notes from behind the language barrier

I've moved....in all senses

2009-02-17T05:56:00.002-03:00

Well folks, I've moved from Chile to California. I've also moved to a blog that isn't about Valparaiso. Keep stopping in here. Thanks for tuning in to one of the best, worst, and most colorful years of my life. Hopefully it just keeps getting stranger and more beautiful.

Meredith's Best Of Valpo

2009-01-22T18:45:00.005-03:00

Well, everyone, my transitional state has me in an overly introspective mood as of late. Then, when I'm not being pensive, I'm running around trying to visit everyone I know in a 4 or 5 state area (not as bad as it sounds, I'm from New England), and both unpacking from Chile and re-packing for California.....which involves going through many storage boxes. All this combined leads to a substantial lack of interest in posting on the blog. I refer you to my previously flawless record of regular posting and thank you for your patience as I get my life rearranged.

In the meantime, I present to you: Meredith's Official Best of Valparaiso, Chile!

Food and Drink

Best budget dinner restaurant: Epif, international-style vegetarian food on Cerro Alegre

Best pricey dinner restaurant: Concepcion, cuisine nouveau, Calle Papudo on, you guessed it, Cerro Concepcion. Sit outside in the garden in the summer.

Best dinner with a view: Cafe Turri, Cerro Concepcion. Reserve a specific table for a good view, and don't forget to order the house cocktail, it's incredible.

Best lunch, full menu: Natur-In, Calle Condell, near Plaza O'Higgins (walk up Uruguay and take a right, it'll be on your left, big wooden door). Vegetarian, three course menu for 1,200, coming in at 2,000 if you order one of their delicious fresh juices (recommended).

Best quick & cheap lunch (and dinner): El Sandwich Cubano, Plaza Intendencia (kitty-corner from Lider). Get the Moros y Cristianos plate, it's the best thing on the menu and also the best deal.

Best (in that it is the only) place to eat on a Sunday: Allegretto, good pizzas and drafts, open late.

Best seafood: Any of the small shops near the fish market in the port.

Best sushi: Kookai, Plaza Victoria--actually owned by Japanese people, and graced by this sign:

Best salad: Mora, a bit down from El Sandwich Cubano in the direction of Lider.

Best ice-cream: The stand in the front section of the wood-facade restaurant in Plaza Anibal Pinto.

Best fruit wine: No, not sangria--fruit blended with wine. Tie between Barposeia and Ritual, side by side on Almironte Montt by Plaza Anibal Pinto.

Best tea menu: Cafe con Letras, Almironte Montt, Cerro Alegre.

Best coffee: Puro Cafe, Plaza Victoria. Just watch out: they claim to have wireless, but it never works.

Best scary, knock-you-down drink: El Suicidio, Pub Matiz, which oddly enough has two locations directly opposite one another on Subida Ecuador.

Best place to get a beer in the afternoon: "The Place With The Mean Waitresses," as dubbed by Elisa and myself: walk up Bellavista towards Subida Ecuador. It's on your left with a typical Fuente de Soda menu. You'll recognize it by a neon sign on the back wall that says "Chiloe," two TVs that are never playing the same thing, a jukebox, and a whole lot of old men lounging around with liters and cigarettes. Not recommended as a solo venture, but two drinking girls can have a nice time chatting and disrupting social conventions. Don't forget to order a liter each.

Nightlife

Best free evening (indoor) entertainment: Wednesday and Thursday nights at Boliche, Calle Cummings (as of my last residency, a great band and a comedy musical performance, respectively)

Best paid evening entertainment: Events at Teatro Mauri, Avenida Alemania

Best cultural events: Programming at La Sebastiana, Cerro Bellavista

Best club: La Sala, Port District, just ask someone for directions. I don't go to clubs unless I'm drunk enough to dance, which also means too drunk to pay attention to where exactly I am.

Best cafe-style bar: Pajaritos, Calle Donoso.

Best movie house: Cine Insomnia, Calle Condell

Best combo deal: Combo 1 at Coyote Quemado, Subida Ecuador: 1 taco, 1 shot of tequila, and 1 beer for 1 mil.

Best place for a cheap vodka: Abasto, Calle Cummings, next to the Ascensor La Reina. Don't let the 800 teenage fleites hanging out on the Ascensor's steps put you off, just wade through them and head on in, the bar's got a bouncer.

Best place for a terremoto: Bitacura, Calle Cummings, serves up a large and inexpensive pitcher of this pineapple-ice cream-alcohol concoction.

Best place for an expensive cocktail: El Trole, Calle Cummings, where you can sit in an old trolley and enjoy a nice atmosphere. Completely empty until at least 12:30.

Best bet for a late night snack: Otra Cosa, Almirante Montt, at Plaza Anibal Pinto. They always seem to be open and have dozens of different kinds of empanadas, some vegetarian, as well as completos and other such things.

Best live music: Wander around the Port district and you'll find lots of shows.

Best over-all entertainment: The festivals!

Best advice:Don't walk up stairway pasajes at night!

Tourist Jaunts

Best quirky spot to visit: Cemeterio Playa Ancha, with its hand-constructed budget pseudo-mausoleums. Don't miss the grave of Emile Dubois, Valpo's own unofficial saint, in the uphill right corner in the home-made section of the cemetary.

Best real-neighborhood walking tour: Cerros Polanco and Baron

Best cultural walking tour: Up and around Cerros Alegre and Concepcion, and don't forget the passageways. Then head up Almironte Montt to the circular shaped square and take a left onto Avenida Alemania. Enjoy the views and the various monuments as you make your way to Cerro Bellavista. Turn left on Calle Florida and visit Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastiana. Head down Cerro Bellavista, keeping to the right of the church, and wander the not-spectacular but satisfactory Museo a Cielo Abierto. Head down Ascensor Espiritu Santo, turn left on Calle Condell and visit the oh-so-strange museum of natural history.

Best day trip: Hiking Cerro La Campana (accesible by public transit)

Best near-by camping: Laguna Verde--neither a Laguna, nor Verde, but a great secluded beach. Catch a bus in front of Lider heading south, go past the actual town of Laguna Verde (ask the driver to let you off on the road to the lighthouse). ASK FOR DIRECTIONS when you get there on how to get to the beach, and don't trust small children (see linked post).

Best beach: I prefer the third beach north in Vina.

Best thing to do on a Sunday: Check out the antique/flea market in Plaza O'Higgins.

Best views of the city: Cerros Artilleria and Baron.

Goods and Services

Best laundry for the best price: Jerusalem, Plaza Anibal Pinto, middle portico in the large ugly gray building.

Best place to use Skype: Cerro @legre, Calle Urriola. Good connection, good headsets, and best of all, quiet--no gamers.

Best place to sit for hours using wireless, having ordered only one cup of tea: Desayunador, Cerro Alegre, Almironte Montt on the corner of Urriola. The wait staff is hard to flag down, but they also won't bother you even if you're there for 6 hours. Even better, all the booths are next to outlets and no one minds if you plug in.

Best used clothing: Calle Condell, on the right heading into the pedestrian portion of Subida Equador. Unsure of the name, but you'll see the racks of clothes. There's some decent stuff in there, particularly if you're heading to a theme party.

Best new clothing: Unfortunately, you'll have to head to the---ugh---mall in Vina if you need something nice. Take a bus marked Libertad and get off at 18 Norte, you'll see it. If you have the time, sometimes decent things can be found in Ripley (Plaza Victoria) or Polar (Avenida Argentina), and they'll be much cheaper than the mall.

Best multi-lingual bookstore: At the very bottom of Calle Cummings, at the corner with Plaza Anibal Pinto.

Best kept financial secret: Banks close at 2pm, but you can also cash checks from many Chilean banks at ServiPag (best office is in the financial district, ask which street as I can't recall).

Best place for cheap produce: The market house, near the end of Avenida Brasil, and the Saturday markets on Avenida Argentina and in the port.

Best place to buy fish: The fish market in the port. There is no fish, repeat no fish, in the supermarket (Lider).

Best place to buy anything under the sun, for cheap: Avenida Argentina, Saturdays and Sundays.

Best place to buy cheap bags and luggage: Walking from Plaza Victoria towards the Terminal de Bus on Pedro Montt, a few blocks up on the left side, is a place with medium sized backpacks for 2mil, small suitcases for 4, etc.

Best deal on a bus to Argentina: Cata, cleverly hidden on the second floor of the Terminal de Bus.

Best place to rent a car: Walk along Calle Independencia near Plaza O'Higgins, there are several rental places. An economy car can be rented for 16.000 a day.

Best way to find an apartment: Walk around the neighborhood and look for signs in the windows; avoid rental agencies.

Exit Stage Left

2009-01-15T17:52:00.003-03:00

In Pucon, in the Southern region of Los Lagos, the main attraction is Volcan Villarica. This semi-active volcano looms over the town. Elisa being the jock that she is, the first thing that she wanted to do when we arrived was to climb it.

We signed up with one of the many available tour companies, and at 7am Wednesday morning we were bumping our way up the gravel road towards the volcano in the company of four hyperactive guides. They shared massive sandwiches, blasted the radio, and swigged soda from the bottle. I stared at the volcano dominating the windshield and resolved to reach the top.
With large packs filled with mountaineering outfits and one icepick each, we started off at the base. The first section was loose volcanic ash and stone--it was very similar to walking up a vertical beach. The sun was strong and punishing, but we wove our way upwards single file. Elisa, predictably, was at the front of the line, and I was just behind her. The pace was slow and steady, and as my calf muscles began to scream I repeated meditation mantras in my head. In this way we arrived at our first resting place.

From there, we entered the snow. We were given a brief tutorial on proper icepick usage, and off we went. My legs felt fine after the break, and the cardiovascular effort was minimal due to the slow pace. Strangely though, as we wound back and forth over the incredibly steep slope, my head began to feel odd. For about ten minutes, it worsened steadily until I became concerned about my ability to continue.

"Elisa, I'm dizzy."

"It's probably the altitude," she told me. "Take deep breaths."

Ah. I can deal with this. I tried to breath deeply, a difficult task while climbing a mountain. Nonetheless, the feeling only continued. Staring at my feet, as was necessary in order not to miss the footholds cut into the snow, I began to lose sense of which direction was which. At times, my stomach turned and I worried that I would be sick all over the bright white slope. My legs felt shaky, even though they weren't exceptionally tired.

"I don't feel very good."

"You should tell them."

"No!"

I kept pushing. The feeling kept growing. Every five or six minutes I'd ejaculate some increasingly dramatic comment on my condition. At one point, I moaned,
"I feel really, really bad right now!"

The guide heard me and swivelled his head around to face me. "Are you ok?"

"Oh yes!" I said brightly. "I'm fine, I'm fine."

About ten minutes later, some 30 or 40 minutes after I'd begun to feel ill, I was distinctly not fine. I caught my breath a bit too shortly and with that, I lost control over my breathing and began to hyperventilate. My knees gave out and I crashed down onto the snow. The guides ran over and, despite my embarassment, I let my pulse be taken and ate the proferred chocolate. Soon, I was able to make the very short distance to the next resting area, a bare rock in the snow.

Altitude sickness, the guides decided, and refused to let me go higher. And so I stayed on the rock, with a wonderful French woman who had tired, and a young guide who was thrilled to get off easy on his 9th straight day of work. The view was beautiful, and we talked and shared sandwiches before sledding down to the bottom and relaxing in the sun. It was a beautiful day; my two new companions each had wonderful stories to tell; the sun was warm; and the lower down on the mountain we got the more I felt my brain begin to stop spinning and my head stop floating above my body. It was not what I set out to do, but I was happy, and I felt no regrets even while browsing Elisa's pictures of the crater over dinner.

The next morning, I woke up, and I knew that I would leave Chile if I were offered the job I had interviewed for in the States.

It's not the country, though I thought that at first, nor is it being far from home. It's a combination of factors, and at the center is my dissatisfaction with work. Teaching was challenging me, but not in the right ways. I felt that my emotional life was wrought with stress, but that my intellectual life had somehow stagnated. I loved my city and my friends, but I had nothing of my own, no project to put my energy towards.

And so it was that when I left Valparaiso on the morning bus to Buenos Aires last week, I left for good, at least for now.

What next? I'm thrilled to have accepted a full-time volunteer position with couchsurfing.com. I'll be starting as their Member Communications Coordinator and Writer next month. In exchange for my work, I'll receive housing, food, and transportation in Berkeley, CA. If you're not familiar with the project, I encourage you to check it out--it's an incredible effort to transform the way people travel, and one that I've been active in during my time in Valpo.

I don't think that I'm through with Chile, in many ways, so stay tuned as I plan on blogging here for a bit longer. I don't expect to write with the same frequency, giving the changes I'm going through, but I still have plenty to say about my time in Valparaiso. Meanwhile, I'll hopefully have another blog up and running sometime after I arrive in California.

In the end, it sometimes works out that the goals that we set for ourselves need to be changed. Sometimes you need to accept your own limitations, and understand that moving forward will bring you more trouble than glory. Sometimes you need to stop and say, "The view is fine from here."

Sheaves of wheat and dioramas

2008-12-09T12:03:00.006-03:00

This past weekend, the Virgin Mary intervened directly in my life (albeit indirectly) and kept me in Santiago for two days longer than intended.

I am referring to December 8th, Catholocism's day to recognize the Immaculate Conception. All across Latin America, different countries take a different spin on the eigth. In Columbia, candles are lit simultaneously in all (participating) houses, representing light of Christ and also solidarity amongst families and neighbors. In Mexico, the day blends with the Saint Day of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an indigenous Mexican canonized in 2002 for being the witness of the apparition of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, who is celebrated herself later this week on the 12th. Worshippers also turn out to visit the Virgen de Juquila, in Oaxaca, pledging various numbers of future visits in return for favors and miracles. In Paraguay, the faithful make their way to see the Virgen de Caacupé, a sculpture of Mary made in the 1800s. The legend holds that the artist was wandering outside the city, looking for suitable materials for his work, when he was surrounded by a hostile tribe from the area. He promised to create a statue in honor of the Virgen if she would save his life, and upon emerging from the situation without harm, immediately did so.

In Chile, or at least in the Central Valley, there are two main celebrations on December 8th. The first is far more famous and is the culprit behind my long weekend. Each year, Route 68, which connects Santiago to Valparaiso, is closed for the majority of its distance to make room for several hundred thousand pilgrims who make the 60-kilometers or so walk from Santiago to the temple of La Virgen de Lo Vasquez. The temple is located just outside the small town of Casablanca, about 30 kilometers south-east of Valparaiso. This pilgrimage attracts yearly media coverage, as it is a popular show of penance amongst the most deliriously devoted to crawl the last few kilometers along the concrete to the shrine.

The other celebration takes place within Santiago, in the Quinta Normal area. This is where the impressively large Santuario de Lourdes, officially designated as a "minor basilica," maintains a forceful if not exactly graceful posture over the surrounding residential neighborhood. Across from the church's entrance, a man-made grotto holds images of the Virgen, and a near-by fountain pumps out holy water by the gallon.

Riding the bus to Santiago on Saturday, pilgirms were already in evidence along the road. One young couple waved at the bus and pumped a Chilean flag with a surface area close to that of my dining room table. Families had set up tents and were lounging after hours on the road. Small children swam and played in the trickle of a river that runs alongside the road, in the midst of horses grazing and plastic bags floating along. At the turn off for the Sanctuary, every available spot on the grass was already filled with tents and vendors' collapsible stalls. I began to see that my return was going to be more complicated than I thought. On my arrival, I confirmed it: I could get back, but it was going to take several hours due to the road closure.

After an interesting and enjoyable Santiago weekend, I awoke on Monday determined to make it to Lo Vasquez. First, though, I needed to eat. I had taken a room near La Moneda, so I wandered into the pedestrian streets near Plaza de Armas. Normally packed with people shopping and eating, even performing illegal lip-syncing shows, the streets were filled with one shuttered store after another. Interestingly enough, while going to the mall or stopping in at a restaurant are apparently not appropriate activities for a holy day, major stores Paris and Ripley seem convinced that the Virgin won't take offense if you stop in at their electronic branches to pick up a new TV. It also seems that completos and other fast food are the preferred nutrition for such a day.

I began to get a little bit desperate for some sort of food with at least a minor vitamin content when I had a flash of inspiration. Where, in the United States, is it always possible to eat on Christmas? Chinese food! I rushed off to one that I knew of and was happily enjoying a veggie chop suey within half an hour.

Following this (and an ice cream, and a lounge in the Parque Forestal--I'm not Catholic, after all, and I expect a bit of relaxation from my days off no matter what the cause) I took the metro out to Quinto Normal. After asking around, it had become apparent that if I wanted to go to Lo Vasquez from Santiago, I was going to have to walk it. My curiousity was not that strong, so at the end of the metro line I walked through the park and arrived on Calle Lourdes.

The scene was not what I expected. All along the street, people had set up tents and camper vans, as in Casablanca. These were not pilgrims, however; they were vendors. And oh what vendors--used clothing, cosmetics in bulk, cheaply made shoes, antique or simply worn down knick-knacks, it was all there. In fact, it was not much different from Valparaiso's weekend flea market on Avenida Argentina, where it is guaranteed that any strange missing part from any given appliance can be found if you have enough patience.

Once I entered the church yard, the scene was equally tacky but with a bit more religious flavor. Here, one can obtain a bottle for holy water in the shape of the Virgin Mary, with a screw cap perched oddly on the top of her head. There are also, of course, plastic statues of the lady of all variety of sizes, ranging from dashboard to lawn shrine, in my estimation. The same vendors offered diorama-esque representations of the Virgin appearing in a grotto, with a surprised plastic doll saint gazing upon her in wonder. These were also available in desktop through display case sizes.

One ubiquitous product that seemed a bit more pure of heart was small sheaves of wheat, affixed with a small card with an image of Mary. I approached a man to ask about the significance.

"It's wheat," he answered. I was aware, I told him, but could he tell me what it was used for?

With a helpful but confused look, he explained to me, "Lots of things! Bread, cookies, cakes...."

I cut him off. "What is the religious significance? Why is it being sold today at the church?"

He looked at me for a moment and then shrugged. "No idea," he said amiably.

To be fair, I would imagine that most people buying wheat stalks at a church have some purpose in mind, and are not inclined to ask for directions. In researching after the fact, I found two possibilites. First, wheat, together with grapes, symbolizes the Eucharist since it is used to make the unleavened bread that represents the body of Christ. Secondly, there is a parable from Matthew that equates Christians with wheat (useful, good) and non-believers as weeds (bad, not good for much). At the time of "harvest," i.e. the end of the world, the angels will act as reapers and take the "wheat" off to heaven. Out of the two of these, I'm more inclined to think that the wheat available in Santiago is linked to the second symbol, since the Virgin is meant to represent purity and goodness. In my limited understanding of things, the Eucharist is a purely Christ-based thing and as such seems an odd thing to invoke for a day centered on his mother--unless it's a reference to the Immaculate Conception itself, which I suppose is the initiation of the body of Christ.

Inside the constructed grotto, mass was being said. I watched for a while and then made my way over to the holy water fountain, an oddly automated version of a traditional rite, at least from my perspective.

Unfortunately, with a dead camera battery, I was unable to capture any more of the scene. Given that I had no baptism to reflect on, as the sign instructed me, I simply stood back and watched as waves of people climbed around on the rock, filling 2 and 3 liter bottles with holy water.

Around the corner, plaques from the contemporary to the distant past record the thanks of visitors whose requests of the Virgin were granted. It is the proper etiquette: if a favor is granted, the worshipper has a responsibility to return and have a stone engraved thanking the saint in question.

Everyone that I asked about the two celebrations in Chile told me that the Virgin had appeared both in the grotto at the Sanctuario de Lourdes and at the Templo de Lo Vasquez. I found it a bit strange that this narrow corridor between the capitol and my city could have been so popular with saints of the highest mark. It also seemed too convenient that the Virgin would appear in a manmade grotto--what would they have done with it if she hadn't shown up? Did she appear in a mark of approval for the construction techniques.

A bit of time on the Chilean Catholic church's website sorted things out. In Casablanca, in the mid 19th century, a family by the name of Ulloa erected a shrine to the Virgin in their front yard. People from surrounding areas began to pay their respects on the 8th, and a year or two later the family Leiva Vásquez was instrumenal in moving the figure to a new site. There was a bit of a squabble--apparently the Ulloa family wanted the shrine to remain on their property, but in the end the church authorities blessed the new site.

The real meat of the legend came during the 1906 earthquake, which leveled huge sections of Chile. In Casablanca, when the devoted returned to their shrine to see what had happened, they found that all of the structure had been destroyed except for the wall which held the image of the Virgin. That was that: the site was blessed as an official temple and holy site, and the grand pilgrimages began, growing larger each year.

The site in Santiago is a bit less of a story. Around the same time that the Ulloas were converting their garden into a religious zone, the Virgin Mary was seen in Lourdes, France, in one of the most famous of such events (hinged largely on the fact that she is said to have spoken to witnesses, proclaiming, "I am the Immaculate Conception"). A Chilean priest described on the site as "fervent," one Jacinto Arriagada, decided to honor the event with the construction of the church and grotto of Lourdes, Santiago. The grotto, it turns out, is a representation of the site of the appearance in France.

So it turns out that the Virgin has not shown herself in Chile. In Santiago, one can worship by proxy, and in Lo Vasquez her influence saved her image, or so the logic goes. This does not seem to be widely known, based on my informal surveying, but I doubt that it would have any large impact on the Day of the Virgin if the faithful were disillusioned of their impressions. The odd mix of events that includes popcorn stands, plastic icons, sunglasses and shoes right alongside crawling penitents and effusive offerings of flowers has been a part of the culture of the Central Valley for over 100 years. It is easy, at times, to forget that Chile is a Catholic country. Indeed many of the people I spoke to about the Day of the Virgin referred to the participants as "crazies" or "fundamentalists." Nonetheless, the history of this country is indelibly tied to the church, and that mutual past floats to the surface on days like December 8th.

Teleton: The event of the season

2008-12-06T10:03:00.005-03:00

Chile is not a philanthropic society. I witnessed one aspect of this directly when I began my efforts to put together a volunteer-based event listing and cultural portal with the aim of facilitating tourism in Valparaiso. Several months later, I am still moving forward only inches at a time. The main reason? Finding chilenos who will even consider volunteering. The concept of working for things other than money--for experience, for a greater good--is just not as common here as it is in the United States. People tend to be very excited about my project, right up until they find out that I'm not trying to turn a profit.

This is an understandable result of the very active class divide in Chile. Long amongst the top ten most inequal countries in the world, it's only within the last few years that the gap between rich and poor has improved to the point of making us the fourteenth worst country in the world for wealth distribution. The current minimum wage is 144 thousand pesos a month--less than $300. As you may recall if you've been reading this blog recently, this is a 10% increase from the previous rate that was achieved only through strikes by government workers. It wasn't until the papers stopped being pushed and the trash stopped being collected that this modest hike was able to pass.

It is stated statistically that 10% of the Chilean workforce works for minimum wage. In reality, many more work for even less. The minimum wage, after all, only includes those who are paid a salary. Many people in this country are paid on different schemes. For instance, many construction workers and the omnipresent housekeepers or nanas are paid per job or sometimes per diem. Both groups are horrifically underpaid, generally making 10 thousand pesos or less for a day of work. Garment workers are another hard-hit group, as they are paid per item produced and often face stiff quotas. This leads to a complete disregard for working hours limitations. The same problem causes agricultural workers to log 60 hours a week in the picking fields during harvest time, and 10 to 16 hour days in the packing plants. All of these groups of workers survive on a feast-or-famine income, and have almost no rights. Meanwhile, a group of under fifteen families control nearly all of the country's wealth.

There is a billboard between Valpo and Vina del Mar that is very telling. It reads, (rough translation): I study engineering, but I'm angry that we're not building a more equal Chile. So much is contained in that 'but.' The class gap in Chile goes back to the days where a scarce group of patrons (the ancestors of today's power families) ran large plantations, and the rest of the country worked on them. The resulting mindset places a stiff barrier between SES groups. People simply don't feel obliged to help those less fortunate, because that lack of resources is seen as the result of some inherant inadequacy on the part of the lower class. Wait, you study a prestigious career at a university.....but you want to do something about poor people?! Unthinkable!

It is all of this background that makes the yearly Teleton, and the accompanying national excitement, a truly bizarre event.

Teleton is an organization that provides physical therapy and other aid to disabled children throughout Chile. It is financed by a two day--you guessed it--annual telethon. This is nothing akin to the PBS telethons that I recall from childhood weekends. Teleton is a full fledged extravaganza, and it sweeps the country like a tidal wave.

The actual telethon is a sort of variety show, hosted by the irrepressible Don Francisco. This man holds an odd position in the Chilean pantheon. He is the visionary behind Sabado Gigante, the long running variety show that has dominated latin television since its inception in 1962. The show began in Chile, the native country of Don Francisco (whose actual name is Mario Kreutzberger). It was incredibly popular both here and throughout the Spanish speaking world, and in 1986 the big man took advantage of his success and decamped to Miami, Florida, where he has worked ever since with Univision. This desertion leads many chilenos to claim antipathy towards the demigod of daytime television, but in reality he is treated with the mixture of awe and reverential respect that is given to all chilenos who estabilsh themselves on an international level. He can be found gracing billboards across the country, endorsing any number of products, and of course, he returns every year for the Teleton.

