The wheels on the bus go round and round... and round and round and round and round!

On Wednesday morning we met with a few members of the social outreach team from San Andres to chat about our experiences during our time in Buenos Aires. We chatted over what we had learned(poco espaniol, how effective nonverbal communication can be, how much of an encouragement sharing testimonies can be, people and things from Argentina are known as Argentine and not Argentinean!) what we had enjoyed (the great organisation of our programme, the variation in work, the people, in particular our hosts) and what had surprised us (the cost of living in comparison to the wages, the amount of dolce de leche (caramel) people eat!). Overall Argentina had been such a fun learning curve for us both and we only wish we could have spent more time there!

Now it was time for a two day bus journey to Bolivia, 45hour on a bus, and Jenn and I were feeling quite excited about it. We had seen the luxury buses and they looked so comfortable! So we headed to get a train into town where the bus station was. It was about 11am so we thought the train would be pretty quiet, but we were wrong, there were no seats and worse still there wasn’t room near a handle to hold on for support, bear in mind Jenn and I had HUGE rucksacks on our backs and small one’s over our front, plus poor Jenn had an extra bag of food(and I use that term loosely!) to keep hunger at bay until Friday! It was an interesting journey, but it all seemed so worth it when we thought about the comfortable bus we would be meeting in town.

We arrived a little later than expected into town so it was a bit of a rush to the bus station to drop off our luggage, but thankfully we made it in time, there wasn’t much time until the bus arrived so we found the right stance and waited for our bus to arrive. 15 minutes before it was due I was getting a little panicky that we were in the right place, 10 minutes later there was still no bus, and no one around to ask for advice! It was now about ten past one, and our bus had been due to leave at 1pm. One of the porters must have noticed our concerned faces and came over to help, he pointed to tell us that we were in the right place, so again we relaxed and felt excited about the bus!

The bus pulled up about 20 minutes late, we pulled out our tickets and waited to board, as we entered the bus we began looking for the seats toward the front of the lower deck that we had requested as they are much better for preventing motion sickness, but the girl directed us upstairs, and to the very back seats, which hardly even reclined as the window was in the way! This was a bit of a concern, and the bus looked nothing like the one in the pictures we had seen... but it all worked out well, we ended up having the back section of the bus to ourselves and lots of room to spread out.

We had been promised breakfasts, evening meals and snacks in between during our journey, so after a little nap we woke up to some crisps, biscuits and fizzy juice. At that point we weren’t feeling to hopeful about dinner! We were pleased when we noticed that the bus stopped at a cafe t pick up our evening meal, roast beef, mash and some bread, cold meat and cheese. Result!

We were now ready for a good nights sleep, and in actual fact it was, apart from the fact that the bus was a bit cold we managed to find fairly comfortable spots (considering) and settled for the evening, we woke up early to some breakfast and some beautiful scenery! I enjoyed the view for a while and then settled for a little nap as there wasn’t much else to do.

I woke up an hour or so later and could hardly breathe, thinking there must be something wrong with the air conditioning I moved around the bus trying to catch a breath! Early afternoon we stopped at the border and I was so pleased that I could get off the bus and catch some fresh air, so off we headed. I stepped off and realised it wasn’t the AC on the bus, it was the altitude! Jenn and I had never experienced this so we weren’t quite sure what to expect, it was all a bit of a shock. We sat on the pavements as it was far too much effort to stand up and chatted about the things that would make us feel better. On this list food was included, so we decided to collect some from the bus, we both stood up quickly and the light headed feeling came over us instantly, it’s like when you get out of bed too fast, only worse!

We spent about 3 or 4 hours at the border in the not so fresh air before finally arriving in Bolivia. Back on the bus and we settled for some food, we were only on the bus about 10 minutes when it stopped and everyone got off. We knew we had to switch busses but hadn’t realised it was so soon. We collected our luggage and walked to the next bus. We now had to pay for our bags to be taken on the next bus, and then pay a tax for using the bus station before being led onto a HOT bus with no toilet. I wasn’t impressed when a very intimidating looking policeman got on the bus, he was searching under peoples seats and repeating something in Spanish, I was dreading him reaching us! But as he approached I could hear more clearly that he was saying ‘buenos noches’ over and over greeting everyone he passed. Jenn was amused as I couldn’t hide the delight on my face at how friendly he was!

