Overseas Briefing Ruminations on a semester abroad

Author: Sara Black

I am writing you from the cloudy skies above Buenos Aires in the first minutes of flight 1804 to El Calafate in Patagonia. The clouds clear out as we rise and leave the city behind, heading south. The pampa spills out below like a patchwork quilt, falling away to the glassy blue of the Atlantic. A bit nostalgically dramatic, but justifiably so, as my semester in Buenos Aires comes to an end.

Looking back, Buenos Aires had been a compulsive choice that I made at the last minute without any clear motivation or direction. Today I credit my luck to the mystical hand of fate, not being able to imagine living in a more amazing city.

As dictates study abroad policy, I knew I would be staying with a host somewhere in the city. After two years of relative independence at Midd, I wasn't sure how I felt about it and some of the past evaluations of homestays were not very convincing. Fortunately, I wasn't given too much time to worry about the transition.

Three hours after landing at Ezeiza International Airport I found myself in a linguistic fog and exhausted, sitting in the lobby of an Argentine airport not knowing whom we were visiting or why we were there. It turned out my host grandmother was ill and didn't trust the doctor, so we were there to calm her down and bring her pajamas.

And so it was destined by the oh-so thorough housing form that I inherit something akin to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," but with all the high-pitched drama of a Spanish telenovela, and less lamb and more beef.

I am not kidding about the last part. The average Argentine eats their weight in meat every year. My host mom usually comes home from the meat market with half a cow, the half that includes all of the grizzly innards that we bland Americans shy away from, rightfully so.

My host mom, dad and brother are the only ones who officially live in the house, but there are always the assorted cousins, aunts, uncles, friends and their pets that stop by at anytime of day or night, or call to see what we are eating or to inform us that laundry detergent is two for one at the supermarket. With such a large extended family that all live close by, it seems like we are always celebrating something--birthdays, graduation from kindergarten, Jewish holidays, catholic holidays, even Obama´s election.

The child of a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. army, I never had the luxury of forming or keeping such relations with one place. Ironically, in the four short months I spent in Buenos Aires I have acquired great aunts to have afternoon coffee with, cousins to gossip with, uncles to talk about soccer with, aunts to make gnocchi with and a host mom who reminds me to wash my clothes.

It all seemed so arbitrary last spring, but now it just feels like home.