Skinheads, Matisyahu, and contact info

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2/2/07 8:54 PM
Hi everyone!
It’s still light here at 9 PM, but darkening. A few shades before twilight. It’s very nice and purple. Well…. I have a list of things to write about, so I’ll just follow it for now.
Santiago’s really a pretty interesting city. You can find all kinds of strange things on the streets. The best example is La Pequeña Gigante, or “ giant little girl,” a giant, 30 foot wooden marionette that was set up in the middle of central Santiago. I guess she’s an project of some traveling French art troupe of some kind, but everyone loved her. She just spent 4 or 5 days in Santiago, doing things that little girls do, like sitting, standing, sleeping, eating, peeing (I don’t know how that worked, but that’s what the newspaper said she did), and brushing her hair. 1000s of people went to go see her, and I guess she was quite a site. And her eyes could be moved, too, so she could look directly at specific people, which I guess was pretty exciting for little kids. Also, in the same week, the citizens of Santiago would find upturned cars and trucks, and all kinds of debris on the streets for two or three days, and then one day an enormous metal rhinoceros appeared on one street corner. Someone told me that they were the same project; that the little girl had supposedly come to Santiago to rescue the people from the rhinoceros, but I that is not confirmed. I think they were the same French group, though. Ivan also told me there was one “art project” where a woman went through her daily life in a glass house, so everyone could see everything she did, but that was really controversial because, of course, she showered naked and changed clothes and such.

Matisyahu’s playing here tomorrow in this big reggae fest with UB40 and some other people (I’m not sure whom exactly), so I got tickets with some folks, and they cost 12000 pesos, which is…. $24! So I’m going to see Matisyahu tomorrow night for TWENTY-FOUR dollars! WOOH!

Now a little story about Chilean skinheads:
Wednesday all of the gringos went out with our “Cultural Monitors” which is a really sterile term for these students from La Chile and La Catolica who are here to like, support us, and answer questions we have about being young in Santiago, and what there is to do, etc. SO Wednesday my group of like 8 people went out to Bellavista with our cultural monitor, Daniel. Bellavista is this really trendy neighborhood with lots of shops and nice-ish restaurants. It’s the only place in Santiago that I’ve found postcards. And I guess at like 1 or 2 in the morning it transforms and has the hottest discos in Santiago. But that has nothing to do with the skinheads.

After the little dinner that the program paid for, a few of us went out to Plaza Ñuñoa, one of the most popular restaurant places, for some drinks. We had some good laughs, etc, and then went for French Fries down the next block. There were about 6 of us walking in twos, when all of a sudden we saw 5 or 6 kids, in camou pants and varieties of black t-shirts, and mullets and shaved heads, etc, all probably about 17, maybe 18, chasing after some other kid about the same age, but dressed in jeans and a casual white button-up shirt. I couldn’t understand what they were yelling, but they were throwing rocks at the other kid, and two of them were toying with butterfly knives. They only ran another block or so, and then the kid in white disappeared, and the skinheads turned around and ran back past us. I was standing next to Tristan, a kid from UCSC who’s like 6’4” with shaggy blonde hair and wears billabong t-shirts, and as they passed us the skinheads got up in Tristan’s face and were like “¡eyyy, gringo, ¿que tal gringo!?” very aggressively, but just in passing as theey were running back to wherever they came from. It was one of those “wow, what the hell just happened?” moments.

When we got to the restaurant with the fries I walked in first with Danny, Jonny, and Lili, and some normal-looking Chilean kid came up and said something we couldn’t understand in Spanish, so Danny was like “what? Are they closing?” in Spanish, and the Chilean guy said “oh no, no, come on in, come on, sit down, they’re just being drunk and fucking around,” and then one of his friends came up from the table where they were sitting and was like “yeah, I’m sorry, come on in and sit down, we’re just being stupid,” and so I looked at their table and saw all of the skinheads and some more of their friends, and that the kid who said “I’m sorry” was actually the one with the butterfly knife who got in Tristan’s face. So we sat down, and had some fries, and the skinheads spent some time laughing and joking around, just like us, and then paid and left.

Thus concludes my story about Chilean skinheads.

Now I’m going to do some things with Luki, so I’ll finish with some more stuff later.
-Sophie


2/2/07 10:46 PM
I bought q-tips today. The most magnificent thing. Magnificent.

