Operation Thanksgiving A Success!

End result: Universally declared as delectable!

I'm pretty happy with the whole affair. The gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce were basically identical to what I remember from home. I take this as fairly miraculous since I made the stuffing from scratch minus a few key ingredients the recipe called for (who cares about poultry seasoning anyway?). I was afraid the gravy wouldn't happen until Ellen swooped in with her culinary expertise and whipped up something amazing with some spare spices and the scrawny turkey neck. And thank you, Dad, for the simple mashed potato recipe, a guaranteed hit in a potato-obsessed country.

The turkey had a good flavor, but appeared to be all dark meat. Huh. Maybe that's what happens when you buy a 10-lb bird? Or maybe I shouldn't expect a lot out of a turkey I found in a Danish Føtex, especially since (as many Danes reminded me today) turkey is native to North America, not Denmark.

The dinner rolls were tasty, but boring. No crescent rolls to be found in Denmark.

Finally, the pie. With such high hopes, it only turned out to be alright. My first slight issue was with separating the eggs. My arm was still tired from wrestling with pumpkins, so the first egg I tried to separate into whites and yolks splattered into a yellow & clear mess. Oops. Double oops since I had exactly the number of eggs the recipe required, so there was no room for error. Luckily it landed in one of my bowls, so I salvaged as much of the yoke as I could and then threw out the remaining bit. Time to try again. The five other eggs went smoothly, and I just figured one less egg white wouldn't cause the pie too much pain. My second slightly bigger issue was with beating the egg whites with sugar--the chiffon part of Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. I got careless and started adding the sugar before the eggs were light and fluffy. Not so bad, you say? Well, it turns out that adding the sugar too early turns the egg whites into a sort-of fluffy but mostly soupy goo. Still, the gooey "chiffon" still livened up the cooked pumpkin filling and I was feeling pretty optimistic. I didn't notice the other two issues until I cut into the pie to serve. It turns out that the gelatin we haphazardly picked in the supermarket was an utter failure. Each piece of pie flattened into an unattractive pile of brown gloop as soon as it was served. Secondly, the pie crust was an odd sort of pastry dough that looked normal but tasted slippery and flat. Hmm. But despite the unfortunate presentation, the filling tasted great!! My favorite feedback of the night: "This pie tastes like the essence of Christmas." If that's not a compliment, I don't know what is.

Overall, it was a wonderfully "hyggelig" (pleasant, cozy) evening. Our guests left in a contented state of fullness, all congratulating me on the great meal. Ellen even requested all my recipes, and Jimmi was inspired by the bread stuffing to alter his own stuffing recipe for the traditional Christmas lunch. Also, I happily understood a fair bit of the conversation in Danish, and that helped me feel more like a part of the family. So here goes: I'm thankful to have two families that will always be there for me, and more specifically, that have both aided me in my eternal quest to eat pumpkin chiffon pie. :D Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

The Turkey

Undeniably the most stressful part of preparing a Thanksgiving feast is The Turkey. First, you must find the perfect turkey. In Denmark, it's difficult enough just to find a whole turkey, let alone a particularly beautiful one. Second, you face a difficult decision: to baste or not to baste. Some websites call for it, some don't, and some recommend buying a self-basting turkey. (This concept makes me chuckle, because I only imagine the turkey wing automatically extending to self-baste in a motion akin to a self-cleaning litterbox.) In the end, I took the easy way out and made a tent of aluminum foil that reflected a lot of the steam and juices back onto the turkey breast. I think my host mom took care of most of the seasoning when she dumped half the salt-shaker on the bird when my back was turned. Third, perhaps the toughest of all, is how to judge when the turkey is done. This caused me much anxiety. My host mom kept cracking semi-serious jokes about how the turkey wouldn't be ready to eat in less than six hours if we set the oven at anything less than 250˚C. For those of you who don't bake in C, that's almost 500˚F!!! I allowed her to turn up the oven for 10 minutes just to raise the oven temperature, then I took it back down to the recommended range. Luckily, I soon had back-up in the turkey department. Family friend Ellen came over and taught me the poke-and-squeeze technique for checking if the turkey is done cooking (stick with a skewer or knife deep into the breast, press hard with a fork next to the hole, and watch the juice that bubbles up for blood). With her help, I managed to get the turkey out of the oven and ready to serve a mere 45 minutes after the proposed dinner time. Not bad for an amateur Thanksgiving chef!

3:21 Pumpkin Pie

I love Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. It is worth this trouble.

This is what I had to tell myself over the 3 hours I spent making pumpkin puree, a pre-made delicacy that is unavailable in stores here. Yesterday I followed every lead I knew of for the ready-made kind--going to the famed Fredericksberg SuperBest for the American aisle (fail) and to Magasin for the pumpkin-in-a-jar that another DIS student said was a sure bet (turns out it was pickled pumpkin: fail). After aimless wandering through random supermarkets, I finally broke down and bought three cantalope-sized cooking pumpkins. Word to the wise: Pumpkins are damn hard. My arm ached after chopping, scooping out, and peeling those suckers. Afterwards, I stuck 'em in the oven at 160˚C for 1.5 hours. Waiting. Waiting. Then Avan (my host mom) and I went through every blending apparatus in the house to finally settle on a tiny version of a food processor that I think we use for grinding spices for tea. Voila! Pumpkin puree. Commence the actual cooking of the pumpkin filling.

A Danish Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a pretty odd holiday when you think about it. It's not about presents, like Christmas. It's not entirely about family, although that's a huge part of it. It's about food. A LOT of food. I've tried to express to my host family the importance of QUANTITY at Thanksgiving. You have to eat like you're going to be fasting for the next 40 days. You have to dress appropriately so you can pack it in. Half the fun is waiting for the turkey thermometer to pop. So imagine the effort I put into making sure this Thanksgiving dinner, my first in a foreign country, is as close to my traditional one as possible. If I have to eat my own body weight in food, it better be good.

