Nurse Judy Came to Visit

Family shot in front of the Puente de las Mujeres
Puente de las Mujeres in Puerto Madero

We had a great visit with a friend from our days at the Bill Rice Ranch. She has been a neighbor and friend for almost 20 years. Without going into too many embarrassing details, let’s just say we have been through a lot together. Not the least of which involves lots of gauze, pain and tears.

She was here for almost a week and we acted like tourists each day.

Wednesday—the day she arrived—we took it easy and talked most of the morning. In the afternoon she and I rode bikes to church and worked on setting up some new microphones she brought with her. Then of course we ended the evening with a church service.

Man painting with his feet
A man painting with his feet

Thursday we went downtown to our city, La Plata and saw the sites. There really isn’t a lot to just walk around and see other than a few old buildings. The city has some nice places to visit, but it would take days to really enjoy the city in the right way. We have an old museum and some beautiful parks. We spent the majority of our time at the Republica de los Niños (the big park near our house) and the old Gothic-style cathedral (the tallest in the Americas). We finished off the evening with a sign language class at church.

Friday was our long walk through Buenos Aires. We started with a train trip to the station in BA. Then we rode the subway to the Casa Rosada which is the seat of the executive branch of government in Argentina. We took a walk down to the waterfront and toured a couple of ships which are now turned into museums. Then a stroll down Florida Street. This is a fancy place where people with money go to shop. Mostly tourists. We enjoyed a walk instead of buying anything. We saw a man painting with his feet, listened to a little music and got rained out of watching some tango music. We rode a nice bus home. We planned to spend much more time in BA, but with the rain we came home and enjoyed a couple of episodes of Shaun the Sheep.

Family at Republica de los Niños
At the park near our house--Republica de los Niños

Saturday Judy and I went to my sign language class at the deaf association in town. We then spent the afternoon at the hippie market. This is a handcraft market that is mostly run by smelly hippies. That night we had some fellow missionaries over for a meal.

Sunday was business as usual. Church in the morning and a long nap in the afternoon. We took a quick trip to another handcraft market before the evening service.

Monday was the day Judy had to return home. One final trip downtown to enjoy a final bus ride and look at a couple of souvenirs. I rode with Judy in a taxi to the airport. The ride cost us $65, but got us from our front door to the front door of the airport. Not bad for a 1.5 hour ride.

The End

The real adventure began on my trip home from the airport. I wanted to get home as cheaply as possible partly just to see if it was possible to get from the airport to home on public transport with no taxis involved. I took a bus for about 45 minutes to a train station. Bus cost $0.50. When I got to the train the ticket booth said I could get on without a ticket. I got to my next train connection and had to wait 50 minutes for the next train. But, I then rode that on to my house. Total cost was the lone 50 cents I paid for the bus. The downside is that the trip took me 3 hours to get home (twice as long as going), but cost $64.50 less than the trip going.

We had a good time talking about old friends and where they are now. We also enjoyed the excuse to take a few days to go see the sites. After she left all our attention got turned to preparing for our church’s missions conference which started a few days later.

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