Potpourri #9

One of my favorite things about learning Chilean Spanish is every so often you come across crazy phrases or expressions that give me a good laugh.  For example, here "Devil's advocate" is "abogado del diablo", or "Devil's lawyer".  Another one is for a stingy/"tightfisted" person, you say they have "la mano de guagua", or "a baby's hand".

But I've found a new favorite phrase that takes the cake for me.  I was walking along the street with some friends the other day, and the person who was talking wasn't paying attention to where they were going, and they stepped in dog crap.  Upon noticing this, my buddy starts laughing heartily, points at him, and says "casaste con la reina, weon!"

I have no idea how you get "you married the queen!" from stepping in dog crap.  Only in Chile.

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The grandmother of my buddy Marco passed away this past week, and so I went to my first (and hopefully only) Chilean funeral last Tuesday.  It was a Catholic ceremony, and for the most part quite similar to the few ceremonies I've attended in the US.  Also, the priest spoke very clearly and slowly, so I was happily able to understand the majority of what he said to the congregation.

Afterwards, we went to the general cemetery in Chile to lay her to rest.  It was interesting compared to the US cemeteries, as this one was much more of a concrete jungle.  There was practically no grass inside the entire compound.  I didn't take any pictures personally (poor taste in any country), but here are a few shots pulled from the internet:

Of course, just because I was respectful doesn't mean everybody else was.  There were street vendors selling flowers, cigarettes, and cookies and water throughout the cemetary, which seemed a bit out of place.  Also, one of the uncles made a joke as we were leaving - we walked by a plastic trash dumpster, and he told me that was a "Peruvian mausoleum".  (Peru is the Mexico to Chile's USA)

It was a pretty interesting cemetery though, all the erect structures inside were unique.  Also, there is one Mausoleum inside that was about 10 stories taller than all the rest (for firefighters only).  I wanted to take a different path out of the cemetery, but Felipe told me it was bad luck to leave a cemetery by a different route.  Best not to anger any karma gods.

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At this point, teaching has lost just about all of its novelty.  Sure, I still have to figure things out as I go along, and there are occasionally those "OH!" moments where students make breakthroughs, but for the most part it's 90 minutes of guided struggle through workbook exercises, and I hammer a paycheck at the end of the month.  But every so often, I find little moments of great joy that help to get me through weeks of teaching with a little smile on my face.

Last week, I sat in on a board exam with a fellow teacher, evaluating a higher-level group of students.  (Side note:  after 8 semesters of classes, it's blatantly obvious which students have been doing their homework, studying on their own, and practicing when they can, and which students have been copying, cheating, and coasting their way through classes.  So we can always look forward to a large range of students in these exams.)  The teacher who I was giving the board with was one of the many Chileans who I suspect is gay, but my lack of cultural calibration throws me off. 

Before we started the exam, we made small talk about Chilean authors we liked, and other things of the sort.  I said my favorite author was Pablo Neruda (total poser answer, it's like saying your favorite music group is the Beatles).  He smiled, and then gushed for a good 5 minutes about a Chilean author named "Isabel Allende", and how she was the new pride of Chile, and her work was so cutting edge, and popular, and was really advancing the culture of the Chilean people.  It was one of those conversations where he clearly felt that he was on the vanguard of culture, and it was people like him spreading the word of worthy artists to simpletons like me that advanced the human race.  Normally I am very open to checking out new musicians/authors/artists, but our chat reeked of self-importance and condescension.  I applied a stock smile to my face and said "She sounds very good, I'll have to look into her." He smiled, and then we began the exams.

The first two students were pretty forgettable - decent vocabulary, but Spanish grammar structures still lingered in their dialect.  The 3rd student who came in was a very bubbly, energetic girl who clearly had been doing her homework for the past 8 semesters.  She used great vocab words like "manifestation" and "imperatives", and save for a few grammatical gaffes, she spoke nearly flawlessly.  My partner, clearly impressed, started probing her about her thoughts on the future of Chile, especially with respect to culture.  She answered very clearly, and always with a smile on her face.  Then he asked her what she thought about popular literature.  And this is how she replied:

"I believe there are many good authors from Chile today, but there are many bad ones too.  For example, Isabel Allende is a horrible representation of Chile.  Her books are simple and uninteresting, and it is very clear to me that she is influenced by many corporate interests in her stories.  She appeals to the lowest group, and that is how she sells books."

