A trip to the driest place on Earth

Winter is starting to set in down here in the Southern hemisphere—the sky is gray, the rains have started, the mountains have snow and I’ve begun to layer. I even bought my first ever scarf today! We’ve been lucky that the winter set in especially late this year—April was completely sunny and it only rained for the first time 2 weeks ago. And I was preparing myself for a lot harsher season, but I now think it will be more like a California winter. Especially when I move to Vaplaraiso in a few weeks, a coastal city, I’m pretty sure the winter will be identical to that of Santa Barbara. But it’s a scary thought, the winter setting in and me staying for the summer—I realized that when spring sets in next year it will have been 2 years since my last spring. Which means, starting last September, my seasons go like this: Fall, Winter, Fall, Winter, Fall, Winter. I will be so ready for Spring when it comes in 2010!

                I spent last weekend in San Pedro de Atacama in the northern limits of Chile. San Pedro is a tiny, rural town in the middle of the driest desert in the world (it hasn’t rained since Chile was still a Spanish colony). The electricity in the town didn’t work the first 3 days we were there, and there wasn’t a constant flow of water (meaning I didn’t take a shower in my 5 days there…). It takes about 5 minutes to walk from one side of the city to another, and most of the buildings are made from adobe. It’s a completely different world up there—everything around the city is sand. There are volcanoes, mountains, plateaus, but everything is desert. The people there are also completely different than those in Santiago—it’s a very indigenous population, and was a part of Bolivia until the War of the Pacific in the late 19^th century. One of our tour guides, Christian, told us that many of the people there, and the culture in general, still identify as Bolivian. The people there looked like, well, what you’d imagine South American people to look like, not the mixed or European look of the Santiaguinos or the Porteños of Buenos Aires. The music played from the stores and restaurants there played a different tune than those I’m used to hearing—the used some different instruments, and the radio played a lot of more indigenous and Bolivian-sounding songs.

                On our first day there, four of us rented some bikes and took them out a few kilometers out of town. We unexpectedly found a huge stone gate marking the start of a trail, and decided to explore for a little while. This involved some rock climbing on some steep inclines, and took us to some pretty good views of the surrounding Andes and also the two nearby valleys—la Valle de la Muerte (Valley of Death) and la Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). When we got to our second or third peak we came to a cross that had been built with the Biblical line, “My god, my god, why have you abandoned me?” written in four languages on each of its sides—in Spanish, Portuguese, and 2 indigenous languages. The Cross looked out on all sides into the Atacama desert, and it was an awesome experience. We climbed down the mountain just as the sun set and turned all of the surrounding mountains purple and the overlying clouds a deep yellow.

                17 of us in all from the Stanford program headed up to Atacama for the long weekend, and 14 of us stayed in the same hostel, taking over the entire place. The 14 of us headed out the next day, Thursday, to the Valle de la Muerte to go sand-boarding. We rented bikes again and headed out about 30 minutes outside of town into the Valley, and a few kilometers in came to sand dunes about 500 feet high, smoothly carved from the valley’s winds. We spent about 5 hours there surfing, or trying our best to surf and mostly just falling, down the dunes and exploring the overlying plateaus. In the afternoon we climbed up hundreds of meters of sand (not fun…you take one step up and 2 steps back trying to climb up steep hills of sand) to go to the top of the plateau that looked over the Valle de la Muerte. It was an amazing view and we could see on all sides of us for dozens of miles. It’s amazing how many volcanoes, mountains, cool rock formations and desert sand dunes surrounded us.

