- For the first time in my life, I don't feel short. I actually feel ... tall? Weird. I'm def taller than most/all of the Chilean women, and a good number of the men as well.
- The Spanish is tough. The Chilean dialect is notoriously difficult for its slang and the tendency to drop consonants [más o menos -> má o meno; ¿cómo estás? -> ¿como e'ta?], as well as quick speed. If someone speaks slowly/clearly - like a professor, or my host mom when she wants to tell me something important, my understanding is good. If I overhear a conversation between two natives ... yeah ... hopefully that will improve.
- The food is delicious. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables - I get to eat avocado in various forms almost everyday. Saturday my family and I went to "la feria," which is the market. Produce isn't really sold in stores, so we bought all that stuff- tomatoes, peaches, cucumbers, etc. - even cilantro there. It def makes a difference in the cooking that all the ingredients are so fresh.
- Santiago is nice mixture of modern and classic city. As to the former: Santiago has the cleanest, most spacious subway system I've ever been on - there's even TV screens in the cars (they show basic stuff like the weather, but still!), and this is coming from someone who's graced the turnstiles of Chicago, DC, Boston, and New York. As to the latter: the city centers around classical buildings from centuries ago, and colonial architecture abounds.
That's not nearly everything, but a pretty good sample I think. They've been keeping us pretty busy (not to mention the amount we keep ourselves busy exploring the nightlife), but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Look forward to more updates soon, and hopefully I'll get some pictures up too!
Well, we're back from our adventure in the southern hemisphere and have re-joined your other blog followers in the chilly part of the globe. And now that we've got our lives back in some order, we're catching up on Érica in Sudamérica.
ReplyDeleteYur comments about the difficult of catching everything in a conversation between two native speakers mentioned Chilean dialect and speaker speed. How about idioms/slang?
Don't know if we ever told you about our friend Grover who, after retiring from Caterpillar, decided he wanted to become fluent in Spanish. He lived in and studied in Spain, Guatemala, Ecuador and Costa Rica. We followed with interest the development of his skill and recall his hitting the stage of being able to speak fluently, but commenting on his sometime difficulty eavesdropping on native speakers. He's past it now, married to a Nica and living half of each year in Costa Rica. (Guess which half!)
On to your post on fav Chilean words . . .