Back by popular demand

holalolaz42

Feb 11, 20238 min read

Hi everyone!

I think the vast majority of you have been following along and know that I have made it back to Argentina!

I spent the last two months in the U.S. just hanging out, eating vegan food, seeing friends and family, and building a little bit of a foundation for my tutoring to make sure I'd have some continuing students once I came back. It was really exciting to share my experiences and what I learned in Argentina with my people back home, and it was fun to share pieces of the U.S. that I have come to consider normal with my new friends here in Argentina.

Like can you believe our iced coffees can be so big?!

And our candles?! (Which may be huge but you will never hear me complain.)

Then, there's all the Christmas decorations...To be fair, I don't think everyone goes all out like a lot of the movies show. However, I also don't think movies are that far off.

The Christmas section in Target:

Here's my family's Rudolph version of Monopoly (which, in our defense, is our only version of Monopoly).

And some fun pre-made gingerbread houses so you only have to put the pieces together and decorate them!

Some Christmas lights at the botanical gardens near my house

And a bar in Richmond that does a Christmas pop-up every year.

Not only was it nice to be back and to see everyone, but it was also cool to be able look at my life and things in U.S. through a new lens. I started looking at things not necessarily with a newfound appreciation but interest. I was able to find joy in all of the things that before I may have considered normal but now are things I want to show my friends here in Argentina. I was constantly thinking, "I bet [insert name of friend] would get a KICK out of this!" Needless to say, as you can see from the pictures above, I took lots and lots of pictures before heading back.

...

This time around, I also decided to bring 2 large suitcases with me, a carry-on, and my backpack. I partially brought so much to make sure I will have room to eventually bring most of my stuff back with me and partially because back in November I thought I needed to bring all of my shoes back with me, including both pairs of sandals. I suppose we never know what a Virginia winter might be like.

I managed to get them both at or below weight: the left suitcase was exactly at 50 pounds and the right at 35.

I started my very long day of traveling on January 25th. First, my mom drove me to Dulles airport in Washington DC which was startlingly empty and reminded me of what it probably looked liked during early pandemic days.

From DC, I flew to JFK in New York. While we were pulling into our gate, the woman in the seat next to me started to make awkward airplane conversation and asked me where I was headed. Slightly embarrassed because in regular, awkward airplane conversations on a plane from DC to New York it seems so unlikely to be headed to my destination. I kid you not. She and here friend were also headed to Argentina, too. Like what are the odds? They, however, were rather lucky and were flying to Chile for another layover in about an hour and a half. I was flying to Peru in 5 hours. I had initially made this choice because of my large distrust of airports. Five hours seemed like an appropriate amount of buffer time between a domestic flight out of DC and an international flight out of JFK. That is, until I actually had to sit in JFK and wait those long, painful 5 hours.

While DC might have been empty, JFK was bustling, filled to the brim with travelers. Trying to lug around my carry-on and my backpack in this mess was overwhelming. With no desire to "get my steps in" before the flight, I found and claimed a seat near my gate for the 5 hour wait. It was truly some of the longest 5 hours of my life. By the time we started to board I was soooo antsy and ready to get going.

When we boarded, it was like we entered the Spanish-speaking world. Everything changed from English to Spanish in an instant. It was exciting. It was scary. I wasn't used to the pressure of having to immediately respond to comments in Spanish.

I made my way to the back of the plane to take my seat (while praying to the universe that there was space for my carry-on because you never know nowadays) and waited for my seatmate. I waited and waited and waited so more. I peaked over the seat in front of me to check the vibe and watch the people still boarding. But then the flight attendants started closing things and checking our seatbelts and there was still no one sitting next to me. Maybe this person had a quick layover and were running to make it in time? Maybe they were waiting until the last possible minute to board? I was convinced my seatmate was running late until we started moving. These things just never happen!

Peep the headphones that Delta must've bought in the 90s.

To settle in for the 8 hours to Peru, I started the movie Bad Education and stretched out a little to wait for our meal...which didn't end up coming for 2-2.5 hours. While our flight left around 10pm, there was so much turbulence that they didn't end up feeding us until almost 1am. Unfortunately, all my good luck was used up on the empty seat, and I was probably one of the last ones to get fed since I had to specifically ask for my vegan meal.

The bread was weird. The meal was fine.

