Aftershock

So my mom and I are safe and together. My cousin Dana is also safe and on the other side of Santiago. We'll try to meet up with her later today. The earthquake was incredibly scary. Many of the buildings in my neighborhood are very old and suffered some serious damages. My mom is staying in a hostel where a wall collapsed and quite a bit of debris fell from the ceiling. Right now we're not sure when she will be able to fly out. I'll keep everyone updated and write more about the situation here soon.



The church across the street from my building.



My street blocked off at both ends by rubble.



The apartment is covered in dust from the street.



Only minor damage in our building.

Thanks for all of the wishes. We're feeling very shocked and very relieved to be safe and together.

Definitive Judgements: Chilean Television

Every year, for about a week in February, Chile becomes obsessed with this music festival in Viña del Mar. Everyone talks about it. It's on every television screen, every night. Proportionally, it's probably equal to the combined popularity of the Olympics and American Idol in the US (interestingly the Olympics are on and no one seems to care/watch). And from what I've seen (at least one act the last four nights) it's terrible. Allowing for the fact that I didn't grow up with these singers, the majority are just not very good at singing. And don't even get me started on the comedy acts. They may as well be speaking Lao. And yet, everyone watches like it's the most exciting television event of the year. Here's indicative conversation of how very strange this phenomenon is for me:

Me: Did he just say "like a penguin in the bed?"

My Roommate: Yes. (Like it was obvious, like everyone has known that lyric all their lives, like lovers and penguins have clear similarities.)

Unfortunately it is not just the music festival of Viña. All of Chilean television is more or less an enigma. We changed the channel after the festival programingand the current show is a bizarre hybrid of Jeopardy and strip poker.

Resolutions: Dancing

I do not usually find myself making broad generalizations about Latin culture. I find Chilean culture with its particular eccentricities generally more notable, interesting and, at times, infuriating. However, I am prepared to say that Latin culture on the whole is much more enthusiastic about dancing than my own (that is, Irish-American from the northeast United States). While "going out" and "partying" in New York often involved some bopping around to music, here dancing is the goal, the focus of many evenings. And I'm not talking about goofy gyrations to Mary J. Blige or interpretive arm flailings to Tina Turner. This is the kind of dancing that requires a partner. And everyone seems to be able to do it but me.

I'm not going to outright blame my parents for this. They read this blog, for one thing. And for another, it is simply not within our cultural norm to rear children to know the difference between salsa, merengue and cumbia. That said, I have vowed to myself several times on the dance floors of Valparaiso that my children will not suffer the same fate. How do I get my hips to do that? And where exactly do I put my weight? How can one even begin at the ripe age of twenty-six to learn the whole system of dancing?

On New Year's Day I found myself once again surrounded by people eager to dance. And despite my pleas of being tired (I had only slept between the hours of 9am and 1:30pm) and hungover (I drank rum!), I was peer pressured into participating. Though I suspect that after seeing me dance, they would have let me stay home had there been more girls for partners. And although I think my dancing might have suffered a bit due to the extreme inebriation of my partner, the whole experience was enough to sign me up for a salsa lesson on the spot. Not that there are salsa lessons at this bar. Or even, anywhere else in the city as far as I know. But I couldn't help but look around and notice all the places other people's bodies were moving that mine wasn't.

This scenario has become such a source of distress and discomfort in my life that I have vowed that 2010 will be the year of the dance. That is, the year I learn to dance. No more to hover in the corner! No more to claim fatigue! Ask for me in December and they'll just shrug and gesture towards the dance floor. And there you'll see me shaking all the right parts at all the right times and twirling like a dervish. It is resolved.

Salt in Your Pocket

Año Nuevo is huge here. Right now the number of people in the city is in the process of doubling, creating traffic scenes that look daunting even to a native Bostonian. They say that the fireworks display at midnight (or apparently somewhere around then, Chileans aren't so bothered by punctuality) is one of the biggest and most impressive in the world. Although I can stay out pretty late by New York standards (I'm no stranger to six am), the party here apparently goes until eight or nine. When Maca and Caro told me this I nearly moved to show them the gray hair I found this summer. I feel old and tired just thinking about it.

