Journeys in the jungle

            Been a bit quiet around here lately, eh? I got back from Puerto Iguazú on Sunday and feel like I’ve been running non-stop! I’ll write about my last days with the kids at Fundación Cor in another entry, but just wanted to give everyone a quick update about my trip to Iguazú National Park and Iguazú Falls this past weekend.

            The park is located within the province of Misiones, which looks a little like it was tacked onto Argentina as an afterthought. It juts out eastward and borders Brazil and Paraguay more than it borders the rest of Argentina! The falls themselves are shared by both Brazil and Argentina; the bulk the actual falls are in Argentina, but the best views are on the Brazilian side (which I didn’t get to, since Americans need an extra pricey visa to visit Brazil and I didn’t have the time to wait for it). The park is thankfully very close to Puerto Iguazú, where I would be based for the weekend.

            If you look at a map of Argentina, you’ll notice that Misiones province is a long way north of Buenos Aires. The most popular way to travel long distances in Argentina is by booking a seat on what are known as omnibuses or micros, which remind me of double-decker Greyhound buses. They are way more comfortable than Greyhounds though; the seats fold down almost flat so you can sleep much better, they serve you dinner and often breakfast (since many trips are 12 hours or more), there’s always a movie after dinner. In some ways it’s like traveling on a plane, but even comfier than that! But no matter how comfy the seats are, 17 hours is a long time to be on a bus – especially considering this particular bus started the journey without toilet paper. Yuck!

            My first task after getting off the bus was to sort out where I was staying, and after that to figure out what I was going to do and when. I arrived in the afternoon on Wednesday and decided to spend all of Thursday in the park checking out the falls. I also booked an excursion for Friday afternoon to go hiking, zip-lining, and rappelling in the jungle nearby the park and another excursion to visit the Jesuit ruins in San Ignacio. I spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening walking around Puerto Iguazú checking out the town and the shops.

            The next day I was up bright and early to make sure I got to the park as close to opening time as I could. I definitely wasn’t the only person with that idea! When I got to the park there was already a line at the entrance, so I got in and booked it to the first trails. I hadn’t realized that the park was made up of so many little waterfalls, probably about 20 or so – I lost track after about 10. The first trail went up above the waterfalls and the second went past the same ones, but at the base. The wildlife and the plants were absolutely amazing. I have never seen so many butterflies, some not much bigger than a quarter and some as big as my hand! There are also a lot of cool animals in the park like coatis (they look like a raccoon mixed with an anteater), capuchin monkeys, and tons of birds, including toucans. After walking along both the upper and lower trails, I took a boat ride under the Salto San Martín and got ridiculously soaked. Thankfully we were given waterproof bags to put valuables in and I had the foresight to stash my shoes and socks inside.

            After doing my best to squeeze water out of my jeans, I headed back up through the park to a different trail I had read about that was supposed to have a lot of wildlife. I got about halfway down it and was starting to think that I had seen a lot of butterflies and a few tiger ants, but nothing like monkeys. And as if summoned, I saw a monkey swing across the trail! I stopped and looked around, and noticed that there were about ten of them in the trees – climbing and jumping through the brush, pulling bark off trees and just generally being cool little monkeys. I stood and marveled for a few minutes, until the monkeys started moving away and the mosquitoes were getting to be more than I could handle. As the monkeys disappeared, a family of four coatis came out of the brush and crossed the trail as well. On my way back up the trail, I met people coming from the trailhead who mentioned that they had seen one monkey further up the trail – I felt very lucky to have caught sight of all of the monkeys AND some coatis!

            My next stop was the biggest and most famous waterfall in the park, the Garganta del Diablo (The Devil’s Throat). There’s about a kilometer of walkways out to the falls and a platform is perched right over the top. It was simply amazing, I’ve been to Niagara Falls but I think this was even more impressive and beautiful. Even better, the weather had been overcast all morning but the sun decided to come out right as I started towards the Garganta del Diablo, so by the time I got there the sun was coming around to shine on the falls and make some pretty rainbows. Pictures don’t do this place justice, it really has to be seen to be believed. Definitely worth the long bus ride!

            I finished my day at the park with a quiet dinghy ride on the upper Iguazú river, where my guide, José, showed me snoozing crocodiles, tiny orchids, toucans, and warned me about an ant with a very painful bite that was crawling up my leg – according to José, the ant is known as “pica y corre” or “bites and runs” (guess what it’s known for doing). This was the last boat launch of the day and I was the only passenger, so it was a very peaceful way to close out my day at the park. I went back to town and treated myself to a really good dinner with a passion fruit mousse at the end.

            Friday morning I went on a tour of an animal rehabilitation center, where I got to see lots of endangered and rare birds and other critters. We learned about the center’s work to rehabilitate animals that had been seized from the black market or surrendered by people who had kept them as pets and later realized their mistake. The center works to treat and breed animals to release into the wild when possible and takes care of animals that can’t be returned to the wild. It was really cool to see all of the animals so close and to learn about what they eat and how they live. It was also neat to see something that didn’t seem to be part of the “traditional” tourist experience in Iguazú. After the critters, I went zip-lining and rappelling, definitely testing my nervousness about heights! Again, it was great to be in the woods and nature, even if nature was filled with some pretty voracious mosquitoes.

            The next day I packed up and shipped out of Puerto Iguazú on a tour to the Jesuit ruins in San Ignacio. We also stopped at a mine along the way, where I got to see some enormous agates and geodes. The town of San Ignacio is about three hours south of Iguazú and on my way back to Buenos Aires, so I figured I would just stay there and get a bus to Posadas, where I could take a bus back to Buenos Aires later that evening. While waiting in the Posadas bus station, I happened to see a man get busted carrying what appeared to be 25 individually-wrapped kilos of cocaine, probably from Paraguay into Argentina. I was a little surprised that the bust was happening in a big glass-fronted border guard’s office where a crowd of onlookers had gathered and was taking pictures. When I got back to BA, my host mom was disappointed that I didn’t think to whip out my own camera and start snapping away – I told her I was a little nervous that I might get reprimanded and my camera confiscated with all of my pictures from the park. So sadly, I have no pictures of that interesting part of the journey, sorry!

