Soy bandito de ping pong

This past weekend we went to Viña again to look for a practice drum pad. Unfortunately we found out that most stores are closed on Sundays so we hung out in the mall since it was cool inside and ate at Burger King. It was pretty good. It tasted pretty much like it does at home. Afterwards we walked along the beaches in the sand and tested out the waters. The water is surprisingly cold! The waves are huge and start close to the shore so no one actually goes swimming; they only wade. People only go about 50 yards into the water because the waves are so big. I think the lifeguard actually yells at you if you go any further.

We walked all along the beaches. The cold water actually felt refreshing after we stood in the sun for a bit. It was in the low 80s that day. Each beach had some sand sculptures artists had made. There was a mermaid, octopus, dolphins, Homer Simpson, and an elephant. They were really detailed.We went back to Viña the next day after class to go to the music stores and to go shoe shopping. Apparently everyone in Chile is a naturally gifted drummer because nobody sold practice pads. We did end up finding running/walking shoes though and for a decent price. We ate at a German place in Viña near one of the plazas. Their burgers were huge!!! We didn't know they were so big or we would have split one. I could only eat half of my burger and I was starving.
Anyway, today was my favorite day of class so far. We got to go on a field trip around town to the Caleta de Pescadores, Mercado de Mariscos, and the Mercado. Patricia, our teacher, and another guy that was her friend were our guides. We took the bus to Portales, which was a pretty scary ride. Then we walked to where the old school fishermen are near the beach. Patricia talked with a man and woman who were preparing for the next day. I found it very interesting even though the smell was hard to handle at first. I wasn't really paying attention to what the man was saying but Jeff and I talked with Patricia's friend about the fishing industry. I found out you don't have to have a fishing permit.

After interviewing the fisherman we walked along their boats, which were surprisingly small, and saw their catches for the day. They sell them right off the boat. Patricia's friend showed me a fish called Serrio that looked cool. It had sharp teeth and the fisherman showed me his mauled hand. Another fisherman there caught a huge one. Over a foot and a half long!

We then walked to the Mercado de Mariscos which was under the same roof as the Pescadores. That was my favorite part. It was basically a seafood market with a wide variety of seafood. If anyone comes down to visit us we can get super fresh seafood for a reasonable price. The market had serrios, reinatas, salmon, tuna, mussels, clams, and this thing called piures. At first I thought they were some kind fish gut but after I googled them I found out they were sea squirts. Don't they look delicious?
After the fish market we walked over to the mercado. It's basically similar to Pike Place Market except they sell only fruits and veggies. I was amazed at the quantity of each type of fruit and veggie they had and for really cheap. They had all these things I've never seen before too. Patricia's friend told me what a lot of them were called in Spanish and described how they tasted but I don't know what they're called in English. At the market they had two different type of corn on the cobs. There were Americanos, which were like the corn on the cobs we buy at our grocery stores. Then there were Humeros. These were basically Americanos but on steroids. They were about 3 times as thick and twice as large. I'm not really sure if they taste any different.

At the market on the third floor there were a bunch of restaurants so we all ate at one for lunch. I just got papas y mayo (a potato salad). It was good, but it just tasted like potatoes. I thought it was interesting that they sprinkled cilantro on it. After lunch we walked to Plaza Ecuador to take a collectivo. It was really nice not being in the classroom. I could talk to my classmates in English, though we did try to converse in Spanish whenever possible. At lunch we talked a lot in Spanish since the teachers were there. Our class: from L-R: Jeff, me, Emma, Marie, Robert, and Christian.

At Plaza Ecuador Patricia and her friend rode with me, Jeff, Christian, Emma, and Marie in a collectivo to Pablo Neruda's house. Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet who won a Nobel Peace prize for literature and he was an ambassador for Chile in a lot of different countries. His house is now a museum and was quite interesting. I liked the way his rooms were designed and he had an awesome view from his living room. You could pretty much see the entire downtown of the city. His house was four stories and was filled with all kinds of paintings, statues, maps, and mosaics. He basically designed his interior and his friends built it. I was surprised at how modern it was.

