A Night At The Orchestra

This weekend Jeanny and I went to see our first Chilean orchestra! There are few words to describe how amazing it was. We sat up on the balcony and the tickets were only about $3 for students! I couldn't believe it. There was a full orchestra and the featured soloist played the oboe which is one of my favorite instruments. The sound is so haunting that I often have to close my eyes when I hear it. It just fills you with this inner peace...that's the only way I know how to explain it. It was a great night and we got to brush elbows with Santiago's upper crust and really experience something cultural. This beautiful city continues to surprise me with all of the opportunities it has to offer!

Our view from the balcony

Those are some classy ladies.

My friend Jeanny & I being goofy

Another Manic Monday

Hello to all my loyal Blog readers! I miss you all so much and I am just so happy that you take time to read about my ups, downs, and all arounds. This week is the second week of classes and I have to know for sure what classes I am going to take by the end of this week. I am praying that everything works out for the best with the classes that I still need to check out because I want to make sure I am choosing the right classes for the next 5 months of my life. An update on my ankle: I got my cast off on about 5 days ago and started walking on my ankle to try to see how things were. I never know if I am overdoing it because I am like a machine and I never know how much I am pushing myself until someone brings it to my attention. Thus I have a hard time just sitting in bed all day waiting for my ligament to heal. So I have been walking places and all the time I am conscious of two things: That I shouldn't be walking so much AND that is hurts like a bitch. Excuse the language but seriously, it is radiating pain through my foot with every step that I take. I have tried every gait imaginable to try to get the pain to subside, and I have also tried very hard to not take medicine for the pain. My dad raised me to heal naturally but gosh the pain is enough to make anyone's day really bad (to say the least).

So I talked to Maggie today and told her that I wanted to get a second opinion on my foot. She's calling right now to see about prices of visits and if there is anyone there that speaks English. I think that the doctor before knew what he was doing but perhaps many of my feelings/hesitancy about my injury were "lost in translation". I'm sure you guys can all sympathize with me...I just want this problem to be OVER! I am sick of it and I want to travel and walk freely and be a normal kid studying abroad in this beautiful country. I'm trying trying trying to keep a positive attitude but until I get to the bottom of this, I am going to continue to be a little bit bitter that this happened to me. So there you have it...

In happier news, I got a ton of errands done today so I am feeling good about that. I went to my campus to check on some articles that were supposed to be at the Photocopy Center (they weren't there but at least I checked). Then I went to Jumbo which is like a Walmart and got all those things that I really needed like black ink for the printer, folders/spirals for school, Apple Cinder Vinegar (proud mama??, and of course GUM :) Oh I also found a book in Spanish that seems really interesting and easy to read. I don't know if anyone knows it but it is called El Gato en el Gorro. haha kidding (The Cat In The Hat...for anyone who doesn't know Spanish). No actually it is a bit more elevated than that. Once I have started reading it, you will probably find mention of its profound subject matter scattered throughout this blog. My mind is beautiful and once I learn something, it comes up again and again in my memory. After shopping, I got a yummy salad with tuna and a green tea. Then I went to the main street to recharge my phone and exchange the ink that I bought yesterday that was the wrong one (ps...I had totally opened the package and even took off the seal of the printer ink and they still let me get a money-back refund! cool huh?).

And then BEST of all...I FINALLY GOT A GYM MEMBERSHIP! About time, right? I am going to my first Chilean cycling class tomorrow and there are tons of other fun classes that I can go to amidst just going to workout. I haven't been able to run for two weeks because of my ankle so I knew that I needed to do something so that I wouldn't melt into a puddle of goo and ikky-ness. It's kind of a long story, but I met a really cool girl who is a grad student at UCSD and we hung out this weekend with two Chilean brothers who she met in Colorado many years ago. ANYWAYS, she told me about the gym and she's a member so now I have a new friend who is also my gym buddy. Now that's what I call fate! ;)

Teacher for a Day

On Friday, I went with Sally to a school to teach English for the day. Sally is staying at Maggie's house also and she is part of a international volunteer program called United Planet. She'd been going to the school for a week and asked me if I wanted to come for the day. It ended up being such a great day! We went to about 6 different classrooms and I introduced myself as Miss Rose. The kids in the different classrooms ranged from 2nd to 8th grade. Each class was very intrigued when they saw Sally and I walk in. They were just as intrigued by me as I was by them I guess.

