A City of Your Own

After spending nearly three months in Argentina, I have finally begun to understand that there is nothing that can be done to prepare you for the experience of living abroad. There is no study abroad guide that can accurately describe the love you will feel for your city, the frustrations of remaining an outsider, or the intense desire to stay long enough to change one or both. There is no pocket language guide that can translate the feeling of triumph you get once you realize you have just had an engaging conversation with your taxi driver in a language you did not know three months earlier. No city guide will ever find you your favorite tango club, vegetarian restaurant, or spot in the park under the flowering trees. And most importantly, no orientation session will ever explain to you how much you will grow to care about the people you meet or how you are ever supposed to say goodbye to them.

Facing my final month in Buenos Aires when I feel I have only just arrived is the most difficult task that I have met so far. Yet, it is the fleeting nature of this journey, the temporality of this break with reality that makes the experience so sweet. At times I panic, gripped by the thought that I will look back on this time as the best in my life and it is passing me by. Then I realize something that no travel blog can ever really portray. What I am supposed to learn from this experience is that you should never really leave the city and people you have come to know. You should hold on to them and continue to seek out new cities and people to love. You should build your life as its own city, erecting monuments and skyscrapers as you go, but always returning to that one plaza at its heart where it all began.