I’ve been saving up more quirky Chilean facts to try and pass along…here are some more of the things I’ve come up with.

1. Continents — I had always been taught that there are seven continents. Period. We probably had a song to list them back in kindergarten. So after a lifetime of brainwashing, I was shocked to hear my Chilean lit professor mention the six continents of the world. Here in Chile (and around the world), there seems to be much more dispute as to the number. It appears that the majority of Chileans count North and South America as one continent, and my classmates seemed slightly annoyed that North America didn’t want to share its name with its southern sister.

2. Americans — Along the lines of the previous comment, “americano” here refers to anyone living in the Americas, not just people from the United States. General terms for Americans here are “estadounidense” (United States-an) or “norteamericano” (North American). Though we Americans are accused of ethnocentricity for calling ourselves such and forgetting about the rest of the continent (or two continents), I have to wonder at what the justification is for excluding Canada from the description “North American.”

3. Sucks to be a Chilean cat. The life expectancy here is shorter: only 7 lives instead of 9. What a rip off!

4. Prince Charming in Chile is refered to as the “principe azul” (blue prince).

5. Characters in Chilean fairytales don’t live happily ever after (well, they do, they just say it differently)…there doesn’t seem to be one standard phrase, but my favorite is “y vivieron felices comiendo perdices”  (and they lived happily, eating partridges).

6. Gringos — the term here isn’t at all offensive. It merely refers to anyone who has light skin and hair. It can be used to refer to Americans, Canadians, Europeans, or Chileans who meet the description.

7. Children who lose their teeth are visited by Raton Perez, a mouse who leaves coins in exchange for molars and bicuspids.

8. Colors symboism — In the U.S., the color green usually represents envy or jealousy. In Chile, it represents hope. I was also told that you should never give a yellow rose to a Chilean girl, because here it means that you are jealous or suspicious of her. In the U.S., a yellow rose usally means friendship.

9. These huge bumble bees are, according to my host mother, extremely good luck to have in the house. For a while in the late spring, we had jars all over the house trapping these bees, waiting until they died so that Jacqui could pin them above the doors, like this poor bugger:

The good-luck bee above the door

Here's a close up of the poor guy

10. Colds — I know this rant of mine is getting old, but it still drives me nuts. Colds here are considered crippling diseases. If you ask someone who has a bit of a sniffle how they are doing, the will tell you, in a voice that would lead you to believe they were dying of cancer, that they caught a cold last night. This debilitating disease is then treated with every kind of remedy imaginable.

11. Most Chileans are surprised to hear that we don’t have a national dance in the U.S. Chile’s national dance is the cueca, and kids grow up dancing it from elementary school. I think it shows how dance is so much more central to life here.

12. Chileans love to dance, and they love to dance late. Parties on the weekend start around 1 am and continue until daylight. I usually wimp out early…my American inner clock can’t handle the late hours. Plus, I actually like to be awake for part of the following day.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Hope you enjoy!

If you want to make sure a Dappen gets her exercise, make her pay to use the transportation. I will be coming back to the states a lean, mean, walking machine! In order to avoid the steep bus fees ($0.34 during the week, $0.70 on weekends) I often find myself slogging through torrential rain, wading through puddles up to my knees, getting sprayed with mud by passing cars, fighting off the cat-calls that plague me in the streets, and getting lost in the thick morning fog. Let me tell you, every day is an uphill battle…but if it keeps those 34 precious cents in my pocket, I consider it time well-spent.

Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate a bit. Though paying to ride the bus twice a day pains me slightly, it’s cheaper than filling up the gas tank at home. Nevertheless, I find myself jealously guarding my change and judging the value of items by the number of bus rides I could take with the same amount of money. If I would rather ride the bus than buy something, I know it can’t be that important. And, though I may have exaggerated the conditions through which I walk, it is true that I have been walking a lot. I often choose to walk the 25 minutes to my internship or the 30 minutes to the university, not just because it saves me the bus fee (though that is an important motivation), but also because the ability to turn on my music and shut off my brain for a half hour is great way to relax and take a breather from speaking Spanish while enjoying the springtime weather.

MICROS:

The micros in Valdivia are my preferred mode of transportation, mostly because they have character…and they’re the cheapest. A trip with a student pass costs about $0.30 and, though I don’t have a student pass (long story involving lots of Chilean bureaucracy), I can usually fudge it during the week…you just have to carry a school bag, hand over the correct amount of money, and look like you know exactly what you’re doing. In my days of innocence and naivety, I must have looked a bit hesitant when handing over my not-quite-legal student rate, and usually ended up paying the adult rate when the drivers saw the fear in my eyes. However, I have learned much since then and have perfected the technique…so much so that, even on bus routes not commonly taken by university students I can usually get the discount if it’s the right time of day. It gets a bit awkward if I’m asked for my student pass and I don’t have it, but it’s worth it if it saves me some of my valuable change.

