Hello again! This is Sam (Sociology, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American Studies student) writing from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I am spending the semester. 

Something that has continually struck me in the month and a half that I’ve spent in this city is the shared space. Buenos Aires is full of it: for example, the sprawling parks, the cafés where groups of friends spend hours over a coffee and croissant (un cafécito con una medialuna). At practically all hours of the day, porteños lounge on park benches reading books, sitting in circles sharing mate among friends, exercising on outdoor park machines, strolling around the lake or laying down soaking up the sun. 

On a recent solo trip I took to the Córdoba province of Argentina (which borders the Buenos Aires province to the west), an Argentine I met gave a name to the cloudy concept that my thoughts about the parks and public spaces had planted in my head: un tercer lugar (a third place). Most of us have a first place, which is our home, and a second place for work or school; the Argentines also have a third place—a park, a café, a bar, or somewhere else where they spend a lot of time socializing and connecting with their community.

To provide a contrast, I’ll lay out the stereotypical American university life: we graduate high school and ship ourselves off to a university in a potentially unfamiliar part of the country; in the dorms, we eat, sleep, study, and even sometimes work with our fellow students. Perhaps there’s not much need for a third place, because the American-style university attempts to provide a first, second, and third place all in one: it’s our home, our school, potentially also our work, and the place where we socialize. Whereas in Buenos Aires, it’s common to commute over an hour to get to campus, where students stay until their classes are over and then go home to their families. Maybe for this reason, people value socialization and community more, both at school (in the thirty minutes that the professor often makes them wait before showing up to teach) and at parks, cafés, and other third places. 

Not to say that one way, or one culture, is better than the other. I enjoy thinking about what each society values and why it does so, and living in Buenos Aires, it’s impossible not to notice the city’s value for third places.  

That’s all for my observations of the city culture this time– I’ll write again soon!