Country mouse goes to the big city

Early last Saturday morning I found myself, bleary eyed from an open-bar wedding reception the night before, adrift in Santiago. If I had not been deprived of my crashing surface, I most likely would have slept another 3 or 4 hours. Nonetheless, I was in the capital and determined to make use of it, as tempting as a nice bus seat sounded.

Valparaiso is my heart in Chile. The common expression is "Santiago is Chile," which makes sense: a huge percentage of the population lives there, and nearly all commerce is located there. For me, though, Valparaiso is Chile. I could not imagine leaving my home here and staying in the country. Nonetheless, there are drawbacks to everything. I love my small Chilean city, but it is a small Chilean city. There are things that just can't be found here.

Even Santiago is a little bereft in the museum department, so I decided to skip out on that particular commodity. No, I was out to be a consumer of the first degree. With that in mind, I got off the metro at La Moneda and beelined to Starbucks.

It's an interesting phenomenon. In the US, Starbucks is my enemy: the gobbler of small, beloved coffee shops. For a time in high school, nearly everyone on the staff of one particular Starbucks was a good friend of mine, and we used to throw parties in their back room and basement purely out of spite. Fact of the matter remains, when abroad, Starbucks is the only place where North American-style drip coffee can be found. It seems that the rest of the world thinks it tastes like "sock juice," to quote a French person I spoke to about the matter, or something else of the same degree. I remain resistant to international pressure and I still think with longing about my free days in the States, which always involved the paper, a crossword puzzle, and an entire pot of coffee. So it is that whenever I come across a Starbucks while in another country, it brightens my life just a tad. This can be witnessed by this photo of me, taken in Christchurch, NZ:

It had been months since I'd been in a city, and my traveling companion, the lovely Argentinian Florencia, was so amused by my reaction that she needed to document it.

Returning to last Saturday. I bought myself a gigantic cup of coffee and sat reading my book and eating a croissant. As my hangover cleared a bit, I was able to navigate my way to the counter once again. I purchased a large French press and a pound of ground coffee. If I can dig up my crossword puzzle book from the plane last February, my next day off will be a delight.


It was very strange to be in a North American institution. As is the Starbucks way, everything is standardized, so the store was decked out in Christmas decorations and resounding with carols. Nevermind that Chileans are not overly excited by Christmas, nor can they spell the word in English.




It was strange to be sitting in air-conditioning, wearing a t-shirt, surrounded by red and green ornamentation. My Chilean friends tell me that it is odd even for them, having at this point absorbed much of the northern imagery associated with the holiday. "How bizarre," they tell me, "to have Santa Claus walking around in furs in 80 degree weather!" This will be my first Southern hemisphere Christmas, and I will be missing the snows of Boston.





From Starbucks, I headed to Patronato. The night before, I had advised the mother of an acquaintance that I had this intention. She was accepting, but concerned. "You need to go with only one small purse, and have it all the way up on your shoulder and under your arm."

She also told me not to walk around obliviously, and demonstrated with a duck-footed, wide-eyed pantomime.


As always, I give little creedence to Chilean prophecies of doom. The populace has been inundated with documentaries about the peligro that lurks around every corner, and they have become a country of truly paranoid people. Earlier that same day, a co-worker had told me that she was afraid to go to Santiago, and advised me that the thiefs and robbers that abound there can spot a non-Santaguino from a mile away. One thing that both the acquaintance's mother and my coworker had right was that appearance truly is everything. One thing they've got wrong is the idea that extranjeras don't know how to put off a potential robber.


I grew up in the suburbs of Boston: hardly risky territory. Nonetheless, I have one fierce lady for a mother, and she grew up near the projects in the Bronx. So, despite my tranquilo New England childhood surroundings, I consider myself a trainee in street-smarts from an early age. Two of the most important things that my mother taught me were to always appear confident and to never seem lost. This is why you will be the one to ask for directions if you are ever in my company, because I won't do it. I also won't pause too long at street signs, or consult a map. If I do truly lose my way and absolutely must ask, I do so with a mannerism of "I just can't seem to remember where I put my glasses, silly me." I add to all of these internal rules a permanently irritated and busy expression, a death grip on my bag, and to this day I have yet to be robbed anywhere in the world (despite one or few attempts). I've probably scared off more than a few potential friends but, such is life.


