Rio Cuarto

Hi! As promised this post is about Rio Cuarto the city that I am living in! I finally went out and took a ton of pictures of everything, and I felt like a total tourist, but oh well. So Rio Cuarto means fourth river in spanish and there is a river going through the middle of the city. It is wide and  super shallow. At the banks of the river is where the slums are and there are a ton of run down shacks that people live in. There are also a lot of horses because a lot of the poor people ride through town in horse drawn carts picking up garbage bags and then they go through it and save stuff. I haven't taken a picture of the horse drawn carts yet but I will. 


I live a ten minute walk from the center of town which is really nice because I can walk almost everywhere. And if I can't walk I take the bus. There are two parts of Rio Cuarto, the center and then when you cross the river its called Banda Norte. But all the shopping is in the center part, thats also where the plaza is. 


Rio Cuarto is pretty dirty, there is a ton of garbage in the streets. This is partly because everybody leaves there garbage on the curb just in bags and then the street dogs come and break the bags looking for food. Thats another thing, there are a ton of street dogs. At first this was something I found really different because there aren't street dogs in my town, but now i'm use to it. There is also no recycling in Rio Cuarto, actually there is one at the Walmart but thats one for all of Rio Cuarto which is around 150,000 people, and no one uses it.  


In Argentina the food stores are super different too. There are stores for just fruits and vegetables, others with just meat, bakeries, and the ones that have the processed food. But there aren't stores like safeway that have everything in one store. There are also tons of Kioscos that sell gum, candy, crackers, cookies, etc. Another common store is Grido which is icecream! Also there are a lot of cafes like Dos Banderas, Luis Maria, and Delicity (which is where a lot of teens go). There aren't fast food restaurants except one McDonalds, which is located in a little mall where there is also a movie theater. 


In Banda Norte there is a huge park called Parque Sarmiento, its really pretty and a very popular spot to go and have mate with friends! I went last sunday with the other exchange students to talk with everybody.


Oh every friday at around 6-8pm a ton of teens go down town and walk around this one block and catch up with friends or make plans for the weekend. We go there usually every Friday. 

I'm not sure what else I can write about Rio Cuarto....There is a lot of cute old cars, which is different from my town. I like them a lot but my host sister doesn't.


So I'm going home in about 5 weeks from now, I really can't believe the time has gone by soooo fast! The people are really nice here and I feel like they are warmer in general compared to the US. I will miss all my new friends here a ton but also I miss my friends at home. But i have to go home, but i will visit Rio Cuarto again, hopefully soon! 








                                       My school!

                                                 The Plaza

There are a lot of motor cycles and mopeds here too, theres a few in this picture.

This is the church my family goes to sometimes, it is so beautiful!

This is a group of boys on bicycles, they are everywhere in little groups biking in the streets.

Here is a Verdulería where they sell fruits and vegetables, i've gotten fruit here a few times!

 Here is a picture I found on wikipedia, its of the plaza but its from 2005 so they haven't put the fountain in the middle that is there now. Its also taken in the spring so things are more green then they are at the moment! 

Changes

Hey! So I know its been a super long time since I last wrote but thats because the computer was broken until last Saturday! Since I last wrote a lot has changed. First of all spanish has gotten a lot easier, I can understand most everything now and I can speak a lot quicker without having to think so hard. I also find myself thinking in spanish sometimes and I have had several dreams in spanish.


Another thing that has changed is that in general I feel more comfortable  here its now like a second home. I'm also realizing it will be hard to leave because I'm making new friends and I really like it here. My exchange is going by so quickly its crazy, I have a little more than 2 months left. I almost wish I was staying for a whole year but that is a really long time and I would miss home a ton! 


School is still very boring sometimes but its gonnen better. My favorite classes or the ones that I understand atleast a little are math, biology, music, technology, marketing, english, and there are some other classes that i understand sometimes. Here I don't have to take the tests because it would be impossible in most classes but I did take the Math and Technology tests. The grading system is different here instead of letters they have numbers 1 to 10 and the tests are therefore out of ten points. In math I got a 7 and in technology a 6, oh but in technology I was using the text book and my dictionary to help me! In music or art class we have been looking at Argentine music: Cumbia and Cuarteto, tomorrow we are presenting projects we did for music class. In marketing the  teacher gave me a long article in spanish to translate in english so i have been working on that for the last 3 or 4 classes. And in biology we are studying genetics which I learned about last year so I understand it! 
But there are some classes that I don't understand at all such as practica, I have never heard of this subject its the strangest thing its all about buying and investing and paying with numbers and charts and I don't get it at all! In classes that I don't unerstand I either read Harry Potter (in spanish) or I work in my spanish grammer book or I draw flowers in my binder! 


Another change is the weather, when I arrived it was the end of summer and the days were hot and sunny. But now its fall and the mornings and nights are cold but usually the days get warm around 65 or 70 probably. But there has been days of rain and wind too. Two weeks ago it was very cold and we were freezing during the breaks at school when we all have to go out to the court yard! Since we have to wear skirts for our uniform my legs are often cold even with nylons! 


