"Cause I'm proud to be a gringa, where at least I know I'm free"

Here in Chile, I am a gringa. Gringa, or gringo for a guy, basically means a white American and whetheror not the phrase is used nicely or rudely depends on who is saying it, the tone of voice, and on the situation. This week was one of accepting my gringa identity and trying to figure out how to own it like a champ.

On Saturday night I was walking with my friend trying to find a cool place to go out and she told me that her host sister described a “gringo bar” called California Cantina where obviously tons of gringos congregate and do their gringo thang. We wanted to go check it out but we had no idea where it was located. Okay, so she would ask her host sister and we would go another time. As we continued walking down this main street in a neighborhood called Provedencia we heard a loud WOOOOOOOO so we followed it, thinking wherever the WOOOOOOOO was coming from would be the place to be for the night. Our gringo senses must have been working on overdrive because lo and behold, the WOOOOOOOO was coming from what else? Cheers from the Pats-Broncos game at the gringo bar! My friend and I took a lap around and there were people wearing Red Sox shirts, everyone was speaking English including the bartenders, and every time I looked at someone they would look back at me with a knowing smile. We were all strangers in a strange land! My friend and I decided this place would be our guiltiest pleasure here.

During orientation when I first arrived one of the directors explained the term to us and also noted that we should not go out in large groups and/or speak loudly in English lest people realize (and subsequently take advantage of) our gringo/a status. What a better way to abide by this rule than by, I mean, what a better way to totally disregard this rule than by singing Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer to kareoke at a packed Chilean bar/discoteque when everyone else is doing kareoke to Spanish songs! Out of the ten people I went out with, about five of us went on stage and sang our hearts out while the bar gawked back at our gringo-ness. Honestly I thought this was going to be the most mortifying thing I had ever done in my life, but a few people actually got into it and started singing along! Either way, my friends and I had a fabulous time doing it (see photo) and I think here we definitely owned up to our gringo nature.

Sunday Montana and I went on a hike up that Cerro San Cristobal that I mentioned in my first post. It felt so good to get this gringa body some exercise. There were tons of small gardens and two swimming pools so we are very excited to go back there with our swim toys for an all day pool extravaganza.

That week I went to a birthday dinner for my friend Jillian. She and I prepared a fabulous Mexican fiesta meal at her apartment that I thoroughly enjoyed. One of the only types of food that is rare to find here is Mexican food! Jillian was here last semester as well so she has many Chilean friends who came to celebrate at the dinner. They warned us that if Chileans ever ask for you to say a word DO NOT SAY IT, chances are they know you are a gringa and are trying to make you look stupid. It is also amazing how many words when said one way mean something, but when said another way, or when one/two letters are changed means something very not appropriate. For example, la dura means really? (as in: seriously?) in Spanish, but when changed a little bit means something that I will not write here. Feel free to ask me privately! Another example: to say embarrassed is avergonzado and to say pregnant is embarazada. Muy confusing! There are a lot of things I need to remember in order not to make a gringa fool of myself!

A couple days later Montana and I went to this area called Patronato for shopping. We first went to a touristy area with a few seafood markets. Every step of the way a different person was asking us where we were from trying to get us to eat in their restaurant. It was very unpleasant! It felt like being in Little Italy where you can’t walk without being coerced into a restaurant. I didn’t understand, did we have the American flag tattooed on our foreheads? After mozy-ing trying to find a restaurant we walked down to this Peruvian place. We weren’t sure if we wanted to eat there so we asked for a menu, while we were standing reading it this guy who worked there kept talking to us asking us where we were from, what we were doing in Chile etc. He was really nice but made reading the menu difficult. When he said he would give us a minute I said “I’ll believe it when I see it” under my breath. He definitely did not give us a minute! At that point it was too awkward to leave so we decided to eat there. A man walked over to our with a sizable American flag to keep on our table. We were so mortified! Everyone started looking at us because now we legitimately had our gringa identities revealed! We just laughed and turned red. Thankfully they also brought us a free Pisco Sour to numb our embarrassment!

Patronato is a crazy place. It feels like every clothing factory in the world vomited all of their goods into this one seemingly endless block of streets. They have some of the ugliest clothes I have ever seen in my life! They do have a few gems but you definitely need to use some serious scuba diving to find them. I didn’t end up buying anything but that will definitely be the locale to buy those Alaadin pants!

