Dancing and the Sand

There are people who have friends that aren't really great friends. Some people are fortunate enough to have one friend. I mean somebody with whom one is and feels safe, with whom one can be silly, learn, love and play. The selection committees responsible for choosing the 15 Argentine Fulbrights somehow managed to choose 15 such people. Each of us is kind, creative, and an unstoppable, flexible force of imagination...

Thanks to Tim for making this map so that we can see where all of the Argentine Fulbright ETAs are located.

We English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) met just briefly at the beginning of our time in Argentina, and on June 12 we all met again in Buenos Aires at the Fulbright Commission. The Commission sat and listened as each of us told about our experiences: some of us talked about living with wealthy chain smokers, others about eating peanut butter and jelly with their students (that's me!).

As you can see from the pictures above, the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Enhancement Seminar (facilitated by the Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States and Brazil, Fulbright Commission Brazil) took place in a beautiful place. The first two pictures are from our day on a Brazilian island, and the third is from our visit to the US Consulate in São Paulo.

The Seminar was perfect. Fulbright ETAs from Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina met up to exchange stories, ideas, to network, and to generally be energized. We had a video conference with the State Department folks in D.C., and one of them even flew down to join us. He danced with us.

We did a lot of work, and it was a lot of fun. My presentation (we each presented) was entitled, Crema de Maní, or peanut butter, and was mostly about the extra-curricular activities that my students and I have created here in Resistencia, Argentina.

These next two pictures are from our trip to dinner in Buenos Aires before we all headed to Brazil.

I finally got to meet a friend's daughter, Anna Newman of Fayetteville, Arkansas, and she got to meet Krishna, you may remember him from my first blog entry. We ate at the second best restaurant in Buenos Aires: 26 pesos for a vegetarian buffet. What!

Here is a picture of our group reunited, telling the Fulbright Commission and each other about our experiences.

In the hotels in Brazil, we visited until we could visit no more.

This would be a great cover for our band's album, though we don't have a band or an album. This was on our walk to dinner. Notice the ever present and vivid graffiti. Brazil has the best graffiti of any place I've been.

Eric, Jenny, Hallock and I befriended the waiter at a restaurant just down the street from our hotel.

Here are Jenny and I getting ready to fly after dinner.

Here I am on the beautiful Brazilian island's beach. To get to the beach nearest our hotel required a dream-like journey. Paige and I made the journey running through the night. We had to sprint down an ever-narrowing dirt path until in nigh total darkness we were slowed to a walk between an aged stone wall 6 feet tall on either side. We could hear the ocean and then see it at the end of this veritable tunnel, and it looked as though we would step from the walled path and fall right in. Paige and I were the first ones to the ocean. Once there some of us danced to ourselves, some of us sang, some of us visited quietly about our most sacred places in the world.
That, our first night on the beach, will remain one of my favorite memories for a while. Walking along the moist sand the indentation of our footprints would sparkle as phosphorescent algae reacted to our steps. They sparkled like stars in the sand, and I walked along the beach turned like an owl watching the sand stars behind me. I haven't felt such like a child since... I was a child.

Paige, Jenny, Tim, me, and two Fulbrighters from the Chile contingent, Lucy and Brad. We ran, climbed, frisbeed, and some of us even played Red Rover. They are brilliant.
And fun!
And we danced so much (elsewhere, not on the island)... samba, capoeira, as well as dances without names.
That was my first time dancing capoeria. What a blast. It's like interactive yoga put to great music.
(from Wikipedia: Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian art form that combines elements of martial arts, games, music, and dance. It was created in Brazil by slaves brought from Africa, especially from present day Angola some time after the 16th century.)

Matt has a great sense of humor and can sing like nobody's business. He's of the Chilean contingent. Among other great tunes, we sang Dispatch's "The General, Barefoot Truth's "Changes in the Weather," and in the Gospel vein, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand," "People Get Ready," "In the Garden," and "How Great Thou Art."

We sang quite a bit, actually. And Mary Ellen there brought her guitar. (She's lived in Fayetteville! It felt so good to talk street names!)

