Day 28

So. To my blog.

First, Thursday.

I had English first. It wasn't too difficult to get through (she did write "March, Thursday 4th" on the board again; I guess she just doesn't know). We read (with a fair amount of ease on my part) an article about how people were going to theaters less. Translating it was harder, but I actually managed to translate almost all of it (except "screen"; how do you say "screen" in Spanish?) This was the first time I actually finished the classwork before anyone else. I did have a small linguistic advantage. Some of the students even asked me for help. Fifteen minute break: I spent idling around until someone in my class called me over to them. History was uneventful (now read that sentence a second time; I didn't notice when I first wrote it). She talked about something historical and didn't write anything on the board, so I have no notes. In economics, there was a student election. I'm not sure what it was for. Something at the end of the year. Everyone who wanted to be elected raised their hands and had their names written on the board. The top four people would be chosen to do whatever at the end of the year. Then the teacher went down the line and let everyone choose two people to vote for. Everyone heard who everyone voted for. I was aghast. There was no way I could do that. It quickly became clear that a boy named Oso (which is Spanish for "bear") was going to win. By the time the teacher got to me (I sit in the last row), Tomás and Mer were second and third. I was frozen. I couldn't say anything. The teacher thought I didn't know what was going on, so she had someone explain the vote to me (and offer their opinions) while she finished the last row. Fourth place was a dead tie. Oh, great. My vote is the one who decides who the fourth winner is and who the last loser is. I froze. I couldn't say a word. The teacher, of course, thought I didn't know what was going on. She explained to me again that they were voting. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I couldn't choose one of those girls I had never spoken a word to over the other. Eventually one of the students brought over the two girls who were tied for fourth and showed them to me and told me to point. I was almost laughing at this point, but I was still frozen in my flabbergastion (I am proclaiming that a new word). The teacher realized (finally!) how uncomfortable I was and walked away. She quickly did a revote for the two remaining candidates and there was one clear winner. Ok. That wasn't too fun. But I'll look on the bright side. I searched facebook for "Oso", "Mer", and "Tomás" (I was too freaked out to even remember the names of the two girls I was supposed to choose between). I found all three, and friended them and all of their friends I recognized. Philosophy was only thirty minutes and involved a small article to analyze with a group. I came exhausted and hungry because like every other day so far, I hadn't eaten anything in school. But actually, besides the election, my day wasn't too bad. Also, I forgot to mention that we chose sports for mandatory gym class. The choices were track and field, volleyball, handball, and one other that I forget. I chose volleyball as my first and handball as my second. That was a stupid choice. I should have chosen track and field in stead of volleyball. Volleyball is, I think, the sport for sports players in this school (in other words, I basically signed up to play sport competitively with people who, in the United States, would be football players). Uh oh.

Friday went pretty well, too. TIC was first. TIC, remember, is my technology class that is taught by a man who hasn't yet figured out how to bring a projector into his classroom. Friday was more dictation. He went through an entire textbook table of contents (complete with telling us where to put commas and colons) because he couldn't be bothered to get photocopies. That class was dull. Third/fourth I had statistics. This was the first day of statistics. It is my only other class taught by a man. He gave broad and vague generalizations, like all teachers, here and at home, do, about what statistics is and why it's important. Sigh. During the second (I think it was the second) break, someone invited me to their birthday party on Wednesday. Other people have said we should do things together and not done anything, but her friends repeated this today, so I think it's a real thing. I have no idea what one does at a 16th birthday when everyone has been telling me how much people drink here. Or, really, any customs. I'll figure it out. My fifth/sixth hour class was culture. With the teacher who doesn't appreciate the culture I bring to her class. But Friday's class wasn't as bad as Tuesday's. Meaning, when I was singled out, I knew what it was for and gave a long Spanish response. Take that, teacher who thinks I don't speak her language. She had us read an article about why humans developed cultures and then asked what we thought about some cultures thinking they're better than other cultures (the United States was not unmentioned in this lecture). I gave her the answer she wanted, though, so all was good. My last class of the day was language. She gave some sort of in-class thing that I didn't understand, so I just sat there. She doesn't check our homework anyway.

The weekend! YAAY! At 6:00, we got a call from a bilingual second grade class in Northfield to talk about Argentina. They asked us questions in English about what Argentina was like, the food, our school (Maggie and I tried on our uniforms for them), and the earthquake. It was cool. Besides our call, we didn't do anything all night.

