July 8, 2014

hello everyone!
It's been about a week since my last post. A lot has happened but also not that much! We have started our language class which is 5 days a week for 4 hours a day so that has kept me pretty busy. It seems like a lot of time (60 hours in 3 weeks!) but it passes by quickly because I really enjoy it! All of the people in my program are so nice and easy to get along with and the class is centered more on discussion and learning chilean culture which is much better than the same old grammar exercises and flashcard learning. Last week I got the pleasure of registering my visa and applying for a chilean ID card ( got to wake up at 6 in the morning to do so!) which was pretty much as fun as any DMV trip but also worse because everything is in spanish. I hope that my spanish is improving but it's hard when all my time is spent with my US friends and after about 3 minutes in Spanish we give up and revert back to english. Hopefully we can all improve together by cutting out more of our native tongue haha.

One of the days last week I went with my friend Rachel to explore our little neighborhood of Ñuñoa and there is so much to see outside my 8 minute walk to campus! We went to plaza Ñuñoa where there is basically the city hall for our neighborhood and we saw some awesome bench art:

So I'm sure you're all wondering what I did to celebrate the 4th of July... and if I'm being completely honest, nothing really! The intention was to go to this Cantina California because it's supposed to be the spot for americans and our celebrations of the 4th but our group split up and 6 of us ended up hanging out with our "cultural mentor" from the program and his chilean friends, which was a blast! We found ourselves at a salsoteca where I got to trip all over myself having absolutely no rhythm to try to dance. But I still had a blast! Saturday when I got up my host mom thought I was up "early for a Saturday" even though it was nearly 11, I guess I have some shoes to fill when it comes to coming home late and sleeping all day.

I think one of my new favorite activities is finding new coffee places and trying all sorts of coffee (plus there tends to be wifi at all these cafes). One was a bookstore that I definitely want to go back to  check out some chilean books. Another was a type of cafe commonly known as "café con piernas" because the waitresses are known to dress in short skirts and be very pretty, this one was called Café Caribe and it was quite possibly the best cappuccino I've ever had. The most recent cafe was where my group was planning our presentation for class, and wowzas their caramel lattes are sweet!!

 

There are so many things to look forward to! This weekend I'll be heading to Isla Negra which is on the coast for the final project that we have for our spanish class and I also have my flight booked to go visit my friend Kevin (who was a student at my high school from Chile) in Antofagasta! 

Although I have come down with a little bit of a cold, I'm taking it easy while trying to not miss out on too many adventures.

On the note of my name.... my host mom calls me Faith like 90% of the time( 50% of which follow her catching herself calling me Joyce) and I haven't seem to be able to find a solution to the whole debacle. Aaaaand last week when I was introduced to one of my cultural monitor's friends, he asked me my name and when I told him, his was response was "¿En serio?" which translates as you'd think to: Seriously? ...... awesome, now people just think I'm joking. oh well, I'll keep you updated on people's comical responses to my name.

Here you can see one of my bomb lunches my host mom has made and the makings we have for salad pretty much every day.. Lunch is the main meal so we eat wonderfully. (And always with a ton of avocado)

It's hard to believe I have been here for 2 weeks! I'm finally getting a hold of directions in my neighborhood, which micro(bus) to take, and where to get to the nearest metro. Also, we have had a little bit of warmer weather the last couple days! Which is nice only having to wear one layer of clothing (: I'm so excited for the next 5 and a half months and all the adventures it has in store!

ciao!

Orientation in Algarrobo

So you know those pictures of that hotel with the largest pool in the world? Roughly 3/5 of a mile long, they put boats in it and its super awesome?!?! ya we didn't stay there but we could see it from our hotel down the round! This weekend we went to the coast for our orientation (if I haven't made it clear it's winter, so brrrrr.) despite the cold it was beautiful and reminded me of my home in Santa Barbara.We spent our time learning more about signing up for classes, the excursions we'll be going on and everything we could possibly know about our universities( for me it's La Chile).

On Saturday we coerced our director into pushing back the time of our orientation to watch the Chile v. Brazil game and although Chile lost it was so much fun to hang out with the hotel staff and watch my first ever full fútbol game( I know right, what have I been doing all my life?!). We ate really well all weekend (bread,bread, and more bread with every meal) and although it continued to be frigid in every room we went to, it was a great time! That night there was a huge party for the fishermen of Algarrobo and there was a band and dancing, and lots of drunk old men dancing their feet off. It was so much fun to experience a small town celebration like that and get to hang out and get warm by jumping and twisting and pretending I have any rhythm at all.

