Day 78

Well, the Kennedies have come and gone, and now we're looking at the end of the trip coming up already. In a few weeks, we're getting on a plane headed to Atlanta, Georgia. And before that we are going to Patagonia and possibly Bolivia (fingers crossed!). I will be happy to see all my friends again in Minnesota, but right now I'm more sad than happy that I wont be seeing my friends here again for a long, long time (scary thought: some of the people here I will probably never see again). School has ended and now I wont see most of the people in my school again. That's a sad thought.

Well anyway, I apologize for, for the umpteenth time, being slow on my blog. This time I was caught up with the Kennedies visiting and school ending. The day before they got here, Tuesday, was Francisco's 7th birthday party. We bought him a toy--some sort of Transformer-like thing--at the toy store in the mall. Present at this get-together were Francisco and his immediate family, his grandparents, one of his friends, and us. Francisco had a birthday party with all of his friends on the weekend. The thirteen of us (Even Pablo got off the computer to celebrate his brother's birthday--but don't tell him I said that) gathered around the dining room table most of the night with 7-year-old Francisco at the head, smiling behind his cake. It was fun (despite the lack of caterers and speaker systems!). We didn't stay any later than very-late-for-a-school-night(-by-our-standards) because we all had school in the morning. As we were leaving, Nestor and Nico arrived, late, as usual.

Maggie, by this point, has been counting down the days she has to stay in Belgrano (and I get to keep going and seeing friends). On Wednesday it looked like two-and-a-half more weeks. With so little time left, I have sort-of given up on putting effort into anything school-related/paying attention in school. So I don't really have much to say about my school subjects, except for English. I have stories. In English on Wednesday (or possibly Thursday, I don't remember), we were studying conditional sentences ("If this, then this"). One girl wrote on the board, "If my family haven't money, they won't have to buy the food." When she went to correct the sentences, she asked someone what was wrong with the sentence, but they couldn't answer. So she picked up the chalk, crossed out the word "the", and moved on to the next sentence. Wait, wait, wait. What about that glaring error related to the topic at hand which makes the sentence almost incomprehensible? And then later, she wrote herself on the board, "If I were a marcian (No capital, no T), I would go to the space." From behind me, "Profe? Shouldn't it be 'go to space'?" Profe rattled off some linguistic jargon, and Juli relented. I turned around and said so the teacher couldn't hear "She's wrong." Juli was elated. She told a dozen people, who all agreed our teacher doesn't speak well (They all say, "That's not English she's speaking, it's German!). The sad thing about that is that I know that, as much as I like to laugh at my teacher's knowledge of English, there are probably teachers at home who have taught me Spanish worse than that (On a related note, I had a great idea while I was making notes to myself of what to write in my blog: there are probably approximately the same number of English teachers in Argentina as Spanish teachers in the US, why not just have them trade places and solve both language problems? If only I were president of the world, everything would be so much better.)

Back to the real world, in which I, sadly, do not hold any positions of extreme power, Jay and Freda and Jack and Max came! Yaaay! They caught an earlier flight than their evening one, so we saw them in the afternoon. We walked around for a while downtown, looking at both historic churches, a museum with art, and the peatonal (pedestrian mall), and we ate empanadas at the MAAM restaurant. Then we went back to our house for the rest of the night.

Thursday I skipped gym for the second time that week, and instead hung out with the Kennedies downtown. We walked around Plaza 9 de Julio for a few hours, many spent in MAAM, the Museum of High Altitude Archeology (The acronym doesn't really work in English. MHAA...). Then we, or I, took the Kennedies on the teleferico, the cable car, up to San Bernardo hill while Dad drove up Mom and Max (Maggie was at dance). We looked out on the city again, and then rode back down and went home. We had to make multiple trips to the bread store to fill up Kennedies, both of the Haunsperger and of the French varieties, not used to eating so late. And at night, we went to Mercedes's and everyone met each other and, after some hesitation, a bilingual game of jumper-cables and running around was on.

