Mom, dad... you're absolutely right. I scanned the previous post and I only used three curse words, if you include wanker, but yeah. I am forwarding these to Rotary people as updates and that means I should be a little more careful. Cody. A little to the left of the picture where I say we're about to climb the glaciar it slopes down and touches ground and we climbed up there.
My situation as an exchange student is pretty unique for several reasons. One is that I spoke the language decently before coming here, and it's apparently not common to even speak the language a little bit before coming. Another is that I came super super late. This means that I never wound up going to high school, as was planned. Summer vacation started this week, which is very exciting for everyone who hasn't already been on summer vacation for five months or so. But it's alright, because in February I should be starting in the National University of Río Cuarto. I ought to be studying Sciences of Communication or something of the like. The system here is different. You don't have to apply to college; you basically just decide where you want to go, figure out housing since student housing is basically non existent, and go. No application and no tuition. No books, even. It looks like most of it is photocopies the professors make. Also, you have to choose a "career" as soon as you enter the university, and it determines your classes for the whole five years you're there. All of them. Hence my decision to study Sciences of Communication... it includes a study of Spanish, which means that I'll get to study Spanish at a very advanced level after practicing speaking and reading it for four months and studying it with other English speakers for years prior, and it includes a bunch of stuff like psychology and philosophy that I find moderately interesting but might not spend a credit on in the US.
Another factor that makes my exchange unique is that I had a Rotary trip two days after arriving. That meant that before I had managed to make any friends in Río Cuarto, I was already pretty solidly connected with the other exchange students here. I am hanging out with them a lot, and we are speaking English, BUT! We are acting as Argentine as we can whilst speaking English. We use all their fun hand gestures, and we drink mate, and we play their table games, and we go out until ridiculous hours. It's tons of fun. I'm connecting with Argentine high school students through my host brother, but most of them are leaving the city in February to go to university, so they all feel like doomed friendships even more than the rest of them. Those don't have to end until July or so. Hopefully I'll make more Argentine friends in university.
A few thoughts that don't really fit in paragraphs. There is a Kool-Aid type powder called Boog, which makes me very happy. Not drinking it as much as the fact that it exists. People in advertising are whiter than people on average in the country. At first it weirded me out, and then I realized that we did the same thing in the US. That made me sad.
The neighborhood I live in is called the "Villa Golf Club". For those who don't speak Spanish, that roughly translates to, "Golf Club Town". As one might imagine, the neighborhood consists of a bunch of houses and a gigantic country club. The people are, for the most part, pretty rich. The neighborhood is semi-closed, which means that it's not even remotely closed, but it has private security. In the truly closed neighborhoods you have to have the security call the people you're visiting to make sure that they're expecting you before you can enter. This neighborhood is one of the few places in town where it's acceptable to go out at night. When you stop next to people on motorcycles, you roll up your windows. There are a million tiny things I never think about coming from a tiny town in the USA that these people (and by these people I mean the Villa Golfians, not the Argentines) do to keep themselves and their thingies safe.
I may be imagining it, but it seems like strangers' reactions to my Spanish are improving. My first bit here, I was pretty solidly pegged as American. Later, they clearly knew I was foreign but always asked where I was from. Then they started commenting on how Mexican/Venezuelan/Central American my Spanish is (they can't seem to make up their mind.) The other night a cabbie asked me if I was from town or not. I have a feeling that was his polite way of asking me where in the world I was from, but it still made me feel good about myself. It doesn't take a lot to make me feel good about myself, especially when it comes to my Spanish.
Oh right, transportation. Well, I'm not allowed to drive, so either my mom has to take me places, which hurts me RIGHT in my independence, or I have to take a taxi or the bus. The bus is awesome. The bus comes by like every half hour, and costs about 50 cents. On the other hand, to actually get anywhere besides the central plaza you have to take at least two and I have yet to figure out exactly WHICH two for anywhere except for the ladies' houses. The taxis are neato. They never feel very expensive when you're paying for them, because you translate it into dollars and you're like, "Oh! That's only three to six dollars, depending on the amount of distance that I have gone in this particular theoretical cab ride! That's not bad!" But then you realize that that's only one way, and that you're taking taxis pretty much every day, and you resolve to figure out the bus system. Which I have sort of done. I can always get to the plaza. Everyone tells you not to take the bus at night, though, and adults actually sleep, so you basically HAVE to take a taxi then. I have the number of an awesome guy named Dario who works between eight and eight, in the scary direction. His seat belts actually work and his motor doesn't make dying sounds whenever he accelerates and he's not any more expensive than the ones who do. He always has a lot of business, so he's slow to get there, but he's so wonderful and he explained the complicated system of eleventh and twenty first and thirty first and whatnot in Spanish to me so it's ok.
Haha that system is crazy so I'll yell about it for a second. You know how one changes to first and two changes to second and stuff like that? In Spanish, "twentyth" and "thirtyith" are as remotely related to "twenty" and "thirty" as "one" is to "first". It's very exciting. So thirty two winds up being thrafity second. Or something like that. Most people are lazy and get around by, instead of saying, "seven hundred and fourty third" saying, "seven four three".
Plans for the summer are lining up rapidly. It would appear that I am going to the town of Bedia in Buenos Aires province. WO. I had heard before coming here a colloquial thing where spanish speakers would aspirate the "s"s, but it always came across as just not really pronouncing it. So Buenos Aires would be Bueno Aire. But I keep hearing here a really exaggerated version of that where people ASPIRATE the s. So Buenos Aires becomes Bueno Haire. It is a trip and a half. But um... yes. My host dad's family lives there, and we're going there to spend Christmas. The third of January I should be going to Necochea, also in Buenos Aires province, to visit the girl who did an exchange to my district last year for a couple of days. A few weeks after that I'm going with the host family of the other American exchange student to Buenos Aires city, and then crossing the river to Uruguay. This is wonderful not only because I get to see these places without having to pay a ton and sit on the stupid tour bus, but also because crossing to Uruguay and back will get my tourist visa renewed, and since I'm crossing from Uruguay and not the US, I won't have to pay a retaliatory 140$ visa fee.
Ok I'm pretty sure I managed not to swear that time but I'm not totally sure. I AM sure that the whole thing came off a little more unnaturally than the last one since I was being careful not to swear the whole time. Thanks a lot, mom and dad.
