We've had quite a busy day today - we had Escuelita this morning and then this evening at 6 we had the first meeting of the new Youth Group! (plus in-between Sylvia came round to plan the youth group with us). For the Escuelita, we looked at Creation, and we'd prepared a 2 sheets in advance - one for the older ones with blank spaces for them to draw something for each of the days of creation and one for the younger ones with pre drawn pictures to colour in. On the back of each sheet was a wordsearch, and a set of sentences with missing words for them to fill in. It went really well today compared to some of the ones we did last year. First Laura read through the story of creation from the Childrens bible and we looked at it in a bit more depth, then they worked on the sheets. For the Youth Group we looked at the topic of what it is to be a Christian - Laura did an introductory prayer and explanation of what the group was about, then we had a few games to get to know one another, then we had two groups each looking at one of the two passages (Acts2:42-50 and 1 John 2:29-3:3)Then they shared what they'd found with one another and we talked a bit about it, we sang some songs and then finished with a prayer.

Had a brilliant bible study in the Barrio today, looking at the 4 different set readings for today. It was really cool - I got a lot from it and felt able to contribute which was good. The readings were Genesis 11:1-9(The tower of Babel), Psalm 37:1-18, Hebrews 6:13-20, John 4:1-42(Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan women). They seemed to link together quite well - the tower of Babel, where the people sought their own achievements ignoring God; the Psalm which told us to trust in God, walk in his paths and listen to him; Hebrews which talked about the certainty of Gods promises; and in John, Jesus saying his food was to do& complete the will of his father.

Feeling much better today, back into food - Yippee! We've started reading Hebrews together which should be cool. The prayer meeting tonight was at a lady's house across the street, who we didn't know, but vaguely recognised, it was a good meeting and Gilberto talked about changing the Merendero at the church to have more spiritual content. We're going to be looking at a bible story with the kids and one of the others is going to pray at the start each week.

Happy Birthday Laura! Unfortunatley I'm not feeling too good though

It's Laura's birthday tomorrow so I've been making her a birthday cake. She wanted a bible shaped one, so I did my best - the shape is ok, but I encountered problems with the icing so it didn't end up with a verse on it! Then in the evening we went to see American Pie - The Wedding, - the cinema was the fullest I'd ever seen it here in Salto.

First Sunday service back in Salto, and it turns out that we're going to be looking at John's gospel in the Sunday services -which is cool especially after having looked at it in depth on the camp. The passage was Jesus at the Wedding in Cana, which Gilberto had previously referred to as showing that Mary was needed to start Jesus' ministry - "If she hadn't involved him here...". However the sermon sounded quite good - no particular focus on Mary and no mention of the above - so it's promising! One thing I noticed that was particularly interesting to me, was that Mary is only referred to in John's gospel as "Jesus' mother" or similar - never by name - in the same way as he doesn't refer to himself by name. They are both only referred to in reference to Jesus, there only importance is how they are related to Jesus - The only importance we have is our relation to Jesus.

Arrived back in Salto today at 7.00 - In some ways, it's nice to be back - but it's been a great trip and would be nice to just keep travelling!!

Left the hotel in the morning, fortunately we could leave the bag there, so we didn't have to carry it round all day. We went to find one of the Christian bookshops, and got some cool books which should help us with the youth group. Then we had lunch at McDonalds - one of there cool salads again, this time to share with 2 chicken breasts - Was lovely. It then looked as if it was going to rain, so we headed back to pick up our bag, as the hotel was a few blocks from the tube. We then went to the Plaza de Mayo and watched the Mothers of the plaza parade in there protest about the lack of information about the people who were 'disappeared'. After this we had a coffee and watched Lord of the Rings part 3 before heading to the bus station to get our bus home at 23.00

Arrived at Buenos Aires first thing in the morning, left our luggage and headed straight to the hotel (Best Western Comfort Hotel) to see if we could check in - we could, so we had showers and breakfast as we decided what to do for the day.

We woke up quite early, after not much sleep as the room was very stuffy - decided to get packed up and leave the hostel as soon as possible. We tried to pay in dollars, but they wouldn't accept it as the note had got a mark on it in pen - so we had to go to the cash machine and get more pesos for them and head back to the hostel before breakfast! We had breakfast at a cafe in one of the main streets and then headed off to try and get some dollars out of the bank to pay Jorge. We looked around a bit, and in the afternoon we went to the shopping centre to pass some time before catching the bus to Buenos Aires.