I´m dreaming in Spanish, and it´s still gibberish.


Jan 4, 2007
I’m reading the last line of my last post and realizing that I must have been tired, because the last thing I was last night was cold. Anway….
The trip around Antofugasta was quite interesting. Jake and I got up at about 8:00 in the morning and I started working on studying more Spanish. I am tired of not being able to remember a word after I hear it, I also need to work on my verb tenses. I don’t have a good book hear that has them in it and I feel very stupid not being able to comfortably conjugate the words I should use. I’m also having issues with typing. I’ll start to type the word, and the Spanish one will come to mine, causing my fingers to start typing that. Boy I’m messed up!
Anyway, I studied a while then our host mother fixed us a breakfast of rolls, cheese some kind of luncheon meat, probably ham based, juices and café. I don’t use the term coffee, because what they use down here isn’t really coffee. It’s Nescafe and consists of a powder that almost, but not quite, taste like weak coffee when mixed with water and lots of sugar. I had mine with warm milk because the tap water of Antofugasta is supposedly heavy with arsenic from all the mining. Charlyn has warned us that we should only drink the bottled water, and find unique ways to avoid drinking the water from the tap. Vegetables and rice cooked in the water should be ok, but we should avoid it as much as possible. I’m of the opinion that I’m going to be as careful as I can be, but not be psychotic about it. Antofugasta is a large city, filled with a lot of people who aren’t dead yet. Besides, I’m only going to be here for two weeks. Napoleon is rumored to have died of arsenic poisoning over a much longer time, and I’m a much larger man than Napoleon was.
After an enjoyable meal and after breakfast discussion with looked more like a game of charades, our host mother insisted on accompanying us to our meeting spot. I believe that she was convinced that Jake and I would get lost and wander around her city until we got mugged, killed, were responsible or starting an international incident or some combination of the three. We met Charlyn, Gina and Kati in front of the gazebo as promised. Tradition has it that if you walk through the arches of the gazebo you are destined to either never leave the city or will return. I make sure that I kept a good distance from any part of the arch. I’ve only been here less than one day; I’m not ready to make those types of commitments yet. After hellos were said we started waiting for Mario and Daniel. Daniel would be our tour guide around the city. He has just turned 16 years old and is basically a little brother of Charlyn, who is trying everything she can in her power to keep him in school and out of as much trouble as she can. I don’t know how successful she is being, but I wish her the best of luck. Mario is his 18 year old cousin who has just returned from his military training. When you turn 18 you reach the age of total consent for everything in this country, and it seems that Daniel is hanging out with him now doing “everything” as well.
Talking with Mario and Charlyn, it seems that when you turn 18 and are male you get entered in to a draft for military training. Mario drew the short straw and spent nine months learning telecommunications. There is a heavy military presence in Antofugasta because it use to belong to Bolivia and the land farther north use to belong to Argentina. The land was lost in a war around the early 1900’s and Boliva and Argentina have been without a seaport for that long. Political relations are strained between the countries to say the least.
Daniel showed up in typical fashion, about 30 minutes late, and only after a telephone call to wake him up. The actual tour wasn’t anything exciting but we all got some time to check out the rand new mall, (it looks exactly like any American mall), and walked along the shore. After a lunch of hamburgers and French fries we went to a meeting at the Ministerio de Education. Where we met our counterpart on the Chilean side. Carolyn was having difficulty getting money transferred from the Santiago up to Antofugasta. This is something that seems fairly common, things being late and materials not showing up on time. After an enjoyable discussion about what we were hoping to do, planning to do and didn’t know about yet, we had a parade of people come into the office who were at various governmental levels. I think I kissed about 6+ cheeks that day, (the traditional Chilean greeting between women and men).------I just got back from the house of Yorka and Christian. I’ll continue with the story of the day and get back to what happened this evening.
After the “official” meeting, where we had the opportunity to speak English with Carolyn and it was Daniel and Mario’s turn to look confused about what we were saying, we went to la playa. The playa is Spanish for beach and really seems to be the main thing to do in a city that is surrounded by open desert with little life and the ocean to the remaining side. We swam and dived in the ocean, but I don’t want to know what was in that water. I’m still having a headache from it. In all honestly, it may be just the lack of sleep, sun, dehydration and exertion from swimming, but I’ll blame it on the water.
Yorka is the daughter of Rosalinda and Christian is her boyfriend. We were suppose to be at the house of Rosalinda at 7:00 to be picked up by Danica and Roberto, (Rosalinda’s son and daughter-in-law). We were all suppose to meet that group and Rodrigo and his wife (Rosalinda’s other son and daughter-in-law), but were half an hour late. We decided that they had come and gone and looked forward to a nice relaxing night. When we were about to call it a day at 9:00 when Roberto pulls up for the first time, two hours late by Unito Estado’s standards. Piling into the care we drove a short distance to the house and had a delightful night eating empinatas and conversing in Spanish and broken English. I also learned how to make empinatas.
Take two eggs, flour, salt and water and mix together into a hard dough. Put in whatever stuffing you want, usually shrimp, cheese, fish or whatever. Then deep fry them. The result is a tasty dish. As I described it to Gina she said “oh, a Hot Pocket.” At that moment, a little part of me died inside.
We also talked a little music, different slang terms in both English and Spanish, and ate some really greasy empinatas. I had a pretty bad headache the entire time, and still do, but it was a great experience and I feel that my Spanish is improving, if nothing else, my charades and workarounds are improving. It’s strange that I’m starting to pick up more words and phrases. I think it’s because I’m starting to compensate for the Chilean accent. This also scares me a little, because I don’t want to return home with a Chilean accent. No one will be ale to understand what I say!
Anyway, it’s late, my head feels like a jackhammer, I have a meeting at 9:00am with the other Whitworth teachers to see the school for the first time and I need to study a few more minutes of Spanish with a hope that some of the words will stick in my mind.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Today as I was going through the grocery store I almost picked up some bottled water for you, then I realized that it would not help you much down in Chile. :)

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