Here's how it will go down: I'm cooking for 8, including myself. Some family friends are coming, as well as my host sister Sine and her boyfriend Jimmi. Cooking started at 10 this morning. I first tackled the all-important cranberry sauce. We went to three different grocery stores yesterday in our effort to find cranberries, and eventually stumbled across a magical tower of fresh (!!!) boxes of cranberries. I bought 1 kilo--you can never have enough cranberry sauce--and found a familiar-looking recipe online, provided by Ocean Spray: 3 cups water, 3 cups sugar, and that 1 kilo in the pot. The only slight hiccup I experienced was when the concoction boiled into such a frenzy that it started to rise, rise, rise, almost foaming all over the glittering black stovetop. I quickly turned the heat down and stirred frantically: my first save of the day. Uh oh, I hope I don't have a limited number of "get out of jail free" cards in this adventure.

Next stop: Pumpkin pie. From real pumpkins. Stay tuned.

The Trials of Learning Danish

Danish language is . . . difficult. The best description I have heard so far is that "half the syllables aren't pronounced, and the rest are swallowed." So true. My greatest linguistic challenge is trying to pronounce the suburb's name where I live: Solrød Strand. The letter ø is particularly swallowed when it's preceded by an r because r's aren't really pronounced (shape your mouth like you're going to hiss and then try to say rrr--yeah, I'm aware of how ridiculous that sounds), which also makes saying Strand a tricky oral conundrum.

Thankfully, most Danes speak English so it's pretty easy to navigate around the city. There was only one occasion where I almost got myself into big big trouble. It was a couple weeks ago on a Wednesday, when I don't have class, and I decided to check out some historic cemeteries and parks on the west side of town (near Frederiksberg Slot, where I also encountered my first Danish hill). I was faithfully following my trusty map from the nearest train stop, and I walked through a gate into a large walled courtyard. There were a couple of signs in Danish, and then a big sign pointing to the VISITORS entrance. Odd, I thought, since cemeteries are usually free to the public, but maybe this one was so old and so historically significant that they charge an entrance fee. It's Europe, so what do I know?? So I walked to the door (not your typical ticket window, but an unmarked black door) and opened it to a starkly white room with linoleum walls. Standing inside were three uniformed police officers. Without a word, I backed out and shut the door. I consulted my map for the millionth time. Hmmm. Time to ask the nice-looking Danish folks standing to the left of the entrance, smoking. I politely addressed them (in English), showed them the map, and asked if they could please tell me if this was the historic cemetery I was intending to visit? The man gave me a slightly incredulous, slightly amused look (very Danish of him) and said, "No, this is a prison."

And that's the story of how my ignorance of Danish vocabulary led to my visit of a most unconventional tourist destination. It turned out to be quite pleasant--I had a nice chat with the smoking couple outside, although I never asked what brought them to the prison. Plus, you can imagine how this visit gave me the more to chuckle about than all the rest.

Terry & Me: Seeking Asylum in Denmark

I've made a few critical comments about Denmark's protectionist immigration policy, so I feel I should explain before I go much further.  Denmark restricted their laws on asylum a few years ago when the government switched hands from the more liberal Social Democrats to the more nationalistic Danish People's Party.  It hasn't always been so strict: before recent economic turbulence, Denmark's booming economy welcomed new sources of labor and the borders were relatively open.  [It was during that time that my host family came here.]  The main arguments against immigration are very similar to what you hear for restricting Mexican immigration, but are more widespread: immigrants (refugees) exploit the welfare system, they can't integrate into a liberal and liberated society (most immigrants are Muslim), they threaten the fragile existence of a "Danish" identity, etc etc.  It's extremely difficult to be granted asylum--after which point you are a legally-recognized refugee--and the process is very slow.  Some asylum-seekers wait years to hear a verdict, and in the meantime are forced to live on welfare in asylum centers (they are not permitted to work).  To be granted refugee status, you must have proof of persecution that threatens your individual person, official documentation preferred.  How many people fleeing Afghanistan do you think remember to grab the paperwork that proves their lives are at at stake?  How many of those papers do you think survive the journey that many people make on foot?

For my Migration & Identity core class, I worked with an asylum-seeker from Bangladesh, who I will call Terry, to write an article for the New Times newspaper based at the Danish Red Cross.  Our collaboration started off slowly because Terry had been experiencing some depression and was also fasting for Ramadan.  I didn't truly understand the challenges he was facing until I met Terry in person.  He is extremely affectionate, cheerful, extroverted man.  When I asked how he liked Denmark, he immediately wrinkled his nose and commented on how solemn everyone is.  This simple gesture gave me a huge insight into how much he missed the openness of his own culture and his dislike of the formality of Danish society. I visited the New Times office once and, instead of settling behind separate computers, we chatted about our article over coffee and chocolate (he jokingly told me in an email that his biggest talents were eating and sleeping, so we figured we would put one of them to good use).  I just use this as a reminder that most of the people that uproot their lives to seek asylum in Denmark probably have a very good reason.

For me, one really rewarding part of this project was finding the common ground between a foreign exchange student and a foreign asylum-seeker.  Although we came to Denmark for very different reasons and have different projected lengths of residence here, we both can commiserate about the rainy weather, the bland food, and the fact that our families are far away in distant time zones.  Terry told me that one big culture shock here in Denmark is that he had to learn to cook for the first time!  Normally a wife, sister, or mother would cook for the man in Bangladesh.  I told him that in the U.S., it was normal for both the man and woman to cook, since women were expected to work as well (I tried to keep my Wellesley indignation at a minimum).  I still need a lot of help learning though since I’ve always lived with a family or at college with a meal-plan option, so he invited me over to the asylum center one day so he could teach me how to cook.  How wonderfully strange it would be for a Bangladeshi man to be teaching an American girl how to cook in a Danish kitchen.

