A time to worry...

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Is everything packed? My travel money, my documents, passport, teaching books, bug spray? What about visas? Am I set or have I screwed that up? Are they going to turn me away at the gate citing some crucial error on my part? All I know is that whenever I double-check something, my mind likes to play tricks on me, and I have to recheck and recheck until the whole thing makes it painfully obvious that I'm getting paranoid. When my Dad tries to remind me of something I might have forgotten, he does it in that anxious voice that really bugs me. It's nice he cares, but then I have to worry about the whole thing again; he is inadvertently causing me serious psychological damage. Or perhaps I am. Oh God.
Usually it's not in my nature to be worried, I tend to care little about planning ahead. My life is the definition of 'winging it' rolled into an 'unhealthy obbession with salsa dip'. The reason I'm a little worried this time is the fact that I'm not travelling for myself; when I get to Argentina on the 7th of March, THIS March, I have to teach people. REAL people, with hands and everything... It's the factor of responsibility that's fuelling this ridiculous behaviour. I guess I'll bring you up to speed with it all. In September of last year, I was certain I was going to get into the perfect course for me, at the university of my dreams and at just the right time for me. Yeah, I was wrong. That inevitability crumbled away before my eyes because of a technicality that I, stupidly, hadn't checked. I was devastated; I had more than enough points for the course, I'd fufilled all the matriculation requirements, done everything asked of me and after all that I had to spend another year doing very little with my life.
After milling around and watching some south park, it came to me that I had previously planned an entire cross-continental trip, in the form of riding the Trans-Siberian, from London to Vladivostok and onto Tokyo. At the time I was pretty enthusiatic about it. But, as usual, time slipped by without me doing anything. I wanted to do something like that, but I decided, NOT that. Something a little more meaningful and perhaps a little less self-indulgent. And also something a little cheaper. 'Eureka!', I thought as I leapt out of the bath... Volunteering! Free food, free board and just a little manual labour in the daytime to pay my way. So I set about looking for volunteering courses for the year ahead. Most were very expensive, to be honest, ranging from £3000-£5000 excluding flights. Bugger, I thought, foiled once again by my arch-nemesis: the infeasility of an economic model based on free money. So I stopped searching. Then I began searching again because I had forgotten why I stopped searching. And this time around I found a nice little charity organisation called LGV that had some whip snappin' prices, completely affordable and had, apparently, lots of experience in sending western people to foreign lands and having them come back alive. This, I thought, was a big tick on the 'important attributes for a voluteering organisation' chart.
So I called up, stating that I'd like a placement in Mexico. They didn't have Mexico.
'How about Ecuador?'
'Sorry', said an exotic sounding woman on the other end, 'Most of the placements are full'. The rest of the volunteering population had evidently not missed the trick. The only placements left in Latin America were Argentina and Brazil. Why Latin America you ask? In short, the weather. I chose Argentina; the prospect of having to spray mosquito repellent on myself every day just seemed like a hassle I could avoid. So they sent me all the documents, made me pay the reasonable sum, which included pocket money for my stay along with free food and board with a host family and told me I had to teach some people.
'Oh okay. Wait, say whaaaatt?'
There's always a catch with these deals. You fool yourself into thinking it's all gonna be plain sailing. But there it was; the bloody 90 kilogram tunafish of a catch. I like tuna. But not this tuna. This tuna was evil. And I needed some mayonnaise, metaphorically, I think, wait, what? Anyway, so yeah I had to teach some english for a number of months, and they were sending me on a week-long teaching course in London. It was actually pretty fun- I got to meet all the other volunteers, use long words and swap some fun activity ideas for our students to do. I had come into my own a little bit, and felt as though everything was going to be fine. I was then told they speak spanish in parts of South America. This I was not aware of. I could swear someone told me they all speak Esperanto, which I speak fluently, of course, as all people should. But this was not the case. So I learnt what spanish I could, which was very little (literally all I could say was 'muy poco, or 'very little'). I was later invited to meet my placement co-ordinator and head of the language institute in San Luis, Celeste de Leon in Oxford, who was really lovely and tremendously helpful in quelling any nerves I had. Then she ruined it by announcing that all my future students were here and they were dead excited to meet me. I was caught off-guard a little bit there, and made a fool of myself by mocking shyness and burying myself into Celeste like a feeding child. That made me shy for real around everyone, and I think I came across as cold on that occassion. I'll make up for it later me thinks when I look the other way to a student's scalawag misdeed.
Later on, I got word from LGV that they had secured my host family; a young family in San Luis with a 5 year old boy. The father, Nihuel, is a teacher, Silvana, the mother and the boy is called Tiao. 'Silvana' is the only name I can thus far pronounce. Nihuel has sent me some emails though and seems like a really nice guy, and the family itself looks like one of those ones you find on Sandals brochures. An irish-skinned borderline iegit such as myself isn't going to fit in here I think, but then I realise that's just the paranoia setting in again, and I should let myself live in the moment for a while.

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Photos

Instituto San Luis
The place I'll be teaching at... apparently.

Comments

[Joanne O'Donoghue]

Fair play to you!
Hi young Cousin Michael/Mikey/Frank, this is fantastic..will be able to trace all your steps! Went to stay on a Kibbutz in Israel for 5 months in 1985, probably at the same age you are now, and had a fantastic time! Sounds like a real great thing you are doing. Am so pleased (and jealous) for you. Enjoy..and keep us filled in on your adventure, as it will brighten up our drudgery!....ah ha, but maybe I enjoy the drudgery! Take care, Joanne Finbarr and girls. x

[farawayfrank]

Hi Jo, yeah I heard about your time at the kibbutz, it sounded incredible, maybe that could be my next trip! If you were on the transport in the region you wouldn´t be so jealous I don´t think, my back is pretty sore! But the family here is wonderful and my host Nahuel, is a godsend! Thanks for that Cave of Snow book btw, I must of had it for four years, and I swear I´ll send it back when I get home! Much Love xxxx