El Más Seco Disierto en el Mundo...

...Kind of. At least that´s what Chileans say about their pride of the northern region, the Atacama Desert. Either way, I´m heading there this evening for a long weekend, and I´m quite excited about it. The landscape is supposed to be out of this world. One famous spot is the Valley of the Moon, named so because it looks like a massive lunar crater. I might even go sand boarding, like snow boarding but with sand. Of course, San Pedro de Atacama is a tiny little desert town with a massive tourism infrastructure, so I'm a bit wary of being an exploitative tourist as per usual. But hell SAND boarding, soooo coool, man!

Since last post the Pinochets continue to be under investigation, some student groups committed acts of violence at a few campuses on the death date of Che Guevara, I saw a powerful play that I could barely understand, climbed Cerro San Lucia and got the best view of the city yet, saw more performances in Parque Forrestal, had classes, wrote a Spanish paper, went to a foreign student and Chilean student meet n' greet/colloquia, made some friends, eat several empanadas, and bought tickets to Buenos Aires.

More updates when I get back from the desert.
Hope you all are well,
Turista Suprema

Mientras Chile Exista Habran Pinochetistas

On a clear Saturday afternoon in Santiago, one can see the cordilleras rising above the city. Their high, snowcapped peaks seem to be within a mear few blocks' walk. Yesterday, the sky was clear and the mountains felt close enough to touch. Meanwhile, in front of the Hospital Militar as men in red shirts raised a plaster bust of Augusto Pinochet over their heads and older women waved the Chilean flag defiantly in the faces of camera clicking reporters, it was the past that seemed to sneak up closer than expected.


There's quite a bit to report from Chile.



Has this made international news? It's certainly a big deal in Chile. On Thursday night, all of the Pinochet family, as well as many close associates of the former dictator, were arrested for stealing millions of dollars out of public funds. 23 people in all are set to go to trial for embsconding (and transfering into American bank accounts) 20 million dollars of public funds. Lucia Hiriart, Pinochet's widow and , had some sort of heart attack upon hearing the news and was admitted to Hospital Militar in Providencia (i.e. my neighborhood, and a few blocks away from the Stanford center!).

In the two days that Hiriart has been in the hospital, there have been a handfull of small Pinochet rallies. Friday on the news there was footage of two teenage girls getting into a fistfight outside Hospital Militar. One a Pinochetista, the other a, presumably, more left leaning byclists. Byclists said something scathing about the former Supreme Commander whiling pedaling by, Pinochetista was not pleased, pretty soon the two found themselves clawing at the face of their political opposition in the first spot of the nightly news and on the front page of the majority of national Chilean newspapers.

Oh yeah, Friday was also the anniversary of the 1989 plebiscite/"No vote," in which a plurality of the Chilean population voted Pinochet out of power.


Naturally, Friday night I went back to La Casa en el Aire (my socialist bar from last week), to listen to some classic, Chilean, political folk rock and sip pisco under the stern but idealistic gazes of Allende and Che portraits. (went with two Stanford kids, so it was a little less fun than last time, although the guy performing stopped at one point and asked why we were speaking Gringo and where we from, he then preceded to play an incredible acoustic version of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," the three of us rocked out while the rest of the Chilean filled bar stared blankly with their half smoked cigarettes wondering "¿What is this shit (que es esta mierda)?")

Saturday, in light of sleeping late and eating a huge lunch I decided to go for a walk around Providencia...i.e. walk to the Hospital Militar and gawk at any potential action. (When I have time, I´ll tell you about Fabia, my program's main organizer and Stanford´s risk management representative, but she would have been freaking out if she knew my afternoon plans) Sure enough, my political voyeurism paid off. When I got to the hospital there was already a horde of reporters, camera men, and news vans waiting outside the front gate. I watched from across the street, occasionally masking my intentions by standing at the bus stop but mostly just blantantly gawking. After a solid fifteen minutes of waiting, the press seemed to come to life and they began to hurry and cluster around the front gate as a small silver car tried to pull out into the street. From across the street, I could see the passenger in the back seat. It was a woman with brown hair and huge black sunglasses. I would later learn that this was one of the Pinochet daughters, I think it might have been Jacqueline, the youngest. All five of the children were released from jail on Saturday and went to visit their mother in the hospital. They go to trial tomorrow.


