Despedida de Renata

One of my friends Renata moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil on Sunday.  To celebrate her last day here, our friends met at her house for a barbecue and party.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was to be a barbecue to end all barbecues.  Take a journey with me, won't you?

We started by arriving at her house around 5:00.  Planning ahead, I had an early lunch to account for the dinner time barbecue, so I arrived a little hungry to begin.  Some other friends were already there, and were drinking cheap beer (Escudo, the Miller Lite of Chile) mixed with a little Fanta.  I have to admit, I was pretty intrigued by the proposition of a delightful orange soda to cut the taste of a bad beer.  Sounds like a good idea, right?

It wasn't.  It tastes absolutely disgusting.  Escudo and Fanta together tastes like you added a couple packets of old Splenda and a teaspoon of red number 5 and yellow number 40 to an already bad beer.  The opposing flavors of sweet and bitter wage war within your mouth, and your poor tongue is left to clean up the spoils after.  I choked it down in 4 well-spaced out slugs, and then settled in with a plain Escudo to sip on for the rest of the afternoon.

Some more friends trickled into the house over the next couple hours.  Eventually at about 8, Wasi looks at me and says "Time to go get the stuff, man".  I nod, expecting to be lead into the kitchen to grab the barbecue meats and charcoal.  Nope.  Instead, we end up collecting money from everybody, and then jump in his car to hit multiple grocery stores and little tiendas to get all the necessary items for the barbecue.

Once we got back, it was almost fully dark outside.  Some of the people were still sitting around, while some were preparing the tables and grill.  The music playing was a playlist from one of the guys computers, and it oscillated between American hip hop, and Chilean funk and hip hop.  They meshed together surprisingly well.

Finally, it was time to start the barbecue.  This one was to be a little different than your average on-the-grill experience.  They called this a "discada", but I think a more appropriate term would be "a middle finger to all vegetarians".  We started with a couple onions and garlic...

Then we added some little chicken wings, and white wine to cook them in...

And then, we threw in some boneless pork ribs...

You might be thinking to yourself, "Erik, I thought you said pork.  That looks like just good old-fashioned steak in his hand."  To which I would reply "Sharp eyes, dear reader.  But if you look closely, you can see that the pork has already been added to the discada.  The beef is simply waiting in line."


So yes, the beef came next.  After a couple minutes, the discada looked something like this:

Looking pretty good, right?  At this point, I'd say the vegetarians would be pretty up in arms.

But let's stick it to them a little harder.  Mariscos!

So for those of you keeping track, we currently have a barbecue dish which contains chicken, pork, beef, and two different types of clams.  Your move, tree huggers.

And afterwards, we made more.  Only with the next couple, there was even more meat, sausage, and chorizo in them thanks to a few people who showed up late.

 Even though we didn't actually start eating until well after midnight, it was worth the wait.  Good times.

We'll miss you, Renata!

Cumple de Luis

My friend Luis just had his 24th birthday this past weekend.  To celebrate, I spent the day with him, his friends and his family on Sunday, where we had a "traditional" Chilean birthday.  He lives in Nunoa, an area to the south of me which is almost exclusively populated by natives.  Getting there from my apartment is like watching a reverse-time video of the development of Santiago.  The buildings slowly get smaller, and their walls become a rougher concrete.  The store signs go from illuminated metal and plastic to painted names and logos directly upon the wall.  The streets slowly shrink in size, and the sidewalks develop more and more cracks.

I got over to his house at about 3:00 PM.  It's the final house on a little dead-end street, across from a small restaurant and grocery store.  The outside gate lets you into their driveway, where there is a mini-RV trailer parked right by the main door.  Once inside the house, you walk through the main entrance, by the TV and couches, and then by the kitchen table to the outdoor patio.  On the patio, Luis and his friends were already hanging out, drinking Escudo beer.  His father and two uncles were also sitting out there, while the mother and aunts were at work in the kitchen.  The music was initially a Chilean pop/rock radio station, but after a while Luis hooked his computer up to the stereo and American gangster rap took over the soundwaves.

We talked soccer for a while (Real Madrid - FC Barca, U de Chile - Liga) until dinner was almost ready.  We (the next generation) were sent by the women to pick up some bread for dinner, so we hopped into the family truck and started hunting.  Most places in Santiago are shut down on Sundays, especially more rural spots, so we had to drive for a while to another part of the city which was a bit larger, but further south and still unknown to me.  "Only Spanish here man."  Luis told me as we were getting out of the truck; his tone a bit more serious than before.  He doesn't need to say any more.  I kept my sunglasses on and my mouth shut as we entered a little mom and pop convenience store and grabbed bread for the table.  The old lady behind the counter didn't say a word to us the entire time, except for the final price after the bread was weighed on a scale.   

