Page-turning

The living room is yellow, with dark carved wood hugging each window pane, fireplace mantel and floor board, matched by a table, chairs and cupboard built into the corner of the dining room. Blue tile lies in the entrance, resting below a grassy green door with a circular frame and rectangular window in the middle, providing a peek-hole into this castle. I am lounging in a friendly black leather chair, feet seated on a matching foot rest, accompanied by a silent fireplace. Orange and yellow leaves give all their colors through the windows lining this front wall, their shadows colliding with sunbeams on the caramel wood. A petite chocolate chair with an ocean cushioned seat states me down from the opposite corner. At its right hand sits a lamp on the chestnut radiator - curvy licorice stem with a creamy shade. Sculpted metal leaves pop out of each end of the curving window frame. High heels echo, asking for the white dress. Fall air is wrapping me up in this space that my friend is learning to call her home.

Sea

There it is.

Water,

soaking space
between land and shore.

sweeping

stilling
sleeping

drifting under sky

sinking blue sighs

exhaling.

I can't tell you how much I love seeing you.

Just Gimme the Coffee

Tall Chai, 2 pumps vanilla, extra hot? Sure.
Grande? This one? Do you want Bold or Pike?
Hi. Good Morning.
Venti Latte, nonfat. Did you want whip on that?

Can I get a morning bun?
Sorry about that! I heard “pumpkin” somehow. So, you wanted Cinnnamon Dolce?
GRINDING GRINDING GRINDING
$100? K. You're all set. And you wanted to pay with the card?
I don't really know much about the ap actually.
I gotta get one of these gold cards.
Black and White Mocha? Hold on a minute. What is that?
The Brice? You probably told me, but I don't remember. So – a Trenta cup with ice – and you're Brian, with the ice, that's the Brice? Ok.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
I'm sorry, what was the first drink?
Ah, the Ted special. What is that again? No problem.
Just getting some more pennies. I hate the pennies.
Tall Bold.
Medium Pike.
Can I get a piece of pumpkin bread? Great choice.
GRINDING GRINDING GRINDING GRINDING
So, that was soy milk?
There's actually cream and sugar over at the counter.
Chocolate Chip Cookie? That sounds so good.
Hi! I love your jacket.
Bryan with a y! Yes, I remember.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
And that's Barb, not Bob, right? With that Boston accent, it just sounds so similar. But you're Barb and you're Bob. Got it.
And that wasn't decaf or anything, right?
Cricket?

Seven? Like the number?
You know, people say the name doesn't matter, but I don't agree.
Where are you from? I was just in Buenos Aires! Love South America.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
Hey! How's it going? Yup, been here a few weeks. It's good, like a game.
You can put "DJ Jonelle" on that cup.
It's just so funny that they're Marshmallow Dream Bars. We all know they're really rice crispie treats.
I know, they look so good. But they're not real food, just sugar pretending to be.
Totally. I've gotten that before.
Hey, I went to Gordon.
GRINDING GRINDING GRINDING
Americano. My favorite drink.
So your total is $4.86.
Pumpkin Scone? Nice.
I'm sorry, can you say that one more time?
It's like autumn in a cup.
Hey, I have the same backpack. So good!
You all set?
Nice, my dad's name is Gary.
GRINDING GRINDING GRINDING
Thanks! I got it in Mexico.
I love your scarf. Where in France?
So I guess that's our only organic coffee then.
What do I think of Howard Shultz?
Yes, you can.
Salted Caramel Mocha? So good. They'll kill you though.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
And here's your change – 2 Abraham Lincolns. Nice. Thanks!
I'm good, you?
Enjoy!
Thank you!

The French Astronomer

In the desert, the consistent nights of clear sky provide the perfect conditions for star gazing. The sky takes over the landscape, stretching out so expansively over the sand and mountains, reflecting nature's brightest blue. At night, the sunbeams quickly clamp themselves down over the mountains, slowly shading in the shadows with purples, reds and pinks. It all happens so fast and without any cloudy interruption, causing the colors to really streak and paint the sky so artistically. I can’t capture it with my camera; I’ve tried. Fortunately, I purchased a polarizer before I arrived here, which has helped immensely in photographing just how blue the sky is.

We booked a tour of the constellations and hopped on yet another tour bus, this one filled with English speakers from all over. A French astronomer greeted us out in the middle of the desert and led us out into the sky, everyone in their newly purchased alpaca hats with the native patterns of swirls and animals on the outside. For myself, I wore my newly purchased colorfully checked hat that has the animal fur flaps that clip over your ears and flip up in the front, very stylish.

He began by noting that viewing the sky is about observation. As the stars are moving, we are moving, and our cultures are also developing and changing. Perhaps the natives in the past were a little trippy from the substances they smoked from desert plants and perhaps the missionaries were trying to convert people by converting the constellations to Christian images. With his laser he pointed out squares or diamond constellations that are seen as a centaur, scorpion or an alter.

“As as you can see here, this is bear. Here is the head and the body, right? Obviously. Well, if you thought that was a bear then you probably would think that over here is a woman. As you know, all women have square heads. But a Virgin? I don’t think so.” He said as he pointed out the constellations that formed two stretched out legs. “Now, if you’re a European this bear now becomes a saucepan or a big dipper. And over here, if you have a monarchy, you would see this as the Northern crown, but if you are perhaps a Communist, this now becomes the sickle.”

“If you’re a Christian you would see this as a cross. Why they chose to use one of the most horrible ways of death, I don’t know, but the Barbarians – they didn’t have this way of killing people, so they saw a kite. People from Patagonia saw a hand and other indigenous saw an arrow. And over here we have a constellation very intelligently named, well, what do you think?” he said as he used his laser light beam to point out three stars 45 degrees away from each other.

“A triangle,” answered someone.

“Yes! As I said, you are a very educated group. But as you can also see, I know many triangles in the sky,” he said, proceeding to connect all different dots to make triangles.

“Now, if you could make a list of your top ten favorite things of all time to do in your life, they wouldn’t be things you learned in school, would they?”

“Triganometry.” piped up someone from the crowd.

"Astronomy is one of those things you will never learn in school."

“I will show you the astrological signs, but I don’t think they really have much meaning. The stars don’t really care about us, and for astrology to be correct they would have to have meetings, figuring out whose birthday was when and then decide to do mean things to people. Well, if you’re boyfriend breaks up with you, and you follow astrology, then he probably was right to do so.”

“What are the five best things to do in life? Breathing, eating, sleeping, drinking and…..? Sleeping again.”

“What do you have to do before you have a baby? Well, you have to make them. And you may need to try one or more different people before you find someone special. Well, watching the stars provide the perfect conditions. Imagine: it’s cold, you’re looking up at the sky. I’m telling you, it’s perfect. There is a closer distance between you, unlike playing tennis or some sport together – these are not going to do the trick. But how do you point out the constellations? Well, you don’t get a laser. What you do is with one hand point out the star and it’s really the other arm that is doing the important job,” he said as his other arm demonstrating pulling a person closer to him, “and don’t just repeat information that you read on Wikipedia, that is not going to work.”

He proceeded to spout off toneless facts about the age of different stars and how far away they are in the sky and then imitated a girl politely creeping away. Then he informed us it’s possible that she could be a nerd too and natural selection would take over the situation.

“You see, to get to the closest star would take 385 generations of humans. So, if you were to take 4 humans, put them in a rocket, and send it off at the speed of light, it would only be the 385th generation that would make it to that star – and you can imagine by the time they got there they would be a little deformed. Perhaps they would have three legs, green skin, and speak in a strange voice. So, whenever you see extraterrestrials on earth, remember that when they began their journey they were actually quite normal looking humans.”

Photography is actually able to capture stars that our human eye can’t take in. He took some of our cameras and set them up to expose for 30 seconds in order to show this. Now I am happy to have a beautiful picture of the night sky. There is an image via the Hubble Ultra Deep telescope that was about able to capture about 2,000 galaxies in an area that is about 1/12 of the moon, the image exposing for 12 days. If there are that many galaxies in that small of a space, imagining how immense our universe is reminded me how very tiny I really am in comparison.

In the beginning of our tour, there was a star over in the East just above the mountain and by the end of the tour it had moved up a good ways, as the earth had been rotating ever so slightly the entire time. As the Earth tilts and rotates, the Southern hemisphere can see certain stars, only sharing about 2/3 of the sky with the Northern hemisphere at a time. The Milky Way surrounds us, and as our guide pointed out, when you see the Milky Way through a telescope you’ll notice that it’s not actually milk but a thick clusters of stars.

“And as everyone knows, people in New York actually walk like this,” he said, demonstrating a person walking at an angle.

