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.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Here and Moved In
What a day.
Slept in until almost ten, since hey, we were at a resort and that's what you do at resorts. There were two highlights to the morning:
1. Madeline (aka "Chicago," for her home city) getting herself trapped in the bathroom and panicking before she realized she had simply locked the door.
2. A small Chilean child drinking her Earl Grey with five spoons of sugar and threatening to kill me if I told her mother.
I've decided that small children speaking Spanish is adorable. Just because they're small children, I suppose, with the added attraction in that they're actually speaking, at such a young age, this crazy language that I only know about from junior high and/or high school. You don't really consider other languages to be quite equal to your own until you hear little kids speak it and realize "hey, this is for real."
This particular kid was quite chatty.
We left the hotel at 1:30 (Chilean version of 12:00), and drove for about an hour on the bus before reaching Viña del Mar.
And what a city!
I don´t know what I was expecting, but it wasn´t this. My first view of it was hundreds of bright houses perched atop a dozen different hills, with modern skyscrapers, construction cranes, and huge billboards in the background. The bus stopped in front of a white mansion with pillars and surrounding gardens (also surrounded by caution tape, due to quake damage), and we all unloaded our luggage and stood around for a while to wait for our host families. Viña is much cleaner than Santiago-- you can actually breathe the air without wanting to scour your lungs with steel wool-- and I can see why they call it the Garden City. There´s the usual poor areas, sure, but even those are full of flowers and greenery and clever little windchime things made out of wood and bits of glass.
Totally off-topic yet pertinent: these aftershocks are getting annoying. That´s the third one today.
Anyway, eventually the ISA folks hooked me up with Myriam, the gal who runs my pensión with her husband Jeime. She was there with two boys, Cristobal, from northern Chile, and a fellow whose name starts with an R (Ricardo? Reduardo? Will make certain in the morning...), who is her son. All of them immediately started yakking away in Spanish, asking me where I´m from and what I think of the city and where I was during the terremoto, etc. etc. as we walk down the street towards the house.
The house is not what I expected at all. I thought it would be your normal two-story downtown townhouse-type thing. Maybe with a little garden or something.
Nope.
It´s perched on the third floor of a labyrinthine complex of stores and apartments, and is reached by walking down an alley in the middle of downtown, unlocking a high iron gate, and walking up three flights of rickety stairs after passing through another gate beneath a huge palm tree. It´s small, but it´s evident that they take very good care of it, and there´s a view across a sort of river to the city from the dining room (my room looks at the buildings beside, including the laundry hanging on lines between windows). There´s no water at the moment, given that parts of the city still need repair, so after I unpacked all of my stuff Myriam took all of us to a friend´s house for showers.
We took a taxi. A colectivo, rather, which is basically a taxi that is cheaper and carries groups. The streets are narrow and winding and in places almost vertical, and there were no seatbelts. Which was terrifying, I won´t lie, but no one died on the way there and for the most part speeds remain below 20 or 30 mph. Which... isn´t very reassuring, I´ll grant, and I´ll probably take buses or the metro more often, but I was told that that´s how it´s done in Chile as far as colectivos are concerned.
The friend was a quirky old woman in a massive apartment complex which had suffered minor cosmetic quake damage. We were over to run up her water bill and mess up her bathroom, but she acted like it was a birthday party and chatted it up and offered tea and cookies (at least they looked kind of like cookies-- huge, double-layered cookies coated with solid caramel) and turkey on bread while one by one five people used her shower.
(Seriously now, tremors, stop it-- I´m not kidding)
I could follow the conversation at the table, more or less (mostly less) and managed to get in a few comments of my own, but mostly just sat back and listened. Everyone here so far has been amazingly kind and curious, wanting to know all about Washington and what I think about Chile and whether or not I like the Backstreet Boys and why the Golden Gate is called the Golden Gate when it isn´t a gate, it´s a bridge...
After showers and once (Chilean teatime), which took more than three hours, we returned to the house via colectivo and I took the opportunity to set up wireless. Called Dad, arranged a brief videochat between him and my host family, and then sat down to write this.
