Happy Thanksgiving

I am thankful I took a risk and changed my life dramatically. I am thankful for greater happiness and confidence. I am thankful for my family, especially Mom and Dad, for supporting me. I am thankful for the good friends I have met here, and for those I miss back home.

I am thankful for my friend Leti, who insisted we have a mini-Thanksgiving dinner. I waivered a bit wanting to celebrate--well, not so much in wanting to celebrate but in thinking that I had time. It truly was a busy day. I taught at 8 a.m. After that, I had my Spanish class and then a work training. During the afternoon I went on a Spanish student excursion to Barrio Italia, which was chic and lovely. There were students from Brazil, Germany, and the U.S. The German guy treated us to gourmet chocolate ice cream, which was swoon-worthy. (The ice cream, not the treating us part.)

I taught English from 6:30 to 8, and then hustle-walked back to my place where Leti was waiting, her bike loaded with a roast chicken, wine, and banana bread. She had really wanted to make a pumpkin pie but couldn´t find canned pumpkin.



We moved around my little kitchen with the ease of old friends to assemble this pretty little meal. We even found half-burnt tea lights and pulled out the plates with the gold trim.

I am thankful for such a day.

It´s a Spring Thing

 It´s finally spring! The streets are filled with flowers and the leaves hang low over the sidewalk; I often have to duck. Now it stays light until 8:30 9 p.m. Sometimes I hold class on the terrace with my evening students.

These flowers are spraying over a fence on my Street. They stopped me in my tracks. This is what I live for--flowers and sunshine and warm, windy days.

Wirey

This amazes me. I have never seen powerlines so full. Why is it like this? When I was living in New York and D.C., I never noticed the absence of powerlines. Here I marvel at how laden down they are.

Stress

Whew. My students today were stressed out. We were reviewing for a test they were about to take. Though it was a taxing subject, (Prepositions. You try explaining the difference for when we use in, on, and at.) I could tell something was up. One student had his head in his hands and was rubbing his eyes. I actually said "time out" right in the middle of an exercise and asked if they were stressed. Rodrigo told me about his coworker getting fired and having to do her work in addition to his own. Dani works in finance and said there was a huge problem with closing the books for October, and Alejandra said she has personal problems, specifically financial. I told them it looked they all needed hugs. I don't think they really understood because they just stared at me glumly until I got up and hugged each of them, and then they smiled and laughed. We played games for the rest of class, and I gave them the test for homework.

Another group of my students is always stressed. They work for a pharmaceutical company. Every day before class I hear about the latest craziness at the factory and how Pablo's boss doesn't listen to what he tells him, only panders to the bigger bosses.

My private student Maria Ines is a doctor and works at an insurance company. She is a supervisor and said she and her team are crushed by the relentless amount of work they have to do.

I feel for my students, and at the same time it makes me thankful for and proud of how I changed my life so that I wouldn't live in a way that didn't make me happy.

The House that Neruda Built

I remember you as you were in the last autumn. 

You were the grey beret and the still heart.

In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.

And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

-Pablo Neurda

I saw the hand-written verse of the poem "I Remember You as You Were" at Pablo Neruda's house here in Santiago. [sigh] What a Love Poet he was.

Neruda is Chile's Mr. Poet. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Wait, that sounds too dry. Let me try it more poetically: From his soul a river of fanciful words did run / For this the highest honor he won

Neruda built a house at the bottom on Saint Cristobal Hill for himself and his lover-turned-wife. The inside of the house resembles a ship's hold, everything is thick, dark wood and low ceilings. There are wooden carvings from the south Pacific, modernist paintings, and a trio of big--I think freaky--dolls in one of the bathrooms. He purposely had small tables so that people would draw near one another and have good conversations.

I visited the house turned museum with my friend Magda. It was a lovely spring day, the type that gets you thinking, softly about summer. We both showed up in summer dresses and sunglasses.

After, I said, "It's the perfect day for sangria." and she finished with "Do you want to go to 100 Montaditos?" To which I replied gleefully, truly, "Yes!"

We drank sangria on the second floor terrace, people watching from above. We smiled conspiratorially as we both admitted to sometimes pausing and saying, "I can't believe I live in Chile."

As we left, I found myself thinking that is was also the perfect day for ice cream. Magda beat me to it, by asking if I wanted to stop at McDonald's for some. They have walk-up windows, and a cone is only 45 cents! I am tickled by this and get them often. We sat in the sun on the steps of a university building to eat.