The United States is an Endeavor, Chile is a Country

So I guess I am going to be keeping with today's theme of slacking off. So far today I wrote 3 letters to personals back in the states and also sealed up a full set of Chilean monedas for MANKUUU in Minnesota. So now instead of finally starting the reading or something I am going to type out a blog. But it is not going to be about the title, I just thought of that when I was going to type out this blog. The idea is a bit amorphous right now, but it seems like the rich white men who started our country did so out of an idea for a country, not an identity. Proof of that is all the royalists sonsofbitches who fought against the revolution; they still felt British. This contrasts with something like Chile, where I feel like it is the identity that formed the country. But I don't know. 10 years ago I was still wetting the bed. 

Anyway I don't want this post to be about that kinda stuff again. I would much rather just list off anecdotes or something like that. It seems more fun.

Last week and this weekend have been really great. Just really swell. And I am not even being facetious. The week was cool: I got to talk more to Chileans, I went to a Pablo Neruda poetry-set-to-music concert (which sounds lame but was pretty good), went to another classical guitar concert, and had some nice jogs on the beach. Thursday night was awesome, I was able to float on a buzz for a good while, traveling to a night club in Valparaiso, before I reached that point I always seem to reach during any night out where I become cynical. Still had a lot of fun. Then Friday I think all I did was walk A BIT hungover to the beach and sit there for three hours. Watching the waves.

But on Saturday I went to Renaca with Craig and we walked on these large sand dunes that surround the city. It was getting pretty dark, but we were still able to crawl to the top of the largest one, where we found the perfect place to sandsurf with a good boogie board or something (tires had been put on the edge down the dune just for that). Navigating back through the dark dunes and drunken Chilean highschoolers, we found a sushi place in Renaca and had some top quality fish with some nice warm Sake. It was muy caro but I didn't care, I think it was worth it. Had a peanutbutter cheesecake for dessert. MMMMMM After that we went to Agustin's house and met some Chileans with whom Agustin's dad was trying to set up Agustin with for some odd reason (although he keeps telling him he has a girlfriend). It was a strange situation but I had fun. JJ kept looking at me like I was embarrassing myself when I was rapping 2pac with one of the girls, but it was still fun. (BTW Matt Rogo, if you are reading this, Azealia Banks is huge in Chile for some reason)

After that a group of us walked out to the Pacific and had a bonding moment. Not going to elaborate. Then today has also been pretty chill, writing letters and such. I mean what more can I ask for, I am truly thankful for all that I have in my life right now, and the clarity that I feel I can exist with. 

Well that is about it. Nothing super crazy to report. I am going to end this post with a phrase that has given me a lot of trouble because my host family uses it nonstop in a semi-condesending way. The phrase is "te fijas" from the verb fijar which literally means to attach. But the Chilean modismo means like "do you see/ do you get it" Literally I think what they are saying is "does it stick to you." Or maybe "do you stick to yourself" or "do you stick it to yourself"... I don't really get it, but it fits with this pic. Same tv in the living room has color. Te fijas? Ya me neither.

 

Osito and the Traveling Circus

    I figured I should probably write this post now. We are heading to Serena (up North 5 hours) tonight and won't be back until Sunday afternoon. Although the bus tickets are bought, the place we reserved dropped us from the roster, presumable because we were 12 loud gringos, so as I write this there is a frantic search for a new place. I ain't sweating it much though, because I don't do that outwardly. I usually freak out after a situation occurs, so I will probably be freaking out when we actually get to Serena. And usually I will freak out about something miniscule, like forgetting my sunglasses. It will suck that I haven't done any reading or summaries for the university but, no me importa. Va a mierda

    The last week here has been a little disorienting. When I first got here, there was an initial impact that lasted for about 8 days. Now it has worn off a bit, and I am starting to furnish myself some little habits. They help a lot with getting yourself more comfortable in a different place, but they really can cage you in too. Especially when the habits center around the other gringos. I think next week I am really going to try to switch some of them. Every missed opportunity sits on my shoulder and spits in my eye. I mean, I don't think I will have a chance like this trip again.

    More advice for study abroad: when you get an opening into the culture, take it. Most times you will be unprepared or uncomfortable, or unsomething. But this is the exact time to nut up. Call me cliche for saying this. And call me cliche for saying that. But if you don't nut up at that exact moment, it will be lost. I can count at least 5 times that happened this week, and I was just too uncomfortable to do anything. 

    So going with that, the phrase this week is more like a verb and it is aprovechar. It means to take advantage of. But not necessarily in a bad way. Aprovecha la situacion. Take advantage of the fact that you are in South America, in Chile, with Chilean people, speaking Spanish, getting in Scooby Doo level adventures, and all of that. The times in which I actually have, those times have been the most memorable of the trip thus far. Don't let new things intimidate you, face them straight. Like how this little girl confronted this puppet. Right in its face. No fear.

