Happy New Year, in September

There are many benefits to being Jewish, including 8 days of presents at Chanukah, the freedom to spell the word "Chanukah" (Hanukah, Hannuka, etc.) about a zillion different ways, along of them correct, and the ability to grow sweet curly sideburns, if you're orthodox. But one often overlooked one is that you get to celebrate TWO New Year's, in one year.

That's right, along with never showing up on time, the Jews have their own calendar. And today, a day like any other day for the gentiles of the planet, happens to be Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Now, you shouldn't feel bad for not having known this. Truth be told, Adam (fellow program member) called me this morning at around 2 p.m. to tell me. Thanks to his excellent Jewish initiative, we decided to gather our small Jewish U.S. Valdivian representation of 2 people and meet at my pension tonight for some good 'ole fashioned apples, bread and honey, a Rosh Hashanah classic.

For those of you unaware, the traditional way to bring in the Jewish New Year is with apples, bread and honey. The honey is representative of having a "sweet" new year, which is fitting, given honey's high sugar content. Besides the fact that apples, bread and honey is a bomb diggity combination, it's a really cool simple ceremony.

I had the idea of having us 3 go around in a circle (Allison, wanna-be-Jew, joined us for her first ever Rosh Hashanah) and say one thing we wanted to do to make the coming year more sweet. Adam said he wanted to be more open, Allison said she wanted to take the initiative and talk to more people, and I said I wanted to more fully commit to being here for a year, and consider it my home. It really turned out to be a cool little exercise. I think we all learned something more about each other (and ourselves) that we hadn't known before.

And more than that, I learned that it doesn't just have to be on my two New Year's that I set intentions to have a sweeter next year. Why don't I wake up every day and set my intentions to have a sweeter month, day, heck, even hour? It doesn't have to be Rosh Hashanah or New Year's for that. So maybe I'll start waking up every morning and pledging to have a sweeter day.

And of course, to make the ceremony official, I'll have to include apples and honey. Probably two servings to make sure I'm really serious about a sweet day.

Happy New Years!

Love,
Ryan

Cool Videos I Stumbled Upon

Miles of Smiles: http://www.helpothers.org/story.php?sid=604

Darn cool video: http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1324

Pick your word: http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/now_showing/eternity/stories_from_the_emotional_heart_of_australia/

For a little bit of inspiration on a dull day.....

Sitting Down To Tea With A Caveman

Sept. 25, 2008

Gratitude and perspective. Two oft-used words. “Be grateful for what you have.” “Just have perspective.” Good advice, certainly. But it’s like giving someone the parts to a model airplane without the instructions, nor even a friendly tip to get started.

So how do I gain gratitude? With perspective, perhaps. How do I gain perspective? With experience, I believe. And why preoccupy with these intangible, lofty ideas, gratitude and perspective?

Because I believe they are key to happiness.

Here is how it works with us uber-intelligent, evolving, developing, civilized humans:

In the beginning was our caveman. Pretty animalistic, uni-brow and all, Cro-magnon man style, but at least peeing upright. A human, by our human standards. What was happiness to a cro-magnon?

One can imagine it was survival. Life was harsh, food unsure. His one purpose in life, to fulfill his biological function, to reproduce, continue the species. He was helped by hormones that told him, “You horny Cro-magnon, you best get spreadin’ yo seed!” And his hunger, his thirst, his adrenaline, no doubt drove him to desperate lengths, made him take down Mr. Wooly Mammoth like it was nobody’s business. Hormone-driven, indeed.

And then, someone saw a decapitated head rolling and thought to invent the wheel, someone saw some wild beets growing and realized the beets were just like them, they too wanted to propagate their seed, so we obliged, and planted. And naturally, if your food is all in one place, ain’t no need to be a wanderlust hunter-gatherer. That’s right, y’all can civilize.

One can imagine these developing homo erectus were fairly pleased for a while. Likely life was still tough, and they had to fend for themselves. But now they were surviving in large numbers, steady food supply. The adults, remembering the tough old days, gratefully smiled fondly at their agriculture, their surplus. But the children, weaned in a civilized world, lacked this perspective. Some of them clamored for something greater. There must be more to this life....

And then the technology began to rain from the sky. Printing press, sewing and weaving, metallurgy, animal domestication, electricity, telephone, planes and cars and trains, sanitation, hot pockets, all the way up to this very moment, to the Internet and iPhone and everything we have in this world.

Every generation, marveling at this new world with its new technology, recalling what the old days were like. Some started calling them “the good ‘ole days” because there was something nostalgic, something beautifully simplistic in the simplicity of yore.

What had the children done, when they clamored for more? They had improved our lives, made them safer, made survival and a steady food source practically guaranteed. Safer, easier. And better?

What was a successful day for Mr. Cro-magnon man? Survival. Food on the dinner plate. Bearing the cold winter. Reproducing. The things we do everyday, that we take for granted, like they’ve always been this easy, handed to us.

What is a successful day today, for you? Not so easy to define now. For some, it’s how much we got done. How much we earned or gained. Perhaps the friendships or relationships we possess or have. The quantity, the surplus, the magnitude. Better?

Now, I think, is the time to answer the question that we complicate more and more every single day: Why?

Why. Just sit with it for a second, this tiny little word that can forever burrow deeper and deeper, to the very core of our beings, the very source of all that is.

Why. Without even answering the question we should probably consider the value and importance in forming the letters. What does it mean to ask why?

To me, it signifies a pause, a break in the flow of things. The right “why” isn’t cause for an immediate one-sentence answer. It’s cause for a pause. For reflection. A desire, perhaps, to stop and understand.

And once we begin to the understand the significance of this all-too-rare question, then perhaps we can begin to attach it to all it could ask us.

