025 Life happens!

You know what? I think it's time for all of us to just accept the fact that I'm never going to be an active blogger, punto. I do have my fair share of excuses, but to be honest I just forgot, just like I have forgotten to send my Rotary club in Finland e-mails and updates.

I would feel really bad if I didn't have tons of pictures to show you and stuff to tell.


After the school started and I started doing pole dance, my host parents have let me walk in the city more. For a long time I had been bothered for not being able to come and go like I was used to in Finland. I understood why, but still, it annoyed me that I always had to be asking my host parents to take me to places, when they had their jobs to take care of. Not only did I want to go freely, but also I didn't want to bother them.
The situation got better after my school started. Normally after my day I go to my first host family's house, until someone picks me up. Most of the times I had no idea when I was going back home. Sometimes I had to wait until 9PM until someone came to pick me up.
After a while being sort of really frustrated by the situation, I mentioned about it to my host sister and also dared to ask my host mum if I could walk to the center instead of waiting someone to pick me up. Later I found out that my host sister had talked about the problem with our mother. Since then I've been going a lot more freely! I still make sure to tell let mom know about my plans as soon as possible, and always tell when I leave the house and arrive to wherever I'm heading. Nowadays, if I'm not home for a long time, I'll let my mom know where I'm going, who I'm with and just generally how's it going.
I know my mom doesn't really like me going alone, because she is concerned for my safety and I do understand her. That's why I try my best to keep her well informed in exchange for letting me explore this city on my own. Not only that, but I'm always extremely careful of my surroundings and my belongings when I leave the house.



Cool things have come from being able to go outside. I've taken photos, learned to navigate and manage in Neuquen, and talked to a former drug addict (super nice and helpful person!) when going to Cipolletti by bus for the first time to meet up with Amandine and Ian. I also got one of my long time wishes come true! You see, in the center there always come these people to do these tricks in front of the traffic lights, when they are red, to collect money from the drivers. They have all sorts of cool stuff, but the most common thing is to do juggling. Well, I was in the center, sitting near The Monument as we call it when I saw this young, funny looking man leave his bag next to me and get ready with his "bowling pins". I was so happy, because I had been wanting to film these people since I first saw them, and now I had got the perfect chance. For five red lights I (among with a bunch of other people in the park) followed as the man did his thing, and when my host mom came to pick me up, I quickly went to give him some money. Both mine and the guy's day was made.



In the middle of March I spent a lovely Saturday in my friend's farm. His family grows all sorts of things there, such as tomatoes, apples, pears, watermelons... I was in awe! We played with cards, made good and bad jokes, talked about all sorts of stuff, climbed trees, had an apple fight, walked around the farm, ate cake and other unhealthy stuff, sang, danced and just spend such a great day together. We also did some "yoga". Yoga as in no one actually knew what they were doing.




Me and Amandine went to a glowpaint part, Let's Glow Fest! Apparently it was the first time they were arranging something like that in Neuquen. It was surprisingly good (but could have been better)! I had some misunderstandings with my host mom about picking up Amandine so I ended up making my host family mad, and I felt really bad about it to be honest. On the bright side, I learned a lot from my mistakes, and I realized me and my host family were lacking a clear communication in certain types of situations. Both parties kept on assuming instead of asking, and that obviously led to misunderstandings. But hey, in the end everything was alright, I apologized for my mistakes, and we moved on. Me and Amandine slept for an hour before getting ready to go to the party, and we totally were tired until we got to the place, got the paint on our skin. The night was absolute blast, and also the first time I went out with Amandine. We were back home at 7AM... Much later I went out with Ian, Amandine and a bunch of Amandine's friends. Another fun night full of dancing!




To be honest, for a long time I felt like I had been annoying my host family and just been such a bother.  There was this tension between us, which I think was because we didn't know how to communicate with each other. Maybe I just imagined it all and it was in my head, but that's how I felt. I'm the kind of person to hold in every shitty feeling, all the frustration, too afraid to say anything because I was afraid of making someone mad or realizing there problem is way bigger than I thought. I just have a lot of problems asking and demanding things from other people, especially when these people opened their home for me. I was kind of afraid to do anything, even help with chores, because I had no idea what they where thinking.
My closest friends know I had some sort of a melt down at one point. I was really tense, everything irritated me, everything was taken so personally. It all ended up me crying on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night. Then I realized there problem was me, which meant that I could change the situation. I stopped pitying myself and forced myself to do small things, that still were hard to me, to solve the problems I was having, Simple things, simple changes, but they really made the difference in me. For example, I was afraid that my host family just thought I was a lazy person who just ate in their house and demanded things. I wanted to help them, but whenever I asked if they needed my help they politely turned my offer down. Then I stopped asking "Do you need my help?" and started saying "Let me do the dishes/clean the floor!" and not taking no for an answer. I take better care of my room now, and help cleaning the house whenever I can. I made them clear that if they want me to do something, they just needed to tell me. If they want me to change something, they just need to let me know. I consciously try to talk more with them, tell about what I'm thinking, just give them as much information about what going on in my life, in my head, in my calendar. That had helped immensely! Maybe the change isn't big to my host family, but I feel a lot better now that I've talked about things that had bothered and worried me. I really hope they can trust me more now and not be afraid to say and tell things to me.