God I hope we get a place to stay by the time we get to Serena.

    

Who are the United States of America

...

Ya this post is going to be deep and probably make little sense, so if that isn't your scene thanks for attempting and I will see you later.

I was thinking today a lot about who we are as Americans. It is a little clearer to me already, just being in Chile for a week or so. I think the name of our country is pretty funny; kind of a misnomer, like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. 

Ya I'll give you that we are states and that we are in the Americas, but we aren't that united. And really that is the most distinguishing aspect to the name. If we were just called the States of America it would be a pretty weak name. So it suffices to say that the united thing is pretty important. Yet when I look around the US, we seem pretty divided. Look at anything in the states and it is easy to see. Politics, race, economics, etc. In Chile there is more of a common motion, maybe forged out of the dictatorship imposed traumas of Pinochet. In Chile I have yet to feel the majority-minority complex that almost invades our lives in the US. People work and walk together, and no one needs to separate, even though Chile is a very diverse country. 

At any rate, the community is stronger here, as a nation, then the United States. Yet somehow, we in the United States seem more nationalistic. Whatever the reasons, the concept of a division is at the forefront of the American psyche. There is always an Us and Them. 

On an even more basic level, we don't trust each other. You don't trust me, and hell no, I don't trust you. Some of us are too busy conquering our little piece of the American dream that has been handed down to us to trust a neighbor whose needs might differ from ours. Others are just in a cave. And still others, like the MinnesOtans, are in islands of community, unaware of the chaos that surrounds them. I don't know. I said that this crap is hard to understand. It's the feeling of a nation.

On a completely unrelated note, classes are going pretty well. I have one teacher who has a bit of a complex, but hopefully she will be satisfied with repeating her soliloquies and leave us poor students alone. Pshhh. Trying to tell me what it means to be Californian. That's what happens when you were born in an ivory tower. I'm not saying she is stupid, cause I think she is a good teacher. But she definitely is of a bullshit type.

The only thing better than the classes is the fact that I get to take a siesta everyday. And my underwear gets ironed. Let me tell you, this is the life. I don't know what I was thinking living like a cockroach in the United States all these years. Ok, its true I kinda miss the states, but I'm not going to let that detract from my nice ironed underwear. Ok.

SO the phrase from this post is going to be "tomar once" which literally means to take 11. It is a way of saying you want to have a small, tea type, meal with some snacks and stuff. So instead of eating dinner at 9PM everyday, I told my host mother that 3/7 days I want to "tomar once" instead. Going with the living-the-life theme, here is a pretty picture of the ocean from the beach at Vina. Bueno.

 

Las aventuras del osito

I never understood the value of a blog as a way of expressing your state of mind during something like a study abroad term. If all you wanted to do was write entries about the impressions you have walking around the street, why not just write them down in a journal. A blog only seems necessary if you are pining after advertisement dollars or something like that. But seeing as everyone is doing some blog and seeing that it could potentially act as my required diary of the experience, vamos. It can't be a bad thing, right?

My first impressions of Chile are varied. I'll give them a point on the whole take-your-time-living-and-not-waiting-in-line-at-Starbucks-and-tweeting-about-your-love-for-Game-of-Thrones thing. But I think I need to subtract at least half a point for the how-they-almost-kill-everything-that-moves-when-they-drive thing. Well that may be a little bit of hyperbole.But they definitely drive with a certain controlled chaos. I have already lost count of the times where I winced at a could be car accident. 

Chileans themselves seem very nice for the most part. They took the European sense of living in the moment and they shed the European sense of look how my shit doesn't stink. This makes a nice combination. I also feel like Chileans have a certain accepted vision of the world that is much more realistic than most Americans. I was talking to my host family's son about the student protests going on in Chile; he works in academia. The answer he gave to the question of whether it was a good or bad things was in the middle. He said that although the students may not see the full picture, the protest is a good thing because the movement's heart is in the right place. I rarely hear a moderate opinion from an American. I feel like in our country we are forced to pick a side, and not just politically. I think that we are a very divided country in more ways than that. To tell the truth I am still finding my way around the fact that I am in a different country for an extended period of time. So you don't have to listen to the bullshit that I am spreading now.

I'm thinking I can end each one of these posts with a parting phrase and a picture. So this week my parting phrase will be "no me acuerdo" because I have been saying that a lot. It means I am not sure. That can also serve as a diagnosis of the time I have thus far spent in Chile, I am not sure what it means, I have yet to make anything of all the cool and strange things that I have seen and felt. It is a mystery, like this big rock head. Hasta mas tarde

 

Un retrato chingón, güey

In the words of Noe, my Mexicano construction superviser

Oh my goodness, güey.

Pásame la chingadera.

And so begins this blog, fck peer pressure