Savy Chileano

Alright, jerks. Enough bullying. Here's your damn blog entry. By the way, "your brother," if the only emotion you can experience during the mugging story is slight boredom, then maybe you don't have enough RAM to experience such intense emotions like nervousness or fright. Check your RAM, robot.

The reasons the blog has gone un-updated for so long are many and mostly inexcusable. For one thing, we talked such a big game before we left that we felt obligated to follow through with our blog updates. We did well for awhile, until it got to the point where we would whine, "I wrote the last one. You write this one." "But I wrote half of the last one. Remember? At the end? The part about the bus ride?" You get the point. Another reason is because class has become ridiculously long and exhausting. It turns out learning is more tiring than working. The last reason is because we're simply lazy. Flojo, perezoso, straight-up lazy. Sorry.

Besides being long, the class has been spectacularly useful. I think we pay way more attention than we normally would because the minute we finish the course we will begin applying what we've learned. Literally. We're probably going to start applying for jobs next week, the last week of the course. We've been doing a lot of teaching practice too, which is both fun and nerve-racking. Fun because playing games where English learners have to race each other up to a board and slap up which indefinite article goes with "orange" is strangely, dorkily entertaining and satisfying. Nerve-racking because every time we slur our instructions or give a hand-out before we give directions or use "If you would..." with beginners, James (our teacher) and the other students are there to immediately scribble down the transgression and tell the offending party during the feedback session.

On a happy note, Nate was asked to teach the first two classes of a beginner class. Comunicorp, the company who rents us classroom space and arguably the best English teaching company in Santiago, overbooked themselves and came up short on teachers. James recommended Nate to teach the class, and even though Nate nearly peed his pants with nervousness, he taught the two classes, taught them well, and actually enjoyed himself. On a happier note, this may mean he has his foot in the door with a really good company that normally only hires teachers with months of TEFL experience. On the happiest note, he is being paid the kingly sum of US$12/hour for the four hours he taught. We may be able to afford to eat this next week, after all. On a slightly unhappy note, Erin was a little jealous that she was not selected as the trainee good enough to teach a class before completing the course. But because the extra money means extra food for her, she is able to swallow her pride and be happy for her boyfriend.

Nothing much more of note has been going on here. Another futbol game was played (this time with full teams and good players), an all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut night was experienced, and a gay club was visited.

P.S. We ate Chileno sausage today for dinner. We mixed it with green pepper and tomato and onion and put it over rice. It was delicious. One more thing, "your brother:" don't ever bring up peanut butter again. It costs approximately $30 a jar here, so we obviously can't buy it. But we want it. Oh, how we want it...

Fiestas Patrias

Here's Jorge. He owns our house, and he's happy because 1) he has a delicious anticucho, 2) he's a happy guy in general, and 3) because it's Fiestas Patrias, the national holiday of Chile, during which every country-loving Chileno covers his house with the Chilean flag, pulls the grill out of the shed, gets his wife to cook empanadas, throws on his funny, black, wide-brimmed hat, and gets down to some serious binge drinking. It's like the whole country explodes in a patriotic orgy of gluttony and debauchery. It's a miraculous thing to witness. We, being gringos, knew relatively little about the whole thing going into it, and I was originally under the impression that it was the Chilean independence day. It's apparently not, however, and as far as I can tell, if they're celebrating anything, it's the abundance of cheap wine and chorizo sausage.

The first evidence I saw of Fiestas Patrias was a game very similar to a cup and ball, only way more complicated. The Chileans have actually figured out a way to turn the cup and ball into four games. The ball has been replaced with a peg of wood, and the opening of the cup has been narrowed to be just large enough for the peg to go in. The idea is to get the two to go together in one of four ways, and which you do is determined by your gender. The easiest way is theoretically reserved for females (not very politically correct, but that's the country we're in), and it involves popping the cup up vertically and trying to get it to land on the peg. All other ways are slightly harder and are done by young Chileno men to impress and seduce women. All of them are pretty fun.

