After the rain…and snow…and teargas…

Near the end of July I went through a rough time of homesickness and frustration with the Spanish language.  I decided to just accept the awkward feeling and make a change.   The first thing I did was change apartments and I now live in a new place with only Spanish speaking roommates. At the same time, I made a commitment of taking Spanish classes with a friend of mine five times a week.  For this reason, I haven’t had much time left over to write my blog since studying and working have been the only things occupying my time.  But now I am happy to say I feel less homesick and I am actually able to have conversations in Spanish – however slow I am – I am speaking now.

And I can finally say for once that I am proud of myself.  Next week I will have been here for six months and I am well over half of my original commitment of staying here until December.  Things weren’t quite the way I had imagined when I came here.  I had too many immediate expectations.  For one, learning a language is a process and so I’m over beating myself up about not being better than I am at this point.  And in addition to leaving my life behind in the States and coming here alone, it’s taken me a while to work out the kinks…  Most of all, I just accept that I am imperfect.  I have compassion for what I am going through when I look at my life on the outside…just as I would for anyone else.  I want to give myself a hug and tell myself that I am doing a good job!

August was an interesting month and definitely the coldest yet.  This is what the city looks like before and after the rain.  Note the thick layer of smog where the Andes Mountains should be in the before pictures:

And after the rain…..

 

I am definitely not cut out for winter.  It’s not only that I am always cold, but it affects everything about me.  I sleep late, have less motivation, no energy and I can’t kick that urge to hibernate with my calientecama (electric blanket).  The thing is like my best friend.  I don’t know why I never got one in the States.  Every morning I wake up nice and warm and it’s a struggle to turn the thing off and get out of bed.  I do that thing where I have to talk myself out of bed…if we just make it through the morning, then we can come back and lay in bed later in the afternoon for an hour…I think some people can adapt well to the cold, but certainly not me.  I remember years ago how I imagined dressing up in stylish coats and scarves, drinking hot cocoa and living in New York City and how romantic of an idea that sounded to me.  No thanks!  A few weeks ago it actually snowed in the city which apparently is rare outside of the mountains.  I walked 40 minutes in the slush to one of my student’s offices, completely unprepared…no boots, no gloves, no hot cocoa waiting for me and no romantic scene…just me freezing my ass off.  And then the next week I was sick.

And it’s a sickness that keeps returning.  Last weekend I stayed home all weekend in bed.  I couldn’t go out because I was on lock down by the mom of my roommate, Felipe.  She kept a close eye on me the entire weekend, making sure I ate all of my soup, making sure I wore socks walking around the apartment, giving me medicine, preparing me teas…  This is quite a change from the times I would get sick in the States.  In the States, when someone is sick, the people panic.  They put you in quarantine where you are avoided and forced to fend for yourself while people spray Lysol on everything you touch or come into contact with.  Needless to say, I’m not used to this kind of care and nurturing.

Outside the Universidad de Chile

Perhaps another thing that sparked my sickness was breathing in all of the teargas from all of the student protests last month.  College students as well as high school students have been protesting for several months now for free education and better education.  The protests can be unavoidable, and on more than one occasion I’ve found myself in the middle of a mob of running students and police spraying teargas.  The teargas lingers in the air and so you can be walking through the city and suddenly be struck with watery, stinging eyes.  Some areas of the city will wreak of teargas long after the students have left.  I canceled three of my night classes last month due to the protests and watched from my window as students threw rocks at the police and listened to people bang pots and pans together from their apartment windows as another sign of protest.  I like to ask each of my students what their opinions are of the protests.  All of my students are different in age and profession, but the consensus is that while they sympathize with and understand the reasons for the protest, they are not happy with all of the recent violence.

Barricades of chairs built by high school and university students

I teach a small group of women at a financial firm and they seemed to think that solving the education problem is not the real problem for Chile, but that the social class system is the bigger issue.  They concluded that even if the students win, that nothing would really change in Chile for the better because there would still exist a division in the people.  There is a big difference between rich and poor here, although personally I have not seen the same kind of poverty I saw when I was in Brazil.  The favelas there were like nothing I have ever seen…whole families living in shacks and by shacks I mean some sort of construction with four walls thrown together with a tin roof.  Still, I do feel the class system here and I have even felt it among friends I have made here that are from different family backgrounds and observing how they relate to one another.  An Argentine student of mine drew a circle for me in which he placed the poorest people in Santiago.  Around it, he drew another circle of semi-poor people and then another circle of lower middle class people and so on.  He told me that each group of people does not associate with the other at all and that here it is very important which area of the city that you live.  People actually lie on their resume and use another address for fear of not being hired.

