weird weird day

scott and i have spoken a couple of times about some key differences between US and Chilean culture. there are so many similarities stemming from capitalistic origins but this day really emphasized a kind of situation that would never happen in the US... and it all started with scott telling me "there's a dead body under that blanket over there."

we met at a pedestrian walkway type thingy and there seemed to be quite a disturbance ahead of us, police officers walking around what appeared to be an accident. there was a smashed truck on a flatbed, an utterly destroyed bicycle and a tarp thrown over a motorcycle. puzzled, because this wasn't any kind of official road (it was right in front of a fountain) i thought little of it and headed into a coffee shop for a cortado (a real coffee- except they serve it with a regular drinking straw). as i was coming out, scott rode up to where i was standing on the bicycle, looking ashen.

me: what's up? are you ok?
scott: yea... there's a dead body over there.
me: what are you sure?
scott: there are feet sticking out from underneath that blanket...

what! now usually i am pretty critical when people in the States gawk at accident scenes, like they can't get enough gore in their lives. i may have changed my mind after this experience... the first thing i wanted to do was run over there and check it out. i have to say the next thought was, what? but we're in chile. this isn't like peru or ecuador, we're in santiago freaking chile.

so... extremely curious at a distance, i started asking other chileans who were walking by solemnly, stopping briefly (in US standards) to look at the scene. a chilean next to me was explaining that yeah, must have been a fatal accident. but how i ask? he explained the road informally opens at night to traffic and maybe the truck and bikes collided early this morning or late last night. now this part did make sense because motorcycles ride on sidewalks all the time here, stupidly. then i ask, why are all of the carabineros (police officers) just hanging around talking to people, taking notes, measurements, pictures, talking to the media? he responds, they're waiting for the judge to get here to declare the accident. this kind of thing happens enough that a person doesn't have to get within 20 feet to know what's going on.

wow, i was definitely amazed. an advanced, progressive city like santiago letting a body hang around unrefrigerated for hours, that's crazy. there were people gathering to an extent but no crowds, nothing show-stopping. i guess in a city where you might pass diseased and dying dogs while leaving the subway, not many people need to run up to a dead body. also, the police did little to deter people from coming within mere feet of the accident. it seemed like they encouraged people to come closer.

i told an unwilling scott that i did want to get a little bit closer just to confirm i wasn't dreaming. as we circled around the side, things looked stranger. i thought i heard a carabinero asking a woman if she liked it, "te gusta?" and then i saw a sign neatly set up by the carabineros "siempre tu amigo" (always your friend). what the? at that moment i saw the fake hand underneath the tarp. it was all set up!! why? promoting safety awareness? i don't know. all i know is that that would never happen in the US. if there was a dead body, you would have had to fight to get to the front of the line. and if the police staged a fatal accident, they would have a lawsuit on their hands.

Easter Weekend Adventure

Back from our weekend in Pucón. It's a great adventure tourism town in the south of Chile. We spent two days partying with a wonderful group of new friends, whitewater rafting, and climbing the volcano 'Volcán Villarica' (vohl-can*vee-ya-rreecah). Our internet has been very spotty, so for now, please enjoy this wonderfully done video by our friend Shelly Guerin!



Please notice the part where Alejandro is asking Caitlin "you don't have the AIDS though, right?" and she answers, "¿que?"

Enjoy, more updates to follow :)

Rrrrrica!

Remember when I told you all about the delicious dangers of Peruvian-hijacking-food? Well here it is (green rice with spinach, pepper and cheese stuffed chicken):
But first we had ceviche with octopus, squid, fish, shrimp and razor clams (machas)... mmmm delicious. That's Scott right there trying to pretend he isn't eating raw animals... Although he is not a practiced seafood eater, I am pretty sure he enjoyed it as much as I did.
Hats off to "El Aji Seco" which was recommended to us by a fellow teacher of mine. I was even impressed with their mobile dessert tray (tiramisu, tres leches, strawberry cheesecake, flan, chocolate cake, apple tart, chocolate mousse)... :) :) :)

ismos

so there's a lot of slang here, so much so that i felt compelled to buy a book on chilean "modismos" before i got here. it's safe to say that there's more than 200 phrases or sayings here in chile that any other spanish speaker might be only able to take a guess at. not to speak negatively at all about these interesting/different sayings, but it's been suggested that due to chile's relatively isolated geography (the andes separate it from argentina on the eastern edges and to the north is the atacama- the driest desert in the world) language has developed without the influence of other south american spanish-speaking countries.

so what you end up with is words like:

• ¿cachai? meaning "get it?" or "did you hear?"(also used as a verb- cachar- meaning to have sex- apparently comes from the english "to catch"- like fishing? or "he's a catch!")
  

