from ARG with love

back

2007-05-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

in five days i will travel back to the united states. i've spent eight months here, learned a bit of spanish here and there, learned to trust God a whole lot more, learned what it means to be in a different culture for a long time, learned what it means to love friends, and have to leave them, maybe forever, learned what it means to miss home, found so many more reasons to praise our God.
in these eight months i've changed alot, and solidified who i am much more. i still have alot of learning to do, and growing. i look forward eagerly to the next part of my life, where i'll learn to live just that: the today that was tomorrow yesterday.
thank you all for your prayers for me, and thank God that he's kept me safe here, and been with me every moment.
i love you all, and cant wait to see you.

SOY FELIZ

2007-03-27T14:12:00.000-07:00

Influxed with the weight of a new language, my mind supplicates me to allow expression in the old. When you stop using your arm, it gets weaker, and less capable—less apt to act quickly. But nonetheless it will be overcome with an itch to move, to be used, to strengthen again. Forward of this day I won’t cease to let my mind dabble and swagger as it attempts to flex its old English strength, once set aside, now commencing a new flourish again.

In spanish we have the verb SER and the verb ESTAR. Both mean 'to be', but SER is much more permanant, and ESTAR more temporary. Conjugated in the third person plural, they read like so: SON and ESTAN. To say 'They are american' something that they are integrally, you use the verb SER, like this: 'SON americanos". To say "They are tired", something that will pass with a bit of sleep, you use the verb ESTAR, like this: 'ESTAN cansados'.

The point of that short spanish lesson was to tell you that there are people who ESTAN felices, or who ARE happy, and there are people who SON felices, still said ARE happy. Note the difference.

My days here have caused me to realize that part of life is the happiness found therein. We decide how important, or rather, how prevalent this part is. To complain of its lack is to announce incapability to take choice, or rather control, over one’s own emotions. A great friend here taught me that we are constantly presented with a choice: to exist happily, or to exist sorrowfully. It’s nothing more than that. A simple choice determines our demeanor, and it is ours to make, with help from God. If we only elect the route of the joyful, if we could constantly retain a force left within us to choose happiness over sorrow, if we never lost the hope that is that choice, we should never lose the happiness that keeps old women laughing, unjustly jailed men smiling, and abused children loving.

intento, capaz sin resultos,,,,,,,,lean

2007-03-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

i try, perhaps without results,,,,,,read ye.

if you read that translation, it means that i have now ceased to have problems with blogger and perhaps will again begin posting.

you can also see fotos of my recent life at http://www.myspace.com/davigerr

sorry for those of you who dislike myspace, from this locale, however, it seems to be more consistantly usable.

chau,
les quiero,

David.

barbaro

2007-02-12T13:37:00.000-08:00

of course, there's blogger

2007-02-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

a worry

2006-12-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

calle florida: more than one way to this street

2006-11-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

on our recent ACA trip to buenos aires (a mite long, and too expensive for my liking, but supposedly necessary anyway) we had five days to review the city. our most frequented venue was a street named Calle Florida. this street is solely for pedestrians, which makes it a tad easier to get around on foot. obviously. however, most of the common activities that take place on this street include the loosing of money,,,such as: buying clothes, gifts, food, or being pickpocketed. thankfully i and those with me only experienced the first three of those commercial activities.
on the last day that we were in buenos aires, our directors informed us that we had the whole day to do whatever we wanted. this brightened my outlook on life for the time being, because while i like museams, and capital buildings, and pigeons(wait, i dont like pigeons) one can only look at so many without them all running together a bit.
therefore, when i was turned loose upon the city with only the whims of my and my friends' brains, it was only natural that our activities turned out thus:
for a while, we, in calle florida, did the usual buying of t-shirts, or books, or food. but soon we tired of these things (or rather, ran out of money) therefore, we needed a new activity to fill the remaining 4 and a half hours we still had there. wherefore, i purchased a quaint little recorder in a shoppe on the side, and found a cozy spot on the street to sit down, and commenced to play a tune upon my new instrument. as i am not accustomed to playing the recorder, i became fatigued after merely 40 minutes, so i stopped my playing. i looked in my shoe, which i had set infront of me for tips, and to my delight, found a little over 5 pesos.
before i recount our next steps of entertainment, i have to inform you of a tendancy of the occupants of calle florida: as we walk down this street, we are often, if not constantly approached by people handing out small peices of paper that advertise restaraunts, shoppes, or other worse things. hence, we were mildly perturbed by this frequent occurrance. this led to our next activity:
with the five pesos i had made with my recorder, i purchased a small box of Q-tips from a pharmacy on the side, and me and my friends christian and jeremy walked about with our pockets full, and when we were approached by these advertisers, and offered a paper, we offered a 'hisopo' (q-tip) back at them. some were so surprised they actually took them. we also paused to mimic a statue-man. we stood on either side of him for around three minutes staring straight ahead, and not moving. i gladly announce that a lady approached me directly after this activity and told me that i was a far better statue than that man was. but still we besowed his unmoving pockets with a few hisopos as we departed.
after we tired a bit of our hisopo distribution, we happed to be near a shoe-shiner's station. and according to the desire i've had all my life, i approached his chair, sat down, and extended my foot to his attendance - - without my shoes. i cannot in words describe the look on his face in that, and the following moments. it was my honest best to keep my own face to rights whilst i discussed with him the invalidity of his refusal to polish my foot. we had quite a lovely conversation upon this matter we did, which my friend christian captured on his camera.
with fortune, i had elected a jovial shoe-shiner, and i left him laughing, and with my compliment of a brand-spanky-new pink hisopo.