Saturday morning we left with Mercedes, her parents, and four kids to Cafayate. Cafayate is a small town in the South of Salta province, about a three hour drive from here. The drive is the most amazing part. It starts flat, but surrounded by mountains in the distance, as is Salta city. But slowly the mountains come closer to the road, and the villages look less billboardy and built up, and more like one would expect a rural Andean village to look: goat pastures upon goat pastures with elderly, provincial people who don't have a chance of speaking a word of English. Then the mountains get even closer and there are no more towns. As a person who grew up in the Great Plains, I cannot even describe how tall the mountains looked to me. You couldn't even see the tops of some of them because they were lost in clouds. We turned 90 degrees around the base of one mountain and we were suddenly in the quebrada. A quebrada, as I'm sure you remember is that ever-so-useful Spanish word describing a certain type of river that flows through two mountains. Ok. So to picture the amazing landscape before us, picture putting a Southwestern canyon in the Rocky mountains, and having both deciduous forest and sandy desert in view. Then make all of the rocks a gorgeous rusty red and slant the entire canyon's strata, making it look like some earthquake millions of years ago shook the canyon until it fell on its side. And finally, running right through it, let a small, dry-season stream run slowly in the dead-flat center, as if that tiny stream had no idea of the fantastic, otherworldly, Martian (Ok, I have plenty of adjectives, but no nouns to describe this geologist's heaven. Oh, actually, I do have one.) quebrada that lay before us. And now you know what a quebrada is.

Our hotel was not actually in Cafayate, but the town next to it called Tolumbon. Cafayate and Tolumbon are both in the in desert right behind the quebrada. We spent all of Saturday afternoon and night in our hotel, mostly by the pool. Maggie and I both put on sunscreen, but got terrible burns. Maggie and I also snuck in to the building behind the pool, just to say we snuck in. It was just an office, but it was thrilling for us. For dinner, I had kid. Glossy kid, to be precise, was how it appeared on the menu. It was actually very good. The night was spent chasing boys around the hotel grounds.

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but Sunday was Dad's birthday. He is 51 years old. We spent the morning of his B-day getting ready to leave, and then left. We stopped in Cafayate for lunch. On the drive back through the quebrada, we stopped at the important stops. There was the rock that looked exactly like frog (It was crazy. It could have been a sculpture.) and there was "La Garganta del Diablo" (flashback to Iguazú!), which means "The Devil's Throat". This was a sort of canyon-let that had been tipped on its side by an earthquake or water and gravity, so that we could walk up into the cave/canyon-let while going down the strata of rock. I have a number of pictures taken up into the cave that look like they were taken down into the cave because the bottom is now at the top. It was amazing. Back on the road we retraced our steps stopping a few more times at lookouts or reststops. Then we drove strait home and spent the rest of Dad's birthday at home.

And that brings me to today. Monday. Week two. My first class of the day was math. Apparently we were supposed to have binders, but enough people didn't have one that she stopped checking before she got to me. We also got gradebooks today, in which the teacher records our test grades (there are, I guess, no homework grades) and gives grades based on about 8 tests a trimester. After that, I have nothing life-changing to report from math class. Language was uneventful, too. We took notes from a dictation (which teachers here do way too much for this foreigner's taste) on coherence and cohesion of writing. My two breaks have been spent meandering around until someone adopted me, because the excitement of a North American has mostly worn off, but I still don't feel like I know anyone well enough to invite myself into their group. (Actually, that's not completely true. During my first break I used the bathroom, which has no toilet paper. In the entire bathroom. Thankfully, toilet paper was, um, not necessary for what I was doing, but what if it had been. That was so strange. I even looked in every stall, and none had any place for a roll. But now I know. Either before school or after.) My third and final three-period class was philosophy. Philosophy today was up in another room where the projector is, so that we could have a powerpoint. The philosophy teacher was not in the mood for misbehavior today. Two students were sent into the hall for talking, and two more were sent out for using phones. In our third break, of five minutes, I went downstairs to the courtyard and talked to Maggie. When break was over, I went to line up like we always do at the end of break, but no one was there. I decided to go up to the classroom to see if we were supposed to have already come back. We were. I was late with one other guy. We weren't punished, but she wasn't happy. Hopefully she realized that at least I had no idea what was going on. Well, at the end of class we got a lecture on behavior. She said we probably wont go back to the other room with the projector. Rats. This afternoon I spent a while writing this blog. And doing various other things. We went to a neighborhood protest of a proposed cell phone tower to meet neighbors. I pointed to Mom and Dad that we were going to a political demonstration in a South American country that, a few decades ago, was a dictatorship known for disappearing political activists. But when does anyone listen to me? We went for about five minutes. Dad was too shy to go up and talk to someone (even though he suggested we go), so we just walked away. Tonight we're going out with Karina and Daniel (I think for Dad's birthday).