How about: why am I writing this? Good question. I’m writing this because I watched The Invisibles in my Salud y Medioambiente class last night, a series of five short films about tragedy around this world. Killer bugs that affect poor populations without health care in Bolivia, war and violated women in the Congo, child soldiers in the 20 year war in Northern Uganda, African sleeping sickness without government investment in delivering the cure, displaced campesinos, removed from their land that sustains them, in Columbian guerilla warfare.

Death, sickness and war, heavy, blood, violence, rape. The worst of humanity. Things I have never experienced. Things I hope never to experience. I felt sick, terrible, helpless as I watched these scenes. How could we do this?

Beyond the guilt and the heartache, know what else I felt, way down deep? Grateful. There it was, like it was always there, waiting for me to say hi. Grateful that I don’t know these things, grateful I have money in my wallet that buys me things like this delicious Te de Navedad and allows me to sit in this bustling café playing Air, shoes off, writing furiously to answer the question “why.”

I felt grateful for a while because while I didn’t experience the movie first-hand, I gained perspective on my life and my luck, the possibilities out there.

So that’s a “why” catalyst, to why I sit writing. But there’s more. There’s also, “why are you really writing this?” What if we asked this question everyday: “Why are you really doing this?” What would it do?

Don’t worry, I’m not dodging my own question. I’m really writing this because I want to be a happy person, and help spread that happiness to others. I’m writing this because I’m always interested in getting to the core, and this seems like a pretty good start.

Happy. I want to be happy. Not so important to get hung up in defining happy...it’s an emotion, a feeling, a state of being. You know deep down what it is, however you decide to call it. We don’t ever have to agree on a definition of happiness, but I truly believe we can see it, feel it, sense it. Whatever word we use, there is a presence, a vibration to this thing I choose to call happiness.

And this movie, The Invisibles, made me consider this happiness. None of that terrible stuff in the movie has happened to me. Am I happy?

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I’m very happy and joyful. More so in recent years.

Sometimes, no. Sometimes I’m stuck in my own head, cut off from the emotions and needs of others.

And so I wonder, why am I happy only sometimes? What would make the people in that movie happy? Some would be happy to survive, have food on their plate, be sitting with their family members. Where have I written this before?

Ah yes. I remember now. The cavemen. That’s what the cavemen sought. They didn’t seek to buy a new car or iPhone, or to look prettier or be thinner. They sought the simple. They sought survival, basic comfort.

They....oh geez. Ohhhh geez. Pardon me. I was just about to get to a breakthrough point, I’m sure of it, when this caveman sat down at my table.

If there was ever a stereotypical cavemen, he is it. He’s got his loin cloth wrapped around his thighs. Hairy hairy man, hair everywhere. A fantastic beard, and a slightly open mouth, like he’s just as confused as I am about where he is. I suppose they don’t have cafes back where he lives.

This is quite a surprise, to have a caveman at my table. I don’t quite know what to say to him, but it turns out I don’t have to. He’s staring at the tea I’ve been sipping quite unmindfully since I sat down to write this.

“You want some tea, caveman?” I ask.

He grunts like a caveman, in what sounds like an affirmation. The first sip he takes is like an electric shock just ran the length of his slightly stooped caveman body. He grunts at me after recovering, and I understand he wants to know what’s in this magical blend.

“Well, there’s vanilla, from somewhere in Africa where it’s cultivated, I presume.” He raises his busy eyebrow. “Cinnamon, from a tropical region. Other herbs, I’m not even sure what. And electrically heated hot water.” His hairy eyebrow raises even further at the last one. I realize hot water is probably tougher to come by in caveman land. I start to realize the tea I’ve paid little attention to really is pretty darn magical.

Suddenly Mr. Caveman starts sniffing the air like a rabid dog, and I realize he’s smelling the acrid smoke that fills this café like an early morning mist. It’s legal to smoke indoors in Chile.

I start to explain to him. “This is something a lot of people in the world do. 30% of the world’s population, in fact. It calms and relaxes you, which helps people who get stressed from so much work. Interestingly, it significantly shortens your life...statistics say each cigarette takes an average of 5 minutes from your life.”

I see my caveman is pretty dumbfounded at this point. I guess when your life is survival it’s hard to imagine knowingly shortening your life.

I check my watch and see the caveman looking at me. “Oh,” I tell him. “I can only spend a certain amount of time doing this. I have a lot of appointments and things to do today.” I don’t bother explaining further, as I imagine a caveman measures time by the cultivation of his vegetable garden, by the changing temperature of the seasons. Geez, this is like explaining life to a baby....

Babies! That thing we once were! Hmm, babies. Who once told me to live like a baby? Speaking of happiness, in thinking of the most happy people in my life, I have to go with babies.

They’re just so darn simple to please. They’ll play peek-a-boo for hours and scream in delight like it’s new every time. I take my keys out of my pocket several times a day to open the gate to the pension without thinking twice, but give these giggling magic pieces of etched metal to my baby nephew Ethan and he goes crazy. They are a certifiable treasure for him. For me, they’re a tool that lets me in the house.

Why?

Good question. It reminds me of all those questions I asked before all these cavemen and babies entered my life.

I believe I had asked what might make the people in the movie The Invisibles happy, and I said survival, food on their plate, sitting with their healthy family members. Like the cavemen, I imagined, or like babies.

And here’s where I finally get somewhere (signal the celebration drums). We’re not cavemen. Neither are the people in the movie. We’re not babies, either, at least most of us (apologies to you babies out there). No, the only people who are cavemen are those who live in caves, and for most of us, that ended long, long ago.

I’m not proposing we live in caves. We live in houses, pretty sturdy well-built ones, most of them with AC AND central heating. Our sinks obey our command and spit water at us when we turn the lever. I’ll be the first to say, that is pretty darn sweet (“bakan” if you live in Chile).

