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Published: March 20th 2007
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My AFS Chapter
These are the people in my AFS chapter. We participated in a march to mark the 101st anniversary of the town. After a 4 day orientation in Buenos Aires, a day spent in the Buenos Aires airport after my plane being delayed twice, I landed in my lovely little town of Esquel. I was so scared and excited at the same time to meet my family (well my little family of only a 29 year old women) and was relieved that she brang a friend to the airport with her who spoke english. Atleast now I didn´t have a 20 minute car ride of silence back to my house. One of the first things I noticed was that in my car the speedometre didn´t work but I´ve come to learn now that that´s common here, as is not having number plates... or all the seatbelts....
So my first few days in my house were.... different... an experience..... made me appreciate what I used to have. My house didn´t have a fridge, I slept in the living room and it was attached to a dentist so I would wake in the morning to the sound of dentist drills. Not exactly what I was used to. Also my mum worked pretty much all day so I found myself stuck alone in a
La Trochita
This is a train that runs through patagonia, it used to function as a mode of transport but now is just for tourists. ( i just went to the station to see it leave, didn´t actually ride in it). house all day watching TV and not learning any Spanish.
After about 3 days, 4 rotary exchange students randomly came and visited me in my house. I have never been so relieved in my life. All of them could speak english and they had all been here for 6 months already so they provided me with alot of great information about the town, how things work around here and confirmed my suspicions that it wasn´t normal for an exchange student to sleep in the living room and not have a fridge in the house.
At the end of my first week in Esquel, I was told that I was only with that family for one month, and then I´d be going to a new one. In the hope that my first family here doesn´t read this, I´d have to say that has been one of the happiest moments of my life. haha
From there everything started to go up hill. As school didn´t start for another 2 weeks, the other exchange students addopted me and we hung out a bit together, though as they all spoke english and I couldnt really speak a word of spanish, I
My first family
That is my first ´mum´Lilly on the right, and her friend Cristy on the left. still wasn´t learning much.
Then I started school. I thought it sounded great that my school was from 7:40 to 12:30 so then I´d have the afternoon free..... but then I realized I´d be getting up in the dark and the cold. That´s really taken some getting used to!!!!!!
I never realised just how right Peter Beatie is when he says (refering to Queensland), ´state schools are great school´. My school here really doesn´t have anything in it. There is a library which is the size of a classroom, I think there would be less than 10 computers in the whole school, none of which are for students, there is no such thing as sporting teams, choirs, bands or anyform of extra curricular activities, and in my classroom there are literally only desks, chairs, a bin and the chalk and duster get delivered and taken away every day I think so that no one steals them. And instead of having lots of text books, the teachers tell the kids what they need for the next class and they get photo copies of the texts from ´kioscos´which are like corner stores.
However like all things in life, it´s the people who make things what they are, and the people in my school are fantastic. Despite on my first day having a ridiculously oversized uniform worn completely wrong and looking like a complete idiot, I immediatly had friends who took me around at luch time, showed me where everything was and were really friendly to me and patient with my inability to speak. Luckily for me, in my first day I was in the wrong class so I got a second chance to look normal for meeting my real classmates the next day.
Luckily my new class way just as friendly. My first week in school I couldn´t understand a thing, I had no hope of writting when teachers were dictating and couldn´t even copy from the board because it all looked so foreign to me. Atleast I wasn´t going to have a stressfull year of schoolwork. By the end of the first week I had settled into a group of friends and got invited over to someones house to drink mate in the afternoon ( mate is something they drink here all day and is kind of like green tea). I think that´s probably the biggest relief for an exchange student when you know you actuallly have a group of friends!!!!
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Zoe HQ
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its' bloody good to hear from you Hannah, it sounds like you're having a ball, i can't wait to finish up here and go travelling south america is first on my list then back to live in europe for awhile, i miss just being able to be totally out of my comfort zone...wierd i know lol anyway keep in touch i miss you! zoe xx