Elections

Today were presidential elections. There will be, as everyone knew there would be, a second round on Jan 17 to decide between Frei (more left) and Piñera (more right). I went to the national stadium, where there is a massive congregation of voters, to check it out. It's an event! It's outdoors, with more than 100 different lines, dogs, lots of kids, vendors selling hats and water and parasols and cyclists driving rickshaws. Entire families go together, which seems quite different than in the US. Sunday is always the "day of the family" so lot's come after church or before family lunches or pass the day in the park together afterwords. Felix and I were interviewed twice, once by a news station and once by El Clinic, the equivalent of The Onion in Chile. I suppose we are interesting because we are obviously foreigners exploring, and we didn't see any other obvious foreigners. I think also in the US they would never let us wander through the voting lines taking photographs of the whole process. My favorite part of which was a man selling florescent parasols. (Trying to play Cartier-Bresson:)







Here's an appetite wetter from el Cajón del Maipo last week with Mom:



Trying to slow the spinning inside my head as I listen to the car horns chant election enthusiasm in the streets outside my window. Tomorrow I leave for Mendoza, Argentina and the bureaucracy, photocopies, and date restraints are crazying me.

I arrived in Santiago around eleven last night after a couple hours of trundling along the curved country highway in a blue bus with hearse curtains and hoary bearded chauffeur who would halt for the mom and child or single craggy-skinned man as they appeared from the treed bank alongside and cocked a finger to flag him down. The world outside the bus becomes an opaque mass as the suns sets and the space inside becomes more of a world, like you imagine the inside of the fairy god mother's pumpkin carriage would be, lit like a bulb and bouncing.

Awoke early this morning to make it out to the warehouse at the far west end of Santiago where I give English classes. We - some coordinators from Un Techo para Chile, 16 parents from the community, 50 kids and myself - left from there in bus at 9am to visit a zoo just outside Santiago to the south. At first the kids were shy and polite and skwirmed when I would ask their name. But as the day progressed - we returned about 5 - they grew increasingly more comfortable, and aggressive, seeing me less as an exotic specimen and more as a step latter. Oye, Tío, why do you have a weird accent? You're not chilean? Are you from Argentina? Brazil? Peru? Mexico? Spain? They locate foreign countries at least in part by the futbol teams the know. And then, How do you say (insert curse or cat call) in English? I learned a lot of new animal names today and made some friends. It was wonderful to wander around with all the kids and explore, have them teach me things. When we returned, one came up to me and said, Chao Tío Wiley. And then another dragged me over to meet his mom, with another small child in wake. Yes, of course he behaved well. Can monsters behave well, or do you still say that their "well" is monsterly?

Afterwords, spent some time in the community, which really is a community, organized and with leaders and lots of kids playing in the stream draining from a broken water pipe. Very interesting to see another side of the city, another formation of community....

Tomorrow to buy a backpack for the summer's journey. Here's the map up to now:
Monday: leave by bus through Argentina, stopping a couple days in towns toward the north. Arrive in Asuncion, Paraguay by the 18th as to have time to get my visa to enter brazil. Stay with Felix and his host family from a previous study abroad. We go to Falls de Iguazu.
The 24th: take the bus across the border into Brazil and to Rio to meet Nate and Laura. We spend the week there and in Buzios. They leave New Years Eve, which I will spend in Rio? From their I wander around the towns near Rio until the 6th when I fly back to Santiago.
8th Jan: to the beach close to Santiago with german friends here and their families. Return the 10th.
Right after: Going south in Chile to the Lakes District and Patagonia. Return at the end of Jan.
2 Feb: To north of chile, bolivia and Peru to see the cities and machupichu and whatever catches the eye with sister Vivi and 6 or so of her/sortofmy friends.
Return by March 1 for the start of the semester March 4.

A special day at the park

No photos, but I'll do my best.

It's a day, a Wednesday, one of those mid-week days during finals that floats, not really preceding or following other days in any determinate order. And the air is very clear and crisp, the way it is when you are supposed to guard yourself with marble pillars and bookcases shelving 300-year-old dust. In Santiago, where you sometimes have to convince yourself in a very non-philosophical sense that the sky is blue, the sky is baby-blanket blue. Magnolia leaves are deep green, varnished in the sun. And a man about 3 feet tall bumbles past, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses that look thick enough to torture amazonian ants on the sidewalk. He wabbles one way as if aiming for us, then back the other as if he were walking on misaligned shopping cart wheels that can't seem to agree on their course. He's not drunk, though it does look as though he's having trouble seeing straight. Blonde and very nerdy looking, he meanders towards a young woman on a blanket. His wheels disagree and he swivels around heading towards us again. From the left side of the set comes sprinting a somewhat larger man (5'10") with soccer ball under one arm. He looks almost to be panting, galloping like a labrador after a slimy Wilson tennis ball. He too aims for the woman sunning herself in the shade and appears more committal as he actually pauses long enough to get down on one knee and say something before springing up, corkscrewing around, darting past his much shorter friend, still struggling with his glasses, and punting the soccer ball with all the force of a 32-year-old who has bottled up all the enthusiasm he hasn't used during his 16 year "hiatus" from the sport. It goes straight up and cracks into the magnolia, bringing down a small limb but no baby robin or nest. He bounds after it. The small one, apparently his son, apparently about 4 years old, wobbles, struggling against his parent-imposed vision torture device. He is impressively nerdy and endearing, like someone with one leg shorter than the other who always walks in circles but has convinced herself that IT's NOT A CIRCLE: IT's SRAIGHT! He keeps shoving his horn-rims back up his nose, even though that has to be what makes him totter so adorably. I mean they are thick. His father seems at least as young as he is. The mother is much too normal. And for the scene wipe, from the right comes this black lab looking street dog scooting along the grass, front legs rigid and straight, haunches collapsed like landing wheels, his butt forming the third leg of the tripod. He swivels, left, right, butt dragging, mirroring the drunk 4-year-old, progressing slowly but surely. The boy in the background collapses. The dad prances with his soccer ball. The mom anchors them in this world. The dog continues, intensely concentrated on cleaning his butt.

I'm not sure if I can eat miso soup again without knees-to-chest in laughter.