the south

I´m sitting in an internet cafe in a town whose name I have utterly forgotten at the moment. I´m going to keep this short and write more later, but here are the highlights so far: Friday night we bussed from Stgo to Concepcion. Eight or nine hours on the bus, I slept less than an hour. Saturday was fun, we saw some pretty things, went to a neat private botanical gardens in Lota, ate lunch in a restaurant on the beach, saw some other cool things and then got to our hotel. Ate dinner, then I started feeling bad, but soldiered on to a bar with a bunch of others. Left just after midnight and walked back to the hotel and commenced expelling everything in my digestive system. I had lots and lots of diarrhea all night, barely slept, woke up in the morning with more and then also threw up, just for kicks. It was delightful. So on Sunday, while everyone else went for a hike and to some Mapuche people´s house, I lay in bed, rehydrating and eating white rice and crackers. Fun times. But I felt better after that and ate with everyone last night. This morning we piled onto the bus again, went to a Mapuche school in the countryside, where we met a bunch of 5-8 graders, gave them some soccer balls, talked to them (I talked to a kid named Daniel, who was for sure the class dork; needless to say I liked him) for a while and then listened to them sing a Mapuche song and then sang ¨Twinkle, twinkle¨ and ¨This land is your land¨ to them (and raucous applause). It was all a little strange, I´ll write more about why later on. Lunch, gorgeous views of ocean and coast, one more stop for a little roadside crafts shop, back to hotels, shower, internet cafe. Now I´m going to stop, because I just passed the quarter-hour mark. Anyhow, point is that I´m having a good time and I really like the south; it´s gorgeous.

wednesday and thursday

I am out of money. Out. In other news, yesterday I got really sad and overwhelmed thinking about how long it's going to be before I see almost any of the people that I love and care about. MDLJ are coming in December, and Grandpa and Marinell next semester sometime, but other than that it's gonna be a good 8 or 9 months before I see anybody. So I sat on a park bench and stared at nothing in particular for a couple of hours, and wished I was lying down. I felt better after just sitting for a while, though. I want to start meditating again, I still miss it and it's nothing but good for me, so what's to lose? I'll try sitting for a little while tonight (maybe 20 minutes) and see how my back does, and go from there. Also I went to frisbee today, not to play but to talk to people and watch and maybe throw around a little, and about 15 minutes after I got there (I was about 20 minutes early, more on why in a minute) it started raining. Then it started raining harder. In the end, only four other people showed, and everyone left before a disc even left a bag. Also after a week of upper-70s, today the high was 63. Joyous. So the past couple of days have kind of been downers, but not totally...

In more positive news, I got my first paper back from Lenguaje Cinematográfico, and I got in the B to B+ range on it, which was great because I was afraid I'd done a lot worse. So that cheered me up. Also, last night I watched two movies that I really liked: The Bourne Identity, which I'd never seen, incredibly, and Lucky Number Slevin, which I thought was great. I might watch it again tonight, actually, although I'm pretty exhausted and might just call it a night. A bunch of people met up to eat whole-wheat empanadas and then go out, but I'm brokity-broke-broke-broke, so I'm housebound. Oh well. Another good thing that happened today was that one of the guys who came to play today lives in La Reina as well, and offered to split a cab with me and even spotted me for it because I was cashless after settling a medical bill at la Católica. His name's Sam and he went to/works at the same camp as Danny Cohen and goes to college with another kid from Gabby's high school. He's a super-nice guy and people being kind to me generally makes me feel better about life. In further good news, I finally saw the Alfredo Jaar exhibit at the Telefónica building. He's a Chilean artist who works a lot against the repression of people and things that otherwise wouldn't have a voice, such as poor Angolans and the 7 million original images that Bill Gates is burying under the ground in western PA. The exhibit wasn't particularly coherent (it's a compilation of work he's done over the past 20 years), as you might imagine from the examples I just gave, but each of the installations was very cool. I particularly liked one that consisted of a huge light table (maybe 9 or 10 feet long) in a dark room covered in a mountain of slides of the same image of a young Rwandan boy's eyes looking away from the camera. Thousands and thousands of identical pairs eyes just dumped unceremoniously on the table, and loups to look at them with. Another good one was from 1987, when he took over a big jumbotron in Manhattan and showed images of the United States with the slogan "This Is Not America" followed by our flag with "This Is Not The American Flag" superimposed on it. It's called "A New Logo for America." All in all, I'm feeling okay. I have a bit of a headache and I'm disappointed about ultimate today, but life is moving forward and tomorrow I'm leaving for the beautiful lakes district! Hurray, travel! 'Night.

great idea

Via digby: The Republicans used the clever tactic of "Google-bombing" John Kerry during the 04 race; that is, they clicked on anti-Kerry sites enough that those were the ones that came up first when you Googled his name. So now, two years later, it's time to take that tactic back. Below are all the BAD Senate candidates, if you've got a minute and are bored, click on a few of them. Help the cause in an extraordinarily easy way.

