I'm Sorry My Elbows Are Above My Ears, I've Never Eaten with My Left Hand Before

Ah. It’s been a month. Where did the time go? I feel like I’m just starting to get my footing here but it’s a long way from seeming like home. I know that I’m starting to adjust because I don’t fall asleep right after dinner every night anymore.

My list of words in the back of my notebook has grown to a good ten pages now and I’m reading some stories of Hans Christen Anderson in Spanish. I still think it’s weird that I can understand nearly everything in my Biology, math and Geography classes but sometimes not a word that my classmates say. I wish it was the opposite but my brain panics when they start talking two or three at once.



So this past weekend all of the exchange students went to Mar del Plata for a Rotary reunion. (The joys of twelve hours in a combi.) I keep wishing the reunions were longer so I could meet everyone but I’ll be spending plenty of time with the other exchange students on the trips! The first trip is in December and we will go to southern Argentina for a week. We’ll visit the southernmost city in the world, walk on some glaciers, see penguins and probably be really cold the whole time.
The next trip is in February and it is a three week long bus tour of the north of Argentina. Hopefully all forty of the exchange students are going because it sounds like it’s going to be crazy.

The day after we got hope from Mar del Plata I finally went out with my friends to Yamo. Yamo (shamo) is the most popular boliche (club) in Suarez and most of my classmates go out there every weekend. Of course we didn’t actually go to Yamo until four in the morning. “Why so late?” I asked. They laughed, “Because it’s completely empty if you go earlier.” Silly me. So we hung out until four and then went to Yamo and danced for two hours. I wasn’t tired at all so when we walked out of the club and it was light out, I couldn’t believe it. Then I slept till three in the afternoon.


This is me with a few of my friends at a birthday party. (Magi, the girl I'm sitting on I actually don't know, Eugenia, Luz and Camila)

That weekend I also went to two more birthday parties (will this ever stop?) and to a place called La Rural. To my American mind it was like the fair, minus the carnival part. There were a few horse races, tents full of venders, live music and lots of tractors. I was able to see some very Argentine things. Like this:




I made peanut butter cookies yesterday. Despite the fact that this butter does not taste anything like butter, the milk doesn’t taste like any milk I know and the only control on the oven is on and off, they turned out well! I made them for a girl in my class who had an operation on her spleen. (It took me two weeks to find out what organ they were talking about. The Spanish word for spleen is not in my dictionary, I guess they never thought it might be useful to know.) I have yet to give them to her but most people here aren’t the biggest fans of peanut butter. And my biology teacher asked me to make an apple pie next week…..a bit more complex. I kind of feel like their opinion of American food depends on my culinary skills. No pressure.

See you later alligator,
Olivia