Seven more hours in South America. What does that even mean?
In a certain sense, I feel as though it is already over. Everything that I have experienced since leaving la Región de Magallanes in Chile has given me perspective, but it also made the time there feel as distant as its physical location 2800 miles South.
Everything feels surreal. Instead of having to take an extremely uncomfortable bus full of puking Peruvians for forty-eight hours, followed by a collectivo on the fly and a stowaway passage on a cargo boat to get home, I will walk onto my flight to the States and be home within ten hours. It seems impossible.
I always find my self grasping at strings to sum up a journey adequately when I confront returning home. Words and phrases that I want to lean on because they are easy fall flat. "Overall, it was a ______ experience..." is not sufficient. "At the end, I see that ______ was _______ all along..." doesn't cut it. "When I began this journey, I thought _______, but now I've learned _______..." just can't work.
I can't tie the thousands of experiences and lessons into a nice little box and package them in shiny wrapping paper. I can't even get them all straight in my mind. Besides, I think somehow that there is no box big enough. Especially not this tiny one on Blogger.
Instead I will make a minor and inefficient attempt to draw the closing lines Al Camino que Hicieron Mis Zapatos quoting...myself. From the beginning.
"Now this experience is beginning, and it feels surreal still...So much craziness has already happened and I feel as though it can only get better from here (and here is pretty great already)..." -26 February
"Occasionally a shooting star that only I get to see shows up and streaks across my life. And I get to be satisfied that there are people like me out there in the world, and that we occasionally find one another." -2 March
"Holy shit. I'm about to see someone get stabbed." -3 March
"Complete And Utter Chaos would come today when my head teacher decided not to come back from his lunch break and the director asked me to substitute with no preparation or lesson plan or materials." -15 March
"And maybe all the things that seem to be contradictions are simply juxtapositions that I am not used to. Maybe my definition of contradiction needs to evolve. And maybe I'm over-reacting because this is actual culture shock instead of the "I'm at home!" feeling Italy immediately gave me." -23 March
"Am I just a cog in the English Cult Machine here in Chile? Maybe." -31 March
"I had no idea how hard I would be expected to work here, nor how hard I would have to push myself." -10 April
"They all think I am crazy. Also I am covered in cat pee." -20 April
"I'm not even concerned with breaking even anymore. I just want a little sprinkling of good surprises and minor victories to season the greater confusion, frustration, and lack of progress. It's enough." -3 May
"I can't change everything. Maybe, just maybe, I can't change ANYthing. I hope that the reality is somehwere in the middle, but it remains to be seen." -16 May
"So, what do you do when there is nothing more to do? When you have nothing more to give? When what you thought was the point of your life has been erroded by three months of floundering and you wonder what the point of trying is?
You tell the existential crisis bearing down on you to go fuck itself, and you spend some of the UN's money on some new boots and a coffee." -24 May
"The images of all the places I have been able to travel so far on this trip materialize out of the bluish gray light, seeming to shine in the snow and cloudy sky. Torres del Paine. Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia. Natales. Puerto Bulnes. The Straight of Magellan. That big hill over there, that we spent the day climbing yesterday. All the toughness of the teaching and the daily stuggles, did it pay for those places?" -27 May
"Circumstantial changes mimic the coming and going of the weather here. If you don't like it, wait five minutes. The chaos will shift again and you will be humbled by your smallness in the face of Patagonia. But you will also find that you can change some of it, and occasionally outsmart the chaos for just long enough to move to the next challenge." -7 June
"I am not working here. This is not a job. This is something at I am choosing to do and that I can just as easily choose not to. I am a volunteer."- 8 June
"There was no assistant teaching. No orientation. No gradual transition from non-teacher to Miss Coleen. Hell, there wasn't even an observation period. I made the transition in a day, in front of a room full of seventh graders. But honestly, I think I've risen well to the challenge. After four months of the struggle in this school, I can say with some confidence that I have at least a tiny claim to that kick ass brotherhood of teachers making a difference." -22 June
"I have done the best job I could do to change and adapt and accept. A lot of what I have learned and changed is great, and I will use the new point of view Chile has offered me to judge my own life more carefully. But that doesn't mean I should lose myself completely either. My own culture and identity have a lot to offer, and the exchange should change Puerto Natales and the people I meet as well." -30 June
"You did it. You did what you came here to do. And you did it so well.
I didn't look back. Really, I couldn't...the more pressing needs to watch out for stray ankle-biting poodles, speeding POS cars on the avenue, and boot-swollowing mud puddles pressed me back to Chilean reality. The Goodbye Spell complete, I walked home." -8 July
"To any observer including me it appears that she has been trying to kill me...but she was actually trying to save me.
Chile woke me up and made me realize that I have a lot of work to do on myself before my life can have stability and I can truly be happy. She laid my own issues and those of the world bare, forcing me to deal with pain, sadness, lonliness, anger, and my own personal tormentors from the past. She forced me to give up a lot about my own way of viewing the world and to try to get by on fumes (and a ton of white bread) even when I was exhausted. She made me feel so tiny and powerless in the face of mountains and the problems of her society, but yet huge and powerful as the most noticeable gringa this side of Puerto Montt and able to do something to help those students." -18 July
"In one week, I've literally done Chile end to end. Punta Arenas to Arica." -9 August
"I don't want to give up on one of the things that I've always held dear to me... The idea that I could act and change something about the world for the better. It is easier to choose to be jaded. The narrow path is not convenient." -16 August
I suppose that my 24 hours in this overly white hotel room ought to have given me the time to emerge with some great Truth about my time here in South America, but to be honest I've been filling it with Law and Order re-runs and The Other Boleyn Girl.
All the tethers to this experience are breaking free, one by one, to flutter in the wind. This week I felt the surprise of already missing Patagonia and everyone who was witness to my adventure here. I especially miss and want to thank Dimitris. Without you, I wouldn't have made it.
Likely whatever change there is within me will only become clear in the stark contrast this last, short leg of the journey will inevitably bring. I have an inkling that there is a big enough physical change that people may be shocked. South America stripped pounds from my frame, changed my hair color, and put the first lines on my face. Also my clothes haven't had a real washing in almost six months.
A girl in my hostel (a random, faked-tanned and overly-bleached California blonde) listened to a few lines of concentrated six months in South America the other day over a mediocre vegetarian sandwich. She was shocked at how long I've been here, and clearly had no grasp on how far South Puerto Natales is. She couldn't stop complimenting my Spanish (that language I did not speak six months ago that I now take for granted).
"Would you do it all again?"
