Jenica in Argentina

You know you are a SANJUANINA when....

2012-02-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

1. Kissing people on the cheek is as common as waving goodbye.
2. Every sidewalk or ditch also functions as a trash can.
3. Throwing chalk at your classmates isn´t considered dangerous or disrespectful but rather a fun way to pass the time.
4. You make fun of the other province´s accents because they say "sh" when you say "y".
5. You add articles in senteces even though you know if it technically incorrect like "The Isabel in in the park."
6. Eating dinner at one in the morning is just something that happens.
7. The thought of eating bacon for breakfast makes you want to barf (but don´t worry, I still love bacon! It is just hard to imagine it RIGHT after I get up).
8. The smell of cigarette smoke doesn´t even make you cough.
9. Drinking alcohol when underage isn´t even critizized and often you get the alcohol directly from your parents.
10. Seeing women´s naked breasts on television commercials isn´t uncommon.
11. You talk in a REALLY high voice when you are excited.
12. Anger is best expressed by talking SUPER fast and REALLY loud.
13. Your parents don´t mind picking you up at six in the morning from a party.
14. You call Coca-cola "Coca".
15. Facebook is just "Face".
16. You never leave a message because nobody bothers to check their voice mail anyways.
17. It is 80 degrees outside and you put on a pair of jeans.
18. Your parents wake-up at six in the morning just to bring you home from a club.
19. Facebook is the only reliable form of communication.
20. Going out clubing on Christmas is a must!
21. Calling people "Fat" or "Ugly" or "Stupid" are just forms of endearment.
22. Nutella nor Peanut Butter can compare with Dulce de Leche.
23. 110 degrees? I´ll survive!
24. You avoid crossing the street just because it is so dangerous!
25. Seatbelts are an extra safety measure.
26. Breakfast consists of cookies and tea.
27. A glass of milk is considered a food and not some that goes with food.
28. Your parents have to wake you up for lunch!
29. Your bikini is smaller than it should be. :)
30. You use words like manso and huevon when you go traveling just because nobody else will understand!
31. You don´t use pencils in school.
32. The dress code rules are ment to be broken. :)
33. Being a vegeterian is considered punishment.
34. You arrive an hour late and are still one of the first ones at the party.
35. You dress up nice just to go hang out with a friend in her house.
36. There is nothing better than Coca-Cola
37. 115 degrees outside? Eh! That´s nothin!
38. It breaks your heart to say goodbye...
39. And while you are away you can't stop thinking about coming back!

Although I can never say that I was born and raised in San Juan and have the blood line of a traditional SANJUANINA, I can say that I feel that way. After growing and changing and spending a year of my life in San Juan, I can confidently say that I AM A SANJUANINA! Even if it only is at heart! <3

Visiting Franco - My Argentinian Brother

2012-01-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

Ever since I had arrived in Argentina, I have been talking to Franco about when I could go visit him. For those of you who don´t remember, Franco came to my house in August (2010) and stayed until January (just a month before I left myself for Argentina). I became really close to him over those six months and while I am here, I am obviously going to take the chance to visit my brother! So in December, the plans were finally made and after getting back from Chile, I set of to Concordia.

Concordia is on the far east side of Argentina, right up against Uruguay, and a very long 18 hours bus ride. I was super excited to get off the bus and see Franco and all his family that it was a little hard to sleep! When I got off the bus, I didn´t see anybody waiting for me. I kind of freaked for a second because I wasn´t sure if I was in the right spot but then I saw Franco walking into the bus terminal. He didn´t see me at first and I just kind of stood there a second not really believing that it could be him before I called out his name and ran over to hug him. He was almost exactly the same! Of course he looked a little older and didn´t have the beard he had when he left my house, but other than that, he was still my brother! We instantly started talking in Spanish. I don´t know why but we just kind of agreed that we would talk in Spanish and not in English. It was the weirdest thing getting into his car and having him drive me to his house. I just couldn´t stop saying "I just don´t believe I am here and YOU are here!".

I stayed there for a week with his family. He has two younger sisters, Euge and Morena, who I became really good friends with real fast. What was so incredible about it was that I felt like I was at home with them. I guess since Franco had lived with us for such a long time, they just welcomed me into the family like I had always been there. The days there were pretty simple. Franco toured me around the city - I got to see his Dad´s shops, the river between Argentina and Uruguay, spent lots of time with him and his friends, and ate icecream. :) It was really weird to see all the places that he had told me about back in the U.S.

My Family! I guess I have three now!

Franco´s Aunt, Uncle, and Grandma

Franco, Euge, Morena, Me, and Facundo (Franco´s friend)

On Sunday when we had an asado, we arranged a skype session with my family back in the U.S. It was the first time they had spoken to Franco since he left back in January and we had a blast. His English has gotten a little worse but was still very good. Him and I went back and forth translating from English to Spanish so our parents were able to talk and say thank-yous and such. It was a little confusing at times especially for me because I was hearing English and Spanish and couldn´t keep track of which one I was supposed to be speaking!

That night I also got to go to Franco´s graduation party! It was held outside with tables circled around a dance floor and twinkeling lights. Graduation parties are a really important event in Argentina and the kids put out a lot of money to make them special. They have tons of professional photographers taking pictures every second, a DJ, an announcer, and have a bar that serves alcohol and pizza for those that need a snack. We went with his whole family but most of us left at about three in the morning. The seniors all stayed until seven - drinking, dancing, and throwing cake at eachother.

Euge, Marcelo, Franco, Silvana, Me, and Morena

Morena (Franco´s youngest sister)

Euge (who is fifteen) took me to a boliche Monday night! I was totally wipped after staying up late at Franco´s party but I wanted to see how the boliches in Concordia were. In San Juan, my parents don´t want me to go out to boliches that check your ID and aren´t known for having minors. So although most of my friends go to the giant, awesome boliches likes Willy Cuba and Arena, I had only ever been to the smaller ones were everyone underage gets let in. But in Concordia Euge took me to the best boliche in town! It was two stories with a giant grass area outside, a deck, and lots of big screen TV´s showing music videos. The best part was when I was sitting outside on the deck watching the sun come up. We were right next to the river so the sun slowly climbed up over the horizon and told us it was time to head home. It was one of the weirdest experiences to be at a boliche at six in the morning and to have the sun come up and have it feel like the middle of the day. It was even weirder to go home, shut the curtains, and go to sleep for the next seven hours!

It was horrible having to say goodbye to him again but I know I will see him some day! It was fantastic getting to know his family and maybe both our families will be able to meet someday....all I know is that if you have ever thought about having an exchange student, don´t hesitate! These kind of relationships can last a life time and give you excuses to travel the world! :)

Iguazú Waterfalls

2012-01-12T09:24:00.000-08:00

Okay, this blog post is WAY over due! But since it was such an incredible experience and I have so much to tell, I have been putting it off just because it is such an overwhelming task! But now (almost two months later) I am finally going to share with you one of the once in a life time experiences I experienced in November.

AFS has special trips that they offer to the exchange students where we spend between seven and ten days traveling to famous places in Argentina with the other students. In November, I took a trip that went up north. In total there was almost 50 students so we rented a bus and traveled all together. We began our trip in Salta and Jujuy which are two provinces at the north of Argentina which are known for their beautiful mountains. We hiked up to this place called the "Mountain of Seven Colors" because it was layed with different colored rocks.

In Salta we got to go rafting! I have been rafting two other times in my life and I absolutly love it! We split up into three different groups and I was in the first group and offered to sit right in the front! I have learned that if you want to get wet, the front is the place to be! We spent the next hour and half rafting down the river and screaming our way through nine different rapids. I was soaked by the end and exhausted from laughing and screaming so much.

A few days later, we spent all day and night traveling in the bus to get to the East side of Argentina to the providence Missiones. Over the next few days we had many exciting adventures! The first day, we visited a crystal mine where natural crystals were growing inside the rocks in the mine and out in the open air! I got kind of clostrophobic inside but thankfully we didn´t go very far in or I just might have had a panic attack!

The next day was one of my favorites! We had the option of going on an extra day trip which included ziplining and rock climbing and I obviously took it! We all pilled into a giant jeep and took off into the jungle. The dirt was an orange-ish color and was kicked up all around us by the truck. Since we had all been lathered with sunscreen and OFF bug spray, by the time the truck stopped, we were all an orange-ish, fake tan color! So when you look in the photos, don´t worry because that isn´t my natural skin color. :) We first went to the ziplining area. We were going to go on three different ziplines all over 60 meters in the air!! That was when I started freaking out! It got even worse when we climbed up the rickety wood structure and we waited to get strapped on the cable. It swayed back and forth and must have been a million years old! I had to stay very still and focus on the tree in front of us not to start crying and turn back around. When I finally made it to the top (I was one of the lasts to go), I actually wasn´t that scared anymore. I was just happy to be holding on to the tree and strapped on to a cabel! Atleast I couldn´t fall unless the tree broke in half! And then the man told me to let go and he pushed me off the edge! And just like that I was soaring above the jungle screaming! It was such an incredible feelings to be so high up! And actually I didn´t feel scared at all on the cabel! As I reached the next tree, another man gave me the motion to slow down and I twisted my hands back and forth as they had shown me. I climbed up the tree another four meters and got on another one. And did that one more time before climbing down to the ground. Although it was an incredible experience and I would love to do it again, I was happy to be standing on something solid!

Next we went to this little waterfall a little ways away. The idea was that you started at the top of the water fall and kind of rappled down it with the water dumping on you. The only problem was that when you started, you were perched at the edge of this cliff and you had to lean out over it backwards before they could start letting you down. I started freaking out all over again! But thankfully it wasn´t as bad as I thought! They began to lower me down as I pushed myself away from the wall with my feet. Soon the waterfall had soaked me all the way threw and I was blindly climbing down. Thankfully I reached the little dock at last and they unstrapped me. I was completelly soaked and my heart was pumping but I felt awesome! There is nothing like a little adrenaline rush to get you going! That was the first time in my life I had ever been ziplining or rappeling and I was so happy I tried it!

Our last day was when we actually got to go to the IGUAZÚ WATERFALLS! They are super famous and one of the biggest in the world and we had been waiting all week to see them. They have built a park around them will platforms that go out above them and below them and boardwalks that take you over the rivers and jungles surounding them. First we visited an area called "The Devil´s Throut" where we had to walk out on this bridge for a ways just to get there. We heard the water before we could even see the fall itself and could see the mist spewing up into the air. The waterfall was incredible! I trully can´t explain what it was like seeing so much water plungeing down with so much forse! From that moment on, I spent the rest of the day in a daze! We went down below to see it from different angles, walked to different waterfalls, and even got to stand right at the edge of one! But my favorite part of all was when me and Eetu (a boy from Finland who I had made good friends with) went down to a plat form right in front of one of the falls. Just the mist was soaking us in seconds as we stood there with our arms spread wide laughing and screaming into the wind and water. It was unforgettable.

But all to soon it was over and we had to head back to the bus and begin the long journey home. Three other students and I all had over 25 hours of travel time before we made it back to San Juan and we all arrived exhausted and ready for a long night´s sleep.

The trip was incredible to say the least! I did so many new things and met so many new people! One of the funnest parts was getting to know all the students from different countries and how they have had to adjust to life in Argentina. It was hysterical (and a little humiliating) talking to the guy from New Zealand because even though he was speaking English, I swear I could understand him better in Spanish! It took me the first two days just to adjust to his really stronge accent so I could talk to him! And we are talking about English here! My own language! Anyways, we had a blast comparing different words and phrases that we use and they all laughed when I couldn´t understand what they were saying. I met a lot of new people on that trip and it was pretty sad to say goodbye. Who knows when or if I will ever see any of them again....

So that it the gist of my trip up north with AFS! An unforgettable experience! :)

Feliz Navidad! Argentina Style...

2011-12-27T07:38:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Everyone! Or should I say - Feliz Navidad! I have to say that my Christmas holidays have been some of the strangest and most different holidays I have ever experienced. When people say that cultures can be different, they really mean it! It has been a fun getting to know how my family celebrates Christmas here but I have to say I did miss you guys a bit.

Anyways, I got back from vacacioning in Concordia on the 22nd to find that Paula had already decorated the Christmas tree and put up decorations around the house. Unlike our tree normally is, this tree was fake and all the ornamentes were evenly placed and color cordinated. I was also wonderfully surprised to find that we had gotten an early Christmas present - air conditioning in the living room! Yay! Given that the holidays where passing by with 90 and 100 degree days, I was wanting that AC pretty bad!

On the 23rd we tackled the task of cleaning my grandparents pool. After a year without use, it was looking pretty gross. We spent hours scrubbing and rubbing and pumping out the yucky water and finally we had to use acid to get the green salt and algea growing on the bottom off. But in the end, it turned out nice and clean and was going to be ready to swim in by Christmas day.

On the 24th we started preparing all the food and desserts for that night. We made fruit salad, Shirley Triffle, many different salads and dressings, baked potatoes, and we purchased chicken and empanadas because nobody wanted to do any serious cooking. We went over to my grandparent´s house and put the tables outside in the patio. We were going to be twenty in total so we need a LOT of space. Thankfully it was a nice night - not to hot and not too many mosquitos! At about ten thirty that night we all arrived for dinner. We feasted until midnight when the fireworks started going off all over the city and we all toaste and wished eachother Merry Christmas! My little cousin, Santiago, still believes that Papa Noel (Santa Claus) comes to visit so we had him go outside with me and some cousins while the rest of the family put all the presents under the tree. And surprise!- Santa had shown up! My family had told me that they didn´t go gifts (which normally they don´t) but since Santiago was getting some, Santa also brought some things for the rest of the family. It was fun to have Santa show up when I wasn´t excepting anything at all!

The night carried on with cake, coffee, and lots of photos! I didn´t end up getting home until four in the morning and I was exhausted! But since it was Christmas day, I woke up at one in the afternoon to mama shouting "Tengo hambre! Vamos a la casa de los abuelos!" Which means, "I am hungry! We are going to grandma and grandpa´s house!" which also had the hidden meaning that I actually had to get out of bed. :) We all had lunch together again and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool. It was pretty weird to be swimming on Christmas...but I guess there are weirder things in the world! I also got to talk to my family in the U.S. that afternoon on Skype. I had been missing them quite a lot so it was nice to "see" them for a little while. As much as it is incredible to be here, I just can´t help missing my family and traditions on such a special day like Christmas.

What really threw me for a loop was when my sisters and cousins decided they were going to go out - ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT! I had heard that it was really popular to go out to a bar or out clubbing on Christmas but I didn´t really BELIEVE it until I was doing it! At about eleven that night we met at a cafe type bar in town. It was all outside with load music and flashing lights. It practically felt like a disco only that we were also eating pizza! At about two a.m. we all headed over to a disco called "Music Bar" and danced the night away until five when mama had set the cerfew. I can tell you, it was one of the most mind boggleing things I have done during my year here - dancing at clubs and Christmas just don´t go together! But I guess that is why I am here - to learn how this culture is different and unique!

Now I am just trying to prepare myself for New Year´s Eve which they say will be about the same kind of thing! After December is over, I just might sleep right up until I have to get on the plane! I am so exhausted and I just got threw the first round of the holiday spirit! All I know is that Christmas was wonderful. It was fun to be able to see how my family here celebrates it and be able to take part in all the traditions.

Only 39 days left in Argentina! And only 40 days until I am back in Washington! Chau for now!

Crossing the Andes to Chile!

2011-12-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

Last week I had the incredible opportunity to visit Chile with my family! Normally they vacation in Mar Del Plata but this year they decided to visit The Serena in Chile!!! We left early Sunday morning with what we thought would be about a seven hour drive ahead of us. What we didn´t count on was the following: when we arrived at the Argentinian customs, my papa realized that he didn´t have the most up-to-date insurance card in the truck. Given that is was necessary in order to cross the border, we spent almost two hours calling numbers and trying to find someone awake on a Sunday morning who could fax us a copy of the receipt saying that we had actually paid. Eventually they got in touch with a friend of a friend who works for our insurance company and we were able finally to get across the border. Easy going from there, right? Not quite- although my parents had calculated out the mileage of the trip and based our travel time off that, they had never actually driven the road before. So when we got to the pass that would take us up over the Andes Mountains we were all horrified to find that it was a pot-hole filled, one lane only, no guard rail, dirt road. So for the next six hours or more we were rolling along at about 25 or 30 miles per hour MAX. Surprisingly (and thank God for this!) I wasn´t actually scared of the height. Which should have scared the crap out of me because we were just feet from tumbling down a mountain. The only actual problem we encounted on that stretch of road was the fact that we hadn´t thought to bring any sort of lunch food. We were stuck eating cookies, media lunas, and apples until six that afternoon! You can imagine that I was pretty hungry by the end of it! The Chile border crossing was easy (searched the car, gave me my stamp, and registered us in the computer) and we were officially in another country!

