the coriolis effect

Also, last night, I watched Pi with Seba nd his cousin Felipe. Its been a while since I´ve seen Pi, I think since I was in a math class, or recently out of one. And I found that while it triggered math associated memories, what I noticed much more this time through was the personal type developments of the plot, rather than the science-y math aura.
Thats a lousy description of what I noticed.

I´m chilling in the Harvard office, waiting to go over to the apartment of this Harvard graduate whos here, and borrow his guide to Argentina. Buenos Aires manana!
I was petrified tickets wouldn´t be offered this week but they were, so I´m going from Wednesday to Wednesday. staying at least initially with one of my mom´s friends. Feeling unprepared in the sense that I´m a type A traveller, and right now I don´t even know how to get to the city from the airport.
I´m at the harvard office because FLACSO has a library in the basement. I went downstairs at 4, only to have the lady tell me she was off to a meeting, and every OTHER day they really were open until 5:30. Chile strikes again. Yesterday it was the San Joaquin library closing, bizarrely, (which means dashing, or brave, or something- check your spanish english dictionary) at 2, lights off and no explanation (well, I didn´t ask). I had been hoping to nab stuff out of their reference guidebooks. So I went tot he computer lab, where 20 minutes later, the power shut off. no warning, no nothing- and depiste the fact that about half the room was probably mid paper, not much complaining. Chile strikes again- and everyone here knows how to roll with the punchs.

many many hours and many many bug bites later (my room is infected with something. or different things. I haven´t found Off, and I feel bad spraying the aerosal can insecticide my host mom bought for me in my room and keep the windows closed at the same time) I finished two MORE papers- this weekend was sociology and literature. for which I read sources in English (lots), spanish, french, and that portuguese book the soc prof assigned (more or less). I´m my biggest hero, at least for the night. Though when I told mom about Buenos Aires plans, she was all against my going (possibly) alone, and all excited when she located an old friend of hers in the phone book. It would be cheaper, sure, and I know she wants to make contact, but I was looking forward to tackling a big huge city all by my (maybe) self. and interacting with people I don´t know directly is really really hard for me. though if I DO do it on my own, I should probably at least get a map. sigh. I want to feel grown up, but part of that is knowing when to be practical. I´m bad at that.
But I finished TWO essays. My host mom apparently told my mom I spend a lot of time on the computer. their computer, as well as my computer. so which I say, though since she hasn´t approached ME about this, probably won´t ever say directly: when I wasn´t finding and downloading articles for my 5 papers, or uploading and optimizing photos for my "website", I was downloading badly needed updates for them. Considering she once turned off the computer mid download, I think this is lost. There really is no direct communication, and I don´t know how to bring up issues with them without feeling plaintive or petulant.
saw sed du mal (Touch of Evil, Orson Wells, Janet Leigh) with Dan friday night post sociology. then hung out at Paula´s mid asado. We started talking to this guy who bore a slight resemblance to Luke Wilson, then Dan left and I continued talking, then the girl next to him got up and started wandering around bored, and only THEN did he saw she was his fiancé, and despite the fact she was so ready to go home OTHER people (including me) where like, look, she wants to go, he kept on talking to me. so much for Chilean Luke Wilson look-alikes. finally I escaped inside, and read Barman and listened to Elliott Smith

This weekend I wrote 2 and a half papers, and saw Subterra with Lewis. (the first Chilean big budget film, they say).
This week, I´m trying to write 3 more (well, I had to scrap the half), with the goal or getting away, somewhere away. Buenos Aires away? maybe.
In the meantime, Monday we listened to what felt like the most wrong headed lecture EVER in Psychology. The ayudante (Tf, TA) started listing ways in which Latin America was different from the U.S. and (mostly) Europe. These included: inequality between people in power and those being governed, inequality in gender relations, wars, people starving.
As in, Europe has all of these things, and Latin America doesn´t. His primary proof? Conditions during the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. The poor, downtrodden, proletariate, bound to the evil mechanistic system, was starving in the street, landless and penniless. Meanwhile, in Latin America (today) everything is all lucky ducky! Yes, there are favelas in Brazil, but they aren´t as bad. No famine here. Plenty of land to go around. We´re pacific- theres only been one real war (at which point people started guessing and at least 20 wars- conflicts-rebellions were named). The government is caring- paternalistic! Fatherly.
As for gender relations, machismo only exists because men are weak at heart. This sounds like an apologetic to me...and it was scary when this one girl was totally agreeing with him (women are powerful, so they try to be more feminine, and men are vulnerable so they try to be more masculine...). We´re hoping he´s not the one grading the 16 page paper we proceeded to turn in, esssentially criticizing gender relations in Latin America...

