đź“ŤBuenos Aires, Argentina, 7.23.25

Landing in Argentina felt something like a hug. Strange, though the air was cold and I tossed my hat on as soon as the wind chill hit me outside the arrivals gate, that it felt far warmer than DC. DC is the definition of hell-frozen-over. Scorching choking humidity and empty soulless void. I was glad to leave and glad to break the hypnosis of monotony. 

I grabbed a coffee and sat for a while. It was 10am in Buenos Aires, and I wasn’t in any rush. What’s always with the rush? Today I turned 26, which means this year is the last year to eternalize myself in the 27 Club. I can slow down for a moment. Take a moment. I think once I’m 27 I won’t think about dying as much, but probably that’s not true. 27 feels a lot different than 26, like by then I’ll feel like an adult or something. If I make it. Prognosis is dim. 

The Uber was an hour, 22,000 pesos. That’s $17 today, though it could be different tomorrow. The Argentine peso is on a roller coaster ride by the minute, skyrocketing in the morning and dropping by the evening. Nobody can keep up. The Milei administration will keep weakening all the currency controls for those IMF bailouts, and the peso will zigzag its little heart out. “Bailouts.” I can already see the self-described anarcho-capitalist sitting for tea with Trump while they recite tales of tariff love tragedies and economic flagellation, oh but I thought it would work and maybe if you squint really hard, it will look as if it helped a person or two. 

I stared at the buildings as we drove down the highway, and the radio played something by Miley Cyrus. I tried not to feel guilty for how cheap the Uber felt, and promised myself to leave a big tip. I felt my self-awareness snap back to me in a single second and realized I was in Argentina–how did I get here? Why did I come? Had I been sleepwalking through all my decisions of the past month? Who lets me make decisions? I’m only 26, that’s not an adult—is it? What am I doing? 

That only ever lasts a few short moments, then I relax back into existence and go on with it. I had things to do, like meet Adriana, the owner of the apartment I was staying at. I texted her and she met me at the door. She’s an artist, and the entirety of her first floor is a studio where she spends her days painting, teaching classes, and blasting American rock music. She lives upstairs and rents out the other two rooms to women passing through on a short-term basis. Between the front door and my room, there are five keyholes that need unlocking. And the keys are those big chunky antique-looking things that click around chaotically before finally locking in. It must take me at least ten minutes to get from my room to the great outdoors. I’ve never been good with keys. 

The first thing I noticed was Adriana’s fluff of dyed-blond hair, then the bloated upper lip of traveling filler, and finally the two brown watercolor eyes. She spoke stilted English, but her aura was entirely maternal, and when she kissed me on the cheek, I felt safe.

Inside, I was greeted by a flurry of other women—a young girl with a velcro bang roller strung haphazardly in her hair and zero social anxiety, two older women—her mother and grandmother visiting from New York. Beside her at the table was a girl from Kazakhstan, late 30s perhaps, a little awkward, who was moving out of the room I was moving into. I sat with them, and they piled morning biscuits onto a plate for me. I spoke too loudly, fever-brained and happy, unexpecting of the warm welcome and birthday wishes. I thought I’d be spending my birthday alone, wandering the Buenos Aires streets like a half-awake zombie, but the girls had other plans. It was my birthday and a Wednesday, and that meant we were going out.

I still zombied around the streets for a while, sticking close to the Palermo neighborhood. The roads were pretty cobblestone, and I wandered into every other coffee shop for a hit of caffeine to keep my legs working. I took the city in through bleary eyes and adrenaline fatigue, and I really don’t remember the half of it. Then, nap.

That night, after a couple of hours of drinking wine and playing music with Adriana, Amanda and Ari took me to an event called Mundolingo. The bar was two blocks down, and by the time we got there around 1am, it was full and spilling out on the street. We held hands and shoved our way inside. They bought me a glass of wine—though I was at least half a bottle in already—and we gathered back outside. Everyone wore little flag stickers on their shirts to mark their country or language. I spotted an Israeli flag almost immediately and ignored his attempt at dialogue. I can’t say I had any particularly interesting conversations that stood out to me, but I met people from Europe, around South America, and some Argentine locals. I tried to ask questions about Argentinian socialism, the Dirty Wars, and all that, but nothing substantive came back to me. A Peruvian called me “political baby girl” in a way that I found very off-putting. Culturally, as Amanda says, men seem to be “forward” in a way that I find pushy and uncomfortable. 

When we got home, Amanda cooked Kraft Mac n Cheese that her mom brought her from the states. We ate it out of mugs.Â