Two years later... oops!

Hello Internet,
Long time no post! I told myself before I left Argentina that I was going to make a post about what it is like to come home. Now, 3 days before my first trip back to Argentina, would be as good a time as any! Although it has been a year and a half since I got home, and almost 2 years since I first left, all the experiences are still fresh in my mind.

The return camp:
Much like the beginning orientation, the ending orientation was a mix of intercultural experiences. People were speaking in all forms of Spanish, combining it with their first languages, sometimes even their second. At the end camp, the volunteers sort of force you to hang out and do activities with the people from your home country so that you can re-assimilate to the culture. Just like astronauts have to be debriefed after coming back from space, so do exchange students! Many of the exchange students thought the camp was stupid, as did I until I finally got home. Most people had to travel a long time on a bus to get to the camp, and no one really wanted to do forced activities. Everyone just wanted to get home to their families. I mean who would want to spend 36 hours with a hundred emotional teens who just had to say goodbye to their friends and families? But I'm actually really happy we had the end camp. I got to meet a bunch of cool people, have late night guitar sing-a-longs, and spend some time with the other American exchange students that I hadn't seen since Miami.

My first day back in New Jersey:
The first thing I did when I got home was take a shower. Even though I had full bathing capabilities in Salta, showering in your own bathroom is just surreal and we all take it for granted. Then after stepping out of the shower and proudly putting on my new Argentina soccer jersey, I went downstairs to find 20 of my friends in my backyard. I was surprised that so many of my friends had suddenly appeared in my backyard in the time it took for me to shower and change. At the end camp they gave us advice about how to talk to our friends and family when we got home. I didn't really pay that much attention and I really wish I had because the first half hour of the party was REALLY awkward. I had missed 6 months of gossip, so I had no idea what anyone was talking about, I had no idea what songs were super popular, who was dating, what new TV shows there were, or what movies had just come out. And when anyone asked me how my trip was I would freeze because 1. I didn't go on a trip 2. I was gone for 6 months establishing a new life 3. How does one even summarize that? After a little while I got back into the swing of things, and I was able to talk to everyone again and it was all fine. Within a few days I was back to hanging out with my friends and everything was great, I just needed that little adjustment period.

A little side note and anecdote:
Whatever you do, do not try to bring alcohol back home. My host dad gave me some wine to bring home for my father, and I had bought those cute little Fernets for my sister, but to my dismay I was not allowed to bring them into the country. After the 10 hour plane ride, I arrived in Miami with my fellow Americans and the airport was crazy. We all had to get to connecting flights, but first we had to go through customs. Our baggage was slow, and so was passport control! When I finally got my bags I said a quick goodbye to any of my friends that I could see and ran for the exit because my flight to Newark was in 2 hours. But then on my way out, the customs officer stopped me to check my bags. He went through my whole bag and took the time to unwrap everything I had as a present, interrogate me about my mate (he thought I was smuggling drugs), and lecture me about trying to bring alcohol into the country underage. I was sleep deprived and hadn't spoken that much English in a while, so of course I could barely talk, and he mistake that as nervousness and made me feel like a criminal. I finally got out of customs with a ticket -_- and had to RUN through the airport to make it to my flight. Dressed in all winter clothing in the middle of July I looked like a royal mess, and I only made my flight because their had been a storm the night before and all the flight were delayed. I got on the plane smelling terribly I'm sure, but I was finally on the last leg of my journey home! So moral of the story, don't try to bring alcohol into the country if you have to go through any sort of customs, even if it is a gift for a 50 year old man.

Este desayuno es HORRRRRRRRIBLE (la salió esta vez!)

Hola gente del Internet!
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, or winter, depending on where in the world they are. Its been pretty chilly here the last few days. While my family in the US is walking around in short sleeves and shorts, I'm bundled up in a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt,  and then like 5 sweaters.
So I'll be picking up from where my last blog post left off, which I believe was Father's day. I don't remember exactly what I did the following days, but I know that either the Wednesday that came after or the Wednesday after that was the next big thing that happened. That Wednesday my family woke up a little bit earlier than normal to go on a short day trip to Cafayate. Now I've already been to Cafayate once on a trip organized with AFS, but this one was different because we didn't go in bus, and therefore could stop along the way as we pleased. The landscape is breathtaking as is all of the landscape of Salta and along the way to Cafayate there are a few famous sites that are worthy of stopping at.

 It's famous cause it look like a frog, but legit like actually.

 This is an amphitheater and we went to it on Flag Day so we got to hear a guy play the National Anthem and we all sang along

 This place is called the Devil's throat because when you look at it from the inside it looks like a throat.

Looking out from the inside of the Devil

 Paisaje y el solcito

It was a nice little day trip and we stopped in some cute little towns on the way back.

