A wonderful phenomena exists here in Chile...everywhere, all week long, you can randomly find an alley full of fruit and vegetable vendors selling the most amazing produce at dirt cheap prices. It's INCREDIBLE. I finally took some pictures the other day....
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
A silly little experience with Chilean street theater...
Numero 1: I began typing this blog on Saturday and didn’t finish until today, Monday. Because of the time lag there are several blog-worthy things that have happened since then, but the only one I’m going to mention for the time being (until I get a chance to dedicate more time to a real narrative) is the fact that this morning I did one of the scariest things yet since I’ve been in Chile. What might that be, you ask? Well, in my ecology class we had to present research papers to the class, explaining everything about the published experiment with PowerPoint aides and the whole nine yards. Something I’ve done a million times in classes at home and doesn’t bother me a single bit…when the whole process is happening in English. It’s kind of a completely different story, however, to get up in front of a group of my peers and
So….the weather has been pretty awesome lately, with hot sunny days and warm nights. I have a pretty good sunburn on one of my arms, contesting to the truth of that fact. However, yesterday was abnormally chilly and overcast, and unfortunately I found myself in a bummed out mood as a result. That’s pretty bad news, since I’m going to leave summer in a few weeks and plunge into the dark deep terrible horrible no good very bad misery of winter for the rest of my life. But that’s another story.
Anyhow, I was having a hard time making myself productive at home (I truly think as a result of the weather) so I went for a quick run to energize myself and then I went out to visit a few museums that are still on my list of places to visit in Santiago. First I went to the Palacio Cousiño, an elaborate early 1900’s mansion built by one of the richest families (still) in Chile. It had, for example, the first elevator in the country, central heating (which most homes still don’t have here, even mine), gas plumbing for the lights, hand painted specially designed for the house Italian floor tiles (you have to wear booties over your shoes when you visit), hundreds of special types of international marbles making up the stairs and fireplaces and everything…it was quite a spectacular. The family lived there for three generations, and then the home was used as a place for foreign dignitaries (kings, queens, presidents, the like) to stay while they were visiting Chile. Now it’s a national monument owned by the government for showing off to tourists like myself. (Although to be honest I don’t really consider myself a tourist anymore, I’ve been here long enough, but I’m not really a resident, either, since I’m leaving soon…I don’t know if I have a classification.)
Anyhow, after visiting the Palacio, I thought I’d go downtown and make a trip to the National History Museum, something I’d been meaning to do for some time.
Sidenote:
I started out that direction, initially taking the metro the wrong direction well, not exactly the wrong direction, but I had two different options to change to two different metro lines that would both eventually take me to the same place, and I chose the one that takes me about 6 stops farther. Not a big deal, though; I love taking the metro places. It’s a blast! There are always interesting people to watch, and usually I have some sort of random interaction with strangers, and I always listen to my iPod while I’m riding so it’s like a have a movie soundtrack to listen to through all of this. I think one of these days when I have some free time I’m going to get on the metro and ride to every single stop on the line, and then come back home, and call it a day.
Anyhow, the National History Museum is in the Plaza de Armas, right in the center of downtown. There are always a million interesting things going on down there—people selling sunglasses and baseball caps and fingernail clippers and belts and avacados and candied peanuts and fingernail polish and sewing needles and purses and jewelry…anything and everything on earth. Often times – especially during what I suppose are “peak” times like a Friday afternoon or the weekends- there are musical acts, people doing traditional Chilean dances, comedians, all sorts of things. I was a few blocks away and the museum was supposed to be closing in an hour, so I decided that instead of worrying about making it there and rushing through the museum I would just enjoy all of the things going on downtown, instead. I started wandering through the crowds of people, rather aimlessly, when a newly gathering group caught my eye. It was evident that a comedy show was about to start, and even though the comedians usually talk in such a very Chilean way, and rapidly, that it’s hard to understand, most often I at least stop and watch for a second to see if I can catch anything that’s going on. Anyhow, I found myself pretty much in the front row of this particular circle forming. As the comedian was getting started he made a point several times to tell all of the men to put the women towards the front, both so that they wouldn’t get their purses stolen and also so that he could have a better look or something cheesy like that. Anyhow, as he was saying all of this he was pointing out specific people in the audience and making slight jokes about them or saying they should step forward more and things like that. He pointed me out several times telling me to come more towards the front as he was doing all of that, and I ended up in the first row of people in the gathering crowd.
