I Love Argentina

So much has been happening that everything just seems like a blur!

I went to the National Festival Of Fine Fruits in El Hoyo with my family, it went for three days over the long weekend. Each night there was a big concert with dancers and bands and that kind of thing, it was meant to finish at about 1.30am each night but when 1.30 came around they weren’t even half way through. I’m pretty sure everyone here just expects that things will run late so they don’t go until late and so things happen about 5 hours after they are meant to, and that applies to everything. Nacho Silva was there, she is a singer of some reality TV show and everyone went bonkers when she performed, it was crazy

Isabella from Wellington has changed families and now is living in El Bolson which is great because I can have a proper conversation with someone for once! When we first talked we couldn’t stop laughing because just the thought of speaking English was so foreign and felt so weird. It also cool cos we can be tourists together taking pictures of things that are just normal to my host sisters and looking at the shops that are reserved for people not from the area.

I had my first panic situation on Saturday night; I went to the club with my sister and my friends. We were dancing as you and all of a sudden Isabella was just gone. It was 5 o’clock in the morning. We searched everywhere for her, the club next door, the streets, the close by parks, but she was just gone. My friends freaked out and went to the police asking if they had seen her and it was all rather scary, we all thought that she had been abducted. I remembered I had left my jacket in the club (me and Isabella had shoved our jackets down the back of a couch and just prayed they wouldn’t get stolen) so I went back in to get it and there was Isabella all alone she had been there all along. THE RELIEF!

School hasn’t started yet, now they have told us it starts on the 16^th of this month but I’ve learnt not to trust anything. So I don’t know. Truth is I am quite happy just cruising without school, it doesn’t make a difference for anything when I get back so it’s not really important. I am going to go to afternoon school which is 1.30pm – 6.30pm. I have a couple of good friends that keep me un-bored. We drink mate and eat facturas (pastries filled with caramel or glazed with icing). They are so rica, someone told me when I was eating them “watch out exchange students have a lot of problems with those”. Eg they are so delicious that you are going to eat too much and get fat. The weather has changed all of a sudden, the whole time I have been here it has been beautiful every single day and then yesterday I wake up to snow on the mountains and rain and wind and freezingness, wah! ):

I was going to go to Bariloche this weekend with Isabella and stay in a hostel with her but I don’t think that is going to happen now because she will be with her new family. I really wanted to go because they have the worlds biggest chocolate there this year for Easter... it is 100m long, and if you know me then you will know that that is something out of my wildest dreams. Hahahaha. But maybe another weekend.

Photos

The New Zealand group

My House

Sols Birthday

My Argentina Family

The Plaza where we hang out every single day

Sisters at Lago Puelo

Comdoro

Our bus ride to Comodoro Rivadavia went through the night, it was 12 hours... longer then the plane ride here! I had the pleasure of sitting next to a very large man for the journey which was not ideal, but he was lovely and his little daughter behind us was so cute, until she started vomiting everywhere. I didn’t get much sleep on the bus. Sol and I stayed with her great aunty, Rocio and Mariela stayed at Mariela’s brothers’ house a few minutes down the road. Comodoro was very beautiful as it is right on the sea and there are many beaches and it’s really hilly a bit like Dunedin. One night we went to Rada Tilly which is another town about 30 min away to stay with Sol’s friend, the idea of fun there is something like, walk to the plaza, walk home, walk to the plaza, walk home, well you get the drift. I probably walked the equivalent of the length of NZ in one day, no jokes! Rada Tilly was much cleaner and nicer then Comodoro but there isn’t much to do there. We went to the town centre in Comodoro, I was expecting to do some shopping but it seems like Argentinians just like to walk around, not actually go into any shops which was a bit disappointing because I wanted some new clothes haha. The day that we left we had a big asado at the house of Mariela’s brother for lunch which was yuummmmyyyyyyy. I think the whole world should have asados, seriously you don’t know what you’re missing out on.

Last night while I was walking to salsa there was something going on in the plaza by our house. A group of about 15 men had gathered and in the middle was a girl about my age being patted down by a police officer, I don’t know what was happening but it was scary. At night time we like to go out walking with a couple of friends, at about 11.30 we walk to the centre and buy lollipops then just walk around for a few hours in the freezing cold. There are a lot of boy racers on the main street here doing laps with their cars that they think are cool but really aren’t, it’s the same as NZ in that way.

