Social/Political Problems in BA

Last night I went to my internship class. Since the internship is categorized as "Service Learning" we talk about Poverty in Buenos Aires and Argentina. It's interesting not only to learn about their political system and ways of dealing with poverty and other social problems, but then to think about how it is in the US. One friend said that he never appreciated stability until he got to Argentina. Of course the systems in the US are not nearly perfect, but there are some very fundamental steps we have taken that I am now starting to appreciate: we generally follow rules. (I'll get back to this)

What I found out:
- There are 4000 kids (5-17) that enter Buenos Aires everyday. A large number of them in situations of poverty (without parents, hungry, taken advantage of, etc.)

-There are lists and lists of parents who would like to adopt these kids, but the beaurocracy takes 7 or 8 years to get through in order to successfully adopt, by which point the family no longer wants the child. (Um, this seems very clear to me, there is way to much beaurocracy and something has to be done. The first thing I would do in office is slash the beaurocracy and stop shooting myself in the foot with this poverty situation, claro no?)

-Since adopting a child is nearly impossible, there is a black market trafficking of children in Misiones (north near Catarratas) where some families go to get kids.

-Raping of children is a major problem partly as a result of the machismo culture

-Buenos Aires is known as a "turist" destination for undereage prostitution

-Abortion is illegal.

-The only time a child may have an abortion is if he/she is violated and is "mentally unable" to raise the child. In this situation, a court judge must give the person permission for the abortion. In a famous case in one province of Argentina, the family helped the child go through all this process legally to get the abortion, and the judge took 7 months to finish teh case. At this point an abortion was impossible.

-Many people die from "abortos caseros" shady abortions out of a hospital.

-In the past, starving children were sentenced by a judge to a jail where they were locked up and given food. These kids were put in the same place where kids who murdered and commited crimes were put. A new law changed the rules, so that kids aren't put in jail with murderers when there only problem is that they don't have food, BUT no one created a new place to put them, so the kids are still going to jail...


There's more, but I'll stop at that. The crazy thing is that we were learning about all the laws that make changes for the better but nothing changes in reality. Our teachers (we have two, that work in social organizations in BA) explained to us that Argentina's laws are that of a very developed country, but nothing happens in reality. The discrepency between what the rules are and how people act is astonishing.

I then starting thinking about why we follow laws in the US (some of us, but a decent percent compared to Argentina) and why someone wouldn't follow laws. One component I came up with is that in the US we live in a culture full of rules (often times, in my opinion, too many). Many kids in the US grow up in families that are encouraged to give their kids boundries, (I see kids here apeshit on the subway or in public spaces, eating off the floor, licking cans in the grocery store, meanwhile their parents look on and don't say a thing) and schools that are chock-full of rules. Not only are there rules, there are consequences; detention, lower grades, missing recess, time-out, etc. Somehow this socialization makes many of us rule-conscious.

In argentina, from my short experience here so far, there don't seem to be as many rules. I don't know about lower levels of school, but UBA, the university I go to, is a free-for-all. It's my little hypothesis that this free-for-all culture has something to do wit hthe fact that this country has developed laws that few people care to follow. I'm sure there are millinos of other factors and influences, but I think this is an important cultural one.

Hasta luego,
Kati

P.S. There are pros and cons of everything- I don't mean to bash on the rule-less culture here, I find it often times liberating in contrast with the stressful structured life of the US.

Jugando Fútbol

Hola!

Today I played soccer with a team from a local university. It reminded me a lot of the good ol' days playing league soccer. It's fun to play with these team because girls soccer is not that big here so if you are in shape and want to work hard, you really stand out. I think the coach really likes us americans (there are three of us playing) because we play hard and it pushes the other girls to play hard as well. They were so-so in the pass acording to the players, but so far they have one 3 games (including the one we won today) and things are looking up! Today we won 3-1, and i scored 2 goals... :) It ws fun to be out there in shinguards, cleats, and a uniform playing with a team.

After the game, we went out to eat pizza together. I got to practice my spanish a bit and they taught me some new words such as estribillo (refrain of a song) hamoca (hammock) etc. It's fun to hang out with them because since we have practice twice a week and games on the weekend, we have lots of time to get to know each other and become friends. I've only been to two practices and a game but I think it will get better and better. I'm be sure to take pictures at some point in the season to post here. It's fun to get to know people over a common goal or purpose and then let things develop from there. Plus I'm getting lots of excercise! En fin, its good stuff.

