Domestic Woes

 TWO FACTS: 

In Spanish the word for 'handcuffs' is 'esposa' which is the same word for 'wife.'  Seriously, Spanish?  Sometimes you make it hard for me to like you, like right now and with the verb echar.

I have a flight out of here in 50 days.  FIFTY!?  Yeesh.

But sometimes you make it easy, like when you belong to cultures with manjar.

THE STORY:

It happens every Monday.  Maite (mi mamá chilena) comes into my room in the morning and gets my laundry and changes my sheets.  I am 100% aware that I have no room to complain but here it is: I miss doing my own laundry and changing my own sheets.  I miss washing the dishes while blasting music, cooking and I don't want my room to be vaccumed every day.  I love my Chilean family but Chilean mothers are intense.  If extreme mothering was an Olympic sport, the judges would be fed mashed potatoes into submission.  Cheek pinching, really good hugs after a rough day, telling you you're too skinny and begging you to eat more, holding hands in public (sometimes), these are constant realities of mine right now.  It took some getting used to but now it's just another weird aspect of my chilean life.  But a funny thing has been happening this semester.  I don't have class in the mornings on Monday but it is still laundry day.  So I can either sit on my couch and check fbook again while Maite cleans my room around me (the whole time apologizing for bothering me) or I can help.  I started helping a few weeks ago (by the way, Chile, we wouldn't need to vaccum all the time if we would take off our shoes in the house, wearing them all the time is just barbaric), and she wasn't exactly bothered but I could tell she wasn't exactly pleased, either.  Well once I found out where the sheets are I started just doing it after breakfast and then bringing the basket down to the laundry room myself.  This, this was not okay.  First I just got a friendly talking to, "Erin, that's my job,"  "But Maite, I can help!"  "Haha, don't worry, more empanadas?"  And when I did it again the next week, she didn't say anything.  HA!  I had won, I thought--incorrectly.  The next Monday I woke up, ate breakfast and when I returned to my room, the sheets had been changed, the laundry was out and things were generally tidier.  Sneaky, sneaky lady.  Thus, it began.  I started doing it before breakfast and when she caught onto that, like this past Monday, I went to the bathroom, the bathroom, I had been awake for like, 5 minutes max, and when I got back, there she was, changing the sheets.  I helped.  

South American Life Experience #436: Get Teargassed

Remember what I just told you about graffiti as political statements?

To be honest, Chile isn't that different than the US.  Of course, they speak Spanish (sort of) and think mullets are cool but young people party, old people knit, and they have Wal-Mart (it's just called Líder).  But these past two weeks or so I have seen some things down here that just do not happen at home.  Young people are taking to the streets and protesting injustices in the government.  I know this happened in the 70's (parents, your generation is the best at everything) but nowadays it's much more likely to see people 'protesting' by complaining on the twitter or joining some angrily named group on facebook, not much of a protest at all.  But right now in Chile, the whole country is in an uproar over recent plans to build dams in Patagonia.  The project is called Hidroaysen and no one is happy about it.  Read about it here and here.  Yesterday during the President's State of the Union-type speech, 40,000 people were in the streets of Santiago, protesting the dams, getting teargassed, arrested and water cannoned.  FORTY THOUSAND!  Do that many Americans even watch the State of the Union?  My school has a lot of students from Patagonia, so we've had marches and concerts and outrage in my city too.  School was effectively canceled twice last week because so many students were protesting.  So while I'm definitely not in favor of throwing rocks and bottles at police, I am pretty inspired by what is going on.  I sincerely hope that the project doesn't go through and many Chileans are optimistic that it won't but in the meantime, I've been walking around with a scarf in my bag just in case I have to walk through a rowdy group of college students getting teargassed.  

Family, I am being very careful and not protesting (visa at stake, signed some papers with study abroad people saying I wouldn't) but if you're on campus when it happens, you might just get a mouthful of teargas, and it sucks. 

Get mad about the project here.

Last Days

Just in case the apocalypse does happen tomorrow, I had a piece of pie today.  Here's a picture of when I heard about the coming rapture literally every other day.

La escritura en la pared

Look at me, just bloggin' up a storm!  I was iffy about this blogging thing (what do I possibly have to say that's worth reading blah blah blah) but then I got over myself and realized how much I like reading other people's blogs, even if they don't have anything that great to say either.  So here's another post, yee haw!

Okay so South America has a lot of graffiti/street art.  There are basically three types of vandalization here:  bad vibes/gangs (the worst kind), political statements, art (the best kind).  I asked a prof about it because we don't really get political graffiti at home, and he told me that SA has a long tradition of loco political regimes that didn't allow a lot of freedom of ideas, making it nearly impossible for people to speak out safely--unless they're anonymous.  Many artists in Chile during the Pinochet era, for example, were either exiled from the country or mysteriously disappeared because for sticking it to the man through art.  So now, much of SA makes political statements with spray paint.  Here are some of my favorite examples of both art and other throughout SA.


Art:

 

Remember when all the kids were electric? (Not my photo, thanks Marie!)

