New Semester

Well, my second and last semester at the Universidad de Concepción has begun. I am taking a continuation of my Mapuche testimony and poetry class and Social Development in Latin America and Chile. The latter is a really cool class. I like the sociology grad students, because unlike the history ones, they are around my age and are not commuters. I actually went to a bar called The Beer Place (clever name, huh?) with three of the students from the class the other night. I think that my classes this semester will be fine, just like last semester, but I have the added stress of writing my thesis and applying to grad schools on top of everything else I'm doing. Somehow, though, I still manage to be bored and stay in on a Saturday night catching up on blogging rather than going out and having a life.

I've been a little bummed over the past couple of weeks. I'm pretty homesick at this point, and I get stressed out very easily. I am sure that comes from my additional responsibilities of thesis-writing and grad school applications, but I just don't like it. I want to enjoy the months I have left in Chile, but at the same time, I just really want to go home and see my family and friends. I feel pretty lonely here a lot of the time. I do have friends here, but back in the U.S., there was usually somebody to hang out with any time I was feeling bored or blue. Now, I just watch Sex and the City episodes that I download from iTunes and pretend that Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha are my friends. How pathetic!

I can't help but wonder if this experience would have been different had I lived in Santiago instead of Concepción. I like Concepción, but it isn't exactly very conducive to having new cultural experiences every day. When I was in Santiago, I felt like there was always some new part of town to see, another museum to visit, another pub to check out.... Here, it's pretty dull. I can see why the Chileans who live here prefer it to Santiago: it's more relaxed, has fewer people, etc. I just think, as a foreigner, that Santiago has more to offer for those who which to be culturally stimulated. There is a saying here, ''Santiago is Chile.'' It's kind of like saying that New York is the U.S. I guess by living in Concepción I get to experience life on the periphery, which, in this country, is any place but Santiago.

There are many good things going on here, besides. Diane and I are working on a project to implement a library in the rural school where we both volunteer, and I am still enjoying teaching the little kids. I helped coach the debate team for the high school where I volunteer (the debates are in English), and they won first place at the last competition! I am very proud of them. I think working in the schools has been the most rewarding part of my time in Chile. That is probably what I am going to miss the most when I'm gone. That...and empanadas.

Termas de Chillan

A couple of weekends ago (still trying to catch up on the blogging), I went to Termas de Chillan with Diane, Mauricio, and two of Mauricio's friends. Unlike the first time I went to the termas in March, it was snowy! It was really beautiful, and I had a good time, except for catching a cold or getting a sinus infection...not sure which one.

Both nights we had asados (cookouts/barbecues) with Mauricio's friend Lily's co-workers, who were in the cabin next to ours. That was some tasty steak. And chicken. And choripan. It's a wonder I didn't gain 10 pounds just from that weekend.

On Saturday, we went to the area where the thermal pools are and where people go to ski. I got a massage and 20 minutes in a private jacuzzi, both of which were nice. The only thing was, whereas in the U.S. the masseuse leaves the room for you to get undressed, apparently in Chile she just stands there and watches you.

I really enjoyed seeing the snow. I sang Christmas carols to myself a couple of times. Now it's the beginning of spring, but since it's September, it feels like fall to me. I'm very seasonally-disoriented at the moment.

We also went to the market in Chillan proper, and I saw some really cool things there. I want to go back sometime when I have more time to look and shop. I want to get Christmas presents from there, but I'm not sure who would want a huaso hat or spurs....

So, in sum, Chillan was short and sweet, and I hope to go back before I leave Chile, which is in a few short months.

