Halleluja

Sunday morning Lizzie, Abby and I met up to go to Tierra Santo (Holly land: name of the Jesus theme park) to see what was up with this place. I was wayyy stoked when Lizzie invited me because I'd heard about the place before and wanted to check it out. We got there a little before it opened so chilled by the river which was right across the street from it. We get in and they take us through this (artificial) cave like tunnel where there are different scenes from the Bible acted out by mannequin statue things. We had a tour guide who didn't seem to pleased to be there, all dressed in his sandles and brown dress. They herded us into a place where we were going to watch the nativity. It was pretttty interesting and the rest of the time we ditched the tour guide and just wandered around checking everything out. I had fully expected it to just be all Catholicism all the time but there was actually a mosque, temple, a wailing wall, shout out to Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther, etc. Oh and the best part...every hour on the hour Jesus would be resurrected to the sounds of "HALLELUJA! HALLELUJA!" It was insane. We were there for 5 HOURS and still didn't see everthing there was to see. I'm still not 100% sure how the Argentine's feel about it but I think they take it pretty seriously. There were families running around and I imagine this is a place where they can show them and teach them about different religions. I REALLY liked that they had something representing nearly all the major world religions (minus eastern ones).

Afterwards I had wanted to check out the Jazz festival that was supposed to be going on in the subtes. Since it was almost 6 I figured by the time I got home and checked it out online it would be too late and I knew that Sunday was the last day. But I'm getting out of the train and trying to get around this big group of people to get out onto the street when I notice the guys they're around have mustical instruments!!! There was the Jazz right there! They played beautiful music and I hung out there for about half an hour listening to it. I thought, man, this is such a wonderful thing. Music is so nice and to bring it into such a common, everyday place as the subte was a really nice gesture. People, like myself, would come up from downstairs, puzzled at first and then stop to listen to a song or two. It made the normally hectic busy people getting on and off the trains slow down.

Monday was a bit hectic...I went to class, came home and did some hw before the running club, ran and then had ten minutes to get ready before meeting up with Greg to go to a film festival! The festival was called Cinemigrantes and all the movies they had to offer were about human migration. I'm fairly certain that their message was that it is a human right to migrate. And that got me thinking. Mostly because every time I hear about migration I feel that it's in a negative light. People migrating to refugee camps to flee rebel armies or people migrating to different countries because they are being oppressed by their home governments.

But the first film we were presented with was about an Iranian woman, Molky, who had been a widower since she was 14. She wanted to travel to visit some family members and did so, even though she was about 70, she set off to see them because it had been twenty years. Ok keep in mind that this is my understanding with having to read Spanish subtitles haha. Anyway, so it made me think about voluntary migration, and what exactly migration entailed. Had I migrated? Even though I'm not here permanently? Wikipedia would consider my journey a migration because I'm "pursuing education." But "The Molky Way", as the movie was called, had followed Molky only to the destination where she had stayed for a few days and then returned home. Her example would make me believe we are always migrating. Just thinking about the number of trips I take by road or by plane, I am always moving, always staying in a different place for different reasons.

The second movie was quite strange. It starts with a woman and her young daughter, clutching a doll, at place of prayer in a Middle Eastern country. The girl puts her doll down and when she turns to show her mother and turns back to the doll, the dolls been taken apart. She turns back to her mother and her mother has disappeared. The woman then wakes up and from the fact that she was speaking French, I assumed she was in France. She goes about her day and from the story you get that she's fighting going back to wherever she's from. She does finally go back and it's all very odd for her and she sticks out for her clothes and manner of behavior. In this case there was migration, she obviously left her home villiage for Europe for whatevre reason, and then felt like an outsider when she came home. I could relate to that in a small part, it's only 5 months, and only two and a half have passed, but I can already feel the things that I'm going to be resistant to in American culture when I come home. But either way, this can definitely be one of the draw backs to migration. On the one hand, if you move to a place, assimilating is often the easiest option, but if you do then you alienate yourself from wherever you came from. If you don't assimilate, then it's more difficult to fit into wherever you've taken yourself.

The third, and the one I had wanted to see the most, El Regreso: The Return. This one was about a group of Palestinian children living in Madrid, returning to Palestine to visit their families and their place of birth. Well, that one was insane I knew a bit about the Palestine/Isreal conflict before seeing the movie but I had never seen it like we did in the film. Now, that was the type of migration I was familiar with. Things are so oppressive in the Palestinian territories that the children were sent to Spain to go to school and live so that they can have better lives.

Overall, the issue of migration is something I hadn't thought to deeply about before but now that I've seen these films and given it more thought I think it's a facinating topic. As well as their claim that it's a human right to migrate. I would agree with that; no one should be told they cannot go wherever they like for however long for whatever reason. But I also believe it should always be on a voluntary basis.

Yesterday I migrated over to Catedral for some Tango :) Met up with Gigi (the Argentine girl we met this weekend). Jessica, Arriana, and a different Nikko (this one a student at Universidad de Buenos Aires and from Germany), and Danielle (a girl from school I've been meaning to hang out with) were all there. It was PACKED. Too packed unfortunately. It's impossible to dance when there're that many people so I just lounged on a makeshift couch and watched everyone else dance. If I had brought enough money I would have enjoyed a glass of wine too but it was still a blast to watch everyone and I love the atmosphere of the place.

Besos!