Beard Adventures: Tandil

The word Tandil can refer to a spider genus, and a German detergent. But in this instance I am refering to a little town near the rolling hills of Argentina. This little jewel was the perfect getaway from the busy city of Buenos Aires. It was a long weekend in commemoration of the liberator Jose de San Martin. The weekend started off great with my bus running about an hour and a half late. But as always I met a really cool person who helped me out. Her name was Agilda and was actually from that town. She was able to give me some good advice on places to go and even gave me her number and said that if I didn't find a place to stay that I could stay at her place. Saweet! So I arrive five hours later and it is butt cold. Mind you I still don't have a place to stay and am going on like 2 hours of sleep,=adventure!
Tandil is one of those cool towns where you can walk everywhere and see the whole town. And the beautiful thing was that it was actually quiet! I could actually hear myself think and it was great to just be back in nature.
On the outside there really is nothing spectacular about this city but its one of those places with a few hidden secrets. One of these is the great cheese and salami they have.

The other thing they are known for is this rock called
"Piedra Movediza," which translates into unstable rock. Apparently back in the day this huge rock just sort of balanced on the side of a hill and the locals would break beer bottles under it to prove to visitors that it actually moved. Well unfortunately in 1912 this rock ended up rolling down the hill and breaking into pieces. (Now its just known as "rock") But in 2007 a couple of engineering students mounted a similar rock in the same spot as the original. Unfortunately its cemented into the ground so it really isn't that impressive.

See not very impressive...But what Tandil lacked in unstable rocks it made up for it with awesome people! Since Tandil isn't very toursity all the people in the hostel were from Argentina except us. I ended up meeting this really cool guy named Javier who was pretty much our personal tour guide the whole weekend. He was raised in Buenos Aires and is taking a break from traveling around the world. He plans to keep traveling and will probably die on the road because that is where he feels most at home. Cool story. We also met other very cool Argentines and we were invited to an Asado at a hostel.

It was here we experienced true Argentine culture. Delicious savory meat, smooth red wine, and hours of conversation. (FYI, Argentine time is different than say, time in the States, if they say they are starting at 10pm what they really mean is that they won't be eating until 12:30am, so eat a snack)

Around 2am, around the time most North Americans would go to bed, my new Argentine friends said that the party was just gettin started. Tired, but determined to try to keep up with these Argentines, I accompanied them to a dance club. There we danced it up until about 5:00am when I had to bail out to catch my bus at 7am. I am pretty sure they are still dancing. Overall great trip with great people and it turned out to be a quite a cultural experience.
P.S. my beard is coming in pretty nicely...check it out!

Trust Issues.

Hello all. A little update, I have been sick this past week so I've been MIA, but don't worry its nothing serious.(Lets just say it pays to be living with 2 doctors)Im about to start my 3rd week of school. My classes are great and include 4 classes in Spanish(one of which is a Tango class) and 1 class in English. And they don't start until 1 in the afternoon so I am loving the sleep!
One change I have noticed in my life since traveling to South America is my increased trust in people. Now a lot of us have grown up being taught "if its too good to be true it probably is." So we constantly distrust people and different type of offers because nobody wants to be labled as a sucker. While I think its wise to take everything with a grain of salt,I also have learned we can miss out on so much because we fail to trust. We not only miss out on cool and adventerous opportunities with people, but I believe this mistrust can overflow into our relationship with God. Allow me to explain. Flying into a new country can be exhilirating and scary at the same time, especially if you don't really have an itinerary. When I landed in Chile I had no idea where I was or where the hostel was and it was in the middle of the night. I had met this Chilean guy during my flight and he was pretty cool. Everytime we passed by each other on the plane he high fived me. He even went so far as to wake me up one time, while he passed by row. How thoughtful..anyways we land and start heading out of the airport and he asks me where I am going and if I wanted to share a cab. Now bells start to go off in my head, and I remembered the wise words from my lonely planet guide to not share a cab with someone you don't know. After fighting with that voice inside my head for a couple of minutes I decided to to go for it. I would just make sure I had my throwing knives on me. So it turns out he had a cab waiting for him already that his company had already set up for him. He ended up dropping me off right in front of my hostel free of charge! And gave me his number and address and told him if I needed anything to just give him a call. Score! There are numerous stories I could share with you from this trip that are similar. I mean I found my host family on Craigs List and all they did was give me an address to meet them at. Definitely a little sketched out during my cab ride to their house, I was thinking of all of the horrible headlines that they would be writing about my disappearance in the newspaper; "American stumbles upon drug lab and is killed, or "Young man shows up at a Mafia hangout and is turned into a monkey slave." You know that sort of thing. Well I can tell you that these people are the nicest people I have ever met and are definitely not in the Mafia. What I have come to find is that most people are genuinely good people and by living paranoid I was missing out on some cool experiences. Frank Crane once said “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough” I mean cool things like couchsuring are built on trust, and its a shame that those rare and unfortunate bad events can keep us from trusting others. Im not saying to just be an airhead and not have discernment, but trust first and if you do happen to get screwed over then get up dust yourself off and keep going. Trust is key in our relationship with God as well. I know for myself there can be that doubt in God's grace. Sometimes I feel its impossible for God to keep loving me because of all the times I've screwed up. His grace sounds too good to be true. But trusting in him means beleiving that when he said "It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift from God not by works, so that no one can boast," that he meant it. And we all know the ever so popular verse, "trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways awknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." -Proverbs 3:5-6. Without trust we miss out on the goodness and kindness of strangers and freedom in Christ. I know for me this is something I am growing in and am excited to see the opportunities it provides.