I wear my sunglasses at night

So, the eighties are back in a big way in Chile. This has several notable downsides. The most immediately noticeable, the one that will slap you in the face as soon as you walk off of the plane, is that the mullet is high fashion here. Not just permissable, not just tolerated, no, the mullet is considered a fabulous fashion statement. So too for rat-tails. Yes, rat-tails. I bet you never thought you'd hear about those again. I certainly didn't. I thought there had been a universal agreement never to mention that moment of mass insanity again. Sweep it under the rug, so to speak, along with layered socks and the like. Apparently Chile didn't get the memo. Now, I am all for freedom of choice when it comes to hair. However, the mullet is an agressive hairstyle--it is not easily ignored. And so it is that I am sad to report that many an otherwise attractive man has been overwhelmed and rendered utterly unpalatable due to his unfortunate choice of hairstyle. Women, as well: actresses on television actually wear mullets--usually when their character is meant to be edgy and hip. I would love to have pictures to illustrate all of this, but I have not yet become such a b*tch as to post pictures of strangers on the internet in order to ridicule their hair.

Anyway, there are other negative side effects to the eighties trend, although none nearly as devastating as the haircut situation. Fanny packs, for instance. Fanny packs are trendy. And my students who dress like skaters look like they walked out of a Bugle Boy ad. But chiefly, just try dancing to Flock of Seagull's "I Ran." It can't be done. It just cannot be succesfully accomplished. However, all the clubs that I have been to insist on playing that song, and others like it, multiple times per evening. Now, Chile does not live up to the South American stereotype regarding dancing skills. Chileans keep telling me that Norteamericanos are terrible dancers--so stiff! Like robots! Well, I am here to publicly state that I have been to plenty of clubs In Santiago and here in Valpo, and on the whole, Chileans aren't any better off than the Norteamericanos. So, you take a club full of people who can't dance, and give them an undanceable song. Great. Thanks for the extra embarassment, DJ.

However, there are also a few upsides to this acceptance of all things eighties. For instance, at this very moment, the sala de profes is bumping to The Cure: Love Song. I get to hear Madonna at least once a day. Yesterday I did my grocery shopping to the sounds of Unchained Melody. And for every unadulterated non-danceable 80s song at the clubs, there is another dance remix that makes up for it: Stand by Me, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.....to a beat! And a few weeks ago I was able to publicly sing along to Time After Time in the middle of a club. Ah, it's the little moments.....So yes. All those songs you thought were dead...that you might never put in the effort to seek out....well, in Chile they come to you. And they make you very happy. If you are several Pisco Sours into the night, they make you extremely happy.

Finally, there is one other gift from the eighties that I have welcomed back into my life with open arms. I could tell you, but I'd rather show you. This is what I wore to work yesterday:

I can hear you now: "But Meredith! They can't be! Are they tights...? Are they pants...? They couldn't possibly be....." Oh, but they are. They are leggings. Magenta leggings. Now, before you have a heart attack, I rush to assure you that I have seen very very few people who have made the mistake of using leggings as the sole covering for their lower half. I think we all remember the trauma of leggings-as-pants, and very few seem willing to go back to that phase, thank god. But leggings under skirts, now this is very popular. So I decided to jump on board, and let me tell you, it felt wonderful. Now I admit, all day I was half expecting someone to come up to me and say, "You aren't seriously wearing those in public, are you?! And to work!" But no one even raised an eyebrow. It was an excellent experience: "I am wearing hot pink leggings while teaching a class, and no one finds this strange in the least."

And so I did it again today. I'm giving oral exams today, so I opted for black leggings--more austere, you know. It's true.....I love the leggings. Welcome back, friends.

We continue our normal blogcast with: My evening as an alfajore saleswoman

My Chilean "family" sells alfajores. These are the most delicious cookie-pastries ever conceived of, in my vague and unbiased opinion. It is precisely because you have to think of them as both cookies and pastries that they blow the competition out of the water. For information, here is a nice site with a recipe that doesn´t look very interesting, but a nice history first: Diana´s Desserts. And of course Wikipedia, which prefers the Peruvian alfajore, which of course is just nonsense (jaja). My family makes the dark version, in that there is dulce de leche in between two cookies, and then the whole shebang is coated in chocolate. These ingredients are home-made, folks. I'll be coming home with a whole new wardrobe, ahem, ahem.

