Reflection at 80%

The Batts clan is here! They arrived Saturday morning and are settling in nicely. Family fun times have caused me to neglect my blog (and my homework*), so I’m actually a few days late for 80%. This means that I have a few days shy of a month left in Argentina. Freakout, as my dad would say.

These reflections were a good idea, and I’ll surely appreciate them someday, but they’re getting more and more difficult to write. I guess I really don’t feel like reflecting right now, at 80%.

With all of the pretension I can muster, I’ll declare that my reluctance to reflect is a perfect reflection of my current state of mind. It’s summertime and the livin’ is easy. November has brought some great adventures so far, and I’m ready for more! Soon, I’ll be THERE, not HERE, so I’m just trying to be here now.**

Coming soon:

-my fabulous yet (somewhat accidentally) substance-free 21^st

-The Wild Battsberrys discover Argentina

-Thanksgiving in Colonia, Uruguay with the entire herd of yanquis

-leaving, probable reverse-culture-shock-related trauma, the end of this blog.

SAD! I promise I’ll do some fun final entries, with lots of amusing photos. Suggestions are welcome!

Thanks for reading, it’s been a pleasure ;) And continues to be!! Because it’s NOT OVER YET.

Besos,

Isa

*I still have homework for Spanish class, as there is still (and always will be) Spanish to be learned. But I’m writing this first, of course – my priorities lie with you, dear readers.

**I have not read this book. Have you?

Reflection at 60%

I'm feeling uncharacteristically reluctant to write this entry, because I'm reluctant to summarize. But seeing as I have exactly two months left, I'd best get this done now. I suppose I'll just use my nearly-full Buenos Aires journal as a guide and write what jumps out at me.

This past month was very much a middle month. It brought Spring, but not real heat yet; preparations for exams, but no exams yet; and traces of homesickness along with the fear that my JYA time is flying by. I feel that I've really settled into daily life here, which on one hand makes me feel great - independent, confident, able - but on the other hand, brings the possibility of boredom and the challenge of making life interesting. My Spanish has also gotten to the point where I don't NEED to improve, but I still COULD improve plenty. To summarize (oh no!), I need to remind myself to make an effort now that life isn't demanding it from me.

I've been reflecting a lot about the ways in which I've changed - or perhaps better said, the things that Buenos Aires brings out in me. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, and they're all positive, but I feel like I should wait until after the experience to reveal them! It blows my mind that I still have two months of change coming, because I already feel a profound difference. One thing I'll share is that I've been learning to be more present, conscious, etc., which goes along nicely with this middle month and will continue to serve me for months to come. ForEVER, I dare say.

I wrote this sentence at the beginning, but don't know where to put it: I feel secure enough in my porteña-ness to make myself PB&J. I feel that's very telling of this moment at 60%.

Thank you all so much for reading, it's super cool to be sharing this experience with all of you!

Love,

Isa

Martes: Rain, shine, being alive

School week diary, day two:

7:30 Miraculously wake up despite having set my alarm to the wrong time. Get up, decide to wear my ugh-it’s-Tuesday outfit (maximum comfort and messy hair coverage), get ready to go. Have a delightful mug of tea and a couple of tostadas (toast.)

8:15 Get on the subte. It’s not as hideously claustrophobic as it usually is at this hour. I close my eyes and focus on the movement of the train. It’s amazing what you can appreciate if you become conscious of it: the steady forward motion, the breeze that comes in through the windows as the train pulls into each station.

8:45 Get off the subte. Notice the torrential rain that has begun to pour from the sky. Brace myself to hate it, to complain about it once I’m inside...but then decide to try to enjoy it for once. I have no umbrella. I get soaked on my way to class. I feel alive! It feels amazing. I can’t stop smiling.

9:00 Spanish language class begins. There’s just a few of us, and the professor, Cruz, is great – very smart and sharply funny. She’s an actress, and as such, full of expression and energy. I’ve learned a lot from her grammar-wise (oh, grammar) and I love talking with her about theater. In class today, we read, we write, we talk, we get off track.

