I imagine many of you fuming with anger after reading my most recent posts, since it's been quite a while since I've posted anything about traveling. Not only are travel posts fun to write, but I imagine that they are also more fun to read than posts in which I write about my random late night thoughts. So, where are these travel posts? Well, actually, since Gil left in August, the furthest I've gone is about an hour and a half outside of Puerto Madryn. I have been spending my days and finding ways to occupy myself here. It's not that I'm necessarily tired of traveling but that I felt like I did quite a lot during the first half of my time here and wanted to spend some time just enjoying the life I've created here in Madryn...re my last post, this, I might add, is another strange part of a Fulbright. We're here long enough to feel the urge to create a life, and, by the time you finally feel like you've got a routine and feel excited about what you're doing, it's time to wrap things up.
For starters, I go to a ceramics class! I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but I think it's time to talk a little more about it. I was initially inspired to go to a ceramics class after going to one in July with Leia in Corrientes. In that class, I equal parts hated and loved the process. I thought it was super cool to be able to make something with my hands, but I hated how long it took and how your piece wasn't just ready and perfect on command. I was, actually, lowkey miserable in the class; yet, for some reason, I wanted to do it again. A few weeks after that class, friend of mine here in Madryn posted a story of her in a ceramics class on Instagram. Within a week, I was signed up. I started the Monday after Gil left.
Now that I've had some practice, I've really been enjoying this space! I have never really thought of myself as a very creative person (even if Renée said I was on my last employee review). However, I say this as if I've ever actually had a creative outlet to confirm that. In class, I'm learning and realizing that creativity can come with practice. As I continue going to classes, I get more and more ideas about things to make and how to decorate them. It's super exciting! While my pieces aren't exactly the prettiest things in the world, I'm always super excited every Monday to go to class.
Here are some of the pieces I've made so far!
This is the first thing I ever made! It's a spoon holder and is dirty because it is a used spoon holder. It looks like a shell because it is a shell. Yani has not let me hear the end of this piece. It took me what felt like years to make it, and she has taken every opportunity possible to remind me.
I've also made an incense holder thing. In Spanish, the word for this is a sahumador, and I truly have no idea what the actually translation is in English. This one is also dirty because it is ~used~.
And here's a bowl I made. It's not the prettiest, and I'm not the proudest of it, but it works.
I made a maceta, a flower pot, too, but it's outside, and I don't feel like going to take a picture of it.
I've also been spending time with my ceramics friends, Angi and Luz! Here we are in class. Peep my maceta in the bottom right corner.
And here I am in ceramics. I am currently making a very large mug...so large that the instructor asked if I was making a flower pot. I just like lots of coffee, okay?
We've also had some meriendas and some drinks together. Here we are trying to figure out what to do with an injured bird after it got attacked by a cat. While we could not save it, we placed it in a tree for, hopefully, a nice, peaceful end. RIP little bird.
I have, believe it or not, been working, too. I've been really enjoying some of the activities I've been leading in some of the classes I go to. I'll give you all a little reminder as to which classes I attend, since it's changed a little:
Monday: Phonetics and Phonology 1 (I started going to this recently. I initially had Mondays off, but since I knew I didn't have any travel plans and because I wanted to actually learn what all the symbols and words that are so foreign to me mean, I asked Sonia if I could start going to her class. Luckily (and surprisingly), she said yes...I say surprisingly because it guaranteed that she would, theoretically, be stuck in a class with me every single day heehee.)
Tuesday: research in English classes (again, with Sonia) - As an aside, I stopped going to the previous phonetics class back in June. I was told I didn't need to go to that class anymore, and since I knew that Sonia had a class at the same time, I asked her if I could join hers. Luckily (and surprisingly), she said yes.
Wednesday: an intro English class for a student who I believe is planning to start at the institute next year (you guessed it...with Sonia)
Thursday: language 2 with a teacher named Kari and language 1 with Sonia
Friday: language 3 with a teacher named Ceci and didactics with Sol and Sonia
In the language classes, I've been enjoying having the opportunity to run activities and discussions. For example, in Language 1 a few weeks ago, I chatted with the class about my time as a vegan, and, then, we had a debate with pro- and anti-meat-eaters.
Here we are chatting and preparing to debate about veganism.
