Day 44

Friday night, still fuming at my ridiculous teacher, I had two plans. One was with school friends to go to a dance or something, and the other was to go to Mercedes's house with Mom and Dad and Maggie. I ended up going to Mercedes's because my friends didn't call. I don't know whether I was supposed to meet them somewhere or if they were going to my house, or what. But I ended up playing hide-in-the-dark with Adriano and Francisco and Chiara and truco with Mercedes and Nestor and Mom and Dad. Have I mentioned truco before? Truco is an Argentine trick-taking card game involving sly gestures to your teammates and a code of signals you aren't supposed to let anyone else see. We came home late and exhausted.

Saturday was a sleep-in day. We left the house to go to the mall, but ended up not going. Instead Maggie and I took a cable car, a "teleferico", to the top of San Bernardo hill at the edge of the city. Karina and Daniel had already taken us here, but we hadn't gone on the cable car. That was cool. We drove back down with Mom and Dad and stopped at a statue of War of Independence hero General Güemes (gway-mace). We went downtown to the bank, and then we stopped to eat hot dogs. Maggie got a "Pancho (Spanish for hot dog) with a poncho (Spanish for poncho)", which was a hot dog covered in a layer of cheese (at least it looked like cheese...). I was happy with my hamburger. After that, we looked at hotels for Aunt Freda and Uncle Jay and Jack and Max, who are now coming to visit us! Yay!! The Victorian and the Hotel Salta both had rooms. Then, we went to the mall to look for peanut butter and unsweetened chocolate. But the supermarket at the mall, like the entire city, apparently, doesn't have those. So no peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for us. Maggie went to a birthday party of a friend Saturday night. As far as I know, she liked it.

Sunday (The end of the weekend already? How does it go by so fast?) we lazed around in the morning (Or, what morning I was awake for, anyway), and then we went to Karina and Daniel's asado house in the country (As they explained, that's basically what country houses are for: barbecue). Many of their other friends were there, some of whom we had met before. I spent a good part of my time in the pool, after asado lunch. I even did a little homework from the pool. And I got a horrible sunburn. Relatively speaking, we got home early Sunday night. I finished up my homework and then went to bed. Not ready for another 7 a.m. morning.

But it came anyway. Funny how it always does. Math. Break. Spanish. Break. Philosophy. Break. More philosophy. Home. Tried to take a nap. Couldn't fall asleep. Facebook instead (my solution to many problems). Eventually did my homework. Tried to start my blog. Ended up on facebook, again. Read. Dinner. Went to bed. Tuesday.

Tuesday is an early morning. Which, combined with the fact that I have both culture and gym, makes it my least favorite day of the week. Spanish. Math. History. In culture, I kept my head down and desperately hoped there would be no anti-yankee rants today. There weren't. Yes. No seventh hour. I got out of school early. Since today, Wednesday, is a national holiday (It's national day of remembrance. Of what, I don't recall. As long as I get school off, I'm happy.), I barely went home at all. I first went to the mall with Luluu and Anto and someone who's name I don't know. We ate McDonald's (Their choice, not mine. But maybe they think I love McDonald's because it comes from the same country I do.). Then they were going to go back to school to go to gym, and I was going to call home from there. But just outside of McDonald's, we saw Tomás and Facundo (His name is usually shortened to the first three or four letters, but with so many English-speakers reading this, I think I'll just leave it seven) going the opposite direction. So I went with them instead. We went a few blocks past the mall to a hamburger stand, where we met three other people I didn't know. They all had hot dogs and lomitos, but I had nothing since I had just had McDonald's. Also, 2/3 of the table was smoking the entire time. 1/6 of the table was coughing the entire time. Tomás's Mom (thank you!) gave me a ride home because Dad was too busy to come pick me up. And right when I got home, I had to change out of my school uniform and into my blindingly white gym uniform. At five, gym started. We walked onto the field and I got handed a green jersey. But there was no explaining of the rules, as I was expecting. Instead there were 15 or 20 boys who were really into handball, and one who had no idea why there were four nets and teams of eight rather than three walls and teams of one. "Kennedy! Run! Catch the ball!" Um, coach? What do I do with the ball when I catch it? Luckily for me, the coach only said that once, because then my team noticed me and started throwing me the ball even if I wasn't waving my arms. When I got it, I immediately threw it to another player in a green jersey like mine. And that was how it went. I tried to stay close to other green players so that I wouldn't have to block or intercept. And at six, I was thanking God I didn't have to pretend I knew how to play this strange sport anymore. I was the first one out of the building and I hopped right into Dad's car so we could get out of there.

