"Hey, how was school?" "Fine." "Were people nice?" "No." "Did you make any friends?" "Yes."

So I've finally decided its time for me to talk about school or "colegio" as it is called here. Its funny because we learn school to be escuela but like no one ever uses that word it's just colegio.
So instead of explaining my schedule, I've decided it would be soooo much easier to just take a picture.

Bueno. Okay so everything is pretty self explanatory. Mondays and Wednesdays I go to school at 12:45 until 5:45, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I go to school at 1:30 until 6:30, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I have gym from 10 am to 11 am, unless it's raining. Gym class is at the country club, which is a country club in every way except I haven't seen a golf course there but it might exist I just don't know, and is a 3 minute walk from mi casa. My school is about 5-10 minutes away from my house, depending on if I'm walking by myself or with other people. It's probably the equivalent of walking to Belleville Ave form my house in the Ridge. The little yellow highlighted line is the designated snack time where they serve hot tea, juice, and a different snack each day. If you want to know more about the snacks you can review one of my previous blogs where I talked about how much I eat and how I should be fat.

So classes:
I pretty much understand everything that goes on in all my classes now, by this I mean that I catch the general topic of the conversation and can go look up stuff about it at home. My favorite class is chemistry or "ambiente" because its really easy to understand and the teacher is fantastic! She explains everything in a way that is really easy to grasp and if we don't get it she'll explain it again without question. She also has A LOT of sass! It's really funny actually. She'll be explaining the hibridación of something and someone will say something a little of topic, and she'll go off on a 20 minute rant about the most random things. English class is also really easy, but that is pretty much because all we do is copy down notes that the teacher writes on the white board, and then do workbook pages. Its like 7th grade Spanish again, without the hours of tiny font and flash card cutting. Math is kind of weird but that's because we are learning thing I haven't learned, or that expand on things that I learned this year in Algebra II. Also they solve the problems a little weird and it looks so much harder than it really is. Salud is like biology class mixed with health class because we study things you would study in health class but also stuff from bio. Lengua or literature is probably one of the hardest classes for me because we read Latin American literature so a lot of the time we read something with so many slang words and I'm just there legit like "what does this even mean?". Etica or Ethics class is kind of like a study of world history and ethics. We look at stuff like how certain revolutions effect society and other stuff like that. It's pretty interesting. Proyecto or project class I can best describe as a class about writing a senior thesis in college except in high school. We basically pick a topic research it and make a like 100 page report with graphs, surveys, and an explanation of your topic. I'm actually doing pretty well in that class so that's good :) I saved my worst class for last. History. I legit have no flippin idea what the heck is going on in the slightest. When we have homework or assignments I kind of understand it. But in general the class is the teacher explaining whatever he is talking about, don't ask me, and then once in a while he'll write something on the board. If you looked around the classroom you would see people drawing on the desks, face down in the arms catching some Zzzz's, the out of place person actually paying attention, and then me drawing in my cuadernito.
My sister gave me the idea to bring a little notebook with me everywhere to write down things like songs I hear that I like, new vocab words, recipes, etc. But during class I don't always have the patience to sit still and listen to things I can barely grasp, so I draw. I can honestly say that I am beast at drawing trees. My friend Leah who is in Italy gave me that idea, and that is legit the only thing I do.  But not so much anymore because I actually know whats happening now.
Here are some fantastic examples of what you might find.

I've also made a list of differences between school here and in the US.
1. Students don't change classes, the teachers move around from class room to class room.
2. There are only 3 or 4 classes each day.
3. Class ends when the teacher stops talking about the subject. Meaning if they finish 10 minutes early we chill.
4. Teachers don't engage the students as much. Meaning its more of a lecture and there is little attempt to ask the students that many questions, and if questions are asked they aren't always taken that seriously. But it depends on the class and the teacher.
5. Someone is ALWAYS absent. I have only had two days when I believe everyone was in class.
6. There is very little homework, you have 2 or 3 days to do each assignment, its not really ever collected or graded, and people don't really ever do it. I do all of it just because it gets me familiar with new words and homework is such a big deal at my school in the US that I feel really weird if I don't do it.
7. Gym is only twice a week.
8. There is no social line between grades, meaning everyone talks to everyone and hangs out with everyone.
9. The students have fights with the teachers about exams and usually always get them postponed or made shorter. (This is not so much my school as other schools I have heard about)
10. Sometimes you can finish a test or assignment the next class.
11. The biggest difference I've found is how the students take notes. My friend put it nicely and said "They put more effort into writing the notes than will ever be put into actually studying them." Everyone writes their notes in at least 3 different colors. How can you do that you might ask? Quite simply. First you don't underline anything in the same color it was written. You absolutely have to have a 10 pack of colored markers to make bullet points, underlines, bold things, etc. You can make any sort of line without a ruler. You don't scribble things out, you use your handy dandy corrector white out pen. You sign the end of your work with a big signature to prove its yours. Here are some examples of my notes. I've pretty much almost mastered it. But ask any of the other exchange students here and they will tell you the same thing.