I hesitated. This was, without question, the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. A few weeks ago, I said that I wished I had never come to South America, through tears in the fancy SkyBar at the Punta Arenas casino.
"Yes. Yes, I would do it again."
My answer surprised even myself. Something must have shifted in the 3000 miles since then. I don't know what that shift is yet, but that tiny glimmer of light peeking out from the darkness seems to be a good omen.
"It is known that one who returns never left..." -Pablo Neruda
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
18 August 2011
16 August 2011
Depersonal Development--Apperances Are Everything
It is time to go home. Everything in my body says it, down to the molar I chipped on a mountain village's Chicharrón (various unidentifiable fried black potatoes and Alpaca bits) during a pit stop for the bus from Tacna to Puno.
Ending this experience in Lima seems odd. Given that I am now whithin 12 degrees of the Equator (a full 41 degree shift from Punta Arenas just two weeks ago), the climate feels densely humid and the air is so heavy it feels suffocating after the 11,000 foot altitude of Cuzco. It's loud. It's crowded. The area that I am staying in is very modern, with bright flashing lights, tall buildings, and even a real live department store.
It's a stark contrast to the other parts of Peru that I've seen. In that mountain village, all the women but one wore the traditional skirt and long braids. The school was a relatively new, bright blue building...probably built as a gift from the all-beneficent government but obviously not in use due to it's broken windows and empty classrooms. The people obviously barely had enough to get by on. The same was true in Tacna, Puno, Ilave, Juliaca, and even Cuzco. none of the people in the Miraflores barrio are as weary-looking as those I saw in rural Peru. Not a traditional woman in sight.
I mean, they have actual indoor plumbing here.
Seeing as I came to South America under the guise of an English teacher in a United Nations Development Program-sponsored initiative, it's one more piece in the puzzle of how to help a country to develop sustainably, equally, and thoroughly. Or rather, one more revelation that the process is far more complicated than just having the UN show up and start passing out magic Development Fairy Dust to everyone.
My experience in Chile was obviously subjective. I am the only one who truly saw everything that I saw and felt it, grew from it, and struggled with it. I was able to get out of Gringolandia for a while and to see the country from tip to tip. It is (and here I quote the omnipotent Wikipedia):
"...One of South America's most stable and prosperous nations, and a recognized middle power. It leads Latin American nations in human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, low perception of corruption and state of peace. It also ranks high regionally in freedom of the press and democratic development."
Chile came out of the 90s as a developing economic power. Despite having fewer residents than most Latin American countries, it outperforms them. Chile produces a third of the world's copper. It's GDP grew 31% in one year this decade (2005-2006).
And yet official figures suggest that a third of Chile's people live in poverty. From what I saw outisde the densely populated Región Metropolitana...the figure in the countryside is far higher. Eve. In Puerto Natales, which has been bolstered by a thriving tourism trade recently, access to basic services like schools and health care is limited. There is no goddamn hospital, people.
Meanwhile in Providencia, the upscale neighborhood of Santiago...there are Starbucks everywhere. The hospital is modern and cutting edge. The people have more than three outfits. They have cars. Shiny ones. Their kids are bilingual in English and Spanish. People are either too fat from a few too many salchipapas or have the pinched thin look of the upper class who smokes too much to eat.
Generalizations rarely suit circumstances, but from what I've seen in Chile and in my brief time in Peru suggests a big one about the development of these two Latin American countries (and perhaps Latin America in general...it's a stretch but they do share a relatively common history).
The development is only for the rich. It is the Haves and the Have Nots. The development is neither sustainable nor equal. Much effort is put into the appearance of development, while infrasctructure and social problems rot it from the inside out.
Example. My students came from some of the poorest families in Puerto Natales. They had subsidized housing, food stamps, and their parents typically worked for the middle to upper class landowners and hotel managers of the city (almost none of whom are originally from there). They were barely getting by.
And yet most of them had touch screen cell phones. A large number had laptop computers, gifts from their government for good grades. Our school couldn't afford to buy posters for the walls of the classrooms, and yet they are more connected at all times of the day than my Facebook-toting grandmother.
Tourism is booming in Natales, but the water is dark brown. The municipality gets grants from the government, but barely any of the money reaches the public schools. Villa Renovald just down the road now has streetlights run on a generator, but it still lacks a school.
The appearance of development is there, but it has huge gaps between the rich and the poor. At times Chile seems very developed (you can get sushi with your Pisco Sour at the very end of the American continent) and at others it feels very Third World (my Chilean nephew is sick and there is no doctor on duty for 300 kilometers). In Peru the contrast is even bigger.
My own experience with trying to help Chile develop and to give new perspectives and opportunities to her youth was marred by themismanagement, lack of interest, and general disorganization that plagues aid work (Can teaching English be called proper "Aid Work?" i dunno...in my school, I think yes. Sure, it could've been worse. But then again it was already pretty awful).
What all this rambling is trying to say is that I've learned a lot about how rough the attempt to help in a developing country can be. Frankly, teaching in Chile was relatively easy compared to the experiences that some of my friends have had teaching here in Peru, doing the Peace Corps, or helping in orphanages in Kenya. I feel guilty in a sense for traveling afterward and living in these fancy-ass hostels with all the other rich Gringos (My room at this hostel is full of Irish Guidos...I didn't know that was possible but it appears the Jersey Shore blight is spreading).
A month ago, I was fed up. I felt that the very people I came here to try to offer something had taken advantage of me and that any kind of aid work would simply result in that sense of frustration. I felt that even by being a Gringa in Chile, I was being a cultural imperialist and that it didn't matter anyway...one person cannot make a difference.
A month of perspective and some key TED lectures later, I feel re-energized. I don't want to give up on one of the things that I've always held dear to me... The idea that I could act and change something about the world for the better. It is easier to choose to be jaded. The narrow path is not convenient.
I wanted this post to be a self-reflective wander about how much I've changed and grown since moving to South America and not a treatise on development. I don't think that the two can be separated easily. This experience will likely change the course of my life. And I am happy that I am still able to focus on something other than just myself.
The narcissistic entry will come tomorrow. For now I am going to enjoy a shower under hot running water with a light bulb in the room.
Ending this experience in Lima seems odd. Given that I am now whithin 12 degrees of the Equator (a full 41 degree shift from Punta Arenas just two weeks ago), the climate feels densely humid and the air is so heavy it feels suffocating after the 11,000 foot altitude of Cuzco. It's loud. It's crowded. The area that I am staying in is very modern, with bright flashing lights, tall buildings, and even a real live department store.
