Tanta plata!

I'm not rolling in the dough by any means down here in Chile, but I do have a hefty bunch of coinage laying around, and I'm trying to rid myself of it.

What do you do with your monedas when they get to be montanas? Here are a few ideas:

1. Invest in some bling.

Various websites can help show you how to turn those pesky 100s into cool looking jewelry, like rings, or turn those pesky 1 peso coins into cool earrings. All it takes is a hammer, some drill bits, and lots of patience. If you're stuck with an old 1000 bill, why not laminate it and make a cool-looking bookmark?

2. Make money grow trees.

Ok, not literally, but any copper based coins, when placed into a vase of flowers (along with a sugar cube) help your florals stay fresher for longer.

3. Use them for small purchases.

If you're okay with getting the stink-eye from the metro kiosk attendant, you might want to load a mil onto your BIP card with 10 or 50 peso pieces. I count them out beforehand and put them in a plastic baggy. Make sure to go at a time when you're not in a rush...and neither is anyone else.

Also, corner stores often will take a 1,000 peso bag of 10 peso coins, but make sure you do this very de vez en cuando.

4. Avoid them in the first place.

Some grocery stores ask if you want to donate small bits of change to charities or to bomberos. It's doubtful that these organizations actually receive all the money, but hey, it leaves you with less change kicking around the house, and it makes you feel good, too.

Buying a 790 peso muffin at Castano? Getting some 250 peso coffee from the vending machine at work? BRING YOUR MONEDAS!

5. Act like a kid.

Why not make a wish? Fountains at Plaza de Armas, Plaza Italia, Cerro Santa Lucia and the square near Universidad Catolica make great scenic places to make a wish and hope it comes true.

Feel like a cheap afternoon out AND pleasing your pololo at the same time? Go to the arcade at a movie theater or play some coin slots at the casino.

6. Find collectors.

Like any country, Chile has its share of rare coins. The most prevalent error was in 2008 when the government minted a bunch of 50 peso coins stating that the country's name was "CHIIE," not Chile.

Chilean coins also contain a fair amount of gold - older 100 peso pieces have .5886 ounces. Perhaps lugging a bunch of them home and having them melted down might not be such a bad idea.

7. Exchange them for dolla dolla billz, ya'll!

If you are a cliente of a bank (or have a friend who is) you should separate your coins into denomination (in the case of 100 peso coins, separate the old and new ones) and bring them to the bank. Like the subway station, be aware that you are going to get MAJOR stink eye for doing this, but most banks now have coin counting machines that will separate coins out. The problem here, aside from major stink eye, is that you must deposit the earnings into the cliente's account - so, unfortunately, you won't be able to walk out with cash.

I think the best thing, if you wish to go this route, is to do a two part trip: first, go to the bank without the coins, but tell them that you are going to come in and deposit a large amount of coins into your account. Make sure that branch has a coin counting machine - if they don't, ask which branches do. Then, arrange a good time with the tellers where you can come in and deposit the coins (ask when they are normally slowest). This way, at least you are showing that you're trying to be considerate. I cannot guarantee, however, that they will be equally polite.

Good luck to all you change luggers! I'll let you know how my coin drop goes.

Have any other tips? (Is there a Coinstar in Chile that you know about?) Post them in the comments box!

The Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

It's that time of year again - time to breathe in deeply, suck in my stomach, and fake tan my way into looking a few pounds thinner. Time to face the fact that the medium sized bikini I ordered from Target isn't going to fit my non-medium-sized badonkadonk. Time to haul ass to get rid of all that junk inside my trunk.

You'd think I would have had plenty of time to prepare for Santiago swimsuit season, between studying for the GRE and working two jobs. You'd think I would have had the self-control to limit myself to only ONE raspberry truffle cake pop a day. But let's face it: I'm an americana gordita.

Looking around at who's hitting the sand, at least I can say I'm in good company: Santiago's blubber layer (my new cute euphemism for "obesity rate") has thickened to 26.6% of the population. So what to do when you're a beached whale?

While my previous answer would have been to buy a more flattering bathing suit, the brown vintage-style tankini I chose apparently didn't cut it with my Peruvian bonbon, who recently sent me an email comparing side by side a photo of me in the bathing suit and a photo taken in the 1940s of a woman sunbathing in similar trunks. I got the picture that I was playing it too conservative.

Seeing as the forest fires in central Chile have limited the extent to which I can go running lately without developing the black lung (or, more seriously, the Hanta Virus), I've turned to Google and Groupon in the desperate hope that maybe I can fake my way into looking and feeling slightly thinner aside the sea. I am now here to share with you the tricks and tips I've learned to lock down a Brazilian booty this summer without breaking the bank OR a sweat:

Crunch Time

Remember 8 Minute Abs? If you've never seen the video, do yourself a favor and illegally pirate it from YouTube. Research shows that just a few minutes of exercise before an event can help you shed a few inches for a few hours. Other quick temporary fixes? Drink tons of water, eliminate salt, carbs, and foods that contain or make you gassy for two days prior to your hitting the beach.

Fake it Till Ya Make It

Just as wearing black makes you appear slimmer, a good fake tan can help you fake sculpt you into an Adonis look alike.

If your level of pasty white, like mine, approaches being Geisha colored, I'm sure you have more than a few horror stories to tell about fake tanning products and weeks spent looking like a glass of Tang. However, a new product I tried last week from Lush (Mall Parque Arauco), at approx. US $16.00 /

heart shaped bar, gave me one of the most natural looking tans I've ever had. Just be careful to pick up the "clara" version if you have light skin!

Tips on fake tanning and on sculpting your body with fake tanning products can be found here at Marie Claire.

Stand Tall

Who knew that when Grandma told you not to slouch that she was secretly letting you in on one of life's most sexpot important lessons? Proper posture can shave inches off your midsection and arms, no exercise needed. There are even photo friendly positions that you can try out the next time your friend waves his camera in your face at the beach.

Let Me See That Sarong

Every woman has a part of them that they feel extra obsessively bad about. For me, it's my thighs. Luckily I found a sweet looking sarong (pareo) at Casa e Ideas (they can also be found at the artesanal shops near Santa Isabel, the ones near Plaza de Armas, or, you know, ANYWHERE in downtown Santiago for about $10 or less). Tips for tying them can be found here in broken English.

Hit the Massage Parlor

Groupon keeps guaranteeing me that for anywhere between US $30.00 - US $120.00, I can lose centimeters (up to 3, usually) from my waist in minutes. All I have to do? Lie on my back and let some masseuse oil me up. I have friends who have done this and swear by it, though quite frankly, I think the results were mostly in their head. I've been trying to Google research on how well massage therapy helps you lose weight, though I have found nothing convincingly conclusive, although some research suggests that acupuncture might help with weight loss by increasing your metabolism rate.

Any other tips or tricks you have to add? Leave them in the comment box!

Back!

Oh, hello, Friend!

How lovely it is to wake up with news from you! Everything you've been doing sounds so cool and interesting. I guess it's my turn to catch you up with my return to Chile!

My first week back in Chile could be described a few ways - in waves of homesickness, in heat waves (back to a very blisteringly hot summer!) - but perhaps is best encapsulated in my culinary escapades.

