on thursday.

A couple of days ago, I was showing one of my student's dictionary.com's cool word pronunciation feature. I chose Thursday. One path led to another, as paths always do. And I discovered that our beloved and often difficult-to-pronounce Thursday comes from Thor's day. As in the hammer-wielding Norse god of thunder, Thor. In fact, the days Tuesday-Friday (in English) all have their roots in Norse gods. Although the origins are different, both Monday and lunes (in Spanish) take after the moon. Friday and viernes (in Spanish) honor love: Freya or Frigg--the Norse goddess of married love and fertility--and Venus--the Roman goddess of love and beauty--respectively. This may not be anything new to many of you, but it's today's cool tidbit for me.

Now that it's past 9 p.m., and I'm barely starting to feel alive to the world. I have felt horribly under the weather all day, just exhausted more than anything else. I'm not sick, but I'm not chipper either. This morning my plan was to try out a new yoga class and then I had a running date. I woke up and ate a little breakfast early enough to have an hour without feeding myself before yoga. But I just couldn't even stay upright. The bed beckoned me back to it, this is after already sleeping nearly 9 hours. I read, got up and ate some yummy red lentil soup that Serkan made, and finally went back to sleep until nearly 5 p.m. At which point, Serkan asked if I still wanted to go for a run. We got ready fast, since the sun had just set, and went for a little run together. Afterward, I practiced my own abbreviated yoga routine. Without fail this makes me feel better. I can actually feel the physical space created within me. I can breathe better and live closer to grace. (Something I've been thinking a lot about lately.)

Serkan and I don't go together often, but I like when we do. This year I need motivation! Last year, I was training for the Ushuaia (fin del mundo) marathon with a friend. It was to be my second marathon. After my first, the desire to run another never picked up. But that's because of a sad streak in my life, battles, poems, and difficulties. Of course, that bump in the road, was also what got me traveling, picking up and moving, meeting my amazing life partner and best friend, so it's not all bad.

Anyway, last year we ran up to 20 miles before we discovered the race was canceled. I was the ra-ra part of the team, snow or rain or shine, vamos! At the end both Bill, my running partner, and I were suffering from minor running injuries, and ignoring them. I think I'd even (in an unrelated incident) broken a tiny bone in my foot. We tapered our training with the knowledge that the cancellation. Then Serkan and I traveled to Turkey and through Eastern Europe for a few months.

Upon my return to Patagonia, I'd had big hopes for training. But nothing ever really materialized. I still ran quite a bit, but short runs and not nearly as regularly. Bill still calls me Coach, which is sweet. But he's the one who keeps up his training. Go you!!! Me, who knows what I need: a kick in the arse from Thor.

 

12th century tapestry representing Thor

in between Odin (Wednesday) and Frigg (Friday).

Happy Thursday!

postcards fade to blue.

This afternoon I'm in a tall hot pink hostel, two stories of corrugated tin siding, typical of most buildings in Natales. I'm waiting for my students to show up. Well, not waiting, enjoying. Sitting in a plush velvety seat to take a wee rest while I scan, again, the huge postcard collection here.

Perhaps there are hundreds of postcards here, rows hanging from ceiling to floor, shoddily stapled together. They dangle against a backdrop of a blue and yellow painted wall, the colors split by a strip of wallpaper border. Giant full-lipped suns intersperse cherub-faced crescent moons looking down beatifically at the yellow stars and one audaciously ringed Saturn, patterned over and over.

Over and over the past few weeks, I've come to realize the blueness of postcards. Predominantly. I'm not sure if it's due to sun bleaching, time, an obsession with sky, the lasting nature of blue or something about the postcard industry's azure draw.

Sure, there's the odd red and white Canadian flag; an Ohio triptych within a red & white frame flaunting old barns; the mauve-blue of D.C. lit up at dusk; a rainbowed 1980s thank you!; one of the royal couples wearing red and black; citrus sunsets; a concrete Hamburg from above (framed again in red & white); Holland: red poppies, orange horizons, blue-green A frames, white & black windmills, yellow "traditional dress," and happy cows chewing their cud in green pastures; Vienese gothic cathedrals and brown bakery goods. Grenoble, San Francisco, Australian koalas, so many Patagonias and Antarcticas, Berlins, Brazils, Wales, La Paz & Hong Kong, the Blue Angels, Stockholm, the Taj Majal and Catalina Island--all doused in a prevailing blue.

It's been about 40 minutes, today's class a no-go. But I sense a postcard exchange on the horizon. Mail here is slow and has been unreliable in the past. But nothing's been lost for a while, and the idea of sending and receiving mail throughout this bitter cold (for me!) winter warms my heart. Funny, just today I also stumbled across The Benevolent Postcard Society, a little too late, but what a beautiful idea!

So, send me your address, even if you think I already have it! xoxo

oh, beautiful cello, beautiful morning.

This morning, in our heated and currently sunlit living room, I'm waiting for my students to arrive. I'm listening to Bach's Cello Suites (in case anybody does show), as classical music is supposed to aid in learning and info retention.

I've been teaching English classes to two groups of hostel and other small-business owners. My good friend Laura, who teaches ESL for a living has given me lots of tips. I've been able to use some of them, but because of the odd grouping of people and level of interest, it's hard to get a good routine going. The groups are small, and sometimes nobody shows up at all.

It's a pretty unnatural situation, because the students are only taking the classes to earn a grant from the government. The process requires that they receive training/take classes in the areas of their choosing. And although my students have chosen to learn English, they don't really want to. Well, at least not the majority of my first class. One has even told me on numerous occasions that she essentially has no desire to learn and is only participating in the courses in order to get plata (dinero) from the government.

Needless to say, these sessions can be disheartening and raucous. Often the students just don't show up. My morning class was in one of the hostel-owners hostels, but it has recently, for various reasons that don't have anything to do with me, moved to our house. I didn't make this decision, but I am definitely benefiting from it. I can be warm, teach without wearing my puffy jacket, and when nobody shows for the first hour of class (each class is a whopping three hours long), at least I can still work and be productive in some other capacity, instead of just shivering and waiting. Plus in the end, each student is only required to complete 50% of the coursework or hours attended. No es nada. So, after this week, only the people who have missed several classes already, will have to continue coming to class, and most of the morning group plans to complete the bare minimum as far as I can tell.

In nicer news, the second group of students have more ganas to learn. They attend classes more regularly, so I can actually do fun things with them. We've drawn self-portraits and baked chocolate chip cookies (in English) and had a blast doing it. When you have three hours to fill, something has to be creative about it.

kneaded, rolled, buttered, cut, snailed, blossomed & frosted.

Dawn's battering of wind has broken the typical weather pattern of the last week. The constant winter cold crisps the morning grass, but there is still no snow. Locals say it's not as cold as it usually is this time of year. Morning's have been sunny, calm, windless. By afternoon the wind picks up, a storm rolls in and the rain pours down throughout the night. This morning, when I walk to the corner market to buy eggs and powdered sugar, a fine icy snow blows against my puffy jacket.

I have had a cinnamon craving for a few days now. The cinnamon & sugar-filled baked banana we ate the other night didn't completely sate it. Because, what I really want are my dad's cinnamon rolls. So, today will be my first attempt at baking cinnabon-style rolls from scratch. Serkan has been taking some photos to  document my progress...

I even talked to my dad and brother on Skype conference call somewhere in between. We make a fine triangle across the earth, me at the end/bottom of it, Dad in Wisconsin, and crazy Earon in Iraq, plunging up the dough plumbing. No need to worry. Aside from overworking himself with 12+ hour days/ 8 days a week, he is safe and basically stuck (safely) in one place. He plans to be there a year, and I'm trying to get him to leave early and visit us in Chile! That is, if we're still down here.

Earon said that to make them like Dad, I would have to use a whole lotta butter. And a whole lotta sugar. I'm sure I used less butter than I "should" have, but I still tried not to skimp on it too much. In fact, here I am using extra butter. 

 

knifing the cinnamon worm.

 

snailing atop butter.

orange-zested cream cheese frosting goodness.

labyrinths & lupines & thanks

This morning, with sun and nothing pressing to do, I looked up information on creating labyrinths. While tracing or planting our own labyrinth is not the most practical of things for us to do, especially outdoors and in this pretty bad and typically cold weather, it is something I want to create one day.

Lately I’ve been reading, hearing, overhearing or witnessing people tell one another: That is so you! Sometimes this is addressed to me, other times it’s something general and in the air… I’ve been wondering what this means with more intensity recently, because I haven’t really been feeling like myself. I wonder what that even means? Who am I, really? And who are you? And are we really different?

Instead of identifying, and thus strongly attaching, ourselves to certain ephemera: interests, likes, personality traits, states of being, etc., aren’t we supposed to be trying to transcend all this stuff? I imagine a lot of people may disagree with such a view and decide it kind of airy. But what I mean is, the more names, designations and identity traits we tape to ourselves, the more bound we are to things that don’t really matter… not in the end. (Here I imagine someone completely wrapped up in duct tape of varying colors and snug beneath pieces of paper with lots of nouns and adjectives—no verbs, unable to move.)

The more we try to differentiate ourselves from and disown each other, the further we get from the truth. Which lies, I believe, somewhere more in the realm of union. We like bad news and gory details, mostly because we are capable of such things. We like to complain or talk smack, because we prefer to distance ourselves from certain people, behaviors and ways of living. But all that really does is sow negativity seeds into our hearts. The seeds, of course, work as magnets, so we end up attracting exactly what we claim to abhor (or at least dislike).

How we label ourselves happens consciously and subconsciously, and we tend to make the labels negative or positive, instead of accepting ourselves and the things around us as they are. In this way, even the “positive” carries an implied “negative” charge with it.

So what does this have to do with me not feeling myself. There’s something bluer these days and so much more earthbound. I’ve been feeling frustrated lately, and fighting against this frustration instead of… well, embracing it as the fleeting thing that it is. Everyone feels sad or far away or discombobulated or aggravated sometimes. But fighting with our emotions usually has the effect of honing them, knife-sharp. And since it’s hard not to succumb to knives, we spiral further into this place and begin to identify with our emotions, and so they grow.

Lucky for me, Serkan stays patient and is more of a problem-solver than a problem-maker. He tells me exactly what I would say to me if I could at said moment. And since I say similar things to other people , I am able to listen to him. He talks to the part of me that knows I’m being a fool, not to the part that is in the middle of being dramatically foolish.

This morning I was looking for labyrinths, some activity on a path inward and back out again. Breathing. Full of breath and thanks. Since the sun was shining, Serkan and I went for a bike ride on the muddy dirt roads. We visited our land and planted lupines in a line along one side of the property. Two chubby, super cute, but overwhelmingly urine-scented, puppies accompanied us. In a year or so, the lupines will start flowering and seeding, whether we’re here to see them or not.