On becoming “Porteña”

Finally, a blog post!  No one is more shocked than I am that my workload suddenly quadrupled overnight.  We were gearing up for the internationally-recognized Women’s Day (March 8), during which we marched and protested and handed out fliers on emergency contraception (more to come on my work next week).  But, we’ve hit a tiny lull again, so here I am, trying to post as many pictures as I can in order to retain the interest of my reading-averse audience (Ian, you’re the .5 of my 2.5 readers).

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So it’s been a couple of weeks, and I’m settling in nicely to my new city, Valparaiso–Valpo, for short.  It’s a port city (hence the name of “Porteños” that is assigned to its residents) and has an unusual layout.  There’s a flat downtown area, “El Plan,” which starts at the ocean’s edge and goes up to the foot of the hills, or “cerros,” that surround the downtown area.  Each cerro has a different name and a different character—sort of like different neighborhoods or sections of town.

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View of downtown Valpo from Cerro Mariposa (basically, the view I see every day when I leave the house!).  Check out the cruise ship in the background.

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Same view, at night.

 

Overall, Valpo has a very laid-back, anything-goes vibe.  Its sister city, Viña del Mar, is right next door and feels much more resort-oriented and, well, a bit pretentious.  Although some people think Viña is prettier, Valpo seems more unassuming and sincere to me, and I feel much more comfortable here.  After going to Viña or Santiago for the day it’s nice to return to Valpo and feel like I can finally let down my guard and relax into my surroundings.  The nightlife is right up my alley, as it seems that people go out to enjoy each others’ company rather than to enter the meat market.

The main plaza in Viña del Mar, Valpo’s sister city

The beautiful cathedral off of Viña’s main plaza (located next to a gigantic department store)

During the day it’s fun to go up the cerros in the ancient hillside “acensores,” or elevators (which always seem to me like they’re going to bust at any second).  From any cerro you get an amazing view of the city and the ocean.  The ocean is littered with boats and ships, all just sort of sitting on top of the water.  It looks like a real-live game of Battleship.  Sometimes when I walk out of my house and see the view, I think to myself, “I can’t believe this is where I live!”

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The view from my bedroom!  Notice the ocean and the ships in the background.  Fun fact: the cactus you see, which is in our front yard, can supposedly be boiled down into an extremely potent hallucinogenic substance.  Every now and then teenagers show up and ask for a piece of the cactus, which is not native to this region and is hard to come by.  Sorry, kids, you’ll have to get your peyote elsewhere…

The houses in Valpo are painted all different colors, which I love! This is a view of the main street (lined by a white cement railing) that leads up to the area in which I live.

Speaking of where I live, it’s in a house about halfway up one of the more residential hills, Cerro Mariposa (which means “Butterfly Hill”).  I’m super close to the downtown area, as I basically just have to go down the hill via a stone stairway, and I’m there.  It’s on the way back up that the 155 stairs seem interminable, sort of like trying to climb a downward-moving escalator.  If any of you are trying to achieve the “buns of steel” look, move to Valpo. 

Part of the never-ending stairway that connects my hill to the downtown area.

The first side street off of the main street (pictured above) that leads towards my house.  These 3 stooges are pushing a refrigerator up the street.  Sucks to be them!

The street I live on is fairly nondescript, and from the outside gate you’d never know that inside there’s a sizeable house inhabited by 11 people—that’s right, here are 11 of us here: Marisol and Mario (the main couple), their 2 children, Mario’s mom, Mario’s grandmother and grandfather (who are separated and live in separate but adjoining bedrooms, which I think is hilarious), 1 Chilean university student, 2 U.S. exchange students, and me.  Oh, and the 2 cats. 

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The same street shown above (with the refrigerator guys), only from the top of the street, looking down.  If you come up this street and round the corner, you’ll see:

My street!  My house is behind the stone wall on the right.  The reddish wooden door that you can barely see (about halfway up, on the right) is the outside gate.

Most of the family lives in the main house, while 3 of us students live in the little “penthouse” they’ve built in their patio area.  We have a small living area and a bathroom in the penthouse, but no kitchen.  It’s nice that I can be with the family in the main house whenever I want, but I can always sneak away into my room for total privacy.  I eat lunch (the main meal in Chile) with the family pretty much every day, and it’s so hard to stop eating—the food is really good!  Marisol is an excellent Chilean cook.  Plus, it’s pretty surreal that every day at 2:00 p.m. someone yells up to me, “Jessica, time to eat!”  And I go down to discover that, magically, there is a delicious, homemade meal waiting for me.  Um…. OK! 

