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.

Fairs, Phones, and Houses (Please excuse the funky formating, technical difficulties)

Whew, tell you what, it has been a pleasant couple of Argentine weeks since I wrote on my blog. It’s now possible for people to visit my casita (little house) and to call my cellphone (which is to say I acquired both).
The house is exactly what I envisioned: my own little structure behind an Argentine family’s house. This way we can visit and when I like I disappear into the silly, joyous solitude of LSAT studies and sautéed vegetables.
On brown rice.
A lot of stuff has happened, in addition to finding a place to live: Darby’s birthday, my dad’s
birthday, Brad’s birthday (my friend, Dad, brother(-in-law), respectively), Easter, a lot of hours of yoga and LSAT study. In fact, it might be best to relate the last two weeks in pictures.
Since I came to Argentina, the Pope came out against condoms. I’m happy to say that even though the Pope had it all wrong, the graffiti in Resistencia has it right. Amen.
This is a picture of the outside of my professor’s house in Corrientes.
This is his cat, “La Habladora,” or the talker. She’s very talkative.

On the 15th, a co-worker from my high school drove me to her mother’s house. We visited, and I found a new friend in Jacob from Colorado (he’s here on a Lutheran Church program); he and I drank the famous Argentine tea, yierba mate, and then Irma’s whole family had dinner. Irma is the landlord, the woman on the end, and her daughter Laura (3rd from left) is one of the English teachers with whom I work. I have been at so many dinners like this, with instantly warm and inviting Argentine families. I finally found the continent where folks are ever more immediately sociable than me!

So this picture was taken on the day that the Britos and I first met, but on the 17th, Good Friday, I moved in with them in Resistencia. They invited me to live with them until I moved into my own little house on the… 16th! Then they invited me to live with them until November. Ha! They’re great, and their house (which has within it two guitars and a grand piano) is perfect. When it comes to the topic of where I ought to live, I seem to be stuck between a swimming hole and a Beth Hawkins cheese pizza. That is, two wonderful options.

On Easter, the Britos family and I went to Mass together, and next to a pew was this prayer, appropriate for my LSAT studies: “Test Prayer: Our God, Good Father, lift my heart via San Ignacio who knew that hours of study, of solitude, of uncertainty, working and asking alms for power to keep going toward his dream. In the hands of your Spirit I put my decisions and my responsibilities. Please do not let me be daunted by the difficulties. I ask that your Holy Spirit illumine the Law School Admissions Test. Give me the grace of strength, of intelligence, of clarity and of friendship. I ask this in the name of our savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” Amen!

This is was the view from my spot on the pew.

This preceptora (teacher’s aide) and I became buddies on the first day of school when she gracefully invaded my personal space and looked down her nose and asked that I consider wearing blank white tee shirts instead of any other kind of shirt and shoes instead of sandals. I asked my boss professor what he thought, and he said that as an ambassador of U.S. culture it is best if I dress how I would dress in the US. So I did that for the next couple of weeks, but on Thursday I bought some tennis shoes and on Friday I got a white tee shirt. Ha! Her powers worked! (Once I’m out of the high school and into the college maybe I’ll transform anew into a typical(ly-clothed) US youth.) We're friends now, especially following this, our chance meeting at mass.

It’s not too unlike the Danville United Methodist Church.

Mariam Britos, 19, accounting major, and I
took a picture outside the church.

After mass, we hit the farmer’s market.

Then I studied for the LSAT by reading (and maybe this was the day I finished it…) The Bramble Bush. The book is edited by my mentor, Dr. Stephen Sheppard. It was a mostly awesome, entertaining and enlightening read, and it will provide a lot of information for my application essays come September.

That night we hit the Paseo de Artesanos, or Artisan’s Walk. It was filled with people and neat frivolities. Among them was a great bracelet and a mate. A mate is the container from which the afore mentioned yierba mate (a sort of herbal tea that many Argentines drink) is sucked through a bombilla (a straw, and in the case of yierba mate, a metal one).

In addition to a mate, a cell phone, a house, a white tee shirt, and shoes, I also found a relatively authentic Argentine national jersey. The real thing is over US$50, but this one was AR$55, 55 pesos, or (55/3.5-ish) US$15.

So check it out: the inside is glass, right? And the straw says Argentina!

One of the great things about doing yoga at the Britos house is their patio. Here are a few pictures from that patio.

This one is a sneakily-taken photo of their dog whose name always escapes me. They also have a wise, brave turtle (not pictured).

Switching to the patio at my new house, we have another dog whose name I do remember: Homero. You can see him above, and my new abode below. You can kind of get an idea that their patio is equally beautiful. Every time I walk home I smell wonderful flowers, and they always catch me by surprise.

And this is my favorite dish, quiveve. Raquel González de Britos, like the dish, comes from Paraguay and she taught me to make it last week. That is brown rice in front.

That's a wrap for now, family and friends. I hope you will take a moment and sign this petition and if you're interested check out a very well made video at http://www.walmartworkersforchange.org/index.php/pages/articles/our_chance_to_change_walmart . Also, below is a letter I wrote to Senator Lincoln, bless her heart. You might give her a call, too, if you've got the time.

