A Hodgepodge Update

I've been a little MIA the past few weeks. Really no excuse for that, but here are a few things I've been up to...

- Trying to keep myself straight about what month/season we are in. The changeable Santiago weather doesn't help, though it seems like summer has officially arrived here, with sunny days (is the sun actually brighter here, or is it just me?) and temps in the mid to high 80s (that means mid to high 90s in the metro, yuck). Despite the weather, knowing that it is November has me all screwed up. Everything I read from the U.S. (read: friend's facebook pictures, cooking blogs, Washington Post's Going Out Guide) screams of fall. And as it's my favorite season, I feel like I'm experiencing some sort of strange "phantom limb" syndrome about it. With Thanksgiving and the beginning of the Christmas season looming I feel it's just going to get worse.

- Halloween in Chile. Chileans are caught in a sort of limbo over Halloween. I couldn't get a straight answer from the Chileans I talked to about whether it's even celebrated. Some would say "Oh yes! Se celebra harto!* Everyone dresses up!" Others would tell me it's just for kids. How long it's been celebrated also seemed to be in dispute. Twenty somethings and sixty somethings alike claimed that the beginnings of Halloween's popularity in Chile lay during their colegio* days. There were certainly a number of costume parties advertised, and I saw a bunch of little kids running around in their costumes in the park near my house, but on the whole, the enthusiasm for Halloween is underwhelming. Besides that, as it's in its nascent stage as a holiday here, Chileans are stuck in that concept of Halloween as "scary." Every costume I saw was a dead something or a zombie something or an ax-murderer something.

Needless to say, they didn't quite get my costume: a Chilean nana.* A piece of background: in Chile, everyone has a nana, regardless of social status, and everyone makes their nanas wear uniforms. So, when the nana is out, doing what the nanas do here, which is everything (taking the kids to the park,  getting groceries, walking the dog, cleaning the windows, mowing the lawn (no, Santiaguinos don't really have lawns, but it was a funny mental image)), the uniform marks the nana for all the world as a domestic servant. They actually have entire stores devoted to nana uniforms. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, one of these stores, where I wanted to buy my costume, was closed on the Saturday before Halloween. Luckily though, for the bargain price of 6 mil pesos ($12) you can buy your nana a spankin' new uniform at your neighborhood....grocery strore! Just one aisle over from the yogurts and the unrefrigerated boxed milk!

My friend took some pictures, and I will be sure to post one once she gets them up, but basically I wore a baby pink checkered smock-like dress, tucked a rag and some clothes pins in my pocket, and carried a plastic grocery bag as my purse. Of course, in true gringo-Halloween fashion, which "sexy-fies" even the most unlikely suspects, I wore heels and cinched my smock with a skinny belt.

- Celebrated my first out-of-town birthday with lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in Santiago. Below is a picture of only round one of my desserts that day :)

- Studying for the GRE. For anyone who, like me, hasn't taken a math class since high school (Mathematics in Society Freshman year just doesn't count), trust me, it's a painful, painful experience trying to relearn the FOIL method, or how to find the volume of a cylinder, or what the sides are on a 45-45-90 triangle. I don't recommend it.

-Starting to make plans for post-December 10, my last day of classes at Duoc. A beach vacation to Brazil or Colombia might be in the cards before heading back stateside. Click away on those links anyone who might be able to get away to the southern hemisphere between Christmas and New Years. You have the will of steel if they don't convince you.

Besos!

*It's celebrated a ton/so much!
* grade/high school
*housekeeper

Overexposure?

Though we still have thirty degree termperature swings from day to night, the weather is getting gorgeous here in Santiago. The past two weekends have been absolutely spectacular, and, after a long, grey winter (well, actually, two winters in a row, with a brief Santiago fall), my sun-starved friends and I were anxious to soak up some rays. There's a huge park pretty close to where I live and four of us donned our bathing suits and planted ourselves on the grass for a few hours. We received a couple strange looks from passing joggers, but nothing out of the ordinary for Chile. As I'm sure I've noted before, Chileans will stare unabashedly at anything that is even the slightest bit out of the ordinary.  Four girls in bikinis in a park fell into this category. Or so we thought.

Like good addicts, we got a taste and wanted more. We returned Sunday for a few more hours worth of Vitamin B. Unfortunately, we were not so lucky round two and were approached almost immediately  by some jotes (Spanish for vultures, but used for creepy, pestering men). We tried our best to ignore them, pretending to not speak Spanish, and trying to continue our conversations. When that failed we told them curtly to leave us alone, but it became clear that we would have no choice but to leave. Luckily as we were leaving a friend who has a rooftop pool called, we told her about our predicament, she laughed and said to come right over. We spent the rest of a beautiful afternoon with a much better view.

