Kyle Hepp

June 27, 2010

Had so much fun photographing this beautiful mother/daughter team in Barrio Yungay today. Their relationship with each other is so much fun and very special, and reminds me a lot of my own relationship with my mom. Love you mommy!

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June 24, 2010

Posting about soccer. I’m sorry. I’m obsessed.

I’ve slept like…a minute, since this World Cup started. I probably won’t sleep tonight because I’m reaaaally nervous about Chile v. Spain tomorrow. And I definitely won’t be able to sleep on Friday night before the U.S. game.

I want the Chileans to win so bad tomorrow A. because I absolutely love the team under Bielsa. And B. because selfishly, it will make me continue loving this place a whole lot more if they win. I’m pretty sure that if they don’t go through, incessant whining will make me want to flee the country. I’ve already heard at least three different commentators say how it “won’t be fair,” if Chile doesn’t go through even though they’ve already won two games — I believe they’d be the first team in the history of the World Cup to not go through to the next round with two games won. But that doesn’t make it “not fair.” That makes it EXCEPTIONALLY sucky. Still not the same as unfair. I really don’t want that to taint what has, so far, been a really awesome run for Chile. So let’s think positive. Chile CAN beat Spain. They’re totally capable. Especially with Bielsa’s genius tactical changes (can I name him man of the match in the last game?). Especially if Spain continues to not step it up. Especially if Medel continues playing like a fricken baller. Dude, he’s SUCH a baller. I have faith in Chile!!! Pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaase just win!!!!

And in the mean time, watch this video of the world’s reaction to the U.S. goal. Thank you so much to Marmo for passing this gem along. Made me cry like a baby.

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Team USA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think that yesterday was one of the happiest days of my life. While I went crazy twitter’ing the first two games. But yesterday, I headed over to a friends house to watch the game, so I didn’t use the internet. I was just watching, in the moment, focusing on nothing else. Chile’s regular cable programming is only showing less than half the World Cup games (ludicrous, as my friend Matt so aptly puts it, in a supposed soccer-crazed country). To see all the games, you have to have Direct TV, which is separate from normal ESPN and Foxsports channels. Anyway. So I drove over to my friend’s house, Paradero 38 on Gran Avenida. To watch the U.S. boys on his giant flat screen TV, in HD, in all their glory. My friend went to work. Seba fell asleep, because, you know, he cares about soccer so much. And I was left by my lonesome to suffer. WOW, did I suffer. By the 90th minute, I was literally in tears.

Normally, one thing that I really love about Team USA is that their behavior always makes me proud. We are not historically one of the best teams, but I think we have always been one of the best teams when it comes to Fair Play. We don’t usually dive relentlessly (a la Italy and a la France) to draw fouls. We don’t sneak in an elbow to the face of the opposition when we think that the ref isn’t watching. We don’t walk out on our coach, no matter how much of an idiot we might think he is. And we don’t bitch about the reffing when all is said and done.

After the TOTALLY LEGIT goal that was disallowed against Slovenia (the would be game winner, instead we got a tie) I was heartbroken. But I didn’t want to blame not winning on the reffing. The players and coach didn’t either. Yes, of course they were upset. But no one got out of hand with their comments. I believe one of them actually said something along the lines of “Well, the ref wasn’t the one who made us go down 2-0 in the first half.” Total class all the way. I’m proud to say that being bitter and whining about reffing is absolute NOT an American soccer tradition.

But then in this last game, as I saw our qualifying chances slip away as it looked like we were playing to a 0-0 tie with Algeria, which would leave us out of the World Cup, and the ref disallowed YET ANOTHER TOTALLY LEGIT GOAL, I thought to myself, “I’m done being a proud, classy Gringa fan. EFF FAIR PLAY! I will HATE THE WORLD FOREVER if we get knocked out of the World Cup with two goals that would have put us through, having been called back for no good reason.

At the end of the game, the ref added on four minutes of stoppage time. In the 91st minute, Landon Donovan came through in a HUGE way for the U.S. and put one in the back of the net. And just like that, we were through. I screamed until I had no voice left. Total jubilance. And then I cried happy tears.

After 90 minutes, I will admit, I had given up. I thought we were out. I was bitter. But the players hadn’t given up. The players weren’t bitter. They just did what they do and got the job done. And finished number one in their group.

So now let’s talk really quick about something else that I love about the game. The Americans are winning over hearts and mind. In the second game that I watched, the announcers were Mexican and didn’t even try to hard their hatred and lack of respect for the U.S. team. But in this third and final group stage game, a Venezuelan announcer started to get excited toward the end of the game. He said, “I’m just going to say it. I want these Americans to get through! They deserve it, look how hard they’re playing! There. I said it.”

