The end of the world

Very recently, my family and I just got back from our vacation to Tierra del Fuego, which means "earth of the fire," but it actually is the closest place to Antarctica. The town we were in is called Ushuaia. From almost anywhere you can see the Andes mountains in the distance, with snow on top, which is very cool. Even though it was summer there, we still needed to put on our coats and our hats, because it was very cold.

The first day that we were there, we rode on a chairlift up the mountain. The name of the mountain is Glaciar Martial. It was very cool to actually see snow for the first time in a while. The rest of the day we walked around the town to see all the cool things in it and also to get used to it.

The second day we were there was a very good day, but also a very bad day. I'll tell you what we did before I tell you the bad thing and the good thing. We had a long and bumpy ride in a little van to a little estancia where we would take a boat to an island. An estancia is like an old farm or ranch that has become a hotel. On the bumpy ride there I was sitting in the back and I had brought my Fishers Cube (which is a Rubik's cube that can change shape) and I was doing it for a long time, mixing it up and solving it. After a while I started getting super carsick. Then I tried to look out the window but it didn't help because it was too late and the ride was so bumpy, and eventually I threw up ten times, which was super disgusting. That, if you haven't already figured it out, was the bad part.

The good part was when we arrived at the estancia and got on the boat toward the island. The reason we wanted to get on the boat to the island is because the island had a ton of penguins, specifically magellanic penguins, with some gentoo mixed in. It was cool because we got to get close and see the penguins in their natural habitat, roaming around or staying in their nests to be with their babies. I noticed that the gentoos' nests were with rocks, and the magellanics' were holes in the ground. It was amazing that we could see so many penguins in their habitats.

The third day in the morning we went to the old prison that got turned into a museum. Before, there had been a prison there because Ushuaia is very cold and it was so separated from the rest of the world. We learned about some of the prisoners and what they did. One example is of a sixteen-year-old who was short and had humongous ears. He set many fires and killed some children, and hurt others. It was cool to see that the prison cells were so small and the uniforms of all the prisoners were blue and yellow stripes. The part that showed us most of what it used to be was the part they hadn't fixed up yet, which was super cold and super smelly and all the paint was peeling off the walls. That gave me a better look at how the prison used to be and how bad it probably was for the prisoners.

That afternoon we went on a boat trip. It was for seeing cormorants and the sea lions, and going on an island to see how the Indians lived there, so close to Antarctica. On the island it was pretty boring for me, because there wasn't much there except for plants. One thing I learned about was a little berry called "manzana del diablo", which means devil's apple. It was one of the things the Indians ate. After, we stayed on the boat to look at the different islands with sea lions and birds.

The fourth day (also the last) we went zip-lining very fast around the mountain I mentioned before. That was very fun, and I had never zip-lined before so it was a new experience. After that we went to the museum that was about the Indians that had inhabited the area of Tierra del Fuego before the Spanish people came and killed them all. The museum was okay, and the coolest and most disgusting thing I learned is that they didn't wear any clothes, even though it was super cold.

Since Iguazu

Since our trip to Iguazu, I have done some fun things with my uncle. I will tell you a few of them.

One of the things that we did was a polo game that we went to. We watched one of the final games in the championship. One team crushed the other. There we saw many people from Europe or the United States, and of course Argentina, that had come to see the game. Some people love polo, and since the polo season already ended in the north, they came to Argentina to watch polo games. As you probably already know, the game is played with a really hard white ball, and there are many people on horses, with mallets, trying to hit the ball between the two goal posts. It was funny.

After that, we went to Recoleta where there is a huge outdoor fair where they sell stuff. We went to the science museum there. After that, we went to a restaurant that we really like called El Sanjuanino.

The day after that, we went to the Casa Rosada (the pink house), which is where the president of Argentina works. It was very nice, but not as big as the White House. We got to go on a tour and we even got to see where she works, because she was not there – instead she was in her house. The president is Cristina Kirchner.

After that, we went to a café that is the oldest café in Buenos Aires. That is a place where many famous writers used to go. The table where we happened to sit down was the table of Federico Garcia Lorca. They had good hot chocolate and churros. The only problem was that the waiter who served us forgot half our order, so we only got half of what we ordered. I was sort of sad because I really wanted to try their cake with ice cream.

I am home from school today because one or two kindergarteners have meningitis, and so they are fumigating the school.

What I’ve been doing in the time that I haven’t been blogging…

First of all, let me tell you that I’m sorry that I haven’t been blogging in a while. I hope this next blog post is long enough to tell you most of what I did. The main thing that I will explain first is that we went to Iguazu, in Misiones province. The way we got there was just like Patagonia, taking a 20-hour bus ride. When we got off the bus, we went to our hotel. Our hotel was very nice. Right near to our hotel there was a banana tree with baby green bananas, soon to turn into big yellow ones, and there also were many, many small lizards, including two that lived in our roof. Another thing we liked to do there was swim in the pool and play ping-pong. It was basically in the jungle there, and it was soooo hot.

