 |
| Practicing the tango |
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| When Cain saw this he asked if he was really this much taller than me. Did you not notice from the first day we met? |
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| Practicing the tango with one of the instructors |
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Tango Lesson
One of the only things I wanted to do while in Argentina was learn how to tango, so I was excited that we finally got to go to a lesson during our last week in Rosario. Our lesson was only for an hour and the girls outnumbered the guys, so I didn't get to dance for very long.
Learning to tango was a lot of fun, and I'm just hoping that I'll have the opportunity to show off my tango skills now that I'm home!
Monday, August 20, 2012
“Somos la Ciudad, Somos Rosario” Rosario Central Fútbol!
For some reason, I was under the impression
that one of our planned excursions while in Argentina was to attend a fútbol (soccer) game. I’m not a huge soccer
fan, but I was a little disappointed when I found out that we weren’t going to
attend a game. Fortunately, Cain was a little more motivated than I was to make
attending a fútbol game a reality. He
looked into the schedules for the two soccer teams in Rosario, Newell’s Old
Boys (NOB) and Rosario Central, and learned that our last weekend in Rosario
was the start of Rosario Central’s season. I’ve been a little partial to NOB
because their letters really speak to home, and I was hoping that we could make
one of their games, but they weren’t playing this weekend. After figuring out
who all wanted to attend the fútbol game
and where to buy tickets, Cain and I set out for la cancha de Rosario Central (the stadium) on Friday afternoon. We
were a little nervous that they wouldn’t let 2 of us buy 8 tickets, but the
worst that could happen would be that everyone else would have to go on their
own to see what tickets were left, so we took our chances.
La cancha de Rosario Central is on
the far north side of town. As we took a taxi to la cancha, we could tell we were entering Central territory because
all the graffiti along the sides of the road was blue and yellow. When the taxi
driver dropped us off in front of the stadium, we were surprised that there
were hardly any people around. Fortunately, there was one other person
purchasing tickets at the same time, or we would have had no clue where to find
the ticket office. The whole setup was very sketch. There was a sheet of paper
in a plastic sleeve taped to the cinderblock wall listing the prices of
tickets. A ticket cost 150 pesos for men and 125 pesos for women. We stepped up
to the ticket window, which was a sheet of plywood with a few holes drilled in
it, to talk to the voice coming from inside the office. Unable to see the man behind
the window, we pooled 1050 pesos for 8 tickets and passed our stack of pesos
under the plywood. After we received our tickets, Cain and I decided to walk
around the stadium and its surrounding neighborhood. We discovered that Rosario
Central is not just a fútbol team,
but also an athletic club and community center. We also saw el Río Panara from a different view.
There were a few beachy areas as well as tiki huts set up along the river, which
seemed very out of place in the midst of a city. After walking around the
neighborhood, we caught a taxi back to the site to distribute the tickets.
The other program was supposed to have their navegación on the river on Saturday
afternoon, and since our trip was cancelled due to weather last weekend, we
were invited to go this weekend. Unfortunately, there were thunderstorms in the
forecast, even though it was sunny when we were supposed to go, and the navegación didn’t happen for the second
weekend. We were supposed to meet at el
Monumento de la Bandera when the boat tour was over, but since we were done
an hour and a half before we were supposed to be, we ended up meeting at Plaza San Martin at 4pm for the 6:15pm
game. We set out for la cancha, only
get dropped off a few blocks away from the stadium because the police had
blocked the street that runs in front of the stadium. While we waited for the students
in the last taxi to arrive, we got to experience the fandom on the street. Everyone
that walked past us was decked out in blue and yellow. Grills were set up on
every corner, and Rosario Central clothing shops were set up along every block.
City buses carrying fans were so crowded that people had climbed to the top of
the bus and were dancing on the top like it was no big deal. What!?
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| Apparently, dancing on top of buses is totally normal. |
The craziness only continued once we arrived
at la cancha. We walked past a line
of armed militants in order to get in. Once we arrived in our section, we found
that our seat numbers were really only suggestions of where to sit, as our
seats were occupied by boxes and boxes of paper shreds. As game time got
closer, the drums from the fan section got louder and louder, mortars were shot
off, and the stands filled with jumping, singing, flag-bearing blue-and-yellow
clad fans. It was crazy. We were totally in the middle of it. Here’s a video (you will be in awe of my videoing skills):
The game itself was just as you’d expect any fútbol game to be. Fans cheered when
Rosario Central did something well, and booed and shouted insults when the team
messed up or the refs made a call they didn’t like. One section of fans, what I
would compare to a student section, sang and beat drums through literally the
entire match. I told Mary that I would convert to a Rosario Central fan if they
won, but if they lost, my allegiance would stay with Newell’s. My allegiance
didn’t change as Rosario Central lost 0-1. As the team walked off the field
looking defeated, the fans in the stands around me all started shouting. At
first, I thought they were showing their loyalty to their team, but then I
realized they were shouting insults at the team for losing! I couldn’t believe
it.
We knew that we weren’t going to get a taxi
right outside la cancha, so we
started following the masses of people down the street. We tried walking along
side streets parallel to the main road to see if any taxis were hiding down
there, but there were none to be found. Thanks to my ability to remember
directions, we walked back the way that Cain and I went home in the taxi on
Friday afternoon. This road would take us past Alto Rosario Shopping, and we figured we might have more luck
catching a taxi down there. Apparently a lot of other people had the same idea
we did, so we just kept walking to try and find a less densely populated area
to catch a taxi. One eventually passed us, so 4 people jumped in to go home.
The rest of us ended up walking the entire way back to our neighborhood in Barrio Central. We had to have walked for
at least an hour and a half, maybe closer to two hours, so we rewarded our hard
work with ice cream.