Allie and I decided to do Teleton Chilean style, so we headed to our friend Carla's house to watch the first night with her and her friends. All across the country, friends and families were doing the same: sharing beer marked with the Teleton logo, we sat and watched the program. Nearby, on Muelle Baron, Valparaiso's Teleton party was underway under flashing lights and booming reggaeton. In the studio audience in Santiago, the camera scanned the crowd, revealing an obviously high society mix with President Bachelet in the front row.

The show cycles through various types of presentations. First, a dramatic story about someone whose life has been changed by Teleton, told with all the requisite tearful interviews, violin music, and upbeat visions of life today. A coworker of mine at Duoc was the first story to be featured, and later we also met a small girl in a near-vegetative state and a young man with severely limited use of his arms. In between these segments, Don Francisco and other celebrities put on comedy sketches that I generally failed to follow. Then the screen would cut to a city's Teleton party, where a local host would interview community group leaders about the donations they would raised. Many of these people would launch into a long speech, leading everyone in the living room and many of those on TV to shout "Cuanto! Cuanto!" until the number was divulged. The directors of several large chain stores appeared on the show as well, making the somewhat half-decent promise to donate large sums of money--if a certain number of sales were made the following day.

The next day, the morning news devoted 16 pages to Teleton recap so that all of it could be relived.

In the end, the 2008 Teleton--the 30th event of its kind--raised an incredible 16,589,850,127 pesos. At current exchange rates, that's 24,641,989 US dollars. This is a program that does wonderful rehabilitation work, and it is hope-inspiring to see it receiving such an outpouring of support.

Nonetheless, I found myself looking at the whole thing with somewhat skeptical eyes. "We have incredible solidarity as a nation," one Chilean told me. I'm inclined to disagree. Two days of charity a year is simply not enough in a country with an economic situation like Chile's.

"Teleton has fundamentally changed our society," another told me. I do believe this, and I also hope that in time it can produce even more change. Teleton, with its campy extravaganza, evening dresses, and giant parties, introduced the concept of charity to Chile in a way that had not been done before. I hope that perhaps this phenomenon can spread, so that some day in Chile helping the unfortunate will be a social responsibility, not a weekend of festivities.

Country mouse goes to the big city

2008-11-22T18:18:00.000-03:00

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

2008-11-20T11:44:00.000-03:00

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

2008-11-18T16:51:00.006-03:00

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

2008-11-12T13:57:00.009-03:00

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

2008-11-10T15:46:00.004-03:00

: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.

Lost lyrics

2008-10-30T16:57:00.004-03:00

I am not a fish out of water. I am a fresh water fish too far down the river, the salt of the estuary entering my respiration.

I am sitting around a crowded table at the port bar that celebrated its centennial recently. At the far end a man in a dowdy green sweater is reading poetry from sheets of paper that swish loudly as he switches them in front of the silent crowd. He is awkwardly hunched at the microphone under a liquid orange beam of light. Dim lights shine under the bar, and the tea lights on the tables cast twinkling glares, and the pulsing ends of cigarettes move without hurry back and forth from mouths to ashtrays. I sip my beer in the dark, staring at the man.

I understand most of his words. I cannot hear poetry. Poetry is such a function of intimacy with language. The breath-catching moments are the combinations of words that have seemed always to have no relation to one another until suddenly they appear together, perfect, like a secretly eloped couple. I know nothing of common or uncommon modes of expression in this language. It is only recently that 'expression' could even be applied to my functioning in Spanish.

All I can follow is the tone in the reading, the signs of emotion and rythym in the words. This man reads like a lecturer--steadily, clearly, but dully. His poetry sounds like a town hall opening ceremony if I close my eyes. I look around the table to see how the others are responding. One poet leans to another and they whisper something and laugh: is the poetry bad? Or is it only friends sharing a beer, ignoring the speaker for the moment? I remember in the beginning days when I would sit at the table with the host family, wondering if they were talking about me. It's a similar kind of paranoia. I am a lone gringa listening to poetry in Spanish. I feel superfluous, worthy of mockery: a poser. The room is dead silent. No one speaks, claps or whispers betwen poems. We sit staring at the man as he shifts his papers and begins again. There is a lot of staring in this country. Too much, I think, wishing someone would comment or drum or even do that terrible snapping of fingers.

The man finishes and finally the crowd claps. I lean over and tell my friend about the poetry slams that used to be popular; how I would go and sit in the back quietly while the older, hipper crowd would shout and cheer and hoot. Once I wore leather pants from a second hand store, a push towards cool. The poet noticed these and used me in his act. I blushed like I still do when something embarasses me or catches me off guard. They asked me to judge and I lied and told them I had to leave, but sat, bright red, through the rest of the show. I lost that poet's photocopied booklet years ago, but would have liked the chance to look back on it now.

Other than the silence, the atmosphere is familiar, making me feel all the more alien. I look around my table at all of the figurines that have decorated my life so many times, in so many guises. The three young poets: one man in a velvet jacket, hair dishevelled; another in button-up plaid with curly hair combed out to be large; the woman beautiful with wild waves in her hair and dark eyeliner on both lids. At her shoulder, the affectionate and flamboyant film student gestures, wearing an antiquated suit with a silk vest, his lined eyes and labret piercing signalling his contemporaneity. Then there is the painter in his argyle sweater and page boy cap, leaning precariously over the candle to hand me scraps of english to edit, bits and pieces to be sent to an uncertain love in Canada. At my side, the unexpected arrival still carrying his camping gear is awkwardly above us on a scrambled-for bar stool. Finally, at the end of the table, an old and muttering poet in a knitted skullcap, papers somewhere within his worn leather bag. He is talking across me to the young poets. They are discussing flowers in Santiago in spring. This relates to women, somehow, and then to ways of perceiving.

I am sure that I have been here before.

One of the trio of word gamers from my table is called to the front by the announcer. A few copies of his recently published book make their way from bags onto our table. The person next to me flips through with purpose to find the poems as they are spoken, to help me. I explain that seeing the words won't make them anymore electric to me than hearing them. I prefer to listen. His poems punch the air with the impression of meaning. The improvement in style leaves me with a lower comprehension, but I enjoy his reading better than the last.

The young man returns, the bar claps loudly, and the old man is called. He rustles through the bag a little too long and then makes his way to the front of the room. He begins speaking, but the mike is on the table. He realizes this after a few sentences, whether of his own accord or from a tip I cannot tell. Rearranged, he begins to read in the rocking, near autistic way of those who live their lives fully within their art. It is, needless to say, unintelligible to me. I like it though, better than the lecturing fumbler, better than the confident and snapping man my age. The tones rise and fall and whatever these words are, whatever they might signify to the people sitting with me, I sit watching them mean absolutely everything to the poet.

I am watching a man read his poetry; I am watching a man deliver his art; that is all. Without signification, without relationship to me, I watch the words matter to him. When he returns to the table I tell him how much I enjoyed watching his reading despite understanding nothing. The film student throws his head back and laughs, delighted, clapping at the joke. I light his cigarette and laugh too, even though I wasn't joking.

Dancing in the Streets

2008-10-28T17:34:00.004-03:00

Walking between one outdoor dance performance and another, the crowd began to realize that it was being directed. As we pushed onto the stairs of Paseo Yugoslavia, a man directed us to split into pairs. As we slowly advanced in our new formation, another gave us further directions. I linked arms with my friend and she closed her eyes while I guided her, as we had been told. As we bumbled half blindly, literally, up the stairs, members of the German dance troupe splashed couples as they emerged with water from the fountain.

At the top we followed our choreographers and joined hands to form a chain. We circled in around the large tree at the center of the small plaza overlooking the port. In front of me was a boy of about three. We circled in, tightening around the layers of people in front of us as more links in the chain emerged from the stairway and coiled around us. I stretched my friend's arm in order to stay just behind the little boy, providing the other half of the support that his mother's hand gave him from in front. We circle-danced over the uneven bricks and the little boy, in the way that small children have of trusting anyone significantly larger than them, allowed me to use our locked hands as a means to lift him over gaps and slants.

A crowd watched from the sides, skeptically, but walking in the circle I could see the sense of the dance. The warmth of sharing movement with strangers. We broke apart slowly and looked up to find the troupe arranged in the tree.

We stood around them as they dropped pieces of paper inscribed with heartfelt messages in broken Spanish, about dreams and clean water. Balloons drifted down and a man played the accordion. After we had all received a few of the small paper airplanes and paper balls, we began to drift away, chattering. The dancers climbed uncertainly down from the tree.

So ended the VII Festival Internacional Danzalborde de Valparaiso, a yearly October event in the city. It had been a week-long event featuring dance troupes from several different countries. Like the final circle around the tree, it was an event that was heartfelt, experimental, occasionally hokey and at times a flop. As things tend to go, here, there was the occasional lapse in the audio equipment, the fact that the locations of the dances were nearly impossible to find out, and a touch of over-earnestness. The awkward moments, though, never overshadowed the wonderful feeling of living in a place that would organize such a thing: a week of contemporary dance spread out through the streets of the city.

Work and the scarcity of information caused me to miss out on all but the final weekend of the festival. That Saturday afternoon, I joined a friend in an attempt to track down the performance that she had finally found a listing for. We wandered around Cerro Bellavista, until finally we discovered a crowd hanging around a stage-like section of the Museo de Cielo Abierto.

A Columbian dance troupe began with a duet. The man and woman, in black street clothes, mixed the occasional classic dance form with angular, disjointed movements. The music was sometimes harmonic, sometimes little more than ambient noise. These contrasts worked extremely well in some segments of the dance; in others I couldn't help but see hints of the infamous Robot dance. The dancers played out various conflicts and reconciliations that can occur in a relationship. At times the woman would collapse, the man urging her up with a series of pushes from his feet. Sometimes he would fall and she would catch him.

The following dance, from the same troupe, showed the same strengths and weaknesses as the first. A group of people crawled, wiggled, and occasionally spun in arabesques across the space. A woman dropped her bright pink pants and hobbled forwards and backwards before pulling them up halfway and rushing forward to the stairs.

After the performance, the dancers left and the crowd dispersed. A small girl took the stage and mimicked the wide, dramatic jerks and thrusts of the dance she had just seen.

That night, the same friend and I went to an indoor performance by a Mexican group. The listing labelled the style as "Minimal Movement." Given that it was in Spanish, I translated it in my mind as "Minimalist Movement." I should have trusted my first reading.

The hall, the auditorium of a local university, was in fact a converted old church. My friend and I found a spot up in the back corner of a crowded set of wooden bleachers. In front of us, underneath the saints looking down from stained glass windows, a woman sat in a chair. She was surrounded by glowing orange globes, strung together like Christmas tree lights. Three antique lamps sat next to the chair. As the crowd settled in, a strange series of sounds began to play and the dancer moved her hand slowly towards her face in a dramatic gesture. The shadow cast by the spotlight hitting her hand made the appearance of a small black tulip opening on her chest. We waited.

A few minutes later, she moved her head slowly to the side and extended her arm. We waited.

She traced her foot across the ground. She opened her mouth, closed her mouth. The music was the sound of dripping water, echoing tones, and wind, intercut with a sudden scream or the sound of a train. I began to consider the fact that bleachers have no side exits.

The visual effect was striking, but after twenty and then thirty minutes passed, I arrived at the critical opinion that perhaps the "voyeurism" mentioned in the description referred to a sort of mirror effect. As I watched the performer squirm around, miming in extreme slow motion the effects of inner turmoil, I began to feel supremely uncomfortable. Trapped. I switched on my art theory and concluded that perhaps this was intended: the audience sharing the stress of the character being danced.

After forty minutes, I was sure that I would much rather be writing an analysis of this piece than experiencing it.

After fifty minutes, I was considering if perhaps the intended effect was to cause someone in the audience to break down and yell for it to stop, as a sort of peak to the anxiety of the dance.

After an hour, I had decided that no analytical approach to this piece could give me back the time I'd lost sitting uncomfortably wedged between college students, on a piece of wood, watching a woman sit in a chair.

Finally, finally, she stood up. In strange, jerky movements, she made her way to a side door and lurched out of the room. The door remained open for several minutes, shooting a plank of white light into the space dominated by dark and glowing orange. Then suddenly, it slammed loudly shut. The visual effect was beautiful.

I didn't really care. I was scarily close to a temper tantrum when the dancer and the other members of her group--who had been working the sounds and the lights--came out to answer questions.

They explained that interaction with the audience was an essential part of the show and asked for input. Students raised their hands with detailed questions about composition and form. The group proudly explained that other than several key points which were choreographed, the rest was entirely improvisation on the part of all three. While looking carefully over the work for 'key points,' I could settle only on a moment when the sounds stopped and the woman kicked the lights, scattering a pile of forks with a metallic sound that was refreshing in the sense that it was the only sudden thing to happen within an hour and a quarter's time. The man who improvised the sound for the piece exclaimed several times over how he hadn't known that the dancer would leave through the door; she modestly explained how it just came to her. More questions were asked. The group discussed the time a cat had entered the performance space in Buenos Aires and thus became part of the performance. They explained how each piece is different, depending on the location in which it will be performed. The dancer elaborated by detailing how in each new city they go to find costumes and props, and these new pieces contribute to the choreography as well. I mentally threw a quick curse at the vendors of antique lamps, black bell skirts, and victorian-style white blouses, wherever in Valparaiso they may be.

When we were released, my friend and I walked at a near-running pace away from the building, laughing and exclaiming. She thought perhaps there had been a helicopter involved in the idea at some point; I wondered about nightmares. We decided that all of that not-moving made us want to walk widely and swingingly back to her place.

The next day I met her and another friend for another performance and was very concerned to find out that it would be the same group once again. Upon determining that we could not possibly be trapped in the pedestrian road on which the stage was set, we all decided to stay and see what happened. Thankfully, the woman is far more interesting when she moves.

This time the inspirational pieces were a large plastic tablecloth set with a birthday cake and six place settings with plates and empty bottles. The costume was a flouncing purple satin dress, a bright red bike helmet worn backwards, black stockings striped with yellow, large boots, and a yellow fly swatter. The character that arose from all of this seemed to be some kind of combination between a martian and a small child.

The man who had been working the lights the night previously was involved this time, scurrying around in a plastic apron. He beckoned members from the audience out from the sides of the street to take the places around the tablecloth.

At the end, he carried her, kicking and screaming, cake demolished on her boots, out of a side door wrapped in duct tape. I was glad not to be forced into artistic appreciation, and felt much warmer towards the group as I followed the file of people up the stairs towards the circle around the tree.

Unsolicited Advice

2008-10-23T18:11:00.005-03:00

"You need to clean your room," my friend said. "It's a complete mess. Also, you shouldn't have been sleeping so late. It's not healthy. You worry me."

I stirred my tea while he ran through a list of my various failures, inconsistencies, and insecurities. Each one made me cringe--he held up to the light every missed deadline, every late night, every unpaired sock and half-finished assignment. I found myself silently thanking all stars and gods that he didn't know me well enough to dredge up anything too horrific, because he surely would have. To top it all off, he spun every negative into a symptom, weaving for me a massive interrelated web of my inadequacies.

You might be wondering how I managed to spark such a disastrous fight in a language I speak poorly, in a country where I have few close friends who are not foreigners. In fact, though, I wasn't having an argument with anyone. The source of my detailed failure report: I told a chileno friend that I was feeling unsatisfied with a few aspects of my life.

Advice-giving in Chile probably accounts for a huge percentage of the country's collective interaction. It is a way of showing people that you care about them. In many ways, Chilean culture can be binary, and this is one of those instances. If you are not in the inner circle, you are Not In The Inner Circle. It is a reserved culture--friendships can be difficult to build. This is very different from US culture. For example, the first time that I met Kacy, a fellow US gringa, and saw that we clicked, I gladly told her various highly personal stories regarding my departure for and arrival in Chile. Less than four months later, she knows nearly all of the major personal details of my life.

At some point, though, you finally cross some invisible line and become a Good Friend. And this means that your life is now shared property. Chilenos will get themselves involved in every detail of their friends and families' existence. They point out the extra weight. They warn each other about pimples or a haggard look. They launch into monologues on the way that a situation at work ought to be handled.

And don't worry, you don't need to ask. The chilenos in your life will jump to give you the advice you need without hesitation, because they care about you and are paying attention.

To cope with this, I try to relate it to those great friends who show up to take you out for coffee without you having to call when you're feeling down. They're special because they care enough to notice.

This, I believe, is the spirit at the heart of the Chilean epidemic of minding other people's business.

I am, however, from a culture that, alongside the concept of minding one's own business, abhors Unsolicited Advice, reprimands the Bossy, and constantly reminds one not to Stick Your Nose Where It Doesn't Belong. Like Inuit words for snow, English has a wealth of vocabulary designed to deter the unwanted consejo. Small children all across my nation, without knowing that there is any precedent to their expression, burst out, "You're not the boss of me!"

The Spanish word for crash is chocar, and it is perfect to me that culture shock has the same sound. Things like this are like a car accident, a conversation flowing like easy traffic until two people run their respective stop signs and: smash. Glass all over the intersection. Watch where you step.

So I stewed for awhile. How was I meant to deal with a person who only wanted to help me feel better, but in the process made me feel worse? Meanwhile, knowing that what I was experiencing was culture shock didn't make me feel any warmer towards the lecture I'd felt I'd received.

Then I tried something absolutely radical in my confrontation-avoiding existence: I arranged a conversation. I explained, as best I could, how I saw the issue in terms of our respective cultures. My friend was amenable but somewhat confused. "But then," he asked, "how can I help you?"

"Just be my friend and hang out with me?" I suggested.

So I'm going to give that a shot. Culture shock might not be a preventable occurence, but if both parties can see it for what it is, then perhaps it doesn't have to cause so much drama. Hopefully these things can stop feeling like a high-speed crash, and start feeling like people stumbling into each other in a dark room, laughing, and helping each other up again.

Choque

2008-10-21T01:19:00.003-03:00

At first I irrationally thought that the car was on fire as it came screeching by. We were walking home from work along Avenida Brasil, Elisa and I, complaining about the day and chattering in relief of release. The silver sedan began skidding well behind us, the rubber literally burning into the clouds of smoke that distracted me for a moment until I looked ahead to the cross-walk. Caught in the middle of a legal crossing were two people. A man and woman were running, hand in hand, she in front pulling, he behind pushing. The car had slowed only to perhaps 30 miles an hour when it hit her, ripping their hands apart.

She flew sideways up over the hood. We stood frozen on the sidewalk as time stopped and she flew, frame by frame, back away from the car, crashing in a heap onto the pavement of the intersection. The man stood on the other side of the car, his face a glass of red wine shattered on concrete.

At the same moment, a block away, two cars smashed head-on. For a moment, the imagined physics of our society revealed themselves as fallacies.

When the hit woman stood, screaming, staggering, I felt a shock as sure as when she had been hit. I had been sure she had been killed. But she stood, pure adrenaline, and staggered to the curb. Her mouth was open, yelling syllables without sense, and the man ran to her wildly. Three of us stood watching: Elisa and I, and across the street a man in green. I thought of my first aid training and all of the questions that I cannot ask in Spanish. The woman gave into the shock and fell backward onto the sidewalk. I stood with air rushing through my sternum watching the man kneeling over his hyperventilating partner. The man in green suddenly sprung from the shocked still life and sprinted across the street, arms pumping, to their side. Someone appeared swiftly from a side street and pushed a jacket beneath her head.

A man in a blue jacket emerged from the silver car, a middle-aged, flustered, average-looking man whose face, I felt, showed too much self concern and not enough guilt. Elisa pointed and I saw his small daughter, too young to be in a cross-the-shoulder seatbelt, in the passenger seat. Another child sat in the back. Distaste and anger flickered in the air, from me, from Elisa, from the old woman who was drawing near to draw the story out of us, and it drew people who began to circle round. The man who knelt over his woman must have felt it too. He looked up and rose, approaching the car. His face was a desperate kind of breaking rage that I hope I never see again. In this momentary world, slowed by my own surge of chemicals, I saw his heavy armed, thrusting approach intercut with scenes of his flight, pushing his love towards safety before him, and the explosion on his face when the car skidded towards the sidewalk and took her and not him into the metal and into the sky.

The man in blue stood petrified, and the broken man came full of intention, but a van of carabineros arrived as if by magic. Four uniformed, helmeted men jumped out and surrounded the reckless driver, half to keep him there and half to prevent a fight of passions too high to be contained.

The crowd thickened. Rubber-necking as a negative act is not a Chilean concept. Any time that I have seen any sort of accident victim in the street, they have been surrounded by a crowd four or five people deep. I have seen people taking pictures with their cell phones, at times. Elisa and I remained at a distance--witnesses, unsure in this foreign system of whether or not we held any role. The abuela at my side questioned me and Elisa and we explained the story, pointing to the skid marks that stretched for a third of a block, making guesses at his speed, turning our hands into bodies flying through the air. We shared exclamations with her and she lit a cigarette and wandered into the crowd. We heard her explaining to clusters of attentive listeners that the gringuitas had seen everything, gaining glory through her intimate acces to the details of the story.

From nowhere, three fire trucks appeared along the road. Where the two cars had crashed, more vehicles gathered. I could here the struck woman shout out angrily, incoherently, from time to time, but by now she was obscured by a thick knot of observers. A woman came over to us and asked if we had some sort of candy for the children in the car. We had been talking of them, of the shock of seeing a woman against the windshield of your daddy's speeding car. Elisa found the apple she had in her bag and the woman took it...better than nothing, to calm the ninitos.

An ambulance arrived and the EMTs disappeared into the now thick swarm of gawkers, around which the abuela hovered with her cigarette. Soon they emerged with the woman on a stretcher, followed by the stricken man who will never forget the image of his partner rag-dolled in mid-air. A few minutes later it pulled away.

Elisa and I explained what we saw several times to various concerned onlookers. We stood uncertainly at the border, watching the man in blue with the carbineros. The abuela wandered back and she confirmed what I had thought: the woman would be fine. She had been lucky. She wandered off, and after a moment of unsure hesitation, so did we.

I have a friend here who becomes irritated with his girlfriend and myself when we are hesitant to cross in the cross-walk when there is traffic. It is our right-of-way, he says, and so the cars need to stop for us and we are being jumpy. I'd like to take a moment for a shout-out: wrong! I would also like to request that he not urge himself or other friends in front of moving, unreliable traffic.

So Elisa and I moved on along with the rest of our plans. In the grocery store, a man dropped a crate and we both dropped the vegetables we were holding.

I am a transparent person: even my students have remarked on the fact that there is no emotion that passes through my head that doesn't show in my exterior. It could be that this is adaptation. It is the physical shape of distress that draws our empathy. I am thinking of the pictures in the paper on September 12, 2001, of the people who had thrown themselves out of the World Trade Center rather than die of asphyxiation. Their forms, blurry, small, were enough to break us all: arms out at the sides, head forward in a dive, the still-conscious desperation potent like the taste of blood in my mouth. In that file in my mind I add the woman flying backwards in the air in the shape of the letter C; her staggering, bent knees with her screaming mouth; and the face, the broken face of a man whose normal day was broken in half by the destruction and resurrection of the woman he loves.

Lights Out

2008-10-19T23:53:00.006-03:00

Sitting at the table with the last light of the afternoon keeping the room glowing, I didn't realize that the power on the cerro had gone out until I finally rose in the graying space and flicked the switch.

I walked down the hill to pick up the pizza I had ordered. Customers sat around candles of various sizes. For some reason, people speak more quietly in the dark, surrounded by candles. I collected my pizza and completed the transaction half under my breath. Parting from my friend at the street corner, I half ran up the steps that run along the side of the ruined stretch of Templeman, where the road has been replaced by rubble and stray bushes. The light was fading and I was thinking of my cavernous apartment and unlocatable flashlight.

I stumbled through the entry way and into the blank space of my apartment. In the dining room, the windows were still letting in a faint hint of light. I rummaged through drawers: tea lights, I know that I saw tea lights. I found them, on my knees in the invisible kitchen, and brought them back to the table. I dropped five of them into the rounded shot glasses that came with the apartment, and they made that satisfying sound: something soft and light cased in cheap metal hitting glass. The sound makes me think of my parents' dinner parties when I was a child, and of Christmas and Thanksgiving at their house.

The house was quiet and empty, my roommate sleeping in his room. My third roommate called to say that she would not come home from her boyfriend's. Lighting my candles and arranging my book, I thought back to another night without electricity. It was in a February, in Morocco, in a small apartment whose walls held no ceiling save in the small cubbies that were bedrooms. After brushing my teeth under stars of an unknown continent, I walked on bare feet across the cold kitchen floor into the tiny room with walls of stone. The bed was a shelf knocked into the wall. As I rubbed my feet under not enough blankets and spoke softly with good company, I remember the three stubs of candles that were stuck onto the deep rock sill of the tiny window at the foot of the bed. The wind picked up, but the crashing sound of waves was loudest outside the little wooden shutter behind the flames. I fell asleep that night, and the nights after, listening through these sounds for my breath and for the other breath beside me, the both of us breathing air so far away from anything previously known.

Tonight I arranged my candles in a semicircle around my chair and lone place setting. I poured some wine, took a bite of food, and opened my book. I've only just begun it, but I am far enough along to know that I am reading of a man whose past still grips him with its mysteries and pain. I know that I will read this book and feel an echo. There is something of this in the life of any person far from home without intentions of permanacy. Our lives here are a flicker; they began recently enough to be recalled in every detail; it is sure that they will end sometime soon in an airport, under flourescent light. The most intimate of friends made here can know only this short burst of time. When we mirror each other, we can see only the present tinted by the stories we tell over coffee, over tea, over wine and beer, staring out windows and tracing the rims of cups with our fingers. We tell each other that we lived before, will live later, but we exist only in the present and these other times are only stories.

