10,000 Words, or 10 Pictures

I have about 10,000 words to say about my experience here in Chile, but I figured, why not just post 10 pictures? You know the equation. So here´s a series of about 10ish pictures which try to sum up my time here..... :-)I posted this in an earlier blog, but it´s a good representation of what a lot of this semester was: reflection. I came here to Curiñanco on Yom Kippur to fast and reflect. One of the most incredible things about my time here was how much time I had to myself, which really let me get to know myself and my thoughts and feelings.
Here you have it, the people of the pensión I called home for about 5 months (minus Diego and la Señora Carmen, perdón). From left to right: Allison, Mati (not to be confused with beverage Mate), Ryan, Jorge, Luis, Manolla (daughter), Jaqui (owner). this was on a boat to an island called Corral featuring old Spanish forts. Damn, it rained a lot. The first month in Valdivia, it rained 29 of the 31 days. I´m still leaking.
Jorge, my closest Chilean friend, and a truly incredible person. He introduced me to mate and helped me get through the rough times. Here we are with a volcano in the background. it´s true, we are in the middle of the road, but we managed to dodge to the side of the quickly oncoming traffic.
One of the best days I spent in Valdivia. Jorge, Allison, Jaqui, manolla, me. We went to the park on one of the first days of sun, played soccer and teeter totter, and ate a lot a lot.
The lobos marinos (sea lions) are one of Valdivia´s main attractions. They have a reputation of biting your limbs off, which is why I look a bit nervous here....
Another of Valdivia´s fames...Kuntsmann, one of the founding German families, has their brewery here. Valdivia is filled with artesan beer, with Kuntsmann leading the way. We had some good times here. Also, the cardboard cutout in which I´m posing isnt so far off...I think I gained about 10 pounds in Chile, a.k.a. land of endless bread.
At our pensión with Alex, me, Jorge. This is our famous "Vamos, Valdivia!" pose, which is one of our inside jokes which will never, ever, get old. It comes from the mayoral race in Valdivia, in which the entire city is covered with huge pictures of the candidates. Alcalde Berger, a gruff looking guy who won, had huge carboard cutouts with him with a serious face and thumbs up, saying Vamos, Valdivia. We are emulating as best as we can here.
Another one of the best nights ever. Me, dressed as tourist. Manola the fairy, Allison dressed as me, other Allison a gypsy. We went to a friend´s cabaña and hung out with gringos, Ecuadorians, Columbians and Chileans alike. They had to drag us out of there, it was so fun.
About 11 gringos gathered at our pensión for Obama election night. Alex animatedly found updates faster than CNN, although he lacked their sweet holograms (still in awe). Notice the celebratory alcohol in the foreground. We were all so excited, Allison actually started crying during Obama´s election speech. One of the times where we all would have really loved to be there for an incredible, historic moment.
Thanksgiving (día de acción de gracias in spanish) at Alex´s Chilean parents´house. The six of us, led by the incredible efforts of allison, put on Thanksgiving, Chilean style, cooking all day. Afterward, we went in a circle and said what we were thankful for. Naturally, I cried. I´m going to post, without her permission :-) what Allison said in reflection about the day:

"In a lot of ways, you could say that our Chilean Thanksgiving was the perfect metaphor for my experience here this first semester: arriving without any sense of what the “ingredients” were, searching unsuccessfully for all the things I had left in the U.S. and trying to replicate the world I had known before, when replication was impossible. In the end, you improvise and you realize that, in many ways, plum sauce is just as good as cranberry sauce and, though you had to abandon the pumpkin pie, it will be waiting for you next year. Though it may be difficult at times, you can still build a life and a community for yourself amongst strangers — beautiful in spite of and because of the differences."--Allison
I am still in complete awe at this entire hike. Up above you can see the glaciar, called Cerro Tronador. We hiked, at extreme peril (sorry Mom!) close to the source to drink the purest water of our lives. Then we climbed up to 6,000 feet and continued to gaze in awe at both sides of the Andes. Just an all around incredible weekend trip, and a nice representation of all the awesome weekend trips we took, from Pucón to Puyeue to Puerto Montt.
Here´s an anecdote for you peoples: Jorge (in the middle) introduced me to the church here, and I went with him about 8 or 9 times throughout my stay here in Valdivia. It was always the incredible music, with the whole congregation singing loudly and passionate, that brought me back. This last Sunday, we all sang a song called "With the Power of Your Love." I was singing at the top of my lungs, and getting pretty emotional, when I look to my left and see a 45 year old women with her hands raised up towards the heavens, praising, and just BELTING out the song, with an incredible beautiful voice that you could hear over the 80 plus people singing. I looked at her and just lost it, the tears started flowing. Afterward they called Jorge and I up since we were both leaving town, and we got to say some words to the congregation. Talk about a first: First good-bye speech in Spanish to Chilean church...that´s something I never thought I would say! Afterwards everyone prayed for us to have a safe return home. This church was truly one of the best things I did here in Valdivia.
Here you have 5 of the 6 kids in the program: Lilly, me, Alex, Adam, Allison (sorry Ian, you shouldn´t have vomited that weekend) in Puyeue, near the volcano peak. We all became pretty close in our own ways, and I feel really lucky to have gotten to share my time here with such wonderful people.
In Cunco with some of Jorge´s family...his 80 yr. old grandma, mom, and cousin. A truly awesome experience to spend the sept. 18 holidays with his family (sept. 18 is similar to our july 4th, but celebrated for about 4 days here). Their hospitality and amount of food they shoved in me will never be forgotten.


