“Summer ends, and we wonder where we are/ And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in you car/…It’s just that time of year, when we push ourselves ahead, push ourselves ahead…”
Those lyrics, from Dar Williams’ song “The End of the Summer”, have been running through my head a lot lately. Not only is my summer winding down (I leave for my Yale Pre-Orientation trip a week from Sunday), but so is my gap year. It’s a poignant moment, although happily not completely unwelcome. I’m so excited to go to college! But I think that, while I still have time and head-space to do so, it’s important that I take a moment to look back, and reflect.
Starting with this summer. Since returning to the States, I haven’t been posting at all, partially because I wanted to take a break from reflection, but mostly just because I’ve been super busy! The camp I worked at, Chinatown Adventure, or CHAD, was a phenomenal and transformative experience. Living with the amazing team I was working with, dedicating most of my non-camp time waking hours to planning curriculum and activities and bonding with the other staff, getting to know eight rising 6th graders very well (their good and bad sides….), working with a great junior counselor to make the summer a success…. Frequent field trips, and a camping trip, and staff retreats, and an intense two-week training…Figuring out how best to communicate with parents through translation, trying to get my kids excited about learning and reading and the world…And then, on top of all that, trying to find time and energy to process my experiences from this year, prepare for college, and squeeze in some time to see friends and family. Needless to say, I’ve been pretty much consumed. But in the best way possible.
I can’t think of a better way to have finished out my gap year. How perfect (and not just in symmetry…) to get to close out a year begun studying Chinese at Harvard, and then living in China, with a program run by Harvard students, engaging with the Chinese immigrant community in Boston’s Chinatown. How perfect to end this year that began with so much learning, with teaching. And with learning, too, since I learned so much this summer, about myself and my kids and Chinatown, about how HARD teaching is, about how to truly let go of best-laid plans, about what service and social change looks like in practice, and how rewarding it is.
There are too many thousands of special moments from this summer for me to document them all. There are too many amazing people who have entered my life because of this experience for me to introduce you to them all thoroughly. The staff, 8 other college students and 8 high school students--six other SCs (Senior Counselors), the two directors, and the 8 JCs (Junior Counselors)--bonded incredibly well considering how short our time together was in the grand scheme. David and Sue, our incredible directors; Alex, Darry, Esther, John, Norman and Raymond, the amazing SC team; Cindy, my JC, and Amy, Bonnie, David, Helen, Lori, Philip, and Raymond, the other JCs –what a wonderful group, a close-knit family. And, of course, Adam, Andy, Jacky, Kathy, Raymond, Sammi, Silvia and Wesley, my campers. Part little kids, part pre-teens (such tweens…), alternatively delightful, adorable, obnoxious, brilliant, awkward, amazing, whiny, smiley, energetic, sleepy….what a group. ☺ CHADLove.
Up until June 14, when CHAD training began, my gap year had been almost entirely me-centered. Which was exactly how it should have been, I think; my year off was about me exploring new places and situations and ways of learning and growing, on my own. It was the ultimate “me-time.” And although those adventures brought some new friends into my life, none of the different parts of my year was really about working in a team, none was a “corporate” experience—until CHAD. By working at CHAD, I got to see, immediately and intensely, how I have changed this year, and how I have stayed the same. It was in so many ways incredibly validating to experience my growth this year reflected back at me in the relationships I formed and the impact I had. Furthermore, I think having such a transformative experience so close to home (I was living for most of the summer at Emerson College, a couple blocks from my house, and the pick-up and drop-off point for my camp everyday was about a block from my house) but not actually at home—being outside my comfort zone so much of the time while still in a part of the world that is the definition of my comfort zone, the part of the world, and Boston, that I know like the back of my hand—really threw into relief how much this experience was the inverse of all my travel experiences.
Working at CHAD was most comparable to my experience working as a waitress this winter; like my job at Highland Lodge, I was doing something I’d never done before in a highly familiar setting, and with people very different from me. My time in Vermont, however, was the “hermit stage” of my gap year, and my summer has been anything but hermit-like. This summer was my re-emergence—re-emergence into Boston, and also a return to my peer group, to the world where I’ll be living and studying and striving for the next four years.
So, what about my gap year in total? What do I have to say about that, in the final week of this 15-month saga? As usual, I have tons to say, but I will strive for pithiness. Strive, rather than succeed, being the key word, most likely.
Let’s begin with the sound-bites. I’ve thought a lot about ways to sum up my gap year (for conversational purposes…answering the question “How was your gap year?” = kind of the bane of my existence), and this is what I’ve come up with.
China was the most important part of my gap year. Vermont was the most perfect. Argentina was the most fun. And CHAD was the most intense.
Why was China the most important part? I use the word important because I think the experience of living in Shanghai is the one that will have the biggest impact on my future, and the education of living in modern China is something that will prove significant again and again, just by dint of my being a citizen of the US and the world in the 21st century. China is the most important, most relevant place on Earth right now, and will be for the rest of my lifetime, I am sure. In more concrete terms, because of my new-found interest in China, I will certainly be studying Chinese during college, and will hopefully have the opportunity to return to China to study and even work or intern.
Why was Vermont the most perfect part? Simply put, I got everything I could have wanted or expected from my time in the Northeast Kingdom. Living on my own, with just my bird and my thoughts, was incredibly powerful. Working as a waitress was a hard, interesting, fun, demanding, and maturing experience for me—just exactly what I wanted and needed at that point. Getting to spend time in a place I love so, so, so much, immersed in nature and silence, was what my soul needed. It’s so cliché, but that doesn’t make the experience less valuable. My time in Vermont is the part of my gap year that I miss the most, that I was least ready to leave. Luckily, it’s also the most easily repeatable part of my gap year.
Why was Argentina the most fun part? Even with the bed bugs, Abby? Seriously? Yes, I’m for serious. What is not fun about getting to live in an amazing, complicated, fun, interesting city, without any limitations except your limited budget and your rather unlimited interests and energy? Not that my two months in Buenos Aires were all fun and games; after all, I definitely had some challenges to deal with, and dealing with those challenges definitely made me more mature and independent.
Why was CHAD the most intense part? Because there is nothing that is not intense about being in your home environment, on your home turf, and yet feel completely out of your comfort zone, feel challenged and stretched in a place where you’re used to feeling the opposite. Returning to Boston and the US and jumping into an experience that made me dig deep into Boston, into current US culture and issues, into my home neighborhood, and brought me into close contact and relationship with people my own age, was SO intense after the previous nine months away from all those things. Being challenged on a daily (hourly?) basis, having to think on my feet and always be on top of my game was so intense—and just as rewarding.
So, lastly, what would I do differently? What are my take-aways?
The first question is a lot harder than the second question. I don’t think I would do a lot differently; I ended up really appreciating the way I organized my year, and I loved the variety of places and experiences. My only regret is that I wish I had more time! But on the other hand, I am so ready to go back to school. Maybe I wouldn’t have done CIEE (soo expensive, so sheltered, but at the same time….I think I needed that structure…or did I? Will I ever really know? No.), maybe I would have done something more intense in Buenos Aires (and lose all that café reading and long walks time? Never!), maybe I would have found a way to see my family more this year (a real regret…but probably just one of those realities of post-high school life that can’t really be changed). The hardest part about facing the end of the summer and going off to college is thinking about how little I’ve seen my family and friends, and now I’m jumping into four years that I’m sure will have very few lulls or resting points…
My take-aways are so many. I think my major take-aways will come out sounding like fortune cookies, but here’s a shot:
- Question yourself, keep your ego in check, remain grounded in reality, but never think that something will be too hard just because it’s foreign, new, or different.
- People are always more similar to you, and also infinitely more different from you, than you assume at first.
- Don’t be afraid to spend money on yourself—but if you’re twice as ready and excited to save money, it’s that much better.
- You can be a great teacher for yourself. But you need other people to truly expand your horizons.
- Introspection is never a waste of time or effort.
- God is always speaking, even in the most unlikely situations. And sometimes the most unlikely situations are the best places to listen and hear God.
- You don’t have to go to China—heck, you don’t have to leave a one-block radius of your childhood home—in order to be transformed. Whole new worlds could be waiting to be explored, right in your backyard. For serious.
- Self-confidence becomes deeper and more meaningful when it’s built on a platform of intelligence AND competence, rather than just one or the other. That may only make sense to me, but I gets it. Sorry bout it.
- The line between when you stop being a teenager and become a young adult is anything but obvious. And that transition is really hard. And it’s a process. Taking a gap year has made me a better young adult—and has also let me acknowledge the ways in which I am still very much a teenager.
Thinking back to my Dar Williams lyrics, I think I can say this: Before taking my gap year, I was pushing myself ahead. Now, after taking a pause and a breath, I’m striding ahead. I’m nervous about going off to college, but it’s a type of nervous I am well-acquainted with at this point: the nervousness of going to a new place, where you don’t know the people or the expectations or the culture, but you’re excited, because you know some things are going to go well, and some things are going to be hard. And then the plane takes off, and you’re watching the clouds pass by, and your heart is pounding a little bit, and you can feel the airplane seat digging into your back a little bit and you’re leaning back against the head rest, you’re bracing yourself, and then suddenly you know, you absolutely KNOW, that it’s going to be OK. And no matter what, it’s going to be interesting.
“It’s the end of the summer/ When you move to another place…”
That’s all I’ve got, and that’s the end of this blog, and the end of an incredible journey. Thank you for reading.
Peace and love,
Abby
Friday, August 13, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Don't Cry for Me, Argentina
So when I said that my next post would be “tomorrow” I guess I meant “more than a week from now.” I’m not all that surprised or worked up that I haven’t posted; it’s been a crazy, crazy week, what with packing and travel and coming home and running around seeing people and enjoying being home. But here I am, finally, sitting in my dining room at home, typing away and watching Merlin preen himself (while typing…multitasking is fun! Fixing typos, not so much…Merlin, you cause so much trouble!). I think this is the first blog entry I’ve written from home (I can’t remember if that’s actually true and am too lazy to check, sorry).
My last blog post ended rather unceremoniously with my arrival in Santiago, Chile. My four days in Santiago staying with my friend Molly passed without any more unfortunate incidents (yess), but that doesn’t mean I have nothing to say about Chile! Chile is sooo different from Argentina; I sort of assumed that going to Chile would be like going to Canada if you’re from the US, but in reality the two countries (or cities, as honestly I can really only compare Buenos Aires and Santiago) felt SO dissimilar.
I think the major difference right now is that Chile is doing much better economically than Argentina, and thus Santiago had a very different feel from Buenos Aires. It just felt, in my limited experience, like there were fewer unemployed, unhappy people in Santiago than in BA; very little graffiti (as opposed to BA, where every building is covered with angry political slogans) and I didn’t see any demonstrations while I was there (while in BA, there are massive protest marches multiple times per week).
In Buenos Aires, a thriving occupation since the economic meltdown in 2002 has been picking through the trash that is put out nightly looking for recyclable/valuable items. Because of this practice, Buenos Aires is a very litter- and trash-filled city, unfortunately, and in that respect Santiago felt cleaner. On the other hand, because of geography (Santiago is nestled in the foothills of the Andes) Santiago has a terrible smog/pollution problem, while BA has no noticeable air pollution. Furthermore, Santiago is the much uglier city, as much of its colonial architecture has been destroyed in earthquakes or by the Pinochet dictatorship and replaced with Soviet-bloc style concrete monoliths/non-descript high-rises.
Santiago also lacked Buenos Aires’ European feel, both architecturally, as I mentioned, and more generally. In the most concrete terms, I saw very few other tourists in Santiago, and got a lot more attention for my blonde hair/white skin than I do in Buenos Aires. Culturally, too, Santiago felt much less European than BA. Walking around Buenos Aires and going to cafes and sights in BA often feels much like walking around Madrid; I saw fewer similarities between Santiago and Spain, and Santiago definitely doesn’t have the Anglophile culture of Buenos Aires.
The other major difference that made my experience in Santiago feel SO different from my experience in Buenos Aires was that I was hanging out with someone I know REALLY well and who knows me REALLY well, and I was staying with her host family. These two simple facts really made the weekend incredibly special. Getting to see Molly and talk with her—about everything, not just the here-and-now experiences in South America but about memories from Boston and high school, about Yale (she’s a junior at Yale studying abroad), and our families and mutual friends, about America and politics—was SO nice, and SO completely different from spending my days with people who barely know me. What a lovely change! Not that I haven’t met some pretty cool people in Buenos Aires or anything—I have—but it’s just a completely different experience when you’re traveling with someone who knows everything about you, and who is serving as an amazing tour guide and knows exactly what to tell you and where to take you and what you’re interested in. I was SO spoiled by Molly. It was absolutely lovely.
Staying with her host family was absolutely incredible as well. After staying in the volunteer house-hostel situation for seven weeks, it was really cool to experience the host family thing again, however briefly. Molly’s host family is a little nuts, but in the best possible way. I loved seeing them interact and listen to them talk (another thing: the Chilean accent/way of speaking is SO DIFFERENT…there are all these words they just use in Chile, and they cut off the ends of their words…oh wow…). They were all so welcoming to me, and I loved getting a peek into Chilean life.
My trip home from Santiago went completely smoothly (no extortionary exit fees!), and I got home to five fun-filled, action-packed days in Argentina. Among the highlights (from the last couple of weeks):
- The best steak I’ve ever had (and one of the best meals I’ve ever had) at the restaurant La Cabrera in Palermo. The only problem with this meal was that they gave us SO MUCH food that we (me and some of the other volunteers living in the volunteer house) couldn’t finish it all. We asked to get it packed up to take home, which the waiters seemed a little bemused by but seemed to understand; we then accidentally walked out of the restaurant without claiming our doggie bag. We returned, however, and asked for our meat and were given a package wrapped in white butcher paper. The next part of this story is not for the queasy, and should give you some idea of how much of a penny-pincher I was trying to be in BA. The next night back in our hostel, we decided to eat our left-over steaks for dinner. Upon opening the package, however, we discovered that we’d been given random cuts of meat that DEFINITELY weren’t ours (the package included some completely random/foul looking pieces of pork which we did NOT order…). UGH. Facing having to give up on our visions of another steak dinner, however, we…..decided to eat the meat anyway. So we fried it…and ate it in pasta…and didn’t catch some frightening disease. Luckily. Disgusting, but delicious! Yum.
