The Next Season...from Argentina

I sit down for dinner and I wonder how I got here?  How the hell did I end up living in Buenos Aires?  It amazes me how full my life is, how the experiences I continue to have put me outside of my comfort zone…every day, and how I still, after a year around the world…actually twice around the world, I cannot get enough.  So here goes Season 2 of an unexpected journey…

Last I wrote, I had just finished a short stint in Central America and was struggling with the concept of ‘perfection.’  It amazes me still that even after a year of leaving my job and the societal pressures of my former life, I still struggle with perfection.  Is my smile good enough?  Are my hair fixed right?  How will social media perceive this image?  Ironically, a few days after I published my last post, I submitted around 2,500 pieces of evidence for a Guinness World Record.  And then, a quick week later and I was an official Guinness World Record Holder for the ‘most countries traveled to in one year using a wheelchair,’ the final number being 55.

For about 24 hours, I was on a high!  I had done something that no one else in the world had done.  I had proven to myself and to every other person with a limitation or a challenge that big goals and dreams should not be shut down with the titles society gives us.  I was so proud of myself and I knew that some little boy or girl would see this and be inspired to live beyond their dreams.

Unfortunately, the little media attention I received gave me a very different response.  It took less than a week for the negative comments to come flowing in…Instagram, Facebook, national news sites.  And just as I was learning to accept my imperfections, exactly as my last post in January 2023 alluded to, I was reminded that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, no matter how good my intentions are, there are people who will find a way to hit me where it hurts most.

I made an emotional and conscious decision to fly below the radar for a bit.  I had never started my travel journey to invoke hate.  All I ever wanted was to see the world, experience it’s people, and live authentically.  I needed some time to reflect on this, without the noise of the world in my head, so I left for Australia with Tony and his family and focused on being present, in Australia, with loved ones.

I spent a month after that in Bali, Indonesia, reflecting and writing.  The events of the past year were so overwhelming and I knew that visiting a place and people who were the start of such a transformation would be healing for my soul.  And they were.  I let go of the negative comments, I became humbled at the intense hate I saw come out of people who didn’t even know me, and I forgave people in my life who had hurt me long ago.  The irony of people hurting me that led me to a place of forgiveness still baffles me, but I’m learning that not all things in life have an answer, and so this I am accepting and am grateful for.

Like I suspected, my time in a place so special to me also gave me perspective, and I knew I couldn’t stop sharing my story.  I have to believe that by spreading positive messages, the world will be better.  And so, I took a break to rebuild my strength, and now I am back, ready to start sharing.

This time, my stories are coming from South America, or at least that’s how it looks today.  I had spent the past year mostly alone and was ready to experience more of the world with Tony and other loved ones.  Somehow, someway, we made a mutual decision to pack up our apartment, put our things into storage, and digitally nomad around South America.  My number one goal was and is to learn Spanish, a bucket list item I’ve yet to successfully cross off the list.

I boarded my flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina on a one-way ticket.  By this point in my life journey, I was becoming accustomed to one-way tickets, never knowing exactly when I might return or where I would return from.  Boy, has my life changed from my corporate America days when I would never consider leaving without a return ticket.  There was always work to get done, and thus, a return ticket to buy.

As my flight took off from Atlanta to Buenos Aires, the all too familiar feeling of uncertainty filled the pit of my stomach.  I was anxious, nervous, excited, and I had no idea why.  I’d been on dozens of flights just like this one, taking me somewhere new and unknown.  I wondered if I would always have these overwhelming feelings for the rest of my life, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I would.  I started to embrace the feeling, knowing that the fear was protecting me and the anxiety was there to excite me.  If I wasn’t a little bit afraid, than what would be the point?  The fear is what turns to courage is what turns to growth.

I arrived in Buenos Aires early on a Saturday morning.  I would have two weeks of immersion – alone – before Tony arrived (he was finishing up a few work conferences before meeting me).  I left with the same green backpack that I’d been carrying around with me for the past year.  All of my prized possessions right there in a used daypack that I got from my momma.  But you know what?  It’s perfect for me!  My ‘prized possessions’ consist of my passport, my cellphone, my computer, and a few items of clothing.  I’ve never really needed much more, and in the rare instance I do, it’s not usually hard to find.  Just this past week, I needed a tool to tighten something on my wheelchair.  I found a bike shop where they serviced my chair for ‘tips only.’  People never cease to amaze me.  No, the kindness of people never ceases to amaze me.

