PUC-V: A Variation on a Theme

Art on the interior wall of main entrance of PUC-V off of Avenida Brasil

The Casa Central of PUC-Valparaiso bears more than a passing resemblance to its big sibling in Santiago, though--like Valpo itself--it is a little more rough around the edges and more interesting.  I can't claim any sort of authority on the matter, but there seems to be a bit less smugness at PUC-V and a more welcoming spirit.  Regardless of the accuracy of that judgment, I really, really like working here.

Situated on the corner of Avenida Argentina and Avenida Brasil, Casa Central is an imposing and dignified anchor to the flat Plan of southern Valpo, far away from the much-praised Cerros or hills that make Valparaiso a draw. 


Like its more-renowned older brother in the capital, PUC-V's interior has a hushed, cloistered atmosphere that blocks out the measured chaos of local buses--collectivas or micros--vendors and the ubiquitous street dogs just beyond the threshold.

Just like any college in the States, student enthusiasm generates a lot of energy.  The bulletin boards are covered in fliers for organizational meetings and events, concerts, and apartment rentals.  On Wednesday, a collection of Vegan groups set up in the central coffee and snack area.  Squint really hard and it could be just another day in the Tate Center court.

Tucked away on the third floor, off of an inauspicious foyer, are the offices of Curriculum and Formative Development of which the Unit for the Improvement of University Teaching is a part.  The folks in these offices will be my colleagues for the next five months, and I feel very fortunate to be able to call them such.  On my first Monday, there was reception for me that featured a home-made confection lovingly prepared by one of my new friends, and today they treated me and my family to lunch, fellowship, and general hospitality.

While the teaching issues and faculty development work are very familiar to me, the unique circumstances, culture, and challenges make this a novel and exciting opportunity.  One unexpected perk is free lunch in the University's casino.  Every day around noon, gracious Lorena comes around to pass out tickets for almuerzo, and around 1:30, folks from the office who can make it head down to the basement for a lunch of basic Chilean fare:  cazuelo, pasteles de papas, sopas, ensaladas composed of highly segregated vegetables, pan, and a postre--today was flan.

The day starts at 9.  Lunch at 1:30.  Work until 6 after which the streets feels a bit like New York City with people rushing to catch buses or the Metro.

I work in a office with three other people that looks out on the Chilean Congress building, which is housed in Valpo while the other seats of government are in Santiago, a legacy of Pinochet. 

Today was a big day: my first faculty development session, a four-hour workshop that kicked off a module on teaching for learning for 22 faculty working on their diplomas in University teaching.   Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to a fun-weekend exploring the Valpo hills with E and Z who arrived last Sunday.  It will be a nice breather from a packed week.

Portillo para esquiar

Two years ago, I had the great good fortune to consult in Chile.  Once in a lifetime, right?  In the past, I had been asked to consult in places like Charlotte or Atlanta.  In an attempt to make the most of this unique opportunity, I tried to fit in as much as I could, including short trips to Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, a wine tour in  the Maipo Valley, a hike up La Campaña--a mountain in the coastal range that Darwin visited, and trekking up to the lake below El Moradao--a natural monument in the Andes.  That day, just me and a guide, was one of the finest days of my life.  In "mindfulness" terms, it was a day when I felt fully "present," fully aware of what I was experiencing, not thinking of much of anything else except the landscape and the feeling gratitude to be in it.  In the "being" mode.  

Me with my guide hiking to El Morado in 2011.

I assumed that I would never return to the Andes.  No way.  As Wordsworth says about the memory of the landscape in "Tinturn Abbey," that day in the Andes was a signature day that would pass "into my purer mind / With tranquil restoration," that I would remember when I was "in lonely rooms, and mid the din / Of towns and cities . . . [and] / In hours of weariness."  

Not only have I returned to Chile, but I have returned to the Andes.  I joined three other leftovers from the conference to ski at Portillo. 
Portillo is at the end of an incredibly engineered road that reminds me of Alp d'Huez from the Tour de France.  One yellow hotel looks out at Inca lake at the base of mountains that loom very large.  

