I’m back!...my biggest apologies for really sucking at blog-writing and not keeping you all updated more frequently! Thanks for your patience and for continuing to read about me.
Well, it’s been a long time since I last wrote, those things seem like forever ago…and the end is now upon me. My amazing experience is soon to be over, and I will be back in the USA on July 15th. This week is pretty much my last week here in Viña and Valpo. Ahhhhhh, I’m in total disbelief! In some ways I feel like it was just yesterday that I was back in snowy Minnesota in the dead of winter, working my butt off and preparing for my trip, waiting so anxiously to get here…but yet I do feel like I have been here for SO long, and it almost seems unreal that I’m leaving this place that I know so well now and going back to a different life again—my old life. In all honesty, I had serious thoughts about staying here for another semester and actually kind of got my heart set on it, but in the end it didn’t work out with St. Kate’s and there was no way I could do it. Just not meant to be right now, I guess, but I know I will be back here someday, somehow, having another experience here…I suppose the fun will be in seeing where the road takes me and how/where exactly I end up after all that I’ve taken away from this. Anyways, I’ve been getting really excited about coming home for certain things I really miss…but I’m also really nervous about coming back and really terribly sad about seeing the end of what has been a 5-month adventure more incredible than I ever could have imagined or asked for. I’ve become so adapted and accustomed to life here that I truly am nervous about going back because I know how totally different it will be, and I’m devastated to have to say goodbye to all the wonderful people I’ve met in my time down here, especially the three closest friends I’ve made who I spend all my time with and know so well and don’t know when I’ll see again.
Okay, enough of that sad business…sorry, I’ve just been really reflective lately with everything coming to a close…it’s kind of like graduation, letting ago of a certain period of your life and everything that happened there in that place with those people. As I was saying long ago, this is my last week in Viña and Valpo, and it’s a busy one. I’ve been studying hard for a final I have on Friday (with that, I’m done for the semester, woo!)—art and society in ancient Chile, and it’s KILLING me! My friend Abigail’s host family is cooking dinner for our group of friends on Thursday and we have a big farewell dinner with the CIEE staff for all the kids on my program on Friday, plus I’m trying to do all the last things in the my beloved cities that I’ve wanted to do before leaving—I have a “to-do” list and don’t intend to leave with anything un-checked! Saturday is coming quickly, and it’s a big day because Abigail, Sarah, Misha (my faithful companions), and I are taking off for a HUGE adventure, a 12-day trip to the north of Chile and to Bolivia!!! Maybe I’ll write one more final blog after I get home to tell you all about the trip because it’s going to be amazzzzzzzzzzzing. After that, we come back to Chile on the 12th of July to pick up Abigail’s boyfriend who is coming to visit, LIVE UP our last two days, and head out back to the Estados Unidos on July 14th…it’s going to be a whirlwind!
Alright, what have I been up to in all this time I haven’t written? A quick run-through of the events. The 21st of May is a Chilean national holiday for all branches of their armed forces. I went and watched the parades (the navy men are my FAVORITE, I even got a photo with some of them on the street last week), which were awesome with all the armed forces, traditional Chilean cowboys and cueca dancers, and I even saw the President as she attended the ceremonies in the plaza. With my entire group from CIEE we traveled to the north of Chile to La Serena and stayed in cabanas on the beach all weekend, doing tons of educational field-trip stuff but then having a crazy costume party that made it all worth it (theme: dressing up as your favorite thing in Valpo). We also went to Isla Negra, also on the ocean, to see another one of Pablo Neruda’s houses, which was awesome, and to tour yet another vineyard. My host family and I have been having and attending lots of asados (barbeque/grill-out type things…lots of meat, lots of alcohol, lots of talking with family and friends…for hours), which are always DELICIOUS and typically provide some pretty entertaining stories the next day too. On a sad note, my host-dog Duke just died of cancer last week, so the family has been pretty devastated by his loss and now we have a hamster named Kiev to replace him. Other than that I’ve been spending a lot of time out and about in Valpo, like spending a whole day in the hilly neighborhoods of the city taking pictures of the amazing art and grafitti (I’ll just have to show you my pictures, there’s no way to describe it); going to the old prison that they stopped using in 1999 and have now made into a community cultural center for art, music, artesan workshops, and a museum to preserve the memories of those suffered in the jail; eating in my few favorite restaurants; scouting out and buying souvenirs that I want to bring home with me; occasional walks/runs along the beach and the coast; and I guess just spending lots of time with my host family, my three good friends, and sometimes their host families doing and seeing all the things I want to before leaving and just enjoying the time I’m with them.
Well, I don’t know, that’s about it…nothing really exciting, just the same stuff I’m always doing because I’ve really settled into a life here and now I’m about to turn around and head home and attempt to transition all over again. There’s big stuff about to happen in my final weeks, but I’m just in the lull waiting for it right now, so I’ll have to write one more blog after it’s all happened to tell about it! I’m excited to be done with school for the semester, I’m excited to see all the people back home that I miss so much, I’m excited to see all the things I’ve taken away from this experience when I’m back in my old environment, I’m excited for certain American foods that just can’t be replaced by anything here, and I’m excited for summer! It’s SO cold here…well really not that cold, but when it’s 40º outside and also 40º inside your house because there is no heating, you start to get really sick of the cold…I’m wearing 3 layers of long-underwear under my clothes everyday and I can see my breath in large puffs when I’m sitting in my bedroom!!! So, on that note, I hope you are all enjoying summer to the maximum because the cold and intense rain that comes for a couple days every week is really a drag. Well, I’m signing off and heading to bed, see you all sooner rather than later, thanks for reading, and I’m looking forward to being able to share my stories and pictures in person when the semester has finally wrapped up! Saludos y cariños desde Chile :)
martes, 26 de junio de 2007
domingo, 20 de mayo de 2007
Latest news from down south (3 months in Chile!)
Hello again blog readers! Let’s see…what’s new?
Well, one of the things I knew I had to write about was the two earthquakes we’ve had down here! Really they only rate between 3.0-5.0 on the Richter scale, so they’re not exactly a full blown earthquake but more like strong “shakes” I guess you could say. Either way, I’ve woken up in the middle of the night twice in the last month because my bed was shaking violently and everything in my bedroom was rattling. SCARY. It happens so frequently here that it’s a normal part of life for Chileans, and although I’m all filled-in on what to do if a real earthquake hits, it’s still really scary because it’s a feeling we never have to deal with in Minnesota (aka the whole earth moving). They don’t last more than a few minutes, but it seems like forever, and it’s scary because you’re just wondering how long it will keep going and if it will start again after it finally stops. Chile experienced the biggest earthquake in world history in 1985 and is apparently long overdue for their next one, so all my American friends and I are always joking (and hoping not) that the cataclysmic earthquake will hit during our 5-month stay in Chile and Viña del Mar will break off and sink into the ocean….and you know, I guess if I meant to die in a cataclysmic earthquake in Chile, then so be it, because there’s nothing I can do about it anyways!