Santiago

So, it has been a ridiculously long time since I have posted an entry. I have been pretty busy. Since the last post, I had a prolonged stay in Santiago, went home to visit my family (thanks, Jimmy, for the buddy pass!), went to Termas de Chillan, coached a high school debate team, and started my second semester of classes. I intend to catch up on those things little by little, but I am working on my thesis, too, so I can't get too carried away with blogging. I'll start with Santiago:

Scott arrived on June 25 to do research on the Mapuche and finish Dr. Liz's research that he owed her. We spent a long weekend in Santiago, and although I didn't get to see the city very much, I did become familiar with the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library). It's one of the most beautiful buildings I've seen in Chile, but what goes on inside it is, well, very Chilean. One has to ask two or three different people to get what you want, most of the newspapers are not digitized but bound in hardcover, and you don't even have ot wear gloves to look at them! We were looking at newspapers from the '50s and '60s, and they were yellowing and easily ripped if one didn't use the utmost care. While we weren't able to take pictures of the papers (even without flash), the one old man at the copy machine could bend them every which way and photocopy them, which exposes them to much more light than a camera flash. I know I sound like a snob, but I was just a little shocked by how carelessly they treat their documents.

I went back to Concepción to finish my classes, and then I went home to see my family. It was sooooo nice to be in the warm July sun and soak in the bathwater-temperature swimming pool with my nieces. Madelyn had been taking swimming lessons and did very well. It was fun swimming with her. Makes me wish I were six again. We also went on a riverboat cruise on the Tennessee River. My sister had gotten us tickets. They show consisted of the boat being taken over by pirates whose boat of choice was a pontoon. Even though they obviously couldn't have been on a real pirate ship, we still thought it was funny that there were ''pirates'' on a pontoon boat.

I went back to Concepción, only to unpack and re-pack my bags to go back to Santiago. I got to see the actual city this time, and I like it. It's so much more interesting that Concepción. There are so many things to do and see. Some of my favorites include a trip to the countryside for a Mapuche ceremony, Pablo Neruda's house La Chascona, the Cerro Santa Lucía, the tribute to Allende on the bottom floor of La Moneda (the government palace), and the cute restaurants in Providencia. We stayed in a wonderful hostal there called Newen Kara, which is mapuzungun (the Mapuche language) for ''urban force''. Not only was the hostal clean and in a great area of town, but the owners were young, sweet, and very helpful.

There were two other places of interest that really affected me: Londres 38 and Parque Por la Paz (Ex-Villa Grimaldi). I was walking down one of the main streets one day, and I happened to see the calle Londres. I knew that Londres 38 was a torture and execution site during the Pinochet regime, but finding the actual place in a guide book or on a map was not happening. I walked down the street, and less than a block away was the facade. The building was closed down and eerie. It looked like it had been forgotten by everyone except those who had pasted pictures of disappeared people and graffittied things like, ''¿Dónde están?'' (Where are they?) and ''Aquí se torturaron y se asesinaron'' (Here people were tortured and murdered). My heart felt heavy.

The Parque Por la Paz is a little outside the city, and it is the site of the famous torture and execution complex Villa Grimaldi. The park is converting a closed-off space of detention and forgetting into a memorial and educational open space. There are placards telling which types of tortures took place where, and they have a replica of a cell in which 3-4 people were detained at once. It was 1m x 1m. It didn't even look big enough to be a closet.

The Tower is the one of the only original structures that remained. The Tower was basically the execution and body disposal site. How the hell can a large number of people in this country pretend this never happened?!

To end on a lighter note, I really enjoyed Santiago. Even though Scott and I broke up right after he got back to the U.S., I think I still have fond memories of the capital city. I especially enjoyed meeting another Rotary scholar named Justin and his friend Andrea. I plan to spend the week of the 18 de septiembre (Independence Day) hanging out with them and Diane in Santiago. Since I am going to be in Santiago for Election Day for a conference, we are going to get together to watch the results. Obama/Biden 2008!!! Yes, we can!!!

Carreteando y Estudiando

Just to clear up the title: carrete = fiesta = party; carretear= to party. Oh, chilenismos.

Last Saturday night Diane, Kristin (new Canadian friend, very cool), and I went to Pablo's birthday party. I joked that we were going to do an homage to Pinochet in the middle of it, as Pablo is a young penochetista. He has redeeming qualities, though, and I just tell myself he doesn't know any better.

