Online Teaching with no Internet... the joys
Monday January 6th, 2020
A week without internet when you teach online.
I write this to you as I sit here after saying to my partner I need ten minutes to write, and continue to write with the sound of his questions. Yesterday I had internet for 3.5 hours in a Mc Cafe at 6 am when all of the clubs were letting out, and I sweat through my sweatshirt trying to charge my laptop in a corner booth with a plugin near the ceiling on the wall, with direct morning sunlight, and the sound of reggaeton booming from car stereos. This morning I tried to edit photos almost incognito after giving classes at a friend’s house as to not overstay my welcome. When you ask someone for their internet for three hours to teach young children English, staying after another hour while drinking mate and trying to get in any sort of editing or writing, or emailing done, while rushing, holding a decent conversation in another language, and also downloading a moving on your iPad, so you have something to last you then next 18 hours of sans internet life… your head begins to simmer.
Three hours before writing this to you, we siphoned internet from the neighbor Luis. Fabian gave him one of my Cadbury chocolate bars with almonds and dried fruit from my Christmas stocking. We moved my computer to the downstairs living-dining room and again I had a ten-minute window of transferring photos from Lightroom to my hard drive, to google photos before Fabian’s mom wanted to talk about the food we were about to eat. There is a bigger sign here of why with every minute of internet we are granted, comes hours of face to face interactions with people. Why something that normally isolates you into a room, or a world of your own is forcing us to open up more to being infront of people, sharing my work, or moments of solitude, or deep thoughts or photos edits or desires to download music or a movie.
A week without the internet took us to Chascomus, a beautiful lake town two hours south of Buenos Aires. It had us staying with family Fabian hadn’t seen in years on mattresses in their living room. It put me face to face in conversations with Tia who had some opinions about Americans and who also had a wealth of knowledge about Argentinian history and politics. No internet introduced me to Argentina’s financial collapse of 2001, and the use of a different currency in every province. No internet brought me into conversations about whether the work I was doing in Rio was ethical. It challenged my comfort levels on language, culture, and abilities. No internet took us to Adrogué and to an Airbnb with mirrors on all the bedroom walls, but no working internet. It took us to a Mc Cafe at 6 am and to a Vegetarian Restaurant that had the most epic vegetarian wraps and was blaring Brazilian Reggae, something rare I learned in Argentina because of the loathing of Brazil because of football rivalries. No internet took us to the tiny apartment of Fran. We shared maté early in the morning with his cat, and he shared his recent breakup pain and change of beliefs about not having children. It took us to the house of Andy who had purchased a car 5 months prior but neither he or his wife knew how to drive. In the 3 hours that I gave classes on his living room floor, Fabian took him out to practice driving. I shared Cliff bars with all of our hosts. Peanut butter filled. Everyone loved the cliff bars. Something I too often get sick of but was transformed into an American peace offering of nutrition and deliciousness.
A week without internet led me deeper into life here and biking here, and drinking morning maté here, and being an American in Argentina, but now more of a lover in Argentina here. It has made me comfortable, although with every moment I think about how much work I need to get done, pangs of discomfort fill my pulsing headache. Then it is all forgotten. The discomfort absolved by a cat crawling on my computer or a joke between Fabian and his friends, or the smell of coffee that Tio made for me, or knowing that when I finish my classes I will not be sucked into two hours of sometimes mindless online scrolling, Googling, and Instagramming, but I will be pushed outside of that womb of comfort and into the warmth of conversation, with friends, with new family, with a whole new appreciation for community. And perhaps down the line a realization of how much more I have to offer others too. Even if it is only a Cliff bar.
