thanks so much for following!

please excuse the annoying mass-editing and posting i have been doing as i get this blog up and running! i’ll soon be adding pictures, videos, and posts from other countries and cities! but until then, enjoy my adventures from argentina!

besos,
Brenna 

onemandreams9:

AHI ESTARE!!!! EN UNA SEMANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Que bueno!! Es increíble y realmente parece a un mundo del sueño :) Que disfrutes :) 

(Source: ohbrenna)

My sister is too cute, isn’t she?
And that head wrap she’s wearing is for sale! Get it HERE! 

innersunandmoon:

sri yantra

I made this for my beautiful sister. Check out her tumblr and her store of handmade adornments!

(Source: ohbrenna)

gracias to all of you for following :)

please excuse the annoying mass-editing and posting i have been doing as i get this blog up and running! i’ll soon be adding pictures, videos, and posts from other countries and cities! but until then, enjoy my ramblings from argentina!

besos,
Brenna 

aka Sara, Ali, Megan, and Sarah!!

Thanks for following, beautiful ladies, I love you all :)

I spent New Years Eve with my sister in Albuquerque—watching 2012 documentaries and reading The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success—and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. We were so relaxed about the entire evening that I’m actually quite surprised we didn’t miss the countdown to the new year! We noticed that midnight was approaching with just enough time to rush into the window-filled entryway where we could see fireworks going off from some other much-more-on-top-of-it partiers. The actual moment when it changed from 2011 to 2012 was fairly blurry to me this year… Being in Albuquerque, I felt as though I was watching the world slowly revolve into the New Year, with some help from facebook. First, friends in New Zealand were wishing everyone a happy 2012. A few hours later, my friends in Europe were celebrating. Soon, Argentines were clinking their champagne glasses and posting “Prospero Año”s. Then the ball dropped in New York, my friends in Oklahoma and Kansas sent me the typical “Happy New Year!” texts, and THEN, after everyone else I know had been celebrating for any amount of hours (up to almost an entire day earlier in New Zealand), it turned into 2012 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The line between years, between hours, between moments, seemed so… non-existant, that I couldn’t help but look at the New Year in an entirely different light. The idea of New Year’s Resolutions always seemed equally appealing and intimidating to me. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with resolutions over the years. I’m hopeful enough to always want to take the opportunity the New Year always brings to start afresh, but just the date on the calendar changing a few numbers was never enough incentive for me to make drastic changes. I could never say “well, it’s now XXXZ instead of XXXY, I obviously have to behave differently!” It just never made sense to me. This year, I think I now understand why that reason was never enough: Time is gradual. In the same way that change is gradual. The only important moment is the present moment, and the only way to change anything about yourself is to focus on being your best self in every present moment… No matter what year it is, or where on the Earth you stand, or when that tiny patch of Earth you are standing on rotates into the “New Year.” And since change is gradual, I’m not going to give up on all of my resolutions if I mess up one moment, or one day. I will put my errors behind me and embrace the new moment—the only important one.

“The past is history, the future is a mystery, and this moment is a gift. That is why they call it the present.”

Happy New Moment, everyone :) 

thank you SO much for following :)

please excuse the annoying mass-editing and posting i have been doing as i get this blog up and running! i’ll soon be adding pictures and posts from other countries and cities such as… ireland, new orleans, albuquerque, and kansas city!
until then, enjoy my ramblings from argentina!

besos,
Brenna 

thank you for following!!
please excuse the annoying mass-editing and posting i have been doing as i get this blog up and running! i’ll soon be adding pictures and posts from other countries and cities, but until then, i hope you’ve enjoyed my many musings from argentina!
besos,
Brenna 

I’ve been trying to decide lately if it is possible to act like the same person in completely different environments with completely different people and I’m pretty convinced that it’s not. And that has made me wonder how genuine I really am… how genuine everyone really is. If our environments and the people that surround us influence our behavior so drastically, is anyone really themselves? Or are you only yourself when you are alone? Or, possibly, I guess the most probable, is that you are just different aspects of yourself in different environments. But even that doesn’t seem right to me. I just don’t know.