got photos developed! and in exchange, got a free enlargement, though I´m not sure why:-)

The day started off with un "actividad con el intendente" in the Parque Metropolitana (Cerro San Cristobal) for all the estudiantes extranjeros. There were lots of us, and lots of video cameras hovering around too- Lewis very well may have been on the 9 o clock news. We got to see a presentation of "bailes folkloricos chilenos" and after downing a glass of what I thought was fruit juice with floating strawberries (and was actually wine) and mote con huesillos, Lewis and I zoomed down the teleferico and met with the other harvard kids and drclas people at El Huerto, a really nice veggie restaurant in Providencia. I hadn´t seen Andryka, for one, since the second week of class. We´re all in one piece, at least.
Biblioteca Nacional, where, thanks to a two book at a time policy I didn´t get all that much done- I found my mind wandering over a book on Southern Cone dictatorships(in french, of all languages). Stumbled upon a beautfiful photo exhibit outside La Moneda, while waiting to see Hijo de Ladrón, play version of a book we read in lit class, by Manuel Rojas.While sponsored by UChile, it was performed in the Teatro Nacional; extrapolating from a comment my host dad made about there being nothing after college choir, university art here really is central. Which is logical- there probably aren´t resources or people for much more. Another girl from my lit class and I went back to the exhibit after, which was SO Fascinating. Check out the website, I can´t describe...but I had seen some of them before in the book Earth from Above.

So I was gone all day, and its 11:30 and I´m home and I don´t know where anyone in my host family is. There definitely are some huge communications problems...I suspect theres equal chance all of them off doing their own thing, and all of them together, doing some family thing. Similar (its always food, isn´t it?) with meals- theres no concept of when theres going to be a real family meal or not. I never have any idea, and I never have any advance notice. It wouldn´t be TOO big a deal, but for the feeling that if I´m going to be a seldom seen boarder who scrounges eggs and bread and cheese, I really could have just rented, and for less. Theres only a month and half left. I don´t know how the guy here before me fared, but all around, its a shame.

Photos! The format is lousy, but they are there...San Pedro, a couple from winter, and more to be added. They all come from Scott´s camera, though that coincides with most of the traveling I´ve done anyway...
I have 5 papers to write in 4 weeks. Spaced out weekly, this allows me the fantasy of finishing them off and jetting over to Buenos Aires before the prices rise any more.
But I miss Widener, and desperately. Not only are all the books here spread out among different libraries, on 4 different campuses, but in total it seems like there are less books than Lamont (maybe Pusey 2 thrown in for good measure). I have resorted to downloading dissertations on la Malinche (9 minutes for 8 MB). If you pass by Widener, send it beams of goodwill for me, for existing....

Temuco,Villarrica, Pucon...
Firstly, Scott´s presentation was great; all professional sounding:-) And its perhaps the only hour in a long time I´ve sat still and not fallen asleep. It took place in Villarrica, and we found ourselves afterwards with overstuffed backpacks and no home. So we watched Volcan Villarrica, and the moonrise, and eventually went to the house of a woman Scott has worked with. After sharing onces, we were shepherded to bed...the women we were supposed to stay with had had car trouble, which we learned the next day. But Carmen was great- after the healthiest almuerzo I´ve had in a long time, and the bestest nap ever, she drove us to Lago Calafquen, and then we came home and gorged on philly cream cheese with hallullas. On Sunday we visited Lago Caburgua, and then Scott and I wandered around Pucon contemplating its "faux rusticity" and these amazing wooden flowers, that totally look real. And we ate kuchen:-)
Pucon and Villarrica share a German ski-lodgy type of architecture- wooden buildings, gingerbread eaves.Plus the area really is a lot greener than Santiago latitude countryside, though trees are falling right and left to build houses with pretty lakeside views. Then Volcan Villarrica, white white white against the blue sky rises behind it all. It definitely was the most relaxing weekend I´ve had in a long time, and the most content. I even managed to carry the feeling through the overnight bus ride home (they showed Shrek! much better than the Mummy Returns and the Tuxedo, the other two Turbus staples) and my psych test the next day:-)

In other news, the dollar continues to tumble. Someone change this please...and in other news, its been really hot during the day. Colder at night. I am definitely happy about this, but if this is early spring, what in the world will summer be like?

