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Valparaiso's firework display for New Years is world renowned. Every year there are several displays that run up the coast for thirty or forty kilometers from Valparaiso to Concon, the community we live in. Instead of staying home, we joined our friends Norm, Charlene and Susana to view the fireworks on the rooftop of the Shuttleworth's apartment on Cerro Placeres.

This is the Esmeralda, lit up for the night. Fifteen naval cadets are chosen each year to train on her as they sail around the world. The ship is a replica of the one on which Los Heroes fought and died in the Battle of Iquique against Peru during the War of the Pacific (against both Peru and Bolivia) in 1879.

Resentments still exist as Chile, with the aid of Great Britian, after having lost the battle won the war, and annexed a huge swath of coastline that belonged to the other two countries, taking away Bolivia's access to a seaport. At that time, nitrate was being exported from huge guano deposits in this area. Chile got the coast and the revenue from the nitrate. Chile has offered Bolivia rail access to use its ports, but Bolivia has declined. I have a norteamericana friend who moved to Bolivia with her husband about the same time we came here. I asked if they would ever consider Chile. She said no, her husband's family would never forgive them.











On the roof we had plenty of champagne (as demonstrated above by Susana) which unfortunately mixed with the sewage smells wafting off the ventilation system. If we were to be here next year, Susana tells us the place to be is in the streets where people dance all night long. Still, I enjoy smaller settings and was satisfied with the view we had of the whole bay and coastline, the feast we shared, and the way we finished our evening with quiet conversation on their balcony listening to the sounds of the city below. Norm and Charlene will be returning to Canada in two weeks; both Bill and I will miss sharing our adventures and misadventures as extranjeros here. We've made friends for life.



Charlene and me







Susana, Bill and I walked down Cerro Placeres, through the dusty plaza and the streets blowing our New Years horns, which elicited a spicy comment to my husband from an elderly senora sitting on her front steps . . . much of Chilean humor has a sexual base. We past parties set on other rooftops lit with fairy lights and vibrating with loud music. The ever

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This is our dear friend Susana. A summer goal is to translate her poems. As I wrote about in my last posting, there are challenges living in a different country but to leave wonderful people like her will be very difficult if we decide to go home. Susana is one of our hijas, along with another young woman named Pamela, whose family we hope to be staying with in another week or two down in the south in La Union. Susana bring trickster energy to us, amazes us in how she's learned English by watching TV, and also the way she can remember new words when we've only mentioned them once or twice. She loves history, wants to teach, and is a writer by nature. So . . . soon, I'll get to the poems and share them here.

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I love this photo my husband took of a sea cave along the beach in Quintero. It reminds me of an archetypal portal, a door leading from one reality to another. The sea can easily become a symbol of the life beyond, by which I don't mean beyond the grave . . . but beyond the day-to-day life, the special world we all go to when we are forced to grow in spirit, imagination, or even in the depths of love in the midst of crankiness or fear or stress.

Bill and I assume we'll go back home next summer (winter here . . . it gets so confusing sometimes to know how to reference the seasons.) I can have a job back in the Middletown Unified School District, not as a reading specialist, but more than likely a classroom elementary teacher. If we stay longer in Chile, I'm cutting the cord for good to employment in the U.S. The companies who run the Chilian pension system take an extraordinary amount of management fees, something we had no idea of when we first got here. Bottom line: retirement. We do fine with the day to day, but what about twenty years down the line?

There have been times I've wanted to run back home. Spanish is not coming fast or easy, though at the final talk by Miss Avril, St. Margaret's director, I understood practically every thing she said. But context is everything. I find that there are times things come out of my mouth I didn't know I knew, but then ten minutes later I can't ask for directions to the bathroom.

Dealing with anything that has to do with paperwork here feels crazy, though I suppose someone dealing with visas and bank accounts in the United States might feel the same. My visa here processed fairly quickly, but I'm sure it was because I had St. Margaret's behind me. One woman who works there told me her mother had to go 57 times to the Departmento de Extranjeros. Without the help of a friend, I'd given up getting my I.D. card processed. I was told to go to a wrong office of the International Police. When I got to the right one, my papers were filled out incorrectly. There was a long wait at the civil office to find out I had to go back to the police, more taxi rides, finding everyone at lunch at the police station (Vero banged on windows until someone came out to help us), and then back to the civil office just in time before the doors locked (at 2:00). My husband is having difficulty getting his visa processed because he took my last name. Right now, a copy of our marriage license is somewhere in limbo in northern California ready for it to be "legalized" by the Chilian Embasy in San Francisco.

Without Saint Margaret's help, I wouldn't have a bank account either. I'm not a permanent resident, so no bank would give me an account. I WANT TO GIVE YOU MY MONEY, I would say. They're weren't impressed. I was carrying nine thousand Chilian pesos home with me in my purse for two or three months, the equivalent of 2,000 dollars.

Getting Internet hook up at our new house was a similar spike in stress. The technician came out, couldn't find our place, wrote the wrong address down. We went back to the mall where we signed up but they wouldn't believe the address was different because . . . well, there it was on the official paperwork. We got through this with our duena's (landlady's) aid, but the address on our bill is still the neighbor's house, though somehow it gets put in the right mailbox.