                We woke up the next morning at 3:30 AM to travel to the El Tatio geyser field—technically, the highest geyser field in the world in terms of altitude. After waiting for our bus (which was 30 minutes late) we headed down on a bumpy, desert, unpaved road for 2 hours. We finally got there, 12000 feet in altitude and about 10 miles away from Bolivia, as the sun was rising and the geysers were in full force. But, wow, I have never been so cold in my life. -12 degrees celcius and I do not go well together. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed in the geysers—I was expecting full on bursts of water like I’ve seen in videos of Old Faithful, but what we saw were more like pillars of mist rising from the ground with the occasional fountain of water. It was really cool to see, especially since I’d never seen a geyser before, and it’s awesome to be able to say that I was 10 miles away from Bolivia (something about Bolivia just seems so far away and different to me), but I was expecting a bit more from it…and to be a bit warmer while doing so. But the bus stopped on the way back at hot springs close to the geysers, and I got to swim in my first ever hot springs. It took me about 20 minutes of hot-springs to get full feeling back in my toes, and it felt great (although burned a bit at times). After that we stopped at a tiny town called Machuca for a few minutes. There were vicuñas (kind of like llamas) there, a really cool church and llama empanadas (nope, didn’t try them).The ride back, however, wasn’t as pleasant. The ride back, however, wasn’t as pleasant. The altitude had given me a bit of a headache, and the 2 hour extremely bumpy road back to San Pedro didn’t really help that get better.

                Atacama was a great experience. We spent the next day visiting the Reserva Nacional los Flamingos (a nearby flamingo reserve in the middle of salt flats), walking around the salt flats, going to 2 beautiful lakes about 12000 feet up in elevation surrounded by mountains and more vicuñas, had lunch in a podunk town called Socaire, picked up a indigenous woman hitch hiker (our tour guide picked her up, not me) and visited a few other small towns. We spend the night star-gazing—because there’s barely any light pollution and no humidity in the air, Atacama is one of the best places in the world to look at the southern night sky. Shooting stars passed every few minutes, the milky way was as clear as…I don’t know…milk, and it was really cool to be able to look at a completely different set of constellations than we can see in the US.

                I spent the last day there relaxing. I honestly don’t remember the last day I ever had to relax. I’m always buying books to read in leisure time, but have never found that time in the hustle, bustle, stress and sleep-deprivation of Stanford. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to sit and do nothing. But I spent Sunday doing nothing but sitting in the main plaza of San Pedro de Atacama and reading a book for leisure. It was a wonderful, peaceful, relaxing feeling that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Hopefully I’ll have some more of those great moments this summer, when I’m living in Valparaíso. I won’t be traveling on weekends, I won’t have homework during the nights, and I hope it will be a very relaxing summer when I can run a lot without the smog of Santiago and read without any homework creeping up on me. So all in all, it was a great week/weekend in Atacama, and I felt like I was in a completely different world up there, without water, electricity, smog or stress. Up next, tomorrow at 4 AM I’m off to the Island of Chiloe, about halfway between Santiago and the southern tip of Chile. It’s supposed to be an area of Chile with a culture unlike the mainland—with witchcraft, mythology, art, and architecture different from the mainland and caught in the past. I’ll be there for a few days, and then the finals grind officially begins!

A lot to catch up on

A lot has happened since I last wrote. It’s been a crazy hectic few weeks filled with traveling, midterms exams, exploring Santiago, meeting more Chileans, and stressing over summer plans. But all is well over here in Santiago—I’m getting to know the city in and out, getting to know more Chileans, and I’ve firmed up my summer plans—I’ll be working for Acción Emprendedora, a Chilean entrepreneurship and microfinance NGO for 8 weeks in Valparaíso, which I’m really excited about. It’ll give me the chance to stay in Chile to practice my Spanish and immerse myself in the culture, and I’ll get to explore subjects that really interest me, so I’m incredibly excited for the summer! I should get back to the United States sometime in mid-August, stay there for 2 weeks, and then it’s back up to Stanford for RA training on August 27th!

