el perseguidor

i had an excellent day yesterday. at about 3, i met with ilana and abby to eat lunch at a thai restaurant in bellavista (which is quickly becoming my favorite section of santiago). it was delicious. we started off with a bowl of coconut soup (which i had been craving) and shared two entrees of pad thai and curried chicken w/jasmine rice. we topped it off with something akin to mango creme brulee. pretty much the best meal i've had in santiago so far. then we went to another friend, rochelle's, choir recital. they performed some gabriel garcia lorca poetry in acapella and later accompanied by a guitar. it was really beautiful, as it was interspersed w/students reading some of his letters and journal entries as well. then it went from good to awesome as we headed to a jazz club in bellavista (www.elperseguidor.cl). it was a little pricey, but the band was off the chain. you know its a good show when you can't stop smiling the whole time they're playing. there was a drummer, a bassist (stand up and electric) a guitarist, a sax and a trumpet. they played everything from funk to latin to sultry soul and they rocked every song. youtube Cristian Cuturrufo is all i have to say.

i love toast.

so growing up with buttery oven toast, i had always rejected toaster toast's inability to melt butter into delicious little pools of salty oily goodness. maybe my home toaster was set too high or too low, but in my search for comforting breakfast foods in chile's bare gastronomical landscape i have discovered i love toast. grab it hot out of the toaster, juggling it as you quickly spread the "light margarine - with more butter taste!" (the smell of which always reminds me of go-go, my grandmother) across its crispy face, then a splat of homemade orange plum jam. enjoy the crunchy outside, one face of which has been softened and sweetened, and sink into the chewy inside. wash down with your cup of milky green tea w/ginger, which you found at a random chinese import shop near your favorite metro stop. breakfast is back. there are some chilean foods i've found that i like though:

pan de miel (honey bread) - for about 30 cents i can pickup a fist-sized powder sugar dusted flattened ball of bready goodness. after the biscotti moistness of the majority of chilean "cookies" i love being able to sink my teeth into something instead of it breaking off in my mouth. it is lightly spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, which reminds me fondly of gingerbread.

"digestives" - like animal crackers for grownups, these guys come in four palm sized disks per package and go down perfect with chocolate milk. they have the wholesome texture of graham crackers, but are a little moister and lightly sweet. i still haven't quite figured out how to ask for them in spanish - i usually just get them from the vending machine. 

vegetariano - i got this sandwich at a restaurant one time. sandwiches in chile are not meant to be picked up. if you try to fit them in your mouth, you will fail. they are served w/ a knife and fork and laugh at the idea of portability. this sandwich was about 7 inches tall of quesillo (a soft, fresh white cheese) avocado, green peppers, and tomato on toasted wheat bread. i make a reasonably sized, americanly hand-held version at home.

cao cola - artur's powdered chocolate milk. there is only two milk options in my house - whole and lactose free (which always smells traitorous), so when i blend the never dissolving cao cola in my glass of full fat milk i get a double dose of goodness - bursts of sweetened cocoa powder and the comfort of milk fat. 

frac bi cappuccino cookies  - i try not to buy them anymore, b/c i can and will eat the whole package in one go. from the moment you open the package, you know these thumbsized guys are going to make up for all the nescafe in chile - they smell more like coffee than anything you've encountered so far. and they do. oh yes, with their dark oreo textured outer cookies lovingly protecting the "bi" layer of creme and coffee inner goodness, they soothe your lack-of-real-coffee troubled soul better than any starbucks. 

nepolitana - all the comfort of an empanada (hot cheese, tasty bread pocket) but with flavors! tomato, ham, and some green stuff - it actually mixes flavors in a way i thought chileans were terrified of. will hold you over three more hours till lunch. 

all that to say i'm doing pilates in my room on a nightly basis now :) 

some non-foodstuffs i'm liking about santiago.

artisan markets/street sales. even when it all starts to look the same, i can't tear myself away. my love of bargain shopping + junk+ random finds+pirate nature (attracted to shiny things) makes me cross the street to walk by the hippie street vendor with his hemp jewelry and gypsy scarves or realize i've just spent two hours wandering through santa lucia. again. several of the vendors know my face now. but its awesome - with the crafts people, there's new stuff every week and you always find some booth you didn't know existed before. 

walking. if my bag doesn't weigh a ton, i love to walk where ever i can (in the daylight, mom). you get people-watching on the move, find new corners that you love, bits of architecture, new shops or events. i feel powerful when i'm on the move - i know where i'm going, or at least where i'm wandering too - finding a good gait, the wind in your hair, good shoes. you're rolling. you also get a lungful of pollution, but i think its worth it. 

people watching on public transportation. i love flirting with babies and toddlers. do the long glance and grin - look away - look back grin again b/c they're still staring at you. give the mom a "your kid's adorable" smile if they notice you.  

street art. as i'm sure you've gathered from my photos, i like the patina of graffiti that the corners of the city will take one. some of it's boring and trashy, but there are some clever diamonds in the rough that i love finding. 

knowing my way around. there is definitely a sense of satisfaction in knowing which micro to get on, where to get off, how to pronounce the street. going somewhere new is like solving a puzzle, and then adding that piece to my knowledge as a whole. 

