SKYDIVING -- April 15th, 2012

Yes, I did go ahead and fulfill one of the most notorious and stereotypical study abroad activities of all time - skydiving. The experience began with an interesting exchange of emails. Here is a copy of the directions sent to me by the Skydiveandes employee:

Deben tomar un bus interurbano con dirección a Melipilla en Estación Central: El bus se llama Ruta 78 y es de color Blanco. Una ves en el bus deben indicarle al conductor que su bajada es en el restaurante Barbarela. Cuando lleguen a Barbarela seguir la siguiente indicaciones:

1.- Cruzar con mucha precaución la autopista.

2.- Se encontraran con un árbol, deben bajar por el lado derecho del árbol.

3.- Encontraran un camino de tierra deben seguir ese camino que los llevara al medio de la pista de aterrizaje.

4.- Son 15 minutos de camina hasta llegar al hangar.

The instructions begin by telling us (Brittany and me) to leave Santiago on an intercity bus to Melipilla, but to advise the driver to let us off, alongside the freeway, at the Barbarela restaurant. Easy enough, right? Hop off on the side of the road and follow some easy directions: 1. Be very careful crossing the freeway; 2. You will come to a tree, you should go to the right of it; 3. You will then find a path (after passing said tree) and follow it until you reach the airstrip; 4. Its about a 15 minute walk to the hangar. 

Umm, you want us to do what?

I wanted to very clearly express to him that Skydiving in South America is considered to be dangerous enough by most people, much less crossing a freeway and finding a tree and then walking through farms to the hangar. Well... we did just that.

So, we travelled over hill and dale, farm and freeway, agricultural runoff ditch and airstrip to arrive at the hangar. We were greeted by smiling faces, who I'm sure were all in on the huge joke that we just followed those stupid directions and now were about to pay an ungodly sum of money to hurl ourselves at the ground. Hahaha very funny. Walking into the shady office was a welcome relief if the wording of the liability release form wasn't. After initialing paragraph after paragraph that prevented me from suing them for anything from drunkenness to a faulty parachute, I encountered my favorite passage and one that made me laugh out loud.  Here it is:

14) Experimental Airplane

I am aware that SkydiveAndes Club airplane is an amateur-built experimental Comp Air 8, and that the airplane does not comply with standard safety regulations for certified aircraft.

                                                                     Initial to indicate agreement (____________)

Its a WHAT? At that point, I probably wouldn't have been surprised if paragraph 15 said: "You will be dropped from genetically modified pigeons from an altitude of 12,000 feet. Initial to indicate agreement (_____)" Thankfully it didn't. BUT STILL. 

After laughing, nervously, and maybe peeing a little, we initialed and handed over a large wad of blue chilean bank notes to complete the transaction. We then waited and waited and waited. For around 4 hours in total. Then I went skydiving. Then Brittany waited for another hour. Then she went. 

Here are a couple videos.

Pre skydive:

Explanation of the videos: As I put the harness on, my heart instantly took residence in my throat and began to beat very fast. I was soon acquainted with the amateur aircraft, both inside and out. On the way up, I sat between the legs of the professional jumper and stared at the back of the plane. I inspected the inside of the aircraft: it was stripped to its bones of the normal plastic and padding that would normally be there and instead was a military-patterned kevlar looking material. I had to think to myself: why does military camouflage always end up being associated with extreme sports? I tried to avoid looking at the thin sliding plastic door that would be my escape from this amateur aircraft (which, of all things, had a sticker that read: "No Farting"). The view out the windows actually turned out to be incredibly peaceful: To the right I looked a hundreds of miles of snow-capped Andes mountains that rose above the Santiago smog and stretched up and down the backbone of the continent. To the left was a shimmering blue Pacific Ocean. How cool is that? I was seeing the width of Chile. And it was gorgeous. 

TWO MINUTES

What? Oh right, I'm about to fall out of a plane. I forgot. WAIT WHAT? TWO MINUTES? And just like that the heart beating and the air breathing went into overdrive. Well, until I saw the first guy nonchalantly fall to his right out the open hole in the side of the plane, then I started losing it. But, we inched towards the door and I waved at the camera and we fell. See below.

The official video I paid to have made:

Yeah. It was awesome. Intense. However many adjectives that you want to add but that all fail to capture what its like. Especially because there is one HUGE problem with skydiving. During the whole process of going up and falling, you become so inflated with adrenaline that when its all over and you are back on the ground, everything feels lame. All you want to do when you land is keep the feeling going. My initial thoughts were: shoot guns, run really fast and far, chop down trees and drive a rally car really fast. Essentially the skydiver wastes an incredible amount of adrenaline in the time after the jump is over. They should just have you hop in a boxing ring right after you land. It would definitely be appreciated, at least by me, if not by many.

Thanks for reading.

