Halloween weekend was a blast. It started off Saturday with the Soul Crew photo shoot. Essex is an awsome photographer and made us look really good, the shot going on the back of our DVD is going to be sick. We ended the night with some halloween celebrations which were really fun.

Daniel hasn't decided whether or not he's coming home or staying in Budapest for another semseter but either way I'll get to see him over Christmas. I'm really starting to miss him but it's good to know hes having fun and enjoying his stay.

I finally got my app for Lewis and Clark in so now all I have to do is wait. Applying to schools is starting to become a lot of work, luckily I'm using the common application for the majority of my colleges.

Schools been in session for about of month and it's been going fairly well. I really like my classes this year. Some of them are challenging but those ones are the most interesting, for example AP language. I don't understand whats going on in that class a lot of the time and my papers aren't very good but everyone in a while I get something and when that happens it really clicks. It's something I haven't experienced a lot before.

Soul Crews movie Hello is finished! Its awesome and Will did a great job producing it. We have a few ideas for how to premier it which will be really fun but whats exciting is somebody out of Idaho offered to play it at the met during the Refresh premier. This is awesome and hopefully it works out.

I've picked up skating over the last month which turns out to be an amazing sport. I think it'll help me with skiing and it's a good challenge. I've made a little progression which I'm happy about. There's something about skating I've really come to like, I'm not exactly sure what it is, maybe it's the fact that there's so many tricks and so much innovation involved. You can skate one thing for hours and not get bored since there's so many trick variations and so much room for improvement.

This may or may not be my last post but either way I hope everyone reading has enjoyed my blog over the past 6 months or so.

I've been home for a long time now and its felt great. Right when I got back Chris, Daniel, and I were lucky enough to spend a week in the Valhalla mountains. There was no better way to relax and spend time with the boys than going on this trip. The climbing was incredible and ranged from bouldering next to the tent to doing multi pitch summits. Unfortunately right after the trip we had to say goodbye to Daniel as he left for his semester in Budapest, from what I've heard so far he's having a great time and is learning a lot.

The rest of my summer has been spent rafting, and relaxing in Spokane. At first it seemed like I was 100 percent happy to be home but unavoidably I miss Argentina. Thoughts of Edgard and all of my friends linger in the back of my head and makes me want to see them. For some reason everybody in Argentina understood me very well which surprised me since friends I've had in the US for years still don't.

School starts tomorrow which I'm excited about. I have a great schedule so I'll be taking some interesting classes and It'll be amazing to see all of the classmates again.

Two weeks left and I´m home. I honestly have mixed feelings about this, it´s true that I´m incredibly excited to be coming home and to see all of my friends and family again but at the same time the last couple weeks have been amazing. My relationship with Amelia and the rest of my family as become alot closer and I´ve finally been talking to Amelia about our past problems. I´ve also been doing recreational stuff with her which I thought would never happen. The other day we woke up early together to go jogging and later in the day rode our bikes to a pueblo close to murphy just the two of us. A month ago I couldn´t see us spending time together like this but we both enjoyed it and I wish we could have been this close since the begining, it would have made the experience more fun and easier. Amelia even pointed out that I´ve changed alot, she says that I´ve become alot more outgoing and more talkative than I was before, I think this is just because I´m able to communicate perfectly with everyone now but she persists to say it´s my personality thats changed. At least all of this means that the fam and I are ending on a good note. They want to come visit sometime which makes me happy and hopefully I´ll get to visit them as well.

Todays the 4th of July!! Of course theres no celebration here in Argentina so I decided to do something a little american for a personal celebration. I´ve missed peanut butter ALOT and so I finally decided I´d make it for the fourth of July so I could enjoy an american treat on independence day. I don´t know if peanut butter was invented in the US but americans eat alot of it so I claim it american. It takes a while to make because you need to shell all of the peanuts and clean the blender but its very easy and obviously delicious, especially when I make it.

Luckily the fam also found it yummy which is a score but I think Edgard lied a little because his face disagreed with his words.It was kind of like when I tried my friends veggie mite and squeaked out "how tasty" before gagging on the wretched stuff.

Anyways, heres a picture of my jar of homemade PB!

The photos below sum up my birthday fairly well. There was alot of good food and even more importantly alot of good people. A lot of my friends never made the trip out to Murphy for the dinner but all went well anyways!

A couple days after the asado and theres still left overs.

The cake!

The friends.

More friends!

Making my wish

Dalila and me

Santi and Leo!

Facebook | Fotos de Cindi Olivo - noche de buzos

Cheers to my first night of legal drinking (thanks to the low drinking age in Argentina) and our class party!

Rodrigo, Leo, Gise and me.

The girls dancing

Topo!!!Rodrigo, Leo, and me.

Every body in the photos above are my classmates! Last saturday there was a competition in the club to decide which school has the best sweatshirt this year. It´s a pretty fun event, you do things such as elect a member of the class to dance against kids from other schools. We may not have officially won but our sweatshirts are most definitly the most handsome!

