My weekends in Europe

So, although is a long-overdue entry, I still want to briefly post about my travels to Valdivia, Chile and Mendoza, Argentina. Two weekends in a row, Ashley and I packed our nice big backpacks and jumped on busses to various parts of South America. Because really, when else in your life are you going to say “13 hours by bus? That’s not bad!” and then head to random South American towns for the weekend. Yeah.

So that’s what we did. Wednesday night, several weeks ago, we hopped a bus at 8:00 at night (sadly, missing our Pilates class, but sacrifices are made for the sake of travel) and arrived the next morning at 9 in Valdivia. Valdivia is a “city” in Chile that has the feel of a homey New England town. Which we didn’t realize until we got there. All we really knew was that a lot of Germans had settled there and that, as a result, there was a lot of good kuchen (a desert). Cool, we were headed to Switzerland for the weekend. (Which I say having never been anywhere near Switzerland or the continent on which it is located.)

Valdivia is where three rivers meet, and is surrounded by the volcano region. Mountains, water, and it’s only 20 minutes from the beach – it’s gorgeous. There were actually people rowing on the rivers too, as in crew. It was so familiar and happy. So the first day we did the normal tourist thing – take a boat tour of the rivers. Ashley and I had our own private tour from a salty old man with several teeth missing and a dog that didn’t bug the heck out of me. The rivers are beautiful and, because Ashley and I are somehow charmed, the day was gorgeous without a cloud in the sky…usually Valdivia has rain every single day, and we didn’t see a drop our whole weekend there.





The next day, Friday, we were going to go to the coast, but that morning, the Spanish-speaking, German owner of our hostel knocked on our door and asked if we wanted to go on a “tour” – his personally assembled off-road trip to a mini-mountain and the beach for hiking and rock climbing. Why not? So we put on our Merrels – definitely the best thing I brought with me to Chile, and squeezed with two other gringas into his truck. We drove off-road to a national park where we climbed mentioned mini-mountain, took lots of pictures of the thirteen volcanoes we could see from the top, drove down to the coast and climbed on the rocky shores looking at local wildlife, and then took off on a terrifying trip along the coast to watch the sunset on the Pacific. Mario, our guide, told us how terrible the bus drivers are as I prayed I wouldn’t meet each telephone pole we passed head on. Because really, would you have a random Chilean tour along the Pacific any other way?









Saturday we hopped a bus to the beach, where we checked out an old Spanish fort, met up with a very odd Swiss man who seemed only to want to talk about himself, and then proceeded to walk a mile or two up the beach (again, climbing over plenty of rocks to do so), accompanied the whole time by aforementioned Swiss dude. Trying not to be too embarrassed of his very poor Spanish-speaking ability whenever he tried to talk to locals. After hanging out there for a while, we hopped a bus back to Valdivia, reclaimed our items from our hostel, bid farewell to Mario, and hopped the 8 pm bus back to Valparaíso. Just in time for the Sunday procrastination payback…in which I work like a maniac to finish everything for the coming week.





The next weekend was my girly relaxing weekend. Which worked out well since I happened to get a really bad cold that weekend. (If anyone was wondering, it turns out “flem” is the same word in Spanish too…I was informed that my cough had it. Cool.) That weekend, Ashley and I only had to be on the bus for 7 hours. We were headed to Argentina (that’s right, I have more stamps in my passport!) for the weekend, to a town called Mendoza. Mendoza has a lot of Italians (and therefore really good food) like much of Argentina, but is best known for its shopping. So basically, this was our weekend in Italy. We arrived on a Thursday and decided to take the weekend slow. Thursday night we walked around all the stores and looked. Friday we entered some stores, tried some things on, and thought about buying. And finally, Saturday, I bought myself two new pairs of shoes (because really, who doesn’t need cute shoes when they’re sick?) for less than $20 total together (yay countries in financial crisis with big leather markets and without sales tax), gifts for friends and familiy, and two skirts to keep me going through the eternal spring that seems to be the Chilean climate. Which trust me, I’m not complaining about at all.



Of course, we also based much of the weekend on what we were going to eat, when. Because really, what else is more important than food when traveling? Especially when you haven’t chosen your own food in months due to living with host families. Italian food it was, and lots of it. We went to two Italian restaurants, an Italian pizzeria, and two “tenedor libre” (all-you-can-eat buffet) restaurants, the last category being the most interesting. The first we went to for a huge lunch with every possible type of food you could imagine. I even had some stir fry for the first time since arriving in South America. And a salad with all the vegetables mixed together; for whatever reason, they’re very big on piles here. Then, the next night, Ashley and I found ourselves in a vegetarian restaurant (quite a rarity in the beef capital of the universe that is Argentina) owned by a little Argentinean woman who had lived in New York City for several years and seemed determined to practice her English with us. I’m not completely sure she spoke either English or Spanish completely fluently. She also informed us that all Chileans are liars, that if you’re a liar you’re a thief, and that jealous neighbors had cut off her gas lines and so all the food we were eating had been cooked in her house and then reheated in the microwave in the restaurant. “Colorful” would charitably describe our new friend. It was incredibly amusing.

Also amusing, was the laundry list of things that we had to pick up for Ashley's host mom in Argentina. Because facial cream is apparently much too expensive in Chile. But it wasn't just skin products that we left with. One of the items on the list was more of a treasure hunt, and one that we're hoping was within all boundries of the law. Ashley's host mom gave us the address of a leather store in the town, where we were instructed to go and ask for Maurio (or some similar name). He was, of course, there, and we gave him a letter from Ashley's mom requesting several prescription drugs along with a wad of cash. And then we stopped by the next day and picked them up. All looking totally legitimate except for the lack of the pharmacy receipt on the outside. Hmmm... smile and nod. And maybe run. Drug deals in Argentina is one way to spend your South American weekends.

The last night, Ashley and I decided to ditch our fun little hostel and treat ourselves to a one star hotel. Because if we were going to be able to afford someplace with a private bathroom and towels, Argentina would be the place to do it. Besides, we weren’t exactly cool enough for our hostel where there was pizza and beer every night…and we were going to bed at 10 pm. It came out to about $20 for the night (split two ways). Not too bad. And the next morning we hopped a bus back to Chile, over the Andes again (where someone told me my cough was surely a result in changing temperatures from crossing the mountain range, something I somehow doubt) and were back in Valpo by 3-ish on Sunday, again in time for me to freak out about the fact that I hadn’t finished enough work (mostly a result of the fact that I was sleeping 12 hours a night trying to overcome my cold).

Well, I did my best to make the recap short but interesting, and it looks as if I haven’t succeeded in either. Kudos if you’ve made it to the end, if you haven’t, I don’t blame you. Hope you at least enjoyed the pictures!

“How to start a war with your host dog”, or “My relationship with Ino: a memoir in progress”

A war with one’s host dog requires careful time and preparation. It is not, I repeat not, anything to be taken lightly. First, one must decide if said war is to be just or unjust. As a matter of policy, just wars are usually preferable for intra-familial relations, however if a goal of the war is to disrupt that fragile peace that is crashing a foreigner’s house as a source of income for several months, then an unjust war has many benefits. Because this latter situation should only be undertaken in extreme circumstances, and because this author desires no responsibility in such a war, we’ll carry on assuming all anthro-canine wars are just.

Coming up with just cause for a war is generally not very difficult. Suspecting your dog of dragging fleas into your bed, for example, is certainly within the bounds of just cause. Discovering that your dog has a certain fondness for emptying your trashcan all over your floor and bed a few times every week also qualifies. And, while slightly less definite of an example, discovering dog hair and clods of dirt on your bed daily is considered by most to be within limits as well. The most important thing to remember is that “just”, like “beauty” is often in the eyes of the beholder. Public perception of justice is much more essential than your own piece of mind. If you’re unleashing a war on your host dog, chances are you’ve thrown conscience to the wind at this point. As a result of this fact, one should also be sure to always consider one’s audience. If you want to be thought just in the eyes of your peers, your hatred for your dog’s little red sweater may be sufficient, however if you seek the approval of your host family, I’d steer clear of declaring a war on their dog because of a bad canine fashion choice that they themselves made.

After that first step, things can be a bit trickier, but this is where creativity comes into play. Much of the battle details will certainly depend on the battlefield (host home), troops (you, the dog, any other pets and humans in the home that happen to become involved), allies (this can get interesting…), etc. In my own experience, tactics have ranged from simply shutting the door in host dog’s face and not allowing him in the room to engaging in a growling match. Obviously, things get more complicated the more people become involved. For example, after I started closing the door more often, my host sister put the dog outside my door at one point and seemed to be waiting to see if I would let him in when I walked into my room. Being as I am not one to upset the delicate host family balance, I lost that battle, and Ino happily entered and leapt to his favorite spot by the window. My next move however, is one to be well noted: faking concern and care for the enemy to others is always a good method. “I’m keeping my door closed while I’m in class today because the window is open, and I’m afraid Ino might try to sit there and then fall.” Remember, it’s all about perception. And if all else fails, a good growling match never hurt anyone. It may sound crazy, but most dogs will think twice about coming to your chair at the dinner table after you’ve barked back. Just make sure nobody else sees.

