Hey look, a parade

Tuesday, June 4^th, 2013

If I had a dollar for every time I turned a corner and found something totally unexpected in “Latin America”, I’d have enough money to stay here forever. On our walk home, we turned right and encountered a huge parade gearing up for its winding journey through town. There were hundreds, if not thousands of people all celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the technical school that’s a block from my house. They had floats, alumni, buses, balloons, music and lights. We stayed and had a blast looking at all the wacky people and floats passing in front of us. People were excited to be in pictures with us and although it drove me nuts that they automatically greeted us with “hhhello hhhow ahrr you?”, they all seemed excited that there was a group of gringos celebrating with them.

That’s what I love about being here. You of course have ideas about what you need to get done in a day and how you’re going to do them, but you have to delight in all the distractions that come up along the way and take you somewhere else. Because if you don’t, you won’t enjoy any of it. It took me a long time to realize this in Argentina, but once I accepted it, I started to miss it when I had to go back home to the U.S. It continues to be a huge part of why I feel so beguiled by “Latin America”. Sometimes you turn the corner and it’s a parade, other times it’s a protest, but whatever it is, it tells you a little bit more about life here—even if it drives you half crazy. You can tune out the news, but you can’t tune out your own life, especially when it collides head on with hundreds of others’ in the same serendipitous moment.