"Brrr, it's chilly." "No, it's Argentina."

A few history lessons, as promised:

During the most recent dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), just as in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, thousands of people with “radical” political affiliations were tortured, killed, and exiled. In Argentina’s case, the estimated number of “desaparecidos” (people who disappeared) is around 30,000. Can you imagine? This past week we got the opportunity to visit one of the major torture centers in Buenos Aires, where an estimated 5,000 people were taken, all but 200 never to be seen again. It was originally a school, and the crazy part is that it remained a school during the years it acted as a torture center, while students still had classes! Somehow, though, it was kept a secret for all those years, even from the students.

We walked through the hallways, saw the torture rooms, read testimonies of survivors, and just stood in awe of the history we were witnessing. It’s hard to describe the sadness I felt while on the tour, especially when we came upon the room where they kept the pregnant women. Our guide told us that when the women gave birth, the men would immediately take the babies and give them to families of the military! To this very day, there are still young adults finding out that they are actually the son or daughter of a torture victim, raised their entire lives in a lie. If I’m not mistaken, there are between 60 and 70 such identified children.

Today, the torture center and school campus is a memorial site for the torture victims and also home to many human rights organizations, a symbol that it will never happen again (“nunca más” is their slogan).

Another big focus of our time here in Buenos Aires—and an extremely powerful reminder of the dictatorship years—has been spending time with the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. “Las Madres” are, quite literally, the mothers of young men and women who were killed during the dictatorship. They all joined forces 32 years ago to demand justice from the government for the disappearance of their children. Their story is very well-known around the world for their perseverance and defense of human rights. Here’s why: EVERY Thursday at 3:30 in the Plaza de Mayo, the Madres gather and walk around the plaza with pictures of their children, protesting for justice and remembrance. We participated in the 1,599th march with the Madres, some of whom are in their 90s and haven’t missed more than a handful. They do so much more than protest every Thursday, though. They have started schools, built public housing, raised money, and so much more, all with the goal to fulfill the dreams of their children. They are remarkable women, with whom we felt so honored to have spent time.

Between these studies of human rights in Argentina, seminars, and visits to six schools around the city, our time to explore the city has been rather limited. In this past two weeks, however, I have managed to do the following:
1) Lose my debit/credit card.
2) Cancel my debit/credit card.
3) Miss my host mom in Santiago.
4) Tame our dog to the point that she's actually excited to see me when I get home. (So much so that she sometimes pees all over the floor.)
5) Make chocolate chip cookies with my three siblings. It was a success.

I will miss the cafes in Buenos Aires. Especially this one in particular, which gives a free scoop of icecream with an order of coffee.

This is La Boca, a very famous section of Buenos Aires.

And of course, our experience wouldn't be the same without a little tango!

Tomorrow we fly back to Santiago (those of us who aren't staying in Buenos Aires to do our research), and then starts the independent project period of the semester. I will be traveling back to Temuco, Chile, where we stayed with the Mapuche families. This time, however, I'll be in the city, living with a different host family. My project theme involves Mapuche women, education, and gender equality (it's a bit more focused than that, but I know it will evolve into something slightly different once I begin my work). We are all sad to say goodbye to each other for a month yet ready for a change in the program, for more independence with our schedules. I'll try my best to keep the updates coming when I'm in Temuco and let you know how my research is evolving.

Thanks to all who are persevering in following my blog; it means a lot to me.

Jenna

Reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The equation of the week: A new city + a new host family (with three young slash pre-adolescent children) + lots of seminars and school visits + a new accent and set of slang = 24-hour excitement and exhaustion. I really love Buenos Aires, though (dare I say more than Santiago?). It's everything I ever thought a city should be: tons of cafes, taxis, buses, beautiful old buildings, protests in the plazas, theaters, clubs, you name it. It´s definitely a bit more European than Santiago, which is a plus because our group doesn´t stick out as much. There are so many tall and beautiful people here, which is intimidating, but a break from the constant stares and whistles in Chile has been well-appreciated.

