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!
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