Makin' Pigs in Pomaire -- April 14th

      A sunny Saturday in mid-April, we all piled into the van at our designated meeting spot to drive about an hour and a half outside of Santiago to enjoy the artisan town of Pomaire. Follow the link for more information about the town. The trip was exciting even before we left Santiago as one of our group members had just recently returned from a Chilean wedding the night before. While that might seem innocuous, but in fact the party had danced its way until 6am with the help of many a pisco sour apparently. Needless to say her enthusiasm at 9:30am was unmatched up until the point she passed out in the back row of the van.
     So we departed and a quick nap later we arrived. Pomaire, as we saw it, was a dusty little town with overgrown trees and a surplus of pottery shops. The van bumped up a long driveway to a large and gaudy house. The hosts warmly welcomed us and quickly showed us to the outdoor oven where they were preparing fresh bread for us to eat with our unexpected breakfast. AWESOME. Food surprises are some of the best, especially on a sleep-deprived Saturday morning. Breakfast consisted of fresh baked bread, with fresh eggs from the property or fig jam and a steaming hot cup of coffee. The meal gave us a chance to look around the house, which they say had been built ten years earlier. It was filled with everything. I mean everything. There was an 80s KISS themed pinball machine (which quickly became the object of all my envy). There was a circe 1950s baby blue beauty salon hair dryer being used as a coat rack. A large collection od locks and keys hung from a wall. An old radio was mounted to another wall whose dial was the light switch. I can't even attempt to name everything, but it was very cool.

     Filled with hot and delicious food, we were given a brief talk about the history of the town. A notable tidbit that came from this talk was that the families in Pomaire refer to the other families by their respective specialties in pottery. Comical, especially when she admitted that most people don't even know the real names of their neighbors. So we tucked that in our cap and set off down the road to play with clay at a workshop. At some nameless, signless, storefront-less garage, we encountered a stout man who was touted as being member of one of the original families of this artisan town (and thus, by extension, famous and very good at making clay crafts). After we gaped at the sheer volume of clay pots and candle holders and vases and umbrella holders, we turned our attention to a demonstration, lead by the man of the hour. We were going to be making piggy banks! Thankfully the body of the pig had already been made into a perfect round shape and we only had to tack on the features that make a football look like a pig. Ten piggy banks later and we were sitting behind a spinning wheel shaping the soft wet clay into bowls (or something that should have resembled a bowl).

The workshop

Piggy bank couple

My pig 

Makin' a bowl

     After everyone had a turn at making a bowl, we headed back to the house to be stuffed with food once more. Plates and plates of food were set in front of us. It was nauseatingly good. So, logically, after I decided to dip my toes in the pool on the grounds of this house (everyone else scoffed at such an activity... their loss). Well because that didn't last long, we headed back into town to try our hand at buying the clay artifacts.  Given that we were buying directly from the craftsmen, prices were rock bottom.  I figured that, if you didn't mind having all earthen-colored kitchenware, you could probably completely supply a kitchen of everything from bowls and cups to utensils and baking dishes for around $50. Pretty impressive. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to test that theory. Maybe next time. I came away from cheap pottery with only a few items: a coffee mug, a pitcher and three cups, setting me back a total of $7.

Wine Tasting: Casas del Bosque

On March 25, we had another program outing to Casas del Bosque, a winery (one of the thousands in Chile) to the west of Santiago about an hour. Our group was greeted by the smiling hostess and given a wooden box, clippers and a snazzy apron embroidered with the company logo. For what? To harvest grapes obviously. We piled into a tractor-pulled modern-day covered wagon of sorts. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up next to some average looking wines and were told that we had to fill two of these boxes with WHITE grapes before we could get our lunch... After only a half hour on the premises, we were already taking orders and harvesting grapes with the best of them ("them" being other wide-eyed tourists or hungover youth). 

Two boxes later, we headed to the sorting machine. This big, noisy and vibrating contraption would sort picked grapes (still on the stems) into just picked grapes of the perfect size to then be made into wine. Pretty cool (pictures below). Then, it was back in the covered wagon and off through the vines to taste some wine. It was a savignon blanc and touted as the best in Chile... I was skeptical given that 1. Chile is largely known for its red wines and, 2. it smelled of grapefruits... With very little color to the dubious tasting wine, it quickly turned out not to be my favorite. But because it was free, I had two. We gazed out across a pond, sampling bread sticks and shrimp ceviche and sipping the finest Chile has to offer of this varietal. Because that type of relaxation tends to bore a lot of people, we hopped back in the wagon to head to the tasting room for a final sample before out lunch. The cabernet they offered was much better and, in fact, delicious after the cat pee we just consumed. We were surprised with home made empanadas filled with chunks of beef and tomatoes to accompany the wine! Lunch followed. After several courses and two types of wine, we left Casas del Bosque fatted and slightly intoxicated for the hour ride back to Santiago. It was a good Sunday.

