Study Break: A Few Thoughts.

I feel like I've been in school for way longer than a week and a half. As much as I moan about how challenging it is, it is sort of fascinating how much personal and intellectual growth goes on in such a short period of time here. A brief panorama of recent experiences:

-I'm taking a lot of economics this semester, 3 of 6 classes. It's a bit much sometimes, especially Microeconomics, mostly because I disagree with its point of view so much, ie the idea that we can somehow chart happiness by looking at consumption. What a horrible place a world that simplistic would be! But I love the economics course I'm taking on cities in the developing world, even though it is pretty challenging. At least my newly acquired doing-work-in-Spanish skills have been coming in handy as I'm doing a policy memo on housing conditions in Lima, Perú. I also love my class on Translation which has turned out to be both more challenging and artistic than I expected. As much as I was not looking forward to taking ANOTHER class on globalization, the history based one I'm taking with Peter Winn, Tufts in Chile advisor, has provided an interesting new angle, attempting to look at things from a non-Western centric viewpoint. Lastly, I'm taking a course with the "Experimental College" on Crisis Mapping, a newly emerging field at the intersection of humanitarianism and technology. I still haven't adjusted to the idea that I'm supposed to be doing work any second that I am not eating or attending the occasional party, but I imagine I'll come around after another week.

-Friday was the annual Winter Bash, a revelrous event involving college students pretending to be classy by going to a hotel in Boston to dance in fine frocks. It mostly turned into a nostalgia fest since I made pisco sours and then kept playing Chilean music at the small party we had beforehand, but it was still quite enjoyable.

-I met 2 random strangers at my favoritest cafe in the whole world, True Grounds, and we just all ended up talking about the random things we had in common and then we went out to dinner at a Mexican place together and I ate cactus. An exercise in breaking away from our socially enforced fear of the unknown and embracing the serendipitious.

-On Sunday, my housemates dubbed me "hippie Martha Stewart" after I made homemade fig and strawberry spread and scones for a goodbye brunch for my friend Maddie who is going abroad to China :( Other than the jail time, it is sort of an accurate depiction at present.

-I've been trying to make it to Buddhist Sangha weekly, which has been great, because it is an oasis of calm in my crazy weeks and its nice to have a community to belong to, something that I never quite felt Catholicism provided. This has inspired me to try and do a few things:
-Smile. Simple yet revolutionary.
-Pick up trash.
-Be more open to stories and sharing.

I think Chilean me is still hanging on, even if she has a lot more on her plate. Hopefully my recent "let's talk about our feelings" phase won't stand in the way of my formation in the soulless international relations and economics tradition XD

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.

So totally random- I just happened to stumble across this article today, and it's a much better description of an art exhibit I saw in Santiago by this super cool artist Eugenio Dittborn.
http://www.economist.com/node/17957320

January 23: Je ne veux pas travallier

Learning some french from my housemate Rebecca, the useful phrase: I don't want to work.

Things always get better after I write semi-depressing blog posts: probably I should just wait a bit longer before writing. This weekend was really lovely, including an impromtu dinner party featuring homemade vegetarian corn, bean and cheese empanadas and Tawainese pastries, a urban hiking adventure across Boston to buy groceries in Chinatown, a very nice evening of warm drinks in Harvard Square, and an unproductive but wonderful afternoon of listening to random music, drinking obscene amounts of tea and cooking Afghani style pumpkin. All these things will probably be not possible once school actually kicks into session, which is sad. My current goal for the semester is to at least try and say (somewhat) sane and maintain my quality of life a bit. As I was talking about with Rebecca the other day: Why should I be so stressed out that I can't even spend a half hour to cook a beautiful meal for myself? If I can't do that, what am I really living for anyway?
Take that american campus culture.*

*Who am I kidding, I'm about to go do work now....

Domestication.

Moving into my off campus apartment near Tufts has been unduly stressful. When I arrived with my father this past Saturday, things were less desirable than I would have liked, especially given my tendency to be allergic to dust and mold and other gross things.
3 or 4 days of carrying boxes, cleaning, removing rugs, vaccuming, scrubbing floors, walls, oven, microwave, reorganizing cabinets, duct taping, contact papering, going on random adventures to Craigslist postings to find bubble wrap to insulate the windows, moving and removing and re-re-moving furniture, decorating,etc. etc. etc. have left me rather exhausted. Additionally, miscommunications with my friends who we are subletting from led to some rather emotional drama with my housemates. Everything is resolved now, but it just wasn't what I had envisioned for starting off.

But I'm trying to look on the positive, so here's some good news:
-I'm currently situated in a room with tons of natural light from 6 (!) windows.
-I got both of my old on campus jobs back, which is great. I'll be working in the pool as a lifeguard and also in the library.
-We've been eating deliciously, thanks to the food the former tenants left in the freezer. Sample meals cooked by my culinary genius housemate Rebecca include:
-mango tomato salsa
-quinoa/spicy black bean veggie burger wraps with guacamole
-french toast with berries drizzled with honey.

I'm back to being vegetarian, which I imagine I will get back to in another post. I've been doing some cooking contributions myself: I made a tortilla española yesterday and a delicious tomato chickpea pasta today.

I'm still finding America a bit depressing, not going to lie. There are some things that I love that I am readily reembracing like the amazing diversity of cultures that have managed to come together to make a nation, something that seems so amazing when you really stop to think about it or for instance stumble into the grocery store in Somerville and see people from every corner of the earth. But the horrible weather has really got me down for starters. I guess another thing that is driving me nuts now is the need to be everywhere on time and the stress that it causes. Once you've been exposed to a culture where this doesn't exist it seems rather unnecessary. All this is sort of inevitable: I just had the best 6 months of my life, free from worries about pretty much everything so I suppose it is hard for anything else to match up. What I'm finding scarier than the let down of reality though is the fact that everything seems so cyclical: I'm back in the same spot doing the same things, yet I am a totally different person. So what am I still doing here? I feel out of place, especially when I walk around campus and don't recognize or can't place people.

Classes start tomorrow which I certainly think will be a positive development.

My weigh in on Tucson

I'm not going to make a political statement here because anyone who has read my blog for a while can guess what I would probably say. Rather I do want to make a sad observations about our culture. Yesterday, while every radio in the country is still blaring news and opinions about the causes of the tragedy, I saw a harried mother at Target buying a large fake water rifle at Target for her child. I wish I were making this up. And then when I was getting pizza with my Dad, a hyperactive 3 or 4 year old had his hands pointed into guns, "shooting" at his sister. Guns have trickled down to be something that is so commonplace that even young children know what they do, even if they can't fathom what it would really mean to take a life. And this is only seen as a game.

So where can start to "make America as good as she imagined it?": teach our kids that violence is wrong, even jokingly. And in the meantime start making our political discourse fitting for adults instead of duking it out playground style. And yes that includes you too Democrats.

THIS IS SO COOL*

Ok, slightly less cool than say, Patagonia, but anyway I found this really cool site that has "pocket documentaries" of Chilean indie rock. Basically just short music videos in pretty places. But still, purty neat.
Yaktoka.org