Author: matt.kelemen

Dear Friends and Family,

There’s really no way to talk about 2016 as a single continuum. There’s the 10 months before the U.S. presidential election and there’s the two months that followed. On November 8^th, we all walked through a looking glass and entered a strange – and frequently terrifying – new dimension.

For the four of us, there’s a special irony, since the preceding ten months had brought a new and welcome familiarity. Jobs solidified. Dylan and Adela were no longer the “new kids” at school. Friendships deepened. Language became more comprehensible. We bumped into people we knew. In short, things got less strange…

From Jeannette: Discrete moments signaled that we were settling in to life in Chile. When I could read the number on a public bus and know where it was headed. When I became part of a carpool with wonderful women who have become my friends. When someone contacted me through someone else I had met. When I joined a committee at Santiago Community Church and organized a volunteer event at a local school. When we welcomed family and friends from the U.S. with authentic Chilean meals – including a legit “asado” (typical Chilean-style BBQ) with tasty pisco sours.

After the election I was completely UNSETTLED, and dozens of Chileans asked me how Trump could win the election – especially without winning the popular vote. While I could explain the Electoral College in Spanish, and how some voters had latched on to a deceptive notion of what makes America “great,” I needed space to mourn and regroup.

Fortunately 2016 had brought me expanded opportunities to work with teachers, students and school leaders –with fabulous colleagues at Fundación Chile and other innovative educational organizations. Travelling to the U.S. for work in May also allowed me to visit friends and family and celebrate my parents 50^th Anniversary and “Pop-Pop’s” 75^th birthday. I’m particularly grateful this year for friends here in Chile who have been so kind and generous, brought me laughter and hugs, and offered me immeasurable support.

From Dylan: This year, we got to visit and experience some very magical places as a family. We started the year off with a bang, taking a vacation to the Lake District in southern Chile. There we visited a wonderful glacier named the Ventisquero Colgante which gets its name from the fact that it hangs over a mountain rock face. As it melts off, icy water falls like raindrops into the lake below. On that same trip, we camped in a very beautiful national park named Parque Pumalín where my parents cycled 16 years ago on their honeymoon. But even before that, my dad and I got to go rafting on the Futaleufú River with class five rapids. This river is very famous throughout the world of professional rafting and is the training ground for many pros who hail from the northern hemisphere, looking to stay in shape between October and March. This was a truly unique experience for me. While I’m a very sporty person, rafting was a totally different kind of fun. The other magical place we got to visit in 2016 was Machu Picchu. While most people either hike the old Inca Trail or take the train up to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of the ruins, we hiked the Salkantay trail. After two days of a steep climb, we reached the Salkantay pass and from there it was mostly downhill through the small towns of Colpapampa and Santa Teresa until we made our final climb into Aguas Calientes. After that long trek we got up at 4am to catch one of the first buses to the historic site of Machu Picchu. Once we were there, our guide led us through part of the ruins, explained the history behind some of it, and then left us at the base of Huayna Picchu. From there, we were on our own to climb it and further explore the rest of the ancient city.

In February, a week into our family vacation, I returned to Santiago alone to resume my soccer. While the rest of my family was enjoying a stay with some family friends in Valdivia, I was training hard everyday with my team, La Católica. In addition to training hard for the upcoming season, I was also hoping day in and day out that my player pass would finally arrive from FIFA so I could fully join the team and play in competitive matches. About a week into the season, we received news that my pass was complete, and that Saturday morning I was walking onto the pitch wearing the jersey I had longed to wear for eight months.

I was deeply moved by all of these experiences. Being somewhere you might never see again gives you a sense of appreciation towards the place and towards those who helped get you there. And as for soccer, I have a deep appreciation for being on a terrific team doing the thing I love.

From Matt: I’ve particularly enjoyed some new and renewed friendships this year. Getting to spend time outside of the city at the getaway homes of Paula Leighton and Gonzalo Argandoña (friends from my traveling days) and getting to know their terrific families. Playing regular Wednesday night soccer with a group of guys who have been friends since elementary school (!) but were happy to let me in. Spending time showing my brother, sister, mom and dad our adopted home. These have been the most rewarding experiences. And I have been so impressed by the caliber of the professionals I have had the chance to meet, at the Ministry of Education and its partner agencies, at local universities, and at non-profits. The desire for positive change is palpable here, and it’s infectious. I remain excited about engaging in the ambitious effort to re-design the educational system here and to strip away the legacy of dictatorship, piece by piece.

