Is this Yerba Loca?

Now that I've been in Chile for so long, it's tempting to spend my weekends drinking coffee and puttering lazily around Santiago, especially now that winter's on its way in. In this country, though, I have to remember that the rewards for getting out of the city are always incredible.

Last weekend I went with four friends to Yerba Loca, a nature reserve northeast of Santiago. It's accessed from the same road as the well-known ski areas outside Santiago but isn't famous enough (yet) itself to be in Chile guidebooks. In retrospect, a guidebook entry about Yerba Loca could have helped us, but being slightly underprepared allows for lots of after-the-fact giggles.

The theme of the trek, which from the parking lot to the campsite was about 18 kilometers, or 11 miles, became "Is this right?" There were moments of "Is this the path?" and "Is that where we have to go?" As the end of the hike became increasingly steep, bringing us to 3800 meters (12,500 feet) via a slippery, rocky, winding trail, I began to feel hopeless, stopping practically every 10 meters to give my heart a chance to slow down.

At the end of one particularly difficult hill, we reached an open area where a lone tent was pitched. "Is this the campsite?" we said. Thanks to the other hiker camping out, we learned that yes, it was, and we could finally take our packs off.

Here we are on a unique, forgivingly flat portion of the trail, gearing up to climb the mountain in the background:

Here's our incredible campsite, the most remote site I've ever experienced:

Our excitement at arriving at our resting place quickly faded as we noticed the cold. I can't say for sure what the temperature was that night, but I can say that I shivered the night away in multiple layers and a down sleeping bag supposedly good to 20 degrees Fahrenheit/-7 Celsius.

We had read that the water in the streams, although run-off from a glacier, was unsafe to drink due to a high content of minerals. The other camper at the site, though, told us that the snow was safe, so we collected it from along the stream and over the next couple of hours managed to heat enough water for tea and the most incredible lentils and white rice I've ever tasted.

The night was not the most enjoyable I've experienced. The tent we borrowed turned out to be a summer tent with lots of ventilation, which didn't work so well for a windy winter night. I was in better shape than my tentmates Faith and Lindsey, though, who survived the night snuggling between a comforter and a slumber party sleeping bag. One could say, though, that it's important to have these nights to appreciate a warm bed with an appropriately firm mattress.

In the morning, we were all too cold to sit around cooking breakfast, so we got up and immediately hiked the remaining 3 kilometers to the glacier (or what we're pretty sure was the glacier...). The sun was fully out by the time we got back to our campsite, so we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before the 18 k return trip.

Here we are in front of the glacier, which the sun made difficult to photograph:

And a group shot: Faith, Meg, Lindsey, Nico and me!

The hike back down, although equally beautiful as the hike up, was a bit of a struggle as we were all pretty sore from the day before and didn't have any drinking water left. Much of the terrain was rocky, so the steady impact was rough on the joints, but we survived and made it to the parking lot, where the chlorinated Santiago water from a tap was the best thing I'd tasted in ages.

It took about three days for me to be able to walk normally again, but all the better to have a reminder of how great it feels to push myself and take advantage of what Chile has to offer besides a great café cortado.

Santiago Half-Marathon!

I'm happy to report that on April 3, I completed the Santiago Half-Marathon! I wrote a blog post about the experience for VE Global's website, so please take a look here!

The End of Entre Todas

Last December, the home in Santiago where I volunteered for two years called Entre Todas was forced to close down due to major funding cuts. The months leading up to the closing were difficult ones, the girls acting out more than usual, reminding me that children aren't built for such instability. Talking to a fifteen-year-old girl about not knowing where she was going to live, if it was going to be another group home or her own, chaotic, unsafe home, was a frighteningly hopeless experience. I felt worried for the girls who had lived at Entre Todas for seven or eight years together and were, for all intents and purposes, sisters. I felt worried for the girls whose cases were being expedited in a effort to get them back with their families instead of finding spots for them at other group homes. I felt worried for the eight-year-old who, as she watched the other girls leave the home one-by-one, still didn't know where she was going to live with just two weeks until the closing date of the home.

