fringo: (n) gringo friends

if you study abroad you should realize that you will only have other gringo friends. i mean, i have only been here for a week, so it makes sense. so when i say in this post i am going to show you pictures of my friends, dont expect to see Chileans. expect to see one girl with dark curly hair and, well, that´s me.


pictured here is my friend Brandon (they spelled his last name wrong) on our metro or tren passes. the reason we took our picture together was that we looked like giraffes with the light cutting off half of our face. bonding on public transportation. and for the reccord, i might just be a pro at the colectivos (lack luster taxi) but i will never like the micro (bus) drag racing masters drive those things.



banano, the fanny pack or the banana shapped purse. wearing them proudly because in the states, this is a screaming tourist item, but here, bananos are quite popular. Pictured, Meghan, Me and Kait.



the roomies from Santiago.  sounds like a band. minus the photographer Mary. she took this with one of her really cool camera that printed out the pictures. Kami is the one in the middle on the left. the first one was a double exposure but i happen to find it wicked cool.

 

sometimes studying abroad is strenuous. and by sometimes, i do mean all the time. all of your thinking in a different language comes from your back muscles. oh yea. so this train is more than necessary. poor Pablo walked in on this, he didn´t know what to do so he just gave us our visa papers.



the wino ladies. wine tour was wonderful, vino tinto y blanca. our tour guide was really nice and explained everything very well and the vinyard was just beautiful. something to mention with the alcohol consumption in Chile, being drunk is 100% not acceptable, the only people you see abusing alcohol and being visabally tanked... the gringos. people need to learn the ways of Chile.

enjoy the time,
raquel

Pablo Neruda sin duda

I can see why Pablo Neruda was over come with inspiration here. The open air is accessible from every house, the metro stations (with the exception of Vina del Mar which opens to the sky like the DC Dupont Circle Orpheus rising out of Hell) and so far I have seen two of his houses. The first one we visited was in Santiago was built for his curly headed mistress (La Chascona)and was built to resemble the feel of a boat.
 
This picture does not do the house justice, but you, my dear reader, needed to see the front. And you needed to see the resident Chasonas. Here is an internal view.

I loved the art work surrounding his house and the green living room with the Diego Rivera double headed picture with Pablo´s silhouette.Can you see it?

I also liked how the house was seperated into four locations that required walking outside to enter. The last room was full of maps and globes and books had a great view of the cascading steps. The second house, La Sebastiana, in Bellavista, Valparaiso was certainly it´s name sake, and a beautiful view.
 
This house was stacked on top of eachother rather than spread out and had six floors. The narrow wrap staircases were fun to traverse but maybe not for a tall or wide person... Neruda? Now that I think about it, there is no way they got the furniture up through the house. There were more windows in these rooms which I loved but a lot more gaudy decore. His book of odes was written in this house and I couldn´t help send some love to Joel and his alcochofas.

The top floor was the meeting point for all the ISA students and everyone had their backs turned from the room stairing out into the mix of houses, lazy cats roaming the cobblestone streets, cozy cafe´s nesseled between mosaic trees and rising behind all,the green teal of the Pacific tossing boats to and fo. The phrase I kept hearing was "I could be a poet if I lived here too" Maybe that is true but we do live here and nothing is stopping you from being a poet but yourself.

Art is everywhere in Chile because no one is afraid.


If my computer worked here,I could have better pictures. These are all from facebook. Sorry to disapoint you.

¡Vive Chile!
raquel

falling in love in a coffee shop

coffee shops are great places to think about stuff. and to journal. and to listen to sappy music. and to watch the storm brewing outside. and to pretend you're sophisticated. and to be alone without being lonely. and to daydream about traveling. and to escape from the craziness of your house. and to make pointless blog posts like this.

embrace the laziness.

with love,

hills

"slow down, feel love"-grassroots 2012

^see this cup? it pretty much defines the grassroots festival of music and dance. happiness. randomness. colorfulness. eclecticness. every year they have a new cup, and when you bring back your old one, you get discounted drinks! what a great deal.

basically, this was one of the best weekends of my life. never have i ever felt so completely connected to music before. the band in the picture above is john brown's body. they're a reggae band with a dave matthews feel....so basically they're perfect. their concert was friday night at midnight and they played for almost 2 hours. this might sound strange, but i definitely think i was having an out-of-body spiritual experience during this concert. i was jamming out in the very front with emma and jane; my body was completely controlled by the rhythm of the music. i don't think i've ever danced like that in my life. i was brought to a whooolllleee new musical level that night. it also helped that another jam band, sim redmond, played right before JBB-and they, too, were wonderful.

