Group Blog: Hardest Custom to Adjust to in Chile

There are actually several customs that I have found a bit difficult to adjust to, but I´ll just focus on one: SOCCER. That is, the custom of watching soccer until your eyes bleed.

Good grief, even my pololo pointed this out to me last night after watching Chile lose once again in soccer, this time to Ecuador. He asked me a rhetorical question, and quite a good one at that: Why, in a country with such bad soccer teams, is soccer such an incredibly popular sport?

The answer? Heck if I know. I mean, we have Colo Colo, la U, Catolica, the national team, etc etc... and which team is actually good? Sorry if it sounds like I´m completely trashing Chile´s soccer program, but I happen to be having one of those everything-about-living-here-sucks days, so I´m feeling a little edgier than usual. Now, the real problem for me is not that the teams are so bad. That´s not the reason I detest watching soccer. The real reason is that I find it incredibly boring. Fact numero 1 about me: I am a HUGE sports fan. But that does not include soccer. The sports I really really love watching with a passion are college basketball, college and NFL football, and the NHL. Short story about my obsession with college basketball: I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill (hereafter referred to as Carolina). At Carolina, basketball isn´t just another sport, it´s a passion. People eat, sleep, dream basketball. And not just the players, but the students too, myself included. So in March of my senior year at Carolina (2005), we were set to play dook (Duke) as usual, as the last game of the regular season. If you´ve ever even heard the words college basketball, you´ve heard of the Carolina-Duke rivalry. It´s always a huge game, and it´s always an amazingly fun time (unless we lose). So my senior year, I had the fortune of getting riser tickets for the game - risers are the platforms right beneath the basket where students with those tickets stand. Those are the most coveted tickets, because they´re literally right on the court. The thing is, if you´re in the back rows, it´s pretty hard to see. So, to make sure I was in one of the front rows, I camped out (along with a ton of other students) at the Dean Dome for 3 days before the game. Believe me, I would have camped out longer if I´d needed to. It worked out too - I got on the second row, and watched us beat Duke in thrilling fashion. :) Carolina went on to win the championship, my senior year!

Ok sorry, I got nostalgic for a moment. But seriously, I LOVE sports. This is why it´s frustrating for me to live in a country where I can´t just turn on ESPN or WRAL (local channel in Raleigh) and watch a Carolina basketball or football game. I´m resigned to watching soccer. And bad soccer at that. You might say, but Jessica, nobody is FORCING you to watch a soccer game. Sort of true. But where I´m living right now, my boyfriend´s brother watches literally EVERY soccer game that´s ever shown on tv. It could be Señora Rodriguez`s cuarto basico class vs. Señor Bravo´s class and he´d watch it. So it´s hard to escape.

Anyway, it seems my choices are limited here - either cultivate a love of soccer (not looking likely), or buy a slingbox so I can still watch Carolina games. I love Chile, but man... I need my college sports!

A Haiku

Communication
Is severely lacking here
Oh Chile - why, why?

Tengo Entrevista!!

Yayyyyyyyyy I have an interview lined up for a job in Santiago! Diego has a good friend at one of the institutes in Santiago that teach English, and he sent him my resume, which then was sent to his supervisor(s). That was a couple of weeks ago, and D let me know tonight that they want me to come in for an interview when I get to Chile... which, by the way, is in exactly 3 weeks from Wednesday!! I'm so excited :) Hopefully I'll get the job, cross your fingers! Either way, I'm stoked about finally getting back to Chile y mi amor, por fin!

Just For Fun, I Bring You...

The Top 10 Things I'd Rather Do Than Go to Work at My Current Job (in no particular order):

1. Wake up at 5:30 in the morning in Santiago. Walk to the micro stop in the pouring rain. Wait an hour for a micro. Take 2 micros. Go teach English classes until 7:30 at night. Walk back in the pouring rain to the micro stop. Wait another hour for a micro. Take 2 micros to get back home.

2. Listen to the latest Jessica Simpson album on repeat for a full 24-hour period.

3. In a similar vein as #2, watch a 24-hour marathon of "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila."

4. Watch any basketball game with commentary by Dick Vitale.

5. Clean every bathroom in my house. Clean the kitchen. Wash every window, inside and out. Dust every visible surface. Vacuum every room.

6. Clean up the porch where my dog threw up on it after eating some weird, unidentifiable object.

7. Try to run a marathon without training at all.

8. Read every William Faulkner book without taking any breaks, except to go to the bathroom and eat something.

9. Translate Don Quixote from Spanish to English in its entirety. Then translate it back from English to Spanish. Then back from Spanish to English again one more time, just for good measure.

10. Eat the hottest pepper on earth, without drinking any water afterward.

Chile, Here I Come!!!

