The Shadow and the Soul

There is a unique perspective given to life when a person leans their head against a bus window. If it is sunny, your cushion of hair absorbs the day through the glass. One of your eyes is inevitably stunted, so that your other has to cock itself up and out to survey the land. I was in this position of the ergonomics of head-against-bus-window contemplation, the wind trailing in faint little bits of seaweed smell from the upper deck, when the conductor abruptly stopped and I slammed my roving eye into the bar in front of said bus window. We were in the middle of nowhere along a rocky coast. Houses facing the ocean looked like sad bits of laundry left waving on the line, connecting this town seemingly to every other nameless, faceless coastal village in Central Chile. There wasn't even a designated bus stop: the driver had whimsically pulled over.

"Isla Negra," he grumbled in our direction. I plopped myself onto the sand-whipped pavement, holding my eye. The bus rumbled off.

Let me repeat that we barely had any clue where we were. Let me state that the lonely beauty of the place made me not really care. I was staring at an endless ice-blue sea on a cloudless day. The wind sounded off the rocks so that all I could hear was a sonic boom of wave after wave and a constant whistling. We bundled up and haphazardly wandered down the road.

I had come on the second installment of my commune with Pablo Neruda, (not even barely arguably) Chile's most famous poet. "I wait for you like a lonely house / till you will see me again and live in me. / Till then my windows ache," he had written once to a lover. Neruda was a natural architect and contractor; his words leave me sure that he viewed life, in part, as a constant construction project. I had come to see one of his favorite places - a "lonely house" built on the raw shore of a rough coast, so close to the edge of the world that the sea could spit at its windows.

Neruda loved the sea, though was famously afraid to ever set foot upon it. The entrance to Isla Negra contains a boat moored safely high up on a rocky outcropping. Neruda would sit in this boat, staring at the sea, and drink red wine - as the slow workings of alcohol had the same effect of being on the waves. His three houses in Santiago, Isla Negra, and Valparaiso all incorporate this nautical love into its archetecture and furnishings. Shipless figureheads find port off of ladder-stepped balconies in Neruda's living rooms; the curve of kitchen ceilings echoes the ribs of a boat's waistline; and knotted wormwood is found in abundance in every inch and corner of his homes.

The houses are as whimsical as I would have imagined Neruda to be, and show that he was a man who enjoyed, above all, the pleasure of enjoyment. He drank out of stained glass cups, saying that water tasted better when in a colored chalice; he placed old toys about the house, saying that "the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly"; and the portraits and statues he hangs about his houses all are positioned to be staring at a portrait or statue of the opposite sex, so that they will "not feel lonely."

Most enchanting is how his words come alive as you walk around the house. Every spot, every nook, has been inscribed in his house of poetry, and it is obvious that these houses, in a way, built his poetry, and vice-versa. Just stand at his desk, looking through a porthole, to see his muse - the sweet, forlorn feeling of Home constructed in harmony with nature; the fragile beauty of manmade composition in the unforgiving path of the sweep of the sea.

Neruda was laid to rest after a battle with cancer shortly after the takeover of the country by Pinochet's military coup. His dream of a functional Communist party in Chile died with a gunshot to Allende's head. Flowers grow thickly out of his grave at Isla Negra, facing the sea, the gravestone inscription eroded into a faint echo of his name, once carved deeply into the rock.

"El que no salta..."

It is minute 73 of Game 2 for Chile. Tension builds to a boiling point as Chile teases our Alameda restaurant onlookers with close-but-no-cigar tries. The swears get nastier. My barros luco grows colder. The horns become more annoying. I could kiss the ref for throwing a red card at Suiza number 11 and could kill him for calling offsides on Chile's first goal (which wasn't really offsides). It is ON and we are pounding the tables and shouting and chanting chichichilelelevivachile! as Chile bears down on the Swiss, cleats flinging turf in tiny missiles and Isla passes to Valdivia, Valdivia passes to Vidal, I think of Vidal Sassoon and my mullet and I forget if Vidal's nickname is Celia Punk or is it Valdivia's and as the fumes of one thousand chain-smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes fill the room all of Chile explodes in a bloodthirsty howl as Chile finally scores a
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our enterprisers quickly close the gates over their front glass windows and discreetly dole out bills to the twenty or so packed restaurant tables as we pay and join the growing mob outside and all around me is the red and white and blue of painted sweatstained faces and flags as capes flapping in the winter wind and the somber olive green of the caribineros as we stampede chanting and throwing confetti in our hair and spitting it out of our mouths and little Chilean babies crawl on mountains of confetti and we are packed, packed in Plaza Italia, holding onto each other for dear life, screaming our heads off, being shoved and our feet not touching the ground as the density of the crowd keeps us moving without walking, jumping and piggy-backing and laughing and smiling and running, running out of fear of being tear-gassed, or, worse, sprayed with sewage water, back to the safety of Laura's apartment and the comfort of a soothing cup of hot chocolate.

