Metro Mini-Stories

The metro stations have an annual competion -- write a short story in less than 100 words, and the winners get money as well as their stories posted all over the metro, read by millions of people. In my Spanish class today we read one of these stories as a lead-up into the situation of the indigenous Mapuche. I think it's a very impactful story, so I'm going to translate it for all of you!

"Passenger Intimacy"

She is called Juana Catrilqueo Peña. Sixty-three years ago she was born in Mantilhue, a rural location situated seventy kilometers from Osorno. At 15 she came to Santiago to work as a nana (housekeeper). She had a son who died, run over in the Alameda in the year 86. Since then she lives in a room she rents in Quilicura. She is silent, reserved, and often pases unnoticed. She travels every day to her patrons house and taking advantage of the tumult and squeezing of an obligatory intimacy, huddles her head on the shoulder of another passenger with out anyone realizing.

It's just such a touching account of one stranger shown to be an individual person, with her own loneliness and pains.

A quick recount of my weekend:
Friday we had a "Memory Tour" of Santiago. Our guide was kidnapped by the dictatorship and tortured for months, then exiled to the US upon his release. After he gave us an overview of human rights abuses in Chile at that time, we went to the Peace Park. Originally owned by a wealthy family, Villa Grimaldi became the headquarters of the DINA, which was Chile's version of the Gestapo. Political prisoners, men and women, teenagers and older, were brought there to be tortured. Almost none of the buildings remain since the government tried to remove any evidence of their activities, but there are markers where each of the torture rooms and cells were, describing what happened there. The stables, the garage, the pool, even the well tower were all turned into "creative" methods of inflicting pain.

Afterwards, we went to the General Cemetery, which was definitely the highlight of the day. It was absolutely beautiful, especially the first section. The cemetery is effectively divided into four sections based on economic class. The first, which has Chile's rich and powerful, is full of elaborate family tombs and monuments. Chile's civil war heroes are buried there, as well as President Allende-- who was overthrown in the coup in 1973. Our guide had maintained his composure at Villa Grimaldi and while talking about his own experience, but he started to cry here while recounting how only three students in his university came from working class or farming families. The second section -upper middle class- has large but rather boring tombs. Lower middle class looked like an apartment complex of graves, with lots of colorful flowers and ribbons. The fourth area, lower class, is graves in the ground, but looked liked a garden there were so many tents and flags and flowers (real and fake), etc. Because of earthquake damage we didn't see the lowest section, where people rent graves. It's there that Victor Jara, a folk singer whose hands were cut off and then he was killed in the early days of the dictatorship, is buried.

I know this is getting long, but we're almost to the pictures! Friday evening I saw two movies (for the price of one! yay movie hopping!). Then Saturday we drove into the Andes a bit and spent the day on horseback, with a shish-kabob barbecue in the middle. Pictures below :)

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Err, pictures not loading now. Either later, or check out facebook. Sorry.

It's been too long!

I've had several interesting weekends since I last posted. And since I'm about to begin yet another activity-stuffed three days of no school, it's time for some updates!

A long, long time ago, in a neighborhood far away, a lone college student made her way up the impressively tall hill which God conveniently placed as a marker for the northern edge of Santiago. Friday, April 9, I visited Cerro San Cristobal (St. Cristopher Hill). The point is basically to go to the top and look at Santiago, or at least the part you can see through the trees. Fortunately for the one or two of you who actually read this and want to be entertained, I stopped half-way up to visit the zoo. Yay animals! Highlights of zoo: there were no penguins since they're breeding; a man tried to feed his child to the camel; condors have huge wingspans; llamas look quizzical; there were at least four different species of swan, my favorite was the Australian black swan; and I don't think it's ethical to stick forty parrots, or 15 eagles and two condors, into one enclosure. The pictures below are llamas and Chile's black-necked swans.





That afternoon I watched the Barcelona-Madrid game. Barca scored right after I sat down and everyone around me cheered, so I decided it would be a good idea to root for them. Which turned out well when the won :)

Then in the evening I went to an international student festival sort of thing. There was a band with Irish music, and I kept thinking they would play some Notre Dame favorite (they didn't). Also present: tons of really yummy food from China, Spain, Bolivia, Chile (surprise! Manjar!), UK, US, Mexico (guacamole!), and other countries.

On Sunday the 11th I went to a church festival called Cuasimodo--derived from the first words in the Latin Mass. The festival comes from the Church teaching that everyone should receive the Eucharist at least once a year during Easter season. But priests in the old Wild West days would be in danger of getting robbed for their valuable chalices and what have ye. So a group of jinetes, or men on horseback, would accompany them. The festival still takes place every year the week after Easter. I had to write a report on it for a class, so I went. I'll be putting up some pictures on Facebook, if I remember.

Then last week I went to a friend's birthday party, which was on a rooftop overlooking the city. The view is so amazing, just seeing twinkling lights heading off until the horizon. And the warning lights on the tops of the tall buildings seemed to be in time with our techno music :) I know I did more during the weekend, but I don't remember right now. At one point we got Dominos pizza! Usually my favorite at home, it doesn't taste quite right here--I blame the new recipe.

Well, maybe I can remember to write up something at the end of this weekend. If so, you can expect an exhilirating insight into my (lack of) study habits and schoolwork! Oh, and I re-published pictures from Valparaiso on Facebook, with descriptions!

Semana Santa Solidaria -- Tejas!

I had the chance to go on a service trip for holy week. We left on Wednesday after classes and spent four nights in San Javier, close to where I was for the pre-program, just me and 19 Chilean students. This is an annual event for students at the PUC, and usually they go and "mission", or talk with people. This year, because of the earthquake, the sites focused on helping with construction or demolition as well. Notre Dame's travel restriction on traveling south lifted that Wednesday, so I was barely allowed to go. One condition: that I don't go near dangerous buildings that might collapse and focus on the missioning rather than construction. In fact, I went to San Javier rather than one of the other forty sites because it was supposed to be one of the safest.

Even the best plans, and I'm not claiming that this weekend was one of them, get messed up. When we got to San Javier my site leader Maria Paz spoke with the priest about the mission aspect. He said that they really weren't prepared for that and we were all expected to help with demolition. Which I was fine with, but don't let ND find out! (JK, they already know)

So San Javier has two churches, and one of them was irreparably damaged in the quake. We were asked to help remove salvagable items--tiles, doors, wood--from the building before it was finally demolished. There was a trash-filled courtyard in the middle so I decided to clean it out, keeping as close as I could to ND's orders to not go inside dangerous buildings (although you do have to walk through the building to get there. Cleaning up the trash took half an hour, maybe. Leaving me with hmmm... two and a half more days of what? I was saved when some people came out and revealed that we should also try to get all the tejas, tiles, off the roof. Without breaking them, if you please, so that they can be reused in the new church.



Therefore, I spent the rest of the weekend having tejas thrown at me and stacking them in the courtyard. I know someone has some cool pictures of our masterpiece from the end of the weekend, but I don't have access to them yet. We caught them in blankets, then eventually developed "sophisticated" systems that worked better--like a slide made from a warped board or just tossing them onto four mattresses piled on top of each other. The dust and accumulated earth on the roof made it a messy job, and it made everyone's muscles ache, but the food was good and we sang Disney and pop music. I made some Chilean friends and attended outdoor mass, as well as a Via del Cruz. Oh, and I was also told that I look like Scarlett Johansson.

Best of all, I got chocolate Easter eggs! And some boiled eggs when I got home on Sunday. Easter at it's best :)