The Latest Blog Entry

Well, not much is really going on lately. Erin, as many of you may be aware, has begun working four days a week with a Korean girl whose father believes she needs to learn English by December. I've spent the majority of my time sitting around the house, venturing out to buy groceries, imagining furniture I might build (see picture below) and generally waiting for work to begin. Despite having been hired a week and a half ago, work hasn't come in as fast as expected and I've got relatively little to do but twiddle my thumbs. Thankfully, I've picked up a full-fledged class beginning next week, and unless things really go to shit, I should get some other work starting in a day or two. Other than that, we've been traveling a little bit. This weekend we went to Vina del Mar for a cloudy, uneventful day at the beach. We ate crunchy peanut butter right from the jar, read some books, visited a casino just to look around, and then headed back to Santiago. Unfortunately for you, there really isn't anything else worth reporting, but since I do have so much free time, I'm going to bore you with mundane observations...about sexual harrassment and strip club cafes.

Chile is kind of a bizarre country in that it's simultaneously very conservative and very liberal. The people are super-formal. They don't go out unless they're dressed up. Leaving the house in a shirt without a collar is completely out of the question, and wearing sandals when you're not at the beach gets you looked at like you're a weirdo. I'm constantly being asked if my feet are cold. At the same time, however, there are these cafes all over the city where the waitresses all wear bikinis or lingerie. There's really nothing strange or weird about them, no secret sex services going on or anything like that. They sell coffee and pastries and aren't any more expensive, but the waitresses dress skimpy and sit and talk to you while you eat. They're just like regular cafes, only sexier. Apparently it's quite pleasant. We met an American who used to go to them on a daily basis because it helped him learn Spanish. He also dated one of them.

One related and not-so-pleasant aspect of Chile is that it's the sexual harassment capital of the world. I've heard other latin american countries are like this to a lesser extent, but in Chile if a girl walks around in anything less than a full-body parka it's an invitation to all the men in the area to whistle and yell and make this particularly annoying clicking/sucking sound with their tongue and teeth or just stare blatantly as they walk past. What's more, they'll do it at Erin even when we're walking down the street holding hands. It's just kind of creepy, and it happens enough that we noticed it when it wasn't happening in Mendoza. I always find myself wondering what they're getting out of the exchange, whether it's disappointment that the approach didn't work for the millionth time like the older kids told them it would or if it's a sense of satisfaction that some woman's day was just a little more sketchy. Coming from a country where sexual harrassment is generally done as discretely as possible and then punished, it seems strange to me that here it's such an open, accepted part of life. This extends to Chilean business, where if a boss harrasses his secretary, he gets a slap on the wrist and a high five from his coworkers.

I apologize to anyone offended by my horrendous spelling. I did the best I could (not really, I could have used a dictionary) but spell checker has left me a pathetic wretch when it comes to correct spelling, and Erin was not here today to correct my mistakes. Also, a very happy birthday to Lisa Fay.

This is Getting Re-Damn-Diculous

Well, we got robbed again. Some lucky/jerkass Chileno now has the second camera, our cell phone, a handful of our clothing, all of our toiletries, Erin’s backpack, and three English books. It was definitely a step up, though, because this time it was done behind our backs and not face-to-face. It’s far more satisfying, we’ve discovered, to find out afterwards that you’ve been robbed, rather than experience it first-hand. It doesn’t feel like quite such a violation. Should Erin ever decide to break up with me, I hope to find out in a similar fashion, realizing she’s not there after a couple days.

The whole thing started with our trip to Mendoza. With a tourist visa, you have to leave the country at least once every three months for a night to renew it. Lucky for us, Chile is only about three hundred kilometers wide at its thickest, so the border is never far away. The wait at the border, however, is generally pretty long, mostly because the international customs folks are completely understaffed. After a failed first attempt to catch a bus, we decided to take the one that left at 8:30 in the morning to beat the traffic and get to Mendoza early. Naturally, when we got to the pass through the Andes, it was still closed down from the previous day’s snow, so while the bus sat in line for an hour and a half, Erin and I walked up and down the road, which was completely packed with people throwing snowballs at each other. It was like a giant international snow day.

