Oh, happy day of all happy days! The sun is shining, the birds are singing and our eerily early spring weather has lifted our spirits! Too bad I just bought a hot water bottle.... but bygones.
My happiness also stems from the fact that I am typing this from my brand-spanking-new laptop. The deterioration of my first laptop, a mere month old, had me in a tizzy for quite some time. My reliance on not only my files and the Internet, but mobility (read: ability to work at Starbucks in Las Condes) made me kind of depressed these last few weeks. Rather than get to the root of the problem, or attempt to fix it, I just got a new computer. HAPPY GIRL!
Somehow, we are two weeks away from the arrival our new class of volunteers. How did this happen? I feel like I've been here for years, like I've known my kids since birth, and at the same time, I still have now idea what the hell I'm doing.
I have mixed feelings about new people. Just when you begin to get you bearings, everything shifts. Things have to be explained over again. People leave. I'm getting a new roommate. I don't think that I'm particularly adaptable, but I'm doing my best.
Everything here happens with such intensity. Part of the reason I feel like I know everyone so well is because I know their secrets. I've read the files on my kids. I know what they've been through. There is a campaign in Santiago (possibly all of Chile) called "Una cama para un nino" or One Bed for One Child. It is common for families, siblings, etc. to share beds because of the expense of buying a bed for every child, or the lack of space. Extended families commonly live altogether, but not everyone can afford to live in a giant house, with each member in their own room. I understand, now, why my Ojos never sits in her chairs. I constantly have to tell her to sit down and work, instead of leaning on the table on top of me, scribbling and babbling and repeating everything everyone says. Of course, it completely freaks her out is I say something in English, which I occasionally do out of frustration. I'm surprised that she hasn't picked up the phrase 'Seriously, why are you doing this to me?'
She hasn't. My English confuses her and she sits back down, obviously uncomfortable. Because at home, she doesn't sit. At home, there isn't a chair.
I don't think that there is a Chilean phrase for personal space. If there is, I don't know it. People, children especially are so used to living and breathing on top of each other at home, that they either forget or don't care when they are out in the world who they are touching. My kids, whose special needs compound their lack of appropriate boundries, touch me all the time. I'm not a touchy feely kind of person. I'm not a hand-holder. At least not without tequilla. On my first day of school, my kids were so desperate to hold my hand that I let them crawl all over me, anxious for their affection and acceptance. Kids will be kids, and they're too cute for me to get overly frustrated with the fact that at any time, in any location, and under any circumstance, I could just be grabbed, or punched or kicked (the kicking, however, is generally b/c someone needs their shoes tied). What more can you expect from a child who shares a bed with as many as three relatives? Still, sometimes I just want to scream.
The adults, I actually scream at. Not the lady on the micro with the fourteen shopping bags, one of which is in my lap. Nor at the man in the collectivo in the business suit who has both of his shiny feet on my side of the floor and WILL NOT MOVE THEM. No screaming necessary. Better just to scuff his loafers with my beat up Birkenstock clogs.
But I scream at men in the bars. While I tried to devote the majority of this blog to work and travel, I'm not going to deny that I like to go out and have a good time. I like Escudo and Pisco and Tequila. I love dancing, and singing all of the worlds to the english language music so that I make friends with the group of Chilenas next to me, who are trying deperately to hate me because I'm rubia. So with the singing, and the dancing and the drinking, come the men. In most places, its fairly easy to pick me out of the crowd. I don't blend, and as a result, and the target of some of the stupidest pick-up lines, in English, that I've ever heard. To add insult to injury, these are generally spoken to me from about 3 inches from my face. Invading my personal space to insult my intelligence and butcher my language when I am perfectly capable of talking to you in the language NATIVE TO THE COUNTRY THAT WE ARE STANDING IN is not ok. I scream.
I scream that my blonde hair does not make me easy. I scream that yes! I can speak spanish, and you saying 'I love you" in english over and over again does not do it for me. I scream that no, I'm not a student, or a backpacker, or rich. I scream that why can't a dance be just a dance?
But such is life. Its true that all women love attention, and I'm not pretending that I'm the exception. I just wish I could remember the exact moment that I surrendered all of my privacy. I guess it was that Friday that I got on the plane.
