A Tribute to my Friends

  Santiago, Chile
Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I am missing quite a few things about Chile, like the language and music, but most of all the people I met. Here is a tribute to them:
 
Luki - She was my host mother, and despite all first impressions, a great one. In the first few days, I may have gotten to know more about her than in the rest of the semester combined. She is an exceptionally strong woman, relying on personal strength to get her through crisis. Her beliefs are really an odd mix, too, that personal effort gets one ahead but that most of the poor will never get ahead... Furthermore, she showed me the beauty of having a large family. Especially in the summer, there were always people in the house, fun to be had, and much love to be shown between siblings or with her. The family dynamic was at the same time combative and very loving, quite supporting in the absence of the father (most of the time, at the very end I did meet him twice).

Rata - He was my host brother, and basically taught me how to party. With reason he is one of the most popular people in Las Condes, and I continued to meet new people through him all the way up to my very last night in which he took me out until 2:30 in the morning when I had to pack to leave at 5:00 am. Despite going out all the time, too, he had a much healthier approach to drinking than many American college students that I know. With him, and with Chileans in general, the objective was never to get very drunk but to socialize and have the drinks with you to help you socialize and meet new people.

Alexi - I met him in a retreat of La Católica a few days before Good Friday, and was from that time struck with how friendly he was. He would end up hanging out and making friends with my American friends even without me around. He invited me to go to Viña del Mar and to his grandfather's farm with him, without any possible way that I could return the favor. We planned to go to Buenos Aires, but never had the chance because he had a tough courseload. Although many of the conversations we had were him telling me about American pop culture, of which he knew much more than me, he was also very open and we just as often talked about our personal lives, more than anything family and faith. He is head of the pastoral of nursing, his major, at the university and leads mission trips and things like that. I really hope to meet up with him again; he was my best Chilean friend.
 
Girls
Dazú - The girl I "almost" dated - see entry 9 (Re-orientation).

Andrea - She was my "cultural ambassador," assigned by CIEE to take a group of us around to get to know Santiago and Chilean culture. We had a great time together at the wine festival at the end of March, but didn't see each other again until the CIEE goodbye dinner in June.
Somehow, apparently, however, she took to me quite a bit and at the asado at the end of the year, she took me aside and kissed me, despite the fact that I told her I didn't really have feelings for her. This led, obviously, to a very long conversation. Anyway despite the fact that there was nothing there on my part she's a nice, extremely outgoing girl.

Pia and Elvira - Pia is the girl I wish I had dated - well, that's hard to say. I don't envy those who did get boyfriends/girlfriends abroad and now have to say goodbye to them or try to make a ridiculously long-distance relationship work. Anyway we were just friends, also meeting at the La Católica retreat, but it turned out that we had a class together - the more basic theology class. In the class we met Elvira too, a very smart law student. The three of us would lunch together twice a week, sometimes with other people, with Elvira being more faithful than Pia, but it was really a wonderful time to discuss politics, food and culture and something that I looked forward to all the time. Despite Elvira being of the opposite persuasion from me (conservative and non-religious), I learned a lot from her. Pia claimed to be very conservative too, but I wasn't really so sure. In any case, like Alexi, Catholicism was a foundation for her where her family could not be. Her father lives in Sacramento, California now after his separation from her mother and is starting a new family in the U.S. Theoretically, then, Pia might be making a trip to California, but as of now is too upset at the situation to contemplate it.
 
Other Chilean friends
Pancha - An architecture student very interested in urban issues, it was easy to be friends with Pancha. She picked me out to do a project in my urbanism class because she didn't like any of the other people in the class. A girl with a very interesting history and up and down life, she's very dedicated and headed in the right direction now. One evening we were working on a project together on campus and went out by a back stairway where we found a bunch of middle-aged folks dancing tango. We asked what was going on, found out it was a weekly tango class, joined it, and danced every week for the rest of the semester.

Matias - Another architecture student I met on the first day of the semester when I met Dazú (again, see entry 9), Matias had spent a semester abroad in Holland; thus, he could empathize much with my situation. We went out to party once together at the very beginning of the semester, but afterward our contact came through a basketball class we had once a week and going out to eat in places where we had coupons after the class. He is currently thinking of switching to the music major.

