The Pategonia Part

While in Buenos Aires, I studied Spanish for four hours a day in a wonderful little school run by a Swiss-Polish bass player. Here, thanks to lots of strong coffee, I managed to learn more or less all the grammar you need to order a steak or read Borges. While Spanish is indeed easier than Russian, I was frustrated with how little I understood in daily life and how little practice I was getting speaking while living among ex-pats in BA.

While searching for jobs on craiglist, I ran across "Connecting Schools to the World". The program connects native English speakers with schools and language institutes in rural Argentina. It seemd the perfect chance for immersion in Spanish, a look at the "real" Argentina complete with mountains and also a way to save money as BA living is full of little expenses that can begin to add up. The timing worked out perfectly with our sublet ending and with my ticket to return to home in June. I got some training in BA in English teaching and with that I was off.

I was matched with a language institute called Fresh Air in Chos Malal, which is a small town of 15,000 people in northern Pategonia, on the Chilean border. It takes 14 hours by bus to get from BA to Neuquen, the nearest major city and another six hours by car through a vast desert to arrive in the dusty little town of Chos Malal. Situated east of the Cordillera del Viento (the older, lower mountain range that parallels the Andes to the east) it has some historic significance as the first capital of the province of Neuquen about a hundred years ago. Today it is a slightly paradoxical place in that many people move here from distant parts of Argentina to work at teachers, doctors and in a few other fields, but most of the people that are here want to move somewhere else to study or find work. The result is a town of children and adults; everyone my age is off studying elsewhere.

My first days in Chos Malal were hard. I suddenly was relying on Spanish for every single aspect of my life and it was exhausting. Things at the institute were also a bit crazy as the teacher who was supposed to start with me quit the day I arrived.

Things have steadily improved. My Spanish, which I still speak fairly badly, has improved to the point that I am not constantly frustrated. Living with a host family with two young children is hugely helpful for learning a language and also makes me feel like I'm part of a family. Teaching English has turned out to be a lot of work, mostly the planning and coming up with homework, exams and stuff. Being the only teacher leaves at the institute (the director is in the US for the year) leaves me with a lot of leeway, but also responsibility. The students, aged nine to sixty, really are awesome and make my life fun. I do wish the classes were smaller than they are which is about fifteen students on average. I have found that the guitar has magical powers to silence screaming children.

Travels:
I've done a lot of travelling from Chos Malal with people I'm met along the way. During Easter week I covered most of Pategonia by pick up truck with some friends from work which is a rather gruelling thing to do considering the unpaved roads and shear desolation of ninety-nine pecent of the region. We had two flat tires and luckily two spares because in these areas there is no cell reception, no road side assistance and for hours at a time, no other traffic. Seeing the mind-exploding Perito Moreno glaciar and half a million penguins at Punto Tombo made it all more than worthwhile.

The next weekend I travelled the nearby Cordillera del Viento. It was incredible how much greener things were in the microclimate between the mountain ranges (C. del Viento and the Andes). My friend was inspecting bee hives, so I got to see the insides of dozens of bee hives and eat honey from the comb, still warm from the sun! I also got to see a slice of life on very small farms, including a cow getting stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife. Whew. I think the thing that surprised me most was how much the people there loved the place where they lived. I had imagine that if you lived in a place like that you wouldn't think of it as being beautiful- but they all went on and on about how beautiful it was. And it really was.

It's hard to imagine that my time here is more than half over. When I think that in two months I will be back, my heart skips a beat. The skip is partly sad; sad because I'm really coming to love Argentina, the langauge, my students and even weird little Chos Malal and the mountains all around. But it's also half euphoric, as I am getting more and more excited about the Appalachian trail (start date, July 1).