September

Well I've been pretty good about updating my blog, expect for the last few weeks. A lot has been happening, and I've been trying to plan out my future, or at least my next year, or couple months. September 16th, I went to see Medeski Martin & Wood. The show was good, but not fantastic. It was great to see a jazz/funk band from the US in the Chilean environment. Normally at their shows you have the hippy/dancing crowd, but September 16th the norm was sport coats for men, and dress pants/skirts for women. I actually heard someone "shhhhhh" someone else. Definitely a cultural experience.

Then the parties of Chile began. The fiestas patrias are what drive Chileans to live. It is a combination of Thanksgiving, Spring Break, Christmas, the State Fair, and July 4th. This year September 18, their Independence Day, and September 19th, their milatary day happened to fall on Thursday and Friday, so the party got started on Wednesday night. Many schools were closed all week and people left Santiago on the Sunday before. I say it is like our holidays for these reasons
Thanksgiving: It is centered around eating. We had bbq's every day, and ate empanadas every day.
Spring Break: It is getting nice down here so people are antsy to get outside, and the beach towns are flooded with vacationers.
Christmas: We put up decorations, banners, flags, and people just had a general giddiness about them that reminded me of the last day of school before Christmas Vacations. I saw students running up and down the hallway giggling gleefully on the Tuesday before "the parties"
The State Fair: All around Santiago and the country there are huge "Fondas" which are basically huge fairs with games, live music, tons of food and drinks, dance tents and a fair like atmosphere.
July 4th: The whole country shows their patriotism during the entire month of September. In the grocery stores, in the little corner shops, in the pharmacy, there are decorations, banners, flags, and national colors hanging proudly. In the major grocery stores there is Traditional Chilean music playing non-stop. Now I thought people may get sick of these songs, but every time I went in, I'd see fathers singing to their children, couples happily reciting the lyrics and generally loving the music.
I didn't leave Santiago for the vacation but instead hung out with my "family" down here and enjoyed hanging out with them.


(Carne galore. Meat, meat and more meat. I think I ate more meat that week than I had in the previous couple months.)


(The cueca, the traditional dance that is performed during this week, but otherwise sort of forgotten about. There was a show on the street outside my apartment in front of the Municipality Building)


(Military parade outside our apartment. They really take their armed forces seriously down here. The parade started in the center of the city and lasted about 3 hours. Then each section of the military marched back through their communities.)


(José-Tomás continues to entertain me, or I entertain him. I'm not sure, but it is fun to have him around the house. He always walking into my room and trys to pull down everything from my desk and investigate.)


(Teaching Angie how to make cinnamon rolls. My "family" is obsessed with the rolls. They think I should sell them outside of Starbucks for $2 a roll. They swear I'd make a ton of money)

José-Tomás and Me

(Via my computer camera)

La Roja

(Craziness for their national anthem)


(The crew, with the funny man in the background, who demanded to see his photo after. It made me feel comfortable that I wouldn't get stabbed during the game, which is a legit fear.


(The opening minute, kick-off, face-off, first pitch, or whatever you call it. The beginning of the game)


(Token cute kid picture. José-Tomás with Angie)

So much for Roll out the Red Carpet

Let's see this last weekend was spent at home. Sometimes you need a relaxing weekend en la casa. Friday night we had a dinner party. We sat down for dinner at 11:30, and cleared the table around 12:30-1:00am. Then we had some drinks and called it a night at a reasonable 4:00am.

(Rodrigo and Elizabeth with the spread of meats we cooked up Friday night. Notice the clock on the wall. They call me Bencito, which is kind of a joke. Bencito is like saying, Benny or Benny-boo-boo. It's a term of affection. And Oliver wrote it on my food cupboard.)
Saturday was spent playing with José Tomás and then we had some completos and a rocket for dinner. Completos are glorified hot dogs with avocados, tomatoes, red onion, and ketchup(mayo if your Chilean). In essence, they are high blood pressure, sodium, and fat content on a plate. They're good about once every other month. Any more than that and you get burned out.

(Completos and a rocket for dinner, what a classy combination)

Sunday was the big day for the Brasil/Chile soccer match. Brasil is the equivalent of the USA's Dream Team. Watching the players warm up was amazing. When they warmed up I was able to see just how talented each player was. Juan Pablo, Stefenia and I arrived to the crowded stadium 2.5 hours early and we struggled to find a place to sit. By then the Chile/Paraguay woman's game had started and we watched that. The whole time the crowd would spontaneously erupt into songs and chants. One of them roughly translates to, "If you don't jump around for Chile, then you're a bum from Brasil." Then when the Brasil players were announced the entire 80,000 people in attendance would shout, "Screw you." Once again, I am roughly translating the phrase into PG terms. It was quite funny. Then the game started and everyone was focused on the game. We came out and seemed to have control for the first 15 minutes, but then the athleticism, skill, and strength of Brasil outmatched Chile. After the game, the fans for Brasil had to wait about 20 minutes before they were allowed to exit. I guess it's a common practice to make the away fans wait before they exit for their safety(I don't think Michigan had it that bad). Nonetheless it was fun, and I'm heading back to the stadium in two days for the Chile/Columbia game.


(This was taken 2 and a half hours before the game started, it's a little different from our late arriving students in Madison)
(The Huaso Peregrino leading the cheers in the stadium before the game. This guy goes to every game, home or away to lead this cheer.

Cheee!
Laay!
Chi chi chi, lay, lay lay. Viva Chile!!!)

I signed up to run a 10k in Viña del Mar October 5th. That should make me stay motivated to run around Santiago.

Hiking around

Teaching is still going well, after I realized that there is only so much I can do to help students learn three weeks of material in one class. I had students who showed up for two or the six classes and well, big surprise, they did terrible on the first quiz. We'll see how my intermediate students fare tomorrow during their first quiz.
Last weekend I headed to Viña del Mar for some hiking at La Campana. It's located roughly between Viña and Santiago and provided us with a healthy challenge as we attempted to summit the peak. Unfortunately it took us longer than expected to navigate taxis, buses, subway, and then another bus, so we had to stop about 2 hours short of the top. But we plan to head back in a couple weeks and do some camping at the bottom so we can head up first thing in the morning. Of course we celebrated with a big bbq Saturday night and had a great time enjoying the food and drinks.

(The hiking crew, senior picture pose)


(This was taken during what may very well been the end of third quarter in Madison for "Jump Around"

(Christmas card 2009)
In domestic news, Angie and José-Tomás moved into the apartment so we now have a 1 year and 3 month year old in the house providing entertainment at all hours of the day. It's really fun. Angie is Oliver's(my "brother") girlfriend, and José-Tomás is their son.
This Sunday I'll be going to the Chile-Brasil soccer match which should be wild. This is a World Cup qualifying game. I know that doesn't mean much to most American's, but in the rest of the world, it's a huge deal. The tickets have been sold out for a couple weeks now, and only about 2,000 $300 tickets are left. The game starts at 9:00 pm as well, which will make it even crazier. Normally the big soccer matches are in the early afternoon to avoid problems with drinking and partying(think Badger football games) but they scheduled this game for late because historically Brasil is not as comfortable playing in cooler temperatures. Talk about home field advantage.
The flowers are out lining the streets, and everyone is getting super excited for the September 18th celebrations. Since day one, I've been told about how amazing that week is, so I'm joining the rest of Chile in building up excitement.


(The clearest I've seen Santiago in six months. This is after a day of rain. August 28th at 8:30am. By 2:00pm the smog was back)