the coriolis effect

Its gotten to the point with the micros, I realized today, that a bus with fifty people in it (approx. forty sitting down) is "empty."

We went to the Teatro Municipal after (the last:-( spanish class today, pretty much everyone, to see Giselle. We were pretty much in nosebleed, but for 3 dollars (and it only appromixated second tier height in the wang). The teatro felt a little worn down- the shape of the old kennedy center concert hall but decor cream and gilt a la the Warner, except less gilt.

Orientation friday, shopping period monday! (but if vacentes disponibles means empty spots, and in the online thing it for some classes it doesn´t seem like many, I don´t know how much of a shopping period it is....) Students from all over, according to the list in the orientation book. the US, but Heidleberg, Vienna, Leeds, King´s College, etc.

THIS WEEK: Colds struck all three of us girls (but not Lewis. Hmm...could his centrally heated apartment have something to do with it? Nevertheless (three cheers for my happening on the pharmacy that sells GNC brand vitamin C tablets!) soldiered on (DRCLAS warmer than my house anyway) and in the afternoon of class Anibal took us to Los Dominicos, an cluster of artisan´s shops in LAs Condes
Today, bus adventures and more bus adventures: In the morning Andryka and I swallowed our 300 pesos (like, 40 cents) and 2 buses to DRCLAS instead of walking 20 minutes the last leg and sprinting across a traffic circle. Whereupon I nearly did swallow an 100 peso coin- the bus was crammed full and when we got on I couldn´t get farther than the top step by the (still open) door. While holding on with one hand I fished in my pocket for my 100 pesos. After nearly getting pushed out when the driver tried to close the door (which I was sort of leaning against for leverage) I couldn´t think of any other place besides between my teeth (I know I know- but it was a life or death moment!) to hold the coin while I tried to open my bag, get more money out, and continue holding on (the door was open again at this point).
On the way home, we were at least securely NOT right near the door (though I was too squashed against the other side to see, I think someone was literally hanging off the side for a couple stops), though no less squashed. The micro is a great equalizer, though: I was crushed up next to a Very Scary business man type. Slicked back hair, black leather gloves, double breasted jacket, almost aqualine yet slightly hooked nose- so totally the spirit of Al Pacino via the facade of Keanu Reeves in The Devils Advocate (or something like that, I never saw the whole movie)

Despite all this, micros are funny places. Normally people enter and pay the driver in the front and sometimes then sprint to the back (via the street) if there is more space. But today someone got on in the back of the also jampacked micro, and up the length of the bus came his three coins, which were dutifully handed to the driver. Then down the length of the bus came his ticket (a ticket for every rider, every time every day, is a lot of tickets. a LOT of little tiny pieces of paper). Lewis said he´s seen this to. Manuela says its evidence of a super ego, or a big brother thing. Its pretty impressive, considering the generally feeling of chaos on them.

SATURDAY: all 4 study abroad people, and the harvard med students who are here also, piled into vans and drove to isla negra. In the morning, the "heat" in our van actually made things colder, but by the time we got to the coast it was ok...Isla Negra isn´t an island, but one of Pablo Neruda´s houses. Its crammed full of things, from mastheads, to masks, to a little room full of french glass bottles. Unlike El Sebastiana, though, the Fundacion Neruda has turned Isla Negra into more of a museum museum. After staring at the huge Pacific waves for a bit, we drove to Pomaire to eat "traditional Chilean food"- I barely made a dent in my huge Pastel con Choclo. Pomaire is teensy but full of ceramics storefronts- and every one sells piggy banks! They´re good luck, apparently. I ended up with a flowerpot and a tiny pig, paying a grand 30 cents for the both.

That night everyone gathered in downtown Santiago and we hit (or tapped gently) the nightlife in Bellavista. Started off at the Crazy Bar on Pio Nono street, than wandered in search of a club. After a failed attempt to find the elusive (and segun Let´s Go, oh so exclusive) Tantra, which I think has morphed into the Cafe Teatro, we headed towards the faux Grecian columns of Delphos. (hey, girls free). While wriggling around to bad latin-something and almost-techno for awhile (and watching two of the med students, who made a gorgeous and yet oh so PG couple), we watched the barely adolescent boys preening on top of the platforms (or whatever they´re called) and watched out for random Chileans hunting for prey from the side (Andryka: "I´ve never seen so many hungry eyes in my life"). Our numbers diminished til it was 4 SA people and one med student. We were rewarded around three in the morning when, de repente, it became the 80s. And then the 70s, and then the 60s- the Doors was as early as it went, but for the next 45 minutes we relived our youths. Katrina and the Waves, Grease, Run-DMC´s Walk This Way, Kriss-Kross, Cypress Hill. After Eminem, though, they swtiched modes to merengue. We recommenced awkward shuffling, then just stopped and watched a swirling couple next to us. I think I was the last to notice, but pretty soon we were surrounded by swirling couples on all sides (Chris the Harvard Med Student: "I have never felt this inadequate in my life"). After a random guy took pity on the three girls in turn and spun us around a few times, we all slipped (slunk) off the dance floor. But at 4 in the morning, Bellavista seemed livelier than Cambridge at 9 PM.

