Day 9

I have a school now. Yaay. We returned to the first and third schools we looked at (Santa Theresa and Belgrano) on Tuesday morning, as we told them we would. We didn't return to the fifth school (San Agustin), because Dad heard from someone he met in a store that it wasn't a good school (and he has yet to tell them that we won't be going...sigh). Santa Theresa told us that they had room for Maggie in Educacion General Basica nivel 8 (the equivalent of 8th grade), but not room for me in Polimodal nivel 2 (the equivalent of 11th grade). So, that probably would have been a little problem. At Belgrano, they told us a little about the school, then, like the day before, told us to come back tomorrow at 8. We walked to the city center, the plaza 9 de Julio (July 9--Argentina's independence day), which didn't look very different than an American square--a statue of some general surrounded by grass and pavement and people. We ate at a museum restaurant on the square. It was pretty good. We had empanadas and tamales. After lunch the four of us tried to get phones from a phone store, but, apparently, we need our passports for that for some reason, so we couldn't. After that, we came back home for a siesta. In the evening, we went back to the plaza 9 de Julio and Dad and Maggie got two phones, which is pretty exciting, (though I don't think they can call out of Argentina, so they can basically only call each other) while Mom and I got dishes for the party we had yesterday. In the evening, we went to a gigantic supermarket that Dad calls "Hiper", even though its real name is something completely different. Calling it a supermarket, though, is not really accurate because this was far bigger than any supermarket at home. And it had everything you could possibly buy in it. It even had a whole mall of other stores inside it. It was humongous. After we spent a very long time buying everything Mom and Dad could thinkof that we need for the house (I should have just stayed home from this; my legs were killing me from standing up so long), Dad decided to drive to the pescaderia for some fish (which is very uncommon here, it being so far from the ocean), but got lost on the way. We ended up driving through the bad parts of town, and Mom says she saw a drug deal in progress. Dad ended up driving the wrong way down several streets looking for a street sign. We did eventually get home, thankfully. We locked all our doors Tuesday night.

Wednesday went a little better than Tuesday night. In the early morning, we went to Belgrano and found out we were accepted to the school. Yaaay. The school has 1400 students, and teaches, I think, the equivalents of 7th to 12th grades. Maggie will be in EGB 8 (8th grade) and I will be in Polimodal 2 (11th). Mine is called "Polimodal" because it has various tracks for students to specialize in (I chose Humanities over Sciences and Economics). Maggie and I both will have to wear uniforms. Other than that, there's not much I know about the school. It starts on March 1. After finding out that exciting news, we went to the pescaderia (and made it this time) and got fish for the party, then went home and cooked and cleaned. At 8:30, guests began arriving. The people who Dad invited were the three realtor friends he made looking for a house and families. The first people to arrive were Mercedes and her four kids, Pablo (12), Chiara (9), Francisco (6), and Adriano (3). When people greet in Argentina, like in Europe, they kiss (or, really, just touch and make a kiss sound) on the cheek (as I learned by being kissed by all my prospective principals). I knew, at this point, that I was supposed to kiss Mercedes when she kissed me, so I did. And I quickly figured out I was supposed to kiss Chiara, when she leaned up to me. So when Pablo leaned up to me like Chiara did, I kissed his cheek, too. But he didn't kiss mine. Apparently that's a huge faux pas in Argentina. Boys don't kiss boys. Oops. Very embarrased, I didn't greet Francisco or Adriano (not that they greeted me), and hid in the kitchen while Maggie and Dad showed them our house. It went better with the rest of the people who arrived: Karina and her husband Daniel (this time, I was smart enough to wait until he stuck out his hand to shake), and Patricia and her 7-year-old daughter Augustina. The thirteen of us all spoke on a wide spectrum of only English to bilingual to only Spanish, so during our extremely late dinner (11:30ish!), conversation switched between English and Spanish with only one half of the table speaking at a time. Dinner was fish (as I already said) or hamburger, fruit salad, garden salad, and Dad's grilled peaches ("mi experimento"). I had fish, fruit, and peaches (which were not actually as bad as they look written down here), but the Argentines were aghast that Dad would set meat and fruit next to each other (flashback to England!). I noticed none of them took any. While Maggie and everyone younger than her played inside (they had already eaten hamburgers inside), I and everyone older than me ate dinner outside (when the fish was done). We/they talked mostly about the cultural differences between here and home--mostly how Argentines kiss hello and goodbye (girl-girl and girl-boy, but apparently never boy-boy), and North Americans almost never kiss. Meanwhile, Dad opened the carbonated juice we bought ("kid-wine", as we call it in Minnesota) for the kids. He gave the first glass to (three-year-old) Adriano, who spat it out immediately. When he was pouring some for Karina, she pointed out to Dad that the juice was 3% alcohol. Good thing Adriano didn't like it.

Everyone left this morning at 1:30. I thought it was a pretty fun party. Well, I don't have much say about today. I've been at home all day (but Maggie is out shopping with Chiara now) procrastinating writing this post (/trying to figure out how to use the mouse on this teeny computer).