Signs of Protest from Chilean students: President Pinera with donkey ears

I find it interesting here that the young people have organized themselves so well and have caused so much of a stir politically, enough to potentially make an actual change.  Friends of mine and I recently had dinner and talked about how we couldn’t see this kind of thing happening in the United States and we wondered why.  I always return to the idea that protest seems to be so much apart of the culture in Latin America, its natural here for people to protest about anything they oppose of the government and that it makes sense for the young people to make themselves heard.  But then young people seem to be doing this everywhere around the world lately, in Egypt, in London, in Spain, in many other countries…but not the U.S.  I read an article recently in the Huffington Post that contemplated the same question.  The article implies that the young generation in the United States nowadays has become numb and complacent.   It goes on to suggest that perhaps the youth (I include myself in this) in the United States are emulating the passive traits of the characters in all of our great Hollywood movies such as “Hangover II.”   It could be.  The writer made an interesting point in saying that the only young people who protested in the U.S. this year have been a group of angry foreign students who came to the U.S. to study English as part of a State Department program, but were instead forced to work long hours for little pay at the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory.

This weekend is September 11^thand this day has quite a different meaning in Chile because it is the anniversary of the day that the dictator Pinochet and a coup backed by our CIA took control of Chile in 1973.  For people not familiar with the history, before Pinochet, Salvador Allende was President of Chile.  He was a Socialist leader voted for by the Chilean people.  The government of Allende was not welcomed by the United States who feared the possibility of another successful Communist country, and during Nixon’s presidency the U.S. invested $8 million dollars over a three year period to boost Anti-Allende opposition.  Supposedly, during the day of the coup, Allende killed himself in the Presidential Palace in La Moneda, however people seem to have doubts that he ended his own life.

The Presidential Palace of La Moneda

The poet Pablo Neruda also died two weeks after the coup and some people suspect that his death was not coincidental, but that he was possibly poisoned for being too critical of the military.  Pinochet’s dictatorship lasted into the late 1990’s and during his time in power scores of people were killed, tortured or went missing.  A report published in 2004 showed that at least 27,000 people were tortured under the Pinochet dictatorship, in more than 1,100 detention centers.  One of my students who now manages a mining company, was a human rights activist in the early 1980’s and was arrested by the police.  While in captivity, he was tortured by electric shock (in which he lost one testicle) and he watched the police murder his friends.  And to attempt to end his life, the police drove him up to a desolate area of the Andes, stabbed him and kicked him off the side of the mountain to die.  He woke up hours later and managed to walk to a small town and seek refuge in a church where the priests and nuns there helped him heal and kept him hidden.

It was suggested to me to stay indoors on the 11th because the people love to riot on this day and that this year will be worse due to all of the student protests.  We will see…

Getting back to myself..

For so long I have been talking about manifesting the things I want and trying hard to attain these things, in order to improve my life.  I feel like I have been doing the work for this for years now.   I’ve read so many books that have made me change parts of my life in terms of how I take care of myself physically or that have altered my perspective about life in general.   I’ve tried going to all kinds of churches and spiritual centers, I’ve done 12 step programs…I did the Artist Way.  All of these things gave me something, but they never gave me that thing that kept me from feeling still partially dissatisfied.

My friend Roxana asks me this question:   “What is it you have to offer other people?”  As I rack my brain for the most truthful answer to this question, mostly I find myself silent.  This she says is what I really have to work on.

Personally, at first I found this very frustrating as my immediate response was:  AGH!  I’ve done enough already!  I mean, from everything I have mentioned above, I felt like this is actually more of time in my life to finally relax, and instead her question left me once again thinking of what more I could do artistically or what kind of project I could get myself involved in..

But then, I realized the other day after the 4^th of July how much I just enjoy laughing and being with people…I enjoy making people laugh.  I enjoy laughing at myself.  In fact, I love it.  I love all of the ridiculous things that I do and all of the ridiculous things that happen to me and I love sharing it.  For so long I feel like my sense of humor has been buried, in the midst of trying to become someone I am not.  And, while it might not be the most productive way of being, I secretly love being that person who didn’t read the schedule and who asks what we are doing for the rest of the day.

