Santiago

JTFC! This post is gonna be a dooozy! I've split it into chapters to ease the reading process. Check it out, ya'll!!!!

CHAPTER 1: Fulfilling Life Goals
Throughout my life, I've only had three real goals.

#1: Win the big bucks on a scratch-off lottery ticket and then invest all my winnings in an alpaca farm in the High Appalachians

#2: Start a musical group called the Fellows Country Band, featuring me on lead vocals and Jayanthi as spur-clicking cowgirl playing the pistols

#3: Live in Seattle, Washington

Of course none of them have ever come true. But I think I may have found the next best thing to #3. You see, the town I am currently living in, Valdivia, Chile--the hamlet with the man-eating sea lions if you recall--resembles Seattle in many ways. Sure, it lacks the coffee culture (they drink powered Nescafe here), and the millions of people (something tells me this town is smaller than Athens), but the scenery and weather are distinctly Pacific Northwestern. I'll spare you the geography lesson because in this post I do not intend to discuss my new home, but rather the place I left just yesterday, the place I have been for the last three weeks, Santiago de Chile.

CHAPTER 2: Arriving
Santiago is one of those cities that people come to and say "OMG, I totes want to go back to Buenos Aires." (Somebody actually said that to me once, but I don't think he said omg...or totes). On first inspection, it's big, polluted, and fairly nondescript. And these ain't lies. The size: 6 million, a little bigger than Atlanta; the pollution: lookey here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32476803&id=4901601; the nondescriptness: on one block I counted a McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, and KFC (they call in 'Kentuuucky' here).

SIDE STORY: On the issue of the goofy way Chileans pronounce English things like Kentucky, I must offer a caveat. Hush Puppies is pronounced in Chile just as you would pronounce it at home. I learned this the hard way two years ago. After seeing that there existed a brand of Chilean cookies called "Kukys," and pronounced "coooookies," I naturally assumed that all u's would be pronounced this way. So when I went with Robin to buy new boots (buts) at Hush Puppies, we snickered at the store's presumed pronunciation. Later that day, I was telling Robin's home-stay sister that we had gone to "Hoosh Poopies," when she replied, in a crystal-clear American accent, "What? You mean, Hush Puppies?"

Back to the issue at hand: Santiago. It's big, bad, ugly, and now I can add HOTT. Going from a genteel March evening in Atlanta to a 90 degree summer day in Santiago sure can jolt a person's physical well-being, especially if said person has been experimenting with alcohol and antidepressants on a sleepless red-eye. Needless to say, when I showed up at the door of my home-stay on March 3rd with a year's worth of luggage, I felt a little lightheaded. I told my host mum, an old by the name of Ana, that I had a headache and then motioned that things were a'spinnin. Having expected her to bring me some delicious and refreshing aguita, I was quite surprised when she appeared instead with a sphigmomanometer (sp?). She took my blood pressure, told me that I had really really high blood pressure (I had gone to the doctor a week ago and everything was a-ok), and then insisted that I see a cardiologist sometime soon. It turns out my host mom is even more of a hypochondriac than I am! What's better: a Spanish teacher here told me that a well-recognized cultural trait of Chileans is that they are all hipocondriacos. Finally, a culture I can relate to.

Though the thing about hypochondriacs is no lie, many preconceptions and first impressions of Santiago are indeed unfounded, and this time as last, I spent my weeks discovering new aspects of the city and truly enjoying my time there.

At first, however, I thought I had made a horrible mistake....

CHAPTER 3: Learning Spanish
It's been said that if something went really well the first time around, you shouldn't try to do it again. A summer of fun in Egypt, for example, might turn into a winter of despair (or Sex in the City) upon returning. The second visit to the giant Superman statue in Illinois, while still really really fun, can't match the first time you lay eyes on it. And I'm sure the World's Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kansas, is a once in a lifetime kind of thing.

