Let´s See How Far We´ve Come...

music: let's see how far we've come (matchbox 20)

When you start losing hope in where you going,

look back to see how far you have come.

The World´s Greatest

Today, I am braving the storage unit with everything I left in the US when moving to Chile for "a year" then hoping to end the day with some celebratory surfing and tacos.  Watching all of my old Libros a Lobitos and travel slideshows with students at my old High School yesterday was such a blast.  I didn´t get to play this one so I wanted to share it with all of you.  It is one of my favorite videos and really favorite things of all times.  It still gives me goosebumbs.  These kids elected to study English with me TWO HOURS a day, FIVE DAYS a week for two months.  They are such motivated, energetic and good-hearted young people and working with them fills my life with more joy than I ever could have imagined.

Big thanks to Tom Chadwick for this video!  You are a beautiful human and wonderful filmmaker.  I miss you, friend and I miss these kiddos too.

They are hands-down, the world's greatest.

To Everything, There is a Season...

Today´s post goes out to Nicholas Michael Bourassa: a good friend and neighbor who left us six months ago today.  

It was already a heavy week when the news of his death reached me.  The aunt of one of my best friends in Peru had recently been killed and I had spent the majority of the week prior in Talara sitting through burial preparations, family arrivals from Lima and all of the various stages and formalities of a Catholic funeral.  I mostly just lingered around waiting for Luchito to have a spare second when we could steal him away from the sadness for a few moments of laughter and an empanada or two.  Later, he would thank us for being the only glimmers of hope and happiness in the wake of the most shocking and traumatic loss his family had ever suffered.

 On that particular day, I had spent the majority of my afternoon running around Talara trying to hunt down lice shampoo and popcorn kernals in 100-degree weather.  Nico texted me to tell me that he and Emi had nabbed the last two spots in the combi so I knew I´d be cutting it close in terms of getting back to Lobitos before the kids´ film festival.  Somewhere between my lice treatment and running down to L.C.P. headquarters to make palomitas for 100 kids in a pan that was comically small, I checked into my facebook and found a message from Jeff.  He had sent me a link to an article in an Orange County newspaper.  I clicked it to read a vague description of a young man who was fatally injured after being hit by a car on the freeway.  I barely had time to process it between the ticking clock and my itchy head so I shouted goodbye to Mari and ran out the door to find Emi and get ready for the event.

As we stood over the tiny gas stove in her kitchen, already popping batch five or six out of a dozen or so pans of popcorn, I told Emi that I had recently gotten word that a good friend from college had passed away.  Her shock overshadowed mine.  Between scratching our heads and finding the humor in the horror of having contracted head lice for the first time in our adults lives, we shared a somber moment for sad news sent from far away…a reality we both know all too well.

The film festival was a hit.  As usual, any stress or sadness I was feeling was squeezed out of my lungs by the hugs of many beautiful little friends.  All mental energy was channeled into entertaining them, distributing snacks and preventing the event from erupting into total and complete chaos.  An impromptu game of duck, duck goose (pato, pato, ganso) kept them entertained long enough to clean up after the event and we even managed to keep them (mostly) quiet long enough for Nico to introduce the videos.

When the crowd thinned out, I headed up to La Casona where my girlfriends had gathered to have a few beers.  I wasn´t up for it.  I hadn´t eaten all day and hunger and sadness were starting to creep in.  I snuck off towards the only store that was still open to buy a massive bag of fried banana chips.  As the grease settled into my stomach, I stomped on thorns and wandered in the direction of the sea.  I kicked off my flip-flops and let my feet carry me to the water.  I flopped down to my knees at the shoreline and let myself cry.  I gave myself up to whatever it was that I was feeling: confusion, anger, hunger and overwhelming loss. 

Everything felt surreal; I had never felt the presence of death all around me as much as I did during those weeks.  It seemed like all of my expat girlfriends had also gotten unexpected news of freak deaths from home.  One of the sweetest men I know had recently run over and killed my best friend's puppy after a particularly rowdy Corrazón Serrano concert and, back in Lakeside, my own family was torn up after the sudden death of my nephew's 20 year-old cousin who was killed in a car crash in Hemit just ten days before.

I looked up at the gorgeous night sky at a billion stars that stared down at me, unpolluted by city lights.  I gave myself the time to think about Nick and our big back porch at Gustafson apartments. There, we shared war stories and confessions over Sierra Nevada Pale Ales.  The porch connected our two little apartments which we shared with our respective partners. We wandered out when we needed to and sat on the steps for fresh air, perspective and cigarettes.  The back yard was filled with raccoons, the smell of orange blossoms and ferel cats.  Though we were a strange little community, we always had each other’s backs. 

