eres un angelito del cielo

Foreword:
Sorry for getting behind on postings. And sorry for always writing so much. I know it's silly to recap every little detail of every day, but I have to think chronologically through my weeks to remember what I did and then I feel bad if I don't talk about an experience that I had. I don't want to offend any memories by not including them.

Entonces...

Thursday:
Attended orientation at La Pontificia Universidad Catolica. As expected, the campus and the students were a 180 degree turn from La Chile. No graffiti on the walls- but rather, pristine buildings (some of which looked like museums) with fountains and nice tile floors and pretty libraries and the works. No students with dreds or tye-die or funky hair colors - but rather, adorned in your classic Gap styles, with a Chilean twist of course. Unfortunately, the mullet was still present on the Catolica boys. What a shame, what a shame.

Umm the orientation was incredibly boring but luckily went by quickly because I spent the time figuring out potential class schedules. Then all of 40 of the CIEE kids crammed into the tiny 3-room CIEE office to look at past course evaluations and chaotically figure out our schedules some more. Marni and I bailed pretty quickly, wanting to just put the whole class-picking conundrum to rest for awhile, so we wandered around a little area called La Feria de Santa Lucia - an outdoor market filled with artisan vendors of all kinds. I got a fun costume-jewelry-ish ring for $2 and Marni found some cool artwork that she's going to ponder whether to buy or not.

Then went to Fallabella to look for an ipod to replace my dead one (grrrr - I'm so mad it's broken! The other day I went to turn it on and the screen just had funky lines running through it! I'm convinced that all ipod products are made to last 2 years and then just self destruct b/c my last one died after 2 years too...). So anyways, I found the ipods and looked at the price and saw that it was 199,990, which I originally read as $199.99 in dollars - seemed pretty close to what the same kind of ipod costs in the states. Then, I reminded myself that I was in Chile and remembered that I needed to DOUBLE that price to convert it from pesos to dollars. Heck no - I am not paying double the price for the same exact product just because I'm buying it in a different country. And if I wanted someone to ship me an ipod from the states, they'd have to pay all sorts of 30% insurance and tarriff fees and such. And if I want someone to look at the ipod to see if they can fix it, I have to pay $100. So annoying. I'm walking all over the place here and it's lonely and boring without having music to keep me entertained. However, I think my mom's going to send my ipod shuffle soon so hopefully that will solve my dilemma.

Thursday night I just chilled at home watching some random spanish TV while waiting for Victoria to come home. Around 8 she called all flustered and apologized for being late and said she'd be home soon. Got home around 9 and felt super guilty so she took me out to dinner (to a place called "Sport Cafe"...they love their english words down here....)

We each had a pisco sour and then split fajitas for dinner (fajitas for 2 were $30!! absolutely absurd- no wonder people don't eat out much down here). Victoria downed her pisco sour in a jiffy and when I eventually finished mine, the waitress brought another one (happy hour - 2 for 1!) Once again, Victoria downed her drink but I didn't touch my second one...as much as I like sugary things, pisco sours taste like you're just drinking liquid lemonheads. Plus these drinks were wayyy stronger than the pisco sours I'd had here so far.

Friday:
Went back to the international police for step 2 in the process of getting an international ID card. Had to get every one of my fingerprints taken; however, considering the smudgy mess that I made when I gave my fingerprints, I doubt they'd be able to identify me even if I left fingerprints all over a crime scene.

Saw "El Caballero de la noche" (The Dark Knight -fortunately we found a screening in English with Spanish subtitles rather than a dubbed version) with my friend Erin at a really nice movie theater (with a dunkin donuts and other restaurants inside the theater). I wasn't super impressed by the flick - the story line wasn't very captivating and by the end I was just bored. Heath Ledger was scary, but great...but I definitely liked Batman Begins much more.

Had dinner with Victoria, Vecita, Rodrigo, RoRo and Marcela. They wanted to celebrate so we had rum+coke with dinner. At the beginning of the night, Rodrigo was trying to talk to me in his million-words-a-minute mode of speaking. Although I can understand what he's trying to ask me when I give him my full attention, he often says something when I don't realize he's talking to me and I have to ask him to repeat himself. Therefore, Rodrigo goes on to talk to Marcela about how I can't understand him, and of course THEN I understand every word he says. Gah.

Then Rodrigo started pestering me because I only had one drink (just the same as him I might add - both of us were wimps compared to Victoria's 3 drinks though). I wanted to explain to him that it was already hard enough to understand him and speak in spanish with the rum in my system.