From Adela: I have had amazing experiences in 2016. Each of these experiences has a special meaning to me, which is why I want to share them with you.

• Summer Camp: Connect to nature and the people around me and help me grow and learn
• Trip to the South of Chile: Learn about the culture, traditions, nature and people that I am surrounded by but that is clouded by the “city smog”
• School: Starting a new stage in my life (middle school) with new friends and teachers and learning even more about Spanish, history and science
• Swimming: Exploring a new-found love for a sport I had never before taken very seriously, and meeting new people along the way
• Model UN: Engaging with other students from all over Santiago and gaining new knowledge about countries and cities all over the world
• Volunteer Work: Helping people and animals not for my benefit but for the world’s benefit
• Music and Theater: Improving my singing and theater and doing something that I really love

Everything that I have done this year has taught me something new, and it has helped me grow and mature. Maybe this year has not been the best for some people (especially those affected by the actions of the man occupying the White House at this moment). But I have learned that we are stronger together, and we have to stand strong, because every person counts. This year, I saw a movie that greatly inspired me. It said that the meaning of life is partly to be happy, but also to live now, and I hope that people will live their lives, not dwell on the past or worry about the future. I now want to share with you three quotes (because I could not decide which one was best) that mean a lot to me. They are all spoken by Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, my favorite books. Enjoy…

“It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”

I hope you all have a wonderful 2017 😉

 

 2016 by the numbers:

0 – number of Copa América titles Chile won before we moved here

2 – number of Copa América titles Chile’s won since we’ve lived here

2 – countries Adela represented in Model United Nations conferences (India, Mexico)

6, 9, 10 – jersey numbers Dylan wore during his 28 games for La Católica this season

14 – day in June when Gigi Hébert was born and Felix became a big brother!

27 – officially bad smog days in Santiago

30 – family and friends who came to visit us (much more enjoyable than the smog!)

50 – special wedding anniversary for Kary and Nanette LaFors on June 17

100+ – hours spent to get official residency status

4,600 – the altitude (in meters) of the Salkantay Pass (that’s 15,200 feet) where we were on Day 2 of our 5-day trek to Machu Picchu

10,000 – round-trip miles Matt and Adela flew to celebrate Michael & Kristin’s wedding

1,000,000,000+ – number of leaf cutter ants we saw doing chores in the Peruvian Amazon

About 500 miles south our home in Santiago, just outside of the city of Valdivia, tucked away in dense woods of a temperate rain forest, stand a few of the world’s remaining alerce andino trees. They’re quite magnificent. Wide, tall, gnarled, magical. Back in February, we stood before the oldest of them – a tree that might be 3,000 years old – and thought about endurance. This tree stood before Homer wrote Odysseus, before the births of Buddha, Confucius and Jesus. It had been around for at least a millennium when the Mayans built Chichen Itza. It has withstood countless earthquakes and deluges and (just barely) human logging. With a minimal amount of caution by humans going forward, who knows how long it might endure? 2016 showed us that bonds endure and it showed us that it will take sustained work to ensure that our values endure as well.

Peace and love to you all. Adela, Dylan, Jeannette and Matt

by Matt Kelemen

The bottom of the world is white. Blindingly white. And it’s black. And grey. And blue. Many shades of blue. Cobalt blue. Cornflower blue. Sapphire. Periwinkle. There’s not much red or yellow or orange, unless you count the sunsets and sunrises. But you should count the sunsets and sunrises because they last a long, long time and they cast the most amazing array of oranges and yellows and reds across the sky. Oh and they paint all the white pink, too. It’s quite nice to see.

But most of all, it’s white. Because of the ice. There is a lot of ice at the bottom of the world, that is to say, on the Antarctic ice shelf.

— Ice that covers 5.4 million square miles, which is bigger than the area of Canada and Alaska put together.

— 6.4 million cubic miles of ice. And if you can’t picture how big that it is, perhaps it is helpful to know that all the human beings on the planet can, standing together and on top of one another, just about fit inside one cubic mile.

— Ice so thick in places that it pushes the landmass underneath it far below sea level.

— Ice that traps 61% of the world’s fresh water. If it all melted, DC would be underwater (there’s a thought), along with Philly, New York, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Shanghai, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Denmark (yup, the whole country), Venice (of course), Cairo, the Amazon basin, and the whole Central Valley of California. San Francisco would be an island, but our house would be safe. (Here’s a cool tool for simulating sea level rise.)