Then, a week later my host brother who has been in the United States since January, Martin, finally returned to Argentina. Nacho, Pablo, and I made signs to greet him at the exit from the airport. In total the entire family more or less was there to greet him as well as his two best friends. We had a family/friends dinner for him with emapanadas and coke and listened to him play some piano. The next few days at school we did almost nothing but talk about his trip and look at pictures. It was a great excuse to miss some class! :)

On Saturday, AFS had their farewell gathering. All the exchange students had to bring a type of food from their home country and a letter about their experience. I made banana bread. After reading out letters we played some games or energizers. I taught everyone triceratops, a new international favorite (thanks Miranda). 

 The next day we did a mural with some of the kids from AFS on a building in the city.

 Martin y yo

 Rebecca from Hungary and Me

 Naty and Me. That's my hand on her arm and apparently she got sunburned and now has a hand print on her skin because it shaded that part from the sun.

The finished mural

On the 4th of July I made a PowerPoint and gave it during class, I did it solely for the purpose of missing class.

Yesterday night I learned to make empanadas from the family master, Tia Nancy. I wasn't that great at it but that only means I have to practice!

Today, Sunday, I made a typical American Breakfast for almost all my family. It consisted of eggs with ham, pancakes, French toast, homemade syrup, and freshly squeezed orange juice. 

 Only missing the syrup and juice

La famila (hermanos y primos) from left to right 'Ana, Guada, Nacho, Cande, Yo, Martin (the tall one) Tomy, and Pablo'

I only have a week left in Salta and it feels really weird. I'm getting things together that I want to take back with me so that I can remember certain things or share things with people back home, but it doesn't feel right. I think part of it is that I have become so accustomed to daily life here and it is weird to think that in 10 days I'll be back in Glen Ridge doing all the summer homework that has been haunting me. The next week will be filled with goodbyes, fun times, and quite possibly, some tears.

Hope everyone is enjoying summer and or winter!

Chau, besito!

Mi casa es mi casa

So after much pestering and nagging from Linda and Torben, I am finally making a short and sweet little post about my casa (house). This will be mostly pictures and little captions.
Here we go!

 Mi casa

 Dinning Room

Front entrance

 Living room

 Backyard

Backyard

 Kitchen

 Computer/ Asado room

Another of the dinning room

 other part of the kitchen

 My room

 Other side of my room

So yeah that's more or less where I have been living the last few months!

Homage of the Gauchos

So the sunday before last, two really important things happened in Salta, one being Father's Day and the other being the Festival of the Gauchos, or the Homage of the Gauchos (gaucho= cowboy).
I'll start with Father's day.
Here in the Zarate household Father's day passes quite normally. Leading up to the day, there are commercials for various tech related gadgets, candy, etc. We woke up a little early at 9 and showered my host dad, Noel, with gifts. I had been sick all that week with the flu, so I accompanied my host mom to buy some of the gifts in the mall last week. Later that day the whole family came over for lunch and a desert. The families exchanged gifts to the respected male members of the family and after many hours of eating, every one of the kids were passed out on whatever surface we could find. I feel like every meal I eat here gives me a worst case of "the itis" than Thanksgiving does. Overall Father's Day is pretty traditional and was fun.

On Saturday afternoon and evening, the gauchos started arriving. I was in the center with one of my friends when all of a sudden the gauchos came riding through the center on their horses and paraded through the streets. The festival is to commemorate General Juan Martin Miguel de Guemes, and on the 16th, the gauchos come to the Monument of Guemes to stand guard during the night and just remember him with bonfires, folk music, and a good time.

 The gauchos standing guard

Juan Martin Miguel is remember for being the liberator of the country that, along with the gauchos, served to support the Army commanded by San Martin to keep the ideals of independence and national sovereignty. 

On the 17th, the streets in front of the monument are lined with visitors from other provinces and from all around Salta in order to see the parade. The parade reminded me a lot of the the memorial day parade back in GR because they had little boy and girl scout types, different clubs from the town, and a few really strange things. 

 This are traffic signals and carrying them are the traffic directors. Reminded me a lot of color guard but with traffic signs.

 Some gauchos riding them ponies

Here is a little clip of some of the dancers in the parade

^^^ this video will appear when it finished uploading... if it ever does. sorry if you can't see it

Also I ate cotton candy which was yellow. It was the first time I had yellow cotton candy, which apparently is better than the blue one but I think it tastes the same...