Chilean Phenomenon #2: Confort

A reconsideration of the inelasticity of demand of toilet paper

In many places in Chile, one will not only find, but rather come to expect toilet paper not to be a luxury accompanying bathroom services. The industry, overcome by a Kleenex-like marvel in which the entire country calls the product by a brand name - “Confort” -, is also not graced with a __-style quality level perhaps implied by the name (Comfort in English), but comes in a more which-grain-of-sand-paper-would-you-like variety? Nice bathrooms do generally have toilet paper in the stalls, however the majority of bathrooms just have one roll outside of all the stalls, which has a 3 to 1 chance of being empty. Some bathrooms employ people to hand out a few squares Soviet Union-allowance-style to those willing to pay. And then there’s the approximately 14.5% of bathrooms that just don’t have toilet paper. Coming from a country where toilet paper is so taken for granted that we have full Seinfeld episodes devoted to “sparing a square”, it can be hard for Americans to get used to the frequent lack of toilet paper. Most begin carrying a roll with them in their backpacks, some take up what we experts like to call the “drip-dry” method. Some of us with very small blathers have developed somewhat of a complex and wake up in the middle of the night, desperately having to run to the bathroom after nightmares of TP-less bathrooms. It very much depends on the person. Discovering that your own home, in fact, is out of toilet paper, is a rather special situation, but one that I gather from my friends is not as common as I might think. I’m just the one with all the luck. And if you think it’s amazing that I just managed to easily turn out 300 words on toilets in Chile, you’re only beginning to understand the obsession that overcomes you when living here.

“This is how I imagined Chile: strange men offering me avocados on the bus.”

Ashley and I took off for a day trip yesterday to the small town of La Ligua, about 3 hours from Valparaíso. Towns in Chile have a odd tendency to specialize in one thing, and everyone in the town takes up that trade. Last week we went to Polmeire, the pottery town, this week was the town of sweaters and sweets. Unlike Polmeire, where every store seemed to have the exact same things, the sweaters of the Valle Hermoso in La Ligua were often distinct. Unfortunately for the sweater lover in me, but luckily for the cheap college student in me, a lot of the sweaters were more thinly woven, light sweaters since it’s spring, and I had more interest in warmer winter sweaters. Still, that didn’t stop me from buying several Christmas presents and two items for myself, along with several dulces, sweets, the main ingredient of which is manjar – Chilean dulce de leche, or a caramel type spread.

The whole thing was a really awesome experience, and another fun cultural glimpse. Ashley commented on how she couldn’t imagine living in a small house and knitting her whole life, and a certain spoiled someone responded, “I know, I bet there’s practically no internet.” (Meaghan, maybe I’m starting to understand your fear of boats.) The waiter at the restaurant (and when I say the restaurant, I really mean that it was one of only two restaurants on the street), rather than handing us a menu, asked if we wanted the stew or the chicken. I had chicken breast – white meat! – for the first time since being here. The food was amazing, but the two-item menu definitely threw me.

The most insane experience of the day, though, was the trip home. Ashley and I chose the cleanest looking seats on our bus, about 5 rows from the back. Spread out throughout the bus were about 10 children, all dressed in school uniforms (not a shock since public and private schools wear them here, so uniforms are the natural and expected attire of all kids everywhere in Chile), and all between the ages of 6 and 14. Gradually, these kids began making their ways toward us until Ashley and I were literally surrounded on all sides by children. There was a man sitting in one of the seats in front of us, but besides him, every seat remotely adjoining ours, plus the aisle, was filled with kids, standing and staring at us.

Finally, Ashley took the first step and said hello to one of them, and gradually the questions began. The most interesting were about transportation to and from the US: How did you get here? How long did it take? Can I take a bus if I want to go to the United States? It was about then that we realized that not only had these kids never been anywhere near an airplane, but telling them 9 hours on a plane meant absolutely nothing to them in terms of distance. The kid sitting behind me kept touching my hair in amazement, and one of the kids sitting near Ashley smelled distinctly of urine. In the midst of the cultural drill session (the questions didn’t stop, which was fine because it was better than them staring at us), the man in the seat in front of us turned around to face us as well. I thought he was going to offer some words of encouragement, but instead, he just handed each of us an avocado and turned around again. Talk about the bizarre express.

Luckily, the students got off in about 20 minutes. I was willing to answer questions for that long, but certainly not 3 hours worth. Somewhere during all that time, the man turned to us again and instructed us to eat our avocados. Because that was exactly what I wanted: raw avocado on a bus in rural Chile. Not knowing what else to do, we dug in, and Ashley turned to me and said, “Somehow, this is exactly how I imagined Chile: strange men offering me avocados on the bus.”

Study Abroad In Chile, Kent State-Style

I don’t really feel I have the right to be telling this story, since it didn’t happen to me, but I also don’t think an account of my Chilean experience would be complete without it. Ashley came over to my house Thursday night for a study and knitting party, despite the fact that neither of us had classes on Friday. I’m in “force myself to stay home sometimes” mode, even when it is a weekend night, trying not to get overwhelmed with homework, which is easy to do in my classes. As soon as we took a break from my family, Ashley broke out into English because, as she said, some things are just too hard to tell about in Spanish.

Ashley and I attend different universities on opposite sides of the same Chilean city. My university is the private public school, hers is the public university. My classmates wear fairly simple clothing for the most part, hers have forgotten how to bathe properly and dress in a sort of punk grunge fusion. My school is very calm and go with the flow, hers misses several weeks of class every semester for strikes. And the most popular time to strike for young militant communists like them? Right around September 11, the date of Pinochet’s military takeover of Allende’s Communist-run government.

This year the strikes started on Thursday, which is what Ashley had to tell me about. Earlier in the week, the school had been turned into a Communist’s playground with pictures of Allende and hammer-and-sickle’s everywhere. It was obvious the strikes were beginning soon, but Ashley had no idea when or how big of a deal they would be. On Thursday, during a break in her class, her professor and some students went to the window and started speaking quickly. Then, they looked at her and said, “What do we do about her?” She was told that, because she was a US citizen, it was more dangerous for her to be there and that she should probably go home. Most of the people here have been pretty good about separating the things they don’t like about the US from us students, but you never know what excited militant communists might be moved to.

So classes ended and Ashley went outside to discover that the strikes had in fact started. She told me it was insane: people everywhere, roadblocks, everyone basically going crazy. She wanted to stay a few minutes and observe, but realized things were starting to get a big rowdy, and started heading down the hill, away from the university. And who do you think was coming up the hill in hummers and trucks but the Chilean police, the carabineros. They busted through the roadblock, and just started spraying tear gas into the crowd. Because that’s a calm response to a half-an-hour old protest. Ashley, a block away from where the gas was spraying, did the natural and intelligent thing and booked it out of there, walked the several miles to her house, and stopped for ice cream along the way.

And apparently this is normal. Ashley’s host mother had about the same reaction mine did to the flea news: uh-huh. Tear gas and parasites, these are the things we’re used to here. Ashley was terrified, but says that, since she got out unharmed, it was definitely one of those top memorable experiences. Is it wrong that I think it’s awesome that she witnessed a Chilean Militant protest and lived to tell about it? Well, never fear, Comrades, I won’t be marching over to join in but will be content to watch on the news.

Today started out as a hope-that’s-shower-condensation-on-the-toiled-seat kind of day. I had to wake up at 6:45 to travel into a poorer area of urban Chile (after several nights of very little sleep and very much studying), and I was not in the mood to play guessing games with the sanitation of my bathroom. But I was going to said area to teach English to 5th graders, and besides, Pame had just taken a shower, it probably was just condensation on the toilet seat.

I feel like anyone who’s spent time in a place where his or her second language is spoken will agree with me when I say it’s hard to speak that language in the morning, especially after waking up from a very short amount of sleep. I had the misfortune of arriving at the school on the same day as several education students who are doing their student teacher assignments at the school. Practicing the Jessie’s Travel Rule #2: English speakers Non-Disclosure Rule, I walked into the school yard a little bewildered and nodded or said “Gracias” with my best Chilean accent as teachers pointed me toward where they thought I was supposed to be: the school director’s office where the education students were introducing themselves. I popped into the room, obviously realized that I was interrupting, and continued my attempt to appear intelligent in the ways of Spanish by simply nodding while the director explained to me that these were pedagogy students and to the students that I was an exchange student. Then he of course turned to me and said something that involved several female names. Of course, I understand everything but the question I have to answer. Looking a bit confused, I answered (in Spanish of course), “I’m Caitlin.” He gave me a pathetic look and nodded, saying, in English, “Yes. Come with me,” and lead me to the teachers lounge.

Well, one blunder isn’t terrible, and one blunder it was, because the rest of the time was amazing. Can I just teach Chilean children my whole time here? Okay, maybe I don’t want to do that, but it was a great hour and a half, and I get to do it every week, what luck! The teacher I was helping left me alone with the students every now and then, at which point they all burst with excitement and would run up to me, begging me to tell them what the English versions of their names are and pleading for my autograph. And I thought REACH skits at the elementary schools of Main Line Pennsylvania were crazy. That’s right, I’m now a star in the Achupallas neighborhood of Viña del Mar, Chile. Pretty exciting. Of course, there were a couple awkward questions I had to field with the grace and charm we all know I possess, like when two boys asked me what it meant when someone said “son of a bitch”. I wasn’t ready to start out my first day with letting the teacher overhear me saying “hijo de puta” to the students. Even during those times, though, I was on a high. When I left, the students closest to the door came to kiss me goodbye and everyone else shouted their own happy goodbyes. I now know the recipe to instant mood boost: be an American around young students who as of yet are not disenchanted with the United States and just admire it’s movies and music. And be the person in charge who’s not giving them homework; that always helps too.

