Thursday, February 21, 2008

La Magia Esta En Tu Alma



I love the murals in Santiago. The city is covered with the same kind of tagging as any urban place in America, but the level of creativity seems to be higher here. Amid what looks like gang graffiti there are message like this. Respect is to love. The magic is in your soul. I like the vampirish like creatures looking on, as though the forces of darkness were taking heed of the message. There are occasional messages on walls proclaiming: Capitalismo es muerte. Other pictures that are intricate and fanciful lace the streets. In the Bellas Artes area, near San Cristobal, the highest part of the city, and where one of Neruda's three homes is located, the mural art is taken to the highest levels, street after street, in a neighborhood full of houses where color and whimsy cry out.

Bill and I went to the immigration office today. The nicest people work there. I was told that St. Margaret's is the "most prestigious school in Chile." Yikes! Definitely not like the Title One schools I've always taught at. We panicked when the forms and procedures were explained to even get a work permit under a tourist visa. Send my teaching credentials to the consulate in San Francisco just to get a stamp and from where they have to be mailed back to Chile?) But then I finally connected with the Sra. Avril Cooper, the director of the school, who said,"Relax, relax. Our people are working on it." Okay, sounded like good advice to us. So I'm sitting in a courytard writing now at La Casa Roja instead of dealing with bureaucracy. Que beuno! (I need to find how to transform my keyboard in a Spanish one but that's a learning curve I just can't take on right now.)

We went to lunch yesterday and today at two sidewalk cafes. A cute little dog, kind of a cocker spaniel/dachshund cross showed up at our feet yesterday. Small and sad. We thought she was a puppy until we noticed she'd recently had babies. We named her "Cute Little F . . ." Amazingly, there she was again today, at least two miles away. She had to have crossed the freeway, going up the steps and across the bridge along with people traffic. She came immediately to our table, lay down, and fell asleep again. We chose not to think of it as a sign, as we're weak where in the cute little doggy area of life. And we need to get Wiley down here. He'd probably be p.o.ed to see a strange dog in what he'd rightfully think of as his place. After today, I'm not sure how much blogging I'll do. after today My job starts Monday (trying not to panic-- I left a lot of my standby teaching material at home because of weight limitations on the airplane). Our house in Vina is cute, but not the place we want to stay forever. We don't want to connect Internet up, only for the two months we'll be there. I may spend a lot of time on the weekend at the Internet place around the corner, but I could also be correcting papers. Oh yeah, i've got another novel to finish.

One last thing! Great news. Nicole, the publicity person at HarperCollins told me that a review posted by Emily Robbins, a thirteen year old reviewers from Readers Views, was picked up by Reuters and usatoday.com. I can't stop smiling!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Night is Falling in Santiago


I chose this picture, though it has nothing to do with Santiago. It does have a lot to do with being willing to venture to unfamiliar places both without and within. Thank you, Mother Eve, for taking the first bite to a realized life.

We have been in Chile for just over a day. I'm sitting in an upstairs lobby of La Caja Roja, a hostel full of mostly young people from all over the world. Loud music is blasting from downstairs. Voices of guests eating their dinners on the patio blend in, along with clinking plates and laughter. Here, it doesn't feel I'm half a world away from winter, where the bells of my school ring, and my commute is driving up a mountain road. The Germanic orderliness that the United States possesses isn't found in Chile.

Bill and I stayed at this hostel for two of the weeks we spent here in July, so coming back felt like coming home in many ways. Out on the streets of the city, though, walking among the blankets spread full of bolsas and zapatos for sell, the crazy traffic, having a poor mother sing a song for some pesos to feed her baby, the reality that I have made a commitment to a strange new life is impossible to ignore.

Ice cream is a real highlight. It's simply wonderful, very similar to gelato. Most of the pastries, on the other hand, are heavy and unappealing-- which is a good thing because I have a weakness for them. I'd rather spend my dessert calories on the helados.

Took a trip to Vina del Mar today to rent a house that we found out about back home. Outside of Santiago, it becomes desert-like, similar to the few un-watered parts of southern California that remain. We passed chapparal and chemise, vineyards in the Casablanca Valley, slums on Valparaiso's hills.

Chile is a poor country with an expanding "middle class," however you might define it, and the wealthy whose homes could be anywhere in tonier areas of the states. Our new house is where a purse being snatched won't be out of the question, but that's probably the worst of worries. I wish my work clothes had deeper pockets to hide my i.d. and what little money I'll carry. I'll travel by bus or taxi to St. Margaret's, which has a gate models on Buckingham Palace, teaching girls who go home to fine houses, mas rica que mi casa.

I've stepped out of the "garden," of what I have always known, into a world where more knowledge and experience will be gained.

I need to work on my book, but so much nicer right now to put my thoughts here.

Tags: chile, hungry, la casa roja, teaching in foreign countries, vina del mar

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Threshold Guardians


According to the Hero's Cycle, heroes need to pass through obstacles that guardians place before them in order to prove the heroes' worthiness to enter into the special world where the story will unfold. Guardians can be other characters, circumstances, or objects (locked windows). I feel that Bill and I are passing through our share of these guardians. To be cliched (as I am using Joseph Campbell's ideas here), we're "following our bliss" in our preparations to move to Chile. Daily we're coming up against a variety of guardians, but somehow a mixture of sheer willpower and serendipity are helping to dissolve them.
Some of these have been:

Reducing a household to four suitcases and a dufflebag full of bedding.
Luckily, we're not horders and have less to get rid of than most people. We're leaving some things: photos, some books, a few of my winter clothes as we'll be living in late summer in just a few days. It feels wonderful to let go. There are no family things on my side and only a few on Bill's, so this has been a blessing.

