Waiting for my real life to begin

Ohhhh, so bad.

I have a word document full of blog posts I've started (well, not really, mostly just titles) and I'm well over the halfway point of my time in Chile here, and I have nothing for you. Today I'm resorting to copying and pasting part of an email I sent to a friend... but it kind of pulls a lot of things I've been feeling more generally together, complete with clichéd travel-related metaphor! Oh boy! First person to spot it gets a scratch-and-sniff sticker in the color of their choice. (words will not describe how much Chilean high school students go crazy for these, by the way...secret participation weapon!)

***

I'm starting to hit what might be some kind of stride in teaching, and it makes me want to go home so I can learn how to do it right and start moving forward on things, which is good because I have been wanting that feeling (rather than the oh my god I wish time would just stop! feeling) for awhile now. I have officially been in Chile 3 months as of today, and I'm planning to be home in 2 more (a little less than a month and a half left in the classroom, then I get to travel!) It's bizarre how quickly and how slowly the time has passed, and how many things I've seen that I was and was not expecting to see. I'm not in love with Chile, and I miss everyone a lot... I think I wrote an email earlier about feeling like I'm always waiting for something to start or end here, and that waiting feeling is not something I like living. The good thing is that I'm starting to feel a lot less like that, and although I'm not in love with Chile like maybe I was thinking I was going to be, we are still friends, and I feel like at least one of the main reasons I came (to see if teaching is something I can do and enjoy doing) has been achieved. The other things I´ve picked up along the way are a lot harder to name but, I know, no less useful in answering some longings I was having in the past year, or maybe longer, and they are waiting to be packed up in my suitcase to be carried back home with me and unpacked at a much later date. I should probably get going; we have some kind of craziness or other in terms of a school event cancelling classes for the third time this week (potentially a fourth time tomorrow!) this afternoon and, as I´m starting to roll with it instead of judging it, I'm actually excited to see what will happen next. (Meggers might be playing some soccer this afternoon! Oh my giddy godkins.)

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I´d like to promise I´ll be better about updating, but let's work on making sure I have a steady supply of clean socks and big girl work clothes before we move on to anything more ambitious.

Walking to School

I have class Monday through Friday, and on every day except Wednesday, barring any unexpected changes in the day’s schedule (word to the wise in Chile: always expect the unexpected!) I wake up at about 7 am. I sit in my warm bed and wake myself up slowly with the help of Spongebob Squarepants dubbed in Spanish. There’s something about the surreality of hearing the same lines I can recite word for word with my friend Tierney now coming out of the mouths of Bob Esponja, Patricio, Calamardo, and Don Cangrejo that prepares me for the day ahead. Right after Spongebob is a subtitled episode of Friends, a show which I enjoyed as much as any other North American back home, but now have come to rely on as my gringa escape when needed. By this time I’m getting up, making my bed, and putting on my big girl work pants and sweater for the day.

During a quick cup of microwaved milk with Nescafe and a toasted roll with marmalade, I’m looking at the clock. When the big hand hits the five, I’m off walking to school, buttoning my coat and putting my headphones in, deciding what music to listen to that morning. At UCLA I used to be somewhat judgmental of the people that automatically disconnected themselves from their surroundings with white earbuds jammed into either side of their head on the walk to class, but here it’s become part of my morning routine and the best way to put myself in a good mood for teaching that day. Maybe there’s a kernel of truth about that desire to disconnect – the walk to and from my liceo (high school) is prime time for me to be hit by the thought that I’m living and working in South America, YAY!, but it’s also prime time for me to be hit by the thought that, oh sweet jesus, I’m living and working in South America.

Besides, it’s hard to completely block out the sights and sounds of the walk to school, whether it’s the cars and trucks whizzing past too quickly on one of Yumbel’s two main streets or the construction crews that have been working on paving my family’s street for nearly two months now. I walk two blocks on the main drag and then veer to the left, the road less taken. I pass the house Gladys’ family lives in, and the cute teal house where Don’s and Joanna’s former host aunties live. The view opens up to the green hills of the campo on the fringes of Yumbel right about the same time that I have to cross to the other side of the street to avoid the muddy ditch that juts out into the street. My breath catches each time I pass this way, and I realize I will be kind of sad when the day comes in which that sight becomes something normal to me.

