that's life

Running away to the other side of the world doesn't really make everything go away. Even all the way down here, I still have to get my classes organized, take finals and plan a thesis. I also get to look for a job, follow up 100 times when really important people (both Chilean and US) don't e-mail me back, panic, take a deep breath, panic some more, change life plans, realize they aren't very good life plans, realize I'm only 20. I have time.

I think I'm going to go look for a time machine, transport back to 1998 before the real world was lurking around the corner and move into the castle in Disneyland. This may just work.

LOLLAPALOOZA (and other adventures)

Traveling back in time: My friends Lizzy and Taylor and I decided to head over to a café after class last week. We wandered around town and I finally remembered my camera so I took a few pics of the street art. We then went into Cerro Florida and found this adorable little café that had brownies which do not exist here. (It turned out they weren't really brownies, they were chocolate muffins but that was close enough). We chatted for hours and it was wonderful...

Coming back to this week, this weekend was my first music festival EVER! It was the first time Lollapalooza ever left Chicago so it was this crazy mix of music from the US and Latin America...

But first: We went to Santiago as a class on Friday to check out Villa Grimaldi which was super super sad. It was a concentration camp but the Chilean military tore it all down to get rid of evidence of what they did so now it's a memorial park. Parts of it have been rebuilt to demonstrate what it was like while it was being used as a torture center. The craziest part was that the woman who organized our community service for us came with us (along with a bunch of other staff members). We figured she was just another chaperone but when we got there, our director introduced her as our guide for the day because she was one of the women that was detained there. Although I'm sure it was so hard for her to go back and talk about it, she said it really helped because the whole point of the memorial is to make sure what happened is never forgotten and by telling us about it, she was contributing to maintaing the memory.

Because we were already in Santiago, we just stayed Friday night and were then ready to Lolla. The weekend did have a hiccup or two considering the will-call line was 3 hours, I missed Edward Sharpe due to technical difficulties and couldn't watch Kayne because I had to jump on the bus home but the weekend was amazing!! Lots of music, sun and friends. 

Throughout all of the shows that were played, my personal line-up consisted of:

Saturday:

Steel Pulse

Anita Tijoux

Cypress Hill

Ben Harper

The National

The Killers

Sunday:

Mala Rodriguez

The Ganjas

311

Chico Trujillo

The Flaming Lips

Sublime with Rome

Thirty Seconds to Mars

Jane's Addiction

Overall, the weekend was amazing. I made it back to Valparaiso safely and I even think I did an ok job on my Chilean gold mining presentation this morning with my four hours of sleep.

Miss you all tons!

school work?!

The whole point of my program is that it's based on field work and experiential learning. The first section (which comes to an end next week) has been more classroom based but in two weeks I am moving down south to Temuco to live with an indigenous Mapuche family. 

After three weeks down south, we get to spend the final month wherever we want to, living with whoever we want to and studying whatever we want to... a little scary but I finally decided what I am going to research and if you know me at all, it really won't be a surprise.

I am going to volunteer at and research an organization called Teletón which helps children with physical disabilities. The handicap accessibility here is horrible and Teletón's whole mission is to empower people with debilitating diseases. I am going to look into how they help people here overcome all of the obstacles that this city throws at them.

If this goes well, my senior thesis will be a comparative piece which analyzes how non-profits in both Chile and the US help kids with physical disabilities. 

And that's the next year and a half of my life.

this means i'm kate winslet!

I'm more or less living The Holiday! (Super cute movie if you haven't already seen it).

Fast forward to the 1:00 minute marker...

Similarity: Today, my neighbor told me his doctor suggested that he walk a little bit every day to stay healthy so we made a nightly date to walk around the block when I'm done with class.

Slight differences: Kate Winslet's older neighbor is a famous movie producer getting ready for a night in his honor, he has all of his teeth, you can understand what he is saying and they make it further than half of a block every night.

So those may be some pretty large differences but I'm excited that I'm becoming a large enough part of this community that I am getting to know my neighbors. Maybe by the end of our nightly walks, I'll be able to understand what he's saying.

and we're back to monday.

Man time is flying by! Sorry I haven't written in a while. It's been busy around here. Also, I just had to write a proposal for my research project and now I'm sleepy so this is going to be mostly pictures.

Thursday evening after class: We headed to Top Top which is a second story bar with a patio that we have been hitting up quite a lot lately. Ordered a few drinks and un churrasco gigante which is a typical Chilean dish consisting of french fries covered in onions, eggs and meat. My pirate face was because I was sick of taking pictures...

On Friday we had a field trip in the afternoon so in the morning cruised over to Cerro Alegre (one of my favorite neighborhoods in Valparaíso). We had brunch at El Desayunador (The Breakfast-ery?) which may be the only breakfast joint around. The back wall of the restaurant has a giant print by the artist Loro Coirón. He's from the area and makes awesome wood prints which is pretty rare anywhere these days.

Saturday we decided to venture into the world of Chilean wine at Viña Emiliana. It was my first ever wine tasting and I was quite surprised that I could taste the difference between the different wines as my usual reaction is just: "Ick. Wine." I had a lot a lot of fun and feel like I learned quite a bit too about both wine in general and organic farming. For fertilizer, they use alpaca poo and for insecticide they just let hens run around the vineyard and eat the little bugs.

The second vineyard we went to, we just drove up, ate some grapes off the vine and left :) It turned out to be ok though because later that night, we met the man who is their wine maker and became friends.

Today (being Sunday) we went to Reñaca Alta which is a community up a ways in the hills and spent the day with an urban Mapuche community. We helped them built an outdoor grill for community gatherings and add a roof the the existing area. In return, they fed us a feast for both breakfast and lunch, taught us the traditional Chilean dance la cueca and taught us the traditional Mapuche game palín. It is essentially field hockey but much more dangerous because you are allowed to pick people up with your field hockey stick and throw them out of the way. I asked the man teaching us not to hurt me and he agreed. I kind of felt bad because we went to do community service but we mostly just ate and played games. I think they enjoyed showing us different aspects of their culture though. 

I also became buddies with baby Matias and played let's scoop dirt onto the soccer ball and into Jill's hands for a while.

Happy weekend!