Santigo de Chile

Well, Santiago has been ok. I'm glad I saw the city, but I can't help but think that it was kind of a worthless trip.

First off, I had originally planned to study Spanish two weeks in Santiago and then two weeks in Bs As. However, it took longer than i had expected to get my Visas, so I had only 3 weeks instead of 4 before I needed to be in Brazil, and I therefore chose, wisely, to spend the whole time in Argentina. Since I had already gotten my hopes up about going to Santiago, and since it was the same price either way with my plane ticket, I decided to at least see the city. It is a stupid trip though. I flew from Bs As in the south to Recife in the north and then 13 hours back to Santiago in the south (2 flights/3 stops). Also, I was charged $100 dollars US just to enter the country. It's a reciprocity fee so I guess the US charges Chilean citizens the same, but still, it sucked. I wasn't exactly thrilled with my choice to visit Santiago for 2 days when I learned that I had to pay $100 dollars to enter and then $26 to leave. Awesome. I would have been better to have stayed in Brazil and spent 3 days in Sao Paulo or Rio.

Oh well, I'm here.

Santiago itself is pretty nice, although there is nothing too spectacular about it. It's a big city, albeit much smaller than Bs As. It seems cleaner and the streets, sidewalks, and buildings seem to be in better repair. The population here is much different from that of Bs As. Whereas most in Bs As were tall and fairer skinned, the Chilenos are small and darker, more of Native South American than European descent.

Plaza behind the congressional building.

I've seen a lot of goth and punk kids around the city, something that I didn't see in Bs As, and I read in the paper yesterday that two goth kids (college-aged) committed suicide by drinking poison. I don't know if the whole goth/punk trend is big here or if it's just something to do with where I'm hanging out (which are mainly the touristy/main pedestrian thoroughfares so I'm not sure about what that means, i.e. are touristy/heavily popular streets non-conformist?)

One view of the Santiago skyline, with the Andes in the distance.

Yesterday I climbed up to the top of Cerro (Hill) Santa Lucía which is some 630 m high. There is a lookout tower at the peak which offers an awesome 360° view of the city. It was really a nice vista: the city sprawls out almost as far as you can see and it is bordered to the east by the Andes. I also threw a 1 peso coin.... ok, digression, I don't understand the 1 peso coin. About 600 pesos make a US$ so the 1 peso coin is worth about 1/6 of a penny? I read somewhere that they are debating doing away with the penny right now, something to do with the worth of the penny itself vs. the it's manufacturing cost. Forget the penny, do away with the 1 peso coin. It makes no sense to me. When a coke costs 1000 pesos you don't need a 1 peso coin. It's literally worthless, what are you going to do with a 1 peso coin? I was just shocked when someone gave me 2 pesos among my change for something that cost around 8500... Anyways, back to what I was talking about: I threw a 1 peso coin into the Fountain of Neptune at the base of the hill, which is in a truely beautiful park and is something like a national fountain. Hopefully my wish comes true...

Fountain of Neptune.

Today is Sunday and the museums are free. I went to the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, which chronicles 4500 years of Pre-Columbian civilization in four different geographic regions: Mesoamerica, and central, northern, and southern Andes. The museum was good. There was also a traveling exhibit about Pre-Columbian hats, which, while somewhat interesting, was also somewhat boring, and didn't really ever capture my imagination. I just briefly perused the collection and left. Wha-bam!

There are some nice pedestrian streets her in Santiago, lined with cafes, restaraunts, and stores. Today, being Sunday, the street preachers are out in droves. At every corner there is someone trying to save my soul or congregations singing hymnes. It reminds me of Speaker's Circle at MU.

So that's Santiago, really nothing too exciting, just a big city. Maybe I'd like it better if I spent more time here and actually got to know the people/culture/country, but for now, superficially, its just a big, modern, South American city with a somewhat European-feel to it. I am not too sad about leaving (I think I'm still a bit bitter about the airport fees).

Tonight I'm going to fly to Tokyo, well, actually to Dallas and then to Tokyo. I'm definitely not looking forward to the traveling, around 24 hours of flight time, but I'm extremely excited about Japan and Asia. It's going to be a completely new world for me. I'm still not exactly sure where I'm going to stay, as all of the hostels and ryokan that I've contacted thus far have been full. I guess I'll work it out when I get there though, what with my stellar Japanese and all... Wish me luck...

