Friday, February 03, 2012
2 days ago I finally learned to roll my R’s (after 21 years
of being told, “you just roll them! I don’t know how to explain it!” I finally
found a willing teacher). This is convenient because I’m leaving to study in
Buenos Aires, Argentina for 10 months today. You’d hope I could at least roll
my damn R’s. And this is how I begin what I’m going to call, “the other half
of my destiny”.
Why Argentina?
I was a senior in high school, dreaming about getting to
study abroad in college, and while I was enamored of China, I was unable to
study Chinese in school and it would be too cumbersome to do so in college. Not
to mention the years of Spanish I already had under my belt. Undoubtedly, I was
allured by the idea of going to Spain—there was Spain, and the rest of Europe.
But everybody goes to Spain and Europe is always there—we know the story there.
Then I remembered the continent that everybody else forgets: South America
whose story we’ve never actually told. A story that I’d like to learn more
about and possibly be a part of…Once I’d written Spain off, I had this tugging
feeling towards Argentina—I had very little to go off of for this infatuation,
but being a place known for food, wine, literature and passion, Argentina had a
pretty good argument. After learning of the Dirty War (One of Argentina’s darkest
hours where the military junta captured, tortured and murdered [and
mysteriously disposed of] anyone suspected of subversive activities—generally
meaning that intellectuals, students, artists, etc. were the targets…), I was
ironically more intrigued and knew for sure that this is where I had to go. My
heart and mind had decided. The seed was planted solidly in 2009 (as was
another, but that is another story…). It had to wait until February 3rd,
2012 to grow, bloom, explode and rise into the sky, where it softly planted me
in the cabin of a Boeing 777 en route to Buenos Aires.
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