Trip to the Iguazu falls

Hey everyone, Im not sure how many of you actually know but I just returned fron a one week trip with AFS to the falls of Iguazu along with a lot of the other exchange students that I met at my entry camp aswell as ones who have been here since august. The trip includes visits to the falls, Brasil, the wanda mines and the ruins of San Ignacio, The native bird park and some other things that I cant quite remember at this moment.

First of all, here the Argentinians are used to travelling long distances in buses. So this means that after my 1 hour busride to the capital I had to catch my next bus which took 25 hours. Not cause it broke down or anything... just cause its a long distance. If you search the distance from "La Plata" to "Puerto Iguazu" you can actually see where I am and came from. Personally I enjoyed the long bus ride because I had enough time to catch up with Maria from NZ and meet new people aswell like my new friends from denmark, norway, turkey, hungary and iceland. Thanks to them I can now point out where there countries are!

Well as I was saying, we had travelled for only god knows how long but we all fell asleep and woke up at the ruins of San Ignacio for some breakfast. Im pretty sure no one knew that we were stopping here as we were a giant group of just awoken foreigners. Unfortunately because of not knowing this my phones battery had already died and I could take any photos. The ruins were quite neat, they told a story of the catholics in Argentina through pictures on the wall and the layout of the building. For me, I just really liked how cool the ruins looked, I believe Im going to steal photos from other people in the group. After that we made our way to what we thought was the hotel in Puerto Iguazu.

Then we arrived at the Wanda Mines. Wanda actually means Maria in the native language here if you're wondering why they have such a blantantly unspanish name. Here we got to see all those cool gem clusters in the caves and outside aswell, legend says if you put your right hand on the gems and then your left hand in the sun then you'll be charged with positive energy. I thought that was a joke to make all the foreigners look stupid because well, everyone did look a bit silly doing it haha. After that we exited through the giftshop and made our way to the hotel.

This time it wasnt a lie and I was able to charge my phone and relax by the pool with my friends. Oh yes, I forgot to mention I wemt away from cold winter weather into a summer climate where it was very comfortable to go swimming. And also the hotel was really nice! Warm showers, comfortable beds, free wifi and a nice look in general that I bothered to take a photo.

Once we were all settled in and rested, we made our way to the Argentinian side of the Iguazu falls, turns out that the river borders Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It was nice to see nature full of life again after living in a urban world for 3 months and a bit. And after a million and half photos of pretty much spectacular views and typical tourist poses we finally made it to La garganta del Diablo (The devils throat). It was probably one of the most amazing things Ive seen and I was a bit gutted that my camera once again decided to be lame and run out of batery right before it. Once again, Im just going to have to steal all the photos again. For now, heres a photo of throat from afar.

That night (because I paid to do all the extra things), a few of us went to a dance show called Obba Obba which featured the dancers doing national dances from the countries in south america. This meant I got to see women dancing with five bottles on their heads, the feathered dancing from carnival and real live professional tango. What I thought was the best thing of the night was that the AFS people didnt tell us that we were actually going to see the show in BRAZIL. I now have bragging rights of visiting Brazil.

The next day, turns out we were going to Brazil anyway the visit the other side of the waterfalls! First we went on this little carriage thing that took us to a dock that turns out we were going to have speedboat rides up the river. They told us that we might get wet so we went in our t shirts and shorts only, leaving our shoes behind with our heavy clothing. Also turns out that when they say that you might get wet, they mean they're going to put you under one of the waterfalls for good luck and say youre going to return in 3 years. Eugh. Thanks Brazil once again. After that, we all headed to the viewing platforms in front of the falls, we were lucky that it rained over night because it meant the falls were full of water. It was impossible not to be hit by the spray of the falls while on the platforms but we didnt mind because we were already wet enough. But i must admit that this sight has probably been one of the most breathtaking things in my life, the beauty of nature has never been so powerful and I can see why the cataratas is now claimed as one of the 7 wonders of the world.

That afternoon we found ourselves in the Parque das Aves (Birdpark) in Brazil, close to the cataratas. Ever since doing a project on toucans in year 4, I have always wanted to see one in the flesh. And by god it was stunning, they looked so unreal, the feathers around its head looks exactly like that of a plush toy and the colours looked like they could only be artificially made. At times I questioned whether it was a robot or not... But apart from that, I can now claim that I saw all these amazing birds (including Flamingos) in real life. I'm quite glad I spent extra money to go visit the park now.

That night we went into town to go visit the shops. And because it's a highly touristic place, everyshop was the same. THE SAME. I wouldnt doubt it if all the exchange students could recount all the items in every store. One item that was rather strange was the eatable wood. Yes, you can argue that all wood is eatable but this wood is made for lunch and such. It tasted as I was eating honey-coated bark.. But it actually wasn't that bad... Anywho after our visit to town, we finally went to bed!

