Loca

I'm going to take a leap here and say that Chile's national anthem is not the song they play when Chile wins an Olympic gold medal; it's this song by Chico Trujillo:

The title of the song is a good description of what Chile is like. If you haven't noticed already by reading my blog, Chile is kind of loca.
Honestly though, everyone knows all the lyrics and Chico Trujillo is considered a god. When I asked my host brother to give me the names of some good Chilean musicians to listen to, he wrote this guy's name first with three check marks next to it. I looked up some of his music and actually bought some on iTunes, much to my host sister's disbelief. When I told her I bought music on iTunes, she was seriously dumbfounded. I guess no one actually buys music (or movies, for that matter) here in Chile; it's all pirated. You should've seen her face. Loca.

If you didn't hear the vuvuzelas and car horns yourself, then you may not know: CHILE CLASSIFIED FOR THE WORLD CUP! Last week Chile's national soccer team played Ecuador and won 2-1, meaning they have officially qualified to play in the World Cup tournament! Immediately after the game, the streets became mobbed because everyone left their respective houses and favorite local bars to celebrate. Everyone was drunk and reckless, so things got crazy pretty quick. This is pretty much what it consisted of: chants, flags, vuvuzelas and other noisemakers, beer, costumes, drums, dancing, and yelling. In one word: Loca. It looked like a huge riot was happening (which wouldn't be uncommon for Chile, but I'll save that for another time) so I'm just glad I wasn't there to witness what it would've looked like if Chile had lost! I recorded this video below to give you a taste of what it was like. (I realize that you may have Chico Trujillo's song still playing. You're just going to have to figure out how to manage having two videos to watch. I believe in you.)

There was a Circus in town! But it cost too much for Colin and I, plus the long line of people at the entrance consisted of either children under ten or their parents. We tried to go in with our friend Areyonna and pretend like we didn't understand that it cost money, but I kind of messed up the plan by actually speaking Spanish. Whatever, it was cool to look at from the outside. 

5000 pesos = 10 bucks. Like anyone could even afford that. 

 On Saturday I went to the Santiago with Colin and an amigo santiaguiño, Ricardo. First we went to the largest mall in Latin America which is connected to the tallest building in Latin America, or at least that's what they say. 

Oh, you fancy, huh? 

And as we were walking in the city, looking for book stores and places to eat completos, we came across a Zombie Walk. It's kind of a creepy march across the city where people dress up as the living dead. It originally started by fans of "The Walking Dead" TV show but now it's just something fun people do to express their love of zombies. I was actually very  impressed with some of the makeup some of these people had. I saw extended jaws, missing eyes, gashes across the face, nasty protuberances, and plenty of blood spilling all over the place. Loca.

What's next, Meth Head Walks for "Breaking Bad" fans? 

And this is the part of my blog where I try to be serious. Let's see how that works out. 

We went to the zoo! I loved it a lot. But while trying to capture photos of all the animals, my camera kept focusing on the cage instead of the animal behind it. But this made me realize something profound. These animals are being taken out of their natural habitat and placed in a confined space behind a cage without enough room to live properly. And the only reason they are put there is so people like me can go and take a hundred photos to upload to Facebook and their blog. Here are some of the pictures I thought were rather saddening, whether it was a monkey trying to climb towards the freedom that wasn't there or a Nile Crocodile that should've been renamed Puddle Crocodile.

                    


 Now, I'm not going to join PETA or anything because of this, but it's definitely something to think about. Also, something else to think about is the fact that while squinting into my camera, it was trying to open my eyes to the truth. Loca.

An American in Chile. (Why isn't United Statesian a term?)

Remember that time when I wrote, "This is a blog for now, but don't be shocked if it becomes a list of funny things that happen to me"?

Voilá

So this is what I feel like here in Chile. (No, for real, click it - it's funny. Make sure your volume is up). I'm trying to assimilate myself to the Chilean culture here as much as possible, but sometimes there's some confusion. Here's my unorganized list of those confusions (and other funny experiences I've had).

1.Please tell me how to eat this.
Because soups usually require spoons.
And potatoes usually require forks.
And drumsticks and corn on the cob usually don't require utensils.

This was my first meal here so I didn't know what the table manners were yet. I was able to pretend like I was thirsty for long enough to realize they use a knife and spoon to eat it all. I've eaten it probably four times now and I still suck at it.

