My New Nicknames

"La Colombiana"

I cannot for the life of me figure out why, but a few days ago two separate men (one random one and one who lives in Nuestra Casa) told me that I look Colombian. Later, I was at dinner with Megan's host family and she asked them if they though I looked Colombian, and they said that I looked like a specific Colombian actress. Whatever the reason, I have now acquired the nickname at work, and entered Nuestra Casa tonight to hear "La Colombiana!"

"Indiancita"

Who knows if this one will stick, but one of Claudia's friends came into the house recently to see that I was wearing socks and no shoes in the house, and called me "indiancita" (little indian) because of it. Apparently it is quite unusual here to go without shoes in the house!

"Corazon"

Ok, so this is not just for me but I had to put it in here. My host mom uses it, and older people call me "corazon" (heart) whenever I ask them for directions or they are helping me with something. I love it- such a sweet expression!

Week of Journaling: Day 3

Ohh the frustration. I just found out that I am one of 50 finalists (out of 700 applicants) for the National Geographic Glimpse Correspondents program, but I didn't make it through the LAST round! They chose 10 of the 700. I was so close!!! How sad. It's a confidence booster to know that I made it that far, but I also kind of wish I didn't know because it makes it all the more frustrating to have been so close. Ah well.

Apart from that little discovery, today has been great. My environmental seminar was cancelled today, so the only class I had was Spanish at 4:30. I slept late, and spent much of the morning lounging around and doing nothing, which was wonderful. Of course, an hour before my class I realized I had forgotten to do a part of my Spanish homework, but thanks to the long commute I managed to finish it!

After Spanish class, Rebecca, Megan and I headed over to Nuestra Casa. Wednesdays are going to be the days that we spend with the men in the house, organizing some kind of activity each week, but this week we just went to hang out and get to know them. It was so much fun! All of the guys are really quirky and interesting- one is a little crazy and really reminds me of Johnny Depp in "Edward Scissorhands." He spent much of the night listing off all of the types of fruits and vegetables that he sells in the market, and told me he would bring me an "atuna" tomorrow, which I think is some sort of green spiny fruit.

Three hours at the house flew by. Halfway through, we went with Jonathan, another one of the residents, to get "vienesas italianas" at the little shop next door. A vienesa italiana is a hot dog in a bun, covered in a thick layer of fresh mashed up avocados and chopped up tomatoes, with a large amount of creamy homemade mayo on top. They are very typical Chilean food, and one of the reasons I feel that I might end up returning to the US a couple hundred pounds heavier than when I left. In this particular shop, the woman made everything fresh on the spot, and Becca, Jonathan and I sat and talked for a while there. At the end of our time at Nuestra Casa, two nice guys (Paco and __ ) walked us to the metro stop. Paco is an old man from Spain, who wears a little woolen hat and knows Italian. He tried to teach me some Italian on the way there, and I promised to help him with his English in return. He is really sweet and grandfatherly, and I want to be his friend.

(Photo above is of a typical street near the house I work at- a little old and run down but quite beautiful.)

Week of Journaling: Day 2

I just returned home and am feeling a bit put out. I was really looking forward to soccer, but it turned out that there was a game today and I wasn't able to play (I would never expect to play after going to a single practice, but I had been excited for the workout!) That said, I did meet a few more of the girls on the team, and rest of the day has been quite good. I woke up early to buy clay to use when I make it to ceramics after my video class. Then I headed to the campus to have lunch with my tandem/language partner Gerson. It was fun, and I got to eat with a bunch of his friends too! Video class was very short today, but I got a personal lesson from the professor about the different ways to shoot a documentary. He offered to teach me documentary making instead of doing photo sequences like the rest of the class, since they already worked on final cut pro before this and I would like to learn it. It's so nice to get such personal attention in this class! I am also getting to know the other three students, and they actually invited me out for drinks this Thursday! I feel like that's a good social step for me. Unfortunately, I am going to work with Nuestra Casa in La Vega that night, but I am hoping we can go some other time. My neighbor also recently offered that he could show me around Santiago Centro sometime. It's so nice to find that people are actually reaching out to me! I am often the one to try to initiate things and talk to people, but it is much harder when I am the new student and also don't speak the language perfectly, so it's great that others are making the effort!

We just had a delicious squash, bean, and sausage soup for dinner. I am starting to get used to eating at 10 or 11 at night! It's lucky that people eat so late here, because by the time I get back from soccer on the micro with all of the traffic, it is usually at least 8:30.

