- Going to my weekly Baha'i discussion/study group and once (like an afternoon tea--we usually have eggs and toast) with friends on Tuesday evening, followed by salsa dancing and a big glass of strawberry juice.
- Hearing live blues in the Salon Rojo (the Red Room, scarlet walls adorned with posters of Communist leaders, ha!) at La Piedra Feliz club in Valparaiso. Downstairs we got to see Congreso, a legendary Chilean folk rock band.
- Having a long weekend due to the celebration of the Naval Glories of Chile on Thursday. A national holiday, it celebrates the sacrifices of heroes like Arturo Prat in the Battle of Iquique in 1879, and all branches of the armed forces march through the streets of Valparaiso. I braved the crowds to watch the parade.
- Seeing Michelle Bachelet (president of Chile) in person as she arrived at the parade! Just so you know, she rides in a Honda.
- Dancing the night away at el Huevo and meeting a great new friend and salsa partner, who is just confused by salsa turns as I am and did not react with the usual disdain of Chilean men at my mediocre yet earnest dancing.
- As the club prepared the close, they started playing cueca and Valparaiso de mi amor and other Chilean folk music and we all danced like crazy people. It was one of those wow-I'm-actually-in-Chile-and-loving-it moments!
- A glorious afternoon on a perfect clear day at the botanical garden with my language exchange group. Two gringos + four Chileans + Uno + hiking + ducks + a picnic.
- The arrival of my cousin Sarah on Friday for brief yet awesome visit! I got to show off my new cities, celebrate with her, and convince her that Chile is superior to Argentina.
- Finally meeting my host brother's girlfriend, Marcela, who is adorable and very sweet.
- Having pizza with friends at Cafe Journal, followed by a showing of The Number 23, a Jim Carrey thriller that we all agreed was stupid, but which was chosen especially for my birthday--May 23.
- A Skype party with family and friends in SC! Thanks for the cupcakes, guys!!
- An unexpected phone call from my host brother (out of town for the weekend) to wish his hermanita a happy birthday.
- Eating seafood at a seaside restaurant on a foggy Saturday afternoon, followed by a visit to Pablo Neruda's house and a brief shopping jaunt, followed by once at my favorite cafe in Cerro Alegre and fruit wine at Ritual, an artsy little nightspot made artsier by live Chilean folk music (guitar, clarinet, and accordion) and an impromptu theatre performance by wandering actors in which a sailor-clown dealt with the consequences of knocking up his two girlfriends, Javiera Maria and Maria Javiera. A perfect evening and pure Valparaiso!
- A restful Sunday spent catching up on homework, emails, and, of course, blogging.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Que Los Cumplas Feliz
Highlights of my birthday week(end). The party lasted for five days straight!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Photo Essay #1
The following is adapted from an essay I wrote recently for my culture class, with some editing. We were each assigned old photographs of places in Viña or Valpo and instructed to the find the spot, photograph it, and compare its current state to its past condition. The original essay was written in Spanish, and I'm translating it here, so some parts may sound a little awkward. It's one of my first attempts at creative writing in Spanish and it's actually very strange to translate your own work...
I.
I leave my dance class with the project on my mind, the mind that's still dancing cueca (1), preoccupied with the new steps that I've been struggling to learn, the movements that only confuse a class full of North Americans who picked the course because it seemed easy and fun. I'm walking with friends, other exchange students, but I'm not paying much attention to the conversation. They're speaking English, and I didn't come to Chile to speak English. I start thinking about the project again. I've spent a couple of weeks trying to convince myself to get started, and I finally have a plan. Tuesday is a flexible day: just one class in the morning and a few hours free afterward, so I have all afternoon to work. Nothing can keep me from it but my own thoughts.
I'm sitting on the metro on my way to Viña. I don't think about it so much now, this aspect of my daily routine, but there's a part of me, the girl from the rural South who's always had her own car, that isn't used to public transportation. I can't quite get over the discomfort of traveling every day with strangers. By the window an elegant older woman in a nice coat and jewelry is taking a nap, her head bobbing softly with the motion of the train. Next to me a man in a business suit is reading a law book. In front of me a young man with an angry face concentrates intently on the floor. I put on the serious, disinterested face of an urban girl, the one that says I don't matter to anyone and no one matters to me.