- I bought myself a beautiful leather jacket, completing the boots-bag-jacket ensemble that will probably get me attacked by a rabid vegan or something back in the States. Ah well.
- I went on a few long walks to my favorite places/buildings in Buenos Aires and got some great pictures. I definitely think that I said a sufficient good-bye to the city, and I also rounded-off my BA To-Do List pretty well. It’s a nice feeling to leave after eight weeks with few regrets/pieces of unfinished business.
- May 1-2 (a long time ago, I know, but I never got around to talking about it) was my final full weekend in Buenos Aires. Saturday of that weekend, May 1, was International Workers Day (a Communisty thing…?), so lots of interesting people were out to play in Buenos Aires! Lots of red T-shirts and banners and drums and stuff. Many shops were closed, and the city had a very festive/holiday atmosphere. This atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the Feria del Libro, the largest book fair in the Spanish-speaking world, and a free outdoor concert by Brazilian crooner Caetano Veloso. The concert was definitely a highlight of my time in Buenos Aires; I now LOVE an artist I had previously never heard of, and have a heightened appreciation for the truth of Buenos Aires’ reputation as being an artistic/cultural center. Caetano Veloso’s music is sort of cool jazz with a Latin twist; it’s romantic and relaxing and beautiful, but not necessarily what I would think of as crowd-pleasing music. The outdoor concert was completely PACKED (like, oh-my-god-I-can’t-sit-down-or-really-even-breathe packed), and the crowd was singing along to these soft, lullabye-like lovesongs. It was lovely and different. The Feria del Libro, in a huge convention center right next door to where the concert happened, also sort of showed me how cultural Buenos Aires is—a reputation I had read/heard but hadn’t had a chance to really experience on a non-tourist level. The Feria, which was open until 1 am on May 1, was also packed; Argentineans take their books seriously, and you could see that in how many people were browsing at midnight, and how extensive the collections where in the stalls in the Feria. Very cool.
That’s all for specific updates. Now that my international travels are over and done, I’ll be posting much less frequently. Sometime in the near future I will be posting some thoughts about Argentina and China and Egypt in general; just some comparisons and thoughts and observations. I’ll also probably post some gap year reflections as well, things I would do differently, highlights, take-aways, etc. And then maybe I’ll post a couple times this summer, depending on how busy I get with my job and everything. And then…that will be it! Thank you for reading this as I’ve traipsed through continents and countries and mishaps and adventures! It’s been an amazing nine months!
My last blog post ended rather unceremoniously with my arrival in Santiago, Chile. My four days in Santiago staying with my friend Molly passed without any more unfortunate incidents (yess), but that doesn’t mean I have nothing to say about Chile! Chile is sooo different from Argentina; I sort of assumed that going to Chile would be like going to Canada if you’re from the US, but in reality the two countries (or cities, as honestly I can really only compare Buenos Aires and Santiago) felt SO dissimilar.
I think the major difference right now is that Chile is doing much better economically than Argentina, and thus Santiago had a very different feel from Buenos Aires. It just felt, in my limited experience, like there were fewer unemployed, unhappy people in Santiago than in BA; very little graffiti (as opposed to BA, where every building is covered with angry political slogans) and I didn’t see any demonstrations while I was there (while in BA, there are massive protest marches multiple times per week).
In Buenos Aires, a thriving occupation since the economic meltdown in 2002 has been picking through the trash that is put out nightly looking for recyclable/valuable items. Because of this practice, Buenos Aires is a very litter- and trash-filled city, unfortunately, and in that respect Santiago felt cleaner. On the other hand, because of geography (Santiago is nestled in the foothills of the Andes) Santiago has a terrible smog/pollution problem, while BA has no noticeable air pollution. Furthermore, Santiago is the much uglier city, as much of its colonial architecture has been destroyed in earthquakes or by the Pinochet dictatorship and replaced with Soviet-bloc style concrete monoliths/non-descript high-rises.
Santiago also lacked Buenos Aires’ European feel, both architecturally, as I mentioned, and more generally. In the most concrete terms, I saw very few other tourists in Santiago, and got a lot more attention for my blonde hair/white skin than I do in Buenos Aires. Culturally, too, Santiago felt much less European than BA. Walking around Buenos Aires and going to cafes and sights in BA often feels much like walking around Madrid; I saw fewer similarities between Santiago and Spain, and Santiago definitely doesn’t have the Anglophile culture of Buenos Aires.
The other major difference that made my experience in Santiago feel SO different from my experience in Buenos Aires was that I was hanging out with someone I know REALLY well and who knows me REALLY well, and I was staying with her host family. These two simple facts really made the weekend incredibly special. Getting to see Molly and talk with her—about everything, not just the here-and-now experiences in South America but about memories from Boston and high school, about Yale (she’s a junior at Yale studying abroad), and our families and mutual friends, about America and politics—was SO nice, and SO completely different from spending my days with people who barely know me. What a lovely change! Not that I haven’t met some pretty cool people in Buenos Aires or anything—I have—but it’s just a completely different experience when you’re traveling with someone who knows everything about you, and who is serving as an amazing tour guide and knows exactly what to tell you and where to take you and what you’re interested in. I was SO spoiled by Molly. It was absolutely lovely.
Staying with her host family was absolutely incredible as well. After staying in the volunteer house-hostel situation for seven weeks, it was really cool to experience the host family thing again, however briefly. Molly’s host family is a little nuts, but in the best possible way. I loved seeing them interact and listen to them talk (another thing: the Chilean accent/way of speaking is SO DIFFERENT…there are all these words they just use in Chile, and they cut off the ends of their words…oh wow…). They were all so welcoming to me, and I loved getting a peek into Chilean life.
My trip home from Santiago went completely smoothly (no extortionary exit fees!), and I got home to five fun-filled, action-packed days in Argentina. Among the highlights (from the last couple of weeks):
- The best steak I’ve ever had (and one of the best meals I’ve ever had) at the restaurant La Cabrera in Palermo. The only problem with this meal was that they gave us SO MUCH food that we (me and some of the other volunteers living in the volunteer house) couldn’t finish it all. We asked to get it packed up to take home, which the waiters seemed a little bemused by but seemed to understand; we then accidentally walked out of the restaurant without claiming our doggie bag. We returned, however, and asked for our meat and were given a package wrapped in white butcher paper. The next part of this story is not for the queasy, and should give you some idea of how much of a penny-pincher I was trying to be in BA. The next night back in our hostel, we decided to eat our left-over steaks for dinner. Upon opening the package, however, we discovered that we’d been given random cuts of meat that DEFINITELY weren’t ours (the package included some completely random/foul looking pieces of pork which we did NOT order…). UGH. Facing having to give up on our visions of another steak dinner, however, we…..decided to eat the meat anyway. So we fried it…and ate it in pasta…and didn’t catch some frightening disease. Luckily. Disgusting, but delicious! Yum.
- I bought myself a beautiful leather jacket, completing the boots-bag-jacket ensemble that will probably get me attacked by a rabid vegan or something back in the States. Ah well.
- I went on a few long walks to my favorite places/buildings in Buenos Aires and got some great pictures. I definitely think that I said a sufficient good-bye to the city, and I also rounded-off my BA To-Do List pretty well. It’s a nice feeling to leave after eight weeks with few regrets/pieces of unfinished business.
- May 1-2 (a long time ago, I know, but I never got around to talking about it) was my final full weekend in Buenos Aires. Saturday of that weekend, May 1, was International Workers Day (a Communisty thing…?), so lots of interesting people were out to play in Buenos Aires! Lots of red T-shirts and banners and drums and stuff. Many shops were closed, and the city had a very festive/holiday atmosphere. This atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the Feria del Libro, the largest book fair in the Spanish-speaking world, and a free outdoor concert by Brazilian crooner Caetano Veloso. The concert was definitely a highlight of my time in Buenos Aires; I now LOVE an artist I had previously never heard of, and have a heightened appreciation for the truth of Buenos Aires’ reputation as being an artistic/cultural center. Caetano Veloso’s music is sort of cool jazz with a Latin twist; it’s romantic and relaxing and beautiful, but not necessarily what I would think of as crowd-pleasing music. The outdoor concert was completely PACKED (like, oh-my-god-I-can’t-sit-down-or-really-even-breathe packed), and the crowd was singing along to these soft, lullabye-like lovesongs. It was lovely and different. The Feria del Libro, in a huge convention center right next door to where the concert happened, also sort of showed me how cultural Buenos Aires is—a reputation I had read/heard but hadn’t had a chance to really experience on a non-tourist level. The Feria, which was open until 1 am on May 1, was also packed; Argentineans take their books seriously, and you could see that in how many people were browsing at midnight, and how extensive the collections where in the stalls in the Feria. Very cool.
That’s all for specific updates. Now that my international travels are over and done, I’ll be posting much less frequently. Sometime in the near future I will be posting some thoughts about Argentina and China and Egypt in general; just some comparisons and thoughts and observations. I’ll also probably post some gap year reflections as well, things I would do differently, highlights, take-aways, etc. And then maybe I’ll post a couple times this summer, depending on how busy I get with my job and everything. And then…that will be it! Thank you for reading this as I’ve traipsed through continents and countries and mishaps and adventures! It’s been an amazing nine months!
Thursday, May 13, 2010
¨What To Know When You’ve Been Detained¨, And Other Lessons
What an eventful couple of weeks it has been! My time in Argentina is rapidly coming to an end—I leave Saturday night. That’s the day after tomorrow. I’m definitely excited to go home, but also definitely in denial that all the fun I’ve been having is ending and real life has to start again. How has my gap year gone by so quickly? True, I have more than three months and a whole summer ahead of me before I start college, but my summer job starts in a month, and my exotic travels are over....EEKS. But at the same time, this year has been absolutely perfect, and feels like it has run its course. I’m ready to back in Boston, ready to be done with airplanes and packing and unpacking, ready to be with the people I know and love the best.
Alright. Enough with the gap year angst. I have so much to say about what I’ve experienced in the last two weeks, and so much to say about Argentina in general. Let’s go.
The most exciting event in the last two weeks was a long-weekend in Santiago, Chile by way of a day in Montevideo, Uruguay. I had an amazing time, as I got to live and spend tons of time with my friend Molly, who is studying abroad and living with a host family in Santiago. Before I jump into all my observations about Santiago, etc, however, I have to talk about the adventure that was getting to Santiago. It was quite the adventure.
Basically, I proved to myself last weekend that, as much as I would like to think of myself as this grown up, adult, ultra-competent person, this is not the case in some respects. I am still a 19-year old girl, who, when faced with the consequences of her own inexperience, more often than not ends up crying on the phone with her parents. My big mistake was that I left Argentina last Wednesday night without my American Express card—I just had my debit card. This was not a very smart move on my part, even if it was a complete accident. I meant to bring the card, I just didn’t double-triple check that I had it. So I get to Montevideo and my hostel and spend a nice day wandering around Montevideo (cute town, pretty buildings, some cool museums, but definitely not a place I would want to spend an extended period of time...Montevideo really is a boring, smaller, less important cousin of Buenos Aires. But I’m glad I’ve seen it.). When I’m preparing to return to the airport to catch my flight to Santiago, however, I go to an ATM and realize that I have about $30 on my debit card, and I don’t have my American Express card—and I realize that I left my AmEx on my desk back in Buenos Aires. Shoot. I spend about a half hour trying to find a phone to call my parents, can’t contact them (turns out they were both in an astronomy lecture.....???), contact my sister, explain the sitch, hang up, and desperately board a public bus (super cheap..yes) to the airport. The bus takes longer than I expect it to so I’m now really late getting to the airpot, and I almost don’t get off the bus at all because it’s SO crowded that I had to climb over people; once I’m in the terminal, I go into auto-pilot because I’m freaking out that I’m going to miss my flight. I run to the check-in counter, wave my E-Ticket at the lady at the check-in desk and practically yell that I’m not checking any luggage, and turn to go to rush to my gate. The lady has to practically yell at me, twice, in order to get my attention, that I can’t go directly to the gate. Why? Because Montevideo charges a $36 ¨airport fee¨ to all people flying out of the airport. Uh-oh.
I run to the desk where I have to pay my fee and hand the lady my debit card, the whole time saying that I don’t think there’s enough money on it to pay the fee and I don’t have any other credit card. Obviously, the debit card doesn’t work...for about 30 seconds I’m standing at this counter just staring at the lady and spluttering, wondering not only how I’m going to get on my plane to Santiago, but how I’m even going to be able to leave the airport, and how I would be able to even get back to Buenos Aires. I would probably still be standing there, spluttering, if it weren’t for my savior: Pablo from Spain. Pablo, the man paying at the window next to me, very nicely paid my fee, saying I could wire him the money later. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. So, big shout-out to Pablo from Spain who saved my butt; who knew that there are people out there who are willing to help and trust people they don’t know. Now I know.
So I get on my plane to Santiago (after, while apologizing profusely and wondering whether I left my self-respect and standards on my desk in Buenos Aires along with my AmEx, jumping the entire security/customs line). Shaken, not exactly knowing how I’m going to get from the airport to Molly’s house if the cab is expensive. Mad at myself. Little did I know.....
....because when I got off the plane at Santiago, I found out that when Americans enter Chile they have to pay a $132 ¨reciprocity¨ fee, because the US, being an incredibly friendly and welcoming superpower, charges Chileans to enter the US. It’s 9:30 pm, I’m already tired and mad at myself because of the Montevideo debacle, the customs area is empty because no one else on the flight had to pay a fee, and now I’m standing in front of a Chilean customs official, explaining that I have no cash, no credit card, and not enough money on my debit card to pay the fee (I did, however, have $100 in Traveler’s Cheques...prior planning or just really good luck, I’m not sure). I end up being sent to this room which is basically the customs people’s office, where I sit in a chair in the corner, staring directly at a poster in Spanish and English which says ¨What to know if you’ve been detained¨ with detailed description of my rights as a detained person. Abigail Bok, Detainee. Perfect. Exactly how I always wanted to end up.