After a day at the beach and before presentations got started...

OK, from here on out the pictures have to do with a presentation my high school students put on for me. It included local food (they made sure none of it had any meat) and local dance. After I ate and they performed, they tried to teach the French teaching assistant and me a little about folklórico, folk dancing.

Tell you what, these are some talented English students.



The above video is from my first day with the Fulbrighter's on March 15, 2009. It's fairly obvious that I'm exhausted in this video, but it's obvious in a really funny way.

One final thing, a summation of my last four July 4ths.

July 4, 2006. Cuernavaca, Mexico. The other Americans studying abroad went out all night. Fortunately, my roommate Chris was 26 and had passed his partying stage and so we went out only to make an appearance. I had what might have been my second alcoholic drink of all time, a bluish liquid with fire on top, and returned extra talkative to Silvia, my Mexican (host) Mom.
July 4, 2007. The Woods, Northwest Arkansas. Josh Culwell, Lydia Michaels, Ryan Denham and I arrived at the Rainbow Gathering the night before and (unbeknownst to us and as we would later discover) pitched our tent in poison ivy. On the 4th itself the first half of the day is passed in silence, no one utters a word and even motions are used sparingly. Silence flows until sometime in the afternoon when everyone gathers in a thousand-person circle and chants “OM.”
July 4, 2008. 25 kilometers from Coimbatore, India. The night before, a great Indian musician and teacher played a British melody which also serves as one of our patriotic tunes in the States (can you name that tune?). After his performance, Swami Dayananda declared that the next day would be one of meditation and of silence until he returned from a trip to Chennai. We didn't utter a word and even motions were used sparingly.
July 4, 2009. Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina. I resolved not to talk this morning and actually scared myself when I accidently broke the silence with song! Ha! I took a practice LSAT and began my personal statement for law school applications. Then some twelve or so English professors and I got together and read poetry.

Thank ya'll for keeping in touch with me via the blog. As my Dad would say, "Write me a letter when you learn to write!"

The Original Wailers and Me

When I was about 16 I really heard for the first time No Woman, No Cry (from Bob Marley and The Wailers’ Live! album) on a compilation CD that my Dad created. Then I read the biography, bought a couple of Marley CDs and then eventually hunted them all down and started growing my own dreadlocks and was the disc jokey for the Reggae Roadblock on KXUA 88.3, the University of Arkansas’ radio station. Well, I combed the dreads out with the help of my friends Jonathan and Grace and my sister Sarah (mostly Jonathan), and now I’m balancing between a love of hip-hop, folk, reggae, and spirituals.

Thanks to Bob Marley and the Wailers, a nascent and unacknowledged idea was given assurance, that of a world with social justice and peace, a world without borders, a world where we understand that our family and nation's well-being is not dependent on independence and competition, but that our own happiness and those we love most are best served by working in interdependence and cooperation with everyone in the world. Dad also introduced me to Alexei Panshin's "The New Celebrations," a collection of stories that according to Dad is about the human condition. So because of this and because of reggae I began to stir, to consider the possibilities of a mature world.

And about eight years later, on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009, thanks to my friend Rochelle (the first friend from home I've seen in Argentina!), I got to hang with Bob’s old group, The Original Wailers! Yippee!!



In the photo above you can see all but one of the current band members. To my left is Junior Marvin and to his left is Rochelle Bradshaw. In the video clip you can see everyone gettin' with it. We had sooo much fun, and the value of meeting and hanging with these unselfish and fun musicians... well, it meant a lot to me.

They played at Luna Park ( http://www.lunapark.com.ar/ )It is a major place in the microcentro of Buenos Aires. It’s also hosted a pope or two.

Here are Rochelle and me! Their schedule had been hectic and this was one of the few times she'd been able to sit down and have a meal.

I had arranged my work schedule to fulfill my hours, and then took a bus to Buenos Aires. Argentina is famous for its buses, and rightfully so; the super soft seat turns into a bed, literally, and a pillow and blanket are provided. The only drawback was an amusing one: I had to watch a string of mixed 80s music videos, and there was no way to turn off the plasma screen or the music. Ha!

