A update on how I'm doing

Well hey there!  I just finished writing in my journal and what had started out as extremely negative, transformed into something completely positive.  Something finally clicked in my head and a revelation was made about my time here.  I also feel like this entry accurately sums up everything I would want to say to people about my trip, but would never be able to tell it so many times in the exact same way, therefore, I am turning this journal entry into my next post.  The only things that are necessary to know before you read is that the class I talk about had two professors, and I was spending the night at Annalise’s homestay this night.  The following is a direct quote from my journal that I’ve been keeping during my time here:

28-6-12

6:28 am

I just woke up because I dreamt that I was being covered by a blanket and suffocated.  I didn’t know where I was and it scared me.  After a few moments, I realized I was laying on a mattress in Annalise’s homestay house.  This calmed me only momentarily because then I started to feel uncomfortable lying there Not the kind of uncomfortable that comes from needing to rearrange myself, the kind of uneasiness and discomfort that can only come from Hell.   I became irrationally afraid of the dark, I reverted back to being a child again, who is afraid that the monsters will get you if you even had one toe off the bed.  This made me want to curl up into a ball to make sure that none of me was off the mattress, but that was too hot.  It became so hot overnight that I found myself absently scratching at my fingers in the exact spot my eczema flares up when it’s humid or there’s a rapid change in temperature—something that hasn’t happened for weeks.

I tried to go back to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes I was sucked back into the nightmare of having a sheet or a blanket over my entire body, not being able to see what was going on, being surrounded by evil creatures of the night.  Immediately all my thoughts would get jumbled and I wouldn’t be able to think straight, wouldn’t be able to warn anyone of the evil dangers that were all around, waiting to try and mess with them.  I laid awake, too terrified to move, too scared to try and close my eyes, but too scared to do anything about it.  I tried calling out silently to God, but instead of the loving, comforting embrace I so richly desired, I saw instead an image of a spiritual battle.  The arms of God were trying to reach out to me, trying to get to me to hold me and to comfort me, but the darkness was too much and too strong. 

I was left in the darkness.

That image terrified me.  Am I so estranged from God that I have let darkness fill my life?  Not wanting to disturb her slumber, I let Annalise sleep on, but soon my fear became so crippling that I knew I could not stay on that mattress, scared to stretch out but too hot to be balled up, for an indefinite number of hours.  I had to wake her up.  When I explained what was happening, she gave me her hand and immediately started praying.  The only thing I could think, however, was “You need to write, you need to write, you need to write” over and over and over again. 

I immediately became grateful I remembered this journal and a pen—although I’m certain Annalise would have let me use paper and pen of hers.  There’s just something satisfying knowing that I can write my own words directly into my journal on pages that are less likely to fall out.  So now, a glass of ice water and an open window later, I write.

I want to write about all the darkness that has been in my life recently, and although I know a few things off the top of my head, I have no idea where this will lead.  My only goal is that by the end of it, I feel a release of the darkness and an abundance of the light…and then hopefully I will be able to sleep deeply and soundly.  I was so tired before, so exhausted and in need of sleep, but closing my eyes only brought sheer terror, and so awake I remained.

The first and most (currently) prominent right now is that I failed the final for my Antropología y Arqueología class.  They failed me.  If they had known how hard I worked on that paper, maybe they would have been more lenient, but they didn’t and they weren’t.  They told me my Spanish was pretty bad and that it was obvious in my paper that I didn’t have much experience using it.  They said my sentences were weak and after searching for a word for a while they just kind of looked down and came up with the word “basic”.  Then they moved on to the content of the paper and asked if I had gone to get help from the student aid/helper person for foreign students and I admitted I hadn’t and they just looked at each other and said Yeah, there’s obviously a lack of understanding about what we talked about in class and you definitely should have gone to get help.  I think I was just too honest with them.  I told them I had been working on the paper for three days, I hadn’t read anything for the class (I didn’t want to B.S. that because I’m certain they would have asked me questions about it later and I would have nothing to say), and that I couldn’t elaborate on any points from my paper because all that I knew was in the paper and I really couldn’t elaborate more than that.  They even asked me if I wanted to take the exam in English instead of Spanish.  Is my Spanish so bad that people really can’t understand what I’m trying to say when I speak?

