my last few days in santiago were fun... i had a barbeque with a bunch of friends. and then went to jose luis's house. he's a composition major from mexico city. he showed me some of the stuff he's working on- super cool. I now have many invitations in the mexico city aread with food and tour guides.
I think juan and i leave medellin for girardot on sunday and from there go to bogota. colombia has been amazing. every time i'm in a car or bus i want to videotape out the window the whole time because it's such a trip seeing the quotidian goings-on.
We eat lots of meat all the time here... and everyone takes lots of showers... i can't convince juan that one shower a day and sometimes not changing pants is ok... he's trying to convert me to his latin ways. wearing cologne and tighter pants, maybe... but i draw the line at going to the 'hairdresser' and getting a pedicure. i'm still an hombre estadounidense!

I'm here in Medellin Colombia staying with Juan, who is a very good guide. Today we went with his mom to her work, which i think involves being the go-between for a big underwear company and people in super poor neighborhoods who sell it's products. it was amazing to see the neighborhood and meet some of the people there... i'll have to post photos and video of it, because it's hard to describe my impression of it. hm... i was excited to get back and write about my experience, but now i can't think of how to put it. I always like to think that i know about low standards of living in far-away countries and have a pretty accurate impression of it all, but every time i actually go to see this sort of thing first-hand it never ceases to leave a giant impression on me. A girl was walking me around her neighborhood while juan's mom was meeting with the girl's mom. I commented that there were a lot of huge vultures and she mentioned that a few years ago when there was a lot of gang violence there they'd come and eat the bodies of the murdered people left in the bushes. I was obviously shocked not only from this charming little anecdote, but also that it came so banally from a 15 year old. She also pointed at a ruined little shack directly behind us and said that the guy living there was tortured by a gang who then killed him and destroyed his house. Juan's mom's friend commented that all people from their class in medellin have had to witness a lot of heinous violence of this nature. She offhandedly mentioned some girl's body turning up in a bag by her house. Later, between chatting about today's soccer game, she told me about how her dad narrowly escaped being murdered by guerillas that killed her uncle and grandfather and how, when they first moved to medellin, her brother was murdered for refusing the join the neighborhood gang, who were later killed by police during a bank robbery. She said that she had almost met pablo escobar once because he was giving away houses to many empoverished people in the city. Juan's friend was telling me about how guerillas were trying to take her part of the city a few years back and helicopters came in the fight them... but she added that it wasn't really in her neighborhood, so it wasn't so bad.
During a few years in the late 80s early 90s, pablo escobar payed a huge sum to anyone who killed a police officer, and more money depending on his rank. For this reason, Juan's uncle, who has served many years as a high ranking officer, had to grow out his beard and go into hiding.
Right now the FARC is big in the news because one of their hostages, a lady who was kidnapped around 6 years ago during her presidential cadidacy, just turned in a video looking miserable, but alive in the jungle. Juan's cousin in Bogota told me that they have around 1,000 hostages out in the jungle. I was sort of surprised that the large figure, so he tried to reassure me, saying that, in comparison to colombia's population of 40 million, a thousand really isn't too many. I declined from replying that it's scary somebody would even consider the hostage population comparable to the entire population.
Everyone i talked to agreed that the new president, uribe, has been really hard on the guerillas and for this reason, it's possible for us to even enter neighborhoods like the one i visited today. Also, crime is supposedly down thanks to La Mano Negra, a sort of unofficial police force that kills criminals.
Nevertheless, the activites of the FARC and the reign of escobar don't hold a candle to the 'period of violence' of the 1940's and 50's, involving the right and left wing political parties having and all-out show-down. According to Juan's mom, there were so many dead that police would cut off the cadaver's heads and line them up in the park so friend's and family could come and see if their loved ones had turned up.
The city seems pretty safe now... i'm still cautious and everything, but everyone is super friendly and happy to meet me. They treat foreigners really well. Whereas in chile i'm sort of a rejected outsider, here it's not such a big deal that i'm from another country... sometimes people act sort of honored to meet me, which is weird... but generally i'm just treated like a family friend, rather than some sort of bizarre space alien.
Juan is a super good host. the first night i was here he took me out to a club and his girlfriend brought a friend to dance with me. Juan lends/forces upon me his clothes so that i conform to the latin style. He makes sure that i get to know the whole city... i've now hung out with various people from the social extremes.
I will write more later, but a friend's aunt just opened a restaurant and we're going to it's grand opening. hope all is well