Imagine finding a lake at 4,200 meters...

We actually made it all the way to 4800 meters!

The next week was incredible! We rented a cabin on the waterfront and just had to cross the street to get to the beach! We actually only had two days of sun which were spent tanning and swimming in the ocean (Did you know that I actually can tan?) and the rest of the week was spent going for runs in the sand and exploring the Chilean culture. What really stood out to me the most was the colors and placements of the houses. I have seen "south american" cultures in movies where all the houses are packed together on mountains with bright colors every other house and steep roads that are almost impossible to drive up, but I never really imagined that they were actually like that. It was so beautiful in such a strange way that I just spent hours taking photos and looking at the town.

What was really fun was analizing all the differences between Argentina and Chile. My sisters had also never been to Chile before so we were all in the same boat. We had challenges going to see if we could spot Chilean boys who were hotter than Argentinians. Which, by the way, was impossible since there was not one! I guess I picked the right country. :) We also noticed the differences in clothing styles and how they still used boots and hadn´t switched over to sandles yet like us. We spent hours shopping and looking at electronics since they are cheaper in Chile. We also went on walks on the beach in the early morning hours. There is nothing like the sweet smell of the ocean water and seaweed. But in fact, I missed San Juan´s dry air. My hair puffed up into a frizzy mess and the air felt heavy and trapping with all the humidity. How I am going to go back to Deming is a mistery to me!

Anyways, the whole week was fantastic and it was super fun to spend time with my family. Paula´s boyfriend, Federico, also came with us which was nice. Sometimes when it is just family we can get on eachother´s nerves a bit. I hope everyone is enjoying the Holidays and not missing me too much! Less than two months before I get back! Chau for now!

Turning 18 Means a Really Bad Haircut

2011-11-27T16:29:00.000-08:00

As you should know by now, turning 15 for girls here is a really big deal. But as some might ask, what about the boys? Don´t they get some big party as well? And that is where I would step in and explain that yes, they do have a party but unfortunetly it is not as...nice as what the girls get. For a guy in Argentina, turning 18 is a really big deal. They usually have a party with their whole family and friends and stay up all night getting really drunk. Only the next morning they almost always wake up with their hair shaved off or cut in random places. Generally you can blame their friends. :) It is a tradition that the guys have to shave off their hair when they turn 18 and normally us as party guests get the honor of chopping it off. I have been to two different birthdays where I got to wack at a guy´s hair with scissors and let me tell you, it was the worst looking hair ever!

The next morning most of them (if they are smart and don´t want to look stupid) go to the haircutters and have them shave it all off! It is always quite funny when I see someone with a shaved head because I automatically know that he must have turned 18 recently. Nobody likes short hair here so you can pretty much bet your money that that is why they shaved it. :) Anyways, just thought you might like to hear a little bit about something I learned recently. Enjoy the snow and cold weather! Today it got up to 98 degrees! Yay! Summer break just started and I am already boiling to death! :)

Once a Nerd, Always a Nerd

2011-11-26T09:34:00.000-08:00

Yay! Summer break has finally arrived and now I can rub it all in your faces! You would not believe how hard it was back in July when I was stuck in school and everyone was off at camp and sunbathing. But now my time for revenge has finally come! Last Friday I officially finished school and until I get back in February, it is all summer, swimming, and late nights! The only thing left to finish in terms of school is the end of the year Mass, Assembly, and collecting all my notes and letters for my school back in the U.S. Last night we had our last Mass that I had to go to which was actually really nice. The best part though was when they announced the "Best Classmate" award for each grade. I had already known that my classmates had chosen me (that was why I had to go to the Mass afterall) but it was still really fun when I got to walk up infront of everyone and recieve my diploma award. Afterwards my family and friends and teachers congradulated me and hugged me and over all just made me blush a lot. This award is really just a silly tradition but for me it means so much more. You have no idea how hard I have worked to make friends here. Every day at school I had to struggle with the language and my fear of talking to people I didn´t know. It sucked some times but in the end it payed off. I also got so lucky! You would not believe how many exchange students only get along with one or two of their classmates and I get along with every single one!! I litterally have started introducing some of the other exchange students to my friends because everyone is so jealous that I have such an incredible class. Anyways, it was really sweet that they chose to honor me with the "Best Classmate".

But as the saying goes "Once a nerd, always a Nerd". As you might have guessed (or might not have because it is so freaking unbelievable!), there is one more award that my school gives out. The principal told me last night at Mass that at the end of the year Assembly I will also be awarded with the "Highest Grade Average" in my class. Yeah, let that sink in for a bit. I, Jenica, have recieved the highest grades out of a group of twenty four students, in a foreign language, and in many subjects that I have NEVER even studied before! And I hate to even say this but I didn´t even study that much.... :) So my reputation continues to stay in tact as a full out nerd, but atleast this time I am also a very popular nerd. :)

Mendoza - City Touring!

2011-10-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to visit Mendoza last weekend! I have spent the last eight months hearing about how awesome this city is and I finally was able to see it for myself. Mendoza is about the size of Seattle (and in many aspects almost exactly like it) and it two hours south of our house. It was my great-aunt´s birthday so we decided to visit her for the day. Sofi and Paula had other plans so they didn´t go but we did take my grandma along with us.

We left at about nine in the morning and began the long ride in the middle of no where. The surprising thing about all my Argentina traveling is that as soon as I leave the city - WHAM! Nothing. I mean like it is the desert for miles and there is maybe one house every half hour. It is like Argentiníans can´t live in anything but clumps which make up the cities. :)

As soon as we finally got to Mendoza, we went straight to my great-aunt´s house. We spent a little time with her, left my grandma there to chat, and went off to explore the city. First we did a general tour of downtown. We drove the main streets and gave me an idea of the layout of the city. It is a lot like Seattle in that the streets are packed with little shops and the traffic is crazy. The only difference is that in Seattle I always got a neck ache from having to look up at all the skyscrapers. In Mendoza there isn´t a single one but it is a lot bigger in area. So kind of like taking Seattle and squashing it with a spatula. :)

Later we went out of the city a little bit to visit a monument. It is on the top of this little hill out in the country with a beautiful view. To get there we got to drive through a giant park where I saw evergreen trees for the first time! I was super excited and took pictures of them just to prove that they do exist here. I hadn´t really thought about it but the only trees here lose their leaves in the fall. We don´t have evergeens in San Juan! The monument was about San Martin and they told me the story of it but I don´t exactly remember. It has something to do with them traveling over the Andes to get to Mendoza and then having to break free of the chains that were keeping them from freedom. Anyways, when we got there I ran into my friend Rosie from Italy! It was such a random coincidence that we would both travel to Mendoza the same weekend on the same day and visit a monument at the same time! It was pretty funny.

Afterwards we went to the mall to do some window shopping and eat lunch. What is so interesting about San Juan is that giant stores don´t exist unless it is the grocery story or Walmart. When visiting the mall, each store is about the size of your living room and nothing more. It makes it a pain to go shopping because often they have only one size of a shirt so you have to be really lucky to find something in your size, the color you want, and at a price you can afford. I deffinetelly miss some of the giant stores in Bellingham. We spent a while looking at stores and went to the food court to eat lunch. It was already three o´clock so I was starving! We bought "lomos" which I have to say are one of my favorite foods in the world (after Mike´s Grinders) and I could eat them all the time. Unfortunetelly we don´t get to eat them a lot so I jump at the chance everytime I have it. They are like a sandwhich but so much better! It has eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonase, and your choice of pork, steak, or chicken. Mi papa also bought french fries covered in eggs. I don´t know if I have mentioned it but Argentinians are obssesed with eggs. They put hardboiled eggs on pizza, fried eggs in sandwhiches and scrabbled eggs on french fries! And the weirdest thing of all is that they are actually so much better with eggs! It was really hard for me to get used to at first but after I make some of them for you guys when I get back, you will see what I mean.

We got back to my great aunt´s house at around six and I was SUPER tired. I went an slept for an hour on an extra bed after I practically fell asleep on the table. When I woke-up, other family members had arrived that I didn´t know. I got introduced to everyone and they asked me the normal questions about how I am doing here, do I miss my family, and what are the things that are different between Argentina and the U.S. You might think that I would have gotten tired of those questions after seven months but I actually still enjoy answering them. Most exchange students come up with an answer that they just automatically give every time but I really try to think about it and give different answers. It makes it a lot more fun that way. Since we still had a two hour drive back home and I had school the next day, we had cake and then left at about eight-thirty. As we were driving out of the city my family told me to look through the back window of the car. I could see the whole city layed out in tiny little lights! It was super pretty and was just a fantastic way to end the day...I then quickly fell asleep until we got back home. :)

Día Del Estudiante

2011-09-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

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!

Seventeen, Smiling, and Surounded by Love

2011-08-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to me! Yep, that´s right! You are now reading the blog of an official seventeen year old! Before I begin, I just want to tell everyone that this was probably one of my best birthdays ever and thank you all for everything that you did for me (more thank-you´s to come!)!!

I guess I should start from the beginning......."Monday night in my house in Argentina with all my family gathered in the kitchen with the sweet smell of fresh cake and ducle de leche." The night of the 15th I stayed up until midnight for it to officially be my birthday as is the tradition in Argentina. As the clock struck twelve, my family started in with the classic birthday song (only in Spanish of course) as I jumped and smiles and blushed from all the happiness. As we shared hugs and they told me congradulations, my sister Paula brought out a small white present for me to open. Inside I found a ring made from real silver and gold with a "J" place in the middle. Rings are a very popular and important thing in San Juan and my fingers have looked out of place the last six months being bare. But now I have a wondeful gift that I can wear everyday and think of my family all the time! The ring was a tiny bit small so some time this weekend we are going to take it in and have them make it a little bit bigger. As soon as that is done, I plan on wearing it every day so I never forget the love I felt that night. :) As I also learned that night, sending text messages to wish someone happy birthday the second it is technically the day is also very popular. I got many messages from my girlfriends here that made me want to tear-up from reading them. I went to bed that night content and excited to wake-up in just five short hours and begin again my birthday.

As my birthday fell on a Tuesday, I had to go to school. But I am happy to say that I got really lucky! We originally were going to have a large test in my Accounting class but the teacher didn´t show up so we watched a movie instead! We also got out of school and hour early because we had a "test" in English and as soon as we finished we could go home. As it was my birthday, I obviously wasn´t planning on going home just yet. Instead I had arranged a popular San Juan tradition with many of my classmates. Going to Mc Donalds!!!! Don´t ask me why but your birthday lunch at Mc Donalds with your classmates almost always a custom here and as I am currently here, I couldn´t miss out on such a fun (although not something I would ever normally do) tradition! Us girls (nine of us in total) took the bus to the little mall about ten minutes from my house while six of the guys got in cars and headed over as well. We also had some photo shoots where I took pictures of everyone and everything! As it should be, the luck was in my favor and it was a day where all my photos actually turned out good! The whole time at Mc Donalds was a blast! They sang me happy birthday a million times, we laughed at jokes, took random pictures in the bathroom, and had icecream to top it off. After I had said goodbye to everyone with more birthday hugs and wishes, I walked home with Mari and Juli.

Maria and I

Luciano, Pigna and I eating at Mc Donalds

When I got home, I decided to open all of the cards I got. I had 20 in total!!! My friend Cary had arranged a day where 17 of my friends got together and all wrote me a card wishing me happy birthday. What I also found after opening the letters, was that they had sent me a message. In each of the envelopes was a picture of one of my friends holding a word and each envelope was numbered- 1 to 17. When all the pictures were lined up in order, I started laughing and smiling as I read " WE LOVE YOU JENICA. WE WISH FOR YOU BON-BONS, ELEPHANTS AND GOOD ------ ON YOUR SPECIAL DAY!" The blank spot is where letter number 13 should have been. Unfortunetelly dear Sumi´s card never made it to my house and must have gotten lost in the mail. After talking with Onalee yesterday, I learned that the missing word was "Fairies". Right now all the pictures are hanging up in our living room so all my friends and family can see them and I can be reminded of how much I am loved.

My papa got home at about eight-ish and he started making "asado" which is like a barbecue but a MILLION times better. I got dressed up, helped set the table, took more pictures, and asked a million questions about the asado and why he was doing this or why he did that. My whole family was supposed to show up at 9:30 and we had to get everything ready! By about ten o´clock everyone was there and we sat down to eat dinner. There was my grandparents (Elsa´s parents), my aunt and uncle and their two daughters, my other aunt, Elsa, Alfredo, Sofia, Paula, Paula´s boyfriend Federico, and my friend Fran from Tailand. We spent the next hour eating empanadas filled with ground beef, eggs, and jalepeinos, Steek asado and pork asado, potatoe salad, a tomatoe and dressing mix and lots of 7up! :) At about 11 they brought out the cake and sang Happy Birthday to me. The cake was absolutely amazing and I ate a LOT! Hehe. It was a three layer vanilla cake. The first layer soaked in peach juice and then a layer of dulce de leche, another vanilla layer with peaches on top, and then the final cake layer covered in hardened white chocolate. My favorite part of the last couple days is when we finish lunch and get to eat some of the leftovers! It is SO good!

Empanadas!

By midnight (and the oficial end of my birthday) everyone said their goodbyes and went home. But I still had one more thing let to do. As my family gathered around in the kitchen, I went a fetched the package from the U.S. that my family had sent. Now this is the hard part. Not only has my English writing gotten worse but this in and of itself is a hard thing to put down in words. But I will do my best. Inside the package I found a tin box filled with 60 pictures. Each picture was of a friend, family member, teacher, or Sandra Bullock (that one was a joke) holding a sign wishing me happy birthday. I made it about six photos in before I started crying. I spent the next fourty minutes with my family looking and laughing at all the places my friends went to to take these photos and all the people who are growing older just like I am here. I saw my parking spot at MB, my Dad hanging up in the crane, my family gathered at the Guerrieri´s house, my art teacher, and my sister jumping on the tampoline. But even as I looked at all these photos of people I love, I didn´t feel sad. I was actually happy. Because in that moment I realized how trully lucky and loved I am. I still miss you all, but I didn´t cry because of that. I cried because I feel like my life is perfect with all of you. I still have challenges and hard days but if I can just think of those photos and how many people in the world sent me birthday wishes, I don´t think I will ever take friends and family for granted again. Thank you all for participating in such a great gift. I also want to put in this quote that I recently put on Facebook in order to try to better capture my gratefulness:

My Family
(Sofi, Elsa, Afredo, Paula and Me)

"It is not every day that you realize how lucky you are. And it almost never is the day of your 17th birthday. Unless of course......you traveled all the way across the world to find yourself, unless you discovered the family can be found anywhere, unless you have best friends all over the world and the thought of leaving them makes you cry, unless you have two counties, two cities, two families, and two schools that you can call home, unless you spent your birthday laughing at jokes, eating empanadas, having photo shoots, and getting hugs, unless you opened a package of pictures and started to cry from all the love. I guess what I am trying to say is, it doesn´t happen very often unless you are me. Thank you everyone for giving me the best birthday ever and helping me learn how trully lucky and special I really am."