Once back at the house, it was time for lunch.  We all shuffled into the dining room on the other side of the patio, and took seats.  The table was comprised of 2 smaller tables, one of which was about 4 inches shorter than the other.  The parents all sat at the larger table, while the next generation took the smaller table.  Ironically, everybody at the small table was bigger or taller than the people at the large table, but there was no way I was bringing this point up to the group.

Lunch itself was a leg of chicken, a strip or two of beef, choripan (chorizo sausage in an italian bread bun), a bean/onion salad (porotos granados), a mayonnaise-less coleslaw, and a normal salad with a balsamic vinagrette-like dressing.  It was the best meal I've had down here, hands down.  Interestingly, nobody drank alcohol with the meal.  Even though everybody was drinking beer or pisco (a grape liquor) beforehand, during the meal they only had sprite or water.  Also, nobody here puts their bread roll on their plate of food.  Everybody just sets it on the tablecloth, and breaks off pieces of it as they work through their meal.  In a strange way, it makes sense.  Why bother taking up space on your plate? Your bread can just rest on a clean tablecloth, simultaneously not really dirtying the tablecloth, and also not absorbing whatever's left on your plate.

After lunch, the women cleaned up the table while the men all went into the back warehouse to smoke cigarettes (did I participate?  You'll never know).  In the middle of the space was a thick rope hanging from the rafters, much like your generic high school gymnasium rope.  The rope ran about 25 feet to the ceiling, and it was just hanging there, taunting us as we stood around.  Finally the birthday boy, Luis, looks at me and says "escalas?".  I couldn't resist.  After I slapped the rafters, I got a few cheers from the food-sedated audience.  A few others climbed it after, but most called it off a couple feet from the top.

I ended up climbing it one more time, only this time when I came down I allowed my hands and ankles to slide a little bit on the rope while I was coming down.  As a result of this decision, I have a couple nice burn scabs on my ankles and blisters on my hand.  Fortunately they had plenty of beer medicine on hand to alleviate the injuries.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around the patio, drinking beer and trading jokes.  Some of mine translated better than others, but it was a good time.  Jokes are actually a good way of practicing a language, because it forces one to think about the double entendres and where the force of the punchline comes from.  The telling of a joke requires some planning when translating across languages.

Feliz Cumple, Luis.

Parque Bustamante

One of the things I really like about my neighborhood is its close proximity to Parque Bustamante.  In fact, when I started looking for a new residence within the last month or so, one of my main caveats was that I remained close to the park.  Parque Bustamante (PB) is a large strip which in total runs about half a mile on each side, and half a city block or so across.  Here's a shot of it from Google Maps:

PB is the area in the middle, encircled by the blue lines.  The purple star is my old apartment, and the red star is where I currently live.

To describe the place for you all, I'm going to start up north, and work my way south with my pictures.  Starting with the north side of PB, this is the view looking north to Bellavista (club/bar area):

To the left of this picture is a semi-major intersection, where a lot of busses pass through.  Behind the statue is Cerro San Cristobal, which I posted pictures from back in September.

And turning around in the same place, we see the northern tip of PB:

I usually don't spend a ton of time on the northern side.  I jog by this little patio on my runs, weaving through bicycles and taxi drivers lounging around in the park a few yards from their cars.  There is a pretty interesting statue in the middle of this patio though, as shown here:

I like to think that in this statue, the rider is desperately trying to keep pigeons from landing on him.  He's not very good at it, unfortunately.

A half block south, and we come up to the little public library.  I often go here to read, or to just hang out and grab a coffee with someone.  It's a really nice place to sit and spend a couple hours.

The same building, from the side.

And behind the building, there is a little reflecting pool.  It looks nice, but often you will see dogs swimming in it, or homeless people washing out their socks.  A couple times I've seen little remote controlled sailboats and ships flying around in there. 

Continuing further south, we come to the exercise portion of the park.  This is where I end most of my workouts, in my attempts to retain whatever anaerobic muscle I've got left. 

 Sadly most of the useless machines were occupied when I walked through, and thus I didn't want to snap a photo of the chubby ladies operating them.  I'll try and include another one of them at a later date (the machines, not the ladies).

