The ol' "Slide in Sideways" manuever

Transfers were yesterday.  That's why I didn't write.  I am now in La Costa -- the southernmost part of my mission.  It was a hour and a half train ride from Cañuelas to Banfield and then a nine-hour car ride to Madariaga.  (And all nine of those hours the driver had 80's music playing.  We listened to the Police, and songs like "Take On Me" by A-Ha, "Enjoy the Silence," "Land of the Rising Sun," "What is Love."  Stuff like that.)  Trains don't run this far south, the furthest they go is La Plata.

There is sand everywhere.  Now, instead of streets made of dirt and rocks we get to ride bikes on streets of sand.  It's a little harder to pedal but the bike tires don't pop as often.  We do have helmets in this area but I feel like we might as well not use them.  They are so broken that, if we did fall, they wouldn't do anything to protect our prescioso brains.

I'm also not sure how I feel about our bathroom.  We can flush T.P. down the toilet here but the bathroom is about 4ft by 4ft -- shower, toilet and all.  You can't sit down like you normally would because the sink is right where your knees would be.  So you kind of have to slide in sideways.  If you aren't careful while doing this...  the toilet tips over.  BUT.  You can flush the T.P..  That is the most important to me.  And a very close second is that the shower head is considerably better than the one in Cañuelas.  I will finally be able to get all of the shampoo out of my hair.  Whoo!

Madariaga is a town full of gauchos [cowboys].  It's interesting because Pinamar, part of our district, is very modern and Madariaga is a little...  old.  But I like it here.  It's super calm and it also seems like everybody here knows about the Church.

My new companion is Hermana Pomader.  She's from Ecuador and she has about the same amount of time as me in the mission.  And that's all I've got for now.  I'm gonna clean all of the dirt and dust in the pench [apartment], kill all of the mold, and destroy all of the spiders.  And then it'll be perfect.  I think I'm going to like Madariaga.

Until next week --
Hermana Crotzer

Editor's note:  Here is the wikipedia entry for Madariaga.  "The economy of La Costa Partido is dominated by the summer tourist season (December–February), which sees tens of thousands of vacationers make their way to the Atlantic coast from Buenos Aires and the Greater Buenos Aires urban area."

Pinamar is a coastal resort town.  Located less than 400 km (249 mi) south of Buenos Aires, it is one of several small seaside communities that line the coast.  Since Pinamar's main attraction is the ocean, it is a fairly quiet town during the winter months.  Tourism is what fuels the economy of Pinamar during the summer.  (Remember that the seasons are opposite ours here in North America.)  Two facts set Pinamar apart from most of the other Atlantic Ocean beach cities:  it is a planned city with a very strict building code, and it has been artificially turned from wild sand dunes into a forest (mostly of pine trees, which explains the "pina" in the name).  It has been chosen as the summer resort for many well-to-do Argentinians, in particular those living in Buenos Aires.

About 18 miles inland is the town of General Juan Madariaga, or Madariaga for short.