¡BAKKAN! (warning: there's some profanity at the end...but its a post about slang, what can you do?)

So, first my apologies for never following up "Chiloe Part 1" with a "Part 2". I got really busy with finals/end of the semester fun and basically, just couldn't get back into the blogging mood to write about something that happened like three weeks ago. Sorry. If you really want to know how the rest of our trip went, well, you'll just have to ask me when you see me!!!!
That's right, in exactly SIX DAYS I will be boarding a plane for the United States of America.
And as much as I love all of you, and I really have missed you, and I can't wait to talk without a computer screen and keyboard interfering, I really don't want to leave Chile.

The one other girl from Kalamazoo, my good friend Jessie, and I are the last two to leave and as such we have had to say goodbye one by one to all our American friends. At least with them, though, there's a realistic possibility of getting together sometime in America--although they come from all over the country: Boston, Seattle, Nebraska, Chicago, New York, etc.

Anyway, so basically its been a jam-packed, fun, sad, hilarious past few weeks.

Little highlights:
-Staying up all night(from 12 to 6:30am) having an incredible conversation with one of my environmentalist friends...who might happen to be the cute recycling one....
-My tia teaching me how to make the most delicious pineapple juice from scratch. Why have we been throwing out the husk all this time?!?!
-Spending the weekend at my chilean friend Ale's house in Rengo, a small town two hours south of Santiago, going on an epic hike, falling into a raspberry bush and thus getting about 20 spines stuck in my hand-which are still not all out, meeting her whole family and having her 91 year old grandpa recite us love poems
-Eating ice cream everyday because when its 32 degrees Celsius that's really all you can stomach
-Finally learning the words to "Amigos Especiales"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpdzrGUO568
and "Tocarte Toa" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qb9zRzAXrU
which are two songs played at EVERY party/carrete/club/bar/festival etc.
(The words are, in general, terrible/cliche/sexist/vulgar but I still love them...that's just how reggeaton is)

ps: I have finally learned pretty much all the basic slang necessary para manejarme bien con los jovenes, and I use my favorites as much as possible, like any good chilena.

Here are some standards:
"Bakkan"=cool, awesome, kick-ass, great, etc.
"fome"=lame, boring
"cachai?"=understand? get it?
"weon"=(This is the ultimate chilean slang word, used 2x in every sentence by some teenagers. Depending on the tone it can mean SO MANY THINGS.) In order from inoffensive to get-punched-in-the-face: friend, dude, dummy, idiot, asshole, scum-of-the-earth

Isla de Chiloe!!! Part 1: "How close is my face to yours?"

After a two hour plane ride from Santiago to Puerto Montt, we stayed on enight in Casa Perla, a nice knick-knack-filled hostal in a semi-sketch neighborhood run by a sweet, million-lingual woman named Perla with an incredible view of the coast.

These were my lovely traveling companions-Meghan, Jessie and Kelsey-in front of Casa Perla

My first impression of the South of Chile was that it's very Seattle-like: permanently drizzling, lush geen countryside and surrounded by water, except that there are sheep and cows everywhere. Our first full day we took a bus-and for part of it the bus was on a ferry- accross the channel to the actual Island of Chiloe and into one of the main towns, called Ancud. We then called Antonio Yanez, a recommended driver from a tour guide in Puccon, and two minutes after I left an awkward, “Hi I got your name from a tour guide in Puccon who’s name I can’t remember”, he called me back and within five minutes was driving us down a rural road to see PENGUINS!

For about $30 a person, Antonio drove us 40mins to the west coast of the island to see the penguin rookery, plus we got our own guided boat tour(from a very cute, college-aged Chilean bird lover named Claudio) and insane rain ponchos made of tent tarps b/c it NEVER STOPPED POURING. We saw adorable penguins-honestly I wasn’t that excited beforehand b/c birds aren’t really my thing, I kept searching for sharks- but they were just soo cool to watch wobble down the rocks and into the water. Plus we saw a seal taking in some non-existent sun on the shore, tons of other bird species, and some kind of endangered otter/ferret/mammal scurrying between penguin nests looking for eggs.