I'm off to try to upload some pictures! I have a bunch, so I'm uploading to a picasa album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/108594640188694136506/AdventuresInChile?authkey=Gv1sRgCPHu-4je3O-9xQE#

Enjoy!

Week of Journaling: Day 1

Today was a busy day. I woke up early to skype with Bee :D which made me so happy! It’s so funny that she’s in Japan, I’m in Chile, and we can still talk almost face to face. I even got to show her the guy who always passes by on his unicycle. Afterwards I left for my Environment class. This class has made me increasingly nervous over the past few days. Suddenly, I have realized a few things. One: it is a senior seminar. Two: I am a junior. Three: A senior here is basically like a grad student in the US, because if they study politics, that is ALL they study for four years. Four: I know very little about all of the Chilean political theories they have learned about during these four years. Five: Economics and political vocabulary is challenging in English. In Spanish, it is more challenging.

So... basically, I am insane for taking this class. But here I am. It is very interesting, and I think I will get a lot out of it, but I spend much of the class hoping the professor doesn’t ask me anything for fear of social and academic death. Today I talked to the professor after class about my concerns, and he basically told me not to worry about it at all, and that he would read my research proposal with “cariño,” which I hope means with a very relaxed and lenient eye. How I will manage to write and present a senior-level public environmental policy in Spanish is beyond me, so let’s hope I improve a lot by the time the end of the semester rolls around! The professor does seem very understanding though, and I met two of my classmates today!

After my classes I went back to Nuestra Casa to participate in a big meeting they were having. Megan, Becca and I presented ourselves to the group, and met a few of the guys who hadn’t been there on Saturday. There are about 25 of them living there in total. I learned a little more about what I will be doing with them: they do lots of things, but most center around work in the house, administrative work, and work in the street. Work in the street consists of “Calle Futbol,” a new movement to get young guys living on the street to form soccer teams that compete internationally, and “Jueves Solidarios,” where the guys from the house and a bunch of volunteers hand out food and talk with the people living on the streets in La Vega. I will hopefully be participating in the work in the street, doing community building projects with the guys in the house on Wednesdays, and possibly helping with some administrative work. This Thursday, I am going to accompany one of the women in charge on her visit to the futbol practice, and help hand out food in La Vega. I’m really excited- it should be quite a new experience! Javi might come too, which would be fun.

Tonight I came back to find a delicious dinner waiting for me on a platter, and joined Javi and Claudia for dinner in bed while we watched a beauty pageant on TV. A nice thoughtless end to a packed day. Now it is 2:10 am and I’m thinking it’s probably time to go to bed. Another packed day tomorrow! Stay tuned for a week of Molly’s ramblings!

Still alive!

Hello again! I’m still alive! It may be hard to believe after three weeks. Sorry about that.

I am about to start a week of writing every night. Hopefully it will give you an idea of how my life is turning out here!

First, an update on what I’ve been up to for all this time. Three weeks ago I went skiing with the Tufts group in the Andes, at “El Colorado.”

It was really amazing! The mountains are incredibly beautiful. I kept forgetting where I was while I was skiing, and then suddenly looking up and realizing how high up I was, and how unreal the view was! It was so picturesque it looked fake. I tried out a really difficult slope at the end, which was exhilarating but unfortunately I had to slide to a stop and am only now recovering from the bruises on my leg!

That week I also had my first real week of classes. It was a very hectic week, since I was trying out more than twice the number of classes that I would actually take eventually. I went to an Experimental Video class, a Photography class, a Film Studies class, a Chilean History of Independence class, a Latin Am

erican Art and Politics class, my Spanish class, and a class titled “Public Politics of Decentralization and the Environment.” It was a very overwhelming week, since I not only had to go to all of these classes, but I had to find them all in various faculties throughout the city! I think I averaged at least one wrong micro bus taken and one completely lost moment each day. Luckily, I was able to narrow down my classes pretty quickly. The Video class ended up working out really well- the professor was very nice and there were only four of us in the class! It was supposed to meet for eight hours each week but it met twice for an hour each, which was much less intimidating. The Art and Politics class and the Film Studies class ended up being “gringo classes,” so I decided not to take them. History was fun, (the professor is crazy) but I found it very hard to understand him! Photography also seemed like fun, but I decided to choose Video since it seemed like I would learn more new material. And the Environment class… oh, the Environment class. It seemed so promising. Well, it still does… more on that in a bit.