Eventually, after much discussion on the part of the bemused Chilean customs officials (I wonder how often are they confronted with a weepy blonde broke American girl? The impression I got is that they’re used to Americans being able to pay the fee no problem...), they finally bring me to a phone so I can use my calling card (I kept saying that I just had to call my parents, and that I had a calling card, but I don’t think they understood and thought that I just wanted to call the United States and charge Chilean customs for the bill...which would have been satisfying, but...). I call my dad, in tears, he puts more money on my card...and problem solved.
This was obviously an interesting evening. For me, it will definitely stick in my mind as a learning experience. I have never felt so incredibly YOUNG. And so incredibly inexperienced. For someone who has traveled as extensively as I have throughout my entire life, I proved that I can still act like a complete amateur. I can’t believe I didn’t a.) remember my AmEx or b.) research what sort of fees are involved in travelling to and from Chile and Uruguay or c.) talk to my Dad before I left about how it would be good if I had ample amounts of money on my debit card. I was also shaken by how quickly I broke down in tears when confronted with a relatively simple, harmless, almost funny situation. I guess travelling by myself stresses me out more than I would care to admit. I think it also made me think about how other countries perceive Americans, and the accuracy of those perceptions; to me, $132 seems like a pretty big amount to just surprise someone with, but people pay it no problem every day. And, at the end of the day, despite my angst/lack of organization, it wasn’t a problem for me to pay $132...I have $132. In fact, I have a lot more than $132, if I need it, in an emergency or unexpectedly...I have an absolutely ginormous safety net. And thinking about it, even the brokest tourist is going to have $132...because international travel of any sort, even the absolute cheapest, shoe-string sort, requires having a fair amount of money, somewhere...if you can buy a plane ticket, most likely somewhere there is a bank account that will most likely have at least a couple hundred dollars in it. A rainy day fund, at the least.
I had always bristled at the assumption by many people in China and in South America that anyone with white skin, or anyone who looks like a tourist, has tons of money and is a walking dollar sign. But, as much as I hate to say it, it’s a true assumption, relative to an average Chinese or Argentinean person. Basically, this whole episode put another puncture in my inflated image of myself as Abigail Bok, sophisticated and intrepid and uttlerly independent world-travelling, gap-year-taking adult. I think I will recover, haha. And I think learning lessons like this is the most important part of taking a gap year. So, Lesson 1: Always bring your AmEx. Lesson 2: Be humble, and always remember that you are never completely independent, always reliant on a safety net.
That’s all I have time for now. Tomorrow: thoughts about Chile, final adventures in Argentina, and some deep thoughts for the road. Chau chau!
Alright. Enough with the gap year angst. I have so much to say about what I’ve experienced in the last two weeks, and so much to say about Argentina in general. Let’s go.
The most exciting event in the last two weeks was a long-weekend in Santiago, Chile by way of a day in Montevideo, Uruguay. I had an amazing time, as I got to live and spend tons of time with my friend Molly, who is studying abroad and living with a host family in Santiago. Before I jump into all my observations about Santiago, etc, however, I have to talk about the adventure that was getting to Santiago. It was quite the adventure.
Basically, I proved to myself last weekend that, as much as I would like to think of myself as this grown up, adult, ultra-competent person, this is not the case in some respects. I am still a 19-year old girl, who, when faced with the consequences of her own inexperience, more often than not ends up crying on the phone with her parents. My big mistake was that I left Argentina last Wednesday night without my American Express card—I just had my debit card. This was not a very smart move on my part, even if it was a complete accident. I meant to bring the card, I just didn’t double-triple check that I had it. So I get to Montevideo and my hostel and spend a nice day wandering around Montevideo (cute town, pretty buildings, some cool museums, but definitely not a place I would want to spend an extended period of time...Montevideo really is a boring, smaller, less important cousin of Buenos Aires. But I’m glad I’ve seen it.). When I’m preparing to return to the airport to catch my flight to Santiago, however, I go to an ATM and realize that I have about $30 on my debit card, and I don’t have my American Express card—and I realize that I left my AmEx on my desk back in Buenos Aires. Shoot. I spend about a half hour trying to find a phone to call my parents, can’t contact them (turns out they were both in an astronomy lecture.....???), contact my sister, explain the sitch, hang up, and desperately board a public bus (super cheap..yes) to the airport. The bus takes longer than I expect it to so I’m now really late getting to the airpot, and I almost don’t get off the bus at all because it’s SO crowded that I had to climb over people; once I’m in the terminal, I go into auto-pilot because I’m freaking out that I’m going to miss my flight. I run to the check-in counter, wave my E-Ticket at the lady at the check-in desk and practically yell that I’m not checking any luggage, and turn to go to rush to my gate. The lady has to practically yell at me, twice, in order to get my attention, that I can’t go directly to the gate. Why? Because Montevideo charges a $36 ¨airport fee¨ to all people flying out of the airport. Uh-oh.
I run to the desk where I have to pay my fee and hand the lady my debit card, the whole time saying that I don’t think there’s enough money on it to pay the fee and I don’t have any other credit card. Obviously, the debit card doesn’t work...for about 30 seconds I’m standing at this counter just staring at the lady and spluttering, wondering not only how I’m going to get on my plane to Santiago, but how I’m even going to be able to leave the airport, and how I would be able to even get back to Buenos Aires. I would probably still be standing there, spluttering, if it weren’t for my savior: Pablo from Spain. Pablo, the man paying at the window next to me, very nicely paid my fee, saying I could wire him the money later. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. So, big shout-out to Pablo from Spain who saved my butt; who knew that there are people out there who are willing to help and trust people they don’t know. Now I know.
So I get on my plane to Santiago (after, while apologizing profusely and wondering whether I left my self-respect and standards on my desk in Buenos Aires along with my AmEx, jumping the entire security/customs line). Shaken, not exactly knowing how I’m going to get from the airport to Molly’s house if the cab is expensive. Mad at myself. Little did I know.....
....because when I got off the plane at Santiago, I found out that when Americans enter Chile they have to pay a $132 ¨reciprocity¨ fee, because the US, being an incredibly friendly and welcoming superpower, charges Chileans to enter the US. It’s 9:30 pm, I’m already tired and mad at myself because of the Montevideo debacle, the customs area is empty because no one else on the flight had to pay a fee, and now I’m standing in front of a Chilean customs official, explaining that I have no cash, no credit card, and not enough money on my debit card to pay the fee (I did, however, have $100 in Traveler’s Cheques...prior planning or just really good luck, I’m not sure). I end up being sent to this room which is basically the customs people’s office, where I sit in a chair in the corner, staring directly at a poster in Spanish and English which says ¨What to know if you’ve been detained¨ with detailed description of my rights as a detained person. Abigail Bok, Detainee. Perfect. Exactly how I always wanted to end up.
Eventually, after much discussion on the part of the bemused Chilean customs officials (I wonder how often are they confronted with a weepy blonde broke American girl? The impression I got is that they’re used to Americans being able to pay the fee no problem...), they finally bring me to a phone so I can use my calling card (I kept saying that I just had to call my parents, and that I had a calling card, but I don’t think they understood and thought that I just wanted to call the United States and charge Chilean customs for the bill...which would have been satisfying, but...). I call my dad, in tears, he puts more money on my card...and problem solved.
This was obviously an interesting evening. For me, it will definitely stick in my mind as a learning experience. I have never felt so incredibly YOUNG. And so incredibly inexperienced. For someone who has traveled as extensively as I have throughout my entire life, I proved that I can still act like a complete amateur. I can’t believe I didn’t a.) remember my AmEx or b.) research what sort of fees are involved in travelling to and from Chile and Uruguay or c.) talk to my Dad before I left about how it would be good if I had ample amounts of money on my debit card. I was also shaken by how quickly I broke down in tears when confronted with a relatively simple, harmless, almost funny situation. I guess travelling by myself stresses me out more than I would care to admit. I think it also made me think about how other countries perceive Americans, and the accuracy of those perceptions; to me, $132 seems like a pretty big amount to just surprise someone with, but people pay it no problem every day. And, at the end of the day, despite my angst/lack of organization, it wasn’t a problem for me to pay $132...I have $132. In fact, I have a lot more than $132, if I need it, in an emergency or unexpectedly...I have an absolutely ginormous safety net. And thinking about it, even the brokest tourist is going to have $132...because international travel of any sort, even the absolute cheapest, shoe-string sort, requires having a fair amount of money, somewhere...if you can buy a plane ticket, most likely somewhere there is a bank account that will most likely have at least a couple hundred dollars in it. A rainy day fund, at the least.
I had always bristled at the assumption by many people in China and in South America that anyone with white skin, or anyone who looks like a tourist, has tons of money and is a walking dollar sign. But, as much as I hate to say it, it’s a true assumption, relative to an average Chinese or Argentinean person. Basically, this whole episode put another puncture in my inflated image of myself as Abigail Bok, sophisticated and intrepid and uttlerly independent world-travelling, gap-year-taking adult. I think I will recover, haha. And I think learning lessons like this is the most important part of taking a gap year. So, Lesson 1: Always bring your AmEx. Lesson 2: Be humble, and always remember that you are never completely independent, always reliant on a safety net.
That’s all I have time for now. Tomorrow: thoughts about Chile, final adventures in Argentina, and some deep thoughts for the road. Chau chau!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Que Kilombo!
Hola! I apologize for not posting in so long! The title of this blog is one of my favorite expressions I've learned while in Argentina, and it basically means, What a mess! The last two weeks have definitely NOT been a mess, but they have been SUPER busy and crazy, so I haven't had a chance to post. I’ve also sort of been waiting to post an update because I’ve been writing (in my head...), or formulating, I guess, a post comparing Argentina to China because I have A TON to say about that. But I’ve been so busy that I haven’t sat down to write THAT post and in the mean time so much has happened that I feel the need to write a purely newsy-update-post. Hence the two week hiatus. Get ready for some newsy updates!
Let’s start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start). Or at least let’s start with the week after my illness and day trip to Tigre. That Thursday, a couple days after my last post, I spent the day exploring one of Buenos Aires’ outer neighborhoods called Belgrano. Belgrano, interestingly enough, used to be a separate town and briefly served as Argentina’s capital during a period of conflict about something or other...I don’t really understand what happened. But the point is that Belgrano has always been a very distinct place from the city closeby/that rapidly enveloped it. There aren’t many stand-out, must-see sites in Belgrano, as it’s a mostly residential neighborhood. I did go to a couple museums, including one that used to be a mansion owned by a guy obsessed with Spain with a beautiful Andaluz-style garden. The other highlight of Belgrano was wandering around Buenos Aires’ Chinatown. Yes, BA has a Chinatown. Yes, it was weird to see Chinese characters and hear Chinese (not a dialect I really understood, however) being spoken. Definitely a bit of a mindboggler, to see translations of Chinese characters in Spanish. Worlds collide! Woah.
My next excursion, on the following Sunday, was slightly further afield (but only slightly) to the city of La Plata, the provincial capital of the province of Buenos Aires, about an hour away by bus. La Plata is home to a university and a lot of government buildings, and is basically just a normal small Argentinean city. Its claim to fame is that it played a major role in the same conflict that somehow involved Belgrano and that I don’t really understand. I think basically there was this big fight over which city would be capital of the new country. But because La Plata was miffed (I think?? ) that it wasn’t the capital, the leading citizens built a lot of beautiful public buildings to sort of try to show BA up. Or at least that’s what my guide book said. BASICALLY La Plata was sleepy and quiet and filled with gorgeous buildings and I saw like zero other tourists and it was a lovely day away. I went to a great craft market and bought some presents and there was an amazing Gothic cathedral and I read my book in the central plaza where there were TONS of Argentine families out and about and it was just really really nice.
The highlights of the following week were many. Tuesday night, Voluntario Global hosted a Language Exchange as a fundraiser in a cafe nearby. The Language Exchange was basically language speed-dating; every English speaker sat opposite a Spanish speaker at tables, and every 5 minutes we switched languages, and every 10 minutes the English speakers moved 1 place to the left. It was really really fun, and really good practice for my Spanish. And now VG is making it a weekly event! Yay. Tuesday I also went shopping all day and spent far too much money BUT ended up with a very very cute pair of very nice leather boots. Mission accomplished! The boots weren’t even that pricey, I just bought a lot of other stuff I didn’t need but love anyway along the way haha.
In furtherance of my quest to explore every far-flung corner of BA and the surrounding area, last week I spent an afternoon in Caballito, a neighborhood geographically in the center of the city, but one that still feels somewhat like a residential outskirt. I passed a whole afternoon sitting in a park reading and writing in my journal, and then visited a natural history museum where I learned about Argentina’s.....DINOSAURS (and other extinct creatures). ROOOOAR. It was so so so cool to see all the skeletons and read about the natural history of South America, which I never really knew anything about before. Did you know that giant sloths were alive only 10,000 years ago??? That seems like a really low number to me. ALSO that South America was where a lot of the really giant herbivore dinosaurs lived (think Land Before Time), and that T. Rex was from North America but may have migrated south just before the big extinction??? HOW COOL ARE DINOSAURS. I hadn’t been to a natural history museum in a long, long time anyway, so this was just super cool on a lot of levels.
To continue the list of REALLY AWESOME THINGS I’ve done in the last two weeks, last Thursday most of us who live in the VG Volunteer House went to a free tango lesson at a hostel down the street. The major lesson I took away, however, was that I am really not very good at tango. At all. I mean, I knew I was no good at dancing before this lesson....now I know, for sure, that I am absolutely no good at tango. Ah, well. It was still fun though.
