New Beginings

I was chatting with some friends after church today, and someone mentioned how long it took her to get home to England.  It was much less time than it will take me to get home for Christmas, which can only mean one thing: I've moved to the East Coast!  There has been some culture shck, but for the most part, it's been wonderful- I’m so grateful for this year, for my community, for the chance to live in New York City, but I’m also learning to be grateful for the challenges.  The area I live in is beautiful, the people I am with are beautiful, and every day is an adventure.  Now that I’ve been in the city a little over a month, I feel like I’ve got my feet under me.  Unfortunately, my camera is acting up, so I’ll have to try and show ya’ll my new life using stolen pictures and embellished anecdotes.

We live in Northern Harlem, right where Manhattan gets skinny, so even though we’re technically on the West Side, we’re about a block from the eastern edge of the island, just a 15 minute walk from Yankee Stadium.  Our apartment is comprised of the top two floors of an old convent.  There are eight of us, but we still manage to be blessed with a ridiculous amount of space, especially for New York City.  One of my favorite features is the rooftop, where we have a small garden and a magnificent view.  When the weather is warm and dry, we eat up there, and we also have the occasional late night sing-alongs, which are splendid.

The view from our roof, stolen from Roommate Jesse

Who, you may be wondering, is this we she keeps referring to?  Part of my commitment for my year in New York is a commitment to community.  We apply this to our neighbors, our co-workers, fellow Jesuit Volunteers around our region, but most of all to the people we live with, which in my case is seven other women.   Having a large community has been a wonderful, if sometimes exhausting blessing.  It took time for us to get to know each other as individuals (and for us to figure out how to have a house business meeting in under an hour), but we’ve learned and grown already.   It’s been wonderful to have a built in group of brand-new New Yorkers to live intertwined with.  We laugh together, go out together, watch TV together, and do life together.  It’s occasionally frustrating and frequently silly, and I’m so grateful for it.  Now just to figure out how to align eight schedules for our thrice weekly meetings…

We had been home from happy hour for like five minutes when this picture was taken, and we were already half in PJ's 

One of the most challenging parts of the transition to New York for me has been my job situation. My first placement started showing red flags from the first meeting, and efforts to resolve these quickly escalated.  I left that job two and a half weeks after starting (the shortest I’ve ever been at a job). I was unsure if there would be another placement that would work out for me in New York.  Fortunately, there was another opening for a Jesuit Volunteer, and I am now placed at an amazing organization called Association to Benefit Children, which uses early childhood intervention and parental education to break cycles of poverty.  I am in the baby room, so I’ll be working with one and two year old children, although I may also be spending some time with three to five year olds as we expand services.  I’m so excited to learn more about this kind of work and thrilled about the possibility it has.  Also, I am not only not required to wear shoes at work, I am actively discouraged from it.  Sounds like my kind of place.

As I think about all that has happened in the past couple of months, I am so grateful for new beginnings.  Doing social justice work and activism means running into huge, insurmountable seeming problems, be they social or personal or (as is usually the case) an intersection of the two. Getting discouraged about these huge problems that aren’t going anywhere makes me discouraged about what is even possible for me to accomplish, as a Jesuit Volunteer now and as a social worker later.  It’s humbling to meet these huge teams of people, dedicating their lives and careers to creating a more just New York and have them be willing to give me the chance to work with them.  Despite the fact that it’s hard and culture-shocking, it’s an amazing blessing to be in New York and I’m so happy about what this year will hold.

I’ve also resolved to blog at least once a week with more essay-ish, creative nonfiction type writing (I’m actually giving myself homework because I miss the process of making my writing good enough to share), so if you hate these sporadic, updatey blog things about people you don’t know, stick around, I’ll be doing different things soon!

Peace and Love,

Diana

Onward through the smog!

It’s a strange thing to leave a place to which you are nearly certain you will never return. Up until this trip, I haven’t really had that experience. Everywhere I’ve gone had either been close enough that I wouldn’t rule out returning at some point (it is, as I’m often reminded, a long life) or significant enough that I’m sure I’ll be back (Oaxaca might not be the stuff of an impulsive road trip or a family vacation, but I will be back, and if I’ll be living in Oaxaca then it’s safe to assume I’ll have a chance to do a spot of traveling around Mexico). Southern Chile is different. As I got on the plane in the city of Temuco today, I did so knowing that I would probably never return to the beautiful region. It was a wonderful experience, but I left thinking that while I was so lucky to get to see this corner of the world, it’s a big planet, and if I ever get to be on the other side of the world from home again, it will likely be another other side.

