The Fantastic Adventures of Erin and Nate in Chile

The Last One: Wherein Nate and Erin Cleverly Wrap Up Their Adventures with a Photo Montage

2007-05-17T13:55:00.000-04:00

To Our Dear, Faithful Blog Readers,

Apologies for the lack of posts in the past month. This will, sadly, be the final post of our blog outlining our adventures in Chile. Because we've neglected the poor blog for a good chunk of time, the easiest way to catch everyone up on our latest and greatest endeavors is with pictures.

We spent our last week in Chile treating ourselves like royalty. This meant 3+ meals a day (sometime in restaurants!), coffees from Starbucks whenever we wanted, unfettered Lost watching, sleeping til 10, and meeting friends out nearly every day. It was glorious. We even cleverly handed over our apartment and cell phone to a new couple who arrived to work at Comunicorp. It was as if they assumed our identities, living in our apartment the day after we left, adopting our cell number, replacing us at work. Very odd. The night before we left we had a little despedida (farewell party) at a bar called Cabo Frio. It was not the drunken orgy we had anticipated (we had packed the day before just in case we needed the whole day to... relax...), but it was a nice gathering of good friends, good beers, and goodbyes.

Erin and Janine and some douche in the background.
Louise, Jose, Janine and Gonzalo
Nate and Gonzalo discussing what, exactly, makes girls so damn crazy and hard to understand.
Irish David and Chilean Tania

We were driven to the airport by our Scottie friend Fiona and her boyfriend German. We drank one last mini-bottle of Chilean wine at an airport bar before boarding the flight... Erin and Fiona
We used everything we brought with us. We swear.

Back at home in the States was a whirlwind of activity. We were greeted in Lexington by a dinner of smoked ribs, grits, grilled veggies, and delicious non-Chilean beer. We spent a few days with Nate's parents (during which time Erin got used to calling him "Nat" again), and did approximately 142 loads of laundry. On the second day back, they went to Roanoke to pick out The Ring. Erin has a tiny engagement ring with which Nate proposed in Patagonia, but there is another Ring on its way, complete with a family diamond. Unfortunately, it hasn't been made yet, so no pictures. But I will describe it: it is big and sparkly.

We drove up to DC that weekend to hang out with friends and attend an engagement party (ours). We caught up with friends we hadn't seen in forever, played lawn darts, drank beer, grilled food. It was nice. Erin also propositioned her 3 female friends to be her bridesmaids by giving them Chilean jewelry. Luckily they all said yes.

Lawn darts
Karen and Christine (bridesmaids to be!)
Christine, Erin, and Karen

Our engagement party (slash Christine's birthday party) was at a bar in DC and was crowded but awesome. After a $40 cab ride into DC (damn these American taxis!), Erin realized she forgot her ID at home. She swore she wasn't used to taking it out in Chile, and she tried telling the bouncer it was her engagement party, etc., but he wouldn't let her in for a while. After a few panicked moments, he quizzed her on her birthday, age, sign, and finally let her in. Thanks to everyone who came to the party--it was great to see you. And, since we never revealed who really wrote the e-vite (and consequently did not give out any free drinks), the answer was this: it was a collaborative effort between Erin, Nate and Karen. I know. We're tricky and stingy. Sorry.

After a rough morning , we got on a plane and headed down to Florida to hang out with Erin's grandma and parents. The weekend was spent mostly being force fed delicious Chinese food by Erin's grandma. Her apparent line of thinking was that if you couldn't pack away at least 7 lbs of food at each meal you either didn't like her cooking or you were anorexic. She even insulted Nate's eating abilities, saying something like "Erin told me you could eat a lot, but...". Needless to say, we loved her food, but began dreading mealtimes. To escape we headed out to the beach and enjoyed swimming in water that was above freezing. It was awesome. Sorry, Chile, but Florida's beaches have you beat.

Nate chasing his shadow
On a boat headed out to a restaurant on an island.
3 generations of crazy women.

After hanging out in Florida for a few days, we flew back to DC. We spent one day there before Erin flew out to Denver to look for a house. The fun part was she got to stay with Whitey and Meg in Colorado Springs, two friends of ours we went to school with who also happen to be getting married. The sucky part was that she had to find a house. After multiple panic attacks and a phone call to Nate every hour to cry about how she could not possibly find a house by herself, she found a place. We'll be living in a garden level (read: basement with windows) apartment in the Highlands. The Highlands are just outside Denver, and pretty much close to everything we need. The couple who live above us (and who also own the house) are also involved in furniture production/woodworking, so Nate will most likely get along with them well and the three of them can haul out the sanders and table saws and drill presses and all those other woodworking gadgets and play together in the backyard. Erin is mostly excited about this new place (it has two bedrooms and its own washer and dryer!!) because the kitchen is straight out of the 1950s, complete with pink oven, countertops, and stove. It rules.

After the Denver trip, Nate picked Erin up at the airport and they headed down once more to Lexington. The past few days have been filled with Nate working on enlarging his parents' deck and Erin researching wedding venues. She'll be picking up her parents this weekend so they can come down, bond with the other set of parents, and look at wedding venues.

A happy boy with his truck and power tools.

And now for the very exciting future. We'll be moving out to Denver during the week of May 30-June 5. Erin will be going to school at the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies in Boulder. Nate, meanwhile, will find a way to earn us some money until we both start teaching in the fall. Nate will also attend woodworking courses during the year, and will hopefully get to do it full-time next year. We have plans to get a dog (eventually) and a car. The wedding will probably take place in Fall of 2008, but nothing is set in stone. If any of you fabulous blog readers are ever out in Colorado, definitely let us know. I hear they have good skiing and rock climbing there.

Erin's email: eefayx@gmail.com

Erin's phone: 540-460-2839

Nate's email: emailmroliver@gmail.com

Nate's phone: 540-460-1274

I'll try not to get too cheesy on you, but we just want to say thanks for reading our blog and supporting us during our adventures down south. We had a blast in Chile. Like any extended period of time abroad, it had its definite ups (Patagonia, San Pedro) and downs (no money, 200 square foot apartment). We made some good friends, and we can both passably conduct an entire conversation in Spanish. We're happy to be home, but we'll always remember Chile fondly. It's the place where they have not only street musicians, but also street jugglers, street break dancers, street comedians, and street magicians. It's a place where people sell you ice cream on buses in the summer. It's got Patagonia, and it's got the desert, and it's got some beautiful beaches. It's got choripan. And wine. It's a place where the people are open and inviting, and curious. It's the place where we got engaged. It's a place that has a lot of culture and nature to offer, and you should definitely visit if you ever get the chance. We'll let you use the blog as a guide.

The Insatiable Pablo Neruda

2007-04-23T11:59:00.000-04:00

Who wants to see some more pictures? These are about a week old, but they are the best we can do for you. Things are going well, as usual. We are in the process of winding down this Chilean trip, mainly getting processed out of work, which is occupying most of the day, and wandering around aimlessly with what time we have left over. Last week we taught our last classes and said our good byes to our students. Erin had some near tears from some of her students. None of that for me, though. My students prefer to express their grief with dinner invitations, so that's what we'll be doing tonight. The weekend was begun with a Comunicorp staff meeting, the first and last we will ever attend. Then we went to the first and last work happy hour we'll ever attend and had some good times meeting and talking to people who have for the most part been working with us the entire time we've been here...but now for pictures.

These were taken in Isla Negra, the tiny two-block town that houses the beach house of Pablo Neruda. Pablo is a pretty important guy in Chile, being a Nobel winner and the most famous poet they've ever produced. He was also a big commie, and he had lots of famous commie and non-commie friends. All in all, he's a pretty interesting guy. The house on Isla Negra (which is neither an actual island nor black) was supposedly his favorite house as well (he had another in Santiago and another in Valparaiso). It's very nice and has a lot of the sea and boat themes you would expect from a man who constantly wrote about the sea yet was terrified of the water. As much as writing poetry, he seemed to like collecting stuff, and a lot of his collections are located in the house. The place feels more like a museum than anything else. Very unliveable in my opinion, but apparently it was the same way when he was living in it. We weren't allowed to take any pictures of the insides, so you won't get to see his collection of mast heads or ships in bottles or erotic bottles or crucified Jesuses. Just believe me, they were there.

Here is the outside, complete with beached boat and mast and bells. This boat is more Pablo Neruda's speed. It doesn't toss or turn much and I like to picture him sitting in it with the sail up and wishing he was man enough to go on the real ocean. I suppose his fear of the ocean didn't prevent him from having three marriages, though, nor countless affairs, so I shouldn't make too much fun. He more than redeemed himself with his excessive promiscuity.

Here, my lady friend and I are under one of Mr. Neruda's archways. His houses are never normal like you think of modern ones. They invariably are laid out in strange inventive ways. In this case, the whole house was like one long hallway, stretching about a hundred feet. To get to the dining room you would have had to walk through the parlor, the horse stable, a bathroom, outside, back in, and through one more bathroom. We're standing in the outside section.

Isla Negra, aside from being the home of Pablo Neruda, was also home to pretty beaches and sunsets. These pictures prove it.

In this picture, Pablo Neruda proves that being dead is no barrier to his womanizing. He'll get all the women he wants, thank you very much.

Back at our rented cabin (we spent the weekend with Janine and Gonzalo), the rest of us drink our coffee and wonder just what happened between Erin and that Pablo Neruda statue.

Here we are later that night, still waiting for Erin to come home. Naturally, we didn't just sit around. The cabin we rented came completely equipped with a grill. We threw on some Choripan and then some two and a half pounds of steak. Naturally, it was all delicious.

Here is another picture of the beach at Isla Negra.

We managed to finally locate Erin the next day, wandering along the beach outside Pablo Neruda's house, completely disoriented and with no recollection of where she had been the last 24 hours. Here we are on Mr. Neruda's patio. It juts out over the beach in the shape of a boat front. It is even equipped with a mast.

This is a section of Pablo Neruda's house. We didn't go in the upstairs, but you can see the rest of it extending off in either direction. On the left side is the dining room, and on the right is his study.

This is more of the same section. The fish at the top is some kind of emblem for Pablo Neruda. We have seen it in his other house, as well. This one also shows the direction of the wind.

It is local custom for children to warn Pablo Neruda not to seduce their mothers and sisters. This is done by sitting on his head. If only I had known to begin with.

Pictures and an Update

2007-04-16T12:07:00.000-04:00

I know I´ve been totally lazy about updating the blog, and I apologize for subjecting you to Nate´s crazy ramblings. Here are some pictures to satisfy the visual learners out there (and to prove that we do, in fact, have some friends). These pictures are from a birthday/St. Patrick´s Day party we had last month.

