una nota de mi corazón

Hola to all! It's been a long while, but wanted to update you guys.


Received A's on both my history essay and photography project! yay! Praise God!

I'm living in a hurricane of exams. haha

Have 3 essay exams next week--History, Culture, Conversation/Grammar.

I have a professor that thinks we're native speakers and who expects us to read material on the university level. It's impossible. I'm often frustrated and discouraged. I spent 3.5 hours reading 5 pages and didn't understand anything. We have close to 60 pages to read for the exam. My parents looked at the material last night and told me that they would need a dictionary in order to read & understand. How encouraging! :) :(

My madre's cousin passed away today. My family is taking it really hard. Please pray that the Lord will grant them peace and comfort during this difficult time. Please pray that the Lord will grant me comforting words to speak to them and that the passing of this special person will lead them to search for Him.

My argentina sister asked me at lunch today when I will return for the states. I just started crying and answered "jj-uu-nnnn-eeee". I kind of surprised myself. I have 2 months left and I already cry when I think about leaving. My madre corrected my sister and said..."No,no,no we don't think or talk about this. Let's move on and think about happier things" So, I've decided that I'll begin, right now, praying for comfort and peace on June 27th. This will be one of the hardest days of my life. Father, grant me peace. . .

I'm so, so thankful for Mr. Mark and Mrs. Karen. We enjoy a time of bible study and mate (type of herbal tea) with sweets every Wednesday afternoon. I absolutely LOVE our time together. We are growing and learning so much about the Lord (not to mention spanish). I'm thankful unto the Lord from the very bottom of my heart for this opportunity to gather and study the word in spanish each week, and just to relax and "let down our reigns" for a few hours. I always feel so renewed and refreshed after our time together. Thank you Mr. Mark & Mrs. Karen! and Michael & Amanda Hodge for putting us in contact with each other. :)

This week we studied Acts 3-the story of Peter and John and the healing of the crippled beggar.
This man was at the gate in order to receive money, but Jesus had something better for this man. Often, we ask God to solve minor problems when in reality God wants to give us help for ALL of our problems.
But his healing wasn't the end of the story.
The Word says "Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God."
This man began to travel with Paul and John and served as a witness of God unto the people. He never forgot what the Lord did for him. Later in chapter 4, we read that Peter and John spent a night in jail for sharing the gospel. BUT 5,000 people heard and believed.
I've been reflecting on the Lord's goodness and all the things he has done in my life. I'm praying that I will be like the crippled man, Peter, and John. In reality, we once were cripple. May I "burn" to share what the Lord has done in my life, no matter what the cost. Just think...5,000 people all because 3 people were obedient. How incredible!

Please continue to pray for my family--Jorge, Marcela, Guille, Coty. I know that the Lord has a special plan for each one of them. Please pray that the Lord will provide me conversations with them and the words and confidence to speak when the conversations come.


Psalm 143:5-10

"I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands to you;
my soul thrists for you like a parched land.
Answer me quickly, O LORD;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me
or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
Rescue me from my enemies, O LORD,
for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
lead my on level ground"

Posted in: on Thursday, April 29, 2010 at at 8:13 PM 0 comments  

I FOUND DARK CHOCOLATE!!!!!! ARGENTINA HAS DARK CHOCOLATE!!!!!! I KNEW they had to have it, but I couldn't find it anywhere! That's because they call it "chocolate amargo" (bitter chocolate). I was calling it by it's literal name "chocolate oscuro" (dark chocolate), but they use this to distinguish between white chocolate and milk chocolate.

So, I found this last Thursday (April 8) at a chocolate festival! I traveled with my tutor, Nadia, and my friend, Cristi, to Villa General Belgrano. This small town was founded by 2 Germans in 1930 and is well known for it's German delicacies like apple strudel and German chocolates. For Easter celebration they had a a festival full of activities from Thursday until Sunday. They had more chocolate than you could possibly think of! Thursday evening, we had the opportunity to watch "Vía Crucis" the Road to Crucifixion acted out by a ballet team. It was amazing!

