"Spring" Break pt. 3: Santiago

I'm leaving for Uruguay this weekend, and I'm still not finished posting about "Spring" Break! I'm just going to have to put my homework off more, so I can play more with this blog. Not a problem.

Anyway. We stayed in Santiago for less than twenty-four hours, from Sunday night to Monday night. So I really didn't get the best impression of the city, but it was still cool to see.

For one thing, we found what has to be the craziest municipal park in the world. You have to sign a guestbook when you enter, and instead of sprawling out it sprawls UP. It's like in a giant spiral upwards, until you reach a little tower at the top and you can see the entire city.

The view from...err...pretty high up in the park. Towards the top there was a lot of smog, and made it kind of tough to take good pictures.


The park tapered off at at little tower at the top. Not for those afraid of heights or steep steps.


The high tower from below.


The park was full of beautiful fountains, sculptures, and buildings such as little chapels and memorials, and just pretty things like this. There was also a garden dedicated to Darwin. Jardin Darwin.


Me from the top, Sarah J and Brenna from below.

Afterwards we wandered around a little more, and got some lunch. I got a traditional Chilean soup, which basically consisted of chicken broth with a steak and some huge chunks of veggies thrown in. Strange, but REALLY good and something I hope to recreate.



Lizzie found a Dunkin' Donuts.

Neruda. Te Amo.

So on our last day in Valpo we made a quick stop at the number one place I wanted to go in the city: Pablo Neruda's house.

Yeah, of course I reserved an entire post for this. I'm spreading the Gospel of Neruda!

I didn't make it to all three of his houses in Chile like I originally hoped (although Jeremy Green did, the lucky bastard), but the opportunity to even see one was absolutely amazing. You can really tell that Neruda built it with love, and each piece of furniture and little knick-knack was picked carefully. The house is full of hundreds of odds and ends, from colonial-era maps of Chile and Japanese screens to a stuffed baby penguin chilling out behind the bar.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures of the inside of La Sebastiana (which is eclectic and super-stunning), but here are a few of the outside:

The view from the patio. Not bad.

Me trying to look "contemplative" on a bench carved with Neruda's silhouette.

The house itself, which is now a museum.

Also, here is a poem Neruda wrote about La Sebastiana, which ironically I read for the first time the morning we went. It just made me love the house even more, made me more excited to see what this magnificent poem describes. And after visiting, I can say that this poem definitely captures the crazy, romantic, eclectic vibe the house radiates in every board and nail.

This is translated from it's original Spanish. No, I didn't do the translating :(

To "La Sebastiana"

I built the house.

I made it first out of air.
Later I raised its flag into the air
and left it draped
from the firmament, from the stars, from
clear light and darkness.

It was a fable
of cement, iron, glass
more valuable than wheat, like gold--
I had to go searching and selling,
and so a truck arrived.
They unloaded sacks
and more sacks.
The tower took anchor in the hard ground--
but that's not enough, said the Builder,
there's still cement, glass, iron, doors--
and I didn't sleep at night.

But it kept growing.
The windows grew,
and with a little more,
with sticking to plans and working,
and digging in with knee and shoulder,
it went on growing into existence,
to where you could look through a window,
and it seemed that with so many sacks
it might have a roof and might rise
and finally take firm hold of the flag
which still festooned the sky with its colors.

I gave myself over to the cheapest doors,
doors which had died
and had been pitched out of their houses,
doors without walls, broken,
piled on scrap heaps,
doors with no memory by now,
no trace of a key,
and I said, "Come
to me, abandoned doors.
I'll give you a house and a wall
and a fist to knock on you.
You will swing again as the soul opens,
you will guard the sleep of Matilde
with your wings that worked so much."

