election day

Did I go to New York this weekend to see Halley in a play? Was the play called "Election Day?" Was the other purpose of my visit to see Peaches and the Herschkowitzes? Would that be a good name for a band? Did I like the play? How are Jenny and Julie? Did I go out for drinks after the play with Halley and a bunch of the cast and crew? Was that fun? Did I eat delicious challah french toast on Sunday morning? Did Peaches and I hang out in her new apartment and then walk around the West Village for a while? Was that great, seeing her? Did I also see the Richard Serra exhibit at MOMA? Did I pay more attention to Peaches than the exhibit, but still enjoy the show? What did we talk about then? Where was that drag queen in the furniture shop from? Did I read a short story by Donald Barthelme called "Concerning the Bodyguard"? What did I think of it? Did Mom and I have really nice drives both ways? Did our topics include the Oxford English Corpus, theology, and internet ethics? Was my new cell phone waiting for me when I got home? Did I talk to Vale on Friday night, and again on Sunday? Is it strange and hard to talk to her on the phone? Is it worth it? How is she doing? Did I play frisbee last night with the Blair clique team, and did we lose 15-11? Was it fun? Did Lincoln and I finish the guest bedroom in Erin and Arthur's house? Was Cori there this afternoon and did we get to talk for the first time in weeks? How was her trip in Bolivia? Did it sound like a nightmare? Did I do prep for painting the hall? Was dinner delicious tonight, and did it consist of orange-mint lamb, corn on the cob and pasta? Is that a lot of starch? Did I talk briefly to Nora and am I going to call her in a little bit? Did Vale's postcard get here? What am I going to do tonight?

What was that short story about?

i think blogger is confused

It says my most recent post was on Monday but that's not possible and also doesn't make sense from the context of what I wrote. Anyhow, today is Friday, and it seems that I'll be painting once again. Painting sucks, especially by yourself, and I'm not sure whether I'll actually do any today. I've worked plenty of hours now for the amount Lincoln said he'd pay me to help out. But we'll see.

Yesterday was the most eventful day in a while. I painted most of the ceiling over at the Fulham-Cohens' (the job today would be to finish it). Then Linc, Mom and I went to the Phillips for the ColorField (the only art movement ever to come out of DC) show there. It was cool for the location aspect and some of the pieces were nice but this was not a big or particularly influential movement. The real show is upstairs in the permanent collection, which has some really tight pieces by the heavy hitters of the past 150 years: Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, Miro, Klee, etc. Plus some excellent less-well-known stuff. Right after that I went and met up with Robin (!) and her friend Boris to go to a one-man show at Busboys and Poets about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was neat, he used beat-boxing and singing plus a whole host of characters to illustrate some tired but important themes about the similarities between the people on either side of the walls there and about the dehumanization of each side by the other. But it cost a lot of money and Busboys and Poets isn't cheap, either. In the end I spent 20 bucks on it, which would have been unheard of in Chile for the same show. Oh well, guess I've gotta choose more carefully down here. It was great to see Robin, though, she's such a cool girl. And I liked Boris.

A couple of other notes: I've taught Lincoln and Jack carioca, although we haven't played a complete game yet because it required a real time commitment and we're all busy and on totally independent schedules. But Jack and I did play a game of Scrabble, which, to my surprise, I won 403-315. Not bad after a year with not a single game in English! Also I found --bless you, Dad, the only THINGS you obtain are books and music and 90% of the time they're great-- an album in the kitchen by a guy named Boubacar Traoré. Well the album's great, and I did some snooping around on YouTube to try and find something to put up here and, well, I got to clicking and discovered a couple of other awesome musicians: Ali Farka Toure, Salif Keita, Corey Harris. It seems Mali produces a lot of great music: Amadou et Mariam, Tinariwen, Traoré, Keita, Toure. Sheesh. It's really interesting to cruise through YouTube, though, and hear just how much of a continuum there is between the traditional African sounds and American blues. Awesome. So the song I settled on ended up being Taj Mahal and Corey Harris playing "Sittin' on top of the world." Enjoy!

i finished harry potter

Because people who give spoilers are basically on par with violent felons, I'll refrain on saying anything about it, period.