In the end, my birthday was fantastic. From the second it struck twelve to way past then the next night. I was content and excited every minute and was suficiently loved even though many of my friends and family weren´t with me in person. I won´t ever forget this day as long as I live. And the parties aren´t even over yet! This Sunday I am having my Pajama Party with my girlfriends at my house. I am sure I will have lots to share about that as well so make sure to check back here later next week! Thank you all again for everything! And I hope one day you guys can (or already have) learned what I learned on my 17th birthday. The only important thing in life is love, and it can be found anywhere in the world. :)

Snow Flakes

2011-07-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

I think you will all be as surprised as I was by this news, but guess what? It snowed in San Juan! Saturday night my sister, Paula, came running into the kitchen yelling that it was snowing. After dashing out the front door, I saw that it was true! There were snowflakes falling fast and heavy from the sky. Since I was just in a sweatshirt I instantly froze, but it was worth it just to be able to see all the tiny flakes stuck to my whole body. It snowed a lot that night but it didn´t stick to the ground. It was just on the border of freezing so it wasn´t cold enough to let it pile up. But even so, we were all super giddy! Getting snow in San Juan is practically a miracle. Given that it only rains once a month here and that it doesn´t get below freezing all the time, you have got a very small chance that the one day it rains will be the one day it gets into the negative degrees. Apparently the last time we got snow in the city was three years ago. Three years!! I don´t know how they don´t burst into tears hearing that. I would miss snow too much! I talked to my friends about it that night and they said that most of them have never even been sledding. That was probably the hardest to hear- I mean, sledding is one of the funnest things ever and these guys have never tried it! I guess I will just have to hope that Argentina suddenly goes into an ice age and San Juan is covered in feet of snow. Then maybe my friends will understand when I talk about how even though I often crash snowboarding and my bottom always kills me after going off jumps on sleds, it is all very much worth it. :) But until that day, we will all just have to get excited watching the snowflakes fall from the sky and melt on the ground...!

Winter Break

2011-07-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

As it is often easy for you guys to forget, it is winter down here. Just think of it all as being exactly the oposite of what you are feeling because really, that is what it is. Even though I am always naturally going to think of July as the one of the hotest months of the year, I would deffinetelly say that it is not hot down here! Right now I am on Winter Break which is really weird in and of itself. First off, where in the world is Christmas? Um, hello? Isn´t this naturally the time of year for Christmas lights and caroling? Well, as only the seasons change and the days of the holidays don´t, I still have to wait five more months for Christmas like the rest of you. :( Thankfully I have found other ways to occupy my time. I got let out of school Thursday the 7th and I go back to school on Wednesday the 23rd so that gives me about two weeks of vacation! My first week was super packed with activities. All of the exchange students except me and a girl from Thailand all left last Sunday so it was their last week here in San Juan. We were all arranging lunches and get-togethers for some last memories with eachother. Saturday night I went over to Maria´s house to spend the night. She is this girl from Austria that only came for a semester but has become one of my good friends here. I hope to visit her one day when I go to visit Jessie in Austria as well. :) We made crapes for dinner which was new for me. Maria says that in Austria it is not at all uncommon to eat crapes for lunch or dinner where as I have only ever eaten them for breakfast. And to had an extra surprise, she has bought Nutella! For anyone out there who has never tried Nutella before, you have got to go out and by some right now. I first tried it when I went to Mexico and I have been in love with it ever since. It is a chocolate and walnut (?) spread that is basically all sugar and one of the best things ever made. :) I didn´t even know it existed in San Juan but Maria found it at our local grocery store! So at eleven o´clock at night we ate crapes covered in Nutella and watched the movie 2012 (which actually wasn´t as scary as I thought it would be). It was super fun to be able to spend some quality time with her before she left.

Tuesday the girl from Tailand, Fran, came over to my house early in the morning. Her parents were going to Mendoza (a gigantic city just south of us) for the day but she wanted to stay home. She skyped with her family in Tailand for a while and it was really awesome to hear her speak in Tailandes! That is one of the coolest things about being en exchange student: not only do you get to live in a different country but you learn little things about other countries as well. I don´t think I ever mentioned this but when I was at my arrival Orientation in Buenos Aires I spent a whole bunch of time hanging out with these guys from Australia and New Zeland. If their accent wasn´t enough to make me love them, they taught me all these card games from their country and we spent hours comparing different words and pronunciations between our countries. It was absolutelly a blast!

So later that day Fran and I met up with the other students in the center park and went out for lunch. We chatted and laughed but the topic of their departure just kept coming up. As much as we all wanted to ignore it, they were leaving in just five days. I don´t think anyone of us could believe it. But even with that greyish cloud hanging over us, we enjoyed every minute. We spent the whole day together and walked over to a little mall near by. There we got icecream and I met up with my friends from school, Vero and Maria del Mar. One of the greatest changes that has begun to happen over the last month is that my ability to participate in conversation has hugely increased. It has given me so much more freedom to talk about whatever subject is on our minds. And that day it was boys... :) It was so good to be able to just chat with girlfriends again about all the crazy things guys do. I had been really missing that since I left Washington. Not only did I arrive here without any best friends but I also had this giant sign taped to my head that said "I am from the U.S. I don´t speak Spanish" so it made it a little hard to just talk about normal stuff. :) But time and hard work has paid off and that is changing! I didn´t get home till about ten that night and I was exhausted from being with people all day. I crashed in my bed and slept until one the next day. That is one of the greatest things about Argentina - sleeping in isn´t looked apon as a waist of the day. But don´t worry, most days I have my alarm set for nine or ten so I can get up and do something with my life. :)

Thursday, Harry Potter 7 part 2 came out in theaters in San Juan and after reading every single book twice and now reading them again in Spanish, I wasn´t going to miss the first showing. :) I went with Gime and Ivan and a couple exchange student guys and it was great! Thankfully we chose to watch it in 3D in English with Spanish subtitles. There was also a version in Spanish but I am not quite ready for that. I like my British accents thank-you-very-much. :) I also discovered a fasinating fact. The pop corn here is always sold sweatened. Some people have tried pop corn with just salt but to most of my friends, the thought of pop corn with salt AND butter is pretty much foreign! Well I am determined to change that because you just can´t go through life missing out on something as awesome as this. I am going to have a movie night at my house pretty soon.

And then Sunday came around. The day that we were all going to go to the bus station to wish the students well on their way back home. The truth was, as much as I got to know these guys, I didn´t expect to be super upset when they lefted. What I mean is that I wasn´t at all prepared for the crying and bawling that I encountered on the platform. As soon as they showed up the tears just started rolling. And I don´t mean a few sniffles and a tissue. These people were truly torn apart at having to leave, and they just let their feelins come poring out. And it got to me too. When I had to say goodbye to Laura, we both just started crying our eyes out. And I just couldn´t stop. I think the thing that made me so touched by everything was that I knew I would have to do this same thing in just six short months. I would be in the same place that they are now and have to say goodbye to my family and friends and the city that I have grown to love. Even now I am tearing up just writing this. So in order not to short out my keyboard from falling tears, I should probably move on. But first I just want to say that although I know it will be so hard to leave everything here, that isn´t stopping me from loving it even more. :)

So far my vacation has been busy and full of emotions. My whole time here has taught me so much about my self and about other cultures. I love learning things from my friends here and getting little facts about the countries they came from. I hope everyone in the world can have the chance to experience what I am feeling . Because really, there is no better way to learn about yourself and what really matters in life than what these students and I are going through now. :) Have a wonderful summer! Send us some warm weather!

You Call That Juice?

2011-07-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

One of the things I find most interesting about Argentina is the differences in the kind of food they eat. I have yet to find a kind of food that I don´t like but I have deffinetelly found a lot that are way different from what I have grown up eating. My favorite example of this is juice. In Washington, I have the pleasure of living on an apple farm sort of thing. That means that each fall we make fresh apple juice from our own trees and freeze it for the winter. But even without living with hundreds of trees, I can garantee you can find more than you can drink of fresh juice in Washington. And even if it is imported orange juice from Florida atleast it is still made from actual oranges. I am sorry to say that what Argentinians know as juice is not. The first time I went to pour myself a nice cup of apple juice with my morning cereal, I was surprised to find that it was white. Kind of like a watered out milk. Hmmm....ignorantly I figured that was just the color of apples here or something. After tasting it (and almost spitting it back up with surprise at the flavor) I found it was deffinetelly nothing like apple juice. As you might have guessed, I figured something was wrong with it. Maybe it was old or had something else poured into the carton. But after asking my Mama about it, she explained that the juice here is "fake" or atleast most of the juice is. It turns out that the apple juice here (or atleast the kind you can easily buy in stores) is actually milk based with apple flavoring (that would explain the white coloring!) It also comes in a nice carton decorated with Barbies or Race Cars; that should have been my first sign something was up! :) A few weeks ago I got to taste "real" orange juice which was deffinetelly made from real oranges but unfortunetelly for my taste buds it had absolutely no sugar and tasted....well, not at all sweet! It has taken me a while to adjust to this thing they call juice. :) And although I still can´t manage to drink the apple juice with out worrying I am drinking rotten apples, I have found that peach juice is much more to my liking. Maybe it is cause I have never drunken peach juice that much before and therefore don´t have a lot to compare it to. All in all, I am finding things I love about Argentina and things I won´t be missing very much. Whether it is apple juice, the buses, my family, or the cute little dog that always sleeps on the side walk outside our front door. But no matter the outcome, it is always a funny process to figure them out. :)

Boliche Nº 2: Popeye!

2011-07-04T10:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to my second club here in Argentina. It was my friend Juli´s 17th birthday, and she wanted to go out partying to celebrate. Before I get into the details of the night, I want to explain a little about boliches (clubs) in San Juan. Technically you are supposed to be 18 to legally enter a club but that rule isn´t always followed. Places like Kika and Popeye actually don´t let you in if you are OVER 18 years old. They are clubs designed for teenagers between sixteen and eighteen. You might think that the cops would have places like this shut down in an instant, but think again. Sure there were cops there last night but they acted more as bouncers than as cops. They didn´t stop us from entering, they didn´t stop us (or should I say my friends) from buying alcohol, and they sure didn´t carry out any fire safety regulations (I will explain that a little later). So I have learned that as long as you know where to go, you can get into clubs even though you are under age. There are ofcourse clubs that check ID and that my mama wouldn´t let me into even if I could slip past the guards. But that is okay with me. I am happy just hanging with my friends at the younger clubs. :)

Where to begin? I guess that only way to describe the night it to go through it step by step because otherwise you just might get lost. My parents dropped me off at Juli´s house at about midnight where we packed eight people into a four person car. Yep, they recently invented seatbelts for a pile of kids stacked ontop of eachother...in Argentina they call them arms :) When we arrived at Popeye I decided to leave my jacket in the car as I figured I wouldn´t need it once getting inside. There are no windows in the building and if we were going to be dancing a lot, I didn´t want to be stuck carrying my jacket all night. Of course, we get out of the car and then have to wait five minutes in the freezing night air to be able to get in. I was wearing my flats, black leggings, and a long sleeve shirt (with an undershirt underneath) so basically I started missing that jacket REAL fast. Thankfully we inside it was the perfect temperature and I warmed up to a more normal and not deadly low body temperature. The inside was a lot nicer than Kika (the other club I went to). It had disco balls and tons of strobe and colored lights. It also had a roof (which I don´t know if I mentioned but Kika didn´t). The only thing that made it worse than Kika was that it was tiny. For those of you who know about how big my living room and kitchen are combined, it was about like that. By two a.m. they was probably close to a hundred teenagers packed in there and you could barelly move enough to dance. At one moment I had the scary thought about what would happen if a fire broke out as surely whoever was in the middle would be trampeled (that is where the police comment came in). At first I was a little uncomfortable. I felt awkward being my my leggings as I am used to something a little less...tight fitting and curve showing. Also, people were smoking inside and given that there weren´t any windows, my eyes started burning. Then add a strobe light so everything is moving all weird and music that was unimaginablly loud. But soon I was able to relax and start dancing. My eyes got used to the smoke and I actually started to enjoy the stobe light. Three girls, me, and about four other boys were able to open up a little circle and danced together for a while. A lot of my classmates were there to party with Juli so I got to check out some of the boys dancing. That is one of the things I absolutelly love about Argentina. Guys actually dance. And it is not just the swaying side to side that many guys at Homecoming try to pull off. They are busting moves, singing along to the music, and basically making a fool of themselves like the girls. I have also found out that many of the guys often dance more than the girls. If you are looking for some fun dancing all night long, deffinetelly find your guy friends. :)

I was super glad that I ended up leaving my jacket in the car. With so many people inside, there was a ton of body heat and by the end of the night every one who was dancing was sweating and trying to stay cool. The music in boliches is also fantastic! As I might have mentioned in a previous posting, at first I really didn´t like it. It was weird to dance to and since I didn´t know any of the words, I couldn´t sing along with everyone either. But now I love it! Potentially more than music in English but I am not ready to officially say that yet. :) As the night went on the music just kept getting louder and louder until I couldn´t even hear. You know that feeling when the music gets so loud that you can´t even hear the words any more and only the bass? Probably not since I didn´t know the feeling until last night either. It was litterally so loud that I couldn´t hear the words to the music and we were all just singing by memory. :) I also couldn´t hear myself talk. It was like when you plug your ears and you feel like your voice is almost echoing inside you heard. I know that by posting that I am probably going to get some hearing loss lectures from my parents but I figured you guys should know every little detail. :)

The boliche shut down at about four thirty and Gime´s papa brought me home. I got in bed at about five a.m. and slept soundly until my alarm went off at two this afternoon. I figured I would probably sleep the whole day if I didn´t set an alarm and I was right. Even after lunch I could only think of sleep but I knew that if I slept more today, I wouldn´t be able to sleep tonight. But given that I have to get up early for school tomorrow, I think I will go to bed a little early tonight. :)

In order to help you better get a feeling for my boliche experiences, here are some videos that I took: Oh! And the weird light and skipping thing isn´t your computer. That was literally how everything looked from my eyes. :)

Travel To Tucuman

2011-06-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

Home sweet home. Or atleast as close as I am going to get to Washington whether in Argentina. For Father´s Day weekend my family drove up north to the Province of Tucuman to visit family. It was my cousins fourth birthday and my mama wanted to be there for it. Now I have always been a lover of road trips so I was super excited to go...until, that is, that I found out it was an eleven hour car ride with me, my aunt, and my sister Sofi all packed in the back seat. It might have been fine if our car was a cadillac and had a back seat like a bed and us three women didn´t all have hips but unfortunetelly none of that was true. It was an awfully long car ride with very little room to move. We left at six in the morning which thankfully gave me something to do for the first couple hours - sleep. The rest of the car ride was filled with starring at the changing scenery. Which I was happy to find was quite interesting. San Juan is generally really flat and really dry but as we started up north some mountains came along. I also got to see GIANT cactusas. These cactusas were as tall as trees and as wide as a car. I would hate to get one of those prickers stuck in your foot! Once we passed the mountains and arrived to the city of Tucumán, I found the I could practically breathe in the rain in the air. It was wonderful!

The weekend was spent meeting my family and having many lunches, dinners, brunches, late night coffees, and birthday parties until I was completelly exhausted. On the night that I arrived I was introduced to so many relatives that I could hardly keep track of who was my aunt, who was my cousin, and who was an aunt of my cousin! I still have yet to remember all of there names. :) But I can tell you about some of them. I have four cousins: Lourdes (who was turning four), Santiago (who is five), and Valentina and Amelia (nineteen and twenty two). I was so happy to be able to hang out with young kids again! I have been really missing volunteering at the special needs preschool in Washington and I got to play "the crocodille is going to eat me!" with Lourdes and Santiago. It still makes me smile so much. Here are some pictures of when they decided to tackle me:

Sunday was Lourdes birthday party and Father´s Day. We all had asado and lunch together and then a bunch of Lourdes school friends came over. They were all dressed up as princesses and had face paint on. It was all very sweet. I hung out with my cousins and talked with a girl I met at the party. I always love when I meet people who are really interested in going on an exchange. She was only thirteen so had few years to wait but you could just see the thirst in her eyes to get to explore other countries. She reminded me of myself just a few months ago. :) In terms of Father´s Day, we really didn´t do much. I was able to send my Dad in the U.S. a quick email at about midnight when I finally got around a computer but Santiago was trying to tackle we and give me kisses so it was awfully short (I later sent him another email and a couple days later we got to Skype).

Sunday night (We were going to leave early Monday morning), Sofi, Valentina, Amelia, Santiago and I all went out to McDonalds for dinner. Afterwards Santiago was feeling sick and was sent to his mother´s room to lie down and watch cartoons. Us girls put on a romantic movie and curled up on the couch. You might have heard of this movie. It is called "Beastly" and comes out in theaters this July 31st. Yep, that wasn´t a type-o, this movie hasn´t even been officially released! How in the world we got it I have no idea but Valentina had it on a pen drive and it was actually in pretty good quality. Argentiníans are famous for their pyrighting abilities. :)

Monday morning our car wouldn´t start because the battery was dead. My parents decided that we could let it charge and have lunch with the family. Well lunched turned into tea time and soon it was five o´clock and we were just leaving. With an eleven hour drive ahead that ment we would be arriving at the wee hours of the morning. And unforuntely I had school the next morning. I was able to sleep a little in the car but it was never very solid. When we finally arrived home and I got into bed at about three a.m. that only gave me three and a half hours of sleep to work with at school. I am starting to get pretty good at functioning on little to no sleep. :) I was also really sick that weekend so it took me the rest of the week to get better.