 This is the one useful machine they have, which I use to do pullups, dips, and pushups.  The handles close to the ground allow you to do deeper pushups than on a flat surface.

The view of the park from the pullup bar.  Often filled with ice cream vendors and little kids throwing soccer balls at each other.

Continuing south, we come to the first of two crossroads that divide the park into 3 parts.  Across the road, the middle island is occupied by a very popular skate park.  Without fail, if you walk around the park for more than 5 minutes, you will see kids either riding towards or away from the park.  This picture I took was at about 10 AM on a Saturday, and is easily the fewest number of kids I've seen in the park.  It's normally packed, to the point where it's a miracle that so few people crash into each other.

Also, it's here that we are treated to the majestic crest of the City of Providencia.

If you look at this picture and nothing comes to mind, congratulations. 

Now we've reached the second intersection, to the far southern tip of the park.  Standing across the street, we can see an open, amphitheater type area which is often set up for little outdoor expos, or festivals.  Often though, the area is left open and I finish workouts with a couple sprints.

If you follow these cars for about 2 blocks, you'll run into my apartment buildling. Immediately next to this picture, however, is the metro station Parque Bustamante:

Here, during rush hours, there are often many little street food vendors, jewelry salesmen, and people begging for change.  It's an interesting window into how some of the people around here survive.

Parque Bustamante is a really nice place to live by.  When I first moved here,  I lived in the heart of Santiago Centro, and it was a little overwhelming.  There aren't really any decent open spaces nearby, and the whole place felt like an intimidating concrete jungle.  The park gives me a place to work out, to hang out, and observe Chileans in their natural environment. 

For those of you who appreciate the photo-heavy entries... you're welcome.

The New Apartment

I sit here on a lazy Saturday in the living room of my new apartment, reflecting on how large an effect one's residence has on one's outlook on life.  My old apartment felt old, decrepit, and uninviting.  The people I knew there were friendly, but in no way welcoming.  I spent all of my time outside of cooking in my room, with its faded nature painting upon the wall and mason jars with taxed candles inside lining my shelves.  I slept on an uneven mattress, with a frame that would occasionally shift out of place and leave the mattress unsupported in the middle.  The chair/couch that accompanied my room had become a fancy clothes rack, as it was really no more comfortable to sit on than my desk chair.  I couldn't open the windows at night on pain of large moth invasions, and I couldn't leave the window fully closed or the room became stuffy all too quickly.

I now sit at the dinner table in my new apartment.  The sliding door to the patio is open behind me, and a breeze gently rolls over my shoulders.  Occasionally a louder than average car passes by on the street below, but the noise isn't as abrasive 4 floors up.  My room is down the hall, and is principally used for sleeping and changing only.  The rest of my time is spent in the open, often with the other tenants of the apartment. 

The two other tenants are Bastian and Sergio.  Bastian is from Germany, and just finished his studies at a local university for the summer.  He's a tall, skinny kid who helps me to explain to people what blond hair actually looks like.  He took off this past week on a trip to Patagonia and southern Argentina.  He's been here for 8 months, and despite not knowing Spanish before he came, he now speaks quite well.  We only converse in Spanish, and I actually find it easier to understand him than most Chileans.  I definitely communicate better with fellow academic learners of Spanish.  There is unquestionably a difference in thought patterns and speech between people who grew up with the language, and people who learned the language in a classroom.

Sergio is the other roommate and official renter of the apartment.  He's about 5'4, and somewhere around 110 lbs.  He grew up outside Santiago in a little town where his graduating class was about 30 kids.  His school also included more indigenous kids, who spoke a completely different dialect of Spanish.  Those indigenous kids would also use the meat of fresh bread to erase pencil marks from their papers.  It's a life that I really can't relate to.  

He's incredibly nice, and likes to operate our apartment as "a small family".  We share whatever food we have, and eat together when we can.  The apartment also stays surprisingly neat, which is nice.  Chileans, for the most part, keep their living areas pretty tidy.

Anyway, here are a few shots of the place:

A shot of the living room, with the patio outside.  This is the first house I've ever lived in with no TV in the living room.

This picture was from standing by the coffee table, looking the other way.  The kitchen is through the door to the right, and the hallway to the left has the bathroom and bedrooms.  The entrance to the apartment is to the right of the kitchen.

The kitchen, in all its long and skinny glory.  The washing machine is through the door on the back patio.

