The Stuff One Sees at the Beach

So, I went to the beach this weekend...by myself! First of all, that never happens and second, it was divine. I had a purpose, aside from entertaining my inner beach bum: I had signed up for the Energizer Night Race being held in Viña del Mar, Chile, with the super odd distance of 8.2 km. I don't know how they came up with 8.2 but whatever, 8.2 it was. And of course, since it was a trip I planned all by my lonesome, the logistics got confuzzled and I ended up going on Friday and coming home on Sunday for a Saturday night race (don't ask). I chose to see the glass all the way full on this one!

So, Friday afternoon, I took myself and my (rather heavy) duffle bag (only 2 nights, come on) to the bus station. Call me a nerd, but I was excited about taking my first "real" bus trip (a two hour bus ride might not seem like a real bus ride but trust me, it was). I actually enjoyed taking the subway downtown, trying to find the correct terminal (second time's the charm, apparently), trying to get on the wrong bus about 5 times, watching all the back-packers, wincing at all the screaming kids, marveling at amount of luggage people lug on a bus, etc. The bus ride itself was fairly boring - I'm guessing because I...fell asleep... and have no idea if anything exciting happened or not. And then, of course the bus arrived and there was a new terminal to inspect and tourist-trappers to ignore and a bed & breakfast to be located (absolutely recommend: amweinberg.cl). All awesome. I got checked in, dropped off the infernal duffle (note to self: time to invest in one of those cool backpacks), and headed to the mall to pick up my kit.

So, first of all, normally, I'm a walking GPS, but that mall dominated me. I could't stinkin' find the Nike store to pick up my kit!! It must have been quite a sight, the solitary gringa roaming the passageways with a confused-changing-to-swearing-in-symbols-under-my-breath expression. Turns out, it was in a "new addition" on the other side of the road and...grrr...saving grace, Starbucks, with a really cool Lego store above it. And the kit was good for a few laughs - one of the sponsors was Banana Boat and they oh-so-thoughtfully provided a nice can of sunscreen...for a night race...but whatever... And then I took myself to the beach for a lovely stroll in the sunset. :)

Saturday dawned grey and cold...dude, it's summer and I was at the beach...not once did "cold" enter the equation... Anyhow, I found my way to, you guessed it, the other Starbucks, conveniently located on the beach #biggrin and #itdoesntgetanybetter. I had on a very light sweater over a tank top and decided it would be grand to walk about five miles along the beach. I really really wanted to run but was trying to conserve my strength for the blistering 8.2 km I would experience that night. I got fearfully and wonderfully sunburned on the way back (idiot, the sunscreen was for the day of, not the actual race!). And here are some interesting things I saw:
*a solitary soul playing bag-pipes on the beach (no lie)
*some VERY unfortunate mullets
*electric blue jeans and a rainbow-striped shirt...on an old dude...wow
*the Divine Elvis aka the homeless guy wearing a red choir robe and playing a drum set mounting on a shopping cart
*a true albino
All of it = awesomeness!

And then...the race... I love running, and normally I like to run alone. But I have learned that participation in races is sort of a group thing. It would appear to be way more fun "with" rather than "without" friends (note to self: work on this for the next one, deadline 1 April). Well, to clarify: the stretching and hanging out for two hours before the race would be way more fun "with". The actual running part I'm still okay with doing by myself...although it would be nice to see a friendly face coming into, say, km 7.6 or something. It really was a fun race...everyone had head lamps and there was no illumination on the course... and it was at the horse track, so it was a couple big loops through sand and grass and whatnot. And very few women passed me, and I actually passed a bunch of guys, so that rocked too.

And that was it, except for the total lack of taxis and the slightly panicky walk through Viña at midnight by myself, and the freezingness of the night for which I was ill-prepared, and then I went to sleep and got up and went to Starbucks and said good-bye to the beach and got back on the bus and came home. How's that for a 5-star weekend! (And I had some pictures but they're lost in email-landia. Maybe I'll get back to it. Probably not, though.)

That Didn't Come Out Right...

Language learning is a _____ process. Fill in the blank - if you've never learned another language, try to imagine it... yourself, a competent adult, able to do things like order in a restaurant, express an opinion, ask for directions, call the cable guy... and then put yourself in a place where NOTHING is familiar, save signs for things like Coke and Levis and the occasional smash-up word like googlear (the act of googling, I kid you not).

Now, I've been in this process for 8 years now... yes, count them, 8... and I have learned a lot. I'm actually quite capable in my adopted tongue. But there are days when absolutely nothing comes out right! Most of the time I know it's me, that I'm having a "boca gringa" day (the days when my pronunciation is laughable), that I'm not coming up with the right words. Then there are days when I promise you, it is not me, it's them....

The other day I was in a coffee shop for a meeting (all meetings require caffeination, right?). Not to brag, but I know what I'm doing when it comes to ordering coffee. This is not a problem area for me. And so I waited at the counter for the guy to quit messing around and pay attention. I was a little annoyed, but whatever. So... I ordered my coffee. It wasn't even elaborate, it was just a plain latte with skim milk. The guy looked at me as if I were speaking Martian or Chinese or something. He repeated back to me an order I never even thought of making, with flavors and who knows what. I calmly (counting under my breath) repeated my quite simple order in a clear, slow voice. He repeated back to me... something else entirely, different from the first and definitely not what I had said. His co-worker corrected him, repeating what I had said. He turned and looked at me with this confused look on his face, and right then and there I had a very unholy moment.

The things is, I'm usually fairly confident in my language skills. But days like that make me wonder... I'm currently studying for a big competency exam mid-November, and I have my rock star days and my Napoleon Dynamite days. I want to know everything - all the vocabulary, why they use this word this way one day and another way the next, the culturally loaded meanings behind things, how to write and speak in such a way that no one suspects I wasn't born with this gift... I know that herculean task is impossible, but I'd like to know enough to at least have a rock star day at test time.

So, I keep turning on the radio and reading the newspaper and watching the sitcoms. I bug my friends incessantly with the whys and the whats and the how comes. I take the plunge and say stuff and laugh along when it comes out so lame. And then I just shrug and say, "That didn't come out right..." and start again...

Like running on the beach

I adore the beach. I was born by the beach. I always turn to the beach (when I can) for that sense of well-being and peace that is hard to find in the city.

I also adore the idea of running on the beach. The movies make it look so easy! The light is amazing (no matter what time of day is being portrayed) and the girl or guy just saunters along the sand, in shoes or barefoot, looking super relaxed and stress-free, clothes billowing, hair blowing... yeah, it is not that easy. It's really hard and really... disappointing. My fantasy of waltzing along the beach, burning calories and looking fabulous, is, well, a fantasy.

The reality, for me at least, is pounding the city streets, dodging cars, stalling at red lights, sweat streaming, inhaling untold quantities of smog, gasping for those last few hundred meters...

I like running in the city. I really do. I like watching people as I run. I like seeing visible progress in the number of blocks I pass. I even like the sweat, the tangible proof of exertion. It's not always easy to convince myself to strap on the shoes and turn on the tunes and get going, but once I do, it's hard to imagine why it was necessary to convince myself.

Normally, I could turn all this into a huge object lesson, but just this once I'm gonna... not. Someday maybe I'll be able to run on the beach... and someday beyond that I'll be able to make it look easy... or not. Meanwhile, it's time to grab my shoes and my iPod and hit the streets.