This week: Piropos, Paros, and Peru

What a busy week. It started out with Rebecca here- we spent Monday together, and she came to my Spanish class. Later we went to my apartment and she met my host fam! She fit right in... we tried to convince her to stay, but unfortunately she already had a plane ticket to Arica. She, Javi and I all went to see "Plan B" afterwards, which was very funny. We got there about 20 minutes late, but in accordance with Chilean time, the movie started just as we got into the theater. Love Chilean time.

Tuesday morning Rebecca and I climbed Cerro Santa Lucia. It was very beautiful! I will post photos once they get on my computer. After the climb, the personal M. Ferrill Orientation ended, and Rebecca headed off to start her own abroad adventure!

The next few days consisted of:

Peru:

Lots and lots of planning for Peru this week! It is an epic trip, but one that requires somewhat impossible planning. It seems like it will work out though...

Piropos:

Just thought I'd throw this in here since it's a part of daily life in Chile. A lot of whistling goes on here. Piropos are birds, but the word is used for men who make a similar sound. Some girls are really offended by it, but I mostly find it amusing. This week, I found the root of the whistling epidemic: Mothers. I was sitting in the bus the other day, and a group of women with a baby came to sit near me. The baby was looking at me for a while, and I smiled back... and then his mother started making whistling sounds and trying to teach him to whistle at me!!! Haha definitely one of the funniest moments of the week!

Paros:

Student protests at the different University faculties, where students refuse to go to classes. Unfortunately, as US students we still have to go to class, since the professors are still required to show up. I encountered three of these classes this week- one ended in a personal lesson in documentary making, another ended in me sitting in an empty classroom for a while and leaving, and the third... well, we'll get to the third in the next blog entry.

I think the only major thing not encompassed by these three words this week is my work. I went on Wednesday night with Megan and Becca, and we had a great time playing dominos and hanging out with some of the men. In the coming weeks we will be organizing events and things to do with them, but this week we were still getting to know them. I found out that one of the guys is really crazy this week.... we were talking about something very coherent and normal, and suddenly he started telling me about artichokes, and repeating the words "cigarette" and "South Africa" and "walnut." Oh, my adventures at work.