Chaos is Beautiful

I still owe you a “catch-up” post, dear readers, but the writer’s urge calls yet, so bear with me. This post just wrote itself on my walk home from a workout at the pool I go to. Here goes.

My Facebook stalkers will note that I’ve just had “one of the most interesting weeks of my life.” Really it’s been the past two weeks that have been particularly interesting. What the heck do I mean by that tell-nothing word “interesting,” you ask? Well, a lot of things. The past two weeks have been inspiring at times and frustrating and disappointing at others; sometimes super fun and sometimes somewhat more solitary; without question very random throughout, and above all, illuminating. I can say I have learned a lot about myself during the month of September.

Study abroad programs explain to their participants that the best way to understand the phenomenon of “culture shock” while being abroad is to know you’ll experience a roller coaster of emotions: happy as can be one minute, homesick the next. Sometimes you feel at home and like a quasi-native in your host country, and other times you’re a tourist like the rest of them. I’ve felt all of the roller coaster emotions recently, and the interesting thing is that I’ve felt them all at the same time.

I’ve made absolutely incredible friends here, ones who will be in my life for a long time, at the same time that I sorely miss my family and my best buds from home. The past month has been the best yet on the work front, so I’m motivated and excited to keep it going; but I’m also looking forward to the exciting things I’ll do while working back in the U.S. And at the same time that I can say for sure that Argentina is now my second home, and that I’ll be coming back, I also know the U.S. is my first one, and I’m excited to come home in December. (That should be comforting news to those of you who have expressed fear and trepidation at my secret plan to marry an Argentine woman and buy land in the mountains in the northwest of Argentina. The search for an Argentine bride continues, but seeing as I have less than three months left here, it doesn’t look good. Rest assured, people.)

It may seem strange to be reflecting on my time here in such a concluding tone, but these are the realizations that have been coming to me lately. I’ve hit the six-month mark, and at this point I’ve had time to really put things in perspective. The perspective is this: I’m incredibly lucky to have had this experience, and I’m equally lucky to have such good friends and family to come home to. That realization, in particular, came to me last night. I was sitting on a bench in one of the quirkiest plazas I’ve seen in Buenos Aires. I had been walking around for a couple of hours, jamming to my iPod and deep in thought about how strange and fun the past couple of weeks have been. I wandered into this plaza, which is only four blocks from my new apartment (I moved, by the way) but which I had never seen before because it’s buried several blocks away from the main avenue.

The second I turned the corner and saw the plaza, I knew it was my new favorite place in this city. On the outskirts of the plaza there were the typical Buenos Aires street performers, darting in front of cars stopped at red lights to juggle flashing, glow-in-the-dark pins in the twilight. Two guys in partial drag were doing a synchronized dance and shaking their booties for the idling cars. There were teenagers with skateboards and these crazy new thingies that I have no idea what to call except for the skateboard's distant cousin, or a mix between a skateboard and roller skates. (If I can't name these things, and I have a hard time even describing them, does that mean I'm getting old? Scary thought.) I sat myself down on a bench in the middle of the plaza, facing a Gothic cathedral and watching people pour out of the front of the sanctuary after an evening service. A bunch of ten-year-old Argentine rascals were playing a helter-skelter game of soccer right in front of the cathedral. I returned their ball a few times when it flew in my direction, as did my fellow plaza-goers who were busy drinking mate (that’s the tea Argentines drink out of a special gourd with a special straw in a special way). Meanwhile, I was half dodging sticks and tennis balls being launched toward me from the other direction – there was a group of twenty-somethings playing fetch with their pack of dogs (there must have been eight canines), and they were rocketing their sticks and balls the entire length of the plaza, over trees and people. The sticks would land right in front of me, and the pack of pups would race through the plaza and come screeching to a halt at my feet in order to claim their prizes. One time the dogs swarmed a woman who was passing through and accidently kicked one of the sticks they were chasing. Once the woman escaped the herd she looked like she couldn’t decide whether to scream, curse, cry, or run for her life. She had a wild look in her eyes, and I was so amused I think she thought I was partly at fault for the fracas.

In the midst of all this beautiful chaos, a man suddenly approached me. He signaled for me to take out my headphones, and he asked if I would buy the mini-packs of tissues he was selling. I was off my guard, and I didn’t catch everything he said, but he kept repeating “con todo respeto” – with all respect – and he pointed to his son and daughter he had in tow. The kids must have been 6 and 8. I bought a pack of tissues, told him to keep the change, and watched him wander through the plaza with his kids and disappear around the bend. After I had bought the tissues, and before he gathered his kids and left me in solitude on my bench, he repeated it one more time: “con todo respeto.” He could tell I was deep in thought, and he was apologizing for interrupting me, I think. That “con todo respeto” really struck me. I don't know if I can explain why, but let me try.

