Just over 5 months ago I left Madison and now am halfway through my time in Chile. I am still processing what that means. Simultaneously, I feel as though I have been here much longer, but that the time passed very quickly.
I’m going to start tutoring a 10 year old girl in English for 6 or 8 hours a week. I am both excited and a little nervous about this opportunity, nervous partly because my sessions with her will constitute a large part of her homeschooling.
I just moved from my Viña del Mar home to a new house and host family right in downtown Valparaíso, in one of the prettiest (and most touristy) hills, Cerro Alegre. The neighborhood is stacked with old, wooden houses painted many colors, decorated with vivid murals and full of cafes and restaurants. It’s quaint. I live with a yoga teacher, Catalina, and her 21 year old son Diego who studies medicine and plays in a punk band. The house is wooden and beautiful, above a pedestrian stairway tunnel called Pasaje Bavestrello. My room is right above the tunnel, which feels a little bit mystical; I can hear people talking below me, sometimes. The other night a cat yowled in the otherwise quiet street.
Here’s a picture of the house. Currently I’m in that special little box on the top, which will become my room when it’s warmer out, but right now it’s a quiet roosting place. 
Photo cred to the internet.
Here’s another picture from the internet of Pasaje Bavestrello. 
A song about resistance and social change. The video’s good as well. Alerta Sometime music can give hope in a way nothing else can. It also makes me want to cry a little.
Here’s a another song: Cariñito Innumerable are the times I have danced to it.
A couple of nights ago I went out to celebrate the going-away of two friends I have come to know well here. We ended up at my friend’s house/punk palace/Casa Ugauga, where somebody projected short films on the wall and people ate good food and drank bad beer and we made a little fire outside and spent the entire night sitting and talking around it and then I slept in a single bed between two friends, Chris and Moisés, from 7-noon.
The other day I took a walk up the cerro and found a fenced-off area that was begging me to enter. There were big ole trees like you don’t see a lot of around here, and tall grass and some flowers and strange window-less ruined buildings made of stone crumbling into the dirt and seemingly random artifacts left around, like a tarp strapped to a tree, and an old rusty thing. I self-policed for a minute, saying things in my head like “I probably shouldn’t climb the fence” and “this is private property” and “people will judge me” and then I realized that all of those things were stupid and I climbed over the fence, only ripping my jeans a little bit.
Once inside, I was immediately so happy that I’d gone in, and I also found an easier hole in the fence for next time. Grassy spaces like this are few and far between in Valparaíso, a city where a bunch of concrete and some fucked up benches can be called a park. Selfishly, I was also happy to find a place where nobody else was likely to be, at least during the day. I took the old rusty thing home with me and no use it to put other things in. Today I went back to what I have now learned is called “Patiganja” and read and ate walnuts for about four hours in the grass and sun.
A week longer of schedule-less wandering, then classes start. The students are still striking, so this semester I will only have classes with extranjeros.
Over and Out for now.