10:15 Ten-minute break. Zoé and I have our usual water-cooler chat. Patricio, my academic advisor, knows all of the details of my personal life by now, whether he likes it or not – his desk is right there.

Class continues. More of the same. I make use of the multiple dictionaries I carry around with me (one Spanish-English and one Spanish-Spanish) and we start reading our second book.

12:00 Class ends. Jimmy and I go in search of food that won’t kill us. We run into his friends Jamie and Ashley, and the four of us end up at California Burrito...something. CBC, in any case. The burritos are yummy! 80% of the customers are tall, smiling blond people. 10% are tall, unsmiling blond people. I creep around the latter 10% to see if I’ve finally found the only other Finns in Argentina. Sadly, the search is still going.

We have some lovely lunch conversations about siblings and insects, but the SAME SONG has been playing on repeat since we got to the restaurant, so we need to peace out for our own sanity.

I buy myself an alfajor for dessert, get back on the subte, get back to Caballito (my ’hood) pretty quick. I pick up my laundry on my way home. (Continuity from yesterday!) Now I have clean clothes. Hooray!

I bum around, take a shower. Coming out of the bathroom, I see light shining through the living room windows – it has stopped raining and is now a beautiful day! In keeping with my Conexión Creativa way of life, I decide to meditate and do breathing exercises in the sun for a bit. It feels wonderful. Almost as good as an orange massage – well, not quite, but in any case, I’m feeling very Zen and one with the Universe.

I write a few pages in my journal, in Spanish as always. I’ve been writing in Spanish for five weeks now, it helps a lot!

17:30 I go to Disco (the supermarket down the street) to buy apples and granola. I come home and eat apples and granola.

18:30 I skype with my dear Hilary Tandy for a good long while and watch the sunset through her Vassar dorm-room window. Lovely!

20:15 The apples and granola haven’t held me over – I cave in and eat an early dinner of leftovers. Tomorrow, Catalina comes to cook, I’m excited to dine on her creations for the rest of the week!

20:45 Start writing this entry. It’s still super early, but it’s been an early kind of day.

All in all, a very tranqui Tuesday. Lots of lovely inner moments and eurekas. A surprising number of words came out of this day!

Off to do some homework (it does exist, I swear.) Stay tuned for Wednesday!

Besos y abrazos :)

Isa

Word of the day: tranqui – adj. Calm. Short for “tranquilo/a.” Used a lot to describe positive moods. Kind of like “chill.”

Coming Up: Una Semana Porteña

Check out that etymology!

Queridos lectores,

I've been here for ten splendid weeks and have almost thirteen left! As I said recently, time is moving at a beautiful speed. I feel very much in the middle, at a turning point, in a transition not the most comfortable feeling in the world, but it's positive nonetheless. Coincidentally, Winter is turning to Spring here - oh, come on, EMBRACE THE METAPHOR.

To complement this change that is occurring in my being, I want to try changing a few external things, as well. I'm trying to eat fewer empanadas, for example, and I'm thinking about cutting my hair. I also want to mix it up on the blog. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!!

The first thing that came to mind when trying to come up with something snazzy to blog about was really quite simple and ordinary: posting a diary of sorts for a week. I mostly end up writing about my weekend life, but four out of seven days (Fridays off hehe) I am IN CLASS. It's a pretty cool set up. And sometimes, ridiculous things happen that you all might get a kick out of. SO I'm gonna write my week this week, Monday - Thursday. THRILLING! No, for real I'm excited, I promise to make it good.

In conclusion: stay tuned to follow me step by step for the next few days, and if you have any blogging ideas for me, COMMENT or send me an e-mail :)

Also coming soon: I'll be in Rosario next weekend with IFSA. I'm excited, I've heard it's a beautiful city! I'll make sure to obtain a camera by then so I can share with you all another piece of Argentina outside Bs As.

Thanks for reading!

