Missing the Less Developed

I missed Argentina for the first time in 2 months.

We watched clips from the 2001 riots in Argentina in J621: Mass Media and Developing Countries.

That’s were I was, a “developing country.” I strode through those “backwards” streets of Buenos Aires with ease despite my capitalist 1^st world label. I wonder if an Argentine would be allowed the same courtesy here.

Because our glorious developed country technology wasn’t working in class, I translated the Argentine man’s word in the movie with surprising effortlessness.

I had heard his words before. “There is no future or past here. We only live in today.”

A country of the hopeless middle class. Yet I felt the vibrancy in the UBA halls. It was more alive than the sterilely silent halls of Vilas. And I felt more alive there, more alive because there seemed to always be potential lying around the next broken sidewalk, always a new challenge to meet at the next bus stop, always a new today.

After all isn’t it better to be “developing,” to have something to more to accomplish, to work for?

After all we can’t all be perfect like America.

Frozen in Spirit

I am buried under 3 feet of unbearable winter.

I am trapped in my house, unable to venture out into this world I was looking forward to rediscovering.

I am weighed down in body and spirit, by this deadening winter.

I forgot how spirit-breaking Wisconsin winters are.

So instead of trying to fight the next month of below zero wind chills, I am putting on my sweats, making some cocoa and hibernating until the March thaws.

My infamous driveway where my car got stuck twice, yes twice, in one day.

Third Culture

[First, props to Penny for enlightening me to the term third culture and for just being enlightening in general.]

7 months ago, I left Green Bay, my first culture. The culture I called home for 22 years. The only culture I thought would ever be home. A culture I would soon learn to miss desperately and question critically.

6 months ago, I stopped crying in my second culture. I looked around Buenos Aires and thought profoundly, “This isn’t that bad.” I experienced my second culture, then I lived my second culture and finally I was my second culture.

1 month ago I returned to my first culture, dismayed that it seemed unrecognizable and unlivable. And so in true Fritz fashion, I panicked, labeled it depression of readjustment and boarded myself up until my first culture stopped slapping me across the face with Wal-Marts and McDonalds.

But I am not re-adjusting nor re-adapting nor doing any re-ing. I am experiencing my 3^rd culture for the first time. For my 2^nd culture not only changed me, it irreversibly changed my 1^st culture. So now I am walking through Wal-Mart with new legs. I am looking at the golden arches with new eyes. I am experiencing my third culture and I am living it with a new soul.

And like that first Sunday in Buenos Aires, I am abandoning my useless fear, getting on collectivo 128 and heading for the unknown of this new home. The guards I needed in my first culture, I learned to abandon and burn in my second. And upon reaching my third, I find the old guards are rusting and ugly and have no use in my painfully bright third culture.

My Computer is a Traitor

I have reset my computer's clock three times since returning to Central Standard Time.

Yet inevitably a few days after resetting my traitorous computer, I open my screen to find i am still in Argentine time.

Currently it is 7:47 PM. I am sitting down to eat with mi familia. Maite is hiding under the table trying to tickle my feet. Inaquis is telling me yet another joke in Spanish I don't understand. Gustavo and Angles are exchanging office gossip and Teo is passing me another serving of food even after I pleaded “estoy llena.”

That is according to my computer.

My brain knows it is 4:47 PM. That I just walked home in the most miserable cold rain after a day of lectures I could understand but not feel. My brain knows I need to do at least another 3 hours of homework before I can even begin to fantasize about the folds of my bed.

My heart is in cahoots with my computer. My heart is opening the patio window and breathing in Argentina, breathing in fresh, hot beginnings.

But my body is here, frozen in Madison, frozen in the past, slipping on the sidewalk between the past and the future.

And I am left wondering; has anything changed in 7 months?

Or am I still crying on concrete steps?

My computer and my heart are in denial, hoping by freezing time in Argentina, they can ignore the past here.

But there are the concrete steps, looking slippery with regret.

23 Jan. Missing Me

People keep asking me if I miss Argentina. And I can honestly respond no. I loved my time there but I was ready to go home.

What I miss is me in Argentina, I miss who I was in the streets of Buenos Aires. I miss the risks I took. I miss how open my heart and mind were. I miss how I never took anything for granted.

In Argentina things were easier because they were harder. From hailing a taxi to speaking in class to venturing to San Telmo, everything was a challenge. And because everything was out of my comfort zone nothing was.

Now my comfort zone feels like a prison. I easily fall back to my old routine, my old self, a self I have now outgrown. I feel like I am living in a skin that is 2 sizes too small.

16 Jan. Failing Bodies

After 6 months of relatively health-filled months in Argentina and 2 weeks of holiday festivities my body finally gave up on Monday January 7^th when I woke up at 6 am with a retched flu. I spent the next two days drinking water and flat sprite.

The flu was followed by a body-ache filled cold, followed by bronchitis which was then followed by a round of antibiotics. The pitiful 5-day dose of antibiotics was doomed to fail and thus came the sinus and ear infections. All of this came to a climatic finale with my third trip to the doctor and horse-size antibiotics.

And now I find school dauntingly in my near future. And I’m just not sure my body nor my mind is ready.

6 Jan. Falling off Pedestals

I want to preface this, MOM!, with I love my family and my home. In fact I could write extensive odes to my family, friends and Green Bay but I won’t torture you with my decrees of love for Brett Favre.

That said my first weeks home sucked. Well not sucked so much as didn’t not suck. After torturous weeks of cultural adjustment in Argentina, I thought coming home would be like returning to the promise land. But instead I found myself routinely unimpressed by everything I had been craving for months.

The food felt stale in my mouth, the language brutally cut my eardrums and the winter just plain hurt. The sight of old friends and family brought tears to my eyes, yet soon after heart-touching reunions, the initial brilliance wore off, I found myself staring at still cherished but somewhat duller loved ones.

Absence makes the heart grow founder but returning slaps that heart and brain right back to reality. It is a harsh reality where I beginning to think I am the duller one not the food, winter or people that surround me.