In any event. This evening a strange occurence has been visited upon me. The family disappeared. Not so much disappeared as went out, but it might as well be the same thing. In two months here, I have never once been the only person in the apartment. The mamá and papá of the house are retired, so mostly home during the day. The daughter works like a madwoman, so she is mostly home at night. There are two other Chilean girls, one a journalist and the other a student, who live here, and they come and go. So, in general, there are at least two people besides myself here at any given time. And then...this evening...I looked up from my book, and, no one!

Now, I looked up from my book not out of idle curiousity but because the doorbell was being leaned on. What the...should I.....is there.....?! By the time I figured out that the gringa really was in charge, it was too late.

The next time, I was alert, but confounded. The doorbell rang. Twice. In less than a minute (showing my host papá's diligence in comparison to my slackness). I made it around the hall to the front door to find it...deadbolted. I fumbled around. No turn-knobs, no switches, no levers. Outside, someone heard me mucking around and wailed, ¡Por favor! ¡Tengo un clase de niños!
Finally I realized that I needed my key and ran back to my room, but when I got back to the door I had missed the boat again.

Damn. I've only been in charge once, and here I am with two missed sales. I consoled myself because there were only seven alfajores left, anyway.

Anyway, I recovered, and the next time the doorbell buzzed, up like a shot with keys in hand. And wouldn't you know it, over the next hour I sold the rest of the cookie-pastries to a series of teenagers on their way out for the night.

So! A rocky start, but in the end I can face the family (whew).

We interupt our regularly scheduled cultural observations to bring you: Self indulgence: Things I Miss: A Photo Essay

With apologies to my friends for using their photos. Things that I miss right now, in a scientifically generated random order.


1. Hanna Haidar

2. Philip Maret

3. All Good music festival and all that that entails

4. Caroline Lang

5. Talking and drinking beer and smoking cigarettes with my friends in Angers (here represented by the back of Cailinn's head, and the wall of my kitchen)

6. Pelicans in San Diego

7. Newtonville Books, and getting paid to hang out there

8. My parent's house

9. Franz Josef Glacier

10. Karen Hutcheson a.k.a. mommy

11. Hanna Haidar

12. The pretty table I painted only to put in my parents' basement

13. Falafel (and let it also be understood: curry. gyoza. tajines. mexican. hummus. chicken kelaguin. lamb vindaloo. SPICES.) (& Philip Maret)

14. Maria Florencia Aldatz & other NZ-aquired friends


15. Hanna Haidar

16. Joseph Hutcheson, a.k.a. daddy, here pictured during his own gringo adventures

17. Berry Breene

18. The roof deck in Taghazoute

19. Emily Brown


20. Pennsylvania landscapes

21. Working in the Marais

22. Living in this bach

23. Living in the apartment in Ocean Beach

24. Sam Breene

25. HANNA HAIDAR

26. Communication.

besos besos and bisoux, all of my missing things, M

Malicious omens

Walking back home for lunch today, I had a disturbing moment.

In front of the mural at the top of this blog---the mural that I think of as describing my current situation, communication-wise--was a dead bird.

A dead bird.

I was an English major. I think my life is a book. I just can't take that kind of symbolism!

Tonight there is a newly purchased copy of Borges translated into English, and a bottle of vino tinto con platano at the bar down the hill, with my name all over it. An excellent combination to make one feel expressive for a short while.

A love story

Chile is a country in love.

It is a country with a serious prediliction for public displays of affection (and other drives), yes. I have seen some rather lurid scenes....in the park....at noon.

But, it is also a country in love with love. I have also nearly stepped on people who have their eyes locked on each other with an intensity that is almost more embarassing than the tangled couples. And certainly more intimate.

It is Neruda's country, or is it? I am inclined to reverse the equation. Maybe it is only Chile that could have made a Neruda, a man who could not live without love, who built monuments and houses and poems and politics all for love, who they say died of a broken heart. It seems that such a story, such a creature, would grow so naturally out of this culture. Chile speaking through its poet.