The kids have English lessons for about 5 hours per week so our job was to be there for the 20-30 minutes that each class was learning English. It is priceless to the students to have a native English speaker there and I found it equally helpful for my Spanish practice because I found myself speaking a lot of Spanish with the children who came up to ask me questions or give me presents. :) Each class was a totally different experience too. In one class, they had a book with actual exercises (the exercise that day discussed the difference between 'was' and 'were') Sally, the Chilean teacher and I went around helping the students with the exercises. In other classes where the children were much younger, Sally ended up reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears in English and/or singing Old MacDonald. The kids loved that and I found it entertaining too!

Another exercise that we did was to have the kids ask me questions in English. This was very memorable because the kids asked me questions like what my favorite color, sport, country, and animal was. I would then answer back speaking very controlled because the entire classroom was watching me and English is not their first language. This experience put a lot of things in perspective for me. Those kids found it very difficult to even say one sentence in English such as one where they had to put in was/were. And if an outsider were watching this, they wouldn't truly understand why that kid is scared to speak English. But as a 21 year old adult who is attempting to gain fluidity in the Spanish language, I completely understand those kids. It is HARD! It is an unexplainable phenomenon really...there are times when you can speak it, and there are times when you can't say something to save your life. Anyways, I enjoyed the kids questions about whether or not I liked Michael Jackson or whether I had a Facebook or my favorite: Someone asked me if I had many Chilean friends. I confessed that I had only just begun classes so I didn't have many Chilean friends. I then asked if anyone had older brothers or sisters and 30 hands shot-up amidst eager shouts. haha

Also, many of the kids asked me if I knew Spanish and I said I was learning it but it is a process. They then urged me to say something in Spanish and I agreed to the challenge. :) I said a little bit about myself in Spanish and who knows whether it was good or not...but the cute thing is that the class started applauding afterward and giving me some "ooooh"s and "ahhh"s of approval. All in all, the day was great and I plan on going back this Friday. Sally and I want to bring along a song to sing with the kids in English but we are going to have to figure out how to get the kids the words so that they can sing along. The number of opportunities I have been offered during this study abroad experience make my head spin. The sky is the limit.

How Quickly We Forget...

I am amazed by how quickly I tend to forget pain! After an incredibly horrible day, I will try to begin again with an optimistic attitude as if nothing bad happened the day before. Monday was a very challenging day which included going to my first day of classes, hobbling around on my cast, walking about 10 blocks all said and done, getting lost before my interview, arriving late and almost in tears, and then hobbling back via the metro, bus, and walking to my house. (Note: Don't worry about the interview. I calmed down before I got there, she offered me tea, and we had a very nice talk. She offered me two different internship opportunities too.)

But in short, it was a VERY long and tiring day. HOWEVER, the next day after talking to my mommy, sissy, and Meggy, I decided to put on an optimistic attitude and was amazed at how quickly I was able to forget my pain. Maybe this is an adaptation we have that allows us to learn from our mistakes and move on with life. All the same, in order to express my feelings from Monday, I wrote a poem.

I have never felt more stress or been more challenged than that day. But for that, I have also never been more proud of myself than that day. I was a rockstar for doing that and anyone who wants to step out of his/her comfort zone and reap the benefits later should try the following. Enroll in a Chilean university with teenagers you've never met who speak a language you don't really speak that well and try to see if it is the place that God meant for you to be. At the very least, you will learn a TON about yourself. That's what being adventurous is all about.

{Mi poema sin título}

I look ahead and see a wave of morenos
I keep my head fastened to the floor
Trying to escape the stares yet unable to escape the nerves
I feel my psyche recoil like a child who feels threatened
I am a bull's eye of bizarre
My presence screamed through the halls
Soy rubia, alta--la rubia, la alta--con yeso y sin accento
Pushing open the classroom door, I enter an empty safe haven
A seat in the back greets me, secure in its isolation
Never thought I could envy a chair so much
Packs of people enter, the minutes slowly tick down
I'm the new kid in the 7th grade class
I'm the kid who gets picked last for the team
I'm the most vulnerable person in the world
My eyes burn into the paper that I've read a million times
All my senses are piqued as my heart beats, beats, beats
The teacher speaks and all of my energy is channeled
To listening, processing and recording the information
That glorious information given to us through speech
What a beautiful gift to be able to decipher the spoken word
Such a simple concept catacombed in complexity
Mis compañeros de clase sit back in their seats
Listening to the speech they've heard a million times
What am I doing here? I ask myself
Amidst the crowd of dialogue entering my mind
Have I asked too much of myself this time?
I fell asleep a bright, accomplished college student
I've awakened a child--unable to express
The desires, the knowledge, the abilities I possess
They are caged up inside my mind, inside my heart
All it would take is one person to free me
To make me feel normal
To make me feel like I belong
That my decision is not wrong
As I clasp my hands, clench my teeth & feel my heart in my chest
Me dio cuento that I am the only person with the power to do this
I am my own worst enemy.
I make my reality. I make my success.
Lord give me strength, I silently pray.
Let today be the day I change my way.

