Green Celery to me! (Easter Island report, with birthday blabla)

For reasons too complex and probably personal, all of which have to do with someone's precipitous and precocious death and feared short life expectancy and really, I am that person who has been to two cardiologists in the past three years only to find out that no, I do not appear to be in imminent danger of a heart attack, I did not scream from the rooftops that I was about to turn 40.

But 40 I turned, a year more than 39, one less than 41, and a birthday that has not put me into an existential tailspin, but rather makes me think about how great these next 40 years are going to be, and how glad I am that I didn't promise to run a marathon this year, because I think I might have a stress fracture in my left foot and my right ankle is the weakest link, goodbye! (only not, because even if she's weak, she's mine, and I'm keeping her).

So. I went to Easter Island to celebrate my birthday, and like any bike enthusiast, partial misanthrope and crazy person, on my birthday itself, I woke up early, grabbed the bike I'd rented the night before and rode up a dirt road to Ahu Te Peu on Rapa Nui, several km out of Hanga Roa, alone, blissfully alone. Except for these cows.



And then I rode back to get some breakfast. And that looked like this (the ride back, not the breakfast):



Then I set out again, this time passing the airport, where I snapped this through-the-fence shot



And I headed to Ahu Akivi, where seven moai face the ocean, are set up to receive the sun at their fronts and backs on the solstices, and where I sweated the sweat of the weary and humidity-unaccustomed and sat on a rock out from under which waddled a cockroach of mouse-like proportions. Photo of moai, not of the cockroach, for obvious reasons.



This bike route, for what it's worth, makes nearly no sense because I doubled back from Ahu Te Peu when I really should have continued on, and would have arrived shortly at Ahu Akivi, but I was hungry and didn't want to miss breakfast and wasn't sure how long it would all take. Also, the island is pretty small, and I was going to run out of road before energy, so it wasn't a big deal to double back.

From Ahu Akivi, where I traded mild conversation with what appeared to be a Chilean-French couple (also cycling), but I don't know for sure because we never asked each other where we were from, I headed back to the road, and made a left, heading over to Anakena, where en route, I managed to get a wicked case of chain suck (yay! poorly maintained, grease-less bike chains), and ganked my chain into a position best described as "twisted" such that a) I could no longer get into the easiest gear and b) there was great skipping and clickage.

No worry, I pedalled on, urged to the right direction by this downward-facing sign, and fueled by fiber cookies, iced tea and a camelbak full of water.



And views like this:



And the smell of eucalyptus and threatening rain, and finally, the long, long downhill to the beach where I felt like I was being towed in by the ocean. I later found out there's a "magnetic" spot at about km 15, where despite appearing to be an uphill, cars will coast up the highway, so perhaps this feeling of towing in was my bike being pulled by this same force.



At Anakena I ran into a Chilean family from Iquique who'd adopted me on a hike to Rano Kau the day before, and whose friend-of-the-family's daughter handed me a piece of poundcake that she'd baked, which she didn't know, but which ended up being my birthday cake. And they shared water with me because I'd drained all of mine, and they ultimately gave me a lift part of the way back because there was no way my twisty bike chain and I were going to make it up that uphill I'd just come down without that smallest chain ring.

And I stopped to say hi to the moai for good measure.



And then I rode the ten or so km back to the bike shop, where I told them about the twisty chain and they gave me a mango for my troubles.

And I sat and watched a wispy sunset and then ate some fish and mashed taro cooked in a banana leaf, but I didn't choose the restaurant particularly well, and the food was just okay, and (don't tell), I shared some of each with a nearby cat. Perhaps it was her birthday, too.
::::::::::::::::

Green Celery explantation: The closest expression to how Happy Birthday sounds when spelled phonetically and then repronounced in Chilean Spanish is Apio Verde, which means green celery. Green Celery to me? Happy birthday to me. You didn't think I'd let a day go by without language geekery, did you? It's my gift to you.

On the anniversary of the 2010 Chilean Earthquake

On the anniversary of a terrible date in recent Chilean history, the 27th of February, nearly a year is completed from the 3:34 AM earthquake in Chile that would generate a tsunami that would wash away towns, and would knock one apartment building flat on its back (photo 13 in this photo essay), and leave many, many homes in uninhabitable conditions and many people more without homes to return to, I have to tell you a story.

It's about juxtaposition. As it happens, I was in Chile during the Haiti earthquake, then in New Zealand for the Chile earthquake, and finally, on Easter Island for the New Zealand earthquake. Yes, I am tremendously lucky, and hopefully, sufficiently thankful.

