Valparaiso, Chile. Part II

I love my EAP Study Center. We go on so many fun excursions (already paid for thru program fees, but I like to think they're free. Jaja). Went to Valparaiso again, and it reminded me so much of my times there with Natali :'( Miss that girl, yo. I thought it would be less fun with a big group of us and a tour guide, but it was very entertaining! Even with a mix of different EAP cliques, we all got along and chatted regardless, which I liked. : )

Architecture in Valparaiso:

Almost candy-like, huh?

Street art in Valparaiso:

Very bohemian and artistic. There's saying that once people get to really know Valparaiso, they never want to leave. I'm not quite there, but even though I've been there twice, it's so appealing. There's so much to see still, so much left unexplored!

Pablo Neruda's house--La Sebastiana

Pablo Neruda is the pride of the nation. A Nobel-Prize winning poet. An Italian movie (Il Postino) was made about his time in exile in Italy. He was a communist. A rich one at that, as you can see from his house. I loved his house. So candy-like and quirky. I took stealth pictures. :D
His house from the outside. He designed it to represent a boat because it overlooks the ocean.

A pink wall with a spur collection!!!! Sooooo clever!! I want to do the same!

Very see-through door to the bathroom...

Definitely my kind of bathroom.

Uh oh...big man Kelley doesn't fit in the doorway. Literally.

Definitely my type of wallpaper.

View from Pablito's house.

Me outside of Pablo's house.

Oh Pablo, you baller commie, you.

Petting llamas in Valparaiso:

I did it!
So soft and cuddly. Like a dog, but bigger. See? It's even licking Christy.

Mercado in Valparaiso:

Chickens for you, Higa! Thankfully the chicken owner just bred them for eggs, not to kill them to eat.

Like one of those Latin-American markets. So Latin-American that Andrea (on my right) got yelled at, "OH MY GOD! BEAUTIFUL WOMAN! WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?!"
In English. With a Chilean accent.
Who teaches these men these phrases? Jaja.

This is the 100th post on this blog.

Woot. I'm the hundredth post. :D!

Anyway, I was finally able to meet up with John Yang. He came to TMEFC. Then we grabbed lunch and headed to Akihabara.

For those of you who don't know, Akihabara is also known as Electric Town. It has a lot of the latest gadgets and what not and you can usually find it for cheaper in Akihabara. It is also known for its anime nerdness. Which is what attracted me to the first place. (Yes, like a moth to light... -_-;)

I was a bit disappointed in not seeing as much nerdness (yes, nerdness and not nerdiness. I just like how "nerdness" sounds) as I had expected... or seen in Densha Otoko... but there was still a good amount of anime nerd going on.

We got a map of the area and John asked where the famous spots were, since we were foreign exchange students. The girl (dressed in a maid outfit) pointed us to three famous maid cafes and a couple of other places but we hit up the maid cafe first.

Wooooow.

They greet you by saying, "Okaerinasaimase, goshujinsama/ojousama." That translates into, "Welcome home, master/milady." Yeeeeeeah. It was kind of weird but we (ok, not we... just me... but I noticed that John speaks colloquially to everyone?) spoke to them formally so that put some kind of customer/service person distance between us. Aside from me, there were two other females in the cafe. The rest were guys. And kind of creepy guys, too. The guy was standing in front of us in line knew all of the maids and they all knew him too.

All in all, it was an interesting experience but everything was butt expensive. Just the sitting fee was 700 yen. My melon soda + scoop of ice cream costed 600 yen. @_@ Definitely an experience, but one that I'm not willing to experience again. Hahaha. It was really funny, the maids do this thing when they serve you your food/drink. They say, "We're going to do some magic to make it taste better." Then you're supposed to follow what they're doing; they make a heart shape with their hands, move it side to side saying, "Moe, moe, kyuu, moe, moe, kyuu" and then shake their hands on top of the food/drink and say, "Oishiku nare!" ... Yeeeah. (Moe = mmm... hard to describe, wiki it. Kyuu = just a sound/noise. Oishiku nare = "Become delicious!")

