First two weeks

Hola a todos!

It's been over two weeks now since I got to Buenos Aires, and things are going pretty well. I'm still living with the family, and life here is very comfortable, but in just a couple of days I'm moving to an apartment in the same neighborhood, Palermo. My "host family" has been a great support, but it's also going to be nice to live on my own.

My room for these first two weeks.

My current home street (it has 13 lanes in one direction!).

Palermo is one of the best and safest neighborhoods in Bs As to live in, since there are a lot of restaurants, cafés and bars which means there are a lot of people even at night. Almost all of the other exchange students in my Spanish class live here too.

A beautiful park in Palermo. My new apartment will be in one of those buildings that are closest to the park.

Parque 3 de febrero in Palermo, amazing place to go for a walk or a jog

The Spanish class started on July 1st, and we have classes Monday to Thursday at 13.00-16.00. We are just 9 people in the class, and we are separated into two groups: A2 with 3 people and B1 with 6 people (my group). The other people in the class are from Sweden, Holland and Belgium, and we have already spent a lot of time together and we get along well :) Last weekend we were on a trip together, which I will tell about in the next post.

Some of los intercambios posing outside the zoo in Palermo on our Sunday walk. Here are (starting from the left) Chantal from Holland, Filippa and Axel from Sweden and Vincent and Misja from Holland.

My Spanish is improving, I'm able to manage in everyday situations such as in a supermarket, café, restaurant, pharmacy, ticket office etc (with a few "¿perdón?" of course), and hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll be able to follow my classes too. I'm already quite used to the local accent, with the "sh" sound for every "ll" and "y" (example: yo me llamo => "sho me shhamo"), and the use of "vos" instead of "tú", but it's going to take some more time before I use it fluently myself.

A cool painting from Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) that we visited with my host mom and her friend.

Self portrait by Frida Kahlo.

The weather has been quite sunny, 10-15°C, but yesterday it rained and today was freezing cold. So it varies quite a lot. But at least there seems to be many sunny days even in winter, which makes us North Europeans happy.

The "obelisco" at Plaza de la República, located at the end of the same street as ITBA, my university.

So that was all for now, will keep writing when I have more time (and something new to write about).

¡Saludos de acá, chau!

Here we go!

Hola a todos!

This is a blog about my exchange year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At home I study systems analysis at Aalto University, and here I will be attending ITBA university and taking classes mostly from the faculty of Administración y Sistemas. I arrived on Saturday June 27th (2015) and will stay until July 2016. I'm writing in English now, but sometimes I might write in Swedish or Finnish instead.

Last evening at home: dinner with my family

Finnish berries for dessert, delicious

I arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday after about 24h of traveling, which was quite exhausting. The trip started with packing and leaving home in a hurry (stressful), being nervous about the size and weight of my luggage at the check-in and of course saying goodbye to my family, which was difficult. Then I flew to Madrid (just over 4h), had a layover there of about 5h (not too bad, nice not to have to hurry) and then there was the 12h flight to Buenos Aires. I managed to sleep for around 7h, so it could have been worse. When I got to the airport in BA, it still took me quite a while to actually get out: I had to wait in line for immigration, wait probably 20-30 min for my luggage and then wait in line for one more scanning of the luggage.

On the plane to Madrid: reading a book about Finland with a Marimekko napkin as a bookmark

Madrid Airport: spent about 5h here

After all of this, I took a taxi to the place where I would be staying for the next few days: the home of my relatives (well, almost) that my grandmother had managed to find through her cousin in the US. I had been in contact beforehand with their daughter who is 18, and she had kindly offered me to stay with them for the first days of my exchange year. Their whole family is extremely nice and welcoming (and they all speak good English btw), and I think they will be a great support for me during this whole time.

View from the family's weekend house

The baby of the family, Zeus

I spent these first 2 days with the family at their weekend house (kind of like a country club) outside of town where the weather was nice yesterday, around 17°C and we were able to eat outside, but today there was a massive thunderstorm that lasted the whole day. But it was okay, I spent the day playing the Argentine version of Monopoly with the family's parents and 13-year-old son.

Estanciero, suspiciously (exactly) similar to Monopoly

Now, we're back in BA, and we just had sushi for dinner and ice cream for dessert (same as yesterday, they seem to like it here and I'm definitely not complaining). Right now I'm messaging with my "buddy" (tutor) from ITBA, my university here, about meeting before my intensive Spanish course starts on Wednesday.

Everything is going well here so far! I'll try to update this blog regularly, and I'm sure that I will fail at that, but feel free to remind me if it's been too long since the last update :D

Hasta pronto!

[written in the evening of June 28th]