It would take 8 minutes at light speed to get to the sun, our closest star. The planets are found within a certain band across the sky but can be seen in the different places over the years as they move along their course and sometimes they align in different ways. As they move, they also find themselves in different astrological signs, which astrologists try to interpret. Saturn in Virgo…. Mars in Scorpio… etc, etc….

“At the beginning of the month, there was an alignment with some of the planets but it wasn’t a great one because the Pope didn’t die. As you know, whenever there is a planetary alignment something catastrophic always happens – a Pope or King dies, etc. In 2040, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter will all align with the moon and that will be the end of the world,” he informed us, ever so sarcastically.

“Now, how do you read a star map? Well, the best source is actually your I-pad, which has GPS and can locate exactly which sky you are in. Then, you want to find the Southern Cross. As you can see, I know many crosses, “ he said as he made different cross constellations with his laser and all different stars in the sky, “but if you read a map it will have the constellation drawn out with a helpful label, ‘Southern Cross’.”

“What you have to remember when looking at the sky is that we’re looking at the past. We receive the light of these stars many years after they have actually formed. See that star over there? The light from that one left when you were born. We are looking at basically the same sky that people did hundreds of years ago. The stars move very fast, but in our sky, this one for example, has only moved from here to here,” he told us, pointing out a very small space in the sky.

We saw a shooting star (or, falling rock burning up in our atmosphere) during the beginning of the talk and he informed us that two others would be included in the tour. He took us around to different telescopes where we were able to see nebulas, globular clusters, the Milky Way and even Saturn. The view of Saturn was actually quite strange because the white silhouette was an exact replica of my glow-in-the-dark stickers that clung to my starry sky ceiling when I was younger. It was a stark white clear cut-out of Saturn, with its satellite to the left brightly shining. I suspected that perhaps it was in fact just a sticker by its artificial nature.

After the tour, we went inside for some hot chocolate. We were actually in his house, though the center room resembled more of a dark adobe gathering place with tiny lanterns hanging from wooden posts. The bathroom was actually very excellent, with a lampshade around the center light with a starry space scene, hot tub in the corner, and colorful and artistic touches in the mirrors and soap dispensers.

He’s been doing research on asteroids out in the desert, funding it himself. His knowledge and exuberance for astronomy was inspiring, especially in that he made it fun for us to view and listen to. Being out in the middle of the desert wasn't so bad either, those stars are quite the spectacle.

Travelers Traveling...

One funny thing about traveling is that your country becomes your first identity. You may even find yourself strangely attached to your history or just forced to think about it more. One night at my hostel I was woken up by, “Who saved you???!” coming from a drunk American of course arguing about World War II and America’s involvement towards the end. Between swearing at this British girl, I could hear her saying, “You can’t just say all these things and not let me say anything.” Lying in my bed, hardly surprised by the arrogance of someone from my own country, I was very tempted to stick my head out the door and tell him that he’s further contributing to the ruin of the American reputation. I later found out that he told a girl from Finland that the war that her grandfather had fought in with Russia didn’t exist and he actually attempted strangling a Canadian guy hours later in the night when they were walking back to the hostel in the absolute middle of nowhere in the desert.

“So, that means you can say you traveled all over South America and the only aggressive person you met was a guy from Florida?” I asked him.

“Yes, looks like it,” he said, “It was strange, he wasn’t quite right.”

Apparently the Floridian was yelling about how he hated Canada and had a crazy look in his eye, perhaps from lack of medication or too much of some other substance. This Canadian, who actually has been living in Australia and London for the past eleven years, would retell the story later as the day he was almost murdered. As we were sitting around a fire in the middle of the hostel, a guy from Seattle was trying to break the wood with his foot by stomping on it, since there was no saw.

“You can do it! You’re an American!” I cheered.

“Yeah, pretend its Canada!” said the Canadian.

A day later I overheard a conversation from my hammock, happening at a table nearby about different holidays.

“Today’s an American holiday,” said an Australian girl, G-chatting with a friend back home.

“It is?” responded a guy from Seattle.

“Happy Memorial Day!” I said from my hammock, realizing the date.

“July 1st… isn’t that when you celebrate the slaughter of your natives?” continued Australia.

“That’s July 4th,” responded Seattle, “It’s our independence day.”

“Right, Canadians celebrate the harvest and you celebrate the slaughter of your natives,” said Australia. She continued, “We take good care of our natives you know.”

“Well, we give them nice plots of land…but your country didn’t always take such good care of the Aborigines,” replied Seattle.

“Right, well we’ve apologized for all that now, and that was all the British anyways,” defended Australia.

“I think the Queen should actually apologize,” chimed in the English girl.

“I know! I was absolutely furious about that. It’s really your queen that needs to apologize,” said Australia.

“Well, the monarchy was really German anyway,” responded England.

You hardly get people’s names either when you meet travelers. When you meet them the first questions are about traveling and where you’re going or where you’ve been and what you think about it. Then, after spending two days with the person or people and they leave, you suddenly realize that you never got their name. They were always just, “that couple from Barcelona” or “that guy from England” or “the girl from Australia”.

“Miles… feet… inches… all these crazy American measurements,” said Canada.

“We keep our measurements even though the Metric system makes absolutely more sense. We actually learn it in school… we use it for science and math…” I said.

“So the entire world agreed upon a system and America refused to join?” asked Canada.

“It’s how we maintain our bubble. 12 inches in a foot, three feet in a yard. Our rulers have centimeters and millimeters though, I believe….” I replied.

“What’s a yard?” asked Canada.

“Well, it’s similar to a meter,” said Seattle.

“Miles, pounds, ounces, quarts, gallons, cups…” I listed, trying to think of all the ridiculous names.

“Cups?” asked Canada.

“Yup! Do you have acres?” I asked Canada.

“No, you use hectares, don’t you…” pondered Seattle.

“That fire is about… 2 feet high or 24 inches.” I said, zoning out into the fire, “So, how about knots – is that universal?”

“I don’t know where it comes from, but I love that measurement. And at least everyone measures horses in hands,” said Seattle.

“Hands? Where did that come from?” I asked, laughing.

“Some king wanted to measure a horse so he thought, ‘Hey, how about I use my hand…’” responded Seattle.

“What about a dozen?” I asked.

“Yup, we use a dozen,” said Canada.

“How about a baker’s dozen?” I continued.

“Yeah, I think I know that one… that’s six, right?” answered Canada.

“Nope, 13!” I said.

“Because you know the baker!” said Seattle.

“In America, you know the baker.” I said.

“Six is when the baker hates you,” said Seattle.

Across from us the Chileans sat listening to Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” singing along to some of the lyrics, then switched over to Chilean music, then back to something English. They turned on the song that Coolie used later for his Gangster Paradise, to which my western companions began singing the rapper part absent from the original version.

“Power and the money, money and the power, minute after minute, hour after hour!”

The most common conversations between travelers usually revolve around language, measurements, wars, entertainment, travel stories, pronunciation, colonization, and Americans not learning enough about the world in school. I was talking with two Scottish girls about Scotland’s contributions to the world, asking if the country had invented the library system. They then asked the Chilean what his country had invented, to which he responded after looking a bit confused, “motels.” I said that I thought those came from America and our car culture, though I’m not sure. I think he was on his second or third glass of straight Rum at that point.

Travel stories come out. A horrible movie seen in La Paz, where the theater was freezing and they were sitting in movie seats on the floor watching a girl explicitly getting gang raped. A leather jacket a guy had handmade for $40 in La Paz, after simply showing a guy a picture of what he wanted. Past travels up through Greenland, north of Scotland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands as a cruise ship librarian. A journey to North Korea for four days where you saw all the lights in the city get completely shut off at night and a guard keeps you company most of the time, making sure you don’t take pictures of the people. You hear about people wanting to go to Colombia, figuring out how to get to Peru when the border is closed in Bolivia, how Brazil is so expensive for Americans to enter, and tales from Easter and Galapagos Islands. Comparisons of food, money, and long bus rides are exchanged; travel becomes this present reality that of course after awhile you become accustomed to, take for granted, and sometimes even get tired of.

“Are you guys headed to Peru tomorrow?” I asked.

“I really don’t want to get on another bus,” said Finland.

“Well, we could go to Arica for the night and then Cusco the next day,” suggested Australia.

“If we don’t take night buses both nights, we’ll have to find a place to stay,” reminded England.

Sometimes you feel tired and it’s difficult to fully absorb everything between jumping on and off buses and snapping photos. At Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon – named because the landscape resembles the surface of the moon) Rosario and I followed our tour up the sand dune and later found ourselves suddenly alone after sunset and running back down through the sand to our waiting companions. Sometimes these tours push you to move a little too quickly and you’re only left with pictures to dwell on and process later, wondering, “Where the heck was I??”

