wow

I feel like its been ages since I've written anything here, and I really need to get back into it. I really enjoy writing here, as much for myself as for any of you who are checking in, but I've found it hard to keep up.

One update though, tomorrow (10/1/09) marks the first day of my goal to only be speaking in Spanish. I'm sure it will be a bit more like Spanglish, but except for writing here and when talking to people who kno no Spanish that will be my language of choice for the duration of my 8 month stay here.

Estoy intimidado. I'm not so much worried about being able to get by as I am about losing my personality behind the lack of vocab (which will improve quickly) as well as the commitment this is going to take not to fall into the habit of speaking in the language that is easy for me.

More to come, I promise :)

Chao

Home

Today was the first time I have really felt homesick since I've been here. It started earlier when I was having some tea that reminded me of the RedRose that my mom always keeps at home and progressed later on after I spoke to my dad.

The time that it really set in, though, was when I was at the supermarket with Carlos. We were looking for cheddar cheese so I could make nachos (one of the Americanish foods I've been craving) and we couldn't find it anywhere except in little laminated sandwich packages. We finally found these little bricks for entirely too much money but though Carlos insisted we get them (at least this once) I was constantly conscious of how much they cost, how little was there, and how unhomelike it was to only have flavorless cheeses available.

Cheese is a big thing in my family, and we tend to like sharp cheeses too. In Chile it seems that they only like bland mozzarella type cheese and that only reminds me that I'm on the other side of the world. I've been craving nachos for weeks and now that I have the makings (the entire supermarket only carried one flavor of salsa, by the way) I have to be stingy in my usage. Que lastima.

I miss home. I miss popcorn with yeast, I miss fruit soups, I miss nachos and "whatever you can find" dinners.

Its good to be here, but I would like just a day back again.

Out for the night. Peace.


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Its about 45 min after I first posted this and I'm feeling much better. I've had my nachos which were as similar as I think I'm gonna get with out going to a specialty import store, and they cheered me up nicely. I begrudged for a moment having to share them with the others (they seem to think that when it's meal time I should eat four helpings, but when it's my snack time I should share one helping) but I got over it and am happier for it.

One thing I thought was interesting, at the supermarket the American (US American) section consisted mainly of Prego tomato sauce and mayonnaise. Strange...

BEST SKIING EVER!!!!

Ok, well, maybe not the best ever but it was pretty damn phenominal.

Me and two buddys went up to Vale Navada on Saturday to try out the slopes for the first time since the Best-Worst-Weekend-Ever a few weeks back and we were not disappointed. In the sun the temperature rose nearly to 65 degrees (that's my guess anyway) but the snow kept a constant fluffy powder all morning into the early afternoon.

Back on the East coast I'm what they call an "expert" skier (no need to be awed, I'll be signing autographs later), but that in no way translated into anything similar here in the powder. The mountains here have qualities very different from eastern slopes, consisting mainly of the lack of trees (and more altitude, and more size, and more awesomeness). In the North East skiers and boarders have to stay mostly on the groomed trails of the mountain, every now and again being allowed to drift into 'glades' trails between trees. Here there are no such restrictions. The main trails are so large that they are called 'roads' and what they call 'trails' are tiny (about the size of trails in the N.E.) connectors between roads. The rest of the mountain is free game.

One of the guys I went with - Lee (left) - would be considered far slower of a skier than me if we were to have a straight out battle down the slopes of, say, Attatash or Cranmore, but here he destroyed me. In fact, I started off trying to get my yah-yahs out by blasting down the main road and promptly caught an edge and yardsaled my ass all over my first run. That was embarrassing... Not only were my DINs way lower than I was used to, but without having skied regularly in four years I was similar to my 53 year old father deciding to commando roll out of a speeding boat because he had been good at it in his 20s in the military... it was a bad scene...

Lee and Justin (the boarder of the group) pulled up, laughed, and as I rubbed the bruise out of my pride we set off for ungroomed trails.