Other cool stuff happening lately: I went kayaking in the OCEAN….for class! It was so awesome, we got to spend our class period kayaking around the pier in Valpo for my phys. ed. class that I’m taking here—who gets to go kayaking in the ocean in Chile anyways?!? Also, I started my language exchange, in which I meet up with my new friend Mario, a law student at my university here, and we spend a couple hours a week talking, for me practicing my Spanish and for him practicing his English. He is so great, very encouraging and patient and more helpful than I could ask for with anything I might need in regards to my stay in Chile. Lastly, I’m in full-swing now with my volunteer work at a school called Ruben Castro, which is a K-12 all-boys’ school and one of the best in the city. I work with a group of eight boys, sophomores in high school and the best in the class, every Thursday morning (at 7:30 a.m. ahhhhhhh!) for 90 minutes teaching them English. They are wonderful, very-well behaved and very smart, and I’m really loving working with them. We focus mainly on activities for them to practice speaking because, like me back in MN, they have very few opportunities to practice speaking their foreign language with a native speaker. It’s been a strange experience because I have my own classroom and everything, the material is completely up to me, I met the teacher one time and she told me to come the next week with 90 minutes of lessons plans…I’m only 20 years-old, what do I know about teaching??? Or teaching English, a language I didn’t have to learn! So, needless to say, it’s a lot more hands-on than I expected, but it’s really fun and I’m enjoying it so much. Everyone who knows me well knows that I have wanted to be a teacher my entire life, so I love stuff like this and I feel so lucky to have had various opportunities to “practice” already at my age. Things are going really good with that, I’m interested to see how it will progress in the coming months.
I’ve now been here for three months as of yesterday, and I cannot believe the time has gone so fast. I’m dreading the end already! In total reality though, we definitely try to make the most of every single day because life is short, and it’s even shorter in Chile because we’ve only got five quick months to live this incredible experience. The past week was a little rough, I started to hit my wall with little things that are really different and food and, most of all, painfully missing people back home. But those feelings pass, especially when my Chilean friend Ivette invited me to spend the whole day with her and her extended family on Mother’s Day, eating SO much and laughing and telling stories and dancing, I spent a night this weekend with my friend Abigail’s entire extended host family, eating and talking and watching crazy home-videos, and my friend Sarah’s real family (haha) just came down to visit and arrived in Chile this weekend. We spent an afternoon showing her mom and sister around the city, ate our favorite empanadas, and then last night went out for an amazing dinner together at this really fancy restaurant that rotates, like the one in Santiago, and looks out over the whole city at night. None of these people are my family, but it doesn’t matter, it’s nice to have someone’s family take you under their wing and it’s made me feel so much better. Plus Skype and a few quick phone calls or emails home, not to mention the big package I just got from Mom…I’ll be just fine.
All in all, things are still great. Rough patches, yes, but I really can’t complain because I know I’m incredibly lucky to be here doing this. I have so many moments, probably every day, where I feel like I could stay here forever—when we’re up in the hills of Valpo and we watch the sunset over the entire port, when I’m sitting with an entire Chilean extended family crammed into a 5-room apartment because they insisted that I stay for dinner and I’m listening to them all talk at once in their crazy version of Spanish, or when I’m out until 5 or 6 in the morning having the time of my life with my three closest friends here. Let the good times roll for the next two months!…I’ll keep you posted.
Well, one of the things I knew I had to write about was the two earthquakes we’ve had down here! Really they only rate between 3.0-5.0 on the Richter scale, so they’re not exactly a full blown earthquake but more like strong “shakes” I guess you could say. Either way, I’ve woken up in the middle of the night twice in the last month because my bed was shaking violently and everything in my bedroom was rattling. SCARY. It happens so frequently here that it’s a normal part of life for Chileans, and although I’m all filled-in on what to do if a real earthquake hits, it’s still really scary because it’s a feeling we never have to deal with in Minnesota (aka the whole earth moving). They don’t last more than a few minutes, but it seems like forever, and it’s scary because you’re just wondering how long it will keep going and if it will start again after it finally stops. Chile experienced the biggest earthquake in world history in 1985 and is apparently long overdue for their next one, so all my American friends and I are always joking (and hoping not) that the cataclysmic earthquake will hit during our 5-month stay in Chile and Viña del Mar will break off and sink into the ocean….and you know, I guess if I meant to die in a cataclysmic earthquake in Chile, then so be it, because there’s nothing I can do about it anyways!
Other cool stuff happening lately: I went kayaking in the OCEAN….for class! It was so awesome, we got to spend our class period kayaking around the pier in Valpo for my phys. ed. class that I’m taking here—who gets to go kayaking in the ocean in Chile anyways?!? Also, I started my language exchange, in which I meet up with my new friend Mario, a law student at my university here, and we spend a couple hours a week talking, for me practicing my Spanish and for him practicing his English. He is so great, very encouraging and patient and more helpful than I could ask for with anything I might need in regards to my stay in Chile. Lastly, I’m in full-swing now with my volunteer work at a school called Ruben Castro, which is a K-12 all-boys’ school and one of the best in the city. I work with a group of eight boys, sophomores in high school and the best in the class, every Thursday morning (at 7:30 a.m. ahhhhhhh!) for 90 minutes teaching them English. They are wonderful, very-well behaved and very smart, and I’m really loving working with them. We focus mainly on activities for them to practice speaking because, like me back in MN, they have very few opportunities to practice speaking their foreign language with a native speaker. It’s been a strange experience because I have my own classroom and everything, the material is completely up to me, I met the teacher one time and she told me to come the next week with 90 minutes of lessons plans…I’m only 20 years-old, what do I know about teaching??? Or teaching English, a language I didn’t have to learn! So, needless to say, it’s a lot more hands-on than I expected, but it’s really fun and I’m enjoying it so much. Everyone who knows me well knows that I have wanted to be a teacher my entire life, so I love stuff like this and I feel so lucky to have had various opportunities to “practice” already at my age. Things are going really good with that, I’m interested to see how it will progress in the coming months.
I’ve now been here for three months as of yesterday, and I cannot believe the time has gone so fast. I’m dreading the end already! In total reality though, we definitely try to make the most of every single day because life is short, and it’s even shorter in Chile because we’ve only got five quick months to live this incredible experience. The past week was a little rough, I started to hit my wall with little things that are really different and food and, most of all, painfully missing people back home. But those feelings pass, especially when my Chilean friend Ivette invited me to spend the whole day with her and her extended family on Mother’s Day, eating SO much and laughing and telling stories and dancing, I spent a night this weekend with my friend Abigail’s entire extended host family, eating and talking and watching crazy home-videos, and my friend Sarah’s real family (haha) just came down to visit and arrived in Chile this weekend. We spent an afternoon showing her mom and sister around the city, ate our favorite empanadas, and then last night went out for an amazing dinner together at this really fancy restaurant that rotates, like the one in Santiago, and looks out over the whole city at night. None of these people are my family, but it doesn’t matter, it’s nice to have someone’s family take you under their wing and it’s made me feel so much better. Plus Skype and a few quick phone calls or emails home, not to mention the big package I just got from Mom…I’ll be just fine.
