...rush...

sorry this has to be brief, but i'm going to valparaiso to celebrate new years (and enjoy the carnaval they have there before hand) today in about an hour and still need to get everything ready to go.

once again, happy christmas, and new years too.

i spent christmas eve and christmas day with icha's family and had a great time. the turkey al cubano, cooked by icha's cuban uncle, was really good - interesting flavor i'd never tasted before.

i'll try and write more and post some photos (once i fix them in photoshop) when i get back.

apartment jazz

writing this post from my new apartment. i'm almost moved in now. still have a few bags of things to bring over from the other apartment, but that should be done today (it sure is annoying taking the metro and buses with huge bags, but i suppose that's life - a taxi would be pretty expensive, and not really worth it).

the apartment's nice - well, i like it at least. the other people who live in the building are pretty nice - all in their 20's. they've been helpful so far, telling me things like where the not-quite-nearest but cheapest supermarket is, and the fastest way to get to places i need to go. the only problem thus far is the refrigerator - it doesn't quite work, but that should be fixed today or tomorrow. and i figure i can live without such convenience for a few days, especially when the grocery is within walking distance.

this post is also being written from my newly installed ubuntu system (linux, for those of you who don't know ubuntu, and for those of you who don't know linux, it's another operating system, like windows, but free, and somehow better in some indescribable way). new, fun toy. and, as i suppose is obvious, the internet (included in my rent :-) works. it's not a direct line, though; appears to be through a router, which is fine, except i'm not sure how to get bittorrent working well. but i've plenty of time to play with it and try and figure that out.


definitely doesn't feel like christmas is 3 days away. i'm sure that's mostly the weather - somehow summer != christmas in my mind. i suppose that makes sense. the displays in the mall with fake snow look so, umm, fake.

still not sure what i'll be doing to celebrate the holidays - my host family invited me to come have dinner with them, so we'll see - that seems the most viable option, especially if i don't leave santiago. i thought i might be travelling with a girl from the program, but i've yet to hear from her, so we'll see.

time to take a shower . . . wait, that's not the best idea if i'm going to be spending hours in public transportation dragging large bags of belongings across the city. so i suppose i'll postpone that and instead get dressed and try and finish this moving bit.


oh, almost forgot: happy holidays to all of you; i miss you and am sorry i can't be there with you.

things a'changin'

i signed the lease on an apartment today. i'll probably be getting the keys and starting to move in wednesday. so i guess you could start sending things there now seeing as it takes a few days for things to get here.

Lucrecia Valdes de Barros 333
Departamento B
Santiago, Chile

it looks to be a nice place, but i guess that's obvious since i signed the lease. $250 monthly, including internet, cable (though i don't as of now have a tv), and water. i'm going to have to buy things for the kitchen, but i figure if i cook mcgyver-style i shouldn't need too much.

yesterday my eye got some cat fur/dead skin in it and got all inflamed. allergic reactions are no fun. but the pharmacy gave me some anti-inflammotory anti-biotic drops, and that made it better in about 40 minutes, and about 6 hours later it felt normal. well, a bit tired and strained, but not swollen or painful anymore.

alright. it's sweltering in this apartment so i'm going to go outside and write some letters or read a book.

same old

not much new here. still looking for an apartment (got some visits scheduled for tomorrow), still yet to take that one last exam. otherwise, school's over and i'm free to do whatever i want, once i decide what that is. as for today, i'm going to go get some coffee and a french press from a friend who's going back to the u.s. and doesn't need/want them. later i'm going to a moive - drops of water falling over hot rocks, or something like that is the title. we'll see how it goes. i also talked to that professor who's willing to teach me things over the summer - tuesday or wednesday i'm gonig to go talk to him and get a book, and start learning, i guess. hopefully i'll be able to fulfill a graduation requirement for free while giving myself something to do all summer.

alright, i'm hungry. lunch time.

oh, and for those of you who want to talk to me (yes, with your voice and not via written words) you should get a microphone for your computer and download skype (user name: aschwieter). it's great fun.

school's out . . . almost

so it appears that all i have left for the semester is one essay on globalization (which i'm writing with another gringa (well, a gringa since i'm a gringo, gender, you know) [ed. note: gringo = pale skinned person, sometimes used to refer to an english speaker; unlike in mexico, it carries no negative connotation in chile]) since you've forgotten what was before the parenthesis, i'll just say that all i have left for this semester is an essay which is half done and an exam. the paper is due tuesday and the exam the following tuesday. hopefully all this time means i won't have to work for hours the night before it's due to finish it, but you never know what heights procrastination can reach.

