KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #7 (Final)
I have returned home safely to Madison, after a red-eye flight out of Santiago that was supposed to live at 11:30 pm and ended up leaving at 2:00 am. I'm still a little loopy. But I came home to a joyous reunion with my tap shoes (and, you know, my family). Today my family and I helped someone from church move into her new apartment, and it was -9 with a windchill of -30 outside. That's about a 120 degree shift for me from about two days before. It was intense.
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #6
It´s been really interesting watching my mom work these past two weeks. I haven´t seen her work since I was little, and then I couldn´t appreciate how good she is at what she does. She works one on one with law students on teaching them effective legal writing, and she teaches law professors how to teach their students to write well. It´s downright eerie how similar her approach to coaching writing is to my approach to coaching writing as a Writing Associate. As a college student, I also have a new appreciation for her teaching style. To illustrate the difference between legal writing and literary writing, She told this true story to her seminar about a judge who retired from law after like 40 years in the field. He finally had time to read for fun instead of reading legal memos, so he started reading some classic novels. He opened up A Tale of Two Cities, and read
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
He thought to himself, 'WTF? It contradicts itself, it jumps from subject to subject with no apparent connection in between, it´s redundant, and it doesn´t tell me anything. This is crap!' And he throws the book away.
Five years ago, I would have thought, Oh, Mom, there you go again. But now I think that´s a pretty funny story and a pretty effective demonstration of the difference between the legal writing audience and the reading for pleasure audience.
It´s been really interesting watching my mom work these past two weeks. I haven´t seen her work since I was little, and then I couldn´t appreciate how good she is at what she does. She works one on one with law students on teaching them effective legal writing, and she teaches law professors how to teach their students to write well. It´s downright eerie how similar her approach to coaching writing is to my approach to coaching writing as a Writing Associate. As a college student, I also have a new appreciation for her teaching style. To illustrate the difference between legal writing and literary writing, She told this true story to her seminar about a judge who retired from law after like 40 years in the field. He finally had time to read for fun instead of reading legal memos, so he started reading some classic novels. He opened up A Tale of Two Cities, and read
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
He thought to himself, 'WTF? It contradicts itself, it jumps from subject to subject with no apparent connection in between, it´s redundant, and it doesn´t tell me anything. This is crap!' And he throws the book away.
Five years ago, I would have thought, Oh, Mom, there you go again. But now I think that´s a pretty funny story and a pretty effective demonstration of the difference between the legal writing audience and the reading for pleasure audience.
KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #5
On Sunday, Mom and I took a ski gondola-type thing up to the top of one of the cerros (they´re big hills) in Santiago to where there´s a statue of the Virgin Mary in the immaculate conception. It was put up to celebrate the date the dogma of Mary´s immaculate conception was made official by the Catholic Church. There´s a little chapel near the statue, and I discovered when I entered that they were playing Taize music. Later that day, we went to a cathedral in downtown, where a cantor was also singing Taize music. It was a very special moment for me. It´s really cool to think about how Taize has gotten all over the world into all different kinds of worship contexts. It has been a recurring theme in my college experience. During my first winter term, I went to the Taize monastery. During my third winter term, I went to a Taize service in Atlanta, GA, and then this winter term I hear Taize music in Chile. And then of course there´s the services in Oberlin and Madison, and the service at the FTE conference in Chicago. Taize renews my hope for the possibility of successful ecumenism.
On another note, today we went to the museum of precolumbian Latin American art. I don´t think I ever realized just how many different cultures and societies there were in Latin America before the genocide of European conquest. I knew about the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas, but there were dozens of others. Anyway, the museum had an exhibit up called 'Morir para gobernar: sexo y poder en la cultura Moche' or 'Dying in order to govern: sex and power in Moche culture.' It was about the Moche people of Peru´s rituals surrounding the death of a king. Sex, and especially non-procreative forms of sex like oral and anal intercourse were really important for ensuring that the king had a successful journey through the land of the dead, the land of the ancestors, and then back into the land of the living where he ruled in the form of his successor. All the ritual sex was heterosexual or masturbatory, because the association between penises, masculinity, domination, and life was very important. The exhibit largely consisted of exquisitely (and remarkably anatomically accurate) carved pots, water jugs, and figurines showing people engaging in oral sex, anal sex, and masturbation. Outside the exhibit was a sign that said 'Minors ought to be accompanied by their parents.' Boy, would that ever be an awkward parent-child conversation.
