Thanksgiving, Corral, "NO! TANTO!" and "Panpo"

I haven't written anything in over a week, so I though I would take a few moments to update everyone on what's been going on down here. First off, things on the school front have quieted down quite a bit. This is the last week of the semester, so all the classes that I work in have been taking tests. So there hasn't been a whole lot for me to do other than help grade. On top of that, since all the students are so busy studying for their finals, it's been a bit on the quiet side lately. For these reasons last week was relatively uneventful. But, a few cool things did happen.

Last thursday was thanksgiving. This was the second year in a row that I was in a different country on thanksgiving, which is kind of unfortunate because thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Nothing like a day when all you do is eat wonderful food and watch football. Sadly, for me, American football isn't very popular down here in Chile. And by not very popular I mean noone ever watches, noone knows anything about it, and it's almost impossible to find a game on TV. That is one of the few things I really miss about being in the US. Oh well. Last year when I was living in Canada during thanksgiving I decided to start my own little "I'm not in the US for thanksgiving" tradition. This tradition consists of going out and eating my favorite food, pizza. I figured that if I can't have turkey, then at least I'll have pizza. And since pizza is something found universally, I figure I will be able to maintain this tradition wherever I end up. So, after I finished up with everything in the office I went down the street to a local pizza parlor and ate a medium peperoni pizza. It was fantastic to say the least. Then I went back to the office with the hopes of being able to call home via skype so I could talk to the family. Unfortunatly, when I got to the office was only able to make a short 5 minute call to my dad before the internet decided to stop working. I waited around the office for a couple hours hoping it would come back online, but alas, it did not. So I was a bit disapointed. I had wanted to talk to everyone back home, and I was hoping to listen to a game online. Oh well, such is life.

Last friday was a bit more eventful. I started the day off right by sleeping in. At around noon I got a call from Victor. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I had nothing going on. He asked me if I wanted to go on a short 'travel' with him. I said yes and he told me to meet him downtown at 1:30. So I took a nice cold shower, got dressed and headed downtown. I had no idea what we would do or where we would be going, so I took the necessary items for adventure; sunglasses, rain jacket, pocket dictionary, camera, money, etc. I met up with Victor and we hopped on a bus to Niebla. Niebla is a small town about 20 minutes from Valdivia. On the ride Victor told me we were going Corral, a small town on an island close to Niebla. He had to do an interview at the local navy post for one of his classes. It all sounded pretty good to me, so I was happy.
It was a really nice day, lots of sunshine, warm temperature, everything you would want for an outing. One the ride to Niebla Victor acted like a good tour guide and pointed everything of interest out to me. Since he is tourism student, he's pretty damn good at this. He told me all about the history of the area, how it was an important Spanish sport a long time ago. Pointed out all the old fortifications and explained how they were used. When we got to Niebla we took a 20 minute ferry to Corral. The island is right at the mouth of the river, so on one side of us was the fresh water of the river, and on the other side you could see the pacific. Very beautiful area. While we were on the ferry Victor continued telling me about all the fortifications. He also told me about the earthquake and subsequent Tsunami that destroyed the area in 1960. I had heared a lot about this before that day. It was one of the biggest tsunamis recorded and destroyed most of Corral, Niebla, and even made its way all the way to Valdivia. There is still no working train system in Valdivia because all the tracks were destroyed in the tsunami almost 50 years ago. So I took it all with a grain of salt when we got to Corral and saw signs warning "Danger, Tsunami zone" and saw all of the signs for evacuation routes.
The first thing we did when we got there was go to the local fortification. It was very cool. Most of us was original, though there were some spots that had been restored. All the cannons were originals though, so that was really cool. After that Victor had to go and do his interview, so I wandered around the town for awhile. When he was done we decided that we needed food. By now it was about 4:30 and I was hungry. We went to a little covered restaurant/food shack and got some empanadas mariscos, empanadas full of different shellfish. They were great. Very fresh, in fact, I don't think they were prepared in any way until we ordered them. Plus they came with some sort of chile salsa that was incredible. I could feel it burning in my stomach for an hour after we ate it, really spicy. As Victor put it, it was manly food. After we ate we walked down the street to a pub and had some beer. The owner was an old guy and he and Victor told me Chilean jokes and we discussed such important issues as which actresses we thought were the most attractive. We wanted to have another beer, but unfortunatly the owner had to close up. So we went back and caught a ferry back to Niebla, then a bus back to Valdivia. When we got back it was decided that more beer was, in fact, exactly what we needed. So we went to a local bar near campus called tratomundos and had a couple more beers. Finally, at 8 Victor had to head back home. So we made plans to have a going away party the next weekend and went our seperate ways.