We had no school Friday. Friday was the anniversary of Salta's founding. So we slept in. In the afternoon, we went downtown, and then to San Lorenzo (Remember the duende story? Maybe not. It's a getaway little town outside the city. Friday afternoon I went on my first ever horseback ride. It was fun. The horses went slowly, so I enjoyed it. We, Maggie, Freda, the guide, and I rode horses along the hills to some spectacular views of the city below us. It was a good first horse-experience. After our hour horse ride, we went to the mall, and then at night we went to a peña, the same one Mom, Dad, and I went to one of our first days. Max and I both fell asleep at our table by the end.

On the weekend, we took another two-day trip to Tolombon, this time with the Kennedies and Karina and Daniel and Karina's mom. To fit us all in two cars, Dad rented an embarrassingly enormous van that we took, along with Daniel's car through the quebrada to Tolombon. We stopped at all the stops. The goat place. The empanada shop, which was closed. The Devil's Throat, which we decided to come back to. The slab of rock shaped exactly like a toad. The "Three Crosses" viewpoint. Finally we arrived to Tolombon. We lunched, late, in Cafayate, the bigger town that Tolombon is next to. Jay, Jack, Max, and I snuck off and had ice cream. The late-afternoon-early-evening we spent in the pool. In the evening, we took a tour of a winery. It was short. Our tourguide had interesting English speech mannerisms (Mmm? Mmm? Mmm.) that we enjoyed. I had a second first at the winery: my first wine-tasting, which is illegal here, too, but nobody heeds the law. I sipped four wines. One was actually pretty tasty, but the others were "feos" in my opinion. We ate dinner at the hotel all 13 of us, and then one by one, headed to bed.

The last day of the week started with a dip in the pool, then Dad and I tried to hike over to the mountains we could see right near our hotel, but it ended up all being blocked off. We had an amazing lunch under the trees at a big table, with men asado-ing right next to us. In the afternoon we headed home. We stopped at the Garganta del Diablo on the way back, and we walked up it. That thing is really cool. We stopped once more at the goat place, and then headed straight home.

Monday we skipped. Maggie and I played hookie and instead we took a long car ride to Salinas Grandes with the French Kennedies in our gigantic van. Last time we went there I didn't give a good enough description, so now I'll put in all the flowery language the salt flats deserve. The last part of the drive takes you through all the mountains and valleys of Purmamarca and that area. Lots of pretty pictures. The Salinas Grandes are in the "puna" part of Jujuy, which is the high desert part. The road wind up mountains and goes through and over them. When you reach the summit of the road, you can see the salt flat down ahead. The unexpecting tourist will think they are looking at a lake, because the flats shine like water. But no. He is in for something much cooler than that. With eyes fixed on the body that he only realizes isn't water when he sees a road and cars driving on it, he stops staring only once he's down the far side of the mountain and he sees something moving out his side window. It takes a second to see the strange, tawny creature against the strange, tawny landscape, but that animal is a vicuña, a relative of the llama that is a little smaller and has a longer, slimmer neck than its cousin. The luckiest of tourists, as the Kennedies just so happened to be this past Monday, will see in addition to vicuñas, donkeys (We saw babies! They were so cute!) and rheas (The South American cousins of ostriches). After that colorful display of fauna, a blazingly white desert lays out through the front windshield of our Goliath. There are mountains in every direction, but we are in the altiplano, the high plains. It's flat all around us. Outside our windows, the scenery changes very suddenly from a Southwestern-style desert to a landscape from the moon. The road that is built over the salt flats is simply a ridge running straight through them, which we drove across. In the middle of the flat is a store, made of salt, that sells salt-related souvenirs. The salt in the ground, I should explain, is solid, as if we were tiny gnats walking across a cube of salt. And it's tessellated. The ground is made of hexagons and pentagons of salt. After a stop at the souvenir store, which wasn't even entered except to use the bathroom, the van rolls on off the road onto a path over the salt further out, where it finally stops at its destination. The salt on the ground is sharp. I would have thought it would be smooth, but it is jagged and it hurts to touch. It tastes, if you were wondering, like regular table salt. And it is mined (Sadly, because that means it is disappearing.). It is mined by using some sort of machine to take out huge slabs of salt at a time, which leave rectangular pools which fill up with water. Several dozen photos later, the van packs up and turns its back to the white salt flat to head back up the mountain. We got home late, and it's not hard to imagine why we stayed longer than we expected. Early the next morning, Jay, Freda, Jack, and Max, left Salta. I think they went to Iguazú Falls and then to Buenos Aires, but don't quote me on that.