Bathroom walls here are a serious business. Declarations of love scrawled across stalls in letters four inches high. I have seen one where a girl covered one wall of the stall with her love for a Guillermo. She returned at some point later to update things. Unlike what I have seen in the states, she didn't destroy the monument to Guillermo. She just used the other wall to establish that now she loves Claudio. Just to make it all clear, she put dates on the two maybe-murals.

On the bus home from Santiago on Sunday, the windows fogged over as night fell. I leaned onto mine and watched as the teenage boy in front of me traced "te amo" in the condensation, then photographed it. Erased it, sketched out a girl's name, and photographed it. Sketched his own name, photographed it. Te amo, again. The two names. Alone. Together. Until there was no more fog left on his window. I would like to see the gift that will come out of all those photographs. Te amo, te amo, te amo.

Rosa is Katie's host mother. I stayed with them this weekend, and I was invited to stick around for an empanada and a beer on Sunday afternoon. Rosa is incredibly patient, and she is a story-teller. She's a hairdresser, which means she has access to more stories than most of us do. Modern society tells its stories to a select few, and hairdressers are near the top of the list. So Rosita told us many stories on Sunday, and one of them was a love story:

An old woman came in to get her hair styled, and she asked for a bride's hairdo. Questions were asked....was she going to a wedding? Mother of the bride? No, she was the bride. And she told the women her story:

When she was a young woman, many years ago--forty years ago, fifty years ago--she was engaged to be married. As the wedding approached, she and her fiance spent a day visiting with relatives. At each house, they were served more food, more drinks. A coffee here with an aunt, a cake there with a family friend, hor d'ouevres with a godmother. They passed the day this way and the young girl began to feel sick, but she couldn't refuse the hospitality of her various hosts.

As the car began to return to her house, she became overwhelmed by illness. She asked the car to pull over, and vomited. It happened again, and again, and she began to have diarrhea, and was staining her shirt and her skirt and the car. When they finally made it to her house, she ran inside and slammed the door in her fiance's face.

The girl was so overcome by shame that she left Santiago without saying another word to the man she had been engaged to. She hid herself away with some aunt or other sympathetic creature somewhere in the folds of Chile, and didn't return for many years. When she did, it was with a husband and two sons.

Years and years passed, and the woman was widowed, and her sons grew up. In the pharmacy one day, a man stopped her. I know you, he said. I don't know you, she replied. You do, he averred. But from where? she asked.

Well of course it was the fiance from so many years ago, now an old man and a widower himself. He gave her his phone number and she went home to ask her sons what they thought. They told her to call him.

And so time passed and the circle closed and the woman came to Rosita to have her hair done for the wedding that took fifty years to happen.

Just a girl and her grammar....

That's me. And that's what I hope will be my new vocabulary/ability to speak in multiple tenses.

At the moment I am drowning in a sea of grammar. I have spent the whole week typing grammar exercises for my students. It is surprisingly difficult. Try thinking of 20 sentences that use "to be" when you only have perhaps a 20 noun, 5 adjective vocabulary to work with. Tricky.

We are....hmmm.....cousins.
They are.....ummm......brothers.
He is......mmm.....my brother.

And then over again for such discrete points of grammar as indefinite v. definite article, questions with "to be," answers with "to be"......it was quite the task. Now I'm onto Unit 2, which is super fun, being all about prepositions.

Prepositions are like sand flies. Small, annoying, and no matter how long they're around you never quite get used to them....

Anyway all this has left less time than preferable for my own battle with prepositions. Luckily the family I live with and the profes I work with keep me talking, and my little lists are proving surprisingly helpful. "Hmm, what was that word...I was looking at it this morning while I was putting on my scarf.....casi! Yes!"

A shameless bit of bragging

Today a girl told me I did a great class, that it was very fun and not boring.

In English!

To enliven this post with something a bit more of general interest, I have a cultural anecdote to share. A Chilean woman recently told a friend of mine that there are very few black people in Chile, but that there are more in Brazil......because it's too cold for them here. You know, because Africa is really hot. They just can't handle the climate.

I don't think there is anything that I can add to that to make it funnier, I'll just leave that for you to enjoy. At some point I'll post a more thoughtful bit on racial attitudes in Chile, but that's a good intro I think.

Cultural observation, with vast generalization alert

......Chileans tend to be just like North Americans in at least one respect:
Even if they speak only one language, they are generally either a) surprised, b) amused, or c) annoyed at people who have yet to master the language of the house.

