Up at 7:30, before anyone else. I'm just awesome (and also I figured out how to set my alarm clock).
Took a shower last night, so I wasn't getting up early for hygienic purposes. Actually, speaking of last night, I should probably fill that in-- went to the building beside ours and played cards on the 10th floor balcony in a T-shirt at night for a bit (with wind, was cold), then returned to the room for a shower. Bathroom is somewhat rickety, and the water kept shifting between freezing and boiling, and the lights flickered out once or twice, but I did get a shower and I went to bed around 1 am local time.
So, anyway: today.
Woke up, got dressed and ready, took pictures of the sun rising over the buildings and more of the surroundings, then went to breakfast on the top floor of the hotel. Very sunny day. Breakfast was toast, yogurt, fruit, tea, and milk that tasted more like half-and-half. As I will discover in a supermercado later, milk comes in boxes, and mayonnaise comes in bags. "Pringles" are "Pringoooools."
At 9:45 (meals take a long time here-- two hours set aside for lunch on the itinerary, every day) we went to the orientation session, where we were informed about all the hazards of being gringos in Chile and of being in Chile in general. Mostly: pay attention to the location of your valuables at all times, keep an eye out for people following you or bumping into you, don't get drunk, don't start fights, and if you have to speak English do so quietly and don't count money in the streets. American tourists make for easy targets.
Luckily, I don't drink-- which is more than 50% of the horror stories mentioned avoided. The ISA staff seems to assume that everyone is planning to go to bars and get smashed. Given that there are millions of bars here and the entire city turns out to party at midnight, I suppose it's a reasonable presumption, but I don't think I'll be going to any shifty joints to dance the night away and get pills slipped into my drinks.
When we headed out to visit the Palacio de Moneda, I brought only a few bills and my camera. If I was to be mugged, I would lose twenty dollars at the most, and I kept good hold on the camera (people will just swipe it, apparently).
Palacio de Moneda: basically the White House for Chile. It's right in the middle of downtown Santiago, surrounded by a square of grass and water, and the smog around it is almost thick enough to chew. Uniformed guards at every doorway ("Como las personas en una banda... una banda que... que... caminar?" I tried to explain in my broken Spanish, "just like a player in a marching band, except with tall shiny boots and authority.") Inside was quite official and with dozens of displays, including several commemorating Presidente Allende, who was killed when the building was bombed in 1973. White columns, oil paintings, chandeliers donated from France, one of which seemed to still have the barcode attached until we figured it must have been a cataloging tag (or a barcode, this is another country, I don't know).
Afterwards we walked to la Plaza de Armas, which is... a huge plaza filled with people selling stuff and people yelling and people hustling around in big groups talking very very fast. The streets in Santiago are packed-- packed, as in wall to wall, building to building, so tight that even the cars have to creep through in places like rocks against water. Other places, of course, they rocket past like guided missiles and God help anyone who gets in their way.
There were shoe-shine stands, dudes on six-foot stilts carrying blue signs, a pack of guys who whistled at us as we passed by (ah, chicas bonitas!), a fellow all in gold who masqueraded as a statue, a rolling information stand, little old ladies selling rosaries, a pair of men giving an impassioned speech to an enormous ring of people, beggars with no legs or humped backs, magazine stands selling Spanish versions of Cosmo, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, people carrying makeshift jewelry stands from corner to corner...
It's quite the country.
I must say, the people in the ISA program have been extraordinarily kind and outgoing and willing to put up with anyone, even me-- if I see anyone from the program I'm free to wander around with them, drifting back and forth between groups as the mood strikes. There's no cliques or barriers or anything of the sort. We foreigners are a unified force.
That said, we foreigners spend our time in the streets talking in a bizarre mishmash of two languages, hacking together sentences like "I don't no sé dónde está una tienda con converters, but pienso que we can find it." It's good practice, and great fun-- any opportunity to speak Spanish without feeling too stupid is a blessing, and we're encouraged to do the best we can with what we know, even if what we know is nothing (as is the case for a few of us). It's still very difficult to understand the native Chileans-- they drop the 's' off words and don't enunciate 'd' and use a lot of slang and speak very quickly-- but we've been reassured that once we catch on, we'll be able to understand any Spanish, anywhere. With the possible exception of the Dominican Republic.
Dinner was pasta, made using ingredients from the local supermercado, food enough for eleven including appetizers and wine for about 10 dollars. I did not partake of the wine. Or the pasta, either (had ground beef in it), but I ate the little tomato-bread things and that was sufficient. Food comes in huge portions here.
Now... I am here, in the room, with my roommates who are speaking with friends and family. There was a card game going on when I first came in, but most people are going to bed now (it's past 1 am).
Another long day ahead!
No comments:
Post a Comment