Slept in until almost ten, since hey, we were at a resort and that's what you do at resorts. There were two highlights to the morning:
1. Madeline (aka "Chicago," for her home city) getting herself trapped in the bathroom and panicking before she realized she had simply locked the door.
2. A small Chilean child drinking her Earl Grey with five spoons of sugar and threatening to kill me if I told her mother.
I've decided that small children speaking Spanish is adorable. Just because they're small children, I suppose, with the added attraction in that they're actually speaking, at such a young age, this crazy language that I only know about from junior high and/or high school. You don't really consider other languages to be quite equal to your own until you hear little kids speak it and realize "hey, this is for real."
This particular kid was quite chatty.
We left the hotel at 1:30 (Chilean version of 12:00), and drove for about an hour on the bus before reaching Viña del Mar.
And what a city!
I don´t know what I was expecting, but it wasn´t this. My first view of it was hundreds of bright houses perched atop a dozen different hills, with modern skyscrapers, construction cranes, and huge billboards in the background. The bus stopped in front of a white mansion with pillars and surrounding gardens (also surrounded by caution tape, due to quake damage), and we all unloaded our luggage and stood around for a while to wait for our host families. Viña is much cleaner than Santiago-- you can actually breathe the air without wanting to scour your lungs with steel wool-- and I can see why they call it the Garden City. There´s the usual poor areas, sure, but even those are full of flowers and greenery and clever little windchime things made out of wood and bits of glass.
Totally off-topic yet pertinent: these aftershocks are getting annoying. That´s the third one today.
Anyway, eventually the ISA folks hooked me up with Myriam, the gal who runs my pensión with her husband Jeime. She was there with two boys, Cristobal, from northern Chile, and a fellow whose name starts with an R (Ricardo? Reduardo? Will make certain in the morning...), who is her son. All of them immediately started yakking away in Spanish, asking me where I´m from and what I think of the city and where I was during the terremoto, etc. etc. as we walk down the street towards the house.
The house is not what I expected at all. I thought it would be your normal two-story downtown townhouse-type thing. Maybe with a little garden or something.
Nope.
It´s perched on the third floor of a labyrinthine complex of stores and apartments, and is reached by walking down an alley in the middle of downtown, unlocking a high iron gate, and walking up three flights of rickety stairs after passing through another gate beneath a huge palm tree. It´s small, but it´s evident that they take very good care of it, and there´s a view across a sort of river to the city from the dining room (my room looks at the buildings beside, including the laundry hanging on lines between windows). There´s no water at the moment, given that parts of the city still need repair, so after I unpacked all of my stuff Myriam took all of us to a friend´s house for showers.
We took a taxi. A colectivo, rather, which is basically a taxi that is cheaper and carries groups. The streets are narrow and winding and in places almost vertical, and there were no seatbelts. Which was terrifying, I won´t lie, but no one died on the way there and for the most part speeds remain below 20 or 30 mph. Which... isn´t very reassuring, I´ll grant, and I´ll probably take buses or the metro more often, but I was told that that´s how it´s done in Chile as far as colectivos are concerned.
The friend was a quirky old woman in a massive apartment complex which had suffered minor cosmetic quake damage. We were over to run up her water bill and mess up her bathroom, but she acted like it was a birthday party and chatted it up and offered tea and cookies (at least they looked kind of like cookies-- huge, double-layered cookies coated with solid caramel) and turkey on bread while one by one five people used her shower.
(Seriously now, tremors, stop it-- I´m not kidding)
I could follow the conversation at the table, more or less (mostly less) and managed to get in a few comments of my own, but mostly just sat back and listened. Everyone here so far has been amazingly kind and curious, wanting to know all about Washington and what I think about Chile and whether or not I like the Backstreet Boys and why the Golden Gate is called the Golden Gate when it isn´t a gate, it´s a bridge...
After showers and once (Chilean teatime), which took more than three hours, we returned to the house via colectivo and I took the opportunity to set up wireless. Called Dad, arranged a brief videochat between him and my host family, and then sat down to write this.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Trying Stuff Is a Good Idea
Because something crazy might just happen.
Sent in an account of the quake to MSN, after seeing a banner asking for "Your Experience."