Oh yea, I was talking about Lee being slower... anyway, once we got off the main road he pulled us high up and we skirted along the side of the mountain way above where other skiers regularly go. We followed this line for about five minutes before suddenly Lee decided to blast ahead and launch off a four foot ledge onto a nearly vertical slope. It looked pretty awesome. What I did, did not. I followed him, 'launched' (read: flopped) off the ledge, landed on the back of my skis which promptly popped off my boots and tumbled head over heels down the rest of the hill.

That is a pretty good sum up of the first half of my day.

Now don't get me wrong, I got better. Learning to ski on powder is actually far easier than learning to carve on hard-pack, so I caught on quickly. I never ceased to face plant myself up and down the mountain, but I did it with less regularity and in more diverse situations. No longer was I eating it only on the descents, I ate it on some of the ascents too! Actually by the end of the day I was bombing down the mountain, launching myself off ledges and landing it, and shooting my way down nearly vertical slopes without too much trouble... I just wish I had another day to show off, it took nearly seven hours for me to get good again, I'm sure after another seven I'd be jumping outta choppers.




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Wow... everyone in this house is a horrible singer.....


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So, there are a lot of words here that I don't think should have easily made their way into common usage. The one I'd like to focus on today is the little phrase "chiquitito." This cutesie sounding word sounds like it would be used to describe baby kittens (which would have to be young indeed to be baby kittens vs. regular ones) or something similarly melty-your-heartish. In fact, this word can be used to describe such things, but really it simply means 'small.' Against my initial assumption, it doesn't make a big bulky guy less manly to describe something as chiquitito while in Chile (used in Columbia will promptly have said muscle man abducted and held for ransom from the TelleTubbies). I went yesterday to buy this killer mid-size hiking pack and the dude in the store, when I described that I wanted something a little less hike-around-the-world-without-refillingish than my massive bag back home, he said "necesitas una mas chiquitito, si?"

I punched him in the face before I realized what he was talking about...

I just don't understand why something that sounds like what my mom would name one of our cats would make its way into regular vocabulary; especially in such a machismo society...

I guess it's just a mystery for another day.

Peace out, cub scouts.

I don't think I could have planned a more perfect day. Today I did exactly what I wanted to do: almost nothing. I woke up at 2 (was out late last night celebrating the Dia de Independencia with the rest of the nation), ate some food and then sat around all day making this:



I'm so happy with it, it's an alcohol camp stove made from a couple of left over beer cans and a 10 peso coin! I found the plans online the other day and have been dying to try and make it. It has 6 jets and can boil water as quickly as most of the $60 camp stoves you'd see at a store. Plus it's lighter, smaller and really freaking cool. I could feasibly make it with a pocket knife if I needed to, but I like Dremels better. I don't think I'll be camping before late October but that just leaves me more time to make better ones as this one is a bit on the rough side.

I've decided that I'm not going to give a whole run-down of my time in Valparaiso last weekend because there's just too much to write and if I don't get back to blogging regularly I can see I'll end up quitting. So suffice it to say I had an amazing time in an amazing city and the next time I go there, I'll fill you in more. As for now, I'll just post some pictures of it.

Peace!

Catching up

I'll be back on in another few days but today I'm heading to Isla Negra and Vina del Mar with the group, then spending the weekend in Valparaiso. I'm not gonna have internet... at least until Monday.

Things are still going well and remaining interesting here but I find myself more discriminate about what I write and when, I don't know why...

Ok, out for the trip!

The best, worst, weekend ever.

This weekend was crazy, I'm gonna give the short of it because I feel like watching a movie and just chilling tonight, I'm exhausted.

Lets just say that the layers of this weekend consisted of emotional smörgåsbord-ness, unmet expectations, theft, death, cold, blindness, sleet, off roading, too much money spent, fragility and friendship...

As a basic break down of all that, I was freaking out about the Craigslist thing (worked itself out, probably some pissant just being a dick), then I thought people wouldn't show up for the ski trip to the Andes, it was raining and the metro opened 45 minutes later than we were supposed to meet at it. We get together, only four of us show up out of the eight or so who said they'd be there, and rent stuff then leave on the bus. The rest of that trip was uneventful except there are so many switch backs in the Andes to get to the resorts that they're numbered... and they decided to start at one again after reaching 45...