After lunch, we walked down a street that was occupied almost entirely by stores that sold knitting and crocheting tools and inexpensive yarns. We must have passed at least five or six yarn stores. I thought of you guys. I guess you'll have to visit Chile now.
I got asked for a third time today if I was Brazilian. Next time someone asks, I'm going to say yes.
On Sunday, Mom and I took a ski gondola-type thing up to the top of one of the cerros (they´re big hills) in Santiago to where there´s a statue of the Virgin Mary in the immaculate conception. It was put up to celebrate the date the dogma of Mary´s immaculate conception was made official by the Catholic Church. There´s a little chapel near the statue, and I discovered when I entered that they were playing Taize music. Later that day, we went to a cathedral in downtown, where a cantor was also singing Taize music. It was a very special moment for me. It´s really cool to think about how Taize has gotten all over the world into all different kinds of worship contexts. It has been a recurring theme in my college experience. During my first winter term, I went to the Taize monastery. During my third winter term, I went to a Taize service in Atlanta, GA, and then this winter term I hear Taize music in Chile. And then of course there´s the services in Oberlin and Madison, and the service at the FTE conference in Chicago. Taize renews my hope for the possibility of successful ecumenism.
On another note, today we went to the museum of precolumbian Latin American art. I don´t think I ever realized just how many different cultures and societies there were in Latin America before the genocide of European conquest. I knew about the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas, but there were dozens of others. Anyway, the museum had an exhibit up called 'Morir para gobernar: sexo y poder en la cultura Moche' or 'Dying in order to govern: sex and power in Moche culture.' It was about the Moche people of Peru´s rituals surrounding the death of a king. Sex, and especially non-procreative forms of sex like oral and anal intercourse were really important for ensuring that the king had a successful journey through the land of the dead, the land of the ancestors, and then back into the land of the living where he ruled in the form of his successor. All the ritual sex was heterosexual or masturbatory, because the association between penises, masculinity, domination, and life was very important. The exhibit largely consisted of exquisitely (and remarkably anatomically accurate) carved pots, water jugs, and figurines showing people engaging in oral sex, anal sex, and masturbation. Outside the exhibit was a sign that said 'Minors ought to be accompanied by their parents.' Boy, would that ever be an awkward parent-child conversation.
After lunch, we walked down a street that was occupied almost entirely by stores that sold knitting and crocheting tools and inexpensive yarns. We must have passed at least five or six yarn stores. I thought of you guys. I guess you'll have to visit Chile now.
I got asked for a third time today if I was Brazilian. Next time someone asks, I'm going to say yes.
Monday, January 14, 2008
KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #3
Chilean accents are a bitch to understand. It makes me feel dumb sometimes when I have to ask people what they said two or three times.
Dafna told me another funny social encounter story. Evidently, her dad was at a party, and he saw a woman who looked really familiar, but he couldn't figure out how he knew her. It kept bothering him, so he went over and asked her, "Excuse me, you look very familiar. Do I know you from somewhere." The woman replied, "Well, I'm the First Lady."
Somebody else asked me if I was Brazilian the other day. I asked one of Mom's colleagues why everyone thinks I'm Brazilian (or at least two waitresses did), and she said it might be because of my wickedly curly hair. I found that affirming, because it makes me feel more like Inara (Morena Baccarin, the actress who plays her, is Brazilian).
I found out that one of the repercussions of America's antiterrorist policies is that it has become a model (or an excuse) for other countries to take a heavy hand with discontented minorities. Many Mapuche, or Natives who live in the south of Chile, have been held without trial and interrogated harshly in the name of anti-terrorism by the government in recent years as they struggle for rights to their land. Soledad, this really amazing woman who invited Mom to teach the workshop in Chile, is worried that it could escalate to genocide if there is not enough international publicity. After she said that, I poked around on the Internet, and I was surprised to find that Amnesty International had almost nothing on the Mapuche, and the Human Rights Watch has only one two-year-old report. I e-mailed Steve Volk to ask him if he knew anything else about international coverage of the Mapuche. He said there was very little, though he had seen international media coverage of a Mapuche university student who was killed by police while demonstrating for land rights.
So...that's pretty much what's up here. And I've discovered that I really love empanadas.
And I'm really going to miss the fruits when I leave. You buy raspberries by the pound here, and they're way cheaper than in the US. I've never pooped so well in my life.