I’ll never forget my host family, or the adventures in Puerto Saaaaaaaaaaavedra with Alvaro, Felipe the mayor’s son, and the dueña of our cabana who was both clearly crazy and clearly an alcoholic (ask me about it sometime, it’s a good story…) Nor will I forget the fight of the Mapuche, the tension in which they live, fighting to both preserve the culture and live in the 21^st century. I won’t soon forget having class in a Ruka (something like a round, straw roofed hut with a campfire in the middle, used for meeting, cooking, and smoking meat) or sipping mate with my host family, or making fun of the mean anthropologist we christened Tobias Bluth and I’m so lucky that I got to have these experiences. I’m overwhelming grateful for the chance I had to be exposed to the culture, but it’s so strange to leave.

It’s strange to think that I’ll never know what my host sisters will grow up to be, or if the family ends up getting a house in the city so their kids don’t have to go to a boarding high school. It’s weird that I won’t know if Tobias Bluth ever really gets with our other trip leader, or how life turns out for that kid who stole a bottle of wine from his grandmother’s funeral and got kicked out of the eighth grade or what ends up happening to the region in the next few decades. I mean, I’ll be able to read broad news on the internet, but my host family lacked even a post office box; there is nowhere to send letters, emails, or phone calls. My world is all about instant, constant contact, the world of rural southern Chile, not so much.

So I’ll give thanks for what I learned and bear witness to what I saw and remember who I met as I turn forward for the next leg of my adventure, the reason I’m sitting in a café in the the Santiago airport, eating overprices cheesecake and sweating the fact that I will be spending the night here with over a thousand dollars of cash in my backpack… that’s right chicos y chicas (or, as all the cool kids write, chic@s), I’m headed to Arica!

The way my study abroad program is structured, the first six and a half weeks are dedicated to intensive language instruction as well as a seminar about justice issues in Chile. Then we had nearly three weeks of excursion in either the north (Arica and up into the Andes) or South (Temuco and surrounding campo, where I went). In the final month of the program, we are all turned loose to go wherever we want and study essentially whatever we want (during language school we submit a proposal and get an advisor as well as advice and direction, but we can really make what we want of the project. Some of my classmates are studying the ecological impacts of a thermoelectric project, another is directing a play, another is studying the politics of Paublo Neruda; everyone is doing something unique and crazy interesting to them. I played with a lot of ideas, all sort of around oppressed groups and modes of resistance, and I landed on a topic that I’m really excited about, but also incredibly nervous. I’m going to be in northern Chile studying the differences in community responses to sexual violence in different communities in the area, and hopefully using some fancy shmancy sociology to explain these differences. Right now, I’m not exactly sure what groups I’ll be looking at, but the area contains Chileans, Peruvian immigrants (Peruvians are sort of the Mexicans of Chile), as well as a local indigenous population, so I should have lots of options. I’ll know more when I sit down with my advisor, but I’m incredibly nervous to do justice to a topic that I’m so passionate about.

This is also something of a test for me, since I feel as though I’m called (or whatever you want to call it) to work with survivors of sexual violence in Latin America, especially among indigenous populations. This will be a sort of trial-by-fire way to see what I’m made of. Those of you who pray, I’d appreciate your prayers.

As I start this final chunk of my study abroad experience, I feel so grateful for the chance I’ve had to study here in Chile. Although I’ve had my share of issues with the program, even though I have a rant about gender and public space nearly every day, I’m so lucky and I’m so glad I’ve gotten to see everything I’ve seen so far. I can’t wait to see everyone back home, I miss you all terribly!

Peace.

I'M BAAAAAACK!

10/21/10

So, after a little more than a month hiatus, the blog is back! Today nine of us moved south for our fist nations excursion, so it’s been a very long day! My day began (as all days do) Skyping with a fabulous friend from home, and bidding farewell to good access to internet, at least for a while. Then I had about two and a half hours of sleep before getting up to get ready to travel to Temuco. This involved saying goodbye to my host mom and brother (my hermano had not yet gone to bed when I left at 4:30 this morning), jumping in the car with a friend and her host family (ten minutes), catching a bus to Santiago (an hour and a half), flying to the city of Temuco (one hour) driving to the house of the Southern Excursion Coodrinator (five minutes) and finally getting dropped off at the house of our new host family, and then sitting down to breakfast. It’s safe to say it was a long day!

