So as some of you might know, I planned a trip for myself to go down to the southish middle of Argentina to a city called Neuquen, to go catch up with my friends from Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey, Italy, Denmark and Sophia from New Zealand. It was planned to be a great trip including going to neighbouring towns and visiting cool sites like the museums in Chacon and so on and so forth. But little did I know what was going to happen wasn't actually going to be too much fun.
So I started off by organizing really well with my coordinators what I needed to do to be ready for my trip in Neuquen, I emailed AFS NZ asking for permission, got all the details from my consejero (coordinator), told my school that I wasn't going to be there for 3 days or so, and did everything that I was supposed to do and badabing badaboom, ya esta, I was off and buying tickets for my 5 days trip to the south to stay with Sophia! The day finally came, my bag was packed and there I was waiting for the bus from La Plata to Confluencia (Didn't have a clue where that was, so I presumed it was the name of the station). After about 16 hours on the bus, we had arrived in General Roca, which is one hour from Neuquen...but I still had about 6 hours left of my trip. This is when I decided that I should try figure out where the hell Confluencia is...I asked some other passengers and they had no idea but they we're still nice enough to help me, in the end they actually couldn't figure it out and I asked the driver myself haha, he told me that it's actually on the outskirts of Bariloche... nowhere near Neuquen.
Once we arrived in Neuquen, I decided that I should get off and change my tickets because something seriously went wrong...luckily I didnt sleep for another million hours and wind up in the wrong city, it's like travelling from Wellington to Hamilton, then accidentally ending up in Russell... Well it was about 7am at this point and Sophia wasn't expecting me until 12, so I called her anyway and made her come and get me. Within the first 10 minutes we were cracking up and almost crying with laughter at our own awkward stories, especially with the kissing people on the cheeks, we've decided that New Zealanders probably come off as the most awkwardest people in the world! I spent the rest of the day catching up with Sophia in Senillosa and drinking mate down by the river, probably one of my favourite afternoons in Argentina.
The next day was spent just hanging around with Nicko(Nikcko, Nico, Niko) I'm actually not sure how to spell it as I've seen it in so many forms..- and some other friends aswell. In the afternoon, we travelled to Plottier and caught up with Manolya from Turkey and had some coffee to end the day, then we returned home. Yes, I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but it was actually really nice to catch up with friends and hang out for a bit, Besides, The Saturday night, Sunday and Monday We had planned to go out and do everything, but that was before all the problems started to roll in on the friday...
Friday morning, we got up and I realised that I couldn't find the 1000 pesos that I had travelled with... this actually counts up to around $300 NZD...today I still can't find it, so I decided that I must've been pickpocketed, not very good for a start to the day, next thign we did, was we went to Sophias school and asked if I could come along with her, the teachers said yes and I went along to a computers class with her, we did nothing but go on Facebook for an hour or two.. after that, they had a big flag assembly, and then point at me and Sophia and told us we had to leave the school, so they put us in a little room during the ceremony and then kicked us outta the school... we thought it was quite rude after they had just said we could come in...same teachers too.. so we decided that we'd have a day trip to Neuquen...that's when the next bad thing happened, we got a message from Sophia's consejera saying "Zac has to return to La Plata", we were confused why and asked why, she said "They're asking for him in the capital". not the most nicest messages to hear when you don't have a clue whats going on.. so after an hour of panicking, we arrived en Neuquen and met up with Nick from Germany and I went off to the side for a while to get explanations from the volunteers from La Plata. They told me that I didn't have permission to go to Neuquen, that I didn't have anymore days to skip school on my exchange and that my family wanted me back for fathers day on Sunday. However, I hadn't missed a single day of school for my entire exchange, I know my family well enough to know that they didn't mind, and it turns out AFS Argentina had a miscommunication with AFS NZ which meant I didn't have permission. So, in the end I went along with what AFS was saying and returned early from my trip to my home in La Plata where my family was just as angry as I was.
So, why did AFS make so many excuses to me and send me home? Because it turns out that one woman, a mother of one of the students (that all the students hate because she doesn't let them do anything - They call her the b**** mum of Neuquen), was afraid of about 15 exchange students getting together for a party in General Roca. So this initiated what I like to call, "lets give Zac and the other exchange students as many excuses as we can to send them home plan". A few of us were then spending that night in the Free Peanuts Bar, trying to figure out what was going on and it all turned out to be the woman. I now really think the worst decision I've made on this exchange was to follow AFS and go back to my city early, because now I missed out on my chance to meet my friends from Norway and Iceland and I might not ever see them for the rest of my life, they were one of my main reasons for going to Neuquen in the first place! And now my family here is still angry, I'm still pretty annoyed and we're still waiting for some sort of apology from AFS, because in the end none of this was my fault and I lost a lot. uh, ohwell, life goes on I suppose.
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