Why, they're Chilean

Yesterday´s grammar class was like a wonderful little window of clarity as I read aloud from our Chilean culture workbook and heard myself articulating the reasons for my host family’s weirdness and for my continued feelings of discomfort at home. I taught myself all about what it means to “estar sentido;” which basically translates into Chile’s tripped-up, steroid-popping take on passive aggressiveness. I also dar-ed myself cuenta about my family’s tendency toward mood-swings, their depression-like behavior, their incapability to hold serious, non-superficial conversations, their obsession with scrutinizing everything I eat and everything I don’t eat (not to mention everything Emma ate that I didn’t), and their propensity to runaway to their rooms and anti-socially drown themselves in television. Apparently, they’re just Chilean. Oh, well somebody should have told that me sooner.

Today my host mom bought whole-wheat pita bread. This, of course, was after Lolli, the nana, shoved a gigantic bowl-ful of cazuela in front of me amid my host mom’s repeated questioning of how bad the food she makes tastes.

After three trips to the Servicio de registro civil e identificación, I now officially have my Chilean ID, my carne. And, even more exciting, after several weeks of illegally using Carola’s school ID and, slightly less successfully, my half-sheet of a matriculation receipt given to me by COPA, to get cheaper bus fare, I now have my very own pase escolar. Yay for micro rides that 130 pesos instead 450! In other exciting news, I now also have classes (or, at the very least, have decided which classes I want, even if it’s still not official). In addition to my COPA Spanish class and my Latin American poetry classes at la Católica, I’ve decided on the contemporary history of América Latina class, the Monográfico of Latin American geography class, and a Latin American sociology class, which I went to for the first time today. And, while sitting in said class for the first time today, I found myself next to a girl named Rebecca, who happens to have just graduated from Middlebury and knows a certain Cat Cooley, sister of a certain Anna Cooley, who spent a semester in Concepción, Chile. We’re now presentation partners.

As I write this, Alex should be well on his way to the equator. I have an odd feeling of two very distinct worlds preparing to collide…or maybe the feeling’s less violent than that—less of a choque and more of a…melding? fusion? Hm, well now I just have images of biology labs freshman year in Harbaugh’s class when we learned about precipitates. I’m trying my best not to be nervous, but I won’t lie and say that I’m not just a bit anxious. And yes, I do know you’ll/he’ll be reading this. Bienvenidos!

Hobbling down to Horcón

So I find myself peering down a decidedly endless 75% grade of a make-shift "staircase," clutching the worn wooden rail with both hands as I pick my way from eroded patch of ground to fallen limb to exposed root, trying to figure out the best way to position my boot so as not to fall the three feet down to the next eroded enscarpment of beach stairs. Twenty minutes later, safely within reach of the beach, I'm greeted by a playfully-drawn sign telling me I'm not allowed to bring fire.

After trekking haphazardly up and down the highly-inclined streets and paths of the small hippie beach town of Horcón, Amanda, Emma, Ariel, and I finally found our way to the picturesque beach of Cau Cau. The rocky cliffs give way on either side of the sizeable cove to light sandy shore, neat lines of breaking surf covered in a metallic-blue color that sets it apart from the bright sky, and steep expanses of very green grass (plus the occassional condo or two--but situated in such a way that you can almost pretend they're not there). After an hour-long bus ride and some token getting lost, we were ready to stretch out in the sun with our seriously over-priced sunscreen, a bit of history reading, and a chilly beach breeze. Emma surprised us all and actually ventured full-speed into the icy Humboldt water and splashed around for a bit. I chose to curl up and sleep after a page-and-a-half of contemporary Latin American history. My relaxing napping later gave way to a search for empanadas (once we'd successfully made it back up the staircase of erosion-filled death), which was oddly more difficult than we'd expected, though tastey and marisco-y. It was an odd town that gave me more the impression of a tiny, brightly-painted tourist corner uncomfortably awaiting the return of the tourists than a hippie community. Life seemed oddly suspended and unreal as we found ourselves walking into a series of completely empty restaurants that overlooked a small stretch of harbor in which all the boats sat onshore. Strange men offered us chocolate and then beer, but we decided the empanadas and Emma's boiling caldron of marisco stew, with varying degrees of chewiness, were probably sufficient. Winding back along the coast and through the hills toward Viña, we passed a series of refineries which, according to Amanda's host brother, look like futuristic cities at night. And the fact that for some reason I couldn't get Che Guevara out of my mind made it all seem even more surreal and dreamlike.

It's been a great last couple of days, filled with showing off my newly adopted town, and my newly adopted Chilean friends, to Emma and Ariel. We carreteared with my friend Cristian and his friends on Friday and then hung out with Graciela and Hugo and his friends on Saturday. In between there were empanadas and more beach to go along with the six cakes my host mom made. It was really cathartic to have some outside perspective on my host family situation, and to be able to have my feelings articulated back to me by someone else. I'm glad to know that it's not just me being a horrible, nit-picky person; that I haven't been making up the fact that it's perhaps impossible to have a normal relationship with my host mom. And I think it helped me better understand my own feelings and values, and to figure out a way to live happily where I am. Plus there's lots of cake.

So despite the fact that I'm beginning to feel my stress levels rise as I watch the homework levels pile up, things are quite good here. I'm finally starting to sense myself breaking from my tendency toward comparing everything to Mexico--I'm hearing myself replacing my once-common apostrophe of "Oh, Mexico" with one slightly more Chilean-oriented. I really like it here. And now I'm feeling the pressure of making sure I don't waste time. The realization has hit that my allotted amount of time here is nowhere near enough to do what I want to do, especially given the outlook of my physical therapists. I guess it's better this way--despite all the heartache it invariably causes. I'd rather raise my blood pressure as I run around for a semester trying to live as Chilean as possible, worrying about my eternal lack of time, than be wishing I were somewhere else. Or perhaps I'll just have to extend my stay.

