Music, Movies, TV, Books

What have I filled my non-thesis time with so far this summer?

Music
Owl City: AKA my getting-ready-in-the-morning music

Tim McGraw: AKA my at-the-gym-music

Evita soundtrack: AKA my constantly-have-stuck-in-my-head-as-I-walk-around-Buenos-Aires music

My summer has been sadly quite music-free however, partially because I have been told that it is inadvisable to walk around wearing headphones on the street, and also because internet music either takes forever to buffer or doesn't play outside of the US; so I have been largely reduced to music that is already in my possession.

Movies/TV
Elefante Blanco
I saw this with a fellow thesis-researcher the first week I was here. Great movie about the slums of Argentina, would highly recommend.

Into the Wild
My cousin Patrick burned me this movie when I was visiting him in Chile, after I mentioned having read the book. Some more thoughts on it below.

Modern Family & Gossip Girl
Pure entertainment :)

Books
Trabajo Doméstico: Un Largo Camino Hacia El Trabajo Decente ed. María Elena Valenzuela
(OIT Chile, I interviewed her assistant while in Santiago)
Well, so this was for my thesis, but I'm including it anyway. Very, very informative and helpful. Definitely the best book I have encountered about current domestic labor and immigration laws in Argentina.

Sin Azúcar (el amor se sirve caliente, la venganza – fría, la amistad – sin maquillaje) by Milena Ivanova
English translation: “Without Sugar (love is best served hot, revenge – cold, friendship – without makeup)". It was pretty much exactly as it sounds.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
I read Into the Wild (also by Krakauer) a couple weeks ago while visiting my aunt and uncle in Chicago. After hearing how much I liked it, my uncle gave me this book – which I have always meant to read, but had never gotten around to. I ended up reading it over the course of my weekend trip to Chile, so my memories of the trip are somewhat strangely intertwined with the experiences on Everest in 1996… Was especially cool to read now, as the step-dad of some of my high school classmates (Conrad Anker, who was mentioned in the book) just recently ascended Everest for the third time this May, first time without oxygen. I read the National Geographic blog about the trip right afterwards, and the two together were great complements.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Am almost done with this – so many classics are available for free on the Kindle!
Might tackle Les Misérables next.

- - -

Two things jump out to me about these lists. First, there are very few Spanish-language sources. In past summers, this was not the case: I kept myself strictly away from all English-language material, only allowing myself to read Animal Farm in English last year in Chile on a day when I was sick and couldn't handle Spanish. This year, however, I have been much more lax with myself. I speak in English with Americans (if they want to), I read English books, I listen to American music, and I haven't watched any Argentine TV since I got here. I think the Spanish immersion method is effective, and was good for me, but this summer I am more concerned with enjoying my summer than sticking to Spanish 100% of the time. Plus, my daily interviews have been better for my Spanish than anything else ever was!

Secondly, although all of these books are quite different – nonfiction essays about immigrant workers in Latin America, a Spanish romance novel, a nonfiction adventure memoir, and a 19th century classic – one thread that happens to bind them together, and that is also quite relevant to myself in my time here, is the theme of loneliness and social isolation (the movie Into the Wild also furthers this theme). Reading about Hester Prynne’s lack of social interactions, about the hours of personal reflection demanded by an ascent of Everest, about the hardships and loneliness of living and working in someone’s home 24 hours a day, 6 days a week (even the descriptions of the pain of divorce in the romance novel)… all have resonated with me particularly strongly given my current situation of solo research in a foreign country. I am currently working on a blog post about my feelings on the subject, so watch out for that in the next few days.