After dinner, met up with some friends at Plaza Nunoa to enjoy the Santiago nightlife. Ended up wandering around and puddle-hopping in the POURING rain, which made for a good bonding experience with some friends. In the taxi ride home, the driver tried to rip us off but luckily we were NOT the dumb gringas he thought we were and we did not get ripped off.

Saturday:
In the morning, wandered around a little outdoor market with vendors selling all sorts of "brand name" (read: fake) shoes and clothes and such. Most of the items were really really bad knockoffs; however, there was a plethora of futbol jerseys, so I decided to buy one so that I could have something to wear when I go see a match. While looking from far away at one stand, a vendor noticed my interest and then...

Vendor: "Ayy que linda! Venga, venga mi amor!" (ahh how beautiful! come here, come here my love!)
[i hesitantly walk towards the booth]
Vendor: "Ayyy eres una angelito del cielo! Mi angelito! Eres la mas bonita aqui!" (you're an angel sent from heaven! my angel! you're the most beautiful one here!)
[man shows me all sorts of jerseys in all sorts of colors, offers me discounts, etc]
Vendor: "Ayyyy tus ojos! Dame tus ojos!" (ah your eyes! give me your eyes!)

This went on for the five or so minutes that I was browsing through the jerseys. As much as I wanted to uphold my feminist values and avoid his piropos (cat calls/flirting etc) and show him that he can't attract customers just by sweet talking them, he did have a jersey I liked and offered me a good price, so I bought it.

Met up with a friend to go to this artisan town outside of Santiago called Pomaire. The bus ride was supposed to be about an hour, but ended up taking almost two hours b/c halfway through the trip, our long-distance bus ride suddenly turned into a community transit system- we picked up random people along the side of the road and they just squeezed down the aisle between the coach seats. A bit strange, but I guess they need some sort of transportation system out in rural areas.

Enjoyed a pleasant afternoon wandering around Pomaire - admiring the clay pottery and 1/2 kilo empanadas that the city is known for and soaking in the smog-free Chilean countryside. I found a pair of super soft alpaca (llama-type animal)-fur socks and Erin got a really cool alpaca fur sweater. We had fun; however, we were ready to go by around 4pm. Unfortunately, when we went to the bus stop where we thought we'd be catching a ride home and found out that we were in the wrong place and needed to walk to the other side of town to get a bus ticket. So then we wandered to the bus station and as the man handed us our tickets he told us that the bus (the last bus of the day) would be leaving at 530. By this point we had seen all the sights in the village so we just sat and people-watched for awhile. Although we were annoyed that the whole bus process wasn't clearer, we were happy that we made it onto the last bus..otherwise we would have had a very interesting time trying to scope out accommodations in pomaire!

Sunday
Went to church with Marni. When I got there, Marni was talking to an adorable elderly couple in English and they were excited to hear that I spoke English too. Turned out that the husband is from Australia and his wife is from Chile, so me being the nosy person that I am asked how they met each other and then had the pleasure of hearing one of the most adorable love stories ever.

A few years back, this man (a widower and former member of the Australian Air Force) was going on an around-the-world trip with his son to celebrate his son's graduation from something. While they were going through security in an airport, the man set off the metal detector and realized he had to take out these metal slits from his Air Force boots. Apparently this Chilean woman thought this was really funny and started laughing at the man. So then the woman goes through the detector and sets it off as well with her jewelry or something and the Air Force guy laughs at her. And then they chat while waiting in the terminal and part their separate ways and reunite a few months later and now they live in Chile together! Precious precious.

At church, met another exchange student from GA Tech (who used to date my friend from high school...small world) and his friends invited me to play frisbee with a group of gringos (apparently Chileans think frisbees are for dogs...)

Met up at a cool park (with actual grass-- quite rare down here) and joined up with some Americans who teach at an International school in Chile. They were a pretty intense bunch with the frisbee, but really nice people in general.

Monday:
First day of school! My tentative schedule doesn't include any monday classes, but today I went to two just to test them out in case my schedule changes. I'm going to try to take a religion class at La Catolica b/c their religion department is supposed to be strong, so my first class was about feminine themes in Christianity. Fortunately, the professor spoke very clearly and slowly...phew! And when we had to introduce ourselves in front of the class I could understand the other students and they didn't laugh at me when I gave my introduction. All very good signs.

The other class I went to was the Introduction to the Bible. Although I thought this would be more of a literary analysis/overview of the different works, the actual course deals more with historical aspects and distribution

It rained all morning and then the sun came out and life was beautiful once again.

Tonight, went to a cool little bible study with gringos and chileans alike. Twas muy fun.

830 am class tomorrow. Sleepytime.

Un besito,

Lindsay