Well hello world... so its been only four days. I looked at my calander and couldnt believe that. It feels like I've been here so much longer! So anyhoo for an update... lets see. Well I've have been doing an awful lot of babysitting and child entertainment. Let me tell you, it's a blast. Ha the missionaries kids all want to play all the time and literally they never ever run out of energy. Today I even went to see the oldest 2 boys (Malachi and Elijah) play basketball for their local team in La Plata. There was around 45 kids though and they were all there to play, apparently basketball is the second biggest sport here next to Futbol.
Ok now let me rewind a little bit, Wednesday I pretty much got some 'orientation' from the missionaries I was with. Then the took me on some errands around town, I also got to go to my local friendly wal-mart. Although it is still wal-mart, its not much the same I suppose. More like a giant market with not much rhyme or reason as to why things are plaecd where. Also Argentines apparently love oranges. They have a million different kinds to buy (more like 9)and aside from Pepsi, Coca-cola and 7up, they have 4 other flavors of pop, all including orange again. It's crazy.
Then that night I went to play soccer with some guys from our area in an indoor arena, it started at 11, we finish around 12:30 and then sat around, drank Mate (a spanish sort of tea is the best way i can describe it) then finally went home around 1 in the morning. That's right, this is all at night. They liked me though so they invited me to play the next day without the missionaries which ended up being a rather heated affair. Some guys on the other team fouled our guys and then our guys fouled them back, all I know is they started screaming and almost had a fight. They broke it up and were fine afterwards and one of the locals, Marcelo, invited me to come eat at his house sometime. So that was good. The Language down here is one of the hardest parts though, Marcelo makes hand signals and then tells me the words often so that is very helpful. The Spanish I learned is not the same here at all, the conjugations are all different (vos instead of nos stuff for those of you who know what I'm talking about) and whatever else.
Ok One more thing to wrap this up and not bore you all too much for the day is that today after I went and saw the two kids played Basketball we went out into the villas (slum) for hora-feliz or in english 'happy-hour.' Don't worry it's not like in America though. It's a time where we just play games with the kids, have a little party and some of the younger ones learn some English. It was amazing and although the poverty is evident the kids there are happy. They taught me this game with marbles and laughed at me alot and we just were goofy. I couldnt have asked for more.
