Wednesday, October 24, 2007 "Me dejo marcando el ocupado"
I’d gone to bed at 4:30, but I woke myself up at 9:30 to finish my essay and around 12:30 headed out to campus. I didn’t have a Chilean edit it so it definitely chalk full of mistakes, but I think it had good ideas and ended being 6.5 pages. If I take nothing else from my experience in Chile, it will be that I can write papers much better than before. And just imagine how easy it will be in English!!
I printed off my paper and went to class, which was more than half empty with all the other students that didn’t finish the essay. After class I hung out in our usual gringa blob and Christian came and ate lunch with us. Then I went to Biblia class where I learned something blog worthy. As they say in Chilean,
• “Me dejó marcando el ocupado” It left me marking the busy
• “mueve el piso” or Moved the floor
• “cambia el esquema” Changed the schema
As you can see there aren’t really any good translations, but basically it rocked my world. Are you ready? Read on: Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became Benedict XVI wrote a letter called Libertad Conquistada in which basically said that people can act against the decrees of the church if and only if they act in good conscience which has been thoroughly analyzed and prayerful discerned. Wow. This class has really been reaffirming a lot of things I’ve thought about faith, religion, God, Jesus, etc. and it makes me feel honored to be Catholic and proud to tell others I’m Catholic. Now we just need to get everyone else to understand the church in the way our professor explains/presents it! About the text, I obviously can’t explain it as well as Ratzinger wrote it, but I asked my professor to email the copy of the text so I can post it for all to read. It should be up soon.
After class I had our Pobreza class where we learned about Neoliberalism and how crappy the United States policies are. This class did not make me feel honored nor proud. Nevertheless, it was really interesting to learn. I took the metro home after class sense it was kind of chilly. I had once with Olga then worked on my blog. I talked to Trevor for a while, then finally got to talk to Anamarie, my best friend from home. We’d talked once since I’d been to Chile so it was great to catch up. I went to bed after 1 am, which was late because I knew I had to wake up early to volunteer. Oh well, I can sleep when I dead!!
p.s. Great News: I’m finally caught up on my blog!! Just in time for me to leave on my next trip! We are going to Pucon, the “adventure capital of the world”, which is about 9 hours south of Santiago. This trip is with the program which means 1. we don’t have to do any planning and 2. it’s already paid for so it feels like its free! So once again I won’t be able to blog for a while but I’ll do my best to not get two weeks behind like I did this time!
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 Nuestra Casa and Up ‘Till Dawn
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 Nuestra Casa and Up ‘Till Dawn
I woke up around 10:30, went for a nice run, showered, and then got back to work on my presentation. I needed to get it done at least by 3, so I was working as fast as I could. I had lunch with Olga around noon and around 2 Miguel and Evan came by. I felt bad but I couldn’t really hang out since I needed to finish and at 3:30 I decided it was good enough. I said goodbye to the family and walked to Nuestra Casa.
Another volunteer Tamara (who grow up in the States because her parents were socialists and escaped after the coup d'eta by Pinochet) helped me edit it and make it simpler. She said it was really interesting and even she learned a lot! Since the workshop wasn’t supposed to be until 5:30 I had an hour or so to hang out with everyone. But 5:30 came and went and Patricio, the employee in charge of the house, kept telling we would start soon. By 6:30 we both agreed that no one seemed too excited to do the workshop today since they were working on their leather workshop. So after all that work we didn’t do it, but I was actually kind of relieved. I realized that in theory it’s great to do a Health Workshop for homeless people but they really don’t have much desire to learn it. They would rather make the leather money holders, purses etc. that they can sell to make money. Patricio said he would talk to them later about whether or not they want to do the workshop and we would see. I ended up spending most of the time talking to one woman Maria about her life on the street and the homeless culture in general. She was really open and didn’t mind answering all my questions. She told me that health is obviously an important topic but to them the most important thing would be first aid. She said they would all love having a First Aid kit as well.
After volunteering I walked home, ate dinner with Olga, then set to work on the essay I needed to write for my Education class tomorrow. We’d known about the essay for a while but the professor didn’t give us the prompt until yesterday. And instead of it being an easy review of a couple readings like I’d thought, it was an intense “no more than 10 pages” essay. Apparently no one else in the class started till late Tuesday either because I talk with 3 other classmates (2 gringos, one Chilean) about what exactly the professor wanted. To make a long story short, I ended up staying up till 4:30 in the morning working. I was thinking about just turning it in late and taking the grade cute, but I decided to skip my Doctrina Social class and finish it in the morning.
