el fin del año 2013

Years are made up of 365 days. Most are mundane. Most are uneventful. And sometimes that’s wonderful. Honestly, most of the days of 2013 were pretty terrible. In October, I wrote, 

It was a pretty shit year emotionally. I left a city that i love. I finished a dissertation, but that means I spent a lot of hours in a tiny room with a computer and not much else. I left another city that i love. I got a job, but that has meant starting from scratch in a new city where I know no one and that's been pretty emotionally draining as well. I hope next year feels like it reaps the rewards of all the crappiness of this one.

The last 2 months have been better, but we're still not in the clear. Nonetheless, at the end of the year, I’d like to remember the highs and lows, the moments of triumph and the moments of defeat. Because that’s the spice of it all, right? (See Bests and Worsts of 2012 & 2011).

Best Meal

Cosmos Club Foundation Grant Recipient Dinner (though I did get mistaken for my professor’s wife rather than an award recipient multiple times)

Worst Meal

My English Pub lasagna that was 2 hours late on Halloween, thereby fully thwarting my plans with Miley Cyrus

Best Party

My despedida from La Paz in July. I ended up tied to a chair on a table, and was fed shots.

Worst Party

When I finished writing my dissertation I called everyone I knew in DC and invited them over. 4 people showed up.

Best 24 hours

Sorrata, la gruta, mi mejor amigo, pelis, and good sleep

Worst 24 hours

Being stuck in San Salvador

Best Teaching Experience

Prof B sent me an email: “Got a good shout out for you in my theory class today. One student--Rebecca with long blond hair--was pretty much the only person who would speak about Geertz. I finally asked her about it and she said she read it in your 110 class. Word.”

Worst Teaching Experience

I asked my “Sex Gender Culture” class students to do a creative final project. I got a few insightful films and narrative stories. And a slew of high-school level collages of cut up magazine images of women’s bodies.

Best Student Experience

Hearing the bagpipes at graduation and feeling like I really had entered “the realm of the anointed”

Worst Student Experience

My lucha trainer getting mad when I didn’t get moves right after not practicing for a year

Best triumph

Getting a University College London/Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile postdoc

Worst Defeat

Not getting the Universitat von Amsterdam postdoc I really really wanted

Best gift received

Cute wooden luchadores from a committee member

Worst gift received

A shot of zambuca from DJ Inside

Best chance encounter

JC in my new fieldsite

Worst chance encounter

The Moroccan’s return to La Paz

Best Holiday

Thanksgivikah. Both because it’ll never happen again, and because it was a great time.

Worst Holiday

St. Pats. 2^nd year in a row. Can’t we just retire it already?

Best Paper I wrote

JLACA article which is FINALLY published

Worst Paper I wrote

Last minute AAA paper (but at least I did it at the beach)

Best “illegal” activity

Tie between sneaking wine into a movie theater and wheat pasting election posters around the fieldsite

Worst “illegal” activity

Getting locked inside and hushed when the La Paz alcalde came to the illegal bar I was patronizing

Best Surprise

My sister coming home for Christmas

Worst Surprise

Having to take a road test to replace a lost driver’s license

Best completed project

My dissertation

Worst uncompleted project

Any number of articles I started writing and never finished

Best encounter with an animal

Accidentally adopting 4 fish

Worst encounter with an animal

The cat who lives in my local Chilean bar who clawed up my pants

Best Fight

Lady Blade’s entrance in the Benefit for Kids with Cancer

Worst Fight

The Pepsi Can incident

Best new experience

Spa days at Hotel Europa

Worst New Experience

The newness of northern Chile (fortunately, the less new it is, the better it gets)

Here’s to the Bests of 2014 being even better and the worsts being, at the very least, funnier!

la lista de musica 2013

Recently, NPR published a retrospective of events in Hip Hop this year. In the preamble, the authors write,

“We all listen to music differently. What we hear is shaded by our history, our knowledge, our equipment, our mood, our taste.”

Each year I give my top ten list here (2012, 2011). It is not a list of the best songs of the year, but a list of the songs that were important to me this year. Many are not “good.” Most are not recorded in 2013. But these are the songs that were shaded by, yet helped to shape my history, knowledge, mood, and tastes this year.

extra special mention

Every year I reserve a special mention for an unconventional live musical event that I experience. This year, I defended my PhD dissertation. But somehow, being a doctor didn’t feel official until I walked into the American University gymnasium in my funny cap and gown to the sound of Scottish bagpipes. It was then that an uncontrollable smile spread across my face and I truly felt the weight of my accomplishment.

10.

In the end, I’ll always remember fondly Inti standing in his corner dj booth, pumping his fist in the air and with a giant smile on his face, singing along “I don’t care.”

9 

If I’m speaking critically, the song is shit. But it was there for me when I needed a bit of confidence.

8. 

…And then I settled into Northern Chile, and I just wanted someone to come live beside the ocean with me.

7. 

Writing a dissertation can make you go insane. Ditto for unrequited love.

6.

You do what you can until you can’t any more.

5.

Sometimes you need to feel like a ninja. Sometimes you need to feel like a primadonna. Sometimes you just need to feel young. 

4. 

Hay muchas preguntas y pocas repuestas.

3. 

It’s no secret that I have a love affair with Illimani. But hearing Wara Sinfonica with a free ticket in a special balcony box, only made my love stronger.

2. 

We all took notice almost immediately when our amada ciudad, La Paz was featured in this video. Months later, after an evening of Wara, I sat in Dumbo with Kicho almost falling asleep to my right and Gus taking Instagram pictures to my right, surrounded by people I love. And then Naughty Boy came on the big screen above us and we all lip-synced along.

1. 

Moving to Northern Chile was lonely and hard. Things just seemed to get worse and worse. But being in Jhon’s car felt different. Suddenly the world looked different from the passenger seat window. Streets that usually felt dingy suddenly glimmered in the summer sun. The highway that feels bumpy and too long from a bus seat feelt exhilaratingly curvy and fast as I stared at it through the windshield, and I wished it would go on forever. Everything feels easier, more exciting, from the car window. Being in Jhon’s car made me free. And then we turned up route 16 as the streetlights turned on, and Walk on the Wild Side came on the radio, and suddenly the whole world felt like it was an adventure waiting to happen.

...and there you have the soundtrack to my 2013