Painful Lessons in Vocabulary

The beauty of living in another country is the daily opportunity to learn new things.  Between the culture, the people and the language, there are always new things to discover.  However, like with anything, there can be growing pains along the way.  Here are ten of the most painful Spanish vocabulary words I've learned in Chile:

1. Hinchado/a: I learned this little beauty of a word back in May when my board popped me right in the face during a surf lesson.  I got this nice fat lip (pictured above) as a souvenir and the word "hinchado" (swolen or, in this case, fat) as a long-term reminder of what a kook I was  am in the water.
  
2. Multa: This unknown vocabulary word kept popping up on our itemized lists of gastos comunes (shared community charges that pretty much every apartment building in Chile charges) at our old place.  One day, we got the brilliant idea to look it up and found out that we were being charged a "multa" (fee) for paying those gastos comunes late...almost every month.  Lesson(s) learned.

3 & 4. Asangrar & Toser: I never really found the need to know either of these words until Jeff arrived to Chile and began doing both of them at the same time.  A nasty case of strep throat (his second week in Chile) brought us to the infamous Clinica Iquique with a little scrap of paper that held our very important new vocabulary words: "toser" (to cough) and "asangrar" (to bleed).

5. Riñón: Although I had the basic body parts down before moving to Chile, I never made it around to the internal organs.  It wasn't until I had a triple dos of terrible in the form of e.coli, salmonella and an infected "riñón" (kidney) that I learned this little gem of a word.  

PS. I still don't know the names of any of my other internal organs, including my liver; although I've put her through quite a lot here in Chile.  I blame the terremotos.

6. Gusano: Speaking of drinking...after being force-fed the "gusano" (worm) at the bottom of the mescal bottle by a very drunk friend, this slimy (yet satisfying) piece of vocabulary won't be soon forgotten.

7. Atropellar: One day, I was talking with my good friend Kenita via facebook chat and she said, "¡Alguien me atropelló en Baquedano!" which (roughly translated) means "Someone somethinged me on Baquedano!"  Thanks to the fabulous spanishdict.com, I was able to look up the word instantly and find out (to my shock and horror) that someone RAN HER OVER...on the street I walked down every day to work.  Dually noted.

8. Celeste: This painful vocabulary lesson took place on my October trip to Peru.  When I showed the park rangers in the lost and found office a little bag that my mom made me and asked if they had seen a similar one with a camera in it, they made an announcement over the walkie-talkie system about a bolsa celeste; a word I had never heard before.  That day I learned that "celeste" meant sky blue and begrudgingly took this vocabulary word home instead of my pictures from Machu Picchu.  RIP Camera :(  

9. Resbalar: For some reason, this was a word that I could never remember for the longest time.  Surf class after wax-deprived surf class I would mime it out to my surf teacher by gliding my hand along my surfboard and exaggeratedly falling back into the water to show how I had just "resbalar"ed (slipped) on my ass.  This was followed by a plea for mercy and "cera" (wax).

10. Erizo: The newest edition to my painful vocabulary list is erizo; a word I had heard several times but never committed it to memory until it committed itself to my foot.  Last weekend, while beach camping just outside of Iquique, I made a new (not so friendly) friend when I stepped on this critter in the ocean and he (or she) left one of its pokey little spines in my foot.  Ouch "erizo" (sea urchin) ouch.

Noticias del Norte

Well, I´ve officially been back in Iquique for a week now and I must say, I'm feeling pretty awesome about the decision I've made.  But before I get into that, can we take a moment to appreciate the new blog layout and the little animation thingy that I made?  What do you think?  Would it detract from my blogger street cred if I told you that I made it using paint?  Shit, too late.

Anyways, as I was saying... life in Iquique has been great.  I have been surfing, tanning and spending time with a lot of friends that I hadn't seen in what feels like a really long time.  I'm also meeting a bunch of new people from all over the world, thanks to my new job.  A few days ago, I started working  as a receptionist at the hostel where I'm staying.  The job has been a serious lifesaver since I came back with close to no money and have yet to start any classes.  The kids' course I was promised didn't pan out after all because of low enrollment, but things are rolling right along with the mining job.  On Friday, I spent three hours in the clinic doing a ton of different exams. Now have the official stamp of approval to go up to the mine (from the medical perspective, at least).  The visa situation is another story but that is suppose to be getting sorted out this week.