Stitches

2006-11-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

El Campamento de Balsas...
...is a weekend where very many youth and otherwise gather together at the parana river with rafts that they've built and float, paddle, or by other means propel themselves upon the raft down the river.
i managed to get myself into a group with the most sofisticated balsa: it had five sets of pedals connected by chains to two propellers out the back. most of the other balsas, in comparison, were only barrels with wood or bamboo across the top, operated by makeshift paddles. we were obviously the best balsa.
however, despite the incredible design, and overall good looks, the thing we were missing was power. it would have taken about fifty horspower to operate that beast correctly, and at the desired speed. therefore, we had a rather leisurely float down the parana river.
but thats not my story.
in the wonderful leisure that we had, we often swam to cool off from the scorching sun (and to escape the balsa, because we also overlooked the fact that painting a balsa black would not improve our situation with the scorching sun) one of these times after i went swimming in the wonderful wet water, i desired to climb back out to bask in the scorching sun on the black balsa, and since we had no ladder(another small oversight) it was custom to clamber out wherever and however one wanted. i chanced to elect the worst place, however, and in the process of exiting, i quite soundly gashed a wound in my right knee upon a metal flange protruding from the balsa. upon gaining the balsa, i examined my wound, and to my utter shock (literally) i was met with a hole in my leg that permitted me a startlingly clear view of my vastus medialis (a leg muscle) and a rather large tributary of the my greater saphenous vein whose specific name escapes me at this time. (and google does not render) wherefore, i commenced to tap the knee of one of my balsa companions, and ask her where the first aid kit was. to which she turned around to see what damage i had done to myself, and nearly fell quite off the balsa. but she recovered, and we cleaned it up, and hailed a motorboat of the campamento overseers, and they whisked me off to a bigger motorboat which contained a doctor. and there on the boat, on the side of the river, he kindly sewed three stitches into my leg, rather without anaesthesia, (a might painful, i say!) and i had a faster ride the rest of that day in the motor boat. this was the first day of the campamento, november 10.
today, november 20, my friend sabri was kind enough to help me by removing the stitches, and making sure everything was ok. i am a healed, and stitch-free man again, and am again ship shape upon my knee.
following are photos, (only of after the stitch, christian felt shame to take photos as i was languishing upon the balsa at first) of my knee and the escapade.

the cleaning in the morning. to make sure i wasnt gangrenous.

a wonderful display, no?

2006-10-30T10:51:00.000-08:00

me in Corrientes, listning to my new I pod

2006-10-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

Argentinian Heights: abridged version.

here my friend martin and i take a stroll across a bridge whose base hieght is 15 metres, and whose top height (where we are) is about 10 more.

i cut my hair

2006-10-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

as some of you know, i left for argentina with rather long hair. recently, due to several factors, not the least of which was my rapidly depleting supply of shampoo, i decided that it was time for a haircut. so while in brazil, i so did.

this is a picture of the length before the cut,,,we did take pictures directly before and after the cut, but they contain partial nudity (such as no shirt) on my part, so for the sensabilities of those viewing this blog, i chose another to display.

cathy, the girl who did the deed, did so with incredible expertise: notice her instrument is nothing more than a pair of rather small swiss army knife scissors. in the next picture you can judge for yourself how she did.

this was the best fully clad picture i had of after the cut. this is back at the UAP at a party. the small one is my friend pricila, and the larger small one is my friend sabri, and the largest of all is myself, hardly recognizable after the shearing, no?

