I'm baaaaack

Back in Santigasco, finally! As they say, it was good to get away, but it can be better to get back (please say I'm slightly more eloquent than dear George W. Bush..."They have a saying in Tenneessee, well actually in Texas, but I'm sure they say it here: Fool me once..." Thank you Michael Moore for finding some of the best horrible Bush quotes).
Since I missed orientation and the first week of classes, I need to spend a few minutes orienting myself at La Chile for the new semester, like registering classes and figuring out where the hell to go on Monday...So I'll try to work on my stories over the weekend (if I get through moving across town), but until then (if this doesn't make you too dizzy), here's what I wrote the night before I left for Peru:

domingo 18 julio 2004 Last-Minute Freaking Out

Argh. Had a little bit too much fun last night and have a subtle yet persistent headache.
Would you believe I spent something like five hours at an Internet café yesterday, doing research about the vacation that I (or somebody!) should have done a month ago…So we had a little emergency meeting to assess the possibility of hiking the Inca Trail. Can you count the number of times the vacation has changed form over the past few weeks? It’s making me dizzy. The rules to protect the trail are obviously incredibly important, but it makes it very hard for anyone on a budget to get to see the ruins along the Inca Trail. Practically the only way to do the classic four-day hike involves a super-expensive tour (including tent, food, and porters for cooking and hauling your over-packed sack), and the tours are solidly booked during the (northern) summer months.
So the latest on our plans is that we’re going to Perú on faith that we can see stuff, assuming that we can do a two-day hike to the main ruins at Machu Picchu. Hopefully we’ll do other backpacking on this trip, because we were more than prepared for that.
Anyway, after the little meeting, Andrés took a few of us to this bar by his house in Ñuñoa that features a film theme. Even though we got there early (9:30ish), it was still one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to. Not only were they showing very hip music videos on the wall, but great movie posters graced the walls, and of course all the drinks were inspired by film. Crazy cocktails like Amélie, Blade Runner, The Godfather, and Clockwork Orange—I wish I could tell you what was in them all, but I’m not very good at that. Fortunately or unfortunately, Happy Hour went until 10, so we all got two-for-one! I didn’t think about the fact that I would therefore have to drink two of these absurd creations until after I ordered, but it turned out ok because they were delicious (I had a Planter’s Punch and Azul Profundo), and I had a great conversation with Lelia about sexism and language and ID politics. Yeah, gotta love those drunken political debates…
I realize this probably sounds like the beginning of one of those boring stories about the dumb college kids who go abroad just to get drunk and have promiscuous sexual encounters. So I’ll spare you the sordid details (of which there are few, but I like to insinuate that this is all very interesting) except to say that after that, we ended up in Las Condes again, this time at a house party on the 18th floor of a posh apartment building (beautiful view). My favorite part of the night was downloading music on the woman’s computer and dancing to Le Tigre on the balcony.
Anyway, that is all to explain why my head hurts today. Won’t be doing that to myself again anytime soon though.
Woke up at noon today to meet friends in El Centro to find this punk-rock flea market along the Río Mapocho. This is the part that deserves some attention. I guess we got there kind of early, because there were only a dozen vendors (punks and other assorted hipsters with sheets on the ground where they showed off their wares, which included some of the coolest clothes I’ve ever seen, including loads of really nice hand-made stuff) set up. They kept coming, so that by 2pm, there were vendors all along the sidewalk on a bridge and along the dirt patches on Santa Lucía, paralleling the river (can I just say how totally cute they were? heavenly). By 3, they swelled so big that they spilled out on the other, nicer, side of the river (complete with grass and real sidewalk). At that point, all the hippy-core punks were selling these wonderful vegan burgers and cookies and other treats. Superb.
The real excitement didn’t start until 3:30, though, because that’s when the caribineros (cops, but part of the military) showed up and started roughing up the vendors on the nice side and rounding them up into their creepy-looking vans. It was pretty ugly, and I had to wonder why they wasted their time trying to wreck the party (it seems that it’s illegal to sit on the ground on one side of the street, but perfectly ok on the side of the river that is not intended for sitting). I wasn’t able to ascertain if that crackdown happens every week (the market is every Sunday afternoon), but people seemed pretty freaked out for awhile, and then the ones that escaped the roundup just set up in a different spot. By then, all the anarchists had shown up, and I found out a bit about that scene in Santiago. There’s loads of stuff going on, and it seems that they use that market space to spread the word. Where are the reds though? I have yet to see them out selling their papers and rallying the masses, but I’m sure I will when classes start.
I finally talked to my host mom about what happens when I get back from the trip, too, which I had been kind of nervous about. But she was really nice about it and didn’t try to guilt-trip me or anything. She’s really sweet, but I’m not digging the family scene and am looking forward to living someplace I can more accurately call my home. People have found lots of living situations, but I have to say I’m crossing my fingers for luck that there’s a spot in one of the good Residentiales when I get back…Yeah, coming back, classes starting, and moving. Fun.
Hoping I can post this before I leave for the grand adventure, but we’ll see. I’m actually kind of nervous about the trip and hoping we can make the best of the situation. I’m so not used to traveling like this, but I guess that’s the way to do it in South America…I keep thinking about how fragile life is and how careful I have to be when I go to Perú and Bolivia, to respect the cultures and stay alive. Both can be hard to accomplish when traveling with 11 gringos to one of the most amazing archeological sites in the world…