Isaiah 41:10

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." -Isaiah 41:10

This verse is what has gotten me through the past few days. Since Saturday it has been an emotional roller coaster. Mostly going down a hill really fast and wanting to throw up... to me that is the worst part. Luckily, I am on my way back up to the top... excited, nervous, and anxious to see what is going to happen next.


I've been working nonstop. It is pretty difficult. To be honest, I would not recommend moving to another country, where they speak a different language to begin your first job... EVER. It has been challenging. I try to explain to my students every day the difficulty of knowing the exact grammar type something is. You know how to speak the language, you know what is right and what is wrong, however you may not know the name of it. I feel like that is my life constantly. Yes, I know whether what you said was right or wrong... but I have no idea if that was an auxiliary verb or an adjective. It's just humanly impossible for me. 


I started teaching a beginner today. Talk about hard! He is about 60 years old and I think it is just fantastic that he is learning English. It was very difficult to communicate with him. My Spanish is so so and when he asked about Papa and Feepapa in the pictures, I think I might have said "I killed him". Sooooooo if I go to jail, you now know why. hahah I also asked him what he liked to do... his response "Pamela Anderson". I have a feeling this is going to be a veryyyyyyy interesting year!


I am so tired right now... actually all the time. Maybe it's because it is FREEZING here. Just so you know... the moment any of you start posting about the beach and laying out and how tan you are... you're getting deleted ASAP. It's so cold here. I am in a hoodie, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks. Talk about terrible! I have class at 8am tomorrow, so I have to wake up around 6:20. Needless to say I am about to go to bed! 


There is a big holiday weekend this weekend. I don't have to work on Monday and Tuesday :) Hopefully I'll have some more pictures and will have time to write some more!


love you all :)

It's still my birthday :)

Don't even think to question me. My birthday goes on for a week every year. Personally, I think it should be the whole month of April. But then we run into the problem that Maddie, the Queen of the house, has a birthday on April 25. Boy oh boy do we know they are gonna celebrate with her more than me.

But really, my birthday weekend was great! Mica's birthday was Friday and she had a party at her house. I went over there with Nico and Mike. Mica is AWESOME! She had an alarm set at midnight to wish me happy birthday :) She also is a better cook than Johnny... yeah I said it ;) I think these 2 need to have a cook off when she comes to visit me in the USofA! We stayed at her house until about 5:15am... I probably got to sleep around 6:15. I slept all day! I completely slept my birthday away and I loved every minute of it. I went to Spanglish where the lovely ladies of Spanglish had a warm brownie and ice cream with a candle for me. Mercedes had a passion fruit cake for me which was delicious.  I went out after Spanglish and met some natives, which was awesome. But on Sunday, I slept all day.... I'm old yall. I can't hang anymore.

Last night, I went to Analia's house with Lauren. Those are both 2 great girls from my certification class. Analia had been in Peru basically since we were done with the course, so we hadn't seen her in a while. It was great to catch up! Lauren got me this DELICIOUS birthday cake. I don't know how to explain it, but I do know that if you are reading this and you live in Capital then you better get here quick.

Work has been very very stressful these past few days. We just got the books that I'm supposed to teach out of, which the students hate. I don't really know what to do about that... I obviously didn't choose them. I had to cancel my class this evening because the stupid subte was down and I couldn't get on complete opposite side of town by taking a bus or taxi in an hour and 40 minutes. So that was a bummer. Then I was trying to plan my lessons for tomorrows classes and looked at the syllabus for what they did last year. Well it's a report in ALL Spanish and my boss won't translate it for me until I come to his office. I'm sorry, you hired me as a native ENGLISH teacher, right? So speak to me in English, nobody said I knew English!

Whew, sorry for venting! I knew I had not posted in a while, so I wanted to say hey and that I am alive!!
I'll add a few pictures from this weekend!

Pub Crawl

Birthday girls

I mustache you a question

I'M FINALLY 23!!!! 

and obviously still a child.

Mica's Birthday Party! 

Birthday cake Mica made for us :)

Birthday girl :)

Mica blowing out her candles

Pinata 

Birthday Princesses

David, me, and Milagro out for dinner after Spanglish

sweet baby puppy

2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a ????

April 14, 1989

MY BIRTHDAY IS IN 3 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
just didn't want you to forget....
AND MICA'S IS IN 2 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)


The spring game is in 3 days too. I'm so upset I am missing it. I am also upset that I have to teach at either 8 or 8:30am every morning except Friday. Anyways, I just wanted to remind you of our birthdays! I'm really excited... get to help Mica celebrate her birthday then I get to celebrate mine!!! So excited!

love and miss every single one of you!

