Islands, Penguins and Barn Dances

As written in the previous post, when the rest of our gang returned to Viña to celebrate Fiestas Patrias (Chilean Independence) on the 18th, my friend Craig and I headed further south to Chiloé. Also as sheepishly mentioned, while our first night did force us into the adventurous sort of mood (what with staying at a random woman's house, unsure if we would wake up the next morning), it was hardly an ideal start. And while I realize this was our own damn fault, conditions did improve as we explored the most beautiful place I have yet seen in this geographically diverse country.

Chiloé (pronounced Chee-low-AY) is an island just off the Chilean coast roughly twice the size of Stearns County. But despite its proximity to the mainland, it's residents are known for being fiercely independent in maintaining some of their own traditions and practices unique to the small island. For this reason, Chiloé is frequently described as a distinct enclave with a deep territorial attachment not only to their rain forests and rolling hills but also to the sea that has supported communities living there for over 7000 years.

So let's start where we left off: with more bad news, both related to the timing of our trip. First of all, as much of the country takes the week off to celebrate independence,
the majority of buildings were closed, leaving us in a veritable ghost town. Most stores as well as tourism information areas were off for the week. Museums and internationally recognized churches, sites my parents taught me were staples when visiting any country, were also all locked up. There was also the conspicuous lack of people roaming the streets, something that made us feel like we were in a veritable ghost town as we had gotten used to bustling Viña.

The weather was also unfortunate due to our timing, although it could have been much worse. Many assume that since I went south to study abroad that it's summer all the time. However, after the equator, the further south you go the colder it gets. It also means our seasons are switched. So while Fall just started back home, we were in Chiloé in its last days of winter. And while there may be cool temps of 50s and 60s in Viña, we were down to to 30s and 40s on the island. Mix in some strong sea breezes and rain, and you've got the recipe for the climate we were in for four days. To make matters worse, insulation is more foreign to Chiloé than we gringos. So not only could we hear the couple on the other side of the hostel, but it felt like an earthquake whenever a bus drove by our hostel. Lack of insulation also meant that the difference in temperature from outside to inside was very little, so we were in 2-3+ layers for a few days. But the sun did poke through the clouds every once in a while and hey, there was no tsunami, so I can't complain too much.

But enough with all that downer stuff. We're from Minnesota; it could have been -30s and we still would have enjoyed Chiloé!

One of the highlights of our time here was the natural life; mainly dolphins, penguins, seals, and even the occasional wild horse or two. It was almost a strange feeling knowing that I was not in a zoo and there was no glass between us and that colony of penguins. Such exposure and almost vulnerability reinforced in us the feeling of being a part of something, not above it.

Another highlight was our adventure on the 18th, the day of Independence. Our hostel owners told us that a certain area in the south of Ancud (where we stayed) was the place to be for the festivities. So that night, with only a hand drawn map of the city, we found ourselves very unsure of where the heck we were until we heard music from the hill we were at the bottom of.

Passing various drunk citizens on our way up the street, we noticed the music was coming from a large barn. What we found was essentially a Chilean barn dance, with a live band playing songs on demand. Adding to the small town feel was that either everyone knew each other there, or was too drunk to care, and everyone danced with everybody else for hours. We were pretty sure it wasn't the festival our hostel owners recommended, but it was a damn good consolation!

Arguably my favorite part of Chiloé was the presence of natural green. There's not a lot of green in a concrete, steel and sandy beach city, and man did it feel good to have those rolling green hills and forested bluffs to admire. Most of our time on the island was spent doing nothing but walking around and appreciating what we'd been deprived of for over a month now.

See what I mean? If I was Chilean I'd take a whole week off for Independence too, just out of pure pride for where I live. It was pretty easy to take a day (how about 4?) to simply explore this island. What I loved most was the small town feel of everything on the island contrasted against the enormity and seeming infinity of the ocean as a backdrop. It reflected the character of the inhabitants of the island because they live in small villages yet depend greatly upon the sea for their livelihoods. Such experiences and lessons remind me of why I decided to study abroad, and are validating the decision more effectively than I could have ever imagined.