For those of you who are wondering “what in the world is a micro?” let me explain. Micros are small buses on the shabbier end of their lifespan (I once heard Jacqui say that Valdivia inherits hand-me-downs from Santiago and other bigger cities) that run through the city at break-neck speed on the most twisting, roundabout routes imaginable. Micros are privately-owned and therefore do not receive a fixed salary from the government. What they make from their passengers is what they take home at the end of the day. The same system was used in Santiago until the competition between drivers became so dangerous that a change was needed. The drivers now work for the city and are paid a fixed salary.

The government must have figured that, since the preservation of the Chilean race is assured now that 40% of the country’s population rides on rule-abiding buses in Santiago, to hell with the rest of the country. As many of the Valdivian micros overlap in their routes and each bus is trying to pick up as many passengers as possible, the result is a high-speed free-for-all in high-density traffic as the drivers compete to be the first to get to the passengers waiting on the curb. I was on one micro with a driver attempting to pass another micro that was moving too slow for his taste. Suddenly snapping out of his fit of road-rage and horn-honking, he realized he was about to pass a very valuable bus stop. From the farthest left lane, he glimpsed a 5-foot gap between two other micros also parked at the stop and decided to make a break for it. Now I know these guys are skilled drivers, but I can’t imagine how he thought he could fit into that space. The other buses weren’t too eager to let him in and share the wealth of passengers, and the end result was us waiting for five minutes for the other buses to move, while completely blocking three lanes of busy lunch-time traffic. I’m not quite sure how we survived.

That said, I have to be fair to the drivers–their skills are incredible! Despite the hair-raising style of driving, I haven’t seen a single accident in my time here.

Learning to ride the micros has been its own adventure, though I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. In my first few weeks, I had no idea which numbers went to which places (and had received many a strange look for asking where I could find a published map of the bus routes). I usually ended up making a random guess, jumping on the first bus that came by, and then jumping off as soon as I had a glimpse of my destination, afraid that the bus would turn down some new maze of side-streets and leave me completely lost. I usually ended up walking an extra five minutes, feeling slightly stupid and incompetent as I watched the bus I had just left pass by the door of said destination. The first time I tried to take the micro to my internship, I knew that I wanted a low number…but I wasn’t sure exactly which (Numbers 1-3 went to my internship). When number 4 appeared, I figured that it was probably low enough, and hopped on. We headed down towards the center of town. Everything looking good. We passed the plaza. Still good. All we needed to do was take a turn to the left and…shoot. We weren’t turning. Not good. Instead, we were crossing a bridge. Definitely not good. I got down as quickly as I could, but not before I was about as far away from my internship as I had been before I got on the bus. I walked for three weeks until I could get up the courage to try again.

COLECTIVOS:

Basically taxis with a fixed route that you share with four other people. You flag one down like you would a bus and squeeze yourself in alongside other people going in the same direction. For students, the rate is more expensive than the micros, but their routes are much more logical and direct, which can save you a lot of time depending on where you are going.

TAXIS:

A pricier option, but necessary for getting to some of the more obscure locations in town. However, taking a taxi involves overcoming my fear of talking with strangers on the phone. Though I have essentially conquered this fear in English, I’m not quite ready to tackle it in Spanish.

CARS:

What are those?

My family doesn’t own a car but, funnily enough, green and white Subarus are a common sighting here. Doesn’t matter whether I’m in Washington, Vermont, or South America…I can’t escape them!

*****

Alright, I think I have written more than enough about transportation for one day. If you made it all the way to this message, my congratulations!

Hope you are all well! Would love to hear from anyone who has the time to shoot me an email or leave me a post !

If you were to combine Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Apple Blossom (for those of us from Wenatchee) and then pump the whole thing full of accordion music and chicha, you would begin to get the sense of what Fiestas Patrias (Chilean Independence Day) is all about. A woman from my internship said that September really only counts for two work weeks: the Chileans spend the first week working, the second week preparing for Fiestas Patrias, the third week actually celebrating Fiestas Patrias, and the fourth week back at work again. This isn’t far from the truth. The news channels started showing pictures of empanadas and asado at the beginning of the month (not exactly sure what the news was–am still having trouble understanding the tv) and, though we at the university only had a four-day weekend, much of the country has the entire week off from work to dedicate solely to visiting family, dancing cueca, relaxing, and eating as much as they possibly can.

The traditional foods for this time of the year are empanadas, fried or oven-baked bread filled with different types of meat-based deliciousness; anticucho, every possible type of meat on a stick; and chicha, a type of hard cider made from apple or grape juice. Though I’m not a huge fan of the chicha, I certainly ate my fair share of empanadas!

