Tired and also in Chile

Today was the day I was tested for my Spanish language proficiency. The verdict: I suck at writing it, but I seem to be doing well in the speaking department. I've been placed at a high level for my Spanish class, and can take any other classes I want.

Good news.

On to the interesting stuff: in order to take this test, I had to take a bus to Valparaiso and to the Casa Central of the university, the main building. It's this massive grey stone structure, almost gothic, sitting right next to a major roadway and rows of open markets. There's a security guard at the entrance. Inside, to my surprise, it is open to the sky: two plazas connected by a roofed cafeteria, with three levels of walkways circling above. The classrooms radiate off this central point, both above and below, and the one I saw was a basic lecture set-up with rows of chairs on terraces and the teacher's desk to the front and side. The predominant color is grey, though the study abroad office was decorated with posters and flags and maps.

Jaime (host "dad," though I'm not to call him that), as it turns out, is a philosophy professor at this very same university.


Most of the time in Valpo was spent waiting in the ISA office, which is about two blocks from the university. From the outside it looks like your typical semi-run-down Chilean building, painted pale yellow stucco, with a massive iron gate. No signage. You'd never know there was forty Americans hanging out and eating yogurt on beanbag chairs inside. Security is ridiculous: there's the gate, and an electric lock, and two additional normal locks on the door inside. You have to push a button and disarm the alarms or something to get out, and it buzzes. One of the lights was broken from the quake but everything else seemed fine.

I ended up waiting there for more than three hours to take my test, because the oral portion had to be done in shifts.

While waiting, myself, Chicago (Madeline's nickname) and Eliot (a dude in the program that I don't think I've mentioned yet) went out to see the markets. I thought they'd be like Pike's Place-- lots of stalls, lots of raw fish, lots of people jostling and yelling. And so they were... multiplied by about twenty thousand and located under a sun that tries its best to kill you dead the moment you step into its rays. There were buildings as part of the markets, but just as many "stalls" inside as outside, and the stench was incredible: chopped-up fruit, gutted fish, the tang from odd sliced vegetables, organic residue everywhere discarded and decaying... Parts of the street were paved with corn husks and fish blood and I spotted a dude carrying half a cow on his back.

I honestly don't know if I like the markets in Valpo at this point. No one, however, came up to me and tried practicing their English on the gringa for once, so I suppose everyone being so busy hacking off fish heads has its high points.


After returning to Viña, I went shopping with Myriam. An arresting part of shopping in Chile: you talk to the shopkeepers. And not just perfunctory greetings, either: you inquire about their kids and about how they fared in the quake and how business has been and did that shipment ever come in and this looks like really good bread, yeah, just baked today? While there wasn't an open market like in Valpo, Viña is plenty busy and there were fruit stands littering the streets along with the usual million-and-a-half feral dogs and packs of giggling children with ice cream bars. I picked up a kilo of grapes for about a buck.

Two words concerning Chile: panaderia and farmacia. One is a store that sells bread. The other is a store that sells medicine.

There must be forty of each within four blocks of the house. All different names, and all different set-ups, but all selling variants of bread and medicine. Every street. Next to each other. Across from each other. Perched on the corners. Panaderias and farmacias are the Starbucks of Chile.

I did get to eat my grapes for "once," which is pronounced like "own-say" and operates like a sort of pre-dinner teatime, if I haven't explained that already. People drink tea here. They also hang their clothes out to dry in the air and wash their plates by hand.

.....

I feel like I'm from Coruscant or Trantor or some other crazy city-planet-- always explaining that people in the US don't wash plates by hand because there's machines to do that for us and that there aren't any open-air markets because all our food comes to giant grocery chains from across the ocean and that our grapes are twice the size and don't have any seeds because they've been engineered to be that way....

I made the mistake of asking Cristobal, who plans to join the Chilean Navy, what kind of ship he wants to serve on. He seemed confused and replied "a warship." I asked what kind of warship, and then tried to describe aircraft carriers and submarines, in addition to the usual surface boats.

Chile doesn't have aircraft carriers or nuclear submarines. Which, on second thought, I really should have known, considering the cost of operating the things, but living in an area where you can drive past an aircraft carrier in dock seems to skew perspective.

I also seem to have acquired my first flea bite and it's all swollen because we Americans can't handle assault by fleas, apparently.

I really need to find that sushi stand.