Today's post is written by Dominique Manuel, a Norfolk Academy participant on the exchange:
Today, much like many of the days that I've spent going to school with my host Cristina, I woke up at 7:00 and started my day with a nice breakfast of cereal, coffee, and my absolute favorite, dulce de leche and crackers. This has been what I have eaten every morning since I arrived in Argentina, and I haven't gotten tired of it yet! After quickly getting dressed after a long, drawn out breakfast period, Cristina's mom, drove Cristina and me fifteen minutes across the city to Holy Trinity where we soon had to split up; she had to go to her classes and I had to meet with the other students from Norfolk Academy.
The first thing we did was shadow ongoing classes. I was placed in a physics class and it was confusing at first because I don't know anything about physics AND it was all in Spanish, but as time went on I understood more and more, especially when the teacher would repeat things for his students to write down as definitions. After physics ended, all the students stayed in the classroom but the teachers switched. I got excited because this was an English teacher! She was very nice and it was fun being able to discuss books that I had read before that they were reading, like Of Mice and Men and And Then There Were None, two of my favorites. After English we had to leave and move on to another class. This one was held in the library and we learned about the type of dialect spoken in Argentina, called Rio Platense. Rio Platense is kind of like the Boston accent of Spanish, and it was very difficult to understand when we first came to Mar Del Plata, but now that we have had an explanation of the language, we might be able to understand it way better. We had two more classes throughout the day, one being about Spanish literature and the language of the gauchos (Argentinian cowboys) and the other being about a type of art called Fileteado Porteño, which we were told we would see once we go to Buenos Aires. We finished the day with making our own versions of the porteño art in the art classroom, which was a lot of fun.
I thought it was interesting to learn so much today at the school instead of going on excursions like we had been and I enjoyed actually getting the Holy Trinity experience by taking notes and engaging in classes taught by the actual teachers.
Today, much like many of the days that I've spent going to school with my host Cristina, I woke up at 7:00 and started my day with a nice breakfast of cereal, coffee, and my absolute favorite, dulce de leche and crackers. This has been what I have eaten every morning since I arrived in Argentina, and I haven't gotten tired of it yet! After quickly getting dressed after a long, drawn out breakfast period, Cristina's mom, drove Cristina and me fifteen minutes across the city to Holy Trinity where we soon had to split up; she had to go to her classes and I had to meet with the other students from Norfolk Academy.
The first thing we did was shadow ongoing classes. I was placed in a physics class and it was confusing at first because I don't know anything about physics AND it was all in Spanish, but as time went on I understood more and more, especially when the teacher would repeat things for his students to write down as definitions. After physics ended, all the students stayed in the classroom but the teachers switched. I got excited because this was an English teacher! She was very nice and it was fun being able to discuss books that I had read before that they were reading, like Of Mice and Men and And Then There Were None, two of my favorites. After English we had to leave and move on to another class. This one was held in the library and we learned about the type of dialect spoken in Argentina, called Rio Platense. Rio Platense is kind of like the Boston accent of Spanish, and it was very difficult to understand when we first came to Mar Del Plata, but now that we have had an explanation of the language, we might be able to understand it way better. We had two more classes throughout the day, one being about Spanish literature and the language of the gauchos (Argentinian cowboys) and the other being about a type of art called Fileteado Porteño, which we were told we would see once we go to Buenos Aires. We finished the day with making our own versions of the porteño art in the art classroom, which was a lot of fun.
I thought it was interesting to learn so much today at the school instead of going on excursions like we had been and I enjoyed actually getting the Holy Trinity experience by taking notes and engaging in classes taught by the actual teachers.