people in santiago walk slowly

My German and Swedish roommate are talking about how they are stressed out by how slowly all the Santiagans walk on the sidewalks and in the subway, especially when they’re (my roommates) in a hurry. But I think that’s just the point of it all, the Chileans aren’t stressed enough, even when they’re late, to walk fast. Everyone says that Santiago runs on Chilean time, which is another way of saying that everyone is late to everything. But it’s cool, because there’s alot of time in the Chilean day. The full-time guys at the office works until 8 or 9 (about 11 hour days) but seems to be really happy and enjoy what they’re doing. They all take their jobs seriously, just not too seriously; last week, for example, we snuck out of the office to go watch a soccer game at one of the guys’ apartments.

So, from here on out, I’m resolving to walk slowly, adopt Chilean time and not get stressed out.

My Swedish roommate Illapha, just walked in and apparently had no trouble walking this time. Probably because he was ice-ax from a mountaineering trip.

Memorial Day

An interesting perspective at the Washington Post

Groceries

Santiago is an interesting paradox of a city. It’s a bustling, up-to-date hub smack dab in the middle of the developing world. It’s cosmopolitan, but homogeneous. My perception is, no doubt, skewed by the fact that I’ve never really lived in a city before. This has its downsides — I pay $25 a month for a 60 minute cell phone plan and the smog here during the winter is pretty atrocious. But it’s pretty sweet, too: everything except technology is pretty cheap, the metro is really useful and people in the know say that it is the only city that throws down harder than Barcelona.

Anyway, here’s my starting lineup of (non-refrigerated) food:

Grocery fun!

Yeah, this consists entirely of snack food. What’re you gonna do about it?

Work Tomorrow

I start work tomorrow at Accion Emprendedora. It’s exciting to actually get to take part in some real work. AE has half a dozen of projects going on this summer and basically all of them are pretty meaty. I met the other intern, Collin, who goes to Duke and some of the full-time guys from the office on Friday and they’re all pretty sweet (and they all speak English with cool, Scarface-style accents).

Got to Chile on Friday morning at 4am. So I get off the plane, not having slept in 30 some hours and try to hustle through customs. My efforts were thwarted (twice) and I finally realized that, as a gringo, I’d have to go to the other side of the terminal to pay a some sort of absurd reciprocity fee (100 USD) before I could enter the country. Waiting in line, I met another American, Justin, who’ll be studying abroad in Chile this summer (winter). Justin was a wild-eyed Hawaiian kid with hair to his shoulders and a the sort of happy-go-lucky attitude of a Hawaiian who comes to the South pole for summer.  He said something about his study abroad group staying at a hotel on Saturday night, and was sure we could get a room there on that (thursday) night. So we hop in a van headed towards Santiago and meet another passenger, a Chilean woman. Between myself and Justin, we put together enough Spanish to have a decent conversation with the Chileno as we whizzed through the suburban Santiago, headed for god only knows where.  After we dropped our Chilean friend off, Justin and I swapped stories from home.  He told me about the Hawaiians that broke his nose in a bar and the cops he raced on his bike.

When we finally arrive at the hotel, the clerk tells us that they’re full up. Shit. “Hay otros hoteles proximo aqui? Puedes llamar un taxi?” When the clerk realizes how helpless and hopeless we are, he leads us upstairs. He opens a door to room 210 and shows us in. The beds are messed up and there’s trash lying around from the previous “guests”. Justin and I look at each other and consider our situation. We grab our bags. Babies don’t sleep this well. Or whatever Ed Norton says.

I start work tomorrow at Accion Emprendedora. It’s exciting to actually get to take part in some real work. AE has half a dozen of projects going on this summer and basically all of them are pretty meaty. I met the other intern, Collin, who goes to Duke and some of the full-time guys from the office on Friday and they’re all pretty sweet (and they all speak English with cool, Scarface-style accents).