Saturday, December 4, 2010

The path taken means as much as the destination...

As I type this, I am staring at a pile of my things on my bed. Two suitcases sit open and almost full on the floor. And I have friend waiting for my arrival at my favorite club - only 4 blocks from my apartment.

I don't know how to say goodbye because I don't know if I ever will come back again.

When I left my parents, it was tearful, yes, but I knew that I would be returning in 5 and a half short months. And how short those months seem now that they have all passed...
Tonight I went to La Catedral de Tango for the last time and I kissed my instructors and my friends homestay mom goodbye for the last time. I had to thank them for all they had given to me. Because when I think on Argentina, of course I think about tango and all the time that I spent at my friend's house and all the time that I spent at La Catedral. And how excited my friends and I were when we mastered a new move - maybe not complex, but it was still new.

I sit here and I look at my Spanish dictionary. It's been so long since that was a vital part of my belongings, since I had to have it with me for constant reference. I am by no means fluent, but I have found that there are ways to talk around things, to try and describe them with the vocabulary that I do have, and if not that, then my hand gestures and body motions generally can do the trick.

This place. I spent 5 and a half months sleeping in this bed. Singing in that shower over there. Eating at that kitchen table. I took that same bus every day - cold, rainy, windy, sunny - to that University. I sat in boring classes, exciting classes, classes in which I thought the substitute teacher was cute and I put in 110% effort.

How did all these things just come to an end?
When did that happen?

How is it that tomorrow I will board a plane, with people I didn't know 6 months ago, who I now call friends?
14 hours of travel. And then I will be in my father's arms. I will pet my dog. It will be cold.
This will be over.

How does that happen?
How is it that at times it felt sooo long? Like when I was sick from my malaria pills, and all I could do was lay in bed, pray it would pass, and ask for my mom. During those days, all I wanted was to be at home.
Now, I want to be home again. I miss my family - talking to them through the phone isn't the same as seeing them, as sharing events with them personally instead of just recounting the days' activities, as being able to actually hug them and kiss them and tell them I love them.
But I don't want to go away from my home. This apartment. This neighborhood. This city. This country. This feels like home to me now. I'm starting to think that being adaptable isn't always a blessing. Right now, adaptability is a curse. Because I will leave this place and soon it will be just a distant memory of something that once was. And Durham, CT will be home again. And the University of South Carolina will be home again. Walking into an apartment to my best friend, Ashley, will be home again. Pulling into my driveway and seeing my mom or dad will be home again. Home will no longer be Pipa and her family, or my two wonderful roommates.


The path taken means as much as the destination.

At first I would have said that my destination was Buenos Aires. But now I know that my destination was more a sense of awareness; I'm aware of how much my family means to me, how much I love my friends - yet how easily it is to make new ones, especially in strange situations. I arrived at the feeling of being comfortable even when I am alone, more than halfway around the world from everything I had once known.
I may have not ended up being a true porteña, as was my original goal, but there is comfort here. There is a family; there are friends; there is a home. It's just strange that I have two sets of each, and they are one different continents. In a different culture. In a different language.

There are days that I have thought, if I could choose again, I wouldn't have picked Argentina. But there are days, like today, that I walked the street, went to tango, and just sat in a park, and I realized... I wouldn't trade these experiences for the world.

Gracias, Argentina, por todos los recuerdos. Voy a extrañarte - tus calles, tus pueblos, y tu gente. Tuve el tiempo de mi vida. No puedo imaginar un otro país con personas tan lindas, con los brazos tan abiertos, con aventuras tan grandes. Hoy, soy una persona diferente que la persona de seis meses atrás. Ella era ... dependiente, y ahora, soy independiente. Ahora, tengo ojos abiertos y más amor en mi corazón que nunca pensé posible. Pero ahora, yo sé, veo, vivo.
He llegado, he triunfado.
Gracias.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Flying Solo to Patagonia

Just a day after my mom left, I left Buenos Aires too. But this time I was destined for Patagonia!
I planned a trip with my friends, but they ended up finding the cheapest flight prices were while my mom was in town, and I encouraged them to do what they needed to do to be able to go on their trip. So while they went to Ushuaia and then El Calafate, I started my trip in El Calafate to meet up with them.

El Calafate is well know for it's proximity to the glacier Perito Moreno. Most people go and stay in El Calafate so they can plan their excursions to the glacier. So I arrived in El Calafate at noon, and booked a mini-trekking glacier excursion for the next day. There turned out to be a bit of a hassle because I booked it for my friends (who were arriving a bit later, at like 5 pm) too so that we could definitely be in the same group. But problems turned up when they decided they didn't want to do the trek on the glacier, and we had to cancel their reservation later in the night - as companies were closing. I, however, was not going to give up the experience of slipping on some crampons and walking over one of the only "stable" glaciers left on the planet. (Stable refers to the fact that it loses ice at a rate about equal to it's growth each year - so while the vast majority of glaciers are getting smaller, Perito Moreno and about one other, I believe, in the Patagonian ice field is staying the same size.)
Perito Moreno after a giant chunk fell off. 

