around Santiago

local artists

take it out on the laundromat

Christmas in Santiago

a deceiving angle at a park in Providencia, 84 degrees F.

a traditional expatriate Christmas dinner: Chinese takeout

becoming a cat person.

Carlos, my gardening mentor, made me this chair from reeds. He's a genius.

Some random pictures from around the farm. After a while in the country, when you spend all your time within the same 4 acres, you find pleasure in simple things. The rapid growth of basil sprouts, a good sized stick making the perfect addition to the strawberry patch border, misplaced oddities in the dirt. The world shrinks and so does what it takes to call it a good day.

Look in the greenhouse...

Sowing cucumber seeds

Lookadem basil! They're getting so big.

a humble abode

The garden shed, where I live, sleep, craft, dream, scheme when not writing or gardening...

I occupy a curtained-off corner of the garden shed. Why don't you step into my office baby...

...natural light, a private space, the lap of luxury...
...the less you need the more you have......beat up speakers stored away and forgotten become my new state-of-the-art entertainment center...
...and of course, to pull it all together...

Most who know me, know I can never truly call a place home until there is some kind of twirling paper and string contraption hanging over my bed. Ah yes, paper cranes, Simon & Garfunkle, chirping crickets, a good night's rest. This video really shouldn't have been longer than 10 sec. Sorry about the poor sound and visual quality.

dirty fingernails

Welcome to Caleu

Caleu is a tiny community of small farms, a chapel, and general store nestled in the dusty hills that surround metropolitan Santiago. Along the one rocky road that strings them all together, hang wooden signs that advertise the home-made and home-grown. "Hay Pan"(We have bread), "Se Vende Queso"(Cheese sold here), "Lechuga Fresca"(fresh lettuce), and the a few parcels of land up for sale. Chirping birds, a few rooster crows, and the occasional crunching of tires over uneven dirt roads dominate the Caleu soundscape. Everywhere smells like hot dirt.

The editor of The Santiago Times (where I intern), owns a few acres here where he and his family also live. I help out in the organic gardens, watering, weeding, feeding chickens, and other light farm work. In exchange, I get to live (humbly, which is the only way really) in their garden shed and get fed three meals a day. A good 80 percent of the meal is straight up vegetables. Though technically this is also a "gardening internship", I still can't believe I get to live and eat here for basically a couple hours a day of gardening and dish-washing at meals. It's a great set up, but will I be able to handle four months of it? Will the routine, physical labor under the mid-day heat, and distance from the city lose it's rustic charm and make me yearn for the madness of living in a concrete jungle? Will I ever write a lead story? Will I ever work up the courage to call sources and confirm facts...in Spanish? Guess we'll see. But oh man, thank god there's internet out here.

What do we grow in the gardens you ask? Well let's take a peek...

Daily weeding ensures a constant layer of earth packed into the crevices around my fingernails. Surely I won't spend hours picking the dirt out of them, just to have them muddied up the next day. Quick fix solution? A bright red nail polish that not only effectively masks the hygiene faux pas, but also allows me to garden in style. Where does my genius come from?

Arugula. One of my favorite vegetables, and they have too much of it. For that, my strangely massive appetite is useful.

Around the farm...

Rosita hangs laundry

Some of my roommates. They're pretty chill, not too neurotic about the cleaning. Though I kind of wish I had roommates who didn't nap ALL DAY or run away when I try to high-five them.

A typical Anderson family meal. The healthiest I've ever eaten in my life.

starting summer on this side of the world

Santiago, Chile

One of my favorite historical figures, Salvador Allende, in front of the capital building

After more than three months of traveling, after three months of couchsurfing with generous strangers, swerving bus rides, sandy hair, irregular bowel movements, jungle rashes, begrudging fishing boat captains, enough pre-hispanic ruins to make Indiana Jones jealous, a whole lot of food sampling, and countless photographs, I am nomadic no more. Or at least not for the next four months. My internship with English newspaper The Santiago Times began less than a week ago. What do I do exactly? Well, it's twofold. I contribute modestly to the online newspaper. Even though the simplistic, unimaginative style of newswriting is not my passion, the translating and re-writing of already published news articles is pretty easy and dare I say, fun. I mostly write articles for the business section on such riveting subjects as the opening of a new lingerie store or a hospital building project, but I was given the early responsibility of translating this high-profile interview.

I live in a garden shed on the homestead of my editor's family, in Caleu, a small town (more like a plebeian enclave) in the Andean foothills, about an hour or two outside of metropolitan Santiago. Here is where I have the second part of my internship. Every morning beginning at 8:30, I learn the basics of organic gardening from Carlos, the gardener and caretaker of their four acres of vegetables, fruit and nut trees, and other bucolic oasis fixings. I am living proof that you can combine international professional experience with organic farming curiosity! Once or twice a week I venture from Caleu to the office at Santiago with the editor, Steve. Public transportation to the city is difficult (one daily bus, $10 round trip) so I just go if Steve is making the trip anyway. If he doesn't leave until the following day, I stay with my conveniently downtown-dwelling Chilean CS host and friend Andres, who has a guest room. The home I'm staying at in Caleu is beautiful, but very isolated. Friends are scarce and the opportunity for peer-bonding is virtually non-existent. I can write for the paper from here, but there are no bars I can saunter into after a hard day's work. Which is probably for the better? I thought it would pain me to be so removed from the city and all its twinkling commercialism and socializing opportunities, but after spending a weekend in Caleu and coming to Santiago for a meeting, the crowds and street noises started to grate on my soul. Stay tuned for pictures of Caleu: hippie Eden.

I just did this.

"Hey don't lick that, it's a souvenir."

Rugged roads, 4 x 4 SUVs, and a dusty landscape. Follow the flamingos.

This is it. The last stretch of my long journey and Riley's. Riley flew out of Antofagasta, Chile a few days ago while I took a bus straight (literally) down to Santiago where I began my four-month internship working for The Santiago Times. I'm here now in Santiago (actually in the countryside an hour outside of the city...I'll elaborate later) and have already been quite busy with the internship, so I apologize to my modest handful of sporadic readers for having taken so long to post. But here it is. Pictures of an end and a beginning.

Three-day road trip though the Atacama Desert
From Uyuni, Bolivia to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

morning dip in thermal baths after a cold night in the desert

Mars? No, Mother Earth.

She breathes...

New friends. Matthieu (France), Lidia (France), Brigit (Netherlands), Olivier (Canada)

How we tore through southern Bolivia

one of many bizarrely serene, flamingo-dwelling lagoons that sprinkle the desert

Oh look, a volcano

Potosi, Bolivia

Cerro Rico, not as rico as it was five centuries ago

Riley and I took a tour of some cooperative mines.

separating minerals

Miner's delight: coca leaves, unfiltered cigarettes and quinoa powder

dynomite.

Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia

walking on salt blocks carved out of the flats to make motels

playing with photographic illusion = endless fun

During our tour of the salt flats we stopped by a "train cemetery". I found the sky more interesting.

Blocks of salt. Each line indicates a year. They're like trees!

Antofagasta, Chile

hello ocean, it's been a while

San Pedro de Atacama

"Where there is injustice, a rebellion is born"