day of the combatant

Today is a big student-police clash day as kids take to the streets, just because they do every year on this day. There's usually something specific that they vaguely want to protest, but the day is actually marked on the calendar. Scheduled riots? I mean, this seemed interesting and strange in September but now it just seems stupid. This year's issue is Transantiago, the 5-week-old overhaul of the mass transit system here, that has been at times chaotic and disastrous. I personally haven't really had much of a problem adjusting to it, but I'm privileged and don't have to commute a long way every day. Transantiago is a good thing--it will reduce pollution and traffic jams in the city eventually--but at the moment it's not really all the way effective. The government still has to figure out which are the most important routes, how to get more buses on the streets in the right places at the right time, and how to relieve the crushing pressure on the metro at peak hours (several people have died from heart attacks brought on by lack of air in packed trains). But once they get all that figured out, it'll be great. People here, however, are really attached to the old system and so have little patience for the new one. So today, like clockwork, 16-year-old kids with rags around their faces are climbing trees and throwing rocks at cars. What a dumb tradition.

springs out of an argument i had with lindsay yesterday

Lindsay, a girl from COPA this semester, and I have Electoral Systems class together Tuesdays and Thursdays, and yesterday we got into an argument about McCain, mostly about whether he's even worthy of respect anymore (we both agree that the positions he's "taken" recently are wrong, but she says she respects him for having taken hard stands based on what he believes and I say he's pandering buttboy for the Bush adminstration et al.). Anyhow, I found myself looking for some evidence today to back up my position. So here it is (forgive the lower case, I originally wrote this as an email to her).

see entry for today, march 28

The REAL McCain

the man has lost all touch with reality and also what once made him the least bit respectable, namely, independence. i don't know him, so you're right, neither i nor anyone else has a right to judge him personally, but as a politician, an elected representative of the people of arizona and a man with a great deal of power, his public behavior is unconscionable and not deserving of anyone's respect. you said he's taking a strong stand, no matter how unpopular? give me a break. it's unpopular because practically anybody who's actually paying attention can see that it's beyond wrong. he, lieberman (Holy Joe at Crooks and Liars) and everyone else who once had even a shred of dignity but now have turned their backs on our country in the face of overwhelming evidence of their incorrectness and ignorance at every turn, should resign. enough damage done.

And with that little snit, I'm going to go home for lunch and then come back to Vale's to take my online European Political Economy test from 5 to 6. Oh Boy.

good weekend

dream about jack

I just woke up and I'm still groggy, so I'm not sure how coherent this is going to be, but I just had a wonderful dream about Jack that I remember a whole lot of, so I'm going to write it down.

He has been sent to this school run by a real jerk, I'm not sure why there of all places. It wasn't very much like Alldrege, I don't think; for one thing, it was in a big beautiful building. He wasn't allowed to leave and we weren't allowed to see him. But somehow we got the idea that what he really needed was a white towel, which in dream land was a very hard thing to find, or maybe it was a very special white towel. So Mom and Dad sent me off on a quest to find the white towel and take it to Jack, whatever it took. I searched and searched all through the beautiful countryside (which was a lot like WV) and finally found one in this shack at the bottom of a long dirt road. I'm not sure how I got there, but I know that by the time I did, time was short. So I cast around for a ride to the school where they'd taken him, finally lighting upon a dirty, beat-up old black Jeep that somehow was tied to Lincoln, but I can't remember how. The Jeep was broken down, so the guy who owned it told me that I could keep it if I could get it up the hill. This seems like a good time to mention that we were at the bottom of a very long, extremely steep dirt road, that it had just rained and that the road was covered in shards of glass. I didn't have a choice, so I climbed in, got the engine going (the guy was already flabbergasted at this point) and started driving. The ride up the hill was really exhilarating, I just kept climbing and climbing and working the car to its absolute limit. I hit a false summit at one point, even, but when I finally got to the top I was elated and knew that I would get there on time.