We lucked out in terms of weather.  The day before was cold and windy with very poor visibility.  We had, well, the opposite.

The last time I had skied was before I was a parent.  Zachary is now 11.  I was by far the worst skier of the four that included an almost 70-year-old emeritus Harvard professor.  The two Johns, one from Denmark and one from South Carolina, were good enough to try even the most difficult runs and the virgin powder accessible from the main "pistas." 

You've got some good human figures to provide perspective in this shot.  The group of three skiers, two from our party, are about to be catapulted up to the top of this hill using a very fast pulley lift.  Midway up, between the diverging line that mark the skiers' path up the hill, there's a speck that is a person.  This was very steep and very powdery.  I watched.  

What none of us could figure out was why there were so few skiers.  It was Sunday during the high season, and yet we never waited for a lift.  We returned to Santiago with the delightful weariness of a day well-spent moving outside with congenial companions.  In the best possible way, it was as ideal a Hemingway day as I've had.

Far from the Madding Crowd

Known more as a summer destination for Santiguinos seeking sun and sand, Viña del Mar is a busy place even in the dead of winter when the beaches are largely empty. Even though it is Chile's fourth largest city, with around 300,000 residents, Viña feels smaller than that, probably because it is geographically compact and densely populated.  Our apartment is in a somewhat newer part of town along some darn-nice beach and equidistance from the 1930s-era casino and the 2012 cluster of mid-rise malls--ten-minutes walk either way.   Here's the view from the apartment:

The Marca Marca creek separates the more tourist-oriented side of Viña from the old Centro.  Avenida Valparaiso is the main drag through the Centro, and it has a mix of shops and restaurants that stretch away from the coast to Plaza Vergara.  I imagine that before the new commercial developments to the south, this was the principal shopping district, but tucked away just north of this node of activity is the biggest surprise that Viña has so far revealed: Parque Quinta Vergara--a quiet escape from the Manhattan-like pedestrian and vehicle traffic of the Centro.

The Italianate mansion was the home of one of the rich Vergaras who eventually ceded it to the city for an arts facility.  It is under renovation now but that doesn't diminish the grand architecture situated in a mature, manicured garden.  Around an adjacent topiary garden, there are poems by Latin American poets engraved on marble slabs including, por supuesto, a good sampling of Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda.   Here's one that includes a fragment of Miguel Luis Rocuant's "The Tree's Dream":

And here is my tortured attempt to translate just the first stanza.  This is should be pretty funny to any Spanish-speaking readers.  I tried to put these four lines into a little more harmonious English than my initial literal translation. Anybody out there is more than welcome to correct my butchering of what I'm sure is a beautiful image.  Here goes:

The Spring Tree, stiff and light

Shimmering with Autumn's frost,

Awakes and stirs,

Believing is some flowering return.

I'm not going to tell you how long it took me come up with that!

Off in the trees were swarms of these squeaky hummingbirds with blazes of red on their heads.  As I watched a creek tumble over some rocks, they would swoop in and hover to drink and dart away again.   Going to Parque Quinta Vergara after the whirlwind of this week in Viña provided me with a little respite to remind myself how damn fortunate I am to be here and to have this opportunity.  

Santiago and Vina del Mar

You ever have the experience of a place really growing on you?  Santiago is like that for me.  The more I explored it, the more I appreciated its distinct neighborhoods.  By no means did I see even most of it, but the areas that I did explore were surprisingly different and changed characters instantly.  Bella Vista, Bellas Artes, and Santa Lucia were my favorites.  The area around San Cristobal is worthy of even greater exploration, and I hope to be back in Santiago to visit Pablo Neruda's house before too long.  The Improving University Teaching Conference, which was the reason for my early arrival in Chile before the Fulbright starts, was at the Pontificia Universidad Catholica Casa Central right next to Santa Lucia where I was staying.

Casa Central is a massive building that takes a whole block of the Av. Alameda.  At the very center is this statue of Christ with arms wide open.    Over the main lintels are the Spanish for "Religion and Science" and "Letters and Arts."  It's a fortress and inside it is composed of a series of beautiful courtyards.  

