One of the classes I sat in on at the UAP was ¨Ciencia y Religion¨- Southern´s equivalent of Earth Science, which I never took. So I learned some new things (at least partially learned) about tetonic plates and dinosaurs and volcanoes. The teacher is really passionate about the subject matter, so the recent volcano in Chile was an exciting thing to talk about in class.

But not so exciting in real life... I had heard that some flights out of Buenos Aires had been grounded by the volcanic ash, but the news predicted flights today would go out as normal, and I had heard that flights yesterday afternoon left as well. So last night at midnight, I boarded a flechabus to Buenos Aires. I arrived early this morning and spent the day exploring the city, blissfully away from internet and news. I got to the airport extra early just to make sure all went okay. When I tried to self-check in, the machine couldn´t find my itinerary. That´s when I noticed the long line of red ¨cancelados¨flashing on the screens. The next flight they can put me on (hopefully) leaves Sunday night - 3 days from now.

Since this is the weather´s fault, the airlines don´t help with anything. Hostels and affordable hotels are full all over the city. Ultimately, it´s cheaper for me to take a 6-hour bus ride back to la Villa tonight (in 6 days, I will have spent 4 nights on a bus), spend a few more days there, and come back to Buenos Aires again later in the day Sunday.

I was really looking forward to coming home today. I´ve enjoyed this trip so much, but I´m tired - physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. I feel like I just want to sink into a big, soft bed of comfort - effortless communication, friends who know me well, jokes that I get, and just having the things around me be familiar instead of unknown.

I hear that I´m supposed to adapt in times like these. Well, I don´t really have a choice. The clock keeps on ticking, whether I´m happy or not. So I´m going to try to be happy:

• I have 12 pesos left in cash (about $3), but I have a free place to stay at the UAP and free cafeteria food (which is not bad, actually. My last post may have made the food situation seem worse than it is. There is some food here I like a lot, like chipas and orange-flavored soy milk!)
• I have to ride the bus again tonight, but this time it´s cama (last night it wasn´t).
• This complicates my upcoming trip out West, but at least I´m driving instead of flying, and hopefully Jones will wait a day for me...
• I´ve had a lot of extra practical opportunities because of this to stumble along in Spanish.
• Although some people in the airport were not helpful (in fact rather difficult), I found many others who were, like the guy who gave me his map today and the airport security guard who walked me to Retiro when we returned after dark.

If you can´t tell, writing this is my way of giving myself a pep talk. As much as I wish I were on a plane to Miami right now instead of in an internet cafe in the bus station, these next three days of life are still a gift, and I will try to find things I enjoy in them.

People had warned me that the food here is a little boring. Many Argentines have German or Italian heritage, so the food here reflects the cuisine of those countries. But I think the spices were lost on the journey across the ocean. The food doesn’t taste bad – it just doesn’t taste much at all. The most common flavoring agents are salt and vinegar, and if someone likes to cook, maybe oregano and a little garlic.

I hear that the meat, on the other hand, is world class. Too bad I don’t eat meat. (You can imagine how, if I can’t keep the names of different meats straight in English, I am completely lost in Spanish.) The option sin carne is typically pasta. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had gnocchi, ravioli, fettuccine, cannelloni, and some kind of giant ravioli called “quesonudle” or something Spanish/German-sounding like that. The pasta is often homemade, and sometimes it’s not bad. But I get bored eating pasta twice a day.

Thanks to Krista, I found some places to eat in la Villa that serve other vegetarian food, and then they fixed the oven in my apartment so I could cook for myself. Unfortunately the principle of supply and demand governs the spice aisle in the local supermarkets; there are only a few options, mostly mixes for marinating meat. So my home cooked meals have been fairly bland as well.

Some of my classmates have ventured further than I have to shop for groceries. The other day the Careys went to a Walmart about 45 minutes away. They told me it’s a little different from the Walmart at home. For example, they lock up your purse in a bag until you pay. But they said that mostly, it was still Walmart.

Last night, I had a dream that they invited me to go back to Walmart with them. But it was very, very different – more like a cross between Costco and an arcade. The store was dimly lit, but the ceiling had all these red and green and yellow neon lights zigzagging across it. The air was filled with beeping noises and clashing electronic music. Instead of the regular straight aisles stocked with cans and boxes, there were different stations haphazardly placed throughout the store. At each station, there was an attendant with big hair, gaudy makeup, and a flashy costume. The attendant would let you play a little game in order to try a sample or buy something from her station.

Most of the samples had meat in them, but eventually I played a game that let me into a lighter, more peaceful section of the store where a few people were sitting around a bar. On the counter were little egg-shaped coasters with samples of Indian food on them. I tried one, and then another, and then another – they were so flavorful! Eventually, with my coaster of curry in midair, it hit me that if they had samples like this, they must also sell the ingredients! I raised my eyes, and sure enough, there was a lovely aisle of spices stretching before me. Each glass bottle glimmered like a spotlight was shining on it, and I could read the pretty handwritten labels - cumin, ginger, cinnamon, basil, red pepper flakes, even citrus grill! This may sound like your average spice aisle in America, but it was so beautiful. Past the spices, there was a section of curry pastes, and beyond that were mixes for other kinds of Indian food. And everything only cost about 3 pesos (around $0.70).