Dogs
The hardest part has been deciding what to do with our dogs. We can't take them now because we don't really know if this is going to work. Will we stay in Chile a few months or the rest of our lives?

We were going to have Lily, our 90 percent Ausie and 10 percent mystery dog, be our Chile dog at first. Then, we decided not to bring any of them. Then all of them. Then . . . We found a wonderful organization called We Care Animal Rescue in St. Helena, California. Through them, Lily found a home with a wonderful couple in the Sacramento area. As traumatic as it was for us to say good bye, Lily was won over by a chicken sandwich. She hopped in her new mom's car and off she went. She's happy. Got her teeth cleaned. Playing lots of fetch and going on oodles of walks.

Lily was a thirty pound whirlwind that kept Dazie wound up and puppy-like for six years. There was an amazing transformation from the very first day. Dazie came into her own and wasn't as fidgety, not even wiggling when I tried to brush her. So . . . we said, "Let's keep Wiley and her!" Friends tried her out on a sleepover to see how she'd do until we figured out how to do this, but on a walk in the hills above Upper Lake she got away.

I was taking Wiley to Petaluma for a potential foster mom to meet him when another guardian came my way. My wallet was stolen before I got there, so I had to return home to cancel things out. I got the message about Dazie. I left Wiley with some food because I hadn't fed him that morning (he gets car sick)and drove the hour to Upper Lake. We spent hours looking for her. She'd run off the road up a hill that was full of chemise, coyotes who'd come out at night, and that led into a wilderness area. I called and called her name at the spot she disappeared. She didn't answer. She could have been anywhere in rugged terrain. Bill was stuck in an elevator during this time (did someone say Mercury Retrograde?) and when he got home, he brought Wiley who only had to bark once for Dazie to answer. She was at the same spot I had yelled for her, but dog-to-dog communication won her over. Bill and Kenn then had to climb the mountain, though, and Kenn had to use all his forest service training to get through the brush. She wouldn't budge when he found her. She weighs 60 pounds and he dragged her through about ten feet of the chemise with her pissing and . . . you get the picture. Once she saw Wiley, she got up and trotted down the mountain with him.

We contacted We Care again for Dazie because we decided the move would be too much for her. The next day heard from a wonderful woman in Yountville (Napa Valley). We took Dazie to her house yesterday. She now lives on a 48 acre vineyard in a 5,000 square foot house full of comfy pillows and gourmet food cooked just for her. She'll eat plenty of fruits, vegetable, New York steak cut just right, and gourmet doggy biscuits. She'll also be taken out to a restaurant that gives the diners plates for their dogs, and back at home has a bidet for her very own to be able to drink fresh flowing water. I'd have felt guilty NOT to let her live there. I've always thought that our dogs had it nice. It's been boot camp for them in comparison! Though she did break our hearts. The two nights she was with us, she climbed into a suitcase to sleep.

What is wonderful is that both of the new families will let us know how Dazie and Lily are doing. We even have an invitation to stay in Dazie's paradise when we're in northern California. And through Dazie's little adventure, the people who were going to take her are now taking Wiley until we can figure out things. He is now the official Chile dog in residence.

However, contacting airline customer service to figure this out has turned out to be the most formidable of the guards at the "gate". I ended up screaming I WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE HUMAN! When we got the humans, it was still difficult. We're still not sure what to do.

Car
No one wanted a Corolla with a stick shift even though we were offering under blue book. What about gas economy????? We were amazed. We dropped the price to way under blue book, and a woman from Willits called us. She was thrilled that our car even had old fashioned roll up windows. We've sold it at the last minute.

House in Cobb
The first people to look at our house are making an offer. HOWEVER, whether their offer is something we'll accept is another matter. We're free here, though, because through a conversation at the Mountain High Coffee Shop, serendipity allowed us to find a renter we can trust if the house hasn't sold by the time the listing runs out.

Home in Chile
Another conversation, at the Cafe Vasquez in Lakeport this time, has given us a fully furnished house to rent (with washer and dryer) in Vina Del Mar, twenty minutes by bus from where I'll work at St. Margaret's.

Work Visa
Last hurdle. By the time we got the documents we need, it was too late to process the visa up here. It will take the FBI four months to process my "rap sheet." Ah, let's see . . . there was a ticket on my way to church a few years ago for going a few miles over the speed limit. That must be what is holding things up. So, we're hoping we can process what we need to do once we're in Santiago. I only have a few days before I begin work, but not being anxious about this is a good lesson for me. If it doesn't happen, our journey may take off on a different path as happens in many good stories.

HUNGRY
Sales have been "quiet" according to my editor. Which means if things remain the same, the book I'm halfway through writing won't be wanted. I worry about the effect of being in Chile will have on my writing career. A friend suggested I blog on my webpage as Deborah in Chile, which I think is brilliant . . . the country's name allowing for a lot of puns with eating. I just hope I have time to do this. Anyway, I just have to believe that bliss and prayer and as much attention as I can put into promoting the book from down south will work.

I haved managed to sneak in a couple school visits through all of this: Lu Sutton School in Novato, where I saw again how much kids connect with the book. Also, another presentation on the Mendocino Coast at Horicon School in Annapolis, and the Four-Eyed Frog Book Store in Gualala. Grandmother Pig's Butt, my alter ego, is still training recruits for the great invasion of Earth, complete with an alien make over of a very brave volunteer. I hope she can somehow keep the training going in Chile.