A short while after i got back from Peru, I saw Prodigy live. Prodigy is on my list of about 6 or 7 bands that i need to see live before i die so this particular night was particularly amazing. the show itself was good minus the sound quality of certain songs. i really wish i heard the synthesizers way more than i heard the drums and bass. but it was Prodigy. i don't think i could have asked for more. something really cool happened though after the show. i went by myself and was just hanging around the Teatro Caupolican when i noticed that there was an after party there. people were going in and out with wristbands. i really wanted to get into this party so i basically just waited around for someone to leave that didn't need their wristband any more. sure enough, someone did leave the party and sure enough, they gave me their wristband. i showed the security guy my band and i was in! there was a DJ spinning techno music and many people dancing. smoke and alcohol were everywhere. i didn't care about anything but the fact that i wanted to try to meet Prodigy. i asked a security guard where they were and in Spanish he said something along the lines of "dude, there's no way it's happening". so i just basically hung around and danced for a while. i actually ended up meeting some pretty cool Chileans that spoke English. we ended up sharing a cab together. one of the guys bought us all orange juice. they were really nice. overall, it was a pretty amazing night.
also, Halloween happened. alice and i wanted to dress up and go out somewhere but we didn't exactly figure out what we were going to be or where we were going to go until about 10pm on Halloween night. we had a bunch of ideas that got scrapped due to lack of materials available. we ended up being zombies and coloring our faces with black and red markers. but then we needed a place to go. we got invited to this Halloween party by one of Alice's friends but it ended up being really far away and inconvenient for us so we tried hitting up the Gringo bar. now, by the time we got there it was like 2am, so it was pretty packed with people that were dressed up. like, it was so packed that we couldn't get into it. so we met up with some other people that alice knew and ended up going to Subterraneo. this club (i think i've talked about it before), plays a lot of american pop and is pretty fun in general. and yes, we did hear "Thriller" that night so it was all worth it. again, it was a fun night.
alice had a few visitors in this past month. one of which was her friend Stephanie. the three of us ended up doing a lot of touristy things together all around Santiago. but one particularly notable weekend, we went to Valparaiso. why was it notable? because we took a harbor tour which we had never done before! now, let me explain something. this tour is not the most glamorous thing in the world. we paid i think like $3 for it and got shoved on a boat that barely held 30 people but somehow we squeezed like 45 on there. i honestly felt like the thing could capsize at any minute. the tour itself lasted about a half hour and we saw some decent things such as gigantic boats. the coolest thing we saw though were 2 sea lions chilling on a buoy. they were just napping and yawning. it was cool (see facebook for pictures). the only thing that really sucked about valpo that day was that i looked like a tomato afterward. i swear. i get sunburned so easily. and i'm pretty sure it was so bad that my skin bubbled a little. haven't gotten burnt that badly since the infamous 2nd degree sunburns from the River Rave in 2000. yeesh. let's move on, shall we?you know what else? Thanksgiving happened. and i'm not talking some kind of measly like, only 2 or 3 dishes meal kind of Thanksgiving. no. this was like, extravagant. how did this happen, you ask? well, alice's friend katie invited us to her place for Thanksgiving dinner and every person made something traditional pot luck style. since about 20 people showed, the list of food available to everyone was kind of massive. there was turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, vegetables, french onion dip, 2 kinds of salad, a potato salad and more for the actual dinner. for dessert someone made squash pie and i made chocolate covered apple slices (which people really liked). before we ate we even went individually all around the table saying what we were thankful for that year (predictably, a lot of people said "for being in Chile!"). i honestly couldn't believe i got to eat a REAL Thanksgiving dinner that year. it honestly blew my mind a little. it truly was a holiday to be thankful.
alice's cousin, Lindsey, visited too. so, once again, the three of us did the "tour of Santiago" walk. we also did some different things with Lindsey though. for example, we went out clubbing. we walked to bellavista and found this discoteca called "La Barra". since none of us had ever experienced this place before, we decided to check it out. we actually ended up getting in for free! probably because we were gringos. but still, usually at clubs if anyone gets in free it's only the ladies. but the bouncer guy was like "todos gratis" so we were just like "sweet" and headed in. the club was a hot sweaty mess with tons of people crammed into a small space. y'know... typical of Chile. the DJ played an incredibly diverse style of music for about a half hour (reggaeton, gangster rap, jock jams, punk) until some guys came out on stage to get the crowd moving. the way they did this was they would play songs and if you sang along to the songs really well, they would throw beer at you. like, full cans of beer. so ridiculous. so then once the hype guys left, the crowd was amped for more DJing. however, instead of more DJing, these two guys came out with ACCORDIONS and started playing cueca music!! in a discoteca!! how absolutely ridiculous is that? since i'm part polish and cueca music is basically like Chilean polka, i was kind of secretly loving it. but after enough time, this music gets repetitive. after about 45 minutes of accordion madness, we decided to peace out. since we got into that club for free, we decided that it would be reasonable for us to try getting into another discoteca (this was at like 4am). so we walked from bellavista to providencia (which takes about an hour) to go to... you guessed it... Subterraneo. unfortunately, it was closed! we were shocked as most discotecas in Santiago stay open until the wee hours of the morning. but whatever. we were exhausted any ways so no pasa nada.