On the last day of our project, I finally asked Terry how he came to be in Denmark.  He told me he was involved in a controversial political organization in Bangladesh that lobbied to bring the man-made constitution more in line with the holy Quran.  According to Terry, the government framed this group for at least one act of terrorism and then painted the entire membership as extremist.  They then used this as license to hang and shoot 15 of the leaders, and to kill as many as 150 of the others.  Terry said they came to his home while he was at work, so he fled and hid elsewhere in Bangladesh for a year, and then lived in India before coming to Denmark to seek asylum.  He sees his relocation as temporary, in the hopes that a new government in Bangladesh will make the country safe for him again, but is trying to seek asylum so he can have a life in the meantime.  I was slightly surprised by his political affiliation, since such an organization would be regarded as fundamentalist right-wing in the United States.  His story made me realize that, even if he may not be persecuted in Denmark for his beliefs, he will certainly not be accepted.  I think he is aware of that but really has no other options if he wants to live openly with a legal right to reside and work outside of Bangladesh.  He had his final interview with the Danish government almost two weeks ago and I haven't heard whether or not his asylum was granted, so I'm just hoping for the best.

Catch-up entry #1: Blast off

How do I really like Copenhagen?  Why did I choose to study in such a small, unimportant European country?  Why the hell am I learning Danish, a so-called pajama language?  I get these rather incredulous and suspicious questions regularly from non-natives and native Danes alike.  They don't exactly paint a very welcoming picture of Denmark.  Luckily, I've come to realize there are as many reasons to come to Denmark as there are reasons not to.  I'll cover the basics here, but you'll have to visit if you want to see the truth for yourself.

How's life in Copenhagen?  Rainy. Windy. Walkable. Bike-friendly. Canal-y. Full of herring and rye bread and Carlsberg beer. Windy. Lively and happening every single hour of the week except on Sunday. Extraordinarily patriotic with flags flying everywhere. Very blonde. In love with jazz music. In love with any music you can dance to. In L.O.V.E. with Aqua.  LIBERAL. Surprisingly homogenous. Packed with 7-11s. Green--in both the color and environmental sense. Friendly. Outdoorsy. Highly proficient in the English language. Did I mention windy?

Danish food isn't particularly delicious, although eating liver pate on a piece of buttered rye bread topped with veal is certainly memorable.  The weather gets pretty dreary, although the September I experienced was full of sunshine and Danes relishing every last drop of it.  Danes don't get recognized in the international media very often, although they made a splash when the government paid for a tourism advertisement depicting a Danish woman seeking the father of her one-night-stand baby.  Bring on the lonely American men looking for liberated Danish women!  Not many millionaires come out of Denmark--and if they do, they get taxed up the wazoo.  The unofficial national motto is "You shall not presume you are anyone [important]" from Janteloven.  So why are Danes the happiest people on Earth?  Most experts cite low expectations as a key factor.  However, being humble and modest (though secretly proud of their Viking past) doesn't stop Danes from thinking their culture is the best.  Just talk to the hundreds of people rejected asylum in Denmark if you ever have a doubt of Denmark being fiercely protective of their Danish identity (5 million strong).

My host-family is actually not ethnically Danish.  They immigrated from Kurdistan about ten years ago and were granted asylum here before Denmark's immigration laws got so strict.  Both my 18-year-old host sister and 13-year-old host brother speak perfect Danish, and both my parents speak very well.  My host mom was the one who dubbed Danish a pajama language, because it's something you feel comfortable wearing but something you have to take off if you ever want to leave the house.  As a result, everyone speaks English.  Very handy for me, but it doesn't exactly help me integrate into the culture--especially since I'm INSIDE the house where everyone else can switch into pajamas, and I'm the only one who can't get cozy.  Having a foreign host family helps because living in a multilingual household is the norm.  We communicate in a mix of Kurdish, Danish, and English--okay, I admit it's mostly English where I'm concerned, but I'm trying to learn.

So do I like it here?  Truly, I love it here.  I never thought I'd appreciate the urban jungle, but I LOVE the fact that there are tons of museums, restaurants, shops, lectures, theaters...all at my fingertips, every day (except Sunday), accessible by my Alle Zone pass that gives me unlimited rides on all city buses, trains, and metro.  Copenhagen isn't gray and towering like New York City, isn't crime-ridden like parts of Chicago, isn't car-filled and exhaust-ed like Los Angeles; here, the old architecture blends seamlessly with the new, the streets are safe and navigable by easy (but fun-sized) landmarks, and bikes flood the streets.  I came here to experience the Liberal & Green side of government, to attend the COP 15 UN climate conference, and to take some academically challenging classes.  You know what I got?  I got Europe as my classroom.  I've already traveled to Lithuania, Sweden, and Germany, and there's a Eurail pass in the mail.  I got a Pro-Environment city and a Pro-Bush host family.  I got to listen about poorly-aimed American missiles from an Afghani asylum-seeker, and I got to stand inside the ramshackle house of a Gypsy women.  I got to walk through the German town where many Nazis found safety after WWII, and then I got to see the tiny dagger that Lithuanian policemen used to stab Jewish children.  I got to dip my feet in the Baltic Sea.  I've got Obama mania times a million.  This excitement is way more than I could have hoped for.  And I've still got three months left.

Mo’ on the Udall Experience

This entry I’ll keep to a minimum, because my adventures with my new Udall family are only beginning.  I am not often tempted to impose peer pressure, but to anyone who is considering applying for the Udall: DO IT.  First, anyone from any background has a chance to win.  My class includes everyone from a farmer dad who is back in college (triple-majoring in four years, I might add, while also producing all the electricity needed for his house and property) to a college government VP/green finance expert who is running for city council in Maryland this fall.  There was even one Republican!  Second, winning the Udall means that you become a part of Morris K. Udall’s living legacy, destined to bring his legendary passion, humor, and integrity to your own work.  A huge part of the Orientation is spent meeting the Udall family and Mo’s closest political advisors who now run the Udall Foundation.  Finally, the other Udall scholars really become your family.  Everyone has so much respect for each other from the get-go that it’s that much easier to let your guard down and be yourself.  It was proven time and time again, between engaging in outrageously silly dance parties and having candid discussions with alums and other scholars about their experiences in the environmental movement.  “See you soon!” was a common sentiment between scholars as we wished each other goodbye—there’s really a very high chance we’ll run into each other sooner or later.