Not long after the first car pulled out of the hospital´s lot, the Pinochetistas arrived. The first wave were a group of four middle aged to elderly women carrying a large Chilean flag. As they approached the grassy lawn in front of the hospital they sang loudly in boisterous Spanish. The few words I caught: "liberty..something, something...PINOCHET!" Soon the group grew larger when a few men arrived, they carried small flags and the aforementioned Pinochet bust. After a few minutes of hugging, kissing, and back slapping, they grouped together to wave their flags and and hold up the Pinochet bust pointed up at the hospital. They were joined by another group of women who pulled right up front in a green pickup truck, blasting music and grooving out in their seats to the tunes of Pinochet Pop. One women propped a home made sign up onto a bus like a sort of mission statement: Mientras Chile Exista Habran Pinochetistas. As long as Chile exists there will be Pinochetistas.

From my post across the street I was mostly alone, save for two middle aged women in cardigans and spectacles who watched on with serious faces. I assumed they too were spectators, until from the green pick up trunk across the street the music blasted: "¡Dame (give me)...Pinochet! ¡Dame...Pînochet! Dame...." And suddenly a few feet to my right, I heard a passionate response of "¡Pinochet!" I now saw that this nice looking Chilean lady was gripping onto a small blue bumper sticker bearing the name of Chile´s former dictator.


As the Pinochet supporters chanted and the reporters waited for more of the Pinochet family to leave the hospital, lots of people passed by. The scene would provoke a short glimpse from passerby, and sometimes the occasional car slowing down to look. But for the most part people would just shrug and walk on, they had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon. My hostfamily, who I have discovered is mostly apolitical, watches the news about the Pinochets as if it´s a spinoff of an old telenovela. They make comments at footage of the Pinochet children like: "Oh, she´s gotten so ugly," or "Wow, he´s lost a lot of hair." Even at the socialist bar on Friday night, there was less celebration than I thought. It was just a regular Friday night. Turth be told, I could only count about 10 Pinochet supporters in all.I have this sense, that a large majority of Chileans just want to move on. Chile´s come along way in the past 19 years. When you´re in Santiago you can feel the urge to progress to continue to update and build new high rise apartment complexes and invest in the arts and keep the streets clean and tolerate gay couples and divorce and a woman president.


As an hour wore on four more cars came out of the parking lot which caused the reporters to scramble around pointing their zoom lenses into the back seat and the Pinochetistas to cheer. I assumed that these were the remainig Pinochet children. The sun was getting low, and I was getting hungry. In the late afternoon sun the snow on the cordilleras turns a faint pink that seems close enough to touch.

Hot Pics!

Checkit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieljayhirsch/

I finally joined the cool kids and got a flickr page. It's not everything, but this should give you a flavor of my adventures thus far.

First day of classes went well. I'm a little stressed because I'm surrounded by hyper productive Stanford kids who are busy planning trips around South America, and I have no idea how I want to spend my vacations. But then I have to remind myself that I've already traveled for three weeks... and have the pictures to show for it!

Hope this post finds you well,
Turista Suprema

Yo corazon Santiago (I heart Santiago)

Whether it be drunkenly dancing to Socialist boleros with a few thirty-something Chileans in a small smoke filled bar, riding the impecably clean subway, being stopped by knive juggling mimes, watching Russian documentaries in small art house movie theaters, eating massive churasco palta (literally Steak Avacado) Sandwichs, stumbling onto a patriotic poetry reading and presentation of traditional Chilean songs, walking through the Plaza de Armas rife with pigeons, pickpockets, street artists, palm trees, and guys selling helado, or just watching telenovelas with my host family and trying desperatly to understand what they´re arguing about, I am thoroughly enjoying Santiago.

This weekend has been good with all of the above included. Oh yeah, also a trip to the Museo de Arte Precolombino.

¡La Cueca!

This morning while walking to the Stanford Center along Avenida Providencia, I came across a big group of Santiaguinos clustered in front of the Ministry of Tourism. Being the tourist that I am, I naturally crossed the street to see what the hubbub was about. And lo and behold I came across a performance of Cueca, Chile's national dance!

It's very different from anything I saw in Peru, more country western in style and attitude. It involves a group of couples dancing around with white hankerchiefs. The men wear black sombreros, guacho ponchos, chaps, and spurs. The women wear frilly dresses with poofy shoulders. It's a lot of stamping and looking coy at one's partner. The majority of the time, the men and women take turns waving their hankerchiefs in their partner's face, then suddenly take it away, in a sort of classic, goofy flirtation: "¿Tu quieres my pañuelo?-- ¡No, no puedes tenerlo! ¡Ja!" (You want my hankerchief? No, you can't have lo! Ha!"). Good fun.

After los bailadores de cueca finished a group of Rapinui dancers came up. Rapinui is the indiginous group of Easter Island. Their dance is similiar to Hawaiian dances I've seen, with grass and feather skirts, women hip undulating and men chest thumping. Very good times.

