Tengo morriña

I think homesickness is part and parcel of this whole experience, but telling myself that doesn´t make it any easier. I had so many routines in Portland, and so few can be uprooted and reproduced.

I can make tea in the evening here.

I cannot sit on my laptop for an hour to cool down after a day out.

I can read (in English or in Spanish) before bed.

I cannot read while snuggled up next to my sweetie.

I cannot go out to a coffee shop by myself and read for several hours on end

Apart from my landlady and my roommate, I don´t really know anyone here yet, and English is beginning to sound strange. Chilean Spanish is beginning to sound more natural. The ambient noise is starting to lose its deafening qualities (that it had the first few days).

Maybe it´s the transition that´s the hardest part. Don´t get me wrong... I really want to start new routines.

I´m just braindumping.

(Next post will probably be about transportation and/or food.)

First pictures

It takes about five minutes right now to upload a photo, so you´ll be getting the highlights in this post. The general update is that I like my region of town (Providencia), I have very nice roommates and I´ve learned how to shop for food and how to ride the Metro. I´ve also learned that as a pedestrian you watch the traffic or you run the risk of being hit.

My night stand at the end of the first night. Note the large mug of mint tea, the clock that doesn´t actually work, a monster woman (a lent item from Mitchell), and a pair of wind-up lederhosen (sp?) (also from Mitchell).My first breakfast in Santiago. Plain yogurt, an apple, black tea (con miel!) and peach juice.

Every woman in Santiago wears strappy sandals (many wear strappy black sandals). With the heat, I decided that I would try to get this part of the santianguinista apparel. Took me three hours. Seriously. For other people looking for sandals, go to the northern end of Paseo Ahumada (U. de Chile Metro stop).

That´s all for now! Skype works! I dug out my art supplies today. I´m feeling very overwhelmed by my surroundings and so I´m nesting a bit. I think tomorrow will be filled with tea and reading.

Ciao.

Here!

I´m here!


I´m very tired.

Also, I´m learning how to use this keyboard. (They made room for some diacritical marks and pushed some of the usual key functions to other keys. Still working on it).

¡Saludos desde Santiago!

We look a fair bit evil...

It's hard to hold a Macbook out at full arms length to try and capture three beings in one image. But, I did it.

This picture is partially for the blog but mostly for me. I'm leaving in a little over a day. I'm going to miss my home and my family, and yet... they inspire me to do what I do, which includes having the excitement and motivation for this trip.

Okay. One last day. And then a long plane ride. Wheee.

Address

Yes, I do have a permanent address for the three months that I'm in Santiago, and, yes, you may write to me (paper letters are awesome! As are emails, but hey... letters don't require a cyber café fee). I'm sending out some emails tomorrow to some folks with that address tucked in a body of text.

If you would like to write me and you do not get such an email, please let me know at jamaicarose at the google mails dot com.

Brief Thanks

This trip that I'm about to take was made a lot easier monetarily by Ie3 Global Internships and their program coordinator, Giustina Pelosi, and I feel that I should say thank you.

Thank you, guys. Really and truly. Besides the financial factor, getting to sit down with Giustina and talk about goals/end projects boosted my confidence significantly.

Goals, plans, itineraries and the such.

One week from today I'll be starting a three month long trip to Santiago de Chile. Is it a trip for work? Yes. Is it a trip for fun? Also yes. Is it another one of those incredible and yet sometimes difficult life learning experiences? Oh third-time's-the-charm yes.

I'll be interning with Fundación Educación Popular en Salud (there's an English version of some site content here )

So here's the short and sweet version of my travel plans to South America:

• March 21st - I kiss my lover farewell at the Portland Airport, and board a plane that leaves at 9:30am.
• March 22nd - I arrive in Santiago at 8:15 am, and blearily stumble towards the housing coordinator's van, which will then take me on to my lodgings in Providencia.

Add in a day's worth of airports (Portland to Seattle, Seattle to Dallas, Dallas to Santiago), air-time, and layovers in between those two bullet points.

I'll have about a week to settle in a bit, adjust to a five-hour time change (moving my internal clock ahead, mind you. Santiago sits further east than Nova Scotia), meet and converse with my landlady, learn how to shop for food, learn how to use an internet café, and generally get used to the fact that I'm a whole continent away from what I know. On Monday, March 28th, I'll be starting a week of super-intensive (6 hours a day) Spanish courses at a local language school (I speak Spanish fairly well, but I need a bit more confidence in my conversational Spanish and particularly in my conversational Chilean Spanish before I start my internship with EPES on the 4th).

I intern at EPES, in El Bosque, from the 4th of April to the 10th of June.

• I board a plane back to the States late in the day on the 14th of June.
• I arrive back in Portland at about 1pm on the 15th.
• I sleep in my Pacifically Northwestern bed with mah sweetie and mah kittehs, and reconnect in meat space with Portland folks.

Easier said than done? Honestly, I'm quite excited. I'm also quite nervous. I've never traveled for this long before, and I'm afraid of homesickness (comprised of place and social qualities) spoiling my experience. I don't think that will happen, but that's something for me to keep in mind.

I'll try to update this bloggerific journal at least once a week (there should be a cyber café around the corner from my apartment), if not more.

¡Saludos desde Portland!

p.s. I'm not quite sure what my exact responsibilities at EPES will be, but, according to the original internship posting, they might include some of the following:

· Support the design and execution of educational activities with the community: seminars, workshops, campaigns for women and teens of little resources.

· Participation in forming and consulting with Health Groups.

· Development of the evaluation process and systemization of long-term educational activities.

· Participation in the design and implementation of "Health Schools" at the local and international level.

· Participation in the Fund for Small-scale Projects on Sexual and Reproductive Health directed at community organizations.

· Involvement in the local community networks to tackle problems such as domestic violence, AIDS prevention, and sexual education for adolescents.

· Collaboration in the investigative process of the topics covered by EPES.

· Support in the creation, editing, production, and diffusion of materials pertaining to health education.

· Support in translation from English to Spanish or vice versa.

· Support in internal activities and diffusion of information of EPES' Educational Resource Center for Action.