Aventuras

Yay, New post! In this post I'm going to write about my recent adventures in Argentina, being my trip to Buenos Aires, AFS Night and the Fiesta de mi clase! But first of all, I'm going to apologise to everyone for making the worlds worst pavlova...I tried to make one for AFS, but it had no middle and the cream kinda had too much sugar and made the crusty meringue bit soggy and then most of the peaches weren't ripe enough, so we kinda just had a big pile of sweet mush which everyone said tasted good, but I'll never accept their lies :P

AFS Night

So, If you're wondering what an AFS night consists of, it's games, food and a night to hang out with the students and volunteers that are helping you along the way in your exchange. Firstly, I began the day with shopping with last minute food items with Sophie, they lack a lot of ingredients here so we had a bit of trouble trying to find everything and finding replacement foods aswell, but I think in the end, we succeeded! As Sophie and I were the selected chefs, we decided to make national foods, Mine being the failure of a Pavlova and Sophie's being Burritos as the USA doesn't have a national food except Mcds and they don't even have Mexican food here, you would've presumed that they knew what Burritos and Tortillas are..but no. They don't. However, They all loved the mexican food and said that they liked my Pavlova. :D After cooking the AFS chapter these meals, we made our way into playing that game where you have the famous person taped to your forehead and you keep asking questions until you figure out who it is. It pretty obvious when someone is Michael Jackson, because the question of "Am I black?" throws everyone into a state of not knowing what the answer actually is...Also I found it rather funny when "Kony" asked if what they were famous for was a sport. I really wanted to say yes just for a laugh, but I don't know if someone would get offended so I held my tongue. And in the end we all got to know eachother quite well and organised for a trip to Buenos Aires the following day to meet with other AFS volunteers and students, and to also be a tourist for once aswell.

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, the city where my inner tourist came out, 178 photos the majority being to get the perfect moment of the Argentinian flag in the breeze and taking photos of ourselves in every mirror we found..even if the mirrors were just doors in La Casa Rosada... anyway...The city was maaaaaaasssssssiiiiiivvvvveeeeeee! So many skyscrapers, So many monuments! So many people! (on a sunday aswell!) I just had to take photos of everything! We spent the first half of the day roaming the city shopping and finding little nicknacks to buy. I brought myself one of those toy cameras where you look through it a take photos but it just switches the photos inside the cameras and shows you the famous sites around BA. I thought it was quite a smart buy. I also saw some ponchos that I really want to get the next time I go there, I'm not actually sure if ponchos are part of their culture but I don't care, I've always wanted a poncho just for the novelty of having one! After our shopping trip, we stopped and got some lunch at a very foreign takeaway store called something like...Subway? hehehehe, I actually prefer the subway in NZ but the fact of finding a store made me happy. Once we finished our oh so foreign meals, we made our way to meet the other students at some plaza in some place. It's easy to get lost in these big cities, so we cling to the volunteers like new born kittens and their mother...speaking of which, our kittens are going great! Soon they'll be fun and able to play with! :D Anyway... so we made it to the meeting place with the other Argentines and started the gathering to drink Mate and eat homemade biscuits and then we had a lot of time to socialize with others, we played fun games like duck duck goose and various other games I remember from year 9 and 10 Drama class :D After this ended, it was sad to say goodbye to some more lifelong friends (which I’ll hopefully see again while on my exchange) and then we returned back to La Plata running solely on AFS Spirit and nothing else.

Fiesta
For those of you who think a fiesta is a whole bunch of Mexicans dancing around holding a boy in the air who invented Stand’n’Stuff tacos, you’re wrong. Hahaha The party atmosphere here is a lot like the one in New Zealand, although I have high stereotypes of what clubbing is like here, but I don’t really think I’ll ever do that here..I’m too scared of the criminal activities and transvestites...(I saw a tranny this morning by the way). ANYWAY, So my class organised a small gathering at a country house of our friend Francisco, in order to celebrate the beginning of the year and I’d like to think welcoming me into the class but I don’t want to feel like the special kid all the time... The alcohol was tasty, everybody danced, A few games were played and there was a friendly atmosphere the whole time! Everybody is so cool in my class, I really enjoy hanging out with them, I’m actually trying to organise a primo challenge this weekend at the local park, I don’t know how well that’s going to go down as everyone can literally see you there and will probably frown upon your silly teenager competitions... Ohwell.

I’m trying to think of more to write but I just keep forgetting everything as everything is going so fast aswell! Oh, there was a cartoon with talking eggs before and they played “Walkie talkie man”. I thought that it was exciting to have a famous NZ song in a Spanish cartoon... Anyway, I’m hoping to have more to write about soon, things like the primo challenge and so on, but I’ll try to write as much as I can about the little things aswell, Chau friends, see you all soon! :D

School!

SO I know I said that I'd write a blog about my first day of school but I got so caught up in it all that now I'm writing a post about my first week at school. BUT before I do that I have news the the cat gave birth to kittens!

Three little gatitos! One black and white, one grey and white and one exactly like their mother, Ginger/grey/black spots on white. They're very cute and at the moment, not very exciting because all they do is drink milk and not open their eyes. But soon enough we we'll be able to play with them! Except there is also a sad side to this story, as one kitten died the other night. :( Poor Marco Junior wasn't drinking his milk and left this world a little early. RIP. But we can't let that hold us down, as life moves on and so do we.

