The End

Things I have learned from living in Chile:

1.     Paint makes all the difference

2.     Street vendor food will not kill you

3.     The US has had a lot of negative effects on the rest of the world

4.     Everybody should just settle down, rules are there to guide life, not reasons to ramp up your blood pressure

5.     You can wear your clothes a lot longer than you think you can

6.     Don’t assume that the noon hour makes a place safer

7.     Street signs should not be taken for granted

8.     You have to be enraged (and/or in awesome shape) to catch thieves

9.     Sweet+ savory combinations (like coleslaw with pineapple, or apple with cheese) freak Chileans out

10. ‘A man in uniform’ is a lot less attractive if your culture has experienced a military dictatorship

11. The US is disgustingly rich and has unrealistic standards of living

12. Condensed milk is a dessert staple, and hotdogs should be the national dish

13. South Americans want to be blond (if you believe their media images)

14. Making abortion illegal does NOT lead to higher maternal death rates (currently, abortion is illegal in Chile, and their maternal death rate is better than that of the USA).

15. Paid host families are not the same as volunteer families

16. English speakers have the privilege of avoiding the awkwardness of dubbed television programs

17. Chileans think salt and lemon should go on everything (even shredded lettuce)

18. It is wrong to assume that prices in all Latin American countries will be lower than the USA

19. Chileans are really friendly

20. Chileans are very homogenous racially and they will freely express curiosity and stereotypical ideas about other races (ie, Asians are all Chinese, white people are all big and rich, if someone has black heritage they will be called ‘negrito’)

21. Street maps sometimes need topographical indicators to make sense in Valpo

22. The Chilean police do not use the internet in their office

23. Vegetarians are odd and hosting one is terrifying for Chileans

24. Zumba calls for enthusiastic yelling and may result in injury

Other tidbits:

1.                    The people in the north speak flatly, while the southern Chileans speak in a singsong manner

2.                    Generally, US women want to have a gender-neutral workplace while Latinas want more specifically feminine rights that bolster their gender identity

3.                    Chile is having a representation crisis in its voting population: out of 13 million potential voters, only 6 million turned out for the last election

4.                    Chile’s economic system was created in the image of Milton Friedman’s ideology…and now it is one of the top 5 most unequal countries in the world

5.                    The Mapuche Indians (general blanket term for Chilean natives) did not surrender their independence or sign a peace treaty until the late 1800’s

6.                    The entirety of Easter Island was at one time rented out as a sheep pasture by an English company. A ghetto was built to keep the people away from the sheep

7.                    PLEASE: it is pronounced ‘Chi-lay’, not ‘Chili’ like the food!

Looking back from a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet over the southwestern US, my last few days in Chile were full. I went wandering with Emily back to Cerro Concepción, visiting a café we had blundered into on our first few days there, and we soaked up the sunshine. Saturday I was baptized in a swimming pool in Valparaíso, and got to meet the family of Mollie’s beau, Tao. Sunday Mollie and I hit up a flea market, and I brought my present bottles of pisco sour with me to church. Monday was full in an entirely unexpected way; after almost 6 months living in big foreign cities, my backpack (and all of my monetary means) was grabbed and disappeared around a corner on the back of a teenage boy. I was reminded that I shouldn’t be too complacent as a glaringly white foreigner with a nice backpack, but I really don’t regret the loss too much. My need for bus money, a way to call home, a backpack to carry my things, and hugs showed me the quality of the friends I had made, both gringo and Chileno. God also managed that I was holding my journal, the one thing that really could not have been replaced, when my bag was grabbed – so I still have it, as well as the mementos and notes tucked inside it. I also found it’s rather freeing not to have anything on you to be worth stealing, and to not need to bring a purse or something like that because everything you have fits in a jeans pocket. I am grateful.

Tuesday I spent ‘learning’ how to sunbathe (is it sunbathing if I was wearing jeans?) with girls from church. We also enjoyed some farewell empanadas. In the afternoon I went to school to meet up with Diego, my Chilean friend who has been discipling me. He has been taking me with him on his evangelizing rounds through the university patio, inviting people to a bible meeting. I don’t know that I have written about him before, but he and the group he works with, Aiglas de Jésus, have made a huge impact on my ideas about what Christians should look like. This international organization focuses on evangelization within universities, be it through posters, coffee meetings, prayer vigils, preaching from pulpits, or organizing anti-abortion events. I hope I can find or start something similar when I go back to school in Spokane. Wednesday I spent all morning with this group – first intercessory prayer for the university, then for Chile out in front of the national congress. Then I met up with Menfis, a female mentor Diego found for me, to ask life questions and tap into her wisdom. Por fin, I came home to find food and make brownies.

