Buenos Aires--again, still, but with a different twist
I have spent some time searching for different places I would like to volunteer with here in Buenos Aires, and my two attempts at finding places to volunteer with have been met with disappointment. The first place that I emailed, that looked very promising and got great reviews. It’s a non-prof whose goal is to basically bring joy into the lives of low-income (poverty-level) children. They arrange birthday parties (did they call my name? what?) and all kinds of other events, and it seemed like a great organization. However, they didn’t write back to me for a month and a half. Very lame, and this did not instill a lot of trust in me. On top of that, volunteers have to buy a shirt (whatever, not a big problem) and pay for taxis to go to each of their assignments. Taxis? Hello? Um, taxis are not exactly an inexpensive form of transportation, and I can’t say that I was too excited at the prospect of high tailing it around in a taxi…so I decided to leave that one be. The next place I looked at promotes literacy and a love of reading to low-income students. That one also sounded great, but I wrote to them over a week ago and I still haven’t heard anything back. I’m sure I’m just used to the timeliness that is to be found in the states (most of the time) and I need to compensate for South American time. Hmph.
This has basically leaves me with one productive thing done each day—Spanish classes. Did you know that there are three modes in Spanish? First, there’s indicative, which is the mode we use to speak about the “real world” (Yesterday I baked cookies.). Second, we have imperative, or the “orders” (Give me some cookies!). Third, and this one both amuses and eludes me, is subjunctive, which speaks about the “world of possibility” the “unknown” and “imagination” (I wish that you would give me a cookie…). It makes me wonder if English is organized in the same manner. Can you imagine the world and all of language really being divided into these three categories? This got me to wondering during class—would my world and life fall into one of these three categories? If so, which would it be? Would I stick in the world of imagination? Imaginary husbands, dreams of flying, etc… I’d like to think that I’m not very bossy, so I think imperative is right out. Or would I be in the encyclopedic version of reality, straight up and factual? As my mind wanders during the numerous grammatical explanations and tangents that one of we students lead our teacher down, these are the kinds of things I ponder. But really, can you imagine the world lying in the realm of fact, possibility and command? Do you think that we can narrow down our worlds into only these three things? (Hmm, possibility, though if you translated that question into Spanish, you wouldn’t use subjunctive! You just might use it on the response, however, depending on the sentence structure.) How did a language evolve to these three “modes”? Then that’s where my mind stops, not wanting to invade the subject any further and preferring to graze upon the surface at the moment. (I think I have become incapable of deepness or serious intelligence lately!)
In other news, I finally moved into my new apartment! Today is day one and I have pretty much secluded myself in my new room which unfortunately is shared, but that was my choice because I’m trying to save a few pennies here and there and my roommate seems like a nice girl. Let me tell you how much sharing a room with one person beats sharing a room with seven! Can you believe I have been living in a room with seven people for the last two and a half weeks? Oy! Well, this will be a six week break after which I will be room sharing for the following five weeks until I get back to Lima. I will be offloading a lot of books before that time, which should lighten my load considerably! I’ll even be getting rid of my dictionary, can you believe that? It’s going to kill me! But oh well, it was a bad dictionary to begin with. I may be reverting to somewhat hermit-like behaviors, but honestly I just want to spend some quality “me” time in some “me” space, is that so wrong? I don’t plan on being completely anti-social, but I have gotten to the point where I am exhausted of having the same conversation over and over: “Where are you from?” “Where have you traveled? Where are you going?” and every once in a while a “So what’s your name?” You would be so surprised at the number of times travelers don’t actually exchange names. It’s really strange, but true, it just gets to be the same old same old, meeting new people. Blah, blah, blah, I’ve just gotten a bit tired of it all and I want to sit and relish in my own company for a while. Maybe try to enhance both my Spanish and English vocabularies by reading more books. For all that I talk about reading, I really don’t get all that much of it done. Though I did just finish reading “Veronika decided to die” in Spanish. Yay for me, another book in Spanish! However short and easy to read it might be. My next book will be “The Little Prince” which was passed along to me by a Swiss lady in my Spanish class right now. She seemed to be quite startled that I have never read the book, and she was happy to clear up some unnecessary clutter from her bag. Aside from reading, I am planning to revert to watching some of my movies in Spanish. Harry Potter in Spanish again…Garden State in Spanish again…I just think it’s about time I got myself a little bit further out of the English habit I’ve gotten into over the last month and a half.