Four hours later:
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/02/27/2214336.aspx
I told them that I'll be in Valpo/Vina for nine months and can report, and received this:
"That is great. I’ll pass your contact info on to folks here. NBC’s sending a team and we always appreciate reports from the field."
:D :D :D
Sent in an account of the quake to MSN, after seeing a banner asking for "Your Experience."
Four hours later:
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/02/27/2214336.aspx
I told them that I'll be in Valpo/Vina for nine months and can report, and received this:
"That is great. I’ll pass your contact info on to folks here. NBC’s sending a team and we always appreciate reports from the field."
:D :D :D
When Disaster Strikes...
...go to a resort!
We are currently in Olmue, in a resort packed with rich Chileans. Leather seats, tiled floors, open bars (that we aren't allowed to use, boo hoo), eight swimming pools, palm trees, flowers, the lot-- all surrounded by a twelve-foot hedge so we don't notice the abject poverty on all sides.
Bizarre.
We're in an area not hit hard by the quake, although the roof of one of the rooms is looking a bit buckled, and we're to remain here until tomorrow. There is quite a bit of quake damage in Valparaiso, with a few host families out of a house and a number of buildings fallen down, but there was no tsunami and the buses, taxis, water, and electricity all work and are running.
Chile is very well-prepared for earthquakes, in general. There are very strict regulations regarding building, and most of what fell down are older structures. An earthquake isn't a real earthquake (terremoto) unless it breaks 8-- anything below that is a 'temblor,' or tremor, and they happen all the time.
So... right now I'm in the lobby of this resort. I'm planning to go to lunch at the buffet, and then... I don't know, lounge around and watch birds or something. We had an aftershock this morning, but all it did was shake the beds. I was too tired to care and the picture frames weren't banging around, so I just went back to sleep.
My camera has dead batteries, and I don't know if I can buy any here. There's no real store, and the wireless is jumpy, so communication will be infrequent until tomorrow at least.
I'll send pictures of the quake, such as it was, a bit later. Computer's almost dead.
I love you all and I thank you for your comments and concern and everything you've said. That said, I'm not running away from here, and not just because the airports are shot and the road to the south is cut in five places.
:D
We are currently in Olmue, in a resort packed with rich Chileans. Leather seats, tiled floors, open bars (that we aren't allowed to use, boo hoo), eight swimming pools, palm trees, flowers, the lot-- all surrounded by a twelve-foot hedge so we don't notice the abject poverty on all sides.
Bizarre.
We're in an area not hit hard by the quake, although the roof of one of the rooms is looking a bit buckled, and we're to remain here until tomorrow. There is quite a bit of quake damage in Valparaiso, with a few host families out of a house and a number of buildings fallen down, but there was no tsunami and the buses, taxis, water, and electricity all work and are running.
Chile is very well-prepared for earthquakes, in general. There are very strict regulations regarding building, and most of what fell down are older structures. An earthquake isn't a real earthquake (terremoto) unless it breaks 8-- anything below that is a 'temblor,' or tremor, and they happen all the time.
So... right now I'm in the lobby of this resort. I'm planning to go to lunch at the buffet, and then... I don't know, lounge around and watch birds or something. We had an aftershock this morning, but all it did was shake the beds. I was too tired to care and the picture frames weren't banging around, so I just went back to sleep.
My camera has dead batteries, and I don't know if I can buy any here. There's no real store, and the wireless is jumpy, so communication will be infrequent until tomorrow at least.
I'll send pictures of the quake, such as it was, a bit later. Computer's almost dead.
I love you all and I thank you for your comments and concern and everything you've said. That said, I'm not running away from here, and not just because the airports are shot and the road to the south is cut in five places.
:D
Super Special Earthquake Update
I am okay!
We are all okay, in fact, and thought the city sustained some substantial damage, no one at the hotel was hurt. Supposedly small tremors-- temblors-- are common in Chile and might happen once or twice a day, but this was a true earthquake-- terremoto-- and it was quite exciting.