Just Another Night with Chilean Transvestites

I’ve been thinking for a while that maybe I should write about a different Chilean phenomenon each week. You know, familiarize my friends and family at home with the wonder that is Chilean culture. After last night, now seems like an appropriate time to write about the Chilean phenomenon that is “machismo”. The large majority of the visible, Chilean male population is desperate and outspoken cowards. If you have of remotely light-colored hair, they’ll say just about anything and everything to you and give you looks that actually do make your skin crawl. As Lucy Alta pointed out, the guys with their heads hanging out their car windows make you want to scream, “You are going to crash. Why don’t you look where you are driving??” In the end however, these men won’t actually do a thing. You can glare at most of them and they cower. My biggest problem is that I’ll probably get accustomed to being honked at while running here and will go home to the states and give one of my friends the finger when they try to honk a friendly hello. Still, although most men would never do anything, sometimes I get freaked out. Especially when returning from a dance club at five in the morning.

Lucy Alta, Katie, and I, had all been at the discotheque at the casino, a place where those who can afford to gather to dance poorly to (as Katie put it) all the 80s music you want to forget. We’re talking lots of men with glasses (the dorky, not the cute kind) who are slightly too old trying far too hard to look like they have any idea what they’re doing. Lucy and I walked Katie to her apartment, and then began walking down Libertad, one of the safest streets in Viña, to find a colectivo together, a sort of taxi that drives along certain lines. While walking along Libertad, two men passed us, glared in that way, slowed down, allowed us to pass, and began following us. Which was odd, but unfortunately not totally unusual, and we weren’t exactly positive they were following us. So we just kept looking for a colectivo, with perhaps a slightly hastened pace. Fate then provided us with what would soon be a much-needed bit of comic relief. Lucy and I definitely passed by two Chilean transvestites. Working the corner in a country where homosexuality and confused gender roles alike are less accepted than at a Christian Right tea party. Chilean transvestites, I applaud you.

Like I said, it proved itself much needed when, in the middle of the next block, a shady looking man in a large jacket and a skull cap walking toward us on the sidewalk did not move aside as he came closer to us, but rather, came right up next to us and began whispering sketchily under his breath before passing us by. It’s amazing how even a word like “beautiful” can make you shiver when said in a certain way. That wasn’t what made the humor necessary though. It was when I turned around to check on our two followers and noticed that the shady, skull-capped man had also turned around and was following closely. We once again picked up our pace, dashing toward the Plaza where the colectivos wait for passengers. We noticed that at this point, the first two men had positioned themselves on either side of us, which, while I was trying to stay calm, really did freak me out. We hopped in a colectivo, not bothering to argue much when the driver told us she was going to charge us double the usual (it’s still a $1.50 cab ride), and took off.

Sure, it’s possible that the two original guys slowed down because they wanted to watch two blondes go down the street and were actually going their separate ways and not trying to surround us when they split to either side of us. Not terribly harmful. And the man in the huge coat who muttered under his breath at us could have just turned around because he forgot something wherever he was coming from. In fact, that’s the worst part of all of it is that a girl feels like she can’t trust men here because they’re men, which seems so stupid. Like the fact that I can’t offer my seat to a tired-looking man on the bus because he “can’t” take it. The gender relations, as I’ve often said here, are the one thing I could never get used to. But things have to be changing, which is good news…here’s to Chilean transvestites everywhere!

Confessions of an American Shopaholic in Chile

Okay, it’s time to lay it all out on the table. It started with a little thing I like to call Líder. It seemed so practical at first, the ability to buy everything cheaply all in one place. Sure, it eerily resembled Wal-Mart, though not as sketchy. (Note: I apologize if Wal-Mart does not seem sketchy to you. If you would like to have a conversation about it later, fine, but that’s really not the point of this story, so, moving along…) Then I began noticing the font of the Líder signs, not to mention the striking similarity between Walmart and Líder slogans, the latter of which translated is: Always the lowest prices. Always. That’s right, “Attention world shoppers: Caitlin is shopping at Chilean Wal-Mart.” Somehow managing to justify recent purchases with the desperate situation of the stained comforter (see previous entries), I am still trying to cut back on my frequency of Líder trips.

My shopping problems do not end there, though. Yesterday, at the end of a pleasant day of café-ing with Ashley, we dashed into Ripley to see if they had anymore functional; much needed; and, most importantly, cheap turtlenecks. (Ripley and Falabella are the two big Chilean department stores. Unlike US department stores, Ripley and Falabella are where just about everyone goes for standard, classic clothing. Read: where I go when I’m missing the Gap. The quality is not quite as great, but it’s certainly not terrible. The prices are higher than in some small stores, but still drastically lower than in the states.) Somehow the fact that they didn’t have any turtlenecks didn’t stop me from buying two pairs of pants (complete with J. Crew style belts); a rugby style shirt; and a, if I do say so myself, rather slick zip-up sweater. Figuring I had done enough damage for one day and needing to finish my homework, I hopped on a micro and headed back home to Viña.

Not wasting an opportunity to be an obnoxious American, I was talking to my friend Maria on my cell phone on the micro, and it ran out of its prepaid minutes. Being as desperately attached to my cell phone as I am and noticing that the bus I was on went to the mall, I decided to skip my stop and go straight there to buy another cellular card. Somewhere, somehow, between the ride to the mall and the buying more minutes, I managed to get a tiny bit homesick. Deciding in this unwell state that I didn’t want to return home, I made the unwise decision to “window shop”. I had wanted to check out the prices of some US stores here, such as ZARA and Ralph Lauren and United Colors of Benetton, the last of which I entered casually. All of a sudden I was standing in line, holding a 30 USD corduroy and suede bag, nodding in agreement to the liquidation no-exchange policy. I walked out of the store, realizing what I had done (but - let’s face it - still loving my new bag). I made myself leave the mall right away, declaring a moratorium on shopping. Except for the next day in Pomeire, a pottery village, “‘cause, those are, like, souvenirs”; or anything really, really cute or really, really cheap…

... and one to the present

and Darling Timothy,

Oh if only the printer here worked. Perhaps I should just buy some of the magazines on the street and hang pictures in my room. I haven't seen any magazines with naked men, but if a puritanical fear of porn is the source of the problem, maybe thinking I was looking at lesbian porn would just enhance the situation. What say you?

Love,
Caitlin

P.S. True story, the internet cafe I went to last week with Ashley had private computers in the back. You pay more for a little cubby of your own. Expressly for porn use. No joke, there are signs saying this.

P.P.S. A very well decorated pirate bar has been encountered on the street near Ashley's house. An outing is being arranged and pictures will be taken, never you worry.

P.P.P.S. To anyone else reading this, let it be a lesson to you all. Leave Caitlin fun comments, get full letters written to you in posts on the blog. :)

A Letter to the Beyond

Dearest Jessie,

I am so sorry to have made your alumnal grave so uncomfortable, but am glad to see that the Jessie Drinking Influence knows no barriers of graduation or state boundries. It's like we're both back at Georgetown and I'm IMing you in search of cheap wine all over again.

Love,
Caitlin

Oh, I should know better than to stay subscribed to Victoria's Secret e-mails while in a country that doesn't have a single VS store. Silly Caitlin. For those of you interested in the American Slut's current situation, though, my self-declared moritorium on thongs for fear that my family thought I was too outlandish has ended! I found out that one of my sister's owns one thong while doing the laundry. They might still think I show too much breast, but at least I know I won't be handwashing my underwear in secret! During my break from fun underwear, I briefly took up a sock obsession, so now I get to pick out matching socks with all my outfits too. Can I just say I love cheap clothes shopping in Chile!

you know what i haven't done in a while? written a short, 4 am procrastination post. without caps or any facade of being grammatically correct. that's right, classes are in session, chilean-style, and caitlin's finally gotten the guts to sneak on her host family's internet at night. caution: boring, pointless entries lie ahead.

The Newes From Chile

Tales of the Chilean Ski Bunny

This weekend I decided to try out the more “cuico” side of Chilean life…that is, snobby. I went to the Andes with eight of my friends to ski. I had to keep saying it to myself to believe it: we’re skiing in the Andes. It was Lucy Alta (tall), Lucy Baja (short), Jenn, Jeff, Rob, Lauren, Ashley, Byron, and myself. We started out with a trip to Santiago on Friday. Renting ski stuff on the mountain, which is about an hour from Santiago, is really expensive, so you have to go to the rich area of Santiago to rent it, and hire a van to pick you and your ski gear up and then take you up. Which you can only do during certain hours of the day, because, to better handle traffic, it’s been mandated that you can only drive up in the morning and down at night. If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. But in the end, it really wasn’t any more work than skiing in the states (I’ve been told, since we all know I’m no real ski bunny), and tons of fun. After trying on sizes at the ritzy ski shop in Santiago, we left our stuff to be picked up the next day (because who really wants to ride the bus and metro with skis?) and headed to Jumbo, a Cosco like store in Chile, to pick up cooking supplies for the weekend. We then headed back to our adorable Hostel Indiana, which the owner described to us as our second home, for the night. I must confess hostels aren’t exactly my thing when you’re in Chile, the land of no heating, and the windows of your room don’t fully close and there aren’t exactly sheets on top of the hard mattress on which your sleeping. But really, for about $5, I was happy to have a place to rest before sleeping, and since we were all crammed into our rooms in little bunk beds, it was very much like summer camp in a fun way.


