10 things...

(Thanks to Ali for her idea for this post "thanks ali!!!")


okay these are ten things i REALLY miss and ten things are REALLY enjoy about san juan, Argentina.





The MISS list:


1- Early dinners (my stomache hates eating at 11pm, going to bed at 12 and waking up at 5)

2- Milkshakes (A chocolate malt to be exact... so mom FYI, as soon as we get back we are heading STRAIGHT to a wendys)

3- The woods (A few trees in the center of the city definitely doesn´t qualify)

4- Scrambled eggs and REAL ketchup (... big breakfasts in general but especially scrambled eggs!)

5- Blonde people (that title sounds bad, I don´t miss blonde people necessarily in the sense that I´d like them to be here or anything, I will just now fully appreciate the one trait that brings millions of american girls together.)

6- Running with sadie and jessie (running circles around the park is quite boring, especially without two high maintenance running companions to occupy my time... ha ha)

7- Chapstick (either they don´t get chapped lips here or they just don´t care because my tube of Crazy Blu Razberry is going very fast and I have seen no farmacia that carries any sort of chapstick..grrrr..)

8- Dancing in my room (I tried, all I could do in my itty bitty room here is climb my feet up the wall and stand on my hands for a bit... it was lame)

9- REAL jeans (not EVERYone can squeeze their thighs into an ankle-loving pair of skinny jeans and still look good... much less move!?)

10- track.. (I honestly did NOT think I was going to miss track, but I really do, my body thinks its supposed to be extremely sore this time of year and it´s not sure what to do with itself without intervals..or the piere...or hills..or lovers lane......´sigh´)

EXTRAS NOT MENTIONED IN THE PREVIOUS LIST: Public education, freedom of religion, CHEWY!, my piano, our very speedy Mac Leopard, trucks (sigh), "real" boys (2x sigh), grass/dirt, my boots, Roman, cold-nights, walking barefoot (grrrrrrr...), Ceily Highberger!!!!

The LOVE list:

1- Asado! (This is an argentine version of a barbecue... Where various (edible) parts of the cow are placed in this very large wood and coal fired brick oven thing that´s actually just a hole in the side of the garden wall and are roasted... Soooo, Grandpa, I think I have a chore for you and mis padres?)

2- The City (Having never lived in a town with over 5,000 people the diversity here is really refreshing... and with over 400,000+ people, there´s always something going on worth seeing!)

3- BOLICHES!!! (... they come complete with the bouncers (who really do have the stereotypical mustaches!), and the people who "check your IDs" (he he he) )

4- Mate (A VERY traditional tea like drink.. green tea, so technically not tea but it´s actually very good. However, there´s a lot of etiquette that goes along with drinking it (no one told little white girl this!!!) and you have to be offered the mate, you can´t just take it.. it´s a sign of respect and friendship from the person who offered it to you.. When I first heard about it i actually thought it was a drug, like chewing coca leaves or some of that... but lucky for AFS Argentina its completely legal!)

5- Tomar Helado (going out for ice cream, this is good for me (i think), because they don´t keep ice cream in their homes it´s more of a treat to go out...it´s also REALLY good)

6- Independence (It´s not that I wasn´t independent before, in the U.S., (..ha ha), but living here gives me the sort of independence of really figuring things out for myself)

7- Spanish (because I could always have been placed in Germany, Arabia, Turkey, the Ukraine, Russia...)

8- The music (.. Blows my american iPod out of the water... It´s way more fun to dance to, listen to, everything!)

9- Bruno! (is the family dog, he has to be like a million years old, what he has left of teeth are these tiny little white stubs buried in his gums... But he´s a sweet heart and at ninety years old he thinks he´s still king of the streets)

10- Currency exchanges (Always a nice pick me up when you can withdraw 3.5x the cash that your accustomed to being able to spend... an inspiration for many a shopping trip!)

EXTRAS NOT MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY: Latino soap operas, very pretty gold crucifixes (everywhere), "al parque", chicos de futbol que MUY lindo (te he he)..etc

