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Hello everyone,
I hope that you are all well and enjoying the nice weather that I’ve been hearing about in Kelowna! Buenos Aires is getting quite a bit colder, sweaters and scarves, but at least the humidity is down!
The Big 15
So I went to my first “15 Cumple” about a week and a half ago. For a girl here, turning age 15 is a pretty big deal and the family throw a huge party with a dinner and music and dancing and all that. Our friend Stevie, who did an exchange program with Rotary to Canada the year after we got back from ours, invited us to his sisters party. It’s actually such an unusual party, first of all the birthday girl is in a big white dress resembling a wedding dress, and there’s lots of people all dressed up fancily in dresses and suits. After the dinner there is a bit of a dance and then came the Candle Lighting ceremony where the girl lights 15 candles, and dedicates each one to people that are important in her life like grandparents, brothers, parents, boyfriend, best friends, etc… then a bit of ice cream and dancing, then a film
Yeaa Rotary
Four ex Rotary Students, Nicolas from Equador, me, Jenica, and Stevie from Argentina presentation of pictures put together on powerpoint of the birthday girl and her life until 15, then more dancing… then my favorite part: the dessert room! Yes that’s right, a room with a big table on it with different cakes and cream puffs and candies and everything that is wonderful in the world of desserts… we sampled a few… Then out comes the carnival gear or hats, whistles, masks, and every random party toy you can think of, and the dancing. It’s a very big production with music, lights, a photographer, and a camera man all to record the memory of the 15th birthday. We ate and danced around until 5 and then thanked Stevie for inviting us, said happy birthday, and arrived home at 6.
La Noche Internacional
Last night was our International night at the university and it was actually such a good time. Despite being in the middle of midterms tones of people showed up and had awesome booths with food and music and typical things from their countries. The Mexicans went all out with guacamole dip and tacos and burritos, the Germans trucked along about 15 1L bottles of beer, the Swiss had their Raclette (a
Our Table
Our assigned "Friends of the Brother" table with a random group of people who were all nice and funny and interesting special cheese melted over potatoes and veggies) and hand made truffles… everyone went all out. Since there are only 3 Canadians here, it was a bit harder for us to do an elaborate food from Canada… so we just bought cookies from down the street and pawned them off as “Typical Canadian” Everyone would come up and try our Canadian cookies, and tell us how wonderful they were and that they defiantly would come to Canada one day to eat these wonderful cookies… even the Argentines who saw their traditional sweet sauces and cookies thought it was a nice sample of Canada… oops… Our table featured bread (wheat) pieces of wood we found on the streets walking to the school, some shirts that Jenica had with Native American art, apples, pig, bear and cow stuffed animals, books on Vancouver, a big flag, a slide show on the computer of traditional Canadian things, money, potatoes, corn, sunripe fruit to go, some random celery thing (for decoration) and fake weed (made of a combination of mate, oregano, and parsley) along with a lighter and rolling papers from cigarettes, and of course the Canadian cookies.
Despite our sneaky cookie scandal there was one
Carnival!
The random carnival treats passed out the birthday of a much grander scale that we were only privileged to know later on that night… The Dutch guy Yvo arrived late and set up his traditional Holland food of bananas dipped in tomato sauce, Sauerkraut on top of chocolate cookies, and pepperoni dipped in apricot sauce with lemon juice squeezed on top… It was only later that night that he confessed that he didn’t have any dutch food, didn’t want to make anything, so just went to the supermarket, bought a bunch of random foods and combined them all… nothing on that table (aside from the sauerkraut) was Dutch. After that we went to a Colombian/Ecuadorian party and danced salsa for a bit, met a bunch of very nice people, and then arrived home safe and sound and slept.
Right now we’re in the middle of midterm exams, we wrote on Thursday in Political Science that went pretty well, now we have a few essays and exams left but hopefully they’ll be pretty easy. Also one of our good friends from Canada, Laura, will be arriving here with her boyfriend Chuck for a vacation in four days, we’re super excited to see her and to spend time with her,
Viva Mexico!
The mexican table with all the food.. yummmmmmm and also for the treats that she’s bringing from our parents!!
Well I should go and write my history paper, but we’ll talk to you all soon!
Lots of Love
Lindsay
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Frisky
Mike Frisque
15
funny how different cultures celebrate different moments in ones life, almost like "over here this is important, over there it's something else, then again over here it's something else" so girls enjoy every day because the past is, well........ over, the future is to come and the present is a present, truly. happy today love and hug m