Chile is still a land of raw materials, with the very little that comes prepackaged set at costs beyond my current means of living. It's nice because it allows me to get crafty and experiment.

Experiment one: No bake cheesecake.

Thesis: If the lack of Graham Crackers in Chile can be offset by their abundance of generic vanilla cookie wafers, then I can make a pie crust.

Process: Long and arduous, especially because I had my friend Alvaro in charge of crushing the vanilla wafers into tiny tiny pieces, and he took a cigarette break approximately every five minutes.

Outcome: ALMOST successful - however, I did not buy enough cookies to make much crust, and then somehow managed to unplug my refrigerator in the process, so the cake unfortunately died overnight from natural causes.

Experiment two: Grinding coffee in a blender.

Thesis: If Nescafe tastes like such shit, then ANYTHING I can manage to brew out of real coffee beans will be better.

Process: Fairly short and incredibly loud, with possible damage done to the blades in our blender (at least it got some use; I can't remember the last time we hauled it out, but it was probably to make something alcoholic). Boiled water and put the whole beastly mess into my french press.

Outcome: .....watery. It was like water coffee with lots of milk and sugar. But then I adjusted the water/bean ratio and this time it didn't end up so bad. I also just managed to drip some of the new batch on our recently cleaned couch, so allow me a minute to clean that up before Erik has a coronary....

hahahahaha ok.

Experiment three!: Beer battered fried chicken.

Thesis: If I have a Betty Crocker cookbook, then I can effectively be Betty Crocker!

Process: Sending Erik to the store during the soccer game so I can turn it off and read in peace; boiling a liter of oil on the stove. (Turning my wok into a deep fryer was very scary, though successful. Things to consider: potential tastiness vs. potential third degree oil burns all over my body).

Outcome: Finally, sweet success! The chicken was crunchy and tasty and everything fatteningly good about America, AND we have leftovers!

Also, my first day back involved lunchtime AND dinnertime sushi!

Last week I went to a house party with Alvaro and his Swedish cousin, Erik, who was visiting the Chilean fam. Very often, the old style mansions that are littered about Santiago have been transformed into something called "collectives": groups of young people who rent out the house together and live in shambles. This particular mansion had six bedrooms, two bathrooms, and thirteen tenants.

Anyway, one of the tenants has a pretty big bank debt due to student loans, so she decided to throw a charity concert for herself! We all bought "tickets" to the show, food and drink, and basically had a group jam session and danced all night. One guy had bagpipes and I taught a group of Chileans how to do the Beginner's Jig. It was so much fun - very relaxing and silly.

What else? Oh, I finally saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. Brilliant! I think the best one so far, though I was disappointed that the strand of disease warfare wasn't more strongly picked up on in the plot line. But all in all very amusing, especially the fight sequences, and that bit on the train :) I wish I could have seen it with you!

I hope you come to visit soon, but for now I promise I'll keep up with my blog so you can know what's going on down here! Chile, of course, is ever changing, and I always find something new and cool about the country.

Hope you are well! Glad we're back in touch!

CUECA FEVER!

I am jonesing for a bit of this action:

And Sting agrees with me!

Serial Friendships: The Solitude of Being an Ex-Pat

When Steven Colbert joked about being Jimmy Fallon's BFFSM - Best Friend For Six Months - I thought it was funny for about three seconds. Then I realized that this is my life.

My writer friend Brittaney came back to Santiago this week for a quick winter-break bum on the couch. Except for the people who continued on in Santiago, I haven't kept in touch with any of my fellow CIEE-ers since they departed back into the wide wide world. Brit and I were talking about her new life in Lima, where she has created a whole bunch of new BFFSM - and perhaps a few WEFSM.

But it was the completely bizarre story she told me about the bunch of Peruvians who pathologically make friendships with the people who pass through her apartment building that got me thinking about how flimsy friendships abroad can really be. Cue background: Brit found out via Facebook that a party was being thrown at her apartment building by thirty Peruvian strangers. Turns out they've been partying with her company's interns (who change every four months) for over a decade. If this wasn't freaky enough, when Brit couldn't find the chip bowl (logical seeing as she'd only spent a week in her new crib) there were a handful of people she had never seen before who new exactly where it was.

So, what do we base friendship on? How long does it take to make a really good "friend"? Do we really need strong friendships in our life to survive and be healthy, sane individuals? And how do all these factors translate into an experience abroad?

In her article "Expat Friendships: Do They Survive When You Return Home?" Mary Richardson writes about friendships abroad as being symbiotic - they thrive on an "interdependence...[her] friends abroad take on a different role [than friends at home] and dramatically impact [her] adaptability." Mary states that making expat friendships while in Okanawa were the only way she could adapt - change to incorporate a new life. However, I find it strange that in the article, it is her Japanese friend who really helps her learn and understand Japanese custom and behavior, while her expat friend merely is who she goes to when she needs a good dose of American pie (and by American pie, I mean reassurance that she isn't, well, turning Japanese).

I often wonder if maintaining expat friends in Chile is a help or a hinderance to my acceptance of Chile as a potential home. A few weeks ago my (expat) roommate, Jackie, and I invited a coworker, Monica, out to sushi. Monica has lived in Chile for two years now after marrying her Chilean boyfriend of 8 months. She has slowly learned to hate Chile. Like the somewhat stereotypical friendly Americans we are, we decided she just needed a good dose of friendship to get her out of her funk.

You can imagine my surprise when, on the walk to the restaurant, Monica bluntly confessed that she "really didn't see the point in making American friends anymore" because "they all just leave after six months anyway." Monica's sad confidence left me dumb. I saw my life stretching lonely before me in a series of six-month serial friendships, learning just enough about other expats to create an interdependent and somewhat parasitic relationship, where each of us sucked the other into a souless incapability of true cultural immersion. If I allowed myself to think all the time like Monica, I'd probably hate Chile, too.

So, how do I solve the balancing act of reassuring myself that I haven't lost the American in me - the part of me that could "struggle with the language, homesickness, and public transportation" and "vent frustrations and joke about funny aspects of [a foreign] culture" with Mary - while still really losing myself in Chilean life?

Monica's solution - ditching serial friendships - could be one answer. My Chilean friends certainly aren't going to desert me by flying far far away. But, as I believe Monica feels, the deeper I wade into Chile, the more truly confused I feel about who I am. I have found that my cultural identity as an American has been an incredibly difficult thing to alter; my attempts at shredding culture have left me feeling stripped and fearful. Not having friendships with other Americans feels like a betrayal of myself, because I feel that part of being human is finding the essential parts of ourselves mirrored in others. And, stuck in a foreign country, I feel like one of my big identity themes has become that big red, white and blue "A" I metaphorically wear. Being American is my targeted different-ness, and really is the first thing Chileans see in me.

That's the other part of the "ditching serial friendships" dilemma: I'm not the only one who has a say in labeling me. Even if I were to weona'o with the best of them, Chileans would always mark me as an outsider. Short of pulling a Michael Jackson and changing my skin tone, even if I were able to ditch my accent, I'm always going to at least look gringa. So, ditching the American and adopting completely Chilean attitudes is, I'm afraid, out of the question for me.