I usually don't leave things to the last minute. I've always liked the satisfaction of a job well done. It's not because of laziness, then, that I've avoided starting this project; it's just that I'm tired of being the gringa with the camera. This is my existence this semester, that of perpetual outsider. At first, when everything seemed fresh and exciting, every minute detail caught my attention. But the novelty of taking photos of my new surroundings gradually diminished, lost in my attempts to get used to things, to fit in. It's a process that's lasted longer than I expected, and sometimes I just wanted to scream so that everyone knows, "I live here too! I'm not a typical tourist! I don't want the English menu!!" What I want is authenticity, some kind of entrance into this culture that still shuts me out.
All of that occupies my mind as I emerge from the metro, getting my camera ready. I step onto the platform and contemplate on the fact that the graffiti here in Viña doesn't have the same character as the works of art that decorate the streets of her crazier sister, Valparaiso. There's an old, red, messy stain that barely shows on the wall, the faint memory of a tag painted by some daring hand. Someone has tried to scrub it away, erase it, eliminate it as if it were a spatter of blood left at the scene of some terrible crime that everyone wants to just forget already. It doesn't belong here on the wall of this modern metro station, where everything is square and orderly. Here there's no space for anything different. Here you have to hide it.
I climb the stairs and my eyes confront the sun that shines above, heating up the afternoon. I try to convey a casual attitude, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stand by the street and take photos of supremely mundane things like buildings and cars and signs. I convince myself that no one is watching me, even though I feel the questions in the eyes of the people who pass me. I start to look for the perfect angle to recreate the old view of Calle Alvarez and Estacion Miramar. It's not difficult to find examples of transculturation and globalization, as we've been instructed. But I'm confused about the specific view that has been assigned to me to photograph. Nothing I see looks like the photos. My efforts are frustrated: the place has escaped me this time. I'll have to try again.
II.
I leave my literature class, determined today to finish the project, which will be due very soon. This time my mind is full of Borgesian images. Today in class we've traveled to El Sur in a gaucho dream (2). "Or was it reality?" the professor inquires, provoking us to challenge his interpretation. The point is that nobody knows and that's the way it should be. Sometimes I feel like I too am dreaming here, reality just beyond my grasp outside my meditative mind. I walk in the direction of the train and the fog descends on the port, a ghost of rain. It comes in from the sea, this fallen cloud, penetrating every corner and hiding the sun.
The station smells like gasoline and cement: the smell of progress? The music they play in the metro always makes me laugh, those instrumental versions of North American pop hits that sound strange--all cleaned up and way too happy. I ask myself what Madonna and REM would think if they knew their songs had been converted into this daily rhythm of arrivals and departures.
I've been told there's a way to walk up the hill close to the station, where I'll be able to get the perspective I need to reproduce the old photos. I find the way up near Cafe Journal, the favorite bar of "all the gringos." All the gringos except for me, it seems, at least the crowded dark room downstairs where beer sloshes and the chairs are too close together and you have to push your claustrophobic way through the dance floor that expands annoyingly throughout the night as bottles get emptied and chairs get pushed aside. I prefer the laidback atmosphere upstairs, where the music is calmer, the art relaxing, and the chairs comfy. I've never walked up this street before, but I pretend to know exactly where I'm going. Walking up, walking up, my eyes search for the images from the photos. Once again I've made a mistake. I realize that the photos were taken from the other side of the street. Luckily, a hidden staircase offers me an escape route and I cross the street to walk up the right way.
They're building something new on the corner and I have to walk by a construction site, where the workers whistle at me when I pass. I know enough not to respond to their comments, but this flagrant machismo still bothers me. The feeling of being conspicuous returns. At least I have dark hair, I think, although here some people consider it blonde. My pale skin, my green eyes, the freckles sprinkled liberally across my cheeks--all of this betrays me, and even more when I open my mouth. The camera I'm carrying doesn't help anything, although I've tried to be discrete and nonchalant.