My decidedly non-fome little corner of the world

So it's possible that I've acquired my very own Chilean stalker. Aside from the fact that because of him I might be changing my class schedule, I find it pretty damn impressive that a mere two-to-three days after making some of my first real Chilean friends, I already have myself a stalker. Impressive, in my opinion. Side note for all parents/pololos (singular): he's not really or stalker-status--he's actually pretty harmless; he just has a way about him that makes the oh-so-Chilean word "flaite" (sketchy, más o menos) roll off the tongue.

Aside from said Chilean stalker (named Claudio, but his email address definitely includes the words "Brad Pitt"), things have pretty amazing these last couple days. I've made a very useful friend of Cristian, a fourth-year history major I have a few classes with. He and I had coffee on Wednesday after our geography class, and I am now officially invited to his hometown of San Antonio (Chile's biggest port city a couple hours south of Valparaíso...apparently it has a spirited sea lion population which I'm very excited about), as well as to Mendoza, Argentina with a group of his friends in October. He's also letting Emma, Ariel, and I tag along with them this weekend. Our two hour conversation was really fun for me, especially as I found out a number of highly important things about him: 1.) he has a Finnish girlfriend who lives in Valparaíso and will be part of all said outings, 2). he's not homophobic; in fact, he went on a hefty tirade about another classmate, René, who can't handle the idea of gay rights or gay relationships in general, and 3). he can't stand the Chilean (and generally Latin American) aversion to schedules and punctuality. It's a fantastic feeling to be able to walk into a classroom and know that there are people I can sit next to, and who don't mind showing me how to sacar las fotocopias or explain (yet again) what reading is due before the test.

And as I've been settling into my increasingly-comfortable routine of racing from random class to random class, I've noticed that more and more people on the street are stopping me to ask for directions. This I find fairly amusing, and also slightly embarrassing as they realize with the sound of my voice that I'm definitely not Chilean. Despite my at times disappointing lack of Chil eanness, I'm starting to feel a certain amount of comfort at this point. A new kind of comfort in which I can see myself settling back into a routine (as soon as I find myself some classes, of course), and curling up into a new life for a little bit. Even my difficulties at home trying to relate to my host mom seem to be relaxing and giving away to a certain amount of famillial familiarty. And the really cool thing about all of that is that I know I'm not resigning myself to curling up in a corner of stability and predictability. As the Chileans would say, I don't have to worry about things being fome; I've got this whole new world to explore, and recently-found friends with which to do it with. And on a side note, I apparently have an Argentinian accent and way of speaking. I've now been told this by my COPA Spanish teacher and by Emma's host parents who are Argentinian. I find this almost as odd as the fact that I apparently really like instant Nescafé coffee.

Off to class I go

These last couple of days have been brimming with class-going and other business, and the rest of the week (except, happily, for Friday) promises to be the same. Monday morning I skipped--sadly not literally...not yet, anyway--off to physical therapy for some good, old-fashioned ultrasound, hydrotherapy, icing, incision-massaging, and exercising. The therapists are all very nice--and the reception ladies like to fawn all over me and drown me in tiny cups of filtered water (half from the cold tap, half from the hot tap, because it's not good for me to have water that cold)--but it's still really frustrating to hear them telling me that I basically can't do anything, and won't be able to do anything for several more months. I got to work with a Thera-band, though.

In the afternoon, I went to a series of three hour-and-a-half history classes: monográfico de america latina y chile, historia contemporánea de america latina, and historia nacional de america latina. The first two are with basically the same group of kids, and I they seem really fun and nice. The contemporary and national history classes are with the same professor, and also have the same TA/student-helper who actually sat down with me and explained everything I was confused about and what I needed to do. Very helpful. The professor's also really nice and welcoming, but he had the unfortunate quality (for me, anyway) of believing it would be fun to call on the single extranjera to answer questions about political system of the United States, and namely that of Puerto Rico. Thank god I took Con Law. And I seem to have sort of made a friend--or perhaps friends plural? There are various people, who's names and faces I may or may not remember the next time I see them (I didn't do to well yesterday with remember those I'd already met), promising to help me obtain the necessary photocopies (you don't buy books in Chile; you happily disregard copyrights and run off literally thousands of pages of reading every week), to let me join their study/special project groups, to work with me on the novel we have to read, even to take me home for onces to meet their family. It was all very overwhelming, but in perhaps the best way possible. I still don't know, however, if the 130 pages of textbook reading I got from the facultad secretary for the national history class is supposed to be completed for our test in two weeks, or for tomorrow. Time will tell, I suppose. I finished the day with a stop at the gym, some dinner, and then several hours of slowly ploughing through my reading. All in all, it was very productive.

After the gym this morning, I decided to give myself a break and not go to a class that I'd been thinking about visiting. Instead, I spent a large amount of time trying to track down my reading for my contemporary history class, and then another large amount of time trying to find a way to reserve the necessary book without being in the university system. Once that was done, though, I headed to Valpo for yet more administrative navigating. I'm now officially registered for my measely two classes at la Católica (my COPA-run Spanish class and my 2 credit Latin American poetry class), and in the process of petitioning to be able to take three classes at UV instead of the usual two. Grammar class was fairly boring, though we did get to watch a sweet commercial of hot women and old ladies making cat-calls at construction workers. Afterward, I had my map quiz in my sociology class, which surprisingly involved having to free-hand the entire region on a sheet of notebook paper. It's funny how different continent can look when you have to draw it yourself. So I still haven't quite decided which three of my four UV classes I'll end up taking, but for the time being I'm content to remain in my little existence of indecision, attending various classes, skipping others, and being invited to onces by random Chileans.

Al Huevo!

Saturday night I finally made it to the notorious Huevo. I started the night by meeting a fairly sketchy Chilean friend while waiting for the micro. He tried to borrow change, of which I had none, but then kindly told me where to get off in order to get to Café Journal--the infamous "gringolandia" of the Viña/Valpo bar scene--where I was meeting Amanda and Rio. It was actually cooler than I'd expected--very British ex-pat inspired, with an interesting assortment of mostly American hits from the 80s and 90s, but also some decent 80s British punk, blasting from the poster-lined walls. We met a large group of Hawaiians, as well as one of their highly-sketchy host brothers, Sidney, who I did my best to outrun most of the night.

