Mujer Maravilla

Hello again. I only have a limited time on the computer and there´s an angry looking french guy waiting to use it so this update won´t be able to fully encompass the past few days, but hopefully you can fill in the gaps with your imaginations. Actually the gaps can mostly be filled in with me just wandering around Baños, eating taffy straight off the post and staring at the ridiculously beautiful hills and waterfalls that frame the town.

So, I´m in a town called Baños now. I was originally planning to stay for a day or two, but five days just went by and I´m still here. It´s a magical town in more ways than one. The scenery is incredible, the people are unendingly sweet and helpful, and the hoards of vacationing ecuadorian families that flock in on the weekends make for good people watching. The town is right next to a huge and very active volcano, but so far they´ve been pretty lucky. If you talk to a big fan of the church, they´ll tell you that Baños is protected by the Virgen de la Agua Santa, and if you talk to someone who knows something about volcanos they´ll tell you that Baños is surrounded by mountains that block the lava from being routed towards the city. Besides all that cool stuff, there´s tons of adventure-y stuff to do too. A few days ago I rented a motorbike quad thing and rode through the "path of the waterfalls" to get to this big bridge where I got to jump off (with a bungee cord, obviously) and experience the incredible and frightening sensation of free-falling face first into a rocky white water river. Similarly exhilarating, I went rock climbing with a new friend from my hostel yesterday. The climbs were really hard, and our guide was great. He free-climbed (no ropes) up in order to attach the ropes before we started. It was nuts. He also did this one path that I swear involved several feet of flat rock. I definitely challenged myself, and am pretty proud of what I managed to do. Afterwards we got to do this awesome zipline where I flew superman style over the river. New vocab word: Mujer Maravilla = Wonder Woman.

Now I´m entering my sixth day in Baños and wondering what to do next. I originally thought about going to the coast, but I´d also like to check out Cuenca, a very pretty colonial city in the south nearby a very beautiful national part. I also made friends with some "engineers without borders" students who are working on a project in a nearby jungle town that they want me to come visit. It´s kind of fun to have no idea where I´m going to end up for my last 3 days.

chilling at the center of the earth

Hola from Quito.

First, a few quick notes about the desert --

The highlight was a stargazing tour. Due to the location of the zodiac light or something like that, the Atacama desert has one of the cleanest skies in the world. It was amazing...you could see absolutely everything. It was weird seeing the different constallations in the southern hemisphere. My friend Vik asked where the northern star was. It was hilarious. We even got to get a close-up on Jupiter and a few crazy colored stars with the telescopes. There was this really hilarious french man giving the tour in spanish, while most of the people on the tour were portuguese speakers from Brazil...so it was a linguistic experience. I met a lot of brazilians in San Pedro de Atacama. It´s really funny how they would talk to me in slow portuguese and I would respond in slow spanish, and in the end we sorta understand each other. I made really good friends with a really awesome and funny brasilian girl named Paula at our hostel (who thankfully spoke both english and spanish), but she had to leave before me. It´s so weird how people can come in and out of your life so quickly. This girl and I bonded immediately, we definitely could have been best friends if we weren´t born a bajillion miles apart. But we´ll keep in touch via facebook.

Anyway, we went to the geysers which were beautiful, but really cold and REALLY early (I´m talking 4 am), but we got to swim in hot springs which was incredible. I´d love to post pictures but sadly I´m without wireless internet now and I can´t upload at the internet cafes. Anyway, we got a steal on sandboarding. Paid 3 luca (6 bucks) for bikes and boards and a map, and then followed a BEAUTIFUL trail through the Cordillera de la Sal ... basically imagine a tiny trail surrounded with huuuuge and crazy rock formations on either side. It came out right at the ´valle de la muerte´(literally the valley of death) where we began our sandboarding adventure. No one had any idea what they were doing, and climbing up the dune was intense in the desert sun, but it was a good time. I made friends with some kids on an exchange program through umich, also studying at La Catolica. We eventually figured out that it´s more productive and more fun to just run down the dune without a board.