In history Tuesday, we watched Gandhi (apparently in Northfield they watched the same movie the same week), and the teacher Maggie hates so much announced she was retiring just as we were leaving. Besides that, not much notable. It was an early day (but my last one!) and a culture day (but my second-to-last one!), but it wasn't too bad. I did some hanging out with people. Gym was basically the same as always. I didn't understand what the rules were until we were most of the way through it. Tuesday night, though, was when Mom and Dad told me they had set the date and that we would be leaving on Friday. I announced this via facebook. At night, Mom and Dad and Maggie went out with Karina and Daniel, but I stayed home.

Wednesday was when everything changed for me in school. Suddenly I was, again, the center of attention for my last three days. I don't think I spent a single break by myself from Wednesday on. Wednesday was my last day of Religion (That wasn't my favorite class, but then again, it probably wasn't my least favorite.) and of English (I never ended up correcting her about anything even though I had pictured myself doing so. I guess that wasn't really realistic considering I barely ever spoke, even in English, in her class.). No more "April, Wednesday 21st". Aw. At night, Mercedes, Chiara, Francisco, Nestor, and Nico came over for dinner. A large game of pillow fighting resulted.

Thursday was my last day of a number of classes. My history teacher came by and kissed me on the cheek in Argentine fashion before she left. I talked to people all day long. I had gym after school, but since it was raining, it was cancelled and I ended up having to walk home.

Friday was my last day. I was sad about this, but Maggie was happy. I had seen on facebook the night before a note sent by Luluu to most of the people in my class saying to bring things for Friday, but I let on that I hadn't seen anything. On the way into school I saw Joche carrying a large plastic bag sideways. After assembly, I walked into the room and saw that a lot of people had brought in things for a party. And, apparently our TIC teacher had already been asked, we had a party first and second hours. There were two homemade cakes, one from Joche and one from Juli and Mer. And there were a lot of other snacks, too. We pushed our desks together and ate and took pictures and toasted and they gave me a card and a present--an Argentine soccer jersey, that I'm wearing as I type this. I liked my party. The rest of the classes went as they always do. My culture teacher told some of the people in my class that I was smiling because I didn't have to see them anymore. I'm not going to miss that class. I had thought that I was going to go to the mall with my class after school, but I didn't. I said long goodbyes to most of my class, and then Dad picked me up and we left. Goodbye Belgranoers! Les extrañaré!

Friday evening we went to Mercedes's. I played with Francisco and Adriano while the adults were at the table, as usual.

We had Chiara all day Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning we made empanadas with Karina and Daniel and Karina's Mom here at our house. I woke up late so I missed most of the empanada-making, but I was up for the end. After empanadas, we drove up a quebrada a ways, up the way the famous "Train to the Clouds" goes, but we didn't go very far. It was a short, pretty drive. We stopped in Campo Quijano on the way back, the place that the best brand of dulce de leche is named after (It isn't made there, though.). We went to San Lorenzo at Maggie's request (To see a cute waiter! She's such a 13-year-old-girl.). We spent the rest of the day at home with Chiara.

Sunday we cooked the empanadas we made Saturday--empanadas are best if they are given a day of rest. We ate them with some of Karina and Daniel's friends at their "quincho", country house. We stayed there most of the day. Then we came home and dropped off Chiara.

We didn't go to school Monday. Eight weeks is too short. It feels like I just started at Belgrano, and now I'm done. Three or four months would have been better, like we did in Liverpool eight years ago. Instead I slept in and studied AP Stats and AP World. Ugh. I can't remember the last time I said this, but I would have rathered go to school than stay home. I am having serious troubles studying statistics. I just hate doing it and can't force myself to do it for more than half an hour. I don't know how I'm going to take a four-hour test in a few weeks. History is better.