A few hours went by. Again I had two plans for the evening. Mom and Dad invited over for dinner Mercedes and Nestor and kids (Three kids came. Two stayed at home.) and Karina (Daniel was out of town.). I was also invited to a hamburger-party-like-thing out somewhere. And I went. In the middle of dinner here, Paau and Mer picked me up and took me to a--well, I guess we would call it a club. When they finish high school (my class will in a year and a half), Argentines go on big trips with their graduating class. They were talking about a ski resort in Patagonia and even Disneyworld in Orlando. And travel agencies ingratiate the students. "Snow" travel encouraged us (Or, I should say, "them". I'm not going.) to go to Bariloche through Snow when they graduate. When Paau and Mer showed up at my door in high heels and dresses, I was a little worried that a T-shirt and shorts would be too dressed down. But when I got there, everyone else was dressed like me. It was a little weird to see people I'd never seen outside of uniform in regular clothes. We, about fifty of us, were seated around a long table in a badly-lit room that wouldn't have fit anyone else. When we got there, everyone applauded, and I kind of think it was for me, because everyone was looking at me. I'm not really sure why, though. I sat down in an empty chair at the of the table and was asked by my classmates if I wanted anything. I said no, but they gave me a Coke and some pizza anyway. The pizza was definitely the worst slice of pizza I've ever had in my life. But I might have been the only one sober enough to taste it. Everyone else (as far as I could tell, that's not even an exaggeration) drank beer. For, I believe, the first time in my life, I was pressured to drink. But I stayed dry the whole time. At one point when some guys offered me a drink, someone, I don't remember who, told me not to eat or drink anything from them. I smiled and said, no, I wouldn't. But she didn't smile. "No, really. Don't accept anything." And she was right. Later that night they offered me unprocessed cocaine. Another first: being offered drugs. Actually, even seeing drugs. Aside from the excessive lawlessness (that is a lot to put aside), I had fairly good time. I just talked to people and posed for pictures. There was no dancing or the promised hamburgers. It only lasted an hour, which I was kind of happy about after being cornered by a bunch of 15-year-olds offering me cocaine. Speaking of lawlessness, I and seven other teenagers crammed into a car without working seatbelts and driven by a kid who may or may not have real license. I was a little glad I was the first one to be dropped off. When I got home, The five adults were still talking at the table, Maggie and Chiara were asleep on Maggie's trundle bed, and Nico and Pablo were on Mom and Dad's bed, one asleep, one watch TV. I told them all where I had just been for a while, and then after that the conversation turned to other things. After a while Karina left, and then I went to bed (at three) while Mercedes and Nestor were still here. I woke up at 2:30 p.m. (good thing I had the day off). From 6:30 to 7:30 we went to Mercedes's and talked/played for a while, and then picked Maggie up from a birthday party and came home.

Sadly, this vacation was only one day long, so I have to go do homework and go to bed now. But before I go, I'm going to do something I haven't before (a radical new approach to blogging!): I'm going to ask a question (You don't really have to answer it. It's mostly rhetorical. [I mean, you can answer it if you want to.]). Is Argentina a third world country? If you've been keeping up on this blog, then you've already read pages and pages about Argentina (more of my sarcastic writing than you need in a lifetime), so your guess is about as good as mine. I don't really know. In some ways it seems like it is, and in others not. And with that intriguing and stimulating thought, I'll log off.