Today I met up with my co-worker, Maja, who use to work at the same site. She gave me the low-down on the students and a few extra tricks of the trade.  Looks like I'm in for a cold "Bolivian Winter", which might actually be nice after so many weeks of face-melting heat.  My projected start date is next Monday but it still feels like there is a lot to do and I'm a bit dubious.  Meanwhile, I'm digging the job at the hostel and taking things one day at a time.

I'm not really sure what to expect at the mine site.  To be honest, I've heard some slightly scary things about the working conditions but I'm actually looking forward to getting an insider's view of something so essential to Chile's entire economy.  I'm also stoked for the improvement in my own economical status that this job will make.

Overall, I imagine it to be pretty much exactly like this, only with copper instead of diamonds...and in Spanish of course.

She Left as She Came; in the Rain and with Too Much Luggage

Sunset south of Iquique (taken from the window of my bus)

After innumerable warnings about the quantity of rain in the south (supposedly regardless of season), I experienced exactly two days of it.  First there was the beautiful misty morning that greeted me upon my arrival to Puerto Varas.  Then, after almost a month of uncharacteristically high temperatures, the south of Chile granted me one more beautiful day of rain in Temuco before I set off on a 25-hour bus ride northward through the driest desert on earth. 

My decision to leave Pucón was a combination of push and pull factors.  For now, I´ll keep it classy and leave the details of those push factors off of the internet.  In all honestly, I really would have loved to spend more time in the south but, to put it nicely, the stars just weren't alined this time.  I will say that met some genuinely amazing people during my trip and I have no doubt that I'll be back to visit them before my time in Chile is up.  However, for the time-being, my place is in the North.

It seems strange to call a place home when, a year ago, I barely knew it existed.  However, upon my return to Iquique, there was no denying it; I was home.  I've done my fair share of running around since I left Iquique in late December and, after six weeks of being away (and 95 hours on a bus), it feels sweet to be back.  For all the things I love about traveling and being in new and exciting places, there's something undeniably comfortable about familiar places and faces.  After running into several friends on the street this evening and popping in to visit a few more, my decision to return to Iquique was reaffirmed.  It feels good to be with my peeps.  Some reassuring news from work also helped sweeten the deal.

For now, it looks like my near future will involve a little waiting and thus require a bit of patience but I've become pretty accustomed to that.  Unfortunately February is vacation season in Chile which means everything runs just slightly worse than usual.  Luckily, I have surf, sun and good people to keep me distracted while things get organized.  The picture is a little foggy but it looks like my career in mining will be taking off after-all. I, as usual, will keep ya posted.

Solo ida

Iquique > Valparaíso (25 hours) > Santiago (2 hours) > Valparaíso (2 more hours) > 

Santiago (Yup, 2 more) > Puerto Varas (12 hours) > Valdivia (3 hours) > 

Pucón (2.5 hours) > Caburgua (.5 hours) > Temuco (2 hours)

Subtract the 2.5 hours I traveled by car between  Pucón, Caburgua and Temuco and that leaves a whopping 48.5 hours that I've spent on a bus this month (given that my calculations are correct...feel free to check).  If I believed in bad omens, this trip would most definitely not have happened. As I mentioned, the trip down to central Chile wasn't quite as smooth as we'd hoped it would be.  

We bought our tickets with a few weeks of anticipation, got everything ready (with not so much anticipation...can you say, last minute?) and rushed down to the bus station on Saturday night.  We got there pretty much right at the departure time but they were still loading people onto the bus so we figured we were fine.  When they saw us and all of our luggage (ok, MY luggage...still haven't quite mastered the arts of traveling light), they took one look at us and said, no way in hell (in not so many words).  We (I) had too much luggage.  They weren't going to take us, no way.  

Time to go to the register and change our ticket time.  Wait, what's that you say?  You have no more tickets until after Christmas and you don't want to give me back my money (Almost $200 USD).  

Oh.  hell. no.

