Montevideo, Maldonado and messes in Buenos Aires

Well, I am finally settled back home again in Resistencia. What a relief. As I recently returned to read my last blog entry, I realize just how tired I was in Buenos Aires. What I wrote was nothing less than scattered in its content and, frankly, didn't make much sense throughout. However, I shall try and reconcile my blog's respectability today with an update on all that came to fruition during my most recent Fulbright adventures.

We shall rewind to Sunday, June 26th when Fulbright assistant Hannah Dalporto (who works in the nearby city of Corrientes) and I boarded our first plane at Resistencia's airport. We nearly died of laughter [and decided we might be becoming a bit too laid back in Argentine culture] when we realized that neither of us knew to which airport we were flying to in Buenos Aires nor if we would have to switch airports once we arrived there (to continue on to Montevideo). Thank goodness the airlines keep track of these things in their computer systems. With most of Argentina's ETA's on the same flight to Montevideo, it was a joyous reunion as we all congregated in the waiting area near our gate. We arrived safely in Montevideo on Sunday evening and wasted no time in sharing our everyday life stories from the last couple of months, storytelling that would thankfully continue throughout the week...

Hannah and I, wind-blown on the tarmac, ready to board our plane!

Bye, bye Buenos Aires! (for the week at least)

Monday morning we jumped right in to the "business" part of our week's seminar with panel presentations from the first group of ETAs. Throughout the week, each ETA had to give a short presentation as part of a five person panel on one of the three following topics: activities and strategies to promote English speaking and writing, strategies to promote classroom interaction and student engagement/participation, and teaching and adapting to life in a foreign culture (in our academic communities and the community in general). Following the morning's first panel presentation, we participated in part one of a two-day workshop with Jennifer Herrin, a U.S. Department of State Senior English Language Fellow (which basically means that she is living and working in Buenos Aires for the year, commissioned by the Dept. of State to give workshops/training on all kinds of language teaching strategies). 

Herein begins the great balance of work, cultural interactions, and "play" that the Uruguayan Fulbright Commission captured perfectly in their scheduling of the week's events. Lunch was eaten at the local Mercado del Puerto, and afterwards, we were escorted in small groups on brief city tours by former FLTA's (individuals who have gone to the US in years past with Fulbright grants to be teaching assistants of Spanish). Following this basic orientation to Montevideo, we all met in the Teatro Solis, the historically famous theatre of Montevideo, to have coffee and a brief tour of this majestic performance facility. Thankfully we also had the opportunity to return that evening for a concert of classical music performed by the Montevideo Philharmonic Orchestra with American piano soloist Ralph Votapek. Our admission was a mere $5; that's the normal admission price for our seats, folks, not a discount in any shape or form! Granted, we were seated on the 4th floor, otherwise known as "Paraiso" (paradise). Nonetheless, we made do as we moved around a bit (occasionally to our usher's dismay. hehe) to seats that were unoccupied.

Teatro Solis. The red latern at the peak of the roof has always signaled to people passing by that there is some type of performance occurring inside the theatre.

Montevideo Philharmonic Orchestra on stage, as seen from our seats in Paraiso.

My artistic attempt to capture the main chandelier in the theatre.

While Tuesday was a rather full day of meetings, presentations and workshop training, Wednesday again brought some good variety to our activities. We started the day in a large group session, debriefing on what we have learned from our Fulbright experiences thus far and where we think these experiences might carry us in the future. Honestly, of all the sessions that we had, this is the one that I truly wish could have been longer. On the brink of breaking into a rich conversation, we had to cut it short and leave for our next event.... Not to say that our next event was trivial in nature, far from it. And so we found ourselves on our way to the Liceo Jubilar Juan Pablo II. This Uruguayan school is interesting for a variety of reasons:

• it is a public school but receives no government funding (i.e. there are private investors, companies, etc. who fund the institution)
• its students attend classes six days a week for nearly 8 hours per day. This is quite an anomaly in Uruguay's system where students usually attend five days per week and only 4 hours per day. I also definitely heard about this time table at lunch from the boys who sat next to me and complained a bit about their long days; I don't think they understand yet what an advantage they have at this school.
• The school is situated in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Montevideo. It seems to me that (while we didn't have a chance to learn quite as much about the school as I had hoped) Liceo Jubilar is working hard to change some of the expectations regarding educational traditions in Uruguay.

