cómo estai?

Hey there...Mom told me to blog and I'm not doing anything and it's raining outside so I guess I will blog. Not much has happened since I last wrote except that I've just been going to school. I've got all my classes and I'm registered. I have all my academic classes on Tuesday and Thursday and Mon, Wed, and Friday I have soccer from 10-11.20. I could have taken the class that started at 11.30 but I figured that having class at 10 was motivation to get up. I can get up at 9 anyway, so it's still like being able to sleep in, yah. Then on tuesday and thursday I have four class for 1 hour 20 minutes each. eek, long day. start at 10 and I finish at 7. I have fonética y fonología, la prosa de borges, my spanish grammar class (I was placed in advanced, the level between beginning reinforcement and superior, but I feel like the teacher is teaching us things that are a wee lower than what I jut did in my language prep program. oh well, it counts toward my major), then for two hours my culture of chile class that's 2 hours long. It's supposed to cover all types of aspects of chile including the governemnt, history, politics, economy, ethnic groups (indigenous groups), etc. Should be itneresting, it starts this next tuesday. Then in September my salsa class starts which is just one day a week for 1 hour 20 minutes. I'm exciteeddddd for that. It's through the school.

Hmm as far as school goes, it's been good. It's kind of annoying though, in my fonetics class, which by the way, the teacher has softened up big time. She's much nicer now and not so intense. Anyway, she speaks super fast so it's hard to understand her but I can still get the gist of the material and with the readings its ok. And in my borges class, I understand the teacher quite well, but the material, that is, the stories by Borges, are so hard to interpret, since that's what you do with them. They aren't meant to be taken literally and they are even hard to understand in the english versions. AND, we have our first exam on tuesday. Oh, great. woohoo, excited to see how that goes.

Chile has been, on average, a bit colder these last few weeks than when I first arrived. It's been raining on and off for the last week, thank goodness. It makes the air fresh, clean, and clear. Also makes for a nice clear and mostly smog-free view of the Andes the day after a rain provided it's clear outside. Last friday and saturday it pretty much rained all day and night, but sunday morning it was really nice outside. There is this big hill in the middle of the city that's called Cerro San Cristobal and there is a massive virgen mary statue on top of it. One of Maritza's roommates walked up it with me on sunday, it was pretty cool. Also am starting to understand my SLR camera. yea. I was a little preocupied with that camera so I forgot to take pictures of the view of the mountains with my digital camera, oops. I will go again though. It was a good wakl too, about an hour and 20 minutes to walk from my apartment to the talk. We took the cable-car/gondola thing down though, I don't know what it would be called in English. USed for sleep inclines to move people up, with a cable.

I also attended an orientation for the English Opens Doors volunteer program through the chilean ministry of education. I will be volunteering in a district called La Florida, which is in the far southwest portion of Santiago. They accidentally placed me on a day I can't go because I have class, but I already emailed the teacher that I will be working with and she just got back to me and said she is going to talk to other teachers at the school to see if they will need any volunteers on other days so I can go at least 2 days a week for about 3-4 hours every time. Basically we go to just assist the teachers in the english lessons, to public shcools only because they are at significantly lower levels than the private schools. That means that the kids in public schools are mosly lower-middle to lower class students and a lot of the teachers that teach english dont have proper ways of practicing their english or getting to attend conferences and so-on. So the volunteering is as much for the students as it is the teachers. Apparently the kids love it though, to have a university student from another country hanging out with them. I don't know what grade I will be with, but I think it's high school. It's rather convenient, the school is on the same metro line I take to and from school so I won't have to transfer, yeah. I hate transfering.

My spanish roommate Goizane moved out last friday and we got a new girl from France named Sarah. She is super nice and talks (yah! the other french guy never says anything). Pierre, one of the two french guys, is moving tomorrow to go back to Francia and then after that I dont know...there is no one lined up to move in because my landlord is doing her best to find someone who is not a native french speaker or english speaker. Nice of her.