All in all, things are still great. Rough patches, yes, but I really can’t complain because I know I’m incredibly lucky to be here doing this. I have so many moments, probably every day, where I feel like I could stay here forever—when we’re up in the hills of Valpo and we watch the sunset over the entire port, when I’m sitting with an entire Chilean extended family crammed into a 5-room apartment because they insisted that I stay for dinner and I’m listening to them all talk at once in their crazy version of Spanish, or when I’m out until 5 or 6 in the morning having the time of my life with my three closest friends here. Let the good times roll for the next two months!…I’ll keep you posted.
domingo, 22 de abril de 2007
Travels and Triumphs: another month in Chile!
Ahhh! I apologize that so much time has passed since my last blog entry…I’ve been busy and a lot has been happening, I’ll try to summarize the best my long-winded self can.
First: I went to Mendoza, Argentina a few weeks ago for a weekend with friends. It’s about an eight-hour bus ride through the Andes Mountains and the views were awesome. Border crossing is at something like 11,000 feet, so we had to wind up and up and up and up and up on these narrow, steep roads…I think I counted about 25 hair-pins turns from what I could see from the top looking down. I stayed in a hostel for the first time (welcome to the world of super cheap lodgings with lots of interesting strangers), and we spent a lot of time drinking wine. We did something called “Bikes and Wines”, where you basically rent bikes and ride throughout the Argentine countryside from winery to winery doing tours, taste-testing, and buying all the wine you can fit in your backpack. Unfortunately I was really sick the whole weekend with a horrible cold that I couldn’t shake for about two weeks, so this was pretty much the only thing I got to do in Argentina. I lost my voice for about four days and was miserably sick, so I stayed in every night at the hostel while my friends went out and I ended up going home to Viña a day early. It was still a lot of fun and a great trip, though.
Second: I have been rockin’ the making of Chilean friends lately. I am lucky to have some fabulous American friends who I love spending time with and who are great to me, but it’s also really important to me to make Chilean friends. I spend all day speaking English with my American friends…I need Chilean friends to give me the opportunity to speak Spanish and to learn from them about the language and the culture and to give me a real, true Chilean experience. I’ve made friends with three Chilean girls (and that’s quite a feat, let me tell you) from one of my classes, and I went to a birthday party with one of them recently and am planning to go home for a weekend with another to her hometown. I also made friends with four Chilean boys, two of them I knew from class. I ran into them while I was out one night and invited them to join us…later my friends took off for the dance club and I stayed out hanging out with the boys until 3 am. Mom and Dad, don’t be concerned. These people have all been so nice to me—always helping me with anything I need, being very patient with and interested in what I have to say, and making sure I’m well taken care of. I’m really happy and excited about how things are going and the friendships I’m hoping to develop. I’m also about to start doing a language exchange program with a law student at my university here, in which we split an hour of conversation between English and Spanish so that we can both practice our foreign language. On top of that, I’m also planning on beginning to volunteer in a boys’ high school helping teach English, so I should be meeting a lot of new people/friends in the coming weeks :)
Third and most important/awesome: I just got home from my 9-day trip to Patagonia!!! Classes were cancelled all last week, so three friends and I took off traveling to the very, very, very south of Chile…what is literally almost Antarctica. I went with my friends Abigail, Sarah, and Misha (gotta have a boy along for good measure—aka to carry the heavy stuff, light the fire, etc., haha), and we went backpacking for 5 days in Torres del Paine National Park. Can you believe that I went backpacking?!? Yeah, neither can I. I pretty much went straight into the wilderness with absolutely no perception of what I was getting myself into. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done—we hiked 76 kilometers!—and as mentally and physically trying as it all was, it was totally worth it and was one of the most incredible trips I’ve ever taken. It’s a very isolated place (who wants to live in the Chilean Antarctic after all?), so it took a looooot of traveling to get there. A bus to the capital of Santiago, where we spent a day touring around and hanging out and then slept in the airport so we didn’t have to pay for a hostel, then a five-hour flight to Punta Arenas, then a three-hour bus ride from there to Puerto Natales (the jump-off city for getting into the park), where the four of us spent Easter together by going to church, eating dinner in a nice restaurant, and preparing all of our backpacking supplies, then another two or three hour van ride to get to the park, and finally a super-expensive boat ride across the lake to the beginning of the trail. Wooooo. From there we hit the trail, hiking anywhere from four to seven hours a day, through all the elements—lots of wind, lots of rain, some snow, and even a short but strong hail storm. It’s the very end of the hiking season in Patagonia, as winter is about to begin, so the weather is pretty crazy and VERY cold. We would hike for the majority of the day and when we arrived at our new camp each night we quickly got set up in our new rugged lifestyle—getting water from the nearest stream because it’s pure glacier water, cooking dinner on our tiny gas stove and often eating out of one pot with four spoons, and then jumping in the 3-man tent for four people to sleep for the next twelve hours because we were so miserably cold and tired (it kept us nice and warm at night being so close together…we’re very good friends now, especially after not showering for five days, haha). There are no roads to get to the sights you want to see in Torres del Paine, so the only way to see them in person is to hike there…therefore making all the difficult hiking worth it because you have earned that view. I got to see a glacier, a real Antarctic glacier! It was huuuuge and really blue and so amazing. The other sights were breath-taking rock formations of the mountains and valleys, lakes and lagoons with the most intensely colored water I’ve ever seen, tons of waterfalls and rivers, dozens of gigantic rainbows, the changing colors of the foliage because it’s fall here, and some crazy animals I’ve never ever seen before. Many people consider Torres to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and now I understand why. I feel so insanely lucky to have been able to see the things I did there…pictures can never capture it the same way, and it was an incredible experience. I think it has to be the coolest thing I have done in my life so far. There were so moments when we all just stood back shaking our heads in disbelief at the awe of all that we were seeing and wondering how we got so lucky to have such an experience. After finishing The W (the whole trail throughout the park), we dragged our weary, broken bodies back to Puerto Natales for some good eating, dry clothes, sleeping late in a soft bed, and at last a hot shower. After recuperating from the trail we did the sleeping-in-airport-thing over again and thankfully got on a flight at 4 am to get home…..I’m still tiiiiiired……
Well, those are the major events of my recent weeks here. School continues to go well, I guess—it’s such a side-note to this whole experience really, haha, and that’s fine with me because I deserve a semester like that. The Spanish has gotten much easier, I now understand almost everything I hear, I just need to continue improving my speaking. But my triumph with making Chilean friends is that I finally feel like I can have a personality in Spanish. It’s kind of hard to explain unless you’ve learned a foreign language, but it’s SO difficult for SO long to express how you feel or what you think or anything at all you want to say. I feel like I’m finally reaching the point where I cannot only communicate well, but I can be Amanda in another language, telling people about who I am/expressing and sharing opinions/telling jokes or being sarcastic/etc….if that makes any sense. But anyways, it’s a big deal for me, a big accomplishment to be living normally and functioning to full capacity in another language and it feels really good. I am so insanely happy here in Chile. This has been, absolutely, the best decision I’ve ever made. In a few days I will mark two months down here, and in such a short time it has been the most incredible experience on so many levels for me. So, no worries, I am wonderfully content here, having tons of fun, and thinking of you all often. Until later :)….