I have a real aversion to words like “respect” – to me, the concept of respect (in English or in Spanish) has a standoffish, hardnosed, even authoritarian connotation. You can treat someone both respectfully and very austerely/coldly at the same time: to show someone respect is not the same as to care about him or her. I prefer to treat someone with compassion than with respect. When I was working at the behavioral school in Holyoke, I avoided telling students they had to “respect” me because I was a (substitute) teacher. I chose to put it differently: I told them it was important that they learn and grow, and that I was there to help them do that. "Respecting the rules" isn't as important to me as understanding why there are rules in the first place. What this man selling tissues did was change the way I think about respect, both as a word and as a concept. He respected my experience of sitting and thinking deeply on my bench; and I respected his experience, too – although there’s no way for him to have known that. We respected each other and each other’s experiences. There may have been compassion involved in the exchange, but he seemed more interested in giving and receiving respect than appealing to an emotion like compassion. In that sense, an old phrase from my 2009 trip to New Orleans comes to mind: "not charity - solidarity." And as Ranger Fred from Jean Lafitte National Park in New Orleans put it: that's a beautiful thing.

Two Wicked Awesome Classes

It’s been months since I posted last – and I have every intention of getting you people caught up on the last three months. But there’s a post that’s pouring out of me – it’s begging to be written – so I must obey the forces of inspiration.

The last two classes I’ve had were the most inspiring and enjoyable I’ve had in six months here. The first was at the teacher-training college (profesorado) I’m working at now, which is an extremely interesting and innovative institute and also the most prestigious profesorado in Argentina. My story starts here: I visited a U.S. history class that’s a requirement for students in the English Department. After getting to class and meeting the professor (her name is Paula López Cano), I found out she’s a fellow Fulbrighter! She won an Argentine Fulbright grant in the 1970s to do a Master’s program at the University of Kansas. I’d say she was even more enthusiastic than I am about the Fulbright program, as well as the U.S. in general. After thinking about it, I can relate to that – I’ve fallen in love with Argentina, and I’ve met a lot of Argentines who are mopey and critical about Argentina and all the issues the country has to face. More on that next time.

While we were discussing the Fulbright program, Paula mentioned certain aspects of the program’s early history that, to be honest, I had forgotten about. The program was founded in 1946 thanks to legislation introduced by U.S. Senator William Fulbright, a Southern Democrat who supported racial segregation but yet had a progressive, idealistic, and philosophical view about the merits of international exchange programs. Fulbright’s ultimate hope was that starting a program for cultural exchange would help countries avoid the horrors and atrocities the world had just seen in World War II. In other words, the program aimed to create a new world order in which countries shipped students and scholars around the world instead of soldiers. In the words of the Senator: “The Fulbright Commission aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.” Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

My fellow Fulbrighter also surprised me with this: later in her career she went to a summer conference at Boston College – so she’s walked the Freedom Trail and she’s even been to a Red Sox game. But get this – while in Massachusetts, Paula and the other conference participants headed west on the Mass Pike so they could get to know the greatest place on earth: Western Mass!!!!! She’s been to Springfield, Umass, and even Sturbridge Village!! I was practically jumping on top of my desk and doing backflips when she told me all of this. I’ve been away for six months now, so it was incredible to meet someone who’s been to all of these places – which span not only my personal and work life nowadays, but my childhood as well (Sturbridge Village!!!). It helped me get over my halfway-done homesickness, and it made me both inspired to keep putting everything into this, and really excited to get home in a few months.

The second class was just last night, and it was at a friend’s private English-language institute about 30 minutes outside of the city. This was my third time visiting her night class, which is for adults, and since I’m familiar with the students now I wanted to do something fun and different. So I prepared a class on Tupac Shakur, the renowned West Coast rapper who was shot to death in 1996. I shared a couple of quotes from my favorite article about Tupac, and then we listened to “Changes,” perhaps his most famous song that talks about the problems African Americans face in the U.S. today – in terms of racism and hatred; complacency on the part of the government and the authorities; and the issues facing African American communities from within. The students were really interested, if a little lost by the lyrics (their English is intermediate/beginner). I thought it was a valuable class because Argentines consume a massive amount of American pop culture – music, movies, TV shows from the U.S. – but they tend to know very little about hip hop and its significance. I’m definitely planning to use the same lesson with some classes at the colleges I’m working at. It should be fun and interesting.

I’m back in the game! I’ll try to post again soon. No promises, but I’ll do my best. A big shout-out to Granny, whose birthday I missed a couple of weeks ago, and Brother Bear, whose birthday I’ll miss tomorrow. Feliz cumpleaños a los dos, y los extraño mucho! Hope everyone is well!

