Traduttore, Traditore (Translator, Traitor)

Hola from Buenos Aires!! Read this with a mug of tea or coffee and ten minutes to spare, because it's a little lengthy. As usual, I've got too much to say.

Happy Valentine's Day--or el dia de los enamorados! It hasn't felt like Valentine's Day here to me much, which is nice, because in the past I have always been acutely aware of this day, and usually in a negative way. Today, instead of going out with my girlfriends and talking about how much we love each other and how maybe next year we'll be with someone on Valentine's Day, a small group of us went to Buenos Aires's Chinatown/Barrio Chino for the Chinese New Year celebrations. It turned out to be much smaller than we thought and pretty anticlimactic because we couldn't even eat at a Chinese restaurant because the lines were atrocious. But the sun was out, the wind was blowing, and despite my hunger and semi-bitchiness due to the hunger, I felt totally happy. We left Chinatown and headed to Palermo (the neighborhood I live in) for a late lunch and browsing through the outdoor market.

Let me back up a minute: Tonight marks one week since I boarded a plane for Buenos Aires from New York. I left the snow behind and landed in 88 degrees (sorry to all my NYC amigos reading this... I know gloating is mean!). After a long day of waiting around in the NYU academic center, getting fed, mingling with other NYU students, and checking in, we were bussed to our dorm. The pictures online of my residence hall look teeny tiny, and I had been told that Master (the dorm I live in) has bite-sized rooms, so you can imagine my shock when I walked into a room with floor to ceiling windows that open onto a balcony overlooking the corner of calles Paraguay and Uriarte. Perfect post-up spot for people-watching! My roommate is wonderful, which I already knew she would be; we have tons and tons of mutual friends in New York and it's a mystery to me how we haven't been friends til now. We have super high ceilings because we're on the top floor, our own bathroom, and plentiful closet space. The dorm has two parts, and across the street is where most of the boys in Master live and the cafeteria where a few of the nicest women I've met here work is across the street as well.

Everybody told me how white people from Buenos Aires are, but I am still in shock by just how white this city is. Not for the whiteness reason but not unrelated, this city feels like an American city, only everyone speaks Spanish instead of English. I'm learning how intensely impacted my experience as a tourist and learner is based on my perceived origins. My perception of a country like Nicaragua, for example, can never be the same as my perception of a country like Argentina, for the simple fact that I am able to blend in here, where there I can not. Being a noticeable foreigner inevitably alters the dynamics around me, sends ripples through a coffeeshop, alters the way that people speak (or choose not to speak) to me. Once I open my mouth all that goes out the door, of course, but being physically able to "pass" as a native here is definitely feeding into my perceptions of the city. (I love it so far.)

A professor here gave a lecture about a Cortazar short story during our orientation, and she quoted an old Scandinavian saying: "Once you cross the ocean, you're never on the right side." I loved it. I immediately wrote it down, as it fits right into my obsession and tenuous relationship with wanderlust. She spoke of codes and reading and understanding the code of the new space and having to start translating yourself at the same time. I keep thinking about how Sr. Puente, my middle school Spanish teacher, thinks that people take on different personalities/characters in each language they speak. If I'm different, I like to think it's only because of lack of ability to sufficiently express my usual personality. Like the other night, I asked the boys from NYU some question about "Do you ever wonder if/about..." and realized I ask questions like that all the time... but not in Spanish. That's not in my Spanish comfort zone yet, and so that piece of myself falls away when I turn to Spanish. Then again, aren't we supposed to be 80% speakers of body language? I like to think that my true self comes through, despite language barriers.

I wrote the above paragraph as I heard her speak. I carry my journal with me everywhere because I never know when something will inspire me to write. As I finished the paragraph, she spoke of the popular phrase "tradutorre, traditore," or "translator, traitor." I must pay attention to making sure that I don't betray myself in the process of translating myself.

Friday we went to Tigre, a delta river area about an hour from Buenos Aires proper. Of course my journal was in tow, and here are my thoughts from the busride home:
Nothing is ever so simple. Or isn't it? I'm sitting on a bus--2 story-- in the very front, watching the early evening "500 Days of Summer" train scene warm sun wash over the changing landscape. We passed the Argentinian flag and I thought how beautiful, peaceful, and happy it looks, and then immediately thought about how that must be at least partially a lie. There's always trouble beneath a seemingly beautiful, still surface. But then I thought--what a terrible way to live life. It's got to be possible to strike some balance between understanding the multiple and oftentimes upsetting dimensions of life and really just purely enjoying it. To be both blissfully happy, to bask in the gloriousness of life, and to address and never forget the crazy shit that takes place. (It's like I decided a year or so ago-- there is a vast difference between joyfulness and carefreeness; one signifies the ultimate presence, the other the ultimate absence.) I've got to step beyond the cushyness of this lifestyle I've just been presented with. It took me some time, but it was when I started living a real life in New York and moving outside the cushy that I really fell in love with the City. It's the spirit and the consciousness and the love and the knowledge of the people being most fucked over by the city that made me realize how alive of a place it is. (I recognize the problems with glamorizing or fetishizing struggle, but that´s for another post.)

Classes start tomorrow-- Mondays and Wednesdays I have a 9-5 of classes all in Spanish. We shall see how I hold up!

I might not be on the right side of the ocean, but it's definitely not wrong. I love you all!
Til soon,

L