okay. so i'm about to go thai food lunching and vintage shopping with some friends. so try not to be too jealous and i'll write up my negatives list later... :) love you all.

mendoza, argentina

we had a couple of days off last week for the chilean labor day so a few friends and skipped over the border to argentina for the weekend. okay, so the skipping part was a lie, because it definitely took us 14 hours to get there on thursday, but that was because a brazilian fruit truck tipped across the winding two lane over the andes and blocked traffic for 4 hours solid. we built an awesome snowman during this period. then another 2 hours at the border stamping passports and such. i think about a quarter of santiago decided it would be nice to go to argentina for the holiday. but i made it back sunday in 8 hours, which is about right. the drive is truly gorgeous though - each hairpin turn opening up another thousand feet of snowcapped, achingly beautiful mountainside right out your bus window. there is nothing quite like a mountain that makes you think "majestic" and seeing nothing on the horizon but blue sky and dozens of snowy peaks is pretty much breath taking. so being stuck on that road for four hours wasn't quite tortuous. the lack of bathroom on the bus is another story. 

after crashing in our hostel by 11 thursday night, we were serenaded to sleep by the party that went on until about four in the morning in the patio outside our window. we got up bright and early for our bike tour of the local wineries and had some interesting conversations at breakfast with a few hardcore partiers who were still going strong at 7 in the morning. apparently the night life in argentina is such: the discoteques fill up around 2:30, past which it is illegal to enter (in mendoza, at least) and then you party till the club closes at 6 and hang around for a bit until the panaderias (bakeries) open at 7. needless to say, we did not indulge in this insanity during our brief stay. that bike and wine tour was wonderful - we rented bikes for the day and rode through the sunny countryside, with the andes anchoring the horizon. we had tours of family vineyards and sampled their specialties, had a leisurely and delicious meal on table made of wine barrels in the shade of a bodega and ended with a artisan chocolate and liqueur workshop. it was wonderfully laid back and relaxing after the smog and crowds of santiago - and much cheaper too! i really do like chile and santiago - but weekends like this make me realize how much more i want to travel. listening to the argentinean accents after hearing only chileans for two months was a bit like waking from a dream - they spoke at such a reasonable pace and with the exception of a few lisping accent quirks, so clearly. i didn't miss hardly a word the whole trip. the next day we wandered through the city of mendoza, which is about the size of birmingham. it has the charm of an old southern town - tall, established trees line the streets and crinkle the tiled sidewalk, hodgepodge buildings of various decades and even centuries rub shoulders. once more, we had a huge, delicious and totally affordable lunch before ambling through a few of the many parks and a large local artisan fair. after coffee and cake we headed back to the hostel to get our list together for dinner, or rather, breakfast-for-dinner.  we had all been craving american breakfast for a while, so in the hostel's community kitchen we made mounds of french toast with honey and cheese eggs. delicious. i'm so glad to have found cooking friends here. we celebrated cinco de mayo yesterday with a huge spicy feast of chicken enchiladas, fajita salad, fish tacos and several pounds of guacamole. as always, more pictures on flickr. 

maipo

yesterday i went for a hike in the maipo valley - a beautiful valley that ends with a glacier covered mountain peak. the area is very rich in mineral deposits, which gave a rich array of hues to the mountains and rocks that had fallen from them. the valley was strewn with boulders from the receding glacier and numerous rock falls. i went with a group of mostly americans (one girl from england) who where either intercambios or had graduated recently and were teaching english down here at an english institute for adults. getting there was a bit of an adventure in itself. we met at the metro and then found two collectivos (group taxis with a fixed fare) to carry us to our destination "cascadas de animas (waterfall of souls). when we arrived there we were told that our guide would be here in an hour and it would be about $10 per person. and that we couldn't go anywhere without the guide. balking at the obvious extortion, we caught the next bus to san gabriel, where we were told by our collectivo driver that all the gringos go and that it was free. free sounded good. we got off at a random corner that our driver assured us was san gabriel. after asking a few of the amused looking inhabitants, we were directed down a road that would take us to "some paths to climb." one of our members had a guidebook and found our location on the map. we seemed to be near a place called "banos de morales" which had hiking trails, hot springs etc. so off we went, trekking up the dusty mountain road, our eight gringo selves. after about twenty minutes we hit a snack shack with a bathroom and we decided to check our progress. there we learned we were about 20 km from banos de morales. at that point we decided hitchhiking would be our best option. four of us got in the cab of one nice young couple's truck, but they said the other four would have to wait, because riding in the bed of the truck op these unpaved roads would be too dangerous. i was in the cab, and the couple was from santiago, headed to the banos morales for the weekend. about half way there we were passed by another truck - whose bed was filled with our compatriots, blowing and bouncing dustily in the wind. we all got there in one piece, albeit some pieces dustier than others. then we began our hike - which was pretty much straight up until we crested the valley.  the first five minutes separated us into the fast and slow hikers. the fast hikers made it to the lake before we had to turn around to go catch our bus. going back down was a totally different challenge - i ended up running/bouncing down about a third of it. when we had the breath we exchanged stories about our travels  and experiences. dave, a practicing buddhist who grew up in vermont, had been traveling bolivia, peru and argentina for two months before coming to work as an english teacher here in santiago. he told us about the "hostel scene," five day machu picchu hikes and sketchy bolivian street food. danielle told us about moroccan whiskey (sweet spearmint tea - b/c they don't drink alcohol there) and spain (where she has studied for the last year). i managed to rip the seat of my linen pants when attempting to wash my hands in the lake. fortunately my scarf covered the 11 inch rip nicely. the bus back was dusty and crowded and quite entertaining. dave and i switched ipods and is now hooked on architecture in helsinki. our fellow passengers were quite enamored with us. they ordered their grandchildren out of the back seats so we could all sit together, sang us a chilean folk song, gave us  a liter of coca-cola and showed us where to get off for the metro. then they all said goodbye as we disembarked and waved farewell out of the window as they pulled out.

