Jeff's First Penguin Encounter (but not in person)

This is totally unrelated but something I found today that's completely amazing.


Guys, feel free to leave comments on any of these posts, so I know that someone is reading this thing.

CHILEANISH PART 3

MORE LESSONS in CHILEANISH

The word for “only” taught in schools in the U.S. is “solamente.” No one uses that here though. They either say, “no más” (no more) or “nada más” (nothing more) depending on the context. However, because of the accent they just sound like “noma” or “nadama” and to the untrained ear, they are hard to comprehend.

Also, they say “harto/a” instead of “mucho/a,” something that was never explained to me and I finally figured out after a month. I thought they were saying “alto” for a long time. For example:

-“¿Como fue la carrete anoche?” (How was the party last night?)

-“Rico, po, había harta gente en el club.” (It was good, there were a lot of people in the club.)

But since I thought they were saying “alto,” to me it sounded like they were saying “It was good, there were TALL people in the club,” which seemed very strange to me (especially since I’ve only seen one Chilean over 6 ft).

Huevon – said like “wayon”, this can either mean “dude” or “motherFer” depending on the context. Everyone under 40 says it, but only when not in the presence of people over 40. For instance, my Chilean sister (in her 30s) never uses it in when our parents are around, but as soon as they are out of hearing range, the “huevon”s start flying out.

UPDATE: I just learned today that they say “wayon” a lot in any social situation, but when they say “HUEVON” with all of the syllables and letters, it becomes very vulgar.

LAS MICROS

A micro is a small bus that seats about 15-20 people that runs on a fixed route through Vina and Valpo.

The red and green bus in this picture is a micro.

The micro is a very interesting part of Chilean culture. In terms of modes of transportation, it is the most frequently used and the most dangerous. There are tons of people who get on the micro (besides thieves) that aren’t getting on it just to get from one place to another. There are vendors of all sorts of things – food, drinks, ice cream, as well as artists, singers/guitarists, and people who tell sad stories and then ask for a little bit of money. They usually get on at the busiest stops and then get off as soon as the bus starts moving or when it gets to the next stop. All these different people make the micro an interesting experience every time I take it, because I never know what I’m going to see next.

Here’s another fun part of the micros: the bus drivers will rip you off if you don’t count your change. This I’m not surprised at all by and I have seen/experienced before in Latin America. What I haven’t seen before are the guys that hawk the transportation services – guys that stand outside and shout out where the buses are going and how fast they can get you there (and believe me, it’s always super rapido). They’ll also shout out that the bus is brand new and how it won’t break down (no matter how run-down it looks from the outside). “Ride this bus! The seats are so nice and soft!” They do this because they don’t have real jobs, and the micro drivers will give them 100 to 150 pesos for their efforts. The reason the bus drivers pay them (this is my theory at least), is because they bring in more people for the bus drivers to rip off, then they share the profits. This is fine, like most things in Latin America, as long as you aren’t a complete idiot about things, you’ll avoid situations like this (and if you are, then maybe you deserve it).

However at night the micros become very dangerous if you aren’t traveling in a group, and these guys who yell info about the micros become accomplices to certain micro drivers who want to rob you of much more than just shortchanging you.

A quick tour of Valpo with PJ's padres

In the beginning of April, the parents of my friend PJ (the one who had the birthday in Santiago) came here and I took them on a tour around Valpo, first to my school, La Catolica, then to one of Pablo Neruda’s houses, la Sebastiana.

A very colorful street in Valpo - on the way to Neruda's house


This dog was having tea and leaning over the railing, watching us climb the hills of Valpo


View from Neruda's house La Sebastiana


Outside of Neruda's House

Then I took them to a cool café that I found with my friend Samantha called Café con Letras.

