encountering the neighbors

We have these upstairs neighbors. I don't know anything about them, because they don't seem interested in chatting. It also seems like there's a leaseholder and some amount of rotation in other residents: consistently, two Asian guys with near-identical polished black Infinitis (a G35 and a G37), and then an unpredictable assortment of other guys and girls.

They stomp around pretty gracelessly, and the building transmits a lot of sound, so I started calling them the Elephants, which was cute until they started playing techno with a subwoofer, first during J's bedtime and then later in the 12-4 AM stretch, especially on weekends. They woke us up Friday night around 1, and Anna went and talked to them for what was probably the fourth time. I think they started to dismiss her as an Oversensitive Female, so after the techno made it impossible to nap in our bedroom this afternoon, I thought maybe an Angry Male might be a useful addition.

I had some wine at the dojo party, to go with my bizarro ex-girlfriend conversation, and went to bed a little amped-up, so I didn't blame them when I woke up two hours later to their laughing. As I lay awake in bed, the talking and occasional bass snippets actually seemed pretty reasonable, and Anna woke up briefly but got back to sleep pretty easily.

Then came the techno. At 1:40 AM. Enough.

A couple eventually cracked open the door I'd been pounding on, to discover a very cranky man they didn't know, saying "It's two in the fucking morning and someone is playing thumpy fucking subwoofer music in the back room. Turn it off. Or just turn the bass down." Note that despite the profanity, I didn't actually accuse them of anything, not knowing if it was them.

And behold, silence. I'm taking some time to settle down, but I think a message was delivered and the thumping will not wake up Anna tonight. Probably I should have added that I'm just going to call the cops next time, but next time I'll probably just call the cops. It's a little weird because in their room the sound is probably fairly moderate. In our room it sounds like someone hitting the frame of the building with a large mallet over and over.

I wonder what those two people saw, how they interpreted it, what their response was. I wonder if they'll take it differently than they did Anna's polite engagement. This is a strange role for me to play.

I wonder what their names are.

because we needed another project

Actually it's because we need a place to live, and suitable rentals are rare and expensive, and house prices have fallen enough that this becomes reasonable:

The offer goes in today, then we'll have a few weeks to back out, giving us time to get inside it again (there are tenants right now). I'll write up details when I take interior pictures, but it's 1,280 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, nice little kitchen with granite counters and the kind of recessed sink that Anna loves because you can just wipe the counters cleanly into the sink. (I also like it, but she is a much bigger fan.) Fireplace, big living room, dining room, 2-car garage, cute little backyard with a lemon tree. The yard is dried-out, cracked clay, which means doing raised beds for gardening, but I think those look cooler anyway. And it's still walking distance to downtown and the train.

More details as it happens. It's a short sale, so there's still all sorts of things that can go wrong, and then the house needs to be tented for termites before we can move in, so there's a whole process left. Still, pretty exciting.

(We had breakfast with Anna's grandparents this morning, and Lois said, "It's good to own property." I was trying to be both honest and gracious, but the fact is that it really depends. We'd be paying 60% of what it sold for in June 2006; whoever that was, owning property didn't work out too well for them.)

daily life

I live with Steve, another WorldTeach volunteer, in Valparaíso, Chile. We live on Cerro ("hill") Rocuant, in Barrio ("neighborhood") O'Higgins. (Bernardo O'Higgins is the great hero of Chilean independence.)

Our "host parents" are Oscar, the sub-director of my school, and Ximena, a Spanish teacher there. They're educated and urbane and not terribly traditional in most ways, so we don't experience most of the stuff we learned about as possibilities in a Chilean family: overprotectiveness or lack of privacy. We call them "Oscar" and "Ximena" instead of "Mom" and "Dad" (as many of our colleagues do with their families) because that's more of the relationship we have.

Aurora is Ximena's mother, lives here and helps with keeping house. I assume she goes out and plays poker or something when we're not looking, she's pretty active.

Ignacio is Oscar's son, age 13, who lives with us full-time. He's pretty quiet and plays a lot of video games, but has relaxed around us more over time.

Jaime is Ximena's older son, a very tall and athletic 17, who comes for weekends or half-weeks.

Álvaro is Ximena's younger son, age 11, quirky and charming. He loves to say "Hello, Chris,"and I think that's the only English he knows.

Three very odd dogs: El Duque, La Princesa, and La Chiquitita. Like everyone else's dogs, they're there to bark at people who walk past the house. They don't like dry food, so Oscar actually "cooks" something for them every night, which is vegetable trimmings and human-food leftovers and wheat flour and I don't know what else, simmered. Sometimes it smells good. Sometimes it looks and smells like that soup made out of human body parts in James Earl Jones's evil serpent temple in Conan the Barbarian.

We're down to three cats (they found a home for a kitten): La Sacha, Comepoco ("eats little," seemingly the parent), and Comenunca ("eats never," the kitten). They're all outside cats, but would very much like to be inside cats, so they find their way in through slightly open windows, or they lie in wait by the front door and run past on their way in. I'm allergic and so is Jaime, so they're not allowed in, but they're incredibly friendly, and they understand that once inside, they will be removed. They always let themselves be evicted, with no scratching or struggle, just a stream of resigned, reluctant meows.

In the mornings we have breakfast, which is tea or coffee, and bread. Steve and I usually eat at the dining room table, because that's where they put out stuff for us, and I guess it's expected; I'm not really sure what's up with that. Dinner happens at random times between 7 and 8:30 PM, and that is also usually just me and Steve, at the dining room table. Oscar and Ximena eat in the kitchen as part of their couples-chatting time, and Ignacio eats in the kitchen, in front of the computer, at the dining room table--who knows. Occasionally Oscar and Ximena join us at the dining room table, especially for lunches on weekends, which seem to be the family times. I think this is probably representative of an educated, two-working-parent blended family in Chile.

I have very few classes right now, which I'll try to remedy now that I've kind of got my bearings a bit. I have time for 40 minutes of morning zazen every day except Wednesday, when I have class at 8ish and I go down the hill with the family at 7:15. Right now I have Thursdays free, which is pretty great. Thursdays or weekends, I go eat something nice, and have some espresso, and read Don Quixote or write blog entries, run errands.

At different times I miss Anna and J and aikido and my sangha and good coffee, but it's a life. I like it.