Although, the travel is great and really bends your perspectives - or breaks them. I’ve tried to find differences between all these cultures, attempting to generalize how Americans are, or Europeans, or South Americans. Though there still seem to be personality differences between them all, I feel like at the end of the day, we’re really all quite similar. Some people are crazy and hate other countries, some people are more relational, others are more critical, and some are very efficient while others are laid back. I think sometimes it’s easier to step back and look at this cultural collage and just admit that people are really just people wherever you are and that when you step into a new place, its more about trying to leave as many of your own cultural filters at home, trying to understand the history and context of the people you are now interacting with. It’s more about observing and accepting than impressing your own beliefs onto other people. Traveling tends to break you down a little bit and stretch out your own ideas as you move through these places where you realize you don’t know much about anything anymore.

Notes from the Beautiful Buenos Aires

In Spanish they use the word “know” when asking about where you visit instead of “see”. This weekend I met the lovely Buenos Aires, city of good air (aptly named when compared to Santiago).

If Rome and Paris had a child, it would be Buenos Aires, and it’s English speaking brother would be New York City. It’s cosmopolitan, with districts named Soho and Hollywood, where I learned the fun of window shopping - each glassy front presenting a story with mannequins and different props. Peeking in while walking along the cobblestoned streets was entertaining in itself and fun to imagine what money could buy if I had it. Tailored leather bags, sweaters, satin and cotton shirts with paisley or flower patterns covered the models, along with scarves and artistic trimmings. Leather shoes for ladies and gentlemen shone brightly in the windows. Tailored mens’ evening coats and jackets, complemented with a patterned tie and straight jeans appeared in browns and deep purple. Striped, paisley, tartan, and flower printed clothing hug the hangers, parading with finely knitted and checkered scarves, leather bags, fluorescent trinkets and retro bags with Marilyn Monroe face printed on them. These stores weren’t within the skyscrapers of NYC, but rather the smaller Spanish storefronts, with wooden doors, long windows and colored outer walls. As I walked along the sidewalk, golden leaves slowly fell around me and the street glistened from the light rain in the early afternoon. I could’ve wandered around these streets for more hours, which says a lot considering shopping tends to give me more anxiety than pleasure. I had fun buying some items for friends back home… as well as a few things for myself.

I felt like I was in NYC most of the time I was walking around the city. The massive Avenida 9 de Julio stretches out through the center, expanding with four streets, each with 2 or 3 lanes of traffic, as well as a park running through the middle. Roman columned government buildings dot the sidelines and an obelisk, a shorter copy of our own Washington monument, claims space in the middle. Every street contains restaurants, stores, pubs and cinemas. I stumbled upon one street that was lit up like Times Square for about 3 blocks, littered with cheap restaurants, cinemas and people selling kitsch items, reminding me of the Wildwood boardwalk in NJ. Another wider street, Santa Fe, hosted larger designer stores, sophisticated theaters and dozens of specialty furniture shops mixed with convenient stores and pharmacies. About 5 taxies drove by me every 30 seconds as I could feel my feet threatening to cramp from having walked for hours. I began thinking of myself more as trekking than walking in order to absorb as much of the city as possible.

Everyone I’ve met in Chile claims that Argentina has better meat but worse wine. I agree with this. What’s funny is that Chileans love their wine so much that it’s all you’ll really find in the grocery stores and wine shops, though I can’t blame them because it is so delicious. Also, what I think is different about South Americans, is that they know all the parts of the cow and the different kinds of cuts of meat. On the menu it specifies exactly where it’s coming from. The meat is definitely awesome, in both Chile and Argentina. The food in general, I think, has more of a kick to it – I feel like you get more quality for less money and the portion is more appropriate for what you can eat. Instead of receiving 8 oz of meat per person, coming with mashed potatoes, vegetables and salad – we shared about 12 oz of meat with tiny dishes providing tasty flavors to mix the meat with: pumpkin, mashed potatoes, onion, artichoke, tomato, and olive pastes. Prior to that, we actually shared other parts of the cow – the names of them escape me though. One was intestine I believe and the other was like sausage; both were fantastic.

When I walked through the parks in the afternoon people were relaxing and drinking matte while others were kicking around a soccer ball and still others had set up ropes between trees and were walking along them like a tightrope – interesting. I loved watching the people play soccer, not just because I actually do enjoy watching soccer, but it just seemed so particularly Argentine. I also wanted to just join some of the people drinking matte, but didn’t act upon that. At my hostel I had matte with some of the staff a couple mornings in a row - lovely.

But one area that absolutely floored me was the cemetery in Ricoleta. It had been recommended to me, but what I hadn’t known was that it doesn’t consist of graves in the ground, but actual mausoleums - houses of graves along tiny stone streets. Walking through brought new meaning to the phrase “on death’s door” in that, these people had tombs with their own doors. It was like streets of the dead. It almost doesn’t surprise me though, that South Americans would find a way to construct beautiful grave sights as well – some complete with columns, domes and sculptures of angels and the men within the ground. The evening light added even more weight to the artistry, the shadows adding more severity to the statues. In the moonlight I imagine it must be incredibly eerie and perhaps ghosts even peek their heads out of their doors and windows to see the night sky.

After the cemetary, I walked back through the market, where some people were dancing Tango on the street, to find La Flor. In the middle of an intersection I heard the tune of an American accent walk by.

"Excuse me! Where's La Flor?"

"Ah, the flower! Yes, that's worth seeing. I think it's over there..." said the Texan, as he pointed me in the wrong direction, "Our daughter just bought a miniature of it!"

His daughter proceeded to open a box with miniature metallic model of La Flor, a huge sculpture created for the university by one of its students. The metallic flower opens during the day and then closes at night. We had to ask a couple other people for the proper directions, but I loved connecting with these Texans. Hearing an American accent is music to my ears when in a crowd, it echoes of familiarity and home, even if they're from Texas.

Arriving back in Santiago was actually quite refreshing, mostly due to the people. Argentines struck me quite similar to New Yorkers, in the sense that they seemed more suspicious of me and though were truly accommodating, it was underneath a thicker skin. They seemed rougher around the edges and direct, whereas Chileans are a bit more open and warmer upon first acquaintance. For example, my taxi driver in Buenos Aires was swearing at the cars on the road, whereas in Chile, he was making small talk with me and I heard him say, “un beso, chau!” (“a kiss!”) at the end of his phone conversation. Hearing this, along with the quick intonation with the rises and drops, made me smile and very happy to be back.

Just a note on the change of Spanish, the Argentines pronounce all "y"s with a "sh". Therefore, you get:

Nueva York = Nueva Shor (New York)

hoy = hoysh (today)

alli = ashi (there)

aye = asher (yesterday)

lluvia = shuvia (rain)

Though I had enjoyed watching hundreds of rocky snowy mountain peaks change into expansive patches of plains below me as I flew across to Argentina, seeing the orange sky contrast with the majestic blue and purple shadowed mountains was a peaceful landscape to watch on the taxi ride back into Santiago. This is also the memory I have imprinted on my mind when I first arrived from Lima, finally reaching near the end of the Andes spine. Moments like this pull on my heartstrings, making me think twice about leaving such a new land. However, knowing that you’re leaving somehow sweetens each moment that you have left to cling onto, which is what time feels like now.

All I can do now is just savor the sweetness as best as possible.

The Cemetary at Ricoleta

La Flor

Beautiful Parks

91 Years

Yesterday, I was reminded that my Grandfather turned 91 this week. My life isn’t even 30% of that. He has lived three times longer than myself and has spent 60 years married to the same person.

Meanwhile, I just ordered an espresso with dos leches (normal milk and condensed milk) along with a brownie and some tiramisu ice cream in a coffee shop on Calle Italia, near my apartment. Oh the extravagance of little pleasures, how I love that. I will miss the colorful money that I used to pay for it, along with the Spanish I used to order it and the conversations that I can’t quite understand around me. In my mind, I am dedicating this elaborate sugar feast to my Scottish Grandfather, probably situated in front of his TV across the Atlantic. Here’s to 91 years of life, Salud!

The scope of spending 60 years with someone is wild to me. 60 years of laughter, joys, disappointments, sadness, support and just living – probably feeling like they want to leave one another during the darkest days and feeling the opposite on the others. Sometimes I wonder what they talk about before they fall asleep at night, after all that time. They had children, who have now had children and time keeps moving us all along. Somehow thinking about the length of life calms my anxieties, realizing that it doesn’t end after failures - there is much to be learned from. Although, all the sugar I just took in might just kill me.

