Final Thoughts I

I'll be home in 2 weeks and my blog will end at the same time as my experience.

I want to have a total of 52 entries to represent the 52 weeks of my stay. This entry is number 50.

I arrived in BA on the Shortest Day of the Year (2008) and will leave on the 20th of June 2009, the longest day in the North.

It's transitioning from fall to winter. The mornings and nights are chilly (though nothing like in Ohio), the trees have lost most of their leaves, the autumn incense is no longer, it's getting dark a little after 5 pm, and people in the streets are huddled in coats and scarves. It feels kind of like Holiday time in the states.

These days, I spend most of my evenings inside writing or preparing classes and more than ever attending yoga classes and chatting with friends in their apartments or online. I'm cooking more too since it's not as hot as it was before and it actually feels good to turn on the oven and fill the apartment with the smell of a chicken roast with onions, garlic, carrots, and rosemary.

My apartment is becoming emptier and emptier too as I clean it out, give away, and sell stuff. Where my futon used to be sits a blanket and a pillow on the wood floor for when I want to watch TV before bed. And a half an hour is about all I can take since my butt hurts too much after that. Luckily, I still have cable even though I'm not paying for it. I even told Fibertel that this was the case, but the guy who came to fix my internet (after it went down for the 5th unexplained time this year) gave it to me anyway after we concluded a chat about how much he likes the US and how he wants to buy a US flag. I thought he was kidding. I asked snarkily, 'Why do you want a US flag?' He replied, 'Porque me encanta Los Estados Unidos' (Because I love the United States). It was surprising to hear that from an Argentine. In fact, it's the first time I've heard one say it.

In any case, he gave me cable and I gave him a glass of water and a powerbar from the U.S. I also rifled through my clothes to see if I had anything with a US flag on it that I could give him, but there was nothing. I really wanted to leave him with some sort of memento from the States.

Anyhow, in the next 13 or so days, I'll be finishing up my work with the family from San Francisco as well as teaching English one last class with the former ambassador from Columbia to the UN. I'll also be eating out with my friends, saying goodbye to Argelia and her family, preparing my trip here in December, going out to movies and dinners with Cecilia, and preparing a bit to buy a car and rent an apartment in Denver.

I felt a bit sad about leaving for the first time yesterday. Life could easily be more boring and normal in the states. Here it was a constant adventure with new opportunities that seemed to fall in my lap at every stage of the journey. On top of that, I had a ton of time here to address my major goal of reflecting on life and deciding where I wanted to go next. I would be surprised if I had that much time in Denver pero veremos.

Speaking of goals that I accomplished here... I also succeeded in gaining new job experiences, improving my physical health, improving my mental health, reflection (to some degree), and improving my Spanish. More than anything else, this has been an experience of spiritual and phsyical cleansing. It wasn't fun or something to be jealous of. For example, it wasn't until the end of my experience that I was laughing on a regular basis. I used to love to have fun and laugh and be silly and stupid. But for whatever reason I've become more serious throughout the years. And when I came down here, broken hearted, lonely, messed up stomach, confused as heck....I was not laughing or having fun. It wasn't until the last few months that I felt as though my fever of life finally turned the corner. And now I'm laughing again, allowing myself to have fun and be stupid and happy. I used to think it was a luxury to feel this way, but now I know that at least for me, it's also a necessity.

But you can't always genuinely feel this way. I had to go through a kind of journey here in which I got my body back on track first, and then focused on my mind and getting to know and caring for myself better. And I think that while I've just started this process, I know now that I ought to sacrifice my physical and mental health only on the rarest of occasions. But I think in the U.S., there is a culture of carelessly handing these treasures over to corporations and our jobs. We don't guard them, but instead guard are jobs. Which is not to say that I plan on being a lazy bum in my job. But I can't let my job take over and force me to put my mind and body second. If I don't have a healthy mind and body, I'm no good for my job anyway. It's kind of the difference between going to war carelessly (as in Iraq) versus only doing it when it's absolutely necessary.

Yes, yet another enlightened musing... I kind of know my trip here has been a stereotype. Like in the webpage my sister sent me of Stupid Things White People Do. One of these stupid things is taking a year off from your job to travel, teach English in another country, write long emails to all of your friends about spiritual enlightenment, and then propose to write a book about it all. Ok, guilty (all except the book about my experience part. Not that I haven't considered it, but it's too cliche and probably been done by a gazillion BA expats. But hey, I'm still not ruling it out). But, shouldn't everyone take the opportunity to step back for a time to find out what it's all about, why they're doing what they're doing or why they're running in the direction they're running. Because if we get to the end and realize we have no idea why we were running our entire lives, that we know no more than we did when we started the chaotic journey, isn't that kind of depressing?

Maybe I'll never make it to a more enlightened and peaceful state. Maybe I'll continue a frustrated path of mock discovery only to realize that I would have been better avoiding it. I don't think there are any assurances that hard work on learning about oneself leads to any kind of true fulfilment. But I think I've traveled beyond the point of no return, so to speak. I've realized too much and there likely isn't any going back now.