i'm making travel plans and trying to learn as much portuguese as i can before i go to brazil. i was originally going to bus around a lot, but now i'm planning on just going to a few places in order to know each better... so my tentative plan is as follows: give notice to my landlord that i'll be out at the end of november, leave my stuff in hannah's room (she's keeping it and paying rent for the months she's not there), staying on my professor's futon because i have my bassoon final on december 5th (talk about pressure to practice at home...). fly on the 6th of december to salvador de bahia and kick it there for a week and a half with some friends of a friend (who i'm going salsa dancing with tonight!), then bus down to rio to meet up with chelsea. i hope to stay and travel with her and her friends until around the 20th of january at which point i'll fly to medellin to see juan. he promised to take me to the caribbean coast and possibly to ecuador. i plan to stay in colombia for two or three weeks and then go down to Lima to see the family i stayed with and visit a couple new friends... hopefully do some touristy peru stuff outside of the city, too. Ursula and I will meet up there (she's from lima, so she has family there) and search online for apartments before starting our bus trip back to santiago. en route we're planning on going to arequipa, san pedro de atacama, and la valle de la luna.
in the meantime i've started practicing portuguese somewhat regularly with a couple friends and working in a textbook.
today i had rehearsal with my accompanist and it was the first time that i felt i had played the piece worth a damn... he said so too. i'm going to make some reeds this week to start getting prepaired for juries.
i like chile more as i understand it's humor better. some books, articles and movies i've seen have helped me through my brief period of angst toward the country.
i've got a beard/moustache grown in... i'm going to leave it until the end of the month to complete the fidel castro costume for halloween. I was considering just leaving the moustache, getting the right glasses and suit and being Allende. Liz then suggested getting darker glasses and a military suit and being pinoche, but i think i'll pass on both of those options and roll with the further-from-home politician so as not to offend.