I am thinking of these things in the dark, with the lights of the other, unaffected cerros of Valparaiso shining against the negative space surrounding my building. In the quiet, alone, I think of the company that is missed, and the history that cannot follow me here. In this unexpected, unadulterated space of the blackout, the shapes of that history fill the room and although it shakes me, I welcome them.

I call no one because I welcome them. Then the door to the side swings open and my sleepy roommate brings out flashlights from his camping supplies. I strap a light to my head just as my tea lights are reaching the end of their short lives. This is when I feel sad. The thin thread has snapped that had connected these temporary candles and this solitary darkness to those other misshappen candles casting dancing shadows against a stone wall, not so very long ago. But this is how we live, now, in this flare within my history. It won't be long before I sit with other candles and my heart pulls for the lonely nights in Valparaiso. So I laugh at myself, spill out my words, and return to my book and my work.

Flavor in Chile: Si, se puede!

2008-10-15T01:05:00.003-03:00

Whoever named the chili pepper was definitely not making any reference to Chile, despite the fact that in certain languages the two words are spelled the same.

A week or two ago, I was cooking for friends, as I love to do. I was making a large stir fry that I knew would turn out spicy. Nearly everything that I cook turns out spicy--I spent three years cooking with a man who isn't happy unless he's sweating and turning colors. Ergo, my estimation of "quite spicy" is on par with most people's "inedible." My "spicy" is "on the edge of tolerance," to quote a friend.

One of my roommates, a chileno, hates spicy food. This is very much the norm: in fact, if you are living in this country, you may have read that sentence as redundant. Of course this is not the case with everyone, as I have at least two chileno friends who love spice, but otherwise it's pretty much the rule.

While cooking, I decided that I would make the sauce on the side in a special gesture in order to include my roommate. Just before the stirfry was finished, I took out vegetables for him and sent him a nice plate with rice via our third roommate. She told me later that when he received it, he made a face.

"What is it?" she asked.

"There's ginger in this. It's spicy," he said, wrinkling his nose.

Yes, my roommate is not the nicest of people. Moving on, though: ginger is spicy.

I won't blame you if you're wondering how on earth one can eat normally in a place where that sounds reasonable. It's been a struggle for me, as I've documented in this blog. While living with a family chilena, I felt as if I would die from carb and meat overload (hence my current vegetarian status). Nonetheless, I've found that it is completely possible to live a happy, healthy, flavorful life in Chile. To start, here is a nice dinner that you can easily make with ingredients from Lider (an average supermarket here):

Appetizer: Tomato Garlic Soup (gracias a C. Martinez)

Ingredients:
1 can tomates pelados (size depending on people invited)
2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
2 bay leaves
small handfull of fresh basil
Aji sauce from the jar, to taste
Boiling water

Directions:
In a small saucepan, saute the tomatoes for a few minutes, and add about a cup of water. Stir in the garlic, the bay leaves, the basil, and the aji. Cook until with water boils off, and then add more. Repeat for approximately 45 minutes.

Side Dish: Potatoes and Carrots in Honey Garlic Sauce

Ingredients:
Potatoes and carrots, to fit size of group, sliced thin and diced into small pieces
a few tablespoons of oil
1 vegetable bouillon cube
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/4 cup honey
a few tablespoons of soy sauce
2-ish tablespoons of white wine vinegar
1 of those mini limes, juiced
Cornstarch (if you can find it) or some other thickener (if you can find it)
2 small cloves garlic, minced
1 fresh aji, minced (optional)

Directions:
Boil the water with the bouillon cube. Once done, remove from heat. If you've got a thickener, add about a tablespoon and mix well. If not, don't worry about it. I put in a tablespoon of flour and it worked out fine, so no worries! Then, add the honey, soy sauce, vinegar, and lime. Use a whisk or a fork to mix well. In another pan, saute the garlic and aji in oil for about a minute on low heat--don't brown the garlic. Add this to the other ingredients and simmer. Meanwhile, heat a bit more oil and saute the potatoes and carrots until just about cooked. At the end, add the sauce and stir until it has thickened around the vegetables.

Main Dish: Indian Stew with Couscous
Group 1:
2 medium onions, diced
Group 2:
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 inch fresh ginger, minced
2 large green ajis, minced
tsp cumin
tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom (this takes a bit of searching (in Chile, of course)...try Jumbo, or Korean shops if you're lucky enough to live near them)
1 tbsp salt or soy sauce
large pinch of saffron (obviously optional given the price)
Group 3:
1/2 cup squeezed orange and grapefruit juice (I squeezed about 4 oranges and 1 pomelo)
4 eggplants, roasted for 1/2 hour, then cubed
Group 4:
2 green and 1 red bell pepper, diced
1 large slice zapallo, cubed
4 medium carrots, sliced thin and then diced
1 medium size can of tomates pelados
1/2 cup or so of water
Finals:
Couscous (or rice)
Fresh basil
Yoghurt natural

Instructions:
Stick the eggplants in the oven at about 350 degrees, halfed, while you're slicing the other veggies.

When you're prepared, saute the onions in oil until transparent. Then add Group Two and saute for about one minute. Transfer from the pan to a large sauce dish. Add Group 3, mixing well so that the spices coat everything. Simmer for about 8 minutes. Add Group 4, adjusting the level of water to allow enough to cook for a while without sticking but without drowning the thing. Simmer (covered) for about 20 minutes, or until the zapallo is soft. Stir every few minutes to move things from top to bottom. Prepare the couscous or rice meanwhile (read the box). About 5 minutes before the end, add a handful of torn basil, and mix in well. When all the veggies are well cooked, serve over the couscous with a 'dollop' (don't you love that word?) of yoghurt.

This may all sound very complicated. However, it's really not when you get to it. I find cooking quite relaxing. If you don't, be content in the fact that the Indian Stew will give you enough servings to eat for ages, if you don't invite 4-6 guests the first time round. You can also easily make as much as you like of the other two dishes, giving you a fridge full of delicious, flavorful, vegetarian food. When you think about how much you have to pay for such a luxury at a chilean restaurant, it works out quite well.

I also recommend that you indulge in our wonderful abilty in Chile to buy good wine at cheap prices, and enjoy a bottle with a friend while cooking.

If you enjoy these recipes, let me know, and I'll add more!

Help a blogger out, Part 2

2008-10-13T23:27:00.003-03:00

** As previously mentioned, I am applying for a writing internship of sorts. Based on input from yourselves and my non-text-based friends, I've put together the following blend of two previous blog posts. Let me know what you think! Kill paragraph two? Vary your vocabulary in the intro? Come up with a better bridge? I want to know what I can do to make this piece polished. Thanks to anyone who'll leave me a little constructive criticism in the comments! **

When I am delayed by some street occurrence and find myself walking home around eight or nine at night, there is a flute playing over Cerro Alegre. The location of this lonely-voiced musician is indeterminable. It is clear that it comes to me from somewhere higher up on the hill, because the sound seems to be falling down from the sky. They are eerie and beautiful, these strange little unaccompanied melodies. The air at night, now that it is autumn, is crisp and clear and the notes of the flute echo these qualities. The flutist never falls fully into song, instead sending out smoke signals, little snatches of melody. Eight bars, sixteen bars, pause. Then follows another cadence, unrelated, it seems. The notes are random, a spread pattern like broken glass, and yet all are glinting. Never does a tone fall flat, never does the clear ringing sound break into a breathy split note. This sky of sound is the layer between Neruda’s sky, shattered with stars, and the chaotic but harmonic Bartok composition that is my city. My thoughts unclench and my mind falls into dreams and poetry. 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.

From the ethereal and chill notes of the night, I arrive into the warmth of my home and the privacy of my room. Here, there is an entirely different kind of music, far from the stars and the cold purity of autumn. There is a man, whom I have never seen, whose experience unfolds daily directly below the floorboards of my room. This building, built into the hill, opens into many spaces, and so while I enter from a pasaje that runs between buildings, this man most likely enters from one of the doors that run the grade of our slope of this hill. It is unlikely that I will ever know who it is whose life I can overhear as I fall asleep. I can guess that he is young because of his voice, the race-car video games whose soundtracks invade my space, and the fact that his most active periods fall between two and five am. Whoever he is, my downstairs neighbor loves to sing. Through the thin wood, he sings me endless gospels, ballads, sometimes pop music or the occasional musical score. He does not sing the way that most people sing when they are puttering around at home--halfway, one lyric here, another there, with half a voice. Nervous about the opening of a door or the angry banging on the wall from next door, we sing in showers, sing in the car, hoping not to offend, hoping to sneak under the radar. This neighbor of mine sings as if he had an audience of 50 people. Accordingly, he gives what deserve to be called concerts. An hour or more will pass, full of resonant sound, deep baritone from below pierced by seagull cries from above. 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 flat cusp of the city at the base of the hill, in Plaza Anibal Pinto, a man bangs on a homemade bass drum while a girl dances with a tambourine and six, seven, now eight people play on panflutes and mouth-harps, and the rest dance.

Morning breaks. The midnight singer is catching up on his rest, but I am quickly moving around between my brush and closet and bag. With a class to be taught at eight am, I am out the door at seven. 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, a reassuring 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 constitute Valparaiso's fleet of micros are not yet quite awake. A scant few scream past and are absorbed again into the quiet, exhaust puffing from rusted pipes to join the sea fog. 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.

Que flaite.

2008-10-12T23:58:00.003-03:00

Last night I met a young woman named Josefa.

Josefa is four years old. She arrived unexpectedly at a moment in which I was going to cause a lot of trouble for my friend, her brother, who had irritated me exceptionally. Luckily for everyone present, I can't wait to work in a preschool and the arrival of an outspoken four year old was about all I needed to let it go. Before you knew it, we had sequestered ourselves with a comic in Italian and were selling my H&M bracelets to each other (just DON'T forget the imaginary bag, that is bad customer service).

Unfortunately, while we were learning our numbers in Spanish and English and going blind unexpectedly ("Donde estas? Where are you? I can't see!") someone decided to break the window of her parents' car with a rock. They came in and told me what had happened, and then left again. Josefa thought for a minute.

"Is it true," she asked after a bit, "what my brother said, that the car is broken?" Yes, I told her (while teaching her terrible Spanish I fear), it's true, but the car is fine.

A few more minutes passed.

"Meredith," she said carefully, "como se dice 'flaite' en Ingles?"

After a bit of death by laughter I had to explain that I could not answer how to say "flaite" in English, because in the States we don't have a synonym. It is a special Chilean word, I told her.

This is quite true. I believe that it's different in England, where a similar sense of class relations exists. Tonight I was taught a few versions of 'flaite' by a British friend. Nonetheless, in USA English, there is no accurate translation. This is because there is no exact concept.

Flaite is a word that gets a lot of mileage in Chile. To itemize the various English almost equivalents, it is somewhat like low-class, ghetto, uncultured, rude, dive (as in bar), trashy, sketchy, and redneck. It is all of these things, and none of them. Flaite is a word that applies not just to a person's attitude, SES, or current position; it goes beyond fashion or cultural affiliation; it goes beyond how expensive the beer is and whether or not you're drinking it from a plastic cup.

Flaite is a noun, an adjective, and much more. Fleite is a way of life.

Chile's class system is an inherant part of the culture. This has become apparent to me in odd ways due to the fact that I happen to have blond hair. Here, paleness indicates European relations, which for years has meant power and influence. Hopefully this is changing, but the fact remains that when I walk on the street in any normal neighborhood, everyone has black hair, brown eyes, and medium colored skin. I turn on the TV to watch anything related to politics, and everyone interviewed looks as if they could be my uncle. It is one of the oddest and most disturbing factors of Chilean culture. People who are in the upper classes speak to me about their terrible household help, not realizing that my grandmother arrived in the US with no English and worked as a maid with only one half day off a month. Conversely, people in the middle class have reproached me with no end of various combative remarks, unable to accept that I make 300,000 pesos a month and will not be owning anything designer at any point that I can think of.

So to be flaite, as it is to be any other rank in the social system, is an all-defining thing. In the states, we'll go to dive bars. That doesn't, however, make us trashy. You can be incredibly educated and cultivate a ghetto style. You can live in the projects and be a bookworm. Here, these divisions don't seem to exist in the popular imagination. You ARE where you go, where you live, who you know, who your father is, who your father knows. It is indelible. You are a function of these things, and if those things are flaite, so are you.

As a gringa, this concept is difficult for me to grasp. I am never aware of what is flaite. Yes, I know what "low-class" is. However, I have been, at various times, told that the following things are flaite:

--Valparaiso
--Plastic outdoor tables at bars
--Drinks on the beach
--Picnics
--Bars frequented by the after-work (as in blue collar) crowd
--Bars frequented by people my age who, as far as I can tell, look just like me
--Micros
--Public transportation in general
--Street art
--Juggling
--Streets with inexpensive shops
--Arcades

And many, many more. I'll be walking with a friend, and suggest popping into a place for a sandwich or a beer, only to be met with an incredulous look and the response, "Pero que flaite esta lugar!" Thankfully, gringos seem to be excused for flubbing the social norms, because it's generally assumed that we have no idea what we're doing. This is a very good thing, because it seems like everything I like is incredibly flaite (ie, I ride micros for fun). Nevermind that flaite also includes mugging people, going to jail, beating your girlfriend, and other such wonders--you had a beer at that place with the plastic cutlery?!?!

Que flaite!!

Help a blogger out

2008-10-07T20:00:00.002-04:00

I am in the process of applying for a writing internship affiliated with a major publication. In this process, I am asked to submit a writing sample. I'm going to take something that I've written about here and polish it into something presentable.
With that in mind, please help me choose the best Note from Behind the Language Barrier (of a Serious variety)!

The leading contestants at the moment are:

Wandering
Listening
Voyaging
Dreaming
Living

Please leave me a comment and vote for the one you think would make the best starting point for a piece of creative nonfiction (of the variety that one would find in a serious-style travel collection). Please! Of course, if you've been checking in for awhile now and have another suggestion, by all means let me know.

Your help is much appreciated!

Head in the clouds

2008-10-07T18:50:00.004-04:00

On grey days in Valparaiso, the city disappears. From my windows, there is only a palm tree, and the jumbled roofs between my spot on the hill and the sea. The lights of the boats in the nearby port are diffused in fog; the coast stretching east and north is only a mental concept. A dim light in the distance could be the other towns which are normally sitting on the horizon above the bay, or they could be ships, but for my mind filling in the blanks like the missed words in a cell phone conversation.

The color closes around the city like a blanket, softly wiping away colors, blurring the eyes of the people walking in their zigzags, irresolutely. It makes my wet hair and my makeup-less face feel at home, born from the same lethargy and lack of edges. I view the polished-dull cerros and the bumbling smoke of traffic with sleepy eyes while waiting endlessly for the micro that doesn't come. We are the same in this moment, the city and I: attractiveness washed away by tiredness, lack of care, a tousled head and a crooked outfit. Perhaps in other moments we can pull off a sort of over-punctuated, hapless kind of beauty, but when the damper is on all that remains is the awkwardness of poor planning.

And so when I wake up in Valparaiso and look out my window to see gray sky, something in me softens, and I know that my city sister and I will have a day of calm. When Valparaiso decides once again to be bright, and laughing, to love the ones that love her and ignore those who don't, I will continue my far less successful efforts to be the same. For today, though, I know that she will not judge me in my last pair of clean socks, with my chapped lips sitting amongst scattered papers. She won't bedgrudge me the slow way I edit my latest project, or the time I spend wandering in the street staring around without conviction. She will allow me to choose the slowest micro I can so that I can listen to music and stare out at the storefronts for longer. She will look on with understanding as I put off til tomorrow what can be done today and instead take refuge under lamplight, out of the cold of the fog that sedates us.

A funny thing happened on the way to my blog post...

2008-10-06T12:27:00.004-04:00

So, apologies from the bad blogger. My personal life has been a bit of a headache lately, and as such my reflections on Chile have been on hold while I try to get things sorted. As this is not a personal life blog, most of what I've been dwelling on of late has not been suitable material.

I'll be back on this week, so check back in today or tomorrow for a real, honest, post about Chile.

In the meantime, please take the time to check out this post on Kyle's blog. She has committed to paying a young man's tuition to DuocUC, a technical university. This is of particular relevance to me because I am, at the moment, a volunteer teacher at that same institution (in another location, of course). It is an extremely respected institution for the level of training it provides (something akin to a technical associate's degree in the US). It is also, however, expensive. This has been one of the major quandaries for me over the course of this year. My students are wonderful people who are given a great opportunity to better their circumstances--but for a price. It is difficult for me to resolve the contradiction inherent in being a volunteer at an institution which is only available to people who can afford the high tuition.

As such, I'm happy to pass on the information that Kyle, who is a photographer, is giving all proceeds from her print sales this month to her friend's tuition. You can read the details of this on her site. She is a skilled photographer. If any of you would like a nice picture of the country at the end of the world, now's your chance to buy one and simultaneously contribute to someone's well-being.

18: Go Chile

2008-09-23T15:37:00.005-04:00

So, the 18th has come and gone. The 18th is really not just the 18th, it is as many days as possible surrounding the 18th, the 19th, and anything in between that and the weekend. It commemorates various aspects of Chile's independence and general identity. We got relatively gipped this year as the 18th fell on a Thursday, so the party didn't start until Wednesday at noon. This may be a blessing in disguise, however, because if Fiestas Patrias had lasted any longer it may very well have killed me.

In some respects, I had a failed visitor's Fiestas Patrias: I didn't hang out with anyone's grandparents. I didn't see the rodeos in Olmue (despite best laid plans). I didn't even go to the ramadas, aka fondas, aka fairs that are the traditional celebration spot.

On the other hand, I had a pretty Chilean-style Fiestas Patrias: I hung around with people I liked, and I ate and drank a lot, and there were often Chilean flags around, and good times were had by all. All in all, rather satisfying. Along with camping (see below), I also participated in and watched some cueca dancing:

The cueca is Chile's national dance and it is meant to represent the courting dance between a hen and a rooster. It kind of intimidates me, as such. I'm not a great hen. The rooster is meant to stare you down, waving his scarf (or plastic bag, as the case may be), while you hide behind your scarf-or-bag and dance coyly back and forth. Truth be told, I don't like being stared down, so instead of doing flirtacious half-circles I pretty much just duck back and forth to get out of the line of fire. Anyway I did give it a shot several times, but the photo evidence lies in the cameras of others.

I attended multiple asados, where many people were shocked and astonished that I am not eating meat. At one point someone said that they had thought that I would at least have a chorripan (sausage in bread), as it's really not large at all. The lovely Kacy and Yasha provided me with fish at their asado, but otherwise I was just careful to eat before or after.

In general, I had a nice weekend, with a lot of relaxing mixed in with a lot of dissipation, plus a bit of wilderness wandering, and tried my best to represent (as did everyone else). Go Chile.

The Accidental Camping Trip

2008-09-21T17:31:00.008-04:00

About half an hour by micro from Valparaiso is the community of Laguna Verde. Over the last few wildly irresponsible days--in honor of Chile's Fiestas Patrias, on which there will be more in another post--someone floated the idea of heading there en masse to go camping on the beach. As one should never count on plans made under the influence or past 3am, I thought nothing of this, until my hazy hungover head heard my phone beeping yesterday around 2pm. Text message: vamos, 3pm. Alright then.

I spoke to a couple of people and two of us came up with the plan to go, hang out for awhile, and head back that evening in order to be in town for a few birthday drinks with another friend. The weather was warm and sunny so when I met him we were both wearing sandals and sleeveless shirts, carrying daypacks. We hit the supermarket for a mountain of fruit, a bit of bread, and cheese.

On a side note, we also bought a product which is called Lemon Stones. It can be found in the beer aisle. It is sort of like O'Douls at home, in that it only contains 2.5% alcohol (O'Douls for the heavy non-drinker, I suppose). It is not like O'Douls, however, in that it tastes like lemon and not like beer. And so it was that I found myself going to Laguna Verde, where there is no lagoon and the water isn't green, toting a cerveza that neither tastes like cerveza nor contains alcohol. Appropriate.

The group as a whole numbered about 15. You can imagine 15 people at a supermarket: I believe the expression is "herding cats." So four of us decided to go ahead and meet up with the others on the beach.

We arrived at the end of the line, as instructed. Although we were barely outside Valparaiso, we had come to another world. Small houses appeared intermittently on a dirt road which ran through a dark green forest. The people wore cowboy hats, drove pick-ups, and looked at us as if we were aliens (I think that may have been my fault, as usual, due to my combined deficiency in melanin and espanol). We asked a little boy, about 8 years old, how to get to the beach. He told us that he lived by the beach and that his 'commute' to the micro every day was about an hour each way. The type of kid who sees no difference between himself and anyone else in the world, he sidled up to one of the chilenos and the two of them were tossing around "waeon" and "poh" in no time. He offered me water and then laughed at himself and said, "Of course! She doesn't understand!" I asserted that yes, I did in fact understand, but he looked very unconvinced.

Eventually the boy's father drove by heading the opposite direction, and so we lost our mini-guide. And so we kept walking. And walking. And walking.

This was the point when I realized that all was not as it should be. I was now nearly an hour on foot into the countryside, without much confidence in my ability to return on my own, and the sun was sinking at an accelerated rate. I began to bother my co-day-tripper about heading back, but he was of the opinion that we absolutely could not walk for an hour only to return without seeing the beach. I was unconvinced, but at this point my curiousity kicked in and I decided to follow along, although I was relatively certain that I would be passing a very cold night in my bare feet.

We had been walking for nearly another hour when a car drove by and we decided to ask for a second opinion. Absolutely not, they said. Turn around, this road doesn't go the beach. We had begun to do just that when a trio of ATV riders passed us for the third time and we flagged them down. No, the road doesn't go to the beach, but you can't turn back. The light was already taking on tones of soft fading yellow as it sped towards what we could only hope was the nearby sea. A path was pointed out to the chilenos as I wrung my hands, vowing that never again in an English-speaking country would I fail to appreciate my ability to ask anyone anything at any time, and understand their response.

The troupe was rather down at this point, and we headed off into a set of fields, ducking barbed wire fences and climbing thin embankments, cursing and moaning in our own languages. The setting was a large, green gorge, dotted with wildflowers and cacti. The wildflowers, though, were closing their buds for the night and as we walked along the steep sides of the ravine the sense of urgency was rather pronounced. Finally, the beach opened up in front of us.

We made it down to the beach just as the rest of our crew, who had left significantly later than we had, arrived from a path on the other side of the gorge. As I ate my cheese sandwich while lying prostrate on the sand, I attempted to maintain optimism. Perhaps the other group had come via a clear and easy to follow road, and we could head back in an hour or two as planned.

We straggled over to the group, who had gathered around a quickly assembled fire, and I asked for news of the road.

"You can't go back in the dark," my friend said. "Sit down and stop thinking about it right now because there's no way."

And what can you do? I did.

At this point I was already freezing, but somehow I managed to inspire charity amongst those better prepared than myself. While my formerly fellow-day-tripper, now co-strandee, made all the noise about our plight, I was being carefully wrapped up in other people's sweaters and sleeping bags without doing much more than staring dolefully at the fire. A picture is worth a thousand words, I suppose. In any event I huddled up with friends under a mountain of sleeping bags around the fire.

The provisions that the large group had chosen were interesting, to say the least. They came equipped with: one jug of fresh water, 6 or 7 packets of pasta, a two packets of tomato sauce, a tin of Nescafe, aji, salt, pepper (all three in full size jars), and 3 bottles of rum, 5 bottles of Coke for mixing, two boxes of wine, and two liters of beer.

This amount of alcohol is not as crazy as it might sound, given the size of the group; however, given the particular prioritizing scheme of the shopping trip there had been very little room left amongst the backpacks for items such as, oh, water. One fallout of this was that someone suggested cooking the pasta in sea water. And the pasta sauce as well. It was, in a word, inedible, but now we've learned our lesson about salt water pasta. I declined my plate and lay in the sand looking at the Milky Way in a perfectly clear line from one side of our valley to the other.

Meanwhile, a group of the guys had discovered a cave where we could be out of the wind and thus a bit warmer. So all throughout the pasta debacle they were harnessing their inner caveman, literally, dragging tremendous logs across the sand behind me. The light of flame began to grow from between the rocks and I watched a friend do a strange celebratory dance. I was simultaneously reminded of pagan ritual and little boys building a fort. Thanks to their work, we abandoned the wind and gathered in the cave.

The cave opened above us, letting out smoke and showing the stars.

The guitar-players took turns playing and we sang along as we could. It was an interesting activity. Our group was mixed: several chilenos, a couple from Argentina, several French Canadian foreign exchange students, an Italian, and myself and a few other gringas. As such, as the guitar went around, different voices came out to go along. I was able to sing along to just about every English speaking Canadian song by a woman, not surprisingly, but the Spanish songs that had the group clapping left me in the dark. It was warm though, sharing a fire and drinks and music. It was an excellent campfire, in short, as they're meant to be, with everyone feeling warm towards the world and each other. We grouped under blankets, heads on shoulders and bodies huddled in for warmth.

