Vida y Santiago

I feel like a broken record, but I feel like the best way to describe life here is to say it's life. Still doing soccer and the gym during the week, then parties Friday and/or Saturday nights. I am getting to feel more like a participant than an observer or an outsider-- especially in spending time with friends. If it's not too fast-paced of a conversation, I can generally join in which is quite awesome because on top of making life more interesting and giving me more opportunities to be using my Spanish, it makes me feel a lot better calling people up and mooching off their social plans. It give me some confidence that I can be an interesting friend (to some degree) instead of always being a needy awkward clinger. It also feels good to add some more legitimate conversation into the question and answer sessions that I fall back on--answering questions about myself and the US and English is probably the easiest type of conversation for me to have, and there are a lot of people who are interested.

Yesterday, I opted to skip my soccer team's tournament in favor of Santiago with Rotary. Scheduling conflicts are lame, but I think

I made the right choice-- while I'm sure I'll get to go to Santiago again, I'll be with Chileans who aren't interested in seeing the touristy sites. Anyway, our group consisted of the 7 exchange students in Curicó, the 4 from Talca, plus 6 Curicanos Chilenos from Interact, which is basically Rotary club for teens. I was a bit exhausted because I went to a party the night before and my ride stayed quite late, which wouldn't have been bad except that I had to get up at 7:30 to make my way to the bus terminal. Actually, I should have woken up before 7, but my alarm didn't go off. By some miracle, I woke up of my own accord and managed to get out of the house in 6 minutes. I'm pretty proud of that.

Upon arriving in Santiago's Central Station, we took the metro to La Moneda, which is the Chilean equivalent of the White House. We checked out the gift shop, then went to see Catedral Metropolitana (a big famous cathedral), the market, Cerro Santa Lucía (a big famous beautiful hill/park with a sweet fountain and a sweet view of Santiago), and a souvenir market. Then we grabbed some lunch and headed back to La Moneda for a tour. La Moneda was cool, but had a lot less grandeur than I expected. I think my expectations were high because it's called a palace, but I found it a good bit less regal than the White House.

We took the train back because something about trains just seems fun. When I got home at 8:30 or so, I napped for about an hour, then went out with some friends to enjoy the Halloween festivities. Actually, the disco we went to had nothing Halloween themed other than the tickets. I know a couple of people who went to a costume party and all of the little kids were out trick-or-treating, but it's pretty apparent that Halloween is a lot less of a big deal here. Actually that segues nicely into...

3 things that are different here

1. Almost all of the backpacks here are Head brand. In the US, the only Head products I've ever seen are tennis related, but here, luggage and backpacks and such are their big thing. I actually bought myself one-- I hadn't brought a normal sized backpack because I was told that everyone here uses tiny backpacks here, and although some people do have tiny backpacks and backpacks in general are a bit smaller, I still needed a fairly normal sized backpack for school.

2. There is no confidentiality with grades. Sometimes, assignments are just handed back and some people won't want to share, but with tests (including the standardized tests for college admission), the grades are almost always read aloud in front of the class or posted on a bulletin board for everyone to see. The other day, the teacher even announced how many classes each person was failing (it seems like a lot more people fail here, and it's a lot easier to fail a grade). It doesn't seem to bother anyone though-- I guess you can't be too bothered by what you're used to and consider normal.

3. The soundtracks for Chilean TV shows and ads are fairly weak in my opinion. For one, they play almost exclusively the same songs that are on the radio. Also, they'll often play a song multiple times in a single episode, in places the song doesn't fit what's happening at all, and they generally use almost all of the same songs in each episode. Game shows, dramas, reality shows-- they all do it. They especially seem to love Katy Perry's Hot N Cold and I Kissed a Girl. To me, the worst offender is Corazon Rebelde, a teen drama. They play their theme song at least 5 time's an episode, always feature both of the above Katy Perry songs at least once, and fail completely at matching the song to the vibe. In an episode I saw the other day, two adults ran into each other at the park and were casually flirting. The music started out with Pink Pantheresque awkwardly-sneaking-around music, then suddenly shifted to someone-is-about-to-get-really-angry-hard-rock-guitar-shredding. No one was sneaking about(unless they were sneaking about so well that I couldn't see them), and no one got angry. A bit confusing, a bit annoying, and a bit hilarious.