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert

all that matters today

I ran. It felt fantastic.

version 2

I found myself just now trying to write about Chilean politics, because I spent all day either talking about them in Spanish class (Chile's relationships with its neighbors, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, and why they are so strained) or reading about Chile's ever-growing number of free-trade agreements and the effects that they are having/will have on Chilean economy but also on Chilean culture. Those are very interesting subjects to me but my knowledge of them is very thin and I really have no set opinions on either case. I have preconceived notions (i.e. NAFTA is bad and the WTO is bad and the Washington Consensus is bad so ALCA must be bad too) without really knowing why, and I'd kind of like to figure out what's really going on before I start spouting off about them. Then I read Hullabaloo and specifically tristero's really interesting post about "christianists" and their role in American politics, and that got me fired up, but I don't really know anything new or exciting about that either (link to Hullabaloo is under "Places you should go because I like them"). So I'm going to modify my earlier post about writing more about politics and say this: I will start writing more about politics as soon as I have some sense of what I'm talking about and actually have something to say about them. Also, I think I might find myself just rambling about this situation or that sometimes, because I imagine that most people who read this don't know a whole lot about Bolivia's claim to sovereign sea access or things like that.

In the meantime, I'm going to start reading a lot more than I have been, and talking to my host family, too, because they're a source of differently-informed opinions that I haven't really gone out of my way to tap yet. Also, I'm going to run tomorrow, I've resolved. I am very excited about it. And now, I'm going to go to sleep.

a quick break to sing the fight song

HAIL! TO THE VICTORS, VALIANT!
HAIL! TO THE CONQ'RING HEROES!
HAIL! HAIL! TO MICHIGAN, THE LEADERS AND BEST!

HAIL! TO THE VICTORS VALIANT!
HAIL! TO THE CONQ'RING HEROES!
HAIL! HAIL! TO MICHIGAN, THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WEST!

God, I wish I was in Ann Arbor. GO BLUE!

today i decided to write more about politics

Election time is coming in the States and there's so much interesting stuff down here, and I've really just started to get into reading about all the goings on in the world again. I've been reading the news, of course, but not really paying very close attention. But the whole deal with Chile's vote for the Security Council seat and Bachelet's decision to abstain (which was absolutely the right one for Chile, but not very fun) and all the student unrest here is really interesting and it's time I paid closer attention to it. And I can't think of a way to make sure I'm paying attention than to write about things a little. Today I've got a Spanish paper that requires my full attention before I fall either asleep or into the state of slack-jawed half-wakefulness in which I can do nothing but look up soccer highlights and old Simpsons and Daily Show epidodes on YouTube, whichever comes first. But starting sometime soon, anyone who reads this will get a periodic dose of my astounding insightful political ruminations. The play-by-plays will continue, of course.

beach! hangover... apartment!

So I finally made it to a Pacific Ocean beach, only the second time in my life I've managed that. I left Friday around 1 for Viña (a little less than 2 hours by bus), where I met Alex, Durham, Rosie, Tim, Vickie and Joe on the beach, lay in the sun for a bit, swam in the freezing-cold ocean, played frisbee with Rosie (the shoulder works!...mostly) and generally enjoyed the gorgeous weather. Then we walked to a Mexican restaurant that Alex knew about, ate a kind of overpriced but pretty good meal, then watched the sunset. It was very nice. We went back to our hotel, which Alex had hooked us up with through family connections, chilled for a while, showered (after a fashion) and then commenced drinking. I had talked to Laura earlier about meeting up, and she said it would be perfect because her whole group left for the traveling section of their program (SIT--it's a weird program, but kind of cool) on Saturday, so Friday was their last night together. We met them at a bar in Valparaiso called Duff (yes, like the Simpsons) and basically all got very drunk. It was really fun, but the collective hangover yesterday was VERY bad. Also the weather on Saturday, which was supposed to be just as beautiful as Friday, turned out to be cloudy, cool and windy. Not exactly great beach weather. Disappointed, we wandered around Viña for a while, ate some brunch--this disgusting-looking concoction called chorillana, which is french frieds topped with fried egg, cheese, chopped hot dogs and fried steak (I didn't eat it, just drank some tea and put my head down on the table)--and came home. I ate dinner, talked to Luz María for a little bit and then tried to make plans with people to go see "Padre Nuestro," a Chilean comedy that's supposed to be really good, but it was only playing at really inconvenient times. So instead we went to Valeria's new apartment, which was really fun. I had seen it when I went apartment shopping with her a couple weeks ago, but she'd added some curtains, glasses, etc. But it was her first day there, so she still doesn't have a fridge or TV or really any furniture other than an inflatable mattress, a foldy-chair-mattress-thing and the little stools that came with the apartment. Anyhow, we ordered some disgusting, fantastic pizza and hung out for hours. Joe, Tim and Raúl (Tim's Chilean boyfriend) left around 2 but everyone else (the rest of the beach kids plus Gaby and Vale) were there until 4, at which point I walked Rosie home and then went back to Vale's and slept on the aforementioned foldy-chair-mattress-thing, which saved me about 7 bucks. Very gracious of Vale to let me sleep there; she also said it was an open invitation. This is great news on a wholly selfish level, because cab fares suck. Anyhow I woke up around 10:45 (the light in the apartment is wonderful--in place of windows she has sliding glass doors that open onto a balcony and form almost the entire exterior wall--but not so great for sleeping in), said bye to Vale, who woke up just after me, and came home. And now I'm here and I've got some homework and whatnot to do, lunch to eat, etc., so I'm going to stop writing for the time being. But that's the update on my doings for the past couple of days.

