Dear Santiago,
I must go back to the cold and the snow now, and skip out on your miserably hot summer days. I promise I'll write you a postcard from New York. Ah, my dear Santiago: where I can get my cheese laminado and not worry about it being covered in a plastic coating; where a gran taco isn't a dish you order at Taco Bell; where a mina has nothing to do with being part of the mining industry and where I can be a huachita while still having both parents; and where being called a wea/weon can be good, bad, or mean absolutely nothing at all.
I will miss:
-nescafe
-$2.00 ice cream sundaes
-chorrillana and barros luco
-the men at the bus station who wave at me to get on their buses, when it's obvious that it isn't the bus I need to take
-CRAZY soccer celebrations
-being taller than half your population
-having TWO hilltop virgins
-the little "poof!" the fire makes when I light the calefont
-asados
-rooftop tanning sessions in December
-Americo
AND, last but not least:
Palta.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Everyone! I'll be blogging you next year!
Saludos,
Kate
laminado = sliced
gran taco = a big traffic jam
mina = a really hot girl
huachita = a hot girl (also, a little orphan)
wea/weon = bro, idiot, or really, absolutely nothing at all
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Davinci Codigo = DuoC.
Look out, Dan Brown - the stars seem to be aligning, but it doesn't mean you've mastered the formula for writing highly-engrossing suspense novels.
Emails received from two top executives of the English Program at DuocUC this week reported a massive regime change from the top down, which prompted top dog and ten-year English veteran Phillip Cary to offer a weak joke about "going fishing." Pinera's presidency has led to a mass change across the board to support more conservative policies in state affairs - as far flung as forcing a resignation of Chile's liberal football coach. AND, after learning about the PSU's, his broken IPOD, and WikiLeaks, Hitler has recently been informed of Opus Dei's dubious connections with Duoc.
That's right, folks - Opus Dei, translated from Latin to mean "The work of God," controls and provides serious funding for almost every major Catholic university in South America, including my school. Founded in 1928 as a superserious sect of Roman Catholicism, Opus Dei has been integral in retaining the most conservative and traditional rites and ceremonies in Roman Catholicism even when the rest of the Church seems to have moved the other way - translating liturgies into vernacular, focusing teachings on the most basic elements of the Gospels, even most recently providing a pass for condom usage among HIV-carrying male prostitutes (if, of course, you count that as being a wildly liberal move).
According to John L. Allen, Jr., author of Opus Dei, "the core idea of Opus Dei...is the sanctification of ordinary work, meaning that one can find God through the practice of law, engineering, or medicine, by picking up the garbage or by delivering the mail, if one brings to that work the proper Christian spirit...many Catholics today take at least some aspects of Church teaching with a grain of salt, but Opus Dei members are encouraged to "think with the Church," meaning to accept the entirety of Church teaching on faith and morals."
It makes sense, then, that a technical university like DuocUC, which specializes in more proletariat forms of labor as well as in lowscale white-collar professions, would be backed by such an organization. The rigors of Opus Dei doctrine and the religious red tape of it all would appeal to a conservative, staunchly bureaucratic society like Chile (when I order a simple croissant from a neighborhood bakery, I must talk to three different people and obtain two seperate receipts!!!). Duoc may recognize some of its high enrollment results at least in part due to the fact that their student base tends to be largely working class who in turn often take up the banner of traditional values and a good old (Protestant-turned-Catholic) work ethic. In other words, if hard work earns you an education, hard religious work might earn you brownie points with God.
And believe me, these students put up quite a fight when you challenge their conservative value systems, albeit sometimes in a nonfallical, Rush Limbaugh sort of way. After receiving a test on which a student wrote that he "wouldn't like to be a model because models are gay and stupid, and [he] is definitely not gay," I decided it was time to have a frank discussion about gay rights, human rights, and common decency in general, especially in a classroom setting. Although the students listened respectfully to my after-school special diatribe on the violence and damage caused by seemingly innocent off-color jokes (since a joke often stems from some deeply serious issue, their punchlines often aren't innocent at all), they continued to defend their right to speak freely and homophobically in whatever environment they might choose, citing their indelicacy toward gay rights as a measly cultural difference between the United States and Chile.
Duoc has often been criticized as being "too religious" of a university - it offers daily Mass at several of its campuses; college credit towards your major (whichever major it might be) if you take religion courses; even leaves mini-Bibles and pamphlets on Christian doctrine in the sala docente. Duoc continues to ask students about their religious affiliation, although in Chile it has become taboo at best and illegal at worst to ask this question, fearing how it might bear on the judgement of a student's application.
