happy holidays

Hey :) Happy holidays! There aren´t any snowmen or sleighs or even christmas lights here in my pueblito so it´s kind of a strange feeling. i went to buenos aires this weekend to go to a party and to pick up my host brother and i went to a mall for a bit and there were christmas carols on the stereo. there was also a really really tall christmas tree covered in santa hats and a bunch of santa robots dancing kind of an awkward dance. a lot of booty-shakin´;)

the weirdest thing is that it´s summer here. i have the Yesss! Summer vacation! feeling from my head to my toes and usually that comes accompanied with summer job and my birthday being right around the corner. but i can´t get a job and my birthday´s not for 6 months so it feels weird. i´m kind of floating around without any agenda.

it´s been almost four months and there´s a lot of things i can no longer do. i can´t play stupid, or ask people to talk slowly, or ask people to come pick me up or take me home. i can call a taxi, i can walk to just about wherever i want. i´m not dependent anymore, and it feels weird. the frustrating thing is that i still can´t understand when all of my friends talk to each other about whatever subject they´re all discussing and i can´t understand who they´re talking about, what happened. who died on a four-wheeler or where one girl bought her shoes. i still don´t get it 100%. it´s okay though.

i´ve gotten pretty used to the time schedule. i go out at 3 am and come home at 6.30 or 7 am without exhausting myself unredeemably. i also have gotten used to cigarette smoke and eating ridiculous amounts of meat and hearing about people dying all the time. because here they do. all the time. it´s kind of ridiculous. i´m used to not wearing my seatbelt and to eating dinner with the fam at 10.30 pm and my host brothers playing soccer all day long. no really, all day long. i also can predict the post-hanging out with another exchange student and talking in english feeling and have learned to deal with it.

and i´ve given up on rationing my peanut butter that arrived a week ago. to hell with it, i eat all of their plum jelly and raspberry jelly and oh my god! blue berry jelly.

i spend a lot of time travelling. but i really really treasure my time at home. if no one sends me a message or calls me i am perfectly content to stay at home all day and read or go to the supermarket with my host mom to buy ingerdients to make really delish food or edit pictures or read some more. sun tan. play soccer or ping pong. watch my brothers and admire how they get along so well but secretly hope that someday i´ll be included in on the secret. because i´m not yet, and i hope that doesn´t mean i never will be.

i´ve accepted the idea that time is meaningless. that i´m not here for 10 months or 40 weeks or 280 days, but that i´m here to make realtionships and go places and meet people and experience Moments that i´ll remember and treasure. and that this isn´t a chapter or a part of my life that begins and ends. sure, it´s an experience that will shape me and change me, but so can every other experience that follows. i´m not riding a roller coaster that´s going to slow down and screetch to a stop any time soon, i´m gliding down the hill that will give me momentum for the whole ride to come.