The bus didn’t make any toilet stops on the 14 hour journey, nor did they provide any food or water so at 7am the following morning, two very tired, hungry and dehydrated girls were dropped on the cold streets of Oruro. We were across the street from the bus station so we headed over to enquire about a bus ticket to Sucre... turns out there were no busses leaving till 9pm.

We grabbed some breakfast and contemplated getting a taxi. Then we realised it was an 8 hour journey and that would probably be out of our budget. We bought tickets and managed to drop our bags off straight away so at least we didn’t have to worry about carrying them about all day, we were slightly concerned that we fully understood the set up, but with some broken Spanish we managed to communicate that we would collect our bags in Sucre and not before it.

We spent the rest of the morning looking for somewhere to eat lunch, we found a tiny cafe with three tables and one lady serving, she was adorable and was so understanding of our lack of Spanish, she brought a small dish with a sample of pasta and rice to ask us which we preferred, she did this with our drinks too and went out of her way to make sure we were comfortable.

We spent another 15minutes fighting altitude sickness and walking around the area before taking rest in a small park. We eventually gathered the energy to make it back to the bus station where we counted down time till our 9pm bus.

The journey to Sucre was pretty smooth and we arrived at our host, Janice’s around 5.30am. Janice was lovely and showed us straight to our rooms so we coult rest and be fresh for our first day in Sucre.

So after 68 hours spent on one train, three busses, and a taxi we’re now safe in Sucre!

Laura <><

super powers without the cape

Last week we went to a lovely nursing home mainly occupied by people from British familias called BABS. We spent two day there talking and laughing with the ladies and gentlemen, most of whom had made it to the grand old age of their 90s! I think the mediterinian inlfuence in the diet here must have something to do with that if the olivio adverts were right about the health properties of food such as olive oil! We spent some of our time in a “reminisence group” where the occupational therapist (a ral glow of sunshine in the place, denise) gives a topic and everyone is invited to share their memories on this topic. When we where there the topic was dogs and horses but we heard some hilarious stories about pets of all shapes and sizes, including a skunk that had its smelly stuff removed!! This activity encourages the brain to keep ticking and the memory to keep working well.

On our second day we gave a presentation about Soul Touch to a very keen audience who were asking questions faster than we could answer. We were then invited to join them for lunch and enjoyed hearing stories of the residents many travels and adventures over dulce de leche (basically condensed milk boiled into caramel that they put on EVERYTHING here) flavoured ice cream. I had my lunch with a woman that was 101! I asked her and the other lady at the table for advice on how to live a happy life and they told me “be happy!” I explained I was hoping for more specific hints than that which might hopefully reslt in happiness, but they explained to me that happiness is often a choice rather than circumstances. No matter where you might end, or how different your life might look to how you expected you can always choose how you deal with the situation. You can choose to enjoy it and be happy, or you can choose not too. However since then I was reminded of a quote which I cannot for the life of me remember properly or even who said it, but it basically says that a happy life comes from a life dedicated to making other people happy. What a nice thought.

Friday morning we headed back to the Good Samaritan community centre for the final time cleaning and serving with them through non-verbal communication. The love they show the people in the community there is unbelieveble. There are no airs and graces whatsoever, everyone is a soul and everyone is treated with such worth.

After a quick stop at home to move to our third host house with a lovely lady that works in the church, Neli, we headed back to the community centre at night with Susan to translate as we gave another presentation on Soul Touch. It was a lovely night as the youth there are so active, always wanting to help and improve themselves and always making you feel wlecomed. We gave the community centre a Scotland flag before leaving and were delighted to reveice a flag from them and t-shirts.

