I have survived the week!A week has gone by since I landed in Santiago. It has been a long week, but very exciting. Except for our first half-day of classes on Monday, we have had class every day from 9:30 am to 5-ish pm. Every day I wake up at 7:30 am, shower, sunscreen up, get dressed, and then usually walk into the dining room to find some breakfast waiting for me on the talbe: cereal, some fruit, tea, some bread, usually. Then around 8:45 am I walk out the door and around the corner to the bus stop on the big, one-way street called Manuel Montt which is a metro stop, as well. I take the bus and then get off and walk about two blocks to the metro stop and ride 10 minutes to the metro stop "Los Héroes" where I get off and walk the three or four blocks to the Universidad Diego Portales building that our classes are in.
In the afternoons, I walk back to the metro and ride to the next metro stop after "Manuel Montt," called "Pedro de Valdivias" where walk a block or so to catch a bus that takes me to the street "Fernando Bilbao." I get off, walk four or five blocks, down "Fernando Bilbao," through/past the park across the street from our apartment building, and enter the gate to the two apartment buildings. I say "buenos tardes" to the guard and head up the four flights to our apartment! I could walk between our apartment and the metro, but it would take 20 minutes, and by the end of the day I'm so exhausted that more walking seems a bit much. It is a very pretty walk though. If you would like to see this better, I suggest google mapping "Escuela de Telecomunicaciones, Santiago." You will be able to see the apartment buildings (we live in the top one), the park, and understand where I walk. It's pretty. =)
In the mornings (from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm, with one half hour break at 10:30 am) we have "Spanish Class" which is more of a Chilean culture class in which the profesora teaches us about Chilean culture, food vocab, etc. and gives us assignments to get us conversing with our host families. The profesora is extremely kind and is very easy to understand (thankfully!). She also is deciding which Spanish class each of us should go into for the semester, so Monday we had a short written test and Friday we had a short interview. They weren't bad. =)
Also, one morning we were divided up into pairs and sent to different places in the city with the task of taking four photos and answering specific questions about the place so that we could present our findings to the class. My partner, Sara, and I were sent to "el Museo de Bellas Artes" (the Museum of Fine Arts). We had a ton of fun! The museum itself is really small (compared to the Smithsonians), but very beautiful. We really enjoyed the special Bicentennial (next year, but they've already started celebrating) exhibit on "200 years of Graphic Narration in Chile." Some of the humor was lost either in translation or culture, but some of the comics were really funny. The comics covered topics in politics, foreign politics (we recognized some US presidents/people), social status of the country, history, women, and Chilean life in general. It was really interesting! I also found a book that I really want to get now that is full of quotes from different authors and famous people about writing, and comics. Here was one of my favorite quotes:
"Las malas palabras son la sal y pimienta del lenguaje, si se abusa del condimento se echa a perder lo que se dice." ("Bad words are the salt and pepper of language, but if you abuse the condiments, the meaning of what you want to say is lost.") ~ Salvador Allende
The museum also had a permanent exhibit of paintings by artists from France, Spain, Italy, and Holland, and a whole floor of a brief history of paintings in Chile (from ancient religious paintings to more modern works of art). Sara and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Afterwards we had a ton of time before our afternoon class (which goes from 3 pm to 5-ish pm), so we wandered around a bit and eventually found ourselves in Plaza de Armas, a wonderful square filled surrounded by markets, restaurants, a few museums, and tons of people. We wandered through the Artisans market on the way (there were TONS of earrings - shop upon shop with walls of earrings! It was amazing).
We also got some snacks for lunch. I ate an emanada de pino: a baked bread pocket filled with a mixture called "pino," which has one hard boiled egg, one olive, some ground up meat, and cooked onions. They are my favorite kind of empanada, so of course, it was delicious. I also decided to try the famous Chilean drink, "Mote con huesillo." There are numerous street vendors that sell it and it is quite good (I liked it, but none of the other students in my program that I know of have gotten up the guts to try it). Here is the definition from wikipedia, since I didn't actually know what was in it besides the peach (which I thought was an apricot): "It is made from husked wheat (mote), mixed with sun-dried peaches (huesillo) that have been rehydrated in water for hours. The water in which the peaches were rehydrated is mixed with some sugar, and the wheat is mixed in the glass with the peaches and the peach-flavored sweetened water." Later, closer to Plaza de Armas, we stopped at a icecream shop and I got a magnificent icecream and fruit sunday with a scoop of lime, orange, and strawberry (?) icecream, strawberry sause, and some chopped fruits, with whipped cream, a cherry, and one of those tube cookies in it. It was delicious!
Back to my schedule, in the afternoons we have our "Orientation" which is taught by a really cool and fun young profesora who is also a journalist. She's Chilean, 26 years old (?), speaks German, and has a German husband. With her we had two days of class time where she went over some cultural things and told us about fun things to do in Santiago, and two days of outings. One day we went to "La Moneda" the building that the Presidenta works in but doesn't live in. It is called "la moneda" because that is where the money ("moneda") is made (or something like that). Unfortunately we came at the wrong time to go through the building, but we did go to the cultural center underneath it. It was really cool! We saw the temporary exhibits of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and also walked through the tiny exhibit on Violeta Perra, the famous Chilean folklorist who was a great singer, artist, and political activist. In Spanish class that morning we had listened to her most famous song, "Gracias a la vida (Thanks to Life)" so it was perfect that we got to see some of her art, as well.
