"buenos aires, mi querido..." revelacion dos.

right. so the only way i can think of to describe the second big thing i realized while in buenos aires is: it made it all worth it. not that it made up for the things i was unsure of or convinced me that everything was going to get better for my students or for the educational system in general... of course not. what i realized in buenos aires, after meeting so many interesting and inspiring people was the following: life is SO much bigger than me or my plans or my ideas. there's really a lot of ways i could explain this and to be honest it's not the first time i've realized this, but it really was one of those "ah ha!" sort of moments. this can be illustrated by such small things as more quality time with a girl who i had met at the Chile ETA orientation but who is placed waaay far in the north and thus i never see her. just one of those people that you get along with really well, same "onda", similar tastes, similar current situations, etc... so much so that it's almost a shame you don't live in the same city... or even close. or it could be big things. things that are so big that they're almost inexplicable. meeting someone that you feel like you've known forever... but yet never run out of things to talk about. someone who fits like few people in life ever fit. someone who challenges you as an intellectual, as a friend, as a professional, and as a person... on a whole other level. as i said, i can't really do it justice through a post on a blog... but it was incredible. i really could babble on for another paragraph or so, but i don't feel like that's necessary; it would only scratch the surface, and this is anything but superficial.

anyways, this sort of realization made me think a lot about other things too. about destiny and fate and God and all those deep things we sometimes get too busy to think about... see upcoming posts for other examples, but in summary it made me feel totally out of control... but in a really comforting way.

"buenos aires mi querido..."

just as the old tango says, this city could not be closer to my heart. but, during my recent trip, courtesy of Fulbright, i experienced more than just the rather materialistic, pretty superficial feelings i'm prone to have in this incredibly cosmopolitan, gorgeous, stylish, hip, entertaining, ..., city full of culture and art and shopping and exquisite food where moreover everything is SUPER affordable. it was more than just these things in many ways. i was lucky enough to meet some really incredible, highly motivated, articulate, intelligent people from all over the states that are currently living some unbelievable situations in way rural Argentina, middle-of-nowhere Brazil, and many other places. but beyond just the experience itself, some things just hit me that week. i feel like i should share these revelation-sort of moments in stages, just because they really are so polarized in their nature.

to begin with, one of the big moments i had while in BsAs was a sort of reaffirmation of one of the things that has bothered me most since being in Concepcion and working at the university. the occasion was in fulbright-speak a regional Fulbright English Teaching Assistants Enhancement Workshop. in real people language it was basically an idea-, experience-, hardships-, solutions-sharing opportunity for us ETAs that are based in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. through this interchange i had the pleasure of listening to people just like myself talk about some of the incredible activities/programs/talks/events they had done including workshops about the different racial and gender based vocabulary that is used in the US, the history of immigrants and their role in building what our nation is today, slang and how it reflects the value systems of today's youth... i could go on and on. they were all disseminating information and opening up discussion about these truly interesting and moreover intellectual topics that i myself would have loved to participate in. now, you might be thinking, "wow, so then, you must have gotten a lot of good ideas from your fellow fulbrighters during this workshop." well, yes, i did get a lot of GREAT ideas, but there's a big BUT.

i really do try to be positive. i don't like to tear into chilean culture (no matter how frustrating it gets sometimes) or make sweaping generalizations about "latin america" or any people in particular. that being said, i have to admit that as i listened and was concurrently disappointed at myself for not having done such things and motivated to get right on that, i knew that that motivation could only carry me so far. in thinking about the realities that exist in my university and in the kind of students in my program, i had to tell myself not to get my hopes up. as i said, i try to be optimistic. but the unfortunate thing is that one also sometimes has to be REAListic. i tried to imagine myself organizing an activity (be it lecture, roundtable, workshop, whatever) on one of these themes and it was absolutely impossible for me to see my students taking an interest.

i feel like i can rant on about this forever, so i guess i'll just keep going. i am not judging my students at all. i fully recognize that not only are a great majority of them from background in which very little (if any) intellectual stimulation has been present, but they are also products of a system. it is this very same system that now has them churning through what i basically consider to be an "english teacher-making machine" in which they are given the exact courses to take at an exact moment in time with a fixed amount of work to do to get a passing grade. because of the way this system is set up, they very much conform to it. there is no search for higher knowledge. there is no craving for extra information. there is no internal desire to discuss and analyze and ponder. and it is really disappointing.

the reason it affects me so is not only for my own personal sense of acheivement and self-pride, but rather that this is just a general characteristic of their existence. i wish i could say they only just don't care about english or anglo-culture or something, but that's not the case. so, as i struggle to find a way to be able to encourage that spark in maybe even ONE student this coming semester, my fight is a much more profound one too. how can one make real progress in this sense? how can we motivate our students (within la Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion, Pedagogia en Ingles program) to want to take the extra step, any extra step really? To want to look beyond what is written or said or heard?

so, here i am. back from what i would probably say is my favority city in the world, back in concepcion. back from theatres, boutique shopping, cafes, big beautiful parks, art museums, amazing restaurants, back to my little apartment that looks out over a pair of soccer fields that are nothing but dirt and two goals. back to the simple life that i love for what it is, with the same sort of doubts, the same sort of challenges, but this time framed in a totally new sort of way.

chilean cold

as we all know, i should have started this blog thing a long time ago... that being said i am going to periodically post things i've written in the past but not had the forum on which to share. as we struggle through the third month of crazy chilean winter, this one seems unfortunately appropriate. was written last year during my time with voluntarios de la esperanza in Santiago:

Sometimes I sit in my Chilean room with my Chilean bed and my Chilean blankets and I feel like I might die it’s so cold. There is no such thing as Chilean central heating. Chilean hot water is not a given, even the barrios altos. After my going to El Bosquecito campamento for the first time with Marcelo and Matilde that day in June, the Chilean cold I feel is different. I don’t know how to explain it, even though I know it’s very simple. After being in Maria and Sandra’s house, seeing it’s small room and makeshift kitchen, both created by “walls” full of holes and barely standing up and knowing that the “second floor” was probably a pile of disintegrating mattresses and blankets chewed through by who-knows-what, I am colder every time I sit in my bed with my nice new down comforter and three pillows. I am colder because I think of my girls. I think of them curled in little balls trying to keep warm and wonder how they fall and stay asleep while shivering so much. I think of them when it is not only cold but raining and I can’t keep images of their whole “house” filling with water, not only cold water but water that will later contribute to the further disintegration of their few belongings, out of my head. I think to myself, “how can they do it?” And for the very fact that I think that, I feel colder.