It was so awesome to be able to meet more of my family and I always love it when I get to talk about my home country and teach people different things about who I am. My soul was refreshed with the rain and I came back home a smiley (but very tired) happy Sanjuanina.

P.S. Don´t forget to check out my photos by following the link!

The Results Are In!

2011-06-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

One of the things I had to mentally prepare myself for before I came here was that I was going to get bad grades in my classes. As many of you know, I have been a little bit of a fanatic for striaght A´s and it was hard to think about me failing classes here. Well have no fear, because my reputation is still intact. I mean to say that I haven´t failed anything yet since I clearly wasn´t able to keep up my straight A´s. :) Here, we are graded from one to ten with ten being the best and one being the worst. You might find it interesting to know that it is impossible to get a zero. If I turned my test in blank, well what do you know? I got one point! I don´t quite understand the logic behind it but for all I know there might not be any! :) I have a total of twelve classes and the beginning of June was the end of our first trimester. That means report cards! So here is the general outline of my grade update:

Lengua y Literatura II - 8.80
Lengua Extranjera: Ingles II - 10
Matemática II - 9.75
Educación Física II - 9.60
Biología I - 8.50
Geografía I - 9.33
Derecho I - 8
Teoría y Gestión de las Organizaciones II - 7.50
Sistemas de Información Contable I - 8.50
Economía II - 8.25
Tecnología de la Información II - 10
Catequesis II - 9

Incase that you can´t read Spanish or are to lazy to look the words up, here is the list of classes in English:

Literature
English (Foreign Language)
Math
P.E.
Human Biology
Geography
Law
Theory and Management of Organizations
Accounting
Economy
Computer Excel
Religion

So in general I would say I am doing amazing for having taken all of these in Spanish! Of course, I studied my butt off and spent lots of time translating all of my notes. Now though that I have proven that I can recieve good grades, I think I am going to take a little break. :) Starting with the Teory and Management test that I took today which I only spent an hour studying for... Yeah.... it may seem like a lot but when it is in Spanish that is just enough time to translate it all into English and read it over once. So I can´t not study completelly but I sure didn´t study enough to get a good grade! There is something in my blood that just makes me start to have a nervious breakdown at the thought of a failing grade. Which is why I am determined to get one here. :) What better place to get more relaxed than when my grades don´t mean anything? And this way, when I come back and start college I will have had a year off of studying hard and have saved all of my energy for getting good grades when it counts! If you think about it, it really makes sense. Why push myself to spend my time studying when I could be hanging out with my family or friends? The first trimester here I spent HOURS each day studying, translating, and reading all of my notes. I could have taken that time to explore my city or play a board game with my sisters. I have got six more years of college to do all the studying I want. :) But I am only in Argentina for one year! I deffinetelly think I should live it up as much as possible even if that means having to get mediocor (I really have no idea how to spell that!) to failing grades. Don´t you agree? :) Yep, I knew you would.

Another Adventure to Rodeo...But a Lot Different!

2011-06-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys! So this last weekend I went to Rodeo again! This trip though was with AFS and was an orientation. Mainly it was designed for the students who are going to be living in July but it was a fun way to get to hang out with the other kids. We left at five thirty on Friday morning (I got to skip school!) and drove the three and a half hours to Rodeo. When we got there, I discovered that there was frost on the ground and my Blue Converse that I love so dearly just weren´t up to the jo of keeping off frost bite. Since I have no other warm shoes here, I resorted to double layering socks and long underwear. My moms (both here and in the States) would be so proud! There are always trying to get me to wear more clothes. :) Our first stop was at the High School where we had "breakfast" which is cookies and chocolate milk with them and gave a presentation about AFS. Then we went to a local Radio Station! At first we thought that only some of the students were going to talk but the interviewer guy wanted to talk to all of us.

As you are probablying think, I kind of went into a miny panic attack right then because this is LIVE radio and I was really scared that I wasn´t going to understand what he asked. But I actually stayed pretty calm. It is one of those things that I am really scared to do but I know that it will be worth it in the end. Even if it is just to say that I did it! So the interview went pretty good. He asked a few basic questions of each of us and I only needed a little help from one of the AFS Volunteers to understand one of the questions. It was actually pretty fun! And the guy was really nice so that made it easier. I can add talking on the Radio to my list of First Things in Life Done in Argentina.

That day we also went to a grade school and did about the same sort of thing that we did at the High School. The next two days were pretty relaxed. We did a whole bunch of AFS activites where we talked about things we like and didn´t like about Argentina and the other students talked about how they were going to go through the process of re-adjusting to their old lives in their home countries. We explored the area around the Dam where we took a million pictures with all of the AFS flags from different countires. It was really funny because everyone wanted to have the picture taken with their camera so the Volunteer would have nine different cameras hanging off her arm and we would all stand their smiling while she shot a photo with each one. We must have spent two hours just taking photos. :) We also visited a local farm where the farmers had a resturaunt and grew all of the food for it. They also had Lamas! Thankfully we didn´t get close enough for them to spit on me.

When you have a group of teenagers in a cabin at night where it is freezing out side so we can´t go partying, we are obviously going to find things to do. :) We found card games. Now you might be thinking that that is clearly a harmless thing to do; and you would be right in most casses. But when we started playing, soon the games started changing to ones where you have to get a tea bag and every round someone is short. Which lead to tackling someone to get the tea bag, which lead to chanting when you won, which lead to us all on the floor in a circle with our playing cards ready to spring the moment someone shouted "Chancho!" when they got four of the same card. It might sound a little confusing or a little crazy but that´s what it was. AFS students now have an inside joke about "Chancho Té" where when ever any one says it we all start pumping our fists in the air and chanting. Yeah, it sounds a little creepy to me too. :) But oh well. I guess that´s why AFS orientation are always so fun.

So on Sunday we left at about four thirty in the afternoon and were going to arrive at about eight in San Juan. But within the next fourty minutes our van suddenly turned off. We were able to get off the high way and thankfully there was a lot of room for us to hang out being in danger of getting hit. I thought it was just something that could be fixed fast with the van but we were there for two hours before somebody showed up. They weren´t able to fix it either so they towed us to a near by rest stop type area that had cabins. We waited there until ten o´clock for another van to show up. At this point I was really feelign sick. I had a sore throat and my head hurt like you wouldn´t believe. To make it worse all we had to eat for dinner was cookies, chocolate milk, bread, and a little bit of this tun fish type dip because we weren´t expectly to have to eat dinner. So I was also starving. We didn´t end up leaving until eleven because then we discovered that the new van didn´t have enough gas so we had to wait until they went and got some more. WE finally arrived in San Juan at two in the morning. My parents also ended up waiting an hour for me in front of the Cathedral because there was confusion about what time we were going to arrive and then I didn´t have coverage and then I fell asleep in the van. All in all it was a long night. But it was a fantastic weekend!

To wrap things up, that last few days I have been super sick and haven´t gone to school. Thankfully, I am a little better today so I think I will make it to school tomorrow. Just in time for my giant Business test. Yay! (not) This weekend my family is also hoping to drive up to Tucum which is twelve hours from here and spend Sunday with family. I really want to be well by then so I am doing all I can like drinking tea, resting, taking cough drops, and staying warm. Wish me luck! Oh! And enjoy summer break up in the U.S.! I will be jealous down here in the cold winter weather. :)

100 Days From Washington

2011-06-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

Today, June 2nd, is the 100th day I have been away from my family in Washington, the 97th day outside the U.S., and my 95th day living in San Juan! In honor of this amazing accomplishment I have made a list of the most interesting little things that are either different from back home or something that is just silly to share:

1. I LOVE tomateos. (I used to hate them)
2. I have mayonaise on everything.
3. I always wear shoes in the house (because my parents don´t like it when I don´t)
4. We don´t have a bath tub.
5. People drive on both sides of the road whether it is a one way street or not.
6. There isn´t recycling.
7. People don´t get in trouble for throwing trash on the side walks (A girl even asked me why I put my wrapper in my backpack instead of just tossing it).
8. In little shops instead of being able to just take things off the shelves, you have to take a number and wait for someone to help you.
9. I wear a uniform to school.
10. We only have one computer.
11. We watch TV during every meal.
12. My mama wakes me up every morning.
13. We use commas for periods and periods for commas in Math. For example, one thousand is 1.000 and one half is 0,5!
14. There is never a moment when you can not see alteast five dogs on the street.
15. My classmate was shocked to learn that we have Oreos in the U.S.
16. My classmate thought that since so many people have very light hair in the U.S. that we don´t shave our legs.
17. I don´t go to bed until 11:30 on school nights.
18. High waisted shorts are considered popular for girls when going to clubs at night.
19. People here have no idea what Enchiladas and Salsa are!
20. My most common name here is Jeni although pronouced like Yenny, Shenny, Jenny, or Henny depending on the person.
21. I have to unlock the door, lock the door, unlock the gate, and then lock the gate when going to school every morning.
22. I have my own set of keys.
23. My new favorite TV show is "Friends".
24. Everyone calls Facebook just "Face".
25. I can´t drive.
26. There is always soda and cookies in my house.
27. I am the youngest sister.
28. P.E. is my easiest class.
29. I can walk to my friends house!
30. I am supposed to answer the phone even if my parents aren´t home.
31. Random strangers talk to me just because they know I am not from Argentina.
32. You can´t change the temperature on our oven.
33. My parents often stay up later than I do!
34. Milk is sold in bags.
35. I forgot how to say "15th" and "Report Card" (it took me several hours to remember) and many times I am able to explain things better in Spanish than in English.

And finally, I now have TWO wonderful families that I always know will love me, TWO sets of best friends and classmates that can make me laugh, and TWO countries that both have a place in my heart. I love Argentina and I can´t believe how fast time is passing by.... :)

Frying Potatoes...Without the Flying Pan!

2011-05-31T14:30:00.001-07:00

Now I have had to go through some hard things in my life but let me introduce you to one I never saw coming. The difficulty of frying food....but without the flying pans! This last Sunday I had the wonderful oppurtunity to cook United States type food for my family for lunch. I chose omelets and my favorite poppy seed cake for dessert. So to start this story off right, I should tell you that I was planning on baking the cake Saturday because it is much better when it is cooled and that way I could have more time on Sunday so I could do everything before lunch. Unfortuntelly, I lost the recipe. Not that you should be surprised by that or anything because I often do that. What was shocking was that even with everyone looking all over the house, in my room, under my bed, in the trash, for over an hour, we still couldn´t find it. And since my mom had mailed it to me, I didn´t have a copy of it on the computer. I that point I was starting to feel really disapointed but I sent an emergency help request to my sister and mom to scan the recipe and email it to me before the next morning. Then, I was invited to a party that night. I was already going to be crunched for time the next morning but there was no way I could turn down a party. :) So I got home at two in the morning and slept until 11. I started cooking at about twelve and theoretically it should have only took twenty minutes at MAX to get the cake into the oven. But then I had a panic attack. :) When I opened the looked closely at the poppy seeds I had bought (on my own), I noticed that the black seeds were mixed with a lot of grey ones. I didn´t remember any grey ones being in our cakes at home. I quickly began researching on the internet and freaked out when I learned that there is a difference between baking poppy seeds and ones for planting. And one source said (which I have now found to be inaccurate) that planting poppy seeds can be poisonous to humans. Oh crap! I was going to poison my family! So as you can guess, that was when my panic attack set it. Thankfully, after talking to my family about it they assured me that these were the poppy seeds my sister had cooked with before and since I purchased them at a food store, I was sure to be fine. Not only did my panic attack tick down the minutes but the fact that my recipe used cups and the only measuring stuff here is in grams. I had to research the converstion for each ingredient and then measure it out. Taking notes to make sure that I wouldn´t have to do it over again next time. I finally finished the cake and got the chocolate ganache frosting cooling at two o´clock. I think two hours baking a cake must be some kind of record because it should have never taken that long.

Normally we eat lunch at about two ish but there was no way I could make omelets and fry potatoes in zero seconds. Now matter how awesome I am at a lot of things, I just haven´t mastered pulling that one off yet. So Elsa ended up helping me with peeling the potatoes and chopping up the vegetables. Now I have to thank my Dad at this point for raising me with such a good collection of frying pans because when I went to put the potatoes on the stove, I only found one. Yep, that´s right. I was supposed to fry potatoes, fry vegetables, and cook the omelets all with only one frying pan. I figured I was best off using the pan for the omelets because I didn´t want to try to cook those in a soup pot. That wouldn´t work out to well. So that left my potatoes pilled up in a soup pot and my vegetables dumped into what I can best describe as a container to heat water in on the stove. Quickly my potatoes began sticking to the pan, my vegetables turned into soup, and I was running out of time. Thankfully, at about three o´clock I was able to finish everything and we were able to sit down to lunch. I have to say, it all turned out well in the end. The omelets were filled with ham, cheese, onions, mushrooms, with potatoes and tomatoes on top and for dessert we had a fantastic poppy seed cake. All of which my family loved very much.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience although next time I am going to start a lot earlier. I would also advise anyone trying to fry food - make sure they have got a frying pan first! It was a blast to share a little bit of my home with my family here and I can´t wait to do it again!

P.S. The Sunday before I had my friend Charlotte over, who is from Canada, and we made Brownies!! Here are some photos of that cooking adventure!

P.P.S. Also, here are some photos of Vero, Ivan, and I making brownies (and eating lots of them) yesterday.

"25 De Mayo" - Late Party, Hot Coco, and No School!

2011-05-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

This last Wednesday we celebrated "25 De Mayo" which is a holiday that celebrates The May Revolution which is inderectly referred to the point when Argentina began its war for freedom. Because of this, we didn´t have school on Wednesday. Now normally, my holidays start at about nine in the morning when I first wake up, but I really want to talk about where I was when the clock struck twelve and it technically came "25 De Mayo". My friend Juli B. turned 16 on Tuesday and she was planning on having all the girls over in my class for tea and cookies in the afternoon. But after the boys hassled her about not having a party that they could go to, she decided that her party would begin at 10:30 that night and include all of our class and more. I have had a blast at the birthday parties in the past that I had gone to and so I was super excited for this one. Juli´s house is only three blocks from mine but since I am not allowed to walk alone during the night, a group of my friends showed up at my house around 10 and we walked over together. Generally, the party was like the other parties I have been to. Loud music, great food, and all of my friends just hanging out outside until the wee hours of the morning. But I swear, I could go to hundreds of this same kind of party and I would never get bored. There is just something so awesome about chatting away in Spanish with your best friends while freezing outside under the stars. I finally got home at about four in the morning and I am proud to say, I wasn´t even tired! I have become accustomed to the strange hours here and have actually begun to enjoy them. Yes, I know that you are probably cracking up reading this because every one knows that I am always the one to want to go to bed first, turn out the light, and tell everyone to shut their eyes. But not anymore! Be prepared folks, cause I am coming back ready to party! :)

So eight hours later at about noon I awoke to the sweet smell of homemade hot coco. Yumm....! It is a tradition here that we drink hot coco on "25 De Mayo". If you are curious why, don´t ask - because I don´t know! :) My sister baked a chocolate cake that we have been eating the last few days and my mama had her friend over for tea. All in all it was a fantastic day. No school, late night party, and yummy treats to fill my tummy!

Peanut Butter Package

2011-05-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This post is highly packed with praise for Peanut Butter. If you are a Peanut Butter hater, I highly suggest you skip this post write now before you torchure yourself by reading this.

