Transcultural vogueing

American Agriculture: FAIL

2011-08-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

I was feeling a little bit orthorexic the other day, which is BAD! You can't have an eating disorder here in the States cause it's a total faux pas. Orthorexia is a fixation with healthy eating. Although it's not a "medically recognized term". But still, while there probably is a grain of truth to the existence of "orthorexia", it bothers me that it's come to this extreme where wanting to eat healthy is considered by some an eating disorder. My orthorexic problem is I don't even want to think about where most of the meat and eggs we buy comes from. Not to mention all the GMO produce. Ugh! We do buy some organic, but it is so EXPENSIVE and TIME-CONSUMING to try to eat healthy in the United States. All I have to say is: of course the U.S. is full of people with eating disorders and health problems. OF COURSE IT IS!!! Anorexia, bulimia, obesity, and diabetes to name a few. Not to mention yo-yo diets and a HUGE NATIONAL FIXATION ON BODY IMAGE! If you go to the supermarket, 90% of the food isn't even healthy. Actually that number is probably closer to 99%. Corn-fed beef full of antibiotics, GMO produce laced with pesticides, all of the sugar and the processed GMO crap that makes up most of the aisles. Of course Americans have eating disorders! Honestly. I've never heard anyone mention this connection and it's so obvious it should be common sense.

You want to cure bulimia, anorexia, and other food-related health disorders? That will only happen when our food/agricultural system transforms into something ecologically and ETHICALLY superior. Honestly. The present corn-based system that spews pesticides into the earth and favors GMO crops and large corporations is absolutely insane! Who in their right mind really wants to eat that crap? Or even produce it. Honestly corporate decision makers, get a life! Go enjoy all that money you've accumulated and leave us alone. And federal government that supports these guys, your demise will come. Your biggest challengers may be local governments who are sick of your BS, and lots of people connected through social media.

I believe the start of a solution to this is a large grassroots community gardens project, people having their own gardens, CSAs, co-ops, etc. Stuff like crop mob too.

All I can say to my garden is "grow, baby grow." Together, gardens and gardeners ;), we can put Cargill out of business. And Monsanto too. And end this corporate insanity.

Direct Consular Filing, OVER

2011-07-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

So if you haven't already started the process, direct consular filing will be a thing of the past starting August 15th, 2011. Which means if you want to petition your alien spouse's visa from Chile, you'll need to do it through United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), in Chicago, I believe.

My love for Chilean soccer

2011-07-17T18:11:00.001-07:00

Started in Canada in 2007 with "la rojita". June, I believe. With Sanchez, Medel, Vidal, Toselli, Isla, y varios más headed by Harold Mayne-Nicholls. La prensa chilena le siguió para todos lados al equipo informando a todo Chile de los cortes de pelo, el shopping, y las andanzas de estos jovenes alegres en Toronto. De hecho, la presa chilena fue criticada por lo mismo porque decían que hizo desconcentrar al joven equipo. A lo mejor se destrayó, pero a la vez me hizo a mi más interesada que nunca en el fútbol chileno, ya que conocíamos a los jugadores y a sus familias. Los periodistas incluso iban a las casas de las familias para entrevistarlas, ver los partidos con parientes y amigos de los jugadores y hacer a todo Chile conocerlos.

Los partidos eran emocionantes para todo el país. Por primera vez, in my humble and bastante amateur opinion, Chile tenía un buen EQUIPO, no solo a "SaZa", sino a una manga de buenos jugadores quienes jugaban (y juegan) bien! (Well, most of the time anyway. No one's perfect.) Chile veía a la rojita con tanta o más emoción y fe que a la selección adulta. No sé si soy yo o si Chile por primera vez tenía confianza en sus jugadores nacionales como equipo.

Despues del altercado que tuvieron con los pacos canadienses, lo que mas me acuerdo de la rojita en Toronto es cuando Medel sacó la pelota del arco Chileno (ni me acuerdo contra que equipo) y el protagonismo de Toselli en los triunfos. Bueno, y la mencionada interacción con la prensa chilena fuera de la cancha.

Bueno, y ahora varios de aquellos jovenes que jugaron en Canadá, ahora son parte de la selección. Y me rompe el corazón cuando pierde Chile, como perdió hoy día. Lo único que quería era que avanzaran para poder verles jugar más porque JUEGAN BIEN CTM!

Business Ideas 5 and 6

2011-06-11T17:17:00.001-07:00

Business Idea #5:
How about a real "guitar hero" bar?

Could somebody please do this one? hahaha, in Spokane please. (Or wherever I may be living at present.)
Perhaps it even exists, if I were to take the time to google it well enough...I might find it.

What I mean by this is not the game, but the real thing. The bar could have a cheap Squire guitar and an amp, a microphone, a beat-up drum set, and a keyboard that people could take turns rocking out on. With the popularity of bar karaoke-which seemed to hit hard the end of the 90´s and just never go away-I think I'm on to something.

I think a band setup, where people of varying abilities could come rock out, or at least try to, haha, could be a lot of fun. Plus, how many musicians (of varying abilities) live in apartments or neighborhoods where they can't crank it up without passive-aggressive neighbors and noise violations screwing things up?

**Note to any Expert Guitar Heros out there...I don't mean to be put down guitar hero the game. Mentioning it just helped me explain what I mean.

Business idea 6: porn streaming/rental for women. Most of that stuff's for guys. Honestly, women's reason for not watching as much porn doesn't come from the fact that we "aren't visually stimulated". What a f$%#ing joke! No pun intended, hahaha. The fact is that most pornos (read 99.9%) are made with guys in mind. What we're really turned off by is watching the guy jizz all over the girl. Gross. And just the whole way the movie's laid out. If you want to consult with an expert about this, check this out.

So this probably does exist, but it could be marketed much more. Like at tuppersex parties...

Standard of Living

2011-04-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

I took a consumer survey today that asked me if I would be willing to experience a decrease in standard of living in favor of my environmental concerns, (for me this means to use less energy, buy less stuff, pay more for organic local food, grow your own food, etc.) I didn't like how the question was posited, because it assumes that having less pollution (cleaner water, air, land) isn't an increase in standard of living. Honestly, some people are annoyingly clueless. (In this case survey writers. What's worse, there was no place on the survey to express this.)

Proving domicile in the USA on the I-864 (the affadavit of support)

2011-04-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

How to show domicile on the I-864 when you're living abroad. I totally had an "immigration zombie" moment with this one.

I believe the reason showing domicile is important is because U.S. Immigration wants to be sure that you will be arriving in the United States with or before your spouse. If you're not living in the States, but your alien spouse is, I imagine that makes the I-864 pretty worthless to the government.

The domicile part of the I-864 is sort of confusing because if you are applying DCF, it's because the U.S. citizen applying is a "resident" in another country. However, you have to prove your "country of domicile" is the United States. You can be a resident somewhere outside the U.S. and have you country of domicile be the United States. If you go to Part 4, question 15 on the I-864 instructions, it gives you options A, B, and C. For most people trying to prove B and/or C is the way to go.

Possible proof of domicile:
On the I-864 instructions they list the following as proof of U.S. domicile:

your voting record in the United States,
paying U.S. State or local taxes,
having property in the United States,
maintaining bank or investment accounts in the United States,
having a permanent mailing address in the United States.
evidence that you are a student studying abroad or that a foreign government has authorized a temporary stay.

Or if you don't have these, you can show the following:

accepting a job in the United States,
signing a lease or purchasing a residence in the United States,
registering children in U.S. schools.

On the visa forums, users make even more suggestions of what to submit as proof of domicile:

a letter from parents/siblings/etc. saying that you are welcome to live with them while you get set up in the United States
a bill from a U.S.-based health insurance in your name or that you're included on
that you are giving up your lease or selling your house abroad
if you will be studying in US, send them documentation that you are enrolled in a college or university

Also there's a wiki at British Expats which is super helpful. It gives suggestions on how to prove domicile in the USA.

For more info on this, i.e., other people's experiences, it's very helpful to do a search for "I-864 and domicile" or something to the effect at british expats forum on the "USA, Marriage-based visas" branch.

Here's a link to the USCIS forms. As of April 14, 2011, anyway.

Business Ideas 3 & 4

2011-03-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

# 3 A food cart on the way to the airport, in a SUPER convenient location, that sells packed lunches for reasonable prices.

#4 A waxing franchise, like that offers the services of leg/bikini/etc wax, but with prices more along the lines of "Great Clips Salons" than "Aveda Salons". So rather than paying boutique-y prices for this service you would pay a more reasonable price. Market: urban areas with lots of yuppies and hipsters.

Update and babblings on Thrifty Living

2010-12-20T00:13:00.001-08:00

V and I are currently in Portland, Oregon. He's subcontracted here for four months. He has work til the end of December and then we'll see where we go from here. He might be asked to stay on another month or two to continue working on his current project. I did find possible work here in Portland. Actually there are some pretty exciting job opportunities for me here :), like teaching Spanish at the Community College level and other Spanish classes, perhaps teaching GED in Spanish, etc. However, since I would have to probably piece together 3 part time jobs to make a third of what Vuko makes in one job, we won't be staying here in Portland due to my work. At least not for now. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do meanwhile.

So, I've mostly been ama de casa since we've been in Portland, a job that's way underrated, might I add :) I made (Chilean) cazuela today! Yummy. With a brand-spanking new pot! A brand-spanking previously-owned pot, rather. I've decided that Goodwill is a great place to shop for kitchen stuff.

Why is this? If a pot or fry pan makes it to Goodwill, it's probably better than most of the ones Walmart sells. Because Walmart pans go straight to the trash after the first owners because they suck! hahaha. I bought the BEST pot at Goodwill the other day for $8. (At the kitchen store, a nice pot costs $125. Mieeeeerda!) The guy in line in front of me even commented on my excellent find. hahaha. He had a Goodwill discount card, so he knows Goodwill merchandise. I asked the cashier about getting a Goodwill discount card, if only to show it to people, hahaha, although I'm SURE I'd get use out of it. However, Goodwill no longer gives them out. :( oh well.

The idea of buying used cooking implements was first suggested to me in Kitchen Confidential. Bourdoin recommends that if you want to get good cooking supplies at killer prices, just wait for a neighborhood restaurant to go out of business and go make an offer on their cooking supplies. Well, if you don't know of a restaurant going out of business, Goodwill is a good place to check out.

Anything we leave Portland with must fit in our Toyota Corolla. hahahhahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahhahaha! Packing will be a feat! Vuko's got a guitar and a pretty big amplifier as well as a long effect pedal. I've got a ton of clothes, my sewing machine, as well as some kitchen stuff. So almost everything we've bought since we've been in Portland will be left here. Thus we don't see most of our purchases as "investments". So we've tried to be thrifty about our purchases:

Our previously-owned king-sized mattress we bought for $100 at a mattress store. We also got a used futon there for $140. And free delivery, yay! I had about 4 hours to find us a mattress since I didn't want to be sleeping on the floor our first night in our new luxe apartment, haha. Otherwise you can get them for free off craigslist. In Portland anyway. Of course then you have to haul it yourself. And hope it doesn't have bedbugs, hahaha. Fortunately ours doesn't. But if you think about it, if you stay in a hotel, you're using a bed that who-knows-how-many-people have used, so it's kind of the same. Plus, my folks bought us a wonderful new king-sized bed upon our arrival to the States. It didn't fit in the Corolla, however. So it will be at my folks' house until we find a permanent home. So till like 2030, hahaha.

Other basic purchases:

A dinner table and four chairs (read: card table) cost $50 at walmart.

Our coffee table was $36 at the Portland garage sale at the Expo center here! I strongly dis-recommend going to the Portland garage sale at the Expo center. Parking was $8 plus $4 each to get in. I've been to better garage sales in my neighborhood! I've personally had better garage sales! Smaller, but better. What a ripoff! hahaha. But I did have to check it out. So the coffee table was only $20, but plus the $16 entrance fee, that gives us $36. And we bought it from people who have a used furniture store like a mile from our house. So there's a bit of a learning curve when moving to a new place.

I got a NICE mountain bike for $40 at a garage sale near our house. It has rock shocks even. It needed a little lovin', that's for sure. But V straightened the steering wheel and pumped the tire with air. I tried it out before buying it, and it works great! This bike's been a lifesaver for us since we only have one car. I use it as a main form of transportation. That way when we both need to go somewhere, V can take the car and I, my bike. I LOVE commuting on my bike. I always see how much car traffic there is and am so happy to be pedaling. And Portland is probably the most bike-friendly city in the United States, so biking here rocks!

But I digress...

So to wrap up this rambling post, I think I'm going to start posting on "thrifty living", as this is something that interests me. My first piece of advice would be to not move to the United States if you live elsewhere, hahaha.

USPS vale callampa!

2010-12-18T14:43:00.000-08:00

I can't believe the United States Postal Service sucks so bad! Honestly. Talk about lack of customer service. Wow! Some of the individual mail carriers are very friendly and helpful, but whoever is responsible for managing lost package complaints in Portland isn't doing an effective job.

I ordered a book from Amazon on Nov. 1st and it never arrived. So I went to the post office a couple times with the tracking info, and called several times. They always said they were going to look for my package and call me back and I NEVER got a call back. I ended up calling the postmaster and then someone emailed me the name of the guy who was supposed to take care of my case. I called to talk to him; he wasn't there. Left a message, he never called back.

The company I bought the book from recharged my credit card. I hope they get their money back at least for the shipping. But honestly. Talk about a need for customer service. I'd never had something like this happen with USPS before, so I was surprised they don't respond for lost packages. I'm sure Amazon has a little more influence over USPS though. But I'll think twice before using USPS in Portland again.

Say what?

2010-12-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

I used to think the most difficult Spanish in the world was Chilean Spanish. It probably still could be considered more difficult than not. Why Chilean Spanish is difficult to learn is that Chileans mostly:

speak softly
speak in a monotone
cut off the last syllable of many words (e.g. cansá instead of cansada)

A Cuban guy came to fix my stove upon moving into our apartment. His Spanish was wonderful. (His English was pretty good too!) I could understand every word he said in Spanish. This only confirmed my knowledge that Chilean Spanish is the hardest.

And then my sink wasn't draining well, so last week, a different Cuban guy came to fix it. Oh my god was his Spanish difficult!!! His English was non-existent, so we communicated in Spanish, but I had to ask him to repeat himself often. When I asked him what had caused the semi-clog in the drain, I didn't understand one word of his reply! So I asked him, "Estaba tapado?" He replied, "Sí". And I had to get rolling anyway, so I saw him to the door and left myself. I think if I had conversed with him for a while, I eventually would have caught on. He left me pretty floored however.

On bilingual kids

2010-12-03T11:49:00.000-08:00

When people comment that V and my future kids are going to be bilingual, I tell them that our kids will speak English with a Chilean accent and Spanish with a gringo accent. hahaha. That would be hilarious and make for a cruel world. hehehe.

Thanksgiving sort of ruined.

2010-11-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

I don't really like holidays a ton, except for el dieciocho and Thanksgiving. Yes, I'm a foodie. hahaha. Thanksgiving used to be my favorite American holiday. This year V and I had a lovely Thanksgiving lunch with my folks, for which I am thankful. But then, V asked me what we were celebrating. I couldn't remember if it was the first harvest that the pilgrims had after arriving to America, or if it was a feast that the Native Americans prepared for the pilgrims saving them from starvation. According to omniscient wikipedia, both answers are partially correct. Turns out the Native Americans taught the pilgrims to plant so that the pilgrims wouldn't starve to death come winter. It worked out well for the pilgrims, and Thanksgiving is celebrated at harvest time. So it celebrates the first harvest. Then the whites proceeded to kill almost all of the Native Americans.

I've always known that. I don't know why it ruined Thanksgiving for me this year and not other years. Perhaps because this year I read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, An Indian History of the American West. And so I guess having to explain Thanksgiving to a foreigner six months after reading this book, got to me. I'm just thankful my little nephew and niece didn't ask me. I might have gone off on an "unpatriotic" rant and ruined their childhoods.

Adios San Marcelino, poderoso salvador y protector del futbol chileno...

2010-11-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

I just mentioned to my husband how I was hoping to read what the gringa bloggers had to say about Bielsa and nobody's said anything really. At least regarding his choice to quit as trainer of the National team if Harold Mayne-Nicholls weren't re-elected as the president of the Chilean Soccer Federation (ANFP) -which he wasn't. So here goes. The Argentinean, Marcelo Bielsa, one of the best soccer coaches in the world, quit. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I really like Bielsa. He's not a Philosopher King, but a Philosopher Coach, literally. And a bit of an enigma due to his general avoidance of the press and his soft-spoken way. I've watched several of his conferences the last few years and while he's soft spoken, his ideas are wise and pack a punch. Especially interesting to watch was the unexpected conference he called the day before the ANFP presidential elections. Usually pretty concise, here he spoke a lot longer than normal, sharing anecdotes. It was really fun to watch.

Soccer is important in Chile! They rarely have a good team. They don't make it to the World Cup often (because as any Chilean soccer fanatic will be sure to let you know, Chile has to compete against Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to get to the World Cup whereas the United States competes against Mexico and Central America, which is plenty easier. ) But Chileans love soccer and love their national team even if sometimes juega como las weas (they play like shit). Well, that changed with Bielsa. Under his direction, they beat Argentina for the first time ever in a play-off game. They beat Paraguay in Paraguay for the first time in 28 years. They won in Lima for the first time in like 25 years. They also beat Colombia in an away game the first time ever. He helped form lots of good players, and he led them to the World Cup in South Africa.

Before I go on, I must drive home that Chileans are A CRITICAL PEOPLE. They criticize everything!!!!!! Seriously!! They have a wonderful public transportation system thanks to ex-presidents Ricardo Lagos and Michele Bachelet and all Lagos and Bachelet got for all their hard work was a TON of criticism. Honestly, here in most cities of the United States we are like 20 years behind the public transport in Santiago, la Quinta Region and probably most of Chile!!!! And lots of Chileans can't talk enough shit about it. *Vent finished* (I suppose being uber-critical is sometimes one of their more endearing traits! :P )

In Chile, when someone actually achieves the carino del pueblo, the people's affection, it does call my attention. And, yes, they-especially the men-do love soccer, but seriously the Chilean people's love for Bielsa goes beyond just soccer. Honestly. It does. I think Chileans really like extraordinary but humble people, like Bielsa. I agree with the Bielsa-loving Chileans, Marcelo Bielsa is a Saint. And to that Bielsa responds: no hay Santo sin historia ni pecador sin futuro. There's no Saint without a past, nor a sinner without a future.

After the World Cup was over, the Chilean National Team went to the Moneda to be greeted by the president, and many Chileans outside la Moneda. When Bielsa gave Pinera a "lukewarm greeting", it was controversial. Because Chileans love one of them more than the other. hahaha. Here I've found the truth about the presidential greetings!

Although the Chilean president denies it, many think that Pinera influenced the results of the ANFP elections so that Mayne-Nicholls lost and Jorge Segovia won the presidency thus provoking Bielsa to quit. I don't know if it's true. However, I don't like Pirana, so it wouldn't surprise me. But the real clencher is that the change of ANFP presidency will be good for Pinera's business interests. Since the team he's owner of, Colo-Colo, will receive more money with Segovia as president than it would with Mayne-Nicholls.

I was really sad to hear Bielsa was quitting! I honestly don't like soccer that much, but I like how Chileans are about Bielsa. And I like Bielsa. I was bummed. But I watched a part of a press conference where Harold Mayne-Nicholls spoke and he made me feel better. More or less he said that Chile had a wonderful opportunity with Bielsa. The ANFP put together a project for Chilean soccer that interested Bielsa enough to accept the position as the coach. He said we should be grateful for those four years, and the work that Bielsa, the players, and others involved in the project did for Chile. (He said it so much better than that, but that's the gist.) It made me feel better about Bielsa quitting. This whole Pinera in, Bielsa out situation also makes me happy I'm living in the States now. As a friend of mine said in facebook. "Todo esto me da asco!!!!!" Agreed!

Immigration to the US: Filing a change of address

2010-10-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Heads up to present and future immigrants and their spouses.

V and I have been in the States for like 7 months now, and just moved for the first time within the States, like a month ago.

We just moved to Portland, Oregon, and thus had to file two forms. One was a change of address form for V, the permanent resident: AR-11. The other was for me. It's the I-865, the sponsor's change of address form. As far as I know, it needs to be sent in by mail. The AR-11 is supposed to be filed 10 days after the move and the I-865 about 30 days after the move. Lots of people don't do it, or do it late, but you could potentially get fined and I'm not sure what else for not doing it.

This British Expat Forum has info on this. Just use the search box to find what you need.

The AR-11 can be filed online.
The I-865 must be sent in. I believe that clicking here and scrolling down you can get the most recent form.

On Study Abroad and Cultural Immersion

2010-07-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

This post was orignally a comment on Leigh's blog, but it got really long.

I studied abroad as a high schooler in Chile and LOVED the host family experience, and being surrounded by Chileans, immersed in the culture.

In college, I did my senior year in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The way this program was set up, we had all of our classes with other American students, and a language class with other foreigners. This is despite the fact that many of us were Spanish majors and/or were very proficient in Spanish. There were no Spanish students in our classes, because all of the history, literature, and humanities classes were taught in Gallego. Sooo, I tried to hang out with mostly Spanish students the whole year. I really wanted to immerse myself into the culture like I had in Chile. Both of my roommates were Spanish, and I met a couple of people through them. I didn't hang out with the other students in my program very much at first. But it was hard to meet other Spaniards until I made friends with a few other American kids from my program who were also interested in hanging out with Spaniards and integrating a bit into the culture. Between the four of us we were friends with 8 or 10 Spaniards and we'd hang out with each other and each other's roommates as well as other Spanish acquaintances. We spoke lots of Spanish, because we were often with our Spanish friends. We only switched to English when we were on our own. We sort of avoided other exchange students, because we wanted the immersion experience, and they may have thought we were rude. Looking back, I might have hung out with the other American students just a hair bit more, to get to know them, and not be rude. But really I only had a year to live in Spain, so it was definitely worth it to limit my contact with other Americans. I think making friends with a couple other gringos also seeking to immerse themselves in the culture is one of the best strategies for making friends with the locals while abroad. With more of you, you automatically multiply the amount of natives you meet. Plus you can converse with the other Americans about the culture and get feedback about questions you might have about your experience of the foreign culture.

Another good way to integrate into the culture is by joining a group, club, etc. I met a ton of people through my capoeira groups in Chile. But any kind of group works, like choir, volunteering, perhaps joining a gym and taking classes there, etc. Actually this is a great way to meet people and make friends in general, wherever you live!!

Business Ideas 1 & 2

2010-07-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

I always have what I consider to be good business ideas and rarely even share them with anybody. Does everybody have this, or is it just me? So I thought I'd write them here in case anybody wants to use them. Probably most of them already exist, but I just don't know about it. And there's probably always room for a competitor. hehehe. So here goes:

1) Start a green cleaning service, where the cleaning lady/guy cleans with non-toxic cleaners, i.e. vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda, etc. They could also set people up with a compost pile, rain barrels, and recycling, and do maintenance of these things if that works too - and perhaps recycle/dispose of the things that aren't picked up at your house for you, i.e. computer monitors, paint, magazines, etc. I think this one has huge potential, what with the green industry here in USA.

2) Create a website where you can download all of your photos for a specific event, say a wedding, and then you can upload other guests photos from the same wedding. Honestly, the internet REALLY needs this. This probably exists though. Anybody know of a site where you can do this?

Packing Light for Travel

2010-06-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

First I must just say "VIVA CHILE MIERDA, GANAMOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

So before a trip:
-Definitely check the weather for where you will be traveling.
-Plan day by day outfits, if necessary, like especially if you'll need formal wear with jewelry, nice shoes, etc.

Here's a packing list from Travel Light Guru Rick Steves:
-packing list

Now, my own tips:

If you have a tendency to overpack, when packing don't ask yourself "what will I need?", but "what can I live without?" - e.g. Perhaps your yoga pants can double as long underwear, pijama pants, and sweat pants. And maybe you don't really need that kitchen sink. Or the laptop. Or three pairs of jeans, maybe not even two.

- Now this is just a general packing tip, to make it easier. A week or two before I leave for somewhere, I often find an empty corner of my apartment and open the suitcase I plan on taking and let it sit there. As I think of things I'm going to bring on my trip, I throw them in, so I'm not stressing out last minute about all the things I might be forgetting. Ojo: this can lead to overpacking. So do this for a week or two before traveling, and then when you are actually packing your bag, start filtering out things that aren't necessary. This is a comprehensive way of packing a bag, and probably isn't for everyone.

- keep a rubbermaid with all your little travel gear in it, like TSA locks, fanny packs :), luggage tags, cosmetic bag, packing cubes if you use them, etc.

- when I travel to other countries, I tend to accumulate some money in other currencies. Before leaving said country, I try to get rid of all the coins, unless I have a reason to hold on to them. For example, the new Chilean 100 pesos is very similar to the Euro coin, so I've heard they work for buying cigarettes from vending machines in Italy. Or they used to. You get a great exchange rate that way. Unheard of. But I digress... So, I actually usually arrive home with foreign bills if I think I will be traveling there again. Not a ton, maybe 20 dollars worth. Then I divide them in little ziploc bags by country, and next time I travel to say, Argentina, I've got 20 bucks worth of pesos just in case. And I keep the money with my passport, so I know where it is. That way it's also travel-handy, and I feel like a spy from a movie, :P hahahha. Except I guess I'd need a couple more passports to really feel like Matt Damon's Jason Bourne.

