Transantiago

So after having utilized it for nearly 5 months, I have decided that the Santiago public transportation system deserves an entry all to itself. Really, I don't know what I would do without Transantiago or my handy "Bip!" card, but I also have to say that I some of my strangest experiences in Santiago have taken place on the metros (subways) and micros (buses).

The Santiago public transportation system as it exists now is relatively new. In February of this year, a program was created that allows commuters to pay the fare once (let's say to get on the bus) and as many times as necessary within the first hour after the payment, be able to enter free into any other form of Transantiago. All payments are made by way of the bip! card, so called because as you board the bus or enter the subway, you slide it in front of a sensor and it "beeps" to tell you you have paid. The bip cards can be purchased and charged at many different places within Santiago, with students and senior citizens being able to get different cards which charge them a lower fare. Basically, my bip! card is something I do not leave home without.

Ok, so to an outsider like me, this system seems like the greatest thing sliced bread, mainly because Savannah's (and to a lesser extent Athens') public transportation is inadequate to say the least. However, the transition to Transantiago has not been without its problems. Drivers who formerly got paid on comission (and still may, I'm not really sure), now find themselves facing the possibility of lower income because a good number of the people who board have already paid to ride, and thus less money may be going into the pot. The newfound facility the system provides has also created what seems to have been an unanticipatedly great increase of users, especially since before the metros were much more expensive in relation to the micros and now they cost the same. I have seen boarding lines at rush hour that rival those at Disney World in the dead of July, and I have seen buses so full that the bus doors are open and people are hanging out, half in the bus, and half inviting passing cars to knock off a limb or two. Since I have been here, there have been cases of bus driver's strikes and disgruntled workers throwing rocks at moving buses and all that kind of fun stuff, but mainly I am giving this (hopefully not so boring) background so that you can understand that the environment of public transportation in Santiago right now is a very unique one. I would say it has more underlying tensions than "normal," and those tensions come out in lots of different ways especially when mixed with the weirdness that is the behavior of the human being.

So the freshest thing on my mind in regards to my fellow passengers on Transantiago is the wrath I experience every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning when I climb onto the bus that stops in front of my grandma's apartment. Now, I think most people who know me would say I am a pretty calm and easy-going person for the most part, so just try to imagine experiencing this same scenario without fail 3 days a week and think about you would feel:

Some mornings, the bus is half-empty, others it is close to full. Sometimes I can leave at 9:05 and hit a traffic jam, and others I can leave at 9:07 and almost feel as if the bus has not had to brake. What does not change however, is that people INSIST on sitting on the seat closest to the aisle, leaving the one next to the window empty. Now, I am an able-bodied person and I usually choose to just stand, but if there is an open seat I will take it, mainly because it frees up room for other passengers and makes it easier for them to get on the bus when you aren't cluttering up the aisles. It has ALWAYS been a pet peeve of mine when people make it decidedly difficult to get into a seat, and even moreso when they act insulted that you should make them shift even a tiny bit from the position they were in. I always feel like saying, "Oh that's right, I forgot that YOU are the MOST important person on this bus. So important that you need to have space next to you, even when other people clearly could use a seat. And I love how you cannot be bothered to make the effort to scoot over so I may also sit down, much less at least make it easier for ME to sit by the window, if you so need the aisle seat. Oh yeah, and thanks for the attitude, your purse is ugly and you have a mustache." Anyway, that is more or less what I find running through my head on a daily basis, and I understand the need to be close to the door to get off the bus at your stop, but really really, being by a window never hurt anyone and I may come to blows trying to prove it.

