Valparaiso

Last weekend we took a trip up to Valparaiso to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary and also to visit with Teresa and Nigel. What a great city, and what a great way to start our next decade together. We walked the hills and narrow streets, ate our first non-Chilean food in two months (Indian), and tried to relax and enjoy the spring sunshine. Teresa and Nigel were wonderful hosts, and we plan on returning to Valpo next month for their wedding.

To see more photos of the weekend, click here.

The poet in the marketplace

This morning I was listening to the radio in the kitchen, which is part of my usual routine, when I heard the deep sonorous voice of Pablo Neruda, his slow oceanic rhythms breathing phrases in and out, instantly recognizable. I was stunned. They're playing tapes of Neruda on the radio. Is Chile a great country, or what?

But wait, listen to the words more carefully, the poem is talking about taking digital photographs, and now the spell is broken and I realize that this is all a hoax, and that it was a Neruda impersonator and this is a commercial! They have hijacked the voice and spirit of Don Pablo for the dirty business of selling! What an outrage. What kind of country is this?

But wait, think again. Try to imagine which poet's voice would be instantly recognizable in the USA, so that such a trick could even be attempted. Alan Ginsberg? Billy Collins? Robert Frost? Here in Chile, it seems to me that everyone would immediately know that the voice in the commercial was supposed to be Neruda, and the conceit, wink, wink, knudge, knudge, of using the voice of a communist poet to sell stuff would have a certain cheeky resonance. In the USA, there is no such single shared literary awareness on which to base the joke.

What a great country is Chile!

You can listen to the commercial here:



Better yet, you can listen to the real Neruda reading Love Poem #20, recorded in Washington, DC in 1966, Note the obvious similarity of the lines in the commercial to the initial lines of this poem.

More Fiestas Patrias

During the Fiestas Patrias celebrations last week, we were lucky enough to be invited to two family gatherings. The first one, on Saturday night, was at the house of Maria Angelica, who is an English teacher at Catherine's school. At her house we met her husband and two kids, her mother and father, her three sisters, a nephew, and a couple of other friends. Early in the evening, I ended up outside with the other men, tending the barbeque and chatting. This was really good practice for my Spanish, and the talk ranged from charcoal to meat to futbol to wine, and then suddenly we were talking about the poetry of Pablo Neruda, and then about the music of Victor Jara and how he was so brutally murdered by Pinochet's troops during the coup in 1973. I was moved by the deep sense of culture and history that lurks so close to the social surface here in Chile.

At one point during dinner the nephew asked me if I liked McDonalds, and I, of course, protested strongly that I hated McDonalds, bahhh! There was a pregnant silence at the table, and then I learned that his mother, Maria Angélica's sister, who was sitting across from me, works at McDonalds. DOH!!!! Why can't I learn to be a little more diplomatic? But, then the discussion deepened, and the questions turned to why did I not like McDonalds. Was it the food? Was it the politics of big business? (Obviously it wasn't because I was a vegetarian because I had just polished off a big plateful of grilled meat.) In the end I think I was forgiven and I confessed that I do sometimes indulge a craving for McDonalds french fries.
Unfortunately I forgot my camera that night so there are no photos.

On the last day of the four-day weekend during Fiestas Patrias, we were invited to a gathering at the house of Omar, another one of Catherine's colleagues. He lives out in the country, about 25 km east of Chillán. It was a beautiful spring day and it felt good to get out into the countryside and breathe the fresh air. As the afternoon progressed, more and more friends and family arrived. There were games, lots of asados, a horse to ride, and, of course, music and dancing. There were a couple of guitars there and several people took turns playing and singing. I even sang the one chilean folk song I know, Te Recuerdo Amanda, and I guess it was good enough since everyone sang along, and then demanded an encore performance later when more guests had arrived. It was a relaxing afternoon spent in good company with warm and fun-loving people. We felt welcomed and accepted.

More photos can be seen by clicking this link
A short video of the singing is here

Fiestas Patrias

September 11th marked the beginning of Fiesta Patrias week – the celebration of Chile’s independence from Spain – culminating on September 18th. Our July 4th is tame in comparison and from what I can tell, these are the high holidays of the year. This is a family centered time that reminds me of Thanksgiving. Long standing traditions define this holiday and include making empanadas, asados (barbecues), playing Chilean folk music and most important, dancing the Cueca. The Cueca is the national dance of Chile that takes center stage this week. It’s a courtship dance that evokes the mating ritual of hens and roosters. The dancers wave a handkerchief and use it skillfully to be coy, clever, and above all, creative.

Here we have my fourth period class on Monday. They came prepared to teach me the Cueca and launch the week in grand style. By midweek all classrooms were decorated for Dieciocho.

