This week I spent quite a bit more time at the hospital, making the rounds and visiting patients with Diego and helpìng out with the merienda and salon again (I am now a facial pro). I also went to the commedor a couple more times, sat in on a meeting of all the commedor volunteers (mostly I just tried to understand what was going on, but I did get to help plan a game for the kids), and went to a public high school in one of the barrios to check out Program Dafna. Dafna is basically a mentoring program, and at the session I went to there were only 3 kids and 6 volunteers but I guess they usually have more kids participating. They spent pretty much the whole time talking about a "taller": trying to agree on the best way to organize a bunch of words that I assumed had to do with the planning/running of the taller, and then talking about the theme of the taller that they would have with younger kids (13-15ish) and scheduling for that. Unfortunately I didn't know that "taller" meant "workshop" until I got home so I was a little lost the whole time, but it was cool seeing the school and Dafna seems like an interesting program--I liked that the mostly 20-something volunteers who were mentoring the older teenagers were teaching them to do the same for younger kids.
Friday night the city put on a big cultural event, the "noche de los museos," with free admission, theater, and music in a lot of the museums. I pretty much live right in the middle of it, so I checked out the happenings at the Casa de Independencia (musica folklorico w/clarinet (!) and incomprehensible theater in Spanish) and another museum that I think used to be the home of one of the presidents. Then there was a big concert in the street with a...rockish band that was pretty cool. Yesterday, after going to the commedor in the morning, I took the collectivo for about an hour and a half to Villa de lleales, the pueblo where the group I met on Monday live. Lidia, the girl I exchanged numbers with, met me at the plaza and we went to her house to meet her grandma and aunt and cousins (basically her whole family lives on the same street). Lots of me pretending to understand what they were saying (I've gotten really good at guessing the appropriate non-commital comments and when I should laugh, etc) and looking at family photos. Then Lidia took me on a mini-tour of the pueblo (all the stores, the two schools, and the church are around the plaza, and other than that it's houses and farms) and we went to a fiesta de la Virgin, complete with a procession and fireworks. I got to see more of the people I met on Monday, and the padre akwardly called me out ("tenemos un amiga de los Estados Unidos" before peforming an awesome guitar/singing set. At that point they convinced me to stay the night and celebrate Dia de la Mama with them (today), so we went back to Lidia's hosue where I met her mom, and then we made the rounds of some firends houses, drinking lots of mate (herbal tea, bascially, that EVERYONE drinks here) and finally eating dinner around 12. Slept in this morning and then had asadas (BBQ) with Lidia's fam and then at a friend's house and took a tour of a friend's farm before I finally went home to the city, stuffed full of meat and cake and pretty exhausted from the constant stuggle to communicate, but incredibly thankful for the kindness and hospitality that everyone in Lleales offered me.
Recent setbacks: bug bites/waking up in the middle of every night to one stupid bug buzzing around my head; getting off the collectivo too early on my way to the commedor and getting lost in the rain in the barrio before I gave up and took taxi; neurosis over what I should buy/how much to spend on the days when I had to buy food myself; struggling to fill hours of downtime and feeling guilty b/c I feel like I should never be bored, ever; angsting over whether I'm being at all "useful" in my work with the Fundacion; general not understanding people; losing my Neutrogena facewash to Beatriz's cleaning
Recent successes: killing the stupid bug that wakes me up!; a smooth collectivo trip the next time I went to the commedor; giving facials all by myself in the hospital "beauty salon"; giving directions to random people on the street; successful conversation for the whole 30 min collectivo ride with Lorena, the volunteer who took me to the Dafna program; I found a cool woven bracelt/anklet in the street; communicating with Lidia well enough to set up my visit; making it to Villa de Lleales by myself; eating lunch in the Mercado for 5 pesos; letting myself buy chocolate cookies
Inexplicable events/phenomenon:
-One morning at the hospital they just closed the street in front, there was a big group of people standing around singing and clapping, and occasionally setting off fireworks.. apparently some kind of demonstration but no one could tell me what it was about
-the other night Beatriz asked to borrow my camera and when I guess she couldn't get the pictures she wanted, she took pictures of this guy on the TV and then saved them on the computer.. despite her attempts to explain I just have no idea what she was doing
-Women in Argentina seem to live forever/preserve better: in the hospital there was one abuela who was 100 and one who was 107, and they were both talkative and lively; Lidia's abuela said she was 70 but Í would have guessed 50; the gorgeous blond TV host who I would have guessed was maybe 30 is apparently 60! All I know is the 100 yr old woman in the hospital said her secret is to drink a glass of red wine everyday
Things I will miss about Tucuman: coming and going from the apartment building with my own key, seeing all the highschool kids in their different school uniforms, watchign TV (en Español of course) with Beatriz, listenign to her son Nico's music and occasional singing, crossing the streets between taxis, motorcycles, and the occasional horse-drawn cart, people watching in the Plaza de Independencia, watching the sun set from the roof of the apartment building, feeling like I live in the city again
Final weather report: four days of rain, then clouds, then HOT
Fotos: the 100 yr old abuela in la hospital, Lidia in the Llleales plaza, her abuela in their garden, their house in Lleales
The church-ish where the had the Virgin fiesta, with the padre performing; me and Lidia; Lidia's fam and friends hanging out at her house
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