Update, belated

Sorry about that-- ended up sleeping more than I really ought to, and spend a few hours fighting my way through the first pages of "Historias de la Penumbra y lo Invisible" by Arthur Conan Doyle, a neat little tome I picked up from the used-book shop next to the house. Three spaced notebook pages of words I didn't recognize for two pages worth of writing. The whole book will be quite the task.

This week was my first week of classes. How'd it go? Not bad, all things considered. My first class ever in Chile, Antropología Generál, was canceled and I spent half an hour sitting in the appointed classroom in the History Castle with six fellow US citizens and a pair of Mexicans before realizing this fact. The following class, however, was not canceled and I managed to take a few Spanish notes on the vertical geography of Chile as concerning early peoples of the area (in sum, Chile is really narrow and really vertical, with completely different vegetation and climate only a few thousand meters of elevation apart).

My first class concerning the Spanish language: I arrived an hour late. The time change had thrown me off-- I was firmly convinced I was on time and wondered why the class was so short before the gal from Germany sitting next to me informed me of my error.

My next class concerning the Spanish language, the next day: I arrived an hour early. Sat through the class before it, after enduring a rebuke by the teacher for being late again (but for a different class, see), and exited just in time to see my actual classmates walk through the door.

My third and final class of the week concerning the Spanish language: I arrived ten minutes late in the right class. Now all I need is a faster micro (bus). Or to leave earlier.

I will not be taking the Physics and Humor class because it is in Valparaíso at 8:15 in the morning and I can´t wake up in time to get there, much less stay awake for the full two-hour duration. As promising as it looked (and still looks), the time requirements simply aren´t kind to my sensibilities and scholastic capacity. Not sure about the architectural workshop, as well, as it starts at roughly 8:00 pm some distance away in Viña, which strikes me as rather perilous an hour to be out and about by myself.

My Language, Cognition, and Society class started off on a fine footing-- the teacher gave everyone a basic evaluative science test (logic problems involving different-sized cups and weights and tokens in a bag, that sort of thing, in which I discovered to my embarrassment I´ve forgotten how to multiply fractions-- yes, laugh, I don´t multiply fractions in everyday life), which, being an extranjero, I didn´t have to undergo. There´s only two of us foreigners in the class. I asked to take the test while the other girl split, which I think reflects rather well upon my studiousness and willingness to learn. I was the second-to-last person finished, of course, because I had to look up words in the dictionary, but I think it went well.

Afterwards a group of kids from the class invited me to a get-together of sorts in Valparaíso, apparently not an unusual occurrence-- the class structure here is more regular than in the US, and people in the same disciplines all get to know one another very well by the end because they all take the exact same classes in the exact same order.

Unfortunately I had a previous engagement. Next time....


This previous engagement was with a gal from ISA, someone who´s been here for about five months and knows people. Shaina (for that´s her name) is part of a non-denominational church group composed mainly of college students which congregates at the very same red edifice I can see from my front door. She´d invited me and about four others to come along for a gathering thing on Friday night.

She didn´t tell me, of course, that this gathering was an hour-long homily framed on either side by a half-hour of rock-band worship music. This came as a bit of a shock. In retrospect I probably should have anticipated it (this being a CHURCH GROUP and all) but I was thinking it wasn´t an organized thing, maybe just some wandering about town with people from the group and maybe cookies, I didn´t know.

In sum: the music was good (all in Spanish, of course) but the hour-long unanticipated lecture on salvation was a let-down and the downright rapturous attitude of some of the people there during the singing was a bit frightening.

So was the mosh pit, actually.

Call me staid and traditionalist, but I´m of the opinion that a person should keep their blissful ecstasy to themselves. It´s like they´re deliberately trying to call attention to how faithful they are, how worshipful and utterly convinced and joyous, and if it´s real, okay, I´m sorry, but at the same time you´d think it would be possible to be in rapture without throwing your arms up and crying and mouthing tongues.

Maybe it comes from being Catholic-- the unrelenting general Protestant emphasis on Jesus and happiness and bliss can get a bit grating. If all the world is love, people, why was Chile flattened by a terremoto a few weeks ago? Sing, dance, fine, that´s cool-- I´m all for that-- but if I wanted a life lecture from some gal in a T-shirt with the aid of Powerpoint I´d attend one of those Think Positive seminars. If there´s going to be a mosh pit, I´d like some warning. And aside from the big wooden cross on the wall (lit by a red spotlight at appointed times during the songs, themselves accompanied by video of dolphins and rainforests and clouds and such), you´d hardly be able to tell the place was a church at all. And... well, there´s spotlights and a mosh pit.

The local Catholic church is roughly a hundred years old. It´s got an adobe-plastered steeple, the exterior of which is slightly cracked from the terremoto, narrow stained-glass windows, and a spiky black iron fence around it.

The name: Nuestra Señora de los Dolores. This translates roughly to Our Lady of Suffering.

I think that about sums up the difference in attitude.

Craig, being Craig, would probably say that this approach is more "metal." In that vein, I have this observation to give: there exists a micro driver in this city who has three big black stickers above his dashboard and they are, in order, a skull, a ninja, and the thorn-crowned head of Jesus Christ.


Religion aside, this coming week will be my first full week of (hopefully) non-canceled classes. I have to find the FIN building in Valpo and sit through almost six hours straight of class on Monday, which will be interesting. I need to swipe some music in Spanish from the cabinet outside my door so I can listen to it while trying to read my book in Spanish. I need to get my camera looked at, because it can't seem to focus anymore and any picture it takes is almost inevitably blurry and indistinguishable (which is why I don't have any pictures at the moment). I need to take a shower. I need to drag María-José to the Fonk Museum in the next few days so I can have a look at that Easter Island moai, and I need to find that sushi shop.

I did pick up a laptop cooling fan for a cool 8600 pesos (about 18 bucks), and it does its job well in the heat.

The last student arrived today, one Diego from the north, and now all I have to do is wait for Roberto and Nicolás to return from wherever it is they´ve gone to get a group photo of the the six of us.

I also have to eat this banana on my desk.