When the pass finally opened, our bus driver took off like he was a NASCAR driver. We were passing and double-passing tour busses on blind turns on this tiny little one-lane highway that was covered in snow on either side. Every time we’d reach a switchback, the passenger riding shotgun would look up over the next stretch of road and tell the driver whether it was okay to speed around another bus. It turns out there was a reason for all of this, because by the time we reached the border we were in front of everybody who had been ahead of us in the traffic jam, and we got through customs in about twenty minutes. It was the most psychotic/amazing display of driving I’ve ever witnessed.

Mendoza was equally amazing. Unbeknownst to us, we’ve been living in some sort of an upper-class slum (Santiago) for the past two and a half months. Although Chile is economically superior, with way more jobs and better pay, it turns out that the standard of living is insanely better in Argentina. The result is that when you go to Argentina from Chile, it’s like you’re the king of the country. You have way more money than the average Argentinean and all of a sudden there’s access to all sorts of nice things you don’t see in Santiago. For dinner, we ate at the fanciest, most expensive restaurant that we could find, got a bottle of wine and two-inch-thick steaks, and still only paid about ten dollars each. It was unbelievable. On top of the cheapness, the town is beautiful. There are all kinds of cafes and restaurants, a casino, and tons of nice plazas. It also has the biggest park in South America, every bit of which is meticulously landscaped. There was even a rowing club with its own lake. The craziest thing is that it’s located in the middle of a desert but is greener than Santiago. Enough runoff comes from the snow in the Andes that the people never have to worry about water. Argentina is also the meat capital of the universe, which puts it high in the running for actual capital of the universe. They must slaughter herds of cattle on a daily basis, because steaks and sausages are practically spilling out the doors of the shops and restaurants. The highlight of all of this is the bife de chorizo, which is a steak about two inches thick and the size of a dinner plate.

Everything about Mendoza was completely phenomenal, up until it was time to leave. Bus tickets can get bought up fast, so we had purchased our return tickets the day before when we arrived. We had a pretty relaxed morning walking around the parks and having breakfast at a cafe, and we went to the bus station what should have been thirty minutes early, just to make sure we'd get out okay. It turns out, we were thirty minutes late. It was daylight savings time, and all the clocks had been switched forward that morning. No one had told us. Since the bus company refused to give us our money back or let us switch to a later bus (and consequently didn't want any more of our buisness due to a strong reaction by Erin regarding its country's completely unfair decision to change the time without consulting us) we had to buy a second set of tickets from another company. The hostel owners were very nice, however, and let us leave our bags with them while we spent an extra seven hours moaping around the city. Erin made sure to reset the watch.

Our second try at leaving Mendoza had mixed results. We were successful in leaving the city but unsuccessful in not getting robbed, although we didn't find out that it had happened until we reached the border. The border going from Argentina to Chile is much more complicated than the other way, probably because Argentina is so cheap and lots of people want to smuggle goods back to Chile. Customs has an x-ray machine and random baggage checks, all of which makes the process of getting through slower. It was during the baggage checks that Erin first realized that her backpack was not on the bus. We don't know what happened exactly, but our position in dealing with the bus company (which we think seems pretty likely) was that after Erin loaded her bag into the luggage compartment of the bus, either the sketchy non-bus-company-employee guy (who makes his money by taking your bag from you when you're literaly a foot from the bus, putting it on the pile, and then demanding a tip) or someone else took it back out and walked off. At any rate, it was gone when we got to the border, and we'll likely (most definitely) never see it again.