 

These are some prime examples of note taking in Argentina. Unfortunately I am not in procession of a white out pen or a 10 pack of colored markers, so I make due with what I have.

Another thing to note is that they don't use folders here. They call binders folders, and put all their papers in these plastic sheet thingy's. 

  

Also their binders are weird. You have the option of a 2 or 3 ring binder, but most people have a two ring ones. It looked really funny to me the first time, but now I'm used to it.

 Here are some pictures of the upstairs of my school. I have yet to take pictures of the down stairs where snack time takes place.

 A typical class room

 Hallways.

Stairs.

Everything is outside, like there are no windows and everything is open aired.

So after the whole campera/sweatshirt thing I talked about a few weeks ago, we moved on to our class banner. And after two weeks of planning and making our sign, we finally finished it on Thursday.

 

The sign with all our names

Some class pictures. There are two people missing from the photo in addition to another two people that are absent because they are on exchange, one of them being one of my host brothers.

I like school better and better the more I get to know my classmates, and the free food helps a little too ;) The only thing that would make it perfect would be if it had a popcorn bar, but that's a bit unrealistic especially because they don't have popcorn with butter here, they have something kind of like caramel corn but different.

This weekend I went to the lake house of one of my classmates. But I'll save that for my next blog!
Espero que todos tengan una buena vacaciones de primavera!
Chau!

She'll be comin around the mounain when she comes

So about two weeks have gone by since my last blog post and a few big things have happened!
On Friday I went to the house of my mom's parents, and on the way there we stopped at this nature park place about 10 minutes from their house. It was really pretty and normally there is a zip-line but it was out of order when we were there, so I didn't get to try it.

So Saturday, I went on the famous Tren a las Nubes, or Train to the Clouds, with my friends Lydia (USA), Alejandro (Salta), Alicia (Germany), and Alicia's sister from Germany, not her host sister. "The train to the clouds or Tren a las nubes is known famously to be the most amazing train in the world, the one that takes you to the clouds reaching a height of 4,220 meters (13845.144 feet) about sea level on the 217 km (135 mile) trip. The train departs from the city of Salta, passes though the Valle de Lerma, enters the Quebrada del Toro, and finally reaches La Puna." (Stolen from Lydia's blog)

 

This is the end of the train ride 4,220 meters above sea level, La Puna. This is when the train stops and prepares to turn around for the ride back to Salta.

On the way up to the top of the tour as we passed interesting sites, a tv would come on and give us a short history about the places we were passing, as well as information about the engineer who designed the track. "The number of spirals, viaducts, tunnels and other twists and turns that the train passes through arises from a decision made by the designer of the project, the US engineer Richard Maury. Maury was given a small budget and an almost impossible task, but he took into account the principle of adhesion of train wheels to the railways and the laws of physics, ruling out the funicular system commonly used, so that the train may safely reach the expected heights. The train has no cogwheels, not even for the steepest slopes, since the railways are peculiarly arranged, running though a system of zigzags and spirals it allows the train to slowly make its climb to the clouds. The Train to the Clouds is one of the leading tourist attractions in Salta" (Again from Lydia's blog)

 

On the train we had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of interesting people. The people in the picture above are exchange students from Germany to another province Cordoba, where my friend Avery from Maine is currently living. We also met a women who had two children go on AFS. 

On the way down, because of high altitude, a lot of people were suffering from lack of oxygen, and that's how we met another two AFS exchange students. One girl was helping and older women from Germany, deprived of oxygen, by translating from German to Spanish. Once that crisis was averted we got to talking and found out she went to Germany and her friend went to Illinois in 2000 with AFS. Small world.

