Submitted by Elizabeth Fleming on the 2018 fall semester program in Buenos Aires, Argentina…
Getting to Argentina was a multi-day journey of buses, cars, planes and a whole lot of sitting, but finally making it to Buenos Aires makes all of the travel time worth it. When I first arrived, I was taken aback by the massive size of the city. Though I knew it was one of the biggest cities in the world, with 2.891 million people, I was not fully prepared for how sprawling Buenos Aires is, and how many places there are to get lost or to explore. As a native of Richmond, Virginia, population of 223,170, the difference took a lot of adjusting at first. I felt very lost because I did not understand how the city fit together and how to navigate it. In my experiences in Europe and even in the United States, it has always been fairly easy to find the ‘center’ of the city, where everything happens and the point from which everything else radiates out. However, not having this point of orientation in Buenos Aires was difficult for me, since we were just taken to our neighborhood on the first day and not to the more central areas.
However, once we finally began to explore the city, I was able to figure out the cultural and colorful centers of Buenos Aires, and see the spots that I am excited to revisit and explore more. Simply wandering around, somehow makes any place seem more like home. Now that I have my feet planted firmly on the ground, I am excited to make Buenos Aires my new home!