host family

1/24/07 11:29 PM

Day 2 in Santiago. Met my host family. Very nice. The wife, Lukí (short for Lucrecia), picked me up at La Pontificia Catholic U. I had a million things about them and my day to say a minute ago, but then I started listening to music and forgot it all. Well, their names are Lucrecia and Iván. They’re retired and I guess their in their sixties, though Luki I would never have guessed. If I didn’t know she had a 35 year old daughter I would assume she was in her 40s or so. Her face is lined, but she doesn’t look old. They lived in Switzerland for 14 years, doing some kind of business something that I didn’t understand (I understand about 60% or so of what I hear. Well, maybe more. I think I’m getting concepts pretty well but am losing lots of detalles. Yesterday Hebrew words kept popping into my head, but today I’m doing fine, though I think I’ve lost a lot of vocabulary and grammar in the last year and a half that I’ve gone without a Spanish class). They moved back to Chile about 12 years ago, but their youngest daughter married a Swiss man and lives there now. Their older daughter (hey have 2) studied abroad in Santa Monica, CA and met a Spaniard from the Canary Islands while she was there, and so she lives in the Canary Islands now. I am their 10^th exchange student. Luki says she was sort of lonely and bored after her daughters moved out, and her youngest suggested she start taking in exchange students, so she did and they love it. It sounds like they’ve had a lot of kids from Santa Cruz and had some funny stories about vegans and surfers and kids trying to ride bikes out here. They live in a condo in Ñuñoa, which is the one middle class district here (like in Mexico, there is a HUGE gap between the upper and lower class here in Chile, but the gap is slowly being filled by a growing middle class). The condo is small, but pretty comfortable. I think my room is almost exactly the size of a single dorm at Merrill, for those of you who know what that means. And I have my own bathroom, which is by the front door, across the apartment from my room. My window looks out on THE most beautiful scene! I took like 10 pictures but none of them seemed to capture it. Right below my window (we’re on the 3^rd floor) is a garden, and then next door is a kind of funky wooden house with an old-looking red tin roof. It’s yard is OVERFLOWING with grape vines and all kinds of fruit trees, so that I can’t see any of the houses next to it, and then they all have tree-ey yards, too, so that I can just see a roof here and there for about a block, and then jetting above the trees are these new big apartment buildings, then kind that have like 30 floors, with cranes working on them. They’re sort of peachy/orange colored and then behind those are the Andes, shrouded in smog that dissipated a little bit as the day went on. They’re so much more sudden than the Sierras. You can’t see the highest peaks of the Sierras because of the many different levels of foothills, but you can see straight to some pretty big mountains here. I guess there are some foothills winding up, but they don’t mask the really big parts of the mountains. I had written on my EAP family placement questionnaire that I really like a lot of natural light, and I’m really glad that I wrote that.

Ivan is a retired policeman and may be the friendliest man I’ve ever met. I guess most of the people who live in this building are retired policemen and their families. Apparently he’s pretty well-read and likes novels by Chileans. He also has 3 TV shows that he watches: 24, Prison Break, and Lost. I thought that was kind of cute. Luki is also a very, very friendly woman. She was telling me that she relates better to young people and children than anyone else. I was realizing over dinner that something about the very core of her reminds me of my mom’s friend Bonnie. Or maybe it was just her haircut. I’m not sure. And something about the quality of her laugh and her smile remind me of my friend Lara. Maybe it’s just a South American thing. She was saying that she doesn’t want to spend her retirement watching TV and sitting around the house, so she volunteers in a house for children with cancer. She is also a big fan of Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s first and current female president. She said that she voted for her because “soy buena feminista.” They also eat fairly healthy which is great. The whole organic/sustainability thing hasn’t really hit here yet, but she said she always cooks fresh vegetables, they don’t eat much red meat, and they have whole grain bread (I was shocked!) and she started talking to me a little bit about climate change, and how important recycling is (they do recycle! At least in Ñuñoa…). She’s also very accommodating. Almost more than I’m comfortable with because I was expecting to have to adapt to their way of life, but she keeps telling me how adaptable she is.

It’s way too early to tell, but right now I don’t think that I’m going to stay here after the Intensive Language Program. The deal is that the UC study center down here assigns the UC students each to a family for the first 5 or so weeks we’re here, during which time we participate in the aforementioned ILP, but after that we have to find out own housing. If the family we live with for the ILP invites us back, we can stay with them for the full year or 6 months, or we can find another family, or rent an apartment with friends (gringos or chilenos) or live in a boarding house. The universities here do not have dorms because the vast majority of the students live with their families (40% of Chile’s population lives in Santiago so most students are from the city). I really like these guys (from the first day) but a) I’m not used to being waited on, and cooked for, and served. I like being a little more independent, and it is just the beginning, but I get the distinct feeling that Luki really wants to do some hardcore mothering. B) they don’t have internet in the house (which is supposed to be almost as common an amenity in Chile as in the US). C) I guess this is just a variation of A, but it’s so strange to live in a house with parent-like people. I don’t know if I can handle it. So like I said, I may be jumping the gun with this after just one day with these people, especially when I didn’t even have any classes today, but I’m just thinking.

What else? We went to the supermarket today to buy me soy milk. It was similar to home, with a million different brands and a deli and huge, etc, but like in Mexico, they store milk in cartons on an unrefrigerated shelf, and unlike in Mexico, they sell milk in bags; like pouches. Those are also on the shelf.

70% of the music here is American. 15% is Mexican. 10% is French and any other kind of South American. 5% is Shakira. I haven’t heard any Chilean bands yet.

Actually, the Shakira thing is just a rumor. I haven’t hear any Shakira yet. They listen to a radio station that mostly plays American 70s Music. Well, I guess ABBA isn’t American, but it’s in English.

It’s also nice to be in the heat again. I really need to learn Celsius. Ivan told me that it was 30 C today which he translated to being about 90 F. I love feeling the sun again, though they’ve got a pretty big hole in their ozone down here, so I guess I gotta start wearing sunscreen, but it’s nice being able to sleep with only sheets for blankets again. Okay, well I have an oral proficiency test in Spanish tomorrow at La Catolica, so I ought to go to bed. Buenas noches.

-Sophie 1/25/07 12:28 AM

P.S. mom, they loved the bowl and the book. Luki’s really into photography so the pictures were great.