Being blonde.

Before arriving in Chile, I realized I would stick out here. Chilean people are, on average, far shorter than Americans, and I am rather tall for an American female. In addition to this, I am also blonde. There are blondes in Chile, but they are rare. Very rare. And usually not all that blonde, with more of a light-brown hair color. So I arrived in Chile armed with this knowledge and the stories of friends, who told me they were whistled at/cat-called every day while they were in Chile. Surprisingly, my situation has not been like this…maybe Concepción isn’t as big on harassing its women, or maybe wearing down vests and my glasses has helped...in any case, I have gotten some attention, but not an overwhelming amount. The most common are comments from construction workers and honks from taxi/bus drivers. Chilean taxis and buses have their normal horns and a horn that sounds like a cat-call, which is the one I hear almost every day—it is more funny than bothersome. I’ve had other experiences as well: One time, a guy started singing to me as I passed (I read this on Allie’s blog from last year and didn’t believe it, but it really does happen). His song was something along the lines of “If I could come back to my bed and find you there…” Thanks but no thanks. Another time, a school bus full of kids passed me, all waving to me and shouting “Hola!” and “Hello!” That was cute. On that note, the “Hello” is a pretty common tactic to try to get my attention. Although a number of people have asked if I’m from Germany (there’s a pretty big German population in Chile, and I am the perfect blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan), most people assume I speak English. I usually pretend I don’t.

Anyway, this weekend, my friend Amy came to visit from Valdivia, and yesterday we decided to go to Tomé, a town about an hour north of Conce. I had heard that there were a lot of pretty beaches in Tomé, but had never been to visit them. It was a sunny, wonderful day, so we boarded a bus to go see the sea.

We arrived in the center of town and walked towards the ocean, arriving at a kind of fish-pier area, where the entire male population (which was the entire population, thanks to it being a fish pier) felt obligated to whistle, tried to get my attention by calling me the Chilean equivalent of “blondie” and the like. Ugh. Needless to say, we got on our way and spent some time on a more deserted part of the beach, which was lovely.

When we headed back to the town, I thought I was set. Normally in the city, comments on my appearance are at a minimum. Not so in Tomé. Almost every single man, whether he was alone or accompanied (by friends, a child, his wife/girlfriend), said something to me, whistled at me under his breath, tried to stroke my arm, etc. I was SO relieved to get on the bus to go back to Conce. I enjoyed seeing Tomé, but I have never felt like such an abused foreigner before.

After exploring more of Conce, Amy and I decided to make a cake. We went to the grocery store to buy our ingredients (ie. box of cake mix and eggs), but when we got home, we realized that the oven in my pension doesn’t work! We baked the cake in the microwave instead. Amy is brilliant. It worked well (we cooked it in about four parts), and it was a lot of fun.

I’m hoping classes start again this week so I don’t need to start working solo with my professors. I talked to Jeff Stevenson, the director of our program, this past week (he came to Conce to eat lunch with Noah and I!) and he’s trying to work things out…

Hope all of you are well and enjoying the fall! Spring is wonderful, but I think my internal clock’s a little confused…

Love,

Tiernan