Week 16-18: Saddling up my Backpack

30 Sec. Update: With only a couple day left in Los Alamos, I'm trying to soak up as much of life here as I can. A fishing trip with my host-father, an excursion to the campo to collect firewood, long walks through town, a late-night barbecue with some of my Chilean friends, and lots of conversation around the kitchen table. The strikes finally came to an end last Friday after having lost over a month of my time teaching. I have come to accept that striking is just part of life in Chile as frustrating as it is that I lost so much time with my students. Looking ahead to the next couple of months, I have been making travel plans, working on my grad school applications, and trying to decide when I am going to return to the United States. My next blog post will be coming to you from Southern Patagonia...

Calling Chile my Home: I have been struggling to write this blog post. How do I draw conclusions from my last four months in Chile? How can I ever wrap-up my time here? Reading through some journal entries that I wrote before leaving, I realize that I never could have guessed what my time here would be like. What did I know about Chile before? I knew about the dictatorship, its unique geography, and Pablo Neruda. What do I know now? This blog only contains a sample of all that I have learned about this country. Despite my frustrations with the strikes, my fierce love for this country and its people remains intact.

When I recently traveling with some other Americans in Argentina, I noticed that I was the only one of us that introduced myself as being from Chile. At first glance, I thought that it was just a technicality. I wanted to identity myself with my Chilean family and my work here, while the others still considered themselves foreigners. After some more thought, I realized that part of me identifies now as being Chilean. In the United States, I straddle between my life in California and my life in Rhode Island without firm roots in either. Whereas in Chile, with a house, with a job, and with a family I feel at home. While I am leaving this home for now, I have promised myself (and my Chilean family) that I will someday return.

It has been challenging to write my “Statement of Purpose” for grad school in Chile. Living in the United States seems like a long time ago now even though I was there only four months ago. How has my time here changed my interests, my aspirations, and my values? Trying to remember my life before Chile and weaving it together with my life here is more challenging than I realized. Before I left, teaching English in Chile seemed like a logical extension of my growth as a teacher and I thought it would affirm my decision to become a teacher in the United States. But after living here for the last four months, I wonder if I even want to go to grad school at all? Maybe being cut off from everything just gives me a certain distance from it and a chance to view everything as an outsider rather than from within. Whatever the case, I am grateful to have this time to just think and I know that I will leave my time here with more clarity and conviction than I had when I arrived.

Only in the "Skinny One" (Being Azn in Chile): My time in Chile has also given me a lot to think about being Asian. At Brown, I was a multiracial of Japanese descent (a hapa) and in Chile, I am just a chino (a Chinaman). While I should feel offended that my hard-won ethnic identity is being trivialized into a racial slur, my Asianess has become one of my chief identifying characteristics here in Los Alamos.

My conversations about being Asian usually go something like this:

Curious Chilean: Where are you from?

Me: I am from the United States.

Curious Chilean: [Looks at me confused]

Me: I am from the United States, but my mom is Japanese.

Curious Chilean: Oh [sounding relieved], I thought so. I could tell by your eyes [demonstrating with her own eyes].

Curious Chilean: Do you do Karate?

Me: No

Curious Chilean: That's too bad. I love movies with Jackie Chan.

Curious Chilean: I have something embarrassing to ask you.

Me: What's that?

Curious Chilean: Is it true that they really eat dog in China?

Me: I don't really know, but I have heard that. It's not really that different from eating fried Guinea Pig in Peru.

Curious Chilean: [Ignoring what I just said and looking shocked] I could never eat my dog. Do you know how to eat with chopsticks?

Me: Yes [demonstrating using two pencils as substitutes]

Curious Chilean: Look! Look! The Chinaman is using sticks to eat.

Chileans clearly have a fascination with Asians. Several of my Chilean students who appear slightly Asian go by the nicknames “Chino” or “China.” TV shows like Dragon Ball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, and other anime are wildly popular amongst my students. There are cliques of Chilean youth that dress like Japanese anime characters (the “Otakus” and the “Pokemones”). Peru, Chile's Northern neighbor even had a Japanese president (Alberto Fujimori) for ten years from 1990-2000. Maybe what feels like discrimination to me is just a little bit of hero worship.

Finding Davis in South America: A few weeks ago, I finally crossed the border into Argentinean Patagonia (I also got the gratification of seeing the same border guard who refused to let me cross two months earlier). My first stops were San Martin de los Andes and Bariloche which are vacation destinations for Argentina's rich and famous. After living in working-class rural Chile for the last four months, it was a shock to know that such opulence even existed alongside places like Los Alamos. While it was alluring to again be in such a beautiful and wealthy environmental, I would not trade anything for my backyard asados in Los Alamos.