I wander around the streets of Cerro Castillo, where I've climbed. There's a park here instead of the empty plot of sandy real estate where three proud men stood posing in the old photo. Now there's only one man, a gardener, watering grass and trimming plans. A black dog accompanies him. They pay me no attention. I approach the place where surely they must have taken the old photo, and pause: the plants are obstructing my view, same goes for a school building, some houses, the new construction. I take what photos I can, trying to capture the scene in a way that's faithful to history.
III.
Another class, another story, another dream. Is it that the moteca is dreaming that he's the motocyclist or is it the other way around (3)? I keep dreaming in the past, trying to find a trace of this place as it was in the old days. I climb again up to Cerro Castillo, walking, walking: it's my last attempt at finding the perfect image. The sun is blinding but standing in the shade makes me cold. The same gardener is working in the park, and this time, as the last, our relationship is one of indifference. I don't stay long, just long enough to take the last few photos that I need for the project. It's calm and quiet here, an island of green in an ocean of concrete.
The mansions on Calle Alvarez all seem to be restaurants, cultural centers, hotels, and schools these days. Some aren't even there anymore, others simply abandoned, the majority hidden between the identical towers of luxury that are the new hills here in this city where the developer is king. 1, 2, 3 bedrooms! Sales center! Open house! The most common trees that you find here now are the skinny palms that tell everyone this is a tourist destination. Fitzgerald wrote of those all-seeing eyes keeping watch over the Wasteland, but here the presence of Coca-Cola watches over us from above, a nearby apartment building crowned with a red billboard and blinking lights that keep the time every night.
I walk down slowly from the hill and head home on the other side of the street, walking toward the ascensor that I take to reach my apartment. The chemical smell of fresh paint emanates from a recently constructed building, offending my nostrils. I still don't know what exactly I will take away from this semester, but at the very least it seems I've found a place whose identity has been changing just as fast as my own. While the city of Viña del Mar continues to conquer the past, I'll keep fighting with the present.
(1). cueca: national dance of Chile
(2). El Sur: a work by the Argentine short story master Jorge Luis Borges, in which a proud porteño from Buenos Aires travels to his ancestral homelands in the southern countryside of Argentina and finds his death at the hands of knife-wielding rural thugs. A mysterious gaucho eggs him on. Or is he just dreaming all of this in his hospital bed after a nasty bump on the head? Borges loved to mess with you.
(3). La noche boca arriba: another short story, this one by Julio Cortazar, whose style is similar to Borges. A modern man is injured in a motorcycle accident and has a creepy dream while in the hospital that he is actually an indigenous captive from the Precolombian era on his way to be sacrificed by the priests of an enemy tribe. Turns out in the end that the dream is the reality, and the reality the dream. Got it?
I.
I leave my dance class with the project on my mind, the mind that's still dancing cueca (1), preoccupied with the new steps that I've been struggling to learn, the movements that only confuse a class full of North Americans who picked the course because it seemed easy and fun. I'm walking with friends, other exchange students, but I'm not paying much attention to the conversation. They're speaking English, and I didn't come to Chile to speak English. I start thinking about the project again. I've spent a couple of weeks trying to convince myself to get started, and I finally have a plan. Tuesday is a flexible day: just one class in the morning and a few hours free afterward, so I have all afternoon to work. Nothing can keep me from it but my own thoughts.
I'm sitting on the metro on my way to Viña. I don't think about it so much now, this aspect of my daily routine, but there's a part of me, the girl from the rural South who's always had her own car, that isn't used to public transportation. I can't quite get over the discomfort of traveling every day with strangers. By the window an elegant older woman in a nice coat and jewelry is taking a nap, her head bobbing softly with the motion of the train. Next to me a man in a business suit is reading a law book. In front of me a young man with an angry face concentrates intently on the floor. I put on the serious, disinterested face of an urban girl, the one that says I don't matter to anyone and no one matters to me.
