Toilets, Showers, and Bad Landings

February 25, 2011

It’s been five days since I arrived in Arica. Tonight, my Arican family, who I’ll be spending at least two months with brought me to an extended family gathering and encouraged the vino tinto con coke zero drink- also known as jote while playing a casual drinking game: la cultura sufisticado pide… “aka the sophisticated culture I order,” and finally at 12:50 am local time, we started eating dinner. The chicken and pork were grilled over an open flame fueled by wood that (if I understood correctly) the men chopped themselves on a disk grill. Served with rice, this salty, yummy meat melted in my mouth… but I was a bit too tired to really appreciate it.

Earlier today, my family picked me up from Hotel Arica, the lovely hotel where 26 SIT students and I have been hiding since Tuesday. We went straight to the fish market/port where they pushed me onto a boat and we went for a ride in the harbor. This wonderful, but smelly treat was followed by lunch out, with the family. It was a long day, and made up of three sisters (one 9, one 17, one 21 who lives separately with a baby, a boyfriend, and another baby on the way) and a mom and dad, the family that’s taken me in to call their own, really seems lovely.

February 28, 2011

Another evening without debriefing in this manner would be doing myself, and I suppose, the world an injustice. In the past week, I’ve reached my hand into the toilet countless times to fetch out the toilet paper that I’ve accidentally tossed in instead of putting it in its proper wastebasket, I’ve showered the Chilean way—without hot water, and eaten the typical dinner, toast with accompaniment to tide me over before bed. All of these surprises have come with great chaperoning. My family always knows where I am, who I’m with, when I’ll return home, how I’ll go to and fro, and I always know that they’ll be with me around the table at my next meal. All of these things accounted for, this has been one of the most exciting weeks of my life. There’s been so much change. So much—unexpected. Great new smells, great new sights, great new people, and of course, por supuesto, there are going to be negatives… por supuesto things are going to be tough sometimes. Por supuesto emails from mom before the first day of school with old time words of wisdom and encouragement are going to make me nostalgic and yearn to hug mama back in jersey, but also, que rico que todo está aqui lo es… que rico.

Tonight, the toilet didn’t flush well. Yesterday the toilet didn’t flush well. I guess tomorrow, I’ll have to just use a different toilet.

Tonight, one of my host sisters missed dinner, and it seemed OKAY. Last night I missed dinner and I felt extremely guilty. Tomorrow night, I might explain that I am going to miss dinner and assume it’s OKAY.

Today, I didn’t nap during the extra time during our lunch break and now I’m exhausted. Tomorrow, I’ll nap, as do the locals.

An exciting story goes like this:

Thursday, they let us out of the Hotel Arica “playpen” and brought us sightseeing around town. This was pretty great. We were finally allowed to roam around Arica past the confines of the hotel and the length of the nearby beach. Through some caves, a natural bird estuary, and to El Moro, a huge statue of Jesus on a big hill/cliff/land-thing that represents peace between Chile and Bolivia, we went, exploring what our new land has to offer when I saw my new “friend” Katie taking a jumping photo on the hill/cliff/land-thing and she just looked just, oh so cool through my camera lens doing so.

So I was inspired. I too would be the star of a jumping photo in this very momentous spot.
Well, I guess the excitement was mixed with hope: for an awesome photo for myself, and also doubt: that the photographer would fail to capture the moment.

So, as I jumped up to take this awesome-to-be photo, I failed at taking one important step: to factor in my landing into the equation. Forgetting about the fact that as soon as I decided to jump I’d have to figure out how to come back down to this steeply angled earth with two feet, my knee caught me from tumbling down the hilly, mountainous tierra on the dirt and gravel of el Morro, and my encounter with Jesus was short-lived and bloody- and not so photogenic, as you might imagine.

Needless to say, I’m pumped for Katie that she has a sweet jumping pic at El Morro, and will be eternally jealous.