I tried some Cadbury’s chocolate Argentina style yesterday, I think it was false packaging… it was disgusting and did not deserve the name Cadbury on it. I miss good chocolate. I went to the market today and since it’s so hot it was massive!  All the hippies sit around under the trees next to the market and play their instruments and sing; one guy was even playing a didgeridoo, actually a lot of people play didgeridoos around the town. Life is pretty cruisy, everyone thought school was meant to start today, turns out it didn’t so I’m still on holiday. It’s only been oh 4 months since I last went to school. Yay for no school (:

Liifffeeeeee

I tried my first asado the other night, yuuumm!! It is like meat cooked over hot embers, kind of barbequed but not. It’s traditional in Argentina and so tasty. Family friends came over and we shared the asado together. Lots of chorizo and steak. I also went to a salsa class which was so much fun, it was all older people but it didn’t matter.  There is a really cool market fair thing here 3 days a week in the centre of town, it is massive and cheap too. Things that would cost $10 in New Zealand are only $3 here so you can get a lot without spending much. This is a hippy town, they are every where and they all sell cool jewellery, mate cups, art and whatever else they can make. There is a lot of reggae and dreadlocks.

Yesterday was the birthday of my host sister, Sol. She turned 15 which is a big thing in Argentina. We decorated the house with balloons and big banners, there was a massive cake and I think we won’t need to do the groceries for a good week. All the family came over for afternoon tea (about 7pm) and later her friends came. We went out to a disco to dance which was so much fun, you are meant to be 18 to go - like in New Zealand - but they don’t really care how old you are as long as you are good and don’t cause trouble. Just another example of the laid back culture. Here they dance to Cumbia and Reggaeton. Cumbia is a really popular style of music with all the teenagers, youtube it.  We went at 3am but it was too early, there was no one there, the real party doesn’t start until about 4am when everyone piles in of the street. My family thought it was so funny when I told them that we go out at 11pm.

We are going on a wee holiday to Comodoro Rivadavia on Wednesday, just for a few days to visit family. It is about 800km away and we are going on the bus. I’m quite excited to see some more of the country. I found out I don’t start school until the 25^th of this month so there is still a bit of a wait but that’s ok. . My Spanish is getting a billion gazillion times better and it’s starting to get really fun!

First Week At Host Family

My first week in El Bolson has been fairly uneventful, I still have no idea when school is going to start but I have found out that classes will be at a different school a few more blocks away and I will go there for one week, then the next week work at home and so on because I think we are going to share the school with the students that were already there. It’s good and bad at the same time, less school, but more spare time to try and find things to do.

The other day I went for a ‘bike ride’ with Moritz from Switzerland and his host brother, it turned out to be more of a mountain climb. I ended up getting of my bike and walking because it was so steep. It was nice though because there are lots of wild blackberries growing all along the side of the road so I stopped to eat them a few times. After about an hour we reached a lookout point that looks down over Rio Azul and the valley, we then biked about 10 more minutes to look at ‘La Cabeza Del India’, it is a huge cliff face that looks like it has a face carved into it. To get to it there is about a 5 min walk up in the bush, so of course we took the horse track that leads up the mountain instead of the real one to La Cabeza. After walking about 15 min of steep uphill walking we finally realized we had gone the wrong way and had to backtrack the whole thing.

The next day I went to Lago Puelo with my host family, a small town next to a lake about 15 min away from El Bolson, it is in another province called Chubut, I didn’t realise that my town is right on the border of Rio Negro province and Chubut. We went on a walk in the forest and had mate and pastries, it was quite nice and reminded me of Te Anau. We went out for pizza that night and had cheese, ham, pineapple and strawberry pizza – the weirdest combination I’ve ever seen but it worked haha. I feel really safe here, even though the windows have bars and it looks scary, me and my host sisters can still go out to the centre at 11pm for ice-cream and I don’t feel like I’m going to get mugged, unlike in Buenos Aires.

I haven’t really done much else, I got all my school books although I have no idea when the school starts and got my ear pierced because my host sister wanted her nose pierced (sorry mum! I hope you still love me). We go to town every now and then but mostly I’m just sitting around waiting for school to start so that I can finally make some friends. It’s getting easier to understand Spanish but it’s still not easy, I feel stupid when people ask me questions and I don’t understand, and then I wish I could just go back to Invercargill where life is easy and I end up feeling homesick. Even the smallest things are hard to adjust to, like eating dinner at 10.30pm every night instead of 6pm or not being able to wear bare feet in the house, it probably sounds stupid to everyone else but I never realised how different life is outside of your own comfort zone and in another culture. You can’t even begin to imagine how different it is until your living in it, I can’t really put my finger on all the things that make it different, but it seems like a whole new world. You have to learn how to behave and act and speak again. It’s not easy at the start, but I’m sure the feeling will pass and soon I won’t want to leave.

Orientation camp

Hooolllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Im in Argentina!