Besos,

Isa

Word of the day: morfar - vb. To eat. (ex: "Morfé como una bestia" = "I ate like a beast." A useful phrase in my life!)

Reflection at 40%

Before I create my epic Iguazú entry and update my play reviews, I want to post THIS to continue with the monthly refection idea. (Look! the "main ideas" are in bold! how convenient)

So here's what's in my head on the first day of Spring in Buenos Aires:

Time is moving at a beautiful speed. So much has happened in the past two months: I've had lots of adventures, but more than that, I've essentially created a life here. So often in life I feel myself panicking about time, about it flying by before I can fill it up, but right now, I feel like five months will be perfect.

My last reflection focused mostly on the language. I think that at this point, (a) I've gotten used to being foreign and (b) my Spanish-speaking has improved to the point that my attitude has shifted considerably. I'm also actively trying not to be too hard on myself, a goal which has been proposed by many and the progress of which is being closely monitored by one Miss Robyn Davies - shout out :) To sum up, the language and I are pretty much besties.

Overall, I just feel so incredibly lucky to be here and to be doing what I'm doing. I've been having a lot of "life is SWEET" moments lately: traveling by swanky night-bus with my Vassar chicas; attending an exclusive interview with Mauricio Kartún, Argentine playwright-director superstar; and of course, getting to see play after play, usually not having to pay anything at all. Most recently, I felt lucky just sitting here in the lovely living room with the cat, drinking tea and listening to the National while reviewing verb tenses. (Please judge me so much for that whole sentence, it was totally worth it.)

To conclude...

Having been here for two months, I don't feel like I'm on vacation anymore: this is real life (well, the JYA version, but life nonetheless), and I prefer it that way. True Life: I live in Argentina! I miss my peeps in the States and will be so happy to return to you all, but I can't say I'm homesick. I'm excited for the three months ahead and ready for what they'll bring, some of which I know (loads more theater, warm weather, turning twenty-one, a visit from the fam) but most of which I can't yet predict. Bring it on, Bs As.

That's all for now, I believe. Stay tuned for breathtaking waterfall shots and comical night-bus experiences. As always, thanks for reading, I really appreciate it :)

With love and uncharacteristic fierceness,

y con besos y abrazos,

Isa

Conexión Creativa

Based on my blog content, one might assume that I actually live in a theater, with occasional trips to boliches and super swanky McDonald’s. But I actually spend a fair amount of my time in classrooms. You know, learning stuff and whatnot.

So I thought I’d do something new and spotlight one of my classes on el blog (I call this “el blog” when speaking in Spanish. With a Spanish "o". I take Spanglish very seriously).

I start my Mondays with Conexión Creativa (translation: – you guessed it – Creative Connection) at USal’s School of Dramatic Arts. I wasn’t originally enrolled in the class, but decided to give it a try during shopping period, and now it’s safe to say I’m in love.

I’ve been exposed to some pretty hippie-dippie stuff in my life. Progressive schools, organic food, folk music, etc. I know what WOOFing is and hope to give it a try some day. Gender-neutral bathrooms don’t faze me in the least. I went to Prometheus Camp in Finland where we skinny-dipped and made meditative sculptures that represented our personal idea of what “time” is, for Pete’s sake.

Hey, this is a fun list! I could keep going, but in the interest of your sanity, dear readers, I’ll stop and get to the point. Conexión Creativa is an extremely hippie-dippie, touchy-feely, find-your-spirit-animal-and-become-a-vegan kind of “class.” I say “class” entre comillas because it’s really more like having art therapy sessions once a week with a group of thirty of your peers. In fact, it is exactly that. And each time I go, the more convinced I am that every theater student – if not every artist/person ever – should have this as part of their training/life.

The professor is a small woman in her late 50s with a constant, genuine smile and a powerful, mellow voice. She says things like, “You are a flower with four petals. Beautiful energy emanates from your center, from the bellybutton.” (Except in Spanish, of course – I’m learning to speak hippie in Spanish, it’s nice!) She has a team of mostly silent, extremely chill people who come with her and make the magic happen. It's pretty ridiculous, but also wonderful.