Enter enraged gringa (me) vacillating between calm rational discussion and screaming concha tu madre at the saleswoman, who couldn't have been less helpful.  She sent me back to the mercado where I bought the tickets only to talk to another saleswoman who was nicer but equally unhelpful.  After two hours of arguing, crying and running (literally) back and forth between mercado and the bus station, I finally surrendered.  We paid to store our bags at the station overnight and bought two new tickets (110 USD a pop) with a different company (screw you Pullman) for the next morning.  I asked the vendor from the other company about the sobre equipaje (excess luggage) fee and, taking pity on me, he told me he would talk to the driver and make sure I didn't have to pay anything else extra.

Feeling defeated, we started walking home.  About four blocks from the station, I got a call from one of my best friends in Iquique who I had called to vent somewhere in the midst of the chaos.  He asked where we were and told us to stay put until he could get there.  The three of us made our way back to the bus station together.  I was doubtful anything good would come out of it but Luis was determined.  After five minutes, FIVE MINUTES, of talking with the same saleswoman I'd just spent the better part of the night with, Luis had the name of a manager and a promise that, if he came back the next day, he could get our money back.  Enter equally enraged (but knows when to keep her mouth shut) gringa.  If it was that easy, why couldn't we have got that settled two hours ago?

The next morning, we got the bus station earlier than I've ever arrived before a bus in my Chilean life.  There was no way we were going to risk anything going wrong.  A bus from our company was just arriving but it was still a good 45 minutes before our departure.  Paranoid (and rightfully so), I showed the man loading luggage on the bus my ticket and asked him if it was this one or the next.  Sure enough, he told me that it was our bus and started putting our bags on board.  We hopped on and, to our surprise, the bus took off within ten minutes...about a half an hour before departure time.  We thought it was a bit odd but were stoked to arrive in Valpo a little ahead of schedule.

When the guy came around to take our tickets, he gave us the ultimate stink face.  We were on the wrong bus.  Our conversation (roughly translated) went something like this:

Ticket Collector: You're on the wrong bus.

Irritated Gringa: Really?  Because I double-checked that this was the right bus before we got on.

Ticket Collector: (talking to me like I'm an idiot) Who told you this was the right bus?

Even-More-Irritated Gringa: (pointing) Ummm...your homie right over there.  I showed him my ticket and he said this was the bus.

Ticket Collector: Well, it's not.  We're going to drop you off in Bajo Molle (aka middle of the nowhere) and you can wait for your bus there.

Livid Gringa: Are you #$%@ing kidding me?  We're like five minutes from the station.  Drop us off here and we'll walk back for god's sake.

Ticket Collector: Nope, we're dropping you off in Bajo Molle.

Livid Gringa with smoke coming out of her ears: But I DON'T TRUST THAT!  Drop us off here!

Ticket Collector: Nope.  

So there we were, with all of our (my) baggage, in the middle of the dessert at 8 in the morning, cursing Pullman bus, Condor bus, and Iquique for plotting a mastermind plan to keep us trapped there forever.  Luckily I had the foresight to snap this picture as a lovely keepsake of our morning.

Twenty-something hours later, we finally made it to Valpo...but I've already told you all about that.  After Christmas, we headed back to Santiago where we spent five nights before New Years and then returned for Jeff's last two nights in Chile.  I'm glad that he had the chance to see a little more of Chile before setting off since his experience has been primarily limited to Northern Chile which is completely different from the central and southern parts of the country.

We did lots of typical tourist stuff; hiking up cerros de San Cristobal and Santa Lucia, tasting strange flavors of ice-cream at Emporio La Rosa, strolling down Pio Nono, shopping in the artisanal markets and stopping by La Piojera for some typical Chilean food and (of course) some terremotos.

 Chorrillana at La Piojera

 Terremotos: The National Drink of Chile

 Cerro Santa Lucia

 Cerro San Cristobal

Kenita and Jeff

On Calle Estados Unidos

In addition to all that "typical Santiaguino" stuff, we also took advantage of being in a city and indulged in some typical (north) American stuff.  Usally I try to avoid seeking out stuff from the US while traveling but it was good to have a little taste of home after almost a year abroad.  Iced coffees were sipped, muffins were snarfed and cravings were quenched...Sorry, not sorry.  Overall, we had a great time.  Yay for ignoring the signs and forging on ahead anyway, bad omens be damned.

