Today was possibly my best day in santiago. i managed to wake up at 10 and met Jenna in the Plaza de Armas. It was cold and cloudy and felt like it was going to thunderstorm all day so everyone was walking around full of anticipation and general excitement. But it never did. We went to the museum of Santiago and followed around high school tours and it was pretty interesting to get a better understanding of how the city developed and why it's like it is now. Then I remembered about this performance art piece happening at the Museo Arte Contemporaneo so we went and it was amazing. The artist was this neat Brazilian guy and it was all in portuguese and all interactive, kind of like a game. I guess it was about communication and fluidity and thinking about our bodies and how we give and recieve. and I could understand it all! in portuguesel! I'm not going to explain it because i think it will be impossible to convey the experience but taking part in it was a more beautiful feeling than I've felt from ever looking at a piece of artwork. I can't stop being excited about it. It was neat, there were only about 15 of us and the museum was closed because it was between installations and it was fun to be there and feel like we all knew eachother even though we never even introduced ourselves and then we had to leave through the secret construction exit and it made me think a lot about how interested I am in curating, not to mention performance art obviously. Then I came to the not very profound realization that I'm only here for a short amount of time and need to just do everything that intersts me and not worry about needing to sleep. But even after deciding that I was still too hungry and tired to go see Raul Zurita (a really famous and interesting chilean poet who was also part of CADA, the groups that did art actions in the 70s against the dictatorship). Eating is important too though (I made pasta with tomatos and garlic and onion and apples and somehow it was delicious). But walking home we stumbled upon a really really cool independent movie theatre that also has a lot of live music and neat things happening there and we went back and saw "Dias de Santiago" about an x-soldier in Peru which was muy fuerte. And we were going to go back again and see a show at 12 but i decided it was probably a bad idea to walk a half hour alone to a kind of sketchy area at midnight, so we'll have to go back some other night. And my globablization class started getting interesting. I'm still confused, we have a different teacher every day , but this one was from social studies, not economics, and it was interesting. And Maria Angelica called me in the middle of the movie to tell me she had found me a job! But it was in the middle of the movie and then my phone died so I don't know what sort of job or anything. but still, bacán!

futbol, etc.

