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, 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.