Two School Visits in One Week
On Tuesday, August 7th, we were scheduled to
observe at Madre Teresa de Calcuta
Comedor y Colegio. It was a rainy day, which I hadn’t realized when I woke
up for class at 8am, so my flats were soaked by the time we arrived at the
school across town. We were let into the building, and it reminded us strongly
of a jail because of the narrow hallways and bars over all the windows,
including the interior ones. We were shown into the directress’ office, where
the secretary talked to us while the directress stood by. Carmen told us later
that because the secretary was male, he technically held a higher rank than the
directress, which is why he talked with us! Crazy! He told us about how the
school is run basically as a charter school. Parents receive a salary to send
their students to school there. On the surface, this sounds like a good way for
low-income families to send their students to a private school, but Marcela
(our Spanish teacher) had told us in class that parents often abuse this welfare
system. Another thing that the secretary told us was that we could take
pictures of the students for personal use, but we couldn’t post any pictures of
the students online because many of them are in the school through the judicial
system and we couldn’t risk revealing the students’ identities online.
When the secretary finished explaining everything in the
office, he took us on a tour through each of the classrooms. The students
mostly asked us the same questions over and over again, while other students
just ignored that we were there. In one math classroom, a little girl named
Guadalupe pointed at me across the room and waved me over to her. I wasn’t sure
what she wanted, but I went over to her and knelt down by her desk. She said, “Tenés ojos lindos” (“You have beautiful
eyes”) which was just so precious that she had even noticed from across the
room. In the last room we visited as a group, which was second grade, I walked
in first and headed toward the back of the room. As I was walking by, a little
girl in the back row jumped out of her chair, blocking my path, and then jumped
into my arms for a hug. Once she broke the ice, we were all flooded by hugs
from the second graders.
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| Dining Hall in Madre Teresa de Calcuta. One of the things that distinguishes this school from others in Argentina! |
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| It was a cold, rainy day when we visited Madre Teresa de Calcuta. |
After we stopped by all of the classrooms from 1st
through 7th grade, the secretary asked which classes we wanted to
visit again. Carmen pointed out that since I’m secondary ed, I should go to one
of the older grades, even though I was perfectly content going back to one of
the primary grades. Mary and I ended up back in a social studies classroom,
where the students wanted very little to do with us. We tried to ask them
questions about what they were studying (Cristobal
Colón, or Christopher Columbus) but they weren’t very responsive. It was
also very strange because they asked what our names were, and I told them Raquel because in all the other schools
we’ve visited, when I say Rachel my name is usually corrected to Raquel, but these students just looked
very confused. Later, we found out that they might have reacted negatively to
my name because Raquel is not
currently considered a name for young people. Ouch! Not a moment too soon, our
visit was over, and I found myself walking home in the rain while the other
students went to teach a lesson at another school. I could have gone to observe
them, but I was tired, hungry, and figured I could work on my final Spanish
presentation. Instead, I watched Whose Line is it Anyway episodes on YouTube.
Good life choice.
Our final school visit was planned for Thursday afternoon. We
had been hearing a lot about this visit for the last 3 weeks because Marcela
teaches 13-year-olds at Maristas.
When we walked to the school, I realized I had walked past it a few times when
walking along Blvd Oroño. It’s a very pretty school, but the front of the
building doesn’t do the school as a whole justice. It’s HUGE. The building is
as long as an entire city block. After waiting in the lobby, we were escorted
to the directress’ office. She served us soda and dulces and gave us some of the workbooks that the students were
using to learn English. Soon after we arrived, she had to leave for another
meeting, but she told us that we could go wherever we wanted to observe in the
school. She asked what grade levels we wanted to observe, and I just assumed I
would tag along with the others to observe the younger grades. Carmen pointed
out that I was studying secondary ed (she seems to be really good at that), and
the directress told me I would have to wait until 2:30 when the secondary
school started. And just like that, I was left alone in the office with a bunch
of teachers while the others from my program went to observe the primary
grades.
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| This is Colegio Maristas from Oroño. The school expands behind this front office part! |
After standing awkwardly in the office, the teacher I was
supposed to go with asked if I first wanted to observe in Marcela’s classroom.
I told her I would, especially since I wasn’t doing anything else, and she
walked me to Marcela’s classroom. Marcela’s only been telling us in class how
rowdy her students are, and I could definitely see that in class. Students were
talking over Marcela, and I don’t think she ever had all of their attention at
one time. A group of students presented on the Olympics in English, and even
though I was sitting in the front row they were speaking so quietly and the
other students in class were talking that I hardly heard any of their
presentation. I felt bad, but there wasn’t really anything I could do. At 2:45,
the first teacher came back to pick me up. As we walked to her classroom, she
told me that she had 16-year-olds. She told me I could speak in English or
Spanish to them, as they were really excited to practice their English with a
native speaker.
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| These are the 16-year-olds that I taught! They were wonderful students :) |
Monday, August 6, 2012
New Month, New Adventures in Argentina
I just looked back over my blog and the last time that I posted about my day to day activities in Rosario was almost a week ago. What!? So here's what I've been up to in the last week:
Wednesday, August 1st:
Apparently nothing happened this day, since I don't have anything written down in my agenda and I don't remember anything. Whoops.
Thursday, August 2nd:
This was the only day of the week that I didn't have morning class, and I had to wake up early to visit Colegio Soldados Argentinos. We've been on a little hiatus from visiting schools because they just had their 2 week winter break (it's strange: just like we get 2 weeks of a winter break around Christmas, they take a 2 week break in the middle of July). To top off having to wake up early, it was raining. This school was very different from the other public school that we visited. The directora offered us coffee and dulces in the office when we arrived, and we ended up having a good discussion about how standardized testing works in Argentina versus in the States and how this school was set up to have 3 different schools in 1 building. After talking with her, she escorted us to a English classroom, where we sat across from all the students and introduced ourselves. Then we broke up into groups to give all the students an opportunity to practice speaking in English. It was such a great experience to talk individually with these students, and we were glad that the teacher let us use the whole class period to interact with the students.
Friday, August 3rd:
After class in the morning, we went on a walking tour of the city in the afternoon. I'll admit, I didn't pay very much attention to the tour. We walked all the way down Córdoba to the river, which is a long walk. We enjoyed the facade of the buildings and learned about how different types of architecture influenced the city over the years. Our tour ended at the Monumento de la Bandera. There is definitely a lot of symbolism in the Monumento that I wouldn't have realized without the guide. It definitely made me appreciate the Monumento that much more!
