Two Cities

Went on a trip last weekend! But first:

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

This is a terremoto. Or at least, the remains of one. Terremoto means "earthquake" in Spanish, and you all can surmise why that is. The ingredients: a fortified white wine called Viña Pipeño, a generous splash of grape brandy called chicha, and a scoop of pineapple ice cream.

They said it only takes one. I said: challenge accepted. As far as I was concerned, it did not only take one; however, I cannot in good conscience recommend having more than two.

Zetes (and anyone else on for 11X) can look forward to these in the summer.

Anyway, I headed out to Valparaiso on Saturday with Dustin, one of the other volunteers at Coanil. Valparaiso is a port city right on the Pacific Ocean, and the sandy beaches of Viña del Mar are just a stone's throw away. Unfortunately, we went on the only two overcast days that we've had so far in Chile. Stupid weather.

Not to say it wasn't pretty, but these pictures are going to make the place look extremely glum. I promise Valparaiso is extremely awesome and you should all go if you are ever in Chile:

Not pictured: the idyllic beauty of Valparaiso

Valparaiso is built on some hills. When I say on the hills, I mean ON them. This city makes no sense at all. It defies gravity, and by that I mean struggles constantly against it. The city has no organization, no order. The buildings are of all shapes and colors and heights and the whole place is a complete mess.

Again, I thought the backdrop would be prettier at the time

In other words, I loved it. I like my cities messy.

I also can't stress how awesome it was to smell ocean after all this time in the city. I think I'm going to have to live on the coast whenever I settle down.

Took an hour and a half to find our hostel. Not exaggerating. That city is so confusing. We were so close at first, too, but we wandered off on a wild goose chase for no apparent reason. Ah well.

The hostel's owner was named Jorge. He told us where to go in town, and we followed his advice to a T. First stop: this restaurant in the docks district called Punta Linta. They served us pisco sours and local beer - I got one from Patagonia, which is down south - and one of the best seafood meals that I've had in a while. They mixed up all these different seafoods. Clams, mussels, shrimp, fish, even some sort of red-colored mollusk that I had never seen before. Added lemon and greens and some sauce. It was fantastic and more importantly utterly filling. I haven't been that full in a really long time.

Also, the man knew how to tend a garden

We next followed Jorge's directions to the house of Pablo Neruda, famous Chilean poet. It took us a while to get there too; as I said, the city is very hilly and there is no sensical layout. We ended up enlisting the help of an eight-year-old Chilean kid named Tomas to bring us to the right place.

Pablo Neruda is dead now, but his house is still there, commemorated in museum form. I am really glad we went. The house was extremely cool. Five stories high and narrow, but with space for anything and everything you could ever want. A welcoming floor. Floor for the kids' rooms. Third floor is a dining room, a party room, a bar. Fourth floor for the bedroom. Fifth floor with the coolest study you could ever ask for, with a view right over the city and tons of old maps and handwritten poetry and and paintings.

Did you know he had a signature drink? Champagne, cognac, cointreau, and orange juice. I'm bringing this back to Dartmouth and serving it right next to the terremotos.

The view from Neruda's study.

I want Pablo Neruda's house. It is so cool. And he was a really cool dude, too. I would have bought a book of his poetry right there but all the ones with both Spanish and English translations were way too expensive. I'll get one around here or back in the states. Seems more economical that way.

A few last pictures from Valparaiso:

Valparaiso at night - see, I told you it was pretty

Cool graffiti

More cool graffiti

In the morning we headed out to Viña del Mar. It was still pretty overcast but it was for sure nicer than on Saturday. We first headed to these awesome botanical gardens. So nice to see all that green.

Pictured: the biggest tree I've seen in a while

Viña del Mar is a much more typical beach city than Valparaiso. High rises along the beach, pretty scenery, shops everywhere. It actually reminded me a ton of Old Orchard Beach back in Maine, except it was a lot bigger and probably a lot nicer. People from Maine will get what I'm talking about, and if you aren't from Maine, OOB is one among many reasons to visit.

Enough about Maine. After we toured the botanical gardens we stopped at this fantastic empanada restaurant. An empanada is like a calzone but butterier and more delicious. Mine had chorizo sausage in it, which was a good call. They also served the best hot chocolate I've ever had. I'm convinced they melted down the chocolate specifically for me to drink at that exact moment.

We saw this cool salsa band out front of a restaurant as we walked from the restaurant to the beach:

The lead trumpet was hitting high-high Gs. Ridiculous.

The beaches of Viña, from rocky to sandy

We essentially relaxed on the beach for maybe three hours. I decided to take a dip in the Pacific because I wasn't going to get this close to the Pacific Ocean and not go in. I don't regret this decision, but I also don't regret the decision to get out almost immediately. I forgot that the Humboldt current brings up a TON of freezing-cold water to the coast, so the water was almost as cold as in Maine. With weather that dreary I was unable to handle it. Also, the tide was breaking really hard, so even if I had gone body surfing like I wanted to I would have eaten a lot of sand.

A few more pictures from Viña:

Some sand art

Epic pelican

Viña del Mar, everyone.

Work has been better lately. It is nice to get settled into a single classroom and get to know particular kids. They may not all be able to speak to me but that doesn't mean they don't have something to say. It's hard to tell at first but each of the kids I work with has a very distinct personality.

One girl, Carmen, likes me a lot. She likes the texture of my watch. It's very smooth and cool. I don't think she gets to feel anything like that very often. But besides that, she always gets this huge smile when I walk into the room, though, like she is excited to see me. 

One of my other favorites in the classroom is Mary, who is always smiling but not super loud. Pleasant. Can feed herself. She can even speak a little, which is awesome. A nice girl.

I am gaining more responsibilities. I helped feed one kid today. His name is Carlos and he is one of the kids who is the most out of it in my classroom. He only seems to pay attention when he hears his name or when food is in front of him, as though he is acting more out of reflex than out of conscious thought. One of the nurses says he has to take a lot of drugs because he has spasms and seizures a lot. It makes me sad because I want to see something - anything - going on with this kid.

I didn't have a lot of hope for this to happen, but today I saw him really pay attention to something for the first time since I got to Coanil.

One of my favorite things in the classroom is the guitar. The tías let me play during the downtime between class and lunch, and also once we're done cleaning things up after lunch before the kids go back to their rooms. I don't have any instruments of my own to play here and I don't get to sing with the Cords (or anyone else, for that matter) while I'm in Chile, so having ANY music in my life is really nice.

I had played for the kids before. This was not the first time I had done this. I wasn't even singing along today, I was just practicing the chords to some songs I wanted to learn better. Maybe it was because I fed him and then played, I don't know. But Carlos was really feeling it. He was touching me, touching the guitar, making eye contact, making noises.

This near-catatonic kid was actually interacting with me.

I'm sure this sounds cheesy. But in a place where I don't get to see much change or progress with the patients I work with, things like this mean a lot. Seeing that change in Carlos, even though it was very brief, reminds me that everything I do here matters. Even dumb stuff like playing guitar, stuff that has nothing to do with medicine or physical therapy or the things that I came here to learn.

I'm starting to think this trip to Chile isn't really about that, though. I'm starting to think this journey is about learning something completely different.

Spanish Word of the Day: Gringo. Depending on the connotation, this word either means "foreigner" or "f%#$ing foreigner."

Next Time on 11Santiago: Probably going to be a little while until I update again, so I'm not quite sure. More on the work situation. Maybe I'll head over to Argentina in a couple of weeks? Regardless, there is still a lot in store.

-Adam