My First Week of Classes

El simbolo por la facultad de ciencias sociales
(where I attend classes)

Unless you have experienced it, you will NEVER be able to understand that courage that it takes to attend classes at a new university where you don't speak the language. This past week was honestly the most challenging week of my ENTIRE life. Monday was the biggest challenge because I had to find my own way to the school in the morning. I then waited around a good hour because I way early, and then when I entered the classroom, I was the only extranjero in the entire class. The only way I know how to describe it is that it is exactly how the new kid in 7th grade would feel if they entered class with purple hair, a clown nose, and riding a horse. Ya...that's a good way to describe it. I don't mind being the extranjero but the thing is that I can NEVER hide. I am tall. I am blond. I just stick out like a sore thumb. But at the same time, I had a lot of fear in the situation so no Spanish words were going to escape from my mouth. I was literally scared speechless and in this class we had to get in a group and even speak with the class listening. I was in a group with some Chilean boys and I will never forget how nice the boy was next to me. He was trying to make me feel comfortable and talk but amidst his trying, I was still trying to calm myself down. But he really did make me feel as comfortable as he could.

How many of you reading this are trying to learn another language? As I attempt to use my Spanish that I have been studying for 4 years now, I have come to realize something. I think that it is a discipline that is unique in that it requires a person to humble themselves enough to be able to express themselves at only a 5th grade level, for example. In English, we would never dream of answering someone's question of: "What did you do today?" with..."I went to the store. I bought bread. The bread was good. I like bread." haha You get my point. There are times when Maggie and anyone else who is at the school will bring up a subject such as health, religion, or human adaptation (all subjects that I love discussing) and I will have to only express a fraction of what I know or speak very slowly and patched to try to get my point across. I have become a student again after speaking English flawlessly for the good majority of my life. I am just amazed by all people who are learning another language because a person who can humble themselves enough to learn a language COMPLETELY different than their mother tongue is a person who is willing to sacrifice their own comfort for the greater purpose.

I attended 5 classes this past week. I am only picking 2 classes to take in addition to the Chilean Culture and Politics class that all the students in my program are taking. While class shopping, I had to be conscious of how much reading the class would demand because I don't want to be in my room studying all the time during the next 5 months. Also, it really mattered how clearly the teacher spoke. There was a class on the Mapuche culture that I attended and it seemed so interesting but the teacher would diminuendo during every sentence. It was VERY hard for my fellow extranjeros because we were already straining to understand his words through his thick accent. That class has a TON of reading so I am still deciding if I want to put myself through so much pain. Always a hard question because the subject matter is very interesting. The class that I fell in love with is Medical Anthropology. I will explain in the next entries to come how I discovered Medical Anthropology, but this is a class that I am definitely taking. The other class that I am most likely taking is a physical anthropology class that focuses on bioarchaeology. That class surprised me the most because there are only like 10 other girls in that class and there is going to be laboratory time for the last 1.5 hrs of class every week where we get to analyze bones and decipher causes of death and so forth. SO INTERESTING!

My Car Tour of Santiago

Maggie took me on a car tour of Santiago yesterday. It was such an awesome day because she showed me all that my little eyes could handle. We had a map of Gran Santiago with us and she would constantly ask me to point out where we were on the map. She is also all about directions so she would pull the car to the side sometimes and ask me what direction we were traveling in or where the mountains were at this minute. I got all the questions right actually which I explained by telling her that my dad is a pilot and he taught me the importance of orientation with your surroundings. It's either that or I'm just a baller. We drove through Nunoa then to Providencia then through Bellavista where we saw people flocking to Cerro San Cristobal because it was the last weekend for the kids start school again. I feel their pain because I start classes tomorrow...classes that will last for the next 5 months! Eeek! After Bellavista, we drove through El Centro de Santiago which I remembered from the day I got my cast on and Maggie took me all the way downtown to get my Chilean identification card. During our car tour through El Centro, she showed me a huge new park called El Parque de los Reyes and then we made a quick turn to the left into another comuna que se llama Quinta Normal. Maggie almost crashed the car upon the turn because she turned to me to say: "Hijita, en cual direcion estamos viajando ahora?" I was like: "ohhhh ummm Doblamos a la izquierda y por eso, estamos viajando hacia el sur porque las montanas estan a la izquierda ahora." Maggie was a very proud mama during the whole tour/test and I realized that I have a knack for orientating myself to my surroundings.

