The Beginning of the End

Well here we are: 2 weeks from the end of the trip, and a delay in getting my VISA for Brazil gives me the opportunity to put up this update. It'll probably be the last one you see before I step onto a plane on the 8th of April which will take me to Miami, and then San Francisco.

I'd love to be able to eloquently express all of my emotions about coming back, but I have no illusions about being able to do so. I couldn't tell you before the trip exactly why I was going, and I can't tell you now exactly what it did for me. Maybe time will tell. It could be after all as someone told me once that "the answers are revealed when the questions are no longer relevant." I do believe that this trip will stay with me indefinitely, and despite the ups and downs (not all of which show up in the blog), I believe for the better.

And now I feel like I've done enough sentimentalizing, but to be honest I'm still not sure what to write about. The most obvious thing would be what should soon be staring at you from the side of this page. It's hard to find even photos of the Iguazu falls to be anything less than awe-inducing. But what you can't see from looking at photos of all the spectacular places I've been are all the smaller real-life details - the people I was with, the conversations we had, the internal struggles. For me these these things are tremendously relevent, and often more impactful than the larger frames which draw the oooo's and ahhh's. But I feel that even to the people that care about me the most, they'd often be lost in translation.

I think a lot about what coming home will be like. I used to think that traveling would give me all these great stories to tell people. Maybe I will have some, but how many more stories will fall instead into an inevitable "you had to be there." I think that what I want now more than a collection of great stories to impress people with would just be that people would love me for who I still am: Stephen, son of Tom and Nancy. I've learned that I'm lucky enough with the friends and family I have to know that that's something I won't lose.

So let me just tell you that I stayed for about another week in Buenos Aires, going to tango classes, hanging out with people, and having a great time. You really have to go to Argentina for those tango classes. There's something deeply fascinating about how the dance is connected with their culture. My teacher explained it to me with the simple statement: "Argentinians want more." And let me just tell you that looking down into the "Devil's throat" of Iguazu falls, you see something a whole lot more heavenly than the name suggests.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully be getting my VISA to enter Brazil, where I'll go to see just a couple more places before coming home - the Pantanal, one of the most dense and varied wildlife regions in the world; and Rio de Janeiro, the 'City of God.'

I'll be looking forward to seeing you all again.

God Bless,
Stephen