¡Qué lástima!

Okay okay, enough whining. I'm a writer, I'm not a writer, chicken or fish, WHATEVER.

So I went to Buenos Aires for a couple weeks. And at first I really, really hated it. Loathed it. It was pouring and gloomy when I arrived at 7 in the morning, and I got a bad exchange rate when I traded in my money at the airport, and then I got ripped off by the taxi driver who drove me to my hostel even though I read approximately 400 pieces of literature before leaving on How Not To Get Ripped Off By Taxi Drivers (Rachel!!). I had an awkward exchange with the hostel front desk guy, who showed me to my bed, which was on the top bunk (dammit). So I hoisted myself into bed and went to sleep for a year. I kept waking up and checking my watch but no matter how ridiculously late it got I kept saying not yet not yet I can't face all this yet.

I am not a seasoned traveler. Kasteel Well was awesome, but for the most part, it was not traveling. I still had my own bite-sized American community and had other people to fall back on. My Eurail pass was set up by Emerson and most of the trips I took were planned by someone else. The closest I got to traveling was when I went to Belgium by myself for the weekend, and even then...that was BELGIUM, people. Just one big merry-go-round of waffels and chocolates and beaming children and Flemish primatives.

So, going into this trip I honestly didn't know whether I like to travel or if I just like to take vacations. One thing I've noticed about myself when I go places - and it is so, so frustrating and I wish I could stop doing it - is that it's always about me. How will this trip make me grow, what will I learn about myself, how will I feel, how will I change, etc etc etc. And of course I want to grow and change and learn but why can't I just sneak into a culture and be? I get so concerned with myself that I don't even see anything. I'll walk for fifteen blocks and not remember anything I passed on the way. Maybe it's because I wasn't there for very long but I feel like I hardly saw Buenos Aires at all, and I suspect it was because I was too busy being embarrassed and frustrated by my half-dozen Spanish catchphrases that I would desperately spit out before sullenly resorting to lo siento, pero no entiendo, no hablo castellano. It's all me me me and I don't look the part and I don't speak the part and I'm so foreign. And I've always been choked by that awful voice in my head hissing what will they think? but as soon as I got to Buenos Aires it began screaming and waving its arms, saying Stop, you're not doing it right, just stay in bed where you can't mess things up.

So for awhile, I did, and then I got over it and shyly shuffled into the city, and I ate great food and bought great stuff and saw great things but it was still a very guide-book trip and at no point did I just close my eyes and fall backwards into the arms of the city.

So when people ask me, "How was Buenos Aires?" I don't know what to tell them except that it was hard.

And that I'll go back.