Viviendo el sueño

I'm back to Argentina after an 8-day power-jaunt to the United States for Matt and Darya's wedding, which was amazing! So much food, so much family, so many goings-on! I now want to take up my cool new in-laws on their offer to go to Moscow or Kiev someday.

Here in La Plata, things are busy once again and it is officially winter. I hit the ground running when I got back. I've been making some cultural presentations to local English institutes where my professorial university colleagues work and have had fun making people try Reese's cups and Craisins and having people ask me if North American universities are like in the movies. Yes, it's just like Animal House!

English III discussion sections are going really well! I've been having fun seeing their creativity come out as we did "Exquisite Corpse" storytelling (continue-the-story, where students pass on the narration of the story -- see my other blog for their stories). I've also done a few "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"-style improv games, which were an amazing success, especially in my Friday afternoon section. I'm also full-blast giving discussion sections for English I - it's fun talking to the freshmen and letting them just talk about whatever they want to and remember that, yes, despite how hard Phonetics I is, English speakers can still understand them when they speak in English. The British accent your professors all want you to have is just icing on the cake. I'm all set up to give more presentations in English IV and I'm preparing a lesson revolving around the film Garden State for the English II classes. So yeah, I'm busy. And very happy!

At the Comisión, I've been playing catch-up but things are going well now. The WM internship continues to chug along, and I'm trying to navigate my role as a middle-man who tries to connect really busy Commission employees and their resources with really busy WM students and their energy. Meanwhile I am, well, really busy. And at the Committee Against Torture, I'm now into the nitty gritty of looking at their databases for habeas corpus claims.

In my personal life, things are going really well! It's great to be back with my Argentine friends (who loved the US merchandise I was able to get past customs for them: baseball gloves, digital video camera, iPod, candies, CDs)! Lately I've been spending my free time studying Portuguese and Hebrew, learning to cook Indian food, discovering the Argentine version of Costco with Tino(it's called Nini and it's excellent! No more grocery shopping for about 4 months! Haha), going to parties and concerts, playing music at my friend's birthday, going to a zombie movie film series at the local cultural center, trying to start a rock band (still not fruitlessly, we have 3 members and haven't yet practiced), hanging and presenting songs and poetry at Kristal's bilingual writing workshop, appearing on an Argentine friend's radio show to play music, volunteering to work with little kids on Saturdays at the local schule.

I'm also looking forward to a winter break visit from Mama and Papa Abbott!

Hasta la victoria,
Chuck /Che Charly / C3

PS. Shameful self-promotion: I appeared on the iTunes podcast entitled My Fulbright Life to talk about, well...myself. (Narcissist!) No, to talk about Argentina, what I'm doing, how to apply...Check it out.