Our Fiestas Patrias began with a party thrown for all of us foreigners by Jorge and his wife, Marisol, on Friday evening (the official start date of all festivities). Jorge lit the grill, and we all ate empanadas and anticuchos, a traditional food that's basically just a meaty kebob, and washed them down with ponche, some sort of wine based punch. Afterwards, the dancing started. I've been personally ridiculed on several occasions while in this country for the quality of my dancing, but after seeing Chilenos dancing the Cueca, a traditional jig, I don't really know why my skill is in question. The dance basically involves finding yourself a white handkerchief, waving it around in a circle above your head, and prancing around like a chicken in the general direction of any girl present. They can all do it, and they mostly do. Other dances were demonstrated, but Jorge's dancing, an interesting combination of hip wiggling and shimmying, was generally considered the best. The next morning, we woke up to find Jorge starting the grill again, and this time we ate choripan, easily the best part of the whole holiday. It's just greasy chorizo sausage on bread. I wish I was eating one right now. (Erin's editing note: this choripan business was purportedly the best thing that Nate has experienced since being in Chile. The boy loves meat.)

Afterwards, we decided to venture out of the house to visit the center of Chilean holiday culture, the fonda. A fonda is kind of like a fair, and there are actually lots and lots of them scattered around in parks throughout the city. Each one is different, but they do share certain characteristics. They all sell tons of choripan, empanadas, anticuchos, wine, and beer and they all have live, costumed performances of the Cueca. The first one we went to focused more on the beer and food side of the fonda, and we both ate choripan to our hearts' desires, before heading home early to avoid the drunk Chilenos. By the next morning, the city was starting to show signs of abuse. While walking around we spotted a well-dressed man passed out on the grass of the park near our house, a woman bathing naked in a public fountain in the center of town, and a suspiciously large red wet spot on the sidewalk. We decided to take it easy and stay home most of the evening.

Monday was our last real day of celebration. We visited another fonda, which was a short walk from our house and seemed to be more family oriented. It still had food and beer, but it also had a circus and a small zoo of domesticated animals. We also got to see some pretty elaborate cultural dances, one of which involved scantily dressed hula girls and even more scantilly dressed fire-wielding guys. Erin swore she could see one's ass, and she probably could (Erin's editing note: I did, in fact see his ass... and much, much more). There was also another dance that was basically just choreographed sexual harassment. The male dancer would chase around the female dancer and try to use his hat to lift up her skirt. In response, the girl would wave around some balls on a string and try to smack him in the head anytime he got too close. In the evening we tried to go to a final fonda, but we were pretty much out of luck, as it turned out to be a bunch of people just drinking and milling around in the street around a stand that sold choripan. When it started to rain on us, we decided to trek home.

That pretty much does it for our holiday. The only other story of interest I have to share has to do with something that actually happened several days before, on the anniversary of the death/alleged murder of Salvador Allende, who was the socialist president of Chile prior to a coup led by Pinochet, the much-hated dictator. While the date isn't exactly a holiday, it's celebrated in the same way every year--namely riots. Rioters are, generally speaking, teenagers and early-20-something-year-olds, none of whom are actually old enough to remember Allende, Pinochet, or the years of dictator rule they are rioting over, and most sensible Chilenos (and foreigners) stay out of the center of town, go home early, and watch the whole thing on the evening news. The several hundred who decide to go out do so in an incredibly violent manner, looting shops, breaking windows, tossing molotov cocktails, getting sprayed down with fire hoses and tear gassed by the police force. The next day, everything goes back to normal.

El Viaje Espectacular: Part III

For those of you aching to hear about the remainder of our trip to San Pedro...After four days in the desert we were about as happy as these guys:

We spent the remainder of our trip, getting up at 4:00 a.m., driving two hours over bumpy roads, and visiting one of the coolest places on earth. The Geysers del Tatio are created geothermically, by magma (it's lava when it's above ground--Yay science!) heating water to the point of boiling. At sunrise every day, the changing temperature causes the boiling water to erupt out of hundreds of little mini-craters. The highest geyser only reaches about 9 or 10 feet, but the combined effect is pretty awesome (much like Kevin and Geordie's 80's outfits). Still, tons of boiling water does nothing to change the fact that the Andes at 15,000 feet at 6:00 a.m. in the morning is one of the coldest places on earth. After about five minutes, neither of us could feel our feet, which led to this situation:

The geysers started erupting around sunrise, and afterwards we got to head over to a thermal pool and have a sit. We took off our down jackets, hats, long underwear, three shirts, pants, socks, and shoes until we were wearing nothing but bathing suits. The air was still pretty chilly, but if you tried hard, you could find a spot in the pool perfectly in between freezing cold and boiling hot. Afterwards it was back in the van for a three hour drive across the country side. Our guide pointed out a couple flamingos, which apparently fall asleep every night with one leg in the air so they can use it to free themselves in the morning when the lake they stand in freezes solid. He also showed us this bizarre breed of radioactive bunny rabbit with toxic-waste-color neon green fur. If it had shot laser beams out of its eyes, nobody would have been surprised. The only other stop we made was at this tiny little Atacamanian village, that has a population of 4 (seriously, not an exaggeration) and exists solely so that its inhabitants can sell barbequed llama meat and trips to the bathroom to people on our specific tour. We tried both, and each was satisfactory in its own way.

That pretty much brings us back to Santiago, where we arrived 10 days ago. Between now and then we have:

1. Visited the MIM in Santiago. It was an interactive, hands-on museum that featured a bubble room (including a way to put yourself in a bubble); various science-y type experiments involving light, weight, water, movement, senses, etc; the worst 3-D movie I've ever seen; and approximately 1200 Chileno schoolkids running around like they were doped up on speed. To find out more, go here: www.mim.cl.

2. Welcomed 3 brand new TEFL-ers to Santiago. Meeting them made us feel like expert ex-pats, and gave us a serious confidence boost in our now-decent Spanish abilities and our knowledge of this weird city. We also met 3 or 4 currently employed English teachers, which is nice, because up until now we've only been talking to students (and they sometimes make us feel very old and decrepit because we can no longer stay out until 5:30am partying).

3. Started our TEFL class! And had our first practice teaching session with real, live Chilean students! It went horribly! It was like a train wreck, but we're not worried, because our teacher says we will improve! Going to class full time like this, by the way, is just like being thrown back into high school, except that there are only 4 students and we're allowed to talk about porn and swear in front of our teacher.

4. Bought a cell phone. This is confusing enough to do in your own country. Never attempt it in another language.

5. Discovered Google Talk. It's like Skype, for those of you who know what that is, except through the all-powerful Google engine. All you need to do to talk to us for free is get a microphone for your computer, download Google Talk, and call us! It's ridiculous--you can even leave voice messages that go to your email inbox. The sound is decent as well. From now on we'll be leaving international calling cards to suckers.

That about wraps it up. Now that we are beginning to have normal lives (aka: not sitting around on our asses all day), we will not, unfortunately, be able to bombard you with the tiniest, most trivial details of our lives. Let's face it: we both win. But for those of you who check our blog five times during work in the hopes of being the first to read the newest exciting and entertaining blog entry (you know exactly who you are), I'll give you a moment to fill that little hole inside of you with something... ... ... maybe that half-eaten candy bar you have laying next to your computer. That should do it. So from now on, the blog entries will be more infrequent but more action-packed.

El Viaje Espectacular: Part II

After scouting out the cheapest options for sightseeing around San Pedro, we decided on the cheapest of the cheap: taking ourselves on a tour. We rented bikes for the first part of the day, packed 2 liters of water each, and set off into the desert. The guidebooks tell you that the desert is hot, high, and dry, and they're not lying. San Pedro is situated about 10,000 ft. above sea level, making it not uncomfortable to engage in physical exercise, but certainly not easy. While riding our bikes we had to take sips of water almost every other minute and breathe deeply so we wouldn't run out of air. Riding in the desert was the strangest experience. We rode on the highway, and the landscape is so immense and empty, that all you can hear is the wind in your ears and the sound of your tires spinning. San Pedro's air is so clear that you can literally see things that are 70 miles off in the distance. On either side of us was a blanket of gray-brown sand followed by volcanoes and crazy salt-rock formations. Thank God there weren't any cars on the highway, because we surely would have gotten run over, staring as we were at our surroundings. You can lose yourself in landscape like that.