Think 7-11 in the states. The guy behind the counter almost always speaks English as a second language. He is almost always highly proficient but somewhere short of fluent. And inevitably people say, Why don't they hire people who speak English! Well, he does speak English. Try learning his language and we'll see how you do.

Chileans in general are less annoyed by the whole thing than Americans, but they are just as baffled. Oddly enough, my students are often the most critical of the lot. For instance: today, I spent nearly 10 minutes trying to explain an important deadline for a class project. A good part of the class was still lost, so finally just to be sure that everyone got it I wrote what is, for me, a rather long Spanish explanation on the board.

Does everyone understand? Yes, we understand now. But then, this one guy raises his hand, and with a facial expression that is a mix of complete condescension and also disbelief, points out that in one part of the paragraph I used "por" when it ought to have been "para."

Now, really!

Like a good little profe I used the opportunity to model the idea that making a mistake is not the end of the world. I changed the word and thanked the student.

I still have some question marks floating over my head though, cartoon style.

An accidental afternoon

Today I went on a mission to the Cemetary (No. 2--I do not know where No. 1 is). It's been tempting me. It is on top of the hill next to mine, and so all these little houses of the dead are just perched up there above the living city. But wouldn't you know it, today we had company so lunch was quite the affair, and I showed up at 5 to 5. Gates close at 5. So that will have to wait for another day.

Wandering away from the cemetary, looking for an alternate route back to my hill, I stumbled into Ex-Carcel. It is a large, fortified building that stands built into the top of the hill opposite the cemetary. It used to be a prison, and I believe before that a fort, although I had some trouble deciphering the sign. Now it is an open public space and an art exhibition area.

Today is Sunday, which means the city is unnaturally quiet and empty. I saw no one outside the walls. Once I entered, I saw a couple walking around, sight-seeing like myself. But they weren't speaking, only looking, and they were far off at the other side of the yard. They were walking around behind a wall with some collapsed sections. Every few minutes my eye would catch just the shape of a person as they passed by an opening in the wall, and then they would be gone. The light took on that color that it only really has in the late afternoon in autumn--bright but somehow muted, yellow. There was a strong wind blowing, lifting dust off of the central yard and making me wrap my scarf up tightly.

All around me, outside the walls, I could see Valparaiso as I have come to know it...the water, the buildings, the hills and the plan. And I had somehow wandered into this empty prison yard with a hundred blank and broken windows looking down on me. Yet there was art: murals all over everything, sculptures of heads growing out of the ground and torsos leaning on trees. There was a playground. Two high school students walked in, smirked at me, and then disappeared into the collapsed walls and courtyards. Empty space, muted light, and the wind shutting out any sound other than itself. Traces of intention left behind by absent hands. I felt like I had walked into a party hours after everyone had left or gone to sleep, to find all the empty bottles and half-eaten dips. Or something more unsettling. An empty house after a kidnapping.





I will go back there to take a better look sometime soon. Today though I just stood in the yard a bit stunned, staring around me at this strange unexpected space, and then I fairly scampered back down into the streets with the other walkers.

The girl in the bubble

Frustration with the language situation is mounting.

It is an incredibly strange experience to be completely incapable of interacting with the outside world, other than in a strictly utilitarian sense. At first, of course, I was pretty thrilled to find myself asking for keys to my classroom and actually receiving them....triumph! Asking for a coffee....getting a coffee! Going to the supermarket....leaving with groceries! Call me Napoleon. Battles being won left and right.

Now that I'm a bit settled, though, I am feeling the effects of not being able to have even the most basic of pleasant conversations. In the past, I have lived and worked with intermediate language abilities. That was frusturating at times. But imagine this scenario:

You are at a bar with friends. With their superior Spanish skills, they strike up a conversation with some other people, and from what you understand of the exchange everyone seems likable and interesting. So you turn to the person next to you, open your mouth and.....stand there absolutely silent with the shocking realization that you can't say anything at all. Unless of course this other person would care to have a nice chat about what time it is, your respective ages and countries of origin, and perhaps food preferences.

This happens to me a lot. For some reason I seem to forget that I am not functional in this language, so I frequently find myself in the above situation. Open mouth, close mouth....fish out of water syndrome.

Really, an ear?

