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an early night
I am bouncier than ever before. No, not springing from couch to couch yet, but it is true that I will bounce all over this town before I leave in ten days (ten? wow!). From Maipu in the centro to ten blocks over past 9 de julio and then to Santa Fe in Palermo and on and on and ON! What I mean is that I am positively filled with energy, inspiring motivating energy that mobilizes me to do almost anything! I am free, I am both empty and satiated with city and Spanish and the night, oh the nights. From the first night here, I found that Buenos Aires operates on a different timetable than the U.S. People go out later and stay out later, and then, since it is only logical, they sleep later too! My perfect schedule! And so I stay out until 5 or later and sleep till 2 or later, when the heat of the day has peaked and so really, it all makes a lot of sense. I wake up sweating and wash my face and enter the bright hot world to do whatever the day has brought for me. This has been the most exciting part of being here. How do I fill my days? Here I must admit that the Internet has been a crutch, if that’s something that’s still wrong or frowned upon. Couchsurfing is a world I became acquainted with through my travels in Mexico, but never deeply. I stayed with people who seemed like they’d be cool, good people, and they were great and fun and I loved them and I’m still friends with them. Here, I tried to do the same, and my experience with hosts has been really nice so far. Okay, I’ve only technically stayed with two of my supposedly six hosts, but I think this is a great project and I know that I chose awesome people (and they chose me), so I have a lot of faith that they are quality human beings. One of my hosts, however, is a hardcore couchsurfer. What on earth does that mean? - you might ask. WEELLLL, I’ve got an answer (the right one?). It means that Couchsurfing in big cities is a community, and that my host is a part of that community, and he hosts/surfs pretty frequently. There are Couchsurfing meetings almost every night - lots of different kinds of gatherings, usually at bars or restaurants. I’ve already gone to two! They were fun, certainly - I talked to lots of different people, most of them in Spanish, and it was exciting and exhausting. I’m fine with all of that, but it still feels a little strange. I don’t know… for some reason I’d still prefer to stay with people who understand the meaning and intent of couchsurfing, and who share its values (friendship, cultural/language exchange, generosity, etc.) without it being such a huge part of their lives. I’d prefer to stay with people who’ve practically never hosted anyone before than people who’ve got done-up profiles with endless lists of the people who they’ve surfed with and when. I want to be special! I want to be different! I think it has to do with being impressionable still about the couchsurfing project. And truthfully, I just want other people to find me exciting and I want to find them exciting too! If they’re just another part of a larger system of Couchsurfing and if I am too, it seems less magical and happenstance. And maybe that feeling itself is contrived because it is not at all happenstance who chooses whom to stay with or host. It’s decided right out here on the internet, very intentionally and purposefully. Maybe I’m just on a couchsurfing overload right now… I want to talk to people without having to tell my ‘story’ constantly - ie, my travels (”yeaahhh, I’m from New Jersey, here for 2 weeks, then I’m going to El Bolsón to work on a strawberry farm for 2 more weeks and do some hiking…. then it’s off to Valparaíso, Chile to study till the end of July…”). Anyway, I’m still trying to get a handle on why I feel so strangely about the couchsurfing community. I partially love it, and acknowledge that it has allowed me to be in this incredible city on my own for almost a week now and meet really cool people. But I somehow resent it also, for forcing me to use it, for some other reason that I don’t yet understand. I’ll get back to you on that….. Subject for another day - public transport and how I suck at it. Photography and how I dread it entirely! For now, I’ll go to sleep early… it’s only 4am!
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