2. I'm sure you know what I mean by the smile and nod.
Even when people are speaking me to in English I do this. I don't want to make them repeat themselves or make them stop telling their story, so I just smile and nod, hoping that'll hide my ignorance. As you can imagine, it happens even more when I'm constantly being spoken to in Spanish. Of course it happens less and less as my ear improves, but just yesterday I was eating lunch with my family and my host mom was reminding me about something that happened last week and all I could understand was 'frutilla' (strawberry) so I asked her to repeat it but it didn't help. So I pretended to think about it and then exaggeratedly responded with "OOOH oooh sí!" and then made eye contact with my host sister's boyfriend and shook my head and rolled my eyes to show him that I had no idea what she was talking about. I feel like it's something Kelly Kapoor would have done.

Notice the ceiling. Notice how I'm not standing straight. 

3. Everything seems smaller in Chile, for a variety of reasons. (For more information on that, read my friend's great blogpost). But here I will only be talking about the actual physical size of things.
Examples:
a. Every morning I take a shower where I can't do a 360 without my shoulders hitting the walls. At least the thought of dropping the soap doesn't frighten me because there's no possibility of retrieving it.
b. The second floor of a club I went to had a ceiling barely over six feet tall. This becomes a problem when you yourself are barely over six feet tall.
c. I saw some hats I wanted to buy but upon trying them on, I realized my head was a bit too big. It's too bad though, because they were selling hats that said "Boston Bruins: 2013 Stanley Cup Champions" which made me smile and frown at the same time.


4. I still don't fully understand the way greetings happen here. From what I've gathered, you kiss a girl on her cheek and you shake a guy's hand. You can also hug the guy if he's your close friend. The only time I've seen guys kiss on the cheek was between family members. Getting the kiss right is tough though. I never know if I should also grasp her opposite shoulder, or how hard I should kiss, or when it's appropriate to actually kiss her cheek as opposed to just making the cheeks touch. I'm pretty sure I put more thought into each kiss I make here than I did my first kiss ever - it's that complicated. Plus, you do this twice; once to say hello and once to say goodbye. Plus you have to do it to everyone in the room. It makes it quite a show when someone leaves an event early and has to sufficiently make their rounds. There's no getting out of it. This is also why I try to get out of church as soon as it ends because even just ten seconds of dawdling means you've become sticky fly tape.

John Mayer : Kanye West :: Sam Skold : Chileans

5. If you've been keeping up with the Kardashians me, you'll know that I sometimes get annoyed when people respond to me in English. It's usually with strangers when I ask them the location of a sushi restaurant or the bus terminal or whatever. So I decided to do something about it. One week Colin and I showed up late to church and we must have had super concerned looks on our face because this guy came up to us and said in English, "We just started, you can enter" and I gave him a weird look and said "No entiendo inglés" (I don't understand English). His face went white and he began to apologize profusely in Spanish saying he thought we were from North America. Luckily I didn't have to prove myself because we were immediately ushered into the service, so that worked out well. Is it bad that I'm proud of making someone else embarrassed? #sorrynotsorry

That's not all, but I think that's sufficient for now. Expect more. Expect many more.

I came, I saw, I ate, I conquered.

I should blog more often. I wouldn't regret writing these if I did them more often and they were shorter.
Oops, I mean....I love updating you all about my life! (Skip ahead to Number 1). P.S. I'm sorry if that link made no sense to you. If it did, you are probably my sibling or close family member.

Life has been so great here in Chile! I've officially been here for over two months - it's hard to believe I'm almost half-way done with my Chilean experience. Let's not think about that though, and just live every day to its fullest. Agreed? Agreed.

I got to go surfing two weeks ago! The moment I heard there was surfing here, I told myself I was going to try it out. The original cost was 10 bucks for the board and 10 bucks for the suit for the whole day. We bargained it down to 10 bucks total for two hours. We originally planned only surfing for two hours anyways, so we win. The trick was to pretend like we wanted to surf longer. The first hour was a little rough; it was tough to even get up on my knees. But then I began actually standing up! By the end of the two hours, I had gotten up on my feet quite a few times! I also took a couple nose dives but whatever - what goes up must go down, right? It's only science. It probably helped that after the first hour, I lost all feeling in my face, hands, and feet. Wait, did I say helped?

