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..."