Temuco, or I should say the rural region around Temuco is ah-mazing. I always sort of thought of myself as a city kid who just happened to live in Burns, but when we got to our host family’s small farm , I realized how much I missed the country. Spokane is good for having a bit of culture but fast access to nature, Viña del mar, no tan mucho. But it’s beautiful here. We live with a school cook named Myriam (she’s the only cook for the school in the village, serving breakfast and lunch to 90 children a day by herself), her small time farmer/stay at home husband Osvaldo, their son Miguel, 17 (although he lives in Temuco during the week to go to school) and their “Gua-gua” daughter Rian (5 months). The family also has a fourteen year old daughter, Daniela, who lives with her grandparents close by. Rian es TAN preciosa (incredibly cute). She’s perhaps the largest child I have ever seen (way bigger than one Micah Curtis) she actually had to go to the doctor today to evaluate her nutrition so she doesn’t become an obese child, but she’s got an enormous smile and is a complete sweetheart.

It’s a lot more rustic here than it is in Viña; we don’t have running water and our toilet is outside, but it’s well worth the switch. There are a lot of things that I will miss terribly about the Viña/Valpo area, but this place is incredible and I’m so glad that I’m here.

After we were greeted with an amazing breakfast and a tour of the granja, we settled down for a nap and when we awoke, it was time to milk the cow. Right now, the family gets milk from just one cow because the other is pregnant (remember, it’s spring here) so my roommate Nina and I got to learn how to milk Mariposa, the heifer that resembled a butterfly about as much as my sopapillas resemble actual sopapillas (a story for another day). It was kind of amazing how much milk came from that one cow! Thanks to Mariposa, we had fresh, delicious, unprocessed milk for dinner and will have it for breakfast and dinner tomorrow as well. After the lack of milk in the city, this is a really big deal to me!

It’s getting late and we have a full day tomorrow, so I’m off for now.

10/22/10

Today our excursion coordinator explained to us how every day he says “tomorrow will be different and better than today” and that’s certainly ringing true. Yesterday was amazing, but today was even better. In the morning, we walked to the community school where Myriam works, and had a lesson in Mapuche music and dance. Then we played futbol, at which I was terrible. Despite the fact that I let two goals by while I was goalie, my team managed to win 4-3, thanks to the army of Chilean niños we had playing for us, and absolutely no thanks to the gringas. J It was good to just chill with kids for a while, I’ve missed that here in Chile.

After lunch, we had a little break in which we introduced out Academic Director, Sergio, to his new nickname: Mama Oso (Mother bear) He received it because he’s always so worried about everything and is our mother for this leg of the journey. He took it with grace, and even said that his ositas (bear cubs) were adorable, so that’s a start…

When the break ended, it was off to first Anthropology and then Mapudungun lessons. Mapudungun is the language of the Mapuche people, Chile’s largest remaining indigenous group. While it’s still a surviving language, it’s no one’s only language and is not spoken as a primary language anywhere except among the oldest Mapuches. For this reason, the language is dying out quite quickly, and I’m afraid our ragtag class did little to help preserve it. While we did learn the sounds each letter makes (mas o menos) and how to count to ten, after that we sort of hit our wall, and struggled to write down the random vocabulary that the class was asking about. It’s sometimes a little frustrating here how disjointed the whole educational process is. I understand that everyone comes from somewhere different and that in a program this varied you have to accommodate different interests, but it all feels sort of disjointed, even the lessons on the different aspects of Mapuche culture. It just feels very disjointed.

After class, I got to help in the kitchen, which was quite exciting! First I “helped” peel potatoes; Tia Myriam got about six done in the time it took me to peel one! Then, we made sopapillas, an amazing sort of deep fried bread that is very common here in Chile. First, you take the dough and roll small pieces into balls. I kept getting the sizing wrong, so Myriam broke off the pieces and I just rolled them into balls. After, you pinch them flat(ish) with your hands, which I was actually pretty good at. Then, you roll them out about as flat as a pie crust for frying. They’re supposed to be disks, but mine were absolutely anything but! Myriam and Nina were very nice about being quiet about laughing at my attempt.

The people of the outlying Temuco area are very proud of how much happier their lives are than the lives of the people in the city. I can’t judge, and it’s certainly a less luxurious life out here, but they’re proud of their simplicity, not in the hipster way that a lot of American “live simply” and not for anyone else. They prize their less complicated lives because it’s better for them. Certainly, there is poverty out here, but a lot of what we’re seeing isn’t so much poverty as it is a different worldview and a different way of life.