Last night some songs from the 80s (or early 90s) came on my friend’s radio, which I translated into Spanish (not perfectly). I swear the 80s is often more present here, in the clothes and the music. Black and stone-washed jeans are popular and sometimes I see people wearing sweaters and sweatshirts with colorful graphics or waxed on pictures that remind me of things I bought as a child. It seems whenever we have the radio on in the apartment there are all these classics coming on from U2 and Phil Colins, etc. Often, there are remakes of the songs as well. Rosario was telling me that she heard the US is usually about three years behind in fashion though, so maybe this is just the time for me to catch up. Anyway, the other night I found myself trying to translate some Tom Petty, something that used to play constantly in the back of my friend’s Dodge mini-van during my childhood.

“Pues, ‘Last Dance with Mary Jane’ es de Tom Petty.”

“Tom Peddy.”

“Tom Petty. Y, el dice ‘el ultima baile con Mary Jane. Una vez mas para morir… el duele? Doler? Y, morir el duele. Sabes ‘Mary Jane’?”

“Claro, marijuana.”

“Si, po… la Mary Jane hace el duele mas facil y mejor.”

Hearing songs from my culture in other countries makes me proud. When Katy Perry’s Firework came on in Ecuador while we were out dancing, I couldn’t have been happier, pounding my fists in the air and jumping like a Gringa.

Not only is English available, but other languages in general. My roommate and I were laughing the other night about our bootleg movies. We seem to have one in every language. The other night we watched the Japanese “Ponyo” with Spanish subtitles.

“Do you understand?”

“Of course….. it’s a kid’s movie. I could probably understand without the subtitles.”

We popped in “Balada Triste” (by Alex de la Iglesia) but it was all in Russian and we couldn’t read where the subtitles were located on the menu, so that was out. Awhile ago, we watch “Je t’aime Paris” in French with Spanish subtitles while commenting in English. When I first moved in, we tried speaking Spanish more, but I began to give up trying to explain more complicated thought processes. Between the intonation, pronunciation and all the words unique to Chilean Spanish, it would take a long time to fully understand or use it well.

Si, po. (“po” is kind of used like “like”)

No, po.

Ka chai? (Did you catch that? Used in the same way as, “you know?”)

Claro (sure)

Lata (lazy)

Filo (whatever)

Vacan (cool)

Piola (cool)

Liz Taylor (listo – ready)

Y, Boston? (And, you?)

“Y Boston?” is the most entertaining for me. “y Boston?” is in reference to, “Y, Vos?” which is like, “And you?” usually used to challenge someone. Why they seem to randomly put English references into phrases, I'm not sure. But, for example:

“You drank too much last night.”

“Y, Boston?” ("So did YOU.")

I love how they play with Spanish, but as an English speaker, it’s challenging to be apart of it. They say Liz Taylor in references to “Listo” which means “Ready”. Apparently, when Pinochet died, on the front page in large print was:

LIZ TAYLOR

Meaning, he was finished. The Clinic is a leftist publication that pokes fun at politics, while offering some intelligent commentary at the same time. When Paul McCartney came to visit, there was a picture of him with, “Can’t buy my love or my tickets!”. The Clinic also has a three-floor pub, with large posters of politicians and jokes printed over them. Their menu can be taken home with racy descriptions of the food, often naming the meat and chicken dishes with double meanings.

One of my students is what they call a farandula, meaning that he likes keeping up with famous people. While sitting at an unassuming restaurant nestled within houses of Providencia, he often points out different starlights to me.

“The man sitting next to you is the manager of a football team.”

“The woman behind you, in the red, is a on the series ‘Macho’.”

“That man behind me to the right, on his computer, is a famous journalist.”

I first learned about Osama’s capture through this student as well, having neglected to read the news that day or the night before.

“I have a question for you. What do you think about the killing of Osama?”

“What?”

“Osama.”

“Ah, they killed him?”

The major political news here has to do with the Hydro-electric power plant they are building in the South, in the neighborhood of Patagonia. I think it’s kind of a shame…. feeling like they should leave the landscape alone. The other night, Rosario and I got a nice breeze of tear gas, drifting off of the protesters entering the subway, having been sprayed out by the government. Used lemons were lying on the metro floor, used to calm the stinging effects. We were joking that there will be a lemon shortage and Rosario was reading later, that tear gas actually affects your fertility.

And with fertility, let’s go back to the first topic: 91 years. 91 years of life. 60 years of marriage. 10 years of the rocky 20-somethings. Years of childhood, children and parenting. Years of growing old and learning how to cope with life and enjoy it.

Cheers to my grandfather and grandmother!

Patagonia

No, I didn’t go there and nor will I. Sadly, the area is entering its winter and Rosario and I thought the desert would be more amiable. Therefore, we settled for San Pedro de Atacama instead.

But: Patagonia. A battle has landed on the streets of Santiago over the best way to energize the country. The land is long and thin, with every kind of climate from North to South. They have possibilities: wind, nuclear, solar or hydro-electric – and what the politicians have sided with is the hydro-electric, which will impact the beauty of the Patagonian territory.

Endesa is an energy company that creates these structures, while Transelec is a company that figures out how to get the energy from there to the distributor. Both of these companies are clients of my institute; Endesa actually being our major client. The situation made for investigative conversation today.

What struck me was how easy it is to demonize companies, when really, no one wants to destroy Patagonia. The other week, two managers of Endesa spent our time telling me all the places I needed to see in Chile, promoting Patagonia immensely. One manager was recommending taking a trip on a boat there, taking me to a glacier along the way, just like he did years ago. He was looking up the information for me and giving me the name of his friend who works for a travel agency.

The problem is, in order to develop, one needs energy. However, if people really want, they can protest that Patagonia be removed from the list of places they can obstruct. Or, can they? At the moment, 60% of Chileans disagree with this decision. Can they create enough commotion to actually redirect the rationale behind this decision?

Usually money wins these types of things. Highly-paid people sit down and reason out all the options, finally settling on a practical or lucrative direction for a country. But what if Chile didn’t even own the Patagonia area? What if people could protest enough to just eliminate this prized possession from the running – and force politicians and CEOs to find another way, because they have to?

Finding another way is the challenging part. Chileans saw the destruction of Japan, instantly reminded of their own possible fate if they were to build a Nuclear power plant. The technology and money doesn’t exist here to build solar panels in the desert, as it does in California. At the moment, coal is the most popular resource in use which also causes more local damage. Perhaps the hydro-electric option is the best, or seems most justified – being clean energy, but yet, it sits in such a beautiful sanctuary.

However, I am very demanding – sitting here between two laptops with the light on and an electric heater warming my feet while an electric blanket warms my bed. I arrived to this country via jets and use public transportation everyday. I like cooking my food on a stove, washing my clothes in a machine, and refrigerating my food. Often I forget a cloth bag when I go to the grocery store and I enjoy taking warm showers. Though most days the mountains are barely visible due to a thick layer of smog and I know that babies sometimes need the dirt from the air cleaned out of their lungs, I wouldn’t recommend living in the dark or going back to the days of just walking from place to place.

But…. Patagonia? We're going to mess with Patagonia?

Ambiance

Throughout my life, my energy has come from trees and sky, stars and open ocean expanses iced with wind gusts and sailboats bobbing on top of the water. Half of my life has been comprised of weekends chopping firewood for our wood burning stove, summer evenings inhaling the scent of cut grass off the freshly trimmed lawn or riding my bike through walls of humidity while listening to the crickets and summer peeps, skidding to a stop on the dirt lane. The crab apple tree in the center of my yard contains a stump in the middle where I would sit and write in my journal lofted above the yard while Friskey would lie out on a branch nearby. Even within these moments, I knew I was actually painted on a page of a storybook.

When I needed to think, finding myself in an empty kitchen after school, I would head to the woods and journey through the dead leaves and moss covered ground, trekking down to the swamp below my house or through the backwoods down my lane. In the winter time, parts of the swamp would freeze over, solidifying curvy narrow ice paths where my brother and I could slide. Runs to White Lake or down Slabtown Creek Road beneath shadowy tree trunks bursting with color characterized all seasons, the winter appearing in grayscale. With my first decent camera, I would take pictures of the sunset or photograph the tree tops for hours, the hard copy pictures now slowly bending in crates in my basement.

The silence slows steps and escorts you carefully into the quiet of the woods. They are very much alive, yet largely still. The trees continue to grow soundlessly; micro-organisms in the ground crunch with their mouths closed and only the occasional squirrel or bird making a swift move up the trees or over to neighboring branches can be heard. Alone on a hilltop or farmland edge I would sit and wait for some kind of miracle or inspiration to come, to write something genius in my journal while following the moving clouds with my eyes.

