At the moment I'm studying Cognitive Science at the University of Linköping in Sweden, and I'm almost done with the first year! Primarily getting my Bachelor's, so another two years to go. If you've read any of my other blogs you'll know that I got in to Speech-Language Pathology last year, but I chickened out in the last moment and decided to take another year off to work and travel. And thank god! What I'm doing now is just so spot on and I really feel like I've found my place. I can't wait to get my degree and then possibly get my Master's as well!
Basically what we do is human-technology interaction. It's a relatively new field, and not a lot of people know about it, but it's starting to be more and more recognized and hopefully by the time I'm done it'll be widespread! At the moment there's a 90% employment rate 6 months after graduation, so even now it's decent. We study neurology, psychology, cognition, linguistics, and we work a lot with programming and AI as well. It's an awesome mix of everything I find interesting!
So yes, moved out about a year ago, and been living in a student dorm since! It's not ideal, but the rent is relatively cheap and I have my own bathroom, so only have to share the kitchen with 7 other people who are all really nice. Constantly keep searching for an apartment though but no luck so far, so fingers crossed something will show up eventually!
Another quite major change is that my family moved abroad! My dad was offered a new position at Volvo in Shanghai, and they decided that he'd take it and that they'd all move! So since the beginning of the year they all live there (my dad, mum, sister and brother). I'm sooooo jealous of them, haha! I'd love to have joined them but I felt like I really wanted to get a degree first, and because of my age I wasn't included in the family the same way my siblings were, and I'd have had to pay for the move and everything on my own (as it is right now Volvo pays for everything for my family). I went to visit them a couple of weeks back, and it was an awesome trip! My sister is getting such a good education at an international school, and I'm so happy she gets to experience this. There were a lot of issues leading up to the move with her blank out refusing to go anywhere and a lot of screaming and crying, but now that they're actually there she loves it. I wish I could've gotten the same experience when I was her age, but what can you do
We spent two weeks just checking out the sites, doing a lot of shopping and stuff, and I really liked Shanghai. Next time I hope I can go to Beijing and some of the other towns though, with a more cultural history. They'll be staying at least 2 years (5 maximum) so there's plenty of time for that.
Oh, and Gon's brother and his wife had a daughter a couple of months ago! She's so adorable, and I can't wait to meet her in real life. I hope it doesn't take too long, but it all depends on when they're in Argentina and when I have the ability to travel there next time. We're such an international family, haha! My SO is Argentinian and he's dating me, a Swede. His brother is Argentinian (of course) and his wife is Canadian (with Polish parents). Their dad is Argentinian, and his girlfriend is Haitian. The bigger part of my family now lives in China or Australia. The kids of this family will be so multicultural
Gon and I are doing great. Our relationship was a bit rocky before he came to visit this time around, and I think it was mostly due to him feeling left out of a lot because I was starting university, and I didn't communicate with him as much as I should have. It led to misunderstandings and hurt feelings, but we worked through it and we're all good. We're celebrating our 5th anniversary this summer, and it's so crazy time has passed so fast! We still have no date for when the distance might be closed, and that's really getting to me a bit. As of right now, it seems we'll just keep doing this until I get my Bachelor's, but I don't know if I can keep on doing LDR for another two years. That means 7 years of LDR. Holy shit. We have to figure something out
Dex (our dog in Argentina) is still alive and doing awesome - Gon hired a professional trainer to teach him some manners though, which I suppose is good. I haven't been there enough to be able to teach him stuff properly, and Gon has no idea how to do it (and doesn't realize how important it is), so they hired a trainer. Dex is the sweetest dog ever and he knows a bunch of the "basic" stuff like sit, lie down, stay and so forth, but he hasn't been socialized enough so he's a pain in the ass when you go for walks or when strangers come to the house. So they hope the trainer will be able to help with that, and I'll keep my fingers crossed. I'd love to be there and be a part of it, but no. As of right now I'll probably not be able to go back to Argentina until Christmas, which is a bit of a bummer, but I really can't wait!
So yeah, that's a bit of an update on what's going on at the moment - I'm still alive and all, I just have a tendency to creep around more on the forums than posting actively - hopefully that will change soon though!
Hope all is well with all of you guys!
But, on a positive note, it sounds like things are going very well for you in general
I hope you'll get to see your SO again soon