            Well, that’s quite a lot of reading to get through! Once again, the plan will be to get one more entry out before I take off tomorrow evening for Mendoza. I still haven’t been able to put my pictures of the trip up on Facebook because their photo editing tool always loads them out of order, and I have no desire to reorganize 70+ photos! Maybe it’s time to switch to a different digital photo album tool, any suggestions for good ones?

            Hasta pronto!

Kids these days

Seeing as I have only one more week left with the kiddies at Cor, I'm starting to look back a little on what we've done together. And I have to say, it's a little frustrating. I haven't really been able to do what I had originally set out as my goals for working with the kids - cooking healthy meals, tutoring English or other homework. They weren't kidding when they told us there wasn't a lot of structure.

Although, today I did get to spend some quality time with one of the boys, F, who seems to always be struggling with one thing or another. It became pretty clear today that although he knows how to write his letters, he has very little sense of what they mean or how they come together to form words. On top of that, he's used to some of the older kids just giving him the answers when he's struggling, so it was tough to convince him that he could do his work on his own. So we made a compromise - F had to come up with 10 words that start with the letter "L" and write them out; I wasn't going to just give him the words or tell him how to spell them, but what I did instead was to give him clues (in Spanish of course, as best I could) about a few words that started with "L" (Ex. What's something that you drink every day, it comes from a cow, and it's white? Ans: Leche) and then helped him sound them out to get the right spelling. Spanish is an incredibly easy language to spell because almost all sounds have their own corresponding letter (this is a simplification, but more or less true); and so I was really worried by how much trouble F was having spelling simple words like "lobo" or "leche" or "luna". He even forgot which letters they started with - and the assignment was words starting with "L"! Keep in mind that F is about 8 years old. The point where I realized that he really had no idea what he was writing was when we got to the second part of the assignment, where he had to write sentences with four of the words. Once again, F expected me to give him the spelling of every word in the sentence letter by letter. So we had another long drawn-out struggle for him to sound out the words - the hardest part for him seemed to be the consonants. As we were finishing up the last sentence, I got distracted by another kid and A, one of the older girls, came over and finished F's sentence for him. But I let it go, because F had been such a trooper throughout the rest of the exercise.

In a lot of ways, this experience with F underscored the conflicting feelings I have that I am simultaneously having no impact and a huge one. While giving F a clue for luchar (to struggle), I grabbed him in a bear hug and asked him how he was going to escape. He could barely stop giggling to figure out the answer and after I let go, he snuggled up under my arm for the rest of the exercise. Several times before, we've had trouble with F being very willful and not listening to adults, or lashing out at other kids for bothering him or taking his things. Lukas was told by one of the cuidadoras (worryingly, the one who always works with the kids on their homework) that Ese chico no sabe nada, "That boy [F] knows nothing" - and she said this to Lukas right in front of F and the other kids. It seems like a lot of the kids at Cor are falling through the cracks at school; many have had to repeat grades, some seem like they might have learning disabilities that have not been addressed. So maybe taking them to the park is doing more than it seems at first glance. I just wish I could stick around longer to find out.

I've grown accustomed to her...space?

            It sneaks up on you in bits and pieces, becoming accustomed to a place. The first time I rode a colectivo (city bus) here, I was so nervous about getting off at the right place and not being robbed on the way that I spent most of the journey standing near the door clinging to the handrail (in my defense, it was night time and I was on my way to meet friends at a place I’d never been before; but I know, kind of sad). Gradually, with the confidence-building of a few bus sojourns in the daytime, I was able to pry myself away from the handrail and sit/stand comfortably in the rest of the bus, with a fair amount of confidence in where I was going. Then came the day that I realized riding the bus was no longer a big deal. This realization was itself a big deal, naturally. I’m not at all ashamed to say that every time I get on a bus – especially if it’s a bus I’ve never ridden before – I get a little boost of confidence. “Look at me, world! I know where I’m going, yes I do! I’m on the bus, and I know where I’m going. Haha!” I’m not saying that announcement goes through my head every time I’m on a bus*, but you get the picture.

            There’s the language part of that too. Working with the kids at Cor has really helped my listening skills and my confidence with the language. I still do a lot of planning out in my head, but my fluency is improving noticeably. I get a lot of compliments on my speaking ability. I’m not sure if that’s just people being nice, or if they’re surprised that I can speak and understand anything at all, but it’s definitely encouraging. I don’t think my Spanish skills will be comparable to where my German skills were when I left Trier (I had Austrians mistaking me for German, boo-yah!), but they’re definitely head and shoulders above where they were when I arrived. Which is great news, considering I’ll be taking the MTTC Spanish certification exam in July. Eep!

            And then there was the realization that some of the things that had so irritated me after my first few weeks in Buenos Aires were no longer as much of an irritation, or had actually turned into a fun challenge. Take change, for example. Not Obama campaign change, jingly coin change. In the US, you never have a problem getting change. Even on a Sunday, most restaurants or businesses don’t even bat an eye when asked for change for a dollar, a five, a twenty even. And that’s when you haven’t even bought anything! Generally speaking, you are not made to feel uncomfortable if you’re the guy who pays for something costing $2.01 with a $20-bill. If anything, it’s viewed as more of a hassle for you, because now you’re the one who has to carry that pile of change around in your pocket. Poor you! You can probably tell by my tone that this is not the case in Argentina. Because of a mafia-controlled black market for the coins (really for the metal used to make them) and the fact that Argentina has to buy the metals to print coins from Chile (and long-standing animosity between the two means high prices), there are much fewer coins in circulation than there is demand for them. So the coins become more valuable than their actual face value and are thus hoarded by vendors and buyers alike. Everyone tells me it used to be much worse than it is now, but when I try to buy something for AR$3 using a AR$5 note and the man at the till refuses to sell it to me because he does not want to part with any of his coins, I call that situation pretty dang bad (this actually happened during my first month here). This drove me nuts. It seemed almost anywhere I went I was looked at as a pariah if I didn’t provide exact change, or if I forced someone to cough up a bit of coinage. It became especially annoying when I wanted to take the bus, because the buses only accept coins and fares are always between AR$1.10 and AR$1.30. I often found myself engaged in a frantic scavenger hunt through the kiosks, trying to find something to purchase that would force the shopkeeper to give me enough change so that I could get the bus back home. It sounds absurd, and it is; and for the first few months I raged and fumed and shook my fist at the crazy government who wouldn’t print more money, the crazy buses who insisted on coins instead of some sort of transit card, the shopkeepers with till full of greedily guarded peso coins. And then one day when I was downtown and had to start the scavenger hunt again, it suddenly became a game. It became something I had to put up with: my misplaced moral outrage would not make the bus driver take my folding money in payment, nor would it turn said folding money into coins. I had to find a way around it, and I managed to do so with a bit of a smile. And oh, how sweet that grapefruit soda tasted after I had paid for it with a fiver and gotten the long-searched-for peso coin in return. I’m sure I must have looked rather smug when I finally boarded the bus, because I certainly felt very smug.