Since Jeff left, things have been a little unstable (yes, even more-so than they were before).  I spent one night in a hostel in Santiago and then a few days with a friend while I was waiting on a response from my boss in Iquique about the position in the mine.  Sitting around playing the waiting game was starting to get me down so I decided to bite the bullet and by myself a one-way ticket south to Puerto Varas.  I already had an interview there so I figured it could either be a job opportunity for a fun little vacation.  Since then, I've been taking things (quite literally) day by day, going where the wind (and my very limited travel funds) take me and buying "solo ida" (just one-way) because God knows if and when the vuelta (return) will happen.

I have been more or less living with the bus company's website open, checking different routes and playing with different travel/work plans.  One awesome thing about the south is that the distances are much shorter between cities than in north of Chile.  In the past week I've had the chance to explore five different beautiful cities and with a little more time in the south, I'll be able to see so many more.  It's also getting to be about visa renewal time so it looks like a mini-trip to Argentina might be in order.

Meanwhile, my life, much like my new favorite website is esperando respuesta, awaiting an answer.

 A much-needed cold beer on a hot hot day in Valdivia 

(Kunstmann Torobayo to be exact, one of my favorite beers)

 Valdivia from the bridge

 Me, melting in the hot Valdvia sun

More beautiful lakes (in Valdivia)

 Sheep crossing our path in Caburgua

 At the dock in Pucón

 Park in Central Pucón

 Vocano View from Pucón

 Cabin in Caburgua

 Inside View

Me & Paula on our last day in Caburgua,

about to head to Temuco

 

Próspero Año y Felicidad

 

Cheap cherimoya champagne, plastic rainbow wigs, and far, far too many hours without sleep; if how we spend our New Year's Eve is at all indicative of how we will spend the next year, mine will be filled with love, laughter, live music, fireworks and more public urination than I'd care to admit.

Following the advice of several friends who told us traffic would be crazy if we didn't get to Valparaíso early enough, we left Santiago at 8:30 AM which landed us in Valpo around 10:30.  We didn't book a place to stay since things were so pricey because of NYE.  We figured we'd be up all night anyways so why not just wait a few extra hours and go back to Santiago in the morning?  I carried around our few essentials in my purse and we got ready in a gas station bathroom (keeping it classy, as usual).

During the day, we entertained ourselves by wandering around (as if we didn't do that enough while we were there over Christmas) and meeting up with different friends throughout the day.  We also did a boat tour of the bay which was nice (and only about 4 bucks), rode the famous outdoor elevators and ate a big delicious seafood lunch.

When nightfall hit, we headed to the Plaza Sotomayor for a concert, street party and an awesome fireworks display.  After ringing in the new year, dancing and drinking there for a few hours, we met up with a friend from Santiago and a group of his friends and stuck with them for a few more hours of aimless ambling around the city (only this time slightly more inebriated).

Around sun up, we were kicking ourselves for not booking our return bus until quarter to eleven.  At seven, we headed to the bus station which was a virtual refugee camp.  Displaced partiers were strewn from one side to the other; littered across the floors and up and down the staircases.  We wove our way around the labyrinth of bodies, only to find that it would be impossible to change our tickets for an earlier time.  We decided to adopt an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach and found a loose scrap of cardboard, nestled ourselves amongst the other NYE casualties and made ourselves comfy. 

The bus station personal eventually got fed up and intentionally set off the fire-alarm...three times.  When that proved to be ineffective, they sent in a police officer to yell and shake his baton around.  I had a nice spot next to the fellow with the tye-dyed fanny pack (pictured below) until the cop starting using his baton to smack the railing that was propping up my head.  I'm not sure if his plan of attack was entirely successful but it was enough of an annoyance to make Jeff and I relocate to the grass outside.

By the time we bussed back to Santiago, metro-ed to our friends' house to pick up our stuff and walked to our new hostel, it was almost 2 pm.  We stumbled through the front door and dragged our feet up the four floors of winding stairs just in time to collapse into a big bed and sleep off what was left of New Years Day.

