field trip to Achao

Today I'm theoretically going to go eat lunch at a restaurant in Quemchi, but it's almost 10:30 and I haven't even showered yet. Instead, I'll show you pictures of Achao, on the nearby island of Quinchao. (Chilote names are great. I'm going to Ancud tomorrow, and then back here to Castro [not a Chilote name] so I can visit Dalcahue and possibly Isla Mechuque.)

I'm not the world's best photographer, but there were some really nice shots around town. This one in particular gives the illusion I know what I'm doing.





In the most un-Chilean thing I've seen since Anna and I had chicken korma in Valparaiso, Achao has a working and quite beautiful little public library.

I'm sure there's a great story behind why this dinky village in southern Chile has a working library and Valparaiso, seat of the Chilean Congress, doesn't. (Technically it has one, the Biblioteca Santiago Severin, but it's been closed since the earthquake and shows no sign of reopening.)

The kids' section:

This is just from the bus ride back to Castro. This kind of scene just crops up everywhere. This is what Chiloe looks like.

Click on any of the photos to get to Flickr, or see them all in the Chiloe set.

Like Valdivia and La Serena, Chiloe is also very clean, which makes me think that Region V, and Valparaiso in particular, just doesn't care. In other words, I used to think that sidewalks covered in dog crap represented Chilean culture not valuing clean sidewalks. After a bit of traveling, I now think that in Valparaiso there's a cultural value on having the place look charmingly run-down, and disgustingly filthy.

expensive ethnic food

What I think of as "ethnic" food is stupidly pricey here. There is precisely one place to get anything Indian here, El Gato Tuerto, and they have precisely one dish, chicken korma. It's good chicken korma, though not perfect, and it's about US$18. Thai curries are about US$20-24. Sushi is 1.5-2x US prices, but tends to be "meh." Ethiopian and Burmese food is unknown here, as in most of the United States. I know, my California is showing.

Why so expensive?

• These are upscale restaurants aimed at well-off tourists.
• There is little broad-based demand for these foods among the natives.
• Many ingredients are probably expensive and/or rare. I have no idea where you'd get fenugreek or keffir lime leaves, for example. Ethiopian food uses so many special Ethiopian ingredients that you probably couldn't open a restaurant even if you wanted to.

Santiago is thankfully different: although the Indian food I had there was middling, it was reasonably priced, and I suspect there's better to be had. I have good recommendations for Thai restaurants there, and we ate at a stellar little Cuban joint.

the teachers' protest

My school's teachers suspended classes today so they could do a protest march to get the government to pay some bonuses it habitually promises and then refuses to pay. The Spanish vocabulary for this is a little baffling: this was a paro, literally "stoppage," in service of a marcha or protesta, but it's different from a huelga "strike". In conversation, the Chileans mix them pretty freely, but almost inevitably correct how I'm using them. Go figure. At any rate, this was just some of the schools in Valparaiso. There were probably 200-300 teachers there, marching from Plaza Victoria over to what appeared to be some kind of government labor/payroll office.

Classes stopped at 10 A.M., which meant I didn't have any, and I went downtown to watch and take some photos. Apparently last year's extended nationwide strikes were unusually aggressive (complete with water cannons), because this was extremely tame.

I walked alongside the marchers until they went into some narrow streets that I wouldn't have been able to escape from if trouble started; that's when I started staying in front of the cops who were walking in front of the march.

Lots of students came, and watched or marched. During the pre-march speeches, the girls were running up and hugging me and chatting, and asking me for money (I have a blanket policy of saying no, though I did offer them some candy popcorn). One kid, who I actually don't know, made a point of being very adult and saying "Hi, teacher, how are you?", and when I said was fine, proceeded to "Can you loan me a hundred pesos?". I smiled and said "Nope!", and his girlfriend gave an amused snort.

This is Camila, Franchesca, Mackarena, and Aranxa:

The march accumulated a pack of dogs by the end. This guy walked the whole route with a Pepsi bottle in his mouth, I assume so he could extract the little bit of Pepsi later.

Uploading to Flickr is kind of horked right now, so the full set of photos isn't up yet, and it might be a while.

I had fun, though, and the teachers appreciated that I showed up. And no water cannons!

when to take advice

I only had one class today, since Marcela kept the second class to work on an acto they're responsible for in the coming weeks, so after my one class finished their test, I took off wandering. I haven't spent much time in the far west/south end of town, since it's harder to get to and I've been under the impression there's not much there.

My impression was correct. I traipsed around the Old Port area for a while and except for seafood restaurants, there's no reason to go there. And travelers are universally warned to avoid the area after dusk, usually more because of sailor bar-fights than anything else, though since it attracts tourists for some reason, there's a lot of petty theft there as well.

I started wandering uphill from the Iglesia de La Matriz, because the area behind it looked intriguingly decrepit. I figured it wouldn't be nice or anything, but that at midday I'd be fine.

I walked past a kind-looking woman selling candy, and when I'd passed her and was about to enter the next street uphill, she called me over.

