80's and futbol (professional--not against 10 year olds)

This past Friday we had an 80's party which was, with apologies to all of the people who have thrown and/or attended 80's parties in the past, the Greatest 80's Party Ever. This, I think, was due to the fact that the Chileans are obsessed with the 80's. They worship Madonna, U2, and Iron Maiden. They wear 80's clothes and have 80's haircuts (Think mullets. Lots and lots of mullets.). So naturally, when KellyAnne announced we were going to have an 80's party for her birthday, everyone got really excited. Everyone dressed even more 80's than they normally do, and it was a riot. People actually chose 80's figures as muses (we had Madonna, Michael Jackson, Tiffany...). There were lots of leggings, an absurd number of high-tops, elbow-length black gloves, upturned collars, side ponytails, blue eyeshadow, inordinate amounts of hairspray, leather jackets, jean jackets, tiny running shorts... It was phenomenal. What surprised me the most is that even though most of the party attendees were foreigners, everyone managed to throw together an 80's outfit with frightening speed and accuracy. I don't know about you, but when I travel, I don't tend to pack outfits for the occasional costume party that I may or may not attend. Kudos have to be given to KellyAnne, who singlehandedly outfitted about 80% of the people who live in our house. The girl has a ton of 80's clothes.

The owners of the house, Jorge and Marisol, also got really into it, allowing us to use the house, rearrange the furniture, invite whoever we wanted, stay up until 5am, etc, etc. They even got dressed up themselves, and didn't care in the least that their 10 year old son was exposed to the drunken antics of some 40-odd foreigners. In fact, Javier appointed himself Party Photographer, dressed up as a (10 year old) 80's gangster, and proceeded to soak up the inebriated attention that all the girls slathered on him.

How, you may ask, did you find enough people to come to your party since you are brand new in Santiago and don't have many friends? Quite easily, really. We just told everyone in the house about it, and everyone in the house invited 2 or 3 friends, who in turn invited 2 or 3 friends, and we had ourselves a party comprised of about 15% Chilenos, 5% Americans, .01% Italians, .01% Mexicans, and 79.8% Swedes. All of a sudden there are a lot of Swedish people around. I'm not really sure why.

Highlights of the party included KellyAnne dancing, according to Marisol, "like she had just snorted a bunch of coke" (which she hadn't, Mom and Dad); Nate dancing like a deranged robot; and numerous, rabid cries of "al seco! al seco! al seco!" which basically translates to "chug! chug! chug!" Which people did.

Pictures! you say. We want pictures! Of course you do. A bunch were taken, and as soon as someone takes pity on us and sends some our way via email we will post them on here for you. The pictures are, obviously, fantastic.

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Besides the 80's party, the only other thing of note that we've done was to attend a real, live professional futbol game. For those of you who have been to a Latin American futbol game (I'm looking at you, Whitey and Karen), you know how absolutely crazy they can be. The game we attended was Universidad de Chile vs. Universidad Catolica (both from Santiago). Don't be fooled by the names, though, the teams have absolutely nothing to do with the schools other than the fact that they are funded by them. The players are professionals (not, contrary to what we thought for the first half of the game, students) and the fans are rabid. The crowd was separated into three sections, those cheering for la U, those cheering for Catolica, and those who do not wish to get trampled in a riot. We sat in the last section. Each cheering section stands behind its goal, jumping up and down, beating drums, and singing songs in unison at the top of their lungs. There were specific songs for every situation. There was one to sing after a good shot on goal, one to sing when your team is winning, one to sing to taunt the other team's fans, and one to sing to drown out the singing of the other team's fans. Also, there were lots of songs that included whistling. Whistling, we have since learned, is the Chileno way of expressing disgust. When fans are unhappy, they whistle. When they all whistle at once, it hurts your ears. When the team you are cheering for scores a goal (which ours did--la U), that is your cue to run around on top of the seats, shove your friends, and curse a lot out of sheer joy. This even happened in our section, which was the section where parents brought their children to be safe. Another characteristic of the Chilean futbol game is the presence of riot squad police all around the edges of the playing field and in the stands. This is for several reasons, one of which is because when a player from the opposing team goes to take a corner kick, the fans throw anything they can get their hands on at him, and the riot police has to use his shield to protect him. Another reason there are riot police is because at the end of the game, fans like to climb the (spiked) fences and run around on the field trying to get close to the players. The last reason is because at the end of the game, whether your team wins or loses (ours won), the people go absolutely out of their mind nuts. Outside the stadium we were thrust into a crowd that was, among other ways, showing their anger/exhiliration by throwing rocks and glass bottles at the police. Once the perpetrator threw his object, he and his friends started running, causing the entire crowd to start running, and making the police circle around on their motorcycles throwing menacing glares at anyone under the age of 30. Needless to say, it was absolute chaos. We did our best to stick together (there were 6 of us), and we had to change our route a number of times so as not to be within 10 feet of someone throwing a projectile at a policeman. We had to walk a good 45 minutes home too, because at important games like this one, where the fans go crazy, they shut down all forms of transportation.