I'm attaching a picture of the applecake tomas and I made at our hostel in San Martin de los Andes because tengo hambre ahora... We gave half to Santiago, the cool hostel owner who helped us find all those excursions. This is one of my favorite cakes ever! Its sooo easy to make too; 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 2-3 eggs, 6 or 7 granny smith apples. You put the apples, cut up in rough pieces about 1 inch by one inch in the bottom of caserole dish and pour the other ingredients that have been mixed together on top. Then in the oven (que sé yo, 350?) until its golden brown. We even used an oven that didn't have tempature markings on it and it still came out perfectly! Great recipe.


hasta luego,
Katie

Vacation in San Martin de los Andes

Hola, tanto tiempo eh?

I just recently went on vacation with Tomas to San Martin de los Andes in Patagonia. Its in the northern part of Patagonia near 7 huge lakes (sort of like the great lakes of Argentina). When we first arrived we realized pretty quickly that the city was out of season. There were hardly any people there except for some natives. We went to the tourist office to ask about what there was to do, but the two girls working there sort of conveyed the message "Why are you here? There's not much to do out of season..."

We waked to our hostel in the fresh mountain air and unpacked. We thought about taking a bus to Bariloche if we ran out of things to do in San Martin which seemed more likely all the time. That's when we met... Santiago!

Santiago was the owner of the hostel we stayed at. What an energetic fun guy. He built our hostel himself, and designed it according to ideas he thought of while traveling in other hostels. There was a huge spacious kitchen and sitting area when we walked in. The rooms were comfortable spacious and clean. Santiago also built his house, which was behind the hostel, where he lives with his wife and 2 kids. So far he seems like an active, great father, but theres more.... he's also a tour guide! This is what made the difference for Tomas and I because everyday Santiago had some fun adventure planned for us. Since the weren't many buses running during the off season and many of the excursions just ended or were pretty pricey, we were worried that we would only have the few shorts hikes near the city to do. Santiago proposed some other ideas and had us off hiking to the top of mountains and riding horses.

The first day we went to the Cerro Colorado and hiked through a range of environments (forests, snow, rock, sandy shrubs...) to get to the top. I don't think I've ever been in a windier place in my life. Someone had built a wall of rocks at the top to block the wind and I was nearly knocked over trying to reach it. Tomas and I hid and rested behind the wall, enjoying the spectacular view and then ventured back down.

The next day we went to the Cerro Faulkner which was much taller. Again we hiked through various climates, at times so hot that we had to be in t-shirts and at times to cold for just our jackets scarves and fleeces. We also had to maneuver around cows during thsi hike. They also liked to hike up the mountain side and we didn't want to piss them off. But besides the cows up there, Tomas and I were the ONLY ones around. So we made sure to scream at the top of our lungs when we got to the top of the mountain.

The last day, we rode horses around the mountains. Tomas apparently is really good at riding horses. There was a group of 5 of us with the guide, and we all stayed conservatively on the path, slowing walking along. Tomas on the other hand was off galloping through the pastures, giving his horse some real excercise. Who knew he was so good at riding horses....

So those are the highlights from the trip!

Hasta luego,
Kati

Things get better every day

Hola a todos! It's been a while since I've written because things have been pretty busy here with classes. Quick update with the exchange rate, it took a huge slump! Luckily I took money out for my 200 peso student visa during the peak of the exchange rate, but its sittin lower now unfortunately. I guess this is good for argentina though so I should just suck it up.

Things get better everyday. I hit the slump a few days ago and I was trying to figure out why it was a slump and what made me feel that way. As I sat up on the terrace watching the sunset, a great place for deep thinking, I came back to the idea of a home. I thought somemore about what makes me feel at home. In thinking about this I made the important distinction between the external things that make me feel at home and the internal things that make me "feel at home." There are all the things I listed in a previuos blog that make me feel at home; a network of people and support, the things you are used to etc. But I was thinking, I don't mind that I can't just use my phone whenever I want to talk to someone or ask a question. I don't mind that I can't just go to the kitchen and cook up a storm. Not having these luxuries isn't that big of a deal.

Then I started thinking about missing the network of people that I have at home or at school. That's what makes the "hump period" of studying abroad, this post honey moon period, especially difficult. I don't have a best friend here, or real family members. And when I just want to go chill with another person who is close to me or be with close friends, I can't. In the beginning everything is exciting and going quickly, but then one gets hit with the fact that there isn't the comfortable network of people.

My reaction to this realization though is that I dont want to need another person to make me feel at home. And that is the "feeling at home" that I realized was on my mind. The type of feeling at home that is an internal feeling at home, which is more just a personal contentness. To feel ok just being you and comfortable with what you're doing.

