She had a rough second week, poor munchkin — got a bad cold, and missed a few days of school. Kevin and I were a little frantic — our baby is sick! in a foreign country! is anyone checking her temperature??? (Yes, her host family was, it turns out…) We relaxed a little once Kavi actually bothered to text us back and let us know that many of the CIEE students were sick too — just some bug going around, whew.
She was better by the end of the week, although she’s been fretting about her grades — apparently, they’re very strict about missing too much school dropping your grade, and she’d started to freak out about ‘what if I fail???’
We tried to reassure her that we just wanted her to have a good international experience and practice her Spanish, but I’m not sure we managed to convince her of that — she’s going into her junior year, and despite all our efforts, the college anxiety is starting to hit.
I think Kavi’s gotten it into her head that this will look good on her transcript (if she passes, she gets college credit for it), and we really don’t think it’ll make much difference (college admissions is SUCH a crapshoot these days), but I suppose when you’re facing a big uncertain future, some sense of control might help? Ah well. I can see that helping her manage her anxiety is going to be a theme of the coming year…
We were really happy to get her photos from this weekend, when they got on a plane and went for a three day adventure to a different part of Argentina. They did lots of things, according to the program guide’s blog, but since she only took photos at the waterfalls, I’ll just include the blog’s notes on those — pretty damn stunning!
(Kavi comes home on Sunday. Whew.)
*****
“Iguazu is located in Misiones, a northeast Argentinian province, and it’s the frontier with both Paraguay and Brasil. The name Iguazú comes from the Guarani or Tupi words “y” [ɨ], meaning “water”, and “ûasú “[waˈsu], meaning “big”. Legend has it that a deity planned to marry a beautiful woman named Naipí, who fled with her mortal lover Tarobá in a canoe. In a rage, the deity sliced the river, creating the waterfalls and condemning the lovers to an eternal fall….
…Cataratas del Iguazu. Iguazu Falls… WHAT TO SAY! Iguazu Falls on the Argentine side has the largest tourist portion of the national park (it is shared with Brazil, on the other side of the frontier). A Natural World Heritage since 1984 and one of the 7 Natural World Wonder since 2011, the Iguazu Falls National Park is a unique natural universe. Full of life, abundant vegetation and more than 250 waterfalls, among them the Devil’s Throat, falling more than 82 meters high; it is the ideal place to connect with nature. It is said that upon seeing Iguazu, back then, the United States First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly exclaimed, “Poor Niagara!”(which, at 50 m or 165 feet, are a third shorter). But the truth is… words just can’t do justice here so, it’s much better to just take a look at the images…”
