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Hello, everyone! This is my second "newsletter" from Agentina. I’ve been abroad for 60 days now, and have almost completely adapted to the new lifestyle. My spanish is going great, and I can carry out a pretty normal conversation with most people. I still have a long way to go, but I feel like the light at the end of the tunnel is in plain sight. Friends are plentiful, both in school and away, with my host brother’s, Ramiro, buddies. At this moment in time, I am extremely glad that I braved the initiation and stuck with it until now.

I just got back yesterday from a week-long school trip to Buenos Aires. My school is an agricultural one, so we saw greenhouses, farms, animals and other stuff for the study part. The other half of the trip was sightseeing and shopping in the city. We went to the Plaza de Mayo, where the Casa Rosada is, (This is the Argentine semi-equivalent of the White House, only that this one is pink, and the president just works there), and went on a tour inside. It was very impressive, with fancy architechture and decorations. I also saw the biggest street in the city, the Avendia 9 de Julio, wich divides it in two. This enormous street has nearly 20 lanes! In the center, at one point, there is a huge obelisk, very similar to the Washington Monument. We also went to the Congress building, wich was equally impressive as the Casa Rosada. A tour was taken inside as well, to see the Senate chamber and other rooms.

This trip lasted for a week, and the last day was the most fun. Before the trip, several fundraisers were done to lower the cost per student from 300 and something to 55 dollars. As it turned out, we had an extra 50 left over for each student! This lowered the cost for this beuatiful voyage to 5 bucks a head! The money was returned to us on the last day, when we stayed at the Plaza Messere from 10 to 6, doing what ever we pleased: shopping mainly, walking around, relaxing in the shade, and eating.

The only downside about this trip was the bus part. It’s twelve hours from Viedma to Bs. As., so that means that I was in a bus for a full day. If you add in all the shuttling back and forth from where we slept to the city, It comes close to two days. Then there was the breakdown on the way back. 25 miles from the next city, something happened, and we had to wait for 7 hours for a mechanic to come out. Overall, I was in a bus longer than the travel time that it took to get from Seattle to Viedma. Oh well.

That’s about all the interesting stuff, everything else here is pretty routine. School, friends, and family take up most of my time. My birthday is coming up in three weeks, and it is going to be a wild time. Several friends have birthdays very close to mine, and I think it will be quite a party. Summer vacation starts December 1st, but I think that I’ll have to come part time until the 15th. This summer I hope to have lots of fun. I’ve planned to go on a graduation trip with my host brother’s class; we’ll go to Brasil, Paraguay, Uraguay, and the Cataratas de Iguazú, a famously beuatiful waterfall. This lasts two weeks. I also hope to go to other places with my family, like Bariloche, San Martin de los Andes, and maybe down south to see more of the Patagonia. It’s going to be awesome. I hope everyone who reads this is having a great time, and would love to hear from you every once in a while.

The following is something I wrote for my school newspaper back home. I’m doing 1 of these each month to get some English credit while I’m gone. Enjoy!

Every teen here loves to party. Everywhere I go, people ask me if I’ve been to or liked one of the many dance clubs in their city. There are three or four big and popular places. Smaller ones exist, but as far as I can see, they are pretty lame, or are targeted at "older people," which includes anyone over 22. The big ones have names like Liquido, Ghost, Eclipse, and Maroco Tropical.

Now, I’ve never been to a dance club type place in the U.S., so I can’t really make comparisons, but the Argentine way has to be different. No place here opens before midnight. The usual schedule for a typical teenager here is to hang out at home until midnight, then take ½ to 1 hour of getting showered dressed, and ready. At 1AM or so, he or she goes to a friends house. There, ten or so other teens hang out some more, listening to music, playing (Argentine) cards, and drinking small amounts of alcohol. This lasts anywere from 1 to 3 hours. Next, everyone gets in cars or taxis and heads out.

The boliche (disco in argentine spanish) will be packed to the walls with teens who are smoking, dancing, drinking, talking, and just hanging out, all to the ear-crushing bass of thundering music. Many types of music can be seen. There are a lot of North American artists, from Britney Spears, to Eifel 65 to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as Argentine tunes. Rodrigo is by far the most popular, who sang to pachanga and cuarteto music. (This very well-loved singer died in a tragic car crash this year). Alcohol is readily available to all who want it, but is quite expensive inside.

My first time in a boliche was quite a shock. Before we went in the door, I could feel my organs vibrating with the beat of the music, and smell the stench of hundreds of cigarettes. Inside, there were so many people that it was impossible to dance, and I had to push my way through to keep up with my host brother. I entered at about 2:30 AM. After 2 or so hours of having my ears hammered in and my lungs choked, I felt like I would throw up. I don’t know why exactly, but I think it was all the smoke, becuase as soon as I got some nice fresh air, I felt normal. My very nice host brother took me home. For him and the other Argentines, leaving at 5 is early. The places normaly close at 7 AM, sometimes later.

For me, this whole deal of staying up late and partying all the time tells me a lot about Argentine culture. It shows a very high value on socializing and being with friends. Also, I see another cultural value here: a very low emphasis placed on having and following rules. From the way they drive to the low drinking age, this is a very strong Argentine trait. I think that there is a legal drinking age, but no one ever told me what it is. Everyone here says that its okay to drink because everybody drinks, as long as you don’t go walking around drunk on the streets and get caught by the law.

Speaking of the police, I haven’t noticed them doing much here. They man the many "police control" highway stop points, respond to house alarms, and drive around. I haven’t seen a single speed trap, or anyone stopped for speeding. Its perfectly normal here to pass a patrol car on a city street at sixty miles an hour.

I’ve only seen two stop signs in the entire city of 30,000 people. There are about 15 stoplight intersections, but many people ignore them and drive right through. Argentines seem to have a built-in radar that lets them continue on, never looking to one side or the other. They also love to tailgate at high speeds, drive all over the road, and (the teens, at least) perform movie-like stunts, like sideways skidding stops. There don’t seem to be any speed limit signs here, either. When driving down the highway, they drive at 80, 90, or 100 miles per hour for hours at a time. Oh, by the way, nobody here, (except me) wears a seatbelt. Seatbelts aren’t for macho men, I hear. For me, this really illustrates the casual style of life here.

This is another strongly evident cultural trait. The only ever-present rule I see here is that there aren’t any rules. The entire time I’ve been here, nobody has said that I broke a rule, or did something wrong. At the dinner table, as well. No one minds if you reach accross their plate to help yourself to a dish, or if you have something to say and just blurt it out. This has made it very easy for me to adjust. I say this because if I had rules and regulations about everything I did, it would be a headache every day. This has to be my favorite thing about Argentina: being able to do everything how I want to do it.