the last couple of days have been largely unremarkable

Tomorrow, however, I'm finally going to Viña to spend a couple of days on the beach. I'll have more to write about when I get back from that.

resolutions

1) Avoid English-language TV whenever possible, except the Sopranos.
2) In lieu of English-language TV, watch more castellano shows/news.
2) Be in bed by 1 a.m. on weeknights.

dr. starbucks, or, how i learned to stop worrying and just go there

First, by request: Reactions to my newly shaven face have been pretty much exactly what I expected, especially Alex's, which I visualized with absolute 100% accuracy before he saw me (I was pretty satisfied with my predicting ability afterwards). I'd try to describe it but it's a visual thing and wouldn't be funny anyway because you very likely don't know him. Unless you're Rosie or someone else from COPA. The general consensus is that I look younger--this consensus got most extreme with Luz María's repeated, "You look like a little baby!"--although Vale also told me that I look, "How you say, smoke hot." Then she told me she liked the beard better. People seem to have liked the beard, but I'm going to give myself a little change to air out, get a little color along my jawline and so on before I let it grow back. And I might not even do that. Who knows.

Now then, as to the title of this post, which was about as clever I could do on four hours' sleep and after a very hard test and then a debate project: I finally went to Starbucks yesterday. I loved it. I'm deeply crushed by this fact, but really, it's the only place in the whole city that I've found with a collection of comfortable reading furniture (i.e. comfy chairs), and that includes some furniture stores I've been to. I went because Katie, Alex and I had to meet to plan our half (Sara was with her parents) of our debate today and Starbucks has free wireless and was the most central place we could come up with. It was probably 70% gringos and 30% yuppie chilenos when I got there, although the proportion swung in Chile's favor as it got later. Also, the counter girl asked me where I was from because my accent didn't sound Chilean, but then was surprised when I said the States, so that was nice. People being surprised you're a gringo is a big complement. Also in the "Yay, I live here!" category: I gave a woman directions this morning as I was walking to the metro. Good couple of days for positive reinforcement of my Spanish.

Last night I studied and finished prepping for the debate until pretty late, then dicked around for a bit, and then Lincoln signed on and we got a chance to talk for a while, which was nice. It'd been a while since we last checked in for real, seems like he's doing really well and working hard and having a good time. Anyhow that combined with the spring forward on Sunday (we're now an hour ahead of EST) meant I didn't get to sleep until after 5 and then I woke up a little after 9 to study a little more and make sure I was totally awake for my test in Relaciones entre Europa y A.L., which I was, but was a bitch anyway. The profe wrote the wrong set of questions on the board at first, questions for a chapter we hadn't read, and then when everyone said, "Hey, what?" she acted all confused, then changed them to be all about HALF the reading we did and NOT the other half, and when everyone starting talking again she got all huffy, put up another question and told us to combine the four questions she'd written second into two and answer the third (eighth) by itself. It was really confusing and the questions were hard. I know for a fact now that I got at least half of one of them completely wrong. Guh. Oh well. The debate (which, in case I haven't written this already, was about whether Chile should have voted for Venezuela or Guatemala for the Security Council--I was pro-Venezuela) thankfully wasn't so bad, and Bachelet abstained like a little wuss anyway, so it ended up being pointless. Anyhow now I'm exhausted and waiting for MDJ to call, so I'm going to cut this short. One more thing: I found a really cool blog: Latin American News Review. It's by a left-leaning grad student at the University of New Mexico. I added it to my links on the right, check it out if you have any interest in the goings on down in these parts. Chao.

i shaved

Finally, I just did it. I asked Luz María where I should go to get my hair cut, and she told me about a place around the corner. I went, sat down right away, paid 4900 pesos and walked right on home. Beautiful day, today. I got my stuff together right away, camera included (photos of the process below) and went to the upstairs bathroom, where the light is way better, and commenced. It feels really weird but I'm really glad to be free of the beard. I like the way I look with it, but a break was necessary, it was starting to drive me crazy. Okay, enough words, here are the pics:


The longest it got


This is how my beard looked most of the last year


Thought I'd have some fun with it. Tried striped but they were harder than expected, so I went with the half-beard look instead.