I am so lucky to have two wonderfuly groups of family and friends. Not only am I surrounded by loving people here but I still have my friends and family back home cheering me on the whole way. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I needed an emergency shipment of winter clothing from Mom. Thankfully, it showed up in an incredible 10 days! I had no idea that was even possible! Now I was under the impression that I was to find sweaters and my favorite shirts in that package and although those were included like promised, I also found something more. In there was practically a year supply of Reese´s Peanut Butter Cups and a jar of organic Peanut Butter. For many people, although that would be a wonderful gift, it wouldn´t have any signifacant meaning, but when I opened up that package, I burst out laughing. It is hard to explain exactly way I thought it was to funny but I will do my best. Earlier in the month I had jokingly hinted that Mom should mail me a jar of PB but later admitted that it would probably be the most expensive jar she ever bought given that it would cost all of my college fund just to send it. :) My intention by mentioning that, if I am being completelly honest, was that I was hoping she would take a hint and send me one or two Reese´s since I was going through Peanut Butter withdrawl. :) Here I have only had one taste of Peanut Butter in the last three months and it was just a cookie flavored like it. Argentinians have yet to realize the incredible invention of Peanut Butter and are ingnorantly avoiding selling it in stores. :) Anyways, when I saw that jar of Peanut Butter and that family size pack of fifty miny Reese´s, I just couldn´t seem to get over how funny it all was! Thankfully after talking to my mom, she let me know that it didn´t cost ALL of my college fund. :) Good thing too because I was looking forward to getting that degree.

So of course I shared some of the Reese´s with my family right away. I had originally brought one big one for them to try when I first arrived, so they already new they liked them. And since I had so many little ones, I figured they were perfect for sharing with my classmates. Nobody here seems to have ever even heard of these things and keeps trying to compare them to treats from Argentina. As I have patiently explained many times, in my hunble opinion Reese´s are in a category all to themselves. Somewhere between heavenly awesome and addictively dangerous and should not be shoved into a group with anything less tasty. After trying them, they all agreed that they were very good and diffinetelly different from things here. Unfortunetelly, some of them seem to be affected with the same addiction I have recently contracted and wanted to eat all of mine. I will have to watch my stash very carefully from now on. :) But the best story of all happened just seconds ago when Federico tried Reese´s for the first time. We got on the subject because he saw me writing this and I then asked him if he wanted to try one. After peeling of the completelly unique wrapping and seeing the heavenly insides he said "Oh, it has chocolate!". Now I thought nothing of this an agreed that the outside was covered in chocolate and inside was the delicious Peanut Butter. But when Paula started laughing, I quickly learned of his mistake. In the dim light in our living room, he had mistaken the dark brown wrapping around the candy for the chocolate and attempeted to eat it just like that. Well let me tell you, it took a while for us all to finally stop laughing and for him to eventually actually try it. He also agreed that he liked it very much even though he normally isn´t a fan of chocolate. But like any actual Peanut Butter lover would know, Peanut Butter can make everything taste better. :)

All in all, it was a wonderful reminder of home and at the same time, a wonderful way to share my home with people here. And I haven´t even opened the jar yet! I think I am going to need to have a Peanut Butter Party where I have my friends try everything from plain PB- PB with Vanilla Icecream- PB with apples- to PB and J sandwhiches (which I am sad to say seems to be an appauling thought to everyone here). I should probably go to bed and dream sweat dreams of Peanut Butter. It is getting a little late. Love you all so much! Thanks for reading!

P.S. I uploaded a new photo album online so make sure to click on the link to the right of this post. Also, I will be adding more photos to some of my previous albums as I have begun collecting them from friends. I will let you know when you should go back and look at the old ones again.

P.P.S. I think I have broken the world record for say "Peanut Butter" the most times in one blog post. :)

Barn Yard Classmates

2011-05-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

Now it might seem slightly offensive to compare my classmates to Farm Animals, but really, I mean it in the nicest way possible. :) The other day I was sitting in class (as standing would be just to exhausting :) ) when I heard these bird sounds coming from the back of the class. In any other situation when the teacher was reading and I heard something like that I would have thought it awfully rude or atleast tried to figure out who it was but not here. I didn´t even bat an eye lash. My classmates have often made strange bird sounds when ever the teachers were trying to get us to listen so it wasn´t anything new. The thing was, that day, they didn´t just make a bird sound. Soon I heard a wolf start howling and the most realistic owl coo I had ever heard. A goat joined in and that was when I lost it with most of the rest of the class. We just cracked up laughing. Here we were listening to things about Business and Economy and you could have sworn that our classroom was actually in a animal barn and not in a Catholic Private School. Now although my classmates might act like barn animals at times, they are actually pretty smart. They have learned to only make sounds really quietly in order for the teacher not to stop them. It is that fine line between making them loud enough so everyone can hear but keeping them quiet enough so the teacher doesn´t get upset. As soon as we started cracking up, all the guys who were crowing and mooing instantly started yelling at everyone to shut up because they were disturbing the teacher. Which just got us all laughing even harder because we all knew (including the teacher) that they were the ones practicing their animal sounds. :) Eventually, we all quieted down and continued on reading. But for the rest of the class there was that constant cooing and baaing and howling coming from all over the class. It put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. :)

Here are some photos that my friends took during class (although techinically we aren´t supposed to use your cell phones). Sorry about the bad quality.

Some of the various culprets:

Mauro, Agusto, Emiliano, Pigna, and Nicolas

Facundo and Emiliano

Luciano and Nicolas

All the Advertising

2011-05-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

Recently I acompanied my sister and parents to vote on a...hmmm... well I can´t remember the word for it but I think you will understand what it is. Techinically the age for voting here is 18 but this vote said that only people who have voted for the past four years can vote so my sister Sofia was left out. One thing I had noticed around San Juan was all the posters for who should be governor. Now this vote wasn´t about the governor directly but the important part is the difference between all the posters. There isn´t any. I hate to say this, but I think Argentinians are lacking creativity in the propaganda and advertising department. :) Not that I normally care about that stuff because usually I think of it as spending a lot of money that could be going somewhere else, but these guys have got nothing going for them. Take a look at these two handouts about the proposed change that my family was voting on. Notice the difference?

Yep, you got it. It is the giant "si" and "no" in the middle. Other than that, they are the same down to the last period. Argentinians are filled with passion about soccer, pride for their country, and protection over their families, but not an ounce of it seems to be included in their advertising campaigns. But in one way, I guess that gives people more oportunity to vote the way their gut tells them and not by many of the misleading things the comercials tell you. So in the end, maybe they thought that and purposefully left them really quite boring. I guess I might never know...

"I am freezing!" "But...aren´t you from Washington?"

2011-05-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

So the last thing I expected when arriving in Argentina was to be cold. I thought of the culture, the people, the Spanish; I prepared for the sun, the heat, and every kind of sickness you could imagine. But I have to admit, I overlooked the fact that San Juan does in fact have winter like every other city in the world. I am now stuck in fourty degree weather and having to hussle my butt off to collect the necessary supplies to survive the winter. I feel like some kind of squirell that got the late notice on collecting nuts and is now walking on thin ice. I have got a lot of catching up to do. People keep asking me if I am cold here and I tell them yes. Everytime the reaction is "But aren´t you from Washington where it is even colder?" Well, technically yes it is colder in Washington but I never said I was warm there! Anyone that knows me well knows that I always have on more layers than everyone else. Secondly, I was not mentally prepared to be cold here. I have to get used to the fact that I will have to be careful to check the weather before I go out so I don´t end up an ice-icle. And the thing is, just because I am "cold" doesn´t mean I am uncomfortable. If I ask any one else in my class, they say they are cold and nobody seems to make a fuss. But when I say I am cold, it is like saying that I am one the verge of hypothermia and need some hot tea this very instant or my fingers might fall off!

Before I left the U.S., I had been informed that it could get down to thirty degrees here in the winter but at times everyone suffers from a litte stupidity and I only brought two long sleeve shirts. Two! I have no idea what I was thinking. I did bring a sweatshirt and a nice jacket but nothing at all that would actually keep me warm. This last week I have been managing by layering three different undershirts, a long sleeve, and a sweatshirt all at once just to stay warm when going outside. And even then, the cool breeze always manages to find its way up my pant leg or down my neck to give me the chills. The other thing I was surprised and utterly horrified to discover is that my class room apparently isn´t going to be heated unless it actually gets down to below freezing temperatures. We have a heater in our room but my classmates, who I am going to kindly refer to as idiots at times :), decide to put paper and food in it which consequently makes it so we can´t run it. So this past week when it has been fourty degress out side, I am sitting in a class room for sic hours that is not much above that. Thankfully, my uniform includes heavy winter coats and the warmest sweatshirt I have ever worn in my life (all in the school colors of course).

After discoving that my school is going to be cold all winter, I was anxious to here about my house. I now I would learn to manage with it, but it would be nice if I didn´t have to dress like an escamo inside as well. Thankfully, we do have a heater and we actually began using it the other day when if was awfully cold. But even so, I was still lacking enough clothing to not have to wear the same thing every day for the four months of winter. It quickly became apparent that I would have to ship some stuff from home so I don´t have to purchase as much. As of this last Tuesday, I have a package on the way that is filled with longsleeves and a vest. Unfortunetelly, that is going to get here anywhere between one month if we are really lucky and three months if we are not. Yesterday, I went shopping for some longsleeves that I can use before then. Not to mention, a couple sweaters that I can use for layering. I have been suprisingly successful here for I figured that I wouldn´t be able to find anything that has long enough sleeves. But actually, it is as easy as it was back in the U.S. I have purchased a few shirts and also a scarf for the wind really creeps down your neck, but I am deffinetelly lacking a little. For one, I need to purchase a turtle neck that I can wear to school under my uniform shirt. During the winter, everyone trades out the white t-shirt for a white turtle neck. I never thought I would where those again. When I was little, I used those all the time until I started to think they were a little dorky. Well I guess here they are just fantastic and everyone uses them all the time. I guess I am just returning to old habbits.

One last thing that made me want to run inside and hide under my warm covers - we have P.E. outside all winter long. Rain, shine, snow, or freezing hail, we are running and playing our freezing behinds off out in the concrete court. Unfortunetelly, today is one of those days and I actually have to go get ready. Send me some warm wishes!

Easter Weekend at Rodeo

2011-04-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was Semana Santa here where we celebrate the resurection of Christ. For this holiday, we also get Thursday and Friday off school. I went to a town that is about a three hour drive straight north of San Juan. I went with my sister Sophia but I actually didn´t end up spending much time with her.

There were two cabins that we were split up into. One holding basically all the people over 18 and the other with every one under.

We also had Sorrentino´s mom come with us and stay in our cabin. The town is has a main street that has a little plaza and tiny stores around it. From there little roads (most of them dirt) take you to streets with houses or camping areas. It reminded me so much of the area where my grandparents live in Colorado. It was really dry with tons of prickely bushes just waiting to stab you when you sit down. :) It was also really gorgeous. Rodeo is in the middle of this valley between mountains right next to a man-made lake. It was a really beautiful drive at the end because we came out of this horrible twisty, dusty road where we were practically going to drive of the edge of a cliff on every turn and then we come over the peek, and there is this beautiful lake that just took my breath away. It was movie kind of perfect view!

Mostly the weekend was spent relaxing and having fun. We took tons of pictures of us just messing around, played UNO more times than I can count, and stayed up late hanging out in the kitchen.

We explored this awesome forest where the leaves has just fallen and covered the ground. Everything was really yellow and bright and I happened to be wearing a yellow shirt as well!

It was a really nice way to get to know some of the kids at my school more. I have found that just having some time with them outside of school can really strengthen a relationship. There are tons of pictures to look at so make sure to check out the link at the right of this page. I think many of them will give you some laughs. :)

When we arrived back home Sunday, we celebrated Easter with Chocolate Eggs that Paula and Elsa has made while we were gone. They were a chocolate shell with icing on the top and chocolate and fruit flavored candies on the inside. We still have two left the we haven´t eaten. But I can´t imagine that it will be that way for much longer. They are too good to resist! :)

When Alarm Clocks Don´t Work....

2011-04-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

This morning I work up needing to go to the bathroom. It was not at all unusually because since we eat dinner so late I often need to get up early in the morning before I need to get up for school. What made this morning so unusual was that when I looked at my Ipod for the time, the clock read 7:11. WOW! That got me out of bed quick! I ran into the kitchen to see if it was my clock that was wrong but the clocks read the same. When I got back to my bedroom, Sofia was sturring and I asked her why Elsa hadn´t woken me up. She then went in to wake up Elsa since Elsa also had to leave for work while I ran into the bathroom to change into my uniform in record time. Now, normally I probably could have made it to school by 7:30 but this was the one morning that I was planning to get dressed fast and finish my homework. Thankfully, the night before I had gotten my bag together with my books and layed out my clothes so I could have as much time to finish my homework as possible. At midnight I had called it quits, only having to edit it, paste it into the translater, and then print it. Now before you start jumping to conculsions and think that I don´t do my homework in Spanish, wait a minute. It actually wasn´t homework. It was three pages of Economy notes that would have literally taken atleast three days to translate by hand. There for, I typed them up, translated them, and then used them to study for the test I was going to have today. Anyways, I was rushing around trying to get my documents up when Elsa came into the kitchen and told me that she could call the director of the school and I could show up late. So all was well although I did eat a very small breakfast in order to not miss my favorite class (Math) that was the first one of the day. As it turns out, we ended up not having the Economy test today and are going to have it tomorrow. So far my tests have gone alright. Here is the latest statistics (they are all out of ten possible points):

English: 10

Microsoft Excel Class: 10

P.E.: 10

Biology: 10

Math: 9

Law: 6

Business Organization: 6

I have also taken a test in Religion, Accounting, Literature, Economy, another in Biology, and Geography. I have a Economy test tomorrow, P.E. test Friday, another Accounting test Tuesday, and a Math test in first week in May. In total, I have recieved seven tests back with an average score of 8.7 which is impressively good. But I must take into account that those four of those classes use almost no Spanish. I have yet to recieve six test scores and I have atleast four more tests in the coming weeks. I am starting to get the impression that the only thing we get graded on are tests here. I am going to have to get good at studying in Spanish cause these last two weeks of school have been exhausting.

Parading Down the Streets with AFS

2011-04-10T07:15:00.000-07:00

The Difunta Correa weekend has come to an end and I am ready to explain my days of activites. As I mentioned before, there was a speech Thursday night where many of the government figures I belive talked about the Difunta Correa and how special it was. They also mentioned us as being representatives of other countries in their celebration and everyone clapped for us. When the governor arrived, he came over to us and asked all of us where we had come from and welcomed us to Argentina. I don´t think I could ever have met the governor of Washington so it was cool to have met him here. On Friday, there was a parade where AFS students lined up with out flags from all the different countries and watched as all the "gauchos" or cowboys went by. They were all representing different families if I could understand correctly and we wished them well on their journey. On Saturday morning, we all met in the center to take a van to the Difunta Correa. The gauchos left at 7 that morning and would ride all the way there. They finally arrived at 1:30 ish. We explored the Difunta Correa and talked in Spanish a lot until they got there. Then, to my surprise, We found an open spot in the parade and started marching down the road with our flags and AFS banner. The announcer annouced us and everyone was clapping. It was pretty fun to be in a parade. We had "asado" for lunch. It is kind of like barbacue but it was better and is a classic dish in Argentina. Here is the link for an article about it in our local paper. Good luch understanding it! http://www.diariodecuyo.com.ar/home/new_noticia.php?noticia_id=454919

We didn´t end up leaving until about 5 in the afternoon because people kept on disapearing right when we were going to leave and we had to wait for them to come back. Once we finally got back into town, Maria (student for Austria) and I went to buy a couple things and then I got to see her house. She lives right down town and has a balcony that looks over the city. It is really quite beautiful. My mama then picked me up and we went to see a singing, piano performace. I wasn´t clear on who was singing or who it was for, but it was beautiful. Piano music is also so much better when you are exhausted and can shut your eyes while listening (that wasn´t a sarcastic remark by the way). Today, I am planning on getting tons of things done starting with this blog post. Hopefully my list of completed things with include:

Wash my shoes (they smell disgusting),

My English Homework,

Eating Breakfast,

Uploading Pictures,

Study for atleast two of the five tests I have this week,

Calculate how much money I have spent since being here,

and Shower (I smell like asado).

Today we are also having asado for Alfredo´s birthday. I don´t know when that will happen but it will be bound to take up many hours so I have to get cracking. Hope all of you have enjoyed your Spring Break back in the States. Know that I am jealous!

