Back in the USA

I’m BACKKK. I’ve almost been home for two weeks, so I figured it was about time for my final blog post about my study abroad. 

After my parents left, I really needed to get to work and finish up all my homework! 23 days seems like a long time… but I had more than fifty pages to write!

I finished up my classes and was able to keep enjoying my internship. I wrote one of my papers on how art helps children learn about things like genocide, with a case study on my internship. I put in all kinds of photos, including this one:

It’s a representation of a sequestered family that the kids really seem to understand.  Also this next one is great too:

 

 

This one is made up of 25 poles and you can only really see the image from one spot… a representation of being “disappeared.” I really enjoyed writing that paper. 

I wrote another on the change in Argentina from state terrorism to a state of memory. And another on Bachilleratos Populares which are the school system Argentina has for adults who didn’t finish high school. 

We got out early on our last day of our human right seminar so Sammy and I decided to hit up 180 Burger Bar since we had been meaning to get there for forever. It was so so good. 

 

Thank God that we didn’t find it until the end or that would have gotten dangerous. I went once more with my friend Layla after we finished our last day of Spanish class. So so tasty. And cheap too.

 

Sammy and I spent a lot of time in Starbucks, clearly pretending to write.

I took breaks to watch the Argentina world cup games:

 

It was so fun to watch the games there because everyone was so in to it and whenever they scored the buildings would ERUPT with screams and shouts.

I also went to my internship as much as I could and managed to capture gems like this:

 

My birthday fell on the last Saturday that we were in Buenos Aires. Luckily I was done and had turned in all the work I had to do before we left… with only one paper hanging over my head. My host mom gave me a present the night before and I was greeted by this from my actual mother in the morning:

 

 

How kind of them… they had no idea how much I wanted one of those cupcakes!!

We went to a burger place for lunch and then headed to my internship for a presentation and everyone there was so so excited about my birthday and it was so nice. I love them all so much. 

I honestly wanted to eat dinner and then crawl into my bed, but it being our last weekend and my 21st birthday, there were other expectations. We had a wonderful steak for dinner and I had three glasses of wine. We had more alcohol and then headed to a club where we got in for free and got free champagne because it was my birthday!! It was all very fun and it was wonderful time spent with friends:

 It was a very fun night. Sunday was a bit rough but I walked the entirety of the San Telmo market the next day and bought some more gifts.  We spent the next days hanging out and watching soccer and trying to ignore the fact that we were leaving. I gave out all the Gettysburg tshirts and candy I brought and everyone that got them were really excited about it. 

I also finally captured a photo of Casa Rosada at night:

 

I went to my last class class in BsAs and we took a photo after we bought our final alfajores from the cute old lady:

Then it was a whirlwind of packing and goodbyes. We shopped on Thursday and had some goodbye coffee at cafe Martinez. On Friday, Sammy and I had lunch before she left and I headed over to my internship at one. We watched the world cup game for a bit and then I helped translate things with the tour guides for a bit. It was really interesting because most of the concepts I had learned in Buenos Aires so it was really hard to translate. They gave me all these great books and other things as a gift. So sweet. I honestly hadn’t been really sad about leaving until I had to say goodbye to all of them. I stayed for the program that night so I didn’t get home until after nine. There were lots of hugs and goodbyes and it was super hard. I cried for a bit, woops. But how could I just leave all these smiling faces??:

 

But I’ll be back, I will. I’m looking into a Fulbright to go back to do research at my internship. 

My last dinner was my favorite thing we ate in my house… Tortilla de Papas, made by Viviana. So delicious. Then I went and got ice cream with Allison in order to say goodbye. In the morning I ran to Plaza Francia in the rain and luckily found the gift I wanted to get for my sister Becca. Then I finished up packing, had some lunch and watched the Argentine World Cup game with my host mom. As soon as the game ended I had to catch my taxi to the shuttle to the airport. I grabbed a selfie with her before I left, so good:

She said that her grandson thinks they’re called “Selfish.” Funny how that kind of works too ahhaaha.

I caught the shuttle with my friend Emma and we got to the airport pretty early so we got through everything really easy. My bag was only a little over and the lady let it go through! I got lucky on the plane and had an empty seat next to me. It was a long flight but I was excited to go home while being sad about having to leave. But I was awake when we finally flew over the coast over Florida, it was awesome! Then we landed and there was customs and we had more goodbyes which was sad. 

At that point I was just ready to go! Layla and I had the NY flight together so we waited and the boarded. I finished that flight just like my first:

We were all so excited to have working phones again and we had to get each others USA numbers. It was strange! I found my parents and ate my requested cheezits in the car and then promptly fell asleep. We stopped at a diner for lunch and I answered the waitress’s question in Spanish which was awkward, that hasn’t happened again. 

Home has been nice! We celebrated my birthday when we got home:

Yes, I made the cake haha. 

Also I made it in time for strawberry season!!:

It’s just been a lot of time eating fruits and vegetables and visiting with friends here !!! It’s been absolutely wonderful. I’ve also been working on my final paper for BsAs – I finished it and sent it to my advisor yesterday. Just in time for our next adventure!

We are camping down to Santa Fe, New Mexico starting tomorrow… it may prove to be very interesting. If you’d like to follow along, you can here….: https://intentsfamilyreunion.wordpress.com/

It will hopefully be amusing. Thanks for reading!