I got to the school and looked for the best way to get in. I'm not quite sure how I managed to do it, but it was extremely stealthy and Mission Impossbile-like. I found myself in a kitchen-like room that opened onto an area with couches and a big TV. It was empty. There was a small TV in front of me, showing the news or something, I wish I could remember what because it was important. I had the white towel over my shoulder and I just remembered that I was completely naked the whole dream. I was all ready to sneak around and find Jack when I heard the voice of the evil director of the school, so I cast around for a hiding place, which was hard considering how open the room was, but I found a wooden panel (I think it might have been one of many) hanging down from the wall and connected to the cantilevered counter in the kitchen. There was a pole behind it, so I sat on the pole and hooked my legs under the counter and leaned as close to the wall as possible. If he came around to the other side, or saw my shadow move, or anything like that, I was toast. He was talking to someone, I think himself, commenting on whatever it was we were watching. This went on for a long time, with me getting uncomfortable and trying to adjust as quietly and slowly as possible and then settling in again, willing him to get called into the hallway or somewhere. A bunch of kids came in and sat down on the couches and all started talking. I eventually fell asleep on my perch and was having this dream, inside my dream, while I slept. I just remembered that, how incredible. I awoke to the feeling of someone breathing on my knee; I looked up and there was the director. He said, "You're going straight to jail, damn it." I said, semi-confidently, "Nah, I'll be in and out," and we started walking towards the door of the kitchen. But right as we were about to go out Jack walked in and looked at us in a very confused way. He was blocking to door, so we had to stop, and I handed him the towel. He smiled and said, "Aw, Luke, you didn't need to do that." This caused me momentary anguish, but I realized he was bluffing because he couldn't say, "Thanks." Then somehow what I was looking at was a slideshow of the City at Peace show that he'd just been in, picture after picture full of energy and color, but the one that stands out most now was a picture, from down below looking up, of kids huddled around in their CaP shirts, beaming as Lincoln, in a red baseball cap, gives them a pep talk. I don't remember too anything after that.

vale got robbed

My day was pretty good until Vale called me a little bit after six, in tears, to say that her apartment had been broken into and her computer and DVD player stolen. That's all they took, apparently, thank goodness, but still past the material things it's so scary to have your home violated. I came right over and talked to her; she cried for a while and then we went to the police to file a report and now she's decided to distract herself by cooking (a thing she rarely if ever does), which is good. I'm going to stay here tonight.

This weekend holds in store a lot of reading for me, plus the Chinese New Year at the Chinese Embassy on Saturday afternoon (thanks to Vale, who invited me) and my friend Paloma's birthday party that night. Plus frisbee on Sunday and yoga tomorrow, after going down to la Católica to pick up more readings for armed conflict. I'm excited, I think it's going to be good. I'm not sure why I'm writing like this, it feels weird. Anyhow I'm going to stop there.

yoga entry, take three

Well I wrote two other posts about this but during both of them Blogger/Safari flipped out on me and stopped responding and I had to force quit and I lost the post both times. Guh. Anyhow, because I don't feel like typing it all out again, here's a synopsis: I really liked yoga, I think it will prove to be very good for me, but it was/is painful. The past couple of days have been fine, I haven't slept that well but I feel like I will tonight so that's okay. Also I know my schedule, more or less. Here it is:

Monday
4:30-5:50 Introducción a la economía política de Europa
7:45-9 Yoga

Tuesday
11:30-12:50 Sistemas electorales y la calidad de la democracia
3-4:20 Conflicto armado y la política del trabajo humanitario

Wednesday
4:30-5:50 Introducción a la economía política de Europa

Thursdsay
11:30-12:50 Sistemas electorales y la calidad de la democracia
3-4:20 Conflicto armado y la política del trabajo humanitario
7-9(?) Frisbee

