Deception Pass is touted by visitors, writers and promoters as the most-visited state park in Washington. It's milky blue-green waters that rage beneath a bridge of the same color draw in spectators who, maybe by accident, stumble upon the used-but-deserted trail systems that the park boasts. Rock heads covered in Ireland-green grass and small, scraggly wind-abused border the park with views of the bridge. These sentinels are look out points, improvised picnic areas, places to nap and they themselves are places to explore.
The park is, for the most part, overwhelmingly immaculate with few traces of people on the right day. Since winter weather in Western Washington isn't unlike weather during most parts of the year, a little rain and cold wasn't a problem for the day's adventure.
Our group started by walking Rosario Point, which, from the Bowman Bay parking lot (before getting to the Deception Pass Bridge on SR-20) is, looking at the water, to the right. The short trail is well-manicured and direct, but has awesome views and several places to detour and look around, including beaches, climbing rocks and bluffs. Rosario Point itself is a small peninsula with tall cliffs that fall straight down into beds of kelp. We were able to see a few whales and seals there while we ate lunch on the grassy hill that makes up the Point's far side. Making it back to the parking lot in a few minutes, we continued to Lighthouse Point, which, despite its name, doesn't have a real lighthouse.
A green beacon with the number 3 stands on the far side just north of the bridge-viewing area, but it is a far cry from a lighthouse. Regardless, the Point has spectacular views and a large amount of trails for exploring. Some of the heads that jut from the point are covered in grass that are perfect for taking breaks.
Exploring is perilous, as we found out. But it is extremely worth it, especially at Deception Pass.
To Arrive:
Head north on I-5 to exit 230 and take a left onto SR-20 and follow signs for Oak Harbor. Turn right on Rosario Road and then 100 yards after, turn left to Bowman Bay where the parking lot is. To get to the Deception Pass Bridge, continue on SR-20 instead of turning on Rosario Road for a few more miles.
Find pictures here.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Revamp and Reflect
Dear Friend-
It has been a long while since I've posted on this blog, but considering the given circumstances of my life, which I hope to go in to some detail later, I decided to attempt to use this space adequately. I can't promise that posts will be regular, but I hope to update as often as possible with information and writing that you might find relevant and interesting.
For now, I'm posting my experience on my dad's kidney transplant from my aunt who was a living donor. He has Polycystic Kidney Disease, and this new kidney has already helped him to feel much better.
Here's to your health, right?
In an operating room, I imagine the surgeon standing over the brown body, the Filipino body. It is motionless on a table and there are lights on above them... the light might even reflect a little off the skin. The lights are white and clean, just like the clothing and the walls and the instruments… like the knife that the surgeon holds in their hand. It is cool and steady as it approaches the body. The flesh seems to part on its own as the knife effortlessly opens the skin, the muscle, the tissue. It gleams as the surgeon’s hand moves like artwork over this body. My father’s body. My aunt’s body. That kidney. Whose kidney?
In a hospital waiting room, a small group of people sits in a circle holding hands, praying. Their heads are bowed and their knuckles are white. Their tears hit the floor as they repeat the name, the prayer, the question, the object, “God,” “God,” “God?” “God.” Their faith in the Creator may be unshakeable, but their reliance on human hands is more easily doubted, more easily questioned. They thank Him for letting Them do their work. They say things like “Thank you,” and “Please,” but not in that order. They all seem very polite about the thing, using good manners to ask this God for things like life, if life were a thing. And if you could ask for it. And if it could be given or taken.
In a lonely hallway, there are people crying; their faces are in their hands and they sob in a language I don’t recognize. No- they speak in a language I don’t recognize, but their sobs are a language that we all understand. They stand in the corner of a hallway, looking through the lenses of their sadness out the lenses of the window into the grey endlessness of the Washington skyline. Their tears streak their fingers and their cheeks as they eye me as I pass. Their eyes prod me; they simultaneously tell me to keep walking and also to offer some sort of reciprocal emotion. Maybe to tighten my cheek muscles, motioning to smile, but not quite making it. It’s the sign you give people when you sympathize with them, but don’t want to connect too deeply.
Then there is crying in the waiting room, but their tears aren’t the hot, confused ones of the hallway. They are the relief of letting out a held breath. They are the happiness of possibility. These tears are good tears. This operation was a good one. Again, they say “God,” but this time, they only say “Thank you.” The smiles that creep upon their faces seem foreign to the envious people around them, who smile in their direction because they’re supposed to, and because it’s all too real and because they want to be able to do this thing called praise. Or prayer.
The owners of the tears pick their bags off the floor and walk for the door with heavy legs and tired eyes. Their sacks are full of magazines and nibbled bits of crackers and fruits, they feel victorious. But the real victors are lying on hospital beds waiting for the Doctor, the real Champion, to pump a syringe full of something into their brown arm so that they can wake up. The Doctor, He walks around the room in his clean, cool, crisp clothing. It’s still white. He exits and walks the halls, not white, but cream and He feels good.
Elsewhere, He looks down from above or from all around or from wherever He is and I imagine Him smiling His ethereal smile that, if He opened it, could gobble up this planet and all of those around it. God does what He wants.
Today, I’m just glad He did what He did.
It has been a long while since I've posted on this blog, but considering the given circumstances of my life, which I hope to go in to some detail later, I decided to attempt to use this space adequately. I can't promise that posts will be regular, but I hope to update as often as possible with information and writing that you might find relevant and interesting.
For now, I'm posting my experience on my dad's kidney transplant from my aunt who was a living donor. He has Polycystic Kidney Disease, and this new kidney has already helped him to feel much better.
Here's to your health, right?
In an operating room, I imagine the surgeon standing over the brown body, the Filipino body. It is motionless on a table and there are lights on above them... the light might even reflect a little off the skin. The lights are white and clean, just like the clothing and the walls and the instruments… like the knife that the surgeon holds in their hand. It is cool and steady as it approaches the body. The flesh seems to part on its own as the knife effortlessly opens the skin, the muscle, the tissue. It gleams as the surgeon’s hand moves like artwork over this body. My father’s body. My aunt’s body. That kidney. Whose kidney?
In a hospital waiting room, a small group of people sits in a circle holding hands, praying. Their heads are bowed and their knuckles are white. Their tears hit the floor as they repeat the name, the prayer, the question, the object, “God,” “God,” “God?” “God.” Their faith in the Creator may be unshakeable, but their reliance on human hands is more easily doubted, more easily questioned. They thank Him for letting Them do their work. They say things like “Thank you,” and “Please,” but not in that order. They all seem very polite about the thing, using good manners to ask this God for things like life, if life were a thing. And if you could ask for it. And if it could be given or taken.
In a lonely hallway, there are people crying; their faces are in their hands and they sob in a language I don’t recognize. No- they speak in a language I don’t recognize, but their sobs are a language that we all understand. They stand in the corner of a hallway, looking through the lenses of their sadness out the lenses of the window into the grey endlessness of the Washington skyline. Their tears streak their fingers and their cheeks as they eye me as I pass. Their eyes prod me; they simultaneously tell me to keep walking and also to offer some sort of reciprocal emotion. Maybe to tighten my cheek muscles, motioning to smile, but not quite making it. It’s the sign you give people when you sympathize with them, but don’t want to connect too deeply.
Then there is crying in the waiting room, but their tears aren’t the hot, confused ones of the hallway. They are the relief of letting out a held breath. They are the happiness of possibility. These tears are good tears. This operation was a good one. Again, they say “God,” but this time, they only say “Thank you.” The smiles that creep upon their faces seem foreign to the envious people around them, who smile in their direction because they’re supposed to, and because it’s all too real and because they want to be able to do this thing called praise. Or prayer.
The owners of the tears pick their bags off the floor and walk for the door with heavy legs and tired eyes. Their sacks are full of magazines and nibbled bits of crackers and fruits, they feel victorious. But the real victors are lying on hospital beds waiting for the Doctor, the real Champion, to pump a syringe full of something into their brown arm so that they can wake up. The Doctor, He walks around the room in his clean, cool, crisp clothing. It’s still white. He exits and walks the halls, not white, but cream and He feels good.
Elsewhere, He looks down from above or from all around or from wherever He is and I imagine Him smiling His ethereal smile that, if He opened it, could gobble up this planet and all of those around it. God does what He wants.
Today, I’m just glad He did what He did.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Adjusting
Adjusting.
Adapting.
Changing.
Acceptance.
Coming back from Chile was originally too easy. I knew it the moment I stepped off the plane. It was all too easy to be true.
A whirlwind summer of reunions, of unions, of meetings and parties and outings made coming back to the United States an experience of many different sorts. You, friend, could say that maybe I didn’t allow myself time to adjust or to really process my “home”coming. I feel like maybe I’ve been somehow avoiding the chore of dealing with my feelings towards having to leave Chile by maxing out my schedule this fall.
At times, I feel like that’s a good thing. Idle hands won’t have time to pick at my idle heart; idle fingers won’t sort through the emotions of missing a home and a routine that had been normalized to the point of being… well, normal. But then, when I let my guard down, Chile creeps back onto my radar. It sneaks into my dreams, silently turning knobs and nudging open the doors to my mind and my imagination and Chile tip toes through my thoughts, pushing memories of friends and places into my vision so that for a while, a short while, all I can think about is last year. Chile has this sly way of penetrating my being so that I can taste one of Amira’s sopaipillas, her famous salsa arabe dripping off the edge of the bread. I can feel the grease on my fingers as I reach into my wallet for my BIP! card, scanning it and pushing my way onto the bus, nestling into a spot shoulder-to-shoulder with other people making their way up Irarrazaval to the comfort of their homes.
I miss Chile, friend. I do. I miss it terribly to the point that I want nothing more than to go back for just a bit and revisit everything and everyone.
But I realize that Chile was an experience. It was a time in my life that has shaped me and provided me with an endless source of energy and inspiration. And I love that. But I also realize that maybe missing Chile, maybe the acknowledgment that I’m not in Chile anymore and the pain of accepting that, is part of the process of coming back. Maybe, friend, I should have given myself time when I got back to think these thoughts.
“Reverse Culture Shock” is the term they use, I think. It’s the idea that, after having experienced culture shock upon entering a new place for the first time, you can experience the same feelings when coming back to your original culture some time later. I can’t say that I’m at all or in any way “shocked” by the United States. For the most part, the country continues to be the same one I left. We continue to believe that we are THE “America.” And by “we” I mean White Male America. We continue to be a country where everyday citizens can consider themselves poor despite several television sets and sofas in their house. We continue to be a country that oppresses and denigrates and marginalizes minorities. We are the America that can preach against yet simultaneously practice colonialism and cultural genocide. We are the few, the proud, the Red, White and Blue.
I’m not shocked by these things. I am shocked by how easily I came back to them. Maybe that’s part of the process, too. I’m willing to say that to just about anything right now, friend. In thinking about readjusting to life in California, I can’t imagine there is one right or wrong way of doing things. I can, however, see there being guidelines, and one of those, I’m sure, is to be open to new things, as was my policy in going to Chile.
So far, friend, I have to say that this approach has worked quite well and that, in leaving a country I grew to love and identify with, being open to new things has made coming back to “familiarity” a surprising and welcome adventure.
Chile will be forever, but it never was forever. I’ll never forget it. I’ll go back. I’ll dream of it always and often. But I have to do me. I have to do what I do, where I’m at. And I have to learn to create, seek and welcome happiness here.
I’m not sad over Chile. No. I don’t want you to think that. But I do want you to know that I’m working through whatever one would call my feelings about last year. I’m readjusting quite nicely. I’m happy. And I’m happy that you are a part of this adventure that we call “living.”
Adapting.
Changing.
Acceptance.
Coming back from Chile was originally too easy. I knew it the moment I stepped off the plane. It was all too easy to be true.
A whirlwind summer of reunions, of unions, of meetings and parties and outings made coming back to the United States an experience of many different sorts. You, friend, could say that maybe I didn’t allow myself time to adjust or to really process my “home”coming. I feel like maybe I’ve been somehow avoiding the chore of dealing with my feelings towards having to leave Chile by maxing out my schedule this fall.
At times, I feel like that’s a good thing. Idle hands won’t have time to pick at my idle heart; idle fingers won’t sort through the emotions of missing a home and a routine that had been normalized to the point of being… well, normal. But then, when I let my guard down, Chile creeps back onto my radar. It sneaks into my dreams, silently turning knobs and nudging open the doors to my mind and my imagination and Chile tip toes through my thoughts, pushing memories of friends and places into my vision so that for a while, a short while, all I can think about is last year. Chile has this sly way of penetrating my being so that I can taste one of Amira’s sopaipillas, her famous salsa arabe dripping off the edge of the bread. I can feel the grease on my fingers as I reach into my wallet for my BIP! card, scanning it and pushing my way onto the bus, nestling into a spot shoulder-to-shoulder with other people making their way up Irarrazaval to the comfort of their homes.
