(Renaca, Chile)

There’s no craigslist here, so this is what I have to do to find more work.

(valparaiso, chile)

Another miserable 10 day weather forecast here in Chile

So I’m an English teacher now.

I got a job teaching english even though I’ve never done it before and I hardly speak spanish.  But I had a feeling I’d be good at it and I assured my boss he’d be stupid not to hire me.

So tonight, five minutes before my first class started, my boss mentioned that my “intermediate” english class was actually the first english class my students have ever taken. Luckily five years of improv/comedy/storytelling training and performing in NYC as well as years working as a raft guide, Outward Bound Instructor, etc taught me how to go with the flow, pretend like I know what the hell I’m doing, and when all else fail, make ‘em laugh. I freak’n KILLED tonight, thank you very much.

Come to find out, I’m really good at this!  Thank you for yet another valuable life skill UCB.

(Valparaiso, Chile)

My new sista’s.  Thank you god.

(Valparaiso, Chile)

I can’t believe how many people they fit into cars here!  (And this isn’t a clown car either. These are my new non-clown friends here in Chile)

(Valparaiso, Chile)

I just went three weeks without a single woman friend  and it darn near killed me. 

During those three weeks I was abandoned in the middle of nowhere in a taxi cab by my couch-surfing host named Nacho so he could hook up with another American girl more willing to put out, I was molested in my sleep by that dude I wrote about in a former post, and I stayed in a clown house with all men, several of whom which hit on me and one who cornered me in the kitchen and tried to kiss me after saying he wanted to show me one of his acrobat tricks (I know, I know.  I should have seen it coming.  It was a tiny kitchen and there’s no way he could have done an acrobat trick in there).  I faced all of these without the support of a woman.

And those are just  the non-specific events.  There’s more.  Everywhere I go in this country I am hit on.  It’s as if I am a little deer in a forest full of hunters in their camo onesies.   If I walk with one of my guy friends or a group of girls, I don’t have to worry.  But alone as a woman I am prey.  They whistle, they bark, they stare, they fart.  Whatever they can do to get my attention and make sure I know they want to grab my boobs or lick my face.  Yesterday the bus driver wrote down his number and gave it to me as I exited the bus. Age makes no difference.  Even the cute little old man on a bicycle ends up being annoying horny old man on a bicycle who whispers sweet spanish nothings as he peddles by. 

I know this kind of behavior has been written off for centuries as “boys just being boys” or whatever laim excuse our society has given us to undermine our experience on the receiving end of it, but they’re not boys. They’re grown men and I am a human being.  A person inside this body that has boobs (albeit small ones) and a vagina.

The worst part about being alone as a woman is that I am forced to act like a bitch.  I have no choice. If I dare smile at one of these men I am opening myself up to being followed or perhaps worse.  One man in Argentina, for instance, harassed me as I walked down the street because I wasn’t mean to him when he waved hello. He ended up following me for about 20 minutes in his truck, begging me to get in the passenger seat.  I told him to go away repeatedly but he didn’t.  Luckily I found a road his truck couldn’t fit down and escaped.  And so, even though I’m a nice person. Even though I love talking to strangers. Even though I like to smile and wave at strangers because I’m from the South and that’s what I was trained to do, I can’t. Men force me to be the bitch I am not and this absolutely infuriates me.

I have tried to find women friends in the towns I’ve visited so that I am not alone in dealing with this, but the problem is that on couchsurfing.com, only men will let me surf their couch.  The women never respond to my couch-requests and if they do they say they’re busy.  In the 3 months I’ve been surfing couches all over Argentina and Chile, only ONE woman would hosted me and that was after I met her for coffee and I told her about the creep who was hosting me.  After that she insisted I stay with her.

Sure, I’ve stayed with some great guys, most of whom which were respectful, but many of the guys on couch-surfing are looking for a hook-up.  To them it’s bed-surfing.  That’s actually how I ended up sort-of dating a dude in Argentina.  It was fun and I don’t regret it, but as I suspected early on  and realized later on, I was just another couchsurfer (I mean bed-surfer) to him, not a woman he truly valued as a person.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not opposed to  hot romantic latin lover affairs.  No, not at all!  But when I email a total stranger, a guy I’ve never spoken to and couldn’t possibly trust yet, what I probably want, dear couchsurfers, is a couch to sleep on, a cultural exchange, and a friend.  I shouldn’t be made to feel like I owe them something in return for their hospitality.  That’s not the point of couchsuring.  If you don’t beleive me, just visit their website.

