Hello, fourth graders at PS205K Clarion School in New York!!! My name is Natalie (she/her pronouns), but you can call me Nati (pronounced like “Nah-tee”). I am writing to you all from the north of the Caribbean, seated on my brother’s front porch in New Orleans, Louisiana. Here, we are soaking up the final golden rays of autumn sunshine, before I prepare to travel back to my home in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In a matter of hours, I will cross approximately 5,000 miles of the American continent, from The United States in North America to Argentina in South America, where I am in graduate school studying cultural diversity. I am also a languages teacher!
It smells like change is in the air...and not just because I can smell a neighborhood cookout in the crisp fall wind. When I board the plane, I will be as prepared as I can be to experience many big changes. When we cross a hemisphere, which is half of the Earth, the seasons change on the other side. My New Orleans fall will turn into a Buenos Aires spring! Instead of golden leaves lining the sidewalks, lilac flowers will rain down from jacarandá trees. In New Orleans, I make up one of approximately 390,000 people, but that population number will turn into 15 million in Buenos Aires.