Buenos Aires further enchanted me. I left on the night of the 15th from Resistencia and arrived the next morning in BA. I ate at Spring Restaurant, Bio Restaurant, and a great little French place, and visited my friend and Gurudev disciple Krishna. He founded this yoga/thai massage place: http://www.espaciothai.com/ He and I saw Star Trek together (Two thumbs way up!). I spent the days meandering around Palermo, which reminds me of Westminster in London, and I studied just a little on the side for you know what. (In case you don't, I'm referring to the Law School Admissions Test, aka the LSAT.)

And the leaves were falling and the air was chilly... it is fall in May! Which is totally strange. Seeing that previous to 2007 I spent 10 years marching in fall football games, I still feel like I should be suiting up and marching around whether it is to play Danville's fight song or the UA's.

While in Palermo, I stayed in the Palermo House Hostel and recorded a video for ya'll:



I'll eventually put a few more videos on youtube.com from The Original Wailers show as well as one from my favorite restaurant in the country, Spring Restaurante. It's oddly dramatic website is at http://springrestaurante.com.ar/

After having lunch (pictured above) at a really great French restaurant, I took care of some visa business for the Fulbright Conference trip to Sao Paolo, Brazil. In response to Bush's stiffer visa requirements, Brazil has made similarly bizarre demands of US citizens entering Brazil. They wanted a credit card statement, bank statements, and bla bla bla. But it all got taken care of, 'seems like.

After two nights in the Palermo House Hostel I moved to a hostel near Rochelle's hotel. We got to hang out the whole afternoon on Tuesday because the band didn't have to go to sound check. While we were hanging out, Annicia, a lovely mother of ten with perfect posture who also sings harmony, worked on Rochelle's hair... and Rochelle hooked me up with an All Access pass!! Thank you, Rochelle!!

And I took a picture of two exciting and important items (above): the All Access pass Rochelle got for me and my LonelyPlanet: Argentina tourist guidebook.

We all met in the lobby and rode the bus to the venue, hung out back stage, and then Rochelle, Annicia, Junior Marvin and I said a prayer and they all got to work. What a GREAT show. It was soooo much fun, and we visited back stage together before the encore... what a dream. And then Al Anderson played an awesome, soulful, beautiful solo for the first song of the encore. Loooooovveely.

So like I said... this show in Buenos Aires was VERY important to me because reggae was among the first things to share with me the idea of an international consciousness, an awareness that love for ones own backyard and immediate family is insufficient and even detrimental to that yard and that family. We are all called to love our whole planet, to “imagine it pretty and whole” to quote the poet from the last blog entry, and to work toward a planet of social justice and peace. Thank you, Reggae! !!

But I was in Buenos Aires for a few days before the show, and so I visited a few neat friends and neat places while I was there, including...

Katie and Kat! Fellow Fulbright ETA Scholars who made it to the show...

and who after the show met Rochelle and Annicia! Fulbright Scholars and harmony singers... totally sweet. Annicia made a huge impression on me; at least one band member was ailing and she cared for him, and she brought Rochelle some preventative medicine, and she is wise. Really tuned in, and wise. She's an inspiration. And like I said: perfect posture.

The Casa Rosada (The Pink House) was between me and the movie theater where Star Trek was playing, so I snapped a photo and kept trucking. It's like Argentina's version of our White House. It's the official seat of the executive branch, and when Evita famously greeted folks from its balcony, well, that would be one of those balconies to my right.

This is a picture of Puerto Madero (Port Lumber or Port Timber would be the direct translation... but madero can also mean oaf) I found on Google. It looked a lot like this on my walk to Star Trek except that it was drizzling.

There was a really fun band, La Todo Mal Orquestra ( The Totally Bad Orchestra, www.latodomalorquestra.com.ar ) in Plaza Palermo Viejo near my Indian restaurant and the yoga studio.