Also on Thursday I went to watch the weekly march by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo through (wait for it...) la Plaza de Mayo. Before going, I was pretty excited to get to see a historic and inspiring group in action. The reality (and, hindsight being 20/20, this was predictable) fell far short of my expectations. At this point, the Madres are sort of just a tourist attraction, and I found it discouraging to watch their small group march with their iconic white headscarfs, dwarfed by the crowd of tourists standing in front of them snapping pictures (I, of course, among them....). The Madres, for those who don’t know, began to stage silent, peaceful protests during the military dictatorship to draw attention to the thousands of desaparacidos, their children, who had been killed or otherwise made to disappear by the regime. They became international icons and drew tons of media attention to what was going on in Argentina and brought tons of international popular support to overturning the dictatorship. Now, however, they seemed less genuine, without a purpose other than just putting on a play. The Madres have also splintered into two rival groups at this point, so there were two small groups marching, and one of the groups had a big sign that said in Spanish “We oppose the oligarchical landowners” and behind them were marching some members of a workers union of some sort. On the one hand...OK they’re an influential group that is putting their weight behind other issues. On the other hand....it felt a little cheap and fake and made me sad. But still, interesting.
Another highlight occurred last Sunday, when I, along with a bunch of other volunteers, went to a futbol game! And not just any futbol game, but a Boca Juniors, the incredibly fanatical team from the neighborhood where I volunteer, game. I was a little stressed before going to the game because I’d heard horror stories about violent fans/riots/lots of crazy drunken scary men, but it ended up being super fun! We were in a spirited but not too spirited section, and everyone around us was singing Boca songs and shouting chants for the whole game. And Boca won! So it was all in all a great experience—and it felt like a very genuine one, too. I haven’t been converted to caring about soccer, but I loved getting a glimpse of the phenomenon here.
Tuesday I went on another excursion, my favorite one so far (maybe even better than Tigre, I can’t decide). This time I went to Colonia del Sacramento, a small town in Uruguay an hour by highspeed catamaran from BA, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Colonia is still, yes, incredibly colonial...in fact, I think it basically fulfills my definition of “Spanish Colonial”. It was just SO CUTE. Touristy, but in the best, most authentic way. Located on a peninsula, Colonia’s Barrio Historico has beautiful old buildings made of adobe bricks and tile roofs, cobblestone streets, gorgeous palm trees and bright flowers, lots of sun, and the beauty of the Rio de la Plata (which is so wide it looks like an ocean). I spent a day on my own exploring and relishing the quiet and slow pace. I sat in the sun by the water and listened to waves; I wandered around and took tons of pictures; I rented a bike and rode by the water a couple of kilometers to the abandoned Plaza de Toros or bullfighting ring, which has been closed since bullfighting was banned in Uruguay many years ago. I picnicked on the remnants of the ancient city wall, I read, I wandered down narrow side roads, I relished silence and nature and history and beauty man-made and natural. SUCH a wonderful day. There were many fewer people than in Tigre, and it felt much better preserved but also much more fossilized in the past than Tiger, which is very much still a modern-day destination for modern-day pursuits. Colonia was a base for the Portuguese, and then for the Spanish, and is now sort of a giant museum to those days. Of course, there is also a modern part which is also cute, as it’s a little, slow-paced town catering almost entirely to tourists. My verdict from the day: Colonia defines adorable, and is perfectly lovely. If you’re ever in Uruguay or Argentina, it’s a can’t-miss.
I have to rap this entry up and end my long list of doings from the past two weeks because I have to go make a Bingo! Game for the kids I’m teaching tomorrow. Sophia and I bought a bunch of games for the afterschool program, and the kids really enjoyed them. Their favorite by far is Jenga (the game where you make a tower out of blocks and everyone has to remove a block using only one hand until the tower falls down). It’s so cute watching the really little kids play Jenga because they actually get so emotionally involved and excited. When the tower looks like it’s about the fall, a bunch of the little kids cover their eyes and refuse to watch until they know it’s “safe.” SO CUTE. I wish I could make a recording of the sudden in-breaths and loud sighs of relief involved in playing this game with these little kids! So basically their enjoyment of this fun but essentially non-educational game inspired me to come up with some fun but directly educational games. I decided that they all really really need to practice their basic adding and subtracting facts (for the little kids) and their multiplication tables (for the older kids), so I’ve devised a bingo game around that. Hopefully they’ll enjoy it! If anyone has any ideas for fun, educational games to play with kids between the ages of 6 and 14, let me know!
Hopefully I’ll get my act together and post something a bit more intellectually stimulating than this update soon. Until then, adios!
Let’s start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start). Or at least let’s start with the week after my illness and day trip to Tigre. That Thursday, a couple days after my last post, I spent the day exploring one of Buenos Aires’ outer neighborhoods called Belgrano. Belgrano, interestingly enough, used to be a separate town and briefly served as Argentina’s capital during a period of conflict about something or other...I don’t really understand what happened. But the point is that Belgrano has always been a very distinct place from the city closeby/that rapidly enveloped it. There aren’t many stand-out, must-see sites in Belgrano, as it’s a mostly residential neighborhood. I did go to a couple museums, including one that used to be a mansion owned by a guy obsessed with Spain with a beautiful Andaluz-style garden. The other highlight of Belgrano was wandering around Buenos Aires’ Chinatown. Yes, BA has a Chinatown. Yes, it was weird to see Chinese characters and hear Chinese (not a dialect I really understood, however) being spoken. Definitely a bit of a mindboggler, to see translations of Chinese characters in Spanish. Worlds collide! Woah.
My next excursion, on the following Sunday, was slightly further afield (but only slightly) to the city of La Plata, the provincial capital of the province of Buenos Aires, about an hour away by bus. La Plata is home to a university and a lot of government buildings, and is basically just a normal small Argentinean city. Its claim to fame is that it played a major role in the same conflict that somehow involved Belgrano and that I don’t really understand. I think basically there was this big fight over which city would be capital of the new country. But because La Plata was miffed (I think?? ) that it wasn’t the capital, the leading citizens built a lot of beautiful public buildings to sort of try to show BA up. Or at least that’s what my guide book said. BASICALLY La Plata was sleepy and quiet and filled with gorgeous buildings and I saw like zero other tourists and it was a lovely day away. I went to a great craft market and bought some presents and there was an amazing Gothic cathedral and I read my book in the central plaza where there were TONS of Argentine families out and about and it was just really really nice.
The highlights of the following week were many. Tuesday night, Voluntario Global hosted a Language Exchange as a fundraiser in a cafe nearby. The Language Exchange was basically language speed-dating; every English speaker sat opposite a Spanish speaker at tables, and every 5 minutes we switched languages, and every 10 minutes the English speakers moved 1 place to the left. It was really really fun, and really good practice for my Spanish. And now VG is making it a weekly event! Yay. Tuesday I also went shopping all day and spent far too much money BUT ended up with a very very cute pair of very nice leather boots. Mission accomplished! The boots weren’t even that pricey, I just bought a lot of other stuff I didn’t need but love anyway along the way haha.
In furtherance of my quest to explore every far-flung corner of BA and the surrounding area, last week I spent an afternoon in Caballito, a neighborhood geographically in the center of the city, but one that still feels somewhat like a residential outskirt. I passed a whole afternoon sitting in a park reading and writing in my journal, and then visited a natural history museum where I learned about Argentina’s.....DINOSAURS (and other extinct creatures). ROOOOAR. It was so so so cool to see all the skeletons and read about the natural history of South America, which I never really knew anything about before. Did you know that giant sloths were alive only 10,000 years ago??? That seems like a really low number to me. ALSO that South America was where a lot of the really giant herbivore dinosaurs lived (think Land Before Time), and that T. Rex was from North America but may have migrated south just before the big extinction??? HOW COOL ARE DINOSAURS. I hadn’t been to a natural history museum in a long, long time anyway, so this was just super cool on a lot of levels.
To continue the list of REALLY AWESOME THINGS I’ve done in the last two weeks, last Thursday most of us who live in the VG Volunteer House went to a free tango lesson at a hostel down the street. The major lesson I took away, however, was that I am really not very good at tango. At all. I mean, I knew I was no good at dancing before this lesson....now I know, for sure, that I am absolutely no good at tango. Ah, well. It was still fun though.
Also on Thursday I went to watch the weekly march by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo through (wait for it...) la Plaza de Mayo. Before going, I was pretty excited to get to see a historic and inspiring group in action. The reality (and, hindsight being 20/20, this was predictable) fell far short of my expectations. At this point, the Madres are sort of just a tourist attraction, and I found it discouraging to watch their small group march with their iconic white headscarfs, dwarfed by the crowd of tourists standing in front of them snapping pictures (I, of course, among them....). The Madres, for those who don’t know, began to stage silent, peaceful protests during the military dictatorship to draw attention to the thousands of desaparacidos, their children, who had been killed or otherwise made to disappear by the regime. They became international icons and drew tons of media attention to what was going on in Argentina and brought tons of international popular support to overturning the dictatorship. Now, however, they seemed less genuine, without a purpose other than just putting on a play. The Madres have also splintered into two rival groups at this point, so there were two small groups marching, and one of the groups had a big sign that said in Spanish “We oppose the oligarchical landowners” and behind them were marching some members of a workers union of some sort. On the one hand...OK they’re an influential group that is putting their weight behind other issues. On the other hand....it felt a little cheap and fake and made me sad. But still, interesting.
Another highlight occurred last Sunday, when I, along with a bunch of other volunteers, went to a futbol game! And not just any futbol game, but a Boca Juniors, the incredibly fanatical team from the neighborhood where I volunteer, game. I was a little stressed before going to the game because I’d heard horror stories about violent fans/riots/lots of crazy drunken scary men, but it ended up being super fun! We were in a spirited but not too spirited section, and everyone around us was singing Boca songs and shouting chants for the whole game. And Boca won! So it was all in all a great experience—and it felt like a very genuine one, too. I haven’t been converted to caring about soccer, but I loved getting a glimpse of the phenomenon here.
Tuesday I went on another excursion, my favorite one so far (maybe even better than Tigre, I can’t decide). This time I went to Colonia del Sacramento, a small town in Uruguay an hour by highspeed catamaran from BA, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Colonia is still, yes, incredibly colonial...in fact, I think it basically fulfills my definition of “Spanish Colonial”. It was just SO CUTE. Touristy, but in the best, most authentic way. Located on a peninsula, Colonia’s Barrio Historico has beautiful old buildings made of adobe bricks and tile roofs, cobblestone streets, gorgeous palm trees and bright flowers, lots of sun, and the beauty of the Rio de la Plata (which is so wide it looks like an ocean). I spent a day on my own exploring and relishing the quiet and slow pace. I sat in the sun by the water and listened to waves; I wandered around and took tons of pictures; I rented a bike and rode by the water a couple of kilometers to the abandoned Plaza de Toros or bullfighting ring, which has been closed since bullfighting was banned in Uruguay many years ago. I picnicked on the remnants of the ancient city wall, I read, I wandered down narrow side roads, I relished silence and nature and history and beauty man-made and natural. SUCH a wonderful day. There were many fewer people than in Tigre, and it felt much better preserved but also much more fossilized in the past than Tiger, which is very much still a modern-day destination for modern-day pursuits. Colonia was a base for the Portuguese, and then for the Spanish, and is now sort of a giant museum to those days. Of course, there is also a modern part which is also cute, as it’s a little, slow-paced town catering almost entirely to tourists. My verdict from the day: Colonia defines adorable, and is perfectly lovely. If you’re ever in Uruguay or Argentina, it’s a can’t-miss.
I have to rap this entry up and end my long list of doings from the past two weeks because I have to go make a Bingo! Game for the kids I’m teaching tomorrow. Sophia and I bought a bunch of games for the afterschool program, and the kids really enjoyed them. Their favorite by far is Jenga (the game where you make a tower out of blocks and everyone has to remove a block using only one hand until the tower falls down). It’s so cute watching the really little kids play Jenga because they actually get so emotionally involved and excited. When the tower looks like it’s about the fall, a bunch of the little kids cover their eyes and refuse to watch until they know it’s “safe.” SO CUTE. I wish I could make a recording of the sudden in-breaths and loud sighs of relief involved in playing this game with these little kids! So basically their enjoyment of this fun but essentially non-educational game inspired me to come up with some fun but directly educational games. I decided that they all really really need to practice their basic adding and subtracting facts (for the little kids) and their multiplication tables (for the older kids), so I’ve devised a bingo game around that. Hopefully they’ll enjoy it! If anyone has any ideas for fun, educational games to play with kids between the ages of 6 and 14, let me know!
Hopefully I’ll get my act together and post something a bit more intellectually stimulating than this update soon. Until then, adios!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Tigre, Tigre Burning Bright
There’s not much to report from the past week, mostly because I spent a good chunk of it sleeping because I was sick. I had a very swollen sore throat and fever, and as a result spent most of last week moping around and sleeping A LOT. Finally, last Friday I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with pharyngitis, which is basically strep throat I think (maybe not as bad?). I got antibiotics, took them Friday night before going to sleep, and woke up on Saturday CURED. Not even kidding, modern medicine is magic. That sentence may seem like a contradiction, but I beg to differ. It felt so good to have energy and be hungry again. So there—another crisis solved! It seems like every week has to have its crisis. Oh well. Life goes on, and is still great!
The other mildly bad news is that I found another live bedbug in my room on Friday night. I’m leaning towards moving out of my room all together and just staying in the bedbug-free dorm room for the remainder of my time here; I have to decide by tomorrow-ish. I have to decide whether I think their bedbug eradication methods are going to solve the problem or not...we’ll see.
The highlight of last week was the day trip I took on Sunday. My friend Sophia and I went to Tigre, a riverside town located 27 km outside Buenos Aires. It’s where the BA elites used to spend the summer, and it is gorgeous. Filled with Spanish colonial architecture and rowing clubs, Tigre, in all its sun-dappled glory, defines picturesque. It’s also incredibly easy to get to—for a mere 75 cents, we took the train there and back.
Sophia and I spent the majority of our afternoon exploring this giant market at the Puerta de Frutos (Fruit Port), where, not unsurprisingly, there was absolutely no fruit to be found, but a lot of tourist souvenirs, as well as vendors of any knick knack or homegood you can think of, including furniture, lamps, scented soap, curtains, children’s toys and furniture, dolls, jewelry...basically, you name it. We dined on amazing so-called hamburguesas completas which are incredibly misnamed. These were not merely complete hamburgers…these were death on a plate hamburgers. Apparently it’s an Argentinean tradition to not just put tomato and lettuce on a burger, but also cheese...and sliced ham. Sounds gross, and it is, as I said, like eating death, but it was also DELICIOUS. My first hamburger since Lent began, and it tasted so good.
