Despues de 3 semanas...

Holaaaaaaa,

So tomorrow will be three weeks since I left home. It really has flown by much faster than I expected, at least after that first week. I was sick last week with a chest cold so that really put me down a bit. It's hard enough adjusting to everything, but being sick away from home was just bad. I, ms feeling much better now, emotionally and physically. I´m finally starting to get into the groove of things here. The other day LB and I sat down and made a list of what we wanted to get out of this experience and how we are going to get it. Spanish was number one on both of our lists, so since then I have taken some steps to make sure I'm speaking Spanish as much as I can, because the first week here consisted of LB and I hanging out in Cafes and speaking English, and the second week consisted of me being in bed sick and not speaking any language to anyone but the cat. So week 3, Spanish classes are in gear, for 2 hours a day 4 days a week, I started reading the paper in Spanish making it a goal to understand fully at least one main article (which means I have to sit down with a pen, paper and my dictionary and look up all the words I don't know, write them down and then reread the article). Deliberate exposure was one of the things that LB and I talked about being important, so yesterday I went to the ethnographic museum with Banu and spent over an hour going through the exhibit on Argentine history that was all in Spanish, dictionary in hand. I also posted on one of the boards at the university for a Spanish partner, a porteño (person from Bs As) who is trying to learn English, so that we can practice together every week. And finally I went to the social science dept of UBA and looked up classes that I was interested in, and am going to start auditing them next week. There are 2 anthropology courses I want to audit: Human Rights Seminar and Sociocultural Systems of America. I would also like to audit a third class on History of Argentina. SO we´ll see if I can feasibly fit it all into my schedule. These classes would be entirely in Spanish as they are for regular UBA students, so I would go and just sit in to listen. Should be coooool if the professors don't mind.

I think in one of my first entries I wrote about how it was finally hitting me that I would be here for 4 months, but now it´s hitting me that I am ONLY here for 4 months. Another week and my first month is over, and in reality since I will be spending my last month backpacking around, I really only have 2 1/2 months to be here, learning Spanish and working in the factory (which I don't start until October). The other night I hung out with LB and two friends from her class, Liz (from Australia) and Mari (From Norway) and the two of them had been traveling around for quite sometime. They, like me, were in a transition stage of finishing up school and not quite ready for the next step, which almost inevitably means work. The two of them had were in the middle of a over a year abroad. To think that Liz had been in South America for 4 months already and then is going to Europe and India before she heads home in April is incredible. We all talked a lot about what means to travel in terms of having the privilege to do it, and to have that tourist gaze that automatically comes with it. What I am seeing here and now and will see until I leave is only my interpretation of the world down here through the lens of my own experience, which is of a very different culture. I am free to come and go as I choose and in whatever capacity, and life will go one here or at home regardless of where I am. When I walk by the same people everyday asking for change, or say no to the kinds on the train trying to sell me stickers for a peso, and then go buy a pair of sneakers at the mall for $300 pesos, because to me that's the equivalent of $100 USD - it's really hard to grapple with how much privilege I have. And then the question becomes, now what? I have it, I can't get rid of it, and I remember what Ms. Ruth said in New Road, that if I have it I should use it. SO then the question is really how do I use it best. Travelling around the world, learning for now works, but it won't forever. SO that next step that we (being every traveling 20something I meet here) keep putting off needs to put what I am learning here to use and needs to make some kind of difference. So, maybe we're not putting it off after all, maybe we're just making sure we're really ready to live in the world as working people.

That´s my theory for now.

OK, well the weekend is here since I don't have classes on Friday, so until next week - Ciao!