This is Janine (who works with us at Comunicorp) and Fiona (who lives above us). Janine is Canadian and Fiona is a Scot. I don´t know why that´s important, but everyone asks and knows about where everyone else is from, so it´s a habit I´ve also gotten into. Here is Nate being positively dwarfed by two Chileans. This almost never happens. These Chileans are abnormally huge. On the left is Gonzalo, Janine´s boyfriend, and on the right is Eric, who drives the metro. We were super fascinated by his driving of the metro (he´s That Voice... it´s like the Wizard of Oz), and he consequently made fun of us because he says all gringos are fascinated by the fact that he drives the metro.
Here is Fiona and her Chilean boyfriend German. It was her party and German made the birthday cake all by himself! His name is pronounced (hermán, by the way).

Nate expressing his feelings about socializing with people for more than two hours.
Janine and Louise, a Kiwi with a Chilean boyfriend as well. (I am the only gringa in the country not dating a Chilean, by the way).

More pictures to follow of our trip to the beach last weekend.

Short update on our lives: We are on our last week of work, and we leave for the States on April 28th. It´s weird to have the departure so close, because it makes you ration and plan certain aspects of your life in ways you normally wouldn´t. For example, we´ve tried to plan it so that we won´t have to do any more laundry before we go. This means there is no unnecessary changing of clothes or underwear if it means we´ll have to do another load of laundry. The last day here we´ll hopefully be wearing our last remaining pair of clean underwear and our last set of clothes. This is not an easy thing to do, but we´re trying to make it work. Laundry here is ridiculously expensive. We´ve also stopped buying things we may not use up in a weeks´ time, like spices, certain kinds of food, toilet paper, new bottles of anything, etc. It´s an amusing challenge to see if we can time everything just so. If everything goes as planned, we´ll be using the last bit of soap, the last square of toilet paper, the last grain of rice on the last day of our stay here.

We stop work on Friday, and then we have a week to mess around, visit any places nearby that we may have missed, buy any souvenirs we´ve put off buying, say goodbye to friends, and get our lives packed into 4 checked bags and 2 carry-ons. We arrive in the States on April 29th, and we´ll be up in the DC area on May4th. See everyone soon!

Poke Holes in My Daughter

2007-04-09T08:42:00.000-04:00

Due to an expanded social calendar this week, we've had a variety of opportunities to experience the metro and bus systems first-hand. Once again, we've found them to be smelly vestiges of their former selves, and the people who ride them seem more down-trodden and dejected. Also, the number of babies on board seems to have increased. This might be because when we first arrived in Chile it seemed like every woman you saw on the street was pregnant. They aren't big fans of maternity clothing around here. On the contrary, pregnancy seems to be a good opportunity to let your giant belly sway freely across the sidewalks like some kind of trophy. Anyway, all those women must have given birth over the summer, because the baby population on the metro has sky-rocketed, which leads me to an interesting observation: the Chilenos love to pierce baby girls' ears. I get the impression it must be a service offered at the hospital, because we've seen babies that couldn't be more than a couple weeks fresh with little fake diamond studs. This is a terrible afront to Erin's feminism and sense of practicality all at the same time, and whenever we see a little pierced baby she rants mercilessly. She has adopted the habit of talking about people in English in front of them, which to be fair the Chileans do to us all the time. I'm a little shier about it, since I am of the opinion that people can always tell when you're talking about them. Anyhoo, her arguement is that it's machismo crap that makes people incapable of accepting the idea that anyone would mistake their seemingly androgenous baby girl for a boy, and on top of that who wants to have one more part of a baby to take care of? I suppose I can see her point.

We've been doing lots of stuff this week with our friend Janine and her boyfriend, Gonzalo Dos. They convinced us to spend our Thursday night learning to dance salsa. I should really say they convinced Erin. No such convincing was done for me, but I was dragged along anyway, along with James. We represented the entirety of the bad-dancing Gringo population in the bar, although Janine was excellent. There seemed to be a regular crowd at the bar where the lessons were held, because after they ended all the Chileans got up and did choreographed line dances, a la the electric slide, and a dance that was fun to watch involving a middle school-type dance circle and lots of stealing of each others' partners.

On Saturday we went to another asado, this time at Gonzalo's house. We drank lots of wine and of course ate the required amounts of choripan and steak. Also lots of mayonaise-based salads and ice cream. This also gave us a good opportunity to practice our spanish, because we were two of only three english-speakers there. By the time we left I was feeling fluent enough to politely turn down another trip to dance salsa, but only by promising to go at some later date. In the course of the evening, I also got to talk about my new favorite topic of conversation, the Chilean system of taking leave from work. Since Chile is much more socialistic than say the USA there are a lot of social programs here that we don't have. My favorite is stress leave. At any point during the year, a person can take off a minimum of three weeks paid leave from work for stress. This completely baffled me initially, but it's apparently very common here, and recently I've heard about a lot of people doing it. I went to give an English evaluation the other day, and after spending a couple minutes on the phone, the supervisor informed me that my evaluee would not be available for at least three weeks due to stress. And that's it. No one questions it. The government takes care of paying you while you're stressed out. It's against the law to fire you, and you get your job right back when you feel better. I find myself wondering if it is encouraged during stress leave to go out and have a good time. Maybe on the doctor's note (which is required), he prescribes having drinks with friends and taking yourself to a nice restaurant.

We're just out of Holy Week, which is a pretty big deal here. For some reason, on several days it was celebrated near our house by people dressed like Native Americans and playing inspirational music. There was also one guy acting out a death scene, probably at the hands of some Spanish conquistador, although it was mostly mimed. Erin and I celebrated by visiting church. It's pretty easy to follow, since the rites are exactly the same, and we even managed to pick up some religious spanish. Finally, we had our Easter brunch at a Chinese restaurant, one of the only restaurants besides Burger King that was still open. So, that much at least is the same.

A Lot of Words About Nothing

2007-04-02T09:39:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that the blog updates are becoming slightly less frequent. We may be losing steam on this whole writing thing. Nevertheless, I was called into work early this morning for absolutely no reason, so I've got a couple hours to kill before my first class. Enjoy.

What have we been doing? Time is kind of all mushing together into a blob, and our weeks all kind of blend together. Generally speaking, we've fallen into a routine of going to parties and movies and whatnot with work people on the weekends and then spending most of our week working and planning for the future. Occasionally, we get out for a beer or something. On Friday we'd been hearing good things about the hamburgers at this Irish pub a couple blocks from our house, so I managed to convince Erin to go give them a try with me. Clearly the only people going to an Irish pub to eat hamburgers in Santiago are gringos, so we fit right in. The most frustrating thing about going to a gringo bar is that the Chilenos feel the need to jack up the prices to a ridiculous degree. That means, instead of paying the 3 dollars for a big plate of sandwich and french fries, like we've gotten used to, we end up paying the exorbidant price of 6 dollars. Completely unfair. Still, the hamburgers were good and loaded with unusual toppings like avocado. We also indulged ourselves in some good Irish beer.

Speaking of the Irish, they all left this weekend, and we were there to witness it. Every Irish person that works in our company has decided to leave, and they threw themselves a collective going away bash. It was supposed to start at 10:00, and Erin and I made the mistake of showing up at 10:30. We were the first ones there by a solid half hour and Erin felt awkward (enough so that she felt the need to put a sizable dent in the bottle of vodka we'd brought), while I made small talk to Niall, the Irish dude. It was also on the 24th floor of the building, with some great big windows, so we took the opportunity to see how long it would take balloons and other things to reach the ground. The answer is pretty long. When everyone showed up, Erin felt less out of place, and I started receiving complementary spanish lessons from our Chilean coworkers. While eating some Pringles, I was informed that the name is funny because in Chilean (not spanish in general) the word pringado refers to someone aflicted by sexually transmitted diseases. Kind of makes eating them seem less appetizing.

Other than that, it's been more of the same. Fall is in full swing, but it's kind of a depressing season here. Pretty colors are completely overshadowed by the fact that the weather turns ice-cold overnight and the smog starts to settle in heavy again. Still, there's something pleasantly sureal about walking down the street and passing ten different guys sweeping the leaves off their lawns using regular house brooms. Do rakes exist here? I haven't seen any.

Are You Flaite or Cuico? The Answer May Surprise You.

2007-03-25T16:45:00.000-04:00

I think we’re finally back into the rhythm of things here in Santiago. We’re in the last stage of our trip here, with only about one month left to go, so in addition to the regular schedule of work and play, we’re beginning to focus on our trip back, getting caught up on all the Lost: Season Two episodes we never watched, and planning forays out to Colorado. This week has been incredibly busy. Erin especially is working a lot, and I’m not too far behind. Still, we’ve had plenty of time for amusing ourselves. I went out for some beers with the single dude friend I’ve made here. We tried hard to muster the appropriate amount of scratching and grunting, but it’s difficult to achieve the desired affect with only two people. Erin countered by going on a girl’s night in which I imagine she watched The Holiday and got slightly tipsy on wine before chatting endlessly about boys and relationships over a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

We also got ourselves invited to a couple dinners. One was tomato soup. The other was a typical Chileno asado. Both were delicious, and we managed to meet every single Canadian living in Chile between the two of them. At the barbeque, Erin found a little girl (maybe 2.5 years old) to occupy her attention, so I didn’t see her for the majority of the evening. To her credit, it was an exceptionally cute little girl. Bilingual, too, so she’d already achieved greater linguistic prowess in her short life than I could ever possibly hope to in all of mine. I’m getting better, though, I swear.