So anyway, I arrive at my AirBNB around 10 am.  I’m exhausted from my overnight flight but know that I need to get some food before I rest, knowing if I close my eyes I might not open them until morning.  It’s winter in Buenos Aires and the sun goes down around 6 pm, and I have a rule that I am always home by dark when traveling alone.  I pull out the few pesos I had from a previous trip and make the three block walk to the supermarket.  I find a few things – bananas, coffee, some crackers – and bring them to the register.  The man blankly and bluntly spouts off a number.  I have no idea what he is saying.  He says it again and I don’t know what to do.  It’s about half the price if I pay with cash but I don’t know how much to give him.  He says the amount again and I give up.  I just hand him all of the pesos I have and hope that he’s honest.  I have no way of knowing if he was but I got some change back, so I suppose that’s a good thing.

Back at my AirBNB, I notice that the coffee maker is on top of the refrigerator.  The one thing I must have is on a shelf that I certainly cannot reach.  I think to myself, “Well, I could crawl up on the counter and then the fridge and then…okay, stop!  If you fall, there is no one around to help you.”  I sit on this for a while.  How will I get to my coffee in the morning?  Finally, I see a broom slightly hidden between the refrigerator and the wall.  Perfect.  I slowing move the coffee maker to the edge of the fridge and knock the glass pot off, catching it on my lap.  It didn’t break so I went for the rest and just like that, I had a coffee maker!

I went through a similar ordeal to get the towels and toilet paper off of a high shelf, and then again to get the shower handle lowered so I could bath.  There were two French-style doors to the bathroom, and without them both being open, I couldn’t get through the door and to the toilet…unless of course I crawled, but really, who wants to crawl around on someone else’s bathroom floor?  I kneeled on my wheelchair and stretched my body as far as I could using a fork to unlatch the second door lock near the ceiling.  Well it certainly wasn’t the intent of the apartment to be ‘wheelchair friendly,’ it definitely was by the time I left.  All necessities had been moved to a low level and furniture had been moved to make enough space for a wheelchair.

Monday morning arrived and it was time for my first intensive language course.  I was nervous as all get out.  Was I the imposter who thought they knew how to say ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’ but really didn’t actually know anything?  Did the placement test I took put me into the more advanced level when really it was a glitch in the system?  None the less, I showed up ready to learn.  I sat down in the class of twelve and observed as it felt like everyone knew more than me.  ‘I will listen intently and get as much out of this as possible,’ I told myself.  And I did.  After four hours, my brain was mush and the sounds of a new language echoed in my brain for the rest of the day.  If immersion is the best form of language learning, as all the studies say, I was doing everything I could.

In Argentina, there is a dollar blue exchange rate that legally allows US dollars to be exchanged for about double the standard exchange rate.  The AirBNB I was staying at had referred me to a man who would deliver Argentine pesos right to my door.  I set up the meeting and right there on the side of the street I exchanged some US dollars for a paper bag full of pesos.  It felt like a drug deal.  I quietly handed him a folded up wad of $100 bills and he quietly handed me a paper bag full of pesos.  No words were exchanged, because, well, I didn’t know any of the Spanish words, and the transaction itself was quicker than a bee sting, everything arranged through WhatsApp prior to his arrival.

Finally having enough money to get some more food, I headed to the supermarket again.  I was also on the hunt for a mechanical pencil.  I realized in my first day of class that I was erasing things quite a lot.  I suppose a trademark of learning, but none the less, I really wanted a pencil instead of my blue pen.

At the supermarket, I could not find a single pencil.  Nothing.  There were, though, bottles of wine for a little over $1 USD, and fresh cheese, and bread, and produce.  I filled my basket and proceeded to the register.  I listened very carefully this time to the amount that I owed.  After all, I had attended an entire day of Spanish class, certainly I must be able to understand by now, right?  I heard the first number – seven – and figured if I just gave eight, I would get change.  It worked and this is how I spent the next two weeks, always rounding up after the first number.

I spent two weeks looking for a mechanical pencil, browsing various supermarkets and book stores.  I found nothing.  I was not successful in communicating what I was searching for and the culture differences were knocking me down at every attempt.  I never found a  mechanical pencil, at least not from a store in Buenos Aires.  But when Tony arrived two weeks later, he gifted me with a pencil (and plenty of lead and eraser refills).