Then, too, came the paint,
licking away at the walls;
it dressed them in sky blue and pink
so that they might begin to dance.
So the tower dances,
the doors and the staircases sing,
the house rises till it touches its crown,
but money is short--
nails are short,
door knockers, locks, marble.
Nevertheless, the house
keeps on rising
and something happens, a beat
starts up in its arteries.
Perhaps it is a saw, seething
like a fish in the water of dreams,
or a hammer which taps
like a tricky condor carpenter
at the pine planks we will be walking on.

Something goes and living continues.

The house grows and speaks,
stands on its own feet,
has clothes wrapped around its skeleton,
and as from seaward the spring,
swimming like a water nymph,
kisses the sand of Valparaiso.

now we can stop thinking. This is the house.

Now all that's missing will be blue.

All it needs now is to bloom.

And that is work for the spring.

"Spring" Break pt. 2: Valparaiso

What to say of Valparaiso...

It was heaven on earth. I was always really excited to go because I knew Pablo Neruda had an amazing house there, but it wasn't prepared for the rest of the city. It's all built on the side of a steep hill, so all the streets are really steep and twisted and narrow.

We didn't do too much there, other than walk around, shop, and eat. But that's all we really needed to do. It was amazing just to be able to wander and find new things. The whole city was like a maze, and every corner had something new and interesting. Just walking down a street we ran into performers, demonstrations, and even an impromptu fashion show.

I'm just going to let the pictures speak for themselves.

"Spring" Break pt.1: Driving Through the Andes and the Importance of Listening to Customs Control

So after a brief fifteen hour bus ride to Mendoza, me and my friends Sarah J, Brenna and Lizzie hopped on a bus for Valparaiso, which is a port city on the coast of Chile. The bus took eight hours, but felt like longer because we had to get off the bus to go through border control.

A note to travelers: when a country says "don't bring produce across the border, we'll make you pay," they mean it. Both literally and figuratively. A woman on my bus tried to bring AN APPLE across the border, and after an hour and a half hold up (by which point we all wanted to flog her), she had to pay approx. $170 American for that piece of fruit.

Anyway. The Andes Mountains. Very pretty, very much larger than these photos make them out to be, and very twisty turny.

Yeah, we drove down that. And I may have raised my hands in the air like I was on a roller coaster more than once...

Three other shots of the Andes, where I have decided I want to build a cabin and be a crazy old hermit that gives water and fruit and sage advice to wayward wanderers.







I'd write about more of my trip in this post than just a bus ride, but the Internet isn't giving mama any sugar today.

Home Sweet Buenos Aires...

Hellooo!

I`m back from my fantastically awesome "Spring" Break, and I have to say...

I never want to take a bus again as long as I live. If my calculations are correct, I was on a bus for a total of 61 1/2 hours during my ten-day break. Some of the movies they showed on these buses included:
-Transporter 3
-Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
-Lakeview Terrace
-The Best of Mana
-The Women
-Latin American music videos from the 1970s

I started losing it around Orsono.

Here´s a lovely illustration of where I traveled.



Right now I`m playing the catch-up dance with my classes and internship, but I will definitely post later some photos and commentary on exactly what I did to terrorize South America.

Sometimes I wish I were an Asian stereotype...

...but I'm not. I'm a little white Jewish girl with a serious penchant for procrastinating. Now I have two midterms tomorrow that I still need to study for AND I need to pack for Chile and Bariloche.

I blame surfthechannel.com, the final season of E.R. and Carter's successful kidney transplant. Damn you, Doctor Carter, for entertaining me and making me smile at your anesthesia-induced cuteness when I should be miserable and up to my ears in Spanish worksheets. Damn you to...doing a pelvic exam on a she-he with a rash or something.

I'm cranky when I should be studying.

Anyway. Tomorrow, after the academic apocalypse I'm off to Chile! A light at the end of the tunnel! Have a wonderful weekend everyone, and talk to you again in 10 days!

My New Housemate

So my house brother and friend Nacho is a med student. And apparently, in Buenos Aires they let med students take home unclaimed skeletons from cemeteries to play with.



I named him Earl.