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.

Lo Que Significa Un Año en Chile

 A year ago today, the 23 hours of travel (back when that was a big deal) from California came to an end and I arrived at my final (or so I thought) destination, Santiago de Chile. I had written this post the day before and was about to write this one, the next day.  No post that day though.  I was too busy getting my first taste of Chilean cuisine at the empanada shop down the street and organizing way too much luggage into my cute little blue room in Las Condes.

I had never been to Chile before and I had 0 experience teaching English.  My Spanish was decent but I had no idea what cachai, weon or CSM meant.  I had never surfed, never been paragliding and never hiked Machu Picchu.  I had never heard of Pucón or Iquique and had no idea that I'd be spending a significant amount of time in either.  I'd never seen warning signs for volcano eruptions or tsunamis nor lived near people who considered the constant threat of one or the other to be a normal part of everyday life. I had never tasted cherimoya, pebre, humitas or a terremoto.  Come to think of it, I had never actually met a Chilean person before (to my knowledge, at least).

Needless to say, 366 (leap year) days later, all of that (and so much more) has changed.  Here are a few more things that one year in Chile means....

1. One year in Chile means one year since I've driven a car.

Yup, if you thought I was a bad driver before...watch out.  I'm coming back in July, crazier than ever.  I may be forced to practice in my high school parking lot with my dad until I brush up on my skills.

2. One year in Chile means one year since I've had real Mexican food or decent tequila.

Best believe the Cazadores will be flowin' when I get back.

3. One year in Chile means one year since I've greeted someone without kissing them on the cheek.

If this is how I respond when we see each other again, please do not be startled. 

4. One year in Chile means one year since I've thrown toilet paper in the toilet instead of in a trash can.

I'll try to remember this one when I come back ;-)

5. One year in Chile means one year since I've had a bowl of soul from The Naked Lounge, a jasmine green tea from Empire or an iced coffee from anywhere besides Starbucks.

No Chile, "café helado" is not the same thing.  An iced coffee does not come with sprinkles, an ice-cream cone and a cherry on top.  This concept seems to be lost in translation.

 

6. One year in Chile means one year since I've gone bike-riding through Bidwell, downed an Irish car-bomb at Duffy's or gone skinny dipping at One Mile (not that I would ever do the latter, of course).

7. One year in Chile means one year since I've sent a piece of snail mail.

Sorry about those post-cards I promised.  I'll try to get that accomplished at some point before I leave .

8. One year in Chile means one year since I've used a stove without lighting a match (or occasionally using a lighter).

Electric stoves are very rare here.

9. One year in Chile means one year since I've used a dryer.

Nothing but clotheslines for me.

10. Sadly (almost as sad as #2), One year in Chile also means one year since I've seen a whole lot of people I love :-(
 

On a happier note, Today I celebrated my anniversary with a day off, a delicious little pie from Suiza Pucón and the silly little lake-side photo shoot pictured above.  I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to make a resolution or a wish as I blew out the candle so I made something that I don't make very often, a plan.  I got a little nugget of good news this morning via e-mail which was just enough to finalize an idea I've been mulling over for a while.  The details will not be revealed quite yet, but you'll see soon enough. 

Cheers to the first year Chile, here's to the rest of our time together :)

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

 

Puerto Varas: Sweden in Spanish

 

Blame it on the fact that I've been stranded in a desert for the past nine months and everything green looks the same to me, but upon my arrival to Puerto Varas on Tuesday, I couldn't help but be reminded of my very first international adventure in Sweden, almost four years ago. 

Perhaps it was the lush vegetation, the quaint little country houses with streams of smoke pouring out of cute little chimneys or the lingering smell of waffle cones which seems to follow you freaking everywhere (or is that just me?) but there is something about Puerto Varas that left me feeling quite deja vu-ish.  Despite a signifigant difference in the blonde population, the two places are strangely similar.  Every so often, my reminiscing would be interruped by the shrill cry of "weon" reminding me that I wasn´t in Scandinavia but rather suprisingly in Chile; the same country where I´ve spent the past eleven months.

I arrived in Puerto Varas around 9:30 in the morning. The gorgeous green countryside was draped in fog and it was raining just the perfect amount.  I made my way to the house where I was couch surfing just in time for introductions and a quick breakfast before I dropped off my things and set out to wander aimlessly for a while, as (you may have noticed) is my tendency.  My trek lasted about two hours and wasn't unlike the walk around Värmdö from which this blog got its name.  