Inside the Cafe con Letras


Outside, my friend's dad shares tea with Neruda


A cool painting in Valpo


the famous ascensor 21 de Mayo

Later, they came to my house and had “once” (Chilean evening tea-time) with my homestay parents, which was very fun because I got to hear my chilean dad speaking english (he sounded like me in spanish!). Actually he's a lot better at english than I thought he was. After that we went out to eat steak at a restaurant in Vina where there was a poster/drawing of Greenwich, CT (weird!).

After dinner I left PJ's parents and met my friend Evan in another part of Vina for a little (okay maybe more than a little) partying before we went to Valpo. We then met a big group of friends and tried to get into Huevo, a club in Valpo, but the line was ridiculous so we went to two different clubs and had an excellent time.

Next post - HEAD NORTH YOUNG MAN

A very fake asado

So we were going to do an asado (bbq) at my friend Jackie's house, but by the time everyone got there it was too late to really organize and buy meat and stuff and grill so we just ordered pizza instead.

But we wanted to keep the spirit of an asado, thus...
Evan at the grill


amigos



That's it for now

UNA BODA CHILENA

I haven’t updated for a while, since life here is becoming more of a routine (going to class during the week, going out on the weekends) – but far from boring, believe me – so I’m going to stop writing so much about that, and more about my big trips/events as they come up.

On March 31^st, (the weekend after I went to the dunes and made the cookies and went to the casino), I experienced my first Chilean (and Latin American) wedding…or at least halfway. The bride was Chilean, but the groom was American. He stayed in the same house I’m staying in when he studied here in 2002, and now he’s back, marrying a Chilean girl that he met when she studied abroad in the States in his University (UNC). They actually got married 2 years ago in the States, and this was the wedding for the Chilean side of the family.


the bride walking down the aisle


my chilean parents at the wedding


bride and groom amidst the bubbles, coming out of the chapel


the family and me at the reception/dinner


cutting the cake



The service was actually held in the chapel in my university - the same central building where I take half of my classes, so that was cool, and the reception was held in the Estadio Italiano, which is right near my house in Recreo in Vina del Mar.

Quick side note - I can't believe it's almost May, and that people are already getting out of classes at home. I feel like I just started classes (it wasn't that long ago).

Dunas and Cookies

First, HERE IS THE LINK FOR ALL MY PICTURES:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bellisj
I am putting up a few with each post, but if you want to see all of them, just follow that link down the rabbit hole.

About 25-30 minutes north of my house, in a town called Con-Con, are a bunch of Sand Dunes. My friend Sam and I went there a few days after we got back from Santiago.

These are the best pictures:

from the front


looking to the north


more DUNAS





my best picture from the dunes trip


me at the dunes


I'm still missing the best picture (because it was taken on my friends camera), which is me COVERED in sand after I rolled 200 meters down the hill. I had sand in my eyes, ears, hair, eyebrows, mouth and throat but it was totally worth it. I'll post that when I get it.



After we got home, Sam and I made the cookies that I had been trying to make (or trying to get the ingredients for) for a long time. Here are some pictures:



a little help from my sister




almost ready



Later that night we went to my friends apartment and hung out and drank some piscolas, then went out to Alcazaba, the same place we went for the Monitor party a while back. I had a few too many drinks, but we had a lot of fun and I danced Salsa all night (it didn't matter what kind of music was playing. The next night we went to the VERY RITZY Casino donde habia HARTA DRAMA, but it's all good now.

Hasta pronto,
Jeff

Alejandro Sanz and a Birthday in Santiago

I haven’t updated in a while so I’m going to do some quick catching up.

The following weekend I went to Santiago for an Alejandro Sanz concert.

This is the opening

and a couple of the songs:

Amiga Mia

La Primera Persona

Corazon Partio
Part 1



Part 2



And finally, my favorite and his encore song, Te Lo Agradezco, Pero No
Part 1



And Part 2

Afterwards we went out to a bar to celebrate my friend’s 21^st birthday and St. Patty’s day and had a fantastic time. I’ve known this friend for 15 years, and lived basically down the street from him for that entire time, so it was really cool to be able to celebrate that with him in Santiago of all places.