Unlike most, I was awake at the time and not out clubbing. In bed, trying to sleep... and then stuff starts shaking. My roommate thought I was attacking her before she woke up fully, and by the time she did I was standing in the doorway, bracing myself as picture frames slapped against the walls and something heavy crashed in the bedroom. She joined me a few seconds later, and we held onto each other's arms and the doorframe as the building bucked and rattled like it had grown legs and was trying to hop away. All the lights were out, and the other two in the room appeared in their own doorway not long after us.
We waited it out.
Afterwards we inspected the room, discovered that the TV had fallen off its stand, all the picture frames were crooked, and there were cracks in the wall plaster outside, with shards of it all over the floors. We didn't know whether to leave the building or stay put, so we elected to stay in the building-- outside glass or brick or something could have fallen on us and the building seemed to have ridden out the worst.
The room has a balcony-- we went to it and watched people congregate in the streets as sirens wailed past the buildings. There were very few lights. Few enough to see the stars-- in downtown Santiago, city of a million midnight clubs.
After a while one of the ISA people appeared at the door and told us that we had to meet in the lobby, outside, to see what would happen. No one seemed to know exactly what to do. I threw together my clothes, grabbed my camera, computer, and first aid kit, and jogged down nine flights of stairs with the rest of my room.
Most of the others were gathered outside on the street below. The street lights were off, and dozens of Chileans were standing around, looking a bit shellshocked. A car on the side of the road had put on its emergency flashers, and that was the only local illumination beyond the hotel's emergency lights (powered by a generator that also generated choking fumes). At least six cars rocketed out of the underground parking garage destined for places unknown.
When people returned from clubbing, they had stories to tell. There wasn' t much damage in our area, but they brought reports of broken glass littering the streets, people fleeing to the doors and screaming, and an old church steeple that had come apart and fallen into the street.
"That can't be right, it couldn't have done that."
"You doubt me? I just saw a church slide to pieces before my very eyes! The whole steeple!"
Later that church appeared on the news, minus a steeple.
We stayed outside for about an hour, playing games with the rubble and offering one another bags of Cheerios or blankets, and then were told to go back inside and sleep. Orientation the next morning canceled. Breakfast at 9:30.
We went back and slept-- but the ground still shook every hour or so. Bed rocking. Lights flickering. Something rattling in the closet.
The epicenter of the earthquake was south, an 8.8 on the Richter scale.
Here it measured about a 7.3. Biggest quake in fifteen years.
We're evacuating to a city about an hour east of Valparaiso-- not going to the coast for fear of tsunami.
Bus coming soon.
And hey, don't worry-- we're all okay, and the ISA people are on top of things. Great first introduction to Chile!
We are all okay, in fact, and thought the city sustained some substantial damage, no one at the hotel was hurt. Supposedly small tremors-- temblors-- are common in Chile and might happen once or twice a day, but this was a true earthquake-- terremoto-- and it was quite exciting.
Unlike most, I was awake at the time and not out clubbing. In bed, trying to sleep... and then stuff starts shaking. My roommate thought I was attacking her before she woke up fully, and by the time she did I was standing in the doorway, bracing myself as picture frames slapped against the walls and something heavy crashed in the bedroom. She joined me a few seconds later, and we held onto each other's arms and the doorframe as the building bucked and rattled like it had grown legs and was trying to hop away. All the lights were out, and the other two in the room appeared in their own doorway not long after us.
We waited it out.
Afterwards we inspected the room, discovered that the TV had fallen off its stand, all the picture frames were crooked, and there were cracks in the wall plaster outside, with shards of it all over the floors. We didn't know whether to leave the building or stay put, so we elected to stay in the building-- outside glass or brick or something could have fallen on us and the building seemed to have ridden out the worst.
The room has a balcony-- we went to it and watched people congregate in the streets as sirens wailed past the buildings. There were very few lights. Few enough to see the stars-- in downtown Santiago, city of a million midnight clubs.
After a while one of the ISA people appeared at the door and told us that we had to meet in the lobby, outside, to see what would happen. No one seemed to know exactly what to do. I threw together my clothes, grabbed my camera, computer, and first aid kit, and jogged down nine flights of stairs with the rest of my room.