In addition to fireworks and dancing and drinking on the crowded streets, the celebration of New Years here involves lots of traditions. As Nike pointed out it seems to be the opposite of what we're used to, Christmas is no big deal and New Year's has lots of significance. All of the traditions have to do with luck in the New Year. They range from familiar to deeply strange.

Yellow Underpants No one has mentioned why exactly, but it appears to be very important to wear yellow underpants on New Years. The street vendors have had stacks of them laid out on blankets all week. Judging by the styles I saw for sale, it seems that the tradition applies mostly to women. Although perhaps gents also don lacy thongs to celebrate.

Eat Lentils You're supposed to eat lentils without salt before midnight. Apparently this will bring wealth in the New Year. Conveniently lentils are one the foods I can afford, so it couldn't hurt to try... Do you think cooking them with sausage would be cheating?

Walk Around the Block With a Suitcase This is supposed to make all your travel dreams come true. It seems like it could be sort of goofy looking.

Eat Twelve Grapes Apparently this tradition originated in Spain. No one seems to be sure why, but it might have started with a royal proclamation intended to help the grape industry. Sounds a bit hard to believe, but ultimately pretty simple.

Put Salt in Your Pocket In your left, front pocket to be exact. I didn't quite understand why. But no other pocket will do.

Hug Someone of the Opposite Sex at Midnight This seems similar to kissing someone you want to be with for the rest of the year at midnight. It doesn't seem to have the same romantic connotations. For example, I am hoping to hug a six month old baby at midnight. I really like babies.

So I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. I'm going to nap now. It looks like I have a long night ahead of me. Happy New Year, everyone!

Things I Don't Understand About Christmas in Chile

1) The weather- Ok. I understand this intellectually. That the earth is on an axis that moves and sometimes the bottom of the planet is closer to the sun and the top is farther away. But today is December 24. I woke up this morning and put on jeans, a t-shirt and sunscreen. And the strangest thing is that they don't even try to adapt it. There are machines that blow fake snow in the department stores. If you get this message in time, please send snow and mistletoe.

2) Pascua- According to sources as varied as my high school Spanish text book and Wikipedia, Pascua means Easter. But apparently it also means Christmas. Santa Claus is Viejo Pascuero. I've asked lots of people how and why they came to call Christmas Easter, and I've never received a satisfying response. It just is. Nothing about the etymology of the word or the history of the celebration seems to justify using Pascua to refer to the birth of Christ. If someone could shed some light on this mystery I'd be much obliged.

3)Bagpipes- Maybe it's a strange coincidence but some guy around the corner has been playing "Amazing Grace" on a bagpipe the whole damn day. I don't know what holiday that is appropriate for (Veteran's Day?) but it's certainly not Christmas. Quit it, dude. You're only making things more confusing.

Anyway, I hope you all have very merry christmases or at least happy days today and tomorrow. And that you're warm and with people you love. I'm going to go make ceviche and a peach tart. One nice thing is that I don't have to eat ham.

Chilean Election Primer

So this Sunday is election day in Chile. Officials at all levels of government from municipal to federal will be selected. Of course, the presidential contest is the most closely watched of these races. This round of voting has four major front runners. If no one wins a majority there will be a run-off between the two candidates with the highest percentages. Most people seem to expect a run-off. This election is particularly interesting because for the first time since the military dictatorship ended in 1990, a candidate from the right is likely to win. The incumbent, Michelle Bachelet, is pretty popular right now but has decided not to seek another term. Neither of the candidates from her party have been able to parlay her popularity into real momentum. In ascending order of polling numbers the four major candidates are:

Arrate: Jorge Arrate is the candidate for the communist party. He held a position (economic adviser of some sort) in the government of Salvador Allende. He seems to have the most interesting, liberal policies. Pretty much everyone I know who plans to vote plans to vote for him. They also all seem confident that he will only take about 12%. Since most of what I know about candidates I infer from the campaign signs that litter EVERY intersection in the city, Arrate has an appealing, Mark Twain-like style. I dig him.