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We are leaving for the north of Chile in, well, in 5 minutes. You probably won't be getting a blog entry until a week or so from now, so I hope this holds everyone off until then...

Fotos of Fantasilandia

As promised... a beautiful photo montage of FANTASILANDIA by Alexis (in brown hooded sweathshirt), the 24 year old son of the owners of our house. The boy in the orange is Javier, the other son, and the other kid is his friend from school. The tall, blonde freak is Nate.

(NB: Yesterday, to get to the entrance of this photo exhibit we went to see, we had to traverse through a literal sea of Chilena schoolgirls. Nate got several calls of "hello! how are you!" and when he responded with something in English, they all squealed with delight. He thought this was a characteristic of young Chilenas, but KellyAnne and I assured him that all 13 year old girls act like that the world over.)




Nate, Alexis and I waiting in line for...













...the Kamikaze, which spins you around and around and around, and prompted us to learn the Spanish words for upside down (al reves or a cabeza) and sick to the stomach (mareado).













The Disco Super Buena, or something like that. Its seats are similar to mopeds, complete with a seat you straddle, and little handlebars to hold onto. The Disco spins you around as you zoom along this parabolic track. It was fantastic. Nate sat this one out because he was still too mareado from the Kamikaze. I think as you get older your ability to withstand the nauseating quality of most amusement park rides diminishes drastically.

Vino y Futbol

The past couple days haven't exactly seen a whirlwind of activity from either Erin or I. We did however, as promised, have an international futbol (that's soccer to you) extravaganza. The game primarily consisted of Erin, me, and a handful of other rag-tag foreigners valiantly defending our respective nations' honors against the mighty Chileno force of Javier and three or four other 10-year-olds. But what we foreigners lacked in raw soccer skill, we made up for in heart (and height). The Chilenos got off to an early lead, but we fought back and tromped them soundly, proving once and for all that the mighty USA can stand up to and defeat any elementary schooler anywhere. Having tasted our might, they begged we reorganize the teams to a more evenly matched big people vs. little people arrangement. The teams were essentially the same, but we got the only player from their team who was over five feet tall. They in turn received a couple of other grade-school kids who happened to be milling around the soccer field. The result was another stunning victory for our team. Afterwards, we received juice boxes and orange slices (although both were largely imagined...by me...just a second ago).

After a night to savor our victory, we decided the next day to do the most touristy thing we could think of. We put on our finest clothes and headed off to La Vina Concha y Toro, which for those of you who aren't oenologists is the largest producer of non-boxed wine anywhere in Chile. It was an impressive place, but in terms of excitement, it had nothing on the bus ride we took to get there. In Chile, busses don't stop to let you on. They pretty much speed around the city at an insane speed and slow down just enough to let you read the sign that says where they're headed and dive on. Afterwards, the driver takes your money and counts change while he dodges pedestrians and other vehicles in an effort to get back up to speed. It was a pretty exciting experience all in all. Erin saw two women praying as we crossed bridges, and I'm not sure whether that was to get us all safely across or what. Getting off the bus was the same process in reverse, and I actually got clipped with the door when I didn't move fast enough.

The nice thing was that we got dropped off right in front of the vineyard. It was a pretty large place with lots of old or old-looking buidlings. We got taken through the actual vineyards, where they explained how awesome their grapes are, then we tasted some of the finished product. They even showed us how to inspect, swirl, sniff, hold, and eventually drink it. Then we saw the gigantic storehouses where casks of wine aged. This included the apparently world famous Devil's Cellar, where there were some county-fair-haunted-house-style lighting effects. The whole thing ended a little anti-climacticly when the voice recording told us the devil did not actually live in the cellar and the lights came back on. We did one more wine tasting and then the tour was over.

This morning we went to the Santiago public library to see a photo exhibit done by local artists between the ages of 20 and 35. Some of the pictures were pretty interesting, but most of them had been heavily digitally edited and after a while that started to seem old. The library itself was amazing both in the incredibly large, interesting architecture way and in the lacking books almost entirely kind of way. The place had apparently benefitted from a grant by the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation, which had obviously bought it a lot of remodeling and computers (seriously, tons of computers), but not many books. It's now a city-wide hub for email, unfiltered internet pornography, and instant messaging. The future is here.

