Re-Triste

My plane leaves for Lima at 8.15 tomorrow. I'm still not fully processing that the semester is over.

I don't feel ready to leave Argentina. Give me a few more months and I would be, I think — this country is kind of exhausting. Eating dinner at 11, staying out until 6, trying to get to class on time when the only thing you can count on is if you plan for the bus to be late, it's guaranteed to leave early. And there's a constant uncertainty about the future that's disconcerting. Frankly, the government is on shaky ground right now in the conflict with the campo and inflation somewhere around 25% a year. This in a country where the longest it's gone since 1900 without an involuntary change of power is 18 years.

My initial infatuation with Argentina wore off after the first month or two. But it's since settled into a patient, profound love. Living in a foreign country is a constant challenge, I think, until it becomes familiar enough to not feel foreign anymore. I'm nowhere near that point. Still, I've made myself a life here, a routine that's exciting because it's almost mundane.

I have my gym filled with people that don't sweat, my fruitería where the apples are always crisp, my favorite helado place, and my lavandería with a Chinese owner who knows me by name, even if she can't pronounce it. I don't think twice about lighting a gas oven, I know which bus will get me to San Telmo (29) and which one will get me to my tutor's house (39), and I no longer blink when people shout "I luff yoo" when I walk down the street. I know I'll have fun if I go out to Liquid and how not to get run over: cars will stop for me at the "chicken" intersections that don't have stop signs, but never if the light is green.

I honestly don't know exactly what has been so perfect about this semester. Nothing by itself, and everything together. My friends deserve most of the credit, even though they're anything but what I expected. (I naively came here expecting to make a cadre of Argentine friends.) Most things were fun with them, whether it was smuggling a kilo of helado into Indiana Jones, being stuck on a broken-down bus for three hours on the side of a highway, or watching an acrobatic interactive performance experience at Konex.

Over-analyzing it isn't going to get me anywhere, although it does give me street cred in a country where Woody Allen is idolized alongside with Maradona and the Pope. But thank you to everyone and everything that has made this semester so amazing.