Last night I was trying to get an essay done and not planning on going at out all when, de repente,three dudes, two of whom i vaguely knew, showed up at the door looking for my roomate, hanna. We all got to talking about our various experiences living in chile and comparing it to our own countries (they're from peru, brazil and spain). We all decided that foreigners were given a much warmer welcome and inegrated much quicker in our countries than in chile. Hanna stayed at home, but we all went out hoping to find food, despite it being late sunday. We went to a colombian restaurant that was packed with colombians dancing to a live merengue band. We nonetheless managed to find a table in the corner and hung out until a bona-fide bar-brawl over some skanky looking girl broke the place up. outside we met up with a friend of a friend of a friend of mine and we all went to hang out at suecia, a street in my neighborhood boasting the most 'fleite' (sketchy, dodgey) clubs and bars in central santiago. the brazilian guy and the spanish guy were quickly lured away by some uber-fleite guys describing some seedy club, but sebastian (distant connection), henry (peruvian) and i hung out. We all talked about how our friends should have been more careful about getting in a taxi with sketchy dudes promising a seedy club and how one generally has to be careful in cities. This led to sebastian dogging on the peruvians in santiago, basically calling them a bunch of thieves and the base of santiagan crime. Henry and I both just bit our lip and until he changed the subject and left. Peru and Chile have a huge rivalry going back to the war of the pacific and continue to insult each other's countries in social situations. After he left, Henry and I ended up hanging out there until 4 in the morning talking about history and politics of the americas in which he's super well-versed. I was telling him that, initially, the US had supported Hussein told him about the picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with saddam. I was sort of embarrassed that he knew who rumsfeld was, seeing as i barely know anything about the peruvian government. When he asked what we thought of Fujimori in the US, i was also rather ashamed to tell him that, largely, we thought nothing at all of him, seeing as hardly anyone would even know who he is.
I think one of the best aspects of studying here is meeting so many people from other countries and talking about their history and their country's situations. Reading piles of articles and statistics about a country will never hold a candle to spending hours talking to one of its inhabitants. Also, hanging out with Henry made me realize the responsibility i have while traveling abroad to represent my country. Whether i try to or not, i'm forming impressions about many different countries based on their citizens that i meet here. So far I have zero interest in ever going germany, whereas i'm already convinced i want to go live in peru and mexico forever. Hanging out with my peruvian and mexican friends is completely different than hanging out with germans, chileans or gringos. The former group goes out of their way to make you feel included, welcome and appreciated. No gesture goes unnoticed.
Living in Chile i'm learning the disadvantages of living within an economic powerhouse. In the US i don't notice it as much because our system is so integrated in my consciousness, but here I notice how affluence has taken its tole on social norms. It's not uncommon here to ask someone how much money he spends in a month or what kind of car he drives. Chile doesn't have a strong sense of tradition or cultural pride, but what is notable is their economic standing in latin america. As a result, Chileans are money-obsessed -as if it were their main cultural trait. This which leads to strong classism. Chileans want to know where to place you in their concept of class hierarchy so that they know how to think about you. In contrast, people i know from other latin american countries will just enjoy a person for his personality. They don't care if you don't dress fashionably and don't spend lots of money going out.
i've been having a lot ideas lately about the attitude difference between chile and other nations, but it's already mid-afternoon and i have too much practicing and essay-writing ahead.
One final note while i'm thinking about it: I only know a couple spaniards, but i can't understand them nearly as well as south americans. i feel like my spanish is really good, but that, since i've only been exposed to latin american spanish, spanish spanish is one of the strangest dialects for me.

I knew that spring would come around this time, but it's nonetheless caught me off guard. I guess one doesn't realize how in tune his body is with natural cycles until a cycle starts going backwards. All the trees along the streets have leaves suddenly and there's flowers and insects everywhere. the days are longer and a lot warmer. everyone's planning barbecues... but that's hardly a change. barbecues are super popular here.
i've started to get into chiean cinema. i've only seen five of their movies, but they were all totally kickass. ursula and i went out to see a new one last night called 'malta con huevo.' it was one of the most whacked-out and funniest movies i've seen... kind of reminded me of 'happiness'... another great opus of our times. there weren't any subtitles and i still got every joke even though it was chilean spanish (the worst spanish in the world). so my spanish must be improving. one of my professors said that my essay (on chilean cinema) was outstanding.
life without a computer is just fine. i stil have my external hard drive with all my essays, music and photos... i've been reading more.

