Why I didn't sleep last night

It's Facebook's fault.

It's crazy. Super Crazy. I've been on the internet for a long time and this is the craziest thing ever. It might be worse than USENET and vBulletin. No, I know it is. 

In this case, I could not stop thinking of Argentina. I live a homey little life where most of my travels keep me within a one-day drive of home, if that, but there was a time in my life where I had my one great international adventure and at that time I went to Argentina.

Through my father's world travels, he came to the understanding that to truly appreciate another country and its culture, a person really needed to live there. Our community hosted an active American Field Service network and somehow we connected into it. My father had a few conditions to my participation: I could not go to an English-speaking country. He felt those were too much like home. I think he said I could not go to Europe, either, because he figured I would be willing to travel there in my lifetime. I remember a "Europe" restriction. I studied Spanish in high school so I decided I wanted a Spanish speaking country. That left: South America. I could have gone for any length of time that I wanted but I did not want to be away from my family for an entire year or really any part of a school year. I selected the summer program which would take me to another country for 8 weeks.

There was a long interview process that included an all-day "group" interview. What I remember most clearly from that process was being dropped in Redondo Beach with a group of strangers, no knowledge of the area and a handful of cash. We were instructed to find lunch to-go for ourselves and the interview team. We were sent with a member of the interview team to "make sure we didn't get lost" but I was rather sure that she would be "reporting" back to them what she saw. 

Immediately another girl and I took over. We counted how much money we had and asked if anyone knew the area. No one did. But I knew where Pacific Coast Highway was and figured it was a big enough street that there might be food there. We marched towards PCH, found a Kentucky Fried Chicken, bought lunch and went back to the interview. Later I when we found out our placements, some of the quiet members of the group ended up with assignments like... Turkey. (They had also asked for Spanish speaking countries.) I liked to think my initiative got me Argentina. It was an awesome placement. I was excited to go and our local AFS chapter was excited for me.

Some reading this may have never met me. Some may have not seen me in person for decades. Others only know me as an old woman with children. For the latter two groups, you may not believe what I am about to say: PerkyMommy today is sedate and calm and rational and composed and quiet and refined compared to 17-year-old Perky-Not-Yet-A-Mommy.

Oh, it's true. Today I know how to hold my tongue. I've learned a lot of lessons and Doc has mellowed me quite a bit. Imagine Mr. Genius, a few IQ points lower, a bit less self-esteem, all of the impulsive naivete and loaded with estrogen. Yeah, that was me.

And they put me on an airplane and said "Go to Argentina!" I know. What were they THINKING?

Well that was the only thing I could think about last night. 

I thought about sitting for 12 hours in a small terminal in an airport in Paraguay with natives wanting us to pay them to take their pictures.

But mostly I thought about my host family.

I thought about my five "brothers" and one "sister" and their wonderful parents. I thought about my host mother and her amazing food. Even at 17, it was all about the food. People in the United States who think that Dulce de Leche is a flavor of ice cream or a coffee drink have no clue. None. They're wannabes. They deserve an eyeroll.

I thought about the rugby player I had a huge crush on and the night he and his friend "rescued" me at the discotheque. I thought about going to school and church. I thought about the trip we took to Buenos Aires. I thought about a lot of embarrassing things that I just won't be posting about because I was 17 but I was a really really young 17. I thought about a lot of funny things that happened - we laughed a lot. I learned what a cama turca is. 

And I thought about how wonderful gracious my host family was to welcome me into their home - they already had a pile of teenagers in a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom modest home and they took in a crazy 17-year-old girl from the United States on top of it all! (Ok, I wasn't the craziest girl from the US that summer/winter. The girl from Newport Beach was way worse.)

But I wondered if anyone would be interested in reading about my 22 year old stories of Argentina. Actually, it doesn't matter if anyone is or not, I plan to write about them. 

I'll start with a gracious story - no worries, the funny stories are coming, I'm just hoping to get some photos scanned to go with them.

The community had a special pet name for principal of the school that most of my host-family attended: La Chancha. This translates to: The Sow. A Female Pig. She was stern and not very hospitable. She was also very leary of AFS exchange students. The previous year, AFS had placed a young woman from France in the community and she had been quite... promiscuous. La Chancha rationalized that if the French girl was like that, the girls from the United States would be much worse. And there were three of us who wished to attend the school.

The first school day that I was with my host family, we all went down to the school. And by we I mean, my host parents, my host siblings, the host parents of the two other girls, our three AFS counselors and me. As if these adults didn't have jobs to go to and other things to do with their time. But they all came on our behalf.

We sat in the office to await our audience with La Chancha. You would think she was the Pope or something as self-important as she was. But our host parents were so gracious to give up their time to fight for us. I do not remember what happened that morning but I remember that we returned home. La Chancha was not ready to accept us but we could come back the next day. 

Now, in Argentine public schools, the students wore pinafores over their clothes. At the elementary level, everyone wore them, at the secondary level, just the girls did. They were white long sleeved "dresses" which zippered in the back, had little colors at the top and pleated skirts at the bottom. Although it was summer in the US, it was winter in Argentina and the girls bundled up. Under the pinafores, girls wore a shirt and pants and over the pinafores, many wore a sweater and/or a jacket. If you saw a girl going to school, you would see a girl wearing a sweater and jeans, with a bit of pleated skirt poking out from her waist to her knees, over the jeans.

La Chancha insisted that if we were to attend the school, we must wear the pinafores. So the next day we returned to the school and again our host parents sat in the office waiting for an audience with La Chancha. The parents pleaded our cases. They promised that we would be good girls, we would not be promiscuous and we would wear our pinafores every day. I can report that my host-parents were able to keep their promise to La Chancha. And the Thumper principle will keep me from ratting out the girl from Newport Beach.

Eventually, La Chancha was convinced and I began to attend school with my host sister every day. 

I do have a few regrets from my trip. I wish I had tried harder to learn better Spanish. I wish I had paid more attention in classes. But the students were very, very kind to me and I can't think of any of them without smiling. 

I have never stopped thinking about my host family and I have always maintained some distant level of contact with at least my host sister. But thanks to Facebook, I've been reconnected in unexpected ways. I poured through dozens of pictures of my host family over the past day and so instead of focusing on anything I should be doing, like housework or business work or cooking or sleeping, I have been obsessing about my memories of Argentina