Mendoza my love

After saying goodbye to all of my friends as they take off back to the states or travelling, I have to say goodbye to Mendoza. I´m leaving tomorrow for Perú, and even though I´ll be back in a month or so with Dad, it´s surreal ... knowing that my time truly living here is ending.

It´s been so weird, the goodbyes to my friends in the program. They aren´t real-- all of these people are still here ... there is a huge part of me that´s sure that if I could pick up my cell phone (yes, I finally lost it) and send a text message ... everybody would be in the same place as before. In my brain, I still have music class tomorrow and I´ll see everybody in the "comedor" for lunch at one.

I never knew it was possible to secretly want finals week to last just a little longer.

And I know it´s a little random, but I don´t want to be depressing, so I´m going to honor this moment with a list ... my ideas for it have been in a memo in my gmail for over a month ...

Things Mendoza/Argentina in general do more/better/crazier than the States:

1. [CRAZIER] Driving. Especially backing up. Most of the streets are one-way, so when you take a taxi, if if the driver can´t conveniently turn down your street to drop you off, he will turn the other direction (to face the right way), put the car in reverse and floor it straight back for the whole block. You and your O-shaped mouth will arrive at your doorstep in record time.

2. [MORE] Eating crackers. This was confusing for me at first. I didn´t know it was possible to have a cultural habit built around crackers. My family eats them by the package with every meal, with their tea, and any time in the middle of the day. Putting the crackers on the table for dinner is as normal as setting out forks and knives.

The first day I got here, when I had gone without sleep for almost two days, I stumbled into my host family´s house disoriented and practically incoherent. They offered me crackers, and I was slightly puzzled, but so grateful to sit down and not think too hard, I accepted. Ten crackers into our cultural differences, they were bewildered when I asked for a glass of milk. Milk on it´s own? Plain? Without coffee? Are you sure you don´t want it with chocolate? What about heated up? You really want a whole glass? Cold?

3. [MORE/BETTER] Staying up later. Argentina is ahead of the States by four hours literally ... and by four hours culturally ... which makes it weird, because if I were talking to a friend in CA, we´re four hours apart on the clock but doing the same things at the same time.

When I´m talking to people from the states around 10 pm my time and 6 pm theirs, both of us are about to take off to dinner. Normal time to leave to go out here is 2 am, so if I were to talk to somebody in Davis it would be 10 and they would be getting ready to go too. In Davis, 2 am is when I´m ditching the party to go home and crash, and here I got in at 6 this morning from bar hopping. Four hours. It´s trippy.

4. [MORE] Exercise. Forget blacks, whites, asians, hispanics-- they don´t have any of that here. Argentinians are prejudiced against fat people. The anorexia rate here is flat-out staggering. (So, is, I should add, the percentage of psychatrists. The number of shrinks here is second only to the states.)

5. [SO MUCH MORE] 80´s pop. Especially bad 80´s pop. When we were in the Andesmar bus going to the Chile border in Patagonia, the CD of BAD 80´s POP got stuck on the same song for almost a half hour while everybody in charge was inside trying to figure out our visas. If ever there was a time that I wanted to kill myself ...

6. [CRAZIER] The busses. Because God-forbid there be a bus schedule. The official bus schedule of Mendoza is "get there early and hope you catch it". Because if there´s a strike, you´re walking. If it´s too full, it won´t stop. If you happen to glance the other way and don´t have time to throw yourself into its path and MAKE it stop, it powers by. And if you DO manage to stop it, jump on fast because half the time it takes off again before you´ve got that second foot down all the way.

When I think of the bus system here, my head is full of images of little old men standing (literally) in the middle of the road to stop their bus. They´re so old, they don´t care if they live or die ... just as long as they make it to wherever they´re going.

Not to mention the fact that the drivers decorate them. And that they occasionally decide to race.