I'm Way Too Good At Goodbyes

Unlike the Sam Smith hit, though, that doesn't mean "I'm never gonna let you close to me."

In fact, I think my experience with goodbyes has helped me react in the opposite way.

The past 365 days have involved a lot of goodbyes...

A high school friend passed away in the Oakland Fire, and I still think of them and my whole chest aches and I find myself crying unexpectedly.

My friends have slowly been spreading out across the country and across the globe, and every time I go to spend time with friends in one place I have to say goodbye to others.

In order to come to Argentina I said goodbye to my first full-time job, a job that meant so much more to me than anything I could have imagined straight out of college. I had to say goodbye to the kids I saw every single day, to the incredible team of coworkers who I love with all my heart, to the neighborhood that feels like a home.

I said goodbye to my family, not for the first time but it was certainly the hardest and felt like the farthest I had ever been from them.

I said goodbye to both of my grandparents.

And now here I am again.

This whole week has been a series of goodbyes-- literally, I've had at least 2 scheduled each day. Goodbye to the first years, goodbye to the secondary schools, goodbye to my aerial rope class, goodbye to the second and fourth and third years, goodbye to the students I worked with one-on-one...

And it's sad, but... it is also heartwarming?

I think I'm a little unusual in that sadness, for me, isn't exactly a negative emotion (hey hey Pixar... thnx for making Sadness the hero <3 ).

The sadness I feel when saying goodbye also makes me smile, because it reminds me how much all of these people and places and experiences mean to me. It reminds me that even when I leave they're not gone from me, because they've become a part of the narrative that makes up who I am.

Goodbyes hurt because I care, and I don't want to feel that any less.

To be fair, this week has also been a bit of a blur and sometimes it just feels surreal. People keep asking how I feel and my answer is usually "weeeeeeeird!!" Sometimes it's easier to say goodbye because it doesn't even seem real. I know that the emotional processing of the end of my time in Argentina won't happen overnight, and it will continue well into my re-entry to the U. S.

But I'm feeling really good about where I'm at, and where I'm going, and where I've been.

There were times here, especially toward the beginning, when I doubted that I had made the right decision in choosing to come to Argentina. I worried it was too hard, I wasn't doing enough, I had given up too much.

I don't worry that anymore.

This morning, after going for a run in the neighborhood and cooling down with some yoga, I lay back in shavasana, taking deep breaths, and I thought: I am becoming someone I would admire.

I think it may actually be the first time I've felt that way before.

In high school, I had all of the typical angst, and I got particularly hung up on the feeling that I would never be enough. No matter what I did, I would never live up to my own expectations for myself. I would never be the person I wanted to be. I would never be good enough.

I think my high school self would be proud to see who I am now.

It's not that I ever reached the impossible standards that I set for myself. It's more of a balance: letting go of the things that I won't ever be (and maybe never truly wanted to be anyways, but rather felt compelled to strive for because of external expectations) and working really hard to amplify the qualities in myself that I already appreciate, to learn to reflect what I most admire in others, and to unlearn the tendencies which do not serve me and the world I live in.

And most importantly, I recognized that I can't do any of it alone.

The support and acknowledgement from others has played a huge role in my slowly growing self-confidence. My fellow Fulbrighter told me something that another foreign traveler who spent the day with us apparently said about me: he said that he loved how I was unapologetically me, and that I didn't lie about what I liked/didn't like or wanted/didn't want or needed/didn't need just to please others.

It meant a lot to me that someone perceived me that way, because that's something I've really struggled with over the years.

Last night, after my very last clases at Zorrilla, the institute I've been working at, I wrote a long facebook post in Spanish. It helped that I was tired and it was late and my filter was down. Everything actually flowed in Spanish, not English, and I found myself using grammar that I didn't even realize I was comfortable with, but it fit what I wanted to say... which was basically just a big thank-you.

I don't usually write much of anything personal on facebook, but a lot of the people I've gotten to know here stay connected on social media and I wanted to say something to acknowledge what a huge group effort it has been for me to survive and thrive here.

So many people responded, and I haven't gotten through the comments yet but what I have read... it's just really affirming. To feel like I had something of a positive impact on some people's lives here, as they had on mine.

I knew going into this experience that it would challenge me in ways I had never been challenged before-- sometimes in ways I could have predicted, but usually completely unexpected. And I feel like coming out of it, I am more unapologetically myself than ever.

I will probably post again another couple times-- my parents are coming and I am sure that exploring the country with them is going to be a whole 'nother set of feels! (Hopefully mostly good-- I'm super excited). And I will probably check in once I am back home.

But this week has been the majority of the goodbyes... and it while it isn't true that every time [I] leave, the quicker [my] tears dry, I think I'm pretty good at goodbyes.