Updates on the work front

Okay, time for some quality updates on the work front. As I explained in one of my first blog posts, rather than having me work at the same college for eight months, my program is sending me to all four of the teacher-training colleges (profesorados) in Buenos Aires. Each of the four is quite different from the others, and has its own unique identity based on what kind of institute it is. My first institute was the teacher-training college affiliated with the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (UTN) - so the approach to both language learning and teaching in general was quite technical and even mechanical. In other words, for every question I was asked about U.S. culture and society, I was asked two that were more grammatical. I did enjoy answering a lot of questions that were less technical, but still more linguistic than cultural (mostly idiomatic expressions or slang): what in the WORLD does it mean, for instance, to say "his name rings a bell, but I can't put a face to the name." Have you ever seen a name ringing a bell?

In any case, you could say that the more technical/mechanical approach to language isn't really the right fit for me - I am an English major after all, so I'm much more interested in literature, culture, ethnic diversity, and the like than grammar. I don't for a minute regret my time at the UTN, though. I learned a lot while working there, and I also made some incredible friendships with both students and coworkers. Andrea and Romina, two of the professor's assistants - or TA's - have become two of my closest friends in Argentina, and I've had many an Argentine adventure while tagging along with them and their friends.

I switched to my new institute about three weeks ago, and I've completely fallen in love with it. It's a fascinating institute: at the college level it's a language institute - it's called Lenguas Vivas, or Living Languages - but it also has primary and secondary programs within the same building. I'm working 25-30 hours a week with the secondary and college programs, and after just three weeks the work has been extremely enjoyable and rewarding already. The approach to language is more cultural and "context-based" (that's my term, not theirs), so while I do teach idiomatic expressions, colloquial language, and some slang, and sometimes help out with grammar lessons (prepositions, for example), I'm also getting to work with English-language literature, giving presentations on topics like U.S. immigration and the health care system, and talking about cultural differences like education, holidays, food, and lifestyles. I'm about four or fives times busier now than I was at my last institute - 25-30 hours doesn't include lesson planning - but the work is so enjoyable that I can't get enough of it.

I should also mention that I finally got my "supplemental project" going - I got a part-time internship for a journalism organization called Americas Journalism Training (AJT). It has a study-abroad program for students from the U.S. and Europe, and students take journalism seminars, Spanish classes, and short courses on Argentina through AJT, and get writing internships at publications in Buenos Aires. I'm helping out the AJT staff, but I'm very part-time and only working 5-8 hours a week, mostly as a blogger. I've posted to the AJT blog twice so far. Check out one of my posts.

I'm actually not teaching this week, because I have a week-long conference put on by the Fulbright program for all the Fulbrighters in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil. Everyone is headed to Buenos Aires for the conference, so I'll be showing 30-plus Americans around the city this week during our free time. It should be a lot of fun, and while I'll miss working at my institute this week, it should be an interesting conference, and a change of pace is always good too. (My current work schedule has me at school at 7:30 on Monday morning, and I don't finish until Friday night at 9:00 p.m. - so I won't be missing the schedule, haha.) I'll be staying at the same hotel as the other Fulbrighters for the week, so that I can get to know them better and not have to commute to and from the hotel throughout the week. So I might be less contactable this week than I normally am - but I'll resurface next week for sure.

I hope everyone is doing well back on the ranch. More to come - talk to you all soon!

Exploring Palermo

So I know I promised I'd post about what the work has been like lately, but first I thought I'd post some pictures I've taken on my favorite walk around Buenos Aires. A few weeks ago I went for one of my need-to-clear-my-head-and-get-outside-for-a-while walks, and ended up finding an amazing route to explore. (As my Facebook friends might remember, I figured out the walk was more than 10 miles - it took almost four hours!) I liked the walk so much that I've made it a permanent route, and I walk it pretty regularly now. It's the perfect combination of exercise (I'm also swimming a lot at a pool close to my apartment, but I still can't run because of my injured knee), a break from the stress, and a way to get out and explore the city. I love being in a part of the city where I can get out and explore parks, lakes, interesting neighborhoods, and whatever else I come across, without the chaos of living downtown.

There's not enough room to post many of the pictures from my exploits in Palermo, but here are some of the highlights of my walk:

These two pictures are of the Islamic Cultural Center of Argentina, which is one of my favorite spots in the city. I still haven't taken a tour of the inside, but I'm definitely planning to when I find time.

This is a really cool building that's part of an athletic club (the clubs tend to be really big here). This photo doesn't really do the building justice, but it's a really interesting color, and the architecture is pretty cool.

Here you can see both a bridge the commuter train goes over, in the foreground, and a pedestrian bridge in the background. The pedestrian bridge connects the two parts of a massive park in the northern part of Palermo, the place I've been exploring the most on my walks.

This is a tiny section of an absolutely massive complex that's used as a water purification plant. When I first saw it I thought it had to be some kind of major tourist attraction, like a museum or something, because the architecture is incredible. Alas, there's actually a practical use for it (ha).

