Guest Blog: Emily Sims

I am thrilled to introduce my second guest blogger, Emily Sims. Emily and I have been friends for a few years now. We ran a half marathon together in St. Louis, MO and we now work together on Travelated. She is an awesome writer and spins some lovely words in her blog Check, Please. Emily wrote a post about her arrival to France, where she lived for 2 months during college. I think it fits in nicely here on my blog about being away from home. Actually, she and I had pretty similar breakdowns (see my first entry for those messy details). I wrote a guest post for her as well.

You Can’t Go Until You Actually Leave

In the 24 hours since I’d left home, nothing had gone according to plan. I expected to die on the plane, I didn’t; I expected arrive in the town from Beauty and the Beast, I didn’t; I expected not to break down less than one day after leaving home, I did.

Boarding that plane to France was, at that point in my life, one of the most difficult things I had ever done. My parents and younger sister took me to the airport in St. Louis and accompanied me to the A gate security line. My dad started waving when he was about two feet away from me, and didn’t stop until I was through security. That’s just how my dad is.

I managed not to start crying until plane actually started moving. This was truly an accomplishment—at 21 years old, I was a bit of an emotional wreck. I tried to keep telling myself that I was a grown up now and this is what grownups do, but I kept crying. Two months is a long stretch, and the prospect of being gone that long with zero chance of seeing your family is very, very hard.  College is different. If you start to get homesick, you drive home the next weekend. There would be no driving home from France.

It also didn't help my mental state that I was fairly convinced that I was going to die.  There were too many plane rides and connections; surely one of them would have a mechanical failure and I’d die in a fiery explosion in the middle of Kentucky. Or something.

I had to catch a connecting Air France flight in Atlanta. After arriving in the Atlanta airport, I headed for the correct gate just in time to board.  I walked down the skywalk and saw a stunningly beautiful flight attendant at the door of the plane. “Bienvenue,” she said to me, stepping aside to let me pass. Her eyes raked over my face, my clothes in a split second.

I had taken great care in selecting my outfit for the trip, and I thought I looked Paris chic, when in truth in my short-sleeved black sweater, tea length gray sweat-skirt and Wal-Mart clearance aisle flip-flops, I looked like nothing more than homegrown Midwestern shit. One glance from the Parisian flight attendant, her dark hair coiffed perfectly in the most rigid of buns, her blue belt cinching her waist even smaller than it already was, her beautifully arched eyebrows arching even higher at the sight of me, and I knew that nothing about me, my scraggly dark blonde hair or pale face, was going to cut it in the streets of France.   

Oh well.

I arrived in France without any explosions or even any turbulence. In baggage claim, I nearly cried at the sight of my hunter green American Tourister, which I affectionately referred to as Green Monster, spinning toward me on the smooth silver of the baggage carousel. It was quite the reunion, wayward girl and suitcase.

Dragging Green Monster behind me through the Marseille airport, breathing hard and hungry, I tried to force my brain to remember that it understood French. Signs were everywhere, but in my confused, sweaty, and desperate state I couldn’t read even the easiest of words. I stopped walking and stared at the signs all around me, feeling overwhelmed and dizzy and ready to quit before I had even begun. People swarmed in front of me, beside me, all around me. I couldn’t understand, I just couldn’t understand anything quickly enough.

Breathe, I told myself. I closed my eyes. 

When I opened them, my brain remembered that it spoke French. I calmly looked around me and saw an information desk to my right. Green Monster and I clunked on over.

“Excusez-moi, madame?” I said.

“Oui?” asked the beautiful young woman at the desk. Her thick brown hair curled gently against her shoulders, her perfect teeth smiled up at me. Her name tag, perfectly pinned to her lapel, parallel to both ceiling and floor, informed me of her name: Annette. With barely a flick of her chestnut eyes, Annette took in my disheveled hair, flushed cheeks, and dingy clothes. Her smile faltered, but to her credit, she managed to hold on to it long enough to assist me.