In classic gringo fashion, we finally made the move to Huevo in a sizable pack of overly blonde indecision, and were greeted by a line stretching around the corner of the gigantic club. Even though there was a live band playing, the place wasn't that full, but I was actually fine just hanging out and chatting with some very friendly (and not sketchy) Chileans we met on the salsa-themed rooftop terrace (each level of the club is dedicated to a different type of music and dance). I even found myself a very tastey piña colada, some of which I managed to spill on my shoe (it was very full, and my coordination has never been great when it comes to food, regardless of the presence, or lack of a presence, of alcohol). Our Chilean friends found this endlessly funny. Even the bartender lady laughed, but then she got me paper towels. We ended up hanging around and talking, and forever thinking about joining the dance floor, for many hours until the other Emily was about ready to fall asleep on her relatively clean shoe.

On the micro ride back to Viña, I snagged the last available seat (the buses are packed at 4am in this city), and ended up finding myself next to some woman who was very much passed out and who, as I slowly figured out, had very recently vomitted on her leg. Whenever the micrero would stop shortly, her torso would drift forward, her head threatening to hit the fiber glass wall in front of us that separated the seats from the driver, and, depending on whether or not the threat was realized, she would or would not wake up. I plan on never vomitting on a bus.

Sunday was grey and gross, and after realizing that the family meal wasn't going to happen at 2 like usual, but instead at 4:30 in the afternoon, and then not finish until about 6, I realized I probably wouldn't be leaving the apartment. It was okay, though, because when we finally did eat, we had delirium-inducing tacos. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration--they weren't anything like my beloved Mexican tacos árabes, but they were nonetheless tastey.

Of oceans and amigos

Last night Graciela and I met up with plans to finally check out Huevo, a highly-frequented, multi-level dance club in Valpo. But instead, we ended up meeting her intercambio de idiomas partner, Hugo (the university sets up foreigners with Chileans to do language practice). We met his hilarious friend Carlos who lives in a sweet apartment/loft place off of Libertad where we hung out for a few hours. I got really excited when Hugo started talking about bagels and spicey Thai food. I've decided to dedicate my semester here to gastronomic tourism, seeing as how I may not be able to be quite the explorer I'd previously imagined. So there are plans to head to Quilpue, which is apparently the sandwich capital of the end of the earth (where you can get a ginormous pile of goodness at 4am on any given corner), the completo stand in Valpo where you can get three heaving hot dogs smothered in sauces, avocado, and tomatoes (hold the tomatoes, mind you), a Mexican place with famous tacos, the Thai restaurant which has a spicey barometer reading next to every item on the menu, and the various empanaderías that dot this country.

After some quality food chatter, we headed to Budnyk, a bar in Viña near the water. Apparently our new Chilean friends knew the owners, so we got Happy Hour prices for whatever we ordered, which was pretty much exclusively strong, though tastey, fruity things. There was even some quality dancing and laughing at a funny, slightly uncoordinated (though I shouldn't be talking) gringo. Somehow it was almost 4am by the time I got home, but it was a really fun night, and really exciting to have spent it with friendly Chileans. It's becoming slightly less surprising to come home at ridiculous hours and learn that my host mom is not there--her carretes apparently last longer than mine. Silly Latin women and their social lives.

Today after lunch Graciela and I headed to Reñaca, the beach town north of Viña, and met up with Amanda and some other people from the program. It was a beautiful day, which made the slightly uncomfortable and unstable walk through the sand totally worth it--there's nothing like basking in the Chilean sun in front of the eerily blue crashing waves sprinkled with surfers in the middle of winter. As the light started to sink between the buildings, the shoreline got this odd haze that just sort of hung itself above the sand making the sunset kind of gauzy and the enormous rocks in the distance look a bit softer. Amanda got some of the world's tiniest empanadas, and we watched about twenty men carry their very own soccer goals onto the sand, pull on their respective jerseys, and play soccer among the rolling beach as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. And all the while we got to marvel at the litany of dogs that were roaming around the shore--some accompanied by families, some not, even one that decided to go body surfing in closest line of breakers. Colorado needs an ocean.

Mi horario loco

The past few days have been fairly hectic--I had an oral presentation due for my COPA Spanish class on Thursday, classes started at my other university on Wednesday and Thursday, I had my very first physical therapy session today, and it's been absolutely gorgeous, meaning that I never wanted to be inside where it remains completamente helada (freezing)--especially since I managed to melt my outlet on Wednesday night while trying to finish my powerpoint presentation.

I got up super early Wednesday morning and headed to my first class at the Universidad de Valparaíso (monográfico de américa y chile--apparently focusing on geography, but not really sure), which has its history and philosophy building all of four blocks from my house. My compulsive earliness is getting fairly annoying, especially given the high percentage of professorial no-shows in this country. So there I was, standing awkwardly in the history building courtyard, watching as abrigados Chileans wandered in and began to cluster into little circular groups, many laughing at Chile's new no smoking in public places law which had just gone into effect. It seemed odd to me that several people couldn't understand me when I asked them what I thought to be a simple question of which class they were taking in an attempt to track down my classroom. I finally figured out that people here don't think in terms of classes as much as they do in terms of years. At one point, students started magically deciding to file in various directions, and I hitched myself onto the end of one of the lines and luckily ended up in the right place. About a half-hour after class was supposed to start, the prof still hadn't shown up, but something fantastic had happened in the mean time--real live Chileans had struck up multiple conversations with me. I even made jokes and people understood them and laughed. I was the only gringa anywhere on the premisice, and I felt myself desperately trying to stifle my ridiculous gringa grin, at least until it could break loose a little more discretely. So I learned several names--and even remember a few--but was really depressed to find out that the schedule had changed without my knowing it, so instead of having two classes with the same group of kids, now I can only have one. And so the search for a fixed class schedule continues....