Oh yeah, the next day, when I got a present from my host family, of course it included a fanny pack, stuffed with memorabilia from El Morro- a keychain, and change purse, embroidered with Jesus’ silhouette. I’d say our run-in ended pretty well though… let’s face it, it’s just a knee/entire leg scrape.

Here are a few activities from orientation, prior to moving in with my family, (in Chronological order) that I want so dearly to remember, but don’t have energy to explain in greater length:

1. Moving in with Erin, an awesome stranger who had just gotten back from traveling through Patagonia. I was nervous when she revealed that she goes to Tufts- where nearly a fifth of our program is from- because I wasn’t sure if she’d want to make new friends. Thankfully, she’s awesome.
2. Getting on the bus to pick everyone up at the airport on day 1 and Aida, the homestay coordinator being shocked to finally see my face—apparently, my photos were all lost in the mail and no one knew what I would look like (I was the only one this happened to, obviously)
3. Walking on the beach for the first time and crazy kids from our program running around on the rocks to disturb hundreds of pigeons and my thinking that they were all imminently going to get fecal-mattered-on.
4. My first pisco sour, courtesy of Hotel Arica.
5. Night walks on the beach during orientation with everyone.
6. THE DROP OFF! (They dropped us off in the middle of the city for the first time, a city I’d never been in before, and gave us a random place around town to go visit with a partner in order to observe, and once there to individually conduct brief interview style conversations with strangers on the street, asking about assigned local words and foods and what they mean and their chilenismo significance… what an experience)
7. Meeting my host sisters for the first time over pizza and ice cream.
8. Our campfire on the last night with cheap supermarket bebidas. How sweet of a last night.
   

For now, ciao! But more soon, from this land of constant sorpesas.

Miracle of the Snail Silly Band

I’m alive and well, and here to admit that there were no more earthquakes, tremors, or natural disasters last night and I slept very well. I packed up, only zipping my equipaje by straddling it and demanding it close with some brute force. Met Ara for a nice, final lunch, and departed for the three legged race to Arica, Chile.

San Jose, Costa Rica to Lima, Peru, check. An easy flight. Girl sitting next to me gave me her contact info in case I want to visit Vino del Mar, Chile- supposedly a beautiful place. This flight featured the most beautiful view of the sunset that I’ve ever witnessed. It felt like we were flying next to the sun… and perhaps we were, but thankfully, and obviously- we couldn’t have been that close. I had an isle seat so of course I asked some random dude to take a photo for me… he was very nice, took los fotós and then proceeded to try and take his own and was happily surprised when I explained that he needed to turn off his flash to get a proper photo. I then helped two other people figure out how to turn their flashes off on their cameras.

This made me wonder: how many people don’t know how to do the “most simple” things, like turn the flash off on their cameras, and then back on? I have the feeling I might be exploring questions like these more and more as I travel- even as I’m reading suggested materials before my program- access to healthcare, quality of care, cost, it’s this cycle of getting used to little access, finally getting some care and not having great standards of care, and then improving the quality of care costing a ton… and I’m sure it applies not only in the healthcare sphere… but with other technological advances, that I certainly have taken for granted.

Lima, Peru to Santiago, Chile started off rough. A small child was obviously tired, cranky, underpaid, overworked because, WOW, he would not shut up, oh yes AND, he was sitting in the row directly behind me, in the middle seat- I was on the isle- approximately 2.2 feet away from this kid’s screaming face. The flight hadn’t even taken off and I literally wanted to shove my hiking socks in his mouth for a few minutes so that I could just close my eyes. For some reason, the flight refused to take off, only making matters with this forsaken child worse. I pushed the little silver button on my chair to lean back and turned my head to see the face of this little demon.

Hola nino, cómo está?

He looked down, emotionless. Silent.

Bueno, tengo un regalito para ti. (Good, I have a little gift for you)

I handed him a neon green silly band that was previously around my wrist. Shaped like a snail, I couldn’t figure out if he’d ever seen anything like it or not. Nevertheless, without response, he held it in between his two fingers with good force.

