i´m in valparaiso with evelyn, ola, and carolina. it´s amazing, i love this city. it makes me love being in chile again. aside from being the most beautiful there are also probably 2 million young people here for new years and you don´t even have to go out to bars, everyone just sits in the streets on the cerros singing and smoking cigarrettes and selling soy burgers and six packs until morning. there are so many people that all of the stores are out of alcohol. it´s weird not to have new years at home with friends but i think this one is going to be exceptional anyway with an hour of fireworks over the harbor that we watch from the top of a hill with millions of other people. so, it´s good. and after this i go to the airport at 4am on tuesday and meet beth and begin lots of new things. i´m going to be pretty m.i.a. for the next two months, so sorry if i don´t answer e'mails or update this at all. in case you are curious the farm is in vilcabamba which is near lagos in the very south of ecuador almost on the border with peru. ok. that´s all.

so in sweden today is christmas. so i have to celebrate it today. we made a compromise that we would open presents tonight at midnight since that´s what they do in chile so it will be funny. we´re making soy swedish meatballs and eggnogg and mango chickpeas and glug and potatoes and pasta salad and spinach and i bought tons of stuff to bake cookies with but then we got home and realized we don´t have an oven. so no cookies. but merry christmas. i miss everyone and wish i was with you. a lot. except it´s cold and cloudy here so it´s not that different from normal weather. we decorated the cabana last night with all the decorations from aunt debbie which was fun and now it looks great.

when travelling kicked my ass

yesterday i was sitting in a park in Calama waiting the 2 hours for my bus reading in the sun. A gyspy came over and asked me for money and i gave her a cien because i was feeling lazy and she only had two teeth. she sat down next to me and took my hands. She told me she was old and pulled up her shirt to show me her wrinkley nipples as proof. i guess she was telling the truth. She told me that I would have a long vacation and then made me tell her about my love history. She told me that she wanted to help me and that she would do it but i had to put a bill of money in my hand, not for her of course, for me. And i said no. And she said, do it now. And I said no, i don't want to. And she said, ahora, ahora! And I said, no, why can't i use this apricot instead of money? and she started screaming, ahora! el dinero en tu mano AHORA! I'm trying to help you and you're making fun of me. Do you want me to have to put a maldición on you? And she grabbed my head and pulled out my hair and grasping it in her closed hands said if i didn't want her to curse me, i'd better get out some money and put it in my hand for her to be able to help me with. I took my hair out of her hands and told her i wasn't putting the money in my hands and she left in a huff and i thought i was safe BUT when i went back to the bus station the bus never arrived and i waited and waited and finally asked where it was and apparently i was supposed to be at the other terminal (even though I specifically asked if i had to switch bus stations of wait in the same one and they told me the same one) so that bus i was supposed to be on was long gone and all the other busses were booked until december 26th. fuck, i thought, i'm stranded in this shitty gypsy cursed city and can't even get back to santiago to celebrate christmas. Then I realized that there were other companies so I went to them. one was booked until december 30th but Pullman Bus had one spot on a bus at 5 o'clock. it was 4:20. i said ok, i'll take it and took out my wallet to pay only to find a giant gaping empty spot where my debit card usually lives. it was more than i could handle and i just sat down on the floor of the bus station and cried. etc. so not only was i stranded there without any buses but also i only had $7 and didn't know anyone. I went back to the other bus station to see if they had made any progress on refunding my old useless ticket so I would at least have some money but the verdict was that it could not be refunded by them because even though i bought it from them it was not their company's bus. i didn't know what to do so i just sat outside of the bosses office and cried and totally freaked out the boy who was working there who had no idea how to handle a girl his age crying and would run by between the bosses office and downstairs as fast as he could without looking at me. But finally they managed to find a bus I could take to Antofagasta and then get a bus to Santiago in Antofagasta later. but it left at 6 and it was now 5:40. twenty minutes. and they could only reserve the ticket if i gave them some money then. so i had to call the bank long distance and cancel my credit card and see if they could send me money somehow from my account. no. ok, western union, that should work. no, only for people with accounts. ok, parents. no, answering machine. fuck, what do i do? I finally got in touch with my dad but at that point i only had $2 and i was calling long distance so i didnt know how long i could talk and it was 10 until 6. he said he would figure it out and i went to leave when the woman working at the telephone office, who had been watching everything, asked me if i was ok and completely amazingly without even knowing me or anything told me she would give me the money i needed. She gave me some water and food to calm down down and then gave me 100 dollars! i can't really get over it. it makes me really happy about people and everything always working out in general. I didn't even ask for it. i'm basically stunned. Just at the same time my dad was trying to figure out how to Western union some money to me and someone told him not to worry, that the chileans were nice and would help me out. and they did. so, after all of that and 24 hours on busses i'm home safely and i had a really nice dinner with Luke Bostian's family and now I'm going to sleep and tomorrow at 4 i'm going to pichilemu for a week with the swedes for christmas. and you will never get to hear about bolivia because i'm tired. it was pretty.