First: I went to Mendoza, Argentina a few weeks ago for a weekend with friends. It’s about an eight-hour bus ride through the Andes Mountains and the views were awesome. Border crossing is at something like 11,000 feet, so we had to wind up and up and up and up and up on these narrow, steep roads…I think I counted about 25 hair-pins turns from what I could see from the top looking down. I stayed in a hostel for the first time (welcome to the world of super cheap lodgings with lots of interesting strangers), and we spent a lot of time drinking wine. We did something called “Bikes and Wines”, where you basically rent bikes and ride throughout the Argentine countryside from winery to winery doing tours, taste-testing, and buying all the wine you can fit in your backpack. Unfortunately I was really sick the whole weekend with a horrible cold that I couldn’t shake for about two weeks, so this was pretty much the only thing I got to do in Argentina. I lost my voice for about four days and was miserably sick, so I stayed in every night at the hostel while my friends went out and I ended up going home to Viña a day early. It was still a lot of fun and a great trip, though.
Second: I have been rockin’ the making of Chilean friends lately. I am lucky to have some fabulous American friends who I love spending time with and who are great to me, but it’s also really important to me to make Chilean friends. I spend all day speaking English with my American friends…I need Chilean friends to give me the opportunity to speak Spanish and to learn from them about the language and the culture and to give me a real, true Chilean experience. I’ve made friends with three Chilean girls (and that’s quite a feat, let me tell you) from one of my classes, and I went to a birthday party with one of them recently and am planning to go home for a weekend with another to her hometown. I also made friends with four Chilean boys, two of them I knew from class. I ran into them while I was out one night and invited them to join us…later my friends took off for the dance club and I stayed out hanging out with the boys until 3 am. Mom and Dad, don’t be concerned. These people have all been so nice to me—always helping me with anything I need, being very patient with and interested in what I have to say, and making sure I’m well taken care of. I’m really happy and excited about how things are going and the friendships I’m hoping to develop. I’m also about to start doing a language exchange program with a law student at my university here, in which we split an hour of conversation between English and Spanish so that we can both practice our foreign language. On top of that, I’m also planning on beginning to volunteer in a boys’ high school helping teach English, so I should be meeting a lot of new people/friends in the coming weeks :)
Third and most important/awesome: I just got home from my 9-day trip to Patagonia!!! Classes were cancelled all last week, so three friends and I took off traveling to the very, very, very south of Chile…what is literally almost Antarctica. I went with my friends Abigail, Sarah, and Misha (gotta have a boy along for good measure—aka to carry the heavy stuff, light the fire, etc., haha), and we went backpacking for 5 days in Torres del Paine National Park. Can you believe that I went backpacking?!? Yeah, neither can I. I pretty much went straight into the wilderness with absolutely no perception of what I was getting myself into. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done—we hiked 76 kilometers!—and as mentally and physically trying as it all was, it was totally worth it and was one of the most incredible trips I’ve ever taken. It’s a very isolated place (who wants to live in the Chilean Antarctic after all?), so it took a looooot of traveling to get there. A bus to the capital of Santiago, where we spent a day touring around and hanging out and then slept in the airport so we didn’t have to pay for a hostel, then a five-hour flight to Punta Arenas, then a three-hour bus ride from there to Puerto Natales (the jump-off city for getting into the park), where the four of us spent Easter together by going to church, eating dinner in a nice restaurant, and preparing all of our backpacking supplies, then another two or three hour van ride to get to the park, and finally a super-expensive boat ride across the lake to the beginning of the trail. Wooooo. From there we hit the trail, hiking anywhere from four to seven hours a day, through all the elements—lots of wind, lots of rain, some snow, and even a short but strong hail storm. It’s the very end of the hiking season in Patagonia, as winter is about to begin, so the weather is pretty crazy and VERY cold. We would hike for the majority of the day and when we arrived at our new camp each night we quickly got set up in our new rugged lifestyle—getting water from the nearest stream because it’s pure glacier water, cooking dinner on our tiny gas stove and often eating out of one pot with four spoons, and then jumping in the 3-man tent for four people to sleep for the next twelve hours because we were so miserably cold and tired (it kept us nice and warm at night being so close together…we’re very good friends now, especially after not showering for five days, haha). There are no roads to get to the sights you want to see in Torres del Paine, so the only way to see them in person is to hike there…therefore making all the difficult hiking worth it because you have earned that view. I got to see a glacier, a real Antarctic glacier! It was huuuuge and really blue and so amazing. The other sights were breath-taking rock formations of the mountains and valleys, lakes and lagoons with the most intensely colored water I’ve ever seen, tons of waterfalls and rivers, dozens of gigantic rainbows, the changing colors of the foliage because it’s fall here, and some crazy animals I’ve never ever seen before. Many people consider Torres to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and now I understand why. I feel so insanely lucky to have been able to see the things I did there…pictures can never capture it the same way, and it was an incredible experience. I think it has to be the coolest thing I have done in my life so far. There were so moments when we all just stood back shaking our heads in disbelief at the awe of all that we were seeing and wondering how we got so lucky to have such an experience. After finishing The W (the whole trail throughout the park), we dragged our weary, broken bodies back to Puerto Natales for some good eating, dry clothes, sleeping late in a soft bed, and at last a hot shower. After recuperating from the trail we did the sleeping-in-airport-thing over again and thankfully got on a flight at 4 am to get home…..I’m still tiiiiiired……
Well, those are the major events of my recent weeks here. School continues to go well, I guess—it’s such a side-note to this whole experience really, haha, and that’s fine with me because I deserve a semester like that. The Spanish has gotten much easier, I now understand almost everything I hear, I just need to continue improving my speaking. But my triumph with making Chilean friends is that I finally feel like I can have a personality in Spanish. It’s kind of hard to explain unless you’ve learned a foreign language, but it’s SO difficult for SO long to express how you feel or what you think or anything at all you want to say. I feel like I’m finally reaching the point where I cannot only communicate well, but I can be Amanda in another language, telling people about who I am/expressing and sharing opinions/telling jokes or being sarcastic/etc….if that makes any sense. But anyways, it’s a big deal for me, a big accomplishment to be living normally and functioning to full capacity in another language and it feels really good. I am so insanely happy here in Chile. This has been, absolutely, the best decision I’ve ever made. In a few days I will mark two months down here, and in such a short time it has been the most incredible experience on so many levels for me. So, no worries, I am wonderfully content here, having tons of fun, and thinking of you all often. Until later :)….
jueves, 22 de marzo de 2007
My new life in Chile--and the craziness continues.