Making plans for the weekend at the Hostel Indiana

Fast forward to Saturday morning, 6:30 a.m. when we have to get up to meet our ride. It’s amazing how little you care about how you look when it’s early in the morning, you’re about to get dressed to go skiing, and you have to walk outside to get to the more than shady looking bathrooms. Showers were definitely and unanimously vetoed, and we hopped into the van perhaps a little smelly, but not really caring anyway. A quick stop at Ski Arroho to pick up our ski stuff, and we were off, up a windy path to the mountain ski slopes, El Colorado. I definitely had never seen real mountains before coming to Chile. It was amazing to climb from Santiago, where it’s chilly but never below freezing, up above tree line in the matter of an hour. Because there were nine of us, we had the van to ourselves, and the diver was very helpful. As soon as we got up there, he helped us look for a place to stay on the mountain, since it would be a real hassle to have to go back down to Santiago for the night. Knowing that it might be expensive, Lucy and Byron set off with the driver to see what was possible. And lucky for us, somehow they found a crazy man who was for some reason willing to rent one of his apartment/hotel rooms out to nine college kids. Who would have guessed? It had a kitchen, cable TV, one and a half baths, two bedrooms (one with two bunk beds = sleeps 4 and one “matrimonial bed”, shared by Jenn and Lucy), and a living room with two day beds and a trundle. And most importantly, because it was in a place where the pipes could actually freeze, it had heat!


Ready to ski! My nickname for the trip was Edward the Turtle. Quite fitting, no?

We quickly got changed and hit the slopes. I, not having skied in about five years, somehow thought it would just come back to me and threw myself over the edge of the somewhat steep bunny slope, apparently with the notion that “turning” was out of the question. Sure, the first few times down the slopes consisted of nothing more than me rapidly gaining frightening amounts of speed and then just tipping over when I felt it was time to stop, but I persevered. As Lucy said, I fell a lot in the beginning, but every single time I hopped back up and started skiing (terribly) again. Of course, my spirits were broken a little when Lucy and I ended up mistakenly on a very steep, very windy Intermediate slope without really realizing it. I had made the error of following Jeff to what he thought would be an Easy slope. That it was not, and Lucy and I freaked out, and proceeded to make, what can only be called gallant but fruitless, attempts to walk back up the mountain. Two Chilean women stopped and, rightly, informed us that we simply could not do what we were attempting to do, and kindly helped us put our skis back on (a problem since in the mess of snow I was trying to do it backward) and make it down the hill safely. Of course, at the bottom of the hill, Lucy and I thought that the ski lift would take us to a point where there were easy hills, like we hadn’t learned our lesson at all. So we naively hopped on and found ourselves in aforementioned steep and windy situation. Nowhere to go but down, we began our descent, Lucy taking slow wide turns, and I alternately throwing myself down the hill and then falling. I know you’re wishing you had the video. At one particularly bad point, I threw myself off my skis, the action of which then threw my skis into random parts of the hill, difficult to encounter in the mess of wind. Upon finding both of them and trying to put them back on, several familiar faces whizzed by me on the mountain, shouting always encouraging words. It was, of course, my fellow gringos, one of whom was Ashley who, thank God, taught me how to turn and took the hill very slowly down with me, shouting things like “Looking good,” and “Don’t worry, I’ll pick up your poles!” I fell a couple of times, but luckily made it almost to the bottom of the hill without major event.

And I say almost, because despite my recently acquired turning abilities, I apparently had not yet mastered creating a stop from a turn. And decided that the best thing to bring me to a halt was an orange fence. Being the good sport that I am, I allowed pictures to be taken, and Lucy and Byron decided it needed to be captioned…


Crash, crash, crash into a fence!

(from the Outkast song Roses, which I only know from my nine-year-old sister Brianna, because yes, she is that much cooler than I am.) Ashley, after snapping the photo, helped me out of the fence, and from there I progressed to master my turning so that the next day I could progress from the Bunny Slopes to some intentionally skied Intermediates.


This is where we were skiing!

Before I could move on up the skiing chain of command however, I had to spend an awesome night in our mountain apartment. Definitely homier than our “second home” Hostel Indiana. It was one of those nights you always thought you should have in college, with everyone just hanging out, so happy to be there together. Everyone was able to take a hot shower as we watched the sunset over Santiago and the beautiful view of mountains that we had on all sides. While watching the Chilean tennis doubles at the same time. I have to say, I’m still American through and through, but it was routing for the Chileans. They’ve never had a gold medal, and the tennis player is from Viña del Mar! Plus you just can’t help getting sucked up into the excitement of the whole thing while here. When we drove back to Santiago Sunday night, the streets were literally filled with people and cars flying the Chilean flag and screaming/honking horns. It was outrageous. But don’t worry, I’m routing for home sweet United States in the rest of the games. My allegiance is true.




The views from our apartment.


Lucy Baja, Rob, and I, Post-skiing

We cooked pasta and soup, alternated hydration with pisco, and played a little MASH (you know you remember the fortune-telling game of 3rd grade fame, don’t pretend you don’t) and never-have-I-ever Chambers-style (absolutely no pressure to drink) because you can always get to know people better. After a full day though, we were pretty exhausted and went to bed by 10:30. Which still didn’t make it any easier to wake up to ski at 9:00 the next morning, but we did it. The second day was equally amazing, especially since I managed to make it over to some Intermediate slopes. Ashley even tricked me into going on a Red Diamond, which here is in between Intermediate and Expert, with the label of “Difficult”. The best part of the whole trip was just how positive everyone was. Despite the fact that we were all different levels of skiing, from Lauren who had never skied to Lucy who’s a Coloradoan expert, we were all skiing our hardest and being incredibly supportive of each other. Laughing with others and at oneself is always a must! I must say, after the CIEE Learn to Ski in a Day program, I feel quite confident in my skiing abilities and can’t wait to show them off in the states! Ski trip anyone?


Reentry

Unfortunately, our amazing weekend made reentry into daily life a little difficult. I returned Sunday night to find my room rearranged because my family had cleaned the house while I was gone. Which shouldn’t be too big of a deal, but it’s still weird. Especially the fact that the bedside lamp that I moved to the desk so I could use it while working had been replaced on the bedside table. I love my family, but sometimes I get a little frustrated. There was also something wrong with our calefont, so I was unable to shower Sunday night or Monday morning. After a pretty bad knee bust-up from skiing, I could have really used a nice warm shower. On top of it all, I had a lot of homework that I probably should have been working on over the weekend. Luckily, I had my crucial Wednesday night pick-me-up with Ashley. Our Wednesday night outings are starting to become a routine since neither one of us has morning classes on Thursday, and we both have busy days on Wednesday. Wednesday is so the new Thursday. Every week, we go to the gym that I just joined with Ashley for our Pilates class (did anyone say Yogalates?!). After, we’ve been going out for a little bit to some local bar or another. This week we went to J. Cruz (not sure I spelled that right), a whole in the wall restaurant that looks super shady. You may ask why on earth we chose to wander down the back alley to such a place, but the food’s reputation had preceded it. Now, when I write “food”, you may imagine several options, however it’s important to emphasize that at J. Cruz, you order one thing, and that is a huge plate of french fries with cooked onions and bites of steak on top. This does not necessarily sound like it should be Ashley and my kind of place, but it is awesome. Hands down the best french fries I’ve ever had, I desperately wish I could share them with all of you. Save money. Buy plane tickets to Chile. The fries’ll be on me.



Queer Eye anyone?

I also had a change of attitude toward my room yesterday that I’m incredibly excited about. When I first moved in, I wasn’t exactly enthralled with my room, but, like several things here, I told myself it was only five months, and that I would just live with it. Finally, a month and a half into my stay, I was getting a bit weary of the stained comforter on my bed and the mildewed walls. Constantly complaining to myself in my head, my frustration was growing. Finally, Tuesday night, I snapped to it. “Am I not an American?” I asked myself. “Was I not born in the land of Trading Spaces and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Surely I can make something of this situation. It’s the American thing to do.” So today began my quest to remake my room. Granted I can’t do much with it seeing as my family doesn’t even like me to move my lamp around, but what can be done, will be done. (P.S. Mom and Dad, perhaps this would be a good time to tell you that the credit card bill that will be coming to the house this month includes a few house making items such as pillows and throws to cover up aforementioned stained comforter. I figured this would not be something to which you would object.) Perhaps not the most exciting thing to be happening in a foreign land, but for the home decorator in all of us, I will post some before and after pictures in a couple weeks. And if anyone has suggestions of how to remake a somewhat barren room (with a large and unidentified object sitting in the corner), I would be in your debt!

Finally, a quick apology is in order for my especially poor writing quality of late. I’m always writing blog entries late at night, the only time I really have the opportunity to, saving them to my computer, and then posting them when I’m able to sneak online. My family loves the internet, and there’s almost always someone who’s not really willing to give it up. Also, the constant switch between Spanish and English means I really don’t speak either language well. What all this amounts to is me constantly writing entries in a semi-drugged state of exhaustion. Hopefully the grammatical errors aren’t great and the interest-level of posted material isn’t completely miniscule!