We have an address as it turns out. You may begin sending packages....now:

0251 Claudio Arrau
Providencia, Santiago, Chile

(You do not need a postal code)

pictures of our room!

Because nothing super interesting has happened in the last few days we thought we'd treat you all to some photos of our room, taken prior to our camera's liberation. Enjoy!


One interesting thing that has happened is that it became summer. Literally overnight. We came back from Valparaiso, and winter in Santiago had ended. We went from wearing every single article of clothing we own all at once to sweating from a 10 minute walk outside. Today it was about 78 degrees Farenheit. Our dream of the pursuit of an endless summer is finally coming to fruition. To celebrate the gorgeous weather, we (with a great deal of help from Javier) have organized a futbol game of Chilenos vs. Extranjeros (foreigners). We will almost surely lose, but it's going to be a hell of a good time.

Last night we went out to an Indian restaurant for our friend KellyAnne's birthday. It was actually pretty delicious, and it confirmed our suspicions that Chilenos do not like any kind of food that has flavor. Our friend Diego almost barfed while trying to choke down his vegetable masala, and then he threw a fit when he found out it cost 5 luca (5,000 pesos or about $10) for "nothing more than some rice and a bowl of fucking mushrooms." We comforted him by plying him with beer.

Today we met with and talked to the guy who runs the TEFL Academy and who will be our trainer. It turns out once we finally obtain jobs, we'll be paid pretty decently; much better than we had originally thought, which is a relief. We can only keep up this destitution act for so long. It has been helpful in terms of health, though. We're both on the "poor man's diet," which consists of only one big meal a day, lots of vegetables (because they're cheaper), and walking everywhere that is less than two miles away. When our class starts we'll be facing intensive classes every weekday from 10am to 5:30, which will be quite the opposite of our rather lax lifestyle right now. I don't know if it was the sudden weather change when we got here or fewer hours of daylight or the fact that we literally have no responsibilities other than to feed ourselves every now and then, but we have only woken up/gotten up earlier than 10:30am ONCE since we got here. I'll pause for a moment to let all of you hard-working shmucks out there loathe us with every fiber of your being. ... ... Honestly though, it's getting kind of boring, and we're both looking forward to our upcoming trip up north to the desert and to our class beginning.

I now realize that I had intended to only post these pictures and that I claimed nothing interesting was happening. Sorry for the long-winded exposition on basically nothing! I might as well add that we love getting comments from everyone, especially the snarky and ridiculous ones, so keep 'em coming!

Soy un fenomeno

Having shaken the dust of Valparaiso from our metaphorical sandals, I was a little perturbed to find out that it had made me sick. I woke up our first morning back in Santiago with a nasty head cold, which has persisted stubbornly through the past couple of days. As a result, the past two days have been somewhat low-key, which drives Erin nuts. After all, "We didn't come half way around the world to sit around and do nothing" and "I'm booooored." Thankfully, we finally saw some activity yesterday when we visited FANTASILANDIA!!!

As you might imagine, Fantasilandia (Fantasy Land) is Chile's version of an amusement park. It's basically the same sort of thing, but a lot smaller and a whole lot cheaper. Erin and I were persuaded into going by the son of our landlord, Javier. He's about ten years old and probably the friendliest, most enthusiastic person I've ever met. And, although we were both a little skeptical about the Latin American amusement park experience, Javier had a pretty easy time convincing us to go along. After a short metro ride and the entry fee of a little less than 6 US dollars a piece, we were participating in the universal amusement park activity...standing in line for hours. I should mention that since we got to Chile I've received substantially more attention from the Chilenos than Erin has. This is most likely due to the fact that I am easily a head taller than about 90 percent of them and I am the only person in the country with blond hair. Walking around, I regularly get people yelling things at me in broken English. It would be like me walking around in the US yelling, "Hola, buenos dias, me gusta tacos," at anyone who appeared to be latin american. This became particularly tiresome in the amusement park lines, which snake back and forth so that you end up passing the same people again and again, and even though I got tired of it, the Chilenos didn't seem to. Essentially, I'm a freak here.

Another thing we learned standing in line was that, in Chile, waiting your turn is for suckers. If you allowed even the smallest gap to develop between you and the person in front of you, there were always about ten high school students waiting to jump the dividers and get in front of you. This is a practice that would be considered outrageous in the United States, but the Chilenos seemed to be okay with it. Even when we were careful to keep moving with the line, we still regularly had people crawling over us to go meet their friends somewhere at the front of the line. At one point, a guard opened a door somewhere ahead of us for a second or two and about a hundred kids took the opportunity to follow him in and get at the front of the line.