As for not knowing any better, we found ourselves in an embarrassing situation that night, but we also learned a new chilenismo, or Chilean way of saying something. We had received a flyer via email from Pablo saying giving the direction of the party, Edificio Lemu, Clubhouse. It said that entrance was free after 10 pm, but at the bottom it said that it didn't include cover. We thought that was strange, but that maybe there was a special fee to get into the clubhouse but we may have to still pay a cover for a band or something. Anyway, we came prepared to pay a cover. Well, ''cover'' actually means alcohol! The party was in a rented out clubhouse, and everyone brought their own booze. We didn't notice this at first, as we were offered drinks as soon as we arrived. Later, though, we wisened up. We had considered bringing alcohol, but because we decided the party was at a bar since we would have to pay a cover, we didn't bring anything. Pablo just laughed and provided drinks for us for the rest of the night. I never would have thought that that is what cover means here. He's having another party to use up the leftover food from the first party, so we are going to bring enough ''cover'' to cover what we didn't bring before!

Other than carreteando, which I really haven't been doing that much of, I have been recovering from a sinus infection, teaching, and eeking out final papers. I am proud of myself for not having waited until the night before the papers are due to start working on them. I figured I couldn't punch out two 15-page papers in Spanish overnight. I shouldn't be doing that with papers in English, either....

I didn't teach at the high school this week because there was a teacher's strike. There were strikes and protests all over Chile because of a new education bill being proposed in the Congress that would further privatize education. That's crap. The free, public school education here is severely underfunded, and the gap between private and public education is only maintaining the economic gap within the country. I don't think they have reached an agreement about the bill yet.

I did teach the little kids this week. My heart is both warmed and broken every time I go to the school. The children are so loving, but it pains me so much to know that some of them live in children's homes because their parents abandoned them, and all of them live in poverty. I found out this week that another child, Jessica, lives in a children's home because her parents were/are drug addicts. She is six years old, the same as my niece Madelyn. She is really sweet, and in class Tuesday she hugged me a lot and called me ´´mamá.´´ I so wish I could adopt her! I actually mean that seriously. If I were in a more stable place in my life and had the money to do it, I would probably try to do it. My 15-year-old niece Kayley told me that if I were to adopt all the kids I see and say I want to adopt, I would already have a house full of kids. She's probably right! That's just me, though. I am a mother without a child.

Teaching Experience

I recently started two volunteer teaching jobs: one at a high school and one at a rural K-8. I am teaching English to mischievous high-schoolers and rambunctious 1st and 2nd graders, and it has been great so far. Although discipline problems are many, I am glad that I have the opportunity to help in some way and hopefully help boost these poor kids' self-confidence and give them a better shot at getting a college degree. Maybe there will be more government aid for students by the time they have the opportunity to go to college.

As it is right now, tuition is expensive and the student loan program is pretty insuffiicient. The students at to U de Concepción have taken over many of the buildings and have succeeded in stopping classes by strike. (Since there are so few students in my two grad seminars, we have continued to meet off campus and plan to complete our work on time so as not to lose vacation days that will likely be used to recuperate the missed days from the striking. We support what the strikers are doing, but we are continuing our work without really crossing a picket line, so to speak). The strike situation may seem radical to North Americans, but I have been told by many people that the only way to get the government's attention here is to have a strike. Unfortunately, although the government usually makes concessions initially, they often take back what they gave later on, thus causing more strikes. The teachers go on strike, too, because at the primary, middle, and high school levels, the government also underfunds schools, and the teachers' salaries are pitiful. My scholarship stipend is the same as what a teacher makes in Chile, which would be well below the poverty level in the U.S.

But back to my teaching experiences. I began working at a high school in San Pedro (about 20 minutes from Concepción proper) about 3 weeks ago. Although San Pedro is a pretty wealthy town, this particular high school is where poor children from the outskirts of town come to school. It is also a dumping ground for students who have been kicked out of other schools for disciplinary problems. I am working at the school through the program Inglés Abre Puertas, or Enlgish Opens Doors, which is a government program that recruits native English speakers from universities to volunteer as teaching assistants in schools whose students come from low socioeconomic levels. I think it is a good program, and the teacher I work with tells me that she can tell that the students are more motivated now that I am there. Just having a foreigner around stirs up student interest in most cases. There are many kids who are really good at English. I just hope they get a chance to do something with the language in the future.