It has also recently occurred to me that I haven’t really written much about my little observances of Buenos Aires. I spend a fair amount of time walking, and most of the time my gaze is focused downwards. Generally I prefer to look up as I walk, and look at the buildings and people I pass by. However, there are two very big reasons that I have a difficult time observing my surroundings on a regular basis, both having to do with the state of the sidewalks. First of all, they’re really broken and crackled, which makes tripping an easy feat to accomplish. Second, you see about as many people with their dogs here in Buenos Aires as you do in Seattle, but the difference here is that people don’t clean up after their dogs. I have been told that it’s actually a law for people to clean up the poo, but it absolutely does not get done. Luckily I’ve been fairly fortunate, but that does have something to do with the fact that I’m always looking at my feet…
Another thing to mention. I have noticed that I am overly preoccupied by what other people are going to think of me. As I am secluding myself in my room (and having refused a few offers of going out to do things today), I’m feeling as though I’m that anti-social roommate. The thing is, I’m not generally all that anti-social, and I like being around other people. I just feel like my energy has been sapped by being around other people for so long and not getting to be by myself nearly enough. Then I get to thinking, why does it even matter to me what they think? I just need to do what I want to do and whatever makes me feel best, regardless of what they think. If I were one of them (ooh, ooh, subjunctive!), it wouldn’t matter to me one bit if someone locked themselves up in their room to read and write if that’s what they needed to feel cleansed. So why do I care??? Why do I care what other people think ever? Why would I care that somebody would think that I’m not trendy enough because I don’t dress in the latest fashion, but prefer my own style to be easy and classic? (Said the girl who just got bangs…yup, who doesn’t care?) Why do I want to go out and buy a pair of skinny jeans when I know that it’s only going to make me feel better for a short amount of time, but that it’s going to weigh my bag down in the long run and then make me feel bad for giving into consumerism and being materialistic? And why, when all I want to do is to sit in a room alone with myself, do I let myself be bothered by the questions of, “What are people going to think when they realize that I’m spending my time in Argentina in a room reading and writing when I should probably be out and about exploring the city?” It’s interesting because when I think of my time in Vienna, I didn’t get out and about all that frequently…by myself, that is. I suppose it’s different because I was in a group and I was doing regular sight-seeing with our entire class, and becoming familiar with the city through our class tours. But I feel like I have grown a lot since then. I mean, yes, it still takes me a lot of urging to get myself out the door of wherever I happen to be staying, be it hostel, a family house in Lima, or now an apartment in Buenos Aires, it always takes a push to get me to go out by myself. I have no problems being alone with myself inside a house, room or apartment, but for some reason once I leave that shelter I feel vulnerable and less confident. It’s strange, because very little has changed and I’m still alone. Maybe it’s just going from the known to the unknown. Yeah, that’s probably it…but still I think that for me, I have done quite well. I am traveling on my own, I’m not relying on other people…I’ve gotten myself enrolled in Spanish classes twice and attempted to do volunteer work four times. Also, a few people here and there (a few people trying to look out for their own interests, a few trying to look out for mine) have been telling me not to look so far ahead in terms of going to Australia, and sometimes it gets me down. But really, why do I care what they think? Why can’t I just trust myself a little bit more and let their cautionary words go in one ear and out the other? Why can’t I just insist on being right when in my heart I know that it is? Blah. Will somebody please tell me why it matters so much to me what other people think? I need to stop this! Once upon a time, I really didn’t care what other people thought, and I would just do exactly what it was that I thought I needed to do without regard for their advice. (Seriously one of the happiest times of my life.) How have I diverged so far from that path? Did I turn my brain off and decide that I didn’t want to think for a while, is that what it is? Is it my obsession to be at an equilibrium and to have peace, or to actually be peace? Often if someone is expressing an opinion that is different than a thought or feeling that I have, I still find myself meeting them in the middle instead of expressing my entire thought. Why, I ask, why would I do that? Why do I have to be so compromising? Granted, there are other times (many other times, actually) where I feel the need to play devil’s advocate and test people on their opinions, even if the point I’m arguing doesn’t quite parallel my own opinion on the matter. Hmm, I thinks that I am a strange, strange person. And why, after all of this, do I refuse to let myself just be? I sit and criticize myself left and right, telling myself I should be this way, or I shouldn’t be that way, instead of just letting myself be whoever it is I am. I question, I poke, I prod and try to test my own limits all the time to see where my firm ground is. Well, I still have difficulty with figuring out what my firm ground is. I have a feeling that I should stop even hypothesizing on this subject anyway, because the more I go in search for “who I am” and “why this” and “why that” the answers are probably going to scurry away from me. I find that the things I am searching for usually catch me when I’m completely off-guard. Aside from jobs, that is, I’ve definitely been pretty proactive about that (but even then, sometimes it just comes…).
