Conveyance

Every good desk should bear the fruit of a good dictionary.

Today, my student told me I’m a good actress. (I think every teacher has to be.) He said this after I dramatically plopped down next to another student and asked her questions and feigned writing down her answers. I mean, how else do you convey the meaning of “interview”?

I admire my students, as I admire anyone who seeks to not only convey but also understand meaning outside their native language. There’s a dual process at work there, especially for beginners, who often have to take in the new language, translate it into their native language, re-translate it back into the new language they know, and then output a response. It’s exhausting.

When we receive our TEFL training, we’re taught to relieve some of this exhaustion by “conveying meaning” in advance, before the student stumbles upon the phrase or word in a reading or audio clip. We can’t do this with every word, of course, but we can predict and pre-teach the especially challenging bits. I’ve written about the objectives of the ESL teacher before, but I continue to be fascinated by this idea of “conveying meaning” because it also seems to be the root of all communication. You and me sit down over coffee. We share the same language. We’re still trying to convey the meaning of a story from work, experience abroad, or the cringe-worthy details of a disastrous date. The story might gain or lose much simply in the process of being re-told. 

It’s also what we do each day for those of us who social network. I read yesterday that Chile is ranked FIFTH in the world for logging daily hours conveying meaning online. That’s impressive for a country of some 17 million people. The author says Chile’s stat is part of a larger implication–“that Latin Americans spend more time on social networking than any other online activity.” There must be a whole lot of conveying meaning going on! It must also be part of the essence of our humanity, even if we are holed up at our separate computer screens. Because none of it really means as much if we aren’t also witness to each other’s lives.

In addition to “interview,” I also taught my students “translate,” “interpreter,” “article,” and “hometown.” The vocabulary all tied into the reading assignment for the day, but it also all seems to intersect with life in general these days, as I slip into nostalgia for home, as I interpret/translate the world around me and my place in it, as I figure out a way to package it all up into some kind of article from which you all can derive your own meanings.

So what about the curious origins of this word I can’t let go of today–convey. First, a moment on my soap box. I’m a firm believer in having a good, hefty, PRINT dictionary on hand, no matter your language(s). I’m fortunate to be the proud owner of a lovely one–Webster’s Eleventh, mustard-leather-bound, scallop-edged, with kaleidoscope endpapers and gold-embossed with my maiden name, which I’ve kept as my byline so that everything I have, do, and will publish in this world bears the name I claimed at 18. That’s just as important to me as it is to also legally share a family name with my husband. (Plus, publishing has a long-standing history with the nom de plume so fortunately mine is a career that lets you have your cake and eat it, too.) 

My first boss gifted it to me when I decided to say goodbye to assisting Manhattan magazine publishing and return home to California to edit a regional publication. He is a brilliant writer and someone who continues to teach me lessons about editing the longer I work and write. I was all of 24 when I left New York. It’s taken years to absorb and use much of what I gathered from observing a well-oiled machine like that magazine and its staff work and work and work.

I’ve taken his lead. When I was a full-fledged magazine editor, and when a bright, young intern moved on in her own career, my colleague and I gifted her a red, hardbound dictionary. I delight when she tells me she still has it and still uses it, just as I recently told my former boss that I was here, writing in Chile, looking up words in a dictionary he gave me over seven years ago. 

So, back to convey. Did you know it comes from Middle English’s conveer, which means “to accompany, escort”? I love that image! Teachers accompanying meaning. The meaning is all important, after all. We are simply the mode of transport. I literally carry meaning from one place to another and shine enough light on it for my students to understand. All of convey’s many meanings (pun intended) are fascinating (to my grammar geek’s mind anyhow):

“
1. lead, conduct
2. to bear from one place to another
3. to impart or communicate by statement, suggestion, gesture, or appearance (This, hands down, is the  best sound-bite job description of the ESL teacher I’ve found yet)
4. to carry away secretly (Oh, my!)
5. to transfer or deliver (as property) to another esp. by a sealed writing (So suspenseful, this dictionary is!!)
6. to cause to pass from one place or person to another.
“
[“Convey.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. 2004]

We could wander further into this etymology until we arrive at conveyance or conveyor or even conveyorize! But for now, I’ll sign off with the hope that I’ve conducted, imparted, transferred, and delivered some sort of valuable meaning to you, dear reader. And why not take a little peek at the dictionary today? It’s a fascinating read.

Our First Dieciocho

Chile’s red, white, and blue.

