Born in the U.S.A.

Natalie at the Mercado Central
I miss this already!
In the Andes!
The photographer in action
The crew at the markets

Everyone just left a couple of days ago and my life here in Santiago finally seems to be in full swing. I am teaching 4 classes and slowly speaking more and more Spanish. Having everyone together in Santiago was an absolute blast. Together we learned valuable life lessons such as there is such thing as too much of a good thing (if that good thing happens to be white bread or Kookies), and Born in the USA is NOT an appropriate song to karaokee. I’d like to draw attention to the second lesson…because honestly…who knew?!? We learned this harsh lesson at Chilean gay biker karaokee bar at around 4:00 Friday night. In case it wasn’t already obvious by our loud voices and midwest accents, we thought it would be best to let the entire bar know just exactly where we were born via song. The Boss was a natural choice. It wasn’t until we were halfway through the song that we realized…this song has NOTHING to do with being born in the USA and everything to do with the Vietnam war. Not exactly the fun loving song we were looking for. Never the less, the show must go on. It wasn’t until we got to lyrics such as “and they put a rifle in his hands, sent me off to Vietnam to kill the yellow man” that things went south. After taking a second to listen to the crickets in the audience, we all just looked at each other with what I think was the exact same thought…if we just sing the chorus really loud no one will realize what a terrible song we chose. So sing the chorus we did. But lesson learned…next time I want to karaokee my American pride…I’m sticking to “Party in the USA” or "Sweet Home Chicago."

In other news, teaching English has been great so far if only for the fact that I get to watch other people make the same ridiculous mistakes that I make in Spanish. One of my personal favorites happened earlier today. Our lesson was about travel and the question was “where have you traveled and why did you choose to travel there?” This class is full of high intermediate adults and the one female student responded that she went to Brazil because of the “hot bitches.” She meant hot beaches. I about died. The only thing that kept me from laughing out loud was a flashback to this weekend when I innocently tried to tell someone that I'm scared of heights. In Spanish the literal translation would be they give me fear...."me dan miedo." I said "me dan mierda"....which roughly translates to they give me the shits.

Chicago is My Kind of People

Wall in Valparaiso
Family breakfast
Valparaiso is famous for its beautiful graffiti
More Valparaiso
Ziplining in Cajon de Maipo -- notice the tire break system

Having everyone here has been awesome! It’s been great to be able to get out of the city for a little bit and relax. On Thursday Natalie, Amanda, Allison, and I all went to Cajon de Maipo. It’s a short metro ride away from Santiago but it seems like a different area entirely. Well except for the excessive amount of stray dogs. What is wrong with this country?! We stayed in an adorable cabin in the middle of mountains and waterfalls, hiked, drank wine, made a delicious dinner, went ziplining and got massages! On Friday, Kristen and Jenny arrived and the 7 of us went to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Before we left for Valparaiso, Amanda, Natalie, Allison, and I went out to lunch. I’m glad we did because they really got to see Santiago at its finest. By the time we had taken two bites of food, we had been hit up for money by not 1 but 5 homeless people. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind, but one man in particular was quite persistent. On our table we had a plate of carrots and a plate of tomatoes. In an attempt to get him to leave, Allison graciously offered him the rest of our carrots. He left for about 30 seconds...came back and mumbled that he prefers tomatoes, and proceeded to drop a spoon from his mouth onto our manjar dessert (sidenote: manjar is like caramel only maybe even better.) As if he hadn’t done enough…he then walked about 5 feet to our left, squatted down and made the most heinous noise I have ever heard. Are you ready for this? ……He was POOPING! Well at least I’m pretty sure he was and we were not willing to stick around to find out. I love this city. The Valpo/Vina trip was complete with lots of walking, a wine crawl, Jota Cruz, sopapillas galore (I could do a whole blog entry on sopapillas alone but for now all you need to know is they are little fried pieces of heaven that you can buy on the street for about 20 cents), lunch at the beach, and too many desserts. Que rico!

Working for the Weekend

Bellavista...close to where I take Spanish lessons
Still not used to having mountains around me all the time!
At Mercado Central...Santiago's fish market
At La Vega...Santiago's biggest fruit and vegetable market

This week I moved into a new apartment and started training for my new job. My new apartment is great! I live with 2 Chilean girls and an American girl. It’s in a great location and more importantly there is always hot water when I shower. In related news, either the weather is starting to get a bit better or I have finally adapted to the cold. Twice this week when I was in my apartment I went sans winter jacket. How Chilean am I?!? Most of my week, however, was spent in full winter gear training for my new job. I think this job is going to be great for me. I will be working with adults at all different levels. It seems like the company is pretty supportive and organized but still allows you the freedom to modify lessons. Many of the training sessions were taught by Dave who is far and away one of the craziest SOBs I’ve met in Chile thus far. Dave is what would happen if Steve Irwin and Harry Carey had a 70 year old son. Some of Dave’s favorite activities include switching subjects at random, swearing, and talking about swearing. Dave is a huge fan of hands on learning. We literally spent 40 minutes one day learning and demonstrating how to play and then pause DVDs. Apparently this is CRUCIAL to being a good English teacher. According to my extensive notes on this subject it is helpful to look at the remote to locate the buttons BEFORE pressing them. Who would’ve thought?! So now, if nothing else, I will leave Chile just a little bit better at watching movies. In all seriousness, most of the training was very helpful and I am looking forward to my first class this Monday! I am also beyond excited because next week Chicago is invading Chile. Natalie, Amanda, Allison, Jenny, and Kristen will all be in Santiago for 2 weeks!! I hope Santiago can handle us.