Sr. Smarty-Jeans

Hola amigos! We're finishing up our first week back after what was an incredible dieciocho week (and spring break).

Our friends Chris and Erin flew into town from Oakland overnight and arrived on Saturday morning (virtually every flight from the States to Chile is a red-eye).


We spent the first couple of days hanging out around Santiago, and then on Monday morning we started a road-trip north, towards the Atacama Desert. We drove about 5 hours, almost all of it along the Pacific coast, on Monday and got to a major beach town called La Serena (a big summer vacation spot for Chileans). The next morning we hopped back in the car and kept going north until we got to Bahia Inglesia, a much smaller beach town at the very beginning of the desert. The drive was extremely cool - we went from green mountains to an almost completely desolate desert within a couple of hours. It was incredibly dry and dusty in all directions and then all of a sudden we re-connected with the Pacific and arrived in Bahia Inglesia. The town is a tiny one - probably only a couple hundred residents - and the beach was beautiful, with the desert coming right up to it.


We spent two days in Bahia Inglesia, and on the second day we took a boat ride out to see some penguins (pinguinos!) that were supposed to be on a rocky outcropping about a mile from town.


We were skeptical, but after about twenty minutes in the boat we were within thirty feet of penguins, seals, condors, and a bunch of other cool animals.

The water in Chile comes up from the south, and so the water is cold this time of year.


We stayed in a funny hostel that rented geodesic domes (glorified tents) out...


Bahia Inglesia is about 3 kilometers from a larger town called Caldera (which we were excited about because we had read in a guide book was the home of an empanada restaurant called "Empanapolis"). Caldera ended up being what we're finding to be a pretty typical town - large square, some impressive-looking churches, small markets, and well-kept soccer field (even in the desert!) among other things.


And it also Empanapolis, which ended up fulfilling expectations and being awesome (partly because of the empanadas and partly because they had exactly two framed pictures on their wall - one of Elvis Presley and one of Freddy Mercury. You can see them in the upper-left corner of the 2nd picture below.).


From Bahia Inglesia we drove about 7 hours south (and east) into the Elqui Valley region of Chile. Along the way we were lucky enough to drive through the desert during its periodic flower bloom (there were noticeably more flowers on the way back down than on the way back up - only 2 days later). The bloom apparently lasts a couple of weeks and only happens every few years, so we were extremely fortunate to drive through while it was happening. Even though the land is incredibly dry, these tiny little pink flowers manage to grow and bloom and cover enormous expanses of desert.


Here we are in the desert on September 18th (Independence Day), trying to be as patriotic as possible in red. Everybody gets into Independence Day, and you can actually get a fine if you don't hang up a Chilean flag outside of your house!


Along the ride we came across a bike gang that had an english name written on their jackets (and a pretty poor choice of font). I was positive it said "dork riders," which would have been a way awesomer name that "dark riders"...


A pic of the landscape between Bahia Inglesia and the Elqui Valley:

Here's one from a 40 km piece of road that took over 2 hours to drive through because it was on a single line dirt road that winded through the hills:


The closest town to where we stayed in the Elqui Valley was Hurtado. We stayed in a very cool hacienda and got to do a lot of hiking, looking at stars (there are a number of well-known observatories in the Valley because of its 300+ days of cloudless skies per year), and listening to ridiculous stories from the german guy who owns the place (i.e. helicoptering around Australia, sailing from Africa around the tip of South America, controlling horses with a radical form of "tail massage"...). Here are some pics of the Hacienda Los Andes:


Again we lucked out and the mountains were full of color because of the flower bloom.



Parrots flying around in Elqui Valley:


On Saturday morning we made the drive back to Santiago and sadly had to say good-bye to Chris and Erin, who we missed immediately and we wish were still here!

The weather has definitely taken a turn for the better, and we no longer need to use our little kerosene-powered heater in the office at work to stay warm. It's been in the 60s and 70s in Santiago the past couple of days, and we're hoping it stays this way.

