Steve Nash Does Bicentenario

At the club on Thursday night (Mariella, Me, Jackie, Carly)
Dream Team
Breakfast
The Crew (Jackie, Christian, Mariella, Carly, Ruben, Louis)
Making frat houses look normal

5 days, 8 ½ empanadas, an entire cow, and copious amounts of alcohol later…we did it! We survived Chile’s 200^th birthday… barely. This past weekend took fun to a new level. Carly, Jackie, Louis, and I took off for La Serena Thursday night and returned Monday morning as mere shells of our former healthy selves. We arrived to La Serena around 10:30, where we were greeted with piscolas, appetizers, and our crew for the weekend (Christian, Ruben, Kike, Mariella, and Claudio). Somewhere around 8:30 in the morning, after a night of toasting Chile and dancing, we arrived straight from the bar to our house in Guanaqueros (aka: wannagetthose). Little known fact about 8:30 in the morning: it’s the perfect time to have a barbeque, even more perfect if you haven’t slept at all. So there we were barbequing …beers in hand...at 8:30 in the morning. I think this is when I knew I was in for a good weekend. After a short 4-hour nap, we started what I like to refer to as an “endless day 2.” In actuality 4 days passed, however; I think we can all agree it felt like just one long and glorious day. Maybe it’s the fact that we did the same thing every day. Or that Jackie and Carly refused to shower for 3 days. Or the fact that we never once got out of our sweats (not entirely true, since I seem to recall an entire hour on Sunday where Kike refused to drink in anything other than his boxers that he had been wearing since Thursday.) Either way, you get the point. Our days passed as follows: wake up, drink a beer, drink some piscolas, get empanadas and wine, walk around for an hour with a beer before deciding to nap at home or at the beach, hour long nap, wake up, asado (BBQ), more beers, piscolas, asado, more drinking, more asados, sleep, repeat. In other words…we were living the dream. Despite feeling like it was one long day, I have managed to separate the actual days by several key events.

Friday: The day Carly caved.

Carly has been a vegetarian for over 3 years and hasn’t eaten red meat for over 9. Carly and I quickly realized that if we were going to survive this weekend, something was going to have to give. I had no problems. I was making this weekend my September “meating.” I rationed that since I didn’t get a full night’s sleep at any point this weekend, it was okay to extend my meating for 4 days. Carly, not wanting to be left out…decided to try one bite of meat. Despite claiming that she felt a little sick after one bite...she trucked on. An entire cow and the better part of a pig later, I looked at Carly with meat blood on her face, and knew that we would be friends for a very long time. Carly and I continued to eat more meat than I thought was humanly possible. Carly….I think you are good on protein for another 9 years. Goodbye morals…see you on Tuesday.

Meat: 1 Carly: 0

Saturday: The day Kike fought the law and the law won, Jackie punched the Governor in the face, and Steve Nash entered the building.

Somewhere between morning empanadas and naptime, Kike got arrested…for yelling into a street cone. Don’t ask. Even better than Kike getting arrested, was that not even an hour earlier he was telling everyone for the 20^th time that he was a lawyer. I think I heard him say the phrase “I am the law” just as many times. I’ve got to hand it to him though, upon being released, he was completely unphased that he had just been arrested and his only concern was more beer.

Law: 1 Kike: 0.

Fast-forward about 8 hours, and the governor of La Serena shows up at our lake house…only to get punched in the face by Jackie. In her defense, he didn’t look like a governor to me. He was 30 years old and had the face of a 20 year old. Apparently Jackie does not take kindly to being lied to. After arguing with him for no more than 5 minutes that he couldn’t possibly be the governor, she just let her fist do the talking. Turns out he WAS the governor. Oops.

La Serena: 1 Jackie: 0

Meanwhile, out of nowhere Rafa showed up at our lake house. Rafa has got dance moves that would make any former boy bander extremely jealous. I’ve never seen someone sing the backstreet boys so precisely and with so much passion. I had never met Rafa before, and the first thing he does is point to me and say “Oh look…Steve Nash.” Excuse you? He was convinced that I looked strikingly similar to Steve Nash, basketball player extraordinaire. If you don’t know who Steve Nash is…stop reading this and Google it right now. It’s not pretty. Not only did Rafa continue to call me Steve Nash the entire night but also every time I would so much as look his way he would pretend to do a fade away. The worst part is that this name caught on like wildfire. By end of the weekend I had accumulated so many insults that it’s amazing my self-esteem is still intact. Lets see…. we had: Rafa calling me Steve Nash, someone else told me I had a big butt but in a good way (gee..thanks) , “Are you Amish?”, “You drool a lot”, and “Did you know that you snore?” and I’m sure I am forgetting some.