We got back around 4:30 that night and I had to get up at 9 the next morning to meet my grandparents, who were just coming for two days, then leaving on a tour out of Valpo. I showed them the little part of Santiago that I knew:

the gondola


the view of their hotel the sheraton from the gondola


the statue of La Virgen at the top of cerro san cristobal





...and they gave me as much food and drink as I could possibly consume. In retrospect, I don't think this weekend could have turned out any better - these 3 things just happened to all fall on the same weekend, and it was awesome.

These posts are going to come rapid-fire for a while until I catch up.

Salsa and Valpo

Hello again!

This weekend my friend Adam from Sweden (who I met in Bariloche, Argentina) came to visit and see part of Chile.

We went to a salsa club Friday night, where a big group of us danced salsa until 5 am. I was on fire, I’ve never danced that well in my life. So of course, to even it out, we’re walking out of the club at 5:15 AM and I all of a sudden feel my nose start to run and I look down and see blood gushing out, and it didn't stop for about 20 minutes. I think it was because I was dehydrated and got too much exercise with too little rest. Still, it was annoying to have a perfect night like that dampered by extreme blood loss, but what can one do?

The next day we went to Playa Reñaca, a beautiful beach just up the coast from us. That night we went to Cafe Journal and came out with pictures such as these:

Sunday I called home and Brazil for the first time since I got to Chile, and Adam went back to Argentina.

The next day I had a case of "the mondays" - I took a micro (a bus) from one side of Valparaiso to the other, but in the wrong direction and ended up at the end of the bus terminal an hour and a half from my house. I felt like the kid who falls asleep on the school bus and has to call his mom to come pick him up at the bus graveyard. I wasn't going to go out this monday night but it was the birthday of one of my friends so I VALEd LA PENA and went out and had a lot of fun.

Tuesday

The next day, tuesday, I had a very FLAITE trip to the cinema in Valpo. Flaite is one of my favorite chilean words - it means sketchy/gangster depending on the context. I was going to meet some friends at an artsy cinema/cafe but my phone died as soon as I got on the bus and when I got there, none of my friends showed up (it turned out later they had changed plans and left me a message, but i couldnt check it). The movie was interesting, but strange, but when I went outside to catch a cab, the owner said that no cabs pass the cafe after 11, and I would have to walk all the way down the sketchy street to the main square (about 8 blocks). I didn't like this idea - this was exactly the kind of situation we were told to avoid in orientation - but I had my trusty hoody with me so I put it up and started walking down. The funny thing that happened on the way down was that there was a woman walking to her door with groceries, and when she saw me coming with her hood up she practically ran to her door, fumbled with the keys and jumped inside, slamming the door as I walked by. I made it down fine, and got a colectivo home. The silver lining in this was that I actually saw a really cool artsy part of the city that I had heard about but I had never seen before. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been so paranoid that something bad was about to happen to me, maybe if I visited it during the day I would have a different experience. UPDATE: This is an example of foreshadowing.

Until next time,

Jeff

The Second Big Post

I received some feedback from the last post that some of the words were hard to understand. For those of you who are not native speakers (in English/Spanish/Spanglish), I'm including a translation guide throughout this one so that you can understand the slang and the idioms. If you need me to translate something else, just ask!

CHILE POST 2

Without further ado, here is the second part of a multi-part series in Chilean Spanish:

Lessons in CHILEANISH (it really is its own language)

First of all, everything here is "rico." This one word can describe people, food, weather, TV shows, sports, the Stone Age, ANYTHING.
Second, everything is over-emphasized here. Bueno becomes buuuuuuueeeeeeeennnnnoo, and increible becomes increeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiibbbbllllee!