I keep walking past the houses and shops, all assorted colors and shapes – some covered with stucco, some little more than artfully tied together sticks and discarded fence posts. Sometimes someone peers out of their house as I’m walking by, squinting against the sun, or maybe the fog, or maybe the incongruous sight of the gringa tramping up their street in headphones, greeting them with a tentative hola. (In a separate post about the walk back from school, I will tell you about the old man who seems to be parked outside his house by his family each day in a lawn chair, who always seems really surprised when I say hello.)

I fought somewhat hard for the ability to be able to walk to school by myself. It’s about a 15 minute walk and requires me to make two turns, yet for my first week at the liceo, the physics teacher was picking me up each morning as well as returning me to my house for the lunch hour and picking me up again in the afternoon. While I appreciated the gesture, I quickly realized that relying on this ride to school was not going to work if I wanted to have any time to set my room up before class actually started. Even now many people seem surprised by how I do not seem to mind walking to and from school each day. It’s difficult to communicate how it’s my alone time in a culture where alone time isn’t a priority for the majority of people. I still feel lingering guilt over this and try to be extra nice to Profesor Pardo, the physics teacher, when I see him in the staff room.

I’m getting close to school when I start seeing more blue-green plaid skirts, more navy blue sweaters and surly expressions, followed by double-takes, and suddenly, assorted “hello miss!”s thrown in my general direction. If I see Pascualita and Pamela, two of my fourth years, it becomes “Wassup, miss?” and I marvel at the things they remember from my class and the things that they don’t. I turn off my music and tuck it into my coat pocket, as prepared as I can be for another day trying to teach English to my Chilean punks.

I wish I knew English like you do!

From a website on motivating yourself to learn English...

***

You're having a great moment with your girlfriend. You're sitting close to each other, your hand is around her back. The radio is playing a beautiful song. You can understand every word of it. Your girlfriend asks: "What's the song about?". "It's about love, honey", you reply. "You're so smart. I wish I knew English like you do", she says. You feel loved and admired.

***

Oh, learning.

Shiny, Happy People

Grandma Lucy read me my horoscope in Spanish this morning while in the car, on our way to our first official family outing at the Saltos del Laja. It said something like this....

Cancer
You will find yourself in a better mood this week, because you know you have things to do. You tend to stay inside, but this week is the perfect one in which to search for things that will stir the storms of passion inside of you.

The storms of passion, eh? It has been raining an awful lot lately. Which means a lot of staying inside, a lot of subtitled Friends reruns, and a lot of knitting. It's comforting to have something to get lost in when I'm about 89% not sure what's going on around me, whether it's at school or in my host family's house.

At some point this week I set aside the knitting and.... started to make more lists. One list for teaching stuff - my site observation with la otra Meghan was eye-opening and helped reconfirm some things I'm startled to find I've forgotten already. I came up with a kick-ass idea for an extra-curricular activity I want to start in my liceo that makes me hop-from-foot-to-foot excited just thinking about it (school newspaper, anyone?) ...

I also made a "feel-better-about-life" list, because if list making has its limits, I do not yet know them. On top of the list is more visitas . There are some people and relationships I've been neglecting in the past 2 weeks, relationships that I've come to realize will define what Chile means for me when I'm back in gringolandia, trying to paint the picture for everyone else. Senora Isabel, former host mom of Corey and current host mom of Don, is among these people. Her smile and wry sense of humor, one that transcends the language and culture boundaries I sometimes think are insurmountable, never fail to warm my heart.

Luckily yesterday we shared a night of waffles (pronounced waff-les in Spanish) and wine with Don and Viviana la loca, niece of Isabel and best friend of my mama (oh the small world that is Yumbel) which culminated in a nighttime trip up to see the statue of the Virgen on the hill overlooking Yumbel. The rain had stopped and the southern hemisphere stars peeking out behind the clouds and the white hood of the Virgen is a sight I won't soon forget.

The meaning of refuge.

A question that Chileans seem to love asking me is what religion I am. Catholic or protestant? They ask. My parents didn't really raise me with any religion, I say, although I do believe in something. I don't know how to say I don't know what that something is yet. Imagine the confusion if I told them I was once the co-president of the Buddhist club! At the very least it might give them something else to chew on besides the fact that I actually (gasp!) enjoy taking walks and (bigger gasp!) showing up on time to class! Oh, those wacky Chileans.

