How 'Bout Some Piggity-Pictures?

At long last, we've managed to hijack a camera and get some photographic record of our trip. If the beach scenes aren't enough to convince you we're actually still here, here's Erin in a crowd of 25 Chileno school children, all ages 8 to 9. If you look extra hard, you may even be able to spot me, in a Where's Waldo-esque hiding place. These kids were on vacation with their school and eating in the same restaurant as us for lunch one day. They apparently had never seen anyone who looked like us ever before (my blonde hair was extra-confusing), so they kept sneaking past out table and shouting, "Hello! Bye bye!" until Erin finally took pity and began talking to them. We were swarmed with questions for the rest of the meal, the most important of which were where we were from and what our favorite soccer teams are. For future reference, mine is Colo Colo and Erin's is U de Chile.

In this picture we pretend unsuccessfully to be surfers. Seriously, we were both rubbish. Erin did manage, however, to get us an invitation to some Chilean surfer's house (his name was Elvis, interestingly enough) for a party, but various medical problems and general lethargy kept us away. And, yes, I am completely naked under my wet suit. Enjoy.

Unfotunately, I lost both my legs that weekend...

...but grew them back in time for Erin to take a picture of me peeing in public.

And finally, a lovely view of the ocean, horribly ruined by some stupid girl.

A Weak Performance at Best

The country has gone crazy again. Let me begin by saying, we're neither responsible nor involved, and, Dave and Lisa, you don't need to worry about your baby girl. Pinochet died last night. For those of you unaware of the history of Chile (shame on you), Pinochet was the military dictator of Chile for a couple decades, and he is primarily remembered for revamping Chile's economic system, making it what it is today, and having several thousand people tortured and then disappeared. Depending on how important human rights violations are to you, you either think he was great for the country or the worst thing since Hitler, or maybe a little of both. As far as current events go, though, his death probably won't be the most important thing that happens to you today, since he hasn't been in power for quite some time. Nevertheless, if you happen to watch CNN, it's the reason you're seeing a bunch of teenagers hurling molotav (spelling?) cocktails and getting sprayed with hoses and tear gas by the police. That's right, they're rioting...again. For Erin and I (and everyone else who's been in Chile for more than a couple weeks) this has long since stopped being a surprising event. National holiday, death of ex-dictator, especially exciting soccer game? Why not riot? No excuse is a bad excuse. Seriously. For your average, non-rioting person this turns out not to be the biggest deal. You stay out of the center of the city for a day, maybe two and it all blows over pretty quickly. In the long run, a couple people get arrested, a whole hell of a lot of protestors get tear gassed, and everyone goes home. Rarely is anyone seriously injured.

Now that you're up to date on current events, it's time to focus on the trully important things in life...girls in bikinis. Erin and I went to the beach this weekend. Since it was a 3-day weekend we opted to take a slightly longer trip and go to Pichilemu, a beach town a couple-hundred kilometers south of Santiago. I had never heard of Pichilemu before coming to Chile, but if you're at all into surfing you might have. It is famous for having a giant wave that consistently breaks from one side of the beach all the way to the other, about a few hundred feet farther on. If you're a reasonably good surfer, this means you get a pretty good, long ride. If you're not, it means you get a very short, possibly painful one. Both of us (and Fiona, who went with us) fall into the later category, so we decided to avoid the big waves and stick to the dinky ones closer to shore. After taking a day to walk around and get our bearings, we rented surf boards for day two. This turned out to be amusing, if not successful. Erin and I were each managed to stand up briefly on our boards a couple times, but the vast majority of our time in the water was spent paddling around trying to avoid big waves and find reasonably-sized ones. Despite the fact that we have both lost a considerable amount of weight in this country, neither of us, it turns out, are in surfing condition. This was not helped by the Humbolt Effect, which is the scurge of all Chileno beaches. Basically, because of a current running down the coast of South America, all the water is freezing cold. With the exception of surfers, who wear wet suits, and Chilean children, who are apparently immune to cold temperatures, no one goes to the beach to swim. The majority of people never set foot in the water. We weren't much better, and after all was said and done, we had probably spent an hour and a half in the water apiece. It was a weak performance at best, and I'm afraid neither of us are destined to be good surfers.

Aside from fridged water, Pichilemu has some of the best beach conditions imaginable. It's incredibly dry and cloudless, and the hole in the ozone layer makes things hot, even in winter.
It's perfect for reading and doing crossword puzzles or letting your toddler run around completely buck naked, which is what a large portion of parents do. We had to put on sun block several times every day, and in the end this caused Erin some problems, as we have now discovered she is allergic to some types of sun block. By the time we all woke up on Sunday morning, she was developing a pretty gnarly skin rash, and it continued to grow all day long and through last night. Regardless, she feels good and keeps saying what a great weekend she had. We got home late Sunday night to discover that Pinochet was dead, all bus service was suspended, and the metro would not make any stops in the center of the city. Regardless, it was an easy and uneventful trip home.

Aside from our recent activities, we've finally learned never to accept directions from Chileans. As newcomers to the city, we're frequently lost, especially when trying to decipher the ridiculously complex bus system. Still, it has taken us almost four months to realize that regardless of whether a Chilean knows anything about where you are going or what you are trying to do, he will try to help you. This is both very friendly and incredibly frustrating, as you will often be told with absolute certainty that you need to do the exact opposite of what you actually should be doing. Chances are that if you ask three Chileans the exact same question, especially about bus service, you will receive three different (but equally confident) answers. We have had two Chileans argue in front of us about what the correct course of action is, only to discover that neither was correct.