Today I slept in again, and then did some more AP studying. After school, some of my friends, Luluu, Anto, Cami, and Desi, (All girls, a fact some family members enjoyed.) came over here to eat breakfast like yankees. We made farmers' potatoes with onions, peanut butter toast (We have peanut butter now thanks to the French Kennedies!), bacon (Which was the primary reason they wanted to know how yankees ate breakfast), and eggs with ham. For dessert, Mom made brownies. It was quite a feast. I put on my Argentine "remera" for the breakfast. They stayed for a few hours and talked and then we said long goodbyes, even though we have plans to make plans to see each other again. Since then I have finished and posted my blog.

Day 63

Now, look at this! Only two days later! Pretty good, huh? As a side note, is anyone still reading this? I've noticed the comments have disappeared. Well, anyway. I'll write to myself if no one else. Um. So Friday night was Mercedes's birthday as I said.

We showed up half-an-hour late at 9:30, and apologized for our lateness, only to find we were the first people there! Argentines aren't known for their punctuality. But the party was amazingly huge! It was like a wedding! The furniture was all rearranged to create two large spaces inside and out. It surrounded by chairs Mercedes had rented from a birthday service place. On tables were neatly arranged snacks on trays on a fancy tablecloth. And there were people in the kitchen cooking. But more than that--there were waiters who carried snacks on trays! And a huge sound system outside! And a professional videographer! Fifty people came to the birthday. It was gigantic. For a few hours people stood around and talked. I, during this time, went back to the hallway/bedroom area with Adriano (Partly to play with him, but partly to avoid having to greet dozens of people and partly to not be offered food by waiters all night). A few hours after everyone got there, Mercedes gave a little speech about her birthday and blew out the sparkler on her cake. Two and a half hours after the party started, Mercedes's boyfriend Nestor showed up and tricked her into thinking he got her a bag of avocados (To my fellow males, Mom and Maggie have informed me that this is a big no-no boyfriend-wise). A few hours into the party, people, at great urging, began to dance to music. Some people knew how. None of us did. I swayed in the corner while Mom and Dad and Maggie and Chiara danced their hearts out next to me. We danced for a while and played with party whistles and confetti. At two a.m., we were the first to leave. The party didn't end until 5 or 7 (which salteños all seem to manage to say with a straight face)! And while I'm on the topic of birthdays, Chiara's 10th and Francisco's 7th are both coming up while we're here.

We had left early because Sunday morning we left to go to Cachi early in the morning for what the guidebook said was a four-hour-drive each direction. After four hours (and exactly zero minutes!) of sleeping, reading, and looking out the window as the hills rolled by us, we arrived in a village of 4,000 with the first view of snow-capped Andes (As impressive as the Andes are, the snow doesn't compare to what we have all year long [see Day 0].) towering over the valley. It was a beautiful day in Cachi, but we didn't stay long. We first went to the central square for tourist info, then we went to a restaurant and ate really good stuffed peppers and quinoa, and then we went to various vistas around the town and saw views of the beautiful Andes and fields of red peppers drying in the fields. Then we headed back down the stunning drive down valleys and around mountains above a layer of fog toward Salta. We got back around 8.

I had a pretty good day at school today. I'm pretty sure I failed my language test and I have a ton of homework for philosophy, but all in all, it wasn't too bad. We four of us went to an Asian restaurant--our first time since Minnesota--after school, but it was very bad.

In other news, four weeks from today, we leave Salta. It's weird to think this is coming to an end. It's gone by so quickly. Also, Aunt Freda and Uncle Jay and Jack and Max are visiting Salta on Wednesday! Jack, if you're reading this, we already have a girlfriend ready for you. She's only nine, but she'll be ten soon and she knows you're coming and wants to meet you all.

