Chau Buenos Aires: ¡Gracias por todo!

I am back in Boston! While I am happy to be home with my family and to have swapped gloomy winter weather for sunny summer days, it is hard to say goodbye to the life I made 5,374 miles away. I have been thinking a lot about the last four months and decided to try to encapsulate everything that made my experience so special in a thank you note to Argentina.

Argentina— 

Thank you for the last four months. Thank you for your cities, your forests, your deserts, and your mountain ranges. The natural beauty was like nothing I had ever experienced before. From the lush hills and vast lakes of Bariloche to the giant canyons and seemingly boundless salt flats of Jujuy, it was truly unimaginable.

Thank you for your busy streets and your people. I loved walking home every day, passing kioskos on every corner and peering into stores dedicated entirely to selling lights or chairs or some other oddly specific item. Although it was against popular opinion, I also loved riding your collectivos. Tapping my card, saying my stop, switching my back-pack to a front-pack, and squeezing between the porteños made me feel like a local. Over the last four months I grew used to doing work while Argentines chatted emphatically around me. I got to know the cafés of Recoleta all too well and became spoiled on the cheap latés and medialunas.   

Thank you for forcing me to improve my Spanish and teaching me about your culture. I absolutely loved chatting with Uber drivers and other locals, proudly and emphatically slipping Argentine slang into the conversations. I will miss saying hello and goodbye with a beso on the cheek, attending asados (even though I never ate the meat), passing around mate, and sitting in los bosques de palermo listening to music with my friends. 

Thank you for IES Abroad. I’ll miss playing tres limones and winning alfajores in Spanish class, having a poetry teacher who personally knows what seems like all of the famous Argentine poets, and going on field trips all over the city. I’ll always remember the twelfth floor of 1069 Carlos Pellegrini fondly─especially the balcony. Nothing compares to kind of doing work, eating, and socializing while listening to the hum of cars racing down Avenida 9 de Julio.

Thank you for my home on Avenida Alvear and my host mom, Hortensia. She taught me so much about not only the city, but about life in general. I will miss being one of her pichonas, listening to her wild stories, coming home to her superb meals, and eating duraznos with dulce de leche on the bright red floral tablecloth in her dining room. 

Thank you for helping me find such wonderful humans and for the most perfect four months. ¡Nos vemos!     

♥  Noa