It was too good to be true! I kept asking my companions (who now included Chris Clouzet, a girl I met in Argentina, and Richard Parker in a raincoat) if I was dreaming. They assured me that it was real; I could buy any of these items that I wanted.

Sadly, I woke up before I made it to the check out line. When I walked into my kitchen for breakfast this morning, I was greeted by a lonely packet of finely ground black pepper on top of the microwave. No curry for me today. My taste buds will have to be patient for one more week.

Cama seats still hold more resemblance to a dentist’s chair than a bed. But they are more comfortable than semi-cama, blankets are provided, and the evening meal comes with a Styrofoam cup of wine.

Speaking of wine, look at my Bingo card from my ride home!

[Pretend that you can see a picture of a Bingo card here, full except for one number. The internet here is too slow to upload pictures...]

You have to get two rows in order to win, but I had two full rows at least three rounds before the next person. And I swear I understood correctly! After trying to learn to count in French (who decided 93 should be four-twenty-thirteen?!), numbers seem so easy in Spanish. Anyway, the prize was a bottle of wine, and my fellow passengers seemed pretty intent on winning it. So I kept my mouth shut, happy to be a real Winner.

Everyone told me that the buses here in Argentina are super nice. I don’t know what kind of luxury I was expecting exactly, but I definitely set my expectations too high. The long distance buses here are nicer than buses in the States, but they are still buses. You can get two kinds of tickets: semi-cama, which means your seat reclines about halfway, and for a little more you can get cama, which means your seat turns into a bed. For my ticket to Mendoza, the only available option was semi-cama. I thought that it would be fine – I’d even save a little money that way. It turned out to be pretty uncomfortable though. The seat does recline quite a bit, and there’s this leg rest thing too, but each part of the seat is the wrong length for my body, so my circulation gets cut off at some point no matter how I try to sit.

To make things worse, during the night the bus got really cold! And there were no blankets. I put on my scarf and extra sweater and wrapped my jacket around my legs, but I was still freezing. Ah. It was a miserable 16 hours…Did I mention it’s like 700 miles from la Villa to Mendoza? I may be on the skinny end of this continent, but I've basically crossed this it now.

There were a few funny parts to the bus ride though. They had TVs on the bus, and they played a variety of entertainment, including an Argentinean movie, Date Night, and a Marc Anthony concert (he’s so ridiculously dramatic!). There was no option to watch TV or not – the volume was controlled by the steward. Sometimes it would be a while before he realized the DVD had finished; we must have listened to the DVD menu loop for Date Night for at least 20 minutes. Another thing we did for entertainment was play Bingo! All those times I played Bingo in Spanish class, I never thought it would actually prepare me for the real world.

When I arrived, I got to experience another kind of bus. If there were a stuffwhitepeoplehate.com, “taking guided tours” would certainly make the list. Exploring a place on your own is much hipper. And cool things seem even cooler when you just stumble upon them and feel like you’ve made a lucky discovery. Plus I like to feel like I’m really experiencing a place when I travel, and being herded along by a chipper guide, holding a flower on an umbrella, reciting a mechanical speech into a crackly microphone is not my idea of an authentic or desirable experience.

Well, my student Edith had considerately arranged a tour of Mendoza for me, which I was planning on canceling. But my walk from the bus station to the hotel (only 17 blocks on the map…but it turns out that’s a long ways) made me realize that it would take an awful lot of walking to just stumble across the cool stuff. Plus I didn’t have much energy to explore. So I decided it might be worth $15 to be driven around to all the best parts of the city.

The tour bus was about 45 minutes late to pick me up, and when I climbed on board, I realized everyone else was probably getting a senior citizen’s discount on this tour. What started off as a bad impression only got worse when I found out this tour was in Spanish only. Perhaps I should have rejoiced at the opportunity to practice listening comprehension, but trying to listen to tour guide talks (which I already dislike in English) seemed like an overly taxing request for my exhausted brain. I spent the first part of the tour wishing I was back in my hotel room sleeping.

But when we got off the bus to see our first statue, I realized I had hit the gold mine for conversation practice! Old people are so sweet and patient. They want to know all about your life and naturally ask their questions a little more slowly. You can slaughter the language up and down, but as long as you say things like “que preciosa!” to pictures of their granddaughters, they’ll compliment your Spanish. Also, they can blame their hearing aids for asking you to repeat something they didn’t understand. And the best part of all – they don’t know a word of English.

