Explaining random things

I just needed a picture for this post, but this was when we went to a park or something where they had little tents with food. This man was wearing a Big Time Rush hat, which is why I took a photo, and I don't know what is happening with the kid in the background.

Cafe con leche: sooo good here. I don’t even know how they make it, but it’s awesome. I think it’s stirred by hand. There’s lots of fluff (???? Cream????) on the top, and it’s sweet but not too sweet and very milky. Sooo good.

Street performers: When you stop at a stoplight or something like that, there are sometimes people who will perform, like they will go in front of the cars and juggle pins or there was one guy who had clown makeup and put a dog on his shoulders while he juggled. Then they will walk through the middle of the cars and people will hand them money through the windows. Also, the traffic laws here are way lax. Mi mamá told me that they don’t care if you speed, and there pretty much aren’t lanes in the road. People don’t stop at stop signs at all, and sometimes there aren’t stop signs and you just have to decide who goes first and stop if someone is in front of you. And people will pass other people on either side of the road, it seems to me like a bit of a free for all. I see why they don’t let us drive on exchange even though I miss it!!

Cocaine: Another thing is that they have a thing here that they call cocaina (cocaine), but it is different than what we call cocaine in the U.S. It comes from the same plant, and it’s leaves that people chew, kind of like tobacco I think. Apparently, though, you need a lotttt of this plant to make a tiny bit of what we call cocaine. I learned this because I asked if mate has caffeine, and the neighbor told me she thought it didn’t but it might have cocaine, and I’m sure I made a face or something because she immediately began to explain this.

Babies and food: In my house, there are always lots of babies around because my host parents are very young so their friends have young kids, and my family has a 2 year old. The neighbors also have little kids, so that has been a lot of fun. They are all very cute. Here, there are always people stopping by the house for mate or asado or to go buy food or something like that. Everything is centered around food. You eat breakfast in the morning, which for me has been medialunas, biscoche, y cafe con leche around 9 or 10 on a weekend. Then you have lunch at 13:00 or so, which is empanadas or tamales, or today we had asado (which is veryyy good, me entcanta el chorizo), and another snack-meal around 6 or 7, I don’t remember the name—this is when you have mate or some people just have regular tea or cafe con leche, and cookies, medialunas, etc. Then you have dinner late. Tonight we did it around 9:30 I think, and we had tortillas (like an egg-potato-pasta pancake) made from leftovers.

Mormons: Today is the first day someone has made the Utah-Mormon connection, which I thought was interesting and was not expecting anyone to really know about. Thus far, if people know what Utah is, they just know it has lots of National Parks.

Kissing: One thing I have mostly gotten used to already is the kissing. You do one kiss, always on the right cheek, when you greet someone, both hello and goodbye. And everyone here is very affectionate in general, as far as I can see. It is a very warm environment (emotionally—right now it is winter but not too cold in Salta where I am).

Bedtime: Everyone here goes to bed really late. Today I told one of the family friends that in the U.S. I go to bed around 11 and wake up for school at 7:30, and he commented that this is sooo much sleep.

Liaison and school: I talked to my contact person today—which is a volunteer for AFS who I can talk to about whatever. I like him a lot, I think AFS has a very good system for this. Also, I have talked to one girl from my school and she seems veryyyy nice. I start tomorrow! I will be at a private Catholic school which focuses on humanities (philosophy, political science, this kind of thing), but I also have chemistry (hahahha), physics, and math. Apparently we are not allowed to wear makeup, but Fer (the girl from school) told me that we can wear base (which is foundation/concealer) and mascara, so we will see!!

Uhhm that’s all! Chau!