Off to the home of Pablo Neruda...

I spent last weekend probably the most relaxing way I could have—lounging by the beach for 3 days with my host family. Meals? Paid for and cooked by my grandfather, a famous Chilean chef. Weather? Just like Santa Barbara—foggy in the morning, beautiful and clear in the evenings. Afternoons I spent walking along the ocean, going to artisan’s markets, fishing villages and sitting on the 10^th floor balcony of our apartment looking out into the Pacific. Mornings I slept until I woke up, and felt the strange feeling of getting enough sleep for once—a feeling I don’t think I’ve felt since high school (or maybe India). And I spent the nights watching movies with my grandfather and brother, going through Spanish worksheets, and doing absolutely nothing. It was wonderful. It may not have been the most exciting of weekends, and it would have been great to have traveled with some of the other Stanford students who went surfing, horse-back riding or rafting, but I’m forcing myself to spend as much time as I can with Chileans while I’m here, no matter if it’s boring or uneventful. I can hang out with Stanford students anytime, but I will make sure I never turn down an offer to spend time with a Chilean while I’m here. That is my goal—make the most out of my weekends traveling and exploring Chile, but to always take the opportunity to spend time with Chileans.

Overall, the weekend was wonderful. I’m really enjoying my host family, and I’m very glad I got placed with them. It was especially great getting to know my Grandfather this weekend. He lives in the same neighborhood as we do, and they see him a few times a week. At one time, he owned about 15 high-end restaurants all across Santiago, but sold all-but-one of them a few years back. He still works full-time at the remaining restaurant, one of the best seafood restaurants in Chile. But when he’s not working, he enjoys playing tennis (we’ll be playing next week, hopefully), or spending time at his house in the countryside or apartment in Viña del mar. His wife passed away last May, and he told me he’s been quite lonely since then. Because of that, though, he’s incredibly eager to talk to me, and he’s been the most welcoming out of the family so far. As I said, we’re going to play tennis while I’m here, he invited me to take walks with him last weekend, bought me a souvenir painting of Valparaíso, calls me “El Gringo”, and is just always there to start a conversation with me. He showed me all the pictures on his phone of his wife, birthday party and dogs, and talked about how he looked at them when he got lonely. And since I’m always willing to spend time with Chileans here, I’m hoping to hope quell that loneliness a bit while I’m here through some weekend barbeques or afternoon tennis matches with him. We were going to play tennis this week, but it ended up not working out because one of his dogs gave birth to 8 puppies, but I’m sure we’ll get in a few games while I’m here. One thing that I especially love about Chile is how close the extended families remain. Most families have weekend get-togethers or daily meals together, and it’s great to be able to not only be close with my immediate host family, but to get to know my uncle and grandfather as well.

While the weekend was incredibly relaxing, I’ve had enough of the city of Viña del Mar. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a beautiful city, and I love the beach. But I started noticing this weekend that it’s pretty much where the rich of Santiago spend their weekends. It’s crowded with high-rise apartments being built around the clock, as well as overpriced restaurants and expensive cars. I didn’t feel like I was getting as much culture as I could get somewhere else, but rather just a feel for the elite culture of Chile. I think because India was the first foreign country I visited that I link poverty with culture. I consider the rich just a globalized portion of society, but look at the poor as being the true bearers of society’s culture. It’s not that I think that’s entirely true, but it’s a feeling I got in India and the same one I’m getting here—the rich are living in a globalized world, while the poor are living in a more traditional Chile, and the Chile that I want to explore. Viña had McDonalds, Starbucks, expensive high-rise apartments and Mercedes’. I get enough of that in the US, and I really want to explore what I consider the ‘real’ Chile. So this weekend I’ll be venturing off to Cajon del Maipo, a village about 2 hours to the south that’s perched right up against the Andes mountains. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll do there, but there will be hiking, mountains, a volcano, and a small-town atmosphere that I think I’ll really enjoy.

We also met with our language partners for the first time this week. Some local Chilean university students came into the Stanford center and hung out with us for a bit, while we talked about a bunch of stuff with them for a few hours. They’re learning English and we’re learning Spanish, so the night was split up into both English and Spanish. I mostly talked with a guy named Israel the entire time. He’s studying Journalism at the Universidad de Chile, and he lives on the southern outskirts of Chile. It was great to talk to him for a few hours, we traded respective slang words, and had a good time. He’s actually engaged, and said he’d invite me over to his fiance’s house in the countryside sometime soon for a barbeque, so I’m looking forward to that. They’ll be back every Monday for the rest of our time here—next Monday, we’re learning traditional Latin American dance. With my dancing skills, though, I doubt I’ll make any Chilean friends that way…

One of my other goals here, other than to never turn down an invitation to hang out with a Chilean, is to get a taste of the arts scene in Santiago. Although it’s not as active a city as New York or London, it has it’s beauties and fun, and I really want to get a feel for that while I’m here. One of my Stanford buddies down here has a host mom who’s a professional singer, so we went to a jazz club last night to see her perform. She specializes in a genre that mixes jazz with traditional Mapuche music, and it was very good! She played along with a more traditional jazz band, along with an amazing harmonica player who blew me away! We’ll definitely be going back to that jazz club more often, and it was a great outing. I had quite a bit of homework to do last night, but thought a night at a jazz club was a good enough reason to wake up early in the morning to do it, and it all worked out. A few friends and I are also going to start exploring other parts of the arts scene here, so we can really get to know that side of the Chilean culture, so I’ll hopefully have some play or band to report back to you about next week.

Well, it’s nearing 1AM, and I have to get up early tomorrow because we’re all going to the coast to visit Pablo Neruda’s house for the entire day. For any of you who don’t know, Pablo Neruda is one of the 2 Chilean Nobel Prize winners, and he won it for literature in the 1970s. He was a communist, given the Stalin Peace Prize, and the Ambassador to France under Salvador Allende. The house we’re visiting tomorrow, in Isla Negra, is about 2 hours away from here and is designed to look like the inside of a ship. It’s the house he was based out of for the later parts of his life, and was the inspiration for a lot of his later poems and works. I’ll spend the bus ride down finishing the book of Neruda poems I’ve been reading, and will hopefully have a wonderful day on the coast. Maybe I’ll even be touched by some inspiration while I’m there. Isla Negra tomorrow. Cajon del Maipo for the weekend. Latin dancing on Monday. I’m in for another wonderful week in Santiago.