Photos courtesy of Jaime Gottleib

the harvest

the sorting machine

grapes ready to go

tasting the savignon blanc

lots of wine

Creedence Clearwater Revisited: March 23rd, 2012

Really, the reason why I decided to come to Chile was because I knew Creedence would be performing in Santiago in late March. The above picture features Doug Clifford (3rd from left) and Stu Cook (2nd from right), two of the original four members of this legendary band (both aged 67 now, but rock out and make Tom Petty look like a corpse). It was an amazing show. It was also funny/interesting to go to a concert of an American (or any English-speaking band for that matter) in a Spanish-speaking country. Doug Clifford would yell out the crowd of ten thousand adoring Chileans only to receive mixed reviews as many fought to translate his shouts. A few times he was interrupted by "Ole-ee, ole-ee Chilee-ee."  But CCR played brilliantly! Obviously. They played all the hits, like thirty of them, including versions of "I Heard It Through The Grape Vine" and "Susie Q" that would give Phish a run for their money for most awesome live jam sessions and guitar/bass/keyboard/drum solos. I bought a concert t-shirt and I don't regret it. That's how good they are.

School Started

Classes (for those interested):

1. Geography of Latin America (more like anthropological history of the region, not just rivers and mountains)
2. Organization and Policy of the Chilean Education System
3. Chilean Poetry at the end of the 20th Century
4. Literature of the Southern Cone

With no class on Friday, I have started volunteering at Liceo Poeta Pablo Neruda. It's a public K-12 in an outlying neighborhood of Santiago where resources to learn English are scarce. I am currently teaching an English workshop with a friend on Thursday afternoons and helping a language arts teacher on Fridays.

More to come on Liceo Pablo Neruda later!

Isla Negra

Isla Negra is a coastal town about an hour and a half from Santiago and south of Valparaiso, Chile. It is best known for the former home of poet Pablo Neruda, Chile's most famous poet. We, the members of the WashU program in Chile, were able to go on a program sponsored trip to this house and beach locale one Sunday at 9am. Lady Luck had it that my camera would die about 30 minutes into the day tour. His house was decorated with some of the strangest, but yet coolest things around. Namely, a collection of ship's prows... I mean, who wouldn't want several giant wooden women jutting out of the wall or the corner of the room? He also had collections of masks, ships in bottles, alcohol decanters, maps, suits, shells and probably other things that are too esoteric for me to remember. Either way, enjoy the pictures!

el grupo

a part of the house

steam engine...

the house!

the late poet's grave by the ocean

the pacific

Haircut

I thought I would share this/record it for posterity's sake. The idea of a haircut is a simple one at best (at least for guys... with short, straight, blonde hair). I had grown tired of wearing a mop on my head in the heat of the Chilean summer, so I stopped into the local peluqueria just outside the metro stop by my house. I sat on the padded waiting bench of the aged barber shop, deflecting skeptical glances from the wrinkled and potentially ancient chilean man to my right. In front of my worked two people. A woman, whose five-year-old daughter was asking if she could eat a piece of candy, and a man. The man was paying more attention to this man's hair than probably the collective care given to my haircuts over the last five years. Additionally, his scissor technique was superb (to the point of being frightening, but more on that later). As this barber massaged this man's hair with his comb and clippers for the next half hour, I ruminated a little on what was about to befall my head. Normally (in the US that is), I go to Nice Cuts - where I receive nice treatment and a generally a nice cut too. At Nice Cuts in San Francisco, I forge my way through a language barrier. Huh! But that barrier is between English and some southeast Asian language I cannot identify. I found it funny, odd, fateful(?) that after years of acting out my haircut in the US, my hair/language difficulties would continue in Chile, this time with Spanish.

Finally, my time came. The stout, scruffy and slightly balding chilean summoned me from the couch to the chair for my turn under the scissors. I began explaining what I typically like for a hair cut. And by explaining I mean gesticulating with accents of Spanish tossed in for effect. He understood... with a broad smile. Silence ensued. It was broken by the sound of the clippers, normally innocuous, but not ominous. What did I actually ask for? Too late. The size 3.5 clippers hummed through my hair with ease and speed. With the majority of my hair on the floor, the barber brought out his scissors. Oh the scissors. It really wasn't so much the scissors themselves as the way he wielded them. Much like he turned on the clippers, I imagine he rolled up his sleeve and completed the circuit to some small motor in his wrist that caused his thumb and middle finger to twitch mechanically. Like pistons in an engine, or the unrelenting jaws of a piranha as it eats whatever it wants... like blonde hair. While all these images and fears rushed into my head, he still hadn't cut any hair. The scissors just rhythmically clanked together about four inches from my right ear as if he need to warm up his cutting hand before he went to town on my head. And so he did, for twenty or so seconds the hand twitched and the blades snapped until finally lumps of my hair fell to the floor at an astonishing pace.

My heart rate calmed as I realized those scissors would not be taking a pound of flesh from my scalp or ears. Then something magical happened. I don't know if anyone else likes this, but I find that when barbers trim the hair on the back of my neck, it makes the haircut exponentially better. Makes me feel clean, or something. Anyway, after he buzzed the back of my neck and lined up the hairline behind my ears, the magic happened. A little white cotton swab was dabbed in rubbing alcohol and wiped on my next. And upon seeing the straight blade razor, the remaining hairs needed no prodding, but stood straight up on their own. He proceeded to clearcut any remaining outlying hairs that should have escaped his watchful eye AND make this the most awesome haircut of all time.

For $8 and a half an hour of my time, I experienced the best haircut of my life. Needless to say, I will be squeezing in as many as I can in the next 4 months before I go home. The end.