Volunteering and traveling in Argentina to proclaim God's great love, and hopefully not getting sick along the way.

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Saturday, December 3, 2011

Distinctions

When you're in between two cultures in a short amount of time, you are able to sense the differences even stronger. Like Daredevil's enhanced sense of everything apart from sight, I sometimes feel the difference just from a whiff of the panaderia, or something like it:

1. Traffic. Wide, usually well lit, lanes in the States. Here, no demarcations to separate lanes. Each car fending for itself. And the cars... in the States, everyone has a nice car. Even your "junker" is probably at least 10 years newer and cleaner than the average car here. Be thankful.

2. Bread. I loved getting to pick what I eat while I was home, and I'm not just talking about getting to pick the restaurant because people were excited to have me home. I'm talking about portion sizes and leaving leftovers. The first thing I'm offered here were criollos, the famous little biscuit given during snack time. I love them so much, I have called them my pecados (Sol always laughs about that one). But I have gone two weeks without them, and I sort of view them as my rabbit hole to engordando. So I had one and stopped. I paused to think about how many things here have bread--a lot of bread--in them.

Such is the life of, as I have previously deemed, second world. Bread and rice, bread and rice. Because these things are cheapest to make a lot of to feed many. I mean, Jesus had fed several thousand on a couple of occasions with it! Again, be thankful for the food you have access to (this includes Asian food!).

3. Air conditioning. We don't have it.

4. Book stores. I have told my fellow reader Flor of the wonders of Barnes and Noble. Even better, the fact that both a B&N and a Half Price are in walking distance to where my parents live. They are places that you can not only (most likely) find the book you are looking for and at a reasonable value, but that you can also have plenty of space WITHIN the store to sit down and read it. For free.

But enough for now. I am enjoying being back, in the summertime, of Cordoba. We had a great little Escuelita this morning, where I was impressed by Javier's handling of some bad behavior by a couple of the boys. We also played this old dice game I used to play at the local skating rink and had a blast with that.

Additionally, in thinking of all of these differences, it is important to try to combine the best of both worlds. Just because it is different, doesn't make it better. Or maybe there is something that is better, but not easily accessible to the rest of the world. Be thankful for what you got, but be okay when you don't have it. From dust to dust any way, right?

Love and chau.

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