Enríquez-Ominami: As far as I can tell, Marco Enríquez-Ominami's most distinctive qualification is that he is sort of a babe. He's thirty-six years old and has very little experience to recommend him, except that his dad was a popular figure in leftist politics. I get the feeling that a candidate like Ominami would get a lot of flack in the US for being a spoiler. He's not going to win, and it seems like he's only splitting the centrist vote. Because technically there is a coalition system in Chile rather than a strict bipartisan system this isn't exactly true. Ominami has the endorsement of four parties. Practically speaking, this run seems more like an attempt to set a foundation for future national campaigns. But for now, we can all enjoy his super-shiny hair and dazzlingly white smile.



Frei: Eduardo Frei seems like sort of a wet blanket. I mean, dude is never smiling in his campaign photos. What's more, he has already been president and ran into some problems with corruption. It's a bit puzzling that he would win the candidacy at all. But he too is the progeny of a figure in the Chilean left. His father was president before Allende in the late 60's. He's become something of a martyr since it was recently proved that Pinochet had him slowly poisoned to death. The major problem with Frei the second is that everyone thinks his government will simply perpetuate the status quo. People are pretty concerned about the state of health care and education here (public schools were closed for more than a month due to a strike this year). Many people care more about change than they do about the potential policies that will be implemented. You could see it as a twisted turn in the world-wide, Obama-ist change movement.

Piñera: Is currently leading all polls. Sadly because he's a total neoliberal. Additionally he is the richest man in the country. Which is always sort of suspect (remember how Steve Forbes always seemed vaguely unreliable?). The final creep-factor for Piñera is that he is highly involved with Opus Dei. Opus Dei seems to have quite a lot of power in Chile and often comes up when discussing right-wing politics. Generally I nod knowingly during such conversations, when in reality everything I know about Opus Dei I learned from The da Vinci Code. So if (and, it sadly seems, when) he wins he'll probably move to privatize health care further and implement even more voucher programs for schools (or the Chilean equivalent of vouchers which seem to subsidize private schools with public money). And we all know how great those ideas work.... Sigh.

Election Policy: Certainly every democratic system has its short-comings. There are two particularly strange policies concerning elections in Chile.

-First of all, if you are registered to vote, it is illegal not to. Unless you can prove to the police that you were sick or more than 300kms from your poling place you must pay a fine. People have told me this discourages them from registering. While I understand that the idea is to underscore the importance of the democratic process, this just seems a little backwards. If I'm not mistaken, this law has been overturned and this is the last affected election.

-Secondly, it is illegal to drink the night before the election. Apparently all the bars are closed. This sort of cramps my style since I unwittingly planned a margarita-soaked, Mexican dinner party for tomorrow night. I hope I don't get arrested.

I'm sure I'm grossly over-simplifying and over-editorializing here. Even after two months it's hard to fully understand the structure and history of politics in Chile. Anyhow, it will be interesting to watch how things go. I don't think Piñera has enough votes to avoid a run-off, but people seem more and more certain of his eventual success. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Currying Flavor

So the Chilean diet has some quirks. Or maybe it has absolutely no quirks at all. The food here is definitely not bad. But it's certainly different and not in a particularly exciting way. I like the two national street foods: giant, calzone-like empanadas and completos, which are hot dogs covered in avocado, tomato and mayonnaise. But generally the intensity of flavor around here is pretty low. Culinarily, the most exciting thing is being able to buy a kilogram of strawberries and two perfect avocados for about two dollars. Many can attest to my abiding love for strawberry-avocado salads, but like anything, one gets sick of them after a while. Especially when one is consuming strawberries by the kilo to avoid spoilage.

So today I decided to branch out a bit and make a curry. I wouldn't say that curry is a staple of my repertoire, but I feel comfortable making it. The nice thing about curry is you can make it with anything as long as you can find curry powder (or paste, but they don't even have milk in the refrigerated section of the grocery store here). When I began my adventure I wasn't sure I'd be able to find the powder. But sure enough, it was on the shelf in the international section of the grocery store, tucked behind some soy sauce. I also bought the brownest looking rice (it was not actually brown rice), some chicken legs (easy) and a can of what I thought was coconut milk. It was actually coconut cream, unfortunately. Which turned out to be really delicious and I ate some spread on a piece of bread as dessert.