Ahhhhhhhhh I'm so excited!! I finally have a date for when I'm moving back to Santiago, and a flight! I'll be flying out of RDU on August 12 :) That means less than 2 months to wait! Now, the next question is... does anybody know of apartments available?? Or people looking for roommates? If so, please let me know :) Woooooooo estoy tan emocionada!

Welcome to the Inferno

I was going to say "Hell", buuuuut I guess I shouldn't be so harsh on my job (although, Inferno and Hell pretty much carry the same connotation, but "Inferno" sounds a little more...poetic, maybe) - mainly because it's a job, and it pays. And it's in an air-conditioned office, which, given the recent tally of over-100 degree days in NC, is a great thing. But those are about all of its redeeming qualities. So, to all 4 readers of my blog, I present... (drum roll please) the list of things that suck about my job (job, company, etc.):

1. The training. Or, more accurately, lack thereof. I could write an entire blog entry just on this. But suffice it to say, I'm expected to do technical support on products for which the training consists of about 5 minutes in a conference room, with me hastily scribbling notes on a notepad as my supervisor talks a mile a minute.

2. The lack of resources. Once again, I am expected to provide technical support on products for which we have no user manuals... not even a leaflet... not even a product image. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Null (I'm running out of ways to say NOTHING). Now, one day I made the mistake of actually questioning this, asking one of my supervisors, "I was just wondering, I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, but... why do we do support for products that we don't even have a user manual on?"... Let's just say I received a less-than-satisfactory answer on this one, as well as a look that basically said, "How dare you question our ridiculous policies?"... YEAH... won't make THAT mistake again.

3. My supervisors. I basically have 3. One is cool, the other two are... well, not. Quite frankly. Look, I understand that their job doesn't revolve around answering my questions 24-7. But answering questions from their employees is certainly PART of their job. And when I ask ONE question in a 5-hour time period, I'm pretty sure I haven't maxed out my quota of questions for the day. But to judge by the looks on their faces when I go to ask them a question - I mean, they look at me as if I've suddenly sprouted 3 heads! This isn't exactly what you'd call encouraging.

4. The customer service policies of the company as a whole SUCK. And I have no control over them. Which for whatever reason, the customers calling in don't understand. "People!", I want to say to them. "I'm a peon in this company! I'm a tech support rep! I have no control over what goes onto the packages for these products! Believe me, if I did, I sure as heck wouldn't put GUARANTEED to work on there, because I KNOW it's not!" But alas, they don't seem to get this. Or maybe, they just need a scapegoat - so they choose me. So I get cussed out because the product they bought doesn't work, or because they're too stupid to read the manual and figure it out. Oh well.

5. I'm sure there's a 5th reason, but I'm kind of tired of typing for now, so I'll leave that for another day ;)

Sorry, fellow bloggers... sometimes it just helps to vent. And to realize that 2 months from now (Lord willing), I'll be back in Chile con mi amor! :)

Algunas Fotitos

one of me and Diego at a wedding in Santiago back in February, and one of just Diego ;) gotta show him off :P i'll post some more pictures later, but for now i'm off to bed!

The Return of My Sense of Humor

...or maybe it never actually left. Several posts ago, I wrote about how frustrating it was (is) to try to maintain your sense of humor in another language. It's a kind of "lost in translation" deal a lot of times. Well, buenas noticias... maybe I'm not as "un-funny" as I once thought. At least according to Diego - who, I admit, is probably biased. But still, it made me feel better when in a conversation recently, he told me that his friends did think I was funny. Now, maybe what they really find funny is this gringa trying to speak Spanish and throw some Chilean slang in the mix, but I'd like to think they find my sense of humor funny as well.

Here's another thing: I remember in the beginning of January (I think this is when it was), when I first started watching Club de la Comedia with Diego and his family/friends. If you haven't seen that show, there's a cast of 6 Chileans who do a mix of stand-up routines and regular skits. When I first started watching, I didn't understand a whole lot of it. So, if you want the definition of awkward - that would be me trying to watch that show with a group of Chilean friends and not understanding hardly anything. So naturally, everyone else is cracking up and I have this half-smile plastered to my face the entire time, hanging on every word, desperately trying to seize upon some joke that I might understand - all so that I could laugh too, and be in on the joke! So needless to say, it was really frustrating at the beginning. But I kept watching, and by the time I left Santiago in March, I found that I understood a great deal of the show. And it cracked me up whenever I would laugh at one of the jokes, and D's mom would look at me in surprise and say, "You understood that?!"... yes, I finally did!

