I'm still here!

¡Hola!

I'm back, this blog isn't dead, I promise! I've just taken a break, didn't have a lot of inspiration for this thing but now I'll try to do better! Not making any promises though :D

So just a quick update for now, longer posts are also coming soon, since I've done a couple of awesome trips in the last couple of months! Anyway: all my classes are basically done, just have to do the final exams which for me will take place between the 11th and the 18th of December. Most of the 4 exams will be easy, but Databases (which is the last one) is just pure hell... hopefully I'll pass that one too!

It's very weird spending this time of year in the Southern hemisphere, where it's actually summer and the weather is hot! There is really no Christmas feeling in the same way as in the Nordic countries, all the Christmas stuff is very plastic and bling-bling, and also, did I mention: it's hot! And not dark! So weird...

At the Christmas section at the supermarket and look who it is! Good old Fresita!

X-mas mayhem in a department store on Florida street in central Buenos Aires.

Last Sunday, Nov 29th, I actually experienced some Christmas spirit for a couple of hours when me and Sanni went to a Finnish Christmas event organized at the Scandinavian church. First there was a service in the church and then coffee and snacks. Of course there was gingerbread cookies, and we also had dark bread (not quite as dark as in Finland but still good) with salmon and pickled herring (silli). It tasted SO GOOD. Then we sang some Finnish Christmas songs and then Santa Claus came to visit, to give all the kids some chocolate! I also got to meet some people I had met on my first trip to Bs As, they had been our hosts that time and now I got to catch up with them. We also got to know some other Finnish people living in Bs As. All in all, it was a lot of fun!

Time for church!

Food!! <3

Joulupukki came to visit.

Those of you that follow me on Instagram have already seen some of these. If you're not one of them, but you'd like to see what I've been up to, I recommend giving Instagram a try (my profile is private so you have to request access: https://www.instagram.com/ella.warras/). I post there much more often than here or on FB.

Today we celebrated Finland's independence day here at my apartment with Sanni. We made some white glögi (mulled wine) since the supermarket didn't have any red juice that would have worked... cranberry was our best bet, but nope. It turned out okay, tasted sort of like glögi but I still miss the delicious Marli glögi from back home. For lunch we ordered sushi (making Finnish food is too complicated) and then we watched Linnan juhlat, of course! For those who don't know, it's the president's ball where he invites 1800 (had to check that number) important people to shake hands with him and drink some punch. The handshaking is the main event, that's where you get to see who got invited and what they're wearing.

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää! You can see my advent calendar in the background, that's going to be my only Christmas decoration this year.

So that's about it for now! Happy waiting for Christmas, hyvää joulun odotusta, as we say in Finland!

Saludos,
Ella

Aurora del Palmar 14-17.8.2015

Hola, I'm back!

This post is about my trip to Aurora del Palmar, which is a huge park of palm trees, and we stayed at a kind of ranch there. I traveled with 4 of my friends from the intensive Spanish course. Warning for A LOT of pictures!

Friday 14.8

We took a bus from Buenos Aires early in the morning, and arrived in a tiny town called Ubajay in the afternoon, after about 6h travel. It was raining like crazy and the only person around was a woman in a café by the bus station. We tried to ask her about how to get to Aurora del Palmar, and she showed us a list of remis (kind of like taxi) and their phone numbers. I called one of them and a guy showed up about 5 minutes later. He drove us the 3 km way to the ranch.

We slept in this old train wagon.

Such a nice little room (quite cold and damp at night though, probably meant for summer).

The main building and restaurant, where we spent most of Friday (because of the rain) playing cards and drinking wine.

Rainy weather. 

We made friends with some local girls who were hanging out in the main building with us, we taught a little bit of English to them and they gave us this ^_^

The other side: they tried very hard to get our names right (should be Axel, Ella, Vincent, Filippa and Misja). Muchas gracias Vera, Jazmin y More!

Saturday 15.8

We borrowed bikes and took a trip to Ubajay. The town was quite dead but the weather was nice!

Found a tiny supermarket where we got sandwich ingredients and then we had a picnic!

In the afternoon it was time for the thing that everybody had been waiting for: horseback riding!!

Trying out the equipment...

Axel looking like a jeans commercial.

And we're off! The weather was great and it was really nice just riding calmly for an hour, enjoying the view.

Selfie with the horses (and Filippa).

Returning to the ranch, saw some really cute baby sheep!

And later the same day we went on a palm tree safari in a jeep!

Just amazing.

Couldn't take this road because it was flooded, had to go back.

Sunset in the park.

The vehicle.

Group picture yaay!

Cool palm tree panorama (click for bigger version).

Just chilling by the palm trees. Totally casual.

Learning how to use the settings on my camera. That's the Milky Way right there!

Sunday 16.8

On Sunday we found out that because of the heavy rain during the previous days, the only two excursions offered were the horseback riding and the safari, i.e. the things we had already done. Our package included one more excursion, and the choice was easy.

