(Knock on wood) Every single palta* that has set foot in my mouth has been perfect. I actually mean perfect when I say it - luscious green ambiguously firm and soft wonderfulness. I don't know what this country does to make their avocados perfect, but I am in love.
Unfortunately I have a propensity to get little green bits of heaven smeared/stained all over my clothing because I am a complete slob. But that's a small price to pay for eating a piece of heaven.
Things like wine, large quantities of red meat, empanadas**, cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh grapes, lots of bread, avocados, mayonnaise, and pisco*** are pretty much the consumption standards here. Sort of yummy, sort of unhealthy. And that's where I'm at.
*Chilean Spanish lesson for the day: whereas everywhere else avocados are called aguacates, in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Perú they are paltas. This caused minor confusion upon my arrival to Chile.
**Empanadas are exactly what you think they are. Pastries filled with yumminess. The classic filling, pino, is apprently the standby Chilean filling for pretty much any consumible you can imagine. Aside from ground beef and salt, it's like.... Hey let's throw in a hardboiled egg, lots of onions, an olive or two, a few raisins, and some zesty ají pepper!
***Pisco is a distilled liquor (apparently in the brandy family, who knew?) made from grapes and produced in Perú and Chile. The "most" popular drink, aside from what is essentially a rum and coke but pisco-ized, is a pisco sour which is exactly what it sounds like. Pisco, lemon juice, egg white, some sort of syrup, and something called bitter are blended together to make the drink. It's kind of great but also kind of sickeningly lemon sweet.
29 March 2008
21 March 2008
Hark the herald bike lanes sing..
Glory to my newfound wings.
In other words, I finally have a bicycle (hooray!). Said bicycle is a very old very beat up carnation pink Oxford women's bicycle. It also has a bell which I am not ballsy enough to use at people. Anyways, to cut to the chase, I am a much happier camper now that I have this bike, because it enables me to get to the "faraway" campus where I have some of my classes.
To get to the campus one must take a bus, which, depending on the traffic, can be anywhere between 22 and 35 minutes, give or take. Walking to the bus stop takes another 10 minutes both getting to and from the bus for a stop, and waiting for the bus is also an adventure, because it means another 5-30 minute wait. It also costs money. In contrast, I get on my bicycle at my door, and I arrive to the building where I am going for class without fail in 25-35 minutes tops. And there are bike lanes for most of my ride (only about 12 blocks or so without). Yay. Also at this campus, Juan Gomez Millas, they have bike racks indoors for one of the departments, and at the entry to the campus there is a manned bike rack where they have a guard and you register your bike when you leave it there. Awesome.
Hooray for bicycles (but not hooray for malfunctioning bike locks).
In other words, I finally have a bicycle (hooray!). Said bicycle is a very old very beat up carnation pink Oxford women's bicycle. It also has a bell which I am not ballsy enough to use at people. Anyways, to cut to the chase, I am a much happier camper now that I have this bike, because it enables me to get to the "faraway" campus where I have some of my classes.
To get to the campus one must take a bus, which, depending on the traffic, can be anywhere between 22 and 35 minutes, give or take. Walking to the bus stop takes another 10 minutes both getting to and from the bus for a stop, and waiting for the bus is also an adventure, because it means another 5-30 minute wait. It also costs money. In contrast, I get on my bicycle at my door, and I arrive to the building where I am going for class without fail in 25-35 minutes tops. And there are bike lanes for most of my ride (only about 12 blocks or so without). Yay. Also at this campus, Juan Gomez Millas, they have bike racks indoors for one of the departments, and at the entry to the campus there is a manned bike rack where they have a guard and you register your bike when you leave it there. Awesome.
Hooray for bicycles (but not hooray for malfunctioning bike locks).
13 March 2008
Thank you, Municipalidad de Providencia.
In my confusingly shaped and colored apartment complex area, there is a goodly sized cement plaza area with a sort of raised up semi circle where the jovenes like to skate, the little kids like to run around chasing ambiguously domesticated stray dogs, and old folk like to sit and chill at night. The semi circle and plaza extension is also the site of a weekly Wednesday night concert series, put on by the municipal government of Providencia, the comuna where I live.
