Jan. 20-Feb. 9

In my last week with my second family, we went on vacation to Carlos Paz, a high intensity tourist city an hour from Cordoba Capital. The father of my host dad has a nice little villa on the outskirts of the town, and we stayed there for a week. The villa is nestled on the top of a hill with a beautiful pool, garden, and patio.

During the week Pablo, Mariano, Jony ( a friend of mine) and I would go to the center of Carlos Paz at night for the general atmosphere. The city is full to the brim with tourists and people, and walking through the streets is like being at a concert with no music. You get confronted by cross dressing show girls, clowns, performers, and all manners of carny folk. Our normal routine was just to eat dinner somewhere, and then walk around for a while until we either decided to go to a club or just went back to the house. The pace of vacationing in Carlos Paz is very slow, and it was good to take a break from the big city for a while.

When I got back in Còrdoba, I had to move families again. Most exchange students are still in the first family, and I am on my third. This is due to a mixture of accidents and poor planning by my Rotary Club, but I don't really mind that much. Anyways, on thursday two weeks ago I moved families. My new family lives only 3 blocks from my first family, in Barrio General Paz, Sarmiento 1874. I was pleased, after living with 6 other people in a fairly small house, to see upon arriving that the house looked decently large from the outside. Upon entering, I met my new host family.

My host fathers name is Alberto. He works for the Secretary of Environment in the province of Còrdoba. A energetic guy who seems pretty nice. His wifes name is Rebecca, and she is a stay at home mom who dominates the house. She takes it very seriously to maintain order at home but is also a very nice and loving person. My new host siblings are Philipe, 14, and a girl Belin, 10. Their brother Jeronimo is in Germany right now on exchange and left a few days before I arrived at ths house. Philipe and Belin seem nice. Belin doesn't really talk much and Philipe is always trying to entangle me in a video game or show me something he has but it is generally a good situation and I feel comfortable.

The house is very large, with two main floors, a large basement with ping pong, work out station, and the car, a pool in the backyard and a roof with a view of the entire city. It is a large change from my last family and frankly I am glad I have the big house with all the comodities.

The family accepted me with open arms and there were't any problems. I said goodbye to my previous host parents and settled in.

Shortly, on the next Tuesday, I went to Alta Gracia for a week at an international festival with a group of 20 other exchange students. The entire week was organized by Rotary. I was staying, along with Bas from Holand and Ole from Germany, at the house of some friends of mine, the previous host parents of Joseph from New Zealand. I had stayed there before, and already knew the parents and the two children. Lucas, 3, considers me his older brother, and Juan a baby of 11 months is really cute and fun to play with. Obviously the atmosphere in the house is never calm but it was fun to have two tiny little brothers for a week. During the week in Alta Gracia we went to the festival every night.

The festival is basically many many tents representing countries from all over the world with traditional food, music, and dance. There is a large stage where bands play and many different art fairs. Unfortunately, not many of the tents actually had natives from that country there, so most of the tents were very similar because they were run by Argentinians who know nothing about the cultures they are representing. For example, the U.S.A tent was selling Choripan, a type of sandwich made of sausage that is only eaten here in Argentina, and spelled Hamburger ``Hamburguer``. Their cheesecake was literally jello on top of whipped cheese, and was disgusting. But for the most part it was a very nice festival. We got to present ourselves on stage, and wander around every night. Most nights we all ended up in the Cuban tent, because it had amazing live music and lots of people.

In the last few days of the week we went to a beautiful river to go swimming. The next day we went to a Rotarians house to hang at the pool, and I got to go horseback riding. I havent done it in a really long time but I was able to get my horse up to a fairly good speed. Because I was in a bathing suit my thighs are still complaining about that but it was fun.

The next day we all went out to a Boliche (club) just to have fun. It was a great time and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

On the finaly day, we were invited to the house of Luis Lima. Luis Lima is an operah singer who is supposedely one of the best in the world, and judging by his house its probably true. He is friends with the Rotary club and invited us over to eat Asado (Argentinian tradational meat barbaque) and hang at his pool. This guys house is extremely large. He owns a large amount of land in the country, has a huge pool with diving board, horses, tennis court, stables, and everything else. Everyone had a great time and I had a particularly amusing time trying to teach Europeans to do flip of the diving board. We played water polo and all got sun burnt.

On the last day, everyone was inviting everyone else to come stay at their cities and have great adventures. I have decided that I want to use my remaining 5 months here to adventure as much as possible and visit as many places as I can. My friends and I are already planning trips and get togethers all over the place. I am now back at home in my new family, but have to go meet a group of exchange students in the center for Suchi Dinner!

Chau