I survived the 8 and a half hour bus ride, though I made the bus with 3 minutes to spare (just when I need a hurtling down the alameda bus, I get two- got off at one point to try the closed metro- trolling for passengers buses and traffic at 10:30 pm). The man next to me, an engineer said, there are good things about the Allende and Pinochet governments, and bad things. Allendes government was malo, malo: there weren supplies, like milk, even if you earned enough money to pay for them. But Pinochets government was terrible with human rights. On the other side, under Allendes government tculture flourished more than under any other president he knew, arts, music, literature. And under Pinochets government the economy improved. But they had no excuse for what they did to innocent people. Pinochet was a coward, he added, for not accepting responsibility. The military is a vertical chain of command, and now all those in prison were on the lower levels. Its a difficult thing.
Speaking of Pinochet, or rather conservatives, I have an internship! Its with the Jaime Guzman Foundation, and though the harvard contact there seemed sort of anxious when he proposed the project they thought up to me, its the sort of glue and scissors work I love- cutting out articles about the UDI from old newspapers and pasting and binding them in order:-)

Sociology test over with, we left the campus later than usual. The intersection of Macul and Grecia (site of previous rock throwing and tire burning events) was smoldering. If you protest on Thursday, you don´t have to spend the weekend in jail.
Temuco, overnight bus, to the wrong bus terminal, totally negating me saving 1.00 metro fare here by buying tickets through turbus and not buses jac. But Temuco...and Villarica....bread and forests and termas, maybe. Wiser with the knowledge that the crisis of estado de compromiso was the desarticulacion de sectores sociales more than a perdida de libertades politicos, despite what I said in the last sentence of my essay. Ah, well.

A little reluctant to go alone, but go I did to the Festival Cultural in the Parque Forestal, on the anniversary of the "No" vote. I came out of the Bellas Artes metro stop, and there were just SO MANY PEOPLE. Thousands. The escuelas de Rock and Pop Rock areas were impossible, so I caught part of a jazz group that did Jump Jive and Wail in english, and the song that has the guy crooning "I love you Baaaaby" but in Spanish. Then the Folklore stage for Jorge Yañez and sons and some pro-Allende songs, and a snippit of Ballet Folclorico de Chile.
Hot weather too. And actual contours on the mountains visible (things are so changeable smog wise here).

Bellavista with Dan. I was in the mood for a nice meal, so I led him to Como Agua Para Chocolate, which was great (and even features a table-bed) thouogh dessert was sullied by an uninformed and sort of pointless reprise of the us cultural hegemony thing. Dan was determined to find this gay bar, but we couldn´t, and instead went into Cafe Theatre instead because I remembered the spanish teachers son being rather vehement (to say the least) about entering when the Harvard kids went out. But though the black suited doorman asked us whether we were there for the bar or the discotheque, we were shown a table anyway...and a pisco sour and margarita later, we were no more the wiser about hidden discos of inequity lurking behind closed doors.
On our way out of Bellavista, about to give up, two girls holding hands walked by who were more than happy to give us directions to Bokhara. The two girls making out outside gave it away, and inside was indeed a different place. Part dance floor, mostly well lit and extremely crowded gathering spot, with pretty Chilean boys (and one blue haired drag queen) but also a fair amount of straight couples, milling everywhere. We squeezed into a table and made small talk with the group next door. And improbably enough, though I was there for Dan, I found myself shaking off some guy before we headed to the door.
Bellavista on a Saturday night was predictably more lively than during a weekday. Tons of vendors lined the streets, and all the doors were open. And at 2 in the morning the buses were packed- I took one home, which is a no-no after 11:30 or so (story of a friend of a friend who was driven out into the country and robbed), the chances of all 40 people getting off before Irrarazaval seemed slim.