Marko Kulji is a Finnish tourist. A few weeks ago, while vacationing on Rapanui (Easter Island), he decided that the ear of a Moai would make a nice souvenir. Why not? So he broke one off, which shattered when it fell to the ground. A local woman saw the scenario and reported him. After much to-do, the court has decided that Kulji can go home to Finland now that he has paid a $17,000 fine. Meanwhile, every effort is being made to restore the ear to the statue.

And after all this, I am left wondering: an ear? International infamy for destruction of cultural artifacts, because you wanted an EAR? I mean really. Vincent van Gogh had syphillis. What's your excuse, Kulji?

The hills are alive....

Sometimes, when I walk home a bit later than usual, around 8 or 9pm, there is a flute playing over Cerro Alegre. I can't pinpoint the location. It must be coming from somewhere higher up on the hill, because the sound seems to be falling down from the sky. It is eerie and beautiful, these strange little unaccompanied melodies. The air at night now is crisp and clear, because it is autumn, and the notes of the flute match those qualities. The flutist never seems to play songs, just little snatches of melody, 8 bars, 16 bars, pause. Then another, unrelated, it seems. But never a wrong note. It makes my thoughts unclench and my mind goes dreamy. I begin to think that there should always be someone playing the flute on clear autumn nights when the stars are out, and Valparaiso's lights are falling into the ocean.

At home, there is an entirely different kind of music. Far less poetic and ethereal but it makes me just as happy. There is a man, who I have never seen, who lives directly below the floorboards of my room. The entrance to that floor of the building is on the street above on the hill, not in the Pasaje that I enter from, so I will probably never meet this person. I am guessing that he is young because of his voice, and because he has a prediliction for some sort of car-racing video game (although you never know, some people don't grow out of those). In any event, Sr. Downstairs Neighbor loves to sing. He has a very nice voice. He sings ballads, mostly, but sometimes pop music or the occasional musical score. And what I love is that he doesn't sing the way most people sing when they are puttering around at home--halfway, one lyric here, another there, with half a voice. Sr. DN puts soul into his singing. He sings as if he had an audience of 50 people. And he'll give what deserve to be called concerts. Sometimes he'll be singing away for an hour, or more. I like to listen, and I like to think about the other listeners propped up on other beds or leaned over other tables. It is an anonymous community, the singer and his audience, hidden away in cubby holes, blind to one another.

Outside, on top of the hill, the flute is cold and beautiful and still. Inside, the lone ballad singer is the warm heart of the building. And down in the plan at the base of the hill, in the Plaza Anibal Pinto, a man bangs on a homemade bass drum while a girl dances with a tambourine and 6, 7, 8 people play on panflutes and mouth-harps, and the rest dance.

Test Day

I was very, very nervous about today.

Today is First Test Day.

And I would just like to make a general announcement into thin air that my students did much better than expected. They rock, actually, I'm going to say. And by extension I'm not a horrible teacher, which is a relief. I have a nice little stack of tests that average safely in the 5-6 range (out of 7), and so I am going to go eat as big a meal as my host family will give me and have a nice Pimenta Verde to go with it.

Plus the "slang of the day" today was sketchy, and I enjoyed that. As in, don't cheat or do anything sketchy that might make me think you're cheating. And they didn't, and all was well in the kingdom.

Mendoza

I went to Argentina for the weekend.

Yes, I had as much fun typing that as you think I did.

In any event, Elisa and I took a vacation to Mendoza. It is the fifth largest city in Argentina, and is known for its vineyards. It's just over the Andes from Chile (yes, I enjoyed typing that too). From Valparaíso the bus ride takes about eight hours (or it would, if the customs process were not total anarchy, but more on that later). I have a three-day weekend every week, since I don't have Friday classes, so it was time for an escape.

We left Thursday night at 10pm, after a beer at the bus station. The bus was nearly empty and so all the passengers spread out into their own two-seat domains: luxury. I listened to music and watched out the window for the intermittent lights that we passed in the distance. As we started into the mountains I lay with my head on the armrest next to the window, staring up at the stars. The road was a series of hairpin turns, but there was no road, only darkness with stars above and darkness without all around. We twisted up improbably, unendingly into nothing. Half awake, I watched as the milky way screwed and unscrewed itself from the sky: clockwise, counter-clockwise, clockwise.