The week in review

Well, the title was originally going to be “The week in review”, but I guess at this point it’s been more like two. To those to whom I promised an update at the beginning of this week, I am quite sorry. I had a huge exam on Wednesday (which I most certainly did not do well on), and had hundreds of pages of reading to do for it. And the one time I took a quick study break to blog some short proof of life, Internet Explorer died and I lost what I had written. And to those with whom I was trying to talk online early this week, I sincerely apologize for disappearing; the internet at my friend’s house died and we couldn’t figure out how to fix it. At any rate, it’s been an exciting two weeks, and if you have the stamina to read about it, then continue.

I left for Santiago immediately after posting the last entry and got to see my host family’s family. First we visited my host cousin and her newborn daughter. My host cousin and her husband also have a two-year-old son who was in that cute trying-to-talk stage, and the grandmother was there as well (my host aunt? it’s hard to keep track) to help out. I finally had my first Chilean Mama experience. I am the third student my host mother has had, so I think she’s accustomed to not forcing food down poor foreigners throats, which is usually quite pleasant. It was great to have the experience, however, of being in a house where the food was just overflowing from the table. Let’s not joke around, it’s my equivalent of heaven.

After my host cousin’s house, I went to my host grandparents’ house where we spent the night. It wasn’t huge, and it certainly wasn’t warm (in case I’ve forgotten to mention it, buildings here don’t have heat, and Santiago gets COLD at night), but it was so homey. It was really nice because it reminded me a lot of visiting my real grandma in the Pocono’s – a house that seems not to have changed in ages, with all the colors of the ‘70s in all the furniture. But more than anything else, it was like Grandma’s house because of the cousin’s that lived right next-door, just like Bridget and Maggie do! It was so much fun to feel like I was interacting with a big family again, with tons of people talking and laughing and eating tons!

This week was slightly less easy. I have to say I felt a few more pangs of homesickness than usual. Most of that is because on Wednesday, it was finally decided that I definitely had fleas. That’s right, fleas. You may have thought only dogs get them, but here in Chile, it’s quite common for people to have those itchy, pesky insects – you often get them from the micros (busses). That was definitely a Caitlin-where-the-heck-are-you kind of day. I’m certainly not the first person in my program to have them either, which makes it slightly easier to laugh about. I hope you are all able to do the same with me and not disown me for my parasitic visitors.

And on that note, an amusing conversation relayed to me by Lucy, from when she told her mother over the phone that she had fleas…
Lucy: Mom, I have fleas.
Lucy’s Mom: Fleas?
Lucy: Yeah, a lot of us on the program have them. You can get them from the micros.
LM: Do people, like, bring live chickens on?
Lucy: No, Mom, the people here have fleas.
LM: Oh. Wow.

A change of sheets later, however, I’m moving on. And quite in time, since the Fiesta Naval military ball was on Saturday night. Rewind for one moment to Friday night, when Sara, Ashley, and I went out with our dates to a bar since Ashley and Sara hadn’t met theirs yet. (Sara was originally going to go with Luis, whom she danced with at the club last week, but he decided not to take her after she dodged every one of his kiss attempts.) We had a relatively good time, a group setting where there was much less pressure to avoid awkward dancing. The only highlight of the night was when my date asked me if I liked my hair the length it is and then had a short but direct discussion with the other two guys about how girl’s hair should be longer. Cool.

So Saturday night when we went to the ball, my expectations weren’t high, but I was at least excited to be getting dressed up. I knew there would be good reason to bring my Chambers dress to Chile. Ashley and I headed to Sara’s house to get changed and do makeup, hair, etc…basically to be girly for a little bit. We got there around 7:40 because our dates told us Friday that they would pick us up at 8:30. As soon as we walk in the door, however, Sara tells us that Luis called to say he’s be there at 8. Not optimal, but 20 minutes is still plenty for a girl to get ready, so we set to work. Then, around 10 or 5 to 8, we got another call saying that Jean Pierre would be coming to pick up his date too. Now, our dates were named Christian, Matthias, Luis, Sebastian, and Benjamin. There was no Jean Pierre. It turns out the military isn’t real big on advanced warning, and they wanted us to find another girl to go to the ball with this last guy. Super. Luckily, a friend of Daniela’s was at the house, and we threw her in a skirt and black shirt with some makeup quickly and were ready to go. Us American chicks are resourceful.

We were taking a van-type car with driver that the boys had rented, which made us all quite happy since we had been nervous about what we would do if our dates drank too much, something that we knew was almost a definite. Of course, the boys showed up in full uniform, being a formal military event, which just made the whole evening a lot more comical. Overall, it was a really great time. The food was good, the music was fun, and the whole place was really well decorated. Sure, maybe we weren’t the perfect dates in terms of what military men are looking for – Sara scolded them as being culturally insensitive for saying Chinese and Japanese food are all the same thing, and I attempted to explain to my date how anti-gay policies in the military are discriminatory and wrong – but we still made it through the night with smiles on all faces. I was also happy to have gone out with them the week before – I knew all of Cristian’s moves so that I could easily dodge kisses and attempts to grind. Sometimes it’s definitely in a woman’s advantage to have a bad dancing partner, especially if she’s the type who naturally tries to lead. I made up my mind early on in the night that there would be no making out on the dance floor, no attempts of his to put my hands on his ass (who dances like that?!), and we were all better off for it. I was also much more comfortable knowing that we had had the pololeando conversation the week before – the we’re-not-dating-and-here’s-why conversation…I thought.

Towards the end of the dance, Christian began trying to tell me something. The music being really loud (and the language being Spanish), I could barely make out what he was saying. So I dragged him outside to some tables and said, “Alright, what are you trying to say.” What follows is a loose translation of the whole conversation since it’s just too good to miss out on. I decided to be firm, I decided to be strong…I decided to lie my heart out. I took my little white lie of an “andandte” (boyfriend) from the week before and made it a theatrical work (and played the part rather well I must say).

Christian, Chilean Military Man (of a whole 19 years of age): Remember what we talked about last week?
Me, US Seductress that you know I am: We talked about a lot of things last week…other American students… (he gives me a look)…pololeando (dating)?
C: Yeah.
M: What about it?
C: Are we?
M: I told you last week, I have an andante (less serious boyfriend).
C: Yeah, so?
M: Well (and this is where I decided to pull out all the stops), Christian, I don’t know you very well, but I’m going to confide something in you: I think I’m in love with my andante. We’ve been talking a lot, and I really just want to be with him. And while I’m not sure yet if he feels the same way, I just can’t go out with anyone else while I’m so in love with him.
C: But he’s very far away, and you’re here until December.
M: Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m in love. It just wouldn’t be right for me to go out with anyone else right now. (He looks frustrated.) Besides, you don’t like short hair.
C: That doesn’t matter.
M: It’s just not right. But you’re my friend, right?
C: (He corrects a grammatical error I made in the last sentence, and then,) yeah, sure.
M: Let’s go dance…

And that’s the point at which he started looking moody. Luckily there were about 10 minutes of songs left, and then a short drive home, but he was not exactly a happy camper. I’m hoping the fact that his friend made fun of him in the car had more to do with it than I did, but you never know. I’m quite the heartbreaker :-P. He was able to perk up enough on the way home to ask how old my blonde sister was…I quickly told him not old enough (not to mention way to far away). My estimation of the whole situation is lonely military boys who have to move fast given that they only have the weekends to do any moving whatsoever. Still, it’s certainly a funny story to write home about.


I wonder if they realize how funny we all think the uniform makes the situation…This was taken at the end of the night, after Sara sat her date down and told him a similar story to mine that wasn’t a lie, he got drunk and decided to test out his English, and Ashley effectively dodged attempted kisses and “you’re super beautiful” compliments. Really, who says that? And yes, those are stuffed dogs in our hands – presents from the military academy.


Ashley and I decided to have our own after-party at her house, formal dress optional.

One lesson to take from the whole experience is that dating in Chile is just not an option for me. The male-female relations here are so foreign to me that unless I found a really progressive man, I can’t ever imagine fitting the cultural requirements of a girlfriend, nor can I imagine wanting to have a culturally adequate man. And these are not the type of norms people step out of a whole lot. While Chile is a very modern country in many ways, women are still expected to serve men, men to look after women. Men are always given their food first at meals (thank God I live in a house of just women and don’t have to see it every day), the women are to make sure they are comfortable and happy. It was not acceptable for me to go to the bathroom by myself at the naval ball, Christian had to accompany me and wait at the door. And while I was going out with some pretty rigid boys in a rather strict setting, even in the most seemingly normal of houses, girls go as far as to break their boyfriends crackers apart for them, because that’s what is supposed to be done. Perhaps I’m not describing it very well, but please believe me when I say the interaction is just completely foreign to me.

And to end, because I’ve once again blabbed on for quite a long time, I’ve ventured into the Pacific Ocean for the first time! I’ve been told that it’s never really warm enough to swim here and that the water is some of the coldest in the world, but I’ve at least put my feet in. And really, just the fact that the weather is getting better and I can walk and sit by the ocean is good enough for me!






Sooo much cooler than Chilean Military Men. When Lynnae and I were on the beach taking these pictures, a little girl about Brianna’s age came up to us and asked if we were “on holiday”. Woohoo for little kids with British accents and being by the beach.

Hair Cutting Parties and Carretear-ing

It is absolutely gorgeous in Viña del Mar today. The weather has been positively chilling at night, but during the day, the sun comes out and it feels like mid-Spring. The last couple of days have been quite busy, and I thought I would write about them quickly before I take off on a bus for Santiago.