Chilean accents are a bitch to understand. It makes me feel dumb sometimes when I have to ask people what they said two or three times.
Dafna told me another funny social encounter story. Evidently, her dad was at a party, and he saw a woman who looked really familiar, but he couldn't figure out how he knew her. It kept bothering him, so he went over and asked her, "Excuse me, you look very familiar. Do I know you from somewhere." The woman replied, "Well, I'm the First Lady."
Somebody else asked me if I was Brazilian the other day. I asked one of Mom's colleagues why everyone thinks I'm Brazilian (or at least two waitresses did), and she said it might be because of my wickedly curly hair. I found that affirming, because it makes me feel more like Inara (Morena Baccarin, the actress who plays her, is Brazilian).
I found out that one of the repercussions of America's antiterrorist policies is that it has become a model (or an excuse) for other countries to take a heavy hand with discontented minorities. Many Mapuche, or Natives who live in the south of Chile, have been held without trial and interrogated harshly in the name of anti-terrorism by the government in recent years as they struggle for rights to their land. Soledad, this really amazing woman who invited Mom to teach the workshop in Chile, is worried that it could escalate to genocide if there is not enough international publicity. After she said that, I poked around on the Internet, and I was surprised to find that Amnesty International had almost nothing on the Mapuche, and the Human Rights Watch has only one two-year-old report. I e-mailed Steve Volk to ask him if he knew anything else about international coverage of the Mapuche. He said there was very little, though he had seen international media coverage of a Mapuche university student who was killed by police while demonstrating for land rights.
So...that's pretty much what's up here. And I've discovered that I really love empanadas.
And I'm really going to miss the fruits when I leave. You buy raspberries by the pound here, and they're way cheaper than in the US. I've never pooped so well in my life.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #2
Today we went downtown, and there were some amazing street shows going on, like puppets and mimes. One guy was giving another guy a haircut while lots of people watched. I didn't get why it was so fascinating, but it reminded me a little of Sweeney Todd so I felt a little creeped out.
Last night, one of Mom's colleagues, Patricia, her friend Ester, and Ester's daughter Dafna took us to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Often when you stop at stoplights there are people selling things and washing windows from car to car. In Valparaiso, a guy came out while we were at a stoplight and rode a unicycle and juggled in front of us in the street. It was one of the more amazing things I've seen.
We went to this little hole in the wall for dinner where these locals who are all at least 75 years old sing and play Chilean folk songs every night. It was pretty fantastic. I'm trying to upload a video of it onto Youtube so you can partake in the awesomeness, but have been thus far unsuccessful. In the meantime, my new Facebook photo is of me and Dafna (who's about my age) sitting on the lap of one of the singers after we asked him for his autograph.
At dinner, my mom's colleague's partner leaned over to us and told us that the man sitting at a table next to us used to be a judge. She was the court reporter on a case that he had presided over, of a rich man who had been accused of murdering his young mistress. All the evidence pointed to the rich man as the murderer. The judge was offered a bribe by the rich man's family, but he sent him to jail to await trial anyways. So the rich man's father went to him, upping the bribe, and the judge accepted it. But the father actually had something else in mind. He had tape recorded the conversation, which he then spread publicly, demanding a new trial for his son. The request was granted, and a new judge, whom the rich man's family already had in their back pocket, was assigned the case. The rich man was acquitted, and the original judge, who had been exposed, was disbarred. Meanwhile, a poor man in a local neighborhood was found hanged in his house with what was supposedly a suicide note, in which he "admitted" to killing the woman and felt so bad about it that he committed suicide.
Evidently that kind of thing happened all the time during Pinochet's regime, and it's really common to run into famous and infamous people in public places in Chile these days. Patricia said that she and Ester were out at dinner one night and Ester leaned over to her and said, "See that guy sitting next to you? He was one of Pinochet's primary torturers." The current president of the country was in an elevator where the door opened and the man who had tortured her stepped onto it next to her.
As you can see, this evening led to a whole mess of "when I ran into a famous person in Chile" stories by Patricia, Ester, and Dafna. Ester evidently had to interview Sr. Lagos, the last president before the current one, while he was Secretary of Education. She couldn't find a babysitter for little Dafna, so she brought her along with her. During the interview, Dafna announced "I hate politicians!"
So I hope you made it through my rather long blog entry, and I hope life is going well back in Los Estados!
Today we went downtown, and there were some amazing street shows going on, like puppets and mimes. One guy was giving another guy a haircut while lots of people watched. I didn't get why it was so fascinating, but it reminded me a little of Sweeney Todd so I felt a little creeped out.