At the apex I was shot back into some version of reality by a flourescent-lit hour at the border crossing. I forgot my sweater, but the bus driver appeared with an unasked-for blanket to wrap up in. Stamps and papers and scans, and all around the dim open structure the same emptiness waited. As soon as we made it back into the bus I was asleep.

We arrived at 7am Argentinian time, and I was amazed to find the city awake and buzzing. This is of course normal at home but it is quite the contrast from my late-sleeping Valpo. Most things were in contrast, though, between these two cities. Mendoza's streets are wide and evenly paved. They are lined by towering and elegant trees, which are watered by an open irrigation system. It is a strange and beautiful thing, like a forest superimposed on top of a city, or perhaps the opposite.

The city is laid out into five squares: Independencia, at the center, is the largest, and it is surrounded at equidistant diagonals by four smaller plazas. My favorite was the Plaza España, which emphasizes its message with beautiful Spanish tiling.

On Saturday we rented bicycles to take a vineyard tour, which is "what you do" while in Mendoza. There is a reason for this. There are very few things more enjoyable, hedonistic, and relaxing than pedalling around in sunny weather and tasting wine. The fact that the bicycle seats threatened my future ability to ever sit down again was a detraction, but otherwise it's a pretty much flawless Nice Day. Which explains why Mendoza is just about covered in gringo tourists (of all classifications, not solely the norteamericano variety). It was incredibly odd to hear so much English after two months of feeling like I may have made up the language in some sort of fit of insanity. The majority of the other bikers were couples, another fact that is entirely not in need of explanation. It's hard to go wrong with a date like that. My date, as usual, was the lovely Elisa:

We have gone on some really lovely dates by now. It is an unfortunate fact that both of us are interested in men, because otherwise we could be well on our way to an enjoyable fling. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful day with or without a date. I fell in love with a liquor called Pimenta Verde which is really and truly spicy--I may have found my aperatif. When I am old and not a volunteer I will order it direct from the family I bought it from and serve it in special little glasses. You are going to love it.

All in all we visited 7 wineries, 1 artisan food company specializing in liquors, dulces and spreads, and 1 olive oil manufacturer. We participated in all of the tastings that were not insanely expensive, which luckily was most of them. I learned a lot more about Malbec, a grape which was once thought to be extinct until it was discovered mixed in with Chile's Merlot grapes. Now it is grown in Chile and Argentina, perhaps other places. It's tasty. Or, as I was told, it has flavors of blackberries and strawberries when young, and a nice oaky flavor when aged in barrels.

I also participated in two very nice book conversations in less than 24 hours, which was really and truly amazing. Since the end of my bookstore days, I've been a bit starved (with the exception of chats with Nicola, who is unfortunately a resident of Santiago).

Finally, yesterday we rode the bus back through the Andes. Some things are just too beautiful and large to wrap your mind around. The pinks and reds against the blue sky were brighter than I could imagine, and underground water gave itself away by showing snakes of green plants winding down the sides of the hills.

Travelling can be brutal. It is lonely, it is confusing, it is uncomfortable, and there are so many times when you ask yourself why you've chosen this sort of a life. But then there are the little things that come through to remind you: now I know what color the Andes are. Now I know what the squares of Mendoza look like. Now I know that there is one man who hates The Alchemist and cannot wait to see his girlfriend again, and another who is working on a novel while touring on a motorcycle. Now I know about Pimenta Verde and mustard made from beer. I don't have much to hold on to down here, but every day my internal world gets larger and larger.

I'm awkward in English, too

Oh my sala de profes. It is the only place where I have free internet access. It has an unlimited supply of nescafe that is miraculously refilled the second it runs out by a nice man who always smiles at me. It is my only current access in the country of Chile to a computer table/desk of appropriate height and stability. It even has nice frosted windows to let in natural light, and air conditioning that is unfortunately usually turned on only when it gets dark and cold out.

Being a sala de profes, it is also, obviously, filled with other profes. And herein lies the problem.

I do all of my work here. I make an endless supply of power point presentations. I check my email. I chat with friends. Now that I've created a blog/imaginary friend, I also write here. And so it comes to pass that I spend several hours a day sitting in a small room with up to seven or eight other people who may or may not be trying to talk to me.