tomorrow i'm going to go look at an apartment, actually two in the same building, in which i might live the coming semester. rent is $284 a month, including utilities, or so i am led to believe. we'll see if that information is amended tomorrow.

what else . . . tomorrow i'm also going to go talk to my math professor about the summer - he offered to lend me a book and help me learn it over the summer, which would be great not only to give me something to do but also because when i get back to the u of i i can take a proficiency test and get credit for whatever it is i learned. great way to get free credit that counts towards graduation. also in my plans for the summer, besides traveling, are maybe teaching some english - the director of my program says she knows someone who wants conversational english lessons, which i don't think would be very hard, since i can converse in english and all. there's also the potential for house/apartment-sitting for people rich enough to pay for such a service. i can act like i live in someone's house (in fact, i've been doing it all semester).

not much else going on . . . other than all that jazz with my mom. the internet sure is wonderful, allowing my dad to send me updates on her (although i'd love to hear more). it sure is hard being 5000 miles away when your mother is in the hospital.

ok. i guess i should work on that paper since i haven't all day. what better time than now to fight procrastination.

thanksgiving

yesterday was the first time i've ever eaten thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. it's not something i'd recommend. you miss out on some of the best parts of thanksgiving, such as seeing the platter piled high with turkey, getting a choice between light and dark meat, eating until you couldn't possibly eat anymore, the sense of family, and, of course, the leftovers. here's what the main plate looked like - some mashed potatoes, turkey with a bit of gravy and stuffing, and a bit of what i assume was cranberry sauce. the food did taste pretty good, and was preceeded by a caesar salad and followed by pumpkin pie, so it sufficiently reminded me of thanksgiving. but it was in no way the same. oh, and i forgot to mention that it's almost summer here so it was warm out too.

classes are winding down, so that means i get to write a couple of papers this weekend. i'm so excited. yay . . . well, i suppose i don't have much choice. it looks like i'll only be taking exams for two of my four classes since i'm exempt from the other two, so i guess that's good.

time to go work on those papers and then go see a photography exhibition.



oh - in case you didn't notice, over there in the sidebar of this page, underneath the stuff about the past, is a link to some photo albums i put in internetland.
--->

ultimate photos

it's late, i have to get up early to go to the beach tomorrow, but here's the link to the photos from ultimate on the beach. photos let me know if it doesn't work, or if there are problems viewing this blog. i'd be glad to fix them for your viewing pleasure.

APEC

just a quick update: there's all sorts of interesting things going on in santiago because of the APEC meetings - lots of detours, protests, and universities being closed. of course, none of this really affects me personally since i live so far from downtown and i'm certainly not going to be doing any protesting (i'm told to do so would risk my visa being revoked, and i wouldn't want any of that).

today's been a nice day so far - went to look at an apartment which was pretty nice, though i'd like to find somewhere a bit cheaper or maybe a couple blocks off the main street so it isn't so loud. after that i went to the museum of beautiful arts (museo de bellas artes - maybe i should translate it as fine arts, but i prefer the literal translation) and saw a couple really cool photography exhibitions.

now it's time for some reading and/or a short nap

beet

back from the beach with a sore body and some sunburnt feet. yes, i know, sunscreen. trust me, i put it on. but apparently i didn't reapply appropriatly, and there is also the possiblitlty that the ocean washed of some of the sunscreen, as well as the other alternative that the sand, known for its exfoliating properties, exfoliated the protected layer of skin and left me with softer yet more vulnerable feet. in any case, they are nice and red now - we'll see if wearing shoes is possible tomorrow - it might be a few days of sandal wearing for "medical" purposes.

don't think that this hot sun burning my feet in any way affected my weekend. i quite enjoyed myself. we played probably 5 or 6 games (5 on 5 with 1 or 2 subs, play to 7) on saturday and another 3 sunday. i was right about the beach being windy - luckly though the wind was essentially parallel to the field, so we didn't have to deal with the oh so annoying and unpredictable crosswind. instead, the team that was throwing with the wind just had a tremendous advantage. this led to a number of games being point for point races, and the winning team was the one that could score into the wind. we played on the beach (so a couple discs did land in the surf when thrown particularly horribly) on a field marked off with some white elastic bands staked into the sand. at first, the field was nice and flat, relatively well-packed sand. that of course changed after one or two games, making all those muscles in your feet have to work extra hard to run, well, as close to running as you can get on the beach. after a long day of playing ultimate, we had an asado at the cabañas (read cookout at the cabins). chorripans, antichuchos, y pollo (sausage-on-bread, shish kabobs, and chicken). quite satisfying.