PANICAFE HELADO IS LIFE
Tramontana on the bottom and dulce de leche granizado on top... and you can tell I may have tasted a few other flavors lol

Finally finished my project to work with underserved students to teach basic circus skills!

We had a blast in Parque del Kempes making juggling balls, learning to juggle, doing some partner balances, and working on handstands and pull-overs! The kids were awesome and so willing to try things.

Working the parrilla in 90˚ heat...

Trying morcilla... yes that means blood sausage...

Asado with carne de vaca (cow), papas (potatoes), chorizo (sausage), cebolla (onion), and berenjena y pimientos (eggplant and bell peppers). And a brick to balance the grill.

yeah I ate the meat... #flexitarian

Aplauso para el asador! Applause for the asado cook!

Goodbye treat: blueberry and peach browned butter bars

New mural at the school: Love is love.

Gift from the secondary school students: the rainbow armband that some of them wear, thanks to our awesome conversation about San Francisco Pride and the experience of being queer-identified in the US vs. Argentina

4th years!! <3

2nd years :)

Me and the friend who came with me to get my piercing! She was the very first friend I made at school and is basically a style/piercing/tattoo icon. <3

Last day shenanigans... the power suddenly went out at 10:20pm and the class lost any semblance of order there may have been... we were hooting and frat-snapping and someone started making dolphin/monkey noises???

Thank you thank you thank you beautiful storm for ending the 90-100˚ weather

Making the Most of It All

I really can't believe that next weekend, my parents are coming to meet me in Córdoba. I have such vivid memories of the first couple weeks, when November felt like a million years away.

Time hasn't passed too fast, though-- or at least I feel like I've been present with it. It's just weird to finally be reaching a moment that I thought about lot.

One of the best things about these past couple weeks is that I've finally felt that I have made an impact and become part of the community of my school. Last Friday evening, I helped organize a taller (workshop) about education (specifically second/foreign language education) in the United States for the second year students. Originally the entire workshop was supposed to be in English, so I had prepared a true/false activity and some other information in English... and then the week of, they decided to do it half in Spanish. We kept the true/false in English, but the rest of the 3-hour workshop would be in Spanish.

That meant I would have to speak in Spanish about my Spanish-learning experience in front of a group of native speakers, and then field questions.

Weirdly, I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be-- not nearly as nervous as I was 8 months ago when I had to give a 2-sentence introduction in Spanish that mostly just included my name and what college I attended.

I made plenty of mistakes, I'm sure, some that I was aware of and others I probably missed. But I think I communicated what I meant to communicate, and the students were all very kind about it.

Afterwards, the school principal and professors and students surprised me with a small gift, a book that they had signed. I don't think I was concerned much about what the gift was-- it just meant so much to me that they took that time to show their appreciation in that way. It reaffirmed that I had made an impact, that I was... one of them.

This evening was followed by an absolutely incredible long weekend in Mendoza-- possibly my favorite few days of travel here.

I met up with some of the coolest parents in the world (aside from my own) who were incredibly generous and made me feel so loved and taken care of. Plus we had some incredible meals and OMG FREE WINE TASTINGS ARE THE BEST. As a Californian whose dad regularly worked up in Napa, I've always had a preference for wine over beer. But, as the person who led our first wine tasting mentioned, there is something about being on vacation that makes all the wines taste even better. I think I've even getting a hang of the whole describing the wine thing... "Yes, it's bold with a smoky undertone... and this one is quite fruity, with hints of chocolate at the back of your mouth..." :P I kept thinking of that scene in The Parent Trap with Haley trying a sip of her mom's wine in England...

While in Mendoza, there were a few times that I ended up doing some translating... and I actually shocked myself with how comfortably I fit into the role! It felt really, really good to be able to facilitate conversation between people who didn't share a common language. There was one time that one of the wine cellar guides was attempting to tell us a little bit about the history of the winery and the wines, but she was struggling to find the words in English. I told her to continue in castellano (Spanish), and I related what she said to my friends. I was able to catch the details about the year that the winery was founded, the number of generations it had passed through the same family, when it had been sold, and I was able to ask clarifying questions in Spanish. It's a small interaction, but it's so satisfying to have those moments where I can see that my work here with the language has really been paying off.

So yeah. It's shaping up to be a pretty wonderful end to my time in Argentina. I'm already thinking about how I will need to continue to find opportunities to speak Spanish when I get back to the States. Now that I've had a taste of bilingual life, I don't want to go back... I love existing in both languages simultaneously. I hope to attend conversation groups, maybe sit in on some classes at SF State to brush up on advanced grammar, and I'm looking into the possibilities of a bilingual teaching career.

Pics from the week (there's a lot this time):

Second year crew, teachers and students

Opening my gift :)

Panorama of the Andes mountains near Mendoza!