The highlight of the trip for me was going to El Bolsón, a hippy town located in a valley surrounded by snow-capped Andes. Full of outdoor artwork, large grassy parks, and locally-owned organic restaurants, the town reminded me of a similar hippy town 5,000 miles away—Davis, California. The focus of my visit to El Bolsón was an outdoor crafts fair which seem eerily similar to Davis' annual Whole Earth Festival. Vendor after vendor sold hand-made knit hats, wooden kitchenware, colorful puppets, organic food, and musical instruments. Walking through the crafts fair with the sun shining down on me, I couldn't help but smile. Even in a place where I least would least expect it, a small Andean town just across the Argentine border, I was surrounded by reminders of home.

Ready to Hit the Road: Having completed my teaching term in Chile, it is time to embark on my travels. My first destination is Southern Patagonia. I am backpacking in Torres del Paine National Park for a week, camping another week in Los Glaciares National Park, and then making my way down to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. After Patagonia, I will be celebrating Christmas with my Davis family in Valparaiso and then we are making a quick visit to my host-family, stopping back through the Chilean wine country.

After the visit from my family I am heading North towards Bolivia to see the drier parts of Chile. I am going to La Serena to sample pisco, see penguins, and admire the stars. Then I will be spending a couple days in San Pedro de Atacama to sandboard, visit the salt flats, and enjoy the beauty of the dessert. A Jeep trip will take me across the border into Bolivia and then I will be visiting more exotic landscapes in Bolivia's altiplano and central highlands. Finally arriving at La Paz, the highest capital city in the world, at over 12,000 feet above sea level, just in time for its world-famous Alasitas Fair.

My current plans stop in La Paz. From that juncture I might head South East towards Salta, Buenos Aires, and Iguazu Falls or continue North to Peru, Ecuador, and finally Columbia. I have made up my mind not to extend my teaching in Chile, but other volunteer work (farm-work, orphanages, and post-earthquake recovery) in lesser-developed areas is my latest plan. There is a virgin beauty here that much of the United States has lost in its urban cement jungles. Four months here in Chile whetted my appetite to explore South America, but I think I am ready to move on from the “Skinny One."

Week 14-15: Waiting for Strikes to End

30 Sec. Update: This past week was melancholy. Teachers nationwide have been on strike for the last eight days, so I have been trying to find other ways to fill the time when I'm normally teaching. With only three weeks of teaching remaining, I hope that the strikes will end soon because they are cutting into my plans to wrap-up my classes. Last weekend, with the pending strikes on the horizon, I took a long trip to Pucón with some of the other English teachers. Pucón is Chile's extreme sports mecca. Over four days, I made two trips to hot springs, visited five waterfalls, hiked eight hours in Parque Nacional Huerquehue, and climbed 4,000 feet up Volcán Villarica. Despite all of last weekend's adrenaline, I have been missing Davis. I recently realized that I haven't been in California for more than two weeks at a time the last two and half years. For a while I have been telling people that I am going to extend my time here, but with this recent epiphany and others, I feel ready to come home.

Only in the “Skinny One” (Damas and Naipes): With rainy weather and more free time on my hands from the strikes, I spent a lot of time this week playing games to pass the time. Two of my new Chilean favorites are Damas and Naipes neither of which I have seen in the United States.

In my high school Spanish classes I learned that “Damas” was the word for Checkers, but at least here in Chile, Damas is a more complex affair. I will try my best to explain the details in words, but it is the type of game that is better learned by playing. The basic movements are the same as the checkers I played when I was a kid, but there a few extra rules. First, you are obligated to take your opponents pieces if you have the opportunity, which means you constantly sacrifice your own pieces to bait your opponent. Second, when your piece gets “kinged,” it now has the movement of a bishop in Chess and can change directions mid-movement to do a double jump. These pieces are super powerful, so the entire game you are figuring out how to gain access to your opponent's back alley. The key to winning is forcing your opponent into a position where they are double jumped and getting “kinged” before they do. Despite knowing this, I have played over a dozen games of Damas with my host-father and have lost every single one.