On Friday, I saw a huge news crew right outside where we work, filming for the hundredth-or-so news piece to air on Transantiago. Over the past couple of months, we’ve been witnessing the effects of a government-instituted plan called Transantiago. It was the brainchild of some poor sucker at the Ministry of Transportation, one of those ideas that looks great on paper but, once carried out (badly), doesn’t actually work. Basically, it was trying to open up public transportation to as many people as possible, especially those who live on the outskirts of the city/in the poorer sections. One of the benefits was supposed to be that you could transfer from a metro to a bus or a bus to another bus without paying twice if you do it in under a certain amount of time. Some of you may remember me babbling early on about the bus system. Well, Transantiago is an attempt to organize and improve the operation of the busses. They built stops, so instead of just flagging down a bus any old place, the people could go to specific spots to catch one. They organized routes. Before there weren’t actually any defined routes, and busses could pretty much pick where they wanted to go, a decision they would publicize using big cardboard signs in the windows. Now, they all run on a plan, dictated by bus number. There are also special busses only lanes now to speed up their movement around the city.
All of this, no doubt, sounds good. It doesn’t work, though, and it’s been a huge disaster. The major reason it doesn’t is because of the Chilean mafia, which owns something like 40% of the busses in Santiago, has refused to send its busses out under the new plan. All transportation is government organized, but the government issues contracts to private companies. Thus, while it can dictate where busses run, it can’t make them actually leave the garage. So, there aren’t enough busses for everyone. As a result, there are often lines of people 50 deep waiting at bus stops (this is actually a good thing—at the beginning of the Transantiago nightmare they used to fight and riot to get a spot on the micros), and you regularly see the people who did manage to catch a bus hanging out the opened doors because it’s so damn overcrowded. All the extra people have no choice but to cram themselves onto the metro, which in turn is now overcrowded, hot, and eternally reeks of BO. Workers have begun lining up outside metro stations at 5am, and when the doors finally open, there is a crowd of 200+ people waiting to surge in. Those who drive now have half the lanes to use, so private transportation is also ruined, with huge traffic jams in the morning and afternoon. It’s been a train wreck. It’s been front page news since its implementation in mid-February, and it’s always the first thing they talk about on the news every night. They always manage to interview some old abuelita saying how she doesn’t like to leave the house anymore. It even ruined the advertising career of the famous Chileno Soccer player who originally advertised for it. He’s apparently lost his credibility. Coincidentally, Paz is the only person we’ve met who is happy. Her commute to school was shortened by half an hour. The real results of all the changes are that there are never enough busses at peak hours and everyone spends about an extra hour commuting, especially the people in poorer areas on the outskirts of the city. While walking around one day, Erin and I encountered a graffiti sign that said (in Spanish), “Wake up earlier to serve the rich? No to Transantiago.” We are blessedly unaffected by all of this, because we walk almost everywhere. Still, it’s interesting to have been here for the death of both the former dictator and the transportation system.
One other thing we’ve noticed is that Chile is a relatively classist society. Wealthier people don’t like to mingle with poorer people and vice versa. This is true even between relatively close income brackets. This is something that everyone is aware of and most Chilenos we’ve talked to freely admit. The thing I’ve found most interesting about this is the vocabulary. From when we first arrived, we heard the words flaite and cuico thrown around pretty liberally, and it took a while to really understand what all this meant. From an entirely literal point of view, someone who is flaite is lower class, but it has the connotation of sketchy, and someone who is cuico is higher class, with the connotation of snobby and stuck up. Essentially, everyone who is not exactly as wealthy as you falls into one of the two categories. When Erin had her picture taken with the Colo Colo soccer team, she was surprised afterwards, given their insane level of fame, to find that, rather than being impressed, most of her students were a little surprised. We’ve since learned that Colo Colo, despite its popularity, is perceived as a bunch of lower class dudes by the typical businessman of Chile. They’re too flaite, in other words, to bother taking a picture with. There is a good bit of downward discrimination among the social classes. Businesses, for instance, in some cases feel that it is okay to pay an employee of a lower economic class less than an equally qualified employee from a higher class. The perception is that poorer people don’t need as much money, thus, it’s good business practice to higher them at lower salaries. In social situations, Chileans seem to avoid hanging out with people they consider flaite, and we have known Chileans to warn US girls that the boy they are talking to by the bar is flaite. The ironic thing is that a richer person might consider these same people to be flaite as well, so it’s all relative. While a lot of the discrimination goes one direction, the negative attitude goes both ways, with people considering those of higher class to be cuico and avoiding them. Occasionally, we’ll here a place referred to as a cuico bar, meaning it’s snobby and no fun, but also that it has a richer clientele. Likewise, when Erin first arrived in Chile with an accent similar to one from Spain, she often got made fun of for being cuica.

Another thing we’ve observed in our months here is the widespread use of credit in purchasing everything. There are credit cards in Chile, of course, but the most common form of credit is the cuotas system. This is private credit issued by the stores themselves. They just divide the purchase into cuotas and charge you once a month, adding a percentage. Cuotas are offered on literally everything. We were once offered the option of buying a pair of scissors (rough value: $1.50) in three easy installments. The thing I can never figure out is who it is among the Chilenos that is actually exercising this alternative, and if they’re buried under a mountain of cuota-induced debt.

Scrabble in the Park

2007-03-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

Captain Heartbreak´s Guide to Chile

2007-03-15T11:12:00.000-04:00

Just discovered: the Santiago Times, which is the English newspaper here in Santiago, runs a comic strip (or rather, ran, as the cartoonist seems to have left Chile) about an ex-pat called Captain Heartbreak. I´ve scanned a few of the cartoons, and they are excellent. They echo Nate and my sentiments almost exactly, and you´ll recognize several references on Chilean culture from our blog in these comics. Things that aren´t mentioned in our blog yet but that appear in the comic strip are undoubtedly phenomena we´ve noticed as well. If you can´t tell, I think this guy and his cartoons and observations are amazing. I can´t copy any of the cartoons on here, but definitely check him out:

www.chipsites.com/Comic/captain.html

So Now We're Back

2007-03-13T10:32:00.000-04:00

After two and a half weeks of traveling through Patagonia, we were looking forward to getting back to Santiago. You reach that point in a vacation where a night in your own bed and a meal you cook yourself start to seem like the most appealing things around. Our first days back were spent being as lazy as humanly possible and washing the clothes we'd been wearing for the entire trip, each of which smelled worse than death. We, thankfully, had reached that stage of filthiness when you can no longer smell your own stink, but the Chileans around us had no such immunity, so I'm fairly certain we were the least popular people on the plane home. We also took the opportunity to meet up with Fiona and German to swap hiking stories and so Erin could take her pretty new ring out in public and start telling everyone she knows she's engaged. It was good practice for her.

When Monday rolled around, we both started work again. Thankfully, the February slump is over. All the Chileno business types have left the beach, put down the ice cream, and come back to Santiago for work. School has also started up again, so around about midafternoon all the school kids in their uniforms are milling around the streets and begging money off strangers near the metro. This is a practice that vaguely annoys me, so I try to come up with creative ways to say no. Tactic 1: Say I don't have any money and ask them if they could lend me some. Tactic 2: Give them exactly 2 chilean pesos. A peso is worth approximately one fifth of a US penny. A little less in reality and has the same buying power here as a fifth of a penny would in the US. That's to say no buying power at all. I have decided that rather than keeping single pesos, I get more value out of either throwing them at things or offering them to school-aged beggars. Tactic 3: Sorry, I need my money for beer. I haven't found that anything really deters them, but it keeps me vaguely amused and I get to practice my spanish. Work is pretty much standard, and it's a good enough way to fill up the day. It also conveniently ends by 2:30, which leaves the rest of the afternoon free for whatever activities we can think up.

Since we got back, we've been trying extra-hard to catch up on all the entertainment we've been behind on. Mostly, this means watching episodes of Futurama and the Simpsons in spanish, but my spanish has gotten decent enough that I can also now follow some of the original Chilean programming. Erin always seems a little disgusted with me when she catches me watching Casado con Hijos (the Married with Children rip off), but I don't care. We both finally got to see the Borat movie, which most of you probably saw months ago. It doesn't officially come out in Chile until this weekend, but, like most movies, bootleg copies have been available since the US release. We both thought it was funny, but it definitely got over-hyped. We also saw Pan's Labyrinth, which was incredible. Here, it's shown without English subtitles, obviously, and that made it a little difficult for me, but I did an okay job and Erin answered my questions after it was over. We've also been trying to get out and do things. We went rock climbing again in Cajon del Maipo. This time we took Nick, Fabiola, and Paz along with us. Nick was kind enough to drive us, and in exchange I promised him I wouldn't let Will or David make any more inappropriate comments about his under-age, pseudo-step-daughter. He was very appreciative, and both he and Paz were pretty good climbers. I was pleased to learn that I was still able to climb after a 3 month break, and I suspect the loss of some 20-30 pounds during these last seven months was helpful in that respect. At any rate, it was fun, and they invited us over for a BBQ afterwards. Nick regailed us with dirty stories of English boarding school and taught us what a "minger" is, and in exchange I spilled wine on their new tablecloth and ate so much steak I was sick that night. Erin was generally pleasant, so good for her. It doesn't make for much of a story.

Patagonia Vacation: Part II and Picture Extravaganza

2007-03-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

Well, we said Patagonia was beautiful, and now we have pictures to back it up. Below are the major rock formations that make up the park. On the right are the Cuernos, and on the left is Mount Doom. I made the second name up, but I think it fits. We actually don't know the real one. Its summit, however, is perpetually shrowded in clouds...and mystery. This picture is from the first day of hiking and at the bottom is Lake Pehoe.

Here we have Erin and I on the shore of Lake Pehoe. Since this is also the first day, we still appear happy. Erin is yet to utter the words, "My feet hurt," and I'm yet to respond, "Maybe if you stopped talking about it, they'd feel better."

Here is our camp site from the first night. Having successfully transported our stove through Chilean airport security, we used it to make a delicious meal of rice and Cup of Soup.

Moving backwards in time, this is once again from the first day's hike. That's Erin in the picture, walking through the field of brown grass. Mount Doom looms ominously in the background.

Our second day was spent in the effort to reach Glacier Grey, which ends in a glacial lake. It's a pretty amazing site, and the whole lake was full of little iceburgs that would break off and float around until they finally melted.

Continuing on down the trail...we reached our campsite for the evening. We stopped to claim a site and set up our tent before we hiked on to the glacier lookout. This is me, chewing on my fork while contemplating just how good that Cup of Soup is going to taste tonight.

And Glacier Grey, or at least as close as we were able to get to it. To reach the view point took an hour of hiking up very steep trails, but I think it was worth it. Afterwards, we hiked back down to our campsite for dinner and sleep.

The view back down the valley from Glacier Grey.

It wouldn't really be a trip if we didn't have some camera problems. This time, we ran out of juice on our memory card. Apparently we managed to take 106 pictures in the first three days. After a day or two pictureless, I figured out how to delete pictures without the use of the LCD screen. The only downside is that we have no idea which ones we deleted. And we'll never know. Skipping ahead to the last day, therefore, we have the river valley that runs all the way to the Torres of Torres del Paine. The trail through this area was a lot steeper than it looks, and on the way down, Erin was nearly knocked off into the river below by a pack horse, which is used to carry supplies to the hostel. Strangely enough, this land is privately owned.

And finally, Las Torres. Erin chose to skip out on this section of the hike, so she missed out on the incredibly steep hike up the terminal moraine and the crazy-strong wind. Still, it's pretty nice I think.

This brings us to Argentina. After an evening in a hostel in Puerto Natales, Chile, we were back on a bus and crossing the border. Argentinian Patagonia, in our experience, was like the luxury Patagonia. I preferred Chilean Patagonia. The landscape seemed a little bigger, the area was more remote, the hikes were longer, the sites were more beautiful, etc. That being said, Argentina had its own upsides, the first and foremost being the food. It's cheap and mostly consists of giant, mouth-watering steaks and log-fire-cooked lamb. But I digress...

