Heyheyhey, reader-friend! I hope you are in great spirits. I am (per usual... but particularly so today) because recien I finished writing my first report for Rotary! Yay.
I'm going to copy and paste pieces of it here...
(Preparate, it's quite verbose...)
Dear Rotary District 6930, Rotary District 4890, and beyond,
Question: What would it take to change the world?
Answer: Collaborate – communities making a global impact – to resolve the most pressing sources of suffering faced by humanity: hunger, lack of access to healthcare and education, intercultural misunderstandings that result in ignorance, intolerance, injustice and war.
But, Rotary, you already knew the answer to that question, didn’t you? You knew because you were the one that observed humanity’s perilous challenges and responded with solutions. You provided solutions and thrust them into life with strategic action. Rather than curse the darkness, you provided light.
In 1953 you were Hope In Action. Today, The Future Is In Your Hands. In between, you have sown themes of Hope, Action, Human Dignity, Service, Unity, Help, Belief, Love, Participation, Renewal and Peace. Rotary, you have woven these themes into the fabric of your organization, and effectively into the fibers that comprise each of your 1.3 million members in 33,000 clubs worldwide. These themes, like your solutions, are ideas dressed as words. But, with your resolve, you have given these ideas life. And in 95 years, Rotary, you have changed the world.
When I was granted the Ambassadorial Scholarship in 2008, your theme was ‘Make Dreams Real.’ Appropriately enough, my initial foray into your organization was no exception: I approached you with a dream – to live, study and travel in South America – and you made it real.
But Rotary, I must confess: things have changed for me. Your confidence in my ability to fulfill the mandate of an ambassadorial scholar stirred something inside of me to life. The themes that you delicately wove into the fabric of your existence are now a part of my existence, and now they are pouring out of me – ideals of Hope, Dignity, Love, Unity, Participation and Peace.
Rotary, I approached you with a dream to travel, to see and know the world. Now that I am living this dream, things have changed for me – this dream is not enough. I can’t just live this dream for one year and let it slip away into the recesses of memory. Two years ago, you made my dream real. Rotary, I write today to report to you that this year, I am taking the future of Rotary in my hands, and effectively, I am changing the future of this world.
I write to report on my first three months as an ambassadorial scholar, specifically: (I) information about my study program, adaptation and progress at la Universidad de Buenos Aires facultad de derecho; (II) the steps my sponsor Rotarian, Sherry Eastwood, and I took to prepare for my experience abroad and how it helped me meet the challenges of living and studying in Argentina; (III) how I have been involved in Rotary since I arrive in Argentina; and (IV) my first impressions of the culture in Argentina and Buenos Aires. Ultimately, with this report, I convey to you, Rotary: as my dream is made real and with your future in my hands, I am changing this world by illuminating in it the very ideals that you illuminated in me.
Okey dokey.. so I am cutting the bulk of the body, since it's quite boring, in my humble opinion! You are very welcome, reader-friend-whose-time-I-will-not-waste-with-mundane-reportings... : )
(IV) My first impressions of Argentina and the people in Buenos Aires and cultural delights that I have enjoyed and shared
I arrived in Buenos Aires in early March, not quite enrolled in la UBA, sans a place to live, unsure of whether or not the city would accept me. Initially, I was shy; I cautiously wandered the streets and tiptoed in and out of the throngs of people delighting in the final days of the southern hemisphere summer. I dressed discreetly and avoided drawing unnecessary attention to myself. After all, I was supposed to be in Chile; I changed the course of fate by forcefully steering myself to Buenos Aires. Would Buenos Aires recognize that I didn’t belong and reject me? Would she force me to live a year ridden with strife because I wasn’t supposed to be here? I felt like a replacement organ placed in a body, making every effort to acclimate so that the body wouldn’t misidentify me and attack me with antibodies.
Well, here I am, Rotary, three months after my quiet arrival, fully integrated into the organ system called la Capital Federal. And, I am not merely integrated. Dare I say it – I am thriving. As it turns out, Buenos Aires’ melancholy, romance and bohemian spirit are precisely the qualities my soul craves at present. And in reverse, I believe these very qualities allow me to be so readily accepted in Buenos Aires.
As I explore friendships with other ambassadorial scholars I observe that we each approach this Rotary experience with differing expectations of experience and outcome. Each of us deliberately chose to evade the comfort and familiarity of family, friends and culture for months or years, motivated by a sense of curiosity, or the nag of adventure, or to fully immerse in a distinct culture, or to observe from the perimeter the novelty of a foreign culture, or to perfect a second (or third, or fourth, or nth) language, or to study at a particular institution, or to travel in a specific region, or to contribute to a particular cause, or to shift our perspectives. There are abundant additional reasons, and most of us are motivated by some combination of the aforementioned and unmentioned.
