Travel
Podcasts and Other False Predictions
The last two days have been pretty brutal transport-only days, with something like 9+ hours Thursday and significantly more today. Why did I go to Argentina for 15 hours, you ask?
I originally came to Chile on a student visa, which was a long and circuitous process I’d love never to have to repeat (think FBI background checks, HIV test, reams of paperwork, and a nice cash deposit in the Chilean consulate’s bank account). That has unfortunately run out, and in an effort remain as legal as possible, I’m on a bus right now to Mendoza to pick up a new tourist visa.
Mendoza is the border town just on the other side of the Chilean/Argentine border, and quite a beautiful wine-filled area, though I’m only staying the night before heading back. The Chilean government is notoriously apathetic about their visas, and basically anyone willing to pay the entrance fee can get a stamp for a 90-day tourist visa. The “Mendoza run,” then, has become a ritual for foreigners and quite a nice and easy way to stay in the country.
Etcetera, and Such
The last few months have been a bit crazy, which would be an excellent excuse to account for my lack of blogging, but the truth lies somewhere between inertia, laziness and malaise, though I’m only about 2/3 confident about the definitions of 2/3 of those words, so who really knows?
School is long over, though I haven’t the slightest idea how I fared, considering the generally disorganized nature of the University of Chile. I legitimately really enjoyed each of my classes in their own way, and learned a lot, but I find myself complaining about the dysfunctional nature of its administration and habits of its faculty more than lauding the classes, which is too bad, but it’s interesting that that’s really what stuck with me. I’ll do my best in the future to acknowledge the good with the bad the next time an anecdotal discussion of the comparative merits of Latin American public higher education comes up which, knowing the crowd I tend to run with, will probably be pretty soon.
Lima: LAN, Chifa, and Walter the Language Guy (Peru Part 1)
Our journey began at 4:30 in the morning in the Santiago airport: a group of 11 bleary-eyed Gringos carefully checking and rechecking our bags, and getting ready for the trip. Most had been able to grab a few hours of sleep before coming; I, unfortunately, had not.
I’d been kept up writing a last-minute piece for the Santiago Times, a quick tale of my personal take on Chilean wine, accompanied by the note to my editor “I think this is what you were talking about…but please let me know if I’m just way off the mark and I’ll figure out something else,” thinking to myself that this had better be on the mark, or there was no way I’d be able to fix it in time while on my trip.
And on your right, you’ll see Santiago, the capital and largest city of Chile…
Right now I’m procrastinating going to bed, which is somewhat of a bad idea, considering that I need to get up early to make it to the strangely prohibitive 8:30-11:30 am hours for the American Embassy tomorrow for their help planning my trip, but until I’m actually set to fall asleep, I figure now’s as good a time as any to update.
The Plan, Stan (Part 2)
Santiago is a different city in the spring, which it finally finally is. Sure, the temperature still varies wildly and the sky is known to occasionally open up with a 10-minute rain and hail downpour, but for the most part it simply varies from brisk to beautiful. The sun is out, the flowers are starting to bloom, the young horny couples are inappropriately touching each other in inappropriately public areas, it’s Spring!
On my part, I’ve been trying to make opportunities to walk as much as possible, something that seems to scare the hell out of most Chileans. “You’re going to walk home? From here?” my friend said incredulously. “But we’re right next to a Metro stop!” I attempted to go to a movie yesterday, but ended up stranded on the far end of Providencia, needing to get home (long story), the Metro just closing, and decided to walk home. I arrived about two hours later tired, but in a good way.
Today I went to Los Leones to check out the leather jacket shop I’d seen my first week in town (god a nice new leather jacket for about $42), and was on my way back when I decided to stop in to the Mundo a Mil (basically their version of a $1 store). I picked up a SUPER 3D PUZZLE of the USS Constellation CV-64, an aircraft carrier, and I was blown away by its amazing descriptions on the packaging. In its unedited glory:
Use hand and head — Training kid’s flexible for their proportion on the hands and eyes.Develop them imagination ability. Make a teaching fairyland.
Design munificent — It can be assemblaged detached over and over,and looks like vertiable.It needn’t any assist tools.
Perfect in workmanship — Materials are daintiness. Safety and slightly.Full of colour printing.
And there › Continue reading
One Month Reflections: On Power, Journalism and Pool
“Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.”
Boy, ain’t that the truth. And as I’m pretty sure the great thinker Kareem Abdul-Jabar was trying to say, in our time, when your power cord dies for your computer, you’re pretty much screwed.
