Hello Good Bye

It’s been a while since I have written. There isn’t any particular reason for it I just haven’t felt compelled to write in this thing. I feel like it has become more of a chore if anything. I have figured out that I don’t like to write for other people, I like to write because I like to write, which makes for a terrible blogger. It’s not that I don’t appreciate people who follow my blog, thank you very much for reading what I write, I feel honored that you find my writing interesting enough to keep reading it. I just like writing for the sake of writing. It’s how I best express myself and how I figure out my emotions.

At this moment I feel like my emotions are on steroids. I am sitting in the Santiago airport waiting for a 6:30 am flight to Sao Paulo Brazil. The time reads 12:40am. I have been here for about three hours and have been ready to shoot myself in the face for two of them. It’s like time is standing still and the only thing that I have to do with myself is think. I am depressed. My first semester in Chile is officially over marked by the departure of all of my closest friends. Channeling my inner Eve 6 fan, my heart’s in a blender and I’m watching it spin around in a beautiful oblivion. Everything is so mixed up. I feel like I’m going through a bitter sweet breaking of the heart. I’m so content and happy with where my life is and where it will go in the immediate future but I am so sad that I have to see all of my friends leave, but also gratefully happy to have ever met them in the first place. I hate feeling this fragile and vulnerable. It terrifies me that I have opened myself up to so many people and that their departure has turned me into a complete emotional train wreck. It has been a while since I have been able to feel so comfortable and open with so many people, allowing them to seep in and settle into the cracks of my mending heart. It scares me quite a bit, but it feels good to know that I reached out to so many people who in turn have permanently changed my life. Their absence hurts me so much that I have gotten physically sick. My chest hurts from constant sobbing accompanied by the constant urge to vomit. I’m exhausted.

I am mad at myself for booking this stupid flight. Who the hell ever thought that a 6:30 am flight would ever be convenient for anyone? I would have given anything to have had one last night with everyone. But I suppose that is life.

The only time that I have ever felt like this was on my way back from my exchange year in Brazil. I think that leaving the place where you went is a million times harder than leaving wherever you are from. Its hardest because you have no idea if you will ever be back, and if you do go back, it will never be the same as when you left. I remember it took me about two and a half days to complete a journey that was only supposed to take about 12 hours thanks to hurricanes along the Atlantic coast. I felt so helpless. My head was in a fog. I was in the U.S. but I felt like a foreigner. I hadn’t seen my family in over a year, I had just completed a journey that tore me to pieces and left me to put them back together again. I just wanted to be home. I remember finding a corner in the terminal that I was stuck in to collapse in and cry. It kind of makes me think of how dogs disappear in search of a place to die. Only not so dramatic.

So, unfortunately for me, I coincidentally am stuck in an airport again with noting but ridiculous amounts of time to think about how I feel. I fucking hate airports. I hate them so much but am too cheap to shell out for a direct flight anywhere. Fuck my life. All I can think about is how alone I am and all of the people that have left. I keep crying at random moments. People must think I’m crazy. Or pathetic. Probably a little of both.

My computer battery is dying. So is my energy. Time to sleep on top of my stuff so no one steals it.

Just got a phone call from my friends. You guys made my night. I’ll be home in a week, I can’t wait to see you kooks again.

I Would Have Been a Happy Inca

The energy is what got me. The distinct ebb and flow of contagious energy that flows through the ancient city, like the wind cursing through the valley and through the city walls. It's in the rocks of the city walls, the thin air that you breath and especially in the sun. Permit the energy can consume you and it will bring you to a higher place where you feel everything slightly differently. Everything is taken up a notch. Your senses, your emotions and the way you feel your muscles contract and release, muscles that you didn't even know you had. The energy grown stronger the longer the sun is up. In the heat of the afternoon its like the tourists have become the city dwellers and the sun is your God. The ancient ruins and the Peruvian jungle that preserved the city for so long are equally breath taking. It makes you wish there were more hours in the day to prolong the fleeting colors of the sunset in which to marvel the city. It is so beautiful that I can't write. I don't know how the put the words together or make sense of what the city made me feel. I would like to think that what I felt was the magic of time and the presence of lost souls that still inhabit the walls built of stone. Its the energy that I have no words to describe. It is different from love which is different from feeling powerful which is different from feeling awake and alive. My words will hardly do these ruins justice. Nor will my photos. But for the sake of an interesting blog, here are some faves:

My travel buddies Christian, Erika and Hannah

Photo cred: Christian Papesch

Checking out Wynapicchu, the mountain in all of the postcards. We climbed it.

