Origins of a Pun

Top left: Jorge, Chilean engineer; Allison, girl from my program who lives in my house, Jacqui, host-mom, a ball of energy known as La Manola
Top Right: The result of 1.5 yrs. of undeterred hair growth..
Bottom Left: The result of 1.5 mins of professional scissors...








Hello! Hi! Welcome! I hope I didn't scare you
with too many exclamation marks! Please forgive me, but I couldn't contain my excitement at starting a blog. I've heard so much about these things called "blogs" in the past few years, and I just never imagined I would have my own. But the time has come. Spurred on by the help of trusty Jenna, former Stebbenite, who provided the ingenious pun Chile Ryano (get it, like Chile Relleno?), I am now ready to blog it up to the cyberlimit.

A little backstory, in case you weren't aware...

After traveling through Ecuador for two months with Santa Barbarians Max and Gabe (summary of trip=Alpaca+diarreah, thankfully never mixed), those fair-weather fans decided they couldn't handle the foul-weather of the south, and returned to the currently sun-drenched northern hemisphere, leaving me to take a 5 day bus ride south (summary=violently bloody movies+inward cursing at the bus companies for having "urine only" bathrooms on board) to Valdivia, Chile. I surprisingly survived, and have been living in this university town for 1 month now, and I have 11 more months to go!

It's been a pretty crazy month, so I'll try to sum it up with the most important/interesting occurences...

Most important is the discovery of a Chilean dish titled "As," which sounds awfully similar to "ass." "As" is a version of the Chilean completo (read: essentially a hot dog filled with every condiment known to man), with beef inside. Needless to say, I've entertained myself too much asking people I meet if they've tried the Chilean "As" yet.

Second most important: I kissed the President of Chile. I'm still a little bit in awe that this happened, especially because I've never even gotten to shake hands with George W, nevermind getting him to pucker up. Here's the story: I have an internship here with the Ministry of Agriculture. The jefe (boss) called me a couple nights ago to tell me to be at the bus terminal at 8:00 a.m. sharp the next morning. He neglected to tell me we would be attending an event with Michelle Bachaluret, first female Presidente of Chile. I admit, full of shame, I fell asleep for a brief portion of her talk (she has a very soothing voice). But afterwards, a little bit groggy, I stumbled over to a line of people, and when I looked up, there was the Presidente of Chile! At this moment, all I could think of was "I must touch the presidente of Chile. I'm so close. All I have to do is reach out and grab her sleeves..." however, to my horror, I discovered a large Chilean man in my path.

So I sidestepped left, and right, but his bulk prevented me from making physical contact. But la presidente, bless her kind soul, saw my desperate gringo eyes, and gracefully stepped past mr. large chilean man and gave me a cheek to cheek besito, the common Chilean greeting. Two days later, I swear her perfumed scent remains on my cheek...

Third most important: my brief career as a guitar teacher for precocious Chilean 6 year olds appears to have come to a failed end. Backstory: Jackie, my host mom, took me to the store to buy a cheap guitar to fill the void left in my heart by leaving my guitar back in California (by the way, I neglected to mention this earlier...a colleague of mine at my internship informed me that "Californiano" in Chilean Spanish means horny...no wonder they snickered at my office when I told them where I was from...). I bought a pretty sweet 50 dollar guitar, and Jackie, being the hopeful mother she is, bought a small cheap guitar for Manola, her 6 year old daughter, and asked if I could teach Manola to play the guitar. She said she thought it would help Manola out quite a bit to learn an instrument like the guitar. I foolishly agreed...

Now, a little backstory on Manola. 6 year old Manola has enough spirit to power the electricity grid of the city of Berkeley. Manola will charm your heart out with her ridiculously wry, imploring smile that begs you to play any and all game with her, at all hours of the day. She also has a disease common to some young children and many adults called "You best not try to teach me nuthin' cuz I's already knows it all!" I diagnosed her with this after our second guitar lesson. Here is how our first guitar lesson went...

(Keep in mind this is all in poorly spoken Spanish) Okay Manola, first we need to tune your guitar to make sure it..Manola, Manola, stop strumming, we gotta tune your guitar first, it sounds like a barn full of recently milked sick untrained cows trying to harmonize together. Manola! Hold on a second! Let me at least show you where to put your fingers! (Manola continues strumming with wild abandon). Manola, this is a good life lesson, you gotta put in a little effort before you can play the guitar well, you didn't pop out of the womb and immediately enter the mile relay did you (Manola still strumming), MANOLA!!!

At this point, I was forced to concede defeat, and Manola began to write the first verse of a song as I strummed the chords. Here is the translation of what she came up with:

The father-plane crashed down with its son-plane,
And never again appeared and it was a grand history
Of a father and his son,
And a friendly plane appeared and rescued them.

Keep in mind, some important things are lost in translation...

Last thing: It has literally rained EVERY SINGLE DAY since I got here to Southern Chile. If it's true that every time God sheds a tear it rains, then God must be extremely dang depressed this month. One thing I've heard is that people here appreciate good weather more than us Californians, since it's so rare here. Now, this is merely a theory, as the good weather to prove this has been severely lacking. One can always dream...but alas, it isn't so bad filling your time with attempting to prevent your umbrella from turning inside out at the powerful winds.

Well, I think this fairly sums up my first month here in Valdivia. I start classes tomorrow, which I'm really excited for. I miss you all! Send word (or words)!

Love,
Ryan