The Fam...

I have given in. I have started drinking Nescafe. Sad, but cheap (or in this case free, my host family has it… on second thought, everybody’s host family probably has it). I try to ignore the taste while I’m drinking it. I need some decent way to inject caffeine into my body. But whatevs.
Quick rehash of the week. There was class. I like my classes, I like Chilean professors, they are animated. I do not like classes that are an hour and a half long; it makes me feel like I have serious attention deficit-ness. There were also birthdays: there were four birthdays and three birthday parties. First on Monday, with Gloria, whose fam rocks (her mom and dad gave us a salsa show). Then on Thursday, with Micah and Richard, who took us first to Micah’s house and then to El Tunnel (or El TUNnel, not tunel) where we partied like rock stars. Then, my host sister’s birthday. She technically had two parties, one on Friday and one on Saturday, but I really only attended the Friday party, which was family style. Then, there was randomness, which involved romantic music in a soccer stadium (Sin Bandera is ‘Nsync part II, sung in Spanish, by guys who look like they're from Sweeden), cards with Samia’s host family, ice cream and my host sister’s boyfriend, a zoo, cueca, ‘trekking’ with experience and some negotiating with Pablo, and finally a giant muñeca and her rhinoceros. Oh, and a mob. So, it was busy. If you need details, email me and I will explain. I didn’t see my host family much, until Friday night. But, they are happy enough to accept that I will do family things with them if they ask before hand.
There are three daughters in the family and two dogs. My host mom, Valeria, is who I see the most. She is a work at home mom. For her work, she cleans the house and sits by the pool. She also watches telanovelas. In fact, we just watched half of one together. It was dramatic. She is incredibly opinionated about things in general, but I think it runs in the family because her dad told me that he didn’t like Michelle Bachelet, because her father was a terrorist. Needless to say, my host mom will tell you if she thinks you are fat, lazy, or need to practice Spanish. Not all of these have happened to me, yet. The love of my host mom’s life is Lukas, her dog. Lukas is a little high strung. He likes to bark a lot. When I first got here, he would not stop barking, making it hard to understand anything. Now he only barks when he wants to play or if someone he doesn’t like comes to the door. Lukas’ life partner is Julian. A little white, stupid looking dog that likes to sit on my bed or in my lap and generally reminds me of Socks, except he’s not as fat, or a cat. My youngest host sister, Vale, is Julian’s favorite. She is eighteen and is in her last year of high school. She just spent about two weeks in Puerto Vara and is going to Pucon at the end of this week. Other than her travel plans, we don’t really talk. My middle sister, Daniela, just turned twenty five. After they finished singing happy birthday, someone started to sing the wedding march. Awkward. Especially for her and her boyfriend. She also likes to go out a lot and sleep. But she and her boyfriend, Felix, are both really sweet and cool when I see them. She also studies Design, which is cool. She’s also twenty-five and still living at home. My host mom likes to complain about Dani. My eldest host sister, though, also just got married and moved out. My host mom misses Maria Ignaci a lot. She talks about how much Naci did around the house to help out. When I’m trying to speak Spanish, Naci is the most helpful, the most forgiving and the most willing to believe I actually understand what they are talking about. Unfortunately, she isn’t around much. My host dad, Jorge, likes to think that I don’t really understand a lot. So he quizzes me, which is helpful. He also talks about stuff that is probably really mundane to him, which is also helpful. He also seems to understand what’s like being a girl in a foreign country and really having no clue what the hell is going on, so he gives me tips on hip things to do while laughing at how bad my Spanish is. My sisters’ boyfriends and husbands are probably the people I feel the most comfortable with, though. Cause they’re like outsiders in the family, too. And while they are closer to other family members than I, I feel like they go out of their way to include me in the conversation while I struggle to understand everything. In any case, there’s an update on my family. They’re really sweet and fun, and have done a lot to make staying in Santiago easier. Okay, I’m done now.

Bing me!

