Bye Bye Buenos Aires

Laying in my bed 2 days before, we fly off for a 6 month adventure, am thinking how exciting.

After 2 plus years of living in Buenos Aires, I will leave my temporary home on Montevideo in Recoletta for the great unknown and uneasy feeling of travel.

Yes unknown and uneasy. To wake up in a country, that speaks a different language and moves very rapidly without time for thinking will make me uneasy. As I have  gotten used to the pace of this city, which is tranquilo. The biggest traffic snafus here are caused by the daily protests in the city in locations from the Pink Palace, to Congresso to the Obelisco.

The street music here is not the rhythms of bachata or tango but the cacophony of car and taxi horns announcing the lack of movement in the street .The horns blair at the slightest provocation. Stopping. Starting up.

This morning it is quiet. No bus traffic or truck traffic but then it is only 8.03 am.

Am leaving in 2 days.
The apartment has been returned to the original stated condition with decorative black and white illustrations on the walls and the beautiful dance floor is loosely covered by a white long haired fake rug.

It’s no longer mine.

And as it was expression of my creativity and my dance studio, with a large mirror on the floor to follow your feet and large tango fotos on the wall to inspire your feet. It is now pretty sterile.

Am ready to leave, to travel to places both known and unknown.

The difference is now I no longer travel alone. I have a wonderful, sweet and kind man in my life.  We laugh a lot, we dance a lot and we love a lot.

But yet it still feels odd saying we are traveling for 6 months.

Has the pandemic really ended?

Are we living in an endemic world?

Now we are maskless, we are naked and exposed again. Will illness mount up again ? Are 4 vaccines enough? Did you get the flu shot? How’s your immune system?

Theses are the questions running thru my brain.

Yes I am packed,  yes I have a big suitcase abd a small one both for checkin. Can’t remember the last time I did this as I usually prefer not to check-in.  But. But. But.

Leaving BsAs has required a different approach.  Dancing tango requires shoes and clothes.  Clothes are not a problem as they are soft and made from rollable materials,  but the topic of shoes…I am traveling with 6 pairs.  Is this too much, or too little or as I think just right?

Leaving in two days.
Time to have a another dinner and drink with a dear friend. Time to
consider what makes us happy.

Time to realize that your once sharp edges are now much less pointed. Time enough to realize,  you no longer enjoy life in the fast lane of life. Time enough to realize that it really is the little things in life that you have some control over, and that the most  important things are the occasions that you laugh with your friend, that you smile, that you take the time to savor your life.

To tell people yes they are important to you and yes they will be missed.

To say, life is lived without regrets takes dedication and awareness of self and others.

I am ready to travel again.
Here we go…love, life and tango.