The weekend before last the program went to Buenos Aires, and had a wonderful 3 day weekend exploring the city non-stop. We arrived on Friday afternoon and spent the rest of the day walking around the city—to the commercial district, the ports, the main streets (one of which is 18 lanes wide!) and some of the better-known neighborhoods. Friday night was great—we went to a tango show that chronicled the change in tango from its advent until now. The first parts started out slow and traditional, with the women wearing parasols and the men with tall hats. Toward the end, the show moved faster and faster, the dances got more and more risqué, and I began to try harder and harder to understand how legs could move that fast. It was awesome, and definitely a great cultural experience. On Saturday we spent the morning at the house of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most famous Latin American writers in history. The Stanford in Santiago director, Don Ivan, is good friends with his widow, who arranged for us to have a special visit to the house. We read one of his stories, learned about his life, and had tea at the Borges Foundation building. It was a really great thing to see, and it was one of those moments that I was really happy I’m at Stanford. I mean, to have 25 students in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, inside discussing Latin American literature and having a philosophical discussion about knowledge and memory—it was a great moment. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was walking around the Buenos Aires cemetery. I was expecting it to be a regular cemetery--green lawns, plaques on the ground, a few statues. Instead, it was more like a city of tombs than anything else—each family there owns a tomb, and it is a resting place for generations and generations. Many of the coffins were visible from the naked eye, many windows were broken, and the lack of 6 feet of earth between you and the coffin made you feel all-too-close to the bodies. It was a very eerie feeling walking through what seemed like a city of tombs…but it was a really special experience and nothing like I imagined it would be. We spent the next day or so exploring the city—we went to markets where tango dancers and antique stalls lined the streets, historic parts of the city with government buildings, the national cathedral, and basically explored the city.

Argentina actually wasn’t as different from Chile as I thought. The two cultures are very similar—both are Latin American countries that aspire to be European, though I think Argentina did a better job at it. I was really surprised at how white and European the city was—I didn’t feel as out of place as I do in Santiago, I didn’t get stared at as much. The city’s buildings had a very European flair to them, and like Chile, many of their customs are taken from Europe. The arts scene was a lot more happening in Buenos Aires—dancers would line the streets of markets, there were colors and music everywhere, and the city really never sleeps. I really enjoyed the city and know I’ll be back someday, and it was a nice break from Chile, although not as different as I expected. Although Chile is often in the shadow of Argentina, the cultures are very similar, and Chile can boast a much more stable government and economy (many people in certain regions of Argentina have resulted to make ends meet because there simply isn’t any money left in the banks.) All in all, it was a wonderful trip, great because of the vibrant and colorful culture, the wealth of events to do and parts of the city to see, and the other side of a country to explore. Oh yeah, and the fact that it was all paid for by Stanford.

This past week Helen Bing (of the BING Overseas Studies Program, Bing Library, etc.) came to visit Santiago. Because of a recent Dengue outbreak she wasn’t able to visit Buenos Aires with us (it’s much more debilitating to senior citizens), but we were able to explore Santiago with her all of last week. She’s extremely interested in the arts, and so all of our arts-related activities for the quarter were squeezed into her week (thus giving me even less time to blog). On Monday we had a class on Chilean music with Chilean students, and spent about an hour singing Latin songs with them. We followed that with a visit to a nearby pub where Blake, one of the Stanford students, was playing bagpipes with his local band. He’s been here for 2 quarters and has joined a bagpipe band called the ‘Andes Highlanders’, and they were performing that night, so the 30 Stanford students, 30 Chilean students, and our professors, administrators and Señora Bing went to watch. It was great, and even though I had a bunch of homework to do, I spent a few hours there talking with the Chilean students. On Friday we went to visit 2 local art museums, and spent evening at the opera-La Traviata. It was my first ever opera, and I must say that I actually really enjoyed it, especially the orchestra. The music was definitely my favorite part, and I have never heard such a good orchestra, it truly blew my mind.  

