Kyle Hepp

January 31, 2009

I learned an interesting tidbit of information today. As you know, we were previously worried that S. was going to lose his job working in construction here in Chile. And then, as I vlogged about, he did not!

But, things are still precarious on the work front. His company didn’t have any new contracts coming in, until recently that is. This week they found out that the project they’re working on at the airport is being expanded. They’ll now have work out at Santiago Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport until 2013, thanks to the government.

Unemployment hasn’t yet hit dire straights the way it has in the U.S. But, the government of Chile feels it coming on. So they are bumping up projects that originally weren’t scheduled for completion so soon, because they want to try and keep unemployment down.

However, in the private sector, things aren’t so bright. Cencosud (who also owns Jumbo, Easy and Almecenes Paris, amongst other business ventures) halted construction on the Costanera Center, which would have been the tallest building all of South America, and the second tallest in the entire Southern Hemisphere.

People keep telling me that the recession hasn’t hit Chile. Nobody seems too worried. But, I have this strange sense of calm before a storm. Chile has had a great economic run, but just like the U.S. they’re not impervious to crisis either.

A few months ago I wasn’t feeling the recession at all. I asked readers about it and most comments said they were fine as well. Now I know that one good blog friend’s husband has been laid off, my own blogs are cutting back, and several people I’m close with are job hunting with no success. So let me ask again — are you feeling the recession now?

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January 30, 2009

Really, I would love to tell you that the Travel Channel contacted me because I have the coolest Chile blog under the sun. But, that’s just not true. In reality, it was a mix of social media and luck that allowed me to have such a cool day filming with them.

See, back in the day when I didn’t have a job and had much more spare time on my hands, I spent hours on Flickr, commenting on people’s streams, making contacts, reading information in groups. The possibilities were endless.

I’m also on Twitter, which is sort of a mini blog. You update your status regularly, telling people what you’re doing at that exact moment, using 140 characters or less.

As it just so happens, Shira Lazar, the girl who contacted me from the Travel Channel is also on Twitter. She tweeted when she found out about her trip to Chile, asking if anyone knew of any bloggers/personalities in Chile that she could touch base with. One of my old Flickr contacts, who I hadn’t spoken with in ages, tweeted back to her with a link to my blog, and the rest is history. The coolest thing about that is, I had no idea that my old Flickr friend even read my blog!

I’ve also had people contact me about my photography services through facebook, and my first wedding actually came via this blog! So basically, my point is that while social media may seem like it’s a bit silly, truly using your social media contacts can help you profesionally.

So, if you want to hang outline here I am on:

Flickr
Twitter
Needish
Facebook
Vimeo (just joined yesterday)

Ps. In yesterday’s vlog, Lori guessed right…I didn’t even notice Mila, our nana, walking by!

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January 29, 2009

Untitled from Kyle Hepp on Vimeo.

First of all, George, you win a 12X18 inch photo of your choice, so email me: kylehepp at gmail dot com. Congrats, and thanks for the great suggestion! He was the first person to suggest La Piojera, which was one of the places we ended up going.

Today was my big day with Shira Lazar for the Travel Channel. She’ll be covering the whole trip for another website as well, so if you just can’t wait to see what the TC special, “Confessions of a Travel Channel,” is all about, you can check out her impressions of her first time in South America over at Jaunted.

I vlogged about the day above, but in case you’re at work or something, let me just sum it up for you: Filming something that’s sort of reality TV but not really, is WEIRD. Shira and I would have a conversation and then someone would be like “Wait, actually can you go stand over there in front of that tree and do that exact conversation again?”

I had a mic on me pretty much the entire time and they filmed for the whole afternoon that we were together, but the show is 7 days worth of footage cut down into an hour, so I’m not sure the odds that you’ll actually see any of me on TV are very good. However, it airs in June. Someone will have to tape it for me and let me know!

We went to la Iglesia San Francisco and Barrio Paris/Londres, not necessarily because they’re the coolest places in the world, but mostly because I wanted to be able to explain a little bit about the Catholic church’s influence on the country as well as the dictatorship.

