I took my first parcial (midterm) at the public university! In my section of the class I'm the only foreign student, so needless to say I was a little terrified. It was 3 short in-class essays on Argentine history from 1810 until 1930. I was a little shaky on the facts (of course) and didn't write nearly as much as all of the Argentine students, but my professor told me on Monday that I passed! I haven't gotten my actual number grade yet, which you wouldn't think would matter since I'm pass/fail, but it actually affects how many tests I have to take, etc. But I'm getting my grade tomorrow so a whole other round of nervousness will begin!
I also went to my first Madres de la Plaza de Mayo protest - only took me 2 months to finally go. Every Thursday afternoon a group of about fifty members of Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the human rights organization founded by the mothers of the disappeared youth during the military dictatorship at the end of the 70s, walk around the plaza with signs. Also, all the names of the 30,000 disappeared are read out loud (not each one every single week, but in rotation over a span of a couple of weeks). For anyone that has any interest in history or human rights I really recommend reading a book or even some articles about Argentina in the past few decades - its really fascinating. I'm absolutely in love with Argentine history and its incredible because you can talk to so many people here who lived through it. For example, my host mom had just started university when the military dictatorship started.
I also got to experience 9/11 in a foreign country, which was really interesting. The news stations covered all of the memorial services and I felt like I could have been back in the states the amount of times old footage was played. My host family and Argentine friends would ask questions about what happened and what it means to us, but I was always surprised by the one question they would always ask. Everyone wanted to know what I thought of conspiracy theories. According to my host mom, a lot of the movies shown here about 9/11 and the news stories have to do with conspiracy theories, and it seems to be the general consensus in Argentina that it was a conspiracy. At dinner my host mom even told me that she had read that it wasn't a plane that crashed by the Pentagon but instead a missile because they never found the remains from the plane. It took quite a few tries, but I think I convinced her that what she had heard was in fact wrong.
Thats all I can think of for right now - but I will be writing a blog post about my trip this past weekend to Jujuy, the northernmost province of Argentina (bordering Bolivia) and look out for a blog post next week about my trip this coming weekend to Mendoza (the Napa of Argentina).
it would have been wonderful to see madres de la plaza de mayo in action. when i return!
ReplyDeletei never realized i spent the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in another country because it has it's own significance here. although chileans don't necessarily talk so openly about the dictatorship, sept 11th was full of masses and memorial services for salvador allende.