I snuck a sideways look at my fellow teacher.  His face had turned beet red, the faint remains of an old smile forcibly retained on his face.  He had puffed his chest out just a little bit, like a pigeon about to get into a pecking battle with an adversary.  His hands were clenched under the table, out of the pupil's view.  But there was nothing he could do - her English was immaculate, and we were not grading her on opinions.  I restrained my mouth from forming a smile, but every other part of my body exuded pure satisfaction, I was a little child who just got everything he wanted for Christmas.

After she stepped out of the room, we gave her the quickest and quietest "95" of any student by far, and equally quickly moved on to student #4.

Watching the Super Bowl

I watched the Latin America broadcast of the Super Bowl on Sunday.  It was entertaining, but mostly for reasons outside of the actual game.

To start, there were 3 announcers in the booth, and they all wore the same outfit - black suit, white shirt, diagonal striped red tie.  The clothes were identical, down to the distance between the gray pinstripes in the black suitcoats, and shades of red in the tie.  Watching this, I pictured some insane latina fashion advisor to the network demanding this outfit, and all of the men uncomfortably going along.  And thanks to her, they looked like three middle-aged children who had to get dressed according to their mother's wishes before the yearly Christmas card photo.

Also, the camera was panned a little too far back in the booth, and we could see that one of the commentators was clearly much, much shorter than the rest of them (his seat was raised up a couple inches higher than the other 2).  I will forever think of him as Latino Mike Tirico.

The pregame consisted mostly of highlights of the 2008 Super Bowl where the Pats and Giants...er rather, the "Patriotas y Gigantes" met before, and the Gigantes ruined the Patriotas perfect 19-0 season.  I turned up the volume on my TV set during this part, expecting to hear the announcers drop some names of players who were still there from this game, or at least some sort of hacky soccer-esque analysis.  However, once the volume was up high enough, I realized they were explaining the RULES of the game to the viewers #facepalm.

The game started, and it immediately became clear that the Latin American broadcast version was merely a formally pirated version of the American broadcast.  Every time a play would end, we would be treated to about 0.5 seconds of a replay or player bio before the cameras cut away to the latin american announcers, or a shoddily produced segment of their own.  At one point there was a "12 men on the field" call against the patriots, and the cameras went from a high-def picture of the field of play to a much lower-def picture, and Latino Mike Tirico quickly counted to 12 before moving on.  Great analysis, LMT.

I've never been a huge fan of the commercials at the Super Bowl - a good commercial is still just a subversive message to buy Doritos or Bud Light.  However, after I watched the same Spanish commercial for the Euro soccer league superfan TV package, I was dying for any sort of semi-intelligent 30 second spot.  It was a sad statement on how few people must watch this game in South America - that Euro league TV broadcast company clearly got a "buy 1, get 30 spots free" deal from Fox Sports LA.

Truthfully, I found the game itself to be quite exciting.  I thought both sides played exceptionally hard, and that the Giants were just a little bigger and tougher than the Patriots.  Their WRs were able to separate from the Patriots CBs well, and aside from a few hard Patriot hits, they dominated the field of play.  Manningham had a great catch for the Giants in the 4th quarter that reminded me of his Michigan years.

After the game, the Latin American crew on the field had the cameras on them the majority of the time, and it was high comedy to me watching them run around trying to get interviews.  Obviously, the big networks in the US garnered all the high-profile stars of the night's game, but the Latin American crews were just looking for anybody who spoke Spanish.  They found one on the Giants, Victor Cruz, but he had too big of a game to speak with them for more than 30 seconds.  They also found Justin Tuck, but he brushed them off within 10 seconds by saying "I need to find my daddy."  Their biggest get of the night was the white D-lineman from the Giants who intercepted Tom Brady in the first half.  He talked about his family and Jesus for a while, completely ignoring the questions from the reporter.  Clearly he was just happy to have a camera on him.

Also, did you see the halftime show?

Ridiculous.  Almost as ridiculous as the show I was treated to for the other 4 hours.

Potpourri #8

A friend of my dad came through town in mid January with a tour group that was going through Peru, Chile, and Argentina.  (Their trip is over now, but you can see their exploits at http://oursouthamericantrip.blogspot.com)  I met up with them for a really nice dinner in a high-class section of Providencia.  It was a lot of fun seeing a group of Americans like that, and getting a good meal out of it was icing on the cake.

