Hellooo friends. So I learned this week that the chilean equivalent of "aww you look tired" is "you have a sleepy face." And its an equally as irritating thing to hear. Especially when you don´t feel that great. For some reason all week I´ve been feeling kind of lazy and tired, despite the fact that I´ve been sleeping a solid 8 hours a night or more. And allll week everyone has been telling me I´ve got a cara de sueño. Sigh. Despire feeling a bit sick, I´ve had a nice week. A bunch of things happened that made me feel like I´ve gotten somewhere after all this time here.
On Monday morning I gave my office their first sociology class. After struggling to gather together all the different componentes into one room, I talked for a half hour about the definition of sociology, neoliberal policies and how they are fucking up Latin America, and how we can design better ones. This obviously presented a challenge for many reasons. My officemates have little to no experience talking about sociology or any social science, I am still learning spanish, I don´t know allll that much about the subject, and I´m obviously the youngest one in the office. Somehow, it all turned out okay. My presentation was full of pictures, and jokes and diagrams and everyone seemed to be interested. The class ended with a quiz which not only produced laughter (ex: True or false: sociology is fun!), but inspired an interesting discussion (can we ever escape the evils of neoliberalism?). Everyone enjoyed it, including my boss and I´m in the process of preparing another presentation for next Monday. Woo hoo!
Yesterday I went to a meeting in a community with the forestales. I wanted to try and advance the idea of founding a library in this community. I had already befriended and talked to the President and was hoping that she would talk to me a little more. Unfortunately she couldnt make it to the meeting and hadn´t talked to anyone about the idea yet. One of the women informed me that she was planning on bringing up the topic that day. I was mildly paniced that the president wasn´t there to guide me, but I moved on with my plan anyway. After Renato finished talking about his tema, I interrupted and said I had something to talk about. I explained to the whole group what I had been doing with Comapu el Solar (where we founded the first library) and that I wanted to know if they were interested in the same sort of project. In the middle of my speech, Renato and Ricardo (the guys from my office) burst out laughing because I used a classic "chilenismo" that they found HYSTERICAL. But the group listened intently and liked my idea. They are going to try and build a bookshelf and we are going to bring them some books!
Also, someone stopped me on the street earlier in the week to ask for directions. My first reaction was to tell them I was a gringa and I would be unable to help. When they asked where the bus station was, I realized with pride that I could indeed give them directions. I calmly explained with my gringa accent where it was, and they thanked me. I guess I´m not as useless as I thought....
Me and the chicas from the oficina had a nice get together on Thursday night. We ate pizza (with ham, obviously) and drank bebidas (soda, obviously) and gossiped about our colegas. We also watched my favorite novela which also happens to be the favorite novela of everyone in Chile. We took a few pictures, laughed a lot, and Ximena even gave me a bookmark that had a note on the back telling me I was always welcome to come back to my home in Osorno. It was fun, I followed most things that happened and I realized that I had indeed made friends who knew me and understood me despite the cultural and linguistic barriers.
I also realized I´m obsessed with chilean spanish. Its so adorable and ridiculous. I´m practicing using the word huevón (idiot/friend/testicle/every other word out of every man´s mouth) as much as possible. I bought myself a diccionario de chilenismos and every free second, I study up. Last weekend when I went to Chiloé, another foriegner told me I talk like a chilena. I´m a little afraid that no one in the US will understand me, but my colegas are proud of what they´ve taught me.
And finally, I bought myself a new wallet (a long overdue purchase) that says Osorno, Chile on it. Its awesome. I also bought a bunch of Osorno and Chile postcards. These purchases made me realized that despite the fact that everyone continues to remind me how ugly Osorno is, I kind of love it.
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