Floating in the clouds after a little meditation with our new friend Joel from Australia.

Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your long hair

Shadow fun

Some surrounding Peruvian jungle mountains. Its no wonder Hiram Bingham didn't discover this until 1911.

Weird Asian boxing movie anyone?

A little back story now. My friends Hannah, Erika, Christian and I traveled 48 straight hours to get to Machu Picchu. As in, we departed from Vina on a Monday night to catch a 4:20am flight from Santiago to Arica, Chile. We crossed the Peruvian border at 8am and then got on a bus to Ariquipa, Peru. After one of our more interesting dinners we got on a night bus from Ariquipa to Cuzco and ended up on a tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas which ended in the town Ollantaytambo where we caught a train that night, ending up in Aguas Calientes at around midnight. After 4 hours of "sleep" Christian and I waited in line for the buses that brought us up through the mountains to the entrance of the park while Erika and Hannah braved the early morning darkness and hiked up. Being a grandmother at heart, I almost died of relief to see their smiling faces, dripping with sweat, at the entrance gate. The gates opened at 6am to welcome us to one of the most incredible days of our lives.

I found them! They're alive!

The ladies spent the following day exploring Cuzco which vibrates with the same infectious flow as Machu Picchu, while Christian took a ride in the clouds with the San Pedro cactus. Cuzco was one of those days where there the best word to describe it turns out to be something completely generic and unoriginal. It was a real good day. A day you can look back on while story swapping with your friends and get a warm feeling inside and know its more than just the sun on your back. Its that good day feeling. That was my day in Cuzco. It was spent bartering for paintings on the street, picking out various clothing items made from alpaca to give as presents and reminiscing about our adventure in Machu Picchu.

The Plaza de Armas, Cuzco

Got this goat thrown into my arms. Thanks.

Hannah bartering with some Peruvian artisan women. Getting a little flustered. 

Saqsaywaman ruins above Cusco

Cusco lit up

 We also thought a lot about our families and the people we love. I have found that on vacations like these you start to think about coming back to these places to share them with people who you love the most. This is not to say that I do not love my friends that I tackled this adventurcation with, it just means to say that you start to realize who is truly important to you. You take notice of the people that are always on your mind and you miss them even harder when you go on incredible adventures without them. I know my family would have had the greatest time in the world exploring those ruins, misunderstanding the locals and eating things like alpaca. So would have my guy friends at school. Its a cool feeling when you stop for a minute or do a double take because those neon sneakers should belong to a guy that lives in a place called the Court House or because someone's grandma's beach house should really have one of those wind chimes hanging outside of her screened in porch. Its those bittersweet moments that I have learned to cherish and appreciate. It means you've probably got someone missing you right back on the other side and they probably think of you time to time as well.

Shout out to the Penguin. I miss the way you waddle. 

After Cuzco we made our way to Lake Titicaca which is the largest and highest lake in South America. It holds a different kind of beauty than Machu Picchu. Its more fluid and placid. After seeing a pre-Incan burial/ceremony site one afternoon we took a boat ride to visit the Uros, a group of people who constructed islands out of reeds and live on them. They lead the most interesting lives out of any civilization I have ever studied or encountered. They live on man made islands of reeds. Impressive. We also visited an island called Taquila. Not tequila, TAquila. This was another peculiar group for several reasons. For one, you could tell a person's entire life story just by looking at them. Their clothes said it all. Wearing a certain sized belt with a certain pattern and color scheme combined with this style shirt with a cloth hat topped with a top hat meant something very clear that none of us could see. Their island was so small that a communistic approach to their economy made sense and actually functioned. Each guided group was assigned a restaurant to eat at. There was no competition for customers. The only souvenir store that we encountered, aside from the children trying to sell us woven bracelets along the stone paths, was in the main plaza and was 2 stories high. They sold hats and belts. There were also no cars on the island. If you wanted to go somewhere you walked along the stone paths that weaved in and around the countryside.

