NYU Goes to Salta

Me at the Salt FlatsI transferred to NYU; I missed out on orientation, welcome week, whatever other get to know you type activities held for freshman to ease the socializing process. When I saw how hard it was going to be to make friends in my classes, or in my dorm I checked out, stopped trying, found a community for myself somewhere else. Studying abroad in Buenos Aires through NYU has, by far, been the most time I have spent around such a concentrated group of NYU students ever... in my life. In a lot of ways it feels like high school again. I don't know how big the other study abroad sites are, but here in Buenos Aires there are about 90 of us, and at this point we all know each other by name and face, and it's likely we have hung out or conversed at some point with only a few exceptions. It's become a bit incestuous at this point. It's always eventful.

The social experiment culminated this weekend when we went on NYU sponsored trips. Half of the program went to Paraguay, the other half went to Salta, and I went to Salta, a northern province of Argentina. We bused around, went to another estancia, saw a lot more gaucho shows, an Incan mummy, the salt mines; it was a lot of moving around. Traveling in a group of 50 is always exhausting. Make them all 21, generally incredibly ambitious, usually trendy, and New Yorkers and imagine how exhausting it is. But we all made it back ok with a hangover and an alpaca sweater to show for it.

This trip has taught me that people never change. 90 people thrown in a room with a dire need to socialize seems to produce the same results whether they are fourteen or 40. People who look the same flock together. At NYU that usually means people who dress the same, or are from similar economic backgrounds. Surprisingly or not, disappointingly or not, this trip down south has been a lot about watching social situations unravel. Who's dating who now? Who has stopped hanging out with who? It's dramatic, there seems to be news everyday, and it's interesting to watch. It's eerie how much it feels like high school again. I went to a small high school and it was incestuous too.