Half Way

So my time here is half way over! 2.5 months down, 2.5 to go. So crazy. Every day here is a surprise. Things that I never expected to be difficult are major hurdles, while things that I thought would be tough I take in stride.

I've been dreaming in Spanish every night...I love that!

Things I like about being here:
-being a university student in a CITY!
-meeting so many new people
-the amazing food, like empanadas, guisos, quiches, "ensalada chilena" with raw tomatoes and onions
-the anonymous, slightly lonely, but very exciting feeling of wandering around a strange city on your own
-Chilean soap operas
-walking by three blocks worth of fruit and flowers vendors on the way to school
-being able to buy avocados for about 20 cents each
-pretty Chilean people who always seem to look sharp...Americans are such slobs!
- exciting bus rides that make you wonder why anyone would bother with amusement parks when you could just get share of thrill and near-death-experiences by paying 15 cents and taking a Chilean "micro."
-the huge window in my room which bring me both morning sunshine and an amazing view of the city lights at night.
-the sweets, of course. Like manjar (dulce de leche), the hot chocolate my host mom makes, and the little cakes called "mil hojas"
-the Chilean custom of kissing people on the cheek as a greeting
-the hills, the ocean, the incredibly run down but beautiful victorian buildings.
-walking EVERYWHERE


Things I miss about the US
-being in closer contact with everyone I care about there!!! I miss you all sooooooooo much.
-the cats
-being able to have a cold glass of milk and some dark chocolate...neither exist here (the milk is from powder)
-thai food. More specifically, thai yellow curry with tofu and vegetables.
-playing the harp! This always seemed like a pain at Grinnell. Especially in the winter, when I've have to go out in the cold to Buckbaum to practice. But that sounds pretty good long about now.
-coming home after a long day to people to talk to
-when I'm at Grinnell, being able to go partying without worrying about how I'm going to get all the way home by public transportation in the middle of the night
-long hot showers and being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet
-at Grinnell, being able to just walk down the street to see friends. Or if you haven't heard from someone for a while, being able to go see them and catch up. This emailing game gets old.
-not thinking so much about how much things, and especially food, costs. Opening the fridge to find it packed with good things to eat.
-the pleasure and unbelievable ease of communicating in English

Questions

Sometimes, I swear that Valparaíso is just like San Francisco. And other times, I feel like I'm in a completely different world. I'm struck by how little Chileans know about Americans, and vice versa. Take, for example, the questions I got asked yesterday:

At home:
-"What's an essay?"-Marjorie
-"Didn't you know that avocado peel tea is good for colds? I thought everyone knew that!"-Erika

At Liceo Barrón:
-"Are you related to Arnold Schwarzenegger?"-Kid
-"I have lots of American music that I listen to. Like the Braveheart soundtrack, that's really popular in the US, right?"-teacher at Liceo Barrón
-"Do people in the US really act like they do in Desperate Housewives?"
-"Do you know Eminen?"

All I can say is that thank god we have things like study abroad, otherwise Chileans would go on thinking that Americans actually act and live like the idiots on tv, and Americans would go on thinking that Chile is a tropical country filled with Chiquita-banana women!

I am so productive...

-write 2nd language acquisition paper...CHECK
-write Hijo de hombre paper on collective memory....CHECK
-start reading Rayuela...CHECK
-make Oceanography study guide...CHECK
-study Oceanography...kind of check.
-go to the beach...CHECK (!)
-talk with long-lost parents...CHECK
-get in touch with long-lost boyfriend...CHECK.

Dvorák's New World Symphony is the most beautiful thing in the world...I think I could sit and listen to it all day long. But instead I'm going to Liceo Barrón to teach. And then to Salsa class to dance!

Weekend

When Marjorie came back from Santiago the other night and asked me about what I'd done this week, I had a hard time remembering, even. I guess I haven't been up to much, or much interesting stuff at least. I had 500+ pages of reading for last week and I have two papers and a test for this week. I bought Rayuela and Cien Años de Soledad for a couple of bucks each and am starting to read them for my Literature class. Oceanography continues to be great, though we got an old, mumbly teacher for the marine geology unit, instead of the biology and chemistry unit teacher, who perfectly ennunciated every world. But still, I love that class. Maybe if I were a Chilean student who actually had to come out of college with a profession (instead of this wishy-washy liberal arts crap) I would have studied oceanography. We've been learning about plankton, deep water fish, whales, jellyfish, all kinds of cool stuff.