A couple hours ago I was walking to the bus stop and found a huge pile of wood in the trash so now i have lots of wood to make paintings on! It's kind of frustrating because tomorrow i would like to stay in my room in the sun and paint but I have class. It is so silly to be taking art classes so that I can do art but then when I feel like doing art I can't because I have to go to class. This morning I woke up feeling really inspired and excited to make things but then I had to go to ceramics and I couldn't translate anything I was thinkng about into clay and I didn't make anything all day except for plans to go to La Serena this weekend. Which I'm excited about because it is the beach! It's only five hours north and we can take a midnight bus and sleep on the way and arrive at sunrise and have a full three days there. But I'm really bummed out because Jenna and I had plans to go to Buenos Aires for a week in September when we have off for independence related holidays but it turns out that the facultad de ciencias has off the week before the holidays and I have off the week after them so now we can't go together and I'm not sure who I could convince to go with me. alone is possibly a bad idea. oh! I also went to a soccer game on Sunday which was crazy. It was a "clasico" which is when 2 of the 3 good teams from Santiago play eachother, in this case the Universidad de Chile vs. the U Catolica (which does not mean college soccer. They are Chile's professional teams, they're just owned by the respective universities). So obviously I was rooting for la U Chile and everybody was giving me shit for it and saying that they were really bad and definitely going to lose so I bet one of the Rafa's that they would win and I don't know what they were talking about because la Chile dominated the whole game and won. so now he owes me a beer. But that is not what's crazy about soccer here. What is crazy is that the stadium is full of carabineros (police) dressed in full head to toe riot gear with shields and some even riding on horses. The way you pay for tickets is based on whether you have to stare into the sun all game and whether you are behind the goal or by the sidelines. The super cheap tickets are behind the goals so that area is packed and a lot rowdier and that's where people are really into it. So the police just line up in front of those two sections and wait for people to start getting too crazy and occasionally they'll march in formation around the field while the game is going on. For me it was really strange, I guess we have security too but it was just so reminiscent of something from a military dictatorship that it was hard to feel comfortable around them. And then we left the stadium and started walking towards the metro but apparently a riot had broken out and the carabineros were spraying down people with water and then charging in on horses and motorcycles to disperse everyone. They were really scary, much scarier than the people waving flags and running in the street and throwing rocks. So of course when you start getting hosed down with water sprayed out of an armored truck, everyone starts running in all directions and it's total chaos and kind of scary especially for me since I obviously had no idea how serious it was or where I should run or whether my friends were still behind me or not. It's stupid because the police response just made it more chaotic and made everyone panic and run and all the rioters were doing was throwing rocks at the armored truck and so if the police hadn't been there "to keep things in order", they wouldn't have even been doing anything. Maybe that's not true but that's how it feels and the police make me really uncomortable. Also they wear ridiculous all brown uniforms that make them look like an army from the 17th century. But the Chileans I talked to are not bothered by it and say that that is just how it is at soccer games and that the people who attend them are kind of dangerous and uneducated. But it is not just soccer games. There was a student protest at Macul (my campus) on tuesday and the police response was the same. Granted the protest was kind of immature and it was supposed to be about LOCE and education reform but mostly was just kids throwing pieces of concrete at the armored truck but again, they wouldn't have been throwing anything if the police in riot gear and armored trucks hadn't been there to put down the protest. And the police shot potato guns back at the students with real potatos! and then they tear gassed them all! I feel like it's just really extreme and it bothers me that the instant response to any sort of demonstration is to disperse it and act really scary so that everybody runs away. That does not make me feel protected. Also they close down the metro stations when there is a riot. But they don't only close down the station next to the stadium, they close down the next three stations on the line, including mine. So after reuniting after successfully avoiding the cops we had to walk an hour to get home. It makes me feel like if i had tried to do something like that alone or without chileans, it would have been basically impossible. I'm feeling vaguely down on Santiago right now but I'll stop talking only about the frustrating parts because lots of good exciting things have been happening too. Today Jenna met a boy in her biology class who is going to New York in a few weeks and wanted suggestions for what he should do there so she took him to meet me and we all went out to a pub with some other chilean girls and I pretended that I knew all about new york and started telling him things to do and realized that I actually did know some things about it and it made me feel good to finally feel useful or knowledgeable about something. Maybe that's what's most frustrating here. There is obviously a lot that I don't know but even the skills that I do have, i am not really getting to share with anyone. . . whew, that was a long and unproofread post and I am going to sleep. Tomorrow I am going to train myself to wake up without an alarm clock since they don't work for me anyway and go see either a Brazilian performance piece at Bellas Artes or go to a park and draw in the sun.

p.a.r.t.y. ! ! !

the best birthday party!!!!!! It was great, I'm too tired to write more than that, but here are some pictures.

If you look closely, you will notice that everybody is wearing some piece of my clothing! (Marisol, fran(cesca), Carolina, mee, Erin, Evalyn, Jenna, Gaby)


(Erin and Nate)


I love Javi!


I got to blow out the candles twice because no one noticed that I had already been sung to and blown the candles out already so they all sang again in spanish and then in English.

The 2 Rafas. Mexicano Rafa's outfit was priceless.

And luke Bostian was there! That was a riot. We just kept looking at eachother and screaming holy crap i'm in Santiago and you're sitting here next to me!

Jorge and Marisol, the owners of the house. They wouldn't let anyone in unless they were dressed up and stayed up with us almost the whole night dancing and dressed up too!



In the back are Piter's brother Richie, Felipe, and Piter, who are incredibly nice and I've ended up spending a lot of time hanging out and playing charades and pictionary with.

The Oliva family! Javier (the 10 year old) stayed up until about 4am taking pictures of us and discreetly videotaping everything and the next morning we all woke up and he was waiting downstairs with all of the videos uploaded to the computer to make fun of how funny we (but mostly me) dance. It was pretty funny because everybody imitated how i danced because they thought that was how you were supposed to dance to 80's music buut really i was just dancing how i always dance.