 

Words:

"La educactión no es un negocio"  Education is not a business.

"Dónde está la primavera?"  Where is the spring?

"Construye tu historia"  Construct your history.

"Ellos tienen la fuerza y nosotros tenemos la razón"  They have the force/strength but we have the reason.  This one is a play on Chile's official motto, "Por la razón o la fuerza" meaning "for the reason or the force/strength."  But in Spanish 'to have reason' means 'to be right' so you could also read it as 'they have the force but we are right,' although it doesn't have quite the same ring to it. 

"Orgulloso Sur"  Southern Pride

"Los animales son mis amigos y no como mis amigos"--San Francis de Assisi  The animals are my friends and I don't eat my friends. -- St. Francis of Assisi, this was on the side of the cathedral.

"No aborto para pedófilos"  No abortion for pedophiles, also on the side of the (catholic) cathedral (abortions of any kind are illegal in Chile).

"El gobierno debería temerle al pueblo"  The government should fear the people.

"Si quieres ver algo k' nunca haz visto, hazlo tu mismo"  If you want to see something you've never seen before, do it yourself.  (I don't get it, maybe I'm misunderstanding though, if any gringos are reading this, let me know)

And finally, I leave you with this question:  Bathroom graffiti is done for neither recognition nor money making it the purest form of art.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Thinking in Valdivia

Here are some random thoughts mostly about Valdivia. 

--Whenever I see the Southern Cross proudly asserting itself upon the Milky Way, I get the warm fuzzies.  Then comes a slight pang of guilt for cheating on the Big Dipper.  But I'll be home soon, Big Guy.

--Reasons why Terpel is better than the majority of gas stations in the US:  empanadas, people fill up your gas for you (I said the majority), Spanish music videos, both indoor and outdoor seating options, funny name.

 --Speaking of Spanish music videos, this song is muy popular here and I saw the video today (at above gas station) and needless to say, maybe I should plan a trip to México soon...

--I am going to have a hard time getting used to paying more than $4 for movies when I get home.  Must figure out a way around this.

--Why aren't there any female micro drivers?

--Bed head is a way different and more threatening monster with short hair.

--I love the rain but when it rains here the sidewalks become overrun with snails and I hate hearing that sickening, life-ending crunch of their shells under my shoes.  I'm so sorry to every snail I have unwillingly crushed. 

--I think after a year here, the smell of wood burning fires is no longer associated primarily with camping but with Valdivia at dusk.  Every home is heated by fireplaces and many don't have an electric oven, but a wood burning one (electricity is really expensive and they're damming up Patagonia to make more).

--WHAT ARE TRUFAS MADE OF?!  (Soon to be answered when Jac gets the secret recipe from our favorite cafe at the end of the semester!!  Sometimes it pays to be a regular)

--Does this blog look like it belongs to an old lady?

Top Fives

None of these lists are in any particular order and obviously I will miss/miss my family, friends and my cat the most so these things are besides them (and you, dear reader).

Top 5 Things I Will Miss About Chile:
Food (empanadas, choripan, hallulla, sopaipillas, berlines, sunys, trufas, mote con heuesillo, casuela)
Overwhelming popularity and stylish-ness of knitted clothing
Chilean Spanish/Chilenismos
Homes that are not afraid of color (or garish decor)
Street dogs

Top 5 Things I Will NOT Miss About Chile:
NESCAFE
Reggaeton/Bus DJs
Popularity of Mayonaise
Popular taste in clothes/jewlery/haircuts (except the good old baby mullet, obvio)
Machismos

Top 5 Things I Miss About the US:
Coffee/Coffee shops
Having a kitchen/cooking
Ethnic food
The Pacific NW
Extensive English libraries 

Top 5 Things I Do NOT Miss About the US:
Political shennanigans
Having a phone
Expensive public transportation/reliance on cars
Lack of baby mullets
A family of four not being able to go to the movies for less than $50

To Name a Few

I love Spanish.  Learning a new language has been one of the most challenging, frustrating, headache-inducing, tested, trying and mistake riddled experiences of my entire life but it has also been one of the most rewarding.  And it's especially worth it when I encounter the following phrases.  This is because sometimes I translate things literally in my head (more when I'm reading than speaking, it's a bad habit though) and they just sound funny.  Here are a few such phrases that I could think of off the top of my head, enjoy! 

He falls on me well.
Have you eaten her yet?  Any good eating this weekend?
Congrats, your wife is giving the light.
She’s my soul twin.
I spotted myself.
The thing forgot itself unto me.
The thing also fell itself.
I feel like going gringo today.
She walked down the snail stairs.
How does dinner at the free fork sound?
Speaking of the King of Rome.
Are you awake yet or do you follow sleeping?
That you enjoy the movie!
This place has too many green old men.
When the river makes noise it’s because it brings rocks.
Things I have: hunger, thirst, jealously, guilt, heat, cold, sleepyness.
Have you taken the decision yet?
Today we’ll talk close to politics.