The first place we visited was about an hour's ride away, a tiny Atacamenian town called Tulor, which was built ridiculously long ago (300 BC or something). The town basically consisted of a bunch of circular rooms/huts that were only partially excavated. The fact that these people had developed agro-pastoralism and had built these abodes that survived thousands of years was pretty impressive. We took a good 5 minutes to appreciate their efforts before hopping back on our bikes and continuing on. You can only stare at circular stone huts half-buried in sand for so long.

The next place we visited was only a 20 minute ride and 3 stream crossings from San Pedro. Quitor, a community-turned-fortress on a hill, was much more impressive than Tulor, even though it was built later and was partially restored for the benefit of tourists like us. Quitor consisted of hundreds of little stone rooms scattered across a hill, connected by haphazard pathways and lacking any sort of guardrails or safety devices . Apparently frivolous lawsuits haven't yet come to San Pedro, because there were some incredibly precarious areas where you could walk right up to the edge of a huge, rocky drop off, and with one misstep, tumble to your death into the valley below (which, appropriately enough, was named Valle de la Muerte). Ignoring the burning in our legs from riding our bikes through the desert, we hiked to the top of the hill, enjoyed the view, climbed around on the walls a bit, and then booked it to San Pedro to make it back in time for a sunset tour of Valle de la Luna.

Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) is named for its supposed similarity to the surface of the moon. It's actually only one part of a national park with all kinds of crazy sections, including salt caves, sand dunes, and rock formations that look like they've erupted from the sand. We came in through the back side of the park, where our guide pointed out a rock formation known locally as Las Tres Marias (or the three Marys). In reality there are now actually only two Marys. The third apparently collapsed three years ago when a tourist attempted to climb one for a picture. The two that are left don't exactly look like Marys either, but according to our guide, Gustavo Le Paige was supposed to have been doing a lot of drugs when he named them. Afterwards, we visited the salt caves, a series of rock passages carved out eons ago by flowing water. They were by far one of the coolest things we saw in San Pedro, but our guide (a one-armed Canadian) had to rush us through them in about half an hour in order to make it to La Duna Mayor (the big dune) in time for sunset. The dune itself is absolutely spectacular. It's about 200 feet tall and 600 feet long, but only a couple feet wide across the crest so that when you walk across it you get the feeling that you could tumble off the side at any moment. In fact some people clearly had been off the sides as there were a couple sets of footprints going from top to bottom. We were warned, however, not to go down the side, as the fall is accompanied by an 80 dollar fine administered by park officials who are on guard during the high traffic times (pretty much just sunset). Once you hike across, the sunset is nice to watch and you actually get to see the Andes change color with the sky. That was about it for the day...and this blog entry.

Teaser Pictures

Here are a couple pictures to whet your appetite for Parts II - XVII of the Viaje Espectacular. Stories to follow. Enjoy!

El Viaje Espectacular: Part I

Photos are back...is what I was originally going to write, but Blogger is now refusing to upload them. Faced with the prospect of no pictorial record of our trip to the North of Chile, Erin and I broke down and purchased the worst, cheapest, unstealable camera that Chilean pesos could buy. The saleswoman even took time to explain to us that it was specifically meant to be a child's camera. We were not dissuaded, however, and it was a good thing since the desert was amazingly photogenic. As a result, we now have pictures to share, although not right now apparently. What a tease. Well, at least you still have my fantastic writing to enjoy...

We began our trip on Monday of last week. We packed up all of our camping gear, clothing, potato chips, and whatnot and headed for the bus station, where we were promptly told that all the tickets to the North were sold out. After Erin calmed down, we purchased tickets for the next evening, having decided that on a long bus ride it would be better to wait for seats not directly across from the bathroom (more on that later). We spent the night enjoying some beers with our house friends, learning how to curse at people in French and Spanish, and attempting to explain the versatility of the word fuck. Rafa, the mexican, had the easiest time learning English and quickly mastered important phrases like, "Fuck you, you fucking fuck," and, "Fuck off, fucker." We also found a little shop that had the best empanadas I've ever tasted. I wish I was eating one right now. Tuesday, we repacked and got to the bus station in the evening for our ride.