So flash forward past my hectic journey to Quito, and I´m wandering around the city trying to find a hostel because the one I thought I booked online bailed on me. The taxi driver was super nice and took me around to all the places listed in my Lonely Planet until we finally got to this little place that looked more like a house from the outside. I ring the doorbell and this girl who can´t be more than seven opens the gate and immediately starts rambling to me in spanish and convinces me to ´play cooking´while we wait for her mom to finish up with talking with another gringo. I got a room, and it turns out this place is the number one recommended in my guidebook but I had somehow overlooked it. The people are very friendly, although it is a bit lonely being alone. I made friends with a guy who is on vacation from being a guide in the galapagos and he´s going to take me to the tourist center and talk to some of his friends in the tour places to help me find a cheap 4 day trip. How incredible would that be?? Apparently it´s possible if you´re traveling solo and at the last minute to fill a spot on a boat that´s leaving in the next few days. But even if that doesn´t happen, there´s plenty of great wildlife stuff to do around here so it should be fine.

I doubt anyone is still reading but I´m sure you´re all very glad to hear that I´m still alive. The updates will probably be more sporadic from now on since I don´t have constant internet access. Miss you all! Also, I promise an extensive update about the flushing of toilets after visiting the center of the earth monument.

- L

desert - the kind that you don´t eat

In the days since my last post, I finished up my studies in Santiago, took some finals and wrote some papers, did some final touristy things and said goodbye to my host mom. Then I hopped on an airplane and flew north to the Atacama desert -- the driest desert in the world. It´s amazing here. We´re staying in a town called San Pedro that´s basically just a giant gringolandia (gringo=foreigner), completely full of backpackers, hostels, restaurants, tour companies and legitimately nothing else. There´s people here from all over the world. Vik, the friend I´m traveling with, and I met a cool guy from Spain who we´ve been traveling with.

Today we rented bicycles and a map and went out to explore some ruins. They weren´t the best ruins ever, but they were the first I´ve ever seen so I was impressed. I just stared at them thinking...someone walked through that door, or cooked dinner in that room, or was like totally annoyed at their sister for stealing their clothing while they sulked in that other room...and these people lived 2500 years ago. Maybe minus the stealing clothing thing, I dunno. Anyway, if I´m so impressed by these tiny and not particularly interesting ruins, I can´t imagine what Macchu Picchu would be like. That´s definitely on the agenda for my next trip to South America. Tonight we´re going on a tour to watch the sun set in valle de la luna, which is supposed to be an amazing experience. Personally I don´t get what makes a sunset worth $4, but it´s one of those things you´re supposed to do here.


Hope everyone´s doing well!

- L
-- Lauren

Santiago smog = 10 cigarettes a day. YUM!

Today I made a new best friend named Oscar. He's 4 years old and pretty much the most awesome kid I've ever met. Oscar lives at the Josafina Martinez hospital, which specializes in children with respiratory problems. Oscar has a trach (http://www.tracheostomy.com/faq/what.htm) in his neck, so he can't talk, but he certainly knows how to get his point across. We played soccer and watched Barney, and he made me clap when the kids on the TV were clapping, dance when they danced, etc. He kept pointing to his mouth when we were playing so I asked the nurse if he was hungry but she assured me that he was just making fun of the way I talk in Spanish. It was so hard to leave...I wanted to take him home so bad. Oscar's been living in the hospital since he was 2 years old, and sees his family about once a week, unless they can afford to take more time away from work and their other children.

The hospital was actually really awesome, considering the fact that it's entirely free, but considering how many kids they have to take care of and how few staff, I can't help but wonder what sorts of developmental problems these kids are going to develop from being left to hang out in bed by themselves all day, with no one but their mechanical ventilator to talk to. It was so sad to see so many kids depending on machines in order to survive. In the play/school room almost all the older kids were wheeling around those big oxygen tank things that you see old people with in the commercials against smoking. It's a lot easier to handle seeing that sort of thing when you feel like the person could have seen it coming, or avoided it somehow. Not so easy with kids.

Speaking of smoking, I'm doing a research project on the health effects of smog in Santiago. It's really fascinating and I'm talking to a professor in the Evironemental Studies department about continuing it with an independent study/research project in the fall. Here's a gem from one of the papers I'm using: "...in winter in downtown Santiago of Chile we have detected 5 ng/m³ of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), the most studied environmental carcinogen in respirable particles. Thus, a non smoking inhabitant breaths benzo(a)pyrene BaP levels equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day." It makes me so angry how little is being done about it. Environmental pollution shouldn't be viewed with the sort of complacency of a far-away problem -- like a storm that we know is coming but we have plenty of time to prepare for. The storm's already here, and the kids can't friggin breath without inhaling particles of imminent death. Ya, I'm being super dramatic. But still -- I just feel like it should be viewed as a lot more of an emergency, but it's hard to convince people (let alone a government that has the power to institute emission regulations) that something they are already living with daily is actually killing them and something needs to change immediately.

