Dispatches from the Provinces of Argentina

I am in Paraná, Argentina, the capital of Entre Ríos province, a city of 250,000 that overlooks the Paraná River. This part of the country is called the provinces – las provincias – as opposed to the capital, Buenos Aires, the cosmopolitan life. I have a Fulbright ETA scholarship for 2009. I arrived here in late March and have now settled and gotten used to being here. I work at the Autonomous University of Entre Ríos (UADER), which was once a “terciary” school – a teacher training college – but was recently turned into a university. It is the only provincial university in Argentina; the rest are national.

My blog posts will have four paragraphs, and maybe a photo or video. This will keep my posts short, and make them easier, simpler to write. Maybe the brevity will do something for my style.

I am not going to explain much, then, in these posts. Who is who or where something comes from. That will just have to come from reading each entry over time. Instead, I’m just going to relate some things I’ve done, seen or heard.

My life has been quiet here – I live in a house a few blocks from downtown, with a professor, her husband, and their 5 year-old son. But I’m also one of the only foreigners in town. Every day I’ve been here I’ve only been with other Argentines. So though much of what I do might be…daily, routine, it’s a routine of another place, people.