Besides enjoying the culinary and commercial delights, the other activities were basking in the sunshine and taking a lovely boat tour through Tigre. As I said, Tigre is on a river, and outside the center of town, there are different strands of the river that act as roads. On each side of these strands of the river, Europeans and wealthy porteños built their summer retreats. These gorgeous houses and cabañas remain to today, and are SO BEAUTIFUL. My new life goal is to have a house in Tigre. Imagine the most exquisite, luxurious mixture of British and Spanish architecture and sensibilities. Tons of rowing and boating clubs and gardens, as well as wonderful mix of small cottages and huge fancy mansions. And each house is surrounded by tall trees and lush vegetation, and is accessible by a little brightly painted covered dock and boat house. I literally couldn’t stop smiling as I sat at the side of the boat, snapping pictures hte whole time, feeling the sun and breeze on my face, and oh-ing and aw-ing over these adorable houses and the families enjoying the water and sun. What a wonderful day!
I’m planning some other daytrips as well as one whole weekend away for my remaining 4 weekends (wow, time flies!).
That’s about all I have to update about for now regarding Buenos Aires activities. The only other thing I wanted to bring up has to do with this summer, long after I return to the states. This summer I’m going to be working as a camp counselor at a camp called Chinatown Adventure in Boston’s Chinatown. CHAD (the affectionate abbreviation hehe) is one of 12 community-based summer camps geared towards low-income kids which are offered by Harvard’s Phillips Brooks House Association’s Summe Urban Program. I’ll be in charge of a class of ten rising 5th graders, and will have to design and execute three hours of classroom time every weekday, with the help of a Junior Counselor. AH. Amazing, but scary.
As a CHAD counselor, I am also responsible for helping with the camp’s fundraising efforts. As a student-run nonprofic organization, we have to raise a lot of money to make these camps possible. It’s a really important endeavor, as these camps provide high-quality, safe, enriching programming (the mornings are spent doing academic work, the afternoons on field trips around Boston) to kids who wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate in a program like that.
If you donate online, PBHA has a donor who will match online credit card contributions. So if you give $25, it's like you gave $50.
Here's the secure website: www.pbha.org/donate.
When you donate, please enter “CHAD” in the -Specific Needs- box and your contribution will automatically be matched. Add my name in the section "in honor of" so I will be notified when your gift comes in.
I think this is going to be an absolutely incredible way to finish up my gap year—an amazing year that began with my learning in China, and is going to end with my teaching in Chinatown. I would truly appreciate any support you can give me and my future campers!
Peace!
The other mildly bad news is that I found another live bedbug in my room on Friday night. I’m leaning towards moving out of my room all together and just staying in the bedbug-free dorm room for the remainder of my time here; I have to decide by tomorrow-ish. I have to decide whether I think their bedbug eradication methods are going to solve the problem or not...we’ll see.
The highlight of last week was the day trip I took on Sunday. My friend Sophia and I went to Tigre, a riverside town located 27 km outside Buenos Aires. It’s where the BA elites used to spend the summer, and it is gorgeous. Filled with Spanish colonial architecture and rowing clubs, Tigre, in all its sun-dappled glory, defines picturesque. It’s also incredibly easy to get to—for a mere 75 cents, we took the train there and back.
Sophia and I spent the majority of our afternoon exploring this giant market at the Puerta de Frutos (Fruit Port), where, not unsurprisingly, there was absolutely no fruit to be found, but a lot of tourist souvenirs, as well as vendors of any knick knack or homegood you can think of, including furniture, lamps, scented soap, curtains, children’s toys and furniture, dolls, jewelry...basically, you name it. We dined on amazing so-called hamburguesas completas which are incredibly misnamed. These were not merely complete hamburgers…these were death on a plate hamburgers. Apparently it’s an Argentinean tradition to not just put tomato and lettuce on a burger, but also cheese...and sliced ham. Sounds gross, and it is, as I said, like eating death, but it was also DELICIOUS. My first hamburger since Lent began, and it tasted so good.
Besides enjoying the culinary and commercial delights, the other activities were basking in the sunshine and taking a lovely boat tour through Tigre. As I said, Tigre is on a river, and outside the center of town, there are different strands of the river that act as roads. On each side of these strands of the river, Europeans and wealthy porteños built their summer retreats. These gorgeous houses and cabañas remain to today, and are SO BEAUTIFUL. My new life goal is to have a house in Tigre. Imagine the most exquisite, luxurious mixture of British and Spanish architecture and sensibilities. Tons of rowing and boating clubs and gardens, as well as wonderful mix of small cottages and huge fancy mansions. And each house is surrounded by tall trees and lush vegetation, and is accessible by a little brightly painted covered dock and boat house. I literally couldn’t stop smiling as I sat at the side of the boat, snapping pictures hte whole time, feeling the sun and breeze on my face, and oh-ing and aw-ing over these adorable houses and the families enjoying the water and sun. What a wonderful day!
I’m planning some other daytrips as well as one whole weekend away for my remaining 4 weekends (wow, time flies!).
That’s about all I have to update about for now regarding Buenos Aires activities. The only other thing I wanted to bring up has to do with this summer, long after I return to the states. This summer I’m going to be working as a camp counselor at a camp called Chinatown Adventure in Boston’s Chinatown. CHAD (the affectionate abbreviation hehe) is one of 12 community-based summer camps geared towards low-income kids which are offered by Harvard’s Phillips Brooks House Association’s Summe Urban Program. I’ll be in charge of a class of ten rising 5th graders, and will have to design and execute three hours of classroom time every weekday, with the help of a Junior Counselor. AH. Amazing, but scary.
As a CHAD counselor, I am also responsible for helping with the camp’s fundraising efforts. As a student-run nonprofic organization, we have to raise a lot of money to make these camps possible. It’s a really important endeavor, as these camps provide high-quality, safe, enriching programming (the mornings are spent doing academic work, the afternoons on field trips around Boston) to kids who wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate in a program like that.
If you donate online, PBHA has a donor who will match online credit card contributions. So if you give $25, it's like you gave $50.
Here's the secure website: www.pbha.org/donate.
When you donate, please enter “CHAD” in the -Specific Needs- box and your contribution will automatically be matched. Add my name in the section "in honor of" so I will be notified when your gift comes in.
I think this is going to be an absolutely incredible way to finish up my gap year—an amazing year that began with my learning in China, and is going to end with my teaching in Chinatown. I would truly appreciate any support you can give me and my future campers!
Peace!
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
An amazing week...with a few itty bitty problems
Last week was another crazy week, filled with interesting experiences, fun adventures, and, unfortunately, its fair share of angst (and I’m not just talking about Good Friday!). Overall, it was a really really good week...I just have a few things bugging me. Please remember that wording for future reference. Or don’t remember it, because if you do, you will hate me and my horrific punning. However, before burrowing (argh!) into the angst, I would LOVE to start with the more interesting stuff.
For instance: Wednesday and Monday I started working in El Comedor, the community kitchen in the community center where I volunteer. Every weekday the center serves lunch to about 60ish people, all of whom either work in the center or live close by. Sophia, the British girl who is also volunteering with me at the afterschool program, and I ¨help¨ by chopping vegetables, cutting bread, doing dishes, putting things away, and other basic tasks. I’m not sure how helpful we actually are, as the ladies who run the kitchen do this every day, are highly experienced, and have a very particular way of doing things. Even so, I’ve enjoyed having the chance to just hang out at El Comedor and see what’s going on. I’m hoping that as time goes on, the ladies will open up a bit and I can actually get to know them a little. As it is, it’s been fun and interesting (seeing how they make a delicious meal for so many people from scratch, listening to what they talk about, eavesdropping on the interesting meetings that happen in the community center while we work, practicing my Spanish...all very interesting), but also kind of exhausting (trying to constantly strike a balance between being helpful and not being in the way, being competent but not doing something wrong, being forthcoming but not pushy or rude over the course of four hours...all pretty tiring). That being said, I think I’ll be happy working in El Comedor twice a week for my time here—and I think I have to give up fretting about being ¨useful¨ and instead just enjoy myself and try to be as present and as helpful as possible.
Another very interesting (albeit slightly frustrating) aspect of last week was the introduction I got to Argentinean nationalism. What provoked this introduction? Well, last Friday, April 2, as well as being Good Friday, was also the day of memory for the Falklands War, aka La guerra de las Malvinas. Helpful hint if you ever happen to come to Argentina: DON’T accidentally or on purpose call those little troublesome islands in the south Atlantic the Falklands Islands because you will be, at best, calmly but firmly corrected, and, at worst, rabidly attacked and told that they’re are actually called Las Malvinas and they are ARGENTINA´S. Don’t worry, I was most definitely NOT rabidly attacked, and it wasn’t even that big a deal here. The only impact this day had on my week was the sudden blossoming of graffiti saying ¨Malvinas son Argentinas¨ (The Malvinas are Argentinean), and a change in the curriculum at the afterschool program where I work three times a week.
Last week, half of every class was devoted to discussing La Guerra de las Malvinas. I shouldn’t have found this frustrating, except that for some reason I DID. Part of my frustration comes from the fact that being exposed to nationalism—particularly in a classroom setting—is just plain uncomfortable when you’re a foreign person in a country. Honestly, I’m sure 4th of July is a really frustrating day to be a non-American in America, even if the festivities, etc, are really fun and an interesting cultural experience. It’s not like I felt threatened or unwelcome or anything like that...I just felt left out/out of the loop. Even more off-putting than this slight discomfort, however, was my frustration at seeing both how little of their own history the kids in the community center know, and how simplified the version of the story of the war we were teaching them was. Park and Milton both taught me that history—and, crucially, the study and teaching of history—is really important, really powerful, and really dangerous. Things like the battle over the revisions to the Texas history textbooks (let’s not even get started about whether there even should BE history textbooks...I am a proud convert to the Milton primary source obsession...a discussion for another day...even writing about the Texas MESS makes my blood pressure rise...) are so heated because both sides know how important history is. Remembering history completely ¨accurately¨ is not really possible, because history is always going to be subjective; it’s so important, though, to shoot for accuracy, for facts, and to try to be as aware of bias as possible. Basically, I’ve always thought that history is something to be handled carefully, with intention. I think the lessons I watched/sort of helped teach were designed with the best of intentions—but because the kids had so little base knowledge, it was almost impossible to talk about anything complex. Part nationalism-infused-geography lesson (ie ¨Here’s Argentina on a map...here’s England...here are the Malvinas...now, kids, which country is closer to las Malvinas?¨...I’m absolutely not exaggerating) part veterans appreciation lesson (we focused a lot on how young and under-equipped the Argentinean soldiers were, and how many of them died or were mentally or psychologically crippled)....I think the wonderful women who run the afterschool program did a pretty good job given the circumstances. I think my frustration comes from the fact that this was the first time in Argentina that I’ve encountered a huge gap between my understanding and what’s accepted as fact here. No one (or, at least, no one I talked to) seemed to see the war the way I was taught it: that it was basically a distraction measure by a weak and failing military dictatorship, designed to bring the country together around a common cause that even the left/pro-democracy people would support and therefore stop their actions against the government, that it was a lost cause from the beginning, that Britain only fought back because of the oil and natural gas deposits on the islands, that Argentina’s rapid and complete defeat served to undermine the dictatorship so severely that the government was ousted and democracy established just a year later. And that’s a horribly oversimplified version. In the lessons we taught, there was no nuance—or even a mention that it was a complex situation. Just: Argentina is closer and therefore the islands belong to Argentina, and the war was really sad because lots of young men died. Part of me knows that my problem is really just that—MY problem. The lessons, in the grand scheme of things, weren’t that bad, or that harmful, and were really truly well intentioned. Teaching history, especially complex and recent history, to young kids is really really hard (especially young kids, or not so young kids, who can’t find England on the map, who barely know that the Malvinas are islands, etc). So hard, that I don’t remember ever being taught about issues like the Vietnam War or the first Gulf War until the last years of highschool....Park didn’t even attempt. So I think my frustration is mainly just the frustration of someone who really loves history seeing history oversimplified (basically I have history OCD?), and who was actually only bothered because of the slight discomfort which comes from having to confront any cultural difference head-on. And having to teach this lesson three times to three different groups of kids (but in slightly different forms) just added salt to the wound.
Wow. I just ranted for such a long time about something that wasn’t even that big a deal. I guess I just had to get that out of my system. Whew. Really, it wasn’t a bad experience at all...it was just very interesting and thought-provoking to think about how to teach history, and the relationship between history and nationalism.
Alrighty then. Moving on to the other major happening of the week: Good Friday and Easter! Alleluia! Being in a Catholic country for Easter was another fascinating aspect of this week. I had a wonderful Easter weekend. Friday night there was a massive Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) down Avenida de Mayo, the street where I live, from El Congreso to Plaza de Mayo. There was no traffic, and the street (which is very wide...three or four lanes) was completely packed with people. The walk started with a live performance of the first part of the Passion story. Then we (the crowd) shuffled down Avenida de Mayo following a giant cross as well as giant statues of Jesus and Mary (who, I guess, played a much bigger part in the Easter story than I’ve ever thought...we kept praying to Mary...Catholic country thing I guess?). People had candles, babies (some people were holding both candles and babies...alarming...), there were food vendors who kept yelling out their wares even when we stopped to pray..... I’m being flip, but it was actually a lovely experience, even if part of my Episcopalian self was cringing at the massive collective demonstration of faith. The live action shows were not my favorite part, that’s for sure. I definitely prefer listening to the texts. It either has to be ¨Jesus Christ, Superstar¨ or the NRSV...This is the land, though, of Tierra Santa, the world’s only (I actually don’t know if that’s true...I’m just HOPING) religious theme park. Live actors perform the different parts of the Passion story (including the Resurrection) every hour or something and there are rides and a fake Jerusalem and stuff. There are all these advertisements for it on the subway that read ¨Tierra Santa: A verdadero ACTO de fe¨ (Holy Land: a true ACT of faith). Hardy harr harr. Another entertaining aspect of Easter in Buenos Aires was the giant blow up Resurrected Jesus doll that appeared in the Plaza de Mayo next to the city cathedral, all white, a full story tall, his arms stretched out as though he was blessing us passersby/rising up to heaven. This would not have been that funny, except that they tied down his arms so he wouldn’t fly away (it was super windy...) but not his head...so in the wind, Jesus was holding out his arms beatifically, but his head kept nodding dramatically and irregularly like he was falling asleep. It was funny, I swear.