Slowly people began to fall asleep, myself included. I woke up to my feet being moved from their spot which was dangerously close to the fire, and the entire circle speaking to me in Spanish. Befuddled, sleepy, I grabbed my borrowed sleeping bag and went off to spend a terribly intermittent and cold night of sleep next to Elisa in a tiny tent.

I woke up before anyone else had emerged, around 6am, too cold to continue lying in the tent. I went outside and sat in the sand and watched as the sun came into the valley by the same route that I had taken the night before.

Some dogs had gotten into our food in the night, so I spent some time gathering up bits and pieces of what was left (it should be noted that my bread and cheese fell victim to these dogs). Later, when the others woke up, we fed the dogs what was left of the salty pasta and I got myself soaked washing the pots out in the water. Later some of the group decided to take a swim but I decided one dunking was enough. I lay on the sand, enjoying the warm sun, feeling my toes come back to life, and listening to the conversation that I could only sometimes follow.

Around midday three of us decided to head out. Being from the ill-fated party of the night before, we didn't know the correct road. Perhaps out of remorse for having deprived us of breakfast, the dogs decided to show us the way. They took us through several crossroads and path changes, barking whenever we went the wrong direction, looking back at us periodically over their shoulders, until they delivered us safely to the micro.

All in all, sometimes accidents turn out better than plans, despite cold toes.

En Memoriam

2008-09-18T00:06:00.003-04:00

David Foster Wallace died this week (on the 12th) by his own hand, at the age of 46. He is the author of the Infinite Jest, a book which I have still yet to read--a book of massive length that can be called perhaps a semi-comic dystopia. It's on my list. I am going to order it now, as I'm sure a thousand other people will. How sad, this endless phenomenon that artists gain even more prestige through death (if they had any to begin with, which thankfully D.F.W. did).

In any event, you don't have to wade through 1079 pages to understand that this man gave American--and English language in general--fiction a gift. This short story is best read aloud, to oneself, I have found. The movement and power within the simplicity is amazing. As well as the fact that there are no sentence breaks. It makes your heart catch, to blend a metaphor.

An excellent tribute review appeared in the NY Times...read to the end of the third paragraph at least to understand the uniqueness of this writer.

RI more P than you had in this life, and dream more dreams.

RIP.

Up (the hill) and Away

2008-09-16T16:23:00.005-04:00

My excessive laziness in relation to blogposts can be explained by the fact that I have been preoccupied by a move to a new apartment. I am now installed in the dining-living room of said apartment, diligently ignoring the unpacking disaster directly behind my back.

That's not me. That's my roommate, who energetically unpacked yesterday, along with cooking dinner, organizing the kitchen, and setting the table with placemats. In between teaching classes today she rearranged the furniture and cleaned up a bit. As I understand it, at the moment she is baking pies at a friend's house.

Meanwhile, I've folded my clothing, stuck some photos to the wall, eaten cereal and leftovers, and broken my reading light that clips to the book (argh!).

It's difficult to stay focused though. I've fallen in love with a city; now I've finally found a place within it that I can feel is mine. I have also had several hours of uninterrupted alone time--something that has not happened since I arrived in this country seven months ago. I am finding myself walking around in circles, touching surfaces, rearranging my things slightly, then messing them up again, and staring staring staring out the window.

The apartment is a section of what once would have been a grand mansion for some shipping family. Now the building is seperated into different living spaces, but the house that it was and is still shows through. The front bedroom sports an intricately patterned paraquet floor; the ceilings througout the apartment are over 10 feet high. The window that I cannot stop staring out of is in fact a wall of windows, itself a good 8 feet in height. From where I sit at my table I can simply raise my eyes and look down the bay to Vina del Mar, Renaca, Concon and on. If I stand up and walk over to the edge of the room, I will see the hill edging down to the water. If I walk into the front bedroom and look out the bay window, I will also be able to see the hills stretching northeast away from me, hugging the bay.

In this city, changing one's position slightly can reveal a whole new image. It is impossible, here, to ever see an entire building from one part of the city. The houses crush up against each other, and the hillsides thrust them out at strange angles, obstructing but also shaping your vision. From here, I cannot see the bottom of what was once a bakery, so I cannot focus on the windows that I often look at. I can only see the domed roof, and so that is what draws me in. There are new buildings, too, although I have only moved farther up on the same hill that I have always lived on. All of a sudden an unyieldingly large rusted roof has given way to let through a burst of purple, the crow's nest of some jagged building. Church spires break out of hills behind the hills that have been my city.

From here I can see that just as the hills I know are falling over themselves to reach down into the water, there are others pulling from the other direction to run away and into the mountains.

And in the morning, in the fog, all I can see is that beyond the neighbor's garden the world disappears.

The house is a microcosm of the city itself. The stunning parquet floor is darker in spots where long-destroyed or sold furniture stood. The large and richly colored planks of the floors in the rest of the house have subtle depressions and rises. Strange windows are punched into the wall; I was not joking about the nearness of my mess, because if I turn my head I will be staring into the back bedroom and my gutted suitcases littering the rope rug. From the kitchen, I could serve you a plate of food without leaving the room. In the precipitious ceilings on the west end of the apartment, tiny, irregularly square skylights open at the end of small tunnels to the roof. And so the light from the wall of windows filters into the house in a makeshift but endearingly odd way. It falls short only of the murky fishbowl of the foyer and the unneccesarily wide hall (officially named the Pasaje, as of yesterday). To compensate, every room has a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling by its cord.

Out of all of these windows, only two open in the same manner as one another; we have windows that slide sideways, shedding paint chips; we have small dollhouse windows that are pulled in with a small handle; we have three-paned windows that slide up; and we have large, heavy windows that push upwards in a mammoth's impression of my childhood colonial-style windows.

None of this deters my attachment to this space, much as jackhammered sidewalks and rusting edifices have only made me feel closer to Valparaiso. An apartment, like a city, is an exterior space that folds over and becomes your internal space. Everything else in my life may be merely different renditions of what I would and will do elsewhere: work, worry, drink, eat, laugh, miss the bus and cry in the bathroom over nothing. It's all richer though for finding a space which echoes and expands through repetition the parts of my mind that draw me in and make me enjoy my thoughts. Beautiful, rusty, honest and unique, is my house, is my city.

Las Chilenas

2008-09-08T23:38:00.000-04:00

**This is the second in a series of posts in which various bloggers around Chile write on the same topic. The previous topic was Chilean men; the current one is Chilean women. Check out "Just Married Chilean Style" for links to the other blog posts.**

This topic was set for Friday. I've been dragging my feet about it because, frankly, there's a lot of animosity amongst gringas towards chilenas and I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to participate in this topic. After thinking a bit, though, I do think I'd like to throw in my two cents on precisely that aspect of things.

Gringas in Chile tend to paint the following image of chilenas: catty, cloistered, competitive, fashion-challenged, and unfriendly. I don't agree, but I do understand where this perspective comes from, and why it's so universally held. I have had a few run-ins with the type of behavior that inspires this stereotype, and it can be excessive. In the incident that first comes to mind, I was at a bar with a chileno friend, two of his male friends, and their two girlfriends. We were all sitting around the table talking, and although the girls weren't being super friendly towards me, they were behaving pretty normally. Then the guys got up to get another round of drinks. Immediately, I became invisible. The girls pointedly stopped talking to me, to the point where they didn't respond when I tried to speak to them. When the guys reappeared, they went back to normal. It was the most outrageous thing that has happened to me in a social setting since puberty (and its accompanying insanity) passed. I bawled my eyes out about it when I got home that night. It was petty, it was mean, and it made me feel like I would never make friends in this country.

Incidents like this are the fuel for the anti-chilena machine. Are they ridiculous? Yes. Do they happen to me here more than at home? Yes. Are they the province of chilenas alone? No.

The thing is, chilenas are just like women everywhere in the sense that at their best, they are warm, caring, and nurturing. At their worst they are territorial and barbed towards other women. The problem is that as extranjeras, we gringas are more likely to encounter the latter behavior.

Why? Because women everywhere can be suspicious of other women. There are various situations and instances which make this more likely to happen, and the gringa-chilena relationship often stumbles onto a few of them.

The first factor, shall we call it, is that both men and women are often less open when they are with their closest friends. If I'm hanging around with my favorite people, you just don't seem as cool. Nor do I feel particularly obliged to hang out with you, because I'm already having a fine time. In Chile, this situation is far more likely to happen than in the United States, because people here are almost always in the company of their nearest and dearest. The itinerant, transitory north american lifestyle is just not the norm here. People do not move away from home for university; they are less likely to move to a new city for a job; they are more emotionally tied to their families and so tend to stay close; and they just plain don't have as many places to go. In the US, when we hit maturity there is the expectation that we will go out into the world and find our own unique place. This is facilitated by the fact that we can move to any one of dozens and dozens of cities, across an astonishingly large territory, without so much as getting a new form of identification. Here, the economy is very much centralized based on sector. Fishing? Head south. Mining? Head north. Office work? Santiago. All of these things combine to create a society where people grow up with the same friends throughout their lives. So when you meet a chilena, the people she is with most likely remember how she wore her hair as an eight year old. That's a lot of history to compete with; I hope you've got a good opening joke. Santaguinos (both men and women) who have moved to the coast have told me that they have the same problem breaking into friend circles.

The second factor is that both men and women are more threatened by people who are different from them. Period. Sad but true, worldwide. Ask any immigrant, anywhere. Add to this that Chile is known for its racism, isolationism, and distrust, and you have a culture that is going to be even less receptive towards outsiders. This is a cultural trait, but it is not restricted to the women.

The third is that foreigners take more work to hang out with. Cross-cultural friendships involve incorporating different perspectives on major issues, behaviors that may strike you as odd, different attitudes towards friendships, and a host of other complications. This is worth it a) if you are interested in international perspectives or b) if you are particularly interested in the person, or both. However, for a lot of people, I could see why it might just be easier to stick to people who think like you do, laugh at the same things, and have experienced similar things. It's not my style, but I understand it.

Finally, a lot of gringas in Chile are dating chilenos. Some came here for their chileno; some came alone and ended up involved in a relationship. This is normal, fun, and wonderful for those who have found love. However, this is factor number four. You will notice that the story I told about my own bad experience happened when I was in the company of a chileno. The thing is that women, in any culture, are far more likely to be awful to one another when there are men in the picture. This is something that I find incredibly sad about my gender, but it's not unique to Chile. We women are territorial about our male friends, about our boyfriends, about our brothers. When a new woman enters a mixed-gender group of friends, she is going to have a much harder time winning over the girls than the guys. They are going to want to know what her intentions are. They are going to make snap judgements about whether she is "worth" their friend's time. If they are single, they might see her as a threat or an interloper.

This is something that makes me incredibly sad every time that I see it. For instance, consider the classic example: a woman's boyfriend cheats on her. What does she do? She finds the other girl, calls her a slut, denounces her to everyone within earshot, cries a lot, forces her boyfriend to denounce the other girl as well, and then slowly rebuilds her relationship with him. The boyfriend is the one who broke a promise and a confidence, but he is absolved because the two women take it out on one another.

It's depressing, and it's a trait that we need to abandon as a gender if we ever want to fully rise to equality.

But is it something that chilenas have a monopoly on? No.

I'm not saying that it's easy to make friends with chilenas. This is a very closed society. However, it's not easy to make friends with chilenos, either. In six months I have been approached by far more chilenos than chilenas, sure. But they're not interested in being my friend, they want something from me. Specifically, either to become attached to my hip, or to take me home for the night. That hardly qualifies as friendly in my book. Meanwhile, the few chilenas who have made an effort towards me do so out of honest friendliness. With my Spanish, anyone who's willing to beast their way through a conversation with me with no specific benefit in mind has got to be a genuinely nice person.

Basically, this reminds me of something a professor told me when I lived in France. France, also, is a closed society, and my language classmates and I were complaining about not being able to make friends with the other students.

"I lived in the United States for one year," she said, roughly, "and at first I thought everyone was so nice. Everyone invited me out, took me places, talked to me...it was great. Except that was it. They weren't really my friends. It was all superficial. At the end of the year, after all of that, I had two real friends, people I could really count on. Here, no one will initiate a friendship with you like in the US. But when they do, it's because they mean it. So, at the end of the year, you'll probably have two friends, and they'll be real friends. It's a different style, but in the end, people are people, and you'll make connections with the same amount of people no matter where you live."

An Ode to Chilean Salads

2008-09-03T21:45:00.006-04:00

..yes, really, no sarcasm.

So, as mentioned in the last post, I am going vegetarian. 6 months of hearty meat and potatoes food has left me feeling like every blood cell in my body is running around with a backpack full of unneccesary building material, and I want out. This food is similar to what my German grandmother prefers, and in both her case and in Chile this diet derives from a farming lifestyle. As in, wake up before dawn, eat as much protein and carbs as possible, hit the fields and work non-stop until mid-afternoon, repeat meal, repeat labor, drop into bed and do it all over again.

When I was working as an apple-picker in New Zealand I had a similar lifestyle, which involved filling 4 or more 1000lb bins a day:

Not to mentiontion placing and climbing up a 12 foot ladder with an awkward load of 25lbs of apples.

Now, I couldn't afford a mountain of meat and potatoes at that point, but I did eat just about as much tuna fish and ramen noodles as I could get my hands on....so I understand the protein and carb heavy diet.

These days, though, the most energy I expend at work is writing on a whiteboard and gesturing like a maniac. While tiring, this hardly constitutes manual labor.

As for the rest of the time, I do a lot of walking, sure, but I don't need a farmer's diet. Yesterday, I mentioned this to the host fam. Or rather, they thrust some chicken nuggets at me and I recoiled with my hand over my face squeaking, "No! No! No puedo! No mas!"

Today I came home with slow feet, heavy hearted, not looking forward to my plate of difficult digestion. When I walked in, host-dad was pointing at a covered plate with a sense of urgency. I sat down, lifted the plate and found....a gigantic, fresh salad.

Pure joy. I broke my fast and introduced nutrition back into my life.

The thing is, in the US a salad means a whole heap of lettuce with a couple of other veggies mixed in, then doused in some heavy dressing. I really don't like them that much, I must confess.

Now I realize that lettuce alone may have been keeping me off vegetarianism for years. What a worthless vegetable--no taste, hard to eat, fills up space. And yet I've gone along thinking it was the basis of any salad apart from the fabulous cucumber-and-tomato mediterranean salad. How wrong I was.

In Chile, a salad is a collection of sliced vegetables laid out in a nice spread on a plate. True, if you go to a restaurant that may be sliced vegetable, singular, such as only celery. However, in someone's home, you are likely to get a nice plate. This evening I was treated to half an avocado, a sliced beet, diced potato with oregano, half of a sliced tomato, some steamed broccoli, and a hard-boiled egg. For dressing, you squeeze a lemon over the top and add, as you wish, olive oil, vinegar, and salt. I generally go for just lemon and a bit of salt.

They may not like them as much as I do, or understand why I want to eat them so frequently, but when Chileans do salads they do them right.

Breaking Point 1

2008-09-02T14:21:00.000-04:00

So, when living in a foreign culture, your environment is, clearly, foreign. Your life is suddenly inundated by a mass of traditions, customs, behaviors, and lifestyles that you must evaluate carefully as you become aware of them. If you don't go through this evaluation process, one consequence is that you will have very little understanding of the experience you are living. The other is that you will never be able to hybridize your foreign self with your new foreign land so that both can lose the "foreign" tag and just become pleasantly different.

Part of this process is picking out the traits in both yourself and your new culture (and the interaction between the two) that you love and want to heighten and encourage. For myself, the first thing to come to mind is the affectionate aspect of the culture here. No, I don't ever see myself calling up a friend and telling her, "te quieeeeeeeero si muuuuucho! beeesooos!!" But I'm all about the kiss hello, the freer use of compliments, and just plain old letting people know that you care about them. I recognize that there's a very reserved aspect of my character that I am slowly abandoning. We gringos tend to be more open with new people than chilenos, but ironically we keep our close friends at more of a distance. Well, chau to that. I'm going sudamericana on this one if I can help it.

Another aspect of this evaluation process is figuring out the "agree-to-disagree" issues. One such example is the piropos as discussed in yesterday's post. Ok, piropos, if no one here minds you you can go about your business....I'm not going to try to convince people that this is a disaster if they don't see it that way. But when I become involved, I reserve my right to respond as I see fit, because it still violates my ideas of moral and respectful behaviour.

The third side of this evaluation, is picking out the things that you simply cannot introduce into your life. Essentially, you need to make rejections. It is all well and good to say that as an immigrant I should go out of my way to accomodate my new culture, and I would say that I and most other internationals worldwide do just that. But there are things that just cannot jive, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as the rejection is made in a respectful way. I have reached the point where I need to make the first of mine. I am stepping down from the chileno diet.

I have been living with a family (as mentioned below) for 6 months, and as part of my rent they feed me three meals a day (although I'm a 2-a-day ticket in general). The food is delicious, absolutely wonderful; the mother is a very talented cook. But this relationship, chilean food and I, well, it's just not working out.

I haven't fully experienced this before in my other foreign travels because no matter how long I lived away, I was still cooking my own food. I'd eat the local cuisine at restaurants and friends' houses, but the majority of my diet was an altered version of what I would eat at home. In my case, this means loads of vegetables and very little red meat or poultry. Plus, of course, the side benefits--I believe in a well-stocked spice cabinet. As a result, I would develop an opinion of the local diet, but never really had to make a decision about it.

Now that I have been totally immersed in a foreign diet, I feel a much greater understanding for my grandmother, who immigrated to the US from the North Sea. She never gave up cooking German food, which she still eats to this day. I thought this was stubborn. Now I see that there are some changes that are just too much to handle, and your internal environment is probably the first area where one might find these.

Consider one example of a meal in my Chilean life (not pictured: soup and bread on the side):

Meanwhile, I live in a country with plentiful, fresh, cheap produce:

For the first few months, going out and supplementing picture number one with picture number two managed to keep me pretty happy. Recently though, I've come to feel so unhealthy that I'm conscious of it pretty much all day long. It's not a cardiovascular thing--the hills here are enough to keep anyone in good shape. It's the extreme overload of calories, particularly given that those calories come in the form of a lot of meat and a lot of carbs. There are two main reactions I've noticed. At times, this diet makes me feel famished all of the time, because even with my vitamins I'm clearly lacking nutrients that I am used to. The second is that sometimes I never feel hungry, and every meal feels like it's following directly on the one I ate previously.

Last week my parents were visiting, and so I ate a lot of restaurant food and drank a lot of wine. I have found that this, on top of 6 months of not-my-kind-of-food, was the breaking point. For years I've played around with vegetarianism but never gone all the way with it. Well, I'm done. Good-bye carne and mountain of potatoes. At the moment I am fasting (family: don't freak out, I do this on occasion and it isn't dangerous) to allow my body to recuperate a bit from the inundation of calories. When I finish my fast at the end of this week, I'm going to cut red meat and poultry out of my diet. For the moment I'm going to hold on to fish, but we'll see.

So Chile and I have had our first real fight, but I'm confident that our new compromise will pull us through.

Piropos, in depth

2008-09-01T21:22:00.004-04:00

So I was reading another blog, and there was a post about piropos. These are the antics of men in the street who get their kicks by bothering women in any number of ways, ranging from benign comments about prettiness, to obscene gestures and lewd remarks, to hissing and high decibal kissy noises. Read all about it from my first rant on the subject. Anyhow, this blog post that I was reading is specifically related to a very layered question: should you respond to these men? --in a negative fashion, claro, if you want to take them up on their offers that's your business.

I found the post very interesting but even more so the comments. I started to write one of my own but soon found it was turning into a post in its own right, so here I am.

In my own life, I tend not to respond to the running commentary. As I mentioned in my previous post on the topic, it's pretty constant. I'm hoping it will ebb some in the summer when the tourists come, but at least this winter being a blond has made me an exceptionally easy target. I just look strange, and that grabs attention. I don't have it with me but at some point in her memoir "My Imagined Country," Isabel Allende makes the comment that men in Chile will go crazy over a blond woman "even if she has the face of an iguana." Add to that, "if she is wearing sweats," "if she hasn't showered in three days," "if she looks like she hates the world," and "if she is in the company of her father," and you get the idea. I am very jealous of a certain short brunette friend who can "pass," as they used to say in a very different context. She frequently notes how much more annoying it is when I'm around. Of course, that statement holds true for a lot of things, but in this instance it's not my fault. In any event, if I were to respond to all of these jerks, I would spend as much of my time engaged in this sport as they do, and I truly would not wish that on anyone.

I agreed with one strategy that was mentioned, which is essentially to give them a look that reads, "oh how pathetic." Luckily I do this pretty naturally so it doesn't take too much effort. I do worry occasionally about some undiscovered link between excessive eye-rolling and future cataracts. Otherwise though, a pretty efficient approach. I will say, though, that I have a sort of knee-jerk reaction sometimes (generally after a hiss or a kissy noise--oh how I hate the kissy noise). This reaction generally involves me stiffening my arms, extending my fingers in some sort of cat-arching-its-back imitation, and letting out a ridiculously aggrieved noise which generally startles whomever I'm walking with. Ocasionally there are obscenities involved. I suppose there must just be a slow build-up that gets let out every once in a while.

While I was reading other people's perspectives, I began to realize what a multi-faceted issue this is. First, there was one comment that mentioned that gringas on vacation who go for the "latin lover" stereotype create much of this problem, at least for other gringas. I disagree with this very intensely. I understand that we are seen as "loose," as it was put, on much of this continent. Girls from the US are seen that way in a lot of Europe, as well. Honestly, this doesn't bother me--in fact, I think that plenty of us are more liberal in our sexual lives than many women here are. There is definitely a different attitude towards sex in the US and here, and I think that's just fine. Yay for difference, and acceptance of difference. Anyhow, what some gringas do or do not do in their personal lives has absolutely nothing to do with what some creep can say to me on the street. That to me is just an extension of the notorious "she was asking for it" logic. The thing is, when was the last time a guy yelled at a woman with the idea that she might sleep with him? These men know they're doing nothing but harassing us. I have a much higher tolerance for sleazy guys who hit on me in bars than I do for the street guys--at least the former have some aim involved other than impressing their friends and making my life unpleasant.

However, there's also another side to this, I realized. It was also suggested that gringas talk to Chilenas and tell them to fight back. The problem with this is, I don't think that's our place. In fact, I don't think it's warranted. I've had enough Chilenas (and French women, who live in a similar environment catcall-wise) tell me that they like the comments that I'm pretty convinced that this is a cultural issue, beyond being a gender issue. Yes, it is a very sexual thing. However, this is also a very sexual culture, compared to my own. And going back to what I said above, that's just fine. Gringas might be more inclined to have casual sex for pleasure--that does not make them sluts, or loose, or any other such obnoxious label. Chilenas may be more inclined to enjoy a sexualized relationship between the genders as a whole--that does not make them degraded, unless they fel that way, which I have not found that they do. Those who don't love the comments tend to find them harmless or at worse slightly annoying.

So, where does this leave us? In my opinion, to each her own. I hate the comments; when I walk towards a group of ogling guys that I can't avoid my stomach hits the pavement. So I will continue to roll my eyes until they fall out of my head and occasionally yell out nonsensical frustrations. And more power to the all-out combatants; I sympathize completely. I don't think that this is a societal problem to be solved--I think this a culture clash that every irritated woman must put up with in her own way. As for equalization of rights, well, maybe around the same time that women in the US start having the ability to express themselves equally, women in Chile will be out there in the streets hissing away with the best of 'em. Gender progress takes many forms--to quote Paul Simon, who am I to blow against the wind?

Oh go ahead, say what you really think...

2008-08-28T23:32:00.006-04:00

The mother of the family with which I live (a doozy of an English sentence....should it be "with whom?") ..has just come home.

She has been living with their eldest daughter for 2.5 months in order to take care of her granddaughter. Why? A terrible accident? A desperate job situation? No attachments back here in Valpo? No. It was winter. Therefore, the baby would die if taken from home to day care. You see this every day here. When babies are taken outside in the winter months, they are wrapped in fleece blankets so that not even one baby finger is sticking out. When my mother saw this for the first time last Saturday, she was quite concerned because she thought the bundled-baby-shape must have been on its way to the hospital. A few days later, we passed another fully wrapped baby...while both of us were wearing tank tops and sweating.

My German grandmother apparently had similar concerns when I was born. My birthday is in the beginning of August, and I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. So the temperature on an average day in my first month of life was about 90 farenheit (high 30s celsius, I think, but anything with numbers loses me). However, my grandmother was extremely concerned about what was known as The Draft. My parents would find her lowering all the windows to a crack, because the dreadful draft was sure to suck away my life energy if I wasn't protected by being sealed in an airless room.

Anyhow. So Host Mom went to save the baby, in a manner after my maternal grandmother's own heart. I saw her today for the first time after her return a day ago. After berating me for my frequent absence from the house, she asked me: "How did you parents find you?"

That is a completely direct translation. You know what she means. However, think about it. We have no comparable question in English. I was rather confused when trying to respond in the immediate pace of a conversation. Did she mean, "were they happy to see you?" or "was it easy to meet them?" etc. Of course she wanted to know what they thought of me after 6 months (an obscene amount of time in this half of the Southern Cone). But really, what does one say? "They don't love me anymore"?

So I went with my steadfast, "Fine!" (en espanol...forgive my tilde-less keyboard)

And she responded, "Gordita?" ("a little fat?")