And so it is...I suppose I lied, I posted about 13 pictures. It turns out there was a lot a lot of cool amazing stuff I did here. One last thing I want to share.....

This past Sunday, some of us went to the beach for one last beach romp. I suggested we do a little ceremony...we would all say one wish-hope-prayer-whatever we had. Here´s mine:

"I want to take everything I´ve learned in these past 7 months, go to Italy and be with someone I love for a month, and then return to my home, and bring all of it back there. I want to take a semester to learn outside of the classroom, explore, find community and some peace."

That´s what you realize when you go far away from home. You realize your home is where your heart is, and my heart is with someone in Italy and in California, in my country, in my language, in all the people I´ve ever known. As the girl in House from Mango Street says at the end, "I had to go away to come back."

And I see now, I did. I went away so that I could come back, come back to my home, and come back to myself. Here´s to the next stage of this crazy, crazy life :-)

Love,
Ryan


"When you find yourself face to face with something you don´t understand, maybe you should ask, ´"What do you think? Is this a gift?´"--Adam Weisberg (thanks Michal for showing me)

Put A Sock In It

A deadly water bottle assassin killed my computer about a month ago, which has made my blog entries wane. So now I find myself en el "Cibercafe," located in the backright corner, with a sweet view of the bathroom and its cleaning supplies. Talk about inspiration!

This, I believe, will be my last Chile blog. It has been quite a ride, family, friends, and occassional random web stalkers. We have shared bathroom references, more bathroom references, and occassional abstract anecdotes to what I´m actually doing here. So so lovely.

And now, I´m going home.

As most of you were probably aware, I was going to spend a year studying in Chile (14 months outside the U.S. in total). And about a week ago, 6 months into my stay, I hit the wall, and I just knew, all of a sudden, that it was time to come back. I actually went to the forest, a la Thoreau, to write a long impassionaed letter about how I was feeling, my reasons for returning, all of that, which I might still share. But for now, I find it sufficient to say: I had an incredible, incredible time here. I came here to learn Spanish and get to know myself better, and that´s exactly what I´ve done. I´ve had the biggest ups and downs in my life, and in the very end of things, I can say I´m happy for every single moment I had here, that I had a million once-in-a-life-time experiences, that I dont regret a single thing. What else can we ask for, in the end of things?

To better illustrate my feelings and reasons for returning, i´d like to share with you all a little anecdote from this past weekend. With Alex and Adam from my program, I traveled to Bariloche, Argentina, my second time there. Only this time, besides watching people drink mate from the bank to in the bathroom (no joke), we decided to hike a glaciar, called Tronador (thunder) because as you hike you occassionally hear the glaciar cracking and spitting off little gumball loogies into the valley below, which sounds like thunder. It was truly incredible, we hiked into the valley and got pretty close to the source of the water, where we bottled up and drank the freshest water of our life. Screw you, Arrowhead, I´ll get to the source myself!

And after 6ish hours of hiking, powering through snow and giant horse flies who wouldnt even let us stop to pee, we reached a lodge at 6,000 feet where you can stay, and have a 360 degree view of andes mountains in every direction. we havent invented good enough words yet in any language to describe this view. alex and i woke up at 6 am to see the sunrise. the only word i got for that one is dayammmmm.

and finally, here´s the anecdote that describes it all:

alex wakes me up at 6 a.m. i groggily reach up above on the shelf to pull out my two beautifully soft and warm wool hiking socks. somehow, they shoot out of my hand, i fall onto my side like an oval shaped egg rolling around, and when i right myself, i look down expecting to see my two beautifully soft and warm wool hiking socks on the ground next to me. any decent csi bullet spray detective would have shown the only possible place for them to land, based on angle and location of fall, would be on the floor, somewhere around me.

