Update

As the U.S. moves into fall, Argentina is fighting to give up the mild but dreary winter. Some mornings are sunny and warm, but by the end of the same day it's windy and or rainy as a front overtakes the city and ushers in a string of dark 50 or 60 degree days. Having replaced two U.S. summers with mild Argentine winters, I've begun to realize that this lifestyle (Spending U.S. summers in South America) is untenable, at least for me and at least for more than 1 year straight. Sun is important. Heat is important.

Aside from weather, my life has changed in other ways. As much as I tried to branch out into other types of work, I have been pulled back magnet-like to my profession. For whatever reason, tourism is not what it used to be here and as a result, I have had little business giving tours or writing for the tourism website. This has upset me since I spent so much time studying and practicing for this position. Granted, I learned a ton about Argentina in the process, but I'm not convinced that the time couldn't have been better spent. I feel as though the company that I signed on with was has been disorganized, overdemanding, and dishonest. Granted, there are factors like the recent economic crisis that I'm sure they didn't bank on. In any case, they overestimated the amount of work they'd have and as a result, I have more or less lost the vast number of hours I invested in them..

I've replaced the tourism job with two new small jobs. I was referred by the mother of the family from San Francisco to another family from the states who owns a luxury trip planning company in BA. They have two trilingual children who attend school in French and Spanish, but not in English. So, the parents employee me to increase the reading level of the older of the two children, both in fluency and comprehension. They also want to improve his writing skills, especially spelling as his current English spellings are a comic combination of Spanish and French. Right now, I'm starting with direct intervention through the repeated reading technique with curriculum-based assessments (Back to school psychology). The job is a no brainer, something I've been doing daily for the past 4 years. And the 7-year-old I work with seems like a really good kid. The added benefit is that the apartment in which I teach is absolutely beautiful, on the 17th floor of a building in Belgrano that looks out over the city as well as the Rio De La Plata. The view is truly amazing and as I administer the reading probes, I have plenty of time to steal long gazes from a vantage to which only the very fortunate are privvy.

I stumbled upon another job in the last week. There is a bit more of a story to this one...In BA, everyone has heavy wooden curtains over their windows to shield from noise and light and some think wrongly that they also protect against burglary. In any case, both sets of mine broke on the same day that I bought spice plants for my balcony, a beautiful sunny 80 degree day. As a result, I couldn't get out to my balcony to repot my plants and my apartment was rendered completely dark. As is the case in BA, I called 3 different guys before one of them decided that he wanted some money and came to my apartment to give me an estimate to fix the curtains. I had planned on getting multiple estimates but when a week had passed and the other 2 handymen had not called me back nor come to my apartment as they said they would, I decided that I'd lived in the dark long enough. I called back the one guy who gave me the estimate and agreed to pay the quote he'd provided. In the process of fixing the curtains, we got to talking about a number of subjects including his interest in learning English. He kept returning to this subject so finally I told him that I'd teach him. I told him to think it over, gave him my card, and told him to call me if he decided he was interested. A few days later, he did call me and we set up 3 hours of classes/week.

So now, my work schedule consists of teaching English at Hewlett Packard, teaching the guy who fixed my curtains, teaching multiple subjects to 2 kids from San Francisco, and teaching reading and writing skills to a trilingual 7-year-old. I'm happy with my work routine and all this direct instruction is no doubt good experience for my career. I continue to teach English in exchange for yoga lessons so now at least two of my students are beginners and I am getting more intensive ELL teaching experience.

For whatever reason, be it fate or lack of effort, I have not succeeded in branching out in terms of different career experiences. I think, however, that I enjoy the independence of teaching, the hours, the meaning and genuine contact with people. I suppose I've decided to some extent that I'm disposed to the education profession in this form and that it suits me much better than sitting in an office all day.

One of the ideas I wanted to explore through my experience in BA this year was whether I wanted to work in the education profession for the rest of my life. I'm still not sure I do. However, I'm more convinced than I was last year that I am at least well disposed to this profession and that it is comfortable and meaningful to me.

I've been talking with folks here too about how meaningful my general experience in BA has been to me thus far. I maintain that I've learned more here in the past 4 months than I learned in Columbus in the last 3 years. I feel as though I'm in kind of a spiritual orbit of my life, a parallel universe in which I'm looking in at my life from the outside, reflecting and sorting out. It's like when a computer runs for months and then all of a sudden tells you that it has to do a scan to check for errors in the system and then it asks you if it's ok to correct those errors. I think right now I'm in the midst of a semi long-term computer scan.

