Part 4: Independent Practice: Barely Getting to Bolivia

"Once pupils have mastered the skill, it is time to provide for practice, so that the learning is not forgotten".
-Madeline Hunter

La Paz’s “El Alto” airport is one of the highest airports in the world and one of the most challenging for pilots to land. Situated even higher than the Bolivian capital city of La Paz, the challenge at El Alto is the altitude (13,325 feet)and the terrain.

The Andes mountains suddenly break away to a high bowl-like valley which contains the city of La Paz. From the plane one can see the entire city in one magnificent vista, framed by snow capped Andean peaks all around.

I have been told that flying into La Paz is one of the most thrilling aviation experiences ever. There are only two runways, each surrounded by city and by steep cliffs of the Andes mountains. One slip and its Adios amigos.

We are in an antique 727 that most other airlines would have deemed unfit for service years ago. I ask for exit row and get one of the last rows on the plane--row 29 next to the galley. But the bonus is I get to board from the back of the plane like in the old days. Out on the runway, grinning soldiers in olive uniforms with AK-47s happily wave me onboard. Security has a different meaning here.

I strap myself in and watch the human parade before me. The overhead bins above us are duct taped shut. Someone has written “Out of Order” in black magic marker in Spanish on the shiny gray tape. I notice the frayed green and purple upholstery on the seats, most of which do not have armrests. Someone has stuck gum between the pages of my in-flight magazine. I try to recline a little. My seat does not recline. Why am I surprised?

A dark man with black greasy brylcreem hair in a worn brown tweed business suit takes the seat ahead of me and promptly reclines his seat so his slimy head is just inches from my lap. He pulls out a cell phone and commences a very loud and apparently very important conversation in rapid fire Spanish.
Time for takeoff. The flight attendants do not bother with the usual safety speech nor cross check. Instead, they are in the back of the plane with me, noshing on the peanuts and cookies. One of them arms my exit door as an afterthought as we take off. We rumble down the tarmac as cell phone guy continues shouting into his phone.

Bang! The plane goes silent. Heads turn in my direction. To my left, in the galley, coffee pots, cups and packets tumble from cabinets above- flung open from takeoff- onto the worn purple carpet. An empty coffee pot rolls under my feet. Packets of sugar rain down into the galley like white butterflies alighting in the rainforest. The flight attendants are unaffected. Nobody says a word. Cell phone guy resumes his important conversation. Life goes on.

The rest of the flight seems uneventful. The flight crew is more interested in chatting with me than working. They invite me to their domain in the back of the plane. Someone gets out a deck of cards. We play “21” until we get bored.
Time to land. Annoyed, the crew makes a perfunctory dash through the aisles. The cards are put away. I return to my seat. Cell phone guy, grease from his black hair staining the purple seatback, is fully reclined and asleep. I skinny into my spot and watch expectantly out my exit door window. La Paz appears, a bowl of twinkling yellow Christmas lights below, myriad glitters interrupting the darkness of the Andes.

Landing is quick and sharp. We hit the runway and bounce. Hard. The aging plane rumbles, shudders and shimmies. Then more roaring and squealing and screeching. We are thrown forward, then backward then from side to side. I think we blew a tire.

Then I smelled it. Cell phone guy has s**t his pants. There can be no other explanation. It lingers in the stale close airplane air. Strapped and trapped into my exit row, I have no escape. I reach into my pocket and retrieve a worn tissue to cover my nose. We rumble into the gate.
Gagging, I escape from my prison to my flight attendant friends as everyone jumps up to retrieve their bags. I tell them about cell phone guy.

“Happens all the time on this landing.” they say.

Part 3 Uruguay: Loving it French Style

“Each friend represents a new world to us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” --Anais Nin, French writer

For our orientation week here in Montevideo, we are lodged in a lovely hotel right on Las Ramblas, basically on the beaches of Rio de La Plata. As we trickle in from our separate flights, we slowly get to know the other American teachers as they arrive. The first ones we meet are our roommates.

And I have the most delightful roommate of all. At least the best smelling one. She comes sailing in on a sea of Lancome perfume, the stuff we can’t even buy in the US yet, and introduces herself in the most charming French accented English I have ever heard in my life. Matilda twinkles. She sparkles. She is ageless, timeless. Showing no trace of jetlag after a brutal flight from the US, she shrugs off the fatigue with a joie de vivre that would rival most twenty-somethings I know.

