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/