Finally, Chileans are obsessed with "ito/ita." For those of you unfamiliar with this, it is what you say to imply something is smaller (por ejemplo, una casita would be a little house). But here they use it for EVERYTHING. My Chilean mother does it the most. Every morning she asks me if I want a "técito" (a small tea), and gives me some pancito and a platito to eat it on. And of course I eat at the mesita. Even if you passed by the most enormous dog you've ever seen, they would still say something like, "ooooooooo perrriiiiiiiiiiiiito, que riiiiiiiiiiiiiicccco!

Usually in the first week or so I spend in any new place I explore the city and figure out where to go and the places I need to see. Here, though, we've just been going to the beach everyday

and eating delicious churrrrrrrrrrrros, and entonces, I still don't know the city that well.

Yesterday I had a light bulb moment (a "light bulb moment" is when you realize something very suddenly, it comes from cartoons – a light bulb pops up over the character's head when he has an idea or realizes something). There is a beach we've been to twice that is only about 15 minutes from my house (I live 3 minutes from the water, but there is no beach there, just rocks and a marina), and then there is a main street in town, but I didn't know how they connected. So I was riding in the taxi home and I came down the main street when I started to think, "hmm this really looks like the area around my beach." Then after 30 more seconds I realized…this IS my beach! I had not been down those 2 blocks so I didn't know how to get from one place to the other, but I am slowly learning my way around this city.

I think the drivers here might be even crazier than in Argentina. The first day I had to go to the University I took a colectivo (a shared taxi). The chofer was whipping around the sharp corners (whipping around = driving very fast around the corners), and weaving in and out of traffic, and I really thought we were going to crash. This was the first time I really thought about putting on my seatbelt in a taxi. Seriously, this guy made Roberto look like a good driver.

I realized how dependent I am on facial expressions and lip-reading to understand Spanish. I was sitting in the den with my Chilean father talking about lots of different subjects and the sun was going down and it was getting darker and darker. After the sun set, I suddenly found it very hard to understand what he was saying, which made me realize how much I need more than just audio clues to understand the language.

The other night we drank COLUMNAS of beer. A columna is something they have in some bars here, like this one, "O H"; it looks like a big cylinder filled with 2.5 liters of beer and it has a tap on it. We went there 3 nights the first week, then on Wednesday went to a friends house to drink a little bit, then went out until 5 am dancing at a club called Scratch. Thursday we were out dancing until 4 at a different club, Rufino. Friday we had a party with our Monitors (Chilean students helping us transition in) at an exclusive club called Alcazaba or something like that.

Yesterday we had a big asado (BBQ) at the house of a Chilean guy we met in Olmue during orientation. It was a lot of fun, but we missed the Lunar eclipse that probably looked cool over the ocean – my other friends might have some pictures though.

I just learned that the Wi-Fi in the corner of my house is not from the University next door, but from a hotel about 5 blocks away. FREE INTERNET!

This is the performance of Caraluna and Contigo Se Va by Bacilos the first night we were in orientation in Chile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxo5e5T5kI

and at the second part of this is Mi Primer Million
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60DbcR2Ti0

I now have another student living in the apartment connected to my house. He's a 17 year old Chilean that attends a different Universidad. He's really happy with me right now because I told him I'm going to introduce him to some gringas that want to surf with him.

Saludos a todos,
Palabra
Paz,
Jeff

Orientation and Bacilos

Aqui empieza el cuento de mi viaje en Chile hasta este punto…

Entry 1

I arrived in Santiago Tuesday night and stayed in a nice hotel near the airport. This is where my adventures here started. When I tried to check out in the morning, the employees told me that I had not paid for the room (which I had gotten from Expedia a month before), and that I couldn't leave to meet my group until I paid in cash (which I did not have enough of). I had to wait for the Expedia reservations manager to get into his office, and I almost missed the group bus at the airport. However, while I was waiting for Expedia, I read in the newspaper that there was a huge music festival in Vina del Mar, where I'm staying for a semester…

Anyway, there is a huge music festival here, the biggest party of the year for this city, highlighted by the final performance of my favorite Spanish band, Bacilos. Sounds perfect, right? The only problem was that I needed to go to orientation for 4 days in a small town an hour away from Vina and I would miss most of the festival.

