Día Del Estudiante

Wednesday, the 21st of September, is "Student Day" in Argentina and obviously going with Argentina traditions, you have got to party! Tuesday night I went over to my friend Juli´s house for a sleepover. We went to a birthday party with her mom and returned about one-ish. We spent the next two hours just chatting about boys and cell phones and eating cookies. The cookies turned out to be a disaster! I had made them earlier that day using a typical Nestlee recipe but accidently put flour with baking powder in it! So the cookies rose up like a cake, then flattened, and ended up having all the chocolate and butter on the bottom and a layer of cake on the top. To put it kindly, they were interesting...

Gime, (don´t know) (don´t know), Ivan, Dani, Sol, Juli V., Juli B., Mari, Me, Elias, Blake

The next morning we got up "early" at eight thirty and loaded up the car with our stuff. All my classmates and I were going to a cabin in Villa Tacu to spend the day together. My other friend Juli owns a house there and offered to let us hang out in it. Villa Tacu and "camping" as they call it are the hot spots to hang out on Student Day so the streets were packed with teenagers. Many people (my guys classmates included) spent Tuesday night in Villa Tacu drinking and partying but all us girls were pretty much forbidden to go. Wednesday is generally the calm day and so it is a lot safer to be out and about than when every one is drunk. Especially because all the drunk people from the night before are so wasted that they just sleep all day!

(don´t know), Thomás, Facundo, Elias, and Lucas.

Since "technically" alcohol isn´t allowed in Villa Tacu, the police searched our car and backpacks as we entered in the area. But you should never under estimate a Sanjuanino´s drive to drink alcohol because my guys classmates drove up a week earlier to bring in the booze. The day was pretty hot - I am guessing in the low 80´s - so most of us were in shorts and tank tops. My first month here when it was summer it never really accured to me how WHITE I am but sitting there in a lawn chair in my shorts, it was pretty obvious that I wasn´t from here! Given that it is impossible for me to tan, I don´t have much hope of being able to blend in during summer. :)

Mari, Sorrentino, and Elias

We hung out the whole day, , had a water fight, and generally just enjoyed being classmates together! We also went on a long walk where I unfortunetelly forgot to put on sunscreeen and ended up getting a little red. But we were in the shade the rest of the day so no harm no foul. Sorrentino cooked hamgurgers on the grill for lunch. I am not sure exactly why but it also seems to be him that cooks the food....given that it was super hot and he had to be next to the fire, we were happy to hand over the job to him. The whole day was fantastic and it was especially nice to have  a day off school. :) I wish that the U.S. would have more random holidays when we got to go party!

Discovering Argentina in 200 Days

Saturday the 10th I celebrated my 200th day from home! It also was my mom´s 50th birthday which made it even extra special! In all the time I have spent here, every day I keep discovering new things. It is like an Easter Treasure hunt where just when you thought you found all the eggs weeks later, another rotten one turns up in the closet. Only obviously here they aren´t eggs and they sure aren´t rotten! So let me take you through some of the things that are SUPER obvious about San Juan but just might take you a couple months to finally figure them out. :)

This one can be kind of dangerous: the holes in the streets. Generally when I think of a side walk, I think of a flat piece of pavement along side the road tha tis designed for people to walk on. Well, here you could pretty much give it the same deffinition but you would have to chop out the word "flat". The sidewalks here are like a death trap! You would not believe how many times I have tripped and almost crushed my face when my clumbsy feet fell prey to the pavement. Right off the bat they have you watching your step because almost everywhere between the sidewalk and the road they have a one foot gap that you have to step over. Thankfully for those older or handcapped people that would like to use the side walk without having to hire a crane to lift them onto it, at the end of every block they have a little cement bridge connecting the two. After you finally make it onto the sidewalk, where there normally is a small harmless crack that will break your mother´s back in nursery rhymes is an uneven little wall or step that my shoes like to catch on a lot. You also have the holes.....yep, just random holes in the middle of the sidewalk! Where exactly they go I have no idea but some of them go down for a long ways! So a piece of advice, watch where you are walking in San Juan!

The amount of animals here as well is something that is awefully strange. One every street there are tons of dogs. It´s like if you imagined that every third person walking the streets of Bellingham was a dog. Normally, with the streets overrun with little puppies, I would have assumed that nobody would have them as pets. Wrong again! Actually there are tons of people that have dogs! The second most popular animal to have as a pet is a bird. Which is especially weird because unlike dogs, there are almost zero birds outside. I might get lucky and see one a day! They also seem to come in one variety marked brown and very little. There must be a lot of worms here because there sure aren´t enough birds to eat them all! The third weirdest thing is that people don´t have cats as pets. Having a cat in the house is about as weird as having birds in the U.S. Sure, some people have them but you don´t usually have to worry that you will let the bird out when you walk into your neighbors house. :) So in general, I find that the weird mix-up of animals quite confusing and without slugs in our garden, I am just lost! :)

Trash manegment has also been some what of a mystery to me for a while. But after paying special attention, I think I have finally figured it out. If you recall, I mentioned how we hang out garbage outside on trees...well it is because the dogs will eat it. We don´t have trash bins (although the dogs could get into those too) so we hang the plastic bags filled with garbage on the trees outside before the garbage truck comes. What doesn´t seem to make any sense to me is exactly WHEN the bags get picked up. As far as I can tell, it just seems like some random day at some random time a giant dump truck drives by and loads up all the trash. As I think I have already mentioned, recycling doesn´t exist in San Juan. That still is something I have not gotten used to and I flinch every time I toss a bottle into the trash or scraps of paper. It makes me proud of how environmentally conscious Bellingham is! :) I also figured out the mystery of what happens with all the trash dumped in the streets or in the ditches. Generally the rule goes as follows: you are required to clean the side walk infront and around your house and all the trash that might have been thrown there. So my family washes the sidewalk, trims the tree outside and piles all the trash and leaves into bags for the garbage truck. The city streets are a whole other thing....I am not exactly who is supposed to clean up there. Hmmm...