I usually don't leave things to the last minute. I've always liked the satisfaction of a job well done. It's not because of laziness, then, that I've avoided starting this project; it's just that I'm tired of being the gringa with the camera. This is my existence this semester, that of perpetual outsider. At first, when everything seemed fresh and exciting, every minute detail caught my attention. But the novelty of taking photos of my new surroundings gradually diminished, lost in my attempts to get used to things, to fit in. It's a process that's lasted longer than I expected, and sometimes I just wanted to scream so that everyone knows, "I live here too! I'm not a typical tourist! I don't want the English menu!!" What I want is authenticity, some kind of entrance into this culture that still shuts me out.
All of that occupies my mind as I emerge from the metro, getting my camera ready. I step onto the platform and contemplate on the fact that the graffiti here in Viña doesn't have the same character as the works of art that decorate the streets of her crazier sister, Valparaiso. There's an old, red, messy stain that barely shows on the wall, the faint memory of a tag painted by some daring hand. Someone has tried to scrub it away, erase it, eliminate it as if it were a spatter of blood left at the scene of some terrible crime that everyone wants to just forget already. It doesn't belong here on the wall of this modern metro station, where everything is square and orderly. Here there's no space for anything different. Here you have to hide it.
I climb the stairs and my eyes confront the sun that shines above, heating up the afternoon. I try to convey a casual attitude, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stand by the street and take photos of supremely mundane things like buildings and cars and signs. I convince myself that no one is watching me, even though I feel the questions in the eyes of the people who pass me. I start to look for the perfect angle to recreate the old view of Calle Alvarez and Estacion Miramar. It's not difficult to find examples of transculturation and globalization, as we've been instructed. But I'm confused about the specific view that has been assigned to me to photograph. Nothing I see looks like the photos. My efforts are frustrated: the place has escaped me this time. I'll have to try again.
II.
I leave my literature class, determined today to finish the project, which will be due very soon. This time my mind is full of Borgesian images. Today in class we've traveled to El Sur in a gaucho dream (2). "Or was it reality?" the professor inquires, provoking us to challenge his interpretation. The point is that nobody knows and that's the way it should be. Sometimes I feel like I too am dreaming here, reality just beyond my grasp outside my meditative mind. I walk in the direction of the train and the fog descends on the port, a ghost of rain. It comes in from the sea, this fallen cloud, penetrating every corner and hiding the sun.
The station smells like gasoline and cement: the smell of progress? The music they play in the metro always makes me laugh, those instrumental versions of North American pop hits that sound strange--all cleaned up and way too happy. I ask myself what Madonna and REM would think if they knew their songs had been converted into this daily rhythm of arrivals and departures.
I've been told there's a way to walk up the hill close to the station, where I'll be able to get the perspective I need to reproduce the old photos. I find the way up near Cafe Journal, the favorite bar of "all the gringos." All the gringos except for me, it seems, at least the crowded dark room downstairs where beer sloshes and the chairs are too close together and you have to push your claustrophobic way through the dance floor that expands annoyingly throughout the night as bottles get emptied and chairs get pushed aside. I prefer the laidback atmosphere upstairs, where the music is calmer, the art relaxing, and the chairs comfy. I've never walked up this street before, but I pretend to know exactly where I'm going. Walking up, walking up, my eyes search for the images from the photos. Once again I've made a mistake. I realize that the photos were taken from the other side of the street. Luckily, a hidden staircase offers me an escape route and I cross the street to walk up the right way.
They're building something new on the corner and I have to walk by a construction site, where the workers whistle at me when I pass. I know enough not to respond to their comments, but this flagrant machismo still bothers me. The feeling of being conspicuous returns. At least I have dark hair, I think, although here some people consider it blonde. My pale skin, my green eyes, the freckles sprinkled liberally across my cheeks--all of this betrays me, and even more when I open my mouth. The camera I'm carrying doesn't help anything, although I've tried to be discrete and nonchalant.
I wander around the streets of Cerro Castillo, where I've climbed. There's a park here instead of the empty plot of sandy real estate where three proud men stood posing in the old photo. Now there's only one man, a gardener, watering grass and trimming plans. A black dog accompanies him. They pay me no attention. I approach the place where surely they must have taken the old photo, and pause: the plants are obstructing my view, same goes for a school building, some houses, the new construction. I take what photos I can, trying to capture the scene in a way that's faithful to history.