Ok, I can see that I'm going the route of a long post, so I'm gonna abridge it now: We get to the mountain, conditions are so bad that only the rope tow was open, we go to the second mountain. There we can't see more than about 30 feet at the best of times, the other times it was even worse. I rented some goggles, we went skiing. Justin boards, about as quick as I am on skis, Naveen had never snowboarded before and did about three runs the whole time, Casey was a decent skier, keeping up w/the rest of us.

We go in for lunch, I don't get served until almost 45 minutes after everyone else, and my gloves, hat and rental goggles were stolen while we were sitting right there... 

I decide to give snowboarding a try and while I was out there falling every few feet I remembered why I decided against it when I was in 5th grade. 

We get to the end of the day and its time to go only we're told there was an avalanche and no one is leaving for the night so we have to stay in a lodge owned by the University of Santiago. We went to a bar because that was the only place with food... and drinks...

We headed out today around noon to see the devastation of one house and much of the road at the bottom of the mountains, the mud slide (my uncle says there was geological activity during the storm last night) took the lives of two parents and their one year old daughter while injuring eight others.

The whole weekend was covered with a comical woe-is-me mood, but I could see how ridiculous that was while all these things were going on, as well as a certain perspective with my own problems and those of the people buried in the mud. Luckily I was in good company and I found that though I was depressed and had my stuff stolen and was stranded in the middle of nowhere and were close to three tragic deaths we kept our spirits high.

I wish I could go far deeper into all of that, maybe I'll write it sometime, but it was an exhausting weekend and I definitely could use some rest.

Life is good, even when its shitty. We just need to remember that.

Peace.

Why would someone do this?

I'm going to stray from my normal talking about Santiago to ask a question... not that I expect to get an answer from those of you who read this.

Why would someone post a malicious ad in Craigslist of me? I was told about two hours after it happened and got it deleted right away, but someone posted a hookup add saying terrible things about me, having personal information on it and including a picture of me from the Alabaster Blue (my a capella group) website.

I can only hope this is a random joke, but its not like it was posted in the middle of the night when someone might have been drunk that thought it would be funny, this was posted at 5:58 in the afternoon which implies to me that it was totally malicious and hoping to hurt me or slander me in the eyes of those who know me. I can see this working as a joke if I were straight and someone was just messing around, but since I'm gay, and this was on a sleazy gay hookup page, theres a chance that it could be seen as authentic.

Yesterday something painful happened, I'm not going to talk about it and it's not like anyone was physically hurt, but I'm so worried that this craigslist ad is some sort of retort to that... I hope not because it is so cruel. Please tell me its not.

...

Its been a rough day. I don't feel like writing about it so I'm gonna post some pics instead.

Splling Errers

Today had so many different feelings about it that I can hardly describe it. It was crazy intimidating then super fun then confusing then sleepy then wild again and on and on! It started out normal enough, with me getting up later than I intended and missing this morning's opportunity to go to the gym for the first time. Then I got on the bus/metro and got to school an hour before my class because I had yet again misjudged my schedule. I read a lot today, still working with Lyra and her friends in the Golden Compass series. I'm actually trying to get through this book as fast as I can because I've seen a disadvantage to reading in a familiar language: it takes longer for my brain to rebound into Spanish mode from reading than it does from merely speaking in English. I can Spanglishasize pretty well, but if I'm reading in English then someone speaks to me in Spanish I have like this huge tractor trailer pileup in my brain before I can answer... So I'm gonna finish then start los Cuatros Acuerdos.

I guess I don't really have all that much to say about the day, I had my first photography class which was only the intro class telling all that stuff we already know. The teacher speaks super fast though and it'll definitely be a challenge to keep up once we get out of camera knowledge I already have. (Oh, that reminds me, David (a gigantic Norse viking in our group, looking and acting unusually like my late Uncle Mike) and I have agreed that we want to be speaking completely in Spanish by October... it won't be perfect, or even good probably, but that's out goal.)