The weekend started early Saturday morning as we headed to a Christian owned country park about an hour outside Buenos Aires for the weekend youth camp for 12 – 14 year olds that had started the night before. The next 2 days were crammed full with dicipleship lessons, games of all sorts, singing, bonfires, tree planting, lots of sweeties and general giggling. The thing that really touched me and Laura however was the patience and kindness of the children at the camp. Even the ones that didn’t know much English tried their hardest to always include us, and the ones that did know English were only too happy to translate. One amazing little girl event realised that Laura was unsure of the Bible reference being spoken about, and so as she couldn’t speak much English at all she wrote the whole thing down for Laura on a piece of paper in Spanish so she had a copy of it. They were so kind and taught us a lot about seeing a need and meeting it before being asked to do so.

The theme of the weekend was heroes. But there was a strong distinction being made between superheroes and everyday heroes. We were told a lovely true story of a boy in a wheelchair that wanted to make a difference in his community. He decided to just do something small and within his resources. So everynight before he went to his job at a checkout in a supermarket he found a nice quote or saying, wrote and cut out hundreds of slips of paper with this on it and started dropping them into the customers bags as a surprise whilst he packed for them. The manager was soon shocked to find the takings jumping up and the queue at this boys till always being much larger than any of the others.People were so touched by this gesture they kept coming back for more and more. It would seem this tiny gesture had a bigger impact than he could have imagined. We encouraged the youth to become heroes like this in their own homes and communities.

On Monday we spent the day painting a changing room in a charity shop run by a family here beside a government hospital for children with cancer. The health care here is free, but the chairty shop offers the transport fees and other costs to the parents, most of whom are already struggling to live in a country that we find expensive, on wages that are about half of the wages in Scotland. It’s a lovely little shop that patients or parents of patients often find comfort and friendship in. The people running this shop are real examples of love and kindness.

The whole time we have been in Argentina we have given several presentations about Soul Touch to several diferent groups. We both always finish talking by explaining the thing we have learnt the most from the trip. My experience in Argentina has completely confirmed to me the lesson I have learnt. (I promise you I was talking about this even before the hero camp!) The world doesn’t want a superhero, and we cant be superheroes anyway. They already have a saviour. All we can do is the little things that make all the difference. Having a cup of tea with someone, or taking the time to genuinely find out how they are and then listening, might not change the earth or even their country; but I promise you it might just change their whole world.

On Friday evening after our talk Harry and Susan took us to the local Baptist church where a group of young people from a college in America were performing. The group sang beautifully in Spanish, and were all so musically talented that we were shocked to hear that none of them had specialised in music. The group shared testimonies and we heard a sermon from their lecturer, it was great to chat with them after the service, they were all very interested in Soul Touch!
Early Saturday morning we left for the Good Samaritan community centre where we would be helping set up for the childrens party they were hosting in the afternoon. We were both a little nervous as no one at the centre spoke any English, and our Spanish has quite a way to go! Thankfully we’re both very skilled in non verbal communication so we managed to be helpful.

In the afternoon we had the honour of accompanying one of the ladies from the centre to the hospital to deliver blankets and New Testaments to the new babies and mums. The ladies were delighted with their gifts and were happy to pose for a photograph.
We arrived back on time to catch the second half of the childrens party, the volunteers at the centre put on a show and at the end they released balloons from the ceiling, the kids were all going mad! They were each given a gift as they were leaving, these were the gifts that we’d helped to package last week. It was great to see the joy on the childrens faces as a result of the committed team at San Andres collecting the toys for them.