I survived chilean fiestas patrias. we all went up to la serena and dined (almost exclusively) on barbeque and beer. aside from the two kilos of tangerines that i brought, we had basically no fresh produce among us. Well, there's stories to tell in the paragraph, but we've all heard party stories, so i'll leave it at that. on the trip i also went to coquimbo with ursula and roxanne and we got the whole caravan to go to valle elqui... check out the photos on my photobucket album. with the rest of the break i went with gabi and her family to valparaiso and vina del mar.
sunday morning i experienced my first semi-violent mugging. i got up early to do some homework and get a coffee. unfortunately, no coffee place was open- it's hard getting used to a country in which catholic traditions really are more sacred than morning coffee. there was one guy in the empty streets with a nescafe bicycle/kiosk, so i got a cup of coffee and sat down on a bench with my laptop in my lap... ok- i know what you all are saying: dude! don't walk around some giant latin city alone with a laptop, especially if you're tall and blonde! well, usually i'm really conscious about stuf like this, but it was early on a sunday morning in a 'nice' part of town and there was hardly anyone around. i noticed some kid whispering something to the coffee guy who was kind of nodding. that was a sketchy red flag, so i decided to finish up my coffee and clear out. just then this other kid appeared infront of me, snatched the computer and started running down the street. i ran after him and after a block and a half chased him down, grabbed my computer back, and started running back the other way. unfortunately, the first kid i'd seen jumped me and all three of us started wrestling and punching in the middle of the street. i had a box-cutter in my pocket, but my better judgement overrode my masculine pride, so i decided to leave the situation with no stab-wounds on either side. I walked back to the corner where the coffee guy was and called the cops, who promised they'd send someone out immediately to make a report. the coffee guy started saying that he was gonna leave, but i put my foot infront of his kiosk wheel and obliged him to stay and talk to the police. In the meantime a couple prostitutes came up and started advising me as to which black markets i should scope out to buy back my computer. then this guy in a suit drove up with an open bottle of wine between his legs and started talking to the prostitutes, who told him about my ordeal. he started trying to give me advice, also. seeing as i wasn't in the best of humor i mumbled some comment about how stupid he looked driving around in a suit with an open wine bottle on a sunday morning. he started to get all pissed off, pulling the 'what did you say?!' card, so i cleared out. as a general rule i don't deal with angry drunk pimps... especially not on sundays. whatever. in the words of the great Jamie Bentz, 'I'm over it.'
that all happened before 7:30 in the morning... all told i actually had a pretty good day. i went to a kick-ass art exhibition with gabby and her brazilian friend and went to dinner at LeAnna's house. While I was over at LeAnna's eating a great dinner with a bunch of friends i considered what those dirty street waifs might have been eating for dinner and where they might've been sleeping that night... with that perspective it's pretty hard to hold a grudge.
i went to a bassoon repair guy to check out a couple pads that weren't shutting all the way and an A flat that's been super low. it was crazy seeing all his different tools and methods. i liked the way he talked about the instrument as a living creature that responds to environment changes and decides to play better some days than others. we hung out in his studio for two hours going over all kinds of stuff and he didn't even charge me. i might take it back to replace the string with cork.
pardon my not writing much... stuff does happen down here. i just don't get around to documenting much of it.

We got e-mails from the US embassy warning us to lay low tomorrow because it’s the anniversary of the military coup which put Pinochet in power… supposedly there’ll be lots of demonstrations that easily get violent. I wonder how stuff will be here on my street (Avenida 11 de Septiembre). But we still have class and everything… which means I should get crackin’ on my music history essay that’s due tomorrow. It takes me a while to write essays in Spanish still. I set up Microsoft word to let me put accents on vowels, but it still leaves me w/out spell and grammar check.

I finally called up the financial aid office and the guy said that they’d print my check for the Presser award on Thursday and get it in the mail. I don’t get the Nagel award, though because I’m not participating in SFSU ensembles (sorry mom…). To celebrate and went and got some decent speakers.

I talked with my Peruvian friend Sara and she invited me to spend x-mas in lima w/ her family. I think I’ll take her up on it… Christmas without family is like turkey without cranberry sauce or pork without apple sauce or lamb without mint jelly… the food in chile leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, everyone says the best fruit here is exported to the US… I told my roommate that she should come to California to try her country’s finest produce. I got some bomb grapes yesterday at the grocery store (of which I’m now a member… that’s a large step in becoming naturalized in a country). So we were all hanging out enjoying this kilo of top-notch grapes, when I noticed that the bag said “Producto de los E.U.” wtf is that?? I guess we export back and forth depending on season, but it caught me off-guard, seeing as our safeways are saturated with Chilean grapes.

I guess I should have started a new paragraph on the subject of food… but whatever… this isn’t for a grade. Killian made friends with a totally cool Spanish chick/lady. I invited them over for breakfast… in most countries it seems to me that breakfast means bread, cheese, and possibly bologna, but of course Killian and I are used to US standards, so I made them French toast, bacon, and fruit with yogurt. The Spanish lady had never eaten French toast and was sort of horrified at the amount of calories going on, so she started vaguely referencing having previously eaten, but al final she had a piece, but without syrup… Estadounidenses seem to have a reputation of being generally fat and porcious. I apologize for reinforcing this. But at least we eat within the boundaries of decency… my Belgian roommate was eating raw ground beef mixed with mayonnaise, mustard and capers. (!)

