Centro Crecer y la marcha de 24 de marzo

Here are some pictures from the march we went to last Tuesday. Very interesting!

See the communist symbol on the flag? There are a lot of communists in Argentina.


Me with two of my friends from Germany
Anyone recognize the name Evita in the background?---"Don't cry for me Argentina"


Not sure what these young people were protesting specifically...


A group of young people were dressed up and dancing in the march







This is a video from Centro Crecer, my home church in Córdoba! Anyone recognize the tune of this song??

Ferias are my favorite!!

Hola todos! Espero que todo esté bien con ustedes y sus familias y amigos! (Just thought I'd throw that in there to get you practicing your Español!)

This past week FLEW by! With every week that passes, the realization that this whole trip is going to be over before I know it becomes more and more real in my mind. It's scary! I'm enjoying it so much here and I don't want it all to fly by before I know it!

So, I guess one of the biggest pieces of news is that I'm going to drop my history class because 1) I don't need the credit and 2) I want to have more time to get involved with my church here and to do a volunteer job with Anna, one of the girls from Clemson! I'm so excited! This idea was actually started last year by my friend from Clemson's Campus Crusade, Abby, and I'm so excited to continue it! What will happen is once a week Anna and I will go to a place that helps underprivileged kids by giving them many things they need, one of which is academic help. Some people come and volunteer their time as tutors to help the kids with their homework, and we could do that too, but what we're going to do is actually plans lessons and activities that correlate with different Spanish stories (for example a kids version of Don Quijote) to teach these children to love to read. I think their ages range from around 6 to 12 and Abby told me they are so sweet! I can't wait to start! It's going to be so much fun to do this with Anna too, instead of doing it solo!

Let's see, yesterday the group of exchange students (which has grown from about 14 to like 30 now) went to the local city of Alta Gracia, to tour the house of Che Guevara there. If you do not know who he was, he was a friend of Fidel Castro and a huge Communist leader in Cuba and in many of locations in South America. Many people are communists here and still worship his ideals. This is because the people here feel as though democracy has failed them, so they think the only other place they can turn is communism. Very sad. Anyway, after that, we went to a lake nearby and had a picnic, shopped, and played fútbol (soccer). It was a beautiful day! Please pray for one of the girls in my group though. I talked with her on the trip and she is having a really hard time with an illness she's been fighting since before she came to Argentina, but now it's gotten a lot worse. Please pray that the doctors here will figure out what is wrong and that she will not be stressed about it.

Tonight, I went to the feria downtown with sometime American and Argentine friends from my geography class! I loved it! I'm a sucker for handmade anything! Everything there is so beautiful! After that, I went to church where we talked about the meaning of baptism and then baptized around 10 people! Very exciting! I´ll put up a video of my church soon! That place is such a God-send. I love those people :) Tonight, I also found out about a college group in my church that goes to a park downtown every Saturday and plays sports with whomever is around, aiming to get into spiritual conversations with them! I'm so excited about going! I'm hoping to go next Saturday! We didn't have school Tuesday because of a holiday (look at next paragraph for details) and there's some holiday this Thursday, so I have a 4-day weekend next weekend and then the weekend after that is called Semana Santa (Holy Week) and so I'll have another 4-day weekend then too! Lots of time off school! I like this place! :) My classes haven't been too tough yet, but midterms are at the end of April (time is flying!) so I'm sure it'll get a little more challenging as we get closer to those.

So, Tuesday, March 24th, was sort of a day of sadness, as Argentina remembered the day that the Dirty War started in their country on March 24, 1976. This day is dedicated to the 30,000 people who were abducted, tortured, and most of whom were killed by the military government at the time. There was a march downtown for it and our culture professor invited all of us to come and participate so I did! Very interesting! There were all sorts of political groups represented, as well as different social activist groups. The news stations said there was a total of 20,000 people there! I'll put up pictures soon! The coolest part was, at the end of it, one of the main news stations in Córdoba interviewed me and one of my friends from Germany about what we thought about all of it! We didn't make it on TV the next day, (my family and I watched!) but it was still a neat experience! I talked about how I thought it was great that high school students were so involved and concerned with politics here. There were a lot of high school students in the march! The voting age is 17 here, which is high school age, so that might contribute a little.

I had an asado today with my parents, one of my sisters and her boyfriend, my mom's sister and her daughter with her boyfriend, plus my mom's mom! Lots of people! I just can't get over how good their meat is here! I always get so excited when Sunday rolls around because we almost alwasy have family asados for lunch! My family is so amazing. I have been able to get to know them even better recently as I can understand SO much more of their Spanish now than when I first got here and had the "deer in the headlights" look on my face when they talked to me :) I am really blessed to have such a big family, because many of the exchange students live with one or two people. There are definitely advantages with smaller families too, but with more people in my family, I have a lot more opportunities to practice my Spanish with them as well as listen to them speed talk to each other, as I try to keep up!

Well, I think that's all for now! Thanks for reading! God bless you!

Bringing the South to Córdoba!

Happy Primer Día de Otoño! (First Day of Fall!) Yep, fall has officially started here in Córdoba even though it was a balmy 33 degrees today! (In Celsius of course!) I'm still have a wonderful time (shocker!) and enjoying getting to know my new classmates! Before coming here, I didn't think I'd have the opportunity to meet people from Canada, Japan, Germany, Austria, Colombia, and Brazil, in addition to Argentines! The new exchange students are a lot of fun and I've really enjoying hanging out with them and practicing our Spanish together! The nice thing with the Japanese girls is that there is no temptation to speak English because they can't! So the only way we can communicate is through Spanish!