I just finished a letter to 826 Valencia telling them why they should hire me and now I can’t think of anything to write. I was going to go backwards but that just seems to complicated right now, so here’s the beginning:
This was the week of Bing.
Tuesday morning, I headed down to the tourism office to talk about Torres del Paine, which seems totally do-able, even if we just wanted to do day hikes. I’ve decided that Chile is the most beautiful country I’ve ever been to; so pretty much, no matter where you end up going, it’s pretty sweet. And the people are nice, like the lady who helped me at the tourism office. I spent the rest of the day catching up on schoolwork, or starting it, and went to dance class. This was a Stanford-sponsored dance class. Like most Stanford dance classes, I was disappointed. Sad panda.
The highlight of Wednesday was that incredible jazz festival that the Bing’s paid for. The performance was on the banks of the incredibly polluted river in Santiago, but it was gorgeous anyways. The guy who was performing, Al Di Meola, was wearing an incredible seventies-style vest, played a zebra print guitar and didn’t speak a single word of Spanish for the minute and a half he talked. Note even “Buenas Noches.” Jeff pointed out that all the pictures of Al Di Meola showed Al Di Meola minus five years. But the guitar playing rocked, as did the percussionists and the keyboardist’s smile. Afterwards, we headed out to the “Phone Box Pub.” Fabia, the center director, has described this place as “crunchy,” as in granola, as in hippie. I wonder if Fabia has ever had granola.
Thursday was another classless day, besides meeting with Mabel, who is super-bien. I found a pool, and it’s cheap. Go discounts! That night I had a great meal with my family, who decided that I needed to know more chilenismos. “What bad words do you know?” my host mom asked. After they finished my Spanish lesson, I headed off to Bellavista with Kiran and Ilana. We got lost by bus and ended up taking the most pimp taxi I have ever been in. Seriously, this guy had bought a new speaker set, put in a new engine; so there we are, racing between taxis and buses, about 100 miles an hour, blasting Bob Marley. Luckily, we see Kara and Sabrina at a stoplight and throw ourselves from the car to meet them. Then, salsa. There was live music and much dancing and spinning, oh my!
Friday: Picnic with Chileans. Today I learned that picnic is a racist word, coming from colonial America where they would pick a nigger to lynch and celebrate with food. To say the least, our picnic did not involve racism or lynchings, only soccer, paddle boats and card games. I then treated myself to a private dance party, which my room is just barely big enough for. Chileans are an interesting bunch. But Americans are definitely weirder.
I mean really who doesn’t go out on a Friday night and starts drinking on Saturday morning at 10:30. The Bings do! Or at least, they paid for us to go on the wine train. We had to be at the center at 8 in the morning, which means leaving the house at 7:15, which means it’s harder to find public transportation. But we made it on time and were served wine from the moment we stepped on the wine train at 10:30 to the end of our tour of Santa Cruz Viña around 4:45. That’s a lot of wine. Luckily, there was an interlude of Dylan, the tallest American among us, dancing the cueca with a girl who was about 4 ft tall. The wine valley is stunning, covered in a sea of grapevines and surrounded by green mountains. We all decided that we could get used to that type of life for a little while at least.
But instead, we headed straight off to Pichilemu, surfing capital of Chile. Okay, so only 5 of us went. Dawn and I had a little trouble, because the hostel we booked at was full, so we hostel hopped until we found one that had space run by a scary old man who sat in a glass office all day and night. We grabbed some empandas and ice cream, caught a couple songs from an outdoor concert, watched some skaters and went on the great ATM search so that we could pay for these really cool cloths we found. There was also some excellent rally, but I think we were both to cheap to pay for it. The next day we went surfing. That’s right, I totally surfed in a foreign country and caught one of the most perfect waves ever. But that’s about it. I caught one. In my defense, the currents sucked (literally) and I eventually gave up trying to paddle out. We then went to go find the bus and caught it to come home. And now I am totally sun burned (did you know that there’s a hole in the ozone layer right over Chile), exhausted and Binged out.

Fuimos a Vina...

The past couple of days have been a little crazy… in a good way. Friday was lots of sight seeing: La Moneda, a strange graffiti park that Kara and I stumbled across and a church with a morgue in the basement. Friday night, Ilana and I and a couple other girls had planned to go to a movie in the park across from our apartment. But when I got home, my host mom asked me to go to a birthday party of someone in the family (the exact relationship got lost in translation.) When I explained my plans to her, she told me I could spend time with my friends at any point, but I would go with her that night. So we went. The whole family was there and asking me about California and where I was planning on traveling to. At points, it almost dissolved into a large game of charades. But as a gift, they gave me a coffee table book of pictures of Chile, so I could see all the places I wanted to go! Then, they served ate hot dogs that were covered in avocado and mayonnaise accompanied by pisco sours, cervezas and wine. Then, as I was trying not to fall asleep on the couch while looking at coffee table books, the family sang happy birthday in English.
I think it was my host cousin’s birthday. I’m still a little confused.
The next morning I headed downstairs and chatted with the doorman (who has a very Chilean name that I cannot remember) until Ilana called me and told me she had slept through her alarm. So I went outside and caught the bus and the metro and met up with 14 other people at the bus station where we climbed aboard to Viña del Mar. Leslie and I bravely led the way to our hostel and got lost…a couple of times. Finally we found it and the owner of the hostel, Ninfa, whose the cool grandma I want to be, and Luna, her cat, welcomed us with open arms. We put our stuff in rooms and headed down to a crafts fair and talked to the vendors for a bit.
Rather than waiting for people to get henna tattoos, Kara and I headed out to Reñaca, which has the craziest beach party scene I have ever seen, but also a gorgeous view of the ocean. Other people eventually joined us and we grabbed empandas and headed back to Viña, accidentally ran into Dawn and Julia and went salsa dancing at a pool hall. We were the youngest people there and the dancing was still going on at five in the morning.
Next morning, headed out to Valpariso. Visited Neruda’s house. He was insane and liked pink and bathrooms with no privacy. We wandered down some hillsides before taking the acensor to the bottom. Then we headed out to Cóncon, which is some of the most beautiful coastline I have ever seen. We had a very long dinner there and then head back to the hostel and threw a party, yay us!
We headed back pretty early on Monday because there was much work to be done. But the dogs in my host family seem to be warming up to me now. It’s probably because I give them food to make them shut up. It’s also hot; maybe they don’t have much energy. Anyways, over dinner, my host mom began to tell me about all the places I should travel to and started to explain what Stanford things I should skip so I can go other more interesting places, while my host dad tested my vocabulary of shellfish. So, I would say, that was a pretty good weekend.
This week, I need to find about Torres del Paine and a pool. Life is happy.