I work at the high school on Monday and Wednesday mornings and at the rural school on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday for bi-weekly 45-minute sessions with students in 1st and 2nd grades. The rural school gig was arranged by my host Rotary Club, which does various activities to help the school. This year they plan to build a multi-use sports field to replace the current one, which is just dirt (or mud if it has been raining) that has no actual goals or markings for sports.

Every time I go to the school, kids from all grades surround me, looking at me like I came from another planet rather than another country, and ask me questions until the principal takes me to the classroom. The kids I teach are soooooo cute and sweet, and they are really excited about learning English, especially the 2nd graders. The 1st graders are much more bashful, but they are doing well. The first day that I went to the 2nd grade classroom, the kids jumped up and down and cheered when I came into the room. I couldn't have asked for a better welcome! Although they are more rowdy and are greater in number and thus a little harder to keep under control, the 2nd graders show a lot of potential. It's amazing how well kids can pronounce words from another language! I don't think they quite understand all of the meanings yet, but that will get better with time. This week I taught them basic greetings, and we made masks with which we could practice the words. The masks are good not only for making learning more fun, but also for helping the shy kids to feel less intimidated.

I found out that one of the kids, who is particularly affectionate and always asking to help me with things, lives in a home for children. He is nine years old and should be in 4th grade, but he is so tiny! I think my 6-year-old niece is as big as he is. His parents were drug addicts and abandoned him, and he lived on the street begging for money before he began living in the children's home. Stories like that just break my heart, but they also give me more passion for working with them. I wish I could just adopt all those kids and care for them the way they should be cared for. Many, if not all, of them live in shacks or run-down houses with no heat or indoor plumbing. For many of them, both at the rural school and the high school, the only food they get is the school breakfast and lunch. There are a couple of high school students that I teach that are fifteen or sixteen years old but look like they are eight or nine. This is likely due to malnourishment, and I wouldn't doubt that some of them were premature or had fetal alcohol syndrome.

A lot of the high school students, though they come from these situations, have cell phones. A lot of them work after school and probably use some of their money for things like cell phones, because having the appearance of living comfortably when one is not is sometimes, I guess, more satisfying than taking care of basic needs first. That's material culture for you, I suppose.

The End of the Earth

It has been a month since I last posted an entry, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I have been busy traveling, teaching, and studying, and I usually don't feel like writing in my free time! I'm going to try to post a couple of entries that will get this blog up to date, and this first entry is the story of my glorious adventure to the ''end of the Earth'', i.e. Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.

In the middle of May, I went with Eduardo and Diane to Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales, and the Torres del Paine national park outside of Puerto Natales. I discovered a totally different part of Chile that, to be, seems more interesting and aesthetically pleasing. The people in Concepción are great, but it is quite an ugly city, to tell the truth. I like the little communities outside of Concepción because they are usually prettier and have a more soulful feeling to them (perhaps I am romanticizing the countryside, but I assure you, I am no right-wing nationalist), but they lack the convenience of city life. I found Punta Arenas to be a mixture of those two: a small city that had enough diversions to keep a person entertained, but also pretty, clean, and full of history. Immigrants from Great Britain, Croatia, Germany, and other European countries settled here; not just Spaniards (and of course indigenous peoples, but I am talking about immigrants).

We got to see some important sites in Punta Arenas, such as Fuerte Bulnes. It was a fort and settlement where ruffians of England lived, sometimes as punishment. The fort is famous (here, at least) because the community rebelled and liberated itself. That must have been a hell of a day.

We also visited the city cemetary. Doesn't sound interesting, but it was. It is full of mausoleums of various sizes and designs--and a various family names. There one can see the tremendous Croatian hertiage of the city. Behind the giant monuments and mausoleums were bigger mausoleums that held many of the deceased of less wealthy stock. Eduardo asked why I took a photo of them sine they were so ugly, and I replied that it was reality, ugly or not.