In Chile, we had fundraising events and a media bath of "send aid," or "send supplies" to Haiti. I know Haiti continues to struggle, and the trials faced in that country are much different, and dare I say harder than what would later be faced here and later in New Zealand.

Bear with me as I fast forward about six weeks from the date of the Haiti earthquake, to when I found out about the earthquake in Chile. I digested the information as best I could, far from the source, and with the occasional missive from friends who actually lived through it.

And then one day, not long after the Chile earthquake, I was walking around Rotorua, NZ, and saw this:



and this:



And I felt my knees nearly give, and then lock.

No.

Chile fundraises for other countries. No one fundraises for Chile, I thought. We're all wineries and deserts and lakes and skiing and hiking and the Andes. Not a charity case.

Time went on, and many millions of dollars were raised to help Chilean earthquake reconstruction efforts, which are still ongoing, particularly in the hardest-hit region of Maule, where adequate housing is still an issue, and where reconstruction is far from complete. So yes. People do raise money for Chile, and with reason. Thank you New Zealand, and everyone else.

And as if to prove that disaster can strike countries of every ilk, Christchurch suffered a devastating earthquake just a few days shy of Chile's 2010 quake anniversary. I took this photo almost a year before the most recent quake from when the Christchurch Cathedral was spiffy and upright, when the city of Christchurch hadn't been so shaken, when so many people hadn't died from having been simply in the wrong place.



And I see now that people are fundraising for New Zealand as well. For Haiti, for Chile, for New Zealand. Three hugely far-flung countries, with very different pasts and presents, joined in recent history by earthquakes.

It pains me to know that people are suffering, with physical and psychological pain, with death. In Santiago we all had to step over escombros (building debris) for months while waiting for it to be cleaned up. A year later, even in Santiago (which was nowhere nearly as damaged as Talca or other more southern cities), many buildings are still scaffolded, 2x4s holding up cornices in places where they could still fall. The people of New Zealand must be reeling, and my few contacts down there seem thoroughly shocked (though physically fine).

Maybe we're supposed to remember that calamity can happen in any place, at any time? That even wealthy countries can need to ask for help? That tectonic plates respect no borders?

I offer out hopeful thoughts for speedy recovery, body and soul for those who need it. To people in Haiti living precariously, to Chileans still hurting, missing loved ones, waiting for reconstruction, and to Kiwis newly shocked and injured, as well as the foreigners who may have been in these places when the quakes hit.

A tidy finish eludes me. Stay safe.

Poof! I'm home!

Iorana!

Despite the presence of a wholly unlikeable seatmate on my flight home (oh! the scalp-scratching, the hangnail chewing, the using of saliva to clean the screen in front of him), I am so peaceful after an actual week off, that I find myself wondering why I don't do that more often. I very seldom disconnect from work, and the many hours of tappitytap that requires, and this week on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was nearly internet free, with the exception of reading (and responding to) many, many, many birthday wishes from some pretty fabulous people, and reading the occasional news snippet. My heart goes out to the people of Christchurch, and once again I am thankful to have missed an event so jarring, so dangerous.

I think the trip from Rapa Nui to my apartment in Santiago is the fastest and brusquest change I've ever made. From being on an island with fewer than 5000 people and about as many horses (and many more than that number of ants!) to my balcony that overlooks downtown Santiago (a city of more than 6 million) took a little over five hours. It's a stunning shift to exchange the twinkling spray of stars overhead to the neon Entel Tower in such a short amount of time.

It always takes me an overnight to make me feel like I'm really on vacation. I know I'm being greedy, but I kind of hope it takes me more than that to start to feel like I've landed back in real life.

Hope you've all been well, and back to more navel-gazing, trip reports and photographic splendor (I hope, I haven't even looked at any photos yet) soon.

Rapa Nui Day 1 report, reflections, nada mas.

Today a woman I had met not more than 30 minutes earlier handed me her adorable 14 month old daughter in a pink rash suit and matching flowered sunhat while she (the woman) struggled on the sharp rocks to get a foothold so she could get out of the water. They had been "swimming" together, with mom floating around and holding her little girl, urging her not to whimper when the water moved around. She pointed to her friend, and then to her friend's dog, who was being held nearby in the water saying, "be like the doggie, she doesn't whine."

I wasn't surprised by the woman handing me the child necessarily, as I had offered to help. But the kind of help I offered was, "can I give you a hand?" not "can I hold your baby?" But she needed help, and it was baby-holding she was after, and so I was on duty. I held the girl, who looked at me with eyes that didn't budge, not even to blink, but didn't pull her to me, as she was dripping wet and I was dry. Also? Not my baby.

