For most of us, any time we make a major cultural change, there is a moment of intense disorientation somewhere in the range of 30-90 days after we arrive. For many, this takes the form of homesickness, and it is a known phenomenon. Three weeks is early for such an episode, and it totally blindsided me last night. I wasn't homesick at all, but it was an evening of major emo distress.
I was already annoyed and unhappy about collecting a second blast in that Venezuela thread. It felt like double jeopardy and I knew I couldn't defend myself without re-igniting the whole controversy.
And I seemed to have eaten something that disagreed with me, which resulted in a touch of the old green apple quickstep.
Then I received some bad news from my (prospective) new landlords, who called to tell me that I can't move into the new department on Monday as we had planned, because the previous tenant can't leave for Chile because her car broke down blah blah blah, yadda yadda. After reading all the horror stories about broken agreements and general Argentine flakiness on these forums, that caused me to wonder whether I can trust these people at all. And it means I have to extend my stay in a hotel, again. (insert multiple highly pungent expletives here).
Anyhow, it all caught me by surprise and I just lost it. I flew into a rage and actually threw a magazine across the room, which is quite unusually demonstrative behavior for me. Trying to calm down, I had a glass of wine, listened to sad mariachi music, and got all bummed out and weepy. And the really annoying part was, I knew I was over-reacting, so there was that element of self-disgust on top of it all.
It was a bad night. But the sun is up now and it's all cool. In retrospect, I recognise it as the predictable emo crisis of reorientation to a new environment and a new culture, and absolutely nothing to worry about now it's over.
The message for any new arrivals that read this - be prepared for your moment of disorientation. Just ride it out and don't let it overwhelm you. Just hang in there, and it will all be fine in the morning.
Earlier in the evening, I had dinner down the street in this little hole in the wall joint. The waitress was at that indeterminate age somewhere from 25-35 at which a woman's first blush of youth is visibly gone. The age at which those first ghosts of crow's feet appear at the corner of her eyes, as the burdens of a woman's life begin to take their toll. The age at which she looks into the mirror in the morning, and knows what she will look like as an old woman. The age at which she begins to seriously wonder where her life is going, and what she will do as the long and weary years wear on.
She was moving at about half speed, and the bossman behind the bar was visibly annoyed with her, snarling low-voiced comments at her with that hard-faced look that bosses get when you're in deep kimchee. (as an aside, it seems to me that male employers and supervisors can be amazingly harsh with female subordinates in this country)
And she was so visibly sad that it just broke my heart. She didn't give me any attitude, or seem to have that sort of a problem. Her eyes showed no signs of a drug habit. She wasn't moving like she was in physical pain. She just seemed so incredibly sad and weary and hopeless.
This is actually not the first time I have seen this, there was one of the girls who worked the breakfast buffet at my first hotel who also looked very very sad, though she was much younger than the waitress I'm talking about now.
It occurs to me that, in all sympathy, Argentine society is under massive stress at this point in time. And, in many cultures, women often seem to absorb the stress and unhappiness, to be the canaries in the coal mine, the ones upon whom it all gets dumped. Because we know what it is that runs downhill, don't we? And no, I don't mean water.