Hahaha. Oh yeah, then after that, we walked around and we grabbed dinner since we didn't want to eat in that butt expensive place where the food was probably mediocre at best. Then we played this taiko drum game that I'm really really bad at but it was a lot of fun. Especially playing it to the Lucky Star opening song. Motteke! Seira Fuku! Ahahahaha.

Mmmmkay. I'm going to stop my nerdy post here. But after going to Akihabara today, I realize that I am not worthy to be called an anime nerd. There is still too much that I don't know/haven't watched/haven't read, so please don't call me it. But I do like anime. :D

Good night! Hhahahaa. (I'll post the only two pictures that I have from Akihabara in my next picture post!)

BTW! I SAW A GIRL DRESSED AS HARUHI SUZUMIYA. IT WAS SO TRIPPY. But she worked at the Taito arcade. When I asked for a picture, she said, "Ok, that's fine," as if she's asked it many, many times. Hahhaa.

Ok, forrealz. Peeeeace.

Universidad de Chile

I haven't talked much about my university classes, taking classes with Chilean students in Spanish.

Basically, it makes me cry. Particularly the class Historia Social de Latinoamerica. Literally cry. I've been walking out of that class feeling like I wasted 1.15 hours of my life because I don't understand 70% of what the professor is saying. And as I look at fellow EAP-ers copiously taking notes, I always have to angle my head to be able to look at their notes and copy their notes.

I went to office hours today, determined to bring some closure to this icky yucky incompetent feeling. After asking the professor a few questions, I flipped through my notebook aimlessly trying to think of something else to ask him, hopelessly wishing that I could just UNDERSTAND THE CLASS.

I said uncertainly, "I think that's it..."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
I flip aimlessly through my notebook again. I feel a sour lump forming in my throat, the sour lump that one feels when I'm on the verge of tears. I couldn't hold it in anymore. Tears just came streaming down my face. I tried to hide it, but in an office that small and him sitting only 2 feet in front of me, and my voice was shaky, it was pretty impossible to hide my tears. My professor had a worried look on his face.

"What happened??" he asked with a concerned voice.
I explained to him everything about how I've been feeling. Everyday after class I feel like I've wasted my time, I don't understand anything, the readings are hard, I go to class when people go off traveling, I go to 8:30 review sessions, and I'm still struggling. And I have an upcoming quiz that I probably won't even be able to respond correctly because I don't understand anything.
Thankfully, he was very understanding and assuring. He told me I could bring a dictionary to the quiz, to not worry about the grades so much, and to ask him questions whenever I needed to.
Gosh, how embarrassing though. I may be a teacher's pet, but I've never burst into tears in front of them before.

So that's how school is going for me...

Establishing normalcy

My alarm clock is beeping and my phone is playing a cute song turned annoying. I wake up to a room with dry, stale air. I kick my blanket off and take two big steps to my alarm clock and turn it off. Then I plop back into bed and re-set the alarm on my phone for 8:15 AM so that I can squeeze in 15 more minutes of sleep.

And the sweet 15 minutes pass by. I had dreamt about something but don't remember what it is. In defeat, I sit up and stare sleepily at the wooden floor. Slowly, I put on my slippers and make my way over to the sink by taking 7 steps. My eyes flinch as I turn on the fluorescent light above the mirror and once my eyes adjust to it, I see my sleepy self in the mirror. I laugh at myself and scratch my stomach as I begin to wash up.

Susan knocks on my door at 8:30, telling me that it's time to go.

"Give me twooo more minutes, I need to find a pair of socks," I tell her.

I frantically search my suitcase for socks. I know that I should fold my clothes and arrange it neatly in my suitcase but figure that I'll do it after doing the laundry.

Susan and I walk to the Shin-Egota station to take the Oedo Line, a subway train. We rush down the stairs, touch wallets (with our Suica cards inside) to the card detector and hurry down the stairs. Once we reach the bottom, we frantically check the arrival time for the next subway train-- 8:54. We had just missed it by a minute.

Once the train arrives, it's packed with commuters. Recently, Susan and I have been good at getting into cars that had space for us to get into-- before, we had to make space, as everyone did when there as a packed train.