The picture is one that I took from the top of Cerro (hill) San Cristobal on Sunday, which was a day after it rained. They tell us to go to the Cerro the day after a rain because that's when the smog is the least obstructive of the view. In other words, this is the smog on a GOOD day. Enticing, ya?

A few years ago Oberlin introduced me to the idea of responsibility being associated with privilege. It's a concept that I think I've always understood subconsciously -- that I've been giving a whole lot of opportunities and I should use them to help those who weren't. But during my time at Oberlin was the first time the topic was really verbalized/intellectualized for me. I've been thinking a lot during this trip -- which is an opportunity that I am extremely privileged to have been given -- about how I'm supposed to fulfill the responsibility that I'm now charged with. As in, how can I use my experiences here to "pay it forward"?

I know that a lot of people don't agree philosophically with what I'm saying right now -- like my friends who say that they worked hard and don't deserve to be shafted in college admissions on behalf of preference for minorities. I understand their beliefs, I just don't agree with them. For me, it's a very personal issue -- it's hard to avoid using the word "guilt" but it's different than that -- if I use the word "guilt" than paying it forward is just a way of alleviated my own guilt and therefore selfishly motivated (insert Ayn Rand discussion here). Maybe it is, but if people are being helped, who cares if it's selfishly motivated? Either way, instead I'll say that I feel extremely privileged to have the opportunities that I have been giving and I feel also obliged to give something back since so much has been given to me by luck and money. This is really just a very long way of saying that I'm leaning towards going into a career in Public Health/environmental health research...using my talents to try to figure out a way to reduce this friggin smog and help the kiddies breath withing taking in carcinogens and other nasties while they're at it.

newborns and wine...not at the same time, for obvious reasons

On Wednesday I was in the neonatal unit of the public hospital. Rather than having to look at the icky tiny sick babies, they let me play with the healthy ones that are fresh out of the womb. The only truly nasty part was watching them comb nasty birth juice out of the babies' hair. But it's an incredible feeling to be one of the first people to talk to a new little person. I bet they're really confused. There was a set of twins...they've been sharing a tiny little womb for nine months and now they're suddenly separate and in a big freaky world. I felt like it was my duty to give them some advice. We had a good chat. The nurse yelled at me for talking to them in English, because she said they wouldn't understand me. I got to carry one of the babies to her mommy. It was so fun being the person to be like, "Hey, here's that awesome new person you just brought into the world. Good luck not fucking her up too much!"

The hospital building is over 100 years old, and I don't know much about medical equipment but I'm pretty sure some of it is old as dirt. That being said, the nurses are great and the patients get good care...for the 15 minutes allotted to them daily. Besides the obvious issues with disease spreading, I like the rooms with 6 or more people in them. There's sort of a camp-y friendly family-type atmosphere to it. I'm only being sort of sarcastic right now.

On Friday we went to one of the new family primary care clinics funded by la Universidad Catolica. This place was spanking new and extremely modern. The patients, all of whom have public insurance, get great personal attention from nurses and doctors. This was the only clinic/hospital I've seen so far with computerized records. The family clinics are a new-ish idea for primary care, and there's two other as nice as this one. Unfortunately that's only a couple thousand people being served by these great clinics. Hopefully they'll expand, because it was really great to see people being treated like they deserve individual attention for their medical needs.

Looking at a very different side of Chile from the people we interact with at the public hospital, we dropped $10 on a wine tour of Cosiño Macul. I talked to a Brasilian couple, and was completely thrown off by their use of "vosotros" in conversation (that's a verb tense that's only used in Spain). The vines are currently empty and they weren't processing any wine while we were there so it was a little boring, but we got to do a few tastes and I got a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon "gris" which is red wine grapes processed like white wine, so it ends up being kinda pinkish and gentler tasting. My host dad was really pleased and Friday night my host sister's godfather came over to visit and he served it. Mostly the trip made me realize that there's a whole lot about wine that I'm never going to have the time or desire to learn.

