A pre-covid memoir of sun-kissed Buenos Aires.
Originally published on my personal blog in 2020.
“3… 2… 1… On behalf of the cabin crew, I’d like to wish everyone a happy New Year!” The plane erupted into sleepy applause, awaking some people who had dozed off — me included. It was the start of 2020, and I was spending the turn of the decade on a red-eye flight from London to Buenos Aires. I had just wrapped up my semester in Germany and, after a brief layover in the UK, was jetting off to city number 5/7 of the Minerva rotation.
As the plane descended, I squinted out of the blinding window towards my first glimpse of Argentina. Endless acres of lush, green pastures came into view. It was a welcomed change to the ever-grey Berlin scenery (sorry Berlin, I didn’t love you and you really deserved better.) I glanced back the notes app I had open on my phone with a new page titled “2020.” The blinking cursor stared back. New Year’s resolution time, or something, right? I quickly typed out “2020 Goals” and then instinctively backspaced and restarted: “2020 Smart Goals:” — academia’s doing. I finished typing out some more specific smart goals about academics, health, and finances for the semester before I could feel the familiar drop-in-altitude-jolt in my stomach as we prepared for our final descent.
I had luckily flown on the same flight as multiple other Minerva students, so I shared a taxi cab with 3 others from the Airport to our residence hall — tiredly, but excitedly, discussing our bucket lists for the semester, making plans with each other that we all knew had a 50/50 chance of follow-through, and giving unsolicited advice on navigating the city from our trusted sources of “I actually heard that…”
When we arrived in the city, things were eerily quiet. It was New Years day, so many stores were closed, surprisingly even the supermarkets. Someone said they knew of a Chinese grocery store a couple blocks away that was open, so I set to find something other than the Alfajores we received at check-in to eat. Grocery shopping for the first time in a new country is always an adventure; I picked up a package of wannabe oatmeal (which would end up slouching in the corner of my cupboard), a couple single-serve yogurts that looked friendly enough, and milk in a strange plastic carton — it would have to do for now. I would come to learn that grocery stores in the city were… dull, to put it generally. Or maybe the psychedelic-esque packaging of Trader Joe’s (which I greatly missed) had just ruined my eye-buds.
That unassuming first day would bleed into a stream of many memories over the next couple months — some tearful, some magnificent, but mostly warm and pleasant. It was one of the first countries where I was determined to learn the language (or should I say, revive the ghost of my 5th grade Spanish skills), so I started taking Spanish lessons that first week. It was slow progress, and I always defaulted to similar-sounding french words — thanks to my 7-years of French training, which still has not proven a worthy use-case — but I enjoyed the non-collegiate mental strain. My roommate, Tara, and I put up a poster of common Spanish phrases on our wall and would quiz each other on the days of the week from time to time. In those first couple weeks, I went to my first asado, visited a neighboring town — Tigre, and got hooked on “tre-de-de” — the potentially sacrilegious drink of mate leaves steeped in orange juice instead of water.
Classes started picking up, and I found myself in the familiar grind of staying up late doing readings and writing essays. I joined a project with Unilever on improving their employer brand, laid the foundations for my senior capstone project, and worked virtually with an SF-based startup to grow their newsletter subscribers. The first month flew by, as it normally does, and I felt a decent sense of routine in my life.
February break rolled around and I joined a spontaneous trip to the ocean with 4 of my friends. We rented a car, drove to Mar Del Plata — 5 hours south of the city — and stayed in a cottagecore-aestetic AirBnb with a horse-shoe shaped pool out back. One night, we went star-gazing near the ocean armed only with a handful of blankets and our iPhone flashlights to navigate. We laid in the sand on a small hill near the ocean, listening to the waves, to each other, and to someone’s Spotify playlist in the background. It had been a while since I’d seen clear stars in the sky (a rarity in the cities of course.) About an hour in, we noticed a light faintly glowing on the side of a far-away cliff. We thought it might be a ship slowly coming over the horizon, but it seemed too bright for that. For a few brief moments, we were scared. Was it a rogue car? A lighthouse? A UFO? The light kept growing — a warm, amber glow until its massive spherical figure emerged quite suddenly atop the hill. It was the moonrise. The most brilliant, magnificent one I’d ever seen — unbridled by any buildings or light pollution that usually gets in the way so we don’t notice her until she’s in the sky, already risen and small. I will never forget the radiance of that moment and the silent awe as we watched.
