It's just dreadfully blue

Weekends really have a way of taking it out of you. After my ever-so-short reunion with Alex on Friday afternoon, I met up with my friend Cristian and his girlfriend Minna and we headed off to San Antonio, his hometown. As our bus whisked its way through the windy roads of Valpo and out into the surrounding hillside, I couldn’t help but smile a bit overly-gleefully at the fact that I was starring out the window, drinking in the darkening countryside, on my way to my Chilean friend’s hometown.

I was welcomed into his family’s toasty-warm living room where we were all treated to a starch-filled onces and quality Chilean banter. Cristian has two younger siblings, a brother who’s 17 and a sister who’s 11, who decided fairly early on that my still relatively limited grasp of Chilean Spanish makes for a great laughter target. His mom seemed to agree. Later that night we went over to Cristian’s best friend’s house where some other people met up for a night of music videos and karaoke. Someone forgot to tell me that San Antonio, though only an hour and a half south of Valpo, is quite ridiculously cold. I huddled shivering on the couch, clutching my copete, and feigning recognition every time a new song came on that still hadn’t broken into the Clear Channel market. His friends were really nice, though, and I’ve decided I really like Minna, even though her accent makes me cringe with jealousy (she spent a year in San Antonio while in high school, and has been living in Chile on and off for a couple years, I think. Were it not for her highly-blonde appearance, you’d never suspect her of having non-Chilean ancestry). As it neared 3am—or 4am, I’m never really sure—I was doing everything I could to stave off the highly-attractive force of the arm of the couch. In doing so, I discovered a wonderful Chilean snack mix that included something reminiscent of Cheetos among the other rather delightful components. When we finally got back to Cristian’s house, Minna and I climbed into his twin-sized bed, shivering uncontrollably (despite our high levels of copete) in his decidedly helado room. But I was too tired to care; I wrapped myself around my five layers of clothing and fell fast asleep.

The next morning, Cristian lovingly woke us at 10am so we could have some breakfast and then make our way to Isla Negra, where Pablo Neruda’s favorite house is. In diligent Emily fashion, I reached for my camera as our bus heaved us alongside the ridiculously-blue Chilean mar. I love how every town in this country seems to just cascade down the rolling green hills, their colorful square houses falling gently on top of each other, picturesquely clustering themselves just above the jagged rocks and crashing foam of the coast. It didn’t hurt that the sun had decided to ease last night’s frigidness, lighting up the sky so the blue above met the blue below with a certain sharpness that you just couldn’t stop starring at.

I have to say, I wasn’t exactly brimming with excitement at the idea of paying to see another one of Pablo Neruda’s houses, but it turns out that a visit to Isla Negra is one of the most stirring experiences on the planet. I felt like poetry was seeping out of my pores. His house, which is filled with some of the most unbelievable collections of everything ever imaginable, is perched above a wind-swept span of rock and sand and waves. Contemplative travelers dotted the boulder-filled beach, their backs toward the house, taking in the spray that sprang up every time another giant wave crashed against the rocks, temporarily obscuring the fields of seaweed that clung to the lower rocky outcroppings. Cristian helped me climb out to the more heavily-sprayed boulders, and Minna and I took pictures with the stone Pablo Neruda head that sat atop one of them, ever pondering the seductive Chilean mar.

When we’d had our fill of house and mar, we headed to a nearby restaurant where we had our fill of Chilean fixed-price lunches, which were quite tasty despite the fact that my “ensalada surtida” was composed of four slices of cooked beets, a peeled tomato that had seen better days, a serving of frozen mixed vegetables that didn’t really have any taste, and potato “salad,” which was really just cubed potatoes covered in Chilean-style mayonnaise. But the chicken was good.

Afterwards, we headed to Cartagena, another coastal town about fifteen minutes away, where we strolled along the beach, played a few games of foosball, and then went in search of the poet Vicente Huidobro’s tombstone. A few wrong turns and an unexpectedly-long hike later, we found his grave, though it was apparently closed for the day, meaning that it was surrounded by a ten-foot fence. Luckily, my new Finnish friend wouldn’t rest until she’s scaled the fence and taken a series of photos of the gravestone for me to show my poetry professor (we’re currently reading Huidobro). Once she’d safely made it back over the fence, we headed back to San Antonio where I unsuccessfully tried to nap in preparation for that night’s asado and carreteando. A shower and another bread-filled onces were had instead, and before I knew it I was shivering again, though this time in someone else’s house. The asado took a bit longer than expected—we didn’t end up eating until 1:30am, but I had a really good time with the dozen-or-so friends that showed up. There was even guitar-playing and group singing led by a dread-lock-toting random Chilean. And when it was finally ready, the meat, potatoes, and churripan were pretty amazing.

To my surprise, at 3am Cristian decided that he still wanted to go out dancing, so we trekked through the now even chillier San Antonio air toward the club. I found this annoying, given the fact that I’d decided not to bring my boot and was now hobbling uncomfortably in my brace and black going-out shoes, but I was happy to find myself suddenly much warmer as we entered the overflowing club. After dancing off a good portion of the night’s churripan, we headed for home (this time, thankfully, in a colectivo), and Minna and I again climbed into bed where I curled up in my now six layers of clothing.

Sunday, which happily didn’t start for me until about noon, was pretty much marked by Cristian and my desperate attempts to find out if Monday’s scheduled test in contemporary history had or had not been changed to Thursday. In between our fruitless efforts to get in touch with our TA, though, there was a good amount of almorzandoing and onceing to be done. There was even a good portion of Emily compulsively freaking out and camping herself at the dining room table to work on history fichas (index cards). After a rather overwhelming stop at Cristian’s grandparents’ house, we boarded our bus and headed back to Valpo. I frantically did fichas the entire way back. But in between the fichas, Cristian, Minna, and I talked about various plans that included camping and making s’mores and having Jewish/Finnish/Chilean dinners (I, by the way, am the first Jew Cristian has ever met. We both found this strange). Right before I got off the bus in Viña, and after Cristian and Minna had already gotten off at their stop in Valpo, I started talking with a fellow U. de Valpo student who was also on the bus and had recognized me (and who was surprised when I told him I was from the U.S.; he though I was French). Walking home across the bridge from the plaza, I couldn’t hide my stupid gringa smile. I don’t really know when it happened, but I’ve made myself a little life here. And this time, I feel like I’ve really done it on my own—without the help of pre-approved Mexican consejeros. I can’t help but feel at least a little pleased with myself.

Around 12:45am, sitting on my bed surrounded by my growing pile of completed fichas, though eyeing the stack of lectura that still had to be dealt with and trying to measure it in relation to how much coffee I would have to make, I got a call from the TA who told me that the test had been moved to Thursday.