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I was hungry last Monday. Sadly, if you had looked in my backpack, on the table, or in the fridge of my AirBnB, you wouldn’t have been able to find anything to remedy this situation. It wasn’t as if Vienna had run out of food, or I had run out of euros. No, it was Pfingstmontag, that is, Pentecost, celebrated fifty days after the Resurrection, when the Holy Ghost had descended upon the gathered Apostles. An unfortunate two thousand year chain of events followed, culminating in me starving in my lofted bed.

The problem was that all the grocery stores were closed. Further compounding this was the fact that Pfingstmontag naturally takes place after a Sunday, where most European stores are also closed, meaning two consecutive days without access to groceries. To add insult to injury, Pfingstmontag was a feast day. Of course, most Austrians had planned around this problem, and had wisely purchased their food before the public holiday, but me being the clueless American that I was (am?) had not done so, resulting in my unchecked hunger. At the time I was outraged, and sulked to myself along the following lines: “Don’t Austrians know that people need to eat? You know in America, everything’s twenty-four seven, right? Why is everyone so lazy here?”

I talked to Josef, my German tutor, about this. He said (in German) that Austria has so many public holidays—Pfingstmontag is just one among many, you can check the national calendar online—was mainly because of the strength of labor unions here. Sure, Pentecost is a religious event, and Catholicism is still fairly practiced in Austria, but the reason Europe has so many holidays and the U.S. so little isn’t really thanks to the laity. Still less is this difference because of some quirk in the calendar.

Rather, the unions here had fought for these holidays as a time of rest, a carefully drawn boundary where people can relax apart from the stresses involved in busily accumulating capital for others. I started noticing this difference in other parts of life, too: businesses close much earlier in the day here. The Viennese have more time for themselves, perhaps to spend time in cafes, to read, to talk, to smoke. Indeed, the legacy of “Red Vienna”—when the city was governed for years by the Social Democrats, who constructed affordable housing blocks and initiated welfare programs—continues to this day, even leading to the New York Times to dub the city a “renter’s utopia.” Given how my American perspective has trained me to treat the dominance of finance over the public good with a kind of inevitability, my experience of Vienna has shown me the possibility of a radically different, and dare I say better, relationship between labor and capital. Even if this experience had to began with an empty stomach.

Today marks one week till I leave my home and travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina for an eight-week language acquisition and cultural immersion program. While there are countless thoughts and emotions running through my head this week, the underlying one is without a doubt excitement. South America is a new continent for me and the prospect of traveling to the southern hemisphere fills me to the brim with anticipation. I am most looking forward to the unique traditions and cultural heritage, and can’t wait to explore both the nature of the region and the city streets of Buenos Aires. I imagine myself a month from now eating exquisite cuisine and tango dancing the night away.

All my research about the city taught me that the charm of Buenos Aires is due to the unique population that comprises the city which blends European customs with a combination of Latin American and indigenous traditions. My time in Argentina will allow me to assimilate into a new and unknown community. However, along with all of this eagerness, there is a small bit of uncertainty. 

I am nervous to be surrounded by the Spanish language and have the need to form new friendships in this language. While I have been studying the language for a while, it has almost always been in an academic setting. My immersion program in Argentina is definitely an uncharted territory for me. I have some experience traveling in the past including my participation in a Notre Dame study abroad program in Rome. However, this program was filled with other Notre Dame students at the Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway. My program in Buenos Aires will bring me out of the comfortable and familiar zone of my past summer.

One of my main goals for the summer is to form quality relationships with my classmates in the target language. This means I will need to bring out my personality using the Spanish language. I know this will take time, and luckily I have eight weeks. This anxiousness is far outweighed by the opportunity to expand my worldview and master the language I have strived to know for nearly half my life. I am excited to post my experiences to this blog and share my stories while in Buenos Aires.

After spending a week settling into Cuenca and my life in Ecuador, I was beyond excited to reconnect with my host family from my time in Global Citizen Year. I have been practicing my Spanish, taking Spanish classes at Notre Dame, watching shows like La Casa de Papel, and even trying to play through Skyrim in Spanish (I did not make it far). This practice would enable a deeper connection with my parents and siblings than I had previously, and not only that, but I would have a chance to meet the new baby of the family!

I finally arrived in Paute this past Saturday night, happy to visit my old home and see the old haunts of Paute. My family was playing in a soccer tournament, and we planned to get dinner together and watch the soccer game that night. After saying hi, hugging, and catching up, we picked up food and returned home to eat. The animated conversation lasted all of 20 minutes, and after that, an awkward silence spread over the table.

Immediately, I felt uncomfortable. I had been away three years, and we didn’t have anything to talk about? While I’m not fluent in Spanish, my skills are proficient to the level that they do not hinder daily conversations. As we sat and ate, I wrestled with this uneasy feeling, trying to dissect where it was coming from, and what could be done about it. My night in Paute was a whirlwind of old memories and emotions, when I remembered the term that my friends and I would refer to the way that the passage of time seemed to dilate during our gap year: “Ecua-time”.

Ecua-time means that things seem to move more slowly here, and rather than constantly preparing for the future, people allow the passage of time to wash over them and react how they may – not forcing anything that was unnecessary. During my dinner with my host family, I felt compelled to force conversation as I struggled to come up with new questions to learn more about the lives of my host family during the years of Covid and beyond. On the contrary, my family accepted the dinner for what it was – quality time with someone they had missed. Conversation arose when it was appropriate, but in the time between words, bites of chicken and the company of the dinner were more than adequate.

As I am re-integrating myself into Ecuador for the summer, these cultural hiccups that feel uncomfortable have begun to arise. While I have a leg up because of my previous experience here, it would be naive to think that this experience will protect me from culture shock. As I continue to navigate a different yet familiar culture, I need to remember Ecua-Time, take a deep breath and process things as the arise, and know that my best is more than enough to thrive here.