Que tal? What's up?

Turns out once you meet all of your wonderful new friends there is less time to do things like write blogs.  This entry's not going in Spanish because I just don't have timeeee, my life is so busy, sorry not sorry.  A brief summary of what has happened in the last week!

Monday
Go to first day of orientation class.  Meet everyone on the trip and find out that we all sort of know each other but sort of not.  Meet Margot, our crazy but awesome spanish teacher.  (As an example of how crazy she is, Margot on US politics: "I really like Obama, chicos.  I think he's a very... sexy man.  I don't know if he's intelligent, but he's definitely sexy.")  Take an entry Spanish quiz and find out that we all suck at Spanish.  Hear a presentation on Chile and create a list a mile long of places we want to travel to.  Finish class and go to a bar where we eat pizza and I have my first Terremoto, or "earthquake" a drink made with Pisco (grape brandy more or less, Chile's national drink), wine and pineapple ice cream.  Walk around most of downtown looking for cell phone stores, and realize in the process that our group is made up of 100% great people, and 0% people who are good at deciding things.

Tuesday
Second day of orientation class.  Learn about different parts of the city.  Afterwards get lunch at a place with empanadas for super cheap, yum.  Go to Cerro San Cristobal (giant hill on the edge of the city) and hike up it with the crew.  Get as far up as the pool, which is beautiful, and go for a swim.  Hike back down.  Go to a sushi place and get a sushi and pisco sours.  Go home for dinner a leeetle tipsy, and discover my spanish instantly improved.

Wednesday
More spanish class.  Go on a tour of the city with some kids who are from Wake Forest university (college?) discover that they are very different from us and it may take some time to figure out how we function together (we'll be seeing them a bunch more) but that ultimately they're mostly nice and fun kids.  See a bunch of cool parts of the city (both cerros, plaza de armas, the racetrack, etc) but decide that it was a slight waste of time because we want to go back to all the places and see them on foot anyways.  Go back to the Plaza de Armas to do research for a project, which is basically the central plaza of the city with a cathedral, post office, museum, and some government stuff. Try a weird drink/food that involves seed corn and peaches.  Go to Charlie's apartment in Santiago Central to put together our powerpoint and see a different version of Santiago living! Get dressed up and go to the Ritz hotel for an event with the US embassy.  Meet the ambassador to Chile and feel super cool, and talk to him about being an ambassador and consider that it would be a pretty cool job.  Go home and pass out.


Thursday
Present our projects about the different sights in the city (each group had something different).  See a bunch of places that I want to go to.  Go home for lunch with madre.  Go back to city to have a little meeting with the program director and tell her that everything is going GREAT and I have no problems.  Get my class schedule.  Receive free mug and head warmer.  Go to a cocktail party at school with all the other students, and meet their host parents which was quite fun and interesting, and mi madre got to meet all the other rents as well.  Free yummy tiny foods and pisco sours and wine for all (and fruit juice too which was mostly untouched).  Finish off a few more drinks after the parents leave and head to a nearby bar, where there are giant beers for like $3 US.  Attract the attention of everyone in the bar by being a group of 12 gringos, and talk with some of them in Spanish.  Some people left and we ended up merging tables and getting a pitcher of terremoto and playing flipcup. 

Friday 
Watch an EXTREMELY sad movie in class about two kids who were friends before the golpe de estado de Pinochet.  Cry embarrassingly.  Go to get lunch at this place with "fahitas" by which they actually mean giant delicious open top burritos for which you sort of have to guess at what the ingredients you want are called, and cost like 2 USD.  Go sit in park to eat them.  Go home.  Leave to go out at night on the metro, only to realize I don't know how to catch the bus I need, and get help from a random guy on the metro.  When exiting the metro ask the help of another man, who shows me the bus stop, and then leaves me in the care of a really nice couple who gets on the bus with me and tells me when to get off.  End up at a bar and have a drink called an "ibañez black out" which is basically an Irish car bomb, except with all the ingredients separate.  Go with Kati in search of a dance club and decide it is a lost cause.  Spend 45 minutes trying to find a taxi that won't rob me blind, and eventually have success.

