I told myself that I was going to document my entire semester abroad in South America and here I am two months in and I hadn’t written anything at all. It’s not really my fault though; you see, I have this terrible disease called lethargy [maybe you’ve heard of it] that tends to take over my entire body when I wake up in the morning. It prevents me from doing anything productive, but oddly disappears when it’s time to have fun. So, I’m blaming my lack of documentation of my trip on that. Or as my friend Rachael noted, the fact that I haven't been writing about my journey goes to show that I've been spending all my time doing more exciting things [does napping count?].
Nevertheless, I’m starting to learn about this thing called “prioritizing” and it’s helping me combat my illness and now I can finally begin writing about the most gnarly, stupendous, out of this world, and at times flaite* 6 months of my entire life.
*Chilean word for sketchy/ghetto
It all began in Buenos Aires.
Have you ever been there? If not, then let me tell you, YOU NEED TO GO; I’m obsessed. My experience was definitely a little different than most because rather than finding a group of Argentinean friends I stumbled upon two groups of Aussome Aussies [shout out to Lucinda, Jonno, Dougie, Tuan, Dan, Scott, David, Taylor, and Chris]. Those hooligans, along with Shermila (a fellow Berkeleyite studying abroad in Chile as well) truly made Buenos an unforgettable time. Getting home at 7am after going out, swimming in a rooftop pool and watching the sunrise, crazy party antics, bbq and drinks on the roof while watching the sunset, hilarious cab incidents with Luc, huge amounts of dulce de leche, getting hissed at on the street by guys, checking out the weird rabbit/guinea pigs at the zoo with Sherm, and so many other memories.
Argentina was a lot of firsts for me. It was the first time I had ever traveled alone outside the US and despite my knowledge in Spanish I still managed to get extremely ripped off by the cab driver from the airport to my hostel. It was also the first time I experienced living only with boys. Yes, I was the only girl in my room and it was AWESOME! For the majority of the time my roomies were two guys from Denmark [who wound up getting together with me when they came to Santiago a few weeks later!], one from Austria, and one from Brazil. Another first was the barbeque that I mentioned earlier, which was the first time I had ever had dinner cooked for me by a group of guys. It was also the first time I became friends with so many international people and now I have friends to visit all over the world! In Buenos Aires I went to my very first club, or should I say discoteque, and didn’t get home until it was already light outside [at that same club I also got my camera stolen, which was a first].
I'm not going to lie--I never wanted to leave that amazing city. To further emphasize this point I'm going to make an analogy. Buenos Aires was like a perfect boyfriend. It was spontaneous, fun, exciting, and super gorgeous [apparently those are the only qualities I look for in a man]. For the next several weeks after I left I missed it like crazy and I convinced myself that I had to go back to live and teach there for at least two years of my life. Who knows if that will really happen, but I definitely left a piece of my heart there and will have to visit again in the future.
Now, here are some photos as proof of my bada$$ adventures:
