This week in Chile...

I'm finally getting into the swing of things here. Classes have gotten out of the introductory stage and into the actual material that we'll be covering for the rest of the semester. The length of the introductory time has been one major difference between classes at Columbia and classes here. We spent two weeks basically going over syllabuses, introductory background material, and listening to professors going off on totally unrelated tangents (including, in just one class, a rant on awfulness of English food, Christopher Columbus' wife, and the Alien movies). To be fair, this happened to a greater extent at La Chile than at La Catolica, which is one of the many differences between those two schools- Catolica is much more in the mold of a US school, with a beautiful campus, studious and serious students, and focused classes, while La Chile has a little more of a hectic feeling, with less central organization and a more political student body.

The political bent of the La Chile students (and ones at other public schools) has been really evident this week, in the form of various protests and riots that have taken place on campuses around Santiago. This week is the anniversary of the murder of a student organizer during the Dictadura, which many Chilean students are using as a reason for all sorts of protests (including, among other things, for educational reforms, cheaper bus fares, anarchist rallies, and of course anti-Iraq).

The rallies got off to a start yesterday, and your humble blogger managed to inadvertenty get a front row seat to them while waiting for a bus. From out of nowhere, 20 or so hooded students walked out onto the street with signs, banners, and bombas Molotov, and began to throw them at a McDonalds across the street from the university. The police (who know the drill and had already taken up positions in front of the arcos dorados) responded by throwing tear gas at the protestors, who resourcefully picked them up and threw them back at the police. Figuring it wasn't a good idea to be 50 feet away from all of this, we decided to walk up the street to the next bus stop. Unfortunately, the protestors beat us there, as they had already taken up positions in front of a guanaco (water cannon truck) and were trying, it seemed and without much success, to light it on fire. We stood next to an overturned street sign and watched for a couple minutes as the protestors got soaked, but had to run away when the guanaco did a 180 and pointed directly at us, menacingly dripping water from its hose. (I would love to post photos, but Monday also happened to be the only day I didn't bring my camera with me. Alas.)

The side effects of the protests have been many, all positive- the cancelling of a quiz for tomorrow (that I hadn't dont any of the reading for), the cancelling of my only class on Thursday (which happens to be incredibly boring, US history in Spanish), and ample opportunity for make-up photographs. Also, it's given me and a friend a perfect excuse to escape Santaigo for the weekend and go to Mendoza, Argentina. I'm not really sure what's there, but it'll be nice to escape the polluted air and noise of the city, even it just means chilling and walking around for a weekend.

That's all for now, I'll post more when the protests get exciting and when I get some pictures. Ciao.

Subway Surfing

One of the most difficult things for me to get used to in Santiago has been the Chilean concept of personal space. Meaning, of course, a complete lack of any. Walking down the street it's a completely common occurance to be bumped into, run off the sidewalk, nearly hit by bikes, and basically feel like everyone is intentionally trying to make you feel under assault. Riding the bus or metro is a similar experience. The trains are so packed that it's normal to have 5 people pressed right up against you, forcing you to hold your bookbag over your head like someone wading across a river. Even when is nobody on the bus, you feel like people are hovering around you. Today on the way to class, I was sitting next to a guy about my age in the back row of the bus, who even though no one was sitting in the seat on his other side, was insistent of spreading his legs and pressing up against me, practically shoving me out the window. Maybe Chileans are just conditioned to press up against each other.

Still, I have never seem as many people cram into buses or trains as I have here. An example- Monday, coming back from class during rush hour, there were so many people on the bus that I was literally forced to sit in somebody's lap, while 10 people were running along side the bus trying to jump through the back exit door, which has been conviniently pried open and not allowed to close due to the people crammed into the back stairway. I would have felt scared at the image of hurtling down the street at 50 miles an hour with the back door of the bus wide open, but I was so tightly wedged into the nice woman's lap behind me that short of an explosion ripping the bus in two, I wasn't going anywhere under any circumstances. Including having to get off (if I had a peso for the amount of times I've been unable to get off at my stop... I'd still be poor, but with a large pile of 1 peso coins).

Compare this to New York, where everyone puts up little barriers around themselves on the subway- newspapers, iPods, elbows, surly glares. And people get genuinely uncomfortable at the prospect of having to ride in a packed subway car- you can almost feel the sign of relief when people get off the 1 train at 103rd St after being packed in after the 96th Street switch from the 2/3. As for me, I gotta admit that while I love certain aspects of the transit system here, I'm too much of an American (with my 40 acres and a mule and all) to get too comfortable here. Dodging bikes and people on the sidewalk is one thing, but it takes a lot of get accustomed to continual invasion of my personal space.

Chile canta con Michelle

Lots of stuff brewing lately, time to open the tap and write some of it down:

Last night, I went with my host mom and brother to a concert for La Presidenta, Michelle Bachelet, celebrating the first anniversary of her inauguration. Bachelet is a pretty insteresting figure- a single mother, a professed agnostic in a heavily Catholic country, a Socialist who was imprisoned and forced into exile by Pinochet, and a doctor by training (much like another famous Chilean socialist, Allende). Despite her non-traditional background, she is a very popular figure here (though less so after the botched implementation of Transantiago), and when she entered people jumped to their feet and applauded, genuinely excited that she was there.

La Presidenta walking on a wall. (Anyone know how to prevent Blogger from reorienting my pictures to horizontal?)

The event, "Chile Canta Contigo," consisted of covers of songs by three of Chile's major artists, Victor Jara, Victoria Parra, and someone else whose name I forget, and a reading of some of Gabriela Mistral's poetry. There was also a short video highlighting the high points of Bachelet's first years (which oddly included a brief shot of a new Transantiago bus, enough to instigate a torrent of boos), complete with an uplifting soundtrack and flattering shots of Bachelet mingling with the pueblo chileno. Throughout the tribute, La Presidenta sat in the front row, completely exposed to everyone without any security in sight- which proved to be slightly problematic during the Gabriela Mistral set when a couple of women broke through the security barriers, ran up to the Presidenta and being yelling at her. Immediately dozens of guys in suits materialzed and jumped on the women, dragging them out, but Bachelet seemed to shrug it off and stayed to watch the end of her concert.

By far the coolest of the night was the audience's reaction to the songs. Everyone knew ALL the words to ALL the songs, and they would stand up and sing along during the choruses and climaxes. During one Victor Jara song, the entire crowd jumped up and shouted the lyrics, waving their flags and stomping their feet. It was really incredible to feel the energy and passion- it was more like a political rally than a music concert, espeicailly with all the Che Tshirts and socialist slogans.

Chilean flags waving during the concert. Can you find Ché?

Overall, it was an incredible event to attend, and a great first-hand introduction to Chilean political culture. The mix of music and national pride, the way everyone seemed to be united in patriotism and Chilean pride- definitely not something I can imagine happening in America (especially since people can't even remember the words to the National Anthem). Also, it was interesting to see the scars of the Pinochet years- during the introduction to Victor Jara's set (a Chilean Bob Dylan who was killed by Pinochet immeidately after the coup), the crowd started chanting "Compañero Victor, te sentimos acá"- Brother Victor, we feel you here. That, and the loud booing at any mention of the Dictadura seemed to show the lingering bitterness at Pinochet, and was also evidence of how far the country has come from the repression of the past.

¡Desde Santiago!

¡Hola a todos! It's been a few weeks (and a continent ago) since I've last posted, so it's high time I fill y'all in on what's been going on down here:

I've been with my program since I arrived in Santiago last week. It's a small group with 13 girls and 4 guys, from all over the US, and all really cool. (As a side note, the skewed gender distribution seems to be par for study abroad programs here- in a university orientation meeting today with 100 other foreign students, I counted only about 20 guys.) For the first few days of our time here, we had a "cultural orientation," which entailed us being locked in a hotel in a non-descript part of town and attending meetings about personal safety, Chilean slang, and public transportation (more on that later). Culturally oriented after three days, we moved in with our families, and we've been commuting to our academic orientation hasta entonces.

My family chilena is "buena onda" (very cool): my dad's an accountant who works from home, my mom works for a progressive think tank, and I have two brothers, 22 and 19 years old. The older works for a real estate agency, and due to the crazy hours that Chileans work (usually 9 or 10 to 7 or 8) is out of the house a lot. My younger brother has a fauxhawk, 5 ear piercings, and is entering his first year in the university as, what else, an engineering student. So far, our bonding has been limited to me watching him play soccer on el Playestation and the both of us trying to fix the house's computer, but I'm hoping that once I can understand more than 30% of what he says we'll bond over other things, like perhaps piercings and extreme hair styles.

Getting used to the language here has been a big challenge. It's not that I can't speak the language, but Chilean spanish is VERY difficult to understand, because of how fast they speak, the halves of the words that they drop, and the thousands of "chilenismos" (Chilean slang) that pepper their speech. Driving in the car with my brother and his friends, I haven't been able to tell when they're talking to me or to each other, which has lead to some awkward silences, or worse, awkward interruptions. It's something that I can get used to, but for now it's been a very fish-out-of-water expreience.

Santiago so far has been wonderful. It has a very manageable feel- one the one hand it's very large and sprawling (like most Latin American cities), but at the same time it feels accessible and homey. Two reasons for this: first, Chileans are about the friendliest, most helpful people I've ever been around. They have no hesitation about answering a gringo's gramatically incorrect question, and even if you randomly ask someone passing by on the street, they'll stop and politely answer youre question, bad accent and all. They'll even help out when you don't ask for it- my friend and I got disoriented while trying to find the exit to a subway platform, and from the walkway above the tracks a guy shouted down at us how to get out. Coming from New York, this seemed way to nice, but I'll take whatever help I can get.

The other reason for the city feeling accessible is the public transportation system- but don't ask any Chilean about that. Some background: two weeks ago, Santiago completely overhauled (read: replaced) their bus routes and timing. Instead of the old system of unregulated "micros" that ran everywhere and stopped anywhere, and where the driver was paid based on the number of fares he recieved (=very inefficient), the new system, Transantiago, has fixed bus routes and schedule, and a contactless Metrocard-like way to pay (onomatepoetically called Bip!). To the rest of the world, this is a normal way for a public transport system to run, but here it's caused mass confusion. About 50% of the conversations that I can eavesdrop on are about Transantiago and how hard it is to use it/get used to it. Granted, there are problems- outside of the subway stations (which only over a small part of the city), there are almost no places to refill the Bip card, and buses run so infrequently after midnight that it's easier to walk than wait. But compared to before, there are fews redundant routes and buses, less pollution, and for us a much easier system to learn.

Time to run to lunch, so I'll sign off. Que toda pasen bien, y ciao.