Three more days until Argentina. Still working on paperwork. Still have an entire book on Argentine history to read.

I planned on writing a retrospective entry on Friday, my last day of working at Hayward Laboratories, detailing the cultural things I learned from all the Latino immigrants there. Now it’s Monday at 4:33 pm as I write this, and most of my former fellow workers are just getting home after a day of repetitive factory labor.

I was only there for two months, but there must be something about factory workers, stuck with their own thoughts for hours on end, that packs them with life advice. I think it takes a certain kind of pensive person to work there for seven, eight, fifteen years, someone comfortable with him or herself.

A woman named Geo, a short Hispanic lady from I’m not sure what country, gave me some unsolicited advice during my first week that isn’t necessarily profound, but I still think about everyday:

No mire para atras ni para los costados. Tu mire para adelante no m�s, siempre a lo que viene.

Translated approximately: Don’t look backward, don’t look sideways. You just look forward, always at what comes next.

Another man, a balding, red-faced and bespectacled mechanic, I’ll call him Alvin, seemed to have something loose in his head. By that, I mean he offered me one of his life philosophies every single time I spoke with him, as if he were telling me so he could convince himself of something. And he laughed. A lot. I read a quote once that was simply, “Laughter eases the pain.” Maybe it applied to him:

Everything is the way it’s supposed to be. It took me years to realize that. No more, no less.

He also told me I should pray, that praying helps. Afterward, like I said, he would burst out laughing.

So that’s some of the mental baggage I’ll be taking with me to Buenos Aires. Given that I’ve been thinking a lot about life direction and such, the two quotes above have been a refrain in my head lately.

I learned Spanish profanities from such countries as Mexico and Puerto Rico too, which I won’t detail here. I will say this: Apparently the word “ahorita,” which usually means “right away,” changes meaning to “later” when one is in Puerto Rico. You can imagine the kind of confusion this causes in a factory setting.

I’ll have to reconcile the Peruvian Spanish I’ve known my whole life with the Argentine Spanish soon. I wonder what changes between those? I also wonder what is formal speak and informal speak…? I’m not sure. I hope I don’t say anything entirely inappropriate in front of a professor while I’m there. Chances are that I might.

And the contact list in Argentina keeps piling up. I have an uncle, a family friend who happens to be a journalist and another who’s a DJ. I’m going to be contacting them over the next day or so…

Location: East Stroudsburg, PA