As far as Chile and spanish goes, my understanding it getting rather good. Makes me happy. I'm also improving in conversing, lately I've been trying to tackle harder verb tenses...like, for example, saying something like this in spanish "I would have gone to eat with you had I known where the cafe was." This is the stuff that takes teh most practice with all the prefixes: he, había, habría....balh blah blah. Every day it seems like I learn a new Chilenismo, that is, chilean slang. It's crazy, the spanish they speak here. Granted, in school the teachers, especially our grammar teacher, tries to speak the most normal spanish, but it still gets out. They eat their "s"
's and often change verb endings in the 2nd person singular. example : estás=estai, vas=vai, andar=andai. Or tienes=tenís, conoces=conocís. hahah yeah, this is for you, Aunt Kathy. jajaja. And then there is the word "cachai." it's very casual, but chilean youth use it in the way that ditzy girls say "like" or "I was all..." It kinda means, " you got it" or "you read me" or " understand" but it gets thrown in there also in ways that people say right like in the sentence "so, i was going to the store, right, and then this man hits my car, right." Oh, and the word huevon or hueón. The most easy and common translation is "dude" but it can also be an insult like call someone an a-hole, depending on tone of voice and context. And for girls it's hueona, haha. And there is a verb for heuon, hueonar. Something on the lines of meaning that something is happening, going, moving, i ahvent really mastered the use of the verb yet. But, for example, i was using the microwave at school once and this guy came up and said "todavía está hueonando?" which kinda translates to, "it's still on/going?" I feel like I've been tackling the accent and trying to speak more like a chilean, because it makes me feel less foreign. Example, people always ask me what im studying and so i say "estudio español y biología" but when it's pronounced, i strive to say it like this: "ehtudio ehpañol y biología" there you go, i ate my S's. Therefore, "cómo estai" is pronounced, "cómo ehtai?" more or less, má o meno. (más o menos). There is a very very very tiny bit of S in there, hard to explain in wrtitin. But basically they disappear if there is a consonant following the S. If there is a vowel following the s, it's usually still prnounced. I spent a good amount of time deciding on this theory one day before going to sleep.

Okee dokee, I guess that is sufficient for now. Hope everyone is doing well!! Chau!

y ahora soy estudiante de la católica

Hmm..it's been a couple weeks since I wrote anything, so I guess I'm obligated now to post. Hmm, what should I write...

Well, I guess I will start more or less when I left off. Our language class ended last thursday. I'm bummed because I really liked our professor but he's only teaching the basic and extrememly advanced Spanish courses this semester, so I doubt I will have him. It was a pretty cool class, all in all quite helpful. Friday we had our orientation, which wasn't much but helpful. We sat and listend to a lady talk about the school and rather boring statistics that are, for the most part, irrelevant. Then we got to go have fake coffee and a sandwich with corn in it and sugar-blasted juice (funny, its called jugo fresco, aka fresh juice...lieeeeeeeeeeees!!!) The better part came after that when there were chilean students from all the departments in the big auditorium for us to talk to about anything. Basically we asked them questins like what classes are good, bad, which professors are cool, mean, talk fast, etc. It ended around one. I went to a cafe/restaurant with soem friends, didn't eat anything as I was 2 blocks from my apartment. Em..the weekend didn't consist of anything interesting, but I started classes Monday. Oh wait, last thursday I discovered that thrift stores exist in Chile, YEAH! I bought a coral colored cardigan and a skirt woohoo!

As far as classes are going, we just crash whatever ones we want to or can and find what we like. Technically we cant register for them till next monday, but some of the departments were mal-informed until yesterday, and im registered in 2 already as I got my form stamped before they realized they werent supposed to be doing that. Monday I went to two: soccer (womens, level one, the only available) and calculus. We're alowed to take one sports class and two academic classes in addition to the two mandatory classes we have to take. It's cool cause the sports classes are three days a aweek and for 1.5 hours each, so it's actually a somewhat significant amount of time. The calc class i went to was not the correct one though. The math student i talked to at the orientation told me there were probably only two sections of calculus II I could take (out of 10) that were more bio science based. I could only go to one of them because the other section is at the same tim as my mandatory spanish class. So I went to the one I could, and it was not anything that would work for me, its calc II for civil engineering majors. Plus the teacher talked supppppppper fast and just booked it after class before I could even ask her anything. So I went and wandered the math department and somehow found myself in front of a math advisor who recommened the correct calc for me. But unfortunately, they conflict, once again, with my mandatory spanish class. Seems like they all do...I guess i'll wait till next semester.

Yesterday I attended two classes: Fonología y fonetica, basically a fonetics of Spanish. i know it will transfer directly towards my major at SFSU so i'm going to take it, depsite the rather Severus-Snapish-aspects the profesor tends to show. If you've read harry potter, you'll understand. If not, I shall just say that she's harsh, mean, and super strict. Some kids walked in late (duhhh its the first week of classes) and about 10 minutes into class she says, "if you're going to come 10 minutes late just dont come in at all, it's a disruption." MIght I add that everytime soemone came in, she would stop talking and just stare at them until they sat down. I understood only about half of waht she said becasue she spoke super fast..but at least I have a friend in the class from sfsu and we are determined to ace the class. I talked to a chilean girl to ask her if she thought the other teacher teaching the same calss was better but she told me that he was likely even harder. EEks.

