Soda Crackers. Why are they so popular?

So Chile is obsessed with soda crackers. I sincerely don’t get it, but they’re like the dessert or snack after almost every meal. Don’t get me wrong, a soda cracker with some honey or jam on top is pretty delicious, but it isn’t just a tasty (fairly) healthy snack here, it’s an obsession. And there are quality soda crackers and low calorie ones and gross ones, but I couldn’t honestly say they taste any different. Clearly my palate is not sophisticated enough to appreciate the delicacies of the soda cracker. So I suppose my question is, is this just a Chilean phenomenon, or are other countries, particularly in Latin America, equally enthralled with the soda cracker? Addy, do they obsess about this tasteless treat in Ecuador?

Right now is the beginning of the grape harvests in the wine vineyards, so there are wine festivals (vendimias) in a lot of the small vineyard towns hereabouts for the next few weekends. Apparently a vendimia is the Chilean equivalent of a county fair but with wine and perhaps cheese instead of cattle and pigs. Not that I don’t love me a good county fair (or the state fair, fried snickers on a stick) but something tells me going to a vendimia will be a blast. We’re thinking about making that happen in the next few weeks, seeing as no one has classes on Fridays and travel is so cheap.

Also, another random thing that I’m just thinking about since I just took a shower. It is absolutely disgusting how much dirt I manage to get on me in the course of a day. To help quantify this for you, when I showered today, the soap turned a grayish color from all the dirt I was rubbing off my skin. I sometimes think I’m looking tanner, but it turns out to be evenly spread dirt that disappears with a shower. Even though the pollution here isn’t exactly visible, it gets all over you and sticks to all the sweat you produce in the heat of the day leaving you all sticky and dirty. I’ll leave you with that cheery mental image.

Carrete Cultural and back to Valparaiso

I just put up a bunch of pictures, so feel free to look. They’re from the carrete cultural I went on, which was essentially a field trip. We went to the Palacio Cousiño, a beautiful mansion built with money from the mining industry; coal and silver mostly. The guy who built it died before its completion, so only his wife and children lived there. She never remarried, and is one of the richest women in history. So rich, in fact, that she loaned money to the Chilean government so they could have a naval fleet in la Guerra Pacífica.

We also went to the Mercado Central, which is a gigantic fish market with several attached seafood restaurants. We were like a parade of white people when we were wandering through the market, and it made me feel the most visible and most US of any experience I’ve had here. All of the stall owners hailed us and asked us where we were from, pulling out their high school English, and all of the restaurants tried to convince us to eat at their establishment. It wasn’t scary or intimidating to be so noticed; it was more like being in a parade. Everyone we walked past was thrilled to see us and talk to us, and we just walked on past, enjoying their good wishes. A little odd, but definitely a valuable experience.

The other photos are from the program trip to Pablo Neruda’s house in Isla Negra and Valparaíso. Since this was the second time in Valpo, I concentrated my photography on the awesome street art. I think I want to learn how to paint and find some artistic talent so I can just go to Valpo and paint these awesome murals for a living. Sometimes I just crave eating something that is really un-Chilean, so when we went to the beach afterward, two of my friends and I went to McDonalds and got some French fries, and then some ice cream at a fancy ice cream place next door. I’m sure you’re all delighted to know that Chilean French fries taste exactly like US ones. I was pretty surprised. Too bad there wasn’t a Wendy’s around, because frostys and French fries are a beautiful snack! Oh how norteamericana did I feel right then… Oh and Pablo Neruda is really into his nautical themes and collected those statues they put on the front of ships. His house is full of knickknacks and there’s a whole room of seashells. And he only wrote his poetry in green ink, because it is the color of life and positive energy. His bedroom has the most beautiful view of the ocean ever and I want that to be my bedroom. That’s the sum total of what I will take with me about Pablo Neruda’s Isla Negra house.

I also got to go out on a boat in the Valparaíso harbor/port/bay thingy (I’m not up on my sea terminology). But I didn’t take any pictures of the military boats because that’s illegal.

Pictures

Or they can be found at the website under "about me" (look right).

Just call me Lobster Liz...

Let my preface by saying I really did put on sunscreen at least 3 times and there’s a freaking hole in the ozone layer here…

So I look like a lobster. A very splotchy lobster who clearly was distracted when applying sunscreen, but a lobster nonetheless. I’m also not just saying this. My host mom Patty pointed at the lobster magnet on the fridge in reference to me. My host dad and brother both commented on my burned redness, and my host sister did a nice little snicker when she saw me. I could just see her thinking “Oh those gringas, they’re so hilarious with their sunburns”. But despite the sunburn, I feel so much better about my life and what I’m doing after this wonderful weekend, so I think it’s worth it.

