Observations

I get the feeling that they laugh a bit at the Argentines here, at their old fashioned haughtiness. It must be weird to be the seat of an old empire. We estadounidenses are on the side of the Argentinians, here. Marina says she loves watching the soap operas that come in from South America, where the rich protagonists ride their horses across the pampas and have such old fashioned names. I imagine it's something like our Laura Ingalls Wilder, but more strange and distant. Come to think of it, my Argentenian friend here has pale blue eyes and long, straight blonde hair and has a long, multicultural mouthful of a name. Starting with Florencia.

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From what I've seen the Spaniards appear to be somewhat comfortable public speakers. I don't say good. I say comfortable. They stand in front of the classroom with the same sort of bored, sort of commiserating, sort of annoyed attitude that they have when talking about assignments and exams among themselves. They gesture with their open palms at the audience and almost roll their eyes, as if saying, "Hey guys, so here I am, I gotta talk about this stuff, I think we can all agree its not very interesting and that this is a colossal waste of time, so lets just get through it so that the teacher can get back up here and do his job." But they're pretty chill. I don't see nervousness. In America there are all the smiles and giggles and shakes. I don't know which I prefer.

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Lucia and I have been talking about thoughts and minds. I've always seen my mind as more linear and one dimensional. Not to say less complex... just that pretty much my mind is unified force, acting as one, understanding itself... with rare exceptions and of course animal instincts like hunger aside, there is the continual line of my thoughts, relatively well formed into words. Language is more than vital, thoughts without language are simply inconceivable. I can imagine a transcript being printed of my life's work in thoughts, pages after pages of observations and inner life. Recent events have upset this, somewhat, I'm more aware of different levels of thinking and sometimes even dissent between them. And Lucia says this is normal for her, she's more aware of levels of mental and emotional existence, and, furthermore, that she has a hard time expressing some of her thoughts in words. This confuses me. My thoughts come in words - there's almost no division between them. But for Lucia it's different, and she's been curious about why, asking me questions about when I learned to write and how much they pushed me to express my feelings on paper in school. But I actually learned to read and write at the normal time, or even late compared to the rest of my mental development. But I spoke as a child, constantly.

And I notice that in class here they keep saying "bucear en la mente..." - to dive into the mind. They use it when I would say "to read the mind". In Harry Potter they say that the mind is not an open book to be read, but I think they could read mine, if they figured out how... neat little sentences spilling out in a row. But that wouldn't work for Lucia, if she can't even order her own thoughts into words and sentences, somehow. Perhaps for her mind diving would be more fruitful, since not all that lies beneath comes to the top and works itself into a neat order. And so I wonder if the linguistic difference doesn't correspond to a cultural difference. It's curious.