How does it feel to be on your own?

Right now, I am listening to the playlist my friend James posted on his blog. James has always had a special talent with mix tapes, and even more talent for naming them. I am in a strange mood tonight, kind of missing home in a lazy, uninspired way, and his soundtrack is the perfect backdrop for ruminations of this sort. Thanks James.

Tonight, it is true, I am bored in Chile. At some point in the last two months, I have become accustomed to the endlessly social Chilean way of life and used to the constant bustle of people in the house, to the point where I seem to have forgotten how to happily be alone. I never thought such a moment possible for me. Yesterday, Felipe returned to classes in Conce. My host mom has been gone since Friday on some sort of spiritual retreat. For one whole day, I have had the house to myself, with the exception of Zuni during the day today--a fact I would have celebrated at any other moment in my life, when I reveled in spending time alone.

This weekend felt like college again. The gringos and I went out and did a lot of drinking, spent Saturday hanging out around the house together, hung over and lazy, and stayed up late talking, giggling and eating junk food Saturday night. After so much time spent in the company of my new best pals and over two weeks of Felipe's constant companionship, the house feels that much more empty tonight. I ate onces by myself in front of the computer two nights in a row, and my meager cup of tea and hockey puck shaped bread was much less filling with only the company of the Modest Mouse and Blue Scholars videos I was watching on YouTube.

My video watching was fueled by a strange need for all things Seattle lately. Ashley sent me a package and it arrived last week. I felt so loved, and it was really fun opening the box and discovering the treasures that lay in wait for me. However, the combination of the new Death Cab for Cutie cd, a copy of The Stranger (the Seattle weekly, not the book), and some deliciously rich espresso-flavoured Seattle chocolate affected me in an unintended way...and I found myself missing home even more. The nature of such feelings is surprising to me...it is not a deep, aching melancholy, but just an irritatingly unsettled feeling. I can picture Seattle in summer right now, the views of the city from Alki beach, the perfect weather that is rarely too warm and simply comfortable, the pink glow of the sky at dusk. As I devoured The Stranger and read about preparations for Pride Week, and accounts of familiar neighborhoods, bars and restaurants, I can picture myself in these places, and the stark contrast of these images with the biting cold as I huddle next to the stove, my best friend right now in this empty house, exhausts me.

Part of my disappointment today can be attributed to the fact that I overslept this morning...my rigorous party schedule has reversed my sleep schedule, and I found at 2 p.m. last night I could not fall asleep...and after rushing off to school and scarfing down two hockey pucks with cheese on the way, I discovered the school still shut up tight, with an officer of the student body standing out front turning students and faculty away with promises that tomorrow there will be class.

I will believe it when I see it. For the last three weeks, my schedule has been affected by paro, the Chilean word for the education strike that started with the students and was carried through last week by the teachers. From what I can gather, they are protesting the law that unfairly allocates more funding to Chile's semi-private schools than it does to the public ones, which obviously only increases the sharp divide between rich and poor in this country. At first, I was pretty impressed with the organization it takes to call students to a national strike and actually have them follow through, coming from my two years working in an American high school and witnessing first hand American teenage apathy. However, I have since readjusted my impressions, as I see that for most of my students, paro means only the absence of class and the hassles of the classroom, and to be honest, it has been such for me as well. Although, now my school will not have a winter break, and so until I hear from my director, my $220 of bus tickets to the desert up north are in limbo. If all that gets accomplished by this paro is that I lose 200 bucks and my carefully planned trip to the desert oases, beaches, astronomical observatories, mines and ghost towns of Northern Chile, I am going to be pissed. It was a pretty phenomenal sight, walking home on the first day of protests and passing the Liceo de Niños. Three boys were perched above the concrete wall that separates the school grounds from the streets, resembling guards in a prison yard. During student protests, the students physically take over the schools and refuse to let faculty on the premises. The chainlink gate at Liceo de Niños was covered with desks and chairs whose legs had been woven through the links, creating an errie and foreboding impasse. I wish I'd had my camera.

I have been out of school so long, I have almost forgotten what it is like to teach. Today, I was struggling to reply to an email from one of my contacts in BioBio asking about my working conditions and responses. After so much time off, I feel very uninspired to trudge back into my classroom and struggle through lessons.

However, my current lifestyle is not sustainable. I have spent six of my last twelve nights in Chillan in some sort of pub or club. After an incident on Wednesday in which Felipe's coat was stolen, and some interactions with unsavory people on Friday, I find myself overcome by a sense of impending doom--enough is enough. And so, I grudgingly welcome the return of some sort of schedule in my life. It is for the best. Hopefully both my students and I can shake the fog of paro out of our heads and get to work.