nim came to chile

with spanish language familiarity amounting to about 3 words and various pizza toppings, my brother came down for 10 days on the first of october. ostensibly, the impetus of the trip was one concert of the nine inch nails, but really someone was just missing his little brother and used various fanboy excuses to buy pricey airline ticket on second-rate urine-scented planes (shout out to american airlines) to come down to latin america and see him.
it goes without saying that it was absolutely lovely to see nimesh and that we got on famously. he was able to have such uniquely latin american experiences as: having illegally smuggled jamaican beef patties that he didn't know he was packing (thanks for trying mom!) seized by chilean customs, subsequently being fined by chilean customs minutes into his trip, eating an unsafe amount of palta (avacado mixed thoroughly with a little lemon and salt... actually a lot of lemon and salt), walking all that palta off, sitting through at least 5 of my sometimes entertaining sometimes torturous english classes, having to kiss every female chilean he met when introduced and when saying goodbye, buying a can of soda in spanish without my help ("fanta..... gracias"), drinking tons of fanta, advertising his iphone to anyone who saw it like it was show and tell and he had an exotic parrot, acting silly in front of an historic moai statue from easter island, and risking his life at a superclasico soccer match (more on this later).

nimbo was also able to have such familiar experiences as: putting in serious brother time, eating dominos pizza (arguably better here), hanging out with a bunch of americans (who were all very, very affable and welcoming - thanks guys!), watching a season of the shield on dvd, seeing nine inch nails (which he said was the best show yet), and spontaneously going to see tropic thunder which just came out here and, i thought, almost unforgivably blew.

since he's left, nearly everybody who saw me with him, which ended up being quite a few people when you consider that i teach hordes of chileans, has been asking me if he liked the country and if so what exactly it was that he liked. chileans are very curious what we foreigners think of their country, its people, and culture. obviously it's pretty difficult to have a bad time on vacation, but when i answer the latter question i always say that it's the people that he enjoyed the most. between my host father (who nim too now considers family) opening up his house, refrigerator, heart, and fledgling english to him and every other chilean he met being ambitiously warm, they even made me like chile a little more.

between all that's happened in the past month and a half in my domestic life and a general negativity that's impossible to avoid brooding when teaching a gaggle of unmotivated, lackadaisical students, i've become un-enamored with chile. i haven't been going out a whole lot and haven't traveled anywheres in forever. in the back of my mind i was saving it all up for when nimesh was here in order to regenerate some of that curiosity and love for the unfamiliar. with brotherman in country, everything got to be new again and i could see how endearing so many of the santiaguinos are. obviously none of this is universal, but quite often when my brother tried to pull his comparatively cold and silly north american salutation (a wave and a hello or a handshake) the chileans would go in for a kiss or a hug, when i introduced him and told people he didn't really speaka the spanish, they'd often try to bust their just slightly superior english, when nim was about to leave a friend of erwin's who had met him twice for a couple of hours called to say goodbye, that he hoped everything goes well, and that it was a pleasure to meet him, a seventy-something year old neighbor who hadn't even met him yet trotted outside to give him a chile button before he got on his shuttle to the airport. it may not be a "chile thing," maybe latin americans are just mostly gems across the board, but whatever it is, we could afford to adopt some of it.

palabra bro.