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