Last week was a great week for me, busy and full and exciting. On Monday and Tuesday I rested from the exciting weekend but on Wednesday we played soccer again! However, I was a little less enthusiastic due to the extreme cold and wet conditions. That morning I woke up and it was pouring down rain, and I mean pouring. I splurged on a bus (instead of a 10 minute walk to the metro which is much cheaper) but the walk to the bus stop and the wait got me almost completely soaked! I should have taken an umbrella that was hanging right by the door, but I had never realized or known they were there. Rookie mistake. Something about rainy weather just kills the desire to do anything except curl up in bed and watch american movies dubbed in Spanish. However, after my last class I ended up accompanying my friend Cameron to his house and eating la once at his place. "La once" is what people call the evening meal and generally is eating around 5 or 6 pm but in my house it's usually eating around 8:30. It is not really a dinner but more of a tea party. We usually drink ceylon tea, with bread, ham, cheese, butter, jam crackers, palta (avocado), manjar (a caramelesque sweet spread) and sometimes eggs. In my house we usually have whole wheat bread but the custom is white bread which is delicious and we never have manjar (my whole family has lost a lot of weight recently due to dieting and change of eating habits). At Cameron's house however, we had white bread, manjar, and cheese, all full fat, full everything and it was DELICIOUS. I love la once at my house, but this was just a step above. Cameron's host brother is Benito, who I think I talked about last post, and his mother is Anto. We ended up talking about music and dancing, and from there we actually started to dance! I learned several moves from different dances including the chilean national dance: la cueca. Here is a video that I found on youtube that has a lot of the same things that I learned from Benito!
I absolutely loved learning how to do it, however it is harder than they make it look! Benito's grandmother Coto was also with us during this dance time. She has severe Alzheimer's and says very obscure, random things all the time but apparently she used to be a magical cueca dancer who danced like no one else. Benito got her to dance with him, and it was a beautiful moment watching a grandson and grandmother dance la cueca. Their faces were the exact definition of joy, as they "played" together.
After such a warm and inviting time at their house, going out in the cold to play futbol an hour away on a wet and cold field seemed very unappealing but I was convinced by very persistent friends. I escaped the field when someone else joined later on and I ran to the warm house of the guy who runs the place.
Thursday was a fun night, and it was almost puro chileno! The bar was cheap and fun, and I met a girl named Nicole who everyone called pollo (chicken). She was so welcoming and excited to talk to me, and it was the first chilena I've met who was so open. We quickly made plans to do a girls night out with her and her friends, and me and Kacey. ALSO! almost forgot, my nickname has become kikiriki which is the sound they make when a chicken crows. I think one of the first night's I hung out with this group of people animal sounds came up and kikiriki ended up being my favorite sound and I said it a lot that night. It stuck and now I am called kikiriki. Nicknames are a big thing here and everyone has one, it shows cariño or that you are cared for. Sometimes nicknames are weird and have no reason like mine, or sometimes they are description of a physical aspect of a person. For example it is very common for overweight people to be called "gordito" or "guaton" which are synonyms for fat or chubby. In the US, being called fatty by your family, your friends, everyone you know is a recipe for low disaster. However in Chile it happens all the time with no resulting disasters. There is no sentiment behind the nickname, it is simply a remark on someone's physicality.
On Saturday Coty had her first communion which was a fun and fairly quick ceremony in which I understood nothing, again. Afterwards, we went home and had 20 some people in the house and we ate ALL DAY. From morning till night I ate nothing but carbohydrates. For breakfast: bread, for lunch: lasagna and pasta, cake, ice cream, la once: bread, peanuts, and palta. I've never felt so stuffed in my whole life. Mi mami promised me that on Sunday we would have good healthy food but we went to Papa Johns's for lunch!!! I don't know how I'm going to survive here. It was Dia de Niños or Kids Day and so of course we had pizza for the kids. Kids day is like mothers and fathers day and we spent the whole day at las Dunas de Con Con, or the dunes of Con Con. We went up and down, up and down for hours, with rented snowboards and sleds that we had to wax with candles. It was a fun time and I got to sand board, albeit slowly (the sand was wet). All in all, a great week and a great weekend! Here are some picture from the weekend
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