Yo Soy Mago

23/9/08
There are a lot of things I like about my morning commute. I walk about 10 mins or so to a plaza on our cerro to catch my bus. In the morning, the air is still cool and the sun isn’t strong yet, and I have a spectacular view of the city while I walk. I also enjoy it because of the little things that happen along the way. The other day I was leaving my house and there was a young kid around the age of 7 or 8 standing in the street. He stopped me and asked me what time it was and I told him. His face wore an expression of impending doom upon learning what time it was, and he hurriedly began to walk along. He hadn’t gone more than 30 feet or so before stopping to look back at me. He then paused, waited for me to catch up, then ran forward another 30 feet and waited for me once again. He ran back and forth from one side of the street to the other as I continued to walk at my steady gate for another 5 minutes and then gave up and decided just to walk along next to me. He never said anything else to me, and we parted at the plaza. I can take one of two micros to class. One micro passes by the market that I went to way back on my first or second day in Valpo. Traffic builds up there in the morning because there are huge piles of lettuce, celery, and assorted fruits dashed across the road. One morning I happened to be staring at a vendor artistically eating a banana dangling the peal above his head and waving it around like a lasso. By chance, he met my stare and flashed the peace sign at me; I flashed it back (they really like the peace sign here). Ever since then, every morning I look for him and try to catch his eye, I’ve been successful on a handful of occasions. And today, my micro driver came to a stop in the middle of the road stopping traffic so that he could buy a sopaipilla (circle of fried bread) from a street vendor who came darting across the road to deliver it to his window.
Tonight I went to Ache Havana, a salsa club. Being determined (still) to learn salsa, I figured this would be a good way to continue my efforts. I went with a large group of other students who also didn’t know how to dance salsa. The class was somewhat of a disappointment mainly because it wasn’t really a class for people who had no idea what they were doing and stumbling around the dance floor, rather, it was more of a brush up for people that already knew the basics. I was able to pick up a few more things than last time, but I now realize that to really learn salsa I can’t just keep going to clubs and need an actual class. There is one girl on our program who is salsa dancer extraordinaire, and I’m hoping that she will be able to give me a little more help in my quest. All in all, though, as much stumbling, complete befuddlement, and being led around the dance floor by frustrated Chilean women as there was, it was a ton of fun.

24/9/08
Today I went to my community work. We continued the theme of hard manual labor, and I spent most of the time clearing a swath of land for the future location of the bathroom. One person would rip out all the overgrown weeds, one person would be removing the dirt with a shovel, and the third would then sift through all the soil removed to remove any rocks. Years of having worked out in the field finally paid off and I was able to show off my soil sifting skills (nobody was that impressed, sadly). The head guy of the organization we are working for is about 30 or so, has really crazy big hair, and the most contagious laugh I’ve ever heard. He also has quite possibly the most adorable son who is three years old. His son single-handedly causes our work to take twice as long because any space where we are working is somehow always coincidentally his play space. Today, the other guy on the program convinced him that I was a magician, so I had to perform at least 10 “magic” tricks for him throughout the rest of the day. Most of my tricks just involved hiding his trowel while he wasn’t looking…I don’t think it is time to switch professions anytime soon. We bought smore materials, and at the end we taught them how to make smores over a campfire. A delicious cross-cultural experience minus the fact that we had accidentally purchased assorted “tropical” flavored marshmallows.

25/9/08
Today Catherine and I went to a café close to our houses to work on a project. This wasn’t just any café, it was the café to end all cafes. My Spanish teacher recommended to us at the beginning of the program his favorite café in all of Chile, and since I knew the general area and had some time to wander, I went searching for it this afternoon. By chance, I happened to come across it, and I wasn’t disappointed. The walls are completely covered with decorations ranging from Abbey Road to a giant poster in German for the “Moustache Orchestra” to hundreds of napkins that past customers have written poems or drawn pictures on. Each table has a different, colorfully designed table cloth, and they sell handmade hats, earrings, and gloves in the back. The menu lists several different sizes, and we didn’t really know what some of the words were, so we asked the waiter how big a “tetera” is, and he replied “It’s a tetera” while putting his hands in a circle – and that’s how we learned that tetera means teapot. I hope to go back there again soon, and maybe even get a napkin put up on the wall.

Sorry, faithful followers, but no pictures this update. Rest assured, next update there will be some good ones!