"Foreigner?"
"Yep."

"Where are you going?" 

"Dunno, just walking. Thought I'd go up there." 

She shook her head. "Alone? No."

"No? Bad?"
"Always wear your backpack in front, and nothing in your pockets." 

[I've never brought myself to do this.]
"It's dangerous up there?"
"It's complicated. There was another young foreigner, who got beat up."
"Like, flaite? Or something else?" [Flaite is a rich word that covers all kinds of petty criminality and poor taste.]
"Complicated."

"But I shouldn't go there." 

"Definitely not. They'll rob you, and maybe beat you up."

She wasn't very urgent about it, but she was very earnest and well-meaning. It wasn't a hard decision to go a different direction: Chileans are notorious for telling you everything is dangerous, but the universal warnings about Valparaíso don't come from nowhere. And I'm not the guy who's determined to go down that dark alley no matter what new information comes in.

"What's that, you say? That sketchy-looking neighborhood is actually sketchy? Well, I mean, I'm almost there anyway, I might as well keep going. Thanks, though."

I went and had coffee at my favorite cafe instead. Much easier.

quiet night out

Last night Steve and I hung out with our fellow volunteer Lauren and her boyfriend Jorge. We went to Bar Kabala, one of the not-cheap, low-key little pub-cafes on Almirante Montt over on Cerro Bellavista. They had a couch, and a decent little cover band, and nice drinks and food. It was my first night out in Valparaíso, because, well, I don't like going out all that much.

(Jorge is from Argentina. He says that when he first moved here, he couldn't understand anything Chileans said either, so English-speakers are in good company.)

At lunch today (weekend lunches the family eats together) Oscar asked when we got back. I said, "Almost 2."

Aurora said, "Wow, so early."

It also turns out Oscar was about 100 meters from us (and got home about a half hour earlier), down at Restaurant Hamburg, which is a nice place with tablecloths and a bunch of naval memorabilia about Arturo Prat and the War of the Pacific, and something to do with Germans.

I was checking it out today, and a late-30s Chilean guy saw me, sort of smiled/smirked, and kept walking. He noticed we were going the same direction, looked at me and said, "Nazi bar."

Ooookay. I said, "Really? This many years after the war?"

With a reservoir of disgust, he said, "Fascists. During the dictatorship."

He smiled before he walked away.

"But the beer is very good."

I believe you have my stapler

Today was Bureaucracy Day! Even though I've already got a one-year residence visa, in order to stay in Chile more than 90 days, and, also important, in order for the Ministry to give me money, I have to get a carnet, a national identification card. This involves a quick trip to the International/Foreigners Police (kind of a pain to translate: Extranjería y Policia Internacional) to register your visa, then take a photocopy of the resulting document to the Registro Civil, which will not be quick. (The police gave me two copies of the original. I don't know why--the Registro Civil only wanted the photocopy.) The Registro Civil most resembles the DMV back home, but covering things like passports and marriage licenses. Basically, if you need to fill out some forms and wait a while for your turn, you're at the Registro Civil.

Oscar is really excellent about making sure Steve and I are happy and taken care of, so he dispatched René', one of the school's disciplinary inspectores, to walk me through the carnet process, since he knows where the two offices are and he's Chilean, and he speaks excellent English. I could have managed it myself, but with René it probably took half the time, even considering the police screwed up the form and spelled my middle name without an 'H'. I'm hugely impressed with Chilean public servants, though: the woman at the Registro said when we came back with it fixed, we didn't have to wait in line again, and the woman at the police who fixed the mistake not only apologized, but made us replacement photocopies so we didn't have to go make new ones. Everyone is very nice and seems to be trying very hard to do a good job, which I've found is often the case in the States as well, though maybe not quite as often.

I got really lucky with my school, and with my co-teacher Marcela. The school on the whole is extremely well-disciplined (especially for Chilean schools), and Marcela actually practices classroom management. My fellow volunteers have some tougher assignments: J is in a school of at-risk kids, including several doing cocaine on weekends and one girl who's 3 weeks pregnant and smoking crack; B, the small redhead gringa, was initially placed in a school of emotionally disturbed kids, where she didn't feel safe and probably wasn't, so the Regional Coordinator stepped in and she was moved to a different school almost immediately (seriously,
who thought that was a good idea?). Steve, Heather and Allison don't have classrooms--neither do I at the moment, but I'm confident everyone understands the need and that it will happen, while they're having to do some fighting for it.

Marcela is very frustrated that the students aren't learning, and very, very much wants my help or advice or any ideas I have about how to help that. I think I got across the whole "students have to use the language, not have it explained" thing; probably next on the list is to get her to respond more directly to their level of knowledge, which is pretty low. The texts she's using (which are easier than the ludicrous texts handed down from the Ministry) are still too hard for them to do more than do rough translation, and don't encourage use. We're "working together" in her classroom for the classes next week, but I don't think she has a clear sense of what involves. I'm really itching to get my own classroom going, but I can contribute and maybe help her teaching, and get the kids primed for my different way of doing things. If it's what she wants and she thinks it will be useful, there's no good reason to push back on it right now.

