So much to tell, ask me for details 'cause I can't write it all

I was in Colorado on crack. I was not on crack, the mountains were. When the wind shifted and made the grass in the field shine and reflect the sun, I caught a breath of familiarity. When the flies and birds harmonized just so with the river singing in the background, or when the sun highlighted the mountains orange at the end of the day -- just for a split second I knew where I was. Then, instead of an abrupt noise, an insistent silence broke my thoughts. I was in Belén, a pretty little ghost of a town, home to almost fifty, where a smattering of houses and a fertile valley rise steeply into dry mountains -- more drastic than I’ve ever seen. At least I think I was there. Now it feels more likely that I was living in an alternate plane that only appears in dreams.

Things that may or may not have been real:

Ë The drive to Belén. Two by two, we were dropped off in different villages hours apart for our indigenous homestay on a windy dirt road. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was thinking we were probably going to go careening over the edge.

v My hostess. At first Señora Natalia, a little old lady whose head doesn’t even reach my shoulders, seemed shy. But she did not stop talking in her cute little voice since five minutes into my stay there. History, stories, gossip -- I wish I had caught every single word she said because they were all so entertaining! She lives alone and still farms her plots of land down the road. Although this was my indigenous homestay, my hostess claims that her family is not Aymaran, they’re Spanish.

Leading me to the field

Digging for potatoes

    Ë Belén itself. 

        It’s soooo small, so quiet.

Belén in its entirety 

v The mix of old and new. Houses built out of adobe the way they have been for years and years; novellas (soap operas) on tv at night. Aymaran rituals for harvesting; Catholic church with kitschy statues of Jesus, Mary, and random saints. An old kitchen, separated from the rest of the house, with walls stained black from the woodburning stove; instant Ensure for breakfast every morning.

Ë Our bus breaking down. In the middle of nowhere. In the driest desert in the world. After four days of the homestay a couple tour buses came to pick each of us up in our little villages. In my bus we were excitedly talking about our different experiences when we stopped and the driver hopped off only to come back on announcing he was going to walk 10k to somewhere (the somewhere was unclear) to get help because the axel was broken. So there we were, seven kids alone in the scene of a horror movie. Luckily we had plenty of water and many of us were stocked with homemade goat cheese and fried bread. Two hours passed quickly as we sang Joni Mitchell at the top of our lungs, listening to the echo in the vast nothingness, nothingness, nothingness…and a cop came rolling around the corner with our bus driver. The seven of us, plus the cop and driver, plus all our luggage, squeezed into the truck, and we were driven to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, where we waited for another bus to come and take us to Arica.

After all the adventures in the north, I am now back in Valparaiso, ready to start the next chapter of the SIT program --- the independent project. Actually, I’m ready to rest for a day or two --- and then start the project. 

Sending love!

The North

I can't really breathe. My head spins when I stand up. I'm really tired. But as we've started saying here, it's completely vale la pena, worth the pain, to see the things I've seen at 11,000+ ft!

                                                                             ****

On Monday our group split into two, half of us going to the south of Chile and half of us going north. Us northerners flew to Arica from Santiago. Surrounded by sand, sand, sand, Arica sits on the coast and has a beautiful stretch of beach but is also known as one of the driest cities in the world. Here we stayed for a couple nights at a hotel, with seminars in the morning --- about the social movements of the indigenous Aymaran population, their cosmovision, the history of Afro-descendants in the region, and their present-day situation -- and a theatre workshop in the afternoons. That's right, yours truly is a star in a play. Not the star, but an actual star in the sky from a traditional Aymaran story that the group is attempting to act out. Led by two lively directors, we are tapping into a form of creativity that, by the looks of it, none of us have ever tapped into before. However, it's pretty fun! Why a play? The play, and the act of doing it, combines a couple different aspects that we're learning about. First, in the traditional Aymaran culture gracias does not exist. Instead, everything is reciprocated, so in order to reciprocate our welcome in the little mountain town of Putre (where we are now), we are presenting the play to little kids. Also, both the directors have participated in a local organization in Putre called Kimsakalko. Kimsakalko organizes theatre, murals, and dance in the village to revitalize the Aymaran culture...

In Arica, we also met a group of urban Aymaras at the local Lyons Club building for some lively dancing, some overeating, and also to take part in a ceremony in which a man and a woman ask permission from Pacha Mama (mother earth) and Tata Inti (sun). It was quite the mixture of tradition and modernity -- men and women swirled around in their customary dress while everyone, including the Aymaras, took pictures. We ate the traditional llama jerky while everyone exchanged email addresses. Then the gringos joined in the dancing, with confetti sprinkling our heads and the floor.

