From the fruits of summer to the icy snow in just two weeks

Do you ever get to the end of a vacation and you are sipping on a fruity drink by the pool or walking along the beach suddenly realize that this is it?  You will go back to your real life and your real worries and every moment that you are spending in this place, under this sun, in this world will soon surrender into a distant picture of how it was?

Every time I go to China, I get one of those dreadful illuminations.  I usually delay it by frantically eating and shopping and attempting to stuff every imaginable tidbit of Asia into my suitcase so that the memory won't fade.  But alas, the loss is inevitable.

In the case of Chile, I decided to do a whirlwind of travelling.  As soon as my finals ended, I went to La Isla Negra, Valdivia, Montevideo, Colonia, Buenos Aires, Punte del Este, Arica, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Puno, Lago Titicala (Titicaca) back to Santiago and finally to the States.  I didn't have a chance to breathe.  Time seemed infinitely short and measured as I crazily took one bus here, another bus there, an airplane here, a ferry there.  Even as I was buying alfajores in Santiago, two days before my trip back to the states, my mind and my body never registered what it meant.

Now, after another whirlwind of travel around Nevada with my family, the tides of contemplation have come.

The tip of the thought begins with two questions I never thought to ask when I planned to study abroad:  When will I go back to Chile? and What do I do now that I am back?

The things I didn't say...

So as much as I've tried to be a faithful blogger, I've actually hidden quite a few trips from you all.

1.  Iquique and Pica

I went to Iquique and Pica in the northern region of Tarapaca in Chile with my CIEE program.  It was an incredibly beautiful experience.  Chile is the land of poets, and I can understand why with such inspiration in the surroundings.

Iquique at its poorest, is the more beautiful sister of the Jersey Shore.  

At its most, it is the strangest, most bipolar place I have ever been.  On one side of Iquique is the beautiful blue Pacific ocean complete with sea lions and pelicans, and on the other is the driest desert in the world (Atacama).

Pica was an oddball too.  The first oasis I have ever been to, Pica is miraculous.  First, you are driving through this incredible desert.  The earth is cracked; the outskirts of your vision shimmer with heat, and all of sudden you find this patch of green.  And then as you get closer, you smell the amazing perfume of the oranges and grapefruit growing there.  Suddenly, you are enjoying the deliciously green trees, the juicy fruit and taking a soak in a terma.  I imagine that if I wanted to drop out of the world, I would go to Pica to enjoy the rest of my solitary time.

In between Iquique and Pica are old salitre companies.  Mining for salitre was the heart of Chilean commerce, and also once was the driving economic force in the country.  Thus, visiting old salitre companies was an amazing historical sight.  The towns and factories were deplete of people so it was akin to a western ghost town.  Or how I imagined a western ghost town to look like since I had never been to one.  Then again, it was said that that the salitre miners and factory workers liked Westerns because it reminded them of where they lived, so my speculation can't be too, too off.

Humberstone

Between Iquique and Pica are these amazing geoglyphs etched into the hills.  They were left by the Incas as road symbols and for other unknown reasons. 

2.  Temuco, Puerto Saavedra and the Mapuche community

For our second CIEE outing, we went to the south of Chile in the Region de la Araucania to Temuco.  Temuco is the region of Chile where the majority of the Mapuche community reside.  Our trip was planned so that we could spend a lovely time at a Mapuche school and then at a Mapuche community.

At the school, we painted the school building, made smores with the kids and then played a massive game of capture the flag. 

In the Mapuche community, we watched as they introduced their culture and community.  The community was situated on a piece of land right next to a lake.  The scenery was incredible.  During our visit, the boys played palin a sport reminiscent of field hockey.  And since the girls were not allowed to play, they watched.  But since it was my first time at a rural farm, instead of watching the game, I asked to see the farm animals.  Some lovely Mapuche women acquiesced and led me and a few others on a little farm tour.  I saw so many baby animals!  And I learned about Mapuche textiles and medicine.

