Summery (sic)

It’s been a great summer up in Boston; I’m currently on my way home and I’m sad to be leaving. Especially since there are still so many things left unexplored. The better you know a place, the more things you realize there are to do. But it will be great to spend some time with the fam, some friends & take a break before things get heinously busy again. Part of me is ready to be done with college: I’m past the point where getting dressed up in ridiculous costumes to greet freshmen or sitting around playing frisbee have much appeal. The other part of me is terrified: there are still so many classes I want to take, internships I want to do, professors & friends I want to know better, research I could do. qué será será though, I really need to calm down about everything.  

Anyway, here’s a brief retrospective of the summer: goals vs. what actually happened. 

1. Have a cool internship

Check. Working with Cultural Survival was really great and I’m going to miss them tons. I’m thinking of coming back to help out in the fall if some other plans fall through.  

2. Read a lot. 

Check. 33 books and counting. 

3. Learn another language!

This goal failed epically. I have no idea when I thought I would have the time to do this. This was partly me thinking it would be cool to study Portuguese again and partly this one week where I decided I should learn a language my ancestors spoke. I decided Hungarian would be cool. There is a basic Hungarian course downloaded into my iTunes. However, I still speak 0 words in Hungarian. 

4. Go on a hiking trip.

While I did finally get around to exploring the Fells, a nature reserve right next to Tufts, I never made it on a backpacking trip or anything more extended than a long walk in the woods. I did however, travel home on 3 separate weekends, to Western Massachusetts for a family party, to Falmouth, MA/Tiverton, RI for my internship and to Nantucket. Not to mention getting to know Boston & Cambridge better. And I went on an epic 30 mile bike ride to the North Shore to work at a wedding. So not a terrible summer for adventuring. 

5. Drink at a rooftop bar.

Boston has a lot of really cool rooftop or patio bars. Never made it to any of em. 

6. Learn to Dance

Despite making it to several “Salsa Abajo las Estrellas” events, I still am a pitiful salsa dancer. At this point, I think the only thing that will really redeem this would be to end up in a serious relationship with an extremely patient Latin American dancer. Which seems rather unlikely at present. I also never made it to any of the African Dance classes at the Dance Complex that I had been dying to go to.  

7. Grow vegetables.

I found some free vegetables in the street once, and was going to have a small garden except the plants died on a hot weekend when I was home. Oops. 

8. Be economically self sufficient. 

This is sort of a misnomer since my parents are still footing tuition, healthcare, cellphone bill and probably a bunch of other things I’m forgetting about, but I had hoped to be able to cover my rent for the summer. This went well for the first two months, until I ran out of hours at my various jobs and needed a bailout package. At least I’ve cooked for myself for the last 6 months or so. 

9. Vegetarianism 

In my opinion, summer is one of the hardest times to be vegetarian. On the plus side, there are tons of delicious vegetables. On the negative side, people are always barbecuing delicious things. My (delicious) infractions: linguica stuffed clams (I mean come on!!), mussels, chicken filled spring rolls, shrimp, clam chowder. But hey, what are principles without a bit of flexibility?

Reveling in Post Finals Bliss*

* Finals are over?

This is so weird I have not actually been able to comprehend it yet, even though I have been done for a full two days. I'm really bored bc I'm at work right now and now was is here for me to watch, so I'm going to make an exhaustive list of things I've been doing to celebrate.

-The night we finished finals, one of my friends and I planned to go out on the town. This did not materialize in the slightess, as we ended up drinking tea and wine on my couch, and hitting the hay after about an hour.

-Read 2 books. Reviews forthcoming...

-Cooked Paraguayan Cornbread, sopa paraguaya, adapted to be heart healthier, using cottage cheese and butter instead of heavy cheese and lard. The results were lighter and fluffier than expected, but still quite nice. And of course, some vegetarian empanadas to go on the side.

-Went on a nighttime raid of "Jumbo Drop," the school recycling program in which old items are donated, sorted and resold. Ironically, I am working part time for Tufts Recycles, so really, I was just making my work down the line easier. Memorable items salvaged included 4 boxes of coffee filters, glittery craft straws, gourmet canned soup, a new wardrobe and a copy of the Wilco album "A Ghost is Born"

-Worked every morning shift at the pool at 6:45. The president's (of Tufts) wife always comes to swim, she's really nice.