We arrived about 10:30 am. It was about a 1.5 hour drive from the City of Cordoba. We walked the streets, entered and browsed through shops, bought TONS of chocolate, and spent from about 1pm-6pm on a blanket by a small river. We drank mate, ate more chocolate, crackers, and took cat naps. It was absolutely amazing! It's definitely one of my favorite days spent in Cordoba so far. After about 5.5 hours relaxing by the river, we walked (very,very short distance) back into town. We ate Pizza (mozzarella cheese, onion, oregano) for supper that was grilled over a fire pit (AMAZING)and we were charged for our utensils (even though we didn't use them and ate the pizza with our hands). That was the craziest thing I had ever heard! haha
After dinner, we returned to the main building downtown to watch the ballet team perform. By this time, it was 10:00 pm and the last bus leaving from Villa General Belgrano to the City of Cordoba was leaving at 10:30pm, so we booked it to the Bus terminal and arrived back home about 12:30 am :)
For those of you that know me well...This is MY KIND OF DAY! :)






















P.S. Daddy: I included the picture of the random tree for you. If you look closely, it's FULL of doves ;)

Posted in: on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at at 11:46 AM 0 comments  

Boy am I glad that it's Friday. I thought I wouldn't ever make it through this week!
I can say that I experienced my first tad bit of homesickness this week. It comes when I'm stressed.

My dislike for history was confirmed this week. I feel like my entire week was consumed with writing my 5 page history paper. I enjoy learning history to some extent, but boy is it 10x harder in Spanish. I finally finished my essay right before class on Thursday after spending hours studying the topic in English, talking with other students, and spending 2.5 hours with another professor discussing the topic. Whew! What a relief! I practically threw my paper into the arms of my professor as soon as I walked into class on Thursday. We'll have them back on Tuesday, I'm hoping for the best.
Not sure if you recall, but I, along with 3 other students from Clemson are taking a photography class here at the University. All of the Clemson students were required to take at least 1 class with other Argentine students. (The rest of our classes are specifically for foreign exchange students) Needless to say, we chose photography. Can I just be honest and say that we hardly ever have a clue as to what's going on in class. It is definitely much easier now that it was at first, but photography has a language of it's own, even in English. We always prepare to spend 15 minutes after class talking with the professor about what happened during class. It's quite comical. I often wonder what he thinks of us, but we are honestly making an effort.

So today, we turned in our first project for photography. None of the professors here (NOT ONE) explain what they expect or what they want for a project/essay/anything. It's all just assumed, and I can't stand that! Anyway, Pat, Matt and I spent Thursday afternoon working on our projects together. We each had to select a theme and shoot 10 photos regarding the theme we chose and illumination. We had the pictures professionally printed and had to analyze each photo: quality of light, direction of light, temperature, intensity, contrast, plan, point of view, etc. Please remember that we've been taught these terms in Spanish and have no clue their significance in English. So, Pat, Matt and I struggled and pushed through each of our photos for about 3 hours. We hope our understanding of each definition is correct because we were pretty strict to these definitions.
So, we arrive to school early this morning to print out our analyses and we're feeling pretty good about our work UNTIL we ran in to some other Argentine photography students. ALL of these students are graphic design majors. Several of the students looked at our worked and made comments like "oh, nice" and "very good". BUT, it had to be a fake! You should have seen THEIR projects! These were the most elaborate, most incredible projects you've ever seen. They made ours look like projects of 5 year olds.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty funny. Here's to hoping our professor understands that we do not have ANY experience with photography and our majors are FAR from graphic design.
Today, I took a 4 hour nap. It was amazing.
Tomorrow I'll be spending the day working on my cultural videos for a class at Clemson. I hope the weather tomorrow is the same as it was today. Sunny, about 75 degrees with a light wind. Just beautiful.

Love you guys!
Can you believe next week is mid-April! 1/2 of my adventure has passed. That just seems crazy to me!

Besos from Cordoba,
Hannah

I wanted to include a few of my photos from photography. I chose the theme of textures with illumination. I realize I'm not a photographer, but I thought I would share some with you guys :)

Posted in: on Friday, April 9, 2010 at at 11:15 PM 0 comments