The primary purpose of our visit to this school was one of cultural interaction and exchange. As I interacted with the students throughout the day, I easily observed some similarities to adolescents of their same age in the U.S. and some clear differences. They were full of life and energy, often very opinionated, and eager to interact with us. To sum up our visit, I'd say we found great success in:

• making gnocchi (as the 29th of each month in Uruguay is national gnocchi day) and chocolate chip cookies
• teaching the electric slide and a couple other line dances to the students and learning a bit of dancing from them
• completing PechaKucha presentations (20 pictures on 20 Power Point slides and only 20 seconds to talk about each slide) about each of our cultures and then sharing them with each other

Our chocolate chip cookies ready to go in the oven.

Below is a video of our epic lunch table and the small army of people (i.e. Liceo Jubilar students and Fulbrighters) that did most of the cooking. We were ready to eat!

Thursday, to put it quite frankly, was a small slice of paradise (and I'm talking real paradise this time, not the Teatro Solis 4th level "Paradise" seating). We were treated to a full day of relaxation at an Estancia (farm or ranch) just outside of the city of Maldonado, about a 2 hour drive east of Montevideo. With no agenda for the day, we were left free to play soccer, ride horses, explore the small gaucho (cowboy) historical museum, pet llamas, eat, drink, and just generally enjoy the views and each other's company, which I certainly did....

The hammocks were plentiful and I took full advantage of their presence throughout the day :)

Rolling hills stretched for kilometers around the estancia. So. Beautiful.

Cool stuff (I don't think any of the things are quite old enough to be called "artifacts" yet) in the cultural museum

We concluded our Thursday with a small detour through Punta del Este, the ritzy vacation spot that is filled to its max in January and February and creepily deserted in July. One of Punta del Este's most renown places is the beach where we find El Hombre emergiendo a la Vida (The man coming to life), a sculpture made by Chilean artist, Mario Irarrázabal, in 1981. Of course, a massive photo shoot ensued as our group descended the bus for a short exploration of the sculpture and the beach...

Larger than life

 Of course all good things must come to an end, and Friday morning we said chau to Montevideo and boarded the plane for Argentina. However, little did I know, my adventures for the weekend were far from over. Following a short meeting in the Fulbright Commission office, we made a special visit to U.S. Ambassador Vilma Martínez's residence where we were given a tour of the historically and aesthetically fascinating home and were treated to tea with the ambassador herself. It would be great to know what Ms. Martínez actually thinks regarding the issues we raised in some of our questions. However, as expected, she responded in a very diplomatic manner as she represents the U.S. and our government. At the least, I was mildly impressed that she would verbally recognize her necessarily imposed bias and that her personal opinions, while she cannot express them, may differ from those which she is asked to support diplomatically.

Large dining room of the ambassador's residence

View down the main staircase toward the front door. Three rugs on the first floor have designs that honor the United States, Argentina, and France (in honor of its French architect).

One half of the ball room where we sat to have tea with Amabassador Martïnez

To be completely honest, the rest of the weekend was sort of a whirlwind between the airport and the hotel with a little bit of enjoying Buenos Aires in between. In a nutshell-- Friday: flight cancelled so I was lucky to have the chance to spend the evening with fellow Denisonian Amy Royse Brown who was in BA for a Suzuki violin training course. Saturday: Exploring randomly in Palermo, back to the airport where I saw off two of my Fulbright counterparts only to have my own flight cancelled again, back to my hotel. Sunday: We (Hannah, her boyfriend who had just arrived to visit, and I) got stand by tickets for a flight at noon (hoping that we could leave earlier than the flight we booked for 4 pm) and were all lucky enough to actually get seats on this flight too!

And so I've reached the conclusion of my crazy, yet very relaxing, week of Fulbright reunions, enrichment, training, experiences, etc. Already this week I feel as if I have tried to approach my work in some different ways; I definitely have new ideas for reaching out to my students with both useful and interesting strategies and knowledge related to language and culture. As I might have mentioned before, it's rather difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that this was a mid-term seminar and that my grant is already halfway done. More updates soon on how this renewed energy has quickly influenced my daily life and work in Resistencia.

Oh, and all important: Tonight. La Copa América. Argentina v. Columbia. 21:45. In Santa Fe. Viva Argentina! :)