Tomorrow we move into our new apartment and are excited. Though we will miss our landlord here, Alfredo. Once we move in we'll put up a video tour or something of our new place. I hope that our apartment will come with a tv so I can watch my new favorite show The Backyardigans. It's a kids show on Discovery Kids about these 4 animals and 1 insect who are computer animated and they basically imagine that they're in different places. It's all in Spanish but I enjoy watching it because I can understand a lot of what they talk about and I learn new words. Last night I watched an episode where the penguin was a ping pong bandit (hence the title, it was one of his lines) and the cricket sheriff had to beat him to win back everyone's ping pong paddles. Then they all sang together and went home for lunch. I think the show is very popular here because I see a lot of little kids with Backyardigan backpacks and they sell a lot of notebooks with them on the cover. Here's a clip from the show in Spanish:

¿Dónde están nuestras pizzas?

Jeff and I had a major breakthrough today in our Spanish speaking abilities...or so we thought. We decided to order pizza delivery from Telepizza. We wrote down on paper exactly what we were going to say with the correct verb conjugations and everything. We tried calling their toll free automated number but it was a bit confusing. After listening to it a couple times we figured out which number to press. However, nothing happened.

We decided to just call the actual location in Valpo. Jeff spoke to the person on speaker phone. It actually went pretty smoothly and we were able to understand most of what was being said. We ordered two medium pizzas each with three toppings. The guy asked if we wanted soda and we said no but he told us it came with it so we got Coke Light. He said the pizza would be delivered in what we thought was thirty minutes.

We were so happy he understood us and we kind of understood him that we texted Nacho to tell him and to find out how much to tip the drivers. Nacho called us and was very proud. He said when he first tried to order in English it took him five tries. We haven't told him what happened yet.

I waited by the window looking out for the motorcycle delivery man for over a half hour. Then Jeff came in and looked out too. We waited for almost two hours! After two and a half hours we decided our pizzas were not coming. We couldn't even call Telepizza because we had no idea what to say to them and we were feeling so discouraged we didn't even want to deal with it. We ended up eating sandwiches for dinner instead and watching True Blood. Needless to say it was a disappointing night.

On another note, check out this beverage we got:If you had to guess what would you think it was? Milk?

Actually it's:APPLE JUICE! What the heck? I bought this apple juice at the supermarket because it was light so it'd have less sugar and when I went to pour it I was surprised to find that it was white! The picture on the back of the box has a woman pouring the juice into a glass and it's brown. So I'm not sure if we got a defective one or if it's false advertising. Not only does it look weird it also tastes kinda different. It's really sweet and initially it tastes like cider but then turns into a strange taste that you're not quite sure if you like or not. I drank the whole thing but I don't think I'd buy it again.

I hope you all have been enjoying our blog. We were a little sad that nobody commented on Domo Domingo. We were thinking of doing Domo Domingo every Sunday or at least every other Sunday but if no one likes it we probably won't do it anymore. So comment if you want another Domo Domingo video!

Chile Is My New Favorite Country

Why is Chile so great? Two words: Cheap Beer.
This weekend we learned a valuable new word-Schop. It means beer from the tap. Yesterday we ate at Schopdog in Viña which is where we discovered what schop meant. We had seen it before in other restaurants but never knew what it was. It was at Schopdog that we also found out how cheap tap beer is. A liter of Escudo was only $1.590clp (about $2.55us)! I got a pint of Escudo and that was only $1.090clp. I never want to leave Chile!

Not only is their beer cheap (at least by American standards) but it's also delicious. Their two main beers are Escudo and Cristal. Cristal comes in lager, red ale, and dark. I've only had the lager and red and they're both good. I love Escudo too. It's a lager but it tastes more like a really light brown ale. I was surprised at how good the beers are here especially since they mostly drink lagers. Jeff loves Chile because everyone here drinks soda and I love Chile because the beer is good and cheap.


Anyway, all this beer talk is making my mouth water. We had a pretty relaxing weekend just hanging out. Saturday we didn't really do much. We walked around at the port and near Plaza Sotomeyer (pictured above). Sunday we spent all day in Viña Del Mar. We took the metro to Viña around noon then took a bus to the mall. The buses here are quite small and a little confusing. They have signs on the windows of which streets they go down so you have to know exactly where you want to go.

