Buenos Aires and the past work week

Buenos Aires was...an entirely different type of fun than Rapa Nui and, although we didnt get to visit much of the city (I only managed to go to like 8 of the 48 communes), we did manage to visit the most important touristic sites of the city. What I did see and experience of Buenos Aires was extremely cool, I really enjoyed Caminitos, the Boca Jr's stadium, and, of course, the delicious meat that was served everywhere. The Argentinian people themselves were, for the most part, very friendly and open-minded, although the people, like the city itself, had a distinct European feel to them.

But after a week of travels, it was time to return to work. I came back to work last week, expecting the Ceremony of Initiation to have transcurred at Polonia, only to find out that due to another professor's strike, the Ceremony had been pushed further back. Furthermore, the kids were now on winter vacation, so attendance at the TG's was expected to drop significantly.

At Polonia TG on Thursday, we showed up to the school to guide the kids to a different school in which we could work (The director wouldnt lend us Polonia during the break). Only three girls, out of the 16 kids signed up, actually came. Needless to say, with only three kids present, it was fairly easy to accomplish all that we had planned for the session (the first time this has happened since I've joined Adopta). The kids worked well, with a few minimal issues, and managed to write up a list of norms they wanted to follow and a system that managed to reward the kids for good behavior and punish them for bad behavior.

The story at the friday TG in Lucero was entirely different. Knowing that the kids would not show up, we decided to go looking for them and bringing them with us to the school. Right away, this seemed like a bad idea. The whole point of a TG is that its voluntary, our actions in picking them up went entirely against the voluntary nature of the program. Additonally, one of our kids had friends over at his house at the time and decided to bring them along. Not only would these friends provide a distraction for our boys (the friends spent their time playing soccer), but also for the girls because, among them was one of the boys who all the girls had a crush on. Additionally, our school was occupied by a group of 100 or so scouts, which forced us to carry out our activities in an entirely different room than the kids are accustomed to. All the signs pointed to a very unsuccessful endeavor and that is exactly what happened. Barely after an hour into the session, the kids had not accomplished anything other than maintain shouting matches between the genders. Claims of boredom attacked us from all sides and every kid expressed a desire to leave. Finally, they decided to stop listening to us and just play outside. Out of frustration, we packed up and left the kids at the school, only to come back half an hour later and see our kids kicked out of the school by the scout headmaster. The kids, obviously, blamed us and stormed off to their homes. We stayed back and talked to the headmaster, who told us he had received exclusive access to the school from the director (which was an obvious lie because we had also received access to the school). We asked him why he had kicked our kids out, to which he replied, "I found it strange to see one of the girls climbing out of one of the windows...Ultimately I'm the one responsible".

Had I seen a girl climbing out of a window at a school before this trip, I also would have thought it to be strange. However, upon hearing the scoutmaster's comments, I found myself thinking, "This dude lives in an entirely different reality...". I've become accustomed to seeing these types of things, which would strike many people dealing with different types of kids as strange, and take them as a part of the everyday life of working with children. The truth of the matter is that, a kid climbing back and forth through a first story window at an after school program is much better than that same kid out on the street doing who knows what. A girl climbing in and out of the classroom through the window is a minimal problem, and is not in any way strange (if you know these kids).