Sunday,
June 3rd
Lara is one of my favorite Argentines. She was my professor
for my intensive in month in February, and I continued to have class with her
in the regular semester, so in a way she’s “been there” throughout my entire
experience here. The only thing she loves more than Buenos Aires is literature—so,
yeah, saying she’s a gem is an understatement. I felt a little bad for the
other students in our Latin American Cultural Studies class, because there are
3 of us from her intensive month class and it’s clear that she doesn’t mind
playing favorites, especially when those favorites give her gum, candy and
actually participate in the class.
One day before class, she asked me to talk to her in the
other room and I thought, oh god, did I have a grammatical trainwreck that she
overheard?? No. She was inviting me and a few other students over to meet her
family and have a leisurely afternoon of snacks and chatting. As a big fan of
snacks and chatting and Lara, I was all in.
The day finally came and after the most convoluted
bus-catching affair (come on 29, I waved my 2-liter Coke at you while I was
running and you still didn’t wait for me?!) I arrived to Lara’s place and was
greeted by her man candy, Pablo, who might be too good to be true—he’s funny,
listens to good music and is too nice. While I arrived perfectly on time by
Argie standards, everybody else was already there, so I felt like I was late.
Luckily we were still going strong on snacks, though. As the afternoon went on,
we all ate a little more, laughed a little louder and talked a little more.
Meeting Lara’s precious little daughter was great too. She laughed, cooed and
danced—and absolutely refused to go to bed because she was missing out on all
the fun.
While it escapes me what all we talked about (though I’ll
never forget Lara reading the opening paragraph of Catcher in the Rye…), I left
feeling happy, full and fortunate to know these 3 people in a city of 3
million. I’ve generally always maintained a pretty close rapport with my
teachers, and Lara is no exception. She is passionate, intelligent and
congenial. Indirectly, she was there in my lowest moment of the experience
(when I first arrived), and she helped me celebrate one of my highest moments,
merely sharing food, stories and time with her family. I have to come back to
Argentina, even just to share a coffee with her—that curly hair and
rrrrrrrolling r’s and all.
No comments:
Post a Comment