It's a stark contrast to the other parts of Peru that I've seen. In that mountain village, all the women but one wore the traditional skirt and long braids. The school was a relatively new, bright blue building...probably built as a gift from the all-beneficent government but obviously not in use due to it's broken windows and empty classrooms. The people obviously barely had enough to get by on. The same was true in Tacna, Puno, Ilave, Juliaca, and even Cuzco. none of the people in the Miraflores barrio are as weary-looking as those I saw in rural Peru. Not a traditional woman in sight.
I mean, they have actual indoor plumbing here.
Seeing as I came to South America under the guise of an English teacher in a United Nations Development Program-sponsored initiative, it's one more piece in the puzzle of how to help a country to develop sustainably, equally, and thoroughly. Or rather, one more revelation that the process is far more complicated than just having the UN show up and start passing out magic Development Fairy Dust to everyone.
My experience in Chile was obviously subjective. I am the only one who truly saw everything that I saw and felt it, grew from it, and struggled with it. I was able to get out of Gringolandia for a while and to see the country from tip to tip. It is (and here I quote the omnipotent Wikipedia):
"...One of South America's most stable and prosperous nations, and a recognized middle power. It leads Latin American nations in human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, low perception of corruption and state of peace. It also ranks high regionally in freedom of the press and democratic development."
Chile came out of the 90s as a developing economic power. Despite having fewer residents than most Latin American countries, it outperforms them. Chile produces a third of the world's copper. It's GDP grew 31% in one year this decade (2005-2006).
And yet official figures suggest that a third of Chile's people live in poverty. From what I saw outisde the densely populated Región Metropolitana...the figure in the countryside is far higher. Eve. In Puerto Natales, which has been bolstered by a thriving tourism trade recently, access to basic services like schools and health care is limited. There is no goddamn hospital, people.
Meanwhile in Providencia, the upscale neighborhood of Santiago...there are Starbucks everywhere. The hospital is modern and cutting edge. The people have more than three outfits. They have cars. Shiny ones. Their kids are bilingual in English and Spanish. People are either too fat from a few too many salchipapas or have the pinched thin look of the upper class who smokes too much to eat.
Generalizations rarely suit circumstances, but from what I've seen in Chile and in my brief time in Peru suggests a big one about the development of these two Latin American countries (and perhaps Latin America in general...it's a stretch but they do share a relatively common history).
The development is only for the rich. It is the Haves and the Have Nots. The development is neither sustainable nor equal. Much effort is put into the appearance of development, while infrasctructure and social problems rot it from the inside out.
Example. My students came from some of the poorest families in Puerto Natales. They had subsidized housing, food stamps, and their parents typically worked for the middle to upper class landowners and hotel managers of the city (almost none of whom are originally from there). They were barely getting by.
And yet most of them had touch screen cell phones. A large number had laptop computers, gifts from their government for good grades. Our school couldn't afford to buy posters for the walls of the classrooms, and yet they are more connected at all times of the day than my Facebook-toting grandmother.
Tourism is booming in Natales, but the water is dark brown. The municipality gets grants from the government, but barely any of the money reaches the public schools. Villa Renovald just down the road now has streetlights run on a generator, but it still lacks a school.
The appearance of development is there, but it has huge gaps between the rich and the poor. At times Chile seems very developed (you can get sushi with your Pisco Sour at the very end of the American continent) and at others it feels very Third World (my Chilean nephew is sick and there is no doctor on duty for 300 kilometers). In Peru the contrast is even bigger.
My own experience with trying to help Chile develop and to give new perspectives and opportunities to her youth was marred by themismanagement, lack of interest, and general disorganization that plagues aid work (Can teaching English be called proper "Aid Work?" i dunno...in my school, I think yes. Sure, it could've been worse. But then again it was already pretty awful).
What all this rambling is trying to say is that I've learned a lot about how rough the attempt to help in a developing country can be. Frankly, teaching in Chile was relatively easy compared to the experiences that some of my friends have had teaching here in Peru, doing the Peace Corps, or helping in orphanages in Kenya. I feel guilty in a sense for traveling afterward and living in these fancy-ass hostels with all the other rich Gringos (My room at this hostel is full of Irish Guidos...I didn't know that was possible but it appears the Jersey Shore blight is spreading).
A month ago, I was fed up. I felt that the very people I came here to try to offer something had taken advantage of me and that any kind of aid work would simply result in that sense of frustration. I felt that even by being a Gringa in Chile, I was being a cultural imperialist and that it didn't matter anyway...one person cannot make a difference.
A month of perspective and some key TED lectures later, I feel re-energized. I don't want to give up on one of the things that I've always held dear to me... The idea that I could act and change something about the world for the better. It is easier to choose to be jaded. The narrow path is not convenient.
I wanted this post to be a self-reflective wander about how much I've changed and grown since moving to South America and not a treatise on development. I don't think that the two can be separated easily. This experience will likely change the course of my life. And I am happy that I am still able to focus on something other than just myself.
The narcissistic entry will come tomorrow. For now I am going to enjoy a shower under hot running water with a light bulb in the room.
25 July 2011
10,000 Miles Begins With A Single Three Hour Bus Ride
The sudden sterility of a room before a move. That space which was once a home, a refuge...vacant and scrubbed of all the marks of its former owner. I've moved ten times in the last four years, and so this moment of cleaning and removing and erasing one's presence is not unfamiliar to me. It even feels kind of good. A definitive closure. A ritual of passage.
The journey that I am about to undertake will be the biggest distance covered in a month that I have ever attempted. The tentative (and extremely flexible) itinerary looks like this:
- Santiago de Chile (July 27)
- Valparaiso
- San Pedro de Atacama
- Cusco
- Machu Pichu
- Lake Titicaca
- La Paz
- Potosi
- Salta
- Cordoba
- Buenos Aires (August 21)
When I arrive in Denver after a red-eye flight and twelve-hour layover in Miami, I will have traveled over 10,000 miles in 25 days. About 400 miles a day, if it were actually divided equally (some days will be disproportionately long...48-hour bus rides tend to do that). 4,000 of those miles will be overland in busses. Four countries to cross- Chile (literally tip to tip), Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina.
Yeah. It's gonna get crazy.
This trip is taking me from the minor leagues of world travel to the major league. Even my friend who recently traveled solo through Eastern Europe for three months and went through several countries that until very recently were war zones said, "Holy shit" when I told him about the plan.
