Argentina.
3 1/2 months. Class in BA, Trips to Patagonia and the North, Independent Study.
Complete. Cultural. Immersion.
This isn't just Spanish class anymore. This is a different life for a semester that I'm about to jump into head first with my limbs flailing and trying to catch all the assignments, my ears straining to understand the new accents surrounding me. It's terrifying and stressful but exhilarating and what I've been anticipating for years.
The countdown: 25 days. The work and shopping and packing and studying that must be done in these 25 days is overwhelming and though I try hard not to, I have let the mass of reading and memorizing stress me enough to almost regretting this trip. I've gotten to the point that I know a few all-nighters will be necessary to finish this work at this point, but it's worth it. Utterly and completely worth it.
I'm going to study social movements and human rights, two topics that Argentina has a large history dealing with. Because of this, I've been closely watching the events unfold in Egypt. Everything happening there is such an interesting situation that no one really knows how it will turn out. What is it exactly?
Journalist Blake Hounshell asked on my favorite international blog: "Are we witnessing a revolution, a soft military coup, or a failed uprising?"
It excites me to think I get to spend an entire semester studying social movements. To move socially. What a concept. Weeks like this one in Egypt will be the definitions of generations and will freckle history continually unless we arrive at a 1984-esque world where moving socially shouldn't even be considered. Hopefully that will never happen.
So I sit here in Caribou, donned in bright red lipstick, one of the Egyptian scarves my sister brought me from her month there and a barely containable apprehension of these next 25 days until I arrive in Buenos Aires to exchange my Black Thai Latte with Maté, English with Spanish and American life with Argentine adventures.
