jornadas

la boca, buenos aires

for those of us working with fadu, this first week has included meetings with our new supervisors, sessions about goals and expectations, and attendance at a conference being held in the fourth floor assembly room. the seminarios habitat y pobreza has consisted of 5 days of speakers with various subtopics addressing housing issues for the poor, primarily in buenos aires. el lunes brought a great speaker about the history of urban development, el martes was about land value appreciation, while the topic of titles was reserved for miercoles. though i wish them well, i'm glad that todays speaker was feeling under the weather and had to cancel.

if you want an impression of what it is like to be there, i could mention that during yesterday afternoon's discussion one man began snoring while another kicked over his thermos in his nascent sleep. and they speak spanish. what hope do i have with that? the first day i felt like my former dying ipod battery: i could focus and perform for a few seconds, but after that i just took up desk space.

i'm doing well enough understanding people, my own speaking ability is questionable, but i tend to do better in a restaurant, supermercados, or dealing with bus drivers. real estate and architectural trade vocabulary are in a spanish course that i have yet to take. that is not to say that the subjects are boring or inappropriate. if anything, as somebody interested in urban land inequality this is a good way to spend a tuesday. but still, i have been glad to be attending preliminary meetings with carlos and my group rather than attending the jornadas.

tomorrow will be the final charlas of the conference. though work will pick up elsewhere, i'm pretty sure this will open up a window to get a tutor to prepare for the next seminario. then, if i fall asleep in public, it will not be because of lack of language comprehension.