Running for VE

In the past few months, I've somehow suddenly become quite interested in running. After so many years of tights and leotards, I sometimes laugh at the sight of myself in running shorts and sneakers, but so it goes, things change. I've dabbled in running for years, but for some reason I've been able to run longer distances and even enjoy the experience lately, which never happened before.

And, as it turns out, running is more fun with friends and concrete goals! In October I accompanied Josh, VE's Executive Director, and a few other VE-ers to run in Concepción, the city in Chile most affected by the February 2010 earthquake. Josh and a friend of his were raising money for VE and the American Red Cross and pledged that if they made a certain amount of money, they'd run the half-marathon. And run it they did! I ran the 10 k, but even as we picked up our numbers the day before the race, I had an itch to run a half. A few months later I ran another 10 k in Santiago, again with a group of other VE volunteers.

And now I'm training for my own half-marathon! I'll be running on April 3rd in my dear Santiago. I'm looking to raise $500 for VE with this run, so if you have an extra $5 floating around someone, I have a great place for you to put it! With the help of Matt Suggett, a computer wiz and former VE director who's training for the Madrid marathon to raise money for VE, I have this sweet donation page that makes donating to VE a cinch. Check it out! There's even a cool little feature on there that makes it possible to track my training through dailymile. Any support would be greatly appreciated! I've already been blown away by the support I've recieved, but I still have a little over $200 to go!

I'll leave off with a couple of visuals of the camaraderie I've so loved:

In Concepción with Meg, Josh, Marco and Meghan

In Santiago with Marco, Lindsey, Nico, Meg, Josh, Annie, Faith, and Stephen

Blog much?

Soooo July 25th was my last blog. Yimes. I think, though, that this lapse in time is a sign of a significant and positive shift in my experience here in Chile. (Yes, I'm still in Chile!). Back in June and July I stopped feeling as though I were having an abroad experience and started feeling as though I were living my life, Santiago style. Moving out of the VE bubble and buying a bicycle really sealed the deal. One day as I was biking to my then-new apartment, I realized the amount of control I have over my own experience and decision-making process. I could bike on the wrong side of the river if I wanted, not caring if it took me longer to get home. I could stay in Chile longer, embracing the fact that life here is indeed reality and a happier reality than I've had anywhere else.

So that's what I've decided to do! I got a little promotion at VE to Director of Operations and in December signed on for another year. It was an easy decision. Student loans be damned, I'll figure something out.

As Director of Operations, my job includes a lot of what I did as Director of Volunteer Relations in terms of running our volunteer orientation program but also includes institutional relations, aka maintaining VE's relationships with the community centers, homes, and schools we work with. The new aspects of my job are quite scary to me but that's why I like them. Each call to the ever-intimidating Señora Ana, director of one of our girls' homes, feels like a small victory, for example. Plus I still get to work closely with all of our amazing volunteers, which is what keeps us inspired.

Last week I went with Josh, VE's Executive Director since June of last year, to visit Centro Comunitario Los Navíos to be interviewed by the three children participating in a journalism workshop with two of our volunteers. The kids each sat up straight at the table, nervously fiddling with their notebooks as they asked us questions from their thoroughly prepared lists. These kids live in one of the most at-risk areas of Santiago but had put on their best sweaters and flat-out dumbfounded me with their thought-provoking questions and insights about our answers. They were the definition of politeness and graciousness. I left feeling more convinced about the importance of our work than ever.

No life, however glorious, is without its ups and downs, but despite those downs, I feel grateful that this one is mine. Getting to help keep VE sustainable is most definitely a mutually beneficial relationship. I've even found a bakery that makes amazing gluten-free bread. It's neither cheap nor close to my house, but hey, it's progress.

Gut Instincts and Toddler Spittle

I’ve recently begun making visits to the various institutions VE partners with to see how each of the volunteers is doing in his or her work environment. I began making the visits for a number of reasons, mainly to increase my support of the volunteers and to begin to more fully understand the experience of volunteering at the different institutions. Although I know very well the experience of working with the adolescent girls at Entre Todas, I previously had no real sense for the nature of the work at our other partner institutions.

