02. The journey begins.

Hello from Argentina!
I'm finally here. It took a long time, but I'm finally with my host family. To be honest, it's been a week already...
But one thing at a time.

The Journey
After the first entry, where I was already near Frankfurt, the next day we drove for an enjoyable 12 hours to the train station, one hour before departure, and then took the S-Bahn to the airport. The day was dedicated to traveling. As soon as we arrived at the train station, something went wrong. Surprise, delay. People on the platform, the next train leaves in an hour and a half. So let's call a taxi, it's not far. 20 minutes of waiting turned into 40, the taxi arrived, and 50 euros later, my mother and I arrived at the airport, 10 hours before the scheduled departure. Then we headed to the baggage drop-off. It went pretty smoothly. After that, there was some time. Observation deck, something to eat, and then preparation. For the flight. I changed clothes one last time and headed to the YFU meeting point. There, I waited for the YFU escort and 18 other exchange students from Germany who are also flying to Argentina. After some time, we made our way to the gate. There, we played Uno. Of course, the flight was delayed by 30 minutes, but we weren't stressed. Then we boarded the plane. Window seat! An older lady sat next to me. Excited, I prepared myself for the 14-hour flight. As the plane rolled, it slowly dawned on me what I was actually doing here. I tensed up a little. Then we took off at eleven o'clock, with a last look at Germany. Despite the excitement, I had hardly any stomach cramps. I exchanged life stories with the nice Argentinian-German woman. After the very tasty dinner on the plane, the lights over the coast of France went out. I had a hard time sleeping. My stomach didn't feel much better after eating. After one or two hours, my nose started bleeding. Fortunately, I managed to avoid making a mess. After that, everything got better and I drifted into a light sleep. In the morning, there was breakfast or something. It was still dark as we flew over Brazil and its scattered lights. It wouldn't be getting light. The nice lady gave me a business card with Bible verses on it, then we headed for the last kilometers to Buenos Aires in the moonlight. Locally, it was just six o'clock. The dawn began as the plane flew over the huge river delta in front of the city. After circling the city, we landed at seven o'clock in the morning. First, we got off the plane and everyone from YFU found each other again. Together, we went through passport control, which went incredibly smoothly for me. With luggage in hand and the other exchange students in tow, we went through one last security check into the airport hall. Our escort had stayed back a little at that moment, as we were greeted with full body contact by a delegation from YFU Argentina. A little overwhelmed, we met a lot of other exchange students from YFU from other countries who would accompany us in the next few days.

I will stop here for now. I am making very slow progress and have been with my host family for over two weeks now, but I will upload this so that something is at the top again. A continuation will follow soon. Just a few things: I'm doing very well and I get along well with my host family, I also understand the language very well by now, and things are going well with my new friends too.
I hope to achieve something next week, then I can finally tell you about the many things that have happened to me in the meantime.
I hope to talk to you soon, have a great time, see you soon!
Emil