Here are a couple of spring break mullets. The first, for obvious reasons, is the Baby Mullet:


The next is on a dude that is running for president here in Chile (clearly the mullet is a distinguished hair-style here). This one can be called the Presidential Mullet (although if he wasn't running for president I would probably call it the Lionel Richie Mullet):


Finally, the title of this post comes from a conversation I overheard among two chilean students at school today. The first made a joke about the second, and so he responded by calling the first a "meeh-ster smarty-jeans." After a couple of confused seconds, someone said "I think you mean smarty-pants." The kid seemed pretty unfazed, and just said "yes, a smarty-pants, a smarty-jeans. Whatever." Awesome.

Spring Break!

Spring break has officially begun and we have a great day to usher it in. Chris and Erin arrived here this morning and are currently napping off the redeye flight. I want to wish speedy recoveries to Meg and Frank--hope you guys are feeling better soon! We're thinking of you. Also props to babies Jacob and Eli. It's awesome watching you grow! Keep sending the pics!

The Big Gringos v. Chilean soccer game was a terrific time, complete with drunken Chilean fans, nonstop Reggaeton, and much flagrant cheating by the Chileans (perhaps this is expected because it was their independence day?). The gringos actually won, 5-4, although I will say that it should have probably been 5-3 because the last goal was the result of hilarious, classically Latin flop-and-roll in the penalty box. Incidentally, the person who decided that this was a foul was the very man who flopped. He immediately just picked up the ball and ran and put it at the penalty hashmark. The flop was actually captured on videotape and it is incredibly funny and incredibly obvious that nothing happened. They didn't actually score on the PK, but since they had at least 3 Chilean players standing inside the box during the PK, they were easily the first ones to the rebound. They also constantly had 12 and sometimes even 13 people on the field and would appear to be quite mystified and confused when we pointed this out to them. By the way, I promise that I am writing this without any hostility. It was much funnier than it was serious, but all the same, it was a bizaar commentary on the value of sportsmanship and fair play. I'm sure there were some questionable calls by the gringos, but it was pretty over the top on the Chilean side--down to earnestly denying that the cheating was going on. Tons of dramatic rolling around and grabbing shins. And they didn't really let their women play. I'm particularly smug about this because I scored a totally sweet goal (so did Justin) and so did one of the other women on our team. It was one of the freak times since I've moved on from being a real athlete at Duke that my body was actually able to execute what my mind envisioned it doing. This doesn't happen very much anymore. All in all an awesome time.

There was a schoolwide assembly yesterday for the Deiciocho holiday. Lots of traditional dancing and songs. It was really great. A couple of thing at this assembly, however, would have either started a riot or a serious incident at Lincoln Park. Mainly, it was the girls in bikini tops (representing Rapa Nui/Easter Island) and the open flames that had Justin and I exchanging alarmed glances. It was really neat to see some of the traditional dances, though. Since so many of the kids are local, a lot of them have authentic outfits that they wear specifically for these dances. The faculty party yesterday afternoon was also quite fun. Our raunchy and inappropriate skit went over incredibly well with the locals and staff (whew!). I can't believe they actually understood what we were saying as it was all in Spanish with our totally non-Chilean accents. We were quite nervous about this, but it turns out that when you serve alcohol at school, the standards of decency are lowered proportional to how many pisco sours everyone has had. Good times.

This week we are heading up north for some warmer weather, beaches and hiking. We'll be going to Bahia Inglesia to stay in these cool looking geodesic domes and then to the Elqui Valley region to stay at a hacienda run by a bunch of Germans. We'll certainly take lots of pictures and keep you posted. Ciao ciao!

Dieceocho!

We've been pretty busy over the past week or so - Saturday was an incredibly nice day and we went skiing at a resort called El Colorado (about an hour from Santiago), and on Sunday we went to see Chile play Brazil in a World Cup qualifier match. Our spring break starts immediately after work tomorrow (celebrates Chilean Independence Day) and there is (1) a big gringos vs. chileans soccer match we're playing in tonight and (2) a party tomorrow that the non-chilean staff puts on for the chileans that involves a skit that we have major roles in.