Lunch With The Fam

Okay ok ok ok.... So we have here to your left "primos".. Julieta (I think?) and the token male cousin, Fransico. As you can see directly below the text is the whole group, and it is dominated mostly by middle aged women... (poor guy ha ha ha). Directly below that picture is Valeria and her BF. Whose name I have temporarily forgotten, but is also another token male in the family. Next to that pic is one of Toto (tia rosa) and I. Tina and I were quite exhausted when these pictures were taken because we were on our nocturnal sleep cycle that happens during sunday after you´ve been "out". Ha ha ha... and yes that is straight hair your seeing because on saturday night before we left for the AFS b-day party Belen (tina´s bff) decided to attempt straightening my hair. She was succesful however we were an hour late for the party and what started as a "cool idea" ended up being a two hour ordeal lol. ....Anyways... So at lunch, which was this really good homemade lasagne, with i think proscuitto or ham, i think, as well as beef and all that good stuff. For desert we had this fruit salad thing. which was really good, most of the fresh food over here is really good, that is if you get to taste it between the bites of "vaca" (beef) that they like to fatten all the little girls up with... (ha ha ha..) Flan was also served. In the United States I had been served flan before, but most of it was "Costco Flan", so when they brought the flan out I just assumed that it would be mostly along the same lines right? Well I was a little wrong. Like it still tasted like flan, but like ten times richer. So I..."Oh flan?!" "Me gusta flan!".....No me gusta flan...
But anyways... So following lunch Irene (host sister Ire) had to take off to head back to Mendoza and the rest of us had coffee. I can handle the coffee over here quite well (with out the crack-addict-like symptoms that often followed my caffeination in the U.S.). Possibly because it´s served in these TINY little cups, or maybe I am finally building up an immunity towards caffeine? ha ha ha... probably not.
So eventually Tina and I were able to vacate and head back home and another very well enjoyed siesta. Following the siesta we went to meet a few girls from her university for Coke and Chips (apparently a staple over here)... towards the end of our "Coke and Chips" I witnessed my first real fight!! not even kidding. I watched these two guys kinda looking at eachother and then all of a sudden this other guy pointed to the guy next to the other-other guy and then the two first guys walked toward eachother and then it kinda just exploded and there were like at least forty guys around all of them trying to get them off cause things were getting a bit serious... So they ended up breaking one of the tables and the huge window between the outside area and inside the gas station-y thing. But they must have been lazy cause for my first fight I didn´t even see any blood. (joke joke, it was fantastic..)... ish because there was this dog who hangs around the YPF (gas station restaurant thing) and somehow got himself wedged under the two opposing males and started crying, it was very sad. But the dog was fine. Anyways school school
ciao

A Day in San Juan...

Even though there has been few days alike while i´ve been here an ordinary day in San Juan, Argentina for a typical school girl goes something like this...

5:45am- I wake up for school. Yes five am is extremely early (especially for me) but I don´t have to go to school in the afternoon so it kinda works out fairly well..

7-1:00pm- I have to be at school promply by 7:01. If I am tardy, for one reason or another, Monica (the school director...(dictator?)..) gives me a firm "talking to" en espanol. By the way, this has only happened once! ...I don´t think she likes me very much acually...ha ha but it is very amusing when she tries to instill some argentine discipline into my "pink head-band-wearing-head". I am now aware, thanks to the explanation given by my companeras, that we aren´t supposed to wear offensive colors such as red, and pink and all that...or paint our nails any "offensive" color. (sigh).

1:15-2(ish)- I take advantage of the seasons being all backwards south of the equator and I sunbathe in the garden

2:30-3(ish)- This is when everyone comes home to eat lunch.. EVERYone.. if you happen to be out shopping and you haven´t purchased everything you need then your out of luck until five o´clock (when things reopen) because beginning at about 1pm everyday, everything closes down and "takes a three hour nap".

3:30-4:00- I sometimes paint my nails during this little awkward space of time where everythings winding down, or check my email or sometimes go back out into the garden.

4:15-600- SIESTA!! I take HUGE siestas, except on days where I have gym class at four, in which case I just eat lunch really fast and jump into bed to try to squeeze one in... it´s very liberating to have scheduled naps, in a way, you don´t have to be tired all the time, you can just go to sleep!

6:30-8:30- This is usally when I walk to the park to run. It´s a long ways away, like twenty city blocks! but it´s good because i get to have some time to myself and it´s really fun to people watch, seven o´clock is VERY busy...

8:45-9:15- This is "chocolate milk time".. actually it´s tea time, mate, crackers, cheese, camote de dulce (which is a very very good little starchy gelatin thingy made entirely from a camote, which is like a really rich really sweet sweet potato)

9:30-11pm- On Wednesdays and Thursdays I have salsa lessons, even though i´ve been super lazy the last week and a half and didn´t go...otherwise, around nine ish is when we all sorta start congregating towards home. Antonio usually gets home from work around then and Toto starts dinner.

11:ish- This is when we FINALLy eat dinner, dinner is pretty tame and light. Many times its left overs from lunch combined with semolina and cheese, crackers, boiled eggs, and sometimes they try to cook hot dogs (the "hot dogs" are horrible)... but there´s ALWAYS tomatoes, always... it doesn´t matter what time were eating or what were eating there are always tomatoes with oil.. I like to think they only use extra virgin olive oil,.. because i´m scared to know the truth!! (ahhh) So in my imagination the food is totally fine...

