A busy weekend etc...

So this past weekend we had our first English class here at the house and a hang out night at our house on Saturday night. Both events brought a lot of people here to the house about 15 people showed up both nights. It was definitely great to see so many people here :)
For the English class we split up into several different groups based on ability. Jon and I had a group of 5 students all around 18 years old. They were really proficient in speaking and writing so we played some more advanced games. One of the games we played is called telephone pictionary. Each person gets a stack of papers with as many papers as there are people. Everyone then writes a sentence on the first sheet, i.e. The cow jumps over the moon. Then everyone passes their entire stack to the person next to them and now everyone draws to their best ability what is said in the sentence. Every other time you write or draw until your stack is returned to you. It is really funny what some of the outcomes are. After this game we made them split into two groups and do skits in English. They did really well but made us make up one on the spot as well. There's was definitely bettter-but I blame it on the fact that they had five minutes preparation and we didn't have any time to prepare :)
The class ended around 10 o'clock and no one stuck around afterward. But we ended up playing soccer with a bunch of guys from the seminary that is right behind our house. It was a blast. The first game it was the Americans vs. all of them. We actually tied and had to go do penalty kicks, and lost during that. But after that first game we switched the teams up. By the end I felt like I improved a bunch, making 2 goals and 2 assists. We played till around 1:30.
The next day, saturday, we planned to have people over at 4 o'clock in the afternoon to play some games and watch a movie. Only a few people showed up at the beginning but by 8 or so we had about 15 people here. We played signs and talked for a long time. Some of us watched transformers in Spanish as well. It was really a good time of getting to know people better. Oh and I almost forgot... we introduced Argentina to the pizza cookie-pizzookie. They loved it! Though most of them thought I was crazy putting the ice cream on top right after it came out of the oven. But it was fun sharing this treat with all of the people we have met thus far. Such a Blessing! About three of our contacts ended up staying really late. Martin had told us that it is not very nice to kick people out of your homes so..... the last people left at 5:30 am! It was a long night but so worth it :) Thankfully we were able to sleep in till 2:30 on Sunday. I am so grateful that the church we were going to didn't start till 7:00 pm.
We are still going to english institutes about 3 times a week which has been so much fun. Each institute has its own personality. Last night we were at one where there were a few people who had lived in the U.S for 13 years. It basically was just a get together with them, talking and answering questions. The Argentines were so talkative and are always interested in how the U.S really is. They watch a lot of American movies and a lot of Simpsons. One of the questions they had was do people really go around swearing all the time and they started asking about which words were offensive. We tried to steer out of that conversation so we didn't have to explain much. During the class we actually talked a little bit about religion. Weston actually explained the Gospel to the class and no one wanted to fight back or debate. Everyone simply listened and took it for what it was. It was really nice to discuss faith in a classroom setting and not experience anyone being defensive. The director of the institute chimed in with an interesting observation. She said that she could really tell that the protestant churches here worked in community and helped each one another while She felt it was missing in the Catholic churches. It is nice to know that these churches have an impact. :)
Thus far it has been a great learning experience. I feel like even after a week I could have returned home having learned a lot. The people here are a lot more blunt then at home which is challenging at times but enjoyable as well. Martin is a wonderful leader and I love his honesty with the team. He has shared with us some amazing experiences he has had with God and his laugh just takes over an entire room. It is so hearty and sudden that it just makes me want to join right in!
Yesterday him and Marisol made us do a team exercise. We had to make a living statue that represented the team and what role we feel we play in the team. It was very interesting. At first we just thought of generic ideas for the whole team to do that represented us needing each others support, but others on the team didn't agree. Me being a very task oriented person wanted each person to share how they were feeling about the team so that we could then work together to create the statue. I asked a lot of questions of each person and I think they thought I was overanalyzing the task. In the end we just kind of settled that each person would do what they wanted. After creating the statue we sat together for about 30 minutes and talked about the statue, but mostly about the process. Much of the team did not really care about the actual statue making cuz they knew they would just end up explaining how they felt afterward. Me on the other hand focused only on the task and wanted us to discuss how we were feeling during the actual making of the statue. Two very different takes on the process-guess that's why I'm the engineering major and not psychology. But it was a good chance for our team to understand each other better.