I spent some time talking to Aurora this morning, Ximena's mother. I was confused last night when Ignacio, the kid, called Ximena tía, which is "aunt" but used affectionately for any adult woman; it turns out Ignacio is Oscar's son, but not Ximena's. She has 3 kids from her marriage, and they mostly live with their dad elsewhere in town, and stay here at various times. Divorce was only legalized here in 2006, and Allyson told us it's common for people to separate without divorcing (since divorce is only newly available) , and just move on with their lives and live with other partners and have more families. And so it is, which sort of explains why Oscar mumbled a bit on Monday when I asked if there were kids in the house. Ximena's youngest, Álvaro, is almost done with junior high school, and staying here this weekend.

I like Valparaíso. It's got a lot of life to it, but unlike Santiago, it's a manageable size, and not smoggy. The ocean is Right There[tm], with its endless cargo ships and Chilean Navy vessels, and this week, a bunch of tall ships I'll go take pictures of. It's like a Bizarro World version of San Francisco, with more ramshackle houses clinging more precariously to steeper cliffs (which are liberally coated with trash), usable public transit that doesn't actively try to run down pedestrians, and a complete lack of hipsters in skin-tight jeans riding fixies and being ironic and jaded as a persistent lifestyle choice.

Also, everyone speaks Spanish.

countdown

Our bus leaves the hostel tomorrow morning at 6:20am to bring us to the bus station, whence we go up to Viña del Mar, where our host families and Regional Coordinator will meet us. The hostel is a zoo right now because the faraway people, about half the Ministry group, are leaving tonight: photos, goodbyes, exchanging contact info, hallways overflowing with luggage.

I made a friend last week at the Zen sitting, Pedro; afterward, he said that his wife wanted something sweet and if he didn't bring it he might as well not come home, so we hung out and chatted for 45 minutes or so during his whole adventure of collecting stuff at the grocery store. I think I caught 60-80% of what he was saying, and he said he had a párcel somewhere outside of town where he was doing something that involved planting trees, and they have a picnic there every weekend and if I wanted to come, just ask. I was ill last weekend, but I called him Friday and we arranged for him to pick me up near the hostel.

It's a ways outside town, about 45-60 minutes, in Calera de Tango. It turns out it's not a getaway place: Pedro and his British wife Joanne are getting it ready to move into full-time. Their British friend Penny came along too, so it was mostly Spanish conversation with some English, which Pedro understands some of. I hadn't known what to expect, except I got the sense it was a work in progress, so I was prepared to help out with yardwork or whatever as being the nice way to spend the time.

When we arrived, their gate was shut and a dump truck full of smooth soccer-ball-sized rocks was waiting, destined for the large square hole forming the leech field for the septic system. Unfortunately the guy managed to dump only a third of the rocks actually into the hole, leading Pedro to shrug and say, "No problem, I guess we'll, um, move them by hand." There's a very Zen chilenismo, "es lo que hay"--"that's what there is". So in between watering the plants and eating lunch, we spent a few hours throwing rocks into a hole.

Here's the full photoset.

After passing out both in the car and back in my room, I joined the WorldTeach group for dinner at Las Vacas Gordas, which was awesome and you should go eat there. I got a scalopa, which was flattened steak stuffed with arugula and mozzarella, breaded and fried. It was delicious enough, but Allyson won by asking for whatever the waiter recommended, and getting some perfectly-cooked thing that might have been a skirt steak, but was just falling apart and amazing and delicious.

Today was supposed to be pretty mellow, but I needed to get money, then went and met a crowd for gringo breakfast at Café Melba (delicious, one of the few places you can actually get eggs for breakfast), and then my plans to lounge around and read were hijacked by suggestions of going to the Los Dominicos artisan market, which was really nice. I decided not to buy anything, since I'm expecting to be back in Santiago at least a few times, for visiting Aikido Hakusan and retrieving Anna and whatever else.

My disappointment about Valparaíso is falling away, and I'm getting excited about the possibilities. Our host families are supposed to meet us at the bus station in Viña del Mar tomorrow; I'll know more then, and I'll write again whenever I can.

and my home for the next 8 months is...

Valparaíso.

On the one hand, it's pretty and supposed to be a really nice place, albeit with lots of petty crime aimed at tourists.

On the other hand, I wanted to be someplace smallish, and Valpo is 275,000 people, so I've got some disappointment I'm making some space for. But, of course, it will be fun and I'll enjoy it, and it will be how it is, in all its is-ness.

We leave here on Monday at 6:20am. We won't find out about host families until we get there.

Day 2 of the Ministry of Education orientation. My internal monologue...has many criticisms, which match everyone else's (WorldTeach and not). Over the coming few weeks, my observations will distill into constructive criticism, and maybe I'll share that later.

The hostel is on Calle Cienfuegos, which means "Hundred Fires" and is currently my favorite street name anywhere in the world.