Yeah, I don’t know how well I’d do as a caveman. I don’t even like caves that much, although I do think the word “spleunking” is fun to say over and over. We live in a modern world. Most of us can’t renounce that. This is our life, and in a way, we would be living in the past if we sat all day bemoaning what has become of our civilization, of all the negative things. We don’t need to feel bad that time sometimes runs our lives, that we don’t always pay attention to our tea, that we smoke cigarettes knowing we’re hurting ourselves. It does nothing to feel bad. But then what do the cavemen have to teach us, if they were then, and we are now?

Who ever said you have to live as a caveman to live like a caveman? Well, maybe the cavemen, but I hear they were pretty rigid in their thinking.

So what does it mean to live like a caveman? First, I think, is just a state of mind. Expectations. If you told a caveman the Internet was down, he wouldn’t complain, he would just sit with you and inquire with a grunt what the Internet is, and once you explained it, he would patiently wait till it was fixed to search “Caveman” on Google images to see if his picture comes up.

Expectations, and along with it that gratefulness and perspective I mentioned at the very beginning of this ditty, before I had even considered a caveman might sit at my table and drink my tea. To occasionally look at the keys we use every day and consider that someone figured out how to make these.

Hmm, but even after all this, even as I write myself into a state of gratefulness and perspective, as I realize I suddenly have this wonderful warm feeling of happiness inside me in this very moment, I wonder if this is still like a de-constructed model airplane without instructions.

I can write this same letter over and over again, stress these same ideas, but will they stick? Will they stick in a world where we all forget this all the time, where the billboards tell me I need more and the TV tells me I should look different? Will this stick if I stay in my same bubble with my same privilege?

I don’t know. I think not. I think we can tell each other to be grateful all day, but I have a feeling it’s the experience and reminders in my life that will make it stick. Reminders:

1. Good friends, certainly, who live joyously and remind me to laugh and not be so serious.

2. Good books, good movies, good teachers who impart this message to me. I want to share the scene that struck me the most from The Invisibles. It’s in the short film about the war in Northern Uganda. The war refugees are gathered inside a building, singing and dancing with joy like you’ve never seen, about the war, about life, pleading for the violence to stop. And they sing “Dancing, we demand that this war ends, that the peace returns.” In the face of mindless senseless destruction they dance. If only they knew how they inspired a privileged kid sitting in a café in Valdivia, Chile, trying to understand in a world very different from theirs.

3. Myself, of course myself, writing or taking pictures or doing whatever it is I need to do to remind myself of the goodness around us. These big three, myself, teachers, and community are indeed excellent reminders. And as we live we start to see that our teachers are everywhere, in our babies and our cavemen and the person sitting next to us, we start to see our community is everyone, that we’re not so different from others. We start to see that myself is connected to all of this, no matter how much we get lost and think we’re all alone.

But I leave myself with this question: where do I go from here? Where do I take this knowledge, how do I remember it, how do I live it? Writing, sharing, exploring, experiencing. Endless incomplete intangible answers.

The most important thing, I’m realizing, is not the answer. It’s the question. It’s continuing to honestly and lovingly ask that question, to live the question and the answer that inevitably follows with purpose, with intention, and yes, a bit of gratitude for simply having thought to ask the question. Shoot, a little gratitude for getting to do this, whatever it is we are doing.

To dig up my Jewish roots, here’s a quote from a Passover seder:

"We must celebrate each step toward freedom as if it were enough, then start out on the next step. If we reject each step because it is not the whole liberation, we will never be able to achieve the whole liberation. We must sing each verse as if it were the whole song‑‑then sing the next verse."

Amen. Dance in the face of everything bad, dance because we give what we can, and that’s always enough, because it’s all we can give.

Only 2 Out Of 700 Kids Hit On The Fingers With Hammers

click here to see more photos of chile!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2366922&l=0db01&id=1241186


1. Manola totally dominating me at the teeter-totter.
2. Manola, Jackie, Jorge, Allison and I at beautiful day in the park.
3. Chilean child, totally stoked for fiestas patrias.
4. Bearing the Chilean flag like a true gringo.
5. Trying to jump higher than the snowy volcano, and failing.






http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/adventure_playgrounds

"Over a two-day period this summer, 700 children came through the Adventure Playground. The injury total was two fingers hit by hammers."

Is it bad that this sentence made me crack up laughing? Probably so. But regardless, this is a pretty cool article about Adventure Playground in Berkeley, California, where I go to college. Woot woot Berkeley!

Alright, now to discuss things not involving hammers....

First I need you to go through a little exercise with me. I'd like you to say the word "Chicha" over and over again until you have fully appreciated the word. It's prounounced sort of like a Brooklyn-ite might pronounce the word "teacher" (teacha) except with the "c" instead of the "t."
Thank you.

Chicha is an alcoholic fermented drink derived from corn and other rice cereals. It's old school, which you can tell, cuz it comes in an unassuming unmarked glass bottle with a shady cork. Normally I wouldn't accept such a bottle filled with a suspiciously smelling drink, but as they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. And when in Chile, drink 1.5 liters of Chicha...

Let me back up just a bit. The last four days, beginning at midnight on Sept. 18, were the "fiestas patrias," the Chilean version of the U.S. 4th of July celebrations, except that the Chileans get way more stoked and party it up for 3 or 4 days instead of 1. Chile also has a still very alive and vibrant culture and traditions, which come into full bloom during the fiestas. Coolest traditions, in order...

1. Cueca, an old school rural flirting dance involving a man waving a napkin-like thing over his head and a woman with a poofy enough dress to clothe a whole room of naked Chilean babies.
2. Empanadas, fried.
3. Emapanadas, oven baked.
4. Chicha chicha chicha CHIIIIIICHA!!!