Often times as he was making jokes with people they were rather interactive-the people had to respond to his questions and things. For example, a very pregnant woman was standing with her husband holding her hand, and the comedian told him to put her in front of him so no one snatched her purse. As her husband moved positions and stood to hug her from behind the comedian asked the lady “And what’s your husband’s name?” “Enrique” “Oh, that’s nice. And is he here?” That sort of cheesy joke.
Anyhow, I don’t even remember how he started with me, but at some point the guy asked me a question and I had to respond. Thank God I understood him talking; like I said before sometimes they’re going so fast and with so many modismos that it’s pretty nearly impossible. However, I responded to whatever his question was and he caught on immediately that I’m not Chilean. Well, foreigners are always novel, of course, and somehow that little interaction ended up launching me right into the center of attention. The comedian started just by asking me various, normal questions, like what I’m doing here in Chile and if I like it and all of that. Apparently, however, his show usually involves a few audience participants, and me being exotically foreign clearly made me a prime candidate.
And thus commenced what ended up being about an hour of me participating in this guy’s comedy show, helping him act out various scenarios and the like. Anyone reading this obviously knows me, and thus know that I don’t mind the occasional opportunity to ham it up and play along with fun stuff like that, so you can rest assured that I wasn’t a boring participant. A few examples of what we did….
I don’t remember what the ending idea of the joke was, but for part of one of his little shticks he wanted me to act like I was greeting my favorite movie star. He went on and on explaining to me that when famous American movie starts come to Chile all of the girls scream and cry and run to them and throw themselves at the movie starts, and on and on and on, and he wanted me to do the same. He was very thorough in explaining that on his cue I needed to run to him excitedly and cling to him. Uh, yeah right, I’m really going to do that to some slightly creepy street performer. When his cue came, I calmly walked up to him and shook his hand. Since I’d been playing along so well the whole time I think he half expected me to do what he’d told me to do, and the look of shock on his face when I didn’t was pretty funny. He tried a few more times to get me to do it, but each time I found another variation of a formal, polite greeting to use instead of running to him and leaping on him. When he started over slowly explaining to me again that he wanted me to act like a Chilean girl greeting an American rock star, as if maybe I hadn’t understood the first six times, I interrupted him and explained that he couldn’t possible expect a dignified American like myself to behave as crazy as a Chilean girl would. (It was in a joking manner, of course, after all he was cracking jokes about the US the whole time.)
After he passed his hat around to collect people’s coins in the audience, before the show was over, he noticed that someone had put in a rather large coin- $500 pesos. He made a big deal about how much he appreciated it, and said that we should do a special ceremony in thanks. He had me kneel down with him on a jacket, and put another jacket out in front, and then he started singing a song of thanks to God for giving him a $500 piece. Then, he sang (like the prayer-songs the priests do) “And as a demonstration of our faith we will stay here until you deliver us another $500…..(we sat for a minute while he looked around at the audience expectantly)….or maybe five $100’s…..” and we sat there for a bit until people started throwing their 100 peso coins towards the circle. There were two or three pieces on the jacket in front of us when someone else threw coin that didn’t land on the jacket “….it has to land on the jacket to count, Lord….” That little caveat turned out to be the real moneymaker, as we ended up waiting for quite a bit while people threw coins toward the center of the circle and they bounced off of the jacket. As we were sitting there, someone threw in a quarter. He stopped from the singing for a second and stared at it, surprised. “A quarter!” I said “Uh, clearly that belongs to me.” and I snatched it out of his hand and put it in my pocket. I guess it doesn’t sound that particularly funny right now, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it.
Anyhow, the “show” continued on for about an hour until finally he was done. Apparently he works in a bit of a group, taking advantage of the crowd that exists when one person finishes their show. Instead of just having the people disperse, someone else quickly steps in and starts their routine. The guy who I’d been acting with the whole time was saying thanks to the crowd and doing one last joke as the next people were coming in, and I don’t exactly remember what he said but after asking for a round of applause for me in thanks for being good natured and playing along he grabbed my arm and said “yeah, and now we’re off to go have dinner together” or something along those lines. Yeah, so everyone laughed and we left the circle, and I kept expecting him to let go of my arm and say goodbye and thanks and everything.