And so I found myself yesterday, sitting in the Santiago Times office working when suddenly my power cord stopped feeding my computer. Shit. But no time to worry about that, as I had to rush off to our first orientation at the University of Chile orientation, in which they did presentation after presentation, including several videos, showing us all about campus, its history and its significance through the years.
I never really realized what a great school it was in the greater Chilean scheme of things, because obviously it’s not really something that we talk about in the states. La Chile and La Católica are the two best universities in the country, so to tell Chileans that we’re going there is a big deal. The best way I can imagine it is if somebody came to do an exchange program to Harvard, or Yale, or one of those schools, and didn’t understand all of the baggage that goes with those names for the average American.
Back From the Beach: A Summary
Full update to come, for now a few key highlights:
People in Papudo lie. A lot.
• Beach at night
• Pasta with crazy sauce (with crazy)
• wine
• the Pacifier / Rambo – the two movies that can be most easily translated to Spanish without losing the nuance
• 7 people in a 5-seater
• Empanada with palta (avocado, are you mad?)
• Ridiculously elaborate ice cream sundae
Eat your heart out, City.
• cheap taxi
• sunset
• just enough cooks in the kitchen
• wine
• rock hike
• crab cake(s)
• pregnant horse
When in Rome…
Insert witty welcome back opening.
The first night in Algarrobo, walking on the beach.
Our group just got back from a couple days at the beach, which is not quite what it sounds like, but was amazing nonetheless. We’re still in the introductory stage, which means no class yet, but they took us to Algarrobo, a beach town southwest of Santiago, for a couple days of meetings, orientation and some (alcohol-assisted) team building. The meetings fell somewhere between informative and mind-numbing, depending on the amount of coffee in my system, but we had plenty of hours in between to hang out, play ping pong and foosball, sit by the fire and play Bananagrams (en español, claro), and explore the town.
Algarrobo itself is a beautiful town, with hilly neighborhoods and a small downtown drag that runs right along the beach. The hotel we were staying at, which we no doubt took over, fed us well, with delicious buffets of everything from fried fish to celery and avocado salad to amazing Chilean wine.
The group walking through Algarrobo.
The festivities, which inevitable happen when that many college-age kids live in such close proximity, were quite fun, with our room hitting its capacity at about 30-ish folks. The second night was quite different, with the majority of the people taking over the downstairs bar, music coming from the TV, and those who could dance teaching other the basics of salsa. The out-going director of the program, Heidi, even busted a few moves on the dance floor, which will no doubt be making its way to Facebook very soon.
Presidenta Bachelet of Chile recently met with Obama in D.C., which received a great deal of media attention in both countries. Though proud that they have a woman president, many Chileans are less than satisfied with the level of assistance Bachelet and the government have provided to help those affected byt he economic crisis in Chile.
On a personal end, I’m starting to feel more comfortable here. My Spanish is definitely improving, though it seems more hit or miss based on the person I’m talking to. It’s great to be in a group of students who, at minimum, have two years of Spanish training, so we’re able to have whole conversations together in Spanish. I’m also being taught a number of “Chilenismos,” or Chilean slang. Many Chileans don’t pronounce S’s, which can be a bit confusing, but also makes both “cómo etay?” (how are you?) and “cachay?” (understand?) common sayings.
Mi família Chilena has been very helpful in learning and practicing Spanish, as neither one of them speaks English, and took time today to teach me some very important words (tenedor = fork, copa = wine glass). In general, everyone I’ve met has been extremely nice (and forgiving of the American thing), eager to teach and learn with Americans.
I’ve managed to find my way around town fairly well, and I’m getting a hang of the public transit, which is also impressing me more and more. To get from my apartment, near the center of town, to La Católica takes about 50 minutes, which includes a ride on the metro and a bus. To imagine the metro, think about BART, but cleaner, faster, more efficient and cheaper. The trains come every 3 or 4 minutes, from my observations, which is a good thing considering that only 3 or 4 people can get onto each car per stop, even packing the people in shoulder-to-shoulder.
A few things continue to puzzle me, as I’ve been trying to figure out whether or not to risk the water. The popular literature (which also said that the Chileans are a cold, unfriendly bunch) says that we shouldn’t drink the water, but the director of the program says that there’s nothing to fear except chlorine, but no parasites. I’ll probably give it a shot soon, though bottles of water are cheap and available everywhere.
Finding available Internet has been a challenge, with none available in my apartment until early next month, so it’s likely I’ll find myself at my current location often (a café a few blocks away with WiFi). My mail client has been freaking out every time I stumble upon WiFi, so if you need to contact me, Facebook is a much better way for me to see it sooner.
For now, Ciao!
She packed my bags last night, preflight…
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.
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.
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