April 15, 2009

Senator Lincoln,
President Obama’s ambitious policy agenda requires a lot of financial support, and some of it needs to come from the estate tax or as Republicans dubbed it some years ago, the "death tax."
I have been a life-long Democrat, active in every election since 2000. Last fall I made calls for President Obama to Hispanic voters in swing states while traveling through Europe. I am an active, passionate (and bilingual) Democrat. That said, I have not been disappointed in you for a few years, but if you continue to push for an even higher threshold for the estate tax, I will not only be disappointed, I’ll be unable to vote for you again.
A new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that only 100 farms and small businesses in the entire country would be subject to the estate tax under Mr. Obama’s plan, a number that shrinks to 40 under the proposal you sponsored with Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. A subsequent analysis by the center raised the prospect that there may be no farms or small businesses in Arkansas vulnerable to the tax.
Your effort to spare the wealthy is particularly ill timed considering the economic situation. If this Republican-backed plan is approved, it could deprive Mr. Obama of about $100 billion for his initiatives on health care, energy and education when alternative sources of revenue are already dwindling. A proposal by President Obama would leave it at current levels, affecting only estates valued at more than $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for couples. You would actually increase the value of estates exempt from the tax above the level backed by Mr. Obama (to $5 million for individuals and $10 million for couples) and have a cut in the maximum tax rate (to 35 percent from the current 45 percent).
I have told all of my friends about this, including my 1100+ Facebook friends, and I will only continue to spread the word.
President Obama helped us access and realize the participatory power we have in our great country. Now that power needs to be utilized against you.
Because Lord knows we need $100 billion for our uninsured children and their schools. Because Lord knows it is more than a drop in the bucket.

Sincerely,
Stephen Coger
Fulbright Scholar (currently in Northern Argentina working on my Fulbright)

OK, so maybe that was a downer of a letter, but this photo of my tabletop is uplifting; those are mandarin oranges, alongside a crystal from Darby and another (Ganges-dunked) crystal from Kazan and a ssswwweeett picture of Jesus from church.

The Week Before April 4th

Hi Ya’ll!
Well all’s well in Corrientes. Today’s April 4, 2009, a Saturday, and it just rained for the first time since I arrived here on March 18.
Let me jump back a few days; last Saturday I established that I would call and email folks in Arkansas on Sundays and Wednesdays only. I hadn’t had so much free time since I was a teenager before I got a job at the Danville City Pool and this rule helped guide its use. On Monday I went to one of the schools at which I am to work and met the faculty. On Thursday I met the Britos Family, who played host to an Indian friend of mine some years ago, and then on Friday I had my first day of work.
At this public high school, I talked mostly in Spanish about colors in English, and specifically about the colors red and white and though I did NOT plan on it (at all), I’ll be dang if I didn’t call the Hogs. That took quite a bit of explaining.
I have reminded my “referente” (in Spanish), the professor in charge of my work and well being, that among the reasons I applied for Argentina specifically was the promise of teaching in a university. What an efficient way to find friends and musicians. And I will continue to gently remind him, but until then the teacher with whom I’m working at the public school is great, and so are her students.
I took my first LSAT this week, and finished The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar & Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph, and then went and read An Introduction to Legal Reasoning by Edward Levi. Fortunately Mr. Levi has a funny bone. Now I’m reading Karl N. Llewellyn’s The Bramble Bush. The book’s introduction and notes were written by my mentor, Dr. Steve Sheppard. Lewellyn’s teaching style is similar to my Dad’s, so he’s certainly more entertaining than Sister Miriam Joseph and Mr. Levi.
Tonight I’ll have dinner with the Britos family. They actually invited me to a surprise party for the mother’s sister, but they would get back by 5, 6, or 7 am at the earliest. They actually invited me to stay the night (which would actually be the morning), also, but as my referente says in reference to the heat or Northern Argentina, “Me cuesta mucho.” Literally, it costs me a lot, or it takes a lot out of me. So I’m going to dine with them and then after dinner (midnight-ish?) I’ll come home and thankfully get into bed.
Among other friends and parents, I owe my adoptive-parents/-aunt and uncle Beth and David Hawkins for my regretless resolution. When it comes to refusing an offer, even though I am denying a cultural experience of the first class, I don’t mind. I don’t like alcohol, I don’t like not sleeping, and I’m fairly resolute about this. Now, if it were going to be a dance party featuring Michael Franti & Spearhead playing their album All Rebel Rockers live, then I’d dance all night long. But it takes specific causes and conditions, and just because something’s once-in-a-blue-moon or supposedly tastes really good or is the only one like it in the world is not enough.
On a more serious note, yesterday was the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” speech. “He spoke without notes, and seemingly without forethought,” Andrew Young said. They were in Memphis trying to get union recognition and wages above poverty level for that city’s garbage workers. I listened to the speech today as I have “A Call to Conscience,” a collection of Dr King’s political speeches, on my laptop.

Here is a picture of the delicious broccoli curry that I made (Thank you Rachel, Geshe and Hamsa, my cooking teachers)

On Thursday before meeting the Britos family I had my first Argentine ice cream. They are justly famous for their ice cream, but I will not be having another because they are filled with sugar. Except maybe in Buenos Aires…

The Britos family and I had a great lunch; they fixed veggie pasta just for me. I met them because my friend Adam Dohagney introduced me to Moshe Newmark and because Moshe connected me with Swami Dayananda Saraswati in Southern India last summer. At Swamiji's ashram, I learned of the Swami Vivekananda Yoga University, and a month and a half later practiced yoga there with 50-ish other folks, mostly Indians, one of whom was Vipul Abhay Shaha whose brother lived with the Britos family.
The bus to Resistencia was packed on Friday morning.

Here is the moon and I in Resistencia’s main plaza, which was just jumping with music and an open-air market.

Back in Corrientes, Emilio and I ate a great pizza dinner last night.

And in honor of Dr. King here is an excerpt from that speech which he gave the night before April 4, 1968, the day he was assassinated:

“Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that He's allowed me to be in Memphis."
The full text of this speech is at
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm .

One last thing, also related to social justice. If you are so inclined, please send a letter to Secretary Clinton questioning the March 22 US' shipment of arms to Israel: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=11787&ICID=E0904A01&tr=y&auid=4706190

Thanks for tuning in!