After our tour, the girls had to go back to class, and Cain and I went shopping. We were on a mission to find an alfajor shop that Cain had been told makes the best alfajores in Rosario. Alfajores are made by taking two cookies and placing some sort of filling in between, such as fruit jam or dulce de leche. Then, they are often dipped in a layer of chocolate, or sugar, or coconut (depending on what kind of alfajor you're getting). Alfajores are made differently in every region of Argentina, and the alfajores we tried at Havana were delicious! After we went home, I decided that I wanted to have a low-key evening to get caught up on some work I've been avoiding while abroad. I cleaned up my inbox and sent some Kappa Delta related emails. Then I went to bed at a decent hour. It was a great evening.
Saturday, August 4th:
We were scheduled to take a boat ride through el Río Paraná on Saturday afternoon at 2. The place where we were supposed to meet was all the way past the Monumento de la Bandera. It takes me about half an hour to get there if I'm keeping a good pace. I left my house 15 minutes before I was supposed to be there because I couldn't decide if I should wear my coat because I was trying to look like a hobo. I had to run a lot of the way there, but since I hadn't stretched or anything my shins hurt really badly. I'm pretty sure the time I made up while running was negated by how slowly I walked the rest of the time, because I thought my shins were about to burst (is that possible?). After I got all the way there, only 5-10 minutes late, I found out that we weren't going on the navegación because the wind had stirred up the river too much. Since we were all down by the Monumento, we decided that we would try and go to the top. After paying our 5 pesos each, we took the elevator to the top and saw the entire city from above. It was beautiful. When we came back down, we walked home along Córdoba, shopping and watching street performers.
I don't wish to talk about Saturday night. We were supposed to go to the boliche but no one listened to me and we didn't go. I did not particularly enjoy the evening.
Sunday, August 5th:
I did not sleep well once I finally got to bed Sunday morning, which only fueled the bad mood I was in most of the day. I felt like I had wasted my day because I was supposed to go shopping along the river with Jessie, but by the time I got up the willpower to shower and look presentable, I didn't have much daylight left. I headed out to the river anyway, thinking that maybe it would clear my mood.
I knew the artisans set up shop along the river on Sundays, but I had no idea that the park would be as packed as it was. There were crowds of people everywhere, and I wasn't sure how I felt about the crowdedness as a way to clear my head. Once I started browsing the stands, listening to live bands play, and watching a traditional dance, I was amazed at how much my mood lightened. Seeing the joy in the people enjoying the parks and sharing their handiwork, whether through an aural, visual, or material form, made me very appreciative of the day. I wish I had had more time to shop, but I had to make my way back into town for church. I was glad that Mary, Melissa, and Cain joined me this week, and we went out for ice cream after. It was some of the best ice cream I've had here, and we eat a lot of ice cream. When I got home, I was really tired, so I put my iTunes on shuffle and wrote in my journal, turning in for the night early.
Monday, August 6th:
Going to bed early had its benefits. I was able to get out of bed over an hour before I was supposed to leave, and I was surprisingly happy for being awake before 8am. After class, Mary, Cain and I went to lunch, and when Mary had to leave for class, Cain and I ran around the city for a photo shoot. After the other girls got out of their afternoon class, we headed over to Manuel Tienda Leon to buy our bus tickets to Buenos Aires for our flights home. It was sad. Have I mentioned that I don't want to leave? Since we walked across town, Mary and I decided that we wanted to try a crepería we had seen near Starbucks a few weeks before. I had a delicious dulce de leche crepe, and Mary finally the Nutella crepe she's been talking about since we found the crepería. I thought the dulce de leche crepe was much better than the Nutella crepe. After enjoying our crepes, we practiced bidet ballet to Canon in D. Video to come soon. Then we walked around the city, feeding the stray dogs with the dog food Mary was carrying in her backpack and enjoying each others company. And now I'm here writing, one of my other favorite activities, so really this day can't get much better.
Although I'm slaving away over my studies abroad, I'm finding time for some fun. One thing we've all really enjoyed is the presence of the bidet, pronounced "boo-day." Almost every bathroom has one, but apparently no one uses them. In the last few days, I've come across two nontraditional uses for them...
Wednesday, August 1st:
Apparently nothing happened this day, since I don't have anything written down in my agenda and I don't remember anything. Whoops.
Thursday, August 2nd:
This was the only day of the week that I didn't have morning class, and I had to wake up early to visit Colegio Soldados Argentinos. We've been on a little hiatus from visiting schools because they just had their 2 week winter break (it's strange: just like we get 2 weeks of a winter break around Christmas, they take a 2 week break in the middle of July). To top off having to wake up early, it was raining. This school was very different from the other public school that we visited. The directora offered us coffee and dulces in the office when we arrived, and we ended up having a good discussion about how standardized testing works in Argentina versus in the States and how this school was set up to have 3 different schools in 1 building. After talking with her, she escorted us to a English classroom, where we sat across from all the students and introduced ourselves. Then we broke up into groups to give all the students an opportunity to practice speaking in English. It was such a great experience to talk individually with these students, and we were glad that the teacher let us use the whole class period to interact with the students.
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| ESOL B and the students at Soldados Argentinos |
Friday, August 3rd:
After class in the morning, we went on a walking tour of the city in the afternoon. I'll admit, I didn't pay very much attention to the tour. We walked all the way down Córdoba to the river, which is a long walk. We enjoyed the facade of the buildings and learned about how different types of architecture influenced the city over the years. Our tour ended at the Monumento de la Bandera. There is definitely a lot of symbolism in the Monumento that I wouldn't have realized without the guide. It definitely made me appreciate the Monumento that much more!
After our tour, the girls had to go back to class, and Cain and I went shopping. We were on a mission to find an alfajor shop that Cain had been told makes the best alfajores in Rosario. Alfajores are made by taking two cookies and placing some sort of filling in between, such as fruit jam or dulce de leche. Then, they are often dipped in a layer of chocolate, or sugar, or coconut (depending on what kind of alfajor you're getting). Alfajores are made differently in every region of Argentina, and the alfajores we tried at Havana were delicious! After we went home, I decided that I wanted to have a low-key evening to get caught up on some work I've been avoiding while abroad. I cleaned up my inbox and sent some Kappa Delta related emails. Then I went to bed at a decent hour. It was a great evening.