There are more, but I've covered the important ones. So back to the recurring theme of Chiccha. Wednesday night, the 17th, kicked off the fiestas in Valdivia, so we went to a park with a bunch of different rooms which all appeared to be doing the exact same thing...playing loud loud salsa-y music too loud for anyone to have a conversation, some people dancing, many people gorging themselves on fried mini empanadas. At around 2 in the morning, my friend Luis and I decided to buy 2 liters of Chicha for the whole table. Friendly gesture, right? 9 people, 2 Liters, enough, right?

Well, when we returned triumphantly to the tables with our 2 liters of chiccha, everyone declined. Even the 3 friendly Chech Republican kids! Man! But I've never believed in letting things go to waste, so Luis and I decided as good citizens of our respective nations, we had to finish the bottle. I think chicha has the same alcohol content as wine. By the end of our chicha escapade, I was officially drunk for my first time in Chile. It was fun. I fell asleep on an uncomfortable chair at 3:30 (damn they do party late here in Chile). We got home at around 4:30 in the morning, and from 3:30 to 4:30 our conversation revolved around floss, because I discovered the Spanish has NO verb for floss, at least that anyone knew of. Outrage, I know. As a favor to Chile, I invented the word "flosear," so they won't have to go around saying, "voy a usar el hilo dental," wasting precious time they could have used to dislodge fried mini empanadas from their teeth.

Four hours letter, Thursday morning, I was ungraciously woken up by Jorge (fellow housemate) and Chicha, my faithful friend who had decided to play a morning rock concert in my brain. Jorge and I had plans to take a bus 3 hours north to Temuco, where he has a lot of family. This almost didn't happen, as we arrived 2 minutes late to the bus terminal, the one thing in Chile which leaves frightenly on time. A dead sprint to the top of the street to intercept Señor Bus got us on, and allowed me and my friend chicha to finally sleep in peace.

Temuco is the fourth-biggest city in Chile. Once we arrived we briefly stopped by the city parade before taking a one hour bus to Cunco, a 6,000 person rural pueblo which I'm convinced is made up of about 3,000 members of Jorge's family. Aunts, cousins, abuelitas (affectionate term for grandmother), they're literally on every corner of the town. As the joke goes, you can't throw an empanada in Cunco in any direction without hitting someone in Jorge's family. Alright, I just made that joke up, but it's totally true.

So the weekend consisted of us meeting different members of his family, celebrating the fiestas patrias with homemade empanadas and gigantic pieces of varied types of meat, and trying not to burst (Chileans are known for their hospitality, part of which is to consistently offer you food, and a slightly offended look if you turn it down). Friday night we went to another fiesta for the Fiestas Patrias, where my dancing spirit was finally awakened. It's true, I was weaned on Cole family bar mitzvah celebrations, so I've had plenty of practice, but a high school experience full of hip-hop school dances with gyrating "freaking" held back my true creative dancing spirit. But something about this Chilean fiesta, with its cigarette smoke creating a thicker haze than an Andes morning fog (there was a 'no smoking' sign inside, but you can't stop a room full of Chileans from smokin', no way no how!), made the dance spirit to come alive. I spun like a rural Chilean woman making her wool yarn. Jorge called me a trompito, which is a Chilean game very similar to the spinning dreidle of yore. I'm inspired now, and plan to take some salsa and meringue classes, to convince my hips and butt that they should also move when I'm dancing (a classic guy problem, I believe).

I also posted a couple of pictures from the sweet national park we visited, which featured a snow-covered mountain burping out lava like it had a serious case of indigestion.

That's about it. Enjoying life down here...send word if you have time!

Love,
Ryan

"We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing." --Storefront window, College Avenue, Berkeley, CA.

The Man Who Let Strangers Into His House

http://www.wikistory.com/wiki/Author:Ryan_Cole

Here's what happens when I finally have more free time than I know what to do with...I write a story. Click on the link to read it. Enjoy!

Love,
Ryan

Languishing In Language

Since nothing too exciting has happened in the last couple days (I did go visit an orphange of 45 girls, and was invited me to come every week to teach them english, but I´ll talk about that some other time), I´ve decided to dedicate this entry exclusively to language.

Now, when speaking and learning a foreign language, two things tend to happen during conversations in your inevitable struggle to master the language...

Option 1: The people who are speaking to you or near you are literally speaking so fast that it might as well be a colony of Chewbakkahs discussing foreign affairs. Sometimes when this happens, I convince myself that the native speakers can´t even understand at this speed, that they all got together and said, ´´hey, let´s trick this gringo into thinking we can actually understand each other.´´

Option 2: All the words you are hearing are words you know and understand, but they are like the gold coins in the game Mario, you can SEE all of them but there are only so many you can grab. So you hear a few words, all is going well, and then all of a sudden you hear a word like ´´entregar,´´ and you think, ´´ah yes, entregar, how excellent, i learned that word a month ago, while standing outside of the chocolateria gazing fondly at all the candies. how fantastic that i learned this word. to return or deliver, it means. and when you add the reflexive, it means to give in, let go.´´

and then you realize, that not only has the entire conversation ended while you were thinking about the word ´´entregar,´´ everyone has actually already left the building to go eat empanadas and sopaipillas.

So yes, there are so many ways one can think about learning a new language, speaking it all the time. Sometimes, when Im more discouraged, I think of it as a series of developing failures of varying magnitude...there are always words, meanings, connotations you miss in this subtle theme called language. Sometimes when I´m feeling optimistic, I think of it as a series of every improving successes, like someone dumped a ton of fish from the heavens and the net you use to catch them gets ever bigger and stronger every time you decide to step outside to catch fish, at the risk of getting smacked in the head by a chubby dolphin.

Language is one of the best metaphors I´ve found for life so far. Check it: I have this goal. I know what I want. I want to speak SPANISH, fluently. And sometimes it goes great, I have a conversation and understand everything, we joke about the difference between anticochi and choripan, I leave feeling like a regular Don Juan. And sometimes, it goes exactly how I dont want, I can´t understand anything, I leave feeling like a wretched failure.

