a love story and a broken anniversery

I should win the romance novel of the year award with this title. "A love story and a broken anniversary" really Meghan? Should I read on? you say to yourself.  Go ahead....it's not what you think.

Not much is, ya know.

We realized while sitting on my friend Mariah's new green couch the other day that it had been exactly one year ago that I had broken my foot. That fatal day of sky diving where the parachute didn't open and I thought my life was over....no no no, actually I was standing in flip flops on a corner, about to j-walk across the street to my office, when somehow my foot slipped off the curb, the bags of books I was carrying prevented me from catching myself on my way down, and moments later I stood up again with the help of a kind old Chilean man, a little bloodier with a broken bone in my foot. Oh the clumsiness, it's hard to believe a year of my life has passed since that awful morning of walking in between doctor's offices and hospitals and crying hysterically. I couldn't say a damn word to anyone in Spanish except "estoy bien" when they would give me strange looks on the street. It's really been a century since that day.

Time in Chile FLIES by, I am not kidding you folks, one month can fly by at such a speed that you blink your eyes and suddenly you are super confused, why does this happen? Everyone confirms it, everyone I know says the same thing, but I have yet to figure it out. It's a good thing I suppose in some ways, and then also I am like SLOW DOWN, I like my life, I want to soak it all in!!

Chile fucking rocks, have I mentioned this to anyone?

Excuse my French (I did study it for five years), but in the last year I have grown madly in love with this country, absolute craziness. But it's not only the country I have fallen in love with,

it's also....(drum roll pllllease)

my bicycle.

I knew you didn't see that coming. Its a true love story. I don't know that I treat much else in my life with as much respect and care as I do my bicycle, although I try to share at least five minutes everyday hanging out with my plants as well and give them encouragement and some smiles, really I save the majority of my concern for my bike.

I have turned crazy in Chile. That should have been the title of this post.

Do you have any idea what it feels like to whiz past a car stuck in traffic on a bicycle, to get to and from work every single day for FREE. Any idea what its like to climb up a hill for ten minutes only to coast down the other side. I ride my bike everywhere, I have successfully gone to almost every nuck and cranny of Santiago and I would say folks, finally, I know my way around. I drove for the first time about two weeks ago, when my boyfriend so happily handed over the keys (haha, sarcasm) and I literally hopped in and just planted myself all over Santiago without a question. After lifting his jaw off the ground, I turned with a smile and said I guess the bike has paid off darling. It was 30.00, it was probably stolen, which is sad, the gears don't really work and neither do the brakes, but the bike rocks! A little busted but not broken! The story of many things I do here in Chile. If you don't have a  bike, go buy one, it will change your life, you CAN ride to work even when you work far away. One of my jobs is a bus ride and metro ride and 45 minutes from my house, I rode my bike there last week! I saved 2.00, and an hour and a half of my life standing on jam packed smelly buses hoping not to die. Instead I biked 20 miles, got a work out and got to see the city from a different perspective. I guess I don't have to go on, but seriously, got out of your car, get off the bus, get off your ass and get on a bike. It's totally worth it!

Well these are two new things I have fallen completely in love with (the bike and the quite small garden on my balcony) but they bring me a LOT of joy. The city of Santiago is sort of cool like that, you get to feel special in many ways. There is a culture of bikers, I see different and yet the same people on my journeys everyday. On my 7:45am bike ride on Tuesday and Thursdays, I pass the same morning juggler (the guy who juggles in the middle of a highway lane during the red light) we exchange morning smiles under his bright red clown nose. I see the same bikers on my other routes to and from my office at 930 in the morning and again in the afternoon. I love so much seeing people in full business suits and skirts and nice clothes riding bikes. I think "you rock" when I see them, thank you for biking. That's what my bike license plate would say if I had one, thank you! There are cool people in the world. Then the garden has gotten a lot of unexpected attention, I befriended a random Chilean girl the other day standing near my plants, when we bonded about the non recycling policies in Chile and her old life of growing up in Canada and how normal recycling and gardening was and how here you are looked at cross-eyed when you don't throw your plastic bottles in the garbage. Get with the program, I think, sometimes, you know I love you Chile, but let's be a bit more eco-friendly.

So I have fallen in love and successfully celebrated a year since the fatal foot accident and the stomach injuries, and the multiple woes of 2009, 2010 has sort of rocked my world and I am very happy with it. I have had some major ups and downs, but overall I am happy to still be calling Chile home, in a very endearing and truthful manner. Hasta manaña Chile, ahora me voy a dormir.

Pablo Neruda

Oda a la bicicleta            Iba por el camino crepitante: el sol se desgranaba como maíz ardiendo y era la tierra calurosa un infinito círculo con cielo arriba azul, deshabitado. Pasaron junto a mí las bicicletas, los únicos insectos de aquel minuto seco del verano, sigilosas, veloces, transparentes: me parecieron só lo movimientos del aire. Obreros y muchachas a las fábricas iban entregando los ojos al verano, las cabezas al cielo, sentados en los élitros de las vertiginosas bicicletas que silbaban cruzando puentes, rosales, zarza y mediodía Pensé en la tarde cuando los muchachos se laven, canten, coman, levanten una copa de vino en honor del amor y de la vida, y a la puerta esperando la bicicleta inmóvil porque sólo de movimiento fue su alma y allí caída no es insecto transparente que recorre el verano, sino esqueleto frío que sólo recupera un cuerpo errante con la urgencia y la luz, es decir, con la resurrección de cada día.

Ode to Bicycles          I was walking down a sizzling road: the sun popped like a field of blazing maize, the earth was hot, an infinite circle with an empty blue sky overhead. A few bicycles passed me by, the only insects in that dry moment of summer, silent, swift, translucent; they barely stirred the air.  Workers and girls were riding to their factories, giving their eyes to summer, their heads to the sky, sitting on the hard beetle backs of the whirling bicycles that whirred as they rode by bridges, rosebushes, brambles and midday. I thought about evening when the boys wash up, sing, eat, raise a cup of wine in honor of love and life, and waiting at the door, the bicycle, stilled, because only moving does it have a soul, and fallen there it isn’t a translucent insect humming through summer but a cold skeleton that will return to life only when it’s needed, when it’s light, that is, with the resurrection of each day