Shopping And Many Other Adventures

2011-04-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

I always seem to get online only to want to talk about how busy my life has been. I have activities all the time and am tired a lot but don´t be fooled. I also have down times. For example, today I was so tired after P.E. that I came home and slept from 7 to 9. Till nine! I didn´t intend on sleeping. I was going to go to my bed, read for a little while, and then do some laundry but I got to thinking and then before I knew it, I was sleeping like a log. But I did do a lot of things this week that I would like to talk about. :) Monday was my sister´s and grandpa´s birthday back in the U.S. Although I wasn´t there to celebrate it with them, it was my friend Mari´s birthday here and, in the Argentina way, we went to McDonalds to celebrate. I got to talk to my sister on Wednesday and I chatted with my grandpa on Tuesday. It was nice to be able to wish them happy birthday even if a little late. I also got to go SHOPPING! On Wednesday, I asked my mama if I could take the bus to the center and spend a couple hours shopping. I left at about five but I didn´t end up getting into town until almost 6 because the bus went by right before I could get there. Since I was on my own, my mama said that I needed to be back home by eight because that´s when it gets dark. I spend two hours exploring places, wondering, and doing a little long awaited shopping. I am so excited about the clothes here. I have realized that although my clothes are acceptible, they aren´t quite up to the standers of Argentinian parties. People tend to dress more on the fancy end and my Seven Loaves t-shirt doesn´t really fit. :) I only bought a couple things that day but now I know what I am looking for next time. And the clothes here are really cheap. That and almost everything else. I have noticed here that since girls can´t wear big earings at school, almost all of them wear these fake pearl bead earings. I figured I would pick myself up a pair as well since all of my earings are rather large and it is a bummer when I can´t wear any of them at school. Now you can find me with my pearl earings like everyone else. It is fun to begin to notice social patterns here. It makes me wonder what kind of patterns there are back in Washington that I just never noticed because I thought it was normal. Hmmm.... This weekend I have AFS activities. It is the Difunta Correa weekend where "cowboys" come from all over to give thanks to here. Today, the exchange students attended a parade like event where we sent of the cowboys off on their treck to the Difunta Correa. They ride their horses from today until when they arrive tomorrow in the near by city. We will leave tomorrow morning and drive to Difunta Correa where we will meet them as they arrive. Just another busy weekend in Argentina. Unfortuntelly, it will also be filled with studying for tests. These classes here are big on tests. I am keeping a record of my scores and am planning on making a list at the end of next week to display my magnificent (or not) first grades for my classes. Don´t worry, I haven´t failed a class yet but some of my scores have come awfully close and I still atleast five more next week!!

Just a Sip

2011-04-03T09:20:00.000-07:00

As all of you well know, before I left I was grilled with lectures on alcohol. What to drink, what not to drink, when, where and with whom. I felt and still feel fully prepared on that front so you don´t have to worry. The thing is, I know people told me that alcohol would be normal with teenagers but it still is a little surprising every time I see them drinking. The other night at Ivan´s party (with the adults permission) there were two different drinks. One was something with an F that was mixed with Coca-Cola. The other was something with a G mixed with Sprite. I realized that mixed drinks are really popular here because that way you can decide how much alcohol in how much soda. Many of my friends would make a drink and then all share it so they didn´t drink it all. Not suprisingly they offered me some. I tried both of them because I was curious but that was all. Until I had talked to my mama here and figured out how much alcohol I could drink without feeling tipsy, I didn´t want to drink at all. That and I have never been a fan of drinking. The whole getting drunk thing has never appealed to me and just plain soda is fine with me thank-you-very-much. :) The one with Coca-Cola I absolutelly hated. It was bitter and tasted like alcohol. The other one wasn´t so bad (more like just Sprite) but I knew enough to know that it too was filled with alcohol. Now I just want to make something clear. To all of you parents, grandparents, and other important people to me, I hope you don´t worry about this. I promise you this - I have no intention at all of abusing alcohol. A drink now and then when there are adults around and I am in a safe envirnment I think is okay. (For example, last night was my grandpa´s birthday and when wishing him happy birthday, we all had a toast. My mama let me have a little bit of this sparkling apple shampange type drink.) I also don´t like to drink. I don´t see the point of drinking alcohol which is often really gross when I could be drinking Coca-Cola which is fantastic on its own. In conclusion, I am sharing this information with you guys cause I want you to know about my new experiences. Not because I want you to worry. But if you absolutelly feel the need, I am not apposed to you writing me a reminder email of all your advice. :) I really do appreciate it. Well my homework is calling my name. Unfortunetelly, it is in Spanish so I don´t know how much I will understand anyways, but oh well! Back to school tomorrow!

Mechanical Bulls and Shaving Cream

2011-04-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

Wow. I am exhausted! There is nothing like dancing until three in the morning to tire you out. Last night was Ivan´s birthday party. He is in my class and he was turning 16. Every one from the fifth year at school was invited and also some other friends of his. The party started at 7 but I didn´t end up getting there until 8:45. I got a ride with Juli and Mari and they were running a little late. :) The party was outside in a yard-patio area. It was a really nice night and I wasn´t cold in my t-shirt and jeans.

Apperently here it is not unusual to have a mechanical bull at birthday parties. At first, I was scared to death to get on it. There is a blow up air thing all around it so when you get thrown off you would get hurt, but I was more scared of the being thrown off part than getting hurt. Well eventually I was practically dragged on by Krystal and we went together. It was really embarassing because everyone started chanting me name and I was holding on to Krystal like my life depended on it. It actually wasn´t so bad and I ended up going another time with Sol. It was definetelly teriffying at first but I would do it again. At about 10 the dancing started.

There was a DJ that set up speakers in the yard and had these awesome colored strobe lights going. At first, only Maria and Guada started dancing but I figured what the heck and got up and started dancing too. It was really fun to just dance with those girls and loosen up. After a while other people came over to dance too. The music here is really different and it wasn´t until about 1 a.m. that I actually got the hang of how to dance to it. It is hard to explain how the dancing it different for girls. I guess the closest I can come is that back in the states, dancing was much more of moving you chest and arms. Here it is much more about a low center of gravity and your hips. Okay, after reading over that it sounds really wierd and can even begin to explain it adequetly but I will leave it in there so you can have atleast some idea. The difference in the boys is dramatic. First, they actually dance here! And I´m not talking the kind of dancing where they rock back and forth a little. I mean they actually dance! It makes it really fun because you aren´t feeling weird that they guys don´t seem to be having fun. For guys, it is all about the hips. It is really funny to watch because it reminds me of the moves some girls would make back in the U.S. when they wre trying to be sexy. :) Well, the guys do that kind of thing all the time and it isn´t considered rude or over the top. After three hours of dancing, my shoes has begun to rub a really raw spot on my ankle. Thankfully, we were dancing in the grass so it wasn´t a problem to slip them off. It wasn´t until later that I realized that they weren´t where I put them. Thankfully, I found them fairly easily.

Earlier in the day Ivan had tried to explain to me something called "Espuma" (spelling?) but I couldn´t figure it out. Well, I caught on pretty quick when I got a face full of it at the party. Everyone grabbed a spray can of this white stuff that I can best describe as shaving cream and started spraying it all over everyone. We were all running around, putting it in peoples hair, and screaming when we got sprayed. I was completelly soaked in the stuff by the time we ran out. It dissolved on us into liquid and it was like I had dunked my head in water. Eventually, it dried and this morning I took a long shower to get it all off. It was such a fun thing to do. I hope that they have it in the U.S. cause from now on, I want to have that at my parties.

I got a ride home from Juli at about three a.m. This party is my favorite out of the three parties I have been too (the 15th birthday, Kika, and this one). It was great because I got to have a blast while also connecting more with my classmates. I didn´t get up until 1:30 today and should probably get some of my homework done because I go to my grandparents house tonight. It is my grandpa´s 77th birthday!

Discos- You Live and You Learn!

2011-03-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

Hola Amigos! Wow, have these last two days been packed with adventures or what? I didn´t have school on Thursday or Friday so I needed some plans to keep me occupied for the long weekend. Well, be careful what you wish for! Cause I have hardly had a moment to relax since Wednesday afternoon!

WEDNESDAY: I went to town with Krystal and Virginia. Our plan was that we were going to meet up with some more of our friends at the movie theater and see a movie. It would have been my first time going to the movie theater and I was pretty excited. I was also freaking out because the movie was supposed to be a suspensful on the verge of horror type and the only reason I agreed to see it was cause I wanted to hang out with these guys. Thankfully, the other people ended up not being able to make it so we opted for eating icecream instead. I got to try Dulce de Leche icecream for the first time and it is incredible! I am getting it every time from now on. The States should definetelly get it together and start selling dulce de leche. I am not sure I can move back if I can´t have it. :) Afterwards, we went over to Nicolas Sorrentino´s house who is the boyfriend of Virginia and a class mate of mine. We had pizza together and watched TV. I had also been invited to a birthday party that night for a classmate of mine who has now switched schools. But I ended up staying at Nicolas´s house later than planned so I didn´t end up going. At about midnight, we walked the eight blocks to my house. Stopping on the way to chill on the side walk while Virginia took her bus to her house. It was so cool to be able to walk home! In Deming, walking anywhere is like planning a week long vacation. It takes a lot of planning, and a lot of time. Here though, I can walk home with friends and it isn´t a problem. So Wednesday, I had plans from 6 in the evening until 1 in the morning.

THURSDAY: Vero, a classmate of mine, had invited me to my first disco (boliche) that night. I was going to meet her at Sofi Suarez´s house at 11 p.m. and then us three were going to leave for the boliche at 1 a.m. It was a Costume Party, but since Vero and Sofi didn´t have costumes and it was my first time, I opted for my favorite short dress and a pair of Paula´s blue flats to go with. :) Now technically, you are supposed to be 18 to go into these places since the drinking age here is 18 but all of my classmates start going once they´re 16. But let me assure you, they weren´t drinking while I was there and I wouldn´t drink even if they asked me to. I don´t like the taste of alcohol thank-you-very-much. Once we got there, it was an immediate start to a roller coaster of emotions that didn´t stop until long after I had gotten home. Since there are so many things to tell, I will just make a list for the simplisity of it.

There were cops waiting at the entrance of the boliche.
The music was loud enough that I had to talk to people in their ear. This made it kind of awkward for some conversacions later on in the night.
When I would walk by guys, they would call out to me, asking my name and tug on my hair.
Some of the more forward ones would even grab on to my waist and start walking behind me. (Later on I asked Vero about this and she said not to worry. You can just ignore them or even dance with them if you want. It is totally normal and fine, just don´t let them get all over you if they´re drunk.)
I later experienced my first drunk guy and thankfully, my friends were there to show me how to get him to back off. Next time, I will be more assurtive but it was a little overwelming at first.
I danced with a guy that I don´t know and aparently none of my friends knew either.
I met a ton of new people and also hung out with some other exchange students that were there. It was pretty difficult though, because when someone would come up to me or ask me to dance with them, I would have no idea if it was a friend that I just met, a friend of someone I came there with, or just a guy harassing me. :)

A ton more happened but I can´t write about that all now. It would just get to long and I still haven´t quite gotten over the shock of things to be able to explain it properly! I will have to save all of that info for Skype sessions! We arrived at Vero´s house at 5:30 a.m. where I spent the night.

FRIDAY (today): I didn´t get out of bed until 12:30 and then I went over to Sofi´s for lunch. I ended up staying there all afternoon and we even went out for icecream with her sister. It was a really fun day. I got home finally at 4 ish and I decided to take a nap. Well, I ended up waking up at 8:30 after sleeping for 4 and half hours. Definetilly not my plan for the afternoon and it is probably going to really screw up my sleep tonight! Next time I will set an alarm. :) I guess you live and you learn!

I don´t have any plans for Saturday and Sunday at this point, but knowing my luck, that will soon change. I also have three tests next week and geography homework that I have to finish. It is kind of pointless for my to study for the tests cause what I know, I already know. Reading over my notes one more time is not likely to improve my chances of getting a better grade! I am impressed how all my classmates can juggle everything. I don´t know how these Argentinians do all this partying! I am exhausted and I still have two more days of no school to go! I am straving and should get off and eat. Just got to keep plugging along!

P.S. I am posting more pictures onto Picasa of last night and my friends also posted some of me on Facebook. The place didn´t have a roof!!

Fútbol, Policia, y Yo (Soccer, Police, and Me)

2011-03-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Over my sixteen years, I have heard many stories of the crazy soccer games that happen in other parts of the world. Where refs are in danger, fans screaming, and general caos the whole entire game. It´s not so much that I didn´t believe the stories were true, but it is just hard to imagine something when you have never experienced it. Well last night I went to my first South American Soccer game and got to experience it for myself. Now before I go into my story I want to remind all you worry-warts that I completely trust my family and know that they would never send me to a place that could be potentially dangerous to me. Also, remember that when writing, I tend to point out only the dramatic parts, which makes it more interesting, but will also tend to dramatize the actual situation. Okay, now that that´s over with I can get on with the story.

This was a small game in San Juan with a San Juan club team playing against another club from a different city. As far as I can tell, it wasn´t for any important position or had any effect in some competition. Keep this in mind when I describe what happens cause I can only imagine what a professional play-off type game would be like. Unfortunetly we arrived late because Federico (Paula´s boyfriend) told us it started at 9 but it started at 8. There were two different places to sit. One on one side of the field were the Crazy Fans were sitting. And the other side for all of the normal fans (although in the U.S. they would also be considered crazy) sat. Sofia and I sat with the normal fans. Instantly, I noticed the giant barbed wire fence towering 15 ft tall infront of us so we couldn´t get on to the field. Other than that, it took me a while to notice all the other cautionary measures they had taken. There were approx. 25 police men spread out through out the stands and then another 30 crowd control personal lining the edge of the field. What I mean by crowd control are those police officers with batons, giant black shield like things, and helmets with clear plastic over their faces. When I asked Sofia about them, she said they were to protect the refs. Later on in the game I got to see kind of what she ment.

About three quarters through the game there was no score and we were getting restless. Suddenly fireworks started shooting out of the crazy people stands. They began setting off smoke bombs that sent blue and white smoke swirling across the sky along with white streamers. Then to my horror (although nobody else was worried) the paper in the stand caught on fire!!!! There were three different fires burning the in stands and the people just kept on singing their crazy song and watching the game!! At a closer look, I could see the people around the fires began stomping them out but it took them a while to finally smother them. It was baffeling and still is why nobody seemed worried, but then again, these guys were too focused on the game to pay any attention!

Finally with only about 6 minutes left in the game, our team scored. I had been prepared for this and couldn´t wait to see what the fans were going to do. Instanly, everyone jumped to their feet and started screaming. People litterally jumped off the stands and clung to the chain link fence off the ground! They were shaking it back and forth and screaming something in Spanish which I couldn´t catch. The air was pulsing with adrenaline. I swear, I have never felt anything like that in my life. It was like you had no idea whether to scream for joy or duck and run cause a bomb was going to go off. It was the weirdest sensation.

The game ended and our team won. Everyone began cheering as our team filled off the field. Then I noticed the crowd control matching on to the field where the refs were. The made a circle around the refs and accompanied them off the field. Once they got close to the fence, they put up their shields like an umbrella over the refs as a shower of plastic bottles and curses pummled them. I even saw a man soak one of the refs in water from his cup. I felt bad for the refs cause they were just doing their job, but at the same time, I could feel some of that frustration at some of the calls I personally thought were incorrect.

Over all, it was incredible and I can´t wait to go to another one. For all you soccer fans out there, this is something you can not live your life without doing. I have to give these Argentinians some credit; their fans have got spirit! I bet a million dollars I could go to the smallest soccer game here and you would still have people on their feet screaming like there´s no tomorrow! All I can say is - WOW!

Coca Cola Has Taken Over

2011-03-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

In the U.S. I would say it was popular to drink soda. Since there are so many kinds, I can´t narrow it down if asked to but I would say Coca-Cola products are in the top five. Well here, it is number one. There is no question that Coca-Cola is considered the best thing ever here. During breaks between classes, what do people drink? Coca-Cola. After school when we are hanging out, what do they drink? Coca-Cola. During dinner, what do they drink? You guessed it! Coca-Cola. It is not surprising that everyone can function on so little sleep when they are constantly chugging caffeine multiple times a day. But don´t be confused. This isn´t the Coca-Cola in the can that you find all over the U.S. This is the real stuff in the bottle. The kind that you keep on your dresser table just to say the you actually had one before. :) Well believe it or not, they just toss them in the trash like it´s not a big deal! Anyways, I like Coca-Cola but it is not my favorite. I am also not used to the caffeine and have been careful with only drinking little bits at a time so I can slowly get used to it. Thankfully, the second most popular soda is Sprite which isn´t caffeineted and I happen to like very much. It even comes in an awesome bottle like the Coca-Cola! Even so, you will stand out like a neon sign if you have a Sprite in your had at school. I have only seen one person so far willing to break out of the status-quo and brave the dangerous waters of the soda popularity.