This, unfortunately, is where he turned into a creeper. Yeah, I thought he was joking when he said to the crowd that we were going to go have dinner, as I’m sure they did, too. Turns out he, however, didn’t think he was joking. We started to walk away and I said “Pues…ciao!” several times, and tried to pull away, and each time he said “ciao? Porque? Vamos a tomar una cerveza, por lo menos!” Sorry buddy, I don’t think so.
It ended up being a bit of an affair getting away from him, and I had to explain that I was engaged and my fiancé was waiting for me before he got the hint and reluctantly let me go.
Bummer that something as fun and lighthearted as participating in some street theater had to regress to the same old creepy Chilean men story, but as long as I forget how uncomfortable I felt at the very end it’s a good memory. Too bad I was alone, so I don’t have any pictures!
So….the weather has been pretty awesome lately, with hot sunny days and warm nights. I have a pretty good sunburn on one of my arms, contesting to the truth of that fact. However, yesterday was abnormally chilly and overcast, and unfortunately I found myself in a bummed out mood as a result. That’s pretty bad news, since I’m going to leave summer in a few weeks and plunge into the dark deep terrible horrible no good very bad misery of winter for the rest of my life. But that’s another story.
Anyhow, I was having a hard time making myself productive at home (I truly think as a result of the weather) so I went for a quick run to energize myself and then I went out to visit a few museums that are still on my list of places to visit in Santiago. First I went to the Palacio Cousiño, an elaborate early 1900’s mansion built by one of the richest families (still) in Chile. It had, for example, the first elevator in the country, central heating (which most homes still don’t have here, even mine), gas plumbing for the lights, hand painted specially designed for the house Italian floor tiles (you have to wear booties over your shoes when you visit), hundreds of special types of international marbles making up the stairs and fireplaces and everything…it was quite a spectacular. The family lived there for three generations, and then the home was used as a place for foreign dignitaries (kings, queens, presidents, the like) to stay while they were visiting Chile. Now it’s a national monument owned by the government for showing off to tourists like myself. (Although to be honest I don’t really consider myself a tourist anymore, I’ve been here long enough, but I’m not really a resident, either, since I’m leaving soon…I don’t know if I have a classification.)
Anyhow, after visiting the Palacio, I thought I’d go downtown and make a trip to the National History Museum, something I’d been meaning to do for some time.
Sidenote:
I started out that direction, initially taking the metro the wrong direction well, not exactly the wrong direction, but I had two different options to change to two different metro lines that would both eventually take me to the same place, and I chose the one that takes me about 6 stops farther. Not a big deal, though; I love taking the metro places. It’s a blast! There are always interesting people to watch, and usually I have some sort of random interaction with strangers, and I always listen to my iPod while I’m riding so it’s like a have a movie soundtrack to listen to through all of this. I think one of these days when I have some free time I’m going to get on the metro and ride to every single stop on the line, and then come back home, and call it a day.
Anyhow, the National History Museum is in the Plaza de Armas, right in the center of downtown. There are always a million interesting things going on down there—people selling sunglasses and baseball caps and fingernail clippers and belts and avacados and candied peanuts and fingernail polish and sewing needles and purses and jewelry…anything and everything on earth. Often times – especially during what I suppose are “peak” times like a Friday afternoon or the weekends- there are musical acts, people doing traditional Chilean dances, comedians, all sorts of things. I was a few blocks away and the museum was supposed to be closing in an hour, so I decided that instead of worrying about making it there and rushing through the museum I would just enjoy all of the things going on downtown, instead. I started wandering through the crowds of people, rather aimlessly, when a newly gathering group caught my eye. It was evident that a comedy show was about to start, and even though the comedians usually talk in such a very Chilean way, and rapidly, that it’s hard to understand, most often I at least stop and watch for a second to see if I can catch anything that’s going on. Anyhow, I found myself pretty much in the front row of this particular circle forming. As the comedian was getting started he made a point several times to tell all of the men to put the women towards the front, both so that they wouldn’t get their purses stolen and also so that he could have a better look or something cheesy like that. Anyhow, as he was saying all of this he was pointing out specific people in the audience and making slight jokes about them or saying they should step forward more and things like that. He pointed me out several times telling me to come more towards the front as he was doing all of that, and I ended up in the first row of people in the gathering crowd.
