¡Bienvenida en Chile!

The steamroller of cultural integration has begun – I’m exhausted and have a little headache, but overall culture shock is better the second time around. So far Chile feels quite European, with an agreeable bit of America thrown in. Huges spaces, vibrant cityscapes, more history than Alaska (which isn’t saying much, of course). Clothing seems to be much like Europe, with a few more bold colors. Think classic. Heating and humid winters also hit a euro chord. No one here has a central heating system, so I’m all bundled up in long johns and my little bed heating pad is my best friend (no dogs this time). My hair has exploded according to the humidity, and the fog and sudden sunshine seems to justify the comparisons with San Francisco. Cacti, nasturtiums, and yellow-flowered trees cover the red clay mountains, and both Viña del Mar and Valparaíso are right on the coast. My Spanish is limping along, and my host mom has told me about health care costs and earthquakes without too much miming. My sentences are awfully constructed, but I usually get my meaning across. I think, anyway. Once classes start I hope my Spanish will return and get better. To get more specific: Family: I’m living with a single mother, Gabriela, with 4 children, 2 who are out of the house and 2 who are studying at universities here (there are so many!). Gabriela is very patient and has welcomed me in warmly. She’s been hosting students for about 10 years, and is used to North American problems in Chile. Fernanda is a couple years older than me and is studying oncology. She is quieter than her mom, but is good at guessing the vocab word I’m looking for. Sebastian is 2 years younger than me and ready to start his first year of studies. He’s been more withdrawn and I haven’t seen him all that much, but he doesn’t seem hostile. There is a cat, Matilde, who belongs to Fernanda. There’s another student , a Chilean woman, who lives in the house, as a friend of the family. I’ve only caught a glimpse of her, I think she must be in class or working or something most of the time. Home: I’m in an apartment that overlooks Vina; the view is beautiful at night with all the lights. I love all the warm colors on the walls, and I have an adorable little room all to myself next to the kitchen. I’m upstairs now in the living room, enjoying the relatively tropical temperatures of the second floor (the little portable heater sends most of the heat straight up).

Universidad: Fernanda took me to an orientation session today. For some reason Arcadia thinks that their students only need one day of orientation while everyone else got a week, but since there are only 2 of us we got a lot of face time with the program assistant. First thing: Spanish placement test. My poor little head made it through an hour of estimations and horror of horrors, a small essay portion. I placed into the intermediate level, which is what I was planning on. We had a whirlwind orientation about the staff and security and family; after mandatory AFS camps that last days and days, this seemed so fast. Then we got to make our schedule. Insert new headache. Classes are organized by ‘claves’ or bells and each class is labeled with the bell number rather than the time of day. Turns out that the 3 classes I had singled out for history credit all overlapped, so I picked Latin American gender studies to get a little history credit. Then I have 2 Spanish classes (only one of which I will get credit for), Ecoliterature and Ecocriticism, and finally Contemporary Latin American Film. I have no classes on Friday and only 2 on Monday…but Wednesdays I’ll have 9 hours of class with a 45 minute break for lunch. Ufda. I think I’m going to ask about dance classes and volunteering too. As AFS drilled into us, exchangers must get involved, sometimes even though it seems like too much at the beginning. Our orientation also included a walking tour of a touristy part of Valpo. The sun came out a little and showed off the beautiful bright colors of the wild assortment of buildings. As our assistant explained, Valpo is one of the few cities of South America that was not laid out or founded by the Spanish; thus the roads grew up more or less willy-nilly. Valpo straddles enormous hills, and the famous elevators, or acensores, transport pedestrians up and down the mountainside. We took an acensor up to look over the city and leave the chaos of the port behind. Valpo is rather dirty and smells like fish, but it’s better up on the hill where the tourists are drawn. There’s really cool graffiti everywhere, as well as stray dogs. The dogs are all fat and in good shape, but they don’t really belong to anyone – people just feed them regularly. We admired the view and noted some museums before stopping for coffee. We had cortados and dulces Chilenos (lattes and Chilean sweets, which are a kind of layered biscuit thing with dulce de leche and a brittle, eggy crust). The assistant explained a little of Chilean culture for us, like the fact that Chileans like ‘gringos’ (Australians, Americans, Brits, Canadians) because they have money and dislike other blacks, Asians, Spaniards, and especially other South Americans. In fact, she didn’t even call the gringos immigrants; only the undesirable others were called immigrants. Chile is being marketed as a developed, stable country (and it is), but the high cost of living is about equal to the relatively low average income, so it’s not the place to save money in Latin America. Thus, not many gringos come to live in Chile, and Chilean students will go to the US to work for the summer to earn serious money. Things like housing and food are cheap, things like clothing and electronics are more expensive than the US. After our coffee we headed back down the mountain and went home with our families for lunch. Meals: Lunch is the main meal, while breakfast is how you want it to be. Once, or tea time, is around 4 or 5 pm and is a light snack of some kind before dinner, which is around 8 pm and is also quite light. The food, so far, is good. Lots of bread, nothing too wild yet. They have mayo like the Belgians. :D Belgian-style kissing is also welcome.The radio is also very familiar; songs like Sexy and I Know It that died out months ago in the US are still played, and lots of classics I have in my itunes account have been showing up in the home radio too. Money: I still don’t really get the money, the denominations are all huge and I’m not sure how they translate into dollars yet. I just buy what I need and assume I can afford socks or toothpaste. So that’s the next goal. Besides constructing coherent sentences and meeting up with Mollie!