When coming here, I was told that you should expect things to be more expensive here than in the U.S. Franco, when he arrived in the States, said that he had waited to buy his electronics here because they were cheaper back in Argentina. Well that might be true for electronics but not for everything else. Clothes seem to be about the same here as I would pay back home but maybe a little cheaper. In terms of food though, it is CRAZY cheap here. Today, I paided 1.5 pesos for a bottle of Coca-Cola. Since 4 pesos is one dollar that is equal to aprox. 40 cents. 40 cents!!! That is crazy!! I told every one else that we often pay 10 pesos for a soda and they thought that was a rip-off. Anyways, I am not going to go broke buying sodas. :)

Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words

2011-03-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

have finally managed to begin uploading my pictures to where my family and friends can see them. Unfortunetelly, it literally takes Picasa hours to upload them and so it was a long process. I still have more to upload and some to get off my family´s camera but I need to find a long block of time when I can use the computer. Make sure to visit the link and check out the photos! You know they say "A picture is worth a thousand words"!

https://picasaweb.google.com/112725819304297041100/SanJuanArgentinaFirstMonth?authkey=Gv1sRgCK_InOLSx6njLw&feat=directlink

School is Different

2011-03-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

School is a funny thing. I never really liked school because, well, school is school, but at the same time school has always been the place where I get to hang out with my friends. The same is true here. I don´t like school because it means I need to spend six hours trying to understand Spanish. Today during break I was so exhuasted that I was minutes away from sleep when the bell rang. At the same time, I love the interactions that happen at school between me and my classmates. It is so fun to see who acts like who back in the states, what kids seem to get into trouble, what I talk about with other people; each day is just so different from that last that I can´t help but be excited when I think about going again. It is also interesting to start seeing the big and small differences that make this school so much different from Mount Baker in Deming. Let me give you some examples:

1. We only have one class room and we never have to leave it.
2. Every morning we begin by having every age group line up in the gym and say prayers.
3. We can´t eat anything in class; only during breaks.
4. This kids have been in the same class with each other since they were four.
5. Because of #4, all of these kids are friends with there whole class. Back home, I have so many different classmates in different classes that although I might know every one´s names, I probably haven´t even spoken to half of them. Here, everyone knows everyone and it makes it really fun in terms of interactions during class and break.
6. When a teacher is sick or can´t teach, we don´t have class. If it is the last period of the day like Literature for me the last two weeks, we just get to go home early. If it is a class in the middle of the day like Religion today, we had a woman come in and play memory games with us until our next class.
7. If you miss school because you are sick, you need to take your note from your parents and get it stamped at the "Centro Civil" before you can bring it to school. I still don´t really understand what the stamp is for. Also, you only have to have it if you are sick. Not if you went on vacation or had an appointment.
8. This last one is probably the largest difference from Mount Baker. What we wear to school. Technically, we have three different options of what to wear depending on the weather, which are dirty, and whether it is a P.E. day or not. The first outfit is the one that you can see me in in the picture on a previous post. It is a white shirt with a redish blouse over it, a checkered skirt, high maroonish socks, and black shoes. The second outfit is similiar but instead of having the skirt, you can wear grey wool pants. The third outfit is maroon sweatpants and a white t-shirt with the school´s emblem on it. For P.E., you are also aloud to wear blue short and a completelly white t-shirt but you can´t wear that to school. With any outfit, you also have the option to wear a maroon/redish jacket or sweatshirt. Right now, I have every piece of clothing except for the jacket. Which has been unfortunate because these last couple days have been cold in the mornings and I have had to go without one.

I need to leave for the center now. I am going to go meet up with other AFS girls and hang out!!

Late Night Tacos - Or Should I Say Early Morning?

2011-03-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

Last night was a blast! Like I had said before, Krystal had invited me over for tacos with her and some of her friends. Turns out that we she actually brought all of the taco stuff with her and we went to this boy Nicolas´s house. There, we were joined by another ten people (about have boys, half girls). I knew some of the people from seeing them at school but most of them were new to me. Unfortuntelly, I can remember almost none of their names. :) I usually am really good with names but here they sound very different from how we would say them and it is hard to tell what is a name and what is a Spanish word! Anyways, I can only remember Krystal, Nicolas, and another boy named Matias. I have found that I am able to remember boys names here better than girls. Then again, many of the girls are named Juli and Sofi, I just can´t remember which ones are which! I often feel bad not being able to remember, but then again, I think they can understand. They never pronounce my name right and so everyone just calls me "Jenny" here.

I played Ping Pong with a girl and was embarrasingly beat. Thankfully, I was much better at cards. I learned how to play a card game called "Mosquito". It was really fun and I was pretty good at it. Or should I say, I was good until we played it after dinner. Then, I lost twice in a row!! Everyone was a good sport about it and we laughed so much when it looked like I was going to lose a third time. Thankfully, I pulled through.

We didn´t end up eating dinner until about 12:30 at night. Or is that concidered the morning? :) They were fantastic tacos and I enjoyed actually eating so late. I wasn´t starving then so I think that is a sign that I am adjusting to their insane eating times.

The whole night was a blast and I didn´t end up going home until three in the morning. I will have to get used to that fact that when we are getting together for "dinner" it really means partying for six hours into the night! This morning, I didn´t get up until 12:30 I was so tired. Tomorrow is school again; it will be my first full week attending school. The first week when I was sick I only made it two days. Last week, we didn´t have school Monday or Tuesday so I only had three days. This week I am having five! I hope my brain can hold out. Although school is really fun, I get mentally tired really easily from all the Spanish. I love speaking Spanish and it is a beautiful language to listen two but when you are in class and trying to understand it for six hours five days a week, your mind can run out of gas really quickly. I have decided to keep taking English cause otherwise I would have to switch to a class in Spanish. I figure I deserve one easy class out of my eleven. :)

I guess you guys have had a time change over in the States. We haven´t had one yet (I don´t know if we even do!) so now it is only a four hour difference in time. Thankfully, my mom let me know that before I missed my Skyping session with Isabel! She should be signing on any minute...I got to go!! :) Take care!

P.S. Oh! Yesterday it was freezing here!! Like, I was in my tennis shoes, pants, longsleeve, and sweatshirt and I was still cold outside. Hallelujah!

P.E. is P.E. No matter where you are

2011-03-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

Today I had my first official P.E. class. Although last week I technically had it, all we did was go over the rules and what time to be here (all of which I didn´t understand until Maria translated it). Today though, we got to practice our basketball dribling skills. Thankfully, I happen to be "okay" at this and did fairly well. The way P.E. works here is that you have school in the morning and get out around one, go home for lunch, and then come back for P.E. from 4:30 to 5:30. At first I was worried that it would be really bad because I am not yet completelly accustomed to the heat but all the other girls there were as hot as I was. There are only girls in my P.E. class. I guess they decide that although we have class with the boys, we can´t have P.E. with them. For that I am kind of glad because back in the States, it seems like there was always this kind of rival going on between the sexes. You were always trying to show the other one up. I know quite a few girls in my class (it also only has 14 students) which is nice because they all talk to me and even some of the six years that I don´t know help explain to me what is going on. Generally, my first P.E. class was a success although P.E. is still P.E. no matter what country I´m in and I don´t like P.E.

Anyways, yesterday it looked as though my weekend would be filled with lots of sleep and lots of time to kill. As of today though, my schedule is becoming booked. People here aren´t much for planning ahead. :) Tonight, I am going to a play with (I think) my sisters and two other AFS students. I don´t know much about it except that it is obviously in Spanish so I will therefore understand very little. Oh also, it is set far in the future after our era has died out and we have started the process of developing technology all over again.

Tomorrow: Morning- Going shopping with Paula and her boyfriend for school books and school shoes. Afternoon- Going to the center to have smoothies with Cati, Charolette, and Maria who are all AFS students. Night- Having tacos with Crystal and her friends. Crystal is a sixth year (remember- that is a senior in high school since high school here has six years) girl who grew up in the U.S. but moved her with her mother two years ago.

At this point I don´t have anything going on on Sunday, but judging by the way things keep coming up, it won´t be that way for long.

During all of my time here I keep noticing things that I won´t to mention on my blog. Of course, once I actually get here, I can´t remember most of them. In the future, I think I will just put random facts or observations into my blog when I think of them. Such as now.

Random Observation: I was told before I came here that Argentinians eat lots of Mayo. As stereotypes go, I figured this was just another one of them. Turns out, they do eat mayo on almost everything. Whether it is on their rice, salad, meat, noodles, bread- they have mayo with it. At first I didn´t eat mayo. I mean, in the States I never ate it and I couldn´t see why it made it so much better. Until today. I put it on my bread with some breaded steak- oh! It was like making a perfect thing even more perfect. From now on I am going to try mayo on whatever they have it on. Even if it seems crazy. :)

Difunta Correa

2011-03-10T15:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I just finished translating my notes from my Biology class. I feel like in every class I am one day behind everyone else. I sit in class and copy my clasemates notes and answers and then go home and translate them to the best of my ability so I can atleast know what we are going. But before I get into school, let me tell you about an adventure I went on on Monday....

My family has gotten a new red car. For all you car lovers out there, I am sorry but I don´t know what type it is. Anyways, when people get something special brought into their lives whether it be a call, a child, or a wedding, they travel to the Difunta Correa to give thanks. The story is that this woman Difunta went in search of her lost husband in the desert with her baby. But when she ran out of water, she died. Amazingly her baby was found by cowboys (gauchos) days later still alive. We give thanks to her for bringing things into our lives. The city (Vallecito) is about an hour drive away from San Juan and we left for it in the late afternoon. At the memorial site for her, there are buildings filled with gifts. Each building is thanking her for a different miracle. One room was completelly filled with photos of family members, some that were born and some that were found after being missing. Other rooms were filled with replicas of houses or wedding dresses. It was really a beautiful place but in honor of the people visiting, I chose not to take any pictures inside the buildings. On the outside, all of the walls were imbedded with placks thanking her and the name of the family and date. Some dated back to 1927. Each plack cost atleast a thousand dollars to get imbedded and there must have been thousands of them. At the top of a hill, there was a life size replica of Difunta and her baby. All around her were gifts of water to help her survive in the desert. Here, people who came also put up their liscense plates all over the posts holding up the roof. I found ones from Oregon and California! In giving thanks, we each lite a candle for Difunta and put it in this giant pit that was filled with burning candles. The whole thing was trully amazing and I was very happy I got to go.

School is another story. I have finally gotten my schedule figured out and I have a total of eleven classes in one week. Each day is a different mix of classes but each week is the same. I have Math, Law, Economy, SIC (which I would best describe as bookkeeping), Theory and Management, Literature, Religion, English (the language), Biology, Geography, and another class which I think is like Computers but because I was sick last week and we had a holiday on Monday and Tuesday, I have yet to have had it. Over all, it is a lot of classes and it is hard for me to keep up. I understand Math very well and I have a handle on Economy and SIC but all the rest are nearly impossible. Not only is there a HUGE language barrier but I also have never studied a lot of these subjects to begin with. It can be frustrating some times in class when I start to get worried when I really have no idea of what is going on. Thankfully, in most of my classes we have tons of notes and I am able to go home and spend hours translating them. I know that it won´t do me much good when it comes to tests because although I will know the material, I will have very little idea of how to write it in Spanish. I just keep reminding myself that since I am doing all this in another language, I don´t need to hold myself to the high standards I have at home because I have a sinking feeling I won´t be getting all A´s. :) School begins at 7:30 everymorning (Monday thru Friday) and on Mon. Wed. and Fri. I get out at one and on Tues. and Thurs. I get out at two. Right now, I am staying that extra hour because I have English. After today though, I am going to talk with the school teachers and see if I can take a different class or go home early. English is obviously really easy for me :) and that class is the kind of class that nobody gets anything done anyways. Then again, with all these other classes that are really hard for me, I might like to have a class that is easy and I can just relax in. I guess I will have to decide soon because this weekend I need to buy my Total English text book if I am going to keep taking English!

Party Hardy

2011-03-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys!

Last night I went to my first party in Argentina! I had been invited to two this weekend but I decided against going to the one on Friday so I could keep resting up. Last night´s party was a brithday party for a girl who was turning 15. I don´t actually know the girl but some friends of mine from school were invited and invited me along with them. At ten p.m. I went over to my friend Maria´s house were we at pizza (They put eggs on their pizza!!!) and got ready for the party. My Paula loaned me a green dress that she had cause I wasn´t sure if my dress would be appropriate. I thought that it might be a little too short. Well once I arrived at the party, I found that most girls here went with the "shorter the better" theory. The dress that I brought would be longer than a lot of them! Anyways, at around 1 a.m. we left Maria´s house with six of her friends and her mom took us to the party. It was at this...hmmm... how will I decribe it? I guess what comes to mind is like a wedding after party outside. It has a gazeebo type building with large grassy areas around and white giant squishy blocks for people to sit on instead of the grass. It also had a police officer at the gate checking everyone´s invitations and corresponding names on his list. At first I got a little nervous that he wouldn´t let me in but Maria explained that I was an exchange student and seeing that I did look a little out of place, he let me in.

Inside the gazeebo was the dancing. They had all these crazy colored lights and would at times switch to a strobe light so everything looked like it was moving in that weird way. It was very disorientating dancing in that light but I started to get used to it. I don´t know how most people celebrate there birthdays in the U.S. but I have a feeling that most aren´t like this. There was a smoothie bar, icecream bar, and a juice bar. There were waiters going around picking up people´s glasses and a camera man who was filming everything. It was all really fancy but yet really laid back. I never actually got to meet the girl who´s birthday it was. It really seemed more like party than celebrating someone specific.

The music was really different from what we dance to at home and at first I didn´t like it. After a while though, I got into it and really started to have fun. I danced with Maria and her friends and some other girls who I met there. I also danced with this guy who knew Maria. It was pretty fun and I think I will enjoy them more and more as I get used to the late start times. The party was supposed to end around five or six in the morning but at three I asked Maria to call Elsa to come pick me up. I didn´t want to push my luck and wake up that day being horribally sick again. Thankfully, after waking up at twelve thirty, I found that I am not any more sick than before and excited about going to more parties.

The AFS kids that are in San Juan are going to meet in the park in a little bit so we can all get to know eachother. There are quite a few girls who have been here for six months already and I am interested in hearing how they ajusted and if they also got sick when they first arrived.

Eventhough you probably think that nothing new is going on in your life, I really enjoy getting the messages about what is up back in the States. Just small little updates are fun and it makes me not miss home as much. Thanks for reading!!

Hanging With My Groupies :)

2011-03-03T15:41:00.000-08:00

Hola!

Yesterday, I went to my first day of school. Surprisingly, although you would think wearing two shirts, high socks, and a wool skirt would kill me, I am alive! Many people had told me that when I went to Argentina, everyone would treat you like you are a rockstar. Well, until yesterday, I didn´t really believe them. Everyone in my class wanted to talk with me. Many of them knew English well enough to ask questions so they would ask me in English and then I would answer in Spanish. I must have answered the same questions atleast ten times! But still, it was kind of exciting to have that much attention on me. From what I understand, I have four classes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. As the week as played out, I have yet to make it to my classes on Tuesday and Thursday (last night I only slept for three hours and had tons of cramps this morning so I couldn´t go to school) so I don´t know what I have then. But I do know I have P.E.! Anyways, I have math, economy 1, ecomony 2, and geography one day and whatever classes the next. I understood the math review worksheet almost completely so it was exciting not to feel behind in atleast on of my classes. In Economy 1 and 2, I understood nothing. It didn´t seem like something that difficult but the language barrier was too much. The teacher told me that Ecomony 1 is a very hard class and I could switch out of it if I wanted. I told her (through the translation of a girl who spoke English) that at this point no matter what class I am in, I am not going to understand it. She chuckled and wished me luck. For the most part, the teachers seemed very nice. It wasn´t all that different from the class room interactions back in the states. The one gigantic difference was when we were working on a worksheet, EVERYONE is talking REALLY loud. Think of the loudest class you have and then times that level of noise by atleast three. It was like I couldn´t even think!

