Trabajo and Tear Gas

I love this city more everyday…Santiago has a way of growing on you. I liked it at first, sure, but day by day it gets even better. I had an uneasy feeling going into Santiago because I had neither a job, nor a place to live, I had a hostel for ten days. I’ve been in my apartment for over a week and get along famously with my roommates. We have a gym in the apartment building, and my roommate Claudio has decided to come with me the past two times I’ve gone. The first time we were in there, there were about 5 other people. Claudio looked like a fish out of water…he was moving from one machine to the other, lifting and then back to the bike for 2 minutes, then lifting, then bike. I let him do his thing, maybe there was some type of method to his madness. Come to find out he’s never been to the gym, but didn’t want to ask how to do anything. We went up again yesterday and I put a routine together for him. Claudio knows only limited English, but every time he was struggling to get a repetition he’d scream “FULL POWAAA!!”

My other roommate, Cristian, has been beside himself. He’s 25 and buying is first car today, he’s been glowing from ear to ear talking about his Ford Explorer. He’s paying about $8k US for a 97 Explorer. In the States, that would be over-paying, but here that seems to be the going rate for said vehicle. To him, cruise control is something from the future. “!Transmision Automatcio y puede controlar la velocidad con sus manos!”
“Ay si, ‘cruise-control.’” He was more than a little disappointed I knew what it was. He keeps sticking his hand out like he’s driving, bouncing it up and down and yelling “Boom, boom, boom! GRINGO, vamos a coger minas en mi Explorer.” I don’t know where all the bass is coming from with a stock cassette player, but that’s really not the point.

Last Saturday my Scottish buddy, Andy, and I took off for coast to go to the beach. When I first met Andy, I thought he was, at the most, 26. Turns out this kid is not quite a kid, 32, but I’d say we’re on the same maturity level. Rather than being a compliment to me, this is more of an indictment of him. He is a professional graffiti artist and has made enough money to take off for a year to go travel South America. His website is: http://www.asonedigital.com/ , check it out, he’s damn good. He’s somewhat of a rough character from Glasgow, but he reminds me a lot of my boy from home, DK, with the way he’s always telling stories and is DFW, down for whatever.

We had grand plans to go to the beach with our Chilean friends Yenny and Sandra, but, last minute they cancelled on us…I’m pretty sure these girls have boyfriends and have just been using us for free nights out. I told my roommates about these girls who don’t think they need to pay for anything when we go out and they told me to get rid of them “son gallinas de yeso”, something about them being ceramic chickens, haha, I think it’s a reference to a piggy bank where you can put money in, but it never comes out.

Saturday was hot here in Santiago, about 82F, but after an hour and a half on the bus, we got to the coast in Valparaiso and it was cloudy and everyone was wearing jeans and sweatshirts. We were planning on spending the afternoon in Valparaiso, but the part of the city where the bus station was just turned us off completely to Valparaiso. Everyone looked mangy and had a scowls on their faces. We get off the main avenue and right in front of us a man drops-trow on the sidewalk (Tim Kumnick, anyone?) and proceeds to relieve himself on a telephone pole, mind you this is 1:30 in the afternoon. We look at each other, thinking let’s go! We hop the next bus to Viña del Mar, which is only 15 minutes up the road and you can go for about a buck. Viña was quite nice, lots of nice buildings and hotels and horse drawn carts going all over the place. By 2:15, the weather cleared up and we ended up having a hot beach day. The beach was great, too. It was good to get some sun on my pasty, winter in Massachusetts, body. The water was FREEZING. The water on the coast of Chile is constantly cold; the El Niño current circulates water from the Antarctic to the coast of Chile making it uncomfortably cold year round. So after talking to various people back in Santiago, we made a big mistake leaving Valparaiso so soon. We landed in the worst part of the city and there are supposed to be very beautiful parts which we didn’t care to take the time to see…I’ll have to go back soon, which won’t be too hard to do since my roommates travel there every weekend to visit their girlfriends.