The other outing we had was on Friday and was much like the activity for our Spanish class: in groups of three we chose a "barrio" or "neighborhood" of Santiago to go to, took pictures, talked to someone, and will present our findings next week. My group went to "el barrio Alonso de Córdova," which as it turns out is basically a Santiago Georgetown, except not quite as fun. It was a row of boutiques and other spendy arts shops and galleries in an upper class suburban area. We didn't enjoy it much. And it took forever to get there and back (we had to take the metro AND micro [the bus]). We did take lots of photos and went and talked to the guard in the "town hall" like place. That was the only kind of interesting thing: there they had three bulletin boards full of the plans for farther development plans for the area like how tall the buildings will be able to be on certain streets.
With such a schedule, every evening I came home exhausted. And it didn't help that the first two days I got a bit lost coming home. =P I made it home okay, and I had a map that Victor (my host brother) made me, but I got disoriented at the metro stops and wasn't sure if I was going in the right direction all the time. But I did get home eventually and now know how to successfully arrive home in a timely manner. (^-^)
Usually when I came home, Maria, the nana/housekeeper who comes here every day (?) to look after Fransisco and clean the house, would present me with a meal and I would eat while she sat with me and talked. Victor and Silvia would come home and then around 7 pm or so, three days in a row, we had people stop by to stay for a while. The first day it was Silvia's good friend Glenis who helped me with my assignment and stayed until 10 pm or so, then Victor's best friend surprised us the next evening with his friend's two year old daughter, and then last night we had Victor and Silvia's young friend Nicole come over and show us her pictures from her trip to the Atacama region. Her pictures were amazing! I can't wait to go there with my class. For each guest we all sat down and had tea/coffee (plain tea with sugar or Splenda and powdered milk), and toast with butter/jam/cheese.
One night I decided to watch some Chilean TV before going to bed. I have cable in my room and it was surprisingly hard to find anything that wasn't in English with Spanish subtitles. I finally settled on the Disney Channel, which has movies that are dubbed in Spanish, before finally going to bed.
Oh, and major important discovery: I finally realized on Monday that I hadn't set my clocks to Chilean time, so was two hours late all weekend. I discovered this when Silvia woke me up Monday morning at 7:40 am because my alarm hadn't gone off (it read 5:40 am which is why it hadn't rang at 7:30 am). So that's cleared up a good deal of my confusion.
I finally got a cell phone! Yay! My phone number is 77410544. =) I pay 150 pesos per minute and 50 pesos per text, I believe. This equals about 25 cents per minute and 8 cents per text, but I don't plan to use it much. And its prepaid so if I run out, I just have to go to a pharmacy to add money.
Some more random things that I thought of writing about during the week:
They love to add "super" to things, like "super rico" means "super delicious." It's kinda funny. Also, they add "sito" or "ito" to everying. So bread is "pansito" instead of "pan," and tea is "tesita" instead of "te." "¿Quieres tesita, mi hista? (Would you like some tea, my daughter?)" is what Silvia always is asking me. =) I've also heard the words "me repente" (reconsider) and
"costumbre" (custom) said a lot lately. The latter might just be coincidence, since I'm learning about Chile in class, but my family, at least, uses "me repente" a lot.
When eating, you keep both hands on the table. One you use to eat with and the other you can use to hold your plate, napkin, or just rest on the table. And that's another thing. Your napkin doesn't go on your lap. It stays on the table, too. But maybe that's just because my family uses little paper napkins. I dunno.
In one of my assignments I had to interview my family for details about their life for my classmates: Silvia works at a public school and is the "Inspectora general" (one of the three people that runs the school, I think). Victor is a lieutenent colonel in the Chilean military and knows how to speak, read, and write Chinese (not fluently, but he said he is at the high Intermediate level). And the dog's name is Peringuinga, which is a name they created from a word that is a kind of sea creature, but I haven't been able to figure out what. She is very funny and loves to hoard plastic bags (tied in a knot), and socks. She also loves people and hates when they go so will start barking when she sees people kiss cheeks as she knows someone is leaving. She also barks to say hi when you come in the door, but she is really a sweet dog.
While walking along the street on a hot day it is not uncommon to think it is sprinkling, but it is really the water from the air-conditioners from the buildings above you.
I ate a hotdog for lunch yesterday that had sauerkraut, tomatoes, mashed avocado, and a ton of mayo on it (the mayo was not so good and the mixture of mayo and mashed avocado were not so good together). This is not an uncommon combination for a hotdog, here.