But it is true that too much time spent with my American friends does make me feel like I'm in a "Chileans vs. Americans" binary that doesn't exist. I don't want to be Chilean, but it's also not my perogative to label myself so American that I can't accept their other-ness. Oh, and, there is a very strong heartbreak one experiences when their American buddies leave.

So you've got to put a little hot dog in your chorillana - be flexible enough to appreciate both Chilean and American friendships, no matter their duration. We need friendships to establish who we are in the face of an unfamiliar and constantly changing social universe; the more strange and unfamiliar our world becomes, any little bit of similarity will do. Friendships come and go as it is - they just come and go a bit faster down here. I guess you also have to essentially trust that the ties you make, if they are strong, will last beyond distance - that you always have some sort of safety cord waiting back home, reminding you of who you are - and that you are made of all the people who pass through your life. I'm sure we can all think of one encounter, however brief, that has changed how we see as well as how others see us.

White Elephant

"Whose fault is it when something fails?" We've been after this case study for an hour. The task: anaylize why the Millenium Dome Project in London was a total disaster. Eyes glossed over ages ago. Mine included.

"In this case, or in general?" pipes The Boss. "Usually it is my fault. Or at least my bosses tell me so." Laughter reanimates the group.

"The Millenium Dome in London was a ... white elephant. Do you know what this is, white elephant?" The Boss explains. "We say it in Chile. It is when a thing that was thought to be great has turned out to be one big failure." He's a history buff, a pleasant guy with deep red cheeks and bright white hair.

"We call it a "folly" in English," I dictate slowly, lingering on the sounds as I scribble the letters onto the whiteboard. "Whose fault was the folly, the white elephant, in London?" I ask.

"The designers," chimes Saleswoman One.

"The event planners," from Saleswoman Two.

"Mine," from The Boss.

"Yours?" My eyebrow arches and I smile. I picture him as a mischevious grandpa. I like the way his cheeks get redder when he tells jokes. "Have there been other follies, white elephants, in Chile?" I probe.

"The Congress building. It is in Valparaiso. It wasn't before." The Boss has changed his tone. He looks like he wants to say something more, but either has decided not to or doesn't know how.

"Why did the building move location?" I want to get him to explain something (I think) I already know. I've been told previously that a lot of the government buildings were moved from the center of Santiago to other neighboring towns, so that if there ever were an attack on the Capitol, it would not wipe out all government branches at once.

What I didn't know, and what I was about to find out, was that was a very small part of the story, and a very polite way to tell it.

September 11th, 2001. Americans know this as the day America paid for all its great white elephants in foreign relations. Two big symbols of capitalism came falling down neat as dominoes. We plummeted with the mistakes we had made up to that morning, and we've plummeted with potential follies since: expensive war and risky dealings have contiributed to costly recession. Tea Party rhetoric has stripped constitutional rights in several states. Fear politics are in session in the States.

"Why did the building move location?" The Boss needs time to formulate a response. "I think it was a political move," he begins, slowly. "He wanted to destroy the symbol of a centralized government. Moving Congress was his way of doing so. But there was no Congress."

"He?" I ask. I know where this conversation is now going. I am scared to go there.

Scared or not, The Boss does. "Pinochet," he whispers.

September 11th, 1973. Chile is deep into its second year with the world's first peacefully installed Socialist Head of State, Salvador Allende. Economic problems have arisen in the Socialist turnover. Politics become tense with poverty.

"There was no bread," Saleswoman Two whispers. She, like her voice, seems very far away. "I can remember that there was no bread. I was so hungry." I can't tell if she means before or after the coup. She doesn't elaborate.

Salvador Allende makes desperate attempts over the radio to assure the Chilean people that Pinochet's military group will not take power. The last transmission, shortly after 8:00 A.M., contains strong political pleas to the proletariat. Refusing to surrender his government, Allende shoots himself in La Moneda.

"I was in The Army. Very young. I want to see both sides...I can see both sides to what happened," The Boss takes control of the conversation again.

I had hit upon one hell of an elephant in the room. Stupidly, stubbornly, I keep on trampling through fields of questions. "What do you remember? About that day?"

Gemeinshaft, a sociological term and German word meaning "community", would explain my deep-seated desire to make comparisons between Chile and the United States. The shared tragedies of September 11th always stand out most in my mind. I remember the silence that day in school as we watched the news. As we watched people choose to jump to their deaths instead of burn in a building. So terrifying, there was nothing to be said. Islamic fundamentalists had called us out on our mistakes, or what they saw as our mistakes. That day, we couldn't defend ourselves. We couldn't explain how we screwed up bad enough to deserve something so horrifying.

I imagine that silence spreading over Chile thirty years ago - a silence so thick that even today, even in this conference room, our voices haven't risen beyond hushes.

"My friend was shot. His name was David." On the other end of the classroom sits the Financier. He keeps mostly to himself. "It happened during a protest on a bridge. All of us were shocked."

"I was detained," he continues. "For expressing my ideas. It was horrible. Horrible."

"I know a man in the Army, my friend. He had to shoot another man. He received orders." The Boss offers this as an irrefutable excuse to murder. The Financier's lips snarl as he sits quiet in the corner.

I think about what I would have done. And really, the more I think about it, the more I understand how this man shot the other man, and how my student could excuse it by pointing out that his friend was just following orders. My brain becomes a question motonoton. Whose fault is it? America? Pinochet? Chileans? Conservatives? Socialists? When did it start? Why didn't it stop? How could you not follow orders? Wasn't a gun at your head, too? At least proverbially? Is it your life or theirs? But, how could you not rise up? How could you not stop the violence? How could you not?

Very suddenly, I am turned upon. "This was America's fault. You committed a great folly providing aid to Pinochet," The Boss deadpans. "America's problem is that it always needs to interfere.

"America holds a very high double standard with human rights," jackals the Financier. "And no one ever suffers. Your wealth protects you."

"Even now, what is Obama doing for us?" The Saleswomen's eyes gleam. They circle in on me. "What does America ever do for South America except start wars?"

The community and connection I want - the trust I thought my students had given me in agreeing to discuss such a sensitive issue - turns out to be completely false. They don't want to try and figure things out with me. They don't want a conversation about change and hope. They want blood.

I have lots I can say in response - I wasn't even born yet when the military coup took place; I don't vote; it's not "Americans" who are at fault, but rather our government, and as much as we are a democratic nation, we don't really get a say. But all I feel like saying is "sorry." So I do. I apologize. I take on the folly.

And that's all they want, it seems, is admittance and a person to blame. Something that will exhonerate them. Something they can look at and say, "I didn't do this. It was you."

I look at The Boss, at the Saleswomen, at the Financier. Eyes have glossed over. Mine included.

The Boss, red cheeked, drops a tear.

Lollapaloser

Noon on Saturday finds me being patted down by a woman in uniform. I've got my carnet upside down in my mouth. My right wrist is cuffed by a particuarly uncomfortable plastic band.

Was I finally deported, you might ask? Particularly strange swinger's club reunion?

