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.