A typical day...

A lot of people ask me what my typical day here is like. There's no straight answer. Most days start with school. Well, toast with jam, then a bus, then a metro, then school. The afternoons and evenings are the hours of small adventures, triumphs, boredom, and surprises.

Yesterday was an exceptionally normal day, if I were 22 and Chilean. After school, I met a nueva amiga for sushi and we only spoke in Spanish. While she swears she understood me, I'm skeptical. Still, it was the longest continuous time I've spoken in Spanish since being here, and I remembered that was the reason I came. Turns out this future psychologist dedicated her last five years as a Jewish youth group leader and six years ago, did a brief exchange program with Schecter in New Jersey. So, before meeting, we had ten Facebook mutual friends. Hopefully, we'll go out this weekend and I can aggregate some more Chileans into our mutual portfolio.

To evade boredom's creeping shadow, I had my friend Nicole over in the early evening. She studied journalism, has a Chilean husband, lives here and freelances: she's a vision of the life I didn't choose for now but easily could have dreamt up and at moments, covet.

After eating mangos in my backyard, we were picked up by some of her husband's high school friends in the neighborhood. They are all bilingual, successful, and still fun 25 year olds - aspirational role models for me. Admiring the moon's brightness through the lack of ozone layer, we sat in Nicole's in-laws' landscaped yard and drank piscolas - pisco, a South American plum brandy, and coke (which is a dangerous starting point after two dry weeks). Then I went home and ate a way-too-salty omelette, talked to five good friends at once, and went to bed.

Press repeat:
Now, I'm in class again. We're talking about the most popular drugs in our home countries. ¿En Italia, se prefieren mas la heroina ola cocaina? ¿En los Estados Unidos, se abusan drogas sintéticas, no? We generally just oscillate between talking about food and illegal things. Not quite the conversations from the Scarsdale High School Advanced Topics course. An adorably skinny with braces Brazilian guy in my class just called me Jennifer, probably because it's a generic American name that he saw in a Hollywood movie. He turned a little pink when the teacher told him my name was in fact, not Jennifer. Instead, they've all started calling me Esteffi because they can't pronounce 'st's nor consonant endings.

Who knows what the afternoon will bring. I think I'm going to go to an indigenous artisan market or an atelier furniture exhibit at the cultural center.

Despite un pequenito duele de cabeza, today is a good day. A very good day.

An iPhone is not an SLR

Despite my lack of technical training nor
For these pictures, I'd like to thank Steve Jobs, Mother Nature, and the Scottish lady who took me up a hill last Friday.

Panoramabobamabananafananafofama.

Check out that thick layer of smog, plus mountains. Stgo is Spcl.

Then I went to Renaca...

I want to wake up every morning like this.

And every night to look like this.

And then to Valparaiso...

Would you ride in that box?

Even the floor is painted.

And in my palace, this will be my breakfast bar.
And I will live happily ever after.

Color confused. This city is discriminatory against the color-blind.

Meanwhile, back in Santiago, I went for the same exact hike as I did on Friday.

Random people I corralled into a picture so
you might think I have friends here.

Oh yeah, that looks like the one at the top.

I'm on the scenic route of life.

A puppet show in a plaza where people used to get hanged.

The world's skinniest, longest church.

You may have noticed I really like churches.

Up a Hill with a Scot

Friday afternoon, I left school early and met up with a Scottish woman near the Universidad Catolica, at her antique office on Calle Londres. We sat in the sun and had a coffee with an ice cream scoop plopped in each tall skinny vase and got to know each other. A random British guy stopped on the street, chatted me up, and it was nearly flattering except his pick-up went: "Americana? Aqui? Santiago? Por que?" No, gracias. He managed to get customary cheek kisses in for both me and the Scot, whose name is Joanne. She arrived 15ish years ago on a long vacation and well, she never left. She runs a private English tutoring service primarily for Santiago business people, and she decided to spend the rest of her lunch break hiking up a small mountain in heels with me. You can probably tell I think she's some kind of badass.