Last night, one of Mom's colleagues, Patricia, her friend Ester, and Ester's daughter Dafna took us to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Often when you stop at stoplights there are people selling things and washing windows from car to car. In Valparaiso, a guy came out while we were at a stoplight and rode a unicycle and juggled in front of us in the street. It was one of the more amazing things I've seen.
We went to this little hole in the wall for dinner where these locals who are all at least 75 years old sing and play Chilean folk songs every night. It was pretty fantastic. I'm trying to upload a video of it onto Youtube so you can partake in the awesomeness, but have been thus far unsuccessful. In the meantime, my new Facebook photo is of me and Dafna (who's about my age) sitting on the lap of one of the singers after we asked him for his autograph.
At dinner, my mom's colleague's partner leaned over to us and told us that the man sitting at a table next to us used to be a judge. She was the court reporter on a case that he had presided over, of a rich man who had been accused of murdering his young mistress. All the evidence pointed to the rich man as the murderer. The judge was offered a bribe by the rich man's family, but he sent him to jail to await trial anyways. So the rich man's father went to him, upping the bribe, and the judge accepted it. But the father actually had something else in mind. He had tape recorded the conversation, which he then spread publicly, demanding a new trial for his son. The request was granted, and a new judge, whom the rich man's family already had in their back pocket, was assigned the case. The rich man was acquitted, and the original judge, who had been exposed, was disbarred. Meanwhile, a poor man in a local neighborhood was found hanged in his house with what was supposedly a suicide note, in which he "admitted" to killing the woman and felt so bad about it that he committed suicide.
Evidently that kind of thing happened all the time during Pinochet's regime, and it's really common to run into famous and infamous people in public places in Chile these days. Patricia said that she and Ester were out at dinner one night and Ester leaned over to her and said, "See that guy sitting next to you? He was one of Pinochet's primary torturers." The current president of the country was in an elevator where the door opened and the man who had tortured her stepped onto it next to her.
As you can see, this evening led to a whole mess of "when I ran into a famous person in Chile" stories by Patricia, Ester, and Dafna. Ester evidently had to interview Sr. Lagos, the last president before the current one, while he was Secretary of Education. She couldn't find a babysitter for little Dafna, so she brought her along with her. During the interview, Dafna announced "I hate politicians!"
So I hope you made it through my rather long blog entry, and I hope life is going well back in Los Estados!
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #1
Hi everyone! Chile is very warm and sunny. It's a little overwhelming sometimes. I keep thinking how much easier this trip is than my trip to Nicaragua. There's hot running and drinkable water, and lots of buildings and paved roads and wireless access. There are also self-appointed parking attendants who hang out near markets and stuff and they help you park. You then tip them on your way out. I wonder how people would react if I appointed myself a parking attendant and asked for a tip in Oberlin.
Yesterday I was on my own for the midday, and I had lunch at this little cafe. I ordered a quiche, and the waitress paused and looked at me and said "Es brasilena?" I still have trouble intuiting subjects when they are left out, and I thought she was asking if the quiche was Brazilian. I said, "Ummm...si." Then later she asked me which part of Brazil I was from, and I got all confused and realized that she had thought I was Brazilian. I explained to her that I had misunderstood; I thought she asked if my food was Brazilian, and when I don't understand a question properly I say "Yes" instead of "Huh?" She probably thought I was crazy.
Hi everyone! Chile is very warm and sunny. It's a little overwhelming sometimes. I keep thinking how much easier this trip is than my trip to Nicaragua. There's hot running and drinkable water, and lots of buildings and paved roads and wireless access. There are also self-appointed parking attendants who hang out near markets and stuff and they help you park. You then tip them on your way out. I wonder how people would react if I appointed myself a parking attendant and asked for a tip in Oberlin.
Yesterday I was on my own for the midday, and I had lunch at this little cafe. I ordered a quiche, and the waitress paused and looked at me and said "Es brasilena?" I still have trouble intuiting subjects when they are left out, and I thought she was asking if the quiche was Brazilian. I said, "Ummm...si." Then later she asked me which part of Brazil I was from, and I got all confused and realized that she had thought I was Brazilian. I explained to her that I had misunderstood; I thought she asked if my food was Brazilian, and when I don't understand a question properly I say "Yes" instead of "Huh?" She probably thought I was crazy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