Soon enough, we arrive at the Higashi-Nakano station. We get off the subway train and proceed to go up five flights of stairs to go to the JR Line part of the station, where we take the Chuo Line to the next station over, Nakano. From there, we taken the Chuo-Sobu Line for 20 minutes to the Musashi-Sakai station. We rush out of the train and hope that the line at the bus stop isn't long. Twice, we had gotten there too late when the line was too long. We couldn't board the bus so we had to take the taxi by grabbing two other people. We had met another foreign exchange student, Ah Song, by our emergency taxi rides.

Japanese class begins at 10:10 AM. We usually arrive with 10 minutes to spare. We walk into Honkan, the main building where all the classes are held, and walk up three flights of stairs. We arrive in our classroom, tired from our morning excursion. It had taken an hour and a half to arrive at school.

Since it's a Wednesday, we have our four hour long core class at 3:10 PM. After Japanese class ends at 12:40, we grab some rather bland tasting lunch from the cafeteria. Then we lounge around in the library where the internet's fast and the air conditioning is strong.

Then we go to class and sit through a two hour lecture, then a two hour film.

After all that, an entire mob of us wait at the bus stop, exhausted from a long day.

And that is the routine.

Everything is becoming familiar. I don't need to think about what train to take, what side of the platform to wait at, what platform I should be at, or if this train goes here or there. My eyes have adjusted to the complicated looking (but not really complicated) map of the train routes and I've learned to read the kanji for many of station names.

It still doesn't feel like Japan. Perhaps I'm in denial or I'm speaking too much English (I suspect that it's the latter).

I walk into the market and check out at the register, repeating the amount that I was told as I hand my money over and then mutter a quick "arigatou gozaimashita" before walking out of the store.

I veer left when walking down the street and lower my head while saying, "Sumimasen, gomen-nasai" when I'm in someone's way.

I've picked up the superficial cultural things, with respect to how I should act when, when to say "excuse me," "thank you," "I'm sorry" without looking too much like a foreigner.

And home is starting to feel like home. I sigh with relief when I arrive at home, just the way I do after a long day of classes in San Diego. I've acknowledged that for now that I have a home here but my mind isn't acknowledging that I'm in Japan. Still.

News from Tucumán!

Hola Grace,mi oveja gringa...(ja,ja) que alegria recibir un mail tuyo,te extrañamos en la campaña de Julio,esperabamos verte en Tucumán,pero por lo visto ya te robaron el corazón esos ¨chilenos¨,pero no importa, lo mismo te amamos y si nos gustaría mucho que vengas en Diciembre porque esta es tu casa y no necesitas invitación. La campaña con la IBM de Bs.As. será del 09 al 17,la idea principal es hacer un campamento para niños los primeros 4 dias y luego enfocarnos en los barrios.

Avisame lo mas pronto posible acerca de tus planes y si estamos incluidos en tu visita...Les diré a Norma y Josué, les dará mucha alegria saber de tí.

Te amamos mucho,un beso grandote para vos---------JORGE

Translation: Hello Grace, my gringa sheep (because I called Pastor Jorge "my Argentine pastor"), how great it was to receive an email from you, we missed you in the campaign in July, we were expecting to you see but apparently "the Chileans" stole your heart (JAJAJAJA, Pastor Jorge seems like he's still bitter) but it doesn't matter. We love you the same. And yes, we would love it very much if you came in December because this is your house and you don't need an invitation. The campaign with the other IBM from Buenos Aires will be from the 9th to 17th, which we mainly want to do a camp for the children the first 4 days and after focus on the neighborhoods.

Let me know ASAP about your plans and if we are included in your visit (OF COURRRRRSEEE!!). I will tell Norma and Josue. They will be very happy to hear about you. We love you very much, a huge kiss for "vos" (the Argentine way of saying "you." I love it.) -Jorge

Brrrrrr....it's wet and dark!

Man...it's only 7:30pm and it's dark outside....sadness. Biking in the rain sucks...I need to buy a raincoat and boots! Time to play some vball though so yay! Haha super short post. Weather here is getting wintery already...Boo...