• sí po' or no po' = yes or no, yes of course, no of course not

• huevón (pronounced weon). this is scott's favorite. its closest equivalent is "dude" and depending on stress and intonation can be "buddy" or "a%*hole" so take caution

• bacán which i have seen used in situations as "cool" or "neat" but i think in many more contexts means "poser"... might need some clarification on this but i use it anyway and people don't think i'm weird... i think

aside from entirely new, chilean specific words, you have two other issues. number 1 is words that don't sound like "spanish" because they are missing too many letters to sound like anything you're used to. examples are "fósforos" (matches) which sounds like "fawforo"; "pesado" (heavy) which sounds like "pe-ah-o"; "se-i" for "seis"; "discu" for "disculpa-me/nos" (excuse me/us) and "más o menos" (more or less) which sounds like "ma or men-o" and is really a descriptor for just about anything that has an amount.

issue number 2 is when you are in situations where a chilean pulls a spanish word out you know you know but in reality it means something entirely different here. situation- walking down the street with scott. we hear some huevón yelling at us but not sure what he's saying. finally we hear him say "flaco- tienes el tiempo?" (hey skinny- you have the time?). now, scott isn't sure at this point whether to be flattered or apprehensive. keeping "flaco" in our heads we hurried home to consult the survival book. "flaco" in chilean means "buddy" or "pal". i suppose there are worse things to be called....

in third grade they teach you that head in spanish is "cabeza", eyes are "ojos", hair is "pelo", teeth are "dientes"... no no no! not in chilean.... cabeza is coco or mate, ojos are pepas, pelo is chasca, mechaso or peluca, dientes are chocleros or alcachoferos (choclo means corn and here it is rather difficult to chew, no wonder why it's associated with teeth). it's like re-learning everything! so issue 2 can be bifurcated in this way: you don't know what you think you do and you don't know anything at all.

friends and family

Since I have been in Santiago there have been a several exciting developments in the lives of our friends, mostly in the form of engagements and babies-to-be. I've always felt like I wasn't old enough, or something, for these kinds of things to happen to my closest friends. The realization has hit while I've been here, I am old enough now! I'm 25 for goodness sake. It's been interesting to meet that reality while also living in a foreign country, where I am meeting new people/making new friends.
Scott (usually a bit more sentimental than I, although I am impressing myself with this post) and I have been really happy to have been kept in the loop with what all is happening in your lives! We miss you (ok he's not here right now but trust me he does) and hope all of you who can possibly make it down here (friends AND family), get down here ASAP! Also, we updated the settings on the blog so even those who don't have a google account can comment!

Love you guys!

i want to ride my bicycle, i want to ride my bike

I got a bicycle! Well actually this is old news, what? I've been busy... When we got our place, I realized that I wasn't really terribly excited about walking a solid 25 minutes each way to school, sometimes twice a day= 2 hours of walking. We got the bike at Persa Bio Bio which is like a perma-flea market in South Central Santiago. I was convinced I was going to be able to buy a second-hand bike because it's well-known that you could go to Bio Bio and buy things that have essentially been stolen from tourists, gringos and other Chileans. *At some point before I leave here I want to walk up to a street vendor selling clothing items, nail clippers and electronics and say in perfect Chilean Spanish "hey, that's mine! where'd you find it?" (as I retrieve the item from the laid-out blanket).

Anyway, I didn't see too many stolen bikes, only brand-new ones. Thinking I would be disappointed with prices, I was happy to find a vendor who made his own bikes, charging about 50 mil ($87). So Scott and I walked and rode it home, stopping on San Diego Street (the street that specializes in bikes) to look for helmets and a bike for Scott. On the way, we spotted an oil-soaked wooden-shelf object that we thought we would use for clothes. We tried to find a nicer shelf for sale at Bio Bio but felt we were being gringoed so we refused to buy. So I rode my bike and Scott carried this heavy thing like, way too far. After he traveled 6 blocks with it we became reaquainted with reality. Would we really use this? Scott asked what I would use it for. I offered, maybe socks? I asked him the same.... silence. We burst into laughter. It was pretty hilarious. So we left the POS on the side of the road and then he happily rode the bike home while I checked out the bike lanes on foot.

Financially the bike will pay for itself in a little more than 2 months (it would have cost me 5,500 CP a week, at least). Also, some of the areas I have to transport myself through at night (11PM) aren't necessarily the best. Being on a bike will definitely get me home more quickly. I've been really happy with the bike lane situation also; I don't have to travel very far before I find one for myself. The other day a pedestrian hit me and I fell off my bike (totally her fault... I was in the road, not in the crosswalk and she wasn't looking). I was completely annoyed, yelling in her direction in English. Anyway that experience reinforced my gratitude for bike lanes. It's kind of unnerving when even pedestrians can be dangerous.

Our Apartment

Wanted to thank everybody who has supported us here in Chile and along our journeys to get here. Some things have been tough with the language, but we've already seen quite a bit and are excited for what's next. Here are some pictures of our apartment for those of you who've asked. Thanks again for following along!

Graffiti Part Deux

As promised. Caitlin said to me in Valparaiso over the weekend that I couldn't keep taking pictures of every instance of graffiti...she's definitely right on that one as there is so much here. I'll keep collecting though and hopefully post some every so often!

Amazing Graffiti

One of the coolest things about living in Santiago is the graffiti that covers many of it's walls. While there is plenty of graffiti that looks like crap or is full of vulgarities, there is a larger proportion of the street art that is....art! Whether poetry or painting, this stuff is everywhere and it's beautiful.

More to follow!

Notes on Graffiti and Women

So just to get some unrelated tidbits out there....

Here is a picture that captures another example of the very loud support in this city for women's education and other issues. I don't know if it's just because it's Women's History Month or not, but they don't do it small here. A possible coincidence, but related nonetheless, was the extreme number of female only portapottys at the concert last night compared to ones for the men.

The other reason for this picture is to show you how common graffiti is in Santiago. This is purposely an example of some pretty standard variety. It's all over the place...nice buildings or not. I'll have a post on some of my favorites coming up shortly.