A short observation: It’s really difficult to have a fun or interesting personality in another language. I find myself wanting to make jokes, be sarcastic, or just contribute to a conversation, but nothing seems to translate very well. The result: I try to laugh and smile more than usual. It hurts my brain to attempt to be so involved in a conversation that I can’t entirely understand. I have, however, perfected my reaction skills. So, for example, I might not have the slightest idea what my host mom said to me, but I can pick up on how she said it and respond with the appropriate facial expression or the occasional interjection. The only problem is when she asks a question without me realizing. To illustrate, here’s a translation of a conversation we had last night:

Mom: Tomorrow you’ll have to take the metro to meet your group.
Me: Okay, no problem.
Mom: Do you want me to draw you a map of how to get to the station?
Me: No, not yet.
Mom: Later tonight, then?
Me: Tomorrow when I leave I can buy one.
Mom: Buy one of what?
Me: A map.
Mom: No, I asked if you want me to draw you a map.
Me: Oooooooooooh. Riiiiiiiiight. Yes, please.

And on and on it goes…


My family has a dog here. Its name is Paile, and we got off to a great start. We met on Sunday and instantly fell in love (there was licking involved). On Monday, however, everything changed. I was the first in my family to return to the house, so everything was dark. Paile apparently didn’t remember our first day together and thought I was a robber or something. She went crazy. I mean crazy, like fangs and barking and jumping crazy. My heart hasn’t beaten that fast in a while. Unfortunately, this has been a daily trend. For about two hours every day, Paile is just about as scared of me as I am of her. She follows me and barks and scratches my door and gets punished about every 5 minutes. All of a sudden, though, something clicks in her dog brain and she falls to the floor and wants me to pet her. From that point on, it’s like we’re best friends again. It’s the strangest thing. Have you seen the movie “50 First Dates”? I’m living that movie in real life. Only with a dog. Every day I have to convince her that she really loves me but just doesn’t know it yet.

Fast facts:
1) I’m living without a cell phone for these two weeks in Argentina, and it’s more difficult than I anticipated. I don’t like the feeling of being dependent on technology…
2) My host family owns a nearby restaurant called “La Paila,” which serves wonderful Northern-Argentinean food. We’ve only eaten there once, but my host parents are really good cooks, so every night for dinner is basically a gourmet experience.
3) I didn’t think it was possible, but the ice cream is better here.
4) I was right about the Argentinean accent; it has definitely taken some getting used to. I try to speak like my family, but I can’t do it without feeling really strange. I imagine it would be comparable to visiting Alabama and trying to speak with a southern accent. It just doesn’t fit.

In my next entry, I’ll talk about some of the really awesome academic things we’re doing here. It may involve some short history lessons, but I promise they’ll be well worth your time.

Love,
Jenna!

The best of Temuco.

Our SIT group spent the past week in a rural village near Temuco, about 8 hours south of Santiago by bus. We stayed in pairs with indigenous Mapuche families and immursed ourselves as much as possible in the culture. The following is a series of highlights from one of the best weeks of my life, in no particular order:

1) We realized within the first 5 minutes of our visit that "indigenous" didn't necessarily mean living with thatched roofs and dirt floors, like many of us had anticipated (see picture below). Most of our families had electricity, running water, and a television. We did, however, lack hot running water, so I only managed to give myself one cold bucket bath during the week. For those of you who are familiar with my hygiene habits, though, that wasn't too out of the ordinary.

2) Rachel, the other SIT student, and I went to church with our family, and somehow I ended up giving a speech in Spanish to the entire congregation. I managed to produce a few cohesive sentences, and for that I was very thankful. I said something like, "Thank you for having us...we're very excited to be here and to share this experience with you..." Booya! This happened just a few hours after arriving Sunday morning. Talk about first impressions.

