...continued from my last post
11. Being chosen from the
audience to walk the runway at a Chilean drag show
A
few nights ago I went to a gay club with some of my friends and there was a drag
show at the end. I had never been to one before, but it was really cool! There were
tons of lasers and black light stuff and at the end they asked if there were any
extranjeros [foreigners] in the audience. My friends pushed me onto stage and then
one of the drag queens asked me questions like where I was from and what I’m
studying. I couldn’t understand a lot of what he/she was saying cause he/she was
speaking really quickly in Spanish, but at the end he/she said that I look like
a model and told me to walk the runway. Then we had a mini walk off and it was
a lot of fun and everyone was cheering. We left pretty quickly after the show though because
a Brazilian lesbian wouldn’t leave me alone even though I told her I was straight. Lolz.
12. Getting drenched from
walking home in the rain
Mer
and I failed to bring an umbrella with us to the gay club so we wound up walking
home in the rain. Thankfully it wasn’t a cold night and the rain didn’t make us
freeze. We got back to her apartment at like 5am [her doorman looked at us like
we were freaks] and made ravioli before heading to bed.
13. Making crazy music
videos with Mer
What
was going to be a chill hang out at her apartment while I waited for the dinner
to be over at my own apartment [my roomies were having guests over and I
didn’t want to be there] turned into a beer and wine night with just the two of
us. Then
it got even crazier with us rapping music videos for our friends and posting them
on their facebook walls. Super hilarious
renditions including Hangover and Wild Ones.
14. Taking mirror pics with
some of the girls at my liceo
I
wanted to take photos with a couple of my favorite students and naturally they led
to me this huge mirror on the side of one of the buildings so that we could
take really great myspace type pics together. Pretty standard here.
15. Freaking out about
adorable puppies
One
time when Mer, Jewels, and I were sitting on a bench in Parque Forestal, we spotted
the most perfect Beagle puppy I have ever
seen [besides my 13 year-old Beagle, Missy, when she was a puppy]. I said “Oh my gosh” at least twenty times over and over before Jewels
told me to shut up. Mer and I were oogling over it for at least half an hour,
but we didn’t go pet it cause it was with its owners. Jewel’s laughed at us for thinking the puppies were so extraordinary and freaking out about them. And Mer also showed me some
pictures of other puppies she saw in another place in the city that were fluffy
balls of joy.
16. Visiting Pablo Neruda’s
house in Isla Negra
A
couple weekends ago my program organized a trip to visit the graves and homes
of three famous Chilean poets. First, we visited Cartagena to see the plaza and
where Vicente Huidobro is buried. Then, we drove to see Nicanor Parra’s house;
we were hoping he would come out and say hi, but he didn’t. Lastly, we went to
Isla Negra where Pablo Neruda had a house. We toured his house and honestly,
it made me like him less. Even though I appreciate his poetry, he was a very
hypocritical person. But I don’t want to get into that right now. We saw his
grave that day as well because he is buried outside his house. That day was a
nice break from the seemingly endless mountain of schoolwork I’ve been
tunneling through lately. And I’ve learned about those poets in one of my
classes here, which made the experience more meaningful and special.
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| Neruda's grave |
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| Neruda's house |
17. Going to Da’ Tito’s [a super
sketchy bar at Los Leones]
Rachael
discovered this hole in the wall place and we went there one night to wait out
the rush hour for the metro. The name itself made us laugh and the waiter we had
was pretty funny too. The five of us [me, Rae, Nat, Mer, and Jewels] went back
there another time to hang out.
18. Helping Rae learn how to
play her first song on guitar
Back
when it was sunny every day, I used to bring my guitar to campus on Tuesdays
and Thursdays because Rae and I have a huge break between our classes. I taught
her how to play “Marry You” by Bruno Mars and now she can! I’m super proud of
her.
19. Eating raw meat with my
Chilean friend
I
went out to lunch a while ago with my friend Ignacio and he took me to this
super Chilean place by Plaza Nuñoa where we got crudo, which is raw ground beef
that you add onions and lemon juice to and then spread it on bread with mayo.
It was really good!!
20. Indulging in scoops of
gelato at Emporio La Rosa
Every
time I go to get ice cream there I wind up getting the same flavor: dulce de leche.
Sometimes I add another scoop of chocolate, but there has to be one of dulce de
leche too. This place is dangerously delicious; if I lived any closer to it then
I would have gained even more weight in my time abroad.
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| Sopaipilla! |
21. Buying arrollados and
sopaipillas at the stand outside La Católica
Another
food that I have become obsessed with while I’ve been here are these two things.
An arrellado jamón con queso is basically a fried bread roll with ham and cheese
and a sopaipilla is fried flat round bread that you can eat plain or top with either
guacamole, mustard, mayo, salsa, or all of the above. These tasty nuggets are
200 and 100 pesos each [100 pesos is about 25 cents usd]. There’s a cart outside
the gates to my university so I can’t help but stop there for a snack. I think that
the women who work there recognize me now.