Chile has some interesting New Years Ever Traditions, of which I participated in just one (see photo above).  Most of them are meant to bring financial prosperity  and, in retrospect, I probably should have done more of them. There is still a lot of uncertainty about what 2013 will bring.  Will it take me back to Iquique to work in the mine?  Will it pull me south to Puerto Varas to start a new teaching job there?  Will the yellow underwear trick fail me and send me scraping together monedas to buy my return ticket to California?  To be honest, all three are possible, if not probable.

If my New Year's Eve serves as any kind of window into what my new year will look like, there will surely be ups and downs ahead.  Things may be sticky (like the cocktail of fake snow and booze that I spent a good part of the night drenched in) but I will find good things in surprising places (like confetti in my bra the next day).  There will be beautiful miracles (like finding a drunk friend in a crowd of thousands) and some mysteries that are better left unsolved (like what kind of meat was used in the 'sándwich de potito' aka 'butt sandwich' that Jeff ate in Plaza Sotomayor).  There will be some things that instantly become crystal clear to me (like the fact that a three dollar bottle of champagne sold on a street corner is bound to be terrible, no matter how much I like cherimoya) but there will others that I will never fully understand (like this cryptic message scrolling on loop our entire bus ride from Valpo to Santiago).

A merry new years to all and to all a young man neoplan bus young man truck.

German technology. Chinese prices.

21.12.12

All of this recent talk about self-driving cars has got me thinking, why on earth has no one invented self-packing suitcases yet?  Driving a car is really not an inconvenience.  Moving is a nightmare.  Since I left home at 17, I have gone through the process of moving all of my earthly possessions an innumerable amount of times.

Ok, maybe not so innumerable.  I have done the official count (using almost of my fingers and some of my toes) and the grand total is fourteen.  FOURTEEN times!  I've moved fourteen times in the past seven years.  Tonight, for the fifteenth time, I find myself slipping into the old routine.  It goes something like this:

Step One: Wait until the last possible moment.
Step Two: Drink an ungodly amount of caffeine
Step Three: Find any smaller and seemingly more manageable task to distract yourself from the actual task at hand
Step Four:  Organize and pack every item possible before your heavy eyelids refuse to tolerate any more resistance and you are forced to submit to sleep
Step Five: Push all remaining clutter off of the organizational epicenter (aka, bed)*
Step Six: Crawl in
Step Seven: Pass out

*If exhaustion is too strong and you are unable to clear off the bed, just push the junk over and make a little space for yourself to sleep in.  Finish packing in the morning.

Although, like most, I consider the process of moving a special kind of hell, there's also something undeniably therapeutic about it.  While rifling through old keepsakes, we are reminded of so many good times and good people.  Moving also gives us an opportunity to take a good hard look at the objects we are lugging around and determine whether or not their essential in our lives.  If not, we (hopefully) chuck them out, simplifying our lives (and making room for new junk).

The last night in any apartment always feels a little surreal and tonight is no exception.  Tomorrow evening, Jeff and I will head down to Santiago on an extremely long bus ride through the Atacama desert.  We will spend about a week and half bouncing back between Valparaíso, Viña del Mar and Santiago.  On the third of January, Jeff will sadly head back to the USA and I will...well, as usual, I don't know what I will do.

I've become accustomed to dealing with a certain amount of uncertainty in my life as of late and, although it is a bit overwhelming at times, I'm trying to roll with the punches.  I'm still waiting to hear from the academy about my possible contract up in the mine.  In the meantime, I'm keeping my options open and considering either coming back to Iquique to teach Summer school kids' classes or heading South to explore (and possibly find work there).  As usual, I'll keep ya'll posted as plans progress.

As for now, I'm just glad to say that we all officially made it through another apocalypse.  This may be the end of another chapter, but it's certainly not the end of the word.

Arte de la Calle

 

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I hope you liked my 6,000 word introduction.  Now on to the main essay (14,000 words) on some of the strange, beautiful and interesting street art I've found across Chile.  

Enjoy :)

 

1. Iquique 2. Valpo 3. Arica 4. Valpo 5. Santiago 6. Valpo 7. Iquique 8. Iquique 9. Iquique 10. Iquique (obviously)
 11. Iquique again 12. Iquique... 13. Arica 14. Yup, Iquique again 15. Santiago 16. Santiago 17. Santiago 18. Santiago 19. Iquique 20. Santiago