Weekend of Fiestas Patrias: La Serena

The day of Fiestas Patrias (Thursday) was celebrated with the Chinese family who owns the restaurant. We went to the park and had a fatty asado (BBQ), basically eating meat for 4 hours straight. What a unique experience, celebrating a super-Chilean holiday with Chinese people. Funny thing is, none of us could communicate with each other with one language. The Chinese people spoke Hakka among each other; I only speak Mandarin; Richard (another EAP/UCSD student) speaks only Cantonese; and among Cui Xia, Richard, and me, we were the only ones who spoke Spanish. Therefore, there was five languages going on during the entire asado. I come from a family who speaks 3 different dialects, so I was very used to this.

But after Thursday, I had no other plans. I was going to go to a rodeo with my boss, but he canceled on us, so it left me with an entire weekend free and bored. I had to do something or else I was going to die of boredom. So, I planned a trip to La Serena in a matter of 3 hours! I thought of a few people who might be interested in going (Christy and Richard, after I convinced him to drop his literature class in order to come haha), called them, went to buy bus tickets (which was a miracle I even found any since during the Fiestas Patrias holidays all of Chile is traveling somewhere), looked around for hostels (and magically found one since every other hostel I called was full full full), and finalized the plans.

Mind you, La Serena is not close to Santiago. It's about a 6 hour bus ride away, the same distance from LA to Norcal.

We left at 8 p.m. and we arrived at 2 in the morning. We slept in the hostel and the next day, hopped on another bus 2 hours away to go to Valle Elqui.

The trip seemed to be characterized by bus rides. But at least the views were pretty.

We arrived in Pisco Elqui, a small town renamed with "pisco" in its name to popularize the pisco vineyard there. Pisco is a type of alcohol made from a special type of grape. The trip to Pisco Elqui was a bust, in my opinion. The pisco vineyard started charging $4,000 mil (~US$8) for its tours...when it used to be free including a free pisco tasting afterwards. Just for reference, a bottle of pisco that was sold at the vineyard was cheaper than the tour. Total ripoff. I don't even like pisco that much.

We just made our own 5-minute tour. And on our way to Pisco Elqui, we met 3 French people who were on the same route as us, so we quickly became friends with JC, Stefanie, et Loudeau (sp??). I tried to throw in a few phrases en français the entire time but it really hurt my brain! I only speak survival French. :( Sadly, we didn't get a picture with them even though we spent the entire day together. They were so helpful as they took care of the trip planning, getting tickets, getting buses, getting taxis, the bargaining, and basically did everything for us. And over dinner at the restaurant Yo y Soledad in Vicuña, we got to talk French and American politics and culture over goat meat, salad, and tea (well, that's what I ate at least. Goat=yummers). And for dessert, I ate pisco sour ice cream. Yummm.

More views of Pisco Elqui. Tiny, tiny town with not much to do.

Then, 1 hour away from Pisco Elqui is the city of Vicuña, which hosts a really great observatory called Mamalluca. It was such a pain to get the tour reservation since we were all last-minute planners, but the Frenchies came to the rescue and talked with the tour office and got them to get a tour for us 6. To get the best views of stars, it needs to be super dark, so this was the only foto I managed to take that didn't come out all black. It was pretty much pitch black up on the hill, and I don't believe I've ever seen so many stars in my life. I even saw cloudy-looking things in the sky, which I learned were galaxies that I was looking at! We used a high-powered telescope and I saw Jupiter and its moons through the telescope and some other stars (whose significance I do not remember). The Mamalluca observatory is significant because of its prime location in South America. The views weren't possible in any other part of the world, which made me feel very privileged to be there experiencing the sky, as it really looks without light pollution, or pollution in general. Cough cough, Santiago. The tour ended at midnight and we took a very expensive taxi ride back (~$13/person). I tried to sweet talk the taxi driver, but it didn't work in lowering the price. Oh well. We said goodbye to the Frenchies and regretted not getting their phone numbers or Facebook or something. :(

The next day, we explored La Serena. According to Lonely Planet, I had thought this was a more exciting town, but it actually isn't...even the residents I talked to said one has to leave La Serena for fun. Such deception, Lonely Planet! I'm learning to not trust what they say anymore...