Friday USAC (my program) took our group to Pomaire (Pom-aye-ray) and Isla Negra. Pomaire is this adorable town that is famous for their ceramic pottery that they make using old Mapuche techniques. The Mapuche is one of the only indigenous tribes left in Chile. We got to see this professional make pottery on a wheel, after a few people tried with the professional and it creepily felt like that scene from Ghost with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. There is a long street in Pomaire with lots of places to get empanadas (I ate the inside of one) and buy pottery (I bought two wine glasses). I may go back to take a pottery class there! We then drove to Isla Negra which is famous for containing Pablo Neruda’s favorite house. The house is right next to the water, long and narrow “just like Chile” and modeled after a boat. He loved the ocean and wanted to do everything he could to be close to it. He and his wife Matilda are buried there as well. He collected many things such as those people who sit on the front of ships, butterflies, insects, ships in glass bottles, Japanese theater masks, and things that reminded him of his childhood. Another important aspect of his life was ensuring that he did not forget his childhood, and that he kept childlike attitude alive. When walking through the house listening to the tour on a remote control I could not stop smiling. He was a really fascinating person for his literature and his politics and being in his house felt like being inside his mind. I hope that one day my house can resemble my personality in the same way Neruda’s did.

From Isla Negra about 20 of us from the group went to Valpariso and Vina del Mar for a beach weekend. Valpo and Vina (as the cool kids call them) are twin cities akin to Minneapolis and St. Paul (shout outs to the Minnesotans reading!). The cities however were nothing like I expected. I was thinking that they both would be small beach towns with one row of restaurants and bars, the beach at arms length. I imagined them to be kind of like Long Beach or Atlantic Beach on Long Island. However, Valpo and Vina are huge cities! In fact there are no real beaches in Valpo only ports so we needed to take a 15 minute bus ride to Vina to get to the beach. We stayed at this adorable hostel in Valpariso and met a woman from Denmark, a woman from Germany, and a few guys from France. It was very cool hearing Spanish with a French accent, and trying to speak to each other using a combination of English and Spanish—though not getting too far with that! Being on the beach was fabulous and the ocean was deliciously cold. I did indeed get a little splotch-ily sunburned, my lips look like a botched collagen job, but it felt so good to relax all with my new friends, get to know them better, and hear some of their stories.

I am a happy lady here in Chile, even though I still have some homework to do and my first exam on Tuesday! I don’t have too much planned for this coming week but I know it will feel like an adventure no matter what!

Ciao!

View from jazz festival

Friends at the jazz festival 

Mildly embarrassing kareoke!

Garden on Cerro San Cristobal representing Chile's friendship with Japan

Cerro Santa Lucia, a beautiful castle in the middle of a very big street, imagine this on Broadway in New York!

Not awkward alone picture on Cerro Santa Lucia

Patronato aaaaaaaaah!

Pottery

Cafe in Pomaire

How celiacs do empanadas!


Candy apples in Pomaire


In case you wanted more of that

View from Neruda's house

Neruda and Matilda's graves

His house

Clock at Reloj de Flores in Vina del Mar

View of Vina and Valpo from above

The hostel in Valpo

La Primera Semana

Now that I have laid a little bit of the foundation for what Santiago is like, I can start writing about what I have been doing! I have literally only been in this country for eight days and it already feels like I have been here for months! I adjusted very quickly and I already feel comfortable in this incredibly foreign place. This is not a result of my own doing in the slightest. On that note I want to publicly thank in the blog-o-sphere all those who have been so kind to me—from the beyond generous Santiago Chabad family who has been housing me to the patient strangers who engage me in conversation on the bus as I fumble and mumble through what I hope sounds like Spanish. Thank you everyone.

I remember my first couple days in Santiago mostly for a lot of small talk conversations with the rest of the group and desperate attempts to remember everyone’s names. The next day many of us remarked it was even more a more difficult day for names because everyone changed their clothes! Our whole group stayed in a hotel that night for orientation and the next morning everyone’s families came to pick them up while I made my way in a cab over to Chabad (a Jewish community center, they have them all over the world!). Although it was to be expected that those at the Chabad were going to be incredibly kind to me, I was, and still am surprised at their amazing generosity to a stranger (me). When I arrived the Rebetzin (Rabbi’s wife) brought me back to their house, a two-minute drive from the Chabad center, the enormous and beautiful new building where I met her. She immediately offered me food and assured me that she was already in touch with some other families to see if I could live there but it would be absolutely fine for me to stay there for the semester as well.

There are also eight other Argentinian girls staying there for the month serving as day camp counselors in the Chabad. I have thoroughly enjoyed their company and it has been very interesting to see all the things we have in common even though we practice Judaism differently. They want to travel just like I do, but through being a shlucha (person who travels to another country to serve in one of the Chabad community centers). I helped one with her English application to Israel for the year, but I do not think that application was being sent to Brovenders (the school that I went to). I caught them weighing themselves after the fast on Thursday was over, and laughed because that is exactly what I like to do as well!

