"We'll know everything beforehand or we will never know absolutely anything"- This oddly enough made me feel comforted when I came across it today at a museum. By poet Nicanor Parra, who we met this one time while creeping on his house.
Words of the Day:
los aeropostales- airmail
los pliegues-folds
hilvanados- basted, tacked, put together
el dedal- thimble
I will say one thing: my life here in Chile is never lacking in things to do. I go to class. I explore the city by foot, micro and metro. I go out a lot on weekends. I hang with the family. I read fiction in Spanish. I read the news. I read online magazines and reports. When I remember to buy one, I read the Clinic, Chile's satirical magazine. I blog and go on facebook extensively. I spend a lot of time looking at places I could travel. I watch TV. I listen to the radio.
I just miss having...work. Homework more specifically. Also a regular job. I miss having unfinishable amounts of work piled on me so that I become saturated with information about the courses I am taking. Because Chileans take 5 or 6 or 7 courses that are essentially about the same thing, each one of their courses doesn't actually have that much work for it. I miss being stressed. As sick as it is, I have become so accustomed to high levels of stress that when I am not stressed, I get stressed, worrying about WHY i could possibly not be stressed. Isn't there something I should be doing???? If there's nothing I should be doing, why haven't I figured out my LIFE yet???? Sometimes I wish I were less tightly wound.
I've been a little frustrated with how my internship situation has worked out, although I suppose it has given me a fair amount of cultural insight. Last week, when I was supposed to finally begin the computer workshop, my supervisor emailed me that there was a "problemita" (small problem) with the computers we were supposed to be using, at a high school near the community. Typical example of Chileans understating the case for things. I finally was able to meet with the program director Carmen Gloria today to look for something else because I can't rely on the workshop at this point anymore for credit. If it does work out, I'll do it as a volunteer.
So we'll see how that goes. On the upside, I'll have stuff to do, because I will need to work 20 hours a week instead of the requisite 10. This will certainly be interesting because my schedule is very open, but I'm not sure it's quite THAT open.
An upside of not having homework is that I can check out museums and other cultural things. I stopped by the Museum of Visual Arts (MAVI) today which featured the work of Eugenio Dittborn, a Chilean artist. While the entire idea of putting certain works up on a wall and calling them art is in itself an elitist concept, at the very least, the prices of museums here aren't as exclusionary as in the US- it only cost me $1 to get in.
Being in the museum reminded me that many aspects of my life beyond homework teach me about language- I learned a ton of vocab just from checking out the exhibits. The "airmail paintings," sent by Dittborn all over the world were really interesting, seriographed images on fabric with many collage like elements and the occasional splash of color. My favorite pieces included one that featured images of artifacts that had been brought from one place in the world to another (like the airmail paintings themselves) and another that featured all different types of faces, from anthropology texts, drawing books, police sketches and children's art. There was a lot of poetry and writing incorporated into the exhibit, written on the airmail envelopes that were displayed next to the works of art, although they themselves were part of the art.
I also saw one of the videos that was part of the exhibit, entitled "Lo que vimos en el cumbre de la Corona" (What I saw on Corona peak) which featured a relatively non-descript middle aged woman reading a newspaper very theatrically and emotionally. It was the first time I had ever sat in a theater completely alone and while it magnified my loneliness a bit, it was also beautiful to be the only witness to the screen.
Today was a cloudy/rainy day, which are generally my favorites. The cordillera was so so clearly visible and a beautiful deep blue color, still veined with snow that seemed whiter than I've ever seen it.
I met up with the rest of the gringo pack after their spanish class for some kuchen, a German cake popular in Chile, to celebrate the halfway there of our time in Chile. As much as it makes me sad that I only have a limited time here, especially when I think about the state of my language skills, I miss my academic life at Tufts. That, along with the fact that I was only able to get a visa for 6 months is going to make it a lot easier to return when the time comes.
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