Today my host family headed off to Miami to visit family there over Pesah, so I moved to Moni's best friend's house. The family is really nice, they have three kids but only one is here right now. She is nine years old and best friends with Uri, but is a little annoying. Very nice though. They also have two boys, but they aren't here right now. The mom, Mariela, is super welcoming and told me to make myself at home, just as if I was at Moni's house. I feel perfectly comfortable here, not awkward at all. I will be staying here for the week, and then they are flying to Buenos Aires to visit family (they're Jewish too) and so I'll move to another family for that week. The mom of the next family I'm going to is the president of AFS here so I've met her before, and she's nice but not as warm as Mariela. Now that Yael is gone, school is a little harder because I don't have someone explaining things to me or to go to for help with the homework. But the girls at school are very helpful so I can ask them to explain things to me. I feel like I'm getting better at Spanish, I understand more already and can speak a little better, but I'm not so good that I understand most of what the teachers say in class. Especially my physics teacher, who talks in a monotone and mumbles. But I think I'm going to get a Spanish tutor to help me out, so hopefully I will get a lot better. We went to another AFS reunion thing on Saturday and pretty much all the exchange students who have been here for around seven months speak really good Spanish (or Castellano) so I'm hoping I will be at that level too when I leave :)

Today was a fun day! Well, other than school of course. When I got home, I played some basketball in the garage with Luki, Uri, and Matti, which was really fun, something you don't have to speak the same language to do. And this morning I had another tennis lesson, which are great. The first day I got here my host family asked me what kind of food we eat where I live, and I said tacos and some other things, so they said maybe one day I could make tacos for them. Well today was the day, and I got a list of ingredients from my parents over email. So me, Luki (one of the maids they have, but who is also sort of a part of the family) and my youngest brother Uri chopped veggies and cooked up the chicken. I told them we usually use salsa too, and they pulled out tomatoe puree. That would not have been good! haha well so I looked up salsa recipes online and got a simple one, with only a couple ingredients, which we had. And everything is so fresh here, it ended up tasting realllly good :) and I'm pretty sure everyone liked it, so pretty much it was a success! haha :) After dinner we ate this pound cake-like stuff with dulce de leche, and it was muy rico! Also there's lots of great fruit, which I love. Tomorrow I'm going running with Yael (at 8:00, ugh!) which I'm looking forward to, since I haven't gone running since I got here. Oh, and on Saturday some of the exchange students who live around Salta are getting together to go downtown and hang out, which should be great. Plus this weekend we're going to the Dique again, woot woot! :)

Ahh so much has happened!! Well first of all, on Friday I went to services (my family is Jewish) and dinner with my host family (minus yael, she was at a birthday party of someone I didn't know), both sets of grandparents (who are soo cute, i love them!), another couple, and Moni's best friend with her son and husband. Then on Saturday we just chilled, did homework and rested. Me and Yael went in their pool, which was amazing! It was so warm, and very relaxing :) We left at around seven to go to the hairdresser to get our hair done for the fifteen birthday party we were going to that night. When that was done, we came home to get ready and then we headed off to the party. In Argentina, fifteenth birthday parties are a big deal, like a sweet sixteen in the states. They had rented out a big dance hall or something, it reminded me of a wedding. There were some couches and low tables on one side of the area, and a bar (with non-alcoholic drinks, haha) and a dance floor, and then up some stairs was an outside sort of garden area with more tables and stuff.
The party started at ten thirty, but for the first two or so hours we just hung around talking, greeting everyone. Then Vale, the birthday girl, entered, and there were photographers and everything. It was like a quincinera, but not religious. She wore a beautiful puffy pink dress. They showed a slide show of her and she gave out little oscar things to her parents and closest friends. They had hired a company to dress her up to look like she was a movie star from the '40s or something, for a video thing they made with her and a guy. They also made a signature book with pictures of her in her different outfits. It was all very fancy, and she looked so glamorous! Then the dancing started, mostly reggaeton and cumbia, but they danced pretty much the same as we do in the states, which was good because I didn't look like too much of an idiot ;) oh and there were waiter people constantly walking around, first with appetizers, then plates of pizza, bowls of suuuper good icecream, and throughout the night they came around with candy and sandwiches. Well anyways, we danced and talked and everything, until five in the morning when Moni picked us up and took us home. It was really a great evening :)

The next day we had to get up in the morning because we were leaving at 11:30 for my family's weekend house, which is on a gorgeous lake, called a Dique. It's like a resevour I think. The house is beautiful too, with a wood stove for cooking empanadas and meat (like the kind you cook pizza and bread in) and they have a motorboat that we went out on. We hooked up an intertube to the back of the boat and lay on it while Mario drove the boat, and it was so much fun. I fell off like three times though, because when you're going really fast, the intertube swings back and forth and bumps over the wake of the boat pretty violently. I got burned pretty bad on my back from lying on the intertube for so long, but it was still a lot of fun. And sometimes they go waterskiing, which I can't wait to try! Afterwards we had salad and empanadas and reeaaallly good beef, and then lay in the hammocks and beach chairs for a few hours. Then we watched half of the Titanic on TV and drove home. All in all it was a great weekend :) too bad I had to go back to school! School is definitely not as fun, the professors talk really fast and it's hard to keep up. Plus, when everyone at school is together they talk super fast and there are different conversations going on at once, and I can't understand practically anything. But when there's a smaller group of people I can usually join in the conversation. It's slow going, but I'm making friends with people. Everyone here is pretty nice, especially my family. And I'm really busy, doing things like tennis lessons (on clay courts! yay!) theatre classes with Yael, and school. Well anyways, I can't believe it's already been two weeks that I've been gone, it definitely doesn't feel that long! Except that I miss my family and my friends so much. Not so much that I want to come home though!

First day of school!

Well Argentina is great! It took a while to get here, but it was so worth it. We had a three day orientation in Buenos Aires, and we made friends with lots of exchange students from other countries, like Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Finland, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Denmark, and others. Everyone was so nice, we were all sad to leave! But there are two other girls from the orientation that live near me, one from the U.S. and one from New Zealand, so at least we might be able to see eachother. I got to Salta, a city about the size of Seattle, and my host family yesterday and they were super welcoming. They made sure to talk really slowly so I could understand, but I still have no idea what most people say. My family has a swimming pool and big house, and I have my own room that they decorated for my arrival. When I arrived at the airport, they were there with a big sign that said, "Bienvenido Hannah" and the whole family was there. I came on a plane from Bueno Aires with the two other girls that are going to Salta (the province), and we were so nervous and excited that we were almost hyperventilating. I love it here, except for the school! Today was the first day, and I didn't understand a single thing the teachers said. I have to write a two page paper about a nail for my psycology class...and I have no idea how that's going to happen! I'm having a lot of fun, but I feel stupid and slow because everyone has to talk to me like I'm an idiot. Yael (my 15 year old host sister) is really nice and explains everthing to me, and her friends are great too. I also have two brothers, one that's thirteen and one that's nine.