Seattle to Miami to Santiago to Buenos Aires to Resistencia

I´ve been here in Resistencia, Argentina for a couple of weeks, three I think, and a lot has happened. I´m not about to write everything down right now, but I will give an overview of the first week. I flew from Seattle on wednesday the 12th of February-my birthday. I arrived in Miami the next day and spent most of it with my uncle Peter and my aunt Aryn, their kids, and my grandparents. We drove around Miami, and drank some starbucks. Afterwards, we ate out at a restaraunt and walked around on one of the main streets. One thing I learned that day, was that it doesn´t matter how small a baby is, they can still rip a hole in your head with their screaming. Another thing I learned is never feed a baby starbucks coffee. At around 4 I went back to the hotel, and we spent the day in orientation, learning over and over again the three basic rules of AFS, and everything in between.
1. No illegal drugs
2. No driving anything with a motor
3. No hitchhiking
We also learned AFS´s famous moto ¨It not good, its not bad, its just different¨

After the orientations the first day, we had a few hours of free time, so me and some friends played poker and talked for a few hours. The next day we did the same kind of stuff, but more program and country specific. For example, we spent an hour watching a video about what different facial expressions and hand motions mean in different countries. For example, if you are in Venezuela, and you grab your croch with both hands when a lady you want walks by, that can be seen as offensive. I can´t say I learned much in those two days, but I did meet a lot of really cool people who, like me, were going to be staying somewhere in South America for either a semester or a year. After the Miami orientation. The Argentina semester and year students broke up, and left for Argentina on different planes. Those of us who were going for a year had to first fly into Santiago, Chile and then to Buenos Aires. The others got to fly straight to Buenos Aires. Once we arrived in BA, and after going through customs, which was easy for most of us, we proceeded to change our US dollars into Argentine pesos. Every US dollar is equal to about 3.17 Argentine pesos. This means everything in Argentina is incredibally inexpensive. A family sized coke for example costs me only 3 pesos, or less than a dollar. A 40 ounce Brama, which is one of the local Beers, costs about 5 pesos. If you want to eat out, this too is very cheap. A large pizza, with everything on it, costs about 15-20 pesos. Back to what I was talking about before. So after changing our money, we met up with the New Zealand students, and took a few busses to this place way on the outskirts of BA, in a very poor district. It was a hospital/church/dormitory. We stayed there for about one and a half days, mostly spending time doing absurd ¨team building¨ excercises, and asking questions if we had any. But at night, we had talent shows and danced cumbia until the early hours of the morning. We sang Tribute, American Pie, and some black gospel song. All the other countries had origional dances and songs. We Americans felt a little ashamed that the only thing we could come up with that represented our country, were a few trashy songs and our national anthem. But it was a lot of fun. The next day, we packed up and did a little tour of Buenos Aires. Its a really nice city, with modern archetecture, couples dancing tango around every corner, the parks flooded with people playing soccer, and a lot of noise, cars, and people everywhere. We went to three or four different places, and all were a lot of fun. After this, we said our goodbyes, and proceeded to the bus station. Bus stations in South America happen to be dangerous. I didn´t really know this. When we arrived at the Buenos Aires bus station (about 100 of us) we were waiting outside by the street for everyone to get off the bus. I was talking with my friends when some woman tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to some money on the ground. It was 12 pesos. She kept on insisting that it was my money. I kept on insisting that it wasn´t, but I finally gave in and picked it up. My back was turned from my bags. Then some guy ran into a woman standing next to our group and a lot of people fell down. I heard a shout that someone was running off with someone´s bag. I looked and short man was quickly walking off with one of my bags. It had my camera, some clothes, money, passport, and all of the essentials in it. So me and a few of the counsejeros ran after the guy and yelled at him in english and spanish. Instead of running, he dropped it and put up his hands in the air saying he thought it was his bag. Afterwards, the lady asked for her money back. To spare other people from being robbed I did the right thing. I kept it. In the bus station, we all made a circle around our bags, and as time went on, different groups of people left to go to their provinces. Our group was one of the last to leave. We had a 16 hour bus ride ahead of us, and I was tired, sweaty, but excited to leave BA. The bus was really nice. The seats were all leather, there was AC, a waiter, and the seats could recline and turn into beds. I ate some shitty food, and watched a movie. After the movie, the waiter offered me and my friend Andeas some champagne. I slept for about 10 hours, and woke up to some more shitty food. All I could see out of the windows was flat land going on forever, palm trees, and an occational car racing by. Finally, we arrived at the bus station.