Feliz 18, Chile! It wasn’t too long ago that I knew little more about 9/18 except that the date (the week, the month…) celebrated Chilean Independence and has been the country’s biggest holiday going for the past 201 years. After heading out to our first fondas, I may only have an observer’s knowledge to add, but what a feast of images my loot includes: kites, every kind of meat you can skewer, chupallas (Chilean cowboy hats), camping tents for those committed to making a day of it, sweet drinks, farm animals, flags, games (my favorite was like ring toss, except the bottle was wine or pisco and you got to keep it if you won–but I didn’t see anyone win), and nearly every imaginable toy and object you can lay on a blanket and hawk, from dolls to calendars to pins to scarves to puppets to shoes to sunglasses to all sorts of “dieciocho” realia.

This hat maker was more than happy to don
his own chupalla for us. 
For our first dieciocho together, Ryan and I decided to stay in the city and both enjoy the quiet, as many Santiaguiños take advantage of the long holiday weekend and flee, and check out our first fondas taking place throughout the city. The fonda, a festival or sorts, can be held in any of Santiago’s spacious city parks or on a smaller family-scale at home. You’ll want to compare the public ones to state fairs or 4th of July celebrations back in the States. They both share a propensity for carnaval food, livestock on display, and rides for the kids. But from the colorful clothes to the professional cowboys to the sheer volume of grilling going on, a Chilean fonda shouldn’t be compared to anything else. 
Four-footed friends galore!

On Saturday, for our very first fonda, we appropriately joined two of our very first friends in Santiago, Emily and Rodolfo, who kindly invited us to check out XVII Semana de la Chilenidad, one neighborhood over in La Reina, which we learned is just about as far east as you can travel without starting to head straight up the Andes. This was a class-act fonda, complete with costumed equestrians, elegant tango in the dirt, a stagecoach show, a full-fledged rodeo, and an expo filled to the brim with artisanal mustards, honey, jams, wine, hot sauce, cheeses, and just about anything else you can cultivate. We saw every military vehicle Chile has to offer, from helicopters to vintage police cars, but nothing could beat the skydiving performance by paratroopers of the Fuerza Aérea de Chile, FACH (Chile’s Air Force). They appeared to come out of nowhere and landed one after another to fanfare below.
We saw sheep, cows, chickens, piglets, and horses galore. We ate meat on a stick, drank two classic Chile beverages that Emily kindly repeated the name of a good half-a-dozen times so I wouldn’t forget: chicha (an incredible slightly effervescent drink comprised of fermented grapes), and terremoto (a.k.a. an “earthquake” since just one–comprised of some more sweet fermented wine, pisco, sugar, and topped off with pineapple ice cream for good measure–can leave you a litte shaky in the knees. The follow-up drink is appropriately called an “aftershock.”) 
Cheers to our first chichas.
And who knew chicha was just what you wanted to wash down anticuchos. Our choice skewers were grilled right before our eyes.
And our first antichuros.
Yesterday, newbies as we are, Ryan was kind enough to take me back to Parque O’Higgins, where he watched the bicentennial celebration last year. This year, the park–the second largest in the city–was a kite-filled free-for-all kind of fonda. We were apparently a day early for the parade (where the President usually makes an appearance), but I think that was for the best given the crowds we dealt with just getting on and off the metro. My favorite part by far were the colorful kites skipping through the air. 
The open field had just enough springtime wind to send hundreds, maybe thousands, of these plastic and paper fliers far above our heads. They created an audible rustle and a visual dance that was a nice change of pace from the fonda’s frenzy. Their white strings criss-crossed our path both above and below, as lost lines scattered over the ground like snail tracks. Many of these flying birds and flags and planes and simple diamonds of color ended up tangled in tree branches. For some reason, these entanglements captivated me more than any of the other attractions. It seemed such a common destiny for the plentiful kites that children didn’t do much more than throw their empty hands up in the air when one of theirs went wayward for good, like a baseball over a far fence.
Though there was this guy, who tried to save the day…
And today we only had to stroll to our very own street corner to take in a proper dieciocho parade, complete with Chilean Military in lined formation, marching bands, and what looked like throngs and throngs more waiting to march up Apoquindo, which on any other day of the year is a four-lane boulevard, but today was wide open for a few hours for all to enjoy.

Since we live just before the parade’s final destination at Escuela Militar, Ryan and I heard the procession coming through our open windows, and I can still here the base drums and snares and horns and cheers all on parade.

After two days of exploring fondas far and wide across Santiago, we’re cooking dinner with a full-blown dieciocho parade going right past our house. Gotta love it. And with one dieciocho down, we do.

