Buenos Aires, Argentina

Beauty is a prerequisite for social justice. If you care about the marginalized, the misfits, those who are the edges of society, who are mistreated and abused - if you want to see justice brought to them then you have a vested interest in cultivating an appreciation for beauty. - Skye Jethani 

It's very apparent. I am in a different country. 

Perhaps I should have expected this. But in the 30-second speech I used to rattle off to explain my study abroad plans, I would pretty much just throw, "and then we're going to spend 2 weeks in Argentina," right in there without missing a beat. And that's sort of how I though of it, just another stop in the general South America experience.

But before the new stamp was dry in my passport, it was obvious that Buenos Aires can be compared to  nowhere. There's mate on the subways, entire neighborhoods dedicated to football teams, and giant old ships watched over by scrap metal sculptures in the center of the city. The pastries are sweet and the mate is bitter. The museums are grand and the nightlife is frenetic. And the cafes are... there. I'm taking full advantage of this fact because I've discovered cafes are not a thing in Santiago. And this I could get used to:

Amanda and I have settled in to our new home, a funky two-story house furnished with floor to ceiling bookshelves and photos of John Lennon, Charlie Chaplain and Eva Perón. Before meeting host family number 3, I was feeling a little weary of inserting myself into other people's lives, but after a few mealtime conversations about Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, the American Civil War and the concept of concrete infinities, I knew I was going to get along just fine here. The only problem is the persistent desire to just stay inside and read. 

Cafes and books were also the theme of my favorite afternoon here. After a long day of school visits last week, friends and I ducked into El Gato Negro. After a lovely conversation over our drinks, we found ourselves in a used bookstore. While I was in raptures over finding a copy of Despertar de Primavera (Spring Awakening) with an inscription from 1977, Carolina was busy chatting up the proprietors, a sweet old woman and her son who wanted to practice his English. I wandered back in time to join in a round of mate, which is evidently a normal thing to do with strangers in a used book store in Buenos Aires. 

On a larger scale, the city is huge and sprawling and seeps culture. Culture of the art, music, philosophy variety. And that's made me wonder about how we define and value culture. In my classes, we talk about educating for change. That's something I believe in 100%, but I tire of the political flavor to the discussions. And the conversations I've had here about authors and art have been invigorating and affirming. It's made me realize how firmly I believe that we should be educating a generation capable of cultivating not only change but culture as well. I believe we must treat culture, both our own and others', as worthy of study and profound and useful in its own right. Here I've seen high school students painting murals in response to literature they read and elementary schoolers putting on plays about human rights. And I believe the vibrancy of the city is the result. 

I want to be a part of advocating for justice in this world. I'd like to one day teach students about the Madres de La Plaza de Mayo (who, by the way, I marched with on Thursday). But I also hope I can get some teenagers to write poetry. Because look at the world that celebrating culture can create! 

Chapod

Wherever you have dreamed of going, I have camped there, and left firewood for you when you arrive - Hafiz

I've been putting off writing this post because I can't figure out a way to put the week I just had into words. I'm going to do my best.

The world we lived in for seven days was small, pretty much consisting of the gravel road between the elementary school for the village of Chapod and our house. During the day, we'd sometimes travel outside of that world, to visit other Mapuche communities (Chile's primary indigenous people group) multicultural schools and the city of Temuco.

The road home

But in the afternoons, we'd walk home, turning off the road in pairs to our respective homes, until six of us reached our shortcut. Then we'd duck through the slats in a fence, cross a few cow pastures, and leave Sloan and Lane at the top of hill, where their sister for the week would run out to meet them. Then we'd walk down past the grazing calves and wave goodbye to Alex and Koral, our neighbors who shared our bathroom, enter through the gate into the yard with the laundry hanging from a barbed wire clothesline and piglets underfoot munching on fruit peels, and Amanda and I would be home.

Outside the front door, featuring the mama pig

Inside, we'd snuggle on the couch with our five-year-old sister Daniela, watch Phineas and Ferb, page through an animal-themed coloring book (both of these experiences helped me learn a new word: ornitorrinco, platypus), or read aloud from Donde viven los monstruos. 

Some days we helped our mom, Miriam, make bread. Not a day passed when she didn't measure flour from a giant sack under the counter, pound the dough with strong hands, and leave it to rise under the windowsill where a small wooden box read El Señor es mi pastor, nada me faltara. There was a modern oven in the house, but the bread was still baked in a woodstove, which also served to keep five kettles constantly ready with hot water.   