Wet, but happy

Then Antonio drove us to our next destination: Chepu.

Don't be fooled by the blue sky, it disappeared in about three seconds

Owned by wife Amory and Husband Fernando, Mirador Chepu is a sort of eco-lodge in a teensy town also called Chepu on the west coast of the island(95% of ppl and towns are on the tranquil east ocast of the island b/c Chile’s main land is so close there aren’t really waves). I chose it because I read on tripadvisor the most rave reviews about the lodge, the owners and especially the dawn kayaking.

The kayaking happens on this river, which even during the day is kind of mystical and
other-worldly-looking

Well, after ten minutes of background on how they met and why they decided to pick up and leave their entire lives in Santiago in order to live simpler, natural lives off the grid and without any debts or strings, I was in love with these people. They built their house and the little cabins we were to stay in by hand, have only solar panel and wind powered electricity and heating, have an organic garden, compost like five different ways, and make money introducing tourists to one of the most gorgeous, unappreciated places I have ever been. The only awkward part was they kept taking pictures of us, I guess for their website, but we shrugged it off as camera-happy b&b owners looking for good publicity. So all was basically fine and dandy, until the one other person staying at the lodge, Brady, a really cool british woman in her 30s, asked about the Mapuche, Chile’s main indigenous group I talk so much about---see my post on the Mapuche March I attended.

I babbled a little bit about injustice, feeling pretty free to speak my mind since the couple was obviously so liberal and awesome, and then Amory interrupted me-“Well, if you want to know the real truth, it’s as follows”.

DUN DUN DUUUN.

She then proceeded to spout EVERYSINGLE stereotype, prejudice and racial slur I have ever heard about the Mapuches, plus some new conspiracy theories I had never heard before. One of the first and classic ones was “The problem is the Mapuche are too lazy and spend all day drinking. That’s why they have no land and are so poor”. Yea. My friends and I(3 out of 4 are also in my “Human Rights of Indigenous Groups and Criminalization of Mapuche Demands” class, so we’re all on the same pretty well-informed page) just sat there trying not to gasp, or groan, or say something like “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR F-ING MIND?!”

Instead at the first moment possible we excused ourselves and when Brady also left, we ambushed her and said, politely, “If you’d like to hear a different perspective on this issue, we’d love to talk more away from the owners”. Thankfully she’d noticed our ashen faces and awkward silence during Amory’s rant and we ended up having a great talk and I hope, cleared up a bit of the stereotypes that had been flung around.

By the way, from the moment we stepped off the plane, through penguins, through car rides, through Mapuche talks and re-caps, it was POURING. So much so, that all of our clothes were soaked through, to our underwear. Even my friend’s Patagonia raincoat had been permeated. Now normally we would hang all our clothes to dry in front of a fire, or perhaps an electric heater-called “estufas”, they saved our lives many a time this trip-but we discovered our cabin had neither, nor did the bunk beds have sheets or blankets or pillows. Hmm. I specifically mentioned in my reservation email that we would need bedding, even though we knew it would cost an extra couple of dollars. When we pointed this out to Amory, she looked at us like we were crazy and said, basically, “Boy are you girls brave for not bringing sleeping bags. You are going to freeze!”

Umm, thanks….

Ultimately we found some thick blankets and doubled up in the little twin beds in order to maximize body heat. Because our group of friends is so great, no one complained too much, and we actually had a fun night singing songs and telling non-ghost stories to pass the time. My favorite line from the night was after we’d turned out the lights, and my friend Kelsey asks her bedmate Meghan, “How close is my face to your face?” Haha, needless to say, we all became really close. We also had hoped to purchase food from them, or a nearby grocery store, but when that proved impossible, we found a bag of spaghetti and had the quickest, saddest dinner I’ve had in a while, then washed the bowls in cold water in their outhouse under a shaking single light bulb in the pouring rain. B/c of the rain, and the fact that we had NO dry clothes, we decided not to do the dawn kayaking, which I think was a good choice, although it still sounds like a fantastic opportunity, and instead left Chepu as soon as we could the next day. The scenery was stunning and we all agreed Fernando was a sweetheart when his “dragon lady” wife Amory wasn’t around-Brady’s words, not mine. Thankfully, since the nearest bus was a 15 mile walk up huge muddy hills, Fernando drove us in a rickety old jeep to the closest bus station and didn’t charge us for the ride, even though the website said it was $10 a person.