We got back to Santiago, ignored calls from Yenny and Sandra and went out with my Peruvian friend Cesar. He looks 15…he’s about 5’6 120 lbs soaking wet, but is actually 22. I ended up going out with Cesar, Andy and Cesar’s three friends from the University in town. One girl was from Colombia and the other two from Brazil. Talking to a Peruvian, a Colombian and two Brazilians, I had an epiphany… “wow, I do understand Spanish!” Chileans have the most garbled, fastest, slang injected way of speaking Spanish that makes having a coherent conversation with a Chileno quite difficult. I had a great time with these fellow foreigners because I could understand what they were saying and they could understand me. The Colombiana’s description of her home country makes me want to go badly. She told me that as long as you stay out of the mountains you won’t be in any danger, just stick to Bogotá, Medellín, and other major cities and you won’t have any problems as long as you keep your head about you and avoid the bad parts of town at night…seems to be a common theme in South America. She told me the people are all the people are friendlier, happier and more fun in Colombia and they have better beaches. I’m definitely going to have to get up there.

Let me be Laverne, you can be Shirley. You want to be Laverne? Fine, it doesn’t really matter… “We’re gonna make it after all!” And by we, I mean me. This week has been beyond excellent on the job front. I was supposed to have interview with the Burford Institute this Tuesday, the goal was to have them help me obtain a work visa. Manhattan, the Institute for which I am presently working, offered me 24 more hours a week; I’ll have to go to “Molymet”, a mining company just outside the city. This place is a big time refinery here in Chile, a multinational corporation. I’m teaching eight hours a day Monday, Tuesday and Thursday here. This job alone will almost give me enough to get by. In addition to this I have 6 hours more with Institute for different classes, I do have enough to get by, but just barely, and they told me they will help me with the Visa…stellar. Today, I made 60 copies of my advertisement to teach English here. I went to Providencia, where a lot of wealthy people live, and handed out about twenty on the street; it’s tougher than you might imagine having someone accept a flyer that you hand out. For every “yes”, I got about four “no”s.

Opportunity knocks where you least expect it. I was sitting on a bench, talking to a Chilean gentleman of about 60 when my phone rings…it’s this guy Cesar who’s teaching at Molymet as well, he teaches there privately and is probably making three to four times the money I am. This guy is Chilean, but speaks English with an affected British accent. “Daan, are you available to teach more classes?” Turns out he has more work than he knows what to do with and thought he’d direct his extra private lessons to me. I need to talk to him later this weekend, but it sounds like he has plenty of extra private work for me which means more hours at about triple what I make at this institute…If anyone’s thinking about coming down, do it…it’s not as hard as you think. Things have all come together for me in just under 3 weeks. I took off with a vague idea and a general plan of attack, and it has all come together better than I could have imagined.

I’m rambling now, I know, a lot happens in a week, I’m going to need to write more frequently to avoid this five page week recap…For class today, the accountant, Rodrigo, treated me to breakfast instead of sitting in his office. We just spoke in English…no book work, it was great. We go our separate ways and as I walk closer and closer to the city center towards my apartment, there were about 300 or so police officers scattered around dressed in riot gear. There were assault vehicles and police busses full of policemen dressed for battle. Today is the 33rd or 34th anniversary of the murder of two Chilean brothers at the hands of the police. This happened under the Pinochet regime, but every year people still protest their murders. The government’s completely different now, the police are the least corrupt in all of South America, but people still decide to riot on this day every year.