The main thing we did there was go to the national park, which we did all the days we were there. The national park also was a jungle. It had many types of birds and animals. At first, the only thing we saw were thousands – and I’m telling the truth, thousands – of butterflies. At first I thought that it would be mostly all butterflies and not so many other animals, but that was not true. The thing we saw after the butterflies that we liked were the coatis. Coatis are related to raccoons and they are animals that people like, but they are also pests that people don’t like. The first one we saw was at the place where you can buy food, trying to steal someone’s food. The second one we saw was right next to one of the humongous waterfalls (which I will explain later), taking food out of the garbage can. His favorite food from the garbage can were the crackers. I took a very good picture of the coati chewing down on a cracker. Later we saw more coatis.

The other cool animals that we saw were the same small lizards that we saw near our house, but there were also VERY big ones. They weren’t the prettiest things ever, but they were very cool. We also saw many birds of different sizes and colors, and a big turtle, and a lot of caterpillars.

The main thing we saw at Iguazu, that wasn’t the animals and plants, what most people came to see are: the amazing waterfalls. There were many waterfalls but our favorite was probably the Devil’s Throat, which is a lot of waterfalls that were in the formation of a throat. It was our favorite because you could get right up next to it on a wooden platform, and you got completely SOAKED by the spray of the waterfall. You could not even see the bottom of the waterfall because there is such a big mist, with birds flying around. We liked it a lot. It is more than two times bigger than Niagara Falls. There were many other waterfalls with different names, including one that was named Adam and another close to it called Eve. There was one that was two waterfalls and it was called Dos Hermanos (Two Brothers).

The next day we went back on the lower trail, seeing if we could see any of the other animals that are in the park, like the jaguars, monkeys, toucans, armadillos, tapirs…but we didn’t see any of those because they come out mostly at night and there aren’t that many of them. But we did see a lot more waterfalls.

We also saw a video about the jungle, and how it is getting smaller and smaller, and how jaguars get killed by people and cars a lot, which makes me sad.

On our last day, when we were going to take a plane home, thanks to me we went to the Wanda precious and semi-precious stone mines. I’m pretty sure you know what it was by the title. It was discovered when someone was washing her clothes in one of the pools, and her finger got cut on a piece of quartz and she brought it to someone and asked how glass got in that pool, and they said it wasn’t glass, it was an amethyst. Then they kept digging and looking for more and they found out that they had found a mine. In the mine, the most common things they have are amethyst and other types of quartz, and agate. That’s another special thing about Iguazu, are the rocks. We got a tour from someone that spoke English pretty well, and she told us about all the stuff from the mine. The way they find out where there are geodes is: first they see a white line, which is from gas that came out of the geode. Then they dynamite along that line. When they see a rock that is a different color from the rest, they start digging. We saw many, many, many geodes half opened. The mine wasn’t so deep because it was a private mine, and not owned by the government. The way it works is that if you find a mine, it can only be 20 meters deep, or else anything deeper than that belongs to the government. They wanted to keep this a private mine so it is 20 meters deep. We liked the mines. When we were walking back, we could just look on the ground and see many pieces of quartz and amethyst and agate. We picked up a few to take home with us. In the gift shop we bought some gifts including some pieces of agate and amethyst, and an amethyst ring. There we learned that if the geode is very big, if you are lucky you will get 15 amethyst crystals good enough to make jewelry out of them.

In the province of Misiones, there are 4 precious and semi-precious stone mines. One of the rocks they don’t have in Misiones though is rhodocrosite, also known as Inca Rose, the national rock of Argentina.

Since then, the only special thing that has happened was my viola concert. I am in an orchestra with violins, violas, and cellos. The concert was at a big theater with many people. I think we did a good job.

It’s Thanksgiving today. It’s not a holiday here, of course, because there were never any Wampanoags here, only Mapuches.

The teachers are going on strike because they want to get more money and they are not getting enough, and the teachers’ strike will last two days, so I’m staying home.

I hope I informed you of what I did! If you have any comments or questions, please post them.

Patagonia

We recently went to Puerto Madryn, in Patagonia. It is very cold there, unlike Buenos Aires. The best thing that we did was to go on a long bus ride to see different parts of it. While we were riding through Peninsula Valdez, on the way we saw many sheep and many guanacos. At the first stop, we saw a beach full of sea lions and elephant seals. Then we went a bit further and what we saw was my favorite thing, which was penguins. Many penguins. The picture above is of one of the penguins. The type of penguin is a Magellanic Penguin. At the next stop we saw a beach with more sea lions and elephant seals, and it had a ton of seaweed on it. Then we had lunch, and after that we went on a whale watch to see Southern Right Whales. Southern Right Whales are really endangered. We went on the boat ride, and at first we didn't really see anything. But then one whale with its mother came right next to the boat. One of the characteristics of the Southern Right Whales is that they are very curious. It was great. The whales were trying to impress us by doing tricks and spraying us with their blowholes. Then we went home.

