dónde el corazón es.

I might just be overly emotional from watching Rachel Getting Married and listening to too much Bon Iver, but I'm ready to come home.

I somehow skipped the standard homesick stage the first two months of my trip. This is probably due to my general flexibility and ability to accept change, but a feeling's been creeping up on me the last week or two. It feels like I've done my Argentine thing and that now it's time for me to get back to my city and the people I love.

The Spanish language is beautiful. It's far more melodic than English, and it suits how quickly I talk but I'm ready to be able to communicate with others without having to translate in my head first. Saying something in Castellano correctly is gratifying, but my true love is always going to be the English language. I miss having conversation skills more advanced than a 3rd grader. I find it hard to establish an actual friendship with Argentines beyond small talk because both sides lack the skills to talk about more than where we're from and what we're studying. I miss having the ability to be sarcastic. I miss wordplay and puns, as my English is so frequently peppered with them, whether they're bad or good. I miss analyzing the small nuances of language because here I'm preoccupied with just trying to figure out the language as a whole. I miss understanding everything I read, see and hear. This may just be laziness, but it's hard to go from being extremely capable at everyday interactions with others and the world around me to being an infant who still gets excited when she manages to get her point across the way she wanted to.

I miss my family so much. The dysfunctional family interactions in Rachel Getting Married, not being home for Easter and an hour long Skype chat got to me a lot today. I miss calling my mom to talk about nothing. With the difficulty of communicating frequently from South America, it feels like every phone call has to have a purpose -- I have to fill them in on exactly what I've been doing, where I've been, how school is, and other black and white details of my life. I miss being able to call just to tell my mom about a cute kid I saw, or to text my sister about something stupid that made me laugh, or to call my dad every single morning, just to have someone to talk to while I'm walking to school. I want to be home to see my sister go to prom for the first time, and to convince her that her hair really isn't as bad as she thinks it is. (It won't be, El. Everyone's hair looks terrible for prom.) I want to continue my mom, sister and I's tradition of drinking coffee, eating cookies in the front row and becoming overly emotional as we watch my dad finish the marathon, something that's so important to him. And yes, we're very aware of how ridiculous it is that we sit and eat cookies while we watch him run. I want to wake up, drink coffee with my mom and do the crossword, while we both pretend to be gracious about the other one doing it. I want to sit and watch TV with my dad, while he falls asleep and then pretends he didn't, because it's so incredibly comforting and peaceful to just be with someone.

I want my fantastic network of friends to play a more prominent role in my life again. Two line messages on Facebook and Twitter only get me so far. I want face to face conversations, and I want wine nights where everyone tries to sound smarter than they actually are, and I want physical human contact. God, I miss hugs. I've met some amazing people on this trip, but it's a group of individuals who were smashed together in a foreign country and almost forced to be friends. It took me about 20 years to find friends that I work with, and now that I have, I am so so grateful for them. I want a repeat of last summer. Sitting on Claire's couch at UC and drinking wine on Sara's porch seemed like the most natural thing in the world. After only a few months of friendship, I felt more comfortable at their respective houses than I did at my own. Granted, Melrose wasn't exactly a palace, but friendship that you fall into that easily doesn't come around very often. I am so excited about living with them this year because that too feels like the most natural thing in the world. I can't really imagine not doing it. I do, however, miss my roommates right now and even the high level of energy that goes along with them. I miss making a giant pot of coffee and sitting on our shitty couches watching Sex and the City in the morning. And then making another pot. And another. I want to have another Norwegian Potluck with Claire, Michael, Nick and Corey. I might even bring something other than Swedish fish. I miss making indie jokes. A girl on my program asked me what indie meant a few days ago. I want to be able to text John every little thing that pops into my head, just because I can. I want to have game night. I want to take too many pictures at Pink House, which will now always be referred to as La Casa Rosada after this trip. I miss Wednesday nights. I want to eat too much Chinese food and pretend that I'm going to do homework in a litttttle bit, as I soak up my best friends instead.

I miss Minneapolis in the spring. Campus gets a different air about it -- a feeling of freshness and excitement that I love. I want to see people wearing shorts when it's 45 degrees out, as only Midwesterners can, because they're so thrilled about the first signs that the eternal winter is over. I want to go running in the slush, and when it warms up, I want to sit in the grass outside the Alumni Center, doing absolutely nothing, just being and observing and enjoying. I want to ignore the bus and walk to school from my house, just for the thrill that listening to my iPod on a crisp Minnesotan day brings me.

I miss being able to walk into a restaurant and being able to order a glass of water, without having to buy a bottle of it. I miss cups of coffee that are bigger than 'an ant's ass,' as Calla so eloquently calls the thimbles that pass for coffee cups here. I miss being able to walk into a Barnes & Noble and waste the day away in my favorite way. I'm so deprived of US media that I almost bought a Vanity Fair magazine a few days ago for US $25. I miss knowing about and somewhat understanding pop culture. I miss the food. Oh god, I miss the food. Argentina has incredible pizza and steak, but other than that, you can basically either have a ham sandwich or a ham and egg sandwich. Going into an American grocery store for the first time is going to be a very overwhelming experience for yours truly.

I'm listening to all 146 songs on my iTunes that involve the word 'home' in the song or album title. This has to be healthy.

This post has the potential to seem whiny, but it isn't...it's nostalgic. I love Argentina and have learned so many things on this experience -- about this culture, about the United States and the impact it has on the rest of the world, and about myself and the way that I behave when I'm placed in a completely foreign situation.

But most of all, I've developed a new appreciation for where I'm from and the people I've surrounded myself with. So here's to the city that I love and the people that I love even more.

And here's to attempting to write my actual thoughts down on paper more often. It's so much easier for me to just comment on other people's thoughts.

I love you.
Megan