After watching La historia oficial in the morning, us program kids hopped a bus to Barrio Bellavista. We lunched on empanadas and then took the funicular up Cerro San Cristobal and looked out over a city that receded back into the smog. Unfortunately, the way Santiago is oriented it seems tricky to casually get sunset over the Andes photos. Andryka and I took the metro "home", which made me very happy for the 10 minutes we were in the metro and a little more anxious for the 40 minutes it took to walk from the nearest station home, in the dark. Maybe when the sun doesn´t set at 5:30 it´ll be my exercise!

and get this Pink Floyd light/music show at the Santiago Planetarium. So Freaks and Geeks. Paula´s cousin actually mentioned it to me, hope I can find someone to go with!

Ack, just lost todays post.............tour of Santiago's barrios of sorts. We started in Maipu, a middle lower class area, then passed through La Victoria. Victoria was settled by squatters in the 70s and is now extremely well organized. We went to the house of a french priest who was shot in 1984, accidentally by police, while he was reading in his second floor study. The house isn't really a museum- its inhabited by another french priest who was in Santiago at the time, and there were some guests of his milling around- but the room is preserved. From there we passed through Santiago Central and Picked up Manuela, the fourth, and then went to the other side of the city and Parque de la Paz. It was the torture center Villa Grimaldi during the regime, and though only one of the original buildings remains, where the DINA falsified documents, there are plaques explaining what took place in each of the buildings, whose foundations remained. Drove on through Lo Barnechea, and la Reina, two of the more exclusive residential areas, to houses nestled in the foothills of the Andes. Though we didn´t hit extremes, we covered a lot of ground in the middle.

A copete filled day;-) In the morning Anibal (the study abroad coordinator) took us trooping around to register our visas and apply for ID cards (Arch has it easy- this is getting expensive!) There is definitely something strange about listening to Janis Joplin in the office while a government official is processing the app. We lunched at the Mercado Central, at Donde Augusto; to accompany our seafood "casseroles" Anibal ordered up four Pisco Sours. Back at DRCLAS, we met up with the Harvard Med students. One of them gave his oral presentation (which we´ll all have), on pisco, for which he provided samples bought in the Valle de Elqui. To top that off, the med students surprised Pilo (the Spanish teacher) and the others staffers with onces...so the table was covered with food, pisco, and a few bottles of wine. And there was a women filming the med students and interviewing them, though I don´t kow for what. Harvard sponsored alcohol consumption- not so unlike Yale, after all.

Lewis, Andryka and I stopped in a mall downtown afterwards, which had a nice city vibe to it. And after getting turned around again this morning, I didn´t get lost walking home from the bus! AND we got the bus to where we were going this morning (not DRCLAS, so not so much walking) without even asking the driver. Yahoo!
In other news, last night I found myself singing Shania Twain´s "You´re Still the One", quietly, shakily (I was freezing) and extremely, painfully, flatly, to my host dad´s and his friend´s (they have a band) guiter accompaniment. Not my idea. Definitely ruined my rep as a "musician." Asi es. But the whole music thing is pretty funny. On the radio its ALL english music- last night I heard something of the Flaming Lips (right about the time guiter friend´s son Carlos- I accompanied him to pick up Paula- asked me, in english if I liked to smoke up. Which itself is steadily creeping up the list of most asked questions. ) My liking Pink Floyd has been a big plus, although the name Billy Joel elicited some blank stares. Maybe I´ve found my mission! ç
Lest all seem like fun and games...I´m off to write an essay now...

