“Keep the point of your ice axe directed away from you at all times while sliding. We don’t want you to end up with the tip in your stomach.”

So, I climbed a volcano yesterday. It's great to be able to say that. "What'd you do yesterday, Max?" "Oh, you know, climbed an Andean volcano in Chile. Good times." I can feel it in my thighs and shoulders today, a persistent reminder of scaling the 9,340 foot Villarrica.

I'm in Pucón, a mountain town in the manner of Aspen or Jackson Hole. Everything is made of wood, there are a lot of hostels, and eXtreme sports companies for tourists are everywhere. The weather here is deliciously familiar. It feels like a chilly 50˚F outside. There has been a confused overcast hanging above me all day. The sky is grey but the sun is attempting to shine through. A mist floated amidst the town in the morning and I could see my breath. The air feels distinctly alpine. There are trees and green grass everywhere. Woods and fields fill the surrounding lands. It could be Snohomish on a cold day in winter. I imagine that this location is at a roughly similar latitude to Washington. It certainly feels like it.

Breaking the backdrop of the quiet alpine town are the sounds of construction: hammers, nails, and saws. There is an incredible amount of development going on here. I remember walking through the streets on the first day thinking, "Wow, this would be an amazing place to buy something rentable. A condo, perhaps." It could be rented out during the year, used for vacations, and sold in a few years. This property is only going up in value. Judging by the skeletons of the soon-to-be hotels and apartment buildings, however, other people seem to share my view. Pucón really is a lovely place.

Actually getting here to enjoy one's vacation home would be quite the trip, however. My fellow students and I boarded an 11 PM bus on Thursday night, slept, and departed the bus at 9 AM the next morning. 10 hours is quite the journey (assuming the bus was doing 60 MPH, that's 600 miles away from the capital). The lights were dimmed; everyone tilted their seats back; and we all woke up in the morning to an oatmeal cookie and a strange (but not terrible) cup of instant coffee. 10 hours goes by quickly when you're simply getting your night's rest.

Two groups of Stanford students came to Pucón. I was in a group with 9 other people. After arrival, we had to decide how to allocate our time. Each person asked themselves, "Do I go river rafting? Horseback riding? Mountain bike riding? Do I scale the volcano? How about the thermal baths?" I decided to go horseback riding Friday and do the volcano and the thermal baths on Saturday. Most people (including myself) figured that they would be too tired by Sunday to do anything too wild. Also, as much as we try to forget it, we all have homework to do. I found a nice café with internet to pass the time and write on my day of rest.

On a side note, technology boggles my mind sometimes. The student sitting across from me used her computer to make a video call to her boyfriend back on campus. Essentially, she was talking into a small amalgamation of plastic and metal in the middle of nowhere in a 3^rd world country in South America and her boyfriend was interacting with her and responding through a similar hunk of plastic and metal thousands of miles away. I love modern technology but I find it particularly astounding when it has novel and tangible effects on the lives of everyday people. This isn't a new smoke effect in a video game or a better DVD. This is technology bringing people together across the world. Just a few days ago, I used the same service (without video) to send my voice from a Starbucks in Santiago into my computer, through the internet, and across the world to the cellular phone of my friend Nikk. He happened to be in class, but stepped out to chat with me as if I was just calling him from a few miles away. Really cool stuff.

Horseback riding was quite something. I can't really remember spending any time on any sort of equine since when I was approximately 5. This involved my best friend Marc Rollins and me going to a pony camp for a few weeks. Apparently, after coming home from the first day, my parents asked me how it went I responded with a "not good," and when my parents asked why, I responded that my pony was "rough." Thankfully, my horse wasn't particularly rough this time. I would instead call him "independently minded." By "independently minded," I mean "out of control." I'd like to take credit and say that I masterfully directed Sam (my horse's name), but he really just did what he wanted while I hung on for dear life. The beginning of the ride was quite nice. We walked into a hilly area with incredible views of the valley.

