Bueno, let's start this again

I've been here three days, getting adjusted. I have a few thoughts maybe worth sharing.

First, I've been sleeping so, so very much. My first day, after just a few hours of bad sleep on the plane, I slept five deep hours during the day, then a whopping eleven also very deep hours that night. The next night it was ten and a half, and today I dragged my ass up after just eight but felt totally sleep-deprived.

This frequently happens to me when traveling. I think a couple things are involved.

First, it's a big change (I'll resist saying 'trauma') to uproot your life in one place and relocate to another place, even if it's just for a while. Rapid long-distance travel is a new thing in terms of human development, so our brains, which evolve slowly, haven't quite gotten used to it. I think this is especially the case when the change is dramatic. The change from New York to LA is nowhere near as dramatic as the change from NY to BA, in large part because of the change in language.

Speaking of the change in language, I think that's the second, and more important thing that makes me sleep so much when I travel overseas. I think it's just a bunch of work to try to understand things in a language that you're just not that good at. It seems to take a great effort to try to absorb and understand as much spanish as I can, and to be constantly thinking of ways to say things in spanish. I remember this from my travels in Mexico. During my beach vacations there, the effort of dealing with spanish plus the heat plus the sun, plus a couple of happy hour beers, would drive me to bed around 9:30 every night. Which is very, very unusual for me. Here I'm just sleeping late.

I guess this isn't really a post about buenos aires. Maybe I should put this on the 'personal' blog. But for now, here it is.