Day 20

Yes, you mathematician counting my addition, I know that it is no longer Day 20. But. I was going to publish this yesterday, but didn't quite finish it (I was too busy doing nothing). So, I will just publish this today and pretend that I finished it all yesterday. So, shh. Don't tell anybody. Here's what I wrote between yesterday and today:

I have some big news to share: I was in an earthquake. Everyone here is fine, though, don't worry. We only felt a tremor of the earthquake in Chile. But besides that (I'll apologize in advance for this) earth-shattering news, this week was a little (not much, but a little) slower than last week. We're settling in, I guess. But don't worry. I promise this post will be just as long and dry as the last four.

Alright. Wednesday. Wednesday we did nothing but go to a movie in the afternoon. We saw "Día de los Enamorados" (Valentine's Day). Thankfully, it was subtitled, not dubbed. Unthankfully (is that a word?), it was a chick-flic. Oh well.

Thursday was Adriano's birthday. We didn't do anything all afternoon (except update our lists of books we've read and compare--and guess who's read 27,208 more pages than his sister in their lifetimes!). We arrived at 9:30 (to a four-year-old's birthday party!). We were the first ones there. At the party was Mercedes parents, her brother and his girlfriend, a couple with a baby (I'm not sure how they know the family), a friend of Mercedes, Nestor, and his son Nico, one of their neighbors, and us. Pablo also had some friends in his room. We got Adriano a dinosaur and car for his birthday. The dinosaur was missing a tail, an arm, and both its legs before he went to sleep that night. Dinner was a barbecue cooked by Mercedes's dad. And the meat tasted great. There wasn't much with it, but that is a custom here: meat, meat, meat, and little else. Vegetarianism is not very popular. The kids' meals were even more meaty than the adults'; where in the US, the kids at a birthday party would get macaroni-and-cheese or pizza with a glass of milk or juice, or at least Gatorade, the kids here got two big slabs of beef from the grill, and a Coke. After dinner, I was invited by one of Pablo's friends to join them in his room. For a while Pablo and I played a soccer video game on the TV while his friends played a video game on the computer. After a while though, Pablo joined his friends and I played by myself, then one of his friends, then Pablo played the soccer game with me again. It was a little awkward. I wasn't sure if they really wanted me there of if they were told to invite me back. And that's where I was until we left at 2:30.

Friday was begun by picking Maggie up from her sleepover with Chiara. And then we didn't do much until the evening (Mom and Dad were awarded their grant for their summer program on Friday, though). In the evening we went to a restaurant with Karina and Daniel. That was fun. As always, the meat was fantastic and everything else was pretty decent (the pork from the skewers Mom and I shared was amazing! It probably had something to do with the also-amazing amount of salt they put on them).

Saturday, yesterday, was when the earthquake hit early in the morning. We were far enough from the epicenter that we didn't feel anything when it struck, but later, in the afternoon, when I was reading and Maggie was napping and Mom was working on the computer and Dad was at the grocery store, the house started to jiggle. What I first noticed was the TV stand because I was facing that direction. It's not very stable, so I wasn't surprised it was shaking. And then I realized that it wouldn't normally be shaking with no one near it. And that's when I suddenly realized we were in an earthquake. Mom realized a moment later when I got up and asked her what we should do. Maggie came out of her bedroom awoken by the shaking. The four of us then walked out on to the porch and the shaking stopped. All of this only lasted 10 or 15 seconds. It was our first earthquake, and it was not how I expected it to be. I expected not knowing what was going on, and then hating the feeling of being shaken, like turbulence in a plane. But I figured out right away what was happening, and actually kind of liked the feeling, for some strange reason. I was suppressing a smile the whole time it was happening. When Dad came back from the store, he said that things were falling off the shelves and people were running out of the grocery store. But none of that happened here. Anyway, life went on. We had a picnic with Mercedes and family at a river. Before that, actually, we went to a statue of Jesus on a hill, and were going to picnic at the river under it, but Mercedes was concerned the water was too fast for her kids, so we went downstream a little. We ran around in the muddy riverbank and ate the snacks we had packed for a few hours. It was fun. That night we went to their house and had pizza (corn, it seems, is a pizza topping here) along with Nestor and Nico and Nico's tennis team. Nestor, I don't think I said above, wants them to emigrate to Wales for life. This time, I spent most of my time running around with Maggie and Chiara and Adriano. They play some of the same games we do (Rock, Paper, Scissors is popular, as is tag), and some we don't (like one game of finding people in the dark, and one confusing one that involves hiding and touching a chair before someone else does). Like on Thursday, we left at some very late hour in the early morning.

And Sunday we have done nothing. Literally. We haven't gone outside all day. But we have done plenty of fretting about school tomorrow.

And now, in the spirit of that chain of facebook notes I never took part in, here are 19 (I tried to think up 25, but couldn't get that far) random facts about the place where we're living right now:

1. The trash is not taken out in barrels. It is set in strange little baskets that at first I thought were mailboxes, which are outside of every house and look like metal baskets held up several feet on poles. It is, I think to keep the dogs from them.

2. Salta has very few street grates. The streets become rivers when it rains.

3. It is very rare to have drying machines. All our clothes are hanging on clothes racks on the porch now.

4. Keys are all old-fashion style. Like the keys in Harry Potter.

5. The Spanish letter Ll, usually pronounced like a Y, is pronounced "zh" in Salta. So are the letters Y, J, and Rr.

6. I have yet to see recycling in Argentina.

7. Everyone here absolutely hates the government. I don't know why.

8. Salteño bathrooms have not only a toilet, but a bidet. If you don't know what a bidet is, google it. I'm not going to explain it here.

9. Salta is almost in the tropics. It is a latitude equivalent to (and opposite from) Miami.

10. There is graffiti everywhere. Even on our house in our nice neighborhood.

11. Bubbled water is so popular here that you have to order "agua sin gas" to get water without bubbles.

12. To my endless annoyance, unlike the rest of the Spanish world, which uses "tú" to mean "you", Argentina uses "vos". Every conjugation I have ever learned is now wrong.

13. Salta is just underneath the Andes mountains. You can see them from just about anywher in the city.

14. Peanut butter is impossible to find. It doesn't exist here.

15. English is the first foreign language of the country, but, often because of their embarrassment at how much they know, they refuse to speak it.

16. Despite being three hours ahead of Minnesota, we probably eat dinner after most of the people at home.

17. Argentines write weird looking 9s. It took me forever to figure out what they were writing.

18. Meat in Salta is really great. All of Argentina is known for its beef. The deserts, though, are unfortunately subpar.

19. Unless our toilet is in a strange polar-magnetic vacuum, I'm pretty sure that water does not spin clockwise here.