Anyways, those were just the three things that came to mind when I was thinking about San Juan. It is interesting all the things I learn here the more time I get to spend exploring and watching. I hope you get a little taste of the culture I am living in down here and maybe one day when I come back to visit, you guys can come too!
P.S. The day after I wrote that long paragraph about being careful where I walk, I fell into a hole for the first time! I was crossing the street to school, thinking about something else, and when I went to step over the crack between the sidewalk and the road, my foot fell in and I went right with it! The crack was filled with garbage and water and the whole left side of my pants were soaked along with my shoes - and I had to be in school in less than three minutes! Thankfully I just crossed back across the street to my house, changed as fast as I could (waking up Sofi in my rush!), and arrived at school only a little late. So like I said, not only can those holes be dangerous, they can also make you late for school! :)

Birthday vs. Cumpleaños

The longer I am here in Argentina, the longer I am fascinated when I learn knew things about this culture and their traditions. Being as it was my 17th birthday just a few weeks ago, I am going to do a little comprason between my U.S. Birthdays and my Argentina Cumpleaños. But as AFS always likes to remind us students - it´s not good or bad, it´s just different. So keep that in mind! :)

I had my birthday party on the Sunday after my birthday with seven of my girlfriends here and we camped out in my living room:

* Note: First time or info is from the U.S. and the second it from Argentina.

Start time: 3:00 P.M. U.S. vs. 8:30 P.M. Argentina.

First person to show up: 3:05 P.M. vs. 9:15 P.M. I was driving my sisters crazy passing up and down the halls until the first person showed up. I keep forgetting that in Argentina being on time is practically against the law. :)

When everyone is finally there: 4:15 P.M. vs. 11:30 P.M. Can you imagine having someone show up to the pary THREE HOURS after if officially started?

Dinner time: 6:00 p.m. vs 12:30 a.m. (that would be a half hour past midnight)

Cake time: 6:30 p.m. vs 2:00 a.m.

Official party ending time (when all the guests leave except my best friends): 7:30 ish p.m. vs. 4:00 a.m. (but I didn´t have this part because I only had it with my seven best friends but normally at other birthdays the non-bestfriends leave about that time.)

Presents: Polite vs Unnesessary. I generally consider presents something you should bring to a party in order to be polite (even if you hardly know the person) and are opened infront of everybody. Where as in Argentina presents are only something you get for a VERY best friend and are opened the second the birthday girl gets it. Otherwise, presents are really unnesessary.

Games and movies: Games vs. No games and Comedy vs. Horror. Usually I have a ton of games to play through out the night and have atleast two romantic-comedy movies to watch. Here we usually talk and take pictures (although I had to have SOME games at my party so I picked my favorite ones and we had a blast playing  them) It is also a tradition to watch a horror movie when you get together with friends. As many times as I have had to explain it, my friends still can´t understand how deep my dislike of horror movies is and often force me to watch them; but thankfully, given that it was my birthday, I opted to not watch a movie to save my self years of nightmares.

Candles: One for each year vs. the Number. I have always had to blow out one candle for each year of my life on my birthday cake until this year. After you get to be about thirteen, they switch out the individual candles for tow candles that say the number. So this year I had a one and a seven on my birthday cake. I have to say it seems a lot more practical given that we didn´t have to scrape off all the wax that melts onto the frosting. :)

Family: Parents vs No Parents. I was surprised to realize that at my party my parents served us dinner but ate in a different room. They also sang me happy birthday but then chose to eat their cake in the kitchen in front of the TV. Since we had a family dinner on my birthday, it is normal that the parents leave the party almost completelly alone except to bring us more food.

Time for bed: 4:00 a.m. vs 7:30 a.m. I can still remember how excited my friends and I were when we actually would make it till four or five in the morning without going to bed! It was something we only did maybe three times a year and was written in the record books. Here, I have already stayed up bast five a.m. atleast 15 times and have hit 7:30 twice now. I have new records to beat!

Also, often people don´t even have a party. They either go out to a club with their classmates or just go out to lunch somewhere with some bestfriends. I am gathering that as soon as you get into your teen years, the importance of having a big party drops drastically. Even so, that wasn´t going to stop me from showing Argentinians how I like to do it! :) During my party, I incorporated traditions from both of my countries. Since I had had a classic, Argentina, dulce de leche cake on my birthday, I baked a Chocolate Expresso cake that Onalee has made a few times in the past. We had churriso which is super famous here for dinner but also had icecream with the cake which they almost never eat. We played lots of games but also stayed up till the sun began to rise. All in all, it was a fantastic way to celebrate my birthday and also gave me a lot of insight into that aspect of Argentina´s culture. It was perfect that I had traditions from both the U.S. and Argentina because honestly speaking, I feel like they both have a place in my heart. How could I ignore one and only celebrate the other?

On a side note: Happy First Days of School to all you northerners! Enjoy the homework and early mornings and I will be here counting down the two and half months until my summer break. :) I hope everyone is well and keeping the rain away from Washington. I will get a tan for you all in the coming months! :)

Chau for now!