And then the half-fu manchu. Or whatever you call this thing.


Clean!

banana republicans!

I thought this was funny. Sad, but funny.



In other news, it poured rain ALL DAY yesterday. And I do mean all day. It was the first gross day in a while, 56 and just coming down. But today is back to sunny skies and 70s, so I guess one day isn't so bad. Also, we went out for Indian food last night because Vickie (who is Indian) has been jonesing for some for a long time and made reservations, with some difficulty, for ten of us last night at the best Indian restaurant in Santiago, which is in a Best Western, of all places, but was really pretty good. Really expensive though. Especially for here. But it was worth it just to have different flavors in my mouth for once.

yes!

I just felt my first earthquake! FINALLY! The house sort of rocked a little bit, slowly, for about thirty seconds. I was confused at first, it felt like the washer/dryer at home was in full swing and I was on the second floor, but my room is on the first floor and no washing machine on earth could make everything move like that. Can't believe that took me almost three months, there have been others since I've been here but I've somehow missed them. In other news, this article about Tariq Ramadan in the New Yorker is very interesting and also pretty distressing: George Packer in Talk of the Town. Meanwhile the French government has decided that what happened to the Armenians in 1915-1916 in Turkey was genocide and saying otherwise should be against the law (BBC Online article about it). Because, you know, the government starting to tell people what they can and can't say always works out for the best. Anyhow, I'm off to cinema class.

midterm wasn't so bad

A little harder than I expected, I guess, but not horrible. I did spring a moderately bad bloody nose in the middle, which was irritating. I still finished in plenty of time (as did everyone else, Mom and Dad) and then wrote up my proposal for the research paper I have to write for Chile chilenos class. I've decided to write about the free trade agreements Chile has signed in the past few years (with Mexico, the US and China) and the ones it's thinking about signing, and whether all this new commercial openness is good for the country or not, on economic and cultural levels. I'm not exactly happy about it, but I'm a lot more comfortable writing about that than Nicanor Parra or Pablo Neruda and I'll definitely learn a lot in the process. I've decided that as soon as I get my hair cut (hopefully in the next couple of days, as soon as I find a place) I'm going to shave. Then I'll be all nice and clean. I like the beard but it's time for it to go. Also I've let it get really long and I definitely don't like it like this. I'll take pictures along the way--I'm thinking I'll trim it back to how it was for most of the last year, then maybe shave some stripes into it or something, then shave it all the way off. We'll see. In any event, Chile chilenos class was about the same as usual today, boring and repetitive with some interesting observations thrown in. Rosie pointed out after class that our professor, Corea, is pretty sexist, not in a misogynistic way but in the sense that he is very comfortable with thinking of men and women in their traditional roles, that is, the "women are mothers, men are sons" dynamic that predominates in Chile. According to him, this is a macho society but not a masculine one; women dominate the home and family, which are much more important here than in the States. He proposed today that this results from the conquistadors' practice of raping and then abandoning Mapuche women hundreds of years ago: Left with no adult male in the family, the children grew up without a masculine role model and learned to see mothers as dominant in all things. But the women were sexist against themselves, so their children grew up admiring men and masculinity but relying on their mothers. I'm not really sure what to make of all that, but I have found that to be true about family dynamics: Francisco and David are totally dependent on Luz María but speak of their father, when they do at all, with some degree of reverence, even Francisco. I'm not sure their father abandoned them, but Luz María certainly isn't on good terms with him and the brothers only see him every so often.

Anyhow, I'm up way past when I meant to go to bed. Let me conclude by saying that on facebook, Michael Steele is WAYYYY ahead in the Senate race. And the only people on facebook (I guess it's more open now, but still, the vast majority) are young people. He's that far ahead with people MY AGE?!??!?! FUCK!!!! I'm going to register to vote absentee right now. Anyone who still supports Bush et al. at this point is utterly beyond me. I used to be able to see how people could find him worth follwing with the right combination of willful blindness and already-wrong political beliefs, or maybe just a belief that he was somehow a "good Christian," but now I just can't. What is the matter with America? We have gone so far astray... And on that rather disheartening note, I'm going to register and go to bed. 'Night.

p.s. Do you ever write something and then look back over what you've written and completely forget writing a phrase or sentence, or even why you might have written it? That just happened to me. It was weird.

i continue to grow

Today I slept, ate lunch, studied briefly for my midterm tomorrow, went to pronunciation class, had a talk with Rosie that was wearing but ended up being good, had a coffee and read Ficciones, went to Hooter's (incredibly, my first time ever in a Hooter's) with Rosie, Durham, Tim, Vale, Gaby, Justin, Amalia and a Chilean boy whose name I've forgotten but was really nice and asked lots of questions about the game, to watch game one of the ALCS. Detroit, 5-1. REPRESENT MOTOR CITY! Not that I've ever really pulled for the Tigers before, but of the four teams left, I'm all for 'em. Sometime soon I feel like I'll write about all these mysterious things I'm thinking about myself and trying to change and all that, but not right now. Now it's time to go to the bathroom, work on this mix I'm making and go to bed. Shout-out tonight to Jack Johnson for his awesome cover of Badfish/Boss DJ. 'Night.

