A short(er) post: Obama, the big 5-0, stuffed animals & more...

¡Hola!

A public service announcement before I start my rambling: today, although the day is now over, is my darling dad’s 50^th birthday. So, although he refuses to allow my mom to throw him a rocking disco party, I want to at least give him some special attention here. Happy Birthday, Daddy!! Have a wonderful day, and know that I wish I could be there to force you to celebrate (though it was wonderful to Skype with you last night!).

And now back to our regular programming.

Things are going well here, and I’m feeling like, after two weeks in Chile, I have settled into something of a routine. It’s funny how it doesn’t take long to find that rhythm of the days going by; of course, as my life motto these days is to “be here when I’m here” (which applies wherever “here” may be), routines are a bit of a threat. There’s a fine line between comfortable and complacent, and sometimes I think we fall into these rhythms because it’s easy to do so and all of a sudden a year or month or week or even a day has passed and we haven’t been fully present for any of it. To be aware of the feelings we’re feeling, to be open to everything we hear and see and taste and smell and touch, and to look for God in all of it—that is to really be alive. I’m good at routines. When I’m at Marquette, I have a routine (ask anyone who’s seen my planner), and when I go home, even if it takes a few days, I quickly fall into the Oshkosh version of my routine. That’s natural and that’s OK as long as the routines don’t prevent me from experiencing—really experiencing— life. And if I came here to Chile to do anything, it is clearly to EXPERIENCE. So anyway, here’s what I’ve been doing, and although it looks like a routine, I’m trying to take the moments one-by-one each time they occur and really be present:

On school days (as everything changes on the weekends, of course), I wake up at 9am. I get dressed, make my bed (though Gladis usually straightens the corners by the time I’m home from class), get myself ready, pack my things for the day (my books, water bottle, sunscreen, swimsuit sometimes, money, etc.), and make myself breakfast. Almost everyday, I have bread with cheese. There’s not a lot of quick-prep food or snacks around here because Gladis goes grocery shopping on a need-to basis and often buys fruits and other things that don’t keep for long. Almost everyday, I have yogurt with a banana and a piece of bread with cheese (which is lunch food at home, but anytime food here), although sometimes I have cereal. I have a glass of milk in the morning, which, although it tastes a bit different, is so wonderful. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t get any milk for six months! When I’m done eating, it’s usually time to go. I leave my house at 9:55 and arrive in my classroom at about 9:59, right in time for my 10:00 class, which finishes at 1 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 3:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (with a lunch break at some point).

After class, if we haven’t already eaten, we usually go as a big group or as several small groups to a Ticket Restaurant nearby or to the cafeteria to get lunch. Then, many days, we go explore some aspect of Santiago, though we’re usually tired and hot and not up for too much walking around in the mid-afternoon heat. The pool is a favorite spot, and that’s where we went today, for example, but sometimes we go to a park or some sort of attraction. I’d like to do more exploring, and I’m often the one begging for us to “go do something” while others are contemplating going home for a nap. I guess I have this idea in my head that, each day, we could go on a new adventure. But if people aren’t feeling up for it, I don’t like to push. Going home at 3 in the afternoon just seems depressing to me, especially since I don’t usually go out on school nights and that means I’m in for the night then. I try to stay out, doing something with someone, until about 6 or 7.

I then return home and am sweaty and tired and hungry. Many days, my late afternoon/evening ensues like this: I tell Gladis or Carolina or whoever’s home how my day was and ask how they’re doing, then I have an once (snack), go for a run, take a shower, do homework if I have it, spend some time on my computer (trying to keep updated with the news from home, sending emails, uploading pictures, and other business), and then I migrate into the living area to hang out with whoever’s home. We don’t always have dinner, but if we do, we usually eat around 9 or 10. After that, people just sit around chatting or playing games on the computer. I’ve been able to get to bed around 1, sometimes later if I’m blogging or something, which means I get a good amount of sleep. I’m always tired at night because the sun sucks all of my energy out of me during the day.

Anyway, Monday was something like that—we didn’t do any exploring because everyone was tired from the weekend, but in the evening, I ran to Santa Lucia, which was exciting because it was outside of our city block and was rather liberating. I organized my photos on Picasa, so you’re all able to access my public gallery and look at those. I’d love to have them in this blog, but something is being stubborn and will not allow me to do that, though I’ve seen it done.