Mom, her name's Sara!

On a completely different note, the next night we rode across the city to a poor neighborhood to meet a group of women contaminated by toxins from nearby factories. This was one of the heaviest experiences of my time in Chile. We all sat in awe as a woman explained how the families in this neighborhood had cherished living in their own homes, humble as they were, until they realized that they are being poisoned by the ground their children play on, the materials they live within, the water that flows by their houses, and the air that hovers over them. Although they connected outbreaks of various illnesses with the toxic contaminants, like arsenic, the government refuses to acknowledge the problem. When a woman, who had been sitting bundled up in the corner with earphones in, started talking to us I realized how real the problem is. This woman had been living homeless on the beach before she realized her dreams and moved into a house that was hers, that she owned. Years later, just a whisper of a person, she has lost 4 children to diseases related to arsenic and she herself has cancer. I didn't catch everything she said in her quiet, shaking voice, but I did understand, I'm dying. Now this group of women is fighting to be have their voices heard by the government.

The next morning we headed in a tour bus (for those of you who were with me in Costa Rica, reminiscent of Scooby) out of Arica and into the mountains.

                                                                               ****

And the show goes on at 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) in the cute mountain pueblo, Putre. Despite everyone being hit by puna, altitude sickness, we keep rehearsing for our little theatrical debut (which is tomorrow), we keep eating entirely too much food, we keep laughing and bonding as a group (we're gettin pretty weird), and we continue seeing things that do not fail to amaze me. Yesterday we walked around and saw all the murals done by Kimsakalko and heard the Aymaran stories associated with each one. And today we toured around and had our minds blown by the incredible scenery even higher up than Putre at one of the highest lakes in the world, Chungara, and some hot springs called Jurasi.

On Monday I'll leave our nice little hotel in Putre to live with an Aymaran family in a pueblo even smaller for a couple nights!!!

Photos taken by the lovely Kandice Stover
                                              

La Memoria

Heartbeats. Fast, aching, thudding, fluttering, skipping. This last week was my most intense, a fusion of experience and emotion. During classes, we were reminded of the deep, bleeding pain that Chile carries, and we ended the week with an excursion to Santiago where we walked through some scars of the dictatorship. Afterwards, I could not have switched gears more drastically as a gaggle of us put on our dancing pants for a whole weekend of Chile's first full-scale international music festival, Lollapalooza.

La Memoria:
The collective memory of the dictatorship in Chile is delicate and strong.* It laces its way through the population, itching some and gripping others. Multiple times since being here I have heard, "We don't want to forget, but we want to move on." And even with my Spanish, I have caught an undertone of, We want to forget, and we want to move on. Many others find an importance in remembering, recording, recounting, and do so in order to ensure the same atrocities never happen again.

I met a man who paints. Graffiti and canvas. Block letters surround his figures and many times, if you piece them together they say Memoria. He says memory takes on many meanings in Spanish -- individual, collective, story, history, identity, culture.

Inti

This past week we saw many grim memories in different forms. We watched them and heard them and felt a miniscule fraction of them. Although as a gringa I will never fully understand the intricate combination of Chile's past and present and the feelings attached to both, I got a valuable reminder of how recently Chile has experienced mass restriction, murder, torture, and disappearance. Whether a Chilean will not talk about it, will talk if asked, or will volunteer information freely, s/he lives in it's heritage.

You might recall my recent documentary addiction. Last week this addiction was fed in class with a heavy spoonful of history. La Ciudad de los Fotógrafos was really moving and about a group of photographers that documented the streets and protests during the dictatorship. I definitely recommend it if you can find it. My heart pounded while watching a group of photographers swooping over a boy whose eye just got bashed out by a policeman. My heart ached while watching an old woman light candles on a shrine made for her children that had disappeared in the 1970's. Forever remaining in their 20's on their mourning mother's mantles, their bones might never be found.

Machuca

La Ciudad de los Fotógrafos

          


We also watched the Chilean classic, Machuca, about two boys of different classes becoming friends right before the military coup. Watch it and cry. And learn a lot too.