Some one might think its unreasonable to not want to rely on another person to make me feel at home, but allow me to explain. Of course people are important in life, and we are social creatures who want to make connections. But I don't want to have to RELY on someone else to make me feel comfortable being me and doing what I'm doing. Of course I will rely on people all the time through out my life, but when nothing is wrong I hope I can just be good on my own. If I'm not relying on someone to give me oxygen in a hospital, or my sister to help me through a tough time, or any other situation that I can't handle on my own, I want to be an indepedent person who can just be herself in Buenos Aires or any other city I decide to plant myself. I guess what will make me comfortable and internally "at home" is just getting to know myself better. I feel more comfortable when I know what my interests or values are, what types of things I'd like ot try, what I've learned is difficult for me or makes me uncomfortable. All of these sorts of questinos and answers are helpful ot ponder. Of course I learn more about myself all the time and I don't expect to know everything ever, just be honest with myself to know more.

After asking myself some of these questions and thinking about the answers up on the terraze (in the light of a full moon none the less) I started to feel much better. I was thinking afterwards that this surely is the sort of conflict that the program is talking about when they say that students tend to have a slump in their trip. It's when you start feeling that this is longer than a vacation and that you don't have many comforts or connectinos with people that you are used to. You can't just go to your best friend to distract you from thinking about what you want to do here in BA and why. That's some hard stuff to grapple. And on top of it all, I even lucked out cause I have a really good friend here, Jesus (his name, not the religious figure) who I feel like I can go to and talk about anything really deep. I'm sure there are lots of students that don't even have that, because it is a rarety to have that after just one month of doing turisty things together. So anyways, IES was right, there are definitely ups and downs during this study about experience that I know see differently her in BA from how I saw them in Spain since my boyfriend isn't around to make things easier.

Every day is getting better because I've thought about these things and on top of that my external "home" is developing more and more. I met up with a girl I talk with to improve our languages (she's learning english while I leanr spanish) and then I just talked with my host mom for about an hour. As these relationships develop I feel more comfortable that I can just walk out of my room and talk with my family here like I do back home, or write an email to ask a friend to hang out this week. So both my external home and my internal home are developing. And that makes me feel better.

That's it for now, hasta luego,
Kati

Milonga - Tango y Rock

La otra noche fui con mi amigo porteño a una Milonga. A él le gusta mucho el tango. Me dijo que antes, cuando era más joven, no bailaba pero ahora trata de aprender tango y su arte. Además, bailar es un buen ejercicio y muy saludable.

Fuimos a un sitio acá en Palermo cerca de donde vivo. Pagamos 16 pesos para tomar todas las clases que tenían esa noche y depués quedarnos en la milonga. Había al principio una clase de baile “rock.” Nunca he oido de una clase de baile “rock” en los EEUU pero bueno, lo aprendí.
Una cosa que suelo notar acá es la gama de edades que hay saliendo por la noche. Jamás hay ancianos fuera de la casa a la una, dos o tres de la mañana en los EEUU, jámas. Me encanta que los ancianos acá siguen saliendo hasta la madrugada, ¡que vivos son! Estuve allá con los ancianos, extranjeros, todos tipos, aprendiendo como bailar con la música “rock”.

Después, comenzaron las clases de tango. Mi amigo fue al grupo intermedio y me quedé en el grupo principiante. Había muchas más mujeres que hombres así que a veces no tuve una pareja, pero compartimos los hombres durante la clase (que suerte tienen los hombres).

Resultaba que había muchos extranjeros allá; conocí a una chica de Canadá que trabaja en la embujada acá y un chico de Nueva Zealandía de vaccaciones. A mí me parece que hay ciertos barrios y locales donde se congregan los extranjeros: San Telmo, ciertas milongas, ciertos bares (irlandeses por lo general), etc. Este local era uno de estos sitios que atraía a los extranjeros.
Después de bailar tanto tuve que descansar y decidí ir a mi apartamento. Me fui a las 3 más o menos. No sé si puedo acostumbrarme a este horario porteño; salir hasta las 8 de la mañana para empecar con clases el lunes a las 9 de la mañana. No sé como lo hacen.

