Retirement should look like This!

This is how I spent Tuesday in Santiago:

0800: Wake up to sun filling the room in couchsurfers 8th story apartment. Walk onto balcony to take in view of Santiago, the Andes, blue sky, and sun



0830: Leave the apartment. Take metro to the center of the city.

0900: Arrive at center. Walk around for an hour and look for café con piernas, settle for a Parisian-like café. Order a double expresso. Set up laptop and hunker down for a few hours with my coffee.

1230: Leave café. Walk around for half an hour. Get hungry.

1300: Order two completes and a glass bottle sprite for $2. Decide that I’ve had enough completes for this year.

1330: Head out to Plaza de Armas, study Spanish for 2 hours, take in 75 degree weather, watch people.

1530: Walk around again. Check out central fish market. Pick up fresh orange off a street vendor.

1630: Return to Plaza de Armas. Start studying again on a bench. Fall asleep in front of group of people playing chess.



1730: Wake up. Start studying again. Guy sits down next to me. Strikes up conversation. Starts talking about the philosophy of life and the universe in Spanglish for an hour and a half, including diagrams with key buzzwords like birth, death, nirvana, equilibrium, subconscious, and fluid. Decide he is crazy, after he told me he was crazy.

1900: Tell guy I need to go to the bathroom to get away. Search for dinner. Settle for a lomito italiano for $2.

1930: Return to Plaza de Armas, study Spanish for 1 more hour.

2030: Switch benches. Watch people.

21:00 Take subway back to couchsurfers apartment. Strike up conversation with a guy on the metro with an Basic English Phrases book. Talk for 20 minutes. Leave train and arrive home by 2145.

All in all, can’t say I did anything difficult all day, used my brain a bit, and had a great time doing so.

South American Accents

So, this really only applies to Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile….we’ll see what Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia have in store.

En serio (seriously), they say the accents are different everywhere, and they ARE…Argentina & Uruguay are actually basically the same. The ‘ll’ sounds like a ‘sh’ (as in llamar), and the ‘y’, also many times sounds like a ‘sh’ (as in ayer). It was really difficult catching onto this, because it makes so many words sound different, you actually think they really are not the same words. It makes you realize how many words in Spanish have a ll or a y in them. After about 3 weeks, I started to acclimate, but surprise, I left for a new accent… Another oddity was instead of saying ‘tu’ for you, they say ‘vos’, but it is not related to vosotros at all, it is merely a replacement word.

Then, when you get to Chile, they get rid of all that sh stuff, which is great because I can understand the words again, but they throw in a bunch of new words and drop the s on a lot of words. In fact, they call Spanish here ‘castellano’. Instead of ‘si’, sometimes they’ll say ‘Sipo’, and ‘nipo’ for no. They’ll say ‘cachai’ all the time, which is similar to ‘entiende?’(get it ?). Really, every third sentence, cachai, cachai, cachai… It’s funny, the Argentinians say they can’t even understand the Chileans sometimes. I was forewarned about Chilean Spanish before I even made it there by Uruguayans & Argentinians.

I just tell everyone I’m from California and they immediately know that the Spanish I learned is from Mexico. In a mercado in Santiago the other day, a guy asked where I was from, I said San Francisco, and he says in English ‘Oh, California, so you must-a speak-a Espanol!’.

That’s about it…I’m going to take a week of more advance classes in Bariloche, Argentina next week to practice more complicated tenses and irregular verbs. Other than that, just need to keep expanding my vocabulary by reading the newspaper and asking questions. I’ll sill be screwed in group rapid fire Spanish for some time, but it’s a slow and steady process.

Suprise, another Christo! This one towers above Santiago:


Santiago from above (smog and dust enshroud the city because it is surrounded by mountains):

Sorpresa!

Aca esta mi primera post, solo en espanol!

En realidad, mi escribiendo es mucho mejor que mi escuchando...escribo con frecuencia en espanol, a Rotaractors y Couchsurfers. Tambien hablo en espanol, pero saca mucho muuuuuuuuuuuuucho tiempo para poder comprender espanol en un GRUPO (no es un problema cuando estoy con uno o dos otras personas).