summer in argentina

2006-10-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

in argentina, the entire population has the custom, or is at least subject to the effects of the custom of a certain time in the afternoon allotted for siesta. during this time, some people sleep, some people watch tv, some drink matte, some sit with friends and talk, or other such riveting activities.
i of course have the desire to embrace this culture while i'm here, so i also have adopted the custom of siesta. this particular afternoon i decided i would take to my bed and sleep for a bit, because i had missed quite a bit of sleep on my recent travels, and wanted to catch up. however, when i entered my room, i perceived that it contained sauna-temperature air. it's coming on to late spring here, so it's only getting warmer and warmer each day.
nevertheless, i was resolute in my decision to sleep, so i stripped off all unnecessary raiment, and ascended to my bed, (i have the middle one in a stack of three) and despite the warmth, fell into a rather comfortable sleep.
approximately an hour and a half later, i awoke with the distict sensation that i had just gone swimming. it was then that i realized that in argentina, in the summer, it is impossible to do any activity, even sleep, without perspiring.

2006-10-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

sabri, me, and jona atop the structure of puente blanco (white bridge)

2006-10-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

me and my good friend juan (chjhhcjhuann!) and i being buffeted by the wind from the bus window,,,,on the way to buenos aires for a choir tour

2006-10-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

such a face follows a night of uncertainty spent with the police.

in trouble with the police

2006-10-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

many people who have heard about the travels i've done since i got here wonder how i get around by myself to so many different places not knowing spanish very well. here and now i tell them my secret: i dont know either. but the following story proves that such a small thing as a language barrier (which is growing steadily smaller) doesnt mean that even the worst situations cannot be overcome.
following my recent trip to Iguazu falls (which, to be said, was beautiful), considering my location, i deemed it quite fitting to visit my dear friend adri again, since i was going to be rather in the area. as the ACA group left for the UAP again, i left for alem, the town where IJBA, adri's school is. from where we were in corrientes, i took a bus to posadas in the evening. from posadas i desired to take another to alem. however, due to some slight oversight on my part i had arrived in posadas too late to catch a bus to alem. there were no more that night. therefore i secured a cab, and directed the hearty and much too loud driver to take me the 100 km to alem. to which he agreed, for it meant money to him.
however, for some reason still unknown to me, after merely 14 kilometres, this kind driver saw it fit to inform me that he could take me no farther, and promptly dropped me and my effects on the side of the road somewhere between posadas and alem at an hour that i am accustomed to sleeping quite soundly during. thankfully, there was a police checkpoint right where he dropped me, so i inquired of the fine gents in blue whether it was possible to yet get to alem that night. they informed me that they would try their best to find me a car or a stray bus to take, but i wasnt too hopefully, for they looked the lazy sort. after an hour of nothing, i was slightly resigned to my fate of not arriving in alem that night. i decided to call adri and ask her opinion on the matter, whether i should continue trying or no, and we decided that weekend was after all not the best for me to visit IJBA, for most of the staff would be gone, and i would have nowhere to stay. so i redirected my interests into finding a bus back to the UAP. shortly thereafter, i learned that time to catch those buses had also run out. it was then i realized that i was THERE for the night. at the police checkpoint. with those fine gents. in the middle of nowhere.
they were kind enough to offer me a chair in their porch to sleep in, and after a few hours of thought, and a random section of time where they asked me to play my violin for them, and i did, i fell into a fitful and shivering sleep. this was interrupted a few times in the night. around 1 in the morning, they decided it was time to clean their station, so they literally threw everything out of the little room they had, and commenced swabbing the decks. i remained highly disinterested, or at least more interested in catching some rare Z's.
sometime around 530, i decided it was time to go back and figure out what i was going to do that day. upon telling the fine gents that i was about to depart, they bestowed a kind gift of fruit upon me. i was delighted, because i hadnt had anything to eat the day before save half a sandwich and some crackers, and of course the bounty of the night wasnt so bountiful after all.
back in posadas, i inquired at the bus station as to what time i could catch one back to the UAP. as it happened, there was no such bus until 8 that night, and it seemed silly to sit in posadas all day. so i figured out what bus went to alem, and went up just for the day to visit adri after all.
after a pleasant visit, i caught a bus friday night back to the UAP, and arrived here again at 9 in the morning on sabbath, just in time to go to church and fall asleep during the sermon.
and this, my friends, is why i need you to keep praying for me, because the only way i got through all this wonderful excitement is because i had God and at least a host of angels guiding me and all those involved through every second of it. i'm sure of it.