024 Recap of the past month and a half

Hello there!

I was so proud of myself when I started to write this post, because it's been less than two weeks since my last post. I was all "Good job Emily, you have only two weeks worth of stuff to tell" but then I realized my last post was a different kind and didn't have anything to do with what had happened in my weekly life. It was about a month ago since I last told you about what I have been odoing lately. Argh! I'll never learn.

I'm gonna begin with A TRIP. Yes, another trip! It's incredible how much I've traveled in Argentina, almost more than in my whole life before I set my foot on this country. Okay, maybe half of my life. The last six years. You get the idea.

This time I was traveling with my second host family and my host sisters. We drove to Buenos Aires, which was a long way. Last time I went to Bs As we did it by flying, so it only took lass than two hours. Add ten or twelve hours, that's closer to what it takes to drive to the capital city. Me sitting in the middle of the back seat not being able to lean against a door or anything was not the most comfortable experience, especially after only a few hours worth of sleep. You could say I was pretty tired when we got to the hotel...
Next day we went to see two places to find an apartment to my older host sister, who happened to move there just a few days ago to study. During our stay in the city we did no sightseeing, a night of eating asado, a few doctors appointments and quite a lot of shopping. We stayed there only for 3 night and then cotninued to our main destination, Mar de Las Pampas. I absolutely loved our apartment hotel, it was clean, pretty, had a lot of things to do and was right next to the ocean.
Long story short, during our week-long stay in there we went to the beach almost every day. I loved to go into the ocean where the wind brought waves to the beach, and if you managed to get to the other side of the wave, it took you high up "in the air" ♥ But if you got trapped right under the wave, then it took you ten meters to the other direction and you could be sure to have a lot of sand in your swimsuit and salty water in your nose if you were not careful - which I sure as hell wasn't. I have never been in such a salty water, because it's the Atlantic ocean we are talking about. The saltyness made me feel sick at times when it was in my mouth and nose. But I love beaches and oceans and I wanted to spend my time there. We also did sandboarding, karting, and drove on quads over sand hills in a reserve. We visited the nearby towns and walked around the streets. I feel like we did a lot of things there, but also had a lot of time to relax.
But all things come to an end and we had to head back to Neuquen, except we did a stop in Bahía Blanca for a night. There was this group of basketball players staying there too, so seeing walking towers everywhere. Bahía Blanca is a really big city, full of big buildings - totally in a different level than in Neuquen.























































I really felt relaxed during the trip, but also I felt like it had been an eternity since I last was in school. 3 months and I barely saw my local friends because I've been traveling or been sick or not able to do stuff for some other reason. I was actually pretty excited to go to school, so I could go back to talking a lot in Spanish and boludear with my friends.
I woke up one day and remembered I haven't checked my day counter in ages. I was pretty shocked when I opened the application.


Immediately I started to reflect my exchange year and feel bad because "I haven't done much" and I literally paniced how soon time has passed and how short time I got left before I go back to Finland and how I will look back and think I didn't do anything. It's better now, but no lie, the horrifying thought of "I have less than four months left" passes my mind several times a week. Maybe it's a good thing, because I have started to make more plans with people. I'm trying to make the most out of my exchange year that I have left. I'm reminding my friends about it too, so they realize we need to do everything now, not just some day in the fairly nearby future like most things are done in Argentina. I really need to make effort to do stuff, to meet people, because otherwise nothing will be done, It's annoying, but that's how things roll in here.

On Valentine's day I went to the river with my exchange student friends and had a great afternoon with them. We talked and talked and joked and swam and drank tereré and ate and talked even more about all kinds of things. I felt so good after that, so happy that I have wonderful friends like these exchange students.

I also changed the arrangement of my room! It was so dysfunctional before, and now I got more space to do exercise and just be. Even my host mum prefers it this way. because now there's room for a desk if they decided to buy one. Probably not, but at least there's space for one.

During the weekends we've eaten a lot of asado with my host parents' families, and I've also been invited to a couple dinners, one of them which was an international dinner in a future exchange student's house accompanied with her family and also Amandine and Ian. Earlier week I met with those two in Cipoletti, and we had a a super nice day outside walking around the center, eating ice cream, following a march to raise awareness of the Nisman case and the problems of the goverment behind the case. Also two girls came to ask things from us because they overheard us speaking English, They were so excited after they got our names to send a friend request on Facebook they ran to their other friends so overjoyed I kind of felt like celebrity of some kind. I also bought the flag of Argentina finally and it is HUGE!

I've gone to see Kingsman twice! I've been thinking about studying cinematography, and that movie sure has been motivating me even more to choose cinematography: it has excellent actors, good plot and it's entertaining, but I found a lot of things I personally would have done differently. It could have been a very serious and cool in a James Bond kind of way, but instead the further you watch it, the more it turns to humour. I keep wondering how much was purposely made to seem like cheaper comedy (if you want to think it that way), how much was simply a bad call from the movie makers or if everything was part of a brilliant, well-thought concept. But Kingsman wasn't made to be just another cool agent movie, that's for sure. It wasn't supposed to another James Bond movie or Nikita season. It was made to be entertaining and it sure succeeded at it.

Something you might know already if you've seen the picture in Facebook is that I started pole dancing! No, I'm not going to be a stripper, we don't even dance in the classes (unless we want to), it's more still positions with the pole atleast now. Super physical and hard! I still have a big bruise from two weeks ago. But I love it so much no matter how much it hurts. In fact, I wanted to start doing pole sport already back in Finland, but it is really expensive there and I would have had to travel to another city to do it. Here it is so cheap because not a lot of people do it.

I began the new school year on 26th of February, so I have a little more than a week behind. The school days are short, and we have not been given the schedule yet. Yeah, I know, Argentina, right? But It's been fun to see my friends and talk with people and notice how much I've improved in Spanish. Maybe it isn't that much of improvement, but I don't hesitate that much anymore. I speak up more and use the language with more confidence. It also feels good when people say I have got the Argentine accent now. But what I really want to have is to not have anyone asking where I'm from or complimenting my Spanish. That's when I know I'm doing really well!

Another thing: I'm sick again. Not that bad, but yeah, after two months of healthy lovely time I'm sick again and it sucks. I went out on Saturday to see Ian participating a race of 10 kilometers. I was near the finish line to give him his Canadian flag and film him running the last meters. After that I spent the night with him and his host family, ate at their house and talked about a lot of things. It was a night well spent, only it didn't do good for me and the flu. Yesterday I just tried to rest, but in the evening I headed out with my host dad to go and say hi to his mother and buy some food. A few hours outside, but I was completely exhausted when we got back. Today I didn't go to school, even though I don't feel that bad. Well, not when I'm resting, of course. Makes me feel kind of bad, because I'm not in the school. But I know I would be dead and suffer if I went to school. I'm gonna try and take really good care of myself today, so that tomorrow I have a lot of energy. I dont want to miss my pole dance class, but if I want to go there I will also go to school.

A lot of different thing's been going on. I'm kind of worried if I'll have enough money. I want to buy the class hoodie, but we're gonna make rotary district hoodies too and I don't know if I should spend money to everything. Choices, choices...! Also I should probably start thinking about buying souvenirs. I am so bad at buying gifts and souvenirs. I'm coming back home: could that be souvenir enough?? Man, someone help me, please.