So I have been going to the conservatorio to play cello. I have a lesson every Friday for one hour with a profesor, and about a month or more ago he lent me a cello to take home so now I can practice too! Cello is very uncommon here in fact when I was practicing the other day my host dad told me it was the first time he had ever seen someone play cello before, and then he ha lots of questions!


I also have been going to a gym every Monday and Wednesday there I take a class called "localizada" its with weights and kind of like pilates I think, but I don't really know exactly what pilates is so its just a guess. On Mondays there are usually 3 other girls that go to my school as well that are one or two years younger than me but on Wednesdays i'm definitely the youngest person there! And on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have Gym with school, we always run a little bit and then play handball, its the first time I've ever played handball so I'm not so good but its still fun! Our class is a mixture of grade 5 and 6 girls (I'm in grade 5) and the girls don't get along so well and it gets pretty competitive because of that, and I'm not terribly competitive. 


So thats what lifes been like here and I like it a lot but don't worry I miss home a lot too so I will be coming back!!! :) The next post I will talk about Rio Cuarto the city I live in but I have to take some pictures first!

FOOD!!!!

So this is going to be all about food! One of my biggest concerns before I came here was that there would be tons and tons of meat, which i am not use to. Turns out we do eat more meat then i´m use to but it´s not overwhelming. 


For breakfast we have milk with chocolate powder or yogurt, but the yogurt is drinkable. Sometimes there is cereal and there is always crackers or tostados to eat with jam or honey. 


Then after school at around 1:30 we eat lunch, it´s always a hot meal that my host mother makes. Examples of what we eat are hamburger patties and a vegetable like zucchini, tomatoes, beets, potatoes, squash or corn. But there is not always vegetables sometimes it will be spaghetti or gnocchi. My family also has a deep fryer so sometimes my host mom fries veggies which i´m honestly not a huge fan of. On the weekends for lunch it´s common that we have fried meat or fish and french fries, which for me is just too much fried food, but it tastes good!


Dinner during the weekdays is simple: hotdogs, rice pudding, leftovers, noodles, pizza and we usually don´t all sit down together to eat it we just eat while we continue doing what we were doing. 


During the weekends is when we eat more meat, we always have asado, which is the traditional way of cooking meat and it is grilled slowly and is very good! With Asado it´s common to have saled or tomatoes. 


Its also common to have a snack between lunch and dinner on the weekends sometimes we have mate too (traditional tea made from the yerba mate plant). And then crackers with cheese or dulce de leche. 


A lot of the desserts here involve dulce de leche, which is kind of like spreadable carmel! Its super good and super bad for you! common desserts are bread pudding with dulce de leche on top, or what i would describe as a casserole but in dessert form, with cookies and dulce de leche and meringue and chocolate and then layered on top of each other. And my host dads mother makes really good fruit saled, but its really different then fruit saled at home. The fruit is in very small pieces and the apple is shredded and then there is a lot of juice so its like a soup but i really like it! 


We don´t have fruit very often at my house here and if we do the boys eat it fast, so last week before going to my cello class I bought a banana! Here there are separate stores for fruits an vegetables and then there is other stores with just meat and others with all the packaged food. 


Here are pictures of the food!

Here is Dulce de Leche and milk, the milk comes in bags and same with the yogurt!

Bread and crackers and tostados!

                                Mate 

My host father preparing the Asado!

The oven where the      meat is cooked!

Asado with saled and tomatoes, and there is always bread at every meal too.

The soda bottles are returnable here and then it costs less, its like lochmead milk in Oregon!

Juice is never real juice but powder added to water

                                              Oats

Then we use the oats to make these. Its oats dulce de leche, coco powder, and butter! and sometimes they make a cake sort of with layers of this between crackers, its really good!

Yummy!!! This was from a restaurant that I went to with some of the AFS exchange girls the other day!

These are peanuts cooked in sugar, they are sold on the streets in little carts. Also Churros with Dulce de leche inside are sold in carts with bikes atached. I tried the Churros once but they were really oily tasting, they weren´t very fresh.

These are criollitos they are soooo good!

A trip to Merlo

Two weekends ago i went to a town called Merlo in the province San Luis. Its a 2 hour drive from Rio Cuarto but the drive is very pretty. We left my two younger brothers at their grandmas house so it was my parents sisters and me. We stayed in the house of my host mothers sister, she has two boys. 


The town is smaller than Rio Cuarto but its a very tourist friendly place and a lot of people from Buenos Aires and other big cities vaccion in Merlo. There is a little carnival in town with rides and we could ride them for free because the Aunt works there! There was one ride called Zumba that my sisters liked a lot is was a cirlcle that spun around and when up and down, it was fun but it also hurt my bac from slamming into the seat. 


The first day we drove up to a area called Mirado el Sol, there are hikes that start there, a beautiful view of the city, people selling crafts, and cross canyon ziplines! we went on the zipline! it was a lot of fun and not that scary even though the second one was 80 meters high!!!