Wikipedia lends further insight into Opus Dei's involvement in education, saying that "leaders of Opus Dei describe the organization as a teaching entity, whose main activity is to train Catholics to assume personal responsiblity in sanctifying the secular world from within...the official Catholic document which established the prelature states that Opus Dei strives "to put into practice the teaching of the universal call to sanctity, and to promote at all levels of society the sanctification of ordinary work, and by means of ordinary work'". The website goes on to say that 68% of all of Opus Dei's nonprofit programs are in the form of schools and university residences, with 6% in universities, business schools and hospitals.
A Catholic education in South America tends to be viewed as some of the best education a child can receive - the Catholic church is financially able to provide ample educational resources without charging such a high student matriculation fee as would be charged in a private school setting. Catholic educational pedegogy tends to be rigorous, focusing on lecture-style classroom sessions, repetetive memorizational exercises, and narrowly-focused studies.
Watching Donnie Darko for about the bajillionth time this weekend prompted a long discussion about the influence of religious involvement in education. What are the implications of a conservative Catholic education in a school system tailored to working-class students? After mulling over the news with a professor friend, we agreed that the enduring educational dilemma is that the roots of education are in preserving accepted doctrines, and that education has been institutionalized; yet, education provides the means to radically question these same indoctrinations and institutions. How much does school - does institution - get in the way of education?
On the positive side, a Catholic education supplies learners who are highly competent and dutifully skilled in their appropriate fields of study, who are trained to be hard workers and to hold the highest ethical values (although they may be conservative ethical values). It also offers this education on a dime, making it possible for the lower class to acheive a better standard of living and of thinking.
However, negatively, Opus Dei's stress on "the importance of work and professional competence...to perform [one's] work excellently as a service to society and as a fitting offering to God" (thanks Wikipedia) might be a politically correct narrative that a university - and, in extension, its goverment - could offer to entice working class students to maintain a social status quo. Being too literal always comes with the danger of taking yourself too seriously in a society that is constantly changing and that isn't championing your personal ideas as much as you might be. Producing a field of heavily indoctrinated worker bees wouldn't be all that bad for a conservative goverment like Pinera's, nor would it be bad for boosting the economics of a rapidly developing nation such as Chile.
But what a shame it would be if the outcome of religious involvement in education were to vastly limit the chance for Chile to produce more highly skilled, highly educated citizens - if the indoctrination and bureaucracy of the Church were to interfere in allowing the students to really think for themselves, however "imperfect" that thinking might be.
As it stands, much of what I think is positive about the English program at Duoc - especially the TIPS program, which allows native speakers to become visiting professors for a year - might be on the chopping block due to regime change and conservative values. According to one of the Duoc professors, Opus Dei is metaphorically tightening its celice on the Duoc English department's thigh with plans to cut this program as well as educational supplies from native English speaking countries (like the grammar books we currently use in the classroom). TIPS next year may have to bear a burden of proving their value in an increasingly conservative learning environment. It looks like any negative aspects of Opus Dei might be less dramatic than being persued by an albino psychopathic masochistic monk, but still carry the sting of restricting various modes of education.
docente = educational staff
Emails received from two top executives of the English Program at DuocUC this week reported a massive regime change from the top down, which prompted top dog and ten-year English veteran Phillip Cary to offer a weak joke about "going fishing." Pinera's presidency has led to a mass change across the board to support more conservative policies in state affairs - as far flung as forcing a resignation of Chile's liberal football coach. AND, after learning about the PSU's, his broken IPOD, and WikiLeaks, Hitler has recently been informed of Opus Dei's dubious connections with Duoc.
That's right, folks - Opus Dei, translated from Latin to mean "The work of God," controls and provides serious funding for almost every major Catholic university in South America, including my school. Founded in 1928 as a superserious sect of Roman Catholicism, Opus Dei has been integral in retaining the most conservative and traditional rites and ceremonies in Roman Catholicism even when the rest of the Church seems to have moved the other way - translating liturgies into vernacular, focusing teachings on the most basic elements of the Gospels, even most recently providing a pass for condom usage among HIV-carrying male prostitutes (if, of course, you count that as being a wildly liberal move).
According to John L. Allen, Jr., author of Opus Dei, "the core idea of Opus Dei...is the sanctification of ordinary work, meaning that one can find God through the practice of law, engineering, or medicine, by picking up the garbage or by delivering the mail, if one brings to that work the proper Christian spirit...many Catholics today take at least some aspects of Church teaching with a grain of salt, but Opus Dei members are encouraged to "think with the Church," meaning to accept the entirety of Church teaching on faith and morals."
It makes sense, then, that a technical university like DuocUC, which specializes in more proletariat forms of labor as well as in lowscale white-collar professions, would be backed by such an organization. The rigors of Opus Dei doctrine and the religious red tape of it all would appeal to a conservative, staunchly bureaucratic society like Chile (when I order a simple croissant from a neighborhood bakery, I must talk to three different people and obtain two seperate receipts!!!). Duoc may recognize some of its high enrollment results at least in part due to the fact that their student base tends to be largely working class who in turn often take up the banner of traditional values and a good old (Protestant-turned-Catholic) work ethic. In other words, if hard work earns you an education, hard religious work might earn you brownie points with God.
