Fashion in Chile

I've found a lot of the young people around here like wearing old American paraphernalia.  I often walk down the street and see a "Texas Football" sweatshirt, or an old tridelt sorority sweater coming my way.  Sometimes I think the person has actually been to or experienced the things their shirt advertises, but the few times I've actually inquired, I've been disappointed.  There have been multiple times where I see a "Michigan - 1997 National Champions" shirt, or a "Minnesota Vikings Football" hat, and it's all I can do to not yell "Go Blue!" or "Skol Vikings!"  I already look like enough of a foreigner around here, no need to draw further attention to myself.

Outside of actual sport teams gear, young people also wear a lot of shirts with half-baked English ideas on them.  There's a pretty common one down here that just says "Don't Touch" 4 times down the front of it.  I've also seen "Surf Tournament", "Xtreme Baseball", and "Use your hands!"  I think they're the kind of thing that people like when they only read the dictionary definition of the words on the shirt, but they seem to lacking in any sort of cohesive thought.  Then again, who knows?  American kids wear some pretty dumb stuff too.

The keyboards down here are a bear to use.  Whenever I have to use a communal computer at the Institute or a friend's house, this is what I contend with:

The regular letters are normal, but if you want to use any other symbols, it's a bit of a nightmare.  The "shift" key works a bit differently for symbols, they have an "alt gr" button, and there's another mystery button which I sometimes hit that puts accents on top of letters.  I still have a lot of figuring out to do with this monster.