These past five days in Tucson reminded me how to apply direction to my life, although it didn’t necessarily inspire me in any particular direction.  During my time in Argentina, I have often felt like I spend more time going with the flow than I spend directing the flow.  I am still mulling over whether having “direction” and “purpose” at such a young age is uncharacteristic of Argentine culture, or whether I just haven’t been exposed to that mindset in the laidback Biosfera office. It is certainly true, however, that the Udall Orientation is a leadership conference in disguise.  This obviously contrasts with the team-oriented focus of community development work and the team structure of the GESI program.  “Don’t do anything others could do for themselves” is a powerful lesson I’ll take away from this summer, especially so for a resolutely self-sufficient gal like myself.

[Side note: I should have access to pictures from the conference soon, since there was a professional photographer named Tom who ran like mad to capture all the most important moments…meaning every. single. one.  Kudos to Tom for pulling it off.]

Embarking at Udall, Reflecting on Argentina

It wasn’t the Gripe A that afflicted me in the end.  Instead, I’ve got a severe case of White Man’s Burden as I overlook the desert landscape from the comforts of my leather-trimmed and air-conditioned suite at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson.  It is a label that I have always resisted because it’s a burden I feel is my duty to make the best of, unlike the connotation that this burden is weighing me down to the point of hopelessness.  Claiming White Man’s Burden seemed like a cry for sympathy.  Let’s be clear: I’m in no way deserving of sympathy.  This trip to Tucson is a dream come true, and I occasionally surprise myself with how many cool places I’ve been lucky enough to visit in my life and how many truly incredible people I am lucky enough to know.  However, I do have a point in evoking the White Man’s Burden in this case.  It provides a familiar comparison for certain moral dilemmas I have encountered in trying to explain my life, particularly this surreal excursion to Tucson, to my friends and family in Argentina.

On my final day in Argentina I made a point to visit the comedor to say goodbye to Adelaida, Paulina, and Ramona—the women who work at the panadería.  I first asked about their weekends, and Ramona told me about visiting a close friend who lives far on the other side of La Plata.  She said that they took a remis (basically an on-call taxi, often cheaper) on their way there, but walked the 80 blocks back.  That’s probably over 3.5 miles. I then had to explain how I could manage to make a quick return trip, by plane, back to the U.S. for a few days.  I explained the scholarship, the obligatory nature of the conference, and cleared up a few misconceptions about the distance I had to travel (12 hours by plane=impossibly long by any other form of transportation).  After that, I didn’t have the energy to counter their assumption that I was going to see my family when I returned “home”—traveling that distance for strangers is ludicrous in this culture.

Oddly enough, it was even harder to bring up the subject of my trip to my moderately well-to-do host mom.  I shamefully waited until just over a week before leaving to inform her that I was going to be gone, simply because I could not find the words to explain.  Finally, I gathered the courage to give my spiel: “Es un premio, una beca, que gané para mis estudios del medioambiente.  La plata de la beca me ayudó pagar para esta pasantía en Argentina...esta reunión con los otros recipientes en los Estados Unidos es obligatorio, tengo que ir—si no asisto, perderé la beca!”  (It is an award, a scholarship, that I won for my studies in the environmental field.  The money from the scholarship helped me pay for this internship in Argentina…I am required to attend this conference with the other scholars in the U.S.—if I don’t attend, I will lose the scholarship!)  Not so hard, you think?  Actually, it was amazingly hard.  For Miriam, travel is probably the greatest luxury in the world.  Her wonderful husband lives 12 hours away by bus so that he can have a paying job, and bus tickets are so enormously expensive that they cannot see each other more than once every two months.  She has dreams of visiting the U.S. and is learning English, but only speaks wistfully of being able to afford a ticket.  Looking back on it, perhaps playing down my trip to Tucson was the exact opposite of what I wanted to convey: that it is a huge honor, that I am extremely lucky that I have this opportunity, and that I would never in a million years return to the U.S. for six days if it weren’t all free!  But it still felt rude somehow because a scholarship like this isn’t even available to people like Ramona and Miriam.  As I embark on this Udall experience, I know that I will appreciate every moment even more because I know how fortunate I am to be given the chance.

A Puppy Got Kicked, And Some Other Stuff Too (inside joke)

Many things have culminated in the last couple of weeks.  We experienced many frustrations and a few successes, and it’s hard to know where to begin.  The easiest place to start is the FSD weekend retreat to San Antonio de Areco that the eleven American girls participated in from Friday night to Sunday night.  Brett stayed in La Plata to advance a multimedia project that is integral to the deliverables we hope to achieve by the end of our seven weeks here.  I do not want to go into details on a public blog, but I will say this: Emily, Liana, and I (Emily first) requested to stay in La Plata to work with Brett and the women at the comedor this weekend, but our request was denied in absolute terms.  Had we decided not to attend this obligatory vacation, we would have faced termination from this FSD program.  Needless to say, Horacio urged us to go on the retreat to save the project and a so-called positive relationship with FSD.

The weekend itself was pleasant.  We arrived at the aptly named Hostel Gaucho on Friday night and enjoyed a delicious ravioli dinner served by the hostel owner herself.  We all turned in by 1 am after a good chat—early by Argentine standards, considering that clubs don’t open in San Antonio until 4 am—so that we could get our beauty sleep before the big day ahead.  The next morning we walked to a deluxe ranch and experienced everything gaucho.  Although, as our astute coworkers at Biosfera jested many times, this place was far too deluxe to showcase the reality of gaucho life.  I could tell as soon as I heard the first Beetles cover song over the cleverly hidden speakers that I was not truly in el campo (the countryside).  Nevertheless, the illusion worked its magic.  Upon our arrival, we went horseback riding through manicured fields, passing by some more modern artifacts: a mini-Jeep for mini gauchos, for instance.  My pony was slow but reliable.  Meaning, I consistently held up the rear of the horse train but at least my pony didn’t stop to eat the bushes like SOME other horses (Kelly calling “Ayuda! Ayuda!” from behind me was one of the most memorable moments).  We then took a hammock break with some delicious Argentine wine, which eventually turned into an asado lunch with empanada and chorizo appetizers.  Vegetarians beware!  After lunch, Liana and I were coerced into dancing foclore with several other more willing volunteers.  The day ended with a semi-beastiality presentation of the close relationship gauchos have with their horses, accompanied by a gentle flute rendition of the song “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina.”  A profound cultural experience indeed.

