It's about time for another update...

I suppose an update is long overdue, and so, to get into the writing mood, I will first write a blog entry, and then write my papers…of course, I will probably have to leave for class before I get to writing my papers…but I feel this is a worthy cause. Also, all I’d be able to do is the thinking/writing equivalent of flopping around while trying to figure out what I want to write, if I’m going to spend time doing something, I may as well make it something worth doing.

Needless to say, so much has happened since my last entry! The last thing I wrote about was Bariloche? Oof. That was a while ago.  Some important things that have happened since then: I moved homestays, Annalise and I had a weekend of awesome, finals week is upon me, and I’m running out of time to do anything.

Ok, I’ll go one by one: homestay change.  June 1, my housemate and I moved homestays.  We did this because, simply put, we weren’t comfortable living in Ines’ house anymore.  She would daily make comments to me about how messy and dirty I am, she would always be there to point out mistakes we were making and it felt like the list of rules kept going on and on and on, as if she was adding them as she saw us doing things incorrectly.  I realize that one can’t remember ALL the rules in their household (due to the fact that some are just so natural you forget they’re not normal to everyone), but seriously, you should establish the ground rules before you start anything.  It got to the point where I would hear my host mom in the kitchen and wait for her to leave before I went to go retrieve my breakfast (which would normally be two pieces of bread sitting out on the counter with cold coffee).  We never ate dinner together, even if we were all at the house at the same time—she didn’t eat the same food as us, she would make us something and often times make herself something else.  The cuts of chicken we got…well, it was usually the thigh or once I actually got the ribcage. The ribcage of a chicken. Do you know how much meat is on a chicken’s ribcage? Pretty much zero.  So basically, we went to bed hungry many times and we never felt welcome in our “home”.  Yes, we are adults, but we are still adults in a different country and we would like to come home to a welcoming environment…not a semi-hostile one.

So Yelena and I finally moved out once we realized that neither of us was happy there.  Once we mentioned this to IES staff, in less than a week we were gone.  Monday we brought it up, and Friday we moved into our new house.  And this new host mom rocks.  She’s awesome.  She’s a TV show producer and this (June) is the only month she was available to host students because she had been working on the production of Big Brother in Argentina up until the end of May, and July 1 she flies out to Peru to do the same thing.  So if we had waited any shorter, we probably wouldn’t have gotten her—which would have been really sad!  But, she hadn’t been planning on hosting students, and so she was on vacation for a week in Mexico with her boyfriend…ok actually it was more like 12 days…but it wasn’t a huge deal.  She left us with the contact information of one of her good friends who lives close by and has come to visit us while Albana’s been away.  But the awesome weekend comes in the first few days my host mom was gone because Yelena was also gone, visiting Iguazú falls.  So basically Annalise and I had a three day sleep-over in which we made awesome food (chicken alfredo), watched Tangled, made more deliciously awesome food (homemade pizza) and watched countless episodes of How I Met Your Mother.  We also did leave the apartment…to go shopping for groceries, as well as…well, I’m sure we did SOMETHING else outside…but I can’t really remember what at the moment.

I know I only gave you a few sentences…but really, the weekend was pretty awesome…I guess you just had to be there though to get the full effect.  I think part of the awesomeness definitely came from the internet being so fast…with only one computer online it just zips right along!  Which brings us to: finals week.  This is THE most stressful finals week I have ever had.  We have had minimal (as in, for most cases, zero) graded homework in my classes, and so the only things we get graded on are our midterms (30%) and finals (40%) with 30% left for the prof to decide how it gets split up (weekly exercises, attendance, participation, etc.) and so A LOT of pressure falls onto the grade you get for these finals.  Also, these grades transfer back into my GPA at Hope instead of (like for some of the students here) having it just count as pass/fail.  Also, Thursday is going to be the day that everything goes down.  I have two papers due that day, a written test, and an oral group presentation. All on Thursday.  But after that…I’m still not done.  On Wednesday evening I have an oral exam for my partner university class that, from what we understand, is just the professor asking us questions and us needing to answer them, only problem is that I have no idea what those questions will be like. Also, due that Wednesday, is a 10-15 page paper for that class (which I have yet to start) about the archeological and anthropological significance of one of the neighborhoods called Boca here.  Of course, it’s an archeology and anthropology course, but I don’t feel like the things we’ve learned in class are going to help me on this paper, it feel more like a research paper that I could have done without the class…so I guess it’s just kind of disheartening to know that I didn’t actually have to go to this class…not to mention it will count for NOTHING once I get back to Hope.  It’s just more elective credits I don’t need.  I wish I had dropped it, but when I finally decided I wanted to, it was two days before the deadline to withdraw from a class, and I was getting seriously guilt-tripped by the other girls in my class who didn’t want me to go.