Nah, nothing so exciting. I'm standing to the entrance of Lollapalooza 2011, the first international Lollapalooza since its inicio in Chicago 20 years ago. The concert is just one of many recent U.S. imports to Chile, a groupie to the smashing success of peanut butter, chart-topping maple syrup, and Rolling Stone cover-worthy visit of Barack Obama.

Since the New York Times named Santiago the #1 destination of the year, Chile has become, like, TOTALLY cool. Chile's daddy made a lot of money in copper mining, you see, and she's become the popular American girls' new "project". With gringa influence, Chile's got a new weave, bitchin' Ugs, and a ticket out of Third Worldom. I also heard that Chile gets high on capitalism behind the gym.

And apparently Chile's got a new taste in music. Lollapalooza - which could have easily been Gringapalooza, seeing as a good third of the concert attenders were foreign - was chock full of U.S. (almost) unknowns like Ben Harper and The National, as well as some good throwbacks (anyone remember Cypress Hill?). Chile's such a poser, I bet she couldn't even sing the chorus to Gold Digger.

Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger (and neither is Kanye), but the strange cocktail of band choices for this year's event certainly perplexed me as a foreigner; indeed Chile was looking to score some serious luka off the concert. Relatively few bands were Chilean, though the ones that attended were surprisingly fantastic: from the first cymbal crash of Los Bunkers to the solid sounds of Chico Trujillo, Chile certainly did some serious representing.

Concert planners were also smart to invite some seriously terrible 80's artists (Does anyone remember James? Let me give you a hint:)

Yeah, Chile pulled a double-throwback by inviting an 80's band whose one hit wonder appeared in a 90's blockbuster film; and, if Chileans love anything, it is famously bad 80's music. James' performance certainly could go down as being famously bad - the guy was off key for ninety percent of the set - so terribly so that when he announced that the next song was written about the band's desire "to be struck by lightning," I silently prayed it would come true. Sadly, Chile's weather is fantastic, with not a cloud in the sky. The Chileans seemed completely unphased by the band's suck factor, and did happy Snoopy dances all over the concrete patio and up onto the stage.

Concert planners were also wise to Chile's mad desire for Mary Jane, which brings me to throwback number two: Cypress Hill. I have to admit it was "high"ly amusing to watch the Spanish-speakers try to figure out the chorus to "Insane in the Membrane." Additionally, the contact high was so strong I didn't even need to take "Hits From the Bong."

The third smart move was the overwhelming number of rock and screamo music (for more information, see my previous post on Chilean male headbangers). The Deftones seriously rocked, as did their background show (images of a kaleidoscope blended with images of a woman on top). Jane's Addiction culminated Lolapalooza's winning formula of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll with the addition of two women hanging on hooks shoved into their skin fifty feet in the air in front of the rockers.

I didn't stay to watch.

The crowdpleasing bands for the Chileans definitely would be considered "losers" by American music trends, but I wasn't to fear - for us gringos in the audience, Ben Harper and The National saved the day (too bad the Yeah Yeah Yeahs copped out).

I kind of embarassingly admit that I'd never listened to Ben Harper previous to his Saturday performance, even more so now that I realize how f-ing awesome he is. For those of you as clueless as I was, if Leonard Skynard, Aretha Franklin and a snake charmer had a love child, it would be Ben Harper. He offers something for everyone - he adds soul to classic rock, rhythm to blues, and melody to Middle-Eastern music.

Unfortunately, the planners were stupid enough to plan Ben Harper and The National back to back, so as much as I was loving Ben's set, I had to peace out early to get a good spot for The National's kickoff.

Cue one hour and fifteen minutes of heaven. The set list was smash hit after smash hit of indie goodness. Like any good badass hipster indie rocker, Matt Berninger washed his lyrics out with a hearty glass of Chilean wine. "I'd like to thank Hans for the wine and the chocolates," he crooned mid-set in his famously sexy baritone half-whisper. After a particularly hairy arrival to the climax of "Ohio," he joked about late onset puberty. The crowd loved it. Well, as much as a non-English speaking crowd would love someone talking about puberty in English.

So, as much as I'm not overly keen to the kitschy American flavor Chile has so recently become hip to, in this case I think the American overtones in Lollapalooza saved the day to what could have been one disaster of a concert.

I also like having maple syrup again.

Death

My rug died.

There it lay, on the floor: my little one-hundred-percent-alpaca-wool pride and joy brought to an early grave by excessive drinking (wine stains), heavy eating (ground in potato chip and dried up avocado blotches), and general dirty living (dirt and dust brought in from shoes).

I had to admit it. It was far beyond any simple Carpet Cleaner resucitation.

Outside, the neighborhood dog howls.

"I'm going to kill that f-ing dog," Tosh barks. "It's EVERY. NIGHT. ALL. NIGHT. LONG."

"The rug died," I forlornly reply, gently stroking its seams.

"Sometimes, when I walk by the dog during the day, I dream about kicking it," Tosh continues.

"I could have treated it better. I could have covered it when we had parties," I continue.

"I know it's not right to kick a dog. I'm not a dog-kicker. I love dogs," Tosh continues.

I throw the rug into the washing machine in hopes of bringing it back from the grave. When I remove it from the spin cycle, it greets my nostrils with the smell of dirty decaying llama.

"This is why they tell you not to wash wool," I complain, vainly attempting to hang the rug over the curtain bar in the bathroom. Jackie sees me struggling and helps swing it up.

Jackie has just returned from a two-month backpacking trip around South America. Facebook narrates pictures of the Camino de la muerte in Bolivia, where Jackie careened via bicycle down the edge of a very sheer cliff. No one died, although a week before the guide had seen another guide lose control and fly off the ledge. When they were able to reach him, it was too late.

My stinky llama rug falls off the flimsy curtain bar. I drag its corpse back to the clothes drying rack. Still wet, it does not seem that any progress has been made toward its Second Coming.

Still Facebooking, I come across the profile of an old friend from college. It says he is living in Chicago. I am curious if this is true. "I was thinking of the time we had a syrah-induced writing frenzy in my suite," I casually lead in hopes of opening a conversation with this person I haven't spoken to in two years. "It made me think of you. I hope you are continuing to do something similar. Perhaps with a classier wine."

Two minutes later, his response: "There is no wine in my immediate future."

"This is very unfortunate," I concede. I wonder if there are very high rent prices in Chicago.

The dead rug, in all its dead weight, slumps sadly to the floor. I attempt a re-hanging. It does not go well. I smell like a smelly llama. The dog barks.

"Is water-ballooning a dog considered animal cruelty?" I ask. There is, after all, a party store located temptinly close to the apartment.

"What if we leash the dog and take him far away, like, to La Florida?" Tosh says. "Though I wonder if he would find his way back."

"We might have a week of quiet, at least," Jackie contributes.

I look in at the rug. It continues in its deadness. In the kitchen I can see Jackie crying.

"Are you chopping an onion?" I ask her. She is.

"I heard once that if you wear swimming goggles when chopping an onion it helps you to not. I wondered if my snowboarding goggles would do the same," she half-asks, half-states.