Often times as he was making jokes with people they were rather interactive-the people had to respond to his questions and things. For example, a very pregnant woman was standing with her husband holding her hand, and the comedian told him to put her in front of him so no one snatched her purse. As her husband moved positions and stood to hug her from behind the comedian asked the lady “And what’s your husband’s name?” “Enrique” “Oh, that’s nice. And is he here?” That sort of cheesy joke.
Anyhow, I don’t even remember how he started with me, but at some point the guy asked me a question and I had to respond. Thank God I understood him talking; like I said before sometimes they’re going so fast and with so many modismos that it’s pretty nearly impossible. However, I responded to whatever his question was and he caught on immediately that I’m not Chilean. Well, foreigners are always novel, of course, and somehow that little interaction ended up launching me right into the center of attention. The comedian started just by asking me various, normal questions, like what I’m doing here in Chile and if I like it and all of that. Apparently, however, his show usually involves a few audience participants, and me being exotically foreign clearly made me a prime candidate.
And thus commenced what ended up being about an hour of me participating in this guy’s comedy show, helping him act out various scenarios and the like. Anyone reading this obviously knows me, and thus know that I don’t mind the occasional opportunity to ham it up and play along with fun stuff like that, so you can rest assured that I wasn’t a boring participant. A few examples of what we did….
I don’t remember what the ending idea of the joke was, but for part of one of his little shticks he wanted me to act like I was greeting my favorite movie star. He went on and on explaining to me that when famous American movie starts come to Chile all of the girls scream and cry and run to them and throw themselves at the movie starts, and on and on and on, and he wanted me to do the same. He was very thorough in explaining that on his cue I needed to run to him excitedly and cling to him. Uh, yeah right, I’m really going to do that to some slightly creepy street performer. When his cue came, I calmly walked up to him and shook his hand. Since I’d been playing along so well the whole time I think he half expected me to do what he’d told me to do, and the look of shock on his face when I didn’t was pretty funny. He tried a few more times to get me to do it, but each time I found another variation of a formal, polite greeting to use instead of running to him and leaping on him. When he started over slowly explaining to me again that he wanted me to act like a Chilean girl greeting an American rock star, as if maybe I hadn’t understood the first six times, I interrupted him and explained that he couldn’t possible expect a dignified American like myself to behave as crazy as a Chilean girl would. (It was in a joking manner, of course, after all he was cracking jokes about the US the whole time.)
After he passed his hat around to collect people’s coins in the audience, before the show was over, he noticed that someone had put in a rather large coin- $500 pesos. He made a big deal about how much he appreciated it, and said that we should do a special ceremony in thanks. He had me kneel down with him on a jacket, and put another jacket out in front, and then he started singing a song of thanks to God for giving him a $500 piece. Then, he sang (like the prayer-songs the priests do) “And as a demonstration of our faith we will stay here until you deliver us another $500…..(we sat for a minute while he looked around at the audience expectantly)….or maybe five $100’s…..” and we sat there for a bit until people started throwing their 100 peso coins towards the circle. There were two or three pieces on the jacket in front of us when someone else threw coin that didn’t land on the jacket “….it has to land on the jacket to count, Lord….” That little caveat turned out to be the real moneymaker, as we ended up waiting for quite a bit while people threw coins toward the center of the circle and they bounced off of the jacket. As we were sitting there, someone threw in a quarter. He stopped from the singing for a second and stared at it, surprised. “A quarter!” I said “Uh, clearly that belongs to me.” and I snatched it out of his hand and put it in my pocket. I guess it doesn’t sound that particularly funny right now, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it.
Anyhow, the “show” continued on for about an hour until finally he was done. Apparently he works in a bit of a group, taking advantage of the crowd that exists when one person finishes their show. Instead of just having the people disperse, someone else quickly steps in and starts their routine. The guy who I’d been acting with the whole time was saying thanks to the crowd and doing one last joke as the next people were coming in, and I don’t exactly remember what he said but after asking for a round of applause for me in thanks for being good natured and playing along he grabbed my arm and said “yeah, and now we’re off to go have dinner together” or something along those lines. Yeah, so everyone laughed and we left the circle, and I kept expecting him to let go of my arm and say goodbye and thanks and everything.
This, unfortunately, is where he turned into a creeper. Yeah, I thought he was joking when he said to the crowd that we were going to go have dinner, as I’m sure they did, too. Turns out he, however, didn’t think he was joking. We started to walk away and I said “Pues…ciao!” several times, and tried to pull away, and each time he said “ciao? Porque? Vamos a tomar una cerveza, por lo menos!” Sorry buddy, I don’t think so.