            That’s not to say I don’t still get annoyed by some of the things which originally tripped my trigger – I don’t think I’m good enough at compartmentalizing to turn avoiding dog poo into a game – but they don’t seem to weigh on my mind as much.

            My impending return I think also contributes to that feeling of ambivalence. I have so much to look forward to: going back to work at Voices; babysitting for a friend’s little girls and for the girls I nannied two summers ago; dog-sitting for a friend; many, MANY weddings; upcoming student-teaching. Also, the manfriend, Will, was just offered a clerkship in Gaylord, MI, and will soon officially be gainfully employed! Huzzah! So much to be excited about.

            I’m hoping to squeeze one more entry in before the weekend (might even start tonight?) because Tuesday night I will be on a bus to Puerto Iguazú, gateway to the famous Iguazú Falls. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google them now, because they’re a sight to behold. This will be my first journey in a micro, the swank long-distance buses that are so ubiquitous in Argentina, so I’m looking forward to that as well. Hasta pronto!

* I’m lying, it totally does! ;)

Paso a paso

            Two entries in one day, wow! Again, I’m playing catch-up. The last entry was started about this time last week, but because of feeling so lethargic from being sick, I never got around to finishing it before today. And then you factor in that I was at Cor the last three days…I know, no excuse, but that’s the reason.

            My time at Cor – and in Argentina – is flying by. I can’t believe I have just over a month left! I feel like I’m finally getting comfortable with the city and with my ability to speak with and understand the Spanish spoken here. Working with the kids has both helped and forced me to speak with confidence. When I first talked with Lukas about volunteering, he mentioned that he and another volunteer often took the kids to a park for a few hours. My first reaction to this was something like “What?! You can’t expect me to take these kids to the park, what if I don’t understand what they’re saying, what if they don’t understand what I’m saying? They’ll never listen to us, they’ll take off and we’ll never see them again and that will be the end of us working at Cor!” I started having flashbacks of the few times I had substituted for 4^th and 5^th grade teachers and how even after only half a day I felt like I wanted to lock myself in a closet until the bell rang. If that’s how a group of rowdy English-speaking children made me feel, I thought I’d be helpless in the face of a group of kids whose language I spoke only passably. How could I project confidence in my voice when my head was constantly questioning whether I was using the right gender or putting the direct object pronoun in the right place in relation to a verb? In other words, this was exactly the  push I needed to get me out of my cautious use of the language and build my confidence in my own abilities.

            That’s not to say it has worked completely. I had a tutoring session today with one of the ISA staff and I’m clearly still making a lot of mistakes in my spoken Spanish (still struggling with when to use the preterite as opposed to the imperfect tense and vice versa). The problem with working with kids all the time is that I rarely get to speak with native speakers my own age. And seeing as how I have only about a month left, it almost doesn’t seem worth the trouble to try and strike up some friendships now. But I’m trying to be positive. The tutoring is a good resource and someone from my intensive month class told me about a weekly intercambio group that meets on Wednesdays. So I may be checking that out soon too.

            The tentative plan for tomorrow is to visit Tierra Santa, a theme-park by the Jorge Newberry Airport that is designed to resemble Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. They have regular espectáculos featuring the resurrection of Jesus and tomorrow they’ll be putting on regular reenactments of the Last Supper. They’ve got special events going on all this week for Semana Santa (Holy Week) leading up to Easter, so there’s a chance I might go again on Friday for what appears to be a Passion play. I’m not a religious person, but I don’t think I can pass this up. Only in Argentina!

Better late than never

            I’ve picked up a little bit of a cold the last few days, of course, right as the weather starts being consistently nice! But no matter how nice the weather may be, I know I’ve also been slacking on writing. Perhaps these sniffles are a hint for me to get busy on bloggin’. So let’s play catch-up.

My tiny bedroom BsAs

The first bit of news is that through many trials and tribulations I have finally managed to get a firm internet connection in my room, at a price (naturally). It took a lot of running around, pleading, yelling, foot stamping and cajoling – all in Spanish! – but I now have a working USB modem from my cell phone company, Personal, that I charge up with credit like a pay-as-you-go cell phone. What made it such a challenge, and necessitated all of that cajoling and running, was that the majority of Personal employees seem to know nothing much about the products and services they are selling apart from how much they cost. The chip in the modem is like a regular SIM card, but I can’t put credit on it like a normal SIM card (contrary to what I was told when I bought it) and I after I do put credit on it (which I cannot do over the phone, again contrary to what I was told by a salesperson), I must call the Personal customer service line in order to activate it (the most crucial step, which I was not told until I had been to the local branch office twice). I have come to think of this experience as The Great Internet Scavenger Hunt, and I think everyone plays it in some form any time they take up residence in another country. My family played it in Ireland (they also played a Phone Service Scavenger Hunt before I got there), I played it in Trier my first few weeks living in the Studentenwohnheim, and I have no doubt I will play it again at some later point when I am traveling and/or living abroad. It is one of my least favorite games, but it always broadens my vocabulary – never again will I forget the meaning of recargar (to recharge) or enchufar (to plug in). Plus I got some excellent listening practice ;)