Here are a few things that are almost always on my packing list:

- a fold-up, eco-friendly grocery bag, e.g. These I find AWESOME for travel. Especially in the airport. I carry it in my purse, and often I have lots of warm clothes like a thick sweatshirt and maybe a coat that I want to carry on the plane. In the airport, I can throw my coat, sweatshirt and extras in this sack for going through security and also if I'm too warm I can just carry it around in the bag. These bags are seriously the wave of the future! ha!

-I find a pair of long yoga pants very useful when I travel, because you can use them as lounge pants, pijama pants, long underwear, and casualwear.

-I'm all about having a beige, gold or bronze pair of dress shoes or sandals to wear with formal wear or anything really. Since they match my skin, I don't need to match every dress, skirt, and shorts; they also go well with jeans.

- bikini: a personal must have. I think I wouldn't leave it behind even if going to Antartica. I have a fear of not being able to swim in a pool, at a beach, etc. because I didn't bring my swimsuit.

- another good item: bolero mangas. I can't remember this word in English if I ever knew it, but one of those sweatshirts or sweaters that is basically just sleeves and goes over short sleeves, like this. It's a great piece of clothing, because it's small and light, packs easily and often when V and I would go to Vina for the weekend, I'd just bring that and two different short-sleeved t-shirts or tanks. That way I could convert my short-sleeved shirts into long sleeves. And I could still put a sweatshirt over the mangas. This cuts down on the need to pack so many long-sleeved t-shirts and short-sleeved. It's great for Vina weather where it can be hot in the day but it is usually cool at night.

- I also travel sometimes with a little "Travel Pro" duffle. Rolled up, it was the size of those eco-friendly grocery bags, and it fits about the same amount, but it has a zipper, so I don't have to worry about stuff falling out of it while I'm in transit.

- Another item that can be useful is a quart-sized see-through cosmetic bag. They sell them at Wal-Mart now, and probably on the internet. That way you can use the same quart-sized bag every time you carry liquids onto the plane. Yoopee!

-Rick Steves travel tips

Anyway, here are a few videos I found useful for packing light. They contain excellent information!!! And lots of it!

-I must say, I pertain more to the "rolling your clothes" way than the layering-folding style. Or the shove-them-in-the-bag style too. It's efficient and effective. haha

Last of all, if you're stressing out before a trip, just make sure you have your travel partners, a passport and perhaps a credit card. Everything else can be figured out upon arrival. Boa viagem!

Top 11: You know you're a chilenized yanqui when...

2010-04-11T22:12:00.000-07:00

11. You can't believe the amount of shopping people do in the States.

10. You are overwhelmed (and perhaps even amused or disgusted) by the material wealth of the United States.

9. Sometimes when a family member or friend suggests eating out, you say, "but we have so much food in the refrigerator at home."

8. You ask for referrals for services and products all the time. You are also very practiced in negotiating prices.

7. You occasionally use wordreference dictionary to translate from Chilensis to English.

6. Spanglish is your language of choice.

5. You can make a seven course meal even with the fridge and pantry almost empty.

4. You check the dates on the milk, yogurt, etc. while shopping at the store to make sure it's not already expired.

3. Half of your facebook friends are Chilean.

2. And you know you are Santiaguized when...acting like a total bitch (especially to strangers) - te sale a flor de piel - comes naturally.

1. You think about a thought in a thousand different ways (te day mil vueltas a un pensamiento) before saying it to assure yourself there's not one possible sexual interpretation of what you are about to say.

hehehehe, feel free to add your own ideas :)

Arriving in the States with an immigrant visa

2010-03-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

So we were scheduled to fly out of Chile March 1st, but there was this "big tremmor" which shook the airport up and trashed it enough to delay our flight about a week. I consider us very fortunate, because many didn't fare so well in the earthquake.

We arrived in Miami March 8th, I believe, and went through immigration. V was on his immigrant visa so he got in the "U.S. Citizens and Permanent Lawful Residents" line with me to go through immigration. It's called something like that anyway. So we went up to the immigration official/cop guy and I went through first and then V. After V got his finger prints taken, the officer lead us to a room close by. There was one other client in there waiting, and then the official. We were told to take a seat and we waited for about 40 minutes while the immigration official worked. It was like 5am. Yawn. But the guy got to us and was really friendly and helpful. V just had to sign a form and we chatted for a while with the guy and headed to Ft. Lauderdale for a vacation with my family.

V was told that he can work with the visa that's stamped in his passport. Apparently it works like a green card while we wait for the green card to come in the mail.
Also the friendly official in Miami had recommended V get an I.D. card at the DMV, so he doesn't need to carry his passport. Also to get a job, apparently you need to present two I.D.s but we haven't gotten that far yet. And V has an international driving license so he doesn't need a driver's license just yet. So at the DMV, we were just about ready to finish getting his I.D. and the lady helping us said that when he comes into get his driving permit, he should bring the receipt she was handing me. I let her know he had an international driver's license. And after making a call, she informed me that if he gets an I.D. card, his int'l license would no longer be valid. Random. So we didn't get the I.D. card.

That night I happened to open some more mail V'd received while we were in Florida, that we just hadn't gotten around to opening. He'd been sent a sort of "alien" I.D. card, so I imagine that will work as an I.D. for writing checks and buying booze 'til he feels like getting his Minnesota driver's license. We had quite the pile of mail. V had like 3 or 4 things, mostly from USCIS. He'd also been sent his social security card, and a couple random papers that I've forgotten what they are. I wonder if the I.D. card he was sent is the green card... hmmmm...perhaps.

phone solicitors

2010-02-02T16:15:00.000-08:00

So we registered for Ripley novios last year, and a few years before that I turned in my personal datos occasionally at the neighborhood Bandera Azul to try to win a moped, a cart full of groceries, etc. So by now a thousand phone soliciters have my phone number. Ugh.

I get a lot of solicitting calls and find them super annoying because they are insistant to sell my husband and I things that we don't need. The typical phone soliciter calls asking if we want to get more long distance minutes for our home line for only like 4.000 pesos a month. Or even better, they want us to switch cell phone companies. To which I have responded on various occasions, my husband has 2000 minutes a month to talk on his cell phone for free because he works in coverage optimization for movistar. They ask me, what about you? I have a good plan as well. What's more I use my husband's phone all the time to make calls. You know we've never gone over the 2000-minute limit? That usually shuts a phone soliciter right down. They're Chilean. They know about making good use of scarce resources.

You can always hangup on them too when you realize it's a solicitor. Sometimes I just do that. But it annoys me that they call me in the first place.

Several months ago I was at my sister-in-law's house and the phone rang and her 10 year-old son picked it up and said "qui pa longhi?". He started snickering as he set the phone down and his ma picked it up. That cracked me up and I was inspired by him and the next phone call I got at home, I followed his lead answering the phone with a, "qui pa longhi?" I was sure it was a solicitor, but it turned out to be the secretary from Solaris confirming my massage for the following day. It wasn't even the young secretary who would've gotten a kick out of my new phrase for answering the phone. It was the 50-something secretary who just straight up didn't understand what I said and clearly found no humor in it. Cuak.

And then there are the random surveys calls, comparing super cerdo with other pork brands, or comparing sports drinks, etc. Sometimes I answer those because I find marketing slightly interesting. There was that one surveyor that wanted to get an idea of our household income by asking if we had say, a plasma tv, computers, internet, etc. I know that some studies do ask those sort of things for that reason, but if that was legit, whoever set up that phone survey is an idiot.

The other day Ripley seguros called to talk to V - they always want to talk to V, and I said he wasn't here and that furthermore we are moving out of the country in a month. That got us off the phone in a jiffy. God, why did I just think of that.

And then, it occurred to me, after like 3 years receiving these horrid calls, why don't I just answer my phone in English, duh? God, seriously. This is just occurring to me now. So I told my suegra the other day that from now on I'm answering my home phone in English to webear a los weones molestosos. (Afterall the principal reason for getting the phone line to begin with was so my folks could call me at home rather than on my cell.) My suegra really liked the idea and said, yeah, you should really make them make a HUGE effort to communicate with you, and then when they finally get the message across, working their butt's off to make sense in English, tell them in perfect Spanish: "lo siento mi esposo está de viaje. Llega la otra semana." Click. hehehehehehe.

And ever since I've made this decision, my phone hasn't rung once. Awaiting my chance...

Edited February 8th:
So I've had my chances. The first call was from the firefighters calling us back because we complained about a gas leak in the building. I switched to Spanish right away ;). And now I've just gotten a call from someone who I don't think I know. The conversation went like this:

Hello?
Alo, alo?
Hello?
Alo, alo?
Yes?
*Click*
Works magic.

Although I'm thinking next time I'll try to figure out who's calling before getting them to hang up on me or at least get more information. I'm thinking the next conversation with a stranger will be more like this:

Hello?
Alo, alo?
Hello?
Alo? Alo?
Si?
Está __________ ___________?
Rrrodrrrigoouu? What?
*Click*

And then just yesterday, the 12th, I answered a call:
"Hello?"
*Click.*
Like a charm. ;)

cómo engrupir a una gringa

2009-12-29T11:38:00.000-08:00

jejeje.

So I was alerted by one of my readers that while I listed how to alienate AND win over Chileans, I only listed how to alienate a gringo and not how to win one over. My reader further expressed that he wasn't interested in how to win over gringos, but would actually like some advice on cómo engrupir a una gringa. Así ha nacido este post.

So here goes:

First, what not to do: NO HAGAS ESTO
1) plis porfavor, por el amor de dios, no seas ese weon latero, mata-onda que se acerca a la gringa en la fiesta (o donde sea) y empieza a pelar a Chile y decir que vale callampa. Weon, no vay a llegar a ningún lado. A lo más la gringuita, te va a escuchar tu opinión, decir, "perrrou a mii me guste Chiile. Pourrr qué nou te guusta?" Después le vay a dejar chata, y hará todo lo posible para no hablar más con vos, pero sin mandarte a la cresta, cosa que las gringas encuentran demasiado fuerte. La verdad es que no son tantos los weones que haga esto, pero lamentablemente, las gringas somos una suerte de imán para este weón latero. Ugh. Seguramente porque no le mandamos a la mierda al tiro y le soportamos mucho más de lo que debemos. Gringas, si encuentran a este weón, digale que en realidad tiene toda la razón, que Chile vale callampa, que te vay de acá luego, y anda a hablar con alguien que valga la pena.

Ahora unos consejos de qué hacer:

1) Be authentic. Sé auténtico.
2) Hágale reir!! ;)
3) Averigua lo que le gusta, y invítale a pasear.

(Personalmente, después de vivir 6 meses en Chile, había conocido una cachada de gente carreteando. Es una buena manera para conocer gente, pero la verdad es que me empezaba a preguntar si los chilenos hacen algo a parte de carretear. (Ahora sé que sí.) Aunque es entretenido, el carrete me tenía chata, y un pelín acolica.) Lo único que quería era que me invitaran (hombre o mujer) a andar en bicicleta, ir a la playa, hacer trekking en el cerro la campana, tomar un cafecito, surfear, nadar, la wea que fuera!!!

4) Si quedas con la chiquilla, trata de llegar a la hora y no la tiras para la cola.

5) Escúchala. Anímate para otro tipo de conversación más analítica y seria, pero tambien webéala un poco en buena onda como cualquier chileno de corazón!!

6) Trata de decir lo que realmente piensas, sin tanto susto de caer mal por contradecir lo que ella dice. Quizas a diferencia del chileno promedio?, somos buenas para analizar nuestros pensamientos y compararlos con pensamientos distintos. Encontramos interesante cuando alguien tiene otro punto de vista, y puede explicar porqué piensa así, a pesar de que esa persona cree algo totalmente distinto a lo que creemos nosotras. Conversaciones interesantes extenderán el tiempo que ella quiere estar contigo y creerán un interés para juntarse contigo de nuevo.

7) Corrige su español, please!!!! Los essspañoles de essspaña son secos para corregirnos, no sé porque los chilenos no lo hacen tambien :( A lo mejor para no caer mal? Puess, tío, ess la osstia que te corrigen el esspañol.

Bueno, esos son algunos consejos para empezar. Seguiré pensando en el tema a ver qué más se me ocurre decir.

En fin, les dejo con unas palabras sabias de calle 13, Atrevetetetetetete! ;)

Ah, y evita de webear a las casadas. Por lo general no estamos ni allí con cagar a nuestros esposos!!! ;)

How to alienate a gring@.

2009-12-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

Following Abeja's lead, I'm going to make a list of a few things that alienate a gring@- of the American variety. I'm sure there are plenty, but here's a small list that came to my mind:

1) Walk slowly on the sidewalks. Gringos always complain about Chileans walking slow and blocking their way. I find it annoying sometimes (when I'm in a hurry), but I'm a pretty slow walker, so I'm probably one of the people who other gringos find annoying ;)

2) Charge gringos "the gring@ price." Especially if they've lived in Chile for a while.

3) Provide HORRIBLE customer service. If the gring@ complains, tell them to go somewhere else to buy what they need. hehehehe

4) Make racist or classist remarks.

5) Be unfriendly.

6) Misunderstand them or make it clear you didn't listen to them when you respond to what they've said. -- Like for example, when a gringa/o lets you know they are vegetarian and that they don't eat red meat, chicken, turkey, fish, or any type of animal cadaver, offer them the vegetarian plate, chicken with rice. ;)

7) Tirales pa' la cola. Make plans with them and then don't arrive. Actually this one alienates lots of punctual Chileans too.

Those are a few ideas that came to my mind offhand. There are plenty more.

How to alienate/win over a Chilean

2009-12-01T05:05:00.001-08:00

I must say, you guys had some hilarious comments on how to alienate Chileans. Sooooo true. First, a few ways to alienate a Chilean:

When you want them to pass you the bottle of Coke, ask them to pass you the azúcar con agua, color caramelo (the caramel-colored watery sugar.) Or the azúcar líquido, color caramelo. (caramel-colored liquid sugar). Here in Chile, it's a sacrilege to call it that.
Tell them you're vegan or vegetarian, hopefully at a barbecue.
Tell them you don't really like tennis, and that Massu and Gonzalez aren't that good anyway.
When you go out with your friends, instead of ordering a beer or a pisco sour, order mineral water. All night.

Now several ways to win them over:

Tell them you love Chile and speak positively about their country. Obviously! hehehe
Use lots of chilenismos. I LOVE language, and eat up new expressions. (I've taken a six-month break from my Chilenis blog, though I've started again-sort of.) I don't know that there's anything more flattering and humorous for Chileans than to see their culture spread to foreigners (especially of the gringo variety) Instead of "Esta wea es para el pico" "Ehsta whea ehs para el peecoo". Oh, and if you really want to blow them away, teach them a chilenismo they don't know. I find the word "lumami" is a bit uncommon here. Some, but not all, Chileans know it.
Ask your suegra (or other Chilean friends who like to cook) for their recipes, onda porotos grandos, pastel de choclo, pescado al vapor, etc. Talk about cooking with older Chilean women, and let them know how the recipes they gave you worked out.
If speaking with a chileno "culto" (~highbrow), mention the poets Vicente Huidobro, Pablo de Rokha, Gabriela Mistral's prose (vs her poetry), the movie Tony Manero, etc. They'll be surprised you didn't choose to talk about Pablo Neruda. Or teach them about a Chilean literary figure that they've never heard about like Teresa Wilms Montt.
With some types of Chilean women, who tend to ignore you on purpose, ignore back. It really irks them and makes them interested in you. Obviously, if they are ignoring you on purpose, they probably will never be a fun friend to have. Fun Chileans usually don't ignore you, and may be interested in what you are like, since you're a foreigner.
Converse as they do, focusing as much on the speaker as on the topic of conversation. Be sure to tease (webear) the speaker as much as possible.

Other posts on "how to alienate a Chilean":
Don't call me gringa
Cachando Chile
Annje
La Gringuita Diaries
NY Gringa Expat
Abby's Line

Immigrant Visa: DCF from Chile

2009-11-27T07:01:00.001-08:00

Or how to get a green card for your Chilean spouse, through the U.S. Embassy in Chile.

Caveat Lector: these are some pointers on how to go about the visa process. What worked for me or someone else may or may not work for you. The information I provide can change and its best to be in contact with the embassy if you are thinking of doing DCF to make sure the rules haven't changed. Getting my spouse's visa was a little like playing "Calvinball", from Calvin & Hobbes. Or like being the protagonist of Dr. Seuss's "Oh! The Places You'll Go!", complete with a total downer. But as Dr. Seuss says, success is 98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.

First off, "DCF" or "Direct Consular Filing" is slang, and not used by the embassy or immigration. It means to file your petition directly to the U.S. embassy in the country you are living rather than going through USCIS. I believe they call it an "immigrant visa petition". DCF is used on the visa forums however, so its a good term to know.

The visa I petitioned for for my husband was CR1, which is a 10 year residency visa with a condition that must be taken off two years after entering the States. The condition is for people who get permanent residency before they've been married for 2 years. (in the case of DCF, they'll be entering the country on a CR1 visa). Read more here.

That said. First you must qualify to apply. At the embassy, V was told that to qualify for direct consular filing in Chile, I (the U.S. Citizen) had to have any (chilean) visa that's not a tourist visa and have lived in Chile for six months with said visa. I wonder if you can have a student visa, though?)

If you are doing DCF from Chile, for a spouse start here.
You go to the embassy with the listed documents filled out and you turn in the petition for your foreign spouse.

If they accept your petition, they'll give you some forms, like for example:

forms for your spouse's medical examination
the DS-230 (more biographical information, the applicant (the foreign spouse) must fill this out)
I-864
perhaps something else that I've since forgotten?

Then we got a letter in the mail saying that our visa interview was in a month or so. My husband went to the doctor a couple weeks before the interview. The morning before the interview in the embassy, he had to stop by the doctor's office and pick up the results of his tests to bring with him to the embassy.

His visa was approved.

I turned in the I-130 on September 9th, and soon after (2-4 weeks?) I received a letter in the mail with the date for the final interview, which was November 4th. I accompanied V to the interview, but that wasn't necessary. At the interview, we were told the visa was approved, and V's passport arrived the following week. So, once my petition was accepted, it was a fast process.

Also, V has six months to enter the U.S. on his CR1 visa from the date of approval, which means, you should bear in mind when you want to arrive in the States before petitioning the visa.

Helpful resources:
U.S. Embassy Chile: Immigration Visas
British Expats: USA: Marriage-Based Visas
Visa Journey : wikis are good, term definitions as well, there's tons of information on visa journey. I registered and tried to post a couple times and it never worked. So I posted on britishexpats and got answers to my questions there. They answered quickly and were super helpful.

A couple useful glossaries:
Here's a glossary of Immigration Terms and Abbreviations.
Here's a second Immigration Glossary.

Forms you may need:
Check USCIS website for most updated version.

Forms for the petition:
I-130
G-325A

For the final interview
I-864
I-864A (for household members of your "domicile")
DS-230
Medical forms filled out by doctor

FAQs - I'll do a future post that will answer the following questions:
What is domicile and how do I show that the USA is my country of domicile?
How do I sponsor my spouse? (using the I-864)

On the British Expat forums one man compares going through the visa process to planning a wedding, because your whole future depends on the outcome of ONE event. He calls these people working on immigrant visa paperwork "immigrant zombies" and compares them to bridezillas. hahhahaha. Touché. I definitely had my "immigrant zombie" moments!

Hope this is useful for some of you out there. I'm not an expert. If you want expert advice hire an immigration lawyer. They run $3000-$5000 per case, at least that is what I was quoted. I didn't end up hiring one; our case was too simple to pay $3000.

You can check out visa journey and britexpats for free. That's what I did.

And I was worried how we would surf when living in Minnesota...silly me

2009-11-24T18:29:00.000-08:00

hahahahaahhaha Is Duluth, Minnesota the new Surf City, U.S.A?
Surfing the Big Lake

Lake Superior:

And perhaps we can apply this strategy to the Mississippi:

"A falta de pan, buenas son las tortas,"

2009-11-17T05:13:00.000-08:00

Elvis told me.

On Saturday, V and I went to La Boca in Con-Con to surf for a few hours. We got there earlier than usual (like 10:30am) because V'd been told the surf shop would start opening earlier as summer approaches. It was still closed upon our arrival and after a few unanswered phone calls to the employees, we decided to walk down the beach and check out our rental options. We stopped by the next surf shop and they wanted to charge 7.000 pesos for each board. We had about 12.000 pesos between the two of us, so that didn't fly. (The other surf shop charges us 5.000 for each board.)

So we continued walking down the beach, towards what looked like it could be an open-air rental shop, set up between two SUVs. As we approach, we don't see any boards or wetsuits, and are about to change direction when a guy sitting on one of the SUVs starts waving at us. I ask V who it is and he hasn't a clue. Walking towards the guy, V gets a better look at his jeep and recognizing the vehicle, says, "It's Elvis." "No way!!" We only know one Elvis in Chile and he's from Pichilemu, our first surf instructor. We chat with Elvis a little. He was there with several Pichilemu students participating in a surf competition. He asked if we came to surf, and we replied that we had, but that the surf shop hadn't opened yet, so we were chilling meanwhile. "My biggest board is a 6'9 he tells me, do you want to borrow it?" To which I replied, bueno!

The board was featherlight, absolutely gorgeous, perfectly waxed, sleak, and didn't have one nick. I put my wetsuit on and grabbed the board. Wading into the ocean I remembered the last time I rented a board from Elvis in Pichilemu, when I came out of the water, there was a huge gouge in it, that I couldn't remember causing. And that board was a bit of a beater, this one was a freaking Mercedes of surfboards. I pushed that thought aside and studied the waves to figure out which one to surf. They were freaking huge, so I decided to mostly surf the espuma (foam?). (This is what is created when the waves break.) The first three times I try to catch the espuma, I crash as I'm still getting used to the shorter, narrower board, a far cry from the tanks I am used to surfing on. Finally, I get used to the board and absolutely fall in love with it. I was even able to surf a few medium-sized waves (rather than just espuma). The board was so easy to maneuver and responded really well to my movements. My thoughts changed from "I hope I don't gouge the board" to "Estos culiados me van a tener que sacar del mar, porque me enamoré y no salgo más." And then I went to ride a bigger wave and don't stand up quick enough or something. I feel myself losing control. The next thing I know I've nose-dived the board into the ocean bottom and the ocean is spinning me around like a piece of clothing in a washing machine. When I surface, I grab the really expensive board that was lent to me, to look it over for gouges. I didn't find any, thank god, and duly returned the board with a smile a mile long, after surfing one last wave. V and I then talked of going to Pichilemu this summer, and said goodbye to Elvis and crew.

The rental shop was open for business and we rented a couple of tanks to surf on and enjoyed ourselves all the same.

Afinando el español

2009-11-10T04:23:00.000-08:00

To find the perfect definition/translation English-Spanish/Spanish-English:

1) I look it up in wordreference, and see if there are any discussions about it, i.e. "cream of tartar", or squirrel/chipmunk (ardilla listada). And at this link, borgonyon explains "Estoy de acuerdo con fenix, se le puede llamar "ardillita" en el mismo sentido que llamamos "chinos" a todos los asiáticos, más como un nombre genérico." Beautiful! ;)

2) If I want to know whether the word is Chilean or not (I've lost all perspective), I look in up in the DRAE.

3) If it's a new word or something I don't understand well, often I'll look it up in the drae, or click on the "Spanish definition" in word reference. Often, a word that is more commonly used in Spanish will have a crappy English translation, or it will have one translation when there are really like 5. This is where it's good to read the definition in Spanish.

4) Also, if there are different translations for the same word like "rebuscado" can be translated as "far-fetched", "round-about", "overcomplicated", etc., obviously it's good to understand the different meanings related to different contexts, especially when the different words are in the non-native language. Again, I'll often look up the Spanish definition of each of these words.

5) If it's a complicated thing, a concept, a medical condition, or something that might benefit from a look at wikipedia, I go there next. For instance to have another look at the squirrel/chipmunk difference, here are some links to wikipedia (this was actually more complicated than I'd imagined because there are a ton of different squirrel articles in wikipedia.):

Tree squirrel - this is the squirrel I see in Minnesota. Once I look it up in English, I then click on "Español" to see what the wikipedistas have decided is the translation. Interestingly, there is no link to Español for this one.

Squirrel (in general) - This one doesn't have the Español link either, but it does have one in Esperanto and another in Gallego.

Eastern Gray Squirrel - I believe this one inhabits Minnesota as well. Finally, I find an article with a link to the Spanish article on the sciurus carolinesis (ardilla).

Then, the moment of truth as I look up chipmunk in wikipedia. I click on the Spanish link and find tamias minimus, also called the "ardilla rayada".

So Lydia wasn't far off explaining this difference to her students, at least in relation to wikipedia. ;)

Edited Dec. 4
Ah and 6) Often I'll google expressions in both Spanish and English. Especially for my chilensis blog because sometimes the words aren't super common and appear in neither dictionaries nor wikipedia.

This is my translation method, that mostly works, except when there is no translation, like for the word "vogueing" for example. But then, at least we know there is no translation.

"Tengo el poto como colador"

2009-10-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

Translation: "My ass is acting like a colander."

**Note: my ass isn't acting as a colander at this minute, I'm just posting this as a "travel tip"

Many of us gringos in Chilito have gotten food poisoning from time to time. It's to be expected. Whether the Augustian changes in weather screw you over, or you eat a typical Chilean delicacy sold in the street: canine shish-ka-bob, or you have fried fish at a market on a Sunday afternoon, or you ate the wrong piece of fruit, or your once (tea) the evening before consisted of quiche and beer, or you drank too much water right after arriving to Chile and before your body was acclimated, we all end up in the same place: at the porcelain throne.