We stopped the car outside of a huge part in Quinta Normal so we could walk around for a bit. We ended up strolling around the park looking at the various museos, gente, y comiendo un dulce tipico de Chile. I have always known that my mind is like a sponge but Maggie is seriously like a bucket of water. She is so full of knowledge and knows exactly how to teach me. She has patience and can really tap into how helpless one can feel while learning another language. It's truly amazing. In the park, she stopped for a moment and urged me to look closely at the people who were walking around us...to listen to their dialects, watch their manerisms, memorize their way of dress. Later when we were having a delightful "once" at Jumbo, she had me do the same thing but this time it was in the comuna of Los Condes which is known for being a high-class neighborhood. She is trying to make me aware of the differences that exist between the people of different comunas which to other Chileans are obvious but to extranjeros are completely nonexistent. I have to laugh sometimes at how funny we must look when we are exploring the world together: this tall blond California girl with this petite Chilean woman...both speaking Spanish and laughing all the while. Al mismo tiempo, it helps me understand that the gap between two people from profoundly different cultures can be easily narrowed if they're willing to be open to learning about each other's customs. Maggie shows me respect for having the courage to live in her world for these 6 months and speak her language, and I have equal respect for her being super patient with me and sacrificing her own time to make sure I feel comfortable and safe in her country.

My tour of Santiago ended with a look at the sanctuary of the Virgen Maria de Lourdes. You may remember from my entry about La Serena that I had researched the story of the appearance of the Virgen in Lourdes, France. It is believed that the Virgen appeared to Bernadette, a girl from the country, in a grotto in the countryside. There is much more to the story so I urge you to investigate it, but in this sanctuary that we visited, it was truly breath-taking to see a huge constructed rock grotto with a replica of the aparicion seen by Bernadette. There were people in the pews praying and the whole place was alive with active faith. Quite a sight to behold. When we got home that night, Maggie made us a feast because Luke and Megan had just gotten back from a day of skiing/boarding in the Andes!! We drank vino navagado and ate raviolis con espinaca. Then Meg and I hit the hay and didn't wake up again until 11 am! Now that's what I call a good night's sleep :)

Una Canción de Amor

Noviembre Sin Ti

I've fallen in love...with a band called Reik. When they sing, you can feel the emotion wrap around you. It's magical. So I took the liberty of posting my absolute favorite song and translating it for all my favorite people. Also check them out on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqrMVY2yFEE

La tarde se aleja, El cielo esta gris
La noche aparece sin ti, Callado en la playa
Te lloro en silencio otra vez, Me ahoga esta pena,
No puedo vivir, Las olas no me hablan de ti,
Sentado en la arena, Escribo tu nombre otra vez

Por que te extrano desde aquel Noviembre
Cuando sonamos juntos a querernos siempre
Me duele, este frio Noviembre cuando las ojas caen
A morir por siempre...

Noviembre sin ti es sentir que la lluvia
Me dice llorando que todo acabo
Noviembre sin ti es pedirle a la luna
Que brille en la noche de mi corazon
Otra vez, otra vez.. yeah

Quisiera decirte que quiero volver
Tu nombre va escrito en mi piel
Ya es de madrugada te sigo esperando

Por que te extrano desde aquel Noviembre
Cuando sonamos juntos a querernos siempre
Me duele, este frio Noviembre cuando las ojas caen
A morir por siempre...

Noviembre sin ti es sentir que la lluvia
Me dice llorando que todo acabo
Noviembre sin ti es pedirle a la luna
Que brille en la noche de mi corazon
Otra vez...otra vez...

TRANSLATION

The afternoon moves away as the sky becomes gray
The night appears without you and alone I silently cry
I'm drowning in my grief, it's impossible to live without you
As the waves speak of you, I write your name in the sand

Because I've missed you since that November
When we were together & promised to love forever,
I'm hurting in this cold November
As I watch the waves fall and die forever

November without you is like the rain is crying
As it tells me that everything's come to an end
November without you is like asking the moon
To shine through the night from my own heart
Over and over again...

I wanted to tell you that I wish you would come back
Your name is written in my skin
And as the sun rises over the beach
I sit and remain awaiting you

Because I've missed you since that November
When we were together and promised to love forever,
I'm hurting in this cold November
As I watch the waves fall and die forever

November without you is like the rain is crying
As it tells me that everything's come to an end
November without you is like asking the moon
To shine through the night from my own heart
Over and over again...