Über Weltmeere und Reiselust: día de la raza

Today I'll tell you about another holiday that is celebrated here in Argentina, the day of the races/ Columbus day .

The official day is the 12th of October but one of the primary schools here in Arroyito already celebrated it yesterday (Friday).

It was so interesting to see the little festival they made. A few pupils wore the ropes of the native Americans and danced a traditional dance from the north of Argentina. Furthermore they sang the anthem and some other songs. I realised how serious they took this whole fest, which made me really happy to see because in Germany the children would never do such a thing with so much discipline like they did here. To be honest I was really impressed they all knew the anthem, I wasn't able to sing it when I was 6 years old. But I wasn't only there to watch them celebrating. Another exchange student (Japanese) and I, we held presentations about our countries. I think it went well, even though it was in Spanish. I got really good feedback and I really hope they were honest with everything they said. My coordinator also told me that my Spanish improved a lot during the last weeks, which made me so happy to hear.

In my presentation I talked about things like food, clothes, religion, Christmas and the life in a typical German family. It was also really interesting to hear the presentation about Japan, since I have never been to an Asian country.

Afterwards the festival was over, we literally lived the life of a celebrities. Everyone wanted to take pictures with us or see my hair (which is blond, and really curly). They even wanted autographs from us (not only on paper but on there arms!). We spend a lot of time there with the children, but then my coordinators daughter pushed me away from everybody, because we needed to go. I felt sad because there were a few people I wasn't able to talk to even though they really wanted to.

It was a funny, weird, and embarrassing experience at once, but I'm also really proud of myself that I talked in Spanish in front of a lot of other people.

The rest of the day I spend at my local coordinators house, eating and drinking 'mate' and in the evening I had to go to my school because there was a little stand of my organisation and I talked to a few people.

After the event in my school was over, which was a lot of fun by the way and I might write an extra post about it, some people from my class and I spend time together and I was back home not earlier than 3 am!

Monday I won't go to school, because of the 'día de la raza'. I'm really curious if my school will celebrate it too next week, if so I will let you know what happened:)

Cara

♥♥♥