-Chilled in the interlibrary loan office of the library and got to return tons of books to other libraries. Nothing like being paid to nose about what other people are ready.

-Went to an absurd unpaid training session for a part time catering job. Received the most boring lecture of all time, 20 minutes about how to pick up and carry a large serving tray.

-Went Salsa dancing!!! At Ryle's, Inman Square's premiere Latin Dance/ Jazz Venue. It brought back a wave of Chile nostalgia, not to mention provoking a good deal of my horrible singing. Also, I have not gotten any better at dancing. The most amusing incident for me was when this guy asked me to dance and I asked if it was actually salsa music that was playing (to be fair, I am rhytmically challenged and they were playing other genres as well) and he judged me super hard, while pretending to pray for my poor culturally barren gringa soul. Despite our lack of dancing ability, our group had a most excellent time. Also it was free to get in which was amazing.

-After accompanying my housemate on her informal taxi service route to the airport, we went on an adventure to East Boston to find Peruvian ingredients for a dish we're obsessed with called Lomo Saltado. (Except that lomo is beef and we are vegetarians) We bought tons of things, like puffed corn kernels, ají amarillo, chica morada and lucuma ice cream. It was epic.

-Then, we rerouted and headed back to Boston's elegant side for a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the Chihuly exhibit. I have never seen such lively, inspired and trippy glass sculpture. I totally want to become a glassblower. Adding that to the list of things to learn this summer.

That's about it so far. But yeah. It's really nice to be done with school I guess, especially since I've been nerding it up with about a book a day, so it doesn't really feel like I'm done with school anyway :)

Cortisol Detox

After finishing with my midterms, it was time for a break. After my last class on Thursday, I ran into some friends on the president's lawn (the big hill in the center of the Tufts campus) and we just sat for a good half hour, not doing much of anything, listening to the awesome rhythms of BEATS, Tufts drumming collective, who bang out tunes on everything from real drums to garbage cans.

That night, we had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day Dinner party, including very very green pancakes.

And yesterday, ahhhh just one of those wonderful wonderful days.
After work, I biked downtown to the Museum of Fine Arts, in the gorgeous warm weather. (although eerie from a climate change perspective.) As much as I love Tufts, its so good to get away and have a little perspective, seeing other people that make up the fabric of the city. Everyone was dying to get outside after the winter: it always amuses me how much less lame of a place Boston is in the summer. After that, I went with my housemate for a free wine tasting which was quite lovely. And then we went home and cooked an impromtu middle east inspired dinner, before a late night soccer game on the quad.

These are the days when you realize why people describe college as the best time of their lives.

Internship Search

I am having a hard time with my search for internships during the summer. I really want to have an interesting chance to gain more experience...along with every other undergrad in the country. And typically for me, I can think of about 25 different subject areas off the top of my head that I would be interested in working with. I'm a little upset because I just found out yesterday that one option I had been thinking about, working with a coffee cooperative BUILD partners with, is not going to be possible because they are having a very unusual year due to the extremely high global coffee prices. See a really interesting New York Times article on the subject. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/science/earth/10coffee.html (Proof that Tufts kids are totally coffee fiends: at least 5 separate people I know have brought up this article in conversation recently)

Anyway, this means that for now I am trying to apply for more competitive things. Which I don't like. Because I lost all my competitiveness last semester when I had to assimilate to a society that values solidarity and group work. I jest. Basically though, I dislike this because it seems like a waste of time to apply to internships with basic description that sound like:

"Seeking dedicated unpaid labor to do office work most of the time, although there's a chance you may get a chance to do something cool for a bit. Maybe. I mean you'll be working for us for 50 hours a week so.....By the way, we did mention we can't pay you anything whatsoever, right? And good luck finding a cheap apartment round here. To apply for this amazing opportunity, send us 2 copies of your resumé, some other form, an official transcript, a 5 page writing sample (like we'll read it), 3 references, a cover letter, blood samples. Preference will be given to applicants who are willing offer us their firstborn child."

After being frustrated by the fact that I am about as likely to get any of those as I was to get into an Ivy, I ran some internet searches on some other ideas. Mining policy came to mind. Until I googled mining activism and found that the first 3 pages of results were people who had been assassinated. Not very reassuring. Probably any career that hypothetically sounds really cool has a pretty high death rate associated with it. Not bueno.