We've spent the last two days trying as hard as we can to hold the bus company responsible for their crappy handling of our luggage. This was made much more difficult by a couple factors. They immediately claimed that it was Erin's fault for not watching her bags 100% of the time. They also did their damnedest to avoid any contact by phone with us, which was already difficult since neither of us is fluent enough in spanish to argue a dispute (big disadvantage), and kept bouncing us back and forth between the Santiago and Mendoza offices. What finally saved our asses was the fact that we rent a room from the nicest people ever. Jorge, the owner of our house, heard about our problem and offered to help us out (do pretty much everything for us). First he argued with people on the phone for us, threatening police action. Then, he went down to the station to talk to the company while we were at work. He even stood outside their office telling people they were dishonest and irresponsible. When everything was finished, he and I had to go down to the station and sign a contract saying that for 90,000 pesos (about 180 dollars) neither of us would ever bother them again. We got the money in cash, on the spot, and now Erin and I are trying to figure out something nice we can do for him.

Employment Update

After months of being unemployed, the impossible has finally happened. Both Erin and I have managed to find jobs. Starting next week we'll both be working for ComuniCorp, the best English institute in the city. Getting the jobs was relatively simple after the recommendations that James gave us, but we still had to do a demo lesson for one of the school's directors. It was basically a try-out, with one real student and the director watching (she also had the incredibly annoying habit of interrupting your lesson to tell you what to do, which bugged the hell out of me). Regardless, both of us did fine, and Erin has already been assigned to work a couple hours a day with a Korean teenage girl, who is receiving seven hours of private instruction per day. She'll probably speak better than I do in about a month.

Originally, there was talk of having me do lessons in Rancagua, a town an hour and a half away from Santiago, but after accepting the job, I gave it the five minutes of thought necessary to realize I didn't come to Chile to spend three hours a day commuting. We were both a little concerned that I might have had to quit the day after I got the job, but I called back this morning, and they said they had enough work for me here in Santiago, so I get to keep the job and not travel an ungodly amount.

The other thing that's going on is that our tourist visas are about to expire. This isn't a huge deal. It happens every three months, and all it takes to renew them is to leave the country and come back a day later. This would normally be an incredibly easy thing to do, because Mendoza, Argentina is right across the Andes, waiting for you with several big plates of cheap, delicious steak. We thought we'd take the trip to celebrate our new jobs, but we woke up this morning to find it pouring rain for the first time in a month and a half. Since rain turns to snow in the Andes, all bus services through the mountains are cancelled, and we arrived at the bus station just to be sent home again. Trips to the bus station never seem to go as planned for us, but with any luck the roads will be clear tomorrow and we'll be wolfing down platefuls of meat at an all-you-can-eat Argentinian buffet.

Aside from that, life has pretty much continued as normal. My biggest complaint to date is that the Chilenos refuse to walk on one side of the sidewalk. Maybe I've spent too many days marching fifth graders up and down hallways, but damn it, it just makes sense to pick a side. I don't care if it's left or right, but people weaving through each other wouldn't work on the highway and it doesn't work on the sidewalk either. I've talked about this with every Chileno I feel comfortable criticizing, and they all agree. The other thing I've noticed about Chile is that the people here are way more racist, and I think it might just be because the population is so homogenous. I'm pretty much the outer limit of diversity around here, so the only exposure most of them have to other cultures is from American television, which isn't exactly a beacon of enlightenment. I've had a Chilean ask me if lots of black people live in the city because they can't sell as many drugs in small towns. It's hard to know how to answer questions like that. "No," doesn't seem like enough.

On a completely different note, the TV just told me a funny joke. Q: Why don't southern girls like orgies? A: Because of all those thank you notes they have to write afterwards!

Holy Gay Pictures, Robin!

Nate wrote up a fantastic description of the Gay Pride activities, but sometimes you just have to see things for yourself...

If you can take your eyes off the Rainbow Man for two seconds, check out the Nun Man on the right with the wind blowing up his/her skirt...
Incredibly hot (and incredibly gay) construction workers and their friend, the full body condom.
The French chicks, Rosie, Erin, and KellyAnne with a few of the Amnesty International balloons.
Rooowwwwr! You can't see in the picture, but this person is on roller skates.
This person is also on roller skates.