And I could say it's because we were on Rapa Nui (Isla de Pascua, Easter Island) and that's the way things are here, except the woman with the baby was from the 5ta Región (near Valparaíso). Or I could say it's because I seem like a trustworthy person, perhaps good at holding babies. Earlier in the day I had helped a little kid at the place I'm staying (maybe 4?) put on her bathing suit top so she could play with a hose with some friends. I guess it's a five-and-under day for me.

The woman with the baby took her back and then retired to a round woven mat she'd brought down to the beach and as the woman with the dog got out of the water, I noticed that she had a band of bluish, slightly raised Rapa Nui tattoos around her left thigh. In the end, I was more curious about the tattoos than about the baby and why I'd been asked to hold her. But I felt too intimidated to ask.

I told them my name in case we ran into each other again, took a picture (with permission) of the lobster the dog woman's husband had speared, slipped on my flipflops and walked back home under puffy, rainless clouds and a fierce afternoon sun.

Chileans make fun of gringos speaking Spanish! (again!) This time: Lah Peeohhaira

The last post, where I talk about whether or not walking more than kung fu (caminar mas que kung fu) is a potentially offensive expression, brought up issues of language and sensitivity. I am particularly attuned to language, and I like to think that I watch carefully how people treat each other, and try not to be a jerk in general terms, though I have been known to occasionally snap at people and later apologize. I'm not proud of that, it's something I'm working on, etc.

But getting back to the issue of language and sensitivity, consider this video from Canal 13 news, where they interview the creator of Askme, a little mobile kiosk where you can get maps, and a service that has some self-guided walking tours and some paid (downloadable) audio tours. Here's what I said about Ask Me on NileGuide, if you're into that.

And here's the video in question, which we will be discussing. Please pay careful attention to the following:

:30-:42
:54-:55
2:01-2:07

Ready? Watch:



What we have here is one journalist in the studio, and one in the field, making fun of how gringos talk. "Dohwnde estta lah Peeohhaira?" is supposed to stand in for Dónde está La Piojera links to #NG. (and there's actually one funny portion here, where the news guy is driving his segway, and says, "look, no hands" and someone in the studio says, look out, or your next line could be "look, no teeth").

But back to La Peeohhaira. I suppose this is funny. If you are eight. I know this is something I have railed against before, and it will never cease to bug me. As an adult, you should be beyond making fun of people's accents on national TV. It's the equivalent of tuning into NBC news and seeing someone do a Speedy Gonzalez imitation to repeat something Penelope Cruz said. (Yes, Speedy Gonzalez, a pretend Mexican mouse, himself an offensive caricature, and I choose Penelope Cruz because she is famous and a native Spanish speaker, not because I am concerned about her new baby who I'm sure is beautiful and has awesome eyebrows).

Eso no se hace (that is just not done). Except in Chile, sí, se hace (yes it is). I'm not necessarily complaining because it affects me personally, I know I have a slight accent in Spanish, and I'm (mostly) okay with that. But that's the point about -isms, they don't offend you because you're part of the group, but because you're part of the society, and as a society, we should just all sign up to join the "let's not be jerks" club.

Except in Chile, making fun of the way gringos talk is not considered to be jerky. See exhibit A, video above. And by the way, the Ask Me people are cool, and you'll notice that the owner didn't participate in this tomjerkery. This is a situation in which my wiring says one thing and the society says something else. It puts me in a grey area of offendedness. Am I still allowed to be offended by something that was not meant to be offensive? I have told all of my friends that pretend gringo accent talking is not funny to me, and for the most part, they respect that.

I guess I just have to go make friends with the people at Canal 13. Won't you join me in my one woman campaign to get people to stop making fun of (and imitating, which is worse) the gringo accent in Spanish? (and looks like we're not alone, the combined search results from "make fun of my accent" and "making fun of my accent" were more than 100,000, and I'm sure bearshapedsphere can't be more than ten of those).

and here's another post where I talked about something quite similar. Call it early onset repetitiveness. A trait I come by honestly. Are you listening oh schvester mia and Mamaj?

