The past couple weeks have been absolutely amazing. I'm loving life here more and more and becoming more and more depressed about how the end seems to be so near. I now have less than two months left, and the countdown on my phone of when I'll be home seems to be going by faster and faster. I now have a limited amount of weekends left, and still have a lot more trips and things I want to accomplish before I leave. It's super stressful trying to fit everything in while at the same time trying to keep my sanity. I've been living the past 3+ months of my life in vacation world - all I do is go to class, don't do any homework, don't study, eat lots of good food, sightsee around the city, go out the majority of the nights of the week, and then take trips around Argentina in my spare time. It's going to be a total culture shock to me in January when I have to go back to school for real classes, an internship, 3 jobs to recover all the money I've spent here, and deal with everything else such as recruitment. I'm trying to savor every minute left of my abroad experience - go out more often, stay out later, sleep less, go more places around the city, spend more time off my computer. It's how I should live my life all the time, but nowadays it's too easy to get sidetracked with material things. Alright, I'm done my philosophical rant.. I told you the eminent end of this trip is making me crazy!
So my mom and my brother were here last week, which was really fun! We did lots of tourist-y things (I've now been to the zoo where you touch the lions and tigers 3 times) and they really liked Buenos Aires. It was a good amount of time for them to be here because they got to see everything they wanted to see when they were here. It was nice seeing people from home again, although every time I see people from the US it makes me miss home more and more. My dad and grandmom are coming in less than two weeks! Very excited to see them but it's bittersweet - after they leave I have less than a month left in Buenos Aires.
Besides that, I've been keeping pretty busy. I go out all the time and am trying to go to as many new bars and clubs as possible because I am too much a creature of habit and like going to the same ones all the time. Last night we went out to the club and, like real Argentines, stayed there until after 6am. The sun had rose and there were still hundreds of people at the club dancing. It was a really weird but awesome experience that I will definitely be doing again.
Today is mother's day in Argentina, and my host mom had over her mother and two of her siblings for lunch. Her son cooked an asado, which is like a bbq and made TONS of meat (anyone remember vegetarian Danielle? She doesn't exist anymore). We ate probably the biggest lunch I've ever eaten and talked about lots of different things about Argentina. Afterwards we had dessert and tea, then drank mate (the typical Argentinian drink that I talked about in some previous post). It was a really cool experience because an asado is very Argentine and I loved being able to have one with an Argentine family :)
Yesterday I went to Tigre, which is a town about an hour away from Buenos Aires. The town was soo pretty because it was situated right on a river. It was really different then bsas.. it was super clean and well taken care of. We walked around a huge outdoor market and looked at artisan crafts (per usual) and got lunch. Then we went to the mate museum, then on a boat tour around four different rivers in the area. It was really pretty and a nice break from the huge city life that I'm used to.
On my way there I encountered another Argentine experience, although this one less exciting. I was on the subway headed towards the train station in Buenos Aires, and someone tried to rob me. I was listening to my music from my iphone (which was in my purse), when the subway car came to the station. As we were waiting for the doors to open, I felt a tugging on the wire to my headphones and spun around. A man behind me was pulling on the wire of my headphones (I suppose to try and get my phone out of my zippered bag, which makes no sense). He stopped when I turned around and whistled to himself while he averted his gaze to pretend he wasn't touching my headphones. I was super freaked out and as soon as the doors opened I went into the subway train and walked about 4 cars down to get as far away from him as possible. I was scared the rest of the ride because I wasn't sure if he would try to find me and hold a gun/knife to me to give him my bag. Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened but it was definitely a scary experience. I will definitely be more alert from now on because I'm petrified of someone taking my stuff or robbing me. Putting this on the things I'm not going to miss when I return to the U.S.
School is still going about the same. I got my spanish midterm back and got an A- on that also, so I'm happy about that. My other midterm I'm still waiting to hear back on, and then my last midterm is this Wednesday. It's weird having to deal with midterms since the entire rest of the semester I haven't done any work. I honestly forget how to do real schoolwork and it's going to kick me in the behind when I get back to school.
This weekend we are planning to go to Punta del Este, Uruguay to play on the beach for the weekend! It's supposed to rain this weekend so we might have to postpone it to sometime in November, but I'm missing the beach so much. The weather is getting really nice here and I'm excited for it to get even nicer by the time I leave.
Seems like that's it for now! I'll update soon again because I like having a lot less to write in one sitting :)
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