A-museo-ing

Six months into my Chile experience. The dollar is falling and I'm beginning to feel my belt tighten a little bit. With an increase in transportation costs to my new Duoc site (in Plaza Oeste), I'm in the process of ditching my uber-expensive room for some more humble digs. Sionara, Kintaro Sushi. Hello vitaminized 40-cent pasta. I'd be on the Ramen diet if it weren't so expensive here (479 pesos for a CUP?!?!?)



Luckily, there is a bunch of free and cheap things to do in Santiago, ranging from tourist traps worth your time to small breaths of fresh air from the heavy smog. Take a look at the top five (plus) ways to kill a weekend without killing your budget:



5. Fantasylandia



What? A real live amusement park in the heart of Santiago, Chile? Six Flags had better be shaking in its boots. This park is really meant for lolitos, but not a problem if you're a lolito at heart.



4. Museo del Arte Precolombino

Who knew that there was mummification going on 2,000 years before the Egyptians - and right here in South America! Apart from being partially creeped out from all the death and sacrifice images, this museum had me at "hola". Usually the entrance fee is $3000 CLP, but for the fiestas patrias, like the other 85 (that's right) museums scattered throughout the city, it should be free.

3. Cafe La Boa

Three friends, an ugly seed, an Erlenmeyer flask and one special wish is all you need to make the te magico, $3000 CLP, bloom to life. Have your waiter spin you a yarn that will make all your wishes come true. Cafe Laboratorio serves some whoppin hot bevs with a science-lab twist. You bring the chemistry.



2. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Movie Nights

Duoc's scheduling leaves me with a lot of lonely weeknights, easily filled by catching a flick. Prices for movie tickets at CineHoyts around the city drop from $4,000 to $2,000 CLP on Mondays and Tuesdays - OR, on Wednesdays, tickets are 2 for the price of 1. So go ahead and order that extra-large popcorn. You know you want to.





1 3/4. Halloween - Chilean Style!



Come October 31st, more than a few Chileans don't mind going gringo and having a ghoulishly good time. Chile's leading underground gay bar, Blondie, is offering a diva night on a dime, with their normal ghastly entrance fees lowering to as little as $3000 CLP for the night. It might have more than one gay man wondering if the svelte little blonde in the Lady Gaga costume is chick-or-treat.



If spending that much money still seems horrific to you, Santiago brings you a screening of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, completely free with an advance reservation by phone (), running from late October to early November. It's bound to be peck-tacular!





11/2. The Shoe Bins at Plaza de Armas

Say goodbye to window shopping AND sore feet - what could be better? Trade in that ratty pair of flats for one of the endless footwear choices you'll find in bin shoe stores at Plaza de Armas. Shoe size rule tends to be to add a "3" in front of your size in the States, unless you have clown feet (then, add a "4"). So, women, if you are a 6, your size would be a 36. They will provide the right shoe, and you'll have to go to the counter to obtain the left. Average cost is about $5000 CLP - $10 U.S. - for two pairs.



1. Subway Station Tour

Are you REALLY broke? Why not just spend 500 pesos on a tour of Santiago's super-modern subway system? Each station has unique art and archetecture, and some, like Quinta Normal, have museum-worthy exhibits that pass through. It's worth a "change" of pace.

Have fun this weekend, and tell your wallet that I say, "You're welcome."

The World's Tiniest Violin Playing Just For You

On May 17th, 2009, Your Lovely And Witty Author Of This Blog walked her sandaled feet twenty feet across a platform and received her college diploma. There was smiling. There were proud tears. And then, after everyone cleared out and I was left to move myself in to a big, new, empty apartment, there was the sheer panic of not knowing what the hell I was going to do.

People expect great and extravagant things from bright young people. So clearly I felt I needed to be great and extravagant. But there I was, working part-time in a coffee shop where I made less-than-minimum wage. I really loved it. I loved smelling like coffee grounds and sweat. I loved mopping the black-and-white tile floor at the end of the night. I loved how the skin cracked on the backs of my hands from the bleach water in the disinfecting sink. I was so tired of being cerebral and I wanted to be off the map. I didn't want to be responsible and I definitely didn't want to be an adult. All I wanted was to be back in my dorm room the night before my graduation, where we slowly drank ourselves into a numb depression, feeling the final moments of camraderie, knowing we had battled through four years of growing up and making grades.

Thankfully after college, something happens. This thing is called Life. Life goes on. Life doesn't wait while you decide to be a baby and drag your feet. Life gets in your face and tells you to go call the Wambulance.

So I applied to Teach in Chile. I felt proud. I rose to the call of being a bright young adult. I was going to do something great and extravagant.

I didn't realize how long ten months really was, though. And I am sitting in my living room and I haven't showered all day and I'm eating four-day-old pasta and feeling bad for myself. Tomorrow I have to lesson plan for at least the next two weeks' worth of classes. Winter is setting in and it is flipping freezing in my apartment and the sun sets at 5:30 and all I have is this flimsy blanket and it sucks. It isn't at all glamorous. If Life told me to go call the Wambulance right now, I'd tell Life to shove it.


I remember feeling so excited when I received the opportunity to come down here. I sentimentalized it. I told myself it was going to be a dream experience; what I had always hoped and wished for. In many ways, it is. But on a day-to-day basis, it's still life. And life has its ups and downs. We are all feeling the reality of being without our support systems at home. We've settled in to life here, and it's adult life: we pay our bills, we cook our food, we go to work. We take crowded subways. We battle with sickness caused by the never-lifting cloud of smog over Santiago. Our computers crash; our Ipods break; I cause fires by burning toast on my gas stove.

But I have this really adorable roommate, Emma, who is French. And as I'm sitting in my sadness and my own unshowered filthiness, she comes flitting up to me, with a tomato in her hand, and she makes the tomato talk to me. It tells me in French-accented English, "Hello, I am a little lonely tomato. I do not know if I am your tomato. But now I am alone on the shelf and I need to be eaten because I am rotting. I used to be the prettiest little tomato of my company." And then she runs away, la-la-la-ing into the kitchen, squishes the tomato into a pulp in her tiny hands, and chucks it into the wok.

Life here is weird. But it throws you funny curveballs just when you need it the most.