Various Additions

It's the second blog entry in two days, you lucky little devils. As Erin mentioned, life is floating along here in a pretty standard fashion. We've both started spanish lessons. I obviously need them much more than Erin does, so I'm taking two a week, while she gets by with one. There isn't really a ton to report, but Erin missed some stuff that I intend to fill you in on. We ended up having a full-fledged, delicious Thanksgiving meal, about 3 days late, so we really didn't miss out on too much. The only real difference, other than the day, was that our Thanksgiving was largely populated by foreigners, who kept saying things like, "Su, thas's wat yu du on Thanksgiving." Most of them had heard of it before, but no one really knew what it was all about, which isn't much when you really think about it. I contributed (with a little help from Erin) the most delicious garlic mashed potatoes ever made in the history of the world, although our gay coworker still mentions to me on occassion that they needed more salt. I generally respond that if he wanted more salt, he could have just added it, to which he says, "No, more salt." It's an impossible argument to win. Erin also managed to get into a conversation with him about my ass. I like to believe that it was a largely complementary conversation, although I don't know the specifics.

We learned the same night that old-fashioned VW Bugs (you know, the type with the engine in the trunk) are not so old-fashioned here in Chile. They are still making them, in all their 1970's glory. We actually rode around in the back of a 1996. They are not allowed in the United States because of their aggregious safety records, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone here. Surprisingly, we're told that the Chilenos are the very best of the Latin American drivers, but nothing we've seen makes that easy to believe, and it's definitely not a place I'd want a car with a poor safety rating.

Despite what Erin might have led you to believe, she is not supporting me. She is, however, working about 10 more hours a week than I am. This isn't because she has more classes scheduled, but because my students have an excellent record of cancelling class. This ends up being the best of all situations, because when students cancel, generally you still get paid and you already have your lesson plans ready for the next week. Erin has not been as lucky, but you shouldn't feel too bad for her. In reality, she only works 20 or so hours a week (seriously, boohoo), regardless of what she would have you believe. All things considered, teaching turns out to be a fantastic way to make a living in Chile, as the average Chilean salary is only something like 300 thousand pesos a month (that's roughly 500 dollars) and the average Chileno works a 12 hour day. Much like Erin, though, you shouldn't feel too bad for them. The average Chileno lives happily with his parents, which keeps costs pretty low (I call this the Larry Frierson model). The average Chileno also spends the majority of his 12-hour day chatting with friends in the office and sexually harrassing female coworkers, but claims he never eats lunch because he's too busy. It is by far the most bullshit-centered work environment I have ever come across, and for the amount of work that gets done, it's a ridiculous amount of time to spend at the office.

That's pretty much it for the day. This Friday is a holiday, as are all holy days of obligation in this country, so we're heading to the beach. Oh, and here's a picture of where we went for Erin's big day.

We´re not dead...

... just busy. I realized our last blog entry was right before Thanksgiving and moreover, I haven´t written a blog in about 3 months. I´ve been working like a crazy banshee lately, earning enough to support Nate and I in the manner to which we are accustomed. Which is to say, still eating 2 meals a day and walking everywhere that is less than 45 minutes away because we still cannot afford public transportation. As it is, this entry will have to be short and sweet because I have to leave to teach a class in 15 minutes.

Two big things have happened. The first is that we moved out of our residencia house and into a fully furnished studio apartment. Our new place is 15 minutes walking from work and approximately the size of a shoebox. But we really like it. It´s in the same building as a friend of ours, so that is fun. Turns out that all of the people we really liked in our old residencia house are vamoosing come mid-December, so out of spite we decided to leave first.

The second thing that happened is that I had a birthday! Besides Nate and my parents only THREE people remembered it was my birthday. The rest of you are on my black list and I will most likely never speak to you again. You know exactly who you are, and I expect groveling emails from all of you explaining yourselves and begging my forgiveness. For my birthday we went out into the countryside and camped by the side of a river next to a good climbing site. Getting there was quite the adventure: we had to take a 40 minute metro ride, then figure out which bus to take to get into the Canyon. The first time we took the wrong bus, and had to ride it for an hour so it could take us back to where we started. But then the driver discovered someone had puked on his bus and made us get off and find another bus to take us back to the place where we could take the correct bus. Long story short, we ended up getting to our destination about 4 hours later than expected because of all the bus nonsense. AND we were left without enough money to pay the entrance fee into the park so we had to sneak in by river access (riverbanks are always public land) and then feign stupidity and no Spanish skills when confronted by not one but TWO toothless security guards on two separate occasions trying to kick us out of the park. They both took pity on our broken Spanish and ignorance and let us go "just this once." The next day a few friends met us for some swimming and climbing action, and they were even nice enough to provide some beer and cake action as well. It was a great time, although I think you´ll all agree that every birthday after your 21st is somewhat of a letdown. Hopefully I´ll be able to put some pictures of the weekend up on here when my friend takes pity on me and sends them. Good news though: we are planning on buying another camera over Christmas and we are also planning on not having it stolen.

Also, we will be in the States on the 20th of December. Nate will be hanging out in the DC area on the night of the 20th, and we will both be in DC on the 30th if you´re interested in seeing us. Hope everything is well with all of you, and that you´ve already started writing your apology emails for forgetting my birthday.