Olives and Spanish Classes

I left Punta Arenas quickly. I think I spent less than 24 hours there. It was either that or stay there for over a week and pay more to get to Santiago. I just spent two weeks in Santiago, Chile. Mainly because I didn't really know what else to do and thought it would be nice to stay in one place for a while. So I signed up for Spanish classes at the same school I went to some years back. My worry about Spanish school is that it is pointless. If I'm not going to practice after, it does me no good. After my first trip to Santiago and two weeks of school, I moved back to Hawaii where no one speaks Spanish. Then back in September of last year I spent a month studying Spanish in Costa Rica and then went to an island in the Caribbean for two months where I rarely spoke Spanish. Now two more weeks of school and one month left in South America. Don't know where after that. I'll probably forget it all again. Oh well. It's never bad too spend a couple of weeks in Santiago. Even if I didn't really do anything. Here are some highlights.

The Mystery Machine - parked right down the street from where I lived.

And a river of chocolate milk that comes from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory located outside the city in the mountains.

And then there is Bellas Artes, the art museum that has changed me in ways I can never explain. You have to go there for yourself. The silent movies they are showing in a couple of rooms left me feeling extremely uncomfortable and weird in a good way. They had some cool paintings too, but I got yelled at for taking pictures of them. Here is a pic of a room full of dog statues, most of which were depicted taking a dump.

All in all Santiago is a nice city. I could definitely live there if I could find a way around the olives and the mayonnaise. That stuff is everywhere. On the other hand they have the best avocados in the world. It's a tough call. Ordering a pepperoni pizza that inexplicably comes with olives on it, combined with my lack of Spanish speaking abilities, results in me saying things like, "Olives make me angry." While true, it probably confused and maybe even frightened the waitress. Another good quote resulting from a lack of a decent Spanish vocabulary was, "My beer tastes like cucumbers. Please give me a beer without cucumbers." In truth, the beer tasted like pickles, but I didn't know the word for pickle. I got as close as I could. I guess even with the proper vocabulary, that would have been odd. The bartender took the beer that I had already drank from and put it in the fridge for the next sucker. I made sure I saw the rest of my drinks being poured.

Boobs and Potatoes

So Chris just recapped our first two months of traveling in the post below, and I guess I’ll recap what I’ve learned after seven days of Spanish courses. We go for three hours a day, Monday through Friday, and we’re into our second week. So far, I’ve logged 18 hours of classroom time and about 10 hours of studying at home. And this is what I’ve got:

culo: in most Spanish speaking countries this is the word for butt, but in Chile it is the derogatory/naughty word for butt. Use with caution.

Past tense:
Verb tenses made me hate Spanish and eventually quit it in high school. Learning it again isn’t helping me attain any new affection for this nonsense. Once upon a time in English class, I learned what the perfect preterit, indefinite preterit, and imperfect preterit were, but those days are long gone. Calling it preterito perfecto, preterito indefinido, preterito imperfecto, and preterito pluscuamperfecto (I swear to God, I am not making that last word up) does not help me learn it any better, no matter what the language is.

Chilenismos are dumb:
Chilenismos are little slang words that are only used in Chile. People here have a tendency to talk really really fast and then they throw in all these weird words that don’t exist anywhere else. Or they decide to conjugate verbs in a completely different way. It gets confusing. But I must say that I like one Chilenismo that describes ugly shoes worn around the house: chancletas.
Pronounced CHAN-KLE-TAS – it’s a good onomatopoeia; even if you have no idea what it means, looking at someone’s shoes and saying, “chancleta” gets the point across. The word just sounds bitchy. I would like sassy black girls in the states to start using that word immediately.

Putting the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong syLABle:
OK, so you have the words ‘mama’ and ‘papa’. I’m sure you’re like, “Duh. I know what those words mean.” But, you also have mama’ and papa’… please excuse my English keyboard, those are supposed to be accents over the last A’s. So when the accent is there, you pronounce it maMA and paPA. MaMA and paPA mean mother and father, while plain mama and papa mean breast and potato, respectively. So look out for that one.

It’s funny when your Spanish teachers don’t speak English and try to pronounce English words:
In our class, the Spanish language is butchered and raped approximately every five seconds by us students, so when our non-English speaking teachers try out an English word, it can be a nice entertaining break. My afternoon teacher Claudia always has issues with the word ‘corner’. She cannot say it. It always comes out, “Ka, ka, kaaarner?” It’s great.