Another interesting aspect of Transantiago is that vendors, beggars, and musicians do not have to pay fare, so on a normal ride anywhere from 1 to 4 people may approach you soliciting money. There are some that will climb on the bus and walk around passing out gumballs, only for you to find that they come back around expecting you to pay for it. Others may try to sell you an ice cream, coca cola, or candy bar "a cien pesos!" and still others will serenade you with the guitar in their hand and voices better than you would ever expect. Somehow I always have tons of change and I don't mind getting rid of it when I'm on my way somewhere. I actually always try to have change because the one time I didn't, a deaf man came around passing out a flyer with the sign language alphabet on it, and me being dumb, took one, and then had to give it back to him without paying. If you can't pay, you aren't supposed to take whatever they are handing out, and I remember feeling really helpless because I couldn't really explain to him why I couldn't pay him (I pulled my pockets inside out like in old cartoons), and I could see the hurt and disappointment in his eyes. People make their livings from what they gain on the buses, and I would rather give them money than be left with the heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach that says that I saw someone worse off than me that I could have helped and didn't. Anyway, sad as all that may be, there have been times when the free-riders, especially the musicians have made my day. Like the one time right after my parents had gone back to the States, and I was feeling lonely, that I was treated to an early morning ride with a man singing oldies songs in English. I felt more at home. Or the time when I rode back from what had been a kind of stressing evaluation in my theatrical make-up class, and shared a ride with a four piece band that played Andean music (no easy task performing with hand drums, woodwinds, etc. on a bus) and sold CDs. There was also the time when Mike was here that we rode on the bus together and saw a guitarist that looked almost identical to my friend Eddie, down to the tattoos , hair, and style of playing. Yet another time, a freestyle rapper (boombox by the head and all) did a really good rap relating to current events of the day and things we were passing. However, the best experience I have had so far was the time when I was on the bus with the same musician two days in a row, and the main song he sang both days was one I had never heard before called "Dulce Daniela." The lyrics and the way he sang were simply beautiful (it didn't hurt that my name was mentioned), and I got off the bus almost floating with happiness and empty of pocket.

The last thing I would like to touch upon about public transportation here in Santiago is that it is considered a PRIME spot to make out. Who would have thought that people would be SO busy that they would NEED to use the few minutes spent going from place to place working in tonsil hockey sessions? And it isn't only young people, oh no, I have seen my fair share of older couples going at it, and I also have seen things get a little more heated between couples than they probably should considering they are ALREADY making out around 200 or so complete strangers. Anyway, the best part of all of that in-public loving is that about once a week or so, I get to experience the joy of having it happen RIGHT BESIDE MY HEAD. now, i am all for people being in love, but when you are on a different continent than your boyfriend, hearing tongues swishing around and saliva being swapped is not only 1) more than kind of disgusting but 2) it makes you feel lonely. Sometimes I wonder if I would do the same if I had grown up in Chile, because I am really the only person on Transantiago that even seems to be affected/grossed out by this phenomena.

Anyway, now that this blog has taken on eternal proportions, I would just like to close with a brief note to Transantiago:

Dear Transantiago,

Thank you for getting me where I need to be while providing me entertainment and emotional stimulation. Thank you for usually being on time and dependable, and for having long buses and metros so that I can have a means to move around when that one creepy guy two feet away from me will not stop staring at me. Thank you for ridding me not only of that change that was creating an annoying bulge in my pocket, but also of my fear of death while hurtling through traffic at breakneck speed. Thank you for always being so full between the hours of 6:30 and 8 pm that I am forced to exercise and WALK 35 minutes to Providencia. For these and many other things I sincerely thank you. Oh, and I was wondering if there might be a possibility of providing free soap to all passengers. Being underground in the first place and then having your nostrils invaded by rank B.O. is not a pleasant part of the public transportation experience.

bip!,

Daniela

update

wow, so it's been nearly two months since i wrote a blog, but i've been consistently writing things down and taking pictures so i have plenty to share. for now i am going to put up the links to all of my latest photos (in chronological order from oldest to newest). expect blog entries about school, mike's visit, social observations, and the like.

http://uga.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2274909&l=09f61&id=4904751

http://uga.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2274897&l=2b910&id=4904751

http://uga.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2274921&l=b3795&id=4904751

http://uga.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2276190&l=801a0&id=4904751

http://uga.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2283500&l=f8218&id=4904751

http://uga.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2283506&l=24885&id=4904751

http://uga.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2283508&l=374e2&id=4904751

a tale of two bums

Since I have been here, it has been a special treat to get to go out to eat. My grandmother (like many other Chileans I have met) has a live-in maid or nana, who cooks all of the meals and cleans. My grandma's "empleada" is named Luisa and she gets a day off every week, which is really our only opportunity to go out to eat. The only thing that thwarts this opportunity is that Luisa, being nice, usually leaves something for us to heat up for ourselves when she leaves. Even if she doesn't, my grandma is the type to say "We have rice and eggs, we can just eat here." Meanwhile, I dream of gourmet meals and salivate at the thought of even just eating Chinese take-out. (p.s. the Chinese food here is REALLY good.) I can't even tell you how many times I have offered to treat my grandma to lunch on Sundays and been turned down (ever so politely). You can imagine my surprise then, when today she declined a lunch invitation from my aunt so that my cousin, her, and I could go out to eat.