Day 61

Tuesday, my early day, started with language, and was followed by math. After that is history. I (and Maggie) have a new history teacher since last week. Apparently the teacher we had had for the first four weeks was just a substitute for this teacher. The first thing I noticed about her was that she wears an incredible amount of purple eyeshadow (It goes all the way up to her eyebrows! And it's bright purple!). And the next thing was that, of all my teachers, she is the most interested in me. And that's not really a good thing. I got an interview the first day (Where in the US are you from? Is it really cold there? Are you related to John Kennedy?). And then another on the second. Not only that, but she asked me (twice) to define "imperialism" (for the perspective of someone from an imperialist power, I'm guessing) and several other questions, and she asked me if I understood after every point she made to the class. Ahh. Too much attention for me. We got a take-home test due Thursday, but when she came over to explain it to me, she took half of my test back to her desk with her. So I didn't have it to do my homework. Oh, well. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. After that is culture. For Tuesday's class, we were (apparently) supposed to have had researched a "counterculture" and be ready to present it to the class. She went though everyone in the class, and at the very end of the hour (literally as the bell was ringing) she called on me (sadly the bell did not save me; she had the class stay until I answered), and I told her I didn't have it. She said to bring it in for Friday or "I'd get a big, fat '1' " (our 'F'). Well, it have been worse. I had gym after school. I don't really think I like gym so far, partly because we keep playing different games and it takes me most of the hour to figure out what's going on. Tuesday night we went out with Karina and Daniel to Jack's. I (in a lemon mood and not, as everyone else always seems to be, in a beef mood) ordered lemonade and lemon chicken. It was the first lemonade I've had here (which is really saying something; I normally drink two or three glasses a day). It was pretty good. The chicken was good too. For desert I had (I didn't know this when I ordered it) a gigantic ice cream sundae with wafers and corn flakes in it. (While I'm talking about deserts, I should mention a recent find: at the bakery we go to often to buy little cookies, we found a cookie that is just a thin biscuit, with an two-inch-thick level of dulce de leche covered in chocolate. Yum. [Side note: as I was writing that parenthetical, I reached into a bakery bag to see if there were any left. Sadly there were none.])

Wednesday I had econ (My teacher is finally back after about three weeks), then English, then religion (I had to give a presentation with my group, but I didn't know what we were presenting, so I faked ignorance [I've found this to be very helpful in these situations. A little "I no speaks Spanish" goes a long way.].). In TIC we went back up to the computer lab, and I, again copied answers (This time, though, everyone else was copying too). I'm not sure why we were in the computer lab, because we never used the computers. We didn't do anything Wednesday evening. Well, I did a fair amount of worrying about my history test due the next day.

But it was Ok. After English, my history teacher asked whether I had the test, and I said no, and explained. So she had me borrow Juli's test and said to turn it in Tuesday. She also had Juli (or maybe Juli did of own accord) correct my test. There were surprisingly few errors (especially for having finished it in the 15 minutes before class). I'm going to go back in time now to first hour. Thursday was picture day. When I got to school, instead of wearing our regular gray uniforms that look like lab coats, almost everyone was wearing a dark blue vest. I guess we were supposed to wear something different today. Oops. I sort of stood by the side not knowing what to do while my class was getting ready to pose for a group picture. My preceptor (The administrator who runs everything related to my class.) saw me and told some boy in another class to lend me his vest. So I got that done and returned his vest and put on my lab coat. And then it was individual picture time. But I managed not to be seen while the photographer went through people to take their picture. Ok, now back to my surprisingly-good history class

