por fin, po'!

I'm sitting here at my desk eating an apple with peanut butter and manjar (chilean style dulce de leche, which i'm pretty sure is all over latin america), and decided that blogging might not be a bad idea, since it's been so long. I don't really have any fascinating news because it's just been school and I haven't left the city. I've been trying to mentally remember all the little things that make chilean culture different from what i'm used to so I can write them here, but that will be more of a process that just being able to remember everything at once. But here's is what I can remember as of now.

1. the mullet: it's really popular here. It's fashionable and lots of young guys have mullets. Dreadlocks are also quite popular, and it's not rare to see a guy from the front who appears to ahve normal hair, until you see the back and realize he has a dreadlock mullet---normal hair on top with anywhere from 1-10 dreadlocks protruding out of the back of his head. Girls often have just one dread too.

2. I realized why there are so few available apartments with young chileans. Chileans tend to live with their parents until their upper 20's if not into the 30s or until they get married. The culture, as are most latin cultures, and very family oriented and so kids my age live with their parents, especially if they are students. If i meet someone my age who lives alone, its either because of problems with the family or they are super independent and/or have lived in a foreign country. No wonder most of the foreign students i know here life with.....other foreign students.

3. the greeting in chile in the side-cheek kiss. When you meet someone new or are just meeting with your friends, the side0cheek kiss is always involved. guys dont do it with other guys, they just shake hands. But girls and girls, and guys and girls, always.

4. Fannypacks are popular here. I bought one a while back because thye are cheap but i didn't have the courage to wear it (of course, knowing me, i bought one that is bright purple) until recently. But really they are popular simply because its more safe to carry a fannypack than a small purse. My friends swedish roommate had her little purse cut right off her shoulder a few weeks back in a very public area. They sliced the strap and ran--her wallet and her camera and her chilean id card were all inside. So i've begun to use the fannypack, quite useful.

5. in universities, instead of requiring students to buy entire textbooks, the teachers just photocopy article and portions of textbooks and leave them at the central photocopy station for every department and then i got and just fill out a little sheet saying what copies i need from what class and pay for that. it's WAYYYYYY cheaper than buying books and makes my backpack wayyyyyy lighter. I think for the science and math classes they probably have books, but at least in the literature, language, poly science, history, and such departments, few people have textbooks. I haven;t spent more than 10 or 15 dollars on copies. Also when we print at school we don't pay per page, we just bring our own paper. That's pretty cool because the teachers often put things up on the their online pages that we have to print and they could be pretty lengthy...so buying a pack of printing paper for 5 bucks is cheaper than paying 8 cents a page like at sfsu. that just means that i have a stack about 3 inches tall of all my total articles and such for this semester thus far.

6. there are a few types of style here but the one that stands out to me the most (and kind of surprised me), is very hippy-ish. Like i said, dread locks are very common here, but there are lots of people that just dress super hippy-ish. interesting.

If I think of more, I will continue the list. As far as my life as of late....

I attempted to go to my first english-help session today at a public school (last week most people started but I couldnt go becasue they were doing some event thing at the school). the director emailed me and asked if i still wanted to come even if i'd only be there 45 minutes but I said i would go anyway. The reason being is that today, September 11th, marks the anniversery of the military coup of General Pinochet that overthrough the government of Salvador Allende and marked the begining of the dictatorship that lasted until 1990. The cut school short and especially recommend to international students to try to stay off teh streets starting in the afternoon and especially at night. There are always protests and manifestations and occasionally they get violent because there are still people out there that support what Pinochet did. The more I head about the time of dictatorship, the most intersting it becomes. I'm thinking of taking a chilean modern history class next sememster just because its interesting. A lot of what I hear is extremely shocking. I was hanging out with some friends the other day, chileans and somehow we got onto the topic. One of the guys is 25 so I asked him if he remembered anything but he didn't but they were telling me some of the things that happened and what their parents remembered or thought of it.

They then went on to say that the Estadio Nacional (national futbol stadium), which is the official stadium of the olympics that were held in the 60's and now of the club soccer team of La Universidad de Chile (the team i saw), was not supported by Pinochet. The other main rival team is called Colo-Colo and they have their own stadium in the southern part of the city. well, pinochet supported colo0colo and put money into the team and the stadium. During his dictatorship, the estadio nacional was used for other purposes: torture and killing people. This really shocked me---I was shocked. It's just so surprsiing because it's all so recent and it happened. I was talking to my new roommate, Matthias (who is German!!! yeah!!!) and he said he had talked to a profesor who was actually tortured there. He said it was too much to take in...t0 hear that from someone who experienced it. Appartnely, alongside physical torture, they also used to mentally torture people, saying things about family members they were killing or other such things. Sorry if this is really intense...it's history though and it happened. What I learn from living in a post-communist country. Apparently they also used to capture people who protested and such, would take them in a plane and drop them from thousands of feet over the pacific ocean. This is heavy stuff.

I think that was the main thing I wanted to blog because it is the most interesting. As of late, I've just been in school. I took my first exam, and did really bad, as I thought I would. Despite hours and hours of studying and trying to understand borges, i still got a pretty lousy grade. The teacher knows my name though, which I think is good...and Ive been trying to talk more in class to at least get participation poiints. I've pretty much become a monitor of his voice as well and I color code my notes. Black ink is concrete and waht he writes on the board and red ink is what I write down from him talking. The unit we are in right now is a bit easier though. I hope I can pull off a B on the next exam, to make up for the D I got (yea, a D. ouch).

Oh, and I mentioned I got a new roommate. So now we are four, back to normal. Me, Sarah and Jean-Charles, bother from france, and Matthias from germany. I tried to talk to matthias in german the othr day because I told him i wanted to practice but it WAS SO HARD!! Every time I stumble to think of a word, spanish just blurts out of my mouth. Or even if i know the word in german i still speak spanish. It's hard. that sucks. oh well. At least I can say "that's life" in a total of four languages!! c'est la vie, asi es la vida, so ist das leben.

The weather is finally getting a litttttle better. It was around 70 today...after 2 weeks of on and off raining and really cold days for what it should be in september. I might be going to the beach next weekend with some friends. I hope i can...i need to get out of the city. i think i am the only person from my entire group who hasnt left for a weekend or day trip to either go snowboarding or valparaíso ( a city west of here on the ocean) or anything else. I just didn't wanna spend money to go places when it's winter and we are going to have 3 months of no school. But i'm dying from some clean air, stars, space, trees, absolute quiet. It would be a nice thing. Also, school ends at 1pm on thursday and there are no classes friday because friday is the 18th of september, chilean independence day. It's supposed to a pretty wild and fun time. I'm excited for the food...maybe i will find a chilean food that has some real flavor in it. I hope so!!

Anywho, I think I will go get started on dinner.. Hope this was sufficient!! Some picutres to come soon!!! Espero que todos estén bien!!!