With the coming of this last week I finally got busy. School started last week on Monday at Campus Oriente. Currently we are only taking formal Spanish classes within our program for four hours a day for the next three weeks but real courses start at the university two weeks after that (And as of today I am going to Peru in those two weeks off!!). Last week classes were held in the afternoon so that groups of students could be taken to the immigration office here to register their visas but for the next two weeks they will be held in the morning to leave the afternoons open for activities with eachother and with our mentors. It is nice to be have something to do every day but I'm not to thrilled about already having homework again.
A group of students including myself has also taken to playing fútbol (soccer) on the field at the university campus whenever possible. The field is located on the campus with all the art students so it is surrounded by a bunch of cool murals and statues, plus it has the Andes as a backdrop so it is a pretty cool place to play. On a side note I don't think anyone could ever get tired of looking at the Andes as they are so incredibly giant y muy hermosas. And although I am pretty awful at soccer it is nice to get out and run around. It hasn't been too cold and it hasn't been raining so the weather has been perfect for it.
On Monday this week after school we also had the opportunity to go wine tasting at Concho y Toro Winery just south of Santiago. Although I have never been on a wine tasting tour in the US I imagine it was pretty comparable except for it being in Spanish and in Chile. We were led around the grounds to some big, gorgeous, old house that the founder used to live in, on to the field where the grapes are grown, and then to see the bodegas and wine cellars before getting to taste a few wines ourselves. They have one wine though called Casillero del Diablo that is their finest label with this whole myth they tell about it. To tell it they lock you in the bottom cellar, which is almost completely dark and pretty cold, and then a big booming voice comes on the loud speaker with ominous music to tell about how a long time ago the townspeople wouldn't go in the cellar bcause they believed the devil lived in it. In reality, people were stealing wine from the founder so he spread the rumor to keep them away but the whole story telling was kind of funny. They also had a dark little passage way barred off like a jail cell with a projected shadow of the devil as if he is always there. It was overall a pretty fun afternoon. Plus I got to keep the wineglass.
The only other particularly eventful thing in the past week or so (minus finally finding some Mexican food which I am very much missing (where are you rendezvous/mi pueblo??)) was the arrival of a new girl into our house. Her name is Biance and she is from Brazil so she pronounces all her s's as z's and "ella" as "ela" instead of "eya" and she is full of personality (aka crazy... in a good way though). Her first night here so got everyone up from the dinner table and shaking their hips the Brazilian way which initiated this whole cultural exchange of dance and music and prompted my host dad to exclaim "Llegó Brasil!!!" (hence the name of this post) which just means "Brazil has arrived!" but I thought it was funny. We got to pulling up youtube videos for a while of Brazilian dancers and people dancing La Cueca (the dance of Chile) and some dance of the indigenous people that live on La Isla de Pasqua (Easter Island). Laura, the girl from Chicago who lives in my house as well, and I didn't feel America had anything quite comparable since we don't really have a national dance that everyone knows so we just ended up showing "Ghost Ride the Whip" by Mistah Fab and "Crank That" by Soulja Boy. I'm not sure how well we represented America but it was worth the laugh.
Tonight we have a house date as well to drink rum, eat pizza, play the guitar, and tell dirty jokes. I was supposed to learn a dirty joke so I asked my mentor to teach me one but I didn't get the ones he was trying to tell me so he just told me a pretty lame one where the punch line is that a kid is in the washing machine but that is all I have for now. My host dad has a whole string of dirty jokes that are pretty funny. Plus he is kind of old and gets in giggling fits all by himself which is super funny just to watch. Should be an eventful evening though!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment