(Section of Part Three)
As the end of our Iguazu trip approached, Eefje and I were
telling each other that we were not looking forward to
going back to Buenos Aires. This was the first time in
my life that I was not happy about returning home
after a vacation. At the end of the last group email,
I mentioned that I was getting lonely. Well, the
situation has improved from before, but I am still
lonely.
At first, I didn’t understand what was going on with
me. I was so happy about being in a new city and
discovering a new culture and country, that I wasn’t
paying attention to the signs my body was giving me.
Sugar cravings. Living next to a bakery makes it
difficult to resist pastries in the morning. However,
the cravings went beyond the croissants. Chocolate
cravings non stop. I was going to get my blood sugar
level checked at the laboratory because I thought that
family’s diabetes strain had come to me. An Argentine
friend pointed out to me that the cravings were coming
from anxiety and loneliness. I had never felt lonely
in my life, so I didn’t realize that my sudden
attachment to sugar and chocolate was actually due to
a powerful emotional problem.
In my four months here in Buenos Aires, I have only
one small group of Argentine friends which I made on
my own. I have other Argentine friends, but they are
through contacts I had from home. When I lived in
France and Hungary, I never felt so lonely. It was
really easy to make good friends. In fact, I am still
in contact with my friends and coworkers from France.
Here, on the other hand, I have become good friends
with other foreigners like Eefje. My stereo is
probably my best daily companion. At first, I avoided
socializing with other foreigners because I wanted to
meet Argentines to learn about their culture. After so
many days of wandering around alone and waiting for
phone calls from Argentines who promised to call me, I
decided that I would have to start talking to
non-natives. I met Eefje at the university and before
she and I introduced ourselves, we were already
planning a trip together.
Talking to Eefje and other foreigners has made me
realize that I am not the only one feeling lonely
here. At first, Argentines seem very friendly and
hospitable. In the same way that Europeans complain
about American superficiality, I have my complaints
about Argentine behavior. From the onset, people seem
very open to meeting foreigners, but this quickly
dissipates when one tries to move the relationship beyond the
superficial chit chat of ¨Why are you here¨, ¨Do you
like Argentina¨, etc. I don’t want to even count how
many times I have heard ¨I will call and invite you to
my house for coffee.¨, ¨Let’s go see this movie
together¨, etc. When I try to actually set up a
time to meet with people, I get the response ¨Yo te
llamo¨, ¨I’ll call you.¨(With an Argentine accent,
¨Sho te shamo¨.) At the beginning I couldn’t
understand why so many people who seemed to be well
intentioned ended up blowing me off. I thought that I
had turned into some extremely annoying person that
people were trying to shut out. Other foreigners have
experienced the same hypocritical behavior and have
also had doubts about their own self worth. Even other
Argentines I meet find this behavior to be atypical,
while others agree with me wholeheartedly. A major
explanation: the economy is doing so poorly now that
people are just trying to survive and have no time for
new friendships.
I am a fairly social person by nature, but I have
become quite antisocial lately. Since I have not
adopted the Argentine accent or linguistic
idiosyncrocies into my Spanish, people know from the
moment that I open my mouth that I am a foreigner.
They look at me as though I were some exotic animal
and ask me the same questions over and over again. It
has come to be so annoying that at times, I try to
avoid speaking in order to not get stuck in the same
old daily interrogation. I am trying not to be so
negative, but I can´t help but feel utterly frustrated
on a daily basis.
Not only have I been consuming a lot of sweets, but I
have been sleeping a lot and losing hair and my body
is very tense. (For those interested in sending a care
package, there is no need to send Rogaine Hair
Treatment for Women, I still have plenty, if not too
much, hair.) I don´t feel stressed, but the daily
struggles with loneliness, inefficiency and the fear
of being killed when crossing the street, must be
having an effect on my state of mental and physical
well being.
It is getting better though. I know more people now
and I know of good places to go even if I am alone. On
Saturday, I discovered this place sort of near my
house called, La Pena del Colorado. It is a
bar/barbeque place where mostly young people from the
provinces go to play the guitar and sing. The
atmosphere was incredible. Amidst the smoke from the
Argentine asador (BBQ) and the cigarette smoke, were
groups of random people singing Argentine folkloric
music together. People come with their guitars and sit
down at a table and start singing and people come and
join as they wish. I had never seen anything like it
before.
Are these people real?
As I mentioned in previous emails, image here is
everything. Even after four months of being here, I still
go into shock on a daily basis when I walk out my
building and see these super, super skinny women who
probably don’t even weigh 100 pounds. I can not help
but imagine what combination of liposuction,
starvation, legal and/or illegal drugs and excessive
exercise can lead someone to have such an unnatural
figure. I have to ask myself, ¨What is real about
these people¨. Their faces? Plastic surgery (nose
jobs, face lifts) and too much make up cover up any
original skin cells which ever existed on those faces.
Their bodies? Liposuction took that away from them.
Their clothes? The furs are probably fake and many of
the clothes are made of synthetic fibers, so even the
layers above the skin are not real. The hair? From my
travels on the continent, it seems that Latin American
women in general have a knack for funny blonde dyes.
In the US, we unfortunately also have an overabundance
of materialistic and image obsessed people who may
also have eating disorders and who have had plastic
surgery performed on them, but I have never been so
shocked by ultra-thin-ness as I have in Buenos Aires. As the
wealth of the country is concentrated in the rich
areas of Buenos Aires, consequently so are the ultra
image obsessed people. In the US, the anorexics,
bulimics and people with plastic surgery are not all
concentrated in one place. In the Los Angeles-Orange
County Area, one is sure to find a high percentage of
plastic surgeons and sickly thin people. However,
everyone moves around by car so there is no real shock
factor. New York has every type of person imaginable
so the skin and bones Kate Moss look-alikes didn’t
pull my attention.