La cueca, Chile’s national dance, is probably my favorite thing about Fiestas Patrias, and I can’t help but smile every time I watch it! Each region of the country has it’s own distinct style and costume for the dance — from the plain, wool clothing of the south, to the extravagant skirts and spurs in the central valley. And, because it is taught in school, everybody knows the dance! When the music comes on, half the room grabs a makeshift handkerchief (scarves, napkins, socks, and toilet paper all seem to function) and a partner and moves onto the dance floor, while the onlookers clap out the rhythm of the music: clap clap, clap clap, clap clap. The dance is one of flirtation and conquest and mimics the mating ritual between rooster and hen. The resemblance is perfect — the man with his flashy, strutting steps pursuing the woman who daintily evades him, all the while shooting flirtatious glances at him from behind her handkerchief. Though partners barely touch throughout the progression of the song, with their eye contact, they manage to create a captivating energy. The dancers circle one another, handkerchiefs waving, occasionally passing close enough to exchange a significant glance before spinning away again until, in the end, they come together and walk off arm-in-arm. I found myself feeling sad that we don’t have something similar in the US — the music might get a bit tiresome after a few hours, but there is something truly beautiful in watching a six-year-old couple dancing alongside their grandparents while the community looks on, clapping out the beat.

I’ve included a link to some footage of cueca (the dancers happen to be Brazilian, but we won’t worry about the details) to give you a sense of what the dance looks like, though it really can’t capture the atmosphere of watching it live.

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For our days of vacation, Jacqui, Manolla, and I went twice to one of the public parks in the city where the set-up is very similar to Apple Blossom — carnival rides (reminding us that carnivals are ALWAYS sketchy, no matter where in the world you happen to find them), artisans selling their goods, and food stalls. The park was full of people and families enjoying the sun, eating, and flying kites. We made two separate attempts to participate in the kite-flying and decided that it was really much more fun to watch Manolla sprint around the park with the kite streaming after her, body-checking toddlers that happened to be in her way, than to just sit in one place and tug occasionally on a string like the skilled kite-flyers were doing.

Friday, we went down to the center of town to watch the military parade — teaching me that soldiers with skis are much cooler than soldiers with guns (see my facebook album) and that, when trying to pick people out of a Chilean crowd, it’s convenient to have blond friends.

Saturday, I went with my friend Alex (also from the Midd program) to Curiñanco, a costal town about an hour and a half from Valdivia, where we spent the afternoon enjoying gorgeous weather and walking through a natural reserve with gorgeous views of the coast.

All-in-all it was a great, relaxing way to spend a weekend. Click here to see the pictures!

I had been starting to get a bit worried that I was doing something wrong in my first weeks here in Chile. All through our orientation we women had been warned that “piropos” (cat-calls) were a common part of Chilean culture and that, especially as Americans, we would be plagued by whistles and rude comments. It was something that I was really dreading having to get used to and yet, after a month in Valdivia, I was still piropo-less. Rather than feeling relieved, I felt slightly let-down. I was missing out on a classic Chilean experience. Was I doing something wrong? I analyzed my behavior and my walking habits and realized that I had made a crucial error:. The majority of the time I’m out walking, I’m with other people and, since my circle of acquaintance only includes the boys in the house and the students from the Midd program (2/3 of which are guys), that means that I’m usually not without a male escort.

So, on a sunny day about a week ago, I took fate into my own hands and ventured out alone to look for my first piropo (ok, so I was really just heading to the university, but it’s a better story this way, right?). Walking along the riverside, I passed the first fifteen minutes unbothered. Rats! I was starting to lose hope when I passed two men washing their delivery truck on the side of the road. One of the men looked up from his work and, nudging his friend, said in a loud voice “Mira la rubia!” (Look at the blonde). It wasn’t really a true piropo–there was nothing rude or offensive in the comment, it was just an observation–but I was still so excited that I had to resist the urge to run over to him, tell him to “chócalo” (give me a high-five) and congratulate him on delivering my first cat-call. My Chilean experience is now complete.

Talking with other students from the program, Valdivia is definitely different from other cities in the level of cat-calling. It sounds like, in the larger cities, it is a much more common and more offensive problem. Yet another point in favor of small cities!

The Chilean preoccupation with colds is another cultural difference that has been a source of simultaneous amusement and frustration. The concept of colds as a product of a virus does not seem to have spread as far south of Chile and, as a members of the fairer sex, we women have to be especially careful to avoid the dangers of this affliction.

I’ve been gently chided many times for forgetting to wear shoes or slippers inside the house, and the family has been very concerned by the fact that I walk from the pension to the casita (a distance of about 12 feet) without putting on a coat. I have been stopped countless times on the doorstep with the cautioning advice that I should really wear more layers to protect myself from the change of temperature between the house and damp weather outside. The conversation goes something like this:

“Allison, can I give you a bit of advice?”

