Wine, Beef, and Tango!

Here is another one of my 30:30 poems...it's not good, but there is something about it that I think will be interesting to revisit when I am further along in my travels.

What Is to Come

Rio de la Plata
stretches before my toes
rolling like my neighbor
can do the worm.
Italian leather slingbacks
and cafe con leche,
mate* and flowers
I can't quite imagine.
A foggy vision of
what is to come...
blurry and matte
finished - a greenish
purpley color. La
Recolata: home, cemetary,
cafes, and tango.

My brain just can't stop
trying to fill in the
gaps.

*mate: a popular herbal tea. pronounced mah-teh

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It's funny how we try to picture places we've never been in our heads. I've been doing it constantly, and quite frankly it's driving me crazy!

In other news, my going away party was on Sunday and it went beautifully. I think everyone had a fun time, the food was definitley up to par (thanks mom and dad!)and it was an overall gorgeous day in Naperville. Go figure.

I also recieved an email from IES about my host family. So far it seems like it is just one woman (a Señora) but I could be wrong. I was given her name and a email, which is the first name of a man and then her last name. So...i'm thinking there's a husband? Or other male figure? Who knows. Here I go again trying to fill in the gaps.

Well I'm off to the outlet mall for some last minute shopping. Packin up the bags this afternoon and tomorrow and then on Sunday I'm finally heading out around 1:00pm for my 5:30 flight out of O'Hare! Boy am I excited...and nervous...and stoked...ayyyyyy dios mio.

Chau,
~A

I wrote this yesterday for my 30 poems in 30 days challenge...

Leggo My Eggo

Only days to go –
bye bye Windy City.

I’m packing scarves
a two-time broken heart

a Diet Pepsi and a
handful of dice.
------------------------------------------------
Solo restan días
adiós adiós Ciudad Ventosa.

Estoy preparando bufandas
un dos veces roto corazón

una Pepsi Diet y un
puñado de dados.
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The translation may be a little bit off, but I ran it by a Spanish speaking friend. It's a decent first attempt at translation, I think! Time is sneaking up behind me...

Ughhhhhhhhhh. It just had to go into PKs. I can't believe Argentina lost today to Germany. I really don't have more to say than that. I still stand by my all time hatred of PKs deciding who the better team is. That's crap.

Meghan came to visit yesterday, and hearing all of her stories about Spain got me so incredibly excited! I found this exquisite article about Bueos Aires that I wanted to republish for all to read:

BUENOS AIRES
Introduction

This complex, energetic, and seductive port city, which stretches south-to-north along the Rio de la Plata, has been the gateway to Argentina for centuries. Portenos, as the multinational people of Buenos Aires are known, possess an elaborate and rich cultural identity. They value their European heritage highly--Italian and German names outnumber Spanish, and the lifestyle and architecture areBuenos Aires City Center markedly more European than any other in South America. One of the world's finest opera houses, the Teatro Colon, flourishes here on the plains alongside the river. Portenos are intensely involved in the life and culture of their city, and they will gladly share the secrets of Buenos Aires if you lend an ear and relate your own stories in return.

Buenos Aires' physical structure is a mosaic as varied and diverse as its culture. The city has no dominating monument, no natural monolith that serves as its focal point. Instead, Buenos Aires is composed of many small places, intimate details, and tiny events and interactions, each with a slightly different shade, shape, and character. Glass-sheathed skyscrapers cast their slender shadows on 19th century Victorian houses; tango bars hazed with the piquant tang of cigar smoke face dusty, treasure-filled antique shops across the way.

The city's neighbourhoods are small and highly individualized, each with its own characteristic colors and forms. In the San Telmo district, the city's multinational heritage is embodied in aBuenos Aires - La Boca varied and cosmopolitan architecture - Spanish Colonial design couples with Italian detailing and graceful French Classicism. La Boca's pressed tin houses are painted a rainbow of colors, and muralists have turned the district's side-streets into avenues of color.

For all its diversity, the elusive spirit of Argentina as a country is present everywhere in Buenos Aires. The national dance, the tango, is perhaps the best expression of that spirit--practiced in dance halls, parks, open plazas, and ballrooms, it is a dance of intimate separation and common rhythm, combining both an elegant reserve and an exuberant passion.

Copyright (c) 1998 - 2005 interKnowledge Corp. All rights reserved.

I feel like I've been getting ready for this trip for ten years. It's only been a little less than a year, but I am already so anxious to leave! Anxioius about leaving home for such a long time, anxious to go completely alone, anxious about my Spanish (AH!), and just about every other feeling that I had as an incoming freshman into IWU. I've been corresponding with my dear friend Rynne who is studying in Spain this semester, and I know without a doubt that this study abroad thing is right for me too. Hopefully I come out with some great stories like hers!!
I'm a little nervous about my host family. I hope that they are nice and forgiving about my "nervous" Spanish, as I like to call it. I think I know more than I let myself realize, but I freeze up when it comes to native speakers because I feel like such a poser trying to speak their language and I'm so awful at it. I guess that is what I am most nervous about...
I AM excited, ecstatic really, about the time I will have to WRITE. I need to make sure that through all of the hullabaloo that I sit down with my journal and really get the ballpoint rolling. (har har har) I'll be sure to share any inspirational or not so inspirational thoughts with you as I go along.
Signing off for now --- more pre-departure thoughts to come!!

~Amanda