As a statement to my acclimatization, I was not entirely thrown off by this. When picturing seeing this woman again, I had thought perhaps she would comment on my Spanish (which gets better every month). "You speak so much better than when I left!" was a possible comment in my imagined world. I had not even really delved into the past tense when she left. I had a vague notion that she might get onto less positive subjects, given the cultural tendency towards the utterly blunt, but I was still rather put off (despite understanding its normalcy) by the weight comment.

This is impossible for a gringa to talk about without falling into either exxageration or dimunition, but to try to be fair, I would say I've gained about 10 pounds in Chile (due mostly to the incredibly unbalanced diet, which will be featured in another post). However, due to the fact that I'm constantly exercising by walking up and down hils, my body in general form hasn't changed too drastically. It's me, plus a widening here or there. I'm not all that interested in any of it, given its small proportions, but at the same time it's not exactly something I'm thrilled about. Being a Northamerican woman, I am pretty well conditioned to think that any change in my body is something to worry over. I don't endorse it, but there it is.

However, I went with the flow. "Yes, a little, I guess," I said.

"Yeah," she said, nodding, "You're definitely fatter than when I left."

Thanks!

From there we moved on to my parents being tired from so much walking, which was attributed to them probably being lazy and used to driving everywhere. Finally we rounded off the reunion with yet another chat about whether or not my volunteer program was going to pay them more rent.

It was truly heartwarming. Honesty is certainly not lacking in our relationship, I can say that.

On a totally and completely unrelated note, I am apartment hunting at the moment...

Yes. It's time to be an isolated, antisocial gringa adult once more.

Touristing Valparaiso (with a cameo by Santiago)

2008-08-24T18:26:00.014-04:00

I have my first visitors here in Chile....my lovely parents. On Friday night I pulled an accidental all-nighter and was on the first bus out of Valpo to pick them up at the airport at 7:30. We spent the day in Santiago, where we watched the changing of the guard at La Moneda, which seems to be based off the British ceremony with the addition of as much fanfare as possible (something that can be said for many things in Chile)

We also went to the Museo de Arte Precolumbino, wandered around the Plaza de Armas and the Mercado Central, and had a very nice lunch in Bellavista. At this point neither my parents, who had been on a plane all night, nor myself, who had been drinking tea and not planning ahead all night, were the least bit coherent. We grabbed their luggage out of storage and were back in Valpo by 6.

Today we set out to explore the city. They are staying in the very luxe Zero Hotel on Cerro Alegre, which I can say is a dream to freeload in (as I sit in an easy chair looking out across the bay). So to get started I decided we should take a look at the city from another angle.

We started out at the Sunday feria in Plaza O'Higgins, which is part flea market, part antique fair.

We poked through the spin-wheel sewing machines, cabinet record-players, brass doorknockers and ancient magazines until my father looked like he was going to fall asleep on his feet from boredom. We livened things up with a puppet show.

Afterwards we took a walk that merged on body-surfing through the Sunday feria on Avenida Argentina. This fair is approximately five blocks long and four stalls deep. Here you can buy just about everything imaginable: shaving cream, underwear, t-shirts, baseball caps (NY Yankees, but no Red Sox--unpardonable), masking tape, bolts, valentines, empanadas, chapstick, furniture, and pretty much anything else that someone managed to buy in bulk and lay out on a blanket. The place is thronged from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.

From there it was a very quick walk to the Ascensor Polanco, which opened in 1916. It is the only ascensor in Valparaiso that runs entirely vertically. It is accessed through a long stone tunnel, and it takes you to the top of a wooden tower with gorgeous views of the city.

You walk from the tower to Cerro Polanco by means of a long walkway, which is also an excellent place for flying kites, as a group of kids demonstrate below (not pictured: kite, as it was about a kilometer above us).

My parents brightening up the scenery.

Then we walked around the hill. Cerro Polanco is not in your guide book (if its any guidebook I've come across), but it should be. It is a quiet hill with small, colorful houses, corner markets, and great views. It's Valpo, in other words, but a particularly nice example of it that comes without the touristy feel of Cerros Alegre and Concepcion. Don't mistake me; I live on Cerro Alegre and I love the area. However I think the common practice of restricting tours of Valparaiso to those two hills, or even starting with them, is not the best way to see the city. Those hills should be loved for what they are, which is a great artistic enclave with some of the nicest (and most expensive) houses in town. They shouldn't, though, be taken as representative of, or the only interesting part of, the city. Every neighborhood has its own character and you don't need the mansions of shipping barons to enjoy a walk in Valparaiso. On Cerro Polanco, you'll find a very tranquilo jumble of color, parks, and stairways.

In the words of my mother, "It feels like a neighborhood. It feels like the kind of place where you could just walk down the street, knock on the door to see if anybody is home, and spend some time chatting on the stoop. There's sort of a peace to it, I guess, not frenetic. I loved all the kids running around just enjoying themselves, playing games, flying kites. Some places you go don't feel like a neighborhood--but on Cerro Polanco you see people walking around, beating rugs, just going about their business. It felt very villagy even though it wasn't that scale, because villages to me feel very community-focused in a way that the word 'town' or 'city' doesn't get across."

From Cerro Polanco we headed to the neighboring Cerro Baron, which can share in most of the descriptions of the former. The view from the top has great views back over the basin of the city, and down onto the plan. The houses opposite the Universidad Catolica reminded my mother of Dr. Seuss houses with trufula trees (reference: the Lorax).

On Cerro Baron we also found the alternative to Jumbo (a gigantic supermarket that might be compared to Wal-Mart, although it only sells food):

Just paces away: Jumbito!

More on Berry Breene, Mural Maven

2008-08-22T16:52:00.003-04:00

So a while back I mentioned my friend Berry. Check her out on the ever-sophisticated local news from Erie, PA. In this clip you can see the gigantic mural that she just finished, and her fine self sounding very articulate. I used to think Berry was short, but watching this video I realized that she's just Chilean-sized.

Some more Valpo murals in her honor:

Chilean men--or lack thereof

2008-08-21T22:58:00.007-04:00

This post is part of a multi-blog blog (like that? an English teacher using a made-up word as both a noun and a verb in one sentence?). Essentially there are masses of us gringos blogging away here in Chile (there it is again). Why? Inexplicable. Maybe it's because you can't throw a stone here (if you were inclined to) without hitting one of Pablo Neruda's houses. Or maybe we're all just exhibitionists. Can't really say. I for one was entirely against the concept when I moved here (see post numero uno for proof). I like to write, though, and as I seemed unable to put pen to paper without going on for pages about emotional ups and downs, I figured measures needed to be taken to ensure that I would have some writing of value to represent my Chilean Years (as the book of my life will label them).

That's fab, Meredith, you may be thinking, but what's this multi-blog business? Or, you may be thinking, are you capable of writing a sentence without a parentheses in it?

To the point. A woman who writes a really interesting blog in Santiago has organized a project of having various Chile bloggers writing on the same subject all at once, then inter-linking the results. I think this could yield some really interesting results, so I'm jumping in and hoping to see more of this in the future. You can check out the other posts through her blog.

The topic for this particular post was set as "Chilean men." I sat down to think about what I had to add to this discussion, at first I thought, "not much."

I slowly realized though that that, in and of itself, is a bit of an oddity.

I came to Chile alone. I've been here for over six months and I am single. None of this is particularly shocking to me, other than the fact that I've managed to avoid starting a pointless relationship simply out of boredom (a vice of mine). Everyone else in the country, though, seems to be completely blindsided by my manless-ness.

It is apparently very difficult to stay single in this country. Walk into any park and you are in danger of tripping over a tangled couple. When my students talk about themselves, if there is a girlfriend or a boyfriend in the picture, you know about it by sentence number two, because every free time activity involves him or her. (sample conversation: Me: "What did you do last weekend?" Student: "I went to visit my boyfriend. I watched a movie with my boyfriend. I went walking with my boyfriend....") People's significant others call them and ask simply, "Where are you?" This is not a simple request for information...this is shorthand for "disclose your location, because I'm coming, and I don't intend to ask what you think about that because we are dating and therefore you want me present at every moment." Basically, codependency, like awkward, is not a word that would make sense here. It would translate roughly as "in a relationship."

In a climate like this, it makes sense that everyone who is not in a relationship tends to be actively seeking one with the intentness of a job hunter. I once had someone explain to me that he had recently ended a two year relationship, but he was ready to get back on the market because it had been over two weeks since the big break up. Plenty of alone time to think things over.

So when I say that I'm not really looking because I "recently ended a relationship," and then am pushed into disclosing that "recently" means six or seven months ago, people just think I'm out of my mind.

I should mention that one of the myriad of benefits of living in a machisto culture is that everyone I meet, particularly men, asks about my relationship status on first encounter. Even if I work with them. Even if I work for them, for that matter, or if I am their teacher. So this topic comes up pretty frequently.

Explaining that I am a disaster in the Spanish language (see: title bar of this blog) doesn't help me out much either. In the roughly translated words of one well-meaning interrogator (with whom I have a professional relationship which would have precluded this conversation in other countries): "What are you talking about?! You're very pretty! You don't need to be able to speak well!"

I actually prefer to be able to communicate with romantic partners, thanks. I'll leave my response at that because I'm sure you can imagine what the rest of it would be.

I had one private lesson that pretty much consisted of me spending 90 minutes, three times a week, explaining all of the ins and outs of my relationship status. No joke. I'd tell him to practice asking questions in the simple past, and the first one he'd come up with would be, "Why did you break up with your ex-boyfriend?"

The unintelligible quality of my single status comes from two main angles, as I see it. First, I'm 25, which means I should be husband-hunting based on common logic. A friend told me that she was recently reading a women's magazine which had conducted a survey in which Chilean women were asked what they were most afraid of. One of the top ten was not getting married. So when people hear that I'm not dating anyone, they go into a bit of empathetic panic. Some people I've talked to seem to equate my current state of mind as the equivalent of a near-suicidal giving-up on life.

Secondly, I'm a gringa. Living in Chile. But not because I am dating or married to a Chilean man. I've touched on this before: this is totally incomprehensible to 99% of people that I meet. To be fair, I myself know very few foreign women who are living in Chile for reasons other than a Chilean partner. Many came for other reasons, but stayed for a relationship. So the fact that I don't have a departure date OR a boyfriend is just an unreal combination.

Well, Chile, get used to it. I spent a whole bunch of years being completely undiscerning in my choice of men. The old criteria was pretty much: you're here, you like me, let's date. In short, when I was living in the United States, I dated like a Chilean. Now that I'm in Chile, I am planning to be picky and date like a gringa.

Valparaiso finally gets it together

2008-08-20T21:37:00.002-04:00

Check out Valparaiso's new tourism website.

After the gorgeous intro, you can toggle into English on the right middle of the page.

The English translation is choppy in bits but overall I'm thrilled with this site. It is comprehensive, and more than that, it represets Valparaiso more or less accurately. It has been an unending frustration to me that most of Valparaiso's marketing is led by people who seem to think that what the city is is not worth visiting. Instead, they take a picture of something that makes the city look like a resort and then gloss over everything that makes the city amazing and unique. It is really exciting to see a website that embraces Valparaiso's identity. There are still overtones of the same old apologetics...but in general, this website is a solid effort to connect the city with the people who are interested in it for what it really is.

Bravo.

Spring: sprung.

2008-08-20T01:51:00.009-04:00

Valparaiso, being an old city, a pre-car city, is built the way I like a city to be. That is, human proportioned. Small buildings leaning over small roads, tightly curled in upon itself like a knot of the strings that trail behind us as we live our lives. I could see this being a claustrophobic place for some. For me, though, it is a perfect mix of warm and cold. It is perched, practically falling into, the huge empty horizon line of the sea; a satisfyingly precarious openness. Against the strange and impersonal depths of the ocean, the city feels like a warm buzzing fortress of the quotidian.

It is, perhaps, the most detailed city I have ever seen. This is difficult to explain sight unseen, so I will relay my typical parable on this topic. A month or two ago, a friend had a picture on her camera of this little piece of awesome:

"That is," I said, predictably, "awesome! Where is it?"

"Almironte Montt," she told me, with a 'what is your deal' look....fairly, because Almironte Montt is a street that I walk down, on average, 3 times daily.

So I kept my eyes open the next time. And...I didn't see it. I was actively looking for a 4 foot high stack of televisions with a command printed on them (shut off the television, live your life...I'm sure you figured it out without my brilliant translation aid). Anyhow, not what every average person has in their front patio. Nonetheless, I could not find it. I actually had to call my friend and ask where exactly I could find the televisions on this 4 block stretch of the road that I walk. Why? Because there is just so. much. to look at.

"Did you ever notice," said a Chilean who has lived here for years, "that the upper windows in Plaza Victoria are painted? I never noticed before." And this doesn't make this person spacy. This is just Valparaiso. Every day I notice something that I have been blind to for months simply because I was always distracted by something else just as attention-absorbing (if you happen to prefer trees to forests..although I'll say that the forest here is perfectly worthy of its trees).

So. Going back to the build of the city. In a mostly cement, brick and mortar world, one wouldn't expect too much of a big deal for spring. Furthermore, the winter here is the equivalent of a chilly September day in New England. Having lived in Northwestern Pennsylvania, where spring explodes in a way that makes you fall backwards into a nearby chair (before fading within a week into unbreathing summer), I can say that it's certainly not a fireworks show here. Nonetheless, though, it is an unmistakeable change in the atmosphere of the city that swept in with unexpected force.

The first hint was two weeks ago, when I met friends for dinner and Emma stopped for a minute. "I smell flowers," she said, and we all sniffed around, shrugged, and went off for a jug of fruit wine.

Then, a few days later, all of the cherry trees bloomed. It must have happened overnight. And it didn't knock me over like a NWPA spring does. But it made me catch my breath. Because spring here, like everything else seems to be, is a slow creeping in of details, a subtle colored pencil taken to the edges of the pen and ink sketch.

It's still chilly. And there was a downpour last Friday. But spring is here, and it is brightening the already bright city.

For those who are concerned about me personally, and are noting the timestamp yet again, I can explain that the reason that I am blogging at 2:30 in the morning is because I need a break from this:

Yes, being a Professional English Speaker is not always as glamorous as you never assumed it was. Sometimes I get to stay up all night plotting grids that by all rights ought to be designed by a computer-person, all so that I can ask strangers earnestly if there are any "large changes going on in their life that might be affecting their skin."

Thanks to begrudgingly generous friend Matt for providing me with a surface on which it is possible to do work, and a tasteful environment in which to do so.

About the only thing tasteful about this particular project....

San Fernando: The City Where Random Blog Posts Are Born

2008-08-17T19:56:00.004-04:00

So I am currently cooling my heels in the much-chillier-than-Valpo, VI region city of San Fernando. I am in an internet cafe rocking out to 99 Red Balloons (English, not German, version). Why am I doing this? (are you impressed by my ability to read your thoughts, imaginary blog reader?)

I am doing this because this weekend I had a mandatory meeting in Pichilemu. I was placed in my Trabajo Numero Uno by a US-based NGO. I am actually a volunteer in said Trabajo, so this was my Mid-Service....Meeting. Generally I talked way too much about teaching, culture, and Chile, and I bitched and moaned a bunch....so, it was a lot like this blog. I also, though, was able to eat burritos and walk on the beach with 17 people to whom I clung like Glad Wrap during the terrifying days of February in Santiago (otherwise known as "What-Am-I-Doing-Here? Month"). So it was a pleasant, if somewhat odd, experience. Former Only Friend Elisa (former applying to the "only" bit, not the "friend" bit) is currently being visited by her parents so I was the sole Valpo representative. Which meant that most of what I said was tangential to the main points of the conversation. In that way it was also somewhat like this blog, and like me in general.

Pichilemu is a really pleasant town on the water. It's famous for surfing at Punto de Lobos, and as such it has a very interesting vibe. Small town Chile meets surfer-world, with which I am more than a little acquainted (by proxy). So basically Rip Curl and Dakine stickers all over places with names like "Donde Jhonny" and "El Tio de los Empanadas." Also, surf-widow mini-skirts in display windows alongside your average small-store-with-an-unpredictable-assortment-of-food-items-booze-and-small-electronics. A group of us tried to walk out to Punto de Lobos, but we didn't have enough time. The rest of the beach was still gorgeous, though.

Only problem (well, biggest problem): there are no buses that go from Valparaíso to Pichilemu. A transfer is necessary, but, this being Chile, it is randomly Not Possible to purchase both of these tickets in Valpo. It is also, conveniently, Not Possible to buy return tickets in Valpo. And this is a three day weekend, which means the entire country is getting on buses to go somewhere or other.

On Friday, then, I headed off to Santiago in a pouring monsoon of a rainstorm, plastic bags around all of my possesions and borrowed boots on my feet. Yes, I strand people in rainstorms without their rainboots because I am too disorganized to have bought my own. Moving along. I was rather irritable about this, because I had no way of knowing whether I would in fact be able to get a seat on a bus to Pichilemu, or whether I was taking a random puddle-jump to Santiago and back. Luckily, there was a bus. Unluckily, there are two routes: the 3 hour route, and the 5 hour route. Guess which one our poor Spanish speaker chanced onto?

I arrived in Pichilemu after everything was closed, so I was unable to buy a return ticket. The next day, I learned that the only buses going back to Santiago that had seats available would most likely get me there too late to get back to Valpo. And I have 5 classes tomorrow.

Enter Awesome New Friend Kacy and Not-Yet-Met-But-Undoubtedly-Awesome Boyfriend of Kacy. These folks made a major trek down to Pucon this weekend (many many hours south of Valpo, nine or ten I believe). They agreed to pick me up en route, something for which I am extremely grateful. So I bought a ticket from Pichilemu to San Fernando, a town which sits conveniently along the highway.

Thanks to a bus ticket vendor who has most likely never made the trip to the big SF, I ended up here 3 hours early. So, here I am. It being dark out, I can't comment on the town. The bus station is cold and boring, as they tend to be, but equipped with an internet cafe, a major blessing.

And that, dear reader, is why this post exists. Call it a meta-post.

More on Pichilemu some other time.

The country that never sleeps

2008-08-15T01:29:00.003-04:00

So. It's 1:30am. Over the past week I have slept perhaps 4 hours a night (and I am a person who prefers 10 or 12, when possible). And yet, instead of curling up with my borrowed cats in my fabulously empty guest room chez amigo/caretaker amiga (how's that for mixed up linguistics....is there a spanish word for "chez"?)...I am writing on my blog.

Why? Why Meredith? (you ask). Well, blog reader, (I reply) apparently Chile is contagious.

There is some sort of super-human gene in your average Chilean that allows them to function perfectly well on approximately 10 minutes of sleep per night. I am absolutely dumbfounded by the hours that are kept here. Let's take a look at a Composite Sample day based on various people I know:

5:30am. Wake up. Shower. Eat breakfast.
6:15 - 7:30am. Stand in ridiculously packed micro on the way to a job in some inconvenient location.
7:30am - 7pm. Work. Or, be at your place of work, even if there is no work to be done, because butts in chairs have symbolic value.
7pm - 8:45pm. Ride home in ridiculously crowded micro through rush hour traffic.
8:45- 9pm. Relax.
9pm - 9:30pm. Eat onces (something approximately an afternoon snack which takes dinner's place, to my chagrin) and talk rapidly.
9:30pm - 12am. Study for some degree that you are working on, and/or work on your home-run business.
12am - 4am. Night clubbing, we're night clubbing...
5:30am. Repeat.

I am rather in awe of all this. Generally I leave clubs at the time when everyone else is showing up (around 2am, in most cases). I have also at times been at parties which then turn into outings....at 4am. After a night like that, I am generally out of whack and worthless for the next few days, and in need of a few weeks' rest before I'm up for another round.

However, Chile is getting to me. At the moment I have 3 jobs and a side project. I have met more new people in the last two weeks than I did in my first 2 months in Valpo...and I've been seeing both the new friends and the old regularly. My life has suddenly turned into a no-rest-zone. And yet I seem to be addicted (see timestamp on this entry).

A current composite day in the life of this chilenacized gringa:

6:20am. Wake up. Curse the fact. Reset alarm. (some things never change)
6:40am. Wake up again. Realize that lateness is becoming a threat. Take a shower. Loose showerhead falls on head at least once. More cursing.
6:50 - 7:30am. Put on clothes. Check weather. Put on other clothes. Wander around room picking up and putting away various teaching-related items, trying to clear the fog and figure out what exactly I am being paid to do on this particular day.
8 - 11am. Bounce around while speaking very slowly to 18 students who find me amusing on a good day, and crazy on any.
11am - 12pm. Ride micro to the office of distant employer.
12pm - 1pm. Have brief meeting with said employer.
1pm - 2pm. Ride micro back to Valpo.
2pm - 3pm. Have coffee with a friend.
3pm - 4pm. Spanish class.
4pm - 6pm. Get to a computer and churn out a combination of copy writing for distant employer, worksheets for evening students, and update emails for side project.
6pm - 7:30pm. Speak at a moderate rate about maritime terms with tired students.
7:30 - 9pm. Eat food that a cooking-prone friend generously proffers. Talk sh*t.
9pm - 12:30am. Go out to a bar or social gathering with some combination of friends.
12:30 -3:30am. Continue various emails, content generating, and so forth for side project. Write a bit more silly copy.
3:30am. Fall asleep with computer still on the bed.
6:20am. Wake up with even redder eyes, achier head, and incoherent mind. Cursing. And repeat.

So, I'm now rather convinced that I have somehow been infected by the prevalent Chilean motivation to be either at work or socializing at every moment that that it is physically possible to fight off gravity. I also seem to have come down with a case of the "DIY employment" entrepreneurship that is so incredibly present here (more on this cultural trait later, as it deserves a proper post).

Unfortunately I have not caught the unreal resistance to fatigue and its side-effects that most people here exhibit. For instance, I once had a woman come to an 8am class after working two shifts in a row---meaning she had been working since 3pm the previous day. All throughout class, her eyes would start to close and her head would start to drop.....and then she'd pull herself back up and conjugate some verbs.

Well, hat's off, Chile. I don't know how you all do it. I'm going to stop pretending I can, and hopefully regain some of my lost functioning ability.

Awkward: the most gringo word on earth.

2008-08-11T11:51:00.003-04:00

This, anyhow, is what I have concluded after months of searching for a translation for this word. On a much earlier post, I asked for ideas. Some people suggested incomodo, or "uncomfortable," but my bilingual Argentinian friend nixed this. I also agree in my limited understanding that it doesn't fit the bill. So ever since I've been pursuing a translation on and off.

Why? Well, because living in Chile is the singular most awkward experience of my life. Showing up in an isolated, Spanish-speaking country where people both do not tend to speak English and are also somewhat wary and insulated from foreigners, without any Spanish whatsoever: every day since February 7, 2008, has been a succession of awkward events. Add in trying to make new friends, learn a new profession, live with somebody else's family, and navigate a new city, and you have a host of extra (as if that were necessary) awkward moments.

As such, it's been rather frusturating to me that I am unable to express this word in Spanish. Given that I live with Chileans and also do my best to befriend others (with pretty unsatisfactory results up to this point, unfortunately) I would like to be able to describe my day accurately.

I've finally figured out why the search for this word has proved so difficult. The reason: awkward is an invention of gringos. The concept does not exist in latin culture.

I've discovered this through a series of interviews with Chileans in which I explain awkward scenarios to them in an effort to elicit the word one would use to describe them. In every instance, the Chilean in question has looked at me as if to say...."So?" Well, actually, they've said the Spanish equivalent. Consider the following example (in which I am portraying myself as far more articulate than I actually am in this language):

"So you're at a dinner party," I suggested to my host sister. "All of a sudden a guy says something kind of mean and personal about his girlfriend. So everyone gets kind of quiet and tries to pretend that they didn't hear what happened."

I looked at her expectantly. "No," she said, "if it's not too bad, then it's funny. And if the guy is out of line, then you'd be like, 'What are you saying to her?! Back off!'"

I tried again. "Sometimes it can be sort of an endearing quality. Like a friend who always says the wrong thing at the wrong time."

"Like acting autistic?" she asked. (Disclaimer: Translation! Don't blame me for lack of PCness, I'm writing about Chile here).

"No, no, not like that, just someone who always comes out with odd things or things that kind of don't fit or shouldn't be said right then, but it's kind of funny because of that."

"So it's someone who's got a good sense of humor," she said.

This is only a sampler. I've had quite a few conversations like this (and this particular one extended a good deal longer).

There are no awkward silences, it seems, because either everyone is talking at once or no one is talking because they have no interest in talking. End of story.

There are no awkward foot-in-mouth moments, because no one is going to pretend they didn't hear what you said. You're just plain in trouble, that's all.

There are no awkward people, because what we would consider awkwardness is either a sense of humor or social backwardness.

When I think about this subject I get a split screen image in my head of my dinner party scenario: on the left, 6 people with tea nervously avoiding eye contact with one another, rattling cutlery and making pointless cover-up small talk. Perhaps also some throat-clearing, and maybe the hostess might hustle the girlfriend off into the kitchen and shoot a silent reproachful look at the offender on their return. On the right: six Chileans yelling at one another with many of those long intonations that swoop from the gutteral up into the highest registers of the human voice (frequently heard in "nooooooooo, meeeentiiiiiirrraaaaaa"); with the women scolding the men in defense of the scorned girlfriend and the men raucously defending their friend's right to free speech.