She just finished a beach vacation at her family’s summer cabana in the south of Spain. Matilda teaches elementary school in Virginia but grew up in France and Spain. She is at the bare minimum, trilingual. I think she speaks a few more languages I don’t know about. She pulls out a full size bottle of good red French wine and proposes a toast. We have a corkscrew? Where did that come from? Matilda is magic.

Our room has been transformed into a perfumerie. Scented candles perch in the bathroom. Full size shampoo and body wash with exotic French labels fill every space in the shower. How does all this stuff fit into a suitcase?

We toast to Uruguay, to each other, to the Fulbright program and to just about everything else we can possibly think of until way too soon, it is time to go downstairs and meet all the others.

I struggle to put on my sensible walking shoes. Matilda effortlessly tosses a scarf over her sweater. Tres Chic. She finishes the ensemble with a pair of knee high leather boots with heels. Where do all these clothes come from? I look like schlumpadinka. She casually runs a comb through her perfect blonde hair. Not one out of place. A spritz of Lancome, and, voila, we are out the door.

Part 3: Blowing into Montevideo

"Checking for Understanding: determination of whether students have "got it" before proceeding".-Madeline Hunter

I want to like Uruguay.
Honest.
I really do. After all, half of my time in South America is going to be spent here.

But the wind.
It never quits blowing.
It starts the moment the airplane door is flung open as we land in Montevideo. We blast across the tarmac to the terminal like thistledown sails in a typhoon.

The gale follows us to the hotel, as we disembark from the van facing the Rio de la Plata, which looks more like Lake Superior on a bad day. I swear I see the Edmund Fitzgerald out the window. Nobody believes me. Whitecaps threaten anyone who dares to set sail on the menacing water. Of course, no one is out there. No one is walking the beach. Too windy. Too cold. Gordon Lightfoot won’t get out of my head.

The wind here is a temperamental, hormonal living entity: one moment tender and soothing, the next frigid and violent. But always cold, cold, cold. It slashes straight through us just like the abandoned farmhouses back home in FoldintheMap.

It is is our constant companion. Even when inside, it threatens. It rattles at the single pane windows like a dog seeking shelter during a thunderstorm. It whistles down the hallways of the hotel and distracts all but the most dedicated of us during our briefings. Even at its softest, it wails like La Llorona at night while we are trying to get to sleep. We are told the wind is a part of life here.

It bays from 22 miles away on the other side of the river in Argentina and picks up screaming speed and force across the icy whitecapped Rio de La Plata. It ruffles the tips of the beach grass like a mother stroking her child’s hair. I wonder aloud if they know about wind chill factors here like back home in FoldintheMap. No one says anything.

The locals stay indoors, in Montevideo’s shopping malls and movie theatres. The lines for the cinema stretch halfway down the mall. The only people here that are outdoors for any length of time are the gringo tourists and those that have to be. We have the sidewalks to ourselves. I’m hoping the rest of our week here will be calmer.
Or indoors.

Part 2: What I came for

 

 

 

 

 

 

School has quickly come to an end and it’s now time to try a little exploring,--although easier said than done--as most of us foreigners have discovered--Buenos Aires is at best, difficult to navigate, and at worst, an incomprehensible tangle of complicated, convoluted streets that run on the diagonal, or inexplicably change names from block to block. Street signs, when present, are small and never in a consistent place. City maps are either outdated or miniscule. Many of the city’s attractions are not served by either the Subte (Subway) or the Colectivos (Buses), so one must factor in the price of a taxi into the price of a ticket—if lucky enough to be able to flag one down.
Faced with these challenges, one quickly learns to rely on landmarks to get anywhere: for example, from my temporary home to get to the Subte, cross the street at the pizza place, walk five blocks and descend the stairs just past the third magazine kiosk, ride the Subte for four stops, (there’s no maps) turn left at the shrine to the Virgin Mary, ascend the stairs, walk seven blocks until the Burger King, and turn left at the white wooden pillars.
All this while dodging uneven and or missing sidewalk tiles, dog poo, homeless people, beggars, pickpockets and little old ladies with canes. And that’s just on the sidewalk. Crossing the broad boulevards of Buenos Aires one learns to attach to a group of locals and offer up a prayer to the patron saint of Safety in Numbers.
Still I must confess a bit of reluctant respect for the place. Born from nitty-gritty beginnings, Buenos Aires has become one of the most important cities in South America; its Italian heritage is still evident in its cuisine, its neighborhoods and its people. Spanish has a musical lilt here I’ve never heard anywhere else--like tango, it dances over the rubbish and rubble and alights upon the ears ever so gently-- like a lover’s kiss. And that’s what I came for.

