Actually, I’ve been in the United States for a little over two weeks, but I spent most of that time in New York City.  But now, I’m officially back home in Michigan trying not to forget where I was the last five months. Sometimes I feel like if I didn’t have pictures or this blog, I would forget I was even there.  I came home and expected things to be different or me to feel different, but everything is and feels the same.

 They say that studying abroad is a life-changing experience, and I admit, there were definitely moments where I could see myself growing and having realizations about my life.  These were especially present on my Córdoba trip, during the time in which everything finally clicked for me in Argentina.  But since being home, nothing really feels different.  In fact, I am just significantly more bored, with no job and most of my friends off interning on either side of the country.  In some ways, I feel like I am regressing, distancing myself further from all of those revolutionary thoughts about my future I had while hiking in Argentina.  Being back at home feels like a step in the wrong direction. 

 Of course there have been moments in the past two weeks where I have experienced what they call “reverse culture shock,” when I felt out of place in my own country.  When I was in New York, I also experienced inexplicable and unnecessary anxiety over things.  Every single day when I left the apartment to go out, I would obsess over what to wear. Suddenly I was worried about being judged, while in Buenos Aires I didn’t think twice when me and Rachel left our apartment with makeup from the night before still caked on our faces and jeans that were so stretched out they would sag on our bodies because we were too lazy to do our laundry.  Another thing I suddenly worried about in NYC was that I had left my wallet at the apartment.  Whenever I was in line to buy coffee or lunch or my ticket to the MoMA, I panicked and thought to myself I have no money with me. I’m going to be laughed at up at the cash register. Even after I felt around in my purse to make sure my wallet was there, I still had this irrational anxiety.  My comfort zone, something that took weeks to cultivate in Buenos Aires, was suddenly lost in New York City, the place where I had spent almost 100 days out of the past year.  

Sometimes I get a surge of memories flooding my brain and all I want to do is write them down as quickly as possibly, so that I don’t leave any detail out.  I want to remember conversations I had with people, songs I danced to, meals I ate (or threw out, in some cases).  But then I think, to what level do I need to remember Argentina?  Is it really necessary for me to remember the entire process of the day I took the bus to the airport in order to pick up a package that was being held at customs, something I thought would be so simple but ended up taking eight hours and costing $100?  Is it really necessary to remember each time that Stefani and I would skip class and hang out at the café down the street from school, the one that had the best dulce de leche treats in the whole barrio of Belgrano?

People ask me how study abroad was, and I don’t know how to answer them.  I usually just say, “It was the best.”  This is because a) it was the best, and b) I know they don’t really want a full explanation; most people just ask because they feel obligated to.  But then there are the few people who want me to tell them stories from Buenos Aires. When this happens, I give them a blank stare.  There are so many things I could tell them (how I was mugged in Brazil, how my host mom wrote me passive-aggressive notes, the way me and my friends would go into clubs and dance like fools on purpose), but I don’t think I would be able to truly get across the essence of these moments and why they stand out in my mind. So instead I just say I don’t have any stories.

Rachel and I rented an apartment in Palermo for the last ten days we were in Buenos Aires.  We’d had enough of the home stay and wanted a little more freedom, especially since we were done with classes.  We told our host mom we were renting the apartment with five of our friends (a lie) so she wouldn’t feel bad about us leaving.  We told her we wanted to have a final goodbye dinner a few nights before we were leaving the city for good, and she said it sounded like a great idea and that she would call us later in the week to arrange.  Friday came around and we still hadn’t heard from her.  For some reason, neither of us had her cell phone number so it was impossible for us to reach her.  We never had the dinner and I never said goodbye to the woman whose apartment I lived in for over four months.  However, on my last day I did say goodbye to the family who I would buy fruit from almost every day, which was more important to me and probably impacted me more than any goodbye with my host mom would have been.  They all gave me a hug and wished me luck.  As I walked outside, they said they would look for me if they were ever in Michigan.  Something tells me this won’t be for a while.