Fresh air rarely filters through this new metropolitan realm. Silence is elusive, found only within my apartment and sometimes creeping along darkened sidewalks or tiny side streets. I try to walk with it, but it runs away to lock itself away for me when I get home. People inhabit every corner surrounding me, carrying conversations, walking hand in hand, moving in vehicles or peddling bicycles. Grassy park commons and fountains painting rainbows in the air outline the city with nature, which I relish. Food and clothing come packaged in tasty styles and decorative wrappings, trimmed with articulate architecture and ancient materials. The city is a fabric of pockets which have been stitched together to form neighborhoods and districts, galleries of the wealthy and poor, laid out among towering structures that climb into the sky, exhaling their innovations and economy throughout the country.

From my bedroom window, the mountains watch me from a distance as I eye the orange sun setting itself along their backbone. Once gone, the moon comes through the black canopy, with a few starry escorts, brightly shining.

To compare the two just wouldn’t be fair.

Displaced

Leaving your home can be very challenging once the reality of having very little familiar community around you settles in. The challenges of finding friends and making them are normal and you know that over time things will come together, but there are still moments when you know this isn't exactly your home and you feel it.

I comically stated to my new found co-workers, “I need some friends. I’ll just be upfront about that,” as we were greeting each other. All being ex-pats, we find ourselves in the same boat and I was promptly invited over to one of their apartments for dinner. One of the girls is actually heading home soon and told me I could inherit her friends when she leaves.

YESSS.

“So, what’s your number?... And what was your name?” I asked one of the girls.

"You mean you took my number without knowing my name?" she laughed.

I'm making a conscious effort to memorize my phone number, due to an experience I had a couple weeks ago involving a security guard and a cashier at a convenient store. The security guard from the office of my students was helping me purchase minutes for my phone by accompanying me to the convenient store where I could buy them. Upon purchase of the minutes, the cashier asked for my number to upload them, which I suddenly realized I didn't know. In Spanish, I had to apologize to the security guard while he put minutes on his own phone so that I could call my bosses from there. I had to call my bosses because I hadn't known the floor my students were on. After calling myself dumb, in Spanish, we headed to the "smart" elevators that I didn't know how to use. Once you punch in the number for your floor it tells you which elevator is coming but I had entered the first one that opened, in which the security guard yanked me out of. Eventually, I arrived to 28th floor of four students perfectly calm. But on top of it all, the books I had were the wrong level for them. "Today you are UPPER intermediate." I told them, confidently.

In the afternoons I teach two managers at Endesa, one of the largest energy companies in South America. Lionel and Alan enjoy chatting and going off topic. For my first class Lionel asked me questions only about myself the entire time, which was actually kind of nice. Their office, like most of the offices I go to, have grand overlooks of Santiago, reminding me how many buildings there are in this big city - and how many different kinds. Looking at all of the different architectural feats is truly incredible, especially in a city that experiences so many tremors and earthquakes. It is HERE, in fact, where they are in the process of building the tallest building in South America.

“What are your weekend plans?” asked Lionel.

“I need more friends. I have two.” I told him, smiling at my helplessness.

"No, you know more people.”

“Yes, but they’re not my friends. I know some people and their families, but I need some friends, you know? People to call up.”

“Oh, but you are very friendly.” he assured me, as he sent me on my way.

In the city, hundreds of people pass me by daily on the subway and streets. Just like the Dr. Seuss book “Are you my mother?” I look around me thinking...

Are you my friend?

You look nice.

You don’t look nice.

You could be my friend.

Could we be friends?

Why are you two friends and not me?

And of course the usual…

STOP MAKING OUT ON THE STREET CORNER.

Walking through the parks after 5:00 or during the lunch hour is dangerous for your eyes. There are some things that are just not worth putting yourself at the risk of seeing.

Besides having a few classes, I have two tutoring students that I see as well. Sometimes tutoring feels like being friends, sometimes it feels like counseling. Either way, I am getting paid to speak. My boss has assured me,

Things are going to pick up soon.

BOYWHOCRIEDWOLF

The main company we work with, Endesa, has been pushing back the start up date for all of their classes. My boss says it's because there are so many students and once things start up, now in May, things are going to be crazy. In the mean time, my schedule is pretty slow. His honesty and personality make everything good though.

By the way, sorry I didn´t pay attention to you and your grammar point today; I was interested. The thing is, one of my old, old friends, a poet with whom I have had a very tempestuous friendship, was waiting for me.

One of my students had hounded me about a random grammar question, to which I found the answer on the very last page of my grammar reference book. The point was: when you begin a sentence with a negative word, you invert the subject and verb. For example:

Never have I had as few friends as I do now.

Rather than…

Never I have had as few friends as I do now.

Tricky. I was impressed yesterday when the six year old that I teach knew the word “tricky”. Her two front teeth have fallen out. She loves to write in script and I taught her how to do the upper case fancy “S” that I used to enjoy writing so many times when I was younger. Her name actually has two of my favorite cursive letters: uppercase S and lowercase f. They are Super fun.

In the evenings, I tutor Hernan in his cubicle at Banco de Chile. The building is beautiful; the elevator has an old man operating it and the doors spread open like an accordian. The center of the building is hollow and the walls tower upwards, the moldings around the windows elegant and antique.

“Did you know that Obama is coming?” I asked him, as he was sorting through his filing cabinet.

“Yes. I called him.” he responded.

“Ah. So you practiced your English?"

“Yes, he is coming for you. You don’t know?”

Sometimes the English I receive is humorous in emails. Although, I have also been writing emails in Spanish sometimes, which is probably just as ridiculous.

We are waiting for you tonight. My coworkers want you tonight !!!!

Hernan's English is on the lower level side. We speak slowly and review grammar most of the time, but our conversations make me laugh and his comments are often witty.

“You look happy, today. Chilean boyfriend?” He asked me recently.

He also flies small planes on the weekends sometimes. I told him about homesickness and how things were beginning to settle in. Suddenly an idea came into his head concerning future English lessons.

“One Saturday we can do English in the plane, and fly to a vineyard for lunch.” he said.

"Perfect." I said, truly meaning it.

My roommate, Rosario, is one of my closest friends at the moment, along with my fellow Beverly transplant who has helped me through the pangs of homesickness by making me a nifty picture of the different stages of culture shock. One of them being:

WTF am I doing in Chile??

But although the downs exist, so do the ups. Rosario and I headed to Valparaiso and Vina de Mar the other weekend and had a great time being photographers, checking out Pablo Neruda's house (a famous poet), having lots of conversations in cafes, and taking in the wonderful ocean - which I have missed very much.

“This is great. I think I’m going to cry.”

Rosario contemplated this as we were watching families gather near the ocean from our restaurant window, taking pictures and walking arm in arm. It’s the relaxed moments such as those that make me stay – when I know I can travel a short distance to a new place and experience a different landscape. Plus, I can't go home until I've seen a glacier in Patagonia or visit Buenos Aires.

Yet, as Rena and I drink some Starbucks on a patio in the middle of the city, I tend to forget that I’m in such a faraway place. Often it looks so familiar and feels so comfortable, but then other times when I stare at my Inbox, I’m reminded of how far away I am from sharing a cup of coffee with people who I love and care about back home. The pull between the two spheres can be very tumultuous at times and a reason for tears.

I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking,
I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Serving something beyond me
But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be
I’ll get back to you someday, soon you will see.

Helplessness Blues Fleet Foxes

Living in the 80's

Below the ground I listened to an up and coming Independent music artist, right smack in the sea of the Indie music scene here in Santiago. My roommate, Rosario, filmed her music video, which debuted in the upstairs section. When finding the place, I walked along a Bohemian street hosting pubs and small restaurants and turned the corner to a dark alley where I saw some dim light floating out of a rectangle in the wall. Youth with dark rimmed glasses and black clothing stood outside smoking cigarettes and waiting in a tiny line. In my light purple checked knee length H&M tartan quarter sleeved shirt, dark jeans, and light hair with smaller dark rimmed glasses, I poked my head through the line, grateful to see my roommate sitting on a couch next to the entrance. I waved like a little American, eager to enter the underground.

Inside resembled the Madonna Vogue music video (thought without men in suits); I felt like everything around me was black, white and edgy. Smoking inside somehow seasoned the mood with independence and free spiritedness, combined with people standing casually with their cardigans, glasses and long dark hair with bangs. Some wore old newsboys hats and girls wore simple high heels and their bangs almost covering their eyes. The bar was cheap, and people held beer bottles that would be deposited in a wire shopping cart once finished, sitting next to the door. The walls were covered with Spanish words, posters, random memorabilia, sketches, little drawings of aliens or a map of the long skinny country. Like the inside of a high school locker, memories of the past and ripped out magazine pages covered the nondescript walls.