It's a painful experience, your stomach & intestines seem to grow a mind of there own. Some of us experience this time and again, unfortunately. But we will get through. Hang in there. Have someone buy you some gatorade, and divide your time wisely between the bathroom and the bed. If the vomiting doesn't ease off, and your ass doesn't stop acting as a colander in a few hours, it's time to go to the emergency room. I've got the magic pill that has kept me from the emergency room at least twice now. And some of you may have it too. It's Entero Micinovo (one of the few drugs in Chile that you need a prescription for, hehehe). A WONDER DRUG to stop the "churi-churi" as Don V (the one in the middle) calls it. hehehe. It was prescribed the first time I went to the ER at the Clinica Alemana in Valpo. And if you take it when you don't have the churi-churi, you'll probably be constipated for a month.

One of the sucky consequences of food poisoning is the sensitive stomach afterward. For the next week you have to watch what you eat and your diet will resemble this:

breakfast: galletas de agua con quesillo (crackers and tasteless "cheese")
té (tea)

lunch: sopa de pollo y arroz (chicken and rice soup)

dinner: galletas de agua con quesillo
té

It's an effective way to lose 5+ pounds in one week. Though I would prefer other, less painful, dieting possibilities to this one.

**If I find the "menu" or list of food that the Clinica Alemana recommended I eat for two weeks after being sick, I will post it here, as I don't doubt it will be useful to some other poor gring@.

Edit February 13th: Okis, so I didn't find the "regimen dietetico" from the Clinica Alemana, but I did find one from Integramedica. Here goes:

bebidas sin cola, agua sin gas
té, aguas de hierbas, matico, menta manzanilla
gatorade, chamyto
galletas de agua y de chuño
pollo, pavo y arroz cocido, fideos cocidos
jaleas, compotas
manzanas y peras cocidas (el auga en que fueron preparadas)
evitar alimentos en conserva (enlatados, en cajas, en frascos)
evitar salsas
no fumar.

Anyhoo, this is just one of the realities of living in the "third world".

I've just come across my "regimen blando sin residuos" from the Clinica Alemana de Valpo:

Alimentos permitidos:
quesillo o queso fresco
carne de vacuno sin grasa (posta, lomo liso, asiento, etc.)
pollo sin grasa y sin cuero
pescado fresco cocido al horno o a la olla (merluza, congrio)
clara de huevo
fideos cocidos
arroz cocido, salado o dulce con canela
galletas de agua, soda o chuño
azúcar, en cantidad moderada
jalea
chuño o maicena en agua
aceite crudo agregado al momento de servir los alimentos
aliños; solo sal, limón, canela, óregano
bebidas: té simple, auga mineral sin gas, coca-cola sin gas, infusiones de hierba antiespasmódicas (anís, manzanilla), agua de arroz con canela

Ejemplo de Minuta:
desayuno: té puro y 4 galletas de soda con quesillo

colación: maicena en agua con canela y caramelo

almuerzo: sopa de posta con fideos cabello
pollo cocido con arroz blanco
jalea y 2 galletas de soda o agua

once: chuño en agua, 4 galletas de agua con quesillo

cena: sopa de pollo con arroz
posta molida con fideos cocidos
jalea y 2 galletas de agua

R.I.P., and resurrected as of Aug. 26th

2009-08-05T06:12:00.000-07:00

RIP to my fave coa/chilensis dictionary : ( : ( Here's what's left of this dictionary that once had more than 10,000 Chilean words and expressions defined.

SUCK! Or perhaps this should be in Chilensis. Puta la wea por la cresta!!!! Pero CÓMO EN MIERA?!?!? To do this post really well, I should really re-subtitle the climatical scene to La Caída (Der Untergang), but that seems like a lot of work so I'm just going to patear la perra a little bit and get on with my morning, ya que el mejor diccionario del internet se fue completamente a la xuxa. Ya no sé dónde voy a buscar los significados de toas las chuchás que escucho en la conversación cotidiana acá en Chile. como la corneta la wea del diccionario. cagó. puuuuuta. internet reculiao.

Edit August 26th: Okay it's back. Yay!

Another encounter with a mime

2009-06-24T13:56:00.001-07:00

I was heading to lunch at the little vega today. Walking, absorbed by my thoughts, I see I'm approaching two mimes, but I'm already 5 feet away when I realize this. Their "stage" is like 10 meters wide and 20 long and I'm very much on the stage with a whole crowd of onlookers watching to see how these mimes will huebearme (mess with me). Huebeando a la gente is the Chilean National Pastime, quite a fun one, when you aren't the object of the webeo.

Nothing left to do but play along. So one of them took me by the elbow, walking with me as a gentlemenly mime, then he took me by the hand. And then he stopped and exaggeratedly admired my butt. Here I saw my entrance, and I slapped him back side the head, and kept walking. Fortunately, they didn't follow me. But just as I get offstage, I think, "I should have gotten out my cellphone and taken a photo with the guy". Doh!

Check out these nifty fashion-related objects

2009-06-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

I so want one of these, called a "trip clip" and tried to order one, but it didn't work. Which is probably better because my Chilenized ego is telling me I could sooo make one for sooo much cheaper. It may just involve a trip to Galeria Rosas. If I do manage to make one that works, I will be selling them. Hehehehe. I'll keep you posted.

This is how you use it. And they could totally try to make these be styling, embedding them with rhinestones or something.

Love these. They are sooo Cute!! I happen to have some pretty beat-up angora that may find a new end as soon as I buy my sewing machine. Because upcycling is where it's at.

So there is an English library in downtown Santiago, sort of

2009-05-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I said downtown Santiago needs its very own English libaray. I was told that the "biblioredes" from the metro has a small collection of books in English at the Plaza de Armas metro stop. Miiiiiiitsch! So I donated a book in English, The DaVinci Code. I handed it in at Los Heroes and they will take care of getting it to Plaza de Armas. And I definitely will be checking out the English books there at some undesignated moment in the future. This should be interesting.

Edit July 26: So I went to the Plaza de Armas bibliored the other day and the only books they had in English were a couple of photography books. Mine had yet to arrive.

My map of downtown Santiago

2009-05-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

Traveling/and planning trips sure has changed in some ways with the internet. Facebook, peoples maps, blogs, google and other internet tools are excellent means for planning your travels.

I started to read this article, but have yet to finish because I got sidetracked with one of his piece's of advice.

I got to paragraph three where you can make your own google map. They look kind of like these: Here you can get a geographical depiction of Matt's drunken walkabout. While here, you can see the general vicinity of Mike's home in Taichung City, and here you can min carta over bloggvanner. You see how useful this tool is?

So I made my own map.
Ver my map of downtown Santiago . I'll probably be editing and expanding it as time passes.

Any other bloggers up for making a Santiago or other city map? Please send me the link if you do your own :) It seems they could be quite useful.

a little on education in Chile, spurred by Lydia's post

2009-05-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

To understand this, first you might want to read Lydia's post on education in Chile. I started commenting on her post, but it got really long once again so I'm just posting here.

I agree with you that Chileans cheat a lot. I think almost all Chileans have cheated in school. At first that was super shocking to me, but then I got used to it. I'm sorry it bothers you. Things here can be so different from the States sometimes. It's not worth it to judge it morally. In Chile, cheating just is.

But cheating is a part of the culture and I think it's hard to get around it.

A friend of mine teaches engineering here and when he gives tests he leaves the room on purpose to give students a chance to cheat. (His students have a lot at stake, so they can't afford being caught cheating. They wait til he leaves the room.) But I think students actually learn a few things this way. It gives them a chance to collaborate. Maybe you should test them everyday. hahaha. It's probably a great group exercise.

Before a really difficult test at the U, a good friend of mine showed me her "torpedo". (cheat sheet) It was a blank sheet of paper. I looked at it baffled. There wasn't one thing on it. How could it be a cheat sheet? She told me to look closer. So I held it in the light and looked really close. The whole page was covered with print, margin to margin, 9 font. She'd printed it in really light gray ink, so you couldn't even tell it was full of answers. It was a work of art.

Another friend of mine has monumental accounts of unabashed cheating. My fave of his stories is when he and his classmates were at a bar in front of the university after the test was taken and the T.A. ARRIVES, TESTS IN HAND! One of the students grabbed the tests from him and tried to start them on fire. The TA about shat his pants and grabbed them back. My friend then starting chatting with the T.A. to get his test back to re-do it. Eventually the TA said he could have his test if he took them all and brought them to the U the next morning to give them back, because I guess the TA didn't want to tote them around or something. So my friend gathered together a couple of his smarter friends and they all went back to his house to re-do the test. hahahahahha. He has hundreds of similar accounts.

I think for Chileans cheating and not getting caught is a TRIUMPH. And if you do get caught and actually have to suffer the consequences, it's bad luck, but makes a good story. Of course, if you're not caught, it makes an even better story.

And I agree with you about the education here as well. It does seem to be about rote learning, especially in the less creative subjects. Even in literary theory, I remember one day we had to interpret a poem. Every student had the same historical interpretation except me. I did like an interpretation having to do with the sounds the words made when you read the poem and how it coincides with the action and what implications that had, etc. But I felt sort of silly at the time being the only one who didn't do the historical interpretation. Because here in Chile, homogenity seems to be emphasized and preferred. They must've thought I had a weird interpretation. But fortunately the prof liked it. wheew! hehehe. But I was shocked how everyone came up with THE SAME INTERPRETATION TO A POEM. Geesh!

At the same time, I like how their subjects have so much theory and tradition and they emphasize using good sources more here than in the US. I think both systems have their pros and cons.

But what I think is wrong, as you mentioned, is the professor/student relationship. The profs here are sort of like Gods sometimes and can fail people when they feel like it. And its totally faux pas to question what the teacher is saying.

Beyond that, profesors can make student's lives horrible. I've heard horror stories of people being royally screwed over in the education system due to internal fights between two schools of thought among the faculty or other faculty problems that have repercussions on the students.

I know of one student who had her final project ready to hand in (in her area of studies these take 6 months to a year), and the director of her field told her she had to do the project all over again, because she'd chosen to base her project on the other school of thought among the faculty. Apparently this faculty didn't have the power in the U, so the student had to start from scratch and use the school of thought the director wanted her to use. Unfortunately I've heard other cruel stories like this. They are more common than you'd think.

Also it seems, crappy University professors are never fired! They just hang around and teach poorly year after year. Personally, I had good profs at the U here. But judging from the stories I've heard from so many others, I was lucky.

Education is quite different here. Cheating seems to be more of an accepted behavior, and this might have to do with the quality of the education, which sometimes I think is great, and others not. I feel like it really depends on the professors. And the fact that the professor is put on a pedestal seems to cause more cheating. In general, this relationship doesn't help forward the student's education.

In Chile's favor, the universities here seem to be really rigorous. The students I've met seem to have a good theoretical base in their areas. It's actually hard to compare two different school systems as they are sooo different, and obviously cultural and socio-economic factors influence things.

Downtown Santiago needs an English Library

2009-04-29T20:01:00.001-07:00

Downtown Santiago really needs an English library. I have books to donate, but no one to donate them to. (I definitely want to be able to have access to them after loaning them.) The National Library will accept them, but only in the regular section, not in the part where you can take the books home, préstamo a domicilio. :( I've thought about donating a book in English to publimetro, but I doubt they would lend it. I have this idea it would disappear. But I should stop being so pajera and try it out and find out. I would donate most of my books in English if I thought people would eventually be able to check them out. So I'm going to donate The DaVinci Code and see if they actually make it available for checking out and take it from there. Meanwhile I have quite the stack of books.

Group post. Travel story: Bena, Minnesota

2009-04-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is a work-travel story. Perhaps we could call it a business trip. hahahahaha. So, one of the summers I was working road construction in Northern Minnesota, I was assigned as a flagger on Hwy 2. During this job, I spent a couple days in Bena, Minnesota. (Check out this link that shows their median incomes. I was blown away when I read this. I shouldn't be surprised I spose, but I was. All I can say is I hope they hunt and gather for food.) I was flagging like 16-hour days which could be a little dull, but this town was a great place to flag. It's 70% Native American, so it´s a totally different culture nestled within Northern Minnesota. (It's on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.)

I spent one whole day standing in the middle of town, stopping people and letting them go through when it was clear. Across the street was the gas station/mini market. At like 9am, somebody from the rez's brown buick broke down right in front of me. They spent the ENTIRE DAY trying to fix it. Something like 4 different people tried to figure out how to get it running. They left the car, came back, left the car, came back. Watching them sort of eased the long moments of boredom that I often experienced. At the end of the day, they ended up pushing the car across the highway and down a little road. I thought about how I would have handled the situation so differently in my town. And it never occurred to me at like 9am when the car broke down that it was going to be a day-long project. It was nice to have a little entertainment during the day and to see a slower-paced way of living.

Working on the Leech Lake Rez sparked my curiousity about the Native Americans living in and close to my home town. However, I moved to Chile soon after that. I'm thinking of perhaps taking some Ojibwe language classes when I move back, just to learn a bit more about their culture.

Check Kyle's post for a list of links to more travel stories.

God does not play dice with the universe...

2009-04-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

he lets us do that.

Why I came and why we will leave... (a belated response to the group post)

2009-04-11T15:42:00.001-07:00

So I'm a bit behind on the group post, hehehe. When everyone posted, I was on vacation in Iquique (the sports capital of Chile, believe it or not).

At the age of 12 I got the travel bug, and I decided I was going to see the whole freaking world. One way to start seeing the world was to be an AFS student for a year. I decided to do this as a gap year before college. At 17, I was fed up with my little town and the snow and cold and tameness of it all, and decided to move my travels up a year or two and go for 6 months rather than a year. (I later regretted not choosing to stay the whole year.) I knew I would miss my friends, but I really wanted to travel. My heart was set on living in Puerto Rico for a semester where they couldn't possibly place me in a home far from the beach. Apparently I wasn't the only one who decided to go to the Reggaeton capital of the world, because by the time I applied, there weren't enough spots left in the program. All the families had been taken. :( So back to the drawing board. Brazil called my attention, but I wanted to learn Spanish and be somewhere warm and near the beach. That year there was a Chilean AFS student in my high school who I was friends with. She urged me to go to Chile telling me about Chilean carretes and how fun it is there, etc. So I gave up my dream of a year-round summer and chose to come to Chile, and I was off. It was a great time.

I came back to Chile for a month my sophomore year of college and visited my host fam. and traveled around Chile. My host father pointed out a masters program at the University he works at; it was a good program and inexpensive. I bore that in mind and came back in 2004 to do the program. After a year living in Valpo I met my husband. I finished school last year and we are currently waiting for me to be eligible to apply for permanencia definitiva so as to apply for V's immigrant visa to the US of A. We've got a while yet. Meanwhile, I'm teaching English.

Why we will leave: I want to go back to the States so V has a chance to live abroad, and get to know my country. I can't wait to travel vicariously through him and see my town, state and country through his eyes. Reverse cultural shock can be quite enriching! I also am excited to live near my family again for a while and watch my nephew and niece grow up and be a part of my family's lives again, beyond Skype. We are planning on installing ourselves in Minnesota, but you never know. Perhaps someday we'll move back to Chile. Or to Europe or Indonesia. Who knows?

I'm not against living in Chile, but I'm not a huge fan of Santiago. I like smaller towns and cities. I've liked living here however, I don't know how I'd feel if I knew I would be living here forever and ever.

To read the everyone else's posts, go to Kyle's post on the matter.

aphoristic thought 2

2009-03-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

It frustrates me to no end that I'm mortal.

Interestingly, frustrate is a synonym of crucify, at least in wordreference.com it is.

Chile and Perfectionism

2009-03-18T11:12:00.001-07:00

Here are some thoughts I have on Chile and perfectionism...

It must be something in the air, because Kyle talks about similar themes in her post today.

So I'm a bit of a perfectionist. You probably couldn't tell by knowing me, because I'm a perfectionist by my rules. I'm not your obvious perfectionist. I'm even quite a slob sometimes. But often I'm a frustrated over-achiever. I'm not going to get into explaining this because I could probably write chapters. But, to resume, no matter how much I do or achieve, it never seems to be enough. There's always something lacking. I'm programmed this way, and fortunately I know this, so I ignore it when I can.

Living among Chileans has made this aspect of my personality sooo much better. Like toned it down a ton! Because, in general, Chileans seem to be all about finding the short cut, and improvising when necessary. I've picked this habit up, and while I often have great expectations of what I can do during the week, I also have learned how to improvise and find the short cut, pretty much on a daily basis. It keeps me sane and actually it keeps me on track at the same time.

Also, so many things here are done soooo mediocrely* that there is no competition. I love cooking and dream of being an incredible cook when I'm a grandma. That's a goal I have, and I'm well on my way. Sometimes I get frustrated, however. V and I went to the Thai restaurant Samsara (in Valpo) when it opened. I ordered the yellow curry and it was excellent! It tasted just like my homemade yellow curry! *breathing on nails and buffing them on my shirt* Then we went to Ky, a Thai restaurant here in Santiago. V's red curry was absolutely to die for!!!! So, of course, I decided to make red curry. While it turned out quite well, it didn't turn out like the curry from Ky. Cuak. And I was upset about it. But then I think, "I do cook better food than most restaurants in Chile." And it makes me feel better. In fact most everything at Ky, besides the curries we ordered, wasn't very good at all. So having little or no competition actually disarms my perfectionism because I have nothing to compare myself to.

Since I'm a WASP, a white, anglo-saxon protestant, I have it drilled into me that good work ethic makes you a good person. It's not so much about appearance (like it seems to be here in Chile), but about achieving results. I used to judge myself by how much I got done in a day, if I finished my to-do list. (Don't do that, it's not worth it.) It was in Spain where I first realized how crazy it was to judge my self-worth by how much I got done on my to-do list. Here in Chile I've only honed my relationship with it. I still have my to-do list, but it no longer is a prueba of how perfect I am. It's now a tool that orients me in the direction I want to go. While before, I was sure to get everything I possibly could on my to-do list done ASAP, now I don't. Some things never get done, as they end up being totally irrelevant, other things get done normally, and some take longer, and probably some things don't take as long. I don't know if it's my ripe age, haha, or Chile, but I seem to pace myself even more realistically then I did before living here.

So I guess I'm using [what I consider to be] a cultural flaw to offset the bad effects of a character flaw. - to borrow a conclusion from John Perry's essay on procrastination.

*I know "mediocrely" doesn't exist as an adverb, but it should.

Anyone have a turistel they could lend me?

2009-03-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

I'm specifically looking for the turistel for el norte. Anyone have one they would lend me for a week or two?

Updates

2009-02-27T06:29:00.000-08:00

I've updated EFL blog: Chile, for anyone interested, though I still need to find a way to put documents on there that users can download. And I've also started again on my Chilensis blog.

I'm not a slob, I'm a horizontal organizer.

2009-02-24T10:20:00.000-08:00

All these years I've thought I was a slob. It's not true. I'm just a horizontal organizer in a vertically organizing world. It's a sad plight.

Check out this essay "A plea for the Horizontally Organized".
He also has a fantastic essay on Structured Procrastination. This is how I came across his website. I stumbled upon his procrastination essay first. I'll give you one guess what I was doing when I came across it.
I'm particularly fond of his logic in his "On Becoming Bilingual" essay. Might I add he has an incredibly intuitive essay on Procrastination and Perfectionism.

I highly recommend http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ for your reading pleasure. Pure Genius.

Dude, John Perry rocks. He needs a fan club on facebook. I would totally start it, but would it be lame to be his only fan if it occurs to no one else to be a fan? Or would it be incredibly funny and original to be the only fan in someone's fan club? hahahaha. That makes me want to start a fan club for some random friend on facebook. Hilarious.

By the way, does anyone else identify with any of these essays? Any other perfectionist procrastinators or horizontal organizers out there?

Money does grow on trees

2009-02-23T11:13:00.001-08:00

It's not that money doesn't grow on trees, it does. The problem is figuring out which trees it DOES grow on and climbing up and picking it. The other problem is getting over the fear of falling out of the tree and breaking your neck.

in search of my money tree(s)...

LensCrafters es como el forro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-02-19T05:57:00.000-08:00

My e-complaint that I sent to the Attorney General of Florida, Bill McCollum:

“I bought some lenses and frames at the Sawgrass Mills Mall Lenscrafters store on March 6th, 2008. The scotchgard coating on the lenses has wrinkled and thus I see blurrily through them now. They are ruined. I called Lenscrafters to have them replaced and they told me I would have to pay half the price of the lenses replacement because, as Gonzalo, the general manager told me, "Lenscrafters doesn't make the lenses." Apparently this means they don't guarantee their replacement. My question to you is, how is this legal? I live in Santiago, Chile, and here in the "third world", we have a consumer rights agency that protects us consumers from these kinds of sales practices. Despite what the companies here tell us about their policies, they have a legal responsibility to repair, replace, or refund faulty products up to 6 months after the sale. Since the United States of America is the "first world", I thought we might have a policy like that good for a year.

Is there a law that protects me against this sort of sales trick? The 30 day moneyback guarantee is all "show" to try to get the consumer to trust the company. And then the real guarantee, the one I'm counting on, ends up being a sales trick. I buy one pair of lenses, and I'm forced to buy the second pair at 50%. That sounds more like a sales tactic than a guarantee.”

I've forgotten the last paragraph of the e-complaint, but that basically sums it up.

(I love this third world/first world terminology. It’s so great at provoking shame and it works in both directions, pitting one theoretical world against another. E.g. “Here in the third world, consumers are better protected than there in the first world.” “Once again, we got typical third-world customer service.”)

If you only have “about an hour” (which is never about an hour, it’s more like a day) to buy glasses, you may be in a hurry and not read the back of the receipt that says the guarantee is horseshit after 30 days. You awe the consumer with the 30-day absolute, no-questions-asked complete refund guarantee. And we don’t even ask about what happens after that. I’ll tell you, your lenses break and you have to pay HALF of their replacement. What a great “buy-one,-be-forced-to-buy-a-second-pair-at-half-price sales model”. Kudos to whoever thought that one up.

My recipe for bringing down the box store:
Everyone go buy a couple pairs of lenses from Lenscrafters and then return them during the 30 day money back guarantee.

Did David Browne just wake up one day and say, “I’m going to sell crappy products. When they break, the consumer will have to pay to get them replaced.”? So ripping people off is the secret to success. And what's with the super Christian website? Geesh. I'll tell you a secret: find some self respect.

Any hackers out there with time to kill, please go to http://www.lenscrafters.com/
and crash their site please. Pretty please, with cherries on top.

So after googling LensCrafters (what I should have done in the first place), I found other customers who weren’t pleased with the store.
Here
ripoffreport
LensCrafters or how I wasted a whole weekend
a report of LensCrafters on a forum
as well as a Sarah Palin, a LensCrafters model, and
on the BARF forum
Suck it, LensCrafters
why I think LensCrafters sucks
I guess working for them is no fun either
LensCrafters sucks ass.
and it can eat dick too
I'm not the only one who wanted to know who is the current CEO of LensCrafters.
Here's an interesting tidbit I got off wikipedia: LensCrafters maintains "corporate headquarters in Mason, Ohio (near Cincinnati), along with Sunglass Hut International; but, in fact, both firms are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Italian-based Luxottica. Luxottica also owns Pearle, Target Optical, JCPenney Optical, Sears Optical and EyeMed Vision Care."
I must concede that some customers are satisfied; apparently this doughy, middle-aged guy liked the store.

I've learned in the future I need to do my homework BEFORE I buy glasses. Cuak! This has not been my customer service month in either the "first" or "third" worlds.

Your average customer service in Chile

2009-02-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

debo reconocer que en comparisión, EEUU, por lo general tiene mejor servicio, porque, a menudo te topay con alguien que te quiere ayudar, y INCLUSO que se pasa ayudándote, porque sí no más.

Nuestra experiencia comprando 2 pasajes en avión, lamentablemente, es MUY TÍPICA acá. Todo el mundo que vive en Chile ha tenido que tramitar weas de esta manera. Es una paja, pero qué se puede hacer? (ojala tuviera un junior, yo cacho que me sería mejor que una nana)

Pasos para comprar dos pasajes en avión Santiago – Iquique:

1) V trató de comprar los pasajes en lan.com con su tarjeta Ripley
2) no funcionó porque no tenía la clave de su tarjeta Ripley
3) se metió a Internet para encontrar un clave
4) allí dice llamar a 600 600 02 02
5) el número no funciona
6) llama de nuevo
7) el número no funciona
8) repita pasos 6 y 7 hasta aburrirse
9) V vuelve al trabajo
10) yo repito pasos 1-7.
11) voy a Ripley
12) me dan mi clave
13) voy a la casa a comprar pasajes
14) hay un problema con el pago a través de la tarjeta Ripley
15) Vuelvo a Ripley ya que el numero del servicio al consumidor no funciona, y tampoco el otro número para comprar
16) en Ripley me dan el número *super secreto* de Ripley, el cual es: 6941000 extensión 1755, por si alguien más no ha podido contactar con esta espléndida empresa
17) llamo el número super secreto y CONTESTAN ALTIRO
18) me arreglan la situación de no poder pagar la wea.
19) intento comprar pasajes de nuevo
20) no funciona el modo de pago
21) llamo a Ripley
22) me aseguran que no es culpa de la tarjeta, que mejor me contacto con Lanchile
23) llamo a Lanchile. decido comprar los pasajes por telefono
24) me sale 20 luka más para cada pasaje
25) llamo a Lanchile para hablar con la gerencia de Internet (ya que la señorita no me pudo conectar con la otra area)
26) marco la opción de hablar con la gente de pago por Internet, o algo por el estilo. hablo con la señorita. Necesita mi número de confimación, la cual nunca anoté porque no había pagado nada aún. No puedo retroceder en el sitio de Internet. Nos despidimos.
28) me meto a la pagina de lanchile de nuevo y hago otra reserva en otro horario porque ya han subido las tarifas y estan agotados los pasajes de vuelta para la hora que queríamos. (porque entre V y yo ya teníamos como 6 pares de pasajes de ida y vuelta reservados, pero no se podía entrar a “mi cuenta” ni ná para cachar que la wea estaba reservada) Asi que, nuevamente hago reserva, esta vez para dos semanas más tarde que lo que habiamos hablado.
29) llamo nuevamente, le doy el código de reserva, no se puede pagar con tarjeta Ripley. Me da la dirección de la oficina de Lanchile más cercana.
30) Imprimo hoja con la reserva y voy a Lanchile a completar la compra.
31) Espero unos diez minutos para que me atienden. En quince minutos más me tiene los pasajes.
32) Voy a Ripley y pago la cuenta Ripley.