Then we hit up la Piojera for a terremoto. We got a standing ovation when we walked in the bar, then the cameras which had been filming us from outside came in and the crowd got even rowdier. There were 2 camera men with a TON of equipment, a producer, a coordinator and a driver with us so we were quite a spectacle. We got hit on by a wasted guy who told us he was a painter and wanted to make art with us. Shira was curious as to why so many people were wasted by 5pm on a Thursday afternoon, so I got to explain yet another side of Chilean culture to her.

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January 27, 2009

This Saturday some Santiago bloggers Katina, Tamsin, Caira and I met up with Valpo bloggers Matt and Allie (plus several significant others/friends whom we did not kick out just because they don’t have blogs).

Our night out on the town was fun. We went to some generic, overpriced Providencia bar with typical horrendous service and then moved on to a Peruvian restaurant (Puerto Peru, I think it might have been called).

Over the course of the night, of course, we all started asking each other the typical questions that are unavoidable in a group of Chile-expats, “What are you doing here, do you like it, are you here long term?”

I always find it fascinating to hear other opinions from people who actually like living here. A lot of my closest friends share similar feelings to myself –I don’t hate it, we’re only here temporarily. So, whenever I meet someone who wants to stay in Chile indefinitely, I usually feel a little bit shocked. I forget that not everyone has plans to flee, since that seems to be what a lot of the other (younger) women around me are working towards.

The funny thing is that out of the few young people I’ve met that would like to live here permanently, most of them have been men. In certain ways, that makes sense — Chile with it’s extraordinary machismo is a man’s world. Is that what sends the gringas running in the opposite direction? Or maybe Chilean women have the same power over Gringo men that Chilean men seem to have over Gringa women.

And then, obviously, you have to factor in individual experiences. I sometimes wonder how I would feel about Chile if I hadn’t been assaulted on day number 5 of living here, if a guy hadn’t jumped out of the bushes and told me he was going to rape me, if I hadn’t been followed home by a creepy guy who threw a rock and smashed a new TranSantiago bus window when I turned around and yelled at him to leave me the fuck alone, if I hadn’t ever been bitten by a huge angry dog, screamed and had nobody help me even though people were passing by all around me. The ifs go on forever.

It might not be fair, but if I hated this country with the passion of a thousand suns I’d feel pretty damn justified. I don’t, though. I’m just wary of Chile, and living here tires me because I have to think defensively all the time. So talking with people who genuinely like being here made me wonder if maybe I would too if my Chile slate were clean….or if I were a guy.

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January 23, 2009

Why do you think so many of us are married to Chileans?

HA. I kid.

A long time ago I went on a trip to Costa Rica. I could not believe how huge the bugs were. I was bit by mosquitos as big as bottle tops and ants the size of my hand. Large insects are a decidedly tropical phenomenon and which Chile is not, so when I moved here, I was pretty happy that I wouldn’t leave the country with stories of massive cockroaches crawling across my butt while I used the toilet, like my mom in Colombia.

Last night, I heard fluttering of wings and a loud buzzing noise. Thinking it was a bat, I opened my windows, got a broom and prepared to chase it back out into the night sky where it belonged. However, when the frantic flying stopped and the thing settled down on my wall next to the bedroom light, I realized that what I thought was a bat was really the most gigantic moth (or something in the moth family) I had ever seen. I mean, maybe it was a bat crossed with a moth, I don’t know. But it was HUGE and insect-y. I didn’t know what to do so I just left it chilling on my light. And then took pictures.

Eventually it came down, Papito killed it and swatted it under the refrigerator where it’s dead body remains until I can get S. to get it out from there.

While I’m not squeamish when it comes to bugs, I have to say that something that massive truly grossed me out. Have any of you ever seen a moth that big or was this thing on steroids?

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January 21, 2009

Hey guys! Random question here, but I need your help in a big way!

