It's been awhile...

Well, I now have about a month’s worth of blogging to make up, and that won’t even include the time I spent with my parents when they visited. So, fasten your seatbelts because I’m going to run through the past few weeks in category form, so at least you can read what you want. Let us begin:


Classes: The month of February brought a second intensive Spanish course with a brand new professor – one that we weren’t terribly fond of. Don’t get me wrong, she was very nice and tried extremely hard to improve the class and make it more interesting for us. Unfortunately, she lacked one very important talent: the ability to teach. Her explanations made us more confused; she loaded on the homework over stuff she had never taught, we never reviewed, and we never learned from; and to teach a new word, she either went on a 20 minute long rabbit trail of an explanation or (the worst option possible) she simply told us in English. At one point we went to the program director to ask her to help us out and she talked to the prof, so at least after that it was somewhat bearable. Needless to say, we found other ways to entertain ourselves. For instance, Vic and I wrote pages of notes about what was going on in our lives, what God was teaching us, etc., and we wrote it all in Spanish practicing the verbs we had learned. In the end, that might have been the most valuable part of our class…

Sports: In addition to classes, the past month brought us more opportunities to play futbol. The first time we played, we got run off our normal “field” by a swarm of mosquitoes and ended up renting a small indoor field for about $7 pesos apiece. [Side story: when we were leaving the park – that is, fleeing the mosquitoes – a group of guys playing soccer literally stopped in their tracks to stare at us and yell at us to join their game. One yelled to Vic, “Che, en la campera negra, te hago marco personal!” (Hey, you in the black jacket, I’ll man mark you!) After all the unoriginal pick up lines we had received, we at least gave that guy points for incorporating futbol.] The last time we played before Vic left, we played girls vs. guys with the guys adding a couple of 12 year-old kids who wanted to play. At last, as if it were a parting gift for Vic, the girls won! And Vic even scored the winning goal! Beyond soccer, I also got the chance to watch the Colts in the Superbowl. But, despite the fact that I donned my Manning jersey, put on war paint, and screamed my head off, the Colts couldn’t pull out the win. What’s worse, Pablo still brings it up (a month later) and mocks me for it. The last sport of the month was basketball. We “played” with some of the youth group guys but it was extremely different than a pickup game in the States. Only one of the guys really knew how to play, and the rest…well let’s just say they dribbled with their heads down and shot with two hands as if making a chest pass – two cardinal sins one would see only in elementary schools back in good ole Indiana. The most painful part was watching the enormous, over 6’6” “Marcelito” shoot from 10 feet out when he had a wide-open layup! If he had stood on his tiptoes, he practically could have dunked it! Anyway, we still had a blast, but I now know how Argentine’s must feel when they watch most Americans try to play futbol.

Hmm, well it seems that I am running out of time and energy for the night, so you’ll have to tune in next time for the next two chapters entitled “Youth Group” and “Random Culture Stuff”.