That was mainly what we did. The hotel where we were staying had a heated pool, which we went to a lot. Also, we found very cool shells on the beach.

We are going to get on a bus to Iguazu tonight. It will take us about as much time to get there as it took us to get to Patagonia: close to 20 hours. The bus has chairs that can bend all the way back or only part of the way back, to make a bed. Iguazu is a place that has a ton of waterfalls. It is right next to Brazil and Paraguay. We are very excited to go there.

Girlfriends

To my friends at Wildwood who read my blog, and everybody else: I took this picture of the rose that I picked for my lovely girlfriend... Which I don't have!!!

To those people who are reading my blog right now, who are saying to themselves "what the heck is Jonah talking about?": I'm talking about the fact that everyone at Wildwood (my school) thinks that I have a girlfriend here. I've gotten about 4 or 5 emails from my friends, saying "do you have a girlfiend?" I have no idea who started this "Jonah has a girlfriend in Argentina" thing, but I'm not too happy about it.

I don't know why, but if you ask almost any other boy in the school here in Buenos Aires, they will say that yes, they do have a girlfriend. Here that's just another thing that people will brag about or tease other people about. Everyone always brags to me that they have a girlfriend, and that it's really weird that I don't.

Here's a funny conversation that I had with my (now not so much of a) friend Ernesto. He came up to me and said, "no quiero ser el novio de Paz ahora," which means, "I don't want to be Paz's boyfriend now." I said, "porque?" which means why. He said, "porque tengo una novia en Alemania," which means "I have a girlfriend in Germany." Then I said, "es simpatica?" which means, "is she nice?" and he thought for a moment. Then he said "hmmm...no tiene personalidad, pero ella es MUY hermosa." That means "she doesn't have a personality, but she is VERY beautiful." I think that's what a lot of people would say about their girlfriends here. Also, none of the girls that people like are that smart. The boys aren't so smart either, so I guess it kind of works out.

This picture of the rose is actually a picture of one of the many roses in the very large rose garden very near to our house. We went there yesterday.

I'm sorry :(

To start off, before my blog post, let me just say to all my fans that I'm sorry I have not been blogging lately. The main reason is because my cousins have been over!! My cousins are from Atlanta, Georgia, and if you didn't know already, their names are Mia, Hannah, and Sam. Their parents are Cindy and Mark. They stayed with us for a week. We have been going to very cool places, like Feria de Mataderos, which is a very big outdoor market in the neighborhood called Mataderos. There are many, many booths with people that do different things, from selling clocks to making mate cups. There was also live music. Our favorite thing there was very cheap crystals and rocks for sale. I got a quartz piece, and an amethyst. Overall, it was very fun seeing everything and buying a lot of stuff.

Their family (not including ours) went to la pampa, to see Argentine cowboys called gauchos. La pampa is the word for grassy plains, a couple of hours away from the city. While they did that, we went to an art museum in Buenos Aires that had paintings by famous people including Monet, Rembrandt, and Picasso.

We also went to Tigre with their family, which is a town in Buenos Aires province. We took a bus, and then a train to get there, and then we got on a boat to ride down the river. We got to see big houses on wooden stilts so that when it flooded, the houses wouldn't get flooded too. I liked it there, but the boat was 100% tourists. The only problem was that the ocean was super littered in Tigre.

The main thing we did, as you can see in the three pictures above that I took, is that we went to...URUGUAY!!! It was very fun there. We went to a pretty old town, on a boat that took an hour from Buenos Aires. The town is called Colonia, and it looks like a colonial town. There are a lot of beaches and a lot of people on the streets selling a lot of rocks, including amethyst, the national rock of Uruguay. We had a very good pasta lunch in Uruguay (that doesn't change), and we walked on the beach and found a whole lot of beach glass. It was fun being in Uruguay. I want to go back there another time, because it is very nice there.

My cousins left tonight (Saturday), and we gave them a big, sad goodbye. Now they are on their way back to Atlanta. I hope this blog post informed you on what I did during the time that I haven't been blogging, and please tell me if you like the pictures that I took. Bye for now!