They started off by telling me that my Spanish was terrible.  That is NO WAY to start any sort of exam or evaluation—my confidence was shattered and so of course I was second-guessing everything I wanted to say and trying not to use more words than absolutely necessary. But my efforts were not enough. I still failed.  What bothers me is that I tried. I tried so hard to keep myself motivated for that class even though it doesn’t count for anything.  And even though I didn’t give up, I still failed.  And that sucks.  It sucks that I could have done nothing and ended up with the same result.  It sucks that I made a conscious (and tough) decision to keep going, and it didn’t even matter.  And not only that, I became ashamed to call myself a Spanish major.

That’s what it comes down to.  I feel like I have let so many people down by failing that exam.

I let the Hope College Spanish Department down, I let the Cuban, Spanish-speaking side of my family down, which means I let my dad down.

I know none of that should actually be true (I can’t even write that none of it IS true) but it all feels so true.  That was the pressure I have been carrying around with me this whole time.  This was my test to see if I really should be a Spanish major, if I’m Cuban enough to actually know the language of my father, if I’ll ever amount to anything in the Spanish-speaking world.  And I failed.  So now I don’t know what to do.  At this point I’m too ashamed to look anything/anyone Spanish-related in the eye…which makes me fear for my online-Spanish class.  But maybe that class can be the remedy.  Maybe that class can show me that I’m not that bad at Spanish and I just happened to encounter two of the rudest professors of my life at a critical moment.  But then, is Hope College spoiling me?  Am I being lured into a false sense of ability in speaking Spanish?  What if I actually suck at it and they just have a crappy Major program? What if I get out into the real world and find that as much as I want to help people, I actually can’t…I can only try to make them feel a little bit better (maybe) with basic phrases and simple words?          

            Well then, that’s what I’m going to do.

            I never felt called to learn perfect Spanish, I only felt called to work with women in Spanish-speaking countries and figured that it might be helpful to know the language.  I’ve been thinking about this all wrong.  I’m not studying Spanish because it’s something that I should have already known how to do, I’m studying it because I knew nothing about it and wanted to learn it because it would be helpful in the line of work I want to be in.  It’s ok that I’m not perfect at Spanish, I was never expected to be.  And this has all been a learning experience for me.  Hope College’s Spanish Department will be proud of me for going to Argentina and being in another culture, and trying even though it didn’t work out how I wanted it to.  My Cuban Spanish-speaking family (which includes my dad) will be proud of me for spending a whole semester down here and (even if it didn’t seem like it) improving my Spanish in any way.  Also, just the fact that I am down here at all is an accomplishment.  I’ve learned so much and done so much that it’s crazy the growth that has happened.  I’m fairly certain it’s a pretty big change in me, but I think I’ll wait for the opinions of friends and family members when I get back…in 3 days.  Well, I leave in 3 days, get back in 4.

You know, all of these things (positive revelations, that is) are things that other people could have told me (in fact I’m sure some people have at least tried to tell me a few of these), but there are just some things in the revelation process that just need to be realized on one’s own, by oneself.

And now that I have finally come to this realization, I finally have peace.  And now that I finally have peace, I finally can sleep.

So good night (for now) and I will see you again soon.

-Kiki

And that is the story of my revelations about my trip in Argentina.  I’m glad that you took the time to read it because this is pretty much the best kind of update I can give you about my life right now.

It's about time for another update...

I suppose an update is long overdue, and so, to get into the writing mood, I will first write a blog entry, and then write my papers…of course, I will probably have to leave for class before I get to writing my papers…but I feel this is a worthy cause. Also, all I’d be able to do is the thinking/writing equivalent of flopping around while trying to figure out what I want to write, if I’m going to spend time doing something, I may as well make it something worth doing.

Needless to say, so much has happened since my last entry! The last thing I wrote about was Bariloche? Oof. That was a while ago.  Some important things that have happened since then: I moved homestays, Annalise and I had a weekend of awesome, finals week is upon me, and I’m running out of time to do anything.