Part 2: The End of the Rainbow

 

 

 

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to sing me a song that always used to make her cry. Not knowing how to react to her tears, I would cry too. Even now, whenever I hear the song, it strikes a sentimental chord deep within me that oftentimes racks me with deep sobbing tears.

And I never understood why.
Until today.

The song laments the singer’s inability to travel to a delightful faraway land known only in stories—a land that no one can ever visit. It is the beautiful distant land of the future—a wonderful place that exists only in one’s imagination.
Born before the automobile ever reached FoldintheMap, my grandmother never could have imagined the places her only grandchild would go. But her vivid imagination and her continuous encouragement, even now, decades after her death, serve as the wind beneath my wings.

I have found the end of the rainbow.

And today not only have I discovered this beautiful land, but I have discovered she has been here with me all the time.

Part 2: Niagra on Viagra

 

 

 

 

Iguazu Falls is one of the biggest and most powerful waterfalls i/n the world. A furious avalanche of water, mist and spray, it is easily seen from over 30,000 feet in the air.
Rightfully designated as a world heritage site, it is located at the confluence of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. Fourteen miles of raging, roaring water plunges 20 stories into a giant gorge in a tropical jungle. If water could flow over the top of the Grand Canyon, it still wouldn’t equal Iguazu.
After the winter cold of Buenos Aires, this past weekend in Puerto Iguazu has been a welcome and wonderful respite. Funny how one has to travel north here to get warm.
The power of the water is breathtaking. One comes face to face with raging torrents of angry water, with sprays so intense it’s as if geysers are erupting from underneath the surface. This fascinating jungle home of giant butterflies, comical monkeys and begging coatis is an ecotourist’s paradise. One cannot help but come away from here feeling awed.
Miles and miles of hiking trails cross straight over the water and many times right to the precipice above; one can traverse both above and below all fourteen miles of falls—the entire park is so enormous it cannot be seen in a single day.
One of the most fun things I found to do in Iguazu was to hire a whitewater motorboat that will take a passenger almost directly under the cascading, plummeting water—guaranteeing money back if everyone does not become thoroughly soaked. It is the best way to see the world landmark up close and personal!

Part 2: Making lemonade

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”--Unknown

I had made plans to reward myself after my first week of school in the city with a weekend excursion to Iguazu Falls in the northern part of Argentina, The falls are about 900 miles (or 24 hours by bus) away, so I decided to fly there to take advantage of the time.
Unfortunately, the winds shifted--carrying the ash from the volcanic eruption in Chile that was originally heading Australia’s way to now heading Argentina’s way. It completely closed both airports in Buenos Aires the day I was to leave (The acidic nature of ash can potentially clog an airplane engine).
So, forced to make lemonade from the lemons I was given, and once regrouped at my temporary home in Buenos Aires, I set forth on a mission to explore the city. The mission: to find Harley-Davidson Buenos Aires. After a brief research session online, fortified with plenty of helpful advice from my host Mom, I set out to find a Radio Taxi that would take me there. Armed with the directions from the Internet, I could not fail!
Fortified with my newfangled city bravado, I confidently flagged down a Radio Taxi and gave him the address I had copied from the Internet website. Off we charged into the Buenos Aires winter sunshine, bravely exploring a part of the city neither of us had seen before. All the bravado came to a screeching halt once we both realized the address I had written was not anywhere near where we needed to be. After numerous fruitless transmissions to the head office of the taxi company, my taxista, Alejandro, called a friend on his cell who directed us to the exact place we needed to be.
What was supposed to be a 15 minute trip ended up taking over three hours and costing me almost 200 pesos—but in the process, I made a friend and saw a part of Buenos Aires that most turistas rarely see. It was a good day all around.