Isn´t life like this? Don´t we know what we want, and if it goes that way, we´re happy, if not, we´re bummed? And won´t life always go like this...won´t there always be conversations we do and don´t understand, situations that go how we want and how we don´t want? I think so. So what do we do about it?

First, I think, is to not blame myself. I´m doing the best I can, I remind myself every single minute as I strain to understand every word, as I accumulate carpal tunnel syndrome from looking up all the words I don´t understand. I´m doing the best I can, and that´s all I can ask myself, all I can be asked. The best I can do is always enough because it´s all I can offer.

Second, I think, is a lesson in perspective. Every conversation is either how many words I failed to understand or how many new words I learned. I can assign a negative or positive value to every single thing in my life, or it can all be positive, because I learned something, because you learn a lot more from the failures than the successes.

Third, I think, is appreciate and be grateful. Just being aware. My God, I think sometimes, I´m speaking another language. I´m learning new words and phrases and concepts for every single thing I´ve ever known. Holy shit! This is crazy! And what´s more, I understand, more and more everyday, this new language.

Fourth, I think, is to think about who we are without all the things we´ve ever known. Who am I, away from my friends and family, my community who props me up when things are tough? Who am I, without the weekly selection of fresh vegetables that makes up the California diet? Without consistent bowel movements? And most especially, who am I without my language, my tool for identifying with people and defining my world?

When everything is stripped away, when you strip everything away, is when you start to really understand that question. Who am I? I don´t know, is the first thing I´ve learned here, the best lesson I´ve ever learned, perhaps. I thought I knew for 20.3 years. My friends told me, my society told me, my magic 8 ball told me. I told me. I was what I could see, what other people could see.

Then when we take the light fluffy cotton candy and SMASH it together, there´s suddenly a lot less of it there. And yet, that sweet flavor remains. What happens when we smash ourselves together, condense into the most solid dense form we are? We hit the powerful solid center. And from there, once you´ve contracted into the most tiny and powerful and real part of you, then you build, everything just an extension of that core.

And so, in the end, I think that´s why I´m really here. To finally see that I am more than I can see, than others can see. I am here to learn that not everything can be described with words, be it English, Spanish, or the Elven language of Rivendale. I am here to learn that the only language the heart has is called love, and it´s something we´re already fluent in. It´s a language we don´t need to learn, because we already know it, deep down in that cotton candy center.

Much love, peeps,
Ryan

´´My message is my life.´´ -Gandhi

Yes, Qi Gong WILL Improve The Quality Of Your Lettuce Crop

Left to right: Making friends with a McDonalds cow (don't worry, we didn't eat there); Valdivia's fish market and big ass river
Since I'm not a very ordered person, I don't think it would be very fitting to write this in order, so I'll start from the end and work backwards. Last night was, well, quite a night. On Thursday, after whimsically deciding to saunter in the botanical gardens to feast on my mandarin orange instead of heading home, I met a couple girls who are planning a class about teaching alternative energy solutions in a rural area, and after I offered them a little bit of my mandarin orange, they invited me to take the class and help them plan it.

And so, on Friday night, armed with peanut butter (one of the girls in the group had never tried it...I told her I literally had pb and j for my packed lunch every single day of sophomore year) and crackers, I found myself locked inside an apartment building on Yunguy street, unable to leave. Let me back up. The original plan was to meet at this girl's apartment at 8:30, but it was changed to 10:30 p.m. later in the day, so that's when I showed up. After meeting a nice man who lives in the apartment building and lived in the U.S. for a couple years and wanted to practice his english (he spoke English while I spoke Spanish), the nice man let me into the building. But when I called the girl, she was at an insanely loud concert, and Spanish is hard enough to understand on the phone. Confused, I decided to go meet my gringo friends at a nearby cafe, but when I tried to leave, there was a big metal gate, and since I am technologically inept, I didn't find the buzzer button to let myself out. At least I know now that I would handle jail pretty well, cuz I stayed super calm throughout my imprisonment.

Anyway, I was eventually let out of captivity, and I eventually met up with the people in the group. Our class planning meeting turned into drink beer and wine night. My rigorous American side was saying, "but we have a class to plan" and my less rigorous Chilean side was saying, "Just drink beer and try not to eat all the crackers." I think you gotta love this about Chilean culture...maybe people don't always show up when or where they say they will, but my god, these are the friendliest people I have ever met. So good-natured, passionate but chill at the same time, not stressed. There's a lot for me to learn here, especially how to stay up until 4:30 in the morning discussing the merits of peanut butter vs. dulce de leche (like caramel). It surely was quite a cultural exchange last night...I convinced everyone to combine pb and dulce de leche, and while at first they thought I was crazy, eventually we were all crowded around the table, talking about how revolutionary indeed this North/South combination was.

Last night ended with a ride home from an agronomy major writing his thesis about how Qi Gong (a Chinese martial arts/spiritual exercise) improves the quality of cultivated lettuce.

Continuing to move backwards in time, Thursday I was invited to a meeting in the Agronomy building, and it turned out to be the formation of a new club interested in organic agriculture and being hippy. It seems like a much less formal version of the Sustainability Club I was involved with last year. We talked about planning a trip to Argentina to visit a permaculture farm, and overthrowing the entrenched capitalist regime and returning to horse pulled carriages (just kidding about the second one).

