Homesickness
It has been a long time since I updated, over a month. I can’t believe how quickly the time is going by! I’ve been here for a little over a month and a half, and I have about 3 and a half months left. My mom and sister are coming to visit me next week, and I couldn’t be more excited. It will also be a good time to reflect on how much I’ve accomplished of the goals I set out for myself. That’s something I’ve been doing a lot of the past few days, as well as trying to get my life a little better organized (it’s always a challenge getting back into school mode).
So far, I feel pretty good about how I’ve spent my time here. Some of my preliminary goals, or rather, expectations, were that I would find certain favorite locations or things to do. I have, to some extent. There are a couple of cafes I love in my neighborhood, a bakery that I think sells the best Alfajores (a popular dessert/snack—2 cookies or wafers with dulce de leche in between) in Buenos Aires, a few expensive but wonderful boutiques, my favorite Chinese restaurant (to be honest, I’ve only tried this one because I am too loyal to try any other ones), and so on. At the same time, I feel like I still don’t have a routine here, in part because I only really cemented my class schedule 2 weeks ago.
As far as classes go, I still don’t feel like I’m in school 100%. Part of that is because I’m used to the barrage of activities that come with school starting. When Davidson starts, I go to classes 5 days a week, Delilahs rehearsal twice a week, and other various club meetings every week, as well as lectures, concerts, meetings with professors, games, and all the other usual college activities. Here, I have classes Tuesday-Thursday and don’t really have any other commitments besides going to class—which is a good thing for the time being because I’m still getting used to reading 100s of pages a week in Spanish.
Besides classes, my social time tends to be Thursday-Saturday nights. I eat breakfast alone, usually while reading an Argentine newspaper or watching the news, and dinner with my host mom. I either make myself lunch at home or I read and eat at a cafe near my house. It has been great living in an apartment with my host mom, but I miss coming home to Lucy and Nina and being able to walk over to the Union and easily find a lot of different people to hang out with. As Lucy well knows, I get lonely when I don’t spend my days surrounded by people, and I think that’s why I’m just starting to get homesick this week. During orientation and even the first couple of weeks of classes, I was always with a bunch of other people, usually Americans, so I didn’t have any time to be lonely or to miss people. It’s probably a good thing, though, as it will force me to meet people and to find new ways to occupy my time. I’ve noticed that in my life the most growth has come out of the times when I allow myself time and space to reflect on what I want and how I want to live my life. That said, I am still really happy to be here, so I feel like I just need to figure out what I want to do and I’ll be happy doing it. I feel very hopeful about the next few months, and I’ll feel even more that way when I am better organized and have settled into more of a routine.
Also, it will be so nice to have my mom and Gina visit me and to get to show them what I love about being here. I miss them a lot but skype has allowed us to stay in close contact, and I’m really grateful for that.
I’ll start posting more soon, and definitely will talk more about the interesting things I’ve been doing and less about sentimental crap.
Beso,
Elena