There’s a scene in the opera where a ballet dancer provides entertainment for an elite party. In the rendition of the opera, the director took a bit of leeway in the scene, and was made very sexual and dramatic. The entire dance was a metaphor of a bull fight—the ballet dancer was the bull, and the men at the party were the ones taunting, chasing, and hurting the bull. It was…very strange, but I didn’t really think too much of it. The rest of the audience, however, was not pleased, and boo-ed it! I couldn’t believe it! I would have never expected that to happen, especially in a venue as tame as an opera. I’m pretty sure it was the conservative Chilean culture, especially among the elites of society, that opposed the unconventional and risqué take on the scene, but I was still blown away when, even during the final bows, the audience boo-ed both the dancer and the director incessantly. I guess even the elite can get a little rowdy sometimes.

On Sunday a group of us spent the day in Valparaíso, a coastal town about 2 hours away from Santiago. It’s an easy day trip, and a beautiful city with tons of color, murals, graffiti, hills and ports to wind around and explore. We visited one of the houses of Pablo Neruda, trekked up the steep city streets and gazed out at the ocean and colorful buildings. It’s a truly unique city, and I really enjoy it. There’s a much more tangible culture there than in Santiago, and although it’s not nearly as clean and a lot poorer, I really enjoy it. We ended up going on the day of one of their biggest festivals, and it seemed like the entire city was out parading through the streets.

 Thousands of school students were suited up and in marching bands, and literally marched around the entire city for the whole day. We started hearing them at 1PM, and they hadn’t stopped by the time we left 8PM. Everywhere we turned we would run into them, and we really couldn’t escape the parade no matter where we went (it was kind of creepy how many places they were). There was a big celebration with naval bands at the town center that was really interesting to watch. Valparaíso is also the town I’ll be living in this summer for 8 weeks while I work for Acción Emprendedora. I’ll be moving to Valparaíso after the academic term ends in 4 weeks, and living in a homestay that the organization sets up for me. I couldn’t be more excited about the summer (well, let’s not talk about money…) and I’m really excited to get to know another city and the language better. I really think I’ll fly out of Chile in mid-August fluent in Spanish, and I know this summer will help me immensely in that.

Well, I think that’s enough of an update for now. Sorry it’s so long (again), but I’ve been really busy the past few weeks traveling and trying to do well on midterms. In less than 4 hours I’ll be waking up to catch a bus to the airport because I’m spending the next 5 days in the north of Chile in San Pedro de Atacama, which is the adventure capital of the desert. It’s supposed to feel like an incredibly different world up there—it’s technically the driest place on earth (hasn’t rained since Chile was a Spanish colony), and there are salt flats, sand dunes to surf on, volcanoes, flamingos, archaeological sites, and much more. I’m really excited, but I should be getting to bed considering it’s almost midnight and I need to be up at 3:30 AM.
Miss all you guys, and I hope you all have an amazing week!

Never refusing an invitation...

¡Hola amigos, espero que estén bien! For all those in Santa Barbara, ¡ojala que su casa y su familia estén seguros y sanos! I’m going to try a new thing this week and not write a novel for a blog post, so bear with me as I try to condense my thoughts. I don’t know if it will work, but I’m going to give it my best shot. At this time tomorrow, I’ll be in Buenos Aires, Argentina in our quarter’s program trip. I’m really looking forward to that—we’ll be exploring the city, going to a tango show, visiting the house of Borges (a famous Argentine writer) and experiencing a bit of the vibrant Argentinean culture for 3 days.

