Cultural Experience

A few days ago, just after our asado, it truly hit me how different this culture is. All throughout the asado, I was getting more and more tired, and the family noticed a few times, but had the attitude of humoring me, understanding that I had only been here a week and was still getting used to the times of meals. One thing about my house is that there is only one clock, since everyone has a cell phone, and I don´t check it that often. It was hot, so we were out in the yard with the dogs, and it had been dark for awhile. The stars were beautiful. My dad cooked the asado on an outside grill (shown in pictures in my previous update) and it took quite a long time, but then again, there was a lot of meat. We also spent a long time eating slowly and chatting with the family, then just as long for dessert (chocolate, vanilla, and dulce de leche ice cream). However, I knew that the family normally ate late, usually finishing at about midnight during the week. When I finally looked at the clock, I decided that it must be wrong, and this accounted for the late hours I had been seeing throughout the week. I asked my sister how off it was (since I thought it must be at least two hours). She looked at me funny and asked me why it would be wrong. It said that it was 2:30 in the morning, and we were cleaning up dinner. This was an accurate clock. I went to bed about three that night, and woke at about noon the next day.

Asado

Mate

Lots of meat=an asado 

My little brother apparently
training for the circus--trying to balance
the end of a broom in his mouth

 Last night my family had the brother of my father and his wife over for dinner, and we had some famous Argentine asado, aka lots of meat, including pechuga de pollo (chicken), chorizos (sausage), vacio (beef), and asado de costilla (beef). We also had mate, which is a traditional herbal drink of Argentina drunk from a straw, a bombilla, mixed with boiling water. We also swum in my family´s pool because it is extremely hot here,    and I played soccer with my littlebrother, who is ten. Today was Día de los Hermanos, or day of the siblings, and all my host siblings kissed my on the cheek and wished my a happy day. 

My dad cooking an asado 

Me with asado 

Our pool

First Day of School

Mural outside the school

Cake a classmate made to welcome me 

Fede, my cute little brother

 Today was my first day of school, in a small school where the teachers move instead of the students, the students get smoke breaks, and two of our teachers were absent today so we only went to one class for about fifteen minutes. On normal days we get three ten minute breaks and get out at noon.

Happy Leap Year!

In Argentina, there is a tradition to cook nejayote for Leap Year, on the 29th of February, which are homade noodles (more like little balls of bread) rolled in flour, and served in a homade tomato sauce, and under all the plates at dinner every person has some money, about five pesos which amounts to a little more than a dollar in the United States. I met some of Lu´s friends today (my oldest sister), and we went down to the laguna (lake in my town) to have tedero (cold mate with Tang) and talk in rapid Spanish, except for me. They asked me about Yellowstone volcano, because they had seen the doomsday film 2012 and thought that there really was a volcano in the part that killed millions of people. There are also stray dogs all over the city, and about five (one with only three legs) followed us almost all the way home, until we got on a bus. I also had to explain the line in Party Rock Anthem (by LMFAO) "Every day I´m shuffling", as well as pronounce the name of the group. It was very fun.

Dinner and more cards

Argentina playing cards-- learned a new game today

Me+empanadas=muy feliz 

Dinner of empanadas: beef, ham & cheese, and vegetable

Rainy Days

Cutting out letters that spell out subjects in school, for folders and dividers in the binder

Bienvenida Sadie!: the sign my family had in their livingroom

Candies of Argentina

It is summer here in Argentina but it rained quite hard yesterday, and the family stayed in playing a card game where you needed a group of four of the same cards, and then you slap them on the table and the other players try not to be the last to slap. We also had something like Frosted Flakes in mugs of whole milk. I´ve tried cold mate, called tedede, which is cold with some sort of fruit juice and quite yummy. My liaison for AFS came by and speaks no English, which is interesting because they are supposed to help me understand my family. Ah, well. Ciao!

Arrival

I have finally arrived in Argentina, and been to a long and rather vague orientation, which mostly talks about having an open mind rather than more important things like how not to horribly offend your host family. After about fifteen hours on a plane (though not continuously) I arrived at a camp outside Buenos Aires with no telephone, and met students from Norway, Iceland, Germany, all over the US, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Denmark, and so on. Then I got on a bus for seven hours that served me food and gave me a bed that was very comfortable and then I met my family, and this is my first day with them. They are all very nice, but don´t speak very much English. When I got to their house, I got coffee and pastries and then had a nap for a few hours until lunch, where we had an asado, which consisted of lots of meat, including a large sausage in a little roll, asado, which is a huge piece of meat, matambre pizza, which is meat with tomato sauce and cheese melted on it, and mate, which is an herbal drink that is made with a cold or hot tea like substance sort of like lemonade. They have two dogs, Fido and Luca. I do not speak much Spanish, but am getting by. I have had two naps since getting here this morning at six. It is all so exciting!