The Burial of ex-president Alfonsín

El jueves fui al enterramiento de Alfonsín. Mi host-mother me dijo que probablemente nunca va a ser un evento así otra vez en su vida. Dijo que después del enterramiento de Eva y Perón, este evento atraería una de las muchedumbres más grandes. Mi host-mother se rompió la pierna hace poco así que era mi deber asistir por ella que no pudo.
Ella es gran admiradora de él y los valores que mantuvo. Dijo que él le dió un sentido de orgullo por ser argentina. Explicó que a veces le llamaron “flojo” o “indeciso” pero él evitó conflictos violentos de todos costos porque valoró la paz sobre todo. Además, nunca era corupto ni ávido; vivió en la misma casa por todo su vida en una manera humilde. Entre la dictadura y presidentes coruptos él sobresalió.
Por eso, supongo, había tanta gente a su enterramiento. Estar en el medio de todo me dió tanta emoción. Al principio, estuve fuera de la muchedumbre, sacando fotos, pero terminé en el medio de todo, gritando “Al-fon-sín” con los demás. Me noté que amable y cariñosa era la gente allá. Todos siguieron el coche con el féretro cogidos del brazo. Más tarde mi host mother explicó que eso es bien latino, para acercarse y abrazarse aún con desconocidos durante tiempos así. Y es verdad, no parece que hay tanta amor y cariño entre desonocidos en norteamerica, incluso durante un evento así.
Mi host-mother y yo esperamos que este evento haya servido como una motivación a algunos argentinos para pensar en la política y sus valores. Con los discursos de Alfonsín que han mostrado en la tele estos días y todos los recuerdos de sus ideas, este evento puede terminar enseñando a los jóvenes y recordandole a los demás.

The Class Situation

Che boludos (that;s slang for hey dummies)
Well it's been a while since I've written anything because this has been such a hectic time. A bit stressful at times. I started my UBA classes last thursday and ever since it's been non stop. Here's why:
I was deciding between 4 UBA classes which I should take. I thought 2, since I took two classes at UAM(the Madrid university) and was fine. Little did I know the reputation of UBA. The school system is very different here but basically UBA is the best school in the country and one of the best in South America. It is a public school and free and most everyone there seems like they really want to learn. The first class I went to was a seminar about reciente argentine history from a historical and historiographical perspective. I could understand the teacher pretty well, except for a few big vocab words, and the class mates were very friendly the us foreigners (2 koreans, 1 german, and 1 other "yankee"). The only problem was that the teacher explained that the class was about perspectives looking at history and she wasn;t going to deal with the actual history becuase "we already know it." As we went around the class introducing oursleves I realized almost everyone was fnishing their 5 year long history major (ie pro's in argentine history). For this reason I felt out of place, so I thought eh I don;t think I;ll take this class.
The next class was Social Geography. I chose this topic cause Argentina has very interesting geography and it probably has interesting affects on their society. The content was fine and dandy but the teacher was impossile. Although my classmates were in their 1st or second years and new to this material as well, I couldn;t barely understand a word the professor was saying. He would trail off at the end of every sentence, years of smoking had turned his words into raspy, uninteligable jargon, he made jokes that the class only knew were jokes when he laughed at them himself and he would pase around the room half the time with his back to the class talking to the wall. That was a miserable 4 hours. O yeah, and the classes are 4 hours long, so that makes a difficult class even more overwhelming. I was so glad to get out of that class and I told myself no way am I taking that class. That was the end to spending from 9 am to 9:30 pm at UBA for one day (8 hours in class without a break). I went back home, went to bed, only to go back to UBA at 9 am in the morning.
My next class was in a huge auditorium type room about argentine histroy III (1916-now). The first thing the strong voiced male professor said from up on his mini-stage in this auditorium us something along the lines of "You all are the future historians and leaders of this country. This is the best university in the country and we expect a lot from you." shit. Again, I was a little misplaced in this class.
When the UBA classes were on pause, since I didn;t have another one to go to for 3 days, things got complicated at my program, IES. I decided that I only wanted to take one class at UBA (turns out portenos only take 3 classes at a time, so for a foreigner to take 2 classes was a lot) (In madrid I took two, but the madrileños took 7! So I had it a little easier) I went into IES frist thing on Monday morning and asked to change my schedule. I got into a class about Cultural icons in Argentina. I bought the texts and found out we had to read about 70 pages in spanish for the next day. whew. I started reading.
The next morning I woke up at 5:30 am and went down to immigrations where I was suppose to get my visa. After waiting in line for 6 hours I managed to get my student visa. I headed straight over to my new class in IES for which I had been able to do about one fifth of the reading for. I found my class mates taking a quiz on the reading. Luckily I was excused from the quiz since I joined late. I sat in class for 3 hours and then headed back to UBA to try out the final class. I looked at the syllabus when I got there, about 5 straight pages single spaced of readings.... The teacher sat in front of about 75 students with a microphone and mumbled about what we were gunna study. I stayed for a while and looked at words she said taht I didn;t know and then left early. I spent another couple hours there waiting in line to get the texts for the first class which wasn;t looking so bad anymore. The next day I started reading the texts for the class and that brings me to now. I am almost done reading the texts and I have the class tomorrow morning at 9 am. WHEW!!
Anyways, that is why I haven;t been around for a while. Probably not very interesting to read about, but I wanted to document this hectic week to remember it.

Luego,
Kati