Valparaíso and Viña del Mar are two gorgeous sister cities right on the Pacific Ocean. Seven of us girls from the program decided to get away for the weekend and go to Valpo (as we cool locals call it), and before you wonder about the extravagant amounts of money it costs to stay in a resort type place like Valpo/Viña, let me assure you that I only paid $16 USD for lodging for two nights and only $12 for transport to and from Valpo, and none of it was particularly sketchy. Oh how I love being in a different country…

Friday: we arrived in Valpo in the rain, and Julie, the girl whose Spanish puts all ours to shame, decided we should follow this lady who said she had a hostel. And yes, that did seem pretty shady to me at the time. We ended up in this adorable house in a slightly rundown part of Valpo that had been converted into a hostel. The dueña of the house was the nicest most adorable woman in the world, and everyone in her family were super friendly the entire time we were there. Truthfully, we didn’t do much besides eat, cook, talk and laugh. I had a wonderful time, but it doesn’t make for the best storytelling. Just imagine six soaking wet white girls walking through a gigantic open-air market buying veggies and fruit for our supper and cracking up for no apparent reason. That’s basically how cool we were.

Saturday: A small table with two bottles of wine on it collapsed onto my foot resulting in a small but fairly deep cut on my big toe. Don’t worry, though, the dueña fixed up my toe and told me to go wash it in the ocean. It’s fine now, but we were out the wine we wanted to have with dinner. We also went to the beach, and I “swam” in the pacific for the first time. By swim I mean stand at about knee level and let the waves slam into me, which generally resulted in me falling on my ass and getting salt water in my eyes. In case anyone is wondering, the Pacific Ocean is really amazingly cold. I also had an amazing ice cream cone and some serious sunscreen issues. Apparently I’m way too ADD to efficiently put on sunscreen. We ended the evening chatting with some other hostel guests who sell bonsai trees for a living. Incidentally, another drink that I don’t recommend trying is wine and coke. It is disgustingly sweet. And morally wrong.

Sunday: We went up Cerro Concepción, which is a hill with magnificent views of Valpo and the ocean. I took about a gazillion pictures, and some sort of link or photo spread will follow shortly. It was so beautiful. You have to ride up the cerro in a rickety asensor that looks like it’ll fall apart at any moment, but don’t worry, it was working today even if it hadn’t been the day before. I love it when the operators say such comforting things. There are truly no words to describe the beauty of that scene, and pictures cannot capture it. It isn’t something you’d ever find in the US and it really drove home to me how lucky I am to be in a different country with the freedom to experience such amazingly lovely things. This experience is invaluable, not only for the places I go but for the people I meet. I have met so many people here already whose passion and personality make me feel honored to know them. This applies to some of the Chileans I’ve met but also to the people in my program. I am so lucky to have this experience and to be with these people in this country. Even if everyone makes fun of my sunburn.

Things that make me realize I’m actually in a different country:

1SStray dogs – they’re everywhere. One followed my host mom and me for quite a ways and would wait for us to catch up again. This morning on my way to the university there was a really aggressive seeming one that barked at all of the pedestrians scared me away from crossing the street. Here, you don’t pet any dog that seems cute; in fact it’s better to keep a wide distance. There’s also a lot of “abandoned dogs die” graffiti except the phrase is a lot more catchy in Spanish.

2. This doesn’t necessarily apply except that I found it hilarious: On TV there is a show, and I don’t remember the name, but it’s essentially the Chilean version of Starsky and Hutch. Like, it was intentionally based on that show, and it cracks me up, even though they talk so fast I can’t understand a word they say, which is now not the norm for me. I can understand everyone in my family, and get a general sense of what people on the street say! Yay, points for Liz! Also, speaking of TV, there are some amazing telenovelas here. The newest one that started on Monday is called “Don Amor” and is about this group of chilenos that go to Puerto Rico and stay in a haunted hotel. Like seriously. A whole lot of mystery and romantic intrigue as one could expect from any good telenovela.

3. Mullets! Chile is very much stuck in the late eighties. Here the word for mullet is chocopanda which is actually the word for this absurdly cheap kind of ice cream bar which costs about a US quarter that they sell in buses and stuff. They’re pretty good actually, but they’re considered low class. So they used this word for mullets. But don’t let the fact that they’ve got a low class connotation trick you into thinking that no one has one, they’re all over the place. It’s just the upper, classier classes that create the jargon, and they are in a definite minority with their non-mullety ways.

4. The idea that one could mix beer and soda. It’s this drink called fanschop which is a mixture of Fanta and schop which is the beer on tap. It’s actually not as bad as one might assume, considering what it is, because conceptually it kind of repulses me. My host family made this thing tonight where they opened up a melon like we would a pumpkin, scraped the inside so there were chunks of melon in it but it was still all whole, then poured white wine and sugar into it. Pretty tasty I must say.