So far, the visits have been even more successful than I anticipated. Even riding the Metro to the institutions with the volunteers has proved to be a great opportunity to chat about how work and life in general is going. I see some of the volunteers more than others, so this is a great way for me to get one-on-one time with everyone. In the past, some volunteers have only come to me if they’ve been having a problem, so this gives me a chance to catch up with them about the positive aspects of their lives in Santiago, too.

Now, whether this fits into my previous description of the visits as “successful” or not, I’ve been loudly reminded of the various delightful facets of working with small children. Last week I visited Hogar Esperanza, a home where the majority of the children are babies and toddlers. Within five minutes of my visit, a two or three-year-old girl noticed that the she and I had ended up in one of the playrooms alone, so she announced that she was going to leave me alone in the room and that I was going to cry. She then proceeded to leave, slamming the door behind her. She later hawked a lougie onto the back of my head and would have delivered another to my face had I not ducked. I was forced to remind myself of the advice I always give incoming volunteers: the kids will do things that seem like a personal attack but the motive comes from an entirely different place.

On my visit to Hogar Pléyades, where the children are between the ages of two and ten, I experienced a similar discovery of the ever-fluctuating attitudes of young children. Their behavior is simply an extremely honest reflection of their emotions at each and every moment. Painfully obvious, yes, but interesting to me as I’ve been chatting with a friend recently about our instincts as adults to feel guilty or unreasonable for reacting in a “childish” way to something sad or frustrating. Children haven’t yet learned the manner in which adults feel they should react to any given situation and therefore react to the events in their lives more authentically.

The honesty goes beyond emotions, as well. I spent twenty minutes with one of the six-year-old girls at Pléyades on the patio, helping her hobble around on her rollerblades. I was having a great time until she randomly stopped, put a wrinkly nosed smile on her face and said, “Tía, you don’t have any boobs, you’re a MAN!” She then laughed maniacally for a moment before she reached her hands back out and said impatiently, “Let’s go.”

Clearly I don’t think adults should go around saying things like that to each other, but I’ve definitely left these recent visits with thoughts about honesty and authenticity. With my departure from Chile in the ever-approaching future, I’ve been thinking a lot about what sorts of decisions I should make in the coming months. I’m feeling more content than ever right now, in huge part thanks to a beautiful new living situation. I feel more balanced and able to listen to my instincts now, even if the decisions they lead me to make take some courage. I’ve found that this only makes the results more rewarding. (Feel free to groan or roll your eyes here).

As for that ever-approaching future I mentioned, it looks like I’m going to be staying with VE through early December or so. Although any VE-er will tell you that I’m actually never leaving, I want to make sure I never arrive at a time in which I’m not feeling excited about the work. I want the person in my position to be energetic and fresh, so I'll just need to keep listening to my instincts about whether or not that person is me. For now, I'm still very, very happy to be where I am.

Caring about the World Cup

I'm a bit baffled that I've just sat down to write a post about sports.

All bafflement aside, I must proceed and admit that I'm really into the World Cup this year. Now, "into" should be taken fairly loosely considering the number of Chileans who actually purchased flat screen TVs for the occasion and the fact that I didn't know until three weeks ago that soccer had rules beyond "Try to get the ball into your opponent's net."

Chile hadn't qualified for the World Cup since 1998, so when they beat Colombia to qualify, the celebrations in Plaza Italia looked like this:

I think I can safely say that every single person in Chile who's old enough to form opinions and young enough to remember their own name cares deeply about soccer, or here, fútbol. One of my first memories from Chile is looking out the kitchen window of my first apartment to Parque Bustamante, where a dad was holding his unsteady toddler's hands to help him walk, a miniature soccer ball bumping along in front of the boy's feet. I can't think of anything quite so universal in the United States, and I've certainly never seen fans in the US act like the fans in Chile.