At the moment, I feel a great urge to jump back into my life as a school psychologist in the states, to be near my family, to go to fall football games, to drink apple cider, to carve a pumpkin, to buy halloween candy, and to spend quality time with my niece and nephews. And I'll get my wish in about two weeks when I visit the states for a week and a half. However, I know that I need more time in Argentina, that there is still much more to learn about myself, that I still have a lot of growing to do.

Some of the things I've learned thus far may seem simple and obvious but require an experience like this to truly internalize. I've realized that my family is a good and close one and that if you're lucky enough to have a good family, you should make an effort to be close to them and value them. That said, I'd like to be in the states next year somewhere in proximity to my family. And I have a dream now of buying a small cottage or house on Lake Erie in Conneaut, the long time hometown of my mother and grandparents. It's a quiet town that lost its industry and has since been forgotten by the world. But its stretch of beach and parklands is beautiful in the summer and has a great rootbeer float stand adjacent to the beech. My family needs a place to meet and spend quality time together in the summer. We have no summer house like many families and once my 95 year old grandfather dies, we will have lost our connection to this town that holds so much meaning to all of us. So the dream is to save up and buy a summer house here that all the family can use in return for some type of improvement, some type of investment like retiling the bathroom or buying a piece or two of used furniture. I'd like to have a grill, picnic tables, beach toys, a sailboat, and a closets full of games and toys for kids. As cheesy and domestic as this all sounds, it's a revelation that I've had while in BA that family and my emotional connection to them is one of the most important things in my life. As such, I should do something to honor them and enrich all of our lives. This sort of plan is even more important in light of the fact that we are now scattered all over the world and need a place for everyone to come back to in the summers.

I've also learned that the big city is a place to which I don't connect well. Buenos Aires is great when you are in love, but it transforms into an entirely different reality when you're not. In love, the city is charming, aesthetically pleasing, has great affordable restaurants and bars, and fantastic nightlife to indulge in romance. Out of love, Buenos Aires becomes extremely stressful. The thought of walking out into the street requires mental preparation. Every trip during the week is a battle against hordes of people to get to a destination on time. The subways and busses are crowded and hot, the pollution is lung blackening, the noise is repressive, the people are on-edge, the drivers are literally crazy, and the ethical standards of the people are often deplorable (whether because of culture or relative poverty).

Of course, there are a lot of great things about the city and the specific people I've met and with whom I've chosen to make friends. However, I've realized that instead of big city, I'd rather live in a more natural place with mountains, fresh air, lakes, proximity to the ocean, rivers, forests, hiking, big sky, wildlife. Some of my best memories were living out in Oregon and spending my days hiking up different mountains in Smith Rock State Park and writing journal entries.

The city has been and will continue to be an important developmental and learning experience for me. However, it is not where I would like to end up. I need more nature and peace and outlets for hiking, biking, and clean exercise.

Another thing I've learned is that you can't run from your problems. You just can't move to the other side of the planet and expect things to magically improve. Often times, the issues are instead intensified because all of a sudden you not only have a clearer vision of your life, but you also become very stressed and have almost no support to deal with your issues. Moving away to run from your problems actually becomes a way of forcing you to confront your issues in a very extreme and stressful way. Whatever issues you have in your life seem to become much clearer when you are stressed out and alone. For that reason, this trip has been exactly what I needed at this point in my life. My last year in Columbus I felt listless, spiritually muddled, confused about my next step or direction, confused about my priorities, confused about my meaning. I have not answered all of these questions or resolved all these conflicts, but after the stress and loneliness of the big city, I have certainly conftonted these issues and am well on my way to coming to sensible conclusions.

So while I feel the draw to come back to the states to smell the soggy leafy fall air and to hear the sounds of the football games on Friday nights and to taste the first apple and pumpkin pies of the season, I know I need to be in Argentina longer to learn more, to be sure that the decisions I make for next year are objective, what I really need instead of being clouded by past issues or confused motivations. The most important thing for me to learn about here is what is important to me, what are my priorities, what do I need to be happy or content. Once I learn more about myself, I can make deliberate decisions to complement my true needs. Without this understanding, I will continue to find myself making decisions whose outcomes don't fulfill my life. With a better understanding, I hope to move towards a sense of inner peace and contentedness that will allow me to settle contedly into my 30s.