Cold Feet

Made a mistake with the flip-flops today, but the weather deceived me!  When I started out at 7:30 for my 8:00 class, it was understandably chilly.  After class, it was foggy and freezing.  When I got home at 11:45, I put on socks and bundled up in my afghan but at 1:30 when I had to go out again, it was once again a beautiful day.  Weird.

Interesting things today:  I saw a parade of at least 25 horse drawn buggies filled with old women waving white hankies.  I have no idea what for…but they were having a good time.

And amidst a chorus of carhonks, I heard “MOOOOOOOOO!!!”, so it appears that somebody in Vina has a cow horn.

I love Thursdays even though they start early.  My short stories class today was a lot of fun…I’ve decided that I love the professor.  He’s nutty…but fun .  He’ll tell these little jokes and sometimes we don’t get them at all, so he’ll just chuckle to himself but if by chance, somebody laughs a little bit, he’ll burst out laughing like he just realized “Wow!  That really was funny, huh?”  And then there was the time he called his middle finger “The Ministry of Health” and stuck it up his nose in the middle of a lecture…

Paula gave me the complete “Chronicles of Narnia” as a late birthday present!  I’ve never read them before, so this should be interesting.  I’m so glad that I have some light reading now…I haven’t read anything for fun in AGES.  Light reading…haha…it’s a tome of like 700+ pages.

I’m thinking of going to Placilla for the weekend…gotta get out of the city and away from cow horns and buggy traffic…

Mid-week blues

Well, I survived another Linguistics class.  Boooring.  Today’s a beautiful spring day so it makes it doubly difficult to go to classes.  Wednesdays are Art Theory and Textual Linguistics and they’re both hour and a half lectures so my only recourse to keep awake is to take notes…

Paula’s going to Buenos Aires on Friday and I’m not going with her…my Art Theory class is having a session with the TA that I can’t miss plus I have a test and an essay due.   Asi es la vida de una estudiante…

So, the weather turning nice means that I’ve been breaking out the flip-flops but I’ve been getting a lot of weird looks.  Girls are running around in these teeny little tank tops and boots and I’m wearing a sweatshirt and flip-flops…is it really THAT weird?  Every time I come upon old ladies walking together, I feel their eagle gaze swoop to my feet and as I pass, they say to one another “Tan desabrigada!”  Desabrigada is almost untranslatable to English…it means something like unjacketed and the whole phrase together means something like “So not wearing enough warm clothing for this kind of weather!”  Whatever!  I’m from Minnesota.

Speaking of Minnesota, there are so many Minnesota people here.  There’s a girl that I went to highschool with that I haven’t talked to, ever.  She was a grade younger than I was and we’ve just seen each other on the street and in the exchange office.  There are two girls from MSUM, Joann and Jill.  I know Jo but hadn’t ever seen Jill before, which is really strange considering how small the program is.  And walking home today, I saw a girl wearing a U of M tee-shirt.

Ah, the coincidences of life.

Foggy

This morning I met Heather and Jill (the workers) and Jorge (one of the friends) in Valparaiso and we did a little bit of sightseeing.  Jill is new to Chile and had to turn in some papers, so they did that this morning and then when I met them we went to a cafe for some coffee.  Actually, Jill and I got hot chocolate and it was pretty good…not like Color Cafe but still good.  We had a nice chat in the cafe and then went up to Paseo 21 de Mayo…a beautiful look out over the city that you can only reach by going up a famous ascensor whose name I have since forgotten.  It’s pretty touristy, but rightfully so, it’s a grand view.  I’d never been there before so that was kind of fun.  Jorge knows ALL about Valparaiso, so he kept throwing out interesting little tidbits about famous buildings and the like.

We walked down the hill and caught a bus to go to the market for lunch. We all got the fried merluza again and it was yummy.  I fell in love with Valparaiso again today… everything I do is colored by the thought that “I’m going home in 3 months”.  It makes me a little desperate.  I don’t want to leave!  But then again I regularly fall in and out of love with Chile so don’t be surprised if tomorrow I have nothing but bad things to say about my wonderfully crazy adopted city.

After lunch, I went to my short stories class and we had a good class about microcuentos like “The Dinosaur”,

    Upon waking, the dinosaur was still there.

Shortest story, EVER.  Written by a Guatemalen author, the original translation is

Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.

So, today was a gooood day.

The Peculiar Joy of Eating Cookies

Hi, everyone!    I don’t know why today, but thanks for reading.  We’re heading into my eighth month of Chilean Adventure.  Wow, eh?

I’ve been cooped up inside working on an essay for my short stories class.  I actually enjoy the topic, enjoy the authors, have done all the reading, this essay is really no sweat, I’m just LAZY.  Or something.  Anyway, I’ve been home all day “working” on it but I just went out to get some fresh air and a cookie.