This is how I hit Patronato. The district, particularly on a sunny Saturday, is packed to the point where it mimics the feeling of standing in a long line. This is because the streets are lined with shops and stalls selling mountains of cheap imported clothing.

Still somewhat dazed, toting my French press, I slowly shuffled up and down the streets in the molasses-like crowd. After a very short while, I became very uncomfortable, but not from claustrophobia. The climate in my coastal city is very temperate, much like San Francisco in the United States. Its temperatures swing on a very small scale throughout the year, always hovering around a median of about 65 Fahrenheit. Santiago, meanwhile, lies within the valley between the coastal cordillera and the Andes. Sharing the same topography as cities such as Sacramento, it reaches much cooler temperatures in winter, with occasional snow. By the same token, it can be broiling in summer. As spring moves along towards the next season, it is beginning to get toasty in the valley. In my long pants and t-shirt, I found myself uncomfortably over-dressed.

Not to worry, this is Patronato. I stopped at the first store that had something cute in the window. Luckily, they had a curtain behind which customers could try on clothes, a luxury in these stores. I entered and put on the sundress I'd chosen. Like all cheap clothing, it required a bit of rearrangement and strap MacGuivering, but five minutes later I left the store 6,000 pesos poorer and infinitely more comfortable, with my coastal clothes stuffed into my shoulder bag.

Other than this, though, I simply couldn't summon the energy necessary for a full Patronato day. Like shopping at a Salvation Army in the US, a successful trip to Patronato requires drive, a discerning eye, and a good amount of time. Last Saturday was not the day for any of this. I was in pursuit of a bigger fish: Missing Ingredients.

Along with its other imports, Barrio Patronato also hosts several well-stocked Korean and Chinese markets. After several wrong turns and yes, even asking for directions, I finally located them. I joyfully texted every living soul I knew in Valpo and picked up a few favors for friends while stocking my own carts. As a cooking enthusiast who favors Asian and Mediteranean foods, there is no shopping spree more delicious than an hour in Asian markets after months and months of supermarkets that consider cheddar cheese too flavorful to stock.

After reaching my limit at about 20 kilos of sauces and spices to carry, I treated myself to the first falafel I've had in months, and then headed wearily but happily to my friend Nereida's house in Providencia. A few pleasant hours later, I was back on the bus, speeding towards Valparaiso at exactly 98 kilometers per hour, as I was advised by the streaming satelite information displayed at the front of every bus.

I could not live in Santiago, I will not lie. It is huge and sprawling; congested; covered in smog; and yes, sometimes dangerous. I would miss my ocean and my seagulls, my hills and my colored houses. Nonetheless, its proximity to Valpo is nothing but a benefit. After months in the regions, even riding the uncomfortably packed metro feels like a refreshing taste of the outside world. It is easy to ensconce oneself in Valpo; the layout of the city almost demands it, clustering the way it does around its enclosed bay. But although I love this town where I meet someone I know at every corner, there is something wonderful and liberating about large cities, where no one knows a thing about you unless you care to inform them. This is a sensation I miss, and one I will seek out more often as I continue to settle here in Chile.

Minimalism is an art

When I came to Chile, last February, this is what I brought:

I was pretty happy about my packing. I take pride in traveling light. I'm quite capable of living with very little; in New Zealand I spent 6 months driving around the country with 2 pairs of pants, one shirt of each degree (long sleeved, short sleeved, etc), two pairs of long johns, a scarf, a hat, hiking gear, a sleeping bag, a continually interchanged book and some food.

That was a trip of constant movement, however. When you're in one place, it's pretty astonishing the ways that things creep in against your best intentions. Fact of the matter is, I'm a bit of a packrat underneath my minimalist intentions. It's a terrible crush of ideals: I believe in possessing little, but I refuse to waste perfectly good wrapping paper or twist ties or potentially-art-project-usable bus ticket stubs.

I discovered the depth of the situation this past week when my roommate and I switched bedrooms. Our apartment has one decent room and one amazing room, so we've decided on a 2 month rotation for the master bedroom. Now it's my turn, so I packed up my things and moved across the living room. To my astonishment, this is what I discovered:

I have got a lot of stuff.

Over the last few days, I've been organizing myself. Bits of paper flutter down from a stack of documents, asking me, "What would you do if you won the lottery?" and "What would you do if you could have any job you wanted?" "Tell your partner about your family!" an index card instructs me. "Dear Caroline," my handwriting floats across a page, "I've now been in Chile four months...."

