Cataratas de Iguazu

Basically I just wanna post a ton of pictures. On the 18-20, I was in Argentina for a district Rotary conference. All of the exchange students (over 60!) from my district were there. Yesterday (the 19th), we visited one of the seven wonders of the world, the cataratas de iguazu. And I know why it's one of the seven wonders. Hopefully you'll see by the end of the post.
So here we go. Pictures.

We traveled from Paraguay to Brasil

Brasil to Argentina..

Butterfly!

At the hotel

Nadia admiring a tree

My point of view admiring a tree

Sooo tall!

Nadia again

Artsy picture

Look at these huge leaves!!

Another artsy photo, the leaves kind of took over the tree

God I'm artsy

So many pretty flowers

A flower that looks like purple leaves

All of these are at the hotel we stayed in

Butterfly!

Look, I visited one of the seven wonders of the world!

Americans!

Look at how attractive we are

Caroline

Nadia

My ticket: all of the tickets said our nationality as Spain

I told Nadia to give me her "I'm in the effing rainforest" face

This my friends is a coati. Its similar to a raccoon, but there were a ton of them in the park! You had to guard your food so that they wouldn't steal it

Look.

How beautiful.

This is.

Obvious why its one of the seven wonders.

Nadia's new hat/best friend in the hot sun

Me (note my fabulous cornrows, courtesy of Phoebe de Texas)

We took a boat to ride under some of the falls, we were DRENCHED afterwards

Phoebe

I can't even. Pictures don't even begin to describe.

Nadia at more of the falls

 

The pictures kinda stopped showing up. I know there's a lot more of them here without captions, but hopefully they kind of speak for themselves.

 

Pictures don't even touch the magnificence of this place. I wish I could buy everyone reading this tickets to come to the falls to see just how beautiful this was.

Only in Paraguay and the Best Pizza of my Life

Yesterday I went to the house of Friedrich (Germany) to have supper and just enjoy time with all of the exchange students in our club. Its nice that we all get together as much as we do. I got there at about 21:00, and we just hung out in his backyard and talked for a while. Also I was introduced to the game Llama Duck. Basically you get shown pictures really quickly and you have to choose whether it is a llama or a duck, but its way harder than it seems.
We didn't eat supper until about midnight.. only in Paraguay! We ate some delicious asado.
Basically if there's a party with food involved, you can bet that you'll be eating asado here. And afterwards we had cake! No occasion, just cake. DELICOUS CAKE. One was an ice cream cake that was Neapolitan I believe, and the other was chocolate and peanut butter. Which one did I eat?
BOTH. Because I'm a healthy individual.

Hunter, Caroline, me, Manon, Kasey, Friedrich, Oskar, and Marius

Anyways. Today I went to Caroline's house and made pizza. Not just any pizza, as you can guess by the title of the post.
THE
BEST
PIZZA
OF
MY
LIFE.

Like, I don't even have words. It was freaking amazing.

GRATE THAT CHEESE

That's Caroline's host brother, Santiago. Literally the cutest kid ever.

I SAID GRATE THAT CHEESE.

Santiago trying to show us how old he is

Our mess. I found it kinda funny that we were making American pizza while eating Paraguayan sopa (that's the stuff on the plate)

Bad picture

Better picture

Caroline and her mom. The pizza was a little tough to cut !

Still cutting it

Sideways picture of both of our pizzas. I swear there's a knife under her hand, she's not massaging our pizza

Told you so

And afterwards, Caroline and I walked to get ice cream. As I said, HEALTHY individual I am. But hey, we walked!

 

Also, shoutout to the DHS marching band (my biggest family) who scored a Division I rating on Saturday!! So proud of you guys!

La Estancia

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to la estancia. La estancia is basically the countryside outside of Coronel Oviedo. My family has a ranch in la estancia, and we went there to celebrate my dad's birthday. My mom, Caroline (an exchange student from Arkansas), and I rode with my uncle. The drive was about an hour, and I don't even want to describe the roads we took to get there without pictures. They were crazy! Many of them were just dirt roads that were really (REALLY) washed out, leaving giant crevasses for us to navigate around.
Tuesday we didn't do much, we just came early to get ready for tomorrow. Also for supper we had the liver of a cow. I didn't really like it all that much.
Wednesday was the day of the party. Some relatives came over and we ate some delicious asado.
Fun fact: we didn't have birthday cake. We had mani (a kind of nut) with cheese and a sweet syrup from sugar cane. Again, I wasn't crazy about it.
Now: PICTURES! (With a little bit of luck)

A...plant? Tree?

The dining area (outdoors!) and the grill on the left.

The dining area (and Caroline)

 

A view of some of our land in la estancia

The outside of the forest

One of the trees. It's being attacked by vines!

ATTACKED. VINES.

Just some more of the land. It was a beautiful (yet hot) day

Caroline and I outside the entrance

My mom, Caroline and I outside

Bonus: Caroline's dramatic shot that I didn't know about until I saw it on her tumblr!

 

Today I started reading a book (in Spanish, mind you) called Contravida. I spent all of literature class and got about four pages in because I had to translate so many words. Hopefully it gets a lot easier, because I have to have the book finished for Spanish class before the end of October!

 

And finally, some news! A week from today, I'll be on my way to Argentina for a district meeting of some sort. Juanro, my brother, told me that we'll be going to the waterfalls too! 

My Life as of Late

Exciting events come less and less frequently now, but I think it's because I'm getting used to life here and there's not so much new stuff. Because of that I'm not really sure what to post about lately.

Yesterday the governor of our Rotary district visited Coronel Oviedo, and came to our Rotary meeting last night. At about 6:30p.m. we all met at Charlot, a restaurant in Oviedo (the ONLY restaurant in Oviedo basically, and a block from my house) to talk with her. And by we, I mean all of the inbounds, outbounds, and some of the rebounds from our club. The inbounds all talked with her together about how our lives are going in here. We told her what was our favorite part about life in Paraguay, and she shared some stories as well. The governor seems like a really sweet lady. When I first met her I didn't know she was the governor, I went to say hello to her and do the usual greeting and she pulled me in for a hug! That was unexpected but really sweet. Even nicer when I learned that she was the governor of the district.
After that meeting Caroline and I went to my house to wait for the actual Rotary meeting, that started at 9p.m. In reality, it didn't start until around 9:30 because that's how time works here. You can be really flexible with time and arrivals and such.  Anyways, all of the inbounds had to make tables that represented their countries. We're from four countries, U.S., Germany, Denmark, and Belgium. Hunter (from Minnesota) brought some maple syrup for people to try (there isn't any here), and it was a hit! Also Manon (from Belgium) brought Belgian waffles, and she was at the table next to us. So we decided, why not let people try waffles with syrup? They loved it! Marius, Oskar, and Friedrich (the Germans) brought 2 bottles of German beer for people to try. It was kind of weird, but not undrinkable. Caroline and Oskar both sang for us, and I'm now convinced that Caroline is an angel.
So all in all, I had a good night at the Rotary meeting, and didn't get home until around 1 in the morning. That's just life here though, you know?

In other news, my Spanish improvement has started to slow down.. and my English is getting worse. For example, if Blogger didn't have spell check I would have spelled English "inglesh". That's the truth.
It's nearly been two months that I've been here, which I refuse to believe. Time is already slipping away from me. Monday marks two months, and it's also a holiday so we don't have school. Double win!