Also the day before Sunday, on the Saturday (cause you on Sunday come afterwards) I went to the center with a friend of mine, and we were sitting on the steps in front of the cathedral, which is a major meeting place (we were waiting for a friend), and then WHAM! I look to my left, and of course I didn't have my glasses, so I think to myself wow that guy looks a lot like Lewis from Australia. I do that weird squinty look when I can't see that makes me look really angry you know like -_- and then WHAM! "Wait that is Lewis!" I don't know if I mentioned Lewis before in my second or third blog about the orientation camp, but Lewis is this guy...

Lewis lives in the Province below mine called Tucuman which is 3 hours away.

So me and my friend ended up spending the night with him at the festival and then Lydia came too, and she had an exciting last two weeks because her family from Connecticut (like her home family from not Argentina) came to visit! So it was really nice getting to meet them!

I hope everyone is having a great summer!! 

New post up in a few days! Chau! 

Name of the Game is "GUESS THAT CACTUS!"

Hola a todos!
I hope everyone is having a lovely start to the summer season now that Memorial Weekend has passed, the pools are open again, and people people are starting to GTL ;) As for me, I have the small issue that it is fall/winter here. But don't feel too bad for me! Fall/winter here is really bipolar. For example yesterday it was a nice 70-75 degrees and then today dropped down to 50 and was cloudy. As my favorite saying goes "if the sun is out the guns are out! But if it's not, 2 sweaters and a cup of tea is nice too."
Now where to begin.
Like 3 Sundays ago (at least I think it was 3) I went to visit the Argentine Salt Flats! Me and a few other exchange students signed up to go with this tour group, so we ended up being with a few other people as well. There were even 2 girls from Colorado except they were probably the worst examples of people from the US. On our way there we stopped in Santa Rosa de Tastil. It is one of the most important pre-Inca sites in the region, it has interesting ruins and a site museum. Nearly 5,000 stones scattered on a hill nearby bear petroglyphs that the indigenous population carved to convey religious and magical concepts. Some stones bear supplications of Inca gods, others just figures of animals and humans. In pre-Hispanic times, the town functioned as the main regional trade center.

 

Me and Lydia at a mural painted on the museum. As always we are accidentally matching. I think we have to start doing what Maggie and I did when we would pre plan what would wear when we went running so we wouldn't always match accidentally!

This is a dead mummy. Its really dead and stuff and kinda nasty to look at! I hope no one is eating now...

After we got back on the bus. I was sitting in the last row with Andi, Sophie, and Tan and the entire time it was like we were riding in a shopping cart over a road made of marbles. But the drive was still really enjoyable. Especially the scenery! Next stop was a small city called San Antonio de los Cobres. The main claim to fame of this high-altitude city (3,774 meters above sea level) is being a stop on the Train to the Clouds. And having been on the train to the clouds I had already been here once before, but this time I got to look at the city from a different direction and it was still pretty cool! Most of the beginning of the trip is the same route as the the tren a las nubes but from this trip we get to drive on the road next to the tracks and see what it must have looked liked to the people driving on the route.

El tren

San Antonio

After that stop we went into the city for a quick lunch. Weirdest thing on the menu for me was milanesa de llama. That's llama meat. Let's just say I stuck with the vegetable soup and baked chicken! I mean how could anyone eat a llama! Look at them!

 We took some pictures in town and then headed back on the bus to start the all dirt road journey to the flats. Te next leg of the trip was about 3 hours and I think my favorite part of this leg was seeing some llamas running in the country side landscape. Everyone legit freaked out when someone yelled out "Mira! Las llamas están corriendo!!" 

 Then after 3 longs hours in the bus we finally arrived at the salt flats! The white "soil" that adds a new color to the dry northern landscape is salt produced by the evaporation of saline water of volcanic origin. 

Believe what you want but it's not snow! It's legitimately all salt!

The flat and blank canvas of a landscape allowed us to take some really awesome pictures!

Squish I'm a bug

This one's funny cause Andi can fit me in her hand but in reality she is the pocket sized one.

Our failed attempted and writing AFS... they corrected my posture but no one told me I was facing the wrong way. 

There were also salt pools which provided a picture perfect mirror image if the picture was taken in the right way. 

[From top left, Sophie from Austria, Laura from Switzerland, Andy from Italy, Lydia form the USA, from bottom left, me :), Valerie from Salta, Alicia from Germany, Ruben our Salta volunteer and friend who also helped organize the trip, and Tan from Thailand.]

We got back on the bus after about 45 minutes and we picked up National Route 52 (famously known as Cuesta de Lipan), which links Purmamarca with the Salinas Grandes salt flats. The road twists and turns until you finally arrive at about 4,170 meters above sea level (that's like 13,691 ft). 

Lastly we stopped in Purmamarca to do some shopping at the famous market there. I'll talk more about Purmamarca in a little because I went back there last Sunday. 