Y todo esto en solamente 4 horas de mi tiempo.

A todo esto, debo decir, que toda la gente que me atendió fue buena onda conmigo. Solo que no se debe demorar 4 horas para comprar dos pasajes en avión.

Comentario de V al respeto: “Fue más fácil desbloquear el iphone.”

25 things about me

2009-02-08T10:09:00.001-08:00

so I've received this forward a bit and here are mine:

1. I want to start a business that sells quotidian things (cosas cotidianas), like food, clothing, cleaning products, what you need to live, basically. I imagine it like the old almacenes from the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s. Really good quality products, being as close to the source as possible, polluting as little as possible, as thrifty as possible. Clothing that lasts 20 years. Perhaps I'll eventually put myself out of business, because people won't have to buy any more clothing.

2. I perhaps will learn from the indigenous people, like for example, the Incas were masters at making fabrics. (White) people used to make there own clothing too, in the United States. President John Adams sported homespun threads.

3. Estoy peinando la muñeca con el tema este. Se los juro. Llevo 5 años pensando en esto. He pelado harto cable ya. Asi que cambiamos el tema. jajajaja, o intentamos...

4. I have sooooooooooooooooooo many business ideas and writing ideas, I could give them away. My aunt just told me the other day that Jack Londan gave story ideas to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

5. I can tell I'm a writer because I could never decided what I wanted to study...in college I took some RANDOM classes including C++ computer programing. I wish I would have known then that my interest was more experiential, than applicable. Duh. I almost bombed the dang class. And I love doing things for the experience of it, if for nothing else: trying out weevil-filled oatmeal, for example. YUCK! I didn't know there were weevils (little grain beetles) when I bought it. Cutting costs can be risky sometimes. I bought the oatmeal wholesale, for half the price per kilo as they sell in the supermarket where I shop. Probably won't do that again...but you never know!

6. I wish the gym I recently enrolled in had a hip-hop class. I would like to be part of a hip-hop troop some day.

7. I want a garden.

8. And fruit trees.

9. I have pastoral dreams.

10. Because I'm from a small town.

11. I think weed should be legal to grow for personal use. And hemp too.

12. Reading the book "Rich dad, poor dad" has almost made me go conservative (republican). The only bastion of right-wing thought I cling to as truth is the idea that education should be free for all, and food too - for those who study. Okay, so, I'm still a democrat, never so mean, but mostly because I think there are so many soul-less business people in this world who take advantage of workers and have no sense of ethics. It's sickening. All they think about is money, the dumbfucks. Could we be a little more creative please? And maybe enjoy ourselves now and then? Rather than chasing the buck non-stop...all the time. Until you die.

13. I'm writing an EFL book specifically for teaching English in Chile...we'll see if I ever finish.

14. If I had a restaurant in my home town, I would have “fictional things” on the menú…(to make it a bit more literary.) For example, The Up-North Roll: a sushi roll with walleye and raspberries, rolled in wild rice and drizzled with a mix of soy sauce and maple syrup. hahahahahahahaha. And the best part is that I might even try to make it.

15. I could also have a crappie roll and a Northern roll. eeewwww. I only say eeewww, because supposedly Northern tastes nasty, though I’ve never tried it.

16. I want to go home.

17. And have a huge pumpkin patch.

18. And prepare venison cazuela, with deer my brothers have shot, and pumpkin from my patch.

19. And start a blues band.

20. with Vuko on lead guitar.

21. I’d be on piano and vocals.

22. I’d have to take voice lessons again.

23. I like singing.

24. I dream about babies alot.

25. I refuse to believe my biological clock is ticking.

26. No, we aren’t planning on having a baby any time soon, so stop asking. or don't.

EFL Blog: Chile

2009-02-06T09:34:00.001-08:00

I've started yet another blog, this one of the EFL variety. The idea is to share resources, tips, whathaveyou. If you are interested in contributing, let me know.

Tip of the day: Use America's Finest News Source as a reading for your intermediate/advanced students. Chileans appreciate humor. Who doesn't?

Jacques Torres ate my heart out!!

2009-02-05T05:33:00.000-08:00

So the brownies aren't even done yet. But they smell so good I think I'm going to faint. The batter was spectacular! And actually the brownie mix is reasonably priced at $12.95 (that is if you live near the store...I got it as a gift from my mommy). They should import this brownie mix!!!! Specifically for the American expat community here in Chilito. It would sell like soy sauce does in China, like vino bigoteado in the Plaza Echaurren. Eeewww! Okay, I grossed myself out. I think I just ruined the post.

Now that the brownies are almost ready, and have a REALLY SHORT life expectancy, poor things, here, I figure out how to plagiarize this recipe.

Me, on the chocolate business:
Okay, so included in the brownie mix was 1 1/2 cups (300 grams) of REALLY good chocolate. Here in Chile, that runs me 4.500 pesos ($7.25)-at the grocery store. The mix costs $12.95. I think that leaves it clear that Torres isn't making money off selling brownie mix. He's making it selling chocolate, and, perhaps off these hummers. I would love getting into this industry. You need to cut out the middle man and get to the source. Check out this article which I have already posted, but I'm posting it again.

Food budget in Chile

2009-02-02T01:23:00.000-08:00

So Kyle's last post is about how much she spends on groceries a month in Chile. She said she was getting emails from people asking her that. I started commenting and realized I should just write my own post. Anyone else who's interested in blogging on your food budget in Chile (or elsewhere, I suppose), please do. We could make this topic into a group post if people are interested. I'll post the links to the other blogs on my entry.

So I'll be guesstimating. But I have been saving my receipts for the last 4-5 years, and when I get around to looking at them and figuring out what my food budget has been I will probably get back to you all. Back in Valpo, I easily spent 80.000-100.000 a month in groceries, but V and I were drinking lots of milk and eating lots of yogurt in those days. And we used to eat tons of chicken and beef. Now that I've gone flexitarian, I'm probably spending between 50.000-70.000 a month in groceries. Although I will know better if I ever organize my finances.

As Theresa in Mérida commented on Kyle's blog, this number will depend on what people eat. So to give you an ideea: I will cook cazuela de ave, for example, or porotos granados (apparently called cranberry beans?) (1500 the kilo-desgranados, peeled) and those dishes will last us like 3 days. Plus, if say, the green beans are out-of-season, I won't put them in the cazuela. I mostly use in-season food, which makes my cooking better and more economical. Another thing that makes my cooking much more economical, is that I cook lots of Chilean dishes, so I almost always use Chilean ingredients: zapallo (300 pesos the chunk), porotos granados, porotos verdes (can't remember), choclo humero (10 in 1000 pesos), etc. I even use typical Chilean ingredients in my own concoctions.

Also, when I get a chance, I do my shopping at the vega, which makes fruit, veggie, chicken shopping a bit more economical. And when I don't have time, I go to a market/vega that's a bit closer to home.

I also, am not a fan of chicken. I will eat it, if that's what's for lunch or dinner (hence flexitarian), but I think about the fact that it spent it's whole life in a cage and that it's been injected with hormones, and I would rather eat more pesticide-covered corn and pumpkin, rather than hormone-injected, cage-grown chicken. (Let's call a spade a spade.)

Other foods we eat a lot of and their current prices in Chilean pesos:
we eat bread (pan pita integral, 800) and avocado (1500 the kilo), or oatmeal (1300 the kilo), bananas (450 the kilo), yogurt (300 pesos for like 150 grams, I believe), fruit,
mote con huesillos or without huesillos (dried full-sized peaches, about 3000-4000 the kilo). I also like to have mote (can't remember the price) with coconut milk (1,100 the can) and pure maple syrup. Yummy. Speaking of, I go through a lot of coconut milk. (The maple syrup was given to me by my mom who was just in Chile. I don't buy maple syrup here.) Sarotti chocolate - 1400 for 100 grams, but waaaay more satisfying than Sahne-Nuss (1000 pesos for 180 grams). Although I still get a Sahne-Nuss fix from time-to-time. I do wish my supermarket would get this brand to try it out. I like getting my products as directly from the source as possible.

We also eat a fair amount of nuts. I just bought 2 kilos of cashews for 16,000 pesos. We eat almonds too, but I can't remember what they cost.

We eat lots of quinoa too, although not lately. (Over a year ago I bought 25 kilos for 25,000 pesos from a dealer in Parque Forestal - there was a bicycle culture festival, and people were selling things like quinoa and vegetarian empanadas). Normally quinoa costs (for quinoa negra) around 2000 pesos for half a kilo, if I'm not mistaken. You can get it at the tostudaria talca. Its uber-expensive at the grocery store, like 2000+ pesos for 200 grams of white quinoa. But 25,000 pesos for 25 kilos is quite the deal, even if we don't finish those last 5 kilos before they go bad.

We also eat pasta, beef, rice, beans-black and tórtola (perhaps around 2000 the kilo), garbanzo beans, crackers (300 for 180 grams or so), quesillo (around 1000), olive oil (maybe 5000 the liter?), regular oil, and lots of spices. When the corn's not in season, I get frozen corn (2000 the kilo?). These last prices I don't remember as well.

That's all I can think of for the moment. I'm sure we eat other foods as well.

Other gringas on their food budgets:

Kyle (the person who started the topic)
Katina

terribly terribly cynical. so cynical I'm laughing

2009-01-29T18:26:00.000-08:00

I think Chile is REALLY getting to me. Because I now find morbid things HILARIOUS. That is the trademark of the Chilean sense of humor, cracking jokes at funerals (even if it's just a light one), breeching topics unsuitable for your grandma's ears, right in front of her, humorously subtitling the most dramatic part of a movie about the fall of one of the (if not the) most notorious people of contemporary history. I swear they have a BLACK sense of humor. Basically it's all about making fun of anything and everything that you shouldn't. P.C. is non-existent. In fact, its almost like the less p.c. you are, the funnier it is. (I'm going to be a pc-wreck if I ever go back to the States. My family and friends will shun me.)

Anyhoo, I saw this article on the Santiago metro news station and then googled it to find out if it's true. So I'm going to end this blog right now. Bye.

EFL/ESL Question

2009-01-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

Has anybody found a lesson plan that helps your Spanish speaking students stop using "a personal"? I have a couple students who use the article "a" prolifically in front of people's names. While this is normal in Spanish, it's not in English. I'll probably just end up looking up the rules to using "a personal" in Spanish and then unteaching them to my students. But thought I'd ask any of you if you've found (internet) material on this.

my thought on Obama's "beauty"

2009-01-26T05:15:00.000-08:00

I've heard and read a lot of people mention that Obama won the presidency because he is black. Or that's the first thing they say or notice about him. The people who think that or have nothing more to say about Obama [than that he's black] are missing the beauty of Obama's campaign: his intelligence, his innovation and his ability to bring people together and create a vision that includes all Americans, and probably non-Americans as well. (Because the rest of the world is influenced by the U.S. president.) He used innovative campaign methods which, it seems they are trying in his presidency. The "fourth" power of government, the media is being democratized and Obama's government wants to take advantage of this, in his Youtube presidency. That's part of the beauty of him being president. Who cares he's black?

Food and diet: I'm a flexitarian!

2009-01-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

I have a name. According to the Mayo Clinic website, I'm a flexitarian. Flexitarians are defined as people who "primarily follow a plant-based diet but occasionally eat small amounts of meat, poultry or fish." Although "occasionally eat small amounts of meat, poultry or fish" translates into a couple times a week (when V cooks), and then gorging on a potpourri of animal cadavers when I stumble upon a Chilean barbecue. But I cook primarily veggies and grains and I eat lots of fruit, chocolate and coconut milk, too. Ñami.

Check out this tool! This is really cool. I did it and found out my daily calorie goal is 2000 calories. Pretty cool.

And here are five different food pyramids, depending on your taste/culture.

The Mayo Clinic rocks.

But my fave food pyramid is this one, from the integrative nutrition catalog:

Perhaps the most complete food pyramid known to mankind.
If I were to formally study nutrition, I would do it with them, integrative nutrition.

Aphoristic thought

2009-01-21T08:31:00.000-08:00

I always get lost in the anecdotes.

Inglés con piernas: an impossible market

2009-01-12T05:03:00.000-08:00

So I've been teaching English in Chilito for a bit and have gotten the feeling from time to time, from potential students that they don't want English class per se; they want an English class with a pretty, young rubia...which they hope could lead to more. The other day, one of the street vendors who sells me fruit asked how much I charge for an English class and told me he would pay me five times that for just one class with me. The proposition sort of amused/shocked me. I just said "que va" and went on my way. Honestly. If I wanted to be a prostitute, I would have chosen that profession and what's more, I would shoot for earning more than $100 an hour because soon enough you are old, and then what?

The type of clientel that want Inglés con piernas are pretty easy to distinguish after a couple weeks in the English-teaching business. And there is such a demand for English in Chile that it's really unnecessary to teach these kind of students unless you choose to. I avoid them because they are a pain in the butt and trying to teach them only leads to misunderstandings, because they are not in it to learn English.

But anyway, there seems to be a HUGE market here in Chile for Inglés con piernas. Unfortunately for the potential customers, I don't know any gringas who are interested. Huge demand, no supply.

So here's a good challenge for any creative businesswomen/men out there. How do you provide this service? And more specifically, who do you get to provide this service? Perhaps a café con piernas could offer this to distinguish itself in the market?

Another year or two in Santiago...cuak!

2009-01-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

So looks like we'll be in Chilito for awhile longer. Our plans had been to move back to the States sometime in the upcoming months, preferably at the beginning of the Northern Hemisphere's summer, but that won't be happening. I went to the U.S. Embassy today to apply for V's immigrant visa and was shot down, because you need to be a permanent resident to apply. I feel like a permanent resident in Chile. After all I've been here for almost five years. Unfortunately, feeling like a permanent resident and being one aren't the same thing. My Chilean carné needs to say "permanent resident" or something to that effect on the back of it. Así que cagué! And I could have applied for permanent residence in September, because after having two consecutive years of student visas and finishing your studies here in Chile, you are also eligible to apply for permanent residence, but you have to do it before your student visa expires. Mine expired September 12th, so I traveled to Mendoza to get a tourist visa because I didn't get all the paperwork together before the 12th to apply for my temporary visa. But I didn't know all of this was going to be so complicated, so I didn't even look into the details of it all. Plus I've had a hyper-busy 6 months: I finished my thesis in September defending it on September 11th, then V, C and I went to Diaguitas for el dieciocho. Then I went to the States for a week to get some paperwork done there, came back to Chile and started teaching English, planning our wedding our honeymoon and my family's trip to Chile. And we just got back from our honeymoon the other day. So just today I finally got the paperwork together to go turn it in and was met with a bit of a surprise.

Bang. Bang. She shot me down.
Bang. Bang. I hit the ground.
Bang. Bang. The embassy official shot me down.

A friend of V's had told us in October I needed to have permanent residence to apply for the immigrant visa from here, but other people had said I didn't, which may have been true back in the day, but isn't true now. Anyway, by October it was too late to apply for permanent residence anyway, because my student visa had already expired. I also could have applied for a temporary visa years ago, but didn't know it would have been easier that way.

Un año más, qué mas da?
Un año más, cuánto se han ido?
Un año más, qué más da?
Cuánto se han ido ya?

So anyway, it takes me a while to digest things. I'm not exstatic about being in Santiago another year. Probably if I still lived in Valpo I wouldn't mind being here longer, at least not as much. It's especially annoying since they've started constructing a building right next door and the drilling sound hasn't stopped all morning. I thought we were in economic crisis?!?!

...but on the good side, now that I'm done with school and the marriage-planning is over, I will actually have time to hang out with friends more. Yay! Some of the best time spent in life is hanging out with friends. It's been quite the introverted last four years, having soooo much to study and I've spent most of the little free time I've had with V, obviously. So I've seen much less of my friends then I'd like to.

I finally am working again in what will probably be one of my main careers in life (teaching) and will actually be excited to work for a year without having to uproot and move back to the States. I must admit I was not looking forward to leaving my capoeira group, which is actually planning a trip to Bahia, Brazil this (Southern Hemisphere) winter. Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! I missed the last one because I had to study... but we'll see if a trip to Brazil pans out for me. I do have more important priorities like spending time with my hubby and establishing a career path for myself, as well as making money to fund the trip.

I also very much like Chile, and to be honest, even Santiago. (Although Valpo's way better.) I think my biggest disappointments are 1) I won't be hanging with my family as soon as I had planned. 2) I think it would be so great for V to get to know MY country and especially to get an outside perspective on his own culture. In general, I think living abroad is really healthy for people because it gives you the chance to see that culture is relative, even your own, especially your own. This is really hard to see when you've never lived within another culture. It's such a great opportunity, but it will have to wait awhile. Good thing V's not been too interested in studying English. Looks like he won't need it for a while.

The visa track I am now on is waiting for my temporary visa. Once I've had that for a year, I can apply for my permanent residence. Then I can apply for V's visa. But who knows? Perhaps by then we'll have two babies, a dog, a couple cars, a house and decide to just stay.

The lady at the embassy said I could go to the States and do the paperwork from there, but we'd have to be apart. Plus I heard that's a large pain in the butt, and takes even longer.

Meanwhile, I spose I'll keep blogging.

What would Jesus do?

2009-01-06T04:45:00.000-08:00

Dude, the SuperChristians who get together on Paseo Ahumada to preach the word of God should be arrested. Their sound system sucks, so walking by them means declaring war on my eardrums. They yell puras weás into the microphone, polluting public space with the terrible sound waves they produce. They should be forced to get rid of their sound system at the very least. I think its so stupid that these superchristians go to only poor neighborhoods to stand on the corners and rant about salvation. As if the rich were all perfect Christians. Of course if they did that in the Barnechea the police would be called and they would be gone in no time at all. I wonder if complaining to police would help. Or maybe I should just approach the superchristians and tell them how I feel. Since they are soo approachable psychotically screaming into the microphone. What would I say?..."Could you please shut up? I lose my faith just coming within earshot of you guys." o algo por el estilo...

while I'm on the Christian note...at Iguazu Falls I saw a superChristian wearing a t-shirt with a quote from the book of John. While the Bible has some pretty good verses, this wasn't one of them. It said something like, He loved you before you loved him. And then there was a logo about some Christian sports league on the front of the t-shirt. And I decided it would be fun to print a t-shirt with a quote on the back of it from the book of Revelations, a book Hunter S. Thompson periodically quoted. And of course, the front of could have a sketch of this popular American writer. If I remember correctly, he quoted dark, apocalptic verses as well as very dramatic literary ones kind of like this one in Revelations: ^"17And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone." He found some good ones, the bible is probably plump full of them.

Politics and Self-esteem

2009-01-04T12:37:00.001-08:00

The election of Obama made my self-esteem go up. hahahaha. I was very surprised with myself when I realized this. It's hard being abroad and being from the States, (in some ways). I spent most of Bush's two terms abroad. During his first term, I was in Spain a year where many Spaniards personally blamed me for Bush's election. I AM that powerful. It was all my doing.

Then I came to Chile. I actually voted against Bush from Chile (I did my part), but he was re-elected and I've spent all of his second term in Chile. Chileans realize most Statesians abroad don't like Bush, so I haven't been personally blamed for him being in office, but I still have felt I've had to explain that half of Statesians are freaking idiots for electing him a second time. Duh. But now, Obama is president-elect. I don't have to explain a thing. I'm actually content with our president-elect, as is most of the world, (or so it seems). And while he only got like 50% of the vote, he won!!! And that's what counts. I'm looking forward to him taking office.

And I still can't get over that my self-esteem has gone up. Really, this shouldn't affect that since I'm not personally responsible for either presidents' elections.

Just another Statesian?

2008-12-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

Caveat Lector: I must admit this is a bit of a cesspool of sometimes partially articulated ideas, that some day could maybe be formed into a coherent blog entry or essay or conversation. But meanwhile, it is what it is. (This is actually a suitable description of my life in general.)

A while back, I read Tyff's blog entry on what Chileans think of gringos where she describes a painfully ugly scene with a bunch of gringos (and one particularly ugly one) in Ruby Tuesday. She notes that she calls Americans "people from the States" (as do I) and gives a bit of an explanation of why. I started commenting on Tyff's blog about the topic of the usage of the word "American", but realized that my comments had turned into a whole post, which I've just taken the time to publish. She touches on a topic that goes unnoticed by most Americans. What is an American? Lots of Latin Americans think that Americans (from the States) shouldn't call ourselves Americans and the fact that we have appropriated an adjective/noun that in Spanish, describes all of North and South America, is on our part, very chauvinistic. In this entry, I take a multifaceted look at this problem. Hopefully it's somewhat coherent. Stealing the dude's words: There are a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous...

Here in Chile I refer to myself as a gringa in informal and general contexts and as an estadounidense (united statesian) in formal and specific contexts. "América"** for the most part refers to the continents of North and South America. America is not equal to América. American does not equal americano. They are false friends and lead you to histo-linguistic warfare.

To a point, different geography models even weigh in on this discussion. I was taught there are 7 continents. Latin Americans are generally taught there are six. North and South America are fused as one. There is also the six continent Eurasia model where North and South America are separate continents, but Europe and Asia are one continent. And there's the five-continent Eurasia model that excludes Antartica.

Back to the central point, I think the best points for defending our use of the word American are: 1) People living in the States were Americans and the States was referred to as America since the U.S. Constitution was written. 2) People from the United States of Mexico are Mexicans and people from the United States of Brazil are Brazilians thus people from the United States of America should be... 3) Most people in the States probably aren't aware that the Spanish word "americano" means anyone from América. I think it would be almost impossible to convince your average gringo he's no longer an American, as he understands the word. 4) if I'm not American, what am I? a yankee? a United Statian? a United Statesian? It's a possibility but sounds better in Spanish.

That said, I've gotten very used to thinking of an americano as anyone from América, and now when I use the word in English (especially here in Chile), it's just too confusing. Sometimes Chileans ask me if I'm an americana, because they know we call ourselves Americans in the States, but that's just even more confusing, because I know they call themselves americanos as well. However, when speaking in English, I mostly refer to Americans as "people from the States" or "U.S. citizens". When speaking in Spanish, as I said above, I use the much more specific term "estadounidenses". Personally I think we've really gotten the shaft on this whole nationality name thing. What were the writers of the Constitution thinking? There is no good answer to what we should be called. The term American is waay to confusing to use abroad, especially in Latin America. While I don't like the term "United Statesian", I kind of like "Statesian". I could live with being a Statesian. But try convincing the rest of the people from the States that they are Statesians and not Americans. Good luck! (So I'll refer to U.S. Citizens as Statesians for the rest of this entry.)

Part of the thing with language and culture is that it pays to understand the perspectives of the people around you. If a Chilean talks about América, (s)he is probably talking about the unified continent of North and South America. If your average yanqui in yanquilandia talks about America, (s)he's probably talking about the United States. And, by the way, yanqui is not a good term to use either because it, too, means different things in different places.

Now while Chileans have often told me that Statesians are chauvinistic because we consider only ourselves to be Americans, I don't necessarily agree. Chileans think that Statesians realize that everyone from North and South America are Americans. This has never crossed your average Statesian's mind. EVER. While I do believe many "Statesians" are culturally egocentrical, and probably even think of Latin America (and perhaps the rest of the world) as the State's backyard, either to be enjoyed, dominated or ignored, they have no idea that Latin Americans consider themselves to be Americans too. There are Statesians who simply don't think about the rest of the world. They are content where they are, so why go elsewhere? So we Statesians call ourselves Americans more because of cultural ignorance than a chauvinistic attitude. Although cultural ignorance and chauvinism are related and somewhat similar. For the record, many Statesians also look down on Europeans as well (it's not just Latin Americans they look down on).

It's interesting to note, while some Latin Americans look at Statesians' use of the word "American" with indignation, many Canadians would be insulted if you called them Americans. Hahaha. To each his own.

Also I think on large cultural lines, Latin Americans have a SEVERE INFERIORITY COMPLEX and that's why this debate bothers them so much. This is a product of their history and the fact that the idea of white supremacy was accepted here by intellectuals such as Andrés Bello (Pratt) and propagated by the history that was (and is) taught in school here. Plus many Latin American countries didn't do as good a job erraticating the natives as my anscestors did. So while they look down on the indigenous, many have indigenous blood. This is culturally fertile ground for the creation of magical realism and for hibrid cultures.