Poster advertising the march on 24. March

My second bit of news has to do with Argentine history. This past Wednesday, March 24^th, marked the 34^th anniversary of the start of Argentina’s last military dictatorship, which ended in 1983. The military junta seized power after Isabel Peron’s government had failed to keep leftist guerrilla activity in the country under control. The military junta led a crack-down on leftists that resulted in the disappearance and kidnapping, torture and murder of as many as 30,000 people – known collectively as los desaparecidos, “the disappeared”. Exact numbers of how many people were disappeared are hard to come by, because the main players in this campaign of state-sponsored terror did not keep very good records). The nebulous figures mean that those in government during the “Dirty War” (Guerra Sucia), as it’s known, have continued to deny that such a large number of people were killed, and many maintain that the desaparecidos simply left the country because they were afraid they would be imprisoned.

Banner commemorating los desaparecidos

 After the first couple rounds of disappearances, families of the disappeared started asking questions and trying to get information on what happened to their family members. A few mothers began making more of a nuisance of themselves and eventually began regularly gathering in the Plaza de Mayo – traditionally a place of protest and demonstrations for porteños – and began demanding to know what had happened to their children. This was quite a gutsy move, especially considering a few of the mothers themselves were “disappeared” after marching – but the group continued, carrying pictures of their disappeared sons and daughters.

            I wish I could say there was a happy ending, but there’s not really. The military dictatorship fell apart after the disaster of the Falklands War but they made sure to pass a host of amnesty laws preventing anyone involved with the dictatorship from being brought to trial for what they did. The Madres continued to march and the group grew, marching weekly. A few of the Madres knew that their daughters or daughters-in-law had been pregnant at the time they were disappeared and set about trying to locate their grandchildren – the babies had been born in the detention centers and “adopted” by families with connections in the police or military. So far these Abuelas have managed to locate a handful of such children and at times have used the court system to reunite them with their surviving biological family members (two great movies about this are The Official Story and Cautiva, both in Spanish). Another bright spot is that former president Nestor Kirchner repealed the amnesty laws after taking office in the early 2000’s, allowing many of the torturers and murders to be brought to trial and held accountable for their actions.

The Madres marching in the Plaza de Mayo

            The Madres now march half an hour around the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday for remembrance and in support of other social causes. The day after the parades of March 24^th happened to be a Thursday, so a friend and I headed to the Plaza to experience this emotional event. Unlike most happenings in Argentina, it started right on time. A group of about 40-50 people assembled at the Plaza with large banners, a few carrying pictures or placards with the pictures and names of their children and the date they had disappeared. At first they walked in silence, a few times circling the Plaza. At the forefront were a handful of ancient-looking women wearing the recognizable white kerchiefs on their heads. After going around the Plaza once or twice, a group off to the side announced that they would be reading a selection of names from the 30,000 people who had disappeared. They started reading the names off, one by one, and after each name was called the group of marchers answered with “¡Presente!” (present or here).

            I feel like I still don’t have words to describe what it felt like to witness the Madres march. I was overwhelmed by the emotion of it and on the verge of tears throughout. I would compare it to visiting a former Nazi concentration camp: you know that you are witnessing the results of unimaginable human suffering. Additionally, I always feel chilled whenever I read anything about the Dirty War, because I have a feeling that had I grown up in Argentina at that time, my political views could very well have put me in the same circles as the disappeared. My writing skills are completely inadequate to express my emotions over those two days of marches and remembrance. I feel like nothing I can write about them would ever do justice to the suffering as well as the strength of these women (and men) who continue to march, continue to remember, and continue to fight for justice in the face of a government and a large part of society who would prefer to just “turn the page and move on” (to paraphrase one of the former Argentine presidents, Menem). It was a truly remarkable and unforgettable experience.

Primeros días en Cor

            The volunteering has officially begun! I had my first visit to FundaciónCor last Friday with Federico, ISA’s ELAP coordinator. We took the train from Belgrano (the barrio where I live) to San Isidro, another barrio further north of Buenos Aires proper. The train takes about half an hour and another 20 minutes of walking puts us at the door of the hogar.

            From the street, you’d have no idea that this house was any different from the other single-storey painted stucco structures on the same street. Same cracked sidewalk tiles, a front patio encased by a wrought-iron fence and partially covered by a corrugated overhang. A heart-shaped sign hanging on the outside wall reads “Cor”. Fede rings the bell and a chorus of young voices erupts from within the house. I notice a few small boys peeking out of a window while a woman dressed in a green smock (one of the cuidadoras, or caretakers) comes to unlock the gate for us. Camila, or Carmela, I don’t quite catch her name, but we exchange besos and she leads us inside.

            The inside of the house is dim and pleasantly cool. A few kids are sitting around tables, some working on homework, one carefully arranging pieces of a puzzle. Fede seems to know them all and several of them rush over to give him hugs and demand to be picked up. We exchange besos with the other cuidadoras, whose names I manage to mishear once more, and after a bit of chatting we manage to make our way through a hallway and into an office crammed with books, papers, a few chairs, and a small woman who looks almost identical to every 50- or 60-something abuela in Argentina. Fede introduces her as Silvia, la loca, and another round of besos ensues. We spend the next half hour talking about all kinds of things – Fede asks about some of the kids who have left the hogar since he was last there, we decide which days I’ll be coming to Cor (Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, to start), Silvia uses some colorful language to describe the political situation regarding donations to organizations like Cor, and finally I’m offered the chance to buy a raffle ticket to put me in the running for a 32” LCD television, which I accept (I figure I’ll leave it with my host-mom if I win). After snagging a snack of toast and dulce de leche from the kitchen, Fede and I head back into the city. We decide I’ll start that coming Sunday by going with Lukas on the train.

