Fiestas Patrias

The 18th and 19th of September are Chile's fiestas patrias, a celebration of Chile's independence. Since this year the holidays fall on a Sunday and Monday, the celebration started on Friday and continued all weekend.

On Friday, my Chilean family had an asado (barbacue) which is an extremely popular way to celebrate. Meat sales are at their highest around this time in Chile and everywhere you go in Santiago you can smell the smoke from the grills. We had the asado on Friday because my host brother, Gonzalo, was flying back to Madrid on Saturday and my host brother, Francisco, took a bus up from Valdivia (a city in southern Chile) for the weekend to see him off. So I got to meet a lot of their extended family and my host mother, Paulina, was happy to have all four of her children together one last time. The food was great, we had choripan, which is a very typical Chilean dish, which is basically just a hot dog, but smaller and with better bread and better meat (chorizo means sausage and pan means bread so choripan is a pretty perfect name). And of course there was grilled beef and chicken, which might actually be the best chicken I ever had.
(Side note: They really cook their meat here in Santiago. It isn't too bad for me, but if I think that the meat is overcooked, then that is really saying something as I'm sure my family will agree. Every time we eat meat here, I always think of my "blue-rare" family and their reactions to overcooked meat.)

Meat cooking on the grill.

One of the most popular things to do to celebrate this holiday is to go to one of the many fondas, which are held in parks all over the city. They are very similar to street fairs or carnivals, with food stands, rides, artisan crafts, games, face painting, dancing, music, and performers. On Saturday & Sunday I went to one of the biggest and best known fondas in Parque O'Higggins with a group of people. We were actually pretty diverse as there were 3 Chileans (they didn't go with us on Sunday), 4 Italians, 1 French Colombian, 1 girl from France, 2 girls from Mexico, and 1 American (me!).

Partial Group Photo of Katerine, Elita, Chiara, Mariana, Me, and Nydia.

Anyways, on Saturday we got to the park around 6pm and spent several hours walking around the HUGE grounds and soaking up the festive atmosphere. In Chile, empanadas are extremely popular, especially as street food. You can basically fill it with whatever you want, but the most popular types are empanadas de queso (cheese), de queso y camerones (cheese and shrimp), or de pino. Empanadas de Pino are the most popular type and are filled with a beef and onion mixture, half a hard-boiled egg and an olive and they are baked (the cheese ones are usually fried). They are actually pretty good, since it's pretty easy to remove the egg and olive, but I decided to purchase an empanada de queso for $2 since I have been missing cheese.

As we walked around we saw a mini parade of Chilean dancers, a man dressed as a woman dancing around, and several boxes of baby chickens, which were the cutest things ever. While exploring the artisan section of the fonda I bought some pink aretes (earrings) and some chicha to drink, which is a typical Chilean drink that was described to me as a "lightly fermented wine". It is delicious and tastes very similar to Sangria.

Chilean dancers.

CHICKIES! so cute!

Chicha

After everybody had finished eating their empanadas several people in our group were intent on finding some cerveza (beer) to wash everything down. At first we were worried that they didn't sell any alcohol there (which would have been very peculiar for Chile) but the Chileans in our group assured us that we just had to go to another section where there was more food and drinks. The national drink of Chile is the terremoto, which means earthquake, aptly named for it's ability to make the earth "move" if you drink too many. It's made by filling a glass with a sweet white wine and then adding a shot of Pisco (a grape brandy that is very popular in Chile), a splash of grenadine, and a scoop of pineapple ice cream or sherbet. Not too many bars serve them year round, but during the fiestas patrias they are served everywhere, so of course several of us opted for the $2 terremoto. Nearby there was a game where you paid 200 Chilean pesos (around 50 cents) and you got 8 tries to throw a wooden ring around the top of one of the many liquor bottles that they had grouped up in back. If you got it around, you won the bottle, which, unfortunately, I did not do.

Katerine and I with our terremotos!

After sitting in the grass and talking for awhile (the Italian guy, Fabrizio, is a fan of the Big Bang Theory and we were convincing Katerine to watch it) everybody decided that we were hungry once again, and that we should head to a nearby "restaurant" for food (this restaurant consisted of a giant circus-like tent and plastic tables and chairs). We all ordered pork kabobs (another popular food) and several pitchers of terremotos for the table. It was interesting being surrounded by people from so many different cultures. Everyone was comparing and contrasting different aspects of their home countries, and it was fun, if a little weird, being the minority in the group. Everybody kept asking for my "American" view on things and I was often asked how to say certain words in English.
(Side note: Whenever people ask me where exactly I am from in the United States, and I reply Seattle, the first thing people say to me is "Grey's Anatomy!". I guess that is Seattle's claim to fame across the world.)

When we went back on Sunday and ate dinner,
a mime came up to us selling roses. When nobody
wanted one, he put a fake gun to Fabrizio's head...

Around 11:30pm we decided it was time to get going. A few people were heading out to a club afterwords, and I almost went, but the metro closes at midnight and the buses late at night can be sketchy by yourself and I didn't want to have to pay for a cab, so I decided to head home.
(A rather long side note: Two other girls were also heading home, and we got to chatting as we waited for the metro. They told me that I spoke Spanish really well, that I had a good accent and had a good grasp of the grammar, which of course made me feel good. This is actually something I have heard quite a few times since I've been down here, and though it makes me very happy to hear it, I take it with a grain of salt, because I know I have told foreigners that they speak great English when it wasn't necessarily true... But they went on to say that they have noticed that a lot of native English speakers (not just the USA, but Australia and the UK as well) often not only have poor accents but that their grammar just isn't there. Now these two girls were from France and Italy, so neither of them are native Spanish speakers, but they weren't saying this negatively. They were acknowledging that it is much harder for us to grasp this language because it not only sounds so different from our own, but is also grammatically very different. I have definitely noticed that the french and Italians seem to speak Spanish much better, and it was interesting to hear that I wasn't the only one who noticed. Of course, it was also nice to hear that my years of studying Spanish had paid off and I didn't sound too much like a gringa. I was talking to the Mexican girls the next day, and they told me that I actually speak a lot like a Mexican with my accent and vocabulary.)

Anyways, to get home I have to take two different metro lines, and the line change is four stops away from where I get off. From there I need to take a bus to get closer to my house. Now here is where I am super proud of myself. I took the first line all the way to the stop where I normally switch, but at this point it is a little after midnight, and the other line has closed. So it's after midnight, I'm alone, I'm slightly tipsy, and I have never actually been above ground at this metro stop before. But I knew that I was close to my house, and I was almost positive that one of the buses I needed to take home, would be close to the station. And sure enough, a short distance away was parada (bus stop) for the 412, which would take me all the way to my street. Granted, this wasn't exactly the most astonishing display of problem-solving abilities, but I was still pretty proud that I was able to stay completely calm and figure everything out. And I didn't even have to call a taxi (I have the number for a taxi service, so I could have got home even if there wasn't a bus there).

Sorry that this was such a long blog post, but I wasn't really sure how to split it up. All in all, it was been one of the best weekends I have had in Santiago and I am finally starting to feel like my Spanish is really improving! Ciao!