Chileans like their country. They want you to like their country, too. If you come visit them, they will be more than happy to tell you all they know about their own country. And they will be more than happy to offer you anything that you need, from Chilean cigarettes and pot to advice about how to eat and the correct bus fare. They want you to feel at home, but they make sure to let you know that Chile is a very different country.
But sometimes, sitting in orientation with 44 other Stanford students makes Chile and the U.S. the same place. Like all study abroad programs, the students speak in English to each other (because we look stupid if we don’t know something) and stumble over our words when speaking to our host families where no one can see us. Like all study abroad programs, everyone will be everyone’s best friend for the next few days, and going to get a drink with your friend will turn into a excursion where you go to get drinks with 20 friends and you walk an extra mile very slowly because nobody actually knows where they are going.
But Santiago will welcome you with open arms and a kiss! When Leslie, Jeff, and I made it through an hour long wait in customs after our flight, the cab driver and a tour guide climbed in the van to take us to our host families homes. Our tour guide happily chatted about all the things to see in Santiago (while pointing out that, of course, only gringos go there) and how green Santiago was and how nice Santiago’s roads were, while the driver focused on getting us to the outskirts/suburbs of Santiago. When we pulled up to the apartment at midnight, my host mom was waiting for me at the door (which made me wonder if she had been waiting there since 10 that morning.) She brought me upstairs and introduced me to her youngest daughter and her dogs, while explaining that the rest of the family would be in tomorrow night; and I crawled into bed.
The next morning, I met Ilana and Tonya, the two other girls from the Stanford program who are living in the apartment complex. We took La Migra, the local Chilean bus to school, where we were welcomed by Fabia, who was bouncy and told us everything we needed to know about Chile, which has lasted for about one week now. Everyday starts with all of us deprived of caffeine and slightly overwhelmed by the whirlwind bus ride to “the center.” The shock of the bus ride is followed by a torrent of information about Chile and its specific traditions, interspersed with the first classes of the week. The nights are a combination of trying to get to know my family and meeting up with people from Stanford. Because it’s the first week, everyone is going out, to bars, to dancing, to karaoke. Despite the crazy nightlife catering to American tourists, everyone seems to be getting to know their family and the habits that there family has, talking to their children, etc, even though they’re in the Center all day.
This weekend we are heading out to Viña, where I have determined there will be dancing. And salsa dancing tonight, and a possible hip-hop studio! Balia en todo el mundo! Muchos besitos!

Delayed

Everything in Texas is large. The state is large. The Dallas airport is large. Even the Gaylord Hotel is large. In fact, it's enormous. It has 1100 rooms. But, the Gaylord Hotel in Tennesse is larger it has 3000 rooms (take that, Texas!). The man at the front desk said that 3000 rooms might be a little excessive.
Why should I care about the Gaylord Hotel? Because they, courtsey of American Airlines, are making sure I get a good 3 hours of sleep before my flight to Santiago tomorrow morning.
We were already in the car this morning when my phone rang. "We would just like to inform you that your 12:40 flight to Dallas has been cancelled. Your new flight time is at 2:45. You will arrive in Dallas at 8:50 to make your 9:20 flight to Santiago." There was no realistic chance of actually making that flight which involved finding and rechecking my baggage and changing terminals in 1/2 hour. So I turned to my dad and said "My flight is cancelled." My mom said "Oh." And Paul gave SFO a look of death.
However, the lady who checked me in was awesome; she explained that I would in fact be able to make my flight (it landed at 8:15, not 8:50, and it didn't change terminals) and didn't charge me for my overweight baggage (yay!). It was decided that I would spend most of my layover in SFO, not Dallas. So we went out for lunch at Brothers' Deli, which was right down the block from our house when I was 6 and boasts the best kosher menu in the Bay Area. All was well and after lunch, my flight arrived to Dallas on time.
However, there was no need to worry previously about whether or not I would make the short connection, because the flight was delayed until 11, due to "mechanical problems, it had to emergency land in Chicago and then we had to de-ice the plane, but it's in the air now and should land shortly." I don't actually know if the plane landed because they decided to cancel the flight until 8 am and would bus us to the Gaylord hotel for the remainder of the evening.
In the meantime, I found Leslie, who I lived with freshman year, and we met another guy on the program, Jeff. We bonded over our common misfortune. And spent the evening wandering the atrium of the Gaylord and enjoying their Christmas decorations and discussing potential activities for Santiago. I am tired now and have to get on a bus at six in the morning. So that is all.