III.
Another class, another story, another dream. Is it that the moteca is dreaming that he's the motocyclist or is it the other way around (3)? I keep dreaming in the past, trying to find a trace of this place as it was in the old days. I climb again up to Cerro Castillo, walking, walking: it's my last attempt at finding the perfect image. The sun is blinding but standing in the shade makes me cold. The same gardener is working in the park, and this time, as the last, our relationship is one of indifference. I don't stay long, just long enough to take the last few photos that I need for the project. It's calm and quiet here, an island of green in an ocean of concrete.
The mansions on Calle Alvarez all seem to be restaurants, cultural centers, hotels, and schools these days. Some aren't even there anymore, others simply abandoned, the majority hidden between the identical towers of luxury that are the new hills here in this city where the developer is king. 1, 2, 3 bedrooms! Sales center! Open house! The most common trees that you find here now are the skinny palms that tell everyone this is a tourist destination. Fitzgerald wrote of those all-seeing eyes keeping watch over the Wasteland, but here the presence of Coca-Cola watches over us from above, a nearby apartment building crowned with a red billboard and blinking lights that keep the time every night.
I walk down slowly from the hill and head home on the other side of the street, walking toward the ascensor that I take to reach my apartment. The chemical smell of fresh paint emanates from a recently constructed building, offending my nostrils. I still don't know what exactly I will take away from this semester, but at the very least it seems I've found a place whose identity has been changing just as fast as my own. While the city of Viña del Mar continues to conquer the past, I'll keep fighting with the present.
(1). cueca: national dance of Chile
(2). El Sur: a work by the Argentine short story master Jorge Luis Borges, in which a proud porteño from Buenos Aires travels to his ancestral homelands in the southern countryside of Argentina and finds his death at the hands of knife-wielding rural thugs. A mysterious gaucho eggs him on. Or is he just dreaming all of this in his hospital bed after a nasty bump on the head? Borges loved to mess with you.
(3). La noche boca arriba: another short story, this one by Julio Cortazar, whose style is similar to Borges. A modern man is injured in a motorcycle accident and has a creepy dream while in the hospital that he is actually an indigenous captive from the Precolombian era on his way to be sacrificed by the priests of an enemy tribe. Turns out in the end that the dream is the reality, and the reality the dream. Got it?
Bittersweet Goodbyes and Hellos
Last weekend started with a tremor.
Literally. I was standing in the kitchen with my host brother, David, making a quick breakfast. As I stirred my (always disappointing) Nescafe and he slathered mashed avocado on a roll, everything in the apartment suddenly rattled violently for a few seconds and then stopped. I thought at first that something had happened to the gas water heater that lives on the wall in the kitchen; my host dad was taking a shower in the bathroom next to the kitchen, so it sort of made sense. But when I looked at my brother, he gave me a big grin and a shrug, and said something helpful like, "We have earthquakes here." Ah, of course. So I've now had my third or fourth seismic experience this semester.
It was 8:00 on a Saturday morning, and I was headed to Valparaiso to take an exam. Yes--I had voluntarily signed up and paid around $100 to take a four-hour exam on a Saturday. Had I lost my mind? Maybe. But I thought it would be worth a shot for the chance to earn a Spanish proficiency diploma from the Instituto Cervantes in Spain. Nice resume padding, if nothing else. I managed to roll out of bed and get to the university on time. My friend Sarah, also evidently a fan of intellectual self-punishment, met me there and we buckled down for the first three and a half hours of exam-ing: reading comprehension, writing, listening, vocabulary, grammar. It might not have been so bad (I had been practicing for a couple of weeks) if not for the monstruous headache that invaded my shoulders, neck, and head halfway through the morning. It didn't let up, either, as Sarah and I went to a cafe nearby for a lunch break. I was tempted to scrap it all to go home and sleep off the pain, but my well-honed frugality and relentless determination prevented me from doing so. I made it through the final section of the exam--fifteen minutes of preparation and fifteen minutes of conversation--and headed home to enact the previous plan. The three hour nap that followed, along with a couple of ibuprofen and lots of water, knocked out the killer headache at last.