Those blissful few days in Mar Del Plata abruptly ended with Monday morning classes and more assignments that piled on. Soon, it was March. (Yes, March 2020.) And I had no idea how my life, the world, would change in a couple weeks. My immediate concerns involved the 3 assignments due the next week, applying for summer internships, and deciding which flavor of gelato I would get each night. (I still dream about those gelato places these days and wish I had known the time it would be my last. Rappanui — I’ll be back for you.)
My fateful, penultimate day in the city — March 14th — started out rather normally. Rumblings of the coronavirus had softly been making its way into the daily conversation. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary — you know, like global-pandemic-about-to-explode.
I woke up that Friday to a news notification that Trump would be holding a press conference on the Coronavirus Pandemic, but I was mostly focused on the fact that I was running late to a tour & meeting with the Ministry of Education — an event that Minerva had organized for a group of about 15 of us passionate about education reform. We took a bus over to the Ministry’s office building, purposefully located in a well-known slum, to stand as a physical representation of the social divides they hoped to dissolve through increased education equity. It was humbling to be there. We all packed into a bright conference room, where one of the secretaries jokingly offered us hand sanitizer to, “stop the spread.” A couple of us laughed and accepted it just for kicks. If only we knew.
As we left the building at around three in the afternoon, the coronavirus rumblings got louder. “Are you thinking of going home?” someone asked me.
“You mean back to the residence hall? or like, home home?”
“Yeah, like back to the US… Because the virus?”
I remember shaking my head — “Argentina doesn’t even have a single case yet. If anything, I’d be down to ride it out and stay here over the summer.”
When I got back to my dorm room, my parents called. They were worried I might get stuck in Argentina. I opened the news app to see the headline “BREAKING: TRUMP BANS FLIGHTS FROM EUROPE.” Shoot. Things were getting serious.
The next 24 hours were a painful blur; I booked a horribly-overpriced one-way flight to Denver for the the next evening. Then went out to get last-minute gifts, stocked up on alfajores and mate, and packed up all my belongings in under two hours. Everyone was in full panic mode. Some of my classmates’ home countries had already closed their borders to citizens and they were stuck in Buenos Aires indefinitely. There were lots of tears and a collective sense of denial — this could not really be happening, right? This is all going to blow over in a couple weeks, right??
When it came time to leave for my flight, a group of my friends who hadn’t left yet met me in the lobby to say goodbye. The scene of them waving tearful goodbyes as my taxi pulled away is permanently etched into my brain. I took a deep, wavering breath and settled into my seat, trying not to cry. I didn’t look back. I should have.
I write this from my quiet Colorado neighborhood with little certainty over my future plans or when I’ll see my classmates again. I recently read an Atlantic article that said we’d likely forget what it was like to live during the peaks of the pandemic — when all the days seems to blur together and there aren’t any significant milestones to mark the passage of time. So I’ve been documenting snippets here and there. The days do seem to blur together. Virtual birthday parties are one of the rare events that seems to be time markers for me. I’ve read a lot of books, made some quarantine-hype recipes, and gone on regular walks with my parents. Sometimes, I open my bag of mate to make a cup of tea and the strong, bitter-sweet smell gives me pause. Because, just for a brief moment, all the memories come flooding back — the smell of fresh-baked medialunas and just-ground coffee. The charming, slightly-peeling buildings marred by colorful trees. The trip to the ocean. The lively chatter of the radio stations from Uber rides where I’d mentally high-five myself if I could understand small snippets.
The little things I took for granted.