Life: 1 Me: 0

Sunday: The day we drove 2 hours to see Pisco Elqui in the dark

Sleep and water deprived, we made the decision to drive to Pisco Elqui at around 7 pm. Pisco Elqui is one of the most beautiful places in all of Chile and it was rumored to have an awesome Fonda (typical Chilean party for the 18^th.) Once we arrived we realized that we were falling apart. We sat in a plaza, danced some Cueca, and turned right back around. Just a tip: daylight and sobriety are necessary to appreciate Pisco Elqui’s beauty. Well maybe not sobriety but definitely daylight. Unfortunately, I think our bodies already knew what our hearts had not yet figured out… this weekend was coming to a close.

Pisco Elqui: 1 Us: 0

So there it is Chile. You may have won the battle but you have not won the war. The Dream Team will be back. Dieciocho 2011 anybody?

Toothless in Santiago

Really?
Elias aka "Kush" or "Kooch" (still with teeth) and I at "La Piojera"
Casey, Caitlin (my roommate), and Kate...3 of my good friends here!
Jackie, Carly, and I at "La Piojera" If this bar doesn't scream classy to you...I don't know what does.
Busting some serious moves

If I had a dollar for every time a friend of mine chipped both their front teeth during a mosh pit at a 18 piece Chilean marching band concert….I would officially have one dollar. My friends and I went to go see “Banda Comocion” last night at a salsatecha in Bellavista. “Banda Comocion” does it all. This 20 piece marching band came equip with gaudy costumes, singers that could have doubled as soap opera actors, trumpets, symbols, and dancing. Perfection. The concert was supposed to start at 11…so naturally the band didn’t come on until close to 1. Needless to say, us gringas were at the bar at 10:30. Jackie, Carly, and I were three of about 25 people in the bar at the time the concert was supposed to start. Fast forward to an hour later and the crowd had done a complete 180. The bar was PACKED. Elias, Zach, and Dustin met us just in time for the live music to start. What started out as some good ol’ fashion dancing quickly turned into a full out moshpit. Apparently this was Elias’s first moshpit because he made the rookie mistake of taking a sip out of his bottle of beer mid mosh. A mistake I am fairly sure he will never make again. Someone knocked the bottle into his mouth and chipped his 2 front teeth. I repeat….Elias lost the better part of his two front teeth in a moshpit at a marching band concert. But if anyone asks….someone was trying to steal Carly’s purse and Elias stepped in. You should see the other guy. Incase you are worrying that this ruined the rest of our night….don’t. Minus the endless photo opportunities that Elias’s new dental status provided us, the end of the night was pretty standard and full of much more dancing followed by delicious late night food courtesy of Santiago’s finest street vendors.

In other news, everyone will be happy to know that I am absolutely not letting work get in the way of my good time. I am loving my job but sometimes you just have to prioritize. Chile has a huge holiday coming up that has been described to me as 4^th of July only crazier and longer (I am pretty sure that everyone who knows me knows that I love any excuse to be excessively patriotic)….and this year it is the 200 year anniversary. I am getting excited just typing this! Everyone has a 4 day weekend so Jackie, Carly, and I have decided to go up to La Serena. The only problem? We are leaving the city at 5 and I have a class that starts at 6. Not to worry. Never underestimate the power of confusion. I had a quick and to the point conversation with my class that went as follows:

Me: I’m guessing that most of you will not want to have class the Thursday before Bicentenario?

Class: No, its fine. We are all planning on being here.

Me: So what I’m hearing is that the class is a little divided. Do you think we should go ahead and cancel it?

Class: It’s not a problem for us to be here. We have to be here anyways.

Me: You’re right. It’s probably better just to reschedule it for another day. Nelly…I’m going to need you to go ahead and call Bridge (my company) and let them know that you guys want to reschedule.

La Serena here I come!!!!

Mo Money Mo Pizza

Some trees
A picture that says 1000 words
Me, Elias, Jackie, and Carly at Concha y Toro (vineyard)
Obviously being a shell and bulls

Two months after moving here and I can finally say that things are all coming together for me! Work is in full swing (if you consider a 12 hour work week full swing), I’ve started doing yoga again, I’ve been pushing myself to speak more Spanish, and I have made some great friends. Life is good. A highlight of this last week was going out with friends from work to “La Piojera”. “La Piojera” (translation: “Lice”) is a very Chilean bar that is famous for its ‘terremotos’. Terremotos (earthquakes) are made of fermented white wine, black liquor, and pineapple icecream. What’s not to love? Needless to say, when you go to “La Piojera” …anything goes. What was supposed to be a relatively tame night out with a few new friends quickly turned into a night of debauchery. After a couple of terremotos everyone just seemed to click. Our group consisted of 5 people from work (Carly, Jackie, Zach, Dustin, and Elias), 5 Chilean friends of Carly and Jackie…and Joe…a British traveler who loved to hand out 40 dollar tips like it was nobody’s business. There’s something about British people that is so refreshing to me. Maybe it’s the accent. Or their pessimistic/sarcastic humor. Or the fact that in South America…they may be the only people worse at dancing than I am. Needless to say, Joe quickly became my partner in crime for the night. After the “La Piojera” and a lot of trouble getting to the metro, we caught the last train and went to a house party where we started dropping like flies. Any by dropping like flies…I mean getting kicked out. We lost one Chilean to not being able to stand up without being held, and we lost Zach to an unfortunate peeing on the wall incident. Lesson learned…drink terremotos with caution.