For the first time in 6 months, I felt short and brown-haired once again.

Anyway, from the dinner he gave me a remote-controlled helicopter.  My dad's been raving about them since Christmastime, so I was excited to get this one up and running.  The next day, I went to my local pharmacy to pick up some batteries for the helicopter.  After walking into the store though, I realized I had no idea what the Spanish word for "battery" is.  Oh well, I thought.  I'll wing it.

I walked up to the counter and noticed a couple different boxes of Duracell batteries behind the pharmacist.  One box had 4 double-As, and one box had 2.  "Disculpe," I started, "dame 2 cajas de Duracell".  The lady behind the counter gave me a timid grin (odd, I thought), and asked me if I wanted a box of 6, or of 3.  I furrowed my brow, clearly seeing boxes of 2 and 4 behind her.  "No, please, I'd like a box of 4, and of 2".
"That's not possible," she replied. "6 or 3?"  Mildly annoyed at this point, I asked for a box of 6. 

She nodded, and then reached under the counter and handed me a six-pack of Durex condoms.

"No, Duracells!"  I responded with a laugh, pointing to the packages behind her head on the wall.  She turned around, and her cheeks flushed ever so slightly.
"Pilas."  She said to me, as she grabbed one box of 4, and one of 2 off the wall rack.
"Gracias.  Pilas."  I smiled, and quickly exited the store.

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My morning classes with teenagers just ended last Thursday.  It was a fun class to teach, but it galvanized my belief that I never want to teach in a traditional school.  With the exception of a few girls who actually wanted to learn, most of them had the attention span of butterflies.  I had a couple kids skateboard inside the classroom, and if I ever left the whiteboard marker out while assisting students, I would turn around to find pictures of ducks smoking joints.

I came back from break on the last day to find a page from one of their notebooks which just said "Teacher te amo teacher rico me encanta teacher..." etc etc over and over again.  It was pretty adorable, but I didn't feel comfortable taking a picture of it.  Best to leave that sort of potentially indicting evidence undocumented.

Top row: Camila, Matias, Tamara, Valentina, Carla, Valentina, Joaquin, Cristobal, Catherine, Alejandro, Valentina, Oriana.  Bottom row: Kenji, me, Panchito, Samir

Surfing in the Pacific

I spent this past weekend with my buddies Felipe and Wasi out on the coast.  There's a string of cities along the coast just outside Santiago that are very popular during the summer months.  Everybody wants to get out of the heat created by the walls of mountains encircling Santiago, and the cities of San Sebastian, Isla Negra, Algarrobo, Vina del Mar, Valparaiso, and others are right on the Pacific Ocean about 30 mins away; the perfect weekend escape.

The high point of the weekend were the surfing lessons that Felipe and I took.  A friend gave us the name of a local who informally taught surf lessons out of a little lagoon close to Isla Negra.  We set up an appointment for Friday evening, and made the trek out to the coast.

Following the directions the instructor gave us, we turned off the main highway into a little residential neighborhood.  The roads twisted and turned around in such a way that it was extremely difficult to tell if we were still on the correct road (one of the annoying things about driving in Chile - the streets are practically never labeled) or not.  We flagged down a couple families walking along the sidewalks and asked if they knew where our beach was located.  Every one of them looked at the rest of the people in their group, and gave us a shrugging "no".  It was not the most reassuring of responses.

After bobbing and weaving through the streets in our truck, we finally reached the dead end described to us by the instructor.  It was a small extension on a dirt road with an end railing made out of large debarked tree sections.  We parked, and walked through the pine forest in front of us.  Upon coming out the other side, we found ourselves atop a steep cliff, overlooking a large touristy beach on our right, and our surfing lagoon directly in front of us.

This was the lagoon in which we'd be surfing.  The two sides acted as a funnel for waves that came in, and amplified them enough to surf even on calmer days (like the one we were there for).  After walking down to the shore, we met our surf instructor, Gabriel.  He'd been surfing for 15 years, and had all the mannerisms and attitude one would expect of a surf instructor.  It never ceases to amaze me how certain activities translate themselves to certain personalities, regardless of language, culture, or location.

We started with some basic stretching.  The pictures will do a better job of explaining the stretches than I could.

