Culture Class: Chilean Families

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Chilean Family (link)

So, looking at some differences in the families of Chile and United States. Families in Chile are a lot closer considering the children do not leave the house until after they have finished college. Most college degrees are 6 years so the majority of the children stay in the house until age 26 easily. Typically, the women are housewives and take care of the house as well as make all the meals. They also serve to keep the nuclear family updated on family news as well as all social happenings. Living at home provides for a much different university experience considering that you aren't surrounded by friends all the time like in the United States. Lunch is served around 2:00 in the afternoon so you return home for lunch. Lunch is the largest meal of the day. Since the Chilean family is closer, the mother is generally wants to make sure that your well dressed it's cold out, that you have an umbrella if it's raining, that you're feeling well, that everything is going well. So the involvement of Chilean parents lives in the lives of their children in the university is much greater than in the United States. Since all the family lives together in the house, it's not abnormal that 2 brothers of 23 and 25 share a room and sleep in bunkbeds. You're expected to tell the family if you aren't coming home one night or if you are getting back later than expected so they don't get worried. On Sunday, the family generally all comes together for a big lunch. The children that no longer live in the house generally come to the house quite often just to talk and see how things are. All meals are eaten the in the dining room where there is no TV. A man comes weekly to completely clean the house and give the mother a break. Water heating is controlled by turning on a heater with a match that heats the water for the house. Dinners at night are at about 9pm and are generally leftovers from lunch. Gas is expensive in Chile so central heating doesn't exist nor any system of heating for that matter. The only heating is a small stove that heats the corner of one room. That means bundling up in the house is a must. Shoes are not expected to be taken off at the door.

Culture Class: Flaite

It's said that Chile is very classist which I could agree with considering my experiences, but I have not found that it's any more classist than the United States. One cultural aspect of Chile is the use of the word "flaite". I think a good comparison would be that of the word "gay" in English in the way that it's used as a demeaning word towards something else. Also a good comparison would be "redneck" but the word "flaite" carries a much more negative connotation. Flaite is (link). This group that the upper class has labeled has a speech that is noticeably different and they are also identified by "flaite" clothing. The term is used to describe the people as well as parts of the city that are run down as well as anything that is bad. "That's so flaite" or just simply "flaite" is used quite frequently in Chilean speech. The "flaites" cannot be defined with a specific racial minority but rather from a different economic class. There are many youtube videos that make fun of flaites so just for educational purposes, I've included a link to one of these extremely classist videos (link). It does not seem to be viewed as a vulgar term to use or offensive term by most Chileans of the middle and upper class.

San Pedro Salt

The Desert of Chile

PHOTO ALBUM 1: San Pedro Trip- link

This past weekend we took a trip up north to San Pedro de Atacama which is a desert in the north of Chile. I went with some of my gringo (american) friends from UNC. The 24 hour bus ride took us to the small but fairly touristy city of San Pedro. While there we got the chance to do some sandboarding on the dunes near the city which was quite entertaining. We did a little bike riding through the mountains and zipped down the hills at lightspeed. On one of the days, we got up at 4am to go to the geysers in the high altitudes of the mountains around there. I don't think I've ever been so cold in my life. Maybe camping once or twice I was as cold, but not much. I had to jog in place the whole time to actually be able to feel my feet. But it was pretty cool. It was basically like 60 Old Faithfuls in the canyon area with bubbling geysers everywhere. There were some hotsprings nearby where you could take a little dip in water that was actually pretty warm. We were too cold to undress to swim, but our legs were revived by taking a dip. When we went for the bike ride, the guy who was leading us told us about all the celebrities that had visited San Pedro and how a number of them were pretty rude. I wish I remembered specifically which ones he mentioned. He talked about his crazy teenage years. He said that 10 years ago, he gave tours in which there was all you can consume pisco sour (chilean alcohol) and marijuana after the bike ride obviously with a higher cost. He said he didn't do that anymore. So that was basically our trip to San Pedro.

AIESEC Leadership Development Conference in Buenos Aires

PHOTO ALBUM 1: LDS Buenos Aires (link)

This past weekend I was in Buenos Aires for an AIESEC conference (link) which was quite entertaining. We found cheap flight tickets form Santiago to Buenos Aires. I was with people from 12 countries including Portugal, Russia, Czech Republic, Poland, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, and Germany. It was a weekend of learning about how to be a better leader, meeting lots of cool people, doing some AIESEC dances, and just having a good time. We were in an ex-monastery on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The parties included one that was Cowboys which made for some interesting costumes. The second night was people with costumes such as cross dressing to get some laughs and have a good time. It's always fun to meet new people from so many different countries that all have the motivation and desire to create a positive impact on society.

