"I would like a cookie, please!"

My internship at Centro Conviven has, without a doubt, been one of the highlights of my time in Buenos Aires. I've neglected to write about it until now because it's so difficult to put into words the unpredictable/overwhelming/chaotic-yet-sweet/adorable/rewarding nature of the English classes I teach for elementary school students living in or near the slum of Mataderos. I spend about 10 hours a week at the little-but-lively community center, though usually I'm only teaching for 2-3 of those hours; the rest of the time I plan lessons, hang out with my fellow volunteers, eat lunch prepared by the amazing staff member Carmen (arroz and milanesa, usually), play with the younger kids who are always around, and do my homework. Conviven relies completely on foreign volunteers to keep the English classes up and running, which means that those of us helping out this semester have complete responsibility for designing and implementing a curriculum even though we may feel totally unqualified/inadequate/clueless as to the best way to instruct these kids. I had the chance to observe the class when two Irish girls were in charge of it (their last days were my first), so we've been able to maintain a bit of consistency in terms of structure, but let's be honest we're just more or less making it up as we go along and hoping desperately that the students learn something. Though the class is pretty much always on the verge of an absolute quilombo, I truly adore our rowdy group of a dozen or so 7-10 year olds. Here's a glimpse of how a typical 60-minute class goes down:

"Hello! Welcome!" I say, as several lab-coat-clad kids enter the upstairs classroom. They greet me with a kiss on the cheek and take their seats. "How are you doing today?" Blank stares. "Good?" I show them two thumbs up. "Bad?" Thumbs down. "OK?" Thumbs in the middle. 

"Good!" one or two of them reply. (Every once in a while we'll get a "Happy!" which is always a thrill.) Bored expressions from the rest.

"Alright, well let's wait for the everyone else to arrive before we get started..." Awkward silence. I'm paralyzed between trying to engage them in Spanish and committing to English immersion. I comment on the weather in English, pantomiming dramatically to express how hot it is outside/in the classroom. They look back at me endearingly, all clearly weirded out. 

Once the chairs around the table are full, we get into our introductory activity: "My name is Malissa. What is your name?" I toss the plush die (dice?... English is confusing and I'm clearly not good enough at it to teach it...) to a student.

"My name is Guadalupe," she answers and then throws it to a classmate, "What is your name?" Mariano intercepts it and chucks it across the room. I run to retrieve it. 

"OK, we don't need to toss anything, let's just go around the circle..." 

After several minutes, we switch to "How old are you?" then we start to get into the real material. We review the parts of the body and then it's time for the real crowd-pleaser, "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes." 

"Everybody stand up!" Drawing on my experience as a junior marshal at Riverside graduation, I make the exaggerated motion for "rise" with my arms. A few of the boys remain seated. "¡Chicos, levántense por favor!" All but one of them get up. After we sing through it a few times, I stop doing the gestures to see if the kids can remember on their own. This confuses most of them, so I feel bad and join back in. 

Next we'll play a game or read a book. This portion of the class is often characterized by random interruptions: "Profe, dónde aprendiste inglés?" someone queries. I explain that I learned English growing up because that's what most people speak in the US, just like they learned Spanish from their parents and others around them here in Argentina. Although no one seems quite satisfied with that response, I try to move on with class.

A little while later, someone will usually interject with, "¿Profe, la merienda?" Ahh, the snack. It may be the reason most of them are here, but I try not to take it personally (and trust me, gordita understands). 

I call them up to the front, one by one.

- "Araceli, would you like water or mate?" 

- "I would like mate, please." 

- "Here you go. Would like you a cookie?" 

- "I would like a cookie, please." 

- "¡No no no cada persona sólo puede tener uno!" I yank the second alfajor out of her hand and call on the next child, who also knows the all-important snack dialogue by heart-- asking for a cookie is probably the English phrase they know best, but hey, it's something. 

We fill the last 20 minutes of class with more games and songs (the Hokey Pokey typically consists of me singing and wildly dancing while some of them follow along and the rest point and laugh at me...), and now that the snack is over many of them have lost interest. 