BUT THERE WAS ONLY ONE SOCK THERE......

It was a nightmare. The only Andes mountains sunset of my entire life approaching. An impossible horrific situation...a missing wool sock, without any explanation. It was terribly insignificantly annoying. Muttering to myself over and over again how very impossible and ridiculous this moment was, I turned up every matress and floorboard on this side of the Andes, to no avail. Finally, I gave up, found other socks, and went outside to enjoy the sunset. Then I came back to look some more. Still no results. A couple hours later, I return again, this time constructing far flung theories about how perhaps it landed in my pants, how perhaps Alex stole it, how perhaps it bounced off a floor board, a matress and an errant horsefly and flew out the open window, where an Andes current carried it to the top of the glaciar, where I would be forced to conduct a dangerous life threatening glaciar rescue.

Nada nada nada. At one point, Alex, who kindly helped me search, was like "hey man, you might just have to forget it." It was good advice, at some point you gotta let it go, right? So I decided I would walk to the other side of the room, my last grand search. Nothing again, until Alex, who followed me over there, looks on the ground and sees my beautifully soft and warm wool hiking sock sitting there like a sad lost puppy. He hands it to me, and in the glory of an NFL touchdown, I do mad fist pumps and hop around the room. Glory is mine.

Now, perhaps youre asking me how this crazy long drawn out anecdote has anything to do with deciding to return home. Here it is, two things: the mysterious force of life and persistence. mysterious force of life: I had no idea where this south american journey would take me. i had my ideas, like where i thought the sock would land at my feet, but as tends to happen in life, i got thrown around for an exciting tumble. and here´s where persistence comes in, something my mom has always always told me: its all about persistence. everytime she would tell me maybe i should think about switching programs when i would tell her i was struggling, i would shrug her off. its me, i would say, i need to try harder, make it work. i can be happy anywhere.

And man, I fought. I persisted and persisted, and I had some incredible times here, some incredible highs. But also some incredible lows, the lows of loneliness, missing your language, missing the companionship of those who know you. And then, out of nowhere, appears the magical sock. Across the room, where you least expected it, where you hadnt even looked yet. Persistence isnt always just sticking things out cuz you should, it turns out...persistence is staying with yourself, compassionately, seeing what appears, listening to yourself over and over again. And everything in me is telling me to return, take the semester off Ive always wanted, go and explore and find community and learn about permaculture and rest my tired spirit. Be home in April for my sister´s second baby being born. Get to know my first nephew better. Read and write and learn to knit and reflect on everything these past 7 months has meant to me. Thats where I found the sock, when I least expected it. And I am so so happy for everything...so happy that I put the sock up there in the first place, so happy it got thrown around and I spent so much time searching for it, so happy to pick up the stinky sock and start the next journey of my life. I have about 11 days left here, and Im blessed with the time to say good-bye to something that has just meant so much to me, so very very much. To write letters to the girls at the orphanage, to Jacqui and Manola from the hostal, to all the incredible kids in the program. To walk down Avenida Picarte just one more time, see the blind man in his same white coat play his accordeon as people walk by without stopping, walk down the costanera and watch people rowing on the calle calle river, watch this beautiful valdivian spring, which has brought so much life, spread its seeds to the wind, that giving and receiving that is life itself.

Thank you Valdivia, thank you life, you have given me so so much.

So for some hard facts, so you understand what´s next: I leave Chile Dec. 20, to go to Cancun, Mexico with my family for vacation for one week. From there, I fly Dec. 28 to Bologna, Italy, to visit Kalen for a month. And then Jan. 28 I fly home to San Diego, where I´ll try to plant some tomatoes and make up for my deepening carbon footprint, hehe.

So that´s it folks. I´m gonna put a sock in it for now. There may come a night in the future when I awake from a dream and notice my fingers moving antsily, like theyre trying to write on a keyboard, and Ill sleep walk over to the keyboard and just start typing another blog. Be prepared, peoples, be prepared....

Love to you all :-)

Ryan

"Every night when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, I´m reborn." --Mahatma Gandhi