An incredible weekend

After some due prodding from Nick, here I am again, finally. I apologize for another epic delay in posting, dear readers! Once again there's so much to write about it's hard to know where to start. Here’s the game plan: I'll catch you all up on the work side of things next time around, but for now I’ll write about my latest greatest Argentine adventure. Here goes.

Last weekend was a four-day weekend, because Tuesday (May 25) was the celebration of the bicentennial of the May Revolution of 1810, when the inhabitants of what would become Argentina rebelled against the Spanish colonial government. In some ways Argentina's May Revolution could be compared to the U.S.'s Battles of Lexington and Concord - both were the beginning of long wars for independence from European colonial rule.

Because of the long weekend, my friend Patricio (who I've posted about before - and who I met through Anna, the British TA I’ve been working with) invited me, Anna, and his Argentine friend Lucila to his family's farm in the countryside, 500 kilometers west of Buenos Aires. The farm is where Patricio grew up, until he and most of his family – his mom, younger sister, and one of his younger brothers – moved to Buenos Aires so that Patricio could go to college and still be with the family. Patricio’s dad and other younger brother still live on (and run) the farm year-round, whereas the rest of the family lives in BA during the school year, and goes back to the countryside during school vacations and long weekends, so that the family is all together.

So on Friday afternoon Patricio, Anna, Lucila, and I piled into one car, with Patri’s mom, dad, sister and brother in another, and we all retreated from the chaos of metropolitan Buenos Aires, passing through the massive plains to the west of the city. The family’s farm is literally in the Middle of Nowhere, Argentina: not only is it a six hours’ drive from Buenos Aires, it’s also about 40 minutes from the nearest town. To get to that town from the farmhouse, first you have to drive three kilometers on the farm, just to get to the road – yes, their driveway is 3 kilometers long. Then you drive about 20 kilometers on a dirt road, and another 15 or so on a small highway. The farm itself is 250 hectares, I think, so about 1 square mile. In other words, it’s absolutely massive. Since Patricio’s dad is getting older (he’s in his early 60s, I believe), the farm is mostly run by his 20-year-old brother and one farmhand, who lives in a cabin on the farm. (I assume they also have seasonal workers for the summer harvest.) The family owns about 15 horses, dozens of cattle, a slew of sheep, and an adorable tamed calf named Berta, who’s basically the family dog. Besides the animals, they also grow crops in the fields and have orchards where they grow all kinds of fruit, which Patricio’s mom uses to make (and sell) homemade jams.

Speaking of Patricio’s mom - her name is Marianne - you can’t imagine how much she spoiled us (and her own family, by the way) over the course of the weekend. We had both lunch and dinner with the entire family every day, and for the most part Marianne made typical Argentine meals – a real treat for Anna and me. At the same time, Patricio’s dad’s side of the family is very English by heritage – the house is basically an early 1900’s English farmhouse, built by the family several generations ago – so one of the family’s most important traditions is having a daily, English-style afternoon tea around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. (Dinner in Argentina is usually eaten between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m., just like in Spain, so a late-afternoon snack is typical for most Argentines anyway – but it has a distinctly English feel in Patri’s family.) Marianne makes a mean pot of tea for everyone share, but that’s only the beginning: we also had homemade loaves of bread, homemade jams from the farm, and even homemade dulce de leche (milk jam), a really common (and delicious) dessert in Argentina that’s somewhere between frosting and the caramel you find on a caramel apple. Un-be-lie-va-ble. I probably gained about 45 pounds over the course of the weekend...but I’m okay with that.

Besides stuffing ourselves with Argentine food and sweets, we also went horseback riding Saturday, Sunday and Monday; herded the cattle on horseback; climbed to the top of a windmill on the farm; milked the cows; fed Berta, whose closest thing to a mom is Patri’s brother Andrés; walked through the massive fields; climbed trees; drank mate (pronounced mah-tay), an Argentine tea you drink from a communal mug; watched the sun set over a lake out on the farm; sat by the fire at night, reading or watching movies with the family; looked at the stars, without the slightest hint of interference from city lights; and basked in the general amazingness of the weekend.

Needless to say, by the end of the weekend the last thing I wanted to do was leave the countryside and come back to the chaos of the city. But I decided that there would only be one chance to see the celebrations of Argentina’s bicentennial. And because Patri and his family were staying in the countryside until Tuesday night, on Monday night I took an overnight bus back to Buenos Aires on my own. I arrived in BA at 6:00 Tuesday morning, slept until about noon, and headed downtown to see the celebrations. I wandered around on my own for a while, checking out the exhibits that filled Plaza San Martín, the main plaza downtown. To showcase the diversity of natural wonders, human demographics, and typical foods and customs you find throughout the different parts of Argentina, each of the 23 provinces had its own exhibit to show off its own unique culture.