“Where is—I mean—Ou est…le…le bus pour Aix-en-Provence?” I managed to sputter.

Annette stared at me like I was a freaking idiot and pointed to her right, out the door. I followed her arm and saw a sign with a large picture of a bus just above double doors that lead outside. Less than 15 minutes on the ground and already the French thought I was stupid.

Classic. 

The bus ride took about half an hour, and I started to freak out a little when we got to Aix.  I really had expected Aix to be a small provincial town; I was thinking Disney style French village like Beauty and the Beast, but it's not—Aix is a city.  It's not Paris, but it's still a city, and there were more people than I had expected. As we wound our way through town, I grew more and more intimidated and scared. Where were Belle and Gaston?

When finally I arrived at my hotel, I locked myself in my room and the full-on mental breakdown that I needed. I was in France and completely, utterly alone.

After a good cry and a shower, I dressed in clean clothes. I wrote in my journal for two hours. I straightened my shoulders. And then I packed a little purse, donned my flip flops like a beauty queen, and opened the door. 

----
I, personally, am glad she did not run into Gaston. We all love Belle but now that we are adults does this douche really look all that appealing?

Rant of the Moment: Concert Etiquette

I recently went to see Belle and Sebastian here in Buenos Aires. Being able to see them anywhere would have been awesome, but seeing them in Buenos Aires, playing in front of a shockingly large crowd was amazing. My experience was only slightly soured by the fact that I was sitting between two of the most annoying girls of all time. This rant will be about concert etiquette, something these two girls clearly know nothing about.

• No cell phone conversations
• Okay, if you are trying to find a friend who is also at said concert, this might be acceptable, though texting seems like a much more logical and effective plan of action. However, having a full conversation on your cell phone is not only pointless but annoying to everyone around you. They always go a bit like this: "HEY! WHERE ARE YOU?.....WHAT?.....WHAT?!....I'M AT THE CONCERT! HELLO? I AM AT THE CONCERT! WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU. CAN YOU HEAR ME? WHAT?!" What exactly do you expect to get out of a conversation like this?
• No long conversations during songs
• Perhaps you think because you are not holding a cell phone to your ear that you are entitled to have as loud and as long of a conversation as you please. Incorrect. Save the drama about your recent fight with your BFF for the down time between bands. I don't want to hear you screaming over my favourite song about what a bitch Jessica is or how your boyfriend is being a dick. You paid for this show and so did I, so let's enjoy it, shall we? 
• No singing along if you don't know the words
• This is not your shower, so save your half singing, half humming off key for when you are confined to a small space. If you know the words, sing your heart out, if not, keep your mouth shut so the rest of us can hear the real version, not your haphazardly concocted one. 
• No screaming during quiet parts
• Have you people never heard of dramatic pauses? The performer didn't bring out his acoustic guitar and pause to let the strings ring out so you can scream"I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES!" loud and clear. Respect the slow and quiet songs and stop screaming nonsense while the performer is attempting to speak. 
• No dancing without music
• I love to dance it up at concerts too, but I reserve that for when music is being played. When the performer is having a chat with the audience or a roadie is fixing a mic there is absolutely no reason you should be wildly flailing your arms and shaking your hips. Bad dancing is completely forgiven when the music is going, but without it, you look like you are suffering from an ant infestation within your clothing. 

Those are my biggest gripes, though I could surely think of a few more minor things. What bad concert etiquette have you guys suffered through?

Blog Switch: Jorge Farah

Jorge and I decided to do a blog switch, our topic being how we met and how the internet influenced our friendship. You can read my guest blog on his site when he posts it.
So Facebook has this nifty new feature where the "View Wall-to-Wall" used to sit. It's called "View Friendship" (take a moment to savor the unintentional poetry there). 