As you can see, the stretches Gabriel had us do ranged from the mildly useful to the clinically insane.  Doggy paddling on dry land isn't exactly how I'd plan to warm up for surfing.  After getting through our retarded gauntlet, Gabriel decided it was time for us to get out into the ocean.  We strapped into the boards, and headed into the lagoon.

Sadly there aren't any good pictures of us up on the boards (that's a 16 year old kid whose out there every day swimming.  I was able to stand a couple times, but it was too short-lived and not really glamorous enough to have any pictures taken.  Despite that, it was magnificent being out on the ocean.  The lagoon was beautiful, and every so often a flock of sea birds would fly overhead.  We would know when a wave was worth surfing, as it built itself up at the mouth of the lagoon, and slowly roll into the shore building steam.  It felt like slowly ascending the first hill the front car of a roller coaster, until the ride was finally upon you.  At this point, it's safe to say I've been bit by the bug.  I look forward to my next trip out.

As we were leaving, the sun was setting over the lagoon.  A fitting ending to such a day.

Dunkin Donuts in Chile

I've recently started teaching English to a CEO of a local university.  Classes are held at her house in Los Dominicos, an upscale neighborhood in Western Santiago.  She's a total Spanish type-A personality, always interrupting and interjecting her ideas when I'm trying to explain a rule or a concept.  We've had about 6 classes now, and I have yet to reach a verbal period on any sentence.

However, hanging out in the upscale part of town does have its benefits.  As I was wandering back to the bus stop one day, look what I found!

One of the funny things about living in a foreign country is you get excited about seeing common super-chain restaurants from the US.  And one of the funny things about seeing Dunkin Donuts down here was what was on the menu.  Or rather, what wasn't.

I always get a kick out of seeing menus like this, because they use the same symbol for the Chilean Peso as they do for the US Dollar.  I picture some ignorant tourist coming in and going "1,280 dollars for a latte?  So overpriced!"  But I digress.  Take a close look at the menu, with respect to the "Cafe" section.  I'll give you a clue, "cafe" is Spanish for "coffee".

That's right.  There is no coffee.  Dunkin Donuts in Chile does not sell coffee.  They have lattes, expressos, and every other kind of fruity, saccharine monstrosity that 14 year old girls love to pretend is coffee EXCEPT for the backbone of Dunkin Donuts.  The universe is clearly playing some cruel joke on me.

I asked the lady behind the desk about it, who seemed thoroughly confused that I could possibly want a coffee from Dunkin Donuts.  She went and asked her manager, who said that all she had to do was water down an espresso, and it would be the same thing.  I wanted to smack both of their heads together like a 3 stooges episode.

Anyway, I ended up getting my "coffee", and it turned out to be pretty good.  At least, it was as bad as a normal Dunkin Donuts coffee in the states.  A little burned taste of home.

Also interesting down there was the selection of Donuts.  They had some of the same ones as the US, but many donuts were different than their Bostonian counterparts.

This one in particular seemed quite Chilean to me - the "Chocolate Volcano"

Sadly, no Boston Creme Pie donuts.  Once my Spanish is up to snuff, the owner of this branch can expect to receive a VERY strongly worded letter from a frustrated patron.

On the horizon

Sorry for the lack of posts recently - I'm trying to get grad school applications in.  I promise to start again strong in a week or so.

Overthinking

One thing Chileans love to do is use salt on everything.  Anything that goes on the grill, it is salted to the point where you can see the white stuff piling up on top of the meat itself.  I've seen a man sitting on a park bench with an apple in one hand, and a saltshaker in the other.  Before each bite, he would dust up the meat of his apple, and then sink his teeth in. I watched him eat about half the apple this way before my stomach demanded I move along.

I made pasta the other night, and while reading the directions (in Spanish), they recommended I bring a pot of heavily salted water to boil before adding the noodles.  Feeling crazy, I followed their directions.  As I was waiting for the water to boil (not watching it, for obvious reasons), I started thinking about how this would change the makeup of my pasta.  My reasoning went something like this:  adding a substrate like salt would increase the boiling temperature of the water.  Increasing the boiling temperature of the water would cause the water to cook the pasta quicker, thus the noodles would be a little softer after the allotted time of 7 minutes.  Interested to see if my hypothesis was correct, I took a couple noodles out after 6 minutes, and a few at 7 to see if there was any noticible difference in the texture of the noodles.

With my first bite, I thought "This tastes...salty."

It never even crossed my mind that the pasta would taste salty.  Forest: missed for trees.