It ended up being a bit of an affair getting away from him, and I had to explain that I was engaged and my fiancé was waiting for me before he got the hint and reluctantly let me go.
Bummer that something as fun and lighthearted as participating in some street theater had to regress to the same old creepy Chilean men story, but as long as I forget how uncomfortable I felt at the very end it’s a good memory. Too bad I was alone, so I don’t have any pictures!
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Photos of the riot brigade...
These photos are a bit old, I took them back in September during a giant free outdoor concert being held in the center of the city. I was during international diversity week, or something like that, and they closed off part of downtown to traffic and opened up the entire Plaza Italia for the afternoon and evening. The concert was called "Youth for Diversity," or "Celebrating Diversity" or something along those lines. Even though it was an totally peaceful event, the ubiquitous guys in green were on hand in case things got exciting. Of course nothing happened, but I took advantage of the calm situation to take some pictures of the crazy (and serious) vehicles that they use for crowd control.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Big Kid's Field Trip...
Well.....this weekend my ecology class had a "Salida al Terreno," which translates pretty much exactly into "Field Trip." The entire class had to camp together in a nature reserve about an hour outside of Santiago, along el Rio Clarillo. Our mission was to think up and gather data for an "ecological study" of our own design, which we will present to the professors on the last day of class. Luckily two guys that I've worked with a few other times on lab projects invited me to work with them, so I wasn't completely alone in the world, and it turned out to be pretty fun. I don't exactly know how the project will turn out; I have my doubts about the quality of the data that we gathered, but we'll see. Unfortunately I was lucky enough to get a cold right before going, and I've been pretty much exhausted as a product of the combination of being sick and going on a camping trip that didn't involve much sleeping.
Classes are starting to intensify a bit, in general, because we've only got 3 more weeks left of school. That means that I've got to final presentations (to be done in Spanish, of course, something I've never had to do before and my very well die from nerves before completing) as well as a approx. 15 page paper on the culture of protests here in Chile (I've never written more than 5 pages in Spanish, and I was pretty impressed with myself for being able to do that at the time.)
So, that's what's new this week, in case you were wondering.
Classes are starting to intensify a bit, in general, because we've only got 3 more weeks left of school. That means that I've got to final presentations (to be done in Spanish, of course, something I've never had to do before and my very well die from nerves before completing) as well as a approx. 15 page paper on the culture of protests here in Chile (I've never written more than 5 pages in Spanish, and I was pretty impressed with myself for being able to do that at the time.)
So, that's what's new this week, in case you were wondering.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Buenos Aires, Pt. 2
So… a little more about my time in Buenos Aires…..
One of the stories that I wanted to be sure and share regards a rather silly and uncomfortable incident that took place on the metro. I don’t remember where we were going, but for some reason KellyAnne and I happened to be on the metro in the height of rush hour. It was crowded to a degree that I have never experienced in my life; people were pushing and pushing to get in, shoving everyone tighter and tighter together to a ridiculous and probably unsafe degree. I was standing facing a business man as people continued to shove all of us tighter and tighter together, and the degree of closeness that we were reaching was uncomfortably intimate. Luckily he was also uncomfortable, not a creeper in the slightest, so I guess it could have been worse. However, as more and more people crowded into the train our bodies were being shoved tighter and tighter together, and it was impossible to ignore the fact that we were as close as we were. Because we were facing one another, it was rather awkward, and as people continued to push into me from behind (my back was to the door) I had to move forward more and more into a space that simply didn’t exist. In order to try and decrease the discomfort level in respect to the man and I being so personal, as I moved my body forward I leaned my head back, otherwise I would have had to have my face resting on his chest. This resulted in my stomach being pressed tightly against his while my back was arched and my face was throw back almost to the ceiling. (I hope) as a result of my odd posture, the man decided that I must be pregnant, and he told all of the people around us that I was pregnant and needed to sit down. Probably he was also trying to escape our terribly awkward situation. So there I was, on a packed subway train where it was impossible to move, being told that I looked pregnant. Awesome. Here’s a recent picture of me, taken the weekend before in Mendoza:
Now tell me, do I really look like I'm "with child"? I sure hope to God not! Don’t tell me that Argentinean’s don’t have body image problems if that’s what pregnancy should look like!! Luckily I just laughed it off, and I thought it was too funny of a story to not share, even though it’s pretty embarrassing!