I spent the weekend relaxing in the countryside with my host family. See, I have this promise I made to myself before I came to Chile that I’m never allowed to refuse an invitation to hang out by a Chilean. I’m here to meet Chileans, get to know the culture and speak Spanish, not to hang out with Stanford people, so I’m pushing myself extra hard to do that. So, while my friends were sleeping under the stars and hiking the Andes, I was celebrating my host sister’s 14^th birthday and going to Bingo night in a small, rural Chilean town! But although this weekend was tame and quiet, I had a good time and I think it really helped my Spanish. There was no internet, no computer, no TV, no other gringos, and thus no English for me the entire weekend. I can really feel my Spanish drastically improve after my weekends with the host family, so I’m really glad I spent the weekend with them in Curacaví. It’s a very small rural town about 40 minutes outside of Santiago home to ranchers, our maid Rosita, and a few vacation homes. Saturday was Catalina’s 14^th birthday, and we had family come over to the house to celebrate. I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with the family across the street—they have 11 and 19 year old boys, and they were very friendly, although they spent most of their time making fun of me and calling me “Gringo” nonstop. They live in a very, as my host family would say, ‘humble’ house with horses, about 7 dogs, a pack of turkeys, and it was an incredibly interesting cultural experience. You would never know they’re from the same country as my host family. While my host mom was taking an afternoon nap, they were cooking bread in their outdoor brick oven while the kids played with the dogs and the turkeys and listened to the futbol game on the radio. They were incredibly kind, and I had a great day with them. It was great getting a completely different experience from my taken-care-of life here in Las Condes, and I felt like I was getting a true taste of Chilean culture not stolen by globalization. The family, I’m sure, had never heard the words Facebook, didn’t know what Starbucks was, and had never Googled anything, let alone been on the internet. The whole town felt real and true to the culture, they had true Chilean pride, displayed the cultural characteristics I expected more of Chile, and it was a great change of pace.

On Saturday night the family invited me to go to mass with them, followed by a town bingo night at the local elementary school (which, my host mom took the time to point out, was a school for poor people.) So, even though I had a midterm to work on, I cannot refuse an invitation, so I went. Mass was interesting, although I had a very hard time understanding it—we were sitting in the back, so I could barely hear the priest, so that on top of my Spanish deficiencies didn’t match well with me understanding the service. But it was really interesting to see some more of the traditional lifestyle of Chileans. We walked over to the Bingo night after that, and it seemed like the entire town was out for it. The school cafeteria was filled to the brim with eager families trying to win the grand prize of 100,000 pesos (about $200). It was fun, I did a lot of people-watching, got called “Gringo” about a thousand more times, didn’t win anything, but enjoyed myself and got great practice with my Spanish numbers! I really felt like I got a true sense of Chile this weekend—one untouched by American and European influence, untouched by the English speaking world. I felt like I could really see Chileans and interact with them, and it felt so different from just interacting with my host family. I mean, it’s not like my family isn’t Chilean. They’ve been here for 3 or 4 generations. But, at times, it seems they are so touched by influences of other nations that any sense of Chilean culture gets washed away. I mean, we had pasta for dinner tonight. We live a block away from a McDonalds and Blockbuster and 2 blocks away from Starbucks. My host mom is on Facebook. They don’t identify with what I think of as Chilean a lot of the time because it doesn’t fit in with their social class. But this weekend, I really felt like I was being immersed in the Chilean culture, and although it was a very tame, relaxing and uneventful weekend, it was a weekend when I wasn’t a tourist, didn’t speak English, and learned the culture firsthand.

So on the theme of not refusing invitations, one of our Chilean friends from the language partner program invited us all to his birthday party last night. I headed over to his house after having dinner with my host family last night. It was a lot of fun once the party picked up a little after I got there. I got to talking with a bunch of Chileans, and felt very comfortable with my Spanish and my ability to converse with them. Most of them go to the Universidad de Chile, and an astounding number of them study engineering (I feel like almost every guy I meet here is studying engineering…no joke.) It was great being able to talk with some more Chileans, and I think we’re going to hang out in the future. We’re trying to get the rest of them to come to our Language partner program this Monday, so hopefully we’ll see a few of them there and keep hanging out with them in the future. The birthday party, for the most part, was exactly the same as one you’d see in the US (except for a different version of the Happy Birthday song, which I still need to learn.) But it was great spending the party speaking Spanish and meeting Chileans, and I had a great time!