On Sunday morning we moved to stay with our new host family in the morning before the church service. Church is held in a high school as the building is too small for the congregation. The service was of course in Spanish but we had most of it translated for us. The service was pretty much the same as a Presbyterian service at home.
We arrived at church, which is held in San Andres high school, and thankfully one of the ladies volunteered to translate the Spanish service for us. We met up with our hosts again and headed home for a traditional Sunday lunch! This house differs from other argentine homes, the traditional meal here is pasta, which makes a lot of sense to me considering the time it takes to prepare a Sunday roast! And fresh ravioli is a real treat! We had some time to relax in the afternoon before we were collected for the evening service, this takes place in an old Presbyterian church building in town. It’s a more traditional service but is the same sermon as the morning, so Jenn and I used the time to practice singing in Spanish (during worship – not during the sermon!) and read our bibles.
We’re excited but very nervous about learning Spanish! But we’ve jumped in a little at the deep end... on Monday morning we agreed that the following evening we would give our testimonies and talk about the trip – IN SPANISH – at an ecumenical meeting which takes place once a month in the Martinez area, north of Buenos Aires. So we spent the rest of the morning working on our pronunciation.
At lunchtime we headed to meet with the youth leaders for a meeting about the youth camp which was taking place at the weekend. Jenn and I had agreed to help out at the event, but we were a little concerned we’d be more hassle than anything as everything would have to be translated for us! Anyway we went along to the meeting to meet with the staff and everyone was very welcoming. A few people told us their English was very poor, but the Argentine’s seem to be quite modest and usually their English is muy bien(very good)!
We spent the afternoon with a couple who work with the youths (Ruth and Sergio), they took us to Caminito which is the birth place of a particular tango dance, As you can see from the photographs the buildings are beautifully painted and Jenn and I had a bash at a tango pose!

We managed to bag ourselves a mati cup and straw (this is a cup used to drink a local tea, which is shared among groups of friends) as a keepsake and headed for a drive around town to some of the tourist spots while we waited for it to be late enough to go for dinner...

I don’t know if we will manage to adapt to the argentine way of living. Dinner served at 8.30pm would be considered early! Our tummy’s are grumbling by 7pm! We managed to get to a restaurant fairly early, it was called follow the cow, but in Spanish and was an all you can eat BBQ place with the most amazing salad bar I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Jenn and I, not being big meat eaters, were baffled when we were asked which part of the cow we liked to eat... we were clueless! Apparently this is something which is very important in Argentina, we were unsure so left it up to Ruth and Sergio to decide for us. We tried something very similar to black pudding, although it was a lot more moist and soft but very delicious! We had a long drive around the grid system as neither of us could remember where our new home was! But eventually we found our way home and headed for some rest (or at least I did!) as we were due at the food bank early the following morning.
I woke up to discover Jenn had been up late organising transport for the day! Oops! Anyway I’m not much fun when I’m tired... The Food Bank takes food from companies which they won’t use, this can be because of imperfections in the packaging etc, but the food is perfect inside so the food bank take the food, and make packages up for places like the good Samaritan community centre and they can use it to feed the people in the area. We arrived at the industrial estate where the food bank warehouse is located and spent the best part of an hour searching for it, eventually we found our way and we were put to work opening boxes of food, checking for holes in the packaging and making sure it didn’t go out of date before October.

The first box we opened was full of open packets, it’s was so depressing to be throwing more food out, but a few boxes in it became visible how much food we were actually saving and it became very rewarding. After we filled the tables with food we made miscellaneous boxes of food which weighed 11kg and these were ready to be delivered. Once the tables were clear the process would begin again. We were working over lunchtime so Jenn and I had started to feel a little peckish... and were now surrounded by food! At one point we opened a box which was full of cheetos (similar to cheesy wotsits) which were due to go out of date the following day. We thought there was a chance we might get a bag, but unfortunately not... we agreed that it was probably delivered to a youth centre and that made us feel much better!
We arrived home in the afternoon absolutely shattered! And tonight was the night we were supposed to be reading our talk in Spanish at the meeting, I had promised myself a short nap before we practiced lots and attended the meeting; unfortunately it didn’t work out like that. We arrived at 4pm and received a phone call telling us to be at the church in an hour, so after a few rushed practices we headed. I think the talk went well, well at least I think the congregation understood us! I reckon we probably read like 5 year olds though, but at least we tried and now we are a bit more clued up on pronunciation!

Laura (now pronounced low-ra) <><

Atlantis

Jenn and I have spent the last few weeks in South Africa, we flew to Pretoria to visit Rudi (a friend from the world without walls project) and luckily arrived in time for the World Cup Final. This was spent at a fanpark in a local cricket pitch.