As the World Cup began, there was an excitement in the air as if Christmas were around the corner. On the days when Chile played, schools opened late to allow everyone to watch the games. People selling fruit on the streets suddenly had TVs tuned to the game at their stands. In bars and restaurants, it was wise to order everything you wanted before the games started, as the waiters and cooks would file into the dining areas to watch, becoming increasingly more difficult to waive down as the intensity of play increased. In the VE office, we'd huddle around the TV in the living room, laptops on our laps just for show.

I've learned a lot in the past few weeks about the surprisingly complicated game of fútbol. I certainly couldn't explain the off-sides rule to anyone, but at least I now understand what's happening when the referee flashes those little yellow and red cards. On the down side, I don't think I'm anyone's favorite person to watch fútbol with. Although I've gotten better at recognizing good plays and bad plays, I'm normally more interested in making commentary that involves the players' facial hair. There are also a few traditions I can't seem to move past. For example, at the end of every game, the players exchange jerseys, sometimes putting them on right then! Jerseys that have been aggressively sweat into for the past ninety minutes by someone else, and the players just pull them right on. Sick.

Watching the Chile World Cup games here in Santiago was certainly a treat. Whenever Chile scored a goal, we'd open the office windows and listen to the immediate explosion of screams and honking horns. When they won their first two games, the celebrations that followed were on par with the best I ever watched from my old apartment on the 15th floor. As usual, the police started with water cannons, then brought out the tear gas. After one of the games, we watched from the office as the police cavalry chased some fans down the side street outside our windows. Even after Chile lost to Spain but moved on the the next round, the mass of people in Plaza Italia was as giant as ever. Even Telefónica showed its Chilean pride with a huge flag on its building in Plaza Italia:

On the one hand, it's great to see so many people fired up about one thing, celebrating together in such a no holds barred way. On the other hand, I wonder how they don't get sick of the same routine every time. Perhaps that's the difference between me and a true fútbol fan. Although I might tire of jumping around with thousands of other people a few times a month, knowing I'd be blasted with water and tear gas and potentially chased by horses, the Chilean fans can't seem to stop themselves from celebrating, no matter the consequences. I guess that's passion for you.

Now that Chile's out of the running, I'm less inclined to check FIFA's website, but it's certainly been an interesting foray into the world of international soccer. At the very least, it's been a reminder to keep an open mind about what I might or might not find interesting. And at the very most, it's been great fun to experience the festivities with my VE colleagues. As for office productivity? Better luck next month.

Bolivia!

Sometimes working a full-time, almost un-paid job in South America can be frustrating in that some of the most amazing travel opportunities in the world are right in my back yard, but I'm too much of a broke volunteer to get to experience them. Sometimes I decide to borrow money and go experience them anyway!

At the end of May, seven of us from VE traveled up north to San Pedro, Chile, a town alongside the Atacama Desert, then continued on to take a Jeep tour that would finish in the world's largest (4,086 square miles) salt flat in Uyuni, Bolivia. I flew up to San Pedro with my friends Annie and Ashton, where we met up with the other four of the group who had opted for the cheaper 24-hour bus. Although the Jeep tour was our "final destination," we took our first day in San Pedro to explore the famous Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) in the Atacama Desert. Here are Annie and Ashton and I at the first stop of the tour in the tour of the Desert:


The tour took us to various famous locations in the desert and concluded with watching the sunset over the Moon Valley. At this point we met up with the other half of our group, then watched as the sunset reflected an incredible set of colors on the mountains surrounding the valley.


The next day we were off on the tour, which brought us immediately to the Bolivian border and 4800 meters (15,748 feet!), so it was coooold. Here's the Bolivian Migration building in the middle of the desert:

After some questionable interchanges in the migration building, we piled into our Jeeps and were off! Because we were a group of seven, and only six could fit into a Jeep, we had to separate into two vehicles, but met a cool couple from Scotland and one from Germany as a result. The first day we drove until about 2:00 in the afternoon when we arrived at the first refugio, which was an unheated, very simple building with beds and a large room with tables for eating meals. This location was at 4370 meters (or 14,337 feet), so the drivers told us to rest up to avoid getting headaches, etc, from the altitude. On the drive to the refugio, we stopped at incredible place after incredible place. There were a few lakes with distinctively colored water, geysers, and this hotsprings:


At the refugio, we ignored the advice of the drivers and went exploring. Although most of us felt fine aside from minor headaches, we found walking up even the smallest of hills extremely difficult. The place was too incredible not to explore, though--it was one of those places with huge sky and landscape like nothing I've ever seen before. When the sun set, I realized I hadn't ever seen a 360 degree sunset. It wasn't too bad.