Also something funny was that no one could understand the idea of dressing up like you were from the 80's and thought that they had to dress up as a specific person. Piter was a Ramone. He was pretty upset that I couldn't guess that. It was decided that I was a mixture of Molly Ringwald and Madonna. definitely.

so birthdays are kind of funny. especially in other hemispheres. but the weather has been perfect, about 80 degrees and sunny and fantastic. I slept with all the windows wide open so it was almost like sleeping outside and almost like it was August here and not winter. I was feeling weird last night and at 2 in the morning I cleaned my whole room and got out my oil paints and painted some cereal boxes because that was all I had. It felt so good. And even better to wake up at 10am with a room full of fresh sunny air and see a big card slipped under my door that everybody in the house signed happy birthday. But nobody was around during the day so I just sat in my room in the sun and made a calendar and read all morning. Then I had to carry 5 kilos of dirt and half of a wooden door that I found in the street to ceramics class and I almost fainted on the bus because it was so hot (I'm getting a little worried for summer). And the profe wasn't even there but I made a dinosaur companion for Ruby my dinosaur who you will never get to see pictures of since every time I try to upload pictures to this blog safari finds it necessary to quit. But anyway, then after a failed attempt at using skype to talk to the family Jenna, Rafa, Erin, Nate, Diego, Felipe, y yo all went out to Indian food down the street. I had some vegetable korma like I've never had it but it was really good and really exciting to have Indian food. Diego and Rafa had never had Indian food before and I don't know how much they liked it but I thought it was really good. Then we all came back and sat out on the enclosed patio and Diego played guitar and we all sang and he made fun of how badly we sang. It was fun but there is always the problem that we don't really know the songs in Spanish and no one else knows any songs that we know. Except sometimes twist and shout works as a mixture with la bamba but everybody gets tired of that pretty quickly. Which kind of sucked because just as I was getting ready to do something more exciting at around 11:30 everybody left or went to bed. I said goodnight and came back and found Rafa singing to himself and playing guitar and he obliged me and played for me for a little while. I think it was the prettiest music anyone has ever sang to me and kind of made me wish I was in Mexico but then he got cold and went to sleep too. It's kind of funny for it to only be midnight on my birthday and have everyone have gone to bed already. But I guess I am having the party on Friday. I can't wait! I have a really amazing 80's outfit and everyone in the house is super into it (well, except for the boys). Marisol, la dueña, even came out and told us that she had a costume ready and that she wasn't going to let anyone in if they weren't in "disfraz." And I went into the computer room and found Francesca looking up 80's clothes on the internet. It's gonna be great!

technology

Hey so I downloaded Skype! Which means if you download it too we can talk! through the internet! but with real voices! My name is KAMifflin.

Today I was blown away by Pablo Neruda's Bellavista house and also got this really cool dinosaur. Jenna and I are going to try to be guides at La Chascona (PN's house) or if not there at Bellas Artes or if none of them want us we're just going to learn a lot about the artwork in some museum and offer ourselves as free guides to whoever wants one. Tomorrow early in the morning (meaning 11), we're going to el mercado central to buy fish to cook for my birthday!

Last night I finally went to a real party. Well it was really just some people sitting around. But they were chileans! and they were nice. I invited them all to my party on friday, hopefully Jorge won't mind. They were not very excited that they have to dress up or that U2 is banned but I think they'll actually come. I don't know if I've explained yet how obsessed people are with U2. They're U2 maniacs and it is constantly on the radio or being talked about in conversation and the idea of a fun night could easily be sitting around and watching a U2 concert on video. Last night I even heard them referred to as "Sacred U2." So for one night we are not listening to anymore U2. And they have to listen because I'm "la Jefa." For some reason last night we were walking around to find french fries in some neighborhood I'd never been to in Ñuñoa but all of the stores were closed so I said I was sure that if we went to the left we would find something and everyone followed me saying "KellyAnne sabe, ella es la jefa." And I was right and for the rest of the night, even though they made fun of me for buying prune juice, I was La Jefa and whenever I was standing someone would come over with a chair and say "would la Jefa like a seat?" or would la Jefa like me to call her a cab. Then when I left they all saluted me goodbye with tears in their eyes.

I finished paying for classes today. I kind of regret it since they're not terribly interesting but it's done. They don't take up a ton of my time anyway.
Some things I'm thinking about:
-setting up a stand at the vegetable market tomorrow to give kids a free facepainting.
-Life as performance art.
-making a zine.
-how some of the terrorists they arrested in London didn't even have passports.
-getting a bike and decorating it like Pepon Osorio.
-anthropology as the study of what humans do with consciousness.
-Frida Kahlo.
-Making a weekly self-portrait.
-Making a dress.
-where i can volunteer here.
-How we throw away 96 billion pounds of food each year.
-The pickled green beans that I made that won't be ready for 3 more weeks.
-How I can learn portuguese.

#1. I feel much better. i.e. I cooked a huge ginger stirfry for myself last night that was better than what we get in Vietnamese restaurants and remembered that I can do exciting things when I am alone too. (although I still didn't actually do any of the things I thought about and just read all night). And I had a nightmare that I had to move to Germany and attend an all girls music institute where they only served fried fish if you had set up your tents on the ceiling correctly. The whole time I just couldn't understand what exactly was wrong with the situation and then I realized I couldn't be happy in Germany because there was so much I never got to do in Santiago. I woke up (late) reinvigorated about all the things that I still have time to explore here.

There was originally a #2 and #3 but I forget them. Today I made spicy pickled green beans!!! I can't wait for them, although it will be a month until they're ready. I made the whole house smell like vinegar though, which is kind of foul. Also this woman who lives here and is vegetarian too gave me a bowl of really good Brazilian beans and rice and said she would teach me how to cook them. I think she likes me because we both think eating meat doesn't make sense and I get really excited whenever she offers me food. She's really into protein and likes to tell me how much protein everything has. For example did you know that pepper is a really good source of protein? I think she also likes talking to me because I usually didn't know that and say wow a lot and she gets to teach me things. For me getting to try other people's food is better than getting paid. There's this fruit here called chirimoya that is like nothing I've ever tasted. It's sour and sweet and slimy but crunchy and so so different than anything I've ever had I can't even say I like or dislike it, it's just an experience eating it. I think it may be the only high quality fruit Chile has. It is too delicate to export so unlike apples and grapes and lamb and basically everything grown here, the chirimoyas you can find in the markets are actually decent and not just made up of whatever wasn't good enough to be shipped out and sold. Pepino is another really good fruit, I lied. Also the kiwis here are mutant. If you cut them lengthwise, the white center part is three inches long!

A few interesting things:
-I eat brown eggs here and I don't refrigerate them. For some reason brown egg shells are much thinner.
-The US is the only place where kids are taught that there are 7 continents! Everyone here thinks I'm crazy for saying there's a North and South America. Even Europeans are apparently taught that America is one continent. I see where they are coming from, but then why do they still consider Asia and Europe 2 separate continents?
-I also don't refrigerate vegetables. And most other people don't refrigerate milk!
-Although their name is Chile, Chileans can't handle spice and it's almost impossible to find chili peppers anywhere that are really spicy!
-Orange juice has sugar in it and is all from concentrate even though there are delicious looking ripe orange trees in every yard.
-I have had about a million conversations about how I really don't like being called Kelly with everyone but that is still the name that Jenna, felipe, and Rafa all think of me as and the more we get to know eachother, the more they call me Kelly.
-Apparently here it is not uncommon or alarming for a man to call someone a sweet tender girl. I went to an intercambio in a bookstore the other week with Erin and Nate and we were talking with this 45-50 year old man who only wanted to know things like what doing coke is called or what you should say to a woman if you want to conquer her. Apparently whoever had taught him English played a pretty big joke on him and he kept saying things like, "yes, I would like to paw that woman" or "oh she is such a sweet girl, such a tender girl." He literally asked us "If I want to conquer a woman, what should I say to her?" definitely not that you want to conquer her. But I also met a 23 year old who wants to learn English really bad and is majoring in "tourism engineering" so she wants to show me Santiago in exchange for some English practice. I think I get the better deal, except that for some reason the only things she seems interested in showing me are cemeteries. Don't you think it's kind of weird for someone to say, "So if you ever want to go see some cemeteries in Santiago, here is my phone number." I am hoping she got the word mixed up with something else. But cemeteries are interesting I guess. . . .

homesick

Today I really miss America. I saw Transamerica last night for free at a film festival and it made me really really want to be exploring the states. Not that I'm not still excited to be exploring Chile but I miss pumpkin pie and snow and there is so much i don't know about in the US. like the Badlands and Missoula Montana and Portland and Texas and all the other 35 states I've never been to. I'm also listening to Sufjan Stevens sing about Michigan and Illinois and I guess he always makes me think about winter and America and Bard. I'm kind of sad that it's never going to snow here and that there's no Thanksgiving or Halloween and that Christmas is going to be hot. It's funny to miss the most obviously American parts of my life, but those are what I miss right now. Plus it's Sunday and in Chile families always have a big lunch together on Sundays so all of Jorge and Marisol's friends and family are eating downstairs and I would really like to be having a big meal with my family right now. Plus it's a holiday weekend through Tuesday and Rafa, Erin, and Nate all went to Valparaiso and Jenna is sick so I am the only one here and don't even have anyone to cook for and pretend that I'm having family dinner with. But my birthday is soon and Jorge said I could have a party. I think it will be 80s themed. I'm sure I'd be the only one to do it if it was anything more than that. People here are totally obsessed with the 80s. Everyone has beautiful mullets and rattails. I even saw someone wearing the jacket from the Thriller music video. I think now I'm going to make some flyers saying I'm looking for roommates. I feel like an astronaut today.

On Monday we made a totally badass chili and cornbread. Here are some pictures. mmm, it was so good. The Chileans were really excited to try it since it shares a name with their country, but I think it was too spicy for them.

(nate, Rafa, some wierdo, Felipe, Jenna, Diego, Erin)





also, holy crap! I just got back from a lecture on globalization in latin america. It was actually kind of boring because it was just an introduction to what the washington consensus is but really exciting that I understood a whole hour and a half lecture in spanish on globablization.

Valparaiso was amazing. totally la raja. i don't know how many pictures this blog can handle, hopefully a million because I took a lot. It is a really cool looking place. It's made up of a bunch of hills covered in houses of every color imaginable all attached to eachother with cats jumping from roof to roof and really really steep streets full of murals and artwork. It was definitely a contrast to Santiago.

On Friday Jenna, Felipe, and I took the bus to Valpo, got off and were assaulted by a million women trying to get us to come stay in their hostels, which was good beacuse the one we were thinking of staying in was full. Somehow we managed to choose a really good one on Cerro Alegre (cerro = hill) in a cool neighborhood. It was not like hostels here, the owner didn't live there and there were just 3 bedrooms. By chance the room they had available had three single beds in it and there was a big living room and a kitchen, although no stove it turned out (we ended up cooking hard boiled eggs in the water boiler for breakfast). So essentially we had our own apartment for the weekend (for $4000 pesos!)

We went to La Sebastiana, one of Pablo Neruda's houses, which was phenomenal. We weren't allowed to take pictures but it is a really neat house, with 5 floors and the most beautiful views imaginable. This is his bar, it was bright pink!