-JJ

Chile Brings Out the Genius in Me

The summer before last, a friend I've known my whole life stayed in our house because he was working on campus that summer. Now, I would consider myself near the far right of the evolution of man sequence, but because Brian and I spent so much time together that summer and next two semesters as roommates, he was the main audience to all the idiotic things I do that would make my parents scratch their hands, baffled that common sense had to fight its way through such a thick skull. Whether is was putting on a rain jacket before remembering I was just going to the shower, placing an empty bowl in the microwave, losing my fishing rod in a tree branch on shore, or flipping over the front of my bike because I was trying to juggle a soccer ball and steer at the same time, Brian developed a simple accusation that fit the act: "that's the stupidest thing I've seen you do!"

This post is mainly about mind lapses, brain farts, or whatever you want to call them. And since every new lapse was the 'stupidest', I feel like I might have upped the ante with these two.


To preview, I approve of the amount of time Chileans elect to take off to celebrate their independence. For the fourth of July we get maybe a day off extra in the states, but in Chile no less than a full week is required to celebrate the 18th of September. Given such a block of free time, we gringos decided to hit the road south to Pucon!

Filled with mountains, wooded trails, ski lodges and coffee shops, Pucon emanates Colorado-like vibes from each breath of fresh air to each drink of clean spring water. We kept ourselves pretty busy in this active town. We went hydrospeeding which is pretty much boogie boarding down rapids. And contrary to popular belief, wetsuits do not keep one dry or warm, but are merely uncomfortably tight rubber suits that are impossible to put on or take off alone. We also rode horses up a mountain with a Mapuche guide, the Mapuche being the indigenous people of that region. He explained to us how the Mapuche view modern religion as mostly a political tool for colonization because it has disturbed the eco-spirituality that is the basis of their faith. It was a new of thinking that we rarely hear, and after our traditional lunch, I could feel myself becoming a little more Mapuche myself! Hot springs were also involved in this weekend, and it occurred to me that since I was on crutches all summer, it was the first time I had submerged myself in a body of water in over a year! I hope that length of time never comes to pass again.

A day of biking was also on our Pucon menu. We rented bikes with a the plan to find our way out of the main drag and out into the country to some waterfalls into a nearby lake. With the less than ideal equipment we rented, I was just hoping we would all come back in one piece. These hopes indeed came to fruition. But no thanks to yours truly, as apparently without a sibling, parent or girlfriend here to smack me when I do something stupid, I let my guard down and decided I would hop the curb when we stopped for a bathroom break.

Do we all remember Gandalf's depressed face when Frodo volunteered himself to take the ring to Mordor? That was my face and the face of those few reading these words when, after such a daring act as to jump a 5 inch curb, the air hissed out of my tires faster than you can say "that'sthestupidestthingI'veseenyoudo!" But as my older brother will attest to after an upbringing of losing to me in various games of chance, I seem to be the luckiest piece of crap on the planet. For just as I was internally kicking myself in the groin for being so stupid (which really was only necessary internally as our bike seats took care of it externally), I noticed a trio of Germans on the side of the road who had the same exact problem with the same exact curb. But the lady at the bike shop seemed to approve of them over the gringos, as they were fully equipped with more than enough patches to go around.

So after a mere twenty minutes and much patience tried on the part of my fellow bikers, we were on our way yet again and enjoyed a glorious day on the waterfront. Except for we never found the waterfalls or glistening lake, but instead a random river below an eerie abandoned shack. I guess precise decision-making is contagious, so you're welcome.


Not only is it contagious, but the effects seemed to linger.
On the day that most in our group headed back to Viña, my friend Craig and I headed even further south. Our plan was to make it to an island called Chiloé, just off Chile's coast. This meant another long bus ride first to the mainland city closest to the island, Puerto Montt.

Having purchased these bus tickets long in advance, I made sure to get my times right. So when the lady at the bus terminal said the bus would arrive in P. Montt at ten, I thought I was in for a marathon night as my ticket said "departure, 16:10." I'm not sure where I went wrong the most, if it was in failing to find a map and determine just how far Pucon was from Puerto Montt, or if it was in mistaking the time of arrival for ten a.m. All I know is that when Craig and I set foot in an unknown city at the same time temperatures were nearing freezing (that's right, it's not all sun and beaches here, it's barely even spring!), we were prepared to either find a bar and stay up all night, or slum it old school or Tom Hanks style and sleep in the terminal.