It wasn't until this weekend at a friend of a friend's birthday lunch in the country that I realized just how out of the ordinary our tomando el sol en bikini en el parque* really was. Chelsey and I recounted our story, which proved to be a real crowd-pleaser. The Chileans we were with just couldn't believe that we were using a park as our personal sun deck. They asked if police had approached us (they hadn't), and laughingly accused us of trying to cause a desorden público.* They were full of suggestions: go to the public pool on San Cristobal (it doesn't open until mid November), come to my apartment building any time you want, try Parque O'Higgins (this last suggestion reflecting Chileans' ingrained classism--apparently, our behavior was more suited to the lower class recreational area downtown than to chi-chi Las Condes).

Wait a minute. Help a gringa get this straight. You go to a pool or the beach in Chile, or any other Latin American country, and the bathing suit cut of choice is a thong, and no one looks twice. Women are laying around with their entire booties exposed and no one bats an eye. But.....we sit outside--in a large, sunny, open area, where men are playing soccer shirtless, people are lounging reading in shorts and tanktops, young couples are making out in the grass (this is a park in Chile, after all)--and we decide to wear our extremely-modest-by-Chilean-standards bathing suits, and it causes a public disturbance? As they say here in Chile, INJUSTICIA!!!

*Sunbathing in bikinis in the park 
* public disturbance

September 18th: Feliz 200th Cumpleaños Chile!

My students gave me fair warning. I should have known from their reaction--outrage tinged with despair--the first time I wrote on the board "Quiz Units 1 & 2- Wednesday, September 22."  "Miss," they told me candidly, "this will not be good. We will be con caña* and we will not be able to study." Gringa that I am, I just didn't get it. Yes, I knew that we had two and a half days off, plus the weekend in between, for Chile's bicentennial independence day celebration, and yes, I had heard all about the parties, dancing and drinking. But, in my denial, I thought, they can't possibly party the entire five days. Word to the wise: don't underestimate Chileans' stamina when it comes to celebrating dieciocho. 

It really all started a couple of weeks ago with the flags. Chileans put the U.S. to shame when it comes to putting their national pride on display. My guesstimate: 95% of houses, apartment buildings, and offices flew a flag, three in every five cabbies sported the blue, red, and white, whether in mini flags or streamers, and countless vendors sold flags of all sizes to passersby.

On Thursday the 16th everything closed half day, and many Santiaguinos packed the freeways and headed out of the city. I stuck around for the light show at la Moneda, the presidential palace downtown. Packed onto the lawn in front of the building we waited...true to form, the show started (almost a full hour) behind schedule. It was spectacular (though, shorty that I am I think I saw much more of the back of people's heads than the show) and an energetic kick-off to the bicentennial. However, it was, without a doubt, the most poorly planned public event I have ever attended. My mild claustrophobia (and anxiety thinking about a mass exit of 60,000 people ) kicked in and Stoddie and I made our way to the fringe of the crowd about fifteen minutes before the show ended. Even so, it was tough going. Roads were blocked for no apparent reason, creating even more congestion in the ones that were open. And the kicker: those 60,000 people I mentioned, the only option for them to get home were the buses. The metro operates only until 11. You'd think that the city, after luring that many people to one spot with an awesome light show, would make an exception and keep it running. By the grace of god, Stoddie and I caught a taxi. My other friends were not as lucky and had to push and shove their way onto packed buses, and that's after waiting almost an hour for one to stop.

Friday we headed to Valparaiso with the intention of checking out the scene on the coast and catching the city's talked about fireworks that night. My friend Chelsey had heard about a fonda in the neighboring city, Viña del Mar, so we caught a taxi over there to check it out.

In the weeks leading up to the fiestas patrias various Chileans had tried to explain to me exactly what a fonda is. Unfortunately, none of them had the English word that sums it up perfectly: county fair. Each city puts on at least one of these mini county fairs. Fondas are, depending on your perspective, either retro or ghetto versions of county fairs in the U.S. I prefer to view them as retro; a throwback to how they might have been fifty years ago. At the fondas you'll find all the typical fair games, but with a homemade spin; nothing is commercial or mass manufactured. For example, the classic game of throwing a ball to knock down a pyramid--at the fondas that pyramid is made of cans with the labels peeled off. And forget stuffed animals or water guns as prizes. In keeping with the overriding theme of dieciocho, most of the prizes are alcohol. First prize gets a fifth of Flor de Caña (Chilean equivalent of Captain Morgan's) second prize a flask of pisco, and third a six pack of Cristal (think Natural Light). But what about the kiddies?? We asked our Chilean friend and it seems young Chilenos are more generous than their North American counterparts: in the miraculous case (all the games are rigged) they win one such coveted prize, mommy or daddy gets some previa* material.