In another class, I taught the students some U.S. colloquialisms like "rip off the bandaid" and "I don't buy that." Then, the students worked in groups and roleplayed scenarios using some of the phrases we learned. I convinced Sonia to act with me. In our situation, we were a fighting couple. I have a video of us acting, but if I were to post that for all of you to see, Sonia would actually murder me. Not to be dramatic, but she would probably push me off a cliff into the water. Or she would have me deported and then somehow find a way to ban me from ever coming back into the country.
Last week, in Language 1, we did some gossiping. Sonia wanted the students to practice reported speech (reporting what someone else said, "He said that he wanted...") and conditionals (If I see him, I will...If I were a unicorn, I would...), so we brainstormed and came up with an activity related to gossiping. The students worked in pairs, and each person in the pair was given a different scenario that they overheard or experienced. As someone in a pair, I had to report the dialogue in my scenario to my partner, and then ask them for advice.
Sonia and I are kind of gossips (hence, why I watch the Bachelor, so that I can gossip about something that doesn't impact the people I know directly), so we wanted nice hot, juicy tea. Here's one of the scenarios:
We had an odd number of students that day, so I got to gossip, too! Terrible photo of me, but here is more proof that I do go to classes.
Although I have no pictures as proof, I do go to other classes! The students in Language 3 were interested in learning about some differences between here and the U.S., so we've talked about the higher education system in the U.S., the small differences in restaurant culture, and even a little bit about different accents and dialects found in the U.S.
Recently, there have been a few more teacher and janitor strikes during the week, which means that sometimes we don't have class or we have class online. Although it's a major bummer when we don't have class, I try to find some fun work arounds. If I'm available a day we don't have class, I often reach out to the students to see if they want to hangout and shoot the breeze and practice some English outside of class just because we can.
Speaking of English classes, this last month, I had the opportunity to go to a few English classes with Sol and the three students who were basically working as student teachers by teaching an English class to 11/12 year-olds in a primary school once a week. Unlike previous years, the three students in practica 4 from the teacher training college doing this student teaching were teaching at a school where English isn't taught, which means that some of their students had never studied/learned English before. I can imagine that must've been super exciting and super intimidating for all parties involved.
I went to three classes at the end of September and to the little activities the students organized to celebrate their last day working at the school. The first time I went to the classes, the students in class asked me a variety of questions to get to know me like, "What is your favorite color?" and "What is your favorite animal?". Thankfully, I had the practica students give me the questions beforehand, so I could prep and think of appropriate answers. For example, rolling into class and saying my current favorite book is Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami or The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante would quite literally mean absolutely nothing to the students. Did I lie a little and pretend that I've read and loved The Little Prince? Yes, but they don't need to know that.
After answering the students' questions in English, we gave them the chance to ask me questions in Spanish. While I'm sure the students were super duper duper nervous to speak in English with a native speaker, I was super duper duper nervous for these students' questions. That's not because I knew that there were going to be some silly questions thrown my way (I've worked with kids long enough to know the types of questions 11/12 year-olds have) but because I was going to be tasked with answering questions in Spanish shouted at me by 11/12 year-olds with the additional background noise of a class full of 11/12 year-olds. I was a tad worried that this experience would be reminiscent of the listening comprehension audios for exams in advanced Spanish classes which, in my experience, consisted of blenders on high speed with elevator music blasting and a voice mumbling something really softly in the background about a news article they read. Fortunately, I impressed both myself and Sol in each of the classes and was able to understand basically all of the questions the students asked and was able to respond in a Spanish that was relatively coherent.
I brought a little PowerPoint to the classes to show pictures of my answers. Naturally, I can't sure you a bunch of 11/12 year-olds, so here's a picture of me Sol got while we were in one of the classes.
And here is Juana and I on her last day of teaching. My poor friend was very very anxious and sad and excited and a bunch of other emotions as we (sort of impatiently) waited to get the activities started.
I really enjoyed my opportunity getting to know the students a little bit and getting to be a part of Juana's work. It was cool being able to see her in action and work with the kiddos.
This last month, I also went on a yoga/meditation retreat. It started on a Saturday morning and went until Sunday afternoon. It took place about an hour and a half away outside of a town called Gaiman. To get there, I carpooled with of few of the women who go to the same place as I do for meditation classes. The location for the retreat was really pretty and peaceful! We spent most of our time outside because, luckily, the universe gave us two perfect days to be outside.
