Orientation and a new apartment

Here's our second post!  

This week has been "orientation" week. Nevertheless we remain disorientated. Monday morning we went to get our RUT numbers - these are identification numbers for Chilean citizens and foreign residents. The registration process was funny, we had to visit various buildings to have our names copied onto forms, then typed onto other forms, have our fingerprints taken, visa type logged etc. Each time the official would spell something wrong and we'd have to start again. 

Chile loves a bit of bureaucracy, which is probably a legacy of elements of its history. We mentioned before that we planned to get some photos of significant places we visited on the tour we took last week. The one below is of La Moneda, the presidential palace where the Chilean president works though he (unusually for south america, not so long ago it was she - we mean Michelle Bachelet, rather than suggesting a very high profile gender realignment) lives elsewhere. La Moneda is where Salvador Allende died during the Pinochet coup in 1973.

Augusto Pinochet is one of the high profile connections between Chile and Britain as he was arrested in London in 1998 accused of human rights violations. He is apparently a very divisive figure today - the situation is very complex because it is widely felt that Chile's progress towards developed status is at least partly due to economic reforms enacted under Pinochet. The country is however deeply scarred by the historical violence and assault on culture and human rights with which this era is associated.

La Moneda

Later on monday we headed up to La Vega, a huge market area known primarily for food:

Verduras at La Vega

Almost the first thing we saw and heard was a line of people queuing up for bowls of broth - basically an outdoor soup kitchen. As our friend Warren said, this was intense. It was the first time we had seen concentrated poverty. The reason we heard it was because a preacher in a suit with a microphone was standing next to it loudly saving souls - his contribution didn't seem to altogether improve the situation, but the food was probably church aid. We got this photo below, which doesn't really capture the scene as it's not really cool to photograph this:

Outdoor soup kitchen at La Vega

A stall at La Vega selling stuff

See los Andes above La Vega in the photo below, we've now managed to take a few photos showing how the mountains decorate so many city views:

La Vega sells all sorts of food - check out the pig's head! All the butchers' stalls sell these, apparently you dice them and roast or casserole...

Pig head on a bed of meat - also intense

carrots - tame

Look at the little dog, he's not for eating

Here's another photo showing the city and los Andes, taken from one of the bridges over the Rio Mapocho. This is a sad river, apparently heavily polluted, which has the appearance of a large drain, though it may acquire some more majesty in the next few months as the snow melts in the mountains. 

A drain masquerading as a river

This one was taken from the top of Cerro Santa Lucia, another urban park with a castle (we think fake, as in decorative and relatively recently built, but further research is required - the mound itself is certainly man made so it may have been the site of an earlier fortification) on top.

An awesome view - similar to the one from our new apartment

See the trees reflected from Cerro Santa Lucia

South America is obviously well known for coffee growing, but this is actually confined largely to Colombia, Peru and Brasil - Chile doesn't have the climate for it. Prior to probably a very few years ago all coffee drunk in Santiago was Nescafe instant - gross. Even now you still have to be careful to ask for cafe de grano if you just order an ordinary coffee, otherwise you may get instant.

To make up for this coffee plight, before cafe de grano was imported an enterprising Santaguino invented the cafe con piernas, coffee with legs. These are basically coffee shops staffed by attractive Chilenas wearing short skirts. There is another type with blacked out windows and banging music, which is staffed by Chilenas in bikinis - a few times a day the manager signals "happy minute" during which the staff remove their bikinis and dance on the tables. Hilarious. We've been to the first type which has great coffee, and Anna will investigate the second type with Jessica as there is one near their school!  

Photos on those another time...

There are now plenty of european style coffee shops in Santiago, here's some photos from one we've been to a couple of times:

un gato de casa keeping warm at cafe constitucion

Anna, Jessica, Warren (and hiding Alison) at cafe constitucion

Back to food. Chile has a real dirty burger culture. There are loads of fast food joints selling fried stuff all over Santiago - called Fuente de Sodas. The only good thing about this is that these places have out-dirtied American fast food, which means the likes of McDonalds and KFC don't have a huge presence here - they're here but the chain el Fuente de Soda DonPepe seems to have the market cornered. There are also lots of small diner type places which serve main meals and snacks, they don't look like much but the food is good (if still not exactly healthy):

A diner near our Hostel - note the Chile flags

Warren, Anna, Alison and Struan tucking in

Churrillana - shredded pan fried beef, chips, sauteed onions topped with a couple of fried eggs - muy bien, what's not to like?

This week has included two major stresses: getting our work schedules and being "orientated" by our schools; and finding accommodation outside of the hostel. Here's Anna's school, Sede Alonso de Ovalle:

Sede Alonso de Ovalle - un edificio colonial classico

DuocUC

Here's Struan's school:

DuocUC Sede Alameda

DuocUC Sede Alameda - all of the campus buildings except Anna's campus are clad in glass

Our schools are part of DuocUC - a college founded and funded by the Universidad Catolica. Duoc is probably best described as a technical college as all of the programmes (2 or 4 years) are vocational, including construction related courses (design, engineering etc), IT, tourism and so on. The academic universities like Universidad Catolica tend to be dominated by the very wealthy who have been to fee-paying schools as there is a huge divide in quality of state education and private here. As such we'll be teaching some of the poorest students in Chile, some of whom have never met a gringo, which will be very humbling.

There'll be plenty of our posts in the future relating to teaching and students so for now we'll just mention that all 5 of us (Warren has now gone to his Duoc school outside of Santiago) have been inducted at our different schools, and all of us have come away with completely different info. We have our first classes on monday which we have all reacted to with varying levels of terror, but we're defo looking forward to getting into it. 

The wednesday barbeque at the hostel came round again, so here's some photos:

Andrea Rodriguez - the legendary TeachingChile coordinadora who has already got us out of some scrapes!

Alan, a Chilean who looks American and sounds Kiwi - manning his barbie

Alan up close, with a board of carne

A minor correction - last week we said the little kebabs were lomitos. They're not, they're anticucho. Details. 

The second big deal of the week was getting our apartment, yay! We'll do some future posting on this, but for now it's a super-modern block (the apartment is almost brand new), in a great central neighbourhood called Bellas Artes, with a guard, laundrette, gym, and roof terrace with outdoor pool! It's the tallest block around so the view from the roof is amazing. 

The other thing to say is that we had a problem with withdrawing money when it came to deposit and initial rent day. The agent and building administrator spoke very little english, and we can't hold this kind of nightmare conversation in spanish - we almost lost the apartment (we think, there was certainly a lot of excitement and arm waving). Anyway, we called in Scott, one of the Americans in our group who has fluent spanish, and got there in the end. He's become a great friend, and in recognition of his assistance we'll end this week's post with him - here he is, declaring his allegiance, or serenading or something:

Scott, living legend - play it again Maestro