I like to put things in my notes on my phone so I don’t forget the way I’m feeling during certain moments in time and this is one that I wrote as I was about to board my flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina on the thirteenth of February.
I realized this morning how excited I was to be in another country tonight. I know it’s not a competition but adding another country to my list is such a cool feeling and knowing that I will have been to at least 30 countries by the end of this semester is incredible.
Thirty. Countries. I’m at 29 now and unless my plans hit a spectacular roadblock, a few more are coming soon. I’m stationary here, but not really.
I have another one from the 30-minute Uber ride along the ‘autopista’ to get into the city and it really encompasses how I was feeling after the ‘and I’m getting older, too’ verse of Landslide played in my headphones at the exact moment our plane physically touched down in my second South American country.
The last two countries I have been in have been very emotional for me, I think the minor disillusionment of SAS is gone and planning these things myself and flying as opposed to just ending up whenever has renewed that sense of awe that, while I still felt throughout those months, was lessened for a while.
Both this arrival and the one to STGO made me feel like I should cry, but in the best way possible. It surprised me that I felt such strong reactions to these arrivals, but I appreciate my heightened gratitude to be here, they’re good feelings to have.
It was a really nostalgic week for me before we got on that flight, but in a good way. The feelings of reflecting and moving at a slower pace in the desert was combining with my anticipation of visiting two new countries within one weekend. It made me want to be in Europe because I was thinking about my first experience abroad and then I was missing Bali after talking to Brooke and felt a draw toward returning to Asia soon. These feelings caught me off guard, as well, but made sense when I remembered that living in a fixed space in a different country is still not a concept I am particularly used to.
Someone asked me recently if it is hard for me to constantly be living different places and saying goodbye to some friends in order to meet new ones. The answer to that is yes and no.
Getting to miss all these places and people is something that I do not for one second take for granted, but something that also by nature makes me nostalgic so often. It has been difficult to not make comparisons to my experience last fall in general, but this trip is also so completely different that daily things have not felt reminiscent of it at all. What a paradox. Same same but different, I guess.
Buenos Aires fulfilled some part of my sudden desire to be in Europe with its architecture and layout. Our airbnb was located in the spare room of a yoga studio that only allowed vegetarian food to be kept in the fridge with a host that gave us the best city recommendations and it was the perfect location, a block from the Obelisk downtown.
We got to the studio around 10:30 pm and then went across the street to a pizza place that was still packed full and where we accidentally bought a full bottle of wine for about one USD, not a bad start to our trip.
Our Friday was spent on a day trip to Uruguay, which was such a last-minute decision but so incredibly worth it. More on that to come, though. (:
Saturday we ‘slept in’ until 9:30 and explored as much as we could of Buenos Aires. It was kind of fun to do the touristy thing for a bit and I definitely think we got a good sense of the city. From the longest artisan market I’ve maybe ever been to and a cemetery that, according to my friend Brenna, makes the famed New Orleans Cemetery look average, we had some very distinct experiences. Add in a huge opera house-turned-bookstore, a trip to the beyond vibrant district of La Boca and a tango show at the oldest cafe in the city with a nap in between, and it was a day full of different things at every single turn.
We almost didn’t end up in the cafe, Cafe Tortoni in San Telmo, when we saw the huge line upon arrival and immediately tried rationalize whether or not we reallyyy wanted to wait to try the famous churros and dulce de leche. Cut to Brenna asking a lady in line and said lady telling us that she didn’t speak Spanish. That’s how we me Debi and Mike, two retired teachers from Illinois spending 58 days on a South American cruise, who then suggested that if there was an open table of four that we could sit together. We agreed and all ended up paying about $15 to see a tango show together, complemented by the churros and dulce de leche, Irish coffees, and wine that Mike ended up picking up the tab for. They were the sweetest people with such cool stories to tell as we waited for the show to begin.
That was the coolest night, and something that would not have happened if we had been traveling in a big group like we typically do. After a very long show, super worth the money, they walked us back toward our airbnb so they could see the obelisk in the city centre. In talking to them more, they had a family friend who did Semester at Sea and were excited to learn that I had participated, as well.
That moment felt very full circle. It reminded me of when my aunt and I met a British couple in the London suburb of Dagenham at a show in 2017 with a similar feel. I thought a bit after that about how I will spend the next semester back in London, a familiar place with for another purpose. Talking about SAS made me feel nostalgic but content about the fact that I was in a place with people that could talk about that experience with me for a minute. All of these things summed up to an evening in a small room in a cafe in Argentina reminded me once again that the world is a smaller place than we think.
The next morning we hit the Feria de San Telmo, an antiques market that is a Bs As must see, before our flight back to Santiago. A whirlwind of a weekend, but it honestly couldn’t have been cooler. I’m grateful to have experienced the city, the same one where my first year Spanish teacher from 2014 had exchanged when she was a high school student. Thinking of that time, all those years ago before I’d been anywhere really, this was a place that seemed so far away, so different. Seeing how far I have come in my skills, and adapting to the different colloquialisms of places like the distinct Argentine pronunciation of the letter ‘ll’, is mind-blowing and Bs As felt like a very symbolic place for me to visiting during my own immersive Spanish language experience.
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