Also Latin Americans seem to be much more aware of the United States than Statesians are of Latin América.

Comments like "Chile is 10 years behind." "Chile is so behind." "Chile isn't a developed country.", while I think perhaps they have a grain of truth, when seen from a certain perspective, are a bit simplistic and are a result of this white supremist attitude which continues to reproduce itself. It's a belief in "progress". That we must "progress." Define "progress" in a general sense for me please! Because it's used in a vague general sense a lot. When people make comments like these, they are referring to Chile as inferior, compared to some vague ideal that they often don't have a clear picture of. Many Chileans seem to want Chile to turn out like the U.S. and/or Europe, this Edenic place to be worshiped and imitated. Most of these people have never been to either the U.S. or Europe. It's a grass-is-always-greener sort of mentality, perhaps the green light in The Great Gatsby.

And clearly each culture has its good and bad points.

So I suppose this whole conflict of opinions will continue. The analysis and attitudes that this problem evokes in people, reflects the identity of the speaker more than it approaches a resolution to the problem. It's rich historical-cultural-lingüistic terrain.

Here are a couple forum threads that debate the unresolved America/América controversy:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=616046&highlight=mexicans

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=21002

There are a few more threads like this on wordreference including one I started about Mexicans, but I couldn't find one.

Here in Chile, they often think Mexico is part of South America. I was always taught it was part of North America so I started a thread in a cultural forum to see what Mexicans considered themselves. The general response was all three, first Mexican, then Latin American, then North American.

**I've seen this distinction America/América distinction made by Mary Louise Pratt.

El precio gringo

2008-12-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

Totally agree about what Sara says about the "Gringo Price". I also agree with the comment Kyle makes on Sara's blog, that if Chileans can get other Chileans to pay more, they will do it. It's not just something they do to gringos. Although, it's called the gringo price because it's much easier to make gringos (especially tourists) pay this price than other Chileans, who know that some of their fellow people will try to rip them off, if given the chance.

When I think about el precio gringo, several incidents come to mind that have happened to me in just the last few months.

When I printed my thesis, my friend X. designed a really stylish cover to put on the ugly fake-leather book (my bound thesis). She had studied architecture for a couple years near where I live and she knew where to get architecture plans (or in my case, a book cover) printed cheaply. She said it should cost about 1.000 pesos (2 dollars) to get the cover printed. We went to this place with the design on a pendrive and asked how much it would cost to print. The guy needed to see my thesis in order to get an idea of the size of the paper. First of all, just looking at me, it's apparent I'm a gringa. Second, on the cover, it said that this was my master's thesis for the Catholic University. So the guy was thinking, she must already have a job since this is her masters. She's going to a nice University and she's a gringa. "That will be 11.000 pesos." X. almost fell on her ass. Of course she questioned why it was so expensive, because she'd often had plans printed there and it didn't cost nearly that much and they were much bigger. The guy said that the paper was really expensive and that's why they were charging me eleven-fold what they used to charge X. It cost me less then that to bind two theses. This was just going to be a simple cover for them. Needless to say we canned that idea, because I had to turn them in the next day anyway.

This is just one of many cases I've experienced where people have tried to rip me off here.

That same day I'd eaten in one of the vegas and I didn't confirm the price of the lunch before ordering. (You should ALWAYS confirm the price before ordering if there's any chance of them trying to charge more. I knew that but had eaten at the vega a few times before with no problem, so I didn't confirm it this time, because it is a pain in the ass having to do it every time.) They totally screwed me over on the price. The waitress brought me the check and they were charging me double the price. At first I questioned the waitress, is this the right check? I pointed to where the price of my meal was written on the wall and asked why they were charging me double. She didn't know what to say so she looked at her boss who said "that is the right price." I got angry and started ranting in really colloquial, semi-vulgar chilensis how "me están cagando por ser gringa, el pedazo de pescadito era así una wea y uds me quieren cobrar 3 luka por esto? Puta, que tengo mala cueva por ser gringa. Qué penca. Así tratan a sus clientes?, etc." The waitress got visibly uncomfortable as all the Chileans having lunch there looked our way. (Chileans don't like to make a scene, so embarrassing them throughly in this way is reeeeeally satisfying. I might have even gotten my money's worth. You got to make them suffer a bit). I didn't want to get much more aggressive than that though because I was not on my turf at all. (Read: It's a poor neighborhood.) But the boss wouldn't ease up on the price even though the waitress didn't know what to charge me and was visibly ruffled. She knew they were charging double and that I knew it and I was letting everyone else in the little restaurant know it too. I left without tipping, too bad for the waitress, pero cómo tan penca? I haven't eaten at the vega since.

And, a month later, I was at the airport. Airport taxis are notorious for charging el precio gringo. You barely walk out the doors of the airport and the taxi drivers start bombarding you with offers to take you to the city. In October I arrived in the airport and needed a ride to my place. I was going to take the Transvip van to downtown Santiago, because it leaves you at your doorstep for like 5.000 pesos. However, most everyone was going to Providencia, or to the suburbs even further East. Right, I thought, Chileans who travel don't live in Santiago center. It was going to be a wait. So I decided to go talk to the bus people to see if the metro was running. Because for 1.000 pesos, the bus leaves you at the metro. However, it was early Sunday morning, so the metro wasn't running. I turned and started walking back the way I came. Just then, a taxi driver came up to me and offered to take me. I asked him how much he charged. He said 12.000 pesos. I looked at him, and very softly, so that he would doubt whether he'd really heard me say this or not, I said, "nica", and kept walking. So then he shouted at my back "11.000", "10.000", and then slightly flabbergasted: "how much do you want to pay?" This made me chuckle, but he'd already tried to screw me over and I knew Transvip could get me home, so I went with them.

When I need to call people to ask for their services, I sometimes have V. do it so that they won't hear my accent and charge double right off the bat. Just the other day I called my suegra to see if she could call the photographer for me so he wouldn't charge me the precio gringo. He gave her an excellent price. But sometimes you just have to suck it up and pay el precio gringo. There's only so much you can do.

Hardest Chilean custom to get used to: lack of self-expression

2008-10-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

With the gringa blog group, this week we are writing about the hardest custom to adjust to in Chile. I chose to blog about "lack of self-expression", a custom/cultural quirk that takes some getting used to.

Chileans often don't say what's on their minds. You kind of have to guess sometimes. Lack of self-expression is why the Chilean Yes exists. People don't know how to say no. Almost every time I make plans with a new Chilean, I never really know if we will end up hanging out or not. A la hora de la cu, usually a few hours before we are to meet up, I call them and can generally tell by their ánimo (state of energy) if they are really up for hanging out or not. So I'll suggest we do it another time if it seems it's not going ot work out. They probably feel relieved they don't have to say no. This is useful, because it cuts down on no-shows. If they really still are up for hanging out, it's apparent to me. They will confirm, i.e.,..saying "let's meet up in such and such a place in an hour."

Why do Chileans express themselves so little? Chileans, in general, are terribly critical of everything and everyone, especially themselves. This can be an advantage, but it can also be destructive in general. They don't say what is on their minds for fear of criticism. It makes for a hard time discussing any kind of conflicts if people don't say what they feel. So there you have Chilean culture's worst vicious circle, according to this gringa. They don't express themselves for fear of criticism. But the are a very critical people. It's kind of humorous actually.

There are so many things I like about Chile that I'm content to put up with the things that are more difficult. For the most part, I've gotten used to Chilean culture, so I know how to deal with the lack of self-expression, the Chilean yes, the customer service, the piropos, and I know how to get along with Chilean friends.

I must say, I find it strange that in a land of people who aren't self-expressed, where people are so critical of everyone, they have so many phenomenal poets: Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, Nicanor Parra, Pablo de Rokha, Pablo Neurda, Violeta Parra, entre otros. But this country perhaps is a bit bipolar as well.

The good side of this lack of self-expression is that it has to find an outlet somewhere. Chileans use humor to let people know what they really think (sometimes subtley, and sometimes a bit blatantly.) You have to be observant sometimes to catch on.

I think I picked this cultural characteristic because it reminds me of home. It's similar to Minnesota nice, but different.

To see what other participants say about the hardest custom to get used to (in Chile or their country of choice), click below:

Sara
Abby
Rita (Colombia)
Lydia
Clare
Amanda
Kathleen (Ecuador)
Lori (Brazil)
Renee
Shannon
Carlos
Katina
Emily
Tyffanie
Jessica

Elqui Valley, part 2 & your chance to be an altruist

2008-10-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Check out Kyle's blog if you feel like being philanthropic today or if you want some photos of Chile. And remember "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish..." o sea la educación es una cosa valiosa.

Alojamiento de cinco estrellas en Elqui Valley

Micro trip La Serena-Diaguitas
(this reservoir is a big Wind/kite surfing destination)

Diaguitas

Paseando por Diaguitas

on the road, Elqui Valley

The obligatory visit to Capel.

Gabriel Mistral's grave, Montegrande, Elqui Valley

Diaguitanos dancing cueca for el dieciocho

waay too cute: Diaguitanitos performing a typical Rapa Nui dance. In Rapa Nui, do they dance the cueca on Sept 18th?

Elqui Valley para el dieciocho

2008-10-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

como las weas manejar las fotos dentro de blogger..... que ondis...

help please!! any suggestions?..moving my photos when editting the post is next to impossible..what should I do?

to be continued...

taking out the trash in Elqui Valley

mmm...huevos del campo

Google Earth, real time.

Group post: Como somos (percibidos) los gringos

2008-09-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

How I think gringos are perceived by Chileans:

**note - "gringo" - has two meanings 1) all white people from Northwestern Europe or whose ancestors were from Northwestern Europe. (perhaps including whites from Eastern Europe and the Balkans) 2) people from the States

I'm mostly refering to the second meaning.

trusting, naive (weones) – Gringos trust too much, they walk around in Chile with really expensive cameras, their cell phones, money, etc. and other things totally in sight. Several times I’ve told random gringos who cross my path to put their cell phones or cameras away when they are not using them.

trustable – I’ve found Chileans often trust me more then their fellow people. And to be honest, I trust random gringos more than I trust random Chileans.

paranoicos, paranoid - (what with the “pre-emptive” strikes and being super prepared for everything, boy scout style)

styleless – hooded sweatshirts, jeans, hair in a ponytail or covered with a baseball cap – this isn’t true for all gringos, but it’s common (Chileans obviously have some of their own style peculiarities –especially among pokemonos, o sea pokemones)

uptight – Especially some gringo tourists of the male sex who come to Chile and everything has to be exactly as they imagine it or else they complain a ton and get their panties in a bunch over trivial things.

approachable/friendly – I don’t know how many Chileans have asked me for directions in Santiago over the last couple of years…a lot.

I ran out of ideas and asked V what gringos are like

He replied the ones he’s met are:

independent

they do what they propose they’ll do (hacen lo que proponen hacer)

they’re honest

they have money

I agree.

See other points of view here:

Kyle
Carlos
Flo
Clare
Sara
Abby
Katina
Emily
Amanda
Renee
Kathleen
Lydia
Shannon
Emma

Is Chile having a sexual revolution?

2008-09-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

Is Chile having a sexual revolution? Let's refer to the merriam webster online dictionary to answer this question:

revolution 2 a: a sudden, radical, or complete change b: a fundamental change in political organization ; especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed c: activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation d: a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm revolution> e: a changeover in use or preference especially in technology revolution> revolution>

Dude, Chilean adolescents have been having sex out-of wedlock since Chile's Independence. According to Julio Pinto in his Contemporary History of Chile, if I remember the statistic correctly, in 1900, 45% of Chileans were orphans. So, yeah, unmarried sex has been going on for a while. Perhaps the biggest difference now is the press the teenage sexual activity is getting. Also, it's now fashionable to poncear with a bunch of people and flaunt it. Another contemporary novelty here are the special adolescent parties you can go to to achieve this end. Appartently, at these parties, it is customary to kiss and grope a lot of randoms.

What Chile does need now is sex ed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's not common knowledge here that STDs can be transmitted by oral sex. Hepatitus is huge in Chile. And unplanned pregnancies are common.

So, I think Alexei Barrionuevo se fue al chancho (overdid it) with his "revolution" assertion, and goes a bit far with the "Chile's sexual awakening". I find it faux pas and stupid that he brought the Chilean dictatorship and Pinocho to weigh in on this issue. Ná k ver. The article, igual, was interesting, but would have been more accurate classifying it as a cultural trend or something along those lines.

For another gringa perspective, read what claresays.

Killing time at the border

2008-09-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

On the way back from Mendoza this weekend, V and I and tons of other people were waiting to re-enter Chile for 3 or 4 hours. This is what the line to go through border control/customs looked like:

There were some big pieces of plastic laying on the mountain and sledding tracks. But no one was sliding. After 45 minutes sitting and waiting, nauseated from the bus and truck fumes, I finally grabbed the plastic and hiked up the side of the mountain to try it out and breathe some fresh air.

I made it look so fun, it soon turned into the pass time of a bunch of people in our situation. Granted, some one had been sliding before we got there, bc there were butt tracks and plastic already there.

And the onlookers:

There were even a couple of Chilean women who tried it out while wearing boots with stiletto heels. Impressive.

82-90 (of 100 things I like about Chile)

2008-09-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here are the first 81 things I like about Chile...now getting around to almost finishing the list...These last were interesting because a lot of them were things I hadn't articulated in my own thoughts before, but mostly walking around the city, and hanging out a bit with friends, living here, I've been thinking about it.

82) The prolific use of tutors. I never, as a kid, had a tutor. My folks answered specific questions I had about homework, but no one sat down with me for an hour or more to explain a subject. But here in Chile it is pretty standard among the people that can afford it. They contract college students or professional tutors to teach math, physics, English, etc. Or often grandfathers (retired engineers, for example) are called on to teach their grandchildren math. Doesn't the thought just warm your heart? I think it's cool because then the kid essentially has two teachers, and is taught the material from slightly different perspectives, something I believe helps the student out.

83) People walk in the street here. In the States, people don't walk much. At least where I lived, it didn't happen a lot. I love the life in the streets. It humanizes a place. And public transportation here, it's not just for minorities. Millions of people actually use it, which makes for a pretty good system (even if its going to run out of money in a few days.)

84) The grandmothers and grandfathers often live with their children. The US system has old-folks homes-which have their appeal-because they hang with their peers, but I like the Chilean family system-everyone in the same house. Plus than grandparents can help out and feel useful and share with their family, as well as save money. And the children can keep an eye on their aged parents and not worry about how they are doing in a home somewhere.

85) The houses are smaller. (I'm talking about middle-class houses here, not the social housing which is too small.) I find the huge gringo McMansions totally unnecessary and I plan on living in a small house for most of my life. Some of the advantages of a small house include: you have to clean less, the house feels more filled with energy, it's less expensive to heat, you have to limit the amount of random stuff you accumulate, entre otras cosas.

86) There's more home-cooked food here. Your average family seems to eat more salads (at least in my experience.) I also love the consomé served before the main course. It's basically just soup broth, but it's tasty. Try ordering that at a gringo restaurant. They'll bring you a bowl of stew toped with a quarter inch of cheese. Normal portion sizes just don't exist in the States. I'm glad they sell mini-bottles of pop, like 4 oz bottles widely availible in Chilito.

87) They don't generally put nasty salad dressing on your salads. I hate it in the US when I forget to ask for the salad without the dressing. Here it's all about the salt, fresh lemon, and olive oil, I actually ask for this at restaurants in the US now. (Although, now and then they put a big gob of mayo on your salad-nasty-but it's easier to get off when it's all in one place.) If I'm going to have salad dressing, I prefer my own home-made French dressing.

88) How Chileans ignore people or cut people off when the speaker is hogging the conversation or getting into a long soliloquy about who knows what. Or they start making fun of a person when he gets too serious in a conversation. In Starbucks one day, a while back, I was comparing gringo conversations and Chilean conversations. The gringo conversations transmitted a large quantity of information and seemed really useful for informing oneself, getting stuff done, sharing personal information. Chilean conversations, on the other hand, are more about teasing each other, joking around, just hanging with the other person "ontologically". The amount of information exchanged is often little.

89) Short term thinking vs. long term thinking, (again). A big change I noticed in myself after being here as an expat for like a year is that, when I was home on vacation, and ran into friends I hadn't seen in a while, I was more likely to ask them what they'd done yesterday and what they were up to tomorrow rather than there life master plan for the next 1 to 5 years. Whereas before going to Chile, I was more likely to ask about their long term plans. One time, while at home on break, I ran into a friend of mine. I asked him what his sister was up to. He told me she had gone back to Spain to teach English for another year because she was sick of people asking her what her plans were. jajajaja. I totally understood her. Hispanic territory seems to be a refuge for those without a plan. jaja

90) The nanas. Class differences suck, I know. But the positive side of that is you can afford someone to cook and clean for you all day, almost every day. Before I came to Chile for the first time as an exchange student, I talked to another high schooler who had just gotten back from Chile. She said the family's nana made fresh natural juices for her everyday. She also spent her first two weeks in Chile with her host family on their yacht, cruising the Chilean coastline. Needless to say, I was stoked I was heading to Chile after hearing her stories. While I've benefitted from the nanas (at friends' houses), I have yet to be invited on a yacht here. jejeje

Thoughts on identity and culture

2008-09-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

Lydia's humorous contribution to the group topic on Chilean women triggered this blog entry.

I often have that experience, talking to Chileans, that they can't/won't get beyond my "gringaness". Lydia makes it super clear in her entry. We talk about where I'm from, if I like Chile, etc. But I feel that a lot of them assume we don't have anything in common and so the conversation sometimes ends quickly. I totally ignore the really superficial people. The ones that I realize relate to me like I'm from Mars. My ignoring them sometimes makes them want to talk to me. If there's no one else to talk to, I'll make conversation.

I find that a lot of times, people assume since I'm gringa I have no idea about their culture. And they assume I don't understand them. They treat me like a tourist teaching me to say "weón" and "cachai". I let them. It's easier than explaining to them that yes I do know some Chilean slang. Although I use a ton of their expressions, some of them barely notice. After several hours hanging out, sometimes it clicks that "I'm just one of them, another human being that just wants to hang out and have fun." And they start treating me normally. Obviously, I'm a human being of the gringa variety.

And most Chileans haven't traveled as much as gringos in Chile, so they don't have a perspective bigger than Chile. It's like the gringos we know who have never traveled outside the US and have no concept of what it's like outside their country. The difference is these gringos probably just categorize the Chileans as Mexican immigrants, whereas the Chileans categorize us as rich gringo tourists and everything they've seen that's come out of Hollywood, what they've seen on TV, in the movies, what music they've heard, etc.

Lots of Chileans can converse beyond our cultural differences, not being stopped by the fact I'm foreign. But it is a clan culture, and if you aren't part of the clan no te pesquen mucho. Fortunately for me, I've crossed paths with a lot of Chileans who sí, me pesquen. I think I tend to roll with people who are flexible about things and with few prejudices and lots of buena onda, here and in the States (which actually made our visit to G-Rock easier for V a few Christmases ago).

Before meeting Kyle and other expats in my situation, I'd lost a big part of my identity because I couldn't be me outside of my gringa culture. It's almost impossible, because everything that is particulary "gringa", my "gringaness", is lost in translation. Totally. Identity depends on the person constructing it, but it also depends on the people around you understanding it.

But it sucked, because being a gringa, being myself, meant being alone. Choosing to always relate to people on their turf, in their cultural territory, meant I could have friends and company. For the most part, human beings have a lot in common, so it's possible. But I did it 99% of the time, and to a point, I left my identity behind. Or better stated, my identity has changed. Now I often feel I identify as much with Chileans as with gringos. But I know when I go home, I will re-gringa-ize.

Playing capoeira, last semester this really cool gringa exchange student incorporated herself into the group. She is a total sweety (now back in the States, cuak!). One day Z had us do an exercise where we had to walk on our hands for about 30 feet. We competed in groups of three to see who made it. And depending on our level in capoeira we were assigned an amount of push-ups to do for the two losers who didn’t make it as far. I made it maybe four hand-steps (3 feet) and fell and did push-ups. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do too many. Than it was A’s and two other kids’ turn. A. walked on her hands with her legs and feet perfectly pointed towards the ceiling. Half-way through her walk, my whole capoeira class started chanting “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A”. It was hilarious. She made it to the other side, no sweat. Granted, she used to be a gymnast. But when they started chanting U-S-A, for her, I thought, what about me? It wasn’t that I wanted them to chant for me, jajaja-in her position I would have started laughing and would have fallen-but I started thinking, how do they see me? I suppose it would be interesting to ask, though I haven’t.

And then another day, Z was showing a series of movements that we had to do. I asked him, “Z, the kick you are doing, is that chapa?” I was a bit exhausted at the time and apparently my accent came out extra-gringo this time. So a couple classmates guenos para el webeo started calling me “chapa”. And I asked them why. They said because when I said that, it came out really gringo-like. To which I replied, “But I’m a gringa.” Like in case they’d forgotten.

Anyway, just some thoughts on identity sparked by Lydia's post...

Group post: Chilean women

2008-09-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

Chilean moms do everything or feel like they should do everything in the house…they auto-value themselves by how well they are meeting their family’s needs and have exceedingly high expectations of themselves as mothers and wives. Either that or they don’t know another roll besides waiting on their families hand and foot. And if they don’t live up to this standard they seem to feel guilty about it. The older generation, in general, didn’t study as much as the younger generation and so are restricted to a life as a housewife and mother.

My generation, probably due to globalization and contemporary times, has way more in common with me than the older generation. They study; they aren’t as concerned about the home (granted my best friends here aren’t mothers.) Some young women don’t even know how to cook and it seems the male generation is learning to cook and clean. Yay! For the most part, they seem to want to “help” the women rather than take responsibility for the cleaning themselves. But even so, it’s nice they contribute.

Women here keep their homes so clean. My Lord. My Chilean man has had to get used to a grungy house. It often looks like a bomb exploded here. I do try to pick up after myself, but it’s hard. I’m not used to it. I’m not Chilean.

Maybe its not that they are so clean and orderly…No, it is. They are neat…and gringos are just more disorganized and messy in general.

I remember as a high school exchange student here, back in the day, I went to Los Andes for a weekend and stayed with a family there. I remember entering the sister’s bedroom with her and a friend, and there were a couple of shirts on the bed and a couple of sweaters. She was a little embarrassed at how messy the room was. Everything else was in perfect order. The bed was made; everything was picked up. She went on for about 5 minutes explaining to me why the place was sooo messy: that they’d arrived and had to change clothes quickly to go somewhere, etc... No choice but to smile and nod. At that age, my room always had a half a foot of clothes on the floor that I would tread through to get to my un-made bed.

Appearances are more important in chile: physical appearances, clean rooms, nice clothing, ojala brandname clothing, nice-looking resumes, etc. The Chilean women dress nicely, and like other gringas have mentioned they dress much sexier than your average gringa.

Although I note that a lot of the older Chilean women are quite overweight and that’s when the sexy dressing stops, but they seem to wear tighter fitting clothes here than in the States.

The Chilean women of my generation are sexually very liberal…I think more so than gringas, although gringas seem to have a reputation as being very sexually active. (They should really teach sex ed here!!) But that’s because of the ones that get drunk and make it with anyone that crosses their path. But actually there are a fair amount of puritans among gringas. Whereas the Catholics can be absolved for their sins once a week, the puritans have to carry their sins with them for the rest of their lives. Cuak. Perhaps this is why.

Chilean women seem more jealous than gringas. I think they like to keep close tabs on their men’s whereabouts. I feel like infidelity is more common here too though. After five months here as an expat, I was traumatized by the amount of infidelity I noticed among the people I was getting to know. At this time, I decided I would not date a Chilean. Eventually I met V, who is part of the 50% of the Chilean non-cheaters.

V. says that my Chilean female friends are not your average Chileans however, so my perspective is a bit off, probably in comparison with the other gringas. I also asked one friend if she agreed with this, and yes, she did. She doesn't always identify with her girl friends from high school. The Chilean women I most hang out with are relaxed, fun, like to have a good time, aren’t jealous. They are easy to get along with. They dress really cute and are more concerned about their appearances than your average Minnesotan. Hahaha. And they have developed people filters.

In the elevator the other day, a friendly neighbor began talking about how the women wear the pants here in Chile. (His wife had sent him back up to the apartment to get an umbrella.) He asked us if this was true. I said yes, hehehe. And the other lady in the elevator said that relationships should be 50-50. So there you have it. And what those 50 percent consist of is the question.

For more perspectives on Chilean women, check out the links on Kyle's blog.

piropos and the like

2008-09-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

After commenting on Kyle's question of the day: to provoke or not to provoke...like if you should bitch out the nasty jotes (ho-tays) who make comments or not...to which several of us replied: the answer depends on the situation...basically, yes it's a good idea, as long as you wouldn't be putting yourself in danger doing it, I'm going to share some experiences I had in Spain along these lines.

Besides the myriad times Chilean guys have thrown piropos my way, the Spanish are also good at this. While the Spanish flirts, in general, I find to be more respectful than the Chilean jotes, and actually I absolutely loved the Galician people and felt very at home when I lived in Galicia...I did have a few memorable incidents of courageous piropos when in Spain and they all seemed really funny to me.

