Money, Metro, Movies

 -Mollie educated me a bit this week and solved the mystery of 'where the heck does my family's income come from?' in one fell blow: the average annual salary here is 18,000 US dollars, and since I am staying here a semester and probably paying about 5 grand for room and board, and there are two students living here (I don't know how much Stephanie pays) that would make 20 grand a year if my family hosts 2 students for 2 semesters each. Not shabby. My socks are blown off by the idea that by cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry for someone (as well as welcoming and fussing a bit like a good mom should) Chileans can make a quite decent living. I imagine this makes the market for obtaining foreign renters rather competitive.

-I realized I have not described the metro here. It's extremely simple, only one line, so thus only two options as to the direction you want to go. The trains arrive every 15 minutes at most (there are more during rush hours) and are very calm, clean, and orderly next to the micros. There are also usually musicians on the metro, and unlike their european counterparts they seem clean, respectful, and decently fed. In the dense areas the metro is underground, but it runs along the beach in the sunshine as well, so you can see the sunset or the sea lions while you zip along.

-Speaking of beaches, I have gone several times since I last wrote. The water is CHILLY ( I'm so punny) but a few people do surf with wetsuits and kids dash out bravely to splash around for a while. There are pelicans as well as gulls. Pelicans are HUGE. I haven't seen one up close yet, but they are impressive even from afar. There's an artesian fair here in Vina on the weekends, we just had time to browse Saturday but Mollie and I intend to return to loot the place. Lots of cheap and cool stuff. There was also sand art that I intend to investigate and photograph. The reason we didn't have time to do all of that was that Mollie had a soccer game. The field is a lot smaller than what GU has, and those ladies are BIG and bloodthirsty. They all may have had little kids watching with dad or grandma on the sidelines, but they were quite serious about the winning thing. It had been a long time since I'd seen a soccer game, so that was fun. And I got to see Mollie play.

In film class we have watched two more films so far: La Cienaga (the Swamp) and Madeinusa. They're both definitely well done, but not necessarily something to watch for fun. But...both super interesting, and I'm getting a better and better taste of Latin America as we go. We are also watching La Nana in my Chilean culture class (again, for me). It seems to be a classic here.