I Hope You Find What You're Looking For

Sometimes I think that my last entry was just a bunch of hogwash. I feel strong some moments and equally weak during others. Reading charles buwkoski has made writing about finding inner-strength seem like silly drivel. Actually, every time I write in this blog, I feel ridiculous because I'm well aware that my thoughts aren't that interesting (unless you're my parents), but I continue to do so in hopes that it serves some personal purpose.

Ever since I got to Chile, I have been trying to figure out what motivated people to come here. Three girls that are extending their stays have found Chilean boyfriends. Two girls left the program early, and had boys waiting for them back home. It could be a coincidence, but I am inclined to think not. Romance and love are powerful motivators, even if no one likes to admit it. Another person I met realized that he was ready to return to the US to finish his bachelor’s degree. Some were looking for an easy way to postpone the bleak career search back in the US and just wanted a sabbatical year. Some were running from things and just needed an escape. Some wanted a cultural experience that involved Spanish and needed adventure to satiate their wanderlust. Some wanted a combination.

As for my motivations, I am not sure what I was searching for. All I know is that I wasn’t looking for love. And I wasn’t coming here to figure out if I liked teaching; I already knew that I did. To my own surprise, I’ve recently realized that I might actually be ready to go home (future travel adventures not out of the question), and I'm certain that I'll miss a lot of things here . So perhaps, just perhaps I have found something. Not inner strength but something more elusive, though I might be mistaken.

Resilency Amazes Me

"Algún día en cualquier parte, en cualquier lugar indefectiblemente te encontrarás a ti mismo, y ésa, sólo ésa, puede ser la más feliz o la más amarga de tus horas"."Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.” (Pablo Neruda)

With 5 weeks left in the semester and spring in full bloom, I can’t help but glance back and reflect on the distance I’ve traveled. This Chilean adventure has been one hell of a roller coaster. Everything has felt more intense here. Friendships are made much faster as a foreigner, because time is limited and travelers share an instant camaraderie that is unlike anything else.

In “normal” life in the United States, people occasionally go through transitions when starting a new job, moving, or making new friendships. However, traveling abroad has been a bunch of transitional phases strung together: First there was the high of getting to know Chile and everyone in my program. Then, I had to get used to the language, move into a house, and adapt to teaching in a new environment. Later, I went through culture shock and got home sick. In between, I traveled to Peru and Uruguay. Then this place magically became my home. Now as I prepare for my South American travels to Argentina, San Pedro de Atacama, and Patagonia, I’m realizing that it’s time to let go of it all. It’s a struggle, but I’m learning that it’s okay for things to be temporary. At times I wonder if the energy I put into all these things was a waste, but in reality I know that nothing here has been a waste.

A year ago, my biggest fear came true: my dad (one of my best friends in the world) had a heart attack and underwent a quadruple bypass surgery, along with many other health complications. Instantly my world was shattered and something inside of me permanently shifted. I don’t even remember what I was doing for Halloween last year, and it’s my favorite holiday. This year, I’ll be in Argentina living out what will in the future be my glory days. This sharp contrast has help me realize just how far I’ve traveled and changed during this year of challenge. While I may not be completely over what happened last year, I have come to trust in my inner strength, as I have learned to confront my biggest fears, learned to stretch my comfort zone and learned to live in a state of transition. Nothing has been a waste, not even when I stumbled and made grave mistakes. Everything I have experienced since last year has allowed me to live life in the moment, learn from mistakes and find meaning in the chaos. That may sound trite but it certainly is true.

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." -Emily Dickinson

If You Don't Like Things, You Leave/For Some Place You've Never Gone Before

For as long as I can remember, my dad has been telling me “there is no magic age where you become an adult. At the age of 61, I still don’t know if I’m an adult.” Nevertheless, I have been waiting in vain for a magic epiphany; the moment of clarity where I not only know precisely where I stand but also where I am going. Even though I was forewarned, some small part of me expected Chile to give me exactly that.

As another season passes and signs of Spring emerge, a lot of my friends are making concrete plans that include fancy jobs, graduate schools, big cities, and more traveling for their futures. Simply put, they know (or are at least pretending to know) what they are doing after this Chilean adventure comes to its grand finale. In all honesty, I don’t want to compare myself to them or feel pressured to map out my life, because I am not them. (If anything, I more often relate to Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate. He has high expectations placed on him, yet his anxious pseudo-bohemian soul rebels after college because he's in search of something more profound, outside the typical life.)

I am determined to take the road EVEN less traveled that is paved by me and me alone. But some part of me can’t help but wonder and at times obsess about the unwritten future, as I am pummeled with anxiety-inducing questions about my next step .

As I think about where the endless numbered days have gone and where I am head so many questions surface: what have I learned; have I been a good teacher; have I made the most of this experience; am I making progress as an individual; will I fall back into old habits; where have I been and where in the world am I going?