Basically, I find that I’m trying to come up with some rules for myself and for my life, and what I keep finding again and again is that I have a hard time making them. I’m adapting to life, that’s what I’m doing. There are questions that I desperately want answers to, but I get stuck in between “Should I go and hunt it down?” or a “Should I wait for it to come to me and keep myself occupied in the meantime?” I end up always being in between the two.
There are my ramblings from midnight on a Thursday night. :)
This has basically leaves me with one productive thing done each day—Spanish classes. Did you know that there are three modes in Spanish? First, there’s indicative, which is the mode we use to speak about the “real world” (Yesterday I baked cookies.). Second, we have imperative, or the “orders” (Give me some cookies!). Third, and this one both amuses and eludes me, is subjunctive, which speaks about the “world of possibility” the “unknown” and “imagination” (I wish that you would give me a cookie…). It makes me wonder if English is organized in the same manner. Can you imagine the world and all of language really being divided into these three categories? This got me to wondering during class—would my world and life fall into one of these three categories? If so, which would it be? Would I stick in the world of imagination? Imaginary husbands, dreams of flying, etc… I’d like to think that I’m not very bossy, so I think imperative is right out. Or would I be in the encyclopedic version of reality, straight up and factual? As my mind wanders during the numerous grammatical explanations and tangents that one of we students lead our teacher down, these are the kinds of things I ponder. But really, can you imagine the world lying in the realm of fact, possibility and command? Do you think that we can narrow down our worlds into only these three things? (Hmm, possibility, though if you translated that question into Spanish, you wouldn’t use subjunctive! You just might use it on the response, however, depending on the sentence structure.) How did a language evolve to these three “modes”? Then that’s where my mind stops, not wanting to invade the subject any further and preferring to graze upon the surface at the moment. (I think I have become incapable of deepness or serious intelligence lately!)
In other news, I finally moved into my new apartment! Today is day one and I have pretty much secluded myself in my new room which unfortunately is shared, but that was my choice because I’m trying to save a few pennies here and there and my roommate seems like a nice girl. Let me tell you how much sharing a room with one person beats sharing a room with seven! Can you believe I have been living in a room with seven people for the last two and a half weeks? Oy! Well, this will be a six week break after which I will be room sharing for the following five weeks until I get back to Lima. I will be offloading a lot of books before that time, which should lighten my load considerably! I’ll even be getting rid of my dictionary, can you believe that? It’s going to kill me! But oh well, it was a bad dictionary to begin with. I may be reverting to somewhat hermit-like behaviors, but honestly I just want to spend some quality “me” time in some “me” space, is that so wrong? I don’t plan on being completely anti-social, but I have gotten to the point where I am exhausted of having the same conversation over and over: “Where are you from?” “Where have you traveled? Where are you going?” and every once in a while a “So what’s your name?” You would be so surprised at the number of times travelers don’t actually exchange names. It’s really strange, but true, it just gets to be the same old same old, meeting new people. Blah, blah, blah, I’ve just gotten a bit tired of it all and I want to sit and relish in my own company for a while. Maybe try to enhance both my Spanish and English vocabularies by reading more books. For all that I talk about reading, I really don’t get all that much of it done. Though I did just finish reading “Veronika decided to die” in Spanish. Yay for me, another book in Spanish! However short and easy to read it might be. My next book will be “The Little Prince” which was passed along to me by a Swiss lady in my Spanish class right now. She seemed to be quite startled that I have never read the book, and she was happy to clear up some unnecessary clutter from her bag. Aside from reading, I am planning to revert to watching some of my movies in Spanish. Harry Potter in Spanish again…Garden State in Spanish again…I just think it’s about time I got myself a little bit further out of the English habit I’ve gotten into over the last month and a half.
