Jet Lag without the Travel

Sometimes our life makes us laugh... not a ha-ha laugh but more of an incredulous laugh. But even more often, we don’t notice things that are actually quite incredible. So here’s to stopping and realizing how unlikely reality can be.

This weekend as Tim and I - two Americans living in an Argentine neighborhood named Palermo Hollywood - ate at a Peruvian restaurant with a Venezuelan student and her Colombian fiancé. The next day we celebrated the Mexican Revolution in a public park designed by a French landscape architect by eating tacos with students from El Salvador and Mexico. And improbable as it may be, our two Mexican students are from Toluca where we lived for 10 years, and yet they didn't know us, nor us them, until we met here in Buenos Aires.

At midnight we got a call from a Chilean friend asking if he could stay the night with us. We felt obligated to extend him a bit of hospitality since we live rent-free thanks to an Argentine family who live in Panama and work for a U.S. company and have been generous enough to let us stay in their apartment. In the morning we served Guatemalan coffee to our guest as he told to of his plans to move with his family to Guatemala at the end of this month.

That evening after tea with a Scottish friend and her Argentine boyfriend, we invited our neighbors, a French and Brazilian couple, to Saint Andrews Scottish Presbyterian church to hear a soprano named Mercedes Olivera sing Beethoven and Mozart.

And right now I feel like I have jet lag just writing about it :-)

Spring-Fever and Goodbyes

(click image to biggie-size)

We have 6 more weeks till the end of the school year at the youth leadership institute. Everyone here has Spring fever pretty badly. They are mentally ready for summer break and are physically worn out, so getting them to work is a challenge.

In December we graduate our largest group yet - about 12 people - many of whom then return to their home country to put into practice what they've been learning. They've been an amazing group and we'll miss them.