Segundo Dia: Un Resumen

Yesterday was my first day of orientation. When I got up, around 7:30, Alvaro was waiting for me in the kitchen to show me all of the breakfast stuff. After a delicious breakfast of oatmeal, bread with peach marmalade, and tea, we had a practice “leaving the house” run through. He showed me which windows to close and which gas valves to shut off (eek) when I am the last person to leave the house. Then we figured out which keys corresponded to the various locks that I encounter on my way out (my keys are color coded—thank goodness—and they live on a cute little Washington, D.C. keychain, a tribute to my nationality). Leaving the apartment complex, we headed around the corner to the funicular, the street elevator that carries you down the steep hill (cerro) to the main avenue where the buses (micros) stop.

We paid the $200 pesos to ride and met Macarena, my program coordinator from the university, who lives in the same apartment complex! She accompanied us to the bus stop and we all rode together to Valparaíso. I made furious mental notes of my surroundings and which buses to take: to go to school I take the Errazuriz bus to Estación Barón. To return, I take the Alvares bus. Not too bad. Alvaro told me that once I receive my student ID we can get a discounted train pass and I’ll ride the metro instead—a lot more comfortable and it follows the same route. The average bus ride costs around $500 pesos, a little under a dollar. Arriving at la Casa Central of “la Católica” (the quick way in Spanish to say PUCV, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso), we went to the international office to meet my monitora (orientation leader) and see about my schedule for the day. Once he made sure that I was more or less settled in, Alvaro left to go to work.

Soon I met my monitora, Anaiza, who gave me a brief rundown of everything the group had discussed on the previous day (most of which was apparently just rehashing the student manual, which I had already perused). The next order of the day was the written Spanish exam. I waited with Sarah and Tom, two other students who also arrived on Monday, until they found a space for us to work. The exam was fairly straight forward—a multiple choice section for grammar, followed by reading comprehension and a short response essay. When we finished, we joined the rest of the group and walked over to a little photo shop, where they took our pictures for the visa registration process. The mental exercise started again as I circulated through my group, trying the meet as many of them as possible. I surreptitiously jotted down their names in my handy dandy PUCV planner so I could remember them—Marcus from Asheville, Kate from San Diego, Sarah from Knoxville, Erin from California, Tom from Washington state, James from California, Ben G. from Oregon, Rachel from Wisconsin, and, of course, Ben R. from Knoxville/Maryville College.

After the photos we waited for our oral Spanish exam appointments. Though it sounds pretty scary, the oral exam was just a short conversation with a professor, who then recommended which language courses we should take. It was actually a pretty comfortable situation. Happily for me, the profesora who did my oral exam told me that I spoke very well and could handle the advanced level of Español Comunicacional y Cultura Chilena. Yay! After the exam, we each took yet another photo (this one, I believe, was for our student IDs) and registered our visas with the local police. I am so thankful that Anaiza was there to walk me through everything. She is wonderful and extraordinarily helpful—when I asked where the bathroom was yesterday, she literally took me by the hand and walked with me. (You can make all the jokes you want about that; I know what you’re thinking. But it was really sweet.) They are serious about making sure we settle in as quickly as possible and understand everything that we need to know, which is pretty great—so different from my experience last summer, when I went it alone and relied on my own instincts (ha, so reliable) and thuh kiiindness of strang-uhs, in true Blanche DuBois style (sort of).

I rode home on the micro with Rachel from my group, and actually managed to make it in one piece, all by myself! Sweet success. I didn’t know who would be home, and had planned to just make myself a little sandwich and then take a nap. But once again my host papá Alvaro one-upped me. When I headed to the kitchen, he followed and started pulling out containers of food. We have a nana (household help) who comes over twice a week to do little chores and cook food to last three days at a time—whoa. So no teeny sandwich for me. Instead, Alvaro loaded me up with rice, bread, salad, and a delicious little wrap containing corn, cilantro, some other veggies, and a creamy sauce. Yum, way better than my idea. Although the nap had been my intention, I got carried away talking with folks on Facebook and Skype and never got to sleep.

When everyone got home, I broke out the little gifts I had brought from SC and TN. After everyone oohed and ahhed over them (David liked the coffee, Maria Elena liked the mango goats’ milk lotion, Alvaro liked the Fighting Scots pencils), we headed over the Macarena’s apartment for a little party celebrating her birthday and that of her dad (I’ll call her Maca from now on, her nickname). Now would be a good time to mention that everyone—EVERYONE—in Chile smokes. Including my host family, all three. They are really cool about it and only smoke out the kitchen window while I’m living here, which is fine. There is absolutely no stigma about smoking. It's actually kind of hilarious--in a very, very dark way--to watch them all light up with ciggies from packages emblazoned with the grim warning "TOBACCO WILL KILL YOU!" and a picture of a guy using an oxygen tank. David is convinced I will start smoking before I leave, since “all” the gringas do, “even though they tell us they don’t smoke!” We’ll just see about that, bro.

So I spent the next several hours meeting various members of Maca’s family (two sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom and dad), eating delicious little tapas (olives, carrot sticks, tortilla española, cheese cubes, garlic toast), and inhaling everyone’s secondhand smoke. (Honestly, I guess I might as well smoke, haha, I think that’s the reasoning behind it. Good job guys.) At first it was a little overwhelming to be in a room with fifteen chilenos speaking super fast Spanish all at the same time (a little??) but I did have several nice chats with people. One friend or cousin, I think her name was Claudia, works at the same bank as my host mom and is taking an English class, so I invited her to give me a call if she ever wanted to practice. I also talked at length with Maca’s dad, Fernando, who told me about good places to visit while I’m here and revealed his grand love for los Beatles. In the neighborhood where he grew up they only received radio stations with British rock music, so it was all Beatles and Rolling Stones for him. As a teenager, he even had his own radio show with a group of friends, where they played their fave Brit-rock for an hour once a week. He was a really sweet guy, and I was sad when he had to leave. But I was exhausted and I left soon after to take a shower (oops, cold since I had neglected to ask how to light the gas water heater…it was a quick one) and go to bed.

So this morning it was time to find my own way to Valpo. I did everything perfectly until I got off at Barón and turned the wrong way. I was so confused—I knew that the day before la Casa Central had been RIGHT THERE! But instead I took about a ten block detour, made a huge circle, and finally arrived at the university to meet my group, sweaty and disgusting. Luckily, this is Chile, and no one even noticed I was late!! We were given maps of Viña and Valpo and then boarded a bus to go on a tour to the other university buildings around the two cities. Since this is an urban school, they are spread out all over. We went to the Institute of Psychology and Education in Sausalito, the Institutes of History and Art in Viña, and the Institutes of Marine Sciences (saw a big sea lion swimming right off the coast!) and Music in Valparaíso. Most of my classes will probably be in la Casa Central, which makes it easy. If I have class in the Institute of History it will also be super easy--it's about two or three blocks from my apartment.

After all of that, I left the school and went to eat lunch with Ben R. and Pippa, who was a new addition to our group. She and Ben have an interesting situation. Ben lives with a guy named Gonzalo and his three sons--Gonzalo Ignacio, Matias, and Nico. Pippa lives with Gonzalo’s ex-wife, Silvia. The weird thing is that Silvia goes over the Gonzalo’s house all the time to cook, clean, and visit. So Ben and Pippa figure that they are almost like siblings here! We had a yummy lunch of cazuela (a Chilean soup), bread, tomatoes, avocados, and juice. Then we walked Pippa over to Silvia’s house and Ben went with me to the mall to buy a cell phone. We stopped by the beach and ended up meeting a group of recent college grads who asked us to take their picture. We chatted for a few minutes and exchanged contact info—they live closer to the Andes and invited us to come skiing sometime! Very cool.

Ben helped me find a bus back to Avenida Alvares and from there I took the elevator up to my street and walked home. Maria Elena was already home, so we talked and she fixed me some dinner (again, super delicioso). Now I’m vegging out after a looooong day of walking (blisters on my toes and a little sunburn on my shoulders), but I have a much better sense of where everything is, which is great, and I'm feeling better about the bus system. Tomorrow is registration day and we don’t have to arrive at school until a little before 3:00 in the afternoon. Mmm.

Diccionario de Chilenismos
-el taco: in Chile, a traffic jam, not a staple of Mexican cuisine
-al tiro: ahora, now, immediately
-pesado: annoying (No seas pesado!)
-auto: car (instead of carro or coche)
-pituto: un trabajito, a little job that you do on the side
-huevón (pronounced "weón"): formerly a derogatory nickname, now used to refer to any person in general (like "guy" or "dude")