March 22 (Miami International Airport) – Tonight I´m leaving Miami, my home for the past five years, for my new home in Buenos Aires. Writing that seems ridiculously surreal for a boy from a small town in Tennessee. It was five years ago, in March 2000, that I moved to Miami from Norfolk, Virginia where I had also lived for five years. (Interestingly, before Norfolk, I lived for five years in Knoxville. I wonder, am I a five year person?) As I was settling into my South Beach home five years ago, Ceci – my girlfriend of the last three and a half years was in the process of moving to Miami from Buenos aires. Our paths in Miami wouldn´t cross for another 20 months.

In March 2003 ceci moved back to BsAs. I traveled back with her then, my first trip to South America. Many more trips have followed over the intervening two years, nearly half-a-dozen trips to Argentina along with journeys to Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela.

This morning´s Miami Herald featured a color photograph of anti-American protestors in Buenos Aires, burning an American flag. Somehow, this seemed oddly ironic to see when I opened the newspaper on the morning of the day that I´m to leave for Argentina. However, I understood the context of the protest: Donald Rumsfeld´s visit to Argentina; there´s strong opposition to the war in Iraq among the Argentina population. Unlike my fellow Americans, the Argentines obviously didn´t believe that story about the weapons of mass destruction and are protesting the expanding Imperialistic behavior of the U.S.

The flights from Miami to Buenos Aires are nearly 9 hour flights. Tonight I´m on American Airlines, though my first back in 2003 was on Aerolineas Argentinas. Tonight, this will be my last flight for a while: I´m staying in Buenos Aires and going to call it home for a while.

So, sit back and let me tell you about my experiences in Buenos Aires, this city of faded elegance.