Last night I had my second argentine geography class (it's a thriller, let me tell ya...) and we worked in groups, so I and some others exchange students got to meet a few really nice argentines in there! We've exchanged cell phone numbers already and we're planning on going to hang out Sunday downtown at an art fair, where there are vendors who sell a bunch of amazing handmade treasures, like jewelry, clothes, purses, pottery, etc.! The argentine people are so open and friendly! It's so easy to make friends with them!

I know you're just dying to know where the title for this post came from, so let me tell you: I made a good ol' southern apple pie for my family a few nights ago and they loved it!! I had so much fun making it and my family couldn't say enough good things about it! My mom here definitely wants the recipe! My parents from the US are coming down to visit at the beginning of May and my family here and I are already making a list of food that they want my parents to bring and for my mom to cook here! Some of the things on our list are fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, smores, spaghetti, and tollhouse chocolate chip cookies...yum! Can you believe that they've never had any of these things?? I can't wait!

MY APPLE PIE! YUM!

So, yesterday, my first female cousin on my dad's side of the family was born in Virginia so I have been so antsy ever since then to meet her via webcam! My parents got my aunt and uncle a webcam, so I've talked with and seen them a few times already, but now I can't wait to meet the new addition to their family! Her name is Margaret Roxburgh, she was born at 3am weighing in at 9lbs. 1 oz., 22 in. long! She's so beautiful!

ROXY!

Please pray for me as I try to work out what I'm doing for the rest of the summer when I get back to the States. I'm really hoping that I'll be able to do some type of an internship with Jackson-Dawson Marketing Solutions, a marketing firm in Greenville where I helped out for a few weeks in January before I came here. I loved the people and the work environment there, and I learned so much! I'm hoping that I'll be able to work with them again when I get back. I'm not sure how I'll be able to find anything else from Córdoba, so please pray it works out!

Well, I guess I'd better go! I'm meeting some of the exchange students tonight at a girl's house to make dinner! I have to buy broccoli and garlic! I can't wait! Chau!

Video!

Here's a picture and a short video from our tango class that I promised to post forever ago! Sorry!!



Our brave men trying their best to dance ;)

It takes two to tango!!

Pictures!!

I'm so sorry I haven't put up any fun pictures or videos lately! They just take so long to load! Here are some pictures from our trip to Buenos Aires! Enjoy!!




When I went to Buenos Aires, I got to see some of my friends from last summer when I went there with Campus Crusade for Christ for 5 weeks

All the girls from Clemson in front of an art museum in Buenos Aires

In La Boca, a very famous and tourist-y part of BA

The whole group in front of the Casa Rosada, in Plaza de Mayo, two very important places in the political history of Argentina

Jumping right into UBP

Hey everyone! Happy Belated Woman's Day to all my female blog followers! Yesterday, Argentina celebrated it's annual Woman's Day and guess what? There's no such thing as Man's Day! Haha! From what I understood from my family, they only have Woman's Day to celebrate the rights that women now enjoy, such as voting. Men never went through discrimination like that, so they don't get their own special day :)

I'm so sorry it's been so long since I last wrote! I had my final exam for my intensive class on Thursday and I went to Buenos Aires with the group from Clemson this past weekend, so I stayed REALLY busy! I did well on my final exam though and got placed into the more advanced Spanish course! I'm taking the spanish language class I just mentioned, a spanish literature class, a beginner marketing class, a geography class, an argentine history class, an argentine culture class, and my tango class as my one cultural experience. I may end up dropping some of them though. Today was the first day of class. This morning I had my marketing class and this afternoon and I had my spanish languge and spanish literature class. I already took this beginner marketing class in Clemson, but I want to learn the terms and ideas of marketing in Spanish, so hopefully it won't be too hard and it'll work out! My marketing and geography classes are my only classes that are with argentine sudents. The others are made up of only exchange sudents. Speaking of, a few new exchange students arrived from Austria, Japan, Colombia, Germany, and Brazil this past week and are taking some classes with us. I'm excited to get to know them. I hope our group works hard to include them--we're all so close already because we've been here for a month, so the new students might feel out of the loop. I'm so glad I came a month before! My dad in Cordoba told me last night that he was really impressed at how much my Spanish has improved!

So, I went to Buenos Aires with the group from Clemson this weekend and we had a blast! We went on a lot of tours of museums and around the city, as well as taking a boat ride down a river in one of the beautiful suburbs! We also went to a tango show and it was incredible! A lot of what we saw I didn't see last summer, so that was good! I got to see 8 of my friends from summer project with Campus Crusade for Christ last summer, which I was really excited about! I want to go back to BA once the summer project for this summer get to BA in mid-May, because a lot of my friends from Clemson are going! I don't have any classes on Friday, so when I have a Monday off, I can spend my 4-day weekend in BA!

My friend Laura is in another study abroad program in Cordoba and they took their students to BA last weekend too! We had no idea that the other's group was there until we saw each other at the tango show! It caught me off-guard to say the least! Sunday morning, Laura and I had breakfast in a resturant in BA and then walked around the Obelisco, a very famus monument in BA, staying close to my hotel, and prayed. It was such a wonderful gift to have that Christian fellowship and group prayer with such a strong believer. I thank God so much for her.

I think that's it! Shoot me an email (bbagwel@clemson.edu) or catch me on skype if you want to talk!