My teacher was actually impressed with my history test. She gave me a thumbs up, and I was feeling pretty good about myself (and my procrastination abilities). And then the day took a turn for the worse from which it did not recover. I haven't said yet, that Maggie absolutely hates this new teacher. She is trying to help our Spanish by singling the two of us out in class (where all the other teachers either treat us the same or give us different homework [such as my philosophy teacher]), but this singling out is just too much for Maggie (and I'm not exactly loving it). She came home really upset one day saying that the teacher had made her read aloud to the class two whole pages of her work, and then corrected her grammatical errors. It's not exactly surprising, then, that she wanted me to talk, in Spanish, about imperialism. And then she asked whether the United States was being imperialist in Iraq. Erm... Yes seemed like the correct answer, so that's the one I chose. And then, Can you think of other examples of your country's imperialism? I stuttered and started for a while. Are there other ways your country is imperialist? You can tell us your real opinion, we won't judge you. Well, I don't know! Maybe... How about your war over the Falklands? Isn't that imperialist, too? But again, "yes" seemed to be the opinion of the other 35 people listening to my words, so I chose it again. Ok. We think so, too. (You think the country I come from is trying to create an empire out smaller, poorer states like yours? Thanks, that's comforting.) I was shaking at the end of this interrogation. She wasn't mean, just a little, um, uncomfortingly (Yes, that is a word.) curious about my political views. There was also, "Are you a Democrat or a Republican and which is your state?" hidden in there, which was a much better question in my opinion. "Demócrata y demócrata".

I got another quite-personal questioning in economics, this time about money. This one wasn't anything I was so adverse to answering. Are you upper class, middle class, or lower class? (Well, Ok. It wasn't anything I was thrilled to answer.) I said middle class (And I think that's at least close to true. I don't know. I don't pay any attention to family finances.). Are you well-off? Does your family go on trips often? Does your family have a car? Yes, yes ("He's been to China, profe!"), and yes (I didn't mention that our "car" was actually two mini-vans). Those aren't things Argentina's middle class can afford, she explained. And then she moved on to other things. I was begging my philosophy teacher in my head not to say anything to me in class (Are philosophers much richer in the United States? Do you feel bad about your philosophers imposing their philosophies on other countries like Argentina? In what other ways is your country horrible?), but luckily she didn't. The one good thing about being singled out all day was that my classmates remembered that I was in their class. Before, people had started to, well, not ignore me; they're very friendly. But I have spent a few breaks sitting on the bench outside the room by myself, or standing a few feet behind a circle of people hoping they would invite me to talk with them (not that I would understand everything they said anyway). But now, I was never without someone to talk (or not talk) to, like on the first day. I was very happy.

I went home and took a long nap after school. But then I had to get up for gym. Oh boy. The first activity was just taking balls and throwing them at the other people (Coach: "two pesos to whoever hits Oso's head!" No one ended up winning this, though there were tries.). I partook as minimally as possible (Kennedy! Get animated! Throw that ball at somebody!), and ended up not throwing any balls at anyone. The second game was to tag every person on the opposite team while they were confined to a rectangle marked by orange cones (I was lucky enough to get tagged early.). After gym, I worked on homework for a while (Or, at least, I opened up my books and tried to keep concentrated), and later we had an asado at our house. Mercedes and Chiara, and Nestor and Nico, and Karina and Daniel all came over for dinner. I bailed on the steaks, and had the less meaty option of a hamburger and potato salad (Yes, surprisingly, the less-meat option involved a hamburger. I know I've defined it before, but an asado is just meat. And lots and lots of meat. People here like their meat.) I had a good time making drawings with Maggie and Chiara of "Paco" the goat (You probably don't remember us inventing him weeks ago on the drive back from Tolombon.) being killed by Maggie or Chiara. But I was exhausted (I'm always tired at dinnertime. One thing I can't wait to go back to is the normal mealtimes.), so I snuck away and went to bed.

At this point I still hadn't researched a counterculture, so I got up early to do that. After some deliberation (I didn't want to choose a US counterculture because that would just be Amerocentric of me, but I couldn't find one non-US-related.), I chose the hippies and wrote a little page (direct from Wikipedia, and translated by me) about them. In TIC, we took a test I hadn't known about. I never know when it's kosher to use notes, because sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I used my notes, and he didn't stop me. The questions were all questions we had answered in classwork on Wednesday, but it turns out my group had #3 wrong (Sorry, Martín, for the wrong answer!). In stats we had another test I was unaware of. This I didn't need notes for, though (Beginning-of-the-year stats? I did that in September.). Except that I forgot to find the standard deviation, and I just made up answers to things like "What are the steps in the Statistical Process?" that other kids had memorized. Oh well.