I've had really good luck with stumbling upon performances of traditional dances.

Excuse the posting from yesterday. Perhaps a little too cynical. A free trip to the opera is a trip to the opera, let's not look a gift caballo in the boca. Also, Chile has a large German immigrant population, so a trip to a German language opera is actually kind of appropriate. Also, I just found out about a website with information about all sorts of cultural events in Santiago. I think I'll definitely be able to see some Chilean theater, and it looks like there's a lot there.

Some other things of note:

- This is the last day of Orientation week, and I'm going to shop one more class today, and then I should figure out my schedule.
- We just had a travel info session, looks like after November 1 you need to get a visa to go to Bolivia. Mierda. I'm kicking myself for not crossing Titicaca before heading to Santiago. But:Donde hay ganas, hay una manera.
- Host family relations continues to be good. We watch a lot of TV together. Everyone in the house loves scary movies. Bond over "The Simpsons" with my host brother. Last night, we watched the premier of a new show Chilean show called "Lola." It's about a man who magically wakes up in the body of a woman. A bit of a scandal for Chile that doesn't have such a good history with gays and transgenders, etc...
- Yesterday went to La Moneda and Plaza de Armas with a few kids from Stanford. Government Center=good times.
-Playing futbol this afternoon with a Stanford and Chilean crowd. Going to Chile v. Peru at the National Stadium in October.

All for now. Hope you all are well.

El Bubble

At the edge of a big continent bursting with complex histories and juntas, and dense jungles and wide deserts, at the edge of chock full of culture, public parks and schizophrenic political identies, in a modern office building on quiet street, on the second hides a secret, fortified bubble flying the banner of CARDENAL RED tried and true. Go Stanford! Go.

Excuse the momentary cynicism.

So far, I'm thoroughly enjoying my time here. I love my host family. I'm really liking Santiago and feel that there's load of potential waiting to be tapped. I've even met some cool Stanford kids..... However, I have the sneaking suspicion that the well insulated and highly secure Stanford Center (in which I'm currently typing) isn't the best place to immerse myself in Chilean culture. Especially when everyone is speaking English around me all the time.

After travelling alone for three weeks, I have gotten accostumed to going out and having adventures and mishaps, making conversation with strangers with my bad spanish and their relative patience. So it's a little weird to all of a sudden find myself in Flannery's Irish Pub with a group of twenty Americans all asking for "MASe CerveSa" and talking with a JAP from Brookline about her family's house in Costa Rica. I had to excuse myself early to go have an adventure with public transportation at night.

I'm being incredibly unfair and acting a little superior. I've only traveled for three weeks, that doesn't make me el gran explorador. It's just going to be a bit of a challenge balancing my desire to make new friends with my desire to have a more immersive experience. For any Bing Overseaers former or current who are reading this, I'd love some pointers about how to avoid being the anti-social a-hole but also how to escape EL BUBBLE!

I'll try to keep the updates coming, my schedule's a little different these days and I don't quiet have a computer at my house, but I'll report when I can. More fun anecdotes about the family Castro Monsalve, impressions of Santiago, and further travel plans.

Hope you all are well.
Danny

One more point of criticism: Mama and Papa Bing are paying for all us kids to go see The Magic Flute as our Chilean night of Culture. How terribly culturally appropriate. It's Mozart
for f@#ck's sake!

La Familia Castro Monsalve

I´m using my host brother´s computer right now and don´t want to hog it, so this will be brief...
But life in the Chilean household is great. It´s almost exactly how I imagined it.

The dominant force in the house is my hostmother Gloria. She´s everywhere in everyone´s business, doing a million things at once, and incredibly lively and warm. My hostfather, everyone calls him Nano, is a bit of a goofy old man (and what´s there not to love?), but also very friendly and kind. They have three children Alejandra (27), Claudio (25), and Rodrigo (20). Also, very nice, but I have a much harder time understanding them, Chilean youth speak pretty fast. Claudio had a bunch of friends over lastnight and they partied loudly until around 6 in the morning. I joined them for a bit, but was mostly in the dark when it came to the conversation. At one point in the night, I woke up to the sound of drunken Chileans singing Karaoke "I Will Survive" in heavily accented English. It was a great moment of cultural exchange.

They eat around four meals a day here, so my stomach is taking a bit of beating getting used to the new diet (and all steaks at 2 in the afternoon). But all in all things are very good, learning all sorts of new Chilean slang.

Hasta Luego,
Hope you all are well.
Daniel Hiiiiirsch (how Chilean´s call me)