The day of the glacier trek ended up being really nice. I was worried because the forecast called for some rain, and the people staying the hostel the first night with me had gone on the trek that day in rain, and they were pretty miserable. But my day was gorgeous, albeit, rather cold (okay - so it wasn't horrible but honestly it was like 90 the day before in Buenos Aires, and por eso, I thought El Calafate was freezing). On the bus ride to the glacier in the morning I met a nice couple, probably late twenties or very early thirties, and they both had studied abroad. So we talked about how my experience was going and they were really supportive of the fact that I was traveling alone and had decided to to my own thing and not give up such amazing experiences because I didn't have anyone to go with. It was so great to meet people who had done it too and survived to tell the story!
I spent the day with them, ate lunch together, walked around, and we did the glacier trek together. They adopted me as their photographer and they also helped by taking some of me, or holding Cocky for his photos. It was so nice to meet them, it really made the day as awesome as it could have been. On the other hand, I was sitting on this short boat ride back to the bus, and I got separated and couldn't get a seat near my new friends. So I sat near a group of about 8 people, I'm assuming Dutch. They were speaking in English to each other and I was just trying to ignore their conversation/look like I wasn't listening in. So I heard the entire thing. And one very large piece of the conversation is about how they would never travel alone and not only is it depressing to be alone and have to travel alone, but it's just lame, or something along those lines... I prefer to agree with my NY couple instead of these Dutchmen because I had a great time even though I was on my trip alone.

So after one more night in my hostel in El Calafate with my friends, I transferred on the 8am bus to El Chaltén. El Chaltén is the "National Capital for Trekking" and is home to Mt. Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre. It's also really interesting because I didn't realize it beforehand, but El Chaltén is actually a town inside a national park (Parque Nacional los Glaciares), so when the bus pulls into town, it first makes a stop so that we can hear about the rules of being in the park (aka no garbage on the trails, everything comes back to the town and then goes to El Calafate later on) and the trails that we could take and their levels of difficulty. Honestly, I felt like the vast majority of the hikers were really respectful of the rules about no garbage/"leave no trace". I did find like a tissue and a cigarette butt while I was hiking, but I just put them in my garbage baggie and brought them back to town with me. Anyway, I had 3 nights (2.5 days), so the first day I did a short hike to go see Cerro Torre. Which wasn't visible. Of course. There's normally a lot of cloud cover there. On the second day, my hectic month caught up with me. I had finals, then I went to Salta, then my mom was here - my allergies exploded at that time and I was a bit sick, and then I was traveling again. So on the first full day, I laid in bed and read all day, and I went out lunch with a woman from Valencia, Spain and practiced some Spanish. I just didn't feel 100% and figured that hiking in the cold wouldn't help. Of course, that day, Mt. Fitz Roy was visible. That day also was Thanksgiving and I was feeling quite homesick after talking to my Mom, Aunt and Uncle on the phone. I ate a hot dog. Between my family, there were 3 turkeys. That's the life of study abroad. I stayed up pretty late that night talking to a nice guy that I met hiking the day before, who was from Israel. We had the same sense of humor so everything was just really funny to us.
Mt. Fitz Roy during my hike.
But, to my luck!, Mt. Fitz Roy was also visible the next day. And how spectacular it is! Seeing Mt. Fitz Roy was probably the highlight of my trip. It was so glorious and it was a great way to end 5 spectacular months in Argentina. I started the hike in the drizzle, and ended up hiking mid-day in a t-shirt because I was so hot. I also got a tad bit sunburned on my hike, and quite lost. I knew I wasn't good at reading maps, but one map said - El Chaltén two hours or four hours, so being the lazy child I am (plus I'd already been out for 4.5 hours), I chose the two hour trail. NOPE! I chose the 4 hour trail because I'm illiterate. After 8.5 hours out in the sunshine and fresh air, I was SO tired. At night in the hostel I overcooked my spaghetti because I was busy talking to a young couple from Seattle and a guy from Switzerland, the part that speaks the really strange language. We started making him say everything to us in it. It was really fun and great to sit down with some complete strangers but have traveling and hiking in common.