Us and our new friend Tom from France

Cruzin with another new friend from Norway

View of the lakeside city Puno

Looking out to where blue meets blue

 Lake Titicaca is so big it looks like it could be the sea. There are spaces on the horizon, between the dotted islands where that is all that you can see, the line of the horizon. Where blue meets blue, the water and the sky. It was strange knowing that Bolivia, the forbidden land for us Americans without visas, was on the other side of all of that water. It was right there, but we couldn't even catch a glimpse of it. It suppose Bolivia will have to be saved for another adventure.

This is a video Christian put together of our time in Peru:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgQWIJlcFDQ&feature=feedu

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Get Cho Drunk Face On!

This blog would not be complete without a drunk blog posting. So run with me here.
I am actually surprised that I am awake enough to type since today has been a busy day. But the day is not so much as important as to why I am tyoing here in my bed at 2:33 am. Long story short I went outside of a club and they wouldn't let me back in. Assholes. Excuse my French. Actually I met this guy there that kept asking me if I spoke French tonight and no matter how many times I told him no, somehow he didn't believe me. Idiot. I speak 3 languages and French isn't one of them. How hard is that to believe. To me it is not so hard. And that really isn't that long of a story.
So what am I thinking right now... I'm thinking a lot about Steve actually, who it the penguin in the adventures of the penguin and the ladybug. Steve means a whole lot to me. I think about him all of the time. Hes got me. Not sure how else to explain our relationship, or lack there of maybe. I don't even know what we are, or where we will go in the future. Where ever it is I hope that it brings us together. I miss the hell out of you. I know you read this and that is a nice feeling.You're nice. Sometimes too nice to me. But I like you for it. I like you a lot for the way you are. I don't even know if I am making sense.Something that I do know makes sense is something that you will only understand: rawr. Yeaaaaa. rawr.
I don't like smelling smoke, nor do I like being treated like a joke. I feel like both of these things are what you have to look forward to with the nightlife in Vina. People blowing smoke and not believing that you don't speak French. Assholes. It kind of sucks, but everything else is kind of awesome about it. I like my friends here. Your friend make the time that you are having and that is whats important. Not where you are but who you're with. I'm going to miss these people. Shout out to my ladies. You know who you are. If you have to question if I am talking about you just assume that I am. It'll make you happy inside and I probably am talking about you anyway.
It is now 2:44 and I have a presentation tomorrow. Its been real. Sleepy time for the sleepy head (Passion Pit reference anyone?)
People are yelling outside my bedroom window and there is a car alarm going off.
Meh.
Buenas Noches

deuces

The Sound of Settling

I am sick. I have been attached to my bed for the entire day, drifting in and out of consciousness, getting up only to take a quiz at school, only to immediately return to my pitiful position. I hate being sick. I hate being unproductive, rather. Which is the reason why I have been procrastinating about writing in this blog.
I feel like I have passed into a new phase of my stay which I couldn't make sense of until I wrote about it to someone else. I was feeling like I had become kind of lazy. I was bored, but not just bored. I was also mad that I was bored. I felt guilty and lazy. In the back of my head I imagined people thinking that I was ungrateful or that I was wasting time. Now I realize that its not that at all.
We have started a new phase in our experiences and now I remember why this feeling is so familiar. Its what happens every time you move somewhere new. It happened when I moved to Brazil, when I went to college, when I moved to New Hampshire. At first everything is new and new is always exciting. Its all peaches. But, over time the excitement wears off and things start looking more like pears (I am not very fond of pears). It is not that I do not like it here, its that I have gotten accustomed to it. Not all of it of course but a lot of it. Like living in a city, taking public transportation or walking everywhere, living with my family, and exploring many of the things my surrounding to offer. Now I have settled, like the tea leaves in the bottom of my cup. And like the settled tea leaves, life is covered in honey. I live here, I have a life here and this settling is something to be proud of.

