Dear Readers,
As of this week, I’ve been
accepted into CAPA’s study abroad program at La Universidad Austral in Buenos
Aires, Argentina. That’s right—after years of watching me write yet another blog post about Argentina,
changing my profile picture one more time
to an old picture from Buenos Aires, and about a million Instagram photos of me
eating alfajores—you’ll get to see EVEN MORE posts about Argentina except in
real time. Contrary to what I’m sure must be popular belief, I’m not going
because I love the food so much (although I do).
When I left Argentina in 2013,
I vividly remember the youth pastor there telling us goodbye on the bus. He
didn’t even tell me goodbye: “You’ll be back,” he said. I knew he was right.
Yet even still, it feels strange to go back. I was a sophomore in high school
last time I was there—now I’m halfway into my junior year of college. The
Claire who left Argentina isn’t the same Claire who’s going back, though
sometimes I feel like I haven’t changed at all. I’m sure it will look like it,
too, when my plane touches down in February and I’m feverishly studying Spanish
grammar until the last second just as I did four years ago.
Every time anyone has ever asked that classic
ice breaker question, “If you could go anywhere in the world right this minute,
where would you go?” Argentina has been my standby answer. It's been the place I've been hoping, waiting, to go back to for years. Suddenly, it is the
place I’m going. I’m going there. And
I feel kind of panicky.
On Wednesday, I picked up
the cute little curly-headed five-year-old I always pick up on Wednesdays, and we
got out her giant foam world map puzzle. We started piecing it together, and as
we did, I told her about my plans for next semester. Once we had placed the
United States in its proper place above South America, I pointed to
Mississippi, and then to Argentina. “Look, it isn’t that far, there isn’t even any
water separating us—it’s all land! You could walk to me if you wanted!” Looking
at the map like that, I was pretty comforted—if it goes just really badly,
surely I could just take a bus back to Mississippi, right?
But Nora saw right through
me. She rolled her eyes, “Claire, that is really far! You know where I want you
to live?” She threw herself into my arms. “Right in this neighborhood! There
are some houses for sale!”
I don’t think it’s the
going, per say, that made me have to bite back tears as we sat there with that
foam map (fun fact: we never even put the rest of the world together, just the Americas
haha), but the leaving. Wow, it turns
out that going and doing cool things like studying abroad involves leaving a
lot of things, places, people that you really love. And that’s just plain hard.
I’ve been struggling with
that hard all semester. A friend of mine just got back from spending last
semester in London, and I’m pretty sure is the reason I haven’t just backed out
of all of it. Every time I start to panic, she reminds me that everyone hates leaving, but that it’s so so worth it. I believe it a lot of the time, because I really am so excited to be back. Wow. It's amazing to me that I get to go back.
Whenever I talk to my
host family from high school, they tell me, “Estamos esperandote!” which
translates to “We are waiting for you!” The verb “esperar” can also mean “to
hope,” though, and that little phrase makes me feel hopeful for this next
semester.
It feels like this place is
where I’m grounded—this is the place where I have people and places and
responsibilities and a reason for being here. Sometimes I worry that I won’t
have purpose in Argentina and I’m just going, alone… But as long as someone is “esperando”
hoping for me, I think I might just be okay.
Your blogger,
Claire
