Fiaca

Fiaca seems to be a common word here. It means lacking energy/laziness/little desire to do something. For some reason, we’ve felt a lot of fiaca since arriving in Buenos Aires. I’m usually up with sun, but here sleeping till 10-11am is more the norm than the exception. It’s baffling, and apparently the same thing happened to the other international students in our house. Our theory is that it has to do with the extremely poor air quality in the city. Buses and vehicles churning out black smoke are everywhere. Walking down most streets involves constantly breathing in diesel fumes and particles — a total shock to the system after nearly four months of breathing pure, mountain air. This hypothesis was supported by one couple we met here. They spent a month in Ushuaia and from the second they arrived felt like they had so much energy…and upon returning to Buenos Aires they felt exhausted and slept for days. Scary!

We're definitely not in the mountains anymore!

Not even Starbucks (first real drip coffee in 4 months!) managed to wake us up for long.