The girls began leaving in October and I quickly learned that I had to adopt a rather zen attitude about the whole process. The first girl was moved to her new home with no warning, leaving the other girls in tears, angrily demanding that the staff give them warning and some sort of recognition of the occasion. When the next two girls left, the staff provided a goodbye party, complete with balloons and Cheetos. Unfortunately, that type of celebration happened just that one time and it became the norm for me to arrive for my weekly shift at the home to find that someone else had been moved. I had to tell myself that the time I had spent with each girl was more important than saying good-bye. At a certain point I started to feel more removed from the process than anything else, knowing there wasn't anything I could do to change what was happening. As a co-volunteer and social worker reminded me, some of the girls were potentially getting the chance to move to a place with better care and attention. Although it had its bright moments, Entre Todas was never the best place for any of them.

The Entre Todas staff held a sweet good-bye party for the home itself, with dancing by some of the girls, slideshows of photos, homemade empanadas and speeches by staff members and a lot of the girls. Despite the leaky roof, the monotonous food and general chaos of the home, the girls had beautiful things to say about their time there. Although it may not always have been obvious, there was a lot of love and care there.

A few weeks ago, I went with Vicky, another former Entre Todas volunteer, to La Pintana, a municipality in the south of the city where ten of the girls live in two homes that are just around the corner from each other. It was the first time I had seen any of them since December, so it was incredible to see that they were doing well and that the homes they're living in seem, indeed, much nicer than Entre Todas. The girls we saw seemed happy for the most part and content to be where they are, which reminds me of their incredible resiliency and ability to adapt despite extremely shitty situations.

The younger girls we visited immediately asked when we'd be coming back to visit again, which made me think a lot about how to best support them without making promises I can't keep. Vicky and I will try to make visiting a semi-regular occasion, but with the three-hour round-trip journey and everything else we have going on, it's not something we can commit to doing every week.

A couple of the girls, including one of the girls I was closest with, weren't home when Vicky and I visited, which was frustrating as La Pintana isn't exactly around the block from the city center where I live and work. Last Tuesday, though, after visiting one of VE's partner institutions in Puente Alto, a municipality to the east of La Pintana, I heard someone yelling "Tía Mariah!" from across the street as I was walking to the Metro. I turned and saw the girl I had been so bummed to not see on our visit waving to me. I screamed and made a terrible scene as she crossed the street, an endearing self-conscious smile on her face. As it turns out, she goes to school very close to the home I had been visiting and, on this day, had forty minutes before her first class. We bought a soda and a snack and plopped on a bench, me bombarding her with questions about her new home and school, etc. She was quiet, as she always is, but answered my questions eagerly, smiling the whole time. She seemed happy and calm, is excited that her older sister is having a baby in a couple of months and that she herself is going to start studying nutrition and cooking next year. It eased my mind to hear her news and know that she has settled into her new routine and is getting good grades, etc.

Seeing some of the girls, though, has made me think a lot about the girls who went home to their families and how I have no way of contacting them to see how they're doing. I've heard through various sources that some of the girls are in pretty difficult situations at the moment. Even though I know logically that by continuing my work at VE, I'm contributing to the support of hundreds of kids, it's hard to think that girls that I knew for a long time are here in Santiago but no longer in a place where they can benefit from VE volunteers. I asked the girl I bumped into if there were any activities or volunteers at her new home and she shook her head, saying, "It's not like it was before."

I know that VE can't work with every child in Santiago--this is the nature of service work, there's always more need somewhere. I also know that sometimes it's impossible to separate this type of work from the emotional attachment it creates. I feel lucky to have known the girls at Entre Todas and to have memories of certain days there that still make me laugh out loud. I'm still struggling to find a balance between letting go and figuring out what more I could do for them in a sustainable way. There's no easy answer but I suppose that's just good practice for life in general and the decisions we all have to make at various difficult moments along the way. For now, I can try to find time every month or so to take a ride on the 205 down to La Pintana.

If you're interested in reading more, my co-volunteer, Alex, wrote a beautiful blog about the closing of Entre Todas for VE's website, which you can access here.

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.