In Chile, there seems to be a peluqueria, or hair salon, on every block. So it did not make the most of sense when Jenn and I decided to cut our hair together, but any excuse for a party that costs absolutely no money is hard to turn down. Besides, I was just aiming to get rid of the femullet (translation: female mullet) that I seemed to be quickly acquiring and was wary of trying to explain that to a hair cutter in Spanish. So cut we did, in Jenn’s bathroom. Jenn’s was a dramatic change – she had been growing her hair long in anticipation of her wedding, but decided she liked her hair better short and could still do fun things with it and a veil. I approved :). Then the two of us together worked on my mullet situation, and I have to say I’m confident that we did a good job. Sure, the next hairdresser I go to will probably be appalled at how uneven everything is, but I have wavy hair, these things aren’t important to me. Bottom line is, in case you were wondering, hair cutting parties are where it’s at for a good time in Chile. For your own party, try to make sure your host mother comes home right in the middle of the process so she can try to explain to you in Spanish why she thinks you’re crazy.

A few hours after the hair-cutting extravaganza, Jenn and I were partying again, but this time at a real carrete. Explanation: in Chile, people don’t say salir (to leave or go out) as much as they do carretear. It’s one word to say go-out-drinking-and-dancing-until-at-least-five-in-the-morning. Basically, party Chilean-style. Not exactly my every-night cup of tea, but dancing is fun, staying up late can be too, and I definitely feel I need to embrace some Chilean youth culture while I’m here. So Friday night, 16 gringos and Sara’s host sister Daniela headed to what is fast becoming our regular place, Olé. Sure, it sounds very Cheers-meets-resort-town-alcoholism to have a “regular place” so quickly, but it has really cheap happy hour prices (which for weak foreigners like us, is fine since we always go out super early anyway), a fun atmosphere, and karaoke! What could be better? So after a few drinks and some karaoke, we headed from there to Scratch (pronounced, like all things beginning with “s” here, with an “e” at the beginning, sounding more like “escrech”). It wasn’t amazing, especially since the dancing, the only part I was really interested in, was hindered by the tons of people there. One guy started dancing with me and then announced proudly that he had some joints for later if I was interested. It’s funny the things “blonde” hair will attract here. Still, it was an experience, and I made some new friends in the bathroom: two drunk girls who thought it was great that I was from Pennsylvania and quickly told me they had a friend in Texas, what a coincidence. I woke up the next morning (yesterday) glad I did it, but not anxious to do it again.

Which was why I was not totally pleased to learn that a bunch of marines wanted to carretear the following evening. But perhaps that requires a bit more explanation. I, Caitlin, slightly skeptical of military schools after friends dated VFMA guys, am going to a military ball. I know, pretty crazy. The Chilean naval school is here in Viña del Mar, and since men have to come from all over Chile to attend, they often stay with neighborhood families on the weekends instead of going home. One such marine lives with another student on my exchange program, so his host mother began to search among the gringas for dates for a few of the boys. Sara, Katie, and I were the lucky ones. Last night was our getting-to-know-each-other night. All we knew was that we were going over to the apartment at 9:30 to meet them, and we were desperately hoping that after the previous evening we wouldn’t be out too late. We got into the elevator with our new boys, whose accents were painfully thick, and found out we were heading to a pub and then Valparaíso to dance. Reluctant, but eventually willing, we decided to go along with it and knew that we could all head out together if necessary. We were lucky we decided to go because the discotheque in Valpo ended up being much more fun. The music was good and there was plenty of room to dance.

Still, the night wasn’t without it’s own interesting side effects. It turned out that my marine was also a big fan of pot and had been missing it ever since joining the academy. Not my favorite topic of conversation, but we didn’t have to talk that much since we were all dancing at that point. That didn’t stop him from poking at my belly and calling me fat though. Now, it’s not uncommon for Chileans to affectionately call each other things like “little fat one”, but it was still a little uncomfortable since he was obviously not impressed by my constant need to eat. Soon after calling me fat, he also was sure to tuck in my bra strap that had slipped out from under my tank top a bit, making me think he thought I was both gluttonous and a slut. The American slut strikes again! Not that I really cared what he thought, but I certainly couldn’t imagine spending the rest of the night dancing with him after that. He obviously couldn’t have thought I was that unappealing though, because then we had a ten minute conversation about why I didn’t want to date him, finally ending with me saying, “let’s just go back and dance.” In the end, it really was a fun night, but certainly comical. When we left the club and Sara and I announced that we really needed to buy hot dogs at the same place the guys were buying their sandwiches, they seemed positively disturbed that I would want to eat again after making everyone wait while I bought cookies before the club. Some social things here I will just never get used to.

That ended up being quite a bit longer than I expected, so I hope it wasn’t too boring. Expect more pictures soon…the military ball is in a week!

My little home, or mi casita, as we would say in Chile. You notice quickly here the phenomenon of making everything small by popping “ito” on the end of it. This is my living room area, complete with drying laundry. My family is one of the few in this area that has a dryer, but we don’t use it because it takes a lot of energy and is quite expensive.


The view from my balcony, which is directly behind the curtains in the previous picture. You can see much of Viña de Mar from our apartment, and a little bit of the ocean on the left.

I left my little house this weekend for an adventure in La Serena, another coastal town about 7 hours north. I knew it wouldn’t be that much warmer, but my friends and I figured anywhere north was better than south, and we had a long weekend, so we took off. Due to some technical errors (I got confused about what time the bus was supposed to leave and we missed it), we didn’t get on the road until Sunday morning at 8 am. It wasn’t a huge deal though and, as promised by other Chilean travelers, the bus was amazing. It was cleaner than any bus I’ve ever taken, the seats reclined quite comfortably, a movie was shown and food was served. Of course, I was asleep for the food, but at least I got to see a bit of Misión Imposible II.

We arrived at the La Serena bus stop at around 2 and hopped a cab to the hostel where I had booked a room. That’s right, this was a hostel where we got a triple to ourselves, along with cable and a private bathroom. All for 6,000 pesos a piece per night, or about $9 US. Not too shabby. Unfortunately, it was Sunday afternoon when we got there, which meant a lot of things were closed, especially in a smaller town like La Serena. We walked around the center of town a little and then headed to the market to get an early dinner – we’re lucky there were still places that catered to US tourists who get hungry much earlier and for much more food than the any Chilean when it comes to dinner.


So the view wasn’t great…our hostel was still cute and run by the sweetest family. Plus, breakfast was included, so I was sold.


A street corner in La Serena.

The next day, Monday, we took off on a tour of the Valle del Elqui. Ricardo, our driver, spoke virtually no English. Hector, our guide, had studied abroad in Michigan in high school, and remembered enough English to give the tour. We were fine with the Spanish, however our tour-mates, two girls from the Czech Republic, were not. They had met each other in Ireland taking English classes, and decided to take off on a daring vacation to Chile without speaking any Spanish. All this meant that we were seven people, with five languages between us (English, Spanish, German, Czech, and Swedish, the last three compliments of our new friends), and not a single commonlanguage. Hector did most of the translating, but the rest of us tried our hands at it as well, and had a good time of it actually.


We stopped by a dam built in the Elqui Valley to supply water to the people of the surrounding area.


We went on a tour of the Capel plant, the biggest producer of Pisco in Chile. Pisco is a sort of un-aged whiskey that has become the national drink of Chile. I’m not such a huge fan, but it was cool to see how it was made and do some sampling. The company also makes some tasty wines that they were nice enough to let us try.


Jenn, myself, and Michelle, where the clear and muddy rivers join into one in the Elqui Valley. It’s really cool because you can still see the waters separately for several yards into the joined river.


Our new Czech friends who, it should be mentioned, spoke English with the most adorable Irish accents!


My new friend, Nico. He was a six-year-old boy sitting on the side of the road by his mother’s little shop. We stopped to take pictures of the valley and I talked to him for a little while. The people of Chile won’t often open up to you right away, but if you initiate, almost anyone will have a conversation with an interested gringa.

We also did a little Gabriela Mistral touring and saw her gravesite, a replica of her house, and the museum dedicated to her. The restaurant at the museum was quite tasty! Overall, the tour was beautiful and fun, and a great break from endless orientation. Jenn and I decided we need to be doing a lot of touring since our bus ride was so cheap (about $15 US round trip) and comfortable.


Jenn and I on my bed in our little hostel room.

The return trip was unfortunately bad and made us seriously reconsider some of the bus trips we’d been planning. I don’t think the majority of busses are like this one, from what I’ve heard, but it was certainly not the comfortable, clean, and climate controlled bus we took to La Serena. “Sketch Express” would better describe the vehicle we rode on. The air conditioning was obviously not working, which was a disappointment due to the fact that the bus smelled stiflingly like a bus or plane bathroom. The whole time. There were several screaming children, not improved by the fact that the father of the crying baby was obviously a few parenting lessons short of necessary…the things he said to his baby were not things I wanted to hear, let alone hear said to a child. Our bus also seemed incapable of traveling over 50 miles per hour, which meant that we didn’t arrive in Viña del Mar for over 7 hours. The moment that took the cake, however, was when our bus driver missed our exit and began to drive in reverse on the shoulder of the highway. Three cheers for traveling in Chile. At least there were gorgeous views the whole time. The country’s natural beauty seems to make up for a lot, and I’m using it to stay positive and have a great time. Next stop: skiing in the Andes! August is supposed to be the best time for it!

