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Its been 2 months. It feels crazy saying it, I mean 2 months is not exactly a small amount of time. Though I can see why people say exchange’s fly by, blink and its gone, thats why I plan on making the most of the time I have, by grabbing every opportunity and doing everything I can... bar blinking of course. :DI guess I can start with school, because as my parents always said school comes first :p It’s awesome, well more specifically the people in my class are lovely and so thats what makes school so great.
My school here, Sarmiento, is so different to the school I went to in New Zealand, the way the teachers and students communicate, the school hours (we start at 7.45am and most days we are finished by 12.45pm) and then I have the whole afternoon which is wicked. Adding to that now and then the teachers don’t show up for certain subjects which means we can go home haha, in other words it’s quite chill here which is kinda perfect for me, given I’m on an exchange. I have some separate things to do in classes such as English where it would be a little pointless to learn basic English haha. :) so I am preparing a presentation to do to the class, a little like my rotary one, though I am going to do it in English and Spanish, e.g Hi my name is Harry, Hola me llamo Harry. This is good for my Spanish and also it will help the rest of the class with their English. I’m still at a level where I don’t understand a whole lot of what the teachers are saying, but usually when I don’t understand I ask one of the guys, who are really helpful in making sure I understand things that are important.
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So with regards to how I’m getting on with the people, I couldn’t be happier, as I said I’m very lucky to be in the class I am, because everyone has been really welcoming, especially the guys. Theres like a group of 9, which I’m now incorporated into, and although I don’t understand everything they are saying, there are always some good laughs, in fact I can’t think of a time when someone wasn’t laughing. After school normally 2 days a week we organise a football game against another class from our school or another. This has been another really good way for me to bond with them and to a degree I feel I’ve gained their respect from how I play in those games. In the last 3 games I’ve scored 9 goals and I think they were a little surprised given that I did come from New Zealand who aren’t exactly known for their footballing pedigree, we aren’t even in the World Cup which they’ve pointed out to me a few times haha. Also now and then we meet at someone’s house and play a Fifa tournament, watch a domestic football game or recently the international friendly Argentina vs Italy. Once when school finished early we went to a bar and played a tournament of pool, that was a good fun. My host family and I went away last week, for the weekend. It was about a 4 hour drive to a small town called Cura Brochero, kind of settled in the mountains. We spent a day at a beautiful river and I also got to ride a horse where for the first time, I went up to a gallop which was pretty exciting of course what made the whole thing even better was falling off, every time I think back to it I cant stop laughing, as my foot slipped and I started tipping to the right and I was holding on to dear life as the saddle slowly started slipping with me and then thankfully the horse slowed down and I landed but my other foot stayed in the holster thingy, a sight to see I’m sure, the guy who let me ride was probably having a good laugh. :p
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Within all this awesomeness I have definitely had moments of homesickness, mainly stemming from missing my family. It’s the small things like getting home telling them all about my day, eating eggs as a family each morning, being able to open up about how I’m feeling and all the emotions flowing through (It’s more difficult in another language, and I think after two months I'm not quite at the stage with anyone where I can poor my heart out to them hahaha) but it’s not anything like I want to return home, cause wow I absolutely love it here, its just that I miss certain parts and people.Finally, yesterday was a big day. Every year there is a performance of sorts (Called a ‘presentación’ here) done by each of the 3 classes of .png)
Sexto Año (Final year of school - year 13 in NZ), and its a really big deal, they started preparing some parts of it last year. It’s performed in front of the whole school (600ish people) and although its not a competition you want to blow the other classes out of the water, so thats what we did. Just joshin, but it went really really well. Especially the haka, which my class asked me to teach them. It was such a cool feeling firstly the fact that my class wanted to present the haka something from New Zealand Culture in their performance and secondly me being able to share it with the whole school and feeling that intense passion as we did it. It was actually the first time I’d done the haka which makes it even more special to me, of course I didn’t tell them it was my first time, I acted like it was an everyday thing of mine, ‘oh yeah, I do it after brushing my teeth every morning’ hahaha. Nah but in all seriousness it was an amazing experience and afterwards, I felt probably the most happy I’ve felt here, and I’ve felt happy a lot so thats saying something. Oh also forgot to mention that early march I went to a Argentinian domestic football game, and it was sooo cool, the crowd was just insane one minute the everyone yelling swear words at the team and the ref the next, the whole stadium is dancing and singing their hearts out encouraging them on. It was such a different experience to any live match I’ve seen before.
Sexto Año (Final year of school - year 13 in NZ), and its a really big deal, they started preparing some parts of it last year. It’s performed in front of the whole school (600ish people) and although its not a competition you want to blow the other classes out of the water, so thats what we did. Just joshin, but it went really really well. Especially the haka, which my class asked me to teach them. It was such a cool feeling firstly the fact that my class wanted to present the haka something from New Zealand Culture in their performance and secondly me being able to share it with the whole school and feeling that intense passion as we did it. It was actually the first time I’d done the haka which makes it even more special to me, of course I didn’t tell them it was my first time, I acted like it was an everyday thing of mine, ‘oh yeah, I do it after brushing my teeth every morning’ hahaha. Nah but in all seriousness it was an amazing experience and afterwards, I felt probably the most happy I’ve felt here, and I’ve felt happy a lot so thats saying something. Oh also forgot to mention that early march I went to a Argentinian domestic football game, and it was sooo cool, the crowd was just insane one minute the everyone yelling swear words at the team and the ref the next, the whole stadium is dancing and singing their hearts out encouraging them on. It was such a different experience to any live match I’ve seen before..png)
Anyway 2 months down 9 and a half to go. Hope all is well in NZ. See you next time. Harry