Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Mud and Mayo

Well this blog is a little behind schedule partly because I didn’t realize that La Rural was two weekends ago, not one, and when I did sit down to write the blog, my family mysteriously didn’t have internet for five days. I guess it’s because of the construction on the house, doctors here (well at least the pediatricians) have house practices as well as some work in the hospital and now half of our house is a brightly colored waiting room filled with toys, tiny chairs and magazines. It’s a little bit strange to me. Like I walked downstairs this morning and the living room is filled with boxes and boxes of plastic gloves, various medicine, Band-Aids and Shrek stickers. I guess it means that my parents will be home more often.

Thank you so much Sunrise Rotary for all your letters!!! It feels good to have mail, it is a million times better than an email. I got a very brightly colored post card today, happy late birthday Kaitin! And thank you Alice for your advice on keeping a journal. I had been keeping notes on what I did from day to day but I stopped around day twenty two, once things got semi normal. But after reading your postcard I started up again, to capture the little moments that otherwise might be forgotten.

This past weekend there was the last hockey game of the season. I didn’t play and that was great for me because I still play with the thirteen year old girls and they crack up when I swing, miss and almost fall over. The girls won the match by a lot and celebrated afterwards by smearing mud on each other. At first I was really surprised, is this some strange Argentine celebration? Then I remembered the last lacrosse games of the season when we smeared cake and paint all over the seniors.Similar but not quite....


Las chicas!!!! Okay I don't know all the names but here we go, from left to right top row first: Clarita, forgot!, Augustina, Lujan, forgot and forgot, Sofi, Eugenia, Pilar, forgot, Camila, Miru and Luz. I'm so bad with names...


Miru and Egue after Egue got chased down and smeared with some fresh mud :)


Then came the condiments....


And now Augs looks like this...


And this...hahahaha so evil!

Katia went to Buenos Aires with her school and we were separated for the first time in almost two months. It was odd because I hadn’t realized just how much time we share just because we live together. We often find that things are more similar in America and Austria than they are in Argentina and I guess we will find out if the similarities really are true when we visit each other in the future. :) Yes, we dream big.

School has been going really well lately. I’m a nerd and took the math test last week. There were some word problems that went right over my head. The test got handed back today and I didn’t get a grade for it or anything but my classmates started clapping and it made me feel so good. I just get bored stiff in school sometimes, this makes any boredom in WHS seem like absolutely nothing. I would love nothing more to be able to do something because I hate feeling stupid and so I’m trying when I can.

But the best part of school is my classmates. They all just have so much personality and they make me so optimistic about having the rest of the year with them. And guess what? I’m off to another birthday party. Hahaha it’s pretty insane because I didn’t know a soul here two months ago.

It is when my friends talk that it is so clear that I am not in the states any more. I have never seen so much PASSION. They talk like the stereotypical Italian, I guess is the best comparison. I wish you all could see it. When the story they are telling gets too intense for sitting they stand up right there and continue with even larger gestures. They talk so loud and laugh so hard, it makes my American friends and I look like dead stumps. And this is all the time, not just when something super special happens, so much passion for everything! If they need a model and I’m sitting next to them then suddenly I’m a demonstration of how the drunken guy in the club was flirting with them. I crack up just watching them because they are just SO animated and it’s even funnier when I only catch handfuls of words.

So far my time here has been so amazing and I hope it stays like this. I don’t want to hit culture shock or get super homesick all of a sudden. I wouldn’t say that I’m madly in love with Argentina because there are for sure somethings that I prefer in the states but there are other things that I just love. And I love them even more because there is nothing like it back home.

Thank you all so much for giving me this chance!

Love,
Liv

2 comments:

  1. Liv, I smile so much when I read all of the blogs. It makes this job so worth it. You describe the moments so clearly I can visualize it like I'm there. I fully expect you to come back waving your arms like a maniac when you tell your stories!
    Robin

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  2. Go visit Austria! You will love it. It is a gorgeous country. And who knows I might be here at the same time. You will have to tell me where your 'hostsister' is from in Austria.

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