Skiing first... Here's Claire and our friend Lissa as we're about to leave:

We now own our own gear (ridiculous, we know). Renting everything down here costs around $40 US a day, and we got a hook-up through a friend at work to buy everything - skis, boots, poles, and helmets (which, if you've skied since 1992, the last time I had, you probably know that everybody wears now) - for around $90 US a person. The sale was extremely easy, and involved us going to a (somewhat shady) part of Santiago we'd never been to and meeting a dude who had a shed FULL of all kinds of ski equipment that he "gets used from Andora." Hmmmm...

We got up early on Saturday and met up with our friends Ian and Lissa (Lissa is our office-mate and Claire shares a classroom with Ian). It was about as nice a day as we could have hoped for. My memories of skiing when I was younger involve lots of fun but also lots of FREEZING cold toes and fingers, but the temperature on Saturday was probably right around 30 degrees F and it made for an extremely comfortable day.

Here we are getting to the mountain:



Here's a view of the tiny town surrounding the mountain:

More mountain (you'll notice there are NO trees on the mountains up here, and that's one of the things that makes it pretty different from skiing in the US)...

There's a place on the way to and from the mountain that has the best bread we have ever had in our lives (called "pan amasado" here). I am very intently looking at some bread...


The soccer game was Sunday night at 9pm (they love starting things late here because it seems like nobody gets up for work until 10am or so). We got to the stadium a few minutes after it opened at 7pm, and it was already PACKED with people singing and jumping up and down. The crowd was amiable, and a couple people near us wanted to try out their english by talking to us. One dude who spoke english extremely well introduced himself and told us that he had spent three years living in Mobile, Alabama and was back for vacation (incidentally I think I inadvertently ended our budding friendship when I meant to ask him his name again and it came out as "te amo" [I love you] instead of "te llama" [what should I call you]).

Outside the stadium, just before going in:
Inside the stadium...

Here's a sweet cowboy (caballero) that gets the crowd pumped up before the game...

Some Chilean stadium food:

Stadium security can also double as baseball catchers in case a spontaneous game breaks out:


The Brazilians had a lot of their top players in the game because they've been slacking lately and were behind Chile in the standings, so it was cool to see Ronaldinho and Robinho. The Brazilians also looked enormous compared to the Chileans. The final score was 3-0 Brazil, but even though towards the end of the game the Chile fans had become pretty deflated they were still waving flags and singing "Chi-Chi-Chi, Le-Le-Le, Viva Chile!" (plus a few other group sing-alongs that involved Brazilian mothers' anatomies and also, oddly, the sexual orientation of Paraguayans - we never quite figured out how or why the people of Paraguay were brought into it).

Some pics from inside:


Here's our friend Becca representing Chile in red by wearing Sarah Natchez's old Cornell jersey:

Finally, here are a couple of the mullets that were sitting near us at the game - first, the ROOSTER MULLET (named for the puff of hair on top that goes with this particular style):


Next, the SALSA DEBIL (WEAK SAUCE) MULLET for those not ready to grow it long or style it:

Independence Day is coming up on September 18th, and so we have a full week off of school starting this Friday afternoon (spring break!). Every year the non-Chilean staff puts on a party for the local school staff on the Friday before break. New teachers are responsible for the entertainment, and Claire and I (along with Ian and Lissa) have written a skit that revolves around us making inappropriate language slip-ups or double entendres in our efforts to speak chilean spanish at a restaurant. We'll see how it goes...

Our friends Chris and Erin are coming in from Oakland on Saturday morning, and we're looking forward to a sweet road trip up north to the Elqui valley and the Pisco region. Hopefully we'll have some really great pictures and stories in our next post!

Talk to you soon!