Marbles

I thought I should write a blog post about one of the very important things in my Argentina life: marbles. The game of marbles is definitely the most popular game to play at recess. Almost no one plays marbles where you just play for fun and don't take the other person's marbles if you win. If people get a marble that looks really cool, they often trade it for more than one marble that aren't too cool, so that they can have more marbles. Every time the bell rings for a short ten-minute recess, about 5 people in the class yell "ulti!" which is short for ultimo, which means last. They want to be last in marbles because then you have an advantage. The reason people want so much to be last is because if you go first, you have no chance of hitting a marble because there are no marbles out, and if you go second, you only have one marble to try and hit, and you probably won't hit it. But if you go third, you have two marbles to hit, so if you accidentally miss the marble you were aiming for, you might hit the other one. People do whatever they can to win, because they want to win marbles from other people. One example is that if they shoot their marble and it ends up close to the other marble, they roll it back a little so that it will be a further distance to hit the marble. They do this to make it harder for their opponent. That is not allowed, but it sort of is allowed, because everyone does it (including me). The most respected kids in the school are the kids who are really good at marbles. My friend Matias is one of the best marbles players, even though when I played with him I did better.

The rules for the small marbles games that people play are: the first person shoots their marble. Then the second and third and any other players shoot their marbles and try to hit someone else's marble (usually at recess there are two or three people playing a game together). Some people play where you get to put your marble a hand's length closer to the other person's marble before you shoot, and other people play where you can't do that. Then if you hit the person's marble, you get to keep it. But not everyone plays this way, some people play where you have to hit their marble two or three times instead of one time, before you can keep their marble. That is all I have to say about marbles.

First playdate!!!

So I had my first playdate on Sunday!!! We didn't invite them over, they invited us over...to our house. As you can see from the picture, we had a good time. He is one of my good friends at school that I see a lot even though he is in fifth grade. His name is Matias. Along with him came his sister Celeste, who happens to be good friends with both me and Aviva. They also brought along (we didn't even know they would) their little sister Antonela. Antonela is more or less close to Ruthie's age (she is in second grade) so they played together, Matias is in fifth grade so he played with me, and Celeste is in my class in fourth grade, and she is ten, but only older than Aviva by a tiny bit. We played some things all together, including using modeling clay, and then we sort of split up into three groups, so it became everyone with their best friend. Matias and I had a good time playing marbles, and Matias is one of the best marbles players so it was fun playing with him (even though I was doing better than him).

It seems that they don't want to invite us to their house. Anyway, I find that reasonable because they have seven brothers and sisters. They are pretty much mine and Aviva's best friends in school. They invited themselves to come back later this week, and I'm happy about that but it would be fun to see what their house is like also. One of my other good friends in school also invited me over but we don't have an official plan yet.

Today in Ruthie's school was her birthday party. We left early from our school to go set up for the birthday. The way it works in the kindergarten is that you bring balloons and goodie bags for everyone, and you also bring a cake and soda and usually a snack like potato chips. The kids seem to like it, except they are used to store-bought cake with a ton of frosting and words, so no one ate the cake that my mom made, which was actually very tasty.

School (again)

Sorry I haven't been blogging for a while. A lot of the time that I wasn't doing something and should have been blogging, I was actually thinking of stuff to blog about.

I actually had a terrible week at school. I have a few reasons:

1. One kid named Orlando was the smartest in the class, and he is mean to me because I got two "excelente" grades and two "sobresaliente" grades. Sobresaliente is the best grade you can get. Orlando makes fun of how I pronounce Spanish words. The teachers still love him because he is smart, and that makes me really mad.

2. One kid teases me and hurts me a lot because he loves Aviva, and he is mad that Aviva doesn't love him. His name is Damian. He writes Aviva love notes, and draws her pictures (he is actually good at drawing Japanese manga characters). Aviva ignores him and sometimes answers him with a light kick. Since my classroom is next to his, and we are in the same grade, and I am Aviva's brother, he gets back at me instead of Aviva, because he likes Aviva and so he's not about to hurt her.

3. Not only does Damian tease me, he also says really mean things about my mom, whom he has never even seen in his life (my mom corrected me on the "whom"). I really don't think we should tell you what he said.

4. My teacher, Maestro Eduardo, not only is mean and yells a lot, but during class he is always:

a. yelling at someone

b. sipping his mate, which is a disgusting drink they have in Argentina, that's like extra bitter tea that you drink with a straw

c. this is what he does most of the time: talks on his cell phone and paces around the room while he is talking. He even does this in the middle of tests. He does texting too, during class. I never thought any teacher would ever do that.

d. the way most of the teachers teach is by reading in their teacher's manual what they should write on the blackboard (or in my case the green board), and then instead of explaining it in the teacher's own words, the teacher just writes it on the board for us to copy, and thinks we will learn it fully that way. The teacher never thinks of stuff by himself, he just copies it from the teacher's manual. While we are copying it, we usually hear the familiar sound of our teacher's phone ringing, and he picks it up to have a conversation.