Alright, so now for the cause of this week’s angst (as if there weren’t enough already haha with my history rant): I found a bed bug in my room on Friday night. I know it’s a bed bug because I killed it and compared it to pictures on the internet. And I know it’s a bed bug because I’ve been getting mysterious bites that I’d been hoping were mosquito bites but are big and last forever. HUGE FREAKING DRAG, RIGHT? I can only joke about it now because I’ve had like five days to stop freaking out. I vacated my room for two days, they fumigated and vacuumed it, I slept there last night and didn’t get bit, thank goodness, but we’ll see how things develop. I’m not entirely confident in the eradication measures they took, just because they weren’t really specific about what they did. I took all my clothes to be cleaned/dried at high heat in case they were infested (YUCK AHBFJDFGEF) and am now keeping them in plastic bags. Have also covered my head board and footboard with plastic trash bags, not because I think it will make any difference but just for peace of mind. Basically, it’s been a bit of a horror show. And led to a lot of feeling bad for myself on Saturday until I went shopping and found a beautiful leather bag to replace my stolen bag (Easter definitely helped too...all my favorite hymns in church...getting to say ALLELUIA again...oh, and Jesus being resurrected is the ultimate upper...). And then Sunday after church I went for a beautiful bike ride in this ecological reserve on the edge of the city by the river that feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere but is surrounded by highrises. So hopefully this AWFUL ANNOYING problem has been ERADICATED and life can continue to be BEAUTIFUL. Fingers crossed. I know that it can’t be that big an infestation because I didn’t get that many bites over the course of three weeks, and it took three weeks for me to see a bug, but still, it’s just the worst feeling to not wanting to even BE in your room, let alone sleep there. YUCK UGH. Again, just like last week, I’m going to qualify my freaking out by saying (for my own benefit because I need to remind myself) that this is a totally solvable problem, that much much worse things could have happened, and that I should just get on with my life and enjoy my time here. So that’s what I’m going to do.......by going to bed now......oh dear.
For instance: Wednesday and Monday I started working in El Comedor, the community kitchen in the community center where I volunteer. Every weekday the center serves lunch to about 60ish people, all of whom either work in the center or live close by. Sophia, the British girl who is also volunteering with me at the afterschool program, and I ¨help¨ by chopping vegetables, cutting bread, doing dishes, putting things away, and other basic tasks. I’m not sure how helpful we actually are, as the ladies who run the kitchen do this every day, are highly experienced, and have a very particular way of doing things. Even so, I’ve enjoyed having the chance to just hang out at El Comedor and see what’s going on. I’m hoping that as time goes on, the ladies will open up a bit and I can actually get to know them a little. As it is, it’s been fun and interesting (seeing how they make a delicious meal for so many people from scratch, listening to what they talk about, eavesdropping on the interesting meetings that happen in the community center while we work, practicing my Spanish...all very interesting), but also kind of exhausting (trying to constantly strike a balance between being helpful and not being in the way, being competent but not doing something wrong, being forthcoming but not pushy or rude over the course of four hours...all pretty tiring). That being said, I think I’ll be happy working in El Comedor twice a week for my time here—and I think I have to give up fretting about being ¨useful¨ and instead just enjoy myself and try to be as present and as helpful as possible.
Another very interesting (albeit slightly frustrating) aspect of last week was the introduction I got to Argentinean nationalism. What provoked this introduction? Well, last Friday, April 2, as well as being Good Friday, was also the day of memory for the Falklands War, aka La guerra de las Malvinas. Helpful hint if you ever happen to come to Argentina: DON’T accidentally or on purpose call those little troublesome islands in the south Atlantic the Falklands Islands because you will be, at best, calmly but firmly corrected, and, at worst, rabidly attacked and told that they’re are actually called Las Malvinas and they are ARGENTINA´S. Don’t worry, I was most definitely NOT rabidly attacked, and it wasn’t even that big a deal here. The only impact this day had on my week was the sudden blossoming of graffiti saying ¨Malvinas son Argentinas¨ (The Malvinas are Argentinean), and a change in the curriculum at the afterschool program where I work three times a week.
Last week, half of every class was devoted to discussing La Guerra de las Malvinas. I shouldn’t have found this frustrating, except that for some reason I DID. Part of my frustration comes from the fact that being exposed to nationalism—particularly in a classroom setting—is just plain uncomfortable when you’re a foreign person in a country. Honestly, I’m sure 4th of July is a really frustrating day to be a non-American in America, even if the festivities, etc, are really fun and an interesting cultural experience. It’s not like I felt threatened or unwelcome or anything like that...I just felt left out/out of the loop. Even more off-putting than this slight discomfort, however, was my frustration at seeing both how little of their own history the kids in the community center know, and how simplified the version of the story of the war we were teaching them was. Park and Milton both taught me that history—and, crucially, the study and teaching of history—is really important, really powerful, and really dangerous. Things like the battle over the revisions to the Texas history textbooks (let’s not even get started about whether there even should BE history textbooks...I am a proud convert to the Milton primary source obsession...a discussion for another day...even writing about the Texas MESS makes my blood pressure rise...) are so heated because both sides know how important history is. Remembering history completely ¨accurately¨ is not really possible, because history is always going to be subjective; it’s so important, though, to shoot for accuracy, for facts, and to try to be as aware of bias as possible. Basically, I’ve always thought that history is something to be handled carefully, with intention. I think the lessons I watched/sort of helped teach were designed with the best of intentions—but because the kids had so little base knowledge, it was almost impossible to talk about anything complex. Part nationalism-infused-geography lesson (ie ¨Here’s Argentina on a map...here’s England...here are the Malvinas...now, kids, which country is closer to las Malvinas?¨...I’m absolutely not exaggerating) part veterans appreciation lesson (we focused a lot on how young and under-equipped the Argentinean soldiers were, and how many of them died or were mentally or psychologically crippled)....I think the wonderful women who run the afterschool program did a pretty good job given the circumstances. I think my frustration comes from the fact that this was the first time in Argentina that I’ve encountered a huge gap between my understanding and what’s accepted as fact here. No one (or, at least, no one I talked to) seemed to see the war the way I was taught it: that it was basically a distraction measure by a weak and failing military dictatorship, designed to bring the country together around a common cause that even the left/pro-democracy people would support and therefore stop their actions against the government, that it was a lost cause from the beginning, that Britain only fought back because of the oil and natural gas deposits on the islands, that Argentina’s rapid and complete defeat served to undermine the dictatorship so severely that the government was ousted and democracy established just a year later. And that’s a horribly oversimplified version. In the lessons we taught, there was no nuance—or even a mention that it was a complex situation. Just: Argentina is closer and therefore the islands belong to Argentina, and the war was really sad because lots of young men died. Part of me knows that my problem is really just that—MY problem. The lessons, in the grand scheme of things, weren’t that bad, or that harmful, and were really truly well intentioned. Teaching history, especially complex and recent history, to young kids is really really hard (especially young kids, or not so young kids, who can’t find England on the map, who barely know that the Malvinas are islands, etc). So hard, that I don’t remember ever being taught about issues like the Vietnam War or the first Gulf War until the last years of highschool....Park didn’t even attempt. So I think my frustration is mainly just the frustration of someone who really loves history seeing history oversimplified (basically I have history OCD?), and who was actually only bothered because of the slight discomfort which comes from having to confront any cultural difference head-on. And having to teach this lesson three times to three different groups of kids (but in slightly different forms) just added salt to the wound.
Wow. I just ranted for such a long time about something that wasn’t even that big a deal. I guess I just had to get that out of my system. Whew. Really, it wasn’t a bad experience at all...it was just very interesting and thought-provoking to think about how to teach history, and the relationship between history and nationalism.
Alrighty then. Moving on to the other major happening of the week: Good Friday and Easter! Alleluia! Being in a Catholic country for Easter was another fascinating aspect of this week. I had a wonderful Easter weekend. Friday night there was a massive Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) down Avenida de Mayo, the street where I live, from El Congreso to Plaza de Mayo. There was no traffic, and the street (which is very wide...three or four lanes) was completely packed with people. The walk started with a live performance of the first part of the Passion story. Then we (the crowd) shuffled down Avenida de Mayo following a giant cross as well as giant statues of Jesus and Mary (who, I guess, played a much bigger part in the Easter story than I’ve ever thought...we kept praying to Mary...Catholic country thing I guess?). People had candles, babies (some people were holding both candles and babies...alarming...), there were food vendors who kept yelling out their wares even when we stopped to pray..... I’m being flip, but it was actually a lovely experience, even if part of my Episcopalian self was cringing at the massive collective demonstration of faith. The live action shows were not my favorite part, that’s for sure. I definitely prefer listening to the texts. It either has to be ¨Jesus Christ, Superstar¨ or the NRSV...This is the land, though, of Tierra Santa, the world’s only (I actually don’t know if that’s true...I’m just HOPING) religious theme park. Live actors perform the different parts of the Passion story (including the Resurrection) every hour or something and there are rides and a fake Jerusalem and stuff. There are all these advertisements for it on the subway that read ¨Tierra Santa: A verdadero ACTO de fe¨ (Holy Land: a true ACT of faith). Hardy harr harr. Another entertaining aspect of Easter in Buenos Aires was the giant blow up Resurrected Jesus doll that appeared in the Plaza de Mayo next to the city cathedral, all white, a full story tall, his arms stretched out as though he was blessing us passersby/rising up to heaven. This would not have been that funny, except that they tied down his arms so he wouldn’t fly away (it was super windy...) but not his head...so in the wind, Jesus was holding out his arms beatifically, but his head kept nodding dramatically and irregularly like he was falling asleep. It was funny, I swear.
Alright, so now for the cause of this week’s angst (as if there weren’t enough already haha with my history rant): I found a bed bug in my room on Friday night. I know it’s a bed bug because I killed it and compared it to pictures on the internet. And I know it’s a bed bug because I’ve been getting mysterious bites that I’d been hoping were mosquito bites but are big and last forever. HUGE FREAKING DRAG, RIGHT? I can only joke about it now because I’ve had like five days to stop freaking out. I vacated my room for two days, they fumigated and vacuumed it, I slept there last night and didn’t get bit, thank goodness, but we’ll see how things develop. I’m not entirely confident in the eradication measures they took, just because they weren’t really specific about what they did. I took all my clothes to be cleaned/dried at high heat in case they were infested (YUCK AHBFJDFGEF) and am now keeping them in plastic bags. Have also covered my head board and footboard with plastic trash bags, not because I think it will make any difference but just for peace of mind. Basically, it’s been a bit of a horror show. And led to a lot of feeling bad for myself on Saturday until I went shopping and found a beautiful leather bag to replace my stolen bag (Easter definitely helped too...all my favorite hymns in church...getting to say ALLELUIA again...oh, and Jesus being resurrected is the ultimate upper...). And then Sunday after church I went for a beautiful bike ride in this ecological reserve on the edge of the city by the river that feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere but is surrounded by highrises. So hopefully this AWFUL ANNOYING problem has been ERADICATED and life can continue to be BEAUTIFUL. Fingers crossed. I know that it can’t be that big an infestation because I didn’t get that many bites over the course of three weeks, and it took three weeks for me to see a bug, but still, it’s just the worst feeling to not wanting to even BE in your room, let alone sleep there. YUCK UGH. Again, just like last week, I’m going to qualify my freaking out by saying (for my own benefit because I need to remind myself) that this is a totally solvable problem, that much much worse things could have happened, and that I should just get on with my life and enjoy my time here. So that’s what I’m going to do.......by going to bed now......oh dear.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Crime and Punishment
Up until yesterday afternoon, this post was most likely going to be as peppy as the last one, as this week was going really really well. But then, yesterday at around noon while I sat outside at a cafe, having a coffee and reading my book (yes, I am reading Crime and Punishment), my purse was snatched from where I had put it on the ground between my legs. I was so distracted (Crime and Punishment is a really good book...) that I didn’t even notice that my purse was gone until the thief (a young man with a couple other goons) was already running around the corner and away. This was obviously super unfortunate. I lost my wallet (which was beautiful and irreplaceable as it was a gift and was from somewhere in Asia), all the cash I had (luckily only like $30), my debit card (quickly cancelled so no harm there), all my IDs (driver’s license, international student id), the Argentinean cell phone I had just bought, both my Buenos Aires guidebooks (luckily there are a bunch of free ones in the volunteer house left behind by people), my Spanish-English dictionary, a sweater, the purse itself which had served me so well on my gap year and was perfection but luckily not valuable to anyone but me, a new pack of gum (the little things which are still so frustrating...literally an unopened pack of gum that those thieves now get to enjoy! “•$%&/), and my chapstick.
From that litany you can probably tell many things (mainly that I carry lots of stuff around with me...and can be a little materialistic/attached to my possessions), but I think the most important facts are these: I didn’t lose anything indispensible/super valuable like my passport or camera or American cell phone with all my contacts, and for that I am super grateful. And the most important/jarring thing that I lost was a (false) sense of security.