Saturday, August 4th:
We were scheduled to take a boat ride through el Río Paraná on Saturday afternoon at 2. The place where we were supposed to meet was all the way past the Monumento de la Bandera. It takes me about half an hour to get there if I'm keeping a good pace. I left my house 15 minutes before I was supposed to be there because I couldn't decide if I should wear my coat because I was trying to look like a hobo. I had to run a lot of the way there, but since I hadn't stretched or anything my shins hurt really badly. I'm pretty sure the time I made up while running was negated by how slowly I walked the rest of the time, because I thought my shins were about to burst (is that possible?). After I got all the way there, only 5-10 minutes late, I found out that we weren't going on the navegación because the wind had stirred up the river too much. Since we were all down by the Monumento, we decided that we would try and go to the top. After paying our 5 pesos each, we took the elevator to the top and saw the entire city from above. It was beautiful. When we came back down, we walked home along Córdoba, shopping and watching street performers.
I don't wish to talk about Saturday night. We were supposed to go to the boliche but no one listened to me and we didn't go. I did not particularly enjoy the evening.
Sunday, August 5th:
I did not sleep well once I finally got to bed Sunday morning, which only fueled the bad mood I was in most of the day. I felt like I had wasted my day because I was supposed to go shopping along the river with Jessie, but by the time I got up the willpower to shower and look presentable, I didn't have much daylight left. I headed out to the river anyway, thinking that maybe it would clear my mood.
I knew the artisans set up shop along the river on Sundays, but I had no idea that the park would be as packed as it was. There were crowds of people everywhere, and I wasn't sure how I felt about the crowdedness as a way to clear my head. Once I started browsing the stands, listening to live bands play, and watching a traditional dance, I was amazed at how much my mood lightened. Seeing the joy in the people enjoying the parks and sharing their handiwork, whether through an aural, visual, or material form, made me very appreciative of the day. I wish I had had more time to shop, but I had to make my way back into town for church. I was glad that Mary, Melissa, and Cain joined me this week, and we went out for ice cream after. It was some of the best ice cream I've had here, and we eat a lot of ice cream. When I got home, I was really tired, so I put my iTunes on shuffle and wrote in my journal, turning in for the night early.
Monday, August 6th:
Going to bed early had its benefits. I was able to get out of bed over an hour before I was supposed to leave, and I was surprisingly happy for being awake before 8am. After class, Mary, Cain and I went to lunch, and when Mary had to leave for class, Cain and I ran around the city for a photo shoot. After the other girls got out of their afternoon class, we headed over to Manuel Tienda Leon to buy our bus tickets to Buenos Aires for our flights home. It was sad. Have I mentioned that I don't want to leave? Since we walked across town, Mary and I decided that we wanted to try a crepería we had seen near Starbucks a few weeks before. I had a delicious dulce de leche crepe, and Mary finally the Nutella crepe she's been talking about since we found the crepería. I thought the dulce de leche crepe was much better than the Nutella crepe. After enjoying our crepes, we practiced bidet ballet to Canon in D. Video to come soon. Then we walked around the city, feeding the stray dogs with the dog food Mary was carrying in her backpack and enjoying each others company. And now I'm here writing, one of my other favorite activities, so really this day can't get much better.
Although I'm slaving away over my studies abroad, I'm finding time for some fun. One thing we've all really enjoyed is the presence of the bidet, pronounced "boo-day." Almost every bathroom has one, but apparently no one uses them. In the last few days, I've come across two nontraditional uses for them...
 |
| ...shelf for a hairdryer...this looks safe. |
 |
| ...Bidet Ballet! |
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Part 2 of 2: Mid Program Thoughts
Here's the second part of the post I started the other day. I've been wanting to write a mid program reflection since ESOL A ended, but obviously we're a little past midway now (more like midway through the second half of the program!). This post has taken me a long time to write because I have so many ideas I'm trying to wade through, so I hope you'll stick with me as I try and unpack this experience!
I had the opportunity to sit down at an heladeria (ice cream shop) with Mary and Emily last week. It was great to talk with them (over café con leche and medialunas, of course) about education, how this trip has affected each of us individually, as well as how we've grown together as a group. I really enjoyed our conversation for many reasons, but mostly because of the passion that drove our conversation. Have you ever had a conversation with people who are as passionate about a subject as you are? If you haven't, you probably should. It's exhilarating. I love that I can talk about education with anyone from the ESOL group and we'd never run out of things to talk about. It's very different from what I'm used to at home, and I'm loving how much I'm learning about the differences between education systems in public and private schools, as well as between countries and even between states.
One thing that I talked about with Mary and Emily was how I really feel like myself here in Argentina. I think it took removing myself from my friends, family, home culture, and the pressures that each of those embody for me to be able to look honestly at myself and where I am in my life. One friend from home that has known me since the sixth grade told me that she can see a new confidence in me since I've been living in Argentina (thanks El). While I would agree that I feel confident in a new way here, I don't think that this confidence happened just because I left the United States. I think it's been inside me the whole time, just been looking for the right experience to give it an outlet.
Mary said something about how our ESOL group seems to mesh so well because besides a passion for education, we all have one thing in common: we were willing to leave what is comfortable behind and place ourselves completely into the unknown that is Argentina. This idea really resonated with me as I thought about how I ended up in Rosario.
Committing to spend 6 weeks of my summer in Argentina did not come easily to me. I was excited about the prospect of studying abroad while filling out the initial paperwork. The glee that came from getting accepted to my program subsided once I started to doubt if I could get on a plane by myself and leave everything and everyone I knew in the United States behind. I cried a LOT at inopportune moments and waited for someone to give me an excuse for why I shouldn't study abroad. The biggest hurdle came when I found out I had the opportunity to go to one of my favorite places in the world (I'm not sure world is the right word since my definition of the world has widened but I can't think of any other word to use), Bethlehem Farm. I absolutely love the Farm and the four cornerstones of prayer, simplicity, community, and service that it embodies. I hadn't been to the Farm since the summer after graduating from high school, and I had an opportunity come up that would pretty much guarantee I could spend a week at the Farm this summer. Suddenly, I felt rushed to make a decision about whether to study abroad or go to B Farm because I had to reserve my spot on the B Farm trip or basically commit to studying abroad. If I decided not to take the opportunity to go to B Farm and backed out of studying abroad, I would be faced with spending the summer in Noblesville, which was the opposite of the adventure I promised myself I would go on after my sophomore year of college.