Profound implication: the diversity of Rotary ambassadorial scholar-experiences is immeasurably vast, convincingly positive and has a tremendous impact in the world. Ambassadorial scholars dive, head first, into unfamiliar cultures, not merely to see the world, but to know the world. And we do it so the world can know us, too. Every year Rotary supports hundreds of students as we create these enduring relationships of knowing, thus etching Rotary ideals of Peace, Goodwill and Friendship into the fabric of humanity.
So, preaching aside, my initial impressions of Argentina are overwhelmingly positive. I was motivated to come to South America as an ambassadorial scholar (beyond my commitment to spreading Rotary goodwill and cheer!) to perfect my Spanish, to gain an international perspective on the law, to travel, and, above all, to relish in the cultural delights of an unknown place.
It’s curious: Culturally, Miami is very much a part of Latin America due to the fact that there are many Latin American immigrants in Miami (that are accompanied by their vibrant and flavorful Latin American culture). Accordingly, Argentina’s language, food – and even people – are found on the streets of Miami, much as they are found on the streets of Buenos Aires. However, Buenos Aires possesses something that can never be emulated, no matter how many Argentines bring their culture to Miami. Buenos Aires has onda. ('Onda' is a Spanish word, unique to Argentina that roughly translates as ‘ambience.’)
Buenos Aires has a remarkable onda that is enigmatic and impassioned. This onda, I believe, is responsible for Buenos Aires’ unrivaled porteño culture (or, perhaps, it is BA's porteño culture that is responsible for its exceptional onda...). It is a culture of carne and Malbec, rock music, tango, world-famous fultbolistas, world-renowned literature, epic design, architecture, art and fashion; it is a culture of passion, melancholy and romance. There is something really exceptional about ‘culture’ in Buenos Aires – namely, culture is ubiquitous. In Buenos Aires, there is a culture of culture.
In Miami there is an ‘art scene,’ which impliedly suggests that one must independently penetrate the ‘scene’ in order to feast upon the art. In Buenos Aires, so far as I can glean, there is no ‘art scene’ – there’s just art. Art is everywhere, literally on every block: there are cultural centers in every neighborhood, dozens of museums, hundreds of art galleries, well over one hundred theaters. Murals and street art adorn walls, buildings and sidewalks and everywhere you look there are statues – there must be like, a gazillion of them – many of which adorned with street art, too. The dining is famed the world over, attributable to the caliber of meat, wine and chefs. Buenos Aires is a world capital of rock music and the world capital of the tango dance. But if rock music and tango isn’t your thing, there are music and dance venues of all types open every day of the week, every week of the year. The onda in Buenos Aires is a culture of culture.
People that create orchestrate culture; ergo I find no surprise that Buenos Aires boasts a culture of culture. Everyone I encounter in Buenos Aires creates; everyone is an artist in one form or another. Herein lies the crux of my experience as an ambassadorial scholar and my cultural experience in Buenos Aires – I too feel the stir of an artist inside of me. The more I come to know the onda of art and culture in Buenos Aires, the more it comes to know me and the more I come to know myself (the artist!).
And there you have it, Rotary – three months worth of experience as an ambassadorial scholar, contained in this report that consists of too many words, yet does not say nearly enough.
In three months I have had the opportunity to perceive the law through a unique Argentine and South American lens, to form friendships with Rotarians, Argentine artists and fellow-foreigners, to savor the cultural delicacies of Buenos Aires, to see Argentina and know Argentina. These three months in Argentina have been among the most formative in my life.
Rotary, I think I am flourishing.
You made my dream real – I am seeing my dream and knowing my dream. Knowing my dream, knowing the world, and knowing the faith of Rotary placed inside me are the most empowering privileges that have ever been placed in my hands. This privilege I am paying forward every moment of this ambassadorial scholar experience: illuminating this world with Rotary ideals of Hope, Dignity, Love, Unity, Participation and Peace.
The question I initially posited – many words ago – was ‘What would it take to change the world?’. The underlying inquiry, I believe, could be more appropriately dressed with the words ‘What does it take to change the world?’.
Question, Rotary: What does it take to change the world?
Answer: Rotary, you already know the answer because you created the answer.
The Ambassadorial Scholarship is the answer.
You, Rotary, are the answer.
Muchos cariños de Buenos Aires, Argentina,
Natalie
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