My room.  Everything isn't quite put away yet, and it will probably look a little different in a month.  It should get a desk and a dresser.

My new address is:
Erik Greene
88 Curico, Depto 404
Santiago, Chile

And yes, I am still accepting birthday presents.

Pigeons, and Esteban

As I was running yesterday, I saw an exceptionally ginger kid riding his bike through the middle of the playground.  There's no path there, and it's not designed for bikes as it's mostly sand.  I watched him weave his way through the park, silently judging him as I jogged a few yards behind and to the right of him on the designated exercise path.

The path he took required him to split the difference between 2 large trees that were about 6 feet apart.  No outstanding roots or anything, but they momentarily limited his peripheral vision.  At this same moment, a domesticated terrier was let off of its leash about 20 yards to the left of him. The terrier immediately scampered towards a nearby flock of pigeons, barking and jumping around.  The pigeons immediately took off, headed directly towards the 2 large oak trees.

As the ginger kid came through the other side of the trees, he found himself in a delightfully unexpected game of pigeon "chicken".  They buzzed his head, chest, and bicycle with the crazed ferocity of a flock of stupid creatures fleeing for its life.  The ginger kid gave a mini shriek and almost fell off his bicycle, catching himself by setting both his feet on the ground.  He was still stopped when I jogged by a few seconds later, laughing to myself.  Gingers.

***********************

A couple weeks ago, I walked out my old apartment at about 11:00 PM on a Tuesday night to meet some friends.  As I was leaving, an effeminate, graying man exited one of the adjacent buildings.  Being nice, I held the gate open for him, and watched him saunter through it as a faint "gracia..." escaped his lips.  He turned to the left, and I turned to the right.

I walked to the corner of my block to take another right, and as I was about to turn right I quickly glanced back.  The guy had changed his course and was now about 15 paces behind me.  I decide to walk up Parque Bustamante on the opposite side of the street, and quickly cross instead of turning right.  He stayed on the same side of the street, and at a more or less parallel pace we walked towards the north side of the park.

At one point we were both stopped by a red light.  As the cross traffic breezed by, I glanced over at the other side of the street, and noticed this man intently staring at me.  Fully creeped out at this point, I patted down my pockets and "realized" that I had left something back at the apartment.  I began to walk back towards my apartment, keeping a peripheral eye on the guy now on my left.  Fortunately he continues to walk up the street in the other direction.  I walk back to the corner, then slowly saunter in the same direction I was initially headed in.  At this point I couldn't see him, but I assumed he was long gone.

Less than 5 minutes later I run into him on my path.  He immediately introduced himself, and asked a couple questions in Spanish.  His name was Esteban, and he worked in some kind of finance in Central Santiago.  Whether he was talking or listening, the expression on his face never changed.  He embodied the emotion of intense, off-putting interest.  I told him I was "moving out of the country" on Dec 1, and would thus be gone soon.  But the conversation kept going, and I felt myself talking more and faster than I normally would to a complete stranger.  Then he asked me what I was doing right then, and I told him I was going to meet some friends in Providencia.  He asked me if I would be going out around the same time the next night, and I told him "yeah, probably."  He says that we should meet and go out for a walk at that time, before I go out.  To which, I inexplicably responded, "ya perfecto".

I have no idea why I said that.  This guy set off every creeper alarm in my head, and I was already squirming inside my body having talked to him for that long.  The only explaination I can think of is that my Spanish is still developing, and often when I don't understand what somebody says to me, my knee-jerk reaction is "ya perfecto" (it works surprisingly well in most cases).  After that I said I was late and had to go.  I power-walked to the nearest metro stop, and boarded the subway.

The next day, as I got back from class, I slipped a little note under his apartment door telling him that I wouldn't be able to meet him the next day.  I did this mainly so he wouldn't be hanging around my apartment door for an indeterminate amount of time, waiting for me to come out.  I waited a good half hour after our scheduled meeting time before I exited the apartment.  This time, I jogged to the far side of Parque Bustamante, and entered the metro stop from the other entrance.

Smash cut to yesterday.  I was late getting on the Metro that morning, and thus everybody was packed in next to each other like this:

After standing patiently for a couple minutes, I look around at the people around me (there are often some verrry entertaining characters in metro stations).  As I start to look behind me, I notice none other than Esteban staring daggers into the back of my head.  Fortunately I had my sunglasses on, so I just continued my sweep around like I noticed nothing, then faced forward again.  I then "noticed" an opening in the line a couple yards down, and jumped into the next subway car as it pulled in.