Sunday

            So Sunday marked my first official day of volunteering. Altogether it was a pretty uneventful day. Lukas and I took six of the kids to the park. According to Lukas, this is always an “interesting” adventure for a number of reasons: 1) kids are kids, and I have not met a single kid on earth who is happy to leave the park when it’s time to leave the park (these kids are no exception), 2) kids of different ages like to egg each other on, so once you get one out of the tree, another one will climb up it, 3) not having the greatest command of the language doesn’t make you sound like a very convincing authority figure, especially when the authority figures these kids are used to can also yell a lot louder than Lukas or me. Getting all six of them out of the park and back to the hogar without anyone being hit by a car or disappearing into a random shop was challenging, but we managed.

Monday

            Monday we were scheduled to go to San Isidro again, but the trains were shut down for over an hour because of some mysterious mechanical accident. By the time they were up and running again, it wouldn’t have been worth the time to get out to Cor and back, so Lukas and I let them know we wouldn’t make it that day.

Tuesday

            The next day, Tuesday, had been arranged for Lukas and I to cook dinner for the kids with another volunteer, Tessa – the meal consisted of hamburgers, oven fries, salad and crepes with apricot jam (Tessa’s Austrian contribution). Not exactly what I’d envisioned when I had thought about cooking “healthy meals”, but I didn’t choose the menu for this one ;) Either way, the kids loved it! The cuidadoras kept shooing them out of the kitchen while we were cooking, but I managed to snag one of the girls I’d taken to the park, J*, for a few minutes to help me tear up some lettuce leaves for the salad. The kids were so eager to be involved, it made me think I might have a good chance of getting some sort of cooking thing going with them on a regular basis. After the (charming) chaos I’d observed the past few days, I assumed mealtime would be more of the same, but I was wrong. I’ve never seen so many children eating so calmly! Not only that, but about three quarters of them wanted salad, and ALL of them ate it! These are kids mostly ranging in age from five to eleven and here they are requesting salad. Not to mention almost every plate came back cleared. After that, it was off to bed for most of them. Brushing teeth, changing clothes, taking medicine, and out like a light.

            As much fun as we had that night, before I left I got a stark reminder of why I am here at Cor, and also why the kids are here. Not all of the kids at Cor have HIV, some are just from families where the parents are positive or have passed away from complications related to AIDS. But many of the kids here are positive. No one tells you who is and who isn’t, kind of like how at Voices we’re not always told everything about a particular client. But you figure it out on your own, you talk to other staff about what you notice, you familiarize yourself with medications, you learn to recognize reactions and behaviors – they know that you know, you know that you know, but everyone saves face by not asking directly. It may seem cryptic, but it helps to maintain a sense of normalcy, so that your day-to-day life is not just about the virus, about jail, about the abuse – the  person is not their illness, or their past, they’re a person.

            This hit home for me as we finished up dinner with the kids. One of the girls I had taken to the park, L*, was called over to the big medicine cabinet to take her meds before going to bed. As I was walking by, I noticed a chart taped to the inside of the cabinet door; the chart consisted of boxes with kids’ names, followed by the list of medications they were taking. The first name I saw was L’s, and at the top of the list of six or seven medications was AZT. I felt like I had been hit in the chest. The little seven-year-old who could barely write her name and who insisted I carry her to the park on Sunday and push her on the swings until my arms gave out, L was positive. Somehow it made the situation much more real and it made me sad, but in a way also hopeful. Sad because it was entirely not L’s fault that she contracted HIV, it was so unfair, and it would probably mean a lifetime of preventive drugs and dealing with the social stigma that still dogs many people who are HIV-positive. But in some ways I feel hopeful, too. Like I said, you would never know any of these kids have HIV just by looking at them. If you didn’t see them at medication time, you wouldn’t know they were taking medications at all! The technology for antivirals has gotten so advanced that for these kids, managing their HIV is like someone managing type 1 diabetes – sure it’s a pain in the butt sometimes, and it means being extra careful, but kids can learn how to do the day-to-day management part of it. And they are troopers the whole time.

            I’m so happy I chose to do the ELAP program, and I’m so glad I chose to do it with FundaciónCor. I can just tell this is going to be a really fun and challenging experience and I’m very excited to get back to the hogar on Sunday and see the sweethearts again. I’m hoping to do more research on how organizations like Cor are funded and run, how kids get accepted to live at the house, and if there’s any way they link up with other organizations (like Lutheran Social Services, perhaps? *wink, wink*). For now, though, it’s time for me to call it a night. More updates coming soon, and maybe pictures later!

* I'm following the tradition of the social sciences and educational fields of not using names when talking about specific kids. Part of it is because of the HIV status and part of it is because they're kids. Hopefully this won't get confusing for those of you reading, if it does, just let me know and I'll try to clear up any ambiguities!

Quick Update

Two things: The internet and the volunteering. The internet situation in my apartment is getting increasingly frustrating - lack of connectivity, incredibly slow connection speed. So until I sort that out, I might not be posting as much as I would like here. Bear with me!

The volunteering: I went to Cor for the first time on Sunday with Lukas and was supposed to go today (Monday) but there was an accident on the train tracks and the trains were shut down for a little over an hour. It takes us almost an hour to get out there, so by the time we would have gotten there it would have been late, some of the kids would be eating, and we would have gotten back quite late on the train (read: train stations are not the safest places to be hanging around in the dark). So Lukas and I decided to go tomorrow (Tuesday) as usual and called the hogar to let them know (they were fine with it). I will write more about this later when the internet situation has improved. Besos!

Adventures, Adventures!

*Apologies if the formatting on this post appears strange, something weird is happening whenever I copy and paste text from a Word document. But I have to do it that way because of the lack of a stable connection in my apartment. Sorry if it's hard to read!

 As good as my intentions were to write an entry before I left for Patagonia for four days, my body had other ideas. I (not 100% positive, but almost certainly) have IBS, as I figured out back in 2006 after a particularly stressful year at Hamline. The last few years I’ve been able to keep my IBS under control by following a diet of lots of organic whole grains and veggies and trying to keep my stress to low levels (part of why I haven’t gotten as involved in campus life at NMU). I’ve still had a few flare-ups brought on by stress, but they’ve always been manageable and short-lived. Looking back on the week leading up to my trip to Patagonia, I had been ignoring warning signs that I should slow down and take better care of myself. And so the day and night before I was scheduled to leave I didn’t write anything or sleep a wink because of being sick. Thankfully I got it under control by the time I got to El Calafate (whew!) and ended up having a great time seeing glaciers and riding horses.