Essentially it's a compendium of every interaction you've ever had with a Facebook contact-- every Wall post, every comment and "Like", every photo in which the two of you are tagged together. It seems to be a feature designed specifically to ellicit that sickeningly mushy "awww we've been through so much" wave of synthetic feeling that washes over you before (or without) realizing that online interaction is fleeting, inconsecuential and impersonal. Like posting a hilarious Youtube video on somebody's wall is equivalent to sharing a real-life giggle fit. Like commenting on a despondent status with a sympathetic smiley is the same as a real-life shoulder to cry on.

Indeed it would be really simple to dismiss all online interaction as nothing but typeface on a computer screen, or binary code, imitation of life. But as Rease and I sat at her Buenos Aires apartment scrolling through our Friendship Page, impishly giddy from the two bottles of cheap white wine we'd picked up and designated our own, it hit us-- or at least, it hit ME-- just how much it all meant. And how, for the great majority of our friendship, it was all we had.

I met Rease about four and a half years ago (which in itself is pretty mindblowing, to me). At the time I had pretty much adopted a Hostel in Buenos Aires as my residence as I sorted my papers out to enroll in school. Truth of the matter is, I didn't really know what I was doing. I wasn't sure why I was there, except I didn't want to go back home. I was essentially a lost soul, making fleeting friendships with random strangers from all sorts of nationalities. The kind of deep friendships you form when you meet other people who are also traveling-- strong bonds over drinks at some local bar, heartfelt goodbyes and a promise to keep in touch that would dissolve into just another hastily scribbled e-mail address in my scrapbook. 

Now, Rease remembers our first actual interaction with a lot more detail than I do. All I can remember is sitting around in the Hostel living room (as I often did) and eventually starting a conversation with these two American girls. One (Rease) spoke to me about The Magnetic Fields, the other (Rachel) was a Pearl Jam fan (I distinctly remember asking her "You're a Yield person, right? You look like a Yield person"). Now, it's a wonder we even made it that far into that conversation, since apparently I was a petulant dickhead and interrupted Rease's attempt to communicate in Spanish with an exasperated "Okay, are we gonna do this in English or Spanish?". Again, I don't remember this episode very clearly but I know myself enough to know I was probably not trying to be a dick. Like every other time I've ended up making an ass out of myself, it's entirely unintentional.

I moved out of that Hostel a couple days later, not really expecting to ever see Rease or Rachel again. Before I left I gave them the URL to my blog-- a sporadically-updated mess of a Livejournal I've had for almost seven years that's mutated into a more presentable WordPress site. And thank goodness I did, because for a long time that site was our sole interaction-- Rease and Rachel would leave comments on random entries whenever they cared to know what was going on in my life. 

Then along came Facebook, with its straightforward, user-friendly and hyper invasive access to every aspect of somebody's life. Suddenly the "Friendship" seemed a lot more real, a lot more tangible, a lot more... convenient. A random comment every once in a while turned into the occasional Wall post. A "poke". A picture comment. And eventually, a good three years later, a message in my Inbox proclaiming their return to Buenos Aires. Through the magic of Facebook we arranged Hostel reservations, coordinated times and places to meet. And through Facebook we said "goodbye" when they left to continue their adventure elsewhere.

That by itself was way more than I ever thought our friendship would yield, because, again, I was pretty certain I wouldn't see either of these girls again. But earlier this year I received a message from Rease telling me she's thinking of moving to Buenos Aires. That's all fine and good, except, you know, SHE'D BE MOVING TO BUENOS AIRES.

One thing you have to understand about Buenos Aires... it's a seductive mistress. Given the proper weather, you could easily spend a few days here on vacation and convince yourself it's the place to be. And you make these fantasies of spending your days living the porteño life in this enormous, beautiful metropolis which captures equal parts Paris and New York City. But then you set up residence here, and you find yourself in a torrentuous sea of people and places and HAZARDS, all around-- a tumultuous mess of political turmoil, civil unrest and bad manners. And then the beautiful Athens of South America you fell in love with reveals its face as a gap-toothed, buggley-eyed whore. 