After wandering around for a while, I met up with Andrea, Romina, and Santi, three friends I know through work (Andrea and Romina are professor’s assistants at the institute I’m working at) and who I’ve been spending a lot of time with. (I go out to dinner with them regularly, and a few weeks ago the four of us went to a massive zoo about an hour outside of Buenos Aires.) We were planning to watch the massive parade together on Tuesday night, but downtown was so chaotic and packed with people - some estimates said there were as many as three million people sprawled throughout the city center watching the parade – that we decided to retreat from the center, get dinner in a quieter area, and watch the parade on TV. It was sad to miss seeing the parade in person, but it was so crowded downtown that we actually saw more of it on TV than most people saw in person. It was also worth it not to get trampled by the crowds – or get stuck downtown for hours, since the subways were absolutely mobbed afterwards. Despite missing the parade, it was definitely worth coming back from the countryside early to be around for the celebrations. Happy 200th, Argentina.

It was an incredible weekend.

Here's a taste of the weekend in the countryside:

I'm second from the right, next to Patricio.

Watching the sun set over the lake.

Anna, Patricio, Lucila, and me.

Education, education, education

It's been a while! The last couple of weeks have gone well. At work I've been doing tons of presentations and class discussions on education in the United States. I've become completely accustomed to visiting a new class prepared to talk about Martin Luther King, or home life and types of housing in the U.S., or any other topic the professors ask me to prepare - and spending the entire class talking about education. Every student I'll have here is a future (or current) teacher, so they're fascinated to learn anything and everything about how education works in another culture. On the one hand I get a lot of questions about my own educational background, about the system of public vs. private vs. charter schools, and about what it takes to get certified as a teacher in the U.S. But I've also gotten to talk quite a bit about my experience (substitute) teaching in Holyoke and Springfield - which I find much more interesting than my own comfortable suburban education and background. Without fail, at the slightest mention of the fact that I worked at an alternative behavioral school in Holyoke, I'm bombarded with questions about the school, the students, how special ed and behavior management programs work, and so on. It's been an infallible spark to an interesting class discussion, and I've learned a lot from my students about special ed and integration programs here in Buenos Aires.

I've also learned a lot about teaching and education here in general. Most English teachers here don't have a stable, full-time position at one specific school, like language teachers do in the U.S. The majority of English teachers work at at least two schools - sometimes more - and many teach at schools during the day, and then give private classes at night. One of the professors at the institute I'm working at told me the English teachers have a running joke: they call themselves "taxi teachers," because they often have to hurry off to teach at another school as soon as their morning or afternoon classes are over. So the schedule isn't regular, like an 8:00 to 3:00 teaching job in the U.S., and some teachers can have 10- or 12-hour work days a couple times a week. Anyone with teaching experience knows that by the end of a six- or seven-hour work day, teachers are normally drained, both mentally and physically. Imagine having to hurry off to your next teaching job, and staying there until 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. This is a whole other level of "overworked and underpaid."

How underpaid? I couldn't really tell you what an "average" teaching salary is here, but I can say that in most cases, I made more money working as an uncertified, non-contract substitute teacher in Holyoke than most teachers make working at two schools here. Factors like the cost of living complicate a simple comparison, but still, overworked and underpaid rings true without a doubt.

Another interesting difference is that most of the students at my teacher-training college are already teaching, before having graduated. Public colleges and universities are free here - something that's unheard of in the U.S. but common in several countries in Western Europe (France, Scotland, Denmark, and others). Still, the phenomenon of studying full-time without working more than 10 hours a week (as in the U.S.) is extremely uncommon here; students have to find substantial work to pay for their living expenses while in college. So a lot of the students at teacher-training colleges are already teaching, but need to complete their degrees to become certified/qualified to continue. I have a friend who's a third-year student at my institute: his name is Ignacio, and in addition to his studies, he works at no less than three schools, teaching English to kids anywhere from 7 to 14 years old. Pretty incredible, if you ask me.

This coming week should be another interesting one for discussing education. On Monday I'm visiting a course whose professor assigned his class a short article about education (especially higher education) in the U.S. It's entitled, subtly enough, "Learning to be Stupid in the Culture of Cash." Here are a couple of the highlights: the author writes about the "impotence of American education to produce brains equipped with the bare necessities for democratic survival: analyzing and asking questions." Fair enough - but she loses me at "Let me put it succinctly: I don't think serious education is possible in America." A little overstated? Nah, couldn't be. In any case, I'm glad the professor assigned the article, because it will make for a really interesting discussion.

I'll post again soon about what else I've been up to, besides living and breathing education. I hope everyone is doing well back home. Happy May!

Health care, hip hop, and house parties

I'm on fire here - three posts in a week could very well be my record while I'm here - but I thought I'd post briefly about how the week ended up.