After the meeting I walked to the plaza with a couple people from the group, and we encountered a lady on the campus selling sopaipillas (imagine fried bread with God's blessing). She was tragically out of sopaipillas, but we talked to her for about 30 minutes, and it was awesome! She told us how she loved selling on campus, how she considered the students like her nephews, how our spirit animates her every day. It really was beautiful, this meeting, because I think that I often have this perception to "feel bad" for informal street vendors like this, imagining it's a tough job, that they don't earn very much money. And while these facts may very well be true, I think it's easy to forget that some of them have such an amazing attitude, that they can teach us a lot about life and living. The lady was really excited when she found out I was from California. I told her she should open up a sopaipilla stand since we don't have this Chilean treasure in California. She was extremely shocked we don't have sopaipillas in California, to say the least.

Last thing, I finally have my classes. I'm taking three, plus my internship. One is that pending class which was not planned on Friday night, but we're meeting Monday on campus to actually plan it (I'm assuming involving less beer this time). The other two are a class called "Ethnographic Documentaries" about the history of documentaries and how they follow social movements. The other is called "Health and Environment," an excellent combination of how the health of the environment affects the mental and physical health of people, and vice versa. We watched an incredibly sad but powerful movie called "The Invisibles" the first class...if you want to feel really bad, but really grateful for your life, I highly recommend it!

Alright peeps, send some word down south. Hope all is well in your toasty northern hemisphere....

Much love!

Ryan

"A lot of times, I think of what is the worst possible thing that could happen. It's usually not that
bad, so I do it." -Professor George Brimhall, from my environment class last year.

Hug Attack

Sent to me by a good friend I'm lucky to have....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMBgSfQI49E

One more way to make the world a better place....

Love,
Ryan

Who Knew Broken Underwear Could Taste So Good?

1) Sideways picture of standard Chilean cigarette carton. What makes you want to smoke more...these teeth or the American cowboy?
2) "Bigger," the neighborhood giant grocery store, is the view I wake up to every morning...forever reminding me that bigger is better.
3) Manola, ballerina star. See previous entry for a written rave review of her performance.


Aware that I'm much better at writing silly anecdotes (see entries 1-4) than explaining the details of my program, I have decided to dedicate this entry to those of you who don't quite understand where I am, what I'm doing, or why Chilean cigarette packages make you want to quit smoking (I don't smoke, but if I did, I would quite after seeing those gnarly teeth).

Alright. It all began on a sun-drenched December day, when my mom (TravelAgent superstar, awarded Most Likely to Successfully Find Everything You Need on the Internet), aware of the fact that I was too unconcerned for my future to actually look into study-abroad programs, asked me where I wanted to study. Looking at a map of South America, I noticed there was only one country skinnier than my wiry 135 pound frame, so naturally, I told her Chile. "But mom," I said. "Don't worry, I'll look into it." After indeed not looking into it, my mom saved my future by finding a supersweet year-long program in Valdivia, Chile, through Middlebury University in Vermont.

The Middlebury program has a couple of unique elements. First is the language pledge, a document we sign promising to speak only Spanish while here, even among our fellow gringos. The language pledge is one of my favorite things about the program, and has helped bring my Spanish to a new level (From, "What the heck did you just say?" to "I understood the first word, but after that, What the heck did you just say?"). And it's sort of a symbolic thing too, an intention to fully immerse yourself in a place and a culture, to speak the language, learn all the mysterious phrases special to Chilean spanish. Definitely interesting to form friendships, especially with North Americans, while only speaking Spanish. But in all seriousness, I feel a gazillion times more comfortable in Spanish, and I credit it to simply speaking Spanish, all the time, even in the shower (not a program requirement, but fun to sing "Cantando en la lluvia" in a shower).

My program also sets you up with an internship catered to your interests. Mine is in the Ministry of Agriculture, a regional government office which oversees other government agriculture offices involved in forest management and research, health and safety, and aid to small and medium agricultural producers. Indeed, pretty strange to be "working for the Man" when I felt like I was working somewhat against him last year, but it's nice to see the other side of the coin. So for the 15 hours I spend in the Ministry of Agriculture office every week, I get dressed up in a nice shirt and slacks, but because I forgot to bring 1) nice shoes and 2) a belt from the States, I wear hiking shoes and show up beltless. Fortunately, my good wit and charm make these classy items unnecessary.

My time in the office has been interesting. I mentioned in an earlier post that I made out with the president of Chile (okay, so we cheek to cheek kissed, but they're pretty much the same thing, right?), but I've also been doing things with people who aren't the president of Chile. Rural women appear to be an up and coming theme here in Chile, especially in a country where women didn't receive the vote until the 1950's, and where agriculture remains such a huge part of the economy (there's a good chance your next apple or avocado says Chile on it...) Many rural women's groups are forming, and part of my internship is to attend meetings with them and people in my office, who give them advice on how to take advantage of resources around them, good agricultural practices, etc. The rural women have been exceptionally nice...a couple of them brought some homecooked fried sweet things to one of the meetings (they are called "calzones rotos" which literally means "broken underwear." the only reason i can think of for the name is that eating too much of them would result in broken, or at least badly damaged, underwear). Admitedly, it's frustrating at times during these meetings, as I would love to participate and understand everything being said, but with the language barrier it is often difficult. But with or without language, one can see the spirit and determination, and it's a cool feeling to see how animated and determined many of them are to improve their lives and equalize the playing field.

Besides time spent in meetings, eating fried things, I've spent a lot of time in the office. I've had little experience with offices in America, but so far the stereotype holds up-Chilean offices are cooler. The people in my office are always joking and laughing, are friends with each other, and create a really happy office environment. Erica the accountant told me one day, "You have to work, so you might as well do it with a smile on your face!" The office is also open and cubicle-less, which adds to the communal environment. My time there so far has shown me that I really don't want to work in an office, but that you can transform any place into a happy one.