Los pulpos
The first experience was while at a discoteque in Madrid with other gringas. I went to the hip-hop floor and started dancing with some of my classmates-all girls, in a circle the way we do, and I had a Spaniard come up behind me and grab me - like put his arms around me. I was shocked and turned around and angrily pushed him away. I crossed the circle of gringas and started dancing on the other side, and the exact same thing happened right away. So I went to the electronic floor where the guys were more chill. The Spaniards called this type of guy a pulpo, (an octupus).

ass-slapping
One night I was walking with my friend Carmen in Santiago de Compostela. We were just arriving to the vegetarian restaurant where we were meeting up with a couple more friends and we heard running footsteps behind us and before I was able to turn around, this guy wound up his hand and slapped my right butt cheek with mucho gusto and continued running. (I was surprised it didn't bruise, the slap was so forceful!) He was out of sight in a couple seconds. Out of shock, I just started laughing. Because it didn't scare me and it was just completely absurd. Granted, I'd probably be pissed if it ever happened again, but at the time it was too ridiculous to take seriously.

Los viejos verdes
And the third and most entertaining incident happened after J, L, and I did the "Camino de Santiago" from the border of Galicia to Portomarín. We heard the last 100 kilometers of the camino were alongside the highways and not nearly as pretty as the first 500 kilometers. Granted we didn't do the whole pilgramage. We started like at kilometer 400 and walked to kilometer 500...but anyway me estoy alejando del tema.

So we were in Portomarín waiting for the bus to Lugo where we would catch a second bus home to Santiago, and there were these two 70 year old guys waiting for the same bus. And J and I were talking to one and L was talking to the other and he began to hit on her, el viejo verde. Just then the bus arrived so we let the old foggies get on first. They sat in the back and then J and L sat behind the driver and I sat behind them where we wouldn't be bothered. After a bit on the bus, I felt something in my hair, and I ignored it because como tan weones...how could they be so dumb. But then I felt something touch my hair again; I turned and the two viejos were sitting behind me smiling at me.

I shouted at them:
Me: ¿Cuántos años tenéis?
el viejo verde 1: Tengo 70. (He said this with lots of dignity, his tone almost made me crack up in laughter).
Me: Porque vosotros estáis portando como si tuvierais 4 o 5 años. (I had just learned the subjuctive form "tuvierais" in grammar class, and was soo proud of myself for being able to use it correctly in an urgent situation like this one.)

And with that, the whole bus erupted. There were like 20 other passengers and they all had an opinion. "Leave the girls alone!" they said. "Behave." "Quit being rude." And the bus driver started braking and asked them "Do you guys want to get off the bus right now? Because if you don't leave them alone, you will be getting off." To which they responded "no." We were in the middle of nowhere. I can just imagine these two viejos verdes balling each other out after being dropped off on the highway in the middle of the prairie. Hahaha. Needless to say, they left us alone for the rest of the ride.

The large difference that I've experienced between Chilean and Spanish cultures with regards to the men who throw piropos, is that the Spanish are way more forward about it. I think they have a healthier relationship towards rejection. Whereas, in the Chilean incidents (I commented them on Kyle's blog), the men often try to "pasar piola"...like the dude on the bus who had his hand touching the side of my leg without me even knowing it. And then when I chewed him out, he just moved over and acted like nothing had happened. And no one said anything. Very typical of Chilean culture. And the other guy who crossed the line staring at me in the grocery store ran away before I could yell at him.

Granted not all Chilean guys are piroperos. Most of them are very chivalrous and fun to be with. While there are a lot of jotes in Chile-too many-I'm doing my part to fight back. Jejejeje.

And I don't mind the ones who are nice about. Every now and then when I'm having an I-feel-ugly day, it's nice to hear that not everyone agrees with me.

Yay, my kahla lilies are blooming

2008-08-27T11:30:00.001-07:00

Just one of the perks of living in Santiago. It's winter and look at my kahla lilies blooming outside. This is impossible in Minnesota.

Falta la foto de Minnesota con un metro de nieve. Lamentablemente no tengo una en forma digital. Here's where I should have a photo of Minnesota in winter:
But I don't. Here's a link of Minnesota in winter, however. Yeah it's pretty. But it gets pretty dull after six months.

My friend Katha gave these to me a few years ago when she moved back to Berlin. The plant had two small stems with two small leaves. I broke one stem in the micro ride from her place in Playa Ancha to my place in the port. I thought the plant was a goner. A couple weeks later, I moved to a much cuico-er part of Valpo and nursed the plant back to health on my balcony for a year. The view from there was absolutely delightful. It received sunlight all afternoon.

and when we moved to Santiago a couple years ago, the kahla began to bloom like crazy. Above you can enjoy a photo of the first three flowers of the season.

The photo of Valpo can also be titled "why I miss Valpo".

blogger world map

2008-08-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

I thought of something that should exist. It probably already does, as do lots of things that occur to me. Comes with living in a world with 6 billion other human beings, I guess. Anyway, the thing I thought of is that there should be a map on the internet and bloggers who blog about places, (like Chile for example) should all be classified together, perhaps by nationality. So if I wanted to read a blog about Iran, I could go to this map and click on Iran, and then I could have the choice of what nationality I wanted the writer to be - Iraní, Spanish, from the States, Chilean, Russian, etc. So as to read about lots of different places from lots of different perspectives in different languages. Anyone know of an internet site like this?

Chilean men

2008-08-22T16:58:00.000-07:00

So with the gringa blog network in Chile, we've decided to all post on the same subject from time to time. This time the topic is Chilean men. (These are generalizations and don't apply to all Chilean men, but do apply to many of them.)

Chilean men are hilarious. They have a good since of humor, sometimes a bit morbid, which makes it even funnier. They try to have fun all the time, and while I've never worked with them, probably even at work. They auto-define themselves as "güenos para el webeo" which means they enjoy teasing each other in a buena onda way and also they like to carretear. I don't know how many times I've heard a Chilean guy say, "Somos desordenados?", looking for me to say "yes". This translates as "We mess around in a disorderly way?" Yes they do.

If you say something to a Chilean guy that can be interpreted sexually, it will be. The other day I greeted a friend (with the typical greeting kiss to the cheek), and apparently my cheek was cold and he asked, “tenis frio?”, to which I replied, “bah, pa ná” so he said, “entonces, todo lo contrario.” So, yeah, he flipped my words around so that basically I was saying I was caliente. Me cagó.

They are entero jooooooootes!!!! Dude, have you seen the quantity of cafés con piernas there are in Santiago centro? Point made. I’m glad they have somewhere to blow off their steam because if not….God! I can’t even imagine. It would be sooo much worse! When I’m by myself in public, I don't make eye contact with ANY guy. Or I try not to anyway. Also I maintain a bored look on my face so they won’t bother me. And if I feel one is moving in to make a comment or something, I try to look pissed off. Actually the technique works really well. With my long face, I’ve even kept a man I know from saying hi to me in public. Later when I talked to Raúl, he said he didn’t want to approach me, because it looked like I was having a bad day. Hahaha. Poor guy. I told him it is my strategy to keep random guys on the street from talking to me, so Raúl confirmed that my strategy is working. On the other side of the coin, it’s sometimes fun when they are jotes, because it’s great for the ego! hahaha.

They love gringas; (that should be obvious from our little blog network) and actually they love women in general. I remember back before I met Kyle and my other expat gringa friends, my Chilean guy friends were ALWAYS asking me about my gringa friends. To which I would reply, you mean the ones who live in the States? They’d always ask me to bring my gringa friends to parties…and when I said I didn’t know any gringas, they would say, well bring your amigas chilenas. And now that I have gringa friends, obviously they still ask me to introduce them. And they say it doesn’t matter that most everyone is already dating or married.

The homosexual Chileans I know are also always thinking about sex. I think they are even more obsessed than the heterosexuals. It’s a sex-charged culture.

To read other gringa perspectives, go to Kyle's blog, where she has a list of links.

100 things I like about Chile

2008-08-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

My boy, obvio.
Mis amigos chilenos and my expat friends, also obvio.
Transantiago. Yes, I hear your groans. It's not perfect, but I like it. So ha! Coming from a small town in the States, public transportation is pretty much magical to me and always will be. I prefer not owning a car. But in most parts of the States you are pretty much obligated to own a car if you want to get anywhere. I remember before Transantiago started, I used to think how under-utilized the metro was. (Be careful what you think about.) Coming home from capoeira class, I was often the only one in the car. Now, the metro is quite saturated during peak hours, but I can wait for the second or third train if necessary. Plus now the trains are more frequent in general. On my way home from capoeira now there are generally 20 people in the car with me. And I obviously don't speak for everyone when I say I like Transantiago. There are probably people who have more problems commuting now, but I think it works pretty well. I've used public transport in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida a couple times. What a freaking joke, pain-in-the-ass frustration. To get from one end of Ft. Lauderdale to the other (where I needed to go) would have taken me 4-5 hours on bus, transferring 4 times, for a total of 5 buses. I ended up taking a taxi at the bus terminal, upon getting off the third bus and finding out I had at least two more buses to take to get there. So yeah, Transantiago is pretty good, even (especially) compared to lots of US cities. Though, I must say, Boulder and Denver, Colorado have pretty good public transport. But doesn't the exception just prove the rule? And should Boulder even count? Afterall, it's just that "small city north off Denver nestled between the Rockies and reality." So, yay for Transantiago.
The minimarkets. (Convenience stores.) They are everywhere and their prices aren't that expensive. In fact, one near my house sells fruits and vegetables for cheaper than the supermarkets.
The asado, (and of course the famous choripan). Ñami. The barbecue is the Chilean carrete par excellence. So eat, drink and be merry.
The TESL market. It's divine y totalmente inagotable. Two words: zero competition.
Hahaha, this one might offend the Chileans: Peruvian restaurants (like Ají Seco) and Peruvian picadas (check out the photo of the ceviche from Alpamayo). (I do like Chilean cuisine as well.)
That the woman doesn't take the man's last name. K lata tomar el apellido del marío!!!! This has never been something that appeals to me in the most remote way. I'll stick with my surname, thank you very much.
Inti-illimani
Valparaíso
El barrio puerto, La Matriz, la Plaza Echaurren, Café Journal (de Valpo), Sethmacher, la Bandera Azul, Pagano y Exodo (especially on weeknights) me está dando nostalgia, que paja.
Los cerros de Valpo. La "O", who knows what this micro is called now...
Café Vinilo
Cerro Alegre, obvio.
Los baños turcos (especially de Valpo)
El Muelle Barón, The Deck
Sonora Barón
Conmoción
Sopaipillas
Cazuela
Empanadas
Chorrillanas y borgoña, los Jota Cruz de Santiago y Valpo
Ritual - los ponce con fruta que liquadan para los clientes
Plaza Aníbal Pinto
Capoeira Sul da Bahia
Capoeira Muzenza
envases retornables
un local en cerro alegre cerca de pza San Luis que tiene un cine pequeño. Abrió como en 2005, pero se me escapa el nombre.
El Danubio Azul ojala viviera allá para frequentarlo más a menudo
Seafood in Con-Con
Maitencillo
Pichilemu
La Carretera Austral
Puyuhuapi Fjord
Las toninas
Bariloche hahaha, just joshing with you. How 'bout Lago Todos los Santos, instead? I recommend the lakes crossings. If you have a Chilean or Argentian carnet, it's a third of the price, and go from one travel agency to the other until they offer lo que te corresponde. The dudes in Argentina tried to charge me 3x the price. I went to 3 different travel agencies because I didn't trust the guys who were trying to sell me the ticket at full price and they had me convinced that I didn't get the "Chilean/Argentinian price", because although I had a Chilean carné, that didn't count. When I finally bought the Lakes crossing ticket, I went to a fourth agency and the lady there was the only one who was honest with me and she gave me the Chilean/Argentinian discount. This was in Bariloche.
La biblioteca de Santiago
El museo pre-colombino
My neighbors, although I don't know them very well, the ones I do know a bit, I get along with, and find to be good people.
Colo-Colo, ja!
Hacienda Los Lingues outside of San Fernando, best hotel I've ever stayed at in my life, and perhaps the best hotel I will ever stay in. It boasts being the oldest business in South America and one of the 15 oldest businesses in the world. I'm no historian, but sure, why not? If you have the money, I recommend staying there the weekend, especially in the summer. They have this gorgeous outdoor pool for guests exclusive use. This place is in the book A Thousand Places to See Before You Die.
el almuerzo, I like that it's generally a three-plate meal
el dieciocho
la cueca
los feriados Católicos!!! - you know those days we get off that no one really knows why, something to do with Catholicism
La Ramada de Viña
Chancho en Piedra
Victor Jara
Chilean writers
Chilean black humor
Chileans love to joke about who you look like. For example, as an AFS student here 10 years ago, my classmates said I looked like Lili Peréz. I just did a google search for images and I see what they mean. At first I found this custom random and somewhat annoying because they were always comparing friends to famous people and it seemed a bit exagerated to me. But I've gotten used to it. And to be honest, this trait has gotten funnier over the years. Several months back there was this chicana girl, Georgina, working here with Movistar. So she was a colleague of my boyfriend. The day I met her, Vuko invited me to the Bar Unión in Nueva York Street to have un sandwich de carne mechada (te lo encargo! y bogoña) with a few of his colleagues, including Georgina and Cristian (who I've known for a few years). We were conversing and suddenly Georgina said, "Don't you think Cristian looks like Mr. Rogers?" I burst out laughing, because He DOES!! That is the single most hilarious comparison anybody has ever made using the typical so-and-so looks like so-and-so Chilean joke format. (This may be as much a Latin American thing as a Chilean thing.)
el Coa
el Chilensis
los mil tambores
Spelling in Spanish, it's spelled just as it's pronounced. What a novelty!
the weather
the fruit: chirimoyas, lucumas, the export apples, oranges, strawberries, avocados, tomatos
my chirimoyo trees - they're pretty young, 2 years old maybe, but they smell like chirimoya fruit...sometimes known as a "custard apple" in British English. I agree with Mark Twain that the chirimoya "is the most delicious fruit known to man".
Patronato
la vega
cochayuyo - although I have yet to cook with it, it's very healthy, with lots of iodine and it's abundant here. Plus it's fun to say chochayuyo
Chilean wine
the olives, oh my lord, the best olives I've ever eaten in my life I had while carreteando at this Ariquen dude's apartment like four years ago. They were the size of golf balls and incredibly tasty.
yoga a luka
el premium - it's a vegetarian completo that they sell on a street off of Pio Nono (Bellavista), although I think it is more widely available now. It's also known as a "completo falso" because it doesn't have a hot dog. El premium comes with tomatoes, palta, melted cheese, Chilean green beans, mayo, and I can't remember what else. But it is tasty.
Portillo, Valle Nevado, etc.
la Universidad Católica de Valpo
tomar once
los hervidores eléctricos y termos - a tradition I will probably use the rest of my life to make tea, turkish coffee (not nescafé), etc.
the "cariño latino" and the social courtesies like greeting each other with a kiss on the cheek. I even feel like the carretes are more "acogedor", as long as you arrive before everyone is trashed, and probably even if you arrive after this point... I get the impression here that there are less "loners" than in the States, because Chilean culture, to an extent, has a way of including everyone...but perhaps the cost of this is the extreme pressure to conform...I noticed a lack of loners in high school here. Granted smaller class sizes probably make it more difficult to be a loner. My high school class here had like 20 people, whereas in the States we were 357 in my class. In fact, does a class of 350 even exist in Chile? Probably not.
el hecho de que los chilenos no se compliquen por las weas insignificantes...Chileans don't get their panties in a bunch over the little things..."pero, no te compliquis"
the "Chilean yes" -- sometimes
Chilean un-pc-ness. To an extent. I had my first experience of total un-political correctness in Spain for carnival 2002. Carnival is a time where you are supposed to do everything you won't be able to do during lent (and the rest of the year). In Ourense, Spain February 2002, the two costumes that the men were dressed up in were: transvestite ones and terrorist ones (six months after 9/11). Those terrorist outfits consisted of the typical white robes lots of Arabs wear and machine guns. One hundred percent un-pc, but there's something relieving about acknowledging a taboo. I think US culture goes waaaay too far to be pc. I think pc-ness is good in that it shows courtesy towards people different from you. But I think US culture takes pc-ness to the extreme that it just becomes another mask. Because the homophobic who refrains from making comments about homosexuals still hates them. And so it becomes a subject that can't even be breached. And there is where it goes too far......So, after that long introduction, I have begun to tener cariño toward the fact that here the world outside of Latin America is made up of four races: chinos, turcos, negros and gringos. And closer to home the nationalities actually get mentioned: argentinos, bolivianos, venezolanos, peruanos, colombianos, mexicanos, etc. I find this sort of endearing...and absolutely un-p.c. which makes it hilarious...
ritoque, la ciudad abierta...la mansa volá
The number of architects here. I met like one architect during the 22 years I lived in the States, whereas here half my friends are architects or graphic designers. It's a Chilean thing or something. I enjoy perusing this website that has to do with architecture and social housing. super interesting. (And the planteamiento del problema is really smart, explaing the economics of long-term planning when developing social housing, not a common type of planning here in Chile.)
On that note: Short-term planning - for some things. (Like parties.) I like how I mostly don't plan at all in advance here. It's cuts down on stress a ton and it makes me enjoy the present moment way more. I may plan a couple outings with friends a few weeks in advance, because it's nice to have something to look forward to, and it also assures people will be available. But it's nice to not be totally committed. I like to have a bit of flexibility. Too few commitments sometimes mean no one is available when I want to see people, and too many just becomes a bit too stressful, trying to pack it all in. A nice balance of committments and flexibility is the key for me.
The fact that people live with their parents until they are 25 or 30. I love it. After I graduated from the U, I moved back in with my folks for a couple years to save money. I may be the only person I know in the States who did that. I could have afforded to live on my own, but I wouldn't have saved nearly as much money. Plus I get along well with my folks and we took turns cooking dinner and walking the dogs. It worked out well for all of us. If I'd had a boyfriend at this point in my life, I probably would have lived with him, but I didn't have one, so there you go. Apparently I was waiting for a Chilean man.
The curfew I had in high school here. My curfew in high school in the States was midnight...definitely a strict one, in the way curfews go. And then I came to Chile for a semester in 11th grade, and my curfew was 8am. hahahaha. Apparently my host mom wanted to be sure her daughter and I were still alive the next day. I was soo excited, although I must say, we never partied til 8am. We were home usually between 3am and 5am, if my memory serves me. I changed host families half-way through my stay and my second set of host parents gave me a more reasonable curfew of 3am.
The fact there is not this constant push to be productive every second of the day, like in the States. I learned to indulge in my unproductiveness when I studied abroad in Spain. Here it's a bit different, but they definitely don't have that push to be productive at every second of the day. Granted I do work and study, play capoeira, hang out with friends, cook a lot, etc. But I try to simplify things often especially when short for time, which Chileans are excellent at. They are incredible improvisers always looking for the short cut. I love this about them (in lots of cases). It has its down side too, I don't negate that.
I've always been on "Latin time". And that works sooo much better in Latin America.
waxing my legs, armpits and bikini line costs $12. Ja! This is a significant advantage to living here, because I'm a hairy beast. hahahaaha

to be continued...

A divided country

2008-07-28T15:23:00.001-07:00

So basically one of the first things many gringos ask about when or before we get to Chile is Pinocho. It's a taboo subject among the natives because talking about El General is pretty much guaranteed to lead to the same old tired argument that has two positions: he was good for Chile, he was bad for Chile. There is no, "well, things sucked with Allende, so perhaps a cous de etat was necessary, but maybe Pinocho & co. se fue en la volada killing innocent people, etc." Seventeen years is a hell-ass long freaking time to have had him as dictator/general of this country and people have strong opinions about him...basically they love him or they hate him. Perhaps there are people out there who actually lived in Chile during those years and are indifferent or ambivalent about him. They probably live in Puyuhuapi. Anyway, I do plan to ask people their feelings about "El general" to see if I hear anything new with regards to the subject. I haven't brought the topic up since like 2000, because I got bored of hearing the same 2 answers...that he's great or that he sucked...and the same ideas and people, enfatically discussed over and over: communists, socialists*, civil war, capitalism, los desaparecidos, human rights, etc. Any other positions out there or am I accurate to say it's just these two?

*When I've heard Chileans talk about socialists, I get the impression they make it a synonym of communists. Anyone else feel this way?

Can I just say I'm sick of the freaking English language?

2008-07-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

I'm sick of writing "their" instead of "there". Meet you their, rather than meet you there. Really I think the whole English language should be re-transcribed, tackling the fundamental problem at the heart of English spelling: it was transcribed with the Latin alphabet, which only has 5 written vowels, whereas English has something like 14 vowel sounds. This is a problem. Let's compare this with Spanish which has 5 vowels and 5 vowel sounds. Sheer genius. We need an English spelling reform, because being an expat, all these annoying spelling exceptions are forgotten. And that's not okay when you are an English teacher. It's embarrassing being corrected by my students.

Porque Colo Colo es Chile

2008-07-21T15:02:00.000-07:00

So after four and a half years in Chile, three and a half of which I have spent lots of time watching soccer games on TV, especially Colo Colo, the Chile national team, European leagues, etc., I finally stumbled upon a good opportunity to see Colo Colo en vivo. Yupi. The game was played in the Estadio Monumental at three thirty in the afternoon and was very exciting because 1) I actually saw the team live and 2) I experienced what it was like in general, how the fans were, the vendors, the 500-peso shot of coffee, etc. It was a bit overwhelming at first. I was soooo excited, because más encima Colo-Colo is my fave sports team in the world. I was super curious to see what it would be like, what would surprise me about it and I was excited to see the game LIVE. Yay.

Once upon a time I went to a hockey game in Prague and I remember the highlight was the mulled wine they sold between periods. A warm tasty beverage to combat the cool December evening. jeje I can assure you they don't sell alcohol at Colo Colo games porque quedaría la mansa cagá. The highlight of this game, apart from seeing Colo Colo play LIVE, was la garra blanca. There were no cheerleaders at the Colo Colo game. They aren't at all necessary. Instead there is a whole section of dedicated Colo Colo fans that make up the self-designated "garra blanca" (the white fighting spirit) whose motto is: "Tu muerte fue jugando. Lo nuestro será cantando." They lived up to their motto and sang the whole entire game from start to finish, taking a break only at half-time. The garra blanca has this big, loud drum to keep the beat. (I think this is typicalyof soccer fans in Chile and perhaps the Greater Latin America.) They continued playing after the game, while we filed out and headed to the car parked at a nearby mall. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have heard the garra blanca is composed mostly of flaytes, so while they give ambiance and entertain, they are best kept at a distance.

The Rangers won 3-2, BOO, but it was a pretty good game. The ref seemed a bit unfair, but it's harder to judge this live because there were no instant replays to get a better look at what happened. The funny thing was, a couple of times during the game I found myself waiting for the instant replay. Once for a possible foul and another time I wanted to see the replay of a goal. But no, this doesn't exist en vivo, duh. Perhaps I should go to live games more often. I must've overdosed on soccer games viewed on TV. The other thing I felt was missing was the roster. Claro, on TV, the commentary people say the names of the players all the time. But since Suazo and Sanchéz have moved on to other teams, I only know one of the players by memory - Sanhueza. Obviously most Colo Colo fans probably know the key players by name, so a roster is totally unnecessary, but I would have enjoyed having one. Perhaps I can check out the official website before going to the next game. Or bring a radio, like what some people do to listen to the commentary. En fin, estuvo entrete la cuestión. A ver si voy a otro más adelante.

deja vu?

2008-07-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

I took this picture in 2006, graffiti-art in Valpo.

Santiago 2008

Puta que tienen buen graffiti.

Garage sales in Chile: lost in translation

2008-07-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

I've had two quasi garage sales in Chile and I'm clear that the Chileans had no idea WHAT I was doing selling my stuff so cheap. But they did understand I was selling pretty nice things for good prices. And that's all they had to understand to participate. Before moving from Valpo to Santiago, I went through my closet to get rid of things that didn't fit right or that were a bit old and worn out. I gave some of my stuff to friends, but the things no one wanted I got ready to take to Avenida Argentina on Wednesday. I laid everything out in my apartment first to make sure it all fit on the plastic I had. I imagined the porteños were going to descend upon my goods pretty quickly and it was going to be total chaos once I got to the Avenida. So I wanted to have a go-through at laying out all my stuff once beforehand. Here's the test run in my apartment:

I got to Avenida Argentina and laid out my stuff and sat and waited. I was at the very end of the line of people selling used stuff. On Wednesdays people line up for blocks with their stuff laid out like so. I was surprised that people walked by and didn't even "pescar". I'm sure they thought it was weird that a gringa was there selling her stuff. They probably assumed my prices were comparable to the other vendors, or even more expensive since my clothing was from the States and probably better quality than theirs. After about 20 minutes sitting there reading the newspaper, a woman finally came up and asked how much something cost. I gave her such a cheap price she didn't even try to bargain with me. There was no point. If she hadn't bought the item, someone else would have for that price. They were garage-sale prices. The thing is, all the other vendors there sell used stuff to supplement their income, so their prices are correspondingly higher. The idea of a garage sale barely exists here in Chile. I have seen signs for a garage sale in the Barnechea here in Santiago, once, but have never seen a garage sale here. Old stuff is much more valuable here at the end of the world.

My part of the sidewalk soon turned into a small tornado of porteños asking me how much my stuff costed and passing me the money. I sold almost everything in about 10 minutes. A few people walked off with stuff without paying, but I imagined that would happen, and it didn't bother me. The point was to make a few bucks while getting rid of extra stuff. I kind of did it for the experience of it all. I was curious what it would be like. I got the idea from a friend of mine and her husband; they had sold a few things there before relatively quickly, pocketed the cash and were off.