Arguably the best part about this night was the next morning. I know it’s hard to believe…but you actually don’t make that much money working as an English teacher. So it has become my morning ritual after a night out to check my wallet to see just how much money I spent. I went out on Friday with 6 luca and when I woke up…I had 20!!!!!! A miracle! During one of Joe’s tipping rampages I grabbed his 20 and told him that I would tip instead (because I had smaller bills). He insisted that I keep the 20-luca tip or give it to the cab driver and proceeded to drop it on the ground. I think I tried to give it back to him for about .005 seconds before I decided who am I to argue?… I should just keep it. And keep it I did. I don’t’ even feel bad about it! What I do feel bad about is the fact that it took me all of 20 minutes the next morning to spend ALL OF IT. In my hungover state I called Fro and ordered her to come get a huge pizza with me because “I’m RICH!” When telling Fro the story of how I came about such riches, I mentioned that Gary would be so proud because I used the Law of Attraction. For anyone not familiar with the law of attraction it works like so: I had been worrying about money, vividly pictured myself having money, and attracted money! Fro’s response? “Are you trying to tell me that your Dad will be proud of you for STEALING?” Yes Fro. Yes I am. Well 20 minutes, one huge pizza, and 15 luca later I was broke again. I guess it was fun while it lasted.

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.

Vegetarians Gone Wild

Andrea and Suzana at Cerro Santa Lucia (downtown Santiago)
Cerro Santa Lucia
Josh, Andrea, Anna, Alejandro, and Pedro
Dancing with the man of the hour, Igor!
View from Cerro Santa Lucia

After being in Santiago for almost a month, one thing is clear. These people love meat. Can’t get enough of it. In light of this, I have decided to start eating meat once a month. I don’t want to feel like I am missing out on any part of the culture. About a week ago I had my very fist “meating” (see what I did with that?!). One of my good friends here, Igor, went back to Brazil last week. In honor of Igor, we had ourselves a pretty solid going away party. The night started out with piscos (traditional Chilean drink) at one of our new Chilean friend’s house (that’s right…I have Chilean friends now). At Igor’s request, we went to what we thought was one of the best gay clubs in town. Turns out it's only a gay club on Thursdays. (Oops. Sorry Igor!) Any who, we continued to party until the club closed and as you can imagine after a late night such as this we needed McDonalds. We needed it bad. We get to the McDonalds and I order a large fry. The cashier informs us that the ONLY thing that they have are cheeseburgers. At first I thought I was in some sort of nightmare. No late night food?!?!? What am I going to do?!?! But then it dawned on me…… This would never happen in America... therefore…this is a part of Chilean culture. If I truly want to be immersed in Chilean culture I HAD to eat a cheeseburger! I had no choice!!!! So there it is. The first meat I have eaten in well over a year was not 1 but 4 (some claim 5) McDonalds cheeseburgers.

In other news, Spanish is still difficult. I feel like I am doing well, but there is still so much to learn. One of the things that bothers me the most is that when I speak in Spanish my personality does not come through at all. So in an attempt to fix this and to make my parents proud, I took it upon myself to learn some essential “Stephanie-isms.” So now, even though I have a lot of trouble telling my cab driver directions, I can tell people to “suck it” (chupa lo), and can even say “son of a bitch” (hijo de puta) with the ease and fluency of someone who was born here. I can also turn anything anyone says to me around on them. For example:

Joe Smoe) You are learning Spanish.

Me) No YOU are learning Spanish.

I know what you are thinking…with my good looks and killer personality (that I can now express en espanol) how do I not have a boyfriend down here?! The thing about Santiago is that it is not a place that values being single. This is probably one of the biggest culture shocks for me. Everyone is dependent on whoever they are dating and whether or not you have a boyfriend ALWAYS comes up in a matter of minutes after meeting someone. Someone asked me the other day if I had a pelolo (boyfriend in Chile.) I told him no. And he says “Oh so you are alone?” Clearly I responded with a “No, YOU are alone.” Psh...owned him!!!