Recently, my friend wrote me from the States informing me in a long email about how she was so inspired by me and the things I have accomplished that she pushed herself to attempt becoming an intern for LA Yoga Magazine, and upon inquiring into this, instead was offered to be one of the staff writers.  She actually wrote about owing it to me for getting this new position.  This makes me feel somewhat weird, because in so many ways, I don’t see myself doing anything that magnificent here.  I mean plenty of people travel and many people work abroad in much more unique and amazing careers.   And, I always imagine how I need to keep striving to be better to achieve that sort of status whether it be as an artist or in something else.  In fact, I am always seeing how I need to be more like her.  It has never occurred to me that maybe by just being me in all that I am not…is enough.  It was enough to somehow change part of my friend’s life.  In addition, I have received so many comments on my blog from people, emails and such that have really blown my mind.  For one, I am astonished that people actually read the thing, but for some people to keep reading every entry and to write me about how I inspired them or made them think just makes me feel great.  When I think about it, maybe what I see as a life that I constantly want to change and alter and improve upon is actually just the life that is okay as it is.

So maybe the most honest answer that I can give to what it is I have to offer people is actually just me being myself.

And instead of always searching for something outside of myself to give to the world, I am better off beginning by just expressing the person I am now and investing in things in which I find joy.  That is the most positive thing I can offer at this point.  This constant search for something beyond what I am in this moment, has only lead me to constant struggle and this is not the kind of energy I want to continue sharing.  Certainly, volunteer work and furthering my art career, along with using the social system that we have of entering certain careers is important, but those things can never be fully realized until I am okay with being without them first and by just being solely the person I am in all honesty.

I started this blog to have something fun to do…to record my time here and because I imagined I’d go crazy if I wasn’t working on something creative.  And, I came here for the love of traveling.  Travel and writing, along with sharing a sense of humor have been by far the things in which I find the most joy in my life.  To not permit myself to do the things in which I find so much enjoyment, would keep me from fully expressing that which I am.   And this is part of the reason I have always felt unfulfilled in the past.

As I’ve mentioned so many times on here, I never allowed my mind any amount of silence in the US.   And here, I just don’t worry about much at all.  I sometimes wonder if it is because the energy here is different.  Maybe in the US, we have a shared energy of things having to be just right all of the time, a shared energy of not having enough, of not being in the right place.  All of this can be very confusing and contradictory as we listen to so many people in all sorts of authority roles tell us how we should live our lives.  Perhaps it’s our media, our news never having anything positive to say, the fact that we love competition, the fact that we for the most part are obsessed with work, the fact that we often love to see people get what we think they deserve and nothing more and that also as a nation we seem to thrive off of fear.  It seems to consume us, making us afraid of not having insurance for every possible thing that could go wrong and making us feel like we must save and save for any conceivable emergency that might happen instead of actually using the money that we earn for any kind of true pleasure.  We go to work sick because we fear disappointing others and we only rarely take vacations.  We are accustomed to attaching guilt to those that actually do miss work.  We are conditioned to avoid certain people and places because we imagine them unsafe.  It seems like we live a large part of our lives thinking only about what could go wrong.  We have no training to handle any uncertainty or to see where it actually may be of value.  I wonder if this is why I felt like life was so overwhelming back in the States and why it was so hard for me to move beyond things or to say goodbye to things a lot of the time…so afraid to be without my own false security.  I’m really not sure, but here, I just don’t feel that kind of pressure and I sometimes wonder how I will feel when I once again am living in the US.