I woke up around 10:30, went for a nice run, showered, and then got back to work on my presentation. I needed to get it done at least by 3, so I was working as fast as I could. I had lunch with Olga around noon and around 2 Miguel and Evan came by. I felt bad but I couldn’t really hang out since I needed to finish and at 3:30 I decided it was good enough. I said goodbye to the family and walked to Nuestra Casa.
Another volunteer Tamara (who grow up in the States because her parents were socialists and escaped after the coup d'eta by Pinochet) helped me edit it and make it simpler. She said it was really interesting and even she learned a lot! Since the workshop wasn’t supposed to be until 5:30 I had an hour or so to hang out with everyone. But 5:30 came and went and Patricio, the employee in charge of the house, kept telling we would start soon. By 6:30 we both agreed that no one seemed too excited to do the workshop today since they were working on their leather workshop. So after all that work we didn’t do it, but I was actually kind of relieved. I realized that in theory it’s great to do a Health Workshop for homeless people but they really don’t have much desire to learn it. They would rather make the leather money holders, purses etc. that they can sell to make money. Patricio said he would talk to them later about whether or not they want to do the workshop and we would see. I ended up spending most of the time talking to one woman Maria about her life on the street and the homeless culture in general. She was really open and didn’t mind answering all my questions. She told me that health is obviously an important topic but to them the most important thing would be first aid. She said they would all love having a First Aid kit as well.
After volunteering I walked home, ate dinner with Olga, then set to work on the essay I needed to write for my Education class tomorrow. We’d known about the essay for a while but the professor didn’t give us the prompt until yesterday. And instead of it being an easy review of a couple readings like I’d thought, it was an intense “no more than 10 pages” essay. Apparently no one else in the class started till late Tuesday either because I talk with 3 other classmates (2 gringos, one Chilean) about what exactly the professor wanted. To make a long story short, I ended up staying up till 4:30 in the morning working. I was thinking about just turning it in late and taking the grade cute, but I decided to skip my Doctrina Social class and finish it in the morning.
Monday, October 22, 2007 Someone's got a case of the Mundays...
Monday, October 22, 2007 Someone's got a case of the Mundays...
Today was a normal Monday. I slept in till about 10 am since I hadn’t gotten much sleep on the weekend. Then I went to Doctrina Social, hung out with Hannah, the girl we’d met in San Pedro between classes, went to Education, had lunch with Christian, went to Biblia, and finally walked home. Since I didn’t go to mass during the day Olga and I went together at 7:30 then had once. Tonight I worked on the AIDS Workshop I was giving on Tuesday at Nuestra Casa, my volunteer job. I realized that it was going to be difficult to make the presentation informative, interesting, and easy enough for them to understand so I worked really hard. I went to sleep pretty early again trying to catch up.
Today was a normal Monday. I slept in till about 10 am since I hadn’t gotten much sleep on the weekend. Then I went to Doctrina Social, hung out with Hannah, the girl we’d met in San Pedro between classes, went to Education, had lunch with Christian, went to Biblia, and finally walked home. Since I didn’t go to mass during the day Olga and I went together at 7:30 then had once. Tonight I worked on the AIDS Workshop I was giving on Tuesday at Nuestra Casa, my volunteer job. I realized that it was going to be difficult to make the presentation informative, interesting, and easy enough for them to understand so I worked really hard. I went to sleep pretty early again trying to catch up.
Sunday, October 21, 2007 Chilean Futbol: A once in a life time experience
Sunday, October 21, 2007 Chilean Futbol: A once in a life time experience
I was awake enough last night/this morning to remember to set my alarm so I could wake up in time for church. I went to mass at the Jesuit church a few blocks away. There were 2 priests taking confessions and I decided to take advantage of it and worked up enough courage to do my first confession in Spanish. I told the priest it was my first confession in Spanish and to tell me if he couldn’t understand. He chuckled and told me not to worry.
After mass I had almuerzo with Olga and did a little work before heading out to meet up with everyone to go to the Colo Colo vs. La Chile soccer game. Before I left for the game I asked Olga which team I should cheer for since I didn’t really have a preference. She told me to wait and see what section I was sitting in and cheer for that team!!
Background: The Chilean soccer league consists of about 20 teams throughout the country. Santiago has 3 big teams that are huge rivals with each other: Colo Colo, Universidad de Chile, and Universidad Católica (they have absolutely no affiliation with the Universities, they just have those names. I don’t know why and yes, it was very confusing trying to figure all this out). And the Colo Colo vs. La Chile is probably the biggest rival and most watched game. For clarification, this league is separate from the national team, just like the State’s MLS is separate from the World Cup team. But Chilean soccer isn’t very good compared to the other Latin American countries and even compared to the MLS.