5. For the first time, someone invited me to their house!! It was Ernesto, the first person I became friends with, who is not really my friend now, just a little bit. I didn't get to go to his house in the end, because Ruthie had accidentally lost her notebook at school, which made my mom late to pick me up, and Ernesto had already gone home (he thought that my mom might take a really long time). I was sad about that. Anyway, someone else invited himself over to my house, and he is about to come over in half an hour, with his sister who is also my friend and Aviva's friend, so we'll see how that goes. I'll try to get a picture of us.

6. One kid, se llama Jesús, never does his work and doesn't have the workbook. So when we are in social studies he comes over to my desk, which is the closest to him, and starts annoying me. I asked him why he doesn't have the workbook and he said, "no tengo plata!" which means "I don't have any money." Then I asked him, "tu mama tiene plata?" and he said "no!" and I said "tu papa tiene plata?" and he said, "no!" This is the same in music, where he doesn't have a recorder, which is all we play in music. We have the same conversation about the "plata" in music. "Plata" means money, or silver.

7. Aviva's English teacher got made at me for talking to some kids whose parents are apparently criminals, or something... She told me not to talk to that girl because she is a thief, not only because her parents are thieves. I was wondering about that.

8. Until a few days ago, I didn't have my pencil case, which meant I didn't have any pencils, scissors, calculator, white-out, eraser, pencil sharpener. I know someone stole it, because they returned my pencil case menos sus rellenos (minus its fillings!) -- just an empty case. They also returned one of my pencils from Amherst, which they had colored blue and ripped off the paint. I was mad about that.

See you next time!

P.S. I hope this post didn't make you sad! I'll have another blog post after my playdate, to see if it goes well or if it doesn't.

My latest report

Okay, so at the end of my last blog post I said that they showed some Argentine guy's game instead of Venus Williams, just because he was from Argentina -- but he turned out to be the U.S. Open Champion! As I've walked past some stores I've seen tennis rackets advertised by mentioning Del Potro's name. Before the finals started, I thought that Federer (who's number one in the world) would beat Del Potro in three sets, because Del Potro is only sixth. After Del Potro lost the first set, I didn't change my mind. Then after he won the second set, I was happy, but I still thought that Federer was going to win. Federer won the third set and I thought it was over. But Del Potro won the fourth set. By the fifth set, I was not sure who was going to win. Then I had to go to bed. When Del Potro had won 5 games in the last set, and Federer had won only 2, I was allowed to come out to watch and see if Del Potro would win. Federer got the next 3 points to make it a deuce, and then they hit it back and forth and Del Potro got the advantage. Then on the last point they were hitting it back and forth but Del Potro made Federer hit it out, and we were so happy that Del Potro won.

Apart from that, sorry I haven't been blogging lately, I guess I've just been too busy. A lot of the time we go to the park, which is one of the few places in Buenos Aires that has grass. The only thing we don't like about the park is that there is a ton of dog poop in it, even in the part that has signs all over saying "no dogs allowed." One of the most common things that they sell on the street are huge tennis balls, which aren't too expensive. We got one, and that is the ball we use when we play at the park. We play spud and soccer a lot with that ball. We also play two square.

Talking about lunch in school, every person thinks that the food we bring is weird. The food that they thought was the most weird was when we brought in guacamole. People crowded around and asked us what it is, and they just stared at it. They thought it looked disgusting, but when they tried it, they liked it. They had never ever heard of it before. Everyone thought that was so weird. Today (Tuesday) we brought in some raw green beans, and to our surprise, no one knew what they were! We let people try them, and before they ate them, they were looking at them and examining them. They did eat them and they liked them too.

That's all for now. I'll try to blog more this week.

The weekend

This weekend we did some fun things. Yesterday (Saturday), first we went to synagogue in the morning. We met two nice people. One of them spoke okay English, and one of them spoke a lot of English. They welcomed us to the shul and they said we could come to the shul on the High Holidays. Since there was a bnai mitzvah, the person who was having it chose for the food at kiddush to be knishes and bourekas and some sandwiches. I loved the bourekas, which are mushrooms inside of phyllo dough, and I loved the knishes just as much. Knishes are mashed potatoes inside a kind of dough. That was a great way to start off the day.

Then we went to the English bookstore, which was helpful and we got some books that looked very good, including a Mafalda comic book translated into English. Mafalda is by far the most popular comic here, even though there hasn't been a new one since the 1970s. After that we went to a little store to buy some spoons and two decks of playing cards and other stuff. The playing cards are different here, because they have 4 of each card and they are all numbers, with no letters. It goes from 1 to 12. After that we went home for lunch and then walked to the Japanese garden to see if there would be a tea ceremony, which there wasn't. But after a few minutes in the Japanese garden, I got very sick. We had to take a taxi home. Then I had some tea and watched Argentina lose to Brazil in soccer, 3-1, on T.V. Then I felt better.