*EDIT* I think the main reason that I didn't find Santiago all that appealing was that I was looking for something different, I had already seen big South American cities and big European cities, I was looking for a change... (Asia offered that)

Recife/Olinda/Porto de Gallinas (Brazil)

So I'm in Santiago right now but I'll talk about Brazil real quick:

I arrived on Friday the 16th in order to start celebrating Carnaval the next day. Carnaval is actually celebrated starting from about a month before, but the main push is the four days just before Ash Wednesday. As was explained to me, there are three major Carnaval celebrations in Brazil: one in Rio, which is the famous samba/parade style one, one in Salvador, and one in Recife. Recife's celebration is called the "Carnaval for the people" because it's free, as opposed to the celebrations in Rio and Salvador where you have to pay, so anyone who wants to can attend, and it takes place in the streets where everyone participates together.

On Saturday we went to Olinda, which is a city just outside of Recife, which along with Recife and one other city whose name I forgot makes up the Gran Ciudad of Recife. Anywayz, Olinda was great. We just drank all day and danced along the streets. We didn't dress up in costumes but many people did. There was one group that dressed up as a funeral procession and carried a coffin around (filled with beer), and another group dressed up as the Smurfs, where everyone wore diampers and had painted-blue bodies and threw blue paint at everyone. There were people carrying trumpets and drums, singers singing from balconies, and music just everywhere. The streets were packed and it was really hard to move half the time. It was incredibly hot and we were all drenched in sweat by the time we left. Before going there I had somewhat expected naked grils running around everywhere, well, that didn't happen, but it was still great. :)

On Sunday and Monday we went to Porto de Gallinas, which is a touristy beach town. There we went to the beach during the day and went out to bars and clubs at night. We went to the same beach both days. The beach had a bar with tables, chairs, and umbrellas that you could place in the water. The waiters would come and take your order while you were sitting in the water, and would bring the food and drinks right out to you. So we would just swim up to the table and have a beer (which were like 3 for $2). We ordered plates of whole fish, and also ordered some little swordfish-looking fish as appetizers that you ate whole: bones, scales, and all.

On Tuesday we returned to Recife and celebrated the last day of Carnaval in downtown Recife. We just drank and danced all night again, and ate a lot of really tasty food. The downtown is really nice, and is sometimes called the Venice of Brazil, for all the bridges and rivers that criss-cross it. The architecture downtown was pretty cool, everything was done up in Dutch style. There was a big outdoor concert and once again packed streets with bands and costumed partiers.

On Wednesday we took in some culture and went to a castle/museum, which up until 3 years ago had been someone's home. It was incredible. It was really as luxurious/decadent as many of the centuries-old palaces in Europe. The castle and the property/land were beautiful, and the museum portion, which housed paintings, sculptures, and the largest collection of knives in the world, was truely fantastic, but I just couldn't believe that someone actually recently lived there. Driving up to the house we passed all of the shanty towns that bordered the city where the people lived in abject poverty, and then you had this huge completely-overdone palace. I guess it attests the huge disparity in Brazil between the country's rich and poor. I was told that the family that owns it no longer works, and that no one within the family's next 5 generations will need to work. Crazy...

The country itself is beautiful. The scenery on the drives to Porto de Gallinas was simply breathtaking. Vibrant greens with hills and palm trees, and the beaches were great. On Thursday we went to a beach about 45 min. from Recife, which was named by Travel magazine to be one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world. It was...

Recife, so I was told, is currently the most dangerous city in Brazil. While I didn't personally experience anything, Marilia told me about the murders of various family friends, her friend Marina told me about various times that she had been mugged at knife/gun/and broken bottle point, and during the four days of Carnaval there were 70 deaths, 23 car thefts, and 295 buses shot at in Pernambuco, the state of which Recife is the capital. Crazy.

Marilia, her family, and friends were all friendly and incredibly generous. Most could speak English and/or Spanish, and I managed to communicate with those who couldn't utilizing a mixture of very slow Spanish and very slow Portuguese. It was a great experience and I'm definitely going to study some Portuguese and return someday, especially to see Rio, which I was told countless times is just amazing.

Summer Plans

Oh, one more thing:

In response to Geoff and Drew's comments: I'm going to be in Germany from mid-May to the beginning of August. If you guys are coming and are at all interested in Germany then we should definitely get together (Germany is awesome by the way). I'll have an apartment somewhere and you guys would be more than welcome to crash. I'm not sure exactly where I'll be but I will find out sometime in the next couple months. If you guys are already planning a trip and need to set something concrete I'm sure I could probably travel to meet you most anywhere in Germany on a weekend. Berlin is fantastic. Where are you planning on going in Europe?