I also like how everyone here calls Chris “Kareese” or simply “Kreese”. In El Bolson, the woman that ran our hostel called Chris, “Meesta Kreese”. Feel free to use that when he returns home.

So yes, I’m learning things. My Spanish has improved to the point where I can read it better and understand it a bit better. I still speak like a four year old with a massive head injury, but these are things that can be improved.

I am going to make dinner now… wait, Yo voy a hacer la cena ahora. YESSSSS!!!!!!!

Happy Easter from the Land of the Old

Sorry for the big vomitous mass of blogs, but we’ve been without internet for awhile.

Chris and I arrived in Santiago yesterday after a 13 hour bus ride (including a stopover in Mendoza). We were tired and stinky but decided to take the Metro line (subway) to our new host family’s home. We are here to study Spanish for the next two weeks.

We found the place without too much trouble (it’s in a nice suburban neighborhood called Providencia), and waited at the door for our host family to answer. And waited. And waited. Finally, a little teeny tiny old man answered the door and let us into an apartment that was covered in photos of the Pope (the dead one). He explained he was napping and didn’t hear the door bell. He really doesn’t speak much English and smokes more than anyone I’ve ever seen. His name is Jose, but his nickname is Pepe… I like to call him Señor Pepe. After twenty or so minutes of awkward Spanish small talk, Señor Pepe’s wife Angelica came out to greet us. She’s pretty much deaf so she didn’t hear us for awhile. She speaks a little English but is also scatterbrained and has lots of Senior Moments, to put it in a nice way. They are both SUPER nice but holy cow, I can’t do this for two weeks.

They forget what they tell us repeatedly and Chris and I both know that their one son is in New York in a play called Dark Continent, they have 10 children, they are approximately 81 years old (each), they’ve visited New York and Miami, Angelica loves the country and is seriously upset they moved to Santiago (this happened about 30 or 40 years ago) but they had to because of the children and their education, she loves horses, Señor Pepe grew up in a winery, and it’s really a shame that Chris and I aren’t Catholic, married, or with children because really, our lives would be much happier if we were… especially if we were Catholic. We know all of this because this is what we were told, over and over, for about three hours yesterday. I guess repetition is a good way to learn Spanish, or to be converted to Catholicism.

This morning at breakfast we were brought out milk for our tea three times (even though we kept saying we didn’t want any), Angelica and Señor Pepe fought over who was supposed to bring us bread, I was told not to eat my eggs until the bread came because it was better that way, Chris had to open the milk container we didn’t want, Señor Pepe had some several smoke induced coughing fits, we were asked if we wanted scrambled eggs or fried, then asked again, then asked again for good measure, told to eat some fruit, and then the hot water for the tea was taken away and they disappeared, only to reappear later to take away some sugar. It’s so weird. Combine that with the fact that Chris accidentally walked in on Angelica in the bathroom that was supposed to be for our use, and cold boiled chicken, eggs, and potatoes for dinner on plates with crusted on food. And I honestly feel bad even talking about this, like I’m making fun of them or something, but this how it is and it’s really funny.

What’s not funny is that the house is really filthy and the smoking is seriously out of control. When we signed up for this program, we specified we didn’t want a house with cats because we are both allergic, we like to go out, and we don’t smoke. I don’t think the screening process is all that thorough. And it costs a lot more to stay here than it would to stay in a hostel so when I finally get around to meeting someone at this school, I think we’re going to put in for a transfer. Chris wants to sneak out in the middle of the night because he’s pretty sure when Angelica and Señor Pepe wake up the next morning, they’ll either forget we were ever here, or just think the two weeks are up. I told him he was a coward; he says that’s how the Colts got out of Baltimore.

Bus ride through the 7th Circle of Hell

I’m writing this post from a nice little hostel called Hostel Altos del Sur nestled in the woods above a town in Argentina called El Bolson. We have a hammock out front, and are pretty much surrounded by trees, a few barking dogs, and nature stuff. El Bolson literally means “big bag”, and the town sits in the middle of a valley surrounded by piney trees and higher up, the Andes Mountains; mountains that appear to have snow all year long. Hippies came here in the 1970’s the build their utopia, and now their utopia consists of a touristy (but clean) main street and the same old hippies selling their hippy crap at the tri-weekly Hippy Fair. I think I’ll go back on Saturday and buy some cheap jewelry, and I cannot resist not having another fresh made waffle, topped with garden grown strawberries and boysenberries and fresh cream. It was delish. They also brew their own beers so Chris needs to get on that.