A bit later, we disembarked and hiked down to a waterfall, Salto del Claro. It was amazingly beautiful. The structure in stone we found was a vertical cylinder seemingly carved out of the higher ground above us. From the top of the cylinder, the waterfall fell down to the pool into below. The water, the moss, and all the surrounding vegetation were incredibly gorgeous.

On the way back, Sam seemed to be in a hurry. Perhaps he needed to use the restroom back at the barn. Fittingly, Sam and Max are the two main characters of a comic book series that was made into a famous computer game, Sam & Max Hit the Road. I would say that my horse and I definitely hit the road. After descending the hills onto more open (but unpaved) roads, Sam decided he wanted to gallop. And Sam certainly was not asking for my permission. I was riding alongside a friend of mine named Alif when Sam started to gallop. Alif's horse, apparently not wanting to be left out of the fun, also began to gallop. The two horses seemed to essentially egg each other on. I bounced up and down in the saddle while holding the reigns and enjoying the experience. After a few minutes, however, I decided it was time to stop and began to pull on the reigns. This had the same effect as putting a stop sign in front of an out-of-control semi truck. Sam only stopped when we came to a corner. Once we rounded said corner, it was back to galloping, again without my consent. My persistent yells of "Sam...Saaaaaam…SAM!" had no effect. He knew where he was going and we stopped shortly before arriving back at the pasture. Despite my inability to steer my horse, it was a great time, especially the galloping.

The next, day we woke up at 6 AM in order to start putting on our hiking gear at 7. On the way up to the base of the climb, I chatted briefly with the group of students in our van from Notre Dame University. We played the "Do you know this person?" game. She asked me if I knew her sister, who was a grad student in the political science department at Stanford. I said no. She then asked me if I knew her ex-boyfriend, Dan Zeehandelaar. I laughed and told her that I had some bad news. I met Dan this year through some friends of mine. He lived in the house next door to mine. The thing about Dan is that he's gay. She started laughing when I told her, as she already knew but wanted to see my reaction. Small world.

We rode half an hour to get to a ski lift at the base of Villarrica, which we took up instead of trudging though the bald ski slope of dirt and rock. From there, we hiked up through 3 successive sections of the volcano: the first, less steep part where I thought to myself "Hah, this is so easy"; the second, steeper part, where I remembered a bit of my humility; and the third, quite steep part up the last part of the volcano, where I thought to myself "oh God, I'm wearing jeans that have become damp and heavy and are now sticking to my legs underneath my latex pants. How am I ever going to get up this?" Thankfully, I did make it up, where I enjoyed my peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwiches with a bottle of Gatorade. Meals at hiking destinations always taste like the best food ever. And I got to see the magma inside the volcano, which was really cool. The views from the mountain were jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

The way down was soooo much faster. After nicely descending the first two regions, we all got to the most legendary point of the climb: sliding down the mountain. There were grooves carved into certain areas where one could buckle on their plastic chaps and shoot down the hill while sitting down. It was great fun and a great way to end a hard day. We slid all the way to the ski lift, which was disappointingly closed. Essentially, in the morning I forked up 5,000 pesos (approximately $10) to get a one way ticket over a dirt field. While this was appreciated, it would have been great if the $10 got me both ways. Oh well. After a 25 minute trot down the ski slope, we all threw ourselves into the vans to rest and get off of our feet after the long day

We ended the day by going to some thermal baths nearby. They were pretty incredible. We lounged in one of several large, heated pools next to a roaring river while sipping wine and enjoying each other's company. As my friend Carolyn jokingly described it, we were in a bad teenage horror porn movie. We were a bunch of American college students in a 3^rd world country in our bathing suits drinking together at night with the moon out and steam everywhere. After a nice, relaxing time, we headed back and I promptly went to bed.

Today, I have been editing my pictures from the weekend and writing. The best of the pictures are up on my photo website, http://picasaweb.google.com/bulletrounds/. Up with them are my pictures from last weekend in La Serena, which I have not yet written about. Tonight is another long bus ride home. We should get to Santiago at around 7 AM, which will I'm sure be unfortunately terrible. There's a high probability I will take the metro across town and go back to bed. It will be good to be back in the city, though.

I've had some time to deliberate on my choice of classes this weekend. I'm not sure at all that I want to take one of my classes, Modernization and its Discontents: Chilean Politics at the Turn of the Century. On the plus side, I want to like the material, it's 5 credits towards my credit aggregate, and it's taught by a former Minister of National Affairs and Minister of Transportation of Chile. On the downside, I cannot understand a word the man is saying, I don't actually like the material (at least enough to study it somewhat rigorously), and the work itself will impinge on my time in Chile. I'm fairly certain I will drop the class. The only thing holding me back is my degree: if I have 225 credits or more upon graduation, I receive a dual degree, or a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. If I do not have 225 credits, I receive a double major, or a Bachelor of Arts and Science in Economics and Mathematics. While the distinction is fairly trivial, it would be nice to have the dual degree. To get it, I need as many credits as possible. I'm just not sure it's worth the extra effort while here in Chile. I have 4 hours to the deadline to decide if it is.

Photos

I have posted some of the photos of my journey here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bulletrounds

Journey from Stanford to Santiago

So it was a long week. There was a lot of living in airplanes and airports involved. It is illustrated here:

I left Stanford on March 24th to stay in Mukilteo for a few days after feverishly packing up my life. It was then on to Boston through Chicago for three days to visit Lauren and Peggy. Sunday morning, April 1st (the day that I was supposed to arrive in Santiago), I left Boston for Atlanta again through Chicago. Upon arriving in Atlanta at around 4:45 PM local time, I discovered that cross-airline employee passes (ID-90's) are only valid on Delta for dependants under 21. Since I turned 21 on January 24th of this year, I was in Atlanta without any method to get on the Delta flight to Santiago that evening. The flights to Washington, DC, were all full, so with the help of my father I found a Holiday Inn, spent the night, and headed back to the Atlanta airport the next morning to fly to Washington/Dulles. I arrived there at around 10:30 AM to wait for the red-eye from Dulles to Buenos Aires, Argentina. 11 hours later, at 9:30 PM, I sat up against the bulkhead in business class as the airplane lifted off for its long journey south. I landed in Buenos Aires sometime in the morning there (9:30?) and waited until 2:30 for my flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago. I finally arrived in Santiago at 4:30 PM on April 3rd, 56 hours after leaving Boston.

The ticket agent in Buenos Aires had attempted to communicate something about the weight of my bags to me which I had barely understood. She told me my bags were in aggregate 6 kilograms too heavy, but then proceeded to stamp both and put them on the conveyor belt behind her. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I did not question her until I arrived in Santiago without one of my bags. I did what I could at the baggage area and moved on.
Upon leaving the security perimeter, the taxistas waiting for tired Americans/foreigners all pounced. They know that you're exhausted, they know you don't speak Spanish all that well, and they know that you don't have a great feel for the local currency. Most were easily dismissed with a "No Gracias," but one, Francisco, was persistent. He wanted it. He would not let me go. As he knew, I was exhausted, wasn't in great command of my Español, and didn't do the conversion of the Chilean Peso to the US Dollar easily. As I was beat after over 2 days of flying and was without a bag, I didn't really care at that point and accepted his badgering to the tune of $60. It should have been more like $30. But oh well, right? At the time, I was too tired to fight.

Later that night, my bag finally arrived. I and all my possessions had finally arrived in South America to begin their 10 weeks here.

Coca-Cola

I've now been in Santiago, Chile for two weeks (almost). It's quite something to live in a 3^rd world country (albeit a fairly developed one). Have you ever seen the movie Lost in Translation? At one level, it's about the disorientation that Bill Murray's character feels when traveling to Tokyo. He sees a society that has adopted Western culture without necessarily knowing why. The movie portrays Tokyo as un poco soulless, and perhaps unjustly so. I can see the same thing here – everyone wants to be Western but they don't know why. Also, the food is terrible. Not poorly cooked, just extremely bland. It's strange to me that a country that provides food to nations of the Northern Hemisphere during the winter months has such flavorless food itself.

Perhaps I should not have opened with the things that are negative about Chile. It's amazing in many ways. I'm seeing a side of life that is really incredible here – I'm witnessing a nation develop from the vantage point of the center of it. The nightlife is fun. I'm meeting new students at the Stanford program, which is excellent. My host mother is incredibly sweet. I'm also realizing that my studies in economics and business have made me a touch more conservative than my peers. The countryside here is beautiful. I've been out to the coast these past two weekends, and it's truly amazing. The place I went to on Friday, Isla Negra, reminded me so distinctly of the Washington coast (with slightly different sand). Once I stepped off of the pavement of the street onto the dirt path leading down to the site that I was visiting, I had the strongest sense of déjà vu. The pine trees and the ground and the air near the ocean put me squarely in the middle of a park in Washington. As I approached the beach, my sense of home only increased. The granite rocks, the kelp, the salt, the tide pools, it all SCREAMED Washington to me. It was a good feeling. I wouldn't say that it made me homesick, for I didn't have a desire to travel home immediately. I did have a desire to plan a barbeque for when I return in June. And I did, however, worry about my future.

This summer, I will be in Zurich. It will mark the first year in which I will not spend a significant amount of my time living in my house in Mukilteo. It portends the future, for my career path traverses the distant streets of New York City. My anxiety stems from the connection that I feel to Western Washington – the sprawl, the green, the weather, the Puget Sound and the ocean, the rain. The adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine that form my DNA double-helixes encode not only my thin, brown hair and broad shoulders, they also express the rainstorms and seaweed-encrusted rocky beaches and immense expanses of salt water and encircling verdance of my home. I will come back. I do not know how at this point, but I will come back. I feel the pull even from here.

In other thoughts, Paris is often described as the city of love or romance. Supposedly there are couples everywhere and their love and affection is endearing in some fashion. I have not found that to be the case here. Upon arrival, my friends and I noticed how many couples there were everywhere we went. Couples can be found on the subway, in restaurants, on the streets, and on the beaches. The obnoxious part is that at any given time, two-thirds of said couples in your presence feel the need to visually and audibly demonstrate their tongues' needs to reconnect with one another. Get a god damn room! Seriously. It stems from the living accommodations of people between their adolescence and marriage here. At home, teenagers feel the need to relieve themselves of their parents' abode sometime between the ages of 18 and 22. They get jobs, they get degrees, they earn money, and they move out. Most want the independence and the privacy. Here, people apparently do not move out until they get married. This means all the young couples need to find a place to canoodle and feel that doing so within the vicinity of their parents is not kosher. Thus, they take their canoodling out on the streets. I encounter it in the seats next to me on the airplane from Buenos Aires to Santiago, on the bench outside the convenience store, and at the table behind me at Starbucks (loudly and with great span of time, in the latter case). Granted, most of the reason why this occurs is because wages for young people, especially those without degrees, are quite poor ($1-$2 an hour, although this $1-$2 can purchase slightly more than it can back home), and thus they live at home. It just seems like this is not a satisfactory solution – soundproof the rooms or find empty parking lots or something. Being a city of romance is not all that it is cracked up to be.

Finally, I am reading fiction for the first time in a while. Number9Dream by David Mitchell. Nikk got it for me as a gift because we both enjoyed another work of Mitchell's, Cloud Atlas. I get on the bus here, start reading, and 10 minutes later realize that I am in danger of missing my stop because I am so engrossed in the book that I have forgotten about the world around me. The nonfiction that constitutes my studies and academic interests, however interesting I may find it, is still not nearly as involving as a good novel. It's good to be back.