My presentation on health care reform in the U.S. turned out really well. It was great to present on something so interesting and so historic for the U.S. As I told the classes I presented to, I tried hard to be as unbiased and factual as possible; but it's hard not to emotionalize an issue like health care when there are 45,000 people dying every year in the U.S. solely because of a lack of coverage. One of the things I mentioned is that the U.S., which has a gross domestic product (GDP) of $14.5 trillion, ranks 37th in the world in health care, according to the World Health Organization. Costa Rica, with a GDP of $48.5 billion - or less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the U.S. economy - has free universal health care and ranks just ahead of the U.S. at 36th. One of the things that really hit home for my students here is that there are currently 45 million people in the U.S. with no health insurance (and thus virtually no health care) - and that's more than the entire population of Argentina (40 million).

In any case, the students seemed really interested and engaged in the presentation, and they even asked some really intelligent questions afterward that I struggled to answer fully. (One student asked roughly what percentage of a person's income goes toward health insurance when they have health benefits, or "employer-sponsored" insurance. I was stumped.)

Besides a great week of work, I had quite a few adventures along the way as well. On Monday night I went to see a Brazilian drumming show with my roommates. The same drum corps, la Bomba del Tiempo, plays at this club every week, and it's an absolute blast. Thursday night we went to a really cool bar close to our apartment in Palermo, and then took a taxi to a hip hop club on the other side of Palermo. The club was amazing - there was a massive break-dancing circle when we got there, and it lasted over an hour. I'm pretty sure it was mostly semi-professionals trying to make it big in Buenos Aires, so it was pretty incredible. After a while the club's professional group took over and danced for about 15 minutes. Then at 3:00 a.m., when most clubs in the U.S. would either be closing or have already closed, the break-dancing ended, the DJ took over, and the dance floor opened up to the rest of the club.

Friday night I tagged along with my roommate Mads to a house party a few of his Argentinean friends were having in the southern part of the city. Conforming to the local culture of very late nights, we arrived at the party around midnight (after a 40-minute bus ride from Palermo), ate grilled meat and vegetables, had some Mendozan wine (Mendoza, in the west of Argentina close to Chile, is world-renowned for its wine country, which rivals the vineyards of Spain and France), and hung out in the hosts' patio until we were too droopy-eyed to stay any longer. There were about twenty Argentines there, all around our age, and they were a lot of fun to hang out with. Another great night in BA.

I'm about to go check out the famous weekly Sunday flea market in San Telmo, near the center of the city. It's supposed to be really cool - I'll post pictures of it when I can.

Check it out!

Two posts in the same week - not bad, right? I thought I would post these pictures of my bedroom and the view from my balcony, which I share with my German roommate Francesca and is right outside both of our bedrooms. Isn't it great? I keep the door open all the time when I'm around - even after a week in this apartment, I still can't get enough of the view.

As promised, the work has definitely picked up quickly. I'm actually doing my presentation on the U.S. health care system, the reform legislation, and the "great debate" of the past year tomorrow (Thursday) instead of next week. So I've been working nonstop on a Powerpoint presentation the last few days, and I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. (And get this - I'm even done with it the night before! No all-nighters for me, haha. My college friends would never believe it.) I'm getting excited to present it tomorrow! I know this makes me a huge dork, but I kind of wish I could upload the document here to show you all, haha. I found some really funny political cartoons - and some others that are pretty intense - both for and against the reform bill. I also included some pictures from the lively and sometimes raucous political rallies over the past year. (My favorite pro-reform sign: "WWJD? Heal the sick! Health care now!")

As I mentioned in my last post, I've gotten really into the health care issue over the past year, so this has been one of those projects that's so much fun to work on that you almost forget it's work. I'll actually be doing other (somewhat smaller) presentations on Martin Luther King and either FDR or JFK in the next couple of weeks. I may not get quite as immersed in those presentations as I am in this one, but I'm definitely still excited for those ones - especially the MLK one. To say the least, I'm really lucky that the work will be so interesting here. When I switch to the next institute I'm working at in early May, I'll even get to lead (along with the professors, of course) discussions of a few American novels. Qué suerte, no?

So let me explain more about my work schedule. I'll be teaching (or "TA-ing") at four different "tertiary institutes" (or colleges) in the city: two teacher-training colleges and two language institutes. Since I'm here for eight months, I'll rotate and work two months at each of the four. (Check out those math skills - impressive, right?) The work will vary slightly at each institute, especially depending on whether it's a teacher-training college or a language institute; but the basic idea is the same, which is that I'm here to teach both the English language and U.S. culture. In addition to working at the four colleges, I'll also be sent out to a number of primary and secondary schools in Buenos Aires for one-time class visits, which I think will be a blast. Just like in Holyoke, I'll get to work with kids of all ages and backgrounds. Since English classes are emphasized pretty heavily in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, my program wants to maximize the number of students in the city who get access to a native speaker. Which is fine by me! I won't start visiting primary and secondary schools until May, but I'll have six solid months to meet kids all over the city.