I know this. I've lived here for five years. I was able to soldier through the little pests and nuances of this city because I deeply love the things that are GOOD about it. But would this deeply-opinionated girl who doesn't eat red meat be able to withstand all the nastiness that comes with living in one of the biggest cities in South America? Also, have I mentioned she doesn't eat red meat?

But I played along. I helped her with a couple things. I looked into a few others. But only when she was physically manifested in front of me did I really believe she was going through with it. And there she stood. And here she stands now, nearly five months later, soldiering through, taking the good with the bad. In these few months she's become one of my closest friends; a fellow expat who knows the joys and pains of living far from home, a friend to hang out with on a failed weekend, a knowing ear to whine to when things don't go my way, and a seemingly eternal source of amusement for her idiosyncratic quirks. 

So you can scoff at the concept of social networks. I know lots of people who do. But I know what I've gained from them to be much more valuable than the feeling of superiority you get when you smugly proclaim "oh, I don't do Facebook". I wouldn't trade it for anything.

2006, in the hostel where we met with Ellen and some random Catamarcans.

2009, at Parque de la Costa theme park in Tigre with Rachel.

2010, celebrating Argentina's win over Mexico in the World Cup.

Train Chasing

Today was a really great day for the strangest of reasons and I want to share these with you all. I woke up at 9 to go to an outdoor Boot Camp class in beautiful, much cooler than usual weather. After that I started working on a guest article I will be writing on Buenos Aires. I'm excited that i was approached and asked to write for someone else! After that, I headed to work. This is where the truly amazing part of my day comes into play. I had to catch the bus, which takes me to a train station. This is a tricky thing to time, nothing is worse than arriving at the train station just as a train pulls away. The short version of this story is I caught the train. The long version of this story is too awesome for text, so I recorded a video for your viewing pleasure:





I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Rease- 1. Buenos Aires Public Transportation slash slow waddlers- 0.

Travelated Articles

I realized I never wrote about a few things in my blog because I wrote about them on Travelated instead. So, I'll post the links for anyone who cares about the following experiences:

Barra de Navidad, Mexico
Colonia, Uruguay
International Potluck (at my apartment in Buenos Aires)

Here's some photos for those of you who are too lazy to read the articles:

View from a 4th story rooftop bar in Barra de Navidad.

A place we stopped to rest while bike riding in Colonia.

Blurry photo of some potluck guests.

My Thank You Note

I feel like a good follow up to my homesick post full of ranting and sadness would be a thank you note, a sort of shout out to the people who get me through everything.

Instead of just listing names, I would like to list actions. So here is a sincere, heartfelt thank you to anyone who has:

• Video chatted with me. You have no idea how big of a difference it makes in my life when I get to hear your voice and see your face.
• Sent me a package or letter. It's expensive and inconvenient to send me packages, which is why I am so flattered when anyone goes to the trouble to do so.
• Asked me how I really am. Everyone wants to hear that every day is the best day of my life, that I never work and I am basically on a super long vacation with never ending resources. It helps when you guys keep it real.
• Surprised me. I love surprises, whether it be a gift, an email, a phone call, a gesture-- it doesn't matter. I love that you put the effort into catching me off guard with something that makes me smile.
• Written me an extra long email. I love life updates. Again, people are under the impression that I have endless amounts of interesting stuff to say and can't be bothered with a boring, US based life. Wrong. I am dying to know how you are and what you are doing, so I really appreciate when you take the time to tell me.
• Commented on my blog. I started this blog to keep in touch and to document my life abroad. It's nice to know people care enough to read it.
• Met me for an extended coffee, lunch, dinner, etc. I love having long conversations with people who have interesting things to say. I've always been picky with friends and I feel lucky to have the friends I have here. I certainly chose quality over quantity and I don't regret it. 

I think each of you know who you are. I love you all so much. Things might not always go right for me and I may be the pickiest person in the world when it comes to choosing who I will spend time with, but that mindset has brought me to you, and for that I am grateful. 

Here are photos representing my first few months here.

June

July

August

September

October