On Friday, we went to Santiago. We arrived at a beautiful gated park in the city and broke into excited English in little clusters as if we hadn't just all ridden one and a half hours together. Suddenly the mood changed as one of our leaders, usually the jokester, told us sternly and earnestly, "No English here, please"* and gathered us to explain where we were. We, or at least I, had not realized the intensity of our excursion before arriving. Villa Grimaldi, which is now a memorial park, had been a main interrogation and torture center during Pinochet's dictatorship. For the next couple hours we walked around mostly quiet, shaking our heads, crossing our arms in discomfort, eyes wide as we learned what had happened on the grounds we were walking on. The most incredible part of the experience was that a woman -- the woman that had organized our day with the Mapuches and had been around Casa SIT -- unexpectedly came in front of us and without wavering, shared her story of being detained there at Villa Grimaldi. In realative terms, she is lucky to not have ended up in the bottom of the ocean and to have not become a desaparecida. Even so, my heart squirmed and threatened to jump out of my chest, or sink into my stomach, when she spoke about being shoved into a tiny closet-sized "house" with four other women for three days while children of soldiers played in a pool across the yard, about horribly invading electrocutions, about her companions hanged from trees.

Before leaving, we were told that if anyone claimed that the torture of the dictatorship was a figment of the left's imagination, we knew differently. It is a true memory.




*I know I'm a history major, but I don't have it in me to describe all of Chile's, so if you're not familiar with it, you gotta open up another window in wikipedia
*You'd think this would be a given considering it's a Spanish program....but it's really hard to not speak English with 20 students who not only speak English but get along so well that they always want to chat chat chat

Community

They said time would go fast. For some reason I didn't believe it. Instead I had an image of these four months as the longest of my life...an invented image of a place void of solid people or places but full of time that would constantly surround me and remind me I was far away. Now I am in a real Chile with vivid colors and tastes, with a real bed I lie in every night and real food and beer that are putting real weight on my body. I am becoming friends with real people whose personalities are engraining themselves into my new image of this place. And time is not surrounding me, intimidating me. It has started to evade me, its absence has started to intimidate me. It is flying. Soaring. Getting lost in the crevices around the city. Maybe time is somewhere in the abyss with my lost credit card (my second lost credit card).

Tonight (or more like in early morning) the moon moves from Capricorn to Aquarius. 

The Moon in Capricorn inspires our ambitions. Time to build, dig, organize, and make practical progress on a dream.

The Moon in Aquarius connects us to our community, reminds us that we are in this together. 

I need to soak up the Capricorn and embrace the Aquarius. Right now the group is working on our proposals for our independent projects. I gotta dig in and organize so I can realize my dream for my project (more on that later)! I also need to take a minute to remember the awesome connections that I have, back home and here, and appreciate the people that make up my community. Love you all!

Speaking of community, this past weekend the crew went on two different excursions to two distinct communities. On Friday instead of class, we headed to a población, or the projects. What I thought was going to be an awkward outing of "look gringos, poor people!" was actually really great (and not awkward). This particular población was a project in social living, where there was a big communal  three-story apartment building. Ironically in Valpo, the poorer people, living farther up on the hills, have the best views in the city, and this particular group of people has the best one that I've seen. 

On Sunday, we were warmly welcomed into an urban community of Mapuches (an indigenous group of Chile). The point was to volunteer with them for a day, but we did minimal work while they fed us, played music for us, taught us their field-hockey-esque game, and did I mention fed us? A lot. Sopapillas (with a higher fried dough density than the Mexican version). Pebre (an awesome pico de gallo sauce). Soup. Bread (unfried). Empenadas (traditional Chilean food -- made by hand with help from some of us).  And more sopapillas; they were overflowing from baskets on the table. Throughout the day we played various sports: a game of fútbol with some kids, some basketball, and later we learned pelin, a traditional Mapuche game that is completely hazardous to your shins....but fun. At the end of the day we danced a little queca, the traditional Chilean partner dance. Although they didn't have much actual work for us to do, I think it was very valuable to them to be able to share their culture, which they are intent on preserving. And of course, it was a valuable community-based experience for us as well. Here's a little preview of me making a fool of myself with the queca. Besos!

A Day in the Life of Liza (or Laysa, Lie-sa, Lisa, Licey)...

...I'll answer to anything. Or nothing, depending on how congested my brain is when you're addressing me.

So, I'm starting my fourth week here and starting to have a bit of a regular schedule; nothing too set in stone, but there have been some consistencies.