Someone from the Travel Channel contacted me. Yes, very exciting although I don’t think I’ll end up on the actual show they’re doing, Confessions of a Travel Writer. But, at the very least I’d like to help them out since one of the featured travel writers they’re filming, Shira Lazar, has asked me to show her places in Santiago that are off the beaten path.

I have some ideas already but I want to make sure I’m not missing out on anything. She’ll only be here a Thursday night, that’s it. Shira will be filming the itinerary the Travel Channel gives her and then breaking away for a little bit with me to go see cooler places. She’s not totally sure of her itinerary yet so I’m waiting to decide on where to take her after I find out where she’ll be and what kind of stuff she’ll have already done by the time I have her in my clutches.

Where would you take someone from the Travel Channel on a Thursday night in Santiago? It can be anywhere…a bar, a park, a club, a restaurant, a landmark…anywhere. If you give me a brilliant idea and I end up using it, I will give you a 12X18 of the photo of your choice to be shipped anywhere in the U.S.* I need all brilliant ideas commented on this post by no later than 6pm tomorrow, so help me brainstorm please!

*Sorry, it’s way too expensive and also bad for the environment to ship just one photo to Chile, but if I send it to the U.S. for you, you can send the photo somewhere as a gift or just wait until the next time you’re in the country to pick it up.

PS. She is also hoping to find bloggers/personalities in Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales. Hmmm, slim chance, but does anybody have any connections down there, or even just recommendations on where to go in those areas?

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Living outside the U.S. will open up your eyes to the culture of another country, that’s for sure. Most people spend more time learning about their new place of residence than they ever did learning about the history of where they grew up.

When I came here on study abroad, I took a ton of classes on Chilean culture and society because it was so interesting to me. I learned here, that so many things are not what they seem upon first glance. And this has made me question even the most normal things in my day to day life here. When a man leers at me on the street, I often start thinking about the roots of machismo. When I hear stories of racism against Peruvians or classism against anyone that has dark skin, my mind automatically jumps back to the indigenous abuses and rapes that occurred regularly in the fundos when Chile was first conquered.

In short, I’m now hypersensitive and overanalyze everything.

So, I wasn’t really surprised when I started searching for answers about cultural habits in the U.S., that I had previously never noticed.

We went to a basketball game. Almost all the players were black. I couldn’t tell who were the coaches from my nosebleed seats, but it looked to me like they were all white. I think there were three refs and if I remember correctly, two were white. The vast majority of fans were white. Orlando Magic, Rich DeVos, actually from my hometown area of Grand Rapids, is the whitest white, filthy rich old man you can possibly imagine. The Magic were playing the San Antonio Spurs, whose chairman is another rich, old Caucasian man.

A quick google search showed me that the NBA is actually lauded for having more diversity than any other men’s professional sport. That being said, in 2008, there was ONE African American owner and 40% of the head coaches were black. 40% sounds pretty high until you stop to think that somewhere between 75-90% (depending on who you ask, I couldn’t find definite info for 2008) of the players are black. So why aren’t African Americans reaching the upper echelons in the business world of basketball, if they’re good enough to play basketball?

Lots of people have studied racism in sports much more thoroughly than I have. This topic has clearly been around for a while. I’m not the first person to notice. It’s obviously a huge issue, and even with the first African American president, we still have a long ways to go. But, my point wasn’t really to show that racism in the U.S. still exists (DUH), rather to point out out how much more aware of it I am now when I go back, after a few years of living in Chile.

I’ve started looking at my surroundings with a more critical eye, no matter where I am. Has this happened to anyone else after spending some time abroad?

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January 15, 2009

I just had the weirdest moment. Here I am sitting at Starbucks, completely wrapped in my own little world — computer out, head down, working hard on writing stories. I hear someone go loudly, “Oye weon, no puede ser!”

And in my head I think, “How strange, there’s a Chilean in here, I wonder if I should go make conversation.”