Aside from line troubles, Fantasilandia turned out to be a pretty good time. It had two rollercoasters, one that was up to par with what we have in the US and one that looked like it was meant to be taken down and reassembled at various county fairs across the country. Both were fun. There were also the usual slew of secondary amusement park rides: the things that spin you around real fast, the things that flip you upside down, and the things that do the both at the same time. There was even a log flume, and although it's basically the middle of winter, there were still Chilenos riding it and getting completely soaked. The last thing we rode were the bumper cars. If you know anything about bumper cars, they're generally powered by electricity that comes down from the ceiling through poles to the cars. These were different. The entire floor of the bumper car arena was electrified and the cars picked up their power from there. Thus, there were several signs around explaining that you should not ride the bumper cars with wet feet or clothes. Also, in a dramatic improvement over US bumper cars, there was no track at all. Nobody tried to make you go around in a circle or anything, and we were pretty much free to run headlong into each other at top speed. At one point, Erin managed to clip the back of Javier's car at the same time I got him from the front on the opposite side. It spun him like a corkscrew for half a second and came close to giving him whiplash. So in general, a good time was had by all.

PS Javier promised to send us some pictures of the amusement park, so when we get them we'll definitely pass them along!

PPS Fenomeno = Freak

The Mugging

You may notice something different about this blog entry. I'll give you a few seconds to think about it... ... ... that's right. No pictures. There are no pictures in this blog entry, nor will there be any more in any subsequent entries (until perhaps after Christmas) because some ASSHOLES stole our camera. So you, dear reader, will also unfortunately be feeling the pain of our cameralessness.

On Sunday, after a night of drinking and terribly executed salsa dancing, we decided to go to Valparaiso on a whim. For those of you who listened to anything we talked about before we left for Chile, Valparaiso was the city we had originally intended to live in. (All that changed after we decided to take a real TEFL course in Santiago instead of an online one.) Accompanying us to Valpo were three people we live with: Rafa (a Mexican) and two French chicks, Pauline and Melanie.

Valparaiso is a city comprised of a port, a tiny flat central market-type part, and thousands of hills, or cerros. The hills are humongous, with colorful houses scattered all over them haphazardly. Think San Francisco except steeper and more poorly organized. Because the hills are so steep and no one consulted any of his neighbors while planning and building houses, the streets create one huge maze. There are secret little staircases that join lower streets with higher streets, kinked alleyways connecting streets, and NO street signs. I assume the hills were designed as one big joke on people (especially foreigners) trying to find their way around, because it is virtually impossible.

We arrived in Valpo at night, with a piece of paper with names and addresses of hostels in our hands. We headed for one of the hills, Cerro Concepcion, where we were advised to stay. We proceeded to spend over an hour searching, searching, asking directions, taking the wrong alleyway, getting confused by the lack of street names, and searching some more for a hostel--any hostel. Because all of us were still relatively new friends and communication wasn't at its best, we spent a lot of time standing around asking each other what to do. No one wanted to express any strong opinions or make any decisions, so most of the conversations went like this: "What should we do?" "Should we ask directions?" "I don't know." "I don't care." "Do you want to stay here?" "I have no preference." "-----" (That last one is Nate, who remains relatively mute when there are more than three people conversing in Spanish.) We eventually found a hostel, discovered it only had 3 beds, found another with 2 beds, and finally decided to just split up and call it a night. The hostel Nate and Rafa and I ended up staying in was ridiculous. It was the owner's (actually, he was just the manager and the real owner's ex-boyfriend) birthday, and he was as high and as drunk as they come. He coerced everyone into drinking with him to help him celebrate, and a few of the residents got completely obliterated. They eventually tried to go to a discoteca (Nate and I passed), but were turned down by the bouncer because they were too drunk. They proceeded to come back to the hostel at 4 am and burst in and out of the room we were sleeping in (along with 4 others), screaming, leaving the door open, slamming the door, and screaming some more. All in all it was a relatively sleepless night. The next morning, this American dude that was staying there just left without paying, and one of the drunken girls from the night before fell out of her top bunk bed headfirst onto the floor. We decided to change hostels.

After checking into a far nicer hostel (one of the best we'd ever stayed in), Rafa and Nate and I wandered around Valparaiso. We checked out this Museo del Cielo Abierto (the Open Air Museum), which is basically a bunch of murals painted on walls by artists and art students of Valparaiso. They weren't anything exceptional, especially because there are amateur impromptu murals and artistry on lots of walls all over the hills that were much better than these. We also wandered over to the fish market and ate some fresh seafood. And then we made our fatal mistake: we decided to wander up an unknown hill to do some exploring.