I'm ready. Travel is adventure and struggle and fulfilment...the sum of all I want life to be. I am happiest when I am constantly moving and adapting at a cheetah's pace. Everything that I learned in this semester of teaching will come into play. I will need every ounce of change and growth and experience that I've gained.
The journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step: Get to Punta Arenas in the snow. It's time for Puerto Natales to fade into the Patagonian snow until I can return.
The journey that I am about to undertake will be the biggest distance covered in a month that I have ever attempted. The tentative (and extremely flexible) itinerary looks like this:
- Santiago de Chile (July 27)
- Valparaiso
- San Pedro de Atacama
- Cusco
- Machu Pichu
- Lake Titicaca
- La Paz
- Potosi
- Salta
- Cordoba
- Buenos Aires (August 21)
When I arrive in Denver after a red-eye flight and twelve-hour layover in Miami, I will have traveled over 10,000 miles in 25 days. About 400 miles a day, if it were actually divided equally (some days will be disproportionately long...48-hour bus rides tend to do that). 4,000 of those miles will be overland in busses. Four countries to cross- Chile (literally tip to tip), Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina.
Yeah. It's gonna get crazy.
This trip is taking me from the minor leagues of world travel to the major league. Even my friend who recently traveled solo through Eastern Europe for three months and went through several countries that until very recently were war zones said, "Holy shit" when I told him about the plan.
I'm ready. Travel is adventure and struggle and fulfilment...the sum of all I want life to be. I am happiest when I am constantly moving and adapting at a cheetah's pace. Everything that I learned in this semester of teaching will come into play. I will need every ounce of change and growth and experience that I've gained.
The journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step: Get to Punta Arenas in the snow. It's time for Puerto Natales to fade into the Patagonian snow until I can return.
18 July 2011
Chile's Version of Cardiac Massage
"¿De que te cansas, Coleen? ¿Que puedes tener que te cansa?"
Why am I so tired, Chilean host mother? Oh, I don't know...maybe it is that I worked a forty-hour week trying to control thirty high schoolers who don't speak English (and protect and support a pregnant fifteen year old) while speaking in my fourth language, after teaching my ass off in a high-risk public school for the last five months? Oh yes, and the fact that I went to sleep at 6:30 this morning and only slept until you woke me up by beating on my door at 10, admonishing me for missing breakfast.
Luckily, I only have to put up with this for one more week. Otherwise I might just pour my very proper tea out onto this table and tell you where you can put your bowl of Manjar.
Chile and I have had a hell of a ride. Now that I am in the transition stage from Tía Coleen to Kick-Ass-Traveling-4000-Miles-Overland-Coleen and as my my final obligations to the EOD program are wrapping up, I find myself spending a great portion of my time thinking about what has changed about me since I moved to this continent.
It's strange, because in some ways I don't feel changed. In my most self-pitying moments, I tell myself that it was all for nought and that it changed neither me nor my students nor the world that I came here. Obviously, this is a product of the lethal combination of a little too much time spent on the uncomfortable plywood floor of my room alone and a chronic lack of sunlight. When I step back a bit and actually name the changes, it becomes clear that my self-pity has no relationship with reality.
I have an image in my head of Chile (who I somehow picture as a big-boned Salweskar woman) reaching into my chest up to her wrists and opening my ribcage, to massage and form and enliven my heart. Like cardiac massage that surgeons perform, but with blood everywhere in big arterial spurts. To any observer including me it appears that she has been trying to kill me, with stress and frustration and futility and ankle-biting poodles.
But she was actually trying to save me.
Chile woke me up and made me realize that I have a lot of work to do on myself before my life can have stability and I can truly be happy. She laid my own issues and those of the world bare, forcing me to deal with pain, sadness, lonliness, anger, and my own personal tormentors from the past. She forced me to give up a lot about my own way of viewing the world and to try to get by on fumes (and a ton of white bread) even when I was exhausted. She made me feel so tiny and powerless in thhe face of mountains and the problems of her society, but yet huge and powerful as the most noticeable gringa this side of Puerto Montt and able to do something to help those students.
I think the change snuck up on me, and that it happened so quickly that I didn't even realize it. Somewhere between the crazy 16-hour flight to Santiago and the trip to the post office this morning, a new Coleen took the place of the old one.
I even look different.
Why am I so tired, Chilean host mother? Oh, I don't know...maybe it is that I worked a forty-hour week trying to control thirty high schoolers who don't speak English (and protect and support a pregnant fifteen year old) while speaking in my fourth language, after teaching my ass off in a high-risk public school for the last five months? Oh yes, and the fact that I went to sleep at 6:30 this morning and only slept until you woke me up by beating on my door at 10, admonishing me for missing breakfast.
Luckily, I only have to put up with this for one more week. Otherwise I might just pour my very proper tea out onto this table and tell you where you can put your bowl of Manjar.
Chile and I have had a hell of a ride. Now that I am in the transition stage from Tía Coleen to Kick-Ass-Traveling-4000-Miles-Overland-Coleen and as my my final obligations to the EOD program are wrapping up, I find myself spending a great portion of my time thinking about what has changed about me since I moved to this continent.
It's strange, because in some ways I don't feel changed. In my most self-pitying moments, I tell myself that it was all for nought and that it changed neither me nor my students nor the world that I came here. Obviously, this is a product of the lethal combination of a little too much time spent on the uncomfortable plywood floor of my room alone and a chronic lack of sunlight. When I step back a bit and actually name the changes, it becomes clear that my self-pity has no relationship with reality.
I have an image in my head of Chile (who I somehow picture as a big-boned Salweskar woman) reaching into my chest up to her wrists and opening my ribcage, to massage and form and enliven my heart. Like cardiac massage that surgeons perform, but with blood everywhere in big arterial spurts. To any observer including me it appears that she has been trying to kill me, with stress and frustration and futility and ankle-biting poodles.
But she was actually trying to save me.
Chile woke me up and made me realize that I have a lot of work to do on myself before my life can have stability and I can truly be happy. She laid my own issues and those of the world bare, forcing me to deal with pain, sadness, lonliness, anger, and my own personal tormentors from the past. She forced me to give up a lot about my own way of viewing the world and to try to get by on fumes (and a ton of white bread) even when I was exhausted. She made me feel so tiny and powerless in thhe face of mountains and the problems of her society, but yet huge and powerful as the most noticeable gringa this side of Puerto Montt and able to do something to help those students.
I think the change snuck up on me, and that it happened so quickly that I didn't even realize it. Somewhere between the crazy 16-hour flight to Santiago and the trip to the post office this morning, a new Coleen took the place of the old one.
I even look different.
