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.

Halloween!

This is where I live! They go on forever and ever (literally, the Rocky Mountains is a continuation of the same mountain range)
And a few from Easter Island:

some pictures, finally.

I've been trying for weeks to put up more pictures but I can't so instead here is an update on me: I look pretty much the same. I wear lots of clothes that I've made here. I listen to Swedish music and little indie chilean bands and hiphop like it was 10th grade. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen in the middle of the night staining all of the kitchen pots solferino and turquesa with bright colored dye and that's probably what they'll remember me for when I leave here. I like to find sunny spots on the lawn of the art campus to read Pablo Neruda's memoirs and imagine that Chile really is like that. Sometimes I make funny pieces of artwork with things I've found in the street that illustrate parts of my dreams. Sometimes my dreams are so good I don't wake up until 2pm. But every time I have woken up early it's been cold and foggy until noon so I don't think I'm really missing anything. I like reading about performance art and the feminist movement in Latin America as well as articles professors post on reserveweb. As always, my room is full of lists and unrealized plans for projects and goals. it's also a mess. I haven't done laundry in a month and I'm running out of clothes. I had fleas 2 weeks ago that I got from the hostal in Buenos Aires but I got rid of them and only got 5 bites. I pick fresh fruit from trees in the street everywhere I go and mostly live on fruit and vegetables and desserts that I bake. Everyone laughs at me when we have barbeques because I fill the grill up with asparagus and zucchini and then for dessert have a bowl of cherries. I'm excited about working on a farm even though I know I'm romanticizing it. I miss home and fall and my family and everyone and sometimes more than anything I want to just come home but I also equally love doing this and am really happy about all of it.

yes! i found concerts and amazing bars and live music and bands who love how i dance to their music and give me gigantic smiles from the stage. so santiago is great right now. I also love the swedish and I think I'm going to travel to Colombia with Carolina and Ola this February. and work on a farm in argentina with andy in january. I'm really excited about all of it, but especially knowing where to see concerts and liking silly santiago bands who i can see every week when they play.

I found people to spend chrsitmas with!!! The swedish kids invited me to get a cabin at the beach in Pichilemu with them. It's not the most exciting since I've already been to Pichilemu and they don't really speak spanish but I like them and we all like the same music and spending christmas relaxing on the beach, although strange, sounds really nice. so mom and dad, you don't have to worry so much anymore. also, I only have one more month in chile! Did I mention already that so long as everything works out with getting into the Universidad de Buenos Aires I'm going to move there in March? So I have three months free to figure out before that and then I'll be in Buenos Aires until July. Also, even more importantly, I made nispero crisp today with nispero that we robbed in the middle of the night from the empty house across the street. It was insanely good and the oven didn't destroy it and I know this is not the type of news anyone wants to read about on the blog but it was so good and I'm really excited that I haven't lost my baking skills because I thought I had. And even better, I made it without a recipe! I wish that everyone could try nispero because they're kind of an integral part of my experience in Chile and I think I talk about them a lot. in Peru they call them mispero apparently. but i'll stop since no one has any idea what i'm talking about.

sike. the nose ring just fell out when I was washing my face and I can't put it back in. now there's snot coming out of the hole. gross.

buenos aires was amazing. i applied to some colleges there. i'm also thinking about rio and montevideo but i guess i'm definitely leaving santiago. even though after being in Buenos Aires I realized how much i love it. but it was really exciting being in Buenos Aires too. There's so much art happening and giant parks everywhere and it's full of people. Except they are all to skinny and fashionable. BA has the highest rate of eating disorders in the world. None of the stores made pants that were bigger than me. Only sizes 1, 2 and 3. Jenna and I were on the metro one day and it was really crowded and suddenly this man started yelling, Oh my god, get this woman a seat, she's pregnant! It was pretty ridiculous. But it was humid and hot like home and there were thunderstorms and parks full of passed out cats and homeless people selling art magazines on the street so i fell in love. But now I'm back and for the first time since being here am really stressed out. I have all these applications to do and I missed a week of school (excused, don't freak out, parents) so I have tons of projects due and I decided I'm leaving Santiago on December 11th but that's really soon so I have to decide where I can go. . . halloween was ok. there was a party at our house but it didn't get too exciting and then Melanie had a crazy alergic reaction and had to go to the hospital so we didn't end up going out or even eating candy. I was a pirate. I pierced my nose for three dollars too. It matched the costume. I kind of hate it though, it's too sparkley but mostly you can't even notice that it's there. today was the best day. The whole house woke up at 2 and we went downstairs and found a ping pong table on the patio and nate and I played ping pong all afternoon and then we got out the grill and made a giant bbq of asparagus and zuccini and onions. and did i mention that I had the genious idea of buying the house a hookah? yeah, its great. Except ping pong plus grill plus hookah means I am never going to leave the house again and it's already midnight and I haven't done any of those things that I needed to do today. yes.