Today (Sunday) we went out to have a huge kosher meat lunch, which was made up of sausage, steak, breaded chicken, a quarter of a chicken, and a hot pastrami sandwich. It was so great. After that, we went to the parque (park) to watch some people who live in Argentina whose families are from other countries, dance traditional dances from those countries. At the end they all did the tango. Then we went home and watched some of the US Open, where they did not show Venus playing the women's game but instead showed some Argentine guy because he is from Argentina. That's all for now.

Some funny things

My first thing that is the most funny, and also pretty annoying, is that one of the major rules in my school is no running at recess. I didn't know that was a rule, but at recess my teacher kept stopping me and getting mad at me, and I didn't know why. And then he acted it out for me, and I was really confused because I thought that was the whole point of recess -- to run. When I told him that in the United States we always run a ton at recess, he was very surprised.

Another funny thing is that two of the games that they play most here are volleyball with a crumpled up piece of paper and no net, and marbles. Not that many people play where you just play for fun and don't keep each other's marbles. Most people take their opponent's marbles if they win. I did not bring any marbles to Buenos Aires. I got five marbles and then lost them. The way I got them was by giving people drinks of water from my water bottle, for marbles.

A third funny thing is that in music we are learning the song, All My Loving, by the Beatles. The music teacher wrote a pronunciation list that looked like this:

clos ior ais an ail mis iou...

and so on. I found that funny. The music teacher can also play All My Loving on the recorder, which is funny.

Fourth is actually a funny moment. One kid asked me how to say "amor" in English and I told him "love." Then he walked up to some girl that he had a crush on, and pointed at her and said, "love!" with an accent. The girl had no idea what he was talking about, and then he explained it: "love means amor in English." The girl sort of freaked out.

A few more funny things: some people think that in America, Michael Jackson is pronounced Mitch-a-el Jackson. And one person thinks they play a lot of rugby in the United States. Thats ol for nau (pronunciation)!

Lunch

For the last three days, Aviva and I have been bringing lunch to school. The first time I brought lunch, I sat with my friends so at least I could do that. But for the last three days, we had to sit at the table for losers who couldn't get lunch at school! That's actually what Aviva and I call that table. The first day, we sat with three people that didn't know much English but were trying to speak English to us. One of the only English words they knew was a really bad swear. We didn't like them that much.

The second day there were new people at our table including someone from my class. This was a bit better, but instead of looking at us weirdly after we did something, they laughed. Today though, we sat next to no one, so we were just talking. Then some seventh graders tried to speak English and they asked us questions but we gave them crazy answers because it was funny. When they asked "what's your name" I wrote a whole long sentence in English on a piece of paper. Then they asked how old we are and we said that Aviva was 73 and I was 74. It was really funny.

For the last few days, I have had the same substitute teacher. I brought my 5x5 Rubik's cube, and my 3x3 to school, and everyone thought the 5x5 was amazing and they even called me a genio for being able to do the 5x5 (try to guess what genio means). They liked my 5x5 even more than the regular one. Since I can't solve the 5x5 too quickly, and I can solve my 3x3 very quickly, they thought that the 3x3 must be easy to solve. Then they were really confused when they tried to solve the regular Rubik's cube. It was funny for me. The teacher made a video of me solving the Rubik's cube and then solving the 5x5. The video of the 3x3 made me look faster than I really am.

We had more ice cream. Out of all the dulce de leche flavors, I chose the dulce de leche flan flavor, instead of the dulce de leche con brownie, or dulce de leche con coco (coconut). It was very good.

For dinner tonight we made empanadas. If you don't know what empanadas are, they are a pastry on the outside, sort of like a croissant, with different fillings in the middle, traditionally onion, cheese, and corn. We didn't know if they would be good at all, because we had never made them before, but they were GREAT!!!! I was the biggest fan. Then untraditionally we made sweet empanadas, and instead of glazing the outside with just egg to make it shiny, we added sugar with the egg so that it would be sweet and shiny. Inside was peaches and sugar, which was great. That's all for now.

Markets

Sorry I haven't been posting lately -- I have had too many things to do! I'll tell you what those things are: going to outdoor markets, and school. Yesterday (Saturday) we went to not too big of a market in a neighborhood called Recoleta. They sold a lot of things, from mate cups, to wool, to candy apples. We looked around and we liked everything. The first things we got were little pastries that were very good. We looked around some more and the second things we got were very cool. All three of us children got a little sculpture, but instead of being made out of clay it was made out of folded up pieces of paper and subway tickets. Mine and Aviva's are owls, and Ruthie's is a swan. They were very cool. After that, I got (with some begging) a quartz crystal, which is found near Iguazu Falls. After that, we went to a woman selling tiny little elves. They were very small and had little chubby cheeks and were very cute. Aviva and Ruthie both got some.

