The southern hemisphere has whisked away my mind, turned my body inside out. I am more red and burned each day, more sleep-deprived, my feet covered in aches and blisters and new calluses, my stomach filled with not vegetables, but meat and beer. This is all okay, i am pretty sure, because even though my head feels like it is sinking through my body and slipping down through the floor, possibly melting into a puddle and settling finally in the cracks of the building, I am becoming more convinced of the rightness of being here. Every day I learn more about the city, become less afraid of public transportation, and my vocabulary even grows. I sometimes even add a vos or sprinkle some lunfardo into my sentences. I am starting to really like this accent, as hard as it can be to understand. Every afternoon I wake up and every morning I go to sleep with the same feeling of floating - of course, I remind myself, this is a temporary state of elation, one cannot float forever, particularly if one is 20 years old, has not yet graduated from college, and does not have a lot of money. But I will ride this feeling because I take what I can get and I can’t help but imagine that this is my life, in a slightly less temporary way. I have slipped into a routine, and soon it will end and I will be nostalgic, but the $140 tourist fee for U.S. citizens in Argentina is good for 10 years, so I should probably come back, you know, to save money!

I’m here because I want to feel part of this culture. I want to speak the language, I want to be surrounded by Spanish and asados and Quilmes (Argentinean PBR equivalent), and I’ve sort of given up on dancing tango - haven’t even tried, and I do love to watch it, but there are other things… so many of them. Last night Elise (who arrived Wednesday morning!) and I ate a giant juicy hunk of bife de chorizo at a restaurant covered in photos of Carlos Gardel and Evita and saw stars (because of the meat). We stayed up till 6, wandered around San Telmo with Tofi and his hostel-dwellers and felt so at home in the quiet cobblestone streets.

I think that tonight is the end of one chapter of my time here. In 11 days, I have stayed with only 2 couchsurfing hosts. This is how it seems to work for me. How can I get to know a person in 2 days? 3? It seems absurd. So I stuck around, cancelled other hosts. I’d rather invest more time in fewer people, it’s about quality not quantity! So tomorrow we shift couches, to Palermo by the Jardín botánico where we will live with Lucila and then mother and daughter Lidia and Mora. And then next Thursday (yes, we pushed back our departure), we’ll get on a bus and go to El Bolsón.

I will post photos soon, but the internet is pretty bad and every time I try, the computer  freezes!