30 June 2011
The Development of a Stoplight Morality
Miss Coleen Monroe, B.A. in Anthropology speaking. It's time we had a little talk about universiality, cultural relativism, and cutting up meat with rusty hacksaws.
In college I read a now-uncountable number of pages from books and articles and treatises arguing with each other about the nature of culture. Since I tended to lean toward exploring the biological side of human nature, I didn't pay much mind to a central conflict within cultural anthropology since its inception...universalism versus cultural relativism.
Incomplete definitions in few words.
Universalism = Moral codes apply everywhere, as we can objectively say that one way of doing things is better than another.
Cultural Relativism = Everything humans do is dictated by culture and none is superior to the other, so no universal Wrongs or Rights exist.
Anthropologists ran into the dilemna of whether to apply these ideas when they conducted their fieldwork in far-flung corners of the world and tried to engage deeply, richly, thickly (to borrow Clifford Geertz's term) with a culture different from their own. In writing their enthographies and making their analyses, they often found themselves judging another culture...assuming it was better or worse than their own. Before the field suffered a crisis of representation in the 1980s and cleaned up its act, much of the work was fairly heavily based on cultural imperialism. White man comes to foreign village. Lives there several months. Writes a scathing ethnography about their practices from his beautiful armchair back in the civilized world. Rinse. Repeat.
Now, what does all of that lofty rhetoric have to do with me living in Puerto Natales? A change in my own thinking about universal moral guidelines and cultural exchange.
In the four months I have been living here, I have tried very hard to adapt and integrate and change to accomodate differences in culture between myself and those around me. Everything is different, down to the way one eats (using a piece of bread to load a fork instead of a knife) or dresses or wears one's hair. Most of the differences are superificial and sneak in without much effort, becoming habit so quickly that I don't even realize they are happening until it's already there.
Others are tougher and take a conscious effort to include in my life. Everything is late here. Regulations fall through. There is compulsory military service for all men over 17. Most people don't use seatbelts. Men and women still occupy very separate spheres and roles. Divorce was only made legal six years ago. My bosses can make jokes about me being their wife or lover without fearing a sexual harassment lawsuit. No one sterilizes their dogs or cats, meaning roaming packs wander the streets and occasionally try to bite you (Side note: It's always the tiny, poodle-y ones. Watch your ankles). Being openly gay would be an abberation. They teach religion in school.
Oh yes, and we cut up the meat for our dinners using a rusty hacksaw.
Just because these things are different shouldn't mean that they are wrong, right? Or should I apply my own culture as universal and lament Chilean backwardness? Or am I falling into the trap of manicheism (wrong or right. Black or white, no gray) that a lot of people from the USA have been reared on? When I bring up the differences, I am often told that as a foreigner I am the one who has to adapt, and that others do not have to. Shouldn't. That my very being here could be a form of cultural imperialism (check out the issue here http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/03/lightbulb-in-my-bathroom-is-out.html). As a result I tried to adapt more, to change more, to judge less and less until I found myself shrugging my shoulders at everything...even the things that really bother me.
Walking around the town the other day, thinking about whether I could say objectively that these differences were anything more than irritating to me personally...I passed a stoplight. I realized that it looked exactly like the ones at home. Red, yellow, green. Simple, easy to learn, and it works. Could it be that this could apply to morality and cultural encounters?
In that moment I became a fan of Stoplightism.
There are many differences between the macro-cultures of countries and regions, and many more between the micro-cultures of families, schools, and towns. By and large, they just don't matter that much. One arriving and living there should adapt to the change of circumstances and change themselves to fit them. But occasionally the differences are actually objectively wrong or right, but in a flexible definition of both with lots of gray.
When can we objectively say, "Ok, that's just not right" and not be a cultural imperialist? When whatever it endangers people, causes loss of resources for no good reason, or reinforces inequalities. Simple, easy to learn, and works. Racism=wrong. Sexism=wrong. Killing=wrong. Stealing=wrong. Willful ignorance=wrong. Irresponsibility=wrong. Not because a god says so, or because my culture says so...but because they cause harm and waste and lead to other problems. Cutting meat with a hacksaw = probably wrong...given the potential harm of metal shavings in the stomach.
Judging cultures based on a simple, functional morality with a lot of room for gray area means that cultural exchanges like the one I am in are opportunities to compare moral notes with other humans and find out what is really important. Meaning that in order for them to function, it has to be a two-way street. Both sides have to consider their customs and change when necessary.
That is why it is called an exchange and not simply a change. It works even better in Spanish (un intercambio inves de sólo un cambio). Equal sharing between cultures to find the simple parts that overlap for good reason, and offer new ways of relating for both to consider.
I have done the best job I could do to change and adapt and accept. A lot of what I have learned and changed is great, and I will use the new point of view Chile has offered me to judge my own life more carefully. But that doesn't mean I should lose myself completely either. My own culture and identity have a lot to offer, and the exchange should change Puerto Natales and the people I meet as well.
And it is OK for me to refuse to eat meat cut up with a rusty saw if I don't want to have metal shavings in my stomach. Just like it's OK for me to bring a bunch of Yerba Mate home to drink like a Patagonian. The cultural exchange will continue and both sides will consider the changes they can and should make to their own moral stoplights.
Eventually we will realize that many of the important things are already the same.
In college I read a now-uncountable number of pages from books and articles and treatises arguing with each other about the nature of culture. Since I tended to lean toward exploring the biological side of human nature, I didn't pay much mind to a central conflict within cultural anthropology since its inception...universalism versus cultural relativism.
Incomplete definitions in few words.
Universalism = Moral codes apply everywhere, as we can objectively say that one way of doing things is better than another.
Cultural Relativism = Everything humans do is dictated by culture and none is superior to the other, so no universal Wrongs or Rights exist.
Anthropologists ran into the dilemna of whether to apply these ideas when they conducted their fieldwork in far-flung corners of the world and tried to engage deeply, richly, thickly (to borrow Clifford Geertz's term) with a culture different from their own. In writing their enthographies and making their analyses, they often found themselves judging another culture...assuming it was better or worse than their own. Before the field suffered a crisis of representation in the 1980s and cleaned up its act, much of the work was fairly heavily based on cultural imperialism. White man comes to foreign village. Lives there several months. Writes a scathing ethnography about their practices from his beautiful armchair back in the civilized world. Rinse. Repeat.
Now, what does all of that lofty rhetoric have to do with me living in Puerto Natales? A change in my own thinking about universal moral guidelines and cultural exchange.