This morning we had orientation again bright and early and I wouldn't normally include such a weird thing but to give you an idea of how cold it is all the time, I'd just like to say that you don't truly enjoy hot showers, until you've woken up cold( wearing full pants, thick socks, and a sweatshirt), sat for an hour and a half freezing in a conference room, and then gotten to shower. Definitely the highlight of my day. Later we left our little coastal getaway happy for the experience and to get to all spend time together as a group. Now I'm home in bed with my guaterro to keep me warm in bed and so excited to start my language program tomorrow! Hopefully soon I'l find a place to buy more socks and sweats and long sleeve shirts.

*I would just like to note that I am holding up fine and the cold is probably not as bad as I think it is and everything takes a little getting used to so there's not really anything to worry about ( I'm talking to you Grandma and Grandpa Aguirre and Grammy Helen)*
  (There's more after the pictures!!)

Hotel Pacifico

Chile v. Brazil game

Algarrobo, a beautiful coastal city

one of the many nice stray dogs in Chile

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So I wanted to add on to this post to share a kind of funny story. On Friday the other student that I live with comes up to me and asks me, "Your name's Faith right?" Puzzled, I answer yes and she goes on to tell me that my host mom has for some reason taken to calling me Joyce, which I hadn't noticed in the slightest because it sounds more like yoice and it's not my name so I wasn't really listening enough to notice it. After this clarification Eni's granddaughter tells her the mistake and she didn't really know why she had started calling me Joyce at all and kind of just went on with her day.
This combined with when I introduced myself to her son-in-law and I said my name was Faith and he goes, noooo, what is your NAME?, after repeating myself he kind of stares at me and tells me that this is strange because it is a word and not a name( thanks mom and dad haha). Hold on folks, because that's not all. Because not only is my name apparently not a name but in the spanish language you don't exactly have the "th" sound. so, now I'm stuck with a name that not only cannot be comprehended but is also impossible for Chileans to say.

After sharing this with all of my friends that are in the program multiple people have suggested that I have a new name. Now I really like my name, I think it's pretty cool, pretty unique but I seem to be at a crossroads. So, begrudgingly I offer to you all to give me a new Chilean name, which I may or may not go along with( right now I'm pretty against it), but any suggestions to overcome this are welcome and encouraged. *** I also want to mention that just going by Fé (the spanish translation) would only solve half the problem because people would still think I'm weird with my word-name. Anyways thanks for reading my babble!             (apparently my last name is common just not my first, "Lomas de lo Aguirre"

Yours truly, (to be determined)

June 26

So today I started my day at 7:45 where I was very disoriented having Ene talk to me in Spanish as soon as I woke up(ask my mom, I don't even understand English that early) and left to go to Campus Oriente at 9:30 where we are having our orientation. It is a beautiful campus which I guess used to be a very expensive boarding school. The directors and teachers in our program are very nice and much easier to understand (although everyone speaks quickly and drops the S's) and we found out that tomorrow we get to go to the beach after our oral exam for the weekend for orientation! It will be a lot of fun to spend time with the other students and hang out more.

I had a lot more confidence with my Spanish today already and even though I know I make many mistakes I said a lot more than Ok or sí. We also met our "monitores culturales" which are students from the universities who are basically like mentors to us and are there for all of our questions(in spanish of course). I tried an empenada from the campus which was ok because it is like any food you can buy at a kiosk from school. Then our mentor Erick offered to take us to get phones so we walked less than a mile to get to a bus stop where we took the bus to the mall which was huuuuuge, it had 6 floors and I think the middle of it is the tallest building in all of south america. He was very nice and went beyond the call of duty to help us so I am very grateful!

When I got home at about 5 I was very tired but through dinner  I had a lot more conversation with Ene and she said that my spanish is already very good. I showered with the heater on in the bathroom( because you freeze otherwise) and now I will pack for the weekend. I am looking forward to bed because I get a pouch of hot water in a sleeve to put by my feet and it is fantastic.

                                                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I wanted to tell about the food since this post is shorter because there are many different things!

Yesterday for lunch we had a tortilla and salad but it is very different than you would think.
      1. tortilla: a thick kind of pancake which had potatoes and I think eggs and onions, I think it is kind of a staple for meals( like pasta)
      2. salad: basically chop tomatoes and avocados( with every meal, yum!), corn, and lima              beans/green beans but I skipped the last two
-ketchup and mayonnaise are big bags like you would imagine a bag of croutons kind of strange haha
-Coffee: it is mostly instant coffee which is ok but I miss Starbucks a lot.
-galletitos(little cookies) are out all the time so I like that.
With tea(or coffee for me) we have bread and Ene makes very good jelly from plums
---bread is pretty much with every meal.
Tonight for dinner we had soup because it's winter and cold everywhere haha. it was good, reminded me of something from home where you mix an egg in it but I don't know the name of it. I also had a tortilla and bread and salad so basically way too much food but oh well I walked a lot today, that counts for something right?
**something funny was that Ene thinks it strange that we like to drink water all the time because she always drinks tea or juice and also at every restaurant when you order water they always ask: con gas o sin gas? because soda water is very common and regular water often comes from a glass bottle like soda even though there is nothing bad about their tap water. Ok, es todo!

