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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