And so I decided the next week that I would take the Video and Environment classes in addition to my Spanish class. My fourth credit will be an internship. During the week I started to organize the internship, but it ended up being challenging. I hoped to work with ECO, a very cool NGO that works to improve living conditions, education, and safety in various poblaciones (poor areas) of Santiago. Unfortunately, after meeting with the woman who runs the program in La Victoria where I hoped to work, I still haven’t been able to go there yet. I think I will be going this weekend though! The first step is to get to know the young people in the community so that it’s safe for me to go there, and later start to help them with projects they are working on with ECO. That said, I am starting to think that it is difficult to organize the trips there for each week, so I might end up going as a volunteer instead of as an intern (as an intern I have to clock 10

hours a week and write reports, etc.) Due to all of that, I tried out another internship last week. More on that later, too.

The following weekend I went to Algarrobo, a beachside town near Vina del Mar and Valparaiso, with my host sister and her friends. Her boyfriend Daniel has a house there right on the beach, and they had a party at the house for one of their friends who was leaving for Quito the next week. One of my friends decided to meet us there, but ended up getting stuck 45 minutes away in Valparaiso, so we went on a voyage to find her at one in the morning. It was quite the adventure but we made it! The next day we all went to breakfast at an empanada place and found an arcade on the same street. Very fun trip! It was great to get to know more of Javi’s friends (whole motley crew featured in the above photo!)

Last week I joined a soccer team! Crazy, I know. No, I don’t play soccer. But hey, now I will! I signed up with a few friends, thinking that we were signing up for a class, but it turned out that it was the government faculty’s team, and after practice they told us we could join! How ridiculous. I absolutely loved it. We are only going to make it to one of three practices a week, and the games, but apparently that’s just fine. On Tuesdays, the day I will be going, the guys’ and girls’ teams do lots of physical conditioning exercises together (aka a LOT of running) and lots of little games and things that actually end up being a really good workout. At the end we separate and actually play soccer. After the first practice I came back extremely sore but SO HAPPY! I am really excited to go back tomorrow. Everyone was so nice, and I have already started running into my teammates when I go to my Environment class at the government faculty!

What else happened last week… I would actually say that it was my first realll week of classes, because everyone had settled in and we actually started having assignments and discussions in class. I finally started to actually know what direction my classes were in, and only got lost once! A miracle! I also met with my tandem partner Gerson for the first time. We were paired up by the University to help each other with English and Spanish. He was really nice and we’re meeting again tomorrow- I’m hoping this will help me with the Chilean slang! I do feel like my comprehension of Chilean Spanish has improved quite a lot since I arrived, though some people are still difficult to understand.

This weekend I helped Karla move out to her new apartment. She is one of Javi’s friends from Northern Chile who was staying with us for a while until she found an apartment so she could study in Santiago. Javi, Karla and I spent much of Friday attempting to navegate the crowded buses with tupperwares, suitcases, blankets and boxes in hand. It was quite a funny experience. That night, I went out to dinner at a great Mexican restaurant, and then to Bellavista to check out the nightlife there! Loveee the Reggaeton they play here at the discos!

Saturday, I tried out a new internship- this one at Nuestra Casa, a permanent or temporary home for men who are getting over drug or alcohol dependency or need a place to stay for some reason. Megan, Becca and I spent the afternoon cleaning up the house with some of the guys, and got to know the two women who work there. It was really nice and looks promising. That night I spent the night at Megan’s house to plan our trip to Peru. I had a fun time getting to know her family and her five year old sister Josefa!

Now that you're all caught up, I'll start on today in the next post.

Want to feel better about your life?

... I'm on it.

Today, after many unexpected "adventures" on various micro buses, I decided to venture into a clothing store before hopping on yet another crowded bus. As I was leaving the store, a cute guy winked at me from across the room. Fortunately, I had been warned that in Chile, girls shouldn't respond to winks. Unfortunately, I then proceeded to walk face first into a hanging mannequin.

Feeling better now?

How to dance the Cueca, win 30 dollars, and learn to climb a silk trapeze in four days and one long night.

Two hours after learning about Kenya, I was on a bus to Valparaiso. On the bus ride, I met a nice man who was in the middle of editing a video for the government on a senator who recently passed away. He gave me some video tips and told me about the people he had interviewed and what they were like in person. I always love meeting people on buses! They always end up being so interesting!