Halfway up the hill, a carful of policeman pulled up to us and said, hey, be careful, stay in a group, keep your eyes open. No big deal, we said. There were three of us, and it was broad daylight. There were schoolchildren playing futbol in the streets. We wandered farther up the hill, snapping pictures of all the amazing art on the walls of the neighborhood. Towards the top of the hill, we stopped to decide if we should keep going and try to reach our hill (Cerro Concepcion) or turn around and head back the way we came. Three Chilenos about our age passed us. A bus passed us. Then the three Chilenos came back towards us. One came right up to me and started grabbing at my camera, which I had in a carrying case around my shoulder. I assumed he wanted to try to take our picture for money or something, so I said no and tried to back away. He kept saying "dame la camera," and I kept saying no. Finally, he grabbed it and pulled, I grabbed it and pulled back, and he gave one hard yank and ripped it right from my shoulder. The three guys took off running, and Nate chased them. One threw a rock at his head, and the others stopped and held up their fists, ready to fight. I screamed at Nate to come back (I had these horrible visions of him getting beaten up by the three of them, while I and Rafa--who's no bigger than me--looked on, helpless), and the three guys ran off. Another bus passed, and without really thinking, we jumped on, just to get the hell out of there.

Just moments before the mugging, Rafa and I had been talking about how some people think that foreigners who travel are automatically rich, and it's ok to take things from them. Maybe they have this idea that they're like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to help the poor, themselves. Little do they know that we're just as poor as they are! I understand that this sort of thing is bound to happen the more you travel. I just can't believe it happened in broad daylight, in the middle of a relatively busy street, with three people present! And the way they did it--just ripping it right off me--was so intrusive that I was shaking for the next half hour. We spent the next two hours replaying the incident in our heads and wondering what we could have done differently. If I had figured out what was happening sooner, I could have run or kicked him. If Nate had figured out what was happening sooner, he could have blocked them from coming near me or thrown a pre-emptive punch. We shouldn't have been wandering around on that hill. We should have turned around when the policemen told us to be careful. I shouldn't have been wearing my camera out in the open. All these ifs, should'ves, could'ves, if onlys... When all's said and done though, no one got hurt and nothing more valuable than a camera was taken. It sucks that we won't have a camera for the rest of our trip (we're only a week and a half in!), but at least it didn't have a whole year's worth of pictures on it. What saddens me is that the whole incident left us feeling really sour towards Valparaiso. The city itself is gorgeous and eccentric, but we're doomed to think of it as the place where we got mugged.

On a lighter note, as we headed back to the bus station, eager to get the hell out of Valparaiso, we noticed a group of firemen, firetrucks, and a crowd gathered. We stopped to take a look, and it turned out to be a sort of relay-race competition between two fire departments. The goal was to knock down these numbers on top of 15 ft. high stands with water from the hose, and to assemble a series of hoses and douse a building with water faster than the other team. All the firemen were in their little fire-outfits (very handsome, as are all men in uniforms), and they would take turns running out, attaching a part of a hose, and throwing their arms up in the air when their section of the attachment process was complete. It was so odd and so funny that it cheered us up for the bus ride back to Santiago.

Back in (relatively) familiar Santiago, we felt much safer and happier. It was Jorge's mom's birthday, so their family and all of us foreigners celebrated with cakes and ham and cheese sandwiches and jote (bad wine mixed with Coke). I made guacamole (and thought of you, Christine), and shared it with everyone and was informed by Grandma's friend that "le falta sal," which means I didn't put in enough salt.

If you'd like to see (someone else's) pictures of Valparaiso, you can go here: http://www.kahunna.net/pilgrims_progress/meredith/journal06.shtml

or here: http://www.traveljournals.net/pictures/chile/valparaiso/ .

It really is a beautiful city. Just don't stray too far from the good hills!

Conquering Tender Young Girls

A few days ago we visited another park, the other "hill" in Santiago that has been turned into a public park. This one was called Cerro San Cristobal and included a funicular, cable car, zoo, chapel, sanctuary, and two public pools. The funicular was pretty cool (photo to the right), extremely steep and surprisingly smooth. You can't tell from the picture, but it goes up at about a 70 degree angle for about 2000 feet.

At the top of the hill, the view of the Andes was spectacular. The big deal at the top is the gigantic statue of the Virgin Mary. It's huge and you can see it from almost anywhere in the city with a view of the hill, kind of like the famous Christ the Redeemer in Rio. Apparently, it commemorates the immaculate conception, which according to Erin was the conception of Mary, not Jesus. If that's true it seems odd that the statue would be a fully-grown (actually a little more than fully-grown) Mary, as I would assume her conception must have taken place sometime before that. In any case, the statue was pretty impressive. The other cool thing was that a little below the statue, there was a prayer area, where hundreds of plaques had been placed thanking the Virgin for various things she had done or might do in the future, such as curing disease, encouraging fertility, and generally being an awesome gal. There was also a beautiful old church that was almost completely covered with ivy, minus a couple spaces for the bell tower and the front door. Overall it was an incredibly beautiful area.

After we got our fill of religious sites, we decided to glut ourselves on a local delicay called Mote con Huesillo. We'd been told about this stuff by an American in the hostel where we stayed the first night. He described it as a peach-flavored tea, and also said that it looked terrible but tasted delicious. He was right about only one of those things. It was incredibly sweet and thick like maple syrup and had two peach halves floating in it. The bottom of the drink was about half-filled with wheat. It looked terrible and tasted only slightly better than it looked. The pigeons and dogs, however, seemed to like the wheat part of it that we dumped out for them.

We spent the remainder of the day walking the seven or so miles back to our house, which was a lot more tiring than either of us had anticipated. We had decided at the beginning of the day to forgo the option of riding either the funicular or the cable car back down the mountain, and although the walk was all downhill, by the time we got home we were exhausted. We spent the rest of the night watching Chilean television, which was interesting. Married with Children (which you may remember with Al Bundy back in the 90s) is alive and well in Chile. In fact, they have a spanish-language version, called Casados con Hijos. The house is identical to the original, as is Peg's bizarre haircut. The neighbors are still around, and the Chilean version of Al still apparently dreads any kind of physical contact with his wife. He does not, however, stick his hands down his pants. I was a little disappointed there. The part we saw mostly involved him and his neighbor drooling over the attractive maintenance woman and subsequently getting caught by their wives. We also saw Quien Merece Ser un Millionario, which translates to "Who deserves to be a millionaire?" The biggest difference is that a million Chilean pesos doesn't exactly equal a million dollars, so they're kind of getting shafted down here.

Contrary to what we originally thought, we're always cold in Chile. The temperature here is much warmer than what we're used to for winter, but what that really means is that the Chileans don't necessarily have to have heaters (and we don't). As a result, the temperature inside is always at least as cold as the temperature outside, and that ends up meaning that in general we are much colder than we would have been in the United States. Fortunately, their winter only lasts two months, and it should begin to get warmer starting in September. Until then, we'll continue to wear most of the clothes we've brought all at the same time.

Last night we hit up "Conversation Night" at an English bookstore with our American housemante, KellyAnne. We were afraid it would be a bunch of gringos there, attempting to socialize and make friends, but there was a surprisingly large amount of Chilenos there to learn English. KellyAnne and I (now it's Erin writing...) ended up talking to this 50 year old dude who only wanted to know things like how to say "drug mule" and "sniffing cocaine" in English. He also kept saying things like, "what do I say when I want to paw a tender young girl?" And "How do you say I want to conquer a sweet girl?" I don't know where he got his questionable vocabulary, but I suspect someone was screwing around with him. The funny thing is, he wasn't creepy in the least. He was just a nice guy who had had a terrible time with his English/Spanish dictionary.

We've had a request for more talk about the food here and to show pictures of our housemates. About the food: nothing to report, really. It's pretty bland and usually includes a hot dog or two. Pictures of housemates will be posted soon...

Piscola

Erin says my spanish is improving. I'm very proud. On Sunday we had big plans to go see one of the Museos, because most local museums have free admission on Sunday. We decided, however, to take a different walking route towards the center of the city than we have in past, and we ended up running into about 100 people all dressed in the most flamboyant costumes either of us had ever seen. The women were all completely barelegged, which was impressive, because we were both freezing cold in our heavy jackets. The Museum plan was quickly forgotten, and we followed the costumed people to a small park beside a church. We never really managed to figure out what was going on, but we did learn that it was some sort of Bolivian festival, although every one of the performers was Chilean. It was great to watch, and Erin and I were able to pick up some dancing tips. It turns out that to be a good dancer you need to move your feet. Who knew?!


The next day we woke up ready to complete our quest to see a Chilean museum. We walked all the way down to the center of the city, only to discover that all Chilean museums are closed on Mondays. Erin says she had read that in one of our guidebooks, but had forgotten. Thwarted once again, we went instead to the Plaza de las Armas, which is home to most of Santiago's pickpockets, starving artists, and mediocre street performers. As far as I can tell, almost no one in Chile works on Mondays, because at least half the population of the country was out walking around the plaza and the surrounding areas. We ate lunch in a sandwich shop where I managed to make a bottle of Aji (the favorite condiment in Chile, so we're told) explode all over me, the table, my food, and a wall. The waitress didn't seem to notice.



