T A B L E_T A L K Offer your tips to a Table Talker who plans to spend Easter in Paris with his son   How-to, why-not and what-for -- find it all at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y Family sanity By Phaedra Hise A mother reveals her secret on how to travel with children -- and still feel like you're on vacation (03/12/99) Michelin madness By David Downie An exclusive club of upper-crust chefs waits patiently each year to see who is added to -- or booted out of -- the fold (03/11/99) The new North Vietnam By Jeff Greenwald A visit to Hanoi and environs reveals the complicated legacy of the war (03/10/99) Clash of the camels! By Laurie Udesky On Turkey's Aegean coast, wrestling beasts relieve winter's monotony (03/09/99) The wizard of Oise By David Downie Vincent van Gogh still draws painters and pilgrims to the Parisian suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise (03/07/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		GOING NATIVE | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - There aren't conversations so much as performances. Americans cluster around Chileans, three-on-one or worse, and watch them be Chilean. Any Chileanism will do -- a gesture, an anecdote, a charming turn of phrase. The Chileans, likewise, can't get enough of the Americans, who seem to have them eating out of the palms of their hands. One student from Illinois is even getting his photo taken with each of the nine Chileans. A glib safari metaphor hangs in the air like something rotten -- the Chileans could almost charge admission. Once, in college, briefly considering spending my junior year abroad, I picked up a piece of literature published by the National Association for Foreign Student Affairs. "One of the most effective ways to increase U.S. understanding of other languages and cultures and to improve our ability to function effectively in this interdependent world is to provide individuals with opportunities to study abroad," it read. Admittedly this was government prose, but the words -- effective, function, effectively -- seemed crude, untraveled. I began imagining someone in a lab coat charting my effective functionality, or myself charting my own. I stayed in America through college. I functioned effectively and ineffectively. Now, three years later, at this party where two cultures have converged, and stared, and agreed to sample each other obsessively, I wonder what it means to travel responsibly. Jennifer is sashaying back to us now, Alvaro in tow, with beer. They're proud, and drunk, and proud to be drunk. He starts in on his favorite subject. "I love this one!" he says in English, hooking a thumb in Jennifer's direction. "I love this one girl!" "I know." "She's top student in university," Alvaro tells me, stroking her arm. "I will visit and see her in big library asleeping like baby!" Jennifer looks to us after this latest coo. Her eyes ask what they always ask -- isn't he adorable? -- but there's also discomfort in them: She's not hooked on this visit idea. Abby and I watch as she guides Alvaro back to more vague affection. Soon they are again bouncing their happiness off us, enjoying the harmless foreignness of each other, as we, in turn, enjoy them, or at least the weird nostalgia that comes with a party full of college students. I take a stroll: a bedroom, then another, then the balcony, then back to the living room. The party's broken down a little -- quieter music, more conversations that last longer. The Americans still seem odd, sharing a funny, ambitious smile like they've stumbled onto gold. I glance at Abby on the couch. She's got a finger up her nose. I like how she is in Chile. This is respectful, responsible travel. It's on my way to the kitchen that Jeff introduces himself in order to talk about himself. He's from Jennifer's JYA program, a stocky, loud soccer player in a Che T-shirt. He loves hiking. He has won something called the Multicultural Award at his college. He plays kickball with poor children. He wants to know if I've read "The Communist Manifesto." "Well," he says, swigging his beer powerfully, "you should read the original German." "What are you doing here?" I ask. "What are you doing in Chile?" "JYA." "JYA." "You need culture if you're ever going to teach," he says, winking at a pretty Chilean as she squeezes past him. "Besides, aren't Chileans great?" Academia is clever. It has figured out how to reproduce in a world often hostile to its existence. It's a loop, a self-perpetuating organism built from ideas, action and rhetoric. I consider the dubious Multiculturalism Award. A perfect model of this self-perpetuation, the idea of multiculturalism facilitates experiences such as Junior Year Abroad -- it is sufficient, now, in justifying six months spent anywhere doing anything, to say, simply, "JYA." The JYA experience, in turn, organizes itself around the pursuit of the abstract ideals that constitute multiculturalism. A successful year abroad thereby helps enable multiculturalism as a substantive project; academia has created an institution whose product is future members of itself. In part through cycles like this one, multiculturalism has aged beautifully into meaninglessness. Attempts at defining the idea have mercifully languished, leaving academia with a striking and showy void. Anyone, in turn, may endeavor to fill the void however he or she sees fit: an essay, a lecture, a semester in Kenya. Abby and I bump into each other in the kitchen. We admit, a little ashamed and a little tipsy, that we miss our friends in America. We admit that we get tired of being Americans in Chile, and we get tired of other Americans in Chile, and we get tired of Chileans in Chile. We admit that it's late and we're tired. We find seats at the kitchen table, relieved a little at the no-culture of a kitchen table, and chat with other guests. Around midnight, Jennifer and Alvaro join us. The party's winding down, people are tired and Bob Marley's on the stereo for the third time. Jennifer has the glazed, satisfied look of a happy host. She surveys the apartment. "Not bad, no?" she asks in English. Her brief returns to English smack of condescension, amused visits to that charming little language so popular in less exotic places. "It was a fiesta all right," Abby says. "Next time, salsa dancing." "What do you think, Alvaro?" I ask. "What do you think of Yankee parties?" "They're superior," he reports, showing off a new word. "Better music. Americans have better music." Jennifer titters briefly. Her boyfriend is forgetting to act cultural. It's all over her face, a strain across the lips like her pricey Roquefort has turned out to be cheddar. Her foreign lover is an apple pie away from saluting the Stars and Stripes. "I love America," he exclaims, unaware of her dismay. "How can I ever be with another Chilean?" "Looks like I've domesticated him," Jennifer jokes, looking around quickly. "He'll never go back to the wild." If a quick silence follows that last one, no one acknowledges it. People are tired and drunk, and also maybe they expect this. We say our goodbyes at 12:30. Jennifer and Alvaro wave in the doorway, a united international front for the time being. They look happy there. Still, I fear he's uninformed in some crucial way. I picture him picturing her back in the United States, in big library asleeping like a baby. I picture her picturing him, then having that picture fade into an idea, then have that idea just float somewhere behind an effective paper on Chilean culture. Abby and I walk to the bus station holding hands, pointing at how the city looks at night. We board our bus and it's off. Soon the last of Santiago zips by and we're amid foothills. Those, with some time, give way to darkness. It's me and my seat and darkness. I think, cynically, guiltily, of Jennifer and her souvenir Alvaro. It occurs to me to be less critical, that love is always pretty selfish. If Jennifer's got a Chile fetish, after all, Alvaro's got his share of American fantasies. All this pigeon holing. I look for my own little nest. Who am I in the travel narrative? Why, that's just it, I realize. I'm the narrator. How convenient. I think about foreignness and college and relationships and cram it all in the grid. The grid is fun but vulgar and obtuse. No better a souvenir than bright scarves or JYA love. To remark upon Americans distancing themselves from America is to distance myself as well. I turn to the window and forget about Jennifer, Alvaro and the politics of culture plus love. We are whining in the dark up through Vallenar, past scattered encampments and mining towns, and then it's the desert. The desert is black and empty. There are craters, emptiness emptying out a little more. And boulders dot the plains occasionally, dumb and still like they wandered into the wrong picture. But there is no picture, really. It's just nothing. I scan the horizon for something Chilean and find only stars. SALON | March 14, 1999 Chris Colin is a freelance writer living in Oakland, Calif. _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________