Sitting next to this Chilean gentleman of 60, my lungs start to burn and my eyes begin to water. I’m breathing fine, but am straining every so slightly. I look around and everyone’s wiping their eyes and covering their noses and mouths with handkerchiefs. I ask him if this is pollution for which Santiago is notorious for causing everyone’s eyes to burn…he laughs at me and says if the pollution were this bad no one would live here…it’s tear gas. A few blocks away the police tear gassed a group of rioters and the wind took it over to us. To me, the most amazing part is that the vast majority of people didn’t pay any attention to the riots, nor the police, nor the tear gas for that matter. People covered up their faces and carried on conversations, sat and ate ice-cream like it was an everyday occurence. I was apprehensive at first, but sitting next to the calm senior citizen I didn’t worry too much. I didn’t actually see any violence, and was only affected with a slight breeze of tear gas. These riots happen twice a year, March 28th and September 11th, the day when Pinochet took over in 1973. Why people still protest these things is beyond me.

OK enough for one night.

Off to providencia.

Too Much Information Eddie

So in my down time, which there’s been a fair amount of lately as I’ve only been working about ten hours a week, I’ve been going up to the pool on the roof of the apartment building and doing some reading and swimming. I pull a chair next to the pool, relax and read mostly, I feel like I’m back at Wood’s Edge condominiums where I “life-guarded” for two summers. Essentially I was paid to read and swim. Best job ever. But I digress…A few times when I went up to the pool this guy Eduardo was up there. He’s twenty three as well and has recently moved to Santiago, working as a nurse. He’s been quite friendly and had lived in the states for a couple of years so we’ve had some things to talk about. There was something that didn’t sit really well with me with him, he was always kind of jumpy, fidgety and nervous when we were talking, but I couldn’t place exactly what I didn’t like about him, I just didn’t feel at ease around him because he wasn’t at ease.

This being said, yesterday I was up at the pool reading “Oliver Twist” when Eduardo comes up there and we get to talking about the book, Boston and working out. I didn’t have anything to do today (Tuesday) until 3:00 so when he invited me to hang out and drink a couple of beers last night I figured there was no reason not to. I didn’t really want to hang out with kid, but I didn’t want to burn any potential bridges so I said “sure, why not?” Something struck me funny, though, when I asked him how his girl-situation is here in Santiago and he tells me, “Oh, I’m not really interested in going out and finding a girlfriend right now, I want to focus on my work.” (In so many words, his English is quite broken) I look at him side-ways somewhat incredulously and hesitatingly say “OK”. What single 23 year-old guy is not looking to go out and hang out with girls…I could tell Eduardo and I probably weren’t going to become the best of friends.

He was supposed to come to my apartment at 9 to hang out for a bit, but 10:30 rolls around and he still hasn’t shown. Feeling somewhat relieved that I didn’t have to hang out with kid I was about to go to bed when the apartment phone rings and it’s him on the other end. “Disculpame, estuve al gimnascio hasta las diez”, (excuse me I was at the gym until ten). “No problema” I said, but my roommate was home and in bed so we’d have to hang out in his place. We go to the store and split a six-pack between the two of us and take it back to his apartment. Eduardo was super-fidgety and nervous; he had an air of desperation about him that I found quite unappealing. He was talking in whispers and couldn’t sit still. He was half-way through his first beer and tells me in broken English, “wow, I already feel drunk”. I say, Eduardo, in the States we’d call you a ‘one-beer-queer’”. Turns out this play on words couldn’t have been more appropriate for the situation. He didn’t know what “queer” meant and I tell him literally is means “strange”, but is another term for someone who is gay. He smiles, nervously and awkwardly, though I don’t think much of it.

The evening progresses and we discuss politics, national pride, Santiago, business and a few other topics. I’ve just polished off my third and final can of Escudo, Eddie’s just downed his second beer and he’s clearly buzzing pretty hard. “Es ard fur me heer in Santiago”, he laments. “I no hab mani frennz”. I tell him I don’t either, but it’s nothing to whine about, you have to go out and meet people. I excuse myself for a brief moment to use the restroom, and when I come out he’s lying on his bed, somewhat coyly, which really makes feel reaally uneasy. He comes back into the living room and says, “Daniel, ken ay trahst en youu?” I tell him “I don’t really know, Eduardo, I’ve known you for about two hours.”
“Well I’b gonna say you this ennywayz…I’m gay, my grantfader rap-ed mee whend I was twelb.”