This Is Not A Rock

Random fuzzy red cactus

Looks like a scene straight out of Motorcycle Diaries

Ancient petroglyphs... pretty cool

Apparently they played Mario Bros a few thousand years ago... gotta love those mushrooms

Alien housing in the desert
(is actually where they melted down metals)

my new best friend... mom and dad, think we can take one home with us?

Biiiiig barrels of wine

Beautiful park

Someone got this whole box of full bottles of wine on carry-on... I don't understand...

Hi I'm a dork but I'm happy to be with these cool people

Calabaza / pumpkin pasta with butter and sage sauce :)

I didn't have time to bake on Halloween, so I finally got around to making these little chocolate spiders!

Expecting the Unexpected

No two days here are the same.

Even when I think I'm going to have the same schedule, that I have my classes nailed down and I know what to expect from the week, things always change.

In the beginning, this instability really annoyed me.

More than that, it drained me.

It was exhausting to feel like I never fully knew what to expect. I have spent basically my whole life either as a student or working in education, with practically every hour of the day tightly scheduled. I had reliable routines that I could stick to. And having that suddenly taken away... it was really really hard.

At some point, though, I guess I got used to it... and now I actually kind of like it. Some of the time.

I like that I can spontaneously decide to spend a couple hours chatting with a new friend and not have to worry that it's cutting into my carefully blocked-out work time. I like that I don't have to set an alarm in the morning and I can wake up when I feel rested. I like that I can book last minute tickets to go on a weekend trip.

Every day is, truly, an adventure.

And I've been feeling like my adventures are becoming a little more successful as I become more adept at navigating the unexpected.

The past couple weeks, I worked on a short series of lessons at a secondary school about cooking and how-to vocabulary. I brought in a video about how to make lemon bars (along with some actual lemon bars to share), we watched it and they had to identify the different verbs used to describe each action, and then they had to match images of the different utensils with their names. We watched the video several times, and broke down the structure: introduction (why make this recipe?), chronological step-by-step instructions (with measurements and verbs), and finally conclusion (how did it turn out?). With this outline, the students had to make their own recipe videos.

I was honestly really impressed with what they created. This is a large class (33 students) in a public school, and the English proficiency level is all over the place. But these kids obviously have more cooking experience than I did as a 14 year old, and they made some pretty impressive recipes ("beat to stiff peaks"? I definitely wasn't very good at separating egg whites and beating them the correct amount at that age!)

At the beginning of this, I wasn't sure how many classes we would have together, what exactly I was supposed to cover, or where to find the classroom. But I made some plans that could be extended or shortened as needed, made choices about content that seemed relevant and important, and... well, wandered around the school building without the ability to contact the teacher until I finally found the classroom and got started about 15 minutes late.

I also switched classes at my regular institute on Monday to give a presentation about the education system in the US, which was fantastic-- I learned a ton doing research, was reminded of how passionate I am about the topic, and had some great conversations about differences and similarities with the Argentine students.

And I made a last-minute presentation on Halloween, which I ended up splitting into two separate presentations and skipped around the slides totally out of order, but made something coherent out of it and got across the main ideas to the students.

I also did not check the weather and got caught in a huge rainstorm on the way to my aerial class and walked in totally soaked (but happy) and found that most of my fellow aerialists love the rain like me and were also feeling giddy and energetic because of the lovely dark grey clouds up above.

With that energy I decided to try something I had done on the rope back in high school, and for the first time I was able to show my classmates something new and they were actually impressed by it (this is legit the first time this has happened, usually it is totally the other way around).

There are, of course, times at which the unexpected can be inconvenient and frustrating and stressful. And as much as I might expect the unexpected, I never know exactly what kind of unexpected to expect (haha try saying that 3 times fast).

This week I had to renew my 90-day tourist visa, which expires on November 7. I had gone in a month ago to try to renew it, and they told me I was literally too on top of my shit and I had to come back a few days before it expired. So I went back on Wednesday, November 1, thinking the process (of trámite, as they call these bureaucratic paperwork procedures) would take maybe a couple hours.

Of course, I was wrong.

I arrived at the Migrations office a little bit before noon, went upstairs where I had been told to go, knocked on the door to ask for assistance, and told them I needed to renew my 90-day visa. They asked me to wait "un minuntito," just a minute, and I waited a little over an hour until they finally printed a piece of paper saying that it would cost 900 pesos... and then told me I had to go pay the fee at the national bank, about 20 minutes away. Also I had to get a passport-size photo taken. By this time, it was siesta, so almost everything was closed down (even in the city center). I walked around for about 15 minutes before I finally found a kiosko that was open that could take my photo, and then I made my way to the bank. I got there at about 1:40pm, only to find that it closed for the day at 1:30pm and I'd have to come back again the next day.