Okay everyone, I am back! Sorry it’s been awhile, but things have been crazy…all the going out, plus going to school sometimes too J To start off with the updates, my group of Americans took a big trip to the south of Chile two weeks ago. We spent 12 hours on a bus each way traveling to Pucón (overnight trips) and got to do a lot of cool stuff during our time there. Our first day was spent with the Mapuche, the indigenous people of Chile. We had to lots of museum stuff like usual, but then they cooked us this huge feast of amazing food in their community center, and afterwards we went out into the farm country where they live and they taught us their dances, their songs, and one of their traditional games. We spent the entire day with them, learning from them and about their own culture and people within that of Chile, it was great. The next day we were able to do all these outdoor excursions if you were interested or had any energy to do so. A huge part of the group went on an 8-hour hike to the top of a volcano, but I decided to do something a little less extreme. I went on a canopy tour instead, which is where you are in a harness and you basically go flying through the trees on zip-lines from station to station. It was something that I have always wanted to do and it was SO MUCH FUN sailing around high up in the trees and over rivers! Our last day in Pucón was spent standing in the rain, touring the best waterfalls in the area and seeing one of the huge lakes…it was all incredible to see. Before we had to board the bus to go home we got to spend about 3 hours swimming in hot springs, which was fantastic after being so cold and wet all day. We got back to Viña at 7:30 in the morning and then had to go to class all day, yuck, but it was a really cool trip overall.
The next important thing that has happened since Pucón was my birthday!! I had the most fantastic birthday down here, my new American friends did so much to take care of me and make sure that I had a wonderful time. My friends Abigail and Sarah bought me an amazing strawberry tort (because dessert is always so much better than a real present, haha), which Abigail carried in one hand while wearing a dress and heels and riding the micro to my house to bring it to me. Later, about 13 of my friends got all dressed-up and came to my birthday dinner at this fancy restaurant right near the beach. The food was amazing and surprisingly cheap, and it was followed with a big piece of birthday cake and a huge shot of some really strong liquor (??—I have no idea what it was) that the waiter brought to me. It was my first shot ever, and needless to say, it succeeded in knocking me off my feet for the rest of the night. After that, we ran over to a nearby karaoke bar where the partying continued and my whole group sang “Quit Playing Games With My Heart” by the Backstreet Boys to me at my request, hahaha. The night was sooooooooo much fun, it couldn’t have been better, and I don’t know how that can be topped next year when I’m back in the States.
Last big thing: I went to my first fútbol game this past weekend…soccer, and oh yes, it was possibly the wildest thing I have ever experienced. The fans are like nothing I have ever seen, with their chants and songs and jumping and humongous flags and banners. There were kids climbing the fences around the field to spit on the players from the opposing team…there were fireworks and streamers and reggaeton…there were carabineros (police) dressed in full riot gear, shields and all, and military vehicles parked around the stadium…the fans gathered all of their streamers together later in the game and lit them on fire, creating a huge bonfire in the stands…when the game ended and everyone got angry that their team hadn’t won they began throwing rocks and logs from the bonfire at and also kicking the carabineros until the police chased them back into order with nightsticks…outside the stadium, to disperse the fans the police shot out a bomb of tear gas…at this point we RAN…wild kids would scream at and charge cars full of fans from the opposing team. Things I learned from the fútbol game: be alert—know where the fans from the opposing team are and when you see them coming down the hill, you sure as hell should NOT be wearing anything of your team’s color, as well as you should always be paying attention for explosions of tear gas, in which case you should cover your face and quickly push through the crowd to escape.
Other than all of that, classes are finally in full-swing. I am taking a course with my American travel companions called Chilean and Latin American Identity: The Challenges of Globalization, Spanish Grammar for Foreigners, and my other classes are with Chilean students—Psychology of Love and Sexuality, Art and Society in Pre-Hispanic Chile, and a Phys. Ed. class called Self-Care and Healthy Living. I hardly ever do homework here, EVER, I’m not sure if that will change in time, but I sure hope not. Beyond school, I’ve been going to the beach, attempted to watch the March Madness games via the Internet on a laptop at my friend’s house, and started going to the discotecas (dance clubs) that are really popular in the city.
That’s about all I have to share at this point…I continue getting to know my host family better each day, constantly meeting new people in the street who help me find micros and the way back to my house from wherever I’ve been taking a class (I’ve become so bold, you have no idea, and you will all be surprised), getting slightly better at Spanish every day I spend here attempting to learn from their craaaaazy version of the language, and eating more fruit, vegetables, and bread than ever before…plus manjar too, of course! I really miss toilets that have seats and can flush toilet paper (and I miss having TP in general), I miss showers that have a regulated water temperature (the calefont is a total gamble as to whether the water will burn you alive or be unbearably freezing), and I miss peanut butter, macaroni & cheese, and Italian food!!! I am wondering when the stomach sickness, the flea bites, and the sexual harassment from the men will ever stop…even though I’m entirely sure that none of these things are going to get better in the coming 4 months. Anyways, all I know is that I’m pretty sure that nothing back in the States will ever scare me or intimidate me again…I can handle anything after living here. This country is making me brave because it’s so crazy and I have to figure stuff out and get what I need on my own, in a different language, with people and things that I don’t know. I really think everyone will be surprised at how I’ve changed when I get back home. I am in love with this country and this whole continent, I think, and although it’s just a phase I feel like I want to stay here forever…life will be so insanely boring back in the U.S., so sanitary and safe and clean and logical! Okay, well that is all for now, I miss you all and wish you were here to live this with me. It has been an incredible month, every day is still entirely an adventure, more stories to come later on!
The next important thing that has happened since Pucón was my birthday!! I had the most fantastic birthday down here, my new American friends did so much to take care of me and make sure that I had a wonderful time. My friends Abigail and Sarah bought me an amazing strawberry tort (because dessert is always so much better than a real present, haha), which Abigail carried in one hand while wearing a dress and heels and riding the micro to my house to bring it to me. Later, about 13 of my friends got all dressed-up and came to my birthday dinner at this fancy restaurant right near the beach. The food was amazing and surprisingly cheap, and it was followed with a big piece of birthday cake and a huge shot of some really strong liquor (??—I have no idea what it was) that the waiter brought to me. It was my first shot ever, and needless to say, it succeeded in knocking me off my feet for the rest of the night. After that, we ran over to a nearby karaoke bar where the partying continued and my whole group sang “Quit Playing Games With My Heart” by the Backstreet Boys to me at my request, hahaha. The night was sooooooooo much fun, it couldn’t have been better, and I don’t know how that can be topped next year when I’m back in the States.
Last big thing: I went to my first fútbol game this past weekend…soccer, and oh yes, it was possibly the wildest thing I have ever experienced. The fans are like nothing I have ever seen, with their chants and songs and jumping and humongous flags and banners. There were kids climbing the fences around the field to spit on the players from the opposing team…there were fireworks and streamers and reggaeton…there were carabineros (police) dressed in full riot gear, shields and all, and military vehicles parked around the stadium…the fans gathered all of their streamers together later in the game and lit them on fire, creating a huge bonfire in the stands…when the game ended and everyone got angry that their team hadn’t won they began throwing rocks and logs from the bonfire at and also kicking the carabineros until the police chased them back into order with nightsticks…outside the stadium, to disperse the fans the police shot out a bomb of tear gas…at this point we RAN…wild kids would scream at and charge cars full of fans from the opposing team. Things I learned from the fútbol game: be alert—know where the fans from the opposing team are and when you see them coming down the hill, you sure as hell should NOT be wearing anything of your team’s color, as well as you should always be paying attention for explosions of tear gas, in which case you should cover your face and quickly push through the crowd to escape.