I went to the “Panaderia Inglesa” that Ryan and I frequented quite a bit when he was here.  I’ve bought berlines there as big as my face for 200 pesos…a ridiculous amount for such a mountain of fried goodness.  They didn’t have any berlines today so I bought two small wheat rolls (seems like wheat anything is considered “health food” here and is not very popular) and a beautiful cookie named “Deliciosa” and took the long way home, enjoying the treeshade, the warmth of the day and the relative tranquility of a Saturday in Viña.  I ate one of the wheat rolls when I got home and it was perfectly wheaty, just what I’d been craving.  I worked on the essay for an hour and then got up for a drink of water and decided to look at the cookie…and maybe try a crumb.  It was two thin sugar or shortbread type cookies held together by a thin layer of manjar (similar to caramel but muy mucho creamier [and don't ever use the phrase "muy mucho" in front of another native speaker and tell them you learned it from me]) adorned with a dollop of raspberry jam in a hole in the middle of the top cookie and sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar.  So, I had one little crumb and decided to have another, and pretty soon half the cookie was gone and I felt really bad because it was so beautiful and it was disappearing but it was so tasty that I couldn’t stop breaking off little pieces and the whole time I was eating it, I kept thinking “This is really strange…I feel really happy and sad at the same time…and I’m just eating a cookie!”

It’s been a good week.  Paula and I went shopping on Thursday and didn’t buy anything but we made semi-healthy carrot cake and got to hear all about Erin’s hitchiking adventures and see the pictures.  Friday we went to the market for lunch and ate a TON of seafood and almost bought tickets to go to Buenos Aires tomorrow but then I had a moment of sanity and realized that I couldn’t go because of my classes.  Another trip to The Best City Ever is pending…maybe in two weeks.  I’m not sure…

The workers are going to be in meeting tomorrow and in the area until Monday so maybe I’ll get a chance to hang out with them and meet the Heather’s new companion from CA.  More reason to get this great little essay wrapped up…

Chau-chau.  Because that’s what we say here.  Not adios.  And that’s what I do…chow-chow….  Har-har-har.

I’m sick :(

Ok, so I’ve had a bad cold as of yesterday.  This is not cool.

This weekend has been the “Fiestas Patrias” for the Chilean Independence day.  The parties started last Friday and have been going strong through today.  There are empanadas EVERYWHERE, flags EVERYWHERE, people dancing the queca EVERYWHERE, kids flying kites EVERYWHERE and Viña is full of tourists.  The atmosphere is extremely festive.

I celebrated the 18th with the Ossa’s…Gustavo was all dressed up like a huaso, or a traditional Chilean cowboy, and they had the entire apartment decked out with flags and streamers.  As soon as I walked in, they handed me one of the empanadas that Laura had just taken out of the oven.  So, I hung out there all day.  We flew a kite until it was destroyed in the wind and went for a bike ride to their cabin and walked around the grounds for a while until it got really cloudy.  I made a Crazy Cake and it turned out to be pretty tasty but really dense…I wasn’t too happy with it but at least it was edible.

It’s the biggest national excuse for a drunken party so there have been A LOT of ambulance sirens going by.  This morning at 5:00 there was a car accident outside of my apartment, according to Angela.  I didn’t hear a thing but she said that the ambulance camepolice and had to get everything cleared away.   I don’t think there were any deaths…

Classes start again tomorrow…I have two.  I’m going to bed early and see if I can’t get over this bug.

Cultural Essay Numero Uno

Chilean Children

The most common complaint among American exchange students in Chile is that our host families try to do everything for us.  They fix our beds, arrange and rearrange our stuff, want to prepare every bite of food that we eat, and insist that we leave our dishes for them to clean.  They do not expect us to do anything for ourselves inside the house.  Angela always makes a big fuss when I clean my own breakfast dishes or help clear the table and was once moved to tears when I brought some laundry in from the patio and hung it up inside.  If she sees me making toast, she offers to do it for me or apoligizes that I have to work.  She appreciates the help, but can’t seem to believe that I enjoy doing it.

Chile has a history of classicism, or discrimination between the classes.  Any respectable middle class family had a nana, or a maid, and if they had a lawn, someone to take care of the garden. When Angela was a girl, her family had a variety of household help; a cook, a gardner, a housemaid, a nanny for the children, etc.  It wasn’t uncommon that young Chileans had EVERYTHING done for them as children and young adults and when they got married and started keeping their own house, they didn’t know the first thing about anything.  Angela told me that when she and her husband, Jose, got married, that neither one knew anything about cooking, not even how to make hardboiled eggs.  And did they ask anyone?  No, she said they were too proud, so they struggled along, learning everything the hard way, by experience.

It’s a little bit different now but when they can afford it, people still hire nanas to clean their houses and help cook.  A lot of Peruvians and Bolivians come to Chile to work as domestic aids and the Chileans are unashamedly rascist towards them.  When a family doesn’t have a nana, the mother assumes the role of doing everything for the entire household.  My friend Paula has two younger Chilean brothers and her mom will heat up a plate of food for the boys and then call and cajole them to come to the table, and when they finally decide that they’re ready to eat, they’ll come down and she’ll more or less wait on them, and when they’re done, they get up and go back to their video games or TV or whatever.

I think that the cultura machista begins in the home with treatment like this, with boys being made to believe that they have no domestic responsibilities.

Most of us exchange students have not lived at home for 3-4 years and are accustomed to making our own food, fixing our own beds, washing our own clothes, etc.  The majority of Chileans live at home while they study at University, even if it means an hour or more commute every day.  In many cases, it really is the more economical thing to do, but the result is that they don’t learn how to take care of themselves without Mom until much later in life.

Thank you to all the mothers who are reading this that make your kids work in the house.  I say, make ‘em make supper tonight.  Tell them I said it will build character.