el huerto

Finally made it to the vegetarian place in Providencia, after a little more than a week of trying to find a time. Met Rosie around 2:15, we walked around for a little bit looking for it, then found it and luckily it was open. Today was a holiday and all the other restaurants on its street were closed, but it was doing a pretty decent business. We sat down right away and our waitress was really nice and saw us right away without being hovery, which was a nice change for South America. The food was delicious, we got toast with cream cheese rolled in sesame on lettuce and carrots for an appetizer and then I got a quesadilla, burrito and rice for my main course. Rosie got a smorgasbord of different things, which were also all very good. It was a little on the pricier side, but that's all right every once in a while and I also spent so little money this weekend that I felt okay about it. Rosie and I caught each other up on our weekends (she'd gone to La Serena with the Ñuñoa kids and Sara) and then walked back to her apartment, where we did some homework (I studied for my Spanish midterm, which is on Wednesday...GULP, and she read for her gender identity in Latin America class). Then I came home, at a delicious dinner thanks once again to Luz María: salad of red lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes with the usual oil-and-vinegar-and-lemon on top and then mashed potatoes and really juicy chicken. I guess this post is about food, but the food today was so good. Then I watched football (YES!) and tried to explain it to Francisco, who seems to have forgiven me for snapping at him the other night. I think I did a decent job, although I neglected to mention how much different scores are worth. Oh well. Today he was all chummy and hit me on the face and neck and tried to pull me towards him by the shoulder again. He doesn't grab my ear anymore because I yelled at him once about that, now he just makes fun of me about not liking it. God, he's kind of an asshole. I'm surprised it's taken me so long to realize this, especially after his great-aunt told me straight out. I'm going to stop writing now. 'Night.

the 100th post

Well, it's been 149 days since I started this thing and I've finally hit 100 posts. I guess that means I haven't kept up with my original intention to post every day, but that's all right. I kind of feel like this would be a good time to comment on the mental and emotional benefits of writing down what I've been doing and thinking, but I don't really have any deep thoughts to share on the subject. I have really enjoyed and appreciated being able to use this tool to basically keep a journal, something I've tried to do multiple times during my life but always failed at. Something about the typing, and the knowledge that there's an audience...but that last part can't be it because I've started journaling for myself, too, in my school notebooks. Freewriting, mostly, just spitting out what's on my mind without thinking about what I'm saying. Being able to look back later and say, "Oh yeah! I remember doing/thinking that!" is really quite nice and I'm sorry now that I haven't been doing this for longer. I started out with the intention of using the blog for commentary, observations, meditations and things like that, but it has turned more into a chronicle, with a few of those things thrown in when they come to me. I'm mildly disappointed in my lack of deep thoughts and astute observations, but maybe my expectations were too high. We can't all be Octavio Paz. And a chronicle is still helpful and fun to write.

Anyhow, as for today, I was going to go to the Precolombino with Laura and them but they left about half an hour ago, so I'm left to my own devices instead. That's fine, I think I'll work on Ficciones and maybe go try and find a decent cafe in walking distance of my house, which I still haven't done. The ones downtown are so much closer to class and everything else. Maybe take a nap. I would love to go running, because it's beautiful again today, but I'm not sure that'd be good for my shoulder. It's feeling a lot better, but I still don't have my full range of movement and I definitely still can't exert more than a tiny bit of force with it. Instead I think I'll go to a park and sit outside. Not as satisfying, maybe, but worthwhile all the same. First, I'm going to eat lunch. Luz María has gone off to visit family (she has a LOT of family) with Francisco, I'm not sure where David is, and my lunch (meat, rice, salad...Oh, Chile) is in the kitchen waiting for me to put it together. There's also the remains of the pasta I cooked last night. Cooking in a strange kitchen, by the way, is a lot harder than I ever thought it would be. Anyhow, using the microwave is as easy here as at home, and that's what I'm going to do now.