Usually I don't realize that I've been spoken to until the unfortunate friendly person turns to a friend and says, "No entienda," usually with an expression half of amazement and half of exasperation. At this point I have a choice:
1. Look up and smile the "I have no idea what you're saying, but I recognize that it is aimed at me and I appreciate the effort, perhaps in a few months we will be able to have a conversation" smile. It's not a fun smile to make. That's an awful lot of information to convery in one facial expression.
2. Keep staring at my computer and pretend that I don't even understand that I don't understand.
My choice depends on mood, moon cycle, perceived friendliness of the speaker, etc. I would place this situation at the lowest end of the awkwardness scale.

Next up, as we mount the scale: the fact that Chileans always greet each other both when entering and leaving a room. When I walk into the room, I have to start with an hola. This often leads to someone getting the mistaken impression that I am capable of communicating with them. But I follow it up with a quick "I'm very sorry but I don't speak Spanish" smile and scurry around setting up my computer, and that usually solves the problem. If possible, I stumble through a very basic series of greetings and pleasantries until the other person realizes that that's as far as I go, and gives up. Once settled, I greet all entering and leaving profes with the "confused but friendly" smile, and usually all goes well.

Becoming more awkward: the people who continue talking to me past the point where it is clear that I don't understand them.....but don't adjust to accomodate my massive limitations. There is one very friendly man who will talk to me at least once a day, but in general I tend to feel that it's more for the benefit of his friends than for genuine conversation. He'll start with a monologue that I don't understand. Then he'll express amazement to the room at large that I haven't followed. Then he'll ask one question very slowly, usually something odd. So far: Do you like to dance reggaeton? Do you like pisco sours? Do you listen to rap? I answer cautiously, becase the next step is always a long, very quickly stated question that I don't understand, then a conversation with his friends that seems to be fun for all. And I just sit there smiling the "I'm a good sport but I don't understand you and I hope you're not making fun of me" smile. For full effect this must be accompanied by nervous glances at all participants in the conversation.

And finally, rounding it all off: When the room is actively engaged in conversation, and then I start to pick up words: Ingles. Gringo. Worse: Rubia. At those points I'm completely in the dark. Are they talking about me? To me? About something entirely unrelated to me? And then I have to try for the "I'm not accusing you of anything, because you're probably talking about something entirely normal, but in the unlikely event that you are talking about me, I would appreciate being included in the conversation such as I can" smile. Oh! Writing is a mirror to life...it's happening right now. It kind of feels like middle school, that would be the best comparison......

So yes, the minefield that is the sala de profes. As you can imagine, it takes a good amount of effort to smile in such nuanced ways, and I live in constant fear of pulling out the wrong one. Beyond this, when not feeling compelled to interact directly with people, I am still the weird little deaf-mute sitting in the corner while everyone else hangs out. It's kind of a general low-level awkwardness punctuated by peaks and valleys.

Feria des Libros Usados, I hardly knew ye

Every day on the way to work I used to walk through the "used book market"--a tent set up off of Plaza Anibal Pinto with tables and tables of used books for sale. I was hesitant....buying a book in Spanish is a major commitment for someone of my abilities. I will most likely be reading it for the next six months. Which one? Which one?

Perhaps if I had bought one I would speak enough Spanish to have known that the Feria wasn't permanent....as of yesterday, April 1st, it disappeared. Now it's an assorted souvenir and knick-knack tent, as most of the tents around the city are.

Hesitation leads to disaster!

Good morning, Valparaiso

In the unlikely event that you didn't know, I teach English. (Even if you didn't know that to begin with, what other job could I possibly hold down in a country where I communicate at the level of a 2 year old?).

Two days a week I have a class that begins at 8am. This puts me out the door at 7am. This would never happen by my own design, but it is a surprising gift in my days.

Outside, it is blurry silence and the click of the bolt seems loud. Between two buildings, through a rusting iron railing, I look down onto the port. It is coated in mist and fog this early. Soon the sun will burn it clear, but for now it is all in haze. At the bottom of my stairway-street, the street cleaner who works my neighborhood is taking his cigarette break. The smell of the smoke mingles with the damp sea air. Twice a week, we see each other here, like clockwork: he is doubtless well into his shift; I am pulling on sweater ends and yanking wet hair around as I stumble into my day. All over the city, the street-cleaners are awake and working silently with their brooms and mops and trash cans. The streets never seem to get any cleaner, but it's not for lack of trying.