It will take another two weeks for my school schedule to go back to normal, or as normal as it gets round these parts. In this time I will watch my liceo celebrate its anniversary with a nearly week-long fiesta and the following week I will celebrate Chilean Independence Day with my family who are becoming more of a family every day (remember, friends, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.) I will gather my feet back under me, and my sense of humor too. I've stopped counting the days, but can I take a moment to say that I've been in Chile almost 8 weeks already? I will listen to the falling rain and the wind from behind my eyelids. I will make cookies for the staff room and ask about weekends and have another cup of tea already. I will read this poem, and take or make the time to reflect.

Monastery Nights

by Chase Twichell

I like to think about the monastery

as I’m falling asleep, so that it comes

and goes in my mind like a screen saver.

I conjure the lake of the zendo,

rows of dark boats still unless

someone coughs or otherwise

ripples the calm.

I can hear the four AM slipperiness

of sleeping bags as people turn over

in their bunks. The ancient bells.

When I was first falling in love with Zen,

I burned incense called Kyonishiki,

“Kyoto Autumn Leaves,”

made by the Shoyeido Incense Company,

Kyoto, Japan. To me it smelled like

earnestness and ether, and I tried to imagine

a consciousness ignorant of me.

I just now lit a stick of it. I had to run downstairs

for some rice to hold it upright in its bowl,

which had been empty for a while,

a raku bowl with two fingerprints

in the clay. It calls up the monastery gate,

the massive door demanding I recommit myself

in the moments of both its opening

and its closing, its weight now mine,

I wanted to know what I was,

and thought I could find the truth

where the floor hurts the knee.

I understand no one I consider to be religious.

I have no idea what’s meant when someone says

they’ve been intimate with a higher power.

I seem to have been born without a god receptor.

I have fervor but seem to lack

even the basic instincts of the many seekers,

mostly men, I knew in the monastery,

sitting zazen all night,

wearing their robes to near-rags

boy-stitched back together with unmatched thread,

smoothed over their laps and tucked under,

unmoving in the long silence,

the field of grain ripening, heavy tasseled,

field of sentient beings turned toward candles,

flowers, the Buddha gleaming

like a vivid little sports car from his niche.

What is the mind that precedes

any sense we could possibly have

of ourselves, the mind of self-ignorance?

I thought that the divestiture of self

could be likened to the divestiture

of words, but I was wrong.

It’s not the same work.

One’s a transparency

and one’s an emptiness.

Kyonishiki.... Today I’m painting what Mom

calls no-colors, grays and browns,

evergreens: what’s left of the woods

when autumn’s come and gone.

And though he died, Dad’s here,

still forgetting he’s no longer

married to Annie,

that his own mother is dead,

that he no longer owns a car.

I told them not to make any trouble

or I’d send them both home.

Surprise half inch of snow.

What good are words?

And what about birches in moonlight,

Russell handing me the year’s

first chanterelle—

Shouldn’t God feel like that?

I aspire to “a self-forgetful,

perfectly useless concentration,”

as Elizabeth Bishop put it.

So who shall I say I am?

I’m a prism, an expressive temporary

sentience, a pinecone falling.

I can hear my teacher saying, No.

That misses it.

Buddha goes on sitting through the century,

leaving me alone in the front hall,

which has just been cleaned and smells of pine.

English not only opens doors, it also opens windows.

Wisdom of my school's principal!

In some ways there has been a lot of door AND window opening of late, whether it's Gladys leaving the door wide open while cleaning (have I mentioned that Chileans are not big on keeping their houses well insulated in the winter? And yet my family has a collective near-coronary when I consider leaving the house without two sweaters, a buttoned-up coat, a scarf, gloves, boots, and a hat) or me prying open the bathroom window each morning to see if the weather has improved.

The sky remains a hazy shade of winter here in Yumbel. One smell I will never forget is the smell of the smoke issuing from the houses on my walk to school in the morning, and in the late afternoon - it comes from the small wood-burning fireplace in each Chilean home, and I can only describe it as toasted marshmallows. The wind whips over the roofs of the houses when it rains, and on days like these we stay indoors and drink endless cups of tea as my macho host brother, home from army training on the weekend, listens to Mazzy Star and the Cranberries on repeat, a situation whose humor needs to be fully experienced to be understood.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks as I try to settle into my life in Yumbel for real. Corey and Joanna, the previous volunteers, made it a fun-filled two and a half weeks and helped me adjust in ways I'm really missing now that they're gone, leaving me the gringa queen of Yumbel. I think I will learn to enjoy my reign, but for now, it's lonely at the top. The challenges of teaching at school are becoming a big thing, as are host family dynamics and general missings of everyone. I could do a separate post about all the frustrations, but I don't want to turn into another version of the Debbie Downer Chilean news programs that my host mom seems to love watching and commenting on.