Caminar mas que Kung Fu: More lessons in Chilean Slang

It wasn't until I heard the expression "caminar mas que Kung Fu" (lit: walk farther than Kung Fu) for about the third time that I thought to ask someone just who or what Kung Fu was, and why he walked so much. It's not that I'm not interested in language. On the contrary. I spend so much time looking at language that sometimes I miss the point entirely. So to combat that, sometimes I just let thing slide and ask about them later, or not at all. I have kind of a rule with is called "interesting or the rule of threes." If something is very interesting to me, or if I hear it three times, I will chase it down. Otherwise, people say things near me all the time that I don't quite know the genesis of, and I'm pretty mellow about it, though I can hear the file cabinet of my subconsicious creaking open and the scritch of a pencil against my mental index cards (white, lined), even as I follow the conversation into the future.

Well you can thank Abby for my recent remembering of Kung Fu, due to a recent blog post of hers on Abbysline where she talks about Chilean expressions. One day three of my friends and I decided to go for a walk. In the end, we walked up to the Parque Bicentenario and most of the way back downtown, including a little amble around the park while we were there. When we got back, I "mapped my run" (except this was a walk) and discovered that it was on the order of 20ish kilometers, or about 12 miles. I later commented to one of the saga-walk participants that I love to go out on walks, but not necessarily such long ones.

And there it was again. "Sip, si ese día caminamos mas que Kung Fu!" (yep, that day we walked a hell of a long way).

So I asked. It turns out Kung Fu was a tv program on in the United States from 1972-1975 that featured an orphaned Shaolin priest and martial arts master wandering the Western United States in search of his lost half-brother. The kicker here is that I have never seen the show, not even in syndication, but here in Chile, enough people have seen it (in reruns, I imagine, given the age of the people involved) to generate this expression, which seems mildly racist on its face, but Chileans disavow most knowlege of any presence of racism, so I'm not really sure how to handle this particular question, other than to avoid it.

So there you have it. Sometimes I walk more than an allegedly half-Chinese fictional character portrayed by a white man who existed on television in the 1970s, and into later years in Chile. I'm beginning to understand the shorthand, even though I still probably won't use it.

A Great Miracle Happened Here (I finally moved)

Above this text you see a picture. A blarey, bright picture with funny gingham checked yellow curtains (not my choice), and a plate full of something, which you probably can't quite make out. It happens that it's my lunch. But not just any old lunch, a lunch partially cooked (the other part raw) on a stove that I installed with my own two hands (and a leatherman) in my new kitchen. A kitchen in which I have set up the previous satellite kitchen (baker's rack) as a place to eat while I ponder the great outside and marvel at the fact that I can stand up and whirl around and extend my arms, and oh my goodness, it's a real kitchen.

I am stupidly excited about the new kitchen, as well as the hallway of my new place. The hallway is also photogenic, but seriously? You can't all want to see pictures of my whole apartment. Trust me when I say there are parquet floors and they are vitrificados (finished), which means I will not have to do the wax-on wax-off shuffle again for as long as I live here.

I have been talking about moving for as long as some of you have been reading here, and for years, for those of you who (like me) don't easily keep track of time. My last apartment had many great features. It was not the one before it (a truly horrible little hovel, with carpet in the bathroom). It had a great view, lots of light, was conveniently located in Barrio Brasil, had giant windows, from which I would take lots of pictures. It was also too small for me and my stuff, so cleverly tetrissed into place. My proof of this is how easily all this stuff that was in my previous tiny apartment has expanded to take up so much space in my current home.

Oh heck, here's the darn hallway, with many linear feet of closetified (shelves and racks and things) closet. Oh, great organizational boon.



There's more, so much more. Many thanks to friends who heeded my crazy need to drag things over under cover of darkness, and who helped me to decide which stove to buy and whose little girl played with a box of scarves and then said "ep-ee" to get help to put the top back on.

There is great joyousness in the land, and maybe soon I will answer the question, "What made you finally decide to move" which is the question I have most been asked. That, and "When are you having a party?" Oh friends, do you know nothing about me?

Deets: About five blocks from my old place, near Metro Los Héroes on a street that if you block out the last two letters stands in as slang for the male genitalia. Oh, ri-KELM (as some people used to call it), I won't really miss you!

Santiago in 36 hours, and what happens to a pitch deferred?

Is Chile so fome (Chilean for boring), that you'd only want to stay here for 36 hours? Or maybe I'm just bitter that I didn't write this piece. Not true! I did write that piece. I have continually been writing and rewriting it ever since I got into travel writing 2ish years ago. But this author sent hers in, and I didn't, and maybe she's famous in the kind of circle that makes you get published in the NYT, perhaps rightfully so. So my version sits on my hard drive, and hers is on your breakfast table besides your bagel and cream cheese. Please tell me there are tomatoes on that. And pepper.