When the crowd finally moved on, I was left with only a few things. It was time to go home. The vendedora kiddy corner from me started talking to me, so I went over to chat with her. She was disappointed that her sales weren't as good as mine, and was perhaps a little upset with me. She may have felt I stole her clients. I doubt it. I've never seen a Chilean street vendor stormed the way I was. And I did it ONCE in Valpo, whereas she's probably there every Wednesday and Saturday. If she'd had any idea what I was doing, she would have bought me out and then easily resold my things at double or triple the price. I empathized a bit with her and offered what was left. She was going to be there all day selling anyway. That seemed to cheer her up. Plus it was nice for me. Otherwise I would have had to have gone to Calle Serrano to give the rest to the used clothing store there. (One of the places that blew up in February 2007 because of a gas leak.)

Garage Sale number II: The garage sale to end all garage sales in Chile.
After living in Santiago for a year, I had some more things that I was getting no use of. This time I went to Parque Forestal, where people sell their used stuff in Santiago Centro. I felt a bit more at home there, because while in Valpo all the people selling stuff were older, here in Santiago, all the people were about my age. They were selling some pretty cute stuff. I was looking forward to selling quickly so I could check out their things. I had just got my clothing laid out when a cop started walking down the street talking to the vendors. He worked his way up the street until he got to me. He said we all had to leave because we didn't have permission to sell our things. Of course, coming from a garage-sale culture, I cross-examined the police dude trying to understand WHAT the problem was. The core of the matter was that the licensed vendedores nearby complained about the "informal" vendedores because we steal all the customers. We could sell at a better price since the informal vendors don't pay taxes. That was a good-enough explanation for me. Well, that, and I had no other choice but to pack up. With a bit of frustration --I hadn't had this problem in Valpo-- I moved on. I was having a hard time accepting that this wasn't going to work out because I had a HUGE backpack full of stuff and didn't feel like going all the way home with it. What a waste of an afternoon. So I walked down some random street near Cal y Canto, and pulled the stuff out of my backpack and set up on the sidewalk. I was the only one selling things. So this generous Chilean dude came up to me, a gringa with her backpack, selling everything in it, and asked me what had happened. They kicked us out of Parque Forestal- I said- I'm just selling some stuff. He walked on. About five minutes later he came back with chocolate milk and cookies and handed them to me. And then he handed me like 2000 pesos. I tried to refuse the food and money. He didn't get it at all. And how would he? He thought I was a gringa backpacker who was so broke that I was resorting to selling all of my belongings to scrap some change together to have lunch and maybe find a hostel, since más encima, they'd just kicked me out of the park! He probably thought I was sleeping in the Park. It bothered me a bit that he didn't understand that I was FINE, and just trying to get rid of some stuff and make some pocket change simultaneously. Le estaba pasando películas con cuático. He wouldn't listen to my explanations because he was SURE I was a broke backpacker. I realized there was no way this experience would translate into his reality except with me as the broke backpacker. So I gave in. He handed me the food and money, turned around, and hurried off.

Then, you know those people who take care of parked cars here in Chile? They turned into my clients. I had a couple nice pairs of men's shoes and pants that I was selling. They were putting together their tips to come buy half of my stuff. Meanwhile, a few passerbys stopped and bought clothing. I was done in about a half hour. On my way home, I decided not to have any more garage sales here. Because in a place that doesn't have the affluence of the States, the culture really doesn't support this type of thing and CLEARLY doesn't understand it.

Future useless things I donated to the hogar de cristo, but finally I figured out the best solution for old stuff is leaving it in the closet by the garbage shoot. That way, either my neighbors take the stuff, or more likely, the people cleaning the building get it. And I'm sure it's very useful for them. It works as a bit of a supplement to their pay, a tip. And it's easier to get rid of stuff. This method works well for everyone.

The "Chilean yes" revisited

2008-07-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

Well like Emma and the people who have commented on her blog entry have made clear, the "Chilean yes" is not always a "yes yes". Personally, I interpret it more as "that's-a-really-cool-idea-if-it-works-out yes". Although sometimes I do believe it is more like a no, but the person says yes anyway just so as to not cagar la onda. This can be a bit difficult to deal with if you have stuff you need to get done, like teaching English classes, especially if you are on a schedule. It is convenient to be able to distinguish between these shades of yes. Oh yes! But personally I think, even the person who is saying yes, doesn't always know if their yes is a yes yes, a maybe yes, or a no yes. One thing to do in this kind of situation is to try to be in communication as much as possible with the other person.

Sometimes a person will stand you up ...like you had plans...you were going to meet at a time and an hour and the other person doesn't show. I must say this has happened to me, but rarely. And then they don't even call to say they weren't going. Now if this happened with a gringo friend of mine, this would scare me, because I would think something had happened to them. I would call to see if they were okay. One day, I was stood up by a Chilean and confused about the whole thing, like asking myself if there had been a mis-communication, did I really make plans with this person? Am I living in some fantasy world? I was sure I'd made plans. Out my confusion came a very clear thought...well, obviously if la Vero didn't show up, she couldn't come. It was so obvious, I laughed aloud. It's just that simple. The next time I will be sure to confirm with her before we get together. Now that I've said this...most of my Chilean friends won't stand me up. They will call to say they can't go, if we have set a place and time to get together, and something comes up.

Now there is a second type of "yes" during the formation of plans. It's like an incubation period. This is before a date and time are specified. With some friends the realization of plans are more assured than with others. Some plans don't survive this period and sort of die off and are not spoken of again. But it's okay because we had never set a time and place. And it was a possibility that just died off. It can always be reincarnated at a better moment in the future. This exists in gringolandia too-when you have "tentative plans", but in the end they don't work out. However, I think its much more common that plans die before they are hatched here in Chile. So I do think that from time to time we gringos confuse "tentative plans" with "actual plans". In my experience, Chilean plans do generally have a more tentative character to them.

Plus I think it’s better that plans fall through from time to time. I think gringos are a bit too “forzados” about things sometimes and this really kills the onda. Although, there is also a time for being forzado about things, especially when dealing with inertia. It’s like you need the right mix of onda and commitment/forzado-ness to get together and have a good time.

For me, the biggest frustration of the "Chilean yes" was not understanding it. As soon as I understood it, I could employ it as well. Why would I do this? Well, this type of “yes” has its strength. It keeps the possibility open, maintains the buena onda. Sometimes the “gringo no” is a total possibility killer. Nobody wants to kill possibility, possibilities like going out dancing together, or making sushi, or having an asado and watching the Chilean National Soccer Team, or crocheting with your boyfriend's grandma. But sometimes in life, we have to say no to some of these possibilities because we are already committed...like with work, or with other friends in other places, or maybe you're sick or tired, etc. You can't always say yes, can you? Maybe not a good idea. So when do I employ the "Chilean yes"? I haven't distinguished too many subtleties about when I give this yes, but I do do it. But there are two cases where I will give it and I haven't even paid attention how often I do it, because I learned it by osmosis, and was not even conscious that I do it until just lately. If I notice that someone (usually a Chilean) is going out on a limb, like arriesgandose to invite me to get together with them, and, for whatever reason, I can't, I will sometimes say yes. I think I'm safe to say that most (perhaps all) human beings don't like rejection. Now some cope with it better than others, but who likes to be turned down? Not many people. In these situations, the yes I give isn't a yes yes. It's a that-would-be-really-cool-if-it-worked-out yes. (This leaves the person inviting you more likely to invite you again in the future, because since you said yes, you obviously were interested. Unless of course you always say yes and then always cancel, because in the end this is like saying no.)

I don't know if the other person notices what kind of yes I'm giving. Perhaps they do. Perhaps they don't. But the important thing is I'm not matando la onda. Although in this stage of the “incubation period” of our plans, I don't generally commit to a time and place. And if that moment arrives (it doesn't always) to set a time and place, or if the invitation comes up again, and I'm sure I can't go, then I will say no...like I really wanted to but...this happened. But this is a lot gentler than saying no outright, off the bat. And how do you know, like really know, that you aren't going to be able to go, anyway? Perhaps the stars will align (as they do for me, from time to time) and you will be able to go after all.[1]

After I started saying yes when I meant no or maybe, I realized that occasionally plan A would fall through and all of the sudden my no yes became yes yes. And this is really important in Chile because my experience is that plans fall through more often here than in the States. So this is the second occasion when I’ll use a no yes or maybe yes. If I have tentative plans with someone else, which I can’t confirm or dis-confirm when invited to do plans B, I sometimes say yes, when really it’s a maybe yes. And of course you can say...I'm doing such and such a thing that day and if it works out, I'll meet up with you afterward.

Not all Chileans are so ambiguous about making plans, nor do they all stand you up. Actually, as I was writing this, I was chatting on msn with a Chilean friend, and I didn't even mention what I was writing and he tells me he had been stood up by a friend the other day and it bothered him, he asked me, “how can people be so indolent?” Although I empathized with him, it struck my funny bone that he brought the subject up just at that moment.

He went on to make a really good point on punctuality: “Creo que es sentido común [llegar a la hora], somos seres sociales y funcionamos con reloj.” He’s right.

On the other hand, what I like about a certain impunctuality that I perceive in Chilean culture is that there is more tolerance for people who arrive a bit late, which is nice, because I don’t always arrive on time either.

So the "Chilean yes" has it's strength, especially when negotiating the social world. The important thing is being able to distinguish it and knowing how to work with it.

Note: I am distinguishing cultural phenomenon using Thick Description (I'll probably formulate an abstract of this theory at some point in this blog's life). Here and here are a couple of summaries.

[1] Alejandro Jodorowsky wrote about this a bit in one of his books. What I remember reading was something like this…he was invited to do a conference in some place and he didn’t even go because he intuitively knew that, although he had agreed to do this a certain time and place, that it wasn’t going to work out. So when he doesn’t show, someone goes to find him and she brings him to the place he’s supposed to give the conference…and they realize there has been a problem, the people were all there to see a different speaker, because the conference date was mixed up on the advertisements. Jodorowsky said…I told you it wasn’t going to work out. But he ended up giving his conference anyway. It’s a funny story. Anyway, so its almost like sometimes you have to make your plans as much with your intuition as with reality.

Carreteando de visita

2008-06-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

Hace como un mes, salí con V, el C y la P. Habíamos preparado un sushi super rico en la casa del C y después salimos a sueciar, jeje. Fuimos a Ile Habana un rato y después andamos por Providencia buscando algún lado para seguir webeando y en eso topamos con el hermano de la Pamela y su amigo. Sugieron que todos fueramos al Ático en Ñuñoa. Partimos para allá. Llegamos y negociamos un poco con el loco en la puerta por el precio de las entradas. Subimos al segundo piso y pedimos nuestros tragitos y la cuestión. Arriba estaba más o menos piola. Bajemos al primer piso donde había una pista de baile, y ponían música ochentera. Estaba LLENO de weones. La luz estaba bajita así que no se veía mucho. Nos acomodamos los cuatro en la pista de baile, dejando nuestros abrigos en un mueble detras de nosotros. Después de bailar una canción, se metieron dos minas entre V/yo y C/P y se pusieron a bailar. Me dio mala espina al toque. Una de ellas estaba bailando con los brazos sueltos y me tocó el bolsillo trasero de mis jeans dos veces en como 10 segundos "por accidente". P y C subieron al segundo piso y yo le dijé al V que hicieramos lo mismo, ya que encontraba las minas enteras flaites. Obviamente estabamos las dos parejas juntos, para qué se van a meter entre medio? Na que ver. Terminó la canción y subimos. V me dijo que yo fuera adelante. En eso una de las chicas flaites le tocó el poto del V, cachando si hubiera algo en su bolsillo. Mientras V le pichuleó, voy acercándome a las escaleras y un weón curado me agarró de la mano y me tiró hacia él. Me enojé más que la chucha, y miré hacia V con cara de "pitéale a este weón desubicado". De reflejo, V le da un codazo a la cara, marcando no más, pa asustar, y le manda a la cresta.

Subí y les conté a P y C y subió V. En eso se le acerca uno de los amigos del weon desubicado y empieza a pedir perdón al V, que su amigo está curado, que hay que disculparle y la wea, y el amigo era tan latero que V le dijo que hablara con sus relaciones públicas mejor, y en eso el C asumió y le dijo que su amigo era el desubicado y que dejaron de webear.

De allí no tuvimos más problema. Pero sentí todo el rato que estaba de visita porque no cachaba el lugar, la gente, el barrio y además los weones andaban hinchando con cuático. Lo bueno es que mi equipo era bien sólido. jeje

The Valpo apartment search

2008-06-19T07:44:00.000-07:00

I just read Leigh's blog entry Adventure on wheels and was reminded of various experiences I've had here dealing with/related to public transportation. This one has to do with going to the end of the bus 1 line in Playa Ancha.

After living in Viña for a few months back in 2004, I decided it was time to move out of my host family's house and find an apartment or house or something. I wanted to live in Valpo, an artsy, edgy, bohemic University city. So I saw a bunch of apartments, many of which I found ugly and overpriced. I'm sure they were giving me the gringo price. I saw a couple holes, I swear to God. But one of the stupider, funnier, scarier experiences was when I went to see an apartment in Playa Ancha. There was one for rent for 40.000 pesos ($80 dollars) a month and it was two bedroom. I'd been to Playa Ancha. My host father worked at the University of Playa Ancha. Cool, I thought, I'll be near la Universidad de Playa Ancha. The 40.000 peso figure was really surprising to me and I wanted to see the apartment as much out of curiousity as real interest in living there. So I called the number and the guy said to take the micro 1 and to get off at the Rodoviario. Okay, easy enough I thought. I caught the 1 and sat on it and we went on and on and on. Like 40 minutes into the trip I already knew I would not be renting the apartment because it was so far from the U. I had no idea how huuuuge Playa Ancha is. So I decide to call the guys and cancel, because they were waiting to show the apartment, but I no longer had cell phone service. So I thought, well the apartment is in front of the Rodoviario so I'll just go anyway and tell them I'm not interested. I was already on the way. We finally get to the end of the line, and the place is absolutely beautiful. The apartments are on a cliff right by the ocean. It kind of reminded me of Ireland. I imagine its a sort of ghetto-style Laguna Verde. (I've never been to Laguna Verde, but would like to go some time.)

So I get off the bus, and the driver asks me what I'm doing there..I said I'm going to look at an apartment. I got halfway across the street, totally freaked out and ran back and got on the same bus to head back home. Although the neighborhood didn't look too creepy, it was. It was like 45 minutes before I had cell phone service and I called the guys and told them I wasn't interested, that I'd been out there to the Rodoviario, freaked out and headed back to Viña.

But these liminal experiences are useful to get clear what a gringa should and should not do when in the "third world". And going to see a 2 bedroom apartment that costs $80 dollars a month in urban Chilito falls in the second category.

good advice: develop your people filter

2008-06-16T07:59:00.001-07:00

So my experience with friendships with other gringos-friends I’ve made in Colorado, Minnesota, Spain and Chile-for the most part, is, that if a gringo seems to be buena onda – like fun, and enjoyable to be with, (s)he is enjoyable to be with and turns out to be a good friend. That strongly contradicts with my experience of friendships with Chilenos. Here I’ve found that not all people who seem to be buena onda, are. My first year in Chile, I had a bit of a hard time due to this difference. The mala-onda gringos I've met in my life, don’t even make an effort to seem buena onda. What’s the point? But apparently here in Chile it pays off, because it seems to be rather common that someone comes off as a good friend, but screws you over when given the chance. One day, upset and confused about some Chilean "friendships", I went to talk to my host mom, V, about some dynamics that I just didn't understand.

She gave me a very simple, good piece of advice. She said, you need to develop your “filter” for friendships. Just her saying that was enough for me, I understood what I had to do and put her advice to really good use. It's like I keep my new Chilean friends at arm's distance, so to speak, and don't trust them until we have a solid, understandable history. If I don't understand how the other person is relating to me, then I assume they are operating from different values and principles than my own and I don't trust them. I don't treat them bad but no me entrego, tampoco. I got along much better after receiving this advice, but not before stumbling along with it all for awhile. The nice thing about people who seem friendly and then turn out to be assholes is that it really makes you appreciate your real friends.

This I think is pretty upsetting to gringos, I've noticed other gringos go through similar things. For us, it sucks, because we like to trust each other. We're just used to it. Unless a gringo seems like a total jerk, I generally trust them. And really, to come to the realization that I couldn't trust anyone off the bat was pretty earth-shaking and upsetting for me, but I'm over it now because I'm blessed with a bunch of really nice friends here in Chile, both chilenos and afuerinos.

Another thing I found is that in Chile, it was much easier to make friends with guys than girls, at first anyway. I think it partly had to do with that I knew more guys than girls. In fact, I knew few chilenas when I arrived. The other factor was that lots of Chilean guys who I thought were my friends-like in a platonic-gringo-friendship sort of way-were actually joteandome. (Platonic friendships between males and females seem few here, not that common.) Ultimately they were interested in hanging out with me, not because they wanted to be my friends, but because they wanted to be my boyfriends. To be honest, I still find this annoying.

But my filter reminds me:

that most guys who show interest want to date (I'm not sure this is totally true, but compared with gringo guys it happens waaaay more often, In fact it rarely happens with gringos.)
that I shouldn't trust new friends until they gain my confianza. I sort of have a guilty-until-provend innocent mentality with the Chilean "other". Sorry, but I didn't arrive with that, so there is something to it.
trust my intuition, almost always
if a person is consistently buena onda and I enjoy their company and my intuition says they are ok, and we have a bit of history together, then I trust them.

When I lived with my host mom V, I found her quite prejudiced against people. When she met someone - generally someone about my age - right away, she often said she didn't like the person. I found her prejudice harsh from my innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality, but now I totally understand her, and realize she just has a highly-developed people filter. And you really have to pre-judge just so you don't get screwed over by someone. I'm prejudice too now. Upon meeting new chileans I don't always trust them to begin with. Sometimes there's something about them that makes me feel uneasy, and I start to watch my things, to make sure they don't steal from me, etc. If I meet friends of friends, they are almost always really cool people, so I trust them. But when I meet new people that my friends don't know, I do keep a bit of distance until I feel I can trust them. And I can't think of a case where someone has passed through the filter and then screwed me over. It seems to be working.

July 13: I'd like to add that this is my extreme filter, the one I had to develop four years ago because my social life was too unstable and unpredictable. I still use it from time to time. However, for the most part, I don't have to, because I've done a really good job of surrounding myself with really cool Chileans (and fellow foreigners) that I trust. This filter is quite useless when I'm hanging with my friends.

taxista care palo

2008-06-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

And speaking of sketchy cab drivers, I only rely on sketchy alternatives when I've run out of options. A few years ago my folks came down South for a visit. The last night of their trip we stayed in the Best Western in Providencia. My parents had these beastly bags that they lugged with them for 3 weeks and getting them to the airport meant finding a larger-than-average taxi. So I asked the dude at the desk if he knew of any taxis that were vans, so as to fit everything in. He said no, but that he could get us a taxi with a big trunk. Me dio mala espina. First of all, he hadn't even seen the luggage that my folks had and he told me the taxi's trunk would be big enough, and secondly, the hotel receptionist seemed pretty flaite to me. So I turned him down and called Transvip. Unfortunately with them you can't set the time they will pick you up at. They ask what flight you are on and they decide when to swing by your hotel. And I wanted to be sure my parents got out of the country, hahaha, so, exhausted all other possibilities, I got help from the flaite recepcionist.

The taxi driver was pretty grungy looking when he showed up, and grungy is not in fashion in Chile and never was. You can deal with a grungy person from the States, and their grundge doesn't necessarily speak to their character, at least not in the same way. Here it means your dealing with a sketchball. So this grungy character shows up at our hotel and of course he didn't even have the orange license plate that all taxis in Chile have. Seriously, there's no way the receptionist didn't know one taxista. If he's going to do a favor for a friend, at least pick a friend who's a taxista. Anyway, the driver got the luggage into the trunk, barely, and we were off. When he dropped us off at the airport, there were cops right by the drive-up, so the taxi driver started trying to hurry my dad up in paying him. Of course, my dad understood about 20 words in Chilensis (not bad), but his Coa sure wasn't up to par to be able to understand the stressed-out pseudo taxi driver ranting at him to hand over the money quickly. Vuko and I were both pretty disgusted with the guy. It wasn't our fault that he wasn't a real taxi driver. That is most certainly his problem. I was kind of hoping the police would notice us so they'd fine the guy, because I really didn't like putting my folks in that position. My parents didn't even know that anything was amiss, and how would they? I'm glad for that. It makes the vacations even better.

Living in Chile, networking, networking, networking

2008-06-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

After living in Chile four years I feel like I've gotten a "diplomado" in business, specializing in networking and negotiating. To get anything done well here, you pretty much have to work among people you know. For example, when Vuko and I moved from Valpo to Santiago, we were lucky Vuko's mom had the number of a good truck driver, and it even turned out to be cheaper because Vuko had a friend who wanted to move from Santiago to Valpo. Originally he was going to charge us 80.000 pesos for the move, he charged Vuko's friend and us 100.000 pesos, and we split this figure 5o/50. I doubt you could find a cheaper 3/4 moving truck complete with 2 teenagers to help move the stuff. And then when V's grandparents moved, they called the same truck driver. To look for a truck driver in the yellow pages is to risk a number of problems: perhaps they don't show up, maybe they charge you 3 times what they should, or in a worse scenario perhaps they steal stuff from you. That's why networking is so important and pretty much mandatory for getting anything done well here in Chile. The other reason networking is good, is that to get a good job, often Chileans rely on pitutos, someone that can hook them up with a good job, or who can get them into a good medical or law school.

The other important thing here in Chile is negotiating. It seems everything here is about negotiating. To bring faulty products back to the stores, sometimes you really have to build your case on why the store should take their low-quality product back. It seems each worker, at least in the multinationals, has to negogiate his own salary, and what you're paid has more to do with your negotiating skills than the quality of your work, although perhaps good-quality work does give you more negotiation power. Personally, I mostly negogiate with taxis, because they are famous for ripping people off, and they specialize at screwing over foreigners with their money, like charging triple the cost of the ride. I generally figure out how far I'm going before getting in the cab and then do the math to get a ballpark figure. Asking someone who takes a similar cab ride is useful to know what the ride should really cost, and then you just have to be stubborn and turn the ride down if the driver wants to overcharge. And, in normal situations, wait for the next taxi. And then there's always Sernac, servicio al consumidor in Chile, if you want to report a person or company that screwed you over.

Restaurant reviews: Ají Seco, completos in Ñuñoa

2008-06-08T13:46:00.001-07:00

Ají Seco is a Peruvian restaurant in Santiago Centro, actually there's two. There's a small one and a larger one, both on San Antonio. I recommend the Ceviche mixto especial. It's to die for, a mix of shellfish and fish marinated in limón de pica, ají, cebolla corta pluma and accompanied with supersized corn kernels and this other variet of corn similar to cornuts. It's soooo good and not pricey. I hope its open on Sundays because I could totally go for another cerviche peruana.

Vuko ordered a tasty dish called arroz chaufa tres sabores; it came with rice, chicken, beef, shrimp, scallions, red peppers, and it tasted like it had fresh ginger and coriander and a few other spices. Christian ordered tacu tacu con lomo liso which features a mix of beans and rice topped with Sirloin steak and fried eggs. I tried the tacu tacu, which was good, as was Vuko's dish. I was craving vegetables so I ordered panache de verduras, which is basically stir-fried veggies. They were tasty as well.

The other good eats place I tried this weekend is a completo stand/restaurant in Ñuñoa. Apparently you can't call yourself Ñuñoino until you've tried these completos. They were absolutely delicious, with topped with tons of mashed avocado. And at only like 750 pesos. It hits the spot. Unfortunately, I can't remember what street it was on, because it was definitely a ways from Plaza Ñuñoa. But Vuko thinks it was at Grecia/Ramón Cruz.

So there are a couple of Peruvian dudes who work at the minimarket where I shop - go figure. Anyway they are nice guys and I've known them for a couple years now, although I've never asked their names and I don't think they know mine either. The other day I told them I'd eaten some Peruvian food, and it was cute, their eyes lit up and they asked me what I'd had and if I'd tried the ceviche. They also asked me which restaurant I'd been to. I said Ají Seco, and they said it was good, but one of them said there is an even better Peruvian restaurant at Teatinos and Rosas. I'm taking him as an authority on the subject (obviously) and plan to check out this other restaurant at some point in the near future. Ojalá.

Ceviche en 6.000 pesos en el Restoran Alpamayo en Teatinos con Rosas.
Ñami. Ñami. Ñami. Me dio hambre. Raw fish and shellfish ceviche, doused in lemon juice, acompanied with potatoes, sweet potatoes, giant corn, regular corn, corn nut like dealies...super tasty, onions. It's to die for.

Experiences with Customer Service

2008-05-28T09:17:00.001-07:00

I'm not the first one to complain about customer service here in Chile, nor the last. Emily has posted about it a couple times. Gringas and Chileans complain about it, because it, for the most part, sucks.

Today I went to the grocery store to return yogurt that was bad although it wasn't expired...at first they said they wouldn't take it back because I had bought it a week earlier. Too much time had passed. The girl said the store can't be responsible for yogurt that perhaps was left out of the refrigerator. I told her I hadn't left it out of the refrigerator. "Pero 'ta maaalo", dije varias veces y me salió hasta un poco flaite. Te lo juro, me desconocí. So I asked to speak to the girl's boss. She went and got him and he told me the same thing, that more than a week had passed, no go. I told him that doesn't change the fact that they sold a bad product. After a bit more discussion and stubborness on both ends, he went to talk to his boss, I guess. He disappeared and came back and then went and changed my yogurt. "The customer is always right" mantra doesn't exist here. Not that it should...