In culture, she had me read what I had researched. I made it short. I summed up the first half-page, and just ignored what I had written about hippies in other countries (which may not have been the smartest thing to do, given what she thinks about me). When I was done, I looked up at her. She was standing right in front of me. She didn't react to me stopping reading. A few second went by and then Juli behind me said, "Sam, are you done?" "Yes, I'm done." We both looked at the teacher again, but she was still silent and looking at me. "Um. Ok, how about some applause for Sam?" offered Juli, and a few people started clapping, but then the teacher took her eyes off me and stopped them. "Why are you giving special treatment? Most of you couldn't even hear what he said. I had to stand this close to hear him. How do you know whether what he said was good?" And then the applause stopped. Later in the class, she had been talking about something else and said "I treat all my students equally with respect." Someone in the back said, "What about Sam?" Thank you, person in the back!! But she just ignored that. At the end of class, she called out everyone's grades so they could write them in their gradebooks (I guess there's no FERPA here!). Most of the grades between 7 and 9 out of 10, and I don't think any were below 6. I am, because I enrolled late, at the end of the otherwise-alphabetic list the teachers have. "Trundo, 7." she called (I changed some letters in the name so not to release it on the internet). "Zafaz, 8. Kennedy." Wait, there was a period after that. She was supposed to say a number. Like "4" or "2". Then she came around to sign what we wrote. When she got to me, she saw I didn't have anything written, and then she wrote in the date, and my score and signed it. I tried to crane my neck to see what number she had written. My book said "8 (ocho)". I was shocked. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, pointed to the number 8, and said in slow Spanish, "This is your score. Your presentation was very good." Wait, what!?! What happened to that teacher who hated me and said all those things about me!?! Then walked on to sign other gradebooks and someone collected mine and put in the box while I sat in stunned silence for the rest of the hour.

I think I've been too harsh on my school so far. I've only focused on the things my culture and history teachers have said to make me feel uncomfortable and unliked. But my other classes really aren't that bad. Literature was actually pretty enjoyable. We were studying for a test on Monday, and all I had to do was copy what the teacher said, and I could listen to the conversations around me. Friday night we went to a travel agent to see about going to Patagonia (where Mom really wants to visit) and Bolivia (where I really want to visit). She's looking into both.

And today is Saturday. I slept in late today (Yay!) (Which meant I missed some sort of graduating-class trip to somewhere, but I wasn't really sure on the details of it, and I haven't yet told Mom and Dad anyway [this blog is going to be the way they find out].). Since then I've been mostly working on homework and this blog, actually. Tonight we are going to go to Mercedes's birthday party.

Day 56

Ok. I'll be honest. I'm really tired of this blog. I was never exactly thrilled, but there was a point where I didn't mind. Now, it's just tiring remembering everything I did and putting it into a blog. But don't worry. The magic of English high school graduation requirements will keep this blog going, if infrequently.

Thursday, I had English. My English teacher definitely favors me. Well, not so much favors, as is nice to more than the rest. Next history, then economics. For two weeks now, my econ teacher has been gone. And lastly, philosophy. She assigned three pages of translation for the weekend. Just for me.

Viernes (see how I'm just slipping the español into my words?) started with Technology of Information and Communication. For the umpteenth time, he dictated and we copied. Stats test third/fourth hour. I don't think it went too badly (Numbers are the same in English and Spanish, after all.). I have decided just to take advantage of not understanding all of what my culture teacher says. I copied down what was on the board about "counterculture". Every day so far, culture class has followed basically the same pattern: there's no work, the teacher just has a lecture/discussion. She starts off the lecture, then she starts calling on students for opinions, and then in evolves into an argument between teacher and pupils, with the teacher eventually just giving the students her opinion. My last class was language, and then I came home. That night, we went to Mercedes's house, with Nestor and Nestor's friend Eduardo. I can't remember whether I've mentioned Eduardo before. Dad and Maggie met him at a photocopy shop. He heard them talking English and (as he speaks fluent English) introduced himself. It turns out he is friends with Nestor. Mom and I met him on Friday. Now here is the weird part: he is Argentine and had only once visited the United States, but he had a Texan accent. Apparently he speaks English only with his Texan friends. Nestor made "puchero", a boiled meal. Some of the things, I have to admit, might have been a little too strange for me (bone marrow?), but it was not a bad dinner. We stayed extremely late, as always.