After a week, I guess a frustrating day was due. I got lost BOTH WAYS walking from the bus stop today, WITH A DETAILED MAP. Its like, 4 blocks (the right way). If you tried to find Greenwich Village with me, maybe this isn´t surprising, but I swear, I´ve been here a week and my direction has never been this bad before. I can do Ireland´s back roads, I did NoVA without a real map...for most of the day I conflated my hopelessly lost feeling with my lack of access to Metro/car. But then I thought- I´ve never ever been to the Southern Hemisphere before, eh? The feng shui is different, and microbes need to adjust, so I can be justifiably disoriented too. I suppose its debatable. But I feel like I´m in an urban Wonderland in the meantime.
Right. So Andryka and I took the bus, which brought us in the general area of DRCLAS- and we had to walk some and sprint across 6 lanes of traffic to get there. Definitely took the taxi back (it was dark anyway) and my goodness I miss the metro. Even the T. Even, almost the green line. Almost.
One more frustration of the day. How come studying gov means an internship at the CEPAL, and studying history, cultural 20th century, garners suggestions of the Museo Precolumbino and "working with children?". Anyone know any Santiago organizations a bit closer to the mark?

There seems to be some weirdness with the keyboard. Its made for Spanish...it took me a while to figure out how to access the @ key. So all those funky Ñ and ´´? I absolve myself of responsibility. But will try to fix occasionally.

Yesterday, I saw Proof at the Universidad Catolica (yes, in Spanish...but I almost understood...) with Scott and two of his friends. Speedwalking to meet his friends, Scott stopped, whipped out his camera, and seemingly took a photo of the Ekono sign and car lot. I asked, and he said, of the mountains....sure enough, behind us, floating above the smog, were the tops of the Andes (but the air hasn´t yet been this clear, so it was easy to forget I could look that high up and see land). And today- the first day of class (Gloat, gloat, I get January off...or at least, its what I tell myself) at the Rockefeller Center, with Lewis and Andryka. No more cheating and speaking in English. Its in the same building as the FLACSO, next to CEPAL and other UN buildings, which is sort of intimidating and pretty darn far from happy little NuNoa (micro - bus- here I come- thank goodness Andryka leaves nearby, strength in numbers and all that). After a morning of Spanish we took the micro and the metro (of the ones I´ve seen, very like Washington´s; it was built in the seventies, the ceilings are high- yet there aren´t infinitely long escalators- and since no food or drink is allowed its extremely clean. And doesn´t stop near my house. ), and walked through La Moneda´s two pretty courtyards, with sculptures, cannons, a fountain, and orange trees. I thought back to the before and after photos I´d seen in Chile: From Within, and here again was the balcony in one piece. And only a bag check to stroll through an entry door two floors directly below the president.

So, Saturday....Camilo B. (from Harvard) and I hopped up to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar. 8 dollars for round trip bus. In Valpo hit the cerros- there are all these hills, and tiny (ancient) ascensores that can bring you up and down them. But in the process of finding the Ascensor Espiritu Santo climbed Cerro Bellavista, through a series of outdoor murals and in the company of a perky stray. We walked through La Sebastiana, one of the houses of Pablo Neruda, at the top, then took the ascensor down (with a sudden jolt at the beginning). Then did the same thing- climbed Cerro Conception while looking for the ascensor to bring us up, all the while wondering at the effort it took to reach the "bottom". We took a tour of the bay, complete with sea lions and tons of military ships (take photos of which will get you arrested). Merval train to Viña, mildly tempted by the fact I could order wine in the Italian restaurant, wandered through the park Quinta Vergara, and its museum. Valpo itself sort of blocked the sunset, the edges of whidh were pretty....
Back in Santiago used up a phone card trying to figure out how to get to the birthday (carrete= party) where Paula was (I still owe you!!!!!), and ended up with directions through streets that might or might not exist, given my hasty phonetic spellings. We´d thought of walking, but since we didn´t see it on the map....the cab driver didn´t know either, at first. Drove and drove and drove and drove, until we got to a pretty unlit neighborhood, where we couldn´t even find the house number (which, given how badly I´d mangled the street names, seemed pretty wrong). After all three (me, C, cabbie) walking up and down a bit, finally found it....a grand carrete indeed, with hotdogs, copete, salsa (two left feet), merengue (yay! a left foot and a half) and someone whispering to me (in english at least) two feet from the videotaping father, do you want to smokeweed? (its pretty much one word here).
And most interesting, was two others talking with Camilo about life under Pinochet, very passionately. I only could give an ear, unfortunately. At one point the girl recounted the story of a Canadian killed by the military, I think referring to the events of July 2, 1986.
At the same time, there are people very pro- Pinochet. The same it is, everywhere, I suppose.
On a different note, leaving the party in the middle of the night, the fog was incredible. It covered everything.