The place hadn’t existed a year ago, but now hosts members of the Indie music scene which is growing quickly. A girl from the States spotted me and served me beautiful English conversation. She is here pursuing a PhD in musicology, specifically checking out the Indie music scene. I commented that it felt like the 80s, with the electric keyboard and the style that people seemed to have. The singer had worn a modest pink dress with half her face covered by her hair and dark make up. She played an electronic keyboard with three female back-up singers swaying back and forth, doing different moves with their hands, dressed in black and white. A woman in a phosphorescent aqua dress joined them for one of the songs, performing a miniature rap in the middle. Green light magnified the seeming kitschy feel, reminding me of the red light bulb that I used to burn in my room occasionally accompanied by a pink and orange lava lamp.

“Some would say Chile never left the 80s,” said my United Statesian friend, “People are nostalgic about that time, when there was a strong sense of community pulling together during the Pinochet dictatorship.”

Before heading to the party, I had watched a documentary about photographers during the reign of Pinochet, who were killed for the exposure that their documentation brought. Their camera had more power than a gun, revealing the atrocities of the military dictator. Prior to Pinochet, Chile had a democratically elected Socialist leader, which was toppled by a military coup. Although the States may not fully admit it, there is evidence that the coup was backed by the CIA, in order to stop the Socialist regime. However, the leader that followed, proved to be worse. Pinochet killed thousands of dissidents, burying them alive in the mines at times. The documentary promoted the importance of not forgetting the lives that had been destroyed through conserving the photographs and publicizing them.

Watching footage of military vehicles spraying people with tear gas throughout the streets that I am currently getting to know, it seemed incredible that it was only in the 80s that this occurred. Observing Santiaguans through this lens, I now calculate out what age they would’ve been when the country was torn apart in this way. I now notice the strength of the people, having dealt with catastrophic earthquakes and a tyrannical regime, recovering from the pain with hospitality and vigor.

After this first social event, we moved on to a film party located in a similarly “underground” location behind a plain rectangular door carved into the concrete. Upon entering, my eyes feasted on another Vogue scene, only this time the members were older. The space inside felt like a barn – open with exposed rafters and functional walls and floor. A disco ball reflected sparkly light around the whole room, adding to mystique of the environment. I wanted to just stand and watch the people, as I am often like a deer in headlights when presented with so much newness in my environment. Again, the indoor cigarette sparks reminded me I was no longer in America.

“We are a bit early,” she told me at midnight, “Parties usually start around 1 or 2 in the morning. I don’t know why, but this is the culture.”

We stayed until only 2 AM and then made our way back to the apartment to the tune of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in her friend Cecilia’s car. Part of me felt very at home, surrounded by people with similar interests to me, and the other part felt very tired from all the cultural digestion. Rosario helped me work on my Chilean slang back at the apartment which was completely helpful and necessary.

Running through the strip of parks that cut through the city this morning, to my newly discovered Chilean music, I passed statues and streets named after people and important events of their history. It’s common in South America to live on a street with a date (for example, 11 de Septiembre, which I believe was when Socialism ended). Passing police at the streetlights, I thought about how they were now mere traffic guards and seemed rather harmless. I thought about how lucky I have been, to live in a place where a tyrannical or military government has never been my reality. I have never been scared of my home surroundings, never thought the police would turn into the enemies. Reading about the intervention currently happening in Libya, I now think about the fear existing among the people of that region, not to mention so many other places in the world. How fast a government can change sometimes, when power is allowed to become a physical force.

Perhaps this is why the community feels so strong here and people have invited me to their birthday parties and family occasions. That sense of fear that they once felt, caused them to realize what was really important. Though it sounds cliché, what was once rebellion is now hospitality and empathy. Once you know pain well, you can’t help but understand people more deeply. I believe I have felt that deeper emotional knowledge all the way down the Andes. It comes out in their invitations, friendship and also their music.

Y por eso, me encanta.

Pachu Mama, Mother Earth: Machu Picchu

“I would first like to take the time to congratulate you, because today I think many of you have made a dream come true,” said my tour guide as we stood at the entrance to the city.

Settled on Machu Picchu mountain, surrounded by the jagged Andes, sits a little vacation village created for the Incan king during the 15th century. A four day trail from Cusco will guide your feet there, bringing you through the Sun Gate at the far edge of Machu Picchu mountain where you can cock your head to see that the sillouhette of the village resembles an Incan man’s face. To obtain an aerial view, wake up at 4:30 AM and hike up Wayna Picchu (Young Peak) at 7:00 AM. Be one of the first to see a blanket of clouds covering the sleeping settlement. In an hour the clouds will be yawned away.

“I’ve been traveling for 8 months. I’m a contracter in London and left my job to figure out how I can start my own contracting business one day… but I fear I’ll go back still not knowing how to do that! [laughter] I need to gather the courage. I’m going back a different person than I left.” said the Jamaican Londoner that shared Arrow Rock with me at the top of Wayna Picchu.

A guy from Brooklyn and I were the first of four to arrive at the top, joining a couple from Britain sharing breakfast on a rock. Huffing and puffing in the thick clouds I exclaimed,

“So, where is it?!”

“I don’t know! Maybe over there?”

“Or maybe there?”

We stared at a drawing carved in a plastic informational post to get our bearings, our Northeast cynicism mocking our unfortunate situation. Taking silly pictures with piles of clouds behind us seemed a good activity for the time being. He then recounted,

“The funny thing is, I came to Machu Picchu last year but it was closed. People were stranded here because of flooding. I really should stop coming during the rainy season.”

“So what are you doing in South America?”

“I’m actually a Producer and headed to Ecuador. I’m filming for a nonprofit that provides lifeguards during Carnival. Everyone goes swimming and apparently many people drown.”

While thinking of the obscure causes that non-profits support, we were joined by a Japanese contingent and then some rowdy young Londoners. One Londoner was swearing at his friend for missing the view of Machu Picchu once the clouds started to burn off.

As if I were scratching away the winning numbers on a lottery ticket, green mountainsides were lit up by the sun to my left, who was slowing pulling back the cloud curtains. One by one patches were burned away, the beams cutting into the atmosphere. The humble entrance blew away the cloudy introduction. The curious fog had whet our appetite and we were not disappointed. As I slowly looked around me, I felt the excitement of being there. All around me was this natural revelation that had been there all along. I was standing in the middle of a new world, sparking inspiration.

If only Sigur Ros happened to be playing on the rocks below (in their Icelandic sweaters).

Heading down was trickier than going up had been; the stone steps were steep and narrow. At one point I crawled my way through a crevice between two rocks and thought about how they could crush me (very comforting). As I passed people on the way down, who asked me how much longer, I encouraged them in their journey.

One wonderful thing about being solo is that you wait for no one. You are off and running up the mountain whenever and heading down as carefully as you desire. After I signed my name out of the book at the entrance, I meandered through the ancient civilization for as long as I liked, spending time sitting on the walls, staring at the mountains and avoiding Lama spit.

On my two hour English-speaking tour (I felt bad for the Japanese guy) I learned a bit about Machu Picchu. It took the Incas about 60 years to build the place and it was still unfinished. They used the terraces for agriculture and created aqueducts that brought water down through the town. They were scholars of the sky, chiseling a rock that resembled the Southern Cross and another one that represented Mother Earth and her three levels: the underworld (snake), earth (puma) and the heavens (condor). Shadows showed them what day or time of year it was. Sacrifices were made to appease the gods, which they thought were the mountains. Even I swear those mountains are gods; their majesty is breathtaking. If a storm came through or perhaps a bad earthquake, they might even sacrifice a child of nobility to appease them once and for all.

I wonder if that worked.

When their king stopped coming from Cusco, they thought something must be wrong so they fled the city. The Spanish didn’t actually invade Machu Picchu until nine years later though, taking all the gold they could find in exchange for chicken pox. More Incans died of chicken pox than fighting the Spanish.

The city wasn’t rediscovered until 1911 when an archeologist came upon it while searching for the Incans last stronghold, led their by a local boy. Since it wasn’t the last stronghold, he didn’t pay as much attention and continued on his way. It wasn’t until a bit later that he returned - realizing it’s value. Since then, they’ve excavated it and Yale University has graciously taken all of the artifacts. Peru is currently in dialogue with the university for their rightful return to the Cusco Museum.

During the busy season up to 4,000 people check out the city and hike up the mountain. In the rainy season, about 1,500 – 2,000 people enter. The Japanese thought Machu Picchu was actually sinking, but that has since been proven wrong. Though, they are going to start limiting the amount of people that visit.