Our trip to Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine was wonderful. We stayed in a very nice hostel for a cheap, low-season rate. Puerto Natales is quite small, so there wasn't as much to do, but we went there because of the park anyway. We took a guided tour on a minibus with a group of young women from Hong Kong and a man from Holland. Hiking would have been nice, but it would have required several days and warmer weather. Still, we got to see all the high points of the park, including the torres del paine (or the stone towers) and the cuernos (horns--smaller than the torres), a couple of beautiful lakes, and a waterfall. We didn't make it to Glacier Grey because it was way on the other side of the park. Being in the park made me feel calm, which was a nice turn from the rest of the trip. I sort of had wanted to strangle Eduardo for most of the trip, because he decided to be in control of everything. He has some idea that he needs to take care of us, but there's not a huge age difference! I think Diane and I are a little more mature than him, anyway.

Enough venting. Eduardo and I did have a fun time at the Austral brewery, but unfortunately Diane had had to leave. We got to drink a lot of beer, and we bought souvenir glasses. Austral beer is pretty tasty. My favorite is Austral Calafate, which contains extract from the calafate fruit, which we don't have in the U.S. Too bad the beer isn't available back home.

I also turned 24 in Punta Arenas. It was on a Monday, and Diane, Eduardo, and I had a nice lunch at a fancy restaurant after we returned to Punta Arenas from Puerto Natales. That night, Eduardo, his cousin Rodrigo whose hostel we stayed at, and I went out for drinks, and I had a slice of alfajor cake (crispy layers of pastry and manjar, which is like a mix between dulce de leche and caramel). Truthfully, I spent most of my birthday being cold, achy, and sad. May is basically wintertime in Chile, especially in the South; I'm used to having a springtime birthday! I missed my friends and family, and my phone wasn't working, so I couldn't talk to any of those who tried to call. I have had some awesome birthdays in the past few years, though, so surely one mediocre one won't hurt me.

The day after my birthday, I took a ride on a ferry across the Strait of Magellan. As a history person, this was pretty exciting for me, even though I always hated studying the exploration period in school. I went to the small town of Porvenir in Tierra del Fuego. Porvenir is not much, but at least I can say that I crossed the Strait of Magellan and have been to Tierra del Fuego! A Chilean man of Croatian descent who had been on the ferry offered to show me around town after handing me a business card for his mom-and-pop travel service. He drove me around the little town and showed me the main points of interest, like the church, the plaza, and a museum that told of the city's history. In the end, he didn't charge me anything and refused to take anythign I offered him! I had only a couple of hours in Porvenir before it was time to board the ferry again. It's a three-hour ride, and since the sun sets earlier in the winter, the return trips are right after lunch. Still, it was worth it.

I am so, so glad I went to Punta Arenas, Torres del Paine, and Tierra del Fuego, even if it wasn't in the springtime. It gave me a new appreciation for Chile and its natural wonders. Who knows, maybe I'll have the chance to go back someday when it's not so cold!

The Rotary District Conference in Los Angeles (Chile, not California)

Last weekend was the Rotary district conference, and as part of our scholarship duties, Diane and I had to go. It was located in Los Angeles, which is a small city/town about an hour and a half away from Concepción. Overall it was a good experience. As with all conferences, though, we had to suffer through boring talks and be chatty with a lot of people. I like meeting people and being chatty, but it gets old after you talk to, like, the fiftieth person. I sound so antisocial right now, sorry.

The first day, things ran pretty much on schedule. We heard an interesting talk by a Mapuche Rotarian about bridging the cultural gap between the Mapuche and the winkas (that's mapudungun for Chileans, or white folk. He didn't use that word; I learned it in my Mapuche lit class, and I like it). We heard other talks as well, which I am having a hard time recalling right now. There was one about the environment, but the guy spoke (or yelled, rather) into the microphone half the time and away from it half the time. He also quoted Genesis a lot...