Drinking some tea, only instead of honey, there is lemon cheesecake, which is just as sweet.

I have also not been as lazy as I thought, I have been getting into my fair share of shenanigance. I have been going out a lot and experiencing all of the funny, awkward and enjoyable experiences that go along with partying. I have come to terms with the reality of being taller than just about every guy I meet and that no matter how much I compare, Chile will never be like Brazil and Spanish will not be like Portuguese. The sidewalk will always have holes in it, stray dogs will follow me home at night and grown men will always whistle and make cat calls.

More stories, this really has been a while.
Vina caught on fire. I suppose this is worth mentioning. It was quite scary actually, I have never witness such chaos first hand. I was at the beach with a friend when we looked up and saw that the sky was black. We didn't notice it at first because we were facing the sea, doing homework and having our own little problem with heavy winds kicking up sand trying to bury us alive. It may have been the sirens, it may not, but for some reason our attention got turned towards the land where we saw the smoke billowing out from the hills. We asked some girls if they knew what was going on, they didn't, but they were very nice and we ended up going to a party at their apartment over the weekend. So my friend and I ventured into town to make sure that it wasn't either of our houses that had caught fire. It turned out to be a forest fire. It was incredible. I have never seen so much smoke or heard so many sirens. There were fire trucks doing rounds trying to get it under control along with planes carrying water from a near by lake. We ended up sitting on my friend's balcony with some tea and banana bread to watch the madness. Everything turned out fine, well, sort of. It turned out alright is what I suppose I am trying to say. Vina is still standing but the trees in the hills certainly are not as tall.

This is what Vina looks like on fire. That plane is about to make it rain.

I lost my shoe in Algarobo. They happened to be my favorite pair. Long story short I threw my shoe into the ocean while trying to beat the shit out of some bees who were trying to eat our Asian sesame chicken salad. I am an idiot. It was the day before easter. I prayed to the easter bunny to bring me my lost shoe for easter, but he didn't. Rabbits don't know how to swim I guess.

Shoeless and pissed in Algarobo
Then Easter happened. I sat in the sun on my balcony all day. It was a perfect way to celebrate a holiday from a religion I no longer have much faith in, doing absolutely nothing. Despite my status as a non-believer the easter bunny did find me after all. Its not my shoe, but it'll do. Thanks Meg! Mi mama Chilena!

From now forward I suppose I will be doing things that settled people do, exploring tea houses and having girls nights on Thursday. Going out to Cafe Journal on Wednesday night and club hopping during the weekends. I also am in the midst of planning two trips. In about two weeks I will be on my way to Machu Picchu and then off to Easter Island in June. Oh life, how did we ever get so comfortable with each other?

Drinking tea and eating cake at the Tea Corner

Girl's lunch on a Friday afternoon overlooking the bay.

It Was Cold, Frigid Cold

It was cold, frigid cold. The rain didn't help, but I had grown used to it since thats what the sky did here most of the time. I had come to appreciate dry sneakers much more than I had ever thought possible to appreciate something that no one even really thinks about. The same goes for dry clothes, the sensation of being warm and a place to sleep that isn't wet, loud or infested with earwigs.

The rock that I was sitting on might as well have been an ice cube. There was a strange sensation in my hands, which usually swell when I hike, but the cold was telling them to do otherwise, leaving me with swollen fingers and bright red palms. My head and my throat hurt from not sleeping and I had scratches on my legs from hiking through thorn bushes and brambles all morning only to end up at this rock.

Our morning hike was supposed to lead us to see the towers, a set of rock formations which the park was named after, but the higher we climbed the harder it rained. The crest of every hill brought another daunting hill crest into sight, and another after that. We eventually decided that it wasn't worth going any further since it would lead us to more of the same thing, fog, rain and probably snow if we went far enough.
\
I wasn't disappointed though. In fact I felt quite the opposite as I sat on my rock embracing the cold and the rain since it was the last time for a long time that I was going to feel it. I reflected on my time here and immediately began to cry. A place has never moved me so emotionally before. The combined thought of where I was and how I felt while I was here was overwhelming. The mountains were just so big that they made you feel like a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert or a single plankton in floating around in the sea. I felt small. Which also meant that everything that I was thinking about was also very small. All of the problems that I had were carried away by the whistling wind. It was liberating. I felt relieved and relaxed.