My grandmother lives in a part of Santiago that is considered to be very "cuico" (rich), and the street beside her apartment is lined with quite a few fine restaurants, many of which offer "executive lunches" on weekdays where you can get an appetizer, entree, beverage, and dessert for the equivalent of about $6. We chose to eat at one such restaurant called "Fragrante," even though we knew the special prices weren't running today. Since the weather was nice, we asked to be seated in the patio section of the restaurant, which was covered with a tent but had windows cut into the fabric. The three of us ordered pasta dishes and were enjoying them and chatting about going to the mall after lunch to buy my cousin a birthday present when a bum sauntered up to the window hole in the tent. As is the usual treatment of bums that I have observed here, none of us looked at or talked to him. He proceeded to tell us about his dental problems and how people don't give him money because they think he's an alcoholic and how he was hungry and everybody gives him bread and he didn't want bread, he wanted money. Now, I would have gladly given him some of my food, but the fact that he only wanted money was a very clear clue to me that food was not what he was after. By the time he finished his schpiel, the waiter came over to ask him to leave, at which point said bum became outraged and said the conversation was between us and him and he could talk to us if he wanted. While I stared really hard at my penne pasta with pomodoro sauce, basil, artichokes, and parmesan cheese, this homeless man started shouting obscenities at my grandma, calling her a conchatumadre (translate that yourself) and a vieja mala (mean/bad old woman). I felt so helpless and angry, especially because I know how good of a person my grandma is and how much she actually does to help the poor in Santiago. Eventually I shouted out "We don't speak Spanish." and waved him away with my hand, but he was too busy flipping out to notice. I don't really know what I thought saying that would do, but I just needed to say something. I guess I think I'm tough.

Anyway, eventually the bum left, and a few minutes later ANOTHER ONE came up. At first I got really scared because I thought it was the first bum coming back for more, except maybe with a stick or a gun, but it turned out to be a much more tranquil bum who just kind of mumbled and left without complaint when the waiter asked him to. Now, I don't know how most people would feel about such an encounter, but I am not used to being accosted by bums. Most of the ones I have encountered in Savannah and Athens are sociable and, dare I say, friendly when asking for money. Even most of the bums here do some odd task (like juggling at a red light or helping you parallel park) to earn money. And this, this had me sad and shocked all at once. The waiter told us that in this neighborhood there is no loitering ordinance and so legally they cannot do anything about the bums. He said there are quite a few that walk from restaurant to restaurant harassing customers, and apparently it is such a problem that they have talked to the mayor about it. Well, after all of that excitement, we thanked the waiter for helping us out, paid our bill, and started walking back to my grandma's apartment, a little shaken, but full of good food. Along the way, we crossed paths with the freak-out bum, who, oddly enough, didn't say a word or even acknowledge our existence.

It makes me sad to see the level of poverty here and the detriments of the very firmly set social classification system, but that was one bum I didn't feel sorry for. I do have to say that not even that run-in ruined my long-yearned-for restaurant experience. Almost nothing comes between food and me.

and just so you know...

as much as i hate capitalization, i am in favor of paragraphs. i just can't figure out why my posts don't show up with them, even though i manually put in 5 spaces at the beginning of each new thought. any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated.

I take back...