And believe me, these students put up quite a fight when you challenge their conservative value systems, albeit sometimes in a nonfallical, Rush Limbaugh sort of way. After receiving a test on which a student wrote that he "wouldn't like to be a model because models are gay and stupid, and [he] is definitely not gay," I decided it was time to have a frank discussion about gay rights, human rights, and common decency in general, especially in a classroom setting. Although the students listened respectfully to my after-school special diatribe on the violence and damage caused by seemingly innocent off-color jokes (since a joke often stems from some deeply serious issue, their punchlines often aren't innocent at all), they continued to defend their right to speak freely and homophobically in whatever environment they might choose, citing their indelicacy toward gay rights as a measly cultural difference between the United States and Chile.
Duoc has often been criticized as being "too religious" of a university - it offers daily Mass at several of its campuses; college credit towards your major (whichever major it might be) if you take religion courses; even leaves mini-Bibles and pamphlets on Christian doctrine in the sala docente. Duoc continues to ask students about their religious affiliation, although in Chile it has become taboo at best and illegal at worst to ask this question, fearing how it might bear on the judgement of a student's application.
Wikipedia lends further insight into Opus Dei's involvement in education, saying that "leaders of Opus Dei describe the organization as a teaching entity, whose main activity is to train Catholics to assume personal responsiblity in sanctifying the secular world from within...the official Catholic document which established the prelature states that Opus Dei strives "to put into practice the teaching of the universal call to sanctity, and to promote at all levels of society the sanctification of ordinary work, and by means of ordinary work'". The website goes on to say that 68% of all of Opus Dei's nonprofit programs are in the form of schools and university residences, with 6% in universities, business schools and hospitals.
A Catholic education in South America tends to be viewed as some of the best education a child can receive - the Catholic church is financially able to provide ample educational resources without charging such a high student matriculation fee as would be charged in a private school setting. Catholic educational pedegogy tends to be rigorous, focusing on lecture-style classroom sessions, repetetive memorizational exercises, and narrowly-focused studies.
Watching Donnie Darko for about the bajillionth time this weekend prompted a long discussion about the influence of religious involvement in education. What are the implications of a conservative Catholic education in a school system tailored to working-class students? After mulling over the news with a professor friend, we agreed that the enduring educational dilemma is that the roots of education are in preserving accepted doctrines, and that education has been institutionalized; yet, education provides the means to radically question these same indoctrinations and institutions. How much does school - does institution - get in the way of education?
On the positive side, a Catholic education supplies learners who are highly competent and dutifully skilled in their appropriate fields of study, who are trained to be hard workers and to hold the highest ethical values (although they may be conservative ethical values). It also offers this education on a dime, making it possible for the lower class to acheive a better standard of living and of thinking.
However, negatively, Opus Dei's stress on "the importance of work and professional competence...to perform [one's] work excellently as a service to society and as a fitting offering to God" (thanks Wikipedia) might be a politically correct narrative that a university - and, in extension, its goverment - could offer to entice working class students to maintain a social status quo. Being too literal always comes with the danger of taking yourself too seriously in a society that is constantly changing and that isn't championing your personal ideas as much as you might be. Producing a field of heavily indoctrinated worker bees wouldn't be all that bad for a conservative goverment like Pinera's, nor would it be bad for boosting the economics of a rapidly developing nation such as Chile.
But what a shame it would be if the outcome of religious involvement in education were to vastly limit the chance for Chile to produce more highly skilled, highly educated citizens - if the indoctrination and bureaucracy of the Church were to interfere in allowing the students to really think for themselves, however "imperfect" that thinking might be.
As it stands, much of what I think is positive about the English program at Duoc - especially the TIPS program, which allows native speakers to become visiting professors for a year - might be on the chopping block due to regime change and conservative values. According to one of the Duoc professors, Opus Dei is metaphorically tightening its celice on the Duoc English department's thigh with plans to cut this program as well as educational supplies from native English speaking countries (like the grammar books we currently use in the classroom). TIPS next year may have to bear a burden of proving their value in an increasingly conservative learning environment. It looks like any negative aspects of Opus Dei might be less dramatic than being persued by an albino psychopathic masochistic monk, but still carry the sting of restricting various modes of education.
docente = educational staff
Friday, December 3, 2010
The Commute
The alarm buzzes. I swat at it till it stops. I swat about for my glasses. I swat the sleepy goo out of my eyes. Then, warm in my sheets, I say to myself, I won't go to work today, I'll call in sick today, don't I feel bad anyways, I just woke up with the sun blaring in my face and the alarm cheerlesssly chirping.
I roll over.
The alarm buzzes.
I get up.