Adventures in Chile

(*note: Luckily, since writing this entry, I have purchased a USB Key (and made friends with the two people that work in the little computer store near my house) and obtained a chair for my desk. I just didn’t feel like going back and rewriting, so you can mentally edit.

Well, despite the long break, I am alive and well in Viña del Mar, Chile, or Vineyard of the Sea. (How perfect, from one Vineyard to the next.) I am, however, quite without regular internet access, so I am trying to encounter a USB key so I can write at home, and then transport pictures, blog entries, and e-mails to the computers at school. If anyone knows how to say USB key in Spanish, it would be much appreciated, because that is one thing I will not be able to describe to a salesperson. Put that as number one on the list of things I wish I had brought with me to Chile.

Anyway, things are going very well here despite the lack of internet. My family is very nice and our apartment is becoming homey for me. I have my own room with a bed and a desk (but no chair, which I don’t fully understand). I live with a mother and three daughters, not too different from my family at home, which I suppose is somewhat comforting. On the first day, their aunt and uncle came with their cousin from Los Andes (a town, not the mountains, though it is located in the mountains), and we all went driving along the beach where I live. The dunes are like mountains, really, not like our Martha’s Vineyard two-foot tall ones, and the all the beaches are public, so you can go to the beach literally along the whole country. It’s one of the most beautiful things that I’ve seen here so far.


My Chilean family and me, on the beach

My orientation class has been going well so far. I get to the University via a bus called a micro, short for microbus. They are all old busses, usually Mercedes, that shake like an earthquake and cost all of about fifty cents. You can take them just about anywhere in Valparaíso or the surrounding area, but there is no central way of finding out which bus to take, let alone a website describing the routes, it is just general knowledge. I think I’ve finally learned the essentials of taking the micro to the necessary places – school and the mall (which, I have to say, isn’t a shabby place to shop at all).

Our orientation class has been several lectures, about half of them interesting, and “activities in the field”. The trip to Pablo Neruda’s house was one such activity, which we repeated for his Valparaíso house, as was a tour of the Valpo port on a boat. You can see from the picture I took the hills on which the city is built.



There are ascensors that travel up the hills. We took one to Pablo Neruda’s Valpo house. On top of the hills you can see a marvelous view, but you also get a first-hand glimpse at much of the poverty in Valpo - many of the poorest people I’ve ever seen live there. The word “house” is a charitable description of the less-than-shacks that many people on the hills live in. Many people near Neruda’s house gather to sell things to tourists for very cheap prices and try to make a living.


the view from the ascensor

Another activity in the field involved a trip to a tiny pueblito in the hills called Rabuco where a family invited all thirty-three of us into their home and fed us empanadas and some of the best bread you have ever tasted. There is one discoteca and one school in the next town over, and that’s pretty much what happens in Rabuco. And while I would never want to live there, the people are some of the nicest, most welcoming and inviting I’ve ever encountered.


The house our big group of gringos is about to squeeze into. And yes, that sign does say “There are cheeses”, though I really have no idea what it is supposed to indicate besides perhaps that the family sells cheese.


And the whole trip would have been much cooler if our hungry group, on the way to the empanadas and good bread, hadn’t been in the bus that broke down on the side of the Chilean highway…


…although, with I view like this, I suppose there could have been worse places to be stuck next to speeding cars.


Caitlin, Guster, and the Andes, all united in the Chilean countryside.

Besides the endless school orientation activities, I’ve been trying to live up my time in Chile by going out with friends when I can. Of course, all this is made more difficult by the fact that I’m a big dork and don’t like dancing until all hours of the night, and would much prefer spending one night at a pub talking and the next at home watching a movie and calling it a thrill of a weekend. Luckily, half of the students in my program seem to feel the same way (I knew there was a reason I was becoming such good friends with some of them), and all of the students are exhausted from our never-ending orientation activities combined with the drain of constantly trying to think in Spanish. Which means that after about two drinks, we’re all ready to go home and pass out. So much for fitting into the Chilean culture, which dictates that young people stay out dancing until 5 in the morning. At least that means we go out earlier and thus get happy hour prices.

Many nights, we’ve gone out with plans to start at a pub and then move on to the discotecas. As of yet, the latter hasn’t occurred, but we’ve still had our fair share of adventures. I will not bore anyone who has actually made it this far through my interminable entry with too many details, but one particularly and short story is that one night my friends and I found ourselves approached by a very drunk, very weird British man. Being that we stick out to just about anyone as rubios and gringos (blondes - which every one of us, including the brownest brunettes, get called – and foreigners), this Englishman could quickly identify us as non-Chileans and decided that we would be more sympathetic to an English speaker and would give him money for his long cab ride. Trying to ignore him and head back to Sara’s house, we found ourselves followed by the slightly belligerent bloke. Sara’s host sister’s thirty-two-year-old boyfriend had to walk each of us home, her family was so worried about us getting home safely! It probably doesn’t sound that amusing, but for those of us that had to deal with it, it’s become a pretty amusing Chilean adventure.

Ashley has also finally arrived and we’ve been keeping good company, even if that only means trips to knitting stores or watching TV over onces (which is a small snack in place of dinner, if I haven’t yet explained that) in my house. Many a knitting party and traveling adventure should ensue in short time! Ashley has also given me a new nickname: American Slut. Apparently the disappearance of some of my favorite underwear from the laundry sparked concern that I was too scandalous for my sweet Chilean mother and she had taken to throwing away some of my dearest possessions. Never fear, however, the underwear has all reappeared folded in my laundry a week later, and the temporary self-imposed moratorium on putting thongs in the laundry has been lifted! I still wish I could do my own laundry, but I suppose it’s not the worst thing to have to get used to in a foreign country, having someone look after you. See, Ashley, my family can handle me…as long as they stop making comments about my tank tops showing “too much chest” (a little translation for my non-Spanish-speaking friends). Oops.

And that pretty much brings me up to the current date. I’m leaving tonight for La Serena, a town 7 hours north on the coast, so hopefully it will be a little warmer. Wednesday I start classes and should get into a somewhat normal schedule, enabling more frequent posts. I’m planning on writing a little bit each night after I finish my homework and then posting it at least once a week at an internet café. Hopefully meaning no more marathon entries! Kudos to those who made it to the end of this one! I miss everyone a lot (and peanut butter, I really miss peanut butter :-p), but am truly having a great time here. Thanks for all the e-mails, keep them coming!


Jeff and I with a mule on the street in Valparaíso. Because where else would you expect to see a mule than in a major urban environment? I feel like this should be a post card home. “Missing you in Chile!”

There have been some questions regarding my "Chile Blog", so here's the deal. If you're looking for a PG-rated version of this blog while I'm in Chile, just hit up caitlininchile.blogspot.com. But if you want the whole story, it's all here. The Chile Blog is basically all the entries from here with an occasional sentece (a very occasional sentence) cut out so that I can give the address to my parents. But if you're already a reader of this blog, I trust you to handle the occasional mention of a hotel room fiesta, so please, go ahead and continue reading here and you can diregard the other.

In other news, I've moved in with my family, and I'm hoping to get some pictures up soon. I've never been a big fan of blogging in busy computer labs with people waiting semi-patiently for you to finish as I'm doing now, nor do I like trying to type on confusing international keyboards, so I'm trying to figure out how to hook my computer up to the internet at home so I can post quickly from there. Until then, I'm sure you know that I miss you all and hope you're doing well. Besos (kisses) to everyone!

The view from the restaurant last night... a little glare from the window, but in real life, it was beautiful

Today was a bit warmer than my first two days in Santiago. I've learned that in Chile, it's all about layers. Not all buildings are heated, so you must be sure to wear enough clothing to keep yourself warm. And you must be sure to be able to remove clothing if it gets too warm wherever you are. Luckily, today I felt comfortable walking around the city in just a sweater, but I brought my jacket so I could have it for when I was eating in cold buildings...it's still cold when you're not moving around.

We went to Pablo Neruda's house in Santiago this morning. I would never want to live there, but it was still very interesting, and we finally had a guide that I could understand! He was very interested in the ocean and sailing, and there were many parts of his home taken from boats. Also, he had symbols of all different parts of Chile decorating his house. And the view was amazing!


The view from Neruda's balcony


Kendra, Sarah, Jenn, Jeff (of Chambers fame ;)), and Byron in front of Neruda's house


The dog that followed us to Neruda's house. One thing that has been difficult to get used to has been the dogs wandering the streets. Chilenos tend to believe that it is wrong to remove the cajones of animals... in other words, there's no fixing the dogs here.

After the tour of Neruda's house we went to the Mercado, the street market, for lunch. I had a seafood soup that was a bit strong and took some bravery to eat, but wasn't bad. We went to the National Museum of Fine Arts for a little, where I just crashed on a bench for most of the time and watched some weird modern art video with sound effects that I must admit were a little unsettling.


About half of the group sitting in el mercado

After the museum, we returned to the hotel and learned about our families. I am going to be living in Viña del Mar, which is the resort-ish town, with a woman and her three daughters. She is a school bus driver, and her daughters are all students, two at universities and one in secondary school. Their ages are 22, 20, and 14. I'm moving in with them tomorrow, so I hope it goes well!