We returned to our house to once again bump into Diego, the friendly Chilean whose dancing I had accidentally insulted two nights before. He didn't seem to mind, though, and invited us to go to a bar for some drinks. Happy hour in Chile, it turns out, runs up until about 10 or sometimes 11 at night. The Chileans then return home for their evening meal and go out dancing or drinking about midnight or one o'clock. I have no idea when they get home, because neither of us has been awake that long. This does not keep them from getting up before us, although we do have some excuse, because we're both unemployed. Anyway, Diego took us to a little bar near our house, where he apparently plays saxaphone some nights. Afterwards, we went for the national food of Chile, the hot dog. That's right. The hot dog. Chileans love hot dogs, especially covered in avacado, diced tomatoes, and a couple other salsa-type substances whose contents remain a mystery. They're called completos, as if a slab of meat and a bun with various toppings are all you need for a complete, nutritious meal. Afterwards, Diego took us to a liquor store to buy the national beverage of Chile, Pisco and Coke. Together, they call it a Piscola. It's delicious. Back at the house, armed with Piscolas, we ran into a few of the other people who live in the house who were making chili and cornbread and butter cookies in the kitchen. (Yes, making chili in Chile: all the terrible jokes were already made.) We swapped piscolas for food, and had a great time. The Chilenos mostly thought that the chili was pretty gross, although they ate it anyway, and they couldn't understand why anyone would eat "cake" mixed in with their dinner.

Un Culo de Caballo

Last night we sat in the entryway/courtyard of our house with Diego, a computer security technician/bassist in a band/befriender of naive and confused foreigners, and had some beers. Lots of beers, to be more precise. Conversation was stilted and slow at the beginning. Chilean Spanish consists of a slur of words spoken at breakneck speed, peppered with regional slang. Everything I learned in classes and in Spain fails me. I will have to relearn Spanish.

Beer, however, like oil on rusty hinges, helped to smooth out the mechanics of conversation. Soon, Diego was demanding that Nate sing and play country songs on the guitar, and we were swapping CDs and listening to Chilean rap. Two Mexican students who also live in the house arrived and more beers were bought.

Here are the things we discovered:
1. Chileans hate Bush. They also don't understand why we can't get rid of him as a president. The four year term thing is foreign to them. The mexicanos suggested a peaceful coup d'etat. We had a lot of trouble explaining why the majority of Americans would want to elect such a terrible president.
2. Chilean beer tastes good with salt, lemon, and tabasco sauce. Oh yes, yes it does. Don't knock it til you try it.
3. Do not tell a Chilean he dances like a girl. After Nate demonstrated the style of dance common among American males (essentially rocking back and forth), Diego got up and started gyrating his hips and ass. Nate, unable to understand the slew of panish that accompanied this demonstration, assumed he was pretending to dance like a girl. Alas, he was not.
4. A ponytail, in Spanish, is called una cola de caballo. I was trying to describe one of the ponytailed guys I had seen around the house, and I said he had a culo de caballo. Everyone burst out laughing and I insisted that it was true. After 5 more minutes of laughter at my expense they told me that culo means ass. Cola means tail. I already knew that too. I swear.

Today we visited a park in the middle of the city called Cerro Santa Lucia. Apparently it used to be this huge, unsightly pile of rock and dirt, and in the 19th century someone decided to turn it into a public park. It's built on a hill the size of which is undetectable from the ground. To get to the top of the park, you can take any number of winding staircases and twisting paths. There are hidden plazas and fountains all over the park which you only discover after climbing higher and looking down and seeing a whole new angle of the park. Then you have to go back down some staircases and wend your way over to the piece of the park that you missed. We've been thwarted by Blogger in our attempts to get pictures on here about ten times, but we finally managed to get two uploaded. I really can't do the park justice by trying to describe it with words; the pictures are much better.

Also, Cerro Santa Lucia is apparently a natural aphrodisiac. We counted no less than 30 couples making out--some engaged in super heavy public petting--all over the park. It was ridiculous. And if you happened upon a kissing couple in one of the secret staircases, they glare at you like you're intruding on their very private section of the park. I imagine that a girl can really tell a guy's intentions if he suggests going to Cerro Santa Lucia, because it's some kind of requisite that you make out while in the park. "Do you want to hang out in Cerro Santa Lucia?" he might ask. "Oh no," she'll say. "I'm not that kind of girl..."

