October highlights

Wow, I can’t believe how quickly October has slipped away from me. Here’s a re-cap of the happenings down south.

--The miners were rescued. Just in case that little bit of news happened to escape your notice. I don’t know whether the Chileans were more happy and proud about the actual rescue or about the fact that Chile was for a brief moment the focus of the international media. It was pretty great to be here and watch the rescue. All normal television programming was suspended on the national channels and for the two days of the rescue effort it was the only news shown. Truthfully, I felt that the media coverage of the event was excessive and sensationalist, invading the privacy of the miners and their families and I have talked with several Chileans who felt that Piñera, the president, has exploited the event for political motives, especially with his tour of Europe. I even heard someone say that they thought it had all been a hoax construed by Piñera to boost his popularity. Ah, conspiracy theorists.

However, it is undeniable that the entire saga of the miners produced an incredible sense of solidarity in the Chilean people. It is also undeniable that the moment when the first miner emerged from the capsule and hugged his wife and son was beautiful and very touching. Amazingly, I did NOT cry, but his son more than covered for me in that department. (As my Chilean mother would say, Chiquitiiiiiiito, que liiiiindo.) The next day my host mom, along with probably millions of other Chileans, played the Lotto and put down the number 33. It was not a winning number.

The rescue capsule is making a celebrity tour around Chile

--I finally was able to do some hiking here. A group of us took advantage of the holiday for Día de la Raza, Columbus Day, and hiked La Campana, which is a nearby national park. It was a hideously ugly day when we left Valparaíso and despite my optimistic assertions that “it will get better, this dense fog/cloudbank will definitely burn off,” I had little hope. But amazingly it did! Or rather, we hiked high enough to be above the clouds and found the sun. There were clouds all around the base of the mountain and other peaks poking up like islands in the cloud-sea. We didn’t have enough time to hike all the way to the summit but we got to a point a few kilometers below the summit where Charles Darwin once hiked. There is a plaque commemorating “Carlos Darwin’s” time in that spot. We ate lunch there (fresh bread, turkey, and lots of avocado—muy chileno) and old Carlos D and I shared a moment.

Darwin's plaque: "We spent the day at the summit and never has time seemed to pass more quickly; Chile extends at our feet like an immense panorama limited by the Andes and the Pacific Ocean" Carlos Darwin Aug. 17, 1834

--I turned 21. Not such a big deal in a country where the drinking age is 18 but I had a wonderful day celebrating with my family and friends here. Here are some pictures that my dad took of the barbecue we had at our house with my family and the gringos.

Just some gringos enjoying anticuchos

Mordiscon

mi papá chileno

--I now have less than two months left here which is astonishing. At the beginning when I had no schoolwork 5 months seemed like all the time in the world but now it doesn’t seem to be nearly enough. The next two months will be very busy with lots of work squeezed in between spending time with my family and traveling. A large part of my work for my internship has been organizing a Regional Conference on Environmental Education, which is finally happening next week on November 4. There will be speakers presenting on a range of topics about biodiversity and education and various organizations and schools presenting projects and initiatives that promote environmental education. We’re in the crunch-time now to finish all the planning but I think it will be a success.

Even after being here for three months I still have moments where I think “I’m LIVING in CHILE.” It happens at random times, sometimes when I’m riding the micro, sometimes when I spend an entire day not noticing the fact that I’m speaking in Spanish the whole time, sometimes when I wake up in the morning and walk out onto the back balcony of my house and look over the houses of Playa Ancha, over the Pacific Ocean and across to the beaches, sand dunes, and curvy road of the coast, with the blue-gray mountains of the Cordillera de la Costa beyond. The day after my birthday I spent the afternoon at the beach in Viña with my siblings and some friends and as we walked back through the city to buy ice cream I inexplicably had another one of the moments. There was nothing particularly notable about what we were doing, just walking along and talking and thinking about what flavor ice cream we would get but I thought “you know, that is really pretty cool, I’m living in Chile and I’m loving it.”