It is nice to have them all home with me. It makes bad times feel very far away.

What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?

Of the fifteen of us who originally came down to Santiago, at least 8 of us are extending our stay for some significant period of time. So, what do you do after Duoc?

You work that English degree, baby.

Chile is the first country I've been to where I can proudly say that going for my English degree was the best decision I could have ever made. Me and my TEFL certificate do a little turn on the catwalk down to every university, ESL company, and bilingual secretary position I know. And really, it kind of feels like shooting fish in a barrel, since there's a plethora of options (for an ENGLISH major!?!?!?! Yes, I died and went abroad).

If you want to go the university route, I've heard thus about the following:

Norteamericano: Great pay, great benefits, great company to work for. However super hard to get in contact with, for whatever reason. They do not help with work visas.

Diego Portales: Also pretty nice pay. My friend Tosh works here as a language assistant for business classes in English. He sounds like he likes it but has complained that some of the students are pretty stuck up (which is kind of typical here among the better off part of the population, unfortunately). He's still in the process of hopefully getting a work visa, which consisted of his boss hiring him out to another company to do translation work. I'm actually pretty confused about how he's getting his visa. I just hope he does so he can get paid.

Smaller class-sizes (6 students tops) float your boat? The following companies sound pretty promising:

Bridge Linguatec: This is where I'll be working starting late February! I'm sure you'll hear more about it, so I'll save my space and your time for now.

Executive English Solutions: I have a friend who switched from Bridge to this company, also based out of Providencia. She preferred it to Bridge because there was less beaurcracy (paperwork) and, at least for her, more potential classes. The last time they had a job posting they asked for a personal interview of all candidates, so if you're considering this company I'd reccommend waiting until you get down here to check it out.

Potential red lights:

Tronwell: I'm on the fence about Tronwell. I haven't heard particularly glowing reviews about the company, but nothing potentially damning, either. Worth a shot. They have branches all over Santiago and seem to have high turnover. Also, they help with a work visa. However, the website looks as fancy as an 80's punk rocker, and I'm also kind of miffed that they never responded to my cover letter...or my phone calls.

Wall Street Institute: I hear they are soul-sucking slave drivers who pay you $3.00 an hour. I'm not going to even dignify this company with a snazzy hyperlink.

And, hey, you could always private tutor. Sell yourself on Vivastreet.cl and charge between $10-$20 luka per lesson (these are the average going rates for a private native-speaking tutor).

If you're really too sexy for your blue-collar shirt, you could freelance with Teatime Magazine - featuring interest articles written with non-native readers in mind - or grab an internship with The Santiago Times or I Love Chile, two of three (as far as I know) English-language newsfonts for ex-pats. You could also sell yourself out to a hostel - free room, but shite hours and living conditions for the most part; also very poorly paid.

Now, none of these options provide you a ton of money (a full time schedule might make you between $300.000 - $600.000 CLP a month), but it's enough to get by and enjoy the country on your own dime. If you're looking for something a little more concrete and possibly better paying, sites like trabajando.com might be a good place to start looking.

Happy foreign country job hunting!

You're So....Hipster.

"What's a hipster?" Alvaro asks, sagging hotly on the couch in a newly opened cafe. It has a hand-knit quilt draped carelessly over the back and sides. The crazy colors of the thread make me dizzy. We're playing Jenga and glancing over a human interest article in the paper which has bought up the foreign term. A single from the Decemberists' new album rides the airwaves of a local indie radio station. I'm sipping down an iced carmel latte. I love this place.

Our Chilean generational equivalent has become quite hipster, though many of them don't even know what that word means. It's certainly hard to define. It has something to do with how you dress: skinny jeans, or eighties' leggings; second-

hand t-shirts, or flannel; vintage costume jewelry. It has something to do with attitude: chain-smoking your loose tobacco in hand-rolled cigarettes; drinking your whiskey straight up; being a bit of a maton. A hipster yearns to be intellectual, or at least to spout enough witticisms that he can be considered intelligent by his hipster friends. He carries a tattered book rolled up in his back pocket, and protests on soap boxes on campus greens the evils and perils of the Kindle.

A hipster, like myself, looks up the definition of hipster o

n Urbandictionary.com. She thinks that saying hipsters "go to art house theaters and watch movies made on a 300 dollar budget and drink lots of coffee and smoke cigarettes. then they stare at paintings on walls for a while," is pretty damn funny. Same with "They listen to cool jazz while thinking of Jean Paul Sarte or Belmondo in Godard's film "Breathless."'

In most dictionaries, "hipster" is defined in Spanish as the Castillian "gafapatas." A note in a WordReference forum alludes to hipster's origins in the 1940's: "a typical hipster was a low-class citizen who had grown up in a ghetto or in the slums on the edges of a city. He dressed in a suit which was very elegant but at the same time vulgar" (translation mine).

This low-class link could be why a lot of people look down on the resurgence of Hipsters in America. My hipster friends self-depricate, each trying out-Hipster each other without being called out on being too Hipster.

But, all these partial definitions combined, anything that inspires this much curiosity and this much self-loathing has to have a lot more going on than ill-fitting skinny jeans and future lung cancer.

Erik sent me this article today which speaks of the Hipster like a diseased vestigial organ of rampant consumerism:

" 'What was the hipster?: A sociological investigation', un ensayo publicado por la revista 'n+1' y coordinado por Dayna Tortorici.Entre la sociología y el sarcasmo, la denuncia política y la mueca asqueada, sus autores acusan al 'hipster' de haber vampirizado la contracultura, hijos del postcapitalismo, pasotas, consumistas sin conciencia de serlo, dandis desprovistos del aterciopelado malditismo, adolescentes tardíos que compran ropa en mercadillos de segunda mano y H&M, por lo general blancos, de clase media o clase media alta, desocupados o atrapados en empleos que, rezan, serán temporales, dedicados al videoarte, la escritura de blogs alternativos y blablablá."

Guess I fit the bill. Middle class? Check. Blog writer? Check. White? Double check. Man, what a vapid hole of intellectual consumerism I must be.

But really, I don't think that's true. I'm not super consumerist. I don't write a blog to be trendy. And I think smoking is caveman-level stupid. However, like my vulgar suit-wearing, jazz-listening forties counterparts, I am pretty darn poor. My parents might be middle class, and I might in some ways still be a middle-class product, but I'm also facing potential explosive disaster of the neat little consumerist package I was raised on.

So, I counter the claim that Hipsters are vapid, intellectually hollow twenty-somethings stuck in a perpetual desire to remain adolescents and live off their parents' earnings with the following, much more likely, scenario:

I think the hipster of today comes from the obvious problems of our capitalism in the U.S., and our generation's attempt to transition from capitalism to scary recession. As children of "post-capitalism," as the article deems us, somehow we need to make "chic" our culture's fall at the hands of the greed of our parents' generation. We have no other choice but to accept the growing fear (and more than fear, actually) that the U.S. economy is crumbling, at least in some ways. On a grander scale, unless you're REALLY a money-grubbing caplitalist, you can't be blind to the flashing warning signs that we've used up our environment's resources.