We started our trip through Argentina in El Calafate. As you drive in, the tourist office located a mile or two before anything else lets you know that El Calafate exists primarily to suck money from tourists. It's a small town with a disproportionate number of fancy restaurants, hotels, chocolate shops (which were awesome), and outdoor stores. We opted not to stay, although we did opt for a nice dinner. We caught the bus the next day to El Chalten, which is where the real activity is. Parque Nacional de los Glaciares is the Argentinian equivalent of Torres del Paine, and includes among other things, Mount Fitz Roy. While not as cool to look at as Mount Doom, it's pretty good. Unlike Torres del Paine, however, all the hikes are day hikes, and most people stay the nights in hostels in town. The hikes, themselves, we soon discovered were also substantially easier, over mostly flat ground. We were having none of that, though, and slogged off into the woods to stay at one of the three camp sites in the park. A sign on the way in warned us that if we saw a puma, we were lucky, but we should take care to throw rocks "aggressively." Check.

Our first morning in the park, we woke up to find a layer of sand covering everything in the tent. The wind had picked up to a ridiculous level overnight and had managed to carry huge amounts of sand up under our tent's fly, where they dropped down onto us below. We were perturbed to find out that the wind had no intention of letting up that day, and that, combined with frequent spots of rain kept us bravely confined to our tent, where I beat Erin repetitively in cards. Here she is looking cute in our tent.

By early evening, the wind and rain subsided, and we ventured up the valley to take pictures of the glacier. It was good. Here's Erin on one of the many moraines that cross the valley. Also, the bathroom.

After our day of bad weather, we woke up on day two to beautiful blue skies and perfect weather. We took the opportunity to hike back out of the park and catch our bus out of town.

Having had our fill of El Chalten, we returned to El Calafate for a night and then skipped town in a plane the next day. Our last stop on the trip was in the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia. Ushuaia was fun. Like everywhere else in Argentina, there was beef, which was enough to keep me happy. Erin and I were pretty worn out from the whole trip at this point, so we spent a lot of time lounging around our hostel, which was very nice, and taking trips to the chocolate shop to buy hot chocolate, which they make fresh using bars of chocolate and hot milk. Our one day of hiking was spent in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. The land of fire, as you might expect, was interesting. It was very pretty, but we never got to see the southern lights for which I believe the area is named. It was always too cloudy. The park did not disappoint, though.

The majority of our time in Ushuaia, however, was spent in the futile attempt to ride a sail boat. We booked a trip for every single day but got weathered out every morning. It was disheartening, so we finally decided to take a ride on an old, steamboat-ish ship that takes a three hour tour (a la Gilligan's Island) around a series of islands populated by local wildlife. Here we are on our last attempt at a sailboat ride. We actually made it onto the boat and ate some breakfast before we were sent home on this try.

Here is the boat we finally managed to go on. The Barracuda. The name prompted Erin and I into singing on more than one occasion during the ride.

Cormoranes, sea lions, and seals! Can you tell the difference between a sea lion and a seal? Each of the male sea lions, which weighed like 800 pounds apiece, had at least six or seven females, who he used primarily as pillows as far as we could tell. Every once in a while they would start yelling at other males, making a noise very similar to a pig's oink. This is truly an advanced social system.

Me with the only penguin we saw on the whole trip (unfortunately)...and a beaver?

A view from the deck of the Barracuda.

And it's captain. Check out his manly beard. God, he just reeks of manliness.
The lighthouse. Pretty.
And finally...what's better than two and a half weeks in Patagonia? 4 a.m. flights home.

Filling In Some Gaps

2007-03-07T08:13:00.000-05:00

Admittedly, we don't always have perfect memories and there are some things that might have slipped our minds while writing the last entry, so let me go back and include some interesting details.

First, the plane ride. Normally, plane rides are boring, especially in Chile, where they aren't kept in the greatest condition on the inside, but our plane ride down to Punta Arenas was event-packed. First of all, we had bought a camping stove a couple weeks prior to our trip so that we would be able to carry in, cook, and eat our own hot, delicious food while camping in the park. Naturally, you always need to test your stuff before taking it on a trip, so Erin and I made sure to do this with the stove. Unfortunately, we opted to test it with kerosene. The fuel itself works just fine, but unlike white gas (which is preferable, and harder to find where we were), it leaves a heavy residue on everything and stinks of gas long after all of the carbon has been burned out of it. We cleaned the stove as indicated in the instructions, but on arrival to the airport made the mistake of asking if it was okay (the thought being that it would be better not to have them think we were trying to sneak stuff on). Mistake. Smelling our stove, this guy tells us he can't let it go on. We protest that it's completely clean. I toss in the phrase, "couldn't light it on fire if I tried." None of this worked, so we begged permission to try and clean it before our flight left. After one failed attempt, Erin begged cleaning supplies off a janitor and we spent an hour in the bathroom, furiously cleaning. Two or three of the airport cleaning people hung around offering helpful advice and suggestions while we both did our best to coat all the equipment with a soap smell in the men´s bathroom. Arriving at the desk again literally minutes before our flight was supposed to leave, we found no one there to check the stove. Rather than repeat our original mistake of asking, we quickly checked the bag and ran to the gate arriving just as they were paging us over the intercom. So that you don't worry, I'll tell you in advance, all our baggage got to Punta Arenas okay. I'll also say that at security they very amiably allowed Erin to go through with a lighter, which not only smelled like fuel but visibly contained more fuel than the stove ever possibly could have and which I had earlier tampered with so that it could produce a flame easily three inches tall.

When we got on the plane, which had been very nicely waiting for us, we discovered that the entire Colo Colo soccer team was on board. This means nothing to you uneducated, unenlightened gringos, but it's the Chilean equivalent of sharing a plane with Peyton Manning and the Colts. Everyone on board was visibly excited. People with cameras were walking around taking pictures; parents were getting their kids to go ask for autographs; people were touching these guys just to do it. Erin joined right in, despite the fact that she didn't know a single one's name, couldn't pick them out of a crowd, and doesn't know the rules of soccer. What she did know: "They're so hot. Look at their tight little soccer bodies." When we arrived at the airport, we stepped off the plane and immediately heard the Colo Colo fans chanting and singing. There was a huge crowd of people waiting for them to arrive, none of whom could get inside the security area, so while we all waited for baggage we had unfettered access to their fame and "hot bodies." Erin even got photos with some of the most famous players, who were only identifiable to us because people screamed and swooned a little more than normal when they went anywhere. That was our brush with fame.

Here´s Erin with two of the Colo Colo dudes.

Erin with Suazo (who is supposedly super good, one of the best in Lat. Am.) and some other dude.Here is a real photo of Suazo in a real game, just so you know we´re not making all of this up.

In other news, we're engaged. If we were Chilean, this would be second in importance only to the fact that we rode on an airplane with the Colo Colo soccer team. Since we're not, I guess it's the best thing going for us right now. Erin likes telling this story more than she likes me, but I'm going to steal her thunder anyway. I asked her in Torres del Paine, in Valle del Frances. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing being eternally linked with France, but it is what it is and there's no denying it was pretty. This was not my initial plan. I was planning to ask her, but not until we reached Las Torres on the sixth day, so I didn't even bother to take the ring I'd bought over Christmas up with me. We hiked to the overlook, and as previously mentioned I also convinced Erin to hike a little farther to the ridge, which was a little too steep and windy, leading to her being angry with me by the time we got to the bottom. Undetered, I suggested we hang out at the overlook for a bit, which was amazingly pretty. It wasn't windy and the sun was out, but somehow it was still snowing little flurries. At any rate, deciding this was probably going to be one of the most peaceful, perfect moments of life, I asked her without really thinking about it. Erin likes to elaborate, embellish, and generally tell more details than could have possibly been squeezed into a couple seconds, but if you'd like to hear them, ask her. She said yes (or something along those lines; that was the jist of it, as I recall).

No more pictures today. You´ll have to wait for the rest.

Patagonian Vacation: Part I

2007-02-26T13:10:00.000-05:00

Howdy and hello to all. As some of you now may have noticed, we've been dodging our blog responsibilities for the better part of two weeks. However, this was not solely to highlight the amoral nature of both Will and David. We've just been on vacation, and still are as a matter of fact. I'll bring you up to date.

Santiago was getting perturbingly hot, and work was getting mind bogglingly slow. My previous vision of working a grand total of two hours a week was a lot more glamorous than it has turned out to be in reality. It turns out that when you don't work, they don't continue to pay you (at least when you're paid by the hour, which we are). Boredom began to set in, and not even the sudden, massive availability of ice cream could fix the heat problem. Chileans love ice cream. The US love for ice cream pales in comparison. As soon as the weather turned hot, we started to see ice cream being sold in places it had previously not been. Everyone had it. Everyone ate it. It was a lot of ice cream peer pressure. I started eating a cone on my way home from work, but as previously mentioned, work being only two hours a week, it still didn't amount to that much ice cream by Chileno standards. So we left, and came south to Patagonia...and here we are.

We started our trip by flying into the port city of Punta Arenas. Punta Arenas used to be a big deal I suppose, and it looks exactly like you would imagine a city that used to be a big deal. Kind of in disrepair and larger in size than it can really support. I suppose its major downfall was the Panama Canal, because up until then ships headed for the Pacific had to make a stop down in the South of Chile. Now, no one stops there, except for tourists. As a result, Punta Arenas is stuck in the unenviable position of trying to milk as much money as possible out of tourists en route between the airport and the bus station. All things considered, they do a pretty good job of it. We stayed overnight, snapped some pictures of the perfectly molded mushroom-shaped, shrub trees which litter the city, and moved on to Puerto Natales.

Puerto Natales is a souped-up version of Punta Arenas. It also exists solely for the purpose of leeching money from tourists, but since it's the gateway city for the Torres del Paine National Park, it does a much better job of it. Every other building is a hostel, and all the others are stores selling over-priced camping gear and unbelievably delicious-looking lamb. I'll take a minute to elaborate. Imagine a full lamb, sans head, fur, and guts, splayed open in a spread-eagle-type position, roasting over an open log fire for most of the day. That's what they call cordero patagonico down here, and it's plentiful and reasonably cheap. And delicious. After another night in a hostel, we finally managed to make the bus transfer into the park, and the real vacation started. It would be difficult to explain exactly how huge and beautiful Torres del Paine actually was, so I'll wait until we can post some pictures. We got into the park the first day and did a quick 4-hour hike to where the real trail started. The route we hiked is called the "W," and it's named for its shape. The section of the park we hiked is made up of one giant range of mountains in the shape of a horse shoe. After we got onto the trail we began by hiking north along the western side of the range until we reached Glacier Grey, one of a couple of giant glaciers that are scattered through the park. All the water in the area comes from glacial melt, and as a result it is this amazing shade of blue and also 100% safe to drink. It's basically the same stuff people pay a dollar a bottle for, but its just everywhere and free. And delicious.

