Arriving in Argentina: Exhaustion, Starvation, and Sleep Deprivation

The nervousness of flying to Argentina honestly didn't hit until the Monday before I left. Being delayed two times kinda makes ya deny that the whole thing is actually happening. Also knowing that the whole saying goodbye to everyone thing is real was a bit overwhelming. I started saying my goodbyes in November and didn't stop until the day I flew, so I was just over it at that point.

My flight left Richmond at 3:33. I flew to Dallas where I met up with some of my fellow Fulbrighters where we were the loud, obnoxious group of people who kept asking random people to take pictures of us. Here we are! It was wild putting faces to the names and messages we had all sent on WhatsApp until I forgot them shortly thereafter.

I (as in my mom) splurged to get this fancy dancy economy seat that had extra leg room, since 10 hours of flying is kind of a lot. It would have been great, amazing, fantastic to take advantage of this legroom when I reclined to sleep but being the socially awkward, kind of polite person I am, I don't think I actually reclined my seat more than an inch.

As a vegan, I love flying the long distance flights because they always have my food ready for me before everyone else. When it was my row's turn, the flight attendant immediately asked me if I had ordered the vegetarian meal to which I replied yes because arguing about vegan vs vegetarian is never really worth it. He then asked the row next to us if anyone had any allergies. Now one of the people in that row happened to be a girl in my program who is gluten free, so she, naturally, let him know. With this knowledge, he looked at me straight in the eye and asked, "Did you order a gluten free meal?"

I responded no because, well I didn't. So he took my [vegetarian] meal and gave it to her. This gluten free human of course could not eat this meal, which visibly frustrated this poor flight attendant who should probably know a bit more about dietary restrictions, so he took the meal again and this time put it away in his cart. Then, exasperatedly, looked at me and asked, "What would you like to eat?"

This man was not happy when I asked for the now stowed away vegetarian meal.

Here she is in all her glory. Just as a heads up to any vegans out there flying. Vegetarian and dairy-free does not mean dairy free, so check your labels before eating anything!

And my breakfast that was served at a bright 4am...

If I'm honest I did not sleep very well on the flight, perhaps because I didn't recline my seat at all or perhaps because it was an airplane and I get scared to lean on the window in case it happens to open up and slurp me out of the plane. The woman sitting next to me also did not sleep. She probably had the longest night of her entire life. Every single time I woke up and "rolled" around, this woman was playing some square version of candy crush. Absolutely wild.

We arrived in Buenos Aires at about 8am, which is 7am eastern time, and we took a bus to the hotel to change and start our orientation. I was a part of the lucky few who had 2 hours to rest before we started our activities. More power to the other half of the group who were plopped directly into a room of speakers. I was falling asleep, so I literally cannot even fathom their exhaustion.

I really don't remember much about our first day other than a white woman who's traveled a bit giving us a talk about "cultural competence" that was super cringey and a city bus tour that had me asleep on the bus.

Here is a quick bus tour picture summary...Don't believe the smiles. I was exhausted, starving, and my pee was a very dark yellow.

Afterwards, once we were finally allowed to eat (Fulbright said food is for the weak and did not provide breakfast or lunch), I, along with a few others including a lovely fellow vegan, went to eat Indian food where we devoured veggie pakora, samosas, naan, and dal, and had quite a bit of wine because omg what a day.

And then we went to grab a beer (and yes, it was actually only one drink per person for this outing), which, although we were sleep deprived, it was nice to sit down and talk about our thoughts and experiences with each other. We had all spent the entire day asking and answering the same questions "What's your name again? Where do you live? Where are you placed?" so it was refreshing to move beyond this awful, awful small talk.

On Thursday, we had even more orientation activities, but this time we had to take a bus to a nearby university. Then I learned that not only does the commission not believe in food (especially vegan food), but they also do not believe in counting. My roommate was left at the hotel (yes, I'm a terrible roommate but I was herded like a little cat to the bus) and had to uber to the university. Fun stuff. Here, we sat through even more talks about safety, diversity, side projects, and a few other things I kinda sorta zoned out during (which I know is bad but for real I was running on little food and little sleep). For lunch, I had some lettuce and a couple grape tomatoes and two fruit cups. Yum yum.

After these sessions, we were bussed back to the hotel to get ready for the big, exciting embassy reception. While everyone was showering and getting dressed, I ran to a nearby restaurant to grab some wraps for myself and the other vegan because we were near death.

The US embassy is in a pseudo-palace and looks just like you'd imagine a US building in a foreign country to look like. I'll let you do that imagining yourself for a second.....

Okay now here are some pictures:

There were free drinks, so we all definitely treated ourselves.

(When you're in a US embassy and are fancy and make lots of money, COVID doesn't exist)

There was lots of mingling. I probably should've mingled, but I really wasn't feeling it, so I stuck with chatting with people in my program.

Here's the ambassador giving us a little speech. It is likely that many of you know more Spanish than he does.

He then insisted that we take a group picture like this, so I was very, very, thankful I did not wear a lowcut dress.

After the reception, we were all tasked with finding our own way back to the hotel about 25 minutes away, so we all, slightly tipsy from the free wine, taxied back to the hotel to eat and then a few of us went to a bar-club combo to enjoy what was for some, their last night in Buenos Aires.