General Roca with Stephanie!!

Another week has gone by without and update. Time is flying. I´ve been in Stephanie´s host family for 2 weeks now and they are a really great family. Days here are very different from ones back home. Basically days don´t really start until noon when you have lunch about an hour after you wake up. I´ve been having a hard time sleeping in enough, and since the house is small there isn’t much I can do until everyone else is up. Still working on the sleeping in thing, just in time to start my 9am Spanish course. After lunch nothing much gets done until 5 or 6 because it is too hot out and all stores are closed until then.

Many days were just spent hanging and socializing and other days we went out and did things. Argentineans know how to socialize and if you go to someone’s house to say hi you are sure to spend at least 2 hours there. People entertain themselves by spending time with each other. A LOT of time is spent around the dinner table, chatting, eating or drinking mate (pronounced mattay). This ended up being really good for my Spanish; I mostly do a lot of listening and am slowly starting to understand more and more. When I get tired though I find myself zoning out, which can kind of backfire when someone is talking to me and I don´t realize it.

Here is a list of things we did while I was in Roca:
- Had an asado, an Argentinian BBQ which is a really big deal. Most families always have an asado on weekends and you can always tell when someone is having an asado because it smells really good near their house. Stephanie´s family always has asado on Sunday.
- Attending an Argentinean Birthday with a lot of talking involved (not on my behalf). Birthday involved getting together and eating dinner, in this case pizza and then having cake.
- Going to Cervantes, Stephanie´s old town to meet her friends. They are a great group of people and Cervantes is a very nice and peaceful town, now I know why she enjoyed herself so much there.
- Go to an old farm and guess what?! Socialize some more. The farm was neat because the house on the property is much different than a typical Argentinean home. It is much larger and really high ceilings. It was built by a German family in the early 1900´s and had some really neat antiques inside.
- Went swimming in Rio Negro! We first drank mate and then had a nice swim to cool off! The river is really pretty and a popular destination for many people to spend the afternoon.
- Went to Neuquén, a large city nearby. We walked around and picked up a parcel from our parents. We also visited a host brother that lives there. We drank mate and had lunch with the host brother. And then went and saw Avatar, fortunately it was in English with Spanish subtitles.
- Made empanadas, an Argentinean specialty!
- Went walking downtown and explored the grocery stores. I find other countries´ grocery stores fascinating.
- Made carrot cake and apple cake for Stephanie´s family to try, they liked both of them!
- Played lots of lots of cards.
- Went the National Apple Festival in General Roca. It was fun and HUGE. There was a ton of fast food, an attraction park, arts and crafts vendors and live music. Some of the music I didn’t really enjoy but there were a few bands that I really liked! The festival was free and they estimated 400,000 people attended during the 5 days that it lasted.
- Watched a friend of Stephanie an Ailen´s perform Arabic dancing at the Apple Festival.
- Watched the scarce coverage of the Olympics! They aired the Opening Ceremonies so we made pizza, drank beer (with peanuts…something they do here) and cheered on Canada (and Argentina).

Tonight Stephanie and I are taking the bus to Bariloche, the town where I am taking my 1 month Spanish course. Stephanie is staying for 2 and a half days and then heads home to enjoy the last of her summer break. I start my course on Monday and am really forward to it. The first week I am staying in a hostel and then I move into a family for 3 weeks.