So, I propose that what is currently popular, or "fashionable," in our generation comes from forced changes in lifestyle - we move back to the cities because we can't afford suburban McMansions. We buy stuff second hand because we don't have jobs and we don't have money. And we follow the "green" movement not out of trendiness but out of genuine care for the environment and the resources we've got left. To be a "trendy" hipster is to accept our generation's growing reality - that we can no longer bear the burden of a capitalist culture - and, spun the way the article chooses to spin it, this realization could be depressing.

But what I love about being a hipster is that the territory comes with some pride, or at least style: like an elderly woman who loses her beauty but still has dignity, being hipster is being dignified in our acceptance of pandemic consumerism's forceful aftershocks. Powerfully, we have chosen our fashion to reflect the hard lessons we have to learn from the way we've abused our resources. We've got to live moderately, and we've got to give up a whole lot. The hipster narration is that it's not only cool but couture to face downsizing with a smile - and a cigarette. And I see the fallacy in my argument, since it's true that I haven't yet had to really tighten my belt, and it's true that I still often live in excess. But at least I'm a hipster. I'm happy with whatever moderate amount that I have, and I'll be happy and I'll make good with whatever amount I get.

Right now, that amount involves the last sip of my latte.

Image uploaded from Toothpaste For Dinner comic strip.

A Temporary Farewell Note to Santiago

Dear Santiago,

I must go back to the cold and the snow now, and skip out on your miserably hot summer days. I promise I'll write you a postcard from New York. Ah, my dear Santiago: where I can get my cheese laminado and not worry about it being covered in a plastic coating; where a gran taco isn't a dish you order at Taco Bell; where a mina has nothing to do with being part of the mining industry and where I can be a huachita while still having both parents; and where being called a wea/weon can be good, bad, or mean absolutely nothing at all.

I will miss:

-nescafe
-$2.00 ice cream sundaes
-chorrillana and barros luco
-the men at the bus station who wave at me to get on their buses, when it's obvious that it isn't the bus I need to take
-CRAZY soccer celebrations
-being taller than half your population
-having TWO hilltop virgins
-the little "poof!" the fire makes when I light the calefont
-asados
-rooftop tanning sessions in December
-Americo

AND, last but not least:

Palta.



Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Everyone! I'll be blogging you next year!

Saludos,

Kate

laminado = sliced
gran taco = a big traffic jam
mina = a really hot girl
huachita = a hot girl (also, a little orphan)
wea/weon = bro, idiot, or really, absolutely nothing at all

The Davinci Codigo = DuoC.

Look out, Dan Brown - the stars seem to be aligning, but it doesn't mean you've mastered the formula for writing highly-engrossing suspense novels.

Emails received from two top executives of the English Program at DuocUC this week reported a massive regime change from the top down, which prompted top dog and ten-year English veteran Phillip Cary to offer a weak joke about "going fishing." Pinera's presidency has led to a mass change across the board to support more conservative policies in state affairs - as far flung as forcing a resignation of Chile's liberal football coach. AND, after learning about the PSU's, his broken IPOD, and WikiLeaks, Hitler has recently been informed of Opus Dei's dubious connections with Duoc.

That's right, folks - Opus Dei, translated from Latin to mean "The work of God," controls and provides serious funding for almost every major Catholic university in South America, including my school. Founded in 1928 as a superserious sect of Roman Catholicism, Opus Dei has been integral in retaining the most conservative and traditional rites and ceremonies in Roman Catholicism even when the rest of the Church seems to have moved the other way - translating liturgies into vernacular, focusing teachings on the most basic elements of the Gospels, even most recently providing a pass for condom usage among HIV-carrying male prostitutes (if, of course, you count that as being a wildly liberal move).

According to John L. Allen, Jr., author of Opus Dei, "the core idea of Opus Dei...is the sanctification of ordinary work, meaning that one can find God through the practice of law, engineering, or medicine, by picking up the garbage or by delivering the mail, if one brings to that work the proper Christian spirit...many Catholics today take at least some aspects of Church teaching with a grain of salt, but Opus Dei members are encouraged to "think with the Church," meaning to accept the entirety of Church teaching on faith and morals."

It makes sense, then, that a technical university like DuocUC, which specializes in more proletariat forms of labor as well as in lowscale white-collar professions, would be backed by such an organization. The rigors of Opus Dei doctrine and the religious red tape of it all would appeal to a conservative, staunchly bureaucratic society like Chile (when I order a simple croissant from a neighborhood bakery, I must talk to three different people and obtain two seperate receipts!!!). Duoc may recognize some of its high enrollment results at least in part due to the fact that their student base tends to be largely working class who in turn often take up the banner of traditional values and a good old (Protestant-turned-Catholic) work ethic. In other words, if hard work earns you an education, hard religious work might earn you brownie points with God.

And believe me, these students put up quite a fight when you challenge their conservative value systems, albeit sometimes in a nonfallical, Rush Limbaugh sort of way. After receiving a test on which a student wrote that he "wouldn't like to be a model because models are gay and stupid, and [he] is definitely not gay," I decided it was time to have a frank discussion about gay rights, human rights, and common decency in general, especially in a classroom setting. Although the students listened respectfully to my after-school special diatribe on the violence and damage caused by seemingly innocent off-color jokes (since a joke often stems from some deeply serious issue, their punchlines often aren't innocent at all), they continued to defend their right to speak freely and homophobically in whatever environment they might choose, citing their indelicacy toward gay rights as a measly cultural difference between the United States and Chile.

Duoc has often been criticized as being "too religious" of a university - it offers daily Mass at several of its campuses; college credit towards your major (whichever major it might be) if you take religion courses; even leaves mini-Bibles and pamphlets on Christian doctrine in the sala docente. Duoc continues to ask students about their religious affiliation, although in Chile it has become taboo at best and illegal at worst to ask this question, fearing how it might bear on the judgement of a student's application.

Wikipedia lends further insight into Opus Dei's involvement in education, saying that "leaders of Opus Dei describe the organization as a teaching entity, whose main activity is to train Catholics to assume personal responsiblity in sanctifying the secular world from within...the official Catholic document which established the prelature states that Opus Dei strives "to put into practice the teaching of the universal call to sanctity, and to promote at all levels of society the sanctification of ordinary work, and by means of ordinary work'". The website goes on to say that 68% of all of Opus Dei's nonprofit programs are in the form of schools and university residences, with 6% in universities, business schools and hospitals.

A Catholic education in South America tends to be viewed as some of the best education a child can receive - the Catholic church is financially able to provide ample educational resources without charging such a high student matriculation fee as would be charged in a private school setting. Catholic educational pedegogy tends to be rigorous, focusing on lecture-style classroom sessions, repetetive memorizational exercises, and narrowly-focused studies.

Watching Donnie Darko for about the bajillionth time this weekend prompted a long discussion about the influence of religious involvement in education. What are the implications of a conservative Catholic education in a school system tailored to working-class students? After mulling over the news with a professor friend, we agreed that the enduring educational dilemma is that the roots of education are in preserving accepted doctrines, and that education has been institutionalized; yet, education provides the means to radically question these same indoctrinations and institutions. How much does school - does institution - get in the way of education?

