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!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