While interactions with the Mapuche people were definitely the highlight of the trip, the most beautiful place we went to was actually Puerto Saavedra.  We stayed at a hostel on the beach and went to a Mirador in the morning with the most amazing scenery. On the beach side of the hills, the sky is clear, blue and gorgeous; On the land side of the hills, it is cloudy and broody.  All of that action can fit in one picture!

3.  Mendoza, Argentina

I went to Mendoza the other weekend.  I hate to be repetitive, but Mendoza was a beautiful city as well.  It was very open and relaxed and well organized.  Mendoza is interesting because there is a park right above the city that is about the same size as the city itself.  I feel like the city folk from Mendoza were much more athletic than any Chilean counterparts.

We went on a bike wine tour.

And we went paragliding.  I didn't know how I would feel about paragliding, but after doing it, it compares to the most freeing, beautiful and exciting swing ride one can ever enjoy in life.  You are literally sailing in the wind.

When we finally left Mendoza, it was over 28 C, but interestingly enough, at the Chilean/Argentine border in the Andes it was snowing!  Thought it would cool to share.

Chugga Chugga poot poot

Now that I have less than a month left of Chile, I feel like all the energy has been sucked out of me and leaves me with nothing to write.  "Es Chile" is a phrase that is now etched in my head.  Using glue sticks and paper cutouts in university class?  Es Chile.  The metro is late?  Es Chile.  Can't find an open pharmacy on Sunday? Es Chile.  The pet dogs are dressed in skirts and capes?  Es Chile.  I have become accustomed to the strangeness that is this country and now, even when something exciting or odd happens, I tend to be just "eh".

However, I know that I should appreciate the interesting times because I will miss them when I leave.  Thus, I will share my fun thing of the week: attending two soccer games.

On Wednesday night, I went to the Chile vs. Uruguay friendly match.  The game was at Estadio Monumental close to my university campus, San Joaquin.  I was quite excited for the game. (Shhh this is a secret since I was cheering for the Chilean team, but ever since I watched the World Cup this summer, I have been in love with Diego Forlan from Uruguay, and think he is the most riveting soccer player ever. Plus, what a beautiful blonde mane!  Also, the Uruguay goalie Fernando Muslera is pretty cute too.)

Thus, I was super worried when it was 8:40 pm, and we were still in a massive line to get into the 8:45 pm game.  I had heard to arrive at a soccer game an hour beforehand, but in line, I heard people say that for international games, it was better to leave 2 hours beforehand.  Unfortunately, it was a little too late for that memo.  Consequently, I was afraid of the game starting without us.  Luckily at 8:43 pm, the line started to move very quickly.  In fact, we all started to run into the stadium (I kept asking people in my group "Why are we running?").  I'm not sure why the attendants waited until then to let everyone in, but the good thing was that we made it into the stadium before the game started.

The Chile-Uruguay game was my first soccer game in South America.  In fact, it was my first real soccer game unless one counts a murky memory of a Kixx game.  Thus, to me, it was incredible.  The stadium was filled with more that 41,000 people and almost all of them were in red/blue/white for Chile.  Some of the people were in black to "mourn the death of Chilean soccer" since the coach Marcela Bielsa was going to retire.

Since I come from a school where students attend football games to throw toast the 3rd quarter and then leave, the audience was amazing.  They were involved and excited throughout the game.  Despite the lack of national anthem, the Chileans sang enough patriotic songs during the game to equal ten American sports games.  Man, can the crowd cheer.  And man, do they love fire and flares.  When the Chilean team scored their first goal, four flares lit up in the audience.

A red-carded Uruguayan player and 2 goals later, the Chilean team won, and I couldn't stop grinning.  The game was so fun.