Needless to say, I am completely and utterly overwhelmed by the incredible amount of work left to do in the next two days.  Two days. All I have is two days to write all these papers (minus the Boca one) and study for all these tests, and practice my presentation. Two days.  In case you couldn’t tell, I don’t think that’s enough time and I think that I might actually fail some of these finals. Which would suck. Because I don’t want to fail.  On top of all the stress of finals, there is also a clock ticking on the rest of my time here.  Every time we say “Oh, we have to go see this place!”  or “Wow, we have to come back here before we leave!” it just comes back and hits us that we won’t be here too much longer and so these things have to happen NOW or they won’t happen.  Which leads me to wonder what I’ve actually been doing with my time here, and how I’ve been spending my time, because right now, it feels like I’ve done nothing but sit around and watch TV while letting important deadlines slip away…and that is pretty much the opposite of taking advantage of a study abroad experience.  It’s doing the exact same thing I do every day in the States.  And now I feel guilty for writing this post instead of flopping around trying to think of things to say for a paper…any paper, they all have to get done.  But I feel like this post was worthwhile, if not for giving an awesome update, at least for giving an extended prayer request list. 

Also, I’m sorry that I kind of let the ball drop on Blog updates, it just never seemed like a good time to write (and it still isn’t) but I guess it just became too mandatory to update. 

Oh man, I almost forgot! I totally went to a Boca Juniors soccer game yesterday!  It was a lot of fun :D  We went through a tour group that included transportation to and from the game, beer and choripan before the game, and bleacher-style seating at the game.  When we got to the “restaurant” (and emptied out building with a grill out front and a cooler in the back) we were submersed into a group of tourists, mostly all English-speaking, from around the globe.  One of the girls in my group brought blue and yellow face paint (the colors of the Boca Juniors) and so the 7 girls I was with and I (there were 4 of us from IES and then four more girls from another program that one of the IES girls knew) painted one blue and one yellow stripe on our cheeks. Almost before we had finished a little old lady came up to us and asked if she could have it too and of course we said yes.  She offered to pay us, but we said no, a decision we soon regretted because from there, there was a fairly steady flow of people asking to get their faces painted too. Even though we didn’t make any money, it was still fun to be able to share the face painting with others.  I was also able to buy myself a jersey (thanks Lita!) and it is awesome. 

We got to the game about an hour and a half before it started and about an hour to kick off, the songs started.  Now, I would say the chants, but these were actually songs that had more of a melody than just rhythmic chanting.  There were so many songs.  It was a bummer that I didn’t know the words to any, but I caught on to a few of the more popular ones by the end of the match.  Boca was playing Arsenal, but the Arsenal from Argentina, not the one from the UK.  And Arsenal and Boca are same-city rivals.  We saw a banner on the other side of the stadium that said “Nunca hicimos amistades” [We’ve never been friends]…so that might give you an example of the very not Cubs-Sox-friendly-rivalry in this same-city match up.  We ended up losing 3-0, but the refs were definitely against Boca.  I’m not just saying that because we lost, I’m saying that because there were SEVERAL times Arsenal fouls were not called, but almost every time Boca did something wrong they got excessive penalties for it.  It was ridiculous.  So ridiculous, in fact, that when the refs came back on the field after half time, there was a group chant of “Hijo de puta” [Son of a bitch] throughout the stadium for a while.  It was kind of awesome.  Also, the strings of cusses I heard there was…well, it was highly entertaining to hear, but I couldn’t help but notice that there were several younger kids there that would sometimes join in. But I guess that’s just the fútbol culture here.  Despite the crowded stands, it was still quite freezing, so I was relieved to be able to get back on the bus to head back to the drop-off point.  It was a bummer I never got to cheer for a goal, but it was still a great experience nonetheless.  And the game ended on a (sort of) positive note when the last song sung was about how they were bummed they lost, but it’s ok because Boca would win in the championships…so…you know, typical rivalry stuff.

And now that I have caught you up (however briefly) on what’s been going on here, I can only ask for prayer support for these next two days so that I am prepared for all of these papers and exams and presentations and that I still have a few shreds of sanity left by the end of it.

Thank you all so much for your support.

Besos,

Kiki