A New Year, a New Outlook on Life

Me and my VE friends at our Christmas Party

Stephen, Lindsey, Lily, Meghan, Faith, Jamie (from left)

New Years Eve in Valpo with Katelin and her pololo

The incredible City of Santiago, photo taken from the top of La Santa Lucia which is a "cerro" (hill) right by my house that is basically forest with steep winding paths and a little lookout spot on top. It is also a favorite place for "pololos" (couples dating) to go and make out, EVERYWHERE and in plain sight (although that basically describes all of Chile in a nutshell). The point is, its very turisty but also incredibly beautiful and one of the best places to see the entire city all around you.

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Dear Friends,

I just spent my first Christmas away from my nuclear family, and although this was difficult for me, I also began to see how I can form family wherever I am, in whatever country, language and culture.

Chileans celebrate on the 24th in the evening with a large dinner and then present opening at midnight. I celebrated a half chilean and a half american Christmas eve. First, I spent time with my roommate and his family and our Brazilian couch surver, eating really good food (you would be surprised how much random vegan food there is here in Chile) and making small talk, in Spanish of course.

Then, when things started getting a little to family oriented and I became a little sad because my family was so far away, I took a quiet walk (there was noooo one out in the streets, it was the quietest I've ever heard Santiago) to my friend Stephen´s apartment (fellow VE volunteer). We were both a lil sad not be participating in our normal family traditions so we comforted ourselves by listening to our favorite selections from the Hanson Christmas album and watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.

On Christmas day a VEer had a Christmas potluck barbecue so we celebrated with Chilean classics; lots and lots of meat and delicious veggie kabobs made by me.

For New Years I went to Valpairiso and Vina del Mar with my friend Katelin, who actually left for the states this Tuesday morning and I will miss her dearly.

We had a blast staying with the family of her boyfriend, meeting his incredibly nice family members, eating the delicious food they made and being driven around by him in his Sisters fancy car. It´s funny how walking and taking public transportation all the time (which is suuuuper hot and sticky during the summer, and always crowded) makes me appreciate cars much more than ever before.

However, don´t think I´ve given up my environmental ways, I think about buying a bicycle daily and I often spend about 20 minutes every day looking on the craigs list of Chile for good deals...

Besides crowded metros and HOT weather, the new year also brought my new job as the Assistant Director of Operations for VE - GLobal! So far its going quite well. I´ve been spending my days in the office contacting new volunteers who will be arriving this weekend, finding them housing, planning welcome dinners, preparing for the week of orientation, writing up program reports, sending thank you notes and so much more.

From now on I´m mostly in the office and I go to the Jardin once a week. For the summer they will be closing anyway, from January 15th until the beginning of March, so there is a possibility that I will get to spend some time in a different institution while mine is closed for the summer.

Today when I arrived at the Jardin, bringing with me two other volunteers who´s institutions already closed for the summer so they´re helping me out at the Jardin, we were told that the electricity was cut off because there was no "plata" (money) to pay for the "luz" (lights). Apparently, they had been without electricity for about a week and they had to transfer all the food in the frigerator and freezer into those of neighboring "houses".

The fridges stank, and all morning I kept trying to turn on lights to find a pencil sharper or more toilet paper, and I kept being reminded that this is not the situation where the irresponsible college kids forgets to pay their bills. This is an issue of an incredible lack of resources and extreme poverty where at the end of the year, there just isn´t money any more for the lights.

Luckily, electricity workers seem to be pretty understanding here because some men rolled up after lunch and turned the electricity back on! I tried to ask the Tias what happened, where did the plata come from, but they just shrugged their shoulders and said "we told them we´d pay later." There will always be things like this that I just don´t understand here...If only I could have told Duke Energy in North Carolina that I´d pay them later, I could have saved a lot of plata. Or maybe a lot of electricy...(since they are not Chilean so they would have just cut it off, get my joke?).

Other good news is that once again, I can tell that my Spanish is improving! When I first got to the Jardin, I could barely understand the Tias and I barely said a word. Today, I understood almost everything they said and we were cracking jokes, having serious conversations about birth control and sex ed. for teenagers and I felt at ease with my language skills. As this is one of my main goals of being here in Chile, it brings me so much joy when I can see these concrete improvements.

Lastly, both myself and my class of volunteers reached our fundraising goal for VE! Thank you all so much to those of you who donated and to those of you who sent me loving thoughts, emails and more. We couldn´t do it without you all.

Muchos Besos de Santiago, Chile.

Faith

p.s. Some friends asked for my mailing address, so I'm gonna put it up here!

Merced 332

Depto. 73

Santiago, Chile

America del Sur

(no zipcodes here)

www.ve-global.org