I should stop complaining though, I am lucky enough to have a world class education and will no doubt find something worth while to do with it.

In the meanwhile, I am keeping calm by drinking lots of tea, because I am getting sick because Tufts is currently a germ infested hole, no doubt caused by midterms concentrating everyone in the library without much ventilation. I went to Buddhist mediation at the Greater Boston Buddhist Community Center today which was pretty cool too, except we didn't actually meditate much, just listened to a buddhist nun talk about certain ideas for practice. And I am listening to this awesome mellow Chilean guitarist chap, Manuel Garcia, over and over and over.

http://youtu.be/mS5ODsIlWqI

Just staying calm and trying to get things done, because there is just nothing else that I can do, except try and control my destiny to the best of my ability.

One more tidbit: If you are in Buddhist temple, it is generally considered disrespectful to point/ stretch out your feet directly towards the Buddha statue representations. Oops. At least I know now.

Una noche, una noche toda llena de murmullos, de perfumes y de músicas de alas

Nighttime is fast becoming my favorite time of day.

I read somewhere once that in the middle ages (or some time long ago and far removed) that people used to sleep in two shifts, waking up midway through the night to get up, walk around, even socialize. According to Ingrid from my internship in Chile, the Mapuche believe that 3 in the morning is a time of the day with magical characteristics.

So clearly, I'm not completely alone (read: insane) in thinking there is something especially beautiful about this time of the night: the lights of Boston sparkle from the lookout on the library roof, looking different every time, invigorating cold air rushes against my face as I bike home, everything is absolutely calm and still.

And now on to "hacer tutto." 40 winks, shut eye, what have you.

Coatpocalypse

This weekend was slightly ridiculous.

On Saturday, I tried to go see a Brazilian drumming/Ethopian funk band/stationary marching band concert, except the plan failed horribly when we arrived and I realized I did not have my id. Although it was 18 and up, they wouldn't let us in, and since I can't pull the "O, but I'm a dumb gringa" flirtation trick anymore, we ended up having to go back to Tufts.

Then, yesterday, afternoon, I got a rather frantic phone call from BUILD, the sustainable development group I went to Guatemala with (OOOO- I should blog about us eventually!!!!) asking if I would be willing to help out with a coat check that we had just found out we needed to do for a Gala to celebrate the 25th anniversity of the EPIIC program, which is run by the umbrella organization that also funds BUILD. Funny story, but we had actually run a horrible coat check last year during Tufts' Winter Bash event, which was literally the worst night of my life since it involved literally 100s of drunk girls rushing at us, trying to find misplaced "black pea coats" and "black northfaces." ANYWAY, 30 minutes or so later, homework and fear of coat checking be damned, I was dressed in an eccentric cocktail dress and headed downtown. 4 of us arrived at the hotel where the event was being held right at 6, which just so happened to be the same exact time as the guests were arriving. On finally finding the racks for the coats, we were informed that THERE WERE NO HANGERS AND TAGS. Apparently, these are customary items to bring with you when you run a coat check. Hotels do not even own hangers, we were told. An interesting development....Without tags, we had to resort to ripping pieces of looseleaf. It was pretty bad, especially once a line built up and we had to make up a system as we went along, and then spent 3 hours fixing the non-functional system.

While it was not the best evening ever, I realized something really unexpected. When the wealthy IGL donor types/important dignitaries had to come in to find their coats because we couldn't, if they knocked a coat off the rack, they would just leave it on the ground. Or they would just throw their paper slips on the ground or the counter or wherever. I realized: I don't ever want to be "too important" to pick up a fallen coat. And maybe I shouldn't have been picking up papers off the ground, but I don't ever want to be the kind of person who thinks its perfectly fine to make extra work for a janitor likely working for minimum wage.

I want to live with unobtrusive dignity. And if its at the expense of getting ahead, I think I'm ok with that.

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

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....

September 27: "Lo sabemos todo de antemano o no sabremos nunca absolutamente nada"

"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.

August 31/September 1: The Grey City

Fun Fact (no particularly compelling words for today): Covering your head with a scarf to approximate a conservative muslim does not disuade construction workers from cat calling. O well, it was worth a try.