My happiness also stems from the fact that I am typing this from my brand-spanking-new laptop. The deterioration of my first laptop, a mere month old, had me in a tizzy for quite some time. My reliance on not only my files and the Internet, but mobility (read: ability to work at Starbucks in Las Condes) made me kind of depressed these last few weeks. Rather than get to the root of the problem, or attempt to fix it, I just got a new computer. HAPPY GIRL!
Somehow, we are two weeks away from the arrival our new class of volunteers. How did this happen? I feel like I've been here for years, like I've known my kids since birth, and at the same time, I still have now idea what the hell I'm doing.
I have mixed feelings about new people. Just when you begin to get you bearings, everything shifts. Things have to be explained over again. People leave. I'm getting a new roommate. I don't think that I'm particularly adaptable, but I'm doing my best.
Everything here happens with such intensity. Part of the reason I feel like I know everyone so well is because I know their secrets. I've read the files on my kids. I know what they've been through. There is a campaign in Santiago (possibly all of Chile) called "Una cama para un nino" or One Bed for One Child. It is common for families, siblings, etc. to share beds because of the expense of buying a bed for every child, or the lack of space. Extended families commonly live altogether, but not everyone can afford to live in a giant house, with each member in their own room. I understand, now, why my Ojos never sits in her chairs. I constantly have to tell her to sit down and work, instead of leaning on the table on top of me, scribbling and babbling and repeating everything everyone says. Of course, it completely freaks her out is I say something in English, which I occasionally do out of frustration. I'm surprised that she hasn't picked up the phrase 'Seriously, why are you doing this to me?'
She hasn't. My English confuses her and she sits back down, obviously uncomfortable. Because at home, she doesn't sit. At home, there isn't a chair.
I don't think that there is a Chilean phrase for personal space. If there is, I don't know it. People, children especially are so used to living and breathing on top of each other at home, that they either forget or don't care when they are out in the world who they are touching. My kids, whose special needs compound their lack of appropriate boundries, touch me all the time. I'm not a touchy feely kind of person. I'm not a hand-holder. At least not without tequilla. On my first day of school, my kids were so desperate to hold my hand that I let them crawl all over me, anxious for their affection and acceptance. Kids will be kids, and they're too cute for me to get overly frustrated with the fact that at any time, in any location, and under any circumstance, I could just be grabbed, or punched or kicked (the kicking, however, is generally b/c someone needs their shoes tied). What more can you expect from a child who shares a bed with as many as three relatives? Still, sometimes I just want to scream.
The adults, I actually scream at. Not the lady on the micro with the fourteen shopping bags, one of which is in my lap. Nor at the man in the collectivo in the business suit who has both of his shiny feet on my side of the floor and WILL NOT MOVE THEM. No screaming necessary. Better just to scuff his loafers with my beat up Birkenstock clogs.
But I scream at men in the bars. While I tried to devote the majority of this blog to work and travel, I'm not going to deny that I like to go out and have a good time. I like Escudo and Pisco and Tequila. I love dancing, and singing all of the worlds to the english language music so that I make friends with the group of Chilenas next to me, who are trying deperately to hate me because I'm rubia. So with the singing, and the dancing and the drinking, come the men. In most places, its fairly easy to pick me out of the crowd. I don't blend, and as a result, and the target of some of the stupidest pick-up lines, in English, that I've ever heard. To add insult to injury, these are generally spoken to me from about 3 inches from my face. Invading my personal space to insult my intelligence and butcher my language when I am perfectly capable of talking to you in the language NATIVE TO THE COUNTRY THAT WE ARE STANDING IN is not ok. I scream.
I scream that my blonde hair does not make me easy. I scream that yes! I can speak spanish, and you saying 'I love you" in english over and over again does not do it for me. I scream that no, I'm not a student, or a backpacker, or rich. I scream that why can't a dance be just a dance?
But such is life. Its true that all women love attention, and I'm not pretending that I'm the exception. I just wish I could remember the exact moment that I surrendered all of my privacy. I guess it was that Friday that I got on the plane.
