Posts Tagged ‘Batman’

My best guess is that God gave me the strength to go to the beach for the weekend, then quickly took it away as soon as I got back. The odd thing is the sky didn't actually look this dark, it just played hell with all of our cameras. Photo by Maggie Sowsnowski, July 2009.

So fun weekend aside, my body is no more excited to be in Santiago than it was at the end of last week, so as I write I’m currently lying in bed, after leaving class on Monday and staying here this morning.

I’ve had “mild, occasional” asthma my entire life, which for the most part has been just that: occasionally mild, letting me do normal things like sports or breath-holding competitions, and only manifesting as a mild lung pain after long runs or in really cold or thin air. Or when I get a cold, like now, in which case it strikes with all of its repressed fury, turning a mild case of the sniffles into a brutal case of the sniffles and a lingering cough for the next several weeks.

The good news is that I don’t have a fever, so it’s not Influenza H1N1, aka “Swine Flu,” which, all joking aside, is actually a threat here. A few people in my program have already come down with it, and though they’re okay, it’s not the kind of thing people take lightly down here.

But that’s depressing, so let’s talk about something that people do take lightly around here: racism.

As I’ve been delving more into the political craziness of this place, it’s really interesting to hear Chileans talk about their own demographics, so most would be quick to tell you that there is no racism, given that there really isn’t more than one race. The Mapuche, the largest indigenous tribe still in existence in Chile, only make up a small percentage of the nation’s population, and though most Chileans are quick to tell you that they have a little Mapuche blood in them (or that they’re ‘pure’ Chilean, whatever that means), I suppose that the supposed “lack” of racism more addresses the day-to-day lack of any color difference on the streets, rather than the infrastructural and historical events. Odd. Still, similar to the U.S., it seems that the government and education systems are making an effort to acknowledge and educate about the Mapuche culture, including activities that EAP students can go on to learn more.

I’m still tinkering around with plug-ins for photo albums, so for the time being I’ll probably just stick to posting the odd photo until such time as I can do it more economically and attractively; my Internet seems to not be able to make its mind about how fast my connection gets to be. Right now I’m on the lower end of its bipolarity, making my best efforts take forever, so I’ll upgrade when I can.

In other news, I’ve found a few key people in this country, both that I knew I was looking for and didn’t.

• Someone (a few someones) to play tennis with: I befriended my (Chilean) neighbors in the apartment a couple of weeks ago, students at La Chile, and one of them is a fan of tennis. Not only did he have a desire and a place to play, he said he could lend me a racquet. Boo yah, I’ll hit that up when I’m back on my feet.

• Someone to study with for the LSAT: That’s right, I’m officially prepping for Law School. I’m terrible at studying on my own, so I figure the opportunity to look at this stuff with another mind is an opportunity too good to pass up.

In other, other news, with the slow Internet connection I’ve had to forego my watching of just about any video at a reasonable rate, so I’m officially in the market for good blogs: particularly entertaining, edgy and cultural. I’m making a concerted effort specifically not to spend too much time on American politics, rather I’d like something that’s just fun to read, fun to keep up with, and will keep me entertained at a minimum of bandwidth. Any ideas?

As I’m now realizing this post is rather serious, please let this image lighten up your day.

Damn kids and their graffiti, making this world a more dangerous place.

For now, Ciao from Chile.

This pretty much sums up the night.

Happy Independence Day, everyone! Today started off like any other day: waking up at 1:30 pm, taking a cab to La Católica, playing “fútbol” for several hours, etc. The Caligringos decided to play soccer, on a back field on the La Católica campus, and it was actually quite fun. I, like most kids, played soccer for a couple of years when I was younger, but it’s been several years, and it was quite evident on the field who was actually good and was used to playing, and who was there just to have a good time and try not to hurt their team’s chances too much (read: the people wearing jeans).

At one point, and continuing for a while, a dog joined the game, chasing after the soccer ball, back and forth across the court. As cute as this sounds, and was for the first hour, I was truly impressed by this dog’s willingness to continue getting hit in the face time and time again, as it seemed to love jumping directly into the ball’s path. Still, filling his role as all-time defender, he added a new element to the game, forcing both teams to learn to pass and shoot quickly, because as the axiom seemed to suggest, if the dog catches up to you, you’ve held onto the ball too long.

After the game, every gringo in the country was acutely aware of the date, and we all had our plans to live as American of a day as possible from halfway around the world. Some were baking apple pie, others were planning on getting sh**faced on good-old-American Budweiser. I was getting Chinese food with my host family.

The day also marked an important collegiate finals soccer game between La U (the fútbol team for La Chile) and Union Española, a rival team. Still, try as we might, we could not find a place to sit and watch it. The rare café we found with it playing was packed, and if we had managed to find a seat, the players would have been nothing but brightly colored specks on a tiny screen 20+ feet away. Alas, we returned home, me to my comida China and my friends, I would discover later, to be semi-mugged and then saved by the Latin Bruce Wayne (story to come).

The Chinese food was excellent, as it seems they had bought a bunch of food and prepared it themselves, bringing an interesting (and delicious) new approach to fried rice. Still, I was in no hurry to complain, and had to stop myself, as overeating would have been easy.

Plus, I had a long night ahead of me, as I heard we were going to a nice, quiet American bar to toast the US of A and knock back a few American brews, speak English and generally reminisce of the land we’d left behind just two short weeks earlier. This bar, literally called “Basic Bar and Restaurant,” would be a nice place to do that.

Or so I thought.

It turns out there are quite a few gringos in the city of Santiago, and I don’t mean to exaggerate that every single one of them must have been at this bar. Basic was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people, decorated gaily in Red White and Blue, with strobe lights flashing and a deejay busting everything from Michael Jackson to Bon Jovi to N’Sync. The beer bong started getting passed around, though I didn’t take up the opportunity, not wanting to imagine where that mouthpiece had been, and Escudo (the Chilean equivalent of Budweiser) flowed freely all night.

All in all, it was a really good time. Most of the students in our program turned out, packing an already filled-to-the-brim bar. I had my neighbors with me, and as surprised as they were to discover that all of my friends could speak Spanish, it was nice to see that some things never really change, as bars, it seems, are pretty universal concepts.

Shopping would be easier without long arms, though the whole getting-stuff-off-of-high-shelves thing never gets old.

Two pair black pants, check.

One pair black boots, check.

Two pair black socks, check.

One black jacket, check.

Three hundred dollars personal burial money, check.

I am Jack’s overstuffed suitcase.

I hate packing, especially because the time I’m going – 6 months – is an ambiguous amount of time, somewhere stuck between a short trip and a full move. I want to settle in, yet remain mobile. Prepared, but potentially nomadic. Then again, I’m sure that it won’t be the easiest thing to find clothes in my size, so I’m resigning to bring more than I probably would have liked to otherwise.

Tomorrow’s going to be a hell of a day, with several rounds of errands, followed by some lovely wine tasting, burger-eating and bachelor-partying, ending with hopefully crashing on somebody’s floor.

In the meantime, it seems I completely missed a disk of Veronica Mars and skipped straight to the finale, and didn’t notice… not sure what that says about me or the show.

In other news, you need to check out this cover of Elton John’s Rocketman, featured on the “Classifieds” episode of This American Life. They found several musicians advertising in a single day’s Chicago Sun-Times, hooked them up, and this song is the result.

Rocketman by The One-Day Band

note: The beginning of this post was a reference to Fight Club, a popular book and movie from the late 1990s. Please don’t take it seriously.