So finally last week I hit my limit with dudes.  A couchsurfer emailed me and invited me over to his house for a meal and to help me “make friends in Valpo,” the new city I just moved to for a few months.  As soon as I arrived, though, I knew I’d been tricked.  Candles and sexy jazz music are not how you make “friends.” This little unintentional blind date was my breaking point.  As soon as I realized that this douchebag didn’t actually want to be my friend, I broke down and cried.   This at least made him back off.  “Do you have any female friends?” I asked with tears running down my cheeks,  “cuz I really need a woman in my life right now.”  He told me he thought women were too catty and that it’s difficult for women to have other women friends in his country.  No, douchebag, what’s difficult is when “friends” like you are just trying to get in my pants.  I knew there were women. I just had to find them.

 So, that’s when I decided to take some action. I needed to reconnect to that part of myself that is more than an orafice.  The person others seem to like for my intellect, my humor, my caring nature, my ability to spill food all over my shirt whenever I eat, and whatever other reason people might like me.  The only way I could do that was to find me some women.  If I didn’t, soon I would start to believe that I was nothing other than what these men made me feel like - a whore.  A woman who has no value other than a body to stick someone’s penis in.

And so I emailed a woman on couchsurfing and told her I needed a woman friend.  Not a couch to surf.  Just a friend.  Two days later we met for coffee and she brought along another female friend.  Then we had a girls night out where I met even MORE amazing women.  Then we spent the weekend together and went to BBQ’s with a great group of guys and even more gals.  Every night we walked each other home form the dance club and dinner parties because it’s safer that way.  We laid out on the beach together and talked about women things.  In fact, I talked for hours and hours like a desperate person who’d been in solitary confinement, sharing my stories from the last three weeks.  Stories I’d tried to share with a couple guy friends but  felt defeated when they laughed at the story about the dude touching me in my sleep.   They just don’t get it.  How can I expect them to though?   They have no idea what it’s like to be on the receiving end of this bullshit all the time. Only women understand this. My new lady friends  listened. They shared their stories. They made made me feel sane for the first time in weeks.  More importantly, they validated my experiences, my feelings, my story, my truth.

And so finally I have women again and my life.  Loads of them.  And everything is in balance.  I love men.  I really do.  I love their friendships.  I love dating them.  But as a woman in a foreign country by herself, I have made a new rule.  First things first. Find a woman in every town I go to and cling to her friendship for dear life. 

Thank god I am not shy.  Thank god I have the balls (ovaries) to email a stranger and ask her to be my friend.  I just need to remember that other women might now be so pushy.  That it is now my duty to reach out to them, let them surf my couch when I get home, and make sure I am there to listen to them and their stories because they need me and I need them.

(Valpariaso, Chile)

My neighbors and their bathtub flower pots.

(valparaiso, chile)

This homeless dog lives on the stoop near my house. Considering the fact that my entire hand is black when I’m done petting him, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one willing to do so.

Today I felt a little sad. Then I pet this dog. Then I felt great. Dogs amaze me.

(valparaiso, chile)

I arrived in South America exactly 3 months ago today.  So far these have been some of the 3 hardest months of my life.  In perhaps the same way someone who’s had their heart broken before and decides to date again or a woman has experienced the pains of labor and wants another baby, I too suffer sometimes from severe amnesia.  The amnesia of a traveler.  I only thought of how much fun the challenge would be when I took the leap of faith and booked the ticket last summer.  Thank god I didn’t realize how much it would suck too or I would never have come! So I’m glad for this amnesia, for it’s what makes me take risks that will, in the long run, always be worth it.  The last 3 months have  forced me, in many ways, to grow into a new and better version of myself.  Someone I didn’t even know I was.  So here’s to surviving the first 3 months.  May the next 4 and 1/2 continue to surprise and amaze and challenge me.