My class has about twenty students so it isn´t that small of a class. The difference is, I have EVERY class with them. The teachers move class rooms but we stay in one spot. It makes it really easy not to get lost! :)

After classes ended about one (I am not sure because I really need to get a watch and there isn´t a clock in the class room) six other girls, I, and one boy all went to McDonalds at the mall. It was really funny because they were really excited to go because there is only one McDonalds in all of San Juan. I got to experience riding on a bus. Let me tell you, hold on tight! Right when I got on it started to move and I fell right over in my seat. It was really pretty funny. I really like this girls(and one boy) and they were really easy to talk to. The boy and another girl spoke pretty good English so when I didn´t understand something or needed to say something in English, they translated. It woked out pretty well because I didn´t get frustrated but at the same time, I was learning Spanish like crazy. From that one afternoon with them, I have learned more Spanish then I would in three weeks at school. It is incredible!

They wanted to know all about the United States. They thought it was crazy that I normally eat dinner at six. Here at the earliest they have it at ten! I always have to either eat dinner early and then go to sleep when they have dinner, or (like today) have two lunches and snack around five-ish.

It was a really fun day and I am looking forward to being able to go back to school tomorrow. With so little sleep last night and still feeling sick, I just wasn´t able to go to school this morning. Thankfully, I believe I have found the reason for my unwillingness to sleep. Did it ever occure to me that drinking caffinated beverages probably wasn´t a good idea a couple hours before I wanted to sleep? Well no. It didn´t. Thankfully, when talking to my mom (I am going to call my mom in the U.S. "mom" and my mama here either "mama" or "host mom") and telling her what I had for my late lunch, she pointed out that I am not used to drinking caffiene and that was probably why I couldn´t sleep. Let me tell you, I am not touching that stuff again for a LONG TIME. Last night was miserable. I was able to sleep from ten to one but then from then until six thirty in the morning all I could do was toss and turn and generally feel uncomfortable. I was also suffering from cramping so that didn´t help.

Today is Sofia´s 20th and Paula´s 22nd Birthday! They were both born on the same day just two years apart. Like Argentinians do, their friends didn´t show up until seven and they are just leaving now at nine. I think their family is supposed to show up for dinner at around ten. Right before I left, I looked up when their birthdays were just to see if I might need to bring a gift from the states and I am glad I did. I made them both my signature Scrabble Neclaces. They liked them very much.

The last couple days at about this time I would be taking a really cold shower and then getting ready for bed. Fortunetelly and unfortunetelly, my family saw how hot I was at night and has bought and airconditioner for Sofia´s and my room. They are currently installing it so even if I wanted to sleep, I couldn´t. Also, I have had dinner yet. I have a HUGE lunch and have snacked a bit so I think I am okay. Anyways, keep it cool over in Washington. I heard you guys have tons of snow. Man would I kill to go boarding right now! I love all of you so much and love hearing your comments about my blog. Feel free to ask any question as well. If I don´t know the answer, I will find out! Adios!

P.S. I am tring to post a picture of me with my friends on this post but I can´t tell if it is working or not. If it isn´t, you can visit my facebook page at Jenica Bee and see them there as well.

My School and My Stomach

2011-02-28T12:17:00.000-08:00

Hola my friends. It is wonderful to write to you again. Hopefully, you are all dedicated to checking my blog every single minute. :) It is fun to think about you reading this from all the way accross the world. Any ways, since I wrote yesterday a lot (well really a little) has happened. Yesterday I felt fine until I went to bed. Then, with all the changes from Washington (86 degrees, don´t eat dinner until 10, the water, the food, and the language) I guess my body just didn´t like it very much. It would be imposible to pin point what excactly caused me to be sick, I just hope that it continues to go away as it is doing now. So last night I got very little sleep because my stomach hurt, but eventually I did fall asleep and slept for a couple hours very well. Then, this morning was my first day of school. Elsa (my mama) told me that if I wanted to I could just go for the ceremony that was like a welcoming every one back. I still felt horrible but I really wanted to go so I did. From what I have seen of the school, I love it. The teachers are nice and some girls who are in my class invited me to come talk with them and stand with them until the ceremony started. Although I couldn´t talk much because of the language barrier, it was the thought that counted. After the ceremony was over, Sophia took me back home. There I did the wonderful and got to experience throwing up in another country. Let me tell you, it isn´t any better than when I was back home. Since then, I have been trying to keep up my liquids. They bought me bottled water because at first many kids can get sick because it is a slight change in water. I am feeling better, but I am still not comfortable to the stability of my stomach. This evening we are supposed to go shopping for parts of my uniform that I am missing but I am not sure I am ready for the walking and standing that intales. I guess I will just have to feel it out. Depending on how I feel tonight, I might also choose not to go to school tommorow. It is hard for me to miss school but then again, I won´t understand hardly anything even if I do go!! If I understood correctly (remember that I am told all this in Spanish) my classes begin at 8 and end at 1. Then I come home and my family eats lunch together. Right now, I am enrolled as some one who is going to go into economics. That means that half of my 10 (?) clases are based on economy. I don´t know much about economy but I guess this is as good a time to learn as any!

There at Last

2011-02-27T05:40:00.001-08:00

I am in Argentina! Yep, that about sums it up but for your sake, I will explain in more detail. Over the last the last five days, I have taken two red eye plane rides, one red eye bus ride, and spent more hours than you could imagine listening to AFS personel tell me important facts. It was all very tiring and I developed a sore throught to top it off. Even with all this, I am still pretty excited. During the orientation, we never spoke Spanish. That was hard because I wanted to prepare for when I finally met my host family. Oh well...

This morning, after riding on a bus for 12 hours (which I am happy to tell you had seats that reclined back into a full bed) I met my host family. They were waiting at the bus stop with a big flag that said "Jenica Bienvenidos" meaning Welcome Jenica! They are very nice, and although it must be frustrating talking to me cause I can´t understand a lot, they are being very patient. They let me call my parents and I am planning on Skyping they later this afternoon.

They city is very beautiful and filled with colors. There are tons of stray dogs everywear and my papa drives really fast. It is all very different from Washington but I love it. My school is just a block away so I will walk there everymorning. I share a bedroom with my sister Sophia so it is not that different from my room at home. I like their house very much.

It is hot here but I am surprised at how well I am doing. Then again, I am not in the direct sun either. I am going to take a shower (but one of my sisters will have to explain how it works, I don´t understand it) but I am thinking about everyone all the time. Don´t be afraid to send me a little email. You can even try out your Spanish if you feel so inclinded!! Love you all so much!

Mi Familia y País Nuevos

2011-02-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

Hola!

Ya queda poco tiempo para yo viajo! There is so little time left before I leave! With the count down remaining with eight days, I have begun to say my goodbyes. Until you have to, it is impossible to imagine how hard it is to say goodbye to people for a whole year. But even with the emotions of departing, I am extremely excited to head off on my adventure!

Over the last month, I have gotten to email with my family a lot. It is so exciting to learn about the place I am going to. I have a mother, father, an older sister Sofia, and an older sister Paula. I am staying in the city San Juan which is about the size of Bellingham. I am going to a Catholic school that is close to my house so I will walk there every morning. It will be hot and I am stacking up on sunblock!

Once I leave for Miami on the 22nd, I will have an orientation there. I will arrive in Argentina on the 25th; have another orientation (only this time in Spanish); take a 15 hour bus on the 26th to San Juan; and then finally arrive and meet my family on the 27th!! It is a long way to travel and it will be so hard to wait to meet my family for that long.

Even though I am leaving, it doesn't mean I will lose touch with all you guys. Make sure to keep checking my blog for I will be posting exciting updates about my adventures abroad (and even some pictures)!!!

Adios!

Wiggle Room

2011-01-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

As this last year came to an end, my goal for $13,400 was also completed! I have now officially raised my whole budget. I want to thank all of my relatives and community members that have helped me get here by either donating time, money, or just your support. I am very grateful to all of you.

During all this, I have also realized that my original budget was slightly inaccurate. Thankfully, my last fundraiser has pushed me over my original budget and gives me some wiggle room. Did you have any idea that you had to translate you birth certificate into Spanish to get a VISA? Let me tell, I am glad I have a little extra money because that is not the cheapest thing to do. Little things like that just seem to be creeping up on my lately. Whether it is for my VISA, background check, or just the new camera I need, I never thought of any of those things for my original budget. A word for the wise: always give yourself some wiggle room. Thanks to the generous people around my and my hard work, I got that without even planning to!

My official departure date from the United States in the 24th of February. Can you believe how quickly that seems to be coming up? This weekend I have my first orientation that my mom will also be attending with me. I am excited to get to meet other AFS students that are going to be traveling with me. I hear there is actually a boy from Bellingham going to Argentina too!

Buenas noches America!

Celebration is on the Menu!

2010-11-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

Wow! These last couple months have been incredible! All of my AFS things have just suddenly come together. Everything from Application status to scholarships. I have quite a few big announcements to make.

1. Let's start off with the not so great to get it out of the way. I was informed that I didn't receive the Vaya A Latina America Scholarship. At first this was very disappointing to me, but after a while, I jumped back up and kept on fundraising. I still believed that I could make my goal even without that large scholarship.

2. Soon after that, AFS gave me a scholarship for $750 in financial aid. This new sponsorship gave me hope that if I just kept trying I would make it. Thank you AFS!

3. AFS Argentina accepted my application, and they are now looking for a host family. They told me I would probably find out who my family was in January. It is so thrilling to be able to discover what the people are going to be like that I will spend a year of my life with. I can't wait!

4. I kept on working and working and was able to earn some good money. My community has been wonderfully supportive of my trip and always looking for things to hire me for. I was able to sell two big ticket items for my parents that they gave me a portion of. My grandparents we also very kind and donated money. It is really incredible how much money you can make when you just put your mind to it.

5. Last (but definitely not least!) I received a scholarship from a local organization called Orca. Thanks to some help by Anne Davis, I was awarded $2000! Talk about getting the wind knocked out of you- I was so excited!

With all of this put together, I am getting very close to my goal. It is exciting to have my goal within reach. All I need is a little more help and work, and I will be on my way to Argentina! Only 4 MONTHS AND COUNTING!

Getting My Ducks in a Row

2010-09-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order! These last couple weeks I have received two great pieces of news. Firstly, my application was accepted by AFS USA. It has been sent off to AFS Argentina and they will let me know if there is any additional information that is needed. I am officially on their list of Spring 2011 Argentina exchange students.

I received my AFS student guide book in the mail and have begun reading it. There is a lot of information that is in there that I had never thought of. Did you know that the U.S. is famous for wearing shorts? My guide book suggests "Don't arrive in another county in shorts or you will be immediately labeled as a U.S. tourist." I will keep this tip in mind when packing my carry on outfit. Wow! It is so exciting just to THINK about packing!

The second thrilling accomplishment was that I have gone over the half way mark in my fund-raising efforts. I now have over $6,900 in money going towards my trip! That means I only have $6,500 more. I am getting closer to my goal every day. If you know of anyone that would be interested in sponsoring me, don't be shy to suggest they check out my blog! I love to hear what you guys are thinking so comments or questions are always great.

Working for Safety

2010-09-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Hello again! Recently I have been working/volunteering for a group of local community members. A hillside above my neighbors houses is up for logging, and they are concerned about the effects it could have. Over the last several years, there have been many landslides that destroyed property and endangered lives. I am concerned that logging the hillside on a steep slope might cause the soil to become unstable and heavy rains will cause the hill to come tumbling down on my friends and family.

I have been working hard writing letters to our commissioner and researching information for my community. We are asking that the DNR only approve the portions of the proposed harvest with low to moderate slopes, where there is no indication of a landslide hazard, and that no roads are approved that cross any areas that are potentially unstable. This way, Sierra Pacific will still be able to collect their necessary harvest while not endangering property, people, or wildlife. We have an event coming up on the 25th called "Mycelium Rising". It is going to be held at the Bloom Cafe in Bellingham from 8-12 p.m.

This is a great cause for me to be working on because it helps me get closer to my goal of getting to Argentina, AND I get to help my community stay safe. It is wonderful to be able to get two things done that I love at the same time. I am able to accomplish twice as many things!

Giving It All I Got

2010-09-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

Last week, I officially submitted my AFS application. It is currently being looked over. Next week, I will have my interview with my local AFS volunteer. Once that is done, my application will be sent to the Argentina AFS organizers. I should hear back from then within the next couple weeks.

This weekend the Vaya a America Latina essay is due. Over the past weeks, I have worked on draft after draft of my essay. The scholarship is through AFS and will cover half of my tuition ($5,112.5). It is really important for me to get it so I have been working hard to make that as possible as I can.

My host brother, Franco, has been living with us for about three weeks. His English is very good, and it has been a joy to get to know him. From him, I have begun to see snip-its of Argentina's culture. He has told me about words that vary from the Mexican Spanish I am currently learning. It has been fun to show him my home town and teach him about new things. It really brings light onto how different cultures are in simple, every day routines. Every time I hear about Argentina from Franco, I long to be there. Having him here has solidified my decision and thrive to travel to Argentina.

Over all, I am continuing to work hard to earn money. I am also taking time to learn about Argentina as much as I can. I am so excited to travel there and will work from dawn until dusk to make it possible. I am giving it all I got.

An Older Brother From Argentina

2010-08-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

Recently, my family applied to be a host family for AFS exchange students. Because I am applying to go to Argentina, we were suggested towards a boy that was from there. Franco Longhi is a sixteen year old boy from Concordia, Argentina. Franco has taken English for four years so his English is fairly good. He will be staying with us for five months.

On August 14th, we will have an orientation and then meet Franco for the first time. I have been emailing him but we have never spoken to each other over the phone. I am extremely excited to have an older brother for a while. I know that at times it might be difficult to have another sibling, but I know it will be worth it. It will be exciting to hang out with someone from the country that I am about to travel to.

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I recently applied for a AFS Family Award. It honors families who have had a prior connection with AFS either through hosting a student or traveling some where. I was informed today that I have recieved a $400 award towards my tuition. This is wonderful news and I very excited about it!

I am continuing to work very hard. I have gotten more babysitting jobs lined up and have gotten house work scheduled for next week. I am also working on an essay for the Vaya a America Latina scholarship through AFS. I will be submitting it later this month. I will be posting more about my fundraising efforts later in the month.

Argentina Exchange

2010-07-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Hello. I am Jenica Barrett from the small town of Deming, Washington. I am a sophomore at Mount Baker High School and attend Three Rivers Cooperative School part-time. This summer, I am applying to study abroad in Argentina for a year starting in January of 2011 through the American Field Service (AFS) intercultural student exchange program.

In Argentina, I will be living with a host family for eleven months. There, I will be attending a Spanish speaking school and immersing myself in the language and culture. I have always been ecstatic about traveling to new places, and I love to experience the new opportunities that come with staying in a different culture. I have been studying Spanish for a little over a year now but I know that full immersion into the language is the fastest way for me to master it. Spanish speaking is a life skill that I believe will help me in many aspects of my life and is an important asset to acquire. During all of this, I hope to discover and solidify who I really am. I will strive to gain knowledge about myself from the people around me and about how my strengths can help better the world.

As a young women, I am currently juggling many things in my life. During the school year, I volunteer at my local special needs preschool every week. Every Tuesday, I participate in school meetings where I represent the student body and provide input on curriculum matters. I am in a band where I play the piano and sing. I also take theater and yoga classes. Continually, I manage to pull all my home work together and keep my 4.0 GPA in tact. This summer, I have also been busy. Once I decided to go on a foreign exchange trip, I began working every hour that was possible. I also had to make room for my family time and my prior engagements. Even with all of this, I pride myself in being able to stay calm and focused and get everything done that needs to be.

Hopefully, all of my hard work will pay off and I will raise enough for this amazing opportunity. My goal is to raise $13,400 for my trip. That will cover all of the costs for preparing, leaving, and staying in Argentina. I have been working really hard all summer long with babysitting, elderly care,yard work, house work, and selling items on Craig's List. I have applied for scholarships and am planning on entering essay contests that open this fall. My parents have been kind enough to also donate. With all this, I still need to raise $7,000. I will need a lot of help to make my dream come true. I appreciate you taking the time to read about my life and trip. Any contribution that you can give will be immensely appreciated. No amount is too small for every penny gets me closer to my goal. To donate to my exchange trip, click the ChipIn! gadget at the top right of my blog. I would greatly appreciate it if you sent my blog site to any one that you feel might be interested in sponsoring my trip to Argentina by forwarding this link.

http://jenicainargentina.blogspot.com/

Thank you so much!

Jenica