I've
finished my first real week of classes! The classes are very
interesting, and so far I find it all extremely engaging. I have been
noticing more cultural differences here, as I have been able to spend
more time actually talking with local people and visiting different
places. Here are some
cultural differences I've noticed here, as copied and pasted from my
field journal, which I'm required to keep for school:
Here in Argentina
it's not unusual for family members to see each other every
day, even when they are adult children who have moved out of the
house. They also are nearly always in contact with each other. My
host mother, her mother, her aunt, her adult children, her
grandchildren, and her nieces and nephews are all either visiting
each other, talking on the phone to each other, or texting each other
at nearly any given moment.
Another
important difference is the relationship to money here. There's a
constant shortage of change in this city, which means that it's like
meeting a leprechaun whenever you happen to get your change in coins,
and trying to break a $100 peso note is like trying to convince
strangers to let you punch them in the face. Bear in mind that 100 pesos is roughly equivalent to $21, so imagine having all kinds of trouble every time you tried to break a 20 dollar bill. People are really
concerned about the fact that they're unable to purchase dollars (the
government has recently restricted this) because people prefer to
save their money in dollars which are considered to be a stable
currency, unlike the Argentine peso. My host mother hates this
preoccupation with buying dollars, she thinks it demonstrates a lack
of patriotism and a lack of faith in the Argentine economy, however
it's clear from the media and from my conversations with other
Porteños that this is a very large issue,
at least for the upper-middle class in Buenos Aires.
Expectations
here are very different for lots of things. On my second day of Spanish
class I left IDES to head to UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires) at 1:20pm, which would typically
leave me with abundant time to reach my destination. However, on this
particular day, the Subte had broken, and Audrey and I had to quickly
find and board the nearest relevant collectivo (bus), which ended up taking
nearly an hour to deliver us to the Plaza de Mayo. I texted the other
students in my class who said it was fine, but I was so incredibly
stressed about the situation and after I ran up the stairs and dashed
into the classroom with apology after apology, I was surprised to
have my teacher just sympathize about the situation and tell me how
common it was. My normal levels of stress that are typically at least
tacitly endorsed by the professors in my school and members of my
family (who in the US seem to believe that being somewhat stressed by
the amount of work you have is a positive thing) are just totally
unacceptable here, apparently. I've observed that people seem to
desire a more low-key type of interaction, and that mentioning that I
am stressed out can be distressing to other people. I don't yet know
completely how people here manage stress, though I'm aware that
psychology is very popular and not as stigmatized as in the US.
Additionally, and
somewhat hand in hand with my observation of different expectations
is the expectation of infrastructure here. It's very interesting to
attend classes in UBA and see the state
of the facility, which is in fairly serious disrepair. Although UBA
is the top university in the country, there is no soap in the
bathrooms, the classrooms are cold and dirty, the walls are a mess
and there are myriad other issues. I don't intend this as a
complaint, especially as I find it fascinating to have this
experience, I simply am very surprised, as a university student in
the US, to see the state of the university here. I understand that
the university is free, and that creates a very different
expectation. I spoke with my host mother a little about UBA, because
her daughter is a student there as well, and she shared with me
similar observations. She is upset that her daughter has to attend
night classes in a facility with cold rooms and a general lack of
amenities after she works all day, and she would personally prefer
for the students to pay a fee for upkeep of the buildings, but on the
other hand she understands that the quality of teaching and the
ability to pay the professors salaries is the priority, something
that is very different in the US. UBA is in a HUGE historical building in the oldest part of the city, and it clearly used to be beautiful, but it's extremely run-down.
Spanish classroom
4th floor bathrooms, somewhat better than the 1st floor bathrooms
At my school, Phil
Knight (of Nike) is an important donor, and he donated a large sum to
the university which they used to construct a building devoted as a
tutoring center for student athletes. This building is the most
expensive on campus (one of the lecture halls has Ferrari seats), and
it's only accessible to the student athletes, yet every year the
university cuts down on the classes they offer, gets more part-time
instead of full-time faculty, and cuts professors salaries. Clearly
the two places have very different priorities, and it's an area in
which the cultural differences are very large. In terms of
infrastructure, Buenos Aires is very different from US cities. Of
course the villas, or shanty-towns here are very different from
something that one might encounter in the United States, but there
are other smaller, yet still important differences. For instance,
even on well used streets, in well-to-do areas, there are frequently
large holes in the sidewalk, which often are unmarked, or simply have
a board placed across them. In the litigious society of the US, this
would be totally unacceptable, but here people do not seem to be
terribly inconvenienced by having to step over or around an obstacle.
A fairly typical sidewalk.
Art is an important part
of life here in Buenos Aires, there's a tremendous amount of street
art, usually in the form of paintings, but we also had the chance to
view intricate mosaics on the houses of a street in Barracas (a
lower-income barrio (neighborhood) in Buenos Aires) when we took a
historic tour of the city.
Mosaics in Barracas
More street art in
Barracas, at a school.
Some of the art is very
culturally significant, such as the portraits of Evita on the sides
of a building, where she smiles toward the working class in the
barrios in the south, and she looks more sternly at the middle class
and upper middle class in the barrios of the north.
Facing south
Facing north.
The portraits of Evita are right off of Avenida 9 de Julio (named after Argentine's independence day), the widest street in the world!
This photo isn't mine, it's from Wikipedia.
In our tour we also learned about some of the history of the unions in Argentina and how important they have been in shaping the careers of politicians and in shaping policy. We also learned about how the unions and the Catholic Church built housing for workers, in order to try to sway them politically, which I found very interesting. Currently we have a seminar every morning from 10-12, about Argentina history, politics, or culture, with a good bit of economics mixed in. We have Spanish from 2-5, and there are only 4 students (including me) in my class, so it's fairly intensive! We also go on a lot of visits to culturally important sites, which I'll discuss more in my next update. Ciao for now!
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