After that, I tried to head over to the sociology building to catch a class that I was also interested in, but of course that schedule had changed as well, so instead I returned home and worked on my oral presentation. My poetry class later that day actually happened, though I thought it was fairly odd to sit there for and hour and a half listening to a profesor interpret a poem for me. The whole lack of discourse thing is hard to get used to, but it was interesting if nothing else. Afterward, I headed back to the history building at UV and spoke with un montón of people--professors, administrators, secretaries, students--who were all very patient and answered my questions. I've decided I really like this university--all the students showed up in punk clothing, about half of them wearing the black All-Stars I left at home. One of the girls I met while waiting for our prof told me that, in relation to la Católica, UV is really revolutionary and less formal. The lack of professors seemed to back up her claim. But everyone's also so much more welcoming and community-like than at la Católica--even when an extranjera confuses a professor for someone else and looks a little foolish and lost.

That night my toasty-warm room suddenly went cold as I realized that odd smell--which was kind of reminiscent of melting rubber--wasn't coming from the kitchen where my host mom is intent on frying everything under the fridge, but was actually the result of my beloved estufa rendering my surge protector useless and my outlet permanently seared to the plug. And now I can't watch tv.

Thursday I headed to my sociology class I tried to go to the day before, and found myself surrounded by many dozen chileans (and I think two french students) in a small room with a professor who came up with the bright idea of calling on random people and asking them to tell him what they knew about Latin America. The title of the course is the social and political history of Latin America, so this seemed like a reasonable, if ridiculously vague and unfair, question. Turns out, not many people know very much about Latin America. I found it very odd as student after student announced that they couldn't even attempt to answer the question. One who did answer it gave a very Euro-centric response about how it's a region that shares a common history, common culture, common language, etc. The professor looked concerned and went on a tangent about the complete lack of research coming out of the region--and especially Chile--on estudios latinoamericanos. I sat there, playing with the idea of what it meant to be sitting in a room full of Latin American students who knew nothing about the region, knowing that I am a Latin American Studies major trained to distinguish between looking at a place as a whole and recognizing the individuality of every country and culture. I also prayed (successfully) that he wouldn't call on me. It also turns out that map quizzes are not just confined to my sixth grade social studies class, which is cool cause I've always liked them.

My oral presentation later that day went fairly well, despite the fact that the story I was assigned is now the most hated story to ever have been read by COPA students. I even managed to come up with some pretty intriguing--though probably silly--themes about the presence of unnatural couples in the story. Afterward I went to the extranjero dance class, where I looked on glumly as everyone else fumbled trying to hop along to the cuenca steps. But later we did merengue, and I was at least able to keep up. Our best laid plans to go to Huevo, a heavily-frequented Valpo club, slowly died that night as Amanda, Graciela and I were treated to her mom's hot wine mixed with orange juice, cinnamon, and sugar in her estufa-laden apartment. We had a great time, though, looking over their pictures from Atacama and chatting the night away over bread.

Today I went back to my influencia anglosajona class today, which I still haven't made a final decision about. It's pretty sweet having the professor talk about me to the entire class all the time, but I'm not sure I really want a Friday class, especially if the powerpoint presentations are going to consist mostly of very dead white men juxtaposed with Hollywood's mass-produced renditions of their lives (think: Henry VIII, William Wallace, oh, and the tokenly female Queen Elizabeth). I also never realized how confusing it would be to try to take history notes when all the names have changed. It took me several seconds to realize who Anna Bolena was, for example.

My much-awaited physical therapy fax finally arrived yesterday, and Vivi drove me to my very first appointment this afternoon. It was all very exciting--there was ultrasound and one of those football player bath thingies that I got to put my foot in and move it around in the warm circulating water, and there were even fun exercises involving paper and slippery wooden things. The less fun part was at the end when my therapist thought it would be another three months before I could hike or play sports. I really didn't think this was going to take so long, and I'm having trouble dealing with the thought of spending a semester in Chile and never being able to hike in the Andes or travel to all the places of been dying to see. My love for shopping carts is being tested. But things are good--if slightly chilly indoors--I'm hoping to see some beaches this weekend.

Playing Santiaguina for the weekend

Friday morning I tagged along with Mary Ellen and her family to Santiago to visit my friend Emma. Everything started out characteristically confusing as we tried flailingly to find each other in the middle of the city at one of the biggest, and most confusing, metro stations. It wasn't all for nought, however; three middle-aged men seemed to get a big kick out of watching me walk in and out of the metro entrance, heaving my green duffel bag, compulsively checking my cell phone for new calls, and hobbling strangely in my boot, not once, not twice, probably not even six times. They seemed to think it was hilarious enough to mock me and throw their special Chilean piropos (cat-calls) my way as I lugged myself around the plaza several times in search of Emma. We finally found each other and I met her friend Ariel before heading off on the subway to her host family's apartment in Ñuñoa, a barrio in Santiago. We did some good wandering, and then found ourselves in one of 12 billion Castaño´s--Santiago's answer to Mexico's Oxxo, the American Interstate's Subway, and the world's McDonald's (of which Chile also has several). It was lovely. THere were empanadas and sandwiches and salads and pastries and cookies and fudge and all kinds of breads; wonderful smell after wonderful smell wafting to every corner of the restaurant. Mmm. Later we had dinner with Saúl and Roxana, Emma's host parents, who are very nice, though very different from mine. They told us all about their life in Buenos Aires before going bankrupt after one of the economic crashes of the 1990s, and their subsequent move to Santiago, a city which, as they explained, was incredibly "fome" (boringly stable) in comparison. Then Emma and I hit the town with some of her friends and random other people studying in the city. There was a great pub that was cleverly called "Phone Box Pub," and had an English phone booth entranceway, and another one with a strange reddish glow on the inside that was a little too generous with its rum. We'd had plans to go to a guidebook-recommended dancing club, but by the time 4:30 rolled around and we were still sizing up our drinks at the reddish-glow place, we decided to just call it a night. But before we could do that, I joined Emma and Ariel for their requisite end-of-the-night tea and snacks at Ariel's host family's house which comes complete with an entire orchard's worth of fruit and a black lab named Julia.