My favorite sketches were always "El Cliente Siempre Tiene La Razón" (The customer is always right) and El Encuestador (a guy showing up at people's houses to conduct a survey). Whenever I'm missing Chile a whole lot (which is basically all the time!), I watch some of the sketches online (www.chilevision.cl) and it always makes me laugh. ;)

A Little of This, A Little of That

Well, I've been inspired by fellow bloggers to spruce up my own a little bit. I wanted to get a picture of Santiago on here, but I just hadn't taken the time to until now. Heck, I haven't even posted since what... the 13th? Anyway, the picture is one that a friend took of the Plaza de Armas when we were in Santiago in August 2006, which is the first time I ever went to Chile. It's kind of bugging me that the picture isn't really centered on the darker blue background, but I guess I can live with it for now. :) I'm also playing around with different color schemes, so we'll see what comes of that. I'll probably write another post later tonight about the amazing bastion of inefficiency that is the company I work for (FYI, a good part of this long weekend will be spent looking for another job). But for now, I'm taking advantage of the chocolate truffle pie my mom made this weekend! ;)

A Tale of Six Flaites

Today's conversation with D starts out with him telling me, "oye, algo malo me pasó anoche..." Cue freakout mode. Not really, but I did think, uh oh... hope it wasn't something TOO bad. Last night, D was supposed to go to a friend's house for an asado. As it turns out, it ended up just being a bunch of guys playing Playstation. Typical. :P Anyway, D lives in Ñuñoa, near the Estadio Nacional, and his friend lives close to the metro station El Parrón, which is basically at one end of the yellow line. Now, I'm not sure exactly where this happened, but at some point when he was on the micro, D was suddenly surrounded by six flaites (not-so-savory characters), all threatening him. Using some common sense, D didn't try to resist or fight them at all (you don't have to be a mathematician to realize that 6-on-1 isn't very good odds). Thankfully, they didn't hurt him at all... but they did take all the money he had on him. Not very much, but still. It's the principle of the thing. A lot of emotions ran through me when I heard what had happened, among them fear and extreme anger. Also relief, that D wasn't hurt at all. But seriously, this just pissed me off. I realize there are criminals and jerks everywhere in the world, but good grief... 6 on 1? This is one of those times when it's REALLY hard to be in the States, away from D. I usually try not to worry too much, and he usually doesn't take the micro late at night by himself, but hearing this story just rattled me. I guess you just never know what can happen.

La Subasta

Alright, this is my first post (obviously) on this new blog, and unfortunately since it's already pretty late I don't have time in this post to go into a lot of background. We'll save that for another day. But long story short, I'm a gringa who's dating a Chilean. Sadly, we're doing the whole long-distance relationship thing right now... which gets really crazy considering the "long distance" in this case is 5000 miles. Yes, we do actually have plans to be on the same continent in the near future. I'm in the U.S. working for several more months, my boyfriend Diego is planning to come visit in July, and then I'm hoping to move back to Chile a couple of months after that. For how long, I'm not sure, but maybe a couple of years, before we both move back to the U.S. Wow, typing that out, it sounds kind of confusing, but trust me, we actually do have a plan! Anyway, I keep coming across blogs by U.S. girls dating or married to Chilean guys, and it's been really interesting reading about their experiences! I've learned a lot, and I think it would be nice to meet some of them when I do move back to Chile, as I'm sure I'll need some good gringa friends for support! :)

Anyway, on to the subject of this post... Diego is being auctioned off tomorrow! That's right, auctioned off. He's part of a college/young adult ministry group in Santiago, and tomorrow they're doing a chicos/chicas date auction ("subasta") to raise money for a mission trip. So, my first reaction upon hearing this tonight from D was.... ummmmm, so you're telling me some girl is going to be bidding for a chance to go out with you? WHAT?! But then I calmed down and realized that a) it's to raise money, b) I trust my boyfriend, c) it's really kind of a joke anyway, and d) he'll be auctioned off with his brother... so, eh, maybe it's not so bad. That's right, it's a package deal ;) He and his brother are in a band, and they're commonly just referred to as Los Hermanos Sí, so one of the things being auctioned off is an outing with LHS... this made me laugh, I have to admit. And D assured me that it probably won't involve much more than a trip to Bravissimo and boom, done. So it's all good. I really do trust my boyfriend, I promise. It's the Chilenas that I don't trust as much. No offense, but the way male/female relationships work in Chile is a lot different from the U.S. Here in the U.S., if a guy tells a girl he has a girlfriend, she'll usually back off (well, ideally). In Chile, telling a girl you are taken means nothing. Basically, you just wasted 3 seconds of your time saying that. So, it doesn't make me really comfortable knowing that some girls are going to be bidding on an outing with my boyfriend, mainly because of that fact. And, in my opinion, he's pretty cute! Anyway, I just thought the whole auction thing was kind of funny. He's supposed to tell me tomorrow night which girl wins. ;)