(PS- Alexis Sanchez from Chile is pretty great)

Yesterday, I went to a lackluster Colo Colo vs. Cobresal game.  It was basically a Colo Colo vs. who cares? game.  Colo Colo is the biggest club soccer team within Chile.  Other big teams are Universidad de Chile and Universidad de La Catolica.  If the game was Colo Colo vs. U de Chile or U Catolica, it would have been exciting, but as it was a tiny team called Cobresal with literally 10 fans in the stadium (Colo Colo's colors are black and white.  Cobresal's color is orange.  There were only 10 people wearing orange), no one was really in any fan fraught danger.  A Cobresal player got redcarded, and Colo Colo won by a goal.  The one notable thing about the game was the fan base.  One section of the stadium sang and stood and jumped and waved tirelessly for the entire 90 minutes of the game.  It was incredible.  My favorite chant (the only one I could make out) was Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le, Colo Colo es Chile!  which is a play on the Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le, Viva Chile! chant.

Irony

I wear a watch in Chile even though I never show up on time and neither do the Chileans.

Random Chile thoughts

So, I have become a very lazy and sad blogger.
Then yesterday, I realized...I only have 1 month left in South America!
Thus, even though my English skills are greatly reduced now, I need to be more vigilant and document, so here are a few lines.


Things I love in Chile
-missing the metro train crammed to the brim with people at 8 am and to subsequently step onto the completely empty one following it a second later
-that blind people and people in wheelchairs are helped on and off of public transportation
-that in the micro, I can catch a girl filling a droplet with milk out of a Coke Zero bottle and opening her lunchbox to feed the kitten inside


Things I question if it is actually wrong or if it is just an American cultural construct
-people saying "gay" and "maricon"
-a presentation group of Chilean nursing students whose faces were covered in dark makeup to introduce Haiti
-the micro driving away as I knock on the door that just closed as I was kissing people goodbye

On being a bad dancer...

When I was 7, I took an intro to ballet class.  There, I spent a joyful month plie-ing in my kiddie leotard and bun when suddenly my mother stopped sending me to class.  In my childhood mind, I always speculated the reason she made me stop going: perhaps she was tired of shuttling me to the odd ballet studio or of having to watch me prance around for 2 hours or of having to socialize with the other moms.  I never knew.


Over the years, I tried occasional attempts to recuperate my learning in how to move, by visiting my friend's dance class, by taking a summer dance workshop and by committing an embarrassing dance audition here or there.  It always occurred to me in those moments, that my body never really listened to what I wanted it to do, and I never understood how to mimic other people's movements properly.  Failing to do right gestures in any event where I should have, I was always tense and confused, and in time, I became resentful.


In the end, I decided to hit the source of my problems, the reason why I was a klutz and so ungraceful: my mother drawing me out of my ballet class.


I confronted her about it one day, when I was still an awkward teenager.  I never really braced myself for what her answer was.  "Jiuling, ni tiao de shi hou zong si beng hu hu de. Wo si zai kan bu liao le" which in English, sums to "Anne, you danced silly, and I couldn't stand it anymore". (In this instance the translation of 'silly' means along the lines of 'you danced like a clumsy animal/circus bear')


How can I describe the crushing reality when one realizes that she can not dance?  That she moves strangely?  That she can never be that talented person in center stage or in a Bollywood film?  It took time for me to accept that harsh reality.  I thought I had overcome it only to arrive in Chile, a place far away from my mother and all the reminders of my real dancing ability, a land where I thought I could reemerge as a decent dancer.


Reality though, came in quick.


The first wave came with the salsatecas.  Although the one class I went to was for beginners, I seriously could not get even the most basic step correct.  "Uno. Dos. Tres. Cinco seis siete" was the continual chime of the svelte male dance instructor.  Easy peasy!  Yet I somehow managed to mix up that pattern with "Uno. Dos. Tres. Cuatro. Cinco. Sies."


I made up excuses: so I wasn't a salsa dancer...I could still do the bump and grind, and if all else fails, the trusty rock/shake.


