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		----------G o i n g  n a t i v e ----------For American college students living abroad, ----------the question is: How local can you get? BY CHRIS COLIN I lived in Chile then. My girlfriend had a fellowship and I had a girlfriend with a fellowship. We were done with college and trying things out. I worked and took walks and cooked chorizo. I learned some Spanish but not all of it. I missed America sometimes, to my surprise, like a spoiled baby suddenly stranded. I ran into American college students. They were intent and eager and earnest and coddled. They rolled their R's beautifully. I went to their parties. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - We're bored the night before our trip out of Santiago. The bus is leaving at 1:30 the next morning. Abby packs and I cook spaghetti and we look at our bags by the door. We count our pesos. We leave the dishes in the sink and go downtown with our stuff. Jennifer, a Northwestern junior we'd met, had mentioned a party for this evening. Mostly Chilenos, she'd assured us on the phone that day. Chilenos, in her book, glosses roughly as authenticity. Jennifer could find cultural currency in a pancake. We go, for the authenticity and the drinks. Jennifer greets us with her trademark fake smile and Alvaro, her Chilean boyfriend. They are a junior-year-abroad relationship, three weeks and counting. The JYA relationship is a phenomenon I try to understand, the condensation of academia, international politics and love into a semester of affection. It's a packed institution, this romance, and the packing seems sometimes lopsided. There are agendas at work -- quiet, innocent ones, but agendas nonetheless. Jennifer and Alvaro are not exactly what I'd call a good couple -- more like, well, a terrible, embarrassing couple. At least he's Chilean, she said to me once. Besides Americans, the party contains nine Chileans and a Peruvian. This is how party success is gauged -- a dark-skinned body count. Only six Chileans showed at John's barbecue, but one of them had marched against the junta in the '70s. Angela hasn't thrown any parties, but she has three Chilean roommates. For American college juniors spending a semester or two in Santiago, more is more. More Chileans at the party, more Chilean friends, more Chilean sweaters. Abby and I walk around the party and watch the Americans take more. "El Boomerang? Worthless. The beer's water," Scott from Massachusetts reports to one of the Chilean students, Nicanor, in excellent Spanish. "I prefer La Chimnea." Nicanor concurs and Scott beams. It's the beam every American here gets upon transcending the gringo ceiling. It occurs to me that this ceiling might just be the principal structure in expatriate architecture. A gringo is the last thing a gringo wants to be; a gringo still a gringo has failed to reinvent himself. The JYA community is itself a reinvention. Each semester, the group arrives in Santiago and ruptures, a determined scattering into the inner pockets of new culture. To be a clump of Americans here is to be Wonder Bread, bumbling, uncouth. The group skirts the American bars vigorously, flinches when a Backstreet Boys hit slips over the border. It neglects to call home sometimes. It regards itself with a self-consciousness bent on eliminating its own self-consciousness. It pretends it doesn't exist. And yet here we are at a party. This community operating on the presumption of its own diffusion has come out of the woodwork for some drinks. Watching them talk, I get the sense they've done so not so much for themselves but for each other. There's a show-and-tell feel in the air. "I met the woman who made it," Jennifer says, wagging a bright, hand-knit scarf. "Well I met the man who painted the mural on Balboa," Sarah offers. Jennifer nods but wags the scarf a little more. Abby and I take to the couch. The couch is where hermits go to avoid culture contests. We have our ambivalences about being Americans abroad, plus some reservations about stupid conversations. We talk about the art on the walls. Jennifer and Alvaro wander up to us. He's friendly and sincere and I wonder, occasionally, what he sees in Jennifer. Jennifer with her fake smile and bright scarf. They're making the rounds with a look that says, "We're making the rounds." "Alvaro's going to have a show next month," she tells us, a hand on her hip. "Tell them what it's about, Alvaro." "Repression," Alvaro says. "Repression," Jennifer says, patting his head and grinning out at the rest of the party. The rest of us talk about art, and Chile, and soccer, and relationships. I like talking with Alvaro. People with lovers like to talk to people with lovers, plus he's funny and nice. Eventually he leans in and gets serious. "She's perfect," he whispers, referring to Jennifer. "So am I," I say. But he's not interested in jokes -- he makes a wedding ring gesture. Jennifer has him up and mingling again before I can reply. N E X T+P A G E | Watching the Chileans be Chilean