I'll be in Germany for a summer internship. You can find information about it at this website http://www.transatlanticprogram.org/ and can see my picture if you click on the Participants of the Transatlantic Program 2007 tab to the left. It's a great picture: I look totally emaciated as it was taken last year when I was training to fight. Sweeeeeeeeeet....

última noite em Brasil

Ok so tonight is my last night in Brazil and we're taking it pretty easy and staying in so I figured I'd update the blog. Yesterday was the last day of Carnaval and we partied all night with intentions of waking up and going to the beach today.... yeah, that didn't happen. So tonight we've taken a much needed respite from the alcohol and tomorrow, cross my fingers, we are waking up at 8:00 to go to a beach about 45 min. from here. There are beaches right here in Recife but this beach is supposedly on of the prettiest in Brazil.

Alright, I'll get back to Brazil here shortly but for now I want to say a bit more about Buenos Aires while it is still fresh on my mind...

Buenos Aires was awesome, I wish I could have stayed longer. Just as I was starting to really know the city I left. I have a feeling that that is going to be the story of this whole trip, but oh well, I'll go back someday.

La Casa Rosada ("The Pink House"), akin to the White House (currently under renovation). There are two stories as to why it is pink: 1) When it was constructed, there were two major political parties, the Red and the White, so pink was a compromise. 2) Argentina is famous for its beef and has a ton of cattle, to offset costs cow's blood was used to color the paint.

I learned so much about Argentinian history, politics, culture, everything... I won't delve into it all now because comments were made telling me to keep all that stuff to a minimum, cough, Chris, cough, but I would highly suggest anyone who is interested to browse Wikapedia or something.

A few interesting tidbits though: earlier I said that there were hardly no indigenous people, that is because they were all killed off in an effort to clear the lower part of Argentina for settlement towards the the end of the 19th century. Also, no black people because the Africans that were here were used as the soldiers, on both sides, during Argentina's war of independence, and after that Argentina didn't have the same need for slave labor as did the US or Brazil, so more weren't brought in. Argentinian politics: I don't understand them at all. Argentinian politics are Peron. There are Peronistas and Anti-Peronistas, but I don't really understand what either of them stand for because Peron was both as far right as you can go, a faschist with friends like Mussilini and Franco, and as far left, with his policies of redistribution of wealth and support from the working class and Communist groups.

Also, I watched a documentary called "La Deuda" (The Debt) about the Argentinian debt and the monetary crisis of 2001 and its aftermath. The movie was made by Jorge Lanata, a left-wing journalist in the same vein as Michael Moore. Much of the movie showed the points of view of the extremes of Argentina about the need to pay back the Argentinian debt. It compared the view of the super rich, those vacationing in Punta del Este in Uruguay, who said that of course Argentina needed to pay it back and that of course they could, with the extremely poor, those starving to death in the northern states of Argentina. The point was that Argentina couldn't pay back its debt, especially at a time when the economy was in shambles, and take care of itself at the same time. The images of poverty were striking though. He compared being poor in Argentina with being poor in the US. Wow, there is no comparison. The poverty in South America is real poverty.

Both the crisis and the debt are still on everyone's mind, but the situation is much better. The economy is stronger, with the exchange rate being 3-1 with the dollar now as opposed to 5-1 in 2001, and number of those living under the poverty line has decreased from 30% in 2001 to 10-15% now. Most importantly, as told to me by my professor, the people have hope, and walk with there heads held high.

Ok, enough about that.

Buenos Aires isn't the safest city in the world, but its not the most dangerous either, but there is a neighborhood called La Boca (famous for its soccer team the Boca Juniors) which is pretty dangerous. It is really a touristy area, but you're highly warned to stick to the tourist streets. Well, one of my schoolmates decided to cut through La Boca to get to the Boca Junior stadium to buy tickets for a game (rather than walk around through another neighborhood). He was walking with another student who was an older lady of about 50. Well, he got jumped. Two guys jumped out and one put a knife to his throat and told him to give him his money and his camera. My schoolmate though, somehow twisted around and shoved the guy to the ground. He couldn't simply run away though, because he was with an elderly woman who not only couldn't run due to here age, but had also been kicked to the ground, so he had to fight the guys off with his backpack until they got back to a more populated area. It's an amazing story but almost as amazing as the event itself, something that we all laughed about after the fact, is that he was even attacked at all. The guy is a BIG guy. About 6'5" and muscular, and he is really boisterous and outspoken; you can tell that he is not the type of person that is going to do something against his will, almost exactly like Chris but more werewolf-looking, with hair like Wolverine from the X-Men. No one could imagine walking up to the guy with intentions of robbing him. He's also Polish, so I think that partially explains his reaction. People from the former USSR just have a different mentality about things like that, I guess it's just more commonplace there.