After our hike to the glacier, we spent the third day of hiking mostly back-tracking the way we had come, arriving in the evening at the southern end of the central valley, called Valle del Frances. Despite being French, it's actually quite a pleasant place, and turned out to be one of the most beautiful places in the park. Our fourth day, we hiked north up the river valley into the very center of the horse-shoe formation. The trek ended with an overlook surrounded by the mountains on three sides and a view of the lakes to the south. I tried to convince Erin to climb even higher up the trail and, unfortunately, was successful. After about 45 minutes of steep hiking in gale-force winds, she was completely pissed at me and we still hadn't found anything remotely as cool as what we'd already seen. So, cold and angry, we decided to go back and spent the next lovely hour or so relaxing at the overlook. It even started to snow a little bit, despite the fact that it was probably 70 degrees and sunny. It was calm and perfect, and we managed to do the rest of the return hike without incident or bad feelings, despite the fact that Erin couldn't keep from tripping over her feet even on flat ground.

Our fifth day was planned as a short, 5-hour hike, but didn't go according to plan. Since we were expecting it to be so easy, we started out late after a lazy morning. We didn't even leave the camp site until around noon. All went well to begin with, and after 4 hours of hiking in which Erin hardly complained at all, we arrived at a crossroads. One path would have been a relatively easy hike to a camp site one hour away; however, it would have taken us one hour in the wrong direction, which we would have to add to the next day's hike (already scheduled to be 8 hours of walking). We opted instead to take a 2 hour hike up the side of a mountain. About an hour into this trek, two giant blisters on Erin's heels that had been growing for two days despite her best efforts decided to burst. This put an end to the pleasantness of the day's hiking, and the fact that the entire walk was up hill didn't help her at all. Still, we ended up getting to the camp a half hour earlier than expected. That and a big meal of pasta and potato chips made Erin's feet feel slightly better. What didn't help was that the whole camp smelled like horse poop. The eastern section of the park is owned, apparently by a private company, which uses its monopoly on one of the most beautiful places on earth to charge exorbitant prices for camping, cabins, food, drinks, and smelly horse back rides up the mountain. They also place misleading signs everywhere, leading you to believe that all the free camp sites are much farther away than they really are. In short, nuts to them.

The next morning we woke up extra early with the intention of making the hike to see the actual torres (towers), for which the park is named. Erin decided not to go, which left me to make the hike on my own. It consisted of an easy 45 minute walk to the base camp, followed by an incredibly steep 45 minute hike up a crumbly rock tallus, during which the wind would frequently pick up pebble-sized rocks and use them to pelt the climbers. At the top, the torres themselves were gigantic and impressive, although not the most amazing thing in the park. They are meant to be most impressive at sunrise, when they change colors slightly. Still, waking up at 4:00 a.m. and hiking an hour and a half in the dark didn't appeal to me and definitely didn't appeal to Erin, so that wasn't in the cards. After my return hike to Camp Poop Smell, I convinced Erin to stop playing solitaire long enough to hike the rest of the way out of the park. We finished off the last of our energy bars, caught the bus back to Puerto Natales, gorged ourselves on as much food and beer as we could respectively handle, and fell asleep by 9:00.

That's all for today. Still to come: eating lamb in Argentina, eating steak in Argentina, and other slightly less interesting travel information.

Paz...

2007-02-14T19:15:00.000-05:00

... is 14. Will and David, I hope you feel appropriately ashamed.

Picture Extravaganza!

2007-02-12T08:37:00.000-05:00

Since my mother refused to write a guest blog entry, and we were so busy during these past few weeks anyway, it's now up to me to catch you up on everything we did while my parents were here. Before we get started, however, I have a very special story for you. You knew it was coming...

How We (Kind of) Ruined Our Third Camera

It's not easy being Erin and Nate's camera. Our first camera was stolen by hooligans in Valparaiso. Our second camera, which was sent by mail from Erin's parents, was swiped by a dishonest baggage handler at a bus station. When we got our third camera over Christmas, it was understandably worried about its fate. As it should have been. About a week after buying the new camera (it was actually a used camera from Erin's mom's co-worker), Nate and I went caving. You may remember the blog entry: the smelly, dead animal, muddy cave. Anyway, as Erin was ascending out of the cave (which, if you've ever ascended a rope you'll know that it was super hard work), she accidentally slipped and fell against the wall. The camera, unfortunately, was attached to her harness, and it got smashed between her giant butt and the hard wall of the cave. It wasn't until Erin finished ascending that she looked at the camera. The LCD screen had a huge, forking crack through the middle of it. She told Nate about it after he finished ascending. He was already angry that he was the last one left in the cave, and now he got even angrier about the accident with the camera. He refused to talk to Erin for the rest of the afternoon except to warn her that she was not allowed to tell her parents about this because they would kill them. When they got home they figured out that the camera still worked, but they couldn't use the LCD screen to view pictures or to change the settings. The reason they've only just now gotten around to telling you about this is because they finally fessed up to the parents while they were visiting. They did not, as Erin and Nate had expected, kill them. They weren't even really surprised. Although Erin and Nate can't ever take panoramics or set up automatically timed pictures or even change the setting from night time to fast action shutter speed, they are grateful that their camera still functions, and they hope to have no more horror stories involving its breakage, theft, or untimely demise.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled blog entry.

While my parents were here, they attended Spanish classes in the morning every day. Because it's summer here and Nate and I are barely working, we only had classes in the morning too, so that worked out nicely. After class, we would meet for lunch and then some sightseeing. It was odd asking my parents "How was school? And what did you learn today?" I distinctly remember being asked that every day of my elementary school years, and I hated it. But they didn't seem to mind it, and they regaled us with what they learned and spoke in Spanish with us to practice. We took my parents to all the touristy stuff that we did when we first got here (and documented on the blog), and they seemed to like it well enough. On Thursday night we had an asado at their house. We invited a bunch of people, Nick and Fabiola (the people who own the house my parents were staying at) invited a bunch of people, and it was really fun. There was dancing and lots of meat. My parents enjoyed the former, and you can all guess who was happiest about the latter.

Funnily enough, my parents mostly danced with other people and not with each other. Come to think of it, Nate only danced one dance, and it was with another girl too. The theme of the night seemed to be tending towards Light Infidelity.

Over the weekend, Nick graciously invited us to go to the beach in Maitencillo with him and his family. Actually, it was the family of Paz, who is the daughter of Fabiola and her ex-husband. So Nick didn't really know anyone there either. We piled 5 people, 2 dogs, and a ton of bags into Nick's jeep and set off for the 2+ hour drive. The drive, however, soon turned into a 3+ hour drive, mostly because one of the dogs chose to shit all over the back trunk area. We had to stop, clean it out, clean both dogs, and clean the bags. As soon as we got underway again, my mom realized she had dropped her glasses back where we were cleaning up the shit. So they had to go back to look for those. We had to drive with the windows all the way down because of the awful stench. When we got to the beach we realized we didn't know where we were going, so we spent the next hour or so driving around calling various people (virtual strangers, remember) for directions. When we finally arrived at the cabin, we were welcomed by the nicest Chilean family ever. We taught them how to play Spoons, and they taught us that it is cool to eat tomato and avocado for three meals a day. We all got to practice a lot of Spanish, too. Here is the cabin: Here is where Nate and I stayed:
Here is the view from the deck:
This is Paz and her cousins.

This is the grandfather of the family, who, it turns out, is a very famous painter. Here he is throwing together a painting of the sea and a sailboat as his granddaughters look on. This is my mom and Fabiola doing yoga on the deck in the morning.
The next morning we went to a little hippie-town fish market in Horcon to buy fresh fish and seafood for grilling and to make ceviche (raw fish with lemon and onions. It's delicious, I swear). That night we had razor clams with parmesan cheese, fresh reinata (it's a big white fish... I don't know the name in English), ceviche, pork ribs, and of course hot dogs (for the kids!). It was a feast. We all drank tons of wine, and the grandfather made us all go around the table and say what we were thankful for. It was kind of like Thanksgiving, except it was on the beach and with a bunch of people we had only met a day ago. All in all, we had a fantastic trip. To avoid the overcrowding in the car on the way home (and the possibility of being pooped on), Nate and I took the bus back to Santiago while my mom, dad, Nick and Fabiola rode in the jeep.

Here's the fish market. It was really cloudy in the morning, but it cleared up and got super hot and sunny in the afternoon.

This was the biggest fish at the market.
Here's Nick watching our seafood being gutted.
Nick and my mom discussing how they're going to cook everything.
The second and last week of my parents visit was filled with more sightseeing and eating at better restaurants than the ones we ate at the first week they were here. My parents now know that Chilean food leaves much to be desired; and strangely enough, our best meals were at non-Chilean restaurants: a sushi place, an Argentinian steak house, and a Catalan restaurant where we ate the most delicious paella.

Here are a few random shots from the week that I thought you might like. This is me and my mom in Parque Santa Lucia, where, as you may recall, teenagers go to heavily pet one another. If you look closely, you can see a couple smooching behind us. We took bets on how many couples we'd find making out, and my mom won with a guess of 21.
You can create your own caption for this picture. Spot the Gringo: Part II
And for everyone who has ever referred to Nate as Nifty, this one's for you. The sign is awesome, and it says "because you asked for it, it's back!!! Nifty! Enjoy it now!"

La Pequeño Gigante, su rinoceronte, y El Gringo

2007-02-01T17:01:00.000-05:00

Ahem. Yes, well. (Tap, tap on the microphone...)

As Nate and Erin are lounging on the sofa and consuming prodigious amounts of candy and popcorn, I will have to be the one to give you images of La Pequeña Gigante and her Rinoceronte. I trust you can tell the difference. Erin has told the story of this exhibition in the past, so I won´t bore with the details. Note the steam issuing from the nose (of the rhinoceros!)

While we were slightly less than impressed than expected with the doll herself (although she is big), we were quite impressed by the rhinoceros, and astounded by the crowd. According to "the authorities", there were 500,000 Chileans there (I think that comes out to 1000 Americans, if I recall the exchange rate correctly).

We have been studying Spanish and Chilean culture at a whirlwind pace, punctuated by hitherto pathetic attempts to find nice restaurants. The best food we have found has been fast food (empanadas) and street food. Despite Nate's devious but ultimately unsuccessful endeavor to keep it for himself, we were able to enjoy--how does one say, Nate?--delicious Mote con Huesillos: a peach flavored tea containing whole, peeled peaches and whole wheat grains.

