From Bmore to BA

Sometimes in your life - and while it doesn´t occur often, it happens with enough frequency to intrigue you time and time again - you step back, pause, and look around, only to find yourself in an utterly ridiculous, quite inexplicable, and inarguably surreal situation. I can think of no other song that so properly sums up this feeling than “As The Days Go By” by the immortal Talking Heads. Naturally, as an “extranjero” travelling through foreign lands and trying my best to keep things interesting, these type of fish out of water experiences should be - and have been, but to a rather smaller extent than would be expected - occuring fairly often, but none nearly to the magnitude that was achieved today.

Quick background to the story: My project completed and back to my normal self - i.e. unemployed with plenty of time on my hands - I wanted to get involved with some volunteer work…you know, help out da Qmunity. I contacted the local branch of an American NGO, and through them arranged to work part-time at a summer camp for kids. Basically, I work in the athletics shed, monitoring all of the sports equipment that goes in and out, interspersed with the occasional trivial task…aside from the fact that the day was one big flashback to my counselor days at Baltimore´s finest day camp, Milldale, I think it went over well. As of now I should be doing this two days a week, and taking Spanish classes two days a week, although we both know that by the time you read this I could be easily working as a volunteer firefighter or some other ridiculous job. English teacher, market researcher, student, Hostel Jockey - now I can add yet another notch to the belt of completely random occupations.

Anyway, the first Deep Thought relates back to what occured today at the end of camp. At 5:00, as the kids stood ready to leave, I was told to get on bus # 8, as it was heading right by my apartment. This wasn´t a public bus of course, but a private bus that drops all of the campers off at their homes. So here I am, utterly exhausted from the blistering sun (it´s probably in the 100´s here, although I can´t be sure, metric system be damned) the last one boarding the bus, when through all of the yelling and screaming I realize I don´t have a place to sit. I´m the “new guy,” you dig! Walking slowly down the aisle, feeling how I imagine Forrest Gump felt that fateful first day of school, I spot a 6-year old that I just me outside as we were waiting the bus, and hope to myself that he´ll let me sit next to him. So it´s come to this, dear friends…I´m praying someone born in 1999 will take pity on me and let me hang out with him! Immediately after he gives me the OK to sit down - and I breathe a sign of relief - another kid, probably 10 years old or so, starts hitting me with the punching bag he just made in camp. I swear, I was just waiting for Miss Lippy to come yell at me, and then the day would have been complete…

Try to envision the scene: there´s unbroken line of sight over a bunch of old seats, except for one sunburn, incredibly high, giraffe-like neck sticking straight up, which you observe being pounced on by someone a 1/3 of his size, as he sits uncomfortably scrunched up in the seat, with one leg in the aisle. While this is happening, there is an incredible commotion of yelling and screaming, but all in a foreign language…and it´s all occuring on an old schoolbus, decked out by the bus driver with accessories such as chrome footprints (never knew they existed until today, I guess man´s imagination knows no bounds), stickers (the fuzzies I think), and stuffed animals…I kid you not. And at this point, you take a long look around, shake your head in disbelief, and ask yourself, seriously - “How Did I Get Here?”

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 9th, 2006 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Buenos Aires. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.