University Life

The university where I study, the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, has about 7 buildings or so distributed among the two cities of Viña del Mar and Valparaíso. There is no campus that exists, so it's pretty much like an urban campus. I'm taking a couple classes including: General Sociology, Fundamentals of Social Work, Social Violence, Spanish, and Choral Practice 1. Generally there are very few gringos (North Americans) in my classes. In Choral Practice, I am the only one which makes me stand out pretty well. In the universities of Chile, all students enter a major (or "carrera") where they take the same classes with the same group of people for all 5 years. So this makes for a tight-knit group where everyone knows everyone pretty well. This also means that classes can be rescheduled like its nothing because everyone in the class has the same schedule so there wouldn't be a problem. For the gringos (like myself), this can be problematic if we have a class scheduled during the time that the class was rescheduled. This has happened about 6 times so far. Or you'll show up to class and there will be no one there because either class was canceled and you didn't find out about it or it was moved to another room and you didn't find out about it. The communication between the professors and the students is pretty limited. The professor doesn't send out emails or notices of changes because if you just tell one member of the group everyone else in the class is going to find out because they all have the same classes, but not the gringos. One day, I showed up for class and the chileans of the class had done presentations which us gringos had no idea that we were supposed to do that. The professor was calling on people to present what they read about, and we were just lowering ourselves in our seats to try to hide behind the heads of the people in front of us so she wouldn't call on us. Knowing our homework assignments is quite unorganized because you aren't given a syllabus on the first day of class with all the homework assignments of the year. If you miss what the assignment is during class, you're kind of screwed. That's why it's really good to have Chilean friends in the class that can let you know what up. The classes that I'm taking only meet once a week so it leaves for a lot of free time. The homework load is a lot less than UNC Chapel Hill which is quite nice. It's kind of hard to understand everything that the professor says, but it's getting better.

Trip to La Serena

All the people from my Study Abroad Program took a 4 day trip to La Serena which is about a 6 hour bus ride north of Viña del Mar. We left on Thursday morning, but I of course had the unfortunate event of my alarm not working and waking up too late to catch the bus. I had to go to the bus station in the center of town to search for another way to get to La Serena. Luck had it that not 5 minutes after I arrived, a bus left for La Serena with me on it. Those sitting around me on the bus were all playing their music on their cellphone without any headphones. I arrived in La Serena after a comfortable 7 or so hours and took on the challenge of finding the hotel where the group was staying. Every person that I asked had completely different derections for me basically pointing to opposite sides of the city which made choosing the right directions quite difficult. I ran into a concert going on in the middle of the city with a line stretched 4 blocks of people waiting to get in. After finally finding where the bus stop was, I took a micro to where the hotel was. Once I finally arrived, I was greeted with the smell of asado (BBQ) and wine.

The next day, we took a bus into the city to see the sights and what was going on. We came to the city center which is a square with a large fountain in the center. Many school children stood around in the park talking with friends while other couples took up the benched showing quite public their PDA's (Public Displays of Affection). We checked out a Japanese Garden which seemed strange in the middle of a smaller Chilean town. And of course the day was not complete without an empanada of seafood. In the afternoon, we took a 2 hour trip north of La Serana to a smaller town called Vicuña where we went to a well known observatory situated on the side of a mountain far from light pollution of the city. We had the opportunity to look through high powered telescopes at developing stars, far away galaxies, exploding stars, and planets. The coolest part was to get to see Saturn where you could actually see the rings. It's wasn't just a spot of light, you could make out the form of planet and everything. After looking at the stars, the group of men that seemed to be pretty knwoledgeable about star watching and allowed us to use the telescopes, then stangely brought us downstairs for a musical show of their band. Afterwards, they tried to sell us their CD which seemed quite strange to me that the scientests just happened to make up a band too and were selling their CD.

On Saturday, we took a bus the 1.5 hours from La Serena back to Vicuña to go to a restaurant that has no electricity. They make all their food using ovens that are only heated by the sun. In the afternoon we went to a factory where they make pisco which is the rum of Chile and Perú. In the night, we celebrated the birthday of one of the girls in our study abroad program.

We headed home on Sunday.