They set up a big stage with professional lights and audio and then they add some chairs out front, and voilá! Insta-culture! When I lived in the big apartment building a little ways away I could hear the music on Wednesday nights, and see a general area where sometimes there were flashing lights, but I didn't really know what it was. Several weeks ago all I could think was "Who the hell is blaring Sting so loudly at 9pm?" Well, lo and behold, it is the municipality trying to entertain its residents.
Today they had a band playing jazz but with an interesting twist. And by that I mean the Darth Vader star wars theme but with lots of spaced out improvisation squeezed in. Other sonic appearances were "Somewhere over the rainbow" and "My Favorite Things". But, to make a long story short, it was a great event. People come out of their big apartment buildings to sit and hang out, little kids run around chasing each other, couples sit holding hands, people bike or walk over from other nearby areas; in short, people are brought together, and I smile.
They set up a big stage with professional lights and audio and then they add some chairs out front, and voilá! Insta-culture! When I lived in the big apartment building a little ways away I could hear the music on Wednesday nights, and see a general area where sometimes there were flashing lights, but I didn't really know what it was. Several weeks ago all I could think was "Who the hell is blaring Sting so loudly at 9pm?" Well, lo and behold, it is the municipality trying to entertain its residents.
Today they had a band playing jazz but with an interesting twist. And by that I mean the Darth Vader star wars theme but with lots of spaced out improvisation squeezed in. Other sonic appearances were "Somewhere over the rainbow" and "My Favorite Things". But, to make a long story short, it was a great event. People come out of their big apartment buildings to sit and hang out, little kids run around chasing each other, couples sit holding hands, people bike or walk over from other nearby areas; in short, people are brought together, and I smile.
09 March 2008
Moving (forward)...
Last night I moved apartments, finally. I moved from a 23 story building, where I lived on the 19th floor, to a 10 story building, where I live on the second floor. I used to live with two Chilean women, a French girl, and a Chilean man. I got along well with the French girl and the Chilean man, but the two women, who were the owners/people's whose names were on the least/furnished the apartment, and I didn't communicate well. They were also, in my opinion, slightly crazy.
All these odd things that I chocked up to cultural differences with them turned out to be, in the end, pretty much eccentricities of their character. We didn't mesh well and the whole feeling of the apartment was more like I was renting a space in a hostel where I was allowed access to a couch and table and kitchen etc. Everyone had to buy their own individual toilet paper and we were supposed to bring it in and out of the bathroom with us and store it in our rooms. They bought 3 cheap pots/pans particularly for the other 3 of us (French, Chilean, and I) to use and said we couldn't use any of the other pans. They wanted the bathroom to be cleaned every day or every other day (cleaned as in swept, mopped, tub scrubbed with and only with an awful acid that takes off veneers from things - Muriatic acid - and apparently is linked to pretty serious respiratory problems from its frequent use here as a cleaning agent, toilet scrubbed, sink bleached). I was not allowed to have anyone stay over night. Ever. Even if they were to stay in my room with me. The internet would get shut off whenever they went to bed at night. And some other stuff.
But anyways, my new roommates, however, two Chilean guys about the same age as me, are fantastic. I am so much happier than I was in my old apartment, even if I don't have the gorgeous view I had before. The layout is nicer (it's a duplex), the kitchen is way better, the two guys are wonderful, I live near trees and grass and flowers, and I don't have to take an elevator to get to my apartment. It is a world's worth of difference. So here's to change and moving forward.
On the unfortunate side note, I am about 80% sure that the Chilean girls stole my Ipod while I stepped out briefly to go to the ATM. Either that or I am a complete idiot and managed to lose the Ipod while packing all of my belongings last night. But I think it is the former rather than the latter, because none of my stuff was left behind in the old apartment, and it just wasn't with me when I got to the new one. Uff.