Saturday started around noon for us, and Emma and I had an amazing day lounging around her apartment, enjoying the view of the Andes, and being thoroughly entertained by an epic 3-hour lunch with her parents and grandparents. Saúl and Roxana are pretty much gourmet chefs, Emma and Ariel have decided, and I got to experience the wonder that is their cooking first hand. There was amazing fish, there were yummy lima bean things, there were strange radish slices, there were the most amazing lentils ever concocted on earth, there was potato salad, there was artichoke salad, there was regular salad, there were four kinds of ice cream, and then, oh my god, there was Turkish coffee served in little tiny espresso cups, topped off with some kind of orange liquour. I was under the distinct impression that I had died the happiest death imaginable. Later that night, the three of us met up with Felipe, a real-live Chilean friend of Emma and Ariel, and saw Padre Nuestro, a Chilean movie playing as part of Santiago's international film festival. The director even got up in front of the theater and introduced the movie, which was very exciting and artsy, I thought. It was also very exciting to understand an entire movie not just in Spanish (without subtitles), but in Chilean Spanish. And it was even more exciting to see my beloved Valparaíso, complete with the restaurant that looks like a boat and the German castle-house that I see everyday, showcased throughout the film.

On Sunday Emma and Ariel took me to Cerro San Cristobal, a pretty hill smack in the middle of Santiago, which comes equipped with a precarious teleférico (gondola) to the top where the Virgin Mary awaits you with her arms outstretched. It's Chile's version of Rio. We even ran into Emma's possibly sketchy Peruvian friend who she met while biking there a couple weeks ago, and he bought us a typical Chilean drink called mote con huesillos, which is basically canned peaches swimming in yummy peach syrup and surrounded by corn and other grains that you eat with a spoon. It was lovely, and I apparently have an open invitation to stay at this strange man's house in Lima. We also met a decidedly bizarre girl from Australia (though originally from Babylon--which doesn't exist anymore, we were informed), who's original language was Aramaic, and who was enroute to Brazil to practice Ju Jitsu (apologies--no idea how to spell that). She even showed us her brandnew tatoo that covers her entire back adn includes Bible passages in Aramaic and a large cross, as well as an impressive scar on her left arm which she sustained during her knife fighting training she did in preparation for the street gangs in Rio. She was odd, and I think Emma had a dream about her. We had a rather disappointing lunch on the hill, but then got to ride the gondola back down through a thick wall of fog, and were delighted to see a small teleférico pod emerge through the mist carrying two men making out. It was a slightly hidden step forward for homosexuality in Chile. Once down the hill, we found a nice coffee shop and met up with Felipe again. I ordered an apple, and it came to me sliced and peeled on a plate and was delicious. Dinner back at Emma's was an unbelievable seafood stew that again found me keeled over with joy at the table. And then there were more lentils, oh goodness. By this time, it was all cloudy and cold and wintery-looking outside, and we found ourselves wishing that Santiago would bring a movie rental store to us. And then it did! Turns out Santiago is blessed by this wonderful thing called Bazuca, which allows you to order movies online and then they show up at your door a couple hours later. After some technical difficulties, Emma and I trekked the three blocks to Ariel's house in our pajamas and watched "Sexo Con Amor" on her computer. Fabulous, just fabulous, and also quite Chilean.

Today I went with Emma to her IES Spanish class (after a lunch of fantastic leftover soup and lentils), which entailed walking around their building in Providencia and taking notes on local café options. I was charged with picture-taking duty, and documented all the good dulce options within a few blocks' radius. Afterwards, Emma and I headed to el centro of Santiago to see La Moneda, the main government building, la plaza de la constitución, and la plaza de las armas, which includes an awesome cathedral, throngs of people, and a crazy statue of some guy holding his own head. Then we found a coffee/ice cream place and rejoiced in our mugs of Baileys-laced coffee topped with cream and cookie sticks. We also oggled over the enormous ice cream creations that were placed in front of serious-looking middle-aged Santiaguinos. Then we went back to the IES building, where I'd stashed my duffel bag, only to find that it had closed a good half-hour earlier. This was disconcerting, given the fact that a fair amount of medication (which I needed that day) was packed inside, and the fact that we wouldn't be able to get it tomorrow because it's a national holiday. But after some tense phone-calling, we managed to get someone to come and unlock the building so I could go home. The subway then whisked Emma and I back toward the centro and off to the bus station where I found my bus back to Viña. An hour-and-a-half later, I met my Mom at the station near our house, and then walked home to a welcome salad, yogurt, and fruit.

I'm feeling very much recharged after my weekend of unbelievable food in the company of an old friend. I think I really needed a few days away from my host family and the bit of a rut I'd gotten myself into in Viña. So despite the fact that I'm getting sick, I feel a whole lot better than I did a few days ago--I just feel like I've gotten a big bundle of energy with which to take on the country again. Plus, I just found out that I have a big box of Special K, direct from Mexico, waiting for me up north.

My grapefruit cities

So the ridiculousness that is the Chilean university system continues. For some reason, I seem to be having difficulties finding classes with actual Chileans in them. Hay que buscarlos. But I'm not despairing; rather, I've resolved to go to ever more classes at multiple universities. At the very least, I'm getting pretty good at navigating my way around these two cities both by foot (singular) and by bus. Plus, Seba's girlfriend, Carola, lent me her school ID for a couple weeks while she has her dad's car, so now the micro (the city bus) costs me a third of what it used to. She's always promised to lend me her bike for the next few months, and has thus become my favorite person in the entire country of Chile. So the homework thing has started--I actually just turned in my first essay this afternoon. Goodbye summer. And, after much stress and limbo-like states of uncertainty, I decided not to take the Chilean and Hispanic Literature class I was really excited about. All of a sudden I'd found myself sitting in front of a stack of 350 pages of photocopies that needed to be read--and understood--by the test on Wednesday. And the thought of reading a couple of novels every couple of weeks in addition to my five other classes finally got the better of me. Plus, this way I don't have that much homework this weekend. It's ridiculous, though, how difficult it is for me to opt not to kill myself with my academic load--it's like I feed on masochistic stress levels.