On Friday I met the rest of the group by the Universidad Andres Bello for a tour of the campus from student guides. We were shown the library, where the printers are, and how to make photocopies. It was at this point I realized that I am actually here for classes and not just to run around exploring! Not to say that I won’t do that as well, just not during class time (maybe). Andres Bello is located in an area with a million other universities in the surrounding area. It is vacation time now for the Chilenos but I bet in March the area will be booming with students. Recently there have been a lot of student protests fighting for education reform (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chilean_protests) so there is a lot of graffiti all around the city as well as on university buildings themselves from the protests. Students also took chairs and desks and turned their legs into the gate of another university-looking building in what seems like their headquarters, but I am not absolutely sure about this (see photos).

After the University tour we went on a bus to get a tour of central Santiago. Our first stop was this area called Plaza de Armas which has a lovely fountain and this grand church called Iglesia de San Francisco (see photos). We then drove up this mountain/hill called called Cerro San Cristobal for a view of the whole city. You’ll be just as surprised as I was when you see the pictures to learn that apparently we did not even go up on the best side! There is an even more beautiful view than the one shown in my photo. I am very excited to hike up the mountain on foot to see for myself.

At this point I was getting a little nervous because I knew we were almost coming to the end of the tour and I was going to need to figure out how to take the bus back to where I lived. I had no idea where the bus was, or how I was going to find it. Thankfully when I was asking one of the directors about the bus, one of our guides said that he knew exactly where the bus was, he was taking the same one, and he would help me buy a BIP card (Santiago MetroCard). I felt so relieved and was very excited to have made my first Chilean friend.

My first shabbat was incredibly lovely and I do not have that much to write about because it was exactly like it is at home. I enjoyed the classic praying-eating-sleeping routine and could not be happier to just be for a moment. I met many members of the community and after all of these first time experiences that I am having, it was nice for something to finally feel familiar.

After shabbat I met up with some friends in a neighborhood called Bellavista. It is an artsy-bohemian type neighborhood with lots of fabulous looking restaurants, both for cheap eats and more expensive dining, bars, discoteques, and neat little cobblestone streets. I met my friends at a bar and practiced my Chilean patriotism by sampling their national cocktail, a Pisco sour. It was very delicious. My friends and I then went to a discotheque called “Amnesia”. Yes, it probably looked as you are imagining. A bar-mitzvah amount of flashing lights and smoke filled the air. It was very fun to dance with my new friends, but it really made me miss dancing with my friends from home. I won’t tell you what time I headed home, but as I was walking to catch a taxi I heard people speaking English. This is very rare in Santiago so I asked them where they were from. As it turned out they were students from the University of Maryland taking a Winter Course here! I even recognized one of them from going on a Hillel Alternative Spring Break! Even though this experience is literally broadening my world, it still proves to be incredibly small!

On Sunday I went back to Bellavista to explore those cobblestone streets that I mentioned. If you go a little bit deeper into those streets off of the main avenues there is a whole new energy that emerges. Every building is covered in amazing street art murals. My friend and I talked about how this is how we pictured or wished all of South America to look like before we came. The colorful painted graffiti on the walls mixed with eccentric short buildings and kooky architecture made me feel like I was in my element (see photos). I am so excited to go back there and explore more!

Monday was our first day of classes and that was standard. The best part of school is lunch! There are many adorable places in the area where you can get a four-course meal of salad, soup, a main (most likely another salad for me!) and dessert for about $6.00! Tuesday night I went to see the movie Win Win (Imdb it! It’s with Paul Giamatti and was awesome!) in a park with some friends. Wednesday night I went to a Jazz festival in another park with some other people. We were sitting on bleachers watching the sunset over the Mapocho River that is brown because of the mining from the mountains that surround us. All we could think about is how happy we were in that very moment. After this crazy week I am very much looking forward to Shabbat and what this next week will bring!

Ciao!

The fountain by Plaza de Armas

 Iglesia de San Francisco 

View from Cerro San Cristobal 

Another view from Cerro San Cristobal 

Our beautiful group!

Street art in Bellavista! 

Bellavista

Bellavista

My future home!

Chairs in a university building gate

"

Lady Water?

The view from my walk home!

Introduction to Santiago or YO ESTOY AQUI!

So, after every drama (or patchka) that I had in planning my trip to Santiago, I am finally here. Many of you may recall my many frantic days and nights in the weeks before my trip. It seemed as if every move I made in the process there was another issue. I had visa troubles, including lost fingerprints, a notary public (who even knows what that is?), housing issues, I didn’t even know where I would be living a few days before my flight! Thankfully though, all is mostly resolved and after a short nachos-from-Jose-Cuervo’s-Tequileria-in-the-airport filled connection in Miami I arrived in Santiago!

My first introduction to Chile was the way that the people in the airport were handling our luggage. Instead of letting the bags sit on the belt, they were taking many of them off and leaving them on the side. So instead of just waiting for your bags to arrive on the belt you would also have to walk around to see if your bag was on the floor somewhere else. Thankfully I was able to snatch BOTH of my bags before they were haphazardly placed elsewhere!