Other than that, things have been going all right here, I suppose. Mom, Dad and Linc are all pretty busy, but I'm still waiting for word from Sparks and Jack is sick still from El Salvador, so he and I have been chilling at home. I emailed our landlord today and applied for a couple of work-study jobs in Ann Arbor for this coming year. However I'm still not sure what to do about spending money; SAT tutoring came to mind today as I searched CraigsList.

Judy and I went out for coffee tonight. It was nice to catch up, and also to drive around a little bit, as cumbersome and useless as the car is at the distances I was traveling (my house-Mayorga-downtown Silver Spring). She seems to be making the most of her summer, working at a nonprofit in DC and biking and although Bethesda is suffocating her, she's getting along fine. Talking about being abroad is nice in general--lord knows I've learned enough things and had enough unusual experiences to fill at least one decent conversation with anyone--despite the fact that it brings my mind to Vale and Rodrigo and Cecilia and the other people I miss and the people I missed the chance to get to know enough to miss. And Vale. But talking to someone who has been abroad recently is so much easier because the shared experience, although we may have gone to such different places, is very powerful.

Dad, Linc and I went to Deb's on Monday night. It was kind of boring and not very fulfilling, which is an unusual experience there. But really there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of tension in the house right now. Stress, to be sure, but we're not taking it out on each other. In other news, I've fallen back into my old practice of reading eight hundred books at the same time; right now they include: Super Fiction, Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme, Cotidianas by Mario Benedetti, Harry Potter (which I obviously just finished, but like 20 minutes ago, so it counts), and Ficciones, plus the usual New Yorker, Outlook, New York Review articles. I've been laying off the blogs, though. It's interesting, when I was in Chile they provided an intellectual link with the day-to-day issues that I care about at home and I drank them in effortlessly and eagerly. But now that I'm here they remind me mostly of sitting next to Vale in her apartment in Santiago de Chile, of how strange it was to be keeping in touch with the goings-on up here through the opinions of other people rather than just by simply being at home.

Anyhow I've got to rise and shine tomorrow, to await word from Sparks and then go to the dentist at 10:15. Hope I've got a car, walking there would suck shit through a wet paper straw, as a certain recent houseguest might say (although he was talking about the Yale University bureaucracy). One last note before I conk out: WHEN IS IT GOING TO FREAKING THUNDERSTORM!?!?!??!!? I feel ripped off.

leaving so soon

Vale made me promise not to use my computer at all tomorrow, so I figured I'd better post now because my next opportunity will be Friday. First, I've got another book for the list: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Barrington Moore. Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, it's time to write a little about what's going on here.

Yesterday Vale and I went to Rodrigo and Cecilia's for a good-bye dinner, which was lovely despite one last Transantiago nightmare getting there. We laughed a lot, as usual, and stayed so late that we ended up spending the night even though Vale had work this morning. It was strange saying bye, I've gotten pretty close with that family over the past few months and I will miss them a lot. Today Ceci drove us to the metro bright and early and Vale went to work and I fell asleep. On waking up I had my second round of good-byes, in the COPA office, to Isa and Katty. I haven't been as close to either of them this semester and it was a little weird and awkward, but they have also been very important this year for obvious reasons and I'm glad I went. Tonight we'll go one last time to the Pilars', but not for dinner. David and I talked last week about me going over there for lunch one day but he never called back to tell me when I should come over and I didn't call him back, either. I'll also leave without seeing the Diaz family one last time. I regret not having made a greater effort to get over there (it's been months since my last visit). Good-byes are awkward and hard and I've shied away from a lot of them or avoided going out of my way for them, which I'm not exactly proud of. I wish I could have said bye to the frisbee crew, but the game got called off yesterday because of rain. Tomorrow I'll spend with Vale, who of course will be the hardest good-bye of all, and then at about 3 on Thursday morning a van will come pick me and my mountain of stuff up (and hopefully Vale) and take us to the airport and away from Chile for a long time. But not forever, and hopefully not even for that long. I love this country and certainly some of its people and there is still so much for me to learn and see and do here.