The following day we were meant to go flying foxing through the treetops of Argentinian jungle but it was raining and we all finally got to sleep in, because they postponed it until the afternoon and gave us freetime in the morning instead. Hallelujah. So that afternoon, we all headed to the border of Paraguay, (about 200m from it) and wenting canoping. First of all, we went for a short walk, which included a surprise abseil off a rock which made one girl burst into tears from fear, luckily enough I was able to film her screaming the whole way down and have it as a laughable experience. After that, we went up high in the trees and scaled from one platform to the other. To be flying through the treetops of Argentina definately has to be added to my growing list of amazing experiences!

Then the time came to finally leave the province of Missiones and make our way back to Buenos Aires. I made so many life friends from this one week trip and everyone was really sad to say by to eachother, even crying was involved. Not on my part though haha. But it's pretty amazing to come to realise that it takes less than just one week to make strong connections with other people in this world and all I can really think about now is how sad it is going to be to say bye to Argentina. I think i'm already beginning to miss the place.

Life as I know it.

Aye! I just realised I haven't done a blog for almost a month, where has the time gone!? Everyday I relive the nightmare of the fact that my time here is almost over! less than two months now...BLAGH! It seems a little unfair to me that I have to have  my exchange cut so short and others get to stay for almost 6 months in other countries. I'm raging with envy. Although, the offer to do this has been so amazing and beneficial to me, I just cant be mad.

Life here is good, the people are friendly, the schools are just like home, the language is coming along and the culture..I'm accustomed to. In this blog, I've decided I'm going to write about life here because I feel like I haven't really described an everyday for me and described the cultural differences, so where do I start? The morning of course!

Every morning, I wake up at 6:30am and take an hour to eat breakfast and get ready for school. Here, they don't have breakfast. My brother eats a small packet of biscuit and my mum has these miniture toast slices that are about the size of your hand, and then they're pretty much ready for the day. I come along with my westernized body and make myself a muesli from all these mixed ingredients because the fact is that it doesn't exist ehre because of the lack of breakfasts.. after that I get dressed in winter clothes that I actually have to wear or else I'll get frostbite.. haha kidding it's not that cold! but it's more cold than whangarei has ever been, so I always get a bit of a grin when my friends post a billion statuses complaining. After that, I'm ready to go! And so we take a taxi to get to school.Taxis are insanely cheap here, for us it's probably less than $5 drive for a distance like Kamo to Okara Park. And then I arrive at my giant, antique school.

It is through those doors in the middle where I meet my friends every morning. And this is probably the biggest cultural difference, The greeting. All we New Zealanders should be ashamed of how cold we are. Here, if you enter a group, you go around and "Saludar" everyone. You go around an shakehands with every one of you guy friends and kiss all the girls on the cheek, If you're a girl, you just go around and kiss everyone on the cheek. And even guys sometimes kiss eachother on the cheek. Actually all the time, I lied. Its only teenage boys who shake hands instead of this, and then again we sometimes greet eachother like that. If you don't do anything, you get like an awkward stare and the moment passes, but you feel guilty for not making it known that you're in the group and so is everyone else. People have asked me why I'm so bad and awkward at "Saludando" (Greeting) and that simply because it doesn't exist in New Zealand, then they follow this with "Well what do you do when you meet your friends in the morning" and I have to explain that we walk in and don't have to say anything, we're kind of just acknowledge mentally, but after I say this I always get the same laugh and comments of how weird and cold that is. I would try to bring it to New Zealand, but the aspect of being exiled by my friends for acting like this is too much of a risk. So I'll pass on that.

After we stand around greeting eachother and asking what we have first period, we go to our first period class and hope for the teacher not to come, because here, they don't usually (never) have substitutes. and so we then have about two hours off to go around and do nothing, most likely play some game of take advantage of a free coffee deal at Mcds. However, It's more often that we have class than we dont. In my school we have those little desk table things like you see in all the american movies and it's really easy to manipulate the classroom into grouped tables or straight lines. Whatever you want. And then we sit there and listen to our teacher rattle on about nothing in particular and give us some work. This homework is always constant and not too difficult, I prefer it to the homework in New Zealand which is more or less like 3 x 1500 word assignments to do in one week after doing nothing at all in the previous 4 weeks... I can't wait for the pile of catch up homework I have waiting for me when I return... Then the grading system here is a lot more simpler aswell. It's a score out of 10 for every subject, 7/10 is a pass, you have 3 exams or homeworks and you need a total of 21/30 in the trimestre to not sit the resit examen. so, it's a bit complicated but a lot less complicated than NCEA...yeesh!