also, while Lindsey was here, the three of us got invited to a soccer game by one of my students! it was Colo Colo versus La Serena. since it was a playoff game, it was kind of a big deal. Colo Colo are like the Yankees of soccer here because they win all the time and, because of this, most other people in Santiago hate them. i wasn't really rooting for either team but i didn't care because i was experiencing a soccer game in Chile. safety was the main concern that day. for example, from the car to the stadium, i was advised to not speak English. we were also advised to not wear blue or red and encouraged to wear black and white. i felt like i was in L.A. or something. luckily, my student bought me a Colo Colo hat which is like saying to everyone else, "don't beat this guy up". once in the stadium, our seats were in an incredibly safe section. i looked onto the other sections and it was like, madness. flares shooting. fireworks going. cheering and singing. people jumping everywhere. massive flags waving all over the place. i would have brought my camera if i wasn't afraid of it getting stolen from me. the game was a little boring. in the first half, no one scored. but in the second half, Colo Colo scored a goal and the place went apeshit. after that, the game was almost over so we tried to leave early and beat the crowd. we would have been successful if some asshole hadn't parked his truck behind our car in the parking lot. so we ended up waiting about a half hour for the game to end and sat through traffic any ways. i wasn't bothered by it considering it only took like a half hour for us to get back on the highway once we were going and, at a typical Patriots game, it takes at least 4 times that long to leave the stadium. so now i can say i've experienced a soccer game in South America. it was honestly pretty fun and i'd love to try to do it again.
those were the big events that happened lately. in between these events, i've been working my ass off trying to find classes. the 2 private classes i've had kind of fizzled out. one with a guy and one with a girl. the guy ended up being kind of lame. i would go to his house and he would call me a half hour after the time the class is supposed to start and tell me that he can't make it. since it's a big deal for me to go to his place because of sitting on the bus during rush hour traffic, i told him that if this happened again, he would have to pay for the class any ways. then for a long time he didn't contact me about classes. i kept bugging him and eventually he said he was going to cancel the classes because he got a new job that involved him moving to the south of Chile. wonderful. the other private class i have with the girl also got canceled. she just found out that she's pregnant like, 4 weeks ago and has been getting ready for that. unfortunately, with the pregnancy comes morning sickness. and for her, it's more like "24 hours a day sickness". which translates to her being too sick to have English class at all. of course i understand but still... there goes my source of weekly income.
it hasn't ALL been bad though. i was incredibly lucky this past month and picked up a teaching gig through polyglot that involved prepping this student for the TOEFL test for 4 days for 6 hours per day. that class essentially paid my rent for this month. the class itself was actually pretty rewarding, too. he said he went into the test feeling confident and that it was not hard. he was so thankful for it, he invited me, alice and lindsey to the aforementioned soccer game. also, while i was helping him, he treated me to lunch for 3 of the 4 days i taught him. we ate every day at this fancy restaurant that was a 4 minute walk from his depto called "Club Providencia". i ended up eating a churrasco con queso which was a lot like a steak and cheese sub. i also had this absolutely insane thing one day called the "Escalopa Kaiser A Lo Pobre". check this out: this thing was ham, cheese and steak all breaded and fried into one solid thing. and it was ON TOP OF two eggs cooked sunny side up, caramelized onions and fries. if Chile has taught me anything, it's how to clog my arteries as fast as possible.
so that class was good. but then the other 2 classes i have with polyglot ended. and since i'm leaving at the end of December, it's been even MORE difficult to find classes. i've even tried other forms of getting money quickly. i heard about this "cultural training" class where i would go in, answer questions about the United States and get paid like $500 for it but that fell through. then, after posting something on vivastreet (Chile's version of craigslist), i got contacted by someone telling me about an audition for a commercial. she said they were looking for gringos so i was like "sweet! this will be great!". i get to the audition and everyone else there looks like a supermodel. "huh. that's weird." i thought. "well i bet i speak English better than these people do so that should give me an advantage" and i was half right. all of the people there either didn't have English as their first language or butchered it significantly. but after waiting 2 hours at the audition, i went in and was ready. i was instructed to turn left, turn right, face forward, and smile. and that was it. no speaking at all. so my English was actually NOT an advantage and the audition was solely based on appearance. and since there were like 50 people when i went, that can only mean that a few hundred people at least are auditioning for this. all of which look like Calvin Klein models. so yeah. probably not going to get this part.
i knew this last stretch would be kind of lacking in the financial department. i guess i just didn't count on the private classes getting canceled permanently. oh well. at least today i'm paying my rent for the last time ever in Chile so that's exciting. also, at the end of this month i get my security deposit back and i get paid a probably measly check from polyglot so i'll have SOME cash coming my way.
there are also things to look forward to. i mean, the reason i'm updating this blog is because basically a lot of crazy stuff is about to happen in the next 2 weeks. on Monday, alice and i are leaving for Buenos Aires and staying until December 16th. while there, we're taking 2 separate 18 hour bus rides to and from Iguazu Falls. so to say i'll have a lot to write about afterward would be a pretty big understatement.
oh and did i mention that this weekend we might buy our plane tickets for January's trip to the south of Chile which will be more than double the length of our trip to Buenos Aires? and that we're still planning on going to Valparaiso for New Year's Eve which i've heard is "the best place in the world on new year's eve" according to my Chilean room mate who has traveled all around the world? well those are also happening, if you're keeping track. i think my life will just gradually get more insane right up until the day i leave to fly back to the U.S.A..
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damn. i fly back to the U.S.A. in less than 2 months. jesus. that blows my mind.
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at any rate, for those that are still reading i would like to say thanks for being so immensely curious about my life and you should probably get your eyes examined from looking at a computer screen for this long. i will update again in about 2 weeks before i travel to valpo for new year's and the south for January. until then, chau and que te vaya bien.