Together, we protected our apartment bike rack from theft (the number one crime in Chico, California).  Joe's moms warded off the evil spirits with some kind of séance ritual, the smoke of which was visible from our perch on the porch steps.  Mattie did his part to feed Orangey who had been abandoned by her alcoholic mother Paula when she was dragged off to rehab.  Being the nurturing soul he was, he felt it was only fair after he had lucked out and scored an apartment so close to two of his best friends.

Nick and I kept our cats (Nico and Gizmo) indoors in our respective apartments, away from the perils of Chico alley cat life.  When I shipped out to Chile, I left Jeff in Nick's care.  They became gym buddies, pizza partners and eventually, best friends.

Nick was no stranger to death.  After serving in Iraq, he knew it well.  He showed me the scars left on his flesh by roadside bombs and talked about the deaths of his comrades casually.  The only thing that really got him teary-eyed was talking about his little girl Melanie, who he didn't get to see as often as he would have liked to.  He was honest and sincere, tough but not too tough to admit his mistakes and ask for forgiveness.  Ironically our friendship actually began with an apology.

A few days ago, I found a photo of the program from his funeral on his facebook.  It reads, 

"To everything there is a season 
and a time to every purpose under heaven.  
A time to be born and a time to die."

 Be it a hard pill to swallow that a twenty-five year old veteran’s “time to die” was on the side of an Orange County freeway, crushed by a reckless driver, fairness was never something that death took into consideration.  Be it by way of cancer, stroke, shark attack, old age, parachutes that don't open or grenades thrown through bedroom windows, death isn't something that is earned or deserved.  It just is.

As you may have noticed, I am on a bit of a Passenger kick these days and I thought today would be a good day to dedicate this song to Nick, a man who understood that life is for living.  I hope you will all take five minutes to listen to the lyrics of this song and let them sink in.  At the risk of sounding both morbid and cliché, we really don't know which day will be our last so make sure you're doing things right, saying what you need to say and living and loving with all you've got.  Do it for the ones that aren't here anymore to do it themselves.  

RIP Nicky boy, we love you man.  

 

"Well grey clouds wrapped round the town like elastic 

Cars stood like toys made of Taiwanese plastic 

The boy laughed and danced around in the rain 

While laundrettes cleaned clothes, high heals rub toes 

Puddles splashed huddles of bus stop crows 

Dressed in their suits and their boots, they all look the same 

I took myself down to the cafe to find all the boys lost in books and crackling vinyl 

And I carved out a poem above the urinal that read: 

Don’t you cry for the lost 

Smile for the living 

Get what you need and give what you’re given 

Life’s for the living so live it..."

Brujo

I didn´t believe in messages from the universe in the same gentle, curious way that she did.  Still, in that moment, I tried to listen for one.  My devout agnosticism allowed for neither belief nor disbelief in anything.  Sometimes I was smug about it; feeling exalted above the need for false security and “absolute truth”.  Sometimes, it was exhausting.

“El universo es sabio,” my expat girlfriends told me borrowing from a variety of different clichés and languages -- the universe is wise.  “Everything happens for a reason.”

Perhaps it was a chink in my armor that allowed me to entertain the idea.  I try not to linger too long near the doors of churches in moments like these.  There is something about the things you allow to touch you when your guard is down.

My incredulousness wasn´t reserved for conversations on religion.  It also extended to modern medicine as a whole and, with more tangible reason, to the medical system in the small Peruvian village where I´d chosen to carve out a home.  The pain was bad, but the nearest clinic was not only a hassle to get to, but offered little hope of resolution. I ruled it out almost immediately though I was vaguely enticed by the promise of strong, easily-accessible painkillers, illegal in the country I had left behind.

Later, a friend from Lima would laugh at me over cervezas and ceviche about the route that I had chosen to take.  “Fucking gringos,” he would say if though my decision was typical of my kind.  His reaction was fair enough, I suppose.  I couldn´t keep a straight face through the story myself and as soon as the word “brujo” (shaman or wizard) escaped my lips, the table erupted into laughter. 

As I walked home from dinner through the chilly desert night, I thought back to the so-called “brujo” who had pushed on the back of my head in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  In my mind, I had neatly labeled him as a chiropractor.  Still, in his own, the work he did was irrevocably tied to God´s.   It made it hard to maintain the secular little bubble I so wished to confine him to. 