Sunday was spent mostly exploring the town itself, although there’s not much to explore.  The best discovery was a little choclateria, where we nearly tripped over ourselves to buy gourmet homemade chocolate.  Chocolate is without some form of dulce de leche filling is rare—not to say I’m complaining!  Our FSD-sponsored lunch place for the day was a little cerveceria that only had three beers on tap (Disclaimer: FSD doesn’t cover drink tabs.  No lawsuits please.).  After meat and cheese picadas, Caroline and I stuck around for a while to enjoy the atmosphere.  One of the things that must be appreciated while here is the slow pace of life, and the personal nature of interaction.  People take time during work, during a commute, or even during their favorite TV show to talk and joke around.  I stay at work to visit with people until 8 PM or later every night.  My host mom will strike up a twenty-minute conversation with the bus driver even though she has never met him before in her life.  She said the city is a little family, although La Plata is far from small.  While the flexible definition of “on time” makes work a little difficult, it makes for an entirely liberating cultural experience.  The integrity of our goals remains the same here, but the means of achieving those goals is a slower, more reflective, more interpersonal road.  It makes me glad that I’m studying abroad next semester and not immediately returning to a more fast-paced, stressful environment at Wellesley.  The slower pace of life also gives me more space to reflect on the institutional difficulties I’ve been running up against, and wonder how bureaucracy imposed by international organization interferes with the pace of development in countries like Argentina. 

An Introduction to (Real) Development Work

We’re a week into our internship at Biosfera and my team is feeling a bit overwhelmed by the immensity of the task ahead.  Our supervisor Horacio requested, rather, suggested that we work with the comedor Estrategia de Caracol (which, oddly enough, translates to “Strategy of the Snail.”)  (I just found this out: the reason it is called Strategy of the Snail is because snails carry their homes on their backs, just like an immigrant family--very clever!) A comedor is a place where food is cooked and served to the poor.  Most comedors receive their food from the municipality, although some also receive money stipends in exchange for political favors.  Caracol receives food that nearly 80 families depend on; however, it functions proudly without money from the municipality.  Yet it is still affiliated with a political organization called the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desempleados (Movement of Unemployed Workers).  The Movimiento is probably the most powerful organization in this poor immigrant settlement aside from the municipality itself.  I should note that neither MTD nor the municipality can be trusted to provide aid without strings attached: for example, if someone at the comedor refused to participate in a strike or protest staged by MTD, s/he would probably lose her job.  As a result, the different political loyalties make it nearly impossible for the comedors to work together despite the fact that there are several functioning within blocks of each other.  (Picture below is of the comedor from the street)

After reading the previous passage, you may imagine you have a fairly good grasp of the political complexities of this comedor.  However, the reality is that I heard those facts in conjunction with evidence that portrayed the total opposite.  It’s possible that I am completely and utterly wrong.  Furthermore, it’s possible that it doesn’t matter.  Even the locals who work at Biosfera don’t understand the political situation and yet they have still implemented successful projects.  Instead of doing a political analysis, we’re here to develop an environmentally-friendly and economically sustainable project within the next six weeks.  One of the biggest challenges for me is understanding that I can’t fix this community, as much as I want to try.  All of my training tells me to visualize the whole problem so that I can find a solution.  But the problem is so complex, our time so short, and our resources so limited that we have to be realistic.  I’m just hoping that realistic is not synonymous with narrow-minded.

Other than working at Biosfera and the comedor, I also have managed to squeeze in some important “cultural research” in the past week.  Ahem. Okay, I’m talking about fútbol!  I went to the Gimnasia vs. Gimnasia game on Sunday afternoon with the eleven other Americans on our trip and some of our host brothers, and then went with my Biosfera team and some Argentine friends to the Estudiantes final Wednesday night.  Soccer here goes beyond obsession!  The Estudiantes game was HUGE--los Estudiantes are the better team and they were playing Brazil in the final championships.  People literally sang battle songs at the top of their lungs, interspersed with frequent profanities (like “hijo de puta!” or “la concha de tu madre!” for those who are interested).  Everybody was wearing red and white for the team, and before the game, people were setting off fireworks and throwing shredded newspaper until I couldn’t even see the playing field.  The game I went to was pretty tame because nobody scored—at all—but all the precautions were still taken to protect the other team’s fans.  Like, for example, fans for Brazil sat in their own guarded section and were required to exit the stadium after all the Estudiantes fans had vacated the premises.  The police screen people before they come into the stadium to check for drunkenness and/or weapons.  Craazy!  The Gimnasia game was much less well attended, but at least La Plata won.  Let’s just hope I don’t get killed for posting that blasphemous comment online.