any time in my life when I have laughed at my mom's accent or made fun of her for it in any way. Why? because now that i am here in Chile, trying my best to grasp the language surrounding me, i realize how truly disheartening it can be. it is hard enough to keep all of the verb subject and tense conjugations, masculine/feminine endings and articles, and general vocabulary in line, and then add onto that trying not to sound embarrassingly un-chilena and basically my brain has to work at about 100 times its natural pace just for me to be able to communicate. i think now i have a better understanding of what my mom has had to go through to be able to speak english as well as she does. i would say the same thing about my dad, but i wasn't around when he learned spanish, and from what i can tell, it came pretty easily to him. i do have to say for the most part though, that everyone has been very encouraging in their comments to me about my progress with spanish, and i do feel like i am getting better and better at it everyday. after being here for 2 months, the words are starting to flow a little easier, i don't have to think as much about what i want to say, and maybe, just maybe, i even have a little less pronounced accent. just today, 3 separate people at the university complimented me on how good my spanish was, especially in comparison with other exchange students. i would be lying if i said that didn't make me feel good, but i also would be lying if i said i always knew what tense i was supposed to be speaking in. haha.
every now and then i will overhear a conversation or someone will ask me a question in a format i am not used to, and suddenly i start to feel like i don't know any spanish at all. as if that isn't bad enough, my tongue also has this uncanny knack of turning into a taste-bud covered brick at the times when i need it most (this also happens to me when speaking english haha). despite these things, i am coming to terms with the facts that there will probably be many more times when i will look and sound like a blithering idiot, and that i will probably always have an accent, but i am really starting to see that none of that really matters if i am able to get my point across clearly most of the time.
and so, in closing, i direct this to my mom: thank you for always putting up with us when we laugh at the way you say things. none of us (except daddy, who doesn't make fun of you) can even dare to say that we know half of much spanish as you do english, and i am very proud of both you and daddy for how well you have mastered your second languages. so next the time we ask you to say "focus" or "yellow," you just remind me of this blog entry and i will shut up. former girl scout's honor.

mostly superficial social observations about santiago, chile, and south america in general:

disclaimer: i realize that these observations are very shallow, but just know that in no way do they portray the full chilean reality. the longer i'm here the better they should get.

-in santiago at least, there are about 800 kajillion pharmacies. i'm not really sure why.
-pretty much everyone here drinks "coke light" or coke zero
-very very lucky people have 2 cars max per family, for a teenager to have his or her own car here is almost unheard of
-not really sure if the toilet flushes in the opposite direction, as i can't remember which way it flushes in the northern hemisphere
-chilean people are hardcore about drinking. like they could probably put frat boys to shame.
-i am realizing that a lot of my traits come from my mom's side of the family, like my addiction to chocolate, fear of heights, and inability to do mental math.
-latin american mtv is hilarious and ridiculous. if you don't believe me then look at this link. this is really a show. http://www.mtvla.com/canal/dansinropa/?_requestid=453837
-after about 1 a.m. soft porn and general nakedness are fair game on cable tv. so far i have witnessed girls next door and dr. 90210 without the blurs and i saw a movie that afterwards i learned was rated nc-17 in the u.s.
-Can't find parking? See an unnocupied curb? It's totally fair game! Just hop on up it, and pretend you don't hear your car's underbelly scraping on anything.
-on this side of the equator, fanny packs are still in and in a big way. It is the accessory of choice for men, and women can often be seen with one slung over their shoulder like a purse. Given the tight quarters of metros and micros, and the probability of pickpocketing, the fanny pack is not only aesthetically pleasing to Chileans but highly practical.
-rotondas (a.k.a. traffic circles) should be renamed ellipses of certain doom. all caution, judgment, and concept of traffic laws are thrown to the wind when one enters these things, and all that can be done is to pray to come out alive and on the intended street. it feels like anarchy.
-game show prizes are a lot smaller and a lot less exciting. their version of who wants to be a millionaire features a grand prize of about $220,000 USD. still nice, but not a million.
-in the mall i saw a stand that had the ends of various cell phone chargers sticking out of it. it costs nothing just to hook your cell phone up to it and let it charge. i would say that somebody should start one of these in the u.s., but i doubt it will happen since there isn't any money in it.
-a guy here has started a company where you order movies online and they are delivered to your house within the hour. doesn't sound so special right? except that you can also order food, wine, beer, baby diapers, etc. the other night i ordered a 5 day movie rental, popcorn, and a 2-person serving of frozen cannelonis and it ran me around $14 (or $7.000 pesos). not so bad.
-there are emo kids here too. God help them. actually the version of them here is more mixed with a rapper style. like tight jeans except for in the butt area where they are sagged enough to see underwear. i can't recall if i ever saw that in the states.

