Why?

First off, I want to say that since, basically my sophomore year in college, 4 years ago, I have not written much of anything. You might wonder 'How did you not write anything in your last two years in college?' that question can be answered by two words: art student(I basically only wrote papers in Spanish).  So I want to apologize first off, if anyone even reads this, that my writing, probably won't be wonderful to read, however, hopefully it gets better.


Why did I chose to teach abroad. Well there really isn't simple answer to that question, as there are many reasons...


Spanish
I minored in Spanish in college, first to get out of a reading/writing class by taking foreign language classes.  I began with Spanish 101, as many of you know, usually you need to take 2 years of a foreign language to graduate high school.  I did take two years of Spanish in high school, however, my Spanish teacher freshman year ruined it for me. I hated Spanish after that and already decided on not taking it after my second year was complete. However, truth be told, I didn't pay attention, was disruptive in class and would rather talk and hang out with my friends in class. Anyway after taking Spanish 101 in college I was already in love with it.  Maybe because my professor was a great person/teacher, or perhaps one of my best friend's at the time was a Spanish major.  I continued to take Spanish courses in college and eventually made it to the 400 level courses where you basically have interesting in-depth conversations solely in Spanish. I was also fortunate enough as well to have under 8 people in every Spanish class after 102, which gets you involved and you really stick out if you don't do your homework or pay attention. But having a good professor makes it easy to participate and pay attention. Especially if you have that same professor for 3 years.  My Spanish is well enough to have conversations with the Mexicans I worked with during my summer job, and people that worked in Mexican Restaurants, even the Argentinians I met while on vacation in Mexico.  However, since those 2 years from graduating college, my Spanish speaking skills have dropped dramatically, as will any skill without practice. So wanting to continue with my skill of speaking Spanish I have chose to live in a Spanish speaking country, so I will forced to use it.

Argentina
Those of you that know me, know that was I all set up to spend a semester in Buenos Aires. However, one week before leaving, the trip was canceled due to swine flu.  I had the opportunity to then study in Spain, however, I was in Spain for 10 days 2 months before, and wanted to experience South America.  Another reason why I wanted to go to Argentina, is that my Spanish professor in college was from there and always insisted that I experience it.  So in order to live in South America, for anything long term, I would need a job.  A friend told me about her idea of wanting to go to South Korea to teach English.  This prompted my 'job' and way to live in South America.  Soon I was certified with a TEFL(Teaching English in Foreign Language) certificate, here.(I will probably post another entry on that experience)  So things were coming together to finally go to Argentina.  However, Argentina is a bit different than the rest of the world and TEFL.  There you do not have a job before going, like other countries(S. Korea, China, Europe), in Argentina, you go there and interview for jobs.  This is, in fact illegal, because you do not have a visa to do it and must leave the country every 90 days to renew your 'tourist visa' or get slapped with 300 dollar fine.  My parents/family were not eager about me going to another country without a job, however I did believe I could handle it...  In the end I found the program with Chile and decided to join that program, as I would have a job/host family all before ever leaving the US.  The downfall to that is the program is only 4 months long, rather than the full year I wanted to spend there, but I believe my Spanish skills will increase greatly living with a host family rather than in an apartment.

US and Society
Being in a couple contemporary art classes makes you think about society a bit differently. It had such a profound effect on me, that every single one of my art projects, besides paintings were about my society and the problems I had with it.  Most of the problems I have with 'our' society stem from myself and the ways I have acted. and still do act.  Some of those projects included: body image, movies(ie. fairy tale perception), and instant gratification(huge with me). With being catholic, and having a good friend become a theology teacher, brought me back to things like marriage, divorce, and morals.  Now with having these problems with the society in which you live, you cannot simply bash it, or I believe I cannot because I have never lived within another society and cannot draw comparisons. Basically another reason why I would love to live in another country to see how that society is run.  I fear that our global/business reach has already impacted the world enough to find out these problems issues have incorporated themselves in the world as a whole.