Basically, the honeymoon ended yesterday, and that’s not entirely a bad thing. I’ve spent the last day keeping busy and enjoying the city, and trying to regain my sense of equilibrium. This was the first ¨bad¨ thing to happen to me during my entire gap year (please re-read that and reflect on how lucky I am). And it wasn’t even that bad. I wasn’t mugged or threatened, didn’t lose anything super important or valuable. But despite those clear facts, I still feel unbalanced. First, there’s the feeling of being incredibly frustrated with myself—why did I put my bag on the ground when I know to never do that and usually keep it on my lap? Why did I let my guard down and get so absorbed in my book that I had no idea what was happening around me? Aren’t I more savvy than that? I don’t like to think of myself as someone who has been duped. Then there’s the feeling of being violated, of anger—How DARE anyone think it’s OK to take what belongs to someone else? There’s the feeling of unfairness, of frustration at the inconvenience. There’s the feeling of loss, because as anyone (particularly, honestly, anyone female) knows, things like purses and wallets and baby blue sweaters from H&M don’t actually MATTER but they do matter to me because they are connected to so many memories and experiences.
Also, I must admit that there is a part of me laughing through my metaphorical tears...I mean seriously. I was reading Crime and Punishment while I was robbed. The irony is deadly.
So suffice to say, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (erm..moping? well, trying not to mope but instead ponder...) today and yesterday. Because while I lost stuff yesterday, I don’t have anything to mourn unless I let this happen again and don’t take a lesson from it. And on the other hand, I’ve only lost something really really valuable and irreplaceable if I lose my ability to love and enjoy Buenos Aires. And I’m really trying to make sure that doesn’t happen! Because that would be a true shame.
OK so there’s the major update. I have so much more to report but unfortunately this little event has hijacked this blog post....BAH! *Shakes fists at heavens* Even so, I’ll try to report the highlights from last week, although it was a truly highlight-filled week.
Starting with my birthday. Which was INCREIBLE. Really really good. Highlights within the highlight were the community celebration in La Boca, and this AMAZING AMAZING drum show. The community celebration in La Boca was for a guy who had helped start the community center where I work and was your good old-fashioned community organizer. He was killed during the riots after the economic crisis in 2001, although I don’t know the details. Every year, the community center/surrounding community celebrates his birthday, which is March 22. Like mine! There were all these cool performances that sort of made me think of a 19th century union picnic or something. Speakers rallying the populace! A master of ceremonies who evoked allegorical characterrs who then came onto the stage to perform songs or skits (ie ¨The Earth¨ or ¨The Mother of the Hero¨ or ¨the Spirit of Community¨)! Children playing, people singing, chants, food, etc. It was actually like something out of Dickens, and it was super interesting/inspiring to see so much community solidarity. Then, after the La Boca rally, I and three other volunteers went to La Bomba, this super awesome open-air drum show that takes place in this renovated factory in the middle of the city. It happens every Monday night during the summer (tomorrow is the last one and I’m SO THERE), and was absolutely incredible. Seriously, I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday evening. It’s like (not to get too self-referential here) a rock concert, Beatnik, a contra-dance in the Greensboro grange, and Woodstock all rolled into one. Basically: PURE BEAUTY. Every type of hippie you can think of, plus just tons of mainstream young people from so many countries, plus these awesome drummers, plus this amazing space, plus yummy empanadas...oh gosh. So good.
Then on Wednesday there was this HUGE march/rally which I went to in the Plaza de Mayo and on Avenida de Mayo (the street where I live) to commemorate the tens of thousands of desaparecidos from the years of the military junta. On display at this march were every type of left-wing CRAZY you can think of. SO ENTERTAINING. Of course, there were some really inspiring/legit community and labor groups, and it was interesting to read all the signs and literature they had...but there were also a whole bunch of student anarchists/socialists/socialist utopians, different factions of various Communist Parties, and, my personal favorite, a group waving a giant flag emblazoned with Mao’s face (NOT OK MY FRIENDS, NOT OK....they don’t even do that in CHINA any more...China’s crazy-ass parade didn’t include Mao ANYWHERE. Idiots.). Also these people waving a giant flag reading ¨Stop Bush¨. Stop him from...what? Building his presidential library? A little late my friends.
Thursday I went to the Recoleta Cemetary, one of BA’s top tourist attractions, and that was really cool. It’s a pretty big cemetary, but no one is buried underground...instead there are all these family crypts owned by various wealthy families, all built above ground, and highly intricate/decorated/beautiful. Lots of awesome sculpture. And it was fun/peaceful to just wander around. A little weird/morbid...but cool.
Today was also really fun. After church I walked through this huge market in San Telmo, a very old and quaint part of the city. Then I went to this beautiful rose garden where there was a free live jazz concert. I walked a ton and am really tired and a little sunburned, but it was a really good day.
Goodnight my friends! Sending lots of love to all from the Southern Hemisphere!
From that litany you can probably tell many things (mainly that I carry lots of stuff around with me...and can be a little materialistic/attached to my possessions), but I think the most important facts are these: I didn’t lose anything indispensible/super valuable like my passport or camera or American cell phone with all my contacts, and for that I am super grateful. And the most important/jarring thing that I lost was a (false) sense of security.
Basically, the honeymoon ended yesterday, and that’s not entirely a bad thing. I’ve spent the last day keeping busy and enjoying the city, and trying to regain my sense of equilibrium. This was the first ¨bad¨ thing to happen to me during my entire gap year (please re-read that and reflect on how lucky I am). And it wasn’t even that bad. I wasn’t mugged or threatened, didn’t lose anything super important or valuable. But despite those clear facts, I still feel unbalanced. First, there’s the feeling of being incredibly frustrated with myself—why did I put my bag on the ground when I know to never do that and usually keep it on my lap? Why did I let my guard down and get so absorbed in my book that I had no idea what was happening around me? Aren’t I more savvy than that? I don’t like to think of myself as someone who has been duped. Then there’s the feeling of being violated, of anger—How DARE anyone think it’s OK to take what belongs to someone else? There’s the feeling of unfairness, of frustration at the inconvenience. There’s the feeling of loss, because as anyone (particularly, honestly, anyone female) knows, things like purses and wallets and baby blue sweaters from H&M don’t actually MATTER but they do matter to me because they are connected to so many memories and experiences.
Also, I must admit that there is a part of me laughing through my metaphorical tears...I mean seriously. I was reading Crime and Punishment while I was robbed. The irony is deadly.
So suffice to say, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (erm..moping? well, trying not to mope but instead ponder...) today and yesterday. Because while I lost stuff yesterday, I don’t have anything to mourn unless I let this happen again and don’t take a lesson from it. And on the other hand, I’ve only lost something really really valuable and irreplaceable if I lose my ability to love and enjoy Buenos Aires. And I’m really trying to make sure that doesn’t happen! Because that would be a true shame.
OK so there’s the major update. I have so much more to report but unfortunately this little event has hijacked this blog post....BAH! *Shakes fists at heavens* Even so, I’ll try to report the highlights from last week, although it was a truly highlight-filled week.
Starting with my birthday. Which was INCREIBLE. Really really good. Highlights within the highlight were the community celebration in La Boca, and this AMAZING AMAZING drum show. The community celebration in La Boca was for a guy who had helped start the community center where I work and was your good old-fashioned community organizer. He was killed during the riots after the economic crisis in 2001, although I don’t know the details. Every year, the community center/surrounding community celebrates his birthday, which is March 22. Like mine! There were all these cool performances that sort of made me think of a 19th century union picnic or something. Speakers rallying the populace! A master of ceremonies who evoked allegorical characterrs who then came onto the stage to perform songs or skits (ie ¨The Earth¨ or ¨The Mother of the Hero¨ or ¨the Spirit of Community¨)! Children playing, people singing, chants, food, etc. It was actually like something out of Dickens, and it was super interesting/inspiring to see so much community solidarity. Then, after the La Boca rally, I and three other volunteers went to La Bomba, this super awesome open-air drum show that takes place in this renovated factory in the middle of the city. It happens every Monday night during the summer (tomorrow is the last one and I’m SO THERE), and was absolutely incredible. Seriously, I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday evening. It’s like (not to get too self-referential here) a rock concert, Beatnik, a contra-dance in the Greensboro grange, and Woodstock all rolled into one. Basically: PURE BEAUTY. Every type of hippie you can think of, plus just tons of mainstream young people from so many countries, plus these awesome drummers, plus this amazing space, plus yummy empanadas...oh gosh. So good.
Then on Wednesday there was this HUGE march/rally which I went to in the Plaza de Mayo and on Avenida de Mayo (the street where I live) to commemorate the tens of thousands of desaparecidos from the years of the military junta. On display at this march were every type of left-wing CRAZY you can think of. SO ENTERTAINING. Of course, there were some really inspiring/legit community and labor groups, and it was interesting to read all the signs and literature they had...but there were also a whole bunch of student anarchists/socialists/socialist utopians, different factions of various Communist Parties, and, my personal favorite, a group waving a giant flag emblazoned with Mao’s face (NOT OK MY FRIENDS, NOT OK....they don’t even do that in CHINA any more...China’s crazy-ass parade didn’t include Mao ANYWHERE. Idiots.). Also these people waving a giant flag reading ¨Stop Bush¨. Stop him from...what? Building his presidential library? A little late my friends.
Thursday I went to the Recoleta Cemetary, one of BA’s top tourist attractions, and that was really cool. It’s a pretty big cemetary, but no one is buried underground...instead there are all these family crypts owned by various wealthy families, all built above ground, and highly intricate/decorated/beautiful. Lots of awesome sculpture. And it was fun/peaceful to just wander around. A little weird/morbid...but cool.
Today was also really fun. After church I walked through this huge market in San Telmo, a very old and quaint part of the city. Then I went to this beautiful rose garden where there was a free live jazz concert. I walked a ton and am really tired and a little sunburned, but it was a really good day.
Goodnight my friends! Sending lots of love to all from the Southern Hemisphere!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
¡Hola Buenos Aires! El placer es mío…
SO THIS IS EXCITING. I’M IN BUENOS AIRES. I’VE BEEN HERE FOR FIVE DAYS. IT’S AMAZING. AND TOMORROW IS MY ¡¡¡¡¡BIRTHDAY!!!!!
Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. But actually, life is so good right now. I arrived in Buenos Aires last Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, and was met at the airport and whisked into the city by a very friendly driver named Victor, who over the course of our drive informed me that he is one of 15 children in his family. And then he listed them. On his fingers. Which required his taking both hands off the wheel. On a five lane freeway. Yesss. ¡Bienvenido a Buenos Aires!
I survived the drive into town, thankfully (I guess being 1 of 15 sort of gives you a pretty good survival instinct, right? If 14 brothers and sisters haven’t killed you, driving with no hands on the freeway doesn’t stand a chance! Right.). In case you have no idea what the heck I’m doing in BA, let me explain (Mom, this is for you....KIDDING. Mostly). I’m here in Buenos Aires for eight weeks, until May 15, volunteering with an Argentinean organization called Voluntario Global. VG, founded in 2005, supports social organizations in different working class neighborhoods in Buenos Aires by providing funding and foreign volunteers. I’m staying in the VG Volunteer ¨Club¨, which is basically a hostel for the VG volunteers, complete with kitchen, common room with TVs and computers, etc. There are no other Americans staying here, and I haven’t met a single other American while I’ve been here, which is cool but kind of weird. The other volunteers are from Europe...England, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany. Everyone is pretty young, probably between 19 and 25, but it’s hard to tell. I’m definitely on the younger end.
So, how am I spending my time? I’m doing two, hopefully three projects. Three afternoons a week I’m helping out at a community center in La Boca, a working class but pretty interesting/vibrant neighborhood (famous for its brightly painted houses), where they have an afterschool program. The program’s stated purpose is homework help, but not all the kids bring homework to do so it’s a lot of playing educational games/ just having fun with the kids...to provide a fun, wholesome, hopefully somewhat educational place for them to be. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons starting this week I’ll be tutoring a couple high school kids in English...the classes are supposed to be for adults but a few highschoolers keep coming looking for help with their homework so I’m going to be their point person. I’m excited. And then I think Monday and Wednesday mornings I’m going to be helping in the community kitchen in the community center. Sophia, a super nice British girl who is also volunteering at the afterschool program, is also working in the kitchen those mornings so I’m excited for that. BUT tomorrow is a special memorial event (not sure what that means...I think it’s a march?) in La Boca so the community center activities aren’t happening but I’m going down to the center anyway to take part in the festivities. And then Wednesday is a national holiday, the Day of Memory for the military junta. So stuff is cancelled again. So I won’t start in the kitchen until next week I guess.
The community center is SO COOL. It has a sewing factory cooperative run by people in the community, where they make and embroider T-shirts, uniforms, etc. They’ve also just started screen printing. Also the kitchen, a big space where different community groups gather, the after school help...it’s a hopping place. Lots of Che Guevara memorabilia everywhere ... which would normally sort of bother me but they’re the real deal Guevarians, right? Without the armed guerilla movement thing. No worries, Mom.
Other than volunteering, I’ve been doing TONS of sight-seeing/ exploring. SO MUCH walking around the city, and this weekend I’ve been riding this double-decker tourist bus all around town. It’s a gorgeous city (a bit grimy, but in a cute way I guess?), the architecture is INCREDIBLE. FOR SERIOUS...every single style you can possibly imagine, which makes walking down the street slightly hazardous because I’m always looking at the buildings, not where I’m going. Like Boston (and Shanghai, to a certain extent), BA is a city of neighborhoods, which makes it a real pleasure to explore. Even though I’ve barely scratched the surface, I feel like I already have a feel for the city because I understand the different neighborhoods. I seriously just can’t wait to keep walking and walking and walking. And I will be doing lots of walking probably until I figure out the bus routes, which are horribly complicated. And the metro is a bit of a joke...like the MBTA, except slower, without AC, and with about a third of the service area. So not like the MBTA. Much worse than the MBTA if you can believe it. But again...WALKING. LOVE IT.
You know what I also love? Leather. Boots, bags, jackets...drool. The big question is brown or black? These are the things I worry about.
Other highlights include the Oscar-winning Argentinean film ¨El secreto de tus ojos¨ that I went to with some other volunteers. Very good but definitely a thriller. Also, cooking for myself has been pretty fun. Also, cafes. Every day I have my cafe con leche in a different place and read my book. It’s an integral part of the gap year growing experience, I swear.