Music life is going alright… I finally started to get down to some serious reed work. I’ve now learned reed-making from three different professors… you’d think I’d be more consistent. My professor conseguired me an accompanist. I meet with him on Wednesday. I doubt he could live up to the legacy of John Chen… but we’ll see. We might do a bassoon concert in November at the university, so I’m working on the Elgar piece (Romance for Bassoon and Piano.)

My non-music classes are generally boring. Portuguese is fun, but I’m hardly learning anything. Spanish grammar is Spanish grammar and Chilean culture is practically a paradox. Well, I shouldn’t be so harsh, but it seems that 17 years of fascism plus heavy modernization took it’s toll on national identity. There’s not too much patriotism here… Then again it might just be my impression from living in the most urban neighborhood of the country… I bet in the campo there’s more visible culture. We had a couple classes on Chilean economy which were taught by a super intimidating old man who, as it turns out, studied economy and university of Chicago (this has great significance in Chile- look it up), served as secretary of the economy and finances for a couple years in the ‘80’s, works for the UN and the World Bank, and has lots of his books translated into English and sold on amazon.com. I talked to him about a Milton Friendman interview I read that had a lot to do with Chile and he agreed with Friendman that the free-market economy that Pinochet had allowed was what eventually lead to the collapse of the dictatorship and a return to democracy… he also referred to Pinochet as a fascist, even though he worked high up in the government during those years, so I guess he’s not a bad guy… just scary.

I guess that’s about all for now. The next time I write will probably be the next time I go to starbucks- I know! Silly gringo traveling thousands of miles to patronize the same old corporations, but you don’t understand! You can’t get good coffee here except at starbucks. It’s either half-milk/half coffe, or it’s a tiny espresso- no asking for “una café, por favor” without all kinds of inquisition. There’s a coffee maker here, so I tried buying grounds at the store and making it here, but the coffee they have tastes like the unspeakable and the little bag of safeway select coffee (how did that get here??) must be some kind of delicacy cause it’s like 6.000 pesos (12 USD) .

But I shouldn’t talk so poorly of Santiago. It’s got generally friendly people and lots of nightlife.

Hope all is well in gringolandia (they actually say that here!)

oye nelson, cual es tu e-mail? gracias por el comentario, pero no te pudia responder. saludos a tu familia... y a sr. granger jaja. sigue leyendo y tratare de escribir mas.

Matt and I went climbing for a the weekend with his friend Paulo, a little moustached, slang-using out-doorsman from Punto Arenas (the world's southernmost city). We got off the bus alongside the highway about an hour and a half outside of santiago and walked up a hill to where there's a bunch of composite rock formations that have runs bolted all over. I could barely get six feet off the ground, but all the crazy chileans up there were climbing over 12 meters of over-hung cliff. after dark we hiked up into a valley where a bunch of different groups were camping out. we joined a campfire group in which a guy with instruments and no musicianship was obligating everyone to try chewing coca leaves together with this hard, bitter/salty thing that he said grew on a plantain tree. while he was going on about the indigenous rituals involved, half of my mouth and my tongue became completely numb, so i discreetly spit out my mystical drug lump into the bushes. that night i slept in my hooded sleeping bag with a sweater, jacket, long-johns and socks while the guy next to me slept in his coat with his climbing rope as a pillow... as i was barely warm enough, i imagined that he must have been miserable, but he slept just fine and had set up his coffee making by the time i was crawling out of my sleeping bag all bleary-eyed and shivery. he told me how sometimes, when he's climbing a super long route, he'll just spend the night in his harness hanging off the cliff. later i saw him scaling a totally gnarly looking route while a bunch of guys yelled encouragement from below.