Here are some pictures that I didn’t take, but I was there. They’re of Cerro Santa Lucia, which is a hill in the main area of Santiago, basically in downtown. It’s the place where Pedro de Valdivia, the Spanish dude who “conquered” Chile declared the country under Spanish sovereignty and himself governor of the new city of Santiago. You can climb up all these really steep steps to the top of the hill, and I did that but I don’t have pictures yet because I didn’t bring my camera. More to follow, they place is really big and really high. The fountain here is at the bottom, but the building is built into the side of the hill and that continues all the way up. You can’t walk through very much of it anymore because we are in the ring of fire for earthquake purposes, but hey, whatever.

CARRETES, PISCO, AND THE JOYS OF 2½ HOURS OF SLEEP

One of the main social things that youngsters like me in Santiago do is go out to carretear, or “party”. Even our orientation staff recommends this as a way to meet people and enjoy ourselves. The thing about the carretes is that nothing actually gets started until about 12, which actually makes sense if you’re eating dinner at 9-10, which is what happens around here. And man, Chileans are serious about their parties. You go, and you don’t get home until dawn. Even middle-aged people, like my host parents stay out late; last night they didn’t get in until 3 in the morning.

So, because we wanted to “experience the culture” 9 of us from the program went out to carretear. We went to this area called Bellavista which is like the bohemian district of Santiago. It’s divided into the good area and the bad area. The street Pio Nono is full of stray dogs and trashy looking bars and a whole bunch of sketchy people on the street. However, you walk through a gate to the Patio Bellavista and you’re in this adorable patio full of bars and clubs and restaurants. The transformation is enormous.

First, we went to a bar in the “good part” of Bellavista, and our waiter Diego (who said I have the most beautiful eyes) brought us chicas pisco sour and beer for the boys. Pisco is the traditional Chilean alcohol, made from grapes, I believe. Pisco sour is just filled with sugar and pisco and sourness, and really it was wayyy to rich for me. However, if you’re ever in Chile, you have to try the pisco, because everyone drinks it. I prefer piscola, which ends up being a lot of like a rum and coke, but with pisco instead of rum.

After playing a rousing game of never have I ever (I know, seriously that’s what we did), we adjourned to the trashy section of Bellavista, which probably wasn’t a good idea but we were looking for something a little less expensive. And we found it: 1 liter of beer in a gigantor bottle for 1500 pesos or $3USD. By the time we left, some people were really trashed, and it was 5 in the morning. Oh and PS, they were playing 90s US pop music along with music videos at the second place we went.

Apparently this is a pretty standard weekend night for the kids around here, and the only way they can survive it is because of the siesta, the most marvelous creation in the world. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t sleep much at night; you can just sleep in the afternoon.

ON PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES

So you know how you hear those horror stories about people who get stuck next to the most annoying person in the world for a 9-hour plane flight? I now have one of my very own, and, without sounding boastful, I think I can assure you that it was particularly horrific. From Miami to Santiago, I sat on the aisle of the central section of the plane. There was one interior seat, and then Annie Gonzalez was in the seat on the other aisle. Annie and I were actually hoping that no one would take the seat in the middle because it remained empty so long, but no, oh the joys of standby passengers.

His name was Michael, he was from Long Island, and he invited us to his wedding in two weeks. He also refused to shut up. Just to get a sense of him, here are a few classic Michael moments:

He offered me a “half” of one of his prescription sleeping pills, which he himself was chasing with beer and vodka in enormous quantities. He also peer pressured me more about drinking than anyone I have ever met.

He tipped the flight attendants telling them “don’t forget about me, I’m the most important person on the plane” and told Annie and I, “I own this plane, whatever you want, just let me know.”

He met his soon-to-be wife in Cancun where he went to party, and she worked as a massage therapist. She has made him a better person, which makes me wonder how he was before, because he’s apparently still a pill-popping alcoholic. Since then, he’s flown to Santiago 8,9,10, or 11 times. Each time he told the story (each of us got several renditions of the same material) the number changed.

I was reading with headphones on and he elbows me in the side, and says, “Hi.” To which I respond, “Hi” but in that why-are-you-bugging-me way. He follows up with, “you hate me, don’t you”

Michael did not shut up from the moment we climbed into the airplane at 11:15 until finally he passed out at 3:00. And he passed out halfway on top of me. Even the flight attendants felt sorry for me. Oh the joys of flying. But really, we should go to his wedding. No, really, it’ll be awesome.

People drive like MANIACS here, and sidewalks do not lend themselves to walking. I thought I was going to die about a billion times while I was in the car with my host dad. Especially when he turned around to tell me things.

I don’t actually have anything on trains. I’m sorry.