Somehow I've never learned this lesson. I know the original terror of midnight hiking with KTO in the dead of winter will never be matched, but I keep taking people back to the haunted realm of Watson Mill Bridge State Park. Perhaps it's my addiction to road-tripping, and the odds that places nearer to Atlanta are simply bound to be visited more often. Nevertheless, when things go well the first time around, I tend to return.

So despite the warnings, I decided to once again return to the ECELA Spanish language school in Santiago. I loved this school when I came to Chile two years ago. Everything about it. The classes, the teachers, the friends, the artificial sweeteners (Daily Gotas). Todo. There was a lot to live up to, and the first week this time around certainly did not. My old teacher, who was amazing, is embarazada (pregnant not embarrassed), so she's gone, and there were much fewer Americans this time around. The Germans were abundant, but they spokeitagerman with each other.

The second week went much better. My new Spanish teacher was an improvement, and after a night of boozing on Pisco Sours with my German housemate, I finally had a friend. Her name is Tina. My German friend last time was called Connie. What is it with American redneck-sounding German names anyway? Most importantly, my Spanish, which was a wreck when I arrived, had improved drastically, making communicating and enjoying life infinitely easier.

One last thing that was much better this time was the home-stay. Last time I lived with a family who preferred to eat meals in their own rooms. Also, the only TV in the house was in the master bedroom, and I just could never bring myself to ask, "Excuse me Mr. and Mrs. Diaz, can I please crawl into bed with you and watch American Idol?"

Given the unpleasantness of my first home-stay, you can imagine my concern when I discovered that this time I would be living with "Ana and Oslvado, a 69-year-old couple." Questions flooded through my mind. Were they each 69-years-old, or had they been married for 69 years? Being olds, were they implicated in the Pinochet dictatorship? Were they torturers, or had they been tortured? If I found torture equipment in their house, what would it all mean?...

Luckily, they were an extraordinarily pleasant hypochondriacal couple. We would sit around discussing our various illnesses (Both Ana and Osvaldo have had heart surgeries), and sharing medication, such as aspirin and pills to relieve nasal allergy symptoms. They also owned a maid who cooked unspeakably delicious cuisine. At first, I had heard this maid woman called Margarita, a more or less common Spanish name. But then when I called her this name while we were eating breakfast, Ana yelled out, "Noooo...margarina." I thought she was correcting me, so I proceeded to call the maid woman "Margarina," which in English means "margarine," the delicious butter substitute. It turns out Ana was just asking Margarita to put some margarine on the table. Que embarazada! (embarrassed, not pregnant).

CHAPTER 4: Growing Vegetables
After about a week of living with Ana, Osvaldo, Tina the German, and Margarine, I realized that I was running short of money. Chile is sups expensive! To remedy the situation, I naturally decided to start growing vegetables in the fertile floorboards of the house. At first we made a lot of money from the abundant harvests, but then, ignoring the demands of a migrant worker, we over-farmed the floors. We lost everything, and had to move out of the house. Luckily a wealthy landowner took us in, and we all worked the land along with a large woman called Maggie.

CHAPTER 5: Moving On
With the end of Spanish school a week ago yesterday, things began to change. The weather grew cooler in Santiago; I moved out of my home-stay, said goodbye to friends from the language school, and moved on to the Fulbrighting aspect of my journey. A Fulbright orientation featuring wine-tastings, dinners at revolving restaurants, and critically-received power point presentations ensued. I don't have the energy to describe the orientation in this post. But just know that I meet all the other Fulbrighters (8 girls and 1 other guy..ha!), and everyone is very nice. I have now made it to Valdivia, the sight of my teaching placement. More to come on that soooon!

Phewwww....that was really long. I promise to write more often from now on, and not let so much happen between blogfeems! Also, I didn't actually grow vegetables in the house. I just thought the chapter titles of this post were starting to sound like the names of Stella episodes, so I decided to pay homage to the best episode of perhaps any show to ever be aired on television. Damn Comedy Central for cancelling that show, and double dog damn that Carlos Mencia for taking its place.