it was super refreshing to get out of the city and kick it in the bush with some gnarly dudes who are totally stoked to be outside all day drinking copious quantities of profoundly strong mate and tirelessly practicing an intense man/nature binding sport, even if i couldn't keep up so well. around my place they just keep the ol' bullshit box blasting garbage into the eyes and ears while paralyzing their other senses for hours (oye valerie, si estas leyendo eso, tendrás que reconocer la certeza de mi metáfora.) ...so i dunno... i might move out. my place is relatively cheap, the location is good and my compañeras are cool, but i'd like to be living with only chileans... preferably those who are into outdoors trips and share my hate of popmediagarbage fountains. matt conseguired a bomb spot... it's in a gnarlier neighborhood in an old super latin-american house owned by a chilean rasta who plays drums in a reggae band. i feel that i must change my path while the inspiration lasts... egg me on in the comment box.

photos here:

http://s200.photobucket.com/albums/aa10/gusinchile/

we went snowboarding. it was fun, but now i'm so sore that i could barely get dressed this morning. i got in some good runs, but the wildest ride of the day was mos def riding back to santiago with rob trying to get to a burger place before 19:00 to get the dinner special. matt is going rock climbing tomorrow with some chilean friends. they invited me to go, but i don't know if i could, considering that i can barely lift my arms now.
i spent a couple hours in the practice room today... good to be playing again... especially with a decent reed.
i put up more pictures on photobucket. check 'em out!

I had my first lesson. the professor is super cool. His argentinian wife and 5 year old daughter live in Buenos Aires, so he said that we'll have to reschedule sometimes when he goes to visit them. I asked him if he was looking for a bassoon position over there so that he could be with them and he said that yes, his job at my university is temporary. He invited me to stay with his family in Buenos Aires, though. (!)
I said that I wanted to work on a south american piece for my jury (which is in november) and he said he'd bring some music next time. I'll have weekly lessons on Thursdays and reed class on Mondays before my portugese class. In the meantime he gave me a reed... i offered to buy one, but he says that he frequently gives students reeds. It sounds pretty good. He gets his cane from a guy in Mendoza who has a plantation there. He says instruments and tools are hard to come by here, so i'm glad i got all my tools in order antes de salir... except for a reamer... falto eso.
Also, my professor plays with the Santiago symphony and said that he'd get me tickets for saturday.
It seems like the school doesn't really offer too many groups... which is weird. My professor said that there's a lot of youth orchestras and that i should audition for one... i'll look into that
Tomorrow i'm going snowboarding. Robert's driving and lending me a board and goggles. Matt's lending me his snow clothes. I think the lift ticket is 13,000 pesos for students ($26). Then there's a party at an austrian friend's house.
i ahve to go to a friend's concert now. forgot about it. i'll write more later

Dearest Cameron,
Thank you so much for the e-mail! en serio, i've been meaning to send you a nice hefty e-mail for a couple weeks now and just haven't sat down and done it. I figured that, as long as I was writing about my goings-on, I'd put it on the blog, but don't worry- it's still written to you... i'll just be careful not to mention the stash.
we had an epic party saturday night- lots of chileans and foreign exchange students. met some cool people, including a mexican guy who invited me to visit him in mexico city and a chilean guy who invited me over for seafood.
my spanish is improving. i got a better final grade in my intensive spanish class than one of the native speakers. (!)
i talked to hermano colombiano juan. he wants to come visit, but i think i'd rather go visit him there. colombia sounds kickass.
My roomates are cool. liz and i make dinner together a lot. grocery shopping is easy, seeing as we don't even have to leave our building to go to the store. you have to tip the baggers here... i didn't know that for the first couple weeks. hopefully they've forgiven me.
I don't know if you saw my few pictures, but from my balcony you can see cerro san cristobal, which is a mountain/hill that is a city park. anyway, i went and took a walk the other day from my apartment and crossed the hill. where i entered the park is one of the nicest areas of the city- german-style houses and street lights and stuff. once i got to the ridge i saw that on the other side of the hill is a neighborhood of shacks. so i walked down a muddy road among funky little tin-roofed houses, kids playing in the street, chickens, etc. i knew that there were super poor areas of the city, but i thought that they'd be more on the outskirts rather than right on the other side of the park down the street. there's such a difference between rich and poor here. not that there isn't in the US, but it's more pronounced here. rich people generally still see pinochet as a national hero.
i started a portuguese class. it's super cool. also, a couple brazilian sisters started helping me learn. i want to get a book and have them help me read or something. hopefully i learn a bunch and then meet up with chelsea in rio for xmas... that's sort of my idealistic plan.
i want to meet your friend who's down here. i have a good crowd going, so i can introduce her to some people. hey, you should come down to santiago! i mean, i'm down here... and so is shannon... and 7 million chileans. well, concider it.
take care!
love