Other than all of that, classes are finally in full-swing. I am taking a course with my American travel companions called Chilean and Latin American Identity: The Challenges of Globalization, Spanish Grammar for Foreigners, and my other classes are with Chilean students—Psychology of Love and Sexuality, Art and Society in Pre-Hispanic Chile, and a Phys. Ed. class called Self-Care and Healthy Living. I hardly ever do homework here, EVER, I’m not sure if that will change in time, but I sure hope not. Beyond school, I’ve been going to the beach, attempted to watch the March Madness games via the Internet on a laptop at my friend’s house, and started going to the discotecas (dance clubs) that are really popular in the city.
That’s about all I have to share at this point…I continue getting to know my host family better each day, constantly meeting new people in the street who help me find micros and the way back to my house from wherever I’ve been taking a class (I’ve become so bold, you have no idea, and you will all be surprised), getting slightly better at Spanish every day I spend here attempting to learn from their craaaaazy version of the language, and eating more fruit, vegetables, and bread than ever before…plus manjar too, of course! I really miss toilets that have seats and can flush toilet paper (and I miss having TP in general), I miss showers that have a regulated water temperature (the calefont is a total gamble as to whether the water will burn you alive or be unbearably freezing), and I miss peanut butter, macaroni & cheese, and Italian food!!! I am wondering when the stomach sickness, the flea bites, and the sexual harassment from the men will ever stop…even though I’m entirely sure that none of these things are going to get better in the coming 4 months. Anyways, all I know is that I’m pretty sure that nothing back in the States will ever scare me or intimidate me again…I can handle anything after living here. This country is making me brave because it’s so crazy and I have to figure stuff out and get what I need on my own, in a different language, with people and things that I don’t know. I really think everyone will be surprised at how I’ve changed when I get back home. I am in love with this country and this whole continent, I think, and although it’s just a phase I feel like I want to stay here forever…life will be so insanely boring back in the U.S., so sanitary and safe and clean and logical! Okay, well that is all for now, I miss you all and wish you were here to live this with me. It has been an incredible month, every day is still entirely an adventure, more stories to come later on!
lunes, 5 de marzo de 2007
Chronicle of my first two weeks.
Hola to everyone! Welcome to my blog and a little taste of my new life here in Valpo and Viña—that’s Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, Chile…they’re just like Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Since I have pretty limited Internet access I thought it might be easier to post updates about my trip on a blog for anyone and everyone to read, rather than sending out hundreds of emails and not knowing who’s interested and who’s not. Please just keep in mind that I don’t have a whole of Internet access or capabilities, so the blog will be updated as often as possible (which may not be very often) but you’ll have to be patient and bear with me.
Okay, so here I am in Chile. Wow, sometimes I really wonder what I’m doing here. It’s been an awesome two weeks here, but I’m telling you that Latin America is totally and absolutely CRAZY. It’s so different, you can’t even imagine. It’s no United States, that’s for sure, and I’m living in the most developed country in South America. Well, to begin, the flight and all the airport jazz went very well—I met a girl from my program in the terminal in Atlanta and then ended up sitting next to another girl from this program on the plane. Luckily we got through customs, immigration, etc. without a problem and made it to the pick-up on time. We spent two days touring Santiago, the capital, and doing orientation—the highlights were eating a four-course dinner in this super fancy restaurant that has a revolving top floor (like the Space Needle) and looking out over the whole city at night and also getting to tour one of Pablo Neruda’s (Nobel winning poet and one of Chile’s most adored people) houses, which was built like the inside of a ship and decorated soooo incredibly cool. Then we spent a day in the country at some type of resort to relax and do more orientation and then our host families came for us. My family consists of Juan and Mary and their 16 year-old daughter Macarena, or Maca for short, plus the cockerspaniel Duke and our nana (maid) Señora Ruby, who is the sweetest little old woman I’ve ever seen. We live in Viña del Mar, unfortunately about as far from the water as possible. Since then, we’ve been in Viña doing more orientation yet, living with our families, preparing for our classes, and attempting to get accustomed to and to survive this crazy place.
Last Thursday we drove way out in the countryside to this rural agricultural community called Rabuco. It was INCREDIBLE…we toured a vineyard and got to see the entire process of growing grapes and then exporting them, learned the process for the cultivation of flowers (the kind you would sell to florists or something—definitely the most gorgeous flowers I have ever seen) from seed to finished product, got to pet a bunch of strange animals, played soccer on a field right at the base of the mountains, and learned to dance the cueca (the national dance). Also, last Sunday my host sister took me to Festival, which is this week-long concert series that is the biggest event of the year in Chile and one of the biggest concerts in all of South America. Chileans are OBSESSED with Festival, when they’re not playing it on TV, they’re talking about the previous night’s concert and re-playing clips…it’s been over for a week and they’re still talking about it constantly. I got to see Bryan Adams (no kidding) and this really popular Chilean rock band called Lucy Bell. It was pretty funny to hear thousands of Chileans singing along in broken English to Summer of ’69, Heaven, Everything I Do, etc. The concert was pretty awesome, and it’s cool that I got to go and be a part of something that is so important to this country.
This weekend two of my friends and I decided to be adventurous and went up the coast about and hour and a half out of the city to the this little beach town called Maitencillo. We just grabbed a backpack with a change of clothes, a swimsuit, and some potato chips for sustenance and hopped on a bus heading out of Viña. We arrived in Maitencillo, found ourselves a cabaña (like a little apartment) to rent for the night, checked out the artesanias (the arts fairs with local merchants), and proceeded to take a nap on the beach. Unfortunately it was pretty cold and cloudy this weekend, but we still a fair amount of time on the beach and had an amazing view of the ocean. We even cooked ourselves dinner in our cabaña this weekend, how grown-up are we?! The next day we had lunch right next to the beach and watched a bunch of guys surf for a couple of hours. It was such an amazing weekend, SO relaxing, and the scenery was incredible, not to mention a LOT of good times were had with my two wonderful companions, Abigail and Sarah.
Here is what I know of Chile after two weeks:
--MICROS. The transportation system here is absolutely wild. They use these small little buses called micros, and there are thousands of them. They stuff them full of people no matter how little space there is left—I was actually hanging out of the open door one morning. The driving is insane, it’s enough to make me sick sometimes, and they also often times have a guy hanging out the window who works with the driver to convince people to get on his micro in order to have more passengers and therefore make more money. He’s always yelling out the window at people on the street or sometimes he jumps out to try and persuade passers-by to get on his micro…problem: sometimes he lies about where his micro actually goes and you get lost.