We visited the house of Pablo Neruda, a poet who won the Nobel Prize, visited a huge statue of the Virgin Mary which overlooks Santiago, and went to see a cartoon in the cinema (Erin thought it would be simple enough even for us to understand).

We also have been having lots of fun playing scrabble and wandering Santiago, inventing new games, such as our own version of "Where´s Waldo?": "Spot the Gringo!"

Disclaimer: All references to Nate are completely fictional and not meant to indicate any person living or dead, now or in the past or future. This blog should in no way be construed to mean Nate is not actually our Second Favorite Person in Chile.

wrecked micro and missing pics of nifty in underwear

2007-02-01T08:06:00.000-05:00

Wrecked micros in the center of town, courtesy of Royal de Luxe, although they tried to blame it on the lost rhino. And a sunset vista from our window for good measure...
By the way, yesterday's original blog entry was much more exciting than the one that got published, because I tried to include a glamour shot of Nifty in his skivvies, just like you requested, Kevin. But Nate found out before I could publish it and threw a fit. Apparently he doesn't want pictures of him in his undewear up on the internet, although I don't see what the big deal is. It turned into a 20 minute mini-fight, during which I said it was funny and he didn't look any different from him in a normal bathing suit. He reasoned that he wouldn't put pictures of me in my underwear up on the internet, but by that point in the argument I had stopped listening.

In conclusion, no one gets to see glamour shots of Nifty in his underwear. But that doesn't mean you don't get to see BLIFTY! in his underwear!!!

La Pequena Gigante

2007-01-31T08:32:00.000-05:00

Dear Everyone,

The comments on the last blog entry were much appreciated, and all suggestions will be taken into consideration. We'll keep everyone posted on which tactic we use the next time we are assaulted by anti-Americanites, in addition to the effectiveness of the tactic and the subsequent reaction of aforementioned anti-Americanite.

The main conclusion I was able to draw from all of your comments, however, is that
you people want a more uplifting blog entry. So here it is. Enjoy.

Last weekend, the theater company Royal de Luxe traveled all the way from France to Santiago, Chile. They brought with them a giant, 5 meter girl/doll puppet named La Pequena Gigante. For three days, la Pequena Gigante walked around the streets of Santiago, controlled by 18 weirdly dressed French dudes, searching for her Rinocerante Perdido (her lost rhinoceros). Besides walking around the city streets, she also, among other things, took a shower, ate a lollipop, took a siesta in a chair, and got tucked into bed.

If you want to see a kick-ass video of her on her first day here, click on the link below: http://www.emol.com/especiales/videos/index/index.asp?id=M22

Choose the video that says La Pequena Gigante. The woman in black in the video, by the way, is Chile's Presidenta, Michelle Bachelet. If you want to see the rhino, choose the video called Captura del Rinocerante, although it's not as cool as the one only about La Pequena Gigante.

My parents arrived on Sunday, and after getting them settled in to their homestay we took them to see La Pequena Gigante. There, in the center of town, we were among 500,000 other Santiaguinos who turned out to see this massive, slightly unattractive, girl doll. The puppet herself was pretty cool, but what was even crazier was the crowd. I have never seen that many people in one place at a time, and it was impressive. After the Gigante passed, a huge sea of people followed in her wake, and we just stood where we were, on the steps of Santa Lucia, staring with mouths open at the sheer force of the crowd. My dad took some pictures, which he'll post on here when he does his guest blog entry.

Does anyone have anything nice to say about the United States?

2007-01-26T22:56:00.000-05:00

Because no one here does. And we are getting sick and tired of having to defend our country to everyone who finds out we're from the United States. As soon as they find out, they blame us for McDonald's, Bush, war, and all other evil that exists in the world. I know we may not be Utopia, but we're certainly not the satanic country they make us out to be. Also, people seem to believe that we are constantly lied to/misguided in the United States and we have no idea how awful our country really is. So they take the opportunity to tell us, because of course everyone who lives outside the United States is an expert on United States politics and policies. I'm sorry about this very un-fantastical adventure blog entry, but Nate and I have had one too many people complaining to us about the United States, and we're downright sick of it. Rant over.

Cascada de las Animas

2007-01-25T16:36:00.000-05:00

Last weekend we really needed to get out of the city, so we went here: It's called Cascada de las Animas, which means Waterfall of the Spirits. It took us 3 hours on public transportation to get there, but for once in our lives we got the bus system right and didn't have to pay twice, ride a bus around an entire route, or otherwise frustrate ourselves with this impenetrable bus system they've got going on around here.

We got to try out our new camping gear from Christmas. I'm convinced Thermarests are the greatest invention since the Schopdog rocket, and I can't believe I've ever slept outside without one. By the way, our Chilean friends have since told us that Schopdog is beyond ghetto and we shouldn't make it our weekly hangout. It's true that at least five three-year-olds selling stickers or fake roses approach us every time we drink there, but we just thought it was because we're a bunch of gringos. Mountain view.
On our second day at Cascada we hiked out to the actual Cascada de las Animas via several sketchy handmade bridges. Actually, they weren't that sketchy, but they had rules about the manner in which you were allowed to cross; on one of them you had to be one meter apart in single file, and the other one only five people could cross at a time. Or they were held up with a stick...
Here's the Cascade de las Animas:
And here's Nate thinking deep thoughts. Probably about choripan.
This isn't the Cascada de las Animas, but it was even better because we got to swim under it!The pressurized spray gets you squeaky clean.Oh yeah, and the place had a really awesome tire swing.

Haircut

2007-01-17T17:33:00.000-05:00

Long and lustrous...

Roowwrr!
Apprehension
All business up front!
Still long and lustrous in the back.Unfortunately, this is Nate's only chance of fitting into Chilean society......but alas, he decided against it. Clean and classy!

Wondrousity

2007-01-17T14:51:00.000-05:00

Malicious comments making fun of my spelling will be punishable by death. Or by abandonment in a crappy, dangerous part of Santiago. Or I will just let Nate have at you. Your choice.

Rocket Love

2007-01-15T15:32:00.000-05:00

Nate just read the "pictures of our apartment!" entry and said, "Good. That's funny. But you didn't write anything about what we've been doing. Write another one." So here I am again to write about what we've been doing. And don't worry--it's not that I am super acquiescent to his every little whim; it's just that we're in an internet cafe right now, with unfettered restriction to an extremely fast internet connection. So, you lucky ducks, you get another entry.

The longer we're in Santiago and the more we settle in here, the more boring our lives inevitably become (at least to outsiders). That at least partially explains why we haven't been keeping up with the blog entries. Another reason is that the internet we steal while in our apartment comes and goes, and it's not nearly fast enough to upload any pictures. The last reason should be obvious. We're lazy! But you already knew that.

The past couple weeks have been much nicer than before we left, mostly because we had a big, fat paycheck waiting for us when we got back to Santiago. This has enabled us to go out for beers with friends, eat meals that don't include lots of rice and water, and see an occasional movie. We've gone to an asado at a Chilean friend's house, gone to that big pool on the top of the big hill (see entry about parties, pools, and poison ivy), and hiked around the city in our hiking boots, trying to break them in before our big trip to the south. The latter activity results in lots of stares from Chileans, who sadly shake their heads and whisper to each other about how weird gringos are. We don't care. We're not going to be caught with blisters and cuts all over our feet when we should be enjoying the splendor of Patagonia. I also got to go out dancing all night with some girl friends while Nate happily stayed home, content with the fact that he was not being forced to dance and/or socialize with girls.

Oh, we also went to a place called Schopdog a couple times; once to watch the KC Chiefs lose, and once to enjoy beer in their Rocket. Schopdog has this crazy contraption that looks like a huge bong (see picture below), but is really a magnificent holder of 9-10 beers. What makes this thing exceptional is that there is a tube of ice in the middle of the tube of beer that keeps your beer cold, and you can pour your own beers out of your own little tap! It's awesome. Other gringos have since told me they have these all over the United States, but I refuse to believe it. The rocket makes drinking beer even more fun than it is normally.

I love this thing!

That's about it. Work is going well for both of us. We bought tickets to the south (Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego), and we'll be heading down there mid-February for two and half weeks to engage in camping, hiking and backpacking adventures. My parents are coming to visit in two weeks as well, so that means we get to show the city to them and possibly eat nice meals at nice restaurants that don't sell hot dogs. Don't worry though, Mom and Dad. We won't deprive you of the wondrousnous that is the Schopdog Rocket. You can count on that.

pictures of our apartment!

2007-01-15T14:59:00.000-05:00

Now that we have a camera, we thought we'd grace you with pictures of our lovely apartment. It is the first apartment Nate and I have ever shared (alone, together), and we are quite proud of it, despite the fact that none of the furniture is ours and it is the size of Nate's old living room.

Here is our bedroom. The whole wall next to the bed is a window, which is constantly open because it is so freakin hot here.

Our beautiful bathroom. We're still working on putting the toilet seat down, and it's highly unlikely that it'll ever happpen. His argument is that if he has to have contact with the toilet seat when he lifts it up, it's only fair that I have to touch it to put it back down. My argument is that it's just plain ugly when the lid is up. And yes, I am fully aware that this is a trite, overdiscussed, and possibly insoluble argument.
Our dining room/computer room/work area/storage unit.
Our living room. We even have a pull-out sleeper sofa!!The tiniest kitchen ever created. Seriously. We can't be in here together. And if any cabinet is open and you're caught unawares, you WILL run into it. With your head. You have to practically hump the refrigerator to be able to reach the sink to wash the dishes. The stove only has two burners, which is pointless, because you can't fit two pots on there at the same time anway. All cutting of vegetables/non-stove cooking takes place in the dining room.Ha ha! Ha! Did we fool you into thinking we had a separate bedroom, living room and dining room? For those particularly clever and alert readers, you will remember that we said our apartment was a studio. And the size of a shoebox. As you can see, that is no exaggeration. This is the view of the whole thing from the bathroom.Obviously, we get along very well. There's no such thing as fighting when you live here, because, short of crawling in the refrigerator, there is simply nowhere to go to get away from the other person. And if you come visit us, you are most definitely welcome to stay on our sleeper sofa... which is 1.5 feet away from where we will be sleeping.

Christmas vacations

2007-01-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone. Happy 2007. We just got back from spending Christmas in the States, which turned out to be a much needed break from our time abroad (and each other).

The first thing we did when we arrived in DC was to hunt down a Five Guys and eat the best burger and fries we had tasted in months. It was heavenly. Then, I went home to Wisconsin to see my folks, my brother, and his wife, and Nate spent Christmas in Lexington with his family. It was nice to have a cold(er) Christmas, although the weather was unseasonably warm and weird in both states. Visiting family was the best; they spoil you rotten and stuff you silly--two things we were both desperately craving. And all our talk about losing weight like crazy was true. Nate stepped on a scale to find out he had lost about 22 lbs. I lost a little less, but still enough to be surprising. We did, however, do our damndest to put all the weight back on by feasting on turducken, stuffing and the likes.