Then, the second punch:  the reggaton in the clubs.  I found myself asking: How the heck do you dance to reggaton? And how do you deal with a dance partner who turns around in a circle during part of the dance?  Do you spin around too?  Is it like hokey pokey?  Furiously shaking through a night of reggaton, I decided to add reggaton clubs onto my list of places where I could embarrass myself.  Amazingly, I was still under the delusion that I could be a fine dancer.  I justified my mishaps by saying that I never learnt how to dance salsa or react to guys who dance reggaeton.


Little did I know the final blow was yet to come...


A little background: for the bicentennial, I attended a CIEE Cueca workshop.  Cueca is the national dance of Chile.  It involves two people (a huaso and a china) dancing around each other.  The best thing about the dance is that it is essentially non-contact and involves mostly mirroring the correct movements and making flirty actions with a panuelo (handkerchief).  I did alright in the workshop.


Thus, to me simple Cueca seemed easy enough that when I saw a few little girls dancing to it in a Mapuche school in Temuco, I joined right in.


I did well at first.  I guided the little 4 year old in a line back and forth.  Then, I clapped.  Then, I started moving when the music started only to realize that I didn't remember the rest of the steps.  Attempting to cover by mimicking the preschooler, I thought I was doing pretty well until my dance partner mentioned to one of her classmates "Esta tia no baila muy bien".


The pain I felt!  The fact sunk into me like a cold wind: No matter what country I am in, I am not still a good dancer.


Thankfully that sad realization didn't stop me from having fun with the 4 year olds.  Aren't they cute?

 My dance partner and I

Chiloe or As Danielle and I liked to say "Northern Patagonia"

So last Thursday night, my friend Danielle B and I left Estacion Central on a 13 hour Pullman bus to Puerto Varas.  Although we only stayed in town long enough to buy a bus ticket to Ancud, Puerto Varas was so beautiful that I wish we could have stayed longer.

Unfortunately, Danielle and I had planned to go to Chepu (a tiny rural town in Chiloe) from Ancud at 4pm so we were tight on time and couldn't stay.  We took a bus to Ancud from Puerto Varas with Cruz del Sur.  Because we were constantly watching the time, it was amazing to us how the buses behaved in the South.  The drivers stop every time there is someone on the side of the road.  There are no such things as "direct" buses and when there aren't enough seats, people stand in the aisle.

Our first taste of Chiloe was the ferry between the port of the mainland and the island.  Danielle and I were excited to get some fresh air after our 14+ hours of bus.  Our ferry was the introduction to the super welcoming/boarding on creepy Chilote guys and the lovely, sunshiney days we encountered in our stay in Chiloe.  Although Chiloe has a weather ratio of 1/3 sun, 1/3 rain and 1/3 clouds, we were lucky and got 98% sun and sapphire skies the 4 days we were in Chiloe.  Thus, the water was always a crystalline blue and so, so beautiful.

The scenery in Chiloe is amazing.  When I close my eyes, sometimes I still see it.


Every time Danielle and I felt lazy during our weekend, we motivated ourselves by saying, "Come on now, we are in Northern Patagonia, we have to do something!"  But the term Northern Patagonia really does not suit Chiloe.  Though the weather is cold enough, the island consists of super green pastures, patches of yellow espinillos (which the Chileans call "the german plague") and rolling hills full of sheep, cows and horses.  I felt like I was a scene from the Sound of Music, but Danielle told me the buildings were not well maintained enough for Chiloe to pass as Europe.

We arrived in Ancud in 3 hours from Puerto Varas after having stopped in Puerto Montt and at least 10 other places along the way.

There we found the harbor of Ancud gorgeous.  Danielle and I chilled there for a little bit and then went up to the rural bus station.


In the next 2 hours, I learned that the rural bus station at Ancud is very, very antiquated, and the rural bus to Chepu is just painful.  The rule about stopping everywhere continues to apply on rural buses which are smaller (looks like a 15 person van) than normal charter buses and much worse when crammed with 40+ people.  Apparently, the rural buses to Chepu usually aren't crammed with 40+ people and usually don't stop every 10 meters, but on the Friday Danielle and I took it, that is what happened.