As far as the Spanish goes, I’ve recently started feeling much more comfortable with my speaking and I can actually notice an improvement now. This, unfortunately, is kind of screwing with my brain, which is now a jumble of Spanish and English. Some words will only come to me in Spanish, others only form themselves as a hazy English concept that I can’t find the actual word for. Once when I got really excited about something while talking in Spanish I said “ME TOO!” without realizing I was speaking English until my friend started laughing at me. My dreams, when I remember them, are still stubbornly in English. But when I count in my head, the numbers now come out in Spanish first. I’ve realized that true fluency is a huge task and probably something I’ll spend most of my life working on. Even the other student who lives with my family, who is Romanian but has lived in Chile since he was 10, makes mistakes and often makes up words in Spanish, causing great hilarity in my family. Sometimes it has been hard for me to recognize an improvement in my Spanish but when I actually think back to my first days here in Chile and the number of times I was completely adrift in the rushing, tumbling torrent of Spanish spoken by the Chileans around me, I can see that there has been a big improvement. I can now absent-mindedly eavesdrop on conversations around me, just like the true daughter of my mom that I am. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment.

Today is an absolutely gorgeous, sunny spring day so we’re headed off to the beach. Ah, the joys of being in the southern hemisphere right now. I hope you northerners aren’t too chilly and that you have a very Happy Halloween!!

My life is a 7

Well, only two months after the start of classes, school has finally started here. And by that I mean I had to write my first essay. Actually, the very first real school-related work I had to do was for my papermaking class, of all things. It was also my first experience with the Chilean grading system, which is based on a 1-7 scale. I mean, that makes sense right? Who doesn’t consider a 7 to be the highest one can hope to achieve? 10? Who needs a 10? I’m going to start using the system in my daily life—“on a scale of 1 to 7, how excited are you for the weekend?” “On a scale of 1 to 7, how hungry are you?” “On a scale of 1 to 7, how scary was the movie?” Chileans are clever and innovative and it’s clearly the wave of the future.

In other news, last weekend I experienced the crunchy side of Chile. Crunchy meaning hippy-granola type, unrelated to food in any way. It was the Mil Tambores (1000 Drums) festival here in Valparaíso, which is a big cultural, environmental, music and all-around hippy fest. 

The crowd on Cerro Alegre

Apparently in past years it has taken place in the flat downtown “plan” part of the city but this year it was moved to the cerros, in an apparent attempt to lessen the inconvenience to storeowners and innocent passersby. I went with some friends to the festival during the day on Friday and it was lots of fun. There were lots and lots of people, mostly young people but also families and older people. There was a big parade of all the drum and dance groups and more dreadlocks than I’ve seen in a long time. 

Cute kid, gnarly dreads

Painting your body for Mother Earth was encouraged

In many ways it reminded me of Seattle, although such festivals in Seattle usually do not involve policemen carrying rifles or people burning things in the street at night. Happily I avoided this part of the festival and spent the night watching a movie with my host siblings instead. 

The festival wasn't just a bunch of crazy kids drinking and smoking and vandalizing things though. As I said, it's a musical, cultural and environmental event and this year it also had a decidedly political side. For over 80 days, 34 Mapuche prisoners have been on a hunger strike protesting their imprisonment under the anti-terrorist law and demanding a fair trial in a civil court (under the anti-terrorist law they are tried in a military court). 

the Mapuche flag

The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile and the relationship between the Chilean government and the Mapuche has been contentious for basically all of Chilean history. At best they have been ignored, at worst, they have been murdered, abused and denied their ancestral lands. The Mapuche today are engaged in a struggle to recover land taken from them by the Chilean government. The actions are often violent, including setting fire to crops and farm equipment. The anti-terrorist law, a Pinochet-era relic, is used exclusively against the Mapuche and carries harsh sentences, including life in prison. 

The hunger strike has brought the issue to national attention (although somewhat overshadowed by the news of the miners) and there have been demonstrations throughout Chile. Several congressmen have even joined the strike. However, it keeps dragging on, the prisoners keep losing weight and the possibility of one or more of the prisoners dying before the strike is resolved is beginning to seem like a very real, and very tragic, possibility. For this reason, Mil Tambores included a focus on Mapuche music, culture, and political rights. As a group of Mapuche danced in the street, the surrounding crowd shouted "Libertad, libertad para la comunidad Mapuche" ("freedom, freedom for the Mapuche community"). I am hoping for a swift (if over 80 days can be called swift) resolution to the current issue and then a long and careful consideration of Mapuche political and cultural rights. It is undoubtedly a complicated issue but simply ending the hunger strike is only the first necessary step to improving the situation.