After a few minutes of pressing his fingers deep into my shoulder blade, he paused.   He left his hand cupped a few inches from my head, presumably to stop my soul from spilling over.  Moving his hands over a few inches, he went back to work.  Something cracked deep in my neck and a gaggle of goose bumps flew south down my spine.  He slipped softly from the room.  I could hear his kind voice from the other side of the door.  “Está durmiendo,” he said—she´s sleeping.  I wasn´t. 

Her voice softened to meet his and their conversation slid under the door into the tiny room which was barely wider than the cot that supported my wilted body. 

She had come to the brujo with burdens of her own and her hopes that he could help her seemed to be higher than my own faith that he would put an end to my two weeks of migraines.  Her man, she said, could not be brought to God.  I wondered if the problem was really his lack of faith or its perceived connection to his lack of faithfulness.

Familiar with the machismo reality in which we existed, the latter seemed, to me, the most probable.  I understood her desperation intimately.  I did know a few honest men who had seemingly been kept honest by religion here.  Far more common, however, were contradictions definitively not unique to this corner of the world.  Splattered across the windows of every motorcycle taxi and family restaurant in town, God was flaunted ostentatiously but seemingly absent from day-to-day dealings.   The incessant cycle of sin, repent, sin, repent was as deeply ingrained as the other rituals rarely questioned in Catholic country. It dribbled out of the churches and into the Peruvian men we were trying so hard to love, or not to.

Hold him, that was his answer for her; simple and precise.  Instead, she held me.  Tiptoeing into the room where I lay, she hovered over me and draped her arms across my bare back.   Hot tears trickled from my pounding head into my ears and I wanted nothing more than to run.  I wanted to run to the place that felt closest to home here, so far from my own.  I longed to sit in his earthen-floored living room.  I ached for the familiar smell of his mother´s cooking and the resolute way his father talked about God.  I cautiously toyed with the notion of prayer and how nice it must be to have a one-size-fits-all remedy for everything.  I knew that I was playing with fire, even just  thinking it.

The next day, the migraine intensified, just as the brujo said it would.  The world around me blurred and pulsed to the rhythm of my beating head.  I strained my eyes trying to find beauty in the reality I had chosen.  The distinct life I had carved out on this seemingly randomly selected speck on the map made increasingly less sense.  At the end of a long day, I collapsed into a puddle of pain, exhaustion and doubt.

In the morning, the clouds parted.  Once again, I had the necessary headspace to grapple with the uncertainty of the unknowable.  Once again, everything was equally as likely as it was unlikely.  God was everywhere, and nowhere.  The pain was gone.

I didn´t believe in messages from the universe in the same gentle, curious way that she did.  Still, in that moment, I tried to listen for one.

Here, Nostalgia is an Illusion

Photo by: Aino Huotari

Silhouetted by the skeletons of old fishing boats, now put out to pasture, gulls squawk and ferrell dogs scrounge for breakfast through the heaps of garbage that line the coast. The sun is  rising on Talara; a city of few charms.

Thirty minutes down a long dirt road from home in Lobitos, Talara houses the only large, "Western" (for lack of a better word) grocery store in the area as well as an expansive fruit/vegetable market, bus station and my preferred internet café. With time, I have come to view my frequent visits as a necessary annoyance.  The burden can usually be softened with some special treats from Plaza Vea, fun school supplies for my English classes and perhaps a tamale and beer from Cocoro's.  Today's trip affords no such luxuries.

Sandwiched between a sleepless night and a full day of teaching, a six am drop-off at Talara's EPPO Station was less than ideal. Regardless, when Moises brought the car around to pick him up, I couldn´t say goodbye. Instead, I threw myself in the back seat like an extra piece of luggage.  

"You've never seen this place without Jackson, have you?" Seth had asked me a few days before.  I hadn't.

"To be honest," he said, "it's exactly the same.  People come for a while and then they fuck off.  You'll get used to it."


I was only a third of the way through my one-year work contract then and Seth was just a few months shy of finishing his. Jackson had just completed the longest volunteer stay in the history of the development organization we worked for; six months in total. Over the last four, he had become one of my best friends and an integral part of my life in Lobitos.  It was the first, but not last, significant goodbye I would have to say in this town. 

Seth wasn't wrong.  Here, “despedidas” come in such abundance that they rarely mean much anymore.  At the time, I couldn´t imagine my Lobitos life without one of the people who had become so ingrained in it.  Now, the constant shuffle of employees and volunteers that have come in to and out of my life over the past year is a virtual blur.  I´ve seen four members of our tiny team arrive and four others leave, abruptly.  With less than one year in Peru, I am currently the longest-standing international staff member on site. 