Hold the Phone

Today, I gave up a little bit. There, I said it. I’ve written it actually. I haven’t said it out loud, but I’m getting close. The defeating act in question is not a tragedy. Quite simply, my phone was stolen. I could leave it at that, as that’s pretty much the whole story, but there’s a part of me that feels the need to retell, look for clues, give fair warning, and simply validate. The last time I saw this happen, I also came home and blogged about it. In detail. And it hadn’t even happened to me. I did so because you still want evidence after a violation. You want solidarity. You don’t want self-pity to win.

 

Some pics from the Plaza de Armas here in
Santiago. Their inclusion will soon make sense.

Once again, I’m phoneless, just like my first two months here. I’m without a lifeline to my husband and without the peripersonal space that is a phone at the end of an arm, secure in a hand–at least to significant portions of modern-day society. I know, it’s only a phone. Thankfully, the thief didn’t make off with my bag or my wallet. My person is one hundred percent intact and safe. But I did have my property stolen out of my dress pocket, which is deep enough and so well folded into puddles of magenta fabric that one might not even guess this dress has pockets! Except that when I was standing on the metro platform, I was using the phone to call my husband to ask where I needed to transfer to get to the Plaza de Armas… (Yes, I have a metro map… on my computer. Not much help when plans change midstream and you have to book it to see a man about a visa.)

 

 

Quick side note: Just so we’re clear, I do know better. Everyone told me to buy the cheap phone. Everyone has warned me about the pick-pocketers. But then I got royally lost and wanted to be able to connect if I ever had to (we know I’ve developed a new appreciation for technology now that my life is divided between people 6,000 miles away and a new city of 6 million). So I didn’t break the bank or anything, but I bought the nice-ish one with email and internet capability so I would have access to maps and things to help me get from A to B. And, see, I have to get a pre-paid phone (which makes a nice-ish phone cost even more) as I can’t secure a calling plan here in Chile without a finalized visa or bank account (that too is harder to secure than one might think, especially for a woman… don’t get me started). But, see, the pre-paid phones will devour your minutes whenever you’re not on a wireless network. So, see, I still occasionally call my husband when I got lost.

 

Okay, back to the transfer. Thanks to Ryan, I sorted out where I needed to go, slipped my phone into my pocket, and boarded a very crowded train car. Ever since witnessing those two friends get robbed on two consecutive days, I’ve been vigilant. So, I actually thought about the phone, thought about moving it to my backpack, but the car was crowded, I was changing lines soon, maybe it was even safer where it was, folded into folds.

 

Well, clearly, those folds made it impossible for me to feel the sleight-of-hand. Was someone watching while we were still on the platform? (My best guess.) Or was someone just slick enough to test the weight of my pocket and slip in and out in all of two metro stops? Either way, I had trusted the nerve endings of my own person to warn me of such thievery. Is the answer to no longer trust myself? Maybe, maybe not. The answer is probably just to buy the cheapest phone I can find. The answer is that the straightest line between two points can really be a straight line. Occam’s razor holds.

 

As I hear about more and more of my girlfriends being robbed, I’ve had a feeling I could be next. There’s no way I could eat a meal on two days with two girls who were both robbed and not wait for the other shoe to drop. But you let your guard down for one moment, and they’ve got you. Now as I think more about it, I don’t know one male friend or colleague who has told me a similar story of on-the-street petty crime. I’m sure they’ll tell me now if they have. But I know personally four women who have been robbed in recent months. I’m just saying those are interesting odds that lead me to believe they’re not odds at all, but a realization that despite everything we as women can do, we are still targeted.

 

In the moment, I couldn’t do much more than shrug, admit I’d been had, pick-pocketed by one of Santiago’s prolific and stealth Artful Dodgers. Nevermind that he/she had photos of a work life on the move throughout this city, the names and numbers of the whole dozen or so people I know here, and a way (until I got home two hours later) to log in directly to my personal email. Though I know that’s not what he/she was after. I know it was just an easy get. A phone. To use or to sell. Nothing more. But it’s still a violation. A stranger on a packed metro car knows infinitely more about me than I ever will of him or her. So I did all I could do… stay calm and exit the metro, armed only with my paper map of the Plaza de Armas and its surrounding streets. Ryan and I came to the plaza a year ago, during that first month I stepped foot in Chile. I was so victorious that day:

 

But apparently I cannot read maps. Apparently, I almost always walk the wrong way before I walk the right way. I had actually headed in the right direction today; I just didn’t know it yet (so I may as well have been heading the wrong way). I looked up and must have given off an expression with just enough confusion and inclination to give up altogether that, amid the hustle of the plaza, another stranger emerged, I dare to say “magically.” He had soft eyes and an old soul to match his physical age. A cane. A yellow bow tie even! Imagine! A sweater tucked underneath a blazer. I don’t know exactly what he asked me, except that it was said with kindness.