Would You Ladies Like to See My Stomach Muscles? -or- Soy Flaco y Flojo.

Happy Columbus Day everyone. Here's a fun fact. Did you know that Christopher Columbus recieves credit for having discovered all of both North and South America? He does, and since the Chilenos enjoy three day weekends as much as anyone, there's no work or school today. Literally everyone in our house has taken this opportunity to leave town, so Erin and I have been left behind to entertain ourselves.

We spent Sunday doing one of our favorite Sunday afternoon activities, sitting around at the park. Parks are huge on Sundays. Tons and tons of Chilean families grab their soccer balls, their kids, and a big blanket and find a spot on the grass around the playgrounds. All the vendors show up to sell stuff, and pretty soon the parks are full to overflowing. The best part is that monuments and fountains become a free-for-all for ten-year-olds, and you can watch dozens of elementary school kids splash around and climb on expensive statues. It's very pleasant and a great spot to people watch, play some cards, and read. We also did a quick walk through a couple of the nearby museums, one of which had a crazy weapons exhibit, featuring a full-size wooden tank and about ten rifles made out of car parts and nails. For me, though, the highlight of the day was making a giant pot of chili. Delicious...

As far as our budding careers in English are concerned, things are going pretty well. We've finished our last week of classes, and we're ready to start hunting for work. Overall, the whole thing was a great experience and well worth the money. James, our professor, has already recommended us to two of the best language schools in town, and one of the directors of one institute even personally asked us to apply. We're hoping to hear from them pretty soon. We've also got our resumes ready (complete with pictures, as is the custom in Chilean business), and we'll take them around town starting tomorrow. I've thus far resisted the urge to use the cartoon I'd drawn of myself as my CV picture. Aside from company work, James also gave me the number of a girl who had called requesting private English lessons for herself and possibly a friend. Her only specific requirement was that the teacher be male, and I was the only one in the class who fit the profile. Odd request, yes, but for private lessons you can charge as much as 20 dollars an hour, so it's a pretty easy way to make money (well worth the risk of being tied up in some woman's basement). If she requests a resume, I most likely will use the cartoon as my picture...

(Erin's editing note: I just got back from running to find Nate still in his pajamas, watching American football in English--he's figured out how to adjust the SAP on the TV--and still working on this blog entry. Javier immediately made fun of us, commenting on how I go out to run and Nate just sits in front of the TV. Then, when Nate was trying to describe himself as being skinny and not needing the exercise, he couldn't figure out which word to use for skinny--flaco o flojo. Turns out he's both. Flaco means skinny; flojo means lazy.)

Nate in Five Years: a Self-Portrait

Old San Pedro Pictures

Belated pictures from our trip to the desert...

Nate at the geysers as the sun is coming up over the mountain.

Erin (in the center) in the hot springs. The hot water entered the pool where the guy is standing up on the right, and it then dispersed rather unevenly, causing you either 10 seconds of freezing misery or 10 seconds of pure, scalding agony, usually in the buttocks region.
Another one of Nate at the geysers during sunrise. Turns out the crappiness of our kid´s camera really helped give these pictures a sepia-toned, washed out, artsy look.
Nate eating llama meat. Isn´t there another picture exactly like this in another blog entry?!?
Erin, wearing 4 layers and still freezing her ass off, in front of some geysers.

Holy Gay Pride, Batman

This weekend was diversity weekend in Chile, and Erin and I didn´t know it... that is until we got home from the store on Saturday morning to find about six or seven members of Santiago´s gay and lesbian community blowing up literally hundreds of balloons in the foyer of our house. Some explanation is probably in order...