Ivan - He met my American companion Clay on the bus because he wanted to practice his English. He lived for three years in London as a child, and as a result speaks almost perfectly. He turned out to be free quite a bit, so we got to spend a lot of time with him.  
Christian-related
Prof. Sergio Silva - My professor of liberation theology, Sergio Silva is well respected among theologians. He helped guide me through the class which was far too advanced for me, and he answered all the questions I had that seemed too basic for everyone else. He had me over twice to the house where he lives with other priests and priests-in-training in the Sacred Heart congregation. At the beginning of the semester, he also recommended that I go to the Via Crucis (see entry 9) to the Villa Grimaldi.

Erinel - A Salesian priest in training, he was a classmate in the liberation theology class. He had me over to the Salesians' home and I learned a fair amount from him about what it's like to be in a specific congregation / order like his, and what it's like to take vows and live out the priestly life. A Dominican, he was the only other person I met in Chile who knew and liked baseball.

Aude, Manuela, y la Perrine - At the Via Crucis event I met Aude, who I recognized from a presentation she had made on behalf of a volunteer organization in my class. I met up with her again at the Fiesta de la Resurrección (Resurrection Party) in the main plaza of Santiago (Plaza Italia) the night before Easter, this time with her fellow volunteers Manuela and Perrine. All of them were French and lived together in a house in Recoleta, a working-class neighborhood in the north of Santiago. It was fun hearing from them about the volunteer experience. They also had one party at their house with all of their European friends in which we all danced to pure Europop, which was at once comical and a great time.

Anita Maria - A friend of the French girls that I met at the Fiesta de la Resurrección, she lived in La Legua and first invited me to that neighborhood and that parish. Deeply involved and committed to the cause and betterment of the neighborhood and poor in general in the city, she had very strong opinions. One of those was a real anti-American sentiment, making her one of the few Chileans I met that had major problems with my country. They had had a bad experience with an American in the neighborhood; she had robbed them. Add to that the very live anger at the military coup of September 11, 1973 and you have a recipe for someone who didn't trust Americans. Despite this, she was welcoming to me and introduced her to her family, though I didn't end up seeing her more than a few times.

Pato and Maria - The second time I came to the parish in La Legua, Anita Maria's son got sick, so she sent Pato and Maria, her friends, to meet me. It was quite possibly divinely ordained, because I spent many wonderful evenings with those two. Every Sunday after mass they would have me over to their house for once (a glorified teatime) and we would discuss issues of faith.
I often brought friends with me and they welcomed them as well without questions. Maria, the social worker, has serious gifts of hospitality, while Pato is the intellectual, liberation theologian and psychologist. They run a youth group that I got to meet in my farewell party (see entry 15). They are two that I without doubt would like to stay in touch with for a long time.

Mariza - My "boss" in my volunteer work, Mariza is another psychologist employed by the Fundación Rodelillo to lead the workshops for youth. My actual work in the classes was less than fulfilling, for a lack of responsibility, mostly, so the best part of the volunteer work was actually the drive home when Mariza took me back to Las Condes. She is much like someone you would expect to find in an American big city: spiritual, religiously pluralistic, wants to be a vegetarian, divorced with children. She helped me process what I was hearing in the youth classes, which was always difficult to understand and sometimes very serious (sexual assault, family problems, etc.) She also succeeded in convincing me that it wouldn't be a bad idea to reduce my meat consumption (for those of you who have had this discussion with me, you know what an accomplishment that is).

Program friends - They didn't get a lot of mention in the blog, but they played a huge role in my semester. Some of my fellow American students from CIEE and I hung out a lot; sometimes we would go out three times a week. We were all going through the same experience and did provide a lot of support to each other; at the same time, we got to know each other, first superficially and within the context of our Chilean lives and then later, hearing about our "real" regular lives in the States. Certainly we all knew each other at least as well as the best of our Chilean friends knew us, and probably better. It's a lot easier for your "real" personality to come out with your own people in your own language. At the same time, I definitely did elect sometimes to privilege hanging out with Chileans over them and for that I feel like I might have ended up a little on the outside...but that is the cost I was willing to pay.

Betsy - Randomly, the sister of my college Christian fellowship leader lives in Santiago. Her name is Betsy, and I got to hang out with her several times, which was great. Living in a working class apartment building and working for WorldVision (a Christian humanitarian organization), she was living some of the experiences that I have been considering for my future.

Elsa and Cintia - They are the women who (with others) ran my exchange program. They were both very helpful; I spent a lot of time within the walls of the CIEE office. We also had a fun party with Cintia during the CIEE trip to Pucón.