I don’t feel lost as I w(o/a)nder, and I don’t feel found. If anything I feel like Chile has brought me to the lost and found. Being here has allowed me to learn, change, grow, and become infinitely more self-aware and feel more alive than I would have in the US within this allotted time…so in that way I feel more found than I did at the beginning. But I am lost (and at a loss of words) because I can’t articulate those lessons, though I know between thought and expression lies a lifetime. So taciturnly, I find myself ruminating about the ‘lost and found’ or the grey, in-between place where I regularly find myself residing. I just have to regularly remind myself that it’s okay not to know, because there is no magic adult age, and there will never be a magic life plan. I will continue to make things up as I go along. I wouldn’t want to live with clairvoyant visions anyways. Some people dream about buying an Audi, some dream about a life in academia, others dreams about a weekend trip to the beach, and I dream about the process of ambitiously traveling…not only to foreign countries but to a place where I’m evolving, giving freely of myself, experiencing, fearlessly loving, pursing happiness, and making the most of my time in whatever crazy situation that I indubitably will find myself in.

With that dream and goal, I do not want to sound overly romantic, idealist, or naive about my freedom/future , because I am well aware that I am still living the finite dreams of a 20-something year old. Miranda July aptly explained life’s phases: ‘It’s kind of about letting go of that feeling of my 20s, that feeling that I will do absolutely everything, I will have sex with everyone, I will go to every country,’ she says. ‘In your 30s, it’s obvious that a finite amount of things will happen.’ [Then] ‘We’ll be 40 in five years.’ [Next] “Forty is basically 50. And then after 50, the rest is just loose change.’ And then the mid-life crisis often comes brought on by mortality terror.At time same time, I refuse to give in to those stereotypes without a wholehearted attempt to follow my dreams.

"we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" T.S Eliot

"If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution"

Chilean Student Movement from Brittany Peterson on Vimeo.

two day strike-huffington post

Chile's national strike

Where’d all the time go? See How The Hands Go Waving Goodbye

Today is the 6 months mark since I left the US. My mind is a carousel of pictures fixated on reflecting. Last night while skyping with my parents my mom said, “the time has flown” and my dad interrupted with “No it hasn’t!” I replied, “It feels like a long time.” I’d be lying if I said the time has flown, but it also hasn’t dragged like heavy furniture.

These past 6 months have been a roller coaster. The first month I was just a tourist. At the three month mark, I was going through culture shock. Six months later and this truly is my life. Even though I will always be a strange impostor in this country, I have grown attached to many people and things here. That is not to say I don’t miss people or things. However, my life at “home” is becoming a distant memory. I left my life packed away in unorganized boxes scattered between houses and not only do I not miss my possessions but I also don’t remember what are in those (now indubitably) dusty boxes.

I’ve purposefully tried to let go of my life in the US and the obsession of my future so that I could make this my home. I haven’t always succeeded in my goal but since home is just an abstract idea, I have succeeded in making this my home and given enough time could probably make one anywhere---MINUS all the people I love that are thousands of miles away, an important thing that can’t be overstated .

Nowadays my pen is heavy and writing is forced. Novelty has faded as my new life has formed. I no longer think twice as I go to kiss someone on the cheek. I actually prefer it to the handshake. I find myself dozing off when I ride the metro, just like all the other Chileans. I unconsciously switch from English to Spanish. And while August snow was weird and November swimming will be something I have to get used to, I’ve come to the realization that the people here are not so different from those in the US. Yes, there are still obvious cultural differences but underneath it all their lives, dreams/aspirations, worries, motivations, and life questions are not so dissimilar. Their language, idioms, and methods of communication may be distinct but their general messages are the same.

At the start of this adventure, I was certain that traveling abroad would make me appreciate my life in the US more: my car, my culture, Targets on every corner, and the general easy access to nearly everything. And although it’s definitely more apparent now how easy things can be in the US, it’s clear the important lessons I’m learning are far different than I would have ever guessed. Here, I don’t have easy access to everything but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy. In the US I have everything at my fingertips but that doesn’t translate into instant happiness. I’m learning that no matter where I go or where my life leads, I have to adjust my attitude and work with what I’ve got, both inwardly and outwardly while simultaneously accepting the things I can’t control. Being proactive is the only option if I am going to go in the direction that I need to; I can change roads so long as I’m moving in the right direction.

These things might seem trite and overly obvious but I had to experience and discover them on my own journey to actually understand. I’m not afraid of the hazy, unwritten future anymore. I look forward to all that waits, knowing that I will blink and all this will be gone because naturally all streets come to an end.