Which brings me to the next part of my work here: my side project. Because I'll only be teaching for a maximum of 20 hours a week, the Fulbright Commission requires that I work on a self-designed project that contributes to the local community in some way. Many of you know about my project already, but for those of you who don't, check it: I'm trying to set up a "pen-pal plus" correspondence program so that the Argentine students I meet can experience even more intercultural exchange, especially with American kids their own age. From the primary schools all the way up to the colleges, I'm trying to match students in Holyoke, Springfield, East Longmeadow, and Boston with students in Buenos Aires. International "penpaling" can be a really fun and rewarding experience, and I'm hoping to establish a more extensive and permanent way for my Argentine students to interact with Americans. In addition to the pen-pal portion, I hope the "plus" part of the project will include online video-chats between Argentine and American classes via Skype, so that 1) the Argentine students can hear other native English speakers, in addition to me, and 2) all the students, both Argentine and American, can "meet" the foreigners they're writing to. The Skype part might be a lofty goal because of the logistics involved, but I'm determined to make it work. Partly because I think it would be a great experience for everyone involved; and partly because I promised my Holyoke kids I would make it happen. (If Ms. Rigali's and Mr. Leveton's classes see this, I'll be in touch with you guys soon!)

Big day tomorrow, what with the presentation, so it's off to bed for me. Good night!

Safe, sound, and settled in Argentina

So today is the three-week mark since I got to Argentina, and I'm finally resurfacing! It's been an incredible three weeks, and so much has happened already that it will be impossible to include everything here. But I'll do my best to hit the highlights.

First of all, I am, at long last, settled in an apartment. I was in a hostel downtown for just over two weeks, but I just moved on Wednesday into a really great place in a district/neighborhood of Buenos Aires called Palermo. Palermo is a bit removed from the center of the city, so in general it's a quieter, calmer section, but it's still a very popular and active place. In other words it's much more residential and "leafy," but there are still countless cafés, bars, and restaurants throughout - Palermo is known for its nightlife - as well as numerous parks (including the biggest in Buenos Aires, 62 acres worth), museums, sports stadiums, and even the Buenos Aires Zoo. In short, it's an amazing place to live, and definitely worth the roughly 30-minute trip from downtown (including a 10-minute walk to the subway station from my house).

I've been incredibly lucky to make a lot of great friends already. Standing in the lobby of my hostel on my third day in Argentina, completely by coincidence, I met Anna, the other English-language TA in my program. She's from England, and in a lot of ways we've seen each other through the trials of the first few weeks of adjusting here. She's also introduced me to countless people, including her own friends and acquaintances from the UK (this city is teeming with Brits) and also an Argentinean guy named Patricio, who's extremely nice and has become a good friend already. We've actually taken two day-trips out of the city with Patricio, first to the suburb of Buenos Aires where he's living (Olivos), where we met his family and hung out with him and his friends, and then to an island called Tigre, which is a popular tourist destination. Patricio is one of those understated, easy-going guys who's up for anything, and I was really lucky to meet him, especially so early on. The day we went up to his apartment in Olivos, we stopped and ate at a riverside café with his friends in San Martín, an absolutely beautiful suburban town on the Río de la Plata. We walked along the river for a while in San Martín, checked out the outrageously nice houses and also a quirky antiques market, and then hopped back on the train and headed to his apartment in Olivos, where we sat around and had coffee, toast, and chocolate, in true Argentine fashion. As if the day hadn't been fun enough, we all headed up to the roof of his apartment building, which had an unbelievable 360-degree view of the river, the city, and, yes, the sunset. It was a picture-perfect day.

I've also really bonded with my new roommates, who are incredible people and really fun to hang out with. There are seven of us living in the house right now - I keep calling it an apartment, but it's actually a three-story house, connected to our landlords' house on the bottom floor. Our landlords are an older couple: Sara drops in to give us homemade pies, and Jorge is constantly giving us advice about the best non-tourist places to go in the city. In terms of roommates, there's me, a Danish guy named Mads (pronounced "Mess"), an English girl (Christina), an Australian girl (Rosy), a German girl (Francesca), and a Spanish couple. I was definitely disappointed at first that I wouldn't be living solely with Argentineans, because I really want to speak as much Spanish as possible; but my roommates are great and I'm speaking enough Spanish otherwise, so I can't complain.