Other than all the academic uncertainty that abounds, things have been pretty good, though not great. My efforts at distancing myself from Americans has pretty much landed me in a state of anti-socialism outside of my family and classes (where, as I've said, it's exceedingly difficult not to be with gringos). And living with my family has it's hard parts too, though I maintain that for the most part I'm very happy with my home situation. And I may even be making strides in getting my food portions scaled back a bit (not to mention the fact that random fruit and the specific yogurt I like seems to be appearing as if by magic in the kitchen). Tomorrow morning I'm heading for Santiago to visit my friend Emma, and possibly to spend some time with my host family's family. I think it'll be a really good change for a few days to be in a different apartment with a good friend and an exciting city to explore. And if nothing else, I'm getting a free ride to Santiago with a different friend who's also going there with her host family.

As a side note, today I had to go back to the Chilean ID (carne) place because they failed to write down my host family's names the first time I went. After a bit of confusion regarding lines, long numbers that I apparently have too many of (who knew?), and money that was being randomly handed to me and then asked for by somebody else, my picture was snapped for a second time, and every single finger was encased in black ink, then bathed in a strange white cream with only a small paper towel with which to clean them. Productive, as far as Chile goes. Oh, and both the setting sun over the horizon at the end of the sea, and the rising moon are the size of flat grapefruits, and look like they've been glued to a thin piece of colored paper against which they rise slowly above the hills. It's pretty sweet.

A critical fall from grace

My friendly unnamed Mexican man fell from grace today. I don't understand why someone would want to ruin a perfect lovely late-morning stationary bike ride by repeatedly telling me that they don't like black people. I find it further un-understandable that said person would scorn the thought of living in a place like the United States because they're are multiple languages spoken (unlike Chile--or any of Latin America, I was told--where there's only Spanish). Nevermind Brazil, nevermind Belize, nevermind Guyana (ok, I actually had to google that one). Said Mexican wouldn't even accept my point that in Chile and much of Latin America--and notably in Mexico--there are numerous indigenous languages spoken. I really had to restrain myself from hitting said idiot when he tried to tell me that indigenous languages are merely dialects of Spanish, and that as a history and literature major (thank god I took some fellow COPA students' advice and stopped telling people I'm a Latin American Studies major), I should really know about languages and cultures--apparently they're important. Ugh. When I left the gym, I made sure not to kiss him goodbye.

I hate finding out things like that about people; it makes me want to kick something, crush something with my shoe/boot, and then show that person what I crushed so they can have some visual aid in order to understand how much they suck. And I wonder...for all the problems the U.S. has with race relations, I don't think I've ever heard such blatant racism as that I've heard while in Latin America. Maybe it's just me desperately trying to cling to some semblance of political correctness in a sea of "negro" this and "chino" that and "gordo" every third phrase. But I think it's more than a difference in tact; my unnamed Mexican gave me the sense that there was hostility of the non-dormant, non-buried variety right below his veneer of ignorance. At the same time, though, I keep thinking about this ridiculous essay I've been trying to get through for my Post-Modern Chilean Lit class. It's this really jargony critique of "Latinoamericanismo"--of scholarship that looks at Latin America from the outside and places outside value systems on the culture and reinforces a colonial relationship without the acceptance of those within who actually experience the culture and the place. Basically, it's a critique of my major. So I find myself caught between whatever I've been told by my slightly eccentric ivory towers of Carleton, my sincere desire to experience and understand Chile and other Latin American countries (careful not to lump countries together...) from the inside as a quasi-native, my incredibly influenceable nature (I believe whatever I read until I read something else), my own self-conscious perceptions, my host dad who tries to get me to boil all of mexicanidad, costriccensidad, and chilenidad into one neat comparison, and this looney at the Y.

Ok, so my morning visit to the Y wasn't quite as uplifting as yesterday's, but for lunch we had cazuela, a typical Chilean dish that's basically everything you own that's large put into a stew (this seems to be a trend, I've found), and that made me much happier. My gigantic bowl heaved itself in front of me complete with an entire potato (size large), half a pumpkin, and an entire side of beef. Plus the stew. Then there were the accompaniments on the table that were to be added to the cazuela--carrots, celery, piebre (like pico de gallo), bread, etc. It was lovely. Plus, we had a cintillating conversation about ice cream, and my mom's friend Jasmine taught me some handy Chilean slang.

I later went to grammar class at just the moment Chile decided to rain again. On the upside, my grammar class was actually fun and interesting. Sweetness. On the bus ride home, the waves in the ocean were all cresting and violent and dark, with jagged swells crashing against the black rocks and upsetting the floaty-thingies further away from the shore. To the north, a dark wall was descending on the hills of Reñaca and Con Con, threatening my home in Viña, and blurring the line between land and sky. It was all very dark and forboding. Now I'm back at home, and feeling really happy and settled with my family, despite any differences I might feel at times. And I'm looking forward to a long weekend in Santiago with my mom, her family, and a friend from Denver!

Ay Mexico...me sigues!

I woke up to find that Chile had finally decided to let the sun shine in. When it's clear and sunny here, the colors are like nothing I've ever seen before--I never thought green could look the way it does, or that the sky could actually be that neon-blue. I went to the Y before lunch, and found myself a very friendly Mexican. I still don't really know his name, but the beyond-middle-aged man from Monterrey started chatting with me and was ecstatic to find out how much I enjoy tacos árabes and salsa. He couldn't believe that I was norteamericana, either (not that he was exactly quick to mistake me for chilena, but at least I'm getting somewhere). So we bantered a bit, and then he decided to go around the gym introducing me to people and declaring my "estudiante de intercambio" status (I think he was under the impression that I was in dire need of friends...which I can't really complain about). It was slightly embarrassing, but by the time I left the gym I was beaming like a looney. He wanted to know which country I liked better after he made it very clear that he was mexicano by birth, and, being sure to diplomatically answer the question while in range of non-mexicano gym-goers, I admitted how much I miss his country to the north. All in all, it was a very productive first few hours of my day; and I now think I've at least partially won over two of the three trainers.

As for lunch, lentils make me happy. And apparently so do beets.