At 5:30 we says our chau's and they scurry out of the classroom. As us volunteers clean up, we laugh/whine about that day's triumphs and antics ("Did you notice that Alex was explaining the activity to the new boy sitting next to him? A few weeks ago he was the one who didn't know what was going on! He's making such good progress!" or "Ugh, what should we do next time Damian lies down on the floor in the middle of 'If you're happy and you know it'?"). 

Sure, the class is always a desafío, but it's also fun, often hilarious, and very humbling; my time abroad has been greatly enriched by my days spent at Conviven. I'm already dreading having to leave these kiddos in a couple months. They're really incredible.   

Mid cookie-stealing debacle

View of the center from upstairs

Buenos Aires Market

I spent most of last weekend working on a midterm, but I took a break on Sunday to visit the health/artisanal food mercado with Sarah. It was the perfect way to usher in the new beautiful spring weather (and a semi-successful attempt to fill the Durham-Farmer's-Market-shaped void in my life). Pretty much everyone and their madre came out to Palermo to browse the booths (and it got a little aggressive at times-- I suffered several elbows stabs to the gut as I tried to obtain samples of batatitas, aceite de oliva, and also some weird vegetable cookies that were probably best left un-sampled...). I only tried a fraction of the riquísimo fare, so I already have a plan for what I'm going to buy the next time the market comes to town! 

Wok for lunch!

Queso Brûlée: caramelized cheese on a stick. (Genius.)

MAMBA

I know I say this every time I visit another museum here, but I really do think el Museo de Arte Moderno is my favorite! Every single piece is thought-provoking; some exhibits are playful, others are gruesome, and everything's just weird enough to hold your attention longer than a "normal" work of art. 

Más...

I walked through several protests on my way to a meeting Thursday morning... Displays of this sort are pretty much a daily occurrence in the city.

Reading for class isn't so bad when accompanied by coffee and an apple crumble muffin at Muma's!

The view from my desk in my bedroom. It is slightly weird to have a window into the rest of the house, but with sunshine streaming in through the upper windows I can't complain!

Middlebury organized a visit to el Congreso. I kinda zoned out when we talked about all the political stuff but the building is really pretty!

Don't forget to keep up with my Twitter if you're interested in my day-to-day reflections/awkward moments! 

Coffee with Legs: my trip to Chile!

Aviso: this is more or less a play-by-play of last week and will potentially bore you to tears... but there are nice pictures included?

Even before I got to Argentina, I knew I wanted to visit Chile at some point in the semester. I mean, it's not too far and there's just this little thing called la cordillera de los Andes separating the two countries!!

Crossing the Andes

But really, it's a quick flight (or a mere 20-hour bus ride if you're crazy into that sort of thing) to the capital city of Santiago, where we spent our first two nights.

We hadn't really planned much about our trip in advance, but despite my usual Type-A inclinations I was content with making up an itinerary as we went (muchas gracias to TripAdvisor and the hostel staff). Yeah, I know, I don't recognize myself anymore either.

I have to admit that Santiago is WAY prettier than I expected. It doesn't hurt that you can see mountains in every direction, plus there's also a lot of greenery, beautiful architecture, and less tall buildings than Buenos Aires (which means more open sky). We were #blessed with gorgeous weather throughout our whole stay which also contributed to the city's overall appeal.

The first day we wandered around our part of the city and visited La Moneda, the presidential palace.

Turns out it's the site of a lot of drama: controversial president Allende committed suicide in the palace during the 1973 US-supported coup d'état that left Pinochet in power. (Shoutout to tour guide Franco and also Wikipedia for the abbreviated history lesson).  

Then we walked up cerro Santa Lucia, a little hill right in the middle of the busy city streets with a nice view at the top.