Dealing with customer service in Chile you basically have to play the role of your own attorney and make your case on why they should change the product for you. (I had bought expired yogurt in that supermarket once before, but the date on the receipt was later than the date on the yogurt, so they exchanged it with no problem, although technically I could have bought more yogurt since then and returned a previously bought yogurt with a later receipt.) And it's almost not worth it to even deal with expired yogurt. Other times I've had problems, I just throw it out. But I like to have a righteous little brawl sometimes. If I ever move back to the States, I might actually miss arguing with customer service here. It's kind of fun, in small quantities..especially if you arguing about a few yogurts that cost like 50 cents each.

Comparing customer services...Vuko plays the electric guitar. He has been to several music stores in Santiago and Viña del Mar and has tried out many guitars. The salesmen are often a bit hesitant about letting customers try out the guitars, and actually one time Vuko asked to try a guitar, and the salesman replied, "Are you going to buy it?" Of course Vuko replied, "Well, obviously not if I don't try it." But seriously, can you really ask a customer that? Apparently so. Total asshole question, are you going to buy it? We went to Guitar Center in the States (the highlight of Vuko's trip to Minnesota) and he was blown away by the customer service (as well as the walls packed with hundreds of guitars). We walked in and he started looking at guitars and the sales guy came up to us and asked if he wanted to try one, and then he set Vuko up at a huge amp and told him to take his time. And, luckily, the sales guy even spoke Spanish, which was a total relief for me because I don't speak guitar talk in Spanish or English. Vuko bought a couple effects there, but both of them were more expensive than he'd seen on the competition's website (with him he had printouts of the products and prices he'd seen at both American Boutique and Guitar Center) and Guitar Center met the competition's prices. Whereas if you try to do that in Chile, the salesmen would tell you, "Well, if American Boutique has better prices, go there."

Now to a degree I understand that customer service here has to be different. It's a different culture. In Chile, plagiarism is customary, photocopying entire books is normal. Universities are surrounded by photocopying places. (Granted books here are expensive.) Chileans come across to me as thrifty people.

Lots of Chileans (and perhaps Latin Americans in general) try to find loopholes in store's policies in their favor. I heard that a store in Florida actually had to start a rule of not letting Latin Americans (from countries outside the US) buy cameras and then return them a week later. Turns out people were buying the cameras, taking photos of their vacations, transferring the photos to a pendrive and then returning the camera at the end of the vacation. So I understand that "The customer is always right" probably wouldn't work at all here, because the companies might go bankrupt. But even so, customer service here is much worse than it could be. But I s'pose Chilean customer service does it's part to slow comsumeristic globalization, because who wants to shop when the vendedores (sellers) can be such a pain in the ass?

I've had problems with customer service in the States as well. I remember one time I had to hire a lawyer to fight credit card fraud. Somehow, someone got into my mail, got my new credit card and then charged like $800 in cell phone bills. I found out a month or two later thru a bitchy phone call from the credit card company where the lady was trying to accuse me of charging the cell phone bills (which were in someone else's name). She didn't believe me that I had no idea that someone had gotten a hold of my new credit card. Luckily, as a University student I only had to pay the University lawyer $15 to take care of my case. But this is the exception to the customer service rule in the United States. Whereas mediocre to bad customer service is pretty much the rule here in Chile.

JLo's Ciudad Juarez movie

2008-05-28T07:02:00.001-07:00

Vuko and I went to see Bordertown the other day. He suggested we go which surprised me. I assumed he'd never seen a JLo movie before (I was right), and didn't actually try to dissuade him because the whole Ciudad Juarez deal interests me, even if I have to get an idea of life there by watching JLo's typical righteous, femenist (and now ultra-gringa) journalist character bumble around Ciudad Juarez. The story is about a chicana reporter who goes to Ciudad Juarez to investigate a few things related to the women who work in the maquiladoras: why so many women who work in sweat shops there are killed, who is killing them, and why the police don't do anything about it. Her character seemed pretty accurate, as did the other characters: the mexican journalist, (Antonio Banderas), the chic from the maquiladora, and then this rich chic that pseudo-helped them out, but really couldn't due to social pressures. Actually more than JLo's character, what annoyed me about the movie was how the plot unraveled. If JLo's character really acted the way she did, she should have been dead within days of arriving to Ciudad Juarez. I would find it very satisfying to see the Mexican Cinema version of the story of a feminist, chicana reporter threatening politicians, businessmen, and police in Mexico. You can be sure it would end in a super-melodramatic blood bath. And probably be more accurate.

I suppose I associate JLo with movies that have crappy plot, like the one about the politician that falls for her, can't remember what it's called. I suppose that's more of a romantic comedy which are generally pretty predictable. What I liked most about that movie was JLo's wardrobe in it.

Anyway, I wouldn't disrecommend Bordertown, but I wouldn't recommend it either. One thumb up, one thumb down.

Extraordinarily green. Wow. Pretty cool.

2008-05-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

http://emoltv.emol.com/?id_emol=272

To see the video in English, type in "grid" in the search box:
http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp
It's not the beastie boys video, but the other one ..living mostly off the grid

Why did I come to Chile in the first place?

2008-05-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

One day, when I was 12, I was at my uncle's house and he began to relate his stories of traveling through Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, Morocco, etc. His stories sparked my gusto for traveling, especially to foreign places and I knew I would travel a lot in my life. At 17 I decided it was time to study abroad as an AFS student. I was lucky to have the opportunity. (Thanks mom and dad.) Puerto Rico called my name. I was used to cold and 20, 30, 40 below-Farenheit days and I knew in Puerto Rico I would be near the beach, no matter what. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to filling out my application, Puerto Rico was all taken. Cuak. I thought of applying for Brazil, but I wanted to learn Spanish. My first Chilean friend, D, urged me to go to Chile. She was an AFS student in my high school in the States and told me Chile was lots of fun thus I should check it out. Puerto Rico out of the picture, I was off to Chile. Five out of six of the photos that I sent into AFS were of me and my friends and family in three feet of snow. The sixth picture was one of me on the beach in Florida, with palm trees in the background and a big smile on my face. The AFS staff got the picture. They probably saw the photos, and said "pobrecita, mandémosla a Viña." Which was exactly my plan. It was not-so-subliminal messaging. I wanted to be placed in a beach city, even if it wasn't warm 12 months of the year like in Puerto Rico, at least some of the year it was warm.

I came back a couple times for Christmas breaks and visited my host family, friends and travelled a bit around Chile. My host father works at a University and one day he told me that his U had a good master's program in Hispanic Lit and that it was reasonably priced. I was only in my second year of my pre-grad and wasn't really thinking about a post-grad degree yet, but several years later I remembered and came down to Chile to get my masters. So here I am.

Knowing the other, transculturally vogueing

2008-05-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

Tzvetan Todorov has a literary theory on "knowing the other." (I'm translating this from Spanish to English.) This is an abstract of his theory.

Understanding a foreign culture, or another person (or a literary text) remits to a simple question, how do we understand the other?

This other can be different from us in different ways:
in time - so knowing the other means understanding history
in space - we use comparative analysis (different cultures)
or the other can be just someone you know

Todorov's solution on how to know the other deals with several successive phases of the same act, although this movement means you have to retrocede in order to advance.

First phase) Assimilate the other to oneself. "I'm a literary critic, all the works I speak of only let one voice be heard: mine." I feel like foreign cultures are structured like mine. The historian only encounters a pre-figuration of the present when he studies the past. There is a perception of the other, but I convert it into a reproduction of myself. There is only one identity, mine.

Second phase) Understanding consists in the disappearance of myself in benefit of the other. "I become more Persian than the Persians: I learn their history and their present, I accustom myself to perceiving the world through their eyes, and I repress manifestations of my original identity."
I'm proud to make the writer I’m reading speak. I renounce myself to fuse with the other. Again, there is one identity, but it is the other's.

Third phase) I re-take my identity, after doing all I could to know the other. My temporal-spatial, cultural surroundings are no longer a curse; in fact they produce new knowledge, this time in the qualitative since, rather than quantative. An ethnologist, I no longer try to make others speak, but to establish a dialogue between them and me; I perceive my own categories as just as relative as theirs. I no longer try not to have prejudices. I pre-judge necessarily and always, but that is the interesting part of my interpretation, since my prejudices are as different as theirs.

Fourth phase) I again separate from myself, but in a different way. I no longer want to or can identify with the other, but not with myself either. (This phase sometimes sends you here.) My knowledge about the other depends on my own identity. This knowledge of the other also determines my knowledge about myself. Knowledge about the self transforms the self's identity, and the whole process can start again, until infinity. The movement never has an end, but moves in a precise direction towards an ideal.

I've had these experiences; I imagine most people have, though I think people living abroad are way more aware of it. I'm sure there are many adaptations you could add to this theory, but in its core I find it quite accurate.

Por si te perdiste algo

2008-05-14T12:33:00.001-07:00

Expat identity issues? No worries...Chile is prepared. Just go to Moneda 1342, they'll help you out.

Chilean male/female relationships: another piece to the mosaic

2008-05-06T08:41:00.001-07:00

So I have a slightly altered perspective on male/female relations in Chile. Perhaps, better stated, one more piece has been added to the mosaic. So Vuko and I went to a wedding on Saturday. It was a nice wedding. (As a sidenote, it was the shortest Catholic ceremony I've ever attended, like 3o minutes.) The revelation I had came a couple days later, but it was stimultated by an experience that just didn't fit within my picture of Chileans. So you know the tradition of the bride throwing the bouquet that may provoke a catfight for the flowers that promise a future wedding/marriage? Okay, so all of us single chiks were waiting for the bride to throw the bouquet. She ended up having to throw it three times because no one caught it. And there was a general lack of enthusiam among the girls to catch it, which was made up for when the groom threw the garter. You should have seen these rowdy guys' ebullience. They wanted that garter. When it was thrown, it passed through Vuko's fingertips and a sea of hands shot up to grab it. I don't know who got it, but Vuko came back to our table wounded. He was bleeding. Some dude had taken a chunk out of Vuko's finger with his clawlike nails. I mentioned this to my psycologist because this just didn't make sense, why are these guys sooo excited to be married? She said that Chilean men were probably more enthusiastic to get married than I had previously thought. No me cuadraba para nada. But why? Maybe they just wanted to make a scene, and I wouldn't have thought twice, but Vuko's finger was pretty ugly. There was more too it than just screwing around. One possible answer is that in a traditional Chilean marriage the woman takes really good care of the man. She's his servant, because as Kyle has described, he's the king. So this also means a wedding condemns the woman to a lifetime of servitude, and thus the bouquet was dropped three times. This explanation fits together quite nicely, actually. Though I don't mean to generalize to all Chilean parejas. I'm sure our generation has a ton of exceptions to the rule. But, perhaps it still is the rule?

Well said.

2008-04-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

Huevo no es pollo

por Pedro Lemebel

Algo hay que decir, al menos desatar la ira frente a la impudicia de cinco momias del Tribunal Constitucional que se arrogan el derecho de apoderarse del cuerpo de la mujer para decidir sobre sus proyectos fecundatorios. Pareciera que después de tanto andar en el difícil trayecto de la liberación, ciertos proyectos de identidad que creíamos ganados son remitidos a la mazmorra feudal del catolicismo inquisidor. ¿Pero quiénes hablan de la vida y la familia con la boca llena de espermios vinagres? La misma derecha miliquera cómplice del crimen a mansalva.
¿Quién habla de la vida y pone los ojos blancos mirando al Altísimo? El mismo prelado al que se le espumea la boca negando el condón, que es el único salvoconducto en la frontera del sida. ¿Acaso, señor eclesiástico, su celibato pedófilo es más recomendable? Tal complicidad retrógrada entre los magistrados y la curia violenta el derecho que tiene toda mujer a decidir sobre su cuerpo. Si no eres dueña de tu cuerpo, mujer, ¿de qué mierda eres dueña? Mujer pobre, mujer proleta, mujer obrera, cansada de trabajar, lavar, educar, amamantar a la prole que, según estos beatos, te manda Dios. Como si Dios te diera un bono de mantención para la crianza. Como si los críos vinieran con una beca divina. Mira tú, si los ricos Opus pueden darse el lujo de parir a destajo porque les sobran las lucas.
En el fondo, como dice una amiga, este pastel podrido es segregación clasista. Que tengan guaguas como conejas las cuicas UDI, que tienen servidumbre para que les críen a los nenes blanquitos. Porque también, si ellas no quieren, pueden hacerse el aborto de un millón, en el fundo o con el médico de la familia, y después llegar regias al cóctel en La Dehesa.
Pero esa realidad glamorosa no es la suya, señora pobla. Con cueva ha logrado tener tres niños, y aun así, usted y su marido se sacan la chucha para educarlos. Y esa monserga de la vida, del huevito, del feto de días que piensa, canta ópera y recita la Biblia, el feto filósofo que es más que un ser humano.
Quién sabe, quién tiene la seguridad del momento cuando empieza el mambo de la vida. Pura culpa y más culpa que le meten en la cabeza. Como dice mi amiga feminista Raquel Olea, ¿cuando usted se come un huevo, qué se come: un huevo o un pollo. Dirán que esto es facilismo. ¡Manual feminista!, gritará alguna cuica Opus. ¿Y qué? Todas las mujeres populares saben del aborto, del palo de perejil, del alambre y de los riesgos que corren con las aborteras clandestinas.
Además, todas conocen los malos tratos y crueldades a que las someten en las postas públicas cuando llegan con hemorragia. La culpa cultural es la construcción madre, virgen y mártir que ha hecho esta sociedad occidental de la mujer. ¿Qué sabe el hombre de un cuerpo agredido en su género desde que nace? Nació chancleta, decía antes la gente, y las perritas se ahogaban en el río.
Lo mismo pueden decir de mí; qué sé yo de esto, de un territorio corporal tan vasto y mortificado por un designio religioso y parturiento. Y quizá tendrían razón, pero me complicito con la libertad del cuerpo mujer y sus decisiones de supervivencia, de tener o no hijos, de tomar la píldora del día después, después de tener un rico sexo espumeante. ¿Por qué estos rígidos señores condenan a la clase trabajadora a tener sexo sólo procreativo? ¿Y si el polvo era sólo por calentura casual? Si la cachita era sólo para pasar la neura, sólo por deseo. Ustedes, señoronas de misa dominical, ¿conocen la palabra deseo? ¿O sólo se abren de piernas para tener hijos? Pero ese es problema de ustedes, y no tienen que imponer esa moralina al país entero.
Tampoco se crean las damas zorrijuntas que llegar al aborto es una gimnasia recreativa. Si fallaron las pastillas, si no resultó el tarro, si el condón se rompió, la colegiala, la pobladora, tiene que vender lo que no tiene para arriesgarse con un raspaje con gillete mohosa.
Alguna vez le pregunté a mi madre si se había hecho algún aborto. Me dijo que sí con aburrida indiferencia y después hablamos de otra cosa, mientras ella apagaba la tele donde el cura Hasbún vomitaba sentencias y amenazas con cola de lagarto.

And my translation into English

The egg is not the chicken.

by Pedro Lemebel,

Something has to be said, at least to unleash the wrath towards the disrespect of five conservatives of the Supreme Court who appropriate the right to take power over the woman's body in order to decide her fecundity projects. It seems like after getting so far down the path to liberation, certain identity projects that we thought were won are remitted to the feudal dungeon of Inquisition Catholicism. But who talks of life and family with the mouth full of vinegar sperm? The same militarist right accomplice of over-assured crime. Who talks of life and directs their white eyes looking towards Almighty? The same prelates whose mouths foam negating the condom, which is the only safeguard against AIDS. Perhaps, mister ecclesiast, your celibate pedophile, is more recommendable? Such reactionary complicity between justices and the ecclesiasts violates the right that every woman has to make decisions about her body. If you are not the owner of your body, woman, what the hell are you owner of? Poor woman, proletariat woman, working-class woman, tired of working, washing, educating, nursing offspring, who, according to these prudes, God sends you. As if God gave you a voucher for raising children. As if kids came with a divine scholarship. Look, if the rich Opus Dei people have the luxury to give birth to child after child incessantly, because they have more than enough money [to raise them], than, deep down, like a friend of mine says, this rotten cake is class segregation. The Dehesa snobs from the UDI (conservative party) can go ahead and have babies like rabbits, since they have servants to raise their little white babies. Because, if they don’t want to have the baby, they can have a million-peso abortion, on the country estate or with the family doctor, and then arrive looking great, to the cocktail party in the Dehesa. But that glamorous reality is not yours, poor woman. With luck you’ve been able to have three children, and even so, you and your husband work your asses off to educate them. And that tirade of life, of the egg, of the fetus of days that thinks, sings opera and recites the Bible, the fetus philosopher is more than a human being. Who knows, who has the security of the moment when the life mambo begins? It’s just shame and more shame that they stick in your head. As my feminist friend Raquel Olea says, ¿when you eat an egg, what do you eat: the egg or the chicken? This should be an easy one. ¡Feminist manual!, an Opus snob would scream. What does it matter? All the poor women know about abortion, about the parsley stick, about the barbed wire and the risks run with clandestine aborters. Moreover, everyone knows about the bad treatment and cruelty that they are subject to when poor women arrive to the emergency room with a hemorrhage. Culturally, occidental society is to blame for defining woman as the mother-virgin-martyr. What does man know about a body assaulted since it’s born? She’s born a good-for-nothing, people used to say, and the female puppies were drowned in the river. They can say the same about me; what do I know about this, about a corporal territory so vast and mortified by religious and child-bearing intention. And maybe they’re right, but I commit to the female body’s liberty and her survival decisions, of having kids or not, or taking the morning after pill, after having rich, bubbly sex. Why do these rigid gentlemen condemn the working class to only have procreative sex? What if screwing was only for casual horniness? If getting it on was only to remedy desire? You, ladies of Sunday mass, do you know the word desire? Or do you just spread your legs to have children? That’s your problem, and you don’t need to impose that superficial moral over the entire country. You must not believe, prude ladies, that having an abortion is recreational gymnastics. If the birth control pills didn’t work, if they had bad luck, if the condom broke, the school girl, the poor woman, has to sell what she doesn’t have to risk herself with a rusty razor blade scrape. One time I asked my mom if she’d had an abortion. She told me she had with bored indifference and we talked about something else, while she turned off the television where the priest Hasbún vomited the same repetitive sentences and threats.

a few concerts in Chile

2008-04-17T22:41:00.001-07:00

Tuesday we went to see Riders on the Storm, aka The Doors minus Jim Morrison. It was an excellent show, in a nice-sized theatre, downtown Santiago. Before the Doors came on, this sucky band called Delta played. I don’t know what the organizers were thinking to schedule them before the Doors. I’ve been to high school band concerts that were better than Delta. And the musical style was totally different. But the Doors rocked. Excellent show, they played all the classics with lots of guitar and piano solos-including a flamenco intro to Spanish Caravan, and random commentary about alcohol, drugs and George Bush. All the musicians were solid, I especially enjoyed Manzarek and Krieger, the keyboardest and guitarest.

We had tickets in the gallery, the highest part of the theatre - but the theatre's not that big so I liked our seats. As Delta was finishing, the people from our section began jumping over the handrail that separated the high gallery from the low gallery. And then at some point the security guard disappeared at one of the stairwells down to the low gallery and tons of people rushed down into the lower section. It was entertaining to watch all this and all the movement left us with lots more room. Then just before the Doors came on, people started jumping from the lower gallery down to the floor to be right by the stage. This was quite the affair as the drop was about 10-12 feet, and it turned into a human waterfall. The original jumpers began to jump and scream from next to the stage "el que no salta es pavo", loosely translated as "he who doesn't jump is a wuss" and so they egged the audience on. I bet 200-300 people jumped. We saw a couple people eat cement, heavy. But mostly, the people already down grabbed the feet of people on their way down and then precariously jumped down or tried to find footholds-and rather quickly because there were security guards. This was definitely entertaining and worked as build-up to the band's entrance to the stage. A good show, well worth it.

Vuko went to the Ozzy Osborne concert at the estadio nacional a couple weeks ago. He absolutely loved the concert and came back raving about it. He got up right next to the stage. I was happy he had gone and even happier that I hadn't. I like Ozzy Osborne, but big concerts here are not my scene.

Two years ago Vuko invited me to see the Beastie Boys here in Santiago in Ciudad Empresarial in this huge pabellón. First Chancho en Piedra came on, and we began slowly making our way through the crowd towards the stage. I very much enjoyed that show, the lead singer came on in a typical Chilean school uniform, for girls. The short plaid skirt really hizo juego con sus piernas re-peludos. He was hilarious and the band was good. The place was packed. Chancho en Piedra left and were as close to the stage as we could get. I felt like a sardine all packed in and I couldn't see anything except the shoulders of the kid in front of me and it was difficult to move. Vuko saw fine because he's like 6'3 while most Chileans are 5'4. We began to wait. I wanted to go to the very back of the pabellón where there was space but Vuko wanted to be as close to the stage as possible. It was hot and stuffy. After waiting for the Beastie Boys to come out forever, I finally convinced Vuko we should go outside for a bit. My back hurt from standing awkwardly, smashed against a bunch of other fans for like an hour. We barely got outside and the Beastie Boys finally made it on stage. One of the Beastie Boys, seemed confused, and was trying to figure out where was the VIP section because to him it just appeared like one big audience. He was surprised to realize the VIP section consisted of the first 20% of the crowd and the VIPs were all packed in sardine-style, just like the non-VIPs, they just were closer to the stage. The group put on a good show, but the sound was a bit messed up. We ended up watching from the back of the pabellón, like 100 meters away. I was too traumatized by the quantity of people that squished together to get close to the group and didn’t want to get any closer. But it was a fun show and the only time I’ve seen the Beastie Boys. But now I shy away from the big concerts in Chile.

A few years back some friends, my cousin and I went to see Kraftwerk in Santiago. It was in the Estadio Victor Jara, a much smaller venue than Espacio Riesco and Kraftwerk is less well known than the Beastie Boys. Good show.

And last year Vuko and I went to see Paul Gilbert, who is an electric guitar virtuoso. I only went because I thought Vuko should see him since he loves the electric guitar. This concert was in the Teletón theatre. Waiting outside, I noticed it was a total sausage fest, the only girls were with their boyfriends (as in my case). I began bracing myself for a testosterone-infused couple of hours, which described my experience of the groups that played before Gilbert. Not at all my style of music. Then Gilbert came out and did a really enjoyable show. He's an incredible guitar player and quite charismatic on stage, and funny. He even improvised a song about the technical problems they were having as the sound people worked to correct them. I was pleasantly surprised by Gilbert (and the band)’s talent and the performance in general. I definitely recommend his shows!

Panchito

2008-03-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

Hehehe. Yeah snail cream seems to be big here. They even sell it in the street. My boyfriend's mom actually has a pet snail and she has it crawl across scars, scabs and sunburns to heal them faster. Snail saliva (or whatever that is) is supposed to regenerate your skin. One day Vuko and I arrived from the beach and the tops of my feet were all burned so Tere and Pepe (Vuko's folks) convinced me to let Pancho the snail crawl across my feet and slobber on them. Unfortuately I think I poisoned him with the lotion I'd applied on my feet because after about 10 minutes, he, uncharacteristically, rolled up into his shell and stopped still, but not before leaving me a big white loogey with curative properties. It was pretty cool.

Vuko's friend Guillermo told me that his girlfriend's mom (la suegra) actually lets the snail crawl across her face to try to get rid of her wrinkles. I heard about this before my encounter with Pancho so it was kind of freaky and slightly nasty to hear. With a grimace, I asked him if it worked, and he started laughing and said it didn't work at all.

Springbreakers bring sexy back in Ft. Lauderdale

2008-03-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

On vacation we came into contact with a "new" 70s-inspired fashion trend: the mini skirt. Actually the mini-dress. It´s basically a long sexy t-shirt that is worn with matching sexy panties. So this trend is new to me (I've been in Chile for the last 4 years and am not up-to-date on US fashion). Vuko and I went out dancing to this club called Art Bar and we came into very close contact with this fad. About 4 spring-breakers had their ultra short dresses in florescent shades of blue, orange and green and they came and danced on the raised stage by Vuko and I. The place was so packed we had nowhere to go, so we stayed where we were right by these girls who were bringing sexy back with their provocative attire and dancing. The one in orange was loving all the attention and giving quite the sexy show. She made her way over to the main stage with the stripper pole to shock and awe. Then she came back and while getting back on stage almost toppled over on me, steadying herself on my shoulder. For me, this maneuver took points off her sexiness. But the goggle-eye gringos on Spring Break weren't fazed. They cheered and drooled. As the girl in orange tried stealing the show with her short dress and sexy pole-style dancing, Vuko, who was dancing right in front of her, ruined it for her because when she got really sexy and show stealing, he would just stop dancing, look out at all the other partiers, and point to her with both hands as if he was presenting her sexy dancing. She didn't know how to interpret this and was visibly uncomfortable. The couple next to us and I all chuckled.

A week or so later my mom and sisters-in-law saw another woman with a super short dress and I explained to them that the fad seemed to be "in". And then in the airport before coming back to Santiago, I was leafing through some fashion magazine and saw lots of pics of models wearing super short dresses and showing off their underwear. With that, my suspicion was confirmed. I don't think this will be a fad hitting Chile too soon due to the amount of jotes here.