I am not saying it is better here or that there aren’t people here that don’t fall into the same category.  And, there are certainly tons of things I miss and wish I had here.  So many things are much more available and more convenient in the States and being here has in fact made me more appreciative of those things.  Let me repeat once again how much I realize how spoiled I was in California.  I had a very good life despite the numerous complaints I often daily voiced.  I lived near the beach with many great friends, not to mention inexpensive food of different varieties from all over the world available always, stores open all night, tons of cultural things to do, places to ride my bike, places to do just about anything imaginable.  Maybe the only thing absent for me in California was joy.  And I’m not talking about the joy that comes from always being constantly entertained, but merely the joy and happiness for all that I have and all that I am and all that I CAN do. Losing my job and experiencing periods of unemployment during the last two years in the States began to shift my perspective on this.  And here, while I can only rarely eat food at a restaurant, as food is very expensive, and while I don’t have a car to escape the city and the smog (it’s much, much more expensive to even own a car here, not to mention gas is at least double the price here than in the States), I now depend on the few friendships I’ve made, and I find activities to do on the weekend.  And I actually get really excited about the possibility of getting into a car and spending the day walking in nature…not such a novelty in the States.  But, I actually feel like, wow, I GET to do this here, while in the States, I only felt that things were never enough.  The ironic thing being that I always had so much more there.

I don’t love it here.  I do love my own country.  But, I am also trying to understand how I can love a place full of so much hostility.

Sometimes I read the news feed on Face Book and I see so many complaints from different people in the States.  I see people write about what they consider are incompetent people at their jobs.  I see people write about their neighbors, their relationships…with so much negativity.  I get it.  I just wonder though if we have all jointly manifested this kind of national unhappiness through all of the expectations we have created of one another, including ourselves.  And, I just wonder if somehow we could all practice a little empathy.  It’s not necessary that everyone be perfect nor that we all be the same.   And also I wonder if we could practice a little more joy for that which we do have an abundance of, especially compared to the rest of the world.   If we could all realize how much we have available to us and how much freedom we waste by not changing parts of our lives that are no longer doing ourselves or anyone else justice.  These are things that many people are unable to change in other parts of the world due to many reasons that are economic or social or because their governments won’t allow it.  We ARE actually free to do what we want.  It’s not always without a lot of effort and not always without giving something else up, but the point is that we GET to make those choices.  It just takes some courage to live life a little less secure and to allow our real selves to be expressed.

4th of July….and Being a Vegetarian

Yesterday we celebrated our own 4^th of July (it was actually the 3^rd, but it was the best we could do) by having a BBQ in the park.  This time Roxie had all of our plans colored coded in an excel spreadsheet (which I didn’t read and was reprimanded for!).  We didn’t have fireworks, but at least we had good food (and an abundance of rice).  I was specifically told to make rice for 19 people and of course only one serving of it was actually eaten and I think that was just someone being nice.   One of the guys showed me how he had taken some of it: “See, I’m having some, Jen.”  I looked and he had taken a small sympathy spoonful.  I knew no one was going to eat that stuff.  Rice is like that side dish that you eat last because there isn’t anything else good leftover…or, if you are vegetarian like me.  So now I have rice for 18 people sitting in my refrigerator.

I love how whenever I go to events that involve eating that people assume because I’m a vegetarian, I can be satisfied by just eating some lettuce.  “Oh, there will be something there for you to eat,” is usually the response I get and usually it’s like a piece of cheese or something that someone pulls out of the refrigerator at the last minute.

Vegetarian food here has no imagination.  In the States, a Vegetarian sandwich (commonly called the “health sandwich” as my friend always likes to point out and laugh at – this could just be a California thing) has things like avocado and sprouts and other vegetables carefully chosen for the perfect combination, on some kind of thick toasted wheat bread usually with seasonings and flavor.  The sandwich actually has weight to it and some creativity.  Here, it’s like someone bought a bag of plain white wonder bread and cut up a tomato and put some pieces of canned corn or other such flavorless vegetables inside it.  It feels as if the chef took their inspiration from cleaning out the refrigerator and figuring they could either throw the stuff in the dog’s bowl or make a sandwich.   No taste, no thought…It just sucks.  No one can fathom a meal without some kind of beef or chicken or pork.  The other day I ordered what was called “The Vegetarian” from a small restaurant in between classes.  I only had a vague idea of what that consisted of and assumed it was a salad of some sort, but I was perplexed when I opened up the box while I walked down the street and noticed there was a heap of chicken on top.  I took the box back and explained that there must be some mistake and so the guy just opened the box and grabbed all of the chicken and gave the box back to me.  Needless to say, I make most of my food at home.

I declined meat from one of the guys at the BBQ yesterday, telling him that I don’t eat meat and he didn’t hesitate to inform me that “that will change if you stay here,” but I have news for him; it won’t.

I haven’t eaten meat in almost 7 years now.  I try not to be a pain in the ass about it, but it’s been so long without meat that, I’m sorry, but I’m probably not going to start eating the stuff again at this point, no matter how much people try to tell me I need more protein and no matter how much I try to tell people I have my own sources of protein.  All I know is that my body feels much better without it and I rarely get sick anymore as opposed to before.

It’s funny to me how some people respond when I tell them I don’t eat meat.  Some people actually get quite defensive and edgy about it.  It’s strange to me.  It’s just food.  My mom tends to react this way and always adds “well, we eat meat here,” (referring to her and my dad) as if my decision is an attack on them.  She used to take it very personally in the beginning, insisting that I can eat her chicken, as if I had to choose between vegetarianism or my family.  Mostly, I think it’s just that she doesn’t appreciate her own lifestyle being challenged by her own kid.  And that’s why she has a tendency to announce to a roomful of people that her daughter doesn’t eat meat, and then she kind of waits around to see if anyone will join her in agreement of criticizing my highly “defiant” act that doesn’t jive with her own cooking.  It doesn’t matter how many years go by, my parents still react to me like I am 15 years old and trying to purposely disobey them by getting part of my body pierced.  Alas, I’m the youngest and I will never be seen as an adult.

My friend from the US recently sent me a box of foods and other odd things I am missing here.  The package included things like real organic peanut butter and organic cheese puffs which were all eaten in the first day of receiving the package.  Only in the US would they actually make cheese puffs organic.  And they do it just for people like me who claim to be all health conscious and assume…organic = healthy.  Its cheese puffs for god’s sake.

I want organic refried beans to be in his next package.  He thinks this is an unusual request.   He assumes that Chile must be the same as Mexico and he can’t wrap his head around the fact that beans aren’t a big deal down here.  I miss Mexican food.  Its not the same here and you can’t get beans in a can here without paying $4 and finding them at the giant grocery store across the city.   I don’t have the time and patience to always soak beans and make a dinner that takes 2 days when it normally only took me ten minutes in the States.

(So instead of paying $4, I make my friend pay $50 to send them from the US).  I know it really doesn’t make any sense.

We actually had warmer weather yesterday and so it was nice to be in the park and actually be able to be without a coat for part of the day.  Recently, it rained and so all of the mountains surrounding the city are now covered in snow:

My personal favorite…thanks to yoga…..

 Yes, we shamelessly painted our faces:

After the BBQ, the guy who is convinced that I will eat meat again, gave me a ride home.  I pleaded:  Please don’t make me ride the metro home (alone) with an American flag painted on my face…my poor non-meat eating self is bound to get into some kind of trouble!

In the spirit of the 4^th of July, this morning I gave one of my more advanced students a reading about the holiday from the New York Times called “Red, White and Blue and Many Other Colors.”  It was a sentimental article complete with quotes from the National Anthem about immigrants coming into the harbor in New York City for the first time and gazing at the Statue of Liberty.   The writer ended the article saying “God bless all of you on this great day and god bless America,“ and of course this made both of us laugh immediately.  I left his office and his last words to me were: “God bless!” while my other advanced student drew an arrow on his copy of the article and added “South” to “God Bless America.”  My less advanced student just looked at me, confused and asked “What’s a firecracker?”

 

Family and Friendship…

Yesterday was a great day.  I finally made it out of the city and went hiking with friends and friends of friends.  Roxana organized all of us to get together and go hiking for the day and have lunch in Pirque, a small town outside of Santiago.

Yesterday was one of those days where I couldn’t take anything too seriously.  Maybe its how being in nature makes me feel a little giddy, but I forgot how much good humor I find in all situations even if I have a tendency to laugh at maybe not the most appropriate times as well.  I remember camping with a friend of mine years ago in the desert, setting up our tent and going for a bike ride.  When we returned, all of our things were gone.  Our tent had blown away in the wind.  He was pissed.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  I remember him not being very pleased with my reaction.

I am pretty sure this comes from growing up on ridiculous comedies and maybe also the last 10 years of reality tv shows combined.  I was happy to sit in the back of the bus like a trouble maker scheming with my French friend and being disciplined by Roxana.  I swear she is such a leader and such a great organizer.  The price I pay for my sense of humor is that I am not a great leader, nor a good organizer.  In fact, I fail when it comes to those things much of the time.  I don’t have the personality to pull off what she does.  She even had all of us introduce ourselves and do that thing where you have everyone say one interesting thing about themselves.  I wanted her to have a clip board and a headset and pass out name tags too.