I've seen well over a hundred volunteers pass through the organization.  I've lived with them, cooked with them, dined with them, worked with them, surfed with them and said goodbye to them.  Each time, the deck is shuffled again and a new hand of friends is dealt.  With it, comes a new soundtrack, a new routine, new recipes, new jokes and new values. 

The last few months have been sprinkled with a handful of goodbyes that were particularly hard to swallow. Tied to fond memories and paths that vow to cross again, they protrude from a bleak backdrop of a dozen meaningless ones.  A fresh batch under my belt, I am reminded of another conversation that I had with Seth, many months later.

“Here, nostalgia is an illusion,” he interrupted as I started to wax poetic about some false notion of the “good old days”.  We were sharing a few beers on the tree swing at La Casona and looking out over the ocean.  Life here, he reminded me, has always been a constant cycle of adjusting, recalculating and scrambling to pick up the pieces. 

In the span of six months, I watched every member of the staff that received me upon my arrival to Lobitos as they packed up and left town.  Between the four of them, they had taught me almost all of the simple, but important, things about daily life here.  They taught me when to take public transportation, how to pump water and where the vicious street dogs hang out.  They taught me how to avoid being eaten alive by mosquitos, how to light the oven and how to coax coffee out of a particularly fickle espresso machine.  They taught me a lot of the big things too.  It was largely through my conversations with them that I came to understand what we were moving towards, what we were fighting for. 

At times, I still find myself clinging to the memory, though perhaps partially flawed, of a team that marched together triumphantly towards a common set of goals.  I remember each individual blow as that train was repeatedly derailed by one unexpected despedida after another.   As the cliché goes, the only thing that has been constant is change.  Ironically, it can also be summarized succinctly with a classic Tali-ism: adapt or die.   There were times when the latter seemed all but inevitable.

Now I find that reminiscence comes in a variety of flavors.  Sometimes it curls up the hole left by a particular person´s departure.  It's the caffeine headache around noon because your standing coffee date is gone now.  It's the lazy feeling of rolling out of bed late now that your solid dawn patrol crew has been broken up.  It's the guitar collecting dust now that Tom isn't there to play Shins covers, Seth isn't singing Bob Dylan songs and Jackson isn't incessantly strumming the four chords that make up the chorus of “Fast Car”.

There are times when I miss the naivety that once allowed me to feel like I was part of something solid; secure, stable.  Luckily stability comes from other sources.  I find it in the tranquility of small-town life.  I find it in my relationships with the amazing people here and even long-distance from loved ones elsewhere.  I find beauty in a lifestyle that allows for days filled with surfing, ceviche, sunsets, good chats with Zoe and hugs from small children.  I find comfort in feeling one step closer to finally figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.  I find hope in the knowledge that dovetailing interests and paralleling good intentions will continue to spark group synergy.  Wonderful people will continue to find their way here and happy things will continue to happen.

Coming Home to Lobitos

“Are we there yet?” I said to no one. 

No, we weren´t.  In fact, only two hours had passed since I had silently asked my imaginary travel companion the same question. I was anxious; squirming in my luxurious 160º reclining Exclusiva bus seat. I wanted to be home.  Fourteen hours and seven “are we there yet?”s later, I finally was.   My twenty-hour bus ride from Lima was followed by a quick moto-taxi transfer and thirty minute combi which finally dropped me at my door.

The house was in virtual shambles. The long, white tiled hallway was caked with mud and every dish in the entire kitchen appeared to be dirty and piled by the sink. “You must be Alicia,” said the unfamiliar face at the table. She was Michelle; one of the new staff that started during my three-week vacation to the states.

“We´re out of water,” she informed me. I smiled, settling back into the realities of life in Lobitos. She also told me that all of the other volunteers and staff were down at the point, doing the last of the winter vacation kids‘ surf classes.  I was off.   I kicked my shoes into my room which was exactly how I´d left it, only covered with a thick layer of fresh dirt.  I dashed down to the beach, taking full advantage of the carefully cultivated callouses that now cover and protect my feet after four mostly-barefoot months in this town.

“Miss Aliiiiiiiiiiiiicccccccccccciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Half a dozen wetsuited children swarmed me the instant my toes hit the sand.  Their tiny arms latched onto my legs and soon I was enveloped in a big, wet group hug.  The water was filled with familiar faces; coworkers, long-term volunteers, Lobiteño friends and all of the usual surf class kiddos. 

The little ones were taking off on considerably bigger waves then I´d ever seen them catch before. A stupid grin plastered to my face, I even let the kids talk me into jumping in for a (fully dressed) swim.  I figured it was the closest I was going to get to a shower after a long day of travel, considering our current water situation back at the house.   