After snoozing through my alarm that goes off at 7, I roll out of bed at 8. Yes family, I know this might come as a shock to you, but I am waking up this early. My neighbor Rachel and her padre pick me up for school. He drives us to La Plaza Victoria down the hill, where we catch a collectivo to Casa SIT --- our house-turned-school and program headquarters. Our Spanish classes are in full swing now, four hours every morning. For these, my group is divided into four smaller classes, each led by two professors. The seminars have also started and are held in the afternoon at the Universidad de Santa Maria. We hike up miles of stairs to reach our classroom but are rewarded with a school that looks like a castle and an awesome panoramic view of the bay. And I couldn't really tell ya (due to a slight language barrier) but I believe we're also rewarded with a lecture about different aspects of Chilean culture inside the castle-school. Ok, ok, actually the topics are pretty great --- so far, Economy, Education, Indigenous People, and Environment ---but my comprehension is not.

My Spanish, or at least my own perception of my use of the language, fluctuates. I'm in a "I suck at this" phase currently, but the only way to move out of this is to keep talking. And I've already had some, "Oh, I can talk, kinda!" days too. With every new word, new phrase, new world view, new song, new neighborhood and cafe comes a realization that there is just that much more still out there. At times this is daunting and others inspiring.

This morning I jumped in a collectivo with a feeling of ease. Once settled in and paid-up, I casually asked how the driver was and started a conversation, "For my class I need to bring a new chilenismo every day. Do you have any ideas?"
"Si...?" Silence. Silence.
"For example, a word that chilenos use?" I offered.
"Eh?"
"A word from Chile." 
"Eh?"
Again. Man, is my Spanish that bad this morning?
"Oh, yeah," he said, "There's a lot of them."
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
And then he dropped me off at the completely wrong street, apparently not having understood even that.

On the other hand, a couple days ago a woman asked me -- gringa me -- for directions on my hill. And I understood her. And I knew how to answer her.

Happy people surround me daily. The Casa SIT is filled with them, both the students and the teachers. During breaks, lunch, and any in-between time the school hums while we plow through the tea and coffee selection in our little kitchen and eagerly converse, telling the latest stories from our homestays and making plans for after class. My family is awesome too. I couldn't be more content with my living situation here. My brothers are so sweet -- so 14 and 15 -- but so sweet. They're here when I get back from school and like to stay in their room on their computers but will also humor me and enthusiastically answer my dorky older sister questions. My mamá chilena is sweet too. Lately, she hasn't been letting me get away with just nodding and smiling when she says something and will demand, "Ok, what did I say?" with a smile and little head tilt until I summarize or admit I have no idea. And ever since the first day when I explained that my family calls me Lizee*, she's called me Licey in a great accent.

I'm definitely missing my real family, missing the original "Lizee-lou" from Mom and Dad (but it's actually them you gotta worry about, about to be empty nesters...again), and wishing I could be roadtripping with Katie to Pennsylvania in a couple days....but I haven't been hit with culture shock, and I've been feeling real good. Few!

Abrazos



*Right before I left for Chile my family was debating how to spell this. Mom, you like this version?

Valparaiso

I think I finally know how to pronounce Valparaíso. I don't know if any of you noticed, maybe were just to kind to point out, that before I left I didn't even know how to say the name of the place that I was going to be living in for at least 2 1/2 months. I tried many combinations of consonants and vowels, sometimes adding some (Valaparaiso), sometimes omitting some (Valpariso). And since I've been here, I've been glad for the nickname "Valpo." However, last night, a fellow gringa broke it down for me. Val-para-iso. And then you throw it all together and try to roll your "r" a bit. Valparaíso.
Valparaíso --- with its port and poetry, with its discotecas and hippie bars, with its filth and its art, everywhere art, trash, graffiti, art--- has the charm of a musician, the slightly mysterious beauty of a gypsy, the grunge of a sailor, and the smooth voice like a sweet-talker. And I am falling for its flirtations. I can see why so many are in love.

I am not in love with the steep walk up Cerro Florida that brings me to my house. But I do love the views on the way up and the way all the colorful houses seem to cascade down the hills into the sea. And I'm amused at the streets that put manuel drivers in San Francisco to shame. I'm annoyed by the catcalls on the street and even the innocent need people have to point out (literally) that there are gringos walking by -- Chileans are not known for their
political correctness. But they are known to be friendly, and I love the way strangers will go out of their way to guide you somewhere instead of giving you hasty directions, how our Chilean brothers will accompany us to our destinations at night so we get there safely, how older women, regardless if you know them, will refer to you as mi hija, and how people gently correct your Spanish whether you're at home or downtown.