My two good friends are off in Valdivia for the weekend, so I've been spending some more time exploring alone and spending more time with my family. Having American friends is great, and it's good to have other people to digest the experience with and talk about how much we miss ketchup and peanut butter and whatnot, but it's also a crutch that keeps me from fully immersing myself in Chile. I spent yesterday evening at home, conversing with my host sister Lena's godfather and talking about plans for Lena's wedding (which is in March, but already the arguments about what kind of music, what she should wear, what kind of wine to serve, etc. etc. etc. have begun). Then my older host sister, Edda, invited me to "carretear" (=going out dancing) with her. Around 11:30pm we left the house with one of her friends and went over to another friend's house where we drank "navegado". It's hot red wine, orange, cinnamon-y spices, and fruit pieces. Super delicious. Around 1:30am, they decided it was time to head to the Discoteca for a birthday party. Crazy chilenos. We had a really fun time dancing and stayed until the club until 5 am, when they finally closed and kicked us out. Out of the whole experience, the weirdest part was getting used to the cheek-kiss greetings. Like when we got to the party I had to go through the whole living room and kiss all the people in the room on the cheek...before learning their names! I actually really like the custom and I wish we had something like it in the US...really breaks the ice and whatnot, establishing a friendly atmosphere...but it's hard to get used to. I always feel like I go in awkwardly or something.

Today we went to a Universidad de Chile soccer game, but I'll write about that later...this is getting long and I'm exhausted.

Kisses to all! I can't believe I have less than two weeks left :-( Time to start making plans for Ecuador. I think I better take some more Spanish classes and get rid of this Chilean accent I've picked up. ¿Cachai?

Warning: graphic images of sick tonsils

Sometime in the near future I'll be posting a long, introspective and emotional reflection on my intense experiences at the public hospital. For now, though, I'm not in an introspective enough mood to do it justice. Today I was in the post-surgery unit. The patients were all super friendly, and mostly satisfied with the care they receive. One guy, an artist by profession who has FONASA A -- the most basic coverage that is completely free -- was super quick to say that he absolutely was satisfied with the care he received. Then he thought about it and added, "Well, when I was first admitted there was a shortage of beds so I had to spend a night in a chair. It was pretty cold. But the doctors are very nice."

In other news, my friend Reva has been getting some extra immersion in the public health of Chile. After visiting two doctors and being diagnosed and treated for both bronchitis and tonsilitis (or "amygdalitis" en espanol), she went through 3 weeks of antibiotics, discovered that the private doctors only take cash in this country (wtf?), and she's still left with tonsils that look like this:

Special shout-out to Dr. Gayla Zoghlin for helping us deal with this one via the internet and suggesting that this is, in fact, a serious needs-a-specialist kinda thing. Something about an abscess that might need to be drained (see the purple spot there?). Luckily for me, there are no privacy laws in this country, so while for Reva that means an annoying medical procedure, for me it means an awesome free show. Any bets on what color is going to come out??

And as Reva put it in her own words, "It always warms the heart to make someones blog because of your bacterially infested mouth." I'm so glad you all could share this with us.

Skiing in the Andes: Check one off of life's to-do list!

Skiing was awesome. I loved how less overrun with development and tourists it was compared to out west. The lifts weren't particularly fast and the trails weren't marked very well, but then again there was NO lift lines EVER, and the trails didn't need to be marked since the whole place is above tree-level, so it's pretty much a free-for-all. It's pretty small, definitely would get boring in a week, but there's three other resorts nearby. We were at Portillo -- where the US Ski Team practices in the summer! Nifty, ya?

After sleeping off my ski aches, I made my family brunch this morning. The typical American meal consisted of: french toast, waffles, bacon (yes, I made bacon! It was kinda icky though), and lots of pure Michigan maple syrup. My host dad put so much syrup on his waffle it legitimately looked like soup. He would get along really well with Sam. I tried to find bagels but that failed. When I was explaining what bagels are and we do with them, my host mom got confused and thought we put smoked fish on french toast. Hehe.

I've started planning a trip to the desert (North Chile) for after the program ends. I'm going to go sand boarding. No joke. It's like snowboarding...on sand. What other country can you go snow-skiing and sand boarding in the same month?