“Sure”

“It’s cold outside, and the change in temperature between the house and the outdoors is not good for you. You should really bundle up before going outside.”

“But it’s only 4 meters to the other house. I’ll run.” (Allison is also thinking about how outside is only about five degrees colder than the house).

“Of course, it’s just advice, but the shock of the cold air is really not good for you.”

“I appreciate the advice, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. The weather at my school in the states is much colder, and I’ve run longer distances without doing any serious damage to my health.”

“But is it humid at your school?”

(Allison is forced to grudgingly admit that, no, it’s not)

“Well, there you have it. The humidity here really makes a difference, and it’s something that you’re not accustomed to.”

“Next time I’ll wear a coat…this time I’m going to make a break for it.”

Two days later I sit down to breakfast with a runny nose and a slight cough. The family looks at me pityingly and says, their voice dripping with I-told-you-so’s: “You caught a cold.” I nod my consent.

Manolla reaches over to tap me on the arm and says, “You know it’s because you don’t bundle up enough.”

An “I told you so” never sounds more humiliating than when it’s coming from a six-year-old.

A list of some of the fun cultural differences that I have noticed so far:

• “po” — Chileans add this word to everything. The abbreviated version of “pués,” it really has no meaning other than a bit of added emphasis. “Sí, pó” and “no, po” are common responses to yes- or no-questions.
• The kiss on the cheek — I think this is pretty standard in most of Latin America, but it is definitely different from the U.S. The kiss on the cheek is the typical way of greeting another person (woman to woman, or man to woman), whether they are a friend or someone to whom you are being introduced. Men shake each others hand–if it is a good friend, they shake hands, embrace, and then shake hands again. Though it felt a bit strange at first (especially when you are being introduced to the 20 people who work in your office), I like it much more than just the handshake…it feels much more open and friendly.
• “-ito” — Chileans add “ito” (the diminutive ending) to everything. Pass the tecito (tea) or the aguito (water). Do you want to eat oncecito (once)?
• Catching colds — The people in my household are big fans of wearing shoes in the house, which is understandable, as the floor is fairly cold. However, I´m prefer to take my shoes off inside, and at times I forget to put my slipper on. Whenever I forget, I´m quickly and politely reminded that I should really consider wearing shoes or slippers, as I will catch a cold if I don´t. Last night, it was raining (as usual) and I was leaving the pensión to head back to the casita for bed. I was told that I should bundle up, because the change in temperature from inside to outside, combined with the moisture would give me a cold. It was hard to keep from laughing…outside isn´t much colder than inside, and I had to run all of 10 ft to get from one house to the other.
• Machismo — I know there are a lot of negatives associated with this word, but let´s focus on some of the benefits for women: I get doors held open for me, men offer me their seat on the bus, etc. My opinion might change once I´ve experience more of the negatives but, for now, it´s not such a bad thing.
• TV — it´s on ALL the time.
• Music — on the popular radio stations, the music is as much in English as it is in Spanish. All sorts of music that is popular in the States right now has made it down to Chile. However, funny moments arise when people don´t understand the words of the songs–such as when I went to a government office to start the process of requesting my Chilean ID, and heard “Sleigh Ride” and “Yellow Submarine” among the selection of music.
• The “carnet” — This is the Chilean ID card, that is needed for everything. The number on the ID is like a social security number, but it need for all sorts of day-to-day activities, such as renting a movie or using a credit card in a store.
• Chileans are very blunt when describing people…I have been shocked to hear Jacqui describe a friend of Manolla´s as “the fat, ugly one.” However, this way of referring to people by their physical traits is not at all uncommon, and not done in a malicious way. Not very politically correct, but I guess it gets the point across.
• “La” — added when referring to any woman in third person. La Allison, la Jacqui, la Manolla. The direct translation would be “The Allison” which was a bit funny to me at first. It makes me feel very important For some reason, men don´t seem to get the privilege of having “el” added in front of their names…not sure why.
• “Chau” or “Chao” or “Ciao” — the standard Chilean word, adopted from Italian, for “goodbye” that is never spelled the same way twice. I believe that this is also common throughout Latin America.
• Americanization — very common in Chile, and openly admitted among Chileans. American music and movies are very popular, and there are a lot of English words that have been adopted into Chilean Spanish. Examples: Yogur (yogurt), boul (bowl), and many more.
• Social class — Is very important in Chile which, though it is one of the richest countries in South America, has one of the worst distributions of wealth. Certain ways of talking can immediately categorize you according to your class. For example, the letters “ch” are pronounced by the upper class like you would say the “ch” in “Charlie,” while the poorer classes pronounce the letters more like the “sh” in “should.” People from the wealthier classes emphasize the “ch” when they speak, making in harsher and more defined, so that their is no doubt of their social status. It is interesting, too, that this difference is reflected in how a person pronounces the name of the country: “Chile” or “Shile.”