First Day of School!

Today was my first day of school here in Argentina! Of course, I had my stylish white skirt and white polo shirt. I still need to buy white long socks, and I must say that the skirt is by no means in Academy dress code, but it isn't too bad. I arrived around 10:30am and talked to some teachers and classes began at 11:00. In my class there are between 20 and 30 boys, and only one girl besides me. Different from the US, to say the least. I went to school in the car with Maya because she teaches English in the school there. Today I had two classes. First, chemistry. I actually understood a lot of what was going on, because the teacher would read a sentence from the textbook and we all would copy it, so I also have all the notes from class. I could understand the content because I have taken chemistry before, though there were a few things that confused me. Next, math. At first my partner showed me the work they were doing and I didn't recognize anything, but once we started doing the math I understood it really well. Again, a few things confused me but the majority was good. Though I honestly had to ask my classmates to repeat things five times to understand them because they talk so quickly and with so much slang. Two AFS volunteers were at my school and at least one works there, so I know some people there.
In the past few days, I've gone to the ice cream store (which sells ice cream for about 75 cents... which may not be a good thing because I'll go there way too often) and spent some time with the other exchange students. My week already is filling up with all of the mate drinking and adventuring and everything!
Tonight they're supposed to show the exchange students on the local news station and have a segment on our arrival. And they interviewed me when I came and I was so tired that I didn't understand anything... and my Spanish was not at its best. So I'm looking forward to watching that haha.

Orientation and Arrival!

Oh my gosh, there is so much to say! From the beginning... we all got to the airport, were escorted to security, then were on our own to wait for the plane. That is when it hit us all, that we were going to Argentina! Some of us had a nice conversation with a man from Cordoba, and later on a woman from Buenos Aires. The plane... was a plane. With plane food, and plane blankets and plane pillows. So I got about three hours of sleep. Getting through baggage claim was no big issue, but going through the visa line was awful just because there were 25 of us trying to speak Spanglish and find papers and stay organized. We made it out alive, and AFS volunteers took us on a three hour bus ride (with the Icelanders- who had fish jerky- and the Canadians) to three different orientation locations. Each location had about 80 students. My location was a church camp where we slept in bunk beds. There were a lot of countries represented, mainly the twenty or so Italians and 8 Americans. The orientation was in English, so although the other students from Europe all seemed to speak four languages, we were the only ones that understood everything easily. After a spontaneous dance party at midnight, we went to bed, and after one more day of activities and mate drinking most of us took buses to the station and then split up by province to our long distance buses. Which were awesome. And had the best food, and fully reclining chairs and curtains. It was the best I slept since leaving home. We arrived in Formosa a little before eleven, and there we met the AFS Formosa president and the current exchange students and our families. When I arrived, my family wasn't there because we arrived sooner than expected (and later I learned that they had a flat tire) but a student from my school came with their family, so there was someone waiting. After about ten minutes, my family showed up and we headed out. We had lunch, then I hung out in my room with my host aunt, Jimena, my host sister, Maya, my host brother, Nicholas, and the student from my school, Gianfranco. It was nice to get to know them, and Spanglish was serving me well. Later we went on a walk to the coast, and Paraguay was right across the river. Afterwards, we went to have dinner at the house of another aunt and some cousins, who are all younger than me and absolutely adorable and absolutely non-understandable hahaha. Sign language is a helpful tool. I am supposed to start school Wednesday!

Orientation in Miami

Orientation for the day in Miami just ended, and now nine of the students are sitting on the lobby couch blogging, Facebook updating, tweeting... some are complaining about how slow the Internet is haha. Today we arrived between noon and four, and sat at the dining room and ate lunch. People are from all over! The plane ride here was pretty uneventful. A little girl was shocked that I was traveling all by myself. She thought that was pretty impressive. Getting off the plane, I kind of followed the mob to baggage plane but I think I took the roundabout way, which meant getting on a shuttle and up two flights of escalators and down two flights of escalators. The orientation at the hotel involved some ice breakers, some rules, and a really nice dinner. I met one other girl going to Formosa. Our flight leaves around midnight tomorrow!

Packing and Parties and all that other Pre Departure Stuff

Saturday night (two days ago) I had my going away party. There were about 18 people, from school, swimming, and Coutts. Of course, I forgot to take any pictures despite the fact that my camera was fully charged and on the counter, so there's no pictures of the cake (half USA flag, half Argentine flag) or the bonfire, or dinner, or s'mores with Nutella, or Liz getting hit in the face with a lacrosse ball (leave it to Liz). It was really fun though, and it was a nice way to say a group good bye. A lot of people were still out of town for the summer or busy, but in the past few weeks I've seen most of my friends. After the party I read some letters that my friends gave me, and I plan on taking those with me. I also got the Love Monkey, which is kind of a Traveling Pants-esque giant monkey that is passed around between some friends. There is no possible way that could fit in my suitcase, so I will make sure it gets passed to someone else soon after I leave.

And that brings us to packing. Which is a nightmare. I did a trial run packing last week just to get a general idea of how much space I have and what the weight is at. I think it's ironic that the people going to the subtropics can have heavier suitcases than those going to Ushuaia (the freezing cold city of the south) who have to bring heavy jackets and lots of pants. Either way, packing for a year is not easy. After a trip to Burlington last Monday I think I  am pretty well set as far as clothes go, but deciding what goes in which suitcase and how many of x to take and keeping track of everything is crazy. So I sat on the couch and made a list while my mom packed. Which is fine. Now all my clothes is packed and I'm currently in the process of getting my camera and phone and computer and all the chargers together. Or blogging as a method of procrastinating doing all that. It is really confusing that sometimes AFS says that we can have a carry on that's 22 lbs and others say 15 and others say something else. I'm going with the one that says 22.
So I leave tomorrow afternoon with my parents to Boston, where we'll stay overnight. Seeing as my brother leaves in the morning many hours before I think about waking up, we already had our heartfelt good bye in the car ("Bye Dylan." "Bye Dan.") The next day we go to the airport and part there, and I'll fly to Miami. We have an orientation there, stay overnight, then fly the next night to Buenos Aires, spend a night there, and then a few of us bus 14 hrs to Formosa, arriving Sunday. The next day I go to school, which is exciting... except for the fact that I don't know my school yet.

So something cool: in February when I first became sure I was doing this, I made a huge paper chain counting down the days until I left, each ring of the chain representing one day. And now after all these months there's one ring left out of a chain that used to be three times my height. Whoa.

By the way, after I leave the US, the best ways to contact me are via email: dmaghini@gmail.com, by commenting on the blog, or by Facebook. None of these will get a super fast response because I am limiting my email/Facebook use to once a week. Do not call/text my phone because that will not be going with me. Also, if you would like to send me that weird, old-fashioned thing called mail, send me an email and I'll give you an address. Just no guarantees on anything arriving there in a reasonable amount of time. I'll miss you all!