The main house (and to the left you see the “penthouse” where my bedroom is located).

The penthouse.   My bedroom is the middle one–and no, I do not have cacti growing on my windowsill–it’s the reflection of the afore-mentioned hallucinogenic cactus.

 

My bedroom, which I love.  You’ll all be shocked to know that I’ve maintained this state of orderliness for nearly 3 weeks now.  (Leah, notice the bamboo-covered TV.  And Jen, that’s my plant!)

Looking down from my bedroom you can see the front yard / patio (and the edge of the main house). Whenever weather permits, we eat lunch at the outside table, which is awesome.  The swing is used most frequently by Leyla, who likes to curl up on it for her cat naps:

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Leyla, exploring

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Free, the other resident feline.  That poor little lizard isn’t gonna last much longer–Free’s quite the huntress.

Despite how well I’m settling in, there are a couple of downsides to living in Valpo.  One is that there are very few places to run.  In La Serena I went running at the Avenida del Mar, a beach that is flat and miles and miles long, and only 5 minutes away from my grandparents’ house.  I could run on the paved walkways or right down by the water.  It’s an amazing experience to run barefoot by the shore and then dive into the ocean at the end!  Valpo doesn’t have a beach to speak of, as its coastline is full of gigantic docks and ships, and its streets are crowded, steep, and full of stray dogs that can be territorial, at times.

The other downside is that there is very little tango in Valpo.  The few teachers I’ve found dance what I’ll call “street tango”—meaning, they’ve picked it up here or there, and they make it work, but they don’t focus much on technique.  I miss my Saint Louis tango teachers and friends!  I’m still planning on taking some classes here, so as not to lose the few skills I have, but I’ll probably have to wait until Buenos Aires before I get the chance to really study tango again.

 

A shout-out to Jen, Matty, and any other Red Sox fans!  This hat belongs to Marisol, who insisted I wear it in order to avoid sunburn (which is impossible here, as it turns out).  I think it’s funny that I had to come all the way to Chile to get a Red Sox hat.

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I can’t take swing classes here, either, as swing doesn’t really exist in Chile.  So, I’ve taken up salsa instead.  I’m not passionately drawn to the dance, but I have a lot of fun at my salsa classes and I’m meeting new people, so I’m sticking with it.  My teacher cracks me up!  He runs the classes like a boot camp.  After the warm-up, during which he’s slyly sizing up everyone, he separates us into three groups: the “you suck” group, the “you suck less” group, and the “you might actually amount to something, someday” group, as I think of them (really, more like beginner, intermediate, and advanced).  I’m in the intermediate group, which is the largest.  He then partners us up and teaches us some new footwork, which we are instructed to do over, and over, and over….  If someone doesn’t get it right, he yells at them from across the room, “Hey, it’s your RIGHT foot!  What–do you not know your left from your right?”  And if you still don’t get it after 3 tries, he kicks you out and demotes you to the beginner class!  Hahahaha, I laugh so much during that class.  The amazing thing is that there are more men than women, which is a nice change.  For once, I get to dance during the whole class, while the men have to rotate out and wait their turn. 

Fabrizio, Silvia, Juan, Juana, Fausto, and Giordano–family members who live in Viña del Mar.

With my cousin, Giuseppe (who also lives in Viña) at his girlfriend’s birthday party.  For the record: I was completely sober, but the same cannot be said for my cousin.

Well, there is so much more to write about (my host family, my crazy job, my self-guided tours of the city), but that will have to wait for the next installment—which I hope to post by the end of the week.  I miss you all, and think of you often.  Stay warm, and enjoy the chance to drink some hot chocolate! 

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Here are some random pics from a nocturnal surf competition that I went to with Giuseppe and his girlfriend, Mariela.

These are the lights they used to give the surfers some visibility. Halfway through the competition the lights went out, and the poor surfers were left blinded in the ocean, with gigantic, scary waves crashing over them.

Same structure, from the front

 

That white blur is one of the best surfers in Chile.

 

Hang ten!