Thursday I spent attempting to make puppet feet at the day center where I volunteer (carpentry is not a gift of mine). I got to have a conversation with a practicing Rastrofarian about her beliefs, which was interesting but troubling (how can people ‘use’ the new testament and not believe that Jesus paid for sins???) while working. Then it was time for bible meetings and brownie-eating and saying farewell to Gustavo (my Mexican friend who also came to Christ through Diego) and Diego. We bummed on up to Gustavo’s apartment to eat and play Just Dance afterwards; the tall and lanky Diego almost took out a chandelier and we had a good laugh. After Zumba, there was another bible meeting with the Aiglas. It was in a little ramshackle church up on a hill with the wind screaming around it – it was beautiful to see the simplicity of the building and the earnestness with which this group worships. After praying for those of us heading out to other parts of the world, we pooled some pesos to buy a bit of food for supper and shared it with many smiles. That was probably the best and most important moment of my last week.

Friday was full of suitcase-squishing and time with Mollie. She came over and walked around the neighborhood with me until lunch, where we celebrated Stefy’s birthday with cake. We watched a GUTS improv show together on youtube– Gonzaga bonding at its finest – before heading out to church activities. I showed up at home around 11 pm, late for the taxi, because I had been looking for buses on the wrong side of the street! Learning and making silly mistakes up to the very end. I did note, however, the incredible difference between my conversation with the taxi driver when I arrived and the difference with the taxi driver when I left – my Spanish is SO much better!!!

In summary: I thought I might cry about leaving Chile, but so far the tears have not arrived. I don’t know if I ever accepted the place as home. I got close to a few Chileans, but the ones that I really will miss are the ones that showed me Christ more than their own personalities. For instance, I don’t think I could tell you all that much about the life and times of Diego, the young man who wasn’t afraid of offending me, or Rigo, the director who taught me to build puppets. And the most precious thing about all of these people was the Christ that was shining through. I was sad to say goodbye to my host mom, and I could tell she was tearing up…but I never succeeded in breaching the gulf between us entirely. The same for the rest of my host family. I probably understood the cat best of all of them. There are several gringas I will be calling up, and I hope to call some Aigla friends as well for their counsel. I don’t know if my lack of interpersonal fixation makes me callous, and it is true that the only love for others worthy of praise is that which is unmerited…I will take it as evidence that I have a lot of growing toward other people to do. But for now, I feel like it is time to go home.

Thanks for reading, hope to see or talk to you soon. J

Eye of the Tiger

Only 2 weeks left in Chile…Vamos, po!

Tomorrow are elections here, so my culture class has been studying the interesting process and atmosphere that is Chilean politics. There are 9 candidates this year, an absurd amount, partially because the vote has been made voluntary for the first time. Before, registered voters would be fined for failing to vote (which means voting in your hometown, because absentee voting does not exist here. If you’re studying somewhere, or traveling, or whatever, too bad). Now instead of registering, everyone with a valid Chilean id over 18 is automatically registered. Some think that this will greatly improve the representation problem of the last elections, in which only about a 3^rd of the voting population participated whatsoever in the elections (and to be president you’re supposed to have 51% of the population on your side). Others, like my host mom, think that now there is no incentive for people to vote at all, and since everyone is disillusioned altogether with the politicians, no one will vote. We will find out tomorrow. Other interesting elements of the voting scene include: 1. Men and women vote in separate places 2. You get drafted as a volunteer to hand-count the votes, much like jury duty 3. The counting process is entirely by hand, and an entirely public event. Every ballot is announced and shown to the politicians, public, and press watching 4. Voting takes place in local schools

Last weekend Emily and I hopped a plane to the Atacama Desert to do some touristing. San Pedro is basically a tourist village, with tour companies, hostels, and restaurants on every corner. We stayed in a hostel a little bit out of town so we saw more locals (we also did not have a reservation the first night because of complications with bus schedules, so the hostel owner let us stay in his house with his daughter. Chileans are so nice.)  I had never seen a desert before, so it was really neat to experience the dust and colors and heat of the place. Bible verses kept popping into my head with more meaning; ‘streams of living water’ mean a lot more when you are out in the middle of plains of rocks and sand under a hot sun.