On the other side of the hill, I met up with Anna, an NU student spending a full year here. Since I loved study abroad so much, it's always a pleasure to meet other people loving their time beyond the states. We strolled through Lastarria, an upscale bohemian barrio and got acquainted. At Cafe Interludio, I had a nice Coca Cola Light in a glass bottle, saw a copy of 1967 Playboy, and met an Argentinian driving from Ushuaia to Alaska...

After meeting all these new people, I caught a ride home with my Chilean mom and within the hour, our family was packed and off to Renaca, Vina del Mar and Valparaiso.

Over the weekend, I saw neon sunsets and Tom Cruise's latest movie (Oblivion, it was like Inception Light), and practiced relaxing which translates loosely to excessive sleeping and snacking. I read a real book for personal enjoyment for the first time in several years and this delighted me greatly.

On Sunday, we went for a picnic in Valparaiso. The entire city is a Patrimony of Humanity, a.k.a. pretty. After taking the 100 year-old Alegre elevator up to the top of Alegre Hill, we still climbed many more stairs, winding through muraled streets and scrapmetal houses. Every door led to a gallery or a cafe or a hostel, each having its own quirky charm. Our family pretended to be looking for a place to stay so we could check out the insides and the views from some of the swankiest options in town.

On the way home, I should've maybe been admiring kilometers of vineyards, but I continued the weekend snoozeathon and slept the whole way home.

That evening, back in Santiago, the women of the house went out for ice cream, visited the grandparents, made matzoh balls, and went to Chilean Walmart. Despite all the weekend's sleeping, I was still exhausted at bedtime.

Every day should have ice cream and sunsets.

If you want to skip yesterdays 1400 words...

A bit excessive, I know, but if you count each picture as 1000, this post is actually much longer.

Lourdes Parish church. Natalie and I totally mass-crashed. 

I would love to sit and play giant checkers there.

That mirrored armoire contains Narnia. Now, play ISpy Stef!

Hipster street art has nothing on the live reading I got from a man who looked like Dr. Octopus on the microbus home.
Still, pretty cool.

But not as cool as this mural!

Or this one!

Or these ones!

So much green!

Pinochet problems yield great architectural contrast.
A 70 year gap in design progress visible here. 

First mural pic!

This street is called Nueva York because it
looks just like 59th and Lex.
Maybe 150 years ago.

You can eat dinner inside a whale and come out alive.
Just like Jonah.

A Royal Palace that just cant handle a good earthquake or 30. To be restored... some day. 

Green drink 1 - Bar Nacional 3 Mente

Green drink 2 - French cafe mint tea

Lider Lidia and the Magnificent Dia

Since arriving in Chile, I hadn’t yet offered many of my more classic commentaries, replete with biting wit and high eloquence. Well, Stef on Stuff 2.0 is back because rather than family time or aimless wandering, I actually went to see things today. Real tourist things, and real untouristy things alike!

When I signed up for Bellavista, I was so excited to go on afternoon trips around the city. I figured that like me, most people in an international immersive language school would be looking for a living language – one they could experience afuera de la clase, con contextos culturales. (Spanish isn’t hard. You shouldn't need GoogleTranslate here. Afuera means outside.). But, considering Monday’s tour was cancelled due to not meeting the minimum of 6 participants and today’s only had 3 people by 11 a.m., I was both concerned and frustrated.

I spent my break harassing No. 4 and No. 5 into signing up, and then asking a whole bunch of others that I didn’t know at all if they’d like to join. Most people turned me down politely, claiming other plans but one incredibly rude British guy, snobby accent and all, said, “I truly can’t imagine anything worse.” Um, hello? So nice to meet you, too and thanks for yucking my yum, jerk. The Queen would be ashamed. Just trying to be friendly and cultural here. Instead of giving him a big FU, I smiled and said, “Well, that’s too bad. Have a great day.”

I can 98 percent guarantee you that my day was better than his.

So, el problema: five signed up, six minimum. You can do the math. My teacher who happened to also be the tour guide told me that el director makes los decisiones. Funny, since I already decided this tour was going to happen. I marched down the hall, knocked on his door, and in about three sentences got his approval to go with five. I spent the next hour beaming with joy.