The trip to El Calafate was one of ISA’s scheduled excursions, but had a lot of free time for us to explore the area on our own. We left Buenos Aires incredibly early in the morning in order to get south as early in the day as possible. I didn’t realize until looking at a map on our last day how truly far south we were, further south of the equator than Marquette is north of it! People aren’t kidding when they refer to it as the ends of the earth; it definitely felt like that at times.

            The first day after getting off the plane was spent viewing the Perito Moreno glacier. The views of this monster were just amazing. I’ve seen a good few glaciers in my life (thanks, Mom and Dad!) but this was something else. The sheer size of it coupled with the sound of it – huge chunks of the glacier cracking loose and crashing into the lake below. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life and since I have no words to describe it that don’t sound like clichés – breathtaking, astounding, jaw-dropping, etc. – you’ll just have to go see it for yourself ;) Here’s a link to some videos of it. We did get to see the glacier calving (breaking) into the lake right before we were about to leave, but because I was watching through my binoculars (thanks, Dad!) I didn’t get any pictures of it. Like I said, you’ll just have to go see it yourself!

After the planned excursion to the Perito Moreno with ISA, we all had two days to do our own activities around the area. Many people chose to go to nearby El Chalten to visit other parts of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (the park that Perito Moreno is in) but I opted to stay in El Calafate and see some sights around there. Because of a mix-up with times and companies, I ended up doing not one but two horseback riding excursions that first day. The first turned out to be just me, the guide, and four scruffy dogs for two hours! The second lasted closer to three hours with seven other tourists and two guides and included an enormous asado (Argentinean barbeque) at the end.

            For my second free day I booked an excursion called Todos Glaciares, or All Glaciers, and was up bright and early to see…all the glaciers! Well, all the glaciers on Lago Argentino at least, which meant most of the glaciers in the park. The excursion lasted all day and I got some beautiful pictures of the glaciers and the lake. Here’s a link to see the rest of my pictures from the trip on Facebook. That night I went with Ashley (another NMU student whom I had never gotten to know before this trip, which is crazy because we know a lot of the same people and frequent many of the same places in Marquette!) to a restaurant called Pura Vida where we had a fantastic meal. I got a dish called Carbonada de Calabaza, which was a rich stew – with potatoes, carrots, squash, onion, and peaches! – served in a half of a pumpkin. I am definitely going to try to recreate this when I get back. Any volunteers to taste-test?

So, when does my volunteering finally start, I’m sure you’re wondering, or am I going to spend all my time here gallivanting around glaciers and devouring whole squashes? A fair question, dear reader, but not to worry: I met with Federico, ISA’s ELAP coordinator, yesterday and I am going to FundaciónCor this Friday to meet with Silvia, the presidenta (not to be confused with Silvia my host-mom!), and meet the kids and see the house. We’ll also figure out my schedule for the next eight weeks; after talking to Lukas, who’s been at Cor for several weeks now, I want to try to schedule my days over the weekends, because there are fewer volunteers who want to do weekends and they need more help. I think this will work out great for me because it will leave me some days during the week to see sights around the city and maybe go on a few day trips outside it.

In order to keep myself focused and busy while waiting to start at Cor, and during the eight weeks when I have days off, I plan to visit at least one museum or cultural center each day I’m in city and not at Cor (most museums are only open in the afternoon, so on days I’m at Cor it might not be possible to get to one in time). So many museums have reduced admission for university students so it’s a very affordable way to pass the time and learn a lot. I’ve already been to the Larreta Museum, La Redonda, the Carlos Gardel House, the Evita Museum, and the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (MALBA), as well as both the Recoleta and La Chacarita cemeteries, the San Telmo art and antiques fair, and the Carlos Thays botanical gardens. Among the next things on my list are the planetarium, the city zoo, and the Museum of Fine Arts. I’ll make sure to keep posting updates of the things I see as well as my time at Cor.

One down, two to go

            Amazing to think I’ve been in Buenos Aires for over a month now! I finished classes at the end of the month and passed my final exam without breaking a sweat, ha-ha ;) I did my oral exam on the preparation and tradition of drinking mate, a sort of herb tea that’s brewed in a gourd or wooden cup and is very popular in the Rio de la Plata region. As soon as I get back to Marquette, I’ll be sure to show you how to “take” mate, porteño-style (in Spanish you often use the verb tomar – to take – in the sense of drinking something). The written exam wasn’t terribly easy, but it wasn’t impossible either. I didn’t have a perfect exam, but my final cumulative grade ended up being a 10/10. Yippee!

            It was a good way to end the week, because I’d been feeling a lot of frustration at that point. Four weeks is usually the point in any study abroad experience where the “honeymoon” of living abroad ends, often abruptly. All of the times I’ve lived abroad or spent significant time away from home – Ireland, Germany, even going away to Minnesota for college! – I’ve experienced a similar feeling after approximately 4-6 weeks into the experience. Every little thing about the host culture starts to bother me, from the food, to people’s modes of interacting with each other (and me), to the weather, all across the board. Any little thing that’s different suddenly becomes a massive annoyance, where before it was just a curiosity.

            Even things I knew about, like the fact that random men will make comments about women as they pass by (these are called piropos, a word which refers to both the comments and the men saying them) and that this tends to happen more foreign women. Even though I knew this, I didn’t honestly think it would happen to me, especially after I noticed I didn’t exactly fit the standard of beauty here. But much to my surprise, I started getting piropos all the time (and noticing them more as my Spanish improved). Initially, it amused me, then it annoyed me, then it got me hopping mad. I don’t like people I know complimenting me normally, and I certainly did not enjoy creepy (in my opinion) strangers leering at me and whispering “Que linda sos” as I strode past. One day a security guard at a park asked me where I was from and, after letting me talk for a few minutes, started commenting on how pretty my eyes were and then asked me if I wanted to go have coffee with him (in Argentina, a woman agreeing to go off somewhere private with a man always means you want to do something much more than just have coffee…). Initially, I laughed about it, then it made me feel icky, and afterwards a little scared. Wasn’t it this man’s job to protect people from such lecherous behavior? If even a security worker looked at me as a piece of meat, what hope did I have against someone with actual bad intentions? After this encounter, each piropo made me more and more annoyed and I started projecting my annoyance onto everything I saw and did in Buenos Aires. By the time I was taking my exam, I was feeling really homesick and just wanted to run away back to Marquette.