            The first day we spent the morning walking about (meaning getting lost in the town, which clearly does not believe in street signs), hitting a couple little tourist shops, and walking out toward Pakara de Quitor, an archeological site about 2 miles from town. We wandered uphill and down, and could see the fortress for most of the time, but only actually arrived after many failed attempts to locate the entrance. We finally did arrive, however, and the view from the top of the mountain was incredible. It looked out over San Pedro, as well as the Cordillera de Sal (the range of salt). There was an incredible memorial at the top for the natives who died defending the fortress from the Spanish in the 1500’s. We also wandered through the ruins of the fortress, which had been built on older ruins; it was cool to be among ancient stories like that.

We made it back to San Pedro around 3 and promptly devoured a banana pizza. Yes, a banana pizza. It was basically a Hawaiian pizza with banana instead of pineapple. Pretty tasty. We spent the rest of the day organizing our tour plans and whipping up supper in the hostel kitchen. We also had some good chats with our roommates, a guy from England and a German living in Slovenia (who had also traveled to 64 countries in his lifetime). They were both quite interesting characters, and also happened to be going on the same tour as us…which left at 4 in the morning.

We got up so early to see the Geisers de Tatio, a site at about 4300 m about sea level and several hours from San Pedro by van. The stars are beautiful at 4 am, by the way…the Atacama is known for incredible stargazing conditions (they have a project out here to discover life on other planets and there are lots of observatories), and even in the patio of the hostel we could see the milky way. I didn’t realize the geysers were so high (no one had told us) and I ate an apple before we left…I was also experiencing the disadvantages of being a woman, and I ended up with altitude sickness even before we made it all the way up there. Despite my nausea and weakness, the geysers were pretty cool – totally new thing for me. There was an entire field of them, big, small, and otherwise. Pinochet had tried 4 times to harness their energy, but they are so unpredictable that every one of his attempts ended up with exploding machinery. We also saw a fox, and on the way down we saw Vicuñas galloping across the lime-green tufts of grass. I was excited to see them, since I knew that their coats are about the only thing that beats quiviut. They need it up there, even at 7 in the morning it was about 20 degrees F. They are also surprisingly graceful.  We stopped at the pueblo of Machuca on the way down, and I got ahold of some coca tea to help the altitude sickness. Always drink this stuff, it was about the only thing that kept me going.

We got home and took a nap after all this, which was very rejuvenating. We then sallied forth for some almuerzo – chorrillana for me with a bean salad. (Chorillana is a typical dish of fries covered with fried onions, steak, sausage, and egg). The food was…chilean. But satisfying.

 In the evening we had another tour – this time to the Laguan Cejar, a series of salt lakes out on the salt plain (5th largest in the world, just after Salt Lake in the US). We went ‘swimming’ in the chilly water, or floating rather. It was pretty neat, and really wasn’t as cold as I was expecting. Alaska prepares you well to swim in the rest of the world. We also checked out another sort of salt pond. The salt crystals were beautiful, and they sure made our shoes look cool afterwards.

Our 3rd day we headed out early again to the Salar de Tara, which, to my horror, was also really high up – 4,800 m. I mentioned that I had been sick to our driver, however, and he made some stops on the way up so that we could breathe and adjust. I was so happy to discover my stomach remained content, even after we had a camp breakfast up high. We were a bit chilly however, since we had stupidly read the wrong description of the tour…we thought we needed light jackets, instead the right description called for bundling up on account of high wind. We dashed in and out of the van to see the sights, and it wasn’t too bad – but I did wish I had grabbed my wool coat! We went up through La pasa Jama ( the Jama pass) which leads to Bolivia, so we can now say that we have seen Bolivia. We also got up close and personal to the many volcanoes in the area, and saw shepherds with llamas on our way up. We also saw these incredible pillars of rock when we left the high way. One looks just like Pablo Neruda. My favorite stop was La Catedral de Piedra, the Stone Cathedral – it was a canyon full of these towering pillars, with incredible texturas on the reddish stone. From there we could look down and see the salt lake full of flamingos that would be our finals stop, and the sun was so brilliant on the stone, and the sky so incredibly blue. Fantastic. The lake itself was also beautiful, surrounded by purplish mountains, with lime green algae growing from a hot spring, and pale pink flamingos stalking throug the water. It was certainly worth the long and rough ride, and all of the wind.

