Finally, an introduction

I am a sophomore in Gallatin. I’m sorry I did not know that this class started before my others though in retrospect I should have checked things out before. I’m submitting this apology to show (maybe) how I d not often think ahead to guess what is coming my way. I am in Buenos Aires right now and in the curious position of trying to explain why I chose to study here having arrived already. If I were to have written this post before I left I would have said that I came here to improve my Spanish and see a different culture, maybe learn tango and travel into the Interior—everything in Argentina besides Buenos Aires. Now that I’m here I want to try every kind of empanada, fly a plane down the coast, get to know kids from NYU (almost none of whom I have ever seen let alone met before), go crazy at a soccer game, and yes, learn to tango.

There are a lot of juniors on this trip. This only means that everyone has a major or—in a few cases a concentration—most of which are focused on romance language, politics, journalism, history and economics. I am still trying to think of how to make my concentration doable in four years as opposed to forty but for now I’ll call it a hopeful mixture of sociology, anthropology, urban design, architecture, economics and maybe a little material science worked in there. Think I can do it? Neither do I but Buenos Aires is a great place to think about it and try to conceive of how human beings interact with the structures—both material and ideological—which operate within their city. I hope to find some of what I’m looking for here and to have a great time while doing it.

Now for the standard introduction; I have lived in Newton, a suburb of Boston for almost my entire life. I enjoyed going to school there and as a sophomore went on my first trip (a two week-long art history tour of Italy) with a group of kids my own age. We went to Venice first where I bought a soon-broken chrome lighter with a canal engraved on it to commemorate my feeling at the time that Venice was nice to look at but very different to be in; namely it was sinking slowly and smelled like sewage in many places. Now I guess that what the place must have smelled like when St. Marcos was being built and have a newfound reverence for those architects and builders who could make such beautiful human creations while other, more humdrum man-made “products” made the city reek on windless days.

In my junior year I traveled to Nicaragua with classmates to do volunteer work during the day and drink and party at night. I stayed in a medium sized town called San Juan Del Sur where tourism had recently taken root. Since the Sandinistas had fallen out of power a large resort had been built onto the hills above the town. My group got full reign the place because it was affiliated with a member, and because we were light-skinned enough to pass the guards. There were infinity pools, fat tanned men with cigars and an old spindly woman with a spider monkey on a leash among the sea of retirees. Not only was it sad that the town was becoming a tourist destination but I was taking part in its transformation, its translation.

These travel experiences and others are informing how I see and will see Buenos Aires where I will live for longer than I have lived in any other country outside the U.S. I will always be an outsider here but hope that with the time I have I will be able to feel more connected to the culture here as well as learn a mean tango.

Location