Sounding the depths

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then we find ourselves failing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unsolicited Advice

"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.

Las Chilenas

**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."

Breaking Point 1

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

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...

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.

Chilean men--or lack thereof

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.

Awkward: the most gringo word on earth.

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

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.

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

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.

Independence day--disjointed thoughts

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.