We also went on a hike! We walked along side a river all the way up to a beautiful water fall! we also swam in the water but it was freezing cold, so we didnt actually swim! At the falls there were wild peach trees and the ripe fruit was very good! 

This is the ride, Agos is standing in the middle, i tried it too but it was really difficult to balence!

At the water fall!

My host mom and dad!

A special food in Merlo is goat! We didnt eat it but it smelled delicious!

School!

School started just 2 days after i arrived, on march 1st. I am going to San Buenaventura it is a catholic private school. The school is just a 10 minute walk away from my house so we walk to school in the morning and back home after school. School starts at 7:30 and ends at 1:20. In the morning we all gather in the courtyard in the middle and the Argetina flag is raised and a bible verse is read, and then we can go to class.
Here we stay in the same class room for all the subjects and the teachers move around instead of the students. This way you get to know the other kids in your class well. We have 16 subjects and there are 4 blocks a day, but sometimes there is two sujects i one block. In between each block there is a 10 minute break were we have to go out to the courtyard. Also 2 times a week we have class in the afternoon from 6:30 to 8 pm and twice a week we have gym from 4-5pm.
we also have to wear uniforms, they arent very pretty but it makes getting dressed each morning a lot easier!


A lot of the classes i dont understand beause the teachers talk really fast so its boring for me a lot of the time, My classes are:


Matematica- math, its one of my favorites because i understand it!


Mercadotecnia- marketing, i havent had this class yet because we havent had classes on moday yet because of holidays


Seminario- Argentina Laws, its very hard to understand!
Pscicologia- psychology havent had this yet either


Artistica- Art, im not sure if this is art history or if we get to do art i hope we get to make art though


Practica- we dont have anything like it at home, its really odd. i dont understand it at all, the teachers gives us situations about buying things and there are all these calulations that you have to do and i´ve never heard of it at all so its a bit impossible.


Economia- economy, we have only had this class once so far and it was reviewing this flow chart about economy it made a little sense to me but not much.


Biologia- Biology, i liked this class because i understood it, the words were really simular to those in english so i knew what was going on, we review the vital body fuctions.


Historia- history, we read something about Argentina´s history and i didnt understand a thing.


Tecnologia- technology, the teacher assigned me the first page in the text book to translate into english! it wasnt to bad...


Ingles- English, i love this class! i feel so smart in it! But is is english for business which i thought was interesting.


Lengua- translated it means language but its literature, i dont know what i´m going to do in this class because there is no way i can read a book in spanish....


F. Cristiana- religion class, the teacher just talks the entire time and i dont know whats going on.


Geo- Geography i understood a tiny bit in this class....


Gestion- management for businesses we wrote about services and brands and i was able to do it!


Sistema-systems, this is like practica its with paying and were the money goes i think


Quimica- Chemistry, so far in this class all we have done is oral testing were the professor brings and student up to the front and asks them questions to see what they remember. in this class i was chewing gum and the teacher said somthing when i blew a bubble, i guess you arent allowed to blow bubbles..oops!

Schdule!

So those are my classes! its a lot or subjects and its really different from school at home!

My host sister and i in our uniforms!

The first day!!!

Hello, i´m Audrey Wheatcroft i´m 16 and this is a blog about my 5 month exchange in Argentina! i hope you like it! 

first there was a 1.5 day orientation in Miami with all the people from the US going to Argntina, Chile, Panama, Brazil and Honduras. there is 21 people going to Argentina from the US. the Orientation was a little boring but the hotel was really nice and it was fun to talk to everybody during freetime. 

Next the kids going to Argentina flew to Buenos Aires, it was about 9 hours i think. the orientation actually kinda fun in Buenos Aires, it was outside except for the cabins! it was fun to meet the people from all the different countries that were going to Argentina. 

to get to our host cities we took buses, my bus ride was 7 hours! that sounds horrible but it was fine because the seats are super comfortable, and they recline so you can sleep and it was overnight so thats what i did. And there was a girl from finland and a boy from New Zealnd going to rio cuarto aswell and a Swiss boy and thai boy going to a nearby city, so we were all on the same bus. 

My host parents and my oldest host sister were there to meet me when the bus arrived! They are very nice and excited for me to be here! we then drove home and had some breakfast and then went back to sleep until 2 pm! then we had asado (meat) it was grilled on the fire in the back and was really good!!! in my family there are two girls 14 and 16 and two boys 7 and 11, and of course parents. 

that aftrnoon we went down town, its just a 5 minute walk away from home, and there are people every where! its a lot of fun it feels like a big city compared to Corvallis! After dinner about 20 of Anto´s (my house sister) friends came over and i got to meet everybody! they all asked me what type of music i liked and about dancing and parties in the US and if i had a boyfriend and if i smoked, etc.....they were very curious! the party went on until 4 am i think but i went to sleep around 2! 

my first day was a lot of fun and so have been the days following and more about those later!