It's hard to believe my time in Chile is already 2/3 of the way over! It has certainly gone by fast! I remember when I was at this point in China. I had just gotten done traveling for a month and a half during the winter break and my disparate friendships were starting to form into a solidified group of friends.
I feel relatively in the same place now. I'll be going on vacation for two weeks starting next weekend to the south of Chile. I plan on going to Pucón, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, Isla de Chiloé, and hopefully I'll get as far south as Punta Arenas. I'm not going to do too much planning, which is the way I traveled in China for that month and a half. I had a "go with the flow" kind of attitude and I couldn't have asked for a better experience. People (Chileans and Gringos alike) have told me that Southern Chileans are some of the nicest, most hospitable people you'll ever meet. A girl I'm friends with here said she and a friend hitchhiked all the way south and back without any problems whatsoever. It's probably not going to be my mode of transportation while I travel, but I think it's a good indication of the amiable manner of the Southern Chileans.
I'm also at a similar point with my friends here. What makes it different is that only a few of my friends left halfway through my year in China. My closest friend, Dustin, left at the end of December. A good friend of mine, Stephen, left today. Two other friends (and brothers) Rodrigo and Diego will leave at the end of February. It does kind of suck, but people need to follow their life's path, whatever that may be. Despite the departures, I still have a lot of friends here, so I'm not worried about sitting in my room all alone crying all of the time, haha.
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I had my Birthday Party a couple of weeks ago. I had about 20-30 people over here for cocktails and then we went to watch a Cumbia show. I think the thing I like most about having Birthday celebrations is getting all of my friends together. They might not really know each other, or hell, not ever met before, but it's always a good time. The funniest part was when we were out on my balcony and my friend, Logan, brought out his phone and said, "Can you text Rick the address, because..." and as soon as he started trying to text on his phone he fumbled and it slipped from his hands, landing in the garden below us. A garden which is completely surrounded by fence. The only way to get to it is through the apartment of an elderly, handicapped woman below. So Logan and one of our Chilean friends, Seba, went down there to ask her if they could look for it, and she said, "Come back tomorrow." Haha. I guess before we left to go to the Cumbia show, Logan decided just to jump the fence and grab it, haha.
We got to the Cumbia show and we just turned it into a giant dance party. Not much else to report besides that. I think the pictures say it all, really.
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Last weekend was a pretty nutty weekend as well. I had an asado and swam with two of my friends, Rick and Jeff. Then our friend Alvaro came over. We hung out for a while and then went to a house party with a lot of French people (I have no idea, so don't ask). The next day I went to an asado with some Chilean friends that Jeff introduced me to (many pictured in the photos of my Birthday) such as Seba, Sebastian, and Simon and some of their friends. THEN, I went to the despedida (going away party) of my friends I mentioned earlier, Stephen, Diego, and Rodrigo. On Sunday, I went to a Super Bowl party at my friend, Andrew Cook's place. A couple of Chileans were there and occasionally would ask questions that were quite logical, considering the labyrinth of minute rules that American Football has. Some questions include, "Why do they call it FOOTball? They almost never use their feet!" and "Why do they have to have two feet inbounds for it to count as a completed pass?" Well, it comes back to that whole FOOTball thing, obviously. No, but seriously. I've never thought about how complicated American Football is until I watched it with a foreigner. It has to be one of the most confounding games for someone who has not watched it their entire life.
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Last night, I went to my first Chilean soccer match. One of my students invited me to go with two of his friends. My student works at BHP as a mechanical engineer. He's about my age and he's real cool and laid back. His favorite team is Universidad Catolica which is one of the best teams in Chile, and is the team that we saw. The match was just as I expected: lots of yelling and cursing. Some of the rudest and foul utterings I've heard in a public space were dispensed from the mouths of the fans. To give you an idea, the majority of cursing was in reference to the private parts of the mothers of the members of the opposing team. Also, I probably heard the word "weon" (alternatively meaning 'dude' and 'asshole', sometimes both) probably close to 5 million times. I told this to my student and his two friends after the game and they started laughing. One of them replied, "It's sort of like a meditation...er...what's that word...mantra! Yes! Our mantra!"
Also, the team they were playing was a team from Bolivia. Bolivia used to own what is North Chile and then sold it (I think) to Chile. It ended up being an awful decision for them, because they lost their only connection to the sea, and the north of Chile has several extremely profitable copper mines. Towards the beginning of the game, the Chileans started chanting something along the lines, "You don't have sea anymore!" or something along those lines to the Bolivians.
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I started taking Spanish lessons at my institute with two other English professors, one of whom being my good friend Chris. The level that we're at is below mine, but I think it will help just forcing me to speak Spanish. Our Spanish teacher, Liliana, is hilarious and is exploding with energy all of the time. It blows my mind how someone can have so much energy. My Spanish has improved quite a bit since I've been here, especially my vocabulary. I still have a lot of trouble with listening comprehension and forming grammatically correct sentences (with the verb tenses and whatnot). Being a visual learner is certainly not advantageous for learning a second language!
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I think I've become an immensely better cook while I've been here in Chile. Just this week I made roasted vegetables (plus cantaloupe!) with an aioli sauce, a beet green-centered pasta dish, a vegetable puree (mainly beets) mixed with polenta (which was mixed with raisins and greek olives), gazpacho, and spicy thai noodles. I'm sure my former roommate and chef extraordinaire, Jay, would be thoroughly proud of my progress.
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Last thing: last year I participated in the Record Producing Month challenge (RPM challenge) during the month of February. The challenge is that you have to record (and if you want to take it a step further, write) an album within a month. That is 10 songs or 35 minutes of music. I decided to participate again this year but I'm at a bit of a handicap since I'm leaving for vacation a week and a half before the end of the month. I have four songs recorded already, and hopefully will get two more done this afternoon. I'll post a link to hear my album once it is finished!