The conference was entirely in the Casa Central, with plenaries in a massive room with three stories of bookshelves.  There were plenty of modern additions, but--as usual--is was the purely architectural elements that drew my eye. 

Before I left Santiago, I visited the incredible Museum of Memory--a new museum that documents the 1973 coup d'etat that ushered in the dictatorship of Pinochet, the oppression of Pinochet's regime, the referendum that brought back a return to democracy, but that also is dedicated to human rights worldwide.  My hope had been to visit both it and the Pablo Neruda house before meeting with my hosts at the Fulbright Chile offices, but the Museum of Memory stopped me in my tracks.  It is an amazing space in itself but is also rich in documenting what happened in Chile between 1973 and 1990.  

After a warm welcome by the good Fulbright folks, I was off to Vina del Mar, my hometown for the next five months.  I took the subway to the bus terminal where I bought a ticket on a very comfortable double-decker bus to Vina.  Ninety minutes later, the bus pulled into the Vina bus terminal and I was met by Fernanda Rejas and her husband David Letelier.  They drove me to my apartment building on San Martin across the street from the Pacific Ocean.

Since moving in on Tuesday night, I've been familiarizing myself with what Vina has to offer.  Everything is walkable, and I've enjoyed discovering grocery stores and markets in my attempt to forage for food.  The highlight, though, is the sea.

I think I'm going to like it here.  But I'll like it better when Erica and Zachary join me a week from Sunday. 

El primer dia del resto de mi vida o Un Estadounidense en Santiago

I promised folks that I would blog once I got to Chile, and I find myself making good on that promise.  It's not hard when you have the experience of traveling to a new place (which this essentially is despite my ten-day sojourn in 2011) and when you have the marvelous good fortune of crossing the street from your hotel and entering the most vertically inclined urban park I've ever encountered.

This is el Torre Mirador ("Lookout Tower"?) atop Cerro Santa Lucia, which Charles Darwin said "certainly [had] the most striking view" of the city and the towering Andean mountains in the background (thank goodness for Lonely Planet travel books!). 

Today was a "feria" or national holiday for a saint, so there were families and youngens of all types mounting an array of incredibly uneven, slippery, ill-placed and wonderfully non-code steps.  As happens every time I leave the States, I'm struck by the thought places like this that simply would not be allowed for liability reasons back home.  While the staircases at Cerro Santa Lucia aren't as ridiculously unsafe as the completely unimpeded waters of the Nile as they crash down Murchison Falls in Uganda, I could not help but cringe in fear as a leashed dog pulled its owner down a precipice. Still, what a wonderful, organic, civic space for people to enjoy.

It was peaceful in the park despite the topography, and everybody was genuinely enjoying themselves. Little kiosks were on the different levels selling mostly ice cream-like confections.  People strolled with dogs, many off leash and well behaved--the dogs and the people.  One couple hung out by a fountain; the young man noodled around on his guitar as his novia drew in sketch book.

Honestly, this was the best possible way for my entry into Chile for what's going to be a five and a half month adventure.   Despite the fact that the famous Santiago smog clouded the Andes Mountains from Torre Mirador,  it was great to be able to wander without worrying what street I was on or where I needed to turn.  And I didn't feel the pressure to "accomplish" anything today because I'm not here for a only week, so I don't feel the need to make sure I make it to this museum or that plaza.

All in all, a very good day. And it ain't over.

Fulbright Video from Chile

In searching around for a Fulbright graphic to go on the previous post, I found the Fulbright Chile website and discovered this video of a guy named Doug Mitchell who worked with NPR, who is an adjunct in radio journalist at CUNY, and who went to Chile on a Fulbright Specialist Award.  What he says about his experience is what I hope, in the best possible scenarios, will happen when I go down.