One day, I visited my linguistics professor, Dr. Stallings, during her office hours to ask for help with a project. At the beginning of the semester, Dr. Stallings helped me evaluate the courses I wanted to take abroad to see if they could transfer back to Ball State for ESOL credit, and she asked how my decision to study abroad was coming along (I bet she didn't see what door that question would open). I grew visibly more upset as I told her about feeling rushed to make a decision between B Farm and Argentina. She told me the first thing I had to decide was whether I was really making a decision between going on the mission trip and studying abroad, or if fear was holding me back from making a firm decision. She didn't ask me to give her an answer, but I knew as soon as she asked that I was just looking for an excuse to push Argentina away because B Farm would be the more comfortable trip for me to take this summer. This isn't to say that a trip to B Farm would be easy: I've learned so many important things at B Farm about service work and spirituality, and those things certainly push me to grow in ways that aren't always comfortable. But if I had gone to the Farm, I would be surrounded by members of my youth group with whom I would do almost anything. Instead, I chose to leave them behind, with promises to pray for the success of their trip, and jet set to a different hemisphere to be the only student from Indiana among a group of students from Oregon. And look at where I am now that I'm here: the confidence that often gets hidden behind fears of wanting to fit in and not wanting to be awkward (which I fail at daily...oh well) has allowed me to explore a side of myself that probably would have stayed hidden if I had stayed at home this summer.
I can't believe that I only have 10 days left in Argentina. I keep joking (kind of) about how I want to stay until my visa expires in another 47 days. There are so many things I'm enjoying here and would love to experience with more time, but there are some things I can't wait for when I get home, like my moccasin slippers and a central heating system and peanut butter. This post was a lot harder for me to write than I thought it would be. It took a long time as I jumped between ideas, trying to write down the ideas in my head as they came to me. It also took a long time for me to edit my ideas into a form that I would feel comfortable publishing because writing about a lot of these thoughts makes me feel very vulnerable. I'm not sure that these thoughts are in their final form, as some of these thoughts are so dense that if I wrote down everything I wanted to say about them, you would give up reading my post based on its length. This experience isn't over yet, and I can already tell that I won't be able to sum it up neatly when I get home. If there's one thing I've learned from my class on Culture and Community as well as my everyday interactions with the people around me, it's that complexity has to be embraced before it can be questioned, which is difficult for me to do as I like to have the answers to everything. With those thoughts before me, here's to my final week in Rosario! Thanks for all your support through prayers and reading my blog!
I had the opportunity to sit down at an heladeria (ice cream shop) with Mary and Emily last week. It was great to talk with them (over café con leche and medialunas, of course) about education, how this trip has affected each of us individually, as well as how we've grown together as a group. I really enjoyed our conversation for many reasons, but mostly because of the passion that drove our conversation. Have you ever had a conversation with people who are as passionate about a subject as you are? If you haven't, you probably should. It's exhilarating. I love that I can talk about education with anyone from the ESOL group and we'd never run out of things to talk about. It's very different from what I'm used to at home, and I'm loving how much I'm learning about the differences between education systems in public and private schools, as well as between countries and even between states.
One thing that I talked about with Mary and Emily was how I really feel like myself here in Argentina. I think it took removing myself from my friends, family, home culture, and the pressures that each of those embody for me to be able to look honestly at myself and where I am in my life. One friend from home that has known me since the sixth grade told me that she can see a new confidence in me since I've been living in Argentina (thanks El). While I would agree that I feel confident in a new way here, I don't think that this confidence happened just because I left the United States. I think it's been inside me the whole time, just been looking for the right experience to give it an outlet.
Mary said something about how our ESOL group seems to mesh so well because besides a passion for education, we all have one thing in common: we were willing to leave what is comfortable behind and place ourselves completely into the unknown that is Argentina. This idea really resonated with me as I thought about how I ended up in Rosario.
Committing to spend 6 weeks of my summer in Argentina did not come easily to me. I was excited about the prospect of studying abroad while filling out the initial paperwork. The glee that came from getting accepted to my program subsided once I started to doubt if I could get on a plane by myself and leave everything and everyone I knew in the United States behind. I cried a LOT at inopportune moments and waited for someone to give me an excuse for why I shouldn't study abroad. The biggest hurdle came when I found out I had the opportunity to go to one of my favorite places in the world (I'm not sure world is the right word since my definition of the world has widened but I can't think of any other word to use), Bethlehem Farm. I absolutely love the Farm and the four cornerstones of prayer, simplicity, community, and service that it embodies. I hadn't been to the Farm since the summer after graduating from high school, and I had an opportunity come up that would pretty much guarantee I could spend a week at the Farm this summer. Suddenly, I felt rushed to make a decision about whether to study abroad or go to B Farm because I had to reserve my spot on the B Farm trip or basically commit to studying abroad. If I decided not to take the opportunity to go to B Farm and backed out of studying abroad, I would be faced with spending the summer in Noblesville, which was the opposite of the adventure I promised myself I would go on after my sophomore year of college.
One day, I visited my linguistics professor, Dr. Stallings, during her office hours to ask for help with a project. At the beginning of the semester, Dr. Stallings helped me evaluate the courses I wanted to take abroad to see if they could transfer back to Ball State for ESOL credit, and she asked how my decision to study abroad was coming along (I bet she didn't see what door that question would open). I grew visibly more upset as I told her about feeling rushed to make a decision between B Farm and Argentina. She told me the first thing I had to decide was whether I was really making a decision between going on the mission trip and studying abroad, or if fear was holding me back from making a firm decision. She didn't ask me to give her an answer, but I knew as soon as she asked that I was just looking for an excuse to push Argentina away because B Farm would be the more comfortable trip for me to take this summer. This isn't to say that a trip to B Farm would be easy: I've learned so many important things at B Farm about service work and spirituality, and those things certainly push me to grow in ways that aren't always comfortable. But if I had gone to the Farm, I would be surrounded by members of my youth group with whom I would do almost anything. Instead, I chose to leave them behind, with promises to pray for the success of their trip, and jet set to a different hemisphere to be the only student from Indiana among a group of students from Oregon. And look at where I am now that I'm here: the confidence that often gets hidden behind fears of wanting to fit in and not wanting to be awkward (which I fail at daily...oh well) has allowed me to explore a side of myself that probably would have stayed hidden if I had stayed at home this summer.
