Noah's Last Cordoba Days!

Highlights:

-playing music with a brazilian band that was staying at Noah’s hostel and spending time with people from all over (Israel, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Brazil)

-the streets got flooded again and the river rose many feet

-saw Alice in Wonderland, enjoyed the effects, ending was lame

-discovered a pet store with puppies and kittens on my walk back from the Language School where I take Hebrew

-practiced my Hebrew with the people staying at Noah’s hostel, apparently all ton of the hostels in South America are filled with Israelis, I was talking to a guy from Mexico about it who had been traveling around, still don’t know why...

-huge soccer parade rally march thing, there were hundreds of people in the street, jumping and shouting, climbing on street signs and monuments in the big intersection in the middle of the city

-a person tried to rob me but i took their hand out of my bag and walked away

-I figured out how to take the bus back from school...it’s the same bus that I take in the morning haha

-had a really funny conversation about arm pit hair and it’s social implications with Cristina, we’ve been talking a lot recently

-meet some girls from the US, Australia, and France who are working with children here and live a block away from me

-talked all night with Noah, this guy from Mexico and three guys from Israel about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, they had very strong opinions

-today was a day dedicated to the Disappeared so I didn’t have any class, there was a huge march in the streets, lots of people carrying signs with pictures of Che and Evita Peron and also pictures of people who disappeared

-I’ve been reading a lot and loving it, I had forgotten how much I love being in thick of a good book, High School doesn’t really make room for such things

-Cristina’s sister, brother in law, and their three children are here from London for a month, bilingual kids with british accents are so ridiculously cute

-today I’m going to Villa Belgrano, the mountain town where Cristina has a few cottages that she rents out

-Noah goes to Capilla de Monte today to start work!!!! I’m going to visit him next weekend

Sentiments:

-focusing on being patient and smiling more

-still getting used to outside Amherst culture but am encouraged by Cristina and my small spanish class (everyone just seems so much more open and unreserved, genuine, fearless!)

-loving argentina!

Nuevos Amigos

I forgot to say that Noah and I met these people playing music on the street at the ferria del paseo del artes (which is this arts and crafts festival that happeneds every weekend on the canal). We went to a birthday party with some of the musicians, Flor and Kaim who live about 10 blocks away from me in Cofico. There were a lot of people playing folklorico and Spanish guitar which was so hard to follow the rythem on! They gave me a viola and it got easier as the night went on but the music is so different to try to jam with!! There was one guy there who spoke english and he quietly helped me out with the rythem. Everyone thought it was really funny and were like, try it again, try it again. Then they all spend a while trying to follow some fiddle songs that I played on the viola. And songs in English were really a hit. This guy was obsessed with the Rolling Stones and spent a long time trying to get me to play "Annnnnnnghhh Aaaaahhnnngghh" before I realized he was trying to say "Angiee Aaaaanngie." They requested Imagine, Let It Be, Bob Dylan songs, and this song by Jason Mraz that's on the radio a lot. They also had a marijuana tree! It was about twelve feet tall and maybe 9 feet wide and we didn't even notice for the longest time. When we did notice, the guy standing next to us, was like yeah I have four more like it at my house! Marijuana is pretty much legal here I think but I don't think it's thaat legal. Of course I think with most people here its a much more taboo topic than in Amherst, at least that's what Jeremy said.

So today I started my first classes at PECLA (basically my first classes with people outside of my program). In my Spanish class there's one guy from my program, Brian from Roosevelt Island, a guy from Turkey who's 22 and has been here for 6 months and a guy from Japan whose also 22 and is staying here with some other Japonese students. That's it! I really like it. Today we talked about the differences in our countries between woman's rights, marriage ages, religion etc and why we came to Argentina, what's different about Argentina than what we expected etc. Then in an hour I start Hebrew! I'm still not completely sure why I'm taking Hebrew but everyone keeps asking me what I'm studying in the U.S. and I always say that I want to study conflict resolution so I've been thinking more about studying abroad in Israel/Palestine which lead me to Hebrew. I could use a place to meet people outside PECLA. Alright Ping Pong calls.

Sinpo Mom Zoo Dogs Homosexuality Lynn

Ok update of the last 3 weeks:

Julia found a kitten in a box on the street and named it Sinpo. I think that when she found her she was probably one or two weeks old but definitely too young to be separated from her mother. We bought kitten food and fed her everyday with a spoon but the weekend before last her stomach started getting really big and bloated and so we gave her to a woman with a cat whose nursing, hoping for the best. It was really nice to have a kitten around and something that I could take care of. She was a very good buddy, crawling over my homework and nuzzling into my skirts so that was a bummer when I came home and she had been given away. I’m sure it’s for the best though.