Veggies were of course no problem. Cauliflower, strangely awesome potatoes, carrots, peppers... my roommate even had a ginger root stashed in the freezer she let me use (thanks, Nike!). So the curry was coming along nicely. My other roommate demonstrated the completely foreign can opener (thanks, Rodrigo!- It actually seems to just be a blade you use to cut open cans). I sort of just added gobs of coconut cream and lots of water where I would normally use coconut milk. And honestly it wasn't bad. The curry powder had a nice kick. It was definitely better than the curry powder I bought from the bodega on fourth avenue in Park Slope. All in all, I think I'll be able to figure out how to approximate all the varieties of foods I have been missing. Maybe next I'll try chili. Because puns make things more delicious.

Life on Mars

Today my friend Jaime took me to Reñaca* to teach me how to rock climb. We walked down a rocky gulch into a sort of chasm by the sea. Even about twenty feet away from the opening, I could see dots of sea spray on my sunglasses. I'm not a geologist, but the rocks were completely fascinating. Boulders in a standard grayish color (limestone? granite?) were interspersed with deep black ones. Like a lava had flown between the rocks and cooled as it reached the sea. Even though we didn't get there until after five the sun was incredibly bright. The glaring difference between shadow and sun gives the afternoons here an almost extra-terrestrial intensity. Like how you hear about temperature differences on the surface of the moon. The sun, the wind, the ocean, the ache in my arms and legs from the exertion... it was just a completely singular experience.







*According to Google Maps, the route we took today was 18.3 km each way. We went on bike, so I am pretty much ready to collapse right now.

Call Me

I have a Chilean cell phone. I bought it solely based on price and ended up with a package intended for children. It came with a tiny t-shirt, stickers, a bracelet, a notebook and a lanyard. It also came with 50 text messages and about $20 in credit. So that should last me a while. Especially considering that I simply don't have anyone to call. Coupled with the fact that I signed up for a Spanish class today, I am feeling pretty productive.

Theft and loss

When I was about five my mother's purse was stolen. It was carelessness, as I remember it. She left it on the front seat of the car which was parked next to the soccer field where I was playing. I might have forgotten to lock the door. They found the purse a day or so later, dumped in a mailbox without any money in it. I remember a conversation between my parents about canceling a Mastercard.

Later that year the family station wagon was stolen. It was parked outside our elementary school. Something about the way the story was told made me imagine that it was used as a getaway car in a bank heist. In retrospect it probably was not a bank heist (in Roxbury, in the late '80s). But it was gone and along with it a particularly special blanket with trucks on it. The blanket was of course irreplaceable. The hassle of replacing a car that my parents experienced (insurance, police) did not affect me in any way. Only the new smelling, silver Ford Taurus that replaced it held any interest at all. In the end, the car theft was no great blight on my childhood.

During my first year in New York, my credit card and bank card were stolen from my wallet. I realized the theft the next morning when I received a call from my credit card company about a strange number of purchases made in Jersey City the day before. Nothing was really lost though. It was the sort of fictitious money that exists in banks and gets spent with checks and swipes. I filed reports with the police, the bank, the credit card company. I made statements. I talked to officers. I identified the likely time of the theft. The money was back in its virtual place before it was missed. Someone got $125 in socks from my credit card company, but all it cost me was a temporary annoyance.

When I moved to Valparaíso I had read a lot about petty crime here. One day last week two men stopped me on the street unprovoked and told me to be careful. I think I must have been looking particularly gringa-ish that day, wearing a skirt and boots. People around here talk about theft all the time. The people living at the hostel all had stories or stories of friends- cameras ripped from hands, cell phones taken at knife point. It's an expectation. A sort of mistrust everyone has of everyone else. It's hard to explain really. It's not a hostile feeling. Just sort of sad.

I guess I was bound to see it eventually. Today my roommate was robbed while we were walking down the street together. A kid, who looked about eleven, grabbed her bag and ran down the hill. She yelled and threw a coffee cup at him and ran after. And then eventually, I yelled and ran after. But my shoe came off and I had to make my way more slowly. The police came. And witnesses said various things. A report was filed. Ultimately not so much was lost. Money. Things of personal significance. And I think she feels those losses now in ways that won't be as important in time. I am surprised really at how much it affected me. That invasion of personal space. The almost violent moment when he grabbed the bag. The paralyzed feeling right after. There are worse things. Many many worse things. Knives or guns could have been involved. It could have been a group of people rather than one kid. In time it will just be a small trauma. A little reminder that even in the glaring sun, it's not always safe.