The last element of my program is a home-stay. I'm staying at a pension, which is like a long-term hostal. There are 3 Chilean students, Jorge the Engineer, Allison and I from our program, Senora Carmen the all-around awesome Nana, and Jacqui and Manola, the mom and daughter team who own the house. Unfortunately for me, the tv is a constant fixture in the house, but besides that, it's really awesome here. Meals sometimes turn into 1-2 hour long engagements, where we discuss everything from funny Manola stories of the day to english and spanish phrases (I'm happy to report I've finally learned the translation for "Better safe than sorry": "Juan Seguro vivio muchos anos." literally, John Safe lived many years.") We also recently formed a weekly indoor soccer game with all the guys of the house, which promises to have us hobbling around most of the week (Chileans take their indoor soccer seriously!).

That's about it for program specifics. I'll be finalizing my class schedule this week, but I think I'll be taking "Campus Sustainability" "Ethnographic Documentaries" (film class) and "Economic and Social History of Chile."

Here's a nice parting quote from someone named Ben Sweetland:

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own. "

Peace!

Love,
Ryan

When You Fart in Public, ALWAYS Blame It On The Quiet One

Well, I last left you all class-less and in the midst of a Mapuche revolution, and not much has changed, except that the Mapuche have promoted me to assistent to the secretary of the revolution, a post which will take effect once I master the Mapuche language and show them I can march in protest like a total bad-ass.

As for classes, it turns out the Antropology department doesnt bother to show up the first week of classes, leaving us exchange students hanging out on the gringo limb. No worries...you wont find me complaining about having free aimless days in now sunny Valdivia (thats right biatches, alert the press, the beatles were right, here comes the sun!) Next week we will see how the classes go, but this week, I lived it up, Valdivian style.

On Wednesday I finally entered the botanical gardens here, an amazing wide open labyrinth of trails and trees that lead to random isolated sections of the campus. God greeted me that day in the form of mysterious flute music while I was walking along. Like a dog that suddenly smells food nearby and starts wildly sniffing the air, I too wildly sniffed the air, searching out this flute music. Assuming it was the music of temptatious deserted island sirens, I prepared to defend their ploy to seduce me and enslave me forever, but it turned out to be jus a regular university student walking along the path, playing the flute. I followed him in secret for several minutes, wanting to hear his magical flute but not wanting him to feel subconscious. I reluctantly left after a while, but now I want to learn the flute, and also meet some sirens.

Wednesday night found us at dinner, enjoying relatively normal conversation, when 6 year old Manola donned her ballerina costume and decided to perform a full length show. She began by doing 360 degree leaps in the air (more like 112 degrees, but we can pretend for her sake), which resulted in her dizzily careening in the direction of a fair number of sharp objects, like the tall points of the metal chairs. My heart leaped higher than her 112 degree spins, in preparation for her gouging out her eyes, but somehow she averted the chairs, and maintains full vision. Her next act was to run full speed at the wall and kick it, which to me is something youre more apt to learn in karate, but who knows, maybe she attends ballarina-karate classes. Her final act involved her on the ground, accidentally farting rather loudly, and screaming ´´It was Mati! It was Mati!´´ (Mati is a quiet, shy university student in lives in the pension). Mati gracefully decided not to debate Manola on this point, but if I were him, I would have gone with the ´´she who smelt it dealt it´´ argument.

Thursday, I accidentally told the entire family in Spanish that I hooked up with Jorge, a good friend of mine who also lives in the pension. A classic Spanish blunder. He had taught me the word ´´poncear´´ the night before, which means ´´hook up.´´ The next day, somehow this word came up with Jackie, Manola, and Allison, and I told them, ´´Jorge me enseñó poncear anoche.´´ (Jorge taught me to hook up last night) Of course, what I wanted to say was ´´Jorge me enseñó la palabra poncear anoche,´´ which means that he taught me the word ´´to hook up´´ last night. Needless to say, the family appreciated this blunder quite a bit.

Played soccer with a bunch of guys from my pensión two nights ago, where I learned Im slightly afraid of the ball (doesnt it kill braincells or something when you do too many headers?) I also learned that all the jargon you use when you play sports (over here, I take it out, you just kicked me in the balls you jerk), Im lacking in my vocabulary, so I ended up grunting a lot, hoping this would signal to my teammates I was open. We ended up tying, and limping home. I´m pretty excited for this, it looks like we will get a weekly game going, and I hope to soon get over my fear of the ball, and getting kicked in the balls.

And finally, here is a story for those of you who complain about walking up the stairs ;-)

http://www.helpothers.org/story.php?sid=8606

Be well!

Love,
Ryan

What Class Is This? or A Severe Lack Of Toilet Paper

From Top to Bottom: Mapuche protest sign that says: "With Autonomy and Revolucion, Liberation Fight"; Mapuche leaders speak with very friendly, accomodating Chilean police; Madonna is performing in Chile for the first time: magazine says, "Finally Gringo Meat Arrives." I'm hoping the translation is not as literal as I think...

I was quite confident my second day of classes would go better than my first. Actually, in thinking about it, this is not true at all. I'm confident of a lot of things, including global warming, the ability of love to conquer all, that Maggie shot Mr. Burns on purpose...but I am not confident of my classes situation.

So, as I unconfidently entered the building of my first class today, and unconfidently failed to find proof that the room I had written on my schedule actually existed, I sought the help of the secretary, who kindly escorted me to a room called Auditoriom. Now, my schedule didn't say anything about an auditoriom, but he appeared so confident, and besides, the word Auditoriom just seems to give off an air of confidence. So I confidently strolled into the class, which was called, "Antropology, Education and Development." And after 20 minutes of listening to the professor talk about Latin American poetry, I began to wonder, "What does Latin American poetry have to do with Antropology, Education and Development?" It turns out, not much. Not much at all. In reality, I was in Latin American Poetry.