Horseback riding again!

Misja is happy :)

Monday 17.8

On Monday, our last day, we found that it was once again raining heavily. We decided to go to a nearby town, Colón, to check out their hot water springs spa. That turned out to be much more difficult than excpected. We didn't find a remis driver who would agree to drive us the 60 km there (except for one, but he couldn't take 5 people), so we had to take the bus. One of the workers at the ranch gave us a ride to the bus station, then we took the 1h bus to Colón, only to discover that the (most likely) only way for us to get back to Ubajay in time (for our bus back to BA) was to catch a bus in 15 minutes! Oh well, so we took the bus for 1h again to get back to Ubajay.

At this point we had like 3h until our bus to BA would leave, and we didn't find anything to eat because it was a public holiday and even the station's café was closed. So I called the remis driver from the first day, he turned up and drove us back to Aurora del Palmar, where we had some delicious steaks. Then he returned a bit later and drove us to the station again. We were back in Buenos Aires at around 11 p.m.

The trip was great, I really enjoyed being away from the big city for a bit! Although the weather wasn't on our side the whole time. It was nice to be able to just relax and hang out in good company :)

Everyday life at the university

¡Hola muchachos!

Now I'll try to explain a little about how the school is here. I go to Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires, more often known as ITBA, which is a fairly small private university. The public universities are free in Argentina, and apparently quite good too, but ITBA has tuition fees for the degree students. As an exchange student, however, I don't have to pay (except for the Spanish courses).

ITBA is located in Puerto Madero, very near the center of the city. It is sort of like the business district, there are a lot of skyscrapers and people in suits around. The word puerto means port or harbour, and Puerto Madero was supposed to be the port of the city but quickly became useless for that since the canal is too small for the large ships. The ferries to Uruguay have their terminals near ITBA though. There are a lot of nice restaurants and cafés by the canal, and there is a big ecological reserve (basically a huge park) close by too.

Puente de la mujer (the woman's bridge) in Puerto Madero.

One of the many subte (subway) stations I see every day. It takes me about 40 min to get to ITBA by subte.

The building is quite old, and the front looks nice from the outside, but most of if is quite worn down on the inside. There are actually two buildings, the main building and the "anexo", plus the post-grad building 2 blocks away. The main building is a bit nicer, it has the main cafeteria and a nice fancy lobby. The anexo is where I have most of my classes, and it is a bit of a maze. Both buildings have 5 floors (I think). Some days it is a bit cold in some of the classrooms, since it is winter here now, but most of the time it's actually not bad. Hopefully the AC will work in the summer...

The façade of the main building. (Picture not taken by me, all of this is under construction right now so not visible.)

The other side of the building. The difference between the façade on the right and the side on the left is quite notable.

University life at ITBA is good: the teachers are in general better at teaching than at Aalto, there is a lot of discussion going on in the classroom and the subjects have been interesting so far. But it does feel kind of like being back in high school: attendance is compulsory and in general you have a lot less freedom than we're used to in Finland. You still have responsibilities though, (unlike in high school) you really have to make an effort to find out what you need to do, because the information might be hidden quite well in the maze of websites the school uses (very much like Aalto back home, yes) or sometimes not available anywhere at all. We have the same courses during the whole semester, which lasts from the beginning of August until the end of November, plus final exams in December. I think it will be a nice change to be able to get deeper into a subject than we do back home, where most of the courses last 7 weeks (the year is divided into 5 periods).

I have 5 courses at the moment:

- Marketing

- Databases 1

- Entrepreneurship

- Information Systems

- Spanish B2

All of them are in Spanish, but it's actually going pretty well. I'm able to understand most of the lectures, but class discussions are a struggle since I'm not able to form my opinions into sentences quickly enough, and I can't always understand the Argentine students when they speak quickly. But I'll get there soon I guess!

My class schedule is the following:

Monday 13-21

Tuesday 14-17

Wednesday 13-17

Thursday 9-12 (optional practice session)

Friday: nada! :)

I'm quite happy with my schedule since it allows 4-day trips during the weekends. I also only have one late evening (some people have classes until 22h some days) and one early morning. Everything happens much later during the day here, so class at 9h is really a struggle. If you go out to dinner, the normal time is 21 or 21.30 (we Europeans tend to go a bit earlier though), and if you want a drink afterwards it's easily 2 a.m. before you get to go to sleep. Clubs start getting full at 2-3 a.m. (not that I would know, haven't really been to clubs).

Last weekend we traveled to el Palmar, an area with a forest of palm trees, but more about that in another post!

Sneak peek from El Palmar.

¡Chau!

Colonia, Uruguay 1.8.2015

Hi again! I'm back to blogging, and the first thing that deserves a post is our day trip to Colonia, Uruguay. We went with my friends Filippa and Axel, and four of their roommates, so we were seven in total. The point of the trip was, as most people in Bs As will know, not only tourism, and so of course we ended up very familiar with the ATMs in Colonia (dollars, I had missed you <3). But the tourism part wasn't so bad either!