With ice floating all around you, and with the benefit of some instruction from Antarctic experts, you start to note the differences in the ice. The big bits are either glaciers — which are actually layers of snow that frozen together over time, sitting on top of land and advancing or receding through valleys — or ice shelves — which are the extensions of glaciers over the ocean. The expedition leaders on Antarctic ships don’t let you get within a half-kilometer of glaciers or ice shelves because of the whole falling-ice-can-crush-you thing.

Icebergs, the kind that sink ships, are pieces of glaciers that have been set free to float along, melt, and tip over again and again as their melting shifts their center of gravity. Jeannette and Adela were in kayaks not far from a cruise-ship-sized iceberg when it started to tip, drawing a calm, measured response from the kayak leader (let’s just say she used her outdoor voice) because of that whole iceberg-tipping-causing-a-tsunami thing.

Just to confuse you, if an iceberg falls off an ice shelf (rather than a glacier), then it’s called a tabular iceberg rather than just an iceberg. These are the ones that look like floating buildings. Big buildings. Or cities. Or Delaware in the case of the gi-normous one that’s poised to break off of the Larsen Ice Shelf any day now.

My favorite scientific terms are reserved for the smaller bits of ice. Anything between 5 and 15 meters in size is no longer an iceberg, but rather a bergy bit, while the babies of the Antarctic, the 1-5 meter ice bobs, are known as growlers. Anything smaller than that is brash ice and you’re allowed to bump your kayak into it. (Fuller description of types of ice here.)

There’s also fast ice, which is ice that is attached to the coast and extends out into the sea. On our furthest-south day, below the Antarctic circle, Captain Beluga (real name of our Russian captain) was kind enough to set us into some fast ice so that we could actually walk on it. Man, was I begging for a pair of cross country skis… and a team of dogs… and a month’s supply of pemmican… and a seal-skin parka… oh, sorry, been reading too much about the heroic insane era of polar exploration.

Editorial note on that: If you’re ever considering exploring uncharted lands, I recommend the Norwegian model, where you study your predecessors, prepare well, adapt to the circumstances, and especially see wisdom in the ways of people who have lived in similar climates. Definitely preferable to the British model, where you take pride in doing things the hard way, assume there’s no important knowledge outside of your own culture, and generally improvise your way through the experience. Roald Amundsen embodied the Norwegian model, got to the South Pole first, and came back alive. Robert Scott epitomized the British approach; he got to the pole second and died on the return (and was considered a hero for it rather than the more appropriate term, “bungler”).

Anyway, it turns out that fast ice is particularly helpful to a number of flightless animals, like seals and penguins, because it’s easy to hop up onto for a nap or a warming break from krill-fishing. Glaciers, pretty as they are, often stick out of the water without easy on-ramps. And they flip, which is not helpful to said seals and penguins. As a result, most of our seal viewing consisted of watching the beasts nap, yawn, and loll around on bits of flat sea ice. (The penguins are much more entertaining, but I’ll leave Adela to describe that in a later post.)

The whiteness of Antarctica is important in lots of ways. The white of a penguin’s front gives it camouflage while swimming, since it looks like the sky from below. If our ship was any indication, the people who get to Antarctica are overwhelmingly white, which is a shame (though the only humans born on Antarctica are Latinos from Argentina and Chile). But perhaps most importantly, the white ice reflects sunlight back into space, keeping the planet cool. We need the white and we should all be deeply concerned that there’s too little of it left.

by Adela Kelemen

Recently, my family and I took a trip down south. We went to many places and did many things. We learned about culture of the native people, the lives off the German settlers and much more. We visited new places almost every day. All in all, it was an amazing adventure!

We started of by visiting our friends, Ben, Ella, Charlie and Stephanie in Puerto Montt. They were staying on a farm owned by an American man. We had the “great outdoors” to play in and that is what we did. We played games during the day, games during the night, and roasted marshmallows over a fire. It was a lot of fun but we did not have much time there. We headed off to Chiloe for the night. Our original plan was for the four of us to go we whale watching. But, two more spots opened so Ella and Ben came along. We stayed the night at a cabaña (cabin) and got ready for an early wake up in the morning. The next day we drove out to the place that had the boats but when we arrived, our trip was canceled! =( So, we decided to kayak instead. It was not whale watching but we still had a good time. That was our last day with the K-Rads (Ben, Ella, Charlie and Stephanie). After we  dropped them of we headed farther south to our next adventure.