Ok, I’ll go one by one: homestay change.  June 1, my housemate and I moved homestays.  We did this because, simply put, we weren’t comfortable living in Ines’ house anymore.  She would daily make comments to me about how messy and dirty I am, she would always be there to point out mistakes we were making and it felt like the list of rules kept going on and on and on, as if she was adding them as she saw us doing things incorrectly.  I realize that one can’t remember ALL the rules in their household (due to the fact that some are just so natural you forget they’re not normal to everyone), but seriously, you should establish the ground rules before you start anything.  It got to the point where I would hear my host mom in the kitchen and wait for her to leave before I went to go retrieve my breakfast (which would normally be two pieces of bread sitting out on the counter with cold coffee).  We never ate dinner together, even if we were all at the house at the same time—she didn’t eat the same food as us, she would make us something and often times make herself something else.  The cuts of chicken we got…well, it was usually the thigh or once I actually got the ribcage. The ribcage of a chicken. Do you know how much meat is on a chicken’s ribcage? Pretty much zero.  So basically, we went to bed hungry many times and we never felt welcome in our “home”.  Yes, we are adults, but we are still adults in a different country and we would like to come home to a welcoming environment…not a semi-hostile one.

So Yelena and I finally moved out once we realized that neither of us was happy there.  Once we mentioned this to IES staff, in less than a week we were gone.  Monday we brought it up, and Friday we moved into our new house.  And this new host mom rocks.  She’s awesome.  She’s a TV show producer and this (June) is the only month she was available to host students because she had been working on the production of Big Brother in Argentina up until the end of May, and July 1 she flies out to Peru to do the same thing.  So if we had waited any shorter, we probably wouldn’t have gotten her—which would have been really sad!  But, she hadn’t been planning on hosting students, and so she was on vacation for a week in Mexico with her boyfriend…ok actually it was more like 12 days…but it wasn’t a huge deal.  She left us with the contact information of one of her good friends who lives close by and has come to visit us while Albana’s been away.  But the awesome weekend comes in the first few days my host mom was gone because Yelena was also gone, visiting Iguazú falls.  So basically Annalise and I had a three day sleep-over in which we made awesome food (chicken alfredo), watched Tangled, made more deliciously awesome food (homemade pizza) and watched countless episodes of How I Met Your Mother.  We also did leave the apartment…to go shopping for groceries, as well as…well, I’m sure we did SOMETHING else outside…but I can’t really remember what at the moment.

I know I only gave you a few sentences…but really, the weekend was pretty awesome…I guess you just had to be there though to get the full effect.  I think part of the awesomeness definitely came from the internet being so fast…with only one computer online it just zips right along!  Which brings us to: finals week.  This is THE most stressful finals week I have ever had.  We have had minimal (as in, for most cases, zero) graded homework in my classes, and so the only things we get graded on are our midterms (30%) and finals (40%) with 30% left for the prof to decide how it gets split up (weekly exercises, attendance, participation, etc.) and so A LOT of pressure falls onto the grade you get for these finals.  Also, these grades transfer back into my GPA at Hope instead of (like for some of the students here) having it just count as pass/fail.  Also, Thursday is going to be the day that everything goes down.  I have two papers due that day, a written test, and an oral group presentation. All on Thursday.  But after that…I’m still not done.  On Wednesday evening I have an oral exam for my partner university class that, from what we understand, is just the professor asking us questions and us needing to answer them, only problem is that I have no idea what those questions will be like. Also, due that Wednesday, is a 10-15 page paper for that class (which I have yet to start) about the archeological and anthropological significance of one of the neighborhoods called Boca here.  Of course, it’s an archeology and anthropology course, but I don’t feel like the things we’ve learned in class are going to help me on this paper, it feel more like a research paper that I could have done without the class…so I guess it’s just kind of disheartening to know that I didn’t actually have to go to this class…not to mention it will count for NOTHING once I get back to Hope.  It’s just more elective credits I don’t need.  I wish I had dropped it, but when I finally decided I wanted to, it was two days before the deadline to withdraw from a class, and I was getting seriously guilt-tripped by the other girls in my class who didn’t want me to go.

