September 30: Excessive Punctuality

Word of the Day:
taco (Chile)- traffic jam

So today has made me feel excessively stupid and sheltered and its not even noon yet. I should just start listing ¨really good at overreacting¨ on my resume.

I woke early up after a night of weird dreams about minature temblores that may actually have been real light seismic activity. Anyway, left my house around 8:30 thinking that would be more than enough time to get to the internship. I had found a different way to go online that wouldnt require a 500 peso ($1, although technically more now that the dollar has been falling a lot) collectivo, a shared taxi. This required taking 2 buses, but seemed a lot simpler. I dont really mind taking the buses even though there are all sorts of class issues involved in public transport. At least til recently, the metro was the more upper class form of transport and much more exclusive. Now, with some extenstions, its much more overcrowded. Generally, wealthy Chileans love to complain about how the metro has been ruined. My host parents were telling last night about how there was a famous skit called Transcagamos, the polite translation of which would be Transscrewedusover. At any rate, by now, I found micros to be much more reasonable. People are nice! Everyone offers seats to babies and old women. Unlike the mad dash to push onto the metro.

Today was the first time I{ve really experienced the wonders of Santiago traffic. It took me 30 minutes to get down Avenida Tobalaba, which is essentially how long it takes me to run the same distance. All in all, my trip took about 2 hours from door to door. Ive gotten to my grandmother{s house in Connecticut, 2 states away!, in less time.

Maipu used to be its own separate town and in a way it still sort of is: its population is around the same as Boston proper. As the city of Santiago grew, the fields separating the two shrank, and it sort of just got incorporated in. There are still a couple fields between all the housing areas, but Im guessing theyre not long for this world with all the development pressure.

While I was on the bus, however, my (hopefully) future boss called me to confirm our interview. I thought I was late, so I told her I was on my way, to which she replied that we were meeting TOMORROW. Silly viernes and jueves, I can never tell you apart!
At this point, I figured I should at least try to find where the internship is. I had freaked out unnecessarily about the neighborhood. I still stuck out like a sore thumb, sure, but there was a supermarket by the bus station whereas I had been expecting Las Turbinas like conditions. Not to say that things looked like home in Ñuñoa or that Id want to hang out there at night, but it definitely allayed at lot of my fears. Im still so incredibly unstreetwise and sheltered. For which I should count myself lucky, but I blister at my own naivete sometimes. Just because a neighborhood may not have the best conditions doesnt mean that people cant live their lives in it in a totally routine fashion.

I wonder how I get percieved by Chileans who see me (without hearing me talk): do they assume Im a gringo or an upper class Las Condes type? Im defintely not really fashionable enough and my complexion is even a little bit olivey for upper class Chile but I hope, but maybe since Im not blonde, that I dont automatically come off as a gringa. In the end, Im not really sure which is better, if either.

One other anecdote for today: the bus I was riding on back to Santiago Centro contained a very demanding clown, who both did some sort of performance while organizing the flow of people on the bus.