Talk about TMI! Good lord, man! I’m not one to keep my cards tight to my vest, as people who are close to me can attest, I often wear my heart on my sleeve, but there are just some things you don’t share with a guy you’ve been friendly with for two hours. He then apologizes and tells me that he only wants to be friends with me, but his peculiar actions definitely suggested other-wise. He asks if we can still be friends, now. Man, I didn’t want to be friends with him from the start, now that this air of desperation he conveyed was substantiated, I really didn’t want to be friends with the guy. It would be one thing to tell me he’s gay, cool, whatever, Emily would be excited I’d made a gay friend, but to be acting coyly and telling me about being raped when you were twelve, really crosses the line for things to tell a person who is essentially a stranger. It’s not like he’s even a really cool or funny gay guy, he’s just creepy and gay…I bid him ado and said I hope we see each-other around. “I hoap wee can steel be frennz.”
“Yea, no problem, take care.” My heart goes out to the kid, but truly, I have no desire to hang out with him again.

So apparently the gay guys in Chile think I’m hot stuff…faaabulouths!

After all that with Eddie last night, I get in the elevator this morning and there’s a man with flames shooting out of his ears. He was smiling flirtatiously and asking me if I’m going to work and what I’m doing here. I give some brief one word answers and bid him good day. Normally I would have been much more amiable, coming right after last night I had no patience. The gays here in Santiago are quite sweet on me…it must be because I’m such a snappy dresser (HA!).

End of week 2

(getting in touch with nature)

(view from my roof and me with all my friends)

So sometimes I’m an idiot…walking home from Bellavista at 4a.m. alone…idiot! My friend, Yenny, was trying to help me out asking how much I had in my pocket making sure I could take a taxi. She and her friend seemed over-eager asking me for how much I had on me, which made me really defensive, I kept saying “tengo sufficiente”, I have enough. In retrospect I really think they only wanted me to get home safe. I was not thinking clearly last night, brushed them off and started walking home alone. I knew it was stupid at the time but I wanted to walk. I was expecting to get robbed the whole way home. I had my fists clenched and was walking with a power-strut, ready for someone to try, I was going to blast them in the face. Luckily I didn’t see anyone once I got near my house, there were no mysterious men lurking in the shadows last night…I made it to the elevator into my apartment and then bed without any problems…brilliant! The Chileans last night kept telling me that I looked bored with the conversation, and maybe I was, only on the parts where I wasn’t included…they speak so fast down here, it’s really tough to keep up with the conversation sometimes, especially when there are inside jokes.

So that was last night, but I have over a week of things unaccounted for: So after going out with the coalition of the willing last Saturday night a ton has happened here. The two things most essential to my survival here are an apartment and a job, in the past week and a half I’ve obtained both. The apartment’s quite small, and I have two roommates Cristian and Claudio, both very nice 25 year old Chilean Engineers. It’s definitely a novelty for them to have an American living in their apartment with them now, everything is “gringo gringo gringo”, they love that word. I’ve now been in my new apartment for four nights and for the past three we’ve all hung out and talked for a few hours each night. They’ve been teaching me how to pronounce my Spanish better and I’ve been trying to teach them basic English, they essentially don’t know any. They know a few basics, “Hiii, howryoooo” and “wachuurnaame?” and that’s about it. My bedroom is a glorified closet, but I have room for all of my stuff. The apartment building has a gym on the top floor and a pool on the roof which attracted me to this place. The rent is roughly $250 American a month with all expenses included hot water, electricity, and presently we are lifting free wi-fi from some unassuming citizen without security on their wireless, thank you Mr. “T.P. Link”. Though the internet is free for the moment, the connection is shotty at best, some days I can connect for an hour no problem and other days, like yesterday and today, I can’t connect at all, I this is going to need to change.

