Carreteando

Graffiti is everywhere in Santiago, a recent addition to the city since the era of the dictatorship. The thinking during Pinochet's reign was that a clean city signified that everything was running smoothly. Which also meant censorship and authoritarian control of public space. So, in a way, graffiti is not a blemish on the city--it is an expression of freedom.

We just finished our first week of classes/orientation with CIEE and I'm getting ready for the next one. We meet every day from 10 AM to 6 PM in a conference center right across the street from Palacio La Moneda, the main government building where the coup went down in 1973. Every day we have several lectures from local professors and we usually watch a movie/documentary or take a tour of the area. We've covered everything from torture techniques employed during Pinochet's reign to the development of the Chilean film industry (if anyone wants a great Chilean movie, check out Machuca).

Highlights of the week:

•Visiting one of Pablo Neruda's three homes, La Chascona. It's named after the Mapuche word for curly, a reference to the unruly hair of his mistress and second wife, Matilde, for whom Neruda wrote Los versos del capitán (Look out for Rosario, the codename he gave Matilde) .The boat-themed house was as eccentric as Neruda was himself--with three bars (one for friends, one for him and Matilde and one for poets), a man-made river running in between the buildings connected by winding staircases, and art from all over the world, including original pieces by Diego Rivera and Picasso made just for Neruda.

•My first empanada on the street. Delicious.

•Finding REAL coffee for once. Most of the coffee here is instant (my mother even warned me my father would refuse to visit just based on that fact), but luckily we found one cafe that actually sells real coffee. Though I hate to admit that I'm getting used to instant. Which is really really sad after Guatemala.

•Manjar. It's the Chilean version of dulce de leche but so much better. And I eat it like it's my job.

Friday night we all went to a big dinner together to meet our arrieros--literally shepherds--who are local uni students who are going to help us with the transition. During our dinner a local artist played Chilean folk music for us.
Afterwards Maggie and I decided to go out so we made our way to Barrio Bellavista, a very popular bar/shopping neighborhood in the heart of the city. It was about 12 at that point, but things were barely even getting started. We wandered into a random discoteque called Tu Tu Tanga, met two Chileans who invited us to dance (mostly reggaeton) before making our escape to sit in a central plaza and drink tea until 3:30 AM. It was still absolutely packed when we caught a cab home and made friends with the cabbie, who proceeded to radio his other taxista friends to ask about good places for us to go dancing. We retired to Maggie's twin bed and woke the next morning to have instant coffee (of course) and bread with manjar (of course).
It took me a good hour to get home (DAMN transportation). But the day was beautiful and I decided to go for a run to check out the neighborhood. It's a really nice residential area, if not kind of bland, and I'm still really trying to figure out who decided that it would be a good idea to put 50 little parks all within two blocks of each other. Anyway, I ran up towards the cordillera of the Andes--that still gets me every time, that the mountains are a constant backdrop here.

I met up with Maggie again a few hours later to go to her host brother's 25th birthday party. We made sushi (for some reason the Chileans LOVE sushi) and drank pisco sours and danced salsa and talked the night away entirely in Spanish. We were the only gringas there and it just felt so much better than walking around in a pack of 40. That was kind of how I had imagined this trip to be, so it gives me hope for the next few months that it really is possible to make Chilean friends and to avoid constantly being in a massive group of gringos. We got back to Maggie's house and crashed at around 4.

Breakfast was: instant coffee and bread with manjar. Then Maggie's host sister took us out to Los Dominicos, a little artisan village in the city. It was a lovely excursion. I feel like Maggie's host family is adopting me as their second host daughter just because of how much time I spent there this weekend. So now I have two Chilean families.

So lesson of the story: I'm feeling much more confident about my time here. I'm beginning to see Santiago in a new light and I can't wait for real life to get started...