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.