A View of Viña from the Valpo Port














The mall we went to was surprisingly large. It was three floors and actually had two sections that was connected by a skywalk. Both sections were big and each had a theater. We went and saw Madagascar 2 in Spanish. The story was okay and easy to understand even without knowing any dialogue. It was pretty funny though I'm sure it's a lot funnier if you actually knew what was being said. We bought popcorn to try the dulce (sweet) kind. It tasted just like kettlecorn. In Chile they have two different types of popcorn: sweet or salty. When we saw Yes Man we got salty popcorn and it was the saltiest popcorn we'd ever had! It was drenched in salt and it made our lips and tongue tingly.


After we walked around the mall we went up the block to the beach. All the beaches were packed! They looked pretty nice though the waves looked a bit rough. We never actually went in the water so I'm not sure how warm it is. There were vendors all along the boardwalk selling jewelry and food. There were also some bungee trampolines on the beaches that you could pay to go on. There's even a huge, fancy looking casino near the beaches. We were going to go in but they charged an entrance fee of around $3.600clp.

We walked along most of the coast of Viña and ran into Nacho. Actually, Nacho ran into us. He and his girlfriend came into town just for the weekend and he was on a jog. He looked pretty gross; we took a picture but decided not to put it up. We met up with him and Maria Jose (his girlfriend) later in the evening for gelato at Bravisimo. We didn't end up getting home until 10pm.

Nacho was telling us the beaches are crowded because people from Santiago and Argentina come here on vacations. A lot of Chileans that live out of town own an apartment in Viña and rent it out in the summer because they can charge $400.000clp a night! They can pay off their apartment in one summer. There's also a lot of tourists from the tour boats. A Celebrity Cruise ship was actually docked in Valpo this weekend. While at the Metro station in Valpo a guy asked me if it was the metro to Viña in broken Spanish. Apparently he thought I was a local. Which is pretty funny because Jeff and I don't really look like Chileans.

Today was the first day of our Spanish classes. We started at 9am and went until 1pm. We have three teachers and each teaches a different subject. There were only 4 people including Jeff and I in the beginning class. The other two were guys from Germany, Robert and Christian. There was also an American girl, Emma, and a German girl, Marie, who were in the intermediate class. There were only six students altogether.

The class was pretty intense and it was all in Spanish. I understood most of the class but when we started grammar I was a bit lost. We started by filling out a packet of basic information about ourselves that was all in Spanish then reading it to the class. The teacher asked us questions about each other from the info in the packet. After that the two girls went to the next room and we learned a bunch of breakfast and lunch words such as different types of food and silverware. We practiced describing items too.

The grammar section was for the last 45 minutes. We went through different conjugations of ser and estoy. When we got to the pasado conjugations I was a bit lost. Robert and Christian seem pretty good at Spanish already. When Arturo, the instructor, was giving examples of the conjugations I had no idea what he was talking about but they seemed to understand. I was happy when class was over because my head needed to unwind. I really hope after two weeks I'll be more proficient at understanding and speaking Spanish.

I'll end with a cute puppy we saw at the pet store in the mall. He was uber soft! Pets are expensive here. Bunny rabbits are about $100us and gerbils are like $20! Sadly, they didn't have any ratties at the pet store.

DOMO DOMINGO!!!

This is where we live:

View Larger Map

We also saw some street music today!

To Valpo & Beyond!

Sunday we checked out the markets they have on the weekends. It's a lot like a swap meet. People sell everything there from computer junk to power tools to old magazines. Jeff bought a pair of sunglasses that were only $1.000clp. They also had a lot of food vendors. I had a delicious empanada with cheese, meat, and olives (they apparently don't remove the pit in their olives) and Jeff had some sort of sausage in a hot dog bun with some kind of onion/meat sauce (it almost looked like entrails, but I'm not sure if it actually was). The market was super long and went for about 7 blocks! It was crazy how many people were there.

We also ate at J Cruz, a social club/museum. Nacho recommended it to us. When you go in the entire place is covered in writing and pictures that people have left behind. You're supposed to sign your name wherever there's room. They only serve one meal the whole day. When we went it was meat cooked with onion and scrambled eggs over french fries. It was delicious! We definitely plan on going back there again. To the right is a picture of one of the walls in the cafe.