Later in the day, I had an interview for a language school.  At this point it looks like I´ll be returning to Iquique to work in the mine but I´m keeping my options open.  If I've learned anything in the past year, it is have a plan B.  The school was great and the owner was super nice but the salary is about half what I´d be making up North.  Womp womp.

I went out with my couchsurfing host and some friends of hers for a few beers (can you say microbrews on tap? ohhh yeaahhh) on Tuesday night and the next morning I went to the National Park .  Needless to say, a few hours of nature was just what the doctor ordered.  Since I´m a little crunched for time at the moment, I´ll  just let the pictures (below) speak for themselves. 

 

Found in Translation

When learning (or teaching) another language, you realize that some words and expressions simply don't translate.  However, I have been surprised several times to find things that translate quite perfectly into Spanish.  Here's what I mean...

Old school : Vieja escuela 

Flea market : Feria de pulgas

Honeymoon : Luna de miel

Curiosity killed the cat: La curiosidad mató al gato

Like a baby's butt : Como potito guagua

Then there are the things that, though not exact translations, make perfect sense.  The literal words used are like hints that help you figure out the translation on your own.  For example, walnuts are known as la nuez mariposa; the butterfly nut.  A crosswalk is a paso de cebra; zebra passing. 

Then you have the para-somethings which means for-well...whatever it's for.  You've got your parabrisas for breeze (windshields), your paracaídas for falls (parachutes) and your parachoques for crashes (bumpers).  I love these super convenient compound words.  My only request is to change the word paraguas (for water) to parallovizna (for drizzle).  Sadly it looks like Snoop Dog jokes are one thing that is still lost in translation.

Los Días Pasan Volando

A big hello to all of you good people who keep up with my little blogski here (I know, it's really difficult since I update soooooo often...)  Here I am again; now with seven months of life in Chile under my belt (can you believe it??).  The last month has seen a few exciting events although, to be honest, nothing too radical has changed (sorry to disappoint).  For one, August brought me back to the beach.  Now I'm back to running and surfing once again which was a bit of a shock to my post-death-bed body al principio.  I'm still readjusting, but luckily I've come a long way from my level of strength and stamina the first week back which was laughable...to say the least.  

August also brought me my first NON-laughable paycheck of the past seven months, whoot whoot.  I've now been working at my "new" job for about a month and a half and I'm still loving it.  I'm really lucky to have such great students and coworkers and I honestly enjoy what I'm doing (much more than I ever enjoyed being threatened and cussed at by teenage boys). Even when I have one of those days when making it to a class seems like a chore, I can push myself by thinking about my students and I'm genuinely motivated to keep chugging along through my (often very long) day.

Being an English teacher has really given me the opportunity to give my mother-tongue a nice hard look and think about things that had never before crossed my mind.  Like what the hell does "got" actually mean?  And why DO we use auxiliary verbs in some questions and not in others?*  Sometimes I feel like my English is actually getting worse, the more I dissect it.  As far as Spanish goes, sometimes it feels like it is improving and some days my brain just doesn't function in either language, let alone both.

There are some words that have been irrevocably changed into Spanish in my brain, so much so that the English translation has left my vocabulary entirely.  Examples include: palta, teraza, salvavida,chauchera, banano & chocopanda.  Side note: thank goodness we've seen less of the latter up here in Nor Chil (Yes, that's short for Northern Chile).

Although my vocabulary is growing (slowly but surely), my grammar still needs a little love and attention which will HOPEFULLY be happening shortly when my boss gets a move on with this whole Spanish class thing at the academy.  I'll keep you posted.

Jeff has been understanding more and more, which is great, although we still agree that he would benefit from a formal class which we plan to get started real soon.  He's still working at the institute where I use to work and seems to be enjoying it for the most part, although he still doesn't feel like a "real teacher".  He's learning more and growing with his teaching style all the time which is pretty cool to see.  However, I do think he misses the whole being threatened and cussed at by teenage boys thing (to each their own I guess).

We are planning to take a trip to Machu Picchu in the beginning of October (before raining season) if we can pull it.  We still haven't solidified anything and (as you've noticed if you've been following along with my blog posts) plans change quite a lot around here.  For now, we're just taking things day by day and enjoying the little things like our little beach-side bike ride today and the delicious homemade pesto that I made (first pesto I've eaten in 7 months, yikes!)  Ok, that's all the news for now.  Un besito, chauuu!  

 

*I would be happy to explain either of those things to you in great detail...for a small fee of course.  Teachers gotta eat.