Most of the others were gathered outside on the street below. The street lights were off, and dozens of Chileans were standing around, looking a bit shellshocked. A car on the side of the road had put on its emergency flashers, and that was the only local illumination beyond the hotel's emergency lights (powered by a generator that also generated choking fumes). At least six cars rocketed out of the underground parking garage destined for places unknown.
When people returned from clubbing, they had stories to tell. There wasn' t much damage in our area, but they brought reports of broken glass littering the streets, people fleeing to the doors and screaming, and an old church steeple that had come apart and fallen into the street.
"That can't be right, it couldn't have done that."
"You doubt me? I just saw a church slide to pieces before my very eyes! The whole steeple!"
Later that church appeared on the news, minus a steeple.
We stayed outside for about an hour, playing games with the rubble and offering one another bags of Cheerios or blankets, and then were told to go back inside and sleep. Orientation the next morning canceled. Breakfast at 9:30.
We went back and slept-- but the ground still shook every hour or so. Bed rocking. Lights flickering. Something rattling in the closet.
The epicenter of the earthquake was south, an 8.8 on the Richter scale.
Here it measured about a 7.3. Biggest quake in fifteen years.
We're evacuating to a city about an hour east of Valparaiso-- not going to the coast for fear of tsunami.
Bus coming soon.
And hey, don't worry-- we're all okay, and the ISA people are on top of things. Great first introduction to Chile!
La Vida es Tan Rapido
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!
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!
Arrived!
I now reside in a two-bedroom apartment deal on the ninth floor of the Rent-A-Home in Santiago, where I will remain with suitemates Carissa, Sheana, and Madeline until Sunday. The flights were long and rather uneventful, save for thunderstorms crossing the Caribbean that lit up the clouds every ten seconds or so and a brief sighting of what I think was the Panama canal, considering that it was extremely narrow, well-lit, and surrounded by huge ships-- the only maze of light visible for almost 4000 miles. Dinner was limp vegetables, pasta, bread, and water; breakfast was a banana, bread, and orange juice. Despite fears, I did not get overly lost in the Atlanta airport, though I did purchase a salad to eat and walk all the way to the correct gate to eat it only to discover I had neglected to pick up a fork.
First impression of Chile: mountains. Lots and lots and lots of mountains. They seemed to have no snow on top and glaciers sliding between, until I realized that the glaciers were clouds and the initial mountains were foothills to the real mountains, hazy and distant and shadowed by the sun. The flight arrived in the early morning, so what I saw was sunrise-- over the Andes.
After an initial panic after landing where I thought they had misplaced my luggage (they hadn't), I couldn't find my entry papers (they were folded in my backpack), and customs almost confiscated my boxed smoked salmon (they made me take the box out, then glanced at it and proclaimed it 'bien'), I successfully entered the country. And then waited at the airport for four hours until the rest of the ISA students arrived. International travel seems to be the ultimate test of patience. (As an aside, the other students seem to have been drawn evenly from across the States, from San Diego to Colorado to Chicago to Nashville to Boston to Iowa, names varying according to whether or not a certain state possesses a large enough city to be widely-known on its own).
Finally, I and about thirty others were loaded into a tour bus and driven into Santiago.
Picture Seattle, without the waterfront and the elevated highway viaducts. Make it flat-- so flat that it sprawls between mountains as a single massive sheet of stucco paint and steel-grey. Then add an atmosphere so caustic the mountains are almost entirely invisible. Permit things like high-rise glass-walled skyscrapers with billboards the size of Rhode Island and decaying shacks made of corrugated steel and guarded by barbed wire to stand side-by-side. Add modern and extensive public transit that can and will run over any pedestrians who don't get out of the way fast enough, extraordinarily persistent beggars, ton upon metric ton of discarded cigarettes, a snoozing dog on every corner, Spanish phrases rattled off like a linguistic firing squad, and a giant statue of the Virgin Mary on a hill.
Pictures attached.
