Hey everyone! This is the first time I've tried out this blogging thing so bear with me...I really just want this to be an opportunity to keep you posted and to share my cultural experiences with you while being here in Chile...
where to begin! no me imagino! Chile is everything and NOTHING like I thought it would be...
It's super modern with wifi available everyone...the metro is clean and many parts of the city really look quite anti-climactic (in the oh i thought this was going to be a third world country sense...) in fact, some parts really do look like california (case in point, las condes where the super super duper rich people live...almost feels like laguna niguel w/out the laguna :)...if you go to some suburban areas, you might see a blockbuster, pizza hut, KFC, and mcdonalds all within a 1 min walk (welcome to capitalism eh?)...Chile is, well, Chile...wifi in the metro but hardly any air conditioning...the perception of efficiency and organization among latin american countries until it takes you 3 tickets just to purchase your ice cream...
it's hard for me to comprehend that it has been only 4 weeks...it has gone fast, but at the same time so much has happened, por ejemplo...i'm sitting in my room right now in the new place i just moved into yesterday...we all had been living in the griengo casa in downtown santiago since it was prepaid by the university...it was super good fun (don't you love my English?!) getting to know everyone and of course, getting on each other's nerves...every night was a party, a broken glass, a "eww, who's rotting cheese is this?" --the fridge was a memorable disaster resembling a leaning tower of cheeses, hams, and juice cartons, i kid you not...)
my fondest memories are of the 2 chileans, marcos (pronounced marco, darn those chilean S's) and andrea (she's a cultural and social activist and marcos is, well, marcos...always teaching me chilenismos and probably bad words, lol)...they ran the hostel and are definitely close friends of ours now...(suerte que tienen buena honda y q me ayudan siempre)
now i'm going to skip the part about how i had to go to the doctor's like every other day for my back and how i was super stressed out when i arrived...things are much better now not living in a hostel sharing a bathroom with 7 people and being able to differentiate between clean and dirty clothes...
highlights you might be interested in: how weird is this...my sister was in santiago 12 years ago and got a mosquito bite on her eye....so did I!!!!! yes sirree, you heard me right...i got one on my eye and lo and behold it was on the day I was supposed to take a photo for my chilean national identity card...i'm showing NO ONE my card since it looks like a case of domestic violence...(the oil on my skin and strands of hair on the sides don't help either, lol)
after posing for my photo at the registro civil (which by the way took 3+ hours standing in line for...) i went looking for a bathroom in the restaurants since apparently the civil office doesn't have one?!!! i didn't have my contacts on because of the whole bug bite eye thing (my eye was sooo swollen) so i couldn't see that i was walking into a CAFE CON PIERNAS (literally coffee with legs but really it's a strip joint that serves coffee)...my chilean teacher mentioned about it but he said they were just dressed in short skirts, etc...this was definitely a strip joint...imagine their surprise to see this weird asian girl w/ a huge swollen eye asking, in spanish, can i use your bathroom in your stripper club? but actually, this being chile, they were pretty cool about it...
what other interesting tidbits....again, impossible to get it all down on this blog but something that occurred and yet didn't fully occur to me was how COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CHILEAN SPANISH IS, cachai? i'm talking whole completely different words, vocab only used in chile...si po, no po, tienes un pololo (novio), quieres comer porotos (beans), etc...la guagua (bebe)...the list goes on...i'm reminded that it's the mapuche influence, but nonetheless, it's like learning a whole different language...forget the spanish i thought i knew and spoke relatively decently...add the chilenismos, drop the "s", speak 100x faster and voila, welcome to chile...
i think i'm barely just catching on...
well i have to end with my favorite: food...not much to say really in terms of cuisine but the freshness of produce, meats, and seafood is awesome... Chile never ceases to amaze me and it seems to grow on me cada dia....
last but not least...wow...my job, ok....so i'm a profesora de ingles (english professor) and how cute is it that the kids call me "profe"!!!! i guess i'll have to continue this blog on the next posting but let's just say they kiss me on the cheek and say ciao (as is the chilean custom)...and how lucky am i, of all people, to have kids studying gastronomy (foooooooood!) and tourism?!!! it just doesn't get better than this...
-abrazos, sandra
(pics from our weekend trip to valparaiso...)
2 comments:
Sandy!!! So good to get an update from you. I've been thinking about you lots lately and wondering how its going. It sounds like it's just the right thing for ya. I admire how adventurous you are. Question for ya: When is it a good time to call you? Like, is there a time I could call that would be free for ya? Love you!
yay for blogging!
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