In advance, I apologize, I sense a somewhat unfocused blog post coming on.
Just when flowers were starting to bust out all the over the place, we've had a spot of gross cold cloudy/ rainy weather the last few days, leaving me more in the mood for Swedish guitarists than salsa or reggaeton. This is super weird, but i kind of like Santiago better when its overcast (although the cold damp is no fun, especially with my hair). I never really realize how old and beautiful the city is until then. There's so much great architecture, color, grafitti and sculpture in the city that isn't super obvious at first glance but if you just focus a bit, another city entirely is there for the viewing. I've been obsessed with trying to take different routes to places lately, because I love variation and the way different things look from different angles. Just walking down another street in Bellavista was like finding a whole different world I had never noticed: colorful bars, artistic grafitti and beautiful mosaic tiles in the street. One of the really interesting things about Santiago is the way the city has and is constantly reinvented/ing itself. The areas of wealth in the city have pretty much always been on the outskirts nearest the mountains, but due to the city's expansion over the years, the upper class areas have constantly more farther and farther out. Which essentially means that there is beautiful architecture all over the place.

Classes have been really good, when I've had them. One of my facultades, Public Affairs, has been on and off strike pretty much all the time, which means that my econ class gets cancelled every once in a while, like today. One thing I don't really get about classes here is how much repetition there is: professors generally spend at least 20 minutes re-capping previous classes at the beginning of every class, so the introduction of new material is certainly much slower, which helps, but also makes it really tempting to zone out for a while. Despite the fact that they never seem to go to class and are taught much slower, I feel like Chilean students are definitely as well read or better read than we are. And they are definitely better at discussing/arguing a point verbally than the average American student. My Globalization and Copper class never fails to make me feel deficient in both of these points. We've been talking about postmodernism the last 2 weeks, of which I know almost nothing. I have no idea how our professor had time to read the work of so many people. I suppose being an upper class male in Latin America guarantees that you'll have a lot of extra time thanks to mothers, maids and wives, but even then! He seems to have econ/business stuff down but probably also has a philosophy degree or something. He's always got another book or philosopher or idea up his sleeve.

Soccer has been really fun too. I realized I can probably only make 1 practice a week, which is fine, but I wish I could do more to get to know people better. Yesterday's practice was great though- running, cardio, strength training, and then an informal game vs. the ladies of the chemistry faculty. My friend Molly and I ended up hanging out with several members of the team until after midnight, which was somewhat ill advised since I didn't do my econ homework/it was a school night (not for them, their facultad is on strike), although I think 4 hours of intensive spanish slang class probably was actually more useful in the long run.

I caught up my econ reading this afternoon, in a cute café. The most interesting thing I've learned from my econ class so far is how the tables have really turned as Latin American economies go: the wealthiest colonies in the 16th/17th century are now some of the poorest areas on the continent (ie Bolivia, Peru). Even in Argentina, the wealthiest areas in the colonial period are now those that struggle most, thanks to the introduction of the Borbonic Reforms turning Buenos Aires from a pirate infested backwater to a more legitimate economic power.
Back to what I what I was talking before with the city, it's so interesting to me how although levels of inequality or poverty might be relatively constant within societies, their geographic distribution can evolve, even into a completely opposite situation.

I still haven't quite figured out cafe culture here. Rather than ordering, getting food and then sitting down in standard Boston café style, I'm never sure if I should:

a) Order at the front or wait for a waiter.
b) Clear my own dishes
c) Pay at the front (this generally seems to be the case)
d) Do I leave a tip? (For a lot of things you don't, like in cabs)

Just a few more things to figure out, when I thought I had the drill down.

August 9-12: Don't Panic.

I had figured this would happen. Although I was totally zenned out after the trip to the desert, this quickly evaporated once I realized that finding 3 classes that were
a) interesting
b)not impossibly difficult
c) not in conflicting time slots (accounting also for commute time across an entire city)

was going to be much more of a challenge than I had originally thought. A whopping 5 of the classes I wanted to take overlapped. Basically, after far too much running around from one side of the city to another, hair pulling, gnashing of teeth, consultations with the program directors, etc... I figured out a schedule that I hope will work.

Courses for the semester:
1) International Human Rights Law (Law School)
2) Latin American Economies: The Experience of Chile, México and Argentina (Public Affairs School)
3) Salsa (Anyone who has seen my pitiful attempts to dance with any degree of coordination knows how necessary this is)
4) Globalization, Copper and the New Chilean Economy