Esto es para ti, pero si lo quieres, necesita tener buen comportamiento porque necesito dormir en este vuelo, entiendes?? (This is for you, but if you want it, you have to have good behavior because I need to sleep on this flight… understand?)

He nodded his head. And remained silent for a solid ten minutes. Golden. From then on, I only heard cute murmurs from him. I’ve never been more thankful to have a silly band on my wrist and to have the ability to bribe a child.

Everyone around me gave me warm eye hugs, full of appreciation for the quiet that followed. I can call it the miracle of the snail silly band.

Made it through customs, immigrations, the fruit check department, and re-checked in. My luggage is down now from 3.6 kilos overweight to 2.2 kilos overweight, and by another stroke of luck, the lady was kind enough not to charge me because it was too pesado. I think mostly because I couldn’t understand sufficiently how much she was saying it’d cost for me to pay per kilo. Oh well. I guess I’ll find out next time… because let’s face it… how is my luggage really losing weight? Its exercise regiment only includes using hair product and lotion… this may, or may not cut it.

Vamos a ver.

I’m now sitting in the Santiago airport, waiting for my flight to Arica. It’s 3:51am NYC time, or 5:51 Santiago time, and my flight boards at 6:45. I’m running on less than three hours sleep but don’t feel too crappy yet. The café con leché helped. I’m excited, slightly nervous, and as ready as I suppose I’ll ever be to start this thing- whatever it may be.

As a wise man says: Onward.

Inspired, to blog

It's the 9th night of my stay in Costa Rica. I've been camping out in Ara's generous hospitality outside of San Jose, enjoying what this oh so foreign land has to offer. It's lush. Green. Leafy. Full of the most amazing clouds. There a bus stops everywhere-marked, unmarked... it seems like wherever you want to hop off a public bus, you just have to pull the chord, and off you go, into the wild.

I say into the wild, not because things are so wild here, but because to me, they're wild. Wild in the sense that they're unpredictable, and somewhat random. I think if I had a better grasp of the language, the subtelties, things wouldn't seem quite as random, but for now, I'm using what I have to get along and expecting anything.

Though tonight, expecting anything excluded the possibility that I'd feel tremors from the earthquake that shook the earth 60 miles from Ara's apartment.

"WHY IS THE BED SHAKING??" thinking that a dog must have snuck its way into Ara's apartment somehow...

"Uhmmm... why is the bed shaking? OH, It's an EARTHQUAKE!" Ara sort of yelled back/explained.

"WHAT DO WE DO??"

"I don't KNOWW"

She explained that she never really knows what to do when this happens.

"WHAT DO WE DO IF IT GETS WORSE?!?!"

"I don't KNOWWWW!!"

All I could think of was Psalm 23, the words Rabbi Peretz told me to recite when I went skydiving for the second time.

"Even when I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil...." deep breaths, deep breaths... as one can only imagine when panick has stricken.

And then it was over. The bed stopped shaking, I wiped the tear I mustered away from my face, and all was fine... except for the fact that I was stunned that such a thing could happen.

So, here I am. Blogging. Inspired, by a scary experience, to write some of it down.

Last Saturday when I arrived, Ara picked me up from the airport, like a goddess standing at the airport exit as I began questioning how I'd find her (my cell wasn't working). After stopping at a local place for a quick bite to eat and dropping my life off at her apartment, we headed off for a drive to Vocan Irazu. We had changed into shorts, because it was so nice and hot, and realized by the time we got un-lost on the way to the volcano, that we would freeze once we finally got to the top. Two and a half hours later, after finding the wrong set of beautiful mountains, a delicious cup of cafe con leche, we arrived at the top of the volcano, shot some moon-like photos, clung to each other (mostly me clinging to Ara) for heat, and managed to see a blue lagoonish type body of water in the crater of the volcano (the highlight of this trip, which some people never get to see becuse of the fog). It was pretty cool (no pun intended).

