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!