In the four months I have been living here, I have tried very hard to adapt and integrate and change to accomodate differences in culture between myself and those around me. Everything is different, down to the way one eats (using a piece of bread to load a fork instead of a knife) or dresses or wears one's hair. Most of the differences are superificial and sneak in without much effort, becoming habit so quickly that I don't even realize they are happening until it's already there.
Others are tougher and take a conscious effort to include in my life. Everything is late here. Regulations fall through. There is compulsory military service for all men over 17. Most people don't use seatbelts. Men and women still occupy very separate spheres and roles. Divorce was only made legal six years ago. My bosses can make jokes about me being their wife or lover without fearing a sexual harassment lawsuit. No one sterilizes their dogs or cats, meaning roaming packs wander the streets and occasionally try to bite you (Side note: It's always the tiny, poodle-y ones. Watch your ankles). Being openly gay would be an abberation. They teach religion in school.
Oh yes, and we cut up the meat for our dinners using a rusty hacksaw.
Just because these things are different shouldn't mean that they are wrong, right? Or should I apply my own culture as universal and lament Chilean backwardness? Or am I falling into the trap of manicheism (wrong or right. Black or white, no gray) that a lot of people from the USA have been reared on? When I bring up the differences, I am often told that as a foreigner I am the one who has to adapt, and that others do not have to. Shouldn't. That my very being here could be a form of cultural imperialism (check out the issue here http://caminochile.blogspot.com/2011/03/lightbulb-in-my-bathroom-is-out.html). As a result I tried to adapt more, to change more, to judge less and less until I found myself shrugging my shoulders at everything...even the things that really bother me.
Walking around the town the other day, thinking about whether I could say objectively that these differences were anything more than irritating to me personally...I passed a stoplight. I realized that it looked exactly like the ones at home. Red, yellow, green. Simple, easy to learn, and it works. Could it be that this could apply to morality and cultural encounters?
In that moment I became a fan of Stoplightism.
There are many differences between the macro-cultures of countries and regions, and many more between the micro-cultures of families, schools, and towns. By and large, they just don't matter that much. One arriving and living there should adapt to the change of circumstances and change themselves to fit them. But occasionally the differences are actually objectively wrong or right, but in a flexible definition of both with lots of gray.
When can we objectively say, "Ok, that's just not right" and not be a cultural imperialist? When whatever it endangers people, causes loss of resources for no good reason, or reinforces inequalities. Simple, easy to learn, and works. Racism=wrong. Sexism=wrong. Killing=wrong. Stealing=wrong. Willful ignorance=wrong. Irresponsibility=wrong. Not because a god says so, or because my culture says so...but because they cause harm and waste and lead to other problems. Cutting meat with a hacksaw = probably wrong...given the potential harm of metal shavings in the stomach.
Judging cultures based on a simple, functional morality with a lot of room for gray area means that cultural exchanges like the one I am in are opportunities to compare moral notes with other humans and find out what is really important. Meaning that in order for them to function, it has to be a two-way street. Both sides have to consider their customs and change when necessary.
That is why it is called an exchange and not simply a change. It works even better in Spanish (un intercambio inves de sólo un cambio). Equal sharing between cultures to find the simple parts that overlap for good reason, and offer new ways of relating for both to consider.
I have done the best job I could do to change and adapt and accept. A lot of what I have learned and changed is great, and I will use the new point of view Chile has offered me to judge my own life more carefully. But that doesn't mean I should lose myself completely either. My own culture and identity have a lot to offer, and the exchange should change Puerto Natales and the people I meet as well.
And it is OK for me to refuse to eat meat cut up with a rusty saw if I don't want to have metal shavings in my stomach. Just like it's OK for me to bring a bunch of Yerba Mate home to drink like a Patagonian. The cultural exchange will continue and both sides will consider the changes they can and should make to their own moral stoplights.
Eventually we will realize that many of the important things are already the same.
27 June 2011
What's In a Name?
Names. They are one of the fundamental ways that we relate to the world, especially as a sort of interface between the exterior world of other people and the internal one of identity.
The name of the principal of my school is...Wilhemina. This would not be that unusual, except that he is a 60-year-old, slightly balding, moustached man. Everyone calls him "Willy" anyway, but it is still bizzare to have a male boss with the name of a knitting old grandmama.
My host stepfather (Uncle? Cousin? Guy who comes over sometimes?) is named Floridor, which I believe means something like "One who Flowers." Even Chileans giggle when he is introduced, but the name suits him since he is something of a mildly-overweight flower child. Also in his 60s. Also slightly balding. I sometimes think he must secretly be making crowns of flowers and dancing around like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream to live up to his name.
And then come my students. Many of them carry names from the original peoples of the area like Unai (Oo-naye), Danai (DAN-aye), and Yahaira (Ja-HAY-Rah). Others have traditional Hispanophone names like José, Jorge, Ignacio, Miguel, Diego, Paola, Pablo, Ramiro, etc. Then there is a montón of María-Insert Second Name Heres and José-Another Name Heres.
Because of the particular history of this region and the influence from Croatians, Italians, and others who immigrated, many students also carry names with Slavic (Katya, Mirko, Victor) or Italian (Luciano, Giovanni, Leonardo, Antonio) origins. Now, names from English are becoming popular...but here the spelling is often changed to make them easier for Spanish-speakers to pronounce. I get a kick out of it everytime I see Yonatan (Jonathan), Oskar (Oscar), and Maicol (Michael). There is also one name of a second grader that (despite asking multiple times to multiple people) seems to be pronounced "Blaaa."
Finally, there appear to be an inordiante amount of girls named Kirshna. As in at least three in every grade level. Hare Krishnas must have made a pass through here.
After all the craziness with the spelling and origins of names in this part of Chile, one might believe that they would be used to pronouncing different names and remembering them. My name, however, appears to cause a ton of problems.
I get Conni. I get Corrine. Then I write it down. I get Colin. Then Col-un. Then I explain that it is an Irish name. This does not help, since nobody knows how to pronounce Irish names (and few of my students can even point to Europe on a map...muchless the tiny Irish Isle...). I get CO-leen. Close enough. Yeah, that works. To be fair, people rarely grt my name right the first ten times at home.
But then, when students are writing their names on papers and projects, they often write in the indecipherable script often seen in graffiti art. This is cool, but they also change letters and add things until it is seriously illegible (Ferdanda=Ferrrdñanyta, Sara=Ssarr¥ta). They wrote my name on a card the other day as Mys Quolyn. And I wondered before why my phonics lessons weren't sticking.