I miss Chile, friend. I do. I miss it terribly to the point that I want nothing more than to go back for just a bit and revisit everything and everyone.
But I realize that Chile was an experience. It was a time in my life that has shaped me and provided me with an endless source of energy and inspiration. And I love that. But I also realize that maybe missing Chile, maybe the acknowledgment that I’m not in Chile anymore and the pain of accepting that, is part of the process of coming back. Maybe, friend, I should have given myself time when I got back to think these thoughts.
“Reverse Culture Shock” is the term they use, I think. It’s the idea that, after having experienced culture shock upon entering a new place for the first time, you can experience the same feelings when coming back to your original culture some time later. I can’t say that I’m at all or in any way “shocked” by the United States. For the most part, the country continues to be the same one I left. We continue to believe that we are THE “America.” And by “we” I mean White Male America. We continue to be a country where everyday citizens can consider themselves poor despite several television sets and sofas in their house. We continue to be a country that oppresses and denigrates and marginalizes minorities. We are the America that can preach against yet simultaneously practice colonialism and cultural genocide. We are the few, the proud, the Red, White and Blue.
I’m not shocked by these things. I am shocked by how easily I came back to them. Maybe that’s part of the process, too. I’m willing to say that to just about anything right now, friend. In thinking about readjusting to life in California, I can’t imagine there is one right or wrong way of doing things. I can, however, see there being guidelines, and one of those, I’m sure, is to be open to new things, as was my policy in going to Chile.
So far, friend, I have to say that this approach has worked quite well and that, in leaving a country I grew to love and identify with, being open to new things has made coming back to “familiarity” a surprising and welcome adventure.
Chile will be forever, but it never was forever. I’ll never forget it. I’ll go back. I’ll dream of it always and often. But I have to do me. I have to do what I do, where I’m at. And I have to learn to create, seek and welcome happiness here.
I’m not sad over Chile. No. I don’t want you to think that. But I do want you to know that I’m working through whatever one would call my feelings about last year. I’m readjusting quite nicely. I’m happy. And I’m happy that you are a part of this adventure that we call “living.”
Monday, June 21, 2010
Así es Chile
*Play song while reading*
This is the story of a boy. It is the story that began over a year ago and has endured ever since. The story is a fairytale, only understood by the dragons and princesses that lived the experience. The story takes place in foreign lands with strange languages and customs. And there is magic. There most definitely is magic.
And like all stories, this one must end.
Happy endings and ever-after’s in any context are subjective, and so it is that saying goodbye to Chile is a process filled with mixed and varied emotions.
For the past few weeks, I have painfully counted down the days, the parties, the final exams and the goodbyes until now. I have a few days left, but I do want everyone in Chile to know how much they mean to me. Especially, amigo, how much you mean to me.
With a wave of the finger, I put off this moment for as long as I could, refusing to acknowledge the wrenching emotions of being uprooted and torn from a life I have come to enjoy and normalize; of a life built and lived and enjoyed here in this city.
“It must be weird to go back to normal life,” said our program director last week.
“This is my normal life,” I replied.
I can’t pretend like I haven’t noticed the smiles over the past few weeks, the ones that so obviously concealed a hint of pain, of knowing that whatever moment we were in would never be reproduced because I am, by no fault of my own, transient in this country.
Transient, yes. But not fleeting. You see, it was tempting and at times easy to treat my time here in Chile like a vacation, or as if I were merely visiting this country of extremes. Understanding that I was here with limited time was never something I had to struggle with; however approaching it as something more than a tourist’s destination was what made my experience (and that of many of my friends) different, I feel like. Being a resident, albeit foreign, made being in Santiago for the last year much more rewarding in the sense that I was (am) able to integrate to some extent into a society which generally is very guarded towards outsiders.
A foreign resident. I guess that would be an accurate way to sum up this year. My status here has always been that of a “foreigner,” no matter how accepted I was in a given situation. People calling me “the gringo” or “the immigrant,” were endearing most of the time.
You see, friend, ever since the excited restlessness of “going home” began to leak into my bloodstream, making my body tense with anticipation and dread, I have been caught between two extremes of my experience: I’ve wanted for a while to see my family and friends, to drive down Soundview Drive with untied running shoes on my feet and a pair of $10 sunglasses on my face. I’ve longed for 6th Ave. and the Narrows Bridges and rocky beaches with cold waters. I’ve also missed desperately towering giants called Redwoods, cracked roads that stretch into the Bottoms and the Westwood neighborhood.
But despite all of these things pulling me back “above” the equator, there is absolutely nothing pushing me from, and out of, Santiago. I cannot bring myself to imagine saying goodbye to anyone for the last time. To realize that a single handshake, hug, kiss on the cheek and look in the eye could be (and probably will be) the last time I see many of my friends here is something that is impossibly difficult to grasp, not only because of its magnitude, finality and unfortunate truth, but because it is something that I have, like many people, never had to deal with. It is arguably something that shouldn’t have to be dealt with.
For a while, I will admit, I was worried about how I was dealing with leaving. While many of my friends told stories of crying while looking through pictures from this year or of plans for extending their trip by a couple weeks, I was starting my 10-day countdown, so far tearless, and making plans for the summer in Washington. I felt like maybe I wasn’t as connected to Chile or its people (my friends) as I thought I was. In all honesty, I would have rather spent a night crying while looking at parties from my first days here than being pumped on going home because that, to me, would have been an appropriate, understandable and healthy reaction to my present circumstances. Being excited to leave Chile was inappropriate, I thought. Let me rephrase, it was being excited to go back to the United States, not necessarily to leave Chile.
However, with 9 days to go, I shut down physically and emotionally and entered a 12-hour depression slump which, after some careful examination, was/is my response to dealing with leaving a place and an experience which I have loved. It wasn’t an outright breakdown, there were no tears, but there was a desire to not have to deal with the goodbyes or to face the fact that this, like everything, must end.
I had always imagined that weekend being epic- crazy parties that lasted until mid-morning and tribute songs and empty bottles and walks through the city at night. That’s how it was supposed to be. You see, in a twisted and dark context, all of this seems rather romantic. People hugging and saying goodbye, a tear falling over the edge of an eyelid, music in the background and balloons on the floor. It’s an ideal way to leave a country. However, as I must realize, that isn’t the only nor necessarily the right way to leave a country. Returning the USA might be as simple as packing my bags and getting on the plane. And is that a bad thing? Would that be a bad thing? For a while, I thought so. I still dislike the idea. I’d rather go out with a bang and leave a positive and memorable mark on Santiago, but I have to also be happy with this year as a whole and not base my “success” in studying abroad on one party in one weekend.
An example of this realization came last night when I went grocery shopping for the last time. For a few months, (Baby) Tay(lor) and I have had the tradition of going grocery shopping at the local supermarket every Sunday night. We’d meet on the corner in between our buildings and then walk under street lamps by San Borja Park where gender-ambiguous teenagers would meet, as if that park was a designated refuge from the judgmental eye of the conservative streets that surround it. We’d wheel our red baskets through each and every aisle, every week, starting with produce and ending with buying bread and maybe even some cookies. But last night, I didn’t meet Taylor. I normally catch her online sometime during the afternoon and we make plans to meet; but because of school, she wasn’t online. So, I slowly stumbled down the street in my sweats, past the park and through the plaza and around the corner into the fluorescent lights of the doorway of the market where a merchant was selling hats, flags, scarves and banners for the next day’s World Cup game against Switzerland (later won by Chile 1-0). Clumsily and with heavy eyelids, I grabbed my basket and began the shopping routine that I had countless times repeated with Taylor, recounting the adventures of the weekend. But this time, I was alone. A nondescript song played from my iPod as I weaved through the aisles, thinking about all the things I would never have to buy again in Chile. It was a somber experience. While looking at the chocolate, I felt a tap on my shoulder. As I turned around, I pulled a headphone out of my left ear and then saw a red-faced Taylor.
“I’m so sorry. I totally spaced,” she said, with watery eyes. “I just ran here.”
I gave her the customary kiss on the cheek and hug and told her that it wasn’t anything to worry about and that I understood.
“It’s no big deal, really. We can just go shopping next Sunday before my flight.”
Pulling away, I saw that the tears had started.
“No, I feel so stupid,” Taylor said, wiping her cheek. “I love shopping with you!”
You have to know, friend, that this was a ritual for us. And this last day was an important one for both us that, for many reasons, meant a lot.
It was in that (not-so)romantic movie-scene moment that my last week in Chile officially began. And it is because of friends like Taylor and many others that I’m so happy with my year abroad.
However, I can’t pretend that the past few weeks haven’t been enjoyable or that they haven’t brought relief. Ending this semester in school is, like always, a relief- to be done with this semester marks the end of my junior year and the beginning of my senior year, a transition which, also given its finality, makes it seem like a big deal. Today being the first day of winter (or summer, depending on your hemisphere), it makes sense that I/we discuss change and its significance and inevitability in life. But as much as change has been a theme of this fairytale, as they say, some things never change.
So, just like our first night here when we stumbled upon a riot in Plaza Italia, it also makes sense that I should experience another riot in the same place today, but after Chile’s win against Switzerland in the World Cup. I would be lying completely if I said that standing amidst thousands of people in red soccer jerseys wearing red, white and blue face paint jumping up and down, waving flags, lighting fire crackers and throwing confetti (and throwing bottles at police cars, cornering a group of riot police against a building, fighting, pick pocketing and vandalizing buildings) is something I wouldn’t miss. In fact, if you put the word “Chilean” in front of anything, it’s quite probable that I will miss it.
Sadly, this could quite possibly be my last blog update from Chile. And if that is the case, my friend, know that this year has been the most memorable of all. Know that I don’t take anything back. Know that I have grown and changed and evolved in indescribable ways. Know that, in this fairytale, I saved the princess and killed the dragon. Know that this story does have a “happily ever after” ending. And know that you have made it all significant and important.
This is the story of a boy. It is the story that began over a year ago and has endured ever since. The story is a fairytale, only understood by the dragons and princesses that lived the experience. The story takes place in foreign lands with strange languages and customs. And there is magic. There most definitely is magic.
And like all stories, this one must end.
Happy endings and ever-after’s in any context are subjective, and so it is that saying goodbye to Chile is a process filled with mixed and varied emotions.
For the past few weeks, I have painfully counted down the days, the parties, the final exams and the goodbyes until now. I have a few days left, but I do want everyone in Chile to know how much they mean to me. Especially, amigo, how much you mean to me.
With a wave of the finger, I put off this moment for as long as I could, refusing to acknowledge the wrenching emotions of being uprooted and torn from a life I have come to enjoy and normalize; of a life built and lived and enjoyed here in this city.
“It must be weird to go back to normal life,” said our program director last week.
“This is my normal life,” I replied.
I can’t pretend like I haven’t noticed the smiles over the past few weeks, the ones that so obviously concealed a hint of pain, of knowing that whatever moment we were in would never be reproduced because I am, by no fault of my own, transient in this country.
Transient, yes. But not fleeting. You see, it was tempting and at times easy to treat my time here in Chile like a vacation, or as if I were merely visiting this country of extremes. Understanding that I was here with limited time was never something I had to struggle with; however approaching it as something more than a tourist’s destination was what made my experience (and that of many of my friends) different, I feel like. Being a resident, albeit foreign, made being in Santiago for the last year much more rewarding in the sense that I was (am) able to integrate to some extent into a society which generally is very guarded towards outsiders.
A foreign resident. I guess that would be an accurate way to sum up this year. My status here has always been that of a “foreigner,” no matter how accepted I was in a given situation. People calling me “the gringo” or “the immigrant,” were endearing most of the time.
You see, friend, ever since the excited restlessness of “going home” began to leak into my bloodstream, making my body tense with anticipation and dread, I have been caught between two extremes of my experience: I’ve wanted for a while to see my family and friends, to drive down Soundview Drive with untied running shoes on my feet and a pair of $10 sunglasses on my face. I’ve longed for 6th Ave. and the Narrows Bridges and rocky beaches with cold waters. I’ve also missed desperately towering giants called Redwoods, cracked roads that stretch into the Bottoms and the Westwood neighborhood.