All these odd things that I chocked up to cultural differences with them turned out to be, in the end, pretty much eccentricities of their character. We didn't mesh well and the whole feeling of the apartment was more like I was renting a space in a hostel where I was allowed access to a couch and table and kitchen etc. Everyone had to buy their own individual toilet paper and we were supposed to bring it in and out of the bathroom with us and store it in our rooms. They bought 3 cheap pots/pans particularly for the other 3 of us (French, Chilean, and I) to use and said we couldn't use any of the other pans. They wanted the bathroom to be cleaned every day or every other day (cleaned as in swept, mopped, tub scrubbed with and only with an awful acid that takes off veneers from things - Muriatic acid - and apparently is linked to pretty serious respiratory problems from its frequent use here as a cleaning agent, toilet scrubbed, sink bleached). I was not allowed to have anyone stay over night. Ever. Even if they were to stay in my room with me. The internet would get shut off whenever they went to bed at night. And some other stuff.
But anyways, my new roommates, however, two Chilean guys about the same age as me, are fantastic. I am so much happier than I was in my old apartment, even if I don't have the gorgeous view I had before. The layout is nicer (it's a duplex), the kitchen is way better, the two guys are wonderful, I live near trees and grass and flowers, and I don't have to take an elevator to get to my apartment. It is a world's worth of difference. So here's to change and moving forward.
On the unfortunate side note, I am about 80% sure that the Chilean girls stole my Ipod while I stepped out briefly to go to the ATM. Either that or I am a complete idiot and managed to lose the Ipod while packing all of my belongings last night. But I think it is the former rather than the latter, because none of my stuff was left behind in the old apartment, and it just wasn't with me when I got to the new one. Uff.
06 March 2008
Hacia el Sur: i.e. Gringo Train on a Bus
This past weekend my program had it's big "fieldtrip", which is part of the required distribution of funds that the mothership organization, IES, mandates. After being left in the dark despite many inquiries, the day before leaving we learned we were actually going not ambigously "South" but rather to Puerto Montt, the island of Chiloe (second largest island in South America), Frutillar, Puerto Varas, and some other places. Joy of all joys. We got on an airplane went South and then consequently spent most of our 4 days on a bus. And when I say on a bus, I really mean it.
1 marco polo bus
+ 23 gringos of aged 19 to 22
+ 1 tour driver named Claudio
+ 2 middle aged women who direct the IES program
+ too many locations spread out
+ squeezed into 4 short days
= Get on bus, get off bus, take pictures of a vista or some inane tourist site whose cultural significance hasn't been explained to us, get on bus, get shuffled to a bad restaurant, get on bus. Repeat.
And then we stayed in the middle of nowhere, i.e. Frutillar (which basically means Strawberryville...or something akin to that). In Frutillar there was one bar, Frutibar, which closed for the season after our second night in town. Ha. On Saturday we got to play in a national park for a bit, which was a welcome change. But, unfortunately, we still got carted around on the bus. A lot.
In short, it was a gringo-bus bonding experience. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but it was what it was. Photos of Chile forthcoming, probably on Facebook because Blogger is really slow with uploading photos.
1 marco polo bus
+ 23 gringos of aged 19 to 22
+ 1 tour driver named Claudio
+ 2 middle aged women who direct the IES program
+ too many locations spread out
+ squeezed into 4 short days
= Get on bus, get off bus, take pictures of a vista or some inane tourist site whose cultural significance hasn't been explained to us, get on bus, get shuffled to a bad restaurant, get on bus. Repeat.
And then we stayed in the middle of nowhere, i.e. Frutillar (which basically means Strawberryville...or something akin to that). In Frutillar there was one bar, Frutibar, which closed for the season after our second night in town. Ha. On Saturday we got to play in a national park for a bit, which was a welcome change. But, unfortunately, we still got carted around on the bus. A lot.
In short, it was a gringo-bus bonding experience. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but it was what it was. Photos of Chile forthcoming, probably on Facebook because Blogger is really slow with uploading photos.
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