Before I knew it, I had been roped into playing personal assistant to Adriana; a sassy seven year-old with a healthy fear of the ocean.  It was her first surf class and she was clinging on to my neck for dear life.  We soon had our routine worked out. I would crouch down in the water so that we were both up to our chins then spring to my feet each time a small wave rolled in towards us. She would shriek, presumably in some combination of delight and terror.  Then, after the wave had safely passed by, we would burst into laughter and nestle down into the calm waters again.

I had allotted myself a few days in Lima prior to my arrival in Lobitos.  My hope was that this pitstop would lighten the load of the fourty-three hours of travel from Los Angeles to Lobitos and provide for a bit of time and space to process a heavy trip home. It didn´t.  The first twenty-three-hour leg of the journey had wiped me out pretty bad and melancholy backdrop of a Limanean winter didn´t do much for lifting my spirits. That isn´t to say that it was all bad. I had a chance to meet up with a few different friends during my short stay and chat to some interesting people in the hostel. I wandered through city streets, spent lots of time snuggled up in the kid´s section of bookstores (for research purposes) and met up with an old co-worker for the first night of his Peruvian despedida. 

“VAMOS NIÑOS!” Surf class was over. Seth´s voice barreled down the beach, “A LA CASA!” Heeding the words of their beloved surf instructor, the “niños” ran to shore and climbed in the back of the trusty burro (the trailer towed by the WAVES´ motorcycle). I stayed back for a moment, watching the chaos from afar. The warm Lobitos sun on my face, I lowered my head back into the cool water and smiled, looking up at the perfect, cloudless sky.  It´s good to be home.

My Little Mocos

“Red, Rojo

Red, Rojo

Verde, Green

Verde, Green

Amarillo, Yellow

Amarillo, Yellow

Azul, Blue

Azul, Blue”

The singing voices of twenty-five small children fill the dimly lit classroom.  Most of the kids are holding hands in a large circle.  They are jumping up and down wildly and chanting the new rhyme that they have learned in today’s English class.

“Reeeed, Rojo

Reeeeeeeed, Rojo

Verde, Greeeeeeen

Verde, Greeeeeeeeeeen

Amarillo, YEH-LOW

Amarillo, YEH-LOW

Azul, Bluuuuuuuue

Azul, Bluuuuuuuuuuue”

With each repetition of the song, I change things up and try to make it even more fun and ridiculous than the last version.  The students started the class sitting at their tables (which are conveniently painted to match the four colors mentioned in the song) and touching each color as we sang about it.  Then, we got to our feet and sang along to a little dance that involves lots of clapping, drumming on our legs and shaking our heads around like lunatics (the latter is obviously their favorite).  Now we’ve moved up to the front of the class to form our big group circle.  Holding hands seems to be helping keep the kids together and minimizing the chaos.

In the three-year-old room, keeping everyone engaged and on task is no easy feat.  Not only is this only our third English class of the year, but they also lack general experience in the classroom since it is just their second month of school.  Despite my best efforts to round everyone up, there are still a few kids who haven’t quite made it yet.

Luckily, I have the help of a WAVES volunteer, as well as the students’ regular teacher during my two weekly classes.  This gives me the freedom to concentrate on the students who are on task while my helpers work on integrating the stragglers into the larger group or working with them individually, if needed.

Kristin, my volunteer for the day, also helps me later in the class when we go around the room and evaluate the students individually.  They are very excited because, after correctly identifying the color of each item, each child is given a paper bracelet, some stickers and a small piece of candy.

Sometimes, the rewards for repeating a word or arriving at a correct answer are even more simple.  Although, like any group of three year olds, they spend a good part of their day playing in the dirt and picking their noses, handshakes have become a staple in the classroom.  When I saw how much excitement this simple gesture evoked during our first few class, I put aside my urges to dip the kids in a large vat of Lysol and started using handshakes as one of our primary sources of positive reinforcement.  Pair that with a few simple words of affirmation (in English) and you're golden...germs be damned! 

Although I have quite a bit of experience with kids, this is the youngest group I've ever worked with and it continues to present new challenges and personal learning opportunities.  Their unbridled enthusiasm and endless energy make them a pleasure to work with and the fact that they're just stinking adorable doesn't hurt either.

Una Blusa Lila

I’m sorry. In retrospect, I guess it was a slightly misleading to call something the “first update on my new life in Peru” when, in reality, the post contained next to no actual information about that new life.  Instead, I gave you a long, incoherent list of Spanglish words and phrases and left you to your own devices to decipher how they might relate to my first few weeks in Lobitos.  Hopefully the next few posts will shed a little light on, at least, some of them.  Let’s start with una blusa lila; a lavender blouse.

