I arrived in Argentina 4 months ago today.

Hola todos,

As usual much has happened over the past few weeks.

My wisdom teeth are coming in and it´s killing me. I can no longer chew with the left side of my mouth and forget about eating hard foods at all, that means cookies, crackers, chips and stuff. Anything really crunchy. When I couldn´t stand it any more I want to a dentist, more like a scam artist. Luckilly Leah´s parents who both happen to be dentists came to visit this week and had a look at my mouth. Their advice: load up on pain killers and stick it out till I get home.

Drum roll please! You are not going to believe this. I FINALLY booked a flight home. I fly out of Lima and arrive at O´Hare airport around 11AM on December 14th. Which means, my last day of classes is Novemeber 16 so I have one month to get myself from Córdoba, Argentina to Lima, Peru. Adventure awaits.

Believe it or not there is life beyond Apple products: My laptop completely died. I´ve tried everything, been on every Mac support site, nothing has worked to revive it. And it´s not like I can run out to my local Apple store in Argentina either. It´s the end of an era. And on the same day my iPod broke. Again, figured out what was wrong, took the thing apart, nothing worked. Also, I was electrocuted pretty bad the other day while trying to fix my friends camera. I was far more embarrassed than I was hurt. So for now I´m done trying to repair electronics. I´ve stopped using anything battery operated, and now I read books. Yes. Books. You may remember them from kidergarden.

Another one of my rants: I´ve felt frustrated lately. Just kind of edgy. The first reason is that I know I´m growing impatient to be done with school. I´ve been in class since July 6th, and the actual learning itself has been more exhausting becuase it´s all in a different language. Hanging in there.

The second reason is something that has been wearing me down for the past 4 months. I´ve delt with it ´till now but lately I can´t take it any more. There are many aspects of Argentine culture that I have learned to appreciate. The machismo is not one of them. Basing a woman´s worth more on her physical appearence than her intelligence is just fucking awful. More sick twisted things happening lately. Too fucked up to post here. There are some things a girl should never have to get used to. I hate walking alone anywhere no matter what neighborhood I´m in or what time of day it is. But that´s life for now I guess.

Also, the social life is kind of a mess. Ugh. Love triangles, drunken mistakes on everyones part, watching history repeat itself. I swear our group would have made a great Real World season. ´25 kids from all over the U.S. thrown together in South America. The Real World Córdoba.´ Tired of having to guess weather or not I´m being used. Every time something happens it makes me miss my Glenview guys. You guys have no idea how great you are.

After one hell of a Friday night (the story needs to be told in person, reading it doesn´t do it justice) I went to Rosario for the weekend. It´s called Argentina´s perfect city for a reason. I loved it. A very chill weeekend with my friends Mary Marshall and Fran just hanging out on the beach and wandering around the whole city. It really gave me a lot of time to think about things. I needed it. Although I don´t mean to be cliche, I didn´t realize how much this experience had changed me until the past weekend. I´m not the same person I was last July. It´s all for the better.

Today I accomplished something huge. I got a 100% on my history final. After thinking for bit I realized what that actually meant. I read an entire history text book in Spanish, took a semester´s worth of class in Spanish, and actually managed to ace it. What?! I came here knowing next to nothing. Getting that test back today was one of the best moments of this semester.

(5 minutes pass)

My throat is actually starting to tighten up as I type this. Inhale. Exhale. I have two weeks left in this country. Two weeks from today I say goodbye to Argentina, maybe forever. Goodbye to another home. Goodbye to places and more importantly people, that I love. This might be one of the hardest things I have to do. Inhale. Exhale. Christina, snap out of it, you can´t start crying in the middle of the computer lab. Inhale. Exhale. I need to go.

Miss you all. See you in less than 6 weeks.
-Christina