24 years old.
I remember last year on my 23rd birthday…I was in a hotel room in downtown Chicago surrounded by all of my best girl friends from college- we were having a weekend reunion visiting one of our friends who had moved to Chitown. It is classic of these reunions for everyone to give a life update on ‘what is new’ and what is the current ‘life plan’…I remember sitting there telling them that next year I was going to make sure I was in South America. I didn’t know where yet, but I was going to be living there.
Well here I am, just celebrated my 24th birthday in Argentina. It was a birthday like I had never had before. For one, it was 90 degrees…typically my birthday parties are moved from an outdoor skating or sledding party to an inside slumber party due to a windchill of 20 below 0. This year I spent the day outside, over in a neighborhood that is near one of the comedors (dining halls for kids to come get free meals) that I work at. I sat and chatted with a mom I hadn’t met before- I have spent many nights hanging out with her two sons at the comedor, I played soccer with a big group of boys and drank terere (mate with cold water or juice instead of hot water) with the older boys. When they found out it was my birthday they were SO excited, they all gave me birthday hugs and kisses, cranked the music so we could have a ‘fiesta’ and brought me presents (a pink bracelet one of them had in their house and a little 5 year old boy brought me a rock he found). That night I could tell my host parents were feeling a little bad that my host siblings and relatives were all out of town for a vacation, so they went out of their way to make the night special for me. They invited some of our family friends over, made tons of pizzas (especially bought bacon for me which we Never have), our friend made me a delicious mocha coffee flavor cake (she also knows I Love coffee flavor), and they gave me a pair of sandals and a side purse because they knew that both my sandals and purse had recently broken.
I received so many amazing messages from people back home, was able to Skype with my parents, sisters, boyfriend and besties, and was treated so amazingly by everyone here. I was so nervous going into this holiday season of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and my birthday…thinking it would just be too painfully hard to be away from everything…but it has surprised me in so many ways. Don’t get me wrong, I miss everyone so much, but my host communities here have been so so great to me and it has really caused me to rely on them and just allow myself to be loved on- which takes a level of vulnerability that is sometimes hard for me.
loving outside the lines 