Booblandia

My plan to post every day for 20 days was thwarted twice. Once by an amusement park and again by a stomach bug.

For the last week, Max and Maya were good sports while we did lots of adult activities when guests visited us. My kids made the best of it when Rob went to New Jersey for nine days, leaving the three of us to our own devices. By that I mean the kids watching The Wizards of Waverly Place in one room, while I watched RHONY reruns in the other. (Sorry, I love Bethenny Frankel. She's me times ten.)

Anyway, we decided that the last outing of our vacation should be the closest amusement park. Fantasilandia is possibly the most urban amusement park ever. We actually street parked. For an amusement park. In Santiago, that means a guy with an orange vest and a stick stood guard over our car for 6 hours. This service cost four dollars. In Tokyo, that would have cost a couple hundred dollars.

Anyway, it's a great park if your kids are tall or brave or both. There's not much for tiny tots, but after some initial hesitance, Maya was ready to take on anything she was tall enough to ride. Luckily, she's tall for her age.

We've all taken our kids to the amusement park. We know what that's like. But the difference between doing it in the States and doing it abroad is ALL THE BOOBS. Unless I missed the Disney mural with Minnie in g-string and pasties, I'm pretty sure we wandered into something that might not fly in the United States.

Okay, so there were butts, too. And a one-eyed girl and bizarre shooting water in your face symbolism. 

To be honest, the only thing I don't really understand is the connection all of this might have to the Easter Island heads. Although, they do seem to be appreciating all the boobs.  

Most of the rest of the day was kind of boobless until the last ride. 

This was the end of me. It wasn't just the bizarre juxtaposition of children and erotica. It wasn't just the sixth hour of blazing Chilean sunshine.

It was the spinning.

Everything was fine until the end of the ride with the scary bottomless-on-a-horse imagery. Right after the pleasant spinning and the lovely view of the Andes from the top of the ride, right to the bottom when you think it's all over, the ride spins you at light speed in circles of flashing light until any plans you had for the rest of the night are lost in a haze of nausea. 

Thus, my lack of a post for that night. 

The next night was lost in a blur of stomach bug, probably contracted from overexposure to poorly drawn boobs.  

Castellano

So, in the spirit of posting daily for 20 days, we just returned from dinner with a friend from the Canary Islands. I asked if he had met Chileans who used the word Castelleno to refer to Chilean Spanish. He said yes. I asked what he thought of that. He said, "It is very curious."

Seven Months Later, I Acknowledge Santiago

I put off writing about Chile for a long time. When we left Japan, our friends were very kind in saying that they looked forward to posts about Santiago, but when we arrived, I found that when I tried to write, all I could do was stare at a blank screen. I told myself a million reasons why I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was dealing with the book, putting off the much-needed editing of said book, dealing with my stupid internet stalker, relearning Spanish, and getting to know my new job.  In truth, these were all just excuses. They should have been reasons to write instead of impediments. It took a while for me to realize why I wasn’t able to conjure up anything to say.

When it comes down to it, I didn’t want to be one of those writers who produce an endless string of first impressions. That might seem silly since half of the travel writing out there is based on first impressions, but that’s a whole different beast. If I’m going on vacation for a week, all I really need for reference is a quick heads-up from someone who has been there. I don’t need the down and dirty on the nuances of the culture unless I do something really stupid and end up in jail. For a quick visit, I just need a map and a rerun of No Reservations that tells me where to eat. However, if I’m going to take the trouble to actually live here, I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to document in a personal way.

We’ve been here for about 7 months now, and I feel like I’m starting to get past the first impressions phase. It would have been silly for me to write about Santiago earlier, since most of the time I wasn’t even sure I remembered where my apartment was. I wasn’t exactly in a position to make deep observations about life here. I remember walking to a nearby restaurant after we first moved into our flat and wondering if it was even remotely possible that this could ever start to feel like home. Now that some time has passed, I do feel like this is where I live. Maybe, just maybe, enough of the overwhelming unfamiliarity has faded that I can start writing again.

Living in Chile is different than living in Japan in many, many fundamental ways. For me, one of the most important distinctions between daily in the two countries is that I speak Spanish. I made a good effort to learn Japanese. I did fairly well but was never fluent. As a result, the language barrier was always frustrating.  It’s different here, though. I’ve had to relearn a lot of Spanish, which hasn’t been a completely effortless process. Chileans are the first to point out that the Spanish here is different than anywhere else.  More than once, someone who grew up here has explained to me in Spanish that Chileans don’t speak Spanish. Chileans call the language here Castellano. It’s Spanish mixed with the language of the Mapuche culture, which is one of the indigenous peoples of the area. Castellano is wicked fast, super slangy, and words are often abbreviated. There’s no s at the end of gracias. It’s just gracia. “How are you?” is “Come stai?” I have no doubt that in the course of those two examples I made about twelve mistakes. There are a million other differences, words that are used only here and such, but that's for another time.

Nonetheless, it’s been refreshing to feel like I can go anywhere, ask questions when I need help, and accomplish daily tasks with a minimum of frustration. More than that, the constant burden of translation has been lightened. It’s not gone by any stretch of the imagination. I still have whole conversations with my face scrunched up in concentration, trying to pick up on key words, and reminding myself to breath at the same time. I have this ridiculous theory that if you tense up, then the words can’t get in. If you try to relax and just let the words flow past you, the odds of actually catching a few go way up. Or something like that.

Anyway, seven months into this adventure, I might be ready to think about it as more than a series of hurdles to jump. We’ll see how the next seven months pan out now that I’m operating at a different comfort level.