Friendship is so important to me.  It always has been.  I rarely get to see my family and to make up for it I have made exceptionally close friendships in my life with both men and women…they are like my replacement family.

I’m not sure if I consider my biological family close.  It bothers me.  I try to call my mom once a week.  I try, but I don’t always do it.  I haven’t seen my sister in almost 7 years and my brother…I haven’t seen him in at least 3 or more years and I only see my other brother due to the fact that he lives semi close to my parents, so when I see them maybe once a year, I usually see him as well.  Is this normal for us in the US?  My dad and I have never been very close, but his one wish for me was to actually write to my sister to say hi and break the ice a little between us.  Why weren’t we talking?  I have no idea.  I think it’s merely just a lack of consciousness we have for communication.  I feel my real family fading away in the dust and it bothers me immensely.

Sometimes I think about how years ago I couldn’t imagine never seeing my siblings…how they were such an integral part of my life.  How did I ever end up with this completely disconnected family?

I always remember the one time my brother came to California because of his job.  He just happened to visit me as well.  I met him at his hotel and we spent the evening together.  The next morning his flight was canceled and he irritatedly referred to the rest of the day together as “dead time.”  That kind of stung. But then at the same time I hear from so many people that know him about how much he talks about me and how much he thinks about me.  He isn’t the only person like this in my life.  Why can’t we just say how we feel to the actual person we have these feelings for?  And why is it easier to express it to someone else?  My mom always says, “You know your dad talks about you a lot,” but he isn’t talking about me to me so how would I know?  In addition to this, my family has always had a habit of insulting each other and its sort of an affectionate thing.  Tough love.  I kinda have a feeling that this is normal for many American families.

So much of American culture is based on independence.  If you are still living with your family after 20 years old then something is wrong with you…or at least that is what we assume.  I haven’t lived near my parents since I was 18 years old other than a small stretch of time when I needed to stay with them for financial reasons.  I missed out on a consistent relationship with my brother and his family and all of my nephews and my niece.  Suddenly my niece is 14 years old this year.  Suddenly my parents have grey hair and all kinds of medical problems.  When did they age?  I was never around long enough to witness all of the transitions.

Maybe I needed them more.  Maybe leaving them so young was actually a premature thing to do because the lack of them has made me seek it in others and I’ve maybe stayed in relationships way too long or formed bonds that maybe I shouldn’t have because of this.

At the same time, to appear needy at least in the US is completely unacceptable and so I was taught that I need to do it all on my own and I need to be proud of this.  I am proud of it.  I have done a lot just solo…more than I give myself credit for most of the time.  I’m definitely not afraid of being alone.  I can take care of myself and I can support myself just fine even if I slip up sometimes and get my Ipod stolen or forget my keys or have to go back to my apartment two or three times after I intended to leave to get something else.    One of my ex-boyfriends used to call me “two trips” because I couldn’t just leave the apartment the first time.  I’m not perfect.

I am thankful for Roxana because currently she is my stand in family and she does a good job of it.  She also does a good job of including all sorts of other people that are new here.  Our new addition was a guy from the States who lost his financial job during the beginning of the economic crisis in the US and changed his life becoming a yoga instructor and looking towards spirituality instead of the American dream.  That’s not much of a unique story these days.

I think I would absolutely go crazy if I didn’t have at least one good friend here that I could really communicate with inside out.  I’m realizing so much how I actually do need people in my life and maybe being so overly independent isn’t all that its cracked up to be.

The mountains were beautiful yesterday and it was so nice to breathe fresh air again.  Between that and having laughed all day, I feel somewhat renewed from all of it.

Where is the fun?

I have been discovering that it is hard to meet people in their 30’s here…meaning single people like me who have come here just to break up the routine of life in their home countries.  I meet a lot of people in the 20’s age range who are usually first time travelers and students, and beyond that I meet a lot of people who have come here to retire.