How Tim Ate Half a Pig

I'm usually not all that afraid of dodgy neighborhoods - living on 8th Street in Allentown certainly kicked most of my fears to the curb. However, I will take it as a pretty good indicator that if 98% of all restaurants are closed on a street after dark, it's probably for good reason. I took stock of my surroundings. Streetlights flickering? Check. Dogs barking viciously somewhere out of sight? Check. Men reaching through a driver's side window, shifting a car into neutral, and pushing it down the street? Check. It was right about this moment that I started wishing I hadn't brought a neon yellow purse to Chile. Tim helped me slip it under my coat, but all that did was create a purse-shaped bulge that made my waistline mimic that of the Elephant Man.

I was happy there were four of us traveling to "El Hoyo," although three of us happened to be an intimidating 5 foot 2. We had set out to put Anthony Bourdain and his Travel Channel goonies to shame:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyWvMobkGgo

I had worked a twelve hour day, sin almuerzo, and my ravenous stomach was up to the challenge.

"El Hoyo"s appearance dually mimics its namesake - it is a hole in the wall on a side street near Estacion Central. The barrel protruding from its stucco exterior is probably the fanciest thing about the place. But we weren't fooled. We had come to feast. On roast beast.

Our dishes of choice?
Tim: Pernil with boiled peeled potatoes
Laura: Arollado with French Fries (and about a pound of ketchup)
Brittaney: A hearty-looking churrasco (sliced steak) with avocado, lettuce, and tomato
Myself: Costillar con agregado (Boneless ribs with more of the boiled peeled potatoes)

Of course, we couldn't come to "El Hoyo" and NOT wash our food down by ordering two pitchers of their famous terremotos. These drinks are called "Earthquakes" for a reason: they might only consist of boxed-quality white wine and pineapple ice cream, but they pack a whollop.

I was halfway through my first one (and consequently halfway to my hangover) when our food was served. All of our eyes bugged out as Tim's dish was plopped before him:

Tim had ordered half a pig.

Literally.

And he finished it all.

It was one of the more amazing things I've been privelaged to see in my lifetime. Tim put Takeru Kobayashi to shame. His pig leg was so slow-cooked it literally fell off the bone in glistening fatty chunks, making knives unnecessary utensils. We all shared each other's plates and had a great time fooling around and talking about the upcoming World Cup, our cute and not-so-cute students, and how forty years from now each one of us could blame our heart attacks on the meals we were consuming that evening.

I guess the saying "you are what you eat" is true, in this case: we stumbled out of "El Hoyo" like fattened swine, searched out a bus, and rode on through the night.

If You Give A Palabra, She Will Appreciate the Support

On our first day of orientation, CIEE told us that working at Duoc would be a "singular experience." It certainly isn't the college I was prepared to teach at.

DuocUC is a sister school of the Universidad Catolica, one of the most prestigious universities in South America. 56,000 students attend technical and professional courses at 12 different campuses. These students are the students who didn't pass their PSU's (Chilean version of the SAT's), who don't have the money to attend a private university, or who are older students looking for a change in career.

Duoc's English program was only implemented ten years ago, but has grown incalcuably in that short time - our campus alone has 30 English teachers, 6 of which are TIPS (native speakers from abroad who were contracted either with Teach in Chile or CIEE's Teach Abroad program). Every student at Duoc needs to take at least 4 semesters of English in his or her time at the college.

Almost each and every student at Duoc would rather not.

It's not all of them, of course - of my 100 or so students, I'd say maybe 8 are actually interested in learning English, and maybe 40 more humor me by being good sports and playing along. I try to encourage these students as much as I can - by reading poetry they want to show me, by participating in improv rap contests with them, by giving them copies of Beatles lyrics, by sending them YouTube videos about famous American illustrators, and by coaching them for interviews with ski companies in Vermont...and, of course, by teaching them how to swear. They are kind to me in turn - they invite me to join them surfing on the weekends, they invite me to go drinking and dancing, they tell me about cool dive bars in the city, or where to get really cheap clothes or food, or why I should like Colo-Colo and not La U. They give me lessons on how to roll my "R"s, and laugh at me mercilessly when all I can manage is to purr like a demented kitten.