In Valparaiso, we found that the hostel we had been recommended was a very strange place, full of bright colors and funky old furniture. Our room had rickety beds and a single lamp, and a carved gold and turquoise ceiling that looked like it was once really beautiful, but is dusty and peeling now. The best part was a trapeze in the main room downstairs! So awesome. It was all a little grungy and bohemian, in a very good way. The people were very nice and showed us how to use the trapeze :D

Later that night, we went out to a discoteca called La Sala. It was kind of sketchy but ended up being really fun. One half had a mix of spanish and english pop and reggaeton music, and the other had reggae music. I think we stumbled upon the Rasta niche, because most everyone in the room seemed to have a joint in hand, a knit cap, or dreads.

After hanging out and dancing for a few hours, a bunch of us realized we were all dancing with a group of guys who had also come together. They were a group of 11 friends, all in their early 20s, who live in the same area that I do, but were staying in a beach house near Valparaiso for the week before their classes started. As we were leaving, they invited us to an after party at their house, which the two Emilys and Mireille and I decided to go to, despite the fact that it was about 3:30am. It ended up being the best choice ever! What a crazy night. We spent the next six hours listening to them play music on guitar, many types of drums, an egg, and a thumb piano, and singing along whenever possible. (La Bamba, anyone?) They also got me to play a few songs, which was fun. I've never played for such an enthusiastic crowd! They were all very funny and used so much slang that I could barely understand anything they said.

One song they played was a Cueca song, which is the national dance of Chile. I made the mistake of saying that I didn't know what the Cueca looked like... and so of course, they decided to "teach" me the dance. This consisted of Francisco ("Tisco") putting a piece of toilet paper on each of our shoulders, dancing around twirling the paper in the air, and trying to push me to where I was supposed to be twirling mine while the others played a song. It was kind of hilarious. Later, I found out that he was in the national Cueca dancing championship in high school. I've been trained by the best!

After hours of similar nonsense, they drove us back to the hostel at 9:30 in the morning. First, one of them accidentally shut my fingers in the door. I always wondered what that would feel like- it hurts.

I slept for a little over an hour before my bed collapsed under me. Decided after that to call it a night and go for a hike up to one of the tall points of Valparaiso before heading back to Santiago. Emily, Cassie, Paige and I headed up a random road, and ended up accidentally finding the Museo al Cielo Abierto, an outdoor mural museum that leads up to a high point in the city. It was really cool, and so amazing to stumble upon! So many colors in this city. I am determined to live in this area of Valparaiso someday, it is one of my favorite places I have been to.

After having lunch in a tiny restaurant in someone's house that we came across, we headed back to Santiago. I slept so well on the way back! That night, my other host sister Maka (23) came to visit with her fiance, Rodrigo. I had never met either of them before, but they were both very nice! They don't live in this apartment, but will be very nearby.

On Thursday morning, I woke up at 9:30am- the same time I had gone to bed the day before. Maka and Rodrigo took me to Calle Rosa, where there are lots of craft and party stores. We found them a box for their engagement rings, and had the most enormous sandwiches I have ever seen near Plaza de Armas. They were literally as wide as the plates, and at least four inches high! Even I didn't have enough appetite to finish one. Later, Maka and Rodrigo dropped me off at the Facultad de Architectura for my Urban and Rural Sociology class. I couldn't find the class, and it was supposed to start at 2pm but the lady who has the list of classrooms wouldn't be in until 2:30. By some stroke of luck I found the classroom by looking at the lists on the doors (this is a very large faculty, so it really was quite lucky that I found it) and saw that they had changed the class to 3pm. I left for a while and found a nice park next door, which is tucked away behind the faculty and I had never noticed before. When I came back at 3, nobody was there! I found the lady with the class lists, and she told me that it would be postponed until next week. So this is what they mean when people say that the first few weeks of class are hectic.

Friday night I went out to a movie at Hoyt's with some Tufts friends and Jon's host brother. We watched Mi Villano Favorito. It was really funny! Afterwards we went to a bar and got Mango Sours. Saturday I stayed in the house for most of the day, probably recuperating after such a busy week! (and -1 nights of sleep...) That night, I went to Daniel's house with Javi and two of her other friends to watch 500 Days of Summer. Her friends were really nice, but once again, I found the Chilean slang almost impossible to understand. Sometimes it sounds like a completely different language! What a difference from the adult spanish used here.

Today is Sunday. This morning my host family and Daniel's family drove to the Zoo, only to find out that it was closed due to the rain. Instead, we headed to the casino/arcade nearby. I had never been to a casino before, but had always thought it would be fun to try out. I guess there is such a thing as beginner's luck, because I won $30.00 in the course of about a half hour! I was also in need of a little cash after Valparaiso, so this was perfect timing. Now we're back and I'm trying to sort out what classes I'm going to tomorrow. First real week of classes is going to be interesting!

~Molly