Afterwards we were all tired and overheated so naturally we decided to search out some hydrating and refreshing... ¿café con leche? Anyway, we thought it'd be easy to find a place in the area since there's a cute café on every corner in Buenos Aires; oddly enough, we came across very few coffee shops and most of them only had standing tables. Increasingly confused but also increasingly desperate for our coffee fix, we finally stopped in a "Café Haiti" that had a few metal tables and stools. We were immediately approached by one of several scantily clad waitresses on a catwalk who hastily took our order (the only options: black coffee or coffee with milk). We were all slightly uncomfortable with the vibes of the place, and Kasey joked that it was either an undercover prostitution ring or just the Chilean version of Hooters. But, on the bright side, we got free chocolate treats with our drinks!

On our walking tour of the city the next day, our suspicions were más o menos confirmed... Apparently, we had stumbled into a branch of the prevalent café con piernas business, or "coffee with legs." Since Chile does not traditionally have great coffee, the concept came about as a way to grow the coffee-drinking population. The strategy: attract/distract (male) clients with a risqué style of service so they pay less attention to the quality of their beverage. In the 90s, some businesses decided to take it a little further by implementing a "happy minute"-- a 60-second surprise striptease by the waitresses that happens at a different time every day. Gracias a Dios we did not have to witness that! We also learned that free sweets are included with women's orders (in an effort to appease them?)... So that was interesante.

Our fantastic 3.5-hour (free!!) walking tour with my new boyfriend the wonderful Franco not only taught us the aforementioned fascinating tidbits, but also showed us various sites of interest throughout the city. We saw this fountain that Germany gifted to Chile (putting the US' gift of a puny bust of Lincoln to shame):

And this building shaped like a cell phone:

Then we visited the eclectic home of Nobel-prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda. They gave us devices to listen to a commentary as we walked through the house's different rooms and, being the committed students we are, we obviously chose the Spanish setting for the recording. Throughout the tour I noticed Natalie's confused expression, but I assumed she was just having trouble keeping up with the history like I was. (About all that I picked up on was that he designed the residence to resemble a ship, because he was simultaneously enamored of and terrified by the ocean. And he lived there with his lover-turned-wife Matilde.) About halfway through, Nat asked us about the meaning of a word that kept repeating in the narration but no one had any idea what she was referring to... A few minutes later we realized she and Kasey had been given devices set to Portuguese! (After writing this I'm getting the impression that it was a "you had to be there" sort of thing... but I assure you it was comical.)

Part of the garden La Chascona

Feeling quite ambitious, we decided to go ahead and tackle another item on our Santiago bucket list- el cerro San Cristobal. But we didn't feel quite ambitious enough to make the long hike to the top so we opted for the tram ride instead. Somebody commented that they didn't feel like we deserved the amazing view since we didn't work for it but I would personally never hike if there was always a tram option  definitely don't share that same sense of guilt... What really matters is that we saw this:

and chilled with the Virgin Mary:

As we were contemplating if we wanted to walk down or take the tram again (Me: "I really don't mind paying for the tram ride, it'll save us a lot of time/energy!" Everyone else: "Yeah, I don't care either way..." Decision: "Great let's walk then!!"), a man approached us and yelled, "YANQUIS, GO HOME!" Such an outright expression of disdain left us more confused than anything, so we I just kinda nervously laughed as he walked away... 

After what turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant descent, during which we saw this:

we found ourselves on the other side of the mountain, a.k.a. super far from our hostel. Nonetheless, the map made the trip look pretty easily walkable (spoiler alert: it wasn't). 

And that's the story of how, according to the pedometer app, we walked 15 (yes, FIFTEEN!) miles in one day. 

The next morning Casey, Rachel, and I took the bus 2 hours to the artsy coastal city of Valparaíso. We checked into our adorable hostel:

and started exploring the area in search of (what else?) food. The surrounding area was absolutely preciosa, pretty much just how I had imagined Valparaíso from how others have described it. The city is almost entirely formed of hills (there's a joke that the women of Valpo have the best legs in Chile), so there are several ascensores to make it a little easier. We definitely let our tourist show when we collectively squealed every time the elevator jolted to a start...

