monday morning... glazed

STRESS is a very relative anomaly here in Chile, but this morning I woke up STRESSED (quickened pulse, achy head, and paranoid itchy) about four things: my profound laziness in correcting 100 quizzes, my empty canister of Nescafe instant coffee, my future, and my neglect of this blog as of recent. My Monday morning is probably going better than yours, but still, rude awakenings.

SOO I Bought some coffee and decided to tackle the blog before the quizzes, because I enjoy it more, and I do what I want.

I’ve been really busy enjoying myself and getting a killer tan (read: freckles, millions). Besides the obvious pursuit of happiness (friends, socializing, excessive food and drink, surfing everyday..), I’ve been trying to strike a balance (alone time, reading, painting, volunteering, reflection). It’s all going very well, the only problem is time is literally on fast-forward (not actually literally though, that would be CRAZY), and I don’t know how to slow it down. Ok, yah, I know, "time flies when you’re having fun", but I only have 2 months left here and I’m trying to get in some quality time and take some pictures or something before I leave.

Hmmm, well I think I’d like to “walk you through” a normal day here in Chile, keep reading if you want some intimate details of my teach-in-chile experience. I wake up with a smile on my face (ha!) around 8 in the morning, I  drink nescafe instant coffee and eat yogurt with granola, fruit (strawberries, YUM), and miel de palma, palm-tree honey. 

Then I usually go surfing, either down to quintay or up the coast to the quintero area. On the way home from surfing we always buy snacks, like empanadas or a really special bag of snack mix (so good, mostly because it doesn’t have pretzels in it, pretzels in snack mix or trail mix ruin EVERYTHING).

Then my day turns into a bit of a hot mess- reality kicks in, I realize I have to be at DUOC by 2, I have nothing planned, and I’m covered in salt and sand and smell like neoprene. I go through a small moral crisis, but then I pull myself together, take a shower, let my hair dry curly, and finagle a cute little powerpoint lesson plan.

I teach 3-4 classes in a row, each class 1.5 hours. I drink like 3 coffees, gratis, because I teach a lot better when I’ve got the diesel brown stuff whizzing through my veins. (PS: still waiting on crest white strips, hoping the damage i'm doing is not too permanent...) I leave DUOC around 8 pm, and ride the metro home. I listen to music on my ipod shuffle, and usually read a book or play Sudoku on my phone. Somedays I just stare out the window and just totally don’t even think about ANYTHING (or am I thinking about EVERYTHING?) 

I get back to Valpo and buy some goodies to make dinner with, unless I’m going to a friends house for dinner (read: friends, more dinner invitations!). I make stir fry a lot of nights because vegetables are stupid cheap: orange stir fry, thank me later. Ummm, so then I’m home, chilling, cooking, reading, interneting, facebooking, etc. Around 10 I might go out and meet some friends for a casual drink at Matiz. If I’m lucky my favorite bartender will be working and we'll ask him to play some whiz kalifa, or some tom jones, and he will. Come home, do some late-night interneting, and set my alarm to do it all again the next day. Same song and dance.

So there you have it. A normal day, take those multiply by 365.24, add the inherent challenges of living in a foreign country, learning the language, cultural jibbing and jabbing, and questioning the meaning of life, and you have my (almost) year here in chile. I hope that’s impressive, if not, I should take up some new hobbies or do more calculated risk-taking. 

off to the quizzes. happy monday. take it easy!

 

 

selling the lifestyle: an (unsponsored) surf trip

on sunday afternoon andres, henry and i decided to take a trip up the coast. 3 wildly attractive surfers, an acoustic guitar, tents, a fire, a ton of sausages and escudo, mellow waves and a sunset- inspired, we took a whole bunch of lifestyle pics- budding stars, waiting to be discovered. of course, there are no pictures of us shredding quite yet, we will need a landlocked photographer to capture those (but we are all pro, basically). anyways, hopefully escudo realizes our potential and offers us a deal sometime soon- sell the lifestyle, not the product, right?

the next morning we woke up to foggy, flat seas. i hit the water for a sunrise (minus the sun) session (minus the waves), while the guys incubated in their sleeping bags. the shred sled got stuck in the dunes on the way out, and we spent an hour and a half laying on our bellies turtle-skulling sand out from under the car. the sled finally made it out, and i got back to valpo in time to shower and get myself to class. more camping trips in the near future... next time- corona.

tent love <3

the dogdom

Valparaiso is full of street dogs. Mangy mutts with short legs, long bodies, and confused mutt-y eyes scratch their fleas on the sidewalks. Huge wolf-like creatures that somehow missed the domestication stage howl at the moon from the tops of the hills. Purebred rotweillers, dalmations, and golden retrievers, unaware of their pedigree, strut the streets like beautiful vagabonds. Old, weathered grandpa dogs sneeze from the salty air as they stare out to sea remembering the good-old-days, and young pups bounce in and out the waves, naïve to the harsh realites of street-dogdom.

They are citizens of the city. They enjoy a thriving subculture between themselves, and sometimes experience strained relationships with the more dominant species (those pesky humans). Most of the dogs live, work, and play in packs- patrolling their territory as a motley unit of fur, fleas, and drool. Pack hierarchy draws its complexities from human hierachies. There are the alpha males and the haughty bitches, the strong and the weak, the freaks and the geeks, the up-and-coming young and the old-and-jaded elderly, the intellectuals and the crazies. Social order is maintained with animal rules and sharp teeth. Packs roam the streets together- finding scraps in dumpsters, napping in circles in plazas, and fighting any dog or human that tries to mess up their day. And, like any culture, there are outlaws, the freaks, the crazy-eyed, hobbling hunchbacks. The dogs that don't fit into a social niche and are forced to wander the streets alone- their livelihood revolves around human kindness and long lucky streaks.