I turn around to see what kind of weirdo is using Chilean slang, snap out of my daydream (In which I am in a Starbucks in Tampa, a 15 minute drive from my dad and a two hour flight from my mom, where there’s no winter, where there’s air conditioning everywhere, where people stand in neat and orderly lines and make friendly small talk, where clothes are cute and mullets are rare, and my husband is paid overtime if he works slave-labor hours) and realize, I AM IN CHILE.

Motherfuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucker.

That was a rude awakening. Guess I’m not as over this funk as I’d like to pretend to be — seeing as how my subconscious seems to have moved back to the U.S. without me.

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January 14, 2009

I finally get what all the fuss is about. Ever since I moved away to Tampa for college, people have been telling me, “You should move to New York, you would love it there!”

Well, we finally got around to visiting, and I DID love it there!

One of my blogging bosses, Vera, decided that enough was enough and she wanted to meet the employee who had been working for her for a year and a half, so she flew S. and I out! I know, I couldn’t believe it either.

S. and I awoke at 4am to get ourselves to the airport, park in short term parking and then sprint in to do the automatic check-in with only carry-on luggage, fly through security and make it to our gate just as the plane was boarding. We jetted out of Tampa as the sun was rising. S. passed out immediately on the plane, as he always does, only awakening when I gripped his hand too tight in my moments of fear. There were little personal TV’s in front of us. I had no idea that U.S. domestic airlines were doing that now too (we were on JetBlue)! Point being that as flew, I was watching the news of the plane that had just crashed on the runway somewhere (Dallas? Denver maybe?). And I’m a nervous flyer to begin with.

Anyways, as we began our descent into JFK, I woke S. up and point out the window. He asked, “Why is it all white, are we still in the clouds?” It was actually snowing hard you couldn’t even see out the window! Turbulence rocked the plane and my heart sunk lower and lower as I realized that the pilot probably couldn’t see out his window either.

But, although it was a little rocky, we made it down. My first impressions of the city were, “Where’s the city? And DAMN, it’s FREEZING.”

Upon arrival, I sprinted to the bathrooms and a woman rudely shoved me out of her way and cut me off on my way into the stall. I couldn’t believe it! The stereotype was true! New Yorkers are evil and cutthroat….except that she turned out to be the only rude person we encountered all day long, and since we were in the airport, there’s a good chance she wasn’t even from New York. Myth number 1, debunked.

My boss’ husband, Bill, picked us up, we found him with no problem. From there it was off to pick up Vera who had dropped the kids off at her mom’s house. We met her family and they greeted us with a kiss on the cheek. Both S. and I got really excited at that point, “You guys do that too?!?”

Finally actually meeting Vera after all this time was surreal because I feel like I’ve known her for so much longer. I mean, we email back and forth a million times a day and not just about work. I actually think we sometimes end up telling each other more about our marriages and our personal lives over the computer than I tell people in real life. Plus, I also read her personal blog and she often does videos so I already knew what was going on in her life, with her kids, and her diet, and everything. We were meeting for the first time but it was just like we were old friends.

First order of business was to buy city tour bus tickets and then to get ourselves to a Starbucks…a woman truly after my own heart. I had a dose of culture shock when we walked in to the store and all the calorie values were posted next to each drink. I didn’t know that NYC has a law requiring nutritional information to be displayed like that, and man was it freaky!

After that, we parked and boarded a double decker bus. S. and I had our cameras out the ENTIRE time. I mean, we were literally snapping away for 8 hours. It was amazing…there was just so much to photograph.

I think both of us were completely awestruck the entire time. We saw famous churchs, and streets where movies have been filmed, walked through Times Square, the center of the universe, saw Ground Zero, looked at the statue of liberty, passed by the street that Sarah Jessica Parker lives on now. I even got a fake Gucci purse in a back room in Chinatown! If that’s not the true New York experience, I don’t know what is. The only thing I was sad about was that we didn’t see an Olsen twin. I knew the odds were not in my favor, but still, I was keeping my fingers crossed. Seeing one of them dressed like a homeless person aka “hobo chic,” would have made my life complete.