But despite all of these things pulling me back “above” the equator, there is absolutely nothing pushing me from, and out of, Santiago. I cannot bring myself to imagine saying goodbye to anyone for the last time. To realize that a single handshake, hug, kiss on the cheek and look in the eye could be (and probably will be) the last time I see many of my friends here is something that is impossibly difficult to grasp, not only because of its magnitude, finality and unfortunate truth, but because it is something that I have, like many people, never had to deal with. It is arguably something that shouldn’t have to be dealt with.
For a while, I will admit, I was worried about how I was dealing with leaving. While many of my friends told stories of crying while looking through pictures from this year or of plans for extending their trip by a couple weeks, I was starting my 10-day countdown, so far tearless, and making plans for the summer in Washington. I felt like maybe I wasn’t as connected to Chile or its people (my friends) as I thought I was. In all honesty, I would have rather spent a night crying while looking at parties from my first days here than being pumped on going home because that, to me, would have been an appropriate, understandable and healthy reaction to my present circumstances. Being excited to leave Chile was inappropriate, I thought. Let me rephrase, it was being excited to go back to the United States, not necessarily to leave Chile.
However, with 9 days to go, I shut down physically and emotionally and entered a 12-hour depression slump which, after some careful examination, was/is my response to dealing with leaving a place and an experience which I have loved. It wasn’t an outright breakdown, there were no tears, but there was a desire to not have to deal with the goodbyes or to face the fact that this, like everything, must end.
I had always imagined that weekend being epic- crazy parties that lasted until mid-morning and tribute songs and empty bottles and walks through the city at night. That’s how it was supposed to be. You see, in a twisted and dark context, all of this seems rather romantic. People hugging and saying goodbye, a tear falling over the edge of an eyelid, music in the background and balloons on the floor. It’s an ideal way to leave a country. However, as I must realize, that isn’t the only nor necessarily the right way to leave a country. Returning the USA might be as simple as packing my bags and getting on the plane. And is that a bad thing? Would that be a bad thing? For a while, I thought so. I still dislike the idea. I’d rather go out with a bang and leave a positive and memorable mark on Santiago, but I have to also be happy with this year as a whole and not base my “success” in studying abroad on one party in one weekend.
An example of this realization came last night when I went grocery shopping for the last time. For a few months, (Baby) Tay(lor) and I have had the tradition of going grocery shopping at the local supermarket every Sunday night. We’d meet on the corner in between our buildings and then walk under street lamps by San Borja Park where gender-ambiguous teenagers would meet, as if that park was a designated refuge from the judgmental eye of the conservative streets that surround it. We’d wheel our red baskets through each and every aisle, every week, starting with produce and ending with buying bread and maybe even some cookies. But last night, I didn’t meet Taylor. I normally catch her online sometime during the afternoon and we make plans to meet; but because of school, she wasn’t online. So, I slowly stumbled down the street in my sweats, past the park and through the plaza and around the corner into the fluorescent lights of the doorway of the market where a merchant was selling hats, flags, scarves and banners for the next day’s World Cup game against Switzerland (later won by Chile 1-0). Clumsily and with heavy eyelids, I grabbed my basket and began the shopping routine that I had countless times repeated with Taylor, recounting the adventures of the weekend. But this time, I was alone. A nondescript song played from my iPod as I weaved through the aisles, thinking about all the things I would never have to buy again in Chile. It was a somber experience. While looking at the chocolate, I felt a tap on my shoulder. As I turned around, I pulled a headphone out of my left ear and then saw a red-faced Taylor.
“I’m so sorry. I totally spaced,” she said, with watery eyes. “I just ran here.”
I gave her the customary kiss on the cheek and hug and told her that it wasn’t anything to worry about and that I understood.
“It’s no big deal, really. We can just go shopping next Sunday before my flight.”
Pulling away, I saw that the tears had started.
“No, I feel so stupid,” Taylor said, wiping her cheek. “I love shopping with you!”
You have to know, friend, that this was a ritual for us. And this last day was an important one for both us that, for many reasons, meant a lot.
It was in that (not-so)romantic movie-scene moment that my last week in Chile officially began. And it is because of friends like Taylor and many others that I’m so happy with my year abroad.
However, I can’t pretend that the past few weeks haven’t been enjoyable or that they haven’t brought relief. Ending this semester in school is, like always, a relief- to be done with this semester marks the end of my junior year and the beginning of my senior year, a transition which, also given its finality, makes it seem like a big deal. Today being the first day of winter (or summer, depending on your hemisphere), it makes sense that I/we discuss change and its significance and inevitability in life. But as much as change has been a theme of this fairytale, as they say, some things never change.
So, just like our first night here when we stumbled upon a riot in Plaza Italia, it also makes sense that I should experience another riot in the same place today, but after Chile’s win against Switzerland in the World Cup. I would be lying completely if I said that standing amidst thousands of people in red soccer jerseys wearing red, white and blue face paint jumping up and down, waving flags, lighting fire crackers and throwing confetti (and throwing bottles at police cars, cornering a group of riot police against a building, fighting, pick pocketing and vandalizing buildings) is something I wouldn’t miss. In fact, if you put the word “Chilean” in front of anything, it’s quite probable that I will miss it.
Sadly, this could quite possibly be my last blog update from Chile. And if that is the case, my friend, know that this year has been the most memorable of all. Know that I don’t take anything back. Know that I have grown and changed and evolved in indescribable ways. Know that, in this fairytale, I saved the princess and killed the dragon. Know that this story does have a “happily ever after” ending. And know that you have made it all significant and important.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
If you want to be a ´Jack
http://thehood.raptorhideout.com/t_pain_dom.mp3
There are things you wrestle with, you know.
Things that are life decisions, or that change your daily life. They are decisions that you don´t take lightly and they are ones which require a lot of thought.
Wrestling with these options and choices and alternatives and pros and cons and why´s and why not´s and what have you is difficult. It´s tiring. But it is always important.
What I have found, though, is that God speaks to me in impulses (Side note: The problem with this sort of communication is separating ¨divine¨ impulses with normal ones, if the two are really even that different).
So, when I not-so-accidentally received the Humboldt Cross Country meet schedule yesterday, my aching longing to again run for that team and my impulse to E-mail the new head coach were the answer to the question that has been bothering me for the past several months: should I run next fall or not?
I urgently sent out a few E-mails to friends seeking advice, even though I already knew what I was going to do about the situation.
Deciding to run Cross is the right choice, I think. It does change my outlook on this coming semester and how I was approaching it. But, in the end, I do think that it is a decision that is truer to who I am than the decision to not run.
Going back to Humboldt will be interesting. Not only will I have been away for a year, but also it is my last year; additionally, Sandy won´t be there as a coach and a few of my best friends have left Humboldt. Running then, isn´t just something that makes me happy and that I want to do, but it is something that familiarizes a place that, upon return, will be completely different.
But change is something that must be embraced, just like Primetime TV shows have told us for years. Change isn´t something that happens on occasion but it is a state in which we live constantly and inescapably. A process of elimination leaves optimism and opportunism as the only two logical and healthy reactions to what is now going on in my life.
Less existentially, as I ran today, I ran a normal distance on a normal route, but I felt better. I felt like me. I felt purposeful.
Running alone in Chile for the next month will be difficult and boring, but it will be a lot better than not running, and it will be a lot better now having something to run for.
So with this difficult decision behind me and a whole season of possibilities ahead of me, I´m excited. And most of all, I´m happy with the decision I made.
There are things you wrestle with, you know.
Things that are life decisions, or that change your daily life. They are decisions that you don´t take lightly and they are ones which require a lot of thought.
Wrestling with these options and choices and alternatives and pros and cons and why´s and why not´s and what have you is difficult. It´s tiring. But it is always important.
What I have found, though, is that God speaks to me in impulses (Side note: The problem with this sort of communication is separating ¨divine¨ impulses with normal ones, if the two are really even that different).
So, when I not-so-accidentally received the Humboldt Cross Country meet schedule yesterday, my aching longing to again run for that team and my impulse to E-mail the new head coach were the answer to the question that has been bothering me for the past several months: should I run next fall or not?
I urgently sent out a few E-mails to friends seeking advice, even though I already knew what I was going to do about the situation.
Deciding to run Cross is the right choice, I think. It does change my outlook on this coming semester and how I was approaching it. But, in the end, I do think that it is a decision that is truer to who I am than the decision to not run.
Going back to Humboldt will be interesting. Not only will I have been away for a year, but also it is my last year; additionally, Sandy won´t be there as a coach and a few of my best friends have left Humboldt. Running then, isn´t just something that makes me happy and that I want to do, but it is something that familiarizes a place that, upon return, will be completely different.
But change is something that must be embraced, just like Primetime TV shows have told us for years. Change isn´t something that happens on occasion but it is a state in which we live constantly and inescapably. A process of elimination leaves optimism and opportunism as the only two logical and healthy reactions to what is now going on in my life.
Less existentially, as I ran today, I ran a normal distance on a normal route, but I felt better. I felt like me. I felt purposeful.
Running alone in Chile for the next month will be difficult and boring, but it will be a lot better than not running, and it will be a lot better now having something to run for.
So with this difficult decision behind me and a whole season of possibilities ahead of me, I´m excited. And most of all, I´m happy with the decision I made.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Freaking out, just a little
“No. I definitely am NOT going out tonight,” I tell Pancho. I hold my head in one hand alluding not to a hangover of any sort, although I probably deserve one, but rather to exhaustion. A long Friday night and a very busy Saturday usually mean, at least for me, a rather tame Saturday night.
Over drinks, Pancho looks at me with disappointment, cocking his head almost like dogs do when they hear weird noises.
“Awww. Why not?” He asks. Diego is judging me over the rim of the glass he holds. I can feel it.
“Because,” I say, “I was out super late last night and I don’t know if I’m going to last the whole night if I’m already this tired.”
Pancho folds his hands around his glass as if he were about to have a serious conversation with me.
“You only have six weeks left in Chile, and you’re not going out tonight?” His voice is cool and purposeful. He knows guilting me like this will get me to go to the club with them.
“I hate you,” I say, smiling, pouring myself a drink.
I never thought I would be a partier.
Never ever.
And friend, I’m very hesitant to say that I am. I would, however, without a doubt, say that I am a celebrater.
Whether it’s a birthday party, a going away party, a welcome party, a graduation party, or anything of the sort, I’m normally game to celebrate.
But now, with T-minus 6 weeks until I leave Chile, I feel like I need to celebrate my time here. I want to celebrate this almost-11 months that I’ve been here, the things I’ve done, the accomplishments I’ve had and the friendships I’ve made.
I don’t want to confuse all this with outrageous, uncontrolled partying. No. But I do feel that I have no legitimate reason to say “no” to anything at this point.
Calmly, I will tell you that I’m freaking out, friend. I really am. I received my first “goodbye drink” last weekend. WHAT?!
I’m not ready for that. I am in no way ready to say goodbye to anyone or anything, nor am I capable of doing so. Not now. And in 6 weeks, I’m not sure if I will be prepared or if I will be even more wrapped up in the emotions of leaving this place, this home, indefinitely.
And because of all of that, I feel like I have to max out for the next 6 weeks to be able to take in Santiago to the fullest extent. The new goal of Plan Do Work is to leave here with no regrets. Hard to do, but not impossible. I don’t ever want to look back at this year in Santiago and think, “I wish I would have…”
It was just over a year ago that I wrote to you in this blog telling you about my trip to Chile. It was kind of a goodbye letter to what I had known as home up until that point back in Washington and in California. So, I guess it is fitting that, at the same time during a year-long study abroad trip, that I should write the same type of letter to you but from the opposite angle.
Yes, that is what I should do. But I won’t. I can’t. It was easy for me to say goodbye to people back in the United States because I knew that I could count down the 365 days until I would see them again. But here in Chile, “365” is replaced with an X and I have no idea how to solve for that variable. It’s difficult pill to swallow, that one. Acknowledging that I really don’t know when I will come back to this place is hard. I will come back. But I don’t know when. Worst of all, I don’t know who will still be here.
It’s sad. It definitely is.
That’s why I want to make the most of my time here. See people, spend time with them. Do things. Go places. Drink drinks and eat food. My 6-week plan to “happiness(?)”
The Legend and I were talking a few weeks ago about this same topic and she told me that it’s important to keep things in perspective. (Always good advice). She said that it’s difficult for anyone to make serious friendships in a single year, especially in college, and especially abroad. This, said The Legend, is even truer for friendships between foreigners and people of the host country. She and I both agree that this isn’t always true and that there are plenty examples to prove us wrong. But, we both understand that, by no one’s fault, it is simply difficult to establish a meaningful relationship and maintain it across the equator.