Saturday
Climb all the way up Cerro San Cristobal, which takes a long time but has an amazing view and church at the top and ice cream.  Walk down.  Go home to change, and go back out this time to Bellavista which is a clubbing/pubbing type neighborhood.  Go on a pub crawl and meet some fun American & British dudes, along with a Chilean or two.  Fun fun fun, dancing, fun. Come home at 5am (that is common here).  Realize that our clocks were wrong due to the time change and actually came home at 6am (less common here).

Sunday
Hangover
Dinner
Write essay about movie

Today 
Clases de español.  Listen to a song by a really sad lady who was in love and  committed suicide (I will put her name and more about her on here later she really did seem interesting).  Go see an exhibit on her art at La Moneda (white house type building).  Go to the Mercado Central and see lots of yucky dead fresh delicious fish, and lots of yummy fruit.  Go to La Vega (another market) and eat lunch at a slightly sketchy but very delicious empañada/ fish/ fresh juice place.  Go look around the market and discover that while it is very cheap, there is also a weird guy following us around.  Leave quickly.  Go to the thrift store neighborhood and find a place with amazing cheap scarves and a bunch of other good shops to go back to.  Take a new way home and see a new neighborhood.  Work on project.  Go home.  Have onces (tea) with la madre and an old friend who moved away, and discover that I can understand more and more of what people who aren't slowing down for me say.  Sit down to finally write a little on el blog!

Other stuff in general
-Tried lots of empañadas and friend empañadas and potato pies and other stuff yum yum
-Eating actual meals every day gives me so much energy! Waking up at 7 every day without much of a prob.
-Still love the dog.
-A lot guys here are either super into their girlfriends and making me jealous, or super into trying to attract the attention of us girls.  I think I prefer the former.
-A common name in Chile is Margot.  And they pronounce the T.  It sounds like Margoat.  Every time I meet someone new:
"Hola, me llamo Margo!"
"Margoat?"
"No, Margo! Sin T! (without a t)."

A lot More Chilenismos I have heard: (Disclaimer: not 100% sure these are all unique to Chile)
A pata: on foot
Bigoteado:  wine that comes from gathering the unfinished bits that remain in glasses drunk by others
Caña: Small glass of wine or beer.  Tener caña: to be hung over
Carabinero: Chilean police officer
Dama: Lady, said instead of Señora (still say Señora to people of the older generation... I think?)
Caballero: Sir, instead of Señor, same as above
Garçon: What you call the waiter in a restaurant.  It's french, I know.
Micro: What they call the buses here
Auto: Car.  A "coche" is like a baby stroller here, not a car.
Colectivo: shared taxi with a fixed route
Cuica: Related to the upper class
Flaite: Related to the lower class
Filo: Never mind, don't worry about it.
Gabriela: $5000 peso bill, named for Gabriela Mistral whose face is on it
Guatón: pot belly.  often used as a term of endearment, as is gordito (fatty) and negrito (which I won't say in English)
Huevón: Dude, bro.  More literally, motherf***er.  Imagine a group of guys on the metro going out and going "Oye, huevón, Que tal huevón, si huevón," etc.  I think it can also be an insult and comes from huevos, or balls (the anatomical kind).
Italiano: A sandwich with tomato, mozzarella, and palta (avocado) 
Ciao pescado: Literally Bye, fish! Think "see ya later, aligator"
Lola: Young girl at the most attractive and fun stage of her life. (usually used by older people.  "When I was a lola..." "Oh, she's such a lola!")
Luca: 1000 peso bill
ojo: Literally "eye," actually means watch out or be careful 
pan de molde: sliced bread that comes in a bag
po: pues, (and then/ so) a conjunction of shorts that chileans pronounce differently
na ma: nada mas, no more (another pronunciation difference)
ma o me: mas o menos= more or less, a third and final example of how chileans pronounce no consonants
pololo: boyfriend.  polola means girlfriend and pololear means to be dating, though our group likes to use it to mean canoodling/pda, which there is a lot of here i.e.  "Geeze there are pololos pololeando everywhere" or "I don't care if you find yourself a chilean pololo as long as you're not pololoing in front of me all the time."
tortolitos: lovebirds, aka people participating in pda
taco: 1. mexican food 2. traffic jam or 3. high heel.  Yeah, it gets confusing.
paso cebra: literally "zebra crossing," means crosswalk.  (black and white stripes)

Until next time, if you want to know what's good check facebook because as they say a picture's worth a thousand words.  Hasta!

Margo