So my mom arrived and after a few days in the city, my mom, Noah, Cristina and I went to the town Ville Belgrano, where Cristina has five cottages there which she rents out but is trying to sell. It was great to get out of the city but I’m actually surprised how unsick of the city I am. Usually when I stay in a city I can’t stay more than a few days before I need to head back to the hills. I guess it’s because now the city environment is the only home that I have right now. My room is great too. It’s a big help. The campus at the University’s nice too. It feels like a real campus, not just like disconnected buildings in a city of people disconnected from nature to be connected to mass media which is what it feels like somedays walking home. Campus is green and pretty well kept up. No one bothers cleaning up the graffiti in this city but on campus all the graffiti is political and you can tell someone thought about it, not just tagging their name on a wall. Its funny, all the graffiti’s in Spanish of course but I can understand most all of them cause we have the same phrases in English like, “A writer lives to write, a real writer writes to live,” and “Military intelligence is an oxymoron.” There’s this really cool one near my building of five or so women struggling to pull a rope attached to a zipper, which opens to a scene of people with their hands in the air, some carrying signs, some just dancing.

There are dogs everywhere on campus too including in the classrooms but there still all really nice, some are just more attractive than others but actually there probably all pretty much the same amount of dirty. I guess like us, some of them just wear it better. When Julie brought home Sinpo I gave her a bath and pulled off all these gross little tick like bugs that moved really fast along her skin and made lots of little black specks in her fur. It was really gross.

Oh yeah and also we went to the zoo in Cordoba which is right across the park from the University. Someone told me its all happenin a the zoo. I do believe it. I do believe it’s true. Personally I like the cats the best. Lions, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, pumas. I also enjoyed the gigantic spiders and the elephant. It was a good zoo.

Then last week we just had finals and exams and stressful ‘evaluations’ that determine what classes we can handle at the University. Then after our last exam on Thursday the entire program went to Buenos Aires for the weekend. We all (27 of us?) stayed in the same hotel, went on city tours and visited museums and such. There are a whole lot of churches in Argentina. I just wish my Spanish was better so I could actually talk to people here about religion. The hardest part for me about Spanish is expressing specific beliefs and values especially concerning spirituality because the only times that I completely understand what someone is saying if we’re having a real conversation is for me to recognize some of the words and then piece together what I think they’d be trying to tell me. But then what am I going to learn if I can already guess what people are going to tell me. It’s not that big of a deal just a little annoying.

I did talk to Cristina about the war on terrorism after 9/11 and the dirty war in Argentina. She says that a lot of people here think that the US government had a part in 9/11 or at least knew about the attacks beforehand and that of course everyone knows that the CIA prompted, backed, and funded the military in the dirty war in Argentina and Chile. So why do people here still idolize the US? On the topic of homosexuality, Cristina felt more conservatively. I asked her how she would feel if her son Martin came to her and told her he was gay and she said that she would like to meet whoever he was with and respect his 'decision' but would feel guilty for not being a good enough mother. She said people would say, "Oh, yes his parents were divorced and he has many siblings so his parents couldn't pay enough attention to his upbringing" and so on. Although I'm no expert I told her that in my town people think that it's not a choice and not a glitch but simply happens in the brain when the mother produces a lot of female hormones when she's pregnant. I told her I didn't know exactly how it worked with the chemical attraction and all but that I thought it wasn't a choice someone made but part of a person's chemical make up and just as deserving of human rights. She said she didn't know but was interested and open about this outlook. She also thought that gay people should respect other people's opinions on the matter more and be more private. For example, she doesn't care if two men 'decide' to be gay but she doesn't want her children to see two men holding hands in the street and think it's an appropriate life decision. It was a very interesting conversation. I was to reiterate that Cristina was very open to knew ideas about homosexuality and was interested to hear about them too. She kept saying "I don't know but I feel..." Well in Spanish but just so I don't portray Cristina falsely. She's very sweet but is a woman who knows what she wants!

Ok gotta go to dinner. 10 oclock!! Right now I'm at a resort with Lynn and Noah which is amazing and beautiful. I'll post some pictures on Flickr, but it's right on the lake and looks out across to the town and mountains. Very very nice. Oooh and theres a warm pool and a regular pool anndd a hot tub!