I shuffle through a mountain of student worksheets, Spanish-language newspapers I never read, brochures that people stuffed into my hands as I walked down the street, flyers for events that looked interesting but then were forgotten about. Archaeological evidence that I have been living a life here. Debris from the daily back and forth that sometimes slips from the mind next to the enormous decisions that seem to litter the decade of one's twenties.

Holding on to these things is a way of grabbing at time. Renouncing belongings, throwing away brochures, accepting that the letter will never be sent, is accepting the passing of moments. In the end, I seem to be a time-grabber.

Nonetheless, Buddhist principles aside, I went out and bought myself a lovely particle board desk and bookshelf, complete with very small desk chair, and a full length mirror. I'm living here, it's time to accept that I need to make arrangements. So now I am happily writing to you from my newly established, thing-entrenched life. And I didn't throw away the wrapping paper.

Sorry folks, the government's closed

About a month ago, I was invited to a small wedding service. In Chile, the matrimonial proceedings are in three parts. I will go into this in another post, but for the moment suffice it to say that the first part is a civil ceremony that legally marries the couple. About a week before the wedding, I asked about dress code.

Casual," I was told, "but I don't really know if they're going to get married or not."

Scandal! I asked for the gossip. It wasn't as juicy as I'd hoped.

"The Registro Civil is on strike, so they might not be able to."

In the end, the ceremony went off as planned, but the strike was not quite finished. Off and on for the last couple of months, goverment workers have been striking for a wage increase. Last week, there was another two week paro: even the operators of the publicly owned ascensores, such as the one by my house, were not working. I had to trudge my way up the hill, but that's the least of the concerns posed by the strike. As of yesterday, it is back on. The effects are wide-reaching--Chile is a country with a large amount of state-run services, and a love of bureaucracy. At the moment, it is impossible to complete any transaction dealing with marriage, divorce, identification papers, visas, death certificates, and even autopsies. Tax services can be accessed only via website. Many public clinics have been shut, and public hospitals are running with emergency staff pulled from other locations. Students at some branches of the public universities can't access any non-academic student services. Valparaiso's port customs office, as that of the airport and all other entry and exit points, is being staffed largely by the armed forces. A large segment of trash collectors also joined in this week.

Yesterday, in the plaza in front of the Intendente, which is the office that represents the executive branch of the federal government within each of the regions, the buildings were shut to the public. Workers waved out of windows from all three government buildings surrounding the plaza. Scraps of shredded newspaper floated down, coating the square, as men in suits tossed armfuls of them out of seventh story windows.

The strike centers on the demand for a universal wage increase of 14.5% for public employees. Original offers from the government were for 4%, then 6%. The current offer is a sliding scale that would award the lowest-paid workers a 9% increase, with decreasing hikes for each subsequent earnings bracket. Those making over 3 million pesos a month, about 4,500 US dollars, would not receive a raise.

This offer seems reasonable, other than the fact that Chile's inflation rate this year has been set at 9.9%. This means that under the current offer, even the lowest paid public employees would not be receiving an adjustment on par with the national economy. Essentially, all of these employees will be making less money than they did last year, in regards to their ability to maintain their living standard. The requested 14.5%, then, is intended to award the workers a 4.6% raise once inflation is factored in. According to the strike's organizers, this amount is a fair reflection of the increase in productivity that is projected for Chile this year.

I know little about finanace, but I will say that it seems entirely reasonable to me that the public employees should be given at the very least a pay raise to compensate for inflation. With the global economic situation, the peso has truly plummeted recently, and it's been felt. You can't hold a conversation with nearly anyone without inflation being mentioned. Part of this is the fact that Chileans love to complain about money; sometimes it seems like a hobby. It is, though a reflection of a very real situation that threatens to alter the quality of life of many people.

On the government's side, I favor the idea of a sliding scale. Offering the same pay raise to all employees makes very little sense and seems unfeasible. Better to pool the money that is available towards those closer to the poverty line rather than to overly augment the lives of those already living comfortably.

On the streets, reactions are mixed. I overheard one woman declaring it absolutely feo that workers in a certain government office hadn't joined the strike. Others stood nearby complaining about the various tasks they would not be able to complete until the strike finished. The effect on the health sector, hardly a shining beacon of efficiency to begin with, is particularly disturbing.