I haven't been writing enough, and I think that might be a sopaipilla-sized part of what's going on. For now I'm trying to be patient with everything and everyone, including myself. I caught a bad cold almost two weeks ago, and that hasn't been helping, but it does give me an excuse to rest and relax a little - I got myself somewhat re-organized with a snazzy new notebook (when in doubt, make a list! especially when that list is in a notebook with Luis Miguel on the cover!) and my latest knitting project (a scarf with llamas and the word "bacan" knitted into it) has grown enormously! I remain as liquid as ever, although I fear evaporating completely. (A little chemistry humor for you all... lord, what has happened to me?!?!)

Every day is new learnings, something else to puzzle over and analyse over without over-analysing. I'm listening to Hawaiian ukelele music on the walk to school, hoping that the sun comes soon, and hoping that today is the day I will have reliable internet access to attempt to upload pictures for the 6th time. So far, no good. I owe you all pictures of painfully adorable baby sheep and mouthwatering asado (vegetarians, avert your eyes!) as well as better updates. Until then, I love you all, and please, wherever you are, appreciate the fact that your hands are not numb. :)

Abrazos,
Meghan

Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme... it´s BOBSLED TIME

Gather round the wood-burning fireplace stove, weones, because it´s time for an update! I know that you are all sitting in your well-insulated homes in gringolandia, shivering not from cold, but from sheer anticipation.

There is so, so much to tell. I´ve been in Yumbel almost two weeks now and, blessedly, I´m beginning to settle in a little more each day. Things with the host family have been mejorando-ing on the whole. Something happened last night which was less than ideal, but I think it´s going to bring us closer together ultimately, so I´m not too worried about it. A few words on the host family experience, while we´re on the subject... It´s been really interesting to hear about the experiences of my WorldTeach buddies and my fellow current volunteers in Yumbel. It seems like we have all been having some similar things crop up as we adjust to life as gringos in Chile, but we also each have the stories that make each experience unique: some funny, some awkward, some a combination of each.

A bit about my family... my mom is a working mother, a teacher at the basica (elementary school), and separated from her husband (at some point I will write an entire post about the craziness that is modern Chilean family dynamics!). Her younger son, aged 11, lives at home, while her elder son, 18, lives in Concepcion (the nearest big city, about an hour and 15 minutes away) during the week because he is training in the army. I once said that I always wondered what it would be like to live with a brother; now I sort of get a taste of that, complete with noncommunicativeness and one word answers. I suppose it doesn´t help that my grasp on Chilean (no, it is NOT the same as Spanish!) is still in progress.

Others in the cast of characters include my grandma, who lives right next door and wanders in mas-o-menos two times a day and eats lunch with us, and sometimes dinner (colloquially known as onces. Oh, I should do a food post, shouldn´t I? Hmmm.) The other person I see pretty much every day is Gladys, who is an interesting bird. She is kind of the family´s maid, as in she watches the house while everyone is gone for the day, cooks lunch for us, cleans, and does our laundry. Gladys speaks the most Chilean-y of all the Chileans I´ve met so far: super fast, sans recognizable intonation, and words I´ve never heard of in my 6 years of Spanish. Paradoxically, Gladys is the person I feel most connected with my house, and she is rapidly becoming a favorite part of my day. She stands about four feet 10 inches and haunts downstairs, traveling between the kitchen, the living room to watch novelas, and outside to gather more wood for the fire. We were talking about dying our hair yesterday, and I told her that I already have one or two grey hairs. She asked where, and when I pointed to my head, she immediately hopped up and started digging around in my hair to find it. She makes sure I put on my coat before leaving and I´m starting to love her and our awkward conversations to bits.


