La música

Music is so important here, the number 1 question I get asked is "What type of music do you like?"
It brings everyone together. At school everyone is always listening to music or singing. One day I hope I can get a video because it is so cool! And mostly it is the guys singing which you wouldn't always get in New Zealand! I'd never been that conscious about music but here it makes everything a lot better! It is a very lively part of Argentina's culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUsoVlDFqZg This is a link to "Bailando by Enrique Iglesias" This is a very popular song here and people are always singing it! I love it as well :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BTjG-dhf5s "Limbo by Daddy Yankee" this is also a popular latin pop/Reggaeton song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc-Fi6K9eCU Here is a typical Cumbia song which is a genre very popular here! This video shows some dance moves from here too haha,

I could link much more, but I'll add them in future posts!

Long time, no see

So its been 2 weeks since I last updated my blog and that time has gone by so fast! Things have been good lately. A few weeks ago all the exchange students got together for the afternoon and just chatted then had pizzas for dinner! It is so good talking to exchange students, there is always something to talk about and it's so cool learning about everyone's countries! I've literally never been so immersed in a conversation! I think this is because we all have the same things in common and are all experiencing the same things!




School has been okay, I've had to do some tests and I bet they are interesting for the teachers to read! I got a 'bien' good, on one so have no idea what that means haha. So far they have only been in communication and literature so you can imagine just how well they went! I am just waiting for the maths and science tests! These are the classes I actually can do all the work in and for an added bonus the teachers of these classes are all pretty cool too!

For a few of the teachers I have lost a bit of my sheen... One teacher (literature and communication) in particular gives me these weird looks and humiliated me the other day saying in front of the class, if I brought the photocopies and listened that I would understand better.. because apparently reading along with someone else and using a dictionary isn't enough haha "What the frick does she know about learning another language if she is only limited to Spanish herself..?" hmmm

As you can understand I was very glad we didn't have literature today and was able to play an hour of volleyball instead!

Other than that I have some really good teachers, my french, maths and geography teachers are my favorites!

Right now I'm getting ready for my trip to the Iguazu falls. Sounds like there will be a lot of travelling in a bus so lets hope it will not be too boring! Before coming to Argentina I had no idea how big the country is! For example New Zealand's Land size is 268,021km² and Argentina's land size is 2,780,400 km². So nothing is as close as it would be in New Zealand! The overnight bus trip to Buenos Aires from Neuquen, the closest city to my town, will end up being 13-14 hours so that will be the longest time I have ever spent on a bus! 

There will be other students from all around Argentina going, theres one other person from my town but otherwise everyone will be new! I'm definitely looking forward to the trip  and I will make sure I take plenty of photos!

Chau for now!

Quotes

Pinterest just happened to come up with these Quotes :) I also have a board that I'm pinning all things relevant to my exchange! Feel free to have a look or follow me :)  http://www.pinterest.com/VoyArgentina/mi-intercambio-en-argentina/

 I've had some days that have truly been very hard, then others that I have never felt happier! It's an experience of so many highs and lows that I will have forever, but yes it's true no-one will really understand unless they also were an exchange student as well :) I have been through quite a lot of homesickness at the moment, I guess it has set in how long I have been away and how long I still have to return to New Zealand. But then other days I am so excited about life here and want to experience more! Again this is the highs and lows. Keeping busy and thinking about what I have to look forward to helps me forget about that homesickness. Here I can talk to my family and friends online and Skype so the only thing I'm missing out on is seeing them in person. I have to keep reminding myself that indeed 3 months is not a long time and that they will still be there when I get home! I will never experience this again, so I need to make the most of every moment! Here I have something that I share with just my host family and friends, another life half a world away! With so much to look forward too I'm feeling a lot better, but I guess you always just have those days!
¡Tengas un bien dia!

School

My seat is to the left of the 2nd desk

The Blackboard! I was there early so there was no work written there

The back wall where they project movies and videos. The massive fan, seriously we will need it in summer!

Was finally able to get some photos today, they are from my little Argentina phone so they might not be very good quality! 

Observations

-Public vs Private schools is discussed a lot! Before coming here I never thought about it. But here they talk about it all the time, in historia educativa (history of education) they were asking all about primary schools in NZ and did private and public schools have the same privileges etc. Here it seems to be a topic that people are very concerned about!

-I have noticed a lot more work is done in science and maths classes. Here the teacher of a language/history based topic either talks a lot or sets things for the class to read together, often if work is set on the board it is not usually finished or very detailed. This comes down to the teachers I guess, you can definitely tell when there is a strict teacher compared to a lenient teacher!