This morning an estimated 4,000 or so people marched through Valparaiso. Protests here are never of the rock-throwing, firehose-spraying, newsworthy variety seen in Santiago, although we do occasionally get some excitement. We do, though, get a huge number of protests, low-key or no, because the National Congress is located here. Today, as I sat at my desk working, the shouts and drumming echoed up from Plaza Sotomayer, where the rally began. Now, all that I can make out is police whistles and the very dull sound of chanting.

Sounding the depths

Within the last month or two, strange things have been going on amongst the gringas nearest and dearest to my heart. Some invisible wave of dysfunction is sweeping the cerros. One friend managed to break all of her electronics, and took to random crying fits during nights out on the town. Another announced to me one day that she wanted to open a restaurant in Chile, only to follow this up the next day with the declaration that she intended to leave her boyfriend and move back home--immediately. A third signed up for any activity that seemed vaguely interesting, nearly bought a puppy, and would regularly inform me pleasantly at our meet ups that she'd spent the majority of the preceding day bawling her eyes out.

As for me, well, the list is long. I've developed a habit of spending 3 hours cooking dinner instead of planning a lesson. I've been periodically bed-ridden with severe anxiety over just about anything I can set my mind on. The few belongings that I have in Chile have somehow managed to spread themselves over increasingly large surfaces and in increasingly disorderly ways. I've been coming down with random illnesses and staying up until 5 in the morning more often than not. I've scoured the kitchen and bathroom top to bottom at 3am. My iPod has been stuck on Tegan & Sara--an angst injection if ever there was one. I've embarassed myself at parties by becoming irritated too quickly. I've become sensitive to the point that if someone gives off the slightest vibe of condescension towards me or my Spanish, it's enough to ruin my night. None of the batteries to any of my various electronics are ever charged. My cell phone never has credit. I watched Amadeus the other night (at 3am) and took from it the moral that if Mozart could die insane and unrecognized, it's probably pretty much a sure thing for hit-or-miss EFL teachers. At the moment, I have been accidentally locked into a friend's house with no working telephone (but not to worry, help is on the way)....and instead of appreciating the humor of the situation I have passed the last hour kicking the door and screaming insults into the empty apartment.

What the hell is going on in the Valparaíso outpost of Gringolandia?

If you've lived or studied abroad, you are undoubtedly familiar with this graphic:


Yes, we're talking about culture shock. The conventional wisdom on the topic is illustrated above, showing four stages. In the first stage, the "honeymoon," the new arrival adores every crack in the sidewalk in their new home. In the second, which has many names but is usually simply referred to ominously as Phase 2, the culture shock victim hates the world or, more specifically, the part of it in which they have landed. People here look funny, talk funny, think funny, and everything they do is wrong and unintelligent, the visitor muses. The third stage, the "adjustment" stage, is the process wherein the person thinks, "Gee whiz, I suppose I should be more open-minded and accept that there are good and bad things in both cultures!" And then, ta-dah, our happy global citizen arrives at the much coveted rank of bicultural--stage 4.

This theory is thrown at every North American who wants to leave the country. It's all over the internet. It's in any handbook available at any university Study Abroad office. Somehow, though, in the process of spreading the word about culture shock, we have watered down the concept to the point where it has very little relationship to the actual experience. The actual phenomenon of culture shock is a profound, volatile, and extremely personal experience.

I don't debate the basic foundations of the culture shock theory. All of those occurances do happen at some point within the living abroad experience. It is the lack of complexity that irritates.

For example, I and the people mentioned in the first paragraph arrived in Chile for very diverse reasons, and we lead very different lives here. The thing we have in common, other than the fact that they are my fabulous friends, is that we all stumbled through customs in the Santiago airport approximately nine months ago.

It's far too late for stage 2. I know I at least have seen that attitude come and go ages ago. It was a bit of a low spot, but it was no disaster. The meat of it was: hey, this city's great, but these people can be really annoying. It culminated with a midnight tea drinking session with a long-departed fellow expat in which I declared passionately, "I just don't see how it's possible to work with these people, let alone have relationships with them!"

Don't hate-mail me. I got over it. Chileans are just fine.