i just got back from bolivia. what, bolivia?! yes. i´ll tell you about it when i get back to santiago on friday.

i´m in the desert now getting sunburnt waiting for a bus so i thought i would sit in an internet cafe for a half hour. the past 2 days have mostly just been travelling and not too exciting but i´m two hours away from san pedro de atacama now which should be exciting. it´s a little weird being alone but mostly i feel safe and not that lonely and i´ve just been reading a lot of pablo neruda and drawing and writing down the things i wish i was having conversations with people about. the desert is a little intimidating. i´ve never been to one before. all i could think about as the bus pulled into antofagasta was why did i come north? this is the scariest place i´ve ever been to. no wonder it was easy for the dictatorship to dissappear people. all there is are grayish tan mountains, gray cement factories, giant mines, and an occasional gray brown pine tree that you almost miss because it blends into the landscape so well. then out of nowhere, still in the middle of nowhere, houses begin to be etched into the mountainside. there are no trees though, not even a cactus. it´s far from an oasis but still it exists which is impressive. then suddenly and totally unexpectedly there are millions of houses and the ocean, all the bluer for the lack of any color surrounding it and still engulfed in mountains on all sides, which is striking enough to see that it makes me glad i came. antofagasta is weirdly like santiago in the way it looks, which means kind of ugly. some people drove me up to see part of the escondida mine which i think is the biggest copper mine in the world but it was actually 2 hours away so i didnt see it, just the processing plant where they turn the copper powder into sheets and load it onto ships. it´s interesting to see the part of chile that really fuels the country´s economy and that´s responsible for starting a lot of the major political movements of the past. chile of course has to buy copper at the world market price. but the people who work in the mines seem to have pretty good working conditions now from what i´ve been told.. i´m in calama now and the half hour is almost up so i guess that´s all. i´m looking forward to spending a bunch of days in san pedro although it is frusterating that it´s a totally tourist place and me going there just continues to fuel that and i hate being excited about seeing people with backpacks or light eyes or hearing english because really that´s not what i want. i could have not come to chile if i just was going to hang out with those people but in practice it´s a lot harder and really all i want to do is meet other backpackers and have something in common and hang out with them. etc...

vicuna, nestled among the mountains, is tiny and delightful. the outside is made up of long walls and chipped paint that sometimes allow a rose bush to peek through giving a tiny glimpse into the wonders hidden beahind those walls: 20 ft tall hollyhocks, apricot trees, creeks, chilli peppers. piles upon piles of rosebushes, grapes, avocado trees, sunflowers, palms, plums, and an assortment of other fruit i can´t even name. and there, as you look past the garden are the neverending mountains. last night i saw red giants and blue giants and megellan´s clouds in clear view without a telescope and through a telescope i looked at future supernovas and other galexies and o´rion´s nebula and more stars than i´ve seen in my whole life. then today i went biciclying in the mountains and stumbled upon a forest of figs ripe and juicy and just waiting for me to eat them! i cooked dinner with a french man and now i am going to antofagasta 12 hours north. being alone is not so bad.