Roxana and I recently hosted an event for expats in their 30’s.  Although about 18 people confirmed that they were coming, only four people showed up.  And, I am no judge of appearance, but the two men were perhaps not in their 30’s.  The thing we did all have in common was the frustration we felt in connecting with other people similar to ourselves…30’s, 40’s, 50’s….it’s all the same.

After this event, we had to think about what kind of social life we are to expect here.

Around the time of this event, which I credit Roxana for organizing, (I just showed up and attached my name to the event posting), we met for dinner at her apartment and she invited her friend.

Her friend is a psychotherapist.  Maybe you can see where I am going with this – but suddenly dinner seemed more like an intervention for all involved.  He knew as much English as I knew Spanish, so Roxana had to translate.  He made me draw a pie of the areas of life in which I divide my time.  About three quarters of my pie was work.  Aside from my actual job, there were maybe 3 big slices of projects I was getting into, starting, finishing, creating…  Very productive!  The rest…the rest was time I spend on the internet researching things for projects I can start, finish and create.  Very productive, very driven and also maybe very boring.  My pie looks like a resume.  I was a little disappointed to discover my life resembles a corporation instead of a human being.  Where’s the fun…aside from the small sliver of pie that included dinner at Roxana’s apartment?

He also recognized that not one part of the pie reflected time that I spend being a woman.

A woman?

How from everything I’ve learned in life in the US about working hard and striving to do better does it come down to my biggest problem being that I’m not having enough fun?  And being a woman?

What a bummer.

My diagnosis:  I need to have more fun and go out and meet people and not to just network for work, but to actually laugh and just hang out and be idle.

When did my life become so serious?  The thing I love to do most in life is laugh and play and they might be the things I spend the least amount of time doing these days other than the times I am able to slip in some sarcasm or joke about some absurd situation I have put myself in and please believe those situations are ample for me here.  I love ridiculous movies.  The other night I stayed up until 2am watching National Lampoon’s National Vacation on TV for the three hundredth time.  And, thank god it was in English.  A while ago, I tried watching School of Rock and couldn’t bare Jack Black’s dubbed in Spanish voice.  The thing is, I still feel very much like a kid and I need to defend my silliness.  But, it’s kind of difficult when at the same time I am expecting myself to be like this person that is supposed to be constantly spiraling higher and higher towards success and self improvement in all ways every day.

I felt pulled in two directions sometimes in the US.  Because at times, I missed the days when I could go to an art exhibition and steal the wine and barely look at the art or the times when my friends and I would go dance every night at the Turkish bar in Laguna Beach instead of taking advantage of the studio spaces we were so fortunate enough to have at the time.  I mean, come on.  We had extremely affordable art studios in the most expensive art city in California and we only half used them for work.  Not to mention we lived in a place with tons of possible connections…an abundance of people ripe for networking, but it was the last thing I did.  Maybe ever since I turned 30, I felt like I had to pay for it by constantly working, worrying and wishing to get ahead.  Everything I’ve been doing for the last several years has been in order to fulfill some sort of purpose to improve my life.  I did yoga, because it made me feel better or I road my bike for exercise.  I met friends because there was an art show or some other event.  Occasionally I would see my old friends who were also trying to recover all their years of not getting ahead.  I also had a relationship with little romance.  We were like two individuals working as a team to help each other survive, very honorable, but we had very little fun together just as a couple in separation from everything we had going on.   In fact the relationship mostly involved working, be it for money or on ourselves.  I don’t mean to sound cheesy here, but a little romance can go a long way.  It does wonders to your soul to feel wanted and to feel the way in which god made me.  As a woman.

So it’s true.  Where is the time I spend being a woman, you know, kinda like I used to do once upon a time back in my early 20’s before I somehow forgot what it was like to live like a female and not a constant problem solver…

This question has really thrown me off.

Protests and Mellowness

The other day I sat on a bench reading a book and a man came up and sat down right next to me when clearly there were other benches available.  He read his paper and didn’t even concern himself with me.  My first instinctual feeling was this is my bench.  My other instinctual feeling was to get up and move, but I stopped myself because that kind of thing is normal here and so it probably should be.  It’s not like I was threatened or harmed.  But, for a second I felt that “invasion of space” feeling that people don’t seem to feel here.

And it makes me feel that I have a lot of negativity inside me and I’m just wondering where it all came from and how I learned to feel this way in the US?  Any why?