First of all, for anyone who was concerned, we've safely arrived in Chile. Not only that, but we've had a couple of the most productive days in our entire lives. We had to run like gazelles to catch our flight in Atlanta, but once we were on the plane, there were 9 solid hours of light dozing combined with Mission Impossible 3. It was by far the most impossible mission I've ever seen.

When we got to Chile, we took a shuttle to our hostel, which has been rated the nicest one in Latin America. Erin might disagree, but I thought the one in Costa Rica was nicer. If nothing else, this one would definitely win the award for Hostel with the Most Bizzare and Erotic Pictures on the Wall, although that was not mentioned in the guidebook. Every single wall was festooned with either ponographic Picasso-esqe sketches or skeletons attacking the living. It was impressive. The place also had a foozball table, which to me was worth the price of admission right there. Unfortunately, the only picture we took of the place was of our dorm room, which didn't have the decor or gaming tables of the rest of the place. We even met a couple people with TEFL experience while we were there and talked to them. The one who'd taken a TEFL class was really positive about it, so now we're both pretty excited to get started on that in a month. Erin says I need to brag about the weather. We're definitely not in the middle of a heat wave in Chile. It's a little cold out of the sun, but maybe in the 60's in the middle of the day. The Chileans seem to think this is really cold, and they all wear scarves and hats and winter coats, but the weather is pretty damn near perfect for us. We thought it was a little foggy the first day, but it turns out it was actually just pollution. Apparently, the cooler weather in winter causes a layer of smog to settle into the city, a lot like in L.A. Anyway, once we dropped our stuff off at the hostel, we immediately went off in search of a place to live for the next two months. We found one within an hour and a half, and now we're moved in. Most Chilean houses aren't much to look at on the outside. I'm not sure there's a really good way to pretty up concrete, but they're mostly nice enough once you get inside. Our room has its own private (and incredibly steep and dangerous) staircase and its own private bathroom. It's pretty roomy with lots of storage space, so we're really happy with it. The rest of the house is like a labyrinth: there are two kitchens, and lots of tiny hallways with tiny doors leading to different rooms. The guy renting us the room is named Jorge (that's George in spanish), and he lets out rooms by the month mostly to students at the university. There are a couple other folks around the house pretty much constantly, which is good for practicing spanish. After about thirty seconds of trying to explain something to me, Jorge's wife realized that Erin was a more productive person to talk to. She says I'll learn fast, though. We're not exactly certain how many people live here; we've met 3 students so far, but there are also younger kids and random neighbors wandering around the house as well. We met a guy who we are meeting for beers in about an hour; he's one of the neighbor/live-ins that may or may not live here. Today we unpacked and went shopping for food. There are a bunch of fresh vegetable stands near our house, and it turns out a big bagful of them only costs a couple dollars, so it looks like we'll be eating healthier than expected.

Pictures of our place soon to follow...

Preflight Thoughts and Anecdotes

We're leaving for the airport in 5 hours, and we're trying to cram in as much friend time as we can. Last night we had a bunch of friends over for dinner and drinks. This is maybe the third or fourth "going away" party we've had, and our friends and we all agree that it's getting ridiculous. They're beginning to question whether we're really leaving or just milking them for parties; we're beginning to wonder if we'll ever get the hell out of here.

By the way, thanks to everyone who threw us a going away party and/or housed us during this two month period of homelessness and poverty. We will bring you all back wonderful Chilean presents.

Last night, a few of us consumed a little too much, and (we won't mention any names, but it rhymes with gate (or bat if you're from Lexington)) ended up sleepwalking into some other friends' bed and scaring the living bejesus out of them. After they sent him away to where he was supposed to be sleeping, a few minutes later he did it AGAIN. This time, the girl was so freaked out that she shrieked and made her boyfriend actually take the sleepwalker back to his bed so it wouldn't happen again. If you know this certain sleepwalker at all, you know that this has been a long-standing problem of his. What worries me is that this will happen in Chile where we know absolutely no one and nothing of our surroundings, and he will get shot and/or arrested for crawling, in a sonambulant stupor, into some Chileno's bed. Let's all hope this doesn't happen.

Everyone keeps asking us if we're nervous and/or excited about going. The answer is yes. Maybe a 15/85 mix of the two. I was much more nervous in the middle of the summer, questioning all of our decisions: should we have chosen to do Peace Corps? Is Chile the right country to go to? Are we ridiculously stupid for not having secured jobs before we get there? Should we be paying a lot of money to take a TEFL course? What the hell is a TEFL course anyway? But when it comes right down to it, the decision is made, the plane leaves today, and tomorrow it will all begin...