 

“Necessito Santo Domingo.” … “A la derecha?” … “Muchas gracias.”

 

A simple, efficient conversation that I only remember my side of as new Spanish still washes over me like rain. But all the same, this man and his bow tie were a much-needed reminder that we can find kindness and civility where we find violation. Just enough kindness and civility not to give up out loud.

 

Connecting with ProfeConnect

I recently wrote about the lovely (and growing) coterie of expat bloggers I’ve crossed paths with of late (I also owe Twitter a special thank-you for that). I spotlighted ProfeConnect, a wonderful new resource connecting English teachers and students. Well, I also owe technological serendipity for the opportunity the site’s founders have given me to share even more about my first impressions of the Southern Hemisphere–of life by the Andes, of the nerves and joys of my first days in the classroom, as well as the details of my foray into TEFL certification.

The first of three posts went up today on the site! Be sure to check it out and show ProfeConnect the love. The beautiful photography is by none other than the seriously gifted Kyle Hepp! She makes everything so much prettier.

To recap a bit more of the back story, I met one of ProfeConnect’s founders via the manic email-and-tweeting-networking and professional-organization-joining I dedicated myself to pretty much full-time when I landed in Chile three months ago. But the other co-founder happened to stumble upon my blog the very same week. How does this awesomeness happen?! (Let’s not forget that I met the aforementioned Kyle all of a week and a half ago and now have the honor of sharing the page with her.)

I love that the gifts of technology, and the often solitary nature of its use, haven’t taken away that “look who I bumped into at the market” feeling you get when you connect the online dots: “Wait, she works with her? She writes for them? You know her, too? That’s your blog?! That’s her photography?” If anything, technology and an exponential ability to broadcast our thoughts to audiences far and wide has made it so that these serendipitous moments can happen at our very desks over a solo cup of coffee and a few dozen new tweets to refresh.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the surprise run-ins at the bookstore, the ways of the Universe that made it so Jack Hutcheson could snap the photo above literally ten minutes before SF’s National Park Service cut away that tree limb we ran around a dozen or so times on the December morning we got married, and the split second decisions that are sometimes in our control (should I stay or should I go?) and sometimes aren’t (the light turned green), but that nevertheless change the course of our lives in exciting, daunting, inspiring ways. But that thrill of discovery is so similar, as is that unmistakable sense that things just couldn’t-have-happened-at-any-other-time-or-any-other-way (or they could have, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as cool). It all goes back to looking for ways to connect–be it social networking or superimposing the events in our lives in interesting ways. Nowadays, we’re just finding that connection virtually as much as we are in person.

What’s happened to you lately that’s made you wonder just how this fair Universe of ours really works? Whether you call it luck or chance or fate or coincidence or kismet or simply life (with so many words for the same phenomenon, it’s clear it’s something to be pondered), how did the rules bend or break so that you could make the train on time? Or miss it and make a new friend instead? What tree limbs did you capture just in the nick of time?

While you’re pondering, I hope you enjoy the guest blog, ProfeConnect, and all the happy serendipities in your life of late.

***UPDATE: Here are Parts II and III as well!

The Girl Who Moved to Chile and Didn’t Learn Spanish?!

Nearly everyone I talk to back home says I’ll “pick up Spanish,” as if the new language is like an empanada from down the street or a pencil dropped on the floor. Spanish speakers tell me this. Non-Spanish speakers tell me this. They say it to be reassuring, as I’m pretty straightforward about the “muy mal” nature of my foreign language abilities.

I see the signs everywhere.

A quick recap… See, I took Latin in high school. I love that if nothing else, I can say “I took Latin in high school,” and all four years mind you. It helped with my SATs and yes, some part of me probably did want to be a doctor though I knew I didn’t have what it took to brave the world of medicine. Last night we were watching Iron Man 2, and there’s a scene where Scarlett Johansson’s character spouts off something witty and sarcastic in Latin to Robert Downey, Jr. I can’t do that. But I can say “Graecia in Europa est.” Or, “Greece is in Europe,” as I’m sure you can “pick up.” It’s the very first sentence I ever learned as a freshman, and it’s the one that’s stuck. Even after eventually translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Virgil’s Aeneid.