The journey here was pretty average to say the most, it started with my bags getting lost. They didn’t arrive in Auckland, they were left in Wellington somewhere. After Air New Zealand did an absolutely excellent job trying their hardest to find them I was told that I would just have to go to Argentina without them, and they would be sent to my host family, which was poos because I wouldn’t have any clothes to wear for the three day orientation in Buenos Aires. Finally just as I was about to check in – minus my bag, I found out it had arrived from Wellington on another flight. I had to do a mad sprint from international to domestic and got it just in time.

The plane ride was boring and the food was yuck as, I think I had chicken or something but I didn’t eat it. I think the coleslaw was plastic grated up. Everything is so relaxed here, you could probably take anything you wanted into Argentina, they didn’t even want to scan our bags at customs when we got there. We had to fill in a declaration form too on the plane, but no one ever took it off us and when we asked them they didn’t even want it. Its so chill.  After the 11 hour plane ride we had to wait at the airport for 5 hours until some Malaysian students arrived, the AFS volunteers brought us “toast” from maccas, but is was like a cheese and bacon bagel. They said it was like breakfast after lunch or something. I think that they meant afternoon tea. By then it was dark so we didn’t see much on the bus ride to our camp which was about an hour out of Buenos Aires.

One thing about Argentina is they love to eat meat, for the first night at orientation we had a massive hunk of steak, like massive. Probably 3cm thick and took up half the plate. Then the next day for lunch we had snitchel, then spag bol for tea and the next day half a chicken for lunch each. They literally cooked a chicken and smacked it in half with a machete; it was the most chicken I have ever seen on one plate. We eat pastries for breakfast and have coffee. It is so different to New Zealand and I can see why people get fat on exchange, if you don’t eat the food you’re offered it is rude. We eat until we pop.

At the orientation camp there were students from Thailand, America, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Denmark, Brazil and probably a few more that I don’t remember. We had a talent show on the second night at orientation with our countries. We sung heads, shoulders, knees and toes in Maori and also weaved flax flowers to give to the AFS volunteers. The Americans thought it was cool how they were all arguing over their performance and we New Zealanders were sitting on the grass weaving flowers in peace. After the talent show somehow it turned into a dance party. Argentinians love to dance, not just the girls but the boys too and it doesn’t matter young or old, everyone has a good time. It’s really different to New Zealand, dancing that night was more fun then any party I’ve ever been to. They know how to have a good time without alcohol here.

After orientation me and another girl from NZ, Isabella and a boy from Switzerland, Moritz, flew to another city called Bariloche where we were greeted by more food and mate (it’s a kind of tea that everyone here drinks and shares with each other out of the same cup, I didn’t have my meningitis shots for nothing). We then caught a bus to our cities where our host families are, it was double decker and we sat at the front of the top storey so we saw everything. The trip was exactly like going round the devils staircase. Halfway we were stopped by police, they are soooo scary. They came on the bus and asked for our passports they then stood there comparing them and made a drug dog sniff my bag. I felt like a criminal they are so intimidating.  They drive on the right side of the road here, but the buses drive in the middle of the road even on blind corners and it is hella scary. I don’t think anyone cares about safety here haha, no seatbelts ever, no give way rules its crazy.

Im at my family now and it is really hard to communicate but it gets a little bit better each day. Im so worn out from listening to them speak Spanish and trying to talk it myself and then when they don’t understand me it is annoying because you cant even convey the most simplest wants or needs to them, so there are a lot of misunderstandings. I love my new family though and Mariela (my mum) is scarily the same as my mum (Marie), they are both crazy. The city is beautiful and the people are so nice and open. It is hard to get used to kissing people in the cheek because you are expected to greet everyone like that, the men do it to each other too. There is a lot to get used to, but its fun.

Mariela, Sol, Rocio y Yo went to a meeting at a school today because apparently my school is falling down and the teachers want the students to move to a bad school and some want a new building to be built. The minister of education was there and was going to decide the fate of c.e.m #48 (my school). There was a lot of arguing that I couldn’t understand so we just left because no one was listening to each other. I think I am meant to start school this week but apparently not now because the school is falling down. I don’t really know what’s going on, but its all fun and I can’t wait to do more.

skkkyyypppeeeee

I talked to my host family on skype today and now I am even more excited to get to Argentina, it is making it all become real. They seem really lovely and I think I will get on well with them, the only thing is they speak next to no english and i speak a miniscule amount of spanish, but its ok we just laugh at each others attempts and use sign language. Its unreal that in one week, at exactly this time my plane will be leaving the ground, im so excited :)

Hasta la vista, baby.