Some real reflections on the past year will come along soon but not now.

summary

This is what has happened since last Thursday:
1) Finished school with final assignment turned in three minutes before the deadline due to extensive editing.
2) Went to Algarrobo with Vale, watched sunset over the Pacific, probably my last for a while. Spent the night at a nice but very cold hostel (no heater in the room), Residencial Vera. Next day went to El Tabo, walked on the beach, ate shockingly overpriced lunch (we saw the menu and thought, wow, cheap! and then it turned out the cheapness was directly related to the quantity and quality of the food...go figure). Really nice time except Saturday night I got very frustrated trying to learn a new card game.
3) Said good bye to Jesse Z and Leslie on Sunday night, to the tune of "Wet Hot American Summer," which I hadn't seen since senior year of high school and which was even more hilarious than I remembered. Great movie. Jesse's planning to visit Ann Arbor in January.
4) Last night Vale and I went out to Zanzibar for dinner, which provoked an avalanche of feelings in me that had nothing to do with leaving or going home, which I'm certain I will feel again in the future and which I will address then. They're important.
5) Talked to Mom Dad and Linc last night before dinner. Jack is in El Salvador. It sounds like things are going smoothly at the moment and that stress is low, which is great news. Hopefully that atmosphere holds until I get home, coming home to simmering clashes wouldn't really help with the whole transition thing, which is going to be hard enough as it is.

I think that pretty much covers the highlights. Cori gets into town from Bolivia tonight and she's here through Thursday morning (I think) before heading back to the states. I've got just over a week left and I'm not even sure where to begin trying to write about that at the moment, so I'll leave it for another day. Before I get back to The Tipping Point, which I'm finding better than Blink but still kind of disappointing, here's a great song by Chile's answer to the Clash, Los Prisioneros. It's title (and chorus) means, "Latin American is a village to the south of the United States." I suspect that most of the people who read this blog (all four of you) don't speak Spanish, but that's okay. Los Prisioneros were really influential in Latin America and their anger and resentment of US hegemony represent a lot of people down here.

allow me to explain

In my dream last night, I had posted at least three times after my last real-life post. I don't remember much else about the dream except looking at photographs of something. The large number of "fucks" arose out of frustration at the fact that this whole ticket mess appears to have been mostly my fault, and as a result the money that I had been saving up in hopes of one last cool trip before heading back to the states will instead go to getting me home. Which, it kind of goes without saying, fucking blows.

In better news, Emily and Vale and I went to Valpo yesterday and had a really good time, despite the cloudy/foggy weather and Vale feeling vomity. It's such an interesting city, I took some more photos, including some duplicates and triplicates of photos I'd taken before because it's just that cool. Emily had bought a ticket straight to Pucón from Valpo so at the end of the day, around 7:30, we went our separate ways--Vale and me back to Stgo and Emily on to Volcán Villarrica. Lucky. Today is a day for work; I meant to get up at 9 but when I did instead of resetting my alarm for 9:30 I somehow turned it off and was only awakened by some guy named Hector calling a wrong number. Twice. But now, with a cup of good coffee (on Friday Vale's mom came to town for a funeral and we went to Granos y Hojas afterwards, which was really fun because watching them interact is hilarious; anyhow the upshot is we split a bag of really nice expensive coffee there) I will start this blankety-blank 12 page final that is all that stands between me and the end of the school year. Hoo doggies.

visibility was 50 feet

Before anything else, I found a new really kickass blog that won the Koufax Award last year for basically "blog that should get more love." It's called Echidne of the Snakes. It's written by a self-styled "recovering economist" named J. Goodrich; formally a feminist-only blog, now merely feminism-focused but also full of links and interesting commentary about all kinds of modern social and political issues (she recently wrote a piece for The American Prospect. Also I'm finally adding Salon's "Broadsheet" after having read it for about a month now without comment here. It's kind of a feminist review; lots of summaries/commentaries about feminist issues as they come along, but it's full of links to more detailed blogs and it's a good way to keep aware of the countless and continuously evolving ways we still put women down as a society. Also the writers are good. I slipped a link to The American Prospect in there in case you didn't notice. That's going with the links, too.