Eventually we would make our way outside to play, knocking on the neighbors' door to invite Alex and Koral and their sister Fernanda. The call to play was usually Mati's doing. Mati was 14, and both Amanda and I were expecting a 14-year-old host brother to be way too cool for us, but instead he was the best brother anyone could ask for. We taught him how to play ninja and he taught us how to tease in Spanish. I'm especially fond of the song he wrote about me after a community soccer game. It went something like this: "Laura plays soccer. But she's afraid of the ball. She never scores a goal. Believe in yourself Laura!! You can score a goal!"

Amanda and Mati were the prominent ninja players

After several games of What time is it Mr. Fox?, Untie the knot, and Sardines (My youth group/babysitting arsenal came in handy) we'd be called in for supper. We'd sing a prayer, then dig in to the fresh bread (sometimes sopapillas, the fried masterpiece I'd been warned about) lettuce salad (Mati's favorite) and delicious meat. We'd recount stories of the day to Danny, who, after accidentally bruising Amanda's arm during the soccer game, earned from us the loving title "Papá abusivo." Like a good dad, he specialized in watching over everything and quietly laughing at all of his children's antics.

Sopapillas and other delicacies 

When the food was eaten and the kids had gotten their hands on Amanda's kindle to play angry birds, (Mati developed a signal to let us know he wanted to play. He'd look at Amanda slyly and say "cuckoo!") it was time for Mate. I'd learned about this South American custom in Spanish class, but hadn't experienced it since it's disappeared from most urban households in Chile. Mate is loose herbal tea drunk through a filtered metal straw, but drinking mate, passing one mug around the circle with each person drinking a cupful before passing it back to Miriam to be refilled, is another thing entirely.

Over Mate we talked until Amanda and I couldn't keep our eyes open, and it was in these conversations that I learned that not only are the majority of the Mapuche community evangelical Christians, they're Alliance Christians. I had heard that, as a result of its focus on missions, the little denomination I grew up in was bigger outside of the United States than inside of it, but it was incredible to me to see that this thing we do called mission work had transformed an entire oppressed people into dedicated and joyful followers of Christ.

Drinking Mate with my mom, Miriam.

When we finally got up from the table, I would go outside to the back porch where the sink was, sometimes stepping into the yard to look up at the sky dusted with southern hemisphere stars while I brushed my teeth. And then I would go to bed, and in the morning I would wake up again into the rhythm of that home. It was a music composed of baking bread and feeding pigs, playing games and drinking mate.

We learned, of course, about the struggle to retain Mapuche culture in the face of dictatorship and a racing "modern" culture. And we learned about the theft of Mapuche land and the draining of natural resources through giant lumber companies. I was reminded in many ways of the time I spent with the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge reservation in the US. I thought about the big issues of indigenous oppression. But in the small world, this week was fundamentally different from the hopelessness I saw in Pine Ridge.

This was contentment, faith and family. I was reminded that culture, as a huge a thing as that is, exists in its simplest form within families. This family lives their lives resting comfortably in their traditions. And even though those traditions are radically different from the ones I grew up in, there was something fundamental that was exactly what I know family to be: work and games and food and laughter. And it was just enough.

What a wonderful family! 

Registro Civil de Santiago

This is not so much a post as an apology.

I genuinely desire to uphold the promise of posting every week. This week, however, I am leaving momentarily to climb on a bus and drive through the night to Temuco, where I will spend the next week in an indigenous village, where I have been warned I will most likely not shower, be attacked by fleas and lice and be stuffed full of fried bread. So, I'm very excited! That's supposed to be funny, but not sarcastic. I am very excited.

I had every intention of writing my weekly post today, Saturday, but I did not schedule into my day waiting in line for 5 hours to get my foreign identity card, a week after arriving in the country, because the civil police have been on strike until now.

I'll tell you that you're not missing much. This is what my week looked liked:

School. Study. Sleep. School. Study. Sleep. School. Study. Sleep. Wait in line for 5 hours.

The real story on study abroad, everyone.

You'll notice, however, that earlier this week I did post a poem. If you don't speak Spanish, I suggest google translate. Aside from some grammar tenses, it is shockingly accurate. My own translation might be forthcoming, when I return fat and flea-bitten, with better stories.

Poema #2

So, this one's in Spanish. Sorry non-spanish speakers. I wrote it as my final reflection for the best Spanish class EVER. Also, apparently public transportation makes for a good poetry topic. Who knew?

Transantiago

Aca estoy en este momento.

Y a este momento,

miro el mapa del Metro.

Las líneas cruzados así,

color a color.

