i added some stamps to my passport this weekend. four to be exact. two more from chile and two from argentina (you get a stamp from the country you leave and that you enter here). we had a long weekend, with today being a national holiday in chile, so me and two other girls got on a bus and crossed the andes into mendoza, argentina. i normally don’t enjoy long bus rides that much, this ride was really incredible. it’s about 6 hours in the bus, plus border crossing, but about 3.5 of those hours are spent literally in the andes mountains. beautiful doesn’t begin to describe. i think the pass we went on reaches a peak of 12,000 feet, with snow covered mountains still towering all around even at the highest part of the pass. the border crossing it actually pretty close to the top of the pass, which is quite interesting. sadly i have no pictures for you at this time b/c i forgot my camera, so i just had to soak it up with the mind’s eye, but i probably was able to enjoy it more that way anyway. but all is not lost for you my friends b/c my friend katie did have her camera and she took tons of pictures, so hopefully i’ll get those from her and share them with you.
well we arrived to mendoza friday night after an exceptionally long ride b/c we took 3 hours crossing the border. but we were all safe and sound, so that’s all that really matters. we checked into our hostel, found a restaurant, experienced a mendozan “tenedor libre” (which translate to free fork, but it’s a buffet) complete with a mariachi band and lots of fresh meat, and then crashed for the night. saturday we got up and took a micro out of town to an area where there’re tons of vineyards (mendoza’s the 8th most important wine producing area in the world) for a wine and bike tour with the intentions of learning about the wine industry that’s so important to mendoza and madding doing a tasting or two. we kinda got a late start and after lunch which was our first stop i managed to get a flat tire. so we made friends with some locals, one being a very talkative, but hard to understand, old man who called the bike place to get a new wheel and by the time we got done we had no time to see even one bodega (where they produce the wine), so no worries, no drunken rachel on a bike in south america. there was actually no alcohol involved. that night we made dinner in the hostel for $2 a person (dinner of ravioli, yummy sauce and bread, pretty great price i think) and went to bed cuz we were all pooped and had sore butts. sunday katie and i got up early and headed toward the mountain to go on a horseback ride in the mountains. the view of the andes is quite incredible from the argentina side b/c there aren’t as many hills to obstruct the view of the actual mountain as there are in chile. we ended up getting a private tour b/c no one else had signed up for the day. our guide was this wonderful argentinean man of probably 40 something who has spent all of his life working in the mountains and was really nice and helpful and knowledgeable. i was so cool to just talk to him as we rode along and took in the sights of all the beauty around us. it was also really exciting b/c we were all talking in spanish and i understood 99%. understanding is such a great feeling. so we went on about a 4 hour horseback ride and then headed back to town for a little souvenir shopping, dinner and another kinda early night b/c we had to catch a bus this morning at 8:45. the ride back across the mountains was pretty uneventful but still breathtakingly beautiful. parts of the mountains had more snow than they had just 3 days before and it was snowing a bit as we came out of chilean customs. i also watched the guardian on the bus in spanish, which i was also able to understand, much to my surprise and delight!
most of the trip can be summed up in accounts of places and sites and silly interactions, but there was one experience that struck in a whole different way. i was on the micro on the way to the vineyards when one of many passengers boarded the bus. as he got on and told the driver where he was headed, i remember thinking for the millionth time how many attractive men there are in argentina, when all of the sudden, i caught a good look at his face, and i could hardly believe what i had seen. he headed back to about the middle of the micro (i was pretty close to the front) but i could still see him in the rearview mirror, and as i looked back, i was again struck by his appearance. he looked like josh. i think i had prepared myself to see people that had some resemblance to josh in the states, especially in places and situations i was used to seeing him in, but this was completely unexpected. when i first saw him, i thought it was some trick my mind was playing on me, but as i continued to glance at him, his features kept popping out at me. the shape of his face, his light hair (not quite as light at josh’s but similar by south american standards), his height, and his eyes. i could hardly take my eyes off of him. it was like, by looking at him, i was seeing josh again. i couldn’t process it all in the moment, b/c i was trying my hardest not to freak out and stop crying, but i had this almost uncontrollable urge to talk to him, ask him his name. as if somehow he would be josh. that talking to him would somehow be liking talking to josh. i’m sure i just imagined it, but i felt like he kept looking at me (maybe because i looked distraught), and i imagined some weird connection between us… as if he were josh and not just a random argentinian man that bore his resemblance. right when i was about to break down, we reached our stop and quickly got off. i saw him watching us as the bus pulled away, and i broke down. i was overwhelmed with grief. i was struck with how much a missed him and the fact that i can’t see him now, and that all the look alikes in the world will never be him, no matter what my mind tries to make me believe. i composed myself after a couple of minutes and we got on our bikes and headed off, but i couldn’t get him off my mind all day. as we rode our bikes at the foot of the beautiful andes mountains i couldn’t help but think how much josh would have loved that. bikes, mountains, what more could he has wanted.
i’m continually surprised and confused by this process that they call grieving. xuan said it well in her blog when she said it comes in waves. but it doesn’t seem to make much sense sometimes, but i guess that is life. who are we to understand it. we just have to live it. and as i remember josh with tears or laughs or smiles or heart aches, i remember who he was and how he lived and what he lived for. and i miss him like mad. but i can’t help but be ok b/c he’s with our father, and the idea of him worshiping up there is even more beautiful than all the memories and it makes him not being here easier. i makes it ok. i even makes it good. i also am continually encouraged by him. encouraged to live as he lived, love as he loved, and accept my faults and screw ups as he did and live unashamed in the Lord’s grace. Lord to be unashamed! to live in that freedom. live in that love. that’s my desire.
as a closing note, i left the states three months from today. three months. it seems like no time at all but then again it almost seems like years sometimes. it still amazes me that worlds apart from home, life still continues. you all have gone on living your lives while i’m here figuring out how to live mine, apart from yours. and while we’re thousands of miles and a continent away, we keep living, keep learning, keep struggling, keep rejoicing, keep smiling and laughing and crying, and while our worlds are soo far apart right now, soon we’ll again share the same land mass and we’ll get to share all these unique experiences with each other. how glorious that day will be! for some that day will be longer coming than for others, but know i look forward to it! so keep living, keep making discoveries and having adventures and learning and drawing nearer to the heart of our Father, and i’ll do the same
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