Next to the question “why on earth did you move to Argentina?”, this must defenitely be the most popular question. Frankly, I never really had an good answer to this one as I am not really thinking of my life here in terms of what I miss, but I prefer to enjoy the things that are better here, and of all the advantages life here has. After all, you are supposed to be happy in the place where your heart is, isn’t it? For me that is here with my family is. True, if my husband would have decided on moving to Timbuktu or Vladivostok, I wouldn’t have been so keen on following him. But fortunately for me he choose Argentina.

Of course there is no doubt about the fact that I miss family and friends, so I don’t think I should even mention that, although with all the posible ways of communication (Skype/Voip), all distances are relative. The only difficulty being the time difference.

There are moments, when discussing this or that, that I realise ‘Oh yes! How I miss that!’, but the next day I already forgot about it completely so I don’t count all these minor things.

After 9 months of living here, I came up with this short list :

1. A walk on the beach on a rainy/stormy day. In Belgium we only lived half an hour from the beach, a beach that is only 40km long, so it was always full of people (Belgians, Dutch and Germans), exept when the weather was bad. That was my favourite moment to go for a walk. We went there almost every weekend (yes we have that often bad weather!). Now we have planned a few days at the beach here in July so I guess I will have my share of walks in the bad cold winter weather… (although, I not sure the winter weather will be bad and cold).

2. Speeding with my car on the highway. (sssssjjjjj! I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned something ilegal). But yes, I realised this when I was back in Belgium for a few days. How I enjoy that! Fortunately I have a 6th sense to avoid speeding tickets as they are really expensive in Belgium!

3. Certain dishes that are imposible to get here. Like ‘handgelpelde noordzee garnalen‘ (shrimps from the north sea, peeled with hands (means you peel them yourself and they don’t go to Africa to be peeled by machines), they are defenitely the best (and unique) in the world), and ‘frikandellen met krieken‘ (meat loaf with sour cherries -the meatloaf never tastes the same here, as in Belgium they feed the calves with milk only, while here they eat ‘normal’ food : the taste is completely different. I have never seen sour cherries here either.)

4. Traveling. Up to now it seems I only travel back to Belgium. I would like to see new places!!! I am hoping for my friends and family to come visit me more, so that I for once can travel elsewhere 🙂

5. Taking photos : too dangerous to go out alone with my camera, so I hardly ever take it with me. There is not much I can do about that. My husband advised me to get a body guard… 🙂 Well he should be young and very handsome!

I had to think really hard to get this list done, I will review it in a year or so. Maybe it has become a lot longer by then!

ps photo : empty Belgian beach on a beautiful but very cold day in spring.