FOOD TALK: Also, besides the always-present tomatoes, which are very good as long as your not sensitive to acidic foods (such as myself).. The other day Toto cooked this semolina but with this "salsa" with it.. definitely not the bogarts salsa, it was like a really delicious sauce, it was served with boiled chicken and it was awesome!!! Exotic other foods include: i´m not sure what they´re called, I can never pronounce it, but it´s like bread that´s deep fried and you eat it with ketchup and mayo.. it has a breading on it or something, but i noticed we seem to eat it a lot when Antonio is going to be late or working or in Mendoza, which I suppose means its a bit simpler...it´s good, but the consistency reminds me of wet cardboard a bit.... there are a ton of foods that are similar to the U.S. but with different sauces or flavors, but a lot of the same basic ideas... a lot of salt is used here!! they don´t sprinkle it either, its like a very healthy coating of salt that you can see across the table! .... I guess it´s always hot and everyone sweats a lot so people need extortionate amounts of salt? yeah...

AFS Camp

After getting off the twelve hour plane ride and making it through customs our group, a huge mass of teenagers at 28 people, was divided into two groups depending on where they were to be dispersed throughout the country. I guess this is where things started to feel real. (ha ha ha). Our group (the northerners) were then taken to our AFS camp. Much to my delight the AFS camp would also be a Hogwarts look-alike!!! So anyways we stayed in these dormers, very tall with huge windows and even with little Harry Potter-ish dorm room beds! I really loved that camp. My roommate Kati and I, who is going to San Juan as well only for a year (she´s a tough cookie) sort of just hung out in this VERY beautiful courtyard, complete with a large fountain in the middle for the giant goldfish to play in, while everyone made their way to our "camp" from the other AFS international affiliations. "camp" is not the word I would use to refer to the castle we were staying in... ha ha ha..

It was only a one-night camp, but it was very jam packed with various activities (and a few very boring lectures) about how to assimilate into a foreign country "smoothly". All the AFS "orientadores" were VERY VERY nice and very cool and sincere and welcoming. Most were fluent with english however all prefered to converse with the students in spanish, however painful it was for the student.. ha ha.. They also didn´t let us go to bed until one in the morning! Most of us there were pulling thirty-forty eight hours without any sleep and were getting a little loopy at this point. However it ended up being VERY worth it... So at ten o´clock we ate dinner (relatively early) and prepared for the "talent show". Each country was to compose a piece of "talent" to show everyone. Complete with a stage. So chicos de Estados Unidos performed a very moving interpretation of the "Thriller". It was basically created all by quick improv. theatrical intelligence. ha ha ha... so anyways. Following the talent show the AFS volunteers performed a skit of a typical "asado" (argentine barbecue). Well at the end of the skit they all began dancing on the stage, and chairs tables etc... but then they started making all of us dance and before we knew it, two hours later, it ws 2:30 am and we had just had our own succesful argentine dance party. It was VERY very fun, but we were all VERY tired and had to be up by eight the next day to drive into Buenos Aires.

MIAMI! ... is very scary, and so is the airport. So the night that I had to stay by myself at the airport hotel I locked myself in my room and ordered room service and watched Twilight.

For anyone who thinks they don´t need to know spanish to get around in the United States has never been to the Miami airport. Not only was room service en espanol, but the directions for long distance calling, and most of the shops within the airport. I literally had to go to the front desk and mime a salmon caesar salad. (no easy task thank you very much).

AHHHH! ¿Donde esta ingles?

So this is now my fifth day in Argentina and my third day with my familia de San Juan. As some may be aware, San Juan is a rather large city (four hundred thousand people) however, when reaching the ¨centro¨ (city´s center) is looks just like a big market, really REALLY big market, but just the same it doesn´t have the characteristics that one would expect from a town of this size. It has the people, but no infrastructure what so ever. I do like it here though. The weather is very easy to get used to, between 70-90 degrees every day. (yay!) And so is the diet. We eat a very small breakfast (tear tear... ha ha) a GIGANTIC lunch at about two, but then everyone (EVERY one) takes a four hour nap, which is absolutely fantastic. The down fall is we eat dinner at about ten thirty or eleven at night. So in order to wake up to go to school, which for some reason begins at seven fifteen (grrr...) I must go to bed almost directly after dinner. And if your mothers haven´t told you this yet it is very bad for your digestion to go to bed right after you eat! So combined with my poor ¨digestion habits¨ and lack of any real exercise I have become quite lazy ha ha...
BESOS!