ah! I'm off!

being in chile is pretty crazy. it's oddly calm right now with just the sounds of helicopters circling and occasional horn honking. i didn't go out when the serious riots were happening mostly because i was alone in the house and it seemed like a bad idea to go out alone. but then we were watching the BBC world news and seeing pictures of what was happening 10 minutes from our house as if we were watching it from the states or something just like any other riot we see on the news. it felt ridiculous to be watching it all on tv so later after things had died down a lot, Evelyn and I walked around and ran into a bunch of things set on fire, lots of broken glass, a lot of people but no one being violent, and really scary pacos. here is a picture of a car on fire. what was the most interesting to me was that all of these fires were right outside of the fire station and about 15 firemen were standing outside watching it but not doing anything to put them out. only the extremely creepy carabinero metal plated war tanks were putting the fires out. I've never been more scared of the police than after being in chile. 20 at a time, they come out of these giant dark green trucks with chains on the front that clank ominously as they apporach and are in full riot gear with shields and clubs and olive green body suits. i know i've talked about them before but it's just so reminiscent of the dictatorship and one hundred percent citizens versus pacos with one side throwing rocks and screaming pacos culeados, asesinos, and other insults, and them retaliating with tear gas, potato guns, water sprays, and chases on horseback and motorcycle, I can't help distrusting them. After reaching the deserted wrecked plaza italia where a lot of stuff was happening during the day, we were about to go home when this guy came up to us and started speaking in a mixture of swedish an german inviting us to have a drink. i thought he knew evalyn since he was kind of speaking in swedish but really he was just a crazy asshole who made fun of us for being gringas and looking like idiots. he couldn't understand what we were doing out and why we weren't acting like all foreigners and running away. apparently he was hanging out with some police officers and they all started laughing at us for having blond hair and assumed that we had no idea that pinochet had died and were just idiot tourists out for a stroll or on drugs. after talking to him i found out that he is in the navy and he grew up in austria because his family had to leave the country for political reasons in 1972. ! how did i fucking end up having a drink with someone involved in the pinochet regime on the fucking day he died when there are millions of people in the streets with clearly similar ideologies as me celebrating his end? Then this guy told us about his grandfather who is retired military who if you give a beer or two will start telling you everything, who, what, when, where... talking about torture and disappearances as if it was a joke. I got really mad and yelled at him for insulting us and treating us like idiots but i don't even know what you say to someone who in his own country has to find foreigners to go to a bar with because he comes from a family who is and was involved in a military who murdered it's own citizens. so we left and now i'm home and it is really strange to be in a foreign country when something like this happens that I care a lot about but that is not my celebration or history and makes me remember how unchilean I am. it's exciting to see people who a lot of the time have been silent about what happened and try to forget that part of their history really rejoice and react to the fact that Pinochet is gone forever. It's frusterating that he was never tried or seriously held accountable for any of the deaths but i think a pretty big weight is lifted by the fact that he's not still living relatively peacefully just over the hill.

Pinochet died! it will be interesting to see how the city deals with it since he never was brought to justice for anything he did. i can't believe i'm in chile on the day he died.

did i not ever write about thanksgiving? this was it. we went to a really nice restaurant nearby with ola, evelyn, erin, nate, and jenna. Like the tablecloth and napkins? courtesy of grandmom and aunt debbie. (wait till you see what i have for christmas). the waiters thought we were crazy and i think we embarrassed the swedish but it was great. I also made an apple pie and pineapple stuffing that we had for dessert.

also this is some performance art i saw the other week in front of the museo de arte contemporaneo. he was from california. i ws going to talk about it but it took so long just to load the picture that now i'm too tired.