Y me paro en los puntos de conexión –   

donde mi alma pequeña

toca la ciudad gigante y gris y hay chispas.

Al tiro.

Hay mucho para conocer.

Ahora conozco bien el camino a casa.

El Unimarc que queda en el rincón,

las peluquerías, el restaurante de sushi.

Cruzo la calle; el perro allá está en guardia.

No hacemos perro muerto.

Entro por la puerta, saludo el hombre en guardia.

Nosotros también somos seguros.

Aca vive una familia que pienso es mío.

Mis dos hermanos –  

traduzco los videojuegos para ellos.

Juntamos a la mesa y comemos pan y palta

Entiendo la mitad de las bromas

¿Cachai?

Las palabras fluyen de mi lengua,

ahora más rápido que antes,

pero si tengan sentido, no estoy seguro.

Escribo un montón de palabras en mi cuaderno.

¿Ahora tengo bastante para contar todo que he aprendido?

Un vocabulario con que es posible expresar:

los aulas y las tomas, los escritorios y la economía.

O las penas que nadie puede explicar en cualquier lengua.

A este momento,

veo atrás,  

a la chiquilla que llegó con sus maletas.

¿Es posible que solo haya pasado un mes?

Ella parece una desconocida.

Si conociéramos en el Metro,

chonclados piel a piel

¿Le reconocería?

¿O pasaría sin mirarle, subiría a fuera

al camino familiar?

No quiere decir que no tenga miedo.

Todavía encuentro miedos nuevos en cada rincón.

Hay mucho que esconde con las arañas.

Pero crucemos.

Al otro lado

hay besitos y tecito,

y no me paro sola a este punto.

Conozcamos en la estación del Metro.

Ven, subiremos juntos.

Vendrá el sol en la sombra de las montañas,

y el olor de mani confitada.

Vendedores ambulantes

en la calle familiar

Sigamos las líneas,

cruzados así.

Color a color a Color Esperanza.

Nos vemos al próximo punto.

¡Valparaiso!

High Tide! Time to move out in the glorious debris. - Barbara Kingsolver

The people of Valparaiso call themselves Porteños - people of the port. I love that. It's a water-soaked geographical identity, and there's a direct correlation between the distance from me to the nearest body of water and my happiness level. But I think the port connotates more than just coastline. A port - a harbor, is a place of safety and shelter, but its also a center for exotic exchange, a point of entrance and exit for adventure. Not to mention just a really great strategy for playing "Settlers of Catan."

In the far too short time I spent in Valpo this weekend, I could feel the energy of the port pulsing through the color-packed hillsides, criss-crossed by winding roads and splattered with street art. (I'm even more into alliteration than usual this week, sorry.) And in the harbor, I felt safe.

Valparaiso is a place that holds firmly to the things that define it. I like that kind of local pride. It feels vaguely Hollandish. So in the free day we had to recorrer the city, (one of my favorite Spanish words, it means simultaneously "to run around" and "to get to know") we chose not to seek out specific sights, but just to enjoy all the things that make Valpo, Valpo. And my dear friend Carolina photographed all of it. 

1. La Playa - The Beach

And more specifically, sea lions! Question: How do they get up there? Answer: They jump. It's not graceful, but it is spectacular. 

2. Mariscos - Seafood

We were told we could find good cheap food at a restaurant above the market. A bit of a liberal use of the word cheap, but it was worth it. Like good Chileans, we slowly enjoyed a huge lunch with fish in every course. 

3. Ascensores - Funiculars 

Historic inclined railways designed for Valpo's countless hills. A little thrill for 300 pesos. 

4. Cerros  - Hills

At the top of the funicular, we kept going up, enjoying views of the sea and the city and inserting ourselves into street art. 

5. Chorrillana 

Valpo's other culinary masterpiece - french fries topped with scrambled eggs, caramelized onions and meat. Give it a second, it's going to stop sounding disgusting and start sounding awesome. 

5. Descanso - Rest

I read in an article for Spanish class that Valparaiso is known for an air of rest. For my friends and me this weekend, rest was skipping out on the nightlife to spend the night in the hotel, eating cake... Okay, so we ate a lot. In our defense, the Chorrillana was Friday night. 

So I'll admit I'm a little sad to be back in Santiago. I miss the water and I miss the colors. A note on how our program works: this week we finish up classes at the University; we'll spend most of the next month traveling and in November we get to choose where we want to return to complete our independent study project. 

My official stance is that I don't know where I'm going to end up for my project. I have cities yet to explore in Chile and Argentina. 

But I'm pretty sure I'm a porteña at heart.