On Wednesday we had a huge fiesta with the seniors. Each grade level had their own celebration. Students all chipped in and helped with the food prep (asados) and organization. We had a Cueca dancing competition between classes (there are 12 in all). Dan and I got to be judges which I didn’t especially find fun because they were all winners. Here we have Romina and Nataly from an all girls class who adapted the Cueca beautifully. They got high scores for charisma and afiatamiento pareja –strong partnership. They eventually took third place. Notice the smoke in the background, testimonial to all the feasting to follow.

Yasmin and Rodrigo in traditional dress—as are many of the students in the background. We saw scores of students wearing these outfits all over Chillán this week. They ranged from pre-K to high school students. I’m trying to imagine my students in Portland embracing folkloric traditions in a similar way and then going public. Somehow the picture is not taking shape.

We’ve all danced, feasted, laughed, and hugged. Here is the winning couple with some of their classmates. The collective enthusiasm is amazing to witness—not only with students, but with colleagues as well. After students left for home on Friday afternoon the staff had our own party with empanadas and dancing. Despite having several Cueca lessons this week, Dan and I didn’t have the confidence to dance until the music changed to salsa. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Here are two Cueca videos. See if you can figure out the dance steps:

Stephanie and Luis--second place

the three finalists

More photos of cueca dancing at Dario Salas can be seen here

Nine Eleven

The earth is shivering
will she sneeze?
Suddenly without warning
buildings crashing down
horror undammed
gushing forth in violent rushes
while we desperately search for life jackets
floating devices in an unlikely event

My how we’ve changed
Homeland Security
for the hidden evil
that lies within us?
No No
you are misguided
wayward preachers of fear

We remain as true as the moon
facing forward
with a hand reaching backward
Hold my hand
tie the strand
knit the soul strings into a blanket of solidarity
warmth is ours when we embrace our true goodness

la leña mojada

Last night, with the return of the full moon, I realized that I have been in Chile for four weeks now. It has been long enough for the novelty to wear off a bit and for some of the realities to step forward. While I want to emphasize that I still love being here, I think it is only fair to talk a bit about some of the more challenging aspects of living abroad, just so you don't get the idea that it is all wine and roses everyday (although the Chilean wine continues to be superb, and I expect that as spring arrives the flowers will be spectacular).

Number one on the list of challenges is just staying warm. Our house has two wood stoves, and numerous loose fitting doors and windows for cold air to enter. There was a large pile of wood here when I arrived, and I joyfully split and burned it at a merry rate, keeping the house toasty. As the cold nights continued, and the pile began to dwindle, we began to realize that the wood pile, which our Chilean hosts has assured us would last for the rest of the winter, was not going to make it until the weather got warmer. It seems that their calculation was made with the average Chilean's tolerance for cold in mind, and our American ideas of how warm a house should be meant that we were using a lot more wood than they did. OK. We can slow down our consumption a bit, but we still need to order more wood because spring is not here yet. (There is a whole other discussion that could happen at this point about energy consumption and global warming, but let's leave that for another day and stay focused on the personal here)

No problem, I thought, Rodrigo left me the phone number of Señor Miguel. I'll call him and order some more wood...except that when I called he told me that he had no more wood. He was done for the season. So, I began to look around and found a place selling wood on one of the main streets in Chillán. I talked to the guy and he told me that he had wood, but that it was not completely dry. I figured that I still had some dry wood from before, and anyway, it would be spring, and warm, soon so I went ahead and bought some wood, which they delivered and stacked that afternoon.

I don't feel like there was any bad faith. I mean, the guy warned me that the wood was 'not completely dry', but a lot of it was really wet inside. It was basically impossible to start a fire with the new stuff, although if you got a nice hot fire going with the older, drier wood, it was possible to burn the new stuff. Each day became a new experiment in crafting subtle blends of my dwindling supply of dry wood with the slowly drying new wood. I began splitting the wet wood into smaller pieces and laying it out in the driveway on the infrequent sunny days. The neighbors must have thought I was crazy. I started stressing out about wood and fire and keeping the house warm.

So I had to ask for help. I asked Luz María, our wonderful local support person, to look around for another source of dry wood. Catherine called our friend Pam to see if the folks she was living with, Don Arturo and Señora Luz, had a good wood contact. Catherine and I are going to walk by a wood seller that she has seen up by her school this afternoon. One way or another we will find enough wood to get us through to warmer weather. At home this was something I would have just handled myself because I know how to navigate in that world, but here I have had to let go of PRIDE and ask for help, and that might be the biggest challenge of all for me.

We take so much for granted in our comfortable lives back home. When problems arrise, we typically know how to find solutions. Living abroad, that sense of competance can be stripped away. Matters that are almost automatic back home can take up huge amounts of time and energy here. On the other hand, many things that consume our lives back home have almost no significance here. So, I take it day to day here, approaching each day's 'learning opportunities' with humility and humor, learning to live outside my comfort zone.