In college, I switched things up and took two years of Italian. I’m Italian. I wanted to study abroad in Italy. Case closed. Well, I ended up going abroad to London, so even though I vaguely remember an Italian final sophomore year where I, gasp, carried on a conversation for an entire ten minutes, I can still only recognize it in print sometimes. That is, as I’ve said, until I moved to Chile, where suddenly long-lost Italian vocabulary finds its way out my mouth whenever I try to speak Spanish. Usually it amounts to an incomprehensible Italian/Spanish hybrid. I did so just this week when asking the price of the aforementioned empanadas by saying “Quanto cuesta?” Direct translation: “How much” (in Italian) + “slope” (Spanish) + interrogative intonation (also universal for “confused”). Oh dear. And, yes, the pronunciation and the grammatical aspects of Spanish and Italian are very similar, so that at least helps. If I can just forget my Italian vocab and swap in Spanish! I have such respect for the folks who acquire not just one, but multiple languages. Where do all those vocabularies go?!

Snapped in Mendoza, Argentina.

Last semester in TESOL, we learned that the best time for language acquisition is 0-8 months, or at least anytime before puberty hits, which is right about when most foreign language programs get going in U.S. school systems (if you’re lucky). Age 13 or so is when all of our hibitions and anxieties also start to kick in, after all, so it’s pretty much the worst time to put yourself out on a ridiculous limb, as is often required when conversing in a non-native tongue.

Either way, I missed the boat with Spanish. I have gotten a lot of the “Oh, you’re from California? You must know Spanish.” Yeah… To that I just say I did take it at my public middle school. Case in point, all I really remember from those years are two most excellent songs, one for the days of the week and another for counting to twenty. I could sing them right now, but I’ll spare you. They are, however, so engrained in my brain that I sometimes have to sing along in my head to sixteen, say, before I can speak the right number aloud. I know, it’s a gift.

Truly. Punta de Lobos, Chile

I also know I’ve only been here three months. In that time, I’ve managed to physically move to Chile, get down to the business of blogging, get TEFL certified, get a job, officially finish the first draft of my novel, and make some awesome new friends. Ryan and I even fit in a quick trip to Mendoza. All good, fortunate, productive stuff that’s given me a lot to write about. Except for the thing about not really learning much Spanish. I did take a week’s worth of lessons before my TEFL course started. I placed in “high beginner,” so I ended up with a course book that was far beyond my actual level, and my lovely, kind, patient teacher didn’t realize until Friday that I should have started at the very beginning. As an English teacher, I now know that “high beginners” can also be known as “false beginners.” In other words, for whatever reason, they have been exposed to and have absorbed enough of the target language to recognize correct answers, but not to really know the reasoning behind them (or the meaning of the rest of the sentence they appear in for that matter). In other words, they guessed well on a placement test and now it’s up to the teacher to re-align the coursework with their skill set.

So, I’m a false beginner. And depending on how much I “pick up,” one of my biggest fears is that I’ll be The Girl Who Move to Chile and Didn’t Learn Spanish. Let’s hope not. Take lessons, you say? Have a weekly coffee with a Spanish speaker looking to improve his/her English? Fine ideas. The only problem is Spanish classes actually cost more per hour than what I make as a beginning English teacher, so it’s hard for me to justify that at this point. Secondly, I think this would be an unfair coffee talk given my “muy mal” skill level. To find someone at a comparable level would probably equate to a lot of mutual nodding and/or confused stares out the window next to us.

Some more Español.

In the meantime, I’ll pick it up. (I’m holding everyone to that promise!) I’ll pay attention. I’ll keep reaching for the Spanish dictionary on our bookshelf. I will study more. But it’s so amazing to be in a place and at an age where I’ve finally cracked the code and have found a way to write everyday or close to it. With lesson prep and family life and all the rest, I keep procrastinating that “Spanish for Dummies” textbook (no joke and it’s not all that bad) under said dictionary. But I’m finally not procrastinating the writing (in English) and, feeling a little victorious about that, I might still procrastinate the Spanish. Just for a little while longer. And don’t worry. I can get by. Just don’t ask me any follow-up questions. At least not yet. Plus, it makes me feel a bit better that many of the semi-permanent expats I’ve asked have said it took three years to really feel like they could communicate freely, nail Chile’s notorious slang, and keep up with the conversational speed of multiple speakers. Not three months in other words.