I then headed off to Valpo for my class about the history of the Supreme Court in Chile. After clumsily asking every third person how to get to my classroom, I found myself one of six students trapped in a spacious, but chilly, sala with a professor who seemed intent on teaching us everything on the first day. This, however, was rather unsuccessful, given his undying devotion to the strongest Chilean accent ever in the history of time, as well as his insistence on speaking without moving his mouth or using his tongue. I spent most of the hour-and-a-half looking at his impressively unmoving mouth, thinking about how he kind of reminded me of that guy from this summer's ABC tv contest hosted by Regis Philbin and with Brandy and that guy from Baywatch. Anyway, this guy on the show had this great ventriliquist act where he would make fun of dubbing by throwing his voice so it wasn't in synch with his puppets. Really quite impressive. My professor wasn't quite as engaging, though.

Seeing as how it was a ridiculously gorgeous day, I decided to walk home from Valpo along the coast. For the past couple weeks I've been trying to gauge how long this would take. I think I underestimated. Granted, I wandered down a private yacht road (yeah, they've got those here), and then had to turn back when the guard told me I couldn't go through, and I took a detour in a grocery store, but it was still a solid 2+ hours of me being in a walking boot. It was fairly marvelous, though. The full moon even decided to rise high above the palm trees and street lamps against the freakishly blue 5:00 sky. At one point I stumbled upon the Castillo Wulff, which Cris and Pauli told me was just some weird guy's house, but actually turns out to be a museum complete with a look-out perch high above the traffic. Near home, I walked through the Plaza Mexico, which I found out was dedicated after Tlatelolco when Latin American countries decided against nuclear weapons...or something--the plaque was old. Oh, Mexico. So now I'm pretty tired, but happy--it's been a good day.

Rocking it in Valpo

After basking in the slight discomfort of finding myself surrounded by intimidating Chileans in my Anglosaxon influence class, I changed gears and basked in the wonder that is sushi (and not just any sushi--Happy Hour oferta sushi, accompanied by two pisco sours [!]). Amanda, Graciela, and later Mary Ellen, and I spent a good 2 1/2 hours enjoying our platters of round goodness, as well as slowly coming to the realization that pisco sours, especially when consumed with something light like sushi, can be quite potent...as well as yummy. And I think we made a new friend out of our mullet/rat tail-sporting waiter, despite Amanda's possessiveness of the last three sips of her first pisco sour.

After dinner, and some subsequent chocolate comprar-ing, we met Emily and Jeff and found ourselves in an overflowing karaoke bar filled with some impressively talented Chilean singers. We also learned that some bars charge you for the saltine cracker/ketchup and mayonaise "salsa" combo they put on the table with your drinks. When the entertainment started to take a turn for the worse, we headed nextdoor to what Chileans apparently consider to be an Irish Pub. I find it hard to believe that any bar without Bailey's on their menu would dare to call itself an Irish Pub.

I woke up ridiculously early for a Saturday morning, and headed out to meet everyone at la Católica for our tour of Valparaíso. We started at La Sebastiana, one of poet Pablo Neruda's houses, which is fairly high up on one of the city's 45 hills that overlook the ocean. I guess I should have expected a poet's house to be eccentric, but I was quite surprised to see a stuffed pink bird, slightly smaller than a thin flamingo, suspended in an oval plastic bubble and hanging from the ceiling of the third-floor living room. It's feet were all wrinkly and contorted, but it had a lovely view of the colorful houses of Valpo cascading down below us, one on top of the other, disappearing into the fog by the sea. There were also some seriously awesome old French maps of Latin America--the kind that look like they came out of a fun house mirror because the countries are all distorted and misshapen.

When we were Neruda-ed out, we headed out on a walking tour of part of the city. Turns out, Valparaíso was not built for those of us confined to our beloved walking boots, which are sometimes lovingly referred to as Billy Bob Boots. Aside from the fact that cities built on hills tend to be quite steep, this one, which was given UNESCO World Heritage status a few years ago, is almost entirely made up of cobblestone streets. And the thing is, when your shoe doesn't let you move your ankle, but there are fairly sizable rocks to be walked on, you tend to rock forward and backward a lot. It's kind of like those figurines that are all ridged when you pull the string taught, but all flopsy when you let go, except for the fact that my knees only bend in one direction, so instead of rocking and flopping gracefully, I tend to rock a little ways, and then jerk upright, and then correct a little bit to the back before steadying myself. It was cool, though, because my slow pace gave me more time to read the grafitti and gaze at the murals that adorns practically every single wall in the city. It was truly incredible--I even saw place where someone had tagged "Denver" onto a building. After our wandering, we rode down one of the cerros on my very first funicular (Valpo has 15 still-in-use elevators that transport people up and down the hills for a small fee). Then we found ourselves in the center of Valpo, surrounded by the very large, and very official, government buildings that surround the central plaza. There was even a great big office building that was built to look like a boat! I took a picture. COPA then tried to make us eat lunch in the Ripley's department store food court, but I went with some friends to a nearby cafe where we got ginormous sandwiches of yumminess.

We finished the tour by taking a boat ride around the port and along the coastline. In addition to almost breaking the boat's engine, and completely burying the other Emily in life jackets, we got to see the tank-sized sea lions that climb up onto floating platforms several hundred meters offshore and sleep in the sun. They seemed bothered by the fact that our captain insisted on circling around them quite noisily. They returned the favor by being really smelly.

Back at home, I went with Seba and his girlfriend Carola to take my host mom to the hospital because she's had this debilitating pain for a good four days now. Seba seemed fairly unconcerned, as did Carola and my mom. I don't think I've ever really spent much time in hospital waiting rooms before--even in Mexico I was in an actual room. Turns out they're quite pleasant, complete with the Mexico/Argentina World Cup game and kitchen catalogues. And now that she's gotten her mysterious injection, my mom keeps talking about going dancing. I for one, am pretty much drowning in sleepiness... once again, middle-aged Latin women show me up.