It has recently been drawn to my attention, YET AGAIN, that I am a “tease” and a “flirt.”

Often, the best things happen to me when I just live on a whim. In fact, I’d be willing to say that the best things ALWAYS happen to me when I live on a whim.

Up until last night, I had no intentions of posting on this blog again.

By the time you read this article — the final article I will write during my Rotary International Youth Exchange to Catamarca, Argentina — I will be spending my last day in Argentina with the people I have grown to love this year.

I knew this day would come since I decided to go on an exchange, but I can’t believe it came so quickly. Days often passed slowly, but the months flew by.

My calendar has been filled with birthday parties, Rotary events, going-away parties, and — most importantly in Argentina — soccer games. The World Cup is so important to Argentines that the entire country stops to watch Argentina play. Stores close, buses stop running, kids stay home from school and parents stay home from work.

After Argentina wins a match, the entire town floods to the central plaza to wave flags, jump up and down, and sing “Vamos, Vamos, Argentina!” There is a constant battle between soccer clubs in Argentina, but this chant has been uniting all of Argentina’s supporters since the World Cup in 1978.

Watching the World Cup with the other exchange students makes the experience even more exciting. When the Netherlands played against Denmark, my Dutch friend, Dominique, and my Danish friend, Heidi, hosted an orange-and-red-themed breakfast during the match at 8:30 in the morning.

The Germans in our group all showed up wearing red, refusing to support The Netherlands, their rival. Host families came in support of their host daughters’ countries, and I tried to get Dominique and Heidi to stop fighting over my support by painting an orange heart on one cheek and a red heart on the other. Encouragement was shouted at the television in English, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Danish but even our competitiveness brought us closer together.

When the Netherlands won at the end of the game, we broke into another round of “Vamos, Vamos, Argentina!” instead of choosing sides. We were all born in different countries, but this year has provided us exchange students with an unbreakable bond; now, we are all Argentines.

Everyone around the world will be celebrating Father’s Day this Sunday, including my host families here in Argentina. I will spend the day having one last asado with my Argentine fathers, who I will truly miss, along with all of the people that have made this year so extraordinary.

When I leave Argentina, it could be many years before I return. Thinking about that possibility always brings me to tears, but I cannot deny that I have spent 311 days waiting to return to my father and all of the people I love in the United States.

Somehow, I expect extreme sadness and extreme happiness to cancel each other out. But that is certainly not the case. I am so eager to return to the United States that I appear to have restless leg syndrome. My heart is always beating faster than it should be, but at the same time, I can burst into tears at any moment. Every night it takes hours to fall asleep, only to sleep through my alarm because I am so tired.

That is the cycle we all go through as exchange students when preparing to leave. The anxiety is all part of the experience, and it has, without a doubt, been the best experience of my life. I never imagined I could learn so much, travel so far and make so many strong friendships in one year.

Rotary International Youth Exchange also gives me the confidence that every year in my future has the potential to be the next best year of my life. I will return to Oklahoma on Tuesday, but the benefits from this year will continue for years to come.

Thank you for reading about my many adventures in Argentina over the past 10 months; I appreciate the opportunity to have shared my experiences with all of you in Stillwater. If you happen to see me around town this summer, please stop and say hello — and if you ever plan a trip to Argentina, let me know so I can tag along.

