Arrived Safely

Hola!
After an 11 hour, 45 minute flight to Chile, a three hour stop over in which I tried to use Telefonia Speedy WiFi with no luck, and a 1 hour 30 minute flight over the Andes that I missed because I was sitting in the middle of the 3 middle seats of the plane ....... I finally arrived in Buenos Aires!

My fellow AFS teachers on exchange were waiting for me so it was wonderful to see some friendly smiley faces as they were on a different flight to me. The AFS volunteer, Pablo, was very, very welcoming and very helpful. He had all our information and made us feel a little bit more sure of what was to come. Two of us were to be staying at a hotel for the night (one was me) the other two were leaving at various times in the evening to go to their host families.

First noticeable difference? The heat! It´s really muggy here. Next noticeable difference - the traffic! WOW! There are cars and taxis everywhere and no lanes and everybody drives really fast, and beeps! But it´s not an unfriendly beep, I think it´s a friendly beep to say "watch out I´m coming up beside you - don´t hit me!"

Once settled in our hotel, the remaining 3 of us decided to venture out on the streets of Buenos Aires. We were right in the middle of the business district. Unbeknown to us, at 6pm that evening, the President of Argentina made a speech. Unfortunately a lot of people did not agree with what she said, and so many, many people took to the streets to protest. Streets, highways etc were blocked for most of the night. Meanwhile one of our teachers was stuck on a bus unable to get through to her host family whilst the other three of us were trying out our varying degrees of español on poor unsuspecting waitors in a downtown restaurant. We had a great meal, wonderful service and a great chat with one another.

Back at the hotel, we managed to use the internet briefly to tell our families and friends that we had arrived safely and then up to the room for two of us to "crash" whilst one of us went to the airport to fly the last three hours of her journey down to Rio Gallegos (excuse the spelling).

Next morning, Olivia from AFS picked me up, put me on a bus to for 8 hours to arrive safely at Paraná. My host family is just adorable. My host "mum" for 4 weeks speaks English - she teaches English at two schools. My host "Dad" speaks a little English but not much. It is still very muggy today, and last night we had a lovely dinner out on the patio at 10.30pm. I had a go at answering and describing New Zealand to my host family in a mixture of Español and English. I have realised that my knowledge of Español is very limited, even after 6 months of private lessons, plus three years of teaching Curriculum Level 1 Spanish. Argentinean people are extremely friendly but boy do they speak fast!

I took some photos yesterday, so will upload them to flickr soon and post again shortly.

Bueno!