On the positive side, a Catholic education supplies learners who are highly competent and dutifully skilled in their appropriate fields of study, who are trained to be hard workers and to hold the highest ethical values (although they may be conservative ethical values). It also offers this education on a dime, making it possible for the lower class to acheive a better standard of living and of thinking.

However, negatively, Opus Dei's stress on "the importance of work and professional competence...to perform [one's] work excellently as a service to society and as a fitting offering to God" (thanks Wikipedia) might be a politically correct narrative that a university - and, in extension, its goverment - could offer to entice working class students to maintain a social status quo. Being too literal always comes with the danger of taking yourself too seriously in a society that is constantly changing and that isn't championing your personal ideas as much as you might be. Producing a field of heavily indoctrinated worker bees wouldn't be all that bad for a conservative goverment like Pinera's, nor would it be bad for boosting the economics of a rapidly developing nation such as Chile.

But what a shame it would be if the outcome of religious involvement in education were to vastly limit the chance for Chile to produce more highly skilled, highly educated citizens - if the indoctrination and bureaucracy of the Church were to interfere in allowing the students to really think for themselves, however "imperfect" that thinking might be.

As it stands, much of what I think is positive about the English program at Duoc - especially the TIPS program, which allows native speakers to become visiting professors for a year - might be on the chopping block due to regime change and conservative values. According to one of the Duoc professors, Opus Dei is metaphorically tightening its celice on the Duoc English department's thigh with plans to cut this program as well as educational supplies from native English speaking countries (like the grammar books we currently use in the classroom). TIPS next year may have to bear a burden of proving their value in an increasingly conservative learning environment. It looks like any negative aspects of Opus Dei might be less dramatic than being persued by an albino psychopathic masochistic monk, but still carry the sting of restricting various modes of education.

docente = educational staff

The Commute

The alarm buzzes. I swat at it till it stops. I swat about for my glasses. I swat the sleepy goo out of my eyes. Then, warm in my sheets, I say to myself, I won't go to work today, I'll call in sick today, don't I feel bad anyways, I just woke up with the sun blaring in my face and the alarm cheerlesssly chirping.
I roll over.
The alarm buzzes.
I get up.

I'm so happy I laid out a dress last night so I don't have to make any last-minute wardrobe decisions. It's so nice how easily a dress just gets pulled over your head and that's it. I brush my teeth, throw on some deodorant, and luckily don't have to re-straighten my hair this morning, so I leave on time.

I can walk east to the green line. Men throw these stupid loving faces in my direction, the ones where it looks like half their face has melted downwards. The polite ones greet me with a buen dia. The majority say holalindahermosabonitahuachitasenoritamericablanquita or, perplexingly, negrita.

The metro is stuffy. I walk down to the far end of the platform to try and push my way into the packed car. An old woman cuts me and there is no more room. I must wait for the next train.

Grr.

Packed car, arm in face, shoved about, pushed out, climb stairs, take escalator, cross bridge, descend stairs, packed car, arm in face, face in face, sit down, scamper out at Estacion Central, packed staircase, swing my backpack to my front to avoid getting pickpocketed, up stairs, up more stairs, up more stairs, packed Estacion Central, dodging slow walkers, dodging baby strollers, dodging men offering me cell phones, dodging men just offering, up escalator, run to bus, bus pulling away, jump for bus door, hang half out half in the door as the conductor simultaneously whizzes us around the curve and hands me a ticket, swung by the bus into the nearest seat.

Close eyes.

Annoying bus-riding clown tells jokes, pokes me awake so I can give him change.

Close eyes.

Get off, up stairs, cross bridge, down stairs, say hi to security men, even the cute shy one who won't let me leave until he comes to give me a kiss on the cheek, up four flights of stairs, and all I want is a cup. of. coffee.

Cesar greets me at Coordinacion Docente. I've been working on conditional "if" clauses in my English classes, and so have decided to try to remember them in Spanish. I try one out on sleepy, unassuming Cesar:

Si tu polola cocina para ti, y no te gusta la cosa, que le dirias?

Que tengo dolor de estomago. He gives me a shy smirk.

En SERIO, Cesar.

Que igual es rico, y que me lo agradezco, he says, and I nod in approval.

Boletas para el cafe? I smile hopefully.

No todavia, chica. Thwarted out of a free coffee, I reach into my bag for a packet of Nescafe and my mug. I brew the delicious sugary stuff using the hot water from the bubbler.

I give my students fifteen minutes of written exercises on the board. It takes them twenty.

This is the best part: pure silence as I sip my mokaccino and begin my day.

Booze Hound

Sorry I haven't been quite writing legitimate blog posts lately. I've been struck by a particularly nasty and virulent bout of hay fever (tip-o'-the-hat to Santiago pollution) which climaxed rather attractively yesterday in the middle of class when I projectile snot-rocketed all over the front of my brand new dress. I assure you, my professor "cool" cred just keeps rising.

When I'm not busy shoving my face into a roll of Confort, I've been combatting another Santiago kryptonite - my stifling top-floor apartment. It's the only place you'll ever find me trotting around in a bikini or voluntarily submerging myself in a vat of ice water (wag-o'-the-finger to cantankerous calefonts).

But, determined to get SOME sort of color this summer, I've been trying to beat the heat in some cheap excursion-ey ways. And there is no better way of doing that than with an ice cold beer.

Like any good group of 20-somethings, I think I could fairly say that the majority of the gringos I've met here self-medicate in various degrees with alcohol (not to say any of us are alcoholics or budding alcoholics in the least bit, but I for one certainly have been drinking more). Although we all have adjusted really well to the daily stressors of living in a foreign culture, it certainly is harder to say "no" to that tempting fourth shot of pisco, letting our hair down, and dancing like a fool when the weekend finally hits.

I've had a few conversations with other gringos concerned about the "responsible adult" dilemma we face as we get older and still are gettin' frat-house shitty. We had a surprising number of birthdays in October and November and so we partied pretty hard. But every year the canhas get more severe and our tolerance lowers (on the plus side, making me even more of a cheap date). And we feel more uncomfortable about having one too many...or four too many. "I just kind of feel like, well, I'm 25, and I should grow up. I should have the self-control to limit myself at this point," a troubled friend confided to me on Skype.

A lot of it is probably the attitude surrounding us. Sometimes it feels like we're back in college, or on this ultimate vacation from real life; the rules do not apply. Two of my friends joke that they "left their dignity at the airport" when they entered Santiago and "will pick it up on the way back home." Funny, seeing as my position here is the most respectful job I've ever held, and that a lot rides on our being responsible adults.

With this in mind, I've set out on an initiative to temper my drinking, or to appreciate it in finer ways. DUOC's no-fear policy to poppin' some bub allowed me my first opportunity: an artisanal maridaje at Tosh's campus (which literally looks like a French Hogwarts) last Friday afternoon. Seven mom and pop breweries strutted their stout in the indoor courtyard, and culinary students tastefully whipped up some accompanying h'ors d'oeurves. Well-known contenders like Mestra proved, as always, to be a crowd pleaser with their mouth-watering amber and bitterly-brilliant scotch ales. But it was a newcomer that had me wanting to rent a car just to drive to retreive a few 24 packs: Kobold brewing company, located on some breathtaking acerage in Vina del Mar, will leave you foaming at the mouth. One of the brewers even told us in English the tale behind the company's trademark labels: it seems a bunch of mischeivous German dwarf booze hounds won't let you or your household rest in peace until you offer them to kick back and klink.