The following day (Saturday, when I had started my trip on a Monday), I took an afternoon bus to El Calafate airport and hopped on a plane to Ushuaia - the end of the world! I thought Ushuaia would be my favorite part of this trip, so I was a bit disappointed. It looked so amazingly beautiful from the plane, but landing was terrifying because the airport is essentially a little island, so you come down over the water and just land. Scary! On my first full day in Ushuaia (the Sunday), I wandered around the town trying to figure out what excursions I would do. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, so barely anything was open, and I got nothing planned. So I returned up the giant hill to my hostel, and booked a bus to go to Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego the next day. On the bus in the morning there were a bunch of 20-somethings, and so we decided to stick together and do a nice hike with each other. There were 2 people from Canada, two from Switzerland, and one from Norway (okay, so she was older than 20-something, but really cool none-the-less). We hiked around, got a bit turned around - I didn't read the map this time, so it was not my fault! - and ended up doing a nice hike along the coastline. It was really great to hike with a group after a few days of hiking alone (although I didn't mind that either). By the end of the day, we'd gone from snowing heavily, to sunshine where I was in just a sweatshirt, back to snow/a drizzle, etc. It essentially was 4 seasons in one day. But it was the end of the world, what else could we expect?!
After getting back to town and warming up a bit after about 6 hours of hiking and a bit of lunch, the 28-year old from Switzerland, the lady from Norway, and I went out to dinner. I tried all sorts of new foods (salmon and mussels - haha, nothing exotic, but I'm such a picky eater anyway), and slept like a little baby. The next morning I woke up and went on a tour of the Beagle Chanel, which was nice, but not what I expected. We went to three islands - one with sealions, one with cormoranes, and one with the End of the World Lighthouse, and I paid extra to go to the penguin island thinking that it was like the excursion my friend did where she was allowed to walk amongst the penguins. That's why I was upset. Because we didn't. So it wasn't much different than going to a zoo, but it was still really nice.
After that I got on a plane and headed "home" to Buenos Aires.

End of the World Lighthouse with Ushuaia (and Chile, to the left) in the background.
Looking back on it, I don't think that traveling alone was scary at all. And it's so strange to hear people say that they're proud of me for being brave and going alone. Don't get me wrong, I'm so glad for all the support I've received to make this trip a reality, but it doesn't feel like I did anything scary or brave. But when I talk with my friends here, and they mention that they never would have dared to go alone, I'm shocked that more people don't.

I guess me feeling comfortable enough to go alone is just a sign that I don't need to depend on other people to figure out my entertainment, or that I'm comfortable enough in knowing that I'm mature enough to go out into this world alone, and I feel so happy that I think that's the real meaning behind all of it.
But I know that if I hadn't gone to Patagonia, if I hadn't seen Mt. Fitz Roy in person, I would look back on this entire study abroad experience and been upset that I hadn't done these things.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

A Week with Mom

Sorry that I'm a bit backlogged on the blogging. This last month has been quite hectic with finals, travel, visitors, and more travel. But I wouldn't trade that for anything.

My Mom came to visit me for just a little over a week, and she brought her best friend Miss Val. I was so excited to have her visit and I thought that it would be nice for someone to see what life was like for me here. I'm so glad that she didn't come earlier in my time here in Argentina, though, because saying goodbye to her again was one of the hardest things I've had to do in my time here - and I knew that I would be seeing her in only 2 more weeks, so I can't imagine what it would have been like to say goodbye and have 2 months left!

It's quite funny because I had a plan of exactly what we would be doing every day. Since I realized my mom was coming to see me, I had put a lot of effort in thinking about what would be the best things to show her and how to make it so that she could really experience Buenos Aires like I had. I rented her an apartment for a week. I picked one that was only 5 blocks from my homestay - I know the area so well, and I know that it's safe and we would have nothing to worry about. I'm so glad that I rented an apartment too; my Mom LOVED it, and it was great because she made me dinner one night when she was here (not that I haven't been having homecooked meals the entire time, but Pipa's cooking does not at all compare to my mother's).
When my mom got here, it didn't take me long to realize that not everything was going to happen as I had planned. We had difficulties agreeing on the things I had thought out to do for both of them, and of course, it being spring/summertime, I hadn't planned on there being an influx of tourism and it being difficult to get tickets to certain things. Either way, I think my mom really enjoyed her time here. She got to relax from her stressful job, and honestly, who doesn't love seeing another part of the world?!
Mom and I "aqui" in Uruguay!
I think the best day that we had together was the day that we went to Uruguay! I hadn't gone yet, and it's seriously only a 3 hour ferry boat ride from the city, so we just went as a day trip. When I was trying to explain how simple it was to go to another country, I told my mom that it was like going to Block Island from CT. When we walked on the ferry, which was truly decked out, held a ton of people, and had chairs that even recline!, I realized that going to Uruguay was much classier than going to Block Island. It was such a fun day because we rented a little golf cart and tooled around the town (Colonia del Sacramento - a UNESCO World Heritage Site) for the entire day. We did some shopping, eating, and I climbed a lighthouse (it wasn't that tall...).

I'm a bit disappointed that my mom didn't get to see what a day was really like for me because we didn't eat at the restaurants that I typically eat at and we only took the bus and subte once during the entire week, when I take them each like once a day, but at the same time, it was nice taking a mini-vacation from my own life here in the city.
My Mom did get to meet Pipa and the family that I live with, and the family LOVED my mom; she also got along with Pipa really well. I was so happy that I could introduce them all to each other because my mom always hears about Pipa, and vice versa.

In the end, of course, it was hard to say goodbye to my mom, but I also knew that in just a day I would be traveling to Patagonia - a trip that I did mostly solo. And for that ... look for my next blog post - I'll write it later tonight after I go shopping with my roommates and do some goodbye-saying.