All this cultural research is definitely paying off in the end, through the fun and interesting people I’ve become friends with and the great strides I’ve made in speaking Castellano.  I remember walking into Spanish class this last semester and feeling like the switch from English to Español was very unnatural.  I had to consciously translate my thoughts into Spanish before I said them aloud.  After one week in Argentina, one major change I’ve noticed in myself is how normal I feel to be surrounded by Castellano.  This afternoon, for instance, I started reading a document in Castellano and didn’t realize it wasn’t in English until a few paragraphs in.  Make no mistake—there’s still A LOT that I don’t understand! I’ve just accepted that I live in a state of constant confusion.  Luckily, I’m surrounded by people who looove to correct my Castellano.  At work, our friend Manuel helps me out by teaching me lunfardo (slang).  At night, my host mom will sit down with me with Castellano-English dictionaries in both hands to help bolster my vocabulary.  The language barrier doesn’t make developing a project any easier, but bit by bit it’s coming down.  Plus, people generally think it’s endearing that I’m trying to communicate in their native language, if badly.  Self-deprecation is my best friend.  (Picture below is of my host parents and Oana, the other intern from Stanford who overlapped briefly with me in Miriam's house)

I have to rant a little bit at how amazing this experience has been so far. Miriam is really easy to talk to and she has offered a lot of insight into our project, since she’s hosted FSD interns before and lives very close to the comedor.  She and her family have very generously given me a room of my own, bigger than my room at home (although, for those of you don’t know, my room at home is best described as cozy).  I eat delicious food like empanadas and milanesa every day—I would hate to be a vegetarian here, the meat is that good—and the people I work with at Biosfera are hilarious and so so so nice.  Lunch at Biosfera is one of my favorite times of day: picture 15 twenty-somethings from all over the world having a great time trying to communicate in our one common language.  At the comedor, I’m starting to make friends with the 16-year old Ramona who watches over the bread while it bakes.  She moved here from Paraguay with her mom, leaving her father and brother behind, giving her an independent streak and a wicked sense of humor.  The other day, the other FSD intern at the comedor rather condescendingly told her to not put any more wood in the fire when he came in to check the bread.  As soon as he left, she glanced conspiratorially at me before she tossed a few more sticks in the fire, making clear who knows how to run the oven best!

In sum, I’m feeling like the luckier one in this exchange so far, with all my grand plans for being as industrious as possible being frustrated by the slow progress that is characteristic of development work. I’m hoping that somehow I’ll be able to teach and help the people I’ve met as much as they have taught me.  

Bienvenidos a Argentina!

We made it!! We arrived in La Plata around 2 am this morning, one day late and working the unwashed look. It was only after an unexpectedly long haul that we ended up crawling into our blissfully smoke-free hostel beds by 2:30 or so. Ironic how the team with only ONE connection to make in Washington D.C. (India and Uganda teams both had multiple layovers) experienced the most technical difficulty.

Here’s the whole story. Our flight was delayed from 9:52 pm on Saturday until 1:15 pm on Sunday. Well, not so much delayed as it was cancelled and rescheduled. United put us up in a Hilton hotel close to Dulles (wait before you envy us for our good fortune) and gave us food vouchers to use for breakfast the next morning. If we hadn’t waited long enough in line for the vouchers, we waited for another hour for our shuttle to the hotel and got there around 11:30. We then rejoiced in yet another line before we got our room keys. Turns out that they ran out of rooms because we weren’t the only flight cancelled that night, so they put our 12 person co-ed group into 4 rooms with one king bed each, two of which rooms were designated smoking and smelled strongly. Not that I’m complaining—staying in the Hilton was far from roughing it! One of the perks was the free TV. The next morning we watched a news show that featured this Bangladeshi woman who was against microfinance. Gasp! She argued that micro loans created a cycle of debt since most recipients would require more than one loan to make a profit off their new enterprise. She pointed to the short repayment schedule—often starting within a few weeks of the loan’s initiation—as the reason for this debt cycle. In many cases, the recipients would take a second/third/fourth loan to repay the debt incurred by the first loan, while creating even more debt. Another point she made (and I can’t remember her name, sorry) was that microfinance divides the community. Part of the beauty of the system is that the community enforces repayment, replacing the need for valuable collateral. However, this enforcement strategy pits community members against anyone who can’t repay their loans: instead of being supported by their community, those debtors are forced into taking on more loans and creating more debt for themselves. It was a very thought-provoking interview, and I look forward to hearing what those microfinance interns have to say about those points.

But I digress. However hard to believe, there was even more fun to be had before we got to Buenos Aires. The flight itself wasn’t particularly memorable until they informed us that we were required to wear face masks as we exited the plane. Turns out that the Argentine government is more worried about H1N1 (“Gripe A”, aka the Swine) than they put on in the media. But apparently they were not worried enough to make us wear the masks after we had made it through customs—I’m not exactly sure what purpose it served beyond making us breathe in our own bad plane breath. Eww. Here’s a picture of us after we were almost about to venture onto Argentine soil. So fierce!


Anne from the Foundation for Sustainable Development graciously received us in the lobby of the airport despite the late hour. We each got one kiss on the right cheek—a custom I will have to get used to, since it is the expected greeting between any new or old acquaintances. We piled into a large van and made the 1+ hour drive back to La Plata while listening to a mix of poppy American music and Spanish hip hop. Interesting note: midterm elections were held on Sunday, so I noticed all kinds of billboards advertising candidates (particularly Kirchner and Scioli) along the highways. I should give a little background. The current president is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is married to former president, yesterday’s congressional candidate, Nestor Kirchner of the Peronist party. Not only did Nestor Kirchner lose his bid in Congress, but the Kirchners’ party lost the majority in both houses and even lost their home province. Things are not looking good for the golden couple. I have yet to initiate a political conversation with an Argentine in my effort to be noncombative on my first day, so I can fill in the blanks once I learn more.

Today, we were allowed to sleep in a bit and got to the FSD office around 10:45. We then “got orientated” to some safety concerns and rules in the Castellano dialect. Fabian, Nancy, and Anne will be supporting us during our stay here. (Shout out to the Cheadles: I’ll have to tell Fabian that he should have been named Allen, because then we would have hit the trifecta!) It’s been great so far to get to know everyone, but I’m chafing a little at the handholding. So far, most of our guides will translate any encounter with Argentines into English for us—and our guides are with us constantly. I’m looking forward to starting work with our host organization and moving into homestays so we will have more uninhibited contact with the community. Tomorrow will give us many more opportunities to do just that—we have been invited to make lunch with Horacio at Biosfera!!—so I imagine I’ll have a very different outlook on my experience then. Hasta luego!