It´s very hard to believe that I only have one month left in Argentina and surprisingly I´m sad. Theres nothing I want more than to see the family again but when I leave I may never see my Argentine friends again. Hopefully someday I´ll be able to return for a visit and my friends will be able to come visit me. **uciel cough cough**

My family here is doing well especially since its almost winter break which means in a couple days nobody in the family will be working or going to school. My first week of winter break will be spent going to Cordoba with my friend Hernan. I don´t understand why families here don´t travel together, maybe it´s just my family but they never plan family trips or vacations it´s always one or maybe two people in the family going somewhere alone, this completly contradicts what the volunteers said in the orientation camp. In Bs.As. before I met my family AFS said that argentine familys are big on going to places as a family and travelling alone is rare.

EDIT: I talked to my friend Uciel about my last paragraph and he said that what AFS told me in Bs.As. is wrong, for example he said that he only goes on a vacation once a year and sometimes that one time is without his parents.

The photos in this post are in reverse order from my trip. If your interested in going through them chronologically I suggest starting at the bottom.

Las Cataratas

The group getting ready to go under one of the falls.

The boat ahead of our group entering the waterfall

A monkey in the National Park of Iguazu, Missiones.

A shot of Las Cataratas from The Throat of the Devil

A shot of me at the "Throat of the Devil" Las Cataratas in the Nacional Park of Iguazu, Missiones.

The church one block away from our hotel in Salta.

From left to right, Bigge, Me, Mike, and Mckayla on top of a mountain overlooking Salta.

Me with a balloon given to me by little school kids dressed up as clowns in Salta.

Atop a little mound in Jujuy!

The gang in Humahuaca Jujuy.

Mike and I atop a little mound over looking Purmamarca Jujuy

Jujuy

Felix and I in Jujuy

Leo and Thibaeut In the flag muesuem of Jujuy.

It´s been a long time since I posted so I´ll do my best to summarize and post some pictures

Lifes gotten alot better and actually felt "normal" the past week or so. The rollercoaster of an experience this has been in the begining is now starting to flatten out and I rarely have problems.

I´ve been playing basketball for about three weeks now and I start tango lessons this thursday which will be a new experience for me. Basketball is fun and it´s been a good place for me to meet friends.

Pictures are worth 1000 words so I´ll quit blabbing and give you something to look at.

Life is good!
I´ve finally started to feel like I´m living at home, not in somebody elses house. Rodrigo and I are starting to get to know each other a little more and everything is amazing, because of my new found comfort the I´m begining to enjoy the Argentinean culture much more.

I wrote in my journal that I hoped to run every week day but that hasn´t exactly worked out though I am managing to run at least 3 days a week to stay healthy. Running is fun but I´m really starting to miss skiing and climbing with my friends. Rodrigos been staying active by playing lots of rugby which is awsome to watch, I´ll be sure to take some pictures at his next game.

I didn´t go to all my classes on Friday because AFS volunteers from Rosario came to Venado so I could go to different classes with them and tell other students about AFS and why its a good experience. When the volunteers told me what we were doing I expected that they would talk to the kids and point to me saying heres a good example of an exchange student
but it turned out I was the one that was supposed to talk, in castellano. It was nerve racking for me but hilarious for the students listening, I´m not sure I´ve been so embarrased in a long time.

Top 5: The friends in Murphy.

Third from bottom: A piece of art given to me from a friend.

Second from bottom: The flyer for the distortionados show. (Santi's band)

Bottom: Rodri after rugby practice.

Things have been going much better the last couple days with my family which makes me extremly happy. Yesterday I decided to go running for the first time which was great, the dirt roads through the farms are very beautiful.

Ive really started to make friends in Murphy which is good because Amelia isnt too fond of driving to Venado with gas being expensive. Since being here Ive thought that Murphy is a nice quiet pueblo and everybodys nice to each other, which is true but theres also a surrprising amount of violence. Two nights ago I was woken up from the noise of two gangs fighting in the plaza. Fights here rather serious because theres only one police unit in the pueblo and they don't have near enough power to stop the chaos.
I´m starting to talk in class! Taking part in classroom descusions is starting to become easier and easier, I might actually do all right in school.

School finally started last week which at this time is surprisingly good for me. Life around the house has been getting fairly boring so I´m starting to enjoy school more and more. Homework is starting to pick up and is extremly difficult.

I´ve come to know my classmates better after a week and my spanish has improved dramatically, its the only thing I´ve learned so far. Class is crazy because the teachers come around to you instead of you going to them so your in a room with the same 20 or so kids everyday, this leads to nobody paying attention and alot of throwing stuff at people. Staying focused is shown to be a difficult task but I´ve found good people to sit next too that will help me understand the material. The course schedule is fairly rigorous as well, unlike the US you dont have every class every day. This means Im taking 13 classes and I have 3 classes a day for 2 hrs each. I don´t know the names of many of these classes but they include computers, another computers course (we make web pages), god and life, ethics, psycology, chemistry,math,literature, english, history. In literature were supposed to read the short story el fin del juego by julio cortazar which is interesting . I read the story in spanish and english so that I could understand it but my host mom thinks I´m stupid due to the fact that she spent thirty minutes explaining a story to me that I´ve already read twice. Rodrigo does no work and never scolded which pisses me off because I´ve stayed completly organized and on top of my work (one assignment in the last week but its starting to pick up).

I went to rodrigos rugby practice today because Amelia wanted me to at least try it, to say the least its not my favorite sport. After 10 minutes the coach just told me to sit down which was fine by me since I didnt know the rules or any technique to the game.

Top two photos: Rodrigos birthday asado.

Bottom: Santiago