Gus

my bassoon lessons start next week. gotta start practicing! more importantly i have to get a reed working. i have an extensive host of mediocre ones, but no straight-up good ones
i think i'll take a monday portugese class. hardly a class- i think it's more of a brazilian club. it's not for credit. i just pay 5,000 pesos for the semester. also, i met a brazilian girl who said she'd teach me some portugese if i'd practice english with her. we start tomorrow.
i talked to juan- hope to get to colombia sometime.
hope all is good with everyone in CA

a few more photos up on photobucket.

a new housemate moved in. she's from finland. she's super tall and super blonde and drinks milk (maybe it's just me, but i always think it's strange when people have milk to drink with a meal). she's cool, though.

robert comes over a lot, entonces hemos estado hablando más español en la casa. tal vez el nos llevará a la nieve.

i went around shopping for classes today. i went to the san joaquin campus first and signed up for a poetry class, a couple poly sci classes and a history class. i couldn't get the portugese so i got all discouraged and went to campus oriente. on the bus ride over there i met a music professor who pointed me in the right direction. i talked to a lady in the music office who gave me stamps and signatures for bassoon lessons (!), music history I, and music of chile and the americas. as we are obligated to take the spanish and chilean culture classes, i'll probably end up dropping all the poly sci and poetry.
my friend will be here soon and we'll go look into how to get over the mountains to argentina for the weekend. if stuff is as cheap as i hear, i'll pick up a guitar.

i'm getting to know the city better now... thanks to the metro which goes everywhere. the part of santiago in which i live is very modern... might as well be in europe. however a lot of the city is as funky as most other latin cities. matt and i went to a weekly market in the west side closer to the mountains. it was freezing cold and raining, but we still had a good time grocery shopping and eating food from sketchy sidewalk grills. i picked up more long underwear... it's key.
last night a few of us went out to some clubs with killian's room mate and his friend- our first chileans. i was tired from waking up at 7:30 to go class, so i went to sleep at 3:00am, but everyone else was out until 7:00. that's normal, though. the night here starts at 12:00 or 1:00 at lasts until well after the sun is up. the clubs are super fun and it's easy to meet people. still, gringos (that's what they call pretty much any foreigner) must be careful and not drink too much. already two students in my program have had their wallets and cell phones stolen. one of them woke up in a tree planter and couldn't remember who he had been with... i'll make a note to myself not to end up in that situation...

oh! i got it... i think. to call me, do all that phone card stuff, then dial 011- 569-78690441. the 011 is to call outside US. 59 is country code, i think 9 is for cell phones, then the rest is my number... i guess there's no city code. i'm three hours later.

