Argentina

I've been home now from Argentina for roughly 48 hours, and over the last 48 hours, I've fallen quickly back into normalcy and routine living. It's amazing how quickly we adjust back to reality after being so far out of it for a handful of days. I spent 9 full days walking the streets of Argentina, talking to people, eating authentic food, and listening to the familiar "ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch" of cumbia in the streets. Life is Argentina is jarringly different than life in the United States. Stray dogs roam the streets and enter into small businesses only to be shooed back into the streets. People embrace and give a cheek "beso" to strangers and friends alike--you would think this welcome would make me uncomfortable seeing as I don't enjoy being touched 80% of the time, but I love the warmth of the hug and the closeness of the beso that I don't mind it all. It just feels so natural, and yet if anyone did it to me here, it would not feel natural. There are more taxis and uber cars on the street than actual personal cars. Buses rule the road, not the police. I'm still uncertain if the policia do anything there. We mostly saw them on their cell phones. Ice cream is served by the kilo, and boy did we eat ice cream. Although donuts are becoming popular now, the normal breakfast item is sweet croissant called a factura (we also ate a lot of those). Dinner isn't served until 9 or 10pm. The siesta is still alive and well. Shops are generally open from 11-1 and then again from 3:30-8. Restaurants are open until 1/2 am.

Every night we trudged the circling stairwell to our hotel room, full of delicious food and lots of love. We didn't get home earlier than 11:00 any night, and we never went to bed hungry. We woke up every morning and quickly threw on our clothes so that we could log anywhere from 8-12 miles a day in the city. We walked to some of the most important tourist spots and very much enjoyed the bright neighborhoods, the sounds of tango music, and the chitter chatter of little crowds everywhere, but we also walked quiet deserted streets where we also enjoyed finding beautiful cathedrals, unique architecture and cobblestone streets. I really loved running into all the different school groups touring the city, each group dressed in their own school apron.

I can't really say what it meant to me to be back in Argentina. On one hand, it felt as if I never left, but on the other hand, so much had changed, that I too felt foreign and struggled to remember just where I was in a place that was once so familiar that it was almost home. The trip felt light in a lot of ways, mostly because I didn't have 5 kids in tow and could eat normal meals without cutting a million pieces of food only to get back to my own cold meal. But the trip was also very heavy for me too. Heavy to see how hard Argentine life is right now. The peso is 60 to 1 on the dollar. The situation is tense and scary. Socialism has essentially flipped their economy upside down, and it appears the next election will put the government will be put back into socialist hands. (I'm not writing this post about socialism.) Honestly, it looks bleak. I was amazed at the dire circumstances of the people. No one is free from the effects of the economy right now. You see it in the dark rings around the eyes of the people. You see it in the grooved lines in their hands. They are working themselves to death quite literally, and yet they're barely making it. Sure, there are people that are probably escaping the dire parts of poverty, but we didn't eat with them. We sat in the homes of people that we've loved for nearly 15 years, and we listened to them talk, and we felt their aches with them.

You have to know that I don't do well with poverty anywhere--not just in the streets in Argentina. I struggle to breathe when I see kids on the streets. No one deserves to live on the streets, especially not kids. Homelessness is a cause I hope to work for one day because it has always eaten away at me, and this trip really just solidified my desire to help more. And so I went away from Argentina feeling deeply grateful for everything we have as a family--for my house, my family, my safety, my security, my car, my jobs, my husband, my education, my kids' education, everything. We are the luckiest. People will find bad in everything. I know people who gripe about the dumbest things--heck, sometimes I'm that person. But you know what...there isn't much we truly can complain about. We have so much. And I am so grateful for it.