            It wasn’t just the piropos, there were other things that were causing me a lot of frustration. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s worth getting into the details anymore, because that feeling went away. It took some work on my part: all I wanted to do was sit in my room and pine for Marquette, for Will, for yummy vegan food, for cooler weather. But I knew from my experiences in Ireland and Germany that the only way to get past this point was to keep going, keep doing things and find something interesting to do. So I did. I went to parks, I went to a museum, I went to the feria in San Telmo, I went to the movies with friends, I went to dinner. I kept myself busy, and I’m still keeping myself busy. And yes, I did spend a lot of time talking to Will and to my parents, because even though I know I need to immerse myself in the host culture, the three of them are good listeners, and they always give me the little boost I need or a different outlook on things. Just enough to keep me grounded. Plus, I feel almost an obligation to put on a cheerful face for them, so it helps me think of how to put my experiences in a more positive light.

            I hope to write one more entry tomorrow before I leave for Patagonia early (4am!) Thursday morning. Now that my class is over I’ll be volunteering with FundaciónCor about 3-4 days per week and I’ll be writing more about the kids and the organization. I’m getting really excited after hearing about the kids from Lukas, another NMU student who’s volunteering with Cor. I’m interested to know how the child and family services organizations are run here, because it seems like there are a lot of key differences between the programs here and those in the US. And after visiting the Evita Museum today and reading about all of the social welfare programs she founded, especially for children, I want to know if Cor is in any way related to the hogares de tránsito, which were a type of shelter for women and children. So much to learn!

            For those of you following this blog who don’t have a Facebook account, here is a link to some of the pictures I’ve taken over the last month. Sorry there are so few, I didn’t have a lot of time to go sight-seeing while doing the intensive month class. There are sure to be a lot more once I get back from Patagonia next week. So until next time, ¡chau chau!

Tercera semana

I told myself when I started this blog that I was going to make an effort *not* to have to start every entry off with "Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote" but it looks like I shan't be so lucky. So, sorry it's been so long since I last wrote! The reasons are varied and include homework, migraines, threatened power outages caused by recent flooding of the city, and fickle internet connections, but also I've been distracted with trying to get out to enjoy the city on the rare nice days that we've had.

 As much as I'm enjoying speaking Spanish todos los días and meeting some lovely people in my program, it's been quite an adjustment. I plan to write more about this later, but suffice it to say the dietary transition has probably been the toughest. Most people who know me will attest that I will try anything once and that I'm not one to refuse food that's offered to me when I'm a guest in someone's home. However, I'm used to that being more of a special occasion than the norm, and to having the recourse to cook for myself most of the time. Believe it or not, I have eaten some sort of meat dish almost every day I've been in Buenos Aires. It's entirely possible to find vegetarian food around Buenos Aires, but the problem is that it's almost always accompanied by massive amounts of dairy and eggs, both of which I've consumed very little the last two years. I'm sure the change in diet was a big player, along with the heat and humidity, in the series of migraines I had during the past two weeks.

But enough with the whining! It really is fantastic here, especially when the weather is sunny and a little cooler. Because my class runs from 9:30am to 2:30pm, and because it's rained every weekend I've been here, I haven't had a lot of time to see the "sights" of Buenos Aires, but once my class wraps up at the end of this week, I plan to do it up tourist-style! A friend I knew in Ireland is living in Santiago, Chile, and is in BA this week with his cricket team, so we are planning to meet up downtown after I finish my exams on Thursday. Additionally, I decided to splurge on an excursion to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno glacier during the first week of March. So I've got some fun things coming up before I start my volunteering with FundaciónCor in March!

As I said, I'll be writing soon with some more impressions of life on the sixth floor of 5831 Av. Libertador, but for now I'll leave you with this picture of me drinking mate with some friends from ISA. ¡Chau chau!

How to even begin?

After about ten hours on the plane from JFK to Ezeiza, during which I panicked that I had lost my passport, we finally touched down in Argentina Saturday (30 January) morning. The temperature was in the low 80’s F and humid, quite a change from 13 F and windy! I got a taxi at the airport – my first opportunity to use Spanish in Argentina! – and started into Buenos Aires. It’s no exaggeration that the taxistas here are bonkers; mine spent most of the drive into the city tailgating in the left lane at about 130-140 kph. Several times I felt sure that an accident was imminent, but we survived and made it to 5831 Avenida Libertador in the barrio of Belgrano, my home for the next three months. My host mom, Silvia, rarely leaves the apartment because she walks with a cane, but she knows almost everyone in the building and most of the shop owners around the block because they deliver her groceries and other sundries (just about every business in Bs.As. will deliver to your home, including McDonald’s in some places). Every morning she makes up a huge breakfast spread for my roommate, Maddy, and me – fruit, coffee, bread, and of course dulce de leche (more on that later).

            First thing after I arrived on Saturday there was an orientation for ISA. This orientation was very brief, and was mostly general cautionary advice such as not wandering the city late at night in huge groups of Americans whilst speaking English. A good policy no matter where in the world you go, in my opinion J I sent off a few emails to let people know I was alive and then headed back home to rest up for the big orientation and city tour the next morning.