no soy un nugget ("i am not a nugget")

so two of the guinea pigs had babies. and they're pretty much adorable. and totally edible.... i will be sure to let you all know how that meal goes down. on a related note, we had chicken again today, because a cat got into the hen house.... 

i met today with the teacher i'll be teaching english classes with for the rest of the semester. she is young, sweet and eager to teach. i think it will be a really good experience. the school is called st. francis of asisi and it was really funny to see little monks with bald pates cut out of construction paper on the front of all the elementary classroom doors. i'll be helping to teach the lessons to classes of 40 4th graders, and especially helping with pronunciation. kind of intense to be "the example" on how to pronounce a language. 

i got my bip escolar yesterday (yay for 25 cent fares because i'm smart and po). on a whim i got off the bus about halfway to try to find a bookstore that sold pocketsize maps of the city. mission accomplished and now i no longer have to pull out my comically large full sized map when i need to check a street, which should come with a giant sign on the back that says "i'm lost! please take advantage of me!" i also walked the rest of the way (about a mile and a half, i think) to my destination, which was very pleasant. there is a sense of accomplishment that comes from recognizing your way around a city that was previously a jumble of similar looking streets and indecipherable systems. as i noted my progress in my now discreet pocket map, i thought about other cities i'd like to conquer. and how to travel to them since i'm going to be pretty broke for the next few years. any suggestions would be welcome : )

i'm loving my new family. the only problem is i only know about half of their names, because the 93 yr old aunt calls everyone "hijita" (diminuative of daughter) and the mom and the maid refer to the aunt as "la tia" or "abuelita" ("the aunt" "grandmother") and the mom refers to the maid as "senora." the husband calls the wife "corazon" or "amorcita" (my "heart" or "little love") so i know neither the aunt or the maid's name, and i wrote down the mom's name somewhere... the husband's name is william (billy for short) and he works up north during the week as an agronomist, so i only see him on the weekends (which is why i know his name, he is talked about in the 3rd person). and artur is the 3 yr old. he gets reprimanded enough that i picked his up too. he is pretty adorable, but have 8 younger siblings makes me less than susceptible to the charms of a 3 yr old. he knows this. he can sense my rebellion to the authority of his winsome smile alternated with menacing frown. i will NOT give you my cookies. NO. MINE. okay. the only reason you got the cookies was because your mom came in, and i cannot politely override her unspoken assumption that i will give you my cookies because you are 3 and you don't know any better than just to take them. but i am soooo on to you. i saw that gleam of victory in your eye. it's on. i am going to hide my cookies way better next time.

the maid is great - she's a wonderful cook - i almost never have to put salt on anything and i always clean my plate. its all very fresh and well-seasoned (whereas i think the only spice chileans are really familiar with is salt). she also is a marathon talker. i think she utilizes circular breathing during our "conversations" because i can get in a word about every 10 minutes. which is fine, because sometimes i totally lose the thread of comprehension and the entires plot-line takes a dive for about thirty seconds until i pick up some context again - oh so we went from the time you got robbed at knifepoint which is where that scar came from to the new chinese herbal remedy for something that you heard about on the discovery channel - i have no idea how that happened, but you are smiling, so i'll smile too...  she's super sweet though - always making sure i have enough to eat - she doesn't want me to lose my "watita" (little belly) on her watch. i'm going running again tomorrow morning...

new pad.

roosters do not say "cock-a-doodle-doo" in chile. i don't know who invented that well enunciated phrase to come out of the rooster's beak for children's books, but i doubt he or she was ever awakened by one. at four in the morning the sound a rooster makes is that it is being stepped on. by something heavy. heavy enough to expel out all air in a harsh an raucous cacophony that sounds nothing, i repeat, nothing like "cock-a-doodle-doo." i think i'm going to put my free ear plugs from delta airlines to work, as this will be a daily occurrence for me now. the tradeoff being fresh eggs every morning. this i can live with :) they live in the backyard, their pens almost completely shrouded in greenery, as well as those of their neighbors, the guinea pigs (to whom i apparently shouldn't get too attached). my new house is pretty much amazing. inside and out it looks almost like it was lifted directly out of some decorating magazine from the seventies. pictures will be posted soon. even the appliances in the kitchen are from that time period. the peruvian couple i am living with is super sweet - they have really welcomed me in as part of the family, including letting them know when i'll be home, and calling if i'll be late, so they won't worry. they only have one child, a three year old boy, who is rather jealous of the attention i'm getting, but i think we'll get along fine. the house belongs to the father's 93 year old aunt (hence the decor) and they have a maid that keeps everything on its doily. 