After a long, hard day at school, where we normally just take advantage of the free wifi and play games, I walk home through the forest and pass the university buildings and arrive at my house where lunch is in the process of being cooked, (oh yes, i forgot to say that I only go to school during the morning and arrive home around 1-2 and my sister goes to school for the afternoon shift), the food here, is...well I'm not sure if it's just my family or what but we don't cook a lot, like my family in New Zealand does by fiending on different spices and foods. Here we eat a lot of cheese and meat with the oil and salt coated salad on the side. I eat the salad normally because I'm so afraid of exchange student weight gain, (I've already witnessed some of the kids from the United States with a bit of extra weight on the side...) but all in all, I can say the junkfood is amazing and so is their "Melanesa" (Schnitzel). But I wasn't really coming over for food in the first place.. now where was I? Oh yes, and everyday afternoon.

And so after lunch, I either fiend my homework, or go and "read"(Which is normally me falling asleep without getting through one page and has become a running joke in my family, I blame dad for giving me this falling asleep gene.) otherwise I actually go to bed to sleep a siesta. A siesta is an afternoon nap if you don't know, and everyone has them here, It's so often, that most shops close up between 2pm-4pm so people can go sleep and the main business hours is from around 4pm-7pm. and then I wake up at around 7pm or even 9pm just in time for dinner, Oh yes, they have dinner at like 9pm or 10pm here, but then again they have a massive lunch which you're most likely still full from so it's not that bad, then they have their giant dinner and you go to bed again, It's quite like having two miniture days within one normal one, with one big meal and a sleep. Life is good.

One a weekend, It's slightly different because there's always a chance to go out to a "Boliche" nightclub and luckily enough it's normally organised by school students and so we get all the VIP stuff that comes with it. So then my weekend is spent organizing how to get to the fiesta and then resting from going out and partying for so long. Great way to meet people, every new week, I shake hands with new mates and kiss more girls on the cheek! Me encanta la vida.

Past Events:
For the past few weeks, I've been a bit busy with moving house but now I'm finally done and what a mess that was. First we'd been cleaning and moving things around all week and then the day came to move, so we put all our things in the movers truck and took them all to the new house after giving over the keys to the new owners of the house and letting them move in, when we got to the new house (only one block away), the old renter was saying that she wasn't moving... We we´re shocked and had to explain that everyone was organised to move in that day, but she decided to change her mind and wouldnt leave. SO then we were homeless with a truck full of furniture... we had to make a few calls and the old landlords had to come and try kick her out. In the end we were allowed the garage for all of our furniture and the old landlords booked us a hotel to go stay in for the night, the next day I had school and it was a bit weird getting ready at a hotel to go to school, but nonetheless we just went along with everything. That day, my family spent it organizing to get the lady removed from the house and then it was still uncertain if we were going to have to stay in the hotel another night or not...But fortunately for us, the lady moved out and left us to move in late at night so I ended up going to bed at 1am! Yikes!

The other day I also went to Buenos Aires to go see the Feria de los Libros and the Zoo, it was lots of fun and It was quite strange to see animals that I've never seen before but only read about or seen in movies, for instance seeing all the lemurs. I couldn't help but think of Madagascar all the time! After about two hours of hanging out in the zoo taking around 200 photos, we went to the Feria de los Libros which was literally across the road! I have never seen so many books.. IT WAS MASSIVE, the was about a 500m walk from one building to another just to see more and more books, I ended up taking advantage of the currency exchange and get 7 books for reasonably cheap prices. Mainly all being books that I've read before so it's not too hard to read in spanish aswell, and I few more to test my skills while I'm at university...like shakespeare...  after doing alot of walking, we returned to our house via the subway and the bus and finally got some well deserved rest.

Last weekend, the kids from Buenos Aires came for a visit to La Plata and we had a picnic in El Bosque and then moved to Plaza Moreno for some games and promotion of AFS, It was good to see all the kids again because last time I had only my 3 weeks worth of spanish and couldn't speak very confidently, so this time I was having chats with all the kids and felt pretty good being able to speak haha, The best about speaking spanish more confidently now is that I can make jokes like I used to, it was rather strange being silent for a few weeks.

Next week I'm heading off to the Iguazu falls with a lot of the other AFS Students that I went on camp with, Im really excited because I haven't seen them for about 3 months now and a lot of us bonded well through the camp. That means it'll be a week before I post an immense amount of photos and maybe a blog post if I'm bothered enough, I might try write a day by day diary or something just to make sure I do it, can't wait to see you all soon! Chau amigos!