Adored by some humans and despised by others, but always kept at a safe distance... because every human knows the dogs carry weird doggy diseases in their matted fur. But for the most part, dogs and humans live side by side in a perfect harmony. The dogs wait at crosswalks patiently, and casually trot across the street when the little green man waves from the other side. Each meat shop has its own guard dog, a hefty k-9 that gets the fatty scraps at the end of the day. Dogs accompany home lone girls late at night, growling guardians, sneering at any man within a 10 meter radius. The drunk homeless curl up with the dogs to stay warm at night, immune to the fleas and doggy disease. Although not symbiotic, the relationship between dogs and humans is a quaint give and take, both species doing their best to get by, and amusing eachother in the meantime.

It’s an odd and beautiful balance. Striking at first, but now perfectly normal. I fall asleep to dogs barking, and step over sleeping dogs on the sidewalk. Many people say it’s a problem. I guess it is. People say... the dogs end up on the street because their owners decide they don’t want them anymore...even more startling problem is the control of the street dog “situation” here in Chile. Police officers are rumored to kill the dogs on a regular basis. If a dog doesn’t have a collar, it is shot and disposed of. Chileans have tried to help out the street dogs by putting collars on strays. What a strange, twisted cycle- get rid of your dog when it stops being a cute puppy, put a collar a different mangy dog to save its life. Definetly a missing link somewhere… But, the street dogs have become widely accepted fact of life here in valpo, and even iconized in graphitti and on tee-shirts. They have integrated themselves into society like proper law-abiding citizens (usually), and they’ll keep trying to prove themselves as mans best friend, even if they never get a good scratch behind the ears.

dancing, drumming, and tear gas

This past weekend thousands of earth-loving, fire-juggling, afro-dancing, drum-stomping, chilean hippies made a pilgrimage to Valparaiso, for the 11th annual Mil Tambores (1000 drums) Carnaval (http://www.miltambores.cl/). The festival has gained momentum every year, and has turned into a mammoth percussion party that takes over the streets and grassy parks of Valparaiso the first weekend of October. It's goal is to bring people together to celebrate the beauty of the earth and promote environmental and cultural stewardship. Throughout the weekend there were parades, talks, classes, and shows all focused on taking a more pro-active stance on environmental responsibility.

On Friday, a 2 mile long parade wound its way through the cerros along Ave. Alemania. But the word "parade" is too confining- in reality, it was thousands of people walking together, a moving, dancing, drumming party. Before the parade everyone gathered in Playa Ancha and painted their bodies, got decked out in beautiful costumes, and warmed up on their drums.  The parade started at 5, and lucky for me, it went right by my house around 7 pm. I've never seen a parade like this before.

Choreographed dancing, constant drumming, jugglers, clowns, mimes, naked men and women, puppets- where did all of these people come from?! The excitement and energy in the air was contagious, and people joined in the dancing underneath a giant Chilean flag.

On Saturday I spent the whole day in Waddington park, eating organic soyburgers and sushi, soaking up sun, and watching dance performances. 

Peace, love, and happiness were the resounding themes throughout the weekend; however, on Saturday, around 4 in the morning, things went wrong. Following tradition, there was a party in the street after the parade. Plaza Anibell Pinto was packed with drunk, painted, charged up young people who had every intention of partying until sunrise (and into the next day). Around 3:30 the police showed up in riot control tanks, around 3:40 everyone started running, around 3:45 the police starting throwing tear gas, around 3:55 the police started spraying with hoses. At 4:00, anger and rage screamed through the streets. A full-blown war. People threw bottles at the tanks, smashed windows, knocked down stoplights, and screamed profanities. Interestingly enough, I had been passing by the street party minutes before the battle started (and in all seriousness, I had JUST arrived and wasn't planning on staying). So I got swept up in the riot and got tear gased- yet another cultural experience along with earthquakes, tsunamis, and spider bites. Luckily, my friend Seba lives near by, and we ran to his house. We watched the war out his window, and waited until it was safe to leave. I went home at 5 in the morning, the streets were sparkling with glass, it reaked of pisco and rum, and peace, love and hapiness had found a safer, cleaner place to rest.

(plaza equador at 5am: pic courtesy of carla araneda)

When the lazy, spring sun came up, the drums started beating again, and peace was restored, but the ecstasy of Mil Tambores was kept in check for the rest of the weekend. The tear gas drifted through the streets all weekend, molesting nostrils and tickling throats. There was no party in the street on Saturday night. It's hard to say, but, if I had to choose sides, I would say the party in the street was exactly what a party in the street should be. From what I saw, there was no fighting and no mischief- until the cops showed up and used force to break the party up. There was no police presence or regulation until 3:30, and only about 5 minutes of verbal warnings before tear gas and hosing. Patricio shook his head when I told him, and said it was because of the new, more conservative government, and that it had NEVER been broken up in the past.

Tear gas, police brutality, and political affiliations aside, Mil Tambores was an incredible cultural experience. It was beautiful and vibrant, beating and stomping with life and hope for a brighter and greener future.