I observe people standing in long lines in stores waiting for the checkout counter and no one seems to complain, no one appears angry.  This would be a totally different scene in the US.  Any amount of waiting I ever experienced in line at the grocery store in the US usually amounted in a great deal of negative energy directed at the cashier.  I don’t feel it here from anyone.  Actually, I usually feel like the only person with a crumpled face trying to see what is going on up ahead in line.  I feel anxious, but no one around me seems to be.

But then the other side of the mellowness I feel from people here is that I seem to be ever attracting myself to places where sudden protests break out.

A few days ago I sat in the park at La Moneda, outside of the Presidential Palace when suddenly police politely asked everyone to leave.  Heading towards the metro, I saw two tanks ride by.  When I turned the corner for the metro, a wall of police appeared along with hundreds of screaming people.  Thankfully, I made it down in the metro just as the police where closing it off.  Two days after that, I was walking though the park on my way to work and had another encounter with angry young people throwing rocks at tanks and people getting sprayed with water cannons by the police.  There have been so many protests lately because the government is supporting a hydrogen electric project that would literally tear up Patagonia and run power lines through 2,000 miles of farmland to give more energy to Santiago.  No one wants the project to happen, but it has already been approved.  Because of the protests, the police have been using tear gas to clear the crowd.

Upon telling my friend Roxana, about almost getting tear gassed in the park, her casual response was “girl, you ain’t lived in Chile until you do,” and she speaks from experience of having been tear gassed at last year’s Independence Day celebration in El Centro in September.  Apparently, the night was ending and the police needed everyone to leave.  I guess that is the best way to make a crowd disperse.

Lastly, I am now down an Ipod.  My solution for a much calmer ride on the metro has been taken away from me and coincidentally while I was riding the metro.  Over a week ago, on yet another suffocating metro ride someone unzipped my bag when I was not looking and swiped my Ipod.   I swear, I hate that metro.   I had so many fantasies of finding the person and punching their head.  So, now I can no longer listen to “All you need is Love,” while riding the thing, but like my friend in the States said, maybe all I need is a gas mask instead.

Thinking About Passion…

Over and over I have to reinforce what I am passionate about in my life and hold onto those things…not let the outside things in.  Like the thoughts about money or impatience or frustrations with people.   It’s like when my house becomes a mess, I need to put all the things back in the closest to clear my mind.

Relationships are like this.  They take maintenance.  If you don’t show and share your passion with the other person often then you are certain to lose that person.  And if they don’t physically leave you then they have probably mentally or emotionally lost you in some way.  It’s just inevitable.  Who wants to be with someone who rarely shows themselves to you.

The love is dormant if you aren’t giving it.  Dormant may be too polite…because all together it just feels dead.   So many times in my life, I think I have had this idea that just because there is “love”, then the relationship should just operate off this word.  And that’s all it is…a word.  Some concept that has been made into this thing love that just sits around at your house watching TV or working on the computer.  But is that what love is?  The statement “I love you.” implies that love is a verb so doesn’t that mean that an action is involved from love?  To express itself?  To show itself?  To communicate a lot and have fun with you?  Isn’t that what attracts us to each other?

It’s like calling myself an “artist”, but never doing any art.

People say the passion fades the longer you are with someone.   Is this true or is this just what we tell ourselves?  Could it be that we just put all of our energy into the beginning of the relationship and then all the other real life shit hits us and then we become lazy and complacent towards the other person?  Do we lose passion for the other things we love in life?  Wouldn’t that mean that all passion would then fade?  Or…does it just take a little perspective to look at the importance we give to our relationships compared to the importance we give other things.  You would think that love over work would rule.  But then why do we continue the passion for work and not for the people we supposedly love?

Thinking about this reminds me that I want to give the most importance to only the things I love doing and the people that I love most in my life and to honor and protect them every day.  Maybe those things are few, but they are enough.   I love my friends and I love my family.  I love to communicate with people and I love to travel.  I’m discovering that I love to write and that I love to paint for people.  On Saturdays I volunteer for a community in the South of Santiago to teach English and play games with the kids.  The community is one of the more financially poor neighborhoods in Santiago.  I’m excited about painting a mural for their neighborhood.  One of the older girls gave me the biggest hug last week out of nowhere.  So much love.   Life is too short to live for anything more.