Friday
7:45-9 Yoga

Saturday
Nothing

Sunday
4-6:30 Frisbee

That's my classes plus the extracurriculars that I'm sure about at the moment. I'm also signed up to tutor English at la Chile but that won't start until April, and I'm trying to figure out when I can take salsa classes. I think I'll end up doing those on Friday, too, because the free ones offered through la Chile conflict with my class schedule. That would put me at 24,000 pesos a month for yoga/salsa, but that's not so much (not even 50 bucks) and the reward will way outweigh the monetary cost. Plus my having less money than usual at the moment is teaching me that I absolutely can live on less than I did before. To clear up any doubts that concerned parties might have, I'm only taking three classes because they're worth five credits each, which makes a full schedule (they all merit it, too, I've got TONS of reading and writing and tests and things, easily equal to a Michigan semester's worth), and I'm doing all Poli Sci because I'll get three major credits for each of them for a total of nine, which is the max I can get for a semester abroad, which will in turn make my life easier when I get home. Huzzah.

And with that, I'd best get a move on down to San Joaquin for Political Economy of Europe.

i finished "snow"

That was the major event of the weekend, along with Saturday night's St. Patrick's Day party at Flannery's near Tobalaba. Both were very satisfying. I liked Snow a lot more than My Name is Red, partially because it was easier to read and grasp, partially because it felt more relevant, less arcane, partially because I reacted to it more strongly. About that last part, one thing that irks me about the way that Pamuk writes, and I assume it's his writing and not the translations because the two books have different translators, is how his characters repeatedly experience instantaneous certainty about something: they KNOW they'll be in love for the rest of their life, they KNOW they're right about something that someone else has done, they KNOW a particular scene or tableau will be with them till the end of their days. His is not the first writing that's caused this irritated reaction in me, it's more of a general dislike in the way that certain writers give gigantic importance to a look, the expression "behind so-and-so's eyes," the positioning of characters in a room. I'm fairly sure I've never had a moment like that, of profound and conscious certainty, and so I'm not sure whether I object to others' descriptions of such moments out of a disbelief that they exist or out of uncertainty whether they do or not and possible envy if they do. They're very appealing, both in a literary sense (they're quite dramatic, although they lose a little of their punch in Snow because they happen every other page) and in a personal sense (everybody loves certainty; the idea that it can come perfectly, in a rush all at once, is tantalizing). But my experience is full of uncertainty, looks I share never give me an unambiguous view of the feelings of the person I'm looking at, nor of my own. Epiphanies that I've had about myself, while powerful and revelatory in the moment in which they occur, never have any lasting effect on my understanding of myself or the world. Whatever certainty I have about myself or the world is cumulative and slow-coming, and so maybe I just resent the characters in the books for having it so simple. I don't know. Ha, I guess that's the crux, isn't it. Anyhow, I've got to get back to work on practical things like my schedule. Joy of joys.

thank god lincoln didn't end up at vcu

Well, I'm sitting here waiting for some photocopies for my Armed Conflict class and ESPN has just informed me that Duke lost on a last-second shot to...VCU. That's Virginia Commonwealth University. The Commodores, or something like that. I'm going to go gouge my eyes out with my fingernails now. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck. We gotta get some actual talent down there. McRoberts is a G (22 and 12 in the season-ender) but Paulus was a bust all year and everyone else is 7 years old. We also throw the ball away every eight seconds, can't shoot free throws or play defense. K is a god, I refuse to blame this on his coaching ability. However, his reCRUITing ability seems to have melted somewhat. We still get a few blue-chippers every year, but not the REALLY good ones, the Durants (a Maryland kid who ended up at Texas--come ON ACC, what the fuck?) and the Odens. Our recruiting class is usually in tens. I mean, come on. Maybe it's the fact that everyone hates Duke and no one wants to play there just because it's Duke and they'd rather go to Carolina (just as blue-blood, but MJ went there so it's gotta be cool, right?) so they can try and beat Duke. And, recently, succeed. God I'm 6,000 miles away but this still makes me sick. Well at least the season is over and I can stop agonizing about how freaking bad we were this year. Or at least agonize a little less about it.