I’m finding it hard to explain what happens in this class. We do a lot of different things. We chat. We listen to earthy music. We close our eyes. We move. We paint. We play like children. Last time we were each handed a lump of clay and were supposed to transfer our body heat to it, then march outside with it with our eyes half-closed to bask in the sun and sculpt.

I can imagine more than one person rolling their eyes at this. “This is your CLASS?” You ask with disbelief and mild to moderate distaste. “You’re getting CREDIT for this?”

I understand why you might feel that way, but I assure you, as pre-kindergarten as it may sound, Conexión Creativa is hard work. Somewhere between the tickling, the shouting, and the clay-pounding, this class really gets to people. It’s all about going deeper, accessing something we’re not allowed to access most of the time, discovering truths about yourself you had no idea existed. “Confronting the beast,” says the professor. So far, at least five or six people have cried each session – last week, I was the first! There’s nothing like tearing and snotting (that should be a word) in front of thirty people you hardly know. At the very least, now they know I'm human, and I think everyone speaks the universal language of unintelligible sobs equally well.

Reflection at 20%

Written Wednesday, August 18th

So far on Isabella la Porteña, you’ve seen a lot of my new Argentine life. You’ve followed me as I’ve encountered boliches, goat-clones*, and a deluge of theatrical bliss (oh, I really am in the mood to write right now. Bear with me.)

I’ve been having a great time, and as the days go by, I’m becoming increasingly aware that this time abroad is really counting as a Life Changing Experience. DISCLAIMER: I’m going to talk about my feelings now.

I get frustrated a lot. My spoken Spanish still isn’t nearly as good as my written Spanish. I’m aware of problems with my accent that I need to work on. I can’t fully express my more complex opinions or make (good) jokes.

“Well,” you might say, “you’re not a native speaker, so you can’t expect to be perfect!”

Ehem.

One evening I sat in my room, rapidly alternating between different Spanish books and Spanish magazines, Spanish TV on, Spanish dictionary and Spanish pen in hand, trying to cram as much Spanish into my head as I could. “Why don’t I know this word?” I thought, “Why can’t I pronounce that one?” I was mad. “Why do I have yet to use this type of sentence construction in daily conversation?!” I stopped. I looked at my life. It dawned on me that I was going a little nuts in this pursuit.

Cramming is never the smartest way to go, but especially not when it comes to an entire language. Immersion is key, but achieving fluency is a gradual process nonetheless. Right now, I’m making an effort to keep things in perspective. Sometimes I lose patience, but when I think back to my first week here, I realize just how much my Spanish has improved. It’s hard to fathom. Most of the time, I REALLY understand people when they speak. Several things that don’t have English translations make sense to me. I am developing a feel for this language, a place for it in my heart. Aww.

In the midst of this self-centered reflection, what I have to offer to my readers is this: encouragement—nay, insistence that you learn a language if you want to. (I said “nay.”) It is very possible and very rewarding! One day, you’re still pronouncing the “h” in “hola” (hint: don’t), and the next, you’re creating beautiful sentences to describe hypothetical situations with appropriate use of verbs in the pluperfect subjunctive. Yes, I AM THAT NERDY.

Language-learning aside, I’ve been learning how to manage independently in a big city. I'm learning different systems of education, transportation, and communication. I'm feeling the clichéd study-abroad-induced changes starting to happen. Realizing my own strengths. Figuring out who I am outside of my language, my habits, my home.

I'll leave it at that for now, since this is only 20% of the way. I have four times as much left to learn as I have already learned. Or is that the way it works? I guess we'll see.

Thanks for reading :)

Much love,

Isabella

*Remember, there were actual goat-clones, this is not some cool new slang term I’ve invented. Or is it?

Word of the day BONUS EDITION:

guy (young man): el chabón, el flaco, el pibe, el tipo/el tipito

girl (young woman): la chabona, la mina/la minita, la piba/la pibita