22. Cooking breakfast for
dinner and watching Star Wars
French
toast and crepes galore! Jewels, Nat, Rae, and Mer all came over to my
apartment to eat some delicious breakfast food and then watch the first episode
of Star Wars. We spiced it up by turning the movie into a drinking game where
things such as whenever someone uses the force, Darth Vader enters the scene,
there’s sexual tension between Han Solo and Lea, etc. we had to take a drink of
whatever we had.
23. Watching the crazy
soccer fans overflowing the buses and cheering on Plaza Italia
Everyone
knows that fútbol in Latin America is a huge deal, but whenever la Universidad
de Chile won a game, it was craziness in the streets. In fact, it gets so crazy
that you aren’t allowed to wear team jerseys in bars or clubs after the games
because it can start fights. I unfortunately haven’t been to a game [it’s
harder than you think to get tickets], but I have watched one in a bar where my
team [Colo-Colo] was slaughtered by la U.
24. Feeding cans of tuna to
the cats on my street
Just
like #10 from my previous post, I can’t resist providing nourishment to the
street kitties who live in an empty yard nearby my apartment. The big, old
orange one and multicolored brown one let me pet them, but the black one doesn’t.
I’ve trained the brown one to come to me when I call out “Kitty kitty kitty.”
It’s precious and I know you’re jealous.
25. Going to Miércoles Po
Every
Wednesday there’s a special deal for foreigners to get into these themed
parties hosted by this company called Comunidad Miércoles Po. I went for the
first time this past Wednesday with my friends Meredith, Maya, and Lauren and
it was snow themed. There was a blower on stage that blew little Styrofoam
balls over the crowd, which at first seemed cool until it got in my mouth while
I was singing and made it look like I had white dandruff in my hair the next
day at school. That night, I also was hit on by my first gringa hunter, who
straight up told me that he really likes gringas, and I made it into the video
from the party [go to :53 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSaEZKsGlrA].
26. Adventures with Lindsey
and Amelia
On
Thursday night we went to a funky, small, super Chilean bar near Lindsey’s
apartment and then headed to Barrio Brasil to go to a club called Galpon Victor
Jara where we watched a couple bands play, almost got trampled in the mosh pit,
and wondered why there was a dancing devil on the stage. Good times.
27. Taking graffiti pictures in Bellavista
Mer and I wandered around Bellavista this afternoon so that we could find awesome graffiti to take pictures with. Here are some of my favorite ones:
In less than a week I’ll be
flying to Rio—only one essay and packing up all my stuff are standing in my
way. I can’t believe that I’ll be home in less than a month. Maybe I’ll have
time to post again on my blog before I leave, but if not then I’ll sum it all
up when I’m back in California. I can’t wait to go back to Brazil and hike
Machu Picchu, but at the same time I’m super sad to be leaving the place I’ve
called home for the past 5 months. I’ve convinced myself that I need to live
and work here sometime in the future though.
Everyone knows that in Latin American countries, fútbol is a really big deal. No, don't call it soccer. It's fútbol. Since it's so popular, my friends and I naturally decided that we wanted to follow a Chilean team and try to go to a game. A few months ago I did some major research on the two teams I was most interested in [Universidad de Chile and Colo-Colo] in order to decide which one I liked more. Just for references sake I'm going to call Universidad de Chile by its nickname "La U" because it's shorter. Also, even though La U is named after the university, it hasn't been connected to the actual university since the Pinochet dictatorship.
La U and Colo-Colo are intense rivals and this Sunday they played against each other in the game known as the "Superclásico". My friend Natalie worked out getting us the tickets through her friend Carlos who works as a manager of the Starbucks that she practically lives at her [lol]. So Carlos, Natalie, Rachael, Julian, Meredith and I got to go and I was stoked for my first South American fútbol game! Rae and I are the only ones who support Colo-Colo and earlier in the semester we got jerseys to rep them, but we couldn't wear them to this game because our tickets were in La U's section so we would've probably been beat up. It was kind of awkward sitting in the opposing team's section; Rae and I had to keep ourselves from cheering whenever Colo-Colo did something good, which unfortunately wasn't often because we got slaughtered by La U [4-0]. Even though we lost, it was still a super exciting experience. Fans snuck flares into the stadium and lit them off whenever a goal was scored and it was hilarious listening to all the yelling and chants like, "Conchatumare" and "Él que no salta es maricón". I'm not gonna post the translation for those though cause they're pretty profane. Another interesting thing was that no fans for La U were allowed close to the Colo-Colo section. You can tell in one of the photos that the stands on both sides of them are empty in order to prevent fights [my tandem partner told me that people used to die at every one of the games from getting into fights with the rival team's fans]. Also, there was a trench/ditch between the stands and field preventing anyone from rushing the field or jumping the fences as well as carabineros [police] standing around everywhere.