Am I doing any WORK, you ask? (haha) It's actually been a slow start because classes are only just starting at the teacher-training colleges. The work is picking up fast though, which I'm excited about, especially now that I'm settled in an apartment. (I guess I should explain that I'll be working as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for English classes at four different teacher-training colleges in Buenos Aires. I'll explain more in my next post.) I did start work this past week, and my first day of class was awesome. Anna and I are at the same institute for the first few weeks, so we actually got to explain a lot of the differences between British English and American English. (We did our best not to confuse anyone during a 20-minute conversation about being "on vacation" in the U.S. versus being "on holiday" in the UK, but I just got an email from one student saying "Happy Easter - which is much easier than holidays, vacations, etc.!" So we might need to revisit that one next week, haha.) The students and professors seemed to really enjoy asking us questions about U.S. and British culture and current events (health care, anyone?), and we'll get to do our own presentations on those kinds of topics too, which will be great. The professors actually asked me to do a presentation on the U.S. health care system, as well as the debate over reform and the brand new legislation, which most of you know is something I've followed closely over the past year. So that's exciting. So a slow start, but it's picking up. I'm hoping to get the penpal program started soon, too - I'm working on a correspondence program between Argentinean and American students. I definitely miss my Holyoke kids, so it'll be great to get that going.

There's much more to report, but I'd better pace myself. Happy Easter to you all, and to my New Englanders, enjoy the warmer (and drier!) weather. Sometimes I fall behind in responding, but always feel free to email me, and I promise to respond as soon as I can.

In the meantime...Red Sox - Yankees, anyone? Happy baseball season, everyone. Go Sox!!

Holyoke

So the primary purpose of creating this blog is to stay in touch and keep people updated on my life in Argentina. For those of you don’t know, I’ll be in Buenos Aires from March to November, teaching English on a Fulbright grant. I’m hopeful that this blog will serve as the best way for me to stay in touch with all the people I’m close to while I’m away. I’m also hoping to be able to use this site as a way to reflect on my experiences, and to express and develop some of the ideas that brew in my head.

As most of you know, I’ve been working as a permanent substitute teacher at a K-12 alternative behavioral school in Holyoke, MA. The school has a lot of different things going on at once – there are several very different programs operating under the same roof – but the basic idea of the school is that it’s a public school, run by the Holyoke Public School district, and it absorbs students who are relocated from the district's “mainstream” schools for behavioral reasons. "Behavioral reasons" is without question a very broad, and in some cases unfair, way to put it, but that's the basic premise. In any case, as an everyday sub, I show up each morning with no concept of whether I’ll be in a K-2 latency classroom or a self-contained, behavioral high school room. So I wear a lot of different hats at work - which is one of the greatest things about the job.

While this blog is mostly meant for Argentina, it’s also very much about Holyoke. Some of you know that I consider having worked at this school for the past six months to be one of the most inspiring, enjoyable, and educational experiences of my life. I can’t think of any other experience, including my time at Wheaton and my semester in Spain, that has been as challenging or rewarding as working in Holyoke has been.

One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed my job so much is that, because I’m a sub, I get to work with different staff – teachers, paraprofessionals, adjustment counselors, interventionists, and even administrators - every single day. Every day I’m exposed to a different approach to teaching, tutoring, mentoring, and, yes, disciplining students. One of the most useful educational mantras that I’ve learned from my coworkers is that “every student is different” – I’ve heard that at least 50 times since September. But every teacher is different, too – and I’ve gotten to cherry-pick the strategies that I find to be the most useful and successful. Some of the advice I’ve gotten from my coworkers – I’m thinking of one person, in particular – has been invaluable, and I will take it with me for the rest of my life. The most important thing I’ve learned? That the very best thing you can do to help a student succeed is simply show him or her that you care. Discipline is important, but if you don’t care about your students and their success, you can’t teach them effectively.

Now, enough about the teachers. As great as they are, they can’t compare to the incredible students I’ve gotten to work with in Holyoke. These might be the brightest and most interesting, curious, and funny kids I ever get to work with. Even after the most stressful, frustrating or disheartening day at work – and there have been plenty of those - I’ve never really given up on the realization of how important it is for these kids to have teachers who really care about them. (As I mentioned, I've been incredibly lucky to work with teachers who are the epitome of patience, dedication, compassion, and a passion for teaching.) A few of you know that as excited as I am about Argentina, there was a significant amount of time in November and December when I seriously considered dropping the Fulbright to stay in Holyoke and teach at this school. That’s how inspiring this job has been for me. Both the teachers and the students have taught me so much that it will be really difficult to pick up and leave halfway through the year. The connections I've made with the students have been the most rewarding and inspiring aspect of the job. They've shown me that, in one way or another, teaching will be a part of my life for a long time to come.

In some ways, I look at the Fulbright as an investment in my own future as an educator; this is definitely something I plan to bring back and share with people in the U.S., including students in Holyoke, Springfield, and elsewhere. One of my coworkers and friends from work is totally signed on to the idea of setting up Skype video conversations and a pen-pal correspondence between my students in Argentina and hers in Holyoke – which I think is the coolest idea ever.

In any case, I hope this serves as an introduction of sorts to what I hope to use this blog for. I promise I’ll try to be more concise – but no guarantees there. Much more to come.