I’m extremely glad I made myself promise never to refuse the invitation of a Chilean. It can be so easy sometimes to convince yourself you’re too tired, you have too much work, or that you simply don’t want to go. It is so tempting just to stay home, watch some TV, fall asleep early, or whatnot. But it’s so rewarding taking advantage of all of the cultural opportunities here. Of course, there are beautiful places to travel in Chile. And sleep and homework are important sometimes too. But I’m so glad that I can put those on the backburner on my priorities list while I’m here, and focus on spending time with Chileans whenever I have the chance. I mean, I still haven’t met as many Chileans as I was hoping, but all the time I’ve spent with them has been very rewarding, and I’m always glad I spent the time with them speaking Spanish, challenging myself to not make a fool of myself and being called “Gringo” instead of all the other things I could be doing.

Okay, well making this blog post short didn’t really work out. But believe it or not, I actually left out a lot that happened this week (Cinco de Mayo Mexican restaurant, exploring Mercado Central and Plaza de Armas in Santiago Centro, watching Slumdog Millionaire with my grandfather.) It’s been a great week and I’m really looking forward to the weekend in Buenos Aires.

In Chile, when a person sneezes once you say “salud”(health). When they sneeze three times the first sneeze is “salud”, the second is “dinero” (money), and the third sneeze is “amor”(love). I thought that would be a good way to sign off tonight. ¡Chau amigos! ¡Salud, dinero y amor a todos!

Pucón, the countryside, and a rant on Chilean culture

Well, I wrote this Friday morning, but our internet was not working then, so I didn't have time to post it before we left for the countryside for the weekend. 

Happy Chilean Labor Day! In a few hours I’ll be off to the Chilean countryside with my host family, where we’ll spend the 3 day weekend. No internet, no distractions. Just me, my host family, and my take-home midterms. Hopefully I’ll get a lot of that done this weekend, especially without the distractions of the internet—Facebook, e-mail, watching The Office online with Spanish subtitles to help me catch a lot of useful words and phrases, etc. I’m looking forward to it, and especially now that I’ll be without a computer, my entire vocabulary this weekend will consist of only Spanish. My Spanish has improved a lot since I’ve gotten here, but it’s still not at the level I’d like, so I know these next 3 days will help me immensely.

                I spent last weekend in the Lakes District in Southern Chile in a city called Pucón, which is about 11 hours south of Santiago. It’s labeled as the adventure capital of Chile because of its proximity to lakes, mountains, and volcanoes, and I’d liken it to a mini Lake Tahoe. We took an overnight bus to get there Thursday night, and after 12 or so hours of driving and 2 hours of waiting for the bus to get fixed after it broke down at 5AM (I slept through all of this) we arrived, and spent the day exploring the lakes around the city. We started off Saturday early to climb the nearby volcano, Volcán Villarrica. It’s a beautiful volcano that rises from the ground in almost-perfect triangular form that is constantly billowing out smoke and last erupted in 1971. We paid for a guide up to the top (they don’t let you go alone), spent the morning hiking up, but by lunch time had to turn back. We stopped about halfway up the volcano, as soon as the ground turned to complete snow and ice, for lunch to wait out the wind, but it didn’t let up. Even after putting on our cramp-on shoes and suiting up for the ice trek, we got to a ledge where it was just too unsafe to pass, and had to turn back down the mountain. The top was far too windy to be safe, and the guide thought that it wouldn’t be safe to trek all the way up. I was really disappointed—I thought it would be an awesome experience to hike to the top of a volcano, peer down inside of it, and especially see the view from the top. Had the weather been clear, you can see all the way from the Pacific Ocean to Argentina from the top, and much of the entire Lakes District as well. It would have been an awesome spot to really feel like you were on top of the world, and it would have been a real feeling of accomplishment to climb all the way up it, so I was really disappointed the weather didn’t have it in store for us. It was perfect weather Friday and Sunday, but the clouds and winds rolled in Saturday and didn’t relent. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll have the chance to do something like that again in the future.

