A Jumble of Thoughts

If you want to read about the adventures of a confident and put-together young woman, then please, skip this post. I have a lot of thoughts zooming through my brain and I need to get them out. I warn you now potential and past employers or professors.

Panic

This is my most prevalent emotion. I have been going to sleep later and later every night this week. I doubt I will sleep much tomorrow night (I am that person who can't sleep the night before the first day of school/something else that is important). I have a little over 24 hours to finish packing everything. And then I have to weigh it to make sure my suitcase is under 50 lbs. Packing overwhelms me. I have avoided completing my packing list because I keep getting stuck on quantities. That, and I thought I could just wing it. Throw the stuff I like into my suitcase and then take stuff out in order to make it weigh less. And then I should double check that I have everything. And then I have to spend as much time with my parents as possible. I do not usually get homesick, but I already miss them. Why does going far away make everything harder?

Confusion

Someone gave me advice today. Really, my parents asked him to give me/them advice today. He told me common sense things that I was already planning on doing anyway. At first I was disappointed. After all, what's the point in receiving advice from someone older if it's not new or insightful beyond what I had already thought? But I couldn't ask for him to try again. That would be rude. Instead, I flipped my thinking. I took his words as an confirmation of my own beliefs. It's always good to be reminded that I am on the right track.

Agitation

I wanted to be finished packing by now. I wanted to clean my room over break. I had plenty of time, so why are neither of these things done? 

Excitement

For most of the past few months, I have been excited. I know I am going to have a wonderful time. I know I am going to improve my Spanish and learn new things and get lost and meet people who will change my life. 

Packing...With Help from the Internet

Of course I have to do research before I pack. I am a very nervous packer; I tend to overpack and stay up late the night before a trip to put everything in my suitcase. To avoid doing this before the biggest trip of my life, I have compiled a few resources. Some of them are Argentina-specific, others are more general. I have been saving links to Pinterest since last summer.

1. Should I Pack It?  a flowchart to determine whether or not something should go into your suitcase. If you let this guide your thought process behind packing, you are set!
2. How to Fit Your Life into 2 Suitcases  I have a lot of stuff, and, depending on how many suitcases I decide to take limited room and only 50 - 100 lbs. worth of weight. The Study Abroad Blog provides helpful tips about how to pack with limited space.
3. A very thorough packing list by The Study Abroad Blog. I found this helpful because he includes a suggested quantity. I am getting so tripped up by not knowing HOW MUCH to bring. 
4. What to Wear in Buenos Aires. Since I have never been there before, I found Travel Fashion Girl's descriptions of what to wear in each season to be very helpful. Now I have a general idea of what I will be wearing and what the weather will be like. 
5.  What is the Weather like in Buenos Aires? I feel like this should be self-explanatory. 
6. 1 Trick That Will Change the way you Pack Forever. Don't believe me? Watch the video.

The good news? Buenos Aires has a much more temperate climate than Maryland! This means that I don't have to pack for extreme weathers. Their summers are relatively cooler (80 degrees instead of 100) and their winters are relatively warmer (40 degrees instead of 20). So I am packing for climates that I am used to (think spring and fall in the mid-Atlantic region).

Life is Moving All Around Me

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life -- it goes on"

Robert Frost

 Although I feel like my life has been temporarily stopped over this past month, Facebook tells me that other people are still moving. Through looking at my friends' Facebook posts, Snapchats, and talking to them I can that they are back at school or already at their study abroad destinations. And let me tell you, realizing this is bizarre. After all, I am the center of my own universe. I say this because I am only constantly aware of myself; other people drift in and out for various amounts of time. And that's fine. I think this might be how most people view the world. 

So, it is strange to see that even though I am missing from my friends' lives, they still move on. I never expected them to stop in time. I do not know what I expected them to do. Obviously they can't stop and send me messages every day saying "I miss you. Come back into my life." 

I wish I could be there with them, experiencing new things for the first time and falling into routines. I miss being in close proximity to my friends on campus. It is a lot easier for me to stay updated on someone's life when you do not have to expend a lot of effort to see them.

For the past month, I have felt like time was standing still. I got into a routine of going to sleep early and waking up early. I spent most of my time at work. I acted really mature and responsible. My motto for February was "work hard now, play hard later." I watched other people mix their work and their play (school during the week, fun on the weekends) and just kept looking forward to that day when my life could move forward. I am constantly reminded that other people never paused. 

Now, I am too busy to compare my situation to others. I have to look forward, and pack! My time for fun is almost here!

Thank Goodness for Public Transportation

But really, you don't think about it until you need it (or until you start working in places where they try to improve it). And lately, I've been needing it.

I live in a house that shares 2 cars between 3 drivers. As the youngest driver, by default I get the car less. So I have to rely on my parents, or my friends, driving me places. Is anyone else having flashbacks to their middle school/early high school days? (I chose this time period because you're old enough to want to go places on your own, but not quite able to get there.) Unless, of course, I took the bus. 