What I'm trying to say is, if at any point I don't post on here for over a week, it's probably because I'm trapped in a broom closet in Esteban's apartment.

The Old Apartment

I'm delaying the post about my new apartment until a later date, one where my room is clean enough to take pictures of it.  Just know that I am now sitting comfortably in the living room of my new 4th floor apartment, where the sun is shining on the patio and the house goldfish peruses the water's surface in search of nourishment.

Now might be a good time to answer the question of why I left my old apartment.  I had signed a contract to stay through the end of February, but another opportunity had opened up (namely, this place), and I had to take it.  Why?  For many reasons.  First of all, the people who I lived with were friendly, but "South American stranger-friendly".  I would be asked how my day was, and then between sideways glances in the kitchen or living room, I was generally left alone. 

The landlady, Monica, also had this really passive-aggressive way of doing things that just irked me.  For example, my room was literally 10 feet from the patio where we hung clothes to dry.  If I walked out of my room to grab laundry, she would walk by and turn the light off in my room.  I would literally be gone for less than a minute pulling shirts off the clothesline, and I would come back to a dark bedroom with my hands full.

I know this isn't her fault, but I'm also fairly certain that she had a colostomy.  As a result, there would often be an awful smell permeating the apartment.  This lead to me spending the majority of my time in the apartment with my bedroom door shut.  And then when I did wander out into apartment, I would be treated to these little signs everywhere:

 Reading it every time was like a double stomach-punch.  A reminder to turn off a light switch I never used, and then poorly translated into English.

My personal favorite - this was the sign you couldn't help but read every time one used the porcelain throne.  It was on the door, perfectly placed at eye level.

Also, hot water here is generated with an in-line heater that is turned on/off only when used.  It's called the "calefont", and looks like this:

Frequently, Monica, in an effort to pinch every available peso, would turn off the hot water in the middle of the day.  It also happened 3 times WHILE I WAS IN THE SHOWER.  So yes, that was another strike against the place.
(Side note - down here they have a lot of tongue-in-cheek ways to identify people as homosexuals.  Some of the most popular ones are translated to "he burns the rice", "he likes the leg of pig", and "he turns off the hot water."  Maybe Monica was trying to tell me something...)

So yes, I am now fully moved into an apartment 4 blocks away, after telling her that I was moving back to the United States.  I never, ever saw her outside of the apartment before, but Karma dictates that I am now going to run into her on a weekly basis.  Whatever, she kept the security deposit.

Michigan-Ohio State, and English Gaffes

People make mistakes in my English classes all the time, to the point where I forget most of them.  Every so often though, they stick.  The first one to stick was "matter of fact"  (New to the blog?  Check the archives!), and now I've had 2 more burned into my audial memory.

The second one came about 2 weeks ago, when we were having an open discussion in class about siblings.  One of the heftier ladies in the class was talking about her older sister, and what she did.  They are always encouraged to use new vocabulary, so she was occasionally checking her notes as she talked.  After a brief pause in checking her notes, she announces to the group "my sister has job where she has much sex."

...

"So, Carol... what kind of job does your sister have?"
"She is bank manager."
"...and she has much..."
"sex...es"
"Ohhhhhh.  Carol, you mean 'success'."

And the latest one came earlier today, as I was giving the final exam for one of my students.  I like to warm the students up before the exam, so to start I asked my student about his family, and what they did.  After talking about his parents, he said "my older sister is an accountant."  Only when he said "accountant", he left off the -ant at the end, and the o was silent.

From his perspective, I had a mini coughing fit between his response and correcting his pronunciation.

**************************

For those Wolverine fans out there, here's a few shots of where we watched the game:

California Cantina, where we gathered to watch the game.  I made them put on the sound for the game, which took a team of 3 of them like 20 minutes to figure out.  Fortunately I got there 25 mins early.

For the times when there was too much excitement in The Game, they thoughtfully put a soccer game on the adjacent TV so we could all level out.

Marco and myself.  One of the other 4 Michigan fans there took the picture.  Unsurprisingly, nobody from Ohio State showed up to the bar.

Bliss.  The postgame interview.

For the first time in 7 years (my entire tenure as a Wolverine), we've beaten Ohio State.  It's a nice feeling.  For those of you who don't know, "nice" is an extreme understatement.

I'm currently writing this from my new apartment.  Things are still getting settled, so I'll have a post up about the place soon.