So far I have managed to come upon one situation which can possibly be awkward: when riding in ascensores, people are unsure whether or not to say hello to everyone--because it's very small, but it is still public transportation. You would say hello to everyone in a small room--but not everyone on a micro. Still, nonetheless, my host sister at least does not find this to be "awkward" in the sense that I would if I were coming from her cultural perspective (of course I don't say hi to anyone, and I find that normal, but I'm an icy gringa). She just thinks it's funny that half the people say hi and half don't.

So, fellow gringos, if you find yourself in awkward scenarios and wish to explain this to the latins in your life, I suggest you do what I did: after careful explanations lasting a good half an hour, my host family now understands the word "awkward," at least in the sense that it pertains somehow to gringos becoming nervous when dealing with social situations (they call me autistic, too). Nonetheless, at least in my house, "awkward" has now been adopted into the pantheon of Chilean modismos.

"La calle no tiene dueno" --local grafitti

2008-08-07T15:37:00.004-04:00

I apologize to my adoring public (consisting of my father, my grandmother, and my mother when her firewall doesn't intervene) for my slight lag in blog posting. Several things have intervened, such as The Day On Which I Get Older, The Evening In Which Essential Friend Threatens to Go Into Anaphylactic Shock, The Email Which Makes Me Worry (unnecessarily, thank god) That A Far-Away-But-More-Than-Essential Friend Has A Major Health Problem, and other such capital-case-worthy events. Also some sleeping, some Spanish-movie watching, and some general goings-on about town.

But to get to the story of today's post. Last Thursday I was walking home from work with my big lovely bag. I love this bag because it contains a computer, but doesn't look like a computer bag, so it's not quite as nerve-wracking carrying it around. And it screams, "I am a teacher." You can credit my mother, who seems to give me a new bag for every profession I enter, each one being perfectly suited to the task....without pretension. How this can be accomplished is absolutely beyond me, but somehow she makes it happen.

So this bag is very discreet. Nonetheless, it does still, on an average work day, contain my computer and everything else of value in my possession.

I am hyper-vigilant here in Valpo, but let me stop you before you decide that this is a horrifically dangerous city. Petty crime is very common in Valparaíso--to hear some Chilenos tell it, you'd think you'd be lucky to get through the day without being beaten and robbed. Note to my previously mentioned, very specific adoring public, above all, but also to the world in general: this is absolute bull. Yes, it is a port city in the lyrical sense. Yes, you are likely to get mugged at one point or another. Yes, you absolutely need to pay attention. However, you are relatively unlikely to get injured during these events, however unnerving they might be. If you think about the violent crime that occurs in most major US cities, you can hardly go around wringing your hands about Valparaíso. I grew up in Boston, a very safe city in general, but every year we have cases of children being hit by stray bullets, teenagers assassinating each other in gang fights, and random people being assaulted for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The major difference, I would say, is that in the US there are "good neighborhoods": places where people have money and don't need to worry about safety; and "bad neighborhoods": places where people do not and you might very well get shot if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Valpo is different in that it has neither. There are no outstanding neighborhoods of extremes (of that sort...we have plenty of other extremes) within the city limits. This is one of the things that I love about the city. Here, people don’t wall themselves off in gated communities filled with people exactly like them. The most beautiful houses in the city are often across the road from falling-down buildings. To be sure, there are neighborhoods with less and more crime. However, I would look at it this way. Instead of having a map with red zones, as you would in Boston, New York, Washington DC, there is a map with varying shades of orange. You're never totally safe...but you're never counting on grave bodily injury, either. Don't call me naive.....I recognize that more serious crimes than purse snatching occur. But, as in the states, you're more liable to be injured or killed by someone you know, rather than a person off the streets, sadly enough. Trust is fabulous, trust is dangerous, and all this is universal to any city in the world.

In any event, the street crime here is mostly of the low-violence theft variety, and here is the story of my first encounter with the same.

I was walking home from work after a night class. This particular class obliges me to walk in the dark through a sketchier part of town, but that has never been a problem. This incident, actually, happened on top of one of the wealthiest hills in the city, and barely 2 buildings away from my pasaje.

I was trying to find someone to go with me to a local band concert (where, beyond having a good time, I was hoping to make some contacts for my Atenea project). I was very near the top of my pasaje when I called a friend, and he asked to call me back. So I walked the round-the-block way to circle around to the bottom end of the pasaje--there's no service once you're on the stairs.

About halfway around there a skinny boy--he couldn't have been more than 17--was stopped leaning against a doorway, by all appearances waiting to be let in. He had passed me a few minutes earlier but I didn't think much of it, obviously---people are always moving around at different paces. Plus, it must be remembered that this was at 7:45 in the evening....hardly the witching hour.

It is a statistical truth that the majority of motorcycle accidents happen within 5 miles of the rider’s home. Why? Because you relax too much.

Perhaps this was the case for me as well. I was certainly not thinking that this kid might be a potential thief. Luckily, I have it drilled into my head that if a bag doesn't go across my chest, one handle is always in a death grip. And this served me well this time.

I heard a quick step behind me and at that point I believe I snapped out of my complacency. Directly following, there was a hand on my shoulder where my bag strap sits and I knew immediately what was going on.

Now. You are not supposed to fight back in these instances, I know. However, in my defense, I seem to have come up against an extremely lackluster thief, and feel that given the circumstances my behaviour was absolutely reasonable.....except in the direct sense, that is, possessed of reason, which it certainly was not. This was pure instinct. Who knew that I had any? Apparently when you take a girl from the suburbs and threaten to take away her computer, you awaken the reptile brain.

Essentially my hold on the bag made it so that he and I ended up facing each other, each with one hand on either side of the bag handles (as in, each of us had both handles in hand, with both hands). All that really went through my head was "no! no! no!" which is what I actually yelled, which may have been perhaps on some subliminal, more intelligent plane, "computer! computer!". But I sincerely cannot offer more than that. We pushed back and forth for less than a minute and I managed to yank it out of his hands. I fell into the wall and took off running in what must have been an incredibly amusing manner: I think the word “flailing” would come into play somewhere.

This is the part where I offer sincere thanks to my mother for her excellent taste in luggage and accessories, because Señor Delincuento couldn’t even be bothered to follow me. I imagine he might have been a bit more devoted to his task if he’d realized that he would be walking off with a laptop.

Frankly, I think he was utterly surprised that I didn’t run off screaming the second he came near me, because I honestly do not believe that I am capable of winning any sort of physical contest. I have a friend (unfortunately now on her home continent) who had an incident with a thief. He tried to take her phone. In her way of putting it, which I like better than my own, she “roared at him.” He was so startled that he dropped the phone on the ground and ran away without it. So, if you happen to be an obvious gringa and someone tries to take something from you, I would recommend screaming at them before you give it up. Worked for me, and for my friend. Apparently blonde gringas are reputed to be delicate flowers around here. So the sheer shock value might work in your favor.

My friend called back as I was crossing the doorstep of my apartment.

“Oh I’m good, I’m good,” I said, “But I almost got mugged since I called you….two minutes ago.”

The odd thing as well is that directly before this incident occurred, I walked by a graffiti tag that said something equivalent to "steal from the rich, give to the poor." My first reaction was a sort of abstract political agreement. Then, as I was waiting for the light to change, I became unsettled as I realized....I supposed that means me, as well. I read about a year ago that to be in that fabled 1% of the world's population that controls 85% of the wealth (or some other unspeakably large number), one only needs US$60,000 in assets. Which is a pretty staggering idea. I am unsure whether this has changed recently with all the economic changes. Nonetheless. There also remains the fact that most people in the world live on less (often much less) than US$2 a day.

Now, $60,000 is not something that I have. However, given the second number there ($2 a day) plus the savings and assets I do have, and the fact that I am very (very! despite recent events!) young.......well, essentially, I don't think I'm loaded, but globally speaking I certainly am. And that is rather unsettling, in terms of ideals and justice and all of those things.

However, this kid looked like he was doing ok for himself, to judge by apparel, so, although I might be the rich from whom one ought to steal, I still don't think I needed to give my computer to some delinquente.

And that is the story of Meredith and the Thief.

Sign Language

2008-07-30T19:51:00.006-04:00

There are two semi-new poster campaigns around town. This one is intriguing:

("What matters to you?") I don't know what this is about, yet, but I'll be keeping my eyes open.

And this one is an anti-domestic violence campaign and is just fabulous:

("Caution! Male chauvinism kills!")

Unfortunately domestic violence is still semi-tolerated in Chile, from what people tell me. Mariticide is certainly very common in the news; this of course is also true in the states, as sensational crimes sell papers. So I have nothing but word of mouth to back this up....perhaps I'll get some after I take a closer look at this campaign.

In an absoluely unrelated matter that is not meant in the least to trivialize the subject, while double-checking the word "matricide" just now I discovered the following interesting vocabulary words:

muscacide: killing of flies

perdricide: killing of partridges

Who knew?

In a more sign-related point, last week I was walking to work a bit late and so I reached a certain point on Avenida Errazuriz at, let's say, 8:02 am. Normally I would be hitting this site at perhaps 7:57 am, to use a nice round number. Because of my delay, I had a most incredible discovery:

I cannot entirely describe just why this was so wonderful to me. I have a bit of a thing for bus signs--as you may know, I often ride buses just based on a particularly intriguing sign. And so, sleepy, late, running, I discovered this absolutely tiny closet, The Place Where The Bus Signs Come From. I've been walking past it every day without even knowing there was a store there, because it was always shuttered....until 8am, opening time. Absolute magic.

The Grand Project Launch, or How Procrastination on Facebook can Bear Fruit

2008-07-28T16:58:00.006-04:00

So, I am now officially recruiting free labor for my pet project. I began by creating a Facebook group, the text of which is as follows:

Valparaíso is an historic port town in the central zone of Chile. It is an entirely unique city, crazily jumbled together over time, painted in bright colors, covered in murals, and electrified with a sense of life and culture in the atmosphere.

It is also a city with major economic issues, including some of the poorest urban areas in Chile. It also has a major tourism industry which is incredibly underutilized. Thousands of tourists pass through, walk through one or two hills, go to three or four cafés, visit La Sebastiana, and head on to the next destination.

There is an incredibly rich cultural life in Valparaíso, though--if you happen to stumble across it. In Spanish, there is adequate information, but spread across different blogs, email newsletters, fliers, magazines, and street posters. In English, there is just about nothing. As such, it is very easy for tourists--and even people who live here--to miss out on fabulous events of every type happening right here in the metro region. The city misses out on a better tourism industry, one that might help support a wider range of enterprises. Local artists, musicians, performers and more miss out on larger audiences for their work.

I want to start a bilingual publication of events, both as a paper magazine and as a website: Atenea Valparaíso. (Side note: the oldest Chilean newspaper is the Mercurio--the messenger god. Atenea, or Athena, is the goddess of arts and wisdom. A nice pairing--that's the logic. She was the goddess of war too, I know, but let's just leave that be.)

It is absolutely impossible for me to do this alone. So I'm recruiting anyone who would like to contribute to this project in one way or another. I cannot offer any monetary compensation (clearly....I'll be lucky to break even). I can, though, offer you full credit for your work and a "good experience," aka nice thing to put on your resume if it turns out well. Some of these functions can be fulfilled over the internet, so even if you're on another continent, you're welcome to get involved if you'd like.

I need:
1. Translators, Spanish to English and vice-versa, both for the actual event listings and for any columns/reviews we might include.
2. Writers, either in Spanish or in English, for the same as above.
3. Researchers: people who will find locations, groups, and people who put on events, and keep in contact with them about upcoming events.
4. Web designer: one or more people who can set up a blog/website that is idiot-proof enough that the rest of the as-yet-imaginary team can use it.
5. Development: People who can search out advertisers and other potential investors.
6. Layout designers for the print edition.
7. Artists who can provide interesting drawings, photographs, etc, to bring Atenea to life.

Essentially, I don't want just a bland, corporate style "Time Out"-esque publication. If I can make this happen, I want it to carry some of the individuality, texture, and frankness that characterize the city itself. So I want an artistic composition, a strong contact with the underground as well as the established scene, good writing, frank opinions, and above all else a clear dedication to making the cultural scene in Valparaíso stronger than ever.So, if you are still reading, and you think that you can contribute somehow, please get in touch. The project is pending until I can assemble enough interested contributors, but hopefully we can get in underway in the next few months.

After all, as is often noted....this city is "crawling with gringos"....let's make ourselves useful.And please--if you know people who might be interested in this project, please pass this along!

I created this group yesterday. By last night, the Incredible Chad Kulig had begun figuring out the website angle, and several other equally amazing people expressed interest in translating, content, layout design, and general help.

There are several factors to consider here:

1. I love my US network. I didn't even know I had a network....I just knew I was friends with a lot of people who like to do back-breaking artistic and civic projects for no or little compensation.

2. I am full of gratitude to the people who want to get involved in this without even having seen the city. Altruists are wonderful. I've been talking about this project in Chile for weeks, with the result (with the exception of my long-suffering close friends, who are forever having translations, ideas, and information demanded of them) of one interested party (to whom I am also very grateful). Then all of a sudden I get all this interest from people who have nothing, really, to gain from this. Love, folks, love.

3. If you are familiar with Facebook, then you are aware that by putting this on Facebook I have essentially told every person I have ever met that I am going to make this happen. So, well, I better make it happen, eh?

If you want to help, the email is atenea.valparaiso at gmail dot com. At the moment this email just goes to me, but hopefully soon it will be a team email.

Go Team! Go Valpo! Let's culture attack.

Deep Breath: De-Stressing in Chile

2008-07-25T17:51:00.006-04:00

So, this week has been a bit of a headache. For the last 48 hours I was paralyzed by the very real concern that I was going to get fired for the first time since my 14-year-old bagel store job (an instance that still makes me cringe); then yesterday my Not-Only-But-Let's-Say-Essential-Friend became an illegal immigrant for a window of about 24 hours. When you have a friend circle the size of mine, having one of the people you see most frequently deported is not something that can be taken lightly.

In the end, I was met with a surprisingly warm reception at my meeting with my boss, and no one was deported. So everything turned out just fine. However, I am operating under a very intense stress-hangover right now. After foolishly thinking that I could go to lunch with actual people and be social, I discovered that all that I was capable of doing was stirring my chicken like a madwoman and forgetting every bit of Spanish I have learned.

Things that I do in Valparaiso when that sort of thing happens:

Overindulge:

Wear silly hats and drink beer (featuring Elisa):

Make friends with stray animals (also featuring Elisa):

Look at pelicans:

Make Allie feed me, even if we can't find a can opener and have to bludgeon the coconut milk out of the can:

Hang out with giant pirate puppets:

Et tu, Brute?

2008-07-24T14:34:00.004-04:00

Ok. So I plan on soon adding several interesting posts about various interesting things in the near future. In the meantime, however, a student who never comes to class has taken it upon himself to complain about me to my boss. This might seem to be breaking my "no-self-centered-rambling" rule....and it is, kind of....but there's also a cultural factor here.

People here don't like to be rude....it's a well-observed cultural trait (by outsiders and Chilenos alike) that they will avoid saying "no" at all costs, even if that entails making plans and then standing people up. By the same token, it seems that discussing my lesson plans with me would be rude, but going over my head and putting my job in jeapordy is not. This is the awkward logic of Chileno Etiquette. They are extremely concered with courtesy (I've heard older people complain that this is no longer the case, but I still find that people here are far more politeness-prone than at home). (Not that anyone has every accused Northeasterners of being overly polite). However, the etiquette system here often seems to be riddled with side effects.

Case in point: I have stated multiple times throughout this course that I welcome input from students. And I do, particularly in these small classes--it is impossible to know which types of lessons work best if you receive no feedback. No one, including my 'Brutus,' has taken me up on this. If he had (during one of his brief appearances), I could have altered my class to address his concerns and emphasize his particular needs. Instead, I now have to prove to my upset boss that I am a competent teacher and do not deserve to be sacked. I also have to teach my accuser tonight without mentioning the fact that I feel capable of saying some very unkind things just at this moment.

So I am only left to conclude that in Chile, offering constructive criticism is A Very Bad Thing. Wreaking havoc in the professional life of your teacher, however, is Par For The Course.

All his faults observed,
Set in a note-book, learn’d, and conn’d by rote.
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.III.92)

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;
For I am armed so strong in honesty
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not. (IV.III.67)

Roman tragedy, English teaching, you know, similar stuff.

La Campana

2008-07-21T20:11:00.005-04:00

So, I did in fact go hiking on Saturday, to Cerro La Campana (excuse my anglophone keyboard). The weather looked threatening, but luckily there was no rain. Having not been outside the city in ages, the trip was a very welcome change from my slowly emerging routine.

It should be noted that a car is not necessary for this trip. It's actually quite simple by public transit, although, of course, longer than your own transport would take. However, for those of us without the option, you can still be on the trail within 2 hours. To get there, take the metro to the last stop, Limache (a pleasant excursion in and of itself). At the station, go outside and wait for a #1 bus. Double check that it is going all the way to the park. Assuming it is, hop on, and the last stop before it turns around is the park. Walk up the trail, where you pay a small entrance fee (a couple luca, I don't recall exactly because in Chile, the invited party pays for nothing---something which is rather uncomfortable for a gringa, but rather nice once I started ignoring it and just enjoyed the free ride). And you're off.

My co-hiker, who was a student of mine this past semester, wanted to walk up the dirt road used for cars. I vetoed this on the grounds that walking on a road is not a hike. So we took the trail proper. It was a good work-out--a steady incline of a not-negligible grade. Due to this, I was obliged to strike a deal that we would take the road down.

Unfortunately, the ranger was not allowing hikers to go to the summit due to the possibility of rain and fog. The views from the top are apparently very nice. I will be heading back on a nicer day to see for myself. Nonetheless, despite the clouds and the fact that we had to stop about two thirds of the way up, the views were calming and beautiful.

The coastal cordillera:

Atmospheric, eh?

I may have missed out on the summit, but I did get to do quite a bit of "flora and fauna contemplation." I couldn't practice Spanish with these friends, but I appreciated their company. They, in turn, enjoyed the idea that they might get some of my peanuts (they were not successful).

The walk down on the road was much less intense, as well as being much longer, but was more condusive to conversation. I finally learned the details of about a million things which have been confusing me, such as the exact controversy over the public education system, and the business structure of the city's micros (buses). Information which I shall share when I am not tired and looking forward to turning off my computer.

The fog closed in, and we walked down into it; by the end I was essentially walking through a cloud. It was incredibly peaceful, after the detail-crammed landscape of Valparaiso, to spend some time in a white-out. And when I got off of the train back in the city, I loved the complications even more.

Overall, a very successful day. I have, in fact, been very well occupied lately, and have quite a few things to write about. So keep checking in for more of la vida Valparaiso.

Language barrier: a two-way street

2008-07-18T18:58:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, unless I get stood up (a rather common occurence when befriending Chileans, unfortunately), I am meant to go hiking at a national park a bit east of the city.

I was curious about what I'm in for, since the only hiking I've done recently is up the hill to my house, and all in all I've been pretty much a computer-bound, workaholic slug as of late.

I browsed a bunch of websites that seem to agree that I'm in trouble, as this is an actual mountain of sorts that I'm dealing with. However, I found one description of the park that had this excellent itemization of possible activities:

Hiking, high mountain tours, climbing, picnic, photography, bird watch, flora and fauna contemplation.

So, maybe I'll let my compañero do the high mountain tour while I stay at the bottom for a bit of flora and fauna contemplation.

Kitschy Music or.....Certain Death?

2008-07-17T14:50:00.004-04:00

A week or two ago, this happened outside my house:

An organ grinder. It's difficult to see in this video, but he has a parrot instead of a monkey--a disappointing choice, but nonetheless. Organ grinders are kitschy, and fun, and I was very excited to have one conveniently outside my window. Hence the video.

While I was taking this little film, people started pointing up at me and taking pictures of me. You can see this in the video a little bit.....at one point I look up to show a more panoramic view, only to remember that my "view" is actually a collection of sea-blocking buildings, and when the camera goes back to the street you can see a few people starting to notice me. At the time I thought that this was because I was a crazy gringa hanging halfway out a window with a camera. This might be true. But a few of my students, who Facebook stalked me, had another interpretation.

I am going to die.

Apparently, they were very put out when they saw a picture of this scene in one of my photo albums online. Turns out that the Chilean traditional superstition is that when an organ grinder plays outside your house, someone inside is going to die very soon.

The girls told me that they think it's silly, and just a superstition, but nonetheless they always chase them away from their houses......just in case.

I pointed out that since I live in an apartment building, there's a pretty good distribution of potential death, given the number of inhabitants. I probably won't even know the unfortunate soul. That's a relief.

However, should a piano or a potted geranium fall on my head anytime soon, well, take the lesson and chase away any organ grinders that come hanging around your house.

NOW! Read this post ABSOLUTELY FREE!

2008-07-14T22:35:00.002-04:00

So I've picked up a new employment, which has become sort of a habit of mine. As with every other job I've been offered in Chile (claro), it is another version of Speaking English Professionally. In this case, I am writing and editing copy for a product's website.

It's a product made in Chile and sold in the US, online only. So essentially it's a direct marketing gig. Not generally my thing, but I can definitely use the web experience--lack of web design has been a bit of a roadblock so far, as I'm generally applying for jobs with a description like:

"Non-profit social services organization seeks General Literate Human Being with Opposable Thumbs. Duties include grant writing, copy writing, advertising, document production, initiative development, client outreach, community outreach, graphic design, designing and maintaining the organization's website, editing anything that manages to get written down, taking meeting minutes, filing things, helping the development guy when his workload explodes, helping the finance woman when her workload explodes, helping anyone at any time who has too much to do, answering the phone, making coffee, ordering office supplies, picking people up at the airport, watering the plants, choosing art for the hallway, and organizing disorganized things/people. Trilingual English, Spanish, and Chinese preferred. Salary minimum wage plus a train pass, and sometimes bagels in the morning."

So, that's my motivation (you can see why, I'm sure).

As a result, I am finding myself dealing with a side of the business world I really never intended to be involved with. It's kind of the opposite of educational not-for-profit....gloss-it-over-for-pure-profit. My training so far has involved reading lots of websites, articles, and books about marketing. They have me a bit baffled.

Some are schlocky as hell. Some are more refined. Some actually come off as intelligent. But there is one basic thing in common. The person who is writing is explaining their theory for how to sell a product or idea, generally through coercion, manipulation, use of very specific tactics, and very calculated packaging of information. Ok. That's sales, I expected as much. However, never having actually read anything about sales before, I've been finding one thing incredibly amusing. Even as the writer is explaining to you how to dupe people, he or she is using the exact same method to dupe you.

Shamelessly, generally. For instance, in one book they recommend using little lists to "engage your audience." "What do these words have in common: Plants, People, Our Fabulous Product, Whatever." Then, about two chapters later, the authors throw one of said lists into their spiel. Hmm.

In that case, at least, it might simply be a reinforcement tactic. Perhaps they are assuming the reader is intelligent and will pick up on it. However, there was another one that really had my eyebrows through my hairline. This was an online-purchased (no, not by me), "Special Edition Report" about some phrase that sounded business-y but upon inspection had no actual meaning. The whole thing was completely over-the-top. What was really fabulous, though, was that they spent a whole section explaining how your newsletter should be called a "service," subscribers or clients should always be "members," lectures and such are "workshops," and so on. They also had a long bit about how every single possible "benefit and gain" from your product should be listed in bullet point format so as to give the impression of being incredibly valuable.

They finish off their "absolutely free special report" by inviting you to become an actual "member" of their "valuable online service," mention some very excellent "workshops" that you can attend, and then provide a page and a half of bullet pointed "benefits and gains."

So. Now, obviously, there is some value in these schemes. I recognize that we, as consumers, are scarily susceptible. However, when you present me with a document that is packaged as breaking news, then tell me 80% common sense, 10% silliness, and 10% new information--while explaining to me in detail how exactly you are doing so--I am not going to be overly impressed. This has led me to believe that marketing may be a self-perpetuating loop. People who work in marketing have complete faith in their methods, therefore they are completely susceptible to other people's methods, and therefore they are all running around selling and buying marketing methods to and from each other.

I'm imagining walking into the multimillion dollar house of one of these "gurus," as they call themselves, to find it filled to the brim with slicer-dicers, handy-reachers, superdurapastes, indestructible lawn tools, and a general panopoly of late-night infomercial products.

"It's amazing!" they'll tell me. "It has fully 32 different benefits! It boils pasta, it boils carrots, it boils broccoli....."

"Well I want to kill this waitress......(but I believe in peace, bitch)" (tori amos)

2008-07-11T15:31:00.003-04:00

Well. I thought I'd come have a cup of tea and finally blog about the LGE protests that have been going on in the last month. Instead, as usual, Chile had other plans for me.

I walked into Cafe con Letras, which has wireless and is a bit of a gringo-haunt. I spend a lot of time here; I like it a lot, actually. So I came in, sat down, and ordered a tea.

I am not exactly sure what happened. The waitress started to hand me a menu and I told her I already knew what I wanted, and asked for a tea, please and thank you and all normal courtesies included.

She gave me a mean look. I was puzzled. Her friend, a guy siting at a table about oh, 6 feet from me, had been looking at me mockingly since I came in. When she sat down again at his table, he leaned in and they began talking very quietly and throwing glances in my direction. Seriously. Now, let's imagine I speak no Spanish at all. Do they think that not speaking Spanish also means that one can infer nothing from body language and, oh, pointing and laughing (nearly)?