On Tuesday, immediately after class, we all hopped on the Metro and went to a place called Basic Bar y Restaurante. Anna, a girl in my class, knew about Basic, and told us that we could watch the Inauguration there. Being away for something so major in the U.S. has been weird for all of us, so we were incredibly excited to partake in the festivities, albeit from a distance. As it turns out, Basic is a total gringo venue, meaning that there are pretty much no Chileans there. The food, the décor, and the service are all U.S.-style. Actually, the owners are from California! I had a fabulous Hawaiian cheeseburger with delicious fries, and I actually got a GLASS OF WATER, which is pretty impossible to order at a restaurant. Here, carbonated water is really popular (we all hate it), so you have to ask for “agua sin gas” (water without gas/carbonation) to avoid that. But even so, we still get bottled water at restaurants rather than glasses of tap water, which is really frustrating because it’s just another thing to pay for and we’re all used to going to a restaurant and getting water for free. Anyway, the food was phenomenal, and since we were all so excited, we splurged on several pitches of beer and a bottle of wine, which I shared with Hanna. It was a very yummy Riesling and definitely worth the extra pesos for the occasion.

Basic was totally packed—our group, which included almost everyone from our program, took up several tables pushed-together and dominated the center of the restaurant, but we were surrounded on all sides by people from the U.S. who didn’t want to miss out on the Inauguration either. The restaurant had a huge screen and a live feed from CNN back home (in English!) so it was almost like being there, except we weren’t freezing! We stood during the National Anthem and sang proudly, we cheered when Aretha—and that fabulous hat!—took the stage, and we applauded several times during the President Obama’s 18-minute speech. I’ve never felt more patriotic in my life, which is funny because we are in Chile. The enthusiasm surrounding the Inauguration, even from thousands of miles away, was contagious and inspiring. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to attend the real ceremony, and I can’t wait to hear from Bethany and Catí about their experiences in D.C.

We were feeling pretty good after our mid-afternoon party (apparently pretty customary here, given this and our Valparaíso experiences with lunchtime drinking!), and we didn’t feel like going straight home. Liz, a new friend of mine who attends Boston College, felt pretty strongly about tracking down a particular ice cream shop near Parque Forestal, a huge, green park. So, we did that (as if we needed more food!), and I had a yummy scoop of Green Tea with Mango. I had seen a sign on the Metro for a Book Festival in the area, so we walked a few blocks to check that out but found out that it didn’t begin for another couple of hours. However, the Museo de Bellas Artes is located nearby, and I had read good things about the art collections there, so I suggested we visit the museum. No one felt too excited about walking around a museum, but I convinced them that it would be a good one.

Unfortunately, the Museo de Bellas Artes is located on one side of this building and on the other side is the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. I’m not sure how to explain the things we saw in this museum, but I’ll try: a sculpture made of tacks; a series of sketches about the process of fertilizing an egg (medium: actual semen); a gigantic purple sheet suspended from a huge, otherwise empty, room; several paintings that seemed to have no purpose and could have been mistaken for a Kindergartener’s refrigerator art; a room containing sculptures made of human bones, emerald wheelchairs, canes, and walkers hanging from the ceiling, and a bunch of motors; and, by far the strangest and most disturbing expositions, a room containing embalmed dogs and another containing embalmed cats, all of which were doing strange things (the dogs were evidently at New Year’s party and the cats were crawling around in a room full of broken glass). I enjoy art, and I try my best to appreciate it, but I was not alone in thinking that this museum was the greatest waste of $400 pesos ever (that’s less than $1, and I still mean that wholeheartedly).

We left discouraged, disappointed, and disgusted, and decided to sit down in the park for awhile before making our next move. As it turns out, since the book fair still would not begin for an hour or so and no one (except myself) seemed to think it was worth waiting for, our next move was toward the Metro to go back home. It worked out alright that we ended our afternoon then, though, because I came home in time to have a snack, go for a run (the perfect time to do so is around 8:15pm as that’s when it finally begins to cool off a bit), shower, and make it on time to my Skype date with Dad at 10pm, which was very wonderful. Not only did I get to chat with him, but I got to see Buckles! Anyone who knows our loving, handsome, quirky yellow lab will understand why I miss him and why it was exciting to see him too.

