Currently I am struggling with the language. For example, I pretty much can only speak in the present. Today I needed to call my Spanish tutor. I told my mother, I´m going to call her. It only took a minute. Then I came back and told her that I was going to go to my Spanish teacher´s house at 5 30. But she thought I still needed to call her. I had no idea how to say, ¨I just called her!¨ I tried, but she thought I wanted her to call her and etc. NO!!!!!! I was so angry at my inability to express such a simple sentence. Finally I told her yo termino hablar con ella, which probably is a very ugly sentence. Ahh. I do get frustrated. But what I can say, I can now say a little bit better and I can understand more. And I do have a Spanish tutor now so that is good.

Anyway, for anyone who wants to go to Argentina, at least in my area of Argentina, they have some curious accents. For example, there is no ¨y¨ sound as in yellow or yo or llamo. It is all ¨juh¨ sound. And, they don´t really say ¨r¨ here. For example, my cousin Rocio here is prounounced ¨Jrocio¨.

Anyway, school is going well. I have a nice little uniform...a polo shirt and a pleated burgundy skirt with little black shoes. School is nice because the teachers don´t expect me to work because I don´t know Spanish! Not that they have work. So I just try to learn to speak and understand. For example, today I learned bad words in Spanish. Yes!!! But, here people joke a lot. There are so many bad words but they are not really bad! I have also noticed that people are a lot more open. I have had lots of conversations with my family about how I don´t want to get fat- the food is very good but very bad for you. Everyone says, Everybody in Argentina is fat! Which is a lie. But they do eat a lot. And, they have pet names here. So, my sister Romina calls her boyfriend (who is a little big) Gordo, which means fatty essentially. And my little cousin who is definately fat is called Gordita, little fatty. It is rather interesting. Nothing is personal here.

Hasta luego.

Hola!

Life is Argentina is going well for me. Even though I am a bit handicapped when it comes to speaking and understanding, I am still functioning. Currently I can only speak in the present tense so I don´t sound very intelligent. Most importantly though, is that I love my family! They are incredibly nice and I feel very welcome in their house. I share a room with my sister Romina, who I pretty much love, and also with her sister Mariela and her husband Lalo. My parents, Estela and Jose obviously live there as well. Everyday I see the other sister Mabel, and her super cute daughters, Ari and Rocio. Pretty much everyday some family members stop by for merienda (afternoon snack) or for dinner or lunch. Currently I am with Romina´s cousins at their house with their exchange student from Germany, Lena.

This is my schedule: I get up around 6:30 and go to school a little bit later. My school is Instituto San Luis Gonzaga, which is a private Catholic high school. That last until 1 in the afternoon. Then I go home, eat some lunch, and generally take a nap and take a shower. Then I get up and eat some merienda with whoever is home, and then I do something with Romina and usually her boyfriend, Yussuff. However, I haven´t really been living that schedule because there has not been school for a couple a days because it is the Election de la Reina in all the schools, which is a bit like homecoming. Last night there was a big fiesta for only my school, which involved electing the queen, and having a big dance in this salon type place. I figured out that i suck at dancing here because everybody actually dances with partners here, which unfortunately for me, nobody does in the US anymore. So I am going to learn because I feel rather substandard considering that I am generally considered to be a good dancer. Anyway, we came home around 3 and it is very good that I didn´t have to go to school today.


The biggest differences here are that the food is not very healthy, I do not look like anyone else here, family is very important, nobody studies in school, you have to kiss everyone whenever you meet up or see someone you know, and lots of other stuff. What matters is that I am having a good time and I am trying to learn.