For lunch we cooked up 2 zucchinis with a couple eggs, tomatoe, onion, and some pasta – we ate so much, but it was so good. And we kept the salt far from our plates. Naps and a bit of homework also ensued. For the evening I dug out our trusty jar of peanut butter and we made sandwiches with apples and some tea.

Our last morning we had found a trusty guide to take us horseback riding. Emily had never ridden before, so he picked out a route that would be easier for her, and promised to teach her what to do. Come Monday morning, he had gotten mixed up and thought that we were coming Tuesday. He came dashing in and was quite worried, but our schedule was relaxed so we got to use my favorite word: Tranquilo! (tranquil, literally – means chill out, no worries, etc. Very very useful here, I love it.) He arranged for us to join another friend who was taking a couple German girls out for an easy ride, but he did walk with us out to the horses, after stopping to say hello to a piggy friend (they have conversations daily, apparently) and introducing us to Jr, the enormous dog. Our guide himself was rather large, we should have known he was from Rapa Nui before he told us. He clearly loves animals, and it was so neat to watch him talking to them and helping Emily learn how to tell her horse, Sueño, where to go. Marcelo, our commandeered guide, took us out towards Pukara de Quitor, and on the way back we doubled through Valle de la Muerte – so cool. We went twisting through a canyon full of rock and sand, and when we got to some dunes our guide asked if we wanted to go faster – I was all down. My horse and I went loping right up this huge dune where we waited for everyone else, who took a slower, more gradual way through the rocks. It was so good to be back in a saddle and to have horse smell all over me again. Sueño did try to roll on Emily (Marcelo warned that he liked sand a lot), but she leapt off after he had sat down as I yelled at her, and everybody was ok. She was NOT happy with her horse, but she got back on like a trooper and we made it home without further incident.

So that was the desert. Definitely worth every bit of the sunburn on my back and the salt marks on my backpack.

This morning I went with my host mom and her boyfriend to go shopping at the market in Viña – YUM. Everything except for the bananas are grown in Chile – kiwi, strawberries, zucchini, garlic…so much fresh food. We ate lots of salad today, as well as some fresh goat cheese with green aji (hot pepper). And fresh melon for dessert…I waddled off to do my homework. Which is what I ought to be doing right now – only 1 more week of school, so it’s final time. Eye of the Tiger, and here I go! Can't be any tougher than the desert, after all :)

The End is Near

Some gems of Chilean Spanish:

martes la trecera= Tuesday the 13^th= Friday the 13^th

cabritos=little goats=popcorn (they jump!)

roncar como lirón=snore like a dormouse= SNORING

te comieron la lengua los ratones= rodents ate your tongue= cat’s got your tongue

pinguino=penguin=high school student (the joys of uniforms)

twitear=to twitter

estar entre la pared y la espada= to be between the wall and the sword= to be between a rock and a hard place

Como una berenjena= like an eggplant= bad or bitter (how was the party? Like an eggplant!)

The mile markers are flying by here...only 26 days until I head back to the states! My 'to do' list, on the other hand, has not taken too many significant hits. I have seen a tarantula and made a pumpkin pie, but there is so much more to be done!

This week I will be heading north to the Atacama desert for about 4 days with Emily, the other girl in my program. I'm excited, it should be entirely different than Valpo or Viña. However, I'm not entirely sure how to pack... the temperatures tend to be extremely hot during the day AND extremely cold at night...so basically I should just bring everything. This weekend was extremely long, with no school Thursday or Friday, so a lot of people traveled. When we go, it should be a bit less crowded, and hopefully we will gather a few pro tips from friends who are coming back from our destination!

For a final project for film class, we have to make a movie or series of images about something particular in Chile, Viña, or Valpo. I am trying to do 'the American Dream in Chile' but I don't know if it's going to be too abstract to show. I'll give it a shot anyway - it really is remarkable how much influence American consumerism, politics, and economics has here. 

For history, I've got a hefty paper on Argentine feminism coming up. I think I have a thesis, and Eva Perón is interesting, so hopefully the 10 pages will click along. That's tomorrow's mission.

My host mom is clearing out her closet right now...makes me think about my closet at home. I've lived with a little suitcase of all-weather clothing for the last 6 months, and it's almost baffling to think about my usual closet. What do I DO with all those clothes? Look cute, I guess. I do miss that, I have gotten a bit scruffy as of late. Even so, I may need to do some minimizing when I get home.