--MILITARY TIME AND PESOS. Using military time is weird and trying to calculate what thousands of pesos would equal in US $ has been hard to get used to.
--SLANG. Chilean slang is so ridiculous: guagua has to be my favorite word, guagua = baby
Some more good ones: sí po, qué fome, ¿cachai?
--REGGAETON. As my friend Abigail says, I think it plays out of the walls here.
--AVOCADO. It’s on everything, I swear. My main food groups now consist of bread, manjar (mmmmmmm, dulce de leche), salads covered in balsamic vinegar, empanadas stuffed with anything you can think of, and more fresh fruits and vegetables than I’ve eaten in the rest of my life previous.
--HEATING. Or lack of. No central heat, it’s always the same temperature inside as it is outside…winter is going to be horrible. If I want warm water for my shower I have to go to the kitchen and light the pilot in the calefont.
--TOILET PAPER. Or lack of, again. Always come prepared because the bathroom isn’t going to have any. And you can never ever flush it in the toilet because the septic systems can’t handle it…it’s so gross and it’s getting really old.
--STRAY DOGS. They are everywhere, no joke. I guess Catholic nations don’t believe in birth control for their pets either. I’ve been told that a couple times a year they actually round up all the strays and have a massacre to get rid of them. How horrible, right?
--PIROPOS. Piropos is the name for what men do when they honk or whistle at you in the street, make comments about your body or how pretty you are or tell you they love you as you pass them on the sidewalk, etc. It gets really old to not be able to walk anywhere without being gawked at and commented upon by gross men. It’s a machismo culture, and it’s really hard to deal with sometimes because the kind of stuff that I have to allow to happen here would NEVER fly with me in the United States.
--PISCO SOUR. It is THE drink here. The alcohol is super strong here, we’ve been warned many times in orientation. The other night I think I took my pisco a little too fast at dinner because I just about tipped out of my chair.
--SUN. The sun is mad strong here, I think I have a new sunburn everyday.
--PLAYA. There are beaches everywhere and everyone is at them constantly. What an awesome change from Minnesota winter. I’m never going to get sick of looking at the ocean every day while I’m living in this beautiful place.
As I always tend to attract a fair amount of bad luck and crazy situations, I thought I would share a few of these odd stories from two weeks in Chile. My friend Sarah and I have been lost several times on the micros, and one time we ended up WAY up in the mountains about an hour outside of the city in an actual shanty-town with dirt roads and people riding horses…it was very scary. But we made it home safely, which is really all that matters. Beyond the micros, I was mildly attacked by a stray dog last week on my walk home. He was seriously trying to bite me and I actually had to yell for help, but thankfully he finally relented and I was able to get away without any sort of injury. And aside from all that, Sarah and I have encountered a group of drag queen prostitutes TWICE in one week on our walks home at night. There are more crazy stories, but I don’t think I’ll share them here, and I’m sure there are plenty more to come.
As I said before, sometimes I wonder what the heck I’m doing here, what kind of place this is that I’m living in for the next five months. For example, when I’m on a bumpy bus ride home from Maitencillo through the countryside of Chile with little kids screaming in Spanish and music from the Village People blasting in the bus. Or when my host-mom gets into a fight with the security guard in the parking lot of Jumbo (Chile’s Walmart, but SO much bigger) or flips off soccer fans as they cross the street in front our car as we fly down the streets of Viña in our Hyundai listening to Celine Dion. Or when I see a woman peeing in the plaza right in front of my university. Or when my friends and I can’t order lunch in a restaurant because it won’t be open for another ten minutes…apparently it opens at 1:20 p.m. on Sundays (?). Or when I walk past a small restaurant and see cages with live chickens in the kitchen. Or when there are filthy stray animals hanging out on top of open crates of fresh fruits and vegetables in the market and the vendors are smoking over their products. Or when I’m told that stray dogs run in large packs in Valpo and are known to attack humans so I should be really careful, and also that I should never ever eat anything made by a vendor in the street because I’ll be in the bathroom for the next three days sick with “Chilenitis.” Or when I see poor people break-dancing or fire-eating in intersections to earn money from passing cars. Or when I’m riding a PACKED micro that has blue fur trim around the rear-view mirror, lots of strange bumper stickers plastered on the walls, and is bumping reggaeton super loud out of the speakers on my journey to school in the morning, as I hang on for dear life and look out the window at the gorgeous ocean the whole time. It’s moments like these that I just have to laugh inside and wonder what I got myself into…but as hard and frustrating and scary and weird as it’s been in the past two weeks, it’s also been totally incredible and it’s so surreal to me that I get to stay here for another 4 ½ months.
Well, that’s all I’ve got. I hope you’ve enjoyed this chronicle of my wild experience here, and I will post more when I have the chance and after more silly things happen. Every day is an adventure, and I am so lucky to be here living this fun, crazy, beautiful experience. So, I guess that’s all for now, I’m out! Hasta luego.
Since I have pretty limited Internet access I thought it might be easier to post updates about my trip on a blog for anyone and everyone to read, rather than sending out hundreds of emails and not knowing who’s interested and who’s not. Please just keep in mind that I don’t have a whole of Internet access or capabilities, so the blog will be updated as often as possible (which may not be very often) but you’ll have to be patient and bear with me.
Okay, so here I am in Chile. Wow, sometimes I really wonder what I’m doing here. It’s been an awesome two weeks here, but I’m telling you that Latin America is totally and absolutely CRAZY. It’s so different, you can’t even imagine. It’s no United States, that’s for sure, and I’m living in the most developed country in South America. Well, to begin, the flight and all the airport jazz went very well—I met a girl from my program in the terminal in Atlanta and then ended up sitting next to another girl from this program on the plane. Luckily we got through customs, immigration, etc. without a problem and made it to the pick-up on time. We spent two days touring Santiago, the capital, and doing orientation—the highlights were eating a four-course dinner in this super fancy restaurant that has a revolving top floor (like the Space Needle) and looking out over the whole city at night and also getting to tour one of Pablo Neruda’s (Nobel winning poet and one of Chile’s most adored people) houses, which was built like the inside of a ship and decorated soooo incredibly cool. Then we spent a day in the country at some type of resort to relax and do more orientation and then our host families came for us. My family consists of Juan and Mary and their 16 year-old daughter Macarena, or Maca for short, plus the cockerspaniel Duke and our nana (maid) Señora Ruby, who is the sweetest little old woman I’ve ever seen. We live in Viña del Mar, unfortunately about as far from the water as possible. Since then, we’ve been in Viña doing more orientation yet, living with our families, preparing for our classes, and attempting to get accustomed to and to survive this crazy place.