I can't believe that I only have 10 days left in Argentina. I keep joking (kind of) about how I want to stay until my visa expires in another 47 days. There are so many things I'm enjoying here and would love to experience with more time, but there are some things I can't wait for when I get home, like my moccasin slippers and a central heating system and peanut butter. This post was a lot harder for me to write than I thought it would be. It took a long time as I jumped between ideas, trying to write down the ideas in my head as they came to me. It also took a long time for me to edit my ideas into a form that I would feel comfortable publishing because writing about a lot of these thoughts makes me feel very vulnerable. I'm not sure that these thoughts are in their final form, as some of these thoughts are so dense that if I wrote down everything I wanted to say about them, you would give up reading my post based on its length. This experience isn't over yet, and I can already tell that I won't be able to sum it up neatly when I get home. If there's one thing I've learned from my class on Culture and Community as well as my everyday interactions with the people around me, it's that complexity has to be embraced before it can be questioned, which is difficult for me to do as I like to have the answers to everything. With those thoughts before me, here's to my final week in Rosario! Thanks for all your support through prayers and reading my blog!
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Part 1 of 2: The Last Few Days
I wanted to write a two-part post about both what's been going on for
the last few days in Rosario and also giving a brief update of how I'm feeling about the experience as a whole. My plan was to write about both of these topics in one blog post, but since I wanted to get something published tonight, I decided to break one long post into two shorter posts. So below is part 1: a summary of the last few days in Rosario:
After coordinating plans via email to turn the final version of Mi Aventura in to Karie (since I couldn't email it to her because the file was too big) and meet Mary at Starbucks, both of these plans were realized Saturday afternoon. Starbucks was quite an experience. I felt obnoxiously American when I walked in because I was supporting an American company while in Rosario (when I told Eugenia I was going to Starbucks, which is maybe 6 blocks down our street, she asked me what Starbucks was. I almost died. That might be an exaggeration. I'm not obsessed with Starbucks.), wearing letters, and carrying Vera Bradley. When we went to order, the man working the counter spoke in English, so we placed our order for alto (tall) dulce de leche frappuccinos. After ordering, he said he didn't have any cups in that size, and would it be okay if he gave us a larger size (it would be easier for him to give us change that way too)? He was holding up a cup for a warm drink, which should have been my first hint that we weren't getting our frappuccinos. When they called our names, we were surprised to find not alto dulce de leche frappuccinos, but venti dulce de leche lattes! You could tell I was mad about it by the way I drank the entire venti latte. After Starbucks I went home briefly, only to walk back to Starbucks about 2 hours later to meet the gang for our evening activity.
Even though Karie's class ended a week ago, she's been hanging out and going to events with us. Saturday was her last night in Rosario, and we wanted to spend the evening with her. We had found a bowling alley while shopping on Friday, and we thought that would be something fun and low-key for all of us to do. After meeting at Starbucks, we made our way to a different bowling alley around 9:30, and the place was dead. We still had fun, and when our game was finished Karie went home to rest up for her day of travel and Mary, Melissa and I headed to an Irish pub. We sat at the bar because there were no tables available. After we had been sitting at the bar for a while, the bartender told us that the bar was cerrado (closed) and that they would get a table for us if we wanted to stay. We then looked around at the rest of the people sitting at the bar, only to find that we were the only women sitting there. There were also 3 men standing by the door behind us, and it looked like we were getting kicked off the bar in order for these men to sit there! We were a little confused about why we were asked to leave, but then we found out that in Argentina people only sit at the bar while they're waiting for a table. Instead of taking the table, we decided we'd have an early night so we could get up the next morning at a normal time.
I had told the group that I went to church last Sunday, and everyone talked about how they wanted to go with me this Sunday, even though no one else is Catholic. We found a church that's much closer to home than the Catedral, and it ended up being just me, Mary, and Melissa that went to Mass. When we arrived, we were approached by who I suppose was the Mass Coordinator, and she told us that since we were young and there were three of us, would we mind taking the gifts to the altar during the preparation of the gifts? After some confusion about our nationality, I told the Mass Coordinator that we would do it, ignoring the fact that neither Mary nor Melissa are Catholic nor familiar with the Mass and its rituals. With some guidance from the Mass Coordinator, we presented those gifts like we knew what we were doing the whole time.
Sunday evening ended with many games of solitaire played on my phone and a research project/presentation over the differences between Argentinean public and private schools. After class on Monday and lunch at Zona, I was off to do some shopping on my own! I'd been dying for a pair of boots, and Karie had left me with a list of recommended boot stores around Rosario. I set off on my own, peering at boots through windows, wishing that the cute boots I kept finding weren't $699 (pesos, not dollars. But still expensive!). I went back to the bookstore that Cain, Mary and I had found on Friday and bought a book called Te Invito a Creer (I Invite You to Believe). I read the introduction on Friday, and the author, Maunel Lozano, writes eloquently yet simply enough that I could understand. It looked like a fascinating book about the different realities that Manuel encounters while traveling around Argentina, and I'm really excited to start reading it! (Manuel also has this really cool TED Talks video where he discusses why he became interested in learning about different realities in Argentina, which you can watch here. You"ll have to turn on the captions since it's in Spanish, but if you have 20 minutes his story is really inspiring). I'm excited to have this piece of literature that was written and produced in Argentina so that I'll have a tangible memento of the language to bring home with me to practice reading in Spanish.
I also witnessed an attempted theft while at the bookstore! This guy came into the bookstore while I was checking out, and was just loitering near the front of the store. I could only see him out of the corner of my eye, but he was giving me the heebie jeebies. As I was finishing paying, he walked up to the woman working and tried to hand her some little cards, but she told him to stop loitering and get lost. So as he tried to leave the store, the alarm starts going off, and the woman working runs over and stops him. He pulls a book out of his bag, mumbling something about "how did that get in there?" and I didn't know what to do but I had already paid so I just kind of walked past them and left. As I was leaving, the worker yelled "Ladrón!" (thief!) and the guy came running out the door behind me, and I was afraid he was going to try and steal my bag out of my hand or something, but he didn't. It was just really creepy and definitely not the way that situation would have been handled in the United States!