It’s also a much more understated culture than in more northern and urban Valparaiso. There’s a lot less talking and a lot more comfortable silence. It’s been a really nice change for me, freedom from the obligation to talk all the time, to make a big deal about everything that I like (granted, I have been making a big deal about a lot of things here, but because I’m genuinely excited about them) It feels a lot more genuine and a lot less forced than the extreme (for me) enthusiasm necessary to be polite. It’s a lot less work for me! There’s a fine line between making judgments and expressing preferences, but I can safely say that, for me, it’s a lot less work to live in a more understate culture. Thank you Harney County. ;)

Once again, it’s very late and I’m getting narcoleptic, so I’d better sign off.

10/23/10

Today was probably the most interesting day that I’ve spent in Chile so far. Not that other stuff hasn’t been interesting, but today was amazing. We got on a bus and headed to Lago Buti, South America’s only salt lake. We took pictures with some famous Chilean Statues (Including this Gem with “Mama Oso y los ositos”)

and then we got back on the bus and drove to a Mapuche hostel on this breathtakingly beautiful hill. Our location is actually the picture that SIT uses to advertise its Chile programs, so that was pretty cool. We had a Mapuche Philosophy class outside, and it was probably the most interesting thing I’ve done in Chile. Even the name of the people comes from two Mapudungun words Mapu, meaning land and Che meaning people. Instead of considering themselves outside nature, acting and being acted upon by nature, they very much consider themselves a part of la naturaleza. We learned about the Mapuche origin story, faith, relationship with life and death, and idea of duality. Safe to say it was a packed three hours- but it definitely didn’t seem that long.

Things are crazy here, so I’ll have to sign off…hopefully I’ll find an Internet café to upload soon!

"Una Isla es un parte de tierra rodeada de agua"

"An Island is a piece of land surrounded by Water" my Spanish teacher began chanting this by way of explanation and then apologized...saying he went to school during "la dictadura" and so his education involved a lot of rote memorization. Later that day, a teacher talked about living as a refugee in the 1980's. He was my age. It wasn't so much strange that he had lived under the dictatorship or had found himself a refugee, but in the casual way he said it. It was in the context of explaining how Chile's attempt at communism meant a lot to a lot of eastern Europeans. Which he met while living as a refugee in Chile.

Another SIT staffer talked about how when she was a little girl she didn't know why she was so afraid when her father came home after curfew, but she was always terrified. Words disappeared from vocabularies. People who I now know have bodies that are covered with scars. People who, when the "golpe" happened couldn't have been much older that I am now. It's hard to think about how profoundly the dictatorship impacted everyone. Kids who chanted in school. Little girls who feared for their fathers' lives without quite knowing why. Young men who lived in another country in their early 20's not to learn something new, but for fear for their lives. Old women's bodies covered with scars.

It's hard for me to wrap my head around here. I don't know how anyone manages to avoid being extremely bitter about what happened.

Tonight begins September 11. Thirty Seven years ago today, the Chilean military attacked the Chilean government. Funded, trained, and armed by the US government, the leaders of the Coup set up a reign of terror that would last for more than two decades. I've known this for a long time. I know that there exist in this world dictatorships backed by my government. I hadn't seen the scars until this week.

After this weekend, I'll be more cheerful, promise. I am loving Chile...

things That I thought would bother me about Chile but don't

Since I'm a list person and I'm trying very hard to blog so I can remember what's going on, I am going to make lists. Today- Things That surprised me by being quite likable or not bothering me at all.

1) Kissing/Closeness in General I'm kind of OCD and have only recently come to terms with the fact that people need to be touched. In Chile, you greet everyone- family, strangers, teachers, peers- with a kiss on the cheek. You can do the cheatsy face rub and kissing sound, but this is much less common than it was in Mexico. Also, people are very close talkers, and very touchy. Putting a hand on an arm, rubbing a shoulder while talking, etc, are all very common. I didn't think that I would like this much at all, but as it turns out, it's kind of nice. Even with strangers, it doesn't feel germy, it feels friendly. It feels like you start out more willing to make a connection, more willing to trust.