When you buy something, like at a Panedería (bread shop), you first order the item and are given a little receipt with the item on it. Then you stand in line to pay for it and are given another receipt which you present to get the actual item. So there are three steps: ordering, paying, and receiving. Same thing with parking. You get a ticket when you go in the parking structure, then you stand in line to pay, and then have to give the receipt to the people to get out. Kinda interesting.
Part of the current President's city plan has been to improve the transportation system. As most people have said, her plan "transantiago" was a good idea, but hasn't been executed very well. The bus system is called Micro and the train system is the Metro. There are several little buses that get people to the major street buses (which are long accordion buses). At big intersections (or near the metros), the bus stops are little waiting arenas where you have to swipe your "bip!" card (a prepaid card you use to pay for all public transportation) to get into the area so that when the bus pulls up you can get on at any of the three (?) doors and don't have to wait in line at the front to swipe your card.
While waiting at a stop light in your car on a major street, there will often be people trying to sell icecream, fruits, juggling, or you might be approached by a person in a wheel chair begging. You will also see that many of the street vendors are disabled (blind, or in a wheelchair, usually). Street vendors sell everything from cookies, toys, sunglasses, shirts, skirts, jewelry, to reading your future in tarot cards.
Silvia likes to keep the bread in the microwave: everyone said she should get a microwave, so she did, but she doesn't use it much and so uses it as a bread box).
Many people of upper middle class - upper class, have nanas who take care of the kids, pets, and keep house for the family while they are gone during the day. We have Maria, a woman in her late 40s (maybe), who is super nice, and travels two hours to get here. She has a 19 year old daughter who we just found out is pregnant and isn't married. She's really excited to be a grandma, but Silvia is shocked and appalled that her daughter wasn't more careful. But only told this to me privately. Victor and Silvia now like to tease her about being a little grandmother ("abuelita"), but everyone is very good-humored about it. Whenever I come home, I always find my bed has been nicely made and my bathroom is often clean. I also found all my clean clothes nicely folded and put away. Maria is treated like a member of the family, in conversation, and will eat lunch/"once" (tea with toast/salad) with us, but will clear/set the table, get Silvia things, and do other servant-like duties, too. She always leaves around 7 pm though.
Today we went to Jumbo (I inconspicuously took a bunch of pictures), the "joven" (young person - 20's) who bagged our groceries, also drove our cart to the car, loaded our groceries for us, and then took our carts back for us. We gave him some money.
I forgot to mention earlier that I figured out my address. When I first received my host family assignment and got their address, I was very confused because the address is "Escuela de Teleconunicaciones (School of Telecommunications) 1207 B, Departamento 404, Provedencia, Santiago, Chile." As it turns out, they don't live in a school, that's just the super long name of the little street that the two apartment buildings are on. "Departamento" means apartment and Provedencia is the neighborhood.
Today while we were waiting in the car for Victor to finish paying for the parking, Silvia explained to me why she never stands in lines anymore. During the presidency of Salvador Allende, when Victor was about 5 years old, people had money, but there was nothing to buy. No food, no items, and the few things that were around you had to stand in line for hours to buy, and they were extremely expensive. Silvia called these two years, two years of chaos. The country was in complete chaos and there were no means of transportation so you had to walk for hours to get to your job. When you left your house, you didn't know if you would be able to get back or even if you still had a job. It was a terrible time, and because of this, Silvia refuses to stand in line anymore. She'll sit and wait, but will never stand because it reminds her of those horrible two years.
Oh, and there are 21 students from American University in my program here. 2o girls and one guy. =) Most of them are juniors but I think there might be two or so of us sophomores. There are two or so other students taking our Spanish class with us, but other than that it's just been us thus far. When we are not in class with the profesoras, we all tend to speak English together, which is kind of a bummer as I want to practice my Spanish more, but oh, well. I finally found a few that are willing to speak Spanish with me. Our classes for the semester are all in Spanish, and are open to Chilean students, too, but designed for us. I hope that we'll have other Chilean students in our class so I can make some Chilean friends.
The weather here has been very hot. 80's and 90's, I think, but I'm not sure. Today was much cooler as it rained. I was comfortable in my jeans and sweater. Most days though, regardless of the weather I wear a shirt and jeans or a skirt (as do most women), so as not to attract unwanted attention from the guys on the street. Even so, I've still heard a couple of guys honk at us, ask "Where are you going, beautiful?" or just say "how gorgeous!" or something like that. They don't usually do anything else, but I want to be safe anyway. And besides, none of the women really wear shorts anyway. Most people here wear sandals and my Tiva-like sandals stick out a bit, but ah well. People in general though, dress much nicer even if they are just walking on the street. Despite the conservative nature surrounding legs, cleavage doesn't seem to be as much of an issue as most women have very flattering shirts that are sometimes a little revealing. Silvia is fond of wearing see-through shirts and no one seems to bat an eyelash that you can see her bra straight through it.
So that just about sums it up so far. Next week we will have presentations in class, go on a morning tour of the city, and then Thursday and Friday we will be in Valparaíso, the coastal city where Congress is held. Should be exciting. Next week we also will get our class schedules and will start classes March 6th.
I hope you all have a great weekend!
~ Kaia
