My Life

Mi Casa

      My family lives in a complex of houses for military families. The man of every family that lives here works for El Ejercito (the army). Seeing groups of men in army fatigue (camo clothes, boots, army backpack thing, and floppy hat) is an everyday, normal occurrence. Slightly up the hill, towards the center of town, there is a small building that functions as the center for the complex and for the men working in the army. I've gone there with my host brother to buy coca for lunch when we're out of it and my host mom doesn't want to go all the way into town. 

the houses

My Week

       Most of this week I've spent relaxing with my family and trying to figure out how to understand Spanish. Wednesday, I walked around Puerto Natales with Max and Carlos again. We then had onces at Baguales, a super popular restuarant that's a 5-ish minute walk from my house and right on the main downtown plaza. For anyone who ever goes to Puerto Natales, I seriously recommend this place. As the Chileans say, "muy rico". It opens at 6:30 and its got tons of locals and tourists every night. (I've already gone there twice- the second time with classmates). For onces at Baguales, a group of Chileans typically order Mega Papas (1 kilo de papas fritas caseras con pollo apanado, tocino y queso/1 kilo of french fries smothered in breaded chicken, bacon and melted cheese) $5.950. (Note: smothered means something completely different here. They have a light topping of chicken, bacon, and melted cheese. They are not the American version of smothered where everything is covered by the cheese. Also, $5.950 does not mean its 5 dollars and 95 cents. It means its five thousand nine hundred and fifty pesos, which converts to approximately $11 USD.) 

For some reason, one of the tourist attractions is fingers coming out of the ground. I asked why, but they didn't know. They thought it was something about some guy who cut off his fingers and then did something memorable. Clearly it wasn't that memorable.

Giant bear. You can't see it, but there's a sign that says Welcome to Puerto Natales, Capital of Adventure Tourism in Patagonia in spanish.

    Thursday, I .... Well, I actually don't remember exactly what I did Thursday. I'm fairly certain that Thursday was the day it rained most of the day and I chilled inside the house, having tickle and pillow fights with my 5 year old brother. 

     Friday, on the other hand, was a very busy day. I went to bed at the usually 2 or 3 am, forgetting that I had to get up early in the morning. So at 8, my host mom woke me up and I showered and dressed. The president of the local AFS chapter picked me up from the house and drove me to the Color Cafe (the one the AFS volunteer owns, which I've now been to a bunch since he's the older brother of one of my classmates as well...) There I had breakfast with Aim from Thailand, three AFS volunteers some of whom spoke English, Antonia from Germany (she's been here for 6 months and goes to a different school), and a student from Denmark who has also been here 6 months and goes to a different school. After breakfast, all of us went to the school Aim and I will be attending (we're in the same curso, or class. Her sister and my brother are also in our curso.) We toured the school and met a bunch of the teachers including the English teacher. She actually speaks really good English, nearly perfect even. I'd been thinking that I would have to keep my mouth shut in English class because we were warned in Santiago that our English teachers probably wouldn't be as good at English as us and we should not in any circumstance correct them in front of the class. She told us that if we ever have any communication issues to go straight to here and she'll be able to help us translate. The school is large (for me), a little more than a thousand students. But then again, it includes twelve grades of students, so for each grade there are the same number or fewer as my 600 person 6 grade school at home. Because there are so many grades, the school has a bunch of different parts. There are two floors and the way it's constructed there are two halves to the second floor and you can't access one half from the other. There are tons of rooms that aren't classrooms but look like they might be and there are bars on the windows and gates in the middle of the hall to stop you from going into the wrong part of the school. It's pretty much guaranteed that I'm going to get very, very lost at some point in the first week or so. After I returned home from school, I went to the bank with my host mom and then made empanadas with my host dad. They are delicious. The dough is water, salt, and flour and its rolled out into a long rectangle. You plop the meat mixture (it's called pino, which is the Chilean name for the mix of carne picada and cebolla) in several spots in the center of the dough then add hard boiled egg and olive on top. You fold over the dough and cut out the empanadas. You can either cook them in the oven or fry them (al horno or frita). Then Aim, her host sister, and another classmate came to pick me up. We walked all the way to the other end of town (like a 30 or more minute walk) to pick up another classmate and then went to Color Cafe where another classmate met us. After hanging out there for a while, we walked to Baguales, met another classmate and had Mega Papas for onces. Then we walked down to the shore and walked along the sidewalk there. Understanding them is really hard, but they loved asking questions about me and Aim (I had to translate the questions for her). Some of them tried teaching me how to swear without telling me that I was swearing, but I caught on to it. When we walked back to the plaza, we met a bunch of boys in our curso, including Carlos, and again some of them tried to get me to swear at the boys. I didn't. Then at something like midnight, Cony and I went to a neighbor's house to watch a movie with the 14 year old daughter and her friend. We ended up falling asleep on their couch around 4 am and didn't come home until 6 am when we had to press the buzzer for a really long time before someone got up to let us in.

 my empanada.... I need some more practice

walking with mis compañeras

      Saturday, Cony and I walked with Nacho all over the place, trying to wear him out and get rid of some of his ridiculous amount of energy. (I have this quote on my iPod which describes the situation perfectly- "kids have so much energy because they siphon it out of their parents like midget gasoline thieves"). It worked until our parents picked us up from our walk (we'd been walking for an hour or something plus time spent playing in the park) and took us to family's house in the campo, or countryside. As soon as Nacho saw the other kids there, he regained all his energy and started running around like crazy again. We arrived at the countryside house at 9 o'clock and left at 12. It was my first asado, or barbeque, which is a huge thing in Chile. My host mother's family was all there- tons of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and tiny adorable little children. The food was the meat, baked potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, and bread. The meat was actually pretty good (sorry, Dad, but your cooking does not compare) and I ate way too much food. 

 Nacho riding on Cony's shoulders

                                                                            Asado

Differences between Chile and the USA

-meals... there are four here. Breakfast (if you wake up early enough), Lunch, Onces, and Dinner. Breakfast is very light, some toast or cereal or eggs or something of the sort. Lunch is the biggest meal, always always something with meat. I've had pollo asado, lentaje y arroz, carne, sopa de pollo, and other things I'm not remembering. Lunch is usually served around 2 or 3. Onces is tea time and it occurrs around 6. Dinner is optional and depends on the day, the setting, the family, etc. It's usually small amounts of food. At every meal, the food is put in the middle of the table in large serving dishes and you serve yourself.

-smoking... every other person smokes. The majority of adults smoke and a third of the teenagers smoke. I've already breathed in more smoke here than I would in weeks in the US. I still notice the smell but it no longer makes me feel like getting out of there as soon as possible.

-buzzer vs doorbell and locks... All homes here have doors that are always locked. If you shut the door behind you, you can't get back in. For whatever reason, almost no one in the family has keys. So when you get home, you press the buzzer to be let in. The buzzer is the same thing as a doorbell only the sound is like the buzzing of a gym buzzer. I always jump when it goes off and I'm standing near a speaker.