I would have been happy to chill peacefully at home that evening, but my feeble protests of intellectual exhaustion and nap-induced disorientation did not stand up to a scolding from my host mom, something along the lines of "You're not an old woman, you are young! Go out! GO OUT!!" (She obviously doesn't understand my lifestyle as a reclusive nerd.) So I turned to my back-up plan and called my friend Jon, who had invited me to a birthday party for his Chilean host mom. I met him and another friend, Carolina, and we proceeded to hang out until the wee hours of the morning, eating yummy party food, making awkward conversation with middle-aged party guests, and dancing to everything from salsa to reggaeton to 80s pop hits (Chileans have very questionable taste in music). Afterward, Jon accompanied Carolina and me to our respective houses and I went to bed.
There were big plans for Sunday, as well. I have gotten involved with a group of exchange students from the university who have organized a Big Brothers/Big Sisters type service project. One of our professors put us in touch with Gina, a foster mom in Valparaiso who is caring for seven foster children in addition to two of her own. The children all come from homes where physical and sexual abuse and other tragic situations were the norm, and so cannot live with their own families. Gina takes care of them and makes sure they receive the medical and psychological attention they need, which is stressful for all of them and especially taxing on her. So the object of our program is to create some fun and self-esteem-building activities for them and give her a little space to herself. The program is called "Tias y Tios" (Aunts and Uncles) because that's what the kids call us--Tia Kelsey, Tio Tom, Tia Jessica, etc.
So on Sunday we gathered the children and took a trip to the Botanical Garden in Viña for a day of picnicking and playing outside. I have to say that it really lifted my spirits. It is heartbreaking for me to think about the horrors that these beautiful children have seen and experienced, and I am utterly amazed that they can have any semblance of normality at all in their lives--perhaps they are just that much stronger than I am. I particularly connected with Javiera, a gangly and adorable 9-year-old. She had the scars of a terrible burn on her tiny arm, and I wondered for a while about what could have happened, but I was more captivated by her boundless energy and sweet personality. We played hours of soccer, took two trips to the lake to see the ducks and geese, climbed bridges and explored caves, named plants and took photos. She cracked me up with her questions and observations.
"Tia, why are those people still parked there if that sign says no parking?" she asked in all seriousness, genuinely astounded by their blatant violation of Botanical Garden rules. "Well, Javiera, apparently they just aren't paying very good attention," I responded. "Oh. Ok. Let's run!" she said with glee and sprints off, glancing back expectantly over her shoulder with a huge gap-toothed smile. On our second trip to the lake, she commented casually, "Oh, there are those people parked where it says no parking," with a little attitude of faint disdain but resignation. Hilarious. And wonderful that she could still maintain that much innocence. Yes, I am an unabashed bleeding heart. At the end of the day we were all deliciously exhausted, and so the tias, tios, and kids all piled onto a bus and headed home. They showered us with goodbye hugs and Javiera took my nametag as a souvenir of the afternoon. Amazing. We will do three or four more big events with them before the semester ends.
I returned to my apartment in time to watch a live streaming video of Maryville College graduation on the internet--it was strange to watch it from thousands of miles away, those little pieces of my life in miniature walking across a temporary stage amidst the tranquil tree-shaded lawn, surreal, disembodied and broadcast straight to my computer screen. I felt connected and infinitely separated all at once. It felt so final. But at the same time I was incredibly happy for all of my amazing friends, and I managed to hold back tears and focused on wishing them well from afar...
"The Lord be gracious unto you
and give you peace," they sing
And church bells toll in a foreign city
Bittersweet goodbyes and hellos
Literally. I was standing in the kitchen with my host brother, David, making a quick breakfast. As I stirred my (always disappointing) Nescafe and he slathered mashed avocado on a roll, everything in the apartment suddenly rattled violently for a few seconds and then stopped. I thought at first that something had happened to the gas water heater that lives on the wall in the kitchen; my host dad was taking a shower in the bathroom next to the kitchen, so it sort of made sense. But when I looked at my brother, he gave me a big grin and a shrug, and said something helpful like, "We have earthquakes here." Ah, of course. So I've now had my third or fourth seismic experience this semester.