To everyone who reads this (and I'm sure there are at least three of you), thanks for reading, hope you've enjoyed yourselves so far and gotten something out of my babbling, even if it's just to know what I'm doing.

relajado

Tonight, instead of going out, I cooked myself some pasta and sausage, planted myself in front of the TV and watched Get Shorty, Lost in Translation and the end of Swim Fan. Francisco came in around the middle of Lost in Translation, somewhat drunk, and tried to talk to me about the movie but I was trying to watch and he just kept talking and making wisecracks about how I was being cold and dramatic and finally I said, "Look, I'm trying to watch the movie," and he went away. He's a very inconsiderate person, really just doesn't pay attention to what other people want unless they bang him over the head with it like I did tonight. He's funny and interesting and likes me, so usually it's not so bad, but sometimes I just want to yell at him. But other than that mild unpleasantness, I had a terrific night. Unless something really horrible happens tomorrow, I think this weekend can already go down in the books as a great success. As to the movies: Get Shorty is one of my all-time favorites and it was my fourth or fifth time watching it, Lost in Translation was interesting and actually if it hadn't been right smack in the middle of the movie, while people were talking and things were happening, I would have liked to talk to Francisco about what he started saying about the movie being a meta-stereotype. Like I said, he's interesting. Swim Fan sucked. Now, it's time for bed. 'Night.

tour guide

The past couple of days have been wonderful. Friday I woke up late, talked to Cori for an hour or so on IM, went down to COPA to meet Valeria. I'd told her I would go apartment shopping with her, so we talked for a bit in the office while she got the place ready for the weekend, and then left and started walking around the neighborhood, getting flyers and phone numbers and so on. I really like her a lot, we had fun and she ended up deciding on an apartment! It was really funny, the woman who showed it to us thought we were together (Valeria looks younger than 28 and I look older than 19, so it was understandable) and started talking about "when you have kids..." and things like that. High humor. She went to fill out paperwork and I walked downtown. Laura called around 6:30, just before Valeria and I parted ways, and we arranged to meet at 8 at metro Santa Lucia, downtown. I went to the Biblioteca Nacional, which is very pretty but was mostly closed when I got there. This week maybe I'll go back during the day and explore a little more. Then I wandered around downtown for a while, looked vaguely for a pair of jeans (my only other pair has a big hole in the crotch) and an mp3 player/radio, ran into Valeria again right outside Almacenes Paris (a big department store chain here) purely by coincidence, and turned my aimless window shopping into "I need some jeans, so I'm going to buy a pair." We went into Paris and I found a pair for like 18 bucks. Good purchase, I'm wearing them right now and like them. Vale and I parted ways again and I went to meet Laura and them. Sushi sushi sushi (so good) and then we met up with a couple of their other friends and Izaak(!), who was really good friends with Laura back in the day but hadn't seen her in years, outside the restaurant. He hung out with us for a bit but had to go catch a bus to Pucon, so we taxied on over to the jazz club.

It was pricier than I thought it would be (5000 cover, a little less than 10 bucks), so four of Laura's crowd went to HBH instead, but Laura and Katherine and Nora and I went in and ordered some drinks. Tim, Vale and Vickie came too, and then Valentín Trujillo himself came out and played a 1.5-hour set, with his 13-year-old grandson Pedro Amat Trujillo singing for about an hour of it. They were both incredible. It was a great show. And then Durham, who was there with her parents, came over to tell us that her parents had picked up our tab! Yay! We rejoined the other half of the Viña kids and went to a bar on Plaza Ñuñoa for a while. Then home.

Today I woke up, chilled for a couple of hours, ate lunch with the family, then met up with Laura and them again in Patio Bellavista, where they had ordered lunch. They ate, I got a Sprite and then I saw Durham and her parents (Candy and Weir--such great names). I went over to talk to them, and realized that I needed sunblock. The kids finished eating, paid and we walked down Pio Nono to Cerro San Cristobal (I bought and put on some SPF-30 on the way). It was a glorious day, 80, dry, cloudless, with a light breeze...mmmmm. There was a bit of a line at the funicular that goes up San Cristobal, but it moved along and we were at the top in no time. The view was spectacular, because on top of the great weather, the smog was very thin today. Really nice. We went down and then to Emporio la Rosa, the great ice cream place that's near COPA. It was jammed. Laura and I both got lúcuma milkshakes and everyone enjoyed themselves. And, of course, we ran into Durham and her parents again. The Viña kids all wanted to take naps, so they went back to their hostel and I came back here and now I'm going to go eat dinner. Still unsure what I'm doing tonight...could go to Barrio Brasil with Laura and them or to HBH with Vale and Tim. Decisions, decisions. Such a difficult life I lead. I'm feeling very nice right now. I've had a great talk with one of my best friends who I don't talk to enough, gone apartment shopping, eaten sushi, gone to a great jazz show, gone to the top of San Cristobal and walked around on a gorgeous day and hung out with a friend who I hadn't seen in ages. All pretty much stress-free. Wonderful. Okay, time to find out what the fridge has in store for me. Peace OUTSIDE!

blood pressure

I woke up this morning and realized that I haven't been taking my BP as much as I should. So I took it, and it came out to 120/78, with a pulse of 55! Lowest reading ever, and absolutely normal. So anyhow, that's making me happy right now.