Lidia is my second-hour teacher. A leftist Pinochet-angsty late 50something, she’s the feistiest. Today’s class conversation included a list of Chile’s top nudist beaches, her grandmother’s discovery of her ex-boyfriend’s five marijuana plants, and a Kazakhstani party girl’s wedding to a Chilean miner. Normal classroom talk. (I also found out that Mauricio has lived with girlfriends in at least seven countries, including Tunisia, and Sebastian loves Dragonball Z.). As one might imagine, I was pretty excited for the stories she’d tell on the tour.

At 1:30, we set off for Metro Salvador hasta Metro Universidad de Chile. On the metro, I started translating for two of our companeras. I figured this would be a nice thing to do for the bewildered pair over the next hour or so. The metro has nice murals, they are about death and dictatorship, here’s a diagram of the conquistadores, yadayadayada. Uplifting stuff. 

We exited the metro into an underground mall which appears to be filled with strip clubs. No, they are not strip clubs, but daytime discotecas, remnants of Pinochet’s curfew era, where people couldn’t go out at night… So, they just made really dark cafes for night-in-day experiences.  Lidia also gave an elongated description of two types of architectural technology to withstand earthquakes. Thanks to a class I took on architecture in Spain, I actually knew a lot of the words she was saying… but how do you translate hormigon armada? I think it comes out to be cement-reinforced-with-crisscrossing-steel-bars-that-can-absorb-shock-well-and-withstand-natural-disasters-like-earthquakes.

We ate lunch at a traditional spot and Lidia told us to get teremotos. A teremoto is an earthquake, but really, its alcohol. And who doesn’t want a fishbowl-sized bebida at lunch on a Wednesday? Mi nueva amiga Nicole and I barely finished our shared one drink but looked real cute with two straws. Lidia champed hers down, expectedly. Nicole had to leave for home, so she didn’t actually get to go on the three more hours of tour. Yes, two down, three to go. Surprise: this took five hours of my life up! Hooray – something to do with my afternoon!

We wandered through the commercial district and the government district, including a street known as New York and a palace known as La Moneda. In between those, I had the chance to attempt a translation for Patrimonio de la Humanidad but in English, can anyone tell me what Patrimony of Humanity means? Please submit your respuestas to stefgroner@gmail punto com.

When we started crossing a bridge over Chile’s singular north-south highway, I realized that Lidia hadn’t actually reached the first of the three ‘cultural’ neighborhoods we would be visiting. I felt pretty damn cultural already.

Over the suspension bridge, we found ourselves in Brasil. “But wait, you’re in Chile! It’s a skinny country but not that skinny,” I thought. Well, welcome to Hipster Chile better known as Barrio Brasil. Within one block, I saw two guys playing guitar and three cardboard box houses for street dogs. You know, just like in Scarsdale. We passed countless universities and I tried to re-explain Lidia’s sentiment on how Pinochet robbed her of juventud (youthfulness) during his toque de queda 

(politically-imposed curfew), which is why she parties so hard with her niece now.  

We passed churches, avenues, and incredible murals – each one needed a picture, so maybe it’s my fault this tour was five hours. Eventually, we reached Spongebob’s house. This underwater-themed restaurant had me beyond skeptical – a nautical urban eatery meant for tourist families couldn’t have sounded more like my idea of hell, or the scene in Easy A when Lobster Todd starts singing.

But, it was THE COOLEST PLACE EVER (well, top 100 on my list, I think). An entire block long, Oceano Pacifico has an actual submarine inside. Every table has different chairs, and each room has a theme. I got a real kick from the one where you sit inside an actual whale’s jaw and another with lots of Easter Island face statues. Waiters in sailor suits and puffer fish turned into colorful lampshades, this was the weirdest restaurant that I have ever entered. And I didn’t even eat anything.

We continued through palm trees and painted streets, eventually whittling the group down to three + Lider Lidia. Finally, she took us to a French Barbershop for tea. ‘What? That makes no sense!’ you say?

You would be correct except the barbershop is just a façade for a speakeasy French café! Here, the bathroom was in Narnia – actually! You had to open an inconspicuous armoire to find the hall to the toilette.

