essBlog

The spat began at the Ibero-American Summit in Chile's capital, Santiago, last Saturday when Mr Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a close ally of US President George W Bush, a fascist, adding "fascists are not human. A snake is more human."

7.7 Magnitude Quake Hits Chile

Way, way up north. About 700 miles away. We still had a blackout last night, though, so perhaps it's related.

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The placement process has been far from painless in Santiago. I went through a placement agency originally, and I didn't get any responses back to email for nearly a month afterwards. Assuming that the agency just wasn't going to come through and that I just hadn't gotten the position, I purchased a ticket and resolved to make my way to Chile alone. Somehow, I reasoned, I would be able to find a job.

You can imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from my placement agency informing me that I had been accepted by the program and would have a job waiting for me in Chile when I arrived. That seemed like great news. It was a job in Santiago, which is where I wanted to be, and it would pay for my housing if not for all of my travel needs.

There was one little catch though, I had to apply for and finalize my student visa while I was in the United States. The process of setting up a Chilean visa in the US takes about 30 days from submission of documents to visiting the consulate to receive your visa. It's not too bad if you have 30 days to do it in.

My flight deadline was about thirty days after I had been informed that I might have the job. While the visa documents and necessary paperwork were all eventually taken care of, I had to delay my flight for a couple of weeks, which cost me travel time and the chance to learn a little more Spanish before my program began.

No problem, I thought, I'd probably have spent that time looking for a job anyways.

It was upon arriving in Chile that things began to take a turn for the weird. I arrived at the hostal where I would be staying with my placement program to find that I was not scheduled to work in Santiago, but in Vina del Mar, a city roughly two hours to the northwest.

This was less than ideal.

I spent most of that night worried that I would have to quit my program, to which I had already paid a substantial placement fee, in order to stay in the city I was told I would be staying in from the beginning. Add to that the fact that you have little legal leverage in this system. Who do you bring charges against? Can you even do so if the system is based in another country? Would it (maybe) end up costing WAY MORE than it's worth?

Probably.

The next day I met with my coordinator in order to straighten things out, and for a while it looked like things would be straightened out. The school I am supposed to work for assured me that things would work out and that I would be placed somewhere in Santiago. My program director apologized to me profusely and said things would be straightened out by Monday.

Monday I had no school. Tuesday I had no school. Wednesday I had no school. Thursday I HAD a school, but on Friday everybody changed their minds and now I have one of two schools and a "week off" more than likely without any idea of whether I will be receiving a paycheck.

It's not a particularly comfortable situation, and I'm hoping that it's resolved on Monday, when I'm told it's supposed to be finished. Then again, it'll be fixed on Monday is something I've heard before, and I don't relish the idea of waking up without a job again on Tuesday.

I'll be a lot happier when I'm in a classroom ready to teach.

I could make any number of excuses for not updating in the past two weeks, but I've just been too busy and too exhausted by the ratrace of getting established in Santiago.

Last week Christine and I visited San Pedro de Atacama in the northern half of the country with about ten of her classmates from La Catholica. It was a good time, but nearly every person who came contracted some sort of voodoo illness from the desert. The cold I got is still kicking my ass (lightly) today.

The northern part of Chile is interesting. Santiago is sort of unique, sandwiched in between two deserts. Atacama, in the north, is the driest in the world. There are many locations that have never recorded rainfall in the time that weather records have been kept.

The desert is also ridiculously cold at night. Right now, in the winter, temperatures can get up to 70 F in the day, then drop to around 30 F at night. Couple that with a total lack of heaters, and you have a situation that demands, nay, requires, long underwear.

The trip was a lot of fun, though. Despite San Pedro's small size, it's a huge tourist destination for Chile. Most of the food is twice as expensive as in Santiago, and it takes twice as long to arrive. There's only one ATM in the entire town, so you'd better hope it's working (like me) or bring enough money to cover any contingencies you may run into.

We kept pretty busy, as San Pedro offers dozens of activities. We biked to Pukara de Quito, an old fortress that dates back to around the 12th century. We rode horses across the Atacama desert. We visited Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna, which was beautiful. We drank a lot of pisco. We saw A LOT of stars.

We also stayed at a great hostal (El Anexo) that was WAY off the beaten path. The owner was a great guy, although his name eludes me. He helped us make a fire and spoke very Chilean Spanish with us while we sat out back for the last two nights we stayed. He was also very good about accommodating us with the room and whatever else we needed. It was a little cold, but it had hot water, and to be honest, everywhere in Chile is a little cold in the winter.

That said, the 24-hour busride was a little excessive, especially since when we rode back we weren't allowed to get off the bus for more than 12 hours at a time (use the Pullman bus instead of Tur-Bus, we didn't have this problem with them). It was also fun to experience the sheer weirdness of watching a pirated movie (the new Harry Potter, dubbed in Spanish) on a professional establishment.

When we got back, we were glad to see the smog in Santiago again. You can't see the stars from the city, but you can stay warm at night, which is a lot more comfortable psychologically and physically.

After a thirteen-hour flight and untold hours getting visas lined up and paperwork processed and classes taken, I'm finally in Santiago.

As a whole, the city is pretty... gray. It's winter here, and the metal storefronts and stone facades on the buildings are the same color as the sky, which is cloudy and subdued most of the day. As mentioned, it's winter, but that means more of a Seattle/Portland/coastal winter sort of thing more than the freezing hellstorm that we're accustomed to in the midwest. There are heaters, and I have my winter coats, but the heaters are only ever on for a few minutes at a time, and the coats are usually unfastened.

Any illusions I had of knowing Spanish have been soundly put into their place. At least three times since I've arrived, people have simply walked away from a conversation or broken into English, which most people at the hostal speak pretty well. I'm also finding out that speaking Spanish is really an exhausting experience for me. It takes energy translating everything in my head, and the nervousness doesn't help much either.

When I got in to Santiago yesterday at 8 AM, I hadn't slept more than two hours in the past twenty-four hours. By that night, it had been 41 hours since I had gotten anything other than two hours of fitful plane sleep, and I was incoherent and basically ready to keel over and die.

I met up with Christine in the morning at the hostal, and we ended up going out for lunch at Mercado Central (I think this is the name) which is a large market that sells fish from the nearby Pacific. I ended up splitting a plate of fish with Christine (vegetarian no more) with rice and greens. We also had some pretty good Chilean white wine, which is something you can get nearly anywhere in town.

I also got to have my first experience ordering water, which is apparently only available most places for a price. This means not only that you have to pay for it, it also means that you have to specify sin gas (uncarbonated) or con gas (carbonated) every time you decide to rehydrate. While it's literally one of the simplest things in the world, it terrifies the holy hell out of me.

At any rate, there's more, but it'll have to wait, because Pato, one of the guys who works at the hostal, has just come to Christine's room, where I've been sleeping and studying all day, and called me a bum, which is true. So I'm going to go outside and look around for a while like a human being that is actually, you know, involved in society.