As I write this, I am sitting on a large rock wall just above the ocean. Behind me, there is a strange (and rather creepy) joker playing the accordion. I’ve never been a beach person, but this town agrees with me. Viña del Mar is the sister city to Valparaíso, and is currently where I find myself living. It is the home of Latin America’s biggest music festival / competition (Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar) along with eight or so castles and a bunch of awesome beaches. Additionally, it is also the home of a clown that hangs out on the sidewalk of one of the busiest streets hawking empanadas, sand sculptures of Michael Jackson’s tomb (you can’t escape that news coverage no matter where you go), and some rather strange graffiti. I love that I am getting the chance to know this city as someone who lives here, rather than strictly as a tourist. While I don’t actually think that Chilean culture is all that different from our own, it’s the little things that are bewildering. I think a list is necessary…
- Eating Patterns – I came here knowing that lunch would be the biggest meal, but I definitely didn’t realize that the other two meals in the day would be pastries. I have yet to be hungry here because I am constantly stuffed with toast, pie, cake, cookies with manjar (i.e. dulce de leche), etc. All of this makes me rather grateful of the fact that my main mode of transportation is walking.
- The Communist Hot Dog Stand – I’m not entirely sure I can explain this one except to say that the man who runs it seems to be nostalgic for the days before the dictatorship and has pictures of Salvador Allende adorning the stand and plays music from the seventies.
- Transportation – As I said, my main mode of transportation is walking. I walk everywhere to meet up with friends, to go out at night, etc. Its not that I mind walking, I’m rather enjoying the ability to go anywhere independent of a car, but rather that Chileans as pedestrians are rather dangerous. One of the first few days that I was here, a friend of my host family decided to take me out to show me the town. I didn’t keep track, but the number of times my arm was grabbed and I was dragged across a busy road nowhere near a cross walk was rather astounding. In the States I am a safe pedestrian; I wait for the light to change and look both ways before crossing. Here, I end up crossing myself before I am dragged in front of speeding. I have decided that I will be tracking my progress towards “Chilenization” based on how utterly terrified I am while crossing streets.
- Traditions – It always strikes me as sad when I meet non-Americans and they start explaining their country’s national traditions. I am always at a loss when it comes to explaining US traditions, mostly because I’m not entirely sure that the US has many countrywide traditions. As far as I know, most people have a cookout on July 4th and watch some sort of fireworks, but beyond that it seems that because we are such a diverse nation with so many different cultures, that no real traditions stand. While I generally appreciate that I live in a country where everyone is different and therefore there is always something new to learn, I do lament the fact that I don’t share more with my fellow American citizens. Chileans on the other hand seem to have many traditions involving music, dance, food, holidays, etc. For example, most Chileans will explain the folk music as having three stanzas because “there’s not a first without a second, and there’s not a second without a third.” The Chileans that I have met are intensely proud of their traditions and the history of their country, and have been more than happy to explain them to me.
While I can pass all of these off as cultural differences that I find amusing, the language is definitely what is throwing me off the most. Chilean Spanish, as my host brother told me last night, is a dialect and should be considered its own language. While I wouldn’t go as far as to count it as its own language, it is distinctive.
But that, I believe, is a post for another day.