Anyway, it’s quiet here and that’s nice. And it’s really quiet here at 6:30AM when your bus drops you off about 3 hours late and the hostel is closed and you have to sit in the eating area until 8AM, waiting for someone to come in and open the place up.

If you ever want to make someone really really hate you, may I suggest a 35+ hour bus ride together from El Calafate to El Bolson, Argentina. You will be greeted by the historic Route 40, which is not paved, and constantly under construction, but not enough construction to actually pave the thing. The scenery can be nicely described as Nothing. No towns, no rivers, no people, a few emus, and a while lot of Nothing. Make it extra special by going with a company called Tasqa, as you will get seats that don’t recline, food stops at places with no food, one stale ham and cheese sandwich offered by the bus steward for the ENTIRE trip, a 3 hour layover that was never announced, one lone dinner stop at midnight, and general lateness and ass hat-ery. By the end, we were grumpy, stinky, starving, and so nasty to each other. If we’d gone a few hours further to the town of Bariloche, only one of us would have made it off the bus with all limbs intact.

I told Chris that if I ever get sent to hell, it will be that bus ride for all eternity, filled with people I can’t stand.

And in the midst of all that junk, our bus steward was so genuinely pumped and happy about his job. It was actually really great and funny and tragic at the same time. Because we spent the majority of the trip going about 15 mph, and there was a lot of random breaking, the bus steward would occasionally bust through the dividing door between him and the driver and us passengers, to point out places we might want to take a picture of. By the way, the entire trip, it looked like we were driving through the backcountry dirt roads of Arizona or New Mexico, and not the pretty parts. I have no idea what he wanted us to take a picture of, unless he was just a huge fan of dirt and shrubs. Another time, the bus braked for an armadillo to cross the road, and the steward hopped out of the bus (again, an easy thing to do when you are only going about 15 mph at top speed) and grabbed the armadillo. He then brought it on the bus for people to look at, and then hopped back off, and tossed the armadillo out. The armadillo didn’t look too impressed.

I’m also convinced they only took us to places where their cousins or friends or some other acquaintance lived. These places weren’t even rest stops, they were just random people’s home where you could use the bathroom and buy snacks they had made. One house had a baby cow and a baby alpaca that would just wander in and out of the kitchen. I have a picture of the alpaca, so look for it in the picture section soon.

It was ridiculous.

So back to nice and quiet El Bolson and my nice and quiet hostel that is playing an album right now by Mika; which is excellent. Chris is having siesta time now and tomorrow we will do a little hike out of the town to some overlook and to a cave that looks like it has a face carved into it. I guess it was done by a glacier, so I’ll probably have to squint my eyes and tilt my head a little to discern the face. There is a Red Hot Chili Pepper tribute band playing in El Bolson tonight and I half want to go, just to see if they know English or are singing everything phonetically. But after not much sleep on Hell Bus, we might just stay in tonight.

On Saturday, we are going to take a two (!!! Yay!!!) hour bus ride to the ski town of Bariloche. They are known for their Swiss style architecture, Swiss style chocolate, and microbrews. We’re going to be there for two weeks because we’ve decided to go to Spanish school for the next month. We will do two weeks in Bariloche (one week in a hostel and one week with a host family) and then two weeks in Mendoza (both weeks with another host family). The school is called La Montaña, and class sizes are 4 people maximum; they include housing and breakfast and dinner and school supplies/texts in the tuition. For one month, it will cost us $1134 each. We’ve been spending that much (actually more) just traveling so we thought we’d throw in Spanish lessons as well. The school also has three to five arranged activities each week that range from white water rafting, to tango classes, to movies, to dinners, to volunteering, etc. I’m looking forward to this and going back to school. We have four or five hours of class each day, Monday through Friday.

I think Chris is excited because he will finally be able to tell people off, like bus drivers that make you wait three hours for no reason in some random town.