It reminded me of when my dad took me skiing right before I left for Chile. He kept saying that he just had to go, he had to get out of his life for a day and get into nature. We were both stressed. He has to do a lot of things in his line of work that he really shouldn't have to do because of the state of our health system in the U.S. I was preparing for my second study abroad experience and was so nervous that I was starting to make myself sick. So we went and it was on of the best skiing days I have ever had. Not just because I got to spend one of my last days in the U.S. with my dad but because of how we felt after. Relieved, more relaxed.

Sitting on that rock, in the cold and the rain, surrounded by fog I felt very humbled. I am not a lucky person when it comes to certain things but I felt extremely lucky to be sitting on that rock with my friend behind me on his. I felt content. I noticed the things that had gone wrong, like losing a contact, the constant cold, my weak ankles, my asthma, our ripped tent, the earwigs but they didn't matter. Not on that rock. Everything outside of that moment was completely insignificant. I appreciated that I was surrounded by mountains and lakes that were so beautiful that they brought me to tears. I was with friends whom I had come to love over such a short time. I felt alive and grateful to be alive.

So, in the end we didn't see the towers but that was ok, just knowing that they were there and appreciating that I was there was enough.

Here is a video that my friend, Christian Papesch, made from photos that he took during our trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8LBVxVr3nY

Let it Rain

I have been meaning to write for a while now. Its been hard though, this week has sort have been a big one, a messy one. A strange one. I have been thinking a lot, but every time I go to write nothing comes out. I have lost my voice. Again.
I don't like this feeling, not being able to write freely. I don't like not being able to put emotions into words or paint a picture with my voice. Its too eerily familiar.
This past week every time I have tried to write something, the words haven't made since on the page. They were too disjointed or mangled. They didn't make sense.
I guess thats how I sort of feel right now. Disjointed, mangled, like I can't make sense. Its how I feel about a lot of things I suppose.
One night, late, after the club had closed, my friends and I sat on a park bench and talked about the world. Or, they talked, I fell asleep. I remember hearing them talk about how fucked up the world is and what it would take to change it. Then this homeless guy came along and started talking to us. I couldn't help but think what perfect timing it was for him to approach us. He was an appropriate example of the fucked up world that we live in. He ended up giving us a blanket because he could see that we were cold. The irony of a homeless man giving us a blanket made me want to throw up. It also could have been all the alcohol that I drank earlier that night, but I am pretty sure it was tragedy of the irony of the situation. It got to a point in the conversation where we asked him why he was alone, and he sat down in a heap on top of his bundle containing all of his belongings and started to cry.
He started talking about God and how God's love keeps him going. He made me question my own standpoint on God, since I have been questioning it for a while now. Mostly because of a lot of fucked up shit I have been through. Like if he truly exists then where the hell was he when I needed him? Where was he when I asked for his help, when I needed a sign that it was going to be alright? I feel like a preacher would tell me that he wanted me to find the strength within myself to prevail, to carry on. I could handle it if I really gave it everything I had inside me. At my church they always said to find the strength of God within yourself, or may God's strength be with you, something like that. But I think that it is because of this inner strength that I question his existence. And the origin of this strength was myself, not God. If I had not found this strength, I would be dead by now. So, if there is a God I would really like to ask him something "What the FUCK was that for?" And do not tell me to find the answer within myself, I'm done with that shit.
But there was this homeless guy, who has probably been through more shit than I have and he has all the faith in the world. I don't get how he still believes. I don't understand how he can get out of bed everyday knowing what lies ahead. Solitude, discrimination, shit. I couldn't really figure him out either, if his words were truly genuine. I would like to believe that they were. It would make the fucked-up-ness of this world more bearable I suppose. But I don't know, I don't know what he was really all about. But I am glad that we met him, and I am grateful for the way he makes me think.
So I am thinking that this experience, among other things, has affected my ability to write anything worth reading, because I don't know the answers to the things that this made me think about. I don't know why I had to go through the shit that I did, why God is never around, if this guy was for real, is my life what I want it to be, or if I'm going in the right direction. These questions are all that I have been able to think about for the past couple of days. They flow through my head like one of those rain sticks that you find at the discovery channel store. You turn it to one side and listen to it rain, like looking at something from one perspective. Then flip it over, look at it another way and let the thoughts drip through your head. Letting the raindrops seep into the cracks, discovering thoughts you had never thought of before. So, here I am. Looking for some answers in the rain inside my head. Right now its like a hurricane.