3) The food was heavenly yet deadly at the same time. We basically ate an entire cow for lunch and dinner. And lots of sopaipillas (fried dough would be the best way to describe them). We knew we were in for a week of hearty eating on the first day when we asked for "just a little bit of food, something small," and got this:

4) We had a class of Mapudungun, the indigenous language of the Mapuche people. I'm sure you can guess just by the name of the language itself that it's rather difficult. We all struggled with the pronunciation but had a great time trying nonetheless.

5) I taught Rachel and my host siblings (Raul and Mabel) how to play Dutch Blitz, only the best card game ever (and it just so happens to originate in Pennsylvania). They absolutely loved it and were thrilled to receive their own set as a gift.

6) We learned how to play palín, the Mapuche sport. It's very similar to field hockey, only with a much longer and narrower field. We were actually pretty bad in terms of skill but made up for it in aggressiveness. We all came away with a few battle wounds.

7) Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of the week was the music. Raul, my host brother, plays multiple instruments and is currently studying to be a music teacher. He and his four younger cousins formed a music group in 2006 (with Raul as their teacher) that plays a lot of traditional music from Peru and Northern Chile. Rachel and I were lucky enough to see them perform a few times during the week. Even if just a practice or an impromptu performance at a family gathering, they gave me the chills. Did I mention they have a CD? It's incredible. Also, every once in a while after dinner, my host father (whose name also happens to be Raul) and I would sing hymns from the Spanish hymnal. Harmony is a beautiful thing. I can think of very few things I enjoy more than harmonizing with a fellow singer.

THIS IS A VIDEO OF THE MUSIC GROUP

8) I prayed for the first time in Spanish. Out loud. For a large group of people. My host father liked to volunteer me for things like that and catch me off guard. It was like the church speech all over again. Again, I survived, and managed to put together a few sentences that I assume made a bit of sense judging by the intermittent "amens."

9) Every night after dinner, and sometimes more often, we would drink mate (pronounced MAH-tay). It's a huge cultural thing here, almost as popular as in Argentina. It's comparable to tea in taste, but it involves so much more community. There's only one mug for the table, filled with loose herbs and hot water. You drink out of a silver straw that has a filter at the bottom, and once you've finished, the server wipes the straw clean, fills the mug up again, and passes it on to the next person. We would spend at least an hour every night talking over mate. I plan to bring a few mate mugs and straws back home with me and start a new tradition with my friends.

10) Our wonderful family: Raul (father), Lucy (mother), Mabel (sister), and Raul (brother, nicknamed Ruly). They welcomed me and Rachel into their lives with open arms and showed us hospitality like we've never seen before. There wasn't a dry eye in the house on the night of our departure. And to think, we were only there for a week. It's hard to believe.


I think I can speak for the majority of the group when I say that we didn't want to return to Santiago, partly because we knew there was a lot of work (and noise and pollution) waiting for us, but mostly because the week with the Mapuche people was so peaceful. Getting attached to our host families was a contributor, too. It really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us. I'm currently trying to figure out what I can study during the research period in May in order to return to the community, or at least be nearby.

This week we are trying to soak up the last few days in Santiago before flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina on Saturday. We'll be there for two weeks, again staying with host families in pairs. And then before you know it, it will be May, when we conduct our individual research projects. EEK. It's going too fast.

I hope all is well with you! Keep the updates coming :-)

Fried eggs, fried brain.

We spent this past weekend in beautiful Valparaíso, Chile, and let’s just say that if I didn’t have to get back to the States pronto, I would spend my summer there. It’s just undeniably gorgeous, or “magical” as my mother says. It really is. Something about the colorful houses built on these steep hills, right on the water—it kind of reminds me of Cinque Terre, Italy.

We ate some wonderful seafood and made a special effort to eat “chorillana,” a traditional Chilean dish which deserves a special explanation. If I weren’t already to die of a heart attack, I will now. Picture this (slash look at the picture): steak on top of fried onions on top of fried eggs on top of french fries. Yes, it is possible to eat that many fried things on one plate and still live to tell the story. Too good. Deadly, even. (FYI: each plate is for two people to share. Does that make it any better?)