I’m having trouble figuring out what to do about housing and the future here in Chile. The program ends in two weeks, and then I have to decide where I’m going to live. I’m mostly pretty happy here with Luki and Ivan, but there is almost no privacy, because the apartment is tiny, and I feel bad closing my door during the day. Also, it still feels really awkward with Luki serving me all the time, and her feeling obligated to get up early whenever I get up early, so she can make me breakfast, even if it’s just putting cereal on the table. It’s not even that she feels obligated, it’s… I don’t know. I guess that’s what women do here. I don’t like it. I thought I might get used to it or she might stop doing it, or something, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. It’s becoming more apparent that she really doesn’t have much else to do. All of the kids with cancer are on vacation for the summer and Ivan watches a lot of TV in their bedroom, and she doesn’t watch TV. But I really like being able to talk to them about things. Today I was reading an article for class about how Santiago never fully exploded into a city of radicals after Pinochet like the cities of Spain did after Franco, and whatever I didn’t understand I could ask Luki about, and she’d tell me her opinions and other opinions and etc, etc. I still have 2 weeks left before I have to move out or stay here, and it’s so hard to tell after just a week, but I’m going to need to start making preparations soon. Looking for a pension should be pretty easy, and that will be more or less like living in the dorms, which seems like an OK option, but nothing amazing. Or I could look around for posters put up by Chilean students looking for a roommate, and that will be very time-intensive, and difficult with my somewhat limited Spanish. Or I could get an apartment with gringos, which is my last choice, but probably would be pretty easy. Some other small things to consider are that Luki and Ivan live about 5 or so blocks from the campus that I’ll be attending, and also that they don’t have internet in their house, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but internet cafes only have certain hours, are frequently full, and I can’t use my own computer, and there are some real coffee cafes that have free wireless internet, but I hear the signal usually sucks, and Santiago is not the kind of city that I want to carry my laptop around in.

I’ve also been thinking about how long I’m going to stay here. Right now I’m signed up for 6 months, but have had every intention of extending to the year program, but I also want to travel a lot, and if I go to school for the whole year I don’t have much time to travel. This month we have two weeks to travel, and then we have a 3 day weekend for Easter, and then 2 weeks between July and June. This month I’m going to the south of Chile, to Torres del Paine, and to see penguins. In July and June it’s winter, and my mom’s coming to visit, so I figure we’ll go up north because it will be winter, and the north is warmer. There we can see llamas and flamingos and beautiful deserts that look like they’re on the moon. But I really, really want to see the rest of South America! And if I stay for a year I could travel in December after school gets out, but I’ll probably be missing home a lot by then. So I’m thinking maybe I won’t extend, and I’ll go traveling for a few months after school gets out in June. But I won’t have a lot of money, and I can’t work here under my student visa. Besides that, studying here for six months doesn’t seem like it would have the same impact on me as a year. I don’t see how I could see al there is to see and really start to understand the culture here after just 6 months, even if I’m in South America for 9 or 10 months, it won’t be the same as LIVING and STUDYING in Santiago for 11 months. Ah well. That deadline is May 1st. I’ll have to extend by May 1st, so I can think on it. Hopefully I’ll be over the culture shock by then and will be able to make logical decisions that aren’t clouded by fear or confusion.

Contact info!

Mailing address:
I receive mail at the EAP study center here. You can address any mail to

Sta. Sophie Carrillo-Mandel
Programa Universidad de California
PUC-CHILE, Campus Oriente
Ave. Jaime Guzman 3300
Ñuñoa
Santiago, Chile

My cell number is:
8-1816777

I’m not sure with all the codes and stuff, but I think that in order to call me from the US you have to dial

011-56-8-1816777
or possibly 011-56-9-8-1816777
All incoming calls are free for me.

I also have Skype, but a) I don’t have internet in my house, and b) I couldn’t get it to work when I tried to figure it out before

My skype name is
SophieAshayne

Now I’m goin cause I have to get up early to get my Chilean ID card, to be an official Chilena.
-Sophie (A quick P.S., my professor, Andres Bobbert, looks a lot like the guy on SNL who always does the impressions of George W. Bush. I can’t remember his name, but most of you should know what I’m talking about)
2/2/07 11:22 PM

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