We also went to the Floralis Generis. It is a sculpture of a flower, and it is very big and famous. It is so huge and every morning they open the flower up, and at 5:00 each afternoon they close the flower up, so it is like a mechanical sculpture. It was very cool.

Today (Sunday) we went to a very big outdoor market in the San Telmo neighborhood. As we walked down the street we saw one person with a marionette, and one person with a jacket that was bent backwards and a tie bent backwards to look like the wind was blowing on him. We also saw a magician showing off the magic tricks that come with the magic set he wanted you to buy. He actually was pretty good. We saw a lot of people selling more rocks, and jewelry made with "Inca Rose" (rhodocrosite) which is Argentina's national stone. We didn't buy anything except Ruthie got a little piece of quartz.

We have been to a lot of ice cream places since I last blogged! One of them is an ice cream place that we went to after school, because we had been eyeing it through the window of the restaurant, La Maie. It was very good. The best flavor there was moka. The next ice cream place was after we went to Friday night synagogue services -- and we think this was our favorite place. The flavors I got were coconut and dulce de leche. Coconut was one of our family's favorites. The dulce de leche also was great. And the final ice cream place was recommended by other American people that we met in Argentina. The flavors I got were flan with dulce de leche, and coconut. The flan was pretty good but the coconut was better. My mom got lemon sorbet and chocolate mousse and the lemon sorbet was much better. We liked that place, but not as much as the second place. There also is an ice cream place around the corner from our house that Aviva likes a lot, and I like pretty much. It has about six different flavors of dulce de leche ice cream, and a few different flavors of chocolate. Sometimes the ice cream is a little icy there, but it's close to our house which is why we go there.

Tomorrow (Monday) I am going to bring lunch to school. I am going to bring a lot of small alfajores to give out to my friends, so that they will think it's actually cool to bring lunch, and they won't think I'm weird. More news after tomorrow! Bye.

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A few things that have happened

Yesterday (Tuesday) I decided to eat lunch at school with my friends for the first time. Almost everything they have at the school lunch is meat (and they didn't have anymore slots available for kids to eat the school lunch), so I had to bring my own lunch. I didn't think it would be bad, because at home I bring my lunch to school every day, and a lot of my friends do too. But here, lunch is free and everyone gets the school lunch. Not a single person in the whole school, besides me, brought their own lunch. The kids really hadn't seen anyone bring lunch from home before, so they thought it was really weird. They just stared at me.

Also, today I learned that some people in Argentina don't know anything about U.S. presidents. Ernesto came up to me and said, "quien es el presidente de los estados unidos?" I said, Obama. Ernesto said, "Ohhhhhhh, Obama" and made a thumbs-down sign. Then he said, "Bush, si!" and did the thumbs-up sign. At first I definitely thought he was kidding, because how could someone like George Bush, but he actually wasn't joking. He said, "Obama loco!" and when I told him that Obama went to Harvard, he said "Harvard malo," which means, Harvard is bad. Then he called one other kid over, and that kid also said George Bush is good and Obama is not good. I thought that was really weird, because how could anyone like George Bush?

Dia de San Martin

Today we had no school because it was Dia de San Martin, a.k.a. San Martin Day. San Martin was a person who helped to liberate Chile, Peru, and Argentina from Spain. My parents both had Spanish lessons, so first my dad went, and we spent a lot of time in the house with my mom playing card games. Then we met my dad to have lunch and my mom went to her Spanish class. After lunch, we got the best pastries ever, that were not even that expensive. I got sort of a croissant, with a ton of powdered sugar on top, and a ton of dulce de leche in the middle. Ruthie got something called an alfajor, which is two cookies with a lemony-orange flavor, with dulce de leche in the middle, covered with chocolate. Hers had a little heart-shaped chocolate on top, just to make it look and taste better. Aviva got a mini apple pie, but with no pie crust on top.

Then we went to a very pretty park near our house, to eat the pastries. There I got an allergic reaction to some nut, but I drank water and then I was fine. We went back to our house and we were just playing a lot of card games, and then we had dinner. The card games Aviva and Ruthie and I love are spoons, spit, go fish, and solitaire.

A perfect dinner

Today we went to a huge place that used to be a market and is now a big shopping mall. The first thing we did when we got there was to go to the children's museum, which was a bunch of stuff that was really fun for little kids (not me). We stayed there for only 30 minutes before we got bored. It was very crowded also.

In the mall, there were FOUR McDonalds. Three were just regular, and one was the Kosher McDonalds, which is the only Kosher McDonalds in Buenos Aires. When it was dinnertime, we went there and decided to order french fries, one hamburger (which is actually called the MacNifica, but it would be a Big Mac at home), and chicken McNuggets. We also got some fried rice at the nearby Chinese place. It was the first time I had chicken nuggets, and also the first time that I had a McDonalds hamburger. I LOVED THEM SO MUCH!!!!!!

