¡A Salta!

So I'm going to pick up where I left off, more or less (events correspond to November of 2009):

I've made a huge mistake. If I've learned anything so far it's that risking the appearance of having the intelligence of a four-year-old by asking more questions is better than assuming you know what's going on. In the end, you'll feel like a four-year-old when what you understood was terribly wrong. I learned the hard way that just because you buy a bus ticket at the terminal, does not necessarily mean that that bus leaves from the same terminal, or even the same town. I learned the hard way that if you miss your bus, there is no way to get your money back. And, I learned the hard way that it's stupid to call a up a company expecting them to help you when the error was so clearly personal (5 minutes and 9 pesos later).

So I played it off to just about everyone that I had actually bought my ticket for the next day, "surprising" my friends by having an extra night and day to hang out. The next day, I did the right (obvious?) thing by taking the earlier, smaller bus to the bigger town to take the bigger bus. Fortunately, as opposed to some of my experiences on buses in 2008, the ride was very comfortable. Not excessively hot, no pirated movies playing full-blast, and a relatively clean bathroom. I even slept for a significant portion of it, which I can't even do on planes! And the view coming into Salta was stunning. Although I had already visited Salta before, this entrance (from the South, instead of the East) gave an overlook of nearly the entire city, the towers of the cathedrals rising high above Salta's mostly low-rise skyline. Descending down that mountain pass, it dawned on me that this was home.

That realization became even more real when I arrived a few minutes later at the terminal. I think that one of the most important qualifications of a home is that you have people that come to pick you up when you arrive. My boss and soon to be adoptive mother, Beatriz, was there with her temporarily shy 8-year-old daughter, Elena, as well as the wisecracking ADRA driver, "Juancito". (A quick aside: in Spanish you can basically throw "ito/a" onto any word as a diminutive, and on names it becomes an endearing nickname. In Salta this is very common, so instead of "pan" for bread it's "pancito", and instead of "agua" for water it's "aguita". This becomes another case of my name being the least international of all names, because calling me Zachito without a "z" sound in Spanish makes it sound like "saquito", the dimunitive for a coat.) We packed the stuff into the car and headed off towards "home", an apartment complex (called "Parque La Vega") that lies about 7km south of downtown. On the drive I only recognized a few things from my last trip: San Martín Plaza, where you can rent swan-shaped paddle-boats by day, or find services considerably less innocent by night; and the San Bernardo mountain, which for 14 pesos a piece has a gondola that will take you to the top to see the whole city from a bird's-eye view (still haven't done it!). Everything else, however, seemed new. The soccer stadium, the high-end car dealerships, and a whole string of warehouses and distribution centers.

Although it must have taken less than 15 minutes, the trip seemed like an eternity. I had entirely forgotten about the other crucial qualification of home: living space. Before leaving to Argentina I had in mind that I would try to live in an apartment on my own, rather than risk the possible--and probable--conflicts that might arise out of staying with a conservative Adventist family. Here I was, sitting in the car, heading off to who knows where, without the slightest plan or idea of how to sensitively ask about my housing options. Again my fears seemed to be in excess of the reality, as the arrangement had already been made for me long in advance. I live just around the corner from Beatriz in the home of a widow, Graciela, who is equally liberal and perhaps more fiery than Beatriz herself... at least when it comes to leaving things on the floor or not making my bed! On top of that, she runs a kiosk out of her living room, so for better or worse I have constant access to a whole slew of goodies, not least of which are the delicious "facturas" (pastries) I get to eat every morning for breakfast with mate cocido (mate in teabags instead of free leaves).

Like English, Spanish has a clear distinction between house and home ("casa" and "hogar").

In both languages they can be used interchangeably, but if we are being specific a house is really just a place, while a home adds an element of humanity. A house can only be a home if there is a person that feels that way towards that location. In addition to the two qualities of home I have already mentioned--people and place--I think the real difference between house and home consists in our pattern of life, the daily rhythm of what we do in and around the house we live in. For that reason, it could possibly weeks or months before I really feel like this new place is actually my home. Only at some point in the future will I be able to assess whether I really feel comfortable in this "hogar", or whether that concept will be forever tied to my two homes in the US (Angwin and Takoma Park), and being in Salta will remain only as a "casa" until the moment I leave.