A New Beginning

People keep asking me if I’m excited to leave for Argentina in the morning, but the mix of emotions that I am feeling is hard to describe in a single adjective.  Excited?  Claro que si (of course)!  At the same time, I can’t help feeling that something special just came to an end.  The past ten days have equipped me with community organizing skills that I could not conceive of two weeks ago; two weeks ago, I had over 50 fewer friends than I do now; two weeks ago, I had not delighted in the magical combination of cheese and caramel popcorn that is native to Chicago (thanks for the tip, Diamond!).  All of these revelations occurred in 10 days, so I can only imagine what I’ll have to describe after 7 weeks in Argentina.  Nevertheless, I am more than a little excited about embarking tomorrow.  Once we arrive in La Plata on Sunday morning, we have three days of orientation with the Foundation for Sustainable Development.  This phase will focus more on getting to know the city and getting introduced to Castellano, the dialect of Spanish that is spoken in Argentina.  For the Spanish buffs out there, the main differences are the pronunciation of the “ll” and “y” sounds (it turns into something between “sh” and “zh”), and the replacement of “tu” with “vos.”  On Wednesday, I will be placed in my host family and will begin work at Biosfera, the environmental non-profit that has agreed to supervise us.  Biosfera does have a website—www.biosfera.org—that is a little slow, but it’s worth checking out for the amazing breadth of environmental issues they work to address with a staff of three.  We talked to Horacio, the star of the whole show, over Skype and he sounds like an incredibly knowledgeable and passionate man.  He spent most of the call telling us how excited he was to meet us, and how he wanted to work with us to design a project we could all be excited about.  I can’t wait to meet him!

Before I go any further, I should give credit to the staff at GESI for organizing an amazing summit that raised us all to an equal playing field.  One of the most important things we gained were the procedural skills to allow our team work efficiently: things like the conflict management, decisionmaking processes, and meta-communication that are necessary to non-hierarchical collaboration.  I realize I may not have mentioned this critical component of our project: no single person is appointed the “leader,” and any leadership position is rotated on a weekly basis.  A natural leader may emerge, but if I may brag a little about my team, El Equipo (our team name, aka The Team) is choc full of leaders.  Lack of leadership won’t be our problem.  Brett just graduated from UC-Davis and previously volunteered in Peru installing more efficient and properly ventilated wood-burning stoves in rural homes. Brett’s the oldest at 28 and, as they say, has more “real world” experience.  Emily also just graduated from the University of Illinois, and she is our resident language consultant because she studied abroad in Buenos Aires for an extended semester.  Liana is a rising senior at Colorado College and spent last fall in Copenhagen examining sociological issues around Migration and Identity.  (Which, by the way, is the exact same program I will be matriculating in myself this fall, woohoo!) I’m the baby, but I don’t think it’s that obvious.  I got skills, yo. ;)

Last night was really the final night of the orientation because it was the last night everyone was together.  After dinner, several of us took advantage of free admission at the Art Institute and got a glimpse of the brand new modern art wing.  I got front and center with a Salvador Dali painting that took my breath away.  There was also a fair share of art that was so modern it was incomprehensible—like the “Clown Torture” exhibit that consisted of several TVs showing three different clowns in varying stages of distress.  For example, one was sitting on a toilet and reading a magazine.  Another was rolling and screaming on the floor.  After leaving the Art Institute, we wandered into Millennium Park and checked out the huge and mirror-bright bean that can reflect the entire Chicago skyline on its curved surface (Pictured above).  When we finally returned to the hostel (there was Dairy Queen run in there somewhere too), we took over a TV dedicated to Michael Jackson tributes and watched a Bollywood movie titled “Jodhaa Akbar,” an epic romance.  And I do mean epic in the sense that it was 3.5 hours long. Most of the India team present fell asleep long before the end—they’re going to be there soon enough!

The India and Uganda teams left this morning amid many hugs and some tears, but the Argentina team’s send-off in the morning won’t be nearly as nostalgic.  The one emotion I think we all share at the moment is impatience to get this adventure started.  We’re ready! Vamos!

Time Is On Our Side

One side effect of an intense summit like this is that it sparks a lot of intense thinking.  How arduous!  The field trip and free time that we had this weekend gave me a chance to ponder what we've been learning about community development, and I think I've come up with more questions than I have answers.  Bear with me while I try to reason through them here, and feel free to comment with your own thoughts.

I mentioned in my last post that ABCD (asset-based community development) is all about building upon existing strengths instead of aiming to come up with a fix to the community's worst problems.  My immediate reaction was, well, the problems (like high crime rates, dropout rates, etc) will still be a problem no matter how many block parties you have, so don't you have to focus on the problem at some point?  ABCD seemed a little too happy-go-lucky to work on the ground.  But, after our visits to the highly successful community development projects on the West Side of Chicago (Bethel New Life, pictured below, and The Resurrection Project), it became clear that although both groups focus their efforts in community strengths instead of resources, both projects are far from naive about their community's problems.  The ABCD approach emphasizes process instead of quick-fixes: it uses thorough assessments of a community to discover the residents' highest priorities, from which the development organization picks areas of focus based on available tools [assets].  ABCD does not ignore problems; instead, it lets the community voice its own perspective on what needs to be done instead of an "outsider organization" (we talk a lot about being outsiders) prescribing solutions to statistics-based problems.  

This approach, I am realizing more and more, makes a lot of sense.  It takes patience.  Most importantly, it requires being an insider or knowing how to locate the insiders.  And it produces a lot of amazing stories.  Mary from Bethel New Life talked about one of her innovations to make her neighborhood safer.  One day, she and her friends set up a lemonade stand on a corner where drug deals were known to take place.  There was so much traffic on that one corner that, in a single day, their stand raised over $300 in profits.  If you consider that each cup of lemonade cost 25 cents, over 1200 cups of lemonade were consumed--how many of those people were coming to buy or sell drugs?  Before you set out to do the same thing in your neighborhood, you have to wonder: do you know where drug deals take place in your town?  How long would you have to live in a community to know that fact?  I've lived in Moscow, Idaho nearly my whole life, I'm among an age group that stereotypically uses a lot of drugs, and even I don't know where to buy drugs (cue my parent's sighs of relief).  But I know who I could ask, and I can probably anticipate their answer: the dealers in Moscow don't work on street corners, they work out of apartments or college dorms or their basements.  So the lemonade stand idea wouldn't work in my community.  This tells me a couple of things: first, there's no cookie-cutter solution to any problem, so you have to know your community well to make a real difference; second, no one person is an expert, so you have to access a network of community members to get the whole picture.

