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.

Desperate Expats

I couple days ago I had yet another great idea for making a reality TV show.  Has anything been done on expats living abroad?  Everything I do, I imagine it as a reality TV show.  In the past I wanted to do art gallery reality TV show, yoga reality TV show, my church TV show…there was plenty of good drama in all of that…trust me.  None of these ever happened of course and I’m assuming this will be a fleeting idea as well.

Desperate expats living in Santiago, Chile, starring Roxana the successful, career driven New Yorker working in the financial industry and me the artist teacher from LA trying to find some inspiration to do art again, but both trying to make some changes in our lives.  It’s perfect!

Yes, I’m from “LA” now, when people ask.  Not Long Beach.  Not that I’m really even from there either.  I’m from a small town in Maryland called Emmitsburg.  No one has ever heard of this place, probably not even most people from Maryland.  I was once at a club in LA and some arrogant guy asked me where I was from and I told him and his response was “I’m sorry.”  I was not pleased about this.  You wonder why I was so hesitant in losing my “Eastcoastness” all those years.  But now, no, it’s just LA because I need it to fit into my Roxana and I are from the opposite coasts theme for our show.

Roxana and I are roughly around the same age.  I think she’s older than me.  But, we seem to have built completely different lives in the States.  Let’s just say that while she was living the Sex in the City lifestyle in New York, I was picking out clothes at the Aid’s Assistance Thrift Store in Long Beach.

We met about a month and a half ago because she was advertising a room in her apartment for rent.  It’s a really nice place.  At least, I think so.  Extremely clean and new, it’s in a very tall building in an area called Belles Artes near a street lined with trees and cute cafes.  She has a roof top pool and a gym.  I’ve never had such nice things!  And for all of these features, I just had to decline.  How unlike me to live in a place that offered so little to worry about?  I mean, it even came with a real oven and real cabinets to put dishes and things.  So unlike my former loft where I would at times boil water on a hot plate to take a bath because my hot water heater was so small.   I could be too bored in a place such as this.  The truth is, I didn’t take it because of the price, but now we are friends and it’s my home away from home.  And she’s a great cook who makes delicious desserts with fruits and sweet sauces, and she invented a dish with my eggplant that I never thought of before.

She has a habit of being extremely positive and clear thinking, and directly yet politely tells people not to bring their negativity around her.

This friendship is really making me see how I no longer want to live in so many ways.

The other night I sat at her kitchen table checking my email and she came out of her room holding some kind of circular thing with clothes pins on it.  My little head popped up from my computer, like a cat that hears its food dish being filled and immediately, thought…is she throwing that out?  I said, “I want that.”  And she replied, “Girl, you don’t even know what this is.”  She’s right, I didn’t.  But, it’s like somehow it’s become instinctual for me now to see some random free item and contemplate how I might need that thing in the future.  This is what living in Long Beach taught me.   Taco Tuesdays and the 99 Cent Store.   Save everything because who knows when I’ll be getting paid next.

It’s not all Long Beach, but Long Beach was where I really perfected this behavior.

Part of this thinking I blame on my mom.  We lived like the Grapes of Wrath.  Any moment we might have to pack up our 1927 Chevy truck and run from the dust bowl.  I never remember my mom ever buying anything nice for herself and instead, only provided for the needs of me or my siblings.  We saved money for problems like what if the basement floods or what if the car breaks down and then we only spent money on problems like when the basement finally did flood or when the car finally did break down.

I feel sort of sad for my parents when I visit them back east and our big dinner out is a night at Perkin’s.  This is a restaurant chain back east where the food tastes like it was taken out of box and heated up in the microwave.  And they have money.  I’m positive of this.  They could buy nicer things, have nicer things, but they are so bent on conserving and saving.  It’s my mom mostly.  My dad makes the money and has handed over his check to my mom for the last 40 years.  He has no control over it.  He has always wanted to go to Italy, but is convinced he can only read about what it must be like to go.  This makes me feel guilty for living abroad.  It makes me feel like I don’t want to share my experiences with my family and it makes me want to only project a poor person’s life.  But I need to change this attitude.

The other part of this thinking, I blame on years of imagining myself living the very romantic life of a poor artist.  I’ve always had this vision of living in a tiny apartment in the city filled with art work and struggling to get by.  Shouldn’t the fantasies of living the artist life be filled with shows and selling art and making it to the top?  Mine weren’t.  All of the time spent visualizing this lifestyle, manifested this lifestyle.  I had what I always wanted.

And it just plain sucked if you think about it.

My beds have never been new.  I’ve had the same scratchy bath towels for years.  I want some damn comfort for once.  Especially as I observe the life of Roxana.

It’s time to step it up a little.

Roxana tells me that my new story is that I’m an artist from LA that is seeking out new inspiration and I chose to teach English and do some volunteer work in Chile.  But that’s not all true, says my little censor!  You went bankrupt in the US and now you’re here because what else should you do and that’s that!  (said in a way in which I’m not even sure of that being the reason for being here).  I love honesty and maybe too much, because I feel like every real thing has to be said or it’s just not right.  But, maybe all those things I’ve been believing about myself aren’t really real anyway?  And maybe it’s okay to dress it up a little in a more positive way, even though it’s almost painful to do this.  But, if life is what we make of it, then maybe it’s okay.  I pretended a lot when I was kid, so why not now?  So then now maybe I can tell people how important I am.  How famous I am.  I know five languages and have many books.  That’s more like the kid I once knew.  When I was a kid I played house, and I didn’t just have a house.  It was a mansion made of sticks and grass.  I was a lawyer, I owned a restaurant, I went on vacations constantly and I had a fabulous sports car bicycle.  I never once played homeless person.   Never once did I tell my kid friends that we had to be careful not to eat too many of our mud pies because our monopoly money might run out, although I’m sure a circular thing with clothes pins on it would have been appealing enough to make it into my pretend home somehow.

Roxana and I talked the other night about how living abroad and being alone makes you befriend people that you would probably never have befriended in the States simply because you need some kind of friendship and bonding.  Probably we would never have been friends in the States.  We would have been too different and stuck in two different worlds and so I’m happy about my friendship with her right now.  It’s waking me up a little and helping me see what I can have in life and maybe someday I’ll even be able to write about how important I am and be serious about it.  Of course, not in a superficial way, but in a way in which I am appreciating myself and seeing how I am doing a lot in my life.  Now is not that time, but hopefully I am on my way.