Saturday day was pretty uneventful. Marjorie was studying and I was doing school work most of the day. She put Fran to sleep around 9pm and continued studying. At around 10:30 she stopped, looked up at me and said, tonight we need to watch a movie and drink beer. I was, of course, in complete agreement. So I went to the store and bought six, one liter bottles of cheap Chilean beer. Six was way too much for just us, but one of her friends was going to come and join us later. So we hung out, drank beer and watched The 40 Year Old Virgin on my computer. I put on the Spanish sountrack and turned on subtitles in English. At around 1:30am Marjorie's friend, Carolina, showed up. Various beer fueled conversations then took place. The topics of which included life goals, family, school, then deteriorated into what we like about ourselves, what we didn't like, and eventually got to swear words in English, and the fact that 'according to her' chilean men were just not well enough endowed. All of this of course took place over several hours during the course of the entire night.
At around 3:30am we ran out of beer. Rather than call it quits for the night and escape with some semblence of well being and good health, it was decided that more beer was necessary. So we called a taxi, which bought the beer and then brought it to the house at a much inflated price. But we were having fun so it was all good. Around 5:30am Marjorie finally hit the wall and had to go to bed. I had not realized to what extent she was entoxicated until she stood up and almost fell over. We much effort she was able to stumble the entire ten feet to her bed and promptly pass out. This just left Carolina and me, though I was rapidly approaching the end of the line myself. She, however, seemed to be going strong. She seemed to just be hitting her stride, and I was inches from falling asleep where I sat. These Chileans really know how to stay up late and drink. My gringo blood just can't seem to get grasp on it. Yeah, I can stay up right there with them, but the next day is always terrible. We ended up sitting and talking until around 7:30am. Finally I had reached my limit and needed to get some sleep. She was staying with a friend a couple blocks away and asked me if I could walk her over there, which I did.
Stepping out into the sun at 7:45am after a night of drinking can only be desribed as really, really bright. I was fairly intoxicated by this point, and so things like sunglasses were beyond my cognative abilities. Carolina was tanked. I hadn't realized it until we got outside, but she could barely walk in a straight line. This fact became evident to me when she came outside, took two steps, and immediatly tripped on the curb and landed on her ass... all in what appeared to be slow motion. I of course laughed my ass off. We then proceeded to stumble down the middle of the street in the exact opposite of a straight line. I could have handled myself fine, but she could barely walk and needed support in this endeavor, which meant that the 5 minute walk turned into 15 minutes. We were walking directly into the rising sun at this point and could barely see. So she opened her umbrella and held it in front of us like a shield to block the sun.
So picture all of this. It's sunday morning at around 8am in a little nieghborhood on Isla Teja in Valdivia, Chile. There are two drunks stumbling down the middle of the street, a Chilena and a gringo. It is a beautiful morning, not a cloud in the sky, and they are holding an umbrella in front of them trying to block out the sun, but also making it so they can't see where they are going. It was a pretty good time. We finally got to where she was staying, said our goodbyes, and I went back to the house. This time it took me all of 5 minutes, and I walked nice and straight. I think I drank more than both of them, but I also went to bed the most sober. Hmmm. By the time I finally got into bed it was 8:15am, sunday morning. I passed out. And then got woken up at 10am when Marjorie came into the room looking for something with Fran. I have no idea what she was looking for, I was way too out of it. All I could do was lie in bed and stare straight ahead while I though 1. please leave so I can go back to sleep, and 2. I am going to hurt when I get up in a few hours. As soon as they left I fell back asleep and didn't wake up until 3pm, and then I had a massive headache. It's funny, in the US I never get headaches when I'm hung over, just nausea. Here I just get headaches. Must be whatever they put in the beer.

So that was pretty much my week. Nothing too spectacular, but some new experiences and some good stories. In another update, Marjorie has been trying to teach Fran to say my name, Ryan. Right now I am just 'tio'(uncle). She can't quite get the hang of Ryan though. She tries, but it always comes out something like Rahblahblah, which is pretty adorable. Also, for some reason, I am now called 'tanto' on a fairly regular basis. Tanto means dumb in Spanish. So whenever I try to do something I usually hear "NO! TANTO!" So it will look something like this, 'Hola Fran, quieres ducle?' (Hi Fran, do you want a snack?) "NO! TANTO!" At which point I put the treat on the table and she comes over and gets it. This all usually depends on how tired she is, but it's become pretty common. Marjorie- "Fran, say hello to uncle." Fran- (looks at me for a second, measuring me up) "NO! TANTO!" Me- "Fran, why am I tanto?" Fran- "TANTO!" If she wasn't so damn cute I may be offended, but as is, it's a constant source of ammusement for me.

The other day I had a very nice "Stupid Chilean moment". Chilean Spanish is full of slang. For example they will add the word 'po' to the end of another word to emphasize it. 'po' doesn't mean anything really. It is a shortened version of the word 'pues' which means 'well...' as in 'well, I could do that I guess.' So the other day we were getting ready to have 'once' and Marjorie asked me if I could go to the market to pick up a couple of things. So after she finished I ran back over the last and asked if I'd forgetten anything. To this she replied, "Y panpo." I sat there with a dumb look on my face for a moment and said, "Panpo?" She said, "Sí". "Qué es panpo?" I asked confused (What is panpo?) "Panpo, panpo." she replied. I mustered all of my Spanish speaking abilities and asked "huh?" Then the realization came to her, "Pan! Pan...po." And with that I felt nice and stupid. 'Pan' means bread. I knew this, but the 'po' threw me off. She started laughing and I pounded my forehead with my fist. Stupid Chilean Spanish. Two months and I still don't have the hang of it. maybe after two years, but two months just isn't enough. Oh well. Maybe someday. Hasta luego.