Finally, we arrived at our lodge at Mirador de Chepu.  Chepu is a town on the outskirts of the National Park of Chiloe and belongs to a union of abalone/mussel fishermen.  The town has a population of 250 people and is very, very quiet.  After arriving, Danielle and I climbed the road as the sun set.

In the backyard where Danielle and I resided was a junction of 3 rivers. At 5 am, she and I woke up to do dawn kayaking.  We set off in a tandem kayak and had fun scaring one another as we were paddling on the river full of mist and dead logs.  Eventually the sun came up and everything was illuminated.

Then we took a boat ride to the delta where one of the rivers met the ocean where large patches of foam floated at the mouth.

Then, led by our boat guide, we climbed up a little hill to a spectacular viewpoint.  But in Chiloe, everywhere is spectacular.  Truly.

After our day in Chepu, Danielle and I got driven to the side of the main road where we waited for a bus to pick us up.  Then we stood in the aisle.  Yes.  We were those people.

But, Castro was so happy and colorful that everything was fine as soon as we stepped down from the bus.

On Sunday, Danielle and I went to Dalcahue.  We took the rural buses from Castro, but unlike the ones in Ancud, they were well maintained and not overcrowded.

We took a ferry to see the church in Achao.  The churches in Chiloe are unique in that they are all wood.

In Achao, Danielle and I climbed up the road to see a breathtaking Mirador de la Paloma.  There were pastures of sheep, a bright town, water, islands and and to top it all off a miraculous snow peaked mountain range in the back.  It was incredible.

Finally, we went back to Ancud.  The harbor is just so exquisite.  It was beautiful, even in the dark; I could imagine a nocturne being written there.  The only lights on the water were from a handful of houses and the sliver of the moon.

After night's sleep, we left Monday morning to see the penguins.  We got driven down a very bumpy road onto the beach where we subsequently climbed into a little fishing boat.

We didn't see very many penguins, but the ones we did see were so cute!  They looked like clumsy little children.  When a line of three Magellanic penguins (the fishermen tried the whole time to emphasize the difference between Magellanic and Humboldt penguins) hopped down from the island to jump into the ocean, the last one got caught in some algae and had to exit another way.  Such adorable things.

After completing our mission to see penguins in Chile, Danielle and I ate some salty curanto and finished our Chiloe weekend.

Ps. Isn't this picture of curanto so sexual?  It's like a Georgia O'Keefe work or a painting of fruit.

So...

Have you ever seen the movie Closer?  There's a moment in the film where Jude Law spots Natalie Portman from across the street, and they smile at each other, and there's music playing "can't talk my eyes off of you", and it's romantic and lovely, and he walks towards her, and she walks towards him, and then she gets hit by a car?

That's how I feel every time I see a cute boy on the metro.  He looks adorable there, standing with one hand on his backpack, the other one holding a bar for balance with his eyes concentrating on the passing platforms.  He wears jeans and the kind of blue pullover sweater to which I am highly susceptible, and I think in my mind, I love you Chile for sending me cuties, and I plan the makeshift convo in my mind, and I'm positively joyous until the metro lurches to a stop.  The stop causes the boy to lurch forward and my heart drops and I send a curse to Chile because there IT is.

The Mullet.  My enemy.  The instant turn-off.  The reason why sometimes I dream about carrying around scissors and snipping away every single one until all Chileans are Mullet-less. And rattail-less.  And dreaded mullet/rattail-less. 

The thing is that you never know where the mullet will turn up.  In the U.S. you can pretty much be assured that a mullet will be accompanied by some combo of gel, a grungy t-shirt, a bandana, a small town where they don't know any better, an 80's fetish, leather/metal necklaces, a leather jacket or acid washed jeans.  Here, they can attach to anyone's head.  A preppy guy with a striped sweater and khakis?  Watch out for the mullet.  A hippie with a brightly colored pants, a cozy, loud poncho and a beard?  Watch out for the mullet.  