In la Villa, people often speak to me in English, even when I try to speak only Spanish. So they think I understand less than I do, and when we speak in Spanish, they usually “help” me by telling me the words instead of giving me enough time to figure out how to say something. But these problems disappeared with my tour group companions. They spoke to me like I understood, and magically, I did (at least, mostly…) Even better, I felt like my tongue was loosed. Not that I suddenly could say things quickly or easily, but a lot of the nervousness that often blocks me from remembering something I do actually know was gone, and I could converse near the level of knowledge I actually have. In linguistics, this is called performance vs. competence – see how I’m growing as a professional on this trip?

In the end, the tour itself was about as lame as I expected. The best part of this area is the mountains that surround it; Mendoza itself is just a big city with a bunch of nice plazas. But I think the confidence I got from talking with these old people for a few hours was worth it.

The next day, I sucked up my pride and got back on the tour bus, this time for a trip to the mountains. I considered taking the regular bus, but the tour cost half of the bus ticket, and it included stops to walk around, take pictures, eat, etc. This tour was actually enjoyable. We spent the whole day driving through the Andes, got to see Aconcagua from afar, and drove up a super steep, windy dirt road to a statue called Cristo el Redentor at 4,000 meters (I don’t really have a good grasp on meters or sea level, but it was high enough that my body felt funny). I didn’t follow the tour guide exactly, but there was a long fight between Argentina and Chile over where the border is, and they finally agreed on where it is now: Jesus’ nose. I’m not sure if this would make sense even if I had understood everything.

Also, on this tour there was a group of 8 middle-aged men who went to high school together. Every four years, they get together and travel somewhere. I know we talk about doing this hypothetically, but guys - let's actually do it! These men were having so much fun. They made me think life can still be full of adventure and friends when I start getting the senior citizen's discount.

I’m about to walk back to the bus station and board my 16-hour ride back home. This time, I have a cama ticket. I’m trying not to set my expectations too high, but I’m sure hoping it’s an improvement.

As I boarded my plane to Buenos Aires, I felt mostly excited for the next four weeks. But a small part of my heart was worried. A year full of deep community just concluded, and next year will be different. Now I will be spending a month by myself, surrounded by strangers, trying to communicate in a foreign language. Could the contrast between isolation and community could be any more extreme?

My life is usually overflowing with people who are so funny and smart and interesting – mostly those of you reading this blog. And I’m so lucky to be around you that I sometimes forget that there are still other people out there worth being friends with. (This sounds snobby. I know.) But this evening (I wrote this blog on Friday), I was reminded that you can never have too many friends. Oscar’s secretary is about my age, and she invited me to her house for dinner. Beforehand, I was a little nervous. My shy, introverted side can only handle so much small talk, even in English. But as it turned out, everyone there spoke English, and so we spoke mostly in English all evening. This is not my goal, but it was a nice break. No work on the Sabbath, right? :) And instead of awkward small talk, we had lively conversation about all kinds of interesting things. I didn’t leave till after 1:00 a.m.

At one point in our conversation, I tried to explain the dynamic of our community. I told them that we are all mixed up in each other’s lives, even our friends who live on the opposite coast. We share everything – food, music, stories, laughter, and tears. No one calls before coming over or knocks before coming inside. We always know that we want to be around each other - that life is better when we’re all together.

I got a little emotional trying to explain the depth and beauty of my community. It’s truly unique. But here, an overnight flight away from my dear home, I am experiencing a different side of community. It’s not so deep or intertwined. But it’s beautiful nevertheless. No one on this continent has any real reason to care about me, but since I arrived, I have been the recipient of so much thoughtfulness. I met Anthony’s mom and family at the airport and caught a ride with them to la Villa so I wouldn’t have to brave public transportation by myself just yet. Our driver paid for our dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. When we arrived in la Villa, Mrs. Handal’s friend escorted me to the president’s office. Oscar thought of everything, from finding me an electrical adapter to giving me money for dinner. This morning, he took me on a tour of the campus and introduced me with pride in his voice to other important people at the university. Another one of my students, Edith, smiles so encouragingly at my fumbled attempts at Spanish. She’s already made sure that my weekend is full of plans.

When I try to describe it concretely, their gestures seem small, but they have made me feel absolutely welcome during a time when I am self-conscious of not belonging. There’s a level of formality to this kind of community, and I don’t feel like any of us have really chosen each other. These people aren’t benefiting from my time here; they are caring for me only out of the goodness of their hearts. But somehow, it feels good to be cared for just...because.

Awesome gifts I’ve received from Elisa include (but are not limited to):

A mug shaped like a flower pot (when the garden project actually had a garden)

A National Geographic from the month and year of my birth

My favorite teaching shirt

A pancake batter dispenser (because I cannot make round pancakes for the life of me)

An Oklahoma – the Musical album

Most recently, my favorite running shirt

And don’t even get me started on all the edible gifts...

The amazing thing about Elisa’s gift giving is that she often finds these extremely personalized treasures at thrift stores. So to celebrate her birthday, we’re going to have a White Elephant Gift Exchange Samaritan Center style – all the gifts have to be purchased at thrift stores.

So if you're in Collegedale on September 19 at 5:00, come to my house to party!