-On Monday we wrote down a half a page of notes for the whole day! This meant being talked at for the most part of the day. I've figured out now that after a certain amount of listening my brain just decides to turn off! Its quite a weird feeling, I guess I just zone out.. 

99 days..

I have 99 days left to go.. and I have been here 27 days, on thursday it would have been here one month!

A very exciting thing I have to look forward to is the AFS trip to the Iguazu falls! This from the 24th of October until the 2nd of November. I'm so excited! I'm not too sure on the exact itinerary but we will travel on an overnight bus to Buenos Aires. Then once we get there we are going on all sorts of tours around the area then travel to the Entre Rios province to do all sorts of different things. The cool thing is we are going to the Brazil side of the falls, this will give a really cool perspective of the falls :) Don't worry once I have gone on my trip a big blog post is coming!

Above I have stated lots of days and dates but here this is not very common. People don't really count down but choose to worry about now, rather than the future. Everyone's pretty relaxed about the concept of time. For example people will say 'en un ratito' which is 'in a moment' or 'in a little bit', this phrase is so misleading! In New Zealand this would mean a few minutes or 10 at the max, but here it means anywhere between there and 1 hour! This makes it hard to know when exactly to get ready or be waiting to go haha...

A perfect example of this is my orientation. I had an AFS orientation on the 27th and 28th of September and I met the 9 other exchange students that are in Roca. We talked about our countries and Argentina and did lots of activities, it was really great. So anyway the Orientation started at 9.30am on the Sunday and this included the host families. You can imagine me stressing because at 9.20 I was the only one ready and my host mum told me we would go 'en un ratito' this stretched to 9.50 when we finally left. I was convinced I would be the last one and everyone would be waiting 

Turns out I was the third one there and no-one was phased at all! This is a perfect example of how the concept of time differs. Another is the supermarkets and big shops. At 'Easy' a shop like Mitre 10 mega there was only one checkout open for at least 20 people and no-one seemed to care about waiting! There was no hurrying people through, everything was so relaxed.. we ended up waiting about 30 or so minutes to be served. If you have heard of Island time, here is the exact same!

I think this will be quite hard to get used to but we will just have to see.

Feeling foreign

Don't you hate that feeling when you know someone is staring at you? It makes you think, is something wrong?
It is very odd when you meet someone for the first time and you continuously feel this... Here I didn't think I was that different looking. Seriously I have dark hair and I try to dress like everyone here but I think I have figured it out. It is because I'm foreign. As soon as I say I'm from NZ they either are very interested in me, or just stare... Here the people aren't afraid to stare, even when I look up and meet there eyes some still continue! Maybe its because I am in a smallish town and they aren't used to foreigners, I don't know..
Last week I met someone new and they stared at me until I introduced myself, saying hello I'm Natisha from New Zealand and then they simply said "what a name!" No "nice to meet you" or "what a nice name" nothing, that was all. I was pretty shocked as she continued to stare after that while talking to my family.. I think about it now and laugh. Some people here are very blunt!

Another foreign thing is the lack of love for Rugby :( When Argentina played the All Blacks I was the only one in my family that watched it and it was not talked about at all in the news! I thought that maybe people would recognize NZ as the country of the All Blacks but people don't really have any idea. Even at my afs orientation I took the jersey and probably one person knew who they were!!
Man I'll tell you what is sad, is that I had to 'watch' the all blacks game vs south africa on my All Blacks app through score updates and written commentary! So sad..
Then I was watching the last half of the Pumas, wallabies game and as we were leading only by 4 points and it was so close with Aussie having possession and the people watching it turned it over! How you even do that? Haha I just don't understand
I guess everyone isn't as rugby mad as The Jones's!

Church

Normally I would not feel like going to church is such a big thing, but here everyone is so passionate. I'm not going to compare my religion to my host family's, just simply make an observation. Here Church started at 8pm on Sunday night, and we left at about 10.45pm while it was still going.. Wow I will never think an hour service is long again! Here the church was about the size of a double garage with rows of 7 plastic chairs wide. If I hadn't of known it was a church I probably would not have guessed, it just did not look like the churches I have been used to in NZ.
What I loved about the service was the lively atmosphere! There was 2 large amps with an electric guitar and keyboard, with lots of microphones. Over half of the time there was singing and dancing! It felt like a small concert, everyone sang at the top of their lungs and I could actually feel the rhythm of the bass in my body! It made me feel so happy and I could see everyone was very passionate about what they were singing about. I am so glad I was able to experience this, its the kind of thing I have only ever seen on movies and it was great to be apart of it