Sophie in Buenos Aires

Last Wednesday, I unwillingly took part in a typical Chielan experience—I was robbed. I was carrying my cell phone in my sweater pocket at a market, felt a tug, looked down, and had no phone. I went to a mobile police unit, filed a police report, and went home. I am completely fine, no worries, but currently phoneless in Buenos Aires…although I am going to buy a new phone when I get back to Santiago.

We are in Buenos Aires for our last two weeks of the structured program, and it feels more like a vacation than work. We have interesting academic seminars, school visits, and educational excursions—more on those later—but we also have significantly more free time than we did in Santiago. It is really relaxing, and a good break for all of us before our Independent Study Projects begin.

I haven’t taken much time to talk about our group as a whole, although it has been a huge part of this experience. Brief overview: there are fifteen of us, fourteen girls and one guy, from all over the US. Hampshire is the only school doubly-represented (go Hamp!) and, although most go to schools on the East Coast, a few go to schools scattered across the Midwest and West. I feel really fortunate that in a group of fifteen, we all get along well enough to go out to dinner together, or to just hang out after class. I’m so happy that it’s worked out this way—that I feel comfortable with everyone, one-on-one or in a group; that I never feel self-conscious about my opinions on education or politics, even though they differ significantly from others’.

It’s really strange that, on November 6th, I will no longer be in this group to which I have become very accustomed, and that, chances are, I will be spending a significant amount of my ISP alone in Temuco. This is both exhilarating and nervewracking, but probably the best thing that will happen for my Spanish language skills.

Since arriving in Buenos Aires, I, along with other people from the group, have started to notice my English grammar and spelling going out the window. I think in English words but with Spanish grammar, for example: “I will go to the house of Kim at nineteen hours” or something like that. And I think about almost all of my conjunctions in Spanish nowadays—so if I come home saying “entonces” (so, anyway) all the time, please forgive me.

Entonces. If Santiago is a South American version of Brooklyn, then Buenos Aires is definitely Upper West Side Manhattan. There are trees and everyone is thin and beautiful. People always say it is very European, which it is—but it really reminds me of the area in Manhattan by Central Park.

I’m really enjoying living with my new host family—it is the polar opposite of living with Mercedes, but it is good just the same. I am living with a single mother, Andrea, and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Agostina, in a relatively large apartment in a nice area of the city. Agostina is studying musical comedy and circus arts, with a focus on trapeze, and is a lot of fun to hang out with. (Tonight I’m going to her dance class, where I will learn the “Thriller” dance!) I’ve met a few of her friends, who are all really nice, and we went to see some of her classmates in a show the other day—so I feel like I’m experiencing Buenos Aires differently than I’ve experienced Santiago. It is incredibly different living with someone my own age—good different, but it’s not that the alternative is bad.

Agostina and Andrea are both out of the house until pretty late at night, so I usually am the first to get home—which is fine with me, it’s just a big change from Mercedes, who is always around. Also, food isn’t nearly as big of a deal here—usually the family just eats dinner together, at around ten p.m.

That’s pretty much all that is going on these days—although tomorrow we will be going on a very special educational excursion, marching with the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. We got to sit down for a chat with one of the original founders of the organization yesterday, which was amazing—and I will post about it soon…I definitely recommend reading about them, they are incredible women and their organization is one of the most interesting and influential human rights organizations in the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_of_the_Plaza_de_Mayo
http://www.madres.org/ (in Spanish)