Tango couple in La Boca.

Another funny story, well again after-the-fact... I was talking to another schoolmate at a bar one night, a Swiss girl that I was starting to fancy, and I asked her a question about what she was doing the next day or something, and it turned out that I had already asked her that question and she had told me the day before. This was something that had happened before with her and at the time we had joked about it and I told her "yeah, I know, but I've just met so many new people and you always ask the same questions and its hard to remember, blah, blah, blah..." So this time she had the same reaction telling me "Oh Matt you're so forgetful, I mean come on, do you even remember my name?" The rough part was that I didn't, and I had talked with this girl every day at school for about a week. When I met her though it was at a bar and it was loud and she had a foreign name anyway, so it was a situation where: 1) she told me and I never really got it the first time and then 2) I saw her again and forgot to ask and then 3) I kept on seeing her and didn't ever ask her again in order not to appear a jackass. I would just say "hola chica". Anyways, I told her I didn't remember her name and I think she thought that I was joking because she asked again "c'mon what's my name?" When I told her again that I didn't know she quickly turned serious and asked slowly and deliberately "what is my name?" That's where the conversation ended. I tried to explain using the same logic given above but to no avail. She feigned laughter but was fuming. She stepped outside to have a smoke and I quickly turned to my friend and asked her name: Antonella. I apologized when she came back, using her name, but it was futile. Once again she lauged it off and said that it didn't matter but wow, that was an awkward situation. I payed her drink and left.

Ok, I'm going to go to bed. I'll write about Brazil next time, probably when I'm in Chile... that makes sense right?

Carnaval

I am in Brazil!!!

Buenos Aires dos

What's up? So today is Monday and on Friday I leave Buenos Aires to go to Brazil to celebrate Carnaval, awesome, I'm excited.

Posing with my Advanzado II teacher.

Last Friday was my last day in my Advanzado I class and today I am starting with Advanzado II. I switched to afternoon classes this week, which will be wonderful!!! I went out every day last week until 4-5 am, and that schedule with 9 am classes just really wasn't working. I couldn't think for the first hour... or two... or three, depending on the day. Anyways, now I have classes from 2-6 pm, so I'll be able to sleep in.

Last week I went to a Peña Folklorica, which was just a traditional northern Argentinian restaraunt with a live band playing traditional music, it was awesome. A woman fronted the band for a few songs. Her voice was incredible, really emotional. Someone described her as an Argentinian Tori Amos. Since then I've been to 3 other traditional restaraunts, the food is great.

Fiesta-ing at an outdoor concert.

I went to one Saturday night with my roommate and after we ate and were receiving the check, an older Argentinian lady struck up conversation with us. We were talking and having a friendly exchange, but then she just talked with us, or rather talked to us, for about half an hour, talking about everything from food, to travel, to her ex-husband. She was sitting alone and seemed pretty lonely, and it was hard to finally break away and leave. Sorry, that story was probably in no way interesting, but was just something that happened that was pretty funny at the time.

Another night I went out with some friends and we went to a trendier bar for some drinks. My friend ordered a cup of the "house" wine and then ordered another cup later. When we got the check, the cups of "house" wine were 40 pesos. To compare, the Vodka Redbulls were 14 and the mojitos were 12. The girl didn't speak Spanish so well so I talked with the waitress, she said "look here's the wine" and pointed to the menu, and I told her that I wasn't arguing the fact that there existed such a ridiculously-priced cup of wine, but rather that she didn't order it, she ordered the "house" wine. The waitress told us that they didn't have a "house" wine, so she just picked one, which happened to be the most expensive (most were about 12, and the second most expensive was 22). Ridiculous. Finally she just paid for one glass, which was still a rip but oh well. We just told ourselves afterwards that we would't go back, but then I ended up going there 2 nights later with a different group of friends...

