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

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

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

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

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

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.

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