Somehow my friend Will was able to get tickets ($22 each) and in the supposedly safer part of the stadium, which was the Colo Colo Stadium. So a group of decided to take advantage of the opportunity to participate in one of the most exciting events in the world of Chilean Futbol.
We all met up in the metro and ended up waiting 30 minutes for our two Latin friends from our program. (Its true that stereotypes come from somewhere!) After running (literally) around the stadium to get in our side, and passing through lots of security (I got patted down), we made it a few minutes before the game was supposed to start. The place was already packed and full of crazy screaming, many intoxicated fans. We were in the Colo Colo section which made up more than ¾ of the stadium. The La Chile fans were all together in one end of the field separated from the rest by huge fences with barbed wire on top and police men in so much armor that they looked like Ninja Turtles. I didn’t think anything of it and since the tickets get you into a section, not a specific seat, we slid in on the side closer to the La Chile fans because there was a lot of space. We later found out why there was a lot of space!
Right at 4:00 (game time) the entire stadium erupted into a cheer “Saleeoooo, Saleooo…” which basically means “Come out!! Come out!!” and the Colo Colo team rushed on to the field. Right when the got out onto the field we started hearing people shouting “Cuidate!” or “Be Careful”. We looked and saw rocks flying at us from the La Chile section. A guy about 2 feet in front of us got hit in the head with a rock and it was bleeding so bad he had to leave. When everyone realized they weren’t going to stop, the crowd started to push away from them to get out of the range of the rocks. For the second time in Santiago, I was actually a bit scared.
Eventually the rocks stopped flying and the La Chile fans started cheering “Saleeoo” while the La Chile players rushed the field. Not surprisingly, the rocks recently projected at us were now returned to their rightful owners. The game began like any other soccer game I’ve ever been to but we had to keep an eye out for rocks flying at us. It was a wonderful event and I realized how much I miss huge sporting events! The fans had more cheers than I thought possible, most of them including foul language and creative insults. My favorite was when thousands of people started screaming, “Puta, chuta tu madre”. I’m not going to translate it but you can probably figure out the general idea.
La Chile scored first which initiated another round of flying rocks. A while later Colo Colo returned the favor and the rocks. Colo Colo scored again in the middle of the second half but it was called back for off sides. After that the place started getting a little insane and the Police/Ninja Turtles were charging the crowd in the La Chile section to try and control them. People were hitting and pushing the police and it was general chaos for a while. Colo Colo scored again and with only 3 minutes left in the game and Colo Colo up 2-1 the stadium was nuts. Then La Chile scored out of no where. So the game ended in a tie 2-2, which I think I realized that is probably the best outcome there could be for our safety.
We tried to leave as soon as the game got over but the gates out where locked with police guards. After about 15 minutes they finally let us out and the crowd filed out in between lines of armored policed men. We had to walk about 45 minutes before we got to a metro that was open and on the way I made a friend. He was a 14 year old Chilean that was obviously listening to us speaking English so I figured he’d been learning some in school. He was really friendly and explained the chants we didn’t understand, why the fans are so crazy (he told us just because they love soccer!), where they get the rocks (the break the concrete steps), etc. He also explained why we couldn’t get on the metros (they close them at least an hour after big games otherwise it is really dangerous. Just image everyone in the stadium trying to get one at one station!) He said he goes to every Colo Colo game with his friends and his dad and he told us that he is a Colo Colo fan because they are “The people’s team”. Ironically that is what all the La Chile fans say.
Once we finally got on a metro, Courtney and I went our gringa friend Sara’s house to have once for her birthday. Since we got there so late we just had the delicious chocolate cake she’d made with amazing chocolate milk. Natalie came a while later and the four of us had a great time discussing religion and Chile. We took a bus home around 10 and I finally started my homework for the next day. I was going to take a shower but I fell asleep early (disgusting right?)
I was awake enough last night/this morning to remember to set my alarm so I could wake up in time for church. I went to mass at the Jesuit church a few blocks away. There were 2 priests taking confessions and I decided to take advantage of it and worked up enough courage to do my first confession in Spanish. I told the priest it was my first confession in Spanish and to tell me if he couldn’t understand. He chuckled and told me not to worry.
After mass I had almuerzo with Olga and did a little work before heading out to meet up with everyone to go to the Colo Colo vs. La Chile soccer game. Before I left for the game I asked Olga which team I should cheer for since I didn’t really have a preference. She told me to wait and see what section I was sitting in and cheer for that team!!
