GMW Abroad: Boxing, Villa Grimaldi, y Acción de Gracias

This post is way overdue; about 3 weeks ago I should've put it up, but oh well.

Andrew and me boxing! Our friend Arturo from church is a boxer, so one Friday night we went to a park and started punching each other after a brief 5 minute lesson about boxing basics. We heard people in the pitch black park saying, "What are they doing???" Thinking that we were fighting for real. Well, Andrew and I were, at least. Jaja.

Andrew totally did not punch me in the face. I seriously couldn't stop giggling throughout the entire fight. It was too funny.

And here's me battling with Arturo, the expert. He had the height advantage over me, which stunk.

But I managed to get a swipe at his arm! Jaja!

Nicolas and Arturo, the professional boxers. Apparently Nico's dad was a boxer?

Graciela with Arturo. She's a feisty one! And a quick learner, at that!

After a wild round of boxing, Emily and I met up with Roberto to get Chinese food! This place is called Los Chinos Ricos, it used to be called Los Chinos Pobres. It's apparently the oldest Chinese restaurant in all of Santiago (in Barrio Brasil). We ordered Peking duck and sweet and sour pork. I was a bit disappointed by the Peking duck b/c it didn't have the crispy skin and it was marinated in a soy-sauce based marinade, which is all wrong! And I didn't see a single Chinese face on whom to use my Mandarin Chinese. :'(

Emily sure is creative with a pair of chopsticks!

Roberto with chopsticks. Chileans do know how to use them!

After a THREE hour dinner, we were still up for a night of carretear ("partying" in Chilean Spanish) so we went to La Casa en el Aire in Bellavista, a live music joint where they serve snacks and drinks. I had been there once before and I enjoyed the music and the chocolate milk (but not the cigarette smoke). This is Emily's tequila sunrise. Mmmm.

The caipiriña azul, which is a Brazilian drink made with said alcohol, a bunch of limes, probably blue food coloring, and sugar. Apparently it's a hard drink to make because you need the perfect amount of sugar or else the caipiriña will be too strong and make the drink nasty.

Emily and Roberto enjoyed it!

So that was a night of fatty carretear...I got home at 4 and had to wake up at 8 the next day. But it was nice to spend 6 hours just chatting about life. The next day, EAP organized a trip for us to go to Villa Grimaldi, a torture center/concentration camp during the dictatorship for people who were suspected to be against the Pinochet regime. Our tour guide was a torture victim himself but was so courageous to speak so openly about the specifics of the torture sessions he endured so that people will remember and know how humans can treat other humans as if they were inhuman. It also opened my eyes to the importance of human rights.

This is a model of how the torture center looked back in the 70's before it was destroyed by the military dictatorship as a way to eliminate any traces of torture that happened, because it was fiercely denied that torture went on during the dictatorship. Now it's been reconstructed in a memorial park.

"Old parking area. Sector where one was tortured with vehicles."

This plaque explains why the park is here. At the bottom it says, "Never again in Chile will torture be repeated."

This held the remains of a boat...of something...I forgot.

This is a wall full of names of the political prisoners who had been in Vila Grimaldi. It was a huge wall.

It was a 7 hour tour, and it ended with a visit to the General Cemetery in Santiago, where many people "disappeared" (read: kidnapped and killed and dumped their body in the ocean) and killed are buried. This guy Orlando Letelier escaped to Washington D.C. but was assassinated by the direction of Pinochet--even in the US! The bottom of his grave says, "I was born a Chilean, I am a Chilean, and I will die a Chilean."

A small hill with an image of Jesus on the cross. Lots of people left notes for God.

It was interesting that the cemetery was divided by class. The front of the cemetery is filled with huge mausoleums of the rich with statues and marble and all that, but as you walk more and more toward the back, the poor bury their dead here. It seemed more like a plant nursery than a cemetery, as it was adorned with potted plants, plastic windmills, toys, and the like.

Barely looks like a cemetery, no?

Nameless graves.

The grave of Victor Jara, a famous Chilean singer in the 60's-70's who sang of social justice and criticized the US foreign policies in Vietnam. When the military coup happened in 9/11/1973, ushering in the Pinochet dictatorship, he was kidnapped, tortured, and killed. His grave is now in the back of the cemetery with "the people" instead of the elites. His wife wanted him to be buried in this sector of the cemetery because she believed Victor Jara would've wanted it this way--to be with "the people."

The wall with all the names of people who died or were tortured during the dictatorship. It was another huge wall.

The wall's description: "Memorial of the disappeared detainees and of the politically executed people. Victims of the period of the military dictatorship."

What's sad though is that there are still people missing, who disappeared more than 20 years ago and whose whereabouts are still unknown...

On a brighter note, the next day at church we had a thanksgiving service to give thanks to Pastor Antonio, so it was 2 hours of people presenting a poem, a Bible verse, a skit, or music to show thanks. I took pictures of the gringos performing :)