June 25: first day in the new home

So after sleeping for 13 hours, missing breakfast, a very cold shower in the hostel we finally arrived at the campus where we were instantly shuttled off with our families. I live with Ene in a very small house in Ñuñoa, Santiago and there is another student here who is finishing her Spring Semester at La Chile. This day was very stressful as I found Ene very hard to understand especially when the first thing she asked me was if I speak spanish which  sounded to me: hablacatellano? and my blank stare gave me about 3 seconds to realize it was castellano which is another name for spanish that I did not know they used here! Her daughter who lives nearby also has a student from my program so it is nice to have people close. I spent most of the day with a deer-in-the-headlights-look uttering the occasional ok, sí, or mmm because I had no idea what was going on.

My first mistake was agreeing to go to a money exchange place with her son-in-law because I basically had no idea where I was going until I got there and felt very awkward because I did not need more chilean money so I exchanged my measly $15 american dollars left and mainly enjoyed the trip because he was very nice and spoke slowly to me and answered many of my questions, even if they were in Spanish. Back at the house we enjoyed tea in the early evening which I learned most people have instead of dinner, but Ene is nice and tells me I can always eat leftovers if I am hungry.

For most of the night after she went to bed I spent on a website brushing up on my spanish grammar and phrases because for a reason that is beyond me I did not think to do so BEFORE entering a spanish-speaking country. I did not sleep until late because I had so many things to be excited and nervous about. I ended the day with a little bit of doubt in my spanish skills but some sleep was in order to rest my brain and process all that is ahead.

June 24: Tourist Day

Oh my! so much has happened since I arrived at 5:40 in the morning on Tuesday! I probably won't post every day but the days I do I will specify when I'm talking about.

Arrived at the hostel( which was very cold) winter apparently doesn't stop when you enter a house or room because most places have moveable heaters, like 1 per house, but the hostel did not even have that so it was a cold morning finding more socks and and scarves to wear for the day. A few of the other students and I heard about a free tour at 10 so we left at 9:30( of course immediately got lost) and ended up having to speed walk for 35 minutes to catch the tour, which I think was probably close to 2 miles walk.
We got to the tour just in time but I was already wishing I had worn more comfortable shoes instead of my boots even though they were warm. We met at El Museo Bellas Artes in pretty much the center of the city which had a park that was called Parque Forestal because it has trees from all over the world in one place. Our guide told us why a lot of the buildings look different because, some have been destroyed by los terremotos( earthquakes) and they rebuild with modern architecture so there are buildings of all types. We walked all over the city, getting to see El Mercado Central which had a lot of seafood for sale and a lot of restaurants for seafood, El Mercado Vega Chica which had all sorts of meats and produce everywhere and many things are very cheap!
After this we left to Cementerio General de Santiago which is the size of 117 fútbol fields! I always think its kind of creepy to have cemeteries as tourist locations but it was interesting because we learned a lot about the culture and different concepts around death that many have like la animita, el animismo, and the mausoleums which if you want I can explain but I will spare the details because there is so much to write about. I was so exhausted at this point that Iswear to you I fell asleep walking, which I did not even think was possible. But I got my second wind when sitting and food were mentioned for after.
Afterwards it is tradition to go to el Quita Penas, basically to drink away the pain of losing a loved one and eventually celebrate I guess where I tried my first terremoto( the drink not the natural disaster) which was very good, very sweet. After this I really needed food because that was pretty much all I had eaten that day besides a few strawberries from the market so we returned to the fish market and ate at Tio Willy where I had scallops with parmesan which was sooo good. Also  I tried pisco sour which is a common type of drink and after my meal I had una mente which is like a drink for after meals to kind of cleanse the palette I guess.
At about 5:30 we returned to our hostel( a long day for jet lag and only 1.5 hours of sleep on the plane) My roommate for the night Rachel returned and we walked to get some dinner and went to bed at about 8:30 because we were both so tired. And that was one day down!!

wheres wally

Lucho!!!

El Terremoto!

First Sunrise in Santiago