This is it. My first solo mate experience. Before flying back to Wisconsin, Guy had shown me his process for brewing up yerba: gourd filled 3/4 with tea, cover the top with a flat palm, shake out the dust, stab the bombilla into the side opposite the tea, set upright, pour hot water, drink. It's not difficult. Or even more work than the coffee pot. Since coming back from Uruguay, I've been drinking the real thing, beginning my mornings with traditional-style mate and a book in the quiet living room.
Readers may recall the whining about "blah blah blah I'm just a tourist" from this post a month ago. What a fool. I fucking live here. I know the best route to the subway station. The clerks at the chino all know me. I could draw a map of Parque Lezama with my eyes closed. My stay here is shorter than I planned---less than six months instead of the year or two I fantasized before I had the hard reality of foreign living thrown against my head like a peso coin. But I am still living here. I work. I wash my laundry, make my own meals. Being a tourist in Uruguay, I realized how different taking a trip is from actually living somewhere. Popping from hostel to hostel, checking the map every other street corner to orient yourself, eating all your meals at disappointing restaurants.
Whatever it is I'm doing in Buenos Aires, it isn't tourism.
I'm still wracked with quarter-life crises: WTF will I do in the USA, where will I live, what sugar mama will pay my rent. But for now I'm living in a foreign town. How many people can say that?
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