Anyway, La Serena has a beach. A beach that one can't swim in because of dangerous currents. Not very exciting. But there was a lighthouse. Sigh. I miss Lighthouse the church.

Then we ate at Daniela II, a seafood restaurant that has an English menu full of typos. Good thing I read Spanish, haha. I ate merluza, which is Chilean sea bass. I didn't know it was gonna be fried, so I ate around the fry batter. Above is pebre (think Chilean salsa). Yum.

Richard left La Serena for Santiago early, so it was just me and Christy. We explored La Serena and went to Mercado Recova. It was very touristy, I saw so many gringos, and the products sold were all about the same. Meh.

Then we went to the Japanese garden. Shout out to Moon Choi!

Can you figure out what the Japanese romanization is saying, Moo Moo?

The Japanese garden was tiny. Walking around the whole of it was probably less than a mile. The most entertaining was probably the ducks. The green ones, the baby ones. Yeah. Ducks.

Christy and I trying to look ecstatic to be in La Serena.

Thankfully, we talked to some locals to ask them what else there is to do in this fome (boring) town. We had heard on the streets of this Pampilla thing. People shouted it all over, it was written on buses, people waved us own and asked us if we were going to Pampilla. We asked locals, and found it was was this huuuuge and very famous fonda (Fiestas Patrias city-wide county fair-esque thing/party that takes place in cities all over Chile) that took place in Coquimbo, the next city over. We hopped on the next bus to get us out of La Serena!

Getting off the bus, this was what I saw. A huuuuuge gathering of people. Cars packed, major traffic, people all lined up to enter. Christy and I looked at each other and realized that this was where the party was at. Everything about this trip suddenly was worth it.

It was very Latin-American. It looked like it was a scene straight out of Tijuana. I had gone to another fonda earlier this week, but it was in a bougie part of Santiago (Las Condes) where the entrance fee was $8 (geez...) and everyone was upper class, and it was super clean and Illapu (a super famous Chilean band) played. This fonda, Pampilla, was much more down-to-earth and people came from all classes. It was lined with vendors selling pots, clothing, shoes, food, housewares, like a swap meet! Everyone squeezed against each other as there was barely any walking space. And the entrance fee was only $1. I again, was the only Asian in probably the entire fonda of thousands of people, so I got a lot of annoying comments throughout the evening. At the end of the night, I put my hood on to obscure my face so I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb.

And I rode a horse for the first time! I see now why one needs balance. I felt like I was going to fall off. The huaso (Chilean cowboy) was very helpful and kind. And I think I committed treason by wearing my Argentina jacket during Chile's Fiestas Patrias. Oops.

And this random man was "performing" to try to get money. I started laughing when I saw him because he was so unimpressive. It looked like he took whatever he could find on the floor and just taped it on himself and danced around to get money. I don't think I'm too off in my guess. He wore a Chilean flag banner as a sash (probably hanging from the ceiling), grabbed some weeds and stuffed it in his shoe, and tied plastic bags to make a skirt.

And bathrooms were port-a-potties. 2 for $500?! What a deal! But after going 3 times, Christy and I realized that this port-a-potty deal was just getting too expensive...And we certainly didn't want to opt for the "VIP" baños and pay more.

Mmm, and fatty food like churros were sold.

This is the man behind the churro magic. Squeezing churro dough into a vat of boiling oil. He saw me and Christy and asked us where we were from. Christy told him the US. He believed Christy, but he didn't believe me. Quelle surprise. :(

I felt so patriotic after the singing of the Chilean national anthem followed by fireworks. This celebrating definitely beats out any 4th of July celebration. Chileans know how to party all week long.

And to close off the night, Mexican singer Pedro Fernandez performed! I didn't know who he was, but thankfully Christy knew him. Chileans went crazy for him. He was a really good performer, even if I don't like mariachi music. He played for more than 2 hours. I don't know where he got his energy, but my back was hurting like mad by 1.5 hours.

Just to get an idea of how huge the crowd was. Huuuuuge. And the last foto is a picture of a girl playing with her glowstick, and me playing with the light function on my camera. Yay. :) Okay, goodnight. This was a super long post to write!