"We all do what we can so we can do just one more thing

We can all be free

Maybe not with words

Maybe not with a look

But with your mind"

Everybody is Searching for Something: Peru 2 Weeks (Part 1 The Jungle)

When examining how one thing differs from another, there can arise a tendency to assign value and priority, to proclaim one reality better or more important than another. In what follows, then, we need to remember that this particular journey aims not to compare in order to put down, but only to identify the differences between distinct realities, each of which is valuable and useful. -The Spirituality of Imperfection

After two days back in Chile and two weeks in Peru, I’m viewing my memory reel in reverse, scrolling backwards in an attempt to process everything. The thing is I’m certain that processing my Peruvian experience could take an extensive period of time; the lessons I learned are elusive and ineffable and exist beyond immediate perceptions. I’ve found answers but have yet to figure out the questions.

After 5 months in Santiago I was in desperate need of a vacation. Some people think that Santiago is an escape and a vacation on its own. However, at the end of the semester the stress of living so far from home felt like a case of bricks pressing down on my spine. The little things really do add up and my seams were slowly coming unraveled. Trying to communicate in Chilean Spanish is a constant battle that leaves me lost in translation and makes everything more difficult than it would be normally. Fighting the apathy of my students was becoming more than I could handle. Feeling cold from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep was getting hard to ignore. The horrific smog was giving me chronic chest pains. Not being able to leave Santiago for such an extended period of time left me feeling trapped and with a strong case of wander lust. It goes without saying that I was stoked and felt extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to Peru for 2 weeks. I would not only get to escape Santiago but would also get to see a different South American country, allowing me to make more extensive cultural comparisons.

Since writing about everything in one blog post seems nearly impossible, I’m going to write about Peru in segments and start with the jungle experience or the first part of the adventure. On July 22^nd, I flew out of Santiago and into Lima. Immediately the airports, crazy traffic/driving, innumerable markets, and lack of police in Peru appeared haphazard, even more so than in Chile. On July 23^rd, I woke up early to catch a flight from Lima to Cuzco to Puerto Maldonado. We were picked up by our personal tour guide Albert, who would spend the next 3 days and nights with us, teaching us not only about the mysteries of the jungle but also the natives of the area. We traveled on a small boat down a giant river for an hour to a lodge in the Amazonian Jungle where we would make a home for the next few days.

We only had electricity from 6pm-10pm, so we quickly became accustomed to going to bed with the sun and waking up at around 4:30 am to the sounds of howler monkies (similar to the sound of a lion or alien ship). We took cold showers, slept in mosquito nets and a film of humidity clung to us like saran wrap at all times.

On the day of our arrival, we went on an unplanned dusk to darkness night walk. Albert pointed out (I’m sure we didn’t see a lot) the only night monkey in the world, a wolf spider, a snail snake, a tree frog, and a tarantula. The sounds we heard when the sun disappeared were unbelievable, and the noises included anything from grasshoppers to copious birds to things you hear on a rainforest CD to things only the imagination can create when being flooded by adrenaline in the dark. On the second day we woke up early and went to a natural reserve for a long walk where we saw red and black army ants, leafcutter ants, and even the infamous bullet ant (if you don’t know what that is look it up)! Then we got in a canoe and saw parrots, parakeets, macaws, kingfishers, swallows, spider monkeys, bats, and butterflies that drank fluids from the eyeballs of turtles. Of course this list is incomplete and is only intended to paint a partial picture. That night we went to Monkey Island and were lucky enough to see a small, cute squirrel monkey and feed brown, white and hybrid capuchin monkeys. Apparently, they will choose Oreo’s to bananas when given the choice. On the way back to our lodge, we rode along the river at night. We spotted capybaras (an animal that is cross between a rat and a pig—they are the biggest rodent in the world!), white and dwarf caymans (omnivores that remind me of alligators) and more stars than I have seen in years.

The next morning we woke up at 4 am in order to visit the clay lick where hundreds of parrots, macaws, and parakeets feed. That afternoon, we walked across a high canopy and zip-lined through the jungle. While walking through the jungle on our way to the high bridge, we caught a glimpse of the largest termites on the planet moving their home with their rarely seen queen . Then, we ate lunch, rested in hammocks and went kayaking down a huge river (“Madre de Dios"). Our final night in the jungle, we ate a delicious dinner and then drank a drink translated as “7 roots.”

I’m certain that if spirituality was a place, it would live in that jungle. I saw dead animals being eaten, eggs being hatched, and fungus making a home in fallen tree branches. Everything in the jungle was not only giving but receiving in a beautiful balance of reciprocity and interconnectedness. The pace of life was slower and seemed more natural than the disconnected fast paced life I lead. There were fewer possessions, no internet or TV, and therefore a lot of time to ruminate about life. Surrounded by the cycle of life and intricate breathing trees, something inside me shifted in a positive way. I felt in awe to be part of such a cycle but also insignificant. I left the jungle suntanned, radiating, and feeling at peace with life’s natural order.