We (we were about 25) started the retreat with a yoga class. This class was followed by lots and lots of meditating. So much meditating. I'm not saying this as a bad thing, but just like as a fact. We meditated for hours. It was really peaceful, though, meditating outside. We were in a more or less remote location, so all you could hear was the wind and the birds chirping in the background. It was definitely hugely different than meditating indoors. During one of the meditations, I may or may not have fallen asleep (oops). At some point we had lunch and merienda. Mealtimes were pretty exciting for me because the retreat was catered by a vegan business, so everything with the exception of a few sweet items was vegan! I hadn't seen that much vegan food all at once for quite a while, so I did end up going a little ham during merienda, but oh well.
After merienda, we did a sort of group family constellations session. At this point, we were all pretty exhausted but pushed through. Family constellations sessions can reveal different dynamics that may span generations of your family. Of course, there's much more to it than that, but that's kind of the main idea. By the time we were done with this session, I was ready for bed (note it was only like 9:30pm haha), but we had dinner then played a bit of a card game before calling it a day.
Sunday morning, we started bright and early with yoga at 7:30. We then had breakfast, meditated a little, and got to take a look at our astrological charts, so what the sky looked like when we were born. The charts also talked about our sign (I'm an aries), our moon, and rising among other fun astrological things.
Was it a weekend full of major hippie things? Yes. Absolutely yes. However, it was really nice to take some time to just do what I was told to do. I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got back to Puerto Madryn that Sunday. Although physically, we didn't do much. Mentally, I was drained. I was also just ready to be alone with my own thoughts because not only was I doing all of that mental heavy lifting, I was doing it in Spanish and then turning around and interacting with people in Spanish. My brain felt like absolute mush. When we got back, I went on a nice long walk on my own to just exist and process everything we did during the retreat.
This is where we stayed...
And the outside + the sky at night...
You could see a ton of stars at night, but, as you can see, my phone struggled just a little capturing them.
Here are some pictures of us in action:
Anto on my right (the left in the picture) is my mediation instructor! In retrospect, I could have put my sunglasses on to avoid squinting so much in this picture.
And a picture of the whole group:
It is hard for me sometimes to take part in activities where there are a bunch of people I don't know. While I may be introverted, it's more specifically because of the language barrier. It often takes me a minute or two to get used to how new people sound. Additionally, meeting new people can be exhausting here because it almost always means that I undergo some sort of a regression of age. I've spoken before about how learning a language makes you feel as if you've regressed age-wise because you are unable to express yourself as someone of your age normally can. Well, when I meet new people, these new folx, understandably, assume that I can't speak Spanish very well, so I have to go through a whole process of proving myself every time. During which, it can be awkward and uncomfortable because people, unconsciously I'm sure, talk about you in the third person like, "Don't say that word! She probably doesn't know what it means" or "We should talk slower so that she understands us." While they may mean well, it can feel awkward and uncomfy because I'm sitting there listening to them talk about me. Fortunately, I had already met the few people who go to meditation classes at the same place I go, so I could relax a little with them.
Otherwise, I have just been hanging out and trying to enjoy my time here. I realized today that, if you include this weekend, I have three more weekends until my grant finishes. That kind of really stresses me out a bit! I hadn't realized it was so soon, so now I feel as if I have to approach everything with urgency. It's like I'm desperately searching some kind of button to slow down time. However, within this desperate search, I'm trying to grasp on to every single moment that I have here. I'm trying to ingrain into my memory the way someone sounds when they speak in Spanish and the way someone else makes the "qué sé yo" gesture and what it's like to fight about who is paying for the weekly coffee/tea with Sol and Sonia and how it feels to walk on the beach before sunset and how I look forward to the gossip sessions Yani and I have on Thursday nights and what the excitement I have to go to ceramics on Mondays to mold some clay while shooting the breeze with my friends feels like.
For me, it's really weird experiencing your life at the end of a chapter you really don't want to end. I find myself trying to stand back and observe while taking as many mental pictures as I possibly can of what I am a part of. However, I desperately, so very desperately am trying to experience every single moment that I possibly can. On top of all of it, I can't help but be poignantly aware of the fact that while I am so frantically trying to milk everything out of every single interaction I have be it with Sol or Sonia or my students or Yani or Juana or my ceramics friends or whoever else I spend my time with, it's literally just any other normal week for everyone else.
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