So this proceeded for several minutes. I kept throwing meaningful glances back, sending brain waves: yes, hello, please stop talking about me.....they didn't pick up. Then the waitress got up and went around behind the counter, which I am sitting next to. She started talking to the other woman working. In essence:

"I am so sick of these gringos, they only speak English. They used to come only in the summer but now it's all the time, it's such a headache. They are so irritating! And that accent! It's like an infestation, these stupid gringas with their attitudes."

But extended. The other woman talked for a bit but then noticed me listening and said, "Quiet! The customer understands you!"

"No, she doesn't," said Favorite Waitress.

Then she went back to the table and talked about gringos some more with her other buddy.

Now, in the cafe at this moment there is only one other gringa; she is a sweet older woman who is smiling and polite and clearly at ease in Spanish. Then there's myself. A rough estimate of the entire exchange I had with this woman:

"Oh, that's ok, I don't need to look--I'd like to have an African Victoria tea, please. Thank you."

I would love to know what strange and terrible gringa vibe must be emanating from this woman and I without our knowledge.

So I stewed for awhile. Then I decided to deal a passive blow. I texted Allie that I was going to call her in Spanish. So I did. We discussed our plans. I used the past tense, future tense, etc. My accent didn't suck. The conversation lasted a few minutes.

The peanut gallery is veeeeeery quiet now. Take that.

So here's the thing: Gringo Guilt. We're filled with it. We are convinced that by being in other countries we are somehow a burden; that we have to shoulder the blame for every US American who ever spoke English to someone without asking them if that was alright, or said something obnoxious about "locals," or did one of the ten thousand annoying things that tourists can do. Just today I found myself apologizing to a Chilean about the fact that not enough North Americans try to speak Spanish.

Well, wait a minute. I try to speak Spanish--a lot. I observe local rules about politeness. I try to blend in, if not physically, at least in behavior. In short, I am a very nice immigrant. Just the fact that I'm here already excludes me from at least a dozen of the most common anti-norteamericano complaints. And when it comes down to it, there is absolutely no difference between this waitress and her generalizations and the people I've met in the US who go on about "lazy latinos." There are arrogant gringos who only speak English. There are lazy people who aren't from the US. But there are also plenty of arrogant Chilenos who only speak Spanish, and lazy norteamericanos.

So let's please. just. stop. it. I believe in peace, bitch, I believe in peace.

Vanishing city

2008-07-06T16:04:00.002-04:00

These two pictures were taken from the same mirador. The fog has crept in lately. This is winter in Valparaiso. Growing up in Boston, I was always the wimpy one who couldn't take the cold. Here I'm perceived as incredibly hardy and/or crazy. Apparently wearing a skirt on a foggy damp day is very hardcore. I'm glad that my toughness is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

Independence day--disjointed thoughts

2008-07-04T16:06:00.004-04:00

Today is July 4th, Independence Day back in the US. I am meant to be at a barbecue at the moment but am finding it impossible to get my work done. Hmm. Blogging is not helping this issue, but so be it.

I find myself very conflicted about this day. This morning I couldn't decide whether or not to do the whole red-white-and-blue outfit thing.

We're talking about a country with which I have a very complicated relationship. Whenever I read the newspaper, I have panic attacks.....I want to undo it all, I want to fix all of the damage, I want to personally apologize to the widows and orphans and fathers of lost children, and I want to distance myself from what is happening (everywhere) all at once. I am Lady Macbeth...out damn spot; will these little hands ever be clean again. We were not listened to. I am at fault. And yet half of the population was screaming out against this most recent of egregious acts of violence, and we were ignored. It is a terrible feeling. I am a citizen of a country which, on a regular basis (in fact, more often than not), violates every belief and moral that I hold sacred. It is a violent, aggressive, murderous country that throws its weight around the world in a way that makes me cry.

But. But? I am from the US. That is my culture. I feel most comfortable within that society--the way people interact with each other. Particularly as a woman. I have issues with women's rights within the states, yes. However, it's the best I've found so far. Let's take a look at My Chilean Life, for instance. I am regularly spoken to by coworkers and students (at any one of my various gigs) in a way that could get you fired at home. And possibly sued. Even at its most harmless, everyone asks me about my marital status before anything else, even in professional circumstances. The fact that I am single is seen as a major problem, and I am constantly being told by students, coworkers, everyone, about eligible young men I might want to date/marry. It is seen as strange that I go out at night in the company of other women--this is often interpreted as a sure sign of being easy. Hmm. I thought it meant we wanted a drink, but hey, feel free to make assumptions about my level of promiscuity. And you know how I feel about the yelling in the streets.

Not to pick on Chile, though. I've lived in France and in New Zealand, and in both places I felt like my gender was a larger 'liability' than it was in the states.

However, this is a blog about Chile. And Chileans are a remarkably blunt group of people. This can be a benefit--you don't ever have to wonder what people think of you--and it can be incredibly frusturating. Politically, it can be awful. Generally, people here are incredibly nice about politics, more so than in other places. They have had personal (in the national sense) experience with a government that acted without the consent of its people. In this way they understand far better than others what it means when I say that I feel powerless against my country.

But, like everywhere, there is a widely held belief in Chile that US citizens know nothing about politics or the foreign actions of their country. People are liable to get rather agressive with you. One friend of mine was told that she needed to 'open her eyes' because of a difference in opinion (regarding the theory that the government initiated the September 11 attacks, something which I think one can see in different lights regardless of how open or closed ones eyes may be). Someone made me cry at a party awhile back by refusing to let up on personal accusations regarding my individual ignorance and culpability for Guantanamo. I almost slapped a student recently for pushing the button one too many times regarding the Kyoto Protocol.

The worst of all, for me, are the self-perceived Cassandras. They are usually older, and lived through the Pinochet years on the wrong end of the political spectrum. They corner me and tell me that my country is lapsing into authoritarianism, that the citizens are in danger, that they have seen this all before and we must stop it before it is too late. This is the most difficult situation for me. Because I agree with them, and I understand them, but they don't believe that I do. And because out of respect for what they've gone through I can't say anything. I just stand there while they run through a list of my greatest fears. They think they are initiating me. They don't understand that I've spent my formative adult years in a political climate of the type that has caused me, on a semi-regular basis, to give serious consideration to how I might get my loved ones out of the country if human rights abuses began to happen within our own borders. What if they start incarerating Arabs? I worry. What if there is a coup and I am far away from my family? What if they pull my name off of the list of attendees at one of the various protests where I was required to give my name to police? What if they take all of my friends for their political activities? What if all of this were to happen while I was overseas?

Chileans also tend to think that we have absolutely no internal issues whatsoever. I cannot even begin to explain how many people have been amazed that we have issues with poverty and violence just like anyone else. It's understandable. The films and tv shows and music that make it here from the US are not the ones that deal with these issues. They're the ones with muscled heroes, blond waifs, and California everything.

So. What does all of this add up to? I'm not sure. I have chosen Chile over the US, at least for the time being. But I can't condemn my country because of its politics. I still love the people, it is still my home. It is what is Normal for me. But it terrifies me. I am afraid of my country, and I am disgusted by my country, and I am a part of my country and always will be. And so I find myself in incredibly hard situations where I can't bring myself to defend the US, and yet I can't stand to hear it abused by people who know less about the issues than they think they do.

Finally, this morning (and here you see that you are dealing with a literature major), I did decide to wear the colors. I am wearing red and blue. Red for the blood that has touched oxygen when it never should have, all over the world, at the hands of the US or others bearing US-bought weapons. Blue for my blood, which is still safely indigo within my veins, which will always connect me to that country of my birth. Together because I understand that it is pure chance of birth that my blood has stayed blue while the blood of others has run red.

White. I could not bring myself to add white, the color that stands so frequently for purity and innocence. How could I? I thought about it. Finally I added my bone necklace, which I designed and made in New Zealand. It is meant to represent a fantail, a particular type of bird which taught me a lot in my time in that country. It is a cocky, unafraid, light-hearted little bird, and it always seemed to appear when I was going off into some spiralling mental tangent. In short, it would remind me not to take myself so seriously. In my post-NZ life, I wear the necklace to remind me of the same. So, in the interest of lightness against all of the unbearable weight that is my country, I am wearing my fantail white. Happy Fourth of July.

Thaaaaat's Chile.....

2008-07-03T12:46:00.004-04:00

...............is just what you have to say sometimes. Explain and clarify in 500 words or less.

Both Valpo and Viña (and Santiago, for that matter) are full of street performers who jump out in front of stopped traffic at red lights. Usually, they look approximately like this:

At night, sometimes, they juggle fire. Unfortunately both you and I will have to live with the fact that my camera is not capable of taking a good picture of this, or at least so far has not proven itself able to.

Yesterday I was in a bus, riding back through Viña del Mar after making some reckless purchases at the mall (more on the mall another time). I was looking out the window and listening to a podcast from NPR's Here On Earth , which I highly recommend. Bits and pieces of everything. This week I've learned about the historical context of Edith Piaf and the history of Argentinian mate, for example. In any event, this particular podcast was on the subject of Rwanda. Specifically, an author was being interviewed about the rebirth of the country since the genocide. They discussed a number of interesting angles: the leadership role that women have taken, the use of traditional tribal law, the concerns about authoritarianism and human rights abuses, the economic growth, and what not.

As I am listening to this very interesting interview about Africa, I look out my window down Avenida San Martin, a busy street along the sea. What I saw I wish with all of my heart I had a photograph of, but unfortunately it was too late to jump off of the bus. There was a street performer. He had painted his entire body black-brown. He was wearing a grass skirt. He was waving a paddle of some sort. He was holding a spear in the other hand. He was jumping around and one can only imagine making some sort of savage-esque noises.

At noon. On a main avenue. For public entertainment.

Thaaaaaaaat's Chile!

Bellas Artes

2008-07-02T15:48:00.006-04:00

Last night I received a real, gen-u-ine paper letter from a certain Berry Breene (take note, other friends, the bar's been raised). Ms. Breene and I met as unmotivated freshman. We were unsuccessful roommates our sophomore year. We almost missed the last train home in Koln, Germany, because I managed to deposit my wallet under a chair at a bar half a mile away. We went to Amsterdam and enjoyed the sights, and pretended not to speak English on the train to avoid backpackers. She showed up in New Zealand and we climbed a very large hill, then had to run down so we wouldn't get trapped in the woods at night with the dangerous kiwi bird about. We even survived a down-under chicken attack together:

I think they wanted their eggs back. Anyhow.

We also lived together rather successfully our senior year, most likely due to the fact that we were both in solitary confinement working on our undergraduate theses, known 'round Allegheny as the Comp. Please note, English teachers, that this can be used as a verb and adjective as well as a noun, as in: "I'm comping this semester," or "Guess who's de-comped!"

I digress. In this amazingly tangible paper letter of mine there is a photocopy of a page in the Village Voice. In said photocopy, one can see the reproduction of my girl Berry Breene's painting Viva la Revolution of my boy Sam Breene with a PBR and his hand down his pants:

Congratulations Ms. Breene, you are a bona fide artist. Check her out.

Now Berry has been working for oh, forever, on a gigantic mural that will be put up back in Meadville, our college town (which I have heard is going to be the film site for the movie version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. No joke. Can someone verify or disprove this?) Here she is doing her thing:

Very soon she will be packing off, prospector-style for the west, bringing her muralistic stylings to Portland, Oregon. I am told that Kate Ickes will keep her from misplacing her bills, clients, head, and what not. Bueno suerte, chicas, I expect to see Portland covered in Berry-art whenever I manage to visit.

And so, finally, as a toast to Berry, I offer up a few of the many, many murals that cover just about every surface in this city. Maybe I'll make it a series: The Berry Breene Commemorative Mural Exhibition Series. Catchy.

Trapped!

2008-06-27T17:34:00.004-04:00

Today is day three of oral quizzes. These are painful. Essentially I sit in a very small room for a very long time. I read the news for awhile. Eventually, a student decides that they probably ought to come for their quiz, since they were meant to perhaps half an hour earlier. Then I will have about 10 students waiting anxiously to come in. Someone sits across from me and looks at me with eyes similar to that of a person about to be hit by a car. I speak to them very, very slowly and ask boring questions. Sometimes things go well and they leave relieved. Sometimes I ask them what their favorite movie is and they tell me that they are good at soccer. Or they just say "soccer. yes." Or they say nothing and cover their face with their hands. It varies.

So. The students hate it. I hate it. Everyone is unhappy and sitting in a very small room.

It just so happens that today I had 8 hours of oral quizzes to give on a day that is normally my weekend, and of course it turned out stunningly sunny. One of those gorgeous "winter" days (if you're from New England, early fall). And I had to stay inside all day with unhappy people.

Further proof that the universe conspired against me:

Yes. All morning there was a marching band parade directly outside of my building. A parade! I felt like a little kid who has been forced to take a nap when all the other kids are outside playing.

But now I'm done and my goodness what a nice feeling that is.

What are you doing here?

2008-06-25T10:02:00.004-04:00

Now. I like to make fun of things here. It ought to be noted, though, that I like to make fun of things no matter where I am. It's affectionate. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be scrambling around with potentially three jobs in an effort to secure a visa for next year.

As such, I have trouble understanding the number of people here who seem absolutely baffled by my presence. To begin with, Chilenos are usually confused by it, which in turn confuses me.

"What are you doing here?" they inevitably ask me, once we've spelled my name a few times and they've given up and started calling me Marilyn. I explain my various situations here, work and all.

They look at me as if I have not understood. "Yes," they say patiently, "but how did you end up here?" This one is a bit trickier. In fact, I made my decision to come to Chile in less than 3 days from initial impulse to visa application. However, there are many plausible explanations for how I ended up with that particular gun in my hand, all of which seem entirely possible to me. So I pick one out and throw it on the table.

Then I receive a lecture. This is a terrible country to learn Spanish in, they tell me. They tell me about all of the slang. They tell me how quickly they talk. They tell me about shortening words. This is all done in said 'terrible Spanish,' but it doesn't seem to make a difference that I am able to understand their lecture. They tell me to go to Peru, Cuba, Bolivia, Columbia, somewhere else where apparently the Spanish is easier to learn. Then, depending on the particular Chileno, they'll add in another theme. Some recent ones: Valparaiso is run down and dangerous; I should not be so far from my family; there is no sense of history here; and, my favorite, Chilenos as a whole are degrading into an anarchic mess of non-chivalrous pricks (this particular person has clearly not been to Boston, nor, for that matter, are they aware that I can't take chivalry).

I attempt a defense of myself, of Chile, of the right of women to get on an elevator last if they'd like. My conversation partner considers me, and then asks, "How long are you planning to stay here?"

"A few years. I don't know. Until I speak Spanish."

Shock. Concern. Disbelief. Then.....a spark of understanding. "Do you have a pololo (boyfriend)?" they ask.

No. No pololo.

At that point they simply stare at me as if I were absolutely out of my mind.

This is the cookie-cutter conversation. There are various personalizations in any given interaction, but every single Chileno who pursues this line of questioning hits on those essential points, and reacts as described. It is a truly out-there phenomenon. Why is it that this entire country seems to find it implausible that someone might choose to live here? Are they trying to get rid of me? Is this a wide-spread inferiority complex? I have no idea. You tell me.

However, even more bizarre to me is when this conversation occurs with a fellow ex-pat. This is less common, but happens more often than one might expect. And while Chilenos will conduct the interrogation with a sense of wonder and bafflement, other foreigners conduct it with bile. Have I noticed how disorganized they are here? Doesn't the difficulty of finding work bother me? Isn't Santiago intolerable? Isn't Valparaiso provincial? Am I aware that I have planted myself in a racist, disorderly, chauvinistic, crime-ridden country with absolutely not one bottle of decent hot sauce to be had?!?!

And then....a glimmer of possible understanding: "Do you have a pololo?"

No. No pololo.

Well, in that case, don't I find the dating scene intolerable?

Whoa. Deep breath, fellow foreigners. I am confused by the Chilenos who manage to be simultaneously proud of their country and yet flabbergasted that I want to live here. I am even more confused, however, by ex-pats who are here voluntarily and yet seem to absolutely hate it. What on earth are they doing here if they don't like it? I can share in many of the gripes (in the sort of way that you tease your friends, however)--but in any event I deal with the little annoyances because I like it here. As mentioned, if I didn't, I would go home, or more likely somewhere else. It is one thing to be really and truly irritated with one's home country but live there nonetheless. I've been there. But why would you stay someplace when it drives you mad when at any time you choose you can get on a plane and say chau for the last time?

Furthermore, am I seriously the only gringa who has ever decided to stay in Chile for reasons other than pololodom? This simply cannot be true.

Anyhow. I like it here. I love this city. Why am I here? Well, to pull one out of the air, because this is a photolog of my "commute" yesterday:

Oh Micro, I bet you say that to all the girls

2008-06-22T18:20:00.003-04:00

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while now. It relates to the absolutely bizarre habit that Chilean buses have of flirting with you.

At the moment I am busing about quite a bit, having acquired work with an institute based out of Viña. So. I head down my hill to the nearest bus stop, which is not actually a stop so much as an area where buses like to hang out without official authorization. I would say one out of every five buses heads to Viña. It is inevitably the fifth bus.

So I stand on the corner, squinting at each bus as it approaches, trying to read the five and a half million signs hanging in the windows and the windshield that give vague clues as to the route. Aduana. Limache. Cemeterio. Etc. The bus notices that it has caught my attention. It flashes its lights--hey there, little lady, I see you too. It slows down to a saunter and pulls up casually to the curb. The door slides open. At this point I have determined that this is not the bus I need, and so I am gazing pointedly off down the road.

The micro, though, knows all about the tricks that women play. I may be saying no, but surely I'm thinking yes. Who wouldn't want to go to Pedro Montt? It's a lovely avenue. The micro gives a little beep to let me know it's still interested despite my cold attitude. It pulls forward a couple inches, playing hard to get, but slides to a stop again when it realizes that manipulation isn't helping. A little more insistently now, it beeps its horn. I continue to ignore it--sorry, buddy, thought you were someone else. After lingering for a few minutes, the micro finally goes on its sad way, rejected.

This is not an every-once-in-a-while occurence. This is standard procedure. Various micros are constantly trying to convince me that I want to go to Concon, or Playa Ancha, or Aduana. This is odd, but when it becomes irritating is when you have actually boarded the bus of your choice. You settle into your seat, ready to be whisked off to the destinations promised by the colorful signs, but there will be no whisking. Why? Because your micro, unfaithful rake that it is, is going to have to stop and flirt several times per street.

The other night I was unfortunate enough to board what I am going to go ahead and call out as the Most Flirtatious Bus in Valparaíso, also known as the Worst Bus in Valparaíso. We stopped every other block to try to seduce some poor abuela. The method actually seemed to work, though, because by the time I got to my stop the bus was packed to such a capacity that I was concerned about the oxygen supply. Of course my half hour bus ride took close to an hour, but who's counting. Every time someone got on I wanted to shout and wave my arms: "Don't do it! You'll never get home! You will die on this bus before you make it out of the center!"

Also last week, I entered a bus that was so crowded that the bus driver instructed me to sit on the dashboard. Instructed, not asked. Otherwise, you see, I would have been standing in a position which would have prevented the door from opening to admit yet more passengers. So I wedged myself in in front of the ticket tray and kind of braced myself against the windshield and the plastic overhead. I was a bit concerned about the idea of a bus crash. More so, however, I was concerned that during one of the 500kph turns I would be thrown sideways into the steering wheel and actually cause a bus crash myself. Headline: Suicidal Gringa Takes Possession of City Bus.

All of this because the micros just cannot control themselves. Flirts.

Old Blue Eyes

2008-06-18T17:38:00.003-04:00

Two nights ago I found myself sitting at the bar in a pseudo-Mexican place, solo. The reason: taco, beer and a shot of tequila for 1.5mil. I have started my second job this week, and I had been working for over 12 hours. The Chilean dinner meal is called "onces," and it generally consists of bread, tea, and maybe some cold cuts. I have been making a very concentrated effort to adjust to this. It's healthier, it's cultural, it's time spent with the host family, and so forth. But when I have had a long day, at the bottom of it all I am a norteamericana and I want dinner, dammit. Like a taco. And a beer and a shot of tequila. I'm telling you it was a long day.

Anyhow, I sat at the bar so as not to be accosted by any overzealous potential "friends." While I was eating, I was making notes about two of my new classes. The man sitting next to me kept glancing over. I can pull a pretty good ice queen when I want to. And I wanted to. So no conversation was exchanged for quite some time. Finally, though, he leaned over and completely surprised me.

He absolutely had to know the underlying meaning of the lyrics to Frank Sinatra's "My Way."

I have written here before about my host "father's" prediliction for this particular song (translated into Spanish, on repeat mode, at full volume, outside my door). I've never really gotten much out of Sinatra, but this man, like my host "father," found something completely unique and profound in this song. Not being an English speaker, however, he wasn't sure whether his interpretation of the lyrics was correct.

Now, the thing is, I have no idea. I have heard this song a million times, certainly, but I've never paid much attention to it. I know he sings, "I did it my way." That's about the extent of it.

The man at the bar, though (who I should add was not drunk in my estimation) was absolutely starry eyed. "Is it," he asked me, "that he can die at any moment because he has done what he needed in life?"

So, I pulled out my English major skills, ie. the art of bullshit. I confirmed the man's interpretation and added a bit of spin on it based off of the one sentence that I knew. ("Yes, true, because he never compromised his own idea of what was right no matter what other people told him....")

I have no idea what the song is really about. Maybe that's right, maybe it's completely not. But, my thought is, why on earth take away this man's interpretation which he has such an emotional attachment?

Anyhow, it's a story without a climax. But there it is.

Definitive proof that I fall into the "nerd" category, and other developments

2008-06-16T09:55:00.009-04:00

Although I am now possessed of two jobs--one of which is forcing me to teach three units of information in four class periods--I still find time to get my kicks. Some of my kicks are of the teacherly variety. For instance, my Final Exam Review uses people that I actually know for a section that asks students to write sentences about "personal profiles." So, if you are within my social circle, there just may be 80+ Chileans writing out.....oh, say......"Phil is an airline employee. He is 25 years old. He speaks German, English, and French." Just to pull something out of the air, you know.

Surprise! That's not the proof that I'm a nerd. It gets better (wait for it).

So, yesterday I went for a walk with a pair of New Friends (I'm moving up in the world). It was a beautiful day so we wended our way down through Cerro Concepcion, and then down Avenida Brasil. Now, Avenida Brasil is where I work, so it is my "commute," if you can call a 15 minute walk a commute. Nonetheless it is a very nice walk. The center of the avenue is a wide green area, with statues and monuments all along the length. If you are from Boston, picture the section of Comm Ave in the Back Bay. If you are not, picture an avenue with a wide green area at the center with statues and monuments all along the length. Yes.

Anyhow we always ignore the things we see most often, or often do. So I was very happy to discover these previously unnoticed fish mosaics on a bench on the Avenida:

It being Sunday, we decided (post-fish mosaic) to head to the antique/flea market. This is a fabulous, wonderful, endlessly entertaining weekly market where you can buy no end of bizarre items. New Friend Allie and I had a thorough look-through and found, amongst other interesting items, teapots with feet, printing press letters, giant travelling trunks, a nice little desk, decorative spoons, and an antique sewing machine with a light built in. Allie acquired a very cool and--I maintain--practical cast bronze candle holder in the shape of a small Asian lantern.

The item on the left, I am very pleased to say, is for catching the milk when you milk your cow:

Typical spread:

Anyhow, I discovered a treasure. Or actually I think Allie discovered the treasure, but I took the treasure, so that's what counts. Here is the proof that our post title refers to. I am now the proud owner of somebody else's antique stamp collection.

And I mean Proud Owner. I have it in my bag right now, just in case anyone might come up to me and inquire as to whether I might have a Cuban stamp from the 1800s. "Why yes!" I will tell them, enthusiastically. "Would you like to see it? I also have some lovely diamond shaped stamps from early 20th century Costa Rica!" And they will go away satisfied and impressed.

Really, though, this book is just. so. cool. The majority of the stamps are from the first two thirds of the 20th century--obviously a time of massive change and bizarre occurences. So looking through this book is just amazing to me. It's a physical history of imperialism, dictatorships, and war, all evidenced in these tiny pieces of paper that merit so little of our attention. And so I present to you a selection from my crazy book of colonies and conflict.

So, yes. I have officially embraced what is widely acknowledged as the Most Boring Hobby Possible. Whatever. I am in love with my stamp book.

Moving on up....

2008-06-15T13:30:00.001-04:00

Just like to call everyone's attention to the fact that I have changed my headline from "non-spanish speaker" to "incredibly limited spanish speaker."

That's right, world, I'm making a declaration: I speak Spanish very, very badly, but I speak Spanish, dammit!

"Today, I will go to Limache."

2008-06-13T19:32:00.005-04:00

This is what I said Tuesday morning at 8am.

What is Limache? Well, that was the question. The metro goes to Limache (direcion Puerto o direcion Limache, those are your options, there is only one line and it leads to Limache). Every day I see dozens of buses going to Limache. What is Limache?

On Monday I had insomnia. Around 5:30am I decided to pour a glass of red wine in the thought that it might put me out. I had a bit of it and then fell asleep. I woke up around 7:00 and realized that the lights were still on and my glass of wine was more than half full. Being half asleep I solved this problem as follows: 1. Put out light. 2. Chug remainder of wine. 3. Go back to sleep.