Ok I promise the rest of the trip recap will be less wordy, I just wanted to highlight one of our many adventures....

But in the mean time, here's a little more of Chepu

BTW, the plethora of dead trees is due to the salinity of the water, this part of the river is so close to the coast that the water so brackish it kills all the trees. This doesn't stop birds, fish and mammals from enjoying the area though...

I HAVE PURPLE HAIR!

Ok, so I realized that perhaps my little note under my halloween pictures was too subtle.
Let me try and be more direct:
I DYED MY HAIR PURPLE!
PERMANENTLY!
(not all of it, just a streak)
Here are some pics of the process-my amazing friend Michelle who has her own red streak offered to dye my and my friend Kelsey's hair-as well as the result.
Sincereley,
Your favorite violet-tressed gringa


A little scared....

Why I will NEVER be a blonde

How to start a 2-step fire!

So this past weekend my entire CIEE program went to Temuco and Pucon, two major cities in the south of Chile-only ten hours away by bus(do you hear sarcasm? maybe because no one slept on either of the bus rides there or back...)! Since I'm a little lazy right now I'm going to mostly put up pictures and then give them descriptions instead of writing out a long summary of the whole week. As you'll see though, we had a great time.

The gorgeous, green, cloudy, rainy south of Chile
This is an example of the infamous pine tree plantation which is now taking over the south, sucking all of the underground aquifers dry, and since its a monoculture(meaning they ONLY grow "mono-"=one crop) they douse the land with pesticides and fertilizers which are contaminating the air, water and soil. (Sorry about the weird glare, I took the pic through the bus window)


We visited an elderly mapuche woman who runs a sort of tourist/cultural exchange/restaurant deal where she invites people into her home, serves them a feast of traditional foods and then has a dialogue about Mapuche culture, history and current lifestyles. She was basically a kickass entrepreneur and in exchange for her family singing us a song, we sang "This Land is Your Land". Yes, I was in the back cringing.(BTW don't mind my friend, Michelle, who's giving the death stare. She was actually very happy)

My favorite dish: includes hominy, barley, squash and a million proteiny delicious legumes.How to dye yarn the ultra-natural way: in boiling onion skins!

We also had the opportunity to visit a rural K-8 school where 100% of the students are Mapuche, and they'll soon be starting a bilingual program(Spanish and Mapundungun) that the government funds. I've never been to a rural school before and it was pretty shocking-the principal said until a few years ago everyone walked about 5km to get to school and their "playground" was a bunch of tires half buried in the dirt. On the other hand, when we arrived they were doing a salsa workshop....(the type of dance kind, not the tomato kind)
So among our many activities in Pucon, a cute ski village-looking town known for its adventure sports, we went horseback riding! Here's my glorious horse. When I asked one of the guides her name, he paused for a long time, and then told me, "well she's my friend's horse, but we can call her 'castaña' aka 'chestnut'". Fome. I mostly called her "mi amor" as I tried to coax her ahead of the group.
Our "guide"(I'm using this word in the loosest sense possible b/c he was mostly the owner of hte horses who grudgingly went with us and would sometimes shout out incomprehensible commands like "para! al a derhsaosdlsaflk izlkajsldf ahora! NO! El otro direccion!" etc.) told us our ride would end at "the most beautiful waterfall in Pucon" but since everyone likes to brag in Chile, I didn't really pay him any attention, until he ordered us off our horses and then we started a 40 minute hike, in the rain, down a muddy mountain and found ourselves a) in a rain forest and b) at the base of this staggering waterfall.