Teach Yourself Spanish

So despite the fact that I took Spanish classes for four years during high school, my language skills now (in a Spanish speaking country, nine years later) are pretty inadequate. For the last two weeks I have been getting by on my patented method of simple words and phrases accompanied by gestures and lots of smiling. To give you an idea of how much language this really involves, I am also able to communicate this way in French and German speaking countries. And I did not study those languages, even at a high school level. With patient collaborators, I have had several real conversations (with verbs and predicates and occasional subjunctives) in Spanish. Meals, drinks, a card game... But generally improving my level of language proficiency is the goal of my life right now.

I am strongly considering taking some intensive classes starting next week to get my grammar into shape, but I have also created a rigorous course of personal study:

-Write out the entire conjugations of two irregular verbs each day. It's easy to chose these verbs because whenever I am speaking in Spanish I have to stop to conjugate them.

-Write down every word looked up each day (at least ten). I never actually write down all of them. It's rarely convenient to pull out a notebook and take a minute to write something down in the middle of a conversation.

-Speak in Spanish whenever possible. Obviously. But sometimes it feels so much easier, knowing that the person I'm speaking with also speaks English, to resort back. No. That is totally against the rules. (This is a rule I break every day)

-Read something, at least one entire thing, in Spanish everyday. Sometimes it's an article or internet news story. Sometimes it's a poem. This just focuses me on comprehension.

-Reread all notes everyday. Usually in bed before I go to sleep I look through the conjugation tables and the vocab lists and try to find them in my brain again. So far they're usually there somewhere.

Fashion Questions: Blue Glasses

So, inevitably, each country has its own fashion sense. In Chile I have noticed that women rarely wear skirts and that men tend to have longer hair. While I like to wear skirts and often find ponytails on men vaguely disgusting, I accept that I will have to adjust to these new terms. What I find most puzzling, however is the apparent trend of bright blue plastic eyeglass frames. On men. Both my potential new roommate and the owner of the hostel wear them. And I have seen several other pairs in passing on the street. This isn't your typical geek-chic, giant, coke-bottle type frame either. The small rectangular design implies that the guiding fashion principal is not irony, but a belief that it looks cool. I wonder if some super-hot, intellectual character in a Chilean film sported azure frames? For me it is a style most reminiscent of my sixth grade teacher Ms. Cohen who had reading glasses to match each of her brightly printed tunic tops. Glasses which she readily admitted to purchasing at Building 19. And though ultimately I'm sure I'll adapt to this fashion like any other at the moment I can't help but feel a bit disappointed that vision trends here is are not more on the cutting edge.

Rose Reviews: Diet Leche Culturada, Sabor Ciruela

So fans of this blog's archives (or long time readers) might remember my reviews of Dutch food stuffs from my time in the Netherlands. Good news! My trip to the grocery store today yielded my first Chilean food product for review. It is worth noting that Chile gets sort of a bad wrap for its cuisine. As far as I can tell that is because it lacks the intensity of flavor of it's neighbors (mostly in terms of spiciness of seasoning). But when compared to Dutch cuisine, the culinary living is easy down in this hemisphere. I mean there is just so much affordable, fresh seafood and produce. Desserts and drinks tend to be a bit sweeter than I like them, but really there's very little to complain about.

Unfortunately that assessment does not extent to packaged and processed foods. When deciding to make the purchase in question I knew I was being adventurous. It seems that yogurt here tends to come in pourable jug form more often than spoonable container form. So rather than the Yogurt Batida Sabor Fresa I had tried earlier this week, I decided to branch out a bit and try this fat free, plum flavored, cultured milk. They were right next to one another. The bottles are the same shape. But on the inside... Basically it Leche Culturada has the consistency of milk. But with a vaguely coating, grainy sort of texture. And the flavor! Maybe there was an element of plum there somewhere... but as a person who has been known to consume upwards of twenty stone fruits in the height of the season, this tasted more like prunes mixed with maple syrup. Ugh.

Street Art

So Valparaíso has insane street art. It's already one of the most colorful places I have ever seen, but the murals and stencils and graffiti are so vivid and abundant. It's awesome. Here are some photos of my first full day exploring: