From the Sublime to the Ridiculous…

Well some amazing, and quite frankly ridiculous, things have happened since last I posted, so I thought I should probably catch you up to speed!

So in the early hours of Saturday morning Marta (who’s apartment I am staying in) left Salta to go to Spain, leaving me to fend for myself at her place. Naturally, I abandoned ship and soon on Saturday afternoon found myself at the Matus’ house, where I stayed for the weekend. Noly is studying for exams at the moment so we didn’t get up to anything particularly, just went to the youth group in the evening at church. After the preach and worship the youth usually have food, but since Noly and I haven’t really done anything together we left to get dinner.

On Sunday it was church followed by going back to the Matus’ as some of the family were coming round for lunch. Then at about 9 myself and Noly headed out for a birthday bash! Involving more yummy food called choripan. Nom.

The next day (Monday) was my first day at the English institute called Camelot. And whilst I was feeling exceedingly anxious, I needn’t have at all, as Camelot is amazing! The other teachers, head and receptionist are quite honestly some of the loveliest people I have ever met! (and I’m not just saying this because they might be reading this, honests!) Laura, the head, showed me around the institute and I met a lot of the classes. All the classes were keen to ask me questions (my favourite being ‘What’s your favourite toy?’) and meet me and I was thoroughly welcomed.

Now before I launch on to the next part of the story, some background info. On Monday I had been in Salta for only a few days and at this point didn’t have an Argentinian sim, so my phone was still on aeroplane mode and I could only contact people when on wifi. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be at the institute so Noly and I had agreed that after his exam (that was taking place at 4) he would come and wait outside the institute and if for any reason he wasn’t there, I would just walk back to Marta’s.

So at about 7pm I was sitting down with Laura, going through some test papers when there was a knock on the door and we were told someone was there – to see me! Turns out it was Noly. I was wracked with guilt as I thought he’d been waiting for hours and hours! Laura turned to me and asked ‘are you going?’ and I garbled back ‘I don’t know! Maybe? But I can stay? I don’t mind! Whatever’s best!’ and so went out to see Noly and ended up leaving. As it turns out, he’d only been waiting about 10 mins before getting bored and had only come in with the intention of giving me my sim but instead left with me in tow! Ha.

The amazing thing about all this, was that when I got back to Marta’s apartment, I turned on the oven, about to roast some butternut squash and after about two minutes was plunged into darkness. Help! The fuse box was probably about the only thing Marta hadn’t shown me! It also meant the wifi cut out too. However, after about 10 mins of scrambling around in the dark looking for a paperclip to open up my phone to put my new sim in, I managed it and could ring Noly for some help (i.e. how do you say ‘fuse box’ in Spanish!). In the end, I rang the porters downstairs and managed to garble some Spanish out, something along the lines of ‘I don’t have lights, I don’t know where the fuse box is and I don’t speak much Spanish, please help me!’. Well anyways, up he came and sorted it out. But I really found the timing of this amazing. Whilst it made me feel a bit panicky (stranded in the dark in a city that I’m not yet used to with noone immediately able to help me and not being able to fully communicate with people), it would have been so much worse had it been the night before when I didn’t have a sim card. This may seem to some like a silly thing to be thankful to God for, but I really believe this was God looking out for me, only letting something like that happen when I could actually deal with it.

So that was ridiculous thing numero uno. Onto ridiculous thing number two!

After church on Sunday I asked the pastor if he knew of any English speaking churches and explained that whilst I want to integrate into the community here and learn Spanish, it’s really hard for me to not understand much at church as I don’t ever feel spiritually fed. Before I knew it, it was suggested that we put on some English services, with me potentially as one of the preachers! Help! This is not quite what I had anticipated and not at all what I had bargained for, especially after only being here for all of five minutes! So we’ll see what happens with that one!

Well anyways, I think that’s all for now! I shall leave you with a picture of Salta I took last night.