san juan argentina

pictures—because it is almost over and there is nothing more that i can say.

so close to feeling close to the end

so, in reality, two months is a long time.

you can do a lot in sixty days. and meet a lot of new people, and learn a lot of new things, and read a lot of new books, play a lot of chess, but these last 60 days feel so unimportant. so short, and meaningless, so waiting.

with all of the other exchange students, we just talk about going home. not because it is so much a ‘want’ as it is a ‘reality’. so i guess that we are just embracing it.

i recently got back from an afs trip to the north of argentina, it was a beautiful week, with even more beautiful people stuck in a little bus for seven days. before i went on the trip, i was so happy in my life here. everything finally felt so normal—so good. but being with all of the other exchange students, seeing kids from the united states, constantly being surrounded by people exactly like you, made me realize what true happiness is. i don’t want to say that i haven’t felt truly happy at all this year, but being with those 53 other kids, just feels so good, so right, and normal, but really, truly, literally, normal.

so i came back to san juan—my home. or some sort of a home. i was happy to just sleep horizontally. and now a week has passed and most of the missing that i was doing has passed too, and now i am back to simply living again, and that should be enough to last me until the end.

the end—july 21st. i will be in a car, more than ‘a’ car, i will be in my car, with my family, driving back to my home, to sleep in my bed. and i will see my friends. and even though i miss them so dearly, i cannot imagine what my life is going to be like without my friends here.

i guess that i am talking more about my exchange student friends, because the truth is i simply just like them better than the real people who live here.

and i guess that i might be so jealous that everyone is from europe, and therefore so close, and they will see each other in germany in october, and i will try and stay with them, but physically it won’t happen, and i can plan as many summer trips to europe as i want, but i will never be apart of this world that they are all from.

and that sucks to be on the outs with the people who are on the outside with you.

i did my first round of packing today. made a pile of all of the things that i am not going to bring home with me, made a list of people who i need to buy presents for, made a list of books that i want to read while i am here.

i am craving a book in english. i am reading a book in english, but it just isn’t what i want. my rule was that i could only read in spanish, but after 9 months, i feel like one book in english isn’t going to change my knowledge that much.

but i want more than one book. i want to go to the bookstore and buy three books, and then i want to read them all in one weekend, and then i want my mom to ask me why i don’t just go to the library, and i will have to explain that i like using books quickly and keeping them. because it is your book. and you read it on the couch next to the cat in front of the fire place, and that is important. it is important that you keep this memory.

so i will buy more books here, and i will read them and i will try to bring them home, and maybe i wont be able to because in reality, they weigh quite a lot.

i am trying not to think of home as any kind of bliss, because that is not what it is. home is home. like it has always been. and maybe some things have changed and maybe some people have changed, but i imagine i will get home, and realize that missing it wasn’t quite worth it. that life is like this. and i chose this year to do this exchange, and i got this family and this school for a reason. and this is how it is supposed to be.

so i will live these last 58 days how they are supposed to be—normal. because even i am not homehome, i am still me. and in reality, i am my home, and i will always be who i am, no matter where i walk.

so this is what life feels like

wow. i have about 100 more days in argentina. that fact still catches me off guard. i would be lying if i told you that the months flew by, because that is not true. they were long, and sometimes a little hard, but now they are gone.

and i go home in about 100 days. and i will see all of your faces, and we will hug and talk and rejoice. and my life will be in english, and we will all need to adapt again.

so now, i am in the end. and it feels like the beginning. or something like that. i guess that it really feels like i am just beginning. you know? like really, the first eight months were just practice. and now i have this real life, and i only get to live it for three months.

so great. but really, it is so great. and there are these people here and now maybe we are real friends. and it is more than pretending to like something to be friends. i mean, it is realer now. and better. and things always get better. at ever stage in this exchange i thought that things couldn’t improve. and every moment i thought that things wouldn’t change anymore, but they always do, and if you embrace them they always change for the better.

this weekend we had a bunch of afs stuff, so that was pretty fun. it is nice to get together with all of the kids sometimes. it was actually so great! it was like the national gathering of all of the guachos in all of argentina. it was nice to do something so typical of argentina. it felt real.

i guess that is more or less what i want to say. that it all feels real now. and sometimes you get angry with people, but that happens because you are friends. so i guess that this is more or less the end, and 100 days is enough, but it isn’t that much.

and great, it is all so great. so this is where i live, and sometimes i go to the movies and i take the bus at least five times a day, and i drink a lot of instant coffee.

and there is more, because there is always more to life. but there is nothing more so important, because the truth is that nothing is so important.

and ann arbor will be there in 100 days and so i will i and we will all see each other and we will all miss something.