Sunday, I hopped on a public bus after exploring the local pastry assortment at the bus stop, and managed to meet Hannah, my lovely roomate from last semester, in Atenas. The bus ride was an hour and a half of beautiful countryside, similarly to the hills Ara and I had accidentally seen the day before on our way to the volcano. This bus ride was also full of my becoming fairly self-concious because I couldn't understand even a fifth of what the native lady sitting next to me was trying to say. Hannah and I had some great fish at a local outdoor restaurant, enjoyed eachother's company and managed to get served a complementary drink of bailey's and cream. yum.

Monday I roamed around San Jose to "take care of business." Tried to get a cell phone (successfully) and tried to book some day tours leaving from the area (failed... I walked in circles all day trying to figure out an apparently outdated map from my tourguidebook). Was shocked at how many varieties of fast food were in the area: fried chicken at KFC's and apprx. 16 other places, fried other stuff that I couldn't name everywhere else. Oh, and a few Quiznos'. Found a veggie place- ate some ice cream. Came back to Ara's and booked some day trips on my own.

Tuesday- went to La Paz Waterfall and Gardens. This was amazing. It poured in the jungle and I've literally never been so happy in my life. It just felt so great to be in the rainforest, next to a huge waterfall amidst the pouring rain. I also got to hold some cool animals - a toucan, some butterflies, and a frog!

Wednesday, I went white water rafting on the Pacuare River. It's known to be one of the top ten rivers in the world to raft on... and man, was it a cool experience. Class 3-4 rapids treated us pretty well, with excitement, but without injury. In the middle of the 3.5 hours on the water, the guides let us jump out and swim for a few minutes... and again, this was just amazing. Floating on my back staring up at the tree limbs arching together, touching to meet above making a tunnel of trees.. this was really just incredible.

Thursday I hopped on a guided tour to Arenal and Tabacon Hot Springs. The hot springs were, you guessed it, quite hot. I ended up hanging out with a middle aged Columbian man which was sort of, awkward, as you might imagine... but also at the same time, quite entertaining. After the hot hot springs, we tried to see Arenal (allegedly the 2nd most active volcano in the world) but couldn't even see the outline of a volcano because the cloud cover was so thick. This was sort of a bummer but the hot springs were so amazing, we sort of got over it. At the end of the tour, the rest of the 9 tourists who'd paid to go on this tour proceded back to San Jose on a 4 hour journey while I jumped off at a Hostel in Arenal to prepare for my trip to La Fortuna the next day.

Friday I woke up and got on a tour to La Fortuna's canyons. Desafio runs an amazing tour called "canyoneering" where they harness you in and you literally rappell down waterfalls in these canyons. They're pretty small waterfalls, but without rappelling, you wouldn't be able to navigate through the area. The hiking in between waterfalls involved wading through clear waters, muddy waters, rocks, boulders, and crazy terrian. Little did I know, but "desafio," the name of the tour company, rightfully means "challenge" in Spanish.

After this amazing challenge, I was ready to return home to Ara. We celebrated my return with some local drinks, guaro sours, which feature local costa rican casique and a nice, casual night out. It's amazing to be in a place where I'm treated like an adult and able to drink responsibly.

Saturday morning, Ara took me to a local market where farmers came and were selling produce, cheese, and everything in between. We tasted the most yummy sausage I've ever had, Ara bought some pretty Peacock feathers and some strange snow cone drink, and in between buying some tomatoes, cucumbers and a pineapple, I tried the most delicious fruit I've ever imagined. It's called caimito and it made my day. Upon our return, we hit the pool for some rays (Ara was studying for a test by the pool, but I was relaxing) and then we made some fajitas for dinner.

Today- I hit the pool early in the morning, we grabbed some great fish at a local restaurant, and now I'm doing some reading for the start of my program in Chile on Tuesday. I also was trying to finish up applications to reapply to be an OL and midyear mentor... AND THAT'S WHEN THE EARTHQUAKE/ tremor HAPPENED! and inspired me to write. For who knows what tomorrow will bring, and at least today has been explained.

Much love. Y, la pura vida.