That night, though, was one of the only nights in my life I've ever had trouble sleeping because of the cold. In long johns, sweats, my L.L. Bean down sleeping bag, and the bedding on the bed, I was still freezing. With my face outside my sleeping bag I seriously feared for frostbite. With my face inside my sleeping bag, at an altitude with so little oxygen, I just couldn't breath. I was glad for the early morning wake-up call just for the excuse to get into the heated Jeep.

The second day of the tour brought more and more incredible sites. It became comical, almost, each time Ruben, our driver, would stop and say "Foto, foto," with slightly less enthusiasm each time. We started off at Laguna Colorado (Colored Lake) where we saw lots of flamingos!

There were more incredible lakes, an oddly beautiful stone tree, a volcano, and non-stop photogenic scenery. For the second night of lodging, as we neared the salt flat, we stayed in a hostel made almost completely of salt. The picture below is of the dining area--all the tables and stools are made of salt, along with the walls. It was salty (I licked it).

The next morning we drove to the salt flat. On our way in, while trying to wrap our heads around what we were looking at, we drove past a man on a bicycle with a baby on the back. The surreality was thick. Here's a photo I snapped of the other Jeep while we were driving quite closely to each other on the salt flat:

The classic tourist activity on the salt flats is to take goofy pictures because something about the seemingly endless salt makes playing with perspective extremely easy. We took lots of pictures such as this one:

The tour also stopped by the first ever salt hotel, outside of which were these piles of salt:

The Jeep tour ended at Uyuni's one other attraction: a train cemetery. After three days of unbelievable natural sites, ending at the resting place of a bunch of antique trains seemed strange, but interesting nonetheless. The trains were used mostly by the mining industry, apparently, but when the industry collapsed in the 1940's, the trains became obsoletes. For us, exhausted at the end of three long days of riding in Jeeps, the trains were simply a cool place to climb around for a minute before we moved on.

After the tour ended, our group went separate ways. Annie, Ashton, Madinah, and I continued on into Bolivia for a few days. After discovering that juice-in-a-bag was the best thing Uyuni had to offer beyond the salt flat and the train cemetery, we decided to take the next bus to Sucre, a beautiful introduction to Bolivian cities. Sucre has, in my opinion, an excellent balance of beauty and grit. The main square, pictured below, is charming, filled with manicured gardens and surrounded by gorgeous buildings.

There seemed to be a fair amount of tourism, but there were also plenty of opportunities to see the vast differences between Bolivia and Chile. Living in Santiago, I sometimes forget what South America is really like. With it's big business and Wi-fi everywhere you go, Santiago is very much a modern, developed city. Sucre, although a beautiful city with everything you could need, was a reminder of a different way of life. A large percentage of the Bolivian women we saw, for example, wore traditional dress. Street stalls such as the one pictured below were much more common than grocery stores and seemed to be the way most people purchased all of their goods. It was difficult to find a soda or bottle of water that was refrigerated, but very easy to purchase fresh, unpackaged foods on the street. We were there on Bolivian mother's day and on the night before, it seemed that one in every twenty people was carrying an uncovered cake amidst the crowded streets.

On our last full day in Sucre, we took a half-day hike along a portion of the Inca Trail. The four of us had a private tour with a Bolivian guide who, along with being fascinated by his first all-female tour group, told us lots of interesting information about Bolivian culture and history. Bolivia's current president, Evo Morales, has declared himself to be the first indigenous president, for example. He's also apparently known for the striped sweater he always wears, which has become a popular style in Bolivia since he took office.

