art is la raja

translation: the shit. Last Saturday I was in Santiago and went to el Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende run by la Fundación Salvador Allende. It was eleven a.m. on a Saturday morning, so I was the only person in the building and the guard outside had to turn on a video exhibit and open some rooms just for me. The video exhibit wasn't very neat, it was a 'piece' by some woman who had linked together clips of explosions from lots of different wars. Everything else was really neat though. Some cool pieces were a giant fiberglass piece in the shape of half of Allende's glasses that you had to duck under and walk around and some really cool paintings. They had a really powerful exhibit up called "ausencias" by an Argentinean photographer named Gustavo Germano, about the dictatorship there between 1976 and 1983. He had taken old photographs of families, friends, couples, etc. and then in 2006 set up photos in the same spot/pose minus the people who had been assassinated/disappeared. Seeing the new photos with everyone grown older without their friends and family was really powerful.

As I was leaving the two guys working gave me some posters, probably because they were so excited to have someone actually come to the museum early on a Saturday and then I heading to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, just a short metro ride away. I love the Santiago metro, by the way. The trick is to never ride it during rush hour or else you'll end up hating it. Not during rush hour, it's the easiest, cleanest, nicest metro ever, even if Bachelet got way criticized for the entire TranSantiago project. I like it, so there. Anyways...before going to the second museum I took a long walk to and then through the Plaza de Armas. They have a new exhibit up below La Moneda about Salvador Allende but I didn't go in.




The contemporary art museum was cool. Not very big, which is nice because I don't have the greatest attention span. I recognized a few statues (Juan Egenau and Sergio Castillo) from that one time I studied for my History of Chilean Art class :P But the coolest part was the exhibit of art from Japanese artists, especially Nobuyuki Takahashi (above) and Satoshi Hirose.

I take that back, SNOWBOARDING es la raja...

I've now been snowboarding twice here and am totally hooked :) The first time I went to Portillo with Gustavo, my host sisters' cousin and his friends. We spent the weekend in Los Andes, a town about an hour away from here, north of Santiago. We brought the grandparents along and stayed with my host mom's sister and her husband and kids. We watched Enzo play rugby, had an asado (barbeque), and chilled at the house. On Sunday I woke up early and headed out with Gustavo and his friends for the drive up to Portillo. One friend had a truck, the other was a military guy with military friends with season passes, and I borrowed basically all my stuff from them, Jo, and the uncle. Luckily all I had to pay for was renting equipment, pretty sweet. I was the only one snowboarding which was kind of lame because I didn't have anyone to help me pick it back up but I still handled pretty well and had loads of fun. Portillo is beautiful. To get to it you take las curvas, the road that crosses the mountains between Argentina and Chile and is really sketchy and terrifying because people drive as if their cars were like, safety bubble forcefields instead of the flimsy metal boxes they actually are. On the way up we saw a truck that had smashed into the side of the mountain. It was carting a bunch of paper and on the way down there was a mini traffic jam because people had stopped to steal reams of paper and wooden flats from the truck which had been abandoned by that time. There were families hanging around, some guys standing on their piles of paper drinking mate, etc. Of course the guys in our truck had to get in there too so we arrived back home loaded down with brand new printer paper. While they were out stealing from a guy who'd been stealing for way longer and had a huge stash all to himself, I was trying to find out where the cab of the crashed truck was. After a while I realized that the big blue square flat against the wall of the mountain used to be the cab and wasn't just a random piece of the vehicle. Craziness...poor driver.

So now that my random, kind of morbid tangent is over...Portillo is beautiful. The lagoon in the middle is gorgeous and when the sun sets it lights up the mountains. Sunsets in the Andes rival ones back home (sorry Polihale...). It has one run that takes you over the tunnels on the highway and a bunch of harder runs with these pole-lift things called button lifts I think off to the sides. Apparently it's a really good, famous spot. One weird thing is that the ski resorts here are above the tree line so there are no trees anywhere. They're also high up so you can get altitude sickness....definitely not fun.

Last week we went in a huge group to spend the night in Santiago and then head to Valle Nevado for the day. I was originally planning on coming back to Viña that night to take a test early the next day and get my classes over with but I decided to stay for an extra day with Jo and Claire, that's how much fun I had. The views from the mountain is breathtaking, especially from the top of the highest lift because you're surrounded by amazing views on all sides. It was really fun and helpful to go with other snowboarders because I went on harder runs then I did at Portillo and they taught me how to turn better and in general just helped out. There was a really cool ravine thing you could drop into and ride kind of like a halfpipe or even a wave. Snowboarding is like surfing but constantly -- no waiting for sets, you can just do what you want the entire way down the run. Soooo fun :D

The next day my entire body hurt...bad, but in a good way because I haven't done anything really physical in a while. We headed out again bright and early. Turns out it was two for one day so after shoving our way through a gigantic mob of people we finally got lift tickets and were off. The second day was more difficult, I was definitely woozy/probably had a bit of altitude sickness almost the entire day and by the end I was kind of zombieing my way down the runs, trying not to fall too hard. We made it back to Viña safe, sound, and sore.

I'm hopping on a bus to Pucón in two hours so I'll have to put fotos of Valle Nevado up later! I'm getting excited to come home and see