Hoy de la manana, yo encontre dos Rotaractors, Jessica y Andrea, que vinieron a mi hostel. Entonces, caminemos al centro, a la Plaza de Armas y aotros calles y lugares en el centro. Los Domingos, los museos son gratis. El primer museo que fuimos fue cerrado, porque el terremoto. Despues, caminemos a un otro museo, el museo de arte precolombian. Este museo tiene muchas artifactas y cosas de la historia de los Americas, entre Mexico, centro America, y Sur de America. Tambien, fue un gran exibito sobre los Incas. Yo no realize que el imperio del Incas fue entre Colombia hasta un poco mas sur de Santiago. Ellos tuvieron rutas entre todos los partes del imperio. Tambien, el imperio fue muy joven, sole de las 1500s.

Con Andrea de Rotaract Santiago:


De todos modos, entonces fuimos al mercado centro, donde venden pescados y mariscos frescos. Muchas muchas tipos de pescados. Por supuesto, yo saque fotos.


Jessica nececito trabajar de la tarde, y por eso, yo regrese a mi hostel. Pero, a las 16:30, Nati me encontro para una tarde en las montanas cerca de Santiago! Primero, fuimos por auto para encontrar Coca, amiga de Nati. Entonces manejemos por un hora, a la casa de los tios de Coca, en un pueblito en los montanas. Ellos tienen mucho mucho tierra, y caminemos sobre la tierra en un valle entre las altas montanas. Muy muy tranquilo y lindo. Los tios de Coca tienen un tienda enfrente de su casa donde hacen postres, todos son de las frutas de la tierra de ellos! Ellos hicieron on postre para nosotros, y tambien un jugo, y todo fue natural.

El postre tuvimos:


Con la tia de coca, ella esta haciendo un postre (no recuerdo el nombre oficial):


They had an earthoven for Empanadas (I really only took this photo for Natalie, haha!)




Well, I didnt look anything up, and it didnt take that long to write, and I'm sure there are a lot of errors! For everyones sake, I wont put another one up for at least a few months. Nonetheless, an accomplishment thus far! Cliffs notes: Went with some Rotaractors this morning to the centro to a museum and just generally around, this afternoon went with Nati and Coca to Coca's aunts house in the mountains where they made us fresh desserts from the fruit from the land they own.

Manana estoy saliendo este hostel y voy a quedar con un couchsurfer hasta miercoles, cuando voy a ir a Puerto Montt, diez horas por bus a el sur de Santiago.

Yum at first Sight

Back from Easter Island, here in Santiago, getting my bearings straight, and figuring out where to go and when (plus checking out the city for a few days as well). Also, enjoying internet access and hot water. For the moment, here is a photo of a super yummy completo! Been looking forward to this for months! Hot Dog, Avocado, Mayo, & Tomatoes. It was Delicious, with a capital D.

The Completos, complete with chilean beer (what a zinger that was....!not...):


Yum:


My friend Nati from Santiago, who picked me up from the Airport AND took me to get completo's at the 'best' completo place in Santiago:

Contemplating

I´m in Mendoza contemplating my next move...I have a bus to Santiago on Tuesday, but I´ve been hearing some iffy things. I am sure everything is fine. I am thinking of hanging out in Mendoza for a few more days, which will give me time to go to Uspallata, where Seven Years in Tibet was shot. Then maybe going to Cordoba, Argentina, for a bit. I´ll monitor the situation and keep tabs on my flight status to easter island from Santiago on the 15th...the airline is not operating at full capacity yet, so we´ll see.

Moving to a hostel for Sunday and Monday after I go camping with my couchsurfing hosts in the mountains tonight. Supposed to take a tour of a few bodegas, plus a olive press on Monday.

I should have a few real posts later when I get to the hostel on Sunday, which has wi-fi...I´m at the locutorio paying for internet and just can´t seem to make a real post here, haha.

Thats the scoop.