The weekend wasn’t all for exploration and relaxation, however. We visited an all-girls technical school in the city, a small rural school 30 minutes away, and had a panel discussion with Valparaíso branch of the Teacher’s Association—all very interesting and a nice break from the sometimes monotonous class schedule in Santiago. At the rural school I made friends with two very adorable sisters named Javiera and Belen, which reminded me so much of my time in Peru. I knew them for all but two hours, yet still felt sad leaving them behind. I mean, really, how could you not instantly fall in love with these faces?

We returned to Santiago early Sunday afternoon in order to avoid any danger on the streets. As I mentioned in my last post, March 29th is the “Día del Joven Combatiente,” a day of remembrance for the Vergara Toledo brothers who were killed in 1985 after a confrontation with the police (during the Pinochet dictatorship, of course—they were leftists). This day, however, represents much more than the death of these two young brothers; it has turned into a day to express anger toward the many human rights violations during the dictatorship years. Every year this day moves farther and farther away from being a silent vigil: protests, looting, police confrontations, bomb threats, small fires, etc. This year, so I’ve heard, wasn’t as lively as in years past—some say because of the soccer game versus Peru that everybody was watching—but I was still able to hear more sirens than usual throughout the night. It’s kind of an ironic day, I think. That is, protesting the violence of the Pinochet dictatorship with…..more violence. I guess I didn’t live the dictatorship years; I can’t even begin to comprehend how people choose to react. Some, like the young people on March 29th, choose violence, while others prefer to ignore the subject completely. From my experience, however, most people talk about the years between 1973 and 1990 as “uncharacteristically Chilean.” They acknowledge the dictatorship as a dark and weak time in Chilean history, yet they’re sure of the fact that it won’t happen again, that they’ve moved on, that they’re once again embracing democracy.

________________________________________

Tomorrow, Thursday, is a significant day for many reasons: it's the second-to-last day of Spanish class, our last school observation, and also the day of the national teachers' strike. The school I'm observing assured me that they will still have school despite the strike, but there's no guarantee that I won't arrive in the afternoon only to find empty classrooms. That's actually what happened to me on Tuesday this week, and that wasn't even a strike day. I walked 30 minutes to the school, found out that the children were sent home early for some strange reason, then turned around and walked right back. When class happens to be in session, though, observing can be quite the experience. The school seriously lacks resources, just like most municipal schools in Chile.


From my mere four days of observation, it seems to me that the teachers have all but given up on being creative or taking advantage of the time to teach lessons. Classrooms act more like holding cells than learning environments. Boys in seventh and eighth grade whistle and say very inappropriate things to me and my partner without any sort of punishment. Teachers often struggle to gain control of their students. It's a very physical example of what we're learning about in our seminars: the privatization of the educational system during the dictatorship, the huge disparity between public and private education, the necessity to have money to receive a good education, etc. Basically, combine all these things, add a bit of politics, and there you have the reason for the teachers' strikes and the ongoing fight for educational reform in Chile. It's such an ironic situation, actually, because the law that changed the educational system so drastically for the worse was passed on the LAST day of Pinochet's dictatorship. His LAST day in power! Nineteen years later, and they're still trying to untangle this stubborn knot. Unfortunately, there are people from the Pinochet's government who still hold powerful positions (and some would say a very conservative right) who impede this untangling process. It's all very complicated; we've only begun to scratch the surface of some very big questions. But really, with a program name like "Education and Social Change," what better time to be in Chile?

Well friends, I don't know about you, but my brain is fried. It could be all this writing, or maybe playing translator all day......or the chorillana. Mmmm.....chorillana.....
Ciao,
Jenna

Shoutout for the week: thank you, Katelin French, for your letter! I miss you too!

OH! And a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdYMeyDJgI
I took it while ascending one of the Valparaiso hills in the famous "ascensores."