It's difficult to tell from a globe or a map, but it turns out Chile is a ridiculously long country. Our bus ride was something like 25 hours. Fortunately, the Chileans have found a couple of good ways to make the journey more pleasant. The first is the semi-cama, which I believe translates roughly to "it's kind of like a bed." It's a bus seat that tilts back extra far. You don't get to be horizontal, but you get as close as you can without actually putting your head in the lap of the person behind you. The second thing they have is Brad Pitt movies. First we saw a Spanish dubbed Senor y Senora Smith, followed by a subtitled Troy, followed by Senor y Senora Smith literally three more times in a row. It really is one of those movies you need to see a couple times to really appreciate. The only snag in the whole trip was that some people were egregiously disregarding the sign that clearly said something like, "The bathroom is only for urination." It's hard to really enjoy a good Brad Pitt movie when you're trapped in a box that smells like an open septic tank. We were, however, very happy with our decision to wait for seats at the front of the bus. Anyway, roughly a day after we started, we arrived rather uneventfully in San Pedro de Atacama.

San Pedro is an interesting place. It has a population of about five thousand people, almost all of whom work in the tourist industry in some fashion or another. Some rent rooms (or in our case, ground) to tourists, some sell food to tourists, some rent bikes to tourist, some drive tourists to various places, others sell crap nobody in their right mind would buy to tourists. About half of these people are native Atacamanians, and the other half are foreigners who have migrated in to make a quick buck. The whole place was put on the map about 50 or so years ago by a Jesuit priest/amateur archeologist named Gustavo Le Paige. Apparently in between masses and (allegedly) smoking a lot of marijuana he found time to ride around the area and uncover evidence of some of the earliest permanent settlements (dating back to before Christ) in South America. Archeologists showed up first to check it out, followed by tourists who wanted to look at mummies and, incidently, the amazingly beautiful landscape around the town. Several decades later, we showed up.

Despite the fact that August is normally one of the busiest months of the year in San Pedro, the place was relatively empty (a Canadian tour guide we talked to blamed this on the terrorists...damn terrorists). The absence of people meant most of the restaurant owners spent a lot of time outside on the street trying to get us to come in. We even saw two guys having a contest to see how many customers they could get. We had to turn down offers of dinner or lunch about ten times a day, and the Chileans always did a convincing job of having their feelings hurt. We ended up camping in a very nice hostel, and after a night of sleep that was way better than anything you could ever find on a bus, we were ready to go. We spent our first day in San Pedro visiting the Gustavo Le Paige Archeological Museum, which had a couple of mummies, some old clay pots, and a whole lot of drug paraphenalia. Apparently, the first thing the indigenous people started doing after they managed to devolop agriculture and domesticated animals was cocaine, for which they made elaborate pipes and little dishes. In another brilliant cultural advance, they also started deforming their children's skulls (as a sign of social status), and we saw a couple that looked like they were harvested from the Coneheads. The rest of the day we spent checking out various tour offices, trying to find some good cheap things to do.

At this point, it's time for dinner, so this is going to have to be Part I. I was originally planning to leave you some of our recently developed pictures for you to mull over and fantasize about what interesting stories must go along with them, but now, thanks to Blogger, you get nothing.

Fotos of 80's Party!!

I know we're supposed to write an entry about our trip up north to the desert, but I was too excited about these pictures to not post them right away. If you're lucky, we'll post more later.

Here are a few of the girls who live in our house; from the left we have Marisol (the owner of the house), Fran (the niece of Marisol), Carolina (a Swede), KellyAnne (whose birthday it was), me, Evelyn (another Swede), Jenna (an American who actually does not live in the house, but comes over all the time), and Gabi (another Chilena).

And here we have me and Nate.