on dedicating time to what I love doing .....

I am back at school.

http://www.vosbuenosaires.com/es/contacto/

At VOS language school and cultural center for the Spanish language - and "vos" is of course the lovely way Argentine people address each other.   The school was recommended to me by a friend of a friend ..... gracias a Pedro Rubio y Roxane!!!  These days I just love asking for help and following recommendations it has never ever failed me - it leads me exactly to where I need to be in my life.
And so of course the lady who runs the school Magdalena happes to be very good friends with Mercedes who  works for  Alejandrina the Director of the Telefonica Foundation in Buenos Aires.  Connecting people - it is a Latin way of being.  I love it.  Me encanta. Perfecto.

So as planned two years ago,  I made it my reality -  the next couple of years in my life would be dedicated to exploring what I always wanted to explore and expand and learn - leaving behind tactical and strategic planning and thinking - just following my heart.  No more will this be good for my career,  is this pragmatic etc - no - I dedicated these years to joyfully learn what I always wanted to learn.  Explore my desire to engage deeply with people via Coaching,  (re)discover Contemporary Art,  explore my deep love for creative writing, speak a third language fluently ideally Spanish,  learn to dance the Tango and yes - live in a Latin country for a while.

I get to combine it all and one area benefits from the other while I work 3 days a week for this incredible company Telefonica in a setting where I can apply all of my skills and all I learn now,  deepening our relationship with our Buenos Aires based partner Telmark.   Really looking back on what I envisioned 2012 to be I could not be happier with the arrangement.  It has been so much joy and learning working with the Argentine colleagues here and as I learn more about this country and nation their history, my admiration keeps growing.   In my generation in most European countries - we do not know what crisis means.   My generation and the ones following can learn from this mentality here and as I wrote in an earlier entry,   the level of maturity of the next generation is astonishing.  Most Argentines carry a European and an Argentine passport and there has been a new awareness in younger people - some now for the first time consciously opt to be Argentine.  

At VOS I get to learn with an international group of people and it goes way beyond the language of course -  the topics we discuss are wide spread.  I love the change of perspectives and looking at the world through the eyes of my Brazilian fellow student or my Argentine teacher.   The first movie  watched during movie night they put on optionally after class was Esperando en Mesisas  by Daniel Burman starring Daniel Hendler an Argentine movie that captures the years of the economic crisis perfectly.

Who would have thought that 10 years later Spaniards would come to Argentina to work,  when in 2001 a whole wave of Argentinians moved to Spain fleeing the dire situation in their own country.  Just a decade and things have been reversed.   An amazing turnaround.   Now 46% of young people are unemployed in Spain - I have no idea of how many that might be in Greece.   The new lost generations.   The Brazilian girl explains to me she will be a lawyer and she studies in Sao Paulo and in order to be admitted to the exams she will have to be fluent in 3 (!) languages this is not counting her native tongue Portugese.   I look at her in amazement what a powerhouse she and so many in her generation will be. This continent equals potential.   I truly enjoyed Esperando en Mesias - have a look....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiHjMQ_0qCw



In class we started with a rather tough subject - Argentina 1975 - 1983 - "el proceso de la reorganizacion nacional" - really a military Junta took over like in so many Latin American countries at the time. I doubt it is really clear how many people the nation lost then.

Each Thursday in front of la Casa Rosada,  the City Hall on the Plaza de Mayo you can still speak with the abuelas (grandmothers) who gather there to demonstrate - they are wearing white headbands reminding the world of that period.   Pancho our teacher distributed this essay about this topic - the essay is meant to test our level of comprehension -  I did quite ok language wise and not so well emotionally - after reading the essay I had tears in my eyes it touched me and of course recalled current experiences in my life that happened over the last two years.  A reoccurring theme so close to me these days - people whom I love dying or dropping out of my life without a trace.

I know of a piece of Photography Art by an Argentine photograher Gustavo Germano collected family pictures of various families who lost members during this period in time - he then took pictures in the present at the same place with the same background displaying the remaining family members only.
When I had first read it it was engrained in my memory immediately - it is a very moving piece so brutally showing the gap left behind by a lost human life and it is strangely healing at the same time to see it so clearly.

http://www.zeit.de/wissen/2010-08/fs-verschwunden-2

Ending for today on a lighter note.  Dear reader of my blog - for you to get the full picture.   Today we had some 40 degrees and it has been super humid.   I try to breathe so slowly that the hot air will not hurt inside of my nose so much.   Even the locals faint and I have now definitely run out of ways to cool me down so I am just hot.   Period.   Hot.  Somewhere I read the Mate would help .... well it is an acquired taste... It just started raining finally - now I am experiencing my first thunder storm in Buenos Aires and it feels heavenly.