I arrived to Lobitos at mid-morning on Monday and started work on Tuesday.  The old secondary school English teacher had quit abruptly which is why everything turned around so quickly. 

The timing was a bit strange really.  Coincidently, Kate had contacted me about the available position the day before the shit hit the fan with the mine in Chile.  After we spoke, I walked away from the conversation feeling really bummed about missing out on the spot, the surf and the organization; all three of which Kate had been raving about literally every time I’d talked to her for the previous seven months since she left Iquique.

When the mining job was suddenly pulled out from underneath me, my initial response (as you may have read about in this post) was utter disbelief followed my blinding rage, waterworks, feeling totally directionless and confused about the next step to take and a long rant-tastic blog post.  Essentially, I worked my way through something roughly resembling the five stages of grief… in the span of about an hour.  I was literally still walking home; with red cheeks and puffy eyes when I remembered about the job in Lobitos.  I think I actually might have jumped off the ground a little, I was so excited about the idea.  I ran home and sent Kate about a million messages via facebook and skype telling her to get in touch with me ASAeffingP.  28 days, and way too many travel hours later, I was here.

They kids were already three weeks into the school year when I arrived because of my little detour back to North America so I hit the ground running; no time to lose.  First thing Tuesday morning, I went to talk to the directora of secondary school.  I was terrified.  I had already heard that she was a little "complicated" (a euphemism Spanish-speakers commonly use to avoid directly calling someone a bitch) so I was trying to make a good impression by dressing professional for our meeting, sitting up straight and minding my ps and qs.  I have never been looked up and down so hard by an authority figure in my entire life. 

 My outfit got the thumbs-up from my co-workers but was I still scolded profusely.  She explained the exact uniform I should be wearing (speaking slowly and annunciating to make sure I understood); looooseeellllyyyyyy fiiiittttiinnnnggg bbllllaaacccckkkkk slllaaccckkkkks, bbbbllllaaccckkkkkkkk cccccllloooooooseeeee-ttttoooooooooeeeeedddddd ssshhhoooeeeesssss aaaaannnnnddddd aaaa llllaaaavvveeeennnndddarrrr bbbbbllllouuuuussssseee.  Then, to make sure I really got it, she explained it three more times.

The first two weeks were rough.  The kids were awesome, a bit hard-to-manage at times, but overall engaged, fun and a pleasure to work with.  When I was in the classroom, I was happy but the administrative side of things was driving me nuts.  

Every day, I showed up to the directora's office where she scrutinized my outfits and threw together an arbitrary schedule for my day.  Then I would run home (luckily, just across the street) and scramble to get things prepared before running back to school.  It was chaos and would likely have continued this way up until now if the organization where I work hadn 't put their very influencial foot down.  All it took was one stern phone call simply stating that, unless I was given an actual schedule, I would not be returning to teach English; which we provide to the school free of charge (and they are required by law to teach).

The directora cracked instantly.  She immediately put together the schedule which was communicated by phone and handed to me on the Monday of my third week.  I haven 't seen her once since then.  She hasn 't even popped into one of my classes to tell me how to manage it or to snap at one of my students for looking at her (not joking...we 're talking Cruella Deville here).  

I never did buy the outfit she so slowly and clearly communicated to me during our first meeting.  It wasn 't part of the power struggle, they just don 't happen to sell those things in the one store I frequent, 20 minutes away in Talara (there isn 't even a grocery store in our town lady...give me a break).  I have, however, found somewhat of a compromise: a lavendar shirt with a black skirt and close-toed shoes.  So far it seems to keep her appeased at least enough to let me do my job in peace.  Which is great, because I love my job.

¡Qué sorpresa!

Lobitos, Peru

A few of you may have caught my last post (please excuse my weak attempt at being enigmatic there).  “Some airport somewhere” (if you even care at this point), happened to be LAS; Mccarran International Airport in Las Vegas.  About a dozen hours deep into almost exactly three solid days of traveling back down south, the photo resembles something between a mug shot and a PSA for sleep deprivation. 

My master plan was to maintain a little ambiguity about my current whereabouts until I finished off the pile of half-finished posts about Chile that have been collecting dust in my drafts folder.  After that, I would release the news that SURPRISE, I live in Peru now.  Unfortunately, I frankly just don’t have the patience for that and I’m terrible at keeping secrets.