That night we got a ferry that took us overnight to Chaiten. From Chaiten, we drove 4 hours to a place called Puyuhuapi. Puyuhuapi is a small town on the shore of a fiord. But we did not stop there. We went about 5 minutes up the coast to a dock. We got out of our car and got on a boat that took us to the Puyuhuapi Lodge. The two days there were our days of luxury. They had fancy dinners, thermal pools, and beautiful views of the fiord. We saw a melting glacier called the “hanging glacier” which was spectacular and got to go kayaking at dawn with sea otters and sea lions. We learned a lot about the culture of the native people living here and it was, all in all,  amazing. When our two days of luxury were over, we packed up our stuff and headed out. We drove almost the whole day until finally we settled down in a campsite on the bank of the river Futaleufú. We set up camp and made dinner. We swam in the river and had hot chocolate in front of a fire. We were tired from a long day of traveling so we got into our tents and went to bed. The next morning, we made a friend who took us to see two kittens on the farm area where the camp sight was. The kittens were so ADORABLE!! One was gray and white and the other was a brown tabby cat. We packed up our stuff and got ready to go. We drove down to a place were we could go rafting. I was not old enough to go because their were class 5 rapids but my mom and I got to go zip-lining! It was a lot of fun and I videotaped it with my GoPro. There were great views as we zip-lined so I got some good pictures too. After my brother and dad did rafting and my mom and I did zip-lining, we hopped in the car, again. After a night of camping and a full day of driving and ferries, we got to Puerto Varas.

We arrived in Puerto Varas pretty late and we were all hungry and tired. We had dinner and headed to a little motel in the area. The next day Dylan would have to wake up early to get on a bus because his soccer started up and he could not miss any more practices. When I woke up my brother was already gone and my dad was at breakfast. I walked down stairs and had a delicious breakfast of kuchen, eggs and toast. Petrohue was our next stop. I had not gotten a chance to do rafting so I did it there. We were at a hotel so we got a good night of sleep and the next day was river rafting day!! My dad had already rafted so it was just my mom and me. We drove down to the place were they would pick us up and we got our gear. Then we piled into two vans and we headed to the river. When we got there, we did some practice and then we headed out on the water. It was a little cold but it was fine. And it was nothin like Disney World. We each had a paddle with which we had to generate power. The German woman next to me was not generating much power but the women in front of me was so it was really all about balance. At one part we all got out and did some rapids on our own. We would dive in sideways and then get on our backs. It was a lot of fun and before we knew it, the rafting was over. 🙁 After the rafting, we went back to the hotel. My dad made us a meal and me went down to the lake. It was supposed to be the most beautiful lake in the south of Chile but, personally, I have seen prettier. The next morning we checked out of the hotel. My mom had been “craving” a bicycle ride so we rented bikes. We rode 7 kilometers along Lago Llanquique, out and back. On our way back, we saw an adorable fox! We stopped to take some pictures and then headed on our way. Now it was time to go to Valdivia.

We had 5 days in Valdivia but it was our last stop. We went to our AirBnB house and settled in. We had some friends (my mom’s teacher Judy and her husband Gunther) who we spent most of our time with. We went and had dinner with them that night and some of their family came too. We had a great time and great food too. The next day was the city’s birthday. We went to a little parade and a celebration; then we went on a little tour of the area. But the best part of the day was the animal clinic. Daniel (Gunther’s son and Judy’s stepson) runs a pet hospital. I got to work there for a couple of hours. Their were puppies, cats and dogs there. I helped out with a lot of stuff like feeding and petting;). I also visited a house so an adolescent pug could get a check up. SO CUTE!!!! The power went out that day so we had a little problem with the doorbell. After that we had a small dinner and headed out to a music festival. But it was not so interesting so we headed back. The next day, Judy my mom and I went to visit one of the forts protecting Valdivia. We also visited a coffee place that used to be Gunther’s old house. It was cool to hear the description of the old house compared to the new cafe. After that we headed to this huge market with lots of little restaurant stands. I had two really long skewers of meat and they were so good! Then we went to a beach really close before we left. We had dinner with one of my dad’s old friends Francisca. She was about to adopt a baby. (Now she already adopted it!) We had pretty good food there. We were all a little tired so we went home. The next day me and my dad went to a hidden beach were we saw lots of cool things including shells, rock, crabs, little animals and kelp farmers. We climbed rocks and looked at tide pools. It was a lot of fun. When we got back, I went to the clinic and my parents went to a cafe. The clinic was a lot of fun and this time I got to see baby hamsters! They were so CUTE!!!