OK this waterfall was SO powerful, the spray reached all the way to us-we were this soaked and never got closer than ten feet to the falls!


So after all those wet, rainy adventures, it was delightful to come back to our adorable cabins and curl up with hot chocolate and good friends. All in all there were 6 of us in our cabin, and my friend Kelsey and I noticed that we had a wood-burning stove and wanted to make a fire(for warmth, but also s'mores-making).
THIS FIRE TOOK TWO HOURS TO START....this is step 1.
(all I can say about step 2 is that it involved rum-doused napkins...)
Since we are stereotypical "city girls" we found it both absurdly exciting and necessary to go foraging for kindling in the "forest" around our cabin.
Here Kelsey and I show off one of our best finds.

A (punk) tree-hugger and her tree

note the purple streak in my hair!!!!

Chilean Elvis

Santiago is big on trends. Right now, sushi is huge, as is Depeche Mode, fanny packs(I'm not kidding), and basically anything 80s. However, a separate but equally pervasive phenomenon is the obsession with Américo. Américo is a 31 year old Chilean cumbia singer, who is taking over the party world. Every bar, club, hotel, house party, restaurant, anywhere really, will eventually play Américo at some point in the night. After hearing his songs about a million times, I finally realized that a) I knew all the words, and b) I really loved his music. He truly is a phenomenon though; some clubs play his most popular songs ten times in one night. He's very handsome, does a mean cumbia, has a gorgeous voice, and wears shiny silver suits and sun glasses. He's constantly guest starring on one talk show or another, and drives the Chilean housewives NUTS. Basically, he's the Chilean Elvis.

So, in my constant search for new/live music, I found out that Américowould be concluded a 2 month long country-wide tour by performing in Santiago, at the Estadio Nacional. Of course I immediately sent out a message to all my friends: Américo performing in Santiago stop we must go stop I'm buy you all tickets stop.
(Ok so it wasn't a telegram, but if they were still around I would've sent one just like that. In reality I sent a facebook message)
All in all, seven of my friends decided to come along and the concert was FABULOUS!
Not quite as packed as I expected, the crowd was still boy-band crazed and absolutely over-joyed to be there.
Now I never got that into any of the boy bands, Spice Girls, etc. and yelling, screaming, squealing and fawning are also really not my style, but when Américo came out...
I thought my voice would be lost for a week.
A picture speaks a million words-or whatever cliche it is they say- but let me just add a few more comments before I put the pictures.

*Every song he would loosen his tie, and the crowd would scream. Then he'd take it off. More screaming. Then he'd unbutton one, two, and finally three buttons and do a sexy cumbia dance. My eardrums were at this point basically shattered. Then the song would end, more cheering, and he'd return for the next song in a new suit and start the process all over again.

*For one song, there was a little 2 min. movie showing the outside of a motel, and a car driving up. Then Américo appeared on stage, standing next to a bed, with a rose on it, and a bediside table topped with a glass of whiskey. He utilized all these props throughout the song and ended the song lanced on the bed in faux-sob.

*My family continues to make fun of me for going b/c his music is the classic, cliched romantic crap, but set to danceable, catchy cumbia with great electric guitar and bass solos.

*I have never felt more chilean than I did screaming the words to "Te Vas" while cumbia-ing as fast as I could.

OK you're ready. Here he is:

(note the unbuttoning)

on a lighter note...

So despite my best intentions, that last post seemed like such a downer. It might be that I don't write about my feelings very often, so that little glimpse of human emotion was too out of context. In order to get back on track with what my life is like 99.9% of the time:

On monday I made apple crisp!!! I think my family enjoyed it, although they'd never tried anything like it before. I'd wanted to make apple pie but was waay to lazy to make up all that dough, and I thought a crisp would be faster-it wasn't. I felt so anachronistic sitting at a table peeling and coring apples by hand for (what seemed like) an hour, but that's also why I love cooking.
So here's how it turned out:


Even though my tia said she preffered my "pan de platano," the entire 9x12 pan was emptied in 48 hours, so I think overall they approved.