(never) turning back

I had heard of Argentina for years, of its tumultuous history, its passionate people, how the helado is the best but its government is the worst, until the words in my head were a tangle of English and Spanish and I had a ticket booked and a schedule that took me from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata (a tourist city by the sea) with my arts ministry. My heart was opened and my mind was baffled by the sharp dividing line between poverty and wealth, between being loved and being left, and I grappled to fathom a culture so different from my own.