it's getting late, so i am going to get to sleep - i slept well last night, but all that exercise made me a bit tired. my body needs to rebuild all the muscles i tore.

oh, i suppose i forgot to mention earlier that i'm probably one of the worst players who went to the beach. it could be that i'm out of practice, but i blame it more on my overall lack of athletic ability. but not to worry - it was still a good time, and maybe i learned a thing or too, or at least found people with which to play in the future. they play once or twice a week, so hopefully that practice will allow me to improve.




i suppose i'm not supposed to comment on the title i just decided upon, but it makes me wonder: how is it that i never ate any beets before i came here? not that i've had a lot here, but i did have them for dinner 2 nights on my trip to the south - and they are good, not to mention beautiful to look at. such a rich color.

ice cream

well. i am officially bad at keeping an up to date web log, even though i am probably on the internet every day. somehow the urge to update this site doesn't come to me when i am at the computer, and when i am not it is a bit tough to do so. yeah, i could right these posts on real paper and then post them later, but i don't much like that idea. well, rather i like it but don't do it. i think i fear the electronicization process, and the fact that i would want to change what i had written to such a degree that there really is no point in writing anything out before i sit down at the computer. now, if i had a secretary, or a voluntary secrectary, things would be different. or maybe if i actually wrote things here that i felt expressed anything more than the moment i am writing them - i mean, if i put some really well-written things in a notebook, i don't think it would bother me much transfering them. but this page isn't so much well written, and i don't see that changing in the near future.


enough blather. you are reading this not to find out about how i write these silly posts but instead to find out about this city and country i am living in, or at least my actions in this strange place. hmm. well, today i went to a couple classes, read a really good story on the micro (micro=bus)("cuello de gatito negro" [translates as "the neck of a little black cat"] by julio cortázar), and went and saw some bad music performed by a group of musicians who wear clown noses. don't ask. the tickets were free. that is definitly the only reason i went. now i understand why they were giving away tickets. beware of free tickets found on the internet: there is a reason they are free.

i asked my math profesor if there were any math-related things i could do in the summer in the city. short answer: yes, but they are boring or unofficial. long answer: i could be a ta or something, but the word on the street is that in the summer that is not the best job to have. lots of discussion sessions, lots of papers to grade, and students who don't care to much and just want to pass the class they failed so they don't get behind. so my profesor offered to lend me a book which i could work through and learn things, and he'd be about to help me and talk about things. while this might be nice, it is in no way something i can use in any official sense in the future. well, i realize now as i write this, i could take a proficiency exam when i get back to school and get credit for a class about what i learned. so this idea just got a bit more attractive, but i'm still looking for something better to do with my summer. and there's always traveling . . .

this saturday i am taking a little trip to the beach to play ultimate on the beach. never played frisbee on the beach - i fear it might be a bit windy, but we'll see how it goes. this is related to the fact that on sunday i played ultimate for 3 hours or so with a bunch of americans and a handful of chileans. they are a group who plays 2 times a week (though i have class during one of them), made up mostly of americans who are in santiago for various reasons, but in the past it was apparently half chilean and half estadounidense. {now is as good a time as any to point out that this whole continent is america, and chileans are americans too. i can't say "i want to go back to america" because in reality i never left. that being said, it is hard to refer to residents of the united states in english in any other manner. so i will most likely continue to do so, but you should be aware there is a cultural issue here, and i cringe every time i am forced to call my compatriates americans.}

yesterday i saw some really amazing improvisational jazz (and free too). the piano player played the inside of the piano, something i hadn't seen before, and also put a piece of paper in the piano to make it sound differently. good music. tomorrow i might go see another trio in the same program.

hmm. i seem to have run out of words to add to this mountain. just one more to top it off:



cherry

books and movies

sorry for the excessive delay in posting anything.

last week i had to write a paper and give a presentation on "anything that has to do with latin america." obviously the idea was that we chose topics that were interesting to us. i chose to write and talk about nicanor parra, a chilean poet, or, as he is known, antipoet. antipoetry is just poetry that breaks with the erudite poetic tradition and brings poetry to both everyday life and coloquial language. basically, makes written poems be like the poems we see an experience every day. quite a good poet. he also makes, well i guess he still does though he is 90 years old, artifacts, which are objects together with a few short verses, for example, a bottle of cocacola and a little card that says "message in a bottle." the idea is to mix common objects with common phrase and create an altogether uncommon result that he then procedes to call art. the mere act of calling it art makes people look at it differently. i could obviously continue on for 7 pages about him, but i'll refrain from that for now. i'll post any poems i find that he wrote entirely in english (since he has a graduate degree in physics from brown university and speaks english fluently).