I won’t say she’s wrong, but I will disagree to some extent. I realize, sadly, that many of the people here that I have met and that I consider friends will probably slip off my radar slowly over the years. But, I want them to know, and I want you to know, and I want to reinforce this idea for myself, that that in no way invalidates the experiences that I have had or am having with them right now; that every Chilean that I have met has had a deep, profound impact on me in innumerable ways. If I return in 10 years to Chile, and I don’t recognize you, I apologize, but please know that you in a unique and individual way have affected me in the best ways possible. And I thank you for that, weon. ;)
Now, to update you, friend, on the goings on of my life:
Currently, on the academic front, I have at least one project or essay to turn in, presentation to give or test to take every week until I leave. Not the most relaxing of schedules but it’s keeping on my toes and making sure I actually go to class during my last month-and-a-half. I’m progressing nicely this semester in my classes, but I’m not going to lie and tell you that it’s easy to go to class and concentrate at the current moment. Motivation is definitely lacking.
I also recently bought a travel mug, primarily for coffee, so that I can keep warm in classrooms without heating (I’m currently planning on plummeting temperatures when winter really hits Santiago) and also for the caffeine boost which will inevitably be a bonus at the end of this semester. Sidebar: the first real rain of the year brought some snow to the tip-tops of the Andes bringing life back to them, ironically. I missed seeing snow on their ridges.
I ran a 5K road race put on by the school’s engineering program the other day. It was sponsored by New Balance which meant awesome gear for prizes. I won which was awesome. Even more awesome was the box of granola bars (now almost empty) that they gave me as part of my prize.
Oh, and I also got the chance to catch up with Pancho, Antonia and Sassy Javiera from Añihue last week. It was great to see them again, especially off the reserve. We met under strange circumstances though. Javier and I planned on going to Antonia’s parents’ house where the two were staying with their daughter Olivia while they visited the city. However when we got there, they were headed out the door to the hospital to see about the baby. Antonia at the time was in her 41st week and a sudden lack of movement from the baby had her worried. So outside a hospital waiting room Javiera, Pancho and I talked while Antonia found out that everything was alright. I just got news that Martín Pescador was born on May 17th.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
T-minus Two Months
Hello Friend-
I’m happy to bring you what might possibly be the greatest discovery in party-going behavior analysis in the past 20 years. And that is a verifiable fact.
After much experience and thought, I have come to understand that the safest social (and possibly structural) space in any room is the doorway. When there is any doubt about a person’s social standing in a group of people the go-to place is the doorway. It is comfortable, it is safe, and most of all, it is acceptable. It says that a person is interested in joining the party but that the person isn’t presumptuous. It provides a quick getaway while also establishing one’s presence.
The doorway is the most reliable of places to be. Picture Dude X in his high top sneakers, jeans and semi-urban full-zip hoodie; his glass is full of coke and some sort of alcohol, the fresh ice cubes clinking against each other. His eyes browse the room full of new faces looking for A) a familiar one, or B) someone to connect with. Too afraid to join the table but also looking to have a good time, he leans his right shoulder against the doorjamb, putting most of his weight on his right foot while crossing his left behind the ankle of his right. Blocking the doorway, he almost looks cocky, but since he’s not raising his glass in the company of anyone, his presence is safe, just like the space he is occupying.
Now, none of this is to say that being in the doorway is bad thing. In fact, depending on which doorway it is, it could easily be the most heavily-trafficked place in the party, providing more social stimulation than anticipated. However, assuming that is not the case, the doorway can soon become uncomfortable, uneventful, uninvolved, and lonely.
That, my friend, is a place that I hope to NEVER EVER, EVER be in during my last two months (exact starting yesterday) in Chile, especially this coming Friday. You see, I’m celebrating my 21st birthday along with La Court/Coco/Nescafé this Friday. And as the host and the one celebrating his birthday, and as the one who has recently discovered the link between social awkwardness and the physical location in a given room, I am dedicating this Friday to the inauguration of Plan Do Work.
Plan Do Work is my detailed and precise plan to go all out (at the appropriate times; i.e. not before tests or any important responsibility) during my final months in Santiago.
Although I’m looking forward to my birthday party and the parties to come, I also know that I have lots of work to do before I head home.
Last week was Hell Week; two tests and three essays. I think I did well on most of them, but I won’t find out for sure until next week probably. I also started working again at the high school teaching English classes. However, the program through the Chilean government is either not operating this semester or really behind schedule and my high school doesn’t have any other volunteers. Definitely a bummer since the school is heavily underfunded and the teachers are spread extremely thin throughout the week. It’s enjoyable work though, and I’m glad I can do it.
Last weekend I also got the chance to travel south to Pichilemu to help construct houses again. This time was different in many ways, but still a good experience. Instead of working in a camp of emergency housing, we were out in the sticks at an old lady’s home where she lived with her husband and several of her kids and grand kids who all had their own homes on her large property. Our group of 11 hit some speed bumps on the way to finishing the house, but in the end we got it done. The woman and her family made us awesome food the two days we were there. Probably some of the best I’ve had in Chile so far.
I’m also juiced on the possibility of getting to work for a new startup whose aim it is to provide running tours of Santiago to tourists and people on business who enjoy running. Everything is really up in the air, but it’s an exciting opportunity. I’m just hoping it works out.
Well, friend. I should get going. I have to make a play list for Friday and actually study. Ick.
I hope that you are well and I am very much looking forward to seeing you in person soon. Two months is a long time, but it will all go by too quickly, I know.
Derek
I’m happy to bring you what might possibly be the greatest discovery in party-going behavior analysis in the past 20 years. And that is a verifiable fact.
After much experience and thought, I have come to understand that the safest social (and possibly structural) space in any room is the doorway. When there is any doubt about a person’s social standing in a group of people the go-to place is the doorway. It is comfortable, it is safe, and most of all, it is acceptable. It says that a person is interested in joining the party but that the person isn’t presumptuous. It provides a quick getaway while also establishing one’s presence.
The doorway is the most reliable of places to be. Picture Dude X in his high top sneakers, jeans and semi-urban full-zip hoodie; his glass is full of coke and some sort of alcohol, the fresh ice cubes clinking against each other. His eyes browse the room full of new faces looking for A) a familiar one, or B) someone to connect with. Too afraid to join the table but also looking to have a good time, he leans his right shoulder against the doorjamb, putting most of his weight on his right foot while crossing his left behind the ankle of his right. Blocking the doorway, he almost looks cocky, but since he’s not raising his glass in the company of anyone, his presence is safe, just like the space he is occupying.
Now, none of this is to say that being in the doorway is bad thing. In fact, depending on which doorway it is, it could easily be the most heavily-trafficked place in the party, providing more social stimulation than anticipated. However, assuming that is not the case, the doorway can soon become uncomfortable, uneventful, uninvolved, and lonely.
That, my friend, is a place that I hope to NEVER EVER, EVER be in during my last two months (exact starting yesterday) in Chile, especially this coming Friday. You see, I’m celebrating my 21st birthday along with La Court/Coco/Nescafé this Friday. And as the host and the one celebrating his birthday, and as the one who has recently discovered the link between social awkwardness and the physical location in a given room, I am dedicating this Friday to the inauguration of Plan Do Work.
Plan Do Work is my detailed and precise plan to go all out (at the appropriate times; i.e. not before tests or any important responsibility) during my final months in Santiago.
Although I’m looking forward to my birthday party and the parties to come, I also know that I have lots of work to do before I head home.
Last week was Hell Week; two tests and three essays. I think I did well on most of them, but I won’t find out for sure until next week probably. I also started working again at the high school teaching English classes. However, the program through the Chilean government is either not operating this semester or really behind schedule and my high school doesn’t have any other volunteers. Definitely a bummer since the school is heavily underfunded and the teachers are spread extremely thin throughout the week. It’s enjoyable work though, and I’m glad I can do it.
Last weekend I also got the chance to travel south to Pichilemu to help construct houses again. This time was different in many ways, but still a good experience. Instead of working in a camp of emergency housing, we were out in the sticks at an old lady’s home where she lived with her husband and several of her kids and grand kids who all had their own homes on her large property. Our group of 11 hit some speed bumps on the way to finishing the house, but in the end we got it done. The woman and her family made us awesome food the two days we were there. Probably some of the best I’ve had in Chile so far.
I’m also juiced on the possibility of getting to work for a new startup whose aim it is to provide running tours of Santiago to tourists and people on business who enjoy running. Everything is really up in the air, but it’s an exciting opportunity. I’m just hoping it works out.
Well, friend. I should get going. I have to make a play list for Friday and actually study. Ick.
I hope that you are well and I am very much looking forward to seeing you in person soon. Two months is a long time, but it will all go by too quickly, I know.
Derek
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Second Semester Slump
Hello Friend.
The day I last posted, there was an earthquake. A magnitude 8.8 struck the coast of south-central Chile sending shockwaves throughout the continent and tsunamis through the Pacific. At 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning… technically my Friday night… I found myself under a door jamb watching disco balls swing and listening to beer bottles fall off the bar as the angry rumble of the earthquake endured for 90 seconds. Calm and collected during the earthquake, I quickly melted into an adrenaline-induced fervor as I left the club. Cell phones that didn’t work illuminated panicked faces, some with tears, most with shock. The street lights had all gone out which made the blue-white light from the numerous phones even eerier. People tripped over bricks that fell off of building fronts as they ran across the street looking for friends. Police sirens shrieked by and their whistles blew, providing little structure to the chaos that the city quickly became following the initial earthquake. Within minutes the streets were clogged with worried drivers trying to get home to their families; their drive was slowed by dangerous intersections and fallen overpasses on the highways. On my way home, I nervously tapped the armrest of the seat as I watched people out the window. Girls huddled in groups together had wide-eyed looks of confusion and fear. Couples holding each other tightly tried to flag down cars. Entire families stood outside the lobbies of their apartment buildings fearfully awaiting the coming aftershocks. Groups of strangers stood huddled around parked cars listening to the radio… the only form of news for several hours. After talking to my roommates and looking at the huge shingles that fell seven stories onto our patio, I decided that it wouldn’t do any good to extend the experience longer than necessary, and I went to bed. A phone call from my old host family woke me up, thankfully they were all OK, just scared. Minutes later, the aftershocks started. I fell back asleep after the first strong one. The second one kept me up.
And that, in essence, is the story of my Chile earthquake. Still, “aftershocks” continue. Their epicenters move throughout central Chile, and they are weaker and weaker every day, but the fact that a month after the initial quake, we are still experiencing related seismic activity is astonishing.
The earthquake was devastating for so many people; if not physically because of damage to their homes, then emotionally.
Now, a month later, on Easter Sunday, I didn’t find myself in a church. There were no eggs to be dyed, no pastel colors, and no chocolate bunnies. Brunch was more of a light breakfast of bread and jam and lunch was noodles with tuna. My hunt for Easter eggs was replaced by a search for 4-inch nails as I wandered the construction site of an earthquake relief community in south-central Chile.
My volunteer trip down to Constitución to help build houses is one of the reasons that this installation is so late. Being nearly completely unaffected by the quake, I felt it necessary to do something to help those who were affected. No, sorry; “affected” is an understatement. The people who we helped survived an earthquake and a tsunami that took everything but their lives. Before moving into the houses that we built for them, they lived in tents in a parking lot. They’d been like that for over a month. My Catholic university gave us two days off before Easter weekend, so we had extra time in my group made purely of students to go build houses.
We left around 9 at night on a Wednesday and arrived tired and cranky at 3 a.m. to the high school that let us sleep on the floors of their classrooms. Five hours later, we were up eating breakfast getting ready to start work.
We were divided into ten groups of about six volunteers in each. Close to 1/3 of those volunteers were from my exchange program. In the four days we were there, each group was responsible for building two houses. Each house measures 3 meters by 6 meters with two windows and a door. We first dug the holes and put in the pillars to support the house. The floor and walls all came preassembled from a charity group in Chile dedicated to eliminating homelessness. Once we created a level floor, we had to put up the walls and put the roof on, made of corrugated aluminum. We were a pretty efficient group once we got over the numerous corrections we had to make to the pillars on our first house which were not level and continuously out of place. The second house was up before lunch on the last day, so we helped other groups to finish theirs. During this time, we had help from an international Christian missionary group as well as military personnel from Chile’s Armed Forces.