After I had checked out all the recommended shoe stores once, there were a few I thought had some promising boots, but I was tired and didn't feel like walking back into the same stores that I had visited already. So I made plans to go back Tuesday after classes. I decided to go on a walk for exercise, so I decided to eat the equivalent to Oreos for energy and left for my walk. I walked along the river and ended up in the Catedral de Nuestra Sra del Rosario, where I took some pictures of the catedral and shopped in the gift store. The lady working in the shop asked me what I was doing in Rosario, and when I told her I was studying Spanish in the university, she told me that I spoke Spanish very well! On my way home, I decided to take pictures along Tucumán, the street I live on, and I came across a shoe outlet where I found 2 pairs of boots that I really liked. I didn't have any more money on me and I needed to think about which boots I wanted, so I promised I would return and went home.
Today started out as a not so good day (only because I had class at 8am and it was freezing outside. Otherwise everything was fine). After class, Mary and I had plans to go to Starbucks for Frappuccino Happy Hour! We found out this weekend that Happy Hour had been going on for the last week and that today was the last day, so even though today was one of the coldest days we've had in Rosario, we made our way to Starbucks. On our way we stopped in the boot outlet I found yesterday and I bought a super cute pair of boots WITH A 25% DISCOUNT. Then we walked across the street and got grande dulce de leche frappuccinos for half price! In that moment I might have been enjoying the happiest day of my life! (that might also be an exaggeration. But it was seriously pretty happy.)
I didn't have any classes after lunch but I hung around the site and journaled while sitting by a warm fire and talking with the students from the other summer program. The day ended with a movie called Victoria, a documentary about a girl born in captivity during the Dirty War trying to find information on her biological parents. I finished my Spanish homework while at the site, so I had time for blogging AND going to bed early so I can get up round 2 of 8am class tomorrow. Unfortunately I don't have time to finish part 2 of this blog post tonight because I want to go to bed, but my mid(ish) program reflections will be posted soon!
After coordinating plans via email to turn the final version of Mi Aventura in to Karie (since I couldn't email it to her because the file was too big) and meet Mary at Starbucks, both of these plans were realized Saturday afternoon. Starbucks was quite an experience. I felt obnoxiously American when I walked in because I was supporting an American company while in Rosario (when I told Eugenia I was going to Starbucks, which is maybe 6 blocks down our street, she asked me what Starbucks was. I almost died. That might be an exaggeration. I'm not obsessed with Starbucks.), wearing letters, and carrying Vera Bradley. When we went to order, the man working the counter spoke in English, so we placed our order for alto (tall) dulce de leche frappuccinos. After ordering, he said he didn't have any cups in that size, and would it be okay if he gave us a larger size (it would be easier for him to give us change that way too)? He was holding up a cup for a warm drink, which should have been my first hint that we weren't getting our frappuccinos. When they called our names, we were surprised to find not alto dulce de leche frappuccinos, but venti dulce de leche lattes! You could tell I was mad about it by the way I drank the entire venti latte. After Starbucks I went home briefly, only to walk back to Starbucks about 2 hours later to meet the gang for our evening activity.
Even though Karie's class ended a week ago, she's been hanging out and going to events with us. Saturday was her last night in Rosario, and we wanted to spend the evening with her. We had found a bowling alley while shopping on Friday, and we thought that would be something fun and low-key for all of us to do. After meeting at Starbucks, we made our way to a different bowling alley around 9:30, and the place was dead. We still had fun, and when our game was finished Karie went home to rest up for her day of travel and Mary, Melissa and I headed to an Irish pub. We sat at the bar because there were no tables available. After we had been sitting at the bar for a while, the bartender told us that the bar was cerrado (closed) and that they would get a table for us if we wanted to stay. We then looked around at the rest of the people sitting at the bar, only to find that we were the only women sitting there. There were also 3 men standing by the door behind us, and it looked like we were getting kicked off the bar in order for these men to sit there! We were a little confused about why we were asked to leave, but then we found out that in Argentina people only sit at the bar while they're waiting for a table. Instead of taking the table, we decided we'd have an early night so we could get up the next morning at a normal time.
I had told the group that I went to church last Sunday, and everyone talked about how they wanted to go with me this Sunday, even though no one else is Catholic. We found a church that's much closer to home than the Catedral, and it ended up being just me, Mary, and Melissa that went to Mass. When we arrived, we were approached by who I suppose was the Mass Coordinator, and she told us that since we were young and there were three of us, would we mind taking the gifts to the altar during the preparation of the gifts? After some confusion about our nationality, I told the Mass Coordinator that we would do it, ignoring the fact that neither Mary nor Melissa are Catholic nor familiar with the Mass and its rituals. With some guidance from the Mass Coordinator, we presented those gifts like we knew what we were doing the whole time.
Sunday evening ended with many games of solitaire played on my phone and a research project/presentation over the differences between Argentinean public and private schools. After class on Monday and lunch at Zona, I was off to do some shopping on my own! I'd been dying for a pair of boots, and Karie had left me with a list of recommended boot stores around Rosario. I set off on my own, peering at boots through windows, wishing that the cute boots I kept finding weren't $699 (pesos, not dollars. But still expensive!). I went back to the bookstore that Cain, Mary and I had found on Friday and bought a book called Te Invito a Creer (I Invite You to Believe). I read the introduction on Friday, and the author, Maunel Lozano, writes eloquently yet simply enough that I could understand. It looked like a fascinating book about the different realities that Manuel encounters while traveling around Argentina, and I'm really excited to start reading it! (Manuel also has this really cool TED Talks video where he discusses why he became interested in learning about different realities in Argentina, which you can watch here. You"ll have to turn on the captions since it's in Spanish, but if you have 20 minutes his story is really inspiring). I'm excited to have this piece of literature that was written and produced in Argentina so that I'll have a tangible memento of the language to bring home with me to practice reading in Spanish.