Shortly after we arrived in Santiago, two French foreign exchange students arrived to do internships in the city. Apparently it was a secret initially that they were lesbians, but they didn´t exactly hide it very well. Maybe they assumed that because they were French no one would notice lots of casual touching (that is how I imagine everyone is in France), but they were wrong. Anyway, like any secret in a house with about 20 people living in it, it quickly became common knowledge, and Erin and I enjoyed following the ups and downs of their WB-style relationship for about two months before we were told by someone that we were allowed to know they were lesbians. Life continued as it always had. Anyhoo, it turns out that one of them is actually doing her internship at Amnesty International of Santiago, which, as chance would have it, dabbles in, among other things, gay rights and acceptance, which in turn led to several hundred balloons being stacked in the entrance to our house at 1:00 on a Saturday (diagram that, Kevin). That´s the butterfly effect for you.

My first impression was that we were about to have a fantastic, exciting party in our house, and I was almost right. The six or seven new folks piled themselves and as many balloons as they could manage (not many) into a car about the size of a Mini, and took off for a park about fifteen minutes from our house. Meanwhile, we were enlisted to help cary the remaining balloons to the park on foot, so Erin, the French chicks, three other housemates and I each grabbed a handful of balloons and headed off for the park. We spent the walk talking about what gay rights slogans we might shout (I´m Erin Fay! I support the gays! or I´m not gay! But if you are, that´s ok!) and making tasteless jokes that were most likely counterproductive, so a good time was had by all.

When we finally reached the rally, it looked more like a carnival side-show than anything else. The nice part was that we fit right in with our bunches of balloons, and we got to enjoy a brief couple minutes of popularity as we handed them out to anyone who wanted them. Rafa tried, unsuccessfully, to sell the balloons at 500 pesos each, which is about a dollar. Some people actually considered buying one before walking away shaking their heads, at which point Erin would run after them with a balloon, tell them it was free for them and totally make their day. Having unloaded our merchandise, we were free to gawk at what truly was one of the most amazing spectacles I have ever seen. The Plaza Baquedano was swarming with about about 10,000 people, most of whom looked relatively similar to us (if we were dressed for an 80´s punk rock video), but a select few of whom (consequently, the people receiving most of the attention) were dressed in the most bizarre outfits you can imagine. After about 10 minutes, assless chaps didn´t seem so outrageous, and I started feeling like the people wearing them had really shown some modesty. There were men dressed as Marilyn Monroe standing over metro vents (with somewhat unpleasant results) and groups dressed as construction workers, minus most of the clothes you might expect someone doing manual labor to need. There was also a giant yellow condom, urging everyone to engage in safe sex. In order to really get noticed though you needed wheels. A transvestite wearing fuzzy lingerie is certainly eye-catching, but not nearly so much as the same transvestite wearing roller skates and weaving through crowds of people. Similarly, any man can dress up as a nun, but if he rides a scooter around and exposes himself, he gets more of a reaction.

By far, however, the most ridiculous thing was not the weirdos. It was that while standing next to a truck featuring real live transexual strippers (one of whom, Erin claimed, although I disagree, could pass as a relatively attractive female) doing the most bizarre shit you can imagine, a guy walked up to me and asked if his girlfriend could have a picture with me. Does this confuse anyone else? (Erin´s ed. note: refer to blog entry entitled Soy un Fenomeno).

After about an hour or so of wandering around, the gay pride rally turned into a gay pride parade, and pretty much everyone started off down the street. We watched the whole thing go by and took some pictures, which we´ll put up tomorrow or the next day, and then headed on home with the one or two balloons we had left. By the next day, the most bizarre people had disbanded (presumably to go home to their families and careers in business), but diversity weekend continued with a gigantic, live, free concert. The concert sounded good enough, although I couldn´t really understand much of what was being sung (besides the occassional reference to marijuana, which apparently becomes legal whenever a crowd reaches a certain size), but the real highlight, as with any Chilean event, was cheap chorizo sausage and beer, and I enjoyed a little bit of both. That´s pretty much it for the weekend. We´re now in our very last week of TEFL classes and gearing up to look for jobs, which should be an adventure unto itself.