By the end of the trip, we added 20 houses to an encampment for earthquake victims that already housed 120 families. A trip through town showed that these people literally have nothing but the clothes on their backs and their families, and now their small house. Entire residential sections of the town were taken away by the tsunami. Large, flat patches of dirt exist where houses and markets used to be filled with life and people. Entire boats sit stranded on piles of rubble… I wonder if the house crumbled first or if the boat destroyed it. Roofs lie caved in and cars are overturned and crushed. On the walls of the houses that still stand are words letting people know that the former occupants are alright.
Overall, it was an indescribably amazing experience that I would consider to be one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever done in terms of helping others and as an experience in general. Being with new people from my university who I previously didn’t know as well as friends from my exchange program created a fun and creative social atmosphere from which we drew most of our energy to keep going during the third and fourth days. I can’t imagine not have going, but I do know that had I not gone, I might be a little less stressed at the moment. Let me explain that situation-
I thought I picked easier classes this semester. Or at least classes that wouldn’t give me a bunch of unnecessary, uninteresting work. For the most part, that has proved to be true. But I couldn’t ever have anticipated the amount of reading I’d have to do. It’s ridiculous. I always have some sort of reading material in my backpack, which makes my days productive, but it also makes them tedious and tiresome knowing that I always have something more to read. Taking four whole days out of my study schedule set me back slightly, but I can bounce back. (I don’t think I told you my class schedule, so if you’re interested… here it goes: Media History, Chilean Folklore, Spanish, Self-health and Volleyball)
The other thing that has me on edge is the Santiago Marathon on this coming Sunday, Apr. 11 (two days after my birthday). It’s not exactly a marathon, it’s a 10K, but regardless, I just want to run fast and get that cool t-shirt that comes with registration. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but it will be interesting. I know that.
What else is new?
Not much. Being back in school is refreshing and more enjoyable. I’m surprised to find how much more I understand in classes this semester compared to last semester. Oh, I’m also in a new apartment. After putting up with a (legitimately?) crazy landlord, moldy walls, water heaters that didn’t work, ridiculous building “rules” and racist roommates, I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m currently living in a much more central, much more ideal location with a Chilean and a guy from France. They’re super relaxed and super cool. Much more my style. The apartment is nice, but it is TINY. It’s ridiculous. My bedroom literally could not fit a double bed in it. My twin takes up a ridiculous amount of room and I’m left with walking space which, because the closet is extremely small as well, is taken up by clothes. Whatever, I can put up with that for the 3 months that are left. Which brings me to the fact that this whole year has gone by so fast! I can’t even handle the fact that in 3 months I’ll be home. I’m way excited, but I’m also sad and torn between getting back to the U.S. and seeing everyone I left there and between leaving everything that I’ve built and come to know and love here in Santiago. It will be tough. But that’s how things are I suppose.
Anyways, friend, I can’t think of anything else to tell you at the moment. It is, however, my 21st birthday tomorrow. Party, right?! Not exactly. I’m compromising between my need to celebrate and my hope to run fast on Sunday by celebrating a little tonight (Thursday) and then hitting it big next weekend with a joint birthday party with a good friend from my exchange program. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.
For now, check out the pictures I took of the reconstruction trip.
Much love to you.
Derek
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=202740&id=629949459&l=593193c6c0
The day I last posted, there was an earthquake. A magnitude 8.8 struck the coast of south-central Chile sending shockwaves throughout the continent and tsunamis through the Pacific. At 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning… technically my Friday night… I found myself under a door jamb watching disco balls swing and listening to beer bottles fall off the bar as the angry rumble of the earthquake endured for 90 seconds. Calm and collected during the earthquake, I quickly melted into an adrenaline-induced fervor as I left the club. Cell phones that didn’t work illuminated panicked faces, some with tears, most with shock. The street lights had all gone out which made the blue-white light from the numerous phones even eerier. People tripped over bricks that fell off of building fronts as they ran across the street looking for friends. Police sirens shrieked by and their whistles blew, providing little structure to the chaos that the city quickly became following the initial earthquake. Within minutes the streets were clogged with worried drivers trying to get home to their families; their drive was slowed by dangerous intersections and fallen overpasses on the highways. On my way home, I nervously tapped the armrest of the seat as I watched people out the window. Girls huddled in groups together had wide-eyed looks of confusion and fear. Couples holding each other tightly tried to flag down cars. Entire families stood outside the lobbies of their apartment buildings fearfully awaiting the coming aftershocks. Groups of strangers stood huddled around parked cars listening to the radio… the only form of news for several hours. After talking to my roommates and looking at the huge shingles that fell seven stories onto our patio, I decided that it wouldn’t do any good to extend the experience longer than necessary, and I went to bed. A phone call from my old host family woke me up, thankfully they were all OK, just scared. Minutes later, the aftershocks started. I fell back asleep after the first strong one. The second one kept me up.
And that, in essence, is the story of my Chile earthquake. Still, “aftershocks” continue. Their epicenters move throughout central Chile, and they are weaker and weaker every day, but the fact that a month after the initial quake, we are still experiencing related seismic activity is astonishing.
The earthquake was devastating for so many people; if not physically because of damage to their homes, then emotionally.
Now, a month later, on Easter Sunday, I didn’t find myself in a church. There were no eggs to be dyed, no pastel colors, and no chocolate bunnies. Brunch was more of a light breakfast of bread and jam and lunch was noodles with tuna. My hunt for Easter eggs was replaced by a search for 4-inch nails as I wandered the construction site of an earthquake relief community in south-central Chile.
My volunteer trip down to Constitución to help build houses is one of the reasons that this installation is so late. Being nearly completely unaffected by the quake, I felt it necessary to do something to help those who were affected. No, sorry; “affected” is an understatement. The people who we helped survived an earthquake and a tsunami that took everything but their lives. Before moving into the houses that we built for them, they lived in tents in a parking lot. They’d been like that for over a month. My Catholic university gave us two days off before Easter weekend, so we had extra time in my group made purely of students to go build houses.
We left around 9 at night on a Wednesday and arrived tired and cranky at 3 a.m. to the high school that let us sleep on the floors of their classrooms. Five hours later, we were up eating breakfast getting ready to start work.
We were divided into ten groups of about six volunteers in each. Close to 1/3 of those volunteers were from my exchange program. In the four days we were there, each group was responsible for building two houses. Each house measures 3 meters by 6 meters with two windows and a door. We first dug the holes and put in the pillars to support the house. The floor and walls all came preassembled from a charity group in Chile dedicated to eliminating homelessness. Once we created a level floor, we had to put up the walls and put the roof on, made of corrugated aluminum. We were a pretty efficient group once we got over the numerous corrections we had to make to the pillars on our first house which were not level and continuously out of place. The second house was up before lunch on the last day, so we helped other groups to finish theirs. During this time, we had help from an international Christian missionary group as well as military personnel from Chile’s Armed Forces.
By the end of the trip, we added 20 houses to an encampment for earthquake victims that already housed 120 families. A trip through town showed that these people literally have nothing but the clothes on their backs and their families, and now their small house. Entire residential sections of the town were taken away by the tsunami. Large, flat patches of dirt exist where houses and markets used to be filled with life and people. Entire boats sit stranded on piles of rubble… I wonder if the house crumbled first or if the boat destroyed it. Roofs lie caved in and cars are overturned and crushed. On the walls of the houses that still stand are words letting people know that the former occupants are alright.
Overall, it was an indescribably amazing experience that I would consider to be one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever done in terms of helping others and as an experience in general. Being with new people from my university who I previously didn’t know as well as friends from my exchange program created a fun and creative social atmosphere from which we drew most of our energy to keep going during the third and fourth days. I can’t imagine not have going, but I do know that had I not gone, I might be a little less stressed at the moment. Let me explain that situation-
I thought I picked easier classes this semester. Or at least classes that wouldn’t give me a bunch of unnecessary, uninteresting work. For the most part, that has proved to be true. But I couldn’t ever have anticipated the amount of reading I’d have to do. It’s ridiculous. I always have some sort of reading material in my backpack, which makes my days productive, but it also makes them tedious and tiresome knowing that I always have something more to read. Taking four whole days out of my study schedule set me back slightly, but I can bounce back. (I don’t think I told you my class schedule, so if you’re interested… here it goes: Media History, Chilean Folklore, Spanish, Self-health and Volleyball)
The other thing that has me on edge is the Santiago Marathon on this coming Sunday, Apr. 11 (two days after my birthday). It’s not exactly a marathon, it’s a 10K, but regardless, I just want to run fast and get that cool t-shirt that comes with registration. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but it will be interesting. I know that.
What else is new?
Not much. Being back in school is refreshing and more enjoyable. I’m surprised to find how much more I understand in classes this semester compared to last semester. Oh, I’m also in a new apartment. After putting up with a (legitimately?) crazy landlord, moldy walls, water heaters that didn’t work, ridiculous building “rules” and racist roommates, I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m currently living in a much more central, much more ideal location with a Chilean and a guy from France. They’re super relaxed and super cool. Much more my style. The apartment is nice, but it is TINY. It’s ridiculous. My bedroom literally could not fit a double bed in it. My twin takes up a ridiculous amount of room and I’m left with walking space which, because the closet is extremely small as well, is taken up by clothes. Whatever, I can put up with that for the 3 months that are left. Which brings me to the fact that this whole year has gone by so fast! I can’t even handle the fact that in 3 months I’ll be home. I’m way excited, but I’m also sad and torn between getting back to the U.S. and seeing everyone I left there and between leaving everything that I’ve built and come to know and love here in Santiago. It will be tough. But that’s how things are I suppose.
Anyways, friend, I can’t think of anything else to tell you at the moment. It is, however, my 21st birthday tomorrow. Party, right?! Not exactly. I’m compromising between my need to celebrate and my hope to run fast on Sunday by celebrating a little tonight (Thursday) and then hitting it big next weekend with a joint birthday party with a good friend from my exchange program. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.
For now, check out the pictures I took of the reconstruction trip.
Much love to you.
Derek
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=202740&id=629949459&l=593193c6c0
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Añihue
On my last day at the Añihue Reserve, I walked with dolphins. Or rather, I walked and they swam patiently, parallel to me. I can’t say there was an actual connection between us, but the one I created meant a lot. At least to me.
You see, friend, the absence of differences between their swimming and my walking was striking. I couldn’t figure out where the sand stopped and the water began, or vice-versa. There was no transition that I could see. The two were blurred together with each wave, the effect of which, at least on a beach, is just as much contributed to by the sand as it is by the water. The tide furthermore blurred the lines between the ocean being there and the sand being here. This is not to say that they are “one,” although they are, but that whatever differences they may have had didn’t matter. All that mattered was that for every few steps I took, a grey bulge would emerge from the water followed by a happy dorsal fin.
Acknowledging and then developing that thought was a sign, at least in my own mind, of my “growth” in Añihue. Now that I have left that place—a place that joins the short list of places that I would call magical—I want to analyze my experience, my growth, and my relationships that resulted because of my time at the Reserve.
In advance, friend, please forgive me if I at all come across as being egotistical. I struggled with the phrasing of a few things in this letter to you as to not sound so self-centered, but I decided that the only way for you to get the full effect of being at the Añihue Reserve is to put you in my position and tell you things from the center of my being. Hence, this:
Overall, my experience was more than amazing. I did something that very few people do in a place that even fewer people do it in a way that nobody has done it or will do it again. To recap- the premise of my time at Añihue was to volunteer my work on an “organic farm” in exchange for room and board for a month. Because Añihue is a nature reserve, most of my work was aimed at maintenance and upkeep of the infrastructure and systems present there, but also I worked on developing a few projects at Añihue. If you haven’t already, check out their Web site (www.anihuereserve.com) to get an idea of what it’s like and what it’s about.
A brief history from what I gathered over meals last month: About 10 or 15 years ago, a rich, Floridian philanthropist named Allison Fisher (or Alyson, or however you might spell the male version of the name) bought 10,000 hectares in southern Chile and called the place Añihue because of what the fishermen in the area traditionally called the place. He deemed it a nature preserve. If I recall right, the place has had three owners in history, first a rich Chilean, who then passed the land on to a Mr. Schidlowski who built the Casa Grande where I stayed during the volunteer trip. He left his son and his wife at that house while he worked in the city. After years and years, the son went crazy and probably the wife too, and they ended up moving. At some point on this jumbled timeline, Schidlowski sold the land to Fisher who swept in with his Superman Cape and all and saved the day, creating Añihue.
