ayer y el dia antes de ayer

bueno. now it´s my turn to tell you all about yesterday and the day before that.

a ver. monday i did not have any planned activities with my program. it was the one weekday in buenos aires that we had this. so, this was the only day that i could visit el colegio, or high school, of my little sister, lucila. my visit to the school reminded me very much of the time that i spent in kenya because i first had to talk to and get to know the teachers. after i had done this, i could access the school. in fact, my host mother had to write a letter explaining why i wanted to visit the school and about me. after we went through all of this, yesterday finally came and i arrived. luli´s school is private, with all grades from 0 to 12, and a total of about 1000 students. there´s about 350 high schoolers. seeing as it was a private school, i was expecting nice accomadations, good teachers, and well stocked classrooms. what i met was the opposite.

the school was all concrete and not heated, which meant that it was frigid. all of the students wore their coats in class. the ´gym´was an outdoor ice cube, in my humble opinion. i first went up the stairs to the upper floors where the secondary school is. before i could go to class, i sat for twenty minutes in the teacher´s work room where three teachers asked me questions and myself and the united states. of course, the conversation eventually got to how much teachers make in the united states compared to argentina. then i went to visit luli´s social communication class. this was fun and reminded me of some people that were in my class in high school. although no one had books and the room was bare, the air was full of yelling students and the teachers face was red from exertion. the class was discussing the recent passing of a law in buenos aires that makes smoking in restaurants illegal (i´m not sure exactly what it is but i think that´s it). then they switched over to the upcoming elections in buenos aires, which almost everyone had an opinion on, but especially the fellow in the second row. he and the teacher engaged on the matter until the end of class. the teacher´s antics were great, he kept picking up and setting down the chalk, rubbing his face and sitting down just to stand up again. my sister told me he is very porteño.

after that i went to visit an english class. i couldn´t go to luli´s english class with her because the teacher thought that i would help her. instead, i went to the upper level english class. most of the students in this class spoke a level of english at or a little below where i´m at with spanish. the teacher let me talk and the students ask me questions for the entire class, as a verbal exercise. that was fun. we eventually got to talking about living abroad and stereotypes that other countries have of the united states. this was a very interesting conversation to have when i was somewhat alone. i ended up telling the students about how much i love traveling because of the awareness that it gives me and the people that i interact with. i said that i thought that every high school student should have an experience living abroad so that open their horizons early. i tried to describe how bubbles and stereotypes develop no matter where you live, but it might be easier in a richer country like the united states to be ignorant of the world around them. at the end of the class the teacher asked me if i could come back before i left argentina, which was nice, and i think i´ll try. i love to talk to high school students because they´re just at the point where they´re ready to explore, to be their own people, to make their own decisions, but they´re also still aware of what it is to be a kid and to be small. they´re open and energetic and searching.

yesterday, tuesday, we visited one of the members of the bicameral congress here in argentina. we talked with estaban bullrich (look at his blog if you read spanish) who is in argentina´s version of the house of representatives. he is the lead in a huge corruption case that is going through the courts right now in argentina. his real passion is education, which was great to hear, and he talked about his kids a lot. he jumped into politics after the economic disaster here in 2001 like many people, because it was obvious that a change was (and still is to an extent) needed.

he said some really interesting insightful things about argentine politics and about his own beliefs. political parties in argentina are named after their leaders primarily and this, as he said, destroys the normal left/right conservative/liberal positions because instead of associating representatives with parties, people assiociate them with past actions of their party leaders, good or bad. an example of this happened on the radio with when bullrich, who is a member of a right-center coalition, was told that he was responsible for the 3,000 disappeared people killed by the military governments of the 70´s. his response to that claim was that he was six years old at the time. he also talked about how spirituality and politics can be linked, but aren´t in argentina. he said that in argentina, all that people do is ask the government for things. what can happen is that people can see the need to develop trustworthy and functional institutions as an investment for future generations because of the worth of human life, and therefore work together towards building a better government. he also gave us some stats on education in argentina, the only one of which i remember is that 4/100 people graduate from college in argentina. it was a really informative and interesting talk. the man was on top of his stuff.

after we finished our visit we crossed the street to the congress building or argentina for a full out tour. we saw the library of congress, which had a bullet hole in one bookshelf from a coup d'etat in the thirties. we also saw the constitution of argentina, and the veils that covered evita´s body one of the times she moved grave sites. we saw the room in which congress meets as well as the smoking room in all pink that evita started to host women. it reminded me of the congress in d.c. except that everything was falling apart a little bit, a little bit older, and little bit more disorganized. that seems to be the trend here in argentina.


this is one of the glass ceilings in the congress building.