I hung out with a bunch of people last night at Carla's and had an amazing time. When I was there I realized how stressed out I'd been all week and how much I needed to be around people and unwind. I definitely talked some people's ears off : ) It had been a lonely week.

I bought my tickets for Buenos Aires yesterday! I'm going to try to see Cady (from Urban) while I'm there.

After studying most of the day today, now I'm going to curl up in bed with my lonely planet and a cup of tea... : )

First Day of Spring

That's right, I've made it to springtime! Nowadays I have more complex concerns than living from day to day without freezing to death : )

Things have been kinda slow since getting back from La serena. I was really exhausted after the trip and I'm fighting off getting the cold that everyone in my host family has had, so I've been kind of tired out and down. I also had to read 450 pages in Spanish for a test that was this afternoon. It was on two books, Hijo de Hombre by Bastos and El reino de este mundo by Carpentier. Hijo de hombre was actually really good, I would highly recommend it! The test was so awful though...12 essay questions in 3.5 hours. Ughh I just want to go to sleep now!

Christian has his thesis presentation today, and he passed. Everyone was very worried about it, since the panel is apparently very strict and tough graders. It was a struggle for Erika to afford the suit for him to wear to it, and on top of that she was worried she wouldn't be able to pay for him to repeat the program if he didn't pass. But thankfully this isn't an issue since he did a great job and got a 90% on it.

I went to the highschool for the third time today. I can't remember if I've written this before, but anyways its an all-boys technical highschool and I'm working as an assistant in for one of the English teachers. Today one of the boys brought me candy and said to me "Jou arre de loub of mai life." 13-year old Don Juans are funny : )

The principal at this school told me that the best way to motivate the kids and get them to speak English was to pretend I didn't speak Spanish...after two weeks of pretending I didnt' understand hundreds of inappropriate comments made by horny, impolite teenage boys, I decided I needed a new tactic. So today after after one little devil made a comment I turned on him and gave him a piece of my mind in spanish. It was pretty funny to see how shocked and embarassed he was. Once word gets out that I speak Spanish, things should go better. Anyhow today we worked on dictation and listening comprehension. It was kind of cool to see Carola (the teacher) using all the tecniques that Antonio and Esteban used to teach me Spanish to teach these kids English. Carola left the room for ten minutes or so to make photocopies, leaving me in charge of the class of boys that we privately call "los diablos." I managed to keep them all in their seats and no one killed anyone else during my watch, so I'm counting it as a successful teaching experience.

La serena

The past few days I've been in La serena, a beach town in northern Chile. I was only gone for 5 days, but it seems like a lot longer given all the things that happened in that short of time. We got back to Valparaíso last night, just in time for the Fiestas Patrias celebrations. The Fiestas Patrias are Chile's Independence day, and people traditionally get together with family, have barbecues, drink a lot, and dance the national dance, "la cueca". We went to hear Inti-Illimani and some cumbia and salsa bands play on the pier in Valparaíso.

Anyways, the time in La serena was packed but totally and completely enjoyable. Looking back over my pictures its kind of bizarre how many interesting but completely unrelated things we did.

First, we went to the Valle de Elqui, which is famous for its dry, dramatic, mountains. Hippies go there because supposedly it has a "magnetic energy"(whatever that means) and nutty people go there because supposedly there are UFO's. Anyways, it was really beautiful. Nobel-prize winning poet Gabriel Mistral is from a little town near here, and we went to see her house.

Higher up in the Valle de Elqui...everything seems to be coated in dust here.

We had lunch at Restaurante Solar Villaseca. These little boxes are solar cookers that reach 180* C. The Chilean government along with environmental organizations have encouraged the use of solar cookers in this town since people are poor and firewood basically non-existant. The sun is scorching here.

Valle de Elqui is also home to the Mamalluca astronomical observatory. I'm not sure why, but this part of Chile has some of the clearest skies in the world. It was nearly full moon when we were there, which was bad for seeing stars and planets. I did get this cool picture of the moon though, through one of their fancy telescopes!