roger waters

Yesterday, after I got done with my stuff at COPA, I had planned to walk home, eat a really late lunch, go meet Vale as a little moral support for her doctor's appointment (she hates doctors), run and then come home, eat dinner and go to a party that Sarah's (a new program girl) host brother was having in Vitacura. But Vale called me as I was on my way back to the apartment, saying that she had gotten tickets to see Roger Waters at the Estadio Nacional, and would I like to come? This concert, like any featuring a big international name down here, had been wiiiiidely publicized and tickets were the opposite of cheap (19,000 pesos to stand up on field away from the stage was the lowest they got). But she said the tickets were free, so I said, hell yeah! I don't really know much of anything about Pink Floyd, but who would pass up free tickets to a huge event like that? Plus, as it turned out, we had box seats. Pretty sweet. And the concert was great, too. It's not really my first choice of style and some of the songs were boring, but when the (great) band got going and the pyrotechnics and fog machines started spewing out fire and smoke and all that, it was REALLY fun. The stadium was jammed and everyone was really into it (except where we were, but I guess that's generally true...the real fans are the ones in the cheap seats, screaming their hearts out).

And when they played "The Wall," Waters brought a bunch of schoolkids, maybe 10 or 12 years old, onto the stage to dance and sing the chorus. THAT was a highlight. Another one, from earlier, was a song that he'd written recently about the Middle East and American/British policies there, which was very moving. It was based on his experience as a 17-year-old traveling across Europe and into Lebanon, where he was taken in by a family just outside Beirut for a time; he wondered in the song what had happened to them and he wished them well. Still another came at the end of that song: as it was reaching its climax they brought out a HUGE pig balloon with socialist and anti-Bush slogans on it, and "Victor Jara" in big letters, which got a gigantic reaction from the crowd (for those of you unaware, Victor Jara was an important member of the Nueva Canción movement in Chile and across Latin America; he was captured in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup here, taken to the Estadio Nacional and, along with thousands of others, tortured and killed--he's a pretty big hero here). After parading the balloon around the stadium it was cut loose and flew away into the night. Kick ASS!

So anyhow that was pretty exciting. And now I'm back in San Joaquin, having arrived for an 11:30 class only to find it postponed for the third day in four. But I've got another class that I'm sure starts when and where the book says, at 3 just across the lawn here. After that, it's COPA office, frisbee, and then finally, FINALLY, Borat. Oh my lord, I can't wait.

mid-week

So classes have been really frustrating so far, which isn't exactly fun. I went to Armed Conflict yesterday, which I think I'll really like (the professor, Andreas Feldmann, is REALLY smart and interesting--Sarah, he taught at U Chicago--and the content is great) but put me in a really bad mood yesterday. I got into the lecture, raised my hand, tried to contribute and was first laughed at for offering Silver Spring as a place with gangs, just because no one has heard of it except the girl in the front row who went to Einstein. You dumbass motherfuckers, just because you haven't heard of a place doesn't mean it doesn't legitimately have gangs. Assholes. And then got incredibly frustrated when the professor asked why organized crime violence doesn't count as "armed conflict" under the definition he gave, called on me, totally misinterpreted my response and did not provide me much of an opportunity to rephrase or defend myself, called on someone else, who gave the EXACT response I'd just given but better phrased and was praised by the professor. Ugh. I had smoke coming out of my ears even 30 minutes later when I walked into the COPA office and scared Vale and Andrew by giving the rant I just gave you, but in Spanish, at high volume, with gestures. Also, I'm not bitter. Well, okay, maybe a twinge, but more than anything I'm just happy to have found a class that provokes me like that, I think it'll be really challenging. Hurray.