After I had about a 2 hour break. I hung out with Nico, the kid from SFSU in the fonetics class, and one of our "tutors" from the little field trips we went on. I met one of his friends too, who is super smart in languages (majoring in english AND teaches it) and I felt smart because he told me that my spanish was good and that he was impressed with some of the verbal tenses i was bustin' out.... haha yeah! When all else fails and you don;t know what tense to use, just guess.

After that, I attended a class called la prosa de borges, aka, the Prose of Borges. Borges is a super famous surrealist writer from argentina. I read some of his stuff in the latin american literature calss i took at sfsu and surprisingly got an A in. I swear, analzying this literature and writeing about it simply requires lots of innovation to make up anything. It worked, my teacher liked it, I got an A. I plan on taking this course, especially because I like the teacher a lot. He speaks at a decent pace and I understood most of what he said, and he's nice and funny.

And then last night I was able to go to a pretty much pro soccer game. Nico lives with a host family and has a host sister who is my age and a host brother who is 19 and they are bother super cool--they've both studied and/or spent a lot of time in North America but they still speak spanish with us. They invited me to go to the game with them and their friends so I went...it was pretty awesome. The ticket was as general as it gets, about $11 but the experience was pretty cool. The team playing is the club team affiliated with the University of Chile. My school has a club team too. It's strange though, they aren't students, they pretty much are just professional players. They start as students, playing for a schools' individual team and then if they're good enough they play on the club team and stop school. So the schools that have club teams have two teams essentially: club team is pro, the school team is made of students. So we watched the club team of "la U" (shortened term for universidad de chile) play a team from venezuela. There were about 50-100 people chearing on the venezuelan team and about 5000 for la U. It was in the "estadio nacional" too so a rather large stadium and ridiculous amounts of police. Some police here ride horses too, kinda interesting. The game was awesome, there are so many songs the chileans sing for la U, so I plan on learning them. We painted our faces too to blend in. And, they won. Yeah!

Today I just had my soccer class and nothing after it. I'm really stoked to be playing soccer again after not having played in 3 years. I forgot how much I love it. The only thing that kinda sucks and surprised me, is that there are some girls in the class that honestly know NOTHING about soccer. Still surprises me how unpopular soccer is to women in pretty much any county except the US. weird.

Umm, I guess that's it....I suppose I'll post more when more interesting things happen....

hasta ahora....

Well, I figured I would write a wee since I am procrastinating doing my presentation on a region of Chile that I do in class tomorrow. I'm all moved in as of last Wednesday, and the apartment is freezing. That is the norm in Chile. There are no internal heating systems and this building is made out of concrete. So there are ups and downs: freezing in winter, cool in summer though. Less likely to burn down in a fire, more likely to crumble to pieces in an earthquake. Go figure. I bit the bullet and bought a heater because I can't concentrate on HW when I can see my own breath in front of me in my room. I couldnt find any that blew hot air for less than $40 (and I didn't even want to spend that much), so I just got one of the ones that has hot oil in it that are comon in Europe--it's not big so it's not significant, but it does make my room a little warmer/livable and it was about $25. I can sell it to some meager freezing American who arrives next year...

I've almost got everything I need to live adequately. The light in my room is weaker than a light you'd find in an over, so I bought a desk lamp because I'm always in shadows. Got a cheap one with a good flourescent bulb and after I put the bulb in and turned it on, the bulb exploded. I have no idea what happened, I got the correct wattage and everything. So I went and bought a new stupid bulb and it hasnt exploded on me yet. The girl who was living here before had bought a thick blanket for the bed and a mirror, both items which were lacking from my room and bathroom so she sold them to me and I gladly took them because blankets are expesive (especially like this one, its part wool). Then I can take them with me if I move. My pillow is about 2 inches thick, so my friends and I are on a mission to find a store like ross where we can find cheap stuff, and maybe a frying pan cause the ones in this apartment are destroyed and everything I cook in them sticks--that means my egg yolks always break. I got a little espresso can coffee maker (cheaper than a regular coffee maker) to make coffee with since Chileans mostly just drink instant coffee like in Korea. Interesting. You'd think coffee would be super popular here, well, REAL coffee anyway since huge amounts of coffee beans are grown in Latin America. But not so much. Mostly just Nestcafe is what you get here. There were only two or three brands of real coffee beans or grounds in the grocery store but about 15 types of instant.

I was wrong when I said i had two spanish roommates...I have two french roommates (guys) and then there is one girl from Spain. One of the guys arrived two weeks ago and he's doing a semester at University of Chile. The other french guy just finished studying and he's working for a bit before heading back to france in a month. the girl also works and is going back to spain in a month. They are all pretty cool and easy people to live with.