I conseguired a place to live. it's on the 11th floor above a shopping center that has a big supermarket and a giant department store. we get to take our shopping carts on the elevator up to our apartment. the apartment is for 6 people, but right now liz (italian liz... not brandlin) and i are the only ones here. my room is TINY. enough room for a twin bed, a little table and possibly a chair... i'll probably just get a folding chair and keep it under the bed. i also have my own bathroom and a decent closet across the hall. the apartment has a great view and is an excellent location, but is sort of filthy. i spent hours cleaning up my room and bathroom... throwing away old nasty curtains, mopping, bleaching the walls, etc. then liz offered to make killian and me spaghetti and meatballs if we cleaned the kitchen... but the three of us ended up cleaning for three straight hours. we should have done a before/after picture... it was heinous. now it's respectable. after dinner i played some bassoon for them.
spanish class is fun- the teacher is super nice. the reading is kind of hard for me, but i'll catch on aight (purposefully misspelled). i'm still sort of unclear on how we sign up for classes... but that'll be easy.
soccer here is madness. while i was cleaning i kept hearing all this crazy yelling and couldn't figure out what was up... sometimes it'd seem like the holy city started yelling. liz came up and told me that it was the copa america causing all the noise. every once in a while i'd look off the balcony and see people gathered around bars yelling, people in the street dancing and waving chilean flags and when a goal was scored all the drivers in the city would start honking their horns... who knows how they knew...
we went to a movie today. that was also madness... there was no parking in the whole neighborhood around the theatre. there were over-flow parking lots down the street with theatre employees assisting. most movies can be seen in spanish or in english with spanish subtitles.
Mom says my phone instructions didn't work... i'll ask liz how her parents call her cell phone. i'd like to hear from some of my gente norteamericana.
i'm sure there's much more to say, but i have to work on this spanish... class early tomorrow.

I got a phone today… you may all reach me at 78690441, but first you must dial 011 to get out of the US, then Chile’s country code, which is 56, then Santiago’s city code, which is 02. Also, never call without a calling card because it’s crazy-expensive otherwise. So to call:

1. Call 1800 number on the back of the intl. phone card

2. Scratch off the gunk covering the pin number and enter that

3. dial 011-56-02-7-8690441

…or just e-mail me at dudealacarte@hotmail.com That’s much easier.

Once again, everyone I met today was very helpful and nice. I hung out with Liz today… not Brandlin… Liz whose surname escapes me. I got an adaptor for my computer and a cell phone. We went to check out the San Joaquin campus, which is immense. I have Spanish class there tomorrow morning. We also went to the Oriente campus where the music institute is located. Oriente is a beautiful campus… puts Cal to shame. We met up with Paula, Katy’s exchange student from years ago. She and her boyfriend drove us to a possible apartment. It included food and laundry, but the room was tiny and didn’t have a private entrance. I told the lady that if I couldn’t find anything else I might stay there a couple months… not too polite, but honesty is just a harsh form of good manners.

I can’t figure out how to upload photos to this blog, so maybe I’ll just start a photobucket account that ya’ll can check out.

It was a long trip- left Monterey at 11:00am on monday and arrived at this hotel at 2:45am wednesday. It was fun, however. Liz's place in palos verdes was awesome. I got to have a second good ol' american bbq party before leaving. we ran into LeAnna at LAX, but she was on another flight. In costa rica we got to leave to airport without paying any sort of tax... i guess there's a 12-hour limit. So we went into the small town by the airport (birthplace of Juan Santamaria- the national hero) and got plates of rice, fish, salad, beans and fried plantains for $2 each. It was very typical latin america- hot, tropical, lots of people hanging out in parks who have no qualms about meeting foreigners. And we could not have been more obviously foreign. we were sweaty and disheveled from the plane and had our carry-ons, which consisted of liz's over-filled backpack and purse, and my laptop and bassoon. despite the weight we were able to explore a little. Back in the airport we met up with LeAnna, who had just arrived after a lay-over in El Salvador. I tried to sleep on top of a coffee table, but liz made friends with two little mexican boys who crawled all over us for the rest of the hours we were there. After a short thunderstorm, we left for Lima, where we had a short wait before the final leg of the trip. Santiago was an abrupt change from Costa Rica... mid summer in the tropics vs. mid winter in the andes.
here at the hotel I have a room completely to myself that includes a king-sized bed and its own bathroom complete with a bidet. the three other guys in the program all share one small room. the first thing i noticed when leaving the building in the morning is the row of mountains to the east of the city. i'd describe it, but ya'll should just do a google image search. i explored for a few hours on my own. everyone i met was super friendly. i took the underground metro (which is cheap and comes all the time) to the university. the music school is on another campus, however. our coordinator told me that they received my audition CD.
I start spanish class on friday... in the meantime i have four days to find housing.