(teleferico and the train to get up el cerro de san cristobol)

Luckily, the Chileans have all been extremely nice to me, probably because I am a novelty. I was out with Yenny last night and she told me that she doesn’t usually like foreigners, Americans, French whatever, but that I’m different than most because I can actually communicate in Spanish with her and because I’m going to be sticking around for awhile. She’s 23 and she’s acting like my mother right now telling me where to go, who I should and shouldn’t talk to, and last night she was trying to make sure I took a taxi home instead of walking. I heeded much of her advice, but not the part about taking a taxi, certainly an idiot. Santiago’s not that dangerous if you know where to go and where not to go and if you take a taxi home when you stay out late. People definitely do get robbed here but if you keep your head about you, you can avoid this. I was warned not to wear my gold chain out at night because someone will most likely rip it right off my neck. During the day there are no problems, it’s just if you stay out late at night you need to keep your head about you.

So I’ve found work now, too…I found it in the rarest of places. I responded to this guy Tony’s post on craigslist in Santiago looking for people to play American football on the weekends. I responded telling him that I would like to play and left him my number. Tony calls me ten minutes later and he asks me what I’m doing here and I tell him that I’m looking for work teaching English. He tells me “I know this lady, she’ll get you a job, no problem, call her now”. He gives me the number for this lady Elba, I had two interviews with her and I have now taught three classes so far. I have classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday with an accountant named Rodrigo from 7:30 a.m to 9:00 a.m. Presently, Wednesdays I am teaching two hour and a half classes at Audi in Las Condes which is the richest part of the city. After my classes I told one of the bosses that my rate is a new car every three months…he laughed at me and sent me out of his office. I’m still looking for more work. This Monday I’ll be working 8 hours in an office Translating documents from English to Spanish. This is only a one time job, though. These people only have a set amount of material they need translated right now. I have second interview on Tuesday with the Burford institute in Providencia. The woman Katie told me they are now in need of more teachers. Burford is more attractive than other options not because of the pay, but they told me they can help me secure a work visa here in Chile in order for me to be here legally which is of paramount importance.Ideally, I’m looking to be an entrepreneur here. I’m going to hand out flyers in the malls, post flyers in the universities, and post my services online. I can charge double what I am making if I do private classes. I’ve done the math…If I can teach roughly 15 hours a week privately, I will make enough to enjoy myself and here to send money back home to pay off my loans, not bad!! Less hours, better lifestyle and I’m not saying “Thank you for calling Mercer, you’ve reached Daniel Callahan, how can I help you?” I think I’m going to lose my lunch. Ideally, I will only work for Burford so I can get a visa and I will do private classes, but in the meantime I will be doing work for Elba so I have some sort of cash-flow. My roommate, Cristian, is helping me to put my flyers together and Yenny told me she’s going to tell her friends about me and is going to post flyers in her university for me, things are coming together.
Side-note: there is always some type of Jenffifer in my life, always has been. I seem to get along with Jenns and Jennys and now Yennifer, I’m probably going to end up marrying a Jennifer.

Right now I need to find books that I can base my lessons on and that I can give to the students. This is only a small problem and I’m sure I’ll have it resolved in the next few days if I ask around. That’s all for now, I'm off to the beach shortly, emails are always welcome!