While I was exploring Narnia, the others succumbed to tiramisu, crème brulee and something called Chocolate Sour. While I was not at the table, Lidia ordered this cocoa beverage for Adineh who speaks about two licks of Spanish and definitely did not communicate that she was allergic to whiskey. Oh well – more for me to taste! Alas, it was too strong and not a good mix with my fresh mint tea. Maybe when I’m in a more afternoon-tipsy mood, I’ll try it again. Another note on the French barbershop: everything inside is for sale! The lookbook lists gilded mirrors, Barbie heads, paintings from Paris, and empty cigar boxes among the treasure trove. We left empty-handed and mildly exhausted, but quite content.

I’m glad I left the motley crew behind because I no longer had to translate for anyone but myself, when I felt like it! Absolved! It was a fun game to practice my translator abilities and occasionally make things up, but by the end of five hours, the mind tends to wander even when the body is physically present in the conversation.

I also had more really exciting plans! I went to Quinto Normal to meet my NU and JYS-Sevilla amiga Natalie, who is here to teach rural Chilean children English for four months. It’s like TFA but foreign and shorter. We had a really nice long walk around a huge park and then into a beautiful church – what more could you want from a late afternoon in a foreign city?

I thought the day was perfect – colorful sites, interesting company, memorable challenges, something chocolatey, and a happy conclusion.

So, I didn’t ask for anything more.

Fotografia

Not the funniest of captions, but perdoname, I'm tired still from Sunday's 8km hike you're about to see a picture of.

But this is actually what it looks like everywhere you go. Just, from 4 km up in the air, on Cerro San Cristobal.

Shops in Bellavista open air market, all boarded up and beautifully so. 

Look at the river aflowin'. 

Wood in motion. So, rocking horses?
Must go back when it's open.

The third church I attempted to visit,
gates locked.

Just like the Seine, amiright?

Middle of the day, middle of the city, things are really bustling.

The first church attempt, a construction site
where I definitely bypassed the caution signs,
at the behest of the very curious workers.
Todo el mundo le gusta a Nueva Iorque.

Obelisks are fascinating.

Seis Millones

I just thought some families would gather, a survivor would talk, we'd light candles, and say a prayer remembering everyone who perished in the Holocaust.  But, 800 seats, filled, with more commemorators standing on the fringe of the aisles? I couldn't have expected that.

The community-wide Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony took place at the Conservative synagogue, just behind the large mall down the street. As we approached the synagogue, cars were lining the block near standstill. The parking spilled over into the mall lot.

When we walked through the entrance, I was transported to a surreal oasis of grandiose modern architecture, a grassy area, quiet fountains and hundreds of teenage chileans in matching scarves. The youth groups came out and represented en mass, Hashomer HaTzair and Maccabi HaTzair emblazoned on the backs of their white button-downs.

I got a bunch of cheek kisses and realized it's a little strange all these people put their lips on my face, yet don't ask who I am or what my name is.

Max led me into the synagogue, where the passage toward the main sanctuary had been converted into a black-sheeted tent, the walls lined with photos from the Holocaust era and small yellow lights to guice you. A recording of music and voices set the context, until we entered the two-floored sanctuary. There, I was surrounded by a bold, vibrant melee of Chileans, gathering, remembering, and celebrating that despite tragedy, there exists this wild, spirited community.

The acto included national anthems of Chile and Israel, six candles lit by six survivors, six readings by six community rabbis, a modern dance by young girls, personal poems by madrichim - youth movement counselors, an address from the mayor and another from the Jewish community president, and one survivors tragic story of losing the only family member he had found alive after the war.

I wanted to write something really meaningful and beautiful, something that would bring you to the brink of tears, but I can't. I can't convey what it's like to be in a full 800-person sanctuary that feels somehow like a small family. It's like they grieve together and they celebrate together. Wrinkled survivors clutching the arms of shiny-haired promising chanichim, the youth group future of the community. A slender daughter's hand wipes a grandmother's cheek and stabilizes her shoulder. A man bellowed his story into the microphone, with the most shocking and painful post-war accounts I have ever heard.

And I sat, quiet, watching, listening. Just trying to take it all in, and process, but I think that will take a while longer than a blog.