Final Postcard from the Bottom of the World (Ken)

I am writing this from a Locutorio on Avenida Las Herras. We returned home about midnight last night to find the laptop had crashed. (Perhaps as a result of all the attacks from the ongoing international blog wars?)

So this will be my last post from Buenos Aires.

Let me begin by saying: I got nothing-but-love for Argentina.

This trip has been fascinating, frustrating, educational, humbling, bewildering, inspirational . . .in short: everything I had hoped it would be--and more.

How much can a person really know about a country after only five months--and most of that spent in its largest city? Honestly, I´m not sure. But I am sure he can know more than if he had stayed home on his sofa watching Fox News. Over then next weeks and months, after some time and perspective, I suspect it will become clearer to me what it is I learned and how this experience has changed me.

This little blog started out after I began reading other blogs in my preparations for coming to Argentina. I found Alan´s blog and then Deby and Jude and Yanqui Mike and "Bloggers in Agentina." It occurred to me that this might be a good way to keep in touch back home. With postcards and letters costing four pesos and taking almost three weeks, this seemed a good choice. I saw a "hit counter" on the Salt Shaker blog and installed one on mine. No one was more surprised than I to find that I had more readers inside Argentina than I had back home. That changed things a bit. I didn´t start to write for a different (and inanticipated) audience, but I began to be read by a different audience.

Anyway, some of you have asked that I keep the blog going to document our return and re-entry into the USA and North American culture--part two of the expat experience. I will do that.

But I was not a blogger before I came here, and I doubt I will be a blogger much longer--once I write about my re-entry experiences. There just won´t be anything interesting to write about.

Thanks for reading. To many of you--thanks for your help and friendship. My next post will be from the USA.


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Twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours to go.
I wanna be sedated . . .
The Ramones