We built our new lives here from scratch. And it didn’t just take one try. We had to go to different sports, different classes, different clubs, on different days at different times, and talk to someone who referred us to a different someone who told us about a different someone until we finally figured out what we wanted to do with our time here. We hung out with one group of friends until we met a different group of friends and had a fight with another group of friends and learned more about a different group of friends until finally, we had our own real group of friends. Our new lives weren’t handed to us when we got off the plane. Yes, we were entering a family that already had their life figured out, but their family that includes us is different too. Back in our old lives, all the choices we had made since we were young determined the way other people thought about us and expected us to behave. Even more, those choices determined the way we thought about ourselves and expected ourselves to behave. When we started a new life, we could easily make the same choices we always expected ourselves to make. But if we were lucky enough to realize that since no one else had any expectations about our decisions, we could change those expectations and rebuild ourselves with every new choice we made. Just like we did when we were little and how we spent all those years back in our old lives. So when we first got here, we made each choice for a reason. It might have been purely to rebel against the way we would’ve chosen if other people had expectations for us. Yet it might have been out of habit or comfort. Or, we could’ve made our decisions based on the people we always wanted to be, but never were. No matter which reason, every choice we made was on purpose. Now, we may not realize that we are different people than we were before. But we are different. We just don’t realize it yet because we made those decisions for a reason. And with every choice, we were changing. We didn’t just turn into different people when we stepped off the plane, we spent this entire year transforming into the people we are today. That’s why we can’t recognize the changes. When you watch the leaves on a tree change color every day, you won’t realize the color is changing until all of a sudden it’s getting cold outside and you think back on the warmer days and realize that back then, the leaves were green. Now they’re yellow. Returning to our old lives, everyone else will see the changes we are not yet aware have happened. It’s like a picture of a tree in summer, and a picture of a tree in fall. Everyone from our old lives remembers the picture of us from before, and when we return, they will have the picture of us from after. But being back in our old lives will help us too discover the ways in which we have changed. When you go on a vacation, you might change temporarily. But it will only take a matter of days or weeks until you have gone back to your old ways. But this year was not a vacation. We lived here this year. We recognize people on the street and stop to say hello. We recognize people on the street and avoid them because of that one time that one thing happened and it’s awkward between us now. We know where to find the best ice cream and the cheapest clothes. We know local phone numbers and the addresses of our friends’ houses by memory. We have a house key. We lost our house key. We found our house key again. We have a usual café and a usual drink at that café. We have friends that are surprised when we don’t order the usual. We know which channel is MTV and at what time our favorite shows come on every week. We are sometimes afraid to ask our parents to go out because we have gone out too many times in one week. We can make a playlist of all the songs that are always played at the club every Saturday, and we know all the words to every one. We know the bouncers at the door and they don’t ask for our identification anymore. We have a signature dance move and our friends can imitate it when someone calls out “The [insert your name here]!” We skip school because we go to school all the time anyway, so one day won’t hurt. We are asked for directions by tourists because we are no longer tourists ourselves. We can tell any tourist how to get to anywhere. We clean our rooms. We make a disaster of our rooms. We clean our rooms again. We pick up sayings and gestures from the people we spend too much time with. We don’t want to leave the people we spend too much time with and go back to our old lives. We live here now. I always assumed that going back would be easier than coming here the first time. But now I’m starting to doubt that statement. When we came here, it was scary because we didn’t know what to expect. When we go back, we know what to expect, only it’ll be even scarier when we realize that the things we missed all year aren’t necessarily as great as the things we have in our new lives. Everything is supposed to be perfect in the place we have referred to as “home” all year. But discovering that everything is in fact not perfect will be the worst discovery I could possibly make. We all want to go home, but not until we get there will we realize that this place is actually a home too. I want to be with my old friends, but I’m worried I will revert back into the ways I used to be when I am around them. Those expectations they have for us still exist. Only those expectations are based on the way we used to be. Will we start making decisions based on those old expectations again? Instead of the way we make decisions now? For ourselves? Something even scarier to think about is the way all of the people from our old lives will react to us when we return. Will they be offended if we tell them about the things we miss from here? Will they understand that we really are different? And that we don’t necessarily want to make the same decisions anymore? At least I am able to talk about this year with a “we” and not an “I,” because I know I will not be the only one with these same thoughts and problems. I got on the plane alone, and I’m going to get off of it alone. But we are exchange students.