I'm so happy I laid out a dress last night so I don't have to make any last-minute wardrobe decisions. It's so nice how easily a dress just gets pulled over your head and that's it. I brush my teeth, throw on some deodorant, and luckily don't have to re-straighten my hair this morning, so I leave on time.
I can walk east to the green line. Men throw these stupid loving faces in my direction, the ones where it looks like half their face has melted downwards. The polite ones greet me with a buen dia. The majority say holalindahermosabonitahuachitasenoritamericablanquita or, perplexingly, negrita.
The metro is stuffy. I walk down to the far end of the platform to try and push my way into the packed car. An old woman cuts me and there is no more room. I must wait for the next train.
Grr.
Packed car, arm in face, shoved about, pushed out, climb stairs, take escalator, cross bridge, descend stairs, packed car, arm in face, face in face, sit down, scamper out at Estacion Central, packed staircase, swing my backpack to my front to avoid getting pickpocketed, up stairs, up more stairs, up more stairs, packed Estacion Central, dodging slow walkers, dodging baby strollers, dodging men offering me cell phones, dodging men just offering, up escalator, run to bus, bus pulling away, jump for bus door, hang half out half in the door as the conductor simultaneously whizzes us around the curve and hands me a ticket, swung by the bus into the nearest seat.
Close eyes.
Annoying bus-riding clown tells jokes, pokes me awake so I can give him change.
Close eyes.
Get off, up stairs, cross bridge, down stairs, say hi to security men, even the cute shy one who won't let me leave until he comes to give me a kiss on the cheek, up four flights of stairs, and all I want is a cup. of. coffee.
Cesar greets me at Coordinacion Docente. I've been working on conditional "if" clauses in my English classes, and so have decided to try to remember them in Spanish. I try one out on sleepy, unassuming Cesar:
Si tu polola cocina para ti, y no te gusta la cosa, que le dirias?
Que tengo dolor de estomago. He gives me a shy smirk.
En SERIO, Cesar.
Que igual es rico, y que me lo agradezco, he says, and I nod in approval.
Boletas para el cafe? I smile hopefully.
No todavia, chica. Thwarted out of a free coffee, I reach into my bag for a packet of Nescafe and my mug. I brew the delicious sugary stuff using the hot water from the bubbler.
I give my students fifteen minutes of written exercises on the board. It takes them twenty.
This is the best part: pure silence as I sip my mokaccino and begin my day.
I roll over.
The alarm buzzes.
I get up.
I'm so happy I laid out a dress last night so I don't have to make any last-minute wardrobe decisions. It's so nice how easily a dress just gets pulled over your head and that's it. I brush my teeth, throw on some deodorant, and luckily don't have to re-straighten my hair this morning, so I leave on time.
I can walk east to the green line. Men throw these stupid loving faces in my direction, the ones where it looks like half their face has melted downwards. The polite ones greet me with a buen dia. The majority say holalindahermosabonitahuachitasenoritamericablanquita or, perplexingly, negrita.
The metro is stuffy. I walk down to the far end of the platform to try and push my way into the packed car. An old woman cuts me and there is no more room. I must wait for the next train.
Grr.
Packed car, arm in face, shoved about, pushed out, climb stairs, take escalator, cross bridge, descend stairs, packed car, arm in face, face in face, sit down, scamper out at Estacion Central, packed staircase, swing my backpack to my front to avoid getting pickpocketed, up stairs, up more stairs, up more stairs, packed Estacion Central, dodging slow walkers, dodging baby strollers, dodging men offering me cell phones, dodging men just offering, up escalator, run to bus, bus pulling away, jump for bus door, hang half out half in the door as the conductor simultaneously whizzes us around the curve and hands me a ticket, swung by the bus into the nearest seat.
Close eyes.
Annoying bus-riding clown tells jokes, pokes me awake so I can give him change.
Close eyes.
Get off, up stairs, cross bridge, down stairs, say hi to security men, even the cute shy one who won't let me leave until he comes to give me a kiss on the cheek, up four flights of stairs, and all I want is a cup. of. coffee.
Cesar greets me at Coordinacion Docente. I've been working on conditional "if" clauses in my English classes, and so have decided to try to remember them in Spanish. I try one out on sleepy, unassuming Cesar:
Si tu polola cocina para ti, y no te gusta la cosa, que le dirias?
Que tengo dolor de estomago. He gives me a shy smirk.
En SERIO, Cesar.
Que igual es rico, y que me lo agradezco, he says, and I nod in approval.
Boletas para el cafe? I smile hopefully.
No todavia, chica. Thwarted out of a free coffee, I reach into my bag for a packet of Nescafe and my mug. I brew the delicious sugary stuff using the hot water from the bubbler.
I give my students fifteen minutes of written exercises on the board. It takes them twenty.
This is the best part: pure silence as I sip my mokaccino and begin my day.
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