Now, the Reserve consists of two places, Añihue, Añihue, which is where the Casa Grande is, Casa de la Isla, and the animals. Here is where Francisco “Pancho” Gomez lives with his wife Antonia Sepulveda and their daughter Olivia. They are expecting a son in May. My volunteer partner, a Chilena named Javiera “Sassy” Carreño, and I stayed with them for the month, working with them and working for them; it all depended on the day, really. We all lived in the Casa Grande, a huge house heated by a fire, which warms the rainwater so we could take showers every few days. The solar panels provide enough energy on a cloudy day to power all the LED lights, and the internet and computer for a solid few hours, just enough time for everyone to check their messages and maybe to watch a movie as a group. On a sunny day, everyone charges their MP3 players, cell phones and other electronic devices to take advantage of the surplus energy in the batteries, which, surprisingly, can damage the life expectancy of them if there’s an excess of energy. Across a sand spit, which fills up to the knee with water during high tide, is the Casa de La Isla, which is in renovation/construction/remodeling at the moment. During Schidlowski’s ownership, a rich doctor bought the “island” from him and contracted him to construct a house there. The land was sold and the house erected, but never quite finished completely, and Fisher bought the land before anyone ever had the opportunity to live in it. It’s an amazing house with an even more amazing view. The animals at this part of the reserve are numerous. The wild fauna aside, Añihue owns, at the moment, about a dozen pigs/hogs, seven chickens and four sheep. They had just slaughtered a pig last month and the pigs that remained were babies still suckling, which in turn made their mother unable to be slaughtered because of their dependency and her skinniness. The other available pigs were only a few months older than their baby cousins and weren’t worth killing at that point—not enough meat on their bones. The chickens reliably put out eggs for us, about three a day. The sheep, having only been at the Reserve for a week before I arrived, weren’t able to be sheered because without their wool now, their transition into, and duration of, the harsh winter in Patagonia would surely kill them.
North of this, on the mouth of the Palena River, is “Toninas,” named after the Austral Dolphins that show up in the Patagonian waters. Here is where the administration of the reserve lives and works; it is also where tourists go to stay. One enters here by disembarking from whichever ferry drops them off at Puerto Raul Marin Balmaceda where the boat Añihue picks them up and brings them to the Reserve entrance on the Palena River. The kitchen and the workshop (also where some of the workers live) are the first two buildings on the path made of planks that cut through the Valdivian Forest. At the end of the path is a sand trail that leads a tourist to the beach, the hiking trail, the hot tub, or their cabin. There are two cabins designed for tourists and a third house where the Reserve director Felipe Gonzalez and his family live… it also has room for tourists and visitors. I stayed here on my last night waiting for the ferry. It’s an amazingly beautiful place, but after getting used to the open expanses of Añihue, Toninas seemed cramped and confined, not only spatially but also within their strict time schedule.
So what did I do there, you might ask? Here is my unexhausted list of things I did that seemed noteworthy or that we did frequently:
1. Tended to the animals (feeding them, watering them, cleaning their house(s) three times a week)
2. Worked at Casa de la Isla
a. Hung doors
b. Cleaned all the shingles from underneath the house leftover from the roof replacement
c. Installed wainscoting
3. Painted houses and walls
4. Found firewood, cut firewood, chopped firewood, hauled firewood
5. Moved a compost toilet
6. Transplanted artichoke
7. Made a wind chime from bamboo, shells, and recycled bags
8. Made a trail and a lookout point
9. Made a fire pit
10. Collected drinking water from a stream
11. Made wheat bread
12. Climbed a giant Coihue
13. Made a tree swing
14. Started a raft made of plastic bottles
15. Dove for shellfish
The setting of Añihue exceeded all of my expectations. Jurassic Park cliffs covered in impenetrable forests hugged the shores of the bay whose emerald waters rose to fill the place with life*** and then swept away to reveal a graveyard of seashells where the only life besides me and the dogs following my path were the fleas that, like cultures, scavenged by the dozens on bits of left-behind kelp.
At Añihue, I felt at home, comfortable, happy and needed. An established routine/schedule, healthy food and interesting company helped me to adapt quickly although I often had difficulty being talkative. The work, in many ways, was a very insignificant part of my month. More important were the times I would stop pushing my wheelbarrow to admire the cliffs behind the Animal House because they showed me something different each time I looked at them. Most importantly was my personal growth. Like any time of significant personal growth, I can’t pinpoint the ways that I evolved, but maybe you, friend, can make your own conclusions if I tell you some of the things I learned:
Take your time:
“Take your time,” said Pancho from over my shoulder.
Not only had he told me this several times, but he was committing pet peeve numero uno: hovering in that space where my peripheral vision just barely picks up on the presence of something. Above all that, he was telling me to take my time on the most meaningless task I did all that month—cleaning windows. It made me feel stupid, frustrated and also nostalgic. For 20 years I have failed to grasp that lesson that my own father had tried to teach me. Mowing the lawn, putting up Christmas lights, cleaning the garage, washing the car. “Take your time.” I can hear his words echoing off the walls of my skull. If I had a brain in there I might have been able to decipher the words he was saying. “Do it right the first time so you don’t have to do it again.”
“Yeah, I got it.” I said back over my own shoulder to Pancho, putting maybe just a little too much pressure on the glass. The next twenty minutes flew by as I wiped Windex off of windows, managing to complete one side of the house. Rounding the corner to start side number two, I felt proud of having accomplished my task in record time. It was then that Pancho came out of the house and started speaking to me, this time in English, making what he was about to say make me feel even dumber.
“Hey, I don’t know if maybe you haven’t done this before, but take your time. Look. You’re leaving all these…um…how do you say…”
“Rayas?” I interrupted, taking my best shot at the Spanish translation for “streaks.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Look, this is how you do it.”
He then proceeded to strip me of my Windex and newspaper wads and show me, in a painfully time-consuming way, how to properly clean a window and leave it streak free.
Ashamed, but not necessarily humbled, I waxed on and waxed off for over an hour, repeating the dethroning of my ego over and over with each spritz from the spray bottle. I feel it was then that I was able to accept the lesson that had tried for years to enter my consciousness. Maybe going to Añihue and being there made me more malleable, or maybe in utter embarrassment, the only way to save face was to admit defeat and try to learn from the moment.
Communication:
I also learned, or rather, reinforced, the important necessity of communication, both on a social and on a professional level. My social tendency towards timidity in new networks made getting to know everyone in any significant way somewhat difficult. My quietness was well-noted but not looked down on. However, by the end of the month, in the last few days when I finally opened up, I felt the benefits of a solid group of friends—a family of sorts. That shyness, at least in Spanish-speaking settings, translated to the “professional” side of things in Añihue. I learned that, especially in doing things that I have little experience in like carpentry, it’s necessary to not only ask whatever question that may occur to me, but also to openly provide the details of the job I’m working on so that the person I’m working with and I can have a clear understanding of our processes and objectives.
Initiative:
Initiative, I have discovered, is what separates noteworthy from forgettable people. Being at Añihue taught me not only to be responsible for myself and my actions and to own my work, but to actively seek out possibilities to develop myself, practice my skills, and deepen my understanding of the world. Pancho and Antonia are two amazing individuals who encouraged me to define my strengths and interests and to pursue them. They showed me that by taking the initiative to do something, a person helps to ignite a sense of enthusiasm within the people around them. The contagiousness of initiative is important to help create an environment where a person’s own interests and pursuits are valued, respected and encouraged.
During the month, I didn’t have one specific area, however I did have a few shared projects with Pancho like the raft, the lookout point and trail, and the bird catalog. The bird catalog wasn’t my idea, but it was my project, and although I didn’t get as far into it as I would have liked, I did make it easy for someone else to continue working on it. Maybe in some way, that was my Añihue legacy. Anyway, I definitely left with a greater sense of confidence in my abilities to create and follow through on projects and work in my daily life.
Another thing I want to mention is the people I lived with for the month. My time at Añihue was shared with the other volunteer, Javiera, a Chilena who we quickly nicknamed Sassy. There were also Pancho and Antonia, the couple who live and work from the Casa Grande at Añihue, and their daughter.
Sassy, for her education in eco-tourism and her never-ending questions which stemmed from a pure curiosity, was a good partner. Although our divorce happened only after three days when she moved out of our shared bedroom to the unoccupied one downstairs, we ended the month on a good note of teamwork and shared experiences, even given a few rough spots.
I must say that rough spots are to be expected when two new, young volunteers are thrust into the family life of a pregnant couple and their 2-year-old daughter in a place as isolated as Añihue.
Pancho will attest to that. He had to give Javiera and me “the talk” about initiative and not depending on him and Antonia so much. That was on day 10. We sailed smoothly through new and treacherous waters after that. Pancho, for being a steady and hard worker, is a very balanced individual: he has been both self employed and an employee of Pakistani royalty and he is learned in Taoism and skepticism, tree cutting and tree climbing, biology and technology, many languages and the Language of the World, —there are very few things that don’t interest Pancho. Of all the things he taught me, he perhaps showed me the important lesson of life: balance—that it isn’t worth living in one extreme lifestyle or the other if you can’t be willing to experience the other side. He manifested this lesson by working at an exhausting pace in the mornings, and then, after lunch, while putting down his second cup of powdered coffee from his giant blue Starbucks mug, saying, “We’re taking the afternoon off to enjoy the weather.” And with that, he would disappear out the door to the beach to smoke a cigarette and watch his daughter splash in the tide pools. His wife, Antonia, would be in quick pursuit to enjoy the moment with her family.
Antonia’s young age and waist-length dread locks hide her maturity and intelligence. A ski-instructor when she isn’t at Añihue, her patience and eagerness to teach helped me a lot. She was a master of the garden and knowing the rhythms of the universe. She also taught me how to bake wheat bread.
I attribute my good experience there at Añihue to one basic thing and to that thing only: it was an indescribable openness to what God tried to show me during that month. It may have been my lack of expectations at what the experience was to be like that allowed me to absorb so much. Or it may have been the physical isolation that made me depend on the people at Añihue that helped me. I can’t say for sure. I do know that there, in the Cold Jungle of Patagonia, it’s easy for one to learn the Language of the World, as Paulo Coelho would say. It is that method of communication through which we contemplate a hill and understand more than a mound of dirt with trees growing on it. It is through the same (lack of) words that we understand our impact on the world and its impact on us. It was easy to understand what nature was telling me and teaching me since, without distractions, I could hear their words through the ears of my soul and not the ears of my head. It was easy because “our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand” (Coelho, The Alchemist). In that way, my fated connection to that land, to those animals, to those people was everything but coincidental; it was meaningful in every sense of the term, and to the word’s fullest capacities.
***This statement might be somewhat misleading since the sad reality of southern Chile is its deceptiveness. It is spoken of and often advertised as an untouched paradise, a cold jungle where limited human contact has left the land and the sea pristine and pure. This is true, until you consider the fishermen and the businesses they work for. Fishermen cruise the waters until they reach beds of clams and oysters where there, at low tide, they harvest all that they can, stuffing sacks full of shellfish until they return to whatever port they came from, not blinded by the sun shining off the water but by the dollars gleaming from inside their laden boats. I spoke with a German biologist, Haike, at Toninas who was conducting research on the communication of Orcas and Pilot Whales. In dealing with the behavioral communication of Pilot Whales, she is one of two people in the world conducting this research. It was her research that prevented a business from constructing a salmon fishery at the mouth of the Añihue Bay, reasoning that the population of Toninas Dolphins that lives off the nourishment provided in that specific area would be destroyed by such a structure. Haike told me that, besides the unsustainable practices of local fishermen, Chilean salmon fisheries have gradually destroyed the coastline, raping the sea of nutrients and contributing back to her “abundance” only contamination. Of all the trash that floats onto the shores of Patagonian beaches, 99% comes from salmon fisheries. And the trash isn’t just plastic bottles and Doritos bags. The trash consists of huge foam blocks tangled in ropes and nets, giant plastic tubs used for storing the harvested salmon, tubing and an endless list of harmful pollutants. Hope comes in the form of conscientious people like those at Añihue who clean the beaches and are dedicated to living low-impact lives and to helping preserve Patagonia.
Google Map:
Ver Añihue en un mapa ampliado
Pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=190645&id=629949459&l=033824c4df
You see, friend, the absence of differences between their swimming and my walking was striking. I couldn’t figure out where the sand stopped and the water began, or vice-versa. There was no transition that I could see. The two were blurred together with each wave, the effect of which, at least on a beach, is just as much contributed to by the sand as it is by the water. The tide furthermore blurred the lines between the ocean being there and the sand being here. This is not to say that they are “one,” although they are, but that whatever differences they may have had didn’t matter. All that mattered was that for every few steps I took, a grey bulge would emerge from the water followed by a happy dorsal fin.