Saturday we went to the salt flats of Jujuy. It's a long drive, but it was worth it. The salt flats are just simply a flat desert made of sand that stretches for miles around. And they are amazing. I don't how else to describe it. I feel like the salt flats were striking enough to deserve a long paragraph, but that's really all it was--which is what made it that cool. For a long ways around, it's completely flat, and in the distance, you can see the Andes mountains. The sand is bright white, so much so that you need sunglasses to see. The landscape is completely devoid of plants and animals--I'll say it again, there is nothing but salt. It is the strangest, most amazing landscape. On the way back we saw vicuñas, which are basically long-necked llamas.

Sunday we had dinner with Karina and Daniel and friends, and then we went to their friends Lily and Carlos's house for a while.

Monday after school we did nothing. We stayed home all night and ate in.

Tuesday we went to watch Maggie dance at her studio (She looks pretty much the same as she does at home.), and then we looked at some churches downtown (They were very beautiful, but we didn't stay long because it was Easter Tuesday and there were things going on.), and we went to a restaurant for dinner.

Wednesday was the last day before Easter break. In TIC the last hour, Noel asked me to write something on his binder ("Just write whatever"). He had taught me the word "vago" a few weeks earlier, which I think means just "dude", so I wrote on his binder, "¡Hi Noel! ¿How are you?" Then I crossed out "How are you" and wrote "Oh, no. I mean, ¿What's up, vago?" I didn't think it was too original, but he did. By the end of the class, everyone had been shown or told what I had written.

Thursday we made empanadas at Carlos and Lily's. This took all day. We made dough, chopped meat and potatoes and onions, cooked the filling, then rolled out the dough, and tried (and failed, for the most part) to twirl the filling into the dough like they do here. That night we ate the empanadas at the house of another friend of Karina and Daniel's.

Friday evening we went to Mercedes's house and ate tacos that Mom and Dad had made. The people there (some of them anyway) had never had tacos! It's weird to think about from our norte-americano perspective. I think we (or I, I shouldn't generalize) think of Mexican food as basically what everyone South of us eats, but that's not true at all. Mexican food is much more foreign to them than to us.

Saturday again we went to Mercedes's with (as usual) her four kids and Nestor. We each brought different dishes this time.

Sunday we drove South to Cachi where you can see the Andes (Apparently the mountains we can see are really just the foothills!). Well, not quite. We tried to. But it was so foggy we ended up turning around. We went out to dinner again with Karina and Daniel and Lily and Carlos.

Today, finally. School is back on. Nothing exciting to report, though. We only stayed home after school.

Ok, I'm sorry about the one-sentence days. But there were just some days I have nothing to say about (And I'm really tired of being so far behind on this blog).

The days are ticking away quickly now. Strange and sad as it seems, we're planning our return now. Maggie has been begging for weeks to be let out of school a week early, and it looks like it might possibly happen now. But no promises, of course. I have been constantly reminding myself that I have to study AP Statistics, but I am incredibly far behind. I'm actually ahead of my classmates in AP World History, but I'm having some troubles forcing myself to do math. Oh well. Maggie is boy crazy. This is nothing new, of course. She's been boy crazy for a while, but it's gotten worse now that the boys are tanned, have accents, and play soccer (Evidently, playing soccer automatically make you more attractive. Maybe I shouldn't have quit my little 4th grade league). There was one boy who smiled and waved at her twice, and she has not stopped talking about it. Completely unrelated-ly, Maggie's interest in taking evening walks by the park has spiked since we've been here.