On my second day of class, as I sat waiting five minutes before the start time, I wondered where everyone was.  Did the room change?  Did I have the wrong time?  I waited and waited.  The professor was there, or at least her notes and supplies were, but the rest of the students were not.  About ten minutes after the scheduled start time, they started to trickle in.  It took 40 minutes for the entire class to be present.  This was a change I was going to have to adapt to.  Things just move slower in Latin America.  Breakfast with the family is more important than class, and chatting aimlessly about things unrelated to language learning is the norm.  This was more than language immersion, this was full on cultural immersion, and man, was my brain being challenged!

That evening, I found a little café that served empanadas to-go.  It was directly across the street from my AirBNB, and since I didn’t go out after dark, I made an almost daily visit to this café on my way home from school.  I never did learn the owners name but we got to know each other and he always had my order ready.  And, he taught me a few words of Spanish, all of which I remember to this day.  Like so many others around the world, his smile still sticks with me, the kindness and patience radiating out of his demeanor as I stumbled over and over to order my dinner.

While I had no strong negative feelings towards my first language school, I wanted to try a new one during my second week in Argentina.  The first school had a strong student population of Brazilians, who by the way are wonderfully outstanding and kind people, but they come from a Portuguese language background and thus their learning challenges are just different than mine.  I found another school on the opposite side of town which had a mostly English speaking student population.

My second Monday morning arrived and I promptly tried to get a taxi.  It took a few minutes but eventually I was able to get what I needed and pointed to the map of where I was going.  I didn’t love this process of taking a taxi to and from school, about 30 minutes each direction, but the Subte (the local subway system) was not wheelchair friendly, and the buses seemed a bit overwhelming for a disabled woman who knew very little of the local language.  A taxi it would be for the week.

It worked well, actually great and I was always on time, ready for class.  Except on Wednesday.  On that first Wednesday in my new school, there were no taxis, or at least none that I could find.  I tried all of the apps, tried to flag them down, I tried everything.  And I was late for class.  I was 30 minutes late.  Exactly the way the Brazilians had been the prior week before.  I suppose karma can be a real pain in the butt, as I ate the egg on my face for complaining about people being late…

That afternoon, in a one-on-one session with a private tutor named Gustavo, I almost started to cry.  Gustavo was pushing me too far beyond my limits.  I didn’t understand anything he was saying and he didn’t speak a word of English.  I started to argue with him in English, which he in turn responded back to in Spanish.  It got heated for a few minutes and I started to think of all the people around the world trying to communicate such simple words that get stuck in translation.  We were talking about what food we had for breakfast and it got heated.  How in the heck can this world even begin to operate with any semblance of peace given the thousands of languages that simply aren’t being communicated and translated correctly?  We were having trouble talking about breakfast!  Of course I got over the intense moment with Gustavo, but it was humbling in a way that I can’t even begin to put into words.

As I stood on the side of the street after class waiting on a taxi, a woman approached me and started to say something to me.  My typical response has been “No, gracias,” and I shoo people away.  There’s simply no point in engaging in conversation with strangers on the side of the street when the words mean nothing to me.  But this woman was adamant, so I listened as intently as I could.  Maybe she needed help?  Whatever she wanted to communicate must have been important.  Finally I heard it and was able to translate it.  “You have such pretty eyes.”  And I wondered to myself, “How many times have I missed the beautiful things people are saying because I don’t understand them?  How many times have I assumed the world is trying to take something from me, when in reality all it is doing is spreading a kind message?”  I had been so frustrated with the language the past two weeks, and all along, there were beautiful words being spoken to me.  I just didn’t understand them…yet.  Man, I could not wait to learn more, to hear more, of the amazing things the people in Argentina had to say.

The following Thursday, I arrived in class and noticed a strange smell.  The classroom I was in was old and had no heating or air conditioning, so I just assumed it was a remnant of someone’s breakfast or stale air sitting idle in the room.  About two hours into class, I noticed a creamy brown substance on my thumb.  When I took a closer look, I noticed it was all over my pen and notepad too.  What was this?  How did I get chocolate on my hands?  I moved my hand closer to my nose to smell it.  And that’s when I realized that there was dog poop all over my hand and school supplies.  I looked down at my big right wheel, and lo and behold, right there next to my leg was a giant glob of dog poop.  It was everywhere.  I excused myself to the restroom and attempted to clean it up, knowing now that the smell was coming from me.

So the thing is, in Latin America, it is pretty uncommon to clean up after your pet.  And there are a lot of pets.  If I’d learned nothing else in my first two weeks, it was that often times some really nasty things will get in your way, and may even ruin your day.  But if you listen carefully to the messages that are often hard to hear, you might find a complete stranger on the side of the street trying to tell you how beautiful you are.