the thing i loved most about this festival was that even though i had barely heard of any of the artists before, i enjoyed their performances almost more than when i see artists i've liked forever. this is because of 3 reasons: 1) you have no expectations because you don't know what their music is like so you're pleasantly surprised when they're really, really good. 2) EVERYBODY dances to the music. it doesn't matter what the genre is, literally everyone is grooving in one form or another. and 3) i could easily make my way to the front of the stage and completely immerse myself in the music.

another cool thing about this festival is that most of the performers actually camp out on site. i didn't even do that! but they hang around for all 4 days to support the other artists. you would see them with their families wandering around, and it was refreshing to know they have normal lives, too. i even got to talk to the drummer of the makepeace brothers for 15 minutes after their show because he was just that type of guy to talk to 3 random girls about music. 

not only was everyone consistently dancing, but everyone was HAPPY. so happy. i'm convinced this place was happier than disney world-and that's saying a lot!!!  

my favorite artists/performances from the festival: john brown's body, the makepeace brothers, driftwood, the gunpoets, thousands of one, sim redmond band, willie watson and the zydeco band. can't stop listening to their CDs in my car. i'm SO glad i went to the festival, and i'm already looking forward to next summer!!

peace out,

hill

los andes

this post is already difficult to write. code switching. I want to write this in Espanol. but lamentations aside, this was what I woke up to. our delayed flight to Santiago (after 7 flight changes and refusing to allow us to board) was so satisfying. not to mention the adorable Paulita that I sat with. she told me el espiritu de Christo connected us and she told me everything there is to know about her country. she moved to the USA 23 years ago but visits her familia in Santiago a lot. the man Meghan sat beside wrote the audio tour for the Valparaiso Pablo Neruda house museum. life is really, really awesome. 

this is the opening stretch of los andes and la cordillera (which means backbone) that stretches all through South America and Central America and supports the other mountain ranges. being a geography nerd comes in handy when in a country that is known for its natural features. 

Mount Aconcagua. it has been one of my dreams to climb the tallest mountain in the Americas, standing at 6,959 m (22,831 ft) but from the global climate change, who know how tall it will be. so feast your eyes on this beauty. breathe in this beautiful sunrise (salida de sol)

un lago (a lake) under los andes about 7 minutes away from the Santiago airport. there is a phrase in Espanol that means from sunrise to sunset, de sol a sol, from dawn to dusk. such an appropriate phrase for Chileans who are so welcoming to every aspect of their life, ready and willing to exchange a compliment or a conversation. needless to say, i love it her. 

stay beautiful, 

rach

impromptu creativity

everything hit me tonight as i was sitting in my car, watching the heat lightening brighten the dark orange night sky. yes. it was orange, i swear. i chugged down a medium caramel iced coffee with cream AND sugar from dunkin' donuts within 10 minutes. needless to say, there will be no sleeping in hillary's room tonight. i was sad and here are my sad thoughts in a crappy & short creative writing piece.

like a shooting star that lit up my world briefly, in the blink of an eye it disappeared. the image in my mind still reamins and i think of that glimmer often. something. i don't know what, but i think it was something. shooting stars are a sign, right? i struggle to find meaning behind a lot of things and i give up after awhile. but i'm still trying to find meaning for that flickering flame. it cast shadows in my room, giving me future reflections and hopeful memories. how can time stand still yet go so fast at the same time? i guess that's one mystery in life that won't be solved, along with your lingering presence. the timing in my life is always off, but i know there's a meaning behind everything that seems wrong. i wanna dive in. float for awhile, sink for awhile, drown out the fear for awhile. i wanna stay for awhile. i'm not ready to go, but i know it's time that i leave for awhile. as much as i want to wait for something to happen here, i need to make something else happen there, first. but maybe like a shooting star i'll linger, too. and maybe i have a shimmering presence that will remain, if only for a little. but maybe i'll be a permanent star that stays forever. just maybe.




sweet dreams,
hill

life

today our toaster oven almost bit the dust. it is 27 years old. a wedding present for my parents. 

but it worked so i toasted pretzel breadsticks. 

my cousins came to visit and send me off and talked only in brittish accents. 

i read a packed about re-entry culture shock for when i get back to the usa. it frightened me and the moral of the packet is that i will hate everything and everyone so in turn, everyone and probably everyone will hate me. 

i will stop kayaking for a phone call ONLY if it is my spanish professor calling. he is the only one worthy. 

finishing the last hunger games book left me really wanting cheesy bread. also i started hearing helicopters in my back yard. but then there actually was a helicopter in my yard so there... 

rather than packing i just looked up acoustic covers to rage against the machine songs... 

life is weird. 

enjoy your song of the day (night)

well done world, 

rach