 

Faces in an alley, done by more
well-known graffiti artists

And I love, love, love all the art. Murals crawl down alleys and dance on store-fronts. Spray-painted faces ride the micros and tower above pedestrians at the port. "Official" and "unofficial" paintings share walls and mix in the street. Here are some of my favorite from an excursion my class took to the port.                

Acensor Artilleria painted during
the night

"I confess that I've drank"
painted on a church

                                        

Week One: Check ✓

It's 19:28. Still really early by Chileno standard. Dinner's at least an hour away. I'm sitting on my bed with my window open, a breeze from the ocean traveling through my room on it's way up the hill.

I left off having not met my Chilean family yet. I lied when I said we were meeting them on Sunday. On Saturday morning we woke up at the hotel, signed our lives away on pieces of paper that said we understood all the information orientation had offered us, and packed up our rooms. From our hotel windows, we could see the group of host families growing, mingling, buzzing

My host mom, Pamela, and one of my host brothers, Sabastian (15), met me with the standard Chilean greeting -- a kiss on the right cheek -- but this particular greeting was charged with a lot more enthusiasm....and smiles. They whisked me away from the rest of the group, which I had become quite attached to by this point (not to worry, we still see each other every day), and we drove to our house in Valparaiso on Cerro Florida. Valparaiso is organized by a series of cerros (hills), and I live on one that is pretty central and hosts both the historical Casa de Pablo Neruda and an open air art museum.

Mi Casa

Across from my house

Around the corner from my house

I briefly met my other brother, Fabian (14) before he ran out the door to help a relative in the garden...
We had a big lunch including a glass of pisco sour and wine...
We met my abuela, who lives upstairs from us in our casa azul with Pamela's three brothers...
We bought cell phones with my fellow SITer and neighbor around the corner, Rachel, and her mama, Paula....
We jumped into a colectivo to practice getting to school....

And afterwards I passed out in my new bedroom while Pamela and Paula made tacos around the corner. I am still thankful for that pre-dinner nap. I wouldn't have been able to last through our dinner party -- or should I say our dinner-party-turned-dance-party that lasted until 4:30 in the morning -- without it. Oh man, our moms kept us up dancing all night!

Didn't get a very good pic; too busy dancing; Rachel's dad, Rachel, y yo

I just took a break from writing to eat dinner with my mama chilena in her room. Yes, it's taken me about  two hours to write this sucker (minus a short break to take pictures of my street). And yes, we all eat dinner together on my mama's bed...a cute little ritual that started because she doesn't like eating by herself in the dining room after her sons run off to their rooms when they're done eating.

On Sunday (after my whole family slept in until about 1:30, thank God) Rachel's mama and papa, Maurizio, took us to Reñaca, a beach town on Viña del Mar's north side. Maurizio's sister, who happens to be a yoga teacher, lives up the hill a bit in the neighborhood of my dreams. All dirt roads. Handmade houses made of completely recycled material and adobe. A dreaded man scooping horse poop with his son the yard of a dwelling that looks something that looks like tree house. Little kids running from house to house, knowing they're welcome in each one. We didn't end up running into the yogi tia, but did drink mate inside the house on the right with her fiance.

In Valparaiso, I feel like I am adjusting well. I'm accepting the fact that I sound like an idiot when I talk. And I look like an idiot when I'm standing on a busy street, awkwardly trying to wave down a colectivo while they drive towards me at 80 mph --- for example. And I'm getting very used to the head tilt and furrowed eyebrow with sympathetic eyes that say, Ay, Gringa. But it's ok. The other morning I was overcome with satisfaction when I walked down my hill to catch a ride to school. The sky was grey and the hill was empty except for equally grey pigeons flapping around and a couple of stray dogs surveying the street. I passed an abandoned lot overgrown with flowers. Whereas every other surface in the city is painted with graffiti, these eroding walls were left mostly unmarked, as if tagging an abandoned building is too obvious. Or as if the cascading purple flowers had already marked the territory. The morning seemed a little eery, but like I said, I only felt completely satisfied. Maybe it was the abundant colors of every building that counteract the grey. Or maybe I subconsciously knew that in a couple hours the clouds would burn off and I'd be lying on the beach in Viña. Oh, mi vida.

*Colectiva: a taxi, but cheaper because multiple people can jump in and it has a fairly fixed route.