Llamame Pepe.

This post is rather long...but that is just because I am finally moved into my house and finally getting accustomed to the notion of living here for the next 4 months. If you don't actually want to read it, there are pictures at the bottom that are just as good! I cater to all of my devoted readers!

30/8/08
This afternoon I met my Chilean mom, Teresa. So far she seems like a very nice woman, and a lot like my actual mom. I think I’ve been asked at least 20 times today if I was hungry. We drove back to (our?) house at midday. The cerro (hill) we live on is directly above Valpo. To get there though is quite the adventure. Most of the roads would be too steep for me to bike up, and they curve back and forth and people hurdle up and down them at breakneck speed.Two boys across the street were running across the roof of their house flying kites when we pulled up. The house is bright yellow, and like everything else in Valpo, there are a bunch of stairs leading up to it. The house is very nice and open, and my room looks out onto the ocean, so not really anything to complain about. They have a german Shepard named Kaiser who is really friendly and also kind of a pain like Shadow. After having lunch at the house we met up with one of Teresa’s friends (who is also hosting an SIT student) and went down to the city to watch her sons participate in what can only be described as a fireman’s competition. Apparently they are a big deal, and the winning team get pins, and individuals compete for ranks within the station. They shut down a street and then proceeded to knock over targets, run around with gigantic hoses, and pretty much reign chaos on the block. After the group competition ended, the individual competition started. Each individual had a helper, and the object was to knock down their two targets before their opponents could knock their own targets down. The catch was that not only could you knock down yours, but you could use the water coming out of your hose to block the other persons water, and then, of course, once you hit yours you sprayed the other person directly so they couldn’t hit their targets much less do anything else. After the winners were crowned, they all got a ceremonial spraying with the hoses, which also allowed a bunch of kids to start running around in the street.
Once we finished up watching the bomberos (fireman), we traveled about an hour to the far side of Vina for the birthday party of a possibly related cousin. Halfway through the bus ride a musician got on and started singing a bunch of songs. Luckily he was pretty decent at the guitar and singing, cause he literally had a captive audience. After finishing up his performance he then sold quartz to most of the people on the bus and left. The bus system is pretty cool. There are tons of them everywhere. At a lot of the larger stops there will be a guy who counts and records when certain lines come in, the drivers then pay him to tell them if they are ahead or behind/should slow down or speed up. When we finally showed up at the birthday party it was a bit overwhelming. Having already spent the previous 4 hours or so speaking and hearing only Spanish I was getting kind of tired (it takes constant focus still for me to understand and maintain, albeit badly, a conversation). So we showed up and everybody was very friendly to the gringo. My name got changed to Pepe in the process because Ethan is hard to say for native Spanish speakers. The party was in a community room, and there were about 30 members of the family there. The family is pretty crazy. Random aunts were getting up and dancing provocatively around, much like how my own aunts would do, and everybody was eating, drinking, and having a good time. I had pisco, which is a kind of liquor in South America distilled from grapes, and also very popular in Chile. The impression I got was that it is just wine that just keeps getting distilled until it’s about 30-40% alcohol. The party began to wrap up and we took the bus back home.

31/8/08
Today I woke up and my mom showed me how to get to casa SIT. Afterwards we had lunch, and I went out to fly kites with the younger son of friends of the family. It was really hard and I kept getting the kite stuck on the roof or in power lines, and he had to keep getting it down for me. After he got it stuck in a tree (one that was about 200m away), we walked up and talked with all of the rest of the family. They live in a complex of houses directly above ours. Later, the two girls that live close to me and I went over to Vina to get cell phones and then go to a concert. After cell phones but before the concert we got some food at this awful place (nothing else is open on Sunday night) that sold the biggest hamburgers (except not American hamburgers) I have ever seen. Mine had ham, green beans, and avocado on it. I ended up with ham, green beans, and avocado on my face and hands. After eating and smearing myself in the burger we went over to el Teatro Municipal. The opening act was pretty good, I think the spelling would be Danza, but I don’t remember the exact pronunciation. Inti Illimani came on and everybody went crazy. It is a group of eclectic old guys (they are pre 1973 Pinochet takeover) who all play a ton of instruments and sing. Back in the old days they got kicked out of Chile because they protested the government in their music. The music is Andean folk, so as you can imagine, the instruments are pretty varied. They were absolutely phenomenal. They ended up getting two encores and everybody was thoroughly impressed. After the concert 4 of us then traveled back to Valpo together with not much incident until we reached our micro stop. From the micro stop we had to take a collectivo (fixed route taxi) up to our houses. My previous experience had taught me that collectivo drivers are crazy, and this trip exceeded those expectations. Most of the way up we tailgated an ambulance (this ambulance had its lights flashing) until finally the driver got sick of going that slow and decided to pass the ambulance. Keep in mind though, that the streets are one lane, so this was no easy feat. Once he passed the ambulance he proceeded to literally floor it, so we then traveled at top speed the rest of the way.

1/9/09
Today I went down to Casa SIT (where half of my classes will be, the other half at the university), and took the ACTFL (language placement) exam. After I finished, some of the other students and I headed down to Plaza de Vina. There were a bunch of kids who had just finished performing a dance called quecha (sp?) and we had missed it so we went up to them and asked them to give us a demonstration. This immediately led to a swarm of 13 year old kids surrounding us. We talked with them for a while and they tried to teach one of the girls in our group the dance, but it seemed pretty difficult. Catherine and I then took the same micro back to our houses (we live on neighboring cerros) for lunch. After lunch I walked around our cerro a bit and took some pictures of the city and port.

View from our cerro.
Looking down from my window.
Dog on roof.
The port.