Settling in Nicely

I’m sitting in my new apartment right now, after cleaning everything up, this place is “la raja, huevon”. Your boy’s lounging in his own KING bed. I got the sheet, towel and bathmat situation squared away…I’m good to go.

So right when we moved in there was a problem with the hot-water heater, we couldn’t turn it on. With a lot of “finesse” (you know, punches and jabs with a screwdriver) I was able to turn the dial and light the pilot. The only problem is that once anyone turns on any hot water there is an explosion that will take your hair off if you’re within two feet of it. With this occurring every-time (you can hear it when you turn on the shower across the apartment), I am going to be showering in cold water until we can get this fixed up on Monday. I really don’t want to die in a gas accident in Chile.

Last weekend was the weekend of the Asados…I went to three in three days. The asado is the Chilean version of a barbecue…they cook steaks, pork, chicken and chori-pan (sausage on bread). I’ve made the mistake of telling everyone at these barbecues that we’ll be having one as soon as we got the new apartment. Well, the time has come, we have the apartment and I think I’ve got 50 people on the guest list. We might have to spread this out over two or three asados.

The second of these asados was very memorable. I met a girl from California, surprise surprise (every American in Chile is from CA) who just graduated from Berkley in Boston. She played guitar and sang her own songs…she was incredible and supports herself for now by playing different bars around Chile. I told her about teaching English, and when she found out that I was making double what she does, she’s considering putting down the guitar some and picking up some text books. There were a group of girls at this asado who call themselves the “warenas” which means “the giant rats”, these girls like to drink cheap beer in alleys seven days a week. Everyone at this event was an English teacher in one form or another. All of the Chilean professors teach elementary school and hate their lives. They’ve all got classes of 45 or more kids who couldn’t care less about learning English. They tell me that in the 45 minutes in class, they are able to teach for less than ten; they spend the rest of the time trying to keep order. They were in disbelief when I told them that most of my classes are one on one to engineers who really want to learn English. Well one of these “warenas” fancied me quite a lot. In no uncertain terms she announced to the party what she wanted to do with me that night and tried on no less than ten occasions try to kiss me while we were sitting around the kitchen table. I was flattered but not really interested in the rat-girl and we ultimately left on less than friendly terms.

There was a funny guy at the party who’s very interested in languages. The sausages they have here are called “Longanizas” and he’s convinced the etymology of the word is English, and that they were originally called “long and nices”. Needless to say “long and nices” was the main subject of the jokes for the rest of the night.

This past Sunday was a phenomenal day here. Cristian, Claudio and I received the keys to the new apartment and decided to a do some entertaining. Claudio invited his cousins Sandra and Lara, Cristian invited his buddy Cristobol and I invited my Peruvian buddy Cesar over. Inadvertently I ended up going out with his friends that he introduced me to and we were unable to contact him to invite him out too. I robbed his friends for the night and felt bad so I had him over for some steaks to make up for it. I was dead from two asados that went late into the night and wasn’t really in the mood to be social Sunday during the day. Usually I prepare some for my classes and get to bed early on Sunday, not this one. We watched soccer on the new TV and had an asado here. Sandra brought an electric grill and we fried up steaks, pork and chori-pan on it. Sandra lives only two blocks away and when she found out Cesar plays guitar she went to her apt and brought over and old, out of tune guitar. Cesar tuned it up and we all sat around the living room jamming for the next five hours. He played a lot of Spanish songs that I didn’t know, but this kid’s a real whiz on the guitar. He plays mostly classical style guitar using all his fingers and thumbs, but he knows how to play Green Day’s “Dookie” cover to cover along with some Radiohead, the Chili Peppers, Beatles, Zeppelin, Pearl Jam and countless other random songs…the kid is incredible.

Sandra started calling me Brian from the backstreet boys and we staged a mock interview like I was doing a show in Chile. Cesar played and we all sang “that way” and I think I’m less of a man than when I began the day. There’s a video of all this on Sandra’s computer that I hope never gets out to anyone I know. Oh but it was great fun. We changed apartments so we could invite people over and entertain and we did just that. There will be more intimate gatherings in the future.

Let’s back up a tick…I left Cesar in the lurch the night before. He called me earlier in the day to go to an Asado with some of his international friends from the University 45 minutes away in Maipu. I got a text from his Brasilian friend telling me to meet up at a subway stop at 8. I ran out of minutes on my phone on the way there and when I got there no one had called Cesar and no one had any minutes. I hopped on the subway expecting to get off at an area where I could buy minutes to call the kid. We ended up having to ride the subway for a half hour to La Florida and then take a car from there to Maipu. The car was full with no room for my Amigo. I robbed my pal’s friends and felt like a scum.
So at this cook-out I met some exceedingly interesting characters. I talked to this girl Stephanie who gave me some interesting insight into the Chilean mentality. If someone is from the U.S. or Europe she told me the Chileans will instantly like them. They think that everything in the U.S. is better just because it’s from the U.S. It seems strange to me, because back home we are very amiable to other people from the U.S. and on the whole are very xenophobic. The Chileans are less friendly to their own and are very warm and open to people from the U.S. because they think we are better than them in all respects. This country has a serious inferiority complex and it shows in the people. In the United States people are loud. People talk on their cell phones loud, the yell in the streets, if someone is in your way you tell them to move. Here the personality of the people is much less flashy, much more humble and modest. If someone is in your way you say in a very quiet voice “permiso” as you pass by. No one yells in the streets. This place could definitely use some hip-hop culture.
At this cook-out I met this kid Huesar. He’s real up on hip-hop unlike most Chileans and he says “Me llamo Huesar, como ‘WESTSIIIDE” hahah. The kid was a clown but an interesting character. I politely declined to do drugs with him and his gangster buddies on some sketchy hill in San Bernardo (San Bega Sigue) after work on Tuesdays, though I appreciated the offer.