Family fun was happening all over the place at the fonda. Not sure if it was clean, as there was also lots of alcohol consumption happening all over the place, but kids and parents were definitely enjoying themselves, playing games, eating empanadas, buying knockoff Oakleys and beaded jewelry, and parading around in the traditional cueca* outfits.

The star attraction of the fondas would have to be the food and drink. A Chilean friend of mine told me about a month ago, when trying to explain what exactly goes down for dieciocho, that you can gain 4 kilos over the five day holiday. "No you must mean 4 pounds," I replied. She assured me--4 kilos. Now, I am a believer. The fonda is filled with little makeshift restaurants where the prominent menu item is carne. Whether skewered or slapped between a bun, meat, and the aroma of it charring, overpower the fonda. And to wash all that meat down obvio you need a nice, cold beverage (though, to be honest, it will probably be closer to room temp. No ice around here). To choose from you have Cristal by the litro, or chicha, a sweet young wine, by the jug, or terremotos, which I'd call the Chilean version of a Long Island Iced Tea. And if you opt for terremotos, you better stick to by the cup, preferably size small. They aren't called "earthquakes" for nothing.

After the fonda and the fireworks in Valpo (which were some of the best I've ever seen, by the way) we headed back to Santiago Saturday afternoon for Stoddie's last night in Chile. Going for a late afternoon walk, it was eery in the city--literally everything was closed. In Chile, as opposed to in the States, a holiday really is a holiday. With nowhere to go but Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and gas station mini-marts there would be no boosting of the economy done by Chileans on these days off. My mind jumped to my empty pantry and refrigerator...I'd have to survive on the supply of Luna Bars Stoddie had brought me until Tuesday.

*hungover
*pregame
* national dance of Chile

From Snow to Surf

Less than three weeks after heading up into the Andes for the snow, I headed down to the beach town of Pichilemu for the surf. My friends Mike and Caren, Stoddie, who was visiting me for the week, and I, rented a cabaña right on the beach where some of the best surfing in Chile goes down. The town of Pichilemu was all but dead, it being mid-week and the off-season, but the surf school down the road was ready and waiting for us. We slipped (or rather, struggled) into our necessary but unflattering wetsuits and headed first to the sand, where we learned the technique, and then the icy cold and rough water. The 10 mil peso ($20) surf lesson was well worth it; if it weren't for our instructor Pablo pushing my board when a wave came up I doubt I would have been able to get up. But, as long as I didn't have to do the hard part--the paddling--I was able to ride a few. I think my experience with yoga helped a lot with the movement and stance, though doing a spin-off of warrior pose is a lot tougher while balancing on a moving piece of fiber glass. It was a lot of fun, though by the end of our hour in the water I was completely beat from struggling with the waves.

We unwound with an asado (cookout) of choripan, Chile's (more delicious) version of a hotdog, and some vino and watched the sunset from our deck.

 

In Pichilemu, I became more aware than ever of what Pablo, our surf teacher summed up as "Santiago no es Chile" (Santiago isn't Chile). It's amazing how different the lifestyle and feel is in this little beach town than in the capital city. The people are more friendly, there's less U.S. influence, and the pace of life seems slowed by about three times (and that means about 5 times slower than what we're used to in the States). Granted, it's a tourist town, and we were visiting in the equivalent of March, but even so, there just wasn't that much to the city. It made me think of the beaches at home, like Bethany and Rehoboth, but what I imagine they were like fifty years ago. It's an awesome place to spend a weekend, and its chill atmosphere kind of draws you in--after two days I wasn't to stoked to head back to bustling Santiago.

 

My Chilean TV Debut--Finally Found it

A couple months ago I posted about being interviewed for a Chilean news documentary about the earthquake. I had looked for the clip and was unable to find it...until now. Here's the link. My part is right around minute seven, but, if you know Spanish, the entire segment is really worth watching. But uff, it's tough to listen to my gringa accent in the midst of all these Chilenos. This clip might be just the incentive I need going into the second half of my time here to intensify my Spanish-improvement efforts.

Semester 2--So Far So Great

I don't want to jinx it (they could just be on their beginning-of-the-semester best behavior) but I'm in love with my students this semester. I have a fair amount of students from my last semester classes, which is great, but on the whole, all five of my classes have a pleasantly surprising percentage of respectful, interested students. It may sound pessimistic, but after some of what I dealt with last semester, and, worse, from the horror stories of some of my colleagues, this really is something to be grateful for.