After the weekend we headed for Cape Town to stay with Jo-Anne and Raymond, a Scottish couple who live in one of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever seen overlooking Cape Town and Table Mountain. Unfortunately the church we were supposed to be working with didn’t have very much going on at the time but thankfully, Rose, a friend of our host family volunteered to set us up with some work while we were there.
Rose is a school nurse so firstly she organised for us to spend some time in a primary school and the second week we would spend with her in her home in Atlantis and work in a crèche for children aged 2 years – 6 years.

As you may already know South Africa was affected by Aparthide (separating people on the colour of their skin into three categories, blacks, white’s and coloured) several years ago. Although this has now been done away with the people generally still live in different areas according to their skin colour. Atlantis is a coloured area a short drive from the centre of Cape Town.

Jenn and I spent the week in different classes, me with a younger group and Jenn with the older kids, we were both placed in English speaking classes which was a relief as our Afrikkans isn’t up to much!

The week consisted of spending time playing with the children, joining them in their practices for their upcoming concert and teaching them games, songs and prayers (including ‘you cannae shove yer granny off a bus and the Selkirk Grace). On our final day the staff from the crèche organised a lunch for us with the most delicious cakes and treats. We were given lovely gifts and cards and pictures o we wouldn’t forget the friends we’d made and time we’d spent with them. Which I’m sure we won’t!

It was a fantastic to spend some time with Rose in Atlantis, it was such a different experience from Cape Town and we’re so grateful to have seen two sides.
Laura <><

Soultouch goes Spanglish

After spending a long, uncomfortable and extremely funny night sleeping on the floor in Johanesberg airport we made the 12 hour flight from South Africa into Buenos Aires safely and without too much boredom. We arrived sleepy but excited at our new host home on Wednesday evening, thankfully just in time to try a lovely spanish supper dish, tortilla, before heading to bed.

Thursday morning started with a much needed Spanish lesson from one of our lovely hosts Susan. We then headed to San Andres church to meet with Valeria and Camilla, the 2 main co-ordinators of the social outreach side of the church, for lunch. Camilla explained to us that San Andres church is still linked closely with San Andres school and University, and although the church itself does not have any of their own social outreach projects they draw alongside many other projects in the surrounding area and are always supporting and helping those around them. Over the course of the lunch we were pleasantly surprised with an extremely well organised time table for the next 2 weeks that ensures we cover all of the different projects and get a real feel for the work the church does here during our time. This type of organisation has become foreign and almost strange to us after living on “Africa time” (any time you want) for so long, but the structure was welcomed by us both and our western minds.

On Friday we spent the day working in a poorer commuity in Buenos Aires in a soup kitchen run by one of the churches there. We helped the dedicated pastor and volunteers hand out steaming bowls of polenta (corn flour mixed with water, milk and cheese) with a sauce similar to bolignaise, and cups of juice to the many children and families from the community that cant afford to buy their own food. Everyone was really lovely to us and so patient considering none of them speak English and so far Laura and I can only string together a few small sentences of Spanish between us. There seems to be a general warm and loving feel to the people here so far, or maybe its just that I like kissing people on the cheek when greeting them!

Very proudly we managed to use the correct Spanish to find our way back to the church on the bus to give a presentation on Soultouch to an Elderly group from the church. Everyone was so nice and really seemed to appreciate the presentation and a look at the many photos we have gathered over the year. And we were invited to join them for afternoon tea which is always nice!

It would seem we have a busy few weeks ahead of us with hospital visits, childrens parties, food banks, several presentations (including one in spanish!) and working at a youth retreat camp, and hopefully on top of all that we will be slowly but surely learning more Spanish as the days go on. It all seems very exciting and we are looking forward to it all, but prayers are needed for the language. Laura, although nervous aswell, sounds great using the words she knows, but I need a bit more of a shove into it as I have very low confidence in new languages. But so far everyone is being very patient and I know that the times of trial are when God helps us shine the most!Eek I hope so!

Love and blessings,

From a mucho scared Jenn! xxx