About 10 students make me want to rip out my hair and/or go at them with a pick-ax. They write me disrespectful emails, ask me every five seconds if class is over yet, and tell me that playing games is fome ("lame"). They text in class, or answer their phones if they ring; they make comments about how great my ass is; they walk in forty-five minutes late and need to take ten minutes to give everyone a hug or a high-five before finding their seats; or, as an entire class, they just don't show up. The worst has to go to my roommate, who told me that one of her girls pulled out a straightening iron, plugged it in, and began to straighten her hair halfway through class.

I've learned some great little tricks on how to make sure they hate their lives when they make mine a living hell.

For cell phones: answer them in front of the class. Answer them in English. This works especially well when Alvaro is talking to his girlfriend and you can practically hear her head spin as she spews pea soup out of her side of the phone when a girl answers instead of her boyfriend.

For chronically somewhat-late students: I have a roll of duct tape which I have taken to cutting into strips. The first student who entered the classroom is allowed to tape a strip to the forehead of the late student, write "LATE," and use a non-permanent maker to give them a moustache, or unibrow, or whatever they deem appropriate (within Catholic school policy, of course). The late student sits in the front of the class, facing them, for the entire class period. A crowd-pleaser. (I arm them with nail polish remover at the end of class so they can wipe away their embarassing face-paint.)

For hopelessly late students: now that I finally have keys to my rooms, I lock the door. If they start banging or whining "Profe, noooooooooooooooo, Profe, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease," I am armed with cold water and a high window from which to pour said cold water over their heads until they stop interrupting my class.

Embarassing them in a funny way lets you keep class respect while making sure the offending student learns their lesson. And they certainly do. When Duoc hands me a "singular experience," I'm prepared to dish one right back at 'em, and keep everyone laughing.

The Santiago City Slicker Meets the Sunshine House

Valparaiso is an olfactory smorgasbord. Nestled into a cove in Central Chile, it's a town that would prompt Liam Neeson to want to release the Kraken on its filth. The beautiful sea breeze wafts rotting fish, sewer water, and dried-out cat poop up into your welcoming nostrils.

Luckily for me, I love things that are slightly shitty. They appeal to me in that I-just-graduated-from-college-and-can't-afford-matching-furniture sort of way. Valpo, like Santiago, seems to have been constructed by a woman who has great taste in style but no matching fashion sense; stately art deco buildings are flanked by Swiss-style chalets are towered by slim San-Francisican-style tenant housing. Think Hell's Kitchen meets Lombard Avenue meets shanty town. Much of the housing is seemingly waif. Almost all the rooftops, though, are made out of sheet metal (as are the fronts of most of the buildings).

Valpo winds crazily up a series of cerros, or steep hills, where the sidewalk yields to a series of steps, like a staircase out of a M.C. Escher drawing. The city has hired a team of local artists to paint the otherwise grey stone buildings and cement walls, and everywhere you turn there is a fantastical mural or a bunch of guys fervently working on something new. In this way, Valpo is a growing comic book of pop art.

About halfway up Cerro Yuguay (spelling?) stands the Sunshine House, home of the talented Jeanette Hardy (whose blog you can find on the CIEE website or through the link here on my page). Tosh, Jackie, Matt, Laura and I slogged up with bottles of champagne and orange juice, sweating in the indian summer sun. We colapsed on Jeanette's makeshift deck (the boards aren't nailed in but are rather cleverly balanced on a wooden frame).

The Sunshine House makes much of material: its outside walls are drywall, sheet metal, wood, and glass, which explains the leaking Jeanette described after the tormenta they received; but the house is like the massive tree-fort mansion every adult secretly wishes they could live in. The rooms are big and bright, with whitewashed walls and distressed floors. Paper lanterns hang from the hallway ceiling. Outside the wooden portico curls upon itself in a series of whispy spirals, the cracked blue paint adding to the house's unending charms. We chilled with our mamosas and looked out on the rough Pacific Ocean and watched huge battleships sail in. I felt small in the wake of the ocean, but warm and relaxed in the company of friends.

We spent the afternoon exploring the insanity that is the city (a map of Valpo's streets exist, but it isn't at all helpful), coming upon neon-yellow and orange houses cheerfully setting in the afternoon sun. We faced undending bluffs and cliffs where the road abruptly ended or turned. A street vendor sold earrings carved out of avocado pits. Street dogs protected us from curious stray cats. My sandaled feet turned black in the street sludge. Music wafted from a reggae concert somewhere beneath us. A child offered me his half-eaten Chupa-Chup. I was loving it all.

As the sun set into the sea, I took refuge in a cafe. Sipping an iced mocha, I sighed into my chair, perfectly happy that I had escaped my city for a town that had as much growing up to do as I have. But I was so happy to come home to the order and elegance that my Bellas Artes pad has to offer, and to fall asleep to the noisy din of the bar below me, and, gently underneath, the purr of the night buses on their beat.