In Chile

So after all that rigormorole I’m here in Chile! I arrived on Friday, it is now Sunday. Friday I was too beat to do anything so I rested up and stayed in for the night. The host of the hostel, Pato, is really friendly, he helped me access the ATM machine which I couldn’t figure out to do…damn “foreigner” button which I’ve never had to use before. After that he invited me out to coffee with him and his friend Angie. I started telling them about my experience in Spain, and he told me never to mention Spain in Chile, that there’s still a lot of bad blood here regarding Spain. He was really sensitive about that. I’m not sure if it’s all Chileans or just him, but he seemed to be easily offended and his humor was really passive-aggressive. So I spent all day Saturday walking around the city, I must have logged about ten miles on foot, I bought a cell phone and by chance I found the Burford Institute where I should be having an interview at some point in the near future. I’m going to go directly there tomorrow to ask for a job in person. I ran into some nice people in the city, too. A lady approached me and asked where I was from and why I was here, she told me of a good institute to find work teaching English. A lot of people have commented on how good my Spanish is, but I think they are just want to say something nice to the "Gringo". The lady told me that I will also have to look out for the girls here, that they are going to love me haha, I guess time will tell. I came back and was invited along for dinner and drinks with an Ausie, a New Zealander, Scotsman and an Irish girl…it was all great fun. We went out to this big restaurant in Barrio Brasil they had all kinds of great meats, I had some type of lamb pot-roast and it was absolutely delicious. The place was huuuge and there was a stage up front where they had live music, the Chileans were all up dancing and having a great time. In the middle of the night, the band stopped playing and a chubby guy dressed in black got on stage with a headset microphone. The music then got crazy and he was dancing around like some crazed, fat, aerobics instructor. He was shouting out comands like "mano derecha, mano izquierda" and the whole restaurant was doing everything he said and they were loving it...Chileans...go figure.

I had a lot of fun with my four new friends from around the world…they told me important things like what a "jap’s eye" is. we all drank a few beers and had a lot of laughs, talked politics and exchanged jokes. They were 32, 31, 29 and 28, I was by far the youngest out at 23, but they didn’t mind at all, we all had a good time. The Irish girl dragged her Kiwi boyfriend up to the dance-floor to help my transition onto the dance-floor easier to go dance with a gorgeous chilean dressed in pink. Good times, good times.

One more time

Ok so day two has been a lot less eventful, but air Canada has some serious issues. I called in this morning just to double check my bookings were all correct and they had me on a plane out of providence at 11 after we had confirmed about five times that I would be flying out of Boston at 1:25. Anyway, I got that all squared away before I took off for the airport, so no harm no foul. The flight went off without a hitch and my bags were checked without issue this time and without the check-in person telling me that there is no guarantee my bags will make it to chile. I arrived in Toronto around 3:00, and I’ve just been reading Jack Kerouak’s "On the Road" and hanging out, I’ll be doing that for awhile seeing as the flight’s not until midnight tonight. I am almost positive I rode an elevator in the airport with Joshua Jackson. He held the door for me, nice guy. So far so good, mom and dad have both been calling to make sure their boy is still alive…I am. I can’t wait to get into chile.

False Start

Sitting in providence right now, I just had the most absurd run around in an airport. Come to providence, flight cancelled, thank you air Canada, go home, come back at 4:30, flight cancelled, thank you air Canada, wheel and deal on the phone with this guy from air Canada for about an hour and we figure out an indirect way to Toronto. I leave dad, he takes one last picture and then I’ve been scheduled to be randomly searched. Go figure, my shoes and cell phone both set off some type of terrorist alarm and I’m waiting in the detainee section at 5:55 for a 6:00 flight, basically I’m thrilled. “Mr. Callahan can you describe your day to me?” “Listen man, I’ve been back and forth from the airport twice, and THAT’S IT”. They run a few more tests on my shoes and phone and predictably they found out that they were just that, shoes and a phone. So I throw all my stuff together, boots half laced, p-coat flying behind me like a cape and sprint to terminal eight, which is, of course, the very last terminal. I caught a few awkward glances as I come to a screeching halt at terminal eight. I would have missed the fight if it had taken off on time, but like everything else in this airport, they too are behind schedule. I’m headed to Laguardia, then to Toronto and if all goes to plan and the stars align I will be in Santiago, Chile by noon tomorrow. WOO! Change of plan…flight to LaGuardia delayed making my connection in Toronto impossible, we’ll try again tomorrow.