This crash that my friends and I are living is not on the clean graph of culture shock, but it is happening with such universality that I can't fail to attribute it to that source. However, if you were to speak to each of us independently about our current discontent, you would probably not make the same connection.

Fact of the matter is, culture shock as a general phenomenon often has very little connection to actual cultural interaction. No one is hating Chile right now. We have our gripes, which we can sometimes overindulge, but at the heart of it no one is roaring on that this is a bad country with bad people. In my case, I'm still very much taken with my city, and completely fascinated by the culture of the people.

The problem is not the difference between the two cultures. This new stage is characterized, in fact, by reaching a level of comfort with the culture. Living here is no longer enough of a challenge to keep my mind fully satisfied. It's certainly still a challenge--stress levels are high. The problem is, it's passed from being a Rubics-cube to being a 1000 piece puzzle of an insipid photograph, if you follow me. It's a drudgery type of challenge. As a result, I--and my fellow culture shock victims--are casting around for something to add to our lives that will give us that essential feeling of learning, of progress.

Trouble is, that's a very complicated thing to do. Living in Chile is limiting for us. Teaching English is the main source of income. This is troublesome for me, as I've found that deliniating grammar points leaves me pretty cold. Even for those who enjoy the teaching, however, it is a frustration. There is no advancement for an EFL teacher living abroad. We will never be promoted or assigned more responsibility. I consider myself quite lucky at the moment to be designing a curriculum for my work in the coming year. The same problem holds for the other work available to English speakers, particularly here on the coast where more varied possibilities are scarce. Copy writing, my other work, is similarly repetitive and also holds little possibility for progression.

There are other ways of feeling successful, yes. Volunteering is a good example. However, unless you find a particularly great volunteer position, you often encounter the same set backs. Whether it's due to language difficulties, a looming departure date, or simply stereotyping, very few organizations seem willing to allow foreigners to move up the ranks.

The thing is, as has been written in sources that I am failing to locate at the moment, people who move abroad tend to fit a certain profile. Part of that profile is a high level of success at home. True, we may be nomadic and jump from job to job, a model I exemplify. Or we may be steady risers. In either case, however, we tend to succeed at whatever we put our mind to. We do well in university. We earn the praise of our superiors at work. We put in place innovations and they work. It's all of this luck and skill that in the end makes us feel capable of uprooting ourselves in the first place.

Then we find ourselves failing.

It doesn't matter who you are; living abroad you most likely will find yourself failing at something. I have failed to live up to my standards as a teacher. A friend of mine feels she has failed at learning enough Spanish. Trust me, once you start looking, there are about a million different things that one can fail at. At home, if I feel inadequate in something, I change it. Here, I am not afforded that option. I want to stay in Valparaíso, therefore it is imperative that I continue working at jobs that do not satisfy me. To put some icing on it, all of that success that I've enjoyed means very little here. My bosses are not showering me with praise. My attempts at innovation are received indifferently. People I meet here are not impressed by my experiences as a world-wanderer: more often than not, they act as though anything that has happened to me pre-Chile simply has no bearing on the present moment.

This is not limited to me, or to Chile. Think about that taxi driver that you had in New York or Boston or Philadelphia who had been an engineer or a doctor in some far off country that you may or may not have heard of. Think about how surprised you were, and how you probably mentioned it to the next person you ran into. The world over, foreigners often find that their hard won achievements didn't make it through customs.

This is why the descriptions of culture shock that give a little more depth list symptoms such as:

• a feeling of sadness and loneliness,
• an overconcern about your health,
• headaches, pains, and allergies
• insomnia or sleeping too much
• feelings of anger, depression, vulnerability
• idealizing your own culture
• trying too hard to adapt by becoming obsessed with the new culture
• the smallest problems seem overwhelming
• feeling shy or insecure
• become obsessed with cleanliness
• overwhelming sense of homesickness
• feeling lost or confused
• questioning your decision to move to this place

(This list taken from about.com, but also available in many other sources).

Some of these are conventional wisdom: sadness, loneliness, criticising the local culture, etc. Some of these, however, show the real psychological depth of the crisis: obsessions with cleanliness and health, developing actual physical reactions such as allergies or headaches, sleep disturbances, and actual depression. This is no "keep your sense of humor and you'll be fine" brochure. This is a life crisis of the first degree.

