I have a friend from class who is a little eccentric.

He is also entirely without shame. He speaks worse than I do, and every place we go he talks in severely broken Castellano about why he thinks there is more crime in Argentina than in the States, or why he thinks Argentines are prejudiced against Americans. I want to tell him it’s because he speaking far more loudly than foreigners should ever speak and that the guy behind us has been following us since the last corner. Instead, I just generally pretend not to know him. But somehow, nothing bad ever seems to happen to him-- he makes friends with people just about everywhere we go—- turning around and striking up a conversation with the guy I thought was going to rob us. Since I realized this, I’ve been trying to be a bit more like him and not be so embarrassed by the fact that I am a foreigner. It’s pretty obvious whether I want it to be or not, so I might as well embrace it.

The strangers I’ve been meeting lately have to ask where I’m from now. When I say the U.S. they are usually surprised. You speak very, very well for an American they tell me. For whatever reason, a lot of them think I'm German at first.

Standing out has its perks too. The other night three different girls at the same bar told me I had beautiful eyes. That makes three times in my life I’ve been told I have beautiful eyes. They were all surprised I spoke Spanish. I go to the same restaurant with a friend of mine for lunch a couple times a week. The owner, Carlos, runs it with his two sons. He kisses me on the cheek when I walk in the door and if it’s not too busy he sits down with me to chat for a little while. When he brings our coffee, he also pours three cognacs and makes a toast that I can never understand before we drink. He must be close to eighty.

So far though, I’ve only been telling you the charming things.

I haven’t mentioned the homeless boy with bloodshot eyes who came up to my table the other night. He didn’t even ask for money- he just stared at us. A girl I was with asked him if he was in school. He wasn’t. She asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said a killer. I asked why and he just said because.

I haven’t mentioned the broken down police car two cops asked me to help them push, or how afterwards the people on the corner asked why I had helped them. They’re the police I said. No, they said, they're the real killers.

I haven’t mentioned the reggae club my cousin took me to where, for the first time in Argentina, I felt absolutely and truly unsafe. I haven’t mentioned the way people looked at me there, with eyes that reminded me my skin was whiter than theirs and that I didn’t belong. I haven’t talked about how suffocating it felt, or how confused my cousin was when I said I needed to go.

But that’s the thing about Argentina: it is not first world. That's it. There are parts that seem to be, but outside of them, past the barb wire fences and the guard dogs there is always everything else. Today, I rode my aunt’s equitation horse through the street with their burnt out cars and piles of garbage. Stray dogs bit at its heels and all I could do was hold on as the horse spooked and ran, like it too knew that their world and ours weren't made to collide.