That's almost all for now, family, friends, and blog readers! I'd like to leave you with one more thing. The murder of Dr. George Tiller has me thinking about what is sustaining violence in our global society. Addressing violence at every level and responding non-violently, we will walk into a non-violent paradigm. But before then we might address what perhaps is the most prevalent form of violence: consumerism, buying things we don't need.

George W. Bush, perhaps the most terrible perpetrator of violence in recent history, had a three-
pronged violent response to the violence of 9/11. He had us invade Afghanistan, he had us invade Iraq, and when asked what the average American could do, he told us to go shopping. From the oil fields of Saudi Arabia from whence oil and thereby plastic can come, to the underpaid (and probably young and female) worker in China or Brazil or India or elsewhere making the junk, all the way to our homes, President Bush urged us to perpetuate this cycle of violence. For some, Bush's urging consumerism could be proof enough that it is a serious form of violence.

Bush's violent response correlates to the triumvirate of violence that was called out by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a speech against the Vietnam War: "I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism." If we are serious about delivering to our offspring a world wherein they might live safely and healthfully, we have to stop buying things. The true cost to the Earth and to ourselves is too high.

And so, clear as day I see the common trajectory of the bullet that killed Dr. Tiller and consumerism's violence. Clear as day are the common trajectories of bullets and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and Tibet and Sudan, and the unnecessary junk (plastic, cotton, wood, diamond and otherwise) that I too often purchase.

"Planned obsolescence" keeps coming to mind, too, the building of stuff so that it falls apart after a few years so that the consumer then buys new stuff. There's a great and sufficiently brief documentary that you might enjoy about such stuff at http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Until next time, if I can't eat it, I'm not gonna buy it! ha!

And here's some lyrics (¡las letras, en español!) to a couple of great anti-television-pro-creativity songs. The first is, "Turn off the TV" by Still on the Hill. I heard this song in the days of my playing trumpet in a hip-hop-reggae band called D. West and the Unknown Soljahs in Fayetteville. It inspired me to get rid of my television. The next song lyrics come from "Television, The Drug of the Nation" by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

Turn of the TV by Still on the Hill
(from their album Mouth Peace , you might like to check out my friends’ website at http://stillonthehill.com/ )

The expressions that we use
the values we choose
the shoes we wear on our feet
the kind of car we drive
how we live our life
‘learned it from the TV

we’re like a sheep bein’ led to the slaughter
like a horse that doesn’t know how to quit drinkin’ water
drawin’ like a moth to a flickerin’ light of a television set
everyday and night

oo turn off the tv
turn off the tv
turn off the tv if you want to be free (2x)

you picked up a Gucci bag
you noticed that the tag
was a’whoppin’ hundred and three
but you couldn’t put it down
it was the hippest one around
‘learned it from the TV

so you reached in your pocket
pulled out your credit card
even though that you knew it was gonna hit ya hard
drawing like a magnet to a shopping spree
you learned to consume watching TV

oo think for yourself
think for yourself
the TV’s controlled by the ones with the wealth

oo turn off the tv
turn off the tv
turn off the tv if you want to be free (2x)

well the men in the suits
on the 6 o’clock news
decide how we view the world
if the news of the day says war’s OK
just watch the flags unfurl
if we believe everything
on the television screen
we’re just puppets on the ends of a string

media head, media head,
don’t believe everything that the television said

try to think for yourself
think for yourself
the TV’s controlled by the ones with the wealth

soo turn off the tv
turn off the tv
turn off the tv if you want to be free
oo turn off the tv
turn off the tv
turn off the tv if you want to be free

At the end of the day
when you gather your pay
you feel you deserve a break
settle in your easy chair
pop a cold beer
make the world go away
but whatever happened to all of your dreams
did you park them in front of a television screen
trying to convince yourself all the while
that you’re not drowning in a sea of denial
o zombie woman, zombie man
do you want to keep living in zombie land

oo media head, media head,
don’t believe everything that the television said

try to think for yourself
think for yourself
the TV’s controlled by the ones with the wealth

soo turn off the tv
turn off the tv
turn off the tv if you want to be free


Television, The Drug of the Nation
by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
(www.spearheadvibrations.com is the website of the Heroes' lead singer's current band)

one nation
under God
has turned into
one nation under the influence
of one drug

Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation (2x)