Cerro Alegre  

Something about the exhaustion of the last couple days compelled us to treat ourselves to a luxurious (read: pricey) lunch at a country-club like restaurant overlooking the water. I went for the authentic ceviche and a raspberry daiquiri ("da-keeeee-ri"). In terms of ambiente, I'd say it was one of the most enjoyable meals de mi vida. 

Daiquiri not pictured

It just so happened that the weekend we spent in Valpo coincided with El Carnaval de los Mil Tambores, a highly-anticipated annual drum festival. Even though we had to leave town before the real festivities (involving painted bodies & crazy parades), we could definitely feel the excitement building (like when we witnessed an impromptu drum circle/rave break out in the middle of a plaza in the wee hours). And we did get to see a little bit of the weekend's programming- a drum class in the park:

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention that we also visited what is supuestamente one of the 25 best heladerías in the world. With such big hype I was expecting something increíble... Don't get me wrong, it was tasty, but I've had better (*cough cough* The Parlour).

Emporio La Rosa

That night we went out with some kids from the Middlebury program in Valpo and tried our first terremotos, the authentic Chilean drink consisting of sweet wine and pineapple ice cream. That's right, the country's famous beverage involves ice cream. Need I say more? 

It was a fun night until we saw a little confrontation between some rowdy youths and the police (glass bottles were thrown and police batons were wielded). Apparently that sort of thing is pretty common, and there's just generally a lot of tension between the younger population and the authorities, some of it related to the college students' movement to demand education reform (which means the exchange students there have a LOT of classes canceled #celosa). 

The following day we took the bus to the neighboring beach town of Viña del Mar where we once again did what we do best- eat/walk around/repeat. Despite the freezing wind it was a lovely way to spend the day!

We went back to Santiago the next day in order to visit El museo de la memoria, which we had heard was a "must" for anyone spending time in the city. I've been learning about the dictatorship in Argentina in my independent study of Argentine cinema, but I'm still really confused about a lot of aspects of the history... Thus, this museum, overflowing with information about the Chilean dictatorship, was a bit overwhelming. Nonetheless, the exhibits are really well put together and even though I might not have understood all the complicated details of the period, I was profoundly affected by the representations of the atrocities that took place. In the case of both Argentina and Chile, the memory of these horrors is still very fresh, which is a really interesting dynamic to confront as a foreigner.

It's a little awkward to transition from such a serious topic, but now it's time to talk more about (drumroll, please), la comida! I haven't eaten much seafood at all during my time in Buenos Aires, so I took the opportunity to indulge during this trip (it was less of a conscious decision than a reaction to the fact that the restaurants we went to had very limited non-seafood offerings). I had my first sushi in months, a delicious dinner of tilapia with lentils, shrimp quesadillas... I could go on but I'm making myself hungry. Though I didn't have a chance to try the infamous chorrillana or mote con huesillo, I did enjoy the traditional dishes of  pastel de jaiba (pretty much a giant portion of crab dip, a.k.a. living the dream) and then, at the Santiago fish market, a giant steaming cauldron of caldillo de congrio (eel stew):

It came out of the kitchen still boiling, and had huge chunks of eel (still on the bone) as well as potatoes, carrots, and spices. Fun fact: Pablo Neruda was so obsessed with this dish he wrote a poem about it. 

After the fish market we ventured to the fruit/vegetable market a flew blocks away. It quickly became evident that our collective decision to sport jean shorts/sundresses was highly questionable. Although we're accustomed to the daily whistles as we walk through the streets of Buenos Aires, we encountered a whole new level of objectification... Upon entering the market we noticed that we were attracting even more stares than usual, and then all of the sudden the building erupted in applause. Directed at us. It was both/either hilarious and/or horrible, I still haven't decided. Nonetheless, we resolved to go ahead with our shopping endeavor, so we passed through the vendors' stands (I bought a delicious Peruvian dessert) and pretended not to notice the men literally bowing at our feet and discussing their preferences between us ("Prefiero la rubia"//"I prefer the blonde") as we went by. Such a weird experience, but throughout my travels I've learned to take that sort of thing with a grain of salt. 

Also. This pie:

That is all.