for those of you who don't know - chile is a bit at odds with all of it's neighbors, who are jealous/have had many physical and or political disputes regarding territorial lines and rights. therefore living with a peruvian family will be a bit of a sticking point for some things. the chilean attitude towards peruvians is much like many american's attitudes towards mexicans - that they are "small, dark and ugly" as one student told me the other day. obviously this is a stereotype, and certainly not true in the case of the family i am staying with. i can already feel a bit of the tension though - when i was telling him what classes i was taking, when i got to "chilean culture" the father said "well you won't learn too much there" with a wry grin. later when i was talking to him about biology, he asked me why i had come to chile to study and that peru was actually much more ecologically diverse and better for field study "it is poorer though" he added. 

next level of immersion

i'm moving today. i'll be living with a peruvian family in las condes (a very nice area) - apparently they wanted me from the beginning, but they had family guests up to this point. so off i go - i still know almost nothing about them, except they don't speak any english. and out comes my crutch. i've basically been speaking english at mireya's, so i'm going to have to take a deep breath and really kick into espanol gear in my brain.  i think the trickiest part will actually be reorienting myself to getting places, as i'm going to have to learn whole new areas of the micro (bus) system, which brings out whole new levels of self-doubt that i never knew i had. i took a couple new buses to get to a friend's house yesterday and my thought process is this: check my note, yes, this is for sure the bus i am looking for. check it again. yes. oh! that's the bus. isn't it?! yes. for sure, yes, get on! (sit down) did i get on the right bus? (look for confirmation somewhere inside) begin double checking landmarks as i go. okay. i'm on the right bus for sure. now where do i get off? ok. i know where that is. try to gauge how close i am. realize i have no idea. glue face to window and check sign name at every street. silently curse the old man who has fallen asleep at the window, blocking the majority of my view. for 30 minutes. feel doubt as to whether i've missed the stop and am now looping back around the entire route. there's the stop! i knew it. now what bus am i looking for....   

the only thing that makes me smile when i think about transantiago at the moment is that soon (fingers crossed) i will be getting a student discount on my bip card, which is like 75% off, which will be amazing, since my biggest expense right now is definitely transportation. why did i not get this before, you might be asking... well, because i was a bit illegal. yes - i had my visa and everything, but what no one told me was that i had to register myself with the international police and then get fingerprinted and get an official chilean id, called a cedula. now that i have completed the kafka-esque task of threading my way through the chilean bureaucracy (about 7 hours of line-waiting and attempting to explain my ignorance in spanish) i will soon be rewarded with my cedula, with which i can apply for a "bip escolar." yay. 

chor-y-pan! chor-y-pan!

so i had my first asado wednesday. "asar" is "to roast" so it basically a chilean barbeque. after making our first recycled paper in my paper arts class (awesome, i know), i waited almost 40 minutes for my bus home. its moments like these that have ruined my romantic notion of public transportation - its kind of like communism - looks good on paper, just impossible to get right in reality. i got home and showered of the effects of the wait and walk in the santiago summer sun before running back out into it so go to the asado, which was nominally starting at 2 (which means 4 in chilean time). i got off at the banquedano metro stop and walked across the river  (which is a brown trickle right now in the dry season) down a little street that would take me through bellavista - the bohemian neighborhood - to the foot of cerro san cristobal. one thing i love about chileans is that they love surrounding themselves with nature, people and animals. apartments have trees escaping out the window, all the neighborhoods have vines, bushes and trees nearly blocking the view of every house and street animals have full reign. there are stray dogs and cats everywhere, but you don't see anyone treat them unkindly. and there are parks everywhere. cerro (a large hill) san cristobal is the largest of these, and from the top, on a morning after a heavy rain (to clear the smog) has the most amazing view of the city. i'm planning on hiking up there one winter morning before i leave.

so after hiking up half the mountain, i finally reached the picnic site, where i could smell the chorrizos roasting, will the bread toasting over the cooler coals. chorrizo is chilean sausage and comes in links and is very tasty (and i normally am not a sausage fan), very flavorful without being overly salty or fatty. combined with the toasty bread, it makes "chor-y-pan" which my dutch friend was chanting excitedly to herself before we were served. the group i was with was several of the same people from bowling and some new intercambios and chileans. i meet several australians and a few more germans and some more peeps from california and new york. the asado was fun and relaxed, and i actually felt very comfortable speaking spanish for the first time in a while. i walked back to the metro with a few of my new friends and i headed to a sushi dinner with danielle and some of her friends from her university. and yes. the sushi here is delicious.

new friends and, um, characters.