Dogs on the street are everywhere. Many times I've had delightful encounters with them, but they're not always friendly. On Magdelena Paz, our passaje, there are three dogs that have adopted the street. We all feed them, and they're healthy and happy. Miel (Hon

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This is Maria Jose, better known as Miss Cote at St. Margaret's. Getting to know her in my first few weeks was a true blessing, as on our drives to school she clued me in to things like how to get photocopies done, shared her stories about getting lost in the giant school (more than once when I've gone up one too many set of stairs and found myself in the "out of bounds" area, I've thanked her in my mind for her story of doing the same thing), spoke of her own feelings of being overwhelmed with so many new faces and names. She also drove Bill and I around so that we found our first place here in Concon. I appreciate Cote's devotion to recycling, her cheerfulness, her love of teaching English, and envy her ability with languages (she speaks French, as well as English and Spanish).



When we moved to the place Cote helped us find, I thought I was in paradise for the first six weeks. The weather was still warm, and though we were in one room, we felt it was grand because the Pacific was just outside our window. We had a bed, dining table, and small kitchen, though I hesitate to use that word for it. We've discovered that a tiny stove, refrigerator and sink is called an American Kitchen, for some reason. The sink was so low, Bill had to do dishes on his knees. He's 5'8" and says that there are times in Chile he feels tall. The bathroom technically counted for a second room, I guess, though it was matchbox size. I loved writing looking out at the waves and watching the surfers at the beach. We'd sit on the roof and drink piscolas, made from pisco,a type of brandy made from grapes and cola,on Friday afternoons. Sunsets were . . . hmm . . . sitting here trying not to think of a cliche to describe them . . . so I won't. I'll just show a picture:



I'm grateful for having lived there because teaching in a new place, being the only non-Spanish speaking person on campus, wanting to prove I was worth the risk the school took hiring me . . . what can I say? It was stressful. I'd open our gate, walk down the steps and around the corner of our dueno's vacation house, step onto their patio which led to our place, and the sea would be there. The sound of the waves and the expanse of water was just what I needed to keep myself together.

Then winter came. The roof leaked. We'd have periodic floods underneath the door, the toilet started acting up. We'd often get rained on when we were using it, too. We were buffeted by wind and it got cold, despite the propane heater we bought. We kept the shades down because it kept the place warmer, so there wasn't much light.

Thanks to Rosemary, one of the inspectors at the school (an inspector is the assistant to the head teacher and someone who acts like a vice principal and takes care of a lot of the discipline issues), we found our new casita.



We were tempted to move to Valparaiso. We found a cool tri-level condo we almost took. The trip to work for me would be long, an hour on the bus each way during rush hour, but we thought having the chance to live surrounded by great atmosphere, living in a real city for the first time ever, might be worth it. Rosemary was dead set against it and started an Internet search for houses for rent. Valpo has a reputation of being un poco peligroso. The cerro that the condo was on could be viewed two ways: seedy or having a whole lot of character.

We were told by neighbors things would be fine as long as we weren't out late at night, but while we were walking around before the real estate lady came to let us view the place, a man spotted us from a hundred feet away; he could see we were norteamericanos from that distance. He was un poco boracho and started talking to us in English. "My f . . . name is Nixon Jimmy, and if you don't f. . . believe it, here's my identity card. My mother named me after your f . . . presidents because she wanted me to be strong. I used to live in f . . . New Jersey. Welcome to f . . . Chile." We told the lady we'd take the apartment, but the bus ride back to Concon seemed even longer and we both woke up the next morning with some anxiety.

We got up early, walked here (to Calle Magdelena Paz . . . I love the name of my street), saw it, fell in love, and called Rosemary to thank her. Had it not been for the bus ride and my having to come home latish on some nights from work, we still may have taken the apartment. New Canadian friends, Norm and Charlene, have found an apartment in Valpo in an area which they describe as "interesting;" a part of me still wanted to do the more Bohemian thing when I read their email last night.

Norm, Bill, me and Charlene


But, here I'm close to work, we still have a view of the sea, a beautiful garden area, nice neighbors. The main drawback is the cacophony of dogs that bark for hours from across the little canyon below us, but I think in time it'll just be background noise as I get used to it. Here's the garden:



Getting back to St. Margarets, it also took me some time to learn the British system, mixed with the requirements of the Chilean Department of Education. Grades are called "notes," they fall from 1 through 7, 7 being the highest grade, except no one is ever given a 1. The Infant School has playgroups for three-year olds, pre-kinder and kindergarten classes. Today the kindergarten girls did a tribute to Hollywood for an assembly for Teachers' Day. Six or seven of them were dressed as Charlie Chaplin, complete with canes and mustaches. They handed out caramel corn to the teachers before they did their dance. Some of the other girls did dances to Pretty Woman (which I thought was an interesting choice), Flashdance, and Footloose. The junior school is made up of grades 1-4, the middle school grades 5-8, and the senior school contains grades 9-12. Seniors are all the girls in senior school. First senior is equivalent to ninth grade, second senior is tenth, etc. Grades 1-8 are also called basicos, and the senior grades are also called medeos. The girls have 15 subjects with music, p.e., and religion teachers. Every day the schedule is different. I had to look at my time table (which is what they call the "schedule") every day for two months to figure out where I was going. There are playing fields for hockey below the school. Other British schools have their playing fields about ten miles north of Concon. And there are houses the students and teachers belong to, just like in Harry Potter. Ours are York, Lancaster, Stuart and Windsor. I haven't been officially told what house I'm in yet. During school week when there were competitions, I hung out with the Windsors.

Our hockey fields looking out to the ocean:

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