It has also recently occurred to me that I haven’t really written much about my little observances of Buenos Aires. I spend a fair amount of time walking, and most of the time my gaze is focused downwards. Generally I prefer to look up as I walk, and look at the buildings and people I pass by. However, there are two very big reasons that I have a difficult time observing my surroundings on a regular basis, both having to do with the state of the sidewalks. First of all, they’re really broken and crackled, which makes tripping an easy feat to accomplish. Second, you see about as many people with their dogs here in Buenos Aires as you do in Seattle, but the difference here is that people don’t clean up after their dogs. I have been told that it’s actually a law for people to clean up the poo, but it absolutely does not get done. Luckily I’ve been fairly fortunate, but that does have something to do with the fact that I’m always looking at my feet…
Another thing to mention. I have noticed that I am overly preoccupied by what other people are going to think of me. As I am secluding myself in my room (and having refused a few offers of going out to do things today), I’m feeling as though I’m that anti-social roommate. The thing is, I’m not generally all that anti-social, and I like being around other people. I just feel like my energy has been sapped by being around other people for so long and not getting to be by myself nearly enough. Then I get to thinking, why does it even matter to me what they think? I just need to do what I want to do and whatever makes me feel best, regardless of what they think. If I were one of them (ooh, ooh, subjunctive!), it wouldn’t matter to me one bit if someone locked themselves up in their room to read and write if that’s what they needed to feel cleansed. So why do I care??? Why do I care what other people think ever? Why would I care that somebody would think that I’m not trendy enough because I don’t dress in the latest fashion, but prefer my own style to be easy and classic? (Said the girl who just got bangs…yup, who doesn’t care?) Why do I want to go out and buy a pair of skinny jeans when I know that it’s only going to make me feel better for a short amount of time, but that it’s going to weigh my bag down in the long run and then make me feel bad for giving into consumerism and being materialistic? And why, when all I want to do is to sit in a room alone with myself, do I let myself be bothered by the questions of, “What are people going to think when they realize that I’m spending my time in Argentina in a room reading and writing when I should probably be out and about exploring the city?” It’s interesting because when I think of my time in Vienna, I didn’t get out and about all that frequently…by myself, that is. I suppose it’s different because I was in a group and I was doing regular sight-seeing with our entire class, and becoming familiar with the city through our class tours. But I feel like I have grown a lot since then. I mean, yes, it still takes me a lot of urging to get myself out the door of wherever I happen to be staying, be it hostel, a family house in Lima, or now an apartment in Buenos Aires, it always takes a push to get me to go out by myself. I have no problems being alone with myself inside a house, room or apartment, but for some reason once I leave that shelter I feel vulnerable and less confident. It’s strange, because very little has changed and I’m still alone. Maybe it’s just going from the known to the unknown. Yeah, that’s probably it…but still I think that for me, I have done quite well. I am traveling on my own, I’m not relying on other people…I’ve gotten myself enrolled in Spanish classes twice and attempted to do volunteer work four times. Also, a few people here and there (a few people trying to look out for their own interests, a few trying to look out for mine) have been telling me not to look so far ahead in terms of going to Australia, and sometimes it gets me down. But really, why do I care what they think? Why can’t I just trust myself a little bit more and let their cautionary words go in one ear and out the other? Why can’t I just insist on being right when in my heart I know that it is? Blah. Will somebody please tell me why it matters so much to me what other people think? I need to stop this! Once upon a time, I really didn’t care what other people thought, and I would just do exactly what it was that I thought I needed to do without regard for their advice. (Seriously one of the happiest times of my life.) How have I diverged so far from that path? Did I turn my brain off and decide that I didn’t want to think for a while, is that what it is? Is it my obsession to be at an equilibrium and to have peace, or to actually be peace? Often if someone is expressing an opinion that is different than a thought or feeling that I have, I still find myself meeting them in the middle instead of expressing my entire thought. Why, I ask, why would I do that? Why do I have to be so compromising? Granted, there are other times (many other times, actually) where I feel the need to play devil’s advocate and test people on their opinions, even if the point I’m arguing doesn’t quite parallel my own opinion on the matter. Hmm, I thinks that I am a strange, strange person. And why, after all of this, do I refuse to let myself just be? I sit and criticize myself left and right, telling myself I should be this way, or I shouldn’t be that way, instead of just letting myself be whoever it is I am. I question, I poke, I prod and try to test my own limits all the time to see where my firm ground is. Well, I still have difficulty with figuring out what my firm ground is. I have a feeling that I should stop even hypothesizing on this subject anyway, because the more I go in search for “who I am” and “why this” and “why that” the answers are probably going to scurry away from me. I find that the things I am searching for usually catch me when I’m completely off-guard. Aside from jobs, that is, I’ve definitely been pretty proactive about that (but even then, sometimes it just comes…).
Basically, I find that I’m trying to come up with some rules for myself and for my life, and what I keep finding again and again is that I have a hard time making them. I’m adapting to life, that’s what I’m doing. There are questions that I desperately want answers to, but I get stuck in between “Should I go and hunt it down?” or a “Should I wait for it to come to me and keep myself occupied in the meantime?” I end up always being in between the two.
There are my ramblings from midnight on a Thursday night. :)
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