However, when a exhausted and zombie looking strange lady offered us a room at her house, we ultimately decided to take the much safer option C, agreeing to get into a stranger's car in the middle of the night in a foreign country to pay to stay at her house overnight. Yet again, Mom and Pops, I make you proud with my demonstration of everything I was taught growing up. Don't get me wrong, we were not naive to the stupidity of what we were doing. In fact, we were practically betting on who would be murdered first. But, surprisingly we did in fact wake up the next morning, making sure to get the hell out of there before anythingone else woke up and headed for Chiloé!

JJ

It's the Economy, Stupid

Maids

When I first learned that a member of our group going to Chile had a maid in their host family's house, I was shocked. We were given the impression that the families who hosted students in Chile were mostly single mothers who needed the extra income of the stipend they receive for housing a gringo. So when after a few days of living in my modest townhouse with my small family my host mother told me the maid was going to come in the next day to clean, I was even more surprised as I knew no one growing up who had a maid and had only seen them in movies.

But where I had perceived maid employment as a sign of elite status back in the states, it's much more commonplace in Chile. I asked my host mother why maids were so popular, and she responded with an answer she clearly thought was obvious: because the economy is terrible, there aren’t a lot of jobs, and these women need the money to keep them from attempting to get money elsewhere, like prostitution (by the way, transvestite prostitutes are apparently very popular here and one even lingers on our street corner). Her answer caught me off guard because in the mountain of research from reputable websites I sifted through before leaving for this country, I had concluded that the Chilean economy was quite successful and was the leading reason behind this country being one of the more stable and safer ones in Latin or South America. Hell, their unemployment is only 6%. Not enough jobs??

From my perspective, one only needed to take a simple trip to a Viña grocery store to understand what I thought was a plethora of job creation. Now bear with me now as I know this graph is true... 

So, grocery store and job creation: We pull into the parking lot, wave at the parking lot attendee who sits in a chair, walk into the store, and begin shopping. Down the cereal aisle, we are approached by a young woman in a space/jumpsuit-type outfit who is advertising the latest new cereal brands while her partner in crime down the other aisle coerces us into buying a different brand of spaghetti sauce. There’s almost one attendee per aisle, all advertising the shelves behind them. After many failed attempts to avoid them, we push our overloaded cart to the checkout stations that are surrounded by baggers all waiting in a line to help out the next station. After paying for our groceries, my host mom tips the bagger, we nod to the young security officers standing on a pedestal just watching the crowd, and when we leave the parking lot, tip the parking lot attendee as well.

^That all felt like a lot of employment there! But after a conversation with the host mother, I found the catch. While unemployment may be low, it’s only because there are zillions of underpaid/not paid workers. All those that my host mother tipped? Their tips are their wages. And the rest? After some back and forth, I found out that they make in a day about what I make in a couple of hours as a student worker in the states. This explains that although unemployment is low, the gap between those with and those without is about as wide as the country is long.   

So that’s my lesson/something I thought was interesting for the day. If you stuck with me through all of that, thanks mom. I promise the next installment will be a better read, as we have a week off for Chilean Independence, and I am headed south!

JJ

Santiago in Santiago

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are spending time in a place you just concluded was not for you? If you’ve been the only an avid reader of this here blogospherical experiment, you’ll know that this is exactly how I felt when our group stepped down from the bus into the less than pleasantly aforementioned streets of Santiago this weekend. It’s as if simply by describing my dislike for the city in an earlier post, it was planning my return in an effort to convince me otherwise. Either that, or I got some shitty luck.

Having woken up before the rest of the world

Outside the museum

 to catch the morning bus to the capitol, we unfortunately seemed 

to wander through the day’s attractions in a daze. First up on Friday was The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which is dedicated to remembering the victims of human rights violations during the military regime led by Augusto Pinochet 

between 1973 and 1990 in Chile.

Photos of still missing victims of Pinochet's regime

After this, we toured La Moneda, the capitol building where the offices of the president and cabinet are located.

We didn’t really wake up until we found a restaurant to watch the soccer match between Chile and Venezuela, which had the streets buzzing after a sound thumping of the latter by the former. The following morning we visited various cultural centers, but were so tired from walking around for the past two days we let out a collective sigh of exhaustion upon our return to the hostel.