Feliz Pascua!!

Happy Easter everyone!! I hope you all have had a wonderful day! I'm not gonna lie, I can't really complain. I didn't have to wake up at the crack of dawn to go to sunrise service. I went to Mercedes mom's house for lunch. Her entire family was there, it was great. We ate lunch and hung out for 5 hours. I don't think I can say that I could stand being around my family for 5 hours straight... haha only kidding! 

It's been a really good week, I've stayed pretty busy. I only had to work on Tuesday and I don't have to work tomorrow! I'll start back on Tuesday and teach the rest of the week. I start work at Duke Energy and some other company I don't know the name of. I should probably figure that out, huh?

I went to Spanglish Tuesday and Wednesday night! I met some really cool girls from Norway on Wednesday. They're traveling the world and will be in BA until the 17th, I believe. Thursday I went to the bakery... twice. Don't judge me. I don't know what they are called, but it's just like a stretched out croissant with sugar all over it. It's so delicious. In fact, I want one right now.. too bad they're closed. I went out Thursday night with some guys I met from San Francisco. It was actually a lot more fun than I expected. Friday night I walked around a lot and went to Puerto Madero and made empanadas with some friends. Yesterday, I went to a friends house with the girls from Norway. We just hung out on the roof and ate and talked. I met up with a friend after that then stayed in for the night.

I have something to admit. I went to McDonalds last night for dinner. It was AWESOME. It's very difficult to find "fast food" here. Not necessarily like Chickfila, Bojangles, McDonalds, Wendys... that kind of thing. Literally just food you can grab on the go. I was starving and needed something quick. I figured after I had walked like 5 miles on Friday it was ok.

Today was great. I couldn't have asked for a better place to be for Easter while in South America. Mercedes family was so inviting and so nice. It was definitely Spanish overload for me, but I had a lot of fun. Lauren and I went to the park afterwards. I tried to juggle.... and failed. Before I come back to the US, I am going to learn and I will be awesome :)

Happy Easter! I love and miss you all more than words can say :)

Armando y Fred... friends from San Francisco

Empanadas...que rico!

Mica!!! Tu eres famosa :)

Ingeborg y Anna.. Norway friends

Mercedes, my wonderful host!

Lauren's actually awesome at juggling...

I'm actually really bad! 

Dulce de Leche: 2, Annelise: 0

I have gone through 2 jars of Dulce de Leche since I have been here. No, I do not know what it is exactly the best comparison is to Heaven. Ok, so it's really like caramel. I don't know, but it's good. I eat a spoonful, or 2... or 3 every night before I go to bed. Gotta have my sweets!

Speaking of sweets... I am almost out of all the snacks that I brought here. Soooo if anyone wants to send me some snacks and some ziploc baggies that would be awesome :) You may wonder why I want ziploc baggies. Well my friends, it's now the little things in life. I have not once seen a place to buy them. Apparently there are a couple of places around here that sell them, but they are expensive. What do I need them for? Absolutely nothing... I just miss having them. Like I said.. it's the little things in life these days.

For the 1 billionth time this week, South Carolina is a state. Yes, it's in the South... hence the name. I don't live on a farm. I don't know how to milk a cow. No, it is not near California. I'm so happy you've been to San Francisco, but no South Carolina is not anywhere relatively close to there. Why people ask where I am from in the United States, I don't know. They never know where South Carolina is and it really annoys me. Except for this one guy. Only he was from New York, but his aunt is from Rock Hill.. pretty cool!

Today is a holiday. I have no idea what holiday though. All I know is that Monday's are almost always holidays here. There was a parade outside my window this afternoon. By parade, I mean a bunch of people walking, singing, and playing the drums. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy when I was trying to write my lesson plans.

Nothing exciting going on down here. I went to Spanglish all week, but other than that I really just hung out. Lauren's dad came in town and I went to dinner with him. He stayed at the Pan Americano in the Center. It was awesome... coolest hotel I've been in. I'm going to Mercedes' mom's house Sunday for Easter. Apparently there is a Presbyterian church around here... I'm going to try and find it one day and go. One of my friend's birthdays is on Thursday. Naturally, I'm going to make him cupcakes. Hopefully they will be delicious!

Love you all :)