Stupid mullets.

Apparently they are called chocos or chocopandas here.  Apparently ice cream truck vendors used to have them and then everyone thought it would be cool to look like ice cream truck vendors.  And apparently Chilean girls like them? My friend who has a small one tells me that his girlfriend likes to twirl the long part of his hair around her fingers...

...

loss for words.

To the North

So firstly, Happy 200th Birthday Chile!  Though this weekend wasn't really when you declared your Independence but rather when a group of your aristocrats first thought about being independent, you are quite a fun country anyways and thus deserve a cake.  Especially since you allow your countrymen to party for a long weekend.

The National Dress for boys and girls

(the boy is dressed like a Huaso, the girl's dress is Huasa China style)

While I had seen a month and a half's worth of preparation in Santiago for the Bicentennial, I did not get to enjoy the fruits of labor.  On Thursday afternoon, Lauren, Danielle S, Mark, Alice and I set off for La Serena, a coastal town to the north of Chile.  I enjoyed the majority of the bus ride to Serena because the scenery was beautiful.  For a great deal of the ride, the mountains set a backdrop of springy green.  As we passed the trees blooming pink, the clusters of cacti and the hills of exposed rock, the different aspects in front of the mountains accesorized the terrain morphing it from sweet and joyful to serious and pensive.  It amused me to see such personality in the land.

In our entire stay, we did not see much of La Serena.  The next morning, on our first day, we took a colectivo to Vicuña to the east of La Serena.  Vicuña is centered in the valley, a beautiful ever green, ever clear, ever temperate place that is irrigated from glacier water.  All along the road there were fields of grape plants and advertisements for papayas.  The town itself is tiny and quiet.  The plaza is little and sweet and every time we saw it, little children would be zipping around in kid-sized automatic cars.  That first day, we toured the CAPEL pisco distillery. 

The second day, we walked to the beach of La Serena and rode horses along the shore.  As I was rocking back and forth on my horse by the water, it occurred to me that most people would be tranquil.  However, due to my inexperience with horses, I regarded the activity with nervous interest.  Throughout the ride, I kept singing snippets of songs to calm myself (and in my mind, the horse) down.  Danielle, who rides horses more frequently than me, kept assuring me that the horse was beaten down and tranquil.  However, when I was on top of a horse and having trouble nudging it in the direction I wanted (my convo with the horse was the follows, "okay horsey, let's follow the others and go up the hill" *I move the rein, the horse's head moves, I let go and the horse continues in the original direction, "okay horsey, I know it's hard to walk up a slope, we can stay here if you want, horse, sir") , it's hard to reassure yourself that the horse is not out to get you.  But I made it through the ride without any damage.  Then, we were going to go to Pisco Elqui to ride more horses, but we ended up taking a horrible bus ride to Vicuña instead.  I was forced to endure The Descent 2, a terrible horror movie.  I hate horror movies.


But thankfully, the trip turned out well.  We went to the Mirador de La Virgen which is a wonderful viewpoint from a hill.  

At night we got to go to the Mamalluca observatory and I got to see planets and stars.  I also got to have this lovely close up of the moon.

The last day, we went walking around La Serena.  We girls hit an open fruit/vegetable market and a really cool park/military base while Mark went to church in the Plaza de Armas.  

Then, we all set off to Coquimbo where we ate a delicious seafood lunch and then went for a very chilly ride on a Catamaran boat to see sea lions.  Coquimbo was a really placid place with a lot of sea life and sea food.  There were about 25 pelicans that flew around the dock.  I was really interested in the pelicans because I usually do not encounter them.  Unfortunately, they also scare me with their size and their flying.  

Once on the boat, we got to see a couple of islands full of sea lions.  The first thing you notice though, is not the cuteness of the sea lions but rather the stench.  I learned some life knowledge that day: Sea lions bark, bite each other and are really quite smelly.

Overall, the La Serena trip was really quiet and perfect for helping me through the next two weeks of school.