Next steps - to the class of 2022 I go!

I decided it was time to start this up again. Going into this next phase of my life I'm feeling particularly inspired (and particularly terrified). I've signed a contract with KIPP Explore, a charter school on the south side of Houston, TX to teach bilingual kindergarten. The campus is in it's second year in the "Mexican quarter" of town, an area that suffers from generational cycles of poverty. I begin in August.

(see: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ike/galveston/6350817.html). My school leader, a 28-year old ex-TFA teacher himself is the one quoted at the end: “We don’t call them kindergartners. We call them the Class of 2022".

That's where I come in. Thursday I move out for my Teach for America training in Texas. New Life. New Friends. New ideas. It's going to be something, that's for sure. I can't decide if I'm more excited or more overwhelmed at the prospect of no sleep, long hours lesson planning, grading, and setting up a whole new life for myself. That said, buying posters for my classroom reminded me why I'm in this: for the kids.

Must sleep before my long day of HR paperwork and banking logistics tomorrow (man the real world sucks).

the end?

It's incredible how fast this has all gone. I want to sit here and write (I've started journaling recently and I love it) but I feel like there is so much to do here on my last day. For now, thus, I offer photos. Not quite as good as words, but so it goes.

Chile tomorrow.
Parents/Aaron on the 15th.
The States on the 27th?

Left: Finished ISP (my first bound work!)
Below: Margaritas on my 21st! and me and my friends on my birthday!

This evening, my taxi passed an ambulance going down Callao. I'm not sure how I feel about that. He showed no apparent remorse.

Some photos from San Martín

(visiting Bariloche, after an interview with Darío Duch, a lawyer/government official)









(below: San Martín from the hill above it)

Today, for the first time since being here, I realized what a luxury it was to study abroad. That sounds silly, but it's true. By "luxury" I don't pretend to mean that I never realized the privilege I had by being able to study abroad nor do I not value my experience here in any way shape or form.

I was talking to my host dad tonight, (who finally came back!) and we somehow got lost in another political discussion about why Argentinean society doesn't trust government, and no one truly believe that it's a representative democracy despite the fact that on paper, it appears one of the best functioning in Latin America. And as we sat there together, talking about history, and past presidents, and social events that have affected the vision and path of Argentinian society, I realized for the first time what a wonderful luxury it is to live in another place, and truly experience what it has to offer. I think I spent the first few months here trying to catch up- facts, stories, classes. All seemed to wiz by. Tonight, for the first time, I applied it. I had a fluent conversation about socio-political factors that affect society today with an argentinan citizen, and I find that so amazing. I feel like I'm not really conveying what I mean to say here. How to best describe it (oh language barriers.. haha).

Not everyone is afforded the luxury of going to another place and truly throwing themselves into it. I've been lucky enough to travel before, but I have never felt something click the way it did tonight. I think there's definitely a period of time necessary to truly understand where you are, and the implications of what you see. You pass through stages: at first everything's new, clean, and shiny. You're a tourist in a new place. Then it starts to become "normal" and the little things stop jumping out at you. Then you begin to miss the comforts of home. Then, finally, I think (if you're lucky enough) you start to be able to reconcile the two and understand how your world comes into play with the other world you're experiencing living in a new place. Tonight, for the first time, I realized that not many people get that chance. How often can you essentially pause life and go somewhere else and start anew? Study what you want. Learn the ways of a new people, of a new city, of a new way of life?

It's strange- going into this ISP period I really was dreading the experience. A full month to do research on your own has so many potential drawbacks, frustrations and also benefits. For example, I KNOW my spanish has gotten worse since living with two Americans for the better part of two weeks. (It's visible in how semi-decent my grammatical structure is at this point). But I also think this period taught me the most about myself. With the freedom to do what I want, or rather to use my time the way I wanted, in order to see what I wanted, I was really able to gear the experience towards what I wanted to learn. And I have. And I love that.

12 days left? Geez. Where'd the time go?

Street racing?

My colectivo just street raced another around Plaza de Constitucion today, in the middle of rush hour. I kid you not, there was engine revving and everything.

Conclusions from Lake Lácar

So I'm sitting here in this little cafe, on the lake Lácar in Patagonia on my last morning. Got up early to attempt to do some of this looming work that will all be turned in less than two weeks now. Crazy how fast it's all going.

But I came to wonderful realizations. I'm copying and pasting from an email I sent out this morning:

Basically, I'm working on the conclusions of my research paper and for the first time really sat down and thought about what politics and political involvement means to me. Let's see if I can put this into words. I've been sitting here talking to youth for the past two weeks about why they're involved in politics in this tiny town. After my interviews I try and analyze similarities- are they involved because its good social network? Because they want to reclaim public space? For personal reasons of transcendence? ect. I really entered into this experience trying to compare it to my own involvement with the Obama campaign and obviously, it's impossible to do so based on the pure logistical differences between their political system and ours. But it hit me today that it's so much more than that. I was involved because it was fun, it was social, ect but more so than that-- it was a way to promote a cause/ideal that I believed it.

What I've found from my research is that here in San Martín, politics is a necessity. People are involved because the whole town is focused on that which the tourist wants and they don't pay attention to the neighborhoods that have been pushed off to the peripheries (both physically and socially). They are involved because the only other option is to lay down and accept social/economic marginizlacion. And to me that is so sad. There is no basic belief in the power of the system, and honestly, I feel lucky to both have been involved when I was, and to have grown up under such a belief system. Obviously, its something that was intrenched in me long before I signed into work for the campaign, but sitting here-- thousands of miles away from home, and realizing such a strong, and wonderful belief in the power of a person to change the world is pretty incredible to me. It makes me sad that due to historical/social history of this place, its inconcievable to most citizens.

Obviously reading my paper and understanding the social/historical context of this small mountian town is important to understanding the true implications of what I came to realize today - but I just feel like this is the culmination of what I've been wondering here in Argentina. Since that first time sitting down with my host family and getting chills as I showed them Obama and JFK's speeches, explaining to them why one would "waste" their own time to promote the career of a politician, I feel like I've come a long way to here.

I find it ironic that studying someone else's system and reasons for being involved led me to understand myself even better. Nonetheless, it's quite interesting.