Yikes, starting my project without much ado!

Okay, I'm going to write this cold without first composing in Word and using spell check because my news for the day is huge, at least for me.

I arrived in Buenos Aires on Friday night. Great apart hotel, very grimy but colorful neighborhood. Think Adams Morgan, but dirtier with ocher dog poop piles and open garbage bags on the street corners. But very charming, and sort of a tourist destination because of the tango that takes place and a mercardo and a sunday fair and all sorts of other things I'll talk aboutin detail later. Met the friend of a friend of a student of my yoga teacher for dinner at 10 p.m. My first indication that I wasn't in Montevideo anymore (besides the smog and crowded streets) was that we ate the a Japanese restaurant within the confines of a cultural center. And there was a vegetariana option!

Last night I tried walking home and came up against the filming of a scene...looked like the 1940s After many takes because locals snuck through the police tape, some of us were legitimately allowed to pass. Kind of surreal...reminded me of a time in Madison when someone was filming for a pinball game (wow that was a long time ago) and the streets around the capital were closed.

And today, more closed streets--this time for a huge political demonstration...I took pictures so I'll put them up in a day or two. Av Julio de 9 (different number here) was closed while the two factions marched up against each other with flags and drums and it was wild but peaceful.

I was on my way to my orientation for my volunteer project. It was supposed to last a week. BUT, while the other volunteers get a week learning about the culture in preparation for their projects, I have to start teaching TOMORROW! Okay, I can do this, right? I'm supposed to have an intermediate level of Spanish, which of course I do not, so I'm being paired with a very nice college student, spending her last semester in BA. She was worried because she had been assigned this project because she is an English major and she couldn't understand why anyone would think that would qualify her to teach English. I really liked her and I think we'll make a good pair. Apparently there are no *real* teaching materials (but I don't know what that means) and somehow we have to ascertain what, if anything, the adult students know about speaking/reading/writing English. The coordinator at the community center does not speak English but she is round and jolly and gave me a big kiss (right side here again). My volunteer organization was afraid to tell me that I needed to start teaching tomorrow...but I look at it as a challenge rather than a problem.

While I live very near to La Boca in San Telmo, I'm not supposed to walk there. It is the most 'economically disadvantaged' (we were told to call it that) part of the city with the highest crime rate. If I need to drop bread crumbs I will pay close attention to how I get there so that I can reverse direction at the end of the class.

So, this is why I came to South America, and I'm not really ready, but you know, I'm starting to think that being ready is only a construct.