My first few days here have been like a whirlwind. Firstly, the weather here is so fantasmicallyfabuloso that it needs a ridiculous word to describe it. It is cool in the mornings and gets hotter during the day but it is never humid. There is a wonderful breeze that passes in the air and it is hard not to smile when it hits your face. At night it cools down as well; I sleep with the window open and it is just lovely. Time also seems to move quickly as it is obviously summer here down in the southern hemisphere (note rhyme). It does not get dark until 9 o’clock, so until I get used to it I think it is 2 o’clock in the afternoon until I ask for the time and it is already 7 o’clock.

This whole trip is sort of like an experiment for me. How would I react when put in a new place, with a language I do not speak, without any friends from before, with challenges in terms of what I can eat (as this country and South America in general is super into meat and bread). As far as the language is going, it is honestly not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I actually surprising speak enough Spanish to get around! Words like “donde esta” (where) are so incredibly helpful! I also have been saying “yo voy a tratar hablar/practicar Espanol” (something to the effect of I am trying to speak/practice Spanish) and that makes people laugh and smile at me. So far the Chileans have been very patient with me and helpful when I mumble questions in broken Spanish.  I have not encountered anyone who has been condescending to me for not speaking/understanding the language. I have had many conversations with strangers on buses and in other places and they are very willing to talk to me even through my mediocre-at-best Spanish. They are mostly curious to hear about where I am from, what I am doing here, and how I like it so far.

It may sound a little silly but I think this experience is giving me a new appreciation for words in general. There are SO MANY OF THEM! For example, the only verb in Spanish that I remembered that had to do with the eyes was “mirar” (to see). But think about how many other words there are that are similar to “to see” but are subtly different, like to search, to view, to find, to look, to notice etc. This is just a random thought that I am having while exploring a new language. Chilean Spanish also has a lot of slang that they use that other Spanish-speaking countries do not use. They say “po” at the end of everything. It does not mean anything; I think it is a word similar “like” in English, it is just something to say. They also say “ya” the serves a lot of purposes meaning “ok”, “right”, or “enough”. It is very common for people to say “si po” or “ya po”. I want to bring it back to the states! Also, everyone says “ciao” when they say goodbye which sounds very glamorous.

As far as the food, it is actually very delicious! The fruits and vegetables are so fresh and amazing. Costco avocados have nothing on the ones here. I have guacamole coming out of my ears and I keep saying I want to bathe in them. The peaches are so juicy and fresh and the cherries are sweet, each one more flavorful than the last. Yes the meat looks delicious, but I do not feel deprived. They also put eggs in/on everything! There is this one dish called bistec a la pobre, literally “poor man’s steak” that looks amazing. It is French fries, covered in fried onions, covered in steak, with a fried egg on top. Perhaps soon I will get it sans steak! I have been eating fish which is huge for me. So far I do not totally love it, but maybe it will be an acquired taste. There are also many opportunities to find cheap, very delicious food which is refreshing. There are so many adorable restaurants and outdoor cafes to choose from that offer fantastic food at fantastic prices. I am looking forward to many meals to be eaten outside in the wonderful breeze!

The style here is very interesting and I am trying to figure it out. There are a lot of women who are dressed fairly western, but then others who are surely not as was to be expected. Gaucho-Aladdin type pants are very popular both in basic colors and in crazy bright/patterned ones. Many women are NOT dressed conservatively as I thought they would be; I have seen lots of very short shorts, belly shirts, tight and backless dresses and shirts. As for the men I have been seeing MANY mullets and rat-tails, super cute. Also there are a lot of guys who wear longer shorts, and thumb rings I noticed. I am excited to get myself a pair of the gaucho pants and I heard there is also Topshop here!

There are many cultural norms here both distinct to Chile and also South/Latin America. Everyone kisses each other on the cheek when saying “hola” and “ciao” no matter how close they are. Cheek kissing is also something not restricted to adults. Everyone my age does it as well. I really like this custom. I think it makes me feel more comfortable with the people I meet automatically, and generally creates a more open friendly atmosphere. Another norm is that everyone shows up late to everything! Plans are not very well kept here. You could have plans with a Chilean and they may show up two hours late and not think twice about it! So far I have not experienced this but I am preparing myself to not be surprised if it does!

I am making a lot of new friends here. They are from all around the United States and I am excited to have people to visit when I travel around the country. I really like everyone a lot. The group is super nice and many share similar interests to me.

This post is getting a little bit long so I am going to stop here after introducing you to the general aspects of Santiago. Feel free to post any questions in the comments and I will answer them as best as I can! Next I will write about what I have actually been doing and also post some pictures!

Ciao!