Right now I feel off balance, like I’m playing a dangerous
game with gravity and culture. I roll like a little marble to the edge of each
extreme and just before I fall off, I speed towards the opposite end. At times
I’m so homesick and regular sick of being here and dealing with feeling inane
all the time because I’ll never fit in with my looks or Spanish; but at other
times I feel completely fluid and move with the culture knowing that as soon as
I come home it will be like I never left, but I, on the other hand, will want
to leave (to BA).
I’m also having the realization of the differences between
traveling internationally and living internationally; because of the former, I
had fantasized the latter. At times I feel like I’m not doing enough to
experience the culture, but at the same time I’ll be here for 10 months and
need to pace myself this way. And keep in mind I’m also a student. During a
vacation, you have maybe a week to get a grasp of the city and see what it has
to offer. You eat out every night, spend much more money than normal and
indulge when necessary. You have no obligations. This is not real life. And
even though I wake up every morning believing this isn’t my real life, it is.
Day to day, I live in Buenos Aires.
Right now I’m trying to live the Argentine equivalent of my
life back home. By this I mean that I’m completely open to new experiences and
want to be immersed in the culture, but every day can’t be a blowout. While I am on a mission to find the best
empanadas, gnocchi and milanesa in town, I can’t go out to eat every night to
figure this out. And yes, there are incredible events going on, cool
destinations that I can’t miss and great shopping, but I’m definitely faced
with social, financial, academic and physiological constraints just like you. Not
to mention that it’s impossible anyways, especially given the Argentine
relationship with time. But also like the Argentines, I’ll do what I feel when I
feel like it. While I’m not going to be
content with coming home every night and sitting in my room, it’s ok to know
that if I have a few days like that each week, I’m not missing out, because
this isn’t a vacation, this is my life. Every day will be notable in its own
way; different way from the last. I know when I leave I’ll have a million
things that “I should have done” or I “wish I had time for”, but at the same
time, I even feel this way at school (and if you know where I go to school, you
know it’s a desert of boredom at times…), yet I’m constantly busy. Plus,
sometimes the best adventures are the ones that aren’t so mapped out.
Overall, I think people have a very skewed perception of “experiencing
culture”—honestly I get more “culture” trying to find something in a grocery
store than I do from a tour at la Casa Rosada. My favorite memory from Paris wasn’t
the Eiffel Tower, rather meandering the streets looking for lunch and finding
the best pizza, speaking all the French I don’t actually speak and finding some
cute stores where I bought unique items that I still love. And I think that’s
what I’m looking for in Buenos Aires. I always imagined it as a place where I’d
make intimate memories and often those are the ones you don’t find in the
guidebook...
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