So 36 hours of shopping! and fashion! Sounds fashion-shoppy. Also doesn't sound much like my Santiago. My Santiago looks like this. Or at least it did when I wrote that. If you read here, you know a little about my Santiago. It has crumbly old buildings and splashy new ones and people doing interesting things on the street, and being nice to each other and searching for good food and a restaurant where they will give you a full (rather than 2/3 full) glass of water and photos of stuff like this:



and this:



The thing is, everyone's Santiago looks different. Kyle's looks different from Emily's looks different from Margaret's looks different from Abby's looks different from Annje's looks different from all the people who aren't gringa bloggers, and every Santiaguino has their own version of what it looks like, what it smells like, what it feels like to put one foot in front of the other to arrive to their next destination, where with any luck they'll be served something tasty to eat or drink, or see something humorous, or get the refreshing spray that lifts off of the Fuerza Aerea (Air Force) fountain near the Salvador Metro, or look up and realize that all this time, there was a rainbow, just hanging there.



I happen to know I'm not alone (oh! this has been discussed ad fingers crampicum, though the story technically comes out tomorrow) when I say I believe it's really important for the person who trots out Santiago as their place to actually live here. Which is why if you've already clicked on the article above, I must make two admissions. One, I am a blunderer for never having emailed my pitch to the New York Times. I know my Santiago well, and I write about it all the time. Simma down (that's me talking to me) At least now I am free of the agonizing dithering of whether or not to send in my pitch/completed story. Two, I knew this article was being written, and could have taken the reins and taken the author all around town, showing her my Santiago. And I didn't. We had contact, and I declined to help.

And so what I get, what she gets, what all of us get, is a guided tour through Santiago by someone who really likes fashion (yes, I have more detail, no I will not give it). Which also explains why when Santiago won the New York Times' first place for places to go, they mentioned the Museo de la Moda. Repetition is the mother of invention, or something.

Ah, sweet Santiago. A new side revealed to me, which I will mostly ignore, and scratch my head about. A lesson learned about not grabbing tofu bulls by their soy horns, and the self-satisfied sleep of someone who has really made Santiago (and parts of Chile, even) her own. Or maybe the self-satisfied sleep is due to the new, improved apartmentage of your author (that's me). Details to follow for my beloved fans and "when are you ever going to move" harranguers, you know who you are.

And now, my "official" reaction to the piece. #NG, clickety do. And I really love the photo I chose for the head there, because that's what much of Santiago actually looks like. A little color, a little run-down, convenient, easy and pretty safe, but it never hurt to be careful.

And if I haven't worn out my link love, and you read Spanish, and want to see another person's perspective on what's on view in Chile, check out this Venezuelan author's take on Cafés con Piernas (coffee with legs) here in Santiago on MatadorNetwork (disclaimer, I work there), in Spanish.

Fashion waterwhat? Making fun of the Chilean supermarket

Sometimes I wonder which colors really go together. Today, for example, I was wearing brown pants and a black shirt. I'm not sure if that's permissible by the various iterations of fashion police that troll the streets. I did have someone say something horrible to me when I was on my bike yesterday in a similar outfit (okay, maybe it was the same one, I'm moving and I don't know where anything is and I'm schlepping stuff hither and yon and hither again). Anyway, I chased down the horrible-talking people on my bike (they were in their car), lowered my glasses and insisted that they repeat their horribleness for me to hear from closer up. They declined, and I felt a giant ball of joy at mucking up their day like they'd mucked up mine. And then I set to schlepping again.

And I still didn't know what I should wear, or shouldn't. Why, I wish I were a watermelon, I thought. Then I'd always wear pink and green and no one would ever shout horribleness to me on the street as I was biking past.

A watermelon, you say? Why yes, a watermelon. They have their own fashion you know. You didn't know? Please regard exhibit A (three years of law school and a fancy diploma in an embossed folder and behind a piece of plastic allow me to say that). (Sandía is the word for watermelon in Spanish).



So think about it. The next time you're pondering whether you should or shouldn't wear something, think of the humble watermelon, which is picked from the fields, baptized something ridiculous, laid in a basket and priced a solid 3X what it should be, where it will sit and do nothing at all while you roll your combination cart-basket past and wonder if you'll still go this same supermarket when you move a few blocks south.

And that is all she wrote for this week. Taking bets on whether or not my internet provider (whose website was down yesterday, oh dear) hooks up my service on time and when they say they will. Kinda betting that's a no, sadly. Back sometime!