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Carlos Paz, where my host mom took us last weekend. I waded through the river but dropped a sock, and didn't notice until much later.
Normalmente no extraño mucho. Then again, I don't think this is homesickness, so much as it is having a cold and not being used to dealing with it in another language, in a foreign country.
Having a cold sounds trivial, until going to sleep means lying awake for what feels like hours, listening to my throat rasp with every breath; until I can barely speak (let alone in Spanish), and I have neither the voice nor the energy to create music activities with the kids through my service learning program. On top of this, menstruation is happening, which is at once too much information and a key piece of context.
I woke up this morning believing that I hated everything and all I wanted was to be back home in California. If I could just breathe in a few seconds of summer and home, within seconds this cold would wither away.
But instead I chose to spend July in the winter in Córdoba, Argentina.
A year ago, I was home for the summer and performed a benefit recital for my cousin and his wife, who have been working and waiting so long to adopt a child. Only a few days ago, they were chosen by an expectant mother! Whoever reads this, I shamelessly ask you to pray for them and for the expectant mother; the next few months before the baby is due must be daunting on both sides of the adoption.
Hearing the news reminded me of the recital exactly a year ago, of how full the house was and how full I felt — perfectly healthy, surrounded by family and friends. If I could choose between last July and this July, it seems I'd choose last July in a heartbeat.
But I know that isn't true, and what I want is simply to say ciao! to being sick. I hate being stuck indoors, especially in a foreign country, where I feel obligated to explore as much as possible. Yet there's only so much that I can explore, so instead I've decided that my only "obligation" is to be generous of myself and to listen well.
I've done plenty of listening to my fellow estadounidenses, many of whom have long tired of speaking Spanish when not compelled by circumstance. I thought I'd be interacting mostly with Argentinians, but I spend more time with the other kids in my program — none of whom I've met before, and whose experiences of the US differ greatly from mine.
I am grateful to have befriended these people. At the same time, I've listened to way more complaining in English than I ever anticipated. It's been my resolution not to add my voice to this tirade, but after being sick for five days, I have unfortunately begun to falter.
Last night, a friend and I went to Mass in la Iglesia Sagrado Corazón, one of many immensely beautiful churches in Córdoba. Every Sunday at 9pm Mass, a youth group does the music, and los jóvenes cordobeses can sing!! Last night, the responsorial psalm was, "El señor es mi pastor, y nada me falta. El señor es mi pastor." I wish you could hear the music to which these words were sung — I absolutely fell in love with the sound of it all.
This music was playing in my head this morning, coinciding with my hating everything. It was beautifully ironic to hear what translates to,"The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want" in my head, while wanting everything to be different. It moved me to accept that I feel awful but truly lack nothing. I have nothing worse than a cold, a home, and food, and true, there is never soap or toilet paper in the restrooms at school; well, I can deal with bathrooms that don't always work.
I'm living in "una oportunidad maravillosa," as my professor said last Thursday. She was actually in the middle of a severe lecture when she said this, because most of my class had been either staring into space or on their phones instead of participating in discussion. I have a feeling that most of us, upon envisioning study abroad, thought more about being tourists than about being students.
It's true, reading and writing about the economic situation of Latin America can feel dry, but we are privileged to be able to live in this situation for the short time that we're studying it; and our professor cares that we understand these topics in Spanish; she won't speak a word to us in English.
So in truth, I am full, as full as I was a year ago, surrounded by friends and family; but instead I'm filled with foreign sights and sounds, and however difficult it is to adjust, this is what I wanted: to be uncomfortable, because it seems I've only known comfort in the US.
I'll close this entry with a few picture and words from last Friday, when our program took us to la Estancia el Rosal. It's a ranch in the countryside of Córdoba, about an hour's drive north of the city.
We rode horses through the woods and were given a tour of the grounds, including a shed for transforming plastic bottles into building blocks, in order to rebuild houses in communities broken by drug-addiction. The blocks have to be as light as possible because it's often women who do the building; as our tour guide said, "es las mujeres que se movilizan; los hombres son borrachos."
The shed where plastic bottles are converted into building material.
We were joined by two folklore musicians, both guitarists and singers. The gauchos of the ranch danced for a few songs, but most of the time we sat around them and listened. One of the musicians is also a professor of folklore dance, and he was trying to get more of us to volunteer to learn how to dance. I jumped up, as well as a few others in our program, but after a couple dances (including cuarteto!) it was difficult to prevail upon anyone else to come up and dance.
So then the professor said, "Si no bailan, no toco más." If you don't dance, I won't play. It's so different from being a classical musician, where an ideal performance is one in which the audience sits totally still, so that the subtlest details come through. I'm used to wanting to command the audience's full attention, rather than desiring that the music I create be appreciated by dance, diverting attention from the musician.
Because no one was dancing, they asked if anyone of us could play the guitar and sing. A couple girls went up, and we all sang a few old pop songs from the US. Hearing these songs after the folklore made me realize just how much more rhythmically complex the latter is; talking with the musicians earlier (I spontaneously interviewed them for my project), they told me that folkloric music is characterized by rhythmic complexity. I usually think of Stravinsky when I hear those words, but then, I've never played chords in syncopated patterns while singing on the beat.
The musicians I have interviewed have been so generous with their time and their answers. These musicians consented to an impromptu interview in less-than-perfect Spanish while carne asado was waiting for them steps away.
I thought it was lovely how we were able to share some US pop songs, but I wish more of us had been willing to dance. I only danced for a couple songs, and to be sure, I was too preoccupied to pay much attention to the music, but if I had time to internalize the movements, I think I'd find it to be overall a more complete experience of the music.
A memorable part of the interview was when both musicians assured me, quite seriously, that if you dance a zamba with someone, you fall in love (we were talking about the different types of rhythm in folkloric music). I couldn't help laughing, but now I find it mesmerizing how tightly folklore binds music and dance.
I have a couple bilingual poems I've been wanting to post on here, but I think they would have to occupy a separate entry — so I'll save those for later this week, and in the meantime here's a picture of the estancia.