After classes I decided not to go out with people in lieu of my book and a snack. After two hours of reading or so I got up, changed clothes and went to the gym. Oh how my body was longing for the gym! I have been intimidated by so much while here that I have completely forgotten to give my body what it asks for! I got there and I felt strong, I was knowledgeable, I was able! It's been almost two weeks since I felt completely in my element, but no matter how far from home I am a dumbbell is always a dumbbell. It felt good to feel strong, I need to be strong. I'll be going back soon.

Out.

Oye! Baile!

I learned the Meringue today! Now I know there are a few of you who will read that and scoff, but I tell you judge not! I am indeed an up and coming Latino dancer! I even got a "muy bien!" from the dance instructor, which (and I'm not kidding) she did not give to everyone. I'm so happy! It was an evening class offered through the program and I though "what the hell? I'm in South America, I might as well learn how to dance." None of my partners tonight were terrible, but there was one who was by far the best of them; it's a good thing that we're developing a dynamic of comfort because it seems so much easier to lead when we're close as the Meringue is supposed to be danced. Most of my partners were like me: either they didn't know what they were doing, or they thought they did (both of which applied(*ahem* applies) to me at one point or another) and so I can't say they were bad or good, just inexperienced. Aleah, on the other hand, had helped many a rhythmically challenged lad in dancing. We spend some time on my hips, and then moved actual moves. I picked up the steps quickly and was enthusiastic to improve, my only real problem is the habit of moving the same hip as my foot, instead of them being opposite, and I attribute that all to my shoulders which - similarly - follow the foot on the same side... so picture a fat Labrador retriever running one complete side at a time, simply rolling left then right... That was me. In the beginning.

At the end we were actually working through the dance moves with relative confidence. Its all up to the guy to lead, to watch out for others and to direct, it is the girl's job to follow (which is probably really difficult). I was surprised to find, as I moved to another partner, that Aleah was an excellent follower and thus made me a better and more confident leader. I hope that we can be partners again, I think that we'll probably make quicker progress if we continue to work together then if we have to keep switching through other dancers of different levels... Plus I like that I look like a better dancer when I'm with her :D

I don't have any pictures today, I left the camera at home as my bag was full of books... I wish I had brought my hiking bag because it's bigger with wider shoulder pads... maybe I should get one here that's between the small day pack I've got and the behemoth 7500 c.i. bag at home... What brings me to this topic is I met this guy Brendon on the metro this morning. I saw him standing a few people away and was trying to figure out why he kept glancing at me, then I noticed the blond hair, the All Star chucks and the CamelBak bag so I said "Are you American? Estas estadaunidense?" He looked surprised and said "Yea, I'm from Vermont!" I guess he was trying to figure out if I was from the US as well. He seems like a cool kid, he's studying international business at another college here. He grew up not more than a couple of hours from me, and now we met in South America! Small world and all that... Oh, and he had a bag like that, it seemed to fit all his stuff well.

I've got about five and a half hours of down time between the last of my morning class and the dance class on Tuesdays so today I spent that time with another guy from the program. I led him to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant near by that I had happened upon. It was literally a hole in a wall you yelled into, put money into and then got handed vegetarian, Indian-influenced food out of. We then decided to go on a treasure hunt for me: I needed a micro SD to USB or SD converter. I also wanted another guitar. Anyway we went through all sorts of places, when we finally found the converter it was at this massive electronics/parts/car/model/toy/musical instrument/lighting/craft store. The process is you talk to the salesman who writes you a receipt. You take the receipt to the cashier who gives you another one, then you go to a final desk and pick up your item... Needless to say, I didn't get it right the first three times I tried. I won't go into details, but lets just say Justin and I weren't the only ones laughing at me.

I cant believe how cheap some of the musical instruments here are! I've been looking for years for an less-than-$100 classical guitar and I found like five today for less than $60! I tested them all out and only one had tone distortion in the higher frets and even if they didn't sound like professional quality, they were still comfortable and nice to hear. (mom, this is where you give me a call encouraging me to buy something I don't need because I need the boost to get me out of my common sense). I ended up just getting some new strings for the guitar I brought with me.

Anyway, the dancing was the highlight of my day, I loved it. Although I wasn't really nervous at the beginning, I definitely had some trepidation. I'm glad I had fun.

Chao!