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!