friday (and i guess saturday too) i went to a 24 hour movie marathon, cine adiccion, of movies that are hard to find in chile. unfortunatly i fell asleep during the one movie a really wanted to see, the holy mountain, directed by aleandro jodorowsky, so i'll just have to find it somewhere and watch it again. another good movie was the tulse luper suitcases, and also i will walk like a crazy horse. 24 hours is a long time to spend in a movie theater.

tonight, or rather in about 10 minutes, i'm going to the 24th international book fair, where i'm hopefully going to hear a professor of mine talk since he is one of 14 new chilean poets there is a presentation about (and i know he will be there since he cancelled class so he could go). hopefully i'll also find some more good books to read - i'm almost done with the perfume: story of an assasin that i'm reading in spanish, translated from the original german. if not, i'll just go to the library - i want to read more by jodorowsky and parra.

time to go.

trip, round 2

so this time maybe i will decribe what the trip was like.
the digital photos i took are here (click to enlarge, obviously) (sorry there aren't many - there are some "real" photos too which i will develop after i use the last 4 pics on the roll and then get scanned so as to share via the wonderful internet)

university of concepción
i couldn't understand why we were stopping in a university. i mean, i've seen universities before, i currently attend 3 chilean ones. didn't make much sense to me. however, in retrospect, it was nice. there was a really cool mural painted by a group of mexican painters in one of the art buildings there. amazing.

chiflon del diablo, a coal mine that is no longer in use.
there was a movie filmed here about the chilean coal mines - subterra. i haven't seen it, but i might after having been inside the mine. one thing is for sure, i could never have been a coal miner. just a bit too tall for that. i only really hit my head once, and thanks to the hard hat, nothing happened. if i hadn't been wearing it, i would probably have had a big gash, or at least a huge bump. the mine is actually under the ocean, which was cool. don't think i'd ever been under the ocean before.

lago lanalhue
sacred lake of the mapuches. didn't look to sacred to me - looked like any other relatively unpopular lake, with houses built around it, many of which have their own little dock in the water with the family ski boat. it sure would have been fun to go skiing or tubing instead of just riding around in a relatively slow moving catamaran.

an organic farm
pretty much the classic farm, where the animals are treated with respect instead of being forced to live in little metal boxes like the superfarms of today. tasted some good fresh cows milk, and had some really good shishkabobs.

a forest preserve
my favorite part of the trip. a chance to see what this part of the world used to look like before the people tore it apart. it just so happens that in this area pine trees reach their optimal size (optimal in the minds of the forestry industry) in just 6 years, where in other places it takes 26. as such, the hills are covered in fake forests of pine and eucalyptus trees, neither of which are native to chile. in fact, there are no native conifers, just the aurucaria, an ancient ancestor of conifers that grows insanely slow. in english, it is called the monkey puzzle tree (there's a picture of one in fake nature on the photos page). anyway, all these forestales are really ugly. you can sometimes see the lines between the trees, like in a corn field, but instead with trees. and there are of course the bald spots left after the trees are cut down before more are planted. it is amazing though how much of the land is covered by these nonnative trees.
anyway, the forest preserve. it is one of the few examples left of what the forest was like in that part of the country. pretty cool. it was nice to walk through real nature.

a mapuche town
we got to listen to the leader (patriarch) of a mapuche family talk about the culture and the place of the mapuches in chile today. in case i didn't say it earlier, mapuches are the natives of chile. they resisted the spanish successfully until they made a treaty in the 1800s. some are still considered violent by chileans and resist development of their ancestral lands, sometimes by senting buildings on fire. to be fair, those acts are perpetrated by members of a militant group of mapuches, and do not reflect the beliefs of the rest. moreover, mapuches do not and did not live as one large group with a single set of leaders. rather, each family was essentially on its own, lead by its own patriarch, called the lonco.
this lonco who we talked to told us that the world is sick and that we need to heal it or else the world is going to end. he believes that mapuche culture is much cleaner, much healthier, and that if the world were to adapt it things would change, the wars would stop, the environment would start to revive, etc. it is also believed by the mapuches that when there are no more mapuches the world as a whole will come to an end.

caverns on the ocean where some theives hid out
probably one of the best parts of the trip. climbing around on rocks on the beach is really entertaining. one of the caves there was amazingly large, and a perfect place for a bandit to hide out. just being there makes you want to rob some haciendas robin hood style. in one of the rocks there was a hole that aparently went all the way down to the water. when the waves came in, the air rushed out, making a really cool noise. too bad i couldn't record it.