Chile is as funny as it is great.

hi everyone! i don't have class until 3 tomorrow (my first class got cancelled) and since i am going to stay up later, i thought i would write a little update. so i have been in classes a little over a week now. after making a few changes to my schedule, i think i have finally found one i will stick with, and i will only have classes tuesdays, wednesdays, and thursdays! i am taking 3 classes as opposed to the 4 i had planned to take, but i think i would rather take one fewer class and be able to have more fun while i am here. anyway, i have so few classes left to take before i graduate that one more class next semester shouldn't be too bad. i am still in the chilean anthropology class with antonia (which involves a lot of reading) and also in a radio narration class and an audiovisual critique class. i can't say that i always understand everything that the teachers and students are saying, but hopefully that will improve the longer i am here. i have already made a few friends, and i'm sure talking with them will also help me.
in other news, my family left last week, and now i am alone in a very quiet house with my grandma and her maid luisa. i haven't had a chance to get too lonely because i DO have like 18 aunts and uncles and 35 cousins, and quite a few of them have been good about calling me and making plans. i know there will be times when i will probably get really homesick, especially when i already miss my family a lot, but i also feel like now the real part of my experience here is starting. i wasn't practicing my spanish as much with all of my siblings around, and now i am the only native english speaker i know. hopefully when we reunite just before christmas (which will be great in itself) i will be as close to fluent as is possible in 6 months time.
even though i am sad about my family leaving, one thing that brightened my week was that mike bought his ticket to come visit me. he will get here september 15th and will stay until the 29th. the best thing is that he will be here for the chilean independence day on the 18th. i have never been in chile for "el 18" before and i am really excited that mike and i will get to experience that together. besides that, i have a whole list of places i want to take him and things i want to show him. this will be the first time that i have been able to show chile to someone outside my family (with the exception of aj, but it was more andrea's responsibility to show him around) and i cannot wait!
i would also like to report that the thing that got me out of bed this morning was... a tremor! that it is the 3rd one that has happened since i got here in june. i have always known that chile has a lot of seismic activity, but tremors happen a lot more frequently than i had thought. my grandma's apartment kind of shakes a lot to begin with, because of all of the buses that pass by.(don't worry, almost all of the buildings in chile are built with seismic activity in mind), but now i am getting kind of paranoid that everything is a tremor. haha. actually in some weird way, i look forward to them because they are kind of cool as long as they are SMALL (!)
other than that, today it snowed in santiago for the first time in 40 odd years. unfortunately it didn't snow where my grandma lives so all i got to experience was the nasty cold wet weather, but it is supposed to snow well into the wee hours of the night. i am hoping it will stick and i will get to play in it tomorrow on my way to class!
well, i think that it is enough of an update for now. i actually have no idea who reads this, so if you (whoever you may be) wouldn't mind leaving me a comment i would greatly appreciate it. hope everyone is well. besitos!

universitaria

so i am sitting here in one of the three libraries on Campus San Joaquín of Universidad Católica, waiting for my first ever university class in Chile, which starts at 10, and i thought it might be a good idea to kill some time by actually WRITING in this thing. haha. a word of warning, i pretty much hate capitalization and do it infrequently at best, so if that bothers you, my apologies in advance. anyway, today is my first day of classes and i am hoping it will go well. i spent the night at my cousin antonia´s house (no apostrophes on international keyboards) last night because she has classes on this same campus. we are even going to have one together! her classes start at 8:30, so we had to wake up at about 6:45, which was not so wonderful, but it was nice to have someone to ride the metro with and to talk to, instead of passing the time staring blankly and inadvertently at strangers, wondering if they can tell i´m a gringa. even though i did the whole micro/metro thing with lester yesterday, i was still kind of nervous about finding my way around on my own today, so i am glad that i had antonia to show me around. my first class is about indigenous chilean art, and i am hoping i will like it, because there aren´t many other classes in that time block that i am interested in. then at 11:30 i have chilean anthropology with antonia. after that i have to switch to another campus that is in downtown santiago, but it is very easy to connect to with the metro. at 3 i have a class on radio narration, and at 4:30 a photojournalism class, which i am not sure i will keep because, as much as i like photojournalism, the class doesn´t end until 5:50, and i have always hated late classes. besides, i am thinking of taking a spanish class, provided that i test into the "perfeccionamiento" level (which i am not sure i will) because that it is the only level that is taught at a time that won´t interefere with my other classes.well, antonia got out of class early and just came and surprised me in the library, so i think i will go for now. i hope everyone is doing well. sorry for all the run-on sentences haha. only a few more days until i am "solita" and it´s quite a bittersweet feeling.