that's not how you spell philosophy, is it? did i mention that the house is decked out with a christmas tree and decorations now? and it's 90 degrees and the sun sets at 9:30pm and everybody's wearing shorts. i can't handle it!

today i got a yellow fever vaccination. the hospital was crazy like an old univerity campus and all the hallways and waiting rooms were outside! with trees and broken tiles that old ladies in walkers were tripping over and fresh air. it was the best hospital i've ever been in. but i don't know what they do in winter. this is a picture in front of the blood bank.

also i had my first and only written exam today. it was hard to write three essays in spanish in an hour after not having written anything in english let alone spanish since may. at least it's over.

And I got officially accepted into the Universidad de Buenos Aires filosophy and humanities department (which has anthropology and art) so as long as Bard is ok with it I'm gonna go there in march. ! ! ! !

i went rock climbing in the mountains today!

man,i'm bad with updates.

Aside from plannig trips and saying goodbye to friends, I haven't been doing anything too exciting lately so I'm just going to write about my plans for the next few months instead: Next Monday December 11th is Jenna's last day in the country and my last day in the house so we're going to throw a despedida party that night and then I move out the next morning! god that's soon. I'm going to take 10 days and travel alone to the north of Chile to La Serena, Vicuña, Atacama valley, and then to San Pedro de Atacama . La Serena has areas of really cold water in the ocean off the coast that are so cold that Antarctic penguins live there. vicuña is supposed to have the most beautiful sky in the world and is where Gabriela Mistral is from and in the Valle de Elqui there is a really nice observatory. There are really neat salt flats north of that before you get to the desert and then there is the desert! (Any grapes you guys in the US are eating right now probably come from around here). Apparently the world's highest volcano is also there, something i just read. The Atacama desert (about 24 hours north of chile) hasn't had recorded rainfall since the spanish conquest and is the dryest place on earth. I'll be there around the summer equinox which is when the Altiplanic Inversion happens causing huge rainstorms in the mountains that rush down the dry gorges and flood everywhere. yes! In the desert there are lots of mummies (well i guess they're not there anymore) but they are from a few thousand years even before the ancient Egyptian ones! There is also Antofagasta which is a big city in the desert with lots of beaches and rocks and San Pedro de Atacama has a dry salt lake and hot springs and lots of caves that you bike through the desert to get to and is near Valle de la Luna which is supposed to be really creepy like the moon and has geysers which burst out of the ground at sunrise every morning because of the drastic temperature change. I doubt I'll make it past there but above that is also Iquique and Arica and then bolivia! So there are a lot of options for places to go during those 10 days. Then I'll come back to Santiago the 22nd and leave with 8 Swedish people to spend 5 days in Pichilemu on the beach for christmas. Then I'll come back to Santiago on the 28th and go to Valparaiso for the 28-1 for New Years. Valparaiso is apparently the place to be for New Years and they have tons of festivals and free concerts and music and theatre going on the whole week before. Then on the 3rd or 4th I'm going to Ecuador with Beth to wwoof on an organic farm there. I haven't decided which farm yet so I can't say where in Ecuador or exactly what I'll be doing but most of them have vegetable and fruit gardens, do a lot of reforestation and seedsaving of medicinal plants used by the Quechua people in the area and have community projects too. more on that i guess when I decide where I'm going. I'll be there until around the 25th or around the last week of January and then 2 of my Swedish friends, Ola (yes, his name is hola) and Carolina, are going to meet me somewhere in Ecuador, where we'll spend some time travelling and then cross into Colombia and travel there until the end of February. So far I don't know what we're doing there yet except visiting the sister of a woman i live with who lives in Colombia on the border with Ecuador. Then the last week of February we'll take buses home for a week stopping in Peru and Bolivia a little bit to break it up. Then first week of march I move to Buenos Aires (or possibly stay in Santiago and get a new apartment), parents hopefully come visit the second week of march for a week or 2 and then school starts again the second and third week of march! man, i am going to be broke.