07/02/2026
LIFE LESSON | I came across these photographs, from 2011 today; the time I landed in Buenos Aires for a few weeks to learn Spanish.😵💫
It’s fair to say my language skills were a bust but I did learn a little something about life during my stay.
Through the language school I was placed in a homestay with a local family and a few other students.
A beautiful old building on the outskirts of the city, it had seen better days. Peeling paint in the stairwell, wooden banisters worn smooth by decades of hands, intricate ironwork that caught the light in the afternoon. Maybe the building was a bit run down, but the apartment was full of colour and full of food, laughter, noise and stories.
Our little group came from all over the world, each us with different accents, different lives, different reasons for being there.
Most evenings we sat in the stairwell for hours, legs folded awkwardly, talking nonsense. We had dance parties on our beds, climbed to the roof looking out over the city and up at the sky where we shared our stories, our fears and the hopes of who we might become.
I don’t know where any of those women are now. I don’t know if they remember me or that place but I remember something precious.
It’s the understanding that it’s not always the big, grand moments that stay with you but rather the small ones. The ordinary ones. The ones you don’t realise are important while you’re living them.
Pay attention, and when those small moments show up, stay a little longer instead of rushing through them to the next ‘better’ moment. 🥰