So I did. On Thursday I left my house earlier in the morning and arrived at the bank shortly after 9am. I asked where to pay and was directed to the DMV-like waiting room on the main floor, where I grabbed my number (C050) and sat down to wait until I was called up (the screen was on B038). I was called up around 10:30am, made my payment quickly and easily, and then headed back to the Migrations office, thinking I was finally on the last step.

No, Lizzy, of course that was not the last step.

I once again knocked on the door upstairs, showed them my paper proving that I had paid, waited again for about an hour (at this point it was about noon), and then they came out, gave the paper back to me, and told me to go downstairs to get another piece of paper...

So I went downstairs, had no idea what the system was, found a little ticket machine with numbered tickets, grabbed one, and when I was called up I was told I didn't need a ticket and that I would be called by name. This wait felt like the longest yet, although it was broken up by a few random conversations, one with a binational student from Honduras and Peru who wanted to study at one of the oldest and best universities in South America (University of Córdoba), and another short interaction with a couple from Portland, Oregon who were moving to Argentina with their adorable 2-year-old.

Finally my name was called, I signed a paper and scanned my fingerprints, and went back upstairs... to wait some more!

It was after 1pm, I was starving and bored and tired, but they finally came back out, handed me a piece of paper saying I'd been certified to stay for another 90-days, and I was able to leave that building... hopefully once and for all.

All of this because my visa would expire just 3 weeks before I left the country. *sigh*

Everyone I talked to said that this was pretty standard-- they never expected to finish a trámite in a single day. My housemate started singing Maria Martha Serra Lima's "La tercera es la vencida" (third time's the charm) when I came home feeling tired and frustrated on Wednesday (my second try to renew the visa), and she was right. In the end, I did manage to get what I needed.

There was another unexpected event this past week that could have been awful, but somehow everyone handled without any major issues: after a series of wildfires followed by the sudden storm that had gotten me drenched before my circus class, the water purification plant that provides water to most of the city of Córdoba Capital got clogged with debris and water was cut off in many parts of the city. Luckily there was water in the water tanks so that people could still rinse dishes and have drinking water, but schools had to shut down because they couldn't depend on there being enough reserve water in the tanks.

The unexpected holiday allowed me to spend time with my fellow Fulbrighter here and celebrate having made it through a wild 8-month ride.

I've only mentioned him a couple other times, I think... once when I commented on the fact that he had so many suitcases that I had to help him carry them when we first arrived.

For the first few months, we mostly did our own thing. We're very different people in some ways, and I think we didn't really know how to interact with each other-- not to mention we were each going through a bunch of other things along with the transition to this new city.

But I always knew that he was there, in the city in with me, the only other person who was really in a similar situation... and when we came back after the Rio Conference, I guess something clicked and we started talking.

Now, I don't know what I would have done without him here... I think Córdoba was one of-- if not the only-- city with two Fulbrighters, and I am so, so grateful.

Since classes were cancelled, I spent the evening at the new place he had moved into during the last part of the grant, a residencia for extranjeros, foreigners. We talked a lot, cooked dinner, darted out into the rain and bought some wine from the kiosko next door, and played tipsy Jenga (pronounced "schen-ga" here) until early in the morning.

As frustrating and difficult as it may be sometimes to wake up each morning not knowing what this day is going to throw at me, it's also a little bit freeing. I think I have released my grip on the expectation that I need to do everything, all the time, and do it perfectly. And I think it took a certain level of letting go of my rigid expectations to begin to really flourish.

Pics/videos of the week:

"Cellulite is normal and you are beautiful," a body-positive sign up in the secondary school bathroom where I work

"Attention: Your image in this mirror may be distorted by false stereotypes of beauty," another awesome poster in the bathroom. (Underneath it there is also a take one/leave one box ford pads and tampons)

La Salle school, an elementary/middle school that is basically a castle. Visited to see my professor's daughter perform on the aerial silks-- video below!!

After the aerial silks performance I went over with my professor's daughter and played on the silks a bit... may have forgotten that wearing jeans is not the best idea on silks... ooops... (they were old jeans anyways)

These gorgeous purple flowers have been blooming all over the city. I've taken about a million pics of them because they are so pretty and they make me happy.

A glance at what a public secondary school classroom looks like in Córdoba, Argentina

A quick tour around the space where I do aerial arts here. Wall art: "Love is in the air... climb up to look for it." / "Overcome your limits."

Professor's daughter and her classmates performing on aerial rope... to the Spanish version of "How Far I'll Go"!! (yeah I got way more excited about that than the actual kids were...)

Spontaneous dancing at the residencia where I hung out with my fellow Fulbrighter and friends (sorry it shows up sideways and I can't make it rotate...)