The Beauty of the City

The last couple of days have been filled with some unexpected surprises. Yesterday's classes were pretty low-key. We were in the middle of Spanish class when the power went out in the Fundación Prats, and the caretaker Sylvia (I think that's her name) ran in and opened the windows so we could continue with class. Turns out, the power outage was city-wide, but they had power back up and running within a half an hour. We also had an interesting conversation about our barrios (neighborhoods). I said that I needed to explore my barrio more, and my Spanish teacher Sole told me that I live in a good location - very close to both the river and the center of the city. When classes finished at 4, I felt inspired by our discussion about my barrio and decided that I would go on a walk to find the river. I also felt like I needed to get some exercise, since Eugenia keeps telling me that she is going to make me fat by the time I leave (which is not going to happen).

The last few days have been very cold in Rosario, so I put on my layers of clothing and walked the 5 blocks to the river.  The street I walked down opened to the Parque de las Colectividades, which was very open and green but covered in graffiti. I started walking to the right because I knew there were more parks to walk through, and I wanted to find the Monumento de la Bandera (Monument of the Flag) which is a tall structure that is lit up with the colors of the Argentinian flag at night. I walked through the first park and past some restaurants along the river bank, past an indoor bike track and came up on a gigantic set of stairs, which marked the entrance into the Parque de España. There was a HUGE skate park there, and there were people everywhere - riding bikes, skateboarding, practicing tricks on roller skates - and it was neat to watch them display their talents through that medium. At that point, I wasn't sure how much further I should walk, but I could see what I thought was the Monumento de la Bandera not too far ahead of me and I decided to see if I could get there. As I got closer, it was starting to get darker, and when I finally reached the Monumento, the lights turned on and it started to glow a light blue. On my way back, there was a park with a swing set that gave me a clear view of the Monumento, and I was overcome with the desire to swing. I got a few stares from the weird people sitting in the park, but it gave me both such a rush and such a feeling of peace to be swinging, watching the Monumento light up in front of me. After a few minutes of swinging, I walked back through the parks through which I had come and got to see the city unfold in front of me. Before living in Rosario, I don't think I would have called an urban city 'beautiful,' but seeing the tall apartment buildings lining the avenue on my left and seeing the parks and river to my right made me begin to appreciate this urban beauty as well. And now I've found a great place where I can go run and work out and not worry about getting fat, so I know I'll definitely be going back and will be able to take pictures.

When I got back home, I figured I was in for the night, so I settled on the couch in my mismatched workout clothes to read for Culture and Community. Around that time, Eugenia got home from work and got dressed up. She had told me on Monday night that she was going to eat dinner with a friend Tuesday night, but I didn't understand that I was going to dinner with her! I quickly threw my nicer clothes back on and we walked down the street to Norma's. I had met Norma on my first day here, as she picked me up with Eugenia from the hotel and drove us home. I didn't know she had an 18-year-old daughter, Julieta, so Eugenia introduced me as soon as we arrived at the apartment. Julieta told me that I could speak to her in English if I wanted to (I must have really been struggling) but I told her that I wanted to practice my Spanish so that I would get better at speaking. Eugenia has been telling me that my Spanish has definitely improved since I've been here, and that I'm able to understand everything she says (kind of not really true) and that I write perfectly (I know I definitely write better than I speak). While Julieta was very patient with me and spoke slowly, she spoke so quietly that I still had a hard time understanding what she was asking me! Then during dinner, Eugenia and Norma got into a heated discussion so they spoke even quieter and faster, and I might have completely zoned out because I was so tired and overwhelmed. I gave Julieta my phone number because I guess she's at home during the afternoons when I get home from school and Eugenia wants us to hang out so that we don't have to be alone. I'm excited to hopefully hang out with her again because talking with her is only going to help improve my ability to comprehend Spanish. I think I was just caught a little off-guard going over to Norma's last night that I wasn't able to comprehend at my highest ability.

This morning, the ESOL group had to get up early to go observe at our second school, Colegio Mariano Moreno N°60. This was a public school, meaning it is free for students to attend, and we could sense the differences as soon as we walked in the door. The principal greeted us and asked what activities we had planned to do with the children. We told her we were just there to observe, and half the group went to observe a class of little kids and the rest of us were off to observe the middle school students. The principal didn't have a classroom of older students set up for us to observe in, so she just barged into a couple of classrooms to ask if we could observe, completely interrupting the teaching going on. We were placed in a social studies classroom, where it seemed that only some of the students were paying attention to the reading from the textbook. After a short time, the bell rang for recess, and we followed the students outside. We were swarmed by students that asked us really random questions. A group of girls asked if I was on Facebook, and then asked what my last name was so we could be Facebook friends. Fortunately, I was saved by the bell (literally), because I didn't want to give them my name and I didn't know what to tell the girls! We weren't sure if we were supposed to go back to the classroom we had been in, so Terry asked the students who their favorite teacher was and they pointed to a man who was walking around with a guitar in hand. So we followed a different group of students to music class, where most of the class didn't even try and engage in the exercises the teacher led them in. I recognized a lot of the exercises from my music classes, and it was neat for me to see that music really is a universal language. Then he asked us to sing a song, and we had no clue what we were supposed to do. Cain, Annie and Ella ended up singing a camp song about a donut that I didn't know, and the students just looked so confused. When they finished singing, Terry thought we were supposed to be back downstairs, so we left the class and waited downstairs for the rest of our group to show up. The principal came out of her office and asked if we wanted to see one other group, and she took us to a 4th grade classroom. The teacher would give each student a subject and verb tense, and the student would have to conjugate the verb to match the given parameters. I understood what was going on, even though it was all in Spanish, but if I was one of those students I would have been so intimidated by her teaching style! We left class about halfway through and went to a café as a group to debrief our experience in this school. As we walked back to the Site, I talked with Karie about bilingual education and why it isn't more widely supported. We don't have a bilingual teaching license program at Ball State, but I really wish we did - from my understanding, there are so many benefits to that kind of teaching style that most importantly allow students to maintain their first language while learning English.

After our Spanish class in the afternoon, the ESOL group had a movie night at the Site. We watched Cautiva, an Argentinian film about a girl who discovered that she had been living under a false identity for year and that her parents "disappeared" during the Dirty War. Have you ever heard of the Dirty War? I hadn't until this movie, but it happened in the late 1970s and had to do with the military regime making those people politically involved with the communists "disappear" into concentration camps. It's definitely a topic that I plan to study more while I'm here. Although the story in Cautiva was fictional, it was really sad to see how the events of the Dirty War still impact Argentina.

On that note, I'm going to bed, since I'm still wiped out from Iguazú and waking up at 7:30 every morning is a challenge! I'm not sure why I chose teaching as my future profession since I'm definitely not a morning princess...