The name of the principal of my school is...Wilhemina. This would not be that unusual, except that he is a 60-year-old, slightly balding, moustached man. Everyone calls him "Willy" anyway, but it is still bizzare to have a male boss with the name of a knitting old grandmama.
My host stepfather (Uncle? Cousin? Guy who comes over sometimes?) is named Floridor, which I believe means something like "One who Flowers." Even Chileans giggle when he is introduced, but the name suits him since he is something of a mildly-overweight flower child. Also in his 60s. Also slightly balding. I sometimes think he must secretly be making crowns of flowers and dancing around like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream to live up to his name.
And then come my students. Many of them carry names from the original peoples of the area like Unai (Oo-naye), Danai (DAN-aye), and Yahaira (Ja-HAY-Rah). Others have traditional Hispanophone names like José, Jorge, Ignacio, Miguel, Diego, Paola, Pablo, Ramiro, etc. Then there is a montón of María-Insert Second Name Heres and José-Another Name Heres.
Because of the particular history of this region and the influence from Croatians, Italians, and others who immigrated, many students also carry names with Slavic (Katya, Mirko, Victor) or Italian (Luciano, Giovanni, Leonardo, Antonio) origins. Now, names from English are becoming popular...but here the spelling is often changed to make them easier for Spanish-speakers to pronounce. I get a kick out of it everytime I see Yonatan (Jonathan), Oskar (Oscar), and Maicol (Michael). There is also one name of a second grader that (despite asking multiple times to multiple people) seems to be pronounced "Blaaa."
Finally, there appear to be an inordiante amount of girls named Kirshna. As in at least three in every grade level. Hare Krishnas must have made a pass through here.
After all the craziness with the spelling and origins of names in this part of Chile, one might believe that they would be used to pronouncing different names and remembering them. My name, however, appears to cause a ton of problems.
I get Conni. I get Corrine. Then I write it down. I get Colin. Then Col-un. Then I explain that it is an Irish name. This does not help, since nobody knows how to pronounce Irish names (and few of my students can even point to Europe on a map...muchless the tiny Irish Isle...). I get CO-leen. Close enough. Yeah, that works. To be fair, people rarely grt my name right the first ten times at home.
But then, when students are writing their names on papers and projects, they often write in the indecipherable script often seen in graffiti art. This is cool, but they also change letters and add things until it is seriously illegible (Ferdanda=Ferrrdñanyta, Sara=Ssarr¥ta). They wrote my name on a card the other day as Mys Quolyn. And I wondered before why my phonics lessons weren't sticking.
31 May 2011
Happy Birthday, Puerto Natales!
Feliz Centenario, Puerto Natales!
100 years of history as a town. Things move more slowly around here...te conserves bien. Progress and change may be at your doorstep are already transforming the town center into a Gore-Tex-happy tourismville, but something tells me that this town will always have a core of unpaved streets, wandering dogs, fishermen's boats in dry dock, and loose cows being chased by gauchos in boinas to keep your true essence.
It appears, as my "Chilean cousin" Maria-Claudia says, that I came here in just the right year to be able to take part in the festivities. In the last month there was some activity every day. I've seen two concerts by Chilean bands, a beautiful presentation at my school showing aspects of Natalino history, dances, parties, banners, sales in all the stores, a huge fireworks display. Finally today (the actual anniversary of the founding of the town) there was a grand parade with all the schools in the whole region participating and important people watching from a platform in the brand new plaza.
I jumped into the parade at the last minute, since people at school have rather been leaving me out of the communiication loop lately (probably due to the enormous effort of putting together the centennial...nothing like this has ever happened here in the past). As we were leaving the house, my Tía Maria-Ester admnshed me for my shabbiness.
"You're not going to parade (yes, in Chileno "to parade" is a verb) like that. Tennis shoes and pants?! Don't you have a skirt or something?"
I ran upstairs and grabbed one of the skirts I had already packed to send home (Remember? I am now trying to travel as lightly as possible.)
"Chucha," the Chilean swear came to me faster than any in English, "It's all wrinkled." The iron is in the kitchen, where Juanito and Claudia are making lunch for everyone. Nothing for it. No time. Must take off my skirt and iron it in my tights on the kitchen table.
"No mires, Juanito!" ("Don't look, Juanito!")
Twenty seconds later: "Coleen, te están llamando!" ("Coleen, they're calling you!")
"Momentito!" ("Just a moment!")
"Ja, ahora antes que te dejan!" ("Yeah, now before they leave you!")
I threw on my skirt and ran out the door.
I did not realize that a parade was such a big deal and so formal in Chile, but it soon became apparent why it is so. Everyone must be dressed up and the students dressed the same, down to white gloves on their hands and exactly the same braid in the hair of all the girls. Everyone has to march Left, Left, Left, Right, Left. We have to keep our hands at our sides and look at the authorities to our right when we pass. Better not to smile too much, this is a serious undertaking. The students had been rehearsing for weeks.
Despite this, our school's organized lines quickly devolved into the students' customary chaos. We waited nearly two hours in the street, freezing our asses off (well, mostly our hands). The students were climbing fences and breaking things, throwing things at each other and fighting. Normal, for us. I noticed that neither the school in front of us nor the one behind appeared to be having such problems. Two of the girls missed out completely on the parade because they left to talk to someone ahead of us. Left, Left, Left, Right, Left.
At some point after we began marching, I realized that I felt mildly uncomfortable with the military feel of the whole thing. It felt like a relic of the period under Pinochet's junta, and to top off my sense of discomfort I realized that the entire armed force of the region, in full battle gear and clutching fully automatic weapons, was not only present but a central part of the march.
It's not a subject that I have approached with anyone since coming to Chile, in part because I simply do not want to know if people I know and like are still supporters of his regime (and yes, there are people in Chile who still are). Pinochet only died in 2006, and thousands of supporters came to his funeral. They are currently in the process of exhuming Salvador Allende's remains to conduct a further autopsy. The wounds of "The Other September 11th" (the coup d'etat) are still here.
As I watched the armed forces and the rapidly disintegrating order of the parade, I realized that the deeply ingrained difficulties with organization and execution of plans that I have experienced in many forms since I moved here ("Oh, you mean you wanted your visa in one month instead of three?" "What do you mean, you want a list of the rules of the school?" "Eh...when the plane leaves, it leaves...") may have actually worked in Chile's favor when push came to shove under an authoritarian government. If one cannot organize a parade or a meeting, it is very difficult for an ultra-organized junta to really take hold.