Acknowledging and then developing that thought was a sign, at least in my own mind, of my “growth” in Añihue. Now that I have left that place—a place that joins the short list of places that I would call magical—I want to analyze my experience, my growth, and my relationships that resulted because of my time at the Reserve.
In advance, friend, please forgive me if I at all come across as being egotistical. I struggled with the phrasing of a few things in this letter to you as to not sound so self-centered, but I decided that the only way for you to get the full effect of being at the Añihue Reserve is to put you in my position and tell you things from the center of my being. Hence, this:
Overall, my experience was more than amazing. I did something that very few people do in a place that even fewer people do it in a way that nobody has done it or will do it again. To recap- the premise of my time at Añihue was to volunteer my work on an “organic farm” in exchange for room and board for a month. Because Añihue is a nature reserve, most of my work was aimed at maintenance and upkeep of the infrastructure and systems present there, but also I worked on developing a few projects at Añihue. If you haven’t already, check out their Web site (www.anihuereserve.com) to get an idea of what it’s like and what it’s about.
A brief history from what I gathered over meals last month: About 10 or 15 years ago, a rich, Floridian philanthropist named Allison Fisher (or Alyson, or however you might spell the male version of the name) bought 10,000 hectares in southern Chile and called the place Añihue because of what the fishermen in the area traditionally called the place. He deemed it a nature preserve. If I recall right, the place has had three owners in history, first a rich Chilean, who then passed the land on to a Mr. Schidlowski who built the Casa Grande where I stayed during the volunteer trip. He left his son and his wife at that house while he worked in the city. After years and years, the son went crazy and probably the wife too, and they ended up moving. At some point on this jumbled timeline, Schidlowski sold the land to Fisher who swept in with his Superman Cape and all and saved the day, creating Añihue.
Now, the Reserve consists of two places, Añihue, Añihue, which is where the Casa Grande is, Casa de la Isla, and the animals. Here is where Francisco “Pancho” Gomez lives with his wife Antonia Sepulveda and their daughter Olivia. They are expecting a son in May. My volunteer partner, a Chilena named Javiera “Sassy” Carreño, and I stayed with them for the month, working with them and working for them; it all depended on the day, really. We all lived in the Casa Grande, a huge house heated by a fire, which warms the rainwater so we could take showers every few days. The solar panels provide enough energy on a cloudy day to power all the LED lights, and the internet and computer for a solid few hours, just enough time for everyone to check their messages and maybe to watch a movie as a group. On a sunny day, everyone charges their MP3 players, cell phones and other electronic devices to take advantage of the surplus energy in the batteries, which, surprisingly, can damage the life expectancy of them if there’s an excess of energy. Across a sand spit, which fills up to the knee with water during high tide, is the Casa de La Isla, which is in renovation/construction/remodeling at the moment. During Schidlowski’s ownership, a rich doctor bought the “island” from him and contracted him to construct a house there. The land was sold and the house erected, but never quite finished completely, and Fisher bought the land before anyone ever had the opportunity to live in it. It’s an amazing house with an even more amazing view. The animals at this part of the reserve are numerous. The wild fauna aside, Añihue owns, at the moment, about a dozen pigs/hogs, seven chickens and four sheep. They had just slaughtered a pig last month and the pigs that remained were babies still suckling, which in turn made their mother unable to be slaughtered because of their dependency and her skinniness. The other available pigs were only a few months older than their baby cousins and weren’t worth killing at that point—not enough meat on their bones. The chickens reliably put out eggs for us, about three a day. The sheep, having only been at the Reserve for a week before I arrived, weren’t able to be sheered because without their wool now, their transition into, and duration of, the harsh winter in Patagonia would surely kill them.
North of this, on the mouth of the Palena River, is “Toninas,” named after the Austral Dolphins that show up in the Patagonian waters. Here is where the administration of the reserve lives and works; it is also where tourists go to stay. One enters here by disembarking from whichever ferry drops them off at Puerto Raul Marin Balmaceda where the boat Añihue picks them up and brings them to the Reserve entrance on the Palena River. The kitchen and the workshop (also where some of the workers live) are the first two buildings on the path made of planks that cut through the Valdivian Forest. At the end of the path is a sand trail that leads a tourist to the beach, the hiking trail, the hot tub, or their cabin. There are two cabins designed for tourists and a third house where the Reserve director Felipe Gonzalez and his family live… it also has room for tourists and visitors. I stayed here on my last night waiting for the ferry. It’s an amazingly beautiful place, but after getting used to the open expanses of Añihue, Toninas seemed cramped and confined, not only spatially but also within their strict time schedule.
So what did I do there, you might ask? Here is my unexhausted list of things I did that seemed noteworthy or that we did frequently:
1. Tended to the animals (feeding them, watering them, cleaning their house(s) three times a week)
2. Worked at Casa de la Isla
a. Hung doors
b. Cleaned all the shingles from underneath the house leftover from the roof replacement
c. Installed wainscoting
3. Painted houses and walls
4. Found firewood, cut firewood, chopped firewood, hauled firewood
5. Moved a compost toilet
6. Transplanted artichoke
7. Made a wind chime from bamboo, shells, and recycled bags
8. Made a trail and a lookout point
9. Made a fire pit
10. Collected drinking water from a stream
11. Made wheat bread
12. Climbed a giant Coihue
13. Made a tree swing
14. Started a raft made of plastic bottles
15. Dove for shellfish
The setting of Añihue exceeded all of my expectations. Jurassic Park cliffs covered in impenetrable forests hugged the shores of the bay whose emerald waters rose to fill the place with life*** and then swept away to reveal a graveyard of seashells where the only life besides me and the dogs following my path were the fleas that, like cultures, scavenged by the dozens on bits of left-behind kelp.
At Añihue, I felt at home, comfortable, happy and needed. An established routine/schedule, healthy food and interesting company helped me to adapt quickly although I often had difficulty being talkative. The work, in many ways, was a very insignificant part of my month. More important were the times I would stop pushing my wheelbarrow to admire the cliffs behind the Animal House because they showed me something different each time I looked at them. Most importantly was my personal growth. Like any time of significant personal growth, I can’t pinpoint the ways that I evolved, but maybe you, friend, can make your own conclusions if I tell you some of the things I learned:
Take your time:
“Take your time,” said Pancho from over my shoulder.
Not only had he told me this several times, but he was committing pet peeve numero uno: hovering in that space where my peripheral vision just barely picks up on the presence of something. Above all that, he was telling me to take my time on the most meaningless task I did all that month—cleaning windows. It made me feel stupid, frustrated and also nostalgic. For 20 years I have failed to grasp that lesson that my own father had tried to teach me. Mowing the lawn, putting up Christmas lights, cleaning the garage, washing the car. “Take your time.” I can hear his words echoing off the walls of my skull. If I had a brain in there I might have been able to decipher the words he was saying. “Do it right the first time so you don’t have to do it again.”
“Yeah, I got it.” I said back over my own shoulder to Pancho, putting maybe just a little too much pressure on the glass. The next twenty minutes flew by as I wiped Windex off of windows, managing to complete one side of the house. Rounding the corner to start side number two, I felt proud of having accomplished my task in record time. It was then that Pancho came out of the house and started speaking to me, this time in English, making what he was about to say make me feel even dumber.
“Hey, I don’t know if maybe you haven’t done this before, but take your time. Look. You’re leaving all these…um…how do you say…”
“Rayas?” I interrupted, taking my best shot at the Spanish translation for “streaks.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Look, this is how you do it.”
He then proceeded to strip me of my Windex and newspaper wads and show me, in a painfully time-consuming way, how to properly clean a window and leave it streak free.
Ashamed, but not necessarily humbled, I waxed on and waxed off for over an hour, repeating the dethroning of my ego over and over with each spritz from the spray bottle. I feel it was then that I was able to accept the lesson that had tried for years to enter my consciousness. Maybe going to Añihue and being there made me more malleable, or maybe in utter embarrassment, the only way to save face was to admit defeat and try to learn from the moment.
Communication:
I also learned, or rather, reinforced, the important necessity of communication, both on a social and on a professional level. My social tendency towards timidity in new networks made getting to know everyone in any significant way somewhat difficult. My quietness was well-noted but not looked down on. However, by the end of the month, in the last few days when I finally opened up, I felt the benefits of a solid group of friends—a family of sorts. That shyness, at least in Spanish-speaking settings, translated to the “professional” side of things in Añihue. I learned that, especially in doing things that I have little experience in like carpentry, it’s necessary to not only ask whatever question that may occur to me, but also to openly provide the details of the job I’m working on so that the person I’m working with and I can have a clear understanding of our processes and objectives.
Initiative:
Initiative, I have discovered, is what separates noteworthy from forgettable people. Being at Añihue taught me not only to be responsible for myself and my actions and to own my work, but to actively seek out possibilities to develop myself, practice my skills, and deepen my understanding of the world. Pancho and Antonia are two amazing individuals who encouraged me to define my strengths and interests and to pursue them. They showed me that by taking the initiative to do something, a person helps to ignite a sense of enthusiasm within the people around them. The contagiousness of initiative is important to help create an environment where a person’s own interests and pursuits are valued, respected and encouraged.
During the month, I didn’t have one specific area, however I did have a few shared projects with Pancho like the raft, the lookout point and trail, and the bird catalog. The bird catalog wasn’t my idea, but it was my project, and although I didn’t get as far into it as I would have liked, I did make it easy for someone else to continue working on it. Maybe in some way, that was my Añihue legacy. Anyway, I definitely left with a greater sense of confidence in my abilities to create and follow through on projects and work in my daily life.
Another thing I want to mention is the people I lived with for the month. My time at Añihue was shared with the other volunteer, Javiera, a Chilena who we quickly nicknamed Sassy. There were also Pancho and Antonia, the couple who live and work from the Casa Grande at Añihue, and their daughter.
Sassy, for her education in eco-tourism and her never-ending questions which stemmed from a pure curiosity, was a good partner. Although our divorce happened only after three days when she moved out of our shared bedroom to the unoccupied one downstairs, we ended the month on a good note of teamwork and shared experiences, even given a few rough spots.
I must say that rough spots are to be expected when two new, young volunteers are thrust into the family life of a pregnant couple and their 2-year-old daughter in a place as isolated as Añihue.
Pancho will attest to that. He had to give Javiera and me “the talk” about initiative and not depending on him and Antonia so much. That was on day 10. We sailed smoothly through new and treacherous waters after that. Pancho, for being a steady and hard worker, is a very balanced individual: he has been both self employed and an employee of Pakistani royalty and he is learned in Taoism and skepticism, tree cutting and tree climbing, biology and technology, many languages and the Language of the World, —there are very few things that don’t interest Pancho. Of all the things he taught me, he perhaps showed me the important lesson of life: balance—that it isn’t worth living in one extreme lifestyle or the other if you can’t be willing to experience the other side. He manifested this lesson by working at an exhausting pace in the mornings, and then, after lunch, while putting down his second cup of powdered coffee from his giant blue Starbucks mug, saying, “We’re taking the afternoon off to enjoy the weather.” And with that, he would disappear out the door to the beach to smoke a cigarette and watch his daughter splash in the tide pools. His wife, Antonia, would be in quick pursuit to enjoy the moment with her family.
Antonia’s young age and waist-length dread locks hide her maturity and intelligence. A ski-instructor when she isn’t at Añihue, her patience and eagerness to teach helped me a lot. She was a master of the garden and knowing the rhythms of the universe. She also taught me how to bake wheat bread.
I attribute my good experience there at Añihue to one basic thing and to that thing only: it was an indescribable openness to what God tried to show me during that month. It may have been my lack of expectations at what the experience was to be like that allowed me to absorb so much. Or it may have been the physical isolation that made me depend on the people at Añihue that helped me. I can’t say for sure. I do know that there, in the Cold Jungle of Patagonia, it’s easy for one to learn the Language of the World, as Paulo Coelho would say. It is that method of communication through which we contemplate a hill and understand more than a mound of dirt with trees growing on it. It is through the same (lack of) words that we understand our impact on the world and its impact on us. It was easy to understand what nature was telling me and teaching me since, without distractions, I could hear their words through the ears of my soul and not the ears of my head. It was easy because “our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand” (Coelho, The Alchemist). In that way, my fated connection to that land, to those animals, to those people was everything but coincidental; it was meaningful in every sense of the term, and to the word’s fullest capacities.