I don’t remember the exact chronological order of the various things we did the rest of the time there, but I know it included at some point the following things:
MALBA: A big, new art museum full of famous and important Latin and South American works. Although I’m not very familiar with the world of art (I can look at it and enjoy it, obviously, but I’m pretty lost when it comes to the whole culture of appreciating it through interpretation and blah blah blah) KellyAnne is pretty into it. In fact, last semester she took a South American Art Appreciation class, and this particular museum was incredibly exciting to her because we saw tons of works that they actually studied in her class. It was a very nice museum, and it was fun to be with her because she was so animated about everything we were seeing, and was able to explain some of the interesting details about many of the works and artists to me.
Tango Show: On evening we went to a tango show at a restaurant downtown. It was incredible! I had no idea it was going to be as involved as it actually was; there were three pairs of dancers, a live band, a live singer for all of the songs they danced to, and sort of a vaudeville-style running interaction between the dancers, the singer (who was also like the MC), the band and the audience through the whole show. It was very fun and impressive to watch, and lasted about 2 hours.
Discothèque: We went out one night to a giant techno club of several levels with Rosie and several of her friends from her immersion program. I’m not sure exactly why, but it turned out that there were about 2 million guys and 5 girls, of which we were 3. Not only that, but Argentine guys are kind of creepers; they’re very forward and presumptuous, and assume that you will be going home with them tonight, thank you very much. Since they happened to be quite wrong in the presupposition, we devised some very entertaining methods of deterrence. The three of us girls invented a super fun dancing game, where we stood together in a little circle and made rules about how we had to dance. For example, one of use would say “dance like a dinosaur would dance!” and then all three of us would have to imitate dinosaurs dancing until someone said “now you’re a penguin!” Among having animal dances, there were rules like “any kind of dance you want as long as your hands are above your head for the next five minutes!” “Only move your left knee!” “Drive a car and sing along with the radio!” “Put your elbows in the middle of the circle!” … and it went on, and on, and on. Because we were acting so strangely everyone pretty well left us alone, and we danced that way for probably 2 ½ hours. We were getting so creative at the end that we ended up exercising parts of our body that we probably forgot existed, and I woke up sore the next morning! It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a dance club, to be honest.
Food fair!!
I don’t know how we ended up finding out about it, but at the Buenos Aires convention center there just happened to be a huge food festival going on. You paid 3 dollars to get in, and then enjoyed all kinds of food tastings of the finest Argentine foods – olive oils, wines, meats, cheeses, chocolates, jams, jellies, preserves, olives…..the list goes on an on. We spent several hours there, and I ate twice as much as I should have because my baby was hungry, too.
And….yeah. We did several other random things, like wandering through the St. Elmo neighborhood where we were staying and checking out all of the antiques and boutiques, etc, as well as eating at some pretty nice restaurants. We went to a really nice Sushi place across the street from a live concert in a park, and the people tried really hard to rip us off because we were speaking English. We had to send the bill back three times for them to correct it before they were honest with us. It was pretty silly and frustrating—that’s the first time I’ve had that kind of problem, even though I know lots of other people that have dealt with being treated that way. Thank God we speak English and aren’t idiots, otherwise we would have paid way more than we should have for our meal! We went to bed late the night before our flight back home, because it was the birthday of one of the girls in our hostel, and it was fun to celebrate together. And then…we returned to Santiago….y punto. :)
One of the stories that I wanted to be sure and share regards a rather silly and uncomfortable incident that took place on the metro. I don’t remember where we were going, but for some reason KellyAnne and I happened to be on the metro in the height of rush hour. It was crowded to a degree that I have never experienced in my life; people were pushing and pushing to get in, shoving everyone tighter and tighter together to a ridiculous and probably unsafe degree. I was standing facing a business man as people continued to shove all of us tighter and tighter together, and the degree of closeness that we were reaching was uncomfortably intimate. Luckily he was also uncomfortable, not a creeper in the slightest, so I guess it could have been worse. However, as more and more people crowded into the train our bodies were being shoved tighter and tighter together, and it was impossible to ignore the fact that we were as close as we were. Because we were facing one another, it was rather awkward, and as people continued to push into me from behind (my back was to the door) I had to move forward more and more into a space that simply didn’t exist. In order to try and decrease the discomfort level in respect to the man and I being so personal, as I moved my body forward I leaned my head back, otherwise I would have had to have my face resting on his chest. This resulted in my stomach being pressed tightly against his while my back was arched and my face was throw back almost to the ceiling. (I hope) as a result of my odd posture, the man decided that I must be pregnant, and he told all of the people around us that I was pregnant and needed to sit down. Probably he was also trying to escape our terribly awkward situation. So there I was, on a packed subway train where it was impossible to move, being told that I looked pregnant. Awesome. Here’s a recent picture of me, taken the weekend before in Mendoza:
Now tell me, do I really look like I'm "with child"? I sure hope to God not! Don’t tell me that Argentinean’s don’t have body image problems if that’s what pregnancy should look like!! Luckily I just laughed it off, and I thought it was too funny of a story to not share, even though it’s pretty embarrassing!