The meals were probably the best part of the conference. We had full-course meals in a nice social club down the street (the conference itself took place in a high school), complete with delicious red wine. They have a special type of wine here called Carmenere (as opposed to Merlot or Cabernet Savignon--it's not the brand name). It comes from a grape that used to be in France but died out in a grape plague of some sort. It lived on in Chile (where I think the French planted it. Either that or it was native), and it is the only place that makes that type of wine. It is very smooth and is my new favorite tinto. Sorry, I will stop talking about wine now.

We also got to sit with different Rotarians at lunch, which could be fun, depending on who we sat with. The Coronel group was lively. Many people also took advantage of the opportunity to practice their English. They don't get so many chances to do that in Chile.

Saturday night there was a dance following the elaborate dinner, but dinner didn't end until about 12:30, and I heard the dance went on until nearly 3. Oh, Latin Rotarians. I was exhausted and left at 1:00. Diane and I had to give speeches the next day, and I didn't want to be a zombie onstage. Our speeches went well, and we were probably the only ones in that entire conference that stuck to our time limit (of 5 minutes apiece, which was a lot shorter than other people's time limits). On Saturday night, one man gave a ridiculously long diatribe renewable energy. Renewable energy is very important, but he didn't dumb the science down for anyone, and he talked for 35 minutes, while I am sure his time limit was 15-20 like the other speakers'. The session had already been running long, and Diane and I just started laughing (discreetly) after he kept showing slide after slide when we thought he had surely finished his talk.

We did meet a lot of nice Rotarians and racked up invitations to speak at clubs. The only problem is, some of those clubs are 2 hours away or more, so we will have to stay overnight during the week.

Speaking of clubs more than 2 hours away, I went to give a speech at the Parral Rotary Club on Tuesday. The president and I had had it planned for about 3 weeks, but he never mentioned that Parral was 2 1/2 hours away from Concepción. I'm sure he just assumed I knew, but I thought that it was just the name of the club! Our host club is called Rayen, after all (well, Rayen de Concepción, but they usually just say ''Rayen''). I thought it was in or near Conce. I was on my way to the gym the day of the talk when the president called me, asking me how and when I would be arriving. I told him that I did not know where the meeting was, and that I could go in taxi or colectivo if I knew the address. He said that someone would pick me up at the bus terminal if I were coming by bus. Then, I realized that this place was farther away. I told him I would be arriving by bus and would call back with the time, and then I dashed home and asked Tía Lucía where Parral is. She told me, and then told me to change clothes and pack an overnight bag, and she would take me to the bus station. I did so, and I got a ticket in time to get there in plenty of time for the meeting.

On the bus, a cute little eight-year-old girl named Esperanza (Spanish for ''Hope'') sat next to me. I was listening to my iPod, and after a while, she asked me what it was. I let her listen to music and play games on it. She had been learning English in school and decided to quiz me on my Spanish-to-English vocabulary. The problem was, she had been learning about the planets, and she asked me what stuff like an axis was. I felt like I was on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? I know my sciencey friends will laugh at me, but seriously, I haven't talked about that stuff since middle school! Still, it was a memorable experience, and it made me even more excited about teaching English to kids.

The man who picked me up from the bus terminal was Jorge, a retired pilot-turned-notary public. He was very sweet, and he let me stay in his house. We went to the meeting, which was at a very nice restaurant. We had pisco sours and appetizers before dinner, and a little old man, who is actually the retired judge, talked to me at length about his children and his visits to the United States--in English! He had been to Nashville, as had Don Jorge.

The meeting included a full-course meal, wine, and a homage to the Carabineros, or police. Many of the police were there, including the chief, who is a young guy who speaks English, French, and Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (he was in that area in the late 1990s). He and I had privileged seats at the head of the table. I also sat next to a man who had been to Wisconsin in the 1960s with some kind of farming program started by JFK. Oh, and I was the only female in the room!

They seemed to enjoy my talk, and they were welcoming and friendly. The last of us finally left at 12:30 (I'm telling you, Latin Rotarians). I returned to Concepcion the next day, vowing to always check about a club's location plenty of time in advance.