June + July

📍 Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Luján - Luján, Provincia de Buenos Aires

Nuestra Señora de Luján (Our Lady of Luján) is the patron saint of Argentina and the venerated statue of the Virgin Mary in Argentina. With Argentina being a Catholic country, it is common to see little statues or depictions of Luján around Buenos Aires and Argentina. The basilica dedicated to Luján is 70km southeast of Buenos Aires, so I took a day trip via train to visit. It was absolutely stunning — the architecture was so incredibly detailed, and the stained glass, altar, and statues around the basilica were beautiful. I also took a guided tour of the crypt (not pictured), which featured 70 different images of the Virgin Mary from around the world — as a cultural anthropology and religious studies person, I found it enthralling and so incredibly fascinating!!

Reuniting with my family at the airport was so lovely (I'd missed them a ton!!). I spent the rest of July readjusting to being back in the US, back with family, in summer, and hearing + speaking English all the time!! There have been and continue to be numerous layers of culture shock and re-adjustment, which I still discover and encounter daily. Some lil highlights the first week back included finding a bilingual version of the same Bible we used at El Redentor in a Barnes & Noble on my first full day back, seeing Mt. Rainier again (oh how I'd missed seeing the mountains every day), and celebrating my brother's 18th birthday!!

Emma (one of my friends from PLU) came over one Saturday which was so lovely!! She had tons of questions about YAGM and my experience and everything in between — we talked for hours about everything (and yet still didn't touch on everything). I loved answering her questions simply because it gave me some structure in how to talk about YAGM: getting more into the specifics or (unintentionally) guiding me to reflect on specific aspects of my YAGM year. We also shared mate and merienda with some of my favorite Argentinian snacks I'd brought back with me (bizcochitos y alfajores) — sharing lil cultural things that were so central to my YAGM year (and ideas around community and accompaniment) filled my heart so much.

June Ligas!! 

Our third Ligas of 2025!! It felt like no time at all had passed between May Ligas and June Ligas, which was wild. I helped Erika out with a ton of the behind-the-scenes prep work for the craft station — from counting, cutting, and painting toilet paper rolls, to sorting googly eyes and helping cut out all the little acessories to make the Joy and Anger dolls from Inside Out (Celeste pictured with the examples she made!!). I also found and printed all the coloring pages that kiddos could color once they finished the main craft or take home to work on later.

For Ligas itself, I accompanied a group of 20ish third graders along with Fran, another young adult from El Redentor and one of my closest friends here. It was bittersweet knowing it was my last Ligas (and the kiddos definitely knew as well — they were generally really huggy and clingy, wanting to hold my hand or just be near me, which was honestly really sweet). Highlights included randomly getting bombarded with hugs, kiddos asking me to hold their things while they played during gym time, doing potato sack races with kiddos, helping out with the craft when kiddos asked, and one kiddo sitting in my lap and playing with my rings throughout the Bible story time.

The week after Pentecostés (Pentecost) is celebrated as a week of prayer for the unity of all Christians — this was something new to me (not a tradition my congregation back in the US talks about), so I took the opportunity to attend several different ecumenical gatherings that centered around the Nicene Creed.

The first (top photos) was a gathering that El Redentor has every year with a Catholic Church in Villa del Parque (Parroquia Santa Ana) — one evening where the congregational members of both churches gather together, sing, read liturgy and scripture, and hear a sermon before gathering for dinner and fellowship afterwards. The Parroquia Santa Ana hosted this year, which was a super cool opportunity to visit the church and meet congregants, seminarians, and the Priest! 

The second (bottom photos) was organized by the Ecumenical Commission of Christian churches in Argentina, and the gathering celebrated 1700 years since the Nicene Creed was formed. The liturgy, scriptures, and overall structure of the gathering were nearly identical to the gathering El Redentor had with Parroquia Santa Ana; the music was more contemporary and upbeat, and there were church leaders and pastors from various Christian denominations and churches. Hearing the liturgy again helped me more fully understand what was being said, as well as having a deeper grasp and understanding of what we were saying!

📍 Teatro Colón - Buenos Aires

I went with Gustavo and Solange (my supervisor + his wife) to a ballet show in the Teatro Colón at the beginning of June, which was such a dream come true!! The Teatro Colón is one of the most famous theatres in the world, renowned for its acoustics and architecture, and seeing their ballet company (ballet estable) was so incredibly amazing. The music + lights + sounds + choreography + costumes were absolutely stunning, and my jaw was on the floor the whole show. Growing up heavily in the ballet world and dancing for over 18 years, the opportunity to see ballet in the Teatro Colón was such an amazing combination of my joys, interests, and loves. :)