The fact that I was most likely a bit drunk when I woke up an hour later probably contributed to my grand desire to see Limache. So I got out of bed, found that I was conveniently still half dressed (I'm always organized in small ways like that), combed my hair, brushed my teeth, got my jacket and hit the road. This being Chile, the metro was shut and no one knew why. So I jumped on a bus, handed over my 700 pesos, and went to Limache.

It took a bit over an hour. Limache turns out to be a town to the northeast of Valpo, close to the coastal cordillera. It was very beautiful there--I am still not sure if I saw a lake or just a valley full of fog, but all in all the views were a nice change from crowded Valpo.

When I got off of the bus, however, I had a realization. Limache at 9am, like all of Chile at 9am, is a ghost town. Nothing really opens here until mid-morning. So I was kind of at a loss once I actually arrived. My plan had been to sit down with a coffee and read, but that was not going to work out for me. I wandered around a bit in the streets which were empty and full of closed stores. I went into a bakery and bought a piece of bread. I went to a minimarket and got a breakfast Pepsi (mmmm) because I couldn't find a coffee shop. Then I just got on another bus and headed back to Valpo.

The day was absolutely beautiful. The sun was out, the temperature had to be in the high 70s, and there was a really lovely warm breeze. So I got off the bus in Vina and walked back along the coastal walkway. This is something that absolutely everyone should do, probably once a week. I have not felt so slap happy in love with life in ages. I put some ambient music on my headphones. I jumped up and down off of benches, leaned over railings, danced a little bit, spun a little bit......think "opening scene of Sound of Music" meets "crazy woman in the street."

Here are some views of the city that I love, I love, I love, I love:

My Valparaiso. My beautiful, beautiful city. It is a wonderful thing to be able to look at a place and just feel your chest fill up.

Here is a poor lobo marino who can't figure out how the other guys got up there:

He was circling around at the base for a good ten minutes. He'd circle back, dive, get up speed, jump....and belly flop. Personally I'm with him: how did they get up there?

This is a shrine by the train tracks about halfway back to Valpo. For a woman named Margarita. A shrine like this makes you stop. You can't help it: did she jump? If she did, why? What Anna Karenina is this? Or did she fall?

There was a similarly fascinating shrine on the beach in Horcon. It was large, a driftwood sculpture with rocks and offerings and plaques. It was for a 23 year old woman and a 4 year old child, I believe. I didn't have my camera. With both, it catches you so suddenly. A beautiful day walking by the water and then in the middle of the bright sun this little monument to unexpected death. Shrines are not put up for the naturally fallen, after all. When you see a shrine you know that something out of the ordinary has happened, relatives were called and shocked, police came. Generally you can guess: shrines by the roadside, for instance, are sad, they catch your notice, but you have an idea of the situation. But this woman with the train; the young mother and her daughter....? .....her niece? Who was it? Did the child fall into the sea, did the girl die trying to save her? Did they go in together for fun and get pulled under by a rip? You can almost imagine them walking along holding hands on the hot sunny sand and a giant, animate wave reaching out over the beach and pulling them in....

But, you cannot spend your whole day contemplating shrines. It's a guilty feeling, walking away, going back to being happy like a little kid and laughing when the wind puts sand into your eyes. But you do. I do.

Here is a piece of grafitti which I assume is by the same artist who did the piece at the top of this blog:

Finally, at the end of it all, I bought a coffee and look what my change had to say:

Well what do you know. My money says good things are on the way (love and work, to be specific). I'm not quite sure how to interpret that symbolism so I'll just let it be and say, "Well thank you, Sir Luca, I certainly hope so."

Love and Literature in Chile

2008-06-08T17:40:00.002-04:00

Those words are synonyms, right?

Life for the book-obsessed is rough in Chile. Books here are unbelievably expensive, when bought new, in Spanish. They are semi-reasonable to mildy outrageious when bought used, in Spanish. They are hard to find and extremely expensive when bought used in English or French.

Now, I try to read in Spanish. However, given my rather hysterically emotional connection to literature, I have to say that it drives me absolutely mad to read a book and know that I'm not getting anything out of it except for the very surface of the meaning. So I have a couple of books in Spanish, but they go more into the "work" category than into the "personal pursuits" category. Next up is French, which I can read with a decent level of subtlety. For a really satisfactory reading experience, however, I'm still stuck on English, for obvious reasons (ie. I speak it pretty well).

There is a store at the bottom of my hill that sells books in English, French, and Spanish. They are used, and not unreasonably priced for Chile. But the selection is of course somewhat limited.

At times this is very frusturating. I had a similar experience in New Zealand, where I would load up on used books whenever I got the chance and then slowly and strategically comb through the disaster of hostel book exchanges, changing out a book every time I found something else worth reading. A limited book supply, plus a picky reader, involves a lot of effort.

However, there are interesting benefits. Being picky, but being very much left to fate in terms of my options, the last year has finally pushed me out of my center circle of literary interest (being Modernism and contemporary feminists, más o menos). As such, I have finally come to read all sorts of things that had been on the list for ages. For instance, within the last month, I have read the bizarre list of: Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf," Carol Shields' "The Stone Diaries," Carlos Fuentes' "Aura," Jorge Luis Borges' "Labyrinths," Robert Louis Stevensen's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Mario Vargas Llosa's "Feast of the Goat," Albert Camus's "La Chute" and "Caligula," Dandwidge Endicat's "Krik? Krak!," D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers," Jose Donoso's "The Obscene Bird of Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night," and.....Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants." (NY Times No. 1 Bestseller!)

¡Lista excéntrica!

A Riddle

2008-06-06T18:37:00.002-04:00

People in Chile often go in for trends that are incredibly distinct and defined....far more so than the hipsters and punks and hippies of my home (or perhaps its just that there are so many categories here). At some point I will discuss pokemonos.

However. Comments on my man-rant post got me thinking about a certain group, the pelolais girls. Literally, "straight hair." The look and the definition go along with a certain high maintenance, moneyed, manicured style. The reason for the name is that, since wavy and curly hair tends to be more common here, the pelolais girls have to put in the effort of straightening their hair in order to get the right look. So their hair shows the amount of time they spend on their looks and hence is an appropriate signifier for the entire pelolais ethos.

Ok. Now, my hair is straight. Friends will sometimes tease me by calling me pelolais. I have also had people yell (or hiss) ¡pelolais! at me in the street (but no more rants this week). So here is my riddle:

Since my hair is already straight, doesn't the fact that I go about with it hanging down straight mean that I cannot be part of the "straight hair" group? In order to be pelolais, I would have to put a lot more effort into my appearance. And so, I ask, if a straight haired girl wants to join the straight hair trend......does she need to curl her hair?

Four months behind the language barrier: Performance Review

2008-06-06T14:41:00.002-04:00

So. On February 6th it was snowing in Boston. My mother, in-demand business traveler that she is, took a cab with me to the airport. We got a coffee. Oddly enough the exact same scene had happened one year earlier, on February 6th 2007, when we got a coffee at the same restaurant (remodelled in the interim), before I got on a plane to New Zealand. Strange symmetry. In any event, on February 6th 2008, I am waiting for a plane to take me to Miami, where I would spend the night before taking a super-convenient combination of three flights (San Jose, Lima, Santiago) on my way to Chile. A hastily made decision, a quick series of preperations, and off I go. I speak no Spanish. I have never been to South America. I do not know how to teach English. Needless to say I am not entirely sure that I am not crazy, and not entirely sure that I don't want to just follow my mother to Atlanta or Idaho or West Point or wherever the hell else she's off to. But I get on the plane because changing my whole life around seems to have become some sort of habit.

So, it is now June 6th, which puts me exactly four months in to my new Chilean life. Time for a check-in.

Spanish: I am rather pleased with my progress. I am now able to speak somewhat competently when addressed individually, in the present tense, by someone with a vast amount of patience. Occasionally I use the past tense correctly. Sometimes I even use the future tense. I use "po" for emphasis (oddly enough, in English at times). I am not getting near "waeon" yet, given that, in my understanding, it is capable of being a noun, a verb, an adjective and even an adverb. In group settings I have gotten to the point where I can think of something to contribute to the conversation.....five minutes after everyone else has moved on to another topic. In short: yes, I suck at Spanish, but what do you want from me?

French: A ghost in the back of my head. I can still read, but seem incapable of speaking coherently. It still manages to trip me up, however, as I run around telling people to "remplacer" things or look at the "deuxieme" item in their books. And every once in awhile I go from being yo to je and that just throws everything off.

Other skills: Last night I learned how to make a little paper collared shirt out of the top of a Lucky Strikes box (photo documentation to be provided at the next chance to upload pics).

Oh yeah, and I know how to teach now.

Jobs: Two, thank you very much. I am very excited to be taking on extra hours with another language school, which will hopefully give my life a bit more order. At the moment, I work all day on Mondays and Wednesdays, for two hours only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and not at all on Fridays. On occasion I forget that I have a job. So hopefully the new hours and new types of classes will bring me back into Grown-Up-Land.

Friends in the metro region: Let's peg it at 3, with a swing rate of 2 in either direction.

Phone: Possessed. It changes its ring tone frequently (unaided), resulting in missed calls. One friend is currently unable to send me messages (they never come through), but can call me. Another cannot call me (error message), and can send messages, but they arrive a long time after being sent. My theory: my phone either wants me to spend all of my money on Entel Tickets as I become forced to call everyone, or--and this is more probable--it is the sinister force behind my stunted social development.

Living in someone else's house: A riot, an amazing experience, a headache. I am immensely grateful to my living situation; I am positive I would not speak Spanish if I were not living with the family. However, I am still not entirely adjusted to the level of scrutiny that my life receives. I am given more unsolicited advice/criticism in a day in Chile than in a year in....wherever else I might be living at the time. I have been told that I can continue renting my room after December, but I have a feeling that by that time I'm going to be ready to be an adult again.

Valparaíso: Amo, amo, amo. I have never loved living in a city the way that I love Valparaíso (except Paris, but who doesn't). My life is frequently a headache but I just look around and I am so happy to be here in this place. This is a new experience for me and it is very welcome.

Future plans: Slowly taking shape. I think that I am ready to say that I want to live in Chile for a while. Things are a struggle. I can't communicate. I have a very limited social life and very little going on in my free time. The truth of it is, though, that four months ago I threw in my lot with Chile. 24 is not a comfortable age for anyone, I think. I may not be fully satisfied with my life in Valparaíso but the meat of it is that I have more here than I do anywhere else. I've moved around too much to have a life waiting for me anywhere; my life is where I am and I have started building a new one in Chile. For once I am starting to see that I cannot keep building up and tearing down existences every six months. So, at the moment, I am going to call Valparaíso my new home.

But....well...talk to me in six months.

The Chilenos

2008-06-05T17:40:00.002-04:00

Well, I am having one of those days, and so it is that I am going to share some cultural observations regarding Chilean men.

I have blond hair and my skin does not produce enough melatonin to protect me from the sun. I don't know, perhaps I'm meant to blend into an arctic landscape so that I won't be eaten by polar bears. Bizzarely, I was born this way, and, it's been rumored, so are many, many other people.

In Chile I am an Attractive Freak of Nature (hereafter referred to as AFN).

This presents some difficulties. This is a culture where a large percentage of men seem to devote a good third of their waking hours to harassing any woman who comes within range. This is not limited to AFNs. I have heard absolutely bizarre stories from Chilenas. One girl told a story at dinner one night: she was standing on the street talking to a friend, and a guy came by on a bicycle, reached up her skirt and grabbed her crotch, and then kept going. Everyone at the dinner table gave a big hearty "oh, boys will be boys!" laugh. Including the girl in question. I personally would have thrown a rock at the bicyclist.

So, it is by no means to be assumed that I and my other melatonin-deprived brethren are the only women being treated oddly. If you watch some Chilean men in the street, it is absolutely fascinating. They seem to be duty-bound (a secret brotherhood, perhaps?) to make some sort of comment or noise at every woman who passes them. This is time consuming, as I've mentioned. There are a lot of pedestrians in this city. As such I have seen men standing in the street devoted solely to the task of whistling at people. I might be missing the point, but, que fome! I would be bored to tears. Why don't these men take the energy they put into yelling at women who ignore them, and use it to actually go converse with some women? They might get better results out of that approach (just a thought). I am willing to bet that not once has any instance of catcalling resulted in a woman turning around and propositioning the catcaller (unless of course she is being paid, but that is another matter).

This is life in general. As an AFN, the attention level is absolutely out of this world. I have confirmation that blondes get it worse: while I was walking with Only Friend Elisa, herself very attractive and clearly foreign, but brunette, she remarked that the creepiness level is far higher whenever she is walking with me. Also, I myself have noticed that it seems to go up on an exponential basis dependent on how many other blonde women I am walking with.

Sweet.

Reasons why this is not flattering:
1. My hair is not an achievement I can really take claim for. Oddly enough, I just sit back and it appears on its own.
2. I already feel like a foreigner at all times due to the fact that my Spanish is so basic. I really don't need to be reminded 14 times on the way to work.
3. If you are a student and I am carrying a teacher folder, you really ought not be whistling.
4. If you are a teacher and I am carrying a teacher folder, you really ought not be whistling.
5. I am going to go out on a limb and say that two inches from my face is well within my personal space bubble.

So. If you by chance are an AFN in Chile, you will be treated to such wonders as: cars stopping and reversing so that people can say crude things to you; young (young) boys coming up with incredibly colorful language, the creative little things; old (old) men cornering you with a shopping cart at the grocery store in order to give you their phone number; various people asking you to provide more detail regarding your eye and hair color (I am puzzled by this--what more information could I possibly have? I am on the inside of the face. I have very little contact with it).

One other oddity of all of this yelling and whistling. There are a number of sounds here that are completely new to me. One is that all Chilean (and Argentinian, at least as far as Mendoza goes) men seem to be trained in the exceptional art of making kissy noises at high decibal levels. I'm talking kissy noises that can be heard over four buses and a barking dog, from a moving car. Try making a kissy noise (if you are not in public of course--in that case I don't advise it). It is a very quiet noise. It is absolutely beyond me how these people are able to elevate it to the level of a shout. Really. This must be some sort of ancient secret passed down through the generations because I've never quite heard anything like it. And unfortunately I have the knee jerk urge to punch everyone who makes a kissy noise at me. Haven't done it yet, proud to say.

Also: hissing is complimentary here. Hissing. It makes me jump every time. I have also had people make cat noises at me, sing songs (Christina Aguilera "Beautiful," probably memorized for just such purposes), and make sort of odd shouting sounds that never in my life would I have imagined to be meant as complimentary (pre-Chile...now I know better).

Now, this is not isolated. I know this. I lived in France, which certainly rivals Chile in terms of the "you left your house, you obviously want feedback on your appearance" man-to-woman relationship. And to the men of both countries I say heartily: what on earth makes you think that I want your opinion? "Thank god that old man on the corner hissed at me, I was afraid that he might not be into me." Anyhow, in France I thought I would go mad. But in France I was Normal Looking. Now I am a Freak.

The Bearded Lady got paid, where's my check?

My weekend: a photo essay

2008-06-02T19:39:00.004-04:00

To begin I offer you a picture that is semi-irrelevant other than being something that I witnessed this weekend and loved:

I don't know. The rain, the flowers, the buses coming and going. It got me a bit.

Returning, though, to my subject. This weekend I was far more out and about than has come to be my habit. I have suddenly started meeting people in Chile, which is good news. The bad news is that after several months of quiet I am not quite accustomed to having an actual social calendar. At the moment I am in desperate need of an apartment that belongs to me and has no one else in it. Maybe in January. Ah well. Never being alone gets normal after awhile, but I find that it has the odd effect of making me lonelier. That and it also occasionally causes me to come out with bursts of irritation that have nothing to do with the particular person or moment. Word to the wise.

In any event, this is a tangent. This weekend I was all about company, as shall be reenacted by these little fellows that I noticed in the dining room the other day:

ParTAY. Much to the delight of my host family, particularly the father. He is constantly asking me if I am going to parties and this weekend he was particularly pleased with me. He was a bit let down that I did not go dancing, however. I manage though. As the following evidence shows, I completely ruined my sleep schedule:

One should never be witness to the flower clock telling you such a time. It is just not the place to be. The place to be is either: A. Asleep in bed or B. At a party or a club. I will go ahead and call myself foolish for being out in the cold at a clock made out of flowers at a time on Friday morning which ought to be "waking up to be a responsible adult time."

Much of the same intervened. I did speak a lot of Spanish, so that is a good thing. I also was fed delicious food by New Friends/Business Network Allie and Julie, as well as experiencing a Hot Toddy for the first time. On Sunday morning Valpo had lost its head to the fog:

And this morning I was back at it, explaining to my students the dangers of the world:

If you will allow me, a touch of sentimentality

2008-05-30T19:07:00.002-04:00

("...aren't you always overly sentimental...?")

("...shhh, Imaginary Blog Reader, that can't be true, sometimes I'm sparklingly witty!")

Several years ago I went on a study tour, with my university, to Greece. It was a travel writing course. Needless to say this was completely fabulous....20 creative types running around looking at things, writing about them, and then rewarding ourselves with amazing food and drink. In a gorgeous country. And at one point, as I recall, we rented mopeds.

I remember very vividly having my first run in with a solo traveler. We were having a lecture session at the foot of the Acropolis in an olive grove. If anything can beat that sentence, it is: he was sleeping at the foot of an olive tree, head on his pack, on a mild afternoon in May (at the foot of the Acropolis, let's not forget). Anyhow now I realize that he was probably some random backpacker who had stayed up all night on a cheap train and couldn't get into his hostel until 12. However, at the time, I was absolutely and immediately jealous. I went off into the Parthenon and wrote a long bit about how wonderful it would be to travel alone.

I read my piece later and at dinner had a conversation with one of my professors, Kerry Bakken. I was bitter and angry because I thought that I would never be able to sleep at the base of the Acropolis with a backpack because I am a woman and that brings with it dangers. In the midst of this irritation and frustration, I said that I would never be able to travel alone because of the state of the world and the general dangers associated with being the 'wrong' gender (and hurled a string of abuse at the universe in general).

And Kerry gave me a hug and said, "You're going to have to get over that idea and do it anyway."

While I was walking home last night I was thinking about that day and I felt very satisfied. So, ok, I'm not quite changing the world yet (although if you are ever in Chile and run into an aquaculturist or blood bank technician with passable English conversational skills, perhaps you can thank me). In any event, though, my world has changed quite drastically and that has got to be the first step.

La niña es loca!!

2008-05-27T14:16:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I left my house at 7:30, running late, as you may be aware depending on your interest level in this blog (I do not blame you if that is Low). I failed, in this state, to remember that it was meant to rain all day. As such, I left without my umbrella, wearing a dress and "teacher shoes."

At lunch, I went to a very interesting lecture about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the U. de Valparaiso put on by the Unión General de Estudiantes Palestinos de Chile. Afterwards I had to run back to give 4.5 more hours of midterms. As such, I had been out of my house for about 12 hours when I emerged from my last class with an open-topped bag stuffed with my computer, a folder full of uncorrected homework papers, and approximately 60 midterms to grade.

And it was pouring.

So I holed up in the Sala de Profes (my second home) to see if it would let up. 2 hours later, I had to accept that it would not.

Being the fabulous teacher that I am, I sacrificed my outer garments (jacket and scarf) to stuff on top of my tests in the hopes that they would not disintegrate during my 20 minute walk. And then I hit the streets.

Water can kill, here in Chile, much like bare feet, so I believe I looked like a complete madwoman. I was walking at my Boston-paced clip, in a wrap dress, makeup running down my face, hair plastered to my head, clutching a bag to my chest as if it were a baby. Meanwhile I was constantly being trailed by a flock of umbrella salesmen who would fairly chase me down, given the state I was in. It probably resembled the scenes in suspense movies where the woman breaks into some office or other and then excapes frantically with the incriminating documents that will bring down the corrupt administration....this way! No this way! And obligingly every bus that passed by sprayed me with water so as to heighten the dramatic effect.

Needless to say, I arrived at the home of my Chilean host family looking like a mess. At home this would be met with laughing and pointing. Here, it was shouts of horror.

"La niña es loca! Loca! Loca!"

I explained my situation regarding the forgotten umbrella, the midterms, etc. In fact it was not very cold out, but given that I am expected to wear a down jacket for all temperatures below 70F, showing up soaking wet in a dress with no jacket was just out of this world.

This morning I got up and got myself ready with the intention of attending the second lecture in the series (which lasts until Thursday, if any of those who live in the area are interested I can share schedule details). As I ran for the door (late, of course) I stuck my head in the kitchen to tell the family that I would not be eating lunch at the house. They took one look at my fleece jacket (which is not a jacket, in their opinion), and literally both chased me out of the kitchen and hollered at me in what was (to me) and incoherent jumble of Spanish.

"Paragua...!!! Loca....!!!! Chaqueta..!!! Cobres....!!! Refria....!!!"

"It's ok!" I assured them in equally incoherent Spanish (but that's the norm). "It's not cold, it's just raining! This jacket is warm, it's just not big! The other is too warm! I have my umbrella in my bag, it's small but when you push the button it gets to be the right size, I promise! I am LATE!!"

"La niña es loca!!" they yelled to each other, yelled after me as I slammed out the door.

Well, unfortunately I was not successful in my attempt to attend the talk. Instead I ended up with an unintentional walking tour of Cerro Playa Ancha in a steady rain. I defy stereotype: I refuse to ask for directions. I don't know why. I think it's due to being raised by a woman from the Bronx who drilled into me that the second one looks like a lost tourist one will be immediately mugged and/or beaten. I don't mind walking in the rain, in fact I rather like it, as mentioned last week. However, teacher shoes plus this:

means that 2 hours later my feet are STILL soaked through. If teacher shoes are anything like rock-climbing shoes (and they are, a bit--they PINCH) then I am consoling myself with the idea that they will fit much better after drying molded to my foot. And praying I can change my socks before the family sees me and has me committed.

While I'm thinking about it....

2008-05-26T20:35:00.002-04:00

I have been unable to find adequate Spanish equivalents for the following two absolutely essential words from my vocabulary:

awkward

random

I have no idea how to survive being this awkward without being able to say the word awkward. How terribly awkward.

Pingüinos, street cleaners, jumbled thoughts and photographs

2008-05-26T10:50:00.013-04:00

I have mentioned how Valparaíso me encanta in the morning when I am all fuzzy in the head and the city seems to match. Today I was running late (on midterm day....I never realized that teachers have the same slumps as their students) and didn't get out of my door until 7:30. As such, the street cleaner from the original post, who I see every morning, had made his way from the bottom of the stairs to the landing to which my door opens. So I stepped out to find him at my morning lookout spot, holding onto the iron railing looking out at the port as I do every morning. I feel rather more attached to this street cleaner now.

So, yesterday I woke up rather late after inexplicably deciding that Sunday morning, 3am, is the perfect time to drink a beer and listen to music for the next, oh, 3 hours. I am not sure if I have mentioned, but the family computer is directly outside my door. This leads to all kinds of interesting things, but in this case it lead to me being awakened to a Spanish language version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way." On repeat mode. At full volume so as to be heard in the kitchen at the other end of the house.

I don't think I've ever left the house so quickly after waking up on a weekend.

Anyhow so I went for a bit of a wander. I photographed a few things I've been meaning to, and explored some new streets. So to begin, allow me to introduce you to the Big Tree:

In Pennsylvania we had a Big Tree that was a frequent destination, at Woodcock park (please, no jokes). It was excellent for climbing, close to a very nice little river where I saw all kinds of animals that were new to my suburban-reared self, and to top it off had picnic tables and those little public grills that I would like to see in more places. So, now I have a new Big Tree. It is far Bigger than its Big predecessor. However as of yet I have not tried to climb it. It is in the middle of the Plaza Victoria, that is, it's quite public, and so far no one has expressed interest in climbing it with me. My threshold for embarassment has gone up quite a bit lately, but I'm not quite ready to be climbing Big Trees in public plazas, solo.

Here is another view of the Plaza, with the Cathedral visible in the background.

And here is a random photo of one of the many gorgeous buildings within the plan:

From there, I climbed up Cerro Bellavista and wandered a bit in the Museo a Cielo Abierto, a series of streets bearing murals from a number of artists (notably Matta). In general though they were not nearly as interesting as many of the murals I've seen throughout the city. I did like this random scribble, though:

One of those statements that inspires the thought, "Oh, that's poetic," which is shortly thereafter followed by "Well, no, actually, I guess it's not, particularly." But somehow I still like it. It might be the little bird-fish.

I did also like this plaza, the name of the artist escapes me but it was actually part of the official art:

There is a statue on top of Cerro Bellavista that can be seen from Plaza Victoria. It is some religious figure, arms out to the city. I was frusturated to find that from the hill you can only see the back of the statue, because it's gated off. So I'm not clear yet on who exactly is watching over the Big Tree.

I was also interested by a number of sheets hanging out of windows with the slogan "Cerro Bellavista--Sin vista?" I am going to try to find out what proposed or actual development this is in response to.....said the girl detective.

On the way back this fellow invited me into the Natural History Museum:

It was a national holiday dedicated to cultural affairs, so the museum was free. Despite the promising beginning, however, the museum was generally odd.

Why?:

Why?:

Well, ok, this is cool:

`God save thee, ancient Mariner !
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !
--Why look'st thou so ?'--With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS. :

And then I settled into something quite my style:

Excellent. To finish off this completely rambling post about nothing in particular, I present you with a photo from last Wednesday's military parade:

Aren't they dashing and.....armed....

Til the next time, when I will attempt to keep a steady line of thought going.