there will be chile

so the actual traveling was just some delirious blur of getting to know some likable pilgrims from the east, west, and all in between coupled with a little miami, san juan, and lima in a 24-hour madcrazyinsanathon. we eventually pulled into santiago at 3am local time to a peptacious josh ("field director") and ashleigh (assistant). we rolled to the hostel 22 deep with an inane amount of luggage and were given rooms that we will be hanging in until march 7th, when we will roll/bounce to the casas de host families. the adjacent picture is my view from the 4th and top floor at about 6:00 in the morning. at any other time, its packed, crowed, and noisy in a way that makes you weary. my mom was right about the noise in santiago. thanks ma, you always got my back dawg!

the next day (let's call it february 9th, or as the chileans do, the 9th of february) we immediately began orientation, which has been a mix of cultural and professional preparation. this business will continue until the 7th and then it's pretty much go time. it's strange to begin with this because its almost a vacation at times. don't get me wrong, during the day we hustle. wake up around 7 or 8 depending on the day, travel to our DuocUC (name of the chain of schools all twenty of us will be teaching for) training site and hang there till about 5 or 6. but when we get back we're mostly unoccupied, which usually leads to the consumption of carb-ridden foods and/or/and drinking chilean cervesas (escudo is okay!). so that's the vacation element, but there's 4 phases to this international experience and the first is the initial euphoria (now), eventually this will turn into phase 2 (no euphemisms, basically it's called hell). sure, eventually you recover, but here, we like to mock our eventual manic depression a.k.a. phase 2 as often as possible.

so far i've:

hiked (first time)
asked a transport employee to shit on my metro card (cagar = shit, cargar = charge/add money)
been embarassed of my spanish ability
tried churillana (sunny side up eggs over fries, steak, sausage, and onions)
enjoyed churillana
thoroughly regretted churillana
missed anyone reading this
woke up every day with bloodshot eyes (gnarly air quality)
resented the sun
been welcomed by 2 random (awesome) chileans on the street who looked psyched to have "gringos" here in their country
met some really awesome folk
felt proud of my spanish ability
met some kinda strange, not so awesome folk
heard much about obama's new-found success
been estranged by periodic american news in another country
sweat like a bastard
met 3 people in my hostel from pomona
neglected my blog
missed 1 episode of the ultimo season of the wire



for the road, one last funny thing about "DuocUC"- turns out one of those c's stands for CATOLICA (Catholic). bickety-bam, just when i thought i was out (godfather III, according to my brother), they pulled me back in. i will in fact be volunteering at a catholic community college-esque university. truly, i am doing god's work

amen?