Today I went to El Museo Nacional de los Artes Decorativos, which is a BEAUTIFUL mansion in the French style filled with superb pieces of art. Every room is a different, exquisite style. Kind of like the Isabella Stewart Gardner but a little less over-filled and you can tell that the owners weren’t as crazy. Just crazy rich. It’s much more just this rich family’s house, filled with their beautiful things, NOT a rich eccentric pack-rat obsessive groundbreaking woman like Isabella’s house. But very cool. Also have fallen in love with this bookstore-slash-cafe in Palermo (my favorite neighborhood so far...chic but not kitchy, filled with cafes and bookstores and boutiques...LOVELY). Also this health-food vegetarian cafe where the waitresses where these awful floral uniforms...WITH CAPS. Poor them. But the food is good.
OK I think that’s all for now. I have lots to say. But I have to go to bed so that I can wake up and HAVE IT BE MY BIRTHDAY. WOOOHOOO. Yay turning 19...the most insignificant birthday of my life so far. But still, it’s a birthday.
Oh one more thing...just want to apologize for the excessive number of times I used the word ¨Ishkabibble¨ in my last post. I found it quite irritating when I just re-read it. I guess, as usual, I was over-enthusiastic. Slash desperate for a unifying theme? Yes. That too.
Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. But actually, life is so good right now. I arrived in Buenos Aires last Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, and was met at the airport and whisked into the city by a very friendly driver named Victor, who over the course of our drive informed me that he is one of 15 children in his family. And then he listed them. On his fingers. Which required his taking both hands off the wheel. On a five lane freeway. Yesss. ¡Bienvenido a Buenos Aires!
I survived the drive into town, thankfully (I guess being 1 of 15 sort of gives you a pretty good survival instinct, right? If 14 brothers and sisters haven’t killed you, driving with no hands on the freeway doesn’t stand a chance! Right.). In case you have no idea what the heck I’m doing in BA, let me explain (Mom, this is for you....KIDDING. Mostly). I’m here in Buenos Aires for eight weeks, until May 15, volunteering with an Argentinean organization called Voluntario Global. VG, founded in 2005, supports social organizations in different working class neighborhoods in Buenos Aires by providing funding and foreign volunteers. I’m staying in the VG Volunteer ¨Club¨, which is basically a hostel for the VG volunteers, complete with kitchen, common room with TVs and computers, etc. There are no other Americans staying here, and I haven’t met a single other American while I’ve been here, which is cool but kind of weird. The other volunteers are from Europe...England, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany. Everyone is pretty young, probably between 19 and 25, but it’s hard to tell. I’m definitely on the younger end.
So, how am I spending my time? I’m doing two, hopefully three projects. Three afternoons a week I’m helping out at a community center in La Boca, a working class but pretty interesting/vibrant neighborhood (famous for its brightly painted houses), where they have an afterschool program. The program’s stated purpose is homework help, but not all the kids bring homework to do so it’s a lot of playing educational games/ just having fun with the kids...to provide a fun, wholesome, hopefully somewhat educational place for them to be. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons starting this week I’ll be tutoring a couple high school kids in English...the classes are supposed to be for adults but a few highschoolers keep coming looking for help with their homework so I’m going to be their point person. I’m excited. And then I think Monday and Wednesday mornings I’m going to be helping in the community kitchen in the community center. Sophia, a super nice British girl who is also volunteering at the afterschool program, is also working in the kitchen those mornings so I’m excited for that. BUT tomorrow is a special memorial event (not sure what that means...I think it’s a march?) in La Boca so the community center activities aren’t happening but I’m going down to the center anyway to take part in the festivities. And then Wednesday is a national holiday, the Day of Memory for the military junta. So stuff is cancelled again. So I won’t start in the kitchen until next week I guess.
The community center is SO COOL. It has a sewing factory cooperative run by people in the community, where they make and embroider T-shirts, uniforms, etc. They’ve also just started screen printing. Also the kitchen, a big space where different community groups gather, the after school help...it’s a hopping place. Lots of Che Guevara memorabilia everywhere ... which would normally sort of bother me but they’re the real deal Guevarians, right? Without the armed guerilla movement thing. No worries, Mom.
Other than volunteering, I’ve been doing TONS of sight-seeing/ exploring. SO MUCH walking around the city, and this weekend I’ve been riding this double-decker tourist bus all around town. It’s a gorgeous city (a bit grimy, but in a cute way I guess?), the architecture is INCREDIBLE. FOR SERIOUS...every single style you can possibly imagine, which makes walking down the street slightly hazardous because I’m always looking at the buildings, not where I’m going. Like Boston (and Shanghai, to a certain extent), BA is a city of neighborhoods, which makes it a real pleasure to explore. Even though I’ve barely scratched the surface, I feel like I already have a feel for the city because I understand the different neighborhoods. I seriously just can’t wait to keep walking and walking and walking. And I will be doing lots of walking probably until I figure out the bus routes, which are horribly complicated. And the metro is a bit of a joke...like the MBTA, except slower, without AC, and with about a third of the service area. So not like the MBTA. Much worse than the MBTA if you can believe it. But again...WALKING. LOVE IT.
You know what I also love? Leather. Boots, bags, jackets...drool. The big question is brown or black? These are the things I worry about.
Other highlights include the Oscar-winning Argentinean film ¨El secreto de tus ojos¨ that I went to with some other volunteers. Very good but definitely a thriller. Also, cooking for myself has been pretty fun. Also, cafes. Every day I have my cafe con leche in a different place and read my book. It’s an integral part of the gap year growing experience, I swear.
Today I went to El Museo Nacional de los Artes Decorativos, which is a BEAUTIFUL mansion in the French style filled with superb pieces of art. Every room is a different, exquisite style. Kind of like the Isabella Stewart Gardner but a little less over-filled and you can tell that the owners weren’t as crazy. Just crazy rich. It’s much more just this rich family’s house, filled with their beautiful things, NOT a rich eccentric pack-rat obsessive groundbreaking woman like Isabella’s house. But very cool. Also have fallen in love with this bookstore-slash-cafe in Palermo (my favorite neighborhood so far...chic but not kitchy, filled with cafes and bookstores and boutiques...LOVELY). Also this health-food vegetarian cafe where the waitresses where these awful floral uniforms...WITH CAPS. Poor them. But the food is good.
OK I think that’s all for now. I have lots to say. But I have to go to bed so that I can wake up and HAVE IT BE MY BIRTHDAY. WOOOHOOO. Yay turning 19...the most insignificant birthday of my life so far. But still, it’s a birthday.
Oh one more thing...just want to apologize for the excessive number of times I used the word ¨Ishkabibble¨ in my last post. I found it quite irritating when I just re-read it. I guess, as usual, I was over-enthusiastic. Slash desperate for a unifying theme? Yes. That too.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Ishkabibble
Ishkabibble is what we call a brownie sundae at Highland Lodge, where I've been a waitress for the past five weeks. An ishkabibble is sort of the Lodge's signature dessert, mostly because of its name; it is a delicious, but not particularly unique, gooey combination of a brownie, vanilla ice cream, and hot fudge sauce. Today was the day of the "Great Ishkabibble", when people could get a free Ishkabibble if they completed the "Great Circle," the outer edge of the Lodge's cross country ski trails, 19 km in all. When I got home from work this evening, I curiously googled the word Ishkabibble to see if I could find what it means. What I found made me think that it would make a great title for this blog entry. Basically, Ishkabibble is a nonsense word of unknown origin, maybe a bastardization of a Yiddish term, maybe of a German phrase, meaning either "Don't worry"/"No worries", or, according to Urban Dictionary, it's "A word to use when something is indescribable, or when there's nothing else to say." Trying to sum up six weeks of living at my own pace, of skiing and working and having fun and eating well and feeling good and thinking my own thoughts and exploring and living in this beautiful rural place I love so much? Ishkabibble.
Worried that this blog post isn't going to go anywhere, that after six weeks I will prove even more incoherent than usual? Ishkabibble.
I do have a lot more to say than just "Ishkabibble," however. No worries. Ishkabibble. The reason I haven't posted in so long is that I have, as surprising as it may seem, been quite busy, particularly during the last two weeks. The inn has been really busy during the last couple weeks, and I've been working a lot. For example: I worked 45 hours in six days last week, and Friday (yesterday) was my first day off in ten days . So in the hours when I haven't been working, I've been watching movies and reading and skiing, and I haven't been inclined to update my blog. Sorry! I guess it's a hermit thing. You probably wouldn't understand (grumpy hermit?). Ishkabibble.
Working at the Lodge has been absolutely great. Being a waitress is tough work, requiring excellent multi-tasking skills, complete focus, physical and mental efficiency, as well as people skills...so it's never boring. Making money is also excellent, especially since I've made a lot more than I expected too. Yay. I'm rich! Not really. But sorta. Ishkabibble.
The people at the Lodge have been incredibly patient and welcoming. I'm definitely in a completely different place in my life than most of them, especially since this is but a transient stage (seven weeks) within a transient stage (a gap year) for me. Since I'm transient, a newbie, going to a "fancy college" (not a quote from anyone at work, but from a girl I met somewhere else in Vermont), AND a flatlander, I expected to be on the outside to a certain extent, and while I am certainly not completely integrated into the Lodge community, it is almost entirely because of the first two reasons rather than the second two. Happily, I seem to exhibit enough of a willingness to work and a decent enough allowance of common sense to have been mostly accepted by the more exigent members of the Lodge staff. Ishkabibble.
The other major component of my time up here has been cross country skiing, which I have done in abundance. On average, I've probably been skiing four days a week, and every time I go I'm blown away by the beauty here. Seriously, every time of the 25-30 times I've been skiing, I've experienced one of those "Oh my ISHKABIBBLE" moments of awe at the beauty of creation. One of my favorite spots is a trail on the Lodge's ski trails that offers a view of the "Snow Angel," a set of fields on a hill opposite that from a distance look like a snow angel. Today I skied right at dusk, just as clouds were moving in and it was starting to snow; the grey of the hills, the white of the snow angel, the light blue of the sky right above the hills, then a strip of dark grey clouds, lightening up to a blue-lavender-grey overcast sky. Somehow the combination of colors and the quality of light reminded me of the my day at Xi Hu in Huangzhou back in November. So beautiful. Ishkabbible.
Most of my deep thinking from the last six weeks has centered around the beauty around me, my personal ponderings as Lent has approached and the movies and books I've been watching and reading. For Lent, I've given up meat and Facebook...it's going to be tough, but I hope that I'll have the willpower to persevere, and that I can spend the next six weeks focusing even more on living well spiritually and connecting with myself and those I love and with the God I love, basically taking care of my body, mind, soul and relationships. I figure I'll never have an opportunity like I do this year to spend Lent really engaging and living intentionally. As far as books and movies have gone, I want to talk about three movies in particular, and how they've made me reflect on my "retreat" from "society" (to which I say: Ishkabibble). These three movies are "Into the Wild", which is based on the true story of a young man who, after graduating from college, gives away all of his money and possessions and begins a two year long odyssey to Alaska, where he intends to live purely in the wilderness (see: Thoreau) and escape the poison and hypocrisy of society. **Spoiler alert** It sounds uplifting, and some cool wilderness-y things do happen, but he dies in the end of starvation after spending three months in the Alaskan wilderness. No longer afflicted by the hypocrisy of society, yes, but also dead. Another movie was "Motorcycle Diaries", about the journey a young Che Guevara took with a friend by motorcycle from Buenos Aires (yeee) thousands of miles across South America. And the third move was "Seven Years in Tibet", also based on a true story, about an Austrian former Nazi who escapes from a British POW camp in India to wander through Tibet, before making a new life for himself in Lhasa and befriending the Dalai Lama. Cue 1949, the Communist Chinese army, and general destruction and tragedy. I loved all three of these movies, and highly recommend them to any audience, but particularly to young adults such as myself. They are all about journeys of self-discovery, and while these odysseys all involved harsh conditions in the wilderness, slogs of thousands of miles through mountains, exotic locales, and isolation and loneliness on the part of all three protagonists, in all three movies I saw elements of my own journey over the course of this gap year. I also saw depicted the arrogance of youthful rebellion, the arrogance of the young who think they are invincible, or who think that their suffering has some higher meaning or puts them on a higher plain than other people, or who think that they see or know something that no one else does. This theme made me sit back on my heels a little bit and consider my own journey, my own odyssey in search of a deeper sense of myself and, yes, my quest for a higher purpose for myself and my year off. I also saw that all three protagonists pushed away emotionally from, while also physically abandoning, their loved ones. Maybe I betray my own arrogance by claiming to see any aspect of my own experience in such amazing, lofty, completely unique stories; I am, after all, settled and not on an epic physical odyssey, and, furthermore, settled into a beautiful house surrounded by breath-taking views, in perfect comfort, completely content. I am also not seeking to break away from society, but rather to make a space for myself to reflect and grow in order that I might find my place in society. That being said, all three of the these movies--especially "Into the Wild"--have niggled their ways into my mind, into my thoughts and reflections, and I can't escape making comparisons. To a certain extent, all three characters fulfilled the role of "the voice crying out in the wilderness", of the prophet crying for truth, for justice, for the holiness and sanctity of the self in the face of society's power. I am no such voice. But I cannot help but ask myself--am I so drawn in by the pull of these movies because of a sense of jealousy? Because I want to be or--or, worse, style myself after--such a voice? And then my mind turns to Jesus, to his 40 days in the wilderness battling the devil, to his role as the ultimate prophet, as the ultimate just judge of society--and to his youth. Jesus was young, too; he, too, underwent a journey of self-discovery that led to a retreat into the wilderness. Jesus suffered, and his suffering has exquisite meaning; Jesus pushed away his loved ones; Jesus acted like he knew something that no one else did, but that was because he did know something, something of the most tremendous importance. The most poignant moment of "Into the Wild" for me was when the protagonist, Chris, writes in the margins of a book that he reads during his final days "Happiness only counts when it is shared." What I think he's referring to, in a meta-sense, is to the primacy of love over all else. Which is also a huge theme in all three movies, and which is, to my mind, the crucial center of Jesus' message and story.
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