La anglosajona of Valparaíso

So I just finished my last class of the week--I was supposed to have had six or seven by now, but only three have actually happened; apparently all the rumors I heard about the gigantic frustration that is the Chilean university system were true. At the moment, though, I really can't complain because I just had an amazing first session of my "Anglo Saxon Influence in Valparaíso" class. It was listed under the Literature Department with a maximum capacity of 15, but by the time our small room on the third floor of Edificio Gimpert was literally bursting (and there was still a fairly steady stream of Chilean heads peering through the small window on the door and then bashfully forcing their way into the room), our professor decided to reconoiter a new sala. From what I know of Chilean (and Latin American, in general) university classes--which, granted, isn't much--professors tend to be fairly distant, there isn't much in the way of discussion or dialogue during class, and lecture tends to dominate. This professor, however, was hilarious and seemed deeply intent on getting to know all of us the very first day (all 40 plus at this point). He went around and had everyone introduce themselves and say why they were taking the class. For the first time this week I found myself in a classroom surrounded by unknown Chileans, without a fellow gringo in sight. This was a very good thing, but it also left me feeling a bit like I was going to throw up. When it was finally my turn to speak, my introduction was met by Profe Vergaro's astute observation that my Spanish wasn't perfect which, of course, I had to concede. He spent the rest of the hour-and-a-half, though, finding ways to incorporate my extranjera status into the syllabus, and by the end of the class he was joking about making sure no one taught me any garabatos, or Chilean bad words. (I think, at least). I'm still not exactly sure what the class is going to be about--it pretty much seems like we write an essay and do an oral presentation on whatever we want that relates to the Anglo Saxon patrimony of Valparaíso--but it seems like a really fun place to spend 1 1/2 hours of my Friday afternoons. Plus, I can't really drop it now that everyone's been instructed to censor their language around me. So I'll see how it goes--I've gotta say that finding myself in a room with forty fifth-year Spanish communication majors is slightly intimidating--but if nothing else, it'll be a good experience. According to our prof, we'll be contributing to the recovery of cultural memory. And the syllabus even said something about archive-diving and field trips!

It's been an interesting past few days. My first class was cancelled because the prof was stuck in Santiago (of course they didn't tell us this until we'd been waiting outside the classroom for twenty minutes). Yesterday I woke up at 7am to the impressively chilly, and impressively still dark, Chilean morning to get myself to my 8:15 Urban and Regional History of Valparaíso class in the Instituto de Historia. Unfortunately, construction has suspended all classes there until August 14 (or August 7...we 5 uninformed gringos have heard both and we're still not sure). I did, however, have a 3 hour Chilean and Hispanic Contemporary Lit class on Wednesday. It was fairly packed with international students (another thing the university apparently failed to explain to us is that most Chileans don't actually start going to classes until next week), but the prof was really funny and engaging and, though it sounds like a ton of work, I think it'll be a good class. I also had my COPA grammar class, which, as far as grammar classes go, sounds pretty decent. So I'm still waiting on several classes, but it's fun to start to get a feel for what the next several months are going to be like; and to get a good dose of extra humility several hours a day.

Other things here are good as well. I think I'm finally getting a feel for who I'm supposed to give my little paper card to at the gym, how to fix my tv when the cable suddenly goes out, how many layers are actually necessary at different times of the day, and what kind of people I'm actually living with. I was talking with Amanda last night about how it feels to live in a house where the mother does nothing more than cook and do laundry (and be an Avon Lady on the side). We decided that it's not the stay-at-home-mom thing that feels weird to us, but rather the fact that food and laundry seem to almost completely make up the identity (or what we perceive to be the self-imposed identity) of our host mothers. It's a strange feeling when 90% of the conversations you have with a person revolve around the enormous plate she's just put in front of you. By the fifth time I've assured her that yes, I really do like my carrots the way she's cut them, I begin to feel confused about how to relate to a person who puts so much thought and energy into something that I find to be relatively unimportant. But then I remember how hard she's trying to make sure I feel comfortable, and how nice of a person she really is, and it strikes me how much living with a different group of people makes you almost step outside of yourself and look around at your own expectations, ways of thinking, and at times arbitrary systems of valorization. And on a more concrete level, I remember that she's buying me tuna in water instead of oil as well as the special kind of yogurt I like.

Ah, no eres chilena...don't worry; it's okay

My local YMCA now knows that I am definitely not Chilean. I only have to open my mouth in response to the trainer's question, and the secret's out. It's cool though; unlike in Mexico, where I never could manage to hide my lack of morena-ness, I at least have a chance here of passing for native so long as I stay mute. And people seem nice at "La Y;" plus, I'm learning to weigh myself in kilos.

My host dad came home today for a dentist appointment, and I had a great time with him, my brother Seba, and Seba's friend Felipin chatting after la comida. My dad told me the origen of the word "O.K.," which, according to him, comes from a Mr. Oscar Kake who worked in the port in Manhattan circa 1640. Before any boat could leave, he had to sign off on it, and had the habit of just signing his initials. This, my dad explained to me (amid not-so-stifled laughter from Seba and Felipin), was how the word managed to spread throughout the world--including to Bolivia, which interestingly does not have an ocean. It was super-exciting to feel like I could follow all the witty Chilean banter. And even when I couldn't, I've become quite adept at turning on the laughter button whenever other people signal that something's funny. In the afternoon, I went wandering around Viña again, and even made it up to Sausalito where la Católica's stadium and picturesque lake are located. Later, on my way through the Plaza de Viña, I saw an old woman bathing out of a bucket in the middle of the packed square. She was surrounded by sleeping dogs, all curled up in tight balls against the chilly afternoon. A couple horses were standing nearby, on hand for whatever tourists or Viñaites might suddenly opt for a ride around the plaza. The manicured grass and flower beds were underfoot as she splashed the water all over her large body. It was approaching rush hour, and the square was filled with people walking home from school and work, all of them either outright staring at this woman, glancing every once in awhile, or defiantly not looking at all. And, not knowing what else to do, I joined the passing crowd, alternating between the type that chooses not to look, and the type that glances inconspicuously.

Tomorrow I have my first two classes--Latin American Poetry and Chilean and Hispanic Literature. The lit class starts 10 minutes after the poetry class, yet they're at least 25 minutes apart. I'm looking forward to inconspicuously leaving earlyfrom the first, and then arriving late to the second. It's cool, though--if nothing else, I can entertain my profe's with my new story about the origin of the word "O.K."