And apparently I slept through or completely didn´t notice an earthquake thursday night. Their dog Kaiser )Scott: what does the dog think of Hitler?) who is a big beautiful and sort of scary German Shepherd, was acting wonky all day. He kept on trying to get inside (he´s very much an outdoor dog) and then curling up in the bedroom, and later, when outside again, actually repeatedly opened the kitchen window with his nose trying to get inside. The next day, Paula asked her parents if they´d felt the earthquake. Which they had...she said it was around 3 (when I was still up) but Scott said it was 6ish (you slept throught he earthquake too?).

Two out of the blue (or my concept of the blue) questions friday. One, at Paula´s cousin´s house, the oh, you study history discussion, into have you studied Chile´s history. Me: Well, I did a little research into the relationship between Carter, Reagan and Pinochet. Cousin´s roomateÑ something something, Nixon, coup..then, Are you proud of the coup?
I thought he must mean, that was I proud I knew enough history to know about it, because well....yeah. Of COURSE I´m not proud of it.
When I returned to the house, some relations of the family were there, and a woman asks me what I studied . Me:history. HerL So what do you think of Hitler?
I had no IDEA what to say. It occured, given the reasons people give for support of Pinochet, that the German economy´s emergence from crazy depression might have been an appropriate supportive comment. except NOT AT ALL.....and that certainly didn´t even occur at the time. So I just mumbled something about not studying him and left it at that. It wasn´t clear what her opinion was.

So the thing with the weather is, doors open all over the place. They just layer and bear it...Paula and I went to her friend´s house last night, and the door to the patio was wide open the whole time. Coats inside and out. I attempted to salsa with the friend´s brother, though Harvard Ballroom style it was not. Later on, met up with some other people. Everyone asks me how I imagined Chile (I didn´t really have an image) and how I found it. One guy asked me if I´d heard of it before I planned to come, and was pleasantly surprised that DRCLAS had its office here, and not elsewhere in S.A., because Chile was so well-regarded. Someone else added that the Chileans were self-deprecating, unlike the Argentinians. And the U.S. came up peripherally...the guy who spoke the most english (not much) commented that the U.S. government was [something obscene] but the people were ingenuous\inocente. ç
Today, Juan said, sort of out the blue, that he was apolitical, and thought that el arte puro, should be without borders- apolitical too. Patricia replied that most artists were associated with the socialism and the left, but she knew Juan wasn´t. At the same time, Paula has said herself that they aren´t a typical Chilean family, because they are artist\musician types. Which makes me wonder back to the only period of Chilean history I know at all, and how much they were affected during the Pinochet era. But considering I have no idea still where exactly I am in relation to the city (the maps don´t have my street on them!) I´ll save history for later later. ç
so cold. SO COLD. My princeton tiger gives me desolate looks when I come in the uheated room.

My hands are SO COLD. I wish I had brought flannel pajamas....though there are handy dandy little gas heater things, we can´t have them turned on at night, which made for a frigid morning. DRCLAS thing last night, ran into other harvard undergrads, which made the fact I was WAY far from home feel absurdly natural.
In other news, Paula´s birthday is March 2, the same as my grandfather´s and Ilana´s. Yay Pisces. ç
As for the city, I think the relatively few people on the street would seem more natural if I could convince myself this was a real winter. I´ve never purposefully traveled somewhere colder before, I don´t think, ever.

Preliminary cast of characters:
my homestay family
Juan, artista, "tranquila, agradable"
Patricia, "persona con facilidad para adaptarse a las personas"
Paula, 20, "alegre y amistosa"
Sebastian, 22, "amistoso"
Francisco, 29, cineasta en Francia
Scott R.: My intrepid traveling companion for the flight down
Lewis, Andryka, Manuela: the other DRCLAS students
the rest remain in the wings

which leaves, at this juncture, a nagging question: if the vacuum sealed bag all my clothes are in becomes un-ziplocked during flight, will my suitcase burst open? Short of that, thank heavens for vacuum pack bags! Though something that threw all that weight very much elsewhere, a la Glory Road, would be nice too.

Right then. Overly ambitious web attempt number 4 commences.
I just reconfirmed my flight to Santiago de Chile for next week. DRCLAS, semester abroad.
To Do: Not fail classes, see a lot of the Southern Cone, find a passion or barring that, a thesis topic. Learn how to dance.
To Not Do: Get swept off my feet by a dashing Chilean boy, drop out of college and get engaged (not in the cards, Booker T;) .