We did some other stuff, but I forget what right now. That night Felipe's friend Piter (Pablo? Peter? it was confusing) came and hung out with us. His sister lives in Valparaiso and his whole family is from there so it is his second home (or first, he doesn't really like Santiago). But it was great because as Felipe and Jenna did pololo-ish things, Piter took me all around Valaparaiso and I basically got my own "tour" of Cerro Alegre and other cool places at 3 in the morning. It was really relaxing because it was high up with fresh air and really crazy windy roads that are sort of chaotic and covered in artwork but except for lots of cats we were the only people out. I guess cats aren't people anyway. Then we sat in front of this really great view of Cerro Concepcion and the sea and railroad and listened to it for a few hours before walking back to the house to find Jenna and Felipe curled up asleep in the street because for some reason Piter, who wasn't even living in the house, had been given charge of the keys. They had been calling our phones and they could hear them ringing in the apartment because we had forgotten them but instead they thought that we had come home and gone to sleep and that they would have to spend the whole night in the street...

We walked around a lot more on Saturday and went to the Museo del Cielo Abierto which is a big area at the top of one of the hills where a bunch of famous artists painted murals on the sides of houses. It sounded kind of more exciting than it actually was and it was hard to figure out exactly where the museum was so we walked all through the hill but only ended up finding three of the murals. Which was fine, the houses themselves were exciting enough. Walking in Valpo is really really hard though. Probably easier than trying to drive a car, but still really exhausting. You are either walking in circles because every street is in a U, walking up steep steep stairs, or running down hills. Except that there are these really cool old shaky scary lifts all over the place that will carry you up to the top of the hill for only $100.

I am afraid this is really long and boring. Hopefully that's ok. I ate the absolute most disgusting thing I've ever eaten in my life. Jenna and I really wanted some seafood so we found a restaurant on the beach and the waitress was trying to get us to come in by explaining all of these wierd types of seafood that they served so we decided to go (not because we wanted what she was explaining) and for some reason she brought us a sample of what she was talking about. Me being me, I of course tried it. I don't know what it was but i nearly threw up. It was yellow and slimy and creamy and bumpy. It was supposed to be a shot of vitamins, but it was more like a shot of death. ugh, i don't know why I am writing about it, I am feeling sick just thinking about how bad it tasted...

(this is Felipe)
Anyway, Jenna and I have been discovering our passion for cooking and baking together. Last night after getting over the foul seafood, I was dying for some dessert but all I could find were popsicles so we decided to cook everyone dinner instead. We made really good guacamole and bread and a garlic, tomato, cilantro, onion salsa/salad (which sounds less delicious and exciting than it actually was) but we needed oil so we sent Felipe and Piter across the street to get some from the mini-market and kept chopping. After about an hour, we were getting kind of pissed off thinking they had probably gone somewhere to eat even though we were in the middle of making everyone food and we were getting annoyed that they weren't being appreciative. But instead they came back with four different kinds of cake for us that they had walked all the way to the grocery store at the bottom of the hill to buy because we had been talking about how much we wanted cake. I felt pretty bad. But excited that they are my friends. And even more excited to be eating cake...

Tomorrow we're cooking veggie chili and cornbread and russian tea cakes!

I just wrote a really long blog post but safari unexpectedly quit and it was deleted, so in short: tomorrow I'm going to Valapraiso and Isla Negra to hang out on the beach, eat a lot of seafood, visit the murals in the open sky museum, and see Pablo Neruda's houses. I'm sure there will be picturs to come....a funny story: Jenna and I went back to interpol yesterday and there were a million people there so we got a number and left and walked around and had lunch but in the restaurant where we ate, the only thing to drink was instant coffee (undrinkable) or liters of beer. So we had to share a liter of beer. at 11:30 am. and then go to the police station. but what was funnier was that we obviously couldn't drink it all and so I just put the bottle in my bag and we left only to turn around and see our waitress running after us down the street because she needed the bottle back and we had a really funny conversation where she thought that some crazy gringas who only ordered avocado sandwiches with no meat were going to come back in an hour to finish a liter of beer that they ordered for breakfast. i think how funny this situation really was is definitely not being conveyed by this poor explanation. my grasp of the english is slipping. really much more exciting things have been happening than that, but I need to pack and go to sleep.

Today I jumped onto a moving bus!