i miss nestle break and bake chocolate chip cookies. i went to a meeting yesterday at san joaquin about the intercambio party that UC's "comision de acogida" (welcome committee) puts on as a tandem welcome to exchange students and an information fair for interested chileans. apparently i was the first norteamericana to ever show up to one of these meetings - even though the majority of intercambios are from the States. way to represent, guys. anyway - so each country has a stand, where they serve some traditional/unique foods, play some music, traditional dress, dance, photos, etc. The director's example of traditional american food was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. i suppose mcdonald's doesn't count because it is everywhere. but back to the cookies - they give us some money for the food, and i am definitely going to try and hunt down stuff for real chocolate chip cookies. there is something about the flour here - it just doesn't set the same. i'll be sending out an email to the rest of the usa kids, so hopefully  can get some help on encompassing our entire nation in a booth. yeah. 

i had lunch with jenifer (a chilena) and gabriel (brazileno) - jenifer showed us the best cheap place to eat on campus - the engineering cafeteria. they are both geography majors and jenifer had studied in brazil, so she and gabriel were kind of language buddies - he helped her with her portuguese and she helped him with his spanish (although he spoke very well). she told us about hiking up the volcano at Pucon, which one of my friends did this weekend. I really want to go - and hopefully i can get a group together soon. We talked about the relative dangers of different major cities - Santiago, Brooklyn, Rio - gabriel said anything feels safe after growing up in Rio, and we all had a good laugh after i tried to explain the trifunctionality of my pepper spray (pepper, tear gas and UV tracer for later identification). after i walked with them to their classes, i still had about 2 hours until the next item on my list - bowling, at 5:30.  i brainstormed for the america stand - which was surprisingly difficult, because so much of american culture has spread so quickly throughout the world it was hard to think of unique things to offer that had not yet been globalized. i found myself focused mostly on southern things - sweet iced (mint) tea, sweet potato casserole, southern rock, folk and bluegrass (with fiddles, washboards and broomstick basses), new orleans jazz. traditional dress had me a bit stumped - um, jeans? i guess native american in general, cowboy hats, Converse sneakers? Polo? GAP? Sport were a bit easier - football, lacrosse, baseball and oh! NASCAR.

i explored the humanities library and listened to some students with a guitar playing and singing songs in english, german and spanish on one of the many grassy quads. i was waiting in line to get some ice cream from a kiosk in the student center when i was approached by a rather unusual character. he was a little taller than me, and his polo shirt was tucked into his belted khaki pants (remember, i am no longer in tuscaloosa - this is unusual dress here). pointing to my green sweater he said (in spanish) "you should had worn that for the festival yesterday" - processing, processing "oh - saint patrick's day, si" (guys: this is not an effective pick up line, for future reference). "Are you american?" he asked loudly in english, his voice had transformed, picking up an odd british accent with an oratorial lilt. he continued to converse loudly and insistently with me in english and by the time i had paid for my icecream i knew that he played bridge and spoke hebrew and french as well and was planning on going to israel this summer. [at this point, i was fairly certain this was the same guy who had struck up a conversation with my friend (also gringa) in the metro while reading his hebrew newspaper and talked her ear off until she was rescued by mireya picking her up at the station.] after awkwardly inviting me to a "cup of teeeea" (which consisted of sitting at the table right next to where we were standing) we continued our conversation. during the next 20 minutes i was told where the best place in south america is to learn spanish (santa cruz, bolivia - b/c the monks from spain taught it to them and they live in the jungle, so it remained uncorrupted), that british women are actually very sweet and romantic at their core (his english tutor was british - hence the odd accent - which, as it waned in and out, and was combined with the strange inflection of someone speaking their non native tongue, really sounded like someone mimicking a eccentric british professor, and doing a rather poor job) and that he wrote romantic poetry  - about women, and politics. and that he thought southern girls (this from a girl from georgia he had met) were very sensual and also innocent. and that poetry "was a means to communicate between two eternities." i was really glad i had both an icecream and a coke to bury my laughter into, because in combination with the loud english, awkward topics, and bad british accent i was also being graced with his very thick and animated eyebrows and wild waving hand gestures. i finally excused myself to go meet the group to go bowling and i couldn't stop laughing all the way back to the station.

bowling was fun  - i met a girl from holland who has been teaching english here for the past few years and told me that crocs started in holland as a design project based in their traditional wooden clogs. i also got to know two guys from germany and finally met some fellow southerners - a girl from georgia and one from tennessee. they seemed very excited about cooking southern food for the stand - and rochelle (from georgia) even has grits! on the way back on the metro i got dyslexic and missed my stop, so i got off at the next one, changed sides and went back. back in the right direction, i grabbed the overhead handle and settled in for the 15 minute ride, when the guy next to me shifted closer in my direction and i noticed the newspaper he was reading was in....hebrew. yeah. so. god has a sense of humor - especially since ricardo's country club is my same stop. on this ride, i was treated to another loud conversation, insistently in english, about the history of the metro - and the reason why there is no line 3 (not worth the story...), a conversation in hebrew on his cell phone, a story about a jewish taxi driver, and given the presupposition that i was neither a woman, nor an american, and i were to go to iraq and ask a single man where he was from, apparently he would respond: i don't know, i am not married. the things you can learn on the metro.

