Good: Good things first! I sent in a job application for a job at this factory-place outside of town that packages meat for a chain of grocery stores across Sweden almost 2 months ago, but heard nothing from them so I supposed they weren't interested. Then on Monday I got a call in the middle of class (thankfully with very few students so I could sneak out for a bit) where they asked if I could come in for an interview Wednesday morning! My Monday was awesome after that.
Then on Tuesday my nerves started acting up. This was my firs actual job-interview ever, and I really had no idea what to expect except (why are those two words so similar??) from what I'd heard from others and what I'd read online. So I spent all my free time on Tuesday writing down answers to all the classic questions such as; "Name your three best characteristics and your three worst", "Why should we hire you?", "What do you know about our company?", "What keeps you motivated?", "How do you handle stress?" and so forth. By the time I had to go to bed I was so nervous I felt sick to my stomach and my hands were shaking! I have no idea why, I've got no issues with talking in front of a bunch of people about a random subject, or travelling alone across the world, but when it comes to validating myself I'm an emotional mess.
Got up the next day and headed off, it takes about 1,5hours to get there by public transport. Plenty of time for my mind to go through all possible horror scenarios and whatnot. But once the interview started, it all went smoothly! The two guys interviewing me were really laid back and kind of young, so it didn't feel strict or anything - we were joking around and they only ended up asking me why I wanted to work there, what I'd done before and what I knew about them Then at the end, one guy just went "Well, I say we hire you before someone else does, can you start mid-June?" and I had to hide my suprise and happiness xD
So I've got a job until the end of August, which is bloody awesome! Plus, 3 of my best mates work there too, so we'll get to spend some time together as well which is great! There hasn't been too much of that in the past year since we all work/study on different times and whatnot, but yeah. All that worrying over the interview for nothing
Oh, and I got invited to the graduation-dinner for the 9th graders (the ones that are off to High School) that's in a few weeks! It almost got me teary-eyed, I'd never expected that since I've only been at the school since January - but apparently they wanted me to come, and that feels awesome They even gave me an envelope wrapped with red ribbon with the invitation in it!
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Bad: Now to the bad part. It's not even a bad part, it's the worst part. I don't know if any of you remember, but a while back (must be almost a year, so I'm not blaming anyone who doesn't remember xD) I was furious because the government of Argentina decided to put a 20% tax-rate on plane tickets bought for citizens going out of the country (because of the economy being a huge freaking mess). Meaning any plane ticket that my SO buys or that I buy for him to fly out of the country, is a whole lot more expensive than it used to be.
Now they've decided to screw us over even more. From now on, foreigners can no longer buy plane tickets or get tickets bought for them in Argentina at all. What the actual flying fuck?!
Tickets must now be bought in a different country, with a credit card, by the person that the card belongs to and by the person who is travelling. Meaning that if me and my SO want to travel anywhere, be it even to the south of Argentina by plane (since it's a country of very vast distances), we have to take the car to fucking Chile to buy tickets.
Go to Chile. To buy plane tickets. To travel domestically and internationally.
Politics never cease to amaze me.
Announcement
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No announcement yet.
Updates and frustration. A lot of it.
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Though in that article it says you can only pay with dollars and not pesos, but apparently that's changed too and now you can't pay with anything xD
It's just one hell of a mess, apparently they decided on it to restrict the number of tourists travelling to Argentina only to exchange pesos/dollars at the black market, but I don't really see how this would help. Seeing as travel is a luxury for most people over there, I'm not that suprised there hasn't been any demonstrations and stuff yet because most people can't afford to travel like that anyway - but the ones who are affected by this are apparently furious about the restricted flow of tourists and the like (according to comments on that article anyway).
Well, Argentina has been a bit of a mess for quite a while now, at least when it comes to the economy. So they've made it more expensive for citizens to travel out of the country to keep as many as possible in, and now making it harder for foreigners to travel around because of something going on with the exchange of money on the black market.
My SO's brother has a girlfriend in Canada, and their dad has a girlfriend who is Haitian (helloooo family of LDR's!), and they've encountered this issue several times already. They've all had to take the car to Chile to get tickets to travel within Argentina, so it seems pretty confirmed that way.