I won't bore you with too many details, but my first impression of the other Americans in my group was not good. It was very strange to hear so much English being spoken on the bus. Anyway, my first impression was wrong in some cases, and right in others. I have met some cool people. There are 37 chicas and 12 chicos, but only about 20 total that seem like people I would have fun with. There are a couple cute girls, but there are only Americans (there are no Brazilians!). Also, it seems like everyone has pololos and pololas here (that's the Chilean word for boyfriend/girlfriend – here "novia" means fiancée). Many of the girls were always sitting in the lobby on Skype talking to their pololos and not meeting new people – dumb idea.

Entry 2

Orientation was good – we had a lot of boring meetings but we partied hard and slept very little – we went to bed at 3 am the first night and woke up at 8 am, then went to bed at 4:30 and woke up at 9, then went to bed at 5:30 and woke up at 9:30 the last night.

I was worried/a little pissed about missing the Bacilos concert, but the first night they showed the concert at the bar the first night and we drank a lot and sang along to all of the songs – Caraluna, Pasos de Gigante, Tabaco y Chanel, Mi Primer Millon, and Besela ya. The first night eliminated my fears about meeting good people – we had a lot of fun. The second night we went to the same bar (I should explain that this town only has 1 plaza, 1 hotel, 1 bar, and 1 store) and the band there played some more Bacilos songs and others, but it was only 2 guys playing and they could not sing well so we just sat and talked.

The third night we went to some guy's house (he was a Chilean about my age named COOKIES, but I don't think that was his real name), for 2 hours, then went back to the same bar where they had a large band where we danced salsa to both salsa music and more Bacilos songs (I think the concert incited Bacilos fever all around this area), and sang Karaoke (Hotel California, some Creedence Clearwater songs, and the Spanish version of Save Tonight). The night ended with me saving some girls who had drank a bit more than usual from some 60 year old guys they were dancing with, then hanging out with some guys in the town square at 5 am with a couple of friends. I was always in the last group returning to the hotel every night. In the end missing the concert didn't matter because we got to hear Bacilos songs every night at the bar, and my roommate and I were always singing it.

Entry 3

We took a much needed nap from 10-1 pm after we missed the bus leaving for the hike in the morning by about 30 seconds. This turned out to be a very expensive nap. Since we didn't turn in the key by noon, the hotel manager (who was a complete A#@HOLE) made us pay 60,000 pesos (20,000 or 40 dollars each) for the hotel room. I was very pissed off about this at the time. I knew that other people were coming to use the room that next night, and he was being paid for it already, so if I had had the time, I was going to go in and demand that he give me the key for that night, since we were paying for the room, just to see the reaction on his face. But alas, I did not have time.

Entry 4

¡Finalmente he llegado en Viña del Mar!

It is amazingly beautiful here. It seems like a mix between San Diego and Hollywood. My room here is bigger and nicer than my room both at home and at school – and my family is fantastic. The father is 62 but acts younger, and the daughter (39) seems fun. I haven't made up my mind yet about the mother, but Marta is a tough act to follow, so maybe I'm just expecting too much.

This is my room, and one of the first sunsets.

Entry 5

I just had my first real Chilean dinner with other guests and everything. It was the same exact meal that I had for lunch 5 hours earlier, but it was good both times. I'm just wondering if that is a trend that will continue. Anyway, I was sitting at the table and finding that I could understand a lot of what they were talking about. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, the conversation somehow switched from a mall in Buenos Aires built primarily for children, to the Mafia. I know it seems like a subtle change, but I didn't catch it. After that I didn't understand much. Here they say all sorts of funny filler words – por ejemplo, "si poh" is like "yeah, dude" but you use it for everything and everyone and POH is used every third word or something. I think the next post will be about me not understanding this crazy Chilean Spanish.

Hasta el proximo post,

Jeff