It was 8:00 on a Saturday morning, and I was headed to Valparaiso to take an exam. Yes--I had voluntarily signed up and paid around $100 to take a four-hour exam on a Saturday. Had I lost my mind? Maybe. But I thought it would be worth a shot for the chance to earn a Spanish proficiency diploma from the Instituto Cervantes in Spain. Nice resume padding, if nothing else. I managed to roll out of bed and get to the university on time. My friend Sarah, also evidently a fan of intellectual self-punishment, met me there and we buckled down for the first three and a half hours of exam-ing: reading comprehension, writing, listening, vocabulary, grammar. It might not have been so bad (I had been practicing for a couple of weeks) if not for the monstruous headache that invaded my shoulders, neck, and head halfway through the morning. It didn't let up, either, as Sarah and I went to a cafe nearby for a lunch break. I was tempted to scrap it all to go home and sleep off the pain, but my well-honed frugality and relentless determination prevented me from doing so. I made it through the final section of the exam--fifteen minutes of preparation and fifteen minutes of conversation--and headed home to enact the previous plan. The three hour nap that followed, along with a couple of ibuprofen and lots of water, knocked out the killer headache at last.
I would have been happy to chill peacefully at home that evening, but my feeble protests of intellectual exhaustion and nap-induced disorientation did not stand up to a scolding from my host mom, something along the lines of "You're not an old woman, you are young! Go out! GO OUT!!" (She obviously doesn't understand my lifestyle as a reclusive nerd.) So I turned to my back-up plan and called my friend Jon, who had invited me to a birthday party for his Chilean host mom. I met him and another friend, Carolina, and we proceeded to hang out until the wee hours of the morning, eating yummy party food, making awkward conversation with middle-aged party guests, and dancing to everything from salsa to reggaeton to 80s pop hits (Chileans have very questionable taste in music). Afterward, Jon accompanied Carolina and me to our respective houses and I went to bed.
There were big plans for Sunday, as well. I have gotten involved with a group of exchange students from the university who have organized a Big Brothers/Big Sisters type service project. One of our professors put us in touch with Gina, a foster mom in Valparaiso who is caring for seven foster children in addition to two of her own. The children all come from homes where physical and sexual abuse and other tragic situations were the norm, and so cannot live with their own families. Gina takes care of them and makes sure they receive the medical and psychological attention they need, which is stressful for all of them and especially taxing on her. So the object of our program is to create some fun and self-esteem-building activities for them and give her a little space to herself. The program is called "Tias y Tios" (Aunts and Uncles) because that's what the kids call us--Tia Kelsey, Tio Tom, Tia Jessica, etc.
So on Sunday we gathered the children and took a trip to the Botanical Garden in Viña for a day of picnicking and playing outside. I have to say that it really lifted my spirits. It is heartbreaking for me to think about the horrors that these beautiful children have seen and experienced, and I am utterly amazed that they can have any semblance of normality at all in their lives--perhaps they are just that much stronger than I am. I particularly connected with Javiera, a gangly and adorable 9-year-old. She had the scars of a terrible burn on her tiny arm, and I wondered for a while about what could have happened, but I was more captivated by her boundless energy and sweet personality. We played hours of soccer, took two trips to the lake to see the ducks and geese, climbed bridges and explored caves, named plants and took photos. She cracked me up with her questions and observations.
"Tia, why are those people still parked there if that sign says no parking?" she asked in all seriousness, genuinely astounded by their blatant violation of Botanical Garden rules. "Well, Javiera, apparently they just aren't paying very good attention," I responded. "Oh. Ok. Let's run!" she said with glee and sprints off, glancing back expectantly over her shoulder with a huge gap-toothed smile. On our second trip to the lake, she commented casually, "Oh, there are those people parked where it says no parking," with a little attitude of faint disdain but resignation. Hilarious. And wonderful that she could still maintain that much innocence. Yes, I am an unabashed bleeding heart. At the end of the day we were all deliciously exhausted, and so the tias, tios, and kids all piled onto a bus and headed home. They showered us with goodbye hugs and Javiera took my nametag as a souvenir of the afternoon. Amazing. We will do three or four more big events with them before the semester ends.
I returned to my apartment in time to watch a live streaming video of Maryville College graduation on the internet--it was strange to watch it from thousands of miles away, those little pieces of my life in miniature walking across a temporary stage amidst the tranquil tree-shaded lawn, surreal, disembodied and broadcast straight to my computer screen. I felt connected and infinitely separated all at once. It felt so final. But at the same time I was incredibly happy for all of my amazing friends, and I managed to hold back tears and focused on wishing them well from afar...
"The Lord be gracious unto you
and give you peace," they sing
And church bells toll in a foreign city
Bittersweet goodbyes and hellos
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Poetic Musings of a Reluctant Chilena
I'm in the kind of mood that makes me appreciate the tiny things I see every day. The fact is that my life doesn't feel terribly different here. I don't feel constantly immersed in a culture strange and foreign. I don't feel as if my outlook is being radically transformed, I don't awaken each morning with stunning revelations of intercultural understanding. I am resigned to quiet contentment. It may sound cynical, it may be disappointing to admit it, but as I mentioned some time ago in an earlier post, life in Chile is still just...life. And so I return to the minuscule, I ground myself in the chance happenings that make me think or smile in the midst of my daily routine.
---
The flock of tiny schoolchildren,
identically dressed in their colorful smocks,
herded by their uniformed teachers
down a busy city sidewalk.
Their entire world a preschool wonder
of giggles and questions,
toddling legs struggle to keep up with busy minds
and there are not enough hands to hold.
---
The tiny blip of a hummingbird
flitting between the flowers that grow
at the foot of the daunting staircase
leading up to the castle where I have a history class.
---
On one deceptively fall day
there was woodsmoke in the air
and a little girl was practicing her spelling on the funicular.
---
Bookshelves, stacks of words
Even the doors are artwork
her Brazilian accent
sings in our ears
lilts around the Spanish, out of place
little plates appear tiling the mesita
milk coffee chocolate marmalade
sing on our tongues
escondidas en our little sanctuary
surrounded by the skeleton frame of a room,
worn studs exposed,
a hidden structure revealed--
our garden retreat
once.
---
There's a quiet old man on the metro
who always wears a tweed suit jacket
and reads the same little paperback:
Historia de Chile.
---
We walk to the end of the muelle, the pier
Clink 100 pesos into the binoculars
to watch the lobos del mar
Sea wolves. We call them sea lions.
They're not looking too wolfish today,
and not very lionish either.
More like blubbery lumps of bliss
sunning themselves on a gently bobbing buoy.
---
The flock of tiny schoolchildren,
identically dressed in their colorful smocks,
herded by their uniformed teachers
down a busy city sidewalk.
Their entire world a preschool wonder
of giggles and questions,
toddling legs struggle to keep up with busy minds
and there are not enough hands to hold.
---
The tiny blip of a hummingbird
flitting between the flowers that grow
at the foot of the daunting staircase
leading up to the castle where I have a history class.
---
On one deceptively fall day
there was woodsmoke in the air
and a little girl was practicing her spelling on the funicular.
---
Bookshelves, stacks of words
Even the doors are artwork
her Brazilian accent
sings in our ears
lilts around the Spanish, out of place
little plates appear tiling the mesita
milk coffee chocolate marmalade
sing on our tongues
escondidas en our little sanctuary
surrounded by the skeleton frame of a room,
worn studs exposed,
a hidden structure revealed--
our garden retreat
once.
---
There's a quiet old man on the metro
who always wears a tweed suit jacket
and reads the same little paperback:
Historia de Chile.
---
We walk to the end of the muelle, the pier
Clink 100 pesos into the binoculars
to watch the lobos del mar
Sea wolves. We call them sea lions.
They're not looking too wolfish today,
and not very lionish either.
More like blubbery lumps of bliss
sunning themselves on a gently bobbing buoy.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Chilean Dogs = Constant Entertainment
This dog is looking for a girlfriend, according to a flyer posted in the waiting area of our neighborhood funicular. "I am a white and brown Cocker spaniel, playful, and a gentleman." Hehe.
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