We spent the past few days looking for a place to live through March. We found a nice apartment in a quiet, nice neighborhood that we will be moving into at the end of January.

Until then we have moved into KasaBellaVista, which is student housing. Although we seem to be the only people living here at the moment. It's pretty affordable and we get a huge bedroom with a nice view. The only downside is that it's on the top of a very long and steep hill. We're not quite used to walking up steep hills, especially with groceries, though by the time we leave we'll be able to scale them no problem. Around town there are funiculars, or elevators, that take you from the bottom of the hill to the top. The place where the apartment is has one close by as did the hostel we stayed in Saturday. However, there is none near Kasa Bellavista. The elevator basically consist of a small wooden station that's on a track going up a steep hill. It's pretty scary if you actually see one because it looks like it will break at any moment.


At Casa Elias, one of the places we looked at renting a room from, they had a cat that had just had kittens three days ago! The woman showing us the place had a little girl who showed them to us. She let me hold them too. They were so tiny they didn't even have their eyes open. They were the cutest things ever! I've never seen kittens at three days old before. I kind of wanted to live there just so we'd get to play with the kittens.



In Valpo there are two big supermarkets, Jumbo and Lido Express. We now live closer to Lido so we will do most of our shopping there. We discovered in both supermarkets that Chile has awesome fresh bread! They have huge bins where they dump all of their fresh breads and buns of various kinds. You have to put them in a bag then take it to get weighed and they put the price sticker on it. Today we found out that you have to get all your fruits and veggies pre-weighed as well. I guess that makes it easier on the cashiers. All the cashiers sit in chairs like they did in New Zealand. I don't know why the cashiers in the US can't sit in comfy chairs all day. At the supermarkets here you're also supposed to tip the baggers. I'm not sure why you tip them but we give about $100 pesos.

Yesterday we discovered a nice assortment of fresh pastas at Jumbo. We got tortellinis con queso. We decided to try the sauce in a plastic container again. This time we picked a nicer looking one. It wasn't that bad. Definitely better than that first one we bought. Then today at Lider we found Safeway Select sauce in a glass jar! We were so excited! I don't think many people buy it cause it looked kind of dusty but we had to get it.

Other than visiting supermarkets we've been wandering around town and even visited Viña del Mar today by metro. We enjoy riding the metro even though we still have no idea how much it costs per station. We just put $1.000clp on our cards and go. It was only a 10 minute ride to Vina and we found out that there are a lot of shopping places there. It seems a bit more expensive though because it's a tourist town. While in Viña I learned that beer costs as much as soda, which made me happy. People in Chile drink more soda than any other kind of beverage. This is good for me since it makes the beers cheaper!

Next Monday we start language school. I'm taking two weeks and Jeff is taking four weeks. I hope that it will help us. I'm not sure if we mentioned this previously but no one here speaks English! Even at Nacho's party everyone told us we must learn Spanish because no one in Chile speaks English. We've been able to get by on the minuscule amount that we know but it's been difficult.

How to Party Like a Chilean

Nacho! (a.k.a. Ignacio Madrid)

We rode the metro across Santiago and Nacho picked us up to hang out at his apartment. We haven't seen him since February 2007 in New Zealand when we were flatmates. He has recently been hired as the #2 marketing person for Peugeot in Chile! GO NACHO! They give him a sweet car to use for free and he lives on the top floor of a great building in a nice neighborhood. From his balcony we could see much of Santiago.

We drank piscola, which is a mix of pisco and Coke. Pisco is the national alcohol, at least unofficially. It's a grape brandy and about 35% alcohol. It will take some getting used to, but it's not bad. However, when Chileans make a piscola for themselves, it's usually half and half. Much too strong for us weak Americans.

Nacho took us to a party at the apartment of a friend of his girlfriend. We didn't even get there until well after midnight. The apartment was on the 15th floor and also had an amazing view of Santiago. Everyone danced, sang, drank, and just hung out. Several people spoke at least a little English, so we learned a lot of cool things. We met a Formula 3 driver! We also learned that we're not nearly as hardcore as Chileans: we went back to the hostel at 5 a.m. Nacho called the next day and said he got home at 7 a.m.

