more toasted heads please

so, i dont even like red wine. or, i didnt. (i also didnt like avocado or sausage or cilantro, but thats not as interesting a story). but, being in chile, i feel its appropriate to sample the products and support the local economy. namely, the fine bottles (ok, so i buy the cheap ones, but hey, im on a fixed budget) of red wine (or white) created in my own backyard, or thereabouts. we recently went on a trip to viña concha y toro, the largest wine exporting vineyard in chile. beautiful, delicious. what else has happened in the past week? the first outing for my montañismo class. pretty fun, its a class about climbing mountians. in chile. awesome. also went up cerro san cristobol with my friend ricardo. beautiful views of santiago and rode in a cable car between a few mountians. what else? i actually participated in class this week. it was one of my proudest moments. knowing enough of what was going on to actually have the nerve to say something was really cool, especially because the prof understood me (kindof). yay for making progress. not a whole lot else is going on. leaving wednesday for buenos aires. loving me some carrie g. all not goign to daily elections and such. missing pizza and chocolate chip cookies. rockin out in chile.

voy a morir (im going to die)

lets get one thing straight: chile is a dangerous place. on more than one occasion, i have seen my short life flash before my eyes. i have other times considered myself to be in immediate danger. actually, im surprised ive made it this long, ive lived here what... a month? i suppose the key word in that sentence is lived, as in, im still alive. im pretty damn proud of that fact. now you might be thinking, jeez, whats going on in chile thats got ali so riled up...is it political unrest? unsavory characters? bird flu? alas, no, my friends. its the ground. i have noticed that in this country that there exists a very different perception of liability. and that idea can be honed in upon by simply walking down the street, sidewalk, hallway, etc, of any given location. remember being young and delighted by the perfect combination of polished hardwood floors, new socks, and velocity that would propel you from one end of a room to the other? yeah, chileans love that shit. but they love it in high heels (or sneakers, or flipflops), and they love it in the metro stations (and the discos, and the street). ill be walking along, minding my own business, and BAM! pulled groin muscle. its like walking on ice...but hotter...and alllllllllll the time. also, theyre tricky with those sidewalks. like, they look nice, all tiled or whatnot, but tread carefully my friend, because that stone that looks so normal, all lying in the grout like stones do, is actually a black hole. oh my god where did my foot go??? yeah. these chileans are tricky. i find myself looking around for the candid camera, but i think theyve hidden it pretty well. and then, if the sidewalks dont kill you, the micros probably will. those tin cans masquerading as buses dont take no crap from nobody. dont even think about trying to flag one down...theyll drive close enough to the sidewalk for you to think theyre going to pick you up, pound on the gas, and take off your raised arm. its a clean tear, doesnt hurt much, but man, try and keep yourself from slipping with your balance all thrown off like that. actually, chileans just dont have time for stupid people. can you believe that their coffee cups dont say ´´contents may be hot´´? its like they think you should know that or something. tricky. anyway, bought some tickets to argentina today. thats about it, just me, chilling, in a country full of mullets.

move over mary sue

there was a time when wendy woods ruled our lives. a sight of that braided, or feathered, mullet woman could send us into a tizzy and leave us to analyze the interaction for days. the glamour of bmw, or fmw, faded as we left the security of couzens and found there was a bigger fish to idolize, mary sue. mary sue earned a place above our fireplace, where we could gaze upon her smiling face as we contemplated the female greatness we ourselves were capable of. we love us some mary sue. i love me some mary sue. however, i feel that her prominence in my life may be over. im sorry mary sue, but you have been replaced by michele bachelet. Chile has a presidenta. I have been caught up in all of the festivities surrounding the changing of the president for the past few days, an exciting event even for someone who is little affected by it. first of all, not only is she a woman, but she is also a single woman (well, separated), and an agnostic. i respect the chilean people for their openmindedness. her position also allows me to forgive all of the relentless cat-calls and whistles i receive. the machismo in this country, it seems, is only on the surface. michele bachelet was inaugrated saturday at the national congress in valpariso, and i went to la moneda in downtown santiago to hear her address her capital city for the first time. it was a political celebration like i have never seen, flags and banners, confetti (challas again), music, chants that everyone seemed to know but illana and i, and an entry parade. interestingly, there was no protesting at all, whatsoever. the people love her. she addressed the people evita style, from a balcony in la moneda. we also returned to that area on sunday for an all day concert in her honor. there was constant music on two stages with artists from chile, bolivia, brazil, peru and argentina. she also spoke at the end of the night. it has been amazingly cool to get to see all of this stuff as it has been happening, first hand. the mood of the city has been jubilant. it was also really interesting to see the votes of confidence in her from leaders of other american nations. im especially impressed by the presidente of peru, alejandro toledo, who was asked about her abilities as the first woman president in south america. he said, its not a question of gender, but ability, and she is more than capable. and, as if there were still any doubts about her ability to stand up to the precedent set by those female marvels bmw or mary sue, ´´vive, b-chet´´ sounds so good rolling off the tounges of a couple hundred thousand chileans.

