Longing for Crayola and making a cow!

Pre-story: This is a picture of part of the city, taken from about half-way up the Cerro Caracol (“Snail Hill”) in Parque Ecuador, which is pretty close to my house. I decided to go for a little hike there, but about halfway up I realized I was completely alone (no other strolling pedestrians), so I turned around to go down. I learned afterwards that Cerro Caracol is the only place I really shouldn’t go alone during the day. It’s famous for its robbers, apparently. Lucky save. To go to the top, I’m planning on bringing a male friend.

Now for the intended message:
When we arrived for orientation in Santiago, a focus of the Middlebury program was that we should strive to be anthropologists in the culture/place where we are studying, instead of being judges. I think I am generally good with this, but today I am judging something: Chilean crayons. I don’t want to complain, but the only ones up for purchase have turned out to be waxy (so that the color doesn’t stick to the page), not a good quality. Also, as I started coloring with them, I realized I don’t have a crayon sharpener (or one of those incredible 96-crayon boxes with the built-in one), so the crayons will be dull. But that’s really my problem, not the crayons’. Quality differences aside, I was glad to have something colorful with which I could make a birthday card for Yani! Yani is one of the other girls who lives in my pension; she and her sister, Desi, are both exchange students from Mexico, only here for this semester. Yani turns 21 tomorrow, but we celebrated her birthday on Sunday.

Yani, trying to blow out the birthday candles (the big one counts for however many more the cake needed to have 21…). Marta, the pension owner/mom, bought the candles that spark everywhere and never blow out. Yani had to work on them for about five minutes, and the kitchen was filled with birthday-candle smoke. If they had smoke detectors in houses in Chile, ours would’ve been going off. [Yes, houses here generally don’t have smoke detectors…and since there is a lack of built-in heating systems (they’re unnecessary due to mild winters), people use portable electric, kerosene, or gas stoves as space heaters! This initially seemed like a safety issue to me, but no one else seems to be worried…]

Anyway, the birthday party was fun. We surprised Yani, because it was a few days early, put a funny hat on her head, sang to her*, told her to make three wishes (why do we only get one wish in the US?), and laughed as she tried to blow out the candles.

To pay for the cake, the hats, and her little present, everyone in the house pitched in a few dollars. The term for this in Spanish is “hacer una vaca,” which literally means “to make a cow.” The idea is that everyone gives what they can and then whatever is purchased (usually food) is shared by the group. I think it’s my favorite new Spanish expression. I’m looking forward to making lots of cows in the Grille this J-term…

*Singing “Happy Birthday” in Chile.
During all of my Spanish classes in middle- and high-school, we sang for people’s birthdays. Always to the same tune as the birthday song in the US, always “Felíz Cumpleaños a tí…” After a few years, I had a hard time accepting that other countries actually use our tune to celebrate…but it’s true. The Chilean lyrics are slightly different, though:

(sing to tune of normal “Happy Birthday”—translation in [brackets])

Cumpleaños felíz
[Happy birthday]
Te deseamos a tí
[We wish to you]
Cumpleaños ________(name)
[Birthday (so-and-so)]
¡Que los cumple felíz!
[That they are completed happily!]

The translation sounds funny, but you get the point.

Here is the whole group:

L to R : Me, Marta (owner/mom), Sergio, side of Irina’s head, Erich, Leo, (front row) Desi, Yani

I like this picture more:

I’ve got the best host “family” ever.

Hope you all are well!

Love,
Tiernan