Lunch was long and leisurely, conducted in a mishmash of Chilean slang, gimped starter Spanish, Southern drawl, and frantic gesture. I ascertained that the banks open at 10 and close at 5, and the clubs open at midnight and close at 5, and if you go to the wrong clubs or the wrong banks someone will leap out of a back alley and stab you and take your money. I also learned that the restaurant food in this country is pretty darn good.
Rode the metro, walked through town with my group led by my group jefe (boss), almost got hit by a few buses, discovered that the restrooms at the top of the funicular track that runs up to the big statue cost 2 bucks to use toilet paper.
There are no black people.
There are also no Asian people.
There is, however, a sushi restaurant down the street.
At this point, having been on a plane for sixteen some hours and waiting in airports for another six or seven, given about three hours of sleep in total, I'm tired. My knees hurt. My head has that special floaty feeling that comes from extended periods upon a swaying aircraft and exhaustion. Random Spanish phrases are drifting through my head, in hopes of being used, and I have the satisfaction of knowing I can make myself understood sort of more or less even if the reverse isn't always true ("Gakgakgakgakgakgakgakgakgakgakgak?" "Uh...").
Meeting for dinner at 8:30. I intend to get in a little R&R before that.
Signing off for now, from Santiago, Chile,
Paige
First impression of Chile: mountains. Lots and lots and lots of mountains. They seemed to have no snow on top and glaciers sliding between, until I realized that the glaciers were clouds and the initial mountains were foothills to the real mountains, hazy and distant and shadowed by the sun. The flight arrived in the early morning, so what I saw was sunrise-- over the Andes.
After an initial panic after landing where I thought they had misplaced my luggage (they hadn't), I couldn't find my entry papers (they were folded in my backpack), and customs almost confiscated my boxed smoked salmon (they made me take the box out, then glanced at it and proclaimed it 'bien'), I successfully entered the country. And then waited at the airport for four hours until the rest of the ISA students arrived. International travel seems to be the ultimate test of patience. (As an aside, the other students seem to have been drawn evenly from across the States, from San Diego to Colorado to Chicago to Nashville to Boston to Iowa, names varying according to whether or not a certain state possesses a large enough city to be widely-known on its own).
Finally, I and about thirty others were loaded into a tour bus and driven into Santiago.
Picture Seattle, without the waterfront and the elevated highway viaducts. Make it flat-- so flat that it sprawls between mountains as a single massive sheet of stucco paint and steel-grey. Then add an atmosphere so caustic the mountains are almost entirely invisible. Permit things like high-rise glass-walled skyscrapers with billboards the size of Rhode Island and decaying shacks made of corrugated steel and guarded by barbed wire to stand side-by-side. Add modern and extensive public transit that can and will run over any pedestrians who don't get out of the way fast enough, extraordinarily persistent beggars, ton upon metric ton of discarded cigarettes, a snoozing dog on every corner, Spanish phrases rattled off like a linguistic firing squad, and a giant statue of the Virgin Mary on a hill.
Pictures attached.
Lunch was long and leisurely, conducted in a mishmash of Chilean slang, gimped starter Spanish, Southern drawl, and frantic gesture. I ascertained that the banks open at 10 and close at 5, and the clubs open at midnight and close at 5, and if you go to the wrong clubs or the wrong banks someone will leap out of a back alley and stab you and take your money. I also learned that the restaurant food in this country is pretty darn good.
Rode the metro, walked through town with my group led by my group jefe (boss), almost got hit by a few buses, discovered that the restrooms at the top of the funicular track that runs up to the big statue cost 2 bucks to use toilet paper.
There are no black people.
There are also no Asian people.
There is, however, a sushi restaurant down the street.
At this point, having been on a plane for sixteen some hours and waiting in airports for another six or seven, given about three hours of sleep in total, I'm tired. My knees hurt. My head has that special floaty feeling that comes from extended periods upon a swaying aircraft and exhaustion. Random Spanish phrases are drifting through my head, in hopes of being used, and I have the satisfaction of knowing I can make myself understood sort of more or less even if the reverse isn't always true ("Gakgakgakgakgakgakgakgakgakgakgak?" "Uh...").
Meeting for dinner at 8:30. I intend to get in a little R&R before that.
Signing off for now, from Santiago, Chile,
Paige
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