It appears that this is the start of my fourth week in Chile, and true to my habits I seem to have let the blog fall to the wayside. So here goes! Mega post for the win. Here are some quick updates of what I've been up to:
- The first weekend I was here I went to a celebration for the Mapuche new year, which falls on the winter solstice. I got up early on saturday, and Seba and I took a bus to San Antonio, a small town about an hour and a half outside of Santiago, located on the coast. Since I tend to have absolutely horrible luck with buses (see: New Years in Valparaíso; Puerto Natales, Chile; Arequipa to Cuzco, Peru; and February bus-meets-blizzard from NYC) I decided to leave us ample time. We arrived about an hour and a half early, to a blustery, freezing cold morning on the sea. While I get many stares for being a gringa in Santiago, I turn even more heads in the tiny towns. Seba and I walked through someone's backyard (whoops), behind some cow pastures, a dirt tennis court, and through some giant mounds of dirt, in order to reach the ocean. While I'm not much of a morning person, it was really amazing to be standing at the side of the ocean with a crisp, winter sun shining overhead. The beach was uninhabitted by tourists or condos; only a few early risers were walking along, enjoying the beauty of the early morning as we were. After tromping around through the hills of sand, we turned back into the village to head towards the Wetripantu (Mapuche new year, in "mapudungun"). I really enjoyed being able to participate in the celebration with the group of people there. About 15-20 people from a Mapuche community in Valparaiso had come for the day, dressed in traditional Mapuche clothes, to share their traditions for celebrating the Wetripantu. The celebration, like most other new years celebrations, welcomes in the new year. We initially started by just watching the celebration, but after only a few minutes were invited to join in. We followed behind the community members, mimicking the dance/steps that they were doing. I didn't really know what to expect from this event, but it was so nice to be included in their celebration, and be able to share this tradition with the people there. We shared in a delicious lunch (at these sorts of gatherings one never goes hungry), and had a fun time talking with other visitors around the lunch table. While in San Antonio, I got to know 2 of the CIEE kids from this past semester, one of whom had stayed in my host family's friend's house. Such a small world! All in all, it was an amazing event to go to, and at the end of the day the lonko (leader of the community) was handing out pamphlets about Intercultural Health; just perfect for my SIP topic!
- I keep running into protests! I live RIGHT outside of La Moneda, and just a few blocks from the main campus of La Chile (where they have been having 24 hours of music blasting through the streets), so I keep accidentally running into all these events. One day we walked out onto Alameda, the main street, and bumped straight into the annual gay rights parade. People were spilling out from the street, onto the side walks, waving rainbow flags, and just being generally happy. Instead of skirting around the crowd to get to the metro, we decided to walk the 10 or 12 blocks to our destination, joining along. The other day I stepped out of my appartment, intending to put some quality hours in at the library (hah) and ran smack dab into another huge protest, this one about the education system. (Pretty much all highschools and universities have been on strike for the past month or so, and are demanding education reform from the government. Newspapers have reported that Chile hasn't seen this many people demonstrating since the end of the dictatorship in the late 1980s...should be interesting to see what happens!)
- I experienced my first encounter with tear gas! Like I said, I live in a pretty central location, and one day as I was getting off of the bus to walk the few bus home, I stepped out into the streets and immediately felt my eyes start stinging. People everywhere were walking with their scarves up over their mouth and nose, and store owners were rapidly pulling the metal shutters closed in front of their property. Some stores had kept the shutters open half way, so that potential customers could duck under and into their stores. As I walked home, eyes and face prickling from the gas, I looked over as a commotion started on the other side of the street. About 50 young people seemed to have gotten riled up and carried away after the days' protests, and had proceeded to tear down the protective metal railings that the police had put up for the protesters. I crossed the street, and saw that they were dragging large pieces of trash and paper into the street, and suddenly a large blaze jumped up out of the concrete. Seconds later, the police who had already been milling around, started moving in. Police cars (which look like someone smushed 4 giant hummers together with walls about 7 feet thick) arrived at the scene shortly thereafter. As much as I love sticking around to see what is going on in the street, I decided that that was a good time to head home (you can stop worrying now, mom :D ). Just another normal day in the city.
- For the 4th of July I decided to make a good ole american dinner. Some friends came over and we ate cheesburgers, corn on the cob, roasted veggies, and brownies with creamcheese topping, yummm. Right now the Copa America (soccerrr) is going on, and that night Chile played, and won. So it was sort of an American/Chilean celebration night. Unfortunately, being an idiot, I decided that night to cook my hamburger nice and raw, while I made all the others cooked all the way through. While that might seem like a delicious idea, which it was at the time, the next morning I realized how horrible of a decision that was. Sparing you the details, let me just say that my digestive system and I were very unhappy for the next 2 days.
- This past Saturday was the doble fiesta for Renato and Leonor's birthdays! Renatito turned 3 and Leo 1, and my family had a giant baby bash for them. Anna visited for the carrete, so she, Seba, and I showed up to celebrate with the tots. I spent the first chunk of time in the kitchen, helping Héctor make anticucho, a meat shiskabob thing; these had beef, chicken, and sausage, cooked on the grill. So good! Then we spent the rest of the night playing with the kids, and acting like 5 year olds. Anna and I spent most of our time sitting on the floor, wrapped in streamers, wearing children's party hats (none of the kids wanted to wear them), and playing with the tots. Most of the adults just sort of started at us with the "what the hell is that gringa doing?" look on their faces. Great great night.
- Regarding my SIP, I have mostly been doing research via the internet/in libraries here. Today I met with my advisor for the first time, which was really helpful. I had sort of been feeling like the library work I was doing wouldn't actually end up being that useful, but today talking with my profe, I realized that I've gained a lot of knowledge doing all of these research. I still have a long way to go, but it was nice to realize that I have actually advance. It was also really helpful to meet with her, because I was able to talk through the thesis and start to focus it a little better on what I'm really going to talk about. No suprise, but my SIP has sort of taken a 180 degree turn from where I thought it would be going in the first place. It's sort of fun to see where SIP will end up, it's almost as if it has a life of its own (wooOOoooOoooOOooo...).
- Harry Potter comes out here on July 14th, what nowwwww USA.
That's it for now! Maybe I will be better at updating this with more frecuency (hah), but for now enjoy this monster of a post. Pictures to come soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment