Thursday, February 9th, 2012
Spanish class today passed like frozen molasses. For some
reason casi nadie understood anything at all and we fumbled for words more than…idk
some football player that fumbles the ball at lot…I don’t watch sports…it was
awful. Usually, I would say my daily Spanish is about at a 70%, in that I understand
that much and can express myself 70% of the time, but today that 30% was
reeeeeeally apparent. Most of the rest of the class had gone out the previous
night and were hungover, but what was my excuse? The only solution was a siesta
that I didn’t want to come out of.
Luckily Tonya politely woke me up for our tango lesson and I
pulled myself together in 10 minutes. It’s not that I don’t care what I look
like here, because I definitely do—it’s just that all my attempts to prove this
seem futile and I feel very unattractive most of the time because my hair isn’t
cooperating (and it’s brunette—sorry, but Nikkiness is blonde), my skin
is greasy, all my makeup rubs off and I feel 20 pounds heavier than most women
here even though I’m small. Ok, and sure I could rely on my personality, but
that is even harder to express because of the lack of my language skills to do
so (plus I haven’t figured out how to speak Spanish in my Brooklyn/Jersey accent…and
if you know me, you know this is a problem). I know I sound like such a self-conscious
“girl” right now, but this society (and every other society) is incredibly obsessed
with appearance and I have little control over mine versus the way I do back
home. And I’m not necessarily telling you this because you need to know, but
because I’m trying to document my entire trip—and many parts of this trip have
dealt with my preoccupation with my unflattering appearance and how I struggle
to be myself 100% because I don’t look like myself, don’t talk like myself, don’t
think like myself and don’t feel like myself. I don’t feel lost, I just feel
dissatisfied.
We showed up in style at La Viruta milonga (tango club). Our
teacher was an unbelievably tiny woman that danced like a flexible leaf and her
comical counterpart who seemed just as small as she did. Tango works like this:
you start with a slide to the right on your right and move back left-right then
cross the left leg over the right, then slide left with left then close with
right. Sound confusing? Eh, it’s simple enough. Every step is with the opposite
foot, just like when you’re walking. In addition, there are specific placements
for the hands of each dancer in relation to their partner’s body. Like all
other dancing, the man leads so if you don’t know what you’re doing, just find
a guy that does know. None of the guys in ISA knew, so it looked like a bunch
of drunk 7th graders trying to dance for the most part. I think I’d
much rather dance with someone who knew what they were doing, or just leave all
the dancing up to some pro tango dancers at a show or a popular milonga. More
on tango later…
After tango, Angela and I wandered around Palermo “SoHo”
(yeah, like SoHo in NYC because it’s the “cool” area of BA). Palermo Soho is
adorable. Every shop is photoworthy because of its cute logo, cool merchandise
and interesting decoration/layout. It also looks expensive, but we didn’t
really have the time or money to explore too extensively, as our sights were
set on getting empanadas. More on Palermo Soho later…
ME GUSTAN MUCHO LAS EMPANADAS CAPRESES! If you like Hot Pockets,
you’d absolutely have a foodgasm over these things. No wonder they’re
everywhere. Another foodgasm inducing item for me is Nutella—which I happened
to finally encounter at a large grocery store in Palermo. If you kept up with
my previous grocery adventure, you know I was quite dissatisfied with the
selection and size of grocery stores. This store, however looked like a real
grocery store from the US and I thought maybe they would have PB or Nutella…of
which we found both…for $28 pesos (~$7 USD) which is soooooo expensive. But I need
something for my sandwiches during the week, so $7 it is. My hopes for the rest
of the store were not met, however. Somehow this grocery store was exactly like
every other one—the only difference was that instead of having 2 kinds of
cookies, pasta, salsa, yogurt and crackers, they had 10 kinds. The diversity
was still low, meaning my quest for the perfect lunch was still a lost cause.
But the grumbling in my stomach was nothing compared to the
crumbling in my heart. Against all the rules I made a long time ago about this
trip, I left the country hopelessly in love with someone that I can only
describe as my love at first sight; someone I was always oddly destined to be
with despite how the timing always seems to be wrong. This was no fling or
something I was willing to throw away. Living with him the month before I left
didn’t help either. Before I left, we’d decided that we’d stay in touch but not
“be together” so as to not limit my experience or create the potential for a
volatile situation between us. Easier said than done. Because we forgot that in
order for it to be so casual, we’d have to not be in love in the first place.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever had to make yourself, tell yourself, force
yourself to fall out of love with somebody that, other than being 1000s of
miles away, has absolutely no flaws, but it’s completely impossible. This in
addition to the effects of culture shock and general homesickness made me
somewhat hysterical when I laid in bed at night. Each day was a new scenario
where we’d want to be together, but somebody was unsure if that was right and
we’d say we had to stop but then keep talking. And this was probably even more
unbearable than the culture shock. We had to make our final decision and I was
terrified…But we decided to try it. Being together under extreme circumstances
sounded better than being apart under the same circumstances. And I couldn’t be
happier.
The fact remains that I probably will end up here for 10
months, it will be difficult, Skype will get old, we might question if this is
right, we could meet other people—but the other fact remains that each day is
only a day and that every relationship has the potential to face hardships no
matter where its occupying couple resides (together, apart, in Buenos Aires and
Middle of Almost Nowhere, USA…). Maybe you think this is a silly decision, that
it will hold me back, but then I’d
have to ask you just what exactly do you think I’d be missing out on? For one,
now that I’m not miserable without him, I can spend time having fun, rather
than being depressed in my room. And I know that when I do come back home, he’ll
be “there” and I can tell him about my adventures or simply just know that he’s
existing out there somewhere in the world and I love him. There’s a significant
time difference and we’re both really busy so it’s not like Skyping all the
time would be possible; we both know that we’ll have separate lives that may
encompass activities or people that the other isn’t entirely sure of, but we’ll
have to trust in each other and we do. And as alluring as making out with
random foreign strangers sounds, it actually sounds gross, dangerous and stupid—especially
given the bad rap Argentine guys have on this front—I’m not interested in this.
I definitely want to see this part of culture and figure out Argentine guys and
give them a run for their money, but I don’t think sacrificing
something I want to have for a long time for something insignificantly “cultural”
is worth it at all. You can judge me all you want or criticize my decisions and
think I’m stupid and that we’ll break up in two weeks. You could be right—but you’re
fighting an uphill battle against my heart, and I must warn you that while the
rest of me may be weakened by my situation, it only pumps harder and has been
acutely aware of its predisposition to love from the first day of Kindergarten
(you know who you are, N.A.); not only that but you’re fighting against my
feelings for this particular person. Good luck. Because I adore him;
consequently I’m coming to adore BA. I used to think I couldn’t travel and love
(my two greatest passions) at the same time, but then I realized trying to
predict anything about travel or love is futile.
All day long I worry about getting my purse stolen, but I try
not to worry about you, because I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my
heart). I am so in love with you no matter where I am. Though certain locations are better than others...
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