English House

Before we left Eugene, we contacted a private English school in Buenos Aires and arranged to be volunteers in the school. Some of our friends thought that we were kind of nuts (you can delete the ¨”kind of” from the sentences to make it more realistic) and they told us why. Why would you want to work when you’re in Buenos Aires, when there is so much fun ot be had? And why wold Mike, especially, want to work as a teacher, when he’s taking a break from teaching? Some ofour friends (thinking of you, Jayne) still wonder why we would choose to work instead of play.

Our reasoning is something like this. First, we see our time in Buenos Aires as kind of an acclimazation period. We see it as an opportunity  for us to land in South America and get centered before we take off traveling through the continent. We can take some time to get used to the sights and smells and sounds of South America, while living in the same place and getting more solid with the language. We wanted to begin to feel comfortable here, instead of just dropping down from a spaceship and not knowing where we were.

So far, it’s working. Buenos Aires no longer feels all that foreign to us. We are still surprised by things that we see, like the dog on the subway (that’s another story) and it does not feel completely normal to step around people sleeping on the street or see families searching through the garbage bins for things that they can sell, but we are feeling at home after being here for a month.

Volunteering at English House has helped us to feel at home. We work there three afternoons a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, for three and a half hours each day. This schedule gives us some definition to our week without overloading us. There is still plenty of time for fun. Working at the school gives us a sense of belonging.

This sense of belonging is important for us. I don’t really consider myself a tourist in the strict sense of the word, but everyone else here thinks of me as one. And tourists always live in an “us” and “them” paradigm. They never fit in; they are always different. This otherness can wear on you after a while. It feels good to have this work routine, where we are a part of a whole, recognized and welcomed as a contributing member of a group. Everybody likes to be part of a tribe. For Monica and me, it is really nice to walk into English House and be greeted with, “Hello Monica!! How are you” It’s nice to belong.

We are classroom assistants. We take the subway to Plaza de los Virreyes, and Gaston picks us up at 4:30 in the afternoon

We usually get to the school around 5:00. Monica works with a teacher named Natilya and I work with Pat. The classes last for an hour, and we help out in three or four classes during our time. The youngest students are four years old!! There are middle-school aged kids, high-school aged kids, and there are also adults who come in for classes at 8:00. Sometimes the kids are just wild, very loud and unruly, but not disrespectful. We wonder sometimes how or if they actually learn English, but they do. Some of the students who are 12 and 13 and older speak really well. My favorite group is the adults, because there is more communication, but at times I help out with the youngest groups also. Pat really likes it when I’m there, but sometimes I find other things to do.Like all teachers, I like some classes more than others. I really enjoy working with the young high-school kids. We often do role-plays where they invent dialogs and act them out. They also read some reduced English novels and then describe what they read. It’s really not so different than my teaching ESL in Eugene. My second week there, one of the girls, named Felicita, brough me a big cake that her grandmother had baked. It’s called Pastaflor. We cut it up and shared it with everyone. Very nice. Felicita wanted to give Monica a piece also, so we found her in a different classroom and called her out so she could get a piece.Th teachers, as well as the kids, appreciate having us there.Monica often sits on the floor and reads to her students. The older students-highschool age- are reading “Twilight.”  Monica helps  out and leads classroom discussions. Portenos everywhere greet each other and say good-bye with an air kiss on the cheek. You see it everywhere. Boys and girls, men and women, girls and girls, boys and boys, men and men. It doesn’t matter. It is surprising to see two burly guys talking things over in front of a hardware store or the corner kiosko, then kiss each other goodbye when they depart.The waiter in El Refuerzo, one of our favorite spots, kisses us when we come in. We ran into the waitress from another cafe, and she kissed us hello and goodbye. It’s always a surprise for us (and somewhat delightful) when the kids file in for class, and come up and kiss us before sitting down, then again after class on their way out. They do it with each othertoo. It’s hard to imagine being a high school teacher in Oregon, and the boys coming up to give their teacher a kiss before class. Here, it’s just another part of the phunn.