Transitions - via the Hotel Imperial

First Breakfast not at the DFAC.

Not Kabul. 

After six weeks in Kabul, I needed a fabulous breakfast. This is what I got - at the incredible Imperial Hotel in Connaught Place.   The civility of this hotel after the chaos of Kabul was a bit jarring, but I always have needed to ease myself from one reality to another in order to manage all the change I face.

Whenever I leave a country, I need to stop somewhere else on the way, even for just a night, so I can process.  I don't think the mind was meant to switch country, time zone, language and job all in the same time - and with my job, sometimes that happens overnight.  So I have found ways over the years to make those transitions easier. 

When I left Florida to start working in Washington, D.C. at the State Department in 2001, I took the train instead of flying.  I was leaving behind my life in Gainesville, a life I loved, and a person I was crazy about. I couldn't stand the idea of just showing up in D.C. for a new job without taking a little time to ease out of Florida and into the next step.  So I took the overnight Amtrak from Florida to Virginia. It gave me 20 hours to slowly move away from what I knew into what was next.

Good place to think about what comes next.

I did the same thing when I moved from Bolivia to India in 2003. I went to Gainesville to touch base with one of my favorite places in the world (Gainesville always makes me feel more like my best self).  Then I took the train from there to start training in D.C. and think about Bolivia and what was coming next.   

 So coming out of Kabul, I like to go through India.  When I leave Buenos Aires, I like to stop in Florida and see my family. When I go back to DC, I stop in Gainesville.  I have all these places I am attached to now for various reasons, and I use them as anchors, and points along the way to help me make these crazy transitions.  And there are people who help too, people who knew me in Kabul, or India, or Gainesville, or Ft. Lauderdale, or maybe more during an important phase of my life that bridged many places.  But all of these things keep me connected.  It also makes me long for those places and people, but I focus on the connections.  Always focus on the connection.

Teatro Colon - A Reason to Visit

Gorgeous.

I had a fantastic tour of Teatro Colon.  We saw the incredible restoration as well as checking out the rehearsal room of some of the dancers.  It is an incredible building, one of the best known theaters in the world. Built in 1908, Teatro Colon had the best acoustics in the world up until the 1940s.   Prior to the 1940s.  Many of the world's best singers, dancers, and classical musicians in the world have performed here. In my nine months I have seen opera (The Merry Widow), the National Symphony Orchestra from DC (visiting from Washington on tour) and ballet (Carmen).  I hope to see many more because it is really one of the best venues in the world - and it is a serious reason to visit.

No detail left untouched.

One of the windows inside the theater.

The box seats at Teatro Colon.  National Symphony Orchestra is warming up on stage. 

Teatro Colon dance company rehearsing for an upcoming show.

Officially Worn Out of Traveling for a While

I cleaned out my wallet after returning to Buenos Aires from Kabul via India and Germany.   What I found was money from SIX different countries: 

• United Arab Emirates Dirhams
• U.S. dollars
• Euros
• Indian Rupees
• Argentine Pesos
• Afghan Afghanis
• One lone Rwandan Franc

I am ready to live with just one currency.  Please.  At least for a few months.

An Important Lesson - We Have No Control.

Before Friday I had a lovely dining room. It had a ceiling, a carpet, nice furniture, and a little bit of sun shining in through the windows.  I enjoyed sitting there, having dinner parties and dumping my stuff on the table everyday after work.

But around 5 am I heard a huge noise.  My first thought was someone had kicked my door in so I took a moment to freak out.  But then I went out to my living room to check out what happened.  This is what I found.  I just stared.  I would pay a million bucks for a video of my face at that moment.  Then I started to laugh.  Not the reaction I expected, but I have learned that when it truly is impossible to do anything, you might as well grin and bear it.

Nothing caused this.  No construction upstairs, no water damage, no earthquake, nothing. It broke the table, the chairs, put multiple holes in the wood floor and covered everything I have in a thick layer of dust.  And it just happened without any known explanation.  Kind of the way things happen in the world every single day.  
I thought to myself, well, the universe definitely has something to teach me.  Your life can be going along and then suddenly, in an instant, the sky can fall. I actually felt lucky that this lesson came in the form of a ruined dining room instead of a health scare or death of someone I love. Maybe it could have been a little less dramatic, but hey, sometimes I need to be hit over the head.  And thankfully, I wasn't under this when it fell because it probably would have seriously hurt me. 

I have been trying to make my time in Buenos Aires work for me. I had grand plans of having a great adventure here, and instead have found myself working hard just to adjust to a new country, job and lifestyle. I feel like the one thing that helped was feeling settled in my house - and waking up to the sunrise, coffee on my deck, reading on my sofa.  This is how I do the moving - I make the place I am my home.  But maybe there are other ways to feel at peace where you are.

And so, in order to teach me a lesson, the ceiling fell.  So what am I learning?   Adaptability, patience, flexibility, tolerance...and that we have NO CONTROL.