In the Thick of It

I wanted to write about living in a big city, where something is going on all the time and when news happens, it's not only nearby but it affects your life. Megan, perhaps, has experienced this in Washington, D.C., it being, like, the capital of the country, or something like that. Big cities are where stuff happens!

What kind of stuff? Well, let me explain: I live very close to the business and political center of the city, and the bus I take to school everyday passes through the major arteries, none being more important than 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the world. My bus also goes through Avenida de Mayo, which ends in the Casa Rosada (Argentine equivalent of the White House) and the Plaza de Mayo. The White House is set back from the street, buffered with manicured lawns, lined by fence, aloof, distant. The Casa Rosada, on the other hand, is right there on the street, there is no distance, figurative or actual, from the outside world. I think that's what makes it a very unique and symbolic place in the national imagination.

When Evita made her famous speeches, she did so from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. When there is a big protest, it always ends in the Plaza de Mayo. When Kirchner died, that's where they held his wake. Essentially, if something important is going on in the country, that's where people go.

So here I am, American girl in the Big South American City, the center of it all. How do I know when something big is going down?
I can't find my bus.

Yes, on par with other tried-and-true measuring devices like the ruler or the litmus test, the importance of a protest or demonstration can be gauged by how far away I have to walk to find a bus stop at which a bus actually stops. For example:

• Death of Nestor Kirchner, former president and husband to current Argentine president Cristina Kirchner. I walked 10 blocks in the rain before realizing I should have just taken the Subte.

• Malivinas (Falklands) War Veterans protest happens about once a month, and the bus route doesn't even change.

• Union/Communist militant/Student march on Plaza de Mayo is an interesting case, because it just created enough stand-still traffic that it behooved me to get off the bus and walk home.

Living in Colorado or even the bubble that is Santa Clara, CA, it's easy to forget that news can actually affect your life. Most of the time, it seems that news is something that happens "somewhere else" in the U.S. Here, there is no buffer zone, and if something's happening, I can measure it in footsteps.
--Nicole