Hedgehogs Are The New Frogs

I had a bizarre experience involving hedgehogs recently:

So I'm in a bar, a clandestino in fact, completely unrecognizable as any sort of drinking establishment from the outside. A Chilean woman has latched on to my friends because she wants to practice her English, which is really not all that bad. There is a long discussion as we try to figure out what the English name is for her pets, and after much description, she finally pulls out her phone and we discover that they are hedgehogs, a fairly popular prickly animal to own in these parts. Somehow it ends up that she is now just talking to me, showing me picture after picture of her beloved creatures and rambling on about how wonderful they are. "I love them so much. I really love them. They are very happy when I come home. I like to play with them." All very normal things to say though expressed in an overly excited manner.

And then she says, "I like to lick them."

The conversation stops for a second while a I contemplate this. The bar is loud. She's not a native English speaker. Either I misheard or she used the wrong word. "You like to lick them?" "Yes," she says. And just to be sure that we are understanding each other, she puts her hand in front of her mouth, sticks out her tongue and makes a licking motion.

I am Privileged

Today was one of the coolest Turkey Days ever, spent doing normal things during the day, then slaving over a traditional meal in a bare Chilean house, with one of 2 Americans I know and her girlfriend. The gas to cook the food got rolled in on a dolly about 7:45 PM. As with any proper Thanksgiving meal, we were awaiting the food long before it came and long after the announced dinner hour.

The sweet potatoes were pale yellow instead of orange. The attendants were mostly not Americans. There was apple crisp in lieu of pumpkin pie (indeed the best apple crisp I've ever tasted.) We sat around a makeshift table and gorged ourselves as every proper American should.

Someone asked me if I missed my family at this time. After years of being away from them, I answered honestly, that no, I wasn't especially sad to be without them. An hour later when the amazingness of our cooking had come to fruition, I realized that there were a few people I miss intensely. They are not technically my family, but they are even more important to me than my blood kin. I wish you were here with me now and I hope you are celebrating your fantabulous lives in your various locations around the world.

I also wish you had been there to join in on our unfailing cure for the after turkey drowsiness. When you feel like sleeping, start a dance party instead. Usher and Justin Timberlake will make it all feel better, and help your body handle those extra 3000 calories way more than a nap during the football game.

Facebook hates me, lets see if this works on here

Spanglish

I’ve been meaning to update this biotch the last couple of days and I’m having trouble sleeping, so now is the time it seems. My sleeping problems right now, have way more to do with the fact that I’ve been going out a lot than any anxiety issues. Staying up til 5 being sloshed will fuck your sleep cycle altogether. Especially if you don’t have a job that demands that you be up at a certain time on Monday no matter how REM deprived. And I don’t. Have a job. I’m working on ways to occupy my time though. More on that later when there is success to report and not just the process of looking to mutter on about in a monotone voice.

So, yeah, so far Chile has been a fair amount of drinking delicious wine (to be continued tomorrow morning at 11:00 with a vineyard tour) without any major excitement other than seafood and the fact that there are a lot of times I have no idea what is going on. But that’s pretty much Coletta every day anyway, no matter what language is swirling around my head. Sadly, I have to admit that after several of days of being confused, mentally exhausted and substantially and embarrassingly more silent in social situations than my normally taciturn self, I’ve taken to throwing the Spanish out the door completely with the group of Scandinavians that have been involved in much of the above mentioned drinking excursions. I still speaka the Spanish with my roommates most of the time, and indeed, had a long conversation explaining the US electoral system en espanol this evening. But there is a point where my desire for any type of meaningful communication that doesn’t hurt just says, fuck it, English is the damn international language and we’re all so GOOD at it, why waste all that talent? Those Europeans have spent years and years learning my native tongue. They should get their money’s worth for that wonderful language education their governments are paying for. Plus there’s been a couple of boyfriends whose Spanish was even less than mine, so really, I’m doing it to make them more comfortable.

Movie tip: If you feel like watching a great Chilean movie that will make you feel shitty about capitalism, white privilege, social inequality and human existence in general, check out Machuca.

Los Cigarillos

The Chilean anti-smoking campaign is a little more hard-core than our pansy-ass Surgeon General's warning.





Para los gringos, that says: THESE CIGARETTES ARE KILLING YOU

Livin the Hostel Life

So I made it to Santiago and the customs dudes didn't even blink when I told them I was vacationing for three months in their country. That damn little blue booklet they stamped sure comes in handy sometimes. I've been here for about 36 hours, so there is plenty of time for me to freak out in the future, but I have to say, the actual process of doing this crazy thing became incredibly less anxiety ridden once I began the journey and was no longer sitting on the couch trying to plan it. I'm not really freaked out about anything yet. I have my own tiny room in a hostel, where if I put my wireless card on my shoulder, I sometimes get a "very good" signal. This only happened after 20 minutes of the owner giving me tech advice on how to connect to his hidden network, but it's not like I really have anywhere to go. He also sold me an adapter so I can plug my computer in. Thank you very much, sir. And some other guy that works here gave me an old phone, so all I have to buy is the SIM card.

My apartment search has been slightly less successful. After several confusing emails and a couple of missed appointments cuz the lady didn't respond, I finally looked at the first place this evening. A very nice apartment indeed. The only problem is, when the woman answered the door I realized that I had made a huge assumption that she was my age and not my mom's. And as much as I love my mama, I was happy to move out of her house and don't feel like moving in with a Chilean mom 3 days later. So the search continues. Luckily I have a few leads and hopefully one of them will pan out.