Hmm, what else has happened... Well, I got my visa extended so it now covers until I go back to Finland. It took me and my host mom two days, because the migration office had huge lines, and the only bank they use is open only until 1PM. Not only that, but the second day, when we went to the bank and got our number (C085), it took 45 minutes and several other customers complaining before the bank started to serve the "C" customers. Fun fact, I was outside the bank sitting with my phone (because you can't use your phone inside the bank), when I suddenly heard cheering and applauds from inside. No words needed, I knew the first number with the letter C had appeared to the info screen.

Other news: my family found a puppy under our car! It was really young and totally lost, so my host parents brought it to our house until they found another home for her. I named it Kira, but I'm pretty sure the new owner did not keep that name. Even though she was the cutest, she also was the loudest. Especially at night. I wasn't really bothered by it, but my host parents had a hard time sleeping while the dog was making sounds like someone was butchering a pig with a megaphone. Kira was one tough puppy though, because when I was upstairs cleaning, she had gone out o the balcony and fell down from there. The neighbour found her and brought her inside. She didn't make any sounds, but she was in shock and couldn't move. I was home alone and couldn't call for help because I didn't have a phone, so I just kept her warm and let her rest.
Four hours later she was already playing with our other dog like nothing ever happened. Unbelievable.


School-wise things have been really boring. The school took a lot of time to really start - the first month we didn't even have a proper schedule and the days lasted only until 12:20PM. Not only that, but we didn't really have much to do in the classes, me even less than the others since I had no clue what we were talking about. No matter how fluent I have become in Spanish, the things teachers talk about go way over my head for some reason. If only they gave us things to read instead of just talking! Luckily the math teacher is really good and always asks if I'm on the same page with everyone else, and I usually am. I even asked for more math exercises to do! It felt so good to be actually work during the classes, since the normal math classes consist of the teacher explaining a new thing, getting interrupted all the time, and the class only doing one exercise before everyone thinks they have done enough and close their binders (they use binders instead of notebooks here - also, no books!). It is really hard to study, because my class studies are one of the hardest ones to just jump in like that, because not only do you need to know four years worth of studying, but also the specific language they use. Not only that, but the teacher always concentrate on helping their students, instead of trying to get this poor exchange student even started. I don't even blame them, though, but I do appreciate more my math and finance teacher for being the only teacher who asks if I want him to explain something to me or if I'm interested in knowing something else.
Oh, oh! My class made sweaters for us! It was so cool to get them after such a long time designing and voting and redesigning it. People had bought bottles of party string and serpentine to spay, and we ripped pages of magazines into small pieces to throw on the whole school as we entered the gym hall with party music, flags with all our our hand prints on it, and our new cool sweaters. It was a celebration!

Oh, oh, right! Our Patagonia-district had the second and last district meeting. It was crazy to see all the people again for a long time, since most of us had not seen after our legendary South Trip and pose in our new district hoodies and t-shirts that Rebecca (Germany) had made for us all! Also the future exchange students from Patagonia were there - one girl is going to Finland! She was such a sweet girl, and I hope I will see her later back in Finland. A lot of them seemed super nice people, and I was so excited for them!
We spent two nights at one Rotaract-girl's home, with two other Rotaract-members that we got close to. They were such fun to be around! On our last night in Comodoro Rivadavia we went to Rotary's dinner, ate the most wonderful food, and then had a party in the same restaurant just for us younger ones, since the old Rotarians had to go to sleep. We got back home late, at six, slept a little over an hour and then packed our stuff in the Rotarian's car who took us there and back. Just by the way, he's seriously the coolest Rotarian ever, and his wife is just a wonderful person. Actually their whole family is just pure greatness.
On our way back from Comodoro the man took us to see the penguins in Punta Tombo. It was so weird to be there for the second time, when I thought I'd never go there again. During our way to Neuquen it just hit me that my exchange year is coming to it's end. The meeting in Comodoro with the future exchange students really made it an unwelcomed reality.
For a few weeks after that weekend I was feeling so shitty about it, and all my classmates reminding me of how many days I had left didn't really help. I just wasn't ready to go back to Finland, because I felt like I was yet to do so many things - like I had not done everything that I could and that I had failed my exchange year.
Talking about it with other exchange students, especially Ian and Amandine, helped me a lot. I stopped feeling so bad about my time ending and I started to look forward to the coming North Trip with all the exchange students.







But more about the Nort Trip on the next post! This text is already way too long, I'm so sorry about it! Sorry, but I'll proof-read this text later. Hopefully there isn't any too horrible mistakes.
I hope you've had a good day or a good week, maybe even a month!