Today's video is "Natty Dread" by Bob Marley and the Wailers, which has long been one of my favorite Marley songs.


To switch gears completely: Cori left for Bolivia last night, but spent the night before at Vale's and then today, after taking it verrry easy in the morning/early afternoon we took a walk ISO some presents for various people. Cori bought some stuff in Bellavista and then we got hungry and each ate an entire pizza at Amadeus (she had cheese, I had cheese with roquefort and salame). Then we headed up to El Mundo del Vino, where she bought cardboard boxes with wine in them for the various families she'll be staying with in Bolivia. It was great to pass the day with her, we had a good and very relaxing time. She got stressed about buying presents but not too much and the rest of the time was just beautiful day, nice walk, good pizza. Also I had a beer with lunch called Erdinger that I really liked. And it came with cacho de cabra, which is a kind of spicy dried pepper flakes! Strange but, well, mmmmmmm...

We said goodbye at around 6 so last night Vale and I were left to our own devices. Vale wanted to take a walk, so out we went. A short walk turned into a medium-long walk as we wound through streets over by Bellas Artes and Parque Forestal, past buildings I'd never seen or noticed before. It was a pretty night, if a little chilly. We ended up at a little bar called Navetierra, where we got a couple of really good pisco sours and some camembert with crackers and soaked in the ambience (very artsy/political with a slightly overwhelming dash of second-hand smoke). The conversations about me leaving are getting harder; we both know it's inevitable but neither of us wants to separate. And as the time draws closer we both get a little sadder. But we can't really do anything but try not to be sad and to enjoy the time we have left together.

Emily B gets in tomorrow from Sao Paolo around 1, which will be fun. But it means that I've gotta finish this blankety-blank Armed Conflict final today, pretty much. So off I go to do that. Citizens as targets in internal conflicts and the friction between the principle of imparciality/neutrality and needing to do the utmost to protect victims. Cheerful stuff.

i will never again bowl at mall plaza vespucio

WARNING: This post has a lot of cuss words. Apologies in advance.

After the closing academic stuff with COPA yesterday in (snow-covered!) Cajon de Maipo, which were actually not that bad, Vale and I decided to go bowling. The idea had come up after the form-filling ended, but no one was interested, so we went by ourselves. It was really fun, after an execrable start by me (0-1-1 for a three-frame total of 2). Vale rolled a 105(!) in the first game and I rolled an 88. Bowling is nice because, well, when I'm not with Lincoln and Jack, I don't care about losing. At all. We were both having a blast and in the second game I really got on a roll, no pun intended, with four strikes in a row! The best bowling game of my entire life! In the 9th frame I rolled a 9, giving me a 121 in the 7th frame. And then the motherfucking lane turned off. We'd paid for only a half hour, and once that half hour was up the piece of shit just shut down. No matter that we were THREE FRAMES TOTAL FROM FINISHING. And that I was on the cusp of bowling the best game of my life, feeling so happy. I didn't get it at first, but the girl at the counter said there was nothing she could do because they were closing soon. It was out of her power to turn the lane back on for three minutes. I was so mad I couldn't speak. Had I been in the States I would have argued, whined, pleaded, whatever, but in my furious state I couldn't even begin to get the words out in Spanish. The dumbest fucking shit ever is the phrase that kept repeating in my head. Vale was still in "we're just having fun" mode, not "oh my God this is something special to me because I have never even come close to doing this well" mode, so she didn't get why I was so furious. Still, she got that I was, so we left in relative silence.

She told me when we got back that she had been a little scared, not so much by me being angry (she's seen me mad before, mostly about the stupefying IFSA bureaucracy) but by how fast I went from incredibly happy to flat and speechless. It was a little weird, to be sure. But I recovered by the time we got back.

