BA Stop

I can't remember a time I was ever this exhausted. Finally in the room, all I want to do is sleep, but with the sounds of Avenue de Mayo outside I know that's probably a useless endeavor (not that it's going to stop me from trying when I'm done with this), so apologies for typos and generally terrible writing. I am alive. Barely.

In Atlanta, idling away my three hour layover, I sat in the bar at the end of the international terminal and tried to chitchat with the man behind the counter. He was, however, the world's unfriendliest bartender and I gave up. Luckily for me, an older couple sat down a few seats away. "Where are you going?" The man asked me. "Buenos Aires." I proudly replied. I had been dying to tell someone. "Us too!" Exclaimed the woman. They moved until there were no more seats between us. Thus I met Dave and Kathy, a retired couple from San Diego taking a cruise from Buenos Aires, around Cape Horn and to Satiago, Chile. They bought me way too many drinks and we traded stories. They gave me their information and said if I ever needed a place to stay in San Diego...

I sat on the plane next to another older woman, who I immediately started a conversation with. Christina was a local, a PhD on her way back home after spending six weeks in Vietnam for some kind of health training. I pulled out my map and showed her where I was staying. "I work two blocks from there." She told me. She wrote down the name of the hospital and what days she works. "If anything happens, you come get me. If I'm not there, tell them you are a friend of Christina's and they will take care of you." 

Though I reached for it all night, sleep never came. I found myself in line across from Dave and Kathy as we waited to get our passports stamped. The lady behind the counter looked at mine, asked me where I was staying, then got up and walked away without saying anything. I looked at Kathy, and she shrugged. None of the other agents were getting up and/or walking away. I was immediately flooded with images of being carted off by Argentine police for a case of mistaken identity. They thought I was a murderer, an international jewel thief, a drug smuggler. They were going to interrogate me and throw me in jail. This was going to turn into Brokedown Palace right in front of my eyes.

The woman came back, stamped my passport without a word and motioned for the next person in line. When I finally made it into the main part of the airport, it actually hit me that I was in South America. All the signs were in Spanish. No subtitles for me. Worse, I realized, is that myth that everyone in Buenos Aires speaks English. The truth is, hardly anyone speaks English. Even at the airport. I managed to get money and on the right bus (with the help of a charades-like game played with a very kind woman who understood that I was a tourist and wanted to get to the city). 

Of course, I wasn't sure at the time it was the right bus. All I knew was she had motioned for me not to get on the bus I was trying to get on, and to get on this one instead. So I did. On blind faith in strangers and my increasing inability to generate logical thought. But I was stressed about it, and the bus driver didn't even seem to notice my existence after I paid the fare. On that bus, no less than four people saw me trying to read my map and asked me (in Spanish, of course) where I was going. I unfolded it and pointed to where I wanted to go. Even though I couldn't understand one goddamn word of what they said after that, I was reassured that I was headed in the right direction and that local Argentinians are the nicest and most helpful people I've ever encountered. One elderly gentlemen, who had said many things in Spanish after I'd showed him where I wanted to be, as he stood to get off at his stop, reached down and patted my cheek affectionately. "Good luck." Apparently the only English he knew.

A woman got on with a toddler and sat across from me. At some point during the ride, the toddler became fussy. So naturally, as any good mother would, the woman whipped out her left tit right there on the bus for all to see and began breast feeding the girl. No one blinked. No one but me, of course, but I can't even speak their language so who the fuck am I to blink? Two hours after getting on, I finally found my stop and got to my hostel. Checked into the room, I tried to connect to the internet to Skype my parents and let them know I was alive. When it didn't work immediately, I burst into tears.

Don't get me wrong; with a little sleep, a little context, and a little distance, I will never regret doing this. But not being able to communicate in words is so incredibly isolating. Having talked to my parents I feel a lot better, but I do have this overwhelming sense of loneliness at the moment. Even surrounded by people who are nothing but weird and wonderful, today has been hard. It's taken a lot out of me. I miss English and I feel like an asshole for missing English after coming to a Spanish speaking country. 

I'm going to try and take a nap.