Valparaiso is soft and sleepy in the morning. I walk through pink half-light. Two old men in wool suits push and pull until they succeed in heaving open a store's metal security paneling. Uniformed children walk to school, chattering quietly like birds. Men wait to buy their newspapers and cigarettes at the kiosks that glow like the lanterns they resemble. The streetlights, determined to fulfill every moment of their service, glow on ever-less strikingly against the lightening sky.

The rumbling beasts that are Valparaiso's fleet of micros are not yet awake, except for a scant few that scream past and are absorbed again into the quiet. Seagulls are the only other jarring noise. Conversations seem muted. Suited businessmen and vendors pushing carts walk haphazardly through the empty streets.

It is a temporary, tenuous tranquility. The light hits the top of the hills first. It shines off of windows and brings the brightly colored houses back to life, and then it begins to creep down into the Plan.

This is not a sedate city. It is a humming city, a pushing-and-shoving city, a city of shouts and drums and motors. No one who finds themselves falling for this place would wish it to be any other way. But there is a beauty in the contrast that I find in the early morning. Even the murals seem to have their eyes closed, waiting for day to break.

Falling in love with a new city is like falling in love with a person. Walking through Valparaiso in the morning, I am lying propped up with one elbow on the pillow, hair tousled. As the light slowly wakes the cerros and creeps down towards the water, I am biting my lip, softly touching a still cheek or a slowly rising chest, thinking, He is so beautiful when he sleeps. Thinking, Wake up. Don't wake up. Wake up.

Walking as a competitive sport

One of the first culture shocks that any norteamericano will have in Valpo (and possibly Chile in general) is the level of strategy and physical agility required to walk anywhere at a pace to which we are accustomed. The chief reason for this is a combination of narrow sidewalks, a large number of people, and the trickling pace of foot traffic. At least a few times a day I find myself trapped behind a group of people walking so slowly that it is actually pretty amazing to watch, if you happen to have the time. They look like any other group of people standing around having a chat....except that they are drifting down the sidewalk at a nearly imperceptible rate. Like clouds in the sky. You can track their movement more easily by fixing your eye on something static behind them and measuring them in relation to it.

As I said, it's quite a sight when you have the time. When you are on your way to work, or anything else with even a general timeframe, it's one of the many adventures that will make your commute a Walking Match. For example, an analysis of a typical Challenge:



To your right, a trole going approximately 5,000 kph will take joy in flattening you if you step off of the curb. The man in front of you, at center, is floating forward without the need to bend his knees. To your left, the other half of the sidewalk is occupied by an oncoming walker. The gap between them is slowly widening as they drift past each other....but, oh! Here comes the Competitive part. As you can see, the man behind the oncoming walker also has his eye on that gap. He's quickening his pace, and he's obviously a pro--he's hiking his bag up onto his back so as to be able to fit through what will likely be the narrowest of spaces. You have a worthy competitor here. You can TRY to beat him through the opening, but you're an extranjero. Your chances aren't great. In my case, I have a scant 2 months of preparation for this moment. It depends on the scenario, then. If you are expected anywhere at any specific time, your only choice is to go for the showdown. Put your head down, get your bag up, and charge for that gap. Your chances aren't great though.....you are an extranjero, with scant experience, and this man is a veteran. If push comes to shove...pun SO intended....you will probably back down first unless perhaps you're from NYC and have a particularly agressive nature to boot. So if you have time to spare, you can often save yourself some stress by letting the fiercer competitor through and waiting for a weaker player to go up against.

Here's an action shot of Elisa dodging through a dicey situation:



She's already avoided a large, sidewalk-swallowing group of people (of which the woman at left is the last). But as you can see, the challenges only continue to mount. Directly ahead: glacial walker. Elisa's poised to pull a sideways dodge-around, but watch out! Man pushing a giant trash barrel at 11:00! If she pulls it off, then she has to face the women at back, who are just greeting each other and will be chatting across the width of the sidewalk for the next few minutes. The suspense! She championed, but sadly the situation forced me to abandon my sports photography and jump in the game.