These past three weeks have been, in a word, a nightmare. I just learned this word in Spanish (there are lots of words I just don't learn because I can use something else to describe them...nightmare/bad dream, all the same when I'm crazy-talking in Spanish), so I think that its a fitting adjective. We had a new crop of volunteers come in (they're cool) and we had the big event (the PR Director in me is saying IT WAS GREAT; the crazy-sensitive-sleepdeprived-caterer in me is saying not so much). Needless to say, we are not a well oiled machine. But looky looky at my beautiful food:
And my beautiful ladies in their beautiful dresses:
Does anything else really matter, if you're wearing a new black dress? I think not.
Once the event was over, and I stopped feeling like a lunatic, our next big stress was the move. The organization finally has an office in the center. For anyone who has been reading this from the beginning, our old office was a house in the Santiago equivalent of Flushing, Queens. Or "the chucha" if you want to be vulgrrr about it. I lived there, for a while on a mattress on the floor that made me what to cry. "We" decided that living with 8 people, and trying to work in an incoveniently located house was maybe not the best for business. So! "We" rented a three-bedroom apartment, which is our new home/office. "We" are the administration of a non-profit and "we" are getting more and more official every day!
Of course, as things go, our big move came on an even bigger day for Chile, and for Latin America. Pinochet, former dictador, died on December 10th. We were standing in the house, taking furniture out onto the lawn to wait for the Flete when we got the call. "Pinochet is dead. Be prepared for some celebrations in Plaza Italia." Which is, of course, exactly where our new office is.
We moved our furniture in, with the help of some insanely nice building men, as the noise from the plaza swelled and swelled. At first, random shouts and chants. Over two hours there was a unified presence of Communists, Socialists and random young people celebrating the end of an era.
I walked out to the Plaza, at first just to see what was going on. We walked down the street to have a drink, and sat in a little schoperia watching the people stream down Alameda throwing confetti and drinking Escudo. Later, we joined the crowd (awesome fotos to come) for a while, just as they starting singing "Cumpleaños Feliz". And I got really uncomfortable.
Agosto Pinochet was a dictator, who tortured and killed thousands of people. Under his regime, Socialists and Communists were taken from their homes and families, never to be seen again. Last week I visited Villa Grimaldi, the most famous torture site in Santiago. Its an eerie place, recently turned into a park (Parque de la Paz) and open to the public. You can take a walking tour guided by an actual survivor, who describes in detail what went on there. If you want to find out more about Villa Grimaldi, or Pinochet, click here: http://www.villagrimaldicorp.cl/ (they have a site in English).
I've never been happy that someone died before. I've never felt compelled to take to the streets and mock a dead person's family, and mark the day as one of celebration. Its difficult to explain the effect that Pinochet had on this country, or the fact that half of its citizens are currently mourning him while others are declaring victory over evil. Most dictators are revered and loathed simlutaneously, or else they wouldn't be in power to begin with. But even after hearing the horror of what happened under his rule, and talking to people who lived through, I still can't help but feel pangs of guilt for cheering and dancing and singing because and old man died.
So I went home.
And my beautiful ladies in their beautiful dresses:
Does anything else really matter, if you're wearing a new black dress? I think not.
Once the event was over, and I stopped feeling like a lunatic, our next big stress was the move. The organization finally has an office in the center. For anyone who has been reading this from the beginning, our old office was a house in the Santiago equivalent of Flushing, Queens. Or "the chucha" if you want to be vulgrrr about it. I lived there, for a while on a mattress on the floor that made me what to cry. "We" decided that living with 8 people, and trying to work in an incoveniently located house was maybe not the best for business. So! "We" rented a three-bedroom apartment, which is our new home/office. "We" are the administration of a non-profit and "we" are getting more and more official every day!
Of course, as things go, our big move came on an even bigger day for Chile, and for Latin America. Pinochet, former dictador, died on December 10th. We were standing in the house, taking furniture out onto the lawn to wait for the Flete when we got the call. "Pinochet is dead. Be prepared for some celebrations in Plaza Italia." Which is, of course, exactly where our new office is.
We moved our furniture in, with the help of some insanely nice building men, as the noise from the plaza swelled and swelled. At first, random shouts and chants. Over two hours there was a unified presence of Communists, Socialists and random young people celebrating the end of an era.
I walked out to the Plaza, at first just to see what was going on. We walked down the street to have a drink, and sat in a little schoperia watching the people stream down Alameda throwing confetti and drinking Escudo. Later, we joined the crowd (awesome fotos to come) for a while, just as they starting singing "Cumpleaños Feliz". And I got really uncomfortable.
Agosto Pinochet was a dictator, who tortured and killed thousands of people. Under his regime, Socialists and Communists were taken from their homes and families, never to be seen again. Last week I visited Villa Grimaldi, the most famous torture site in Santiago. Its an eerie place, recently turned into a park (Parque de la Paz) and open to the public. You can take a walking tour guided by an actual survivor, who describes in detail what went on there. If you want to find out more about Villa Grimaldi, or Pinochet, click here: http://www.villagrimaldicorp.cl/ (they have a site in English).
I've never been happy that someone died before. I've never felt compelled to take to the streets and mock a dead person's family, and mark the day as one of celebration. Its difficult to explain the effect that Pinochet had on this country, or the fact that half of its citizens are currently mourning him while others are declaring victory over evil. Most dictators are revered and loathed simlutaneously, or else they wouldn't be in power to begin with. But even after hearing the horror of what happened under his rule, and talking to people who lived through, I still can't help but feel pangs of guilt for cheering and dancing and singing because and old man died.
So I went home.
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