I have the same intensive schedule--all five classes on two days--but instead of 5 sections of the same course (Basic 1) like I had last semester, I now have three Basics, and two Intermediates in the evenings. And the Intermediates...it's a fresh of breath air not to have to repeat myself twice more after already doing so three times. It's fun to be able to incorporate more conversation practice (they can actually hold them) and it's great because they can give more creative (and amusing) responses in oral drills. For example, we were working on the conditional, and one of the provided statements was "If you don't get married..." and they had to complete the sentence. When one student responded, "If you don't get married, you might have to get a pet." I couldn't help but smile, and even more so when he added, "It's cheaper." We also have been working on time contrasts: "In the past people...In the present people...In the future people will..." We did a drill where each student gives three statements about a person (the idea was it would be a famous person) and the rest of the class had to guess who it was. My two favorites: "In the past she was a he. Now she sells many records (but I don't like them). In the future she will probably die of a drug overdose." Lady Gaga anyone? And this one, bet you can't guess who it is: "In the past she lived in another country. Now she teaches English in Chile. In the future she will speak Spanish very well." :)

And it's not just a case of teacher's bias. After subbing for me last week, a colleague expressed similar amazement at how great my classes are, asking if we could please switch. There's no way, especially when my other sub told me how distraught my students were when "Miss Megan" wasn't there and how concerned they had been over whether I would be coming back. Ah, my heart. It's that kind of thing that makes all the lame excuses for missing class, all the times they won't stop talking in Spanish, and all the times that they won't open their mouths to participate no matter how I threaten, totally worth it.

Argentina on My Mind

The first five months I was in Chile I had this feeling. The feeling that if I visited Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital city, I would love it so much that it would make me regret that I hadn't chosen it as my South American home for the year. Part of it had to do with the rave reviews of the city that I got from every person who had ever visited or lived there. But the other part was just this premonition. I had the same feeling about London when I was studying in Sevilla. I just knew that I was going to love it. And, sure enough, when I visited my friend studying abroad in London I felt this unexplainable attraction to and at home-ness in the city--it was without a doubt my favorite place I had ever visited and I didn't want to leave.

But after this weekend in B.A., London has been replaced.

Immediately, from our first cab ride from the airport to the apartment we had rented, I was enchanted. I had forgotten how much beautiful architecture can affect the atmosphere or feel of a city. On every corner, beautiful European style buildings lent a classy, sophisticated, almost regal air to the city streets. I had been told by some that Buenos Aires is more "concrete jungle" than Santiago, but I didn't have that sense at all. There were parks all over the place, and the wide boulevards (their principal street, Avenida 9 de Julio, is claimed to be the widest in the world) prevented the suffocating feeling of say, New York.


Whereas I sometimes struggle to describe Chilean cuisine (as do Chileans whom I ask about this), in Buenos Aires it's all about the parilla--grilled meats. And they are insane. I'm not really a big red meat eater, but these steaks are out of this world. And the cherry on top of the culinary sundae for me is their outstanding pizza--grilled on hot stones and with a crispy thin crust, just how I like it.

Arguably my favorite part about the city, and what I think is most representative of the gulf between Santiago and B.A. is the fashion. As I have lamented in previous posts, for me, Santiago has nothing to offer as far as clothing and style goes. Not only are there very few options to buy fashionable, interesting pieces, but you don't see people walking around in covetable outfits...ever. The opposite in Buenos Aires. My friend Caren and I spent an entire day shopping around the boutiques of Palermo, and we had only just scratched the surface. And all of them filled with unique, incredibly well made, just gorgeous clothes. And I can't even start on the fashionistas that we saw on every corner, of every section of town, at every hour of the day. Add their great sense of style (both men and women) to their natural gorgeousness, and porteños are absolutely lethal in the looks department. And that's before they open their mouths and start laying on the charm with their irrestible breed of Spanish.

Obviously, language-obsessed as I have become since my arrival in Chile, I would have a strong opinion one way or another about Argentinian Spanish. I can't get enough of it. I love the way that they use vos instead of "tu." I secretly hoped that they'd have to use llegar or silla or any other ll word, the sound of which they prounounce like the s in "pleasure." And their intonation, which to me was reminiscent of the sing-songiness of Italian, made anyone and everyone's speech literally, music to my ears.

Perhaps it's been said before, but Buenos Aires, for me, combined the beauty and style of Paris, with the palpable energy of New York (just find yourself at one of their boliches, or dance clubs, at 6 AM and you'll know what I'm talking about), with a fiery Latin American flair. By the time I had been there for 4 hours, I was already telling everyone we met that I'd live in Buenos Aires one day. Unashamedly proud of their city, and in love with it as I was, they readily agreed that I should. But for now it's back in Santiago, which, as great as it is, unfortunately has suffered a great blow in my mind from it's cross-Andean neighbor.