Needless to say, I am completely and utterly overwhelmed by the incredible amount of work left to do in the next two days.  Two days. All I have is two days to write all these papers (minus the Boca one) and study for all these tests, and practice my presentation. Two days.  In case you couldn’t tell, I don’t think that’s enough time and I think that I might actually fail some of these finals. Which would suck. Because I don’t want to fail.  On top of all the stress of finals, there is also a clock ticking on the rest of my time here.  Every time we say “Oh, we have to go see this place!”  or “Wow, we have to come back here before we leave!” it just comes back and hits us that we won’t be here too much longer and so these things have to happen NOW or they won’t happen.  Which leads me to wonder what I’ve actually been doing with my time here, and how I’ve been spending my time, because right now, it feels like I’ve done nothing but sit around and watch TV while letting important deadlines slip away…and that is pretty much the opposite of taking advantage of a study abroad experience.  It’s doing the exact same thing I do every day in the States.  And now I feel guilty for writing this post instead of flopping around trying to think of things to say for a paper…any paper, they all have to get done.  But I feel like this post was worthwhile, if not for giving an awesome update, at least for giving an extended prayer request list. 

Also, I’m sorry that I kind of let the ball drop on Blog updates, it just never seemed like a good time to write (and it still isn’t) but I guess it just became too mandatory to update. 

Oh man, I almost forgot! I totally went to a Boca Juniors soccer game yesterday!  It was a lot of fun :D  We went through a tour group that included transportation to and from the game, beer and choripan before the game, and bleacher-style seating at the game.  When we got to the “restaurant” (and emptied out building with a grill out front and a cooler in the back) we were submersed into a group of tourists, mostly all English-speaking, from around the globe.  One of the girls in my group brought blue and yellow face paint (the colors of the Boca Juniors) and so the 7 girls I was with and I (there were 4 of us from IES and then four more girls from another program that one of the IES girls knew) painted one blue and one yellow stripe on our cheeks. Almost before we had finished a little old lady came up to us and asked if she could have it too and of course we said yes.  She offered to pay us, but we said no, a decision we soon regretted because from there, there was a fairly steady flow of people asking to get their faces painted too. Even though we didn’t make any money, it was still fun to be able to share the face painting with others.  I was also able to buy myself a jersey (thanks Lita!) and it is awesome. 

We got to the game about an hour and a half before it started and about an hour to kick off, the songs started.  Now, I would say the chants, but these were actually songs that had more of a melody than just rhythmic chanting.  There were so many songs.  It was a bummer that I didn’t know the words to any, but I caught on to a few of the more popular ones by the end of the match.  Boca was playing Arsenal, but the Arsenal from Argentina, not the one from the UK.  And Arsenal and Boca are same-city rivals.  We saw a banner on the other side of the stadium that said “Nunca hicimos amistades” [We’ve never been friends]…so that might give you an example of the very not Cubs-Sox-friendly-rivalry in this same-city match up.  We ended up losing 3-0, but the refs were definitely against Boca.  I’m not just saying that because we lost, I’m saying that because there were SEVERAL times Arsenal fouls were not called, but almost every time Boca did something wrong they got excessive penalties for it.  It was ridiculous.  So ridiculous, in fact, that when the refs came back on the field after half time, there was a group chant of “Hijo de puta” [Son of a bitch] throughout the stadium for a while.  It was kind of awesome.  Also, the strings of cusses I heard there was…well, it was highly entertaining to hear, but I couldn’t help but notice that there were several younger kids there that would sometimes join in. But I guess that’s just the fútbol culture here.  Despite the crowded stands, it was still quite freezing, so I was relieved to be able to get back on the bus to head back to the drop-off point.  It was a bummer I never got to cheer for a goal, but it was still a great experience nonetheless.  And the game ended on a (sort of) positive note when the last song sung was about how they were bummed they lost, but it’s ok because Boca would win in the championships…so…you know, typical rivalry stuff.

And now that I have caught you up (however briefly) on what’s been going on here, I can only ask for prayer support for these next two days so that I am prepared for all of these papers and exams and presentations and that I still have a few shreds of sanity left by the end of it.

Thank you all so much for your support.

Besos,

Kiki