After Christmas I flew out to DC where we briefly met up with some friends before heading down to Lexington. Ridiculously enough, a week apart was all Nate and I needed to realize how much we really appreciated each other (and how much we had needed a break from each other!). We visited with Nate's family in Lexington and Charlottesville and continued to eat as much food as possible.

At one point during the week, Ned, Nate's little brother, convinced us to go caving. And by "convinced us" I mean he said "Hey, you wanna go check out this 80 foot hole in the ground?" And that was all the convincing we needed. After rigging up some serious ropes and rope ladders, we lowered ourselves 80 feet in the ground to find the stinkiest, muddiest cave on Earth. The cave supposedly extends about a mile underground, but we only saw a brief portion of it due to the muddiness and the horrible stench. We are positive some kind of animal fell into the hole and died, because none of us had ever smelled anything quite so disgustingly rotten. While down in the cave we made a list of the things we'd rather be smelling other than the cave-smell, and they were (among others): manure, urine, and Nate's farts. Apart from the stench, however, the cave was super cool, complete with little holes to climb into, rocks to climb over, and tiny, cute bats sleeping while attached to the roof. Ascending out of the hole was the second-worst part (after the smell, of course), and it basically involved climbing an 80 ft. rope with little to no assistance.

Here are a few pictures from the caving expedition:

The Oliver boys contemplating the great abyss.Ned and Erin inside the cave. Nate (poor sucker--we made him ascend last) taking his first breath of fresh non-death-smelling air.

P.S. We stocked up on lots of cool gear in preparation for our trip down to Patagonia. Among the things we bought was... a camera! Don't hold your breath, though. We expect it to be stolen, destroyed or misplaced within a couple days or so.

How 'Bout Some Piggity-Pictures?

2006-12-13T17:33:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-11T09:53:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-12-06T16:02:00.000-05:00

... 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.

Slightly Bitter Thanksgiving Salutation

2006-11-22T09:25:00.000-05:00

I realize Thanksgiving officially happens tomorrow, but I'm bored and jealous now, so here's your damn holiday blog entry. While you spend the day gorging yourselves on delicious turkey...

...and celebrating the subjugation of Indians (some very attractive Indians, I might add)...

...by merciless religious fanatics...

...please, remember us, all alone in a cold, equally violent, and turkyless country with no attractive natives to speak of. We'll be working. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Parties, Pools, and Poison Ivy, Oh My!

2006-11-20T17:21:00.000-05:00

Howdy again from Chile. For those of you who haven’t already figured it out, the blog has recently devolved into being more or less an account of our weekend. Today will be absolutely no exception, as nothing particularly noteworthy seems to happen during the week anymore (unless you count students learning how to use the phrase “used to” correctly in a sentence). Obviously, I suppose this was to be expected, although it’s a little disappointing to realize you’ve traveled thousands of miles away from home just to become part of a different country’s work force. Still, that’s how it goes. Let’s have at it.

This weekend was a party weekend, which inevitably makes Erin very excited and me grit my teeth. Despite my best efforts, Erin has managed to make us a couple friends who actually seem to like us (Erin) for who we are. One of these people is a Scottish teacher, who Erin met online, named Fiona. Despite the inherent creepiness of making friends over the internet, she turned out to be a very nice person and in no way a member of a cult. She’s also about the thousandth female traveler I’ve met here who came specifically because of a Chilean boyfriend. Maybe there’s something unbelievably irresistible about Chilean men that’s not inherently obvious beneath their universally crappy haircuts (seriously, it’s a major problem around here…it’s kept me from getting a haircut for four months), but whatever it is, they attract foreign chicks like moths to flames. I don’t get it, but it may be because the general image I have of the average Chilean dude is the same guy catcalling my girlfriend as we walk down the street together. I will say that many (many) of the girls I meet here, speak openly about wanting a Chilean boyfriend, so I think there’s a little bit of a predisposition in the lady population. This is actually something Erin and I had an argument about not so long ago, so I suppose we might as well air our grievances in public and see what you folks think. I claimed (much to Erin’s disapproval) that it is inherently shallow to come to a foreign country and specifically go looking for a local boyfriend (or girlfriend, I suppose, although it never seems to come up), much the same as it would be shallow to go fishing for a rich husband or a trophy wife. My argument is that you’re essentially focusing on non-personality/character traits. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against being shallow. I just want it acknowledged that this is a shallow dating practice…which it is. Erin’s counter-argument, although she will surely post an editor’s note correcting me and making me out as stupid and thick-headed (which I may very well be), goes something like, “Why would you come to a foreign country and date a white boy?” I’m pretty sure that’s nearly an exact quote. I’ll let her explain it, and feel free to post your own opinions. But I digress…

This weekend was a party weekend. First off, the previously-mentioned Fiona invited us to her apartment where her incredibly hot-accented, Scottish friends were visiting for the week. This mostly involved drinking wine and chatting and was a perfectly fine time. We went with another friend we’ve made and after a couple of hours of her and Erin drinking wine and flirting with all the Chilean boys they could lock in conversation, I took the opportunity to skip out a little early and catch up on some of the sleep I haven’t been getting during the week. Saturday, I forced Erin to embrace her inner old man and go look at antiques with me. A museum up the street from our work was having an antiques exhibition, and I wanted to go look at the furniture. Erin, to her credit, did not enjoy herself one bit, and complained mercilessly pretty much the whole time, with the one notable exception of when she saw an old, sexually suggestive movie poster and inquired about the price. I on the other hand had a pretty good time, since I’m completely lame and dorky like that. It’s true. There were old motorcycles to look at, an early-model MGB, some cool paintings, and interesting furniture. It was more or less a nice little Saturday afternoon. Party number two was Saturday evening, and it was an asado (that’s barbeque), which was also right up my alley. Some girls from our company, decided to throw themselves a going away party and everyone got invited. We grilled a little choripan and talked with the folks we work with, plus anyone they cared to bring along, although nothing more exciting than that really happened. Oh, Erin got into a semi-confrontation with the girls who had thrown the party. A Chilean girl had asked her if she could show her how to hook her MP3 player up to the stereo, and Erin was in the process of explaining it when these girls told her they had already (no doubt, carefully) planned the music for the entire eight hour party, and there unfortunately wouldn’t be time for the Chilean girl to play one song. Seem a little bitchy to you? It did to me.

On Sunday afternoon, WE WENT HERE!!?!

It was absolutely fantastic. We alternated between burning up in the sun and freezing to death in the pool for the entire day. This weekend was apparently the Chilean equivalent of Memorial Day weekend, and therefore the unofficial beginning of summer. Eat your hearts out. Endless summer…WHOO!!?!

Below, Erin, a Peruvian girl we met in the taxi ride up, and I are all hanging out and perfecting our bikini tans. We don't know who the guy is with the baby on the right. That picture was, for some unknown reason, attached to the picture of us.

Other than that, I have only two relatively mindless ramblings to share for the week. Number one, I got a phantom case of poison ivy. It appeared in small, random patches on my arms and one leg. I’m completely confused about how it happened, because in the days prior to getting it, the most nature I’d come in contact with was Gus, our bonsai tree, who is still alive and kicking despite all odds. Number two, some of you may recall me rambling on in some previous blog entry about how the Chileans refuse to walk on one side of the sidewalk. Well, the Santiago metro people must have heard me complaining, because just this week in all the metro stations, there began appearing yellow lines accompanied by small signs asking people to please circula por su derecha (walk to the right), because es mas comodo. It’s the start of big things for this country.

Escalar y Otras Aventuras

2006-11-12T16:21:00.000-05:00

So, due to a combination of me working 15 hours a day and Erin being extremely (extremely) lazy, we haven’t managed to write for a while. Turns out we’re getting really busy around here. Work is picking up like crazy, which results in a combination of relief (in the “not going to starve to death” way) and stress (in the “having a job” way). The most ridiculous aspect of the whole working thing is how we’ve somehow ended up with completely different working hours. Specifically, Erin has awesome hours, working between the hours of 10 and 3 just about every day, while I’ve basically gotten screwed, waking up at 6 and ending work at 9 in the evenings with a huge gap of nothing to do during the day but listen to the director’s stories of how she accidentally hired a pedophile one time. Amusing? Yes, but I’ve been instructed not to tell anyone else about it, so don’t mention it to anyone from Chile. Still, work is easy and we both really like our students, which makes even ungodly hours like mine relatively doable.

Also, we’ve managed to have a pretty fun week when not teaching English to businessmen on their lunch hours. On Thursday, Erin dragged me out to this club that was featuring drum music and dancers to meet with some folks. We decided to take the hour walk to the place to avoid paying for what turned out to be a $1.50 cab ride on the way home and got there incredibly late, long after the rest of our group had arrived. Still, when we arrived, the music was passable and the company was excellent. We ended up meeting a Chilean dude named Jose and his Kiwi girlfriend, Louise (which the Chileans think is hilarious, because Luis a guy’s name here). Jose is something of a climber, and we mentioned we were planning on going to Cajon del Maipo this weekend to do some climbing. Jose offered to go along and show us around, which turned out to be a really great thing. Once I started falling asleep at the table, Erin agreed to head home.

On Friday, we weren’t planning on doing anything, but we got a call from our TEFL teacher, James, asking us if we wanted to go and help his new graduates celebrate. We did, and we did. It was an awesome time. We ate delicious Thai food, drank beer, met James’ Chilean girlfriend, and discussed bathroom etiquette. There were also Marlboro Cigarette representatives giving out free, incredibly ugly baseball hats (which of course we all wanted). All you had to do was watch a movie displayed through 3D glasses. First they asked if we smoked, and we all replied no. They then informed us that we couldn’t watch the video, because they weren’t allowed to encourage non-smokers to start. I quickly corrected my mistake, admitting that I’d been smoking for years and years, and they agreed to let me watch. The video, it turns out, was just giant, 3D packs of Marlboro cigarettes floating through space over a western landscape (and not worth the effort), but they let me play a matching game afterwards, and once I won I received a hat that will no doubt make me 100% more attractive to the ladies. Watch out.