We were free to go where we wanted for dinner, so a big group of us went out for sandwitches at a local cafe. Afterward, we picked up some ice cream at the Big John, a convenient store on the way from our hotel to the main restaurant area. We stopped for ice cream and ended up leaving with pisco and Coca Cola as well. They were having a sale, and though none of us really like pisco (unaged whisky, part of the national Chilean beverage, which is a pisco sour), we decided that we were not above cheap alcohol. We all returned to the hotel and had a little card-playing party in Lucy and my room to end our last night in Santiago.


Our last night fiesta

I need to be awake early tomorrow to go to Valparaíso and meet my family, so it's bedtime for me. Hopefully I'll be near some of my friends from the program, because we've been having a lot of fun so far!

My first chilean lesson: it is more difficult to sleep on planes than I once thought. But besides that, and the very sudden awakening at 6:30 am, the flight wasn't too bad. Waking up early was hard, but it payed off when I looked out the window (I was on the east side of the plane) and saw the sun rising over the Andes mountains. The first day was busy - it felt five days long. The program staff met us at the airport and took us to the hotel, which was somewhat comforting. There we had lunch and began our orientation before leaving for the Cerro de San Cristóbal. Cerro means hill or mountain, and the Cerro de San Cristobal has a lift you can use to access the middle and top of the hill. Everywhere you look, you see city, because Santiago is absolutely enormous.

After the Cerro, Jeff, my roommate Lucy, and I went out to find some dinner. Chilenos tend to eat dinner very late, so us US-ers felt pretty stupid trying to find dinner at 6:30. I have a feeling I will love the 9:00 dinners when I haven't been awake since 6:30 in the morning, but last night, all I wanted to do was get some warm meat in my stomach (there are a few vegetareans on the trip, so our provided meals have been mostly vegetables), and go to bed. We finally found a restaurant that would be considered fairly pricey, and had our meal in pleasant solitude as no one else was eating yet. The bill? 22,000 pesos, which is about $11 US per person. I went home and was asleep by 10 pm.

This morning Lucy and I were up at 7 to get ready for breakfast. The hotel breakfast was quite tasty, and afterward we all went to the campus of El Mercurio, one of the major Chilean newspapers. The grounds were huge, and the building we went through was so extensive. Much bigger than the tour I went on of the Vineyard Gazette... all two rooms of it. We had lunch at the hotel, vegetarean again, and then had more orientation sessions and a trip to the Precolumbian Art Museum. While I must admit my interest in Precolumbian South American art is somewhat low, the trip was still fun. We were all really tired though, so it was good to get back to the hotel before our welcome dinner.

The dinner was great. The location was a surprise: a restaurant in the center of the region of Santiago in which our hotel is located, Providencia. It was on the top floor, and slowly spun around for a view of the whole city. I had turkey (meat again!), and they served us pisco sours (pisco is unaged whisky, and a pisco sour kind of tastes like a strong margarita... not something i would order on my own, but it's the national drink of chile) and wine (i had red, because come on, it's chile!). The view was beautiful, but my pictures don't do it justice because of the glare from the window.

Overall, orientation is somewhat exhausting, and I miss my friends and family back home a lot. The highs are really high and the lows are really low, but I am still glad to be here. Santiago is a very interesting city, and has some beautiful buildings, but others are somewhat dilapidated. The architectural variation is extensive, mostly due to earthquakes which have given way to a need for rebuilding during many different time periods. The city is home to 5 million people, and is absolutely enormous. In some part because of this, I'm sure, it is one of the most polluted cities, which makes me glad that I'll be moving to Valparaíso on Sunday. Providencia is a very nice area, however, and all of the government buildings are quite impressive in their architectural style. (Sorry for the boring tourist information!)

The people in my program are very nice, and it's also great to have a familiar face in the other Georgetown participants. I would love to get e-mails from people at home, though, because I am missing everyone more than I ever imagined possible. Just to assure you that I am in fact having a good time, though, here are my pictures...



The CIEE group waiting in the Santiago airport. Don't we blend in.


Lucy and my room... so cute! The maids even straightened up our stuff, putting our books in piles and organizing our shower supplies!


Me on top of Cerro de San Cristóbal. Picture taken by Jeff :)


One of the views from the Cerro. One of the most interesting things here is the great variety in plant life. There are evergreen trees alongside palm trees and cactuses, and some trees are bare while others have all their leaves. There are cactuses (or cacti... which is correct?) in the bottom of this picture.


Believe it or not, those are snow covered mountains through the fog and smog. The view was clearer today, but I wasn't able to get a picture of the mountains without power lines or construction blocking the view.

written on the plane to chile...

And she’s off! Despite a rocky start – my flight to Atlanta was cancelled – I am finally on my way. After finding out that bad weather all over the country had cancelled numerous Philly flights, and some begging with the Delta representative, I was able to get the last seat on an earlier flight to Atlanta than my originally scheduled one. There was only one difference…this seat was first class! So I got bumped on the first stretch of my flight. Sure, I was a left a little frazzled from the shock of seeing my flight cancelled, being told that I probably couldn’t get a flight until the next day, and then being (yet again) one of the few, the proud, the randomly selected and carefully searched passengers, but I think the cushy seats made up for it. And since the new flight was an hour earlier than my cancelled one, I had time to grab some dinner at the Atlanta airport at a restaurant which described itself, quite charitably, as having “Chinese Food”. Well, it was something. Now I’m lucky enough to have an empty seat next to me on this huge flight, so I’ll be able to stretch out and get some sleep. Yay for being short! As long as I can endure the father and son hunting travelers sitting behind me (really, I need to get a better understanding for some of the things people do for fun), and as long as the movie is better than the corny self-help guide to flying they’re playing right now (actors sitting in fake flight seats demonstrating how to swallow and gargle water to stretch your jaw while flying), this flight should be great! A “morning after” post will have to follow! Chile, here I come!

many apologies for the long break! there are several posts to update... first the ones i wrote in martha's vineyard:

I’m finally here. Have you ever felt completely delirious with relief, combined with the fear of the possibility of losing that comfort at any time? I’m practically shivering with it, mostly because I know that any time is in one and a half weeks, and that the vineyard isn’t the only comfort I’m losing. Sometimes I wonder if that is how it feels to be loved - an all embodying, exhausting sense of contentment trimmed with fear. For now, I’ll just let Martha’s Vineyard love me, comfortable in this house I adore for at least a few nights more before I leave for uncertainty.




back in massachusetts

just over 24 hours after hearing guster sing those very words live, in the DC suburbs, that’s exactly where i am, back in massachusetts. it was a crazy two days, but totally worth it. ashley, otherwise known as kerra, and i left for DC at 1:30 on tuesday (june 29th, since i have no idea when it will be when i actually get to post this), and arrived at georgetown in record time. we made a pit stop at tim’s to get into concert-going-attire, and then the two of them put themselves into my competent driving hands as i hurled us into the virginia suburbs in my father’s station wagon. so we got a little lost, but thanks to tim’s navigational skills and my driving abilities (but, let’s face it, mostly the former), we were able to make it to the concert before they were even seating in the “luge” section, which is exactly where we were sitting. it turns out this section was suspended above the stage, looking down. the view was great. especially of guster, who looked amazing. who (besides tim) is surprised?

rufus wainwright, guster, and ben folds later, we were sitting in the parking lot, at a stand still, for at least half an hour. but we had guster on the radio and green, fuzzy llama guster t-shirts in hand, so there were really no complaints. at midnight on the way home, we hit the only traffic in our two day travels since I-495 was under nighttime construction and concert traffic at the same time. oh well. once again, our music choice for the trip home made the whole thing totally bearable. after some reheated leftovers and an episode of queer eye, we went to bed, ready to wake-up bright and early the next morning for the return journey. before we left, ashley got to see uncommon grounds and meet the creepy roommate, all good times, and then we headed back to PA so that kerra could work and i could catch a 4:30 flight to boston.

granpop took me to the airport with plenty of time to spear, which was smart seeing as the line for security was 40 minutes long. my flight got me to logan at 5;45, where i had to wait for a 7:30 bus to the cape. that arrived just in time for me to catch the 10 pm ferry to vineyard haven. where i was met by my dad, uncle jerry, and brianna, who took me to see the links (my mom’s twin sister’s family) and the rest of my family. like i said, it was a very busy 48 hours, but it was all so worth it. i got to be in so many of my favorite places, with so many good friends, in such a short amount of time. and one and a half amazing weeks at the vineyard await me.




today (jjuly 7), i got to dip my toes in the water of the life i desperately wish to someday live. our family friends are visiting us in martha’s vineyard and staying in the carriage house. unlike the many other visitors we’ve had, though, they did not fly, train, or drive up here, but rather came by way of boat. which they were happy to take us out in today. it was amazing. we went all the way around the island, stopping at cuttyhunk, off of gay head, to get some lunch. so many times i’ve been swimming on the beach and looked with envy at the boats that passed us by, and today i got to be one of those boats.

cuttyhunk was quite an experience. it’s one of the elizabeth islands, the only one with a real town, and that town is inhabited by only about 40 year round residents. the only way to reach the island is by private boat, which means there aren’t really cars – people drive around on golf carts. it has a pizza place that opens at 5:30, a market, two harbor side food carts, and not much else besides spectacular views. i had always been interested in seeing the island, and now i can finally say that i have.

we finished off the boat trip by dropping anchor between edgartown and oak bluffs and going for a quick dip. the water was refreshing and the sky was serenely clear. it was a perfect day. the only negatives that have come out of the trip are: 1) i now want a boat more than ever, and 2) i have very sun burnt knees.