Also, there was a different Kosher restaurant next to the McDonalds, and we got two chicken empanadas (which are meat or vegetable-filled dough baked in the oven). We also got meatballs with rice.

It was the best dinner ever because we had so much meat, and we also had good french fries.

When we were on the subway back home (Andreas, are you reading this??), we saw a ton of commercials for Kumon. In case you don't know, it's a program that is basically extra math homework, which no kid in the world likes. Then when we got home we took our showers and then brushed our teeth.

Tomorrow is a holiday for Argentina, so we don't have school tomorrow. I can blog all day!

The best place in the world

Last night, we went to a place right near us, with different types of foods and products from different parts of Argentina. It was a big show, like a fair, and a competition between different regions. I loved it because there were so many free samples, and I got to try them. They had free samples of cheese, jelly (there was a lot of that), chocolates, dulce de leche, and other things. We got to try different foods from all around Argentina. The product they had most of was jelly and we tasted a lot of good jelly. There was peach, blueberry, boysenberry, raspberry, plum, apple, orange, and some names that we didn't know what they were in English. We bought three types of cheeses, including really good goat cheese. We bought chocolate, candy, nuts, fruit, and jelly. We stayed there for two hours taking all of the free samples, and even going for doubles! One of the dulce de leches was so good that I had two spoonfuls of it. It was a great place.

At school

In school I brought my Rubik's cube just to play with, and someone came over to watch, then a few more, and a few more, and a few more, and soon pretty much half the school was watching me. Then when I finished, everyone was cheering! One kid said to me, "es Dios!" Everyone was asking me what the secret was, and I didn't tell them anything.

In the beginning of the day, every day, we get a type of snack. Sometimes it is bread or crackers or biscuits, and strawberry milk. Today we got a special treat called alfajores. We didn't know about them until we got to Argentina. They are everywhere here. They are two cookies, with dulce de leche in the middle, and the whole thing is covered in chocolate. My friend Ernesto asked me, "como se dice alfajores en ingles?" which means "how do you say alfajores in English?" I replied, "no hay alfajores en los estados unidos!" which means "there are no alfajores in the United States." Then Ernesto was in a state of total shock for five seconds.

He was also surprised when I told him that people don't eat dulce de leche in America. He couldn't believe it.

Today we had English class in school. The kids were learning how to say the names of clothing, like socks, hat, shoes, and sweaters. Then, to help their English, they put on a CD of people speaking English and the people speaking English had British accents. The English teacher also told the class that there is an important baseball team from Massachusetts called the Red Sox (because we were learning how to say socks). She said they wear red socks (because they had already learned the colors).

That's all for now.

After day one of school

All right. So when I got there, all the students were mobbing me with questions. When they found out that I am from the United States, they pretty much told everyone in the school. I didn't really understand anything they said. The first sentence anyone said to me in English was "Michael Jackson: King of pop." As I said before, the uniforms are white lab coats. My class has 13 people: 3 girls and 10 boys, which is nice and small. My teacher is not that nice and she yells a lot. My deskmate loves Michael Jackson and guitar hero. To put it this way, it's just very different.

School?!?!

OH MY GOSH!!! I am going to school tomorrow, Wednesday. I am more than scared. The school I am going to is called veinte (20). It is a public school. The uniform is pretty much a white lab coat, which I find funny. It has around only 13 people in a class, which might make it easier. A bit. So that's pretty much it. More on school tomorrow.

Pizza???

Today we went to a small restaurant to have lunch. There were not many choices, so I got pizza (pronounced "pixa" in Argentina). When they gave me the pizza, I was surprised what I got. They gave me a thin piece of bread with a ton of cheese and around 5 olives. I have noticed that this is pretty much what pizza is. There isn't much sauce at all. In America, I love eating pizza. in Argentina? not so much.

America and Argentina?

I noticed as I was walking down that at a lot of stores had things having to do with Ben "diez".
There were backpacks, trading cards, action figures, coloring books, and even yogurt containers with ben 10. Another thing that is popular here are (I like this one!!!) RUBIK'S CUBES!!! I am happy about that! some foods I like are: meat, dulce de leche (a soft type of caramel), pasta and gnochis, and papas fritas, also known as French fries.

Argentina rocks!!

Today we bought food for the first time!!! That's pretty much all I have to say.

Day 1

We arrived at Argentina August 4th. So far, I don't like the bad drivers and restaurants (It's legal to smoke in them), and I like everything else.

Welcome!!!

Welcome to the blog of my Argentina! I will keep you updated of what we are doing throughout our trip.