Today will be a day for working on my Armed Conflict final, which I want to turn in on Tuesday, and then at five heading over to give the Fulham Cohens some things to take back for me. Cori is going to spend the night here tonight while her family flies back to the States; she leaves tomorrow for Bolivia to spend some time with her (Maryland) roommate's family. Also the return ticket situation remains frustrating. I haven't heard back again from Bonnie of Advantage Travel, but the latest word was that I'm on my own to book a one-way. Fuck that noise.

yesterday i was really sick

The worst possible timing: I had a paper due yesterday and I have an exam tomorrow, but starting Monday evening, well, let's just say it was comin' out both ends. Plus I had a fever, plus the kind of energy-destroying pain in all my joints that fits in the category "flu-like symptoms," so much so that I didn't even have enough energy to watch TV. Oh and sharp pain right below my belly button. Aaaand I basically didn't sleep on Monday night cause I was getting up every half hour to go to the bathroom.

So I emailed my prof basically saying, "Sorry, I couldn't finish, please don't penalize me, I'll turn it in tomorrow," and my hunch is that he'll be okay with it. He's a super nice guy. Vale took really good care of me yesterday, brought me juice and ginger ale and made some chicken soup and white rice and even (holy crap!) home-made apple sauce that she just kind of whipped up in the kitchen. And today I'm feeling all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I'm about to get cracking and finish up that final. Worse comes to worse I get a few points knocked off, which is okay because all I have to do is pass and I'm not in danger of failing. The paper isn't great by any means but it doesn't completely suck. In other news, I found another great video, again thanks to Crooks and Liars, this time of a guy named Andy McKee who apparently has spent a lot of time practicing on his guitar. Sweet.



Add that album ("Dreamcatcher") to my wish list.

Also, for anyone who pays attention to this kind of thing, I always knew Digby was a woman. Everyone always called her "he" (even me once or twice, I think), but that always felt wrong to me. Seriously. Speaking of which, congratulations, progressive blogosphere, winners of the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award. Suck it, Lindsey.

And now, breakfast.

fulham cohens!

Last night (after working all afternoon at Starlight Cafe) I went with Vale to the F-C's apart-hotel! We chatted for a while in the apartment and then walked over (all of two blocks) to Giratorio, the 16th-floor rotating restaurant at Los Leones. I had never eaten while spinning in a circle before. It was pretty strange. But the food was good and it was great to see all of them. Afterwards we went back to the apartment and had tea and cake. Somehow (not hard to guess how with a family that loves HP so much) the conversation swung to the final Harry Potter book. Amongst much laughter and argument we created a betting pool (me and the Fulham-Cohens, Vale abstained; I think she was a little intimidated by how into it everyone got) for who's going to die in this book. We made a list of 21 names and everyone voted whether each character was going to die or not. Winner gets 20 bucks from Arthur, unless he wins, in which case everyone gives him 20 bucks. It was really fun, but finally Vale and I had to duck out because I'd told Dad I'd call around 10:30 to say happy father's day.

We got back to Vale's around 10:45 and I connected with Lincoln right away. We all (Mom Dad Linc me) talked for about half an hour, which was nice. Jack had fallen asleep, but we made plans to talk again on Tuesday. They all sounded really good; there was a lot of talk about SilverDocs and I'm sorry to be missing it this year. I'm edging closer to a July 18 return date, I think it's the last day I can come home without paying huge fees or getting a new ticket. One crazy thing I found out yesterday, before I get back to work on these finals (yippee!): A one-way ticket from Miami to National costs $79 in economy class, and $549 in first class. Who on earth would pay five hundred and fifty bucks for a 2.5-hour flight? That just seems stupid and excessive, but then again probably shouldn't surprise me. Okay, back to work. Here's to getting through Thursday!

starbucks failed me

After prolonged attempts to get online at two different Starbucks, I gave up and came back to Vale's apartment with her (she had been running some errands and getting her hair cut). She's been feeling lightheaded/dizzy/nauseous all day and I just took her pressure and it's scarily low (99/52, and with a pulse of 118!). So now she's calling Rodrigo and hopefully he will have some advice.

My electoral systems final is coming along despite the incredibly annoying Starbucks interlude; it's going to end up being pretty dry but not entirely devoid of purpose, which is about all I could have hoped for at this point. At the very least, I'm learning a lot about Portugal, Ireland and Greece that I never knew.