But the best part of the whole thing (besides the free beer and sushi) was learning about the small start-up beer companies. Schop is incredibly popular in Chile, with almost every bar offering their own particular brew or contracting out to small businesses such as these. Since the majority are brewed without preservative or chemical additives, their carbonation lasts almost a lifetime once the bottle is sealed. And, for those of you not quite ready to grow up yet, artisanal beers tend to have at least double the alcohol content of their mass-produced contenders.

But I'll let you read the rest for yourself: Saludos a todos!

Terms in italics defined:

A brand of toilet paper

Hangovers

"In gastronomy, the technique or art that determines the adequate combination of wine and food in a manner that compliments or contrasts flavors, with the intent of heightening the consumers' experience." (From the flyer given to us before the beer tasting at DUOC. Translation mine.)

Water heaters

Artisanal beer

Cheers, everyone!

Danger! Danger! High Voltage!

Teaching my kids about permission, warnings, obligations, and prohibitions at work:

TGIF!!! A Look at Friday Happenings in Santiago Centro

The opning of an art gallery a few buildings away from me prompted an old-time band (complete with smart straw hats, striped red dress shirts and white trousers) to start up with some rag time:



(Bad view of the band due to the tree, but nice 180 view from my balcony.)

The Roof, The Roof, The Roof is on Fire...

I melted all over the taxi's backseat on Monday afternoon. Bits of me dribbled onto the floor mats, dripped over the plush valour seats, and formed a little puddle that could have previously been my exhausted, sweat-shimmering arms draped limply over bags and bags of our luggage. I was in the process of moving everything to my new apartment, which is in a tiny corredor closer to Plaza de Armas and Mercado Central, but still rests on the edge of Parque Forestal.

In a liquidy haze I overheard the driver animatedly telling me about the "storm" Santiago had a week ago (by storm, I mean it maybe rained lightly for two hours). "Last one of the year, I believe, though you never can tell," he told my limp, lifeless body.

Santiago could give SoCal a run for its money in terms of sunny days. The shift from freezing wet winter to hot arid summer was so immediate I barely had a chance to blink my eyes. Here it was: a golden land of stagnant summer smog and parks full of pirouetting pollen. Definitivamente me estoy derretiendo.

Coming from temperate Connecticut, I've never had to worry much about fire danger. Smokey the Bear was often confusesd with Yogi Bear. Every summer I've vaguely watched massive forest fires rage across the West Coast on tiny t.v. screens, disinterested by the massive power of nature unfolding 3,000 miles away.

But yesterday night my ignorance literally exploded in my face. I lie tossing and turning, a pool of slowly desolidifying flesh in my hot hot bedroom, when the sound of literally dozens upon dozens of fire engines rose up from below. Peeking out of my window with my half-deliquesced eye, I saw this:



The heat from the flames was so strong I could literally feel it on my face through the glass. Buildings popped and fizzed like popcorn on a stove, sending up epic flares of fresh flame and cinders. Men scrambled on rooftops, shielding their faces from the smoke and the light, desperately looking for a way to get down. The whole of Santiago Centro lit up with the blue, red, and green of ambulances, fire engines and cop cars. The initial fire was actually MUCH bigger than what I caught on film - at least three times this size. I stayed awake, awkwardly got dressed, and remained with a blanket and water bottle by my side in case an evacuation was called.

But, perplexingly, there has been NO NEWS on this fire. I've Googled in both English and Spanish, scoped out electronic versions of El Mercurio and The Santiago Times, and I've seen no reports on last night's scary and awesome events. Brittaney, who lives a few blocks down from me, said that none of the people in her building had heard of anything last night. She slept soundly, although I text-messaged both her and Tosh to warn them, as all of us live very very close to where the fire occurred.

So, this prompts me to very eloquently ask: WTF, Santiago?!?!?!?

I've been trying to Google fire precautions and safety measures that Santiago takes in the case of a firestorm like last night, but haven't come up with anything. I'm going to interview my Duoc colleagues tonight and re-edit this post based on the information I get.

For right now, it seems odd that santiaguinos aren't fuming over more effective fire-safety measures. I don't know what caused the flames, but I sure hope to find out that there's something in place to deal with occasions like these, and to inform the public when they occur.

CIEE people: has anyone seen or heard anything about this? I'd be interested to have more information.

To Autumn (Sad When I Think of Missing This)

An ember faintly shines in autumn dark

The pulse of light, the heartbeat of a fire

Emits a ghostlike, ectoplasmic smoke

That dissipates on eddies in the wind.




A fiery ensign branded in the bark

A thousand stars in coal I must admire

They constellate, and laugh at private jokes,

And murmur crackles in drowsy lovers' ears.



It could be coaxed. To woo inspired sparks

With gentle blow I could ignite the flame.

But court too harsh, live cinder could be choked,

Extinguished by too strong of a desire.

When I am spent and doused, may it prove true

That charcoal is a useful object, too.

Photos by Google Image of fall foliage in Connecticut.

Poem by me.

New Digs in the Old Country

There is no internet in my new house because the house is so old that the cable lines do not exist close enough to the location to have internet.

I love my internet. I love my cruddy late-night Grooveshark dance mixes and my pirated t.v. Project Runway marathons. I love calling my mommy on Skype whenever I want to. I love wasting several thousand hours of my life on Facebook. Oh, and I love blogging.

You think I would have thought to ask if an internet connection existed at my new place, but I found myself falling into the Chile trap - thinking briefly that Chile is as technologically pimped out as the U.S., and forgetting it actually isn´t.

So, resigned to my fate, I will be spending the last two months in Chile internetless, excepting forays to Starbucks and the internet at my school. I will also be spending the next two months without: a fan or air conditioner, a washer, or an oven (luckily I have already resigned myself to lacking a dryer, hairdryer, hot water, dishwasher, microwave and any semblance of affordable prepackaged food).

After so much time here I´ve just kind of forgotten how much harder it is to do simple tasks in Chile. I´ve reached the ¨meh¨ phase of my trip, where it doesn´t really bother me to spend two hours standing in line at a bank, six weeks to fix a washing machine (lucky there was one to fix), or ten thousand hours cooking completely everything from scratch.

I´ve grown to enjoy the rusticness and simplicity of some of these activities. The physical labor acts as a calming force in my life. I like that I´ve learned how to fix broken pipes, use a sodering iron, bake from scratch, construct a makeshift mop, and do my laundry by hand (in a bucket with one of those funny-looking scrubbing boards). I kind of feel like I should be milking goats or something, or composting my trash.

It has definitely inspired me to live more simply when I return to the States. There really is just so much you don´t need. So internet, schminternet. I´ll be alright getting it when I can. And maybe I´ll spend more time outside in this beautiful weather...