The trail itself, which dates back to pre-Columbian times, was incredibly beautiful. The colors of the landscape were unlike colors I've seen elsewhere--the greens were almost muted, the dirt and clay orange-y and purple in places. Along some parts of the trail we walked on new paths but in some places we walked on the original stones that has been placed there thousands of years before. Here's a photo that shows a new dirt road which we later drove up to get a view of the valley, which includes a massive crater in which you can see original dinosaur prints. Nutty!

For the last two days of my trip, I travelled alone. Madinah headed further north to La Paz, while Ashton and Annie headed to another Bolivian city, Potosí, where they took a tour of a grim operating silver mine. Because of limited time, I needed to head back down to San Pedro to catch my flight back to Santiago. Transportation in Bolivia is much less efficient that in Chile, we learned, so I wanted to leave myself plenty of time. Although I was initially a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of traveling by myself, even just for two days, I found it quite relaxing and got a lot of reading and writing done, which was lovely.

Bolivia was a fascinating place and definitely one that I'd like to revisit. Perhaps I'll WWOOF there, who knows! Regardless, the trip was well worth going a bit further into debt for.

Smog Season/Fresh Starts

Winter has most definitely arrived in Santiago. As I write this I’m perfecting the art of typing with my sweet new alpaca fingerless gloves with mitten flaps from Bolivia! Fun, perhaps, but necessary more than anything else. I’m also writing this on a Saturday night, which normally wouldn’t happen, but I’m sitting home with what was a flu but morphed into a sinus infection with a bonus side of pink eye! Thanks, Santiago, your smog has done me well, yet again.

There is also positive news to report, however! We’ve just finished the orientation program for the June class of VE volunteers, a class of ten, none of whom were welcomed to Chile by an 8.8 earthquake. Orientation went smoothly and we’re all quite enamored with this set of newbies. Anther exciting newbie at VE is Josh Pilz, who will take over for Brooke as Executive Director. We LOVE him. As sad as it is to see Brooke go, we’re all thrilled that Josh is the replacement! I first met Josh on our earthquake relief trip to Retiro and was thoroughly impressed with him as a human being. He has started his training in the VE office, even taking part in the majority of the June class’s orientation week. He’s even excited about Vanessa and Edmondstone, the tiny little VE turtles he’ll inherit as ED.

A very exciting detail that deserves its own paragraph is that one of the newbies doesn’t eat gluten. !!! I’ve already taken her to one of my favorite restaurants, fed her my from-scratch gluten-free pizza, and generally overwhelmed her with my excitement about having another of my kind around VE. She has stated repeatedly her gratitude that I laid down all the groundwork in training the VE staff on the art of gluten-free cooking, which is valid considering I ate lettuce and rice with tomato paste sauce during my orientation week.

In other new news, I’ve moved! We decided it was time to move on from cozy apartment 1505 (one cushy block from the VE office) and venture into the world of living with Chileans. I’ve found myself a perfect little quirky apartment three metro stops from the office in the very happening area of Providecia. I live with Jose and Max, two wonderful/terribly cool Chileans who are both in film. (I know). The apartment is great fun—the two boys live upstairs and downstairs are the kitchen, living room/dining room, and my room, complete with my own bathroom. The rent is cheaper than 1505, and I get to speak Spanish every day. I moved the Monday of orientation week, so was literally in the apartment only to sleep for the rest of the week, but now that life is returning to normal, I think I’m on my way to figuring out the rhythm of the casa.

And, because apparently I forget to tell people, I’m staying a bit longer than planned here in Chile! I guess I meant to leave some time this month, but for many reasons, including that there’s no one to take over my job yet, I’m staying a few extra months. My priority is to do what I can to help the transition for whoever takes my job go smoothly, and since the huge transition from one Executive Director to the next is currently happening, I want to be around and help in any way I can with that as well. The plan as of right now is to find someone for my job sometime in July, train them for the month of August, help them with the orientation for the September class, then head off to a farm to WWOOF for a few months. WWOOF-ing is something I’ve always wanted to do, and something I would love to do in Chile or Argentina or Bolivia, so this seems like the time. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be home for Christmas and a great big reality check!