My other favorite way to past time in Chile is “Naipes.” On a first look, the cards appear similar to a normal deck of playing cards. There are four suites (gold coins, swords, clubs, and chalices). Each suite has numbered cards and facecards. The big differences are the images that appear on the cards (they look more like Tarot cards) and the deck only contains forty cards rather than fifty two (ten for each suite; # 1-7, jack, queen, and king). There are a number of games you can play with these cards, but the only one that I know is called “Escoba” or “Quince,” which is a cross between Spades and Gin. As suggested by the name, the goal is to collect as many cards as you can by making combinations of 15. Each round points are awarded to the player who collects the most cards overall, the most “gold” cards, the 7 of “gold,” and the highest card of each suite. This game is fairly straightforward, but it is complicated by the fact that a jack is worth 8, queen is 9, and king is 10 testing your basic mental math. My favorite parts of the game are the colorful cards and the idea of collecting gold to win.

Volcan Villarica (2,847 m): Climbing the volcano was my chief reason for traveling to Pucon last weekend, but because the foul weather, I didn't have a window to attempt a summit until my last day there. The wait was more than worth it though. The views during the ascent were spectacular. I could see hundreds of miles of the snow-capped Andes, high altitude lakes, and pristine forests from Chile to Argentina. The return of high-speed winds and white out conditions prevented me from reaching the crater, but glissading down the volcano in the middle of blizzard was all the more exhilarating.

This was about the point when we decided that we wouldn't be able to summit.

Dulces y Travesura: Halloween is a recent export from America to the “skinny one.” While there is a long history of “Día de Los Muertos” (the 1^st of November), only in the last ten years have they started observing “All hallows eve.” After thrity years of watching American horror movies and seeing Halloween episodes of the Simpsons, Chileans have become fascinated with this American tradition. Still in its infancy in Chile, Halloween is mainly celebrated in the larger more cosmopolitan cities. In small towns like Los Alamos, it is a dinner-table debate topic and is used by the Evangelical churches to rile up their followers during protests and all-night sermons. In order to investigate how Chileans celebrate my favorite childhood holiday, I decided to travel two hours to the biggest nearby city, Concepcion in search of Halloween.

One of my first stops was in the city's plaza and there I hit the jackpot. Hundreds of people were attending an Evangelical anti-Halloween concert. I was wearing a plastic bandit mask that I had bought from one of the street vendors, but I was advised to take it off to avoid a confrontation. On stage as a band played Christian rock, I watched several actors dressed in Halloween costumes attack a white-robed Christ figure and he fought them back to the cheers of the crowd. Afterwards every in the crowd started chanting “Cristo vive! Cristo vive!” The night before my Chilean aunt and cousin talked over whether they should let my younger cousin dress up. Both of them Christians felt torn between letting my younger cousin be a kid and the anti-Halloween statements espoused by their minister. Celebrating Halloween is clearly a contentious issue in Chile.

As I continued walking around the city, I noticed little signs of Halloween here and there, but I could tell that it was still a fringe holiday. On street corners, a couple vendors sold plastic masks and plastic pumpkins. In the grocery store, there was a display of candy which said “Dulces o Travesura?” (the Spanish equivalent of “Trick or Treat”). On the sidewalk, I saw a little boy wearing plastic red devil horns and a matching pitchfork. This didn't feel like the Halloween I knew when I was a child. For me the weirdest thing was to be celebrating Halloween in the spring time. So many of my memories of Halloween have to do with the fall: visits to the pumpkin patch, corn mazes, bobbing for apples, and of course, carving pumpkins. I had come to Concepcion to see a Chilean Halloween, but instead I found myself missing an American one.

Missing America: I never thought that I say this but I earnestly miss America. I guess it takes some time outside of our country to appreciate everything that we have going for us. My latest bout of missing home was brought on by a list of the 100 must-try American foods. It was the geographic and ethnic diversity of the foods that reminded me of how good we have it. I'm tired of mono-cultural Chile. Living in a place where there is a such a strong shared culture is fascinating but I want my Chinese food, I want to see people of different skin colors, I want to listen to different kinds of music, and I want the comforts of being in Davis and in Providence.

This week my pendulum has firmly swung in the opposite direction about extending. My infatuation with Chile is starting to wear off and I want to be home. It is also the realization that it has been so long since I actually felt at home in Davis. I haven't lived there for more than two weeks at a time over the last three years. I haven't felt like I actually lived in Davis for the last four and half years.

The more I think about this decision, the more it feels right for what I need right now. I don't want to get back from Chile and go straight into grad school without spending a long time with the people I love. I took this year off for a number of reasons and while one of those reasons was for the self-exploration that I had in Chile, one of the biggest reasons was to spend time at home with friends and family. I'm excited to continue my travels after I'm done with teaching but by that time I will feel ready to come home.