baila conmigo

well, i'm having a hard time going to sleep with the ringing in my ears. i just got back (at 4 am) from my first (and probably last) brush with santiago nightlife. a group of about 7 of moni's friends and i caught a bus down to our destination around 12:30 ( things don't really get going until about 2 here, and they go till 6 or later in the morning - we left at 3). it was loud, sweaty and festive, with several levels of dance floor and screen up of extended music videos - but i feel like to really make the most of it you should be moderately wasted, slightly deaf already and looking to score. as i was none of the above, it was fun, but not something i'll go out of my way to experience again.

classes are going well - i can understand all of my teachers, but if a student makes a comment or asks a question, i can't make out a thing. my prerequisites for full comprehension are: enunciation, minimal background noise, voice directed at me and logical transitions. this makes conversations on public transit difficult, which i suppose is why the trio of bostonians on the metro with me this morning were speaking loud enough (in heavily accented american) for the entire car to hear. i felt mixed shame and amusement as they all had their metro maps spread wide front of them and were forcefully discussing their next plan of action. i gave the more harried looking man a sympathetic smile as we came to my stop, "Universidad Catolica - that must be where all the catholics go to school" was the last comment i heard on my way out.

i eat these for breakfast.

called "tuna" in chile, prickly pear was one of the most common plants i saw when we made our way winding the mountains to olmue, the town where mireya's mother lives. although we had our first rain of the season on the way down there, coming back through the mountains, the view was amazing - rows and ruddy cordilleras, speckled with green and overlapping like shark teeth. then you would round one of the many curves and they would open up to reveal a glistening city or ocean. olmue is a small town about 30 minutes from vina del mar and valparaiso. valparaiso is basically the bigger, more disorderly port city and vina is its cleaner little sister with a pretty beach. valparaiso is like a strange mixture of the bright colors of seaside, the feeling of decayed glory (with a few bright remaining specimens) of new orleans and the drunken angles of san francisco streets (and the hippies). i saw more tourists there than i have yet, with their dog-eared guide books, ready cameras and obviously ostentatiously practical walking shoes. i heard portuguese, , french and english (both british and american). the seafood is of course, fresh and delicious here. i has "pastel de jaiba" for lunch which was basically melted cheese baked with chunks of fresh crab (pic on flickr). very delicious, and good for my cholesterol i'm sure.

mireya's mother's house was a treat in itself - built by mireya's father of a rosy pine, it was spacious and surrounded by an amazing garden and orchard. he had a passion for gardening and several of the trees were grafted together - an avocado tree that bore four different varieties, and an apple tree whose left half ripened early in the summer and whose right half was just now coming to fruit. we brought back pounds of fresh apples, pears, onions, corn, peppers, plums, and eggs (from down the road). sometimes you forget where the fruit in the fluorescently-lighted grocery aisles came from and plucking a fresh apple off of a tree just seemed magical.

that saturday night i had my first taste of chilean night culture. moni (mireya's daughter) and i had dinner with the 30-something year old couple that lives in her grandmothers other house (about 20 yards away). she had hung out with them a lot over the summer and they had invited us to make and eat pizza. starting at about 8:30 pm we drove down to the local grocery and picked up the supplies. then we drove about 20 minutes out to pick up his goddaughter. the husband was very animated and talkative and kept a conversation going the whole time is was anywhere near him. he told me how his goddaughter's parents were learning english with this "english without barriers" program (yes, the same one as in the movie "spanglish"), so when we got to the house, he had them pull it out and show everyone. they had just finished the first lesson, which involved introductions, and thought that the handshake greeting was rather cold. after having been kissed about 100 times since being here, i have to agree. the conversation on the way back to the house was mostly about "pokemon" - not the cartoon, it's their word for what are basically "emo" kids. my chemical romance is very popular here and there is a whole subculture of manga, punk, eyeliner-on-boys, choppy bangs over the eyes, stripes and combat boots that creates a look referred to as "pokemon," i think because of the beginning with japanese cartoons (hello kitty and beyond). apparently there is a whole unspoken code of how to "be" pokemon. its pretty intense, down to the way you pin your hair. now at about 10:30 we start making the pizza, which we sit down to around 11. we ate and talked for three more hours, until i was almost falling asleep between conversation topics, which ranged from his adventures in the andes to how chile is perceived by america, to public transportation to food i have to try. i only grossly misunderstood a few questions - abrupt topic changes throw me off because my context clues get disrupted. 

and about that prickly pear - i did eat it for breakfast, after mireya had unarmed it. they sell them in bags with the spikes removed (they will jump you!) and you have to peel off the thick outer skin with a fork and knife. the inside is bright green and full of seeds the size of regular grapeseeds. its is light and sweet, a little melon-y, like honeydew. i think it would make a good juice, because you have to eat it through the seeds (just kind of swallow them along with it).