You gotta love a comeback kid. And I think the fact that we had three incredible comebacks, in three games, that we legitimately should have won the second game, but didn’t whine about it and start a scandal, just moved forward, that we play hard for 90 minutes and never give up, I really think those things are winning people over. We might be the Clown College of Football, but everybody still loves us

Some people think this is some kind of Cinderella story. Which, I actually find to be hilarious. We came out first in our qualifying group. We made it to the finals of the prestigious Confederations Cup. We were the first team to break Spain’s two year unbeaten streak. The only team to get a goal against eventual World Cup winners Italy, in the last go-round. We won the Gold Cup. We’ve beaten Mexico solidly and consistently (everywhere except in the Azteca stadium) for the last ten years. Would the U.S. in the finals or even the semi-finals be extremely improbable? YES. Unthinkable, like it used to be? NO.

But to go back to the U.S. bringing the world over to the dark side of soccer, I love it. So many times people don’t separate government from citizens. And the World Cup is a good way to put a face to a country, and realize that even if you hate their politics, they’re still human beings who love and suffer and want to win the World Cup, just like everybody else.

No matter what the outcome on Saturday against Ghana is, I’m so proud of our team right now, and nothing will take that away.

Below, by far, the best World Cup sign I’ve ever seen. It brings a grin to my face every single time I scroll down and look at it again. Credit for the picture to Foxports.

If you don’t get it, watch this Braveheart video around minute 2:15.

PS. I love that we took a movie based on the history of Scotland, put Mel Gibson in it, and made it completely ours. Man, I LOVE being a gringa, with all my little Braveheart.

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June 22, 2010

The other night I got tipsy with my suegra and we talked about Chile from the perspective of two expat women who have lived here a long time — one significantly longer than the other, but still. We got to talking about Chile’s isolation from the rest of the world.

In many ways, this is a very cool thing. Chile is so out of the way, that the people that come here, I generally find to be very random and very interesting. You don’t just happen to pass through Chile, the way you might just happen to pass through Mexico. No. You take a usually $700+ flight, for 9+ hours if you’re coming from most places in the U.S. or elsewhere outside of South America. That requires at least a minimal amount of thought on why in the world you’d want to go through all that effort to come to this little country at The End of The World, as I refer to it.

And Chile is very isolated geographically. The Andes Mountains separate it the Eastern part of the continent, the Pacific ocean is to the West, the Atacama (driest desert in the world) is to the North, and Patagonia wilderness is to the South. So right from the get-go, as the Spaniards were busy trying to colonize those crazy Mapuches, who fought to the bitter end (and continue to fight in the Southern Chile), they realized that this place wasn’t easy to get to. Once you got here, especially back in the day, when letter had to travel by boat, then by horse, then by lord knows what else, you were cut off from the rest of the world.

Then we have the dictatorship, which I’ve heard a lot Chileans say kept them isolated as well. That may be. I’m not a Pinochetian scholar. I do know that he was in power for 17 years and put a hefty tax on books in order to keep the people from reading.

But I think that the isolation comes more from inside Chilean minds than anywhere else. The earthquake seemed to make it very clear to me that Chile still retains much of their Us Against The World Mentality. All the way from up top — President Bachelet, initially refusing foreign aid — down to the country’s largest relief effort — called “Chile Helps Chile.”

I’m just going to say it — that’s a weird name. To me.

All I have to compare this against is my experience living in the U.S., and I can’t imagine that in the face of natural disaster we would entitle our relief efforts, “The USA helps The USA.” That seems very ethnocentric. Not that the U.S. is NOT ethnocentric. We sooooooo are. However, when it comes to helping abroad U.S. citizens give more than fairly generously and  I think expect to be supported by fellow mankind around the globe, even if it’s in non-monetary ways. I can’t see us starting a campaign featuring the fact that we help ourselves.

About a month after the earthquake I saw a news reporter here talking about how the entire globe was still talking about Haiti and had already moved on from Chile. Um, yeah. Maybe that’s because Chile is screaming to the world, “We Help Ourselves!” Or maybe it’s because the catastrophe here wasn’t quite on the same scale. Take your pick.

This Us Against the World mentality does seem to be a driving force for the country of Chile to effectively work hard to be a better place. But I think it also gives Chileans tunnel vision and they forget that opening up to the rest of the world is not necessarily a bad thing. Implementing good ideas from around the globe doesn’t mean that Chile will become any less Chilean. Accepting help from abroad if necessary doesn’t mean that Chile isn’t capable of helping themselves. Chile is not alone. No one is alone these days. The world is way too small. Chile can and should help Chile. But they shouldn’t close the door on everybody else. That’s all I’m saying.

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June 21, 2010

Carolina and Gabriel are SO good together.

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