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.