On two hours of sleep, I bought said overpriced (but oh so wonderfully Dominican- I´m excited) tickets. Museo Bellas Artes afterwards.
Peter and I ran into two older English ladies, in their seventies, and we started talking. When they asked where I was from and I said, Washington, one said, "Oh you speak English so well!"
uh-huh?
But it was great talking to them. The same women has traveled everywhere, it seems- last year she was in Patagonia, down in Ushuaia traveling through ice floes, then up in Canada watching polar bears. She and Peter realized they´d stayed in the same hostel in Holland, nearly 50 years apart. And aside from "bumming around Europe" after the war, she took the Queen Mary to New York, and bought nylons in Macys to send all her friends. 1947! It was just neat to meet people who have lived a lifetime of traveling, when I´m just getting started. And Peter and I are now going to be in a British photo album somewhere:-)
After Cafe Sicosis, we climbed Cerro Santa Lucia. While much smaller than San Cristobal, its one of the higher points in Santiago. And the Andes were a greyish blur behind a curtain of smog. Barely the tips were distinguishable! We sat and watched a pretty landscaped waterfall (the cerro is a maze of little stone staircases and plazas and green and smooching Chileans), until the water stopped and it was time for Peter to head to the airport. 8 months of traveling, over.
It made me melancholy in an I want to go home too way (not a strong feeling, just reflective that a week or so would be nice), but I had a review session to distract me...we ate cornflake rice krispies treats (really good, despite the substitution of necessity), fruit, sandwiches, cookies, crackers...and got at least through the "edad de oro" of the oligarchy. It was really frustrating at times because I have half remembrances of outlines of concepts learned in previous classes, and my notes are half a hemisphere away. weep!

Thursday. thursday...Flora displays her massive inability to discuss or characterize American politics. (quotations liberally paraphrased)

Frank from Holland: Why do all Americans rally behind their president? Thats the picture the media paints abroad.
Moi: Uh, there are lots of people who oppose Bush.
F: Thats not the idea we get at all. Why don´t they do something?
M: They try. Lots of people protested against the war. There just isn´t a strong democratic leadership right now.
F: But it seems like they just make decisions and everyone agrees with it
M: Well, there are 250 million Americans and only 400 odd in Congress. Its hard for the votes to be representative of everyone....it becomes a personal decision as well. But lots of people are upset over what is happening!
F: Why don´t they act? Everyone just supports Bush!
M: uh....no....
F: At least thats the image we get in Europe.

Maestra Vida again- and even a smidgen of live music:-)

After swallowing hard and paying far too much for tickets to the DR for Christmas (that leave Santiago at 4 AM), I bought bagels to share the wonder with my host family. I´ve been eating most of them though....

Wednesday Dutch Peter and I attempted to reprise Bellavista, but after listening to a guitar player over a plate of appetizers at the 2nd Piso Pub, we wandered the areas tortuous streets and confirmed nothing really was open on a Wednesday night. Driven by the desire for a chocolate empanada, we walked the 40 minutes or so to Suecia, and fought a losing battle against oozing manjar ones while staring in something akin to horror at the scene around us. Things were open on Suecia, cementing its fake touristy reputation. But providing me with sugar, so I can´t be all that disdainful...

Sunset last night was amazing. It was dusky rose mixed with blue on top, graduating to coral and becoming a brilliant salmon pink- orange on the bottom. I was in Las Condes, and the colors reflected off the glass office high-rises, softening everything. Then the upper hues were fractured by the clouds, turning everything coral-y orange and textured.
But then I had to go inside for the presentation of Bicentenario Chile´s new magazine edition.
Upon returning to the house, I met another Peter, this one British born, who had arrived in Chile via Canada and Jamaica and was now in our yard trying to mate the German Shephards. He was shocked to hear someone speak English (a little less so when he realized I wasn´t actually Chilean). So we criticized Bush and I exposed my total ignorance of libertarian politics while the two dogs wheeled in a conjoined circle in front us. When they finally separated and bounded off, Paula squealed, "its true love!".
At the very least, they still appeared on nuzzling terms this morning.