The “in Santiago” part of the “Sophie in Santiago” blog is ending for good in four hours. This is all too big to think about. Since I can’t formulate coherent thoughts right now, I’m going to make a bulleted list of my incoherent thoughts:
• I’ve been planning my study abroad semester since my senior year of high school. Now it is over. I have used it as motivation and something to look forward to since I was seventeen—a semester of break from normalcy. I don’t think that I will be in this type of situation again.
• I will never have this type of experience again—living far away I mean. I don’t see myself ever living in a country other than the US permanently, which isn’t something I could have said four months ago.
• I leave for Brazil in four hours, where I will be meeting and staying with a few random relatives who I got in touch with via e-mail six months ago.
• I took my friends to the airport today—these are people who I have spent every day with (almost) for the past three and a half months. Although I’m pretty sure I will see almost all of them again, I highly doubt that we’ll ever all be together. Except at Kim’s wedding. (Kimi, I hope you still read this.)
• “Is this real life?!?!??!?” (The second most commonly used phrase of our program—after “It’s fine.”)
• There is a strong likelihood that I will never return to Chile. If I do, it will definitely be in a different context—I will be a tourist rather than a student. Chances are it will be in a long time.
• I will not be speaking in Spanish every day anymore (well, really that’s a three-weeks-from-now concern.) It’s pretty likely that if I do, people won’t be able to understand me because of Chile’s crazy dialect. They don’t exactly put “po” after every sentence anywhere else…
• There is a very strong likelihood that I will never see Mercedes again after tomorrow morning. I am trying not to think about this.
I’ll try to post from Brazil, Peru, and will definitely be posting reflections from home. For now, chau from Chile.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
ISP Complete!
I have finished my independent study project and paper! I’m not going to post the entire forty-two-page document here, so I will just leave you all with the sixteen-line abstract (in English!)
Mapuche culture is changing, and with it, the role of Mapuche women. The aim of this study was to see how/what Mapuche men and women think and write differently about the gender roles in the Mapuche community of the past, present, and future. Thirty-seven secondary school students between fourteen to sixteen years of age participated in this study. These students were 87% Mapuche. Over six days, the students participated in dialogues on changing roles of Mapuche women. Additionally, they wrote creative compositions on the lives of their grandmothers, mothers, selves, and future daughters to examine the histories of women they knew who lived with these gender roles. The male and female students wrote differently about the women in their lives, as well as the role of Mapuche women. The males used positive language when describing the past, idolizing the roles fulfilled by their mothers and grandmothers, and were more neutral when talking about the future, expressing the desire for their future daughters to rely on the men in their lives. The females, however, had the opposite reaction: they wrote negatively about the effects of the gender roles of the past, and wrote positively and hopefully about the future.
I am exhausted. I haven’t really thought about much else other than this project for the past four weeks, so now my mind doesn’t really know where to go!
Tomorrow we head back to Algorrobo, where we spent our first few days together, to give presentations on our ISPs, have a re-orientation to the USA, and go to the beach before we all head our separate ways next Wednesday.
Thursday morning, I leave Chile for Brazil, where I will meet family I hadn’t heard of until five months ago (third cousins a few times removed?) But I will post more about those plans when I have time (likely on Wednesday after everyone else leaves.) For now, I am going to get some very-much-needed sleep.
Mapuche culture is changing, and with it, the role of Mapuche women. The aim of this study was to see how/what Mapuche men and women think and write differently about the gender roles in the Mapuche community of the past, present, and future. Thirty-seven secondary school students between fourteen to sixteen years of age participated in this study. These students were 87% Mapuche. Over six days, the students participated in dialogues on changing roles of Mapuche women. Additionally, they wrote creative compositions on the lives of their grandmothers, mothers, selves, and future daughters to examine the histories of women they knew who lived with these gender roles. The male and female students wrote differently about the women in their lives, as well as the role of Mapuche women. The males used positive language when describing the past, idolizing the roles fulfilled by their mothers and grandmothers, and were more neutral when talking about the future, expressing the desire for their future daughters to rely on the men in their lives. The females, however, had the opposite reaction: they wrote negatively about the effects of the gender roles of the past, and wrote positively and hopefully about the future.
I am exhausted. I haven’t really thought about much else other than this project for the past four weeks, so now my mind doesn’t really know where to go!
Tomorrow we head back to Algorrobo, where we spent our first few days together, to give presentations on our ISPs, have a re-orientation to the USA, and go to the beach before we all head our separate ways next Wednesday.
Thursday morning, I leave Chile for Brazil, where I will meet family I hadn’t heard of until five months ago (third cousins a few times removed?) But I will post more about those plans when I have time (likely on Wednesday after everyone else leaves.) For now, I am going to get some very-much-needed sleep.
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