overall, the trip was good. did things i wouldn't have done had i been traveling on my own. mostly, though, it just makes me want to travel more. this weekend, though, i have to prepare for a presentation on monday about the parra family.

time to go get ready and go to a concert of the "universal orchestra"

el dia del cine

tuesday was el dia del cine in all of chile. all movie theatres were showing all movies for $1.60 or so. the lines were insanely long, so much so that i would prefer to pay twice as much so the theatre isn't completely filled with people. however, i did celebrate the day by watching a bunch of shorts for free, shown on a plaza. sitting outside and watching shorts is a really good time. one of the shorts, from italy, was really good: el ultimo pistolero. it was in black and white, all dramatic-style, set in an abandoned building. as the title indicates, the only character was a lone gunman. he walked about the building, fixed a sign that was dangling, moved a door a bit, etc. eventually, as the music climaxed and the camera showed the dust in the light that came in through the almost cathedral-like windows, he finally drew his gun and aimed straight ahead at the non-existent dueler, and fired. the shot ricocheted off all the things he had looked at and adjusted, ending by slamming into his stomach. he fell dead on a rug placed behind him for that exact purpose. it was like the crazy pepsi(?) commericials with the insane basketball shots. quite entertaining.

trip

so, where i went:
university of concepción
chiflon del diablo, a coal mine that is no longer in use.
lago lanalhue
an organic farm
a forest preserve
a mapuche town
caverns on the ocean where some theives hid out

i'm pretty hungry, so i'm going to eat. hopefully i'll fill in the details of all these places today. if not, tomorrow.

kafka

the play yesterday was pretty good - and unexpectedly free, which is always nice. it was called "the condmenation" and based on a story of the same name by kafka. even in spanish, it still had the distinct kafka feel to it. it should be noted, though, that since i don't know any german, all of my experience with kafka has been in translation, just like this play. ok, looking about online, i think that the title in english might be "the judgement," but i don't really have time to read the story now and find out. looking at the ending, though, it seems to be the case. regardless, the play was good - better than the other 2 plays i've seen here, even if the acting wasn't quite as good. maybe i just like kafka.

now i need to leave to go see an exhibition of industrial design sculptures. it should be really cool, and best of all i can walk there.

ahh, gotta go

woah. this updating regularly thing appears to be a challenge.

this coming wednesday i'm going to go on a trip with the program to the south - it should be a really good time. we will be doing things that tourists don't usually do, such as meeting mapuches, the native people of chile. other than that, though, i really don't know what the trip entails. they like to make all our plans surprises - that way we can't really be disappointed.

alright, i promise i'll add something more tonight or tomorrow, but now i'm going to go see a play by kafka, i think.

interesting morning

so at about 7:30 this morning i woke up. no, not for class, or on purpose. just a tremor, gently shaking me awake. craziness. not something i've felt before. no, there wasn't any damage or anything like that, it was just a little tremor, a friendly reminder that the city i live in is on the pacific rim, and has seismic activity.

woah, a week

one of those sayings i was taught when i went to peru is proving true again: the days are long, but the weeks are short. somehow, another week has gone by. every day it seems like i've nothing to do, but somehow i do things and it becomes another day. on wednesday i went and saw mala leche, a chilean movie. yay free cinema. it was really good - though i didn't understand probably half the dialogue, due to the excessive use of slang and mumbling. but that didn't really matter - i got the idea, enjoyed the movie. thursday i saw a really bad concert, but i suppose they can't all be good. friday i saw elephant, a movie directed by gus van sant (who also directed good will hunting and a number of other movies). i'd seen it already, but not on "the big screen." it's really well done, makes you want to take pictures or make movies or something. yesterday i saw a jazz concert that was pretty good, i really enjoyed the saxophone. today i saw amelie for just 100 pesos, which is, umm, 16 cents. such a good movie. i mean, i have it on dvd and all, but for 16 cents, how can you pass it up.

i was informed of two good poets this week: oliverio girondo (argentina) and mario benedetti (uruguay). what little of them i've read so far i've enjoyed, and this week i'm going to either buy some of their books or at least check them out of a library (something i've yet to do in chile, but probably should start doing. i seem to have stopped reading for the most part since i don't want to read in english and haven't found much that i want to read in spanish. there are easy solutions to this problem, i just haven't implemented them. one answer is to read the newspaper, and another is to just start trying books. hopefully i'll start reading more soon.).

there were some other things i wanted to say, but i seem to have forgotten them. if i remember, i'll write them down and add them later. for now, i'm going to edit my essay for tomorrow and go to bed.

on dreams - the last photo is also a part of the same project about dreams. the girl in this photo is her cousin.

auto retrato (self portrait) by/of icha