Word of the day:
camote (Chile)- sweet potato
ponche- a drink with white wine & chirimoya (a fruit from the North of Chile)
Today featured two very interesting musical panoramas that I wanted to write about.
-During the hubbub of the national paro, featuring a strike by thousands of public servants (including teachers employed by municipalities) a lone violinist played a sad but sweet tune just outside the Baquedano metro station. It seemed fitting, people marching for more rights they will probably never recieve, but keeping the hope and action of seeking alive.
-On a bus I took up the Alameda to Las Condes, a Brazilian drummer got on. In broken Spanish he explained he was going to play some samba. It had been a hot day and although it was joyful music performance lacked luster. Without a band behind, the lone samba drum seemed plaintive and echoing through the bus, where few people watched or listened, everyone plugged into their individualized i-pods and individual dramas. It struck me as terribly sad, a voice far from home, searching for ears and finding none.
I had a very UChile experience today. I went to class expecting to have my final for “Globalization and Copper” but when I arrived the professor (after having sent out a message earlier in the afternoon telling us to come to class even though several of the facultades were on strike) informed us that there had been a problem and that our final examination would now be held next week. I am fairly certain that heads would roll if a professor at Tufts tried to pull that one. Just saying.
Luckily, however, this meant that I could go on time to the Thanksgiving dinner our program directors had planned for us, in the beautiful barrio alto home of our program assistant Loreto’s mother. Dinner was delicious, and possibly the most “American” thanksgiving I’ve ever had: they served sweet potatoes with marshmallows and the jelly kind of cranberry sauce, neither of which I had ever had before. It was also interesting to be eating meat again- last Thanksgiving I hadn’t, breaking the American model of animal protein as central to any meal. There were some very Chilean touches to the meal however- pebre, a delicious spicy sauce, Chilean bread, some exquisite wine (agua rojo as our program director jokingly called it). It was kind of bittersweet to have the whole entire group in one place as we realized it might be the last time that every single one of us would be together again. Ahh gringo pack! We’ve been blessed with some really great group chemistry that has made this semester especially wonderful.
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