Now for another "unfortunately"...Unfortunately, because we didn't get our food until 1 and we were landing around 6:30 (meaning we got breakfast around 5/5:50), I was only able to sneak about 4 hours of airplane sleep in. That means probably more like 3 hours of sleep total before we were blessed with our mouth-watering breakfasts. My "vegan" breakfast consisted of greasy potatoes and eggs and tomatoes and more of that weird bread.

Vegan meal or no vegan meal, we made it to Peru! (When I say "we," I literally just mean me and the rest of the plane).

The process of getting into the airport was pretty easy. Because I had a connecting flight and was not leaving the airport, so all I had to do was just go through security again. In Peru, I had a painfully long 4 hour layover. However, rather than being super antsy, I was super tired, trying to keep myself from falling asleep in the 4 or 5 different seats I sat in as I wandered around to keep myself awake.

My flight to Buenos Aires left at 10:30 that morning. When I boarded the plane, there was a kid (teenager) sitting in my seat. I politely told him that I thought that was my seat (while simultaneously holding my ticket and very confidently knowing that that was, in fact, my seat). He stood up to move saying that he had thought he had sat in row 15 not 16. Since we were both in window seats, I asked if he cared because I was fine sitting in aisle 15's window seat. He said it was fine, so I sat down. Ten minutes later as people continued to board, the rest of aisle 15 piled in. Fifteen middle seat and fifteen aisle seat were this guy's friends. Rather than speaking up to begin with, they talked over my seat the entire flight.

Although pretty annoyed the entire flight, we got served lunch, which seemed pretty fancy considering this flight was only 4 hours. This lunch was also very exciting because it was actually vegan. I'm not saying it was particularly good, but it was vegan. I got these little tacos with what were very likely canned mushrooms and green olives with lettuce and "guacamole" on the side. There were so many olives in these little tortillas. One thing I absolutely abhor about olives is that, unlike tofu which absorbs surrounding flavors, olives shed their flavor and juices onto all surrounding foods. But I was hungry, so I made it work.

I made it to Buenos Aires at about 5pm Argentina time, 3pm Eastern time. At that point I had bene traveling about 29 hours. I was tired and really sweaty. Unlike Richmond, it was not 40 degrees in Buenos Aires, so my sweatpants weren't doing me any favors. Once landed, I went through immigration (which I was a little nervous about since I bought a one way ticket) and customs and practically ran to find a taxi because all I wanted was to be in my bed at the hotel for the night.

I stayed at a hotel near the center of the city of Buenos Aires as if I was going to do some exploring. I only left my room for the food I ordered for dinner and for breakfast the following morning.

The room made me feel fancy, but it was perfect after three hours of sleep and three flights.

The dinner I ordered...

I slept in as late as possible to still have time to eat breakfast at the hotel. At breakfast, I stole a couple pieces of bread to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich during my day of nothing until my flight in the evening.

I had asked like three times during check-in to make sure I had the late checkout, and the girl assured me that, yes, yes I did. So, I was a little annoyed when someone knocked on the door at around 1 asking me when I was leaving. I was even more annoyed when I got a call from one of the workers insisting that I had to leave because it was after noon, checkout time. We were both a little sassy with each other until he realized that I was more than happy to pay the extra $40ish to stay until 4pm. I stayed until 4pm on the dot before heading downstairs to checkout and hangout a little bit until my flight. My flight to Puerto Madryn was delayed about 2/2.5 hours, so I had a little time to kill.

I stood here forever waiting to board.

Another flight with the seats all to myself!

This delay was a bit of a bummer initially because I was tired and wanted to be done traveling and because I felt bad because poor Yani was waiting to pick me up. However, I did get some awesome views during the sunset.

I got to Madryn around 10pm (I was supposed to get arrive about 7), and Yani picked me up from the airport!

I spent the night at her place since mine wasn't quite ready yet.

She helped me move into my apartment the following day when it happened to be like 90 something degrees. It was absolutely miserable, horrible, horrendous. I so badly wanted to get comfortable, but I had no desire to move any part of my body lest the heat return.

I immediately bought a fan for my apartment. I knew it would make me more comfortable. There was no need to prolong the suffering.

Since settling in, I've been trying to get back to a semi-routine with the gym, ceramics, meditation, time on the beach, reading, hanging out, and all kinds of stuff. It was initially a little overwhelming trying to get back to everything during the first week, but things have finally started to slow down a bit. It's a bit weird to get here during summer time because everyone is so relaxed and chill, and I just left the winter, which does not put me in a relaxed, chill mindset whatsoever. A bit of a season shock heehee.

Here are some fun moments since being back: