Ciudad informal

Estimados (hah!),

I only have a month left in Valparaíso (less really, when you take out my two remaining weekend camping trips with Mountain Sports and my planned expedition to Patagonia during the first week of December).

It's the strangest thing because from when I got here up until a few weeks ago, I looked forward and saw what seemed like an eternity ahead of me. But now, it feels like there's no time at all. Where did it all go? How'd I go from counting down the months to desperately clinging to each of my precious few days? Is this going to happen for the rest of my life? Ok, I'll save the quarter-life crisis for later. Ironically there's just not enough time for it right now!

I'm going to gloss over the incredible trip down south to Pucón my interchange program took us on. I'm fortunate enough to be returning in a month (AHHHH) with my family (Hi M, D, & Nad! I can't wait to see you guys by the way!) and will certainly share more about that region after that trip. However, I can't resist a small preview of what's to come:

When not traveling or working frantically on applications for things at Georgetown (yes, somehow it still manages to take up more of my time than the university I am actually attending), I've been trying to spend a lot of time with my host family. They are really such wonderful people and have made my transition into their family as smooth as it could have possibly been. And in addition to that, they're my single greatest source of insight into this crazy city.

A few weekends ago, they took me to an exhibition that was part of the Festival Internacional Danzaalborde, a week long contemporary dance festival. My host mom, being an architect and urban planner, wanted to go to this exhibition in particular because it took place outside and was supposed to move from the top of a hill down with each successive performance.

We arrived to the plaza during the start of the first dance. They had delineated their "stage" with tape on the ground and set up giant speakers to blast their creepy modern techno music (I'm at a complete loss for words for how to describe it better). But aside from those two formalities, the performance looked just like people going about their regular business had broken out into beautiful ballet and attracted a small crowd, sitting and standing along the borders of their performance. The dancers were wearing plain clothes and kept on entering and exiting the performance from the street, blurring the lines between audience and participant. There were dogs barking and nipping at the heels of the dancers, children climbing in overhanging trees, and a man walking through completely immersed in an iPad and seemingly completely oblivious to the performance. I still have no idea which parts of it were planned and which weren't.

Note: my host siblings and mom in the foreground and iPad man towards the back

Immediately after the music stopped, things really got weird. A group of five people dressed in street clothes that looked normal from the front, but as if they'd all laid down in the same color yellow paint from the back, struck a pose and then scampered off. The audience followed, demonstrating the porteño (Valparaisian) acceptance of the weird and unexpected that I'm going to fondly call flexibility of thought.

These yellow ballerinas proceeded to lead the audience down the hill, winding, hopping, climbing, prancing, rolling, and frequently stopping to lie down in the middle of the street, on rooftops, on each other. The whole thing was quite frankly baffling.

But what really struck me was how exceptional Valparaíso is. A city where dancers can literally take over the streets? Where cars are expected to wait for the art to pass? Where a passing police car is heckled for not giving creativity a respectful distance? Where these dancers could practice this performance without being committed to an insane asylum? How incredible.

It reminded me of something my host mom had said earlier in the week. I'd walked into the kitchen during what was supposed to be a city-wide water outage to see her washing dishes. Surprised, I asked how the water was on. She thought for a moment, then said "Mi hija, vienes de un lugar distinto. Hay ciudades formales y hay informales. Esta es una informal" ("Daughter, you come from a very different place. There are formal cities and there are informal cities. This is an informal one."). In that moment, she was both laughing, but deeply serious and sad, but proud.

An informal city of water-outages that happen two days late, sidewalks converted into trash mountain ranges by the reverse erosion of a garbage collection strike, streets not assumed to belong to cars, and creativity that seems to seep out of every crack in every deteriorating building. Is the mess needed for the beauty of this place? Could it change? Should it?

I have no conclusions for you today, only wonder. I'm no artist, but hope I've been able to share even a little bit of it.

(Ciudad informal means "informal city")