            The big orientation was very similar to the first, but went into more depth about the hazards of the city – counterfeit bills, the occasional sneaky cab driver, the potential for “cultural misunderstandings” between Argentine men and American women – as well as how to make living with a host family as smooth as possible. A lot of this was familiar to me from living abroad twice before, but it never hurts to review in a new country. After the long orientation, we were treated to algo muy argentino (something very Argentine) – empanadas (see picture above). If you’re a yooper, think of them as little pasties with a lot more variety for the fillings. The style of crimping on the dough helps you tell the different fillings apart. We had four different kinds to choose from – chicken, beef, ham & cheese, and caprese with mushroom – but I’ve seen lots of combinations so far, like spicy beef, ham & bleu cheese, cheese & onion, spinach, and something that was a mix of chicken and sweet corn. Empanadas are a great lunch or snack food because you can find them practically everywhere and at AR$3 (Argentina uses the $ symbol for pesos: AR$) for one, they’re a steal. I have a feeling I’ll be eating a lot of these little guys while I’m here.

            After devouring our empanadas, we took a brief city tour of some Buenos Aires highlights, which I’ll write more about in later entries. After the city tour I spent some time walking around Belgrano and had my first sandwich de miga – kind of like a big tea sandwich – and an alfajor – a big sandwich cookie made of two delicate, buttery gallettes around a filling of dulce de leche. I could still barely take it all in – I was in Argentina (sitting in a café called “La Argentina”, no less) eating migas and alfajores while drinking café con leche and reading about drinking problems amongst Argentina’s youth. And all the while sweating like I was in a sauna! Even with all the traveling I’ve done, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly I can now travel to somewhere so very different from my home.

            Monday morning arrived and it was time to take the placement exam for my month-long Spanish class. The test was scheduled for 10am and all of the ISA people had advised us to show up early so that we could start on time. As ten o’clock rolled around, students were still meandering in and out of the classrooms while instructors flitted from one room to the next, shuffling papers and looking not the least bit flustered. About 10:30am we were handed a form to fill out that included our address in Argentina and other sorts of identification information – but still no test. Sometime around 10:45am we were finally handed our exam which was essentially a two-sided cloze exercise and told we had as much time as we needed to finish it. Some people “finished” (gave up) in about 2 minutes while for most it took about half an hour to fill in the blanks. I ended up being placed in the Advanced class (kudos to NMU’s Spanish program for that one!) and had the rest of the day free until classes started on Tuesday.

            I really enjoy my class and think it will end up being a good use of my time. A lot of this first week was review and learning the voceo – the informal form of address in Argentina, which I’ll write more about later – so nothing too stressful. Even so, by the end of the week I was starting to feel the first pangs of homesickness. I think it’s less that I want to be back home and more that I want to bring everyone from home here, to share the experience with me. Not a day goes by that I don’t see or hear something that makes me think of a friend or family member and how I wish I could be seeing or hearing it with them. I guess that means I’ll just have to come back again! In the meantime, I hope people get a kick out of this blog and the pictures.

            I’m also having a fun time comparing this experience to my time in Germany, everything from the placement exam to daily life. In Trier, I was more or less plunked down and had to do a lot of fending for myself. ISA’s program is a lot more structured and the homestay is an adjustment, since I’m very used to cooking, cleaning and looking after myself. And then of course there are differences in the culture, climate, language, food. That said, there are lots of similarities, too. I can tell already that I’ll have lots of material to write about during the next three months!

            A side note about receiving mail here. ISA advises us to have mail sent to their office, since our names generally aren’t on the letter-boxes at our homestays, and the letters or packages could get “lost”. If anyone feels like sending mail to me, address it like so:

Attn: Katelynn Jensen

c/o ISA Office

Av. Cabildo 875 #1

C1426AAI  Buenos Aires

Argentina

(But don’t feel obligated, as it could take a very long time to get here. Email is definitely quicker.)

Antes de llegar...

Here's a short entry I wrote while waiting for my flight from JFK to Ezeiza (the international airport of Buenos Aires).

            I’m writing this entry from JFK International Airport in New York, but by the time it’s posted I will be in Buenos Aires! I really did intend to write one more entry before I left, ideally one outlining the things I was packing – a sort of what to bring, what not to bring PSA. But as it turned out I was packing up to the last minute, so writing a blog about it wasn’t top priority. I had everything stowed away, my luggage was even way under the 50-lb limit (33.5 lbs for the suitcase, 24 lbs for the backpack, boo-yah!). I had electrical converters, extra pairs of socks and underwear, soap, books, snacks – I was prepared for any hiccup on the trip. And then about three hours into the drive to Chicago, I realised I had left my entire ISA folder – complete with my homestay information, ISA and ELAP handbooks, and my hotel reservation in Chicago – at my parents’ house, where I had stopped before leaving. Thankfully, I have an amazing mom and she was able to overnight the entire folder to where I was staying in Chicago. Whew! Just goes to show you can never prepare for everything.

            Speaking of homestay information, by the time I post this I’ll have met my host-mom, or perhaps “host-abuela”, Silvia Clark. From what I found on Google maps, it looks like her apartment is very close to the University of Belgrano – where my classes are based – and also on a pretty big thoroughfare in Buenos Aires, Avenida Libertador. Pictures to come! Before leaving Marquette, I picked up a few U.P. goodies to give as gifts, like yummy thimbleberry jam and maple syrup. While I was in Chicago, Will and I visited the Shedd Aquarium and I got some coloring books to bring with me to FundaCor. I wish I had thought sooner to pick up some coloring books for the U.P. but the aquarium ones are probably a little cooler. J

            I’ve had such a mixture of emotions the last few days. It was hard for me to say good-bye to Will, even knowing that I’ll be back in only three months. Thankfully, he let me download a lot of his music, so now whenever I miss him I can pull out my MP3-player and listen to music that reminds me of him. We also both have Skype, so that makes keeping in touch a little easier. I bought a phonecard in New York and the plan is to call my parents and Will before boarding the plane for Argentina. The flight leaves New York at 10:20pm and touches down in Argentina at 11:00am, so with the 2 hour time zone difference, that makes it about a 10-hour flight. I’ve brought Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez with me to read on the plane, as well as guidebooks to Argentina and Buenos Aires. Much as I love to read, I’m really hoping I’ll be able to sleep a little on the flight, even though I always have trouble sleeping on long plane rides. Oh well, guess we’ll see.