"A Global Perspective: US and Argentina"
A Global Perspective: My Two Countries (US and Argentina)
May 3, 2012 marks the day I returned to my country of birth (the US) with my two
boys to live. For me, it had been 16 years since I’d been “home”. I hadn’t seen my
family, friends or country since December 1995 when I voluntarily left my roots to
marry my handsome Argentine prince.
Now, after five years of being back in the US, life is very different for us now. We
are now getting used to “American” life and are becoming more integrated into daily
life, community and the local culture. However, I know that our previous life living
abroad has forever changed us and has transformed us into the people we are today.
Living in a foreign country will mold and change you, as you are forced to open your
mind to another way of life. It is inevitable. When you first get there, you feel like
you’ve lost your whole reference point of the way you used to view things and the
way you always thought things should be. You might find that your old perspective
serves you very little in your new location, and your coping skills don’t work with
the old rules and regulations. Thus, your mind begins to expand to think that there
may be another way to do things that is different from the way you’ve thought and
have been taught previously.
That adaptation process can be very painful at times, as you struggle to find anything
familiar to grasp onto. Anyone you run into from your country of origin or who
speaks your same language instantly becomes your new best friend, since you are
desperately trying to find common ground with others that you don’t necessarily
have much in common with in your new location. The comparison game of “it’s not
like that in my country” is a constant and it can often cause you to be discontented
in your new place.
However, as you begin to adjust to your new place, you slowly stop comparing and
you accept your new life and the circumstances that brought you there. You realize
that nobody is going to adapt to your ways, so you learn to follow the “when in
Rome, do as the Romans do” philosophy. Little by little, you start incorporating
other mannerisms and eventually embrace your new life and the adventures that
await you.
My two countries are the United States and Argentina. The people of Argentina have
given me many gifts. The gift to be able to see life from a different angle than the
one I’d been raised with, a different worldview, a new language and a new way of
expressing myself, which even awakened feelings and emotions I never knew
existed, as well as unique experiences. They accepted me as their own, took me in
and allowed me to grow in ways that I never knew I could. My interpersonal skills
in relationships can now go deeper than before, due to having been immersed in
Latin America for so long.
I was blessed to be able to teach ESL and EFL (English as a Second Language /
English as a Foreign Language) to many students with varied socioeconomic levels
and cultures. Most of them were private classes and it taught me so much about
relationships and how important human interaction is. I must admit that I made many
mistakes in these interactions and have hopefully come out of these, having learned
the value of that getting to know another human being at such an intimate level is a
privilege. Maybe it’s because my students were speaking another language that they
often felt safe enough to share their secrets with me. In any case, it’s something that
I hold sacred and would never like to take for granted. Each student blessed my life
beyond what I can describe, and I was the benefactor of all their teachings, as they
became my some of my best teachers.
Where we lived was about a one-hour drive outside of the capitol city of Buenos
Aires. Predominately settled by Italian and Spanish (Spain) immigrants along with
an influx of Germans, it was like a having a little piece of Europe in South America,
but one that speaks a beautiful dialect called Castilian Spanish (Castellano). Besides
the fact that the food was out of this world delicious, I felt like I had found a piece
of heaven on this earth and it was fascinating to me!
It helped that most of my professional experience proved that that the culture there
is generally very accepting and open to foreigners. The locals are usually curious to
know what it’s like to live in another part of the world. They want to know what
you’re doing there in the first place and I often had comical but repetitive
conversations with taxi drivers about why I would ever choose to live in such a place.
I always found that curiosity so refreshing, especially since I rarely found a group of
inquisitive Americans who wanted to know what it was like in another place other
than their own. A prime example is once I returned to the US, I took on an English
teaching gig for a corporate student to teach him at his company. His origin was
Dutch, having come from The Netherlands (Holland) and he made a bold
observation to me that shocked me a bit, but something I also found quite amusing.
After three years of living in the US, his observation was that Americans are so stuck
on themselves and can’t see any other viewpoint except for their own. He blatantly
stated, ‘There is another world out there, you know?’
Perhaps we can easily blame our educational system in place in the US at the time,
that we weren’t taught much about global affairs, which involves at a minimum,
knowing where other countries are located geographically and a few facts about each
country. I was publicly schooled in the 80’s and very few of us seemed to know what
was going on in other countries or seemed to care for that matter. In fact, in full
disclosure, I admit that when I was first assigned to serve a mission trip for my
church in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I didn’t know where it was on the world map!
Luckily that ignorance is changing with this new generation of millennials. They are
curious, have full access to the Internet and are generally interested in living life to
the fullest. And of course, that involves frequent travel and unique experiences.
Things are changing and I personally think that’s a good thing.
I get emotional and cry when I hear both country’s national anthems. The
Argentinean flag with its blue and white colors chosen by Manuel Belgrano, the
leader of the Argentinian revolution against Spain represents the blue sky parting to
reveal white clouds, as is said to have happened when the Liberation demonstration
began in Buenos Aires, on May 25, 1810, thus this date is celebrated as “Día de
Mayo”. Observing the flag, our gaze is immediately attracted to its center, where we
find its most striking feature: a human face wearing a neutral expression inside a
gold sic with straight and wavy rays emitting from its center, representing a sun. The
sun, name “el sol de mayo” (the sun of May) after Argentina’s May revolution,
which eventually lead to the nation’s independence from Spain, is a national
emblem.
Figuratively, the flag of the United States of America stands for freedom and
democracy. It represents the unity of America, our common cause and the hope for
a better tomorrow. It contains 13 stripes and 50 stars representing the 50 states. The
strikes represent the 13 original colonies and are broken down by color with each
having its separate meaning. White signifies purity and innocence, Red is hardiness
and valor, Blue means vigilance, perseverance and justice. It’s no wonder I’ve
chosen my next career to be about justice, which mission I feel passionate about and
love fighting for!
I’m thankful and so blessed to say that I now have two countries that I can call my
own and where I feel completely “at home”, having built distinctive lives in both. I
am a local “Yankee” in Argentina and a “Latina” who drinks mate, pronounced
“mah-tay”, which is a typical hot Argentine tea drunk with a metal straw, in the US.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.