T.V., its
satellite links
our United States of Unconsciousness
Apathetic therapeutic and extremely addictive
The methadone metronome pumping out
150 channels 24 hours a day
you can flip through all of them
and still there's nothing worth watching
T.V. is the reason why less than 10 percent of our
Nation reads books daily
Why most people think Central America
means Kansas
Socialism means unamerican
and Apartheid is a new headache remedy
absorbed in its world it's so hard to find us
It shapes our minds the most
maybe the mother of our Nation
should remind us
that we're sitting too close to the...

Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation on
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

T.V. is
the stomping ground for political candidates
Where bears in the woods
are chased by Grecian Foremen and
bald eagles
T.V. is mechanized politics
remote controlled over the masses
co-sponsored by environmentally safe gases
watch for the PBS special
It's the perpetuation of the two party system
where image takes precedence over wisdom
Where sound bite politics are served to
the fast food culture
Where straight teeth in your mouth
are more important than the words
that come out of it
Race baiting is the way to get selected
Willie Horton or
Will he not get elected on...

Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation on
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

T.V., is it the reflector or the director?
Does it imitate us
or do we imitate it
because a child watches 1500 murders before he's
twelve-years-old and we wonder why we've created
a Jason generation that learns to laugh
rather than to abhor the horror
T.V. is the place where
armchair generals and quarterbacks can
experience first-hand
the excitement of warfare
as a theme song is sung in the background
Sugary sweet sitcoms
that leave us with a bad actor taste while
pop stars metamorphosize into soda pop stars
You saw the video
You heard the soundtrack
Well now go buy the soft drink
Well, the only cola that I support
would be a union C.O.L.A. -- Cost Of Living Allowance
On

Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation on
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

Back again, "New and improved"
We return to our irregularly programmed schedule
hidden cleverly between heavy breasted
beer and car commercials
CNNESPNABCBCBTNT but mostly B.S.
Where oxymoronic language like
"virtually spotless," "fresh frozen,"
"light yet filling," and "military intelligence"
have become standard
T.V. is the place where phrases are redefined
like "recession" to "necessary downturn"
"Crude oil" on a beach to "mousse"
"Civilian death" to "collateral damages"
and being killed by your own army
is now called "friendly fire"
T.V. is the place where the pursuit
of happiness has become the pursuit of
trivia
Where toothpaste and cars have become
sex objects
Where imagination is sucked out of children
by a cathode ray nipple
T.V. is the only wet nurse
that would create a cripple


Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation on
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation (2x)

PS:

The new haircut! Much thanks to my friend Claudia's friend, a hairdresser who donated her work, time, shampoo, and water to the project.

This photo was an accident; I was trying to get a shot of my new do. But something about the composition is cool.

Here are a couple of gifts given me by a college student and a high school student, respectively. The latter is pretty funny and interesting because, firstly, they consider me blond. Ha! Secondly, the cow and it's representating dulce de leche, or sweet of milk, a popular desert. Then there's maiz, or corn, and then algodón, or cotton, and then soja, or soy. Argentina exports a whole lot of genetically modified soy to Europe for animal feed.

Here's my students! This is not all of them, but it is all of those that came out last Saturday to practice their English for fun.

OK, the next blog entry will feature the upcoming trip to Brazil, so check back in a couple of weeks!

My Job

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"Do you like Obama?"
"How old are you?"
"Do you like Argentina?"
"Do you like asado?" (barbecue)
"What’s your favorite music group?" (There’s a large Lincoln Park and Green Day following here.)
"What’s your favorite movie?"
"What’s your favorite fútbol (soccer) team?"
"Do you know any famous people?"