I didn't go to Gualeguaychú this past weekend. I decided that since I'm going to Brazil in a week a week anyway, I really didn't need to go to the Argentinian version of Carnaval. I heard it was fun though.

View of the stadium during River Plate game.

I went to a River Plate soccer game yesterday. River Plate is one of the biggest soccer teams in Argentina along with Boca Juniors. They are both from Buenos Aires and are huge rivals. The game itself wasn't that great. They played Lanus, a team from just outside Bs As, who they should have beat pretty easily, but they only won 1-0 and the lone goal came in stoppage time. The atmosphere was awesome though. The stadium holds about 60,000 and it was practically full. There were fans with huge drums and the whole stadium chanted songs the whole time, non stop, it was awesome. The opposing teams fans sat in a lone section that was fenced off from the River fans. The top of the fence was lined with barbed wire and there was an empty section on both sides, with a line of policemen making sure that noone crossed. Awesome. Their fans were crazy though too.

I'll write more later on, I've gotta go. Ciao...

Buenos Aires

So today makes one week that I've been in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It's summer here, so it's about 90 degrees and very humid. I could do without the humidity, but it's much better than sub-freezing temperatures in OK and MO.

I'm taking language classes at a school, and I tested into the advanced class, so that's pretty sweet. My class is just three students and a professor, and we basically just talk about the culture, politics, and history of Argentina, and then touch on grammatical/language issues that arise through the discussions. I'm enjoying it.

I live in a shared apartment with two Germans, who are also studying at the school. They're both really nice, and we try to speak to eachother solely in Spanish.

This first week was really slow going at first, as I didn't know anyone other than my roommates, and I didn't really have anything to do. Each day I'm meeting more and more people though, and I've gone out a few times, so the situation is getting better. Unfortunately I really don't know any Argentinians, which I expected, but I'm still a bit sad about. It would obviously tremendously help my Spanish if I were hanging out with Argentinians, but it would also give me a truer picture of the country. Oh well.

The widest avenue in the world, punctuated by the Obelesk.

Before I came here everyone said that Buenos Aires is a European City in South America, the Paris of South America. It's the truth. I walk the streets and I feel like I'm in Europe. The architecture, the buildings, really the look of the city is completely European. So also is the populus. The city is made up of Spaniards and Italians, at least as far as ancestry is concerned, to the point where 4th or 5th generation Italians and Spaniards still have papers and could immigrate to their respective country of origin if they wanted. Everyone is tall and pretty fair-skinned (darker than me obviously). The women are all ridiculously beautiful and the men all have mullets.

There are very few minorities within the city that I have seen. There is a Chinese population that seems to run every small grocery store in the city, and an indigenous population that you see doing the more menial jobs or selling handicrafts on the streets. I have yet to see a black person in Argentina.

Mural in La Boca.

The country is crazy about soccer, and of all the teams in the Argentinian 1st division, I think 75% of them come from Buenos Aires. Each neighborhood has it's own team. The fans are ravenous. There exist huge animosities between teams/fans, to the point where there were some 16 deaths last year from houligan violence. Wow...

Next weekend I am going to go to a carnaval celebration in Gualeguayghu. Which I think/hope is going to be something like carnaval in Brazil. Its a town on to the north of Buenos Aires on a river that borders Uruguay.

As an aside, something interesting is happening right now at that very spot. Uruguay is a richer country but like most other South American countries exports most all of its resources and imports finished goods. For years it has been exporting trees to make into paper, and then importing the paper. Well, now in an attempt to build up industry so as to become more self-sufficient, it has built a paper factory (the size of a mini town) on the river. The problem is that the factory is directly across from Gualeguaychu. The factory is not functional yet, but is 80% complete. When running it will emit sulfuric-smelling gasses that will destroy the economy of Gualeguaychu, which is based on tourism. The construction is halted for now as the two countries figure out what to do. The presidents aren't talking with eachother though, and Spain is acting as a mediator. Last week the three bridges between the two countries in Gualeguaychu were destroyed (or picked and rendered unusable) by protestors, and the Argentinian president, who claims to be left-leaning, hasn't said anything about it because it is a demonstration of the people and therefore should not be reprimanded. Meanwhile commerce has stopped between the two countries in this area (and these are the main land-crossing points between the countries). Cool. Just someting that is going on.

I'll write something more interesting next time...

La Recoleta Cemetery, where, along with countless other Argentenian notables, Eva Peron is buried.