Getting to Machu Picchu is quite the journey as well, involving flying to Cusco, being bussed through the Sacred Valley, taking a train to Aguas Calientes, and then taking another bus actually up to the site. When I first started planning, it all seemed quite confusing. But once you’re there, you have PLENTY of willing Peruvian tourist agencies more than willing to help you.

“Ok, Lady,” said the tourist guy that I signed up with at the airport as he escorted me to my hotel in Cusco.

His ring tone was a Justin Beiber song, which made me feel immediately comfortable with him. He set me up with a bus tour through the Sacred Valley, to all different archeological sites, and all my expenses for Machu Picchu (train, bus, and entrance ticket). I know he loved me. I know he cared. I shouted "wheneva" and he was there.

While sitting on one of the walls of Machu Picchu, I stared at the mountains in front of me. Time passed me by as my thoughts spaced out into the distance. The mountains still stood there though, even as time pushed through. Majestically, they had watched the Incas and now they were watching me.

I can’t seem to get a handle on the scope of that, my mind being too small. But in that moment I knew the beauty of it, and that is all I could understand.

Being Gringa

“You look like a tourist.” Patricia lamented, leaning against the entrance to the kitchen.

Unfortunately, settling into a new country is challenging when you have to tear down American stereotypes that have attached themselves to your appearance. When judged by my appearance, I believe I’m something along the lines of wealthy, opportunist, flaky, naïve and into partying. I don’t know how many people realize that America is in a recession, most people are drowning in college debt and the standard of living is too high for the wages that one receives. The most expensive thing I have EVER owned has been my computer and I was only able to travel because I have a useful skill, saved up some money, and put my college loans on hold.

When you meet people from western countries, they seem to be one of two extremes: they’ve worked hard and saved up money to be here or they’re living off their parents’ wealth and are just floating around. Of course there are the students, humanitarians and capitalists in there somewhere as well. But I’ve had a few experiences of meeting Westerners where I was very turned off by their attitude towards me as if they were trying to group me into one of the extremes. They seemed suspicious of me and used that as an excuse to be condescending.

“Oh, you studied in Chile? I’m headed there next. I’m intimidated by the Spanish… I hear it’s a lot faster.” I said to a girl from the States who had been living in Lima for about 5 years. She stared at me blankly as if she had no conception of the widespread view of Chilean Spanish. Even among South Americans it is notorious for being botched up and having a whole realm of idioms and words that exist nowhere else. It would be like a person not acknowledging that Irish is sometimes difficult for even English speakers to understand or that American English is different from British English. She then replied, “Well ANYWHERE you go you have to just learn the idioms and local dialect. I studied in Chile for about a month before I went to Argentina, and I’d say they’re just different. ”

The other strange thing about being western is that most times, in fact, you do come from a higher standard of living and find yourself easily in circles of the upper middle class, or even the wealthy class, because these are the people who either know English or want to know English. Therefore, if I’m teaching English, I’ll probably meet wealthy people. It’s strange to feel the class difference and sometimes I have these kind of Great Gatsby moments of being around people who have a maid, drive an expensive car, own a blackberry, and the art on their walls makes me feel like I’m in a gallery or a museum.

“You graduated about 4 or 5 years ago. What have you been doing since then?” said my interviewer for a business school, sitting behind a desk with my resume right in front of him. I looked at him curiously and casually pointed to the place entitled “work experience”. “I’ve been teaching English for 2 ½ years at the New England School of English.” I replied.

“Oh, right right, sure.”

He and his partner soon told me how they only hire people who already have a work visa. They explained how many institutes start the paperwork for your work visa, but everything is basically done under the table, and that they can basically fire you whenever they want because nothing is actually legal. Getting a work visa is actually more involved and when you stop working you have to leave the country.

Did they think they were doing me a favor or was this some sort of hazing?

I’ve gotten the impression that the competition between English institutes and schools is very high. English is in high demand and teachers basically have their pick of all kinds of opportunities. I emailed someone about an apartment and he emailed back, “The apartment is taken, but I’ve been wanting to learn English! Can you teach me three times a week? How much do you charge?”

Also, the people who I’ve interviewed with have been quite nosey. “You’ve interviewed somewhere else? What’s the name? How much did they say they’d pay you?” Or, when my employer found out I was from the New England School of English (recently rated one of the top English schools on the East Coast, if not the USA) he questioned, “What kind of teachers do they hire? What’s their curriculum? How do they get good teachers?”

Throughout my whole experience in South America, about 90% of people have gone above and beyond my expectations of being kind, hospitable and overall just friendly and fantastic. On the way to Machu Picchu I met a woman from Santiago who gave me her email and invited me to her birthday party when I got here! It was wonderful. However, there is of course, that 10% that either rub me the wrong way or have outright offended me. The other day I had a little stumble when I was about to rent an apartment.

I was excited about the place and had told the woman the day before that I would take it. It was clean, quiet, and the rooms were very peaceful and comfortable. There were gardens outside and even hammocks! She was very organized and told me that there was no drinking or smoking allowed in the house. Although wine is one of the reasons I came to Chile, I liked the look of the place so much that I figured it would probably save me some money. It would definitely be a challenge, but I figured I could go to a friend’s house or go out for drinks.

The next day I went back ready to pay for the month. A woman who does the administration had come to talk to me about all of the rules of the contract. This time, I got to hear them in English and discovered that in fact, I’m not allowed to have ANY friends in my room. She kept saying how the house was a place of rest and it was important that it be a home for the people who live there. I’m all in favor of no partying, but to not be able to have even just one friend come over? And even more, not be able to share a bottle wine? Suddenly I felt the retaliation of my gut saying, “NO WAY.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t act fast enough. I contemplated these rule as I was signing the documents, this was my own mistake. Perhaps it’s because I’m a flaky American. It wasn’t until I looked into my wallet to hand over the payment that I realized that I couldn’t. Community is too big a part of my life; I can’t live in a place that suppresses that. Was this a convent?

Well, when I explained that I didn’t want it after all, I set off a whole storm of Spanish between both the owner and the administrative lady. The administrative lady had already spoken down to me in English, explaining the rules as if I were a child. But once she realized her time was for nothing, suddenly she felt the need to tell me,

“This isn’t like America! This house is a safe place. That is IMPORTANT. You need to understand this. This isn’t America! This is a good place and you will not find this kind of security. This is not America!”

She kept reiterating that this wasn’t America, even stating,

“I know! I lived there for 5 years.”

To which I now, beginning to boil under my skin, shot back,

“I KNOW this is not AMERICA. I’ve lived there my ENTIRE LIFE.”

I wish I could have spouted off to her in Spanish, but it just wasn’t possible. I felt like she saw me as careless, flaky and looking for a place to party (party of 2?). I was beginning to think that the place was actually a cult or a convent, especially when they demanded that I erase all the pictures I had taken of it from my camera. She also demanded a copy of my passport, for some kind of security reasons and was saying,

“You can’t just come in and take pictures. This is someone’s home. This is a safe place.”

By the time I left the gate, I wasn’t sure what I was leaving. I really thought the landlord was about to give the people Kool Aid in there. Needless to say, I was trying to find a liquor store the whole way home. I’m definitely glad I didn’t sign that contract.

Being an English speaking Gringa goes both ways. Sometimes I find myself with the wealthy upper class, embraced with open arms, and other times I’m looked as suspiciously and assumed to be very careless. At this point, I am only in my initial stages of getting to know Santiago, so I just have to take these experiences in stride. Supposedly “Gringa” (feminine) refers to the fact that I’m foreign or have an accent. According to Wikipedia, the term came about during the Mexican war when the Irish would sing some old song that was like, “Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!” which the Mexicans began interpreting as “Greigo” which later became “Gringo”. It also says that Americans, specifically, can be referred to as this because Latin Americans don’t want to call us “Americans” and the other option would be “United Statesians” which is awkward in English (and we don’t use it anyway).

Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!

So, how fast can one learn Spanish?

As I move down this continent and up in age groups I feel more pressure to learn Spanish as fast as possible. I’m beginning to find myself in more lofty conversations where the speed is faster and I trip on about 50% of the words that they’re saying (quite the jump from Special needs kids and toddlers). If I could read a transcript of the conversation I would probably understand more of it, but to just listen to the quick sounds, my brain has trouble keeping up with the foreign tongue.

Lima is fantastic. The air is warm, the ocean breeze is salty and the land is flat. Metropolitan activity excites the streets and the architecture reflects the developing economy. Southern California constantly pops into my head as I’m in a taxi driving along the wide stretches of highway and able to see for miles down the long stretches of avenues. The modern city lights tell me that it’s a few notches above Quito in development and I feel a few notches safer as well. My backpack is often worn on my back now.

