No Bravery

So maybe I'm something of a complainer. It seems to me, that with recent health scares, dying pets, funding issues and ego trips, I have something to complain about. I've always believed that laughing through a complaint makes it less annoying. Apparently not.

Someone told me to be positive today. I look back on the last few weeks, and I made it through surgery, we got a much-needed donation, I started actually getting paid for freelancing (which has made it a LOT easier to travel in and out of the country....customs and passport control don't understand how "volunteer" or "pr director" are professions....no one questions "writer"), we had two amazingly uplifting art events for the kids. Nothing much to complain about.

But I still want to moan and complain. Because through getting sick, I became this whiny, needy girl who was always crying for no reason and who lashed out at people. I wasn't sitting and being brave and nice and smiling through the pain....I had a meltdown.

We're all so hard on each other; I'm probably the worst of all. No matter how old you're getting, or whether you're working in social service or as a writer, or a doctor or an astronaut, you never get over this need to compete, to be better. The volunteers I work with are so obsessed with how everyone else is doing, who's friends with who, even who the kids like more. I don't know why it matters so much any more than I know why I've spent the last few weeks competing with the stronger, less weepy Lauren.

She's not perfect, either.

That funky monkey...

My very first freelancing article is up! I wrote a (somewhat exhaustive) piece for JobMonkey.com about Overseas Volunteering and you can see it in all its glory here. It's almost 50 pages long...I don't expect that anyone who is not actually looking to be a volunteer would read it...but yay me!

Give a little, take a little

In a better, brighter world I would have a picture of my gallbladder to post on this blog, with a very short description of the last four days. But sadly after Friday's emergency surgery, they didn't let me keep my apparently-useless organ, nor did they give me any photos. Actually, due to some unfortunate translation, I spent two days thinking I had surgery for kidney stones, and not a complete removal of my gallbladder. People go back and forth between feeling sorry for me and thinking that we're all idiots. In fairness, Chilean doctors (even good-looking, half-Australian, English-speaking ones) are less than forthcoming. They told me over and over the name of my ailment and surgery, assuming that I knew what at "colecistectomia" was. I thought it was a removal of kidney stones. Not the case.

Farewell sweet gallbladder! You will be missed. As will my pride.

Canciones de Amor

There is a great song called Canciones de Amor by a Mexican singer/songwriter named Julieta Venegas. I've recently been listening to nothing but her music in my ipod, causing me to now associate her lyrics with various places in Santiago that I might pass ("No seré una mujer perfecta" means Parque Balmaceda, for example). I was listening to Canciones de Amor during my train ride to Rancaugua this weekend, and it made me wistful and giggly. It doesn't have particularly uplifting lyrics (Estoy tan cansada de las canciones de amor/siempre hablan de un final feliz/pero sabemos que la vida nunca funcion asi***) but the bouncy guitar and somewhat optimistic tone offset the pessimism (and I believe, truth) of the lyrics. I am obsessed with this song.

I am that girl that girl who believes that love stories and love songs don't really happen, and that people make them up. Every relationship I've ever been in, or known of even, has ended with the destruction of one or both parties - no happy endings there. I don't know if that's just my generation, and if we aren't programmed for the long-term anymore, or that romance is dead...I have no idea. It's kind of amazing how many girls came down here thinking that they would meet some wonderful, romantic man...the kind of man they believe they can't meet in New York or San Francisco or Madison, WI. I didn't even have the optimism to hope that would happen to me; Santiago men proved to me in my first few days that they are not so unlike New York men. I will give them credit for having some wonderfully forthcoming pick-up lines, though.

I'm wrong about all of it. Something pretty amazing happened to me in the hot springs of Termas de Cauquenes. It was novella-worthy (and more than likely I'll go ahead and write a short-story about it). I met someone, we connected, I left....we'll probably never see each other again. But the whole thing was so hopeful and bizarre. There's so obviously no long-term relationship there, no happy ending in the traditional sense. But maybe that's what Julieta really means, that happy endings just aren't what they used to be. Because I'm certainly happy just having had the experience of living outside of my life for two days with someone new, who for some reason understood me as much as I understood him (in Spanish, to boot!). I'm happy that romance is alive and well and living outside of Rancaugua.

That's my happy ending.

the English translation
***I'm so tired of love songs/always talking about a happy ending/but we know that life never turns out that way****