I’m going to jump ahead to the end of our trip for now, because that sense of peace was put to the test yesterday. The day after we got back to Santiago, David was followed from the bank after cashing his check, and he was robbed at gunpoint during the middle of the afternoon. He had over 800 dollars stolen, an expensive utilitarian Patagonia jacket taken, his credit card, Chilean ID and sense of security all looted. I was wary about the rampant poverty in Peru and was completely caught off guard yesterday. I’m happy that he is safe but am left wondering if there is a lesson to be learned between these extreme contrasting experiences.

(CLICK ON "THE JUNGLE" LINK TO SEE THE PICTURES AT YOUR OWN PACE AND NOT CUT OFF)

Jungle - slide show

Haiku

Live the jungle life

Have airless realizations

Make a circle home

Now with my trusty paperclip, I picked locks of thoughts vault finding the garden barren

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused- Hemingway .

Equality, Tolerance, and Human Rights for all People Despite Their Sexual Orientation

In a country where gays are too often discriminated against, it was beautiful to see thousands of people march in favor of same sex marriage laws on June 25^th in Santiago’s central square. It was wonderful to see so many people allowed to express their sexuality openly, in an environment free from judgment and violence. I can only hope that the unprecedented turnout will have a positive impact on the movement, even if it’s a slow process. If Argentina and Mexico city (and NY!) have legalized gay marriage, then there is no reason why Santiago shouldn't follow in their footsteps.

More info

More info x 2

Good God Dam(n): HidroAysén

The Chilean government claims that the country will run out of energy, if they don’t follow through with a 3.2 billion dollar dam project called HidroAysén (5 dams on 2 rivers) in Patagonia. Aside from HidroAysén, protestors believe that there are a lot of better options (e.g. solar, wind, geyser and geothermal power, etc) and that if the project goes through then one of the last untouched, pristine, and fragile landscapes will be destroyed. Anecdotal research has led me to believe that no one in Chile wants the dam to be built. Citizens, conservationists, and scientists contest the government's claim; they believe that the motivations of the people in power are greed and consumerism (what a surprise?!). In addition they are worried that the project would "flood a large part of a region dominated by national parks and reserves"

As a result in recent weeks, there have been hundreds of protests and thousands of protesters (that vary greatly in not only age but also class and background) fighting back in and around Santiago. Since in the US people are generally apathetic, unorganized and/or their voices are too often squelched, watching the people unite under a common cause has been awe inspiring. The relentless acts of conscientious protest have taken place on the streets, are rampant on FaceBook and can be spotted on defiled government money. None of the public outcry has gone unnoticed and that is even more inspiring.

To my surprise four days ago, the project was suspended. The fight is far from over and it's likely to be a very long and difficult road. However, this fight (along with recent events in Egypt and across the world) has renewed my faith in grassroots moment and proven to me that dissent is not futile!

In a world where corporations are seizing more and more power and the gap between the rich and poor is growing at an alarming rate, it's essential that we remember that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" (Thomas Jefferson).

For more information, here are some links:

NPR offers A glimpse at the situation

A comprehensive article in the NY times

BBC's article on the current situation

I Was Walking Far From Home

On the first day of Winter, I present to you some of the things I see on my daily walk. When words fail, pictures never do so click on them for a better view and let your imagination run wild. I'm going to try and think of more blog topics of interest and if I come up short, then I'll keep a picture blog.

My students

The mountains are a spectacular view and backdrop after the rain. There are so many power lines and when the torrential winter downpours start, they are likely to fall and cause power outages...

A mumbling vegetable man that sells the cheapest tastiest fruit. I think he is missing some teeth.

Glass used as barbed wire and walls filled with graffiti.

"Cafe el diablo" --A strip club with coffee in Chilean suburbia.

I walk by this extremely fluffy, chill chow on the daily. I think the vegetable man owns him.

Hanging trash bags

Gas trucks

The hostel in front of my house. A huge yellow wall and the black gate I use.

I live with 4 shih-tzus that bring lots of laughs.

The colorful living room inside my little house. On the right is the gas heater and TV. Tile floors and a wall of windows leads to very cold days.

The smog blanket that unfortunately doesn't keep anyone warm and usually hides the mountains.

A flute playing human statue that sits in the open air market that is on my way to work.

This song says it all

Cambia lo superficial, cambia también lo profundo, cambia el modo de pensar, cambia todo en este mundo, y así como todo cambia, que yo cambie no es extraño...

Fakesgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving this past Saturday at my house. In case you are wondering, they don't have Thanksgiving in Chile. Indians, land, pilgrims, give it a thought. However, it's Fall here, feels like Thanksgiving weather, and we've been missing a lot of things from home, so "Fakesgiving" in June seemed like the perfect fix.