SO anywho, I started school on tuesday, I only had two weeks practice of speaking spanish and bam, I was chucked into a school with only one other exchange student, who I don't know who that is still...and all the students here speak totally in spanish, and a very impressive english when they try. But I tell them not to, as I really want to improve my spanish, so it's an emergency only thing. Anyway, So my first day of school started with a long and boring speech from the principal, seems like our schools are exactly the same... After that we were taken to our first class, where our coordinator explained some new system thing blah blah blah, I don't really know, haha but now I HAVE FRIENDS! Two weeks in this country of hanging out with Sophie and Afs Volunteers and finally I have friends!

So there's this process in school called "Hora Libre" Which is caused by the non-existence of Relievers (or substitute teachers or something for you americans). Hora Libre, Translates to "Free hour", meaning that when your teacher doesn't turn up, you get the class off to go into town! I had Analysis of Visual something for three hours, but the teacher didn't turn up. SO My new friends and I went off to play soccer for three hours, I thought I would have been terrible as I kept telling them but they made me play anyway, turns out Onerahi Soccer has made me a little better and I was actually a lot better than I expected. woohoo! So through my soccer skills, I earned a place in my class!

From then on, I've been sitting in each class daydreaming a lot while the teacher speaks because I get way too tired from focusing on what they're saying. And lucky for me, I have a basis on each subject in school because of the subjects that I took at Kamo, like the topic in history turns out to be on the World wars and Russian Revolution...which are the two topics I specifically learnt about in Year 11 History, however, I don't think I'll have any basis in Political rights, whatever that class is... However, Good news is that I ace english! woo! Who saw that coming!

Also there have been so many dopplegangers that I have met on my exchange, Kellie Wharerau, Vaughan Brooke, Anthony from SMOSH and many more! It's like reminders from New Zealand are lingering everywhere! I'm also making a Pavlova tomorrow for the first time tomorrow, so wish me luck!

But apart from all that, My exchange is going really well, I have amazing friends, I have a great school, I have an awesome family, I have a typical routine. I HAVE A LIFE.

Also, Happy Saint Patrick's day and Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Week 1...Check!

Well, What a week! I've learnt so much Spanish and it's really doing my head in, everyday, I'm constantly focusing in on everybody's words and listening intently to the sounds and accent. It's difficult but I love it!

At the moment It is the summer holidays so I'm just hanging with the family playing games with cards, balloons and the pets. It's quite difficult to learn a complicated card game in spanish but I think I've got it, I've decided I'm going to teach everyone the game Truco because it is honestly a lot of fun, and we ARE going to need something to do when I come back in winter...soooo horrah!

On the 29th of February, I had my first disaster as a foreign visitor, I went to the main bank in Argentina with had the most amazing architecture that I had ever seen! I even commented that it was like we were inside Gringott's Bank from Harry Potter because it was so beautfiul. And in the center of the roof was this fantastic stain glass window depicting some catholic thing of somesort, The colours, The architecture, Oh how I wanted to take a picture so badly but there were signs saying no cellphones which is in this case, my cellphone is also my camera for this exchange. So I asked my hostmum if she thought that I could get away with taking just one photo, she said "I don't see why not". So I slyly stepped out of the bank line and aimed the camera, got the picture, and after I examined to see if the picture was good or not, I looked up and I had two security guards around me. One yelling something in Spanish and the other just staying quiet, my hostmum and a few ladies in the bank line were saying "he doesn't speak english! just let him have the photo! What's so bad about it!" But the security guard just kept yelling! "AEGERIUJKGLRERSJK" I forgot all my Spanish and my face went bright red! The other guard, who wasn't yelling, calmly said, "Can you erase the photo please" and did a little hand gesture which complimented his calm words. And so being the scared little foreigner I was, I slowly deleted the photo, showed the guards and stood back in line. I've decided I don't ever want to return back to that bank no matter how beautiful it all is!

Two days ago, I went for a run with Sophie, I died. And today I feel better, but my legs are still dead. I'm going for another run tomorrow though... lets see how I end up hahaha. As most of you know, Exchange students get fat. I plan to avoid this by eating healthy, except it's really hard because they practically eat a giant amount of meat for every meal! I literally had some off the side fat that I was cutting off, squirt into my face... D:
Good news, I just asked my mum if she can buy me some muesli for breakfast and she said yeeeeessssss! woooo! Along with my immense targeting of the salad at meals, I think I will be successful and staying healthy. Huzzah!

Yesterday I went for a walk around El Bosque and took some photo's which I'm about to put on facebook! It was so nice, there was a band of people who all play drums to make this weird song, I can't really explain it but it sounded cool, and there was about a bagillion people playing football or drinking mate, It's definately the place for people to hang out! There's also a zoo next door which while we were on our run, we saw a protest happening, the urge to join in and yell at people for keeping animals locked away was definantly there but the fear of not actually understanding what was actually going on and making a fool of myself took over and we just carried on running. I'll save my activist side for when I'm fluent. hahhaha

Also, I get on really well with my family, we all like to bully eachother in a family kinda way, like my whole family laughs at Ana (my sister) cause she laughs funny and says some pretty stupid things haha, She thought spongebob was a piece of cheese when It's clearly in his name, I decided to join in on the teasing her last night by playing the card game "Pick up 52" with her... hehehehhehehehe

Apart from all that, Life is going well and I start school in 10 days... I hope everyone is having as much of an adventure as I am and I'll leave you with a nice photo of my running track :)

Adios!