2) Cat Calling on the Streets Ok, so I don't actually like this, but I don't mind it either. Es como...I mean, it's like this: in NorteAmerica, I also get shouted at on the streets, but it 's so much meaner. Here, they yell things like "hola gringa bonita, I love you" In the states, they just honk or whistle or yell much less clean things. I am aware that the random men yelling from their cars while showing off to their friends do not actually love me, but it's so much less mean spirited showing off than it could be

3) No Central Heat So it's still very early spring here, and, like most of the world this year, Chile is having a Chilly spring (see what I did there) The other thing is, most houses have a heater, but it's only for agua...and it's only connected to the shower. At first, the not having central heating thing was rough, but you just get in the habit of putting on more clothing. Those fingerless wool glover sure came in handy...it also helps that I went sweater shopping today :)

but seriously, it's actually a much more sustainable way of living. Plus, it's kind of cozy to snuggle under a bunch of blankets at night

4)The Late Night Culture As many of you know, I tend to get cranky when I am not fed promptly. In Chile, they have breakfast around eight, lunch, the biggest meal of the day, around 1:30 or 2, and dinner around ten at night. On the weekends, most clubs don't open until midnight, and people stay out until six or seven in the morning. (Obviomente, not everyone, but there's apparently still a scene at that point)This worried me very much when I was preparing for Chile, porque I am used to eating and sleeping much earlier. As it turns out, I just sort of avoided becoming jet lagged with the three hour time change. I'm getting used to going to bed just two or three hours after eating, and I hear it's not super healthy, but it is super comfortable :

5) It's very conservative There are liberals and progressives in Chile, but even among many of these people, attitudes are very socially conservative. (Looking at the wikipedia page, you may think that Chile is more liberal because a lot of the presidents in recent years have been part of the "Socialist" party, but that's actually quite centrists and not at all what Americans would think of as Socialist.) I thought that it would bother me, living in such a conservative country, but the level of public discourse is actually very high. Apparently it's not conservatives that bother me so much as name calling, anti logic warriors. Although I have to note that this may bother me more after I start studying the dictatorship more...

Overall, things are getting much better as I gallop right on through the stages of culture shock. A whole bunch of people in my host family's social circle have a pretty bad flu, so I'm REALLY hoping I don't get sick. I start morning classes tomorrow and afternoon classes early this week. Four Straight hours of Spanish class, here I come!

Peace

A week later.

I've been in Vina for all of one week, and I still think it's a beautiful city. There have been some parts that have been really tremendously difficult, but that's why God invented Google phone- so I can call my mommy for free. No wonder they used to make missionaries in the jungles be married in the days before calling one's mommy was so easy. Anyway, apparently adjusting to Mexico was this tough for me, but I don't remember that either, so I guess I'll probably forget the tough parts of this. Mom said to write it down so I could better prepare myself for the next time I go somewhere.,

Despite some challenges, I'm having an amazing time. Yesterday, I met my host family and they're fabulous. I live with my host mother, Amanda, and my host brother, David. Amanda is an actress and Theatre professor and David just graduated from college. He's a filmmaker and is just finishing a project, so he isn't home much, but that should change relatively soon.

Amanda is a wonderful woman who seems to have friends everywhere; we're always going to someone's house for delicious Chilean food or kissing people on the streets or something. She also spends a lot of time talking to me and is a very patient teacher. In Chile, breakfast and dinner each takes about an hour (lunch takes much longer) because you sit and talk for a long time. Tonight, she started talking about solidarity in Chile and about Pinochet. I had read that a lot of Chileans don't like to talk about this ever, so I feel very lucky that Amanda was willing to share so much with me so early.

It's very late here, but stay tuned to hear all about graffiti culture, communist concerts, and ChileVision!

Peace

Estoy en Chile!

Hey everyone,

I landed in Chile yesterday and it's amazing! I'm living in a town called Vina del Mar, on the coast of central Chile (just went of Santiago for those who know where that is).

We're staying in a hotel for orientation week, so we've been spoiled with unlimited hot water, catered meals, and not a lot of work. During the day, we have training mixed with adventures. Today, we got to go on a boat ride around the bay to see Vina and Valpo from the water. The university where we're having classes looks like a castle and overlooks the bay. I'm so lucky to be studying in this gorgeous city!

Beautiful as this city is, it's freezing! Because we're at the tail end of Southern Hemisphere winter and we're on the coast, it's quite chilly. The fact that there's not really central heat does not help. Fortunately, I found some beautiful wool gloves today for just 2000 pesos, so I should be fine :)
The other amazing thing about Chile is their currency- there are about 500 pesos to the dollar, so whatever you have, you get to feel ridiculously rich. I paid for something today with a 10,000
peso note, and have enjoyed leaving hundreds of peso tips for a drink in a cafe :) Exchange rates make me happy, apparently.

On an unrelated note, I am trying really hard to keep up with Infinite Jest even though I'm in Chile, so I had better get to reading that. What better way to get through culture shock (and the realization that my spanish is abysmal) that to loose myself in a novel about Hanging In There.

Hasta Mas Tarde.