All in all life is going wonderfully, as usual! There’s never a dull moment with VE and rarely a free one (it took me staying home sick to blog, apparently), so time continues to pass at an alarmingly quick rate. There have been a few tough good-byes recently with long-term volunteers moving on, but this new class of volunteers has given me very high hopes for the next three months.

Construction Trip to Pencahue, Chile

After such a fulfilling trip to Retiro to help with post-earthquake reconstruction, four of us decided to repeat the experience back in early May. We joined a group of students from the Universidad de Chile for a weekend of building in Pencahue, another tiny town about 5 hours south of Santiago. We brought our own hammers and measuring tapes on this trip and thank goodness we did, as not long after we pulled out of Santiago, the trip leader passed around a laptop with a spreadsheet into which each person was filling in their name, what tools they brought with them, and how much construction experience they had.

We thought nothing of the spreadsheet until the morning when, over clumpy powdered milk, we discovered that the group had been divided into teams of four people per mediagua (the pre-fabricated temporary housing we were there to build). There were 16 mediaguas sitting outside the school where we were sleeping and the plan was to finish them all by Sunday afternoon.

“That can’t be possible,” I said. “The guys in Retiro said 12 was the ideal number of people to build a mediagua.”

The 16 mediaguas in waiting

We were not in Retiro anymore! Still recovering from the 3:30 a.m. arrival in Pencahue and the 6:30 a.m. wake-up call, we all piled on to a bus that delivered us each to our worksites. Unlike in Retiro where the worksites were all within the “downtown” area of the town, we were each at least a mile from each other, most of us on family farms.

My team, luckily, was comprised of three Chilean students, each of whom had some significant construction experience. I was able to help a lot in the first phase—digging holes for the foundation pile-ons with iron rods! As we got into the more complicated building stages, I became an expert wall-holder and nail-hander-to-er. On Sunday evening as the sun set and the boys finished the roof, I was “in charge” of taking pictures.

Our team, plus a few members of the family, working on the foundation

The land around our site was absolutely beautiful, with mountains visible in the distance 360 degrees around us. As we worked, we were surrounded by cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, cats, dogs, sheep and horses. At one point on Sunday morning, we saw the stream of run-off from the house flow red after the mother slaughtered one of the turkeys for lunch.

The best part, by far, of the weekend was getting to know the family for whom we were building the mediagua. Because all of us from the group were all so separated throughout Pencahue, we didn’t meet back up for lunch or breaks, we simply ate lunch with our families. When I told the family that I didn’t eat meat or gluten, I became an instant topic of conversation. I was presented with a beautiful bowl of lentils instead of the turkey soup everyone else was eating, and the mother cooked a batch of potatoes for me on the second day. Throughout the course of the weekend, each of the couple’s four daughters showed up, two with their children, so I got to explain my fascinating dietary requirements each time.

The welcome they extended was so warm, I didn’t notice until the end of lunch on Saturday the condition of the family’s house. It seemed to be combination house and grain barn, and I’m still not sure if they were only living there because their house collapsed in the earthquake or because they had been on the list for a mediagua and their time finally came. The house was put together with various materials, in some places just plastic sheets, and was thus incredibly drafty, so once the sun went down, they all huddled around a bowl of coals from the oven to keep warm. They were incredibly generous with us and incredibly appreciative, offering us hot coffee and tea and fresh homemade bread (an egg for me) each evening so we could take a break from the cold.

The father helping out with the foundation

The matriarch, looking adorable as usual

Handing up the zinc roof panels

In the end, our group of forty-eight people completed twelve mediaguas. A smaller group was planning on staying until Tuesday to finish the remaining four. Although I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Retiro, I feel incredibly content to have gone on this trip, which felt infinitely more productive, and to have met that family. Hopefully they’re enjoying the new addition to their home!

With the family in the finished product!