Also, the sunset was really beautiful today, a half-cloudy orange sky in the west throwing pink light off of the snowy mountains. I wanted to take a picture but of course my camera pooped out at exactly the wrong time. It's okay, there will be other opportunities for nice shots like that before I leave. Speaking of which, that date is rapidly approaching and I need to email the damn travel agent again because they never got back to me the first time about my return ticket. So I'm going to go do that and then keep pounding out histories of political parties. Because, you know, I just love political parties.

weekend in brief

First, everyone should check out this really cool video that Dad sent me by email. I highly suggest watching the whole thing:

500 YEARS OF WOMEN IN ART


Anyhow, highlights of the weekend include me driving for the first time in almost 11 months, yesterday. I made crab cakes for Vale and her aunt and uncle (the kids got tuna with mustard, which is apparently a house favorite), and Vale and I had to go to the grocery store to pick up some key ingredients, like crab meat. So I drove Rodrigo's car to Alto Las Condes and back. It was kind of nerve-wracking getting in, just because it had been so long, but as soon as we started going it was fun and easy. Helped that it was Sunday morning and the road's weren't exactly crowded. And then, on the way back, instead of going straight to Rodrigo and Cecilia's house, I drove past it a little ways and pulled into a little mini parking lot/lookout type place, and passed the keys to Vale. She's 28 years old and had never driven a car, not even in a parking lot. So she had her first driving experience; she wasn't bad for a first-timer although the whole staying-in-your-lane thing would have been a problem had there been any other cars around. Pays to live waaayyyy out there.

Also we watched "Goodbye Lenin," a very sweet German movie about a kid from East Germany growing up and coming of age during the fall of the USSR. I liked it a lot, and so did Vale, although she fell asleep for about the last 20 or 30 minutes. We watched with Spanish subtitles and I got everything except for a couple of words here and there (like maybe 8 total the whole movie), which was a good feeling.

Yesterday also was my first time back at frisbee after a two-week absence, and despite having eaten a crab cake sandwich and fries before playing, which caused a few issues towards the beginning, I played really well and had a great time. Afterwards of course included a trip to Tortilla Factory. Blackberry, raspberry, banana, apple and blueberry smoothie and a cup of coffee plus the house corn chips and salsa...perrrrfect. Vale wanted to go buy some tea after that at a hoity-toity tea store in Alto Las Condes, so we walked across the street. I also hadn't just kind of mosied and people-watched and window-shopped in a mall for a long time. Malls, love them or hate them, are interesting places. We went into a couple of book stores trying to find a copy of Intérprete de Emociones (Interpreter of Maladies) but the translated edition is apparently out of print and sold out everywhere. Vale also dragged me into various clothing stores and made me try on coats. If I had money to burn I'd like to buy a nice pea-coat-type thing, the ones I tried on were really comfortable and I like the way they look. But the cheapest one was like 150 bucks (which, I suppose, isn't that much in the long run, but it's too much for me right now), so my very nice parka and various sweatshirts and fleeces will suffice just fine for the time being.

We're reading right now, in European Political Economy, about the adjustments that OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--basically Europe, North America, some Latin America, and E/SE Asia) countries have had to make over the last 30 years to their trade and monetary policy and also to their welfare states. I think the latter is what I'm going to write my final paper about for the class. How countries like Sweden and Denmark, which have powerful social-democratic welfare states that, to me, seem overwhelmingly fairer and more appealing than the residual welfare states (bascially, no help until you're screwed, and then not very much) of the Anglo countries or the corporatist, conservative welfare states of Germany and Austria (extremely compartmentalized and unevenly distributed help based on job category). The de-commodification of labor in the Norwegian countries is wonderful but they are the most vulnerable to collapse under current structural (globalization, general aging of the population) and institutional (the EU, weakening of labor organizations) changes. It sucks for them, and I think how they respond to those changes has been and is going to be really interesting and instructive. Can they make it without compromising their whole systems, and what are they doing to try?

Speaking of which, I should eat breakfast and then get reading. We've got class today for the first time in months because we missed a couple of Wednesdays and need to make them up. Hope you enjoyed the video.