Last night I spent some time on a rooftop with a mixture of Peruvians, ex-patriots (or, ex-pats: people who no longer live in their home country, all of which were English speakers) and lots of Pisco (a liquor made from grapes). English and Spanish competed for conversation the entire time. Since I was the worst player on the Spanish team, I wasn’t sure what to do. Self conscious of actually speaking my broken Spanish I just wanted to keep listening to the rapid conversation surrounding me, hoping that I would comprehend 75% of it eventually. I felt babied when a person would start speaking English with me, like when you can’t keep up with the person you’re running with so they run slower just for you. Kind in some ways, but no one likes to be pitied. Asking people to repeat their thoughts felt very dorky. In English it might sound like….

“Yeah, so I thought the movie was pretty cool but nothing to write home about.”

“Um… excuse me?”

“I thought the movie was cool but nothing special.”

“What? Sorry… more slowly, please?”

“Cool. The movie was cool. But not great.”

“Oh! Ok. Sure. Cool?”

“Good.”

“Oh! Ok. Nice.”

*Silence*

If you notice in that dialogue, it begins with two kinds of slang: “pretty cool” and “nothing to write home about”. If a fledgling English speaker didn’t know that “pretty” could be used for “very” or that “cool” could actually mean “good”… or, even worse, if the speaker couldn't pick up on the pronunciation of either, then the whole meaning has no chance of coming about. The listener wouldn’t even make it to the next idiom and would possibly only understand the word “home” and wonder, “Did you watch the movie in your home?” For the person speaking, who only made a casual comment about some half decent movie, all the repetition would feel kind of annoying leading to them avoiding the fledgling English speaker. This would reduce their interaction to smiles and facial gestures which only take you so far.

Hence, I smiled a lot last night and drank a few pisco sours with maracuya (passion fruit). Very tasty.

Prior to even arriving, I spent about 5 minutes misunderstanding my cab driver who was trying to tell me that I owed him a dollar because he had given me too much back in change. I remember my students telling me that cab drivers in NYC had been impossible to understand and now I fully comprehend why. It was the quick mumbling that really got me; I hadn’t had the same problem in Ecuador. The Peruvian accent is a bit faster and less clear. Unfortunately, I think Chile is going to be even worse.

Therefore, I am bolstering my Spanish skills as fast as I can. I was reading aloud to the maid here (yes, there is a MAID where I’m staying. Completely unheard of in the US, but not so out of the ordinary for a middle class family here) like a little kid to their mother.

La sala de espera de este doctor es muy grande porque trabaja solo.

The waiting room of this doctor is very big because he works alone.

Practice makes perfect… or makes more practice where language is concerned. Learning a language is never-ending which makes it forever fascinating but often frustrating. However, the feelings of stupidity and frustration haunt me, forcing me to absorb as much as possible as quickly as possible. I know that even at that it will still be slow-going, but I’m determined to press on!

When I got in the car after the rooftop I immediately spoke to the driver in Spanish and demanded that he play Spanish pop music only. Down the wide highway and passed the city lights we drove as I tried to kill all my English thoughts.

Hola, Espanol.

Song for Sharon

My friend Sharon just got engaged the other day. She and her boyfriend had been apart for five months before he flew down with a ring in his pocket and proposed to her that evening. By the time I saw her the next morning she was glowing nonstop and bumping into things all day.

Joni Mitchell sings a beautiful song in the form of a letter to her friend Sharon about how she’s moved out to NYC but all she really wants is to find that one person she can share life with. Not only did I feel it necessary to use the title for my friend Sharon, but I love the way that Joni poetically tells the story of love (and the search for it).

I went to Staten Island, Sharon.
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars...
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy.

I think that “some girl” is Joni. I used lyrics from a Joni Mitchell song in my last post from a song about Woodstock. Ironically, Joni never made it there due to a rainstorm. She ended up stranded in New York but created this beautiful song about the event.

I’m going on down to Yasgurs farm
I’m going to join in a rock n roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Joni was a bit a hippie and from CANADA. Guess where my Sharon is from?

CANADA.

We have now come to the real connection between my Sharon and Joni.

It took awhile for both Jen and I to fully adjust to a Canadian, attempting to understand the language and local idioms. To make matters worse, Sharon also grew up on a farm in Alberta. She was speaking about silage, birthing cows, cutting amneonic sacks, and was stressed out when their bulls weren’t going to make it across the border because border control couldn’t read the numbers that had been tattooed in their ears.

Nothing is worse than an unexpected group of 80 bulls.

She was saying “Ay” and talking about their currency up there as loonies and tunies (Looney Tunes?). We talked about playing board games when we were little while she gloated about having thousands of acres to create her hundreds of fort kingdoms. She told us about the time she took some kind of gun and shot a coyote. Due to the length of the gun, she had to open up her window along with the back window of the truck she was driving. We were told that when the cows are calving she has to check on them at 1 AM or 2 AM to make sure all is going well, while her dad checks them in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes they have to drop everything and run outside when a calf is born and hasn’t broken the amneonic sack that is now drowning it. She also expressed,

“I think every kid should see an animal butchered. I mean, I had to eat my favorite cow when I was 12.”

Sharon uses the word sh** and calls the handle above the passenger seat the “oh sh**” handle, saying that us Americans don’t swear. To her credit, she’s actually talking to the right crowd where that’s concerned.

That being said, Sharon is my dear friend. We watched many an episode of Gilmore Girls together and I ate all of the meals she cooked for Jen and I, especially her banana chocolate chip muffins. I also took full advantage of any offered massage. She showed me pictures of her Albertan childhood that resembled something out of a Land’s End catalog with her family often in the outdoors grouped together in snow gear and various outdoor attire. Now she has a shimmering special something on her ring finger, which means she’s got a whole lot of something wonderful coming her way.

Best wishes, my Canadian amiga.

We Are Stardust (We Are Golden)

What would you do if you were diagnosed with a fatal disease? This thought is the reality that the directors are facing here. Clark has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease which will wear down his motor neurons for the next few years. He had been experiencing difficulty walking while he and his wife were visiting churches in the States. In Boston, his friends told him to get checked out which resulted in various MRIs and being referred to two different doctors both of which confirmed his fatal diagnosis. Since returning to Quito, he has been struggling with the high altitude a bit, but not to any extent that an outsider would notice. He does carry a cane now though, without stress or difficulty. Today many people came forward in church to lay their hands on Clark and his wife Melinda to support them in this diagnosis, showing their love and respect for the work they have done and the people that they are. Though Clark and Melinda shirked any kind of pity, it was hard to keep a dry eye.

Clark was educated to be an attorney and in fact had a successful practice out in Mammoth, CA. He had come down to Quito on a missions trip some years prior, with his future wife Melinda, and a few years later felt moved to return and begin an orphanage here – moved by God, they would attest. Despite their friends’ concerns, they packed up their life and came down here 20 or so years ago and began creating a place where unwanted children could come in the hopes of being adopted. At first it seemed uncertain as they faced great difficulties, even involving losing the life of a baby in the process. But though they questioned this calling, they didn’t turn back.

They told people that they felt called by God to start this orphanage but would be challenged with, “But has God also called your children?” Ecuador is not exactly the safest country, nor is it on par with the United States in standard of living. They assured their children that if the territory were to affect their family, they could always go back to the states. This consolation provided enough assurance for the children to be on board with the decision. They could always go back if they absolutely needed to: family came first.

Now I’m sitting here, 20 years later, enjoying the fruits of their labor. There are three buildings here, all of which provide a loving environment for any child to grow up in. I sit on the porch of a guest house that welcomes any team willing to help. As of now, there is a team from Boston here, which makes me even more contented (they were showing us pictures of all the snow up there, making me feel a bit nostalgic). They’ve helped guide the process of hundreds of children to families. It’s amazing the things that you can do in your life and the lives that you can greatly influence. Helping a child find a caring family seems to be one of the most basic to human happiness.

And now, here they are faced with a life threatening illness. The difficulty of that only challenges their character even more to respond in a great way. Some people would fall apart when faced with such finiteness, yet many would only be able to respond with great strength and power. I have often thought that losing a spouse would be more difficult than losing a child, and here is a woman faced with exactly that. Time doesn’t stop for trials, it keeps moving along challenging us to cope. However, its incredible the support that you can find in the people around you. As Melinda put in, she feels like she has been injected with peace and comfort only by the grace of God, feeling the warmth of a thousand prayers.

Realizing how short life really is, reminds me that appreciating relationships and building a meaningful existence is paramount. Not allowing stress or difficulties overcome you is key, as you intentionally take advantage of all the goodness that surrounds you: friends, family and helping others. It sounds cliche, but most true things are. We often repeat these kinds of things for a reason. Life is really about giving and loving the best you can.