today was busy

I thought I had a test at noon; in fact my professor told me exactly a week ago that there would be a test today. So I stayed up late last night cramming as much more of the reading as I could into my head (if anyone's interested, it was two chapters from John Lynch's Latin America: Between Colony and Nation) and then waking up early to make sure I was on time and wide awake for the test. Turns out she decided the test will be the 16th, so today was just a painfully boring lecture about population growth in Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Mexico in the latter half of the 19th century. I like that class a lot in general, I'm learning a lot from it, but sometimes, well, let's just say that today's lecture was bad for my state of alert readiness. So we got out of class, got our tests from Monday back (fast! I did well, too...) and I hauled ass on over to COPA, where I did the corrections for the essay that was due last week and then the homework for class today, went to class, got out of class, finished the stupid assignment for Chile chilenos class, printed it, then waited in blissful laziness for Rosie to show up. I forgot to mention lunch: I ran to the panadería a couple of blocks from COPA, got a pair of empanadas and a Coke, and downed them in record time. More on that later. Rosie got there, finished HER version of the stupid assignment and we walked to class. It was a nice day today, if a little cooler than it has been, but super clear and the air was great. The cordillera was practically clear two days after being almost completely obscured by smog. Not a bad turnaround, Santiago. In any case, class was boring as usual, we turned in our thingies and left. I came home, talked to Luz María, ate dinner, was unbelieveably tired, watched the last half of "George A. Romero's Land of the Dead" or whatever that movie was called and part of "Black Hawk Down," came back in here and started working again on that stupid essay due tomorrow in cinema class. Death to papers, this weekend can't come fast enough. Funny how I said that last week, too. Oh well, next week will be just as bad (midterm in Spanish, among other things) and then I'll be home free for a little while.

Back to lunch for a minute: Today I spent 1770 pesos on lunch and no other money, which means I turned a profit on the day because the COPA families are required to give us 2000 pesos if they don't make us a lunch. This might not be the first day I've come up in the black on a day here, but it doesn't have much company. I felt oddly good about that. Especially because this weekend Laura and them (apparently not Mara) are coming and it probably won't end up being a particularly frugal weekend, showing them about town and so on. At least we'll have gorgeous weather and a good jazz show. NEWSFLASH: I just got distracted and it turns out Valentín Trujillo is playing on Friday at the Club de Jazz. I got reservations for four automatically, just sent an email out to COPA people asking if anyone was interested. Trujillo is a great Chilean pianist; David is a big fan and gave me a recording of a concert he gave of Gershwin, David did the lights for another show of his and got an autographed copy of this album out of it. I really like the album, so I'm pretty psyched for the show. I hope it's not already booked, but I think I'm probably overreacting and he's not as famous as I think. I just imagine that he's famous because I know about him, and if I know about him, then a lot of other people must, too. It's not like I've got my ear to the Chilean jazz underground in search of hidden talent, plus he's a grandfather, so he's not exactly an up-and-comer. Anyhow I hope there's a table and I hope it's a great show. Now I've got to do some more essay writing. Wish me luck. 'Night.

machuca and dream

Last night I watched a really interesting movie called "Machuca," about a couple of boys at Chile's most elite prep school during the coup in 1973. One is very rich and the other very poor, part of the principal/priest's initiative to bring quality education to everyone. It's a really interesting look at the stratification of Chilean society at that time and it's also a moving portrait of a young kid growing up without wanting to or really knowing why.

Also, I had a very vivid dream, of which I remember the last part, and I want to write it down somewhere, so here goes: I was on the metro in DC with a friend who was blond, and we got off at Tobalaba, which is where I transfer to my line here in Santiago but in the dream was an awful lot like Takoma. The friend was trying to get home but didn't know what bus to take from the station, so we asked Riley, from the Boondocks, who was standing outside of the station looking for his bus. But my friend didn't know what his neighborhood was called, he kept saying names that sounded vaguely like neighborhoods in Santiago and I kept saying names of real neighborhoods (¿Sótero del Rio?) and Riley said, "Man, if you don't even know where you live, how am I supposed to to help you out?" So I was like, well, whatever, you can just come back to my house. So we walked past all the buses, which were American school buses but with big cardboard Chilean protest signs dangling off of them, along Takoma Avenue and ended up walking up onto my front porch. There was a package for me wrapped in tinfoil with a note, and suddenly I knew it was my birthday, but I hadn't told everyone. I picked up the package and we went inside, and Izzie ran out to meet us and the friend sat down on the stairs and she started jumping on him. I said, "It's my birthday" and the friend didn't say anything, so I unwrapped my package, which contained a loaf of pumpkin bread. That's all I remember. Sorry to be boring, now it's time to get dressed, grab a bite and hustle on down to my second Relaciones entre Europa blah blah blah test of the week. Wish me luck!

nothing to report

Okay so the title is a lie. I took my first real test down here today (Relaciones entre Europa y América Latina) and I think it went really well! Although who knows, maybe the professor grades really hard. Well, it's over with and I'm relieved. I have another test in that class on Wednesday (today was a makeup because I missed the first one due to my shoulder), which ought to be a little harder. Oh well. Other than that, my day was pretty damn boring. I ate lunch with Katie, went to Spanish class, hung out with Rosie for a while (she was in a weird mood, let me tell you) and then came here. I'm going to go make dinner today and then try to get a little homework done before tomorrow, when I have to do homework all day (although part of that is watching a movie and then writing a baby essay about it). 'Night.