Fulbright to Chile (part 1)

  



Among all the busy-ness at work this spring, including teaching another delightful set of undergraduates in my American literature survey class, I received the incredible news that I have won a Fulbright Scholar Award to work at the Pontifica Universidad Catolica in Valparaiso, Chile.  This will hitherto be acronym-ed as PUC-V.  There seem to be a number of Pontificas Universidades Catolicas in South America, and the main one in Chile is in Santiago.  The one in Valparaiso, or Valpo, has about 13,000 students and is only a few blocks from where the Chilean Congress meets.

This all came about because of a surprise request by Fernanda Rejas to visit the University of Georgia in the fall of 2010 to find out what programs the Center for Teaching and Learning offered to train and support teaching assistants in their instructional roles.  At the time, she was working for PUC-Santiago.  My boss then, Nelson Hilton, forwarded Fernanda's email request, asking if I would be willing to meet with her.  Sure.  Why not?  Little did I know that I would meet such a delightful person who was so eagerly interested in what we did, so easy to talk to, and so appreciated of any ideas for her own institution.  On the last night of her stay in Athens, Erica, Zachary, and I had her over to our house and took her out to La Parilla, and she went on her way.  That, I thought, was that.

After returning to Chile, she contacted me to ask if I was willing to present an overview of TA Programs to a group of faculty and administrators at PUC Santiago via Skype.  I eagerly agreed.  Though I'd had little experience with Skype at the time, the presentation would be during the week, and I could rely on the technical expertise at my office to test the connection and to troubleshoot if something went wrong.  It just so happened that this was in December, and Athens had one of its rarest of all natural phenomenons--a snow storm.   Well, a snow storm by Georgia standards, meaning that there were at least two inches of snow that promptly slushed-up and then re-froze, making Clarke County one big ice rink with only a few municipal trucks to fling sand on the overpasses.  The day of the presentation, the University was closed and I was at home with my own devices to pull off this presentation.   After reaching Fena on a shaky connection with blurry, jerky video and uneven audio, she made the mistake of showing me the room of people that I was going to address.  This was an auditorium of people who were gathered to hear me prattle on about TA Programs from my home office.  Things went well until we lost connection toward the end of the presentation.  After some follow-up emails with Fena, I thought: that was that.

Some time early in 2011, Fena contacted me that her office at PUC-Santiago was applying for a government grant to bring an "expert" to come to Chile to consult about training teaching assistants, which--it turns out--typically means undergraduate teaching assistants or "ayudantes pregrados."  She asked if I would be interested in being that expert. . . . Ummm, yeah: which meant, YEAH!, I was incredibly excited about the chance to travel to Chile, and, yeah?, I'm not sure I'm the person that you are looking for.   I eagerly encouraged her to apply with the assurance that I was more than willing to come.  This was in the spring and it sounded all so prospective.  That was that.

Throughout that late spring, throughout the summer, and into the fall, Fena kept sending more and more encouraging emails, until she asked when, exactly, could I come.  Dates were set.  Emails exchanged.  Forms filled out.  Itineraries were proposed, revised, revised, revised.  And it was set:  I was headed to Chile to consult on what PUC-Santiago could do to better train and support ayudantes pregrados.  I remember saying to Erica as I pulled out of the driveway in my 1993 Nissan pick-up truck that I truly wasn't sure that what I knew was worth a trip down to Santiago, Chile.

Those ten days, September 26-October 5, were unlike any other in my life.  Sure, they were different because I was in Chile.  More than that, though, for the days that I worked, I worked harder, met more people, spoke with more confidence and authority about what I had learned in my job than I ever had before.  For all ten days, I felt more comfortable in my skin than I had in a long time.  One day was a wine tour in the Maipo Valley.  Another day was a hike with an incredible guide to one of the lower lagoons at the foot of El Morado, a snow-capped peak in the Andes. One weekend was with Fernanda and her husband David in their home in Vina del Mar and a day touring the funky town of Valparaiso.  And a short trip to Quintay, the smallest of all fishing villages with the feeling of a Hemingway novel.  Little could I imagine that I would return to Vina del Mar with my family to live for five months and work in Valparaiso. 

When I flew out of Santiago, I definitely thought that that was that.