Today after class we took another trip to Pablo Neruda’s Santiago home, La Chascona. Again, I was fascinated by the architecture, which was inspired once more by boats and accessorized accordingly. I also enjoyed looking at the many items he collected from around the world during his lifetime. I’ve been reading some of his poetry while I’m here, and I’ve read it a bit in the past, and since he’s a legend in Chile, I thought I should purchase something from the gift shop. I found the perfect souvenir: an artsy drawing of the colorful hills of Valparaíso (where he has another home, you’ll recall), with a few words of Neruda’s about this city he loved. Given that I instantly felt the magic of Valparaíso and can’t wait to return, and because I like art and Pablo Neruda, this was a perfect souvenir and I can’t wait to frame it when I return home. By the way, Katharine, I fully intend to hang it somewhere in our apartment, probably right alongside that fish picture from Seattle that you have insulted!

After our visit at La Chascona, we were pretty hungry (as usual). Marcela, our kind instructor, led us to Patio Bellavista, where I'd been before but only briefly. It's a new, very upscale-looking patio with several restaurants and tons of small shops, and it's very pretty. We sat down at a restaurant that had upholstered chairs around the tables, as it looked comfortable. The food, as we might have expected, was somewhat pricey, but we were able to combine lots of Tickets and pay mostly with those. I shared a pizza with Laura M. (there are two Lauras), which was delicious. We were a bit brave, as it contained bacon (of course!), ham, tomatoes, basil, two types of cheese, and pears! I loved it, and although we had to wait quite a long time for our food, it was relaxing to hang out in such a pretty area and chat with a smaller group of people. Everyone in the program is really quite nice, though I haven't had equal opportunity to talk to each person. Our lunch crowd today included myself, Liz, Alex, Laura, and Beth (the last three all attend Loyola and were already good friends before coming here, which is sometimes a bit intimidating although they're all very sweet). It was an enjoyable meal, and I love Bellavista.

Afterwards, we had to go back to campus to get our school ID pictures taken. That was a pretty quick process, and afterwards I went to the pool for about two hours to cool off with Ken, Tony, Rob, Liz, and Caitlin. The boys, much to our bewilderment, seem to group together all the time, so that left Liz, Caitlin and I to have some good discussion, some of which included possible theories as to why the boys seem uninterested in pursuing our friendship. Aren't men always a mystery?

Well, lucky for you, this post is a bit shorter than most of the others. I don’t have much to say, as the days are flying by here but not seeming, at least during the week, too noteworthy. This weekend, I’m planning to do something exciting (perhaps white-water rafting, which I loved in Alaska!), and I also need to begin thinking about February more seriously. I have a rough idea of where I’d like to go and what I’d like to see, and everyone has been talking about travel plans, which is kind of overwhelming. I now know that I’m for sure traveling with two girls I really enjoy and get along with, both from BC, Liz (the aforementioned) and Caitlin. I’m not sure who else will join us (we should probably keep the group to six or less, I’d say), but that will all get figured out soon, I would imagine. Everyone is going to be doing many of the same things, but to travel with 23 people would be a major headache, so we’ll be splitting up. It’s daunting to think about who will go with who and where we’ll go, but it’s quickly approaching! For now, I’m going to be here. I must constantly remind myself of this.

As I mentioned, I uploaded my Chile pictures to Picasa, a photo site accessible to all of you (whereas using Facebook wouldn’t work as well). This is the link to my public galleries. If you have any problems accessing my photos, just let me know. I’m excited to finally be able to share some of them with all of you. You’ve been so diligently reading and now it’s time to look at the pictures! Enjoy, and please give me feedback whenever you have questions or comments about anything in my photos or on here. Knowing that you’re all interested is what keeps me dedicated to updating this thing. Well, that and the fact that I miss you all, of course.

Here’s the photo site link: http://picasaweb.google.com/amwolff87

I’m off to bed (and I bet you are too).

Que te duermas bien (sleep well)!

Amanda