Last Thursday we drove way out in the countryside to this rural agricultural community called Rabuco. It was INCREDIBLE…we toured a vineyard and got to see the entire process of growing grapes and then exporting them, learned the process for the cultivation of flowers (the kind you would sell to florists or something—definitely the most gorgeous flowers I have ever seen) from seed to finished product, got to pet a bunch of strange animals, played soccer on a field right at the base of the mountains, and learned to dance the cueca (the national dance). Also, last Sunday my host sister took me to Festival, which is this week-long concert series that is the biggest event of the year in Chile and one of the biggest concerts in all of South America. Chileans are OBSESSED with Festival, when they’re not playing it on TV, they’re talking about the previous night’s concert and re-playing clips…it’s been over for a week and they’re still talking about it constantly. I got to see Bryan Adams (no kidding) and this really popular Chilean rock band called Lucy Bell. It was pretty funny to hear thousands of Chileans singing along in broken English to Summer of ’69, Heaven, Everything I Do, etc. The concert was pretty awesome, and it’s cool that I got to go and be a part of something that is so important to this country.
This weekend two of my friends and I decided to be adventurous and went up the coast about and hour and a half out of the city to the this little beach town called Maitencillo. We just grabbed a backpack with a change of clothes, a swimsuit, and some potato chips for sustenance and hopped on a bus heading out of Viña. We arrived in Maitencillo, found ourselves a cabaña (like a little apartment) to rent for the night, checked out the artesanias (the arts fairs with local merchants), and proceeded to take a nap on the beach. Unfortunately it was pretty cold and cloudy this weekend, but we still a fair amount of time on the beach and had an amazing view of the ocean. We even cooked ourselves dinner in our cabaña this weekend, how grown-up are we?! The next day we had lunch right next to the beach and watched a bunch of guys surf for a couple of hours. It was such an amazing weekend, SO relaxing, and the scenery was incredible, not to mention a LOT of good times were had with my two wonderful companions, Abigail and Sarah.
Here is what I know of Chile after two weeks:
--MICROS. The transportation system here is absolutely wild. They use these small little buses called micros, and there are thousands of them. They stuff them full of people no matter how little space there is left—I was actually hanging out of the open door one morning. The driving is insane, it’s enough to make me sick sometimes, and they also often times have a guy hanging out the window who works with the driver to convince people to get on his micro in order to have more passengers and therefore make more money. He’s always yelling out the window at people on the street or sometimes he jumps out to try and persuade passers-by to get on his micro…problem: sometimes he lies about where his micro actually goes and you get lost.
--MILITARY TIME AND PESOS. Using military time is weird and trying to calculate what thousands of pesos would equal in US $ has been hard to get used to.
--SLANG. Chilean slang is so ridiculous: guagua has to be my favorite word, guagua = baby
Some more good ones: sí po, qué fome, ¿cachai?
--REGGAETON. As my friend Abigail says, I think it plays out of the walls here.
--AVOCADO. It’s on everything, I swear. My main food groups now consist of bread, manjar (mmmmmmm, dulce de leche), salads covered in balsamic vinegar, empanadas stuffed with anything you can think of, and more fresh fruits and vegetables than I’ve eaten in the rest of my life previous.
--HEATING. Or lack of. No central heat, it’s always the same temperature inside as it is outside…winter is going to be horrible. If I want warm water for my shower I have to go to the kitchen and light the pilot in the calefont.
--TOILET PAPER. Or lack of, again. Always come prepared because the bathroom isn’t going to have any. And you can never ever flush it in the toilet because the septic systems can’t handle it…it’s so gross and it’s getting really old.
--STRAY DOGS. They are everywhere, no joke. I guess Catholic nations don’t believe in birth control for their pets either. I’ve been told that a couple times a year they actually round up all the strays and have a massacre to get rid of them. How horrible, right?
--PIROPOS. Piropos is the name for what men do when they honk or whistle at you in the street, make comments about your body or how pretty you are or tell you they love you as you pass them on the sidewalk, etc. It gets really old to not be able to walk anywhere without being gawked at and commented upon by gross men. It’s a machismo culture, and it’s really hard to deal with sometimes because the kind of stuff that I have to allow to happen here would NEVER fly with me in the United States.
--PISCO SOUR. It is THE drink here. The alcohol is super strong here, we’ve been warned many times in orientation. The other night I think I took my pisco a little too fast at dinner because I just about tipped out of my chair.
--SUN. The sun is mad strong here, I think I have a new sunburn everyday.
--PLAYA. There are beaches everywhere and everyone is at them constantly. What an awesome change from Minnesota winter. I’m never going to get sick of looking at the ocean every day while I’m living in this beautiful place.
As I always tend to attract a fair amount of bad luck and crazy situations, I thought I would share a few of these odd stories from two weeks in Chile. My friend Sarah and I have been lost several times on the micros, and one time we ended up WAY up in the mountains about an hour outside of the city in an actual shanty-town with dirt roads and people riding horses…it was very scary. But we made it home safely, which is really all that matters. Beyond the micros, I was mildly attacked by a stray dog last week on my walk home. He was seriously trying to bite me and I actually had to yell for help, but thankfully he finally relented and I was able to get away without any sort of injury. And aside from all that, Sarah and I have encountered a group of drag queen prostitutes TWICE in one week on our walks home at night. There are more crazy stories, but I don’t think I’ll share them here, and I’m sure there are plenty more to come.
As I said before, sometimes I wonder what the heck I’m doing here, what kind of place this is that I’m living in for the next five months. For example, when I’m on a bumpy bus ride home from Maitencillo through the countryside of Chile with little kids screaming in Spanish and music from the Village People blasting in the bus. Or when my host-mom gets into a fight with the security guard in the parking lot of Jumbo (Chile’s Walmart, but SO much bigger) or flips off soccer fans as they cross the street in front our car as we fly down the streets of Viña in our Hyundai listening to Celine Dion. Or when I see a woman peeing in the plaza right in front of my university. Or when my friends and I can’t order lunch in a restaurant because it won’t be open for another ten minutes…apparently it opens at 1:20 p.m. on Sundays (?). Or when I walk past a small restaurant and see cages with live chickens in the kitchen. Or when there are filthy stray animals hanging out on top of open crates of fresh fruits and vegetables in the market and the vendors are smoking over their products. Or when I’m told that stray dogs run in large packs in Valpo and are known to attack humans so I should be really careful, and also that I should never ever eat anything made by a vendor in the street because I’ll be in the bathroom for the next three days sick with “Chilenitis.” Or when I see poor people break-dancing or fire-eating in intersections to earn money from passing cars. Or when I’m riding a PACKED micro that has blue fur trim around the rear-view mirror, lots of strange bumper stickers plastered on the walls, and is bumping reggaeton super loud out of the speakers on my journey to school in the morning, as I hang on for dear life and look out the window at the gorgeous ocean the whole time. It’s moments like these that I just have to laugh inside and wonder what I got myself into…but as hard and frustrating and scary and weird as it’s been in the past two weeks, it’s also been totally incredible and it’s so surreal to me that I get to stay here for another 4 ½ months.
Well, that’s all I’ve got. I hope you’ve enjoyed this chronicle of my wild experience here, and I will post more when I have the chance and after more silly things happen. Every day is an adventure, and I am so lucky to be here living this fun, crazy, beautiful experience. So, I guess that’s all for now, I’m out! Hasta luego.
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