Journal Buenos Aires Argentina Cordoba Mountains 11 Jan 1999
Dearest Beth:
Thanks to all of you for remembering us at Christmas time. I appreciated your prayers and well wishes. I am pretty much back to my grouchy, stubborn self--so all is well. Nathan sat beside me in Church yesterday and looked up at me with long-suffering borne of a full fifteen minutes of sitting in Sacrament Meeting. "Mom," he whispered to me, "are you all better yet?" Brent overheard and couldn't help but laugh. Nate glared at him and then looked back at me. "Well, are you?" "Yes," I answered, "I'm just about all better." Nate looked depressed. "It seems," I asked "like it is taking a long time, doesn't it?" "Yah," he agreed, then added, "Can we go home early from Church today?" "No." "Why not?" "That's one of the problems with me getting better. Now I love being at Church and I want to stay for the whole three hours!" With that Nathan rolled his eyes and lapsed into an agonized quiet. Every silver lining has its cloud, eh?
It has been nice weather down here lately. I am beginning to get used to the metric system and the 25°C days (about 78°F) appeal to me. Just a week ago we had a heat wave--temperatures up to 40°C (104°F)--yuck. Rain came, though, and with it, cooler temperatures.
There are lots of nicer things about living here, though. Monday through Friday I have a wonderful woman named Ofelia come and take care of the house and the laundry. She is a marvel. She does more in 4 or 5 hours than I could do all day. The children miss their old friends and familiar neighborhood, but they don't miss cleaning their rooms or having their dirty clothes returned to them the next day all ironed and folded. Nathan (10 in March) says he misses Taco Bell and Boston Market--but he loves the beef here. There are also a myriad of small "kioskos"--bitsy little stores hidden along every block--that sell candy, sodas, milk, small toys and juice. He loves those and I know I will hear laments about his missing those when we return to the States. The school is good. It is small--classes are no larger than 18 students. Nathan's class has 16. He studies Spanish for two hours each morning. There are children who speak 4 and even 5 languages all around him. Most of the children that attend the English school do not come from the United States. There are a large number who speak neither English nor Spanish--they are learning both. It must be a frustrating experience for them. There is a whole different feeling at the school. Pride in who you are is all wound up in your national traditions, your family ties, and your independent efforts to become an individual. It is strange, wonderful sensation.
Meg (15 years) and Lauren (13 years) are growing quickly. They are both taller than I am. Megan is blossoming into a talented artist. A teacher from Buenos Aires' University of Fine Arts lives just a few blocks from us and gives Meg art lessons twice a week. La and Nate have also decided to enroll--they go once a week on Saturday mornings. Lauren is the tallest of the three of us Hendry girls. It is strange to walk along side of her and Megan--I feel old. I remember my mom saying that us kids were growing up too fast, and I used to laugh. Now I laugh and keep my feelings to myself, thinking that I am turning into my mother.
As old as I am, I am enjoying something that I never thought I would be able to. I am taking riding lessons here from two instructors who are national champions. The horses here are wonderful. The barns are closed on Mondays and I spend Sundays at Church and with the family so I only ride 5 days a week. They are glorious mornings, though. I take Megan to her early morning religion class and Brent to the train station. Then I come back to the house and get Nathan and Lauren and take them to school on my way to the barns. It is a good way to get myself going every day. I am learning elementary dressage and I am jumping jumps over a meter high. What matters most to me, though, is that I can feel myself getting better and better. Things that I have been focusing on for months and months are finally becoming habit. I am freed to begin working on a new list of details that the instructors have quite nimbly come up with. I don't even mind that the number of elements they keep calling out to me remains the same--it is just enough that what they call out changes over time.
Brent is busy at work. He was able to hire another lawyer before Thanksgiving and this has freed him up just enough so that the stress level is bearable now. He still goes in at 6:30 am and returns after 7:30 or 8 pm, but he sleeps more peacefully. He has managed to keep his weekends free for us--and I am very grateful for this talent. He only has to travel a few times a year, so we are indeed fortunate.
Everyone is progressing slowly with their Spanish. Mine seems to have begun disintegrating. We went on a week and a half trip to Cordoba (about 10 hours west of Buenos Aires into Argentina's interior mountain ranges and desert plains) for our family's Christmas vacation, and neither of our guides spoke English. I was able to hone my translation skills--I don't know how professional translators do it, though. By the end of each day I was so tired of talking--repeating Spanish dialogue into English and English questions/comments into Spanish--that I just let everyone look helplessly at one another while I lapsed into a comma. We trekked up mountains, hunted for pictoglyphs, rode horses, climbed up stream beds, and hunted for condors and parrots in the skies above us. Dinner was at 9:30 or 10 pm each night (the customary Argentine time to eat). By the time the appetizer was eaten, we had usually lost at least one child to sleep and before the main course was cleared away, all three were usually in bed--passed out. The scenery was breath-taking. The daily trips exhausting. There were days of heat and dust and rain and cold. BUT by the end of the trip, the rest of the family was at least trying to converse with our guides in Spanish. I lost 3 kilos (7 pounds) and heard Brent, Meg, La and Nate speaking Spanish--in my opinion, every cent we spent on the trip was worth it.
I hope that all is well with your family. We are doing fine. We miss the United States, but there are things that we are coming to love here that we will miss when we leave.
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