system failure

I never thought i would say this, but i miss wolverine access. that horrible computer system that singlehandedly ruins my registration experience each semester at michigan does not hold a candle to the complete and utter wild goose chase that is registering at la PUC. my week of registration (thats right, week) went sort of like this:

i decided which courses i thought i was going to take based on their names only, as there is no courseguide of any kind, anywhere. generally freshmen and foreigners attend the 1st week of class during their registration process, as a kind of taste test of classes, so thankfully i was not already locked into the misguided decisions i had made. for instance, in reading the title poetas latinos, i got fired up to attend a class on latinamerican poetry. WRONG! poetry yes, in latin. that was great. the prof starts talking and im thinking, ´´wow, that really doesnt sound like spanish´´. yep, latin. so, the supposedly simple task of finding classes to take here is considerably more difficult.

then, theres this whole process of actually registering. rather than doing it neatly (comparatively) on a snazzy program like wolverine access, one must physically go to the office of every department for each different course to get a signature of approval. this is no small task. the offices are on different campuses, separated usually by about 45 minutes of commute, and are often not on the same campus as the class you are trying to register for. also, there is no way to know before going to the office if the class you want is closed already, which it probably is. and, when you can register, other than the signature that i have on my paper, the only way that they know im in the class is by writing my name down in a spiral notebook. i dont mean to knock the organizational skills of others, but i feel like they should at least be typing it in somewhere....

so basically, i think im registered in some classes that look pretty cool, although i wouldnt be surprised to realize in july that i was never actually registered in them.

another cultural system that i can just not wrap my mind around? soccer tickets. i mean, this is south america, they love soccer. illana and i went to the national stadium where they hold games to buy tickets. wow. so we said, hey, we want tickets to a soccer game, can we see the schedule so we can pick one to go to? seller guy shakes his head. there are no schedules. interesting, we think. ok, when are the games? guy shrugs. he doesnt know. does anyone know? not really. ok, we say, we want tickets to any game, between any teams, at any point between now and july. anything. the guy shakes his head. no? apparently thats not how it works. eventually guy makes a phone call and writes down on a post-it when there might possibly be games. how are they not sure? because, for instance, on march 12 there is supposed to be a game at 5pm and an oasis concert at 6pm. one of them isnt going to happen. same for almost every weekend, and since i know that people have already bought tickets for oasis, im pretty sure the game is the one getting the boot. guy stars games that are more likely to happen, but still isnt sure. additionally, even if they were, by some fluke of nature, going to happen, we wouldnt be able to buy tickets there. despite the games supposedly being held there, tickets are sold on the other side of the city.

needless to say, we still have no tickets.

and dont even get me started on registering my visa.

loving chile, but lost in red tape.

teaching chileans to whistle, one city at a time

so i just wrote about a mile of info about our trip through the south. puerto varas, valdivia, niebla, villarica, pucon... horseback riding, volcanos, hotsprings, vans not falling off mountains, challas, noche valdiviano, ´gastronomical events´, huge plates of meat, free pisco, fresh blackberries, alpacas, and a whole lot more, but it got lost into the black void of technology. entonces, you all must settle for photos.

side note on photos, the screen on the computer ive been using has absolutely horrible color values and no way to let me adjust it, so i have no clue what these images look like in real life. they are all very dark on my screen. dont judge. the photo editor in me is crying.

the lake off puerto varas, as well as the volcán osorno in the distance. puerto varas was my favorite town on the trip. although pucón is supposed to be awesome, we were only there when it was raining and didnt even get to glimpse the infamous volcán villarica, let alone climb it. when we return there ill give an updated opinion.

alpaca? llama? who knows? i dont, but its still cool

i am, however, quite certian that those are horses, and thats us on them. this is definitely after our guide decided that a complete lack of riding skills made us qualified to run full speed across the hills with horses that spoke better spanish than we did. awesome.

no thats not snow, its challas, confetti, that gets thrown into the mouths of festival goers in Valdivia. we didnt know that until the next day, which explains why im still coughing them up.

the ocean from niebla, the smallest town we have been to so far. and by town, i mean ´town´. nice to catch a glimpse of life off the beaten path.

of course there are mountians more photos, but this is the best youre going to get at this point. and blame technology and the black hole of the internet for not getting a better update.