More on the people of Yumbel. Actually, more on my fellow gringos. Don, another WorldTeach comrade, lives down the street in the same house as Joanna. We had the best time on Tuesday taking over the night English class for adults in the community! I´m looking forward to working more with him and hanging out in the next few months. Joanna is my age and was there to pick me up in Concepcion, which I´m eternally grateful for. She and I enjoy talking about knitting projects and listening to David Bowie on the bus. She is super bacán and a sweetie. I´m going to miss her a lot when she leaves next week!

Because she works at the Basica with Don, I don´t see as much of Joanna as I do of Corey, my favorite Canadian weon who I work with at the liceo. Corey enjoys pretending to be flaite and rattling off chilenismos as if they were going out of style (they´re not, unfortunately for yours truly at the moment.) Corey is also always up for random adventures that require many bus transfers and/or coming home smelling of mariscos. For example, last weekend we hacer´d la cimarra (skipped school... well, kind of. Our teacher was absent due to illness, which in Chile means class is cancelled. Substitute teachers? Such things are for pansies! Or so it seems.) to go to Talcahuano, a small port city most famous for mariscos (shellfish!) empanadas and el buque ¨HUASCAR,¨ a boat famous for being captured by the Chileans during the war with Peru (and perhaps Bolivia) in the late 1800s. We had way more fun than should be legal on a cheesy tourist site, with pictures sure to follow. (If only I could find Horatio Hornblower theme music....)

Other excursions last weekend included a trip to Chillan to try to see the mural depicting the life and times of Bernardo O´Higgins, Chile´s national hero and liberator, henceforth to be known as Bo´ Higgins (or, for those so inclined, Bo´ Higgedy!) On Saturday we went as a group with many of the English teachers in the schools in the area to las Termas de Chillan, a wonderous place of pristine Andes slopes and thermal baths heated by a volcano. We didn´t have time to ski, but we had a blast and a half sledding on plastic sacks (multiple sacks = more people = MORE GOOD TIMES! We saw a family of 9 trying to sled down... welcome to Latin America, my friends. The weather´s fine.). Cool Runnings reenactments obligatory. The weather was perfect - glittering snow on the ground, bright sun in the cloudless sky, and the Andes in the background as we sat in steaming pools of mineral water. And you thought I was roughing it!

What´s that? Teaching? School? Oh, that.

Seriously now. This week has seen me in my classroom by myself for the first time, and so far, so good. I´m having a blast playing introduction games with my students. The challenges of trying to balance the expectations the teachers have for the students and the kind of work their textbook says they should be doing, and my hope that by the time they will actually be able to speak some English and not parrot difficult passges from reading assignments, are going to be great. I´m hoping to get things in order (my schedule, for example!) so that I can plan more difficult, yet still enjoyable and doable lessons for these kids. Such is mi mejor sueño. Thankfully I have a lot of time to get there. I think these students have a lot of potential to surprise me.

One last thing before I go. I have a confession to make. In Chillan on Sunday, in a bout of combined homesickness and wishful thinking, I bought... a sundress. A bright red flowy cotton sundress. A bright red flowy cotton sundress that I will not be able to wear for at least another month and a half.

Don´t judge me!!! I will wear my llama hat AND my alpaca hair mittens tonight in penance. And I will promise to get some pictures posted up for all my weones. Chau for now!

Meghan Zero has reached new states of liquidity.

Do you ever find yourself thinking in Facebook status updates? Unfortunately I do. Maybe I can think of it more as narrating life in the third person, which is always kind of fun.

I don't have much time tonight because I want to be all bright and shiny and perky (or as perky as it gets in forty degree weather) for my first day of school tomorrow, but I wanted to share a catchphrase (of which we WorldTeachers had many) during orientation, partly for you, and partly to remind myself.

Just be liquid.

Lots of unanticpated "sorpresas" in the past day and a half, the least fun of which is that I am now sans Jessie in Yumbel, thanks to even MORE annoying Ministry hijinks! (say it with me... maaa.. puuu.... chayyyy....!) This alone makes everything a little colder than it should be. Living with a host family is turning out to be harder than expected; I'm hoping the awkward period wears off sooner rather than later. More on them later, because they are really nice people. Just a lot of uncertainty, which requires me to be more liquid than what I am accustomed to.

Wish me luck and warm toes for tomorrow! And LOTS of liquidity! In return I promise you pictures of Home Sweet Yumbel, where the magic may or may not happen.