On Friday, a smaller group of us went by boat to Isla Damas, an island in the Pacific a few hours from La serena. We saw dolphins (amazingly beautiful), penguins, sea lions, and lots of cold, gray, windblown landscape. I would put my dolphin and penguin pictures online, given how fast they moved and how well camoflouged they are, the pictures aren't very exciting :-)


Mariah, Jessica, and Kristin compare sea-shells.

A beautiful white sand beach on a cold, cold day.


Wild Llamas, "Guayaca," in the desert on the way home from Isla Damas.

Carla, Mariah, Jessica, Kristin and I spent an extra day in La serena itself. As the second oldest city in Chile, it has really beautiful colonial architecture and churches. Kristin said it reminded her of Spain.

Carla, Me, Kristin, Jessica. Mariah's taking the picture.

Parque Nacional La Campana

Mariah, Francisco, and I start out from the valley of Quillota, where Francisco lives.

California poppies in Chile!

As we get higher and higher up, we can see both the Pacific Ocean and the Andes. We think the big peak in the center is Aconcagua, the highest point in South America, which is in the Mendoza provence of Argentina.

These beautiful, bizarre aloe vera plants grow high up in the mountains. They look almost other-worldly to me. The black part isn't burned, except by the intense sun. The silvery aloe vera keeps growing along these long tentacles, leaving the dead part behind.

We finally get to the top of La campanita! After climbing 6000 feet (and it seemed like for every 1000 feet, we'd go back down 700, only to have to regain them), we--me especially : ) -- were exhausted. The last bit was incredibly steep. It took a long time scrambling over a landscape of boulders, cactus, and aloe vera plants. Behind me in the photo is another range--La campana itself. One of these days we will have to go hiking there, too!

Mariah climbs over to another rocky outcrop during lunch.

Here we are the top!

Beautiful sunset as we walk home. It got dark and hard to walk fast after the sun went down, but soon enough we were on the road, with the moon, stars (southern-hemisphere stars, completely different from the ones at home) and lights from town to help us see.

The sand dunes at Con-con

Saturday evening I went to Con-con with Alisa to see the dunes and the sunset over the water. Though the sand's a different color than at home, a lot of what I saw could have just as easily been in CA as in Chile, which was kind of odd.

In the past few days I have

-learned to make empanadas
-watched "La virgen de los sicarios"--" Our Lady of the Assasins"
-started volunteering in an English classroom. Its an all-boys highschool in Cerro Barrón, a poorer neighborhood not far from where I live. Walking from the school entrance to the classroom amidst screams and whistles from the hundreds of boys around who formed a crowd around me wherever I went was one of the most awkward and terrifying experiences of my life. Still, I like the teacher I'm paired with and it seems like a potentially good experience.
-gotten a haircut (by my host mom)...it looks really nice!
-Made 4 friends
-Played "tacataca" aka table hockey for three hours
-Made plans to go hiking in the coastal mountain range tomorrow
-started reading "Hijo del hombre" (Son of Man) by Bastos for my literature class. Its reasonably good but not something I would chose to read on my own time.
-toured a fire department
-actually fallen over while riding the bus
-and I just read online that Bush's approval ratings, according to an AP poll, are below 40% for the first time (!!!!)

A haircut pictures. Ok so it doesn't look that different. But still, it feels really different, and I like it.

Procrastinating

Well, 150 pages of reading, one test, and one paper down. I have my oceanography test tomorrow and then 300 pages of reading for next week. My hand hurts from taking notes. Whine, whine.

Here are some pretty pictures from this week though...


Walking toward my history building.


History building from the garden just in front of it.

I have my history class in Viña every Thursday night. Getting out of class this week I saw what I knew would be an amazing sunset. I tried to run to the beach in time to see it, but it was farther than I'd remember it being, and I missed the sunset. Since its getting nearer and nearer to summer though, hopefully in a couple weeks or months I'll be able to make it from class to the ocean in time to catch a really amazing sunset.

Another Monday

I think I'm getting better at Salsa! I was able to do lots of new steps today, it was pretty exciting. I had a really nice partner who was just slightly beyond my level. This was perfect because he was able to lead me reasonably confidently but also didn't get impatient with my mistakes. His name is Diego and he goes to the Santa María. Hopefully I can dance him next time too.

I have so much work lately. Argh. For Wedesday I have a turn-in essay plus an in class essay test. On Thursday I have a test for the Chemistry unit of my Oceanography that's 25% of our grade. Oh, and then by the following Wedesday I'm supposed to have read two books to have a test on them. Two books!!! That's going to take me alllllllllllll weekend long.