                On Sunday, before our bus back to Santiago at night, the hostel recommended we check out a place called Ojos de Caburgua. We took a bus (along with about 5 Chilean kids staring and pointing at us the whole time) and walked a little bit to get to the ‘Ojos’, which turned out to be a beautiful area with waterfalls, creeks, and shining blue pools. I was very tempted to jump in because the pools looked so refreshing. We decided to spend the rest of the day going to the city of Caburgua, which is about 5 kilometers away from the Ojos. There’s a bus that goes from the Ojos to the city, but we decided that we had enough time to walk. So here we are, 5 gringos, taking a long walk on the side of the road through “podunk” Chile, passing local fútbol games, farms, and Sunday-afternoon family get-togethers, for 2 hours, with people pointing at us and cars honking at us the entire time…Finally we arrived to Caburgua, which turned out to be nothing more than a very small town that is practically deserted in the non-summer months, but it backs up to a beautiful lake with mountains rising from all sides. We spent a relaxing few hours there before taking the bus back to Pucón, grabbing a bit to eat, and taking an overnight bus back to Santiago.

                This past week hasn’t been very exciting—just midterms, meeting with our language partners, reading, and watching The Office in Spanish. I did have a very interesting conversation with my host family, though. We were sitting at the dinner table a few nights ago, when they asked me to try and say “ferrocarril”, a very hard word to pronounce for gringos because of the 2 rr’s, which both require a rolling of the tongue, which a lot of us gringos can’t do. I said it mostly correctly, and they were surprised. I decided to turn the conversation around on them. One sound that I’ve noticed they have a hard time pronouncing is the “sh” sound, which they pronounce more like a “ch”. For example, I’ve noticed that they say “suchi” when they’re talking about “sushi”, so I asked them if they could pronounce it with the “sh” sound. Turns out they could, and the reason they pronounce it “suchi” is not because they can’t say the “sh” sound, but rather that the “sh” sound is thought to be lower class in Chile. The poorer people, they tell me, pronounce “Chile” more like “She-lay”, and words like “sushi” with the “sh” pronounced. They didn’t pronounce it that way because, well, that wasn’t for their socio-economic level. They make a lot of comments and observations like that, about the “humble” members of society, those like our maid, Rosita. Now, they’re a great family and all, and I’m not saying they’re exceptionally racist or classist. They have said things about other races, as well, like the Peruvians and the Mapuches, but most of their remarks like that tend to focus on the poorer members of society. But rather, I think it’s Chile in general that is this way. They tend to be overly honest with their comments, and generally a bit racist. What I find most interesting, however, is the amount that race and class go together here. Racism and classism are not two distinct entities, but are bundled up with each other and practically identical. The higher classes are mostly all light skinned, with European backgrounds that trace back a few generations. My family, for instance, is Spanish-German, and is a 3^rd generation Chilean family. The lower classes are mostly all dark skinned—Mestizos, Indigenous (about 10% of the population), Peruvian, etc. There are completely difference customs and cultures between the classes (the foods they eat, the way they pronounce their words), and they are extremely divided. Of course classism exists everywhere, and there are many examples of it I could draw from the United States. Of course, there’s always a divide between the rich and the poor. But here in Chile, that divide is so strong and the cultures so different, and the different socio-economic classes are so tied in with race, it’s astounding. A lot of the things I ask my family about Chile’s culture, such as fútbol, festivals and food, they label as ‘lower class’, as things they don’t identify or associate with. Maybe my family is an exception, but the divide between classes is something I have noticed quite strongly here. It’s almost as if there are 3 different, distinct Chiles here—the rich, the average, and the poor, and their cultures do not mix. It doesn’t create a distinct, Chilean culture, but rather a mesh of a globalized upper class who eat sushi and drink Starbucks, an impoverished lower class, and a middle class that tries to find a place in between. It’s difficult for me, if not impossible, to describe the Chilean culture without talking about the different socio-economic classes, and it just turns into a blended country that, in my opinion, lacks a distinct personality.

                Oh well, there’s my opinion/a bit of a rant on classism and culture in Chile. Now, off to the countryside for the weekend! ¡Chau, amigos!