You can now imagine my trepidation about our seven week time limit in each of our communities.  In such a short amount of time, is it possible to insert myself in a new language, a new culture, a new community, and become expert enough to pinpoint a single opportunity for the most change?  However, the lovely folks at GESI have anticipated my worry and come up with an answer: think of Time as an asset, not as a barrier.  We have Time to make a difference, and that's a blessing in itself.

Realistically, though, the best we can probably do is plant a seed for future development and hope that our new partners in La Plata will see it through.  When I think of doing similar work at a college where we have, at most, four years to do the same work, I realize that we should focus more on planting seeds than we should at checking off something of our list of "things to fix about Wellesley before we leave." (Wellesley readers, you know what I'm talking about)  I have to stop worrying about my personal legacy and start thinking about long-term change. We have to trust that students after us will have the capacity to sustain our projects--if not, either the there was something wrong with the project idea or we didn't put enough legwork into capacity-building.  If I want to stay connected to a project, I would have to make the commitment to stick around.  Bethel New Life took ten years to build a home for seniors.  The Resurrection Project took 15 years to see their homicide rate decrease significantly.  A project may take time you and I don't have, but some passionate person has that time--so make sure to reach out to those people!

I wrote that last sentence more as a reminder to myself, but maybe you will find it helpful in your quest for sustainable solutions.  Most of the tools that we now have under our belts are applicable to every occupation imaginable.  Ha ha! to all those people who scoff at community organizing as some left-wing conspiracy to take over (we prefer the word "save") the world.

Tonight, I am lucky enough to have some Time left to finish the copious amount of reading required for tomorrow.  See how optimistic this ABCD approach is making me?!  I do have some stories to share about my adventures around Chicago this weekend--pictures included--but you will have to wait until a later post.  Patience, I have come to accept, is one of our greatest Assets.

Day Two: Meeting Jody and Paul

Today, most memorably, was exhausting!  We arrived by bus at Wieboldt Hall to begin at 10 am sharp.  Orientation was followed by an enlightening introduction to Asset-Based Community Development (the ABCDs for college students) by John Kretzmann.  For those of you unfamiliar with Jody, he's a pioneer of this ABCD approach and trained the likes of Barack Obama to become community organizers.  Barack Who, you say?  Indeed, no small potatoes allowed to teach us GESI kids.  Jody wants us to refocus our attention on the positive attributes of each of our communities and to avoid focusing on the problems.  For example, instead of being inspired by illiteracy as the reason for charity, we need to identify the "success stories" and use those to inspire local residents to invest in their own educational future.  My mind was a little blown when "service" was juxtaposed as the negative counterpart to "empowerment," though I think I was more surprised by the language than I was by the sentiment.  Our second professor in the afternoon was Paul Arntson, another well-respected professor of Communications at Northwestern.  His lesson was focused around the language of communities, and learning how to ferret out the places and people that are central to each of our host communities.  Two guest speakers spoke after dinner about Ugandan politics, which was interesting though not directly related to my impending service in Argentina.  My jet-lagged brain can't recall much more than that at the moment--no fear, I have thorough notes I can refer to once I'm more rested.

What I'm not mentioning is that once we arrived on the fourth floor of Wieboldt Hall at 10 am, we didn't leave until after 8 pm.  All our meals, classes, and breakout sessions were confined to that one floor.  I have a feeling we will be harboring less-than-friendly emotions towards that floor once we've spent eight days treading its paisley carpet and inhabiting its excessively air conditioned rooms.

My hour walk back to the Hostel International-Chicago was the only glimpse into Chicago life I have gotten so far, but I am already intrigued.  The walk happened to include the Michigan Mile where we got to experience its famous window shopping and cultural relics.  More exploring beyond this one stretch of road (thank goodness) is in the cards for this weekend, when we venture with Jody to the West Side for a real taste of the history of community organizing here.  Some time is alloted on Sunday to explore other cultural landmarks--sadly, no Cubs game in my future!  The only thing I can foresee right now is the large pile of reading to be completed by the morning.  Signing off!

Day One and the Deers

(Note: this post was written on 6/16/09 but posted a day later due to internet difficulties at the hostel)

Dad and I dragged ourselves out of bed at a god awful hour I am reluctant to even repeat (hours before sunrise) to get me to the Spokane airport for my early flight to Chicago.  I admit I was feeling a little gloomy to leave behind my family and my pets after a wonderful three weeks at home.  Everyone seemed to feel equally sad about my departure--even Pepper, my deaf and blind Shih Tzu, summoned a congealed tear--everyone, that is, except the two deer that provided a rather rude awakening.

Granted, any predawn driving warrants some extra caution to avoid deer traffic.  However, these deer went out of their way to loiter on the road while Dad and I approached them in the car.  Both slowed to a near stroll as they crossed the major highway (major for Washington standards . . . meaning it was a wide two-laner), and one even had the guts to jump two highway barriers just to intersect our car!  I suppose I could take this as a friendly Palouse farewell, but it was the decidedly unfriendly tail shaking in my general direction that convinced me otherwise.  Someone (two someones) were clearly scorning my decision to leave.  

I can't say I have real evidence yet to prove that my departure was worth leaving behind such amiable company; such evidence I will make an effort to provide over the next two months.  All I can say is that I'm here, I've met some very cool and exciting people, and everyone is excited to start class bright and early tomorrow!