Here are some pictures from out the window and from the highest point of our tour.

Sunday was Easter and I went back to my grandparents house for a big lunch with the family. They have a really awesome sick nasty nice house. Its freaking huge, has a pool house, a HUGE yard, and lots of other big stuff. We had a lunch of steak, mashed potatoes (which I might add, are not as Farmor's), salad, and a variety of cheeses.

The Fam at the table.
After eating we went on an Easter egg hunt. The only difference between the ones here and in the US are that instead of the brightly colored plastic egg cases, they find little chocolate eggs that are hidden in the shadows.

School the next week was pretty chill, I got out of chem test because the students just kept asking the teacher question for and hour and a half so now I have to take it tomorrow. On Thursday, I gave a presentation for my Project class on the influence of virtual websites on the loss of privacy and insecurities of the adolescents of Salta, all in Spanish, so I was really proud of myself because I got a 10 out of 10.
Friday we had a field trip type thing to this camp about 10 minutes from the Salta airport. The idea of the camp was to get the people who don't normally talk to the other kids in class, to talk with people. We played soccer, had a BBQ where you had to start the fire with your team and then prepare everything for the meal yourself, and we played volleyball. Lets just say that the weather forecast said it would be cloudy, so I didn't wear sunscreen, and then spent the next 3 days apply a generous amount of aloe vera to my face, neck, and arms, but I'm tan now so it's all good. 
That night I went out for Chinese food and bowling with a bunch of AFS people. I can not tell you how many times I've passed the bowling ally and wanted to enter but haven't.
Tomorrow marks the half way point. Once it's tomorrow I only have 3 months left in Argentina, and that's three months that are going to go bye to quickly.
Oh by the way I found Jesus again! This time he was wearing parachute pants. I know it was him because he was on the Train to the Clouds.

I've found Jesus... And he is freaking huge!! Oh and Guys I Took More Pictures of Mountains!!

So a busy two weeks it's been! I guess I'll start with last Monday.
Last Monday, or March 27th, was my host brother Pablo's Birthday. The tradition at least in this household is that everyone wakes up at 7 before school and brings breakfast to the birthday person in bed and everyone drinks juice as they open presents. I got him a small box that I bough in Cafayate for him to hold his guitar pics in, and made him this card that took me 2 hours to draw and color. That night a bunch of family members came over for pizza, empanadas, and cake.

(The family blowing out the candles)
The party was a lot of fun, my two girl cousins speak really really fast, especially when talking to each other and are constantly telling one another to shut up, it's like a normal happy family :)

The rest of the week went by without anything of big importance to mention.

Then on Sunday my family decided to take a day trip to El Carmen in the Province of Jujuy (who-whoy). We went to this lake with a really nice view of the mountains and a really nice restaurant. And for lunch, this is the most surprising part, I ate fried fish. OH MY GOD I know I ate fish! But i did make a promise to eat anything they put in front of me! And I took a picture as proof.

The restaurant had a really nice view of the lake and the MOUNTAINS.

We just kind of chilled at the lake and stared clouds and took a really nice boat ride on the lake.

After hanging out at that lake for a while we started this really nice trip through the mountains to get to another lake near by. It was an awesome experience to actually be able to go up on a mountain. The road was really curvy and really high up, and I think got vertigo a couple times.

(This is my favorite mountain. I love mountains <3) 

The lake we went to was really nice. When we got there the first thing I noticed was this really big wall with hundreds of names written on it.

 
"This is the wall of love every lover write your name". It's a really cute idea, the wall goes on for the next several hundred feet, and there are A LOT of names written on it.

We fished for a little bit and then left to go see one more sight.
The next sight we went to was well... this

Yes that is Jesus. And yes he is giganticized.
Just for a comparison see the photo below

That's me the little person in the green shirt, and behind me in ginormous Jesus. I also think that Jesus has some sort magic powers over nature because I was able to take this photo in which in think the background looks completely fake, yet it's not.

Lastly on the way home I noticed this TOTALLY awesome playground and made my family stop so I could go on the slide.

However, unseen was the little straight part at the bottom of the slide. So of course I go as fast as I possible can  down the slide and then pretty much destroyed my tail bone, but it was still really fun!

So over all, that trip was really fun!

Hope everyone has a fantastic Easter weekend!!!
Besos! Chau!