I also witnessed an attempted theft while at the bookstore! This guy came into the bookstore while I was checking out, and was just loitering near the front of the store. I could only see him out of the corner of my eye, but he was giving me the heebie jeebies. As I was finishing paying, he walked up to the woman working and tried to hand her some little cards, but she told him to stop loitering and get lost. So as he tried to leave the store, the alarm starts going off, and the woman working runs over and stops him. He pulls a book out of his bag, mumbling something about "how did that get in there?" and I didn't know what to do but I had already paid so I just kind of walked past them and left. As I was leaving, the worker yelled "Ladrón!" (thief!) and the guy came running out the door behind me, and I was afraid he was going to try and steal my bag out of my hand or something, but he didn't. It was just really creepy and definitely not the way that situation would have been handled in the United States!
After I had checked out all the recommended shoe stores once, there were a few I thought had some promising boots, but I was tired and didn't feel like walking back into the same stores that I had visited already. So I made plans to go back Tuesday after classes. I decided to go on a walk for exercise, so I decided to eat the equivalent to Oreos for energy and left for my walk. I walked along the river and ended up in the Catedral de Nuestra Sra del Rosario, where I took some pictures of the catedral and shopped in the gift store. The lady working in the shop asked me what I was doing in Rosario, and when I told her I was studying Spanish in the university, she told me that I spoke Spanish very well! On my way home, I decided to take pictures along Tucumán, the street I live on, and I came across a shoe outlet where I found 2 pairs of boots that I really liked. I didn't have any more money on me and I needed to think about which boots I wanted, so I promised I would return and went home.
Today started out as a not so good day (only because I had class at 8am and it was freezing outside. Otherwise everything was fine). After class, Mary and I had plans to go to Starbucks for Frappuccino Happy Hour! We found out this weekend that Happy Hour had been going on for the last week and that today was the last day, so even though today was one of the coldest days we've had in Rosario, we made our way to Starbucks. On our way we stopped in the boot outlet I found yesterday and I bought a super cute pair of boots WITH A 25% DISCOUNT. Then we walked across the street and got grande dulce de leche frappuccinos for half price! In that moment I might have been enjoying the happiest day of my life! (that might also be an exaggeration. But it was seriously pretty happy.)
I didn't have any classes after lunch but I hung around the site and journaled while sitting by a warm fire and talking with the students from the other summer program. The day ended with a movie called Victoria, a documentary about a girl born in captivity during the Dirty War trying to find information on her biological parents. I finished my Spanish homework while at the site, so I had time for blogging AND going to bed early so I can get up round 2 of 8am class tomorrow. Unfortunately I don't have time to finish part 2 of this blog post tonight because I want to go to bed, but my mid(ish) program reflections will be posted soon!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Truths I May Have Exaggerated...
Truths I May Have Exaggerated to the Other Students in My Study Abroad Program:
- There is only corn in Indiana: This came up in Spanish class because I was asked to talk about what Indiana is like since the other students in my program are all from Oregon. No one has ever asked me that and I quickly realized that my Spanish vocabulary was limited to maiz, so I might have just said that's all there is there. When they asked me to tell them more about Indiana in English I couldn't think of anything else to add to my description. I did finally tell them that paved roads run between the cornfields so that's a step up, right?
- I am afraid of camp: This came up because some of the students from Oregon are camp counselors. One day, they were talking about the kids that wake up in the middle of the night crying and I told them that I would be that kid. I cried at day camp because I disliked the whole experience so much (and I'm sure it only would have been worse at overnight camp, thank goodness Linda and Dan had the sense to never send me). In Spanish one day, I was asked if I had any fears and I said no (because I couldn't think of any in the moment). Then, it came up in a later activity that I didn't like camp so then they just assumed that because I didn't like it I'm afraid of it. Which is not how it is at all.
- I can't live without Starbucks: If you had a Starbucks rewards card, you wouldn't leave it at home to miss out on drink rewards, would you? Sorry I brought my card for a company known around the world to a different country. I'm rather enjoying my cafe con leches in the quaint cafés here, and I'm surviving just fine without my frappucinos, thank you very much. I found the Starbucks last weekend (it's only like 5 blocks away from my apartment!) but it's super expensive. 27 pesos for a coffee? I still want to go to say I've been there, and I think Mary and I are planning an excursion there this weekend.
- I only do the 'sorority lean' in pictures: I just really like putting my hand on my hip when I have one arm free in pictures. Otherwise, what am I supposed to do with my hand? Let it hang awkwardly (although we all know how much I love awkward things)? Cain initially asked if I would teach him the sorority lean, but now it has caught on and we need to tone it down a little - our sorority leans are getting a little out of control. Karie looked through the photos I brought with me from home and said that the lean is the pose I do the most. When I went back and reviewed the 25 pictures, only 5 contain the lean in some form, 3 contain the sorority squat, and the rest are semi-normal. Since the majority are semi-normal can you really say that I do the sorority lean in every picture?
- I am afraid of elevators. I have two irrational fears that come up every time I have to ride in an elevator: that the cable supporting the elevator is going to snap while I'm riding in the elevator, and that the elevator is going to get stuck with me inside. I don't know where these fears originated, especially because I'm not claustrophobic and neither of these horrendous scenarios have ever happened to me. Because of these irrational fears, I usually try and take the stairs when I have that as an option. Not only are stairs safer than elevators, but they also promote wellness by improving my cardiorespiratory endurance. Anywho, so the elevators in Argentina are sketchier than elevators in the United States. There are no doors that open automatically when the elevator arrives at a floor: you must first open what looks like a regular door in order to enter the elevator, shut the door behind you, then move the grate across the doorway to keep you inside. The elevators take off and come to a stop with a halt, which continues to freak me out even though I know it's coming every time. Also, the elevators are TINY. I can barely fit myself, my backpack, my suitcase, and one other person in an elevator at one time. Now that the other students know about my fear, every time that we take an elevator, they apologize for making me take the elevator. It's totally unnecessary because a) I've never made a big deal about taking the elevator instead of the stairs, and b) elevators don't freak me out enough to not take them. Although maybe the elevators in Bracken Library should make me reconsider - they seem to be broken every time I go to the library, which is a lot. I guess maybe I should say that instead of being afraid of elevators, I simply distrust them because of their sketchiness and ability to break down often. That would probably be more truthful.
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