Ella lo que quiere es salsa

Hola a Todos,

I'm seeing this trend where I'm blogging once every three/four days. I want to blog everyday, but it's really hard when I've been out and about for 8 hours and when I return I have to do homework. I've done so much these past four days, so I'll start with Thursday. I have a presentation due tomorrow so I can't write everything that I want to say. However, this post will be continued tomorrow!

      Thursday morning was my fourth day of my internship. Today I was by myself observing the psychologists in the "sala de juegos." The Sala de Juegos is a game room where children in the hospital can play games and be observed by the psychologists. There were two adult psychologists and about 8 University of Buenos Aires students that were completing their internships. On Tuesday when Dr. Bes had showed me where I needed to be, I initially thought that I would only be working with 1 psychologist. It was a little intimidating when I walked into a room filled with so many people. But everyone was really nice and spoke slowly so I would understand.

      Around 10, the sala de juegos began to fill with patients. There was a little girl who was waiting on a heart transplant that had a giant artificial pump that had to be wheeled behind her. Then a little boy was playing with his psychologist and his dad (who had dreads all the way to his knees). I played games with two psychologists and a little girl named Virginia that was 12 years old. I really liked working in the Sala de Juegos because we played childrens' games that helped improve  my Spanish vocabulary. The first game that we played was this complicated Spanish game that we don't have in the United States, but after watching for a while I caught on and was able to play. Next we played "Quien soy yo?" aka Guess Who? I really liked playing that game because I learned so many new words. Next we played memory. This was probably my favorite game because the game was made in English with Spanish in parentheses and one of the psychologists decided that we were going to play the game in English...even though I was the only one that spoke English. When we first started playing she was like, "Oh my gosh! Hah-low. We're speaking English." Then she would try to pronounce each picture in English. Hilarious! The little girl that we were working with looked so confused but she was cracking up. Afterwards I sat with the psychologists as they discussed the different things that they had observed. The psychologist had explained to me that the little girl that we were working with had suffered head trauma and at times she was having complications with her speech. How perfect that I worked with that little girl.

        Dr. Bes came to meet with me towards the end of my session. He explained to me that in Argentina, speech language pathologists choose to specialize in either speech therapy (therapy that concerns the muscles/articulators that are responsible for forming the sounds of speech) or language therapy (therapy that concerns speech impediments that are the result of neurological dysfunction-grammar problems, receptive language etc.). Next week I will be working with a speech therapist and in the future I will also be working with a language therapist and an otolaryngologist!! I am soooooooooo excited!!!!!!

         After my internship I came to class. We're reading about Cortazar and Borges, two argentine authors. I'm actually liking these stories because they take place in Buenos Aires and many of them mention the streets close to my house. I guess this lit class isn't that bad after all. :-P

          Thursday evening was Salsa/Bachata class! It took about a 20 minute walk to get to the Salsa club where we would be taking our lessons. The club had murals of Celia Cruz and Frankie Ruiz on the wall so I knew it was legit. Haha! There was a big dance floor were people were freely dancing and our lesson took place to the side of the dance floor. Our salsa teacher was hilarious and was flirting with all of the girls. He was a good teacher and I liked that he remembered all of our names. We paired up and just like in Tango the girls switched off with the boys. Salsa was different from Tango because it wasn't just UGA students taking the class. All of the people in the class were really friendly and a couple of people were even our age. Everyone wanted to know where we were from and how long we were staying in Buenos Aires. Some of the kids in our group were having a hard time, but I have been to salsa class before so it wasn't too bad for me.

        Next was Bachata time. Everyone started off in the middle of the dance floor to do a warm up. The guy who was djing for the salsa lesson was the Bachata teacher for our warm up. He was such an AMAZING dancer. He was so smooth and he was adding all of these extra moves into the routine which made it even more amazing...think Usher/Chris Brown meets bachata. He was such a great dancer that for a second I thought we were in the DR. haha! After the warm up we split up into sections:advanced in the middle of the dance floor, beginners in the section where we had our salsa lesson and intermediate on the opposite side of the dance floor. Our Bachata teacher was different from the salsa teacher. He was good, but it was harder to understand him and he spoke really fast. Even though the bachata is much easier than the salsa, it was more difficult for me to catch onto the moves because I couldn't understand the teacher. However, I really liked it. Luciano told us that the salsa club turns into a boliche (dance club) at night so we're thinking about possibly coming back in the future. Our group liked salsa so much that we're going back again next week and afterwards Enrique, who is Peruvian, is going to take a to a Peruvian restaurant that is close to the salsa club.
      Even though I'm almost half way done with my trip, it's just beginning to hit me that I'm in South America. Structurally Buenos Aires is so similar to cities in the US that it feels like I'm just in a  different city in the United States that has a different culture and language. Or maybe Argentina just feels so familiar because I'm beginning to see that in the end we're all just people who share similar commonalities regardless of race or culture. When I was sitting in the hospital playing games with the children it really hit me for the  first time that I'm in South America on the trip that I've dreamed about for the past year and a half. Time is really flying by on this trip and I'm realizing that I still have so much to do and so little time. I knew that this trip was going to be jammed packed with activities, but I honestly didn't realize how busy I would be. I'm literally gone all day and when I come home I have less than an hour to take a nap before it's time to get up and go somewhere new. I've developed a  schedule and have become really comfortable navigating the city. Buenos Aires is truly beginning to feel like a home away from home. I'm gonna miss this place.

To be contined....

Ciao,

Jackie