Una introducción: Wisconsin dwelling, South American daydreaming

(The Art of Travel, post 1, Introductions)

This entire winter break (so far, a month and three days in) I’ve been the poster child for apathy.  After a rough fall semester, it is too nice to sit around and not think or do anything involving due dates and specific formats.  And just like any other college kid with too much free time, I’ve become a slave to the couch and the almighty revered Netflix.  This degree of apathy has been okay, however.  I’ve actually really enjoyed it.  But it’s crunch time.  In a week and three days I’m moving myself to a different continent for Pete’s sake.  I think it’s time to switch emotional gears and potentially use my brain again, before it turns into couch potato mush (that is, if it hasn’t already, considering my break is literally a month and a half long).

¡Hola todos! My name is Meg and I think I’m finally ready to get in the mindset of ‘I’m about to start school again.’ Wait, scratch that… more like ‘I’m about to move to Argentina, live with a random family, explore a whole new city and lifestyle, and, oh yeah, take classes on the side.’  My semester in Buenos Aires will complete my sophomore year at NYU.  I’m in the College of Arts and Sciences, with so far an undeclared major, but studying something that will hopefully involve foreign languages, my true loves (I speak Spanish, French, and a little bit of Irish Gaelic, and am eager to teach myself / learn many more).  I will most definitely be receiving my minor in Latin American studies, especially with the courses I will be taking this semester (which I am very excited about. Three out of my four classes will be conducted in Spanish!).  An inevitable goal for myself, as is with many others traveling to places of a different language, is to improve my Spanish.  I really hope to be fluent by the end of the semester.

Beyond Spanish being my first foreign language and the desire to improve and use that language, there are other reasons to my deciding to travel to Argentina.  For example, why not Madrid?  I’ve never even been to Spain, but have always wanted to go.  I have been elsewhere in Europe, however (France, Belgium, Ireland), but never to South America.  Notorious journalist and author Thomas Friedman has noted that South America is rising to be made up of ‘second world’ countries (The World Is Flat), and I do not plan on missing out on its rise to glory, while also discovering just exactly why this is the case by learning more of its history, politics, culture and people.  Also, as much as I loved New York my freshman year of college, it was a fantasy.  Sophomore year hit reality, and I was close to falling out of love with the city with an anxiety to go elsewhere, for perhaps a new fantasy to begin.

My education at NYU thus far has taught me the importance of ways of looking, seeing things in as many ways as possible.  I am prepared and truly excited to see the Spanish language and Latin American culture through the eyes of its citizens, as a member of their community, but still as a scholar pursuing this new path of vision.  In the very birthplace of the tango, I long for a dance with my body, mind and spirit partnered with the history, culture and people of Argentina, where no doubt together we will grow and develop to become a symbiotic force where I absorb my adventures and education and I do all I can in return for Buenos Aires, the city I hope to come to know and love.  And now, at the end of this post, I think I’ve decided that I am definitely ready for this semester to begin.