Another excuse for my lack of attentiveness during the day’s exhibitions was that I was excited to reunite with an old amigo. For those of you who don’t know, my family back home seemed to always be hosting an international student from some part of the world or another. During my last year in high school, one of the students was some punk from Santiago named Santiago, giving the impression that it was common here to name your child after the city they were born in. So after three years, St. Cloud (this guy) and Santiago hung out yet again. We went to a small party at a friends house before returning for the night, and I awoke the next day feeling as though I was in a paradise. My friend’s family lives outside Santiago, which makes me feel better about not liking the city especially when his father feels the same way. A large house on a private lot, they also have a large enough outdoor space for a small soccer field, a swimming pool that is used mostly by their dogs Willy and Guatón (<which literally means fatty) and a large barbeque and eating/patio area. Spotted with palm trees, I sincerely felt like I was in another world while still so close to the city.

<<el weón, Santi

I was surprised at how respectable Santi’s English still was after so much time without using it besides the occasional English class. Nevertheless I made sure to tease him about a few slips. That being said, if he slipped, then I fell disastrously in my feeble attempts to effectively communicate with his wonderful family. But as all three children of the family went through the pains of learning English, they all were aware of the effort I was expending in taking what felt like an hour to sputter out a coherent phrase or two. It was a fantastic end to a weekend with a sluggish start, but it was over too soon as I made my way solo through the metro and bus system of the metropolis to find my way back to Viña. Needless to say, the end of my weekend was surely spent with some great people and great food. And I hope to return to the Oyarzún house before my time here in Chile is up.

JJ

My school: Adolfo Ibañez

So far, my mornings in Viña have started cold as it is usually in the upper forties or low fifties without the sun, and electrical heating is a luxury most go without. I shiver through my morning routine, which—for the first time in over ten years—now includes breakfast! In an effort to warm up, I power walk down my street to the museum (Museo Fonck) where my bus stop is.  My fellow gringos and I try (and fail) to blend into the Chilean student crowd as we all wait for the loosely scheduled bus to pick us up and bring us ten minutes east up the hill to our school, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez (UAI).

Prologue-y side note: When trying to describe the school to my sister, Michaela, who had also studied here a thousand years ago, she couldn't recall any of what I was talking about. But after talking to a man here who had helped build the school, I found that the school was only finished three years ago and my sister wasn't crazy (a theory yet to be proven about all three siblings).

While lavish, strange, and overall Rowling-esque are three adjectives I would use to describe the school, it really is a pretty great place. It consists of four main buildings: A for academics, where all the classes are taught, some offices are, and the fitness center in the lower right. B is biblioteca, which means library. C is cafeteria and D I think stands for dean, and it's where the majority of faculty and staff offices are located. I should also mention that there are no dorms because all the students, international and Chilean, live with either their families or in apartments down in the city. And whether you think the school looks like the most difficult lego set to recreate or like someone was just showing off their love of geometry, we can all agree it's pretty unique. 

 ^This pre-construction aerial also shows how every building is connected to its neighbor by balconies. Such elements of connectedness is taken to the extreme as we walk inside building A, where we spend most of our time (besides the library, mother!) The picture below shows how the effort to connect everything with ramps can look very confusing

 This Hogwartian style confused me much as it did many a wizard  student before me, but I think we've got it all sorted out. Although, there is the fact that one can be on the second level and still need to ascend either another flight of stairs or a ramp to get to rooms that are also considered the second level? Not exactly nine and three quarters, but still confusing. Thank God the ramps don't move.

The campus is filled with dedicated and hard working staff, from the custodians—who I swear are always cleaning the bathroom when needed most, to the grounds people, security, and the fitness trainers. Everyone is very serious about their job. Case in point, what the picture of the gym below doesn't show is the fingerprint scanners and passport number entry system you need in order to use the facility.

Oh yea, did I mention that the school overlooks Viña? So try paying attention in class when this is what you see out the windows.

Overall, UAI is exceedingly modern, cared for with near perfection, and comfortable. The school has also become a place I enjoy spending my time at, something that goes against everything I learned growing up.

Since I included a prologue-y side note, it's probably best if I also include a epilogue-y side note as well. Addie left for Austria today for her study abroad, so read her posts as well http://addiesaustrianadventures.tumblr.com/ and wish her luck! It's been a long month and I miss her, but I hope her travels are safe and that she has as much fun as I currently am having :)

JJ