Vera and Bill were completely patient with us the whole time. They didn’t seem to mind taking in a whirlwind tour and seeing the entire city in one day with people who looked like stupid tourists (because we were stupid tourists). They didn’t seem to be annoyed that every time they turned around we would be falling farther and farther behind because we were too busy taking pictures and gawking at things to keep up!

Even on a rainy, ice cold Sunday day, there were more people out than I ever could have imagined. NYC is crowded, sort of like Santiago, but ummm, better. The city just has an energy to it like no other. Both S. and I were pretty much in shock the entire time. We kept looking at each other and going, “This is JUST like the movies!” I liked it so much, it made me want to live there. Maybe someday in the far off future (when we’re rich), but still, that’s a city I could hang my hat on.

S. still keeps telling every person he knows that we went to NYC. I feel like it’s more of an accomplishment than a vacation to him. He feels like he’s made it big now that he’s been to the center of the world. And I still get a buzz thinking about being there. It was just a small enough taste to keep me coming back for more. Now, the next time we’re in the U.S. I HAVE to plan a longer trip there (Vera, keep your basement open!). It was amazing, really.

Below are my Hi-I’m-A-Tourist photos, mostly from my point and shoot. If you’d like to see the pictures that I took with my “real” camera, they’re all at my photography blog, first post up right now.

Nut 4 Nuts, started in Chile. And by the way, in case you didn’t know, another genius Chilean started a business called Nuts 5 Nuts. How’s that for entrepeneurialship? I wonder if it’s a joke, or if he actually didn’t understand that Nuts 4 Nuts means crazy about nuts?

Don’t honk…Santiago should implement a similar law. HA.

From the back I look like a badass New Yorker. Again, HA.

The Statue of Liberty is off in the distance.

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January 13, 2009

To say I’m not a kid person would be an understatement. At my family photo shoots, I do nothing in order to get the kids to be cheery and happy. I leave that up to the parents and simply chase, while doing my best to get good angles, light and smiles all at the same time. Trying to entertain as well, would be asking for disaster. Doing these family photo shoots is enjoyable most of the time, but always exhausting. Every time I finish, I think, “Wow, that was fun, but thank goodness I don’t have kids.”

Maybe someday that will change. Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and say, “I can’t wait to have a baby and dedicate my life to being a mother.” But, I’d be lying if I said I hope that happens. Right now I have a dog, which completely satiates any maternal cravings I might have.

Part of my lack of desire to have children stems from my yearning to have a wildly successful career. Now, I’m still not sure in what, but I’d love to be the next Annie Lebowitz or a less sappy Elizabeth Gilbert. I would like to work for the U.S. Olympic Committee or the World Cup Planning Committee. I’d enjoy building a multi-million dollar construction company with my husband and overseeing the business side.

But, I don’t think I’m being unrealistic in thinking that any kind of serious career building requires immense sacrifice, definitely more so on a woman’s part than on a man’s part. In fact, when I started googling the topic, I found a fascinating post by a professional blogger about it.

When men are in powerful positions at their jobs that require time and travel, the first thing they sacrifice is their family. If women have children, they cannot sacrifice their family. They don’t have the luxury of choice.

Sometimes I feel societal guilt for my lack of desire to procreate. But then I slap myself in the face and snap out of it. Really, the Earth is overpopulated enough as it is. I don’t think anybody will miss my spawn if I choose never to have them.

In some sense, I’m looking forward to our big trip because it will be a form of running away from that pressure. People aren’t going to look at two broke backpackers trudging across the world and ask them, “So, when are you thinking about hanging up your traveling hat, staying in one place forever and making babies?” I’m looking forward to having nobody asking me if I’m pregnant yet for the entire time we’re on the road. If anyone dares pose the question, I’ll punch him.

I’m not saying I will never have a baby. Because I never say never. Time changes people. And we’re still newlyweds. We’re not ready for kids right now, but maybe someday we will be. I mean, I once hated all dogs, and now I adore Papito with all my heart and soul. That little bitch has changed my life. And I have a feeling that if I do end up with a daughter, I’ll probably be able to say the same thing about her.

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