We have language classes, which are 9 to 12.30 until next thursday. They aren't that bad, I really like our teacher. He's youngish--maybe 30something and really knows the grammar well and explains it well. He doesn't give us busywork HW and is really laidback. We just sit and have conversations about world events and things in Chile for about an hour every day to practice speaking and learn about Chile.

August 3rd we start classes, or as our advisor, Sofia, told us, the class shopping period begins. And class dont really start till August 21st--you just sit in until you find classes you like then registering starts the 10th but lots of teachers don't come. So that 2-3 weeks will be a nice stress-free time of no HW and class work. Yeah. And then classes go until november 25 and the exam perioud is november 25 until december 15 or something. I kind of like that the exam period is spread out, it will lessen the chance of having 2 or 3 or 4 finals all on the same day or two days, which I so often had in SF.

I'm learning how to Salsa dance and I LOVE IT!! It's realllly fun. Maritza and Elvira have both been doin it for years so they're trying to teach me. AND Sofia (the advisor to all the students from CSU, she's realllly nice and super helpful) sent us basically a giant handbook for going to school at PUC or la Católica as it's generally called (my school), and there was a section I was reading about where non-credit courses are offered. They are mostly sports, dance, art, or music classes and cost $22,000chilean pesos (about $45) per semester to enroll in the prgram and take as many of the classes as you want. Basically they are kind of like extracurricular or intramural sports--I'm super stoked. I might take soccer or photography--we'll see. But definitely I want to do the Salsa/merengue class. Two nights a week for 1.5 hours each. A great way to meet people too. Sofia said too that a lot of chileans that do these classes are looking to meet foreign students, which is good becasue aparently chileans are realllly hard to talk to just sitting in class and so you have to seek to talk to them, and generally its going to be a non-studying environment.

Some of the kids may be going up to the Andes this weekend to go snowboarding which sounds pretty epic, but it seems a bit pricy given the fact that all I have is a coat and gloves. Eh, I'll wait and see if there is going to be a group trip through school, which I hear there is, and it's much cheaper.

Well, I suppose I ought to start my HW. It's raining outside and chilly. brrrrr. Hope you are all roasting in California.

Fotos

I posted fotos! Check them out at my picassa gallery link to the right! Read the captions it it's kinda like I blogged...

Ya tengo un piso!

I found a place to live!! Yeah!! It's a rather large flat in an apartment building in the perfect area to live in. It's in the Providencia district, literally across the street from a metro stop with the line that will take me straight to school. After looking for places and knowing that this city is huge, I decided that there are three main things that I have been looking for as far as where to live: location (must be near easy access to the metro or direct bus lines), the people (must be fun, comfortable to talk to, and understanding to my ever-changing spanish), the amount of lighting (some places have small windows and are sort of depressing because the Chileans won't install lots of lights for electricity purposes). The place I found has lots of natural lighting, a perfect place to hang out and it feels safe. It's not on a main street, so not loud, and the Chilean girl I met there are extremely nice. She likes to rent to foreigners, she is very kind and seems like a fun person to hang out with. She's 25 and works in econimic development in poorer parts of the city. The other two, whom I haven;t met, are two guys from Spain. The room I get is painted lime green, as I mentioned before is rather common, and it has a private bathroom attatched to it (yes!!) All amenities included, and lets than $300.

As of late...today was really cold. Huge change from yesterday when it almost hit 70 and today the clouds stuck over the city and it probably didn't go over 53 I'd say and may have been colder than that.

Hmmm...what else. Things I've noticed about Chile/Chileans:

1. Chileans talk like they're running out of breath. That is, they chop the ends of words off and continue to speak really fast without many endings. Most of the spanish world uses the work Pues for "well" but here they say "Po" There you go, they chop it off! and they tend to say Mucha gracia.

2. Chileans like Mayo. A LOT. And there is this food they eat here that they call a vienesa which is basically a hot dog thats stacked tall with avocado, tomatoes, mayo and oregano. And then there is churrasco which is a type of shaved beef with some sort of flavor to it that is pretty good, on a type of burger bun, with the goods: avocado, tomato, oregano, and mayo. They eat lots of bread type things. Or just lots of bread.

3. Fanny packs are the cool thing to have. For girls anyway. I think it's a mix between convenience (it's right there always at hand), safety (close to you, not hanging on the shoulder to be robbed from), and they are kinda fashionable. It's recommended by our advisor to have one cause they are safer as far as keeping things close to you. I might have to get a bright green and yellow one to match my green and blue reebok hightops.

4. In a restaurant, there is no pepper and rarely ketchup. There is salt, mustard, a sauce called ahí---red spicy type stuff, and another red sauce that is more BBQ oriented.

Well, I guess that's all for now...pictures will be up within a week. Chau!