Sunrise in the port of Buenos Aires. We left at 9:45am, and took the slower (but cheaper) boat (3h instead of 1h).

The Uruguayan flag with the Bs As skyline in the background.

Happy tourists in Colonia!

Me and Filippa with a cool lamp post.

We went up to the lighthouse that turned out to have a led light from Finland (Suomi mainittu!!).

Not a bad view from the lighthouse. The boat terminal where we arrived is on the left.

One of the main squares with a small handicrafts market. It really feels like autumn here with these colors.

Found some delicious ice cream.

Sunset with the lighthouse.

Eating ice cream. Had a great day with these guys!

We took the ferry home at 19:30, and spent the whole trip playing an extremely fun but complicated (since we added new rules for every round) card game. I feel bad for the people who tried to sleep nearby, the game got pretty intense at times.

That was it, the trip was a lot of fun and I'll visit Colonia again for sure! And not just for the ATMs...

Trip to Córdoba 8-12.7

Hola!

[warning for lots and lots of pictures!]

Thursday the 9th was Argentina's independence day ("9 de julio", a lot of streets are named after that day), which meant a day off, and since we don't have class on Fridays anyway, 8 of us exchange students plus one more friend decided to go on a trip to Córdoba. It is a "nearby" city by Argentine standards, which means a 9h bus ride away, but we took a night bus both ways so it wasn't that bad.

Exploring the guidebook

Thursday

We left from Retiro station in Buenos Aires at 11 p.m. on Wednesday. We had been upgraded from "semi-cama" (a bit more comfortable than normal bus seats, recline a lot more though) to "cama" (really wide and soft seats, recline a lot too), so that was nice. We arrived in Córdoba at 8 a.m. on Thursday. We decided to spend the first day just checking out the city, so we walked around and saw the main square, some nice churches and parks. Then me and "los suecos" (the Swedes) decided to visit the Fine Arts Museum Evita, and the others continued walking around town. The museum turned out to have very little to do with Evita Perón, but there were a lot of paintings from the Córdoba province. And the building was nice! In the evening we went to a good and affordable parrilla (grill) restaurant for dinner.

The main square in Córdoba

Los chicos on the main square trying to figure out where to go

Hannah, me, Charlotte and Vincent in front of a church by the main square

Another nice church

Lunch: locro (traditional beef and corn stew) and humita (traditional corn stew), both were kind of strange and really sweet

Found a park with these kind of rings for every year since I don't know when, and here are us '92-kids posing

Las chichas suecas y yo en el museo

We did find one Evita in the museum that was called, yes, Evita

Friday

On Friday we took a bus for 2h to a small nearby town called Capilla del Monte, which was supposed to be good for hiking. After a breakfast that consisted of coffee, juice and way more grilled ham and cheese sandwiches than we ordered, we headed to El Zapato, a local sight that consists of a shoe-shaped rock. From there we started hiking over the rocks to a big dam, and after reaching that we kept going and had a picnic on top of a hill. The weather was amazing, at some point we were even walking around in t-shirts! After the picnic we found our way back down, ended up in the middle of some old guy's farm with ducks and sheep, found the road and walked back to Capilla del Monte. There we enjoyed the last sunlight by walking around and sitting on terraces in between, and in the evening we took the bus back to Córdoba.

Take care of the nature!

The famous shoe, El Zapato, with my friend Nina.

On top of the hill in front of the lake created by the dam.

Gorgeous mountains, or "las sierras" as these ones are called.

Chilling on the dam.

Picnic on top of the hill, Charlotte and Axel are happy.

Saturday

On Saturday we did a small day trip to Alta Gracia, a small town about 45 minutes by bus from Córdoba. There we visited Che Guevara's childhood home, saw the ancient Jesuitic estancia (ranch) and went to check out Lourdes Virgin's sanctuary, a pilgrimage destination.

La casa del Che.

Little Che sitting on the porch.

La estancia jesuítica, the jesuitic ranch, in the center of Alta Gracia.

Will try to make this the cover picture of this blog.

Feels pretty cool to be in a country with orange trees.

Nice artificial lake in the center of the town.

Misja and Loek trying to figure out where to go next.

Bought a home made tortilla here, which was basically a 2 cm thick bread. It tasted pretty good, especially when hot!

Walking to the pilgrimage place with our two companion dogs, which I didn't appreciate (even thought they were harmless, they were stray dogs with lice and all and they wouldn't stop following us).

A lot of people gathered at Lourdes Virgin's sanctuary. It seemed that families were bringing their babies there to be blessed. 

The walls around the area were full of there small plaques where people had written their thanks to the Virgin for good things in their lives.

In the evening we took the night bus back to our dear home, Buenos Aires, where we arrived safely (but very tired) on Sunday morning. All in all, a great trip!