The next week went by like a normal week and nothing really excited happened, except for the movie we watched in Literature class. It's weird here we watch rate-R movies all the time in school and it makes for some really uncomfortable moments with the teachers. This movie was based off a book we "read" (I use read very lightly as almost no one read it) called "Rosario Tijeras". In a nutshell it's a about a girl named Rosario who lives in Columbia and was abused as a child. She is a prostitute and does lots of drugs, her brother was killed by this gang, she kills people in this gang, she has this love triangle going on with these two guys who are best friends, and then she gets killed by her brothers best friend. It was a really interesting story and provided a lot of heated discussions on what is wrong and right with society.

On Saturday I skipped orchestra to go to my brother Pablo's (14) guitar concert. It was my first time seeing him play outside the house and he was really really good :) He even had his own little fan club of girls my age cheering for him like he was a member of One Direction.

Three people who's names I don't really know and Pablo all the way on the right.

The next day, Sunday, we went to have Locro at my Aunt and Uncle's house. "This soup (or luqru ruqru of Quechua) is a stew made with squash, beans or beans and corn consumed in the area of ​​the Andes, from Argentina, Chile (although there are given various names) to Ecuador , passing through Peru and Bolivia" thanks wikipedia! 

Yummy :D

Then on Wednesday this week (after they told us Monday and then Tuesday) our senior sweatshirts FINALLY arrived!!! The entire day was spent taking pictures, eating food, drinking soda, and playing soccer with the soda bottles. 

 This is one of my favorite pictures. Enlarge and look at everyone's faces!

 One side of our wonderful, super, fantastic, coolness, remarkable, and red white and blue camperas!

 Total G's

 The other lado

The next day we had Literature again and no one really is reading the book we are reading right now either... so we decided to tell the teacher that the sweatshirts came today and for the first 20 minutes of class distracted the profe by saying things like "Look profe the camperas came today! We have to take pictures!" "Profe we can't do work today we haven't finished the movie! How do we know if the movie is the same as the book if we didn't see the end of the movie!" "Profe we don't have a picture with you yet! Let's get the director to take a picture! Wait here." Then finally we settled down, except that it was a really nice day so we decided to go read and discuss outside and then spent five minutes deciding where to sit. And then we spent another minute deciding to take a picture. And once we actually started talking about the book we got sidetracked and talked about Cuba, the relationship between the US and Cuba, and a bunch of other stuff. But I swear normally we do work in that class just not last week haha.

Then on Sunday this week my family and I took a trip to explore Jujuy another time. The first part of the trip was through the capital of the province which I had already seen, but when I saw it it was night time and I couldn't see anything! The land scape was breath taking! We drove past mountains, through mountains, over mountains, etc. You would think by now I would be tired of mountains, but I'm not :) I mean just look at the mountains!

We went to a bunch of really cool places! The first was called humahuaca and had a giant monument of a Native and some others on horses. The monument was built to honor heroes of the independence in the Gully of Humahuaca. 

Just chillin with my native brethren

The town is also famous for having this really HUGE kookoo clock that comes out at 12 pm exactly.

Next stop was the tropico de capricorno. The line that divides South America between northern and south South America. 

Casually chillin on the Tropic of the Capricorn being between two places at once. nbd

Then we stopped in Tilcara which has one of the earliest Native Settlements in Argentina! It was full of adobes and cacti!

Now its time to play a little game. I call it name that cactus. I'm going to put up some pictures of cacti and what you have to do is look at the cactus and guess what animal it looks like! I'll post the answers at the bottom! Good luck.

Lastly we stopped in Purmamarca on our way back to Salta. Purmamarca's claim to fame is that it has mountains that have over 7 colors in them!

 

We climbed up a smaller mountain which provided a view of the entire town and the surrounding mountains. Each one different! Some were green, others, brown, and others multi-colored.

 After that little hike I went shopping searching for little trinkets to bring home for friends and family :)

 

On another and final note. Today my host brother Martin who has been living in Tennessee for the past 5 months is taking on last big journey before returning home in about two weeks. He is on route to come visit my family in New Jersey and peek around New York City! It will be strange knowing he is at my house when I'm here at his! I hope he has a ton of fun and learns to love the city like I do! 

P.S. Maggie and I have entered a Cover contest by the Cast of the Musical Once currently on Broadway! The winners get free tickets and a chance to meet the cast and crew! So if you guys could take 5 seconds and go to this link and like video #24 that would mean so much to us!

https://www.facebook.com/OnceMusical/app_288203507935043 

Chau! and Muchas Gracias!

Answers to "Guess that cactus"

1. Giraffe Cactus
2. Rabbit Cactus
3. Elephant Cactus
4. Llama Cactus
5. Boxing dog cactus. As in a dog getting ready to box.