In fact, I’m amazed that I was actually able to keep my last minute trip to the states a surprise from my family for as long as I did.  I freaked the ba’jesus out of my sister and dad during two separate but equally wonderful surprise attacks and made a few, less successful, attempts to surprise my friends, who already had their suspicions about me coming up.

The ten days at home were (at the risk of sounding cliché) just what the doctor ordered.  Though chaotic and exhausting, I can’t even articulate how wonderful it was to have the time with Jeff and to see so many fabulous people that I have been missing so much.  

My journey started with a 5.5-hour bus from Iquique to Arica, followed by a quick 45-minute taxi across the border at Tacna and a (not-so-quick) twenty-hour bus to Lima (23 hours).  At the Cruz del Sur station, I touched base with a couch surfer friend in Mira Flores and caught a taxi straight to his house for a (much needed) shower and some lunch.  He showed me around the neighborhood a bit (beautiful by the way) and I set off for an unnecessarily long triple-layover flight through Huston, Vegas and, finally, LA. 

After my awesome little ten-day vay-cay, I retraced my steps back through LA, Vegas and Huston.  However, instead of busing back down south to Chile upon my arrival to Lima, I spent one night there before embarking on a different twenty-hour busing adventure (note the sarcasm in my voice).  Hopefully my last all-day bus ride for a while, this trip brought me to Talara.  Once there, a “moto” (motercycle with a little car for passengers built around it) carried me to a “combi” (a van used for transfers between Talara and Lobitos) where my luggage was tied to the roof while I crammed myself inside with fifteen Peruvians.  Twenty minutes down a dusty desert road and I was finally home.

Now I’ve been in Lobitos for about two weeks.  Things have been a bit rocky here and there but overall, I am having a wonderful time.  I feel like there are a million and one things I want to update you on  but, frankly, my blogging stamana is down after a few weeks of not writing and I feel a little overwhelmed.  Instead, I will just try to capture the highlights with this thirty word summary and elaborate later....

Waves. 
Water.

Thorns. 

Girls. 
Calluses.

Mosquitos. 

Ceviche. 

Cera. 

Rum. 

Coke. 

Shortcut. 

Vomit. 

ER. 

Mermaid Cast.   

Sunsets. 

Chifles. 

Mocos. 

Miss Alicia. 

Una Blusa Lila. 

Hello, Hello, Hello. 

¿Puedo Salir A Toser? 

Greetings From Some Airport Somewhere...

Round and round and round she goes...where she stops, nobody knows.

Painful Lessons in Vocabulary

The beauty of living in another country is the daily opportunity to learn new things.  Between the culture, the people and the language, there are always new things to discover.  However, like with anything, there can be growing pains along the way.  Here are ten of the most painful Spanish vocabulary words I've learned in Chile:

1. Hinchado/a: I learned this little beauty of a word back in May when my board popped me right in the face during a surf lesson.  I got this nice fat lip (pictured above) as a souvenir and the word "hinchado" (swolen or, in this case, fat) as a long-term reminder of what a kook I was  am in the water.
  
2. Multa: This unknown vocabulary word kept popping up on our itemized lists of gastos comunes (shared community charges that pretty much every apartment building in Chile charges) at our old place.  One day, we got the brilliant idea to look it up and found out that we were being charged a "multa" (fee) for paying those gastos comunes late...almost every month.  Lesson(s) learned.

3 & 4. Asangrar & Toser: I never really found the need to know either of these words until Jeff arrived to Chile and began doing both of them at the same time.  A nasty case of strep throat (his second week in Chile) brought us to the infamous Clinica Iquique with a little scrap of paper that held our very important new vocabulary words: "toser" (to cough) and "asangrar" (to bleed).

5. Riñón: Although I had the basic body parts down before moving to Chile, I never made it around to the internal organs.  It wasn't until I had a triple dos of terrible in the form of e.coli, salmonella and an infected "riñón" (kidney) that I learned this little gem of a word.  

PS. I still don't know the names of any of my other internal organs, including my liver; although I've put her through quite a lot here in Chile.  I blame the terremotos.

6. Gusano: Speaking of drinking...after being force-fed the "gusano" (worm) at the bottom of the mescal bottle by a very drunk friend, this slimy (yet satisfying) piece of vocabulary won't be soon forgotten.

7. Atropellar: One day, I was talking with my good friend Kenita via facebook chat and she said, "¡Alguien me atropelló en Baquedano!" which (roughly translated) means "Someone somethinged me on Baquedano!"  Thanks to the fabulous spanishdict.com, I was able to look up the word instantly and find out (to my shock and horror) that someone RAN HER OVER...on the street I walked down every day to work.  Dually noted.