My high school students tend to giggle with curiosity, to shy away from speaking English and sometimes from speaking at all. Before my coming to a class their English teacher often requires them to draw up questions, and those questions above are some of the more common ones. Once we get those out of the way, I generally make my way to the US Civil Rights Struggle. Students have said that things seem picture perfect in the movies that the US exports and they are surprised to learn that we are still struggling with things like women’s unequal wages, the placement of toxic waste dumps (75% of toxic waste dumps that do not meet with Environmental Protection Agency standards are in predominately African-American or Latino neighborhoods. Eek!), or anti-immigrant sentiment. As part of my job description is serving as a cultural ambassador, I feel a certain responsibility to share stuff that they don’t get from Hollywood, that they don't have access to otherwise. It's nice because they are sooo curious about the United States and since I enjoy talking about it, well, it's a cycle of positive energy.

I’ve been working for maybe a month and a half, and enjoying it. In addition to the hours I am required to work during the week, some students and I arranged a time on Saturday afternoons to meet and simply hang out in English. This for me is a pleasure since Spanish requires a bit more thought; speaking English can feel like taking a breath after holding it for a long time.

I’m also arranging a time with the English professors at the various places I’ve worked to watch movies and/or read poetry in English and then discuss it. We haven’t pulled this off yet, but we will. Organizing something in Argentina… well it takes more time than in the U.S., even more than in India. In my experience.

Also, the professors at San Fernando Rey have said that many of their students are interested in playing music with me, which will be a blast! I suspect. That, also, has yet to gel, but when it does it will make a great blog entry.

And whatever the case, free time is already fleeting. Between teaching English and
serving as a cultural ambassador, preparing for class, volunteering to "hang out in English" and such, and all this alongside daily LSAT studies, there’s hardly time enough to watch the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation a friend downloaded for me. (I think I have ALL of season three. Yeah!)

Another thing that (some of) the students and I enjoyed was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The idea seemed fairly repulsive to many of them before trying it, and to a few of them after trying it. But as a young cultural ambassador, how could I not introduce this vital meal to them? I explained to them that I ate peanut butter and jelly 6 days a week at one time. Not sharing this food would, in my mind, disqualify me from calling myself a cultural ambassador. (joke alert!)

So I found crema de maní and mermelad de frutilla and some good wheat bread, and shared it with a few of the classes in the poorest school at which I worked. They did everything themselves, scooping out spoonfuls of peanut butter and wiping swaths of it along the bread... Como profesionales, like professionals. We had a blast making it, eating it, and then we played frisbee and watched a Michael Franti & Spearhead music video. Ha! Also a blast.

Some students loved it and tried to make more than their fair share, and some were grateful at being reassured that it was OK not to eat beyond the first bite. (And some resolutely refused to try it at all. Ha!)

The time for frisbee was brief, because depending on the class we had either 40 minutes or 80 minutes, and in addition to this I wanted to show Michael Franti & Spearhead's "Hey World" music video (I printed the lyrics and we said them line by line together and discussed their meaning), and prepare and eat peanut butter and jelly.

This is the entrance to the school that serves young people on the lowest end of the socio-economic spectrum. It is located in Barrio Mujeres Argentinas, cerca al golf club, en Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina.
There is some neat art work along the walls of the school.

Here is some more wall art, and the English professor's car. Her name is Angelina, and she really cares about her kids. She has a big heart and reminds me of my sister Sarah.

This is a picture of a heart-shaped tree which is just in front of the bus stop in Barrio Mujeres Aregentinas. It's appropriate because the teachers at the school are really great!

This is one of the students in the act of making a wonderful peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

These students are from the Escuela Normal Sarmiento, the first school at which I taught, it is located in downtown Resistencia. This was the wealthiest school at which I worked.

Here's the school itself. Just across from it is a great plaza where I have been known to eat, observe ciesta (aka take a nap), play frisbee, visit with hives of students, and study for the LSAT.
I still work here every Tuesdays because of a particularly nice, talented class. I'm only required to work at the college in town, but I will keep coming here because it will be fun to see how they advance until I leave in November and because frisbee at recess is way fun.

Here we are! I look taller somehow. Claudia Gomez is this professor's name. (They call high school teachers professors here.)

