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