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.