Yesterday, we went climbing. We got up early and met Jose, Louise, and their friend Jorge (another Chilean, who Erin claims was attractive despite the fact that he looked nothing like me) to go to Cajon del Maipo, a valley nestled up next to the Andes that’s home to most of the area’s outdoor activities. After an hour on the metro and bus, followed by a fifteen minute walk, we found out that the area we wanted to go to is completely unreachable, since to get to it you have to cross private land, owned by people that don’t want you crossing their land. This is when we realized how lucky we were to have met Jose and his friends, because while we (and by we I mean Erin) would have sat down and cried and then headed home, they informed us that there was another place nearby we could go to that was almost as good. Problem solved. This place, too, lay on the other side of private land, but whereas the first place denied us access, this one only wanted four dollars apiece to cross. We decided not to pay and instead opted for a one and a half hour trip around via a nearby river (in Chile it is against the law to block access to rivers) that would lead us to the spot. It was an incredibly fun walk. The water was a nice temperature, and the land was incredibly beautiful. After about an hour and a half, we came to a spot in the river that seemed impassable (at least without being fully submerged, which doesn’t mesh well with rock climbing gear), but we tooled around for a little while and finally managed it, arriving at the rocks 5 minutes later. I wish we hadn’t been robbed twice, because then we’d have pictures of the place we ended up at. It was a collection of two or three 50-60 foot boulders right next to the river, which was crystal-clear, surrounded by green forests, with the snow-capped Andes visible through the river valley. If I was rich, it’s what my bathroom would look like. It was by far one of the most beautiful spots we’ve ever been. We ate, climbed all day until we were tired, then bought empanadas at a shop on the trip out. It was an awesome day.

That brings us to today. We haven’t done anything of note, but we are planning on having a couple folks over for another asado. And you know what that means. More choripan. Delicious. Hope everyone is doing well.

Halloween Fotos

2006-11-06T17:01:00.000-05:00

Apparently a pirates' preferred manner of dress is simply a striped shirt, something wrapped around the head, and leggings.

A pirate brawl

I told you he didn't even try with his costume...

A pirate scowl

Fran and Erin

A Few Minor Corrections

2006-11-02T10:22:00.000-05:00

For once, I am home relaxing while Nate is doing something other than playing video games from 1993 on his laptop. That's right. We thought the day would never come, but he's actually working. It's a proud and relieving moment for all of us.

I'm obviously not dead and, perhaps even more obviously, Nate could never manage to pick up a Chilean girl. His catcalling skills are not up to par, and his sketchiness level is far below that of other Chilean males. Anyway, I've been reading the last couple of blogs and I think the time has come to A) take a break from all the extremely hard work I've been doing to ensure that Nate and I don't starve or have to live in a cardboard box in the park and to B) defend my honor and to C) correct all the tiny euphemisms that Nate has been throwing around in our blog lately.

Halloween was great fun, but Nate was a little misleading in his description of our respective costumes. Here is what I looked like:

And here is what Nate looked like:

That's right. The kid refuses to dress up. No fun. No fun at all. By "dressed up like a girl" he meant "wore a skirt over my jeans but otherwise did nothing to change my appearance or even attempt to create a costume."

The part about our bonsai tree is all true, but Nate forgot to write that he now loves Gus more than he loves me, and he spends all the time he isn't playing Zelda crooning to Gus, trimming his tiny branches, and researching what shape he ultimately wants Gus to have. It's nuts. He even built a tiny shelf outside our window so that Gus can have just the right amount of sunshine and so that when he wakes up in the morning, he can open the windows and greet Gus with a hearty "Good morning, Gus!"

Besides those minor corrections, everything else is pretty much true. My classes are surprisingly easy and fun. I only have two, and my students couldn't be more different. My Korean student, Suh-Young, is 15 and is amazingly quick at picking up English (it's that Asian work ethic... and the fact that she has 7 hours of English a day before going to her father's office to study for 3 more hours). She gets embarrassed when we talk about boys (including her two male teachers) and when she finally finds a word she's been searching for her eyes light up and she goes "oohhhhh!!!" My other student is the Vice President of BBVA, an enormous international bank based in Chile. His office is the nicest office I've ever seen; it literally takes up the entire 16th floor of his building, and he has an assistant who serves us drinks during our conversation class. He travels internationally at least once a month, and the purpose of our classes are to prepare him for a trip to Turkey where he'll have to make a presentation in English. Unlike Suh-Young, his English is pretty basic, and because he's Chilean he absolutely refuses to pronounce his s's. Thus, all of his words are singular and possessives are beyond all hope. Whenever he says a word without an s, I am there to hiss at him "sss" to make him tack that s on. At first I was quite intimidated to be teaching this head honcho dude, but after a couple classes, I relaxed and resumed my regular bossy persona.

Last week Nate and finally got ourselves to a climbing store and found out how to access the local climbing spots. Apparently there's a really nice place only 40 minutes from Santiago where the rock is nice and the routes are right around our level. Before heading outside though, we wanted to do a practice run in the gym just to get our bearings back. To put it mildly, we are disgustingly out of shape. When we wrote about losing weight before, it simply wasn't true. What we were losing was muscle, and we have now been rendered absolute weaklings. It was pathetic. For those of you who know us and know how we climb, let's just say that we had to stop after an embarrassingly small number of climbs, and it seemed like the routes were rated easier than they actually were. Needless to say, they weren't. We just suck after 5+ months of not being on rock. Regardless, we'll be heading out to Las Palestras soon, and hopefully whip ourselves back into decent shape.

On a somewhat similar note, because we now know how to access these climbing places and because we've been itching to get out of Santiago as often as possible, we came extremely close to buying a scooter. Moms and Dads, I know you're not huge fans of the idea, but you don't have to worry because we decided we just won't be able to swing it financially. But you have no idea how close we came--we're talking serious research, multiple trips to various moto shops, calculations concerning financial feasibility... It was exciting to think we'd have an independent mode of transportation, and we were already planning all the great weekend trips we'd take. It's sad, but it's not going to happen. We've resigned ourselves to taking buses everywhere--and knowing that we're going to have to padlock ourselves to our bags to make sure nothing else gets taken from us.

This weekend Nate and I are hopefully heading out to the beach--to a tiny but ritzy town called Renaca. We'll let you know how that goes...

Cruising for Chicks at the Family Reunion

2006-11-02T08:14:00.000-05:00

It’s been just about a month since Erin has written a blog entry, so I figure most of you are already wise to the fact that I’ve killed her and secretly fed her corpse to the people in our house. Mwahaha…and so on. That being said, I guess everyone is just going to have to get used to hearing my relatively pointless ramblings on Chilean culture and the things we’ve been doing (by we I mean me and my new Chilean girlfriend, who is conveniently also named Erin…and also looks exactly like her in photos). Erin and I are both officially working now. I know Dave and Lisa thought I was just going to sponge off their daughter (may she rest in peace) for months on end, but I’ve actually managed to start work, and beginning next week I’ll be waking up at the ridiculous hour of 5:30 (that’s 3:30 EST) in order to make it to a one-hour private lesson with a man that by all accounts is incapable of learning English. He’s been taking private lessons with several other teachers every day now for several months and has not improved at all. I’m looking forward to it.

In other news, Halloween just passed, which means most of you are already seeing Christmas decorations in your local Walmart or Kohls or whatever soulless corporate super-store sells you your groceries, clothing, electronics, and children. Halloween hasn’t really been a big holiday for me for a while, and the Chileans can sympathize since they’re still emerging from their dictatorship. Apparently, in addition to routinely abducting random people and torturing them, the military regime also took exception to all candy-related holidays, so Halloween went uncelebrated for quite some time. Now it’s getting more popular again, but the Chilenos don’t really seem to know how to do it. Not many kids trick-or-treat, which is probably good since not many people give out stuff and if they do its liable to be cards with religious messages written on them. For us, Halloween meant another opportunity for the owners of our house to try to make some extra cash by trying to throw a party and selling alcohol to foreigners. This has been kind of an ongoing scheme that never seems to work out very well for a couple reasons that I won’t get into. Nobody ever shows up and we all just end up talking about why it wasn’t a good idea in the first place and how we hope this will be the last time they try it. It’s really an awkward situation for everyone involved, but it’s how we spent our evening. For anyone wondering, Erin went as a sexually confused pirate and I went as a girl, so sexual confusion was kind of the theme.

We woke up around 1:00 in the afternoon, to find that someone had brought a ping pong table to the house. This pretty much kicked off what turned out to be a fantastic day for everyone. Having discovered the ping pong table, we spent the first three hours of the day challenging various housemates to games and scaling the fence into the next door neighbor’s yard whenever someone hit a wild shot. Next, since it was a holiday, we managed to convince a fair number of the people in the house to participate in a barbeque, which basically consisted of lots and lots of Choripan (still one of the best things about this country). We spent the rest of the day cooking, gorging ourselves on cheap sausage and vegetables, and discussing marrying first cousins. Interesting fact: Chileans seem to be for it. We learned over the course of the evening that 1) marrying your first cousin is not against the law here (George Michael would be thrilled) and 2) the couple that owns our house are actually cousins. Lest you grab your cutest cousin and jump on a plane to Chile, I think I should point out first that Mexico is closer (it's also allowed there according to our Mexican friend) and also marrying your relative is not all fun and games. Although it’s legal, not everyone approves of it and it's not necessarily easy to do. To manage it in Chile you have to get a letter from the Pope saying that it’s okay. Definitely something to think about though...

Changing subjects, Erin and I welcomed a new member into our Chilean family a couple days ago, a Bonsai tree that despite all odds is still alive. We got it from a plant fair that we happened to pass in the park near our house. I managed to convince Erin to name it Gus, with the promise that I’d never suggest the name for anything else. Hopefully some day he'll look this good.

Happy Halloween everyone.

The Latest Blog Entry

2006-10-23T15:18:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-17T19:08:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-13T15:41:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-10-12T11:40:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-10-09T11:07:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-07T23:31:00.000-04:00

Old San Pedro Pictures

2006-10-03T14:00:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-02T14:20:00.000-04:00

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.

Savy Chileano

2006-09-28T22:19:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-19T20:33:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-14T17:04:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-10T21:57:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-08T17:25:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-07T20:49:00.000-04:00

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!!

2006-09-06T09:36:00.000-04:00

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.

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

2006-08-28T13:25:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-26T13:06:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-25T18:32:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-08-22T17:54:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-19T17:28:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-16T16:31:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-11T14:56:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-08T12:15:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-05T20:29:00.000-04:00

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..."

2006-08-04T22:59:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-02T10:38:00.000-04:00

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...

The First One: Wherein Nate and Erin Cleverly Start a Blog

2006-07-28T14:28:00.000-04:00

This is it. We promised we would make a blog, and here it is. We are leaving for Chile in T-minus 5 days, and we a) do not know where we will stay when we arrive, b) do not know what we are going to do with our time for the first month until our TEFL class starts, and c) have not even begun to think about packing yet.

But we started a blog. We even figured out how to post pictures on our blog. And we are very proud of that.