The lunch that I eat in the plaza comes from here, Rotiseria Natural. Everything here is vegetarian! Ha! Yeah! And the owners are super sweet, and have invited me over a pair of times to visit, share green tea and talk Taoism. The value of a vegetarian restaurant to this vegetarian... well, it means a lot to me. And in this country, where the average person consumes 40 kilograms of beef per year (compared to 25 in the USA), it is even more special.

Pablo Ricchieri was my third and final high school. Socio-economically the students here probably have less problems than those at Barrio Mujeres Argentinas, but their opportunities are probably generally fewer in number than those of students at Escuela Normal Segundaria.

Claudia Susana Rios, an English instructor at Pablo Ricchieri, loves her students. And she is very persistent, very intent on having me come back and visit her classes. She is like all the English professors with whom I've worked in that she is super sweet and speaks great English.
An aside: I always remind students that the Fulbright is a two-way street, that provided they work and do well in school and take advantage of their time with such wonderful teachers as those pictured here with me, well, I always remind them that doors will open. Doors that could lead to more education, a job, travel: to who knows what. This is a new idea for a lot of my students.

"Todo esto es el trabajo de los estudiantes," or "All of this is the work of the students." The students are in charge of maintaining a couple of greenhouses and even an organic vegetable garden, from which students reap vegetables.

On the left is the professor, Claudia; this picture is pretty neat because if you look closely you can see a few of the things that their questions led me to talk about: there’s a map of the USA with Arkansas being the only state drawn in, there’s “Michael Franti and Spearhead” (they must have asked about what kind of music I listen to), “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “Loaded Weapon 1” (I’m not sure if these were actually on the board, but they were if they asked me about my favorite movies), Sarah and William (my sibling and her child), Fulbright (the scholarship that brought me here and could some day take them to the USA), a drawing of China and Tibet (the question that prompted this drawing may have been, “You said that you liked one thing that George Bush did in eight years, what was it?” And then I would explain about how he gave the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal and hosted His Holiness in the White House. It may have been, “What other languages do you speak?” And though I do not speak Tibetan, I can say hello and how are you, and the students get a kick out of that.), there’s the word curfew (they were interested in the idea of having to be back home by a certain time; for them parties often last until 6, 7 or 8am the following morning.), and a drawing of South America in relation to North America with South America being on top for a change.

As allegorically appropriate as the heart-shaped Weeping Willow outside Barrio Mujeres Argentinas, this tree at Pablo Ricchieri seems to be growing from brick.

I have finished working at the high schools (except for the Tuesday gig) and now will concentrate on the Instituto Terciario San Fernando Rey. It may be that the closest thing we have in the U.S. to an Instituto Terciario is a community college. The young people from here graduate in just three years. My students are to become English teachers. I am very impressed so far with their enthusiasm, the professors' level of English, and the students' level of English. We have fun together. The school has a website, and it is: http://ispsfrey.cha.infd.edu.ar/sitio/index.cgi

Earlier I mentioned that the professors and I will be getting together to talk about poems and movies. Well I have already chosen the first two poems and here they are. Thank ya'll for reading my blog!

--Stephen

All Those Women on Fine September Afternoons
by Katrina Vandenberg

When she baked a pie, my mother’s hands were blackbirds;
they flecked butter at heaps of sugared apples.
Her hands were wings around the piecrust’s edge,
and she fluted it until it swooped around
and down. Never worry the crust, she said.

You love crust like a child; roll it
and imagine it pretty and whole.

My grandmother could weigh flour
with her hands and measure vinegar with her eyes.
She rolled her crust with a rolling pin
cut by her father from a single apple limb.
My mother cut out star cookies from what was left.

I think about my mother and her mother
and every mother before they came along
on the days I roll out piecrust with the rolling pin
my grandmother gave to me: the rolling pin
that was part of a tree, swelling apples
from blossoms, apples to swell and dimple
crust. My God, think of it, all those women
on fine September afternoons like these,
rolling piecrust and not worrying,
seeing things whole.


"The Traveling Onion"
by
Naomi Shihab Nye

"It is believed the onion originally came
from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship --
why I haven't been able to find out. From Egypt
the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence
into all of Europe."
--Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.