So what's the solution? I believe that this varies. I am putting all of my energy into my writing these days (no, not just this blog) in the hopes that even if nothing makes it into print I will at least have improved my skills. I am focusing on Spanish and trying to stop myself frequently to remind myself that nine months ago I spoke nothing of this language, but yesterday I engaged in a full-fledged discussion of philosophy. I am crossing my fingers till they turn white that working with small children will give me a greater sense of satisfaction than working with teenagers. Another friend has decided to make use of her masters program's online courses to continue working towards her degree from afar. Still another has taken the LSAT and is applying to law school.

In the past, I've known people who hit what I now know to be this wall of a crisis. They went home, and I think that that can also be a valid decision. Sometimes this is just too much to deal with, and it's entirely reasonable to take the incredible experience you've had and take it home with you where you can put it to use. In the case of my friends and I, however, no one's leaving. We're scrambling up this gravel slope in the pursuit of different goals, but we have in common the fact that we are sticking it out.

I can't surmise what may be the outcomes of this particular crisis, but I do know that what we will gain from this is far more than just the ability to stick it out in Chile. Maybe I'll learn how to cope with failure, or how to work through mediocre jobs. Maybe I'll figure out how to seek satisfaction outside my work. Maybe I'll figure out how to find a meaningful career. Who knows. All I know is that once I emerge from this heavy time, I'll be much richer for it. I'm just hoping I don't break any doors in the process.

Que Valpo

:part of speech: descriptive phrase. 1. How very eccentric! The collective almost hit a body-painted drummer! Que Valpo! 2. How completely unexpected! Look at those people staging a parade without apparent reason! Que Valpo! 3. How colorful, and yet poorly planned! They’re having an outdoor concert, but the sound system is linked to a non-functioning laptop! Que Valpo! 4. How free-spirited, and yet somewhat irresponsible! We've just had a four hour lunch with drinks, on a weekday! Que Valpo! Etymology: the absolute necessity for a unifying descriptive term for the odd events associated with Valparaíso, Chile. Thought to date from early last week. Derivative of other Chilean exclamations using “que.”

Last night, I was up late working. Specifically, I was trying to put together a PowerPoint that required me to ponder such profound depths of the Spanish language as: Can one truly “amar” a hamburger? If one can’t stand a food, is it best to say that one cannot “tolerar” the offending item, or better “odiar?”

I was pulled from such deeply fulfilling reveries by a sound like shots. Arriving at my window I saw, sparkling above the coastline, a fireworks display. I checked my watch. The time was about 12:45 at night, on a Sunday.

I expected the show to stop after one or two explosions—maybe someone had randomly decided to set a few off in their yard, or some such thing. But the displays grew larger and more complex. Heart shapes appeared, mixed in with circles and color-changing cascades. The water in the bay glowed pink and green, and flickering white. The odd extravaganza ended slightly past 1am.

In theory, fireworks are meant to entertain an appreciating crowd, or at least such has been my impression. I certainly enjoyed the display. However, I somehow doubt that many people were expecting, or awake for, an unexplained show of fireworks in the middle of the night on Sunday, November 9.

This is the sort of thing that happens regularly in this city, and yet it never fails to baffle me just a little. Recent examples include a belly dancing concert in the square, a memorial service put on (with parade, of course) by the carabineros in honor of the fallen of a several-year-old tragedy in the south, a drum concert staged in an unblocked-off intersection, a protest involving adults dressed up like small children, and a solemn procession of people in witch costumes.

I am a teacher. I have always been told that when teaching, it is the students who care who make it all worthwhile. I'll come back to my dubious relationship with teaching at another time, but I haven't found this to be true. Perhaps there aren't enough of those students, or perhaps they don't care enough. Whatever the reason, I think my students are great people and I enjoy my relationship with them. This does not, however, make me feel compensated for the extreme amount of effort that goes in to teaching a mandatory subject on a tight curriculum. The "teachable moments" are nice, sure. But if you really want to get me glowing and feeling like it's all worth it in the end, there's nothing like an unexplained marching band or a drunken digirido player to make my day.

I finished my PowerPoint, and I'll be using it this week. But I know that it won't be the student who learns to recite "I'm crazy about lasagna" who will make my lack of sleep par for the course. No, I'm already satisfied, because what other city congratulates you for a boring task completed by setting off a round of fireworks, any time of day?

Que Valpo, que bueno, how wonderful to live in a city as eccentric as I am.