I don’t remember the exact chronological order of the various things we did the rest of the time there, but I know it included at some point the following things:
MALBA: A big, new art museum full of famous and important Latin and South American works. Although I’m not very familiar with the world of art (I can look at it and enjoy it, obviously, but I’m pretty lost when it comes to the whole culture of appreciating it through interpretation and blah blah blah) KellyAnne is pretty into it. In fact, last semester she took a South American Art Appreciation class, and this particular museum was incredibly exciting to her because we saw tons of works that they actually studied in her class. It was a very nice museum, and it was fun to be with her because she was so animated about everything we were seeing, and was able to explain some of the interesting details about many of the works and artists to me.
Tango Show: On evening we went to a tango show at a restaurant downtown. It was incredible! I had no idea it was going to be as involved as it actually was; there were three pairs of dancers, a live band, a live singer for all of the songs they danced to, and sort of a vaudeville-style running interaction between the dancers, the singer (who was also like the MC), the band and the audience through the whole show. It was very fun and impressive to watch, and lasted about 2 hours.
Discothèque: We went out one night to a giant techno club of several levels with Rosie and several of her friends from her immersion program. I’m not sure exactly why, but it turned out that there were about 2 million guys and 5 girls, of which we were 3. Not only that, but Argentine guys are kind of creepers; they’re very forward and presumptuous, and assume that you will be going home with them tonight, thank you very much. Since they happened to be quite wrong in the presupposition, we devised some very entertaining methods of deterrence. The three of us girls invented a super fun dancing game, where we stood together in a little circle and made rules about how we had to dance. For example, one of use would say “dance like a dinosaur would dance!” and then all three of us would have to imitate dinosaurs dancing until someone said “now you’re a penguin!” Among having animal dances, there were rules like “any kind of dance you want as long as your hands are above your head for the next five minutes!” “Only move your left knee!” “Drive a car and sing along with the radio!” “Put your elbows in the middle of the circle!” … and it went on, and on, and on. Because we were acting so strangely everyone pretty well left us alone, and we danced that way for probably 2 ½ hours. We were getting so creative at the end that we ended up exercising parts of our body that we probably forgot existed, and I woke up sore the next morning! It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a dance club, to be honest.
Food fair!!
I don’t know how we ended up finding out about it, but at the Buenos Aires convention center there just happened to be a huge food festival going on. You paid 3 dollars to get in, and then enjoyed all kinds of food tastings of the finest Argentine foods – olive oils, wines, meats, cheeses, chocolates, jams, jellies, preserves, olives…..the list goes on an on. We spent several hours there, and I ate twice as much as I should have because my baby was hungry, too.
And….yeah. We did several other random things, like wandering through the St. Elmo neighborhood where we were staying and checking out all of the antiques and boutiques, etc, as well as eating at some pretty nice restaurants. We went to a really nice Sushi place across the street from a live concert in a park, and the people tried really hard to rip us off because we were speaking English. We had to send the bill back three times for them to correct it before they were honest with us. It was pretty silly and frustrating—that’s the first time I’ve had that kind of problem, even though I know lots of other people that have dealt with being treated that way. Thank God we speak English and aren’t idiots, otherwise we would have paid way more than we should have for our meal! We went to bed late the night before our flight back home, because it was the birthday of one of the girls in our hostel, and it was fun to celebrate together. And then…we returned to Santiago….y punto. :)
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