So just to catch you all up to speed, I’m still in Argentina. I’m going home in two weeks and that’s probably why I’m on here writing this, hoping that some existential rambling will put the past six and a half months in perspective. That or I’m just procrastinating studying for my finals. Whatever.

So, the past 6 weeks, highlight reel style.

My parents come to Argentina. We managed to avoid any serious lost-in-translation moments, although they did once try to pay for lunch with counterfeit money. Oops. Luckily the clueless norteamericano defense was pretty convincing. And my dad managed to keep his iPhone from being stolen despite whipping it out to photograph every car made before 1990 (of which there are many). Then they went home and power was out in Athens for 8 days. One point for Latin American infrastructure.

Mendoza. Lots of wine and good steak. Gigantic, snow-capped mountains. Blissful. And then I go and get food-poisoning from the first expensive meal I’ve had in South America. I drank out of a stream the other day and I was fine. Some things just don’t make sense.

Quebrada del Condorito. Last weekend a few of my friends and I went on an all-day hiking excursion in a national park about an hour outside of Cordoba. So beautiful. Cordoba continues to surprise me. Depending which way you leave the city the landscape is dramatically different. Quebrada del Condorito is dry and windswept, with steep, rocky cliff faces and gorges that plunge down 500 meters into icy, clear rivers. We saw condors. We napped in the sun and drank from the river. We ate a massive asado. It was a pretty good day. We’re not going to talk about how my legs felt for the next three days. Somebody’s not in hiking shape.

I’m going to miss Argentina, but I’m excited to go home. I’m conflicted but I’m happy. So far I haven’t had any big revelations, existential or otherwise, but maybe that will come when I finish finals, when I finally kick this cold and can breathe out of my nose for the first time in 3 weeks, when I get on the airplane. I feel like big revelations tend to come on airplanes, for better or for worse.