Weekend Tourist

I’ve been having kind of a tough time lately. What with working, studying, and still trying to adapt to this culture, it has been a bit frustrating. Another problem is that it’s been pretty hard for me to find a good group of local friends. The problem with having expat friends is that at some point they go home. But even with the few that I know, we can’t hang out all the time because of differing schedules, and it leaves me to scramble to find things to do on the weekend.

But I remind myself frequently that things were not easy in Ecuador for a long time, and it took me months and months to really get comfortable and make more friends, though by the end I had given up on meeting new Ecuadorians, and instead was hanging out more frequently with other expats. Yet Argentinians still remain stand-offish and seemingly unwilling to befriend any foreigner, at least in general any way.

So I’ve been thinking of what I can do to improve my mood. One of the things that makes me happy the most is traveling. It’s freeing to have an afternoon beer at a café while touring some new land with a few friends. But short of that, you can at least experience something new. I don’t really have the chance to travel far away, but Buenos Aires is a huge city with lots more to see than the average traveler gets in.

I planned out some spots worth checking out that I’ve been too busy to see so far. Instead of just hanging out on the weekends I’m going to make an effort to go to these places, camera in hand, as if I’m a tourist. So even if I live here, it will at least be something new and interesting worth seeing. Next month I’m taking the GRE, and once that’s finally over with I can breath easily. But until then, I’m going to stop going out late on the weekends to prepare better. So that means during the day I won’t have to worry about feeling lousy and can wander around the city more, all as the weather gets better.

This upcoming weekend I’m going to try to head out to Tigre, a town north of the city known for its muddy water ways and houses on stilts. It used to be a weekend retreat for the rich and elite, and also the place where my grandparents spent their honeymoon. I was told to wait until the weather is nice for a visit there, and it couldn’t be any better at this point in time. Other than that, there are some museums and cultural sights that I’m going to check out. And hopefully this will help me feel better, and maybe meet some other people that way too.