We are now in Valparaiso, which is a beautiful and historic city on the Pacific Ocean. About 30% of all Chilean goods go through the port in Valparaiso. We could only find one room for Saturday night, but we're not complaining. It's a private room with own bathroom and wonderful view!


Coincidentally, the Dakar Rally is in Valparaiso today! Today is a rest day, so all the race vehicles were parked in a big field at one of the universities. We got heaps of photos!

Later, we ate at Porto Viejo, a restaurant recommended by the hostel owner. Carly ordered Reineta Don Octavio (A La mantequilla, negra), a local fish, which was recommended by the host. Jeff had a 400 gram steak. It was delicious! Both meals also came with a big plate of papas fritas (french fries). It was too much to eat. Here are before and after pictures of Carly's reineta.



We will try to get up early enough Sunday to see the Dakar racers leave town. We're also going to try to find a home for the next several months.

Day Uno.

Today we learned how difficult it is to function when you cannot speak the native language.

Before we made it to Chile we had to change planes in Dallas. The airport seemed nice and they had these cool vending machines with Ipods, PSPs, earphones (including Shure earphones, and they were $50 cheaper than in the retail stores), and other electronic gadgets. Every store had items for sale that either said Texas Pride on it or had the Texas flag.Our flight to Chile was descent but nowhere near as nice as Qantas. They only had one movie the whole flight and the rest of the time they made us watch horrible CBS sitcoms (with the exception of HIMYM). We didn't even have our own on demand screens! They had television screens in the middle of the aisles. We don't plan on flying American Airlines again on long distance flights. Here's a picture of the Andes out of the plane window. I also got to see the sun rise from 30,000 feet which was pretty cool.The confusion started when we arrived at the Santiago airport. We were happy to find most of the signs were in English as well as Spanish but once we got to customs we found we had absolutely no idea what to do. There were three different areas with lines and we weren't sure if we were supposed to pay the entrance fee then go through immigration. We guessed correctly and paid our fees then stood in a long line for immigration. We went through without a hitch. We're legal for 90 days! After that we have to leave the country for at least a day then return and they issue you a new tourist card for another 90 days.

The baggage claim was similar to any other baggage claim except that it was crazy! There were customs people everywhere and most had dogs sniffing out illegal imports. We had to read the custom laws a few times to make sure my White Cheddar Bunnies were allowed into the country. Luckily only fresh cheese is illegal.

In Chile they have many cheap options to get into the city. We went with the shared van shuttle. A guy helped us get our bags into our correct van then demanded a tip. We had no idea how much so we just gave him all our coins; about 300 Chilean pesos (clp). The ride into town proved to be very exciting. We learned that people drive worse than the Canadians! They are very impatient and honk almost immediately after the light turns green. The motorcyclists also weave in between lanes, which are already very narrow. We saw a car get rear ended. No one got hurt but the lady was crying when she got out of the car and people started honking at them because they were blocking the middle lane. Our bus driver seemed undeterred by the whole situation and just went about like it was a normal occurance. About a half hour later we somehow made it to our hostel, which was unmarked.

Charles, the owner of Hostal de Sammy, is an expatriot and is quite friendly. We got information about the subway to take to the mall so we could get a sim card for our phone. This proved to be incredibly difficult if you can't speak Spanish.

Some things we learned while trying to communicate:

• Never underestimate the power of pointing.
• Reading Spanish from a phrasebook is not the same as speaking Spanish.
• If you're completely confused just say "Si" and nod.
• "Mil" is one thousand in Spanish.
• Using automated telephone menus in Spanish is really hard. (It took us an hour to figure out how to top off our cell phone with a prepaid card.)

Besides the language we discovered some other interesting differences between the US and Chile. Luckily, we were prepared for some because we read that Culture Shock book. For example, they do not flush their toilet paper in most places. They have a waste basket next to the toilet and you put the used paper in there. Also, most of their bottled water is actually carbonated water or fruit flavored. One of the most disheartening things we discovered was that spaghetti does not taste the same. Their spaghetti sauces come in pouches, not jars, and the spaghetti tasted somewhat slimy and just plain odd.