So now I'm in the COPA office, about to meet with Isa about my schedule so I can figure out what the hell I'm going to do now with all the reschedulings and classes that I thought would be easy but are really hard and blahzee blahzee blah. Also, I've gotten so used to typing on Spanish-language keyboards that now, to type an apostrophe, I type "-". I-d like to say I-ve got more to write, but I don-t. Actually I probably do, but it's meeting time. Peace.

another reason to miss michigan

Is that there, at least they don't change the schedule of a class and not tell you. I went to a class this morning--Foreign Relations of the E.U.--waited around the room for a while, no one showed up, went to the Poli Sci office and was told that the class had been moved to the same time tomorrow, exactly conflicting with at least two other classes in the department, one of which I want to take. Yayyyy. Also went to Written Culture today, which sounded like a gimme class from the title but actually turns out to be for advanced linguistics students. Really interesting, but complicated enough in English, I think. Oy. I forgot how much of a pain scheduling is down here.

ups and downs

Well this week was kind of strange. Things have been going really well in Chile: I like my family and house, except for the lack of internet; I've been getting lots of exercise running and playing frisbee and I feel like I'm becoming more a part of the frisbee crowd than I got to last semester just because I'm in the group memory now and I'm going regularly and playing hard; I've started visiting and registering for classes, and I've got two set that I'm excited about: Armed conflict and the politics of humanitarian work and Contemporary Chilean literature. I think I'll have my schedule wrapped up by the end of next weekend, including English teaching and possible yoga classes (!) and frisbee and all that. This looks like a busy semester, which makes me happy.

On the other hand, things at home haven't been going to so well. I finally got to talk to Jack and Mom (and Lincoln, too, in RI), which was great.

Today I'm going to hang out in the office for a little while, even though Airlie is in the other room YELLING into her computer on Skype, making use of the free internet, then hopefully go up to Las Condes to a track I saw there to run some more. I've fallen in love with running, I just hope I can keep it up. It'll be easier if I can find a stopwatch to use today so I can time myself and thus be able to set some goals. Also there's a 10k on April 1 that I want to run. I'm sure I could do one this instant, but my time wouldn't be that great, I'd like to run it in 45 minutes (a 7:15 mile pace). That might be a little lofty given my current physical state, but I can dream, can't I? In other news, I finally took some pictures of my new house, which I'll get up as soon as I add one of the outside and of the Pilars themselves and upload the lot.

finally posting again

Ugh, I've gotta get internet at home, for whatever reason blogger takes millenia to load at internet cafes. Blech. Anyhow, I just finished up my reorientation with Isa and now I'm back in the office with a bunch of program kids all planning their schedules. I should also start doing that soon, because classes started today in la Chile. Wednesday in Catolica. Diego Portales varies but I don't think I'll be taking anything there anyway. Things have been going really well otherwise. I'm adjusting to my new apartment and family pretty well, and the food is really good, which helps. Fruit salad with yogurt and granola plus toast and honey for breakfast every morning. Mmmmm. Also I played frisbee again yesterday for the second time since I fell and it was amazing. I'm in bad shape but just running around and competing feels unreal, even if I get beat deep sometimes. I'm going to start running again soon, maybe today, and I want to start taking either pilates classes or yoga classes, depending on which family I want to please, the Díazes (Dur's old family, whose eldest son owns a pilates studio) or the Santeliceses (my current family, whose oldest son is a yoga teacher at the swankiest yoga school in Chile and told me to call up his friend who just opened his own school and would be a lot cheaper).

I saw Kelly Anne and Fred last weekend at her house's good-bye cookout, which was so much fun. Great food and lots of drinking and ping-pong and new people, and Cori. Good times. This weekend was very relaxed, I finished My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (verdict: I understand that it's beautiful and profound and complicated, but I found it tedious at times and my overall impression is that it's a great book, but not one that I could gain anything extra from by re-reading it in 10 or 20 or 30 years), and started on Neruda's The Heights of Machu Picchu, and went up to Rodrigo and Cecelia's yesterday to have lunch and play Scrabble (which I again won, thank you very much, I'm now 4-1 against native Spanish speakers playing in Spanish). I hung out with Anita on Saturday, just taking it easy and passing time with her; she left for BA yesterday. So anyhow life is going pretty swimmingly at the moment, and I'll try to post more regularly (my eternal promise to myself and whoever reads this thing, but I do mean it every time) as classes and activities start falling into place. Bye for now.