Background: The Chilean soccer league consists of about 20 teams throughout the country. Santiago has 3 big teams that are huge rivals with each other: Colo Colo, Universidad de Chile, and Universidad Católica (they have absolutely no affiliation with the Universities, they just have those names. I don’t know why and yes, it was very confusing trying to figure all this out). And the Colo Colo vs. La Chile is probably the biggest rival and most watched game. For clarification, this league is separate from the national team, just like the State’s MLS is separate from the World Cup team. But Chilean soccer isn’t very good compared to the other Latin American countries and even compared to the MLS.
Somehow my friend Will was able to get tickets ($22 each) and in the supposedly safer part of the stadium, which was the Colo Colo Stadium. So a group of decided to take advantage of the opportunity to participate in one of the most exciting events in the world of Chilean Futbol.
We all met up in the metro and ended up waiting 30 minutes for our two Latin friends from our program. (Its true that stereotypes come from somewhere!) After running (literally) around the stadium to get in our side, and passing through lots of security (I got patted down), we made it a few minutes before the game was supposed to start. The place was already packed and full of crazy screaming, many intoxicated fans. We were in the Colo Colo section which made up more than ¾ of the stadium. The La Chile fans were all together in one end of the field separated from the rest by huge fences with barbed wire on top and police men in so much armor that they looked like Ninja Turtles. I didn’t think anything of it and since the tickets get you into a section, not a specific seat, we slid in on the side closer to the La Chile fans because there was a lot of space. We later found out why there was a lot of space!
Right at 4:00 (game time) the entire stadium erupted into a cheer “Saleeoooo, Saleooo…” which basically means “Come out!! Come out!!” and the Colo Colo team rushed on to the field. Right when the got out onto the field we started hearing people shouting “Cuidate!” or “Be Careful”. We looked and saw rocks flying at us from the La Chile section. A guy about 2 feet in front of us got hit in the head with a rock and it was bleeding so bad he had to leave. When everyone realized they weren’t going to stop, the crowd started to push away from them to get out of the range of the rocks. For the second time in Santiago, I was actually a bit scared.
Eventually the rocks stopped flying and the La Chile fans started cheering “Saleeoo” while the La Chile players rushed the field. Not surprisingly, the rocks recently projected at us were now returned to their rightful owners. The game began like any other soccer game I’ve ever been to but we had to keep an eye out for rocks flying at us. It was a wonderful event and I realized how much I miss huge sporting events! The fans had more cheers than I thought possible, most of them including foul language and creative insults. My favorite was when thousands of people started screaming, “Puta, chuta tu madre”. I’m not going to translate it but you can probably figure out the general idea.
La Chile scored first which initiated another round of flying rocks. A while later Colo Colo returned the favor and the rocks. Colo Colo scored again in the middle of the second half but it was called back for off sides. After that the place started getting a little insane and the Police/Ninja Turtles were charging the crowd in the La Chile section to try and control them. People were hitting and pushing the police and it was general chaos for a while. Colo Colo scored again and with only 3 minutes left in the game and Colo Colo up 2-1 the stadium was nuts. Then La Chile scored out of no where. So the game ended in a tie 2-2, which I think I realized that is probably the best outcome there could be for our safety.
We tried to leave as soon as the game got over but the gates out where locked with police guards. After about 15 minutes they finally let us out and the crowd filed out in between lines of armored policed men. We had to walk about 45 minutes before we got to a metro that was open and on the way I made a friend. He was a 14 year old Chilean that was obviously listening to us speaking English so I figured he’d been learning some in school. He was really friendly and explained the chants we didn’t understand, why the fans are so crazy (he told us just because they love soccer!), where they get the rocks (the break the concrete steps), etc. He also explained why we couldn’t get on the metros (they close them at least an hour after big games otherwise it is really dangerous. Just image everyone in the stadium trying to get one at one station!) He said he goes to every Colo Colo game with his friends and his dad and he told us that he is a Colo Colo fan because they are “The people’s team”. Ironically that is what all the La Chile fans say.
Once we finally got on a metro, Courtney and I went our gringa friend Sara’s house to have once for her birthday. Since we got there so late we just had the delicious chocolate cake she’d made with amazing chocolate milk. Natalie came a while later and the four of us had a great time discussing religion and Chile. We took a bus home around 10 and I finally started my homework for the next day. I was going to take a shower but I fell asleep early (disgusting right?)
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