When You Fart in Public, ALWAYS Blame It On The Quiet One

Well, I last left you all class-less and in the midst of a Mapuche revolution, and not much has changed, except that the Mapuche have promoted me to assistent to the secretary of the revolution, a post which will take effect once I master the Mapuche language and show them I can march in protest like a total bad-ass.

As for classes, it turns out the Antropology department doesnt bother to show up the first week of classes, leaving us exchange students hanging out on the gringo limb. No worries...you wont find me complaining about having free aimless days in now sunny Valdivia (thats right biatches, alert the press, the beatles were right, here comes the sun!) Next week we will see how the classes go, but this week, I lived it up, Valdivian style.

On Wednesday I finally entered the botanical gardens here, an amazing wide open labyrinth of trails and trees that lead to random isolated sections of the campus. God greeted me that day in the form of mysterious flute music while I was walking along. Like a dog that suddenly smells food nearby and starts wildly sniffing the air, I too wildly sniffed the air, searching out this flute music. Assuming it was the music of temptatious deserted island sirens, I prepared to defend their ploy to seduce me and enslave me forever, but it turned out to be jus a regular university student walking along the path, playing the flute. I followed him in secret for several minutes, wanting to hear his magical flute but not wanting him to feel subconscious. I reluctantly left after a while, but now I want to learn the flute, and also meet some sirens.

Wednesday night found us at dinner, enjoying relatively normal conversation, when 6 year old Manola donned her ballerina costume and decided to perform a full length show. She began by doing 360 degree leaps in the air (more like 112 degrees, but we can pretend for her sake), which resulted in her dizzily careening in the direction of a fair number of sharp objects, like the tall points of the metal chairs. My heart leaped higher than her 112 degree spins, in preparation for her gouging out her eyes, but somehow she averted the chairs, and maintains full vision. Her next act was to run full speed at the wall and kick it, which to me is something youre more apt to learn in karate, but who knows, maybe she attends ballarina-karate classes. Her final act involved her on the ground, accidentally farting rather loudly, and screaming ´´It was Mati! It was Mati!´´ (Mati is a quiet, shy university student in lives in the pension). Mati gracefully decided not to debate Manola on this point, but if I were him, I would have gone with the ´´she who smelt it dealt it´´ argument.

Thursday, I accidentally told the entire family in Spanish that I hooked up with Jorge, a good friend of mine who also lives in the pension. A classic Spanish blunder. He had taught me the word ´´poncear´´ the night before, which means ´´hook up.´´ The next day, somehow this word came up with Jackie, Manola, and Allison, and I told them, ´´Jorge me enseñó poncear anoche.´´ (Jorge taught me to hook up last night) Of course, what I wanted to say was ´´Jorge me enseñó la palabra poncear anoche,´´ which means that he taught me the word ´´to hook up´´ last night. Needless to say, the family appreciated this blunder quite a bit.

Played soccer with a bunch of guys from my pensión two nights ago, where I learned Im slightly afraid of the ball (doesnt it kill braincells or something when you do too many headers?) I also learned that all the jargon you use when you play sports (over here, I take it out, you just kicked me in the balls you jerk), Im lacking in my vocabulary, so I ended up grunting a lot, hoping this would signal to my teammates I was open. We ended up tying, and limping home. I´m pretty excited for this, it looks like we will get a weekly game going, and I hope to soon get over my fear of the ball, and getting kicked in the balls.

And finally, here is a story for those of you who complain about walking up the stairs ;-)

http://www.helpothers.org/story.php?sid=8606

Be well!

Love,
Ryan