(re)orientation

i'm not going to lie - i was pretty stressed yesterday about starting school. no one had contacted me about when my orientation was or given me any directions as to find it. i didn't have an email, or anyway to access my classes to find out where they were and when they would begin. i had hitherto not been stressed, because i thought that i would find all this out at orientation "novatos" (new students"). but yesterday i discovered that that orientation was for all students (who had confirmed their schedules moths ago) and was told that the orientation for intercambio students was the 10th (classes start the 5th). oh, and i should go to the casa central campus (a 20 min metro ride) but their office closes in 10 minutes. oops. fortunately, God is sovereign. after making the metro journey this morning to san joaquin campus (where the novatos orientation was) , which involves 3 changes of metro lines. i left after about an hour of disorganized crow following which brought me to a mass (which i could hear and not see) and a student organization fair from which all i was able to gather was that theatre people are the same in every country.

i then trekked it back to casa central, feeling a mixture of self pity and pride (because i was totally rocking figuring out where i was going in the metro!) where i ran smack dab into.... intercambio orientation! after talking to the director i found that there had been a memo lost in the information transfer from UC to UAB to me (it happen a lot to kids from alabama, she said) but all was well because i could go to the last session at 3 (it was now 11:30) and i wouldn't miss anything as they were all the same (b/c of this frequent problem). 

so with about 3 hours to kill, i ambled around the block, documenting some of the creative stencil graffiti (see flickr) and snacking on a hot dog smothered in avocado and mayonnaise and a cone of chocolate softserve (healthy, i know, but it was something i knew for sure how to order). i then wandered around to the lovely san lucia park which is right across the way. they have a daily indigenous craft fair, where i was wooed by a charming old man to listen to and later purchase an ocarina (a round flute handmade from clay and its printed history AND 2 songs ALL for ONLY 1.000 pesos! about $2). i then made my way through the charming winding paths up the hill to castle like turrets from where you would be able to see the whole city, but for the smog. the only downside is that all the nooks, crannies and benches in the park make for a hot makeout spot and there were pda-ing couples at every other turn. nevertheless, it will be a nice place to do reading for school and stretch my legs between classes.

orientation went well, with the majority of students in my group being from germany, france and bolivia. i have about three weeks to settle on what classes i want. i also signed up for a volunteer program called "english opens doors" to help with english tutoring/classes in some of the cities poorer areas. i have my first class tomorrow afternoon - i'm a little nervous but i think i'll like it a lot - its a class on chilean culture, specifically for intercambio students, so it should be a good transition.

(and the note in the photo reads: chelsea you eyes alone are more beautiful then this view.)

of llamas and crepes

i had my first experience with santiago public transportation today. chris and i rode two buses down from his house to meet lari at the metro. the buses were large, but filled up very quickly - and they have handles on the back of the headrests for a reason :) once on the metro, i got my "bip" card, which is a reloadable card i can use on any bus or metro in the trans-santiago system. another card i think i want to get is a library card - to the library in the metro! you can check out books at these mini-library kiosks, and return them there when you are finished.

we got in at the tail end of the train, which was relatively empty until the second stop, and as we went around a turn i had a sensation similar to looking into two mirrors reflected into each other as the white poles, dark windows and blue seats seemed to multiply and sway into infinity. that sensation ended as a tidal wave of people flowed in on the next stop and you could no longer see past the balding head of the sweating business man in front of you or through the mohawk of the would be punk to your left. we got to the main campus of u catolica in about 10 minutes - casa central is a beautiful old building with an open air plaza in the middle. it's where i'll be having my bio classes. about two blocks over is the san lucia artesania -a local crafts fair- kind of like the french quarter in n.o. but a little more ethnic :) i found a neat little old man who sells bags of old stamps, old nature prints and antique books and maps. i'll definitely find my way back over there (and to the fresh mango ice cream!). llamas were a favorite motif in the knitted goods area, so neal - your present will be easy to find, hard to decide on. there is also a kind of chilean 8 string ukulele-sized instrument they call a charango...if anyone is interested i could probably fit it in my suitcase :)

then, being the good american that i am, we hit one of the nearest starbucks (there are about 20 in santiago, i had no idea!). i got a mango and tea frapp - one of the many different offerings in this three level (not quite stories, there there were three sets of stairs) establishment. there is free wifi in all the locations though - so probably i will be there an embarrassing amount.

we then hit two very different malls - los caracones (in providencia) which means "the snails" because the building is two giant spirals with tiny stores studding the outside walls (i put a picture on flickr"). then we went to falabella -the "cuico" mall. *cuico  - think "it girl" - very wealthy, trendy* it kind of felt like a big florida mall - open air plazas, palm trees, big labels. it was there that we feasted on delicious, delectable crepes - made before our very eyes and filled first with oregano goat cheese, tomatoes and spinach (for an affordable $7) and then, oh, then, with nutella. and fresh strawberries. i took a picture to commemorate the deliciousness. the crepe cafe has 3 locations; paris, san francisco, and (randomly but fortunately) santiago.

waiting of the bus home, i got to snag some photos of some of the street art/graffiti that is everywhere. the banksy style stencils are very popular, as it enables them to get a written message across quickly and clearly. around the casa central there is a lot of vegan protest art, which i will get photos of soon. the other two most popular guerrilla art themes are free education and of course, che guevara. 

i'm moving in with the new family tomorrow - they are just 15 minutes walking from the metro and are very sweet. mirella, the mother, is going to walk me through my route on monday - getting to the metro, where to get of, where to go from there etc. the lord has really blessed me with some wonderful contacts down here, so thank you everyone who was praying about housing!

check out my new flickr account!

and i'm here.