That's it for local transportation, but what about going a farther distance? Enter Megabus , Metro, and another regional bus service. Thanks to them, I have been able to spend my extra month of winter break visiting my boyfriend, and other friends at University of Delaware, UMBC, and DC. (Shoutout to my dad for driving me to bus/train stations a lot!) It's fantastic because I feel this sense of urgency knowing that I will not be able to see my friends until at least July. Right now, July sounds very far away and I miss them all a lot. 

In fact, today I met a friend in DC. She lives in Northern Virginia and I live somewhere in Maryland, so DC is our middle ground. The best way to get there is via Metro. We visited 2 museums (Crime & Punishment and American Art Gallery/National Portrait), ate, chatted, walked. It was wonderful. We don't see each other often, so when we do it needs to be for at least a day. There was so much for both of us to say that it was hard to fit everything in. For me, it was hard just to start. 

The only drawback was that I had to wait 15-20 minutes for each of my trains today. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the DC Metro system, that is a long time. But I was too excited and tired to really be concerned. 
Also, proof that Megabus is not awful; my trip earlier this month was only 20 minutes late even though the highway we were driving on was a puddle of slush. It started snowing halfway through the 2.5 hour trip. 

Suggested reading:  Why Bus Travel is much Better Than you Think it is 

Let the Countdown Begin!!

Not like I haven't been ticking the days off in my head. One by one, they go so slowly. Now that I finally have one week remaining -- yes, in exactly a week, I will be in a plane on my way to Argentina. -- it's hard to pull myself out of "oh, I still have plenty of time" mode. Although I have less than a week before biggest trip of my life, I lack a sense of urgency. I have to constantly remind myself that THIS IS HAPPENING SOON. I HAVE TO START MOVING NOW.

Today was my last day of work. At 5:10, I had to log of of everything, turn off my computer, push myself out of the chair, put on my coat, and say goodbye to everyone. I usually prefer to sneak out the front door promptly at 5. Today, I said "goodbye" and "thanks for having me" and "let's keep in touch." I enjoyed working at FITP. It was different from my usual desk job. The work was interesting and the people were  friendly. What more could I ask for? (besides a cabinet full of tea, which they had).

I gave myself a week of not working to pack, clean, and sleep before my big trip. I am going to have to stay focused in order to complete everything that MUST get done with the time remaining. I did not do too much during the past month.

So, for the sake of organizing my brain, here is my to-do list for now until Thursday:

1. do more research on Buenos Aires/Argentina (country/city history and reading that guidebook)
2. laundry - wash everything
3. figure out how much of each thing I should pack
4. sort my clothes into "take" or "not take"
5. pack clothing
6. pack other things 
7. weigh and re-weight suitcase to make sure it is within the weight limit
8. finish cleaning my bathroom
9. clean my room
10. clean out that toaster 
11. spend time with my parents and my aunt
12. make a LinkedIn account
13. update my resume (and see if someone from my college's Career Services department can look at it via email)

What's in a Name?

"That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet"
(Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare)

Yes, I did just quote Shakespeare. No, I did not cite my quote in proper MLA format. I have been in winter break mode for 2 months; I think I forgot what that is. 

This is my first post, so I figure the best place to start is with an introduction. "What is your name?" is the first question I typically ask people. So, it will be the first one I answer. I will talk about two names: my own, and the city where I will be living for the next few months. 

Arielle

My name is Arielle. My friends call me Ary; you can too if you want to be my friend. Anyway, I really like my name. It's Hebrew, but the spelling is French. My parents decided to do that because my mom thought the -elle ending made the (commonly male) name more feminine. 

Unfortunately, this makes my name utterly unpronouncable to someone speaking Spanish. In Spanish, you pronounce each letter, and the double L is pronounced as an "ey" (as in hey), and in Argentine Spanish it's "sh". So, put that all together and you get A-ri-esh-e. Yeah, I don't know what to do with that either. (Thanks mom!) 

What am I going to do about this? My first idea is to hope that people will just happen to know how to pronounce -elle. If not, I will do what I always do and say my name whenever I sense someone's tongue is about to trip.

Buenos Aires

According to spanishdict.com, Buenos Aires means...Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina. Thanks for nothing online translator. Using my knowledge of Spanish, I can deduce that Buenos Aires roughly translates into "good air." It is a port city, so having good air would be important to the people who named it way back when. After all, they needed wind to move their ships in the right direction. 

Fun fact: Buenos Aires is just the shortened version of the city's given name. Spanish conquistador Juan de Garay named the settlement Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Nuestra Senora la Virgen María de los Buenos Aires ("City of the Most Holy Trinity and Port of Saint Mary of the Good Airs"). I am so glad someone decided to shorten it.