Today was pretty fun. I had a great time talking to Dylan! He just got back from visiting Grinnell and is leaving for Tokyo on Thursday.

I've been really impatient and jumpy lately. Isn't it supper time yet? Why isn't the time till the next weekend going more quickly? Why can't it be time to go to La serena? Can't it be spring yet? And what about Buenos Aires? How much longer until I can actually speak Spanish the way I want to? And I want to see my parents and Dylan. And get back to Grinnell. And then go to Russia! There is so much going on right now, so many things to look forward to over the long term. Its very distracting. But in a good way : )

More Photos

Everything looks entirely different in the sunshine!

My favorite little plaza. I love the fountain, the old men smoking their pipes and talking, the vendors, and all of the icecream stands.

Quiet street along Parque Italia

Detail from the doorframe of Iglesia Sagrados Corazones.

Parque Italia. Parents rent out these tricycles for their kids. Its such a hilly, urban, crowded environment that the plazas are pretty much the only place kids can ride.

Busy, happy

There's definitely a correlation. I've spent so much time out of the house lately, walking here and there, going to class, meeting people. I had my orientation meeting for the Inglés Abre Puertas program which was really exciting. You're paired with a Chilean English teacher in a local highschool and then you get to help in the class, have conversation sessions with small groups of kids, plan cultural activities, etc. In the orientation they said that having a native speaker in the classroom is really helpful for the teacher, who with the small salary they receive will probably never be able to go to an English-speaking country, and for the students, who are more motivated to learn if there's someone physically there to talk to them in English, answer their questions about the US, etc. In fact, the program was created by the Dept of Education EFL because Chilean students were doing poorly in English. In the orientation they gave us all sorts of ideas for lesson plans and tips for interacting with the kids (like don't ever speak to them in Spanish, don't correct their mistakes in English, just let them try). It sounds like a great program. I think I'll end up really liking it. You get a certificate from the Chilean Department of Education when you're done. Since I'm not completely sure which appeals to me more, interpreting or teaching, I want to keep my options open.

I keep thinking about one of the presentations in our Globalization class. It was on the theory that one Chilean sociologist put forth that all Chilean women are mothers and all Chilean men are sons, no matter what their age. This is disturbing for so many ways, but I see it around me every day. For example, Erika lets Christian wake her up when he comes home from partying (2 in the morning). The reason? He's HUNGRY. The food will be sitting in a tupperware on the counter (they don't refrigerate much here), so all he would have to do is put it in the microwave and grab some utensils. But instead, he wakes her up and then sits at the table like a little king while she microwaves the food and serves him. Sometimes I feel like I'm trapped in the 50's. Erika likes to give me advice on how to raise and serve a family, decorate the house, and cook for my man. I'm always polite--I love Erika and I appreciate how hard she works to make me feel welcome and cared for-- but I find it depressing and irritating. How to explain that my goals are to be independent, to travel, to learn, and never, ever, close myself into such a subservient role.

Last night after class I went out with Kristin and Carla to "Vitamin Service," an icecream shop that's been in Plaza Victoria for generations. At 7 we went to see "María llena eres de gracia." The Colombian embassy is sponsoring a Colombian Film Festival in Valparaíso, so every Thursday night from now until December they're going to show a free Colombian movie. This is perfect for me because I'm interested in Colombia, I like foreign films, and Colombian spanish is so much easier to understand than Chilean spanish (the movies aren't subtitled, obviously).

I usually like movies that make you think but not necessarily ones that make you want to cry/throw up/scream. I thought that this was going to be in the latter category from what I'd heard. But while it was depressing and a bit gruesome, it was more of just a really beautiful, compelling, and complicated thinking movie. Its about a 17 year old Colombian girl who, frustrated with life and the lack of opportunities in her small town, decides to become a "mula," a transporter of heroin, from Bogotá to New York. Its not a sob-story, though it is sad: María knows what she's doing and isn't forced into. She's isn't a typical victim--she's capable, smart, beautiful, and determined to do what it takes to get ahead. Her decision to work as a "mula" seems strangely understandable and her trip, though extremely tense, seems strangely ordinary.

We'll see if I can make it through "La virgen de los sicarios" (Our lady of the Asassins) next Thursday.