"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.