Third-wheeling with an engaged couple. Or maybe it's called third-finning?

A friend of mine (who was a friend of a friend of my brother but is now my friend and was always a brother (in Christ)) Actually, the friend of my brother is also now my friend and was always my brother (in Christ) so I guess I could've said a brother of a brother of my brother, or a friend of a brother of my brother, or a brother of a my brother. Or just my brother. Or just my friend.

...so this friend of mine is in a Chilean Gospel Choir and they had a concert last week. I took a bus over to the church in Valparaiso with a friend of this friend (Okay, I'll stop) who was also in the choir, so we got there an hour early for them to practice. During this time, I walked around town because it was a nice day. What I found was so great. There was a worship service going on in the middle of the central plaza, so after snagging some street food, I watched and praised the Lord! 

Praising God...

...for this.

The gospel concert was amazing! I got there at 6:45 for a 7:00 concert. And it started a little after 7:30. I had to remind myself that I am in Chile and this is regular...But honestly, they sounded so good, and I recognized almost all the songs, except they were in Spanish. It's a cool feeling when you realize that the Holy Spirit doesn't only move in the states and doesn't only speak in English. Christianity is a worldwide religion, and our God speaks every language! That's so cool to think about. (PS, I hate to break it to you, but Jesus wasn't white.)

¡Jubilosos!

So this is the transition sentence. (I never really figured out how to do those in middle school 5 paragraph essays.) I'm in a choir! I joined the University's choir made up of about 10 people. There aren't many activities other than sports to do on campus because in Chile, you don't live at school in dorms, you live at home or an apartment and commute to school. So since no one really stays on campus for much other than classes and the gym, the few extracurricular activities that they have aren't very popular. Anyways, after practice last Tuesday, one of the girls in the choir brought up the idea of singing in the school's talent show the next day. So we picked a song (Hey Soul Sister), made up parts, and learned it all in just one hour. The next day we met once before going on stage to review the parts and everything. There was actually quite a large crowd (this was "University Day") and it was a little frightening, but we went up there and sang like pros. Seeing as we picked the song just 24 hours beforehand, it was a pretty great accomplishment that we got SECOND PLACE!

I'm guessing you can tell who the other foreigner is. 

In other news, I met this super famous guy. A man named Alejandro Chafuen who is from Buenos Aires but is a graduate of Grove City College and is now a famous economist and is on the board of advisors to the Center for Vision and Values at GCC and he's founded all these things and is the president of various things (John Steinbeck's got nothing on my level of detail). Basically, he's so famous that after the other two GCC students here in Chile and I ate a super fancy lunch with him, he went to go talk to the president. Of the college? No. Of the nation of Chile. He literally left the college and went to the capital to talk with Piñera. We got a picture with him but they haven't uploaded it to Facebook yet (ugh...adults and their lack of FB immediacy)

This past Friday there was another included excursion through our program - to Pomaire! Pomaire is a small little town known for their pottery. Literally, there was almost nothing but pottery sold there. OK, I guess I'm being dramatic; there was also marijuana plants being sold on the street. You think I'm joking, don't you. I guess that's why they call it pottery.

First we went around and bought things, like good little gringos. And then we ate lunch. Colin and Kyle are the two other Grove City students here this semester. We shared our lunch between the three of us. Now, if three hungry 20 year-old guys are going to share a lunch, it better be pretty freakin huge. Take a gander at this baby: 

The best part about this picture is the girl in the background is a vegetarian. 

Yeah, that was one of the most satisfying lunches ever. I call it "Big Pot of Meat". It has a name in Spanish but I always forget.

And then we got to make pottery, with the potter's wheel and everything. But first we watched a demonstration by the professional. He was so amazing at it and made it seem so easy. Like, honestly he turned a slab of clay into a fully enclosed apple in about a minute.

I'm going to pretend this is me and not the professional

Then we all got to try. I was too big for my workspace. Every time I kicked the wheel to make it go, I smashed my leg on the tiny table. But after a lot of failed attempts at this whole pottery thing, I got pretty mad so I started kicking things on purpose. Worked out great - no one noticed. 

Monkey See, Monkey Cry because he can't Do.

It was super tough but it was a great experience. But let's just say those "bowls" I made aren't coming home with me to the states. Sorry mom and dad, looks like my gift to you will be plants I bought on the street.