Feminism in Chile Hello, friends. When I first wrote about Santiago, I shared a photo of posters about working women’s rights made by Chilean girls. Seeing that exhibit sparked some questions for me. What was the state of women’s affairs in Chile? How did Chile’s recent history—almost two decades of military rule under Pinochet and then almost two decades of peaceful,...
Writing from the bus to El Calafate in Argentina. I am a complete idiot (we’ll get there) and left Puerto Natales a few days later than I’d planned, but my mistakes meant that I ended up leaving Chile exactly one month after I arrived, giving me a perfectly-timeboxed life experience to reflect on. Already Argentina looks different, even though we’re...
Torres del Paine and Actual Pain: Last Days in Chile I knew Tomás actually hated me when he started addressing me as usted. (Spanish has two different forms of “you”—one for familiar, friendly relationships (tú) and one for formal relationships (usted). Many other languages have this structure; it’s called a T-V distinction, from the Latin pronouns tu and vos. English...
The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors: Bedbugs in Puerto Natales I’ve spent a lot of time so far on this blog writing about mostly wonderful things (interspersed with frustrated, morose paragraphs on how hard it is to learn Spanish, but still). And that’s because this trip has been mostly wonderful so far—amazing people, mind-blowingly gorgeous landscapes, lots of...
Pucón is to Chile as Colorado is to America (she says, never having been to Colorado)—a veritable mecca of geographical phenomena converging in one place to create incredible beauty and an eco-loving adrenaline junkie’s paradise. Volcanos, mountains, forests, rivers, lakes: Pucón has it all (and all within only 500 square miles—1/20 the size of Colorado!). Even before it was valued...
PROGRAMMING NOTE: I'm posting this before it gets too out-of-date (I've had it done for two days now, but the wifi at my hostel in Pucón wasn't strong enough to upload photos, and then a storm last night wiped out all electricity in the city [currently stealing a friend's hotspot to post this]) even though it's not quite finished. Will...
Hi, friends. Writing this from the guest bedroom of Mariscal y Javier*, friends of Laura’s (who are wonderful and kind and have invited me to stay with them for the next few days), where I’ve retreated for a couple of minutes to recover from the barrage of self-hate and frustration that comes after trying with every last brain cell—seriously, I...
I landed in Santiago 12 hours ago. That isn't enough time to get to know a place, but was enough time to accomplish the following: realize just how bad my Spanish has become make my first friend on this adventure go on a 4-hour, 7-mile walking tour to get my bearings eat some mostly terrible Chilean food and some mostly...