So the moral of the story is that disorganization is a secret ally against authoritarian rule. Nice. I waved to the authorities in their safe little box high above the crowd as I passed, and knew that tomorrow I have to face the students again...and all the problems that manifest themselves in the micro-culture of our school. And for the moment, I was proud that we were the most disorganized group of all.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Chile
100 years of history as a town. Things move more slowly around here...te conserves bien. Progress and change may be at your doorstep are already transforming the town center into a Gore-Tex-happy tourismville, but something tells me that this town will always have a core of unpaved streets, wandering dogs, fishermen's boats in dry dock, and loose cows being chased by gauchos in boinas to keep your true essence.
It appears, as my "Chilean cousin" Maria-Claudia says, that I came here in just the right year to be able to take part in the festivities. In the last month there was some activity every day. I've seen two concerts by Chilean bands, a beautiful presentation at my school showing aspects of Natalino history, dances, parties, banners, sales in all the stores, a huge fireworks display. Finally today (the actual anniversary of the founding of the town) there was a grand parade with all the schools in the whole region participating and important people watching from a platform in the brand new plaza.
I jumped into the parade at the last minute, since people at school have rather been leaving me out of the communiication loop lately (probably due to the enormous effort of putting together the centennial...nothing like this has ever happened here in the past). As we were leaving the house, my Tía Maria-Ester admnshed me for my shabbiness.
"You're not going to parade (yes, in Chileno "to parade" is a verb) like that. Tennis shoes and pants?! Don't you have a skirt or something?"
I ran upstairs and grabbed one of the skirts I had already packed to send home (Remember? I am now trying to travel as lightly as possible.)
"Chucha," the Chilean swear came to me faster than any in English, "It's all wrinkled." The iron is in the kitchen, where Juanito and Claudia are making lunch for everyone. Nothing for it. No time. Must take off my skirt and iron it in my tights on the kitchen table.
"No mires, Juanito!" ("Don't look, Juanito!")
Twenty seconds later: "Coleen, te están llamando!" ("Coleen, they're calling you!")
"Momentito!" ("Just a moment!")
"Ja, ahora antes que te dejan!" ("Yeah, now before they leave you!")
I threw on my skirt and ran out the door.
I did not realize that a parade was such a big deal and so formal in Chile, but it soon became apparent why it is so. Everyone must be dressed up and the students dressed the same, down to white gloves on their hands and exactly the same braid in the hair of all the girls. Everyone has to march Left, Left, Left, Right, Left. We have to keep our hands at our sides and look at the authorities to our right when we pass. Better not to smile too much, this is a serious undertaking. The students had been rehearsing for weeks.
Despite this, our school's organized lines quickly devolved into the students' customary chaos. We waited nearly two hours in the street, freezing our asses off (well, mostly our hands). The students were climbing fences and breaking things, throwing things at each other and fighting. Normal, for us. I noticed that neither the school in front of us nor the one behind appeared to be having such problems. Two of the girls missed out completely on the parade because they left to talk to someone ahead of us. Left, Left, Left, Right, Left.
At some point after we began marching, I realized that I felt mildly uncomfortable with the military feel of the whole thing. It felt like a relic of the period under Pinochet's junta, and to top off my sense of discomfort I realized that the entire armed force of the region, in full battle gear and clutching fully automatic weapons, was not only present but a central part of the march.
It's not a subject that I have approached with anyone since coming to Chile, in part because I simply do not want to know if people I know and like are still supporters of his regime (and yes, there are people in Chile who still are). Pinochet only died in 2006, and thousands of supporters came to his funeral. They are currently in the process of exhuming Salvador Allende's remains to conduct a further autopsy. The wounds of "The Other September 11th" (the coup d'etat) are still here.
As I watched the armed forces and the rapidly disintegrating order of the parade, I realized that the deeply ingrained difficulties with organization and execution of plans that I have experienced in many forms since I moved here ("Oh, you mean you wanted your visa in one month instead of three?" "What do you mean, you want a list of the rules of the school?" "Eh...when the plane leaves, it leaves...") may have actually worked in Chile's favor when push came to shove under an authoritarian government. If one cannot organize a parade or a meeting, it is very difficult for an ultra-organized junta to really take hold.
So the moral of the story is that disorganization is a secret ally against authoritarian rule. Nice. I waved to the authorities in their safe little box high above the crowd as I passed, and knew that tomorrow I have to face the students again...and all the problems that manifest themselves in the micro-culture of our school. And for the moment, I was proud that we were the most disorganized group of all.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Chile
26 May 2011
Chile Doesn't Ask. She Demands.
Just ONCE in Chile I would like to have a heads up more beforehand if I have no more classes, have to organize a field trip, have to attend an assembly, partcipate in a national holiday or community one, meet the governor, or attend a meeting. And just ONCE I would like someone to tell me that it was their mistake or change of attitude or unwillingness to speak clearer Spanish (and not my stupid Gringa-ness) that caused the misunderstanding between us. And just ONCE I would like someone to acknowledge that I am working three times as hard for half of the recognition (school full-time, hostal part-time, fourth language all the time).
To put so much heart into it and get so little response infuriates the part of me that craves equality in the world. Perhaps I am still too much of an idealist, and all of this is one big fat reality check to transform me into an idealistic pragmatist.
Do what you can, with what you have, in the time you are given. No one can ask anything more of you.
I thought I had reached a hard limit of how much I could give this week...of how much I can take. Turns out, Chile demands more. She is pushing me to new limits, forcing me to adapt and learn and change. She is demanding. Exigente. And then I remember what I tell my students when they are frustrated. When they say I am demanding or mean or pesada (lit. "heavy").
"When a teacher demands a lot of you, it is because they are demanding that you learn. It is because they know you can do better."
Bring it, Chile. I made it this far and if you demand more...it must be because you know I will find it within me to take it.
To put so much heart into it and get so little response infuriates the part of me that craves equality in the world. Perhaps I am still too much of an idealist, and all of this is one big fat reality check to transform me into an idealistic pragmatist.
Do what you can, with what you have, in the time you are given. No one can ask anything more of you.
I thought I had reached a hard limit of how much I could give this week...of how much I can take. Turns out, Chile demands more. She is pushing me to new limits, forcing me to adapt and learn and change. She is demanding. Exigente. And then I remember what I tell my students when they are frustrated. When they say I am demanding or mean or pesada (lit. "heavy").
"When a teacher demands a lot of you, it is because they are demanding that you learn. It is because they know you can do better."
Bring it, Chile. I made it this far and if you demand more...it must be because you know I will find it within me to take it.
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