8. Celeste: This painful vocabulary lesson took place on my October trip to Peru.  When I showed the park rangers in the lost and found office a little bag that my mom made me and asked if they had seen a similar one with a camera in it, they made an announcement over the walkie-talkie system about a bolsa celeste; a word I had never heard before.  That day I learned that "celeste" meant sky blue and begrudgingly took this vocabulary word home instead of my pictures from Machu Picchu.  RIP Camera :(  

9. Resbalar: For some reason, this was a word that I could never remember for the longest time.  Surf class after wax-deprived surf class I would mime it out to my surf teacher by gliding my hand along my surfboard and exaggeratedly falling back into the water to show how I had just "resbalar"ed (slipped) on my ass.  This was followed by a plea for mercy and "cera" (wax).

10. Erizo: The newest edition to my painful vocabulary list is erizo; a word I had heard several times but never committed it to memory until it committed itself to my foot.  Last weekend, while beach camping just outside of Iquique, I made a new (not so friendly) friend when I stepped on this critter in the ocean and he (or she) left one of its pokey little spines in my foot.  Ouch "erizo" (sea urchin) ouch.

TEFLbloggers.com

Oh hey, look whose the new resident writer for Chile TEFLbloggers.com! To celebrate (and because I'd hate for anyone who found my blog this way to be greeted with the biggest bummer of a blog post I've ever written), I've put together a little collection of blog posts that might be particularly interesting or helpful to someone who is considering teaching English as a foreign language in Chile.  I hope these ten selections (in no particular order) will give you a good little overview of what my experience here in Chile has been.  I also plan to post a lot more blogs specifically about life in Chile and TEFLing in the near future so stay tuned.  In the meantime, happy reading :)

•  My First Few Days in Santiago
• Leaving Santiago and finding Iquique
• First Month in Iquique
• Spending the Holidays Away From Home
• New Years in Valpariaso
• Five Random Things About Chile
• My Trip to Peru
• Chilean Independence Day
• Reflection After Finishing A Year In Chile
• A Video Slideshow of My First Year in Chile

Lamentablemente

The Word of the Day, I was informed, was lamentablemente.

lah-mehn-tah'-bleh-mehn-teh
(adverb) unfortunately, regrettably

Examples

1. Lamentablemente, cuando llegamos a la playa había empezado a llover.
   Unfortunately, when we got to the beach it had started to rain.
2. Lamentablemente, cuando Claudia llegó al viñedo, Eduardo estaba encamado, sin muchos ánimos de seguir luchando.
   
   

   Regrettably, when Claudia got to the vineyard, Eduardo was bedridden, with not much of a will to continue fighting.

   
   

   Both coincidentally and quite lamentable in and of itself, I not only already knew the word, but had also had it thrown at me just a few hours prior.  It was used as an opener to laundry list of unfortunate developments in my work situation.  Lamentablemente, the mining company had confirmed earlier that day that they changed their mind about needing a native speaker at the site.  Lamentablemente, they were now requesting a teacher who was qualified both to teach both English to their Chilean workers as well as Spanish to their Canadian workers.  Lamentablemente, I didn't fit the bill.  Lamentablemente, since I was only staying until July and wasn't going to the mine anymore, it wasn't worth their time to give me a visa... 
   
   I stared at my boss for a few seconds in silence until I could absorb the full shock of the blow.  Her tone of voice was so light and casual that I needed a moment to bend my brain around the words she was saying and wring out the weight of their true meaning.  Her tone and facial expression said something more along the lines of, "Unfortunately, when we got to the beach it had started to rain." but the words coming out out of her mouth were infinitely more destructive.
   
   In my mind's eye, I could see all of my plans lined up in a neat little row.  With one clumsy flick of the wrist, she knocked down the first of them and they fell like dominoes; each one colapsing onto the next.  There wasn't a glimmer of sympathy involved, not even a simple "I'm sorry", just the dreaded Lamentablemente. I was back to square one.
   
   I felt like Charlie Brown, running at full speed towards that football, only to have it yanked away at the last second and fall flat on my ass.  That's beginning to describe my relationship with the academy alarmingly well.  It seems to be empty promise after empty promise with them lately.  I always approach cautiosly at first but (much like Charlie) am quickly convinced to give more trust than has been earned.  
   
   Within the next few weeks, I'll be scrambling to put together a new plan (be it in Iquique or elsewhere).  When my other boss gets back from vacation, I'm sure he'll have lots of lovely things to tell me about how great it will be for me if I stay on here in Iquique.  He'll hold out another football and things will seem shiny and new and promising again.  Maybe I'll run after it, or maybe I'll just walk away.