(my first week in chile was without a computer, so i apologize for the length and delay of this entry!)

after several interesting conversations with my belgian seatmate on the plane about american politics, reality tv, where to go in chile (his wife is from santiago) and the current status of milwaukee (where he lives), i arrived with only minor delays at the santiago aeropuerto. there, my bag of trailmix was confiscated at customs (apparently raisins are still fruit) but they let me bring in the three bags of coffee and about 12 pounds of m&ms and cake mix (hard to get in chile). although i felt silly bringing coffee into south america, neither chile nor argentina are coffee drinking cultures, as they don't grow it (this was affirmed by my belgian friend). however, there are about 4 starbucks in santiago and i can't imagine that the rather awful instant coffee that they use can hold out much longer. 

i'm currently staying with the marshalls - a wonderful missionary family that covenant helps support. they met me at the airport on saturday and i went to one of their church connections, cristo rey on sunday. the service started at the usual time - about 30 minutes late and i've never been kissed so many times in 15 minutes. the traditional chilean greeting is a mutual audible kiss on the right cheek for woman-woman and man-woman. a man-man greeting is usually prefaced by a vigorous handshake.  the accent has been a challenge, as well as the vocabulary, which incorporated a lot of slang and indian words. 

other differences:

burger king offers it's chicken sandwiches and burgers with palta (avocados)

they serve pate instead of liverwurst on their sandwiches in the buses

oh yeah, buses. they have lots of them and people actually ride them. a lot.

the tv is basically the same, just with spanish subtitles.

only gringos use rolling luggage

their version of dodgeball is way more intense (you're vunerable from both sides and by the end, on all sides)

the coke bottles are skinny and diet coke is coke light

the lightswitches are sideways

the milk comes in liter sized boxes and doesn't have to be refrigerated until it is opened (which can be for almost a year!)

end of sidetrack and on with the narration - that sunday night we left from santiago to head down to the south of chile to a place near osurno. puerto fonk is a charming tin roofed encampment with capricious toilets and much autographed bunkbeds. the view from the main house way amazing - the snowcapped peak of el volcan osurno (one of the most perfect examples of a conic volcano in the world) and its sister volcan puyehu, also stunning. these were offset nicely by the glistening lago llanquihue, the largest lake in chile, which is shared by argentina. the wind was constant and mild, making the black volcanic beaches perfect for sunbathing (tomando el sol - literally taking the sun- in spanish) and whipping up some nice waves that beat a regular, ocean-like rhythm. see photo.

our schedule: we woke up about 8:30 had solo bible time in the morning, followed by a discussion and then at about 9:30, a breakfast of bread, butter, cheese, jam and chocolate con leche. then we had some lectures (which i understood to varying degrees - depending on the accent and rapidity of the speaker), played some games in which we were divided into azul and verde alizanzas (teams), then lunch around 2 and then to the playa (beach) until about 7. the sun was headed down by 8, at which point we had dinner around 8:30 or 9 followed by another tema (lecture). then more games and bed by 12ish. 

one day we had a hike up over these gorgeous fields, with the mountains rising on the sides and the lake shimmering into the horizon. after making our way to the top of these rolling pastures, we found ourselves at a very eccentric farm whose owners had a perchance for.... ancient fords, model t, model as, mercurys from the 30's, bel-airs from the 40's - all in varying stages of restoration. and lots of jugs of homemade brew fermenting in the sun. on the way back down we filled our pockets and mouths with dozens of ripe moras (blackberries).

our other excursion was to the cascadas - a beautiful waterfall that we reaches after an adventurous bus ride and a verdant, slippery hike. the water was freezing and up to our ankles as we made our way the last hundred meters, gripping the mossy, concave walls that stretched up both sides, forming the illusion of a semisphere of green on both sides of the falls. the water crashed down into a deep pool and sent up such a spray that the walls were all dripping and a complete rainbow could be seen from almost any angle. i climbed back behind the falls and the sensation of the incredible power behind the water sent such a rush of adrenaline through me that i didn't feel the cold until we were wading through the icy stream again.

now i'm back in santiago after about a three hour delay trying to come from downtown because the metro was shut down (someone committed suicide)  and thus all people that would be on the metro were shifted to buses, thus all the buses were full. this did give me plenty of time for people watching though. chile is quite a melting pot of german, french, spanish, indian, peruvian, mexican and arab. the smallest minorities by far are blacks and asian. lots of blue and green eyes mixed in with hazel and brown.

i'm now shifting gears to school, trying to find out what i need and where to go. i'll be moving in with a chilean family closer to the school by this weekend. they also speak fluent english, just not to each other, so it should be a good transition linguistically. one thing i am very excited about is that lined notebook paper basically doesn't exist here - just graph paper, which i, being a nerd, thoroughly enjoy. i'll post again soon, much love!