At this point, I had two options...try to find my Antropology class, which I was beginning to believe was merely a figment of my imagination, or stare at the professor, who looked uncannily similar to our family friend and dermatologist Bill Resh. Naturally, I chose the latter, so I spent the rest of the class contemplating what it would be like if the real Bill Resh spoke Spanish. I also learned that it's fun to hear English poets like T.S. Elliot prounounced in a Spanish accent.

So anyway, after the class finally ended, it turned out I had to go to the bathroom, drop the kids off at the pool, "echar the larga" as they say here in Chile. As I calmly walked into the bathroom, I uncalmly noticed that none of the stalls carried toilet paper. And I began to more uncalmly notice that all the other buildings all didn't carry toilet paper, until I was speed walking to the other end of campus, where perhaps exists the only building in a 2 mile radius with toilet paper in the bathroom. Apparently in Chile you don't have to bring your own beer (BYOB), but you do have to bring your own toilet paper (BYOTP). Fortunately, because of months of practice with this type of thing in Ecuador, I didn´t ruin my good reputation by pulling an Ethan on the stone steps of the Valdivia campus. There are some things to be truly grateful for...

Speaking of grateful, here´s a nice video, if you´re into this kind of thing :-)
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=428

Anywho, Lilly, Alex and I met two German exchange students, and then a third German exchange student, and we sat down to have a proper international coffee/tea. It was pretty cool, speaking Spanish with Germans in a German Spanish accent. We all had a good time, secretly appreciated the ease with which we could understand our slowspeaking gringo selves, and eventually parted ways.

At this point, I managed to stumble into a protest by the Indigenous Mapuche people, a small but active part of the population who, much like the American Indians of the States, were forcibly (and violently) removed from the land, an action whose effects are still seen in abhorrent levels of poverty in the Mapuche population today. About 50 strong, with traditional Mapuche dress and all kinds of cool Mapuche instruments, the group blocked one side of the road, had a brief chat with the police, and continued on, with the police leading the way. At one point, I started walking with them, but I wasn't sure if they would take kindly to me walking with them and also snapping pictures to satisfy my tourist nature. My host mom told me the protest is part of a "land reclamation" movement, an up and coming theme here in South America, where the Mapuche are trying to reclaim land, at times forcibly, which was taken from them long ago. Pretty cool that I got to witness it!



Well, I've learned much today, but most importantly, to always carry a roll of toilet paper in my backpack. I have yet to attend a class I want to take, but my confidence in the Chilean Educational system is at an all-time high, and I'm fairly confident tomorrow won't let me down. And if it does, at least I'll be prepared with 505 sheets of double-tiered toilet paper.

Oh yeah, and here's a cool poem I found by poet Mary Oliver:

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? --Mary Oliver

Love,
Ryan

You Can Poop Your Pants If You Want To, You Can Leave Your Friends Behind

Well, auspiciously enough, the surpisingly calm Valdivian day literally just turned into torrential rain falling like out-of-control baby elephants from the sky the moment I began to write this entry, but as they say here, it's probably just a nubesita (baby cloud).

Today was the beginning of classes at Universidad Austral de Chile (UACH). Because of 2 month long strikes last semester, this semester began a month later, and is being compressed into a shorter time frame. I'm not sure why they protested last semester, but I imagine they were protesting how much it rains here.

Anyway, I began my day at the university feeling somewhat like a lost puppy. After two years at the same university and 3 months of summer, it felt pretty surreal to be at a different university where I didn't know anyone, and didn't know where I was going. After aimlessly wandering around for awhile, I met up with two other kids from my program, Lilly and Alex, so that we could be like three lost puppies wandering around. But with the true determination of the gringo spirit, we found our various destinations, and met up with the director of our program. However, we were delivered rather devastating news...Historia de Chile, a class we were all really excited to take, was exclusively offered to foreigners, because apparently the Chileans already know their own history. Because we're hoping to be in a more legit, Chilean-filled atmosphere, we decided not to take it.

This was the auspicious start of a day I have decided to call, "Gracious welcoming to the Chilean educational system." Now, it could be that they're just playing a huge joke on us foreigners, or it could be that in the States we're just too used to a system where you can find all your information in one place, but regardless, here is how it works. To find out what classes you want to take, you must first go each specific major's building, where with some prodding and poking and confused looks, you can hopefully obtain a list of classes offered. Once you've passed this hurdle, you take this information to another office, where you tell them the name of the course, and they tell you where and when it's offered. Once this is achieved, you go to your course at the time and place it's offered, and it's not there. As you frantically scour the premises for a trace of human (or even animal) life, a nice man with a radio offers to help you, calls approximately 34 people, and tells you that, naturally, the course you're trying to find is on the other side of the campus.

So Alex, Lilly and I entered my anthropology of globalization class about 20 minutes late, but fortunately, there were only 2 other people there. It turns out the professor makes attendance optional, which the other 25 Chilean students in the class appear to be taking full advantage of. However, coming from 700 person Berkeley classes, it was pretty cool and surreal to sit in a class with only 4 other students. We joked and laughed a bunch, the professor talked about some theories of globalization and used other big words, and that was about it. I have to choose 3 classes in total to take, and I have about 6 others to choose from, so I might not be taking this one.

But in the end, I passed the day very happily. I'm getting really into reading books in Spanish, and I found an awesome used book mini-store here, so after finishing a book by Paulo Coelho (who also wrote The Alchemist) I returned to buy another one of his books. I really recommend him to everyone...the man is a genius.

Alright, well I'd like to end this blog post with a special shoutout to my 1.5 year old nephew Ethan, who, with the collaboration of my mom, managed to poop his pants and send the diaper flying while running rampantly through our house, while I was talking to the family on Skype, prompting a humorous escapade which had me giggling all the way from the southern hemisphere. Thank you, Ethan, for reminding me that you don't have to be ashamed of pooping your pants in front of a crowd of people. May we all shamelessly poop our pants in front of our respective loved ones some day.