finally went to bellas artes

Today, I wandered around for a long time with Rosie looking for an open place to eat lunch, found one, ate there, wandered around looking for el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in the wrong place, found the Museo de Arte Moderna instead, went inside, looked at everything, liked a bit of it but not most, found the MNBA, went in, thought it was okay, got a milkshake (oh yes...), watched a bit of a reggae show in Plaza Italia, came home, ate once, talked to Luz María, David and Francisco, came in here and suddenly was overwhelmed by exhaustion. I don't have as much homework as I had thought yesterday, which is nice, but still, the prospect of doing it makes me even sleepier. So I'm going to do that and then call it an early night. Except the new season of the Sopranos is on at 10. Oh MAN I'm glad I remembered that. Okay, time to get cracking on my moronic Spanish essay. Wish me luck. 'Night.

today was an improvement

Today was good. I woke up in the morning, showered, ate some yogurt and toast with jam (everyone makes fun of me for calling it marmalade in English, but I do it because I say "mermelada" so much in Spanish that it just rolls off my tongue as "marmalade" now), went to meet Rosie for lunch at a vegetarian joint in Providencia, but ended up running out of time in transit because she had to meet Tim at 2:45 for the gay pride parade in Plaza Italia (three blocks from her apartment). So I just ended up chilling with her for a little bit. Tim came by on schedule and we walked up to Plaza Italia to find a kind of meager and quiet crowd assembling at 3 (the scheduled start time). But the crowd grew steadily and some music got going from trucks parked along General Bustamante street. It wasn't a big gathering by any stretch of the imagination, especially for a city of 5.5 million: maybe 400 people all told. But plenty of drag queens and outrageous political statements and flags and even a walking condom. I took some pics, we walked around, met a girl from California who had been looking for the parade in the wrong place and found it by accident (love when that happens), we sat down, people watched for a while and decided it was time to get something to eat. On to Amadeus, where we just missed the lunch kitchen, much to my disappointment. But we got some hot drinks and a big, delicious slice of raspberry-chocolate cake. Tim has been feeling sick and realized he couldn't finish his tea with milk, so after my cortado I polished that off for him. We sat there for a while, just talking about things. It was really nice, Tim's really cool and I like that I've been spending more time with him in the past couple of weeks than in the beginning. He and Rosie talked about how crazy it is that they've only got 2.5 months left, which really is pretty nuts. That's 10 weekends. No time at all. I can't really relate because I've got 9.5 months left, but even that seems like not so much. I'm in single digits month-wise. Weird. I was about to write that on the one hand it feels like I just got here and on the other it feels like I've been here forever, but the truth is that it feels like I've been here just about 2.5 months. I'm comfortable here, still-meh Spanish be damned.

Anyhow after Amadeus, we went back to Rosie's, chilled for a while, Tim left to get food and figure out what to do tonight. I had really wanted to go to the Club de Jazz tonight, but Gaby and Vale bailed on me and no one else was interested and so I was disappointed. I thought about going alone, but couldn't stand the thought of that. Just too lame, too much money for the social payback. Who knows, maybe I would've met some awesome person if I'd gone, but I was disheartened and sapped of desire to do anything after getting shot down. I ended up just watching City of God with Rosie and then coming home. Which wasn't so bad, in the end, I'd been wanting to see that again and am glad I did. It's a very good movie, if you're prepared for the brutality.

So now I'm home and not really tired and writing this. Also, I want to relate an idea that I had for writing the other day, which might be incredibly stupid but I don't care because it tickles me. Wouldn't it be interesting to write two parallel or somehow connected stories and then overlap them by alternating words. So if one started "Once upon a time..." and the other "Call me Ishmael..." the finished product would go "Once call upon me a Ishmael time..." It just seems like it'd be interesting to see the sentences and phrases and such that resulted from that. Tim pointed out that you might even need to have three stories to make sure the reader understood what was going on. I am a genius and one of these days I'm going to do that. The above idea is copyright Luke Bostian, 2006, so nobody even think about stealing it or I'll sue you blind.

On a slightly down note, neither Mara nor Laura called today, so that was kind of a bust. But that's all right, I was half-expecting them not to call. Still, it's a disappointment. This day was kind of lame, actually. I didn't do very much, I ate practically nothing (I haven't been eating particularly well the past couple of days, which will change tomorrow because if I leave the house at all, which I might not owing to my homework load, it'll be to hit up that vegetarian place in Providencia) and I had a couple of medium-sized disappointments. But I'm in a good mood nevertheless. Songs of the day: Taj Mahal's cover of "Johnny Too Bad" and "Seed 2.0" by the Roots. 'Night (or should I say, 'Morning?).