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Dear Traveler

By janellekranz

Dear Traveler,

Prepare yourself. You are going to be asked, “Do you feel homesick?” about a million times while you’re gone. It can be a tricky question to answer, especially in your first week abroad. You’re meeting new people, trying new foods, living a different lifestyle – but by no means do you forget where you came from.

I try to avoid the “homesickness discussion” because it involves telling people – who many times don’t care – about my feelings. Sometimes I feel ashamed of being homesick because I realize that nurturing the homesickness means missing out on fun activities in a new country. Other times I use it as fuel to do something fun, and that reminds me of the endless possibilities that come with a new place to live.

This is my second international trip alone, and I’ve come to learn that homesickness is a reaction to a different emotion: overwhelm. “The Overwhelm” is very real when you are thrust into a different culture – especially if that culture comes with a different language. With a new language in the mix, it’s almost as if you’ve missed a train and been told to run to catch up as it speeds away. It seems like an impossible task.

My first week in Buenos Aires was incredibly exciting, but the more involved I became, the more Spanish I was surrounded with. If there’s one thing professors don’t tell you in Spanish class, it’s that understanding Spanish in class and understanding Spanish on the street are two incredibly different things. People on the street do not enunciate. People on the street use common vernacular, like peleta instead of piscina and vos instead of (which comes with its own special verb conjugation). People on the street speak as fast as I do in English at home. Regular conversations made that train seem faster and my legs seem shorter – and it was so exhausting that sometimes I didn’t feel like I had the energy to go hang out with my new friends or even order lunch – because that meant more Spanish. And that made me miss home.

But over the past few days, I’ve decided that home is a state of mind. I remember how easy it has been to call each place I’ve lived – homestays, hotels, dorms – home. When I say home, most times I’m talking about a place. And when I’m homesick, I’m missing the easiness of being home. There, I’m not bombarded by a language I only half speak and three-quarters understand. There, I don’t have the fear of being a gringo committing a cultural faux pas or a blonde American girl intimidated by a machismo culture.

When I realized that my homesickness derived from my overwhelm and my overwhelm stemmed from being uncomfortable, I realized that “home” in its true meaning is a feeling, not a place. “Home” is the feeling of being comfortable, being surrounded by people you can understand and love and appreciate. Now I’m not saying I understand and love and appreciate every single American, but “The American” – that’s the type of person I understand and love and appreciate because that’s who I am. I understand what it means to be an American. But in Argentina, it’s diferente. I don’t understand the culture here; I’m learning more every day. I don’t love “The Argentine” always; I don’t know them very well. I don’t fully appreciate this place yet; I know so little about it.

However, this is the reason I travel. I travel to be uncomfortable because that’s how one learns best in life. Being uncomfortable is overwhelming, but when it becomes uncontrollable, you have to focus on the familiarities. Here, the subte system is like the DC metro. The barrios are like the neighborhoods of NYC. The Spanish spoken in my classes here is like that of my Spanish classes in the US. When you focus on what you already know, the unfamiliar things suddenly become easier to tackle. That train seems a bit slower, and my legs seem a bit stronger.

If my first several days in Buenos Aires have taught me anything, it’s that being abroad is a challenge. It’s exhausting and overwhelming to rise to that challenge, but the moments when your taxi driver compliments your Spanish or your host Mom comes running to see if you’re okay after you faint or you discover a new empanada place with some new friends – these moments make all of the effort worthwhile.

Suerte,

Janelle