La Ola Gigante que Nunca Llego

I just realized that I have completely overlooked something that I feel I should address. Last Thursday night, as the world knows, Japan was shaken by a tremendous earthquake ranking an 8.9 on the Richter Scale. This earthquake also triggered a 23 foot tsunami that plowed through the northeast coastal region and sent its waves pulsing outwards trough the Pacific.
On Friday morning, I woke up to a phone call from my program coordinator here in Chile telling me about the earthquake in and how the Chilean government had issued a tsunami warning for Chile's entire coastline. The phone call itself wasn't very traumatic it was afterwards that the news began to sink in that I started to feel scared. I have minimal experience in dealing with nature's destructive forces. A tornado hit my town in Maine last summer, but I was working in New Hampshire and wasn't there to experience the panic that it must have caused, the same panic that must have terrorized the people of Japan. A friend texted me everything that happened, giving me a play by play. But she was fine in the end. My family was fine. My friend's house had some serious damage, but everything really turned out like the rest, just fine.
I watched a documentary on tsunami's once, right after a massive one cleared out most of Indonesia a couple of years ago. So of course that is what I think of when I think of a tsunami, an enormous wave driven by an inconceivable force that contains the potential of destroying entire islands. I pictured the big casino here in Vina and the ritzy Sheraton hotel both being swept away by a single wave, the ships in the harbor colliding into apartment buildings and the stray dogs of Vina running for the hills, leaving us all to drown. I thought of my boyfriend who was camping on a peninsula in New Zealand, not having heard the news until it was too late. I thought of him being trapped in his tent as the waves approached the shore where he was camping and taking him out to sea. All very scary thoughts.
My friends and I had planned to go to Valpo that Friday but the tsunami almost made us cancel our plans. I am glad that we didn't. So went back to Valpariso and took an ascensor (elevator) up onto the top of a hill where you can see the sea for miles. It made me feel better being up high with people who understood what I was saying and being able to see the the ocean. It would have been amazing to witness the waves from up there. I felt like if something that powerful and destructive was going to happen, I wanted to see it. And I wanted to see it from that hill. I expect it would have been one of the most incredible things I would ever have seen in my life.
When we headed back to Vina we learned that the road connecting Vina and Valpo was closing at 9pm because of the government issued warning. When I got home my host family was there and told me that I couldn't leave the house anymore. So I went online and learned that everyone that lived at sea level was being evacuated to higher ground. My host sister took me out onto the balcony and showed me that all of the cars were in the garage and the streets were deserted, even the dogs could sense what was coming. It was a Friday night and everyone was at home. My family kept telling me that all of this was just precautionary and that there was no reason to be worried, like this sort of thing happened all the time. And maybe it does, I didn't really want to know at the moment. It was not until my host brother left to go to a friends house that the threat of anything actually happening was incredibly slim, which contradicted what that stupid documentary had told me years ago. I thought that the worst thing for a tsunami was open water because without anything to slow it down, it gains more speed and momentum. But if my host mom let him leave, it must not be that serious. At 1am I was finally able to sleep since the tsunami was due to arrive at 12:31am. If anything was going to happen it already would have.
In Vina nothing happened. Maybe a couple waves were a few feet bigger than normal,  and a few friends had to abandon their homes that night, but everything here is OK. Just like Maine after the tornado.
After the scare and the stress, and as the death toll continues to raise in northeast Japan, I am eternally grateful that I am OK. That Vina is OK and that everything here turned out just fine.