Still Going

The apartment and neighborhood are still peaceful and the roomies are proving to be good picks. Both Rafael and Elsa are really laid back and SUPER patient while I drag out what should be 30 second exchanges for 2-3 minutes. Elsa has a lot of Chinese friends, so she’s used to speaking slower and actually enunciating her words- something that Chileans just don’t do- so I enjoy chatting with her a lot and am happy to be able to understand most of what she says. Rafael, on the other hand, is freakin marble mouth. If I’m tired, I just nod a lot and pretend, but mostly I do try since they are both so helpful when communicating with me. It’s really amazing to me just how patient most Chileans are when engaging with me in Spanish. I sometimes give up and say “no importe”, but they always cheer me on to keep going, until we reach an understanding. It’s a little embarrassing when whatever my point was, really wasn’t anything interesting and they just spent 5-10 minutes (sometimes more) playing charades with me and sharing dictionary duty.
Those days will soon be behind me since I signed on to a Spanish class, starting next Monday. Four hours being taught, then directly on to four to six hours of teaching. I’ve been holding out on paying for classes because the lovely DUOC was supposed to provide us English teachers with 60 hours of free lessons, but nothing’s happened and I’m sick of being muted by language barriers! The school is in a really cool barrio (neighborhood) called Bella Vista, where I’ve only spent minimal time so I’m excited to be a regular for a couple weeks, gain my bearings and hopefully make some fantastic finds. I was originally in the area in search of two Asian food markets, where it was rumored I could find fish sauce, dried lemon grass and cheap coconut milk, but all I found was my new Spanish escuela. Food proved to be a good motivator to get me out roaming Santiago, because I asked around about where to find “international” food markets and they pointed me to another barrio adjacent to Bella Vista, so I walked around there for another couple hours. No markets, but great finds anyway and always good to be familiar with yet another area. Taking the metro (the underground) is fast and convenient but terrible for becoming oriented in this new city so five hours of roaming on my day off did me good.
I AM pleased to report that I found coconut milk (just not cheap-$6/can) and curry paste ($5/400g) and feasted last week on red curry. On Friday I had a couple of teacher friends over to share the Thai pleasures and we all hung out with Rafael and his buddies for a bit. Elizabeth speaks Spanish really well and acted as translator between Renee/Carol and Rafael/Rafael’s friends when all other efforts failed so I actually got to know a little about him. He has a pretty good sense of humor and knows how to let loose. He’d mentioned that he was having a party on Friday, and given that on Thursday night I came home to find three gigante trays of jell-o shots and a huge jar (2 gallon-ish) of Chilean sangria (it’s not really considered Sangria, I just can’t remember the name) I expected a whole houseful, but just the six of us. Yes, he made us help them with the shots and “sangria”. My assistance was minimal since I have classes at 8:30 on Saturday mornings but it was a good way to break in the first weekend as roommates. Turns out, though, that I could have got away with “shooting” all night, because my Saturday class was interrupted after only 15 minutes because of a bomb threat- all I heard was “calma”, “rapido” y “bomba” so I skedaddled pretty darn fast. I hung out with about 200 other people in front of the school until the end of my class time, just in case but no return to class. I did get to practice Spanish with the whole bunch of my T/TH intermediate students- they’re the ones who act as my Spanish teachers outside of the class and they love it, especially when it comes to the double Rs. . . I’ll only admit it here, but they are my favorite class. I might even go for beers with them before the semester is over!

For the most part I’m loving life here. I’m getting used to always having the door opened for me when I come home and sometimes the elevator button pushed as well. A little awkward for me but I remind myself it keeps one more person employed. This is something that Chile does well- employs people with incredibly mundane jobs. My favorite is how in many shops, you have to make three stops to make a simple purchase. I’m not talking about expensive items either- my first experience with it was when buying a bag a candy (bribery) for students. You tell one person what item you want, who writes out a notice for you to deliver to another clerk (who’s usually inconveniently across the store), who takes your money and writes yet another notice for you to take to ANOTHER person (again, across the store) from whom you finally retrieve your purchase. I try not to, but I usually get a little pissed when stuck in these circumstances, since I hate shopping as it is and their strategy just makes it worse. I do love the street food here though and cheap wine, as well as super friendly people and lots of eye candy. A lot of head turners but no incidents of whiplash to report . . . I’ll stick with just looking for now because Chilean men have a reputation for being really macho and clingy, meaning if you go out on one date they think you’re their “pollola” (girlfriend). Actually I had my own experience with this, but he waited until the second date so definitely no third. Too bad, but you all know how much I love me a clingy man. I’ve been in the market for Chilean friends to practice Spanish more and also have some local insight on what to do in Santiago and cool spots for weekend trips. So far, I’ve had some offers from people wanting to practice their English and I’ve lucked out that they’re people I’d actually like to hang out with, not just for the sake of learning Spanish. We’ll see.