***This statement might be somewhat misleading since the sad reality of southern Chile is its deceptiveness. It is spoken of and often advertised as an untouched paradise, a cold jungle where limited human contact has left the land and the sea pristine and pure. This is true, until you consider the fishermen and the businesses they work for. Fishermen cruise the waters until they reach beds of clams and oysters where there, at low tide, they harvest all that they can, stuffing sacks full of shellfish until they return to whatever port they came from, not blinded by the sun shining off the water but by the dollars gleaming from inside their laden boats. I spoke with a German biologist, Haike, at Toninas who was conducting research on the communication of Orcas and Pilot Whales. In dealing with the behavioral communication of Pilot Whales, she is one of two people in the world conducting this research. It was her research that prevented a business from constructing a salmon fishery at the mouth of the Añihue Bay, reasoning that the population of Toninas Dolphins that lives off the nourishment provided in that specific area would be destroyed by such a structure. Haike told me that, besides the unsustainable practices of local fishermen, Chilean salmon fisheries have gradually destroyed the coastline, raping the sea of nutrients and contributing back to her “abundance” only contamination. Of all the trash that floats onto the shores of Patagonian beaches, 99% comes from salmon fisheries. And the trash isn’t just plastic bottles and Doritos bags. The trash consists of huge foam blocks tangled in ropes and nets, giant plastic tubs used for storing the harvested salmon, tubing and an endless list of harmful pollutants. Hope comes in the form of conscientious people like those at Añihue who clean the beaches and are dedicated to living low-impact lives and to helping preserve Patagonia.
Google Map:
Ver Añihue en un mapa ampliado
Pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=190645&id=629949459&l=033824c4df
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
January Mindlessness
Meaghan told me to update my blog. So I am. I love her.
I don’t have much to tell. I say that now and then 2,000 words later I might change my mind. The last time I wrote to you, friend, was just after Christmas. Things have changed since then. Lots of things have changed significantly.
Maybe I’ll work in reverse order to tell you about my life right now. Today, I just bought my tickets to travel south to the Añihue Reserve in six days. I wasn’t really excited yesterday but today, when I think about my time there, I’m so juiced on it. Find a video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uTCmQB-bKE.
So basically it’s an overnight bus to Puerto Montt, a six-hour bus to Quellon on the southern tip of Chiloé, and then a 12-to-24-hour bus to Puerto Raul Marin Balmaceda. From there I get picked up and taken to the Reserve. It’s a confusing process, and I’m just hoping I don’t get lost and that I can make all the connections. If I do, I’m about 94% positive that I’m going to experience things that very few of us get to… and I mean that not in a geographical sense but in the fact that for a month I will be living on a 10,000 hectare (almost 37 square miles) nature reserve on the coast of Chile and also on the side of the Palena River. The point of going is to volunteer my time (about 6 hours a day) of work on their organic farm in exchange for housing and meals. Of course, that is all bundled in the “experience” of learning about their sustainable operations that stretch extensively into research projects on things from species population studies and climate change. That, and I get to play on the beach and in the river and in the forest and go exploring. But what exactly, will I be doing? I have no idea. Their Web site says that a lot of it is working in the garden- weeding, planting, picking fruits and vegetables. It’s also collecting algae for compost, collecting firewood, and tending to their farm animals. It all sounds way too good to be true.
So that’s my February. Lately I’ve been trying to run more, but had a hiccup after New Year’s. I don’t know what happened, and I say that not because of the alcohol, because I remember everything, but because literally all I did was dance and then I came home and the next day my leg was messed up. Anyways, I had to take last weekend off. I plan on heading out tonight to see what’s up, fingers are crossed that it just needed a rest.
Oooh, another nice story is the party I had at my house last weekend. It was for two reasons that I had the party- one was because I have no roommates right now and I’m bored out of my mind, and reason two is that on that night (last Saturday), all the clubs and liquor stores were closed because of the elections the next day (Piñera Presidente). So, the entire world came to my house. Not really, but I would say there were about 30 people in my apartment… give or take. It was a really good time. I made the most ballin’ playlist of my life and there were cool people and new people and good drinks and my apartment is the bomb so basically it was the place to be that night. The only bad thing was…. And this was a really bad thing… someone stole my friend’s wallet. It was in her bag on a chair and somehow it ended up missing. No one knows who took it or if she lost it or what happened. We had to put two guys at the door to frisk everyone leaving since a lot of people who came were friends of friends. It was a downer for sure and everyone at the party kind of knew it. So by the end of things, everyone had left by 5 a.m. or so… not exactly the rager I was hoping for, but it will suffice for party #1 of the 50 parties I plan to throw before I go home. Haha, not really, but I do hope to have people back sometime during the semester… minus the guy who stole the wallet. It also didn’t help that six 30-year-olds rolled up to my door at 4 in the morning wanting to come into the party. Nope.
This last week hasn’t been kind to me. No, that’s a lie. It’s either been extraordinarily kind to me, or it has been downright mean to me, I can’t decide. In the past 9 days I’ve gone out six of those nights… a mistake… but it has also been really fun because I got introduced to a new group of friends who are actually in Santiago right now which has been one of my most basic needs for the past several weeks… people to socialize with who are actually in town for an amount of time. So it has been fun hanging out with them and what not, but I also averaged a 4 a.m. bedtime last week, which, for those of you who know me, know that that is horrible for me. This week is going to be tame like a kitten I’m hoping.
I just realized that this whole post has been uncharacteristically informative. I feel like I normally ramble for a while about something that I, personally, would consider profound. I guess today can be no different, because I have come to realize a truth about my world after a few noteworthy experiences.
First, I was reading Miracle In The Andes by Nando Parrado about the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes and spent 72 days in the snow before being rescued. It’s a really good, quick read, but there were a few parts of it that stood out, principally the one that made me cry. Yes, it made me cry. I haven’t cried reading a book since Dumbledore died in The Half-Blood Prince. It was the part when the narrator Nando reunited with his dog. And after having spent a few days last week playing in backyards with dogs, I came to realize why I had such a strong reaction to this part of the novel and why I have an attachment to animals…
It is because dogs, or animals in general, don’t hide their emotions. If an animal likes you, it’s obvious, the animal makes it known. When Hadley nestles in my lap and rests his head on my leg or when he lays upside down waiting for his belly to be rubbed, it’s not because he dislikes me. Yeah, he wants attention, but he wants attention from me, or from you, or from my family, or from my friends… people he likes. It is this raw emotion that makes it easy for sympathetic humans to bond with animals. Because humans, as it turns out, are horrible at showing their feelings. I could spend the next two pages of this post writing about why that is or could be, but I won’t, just take it as it is. Know that we play games with emotions… our own and those of others… but with animals… they feel what they feel and they show that they feel and they don’t understand when they’re not allowed to do so. I honestly don’t know how I expect any of this to make sense, but the point is that I rediscovered my deep attachment to animals and I acknowledge it and hope that it is something which doesn’t go away, because with them, I can be honest and I can trust in the fact that they will be honest with me.
Thus concludes the most mindless blog update thus far in Chile… but it was kind of time I post one. The next time I update I will either be down South at the reserve, or it might have to wait until, I get back. Either way, expect exciting things.
I don’t have much to tell. I say that now and then 2,000 words later I might change my mind. The last time I wrote to you, friend, was just after Christmas. Things have changed since then. Lots of things have changed significantly.
Maybe I’ll work in reverse order to tell you about my life right now. Today, I just bought my tickets to travel south to the Añihue Reserve in six days. I wasn’t really excited yesterday but today, when I think about my time there, I’m so juiced on it. Find a video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uTCmQB-bKE.
So basically it’s an overnight bus to Puerto Montt, a six-hour bus to Quellon on the southern tip of Chiloé, and then a 12-to-24-hour bus to Puerto Raul Marin Balmaceda. From there I get picked up and taken to the Reserve. It’s a confusing process, and I’m just hoping I don’t get lost and that I can make all the connections. If I do, I’m about 94% positive that I’m going to experience things that very few of us get to… and I mean that not in a geographical sense but in the fact that for a month I will be living on a 10,000 hectare (almost 37 square miles) nature reserve on the coast of Chile and also on the side of the Palena River. The point of going is to volunteer my time (about 6 hours a day) of work on their organic farm in exchange for housing and meals. Of course, that is all bundled in the “experience” of learning about their sustainable operations that stretch extensively into research projects on things from species population studies and climate change. That, and I get to play on the beach and in the river and in the forest and go exploring. But what exactly, will I be doing? I have no idea. Their Web site says that a lot of it is working in the garden- weeding, planting, picking fruits and vegetables. It’s also collecting algae for compost, collecting firewood, and tending to their farm animals. It all sounds way too good to be true.
So that’s my February. Lately I’ve been trying to run more, but had a hiccup after New Year’s. I don’t know what happened, and I say that not because of the alcohol, because I remember everything, but because literally all I did was dance and then I came home and the next day my leg was messed up. Anyways, I had to take last weekend off. I plan on heading out tonight to see what’s up, fingers are crossed that it just needed a rest.
Oooh, another nice story is the party I had at my house last weekend. It was for two reasons that I had the party- one was because I have no roommates right now and I’m bored out of my mind, and reason two is that on that night (last Saturday), all the clubs and liquor stores were closed because of the elections the next day (Piñera Presidente). So, the entire world came to my house. Not really, but I would say there were about 30 people in my apartment… give or take. It was a really good time. I made the most ballin’ playlist of my life and there were cool people and new people and good drinks and my apartment is the bomb so basically it was the place to be that night. The only bad thing was…. And this was a really bad thing… someone stole my friend’s wallet. It was in her bag on a chair and somehow it ended up missing. No one knows who took it or if she lost it or what happened. We had to put two guys at the door to frisk everyone leaving since a lot of people who came were friends of friends. It was a downer for sure and everyone at the party kind of knew it. So by the end of things, everyone had left by 5 a.m. or so… not exactly the rager I was hoping for, but it will suffice for party #1 of the 50 parties I plan to throw before I go home. Haha, not really, but I do hope to have people back sometime during the semester… minus the guy who stole the wallet. It also didn’t help that six 30-year-olds rolled up to my door at 4 in the morning wanting to come into the party. Nope.
This last week hasn’t been kind to me. No, that’s a lie. It’s either been extraordinarily kind to me, or it has been downright mean to me, I can’t decide. In the past 9 days I’ve gone out six of those nights… a mistake… but it has also been really fun because I got introduced to a new group of friends who are actually in Santiago right now which has been one of my most basic needs for the past several weeks… people to socialize with who are actually in town for an amount of time. So it has been fun hanging out with them and what not, but I also averaged a 4 a.m. bedtime last week, which, for those of you who know me, know that that is horrible for me. This week is going to be tame like a kitten I’m hoping.
I just realized that this whole post has been uncharacteristically informative. I feel like I normally ramble for a while about something that I, personally, would consider profound. I guess today can be no different, because I have come to realize a truth about my world after a few noteworthy experiences.
First, I was reading Miracle In The Andes by Nando Parrado about the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes and spent 72 days in the snow before being rescued. It’s a really good, quick read, but there were a few parts of it that stood out, principally the one that made me cry. Yes, it made me cry. I haven’t cried reading a book since Dumbledore died in The Half-Blood Prince. It was the part when the narrator Nando reunited with his dog. And after having spent a few days last week playing in backyards with dogs, I came to realize why I had such a strong reaction to this part of the novel and why I have an attachment to animals…
It is because dogs, or animals in general, don’t hide their emotions. If an animal likes you, it’s obvious, the animal makes it known. When Hadley nestles in my lap and rests his head on my leg or when he lays upside down waiting for his belly to be rubbed, it’s not because he dislikes me. Yeah, he wants attention, but he wants attention from me, or from you, or from my family, or from my friends… people he likes. It is this raw emotion that makes it easy for sympathetic humans to bond with animals. Because humans, as it turns out, are horrible at showing their feelings. I could spend the next two pages of this post writing about why that is or could be, but I won’t, just take it as it is. Know that we play games with emotions… our own and those of others… but with animals… they feel what they feel and they show that they feel and they don’t understand when they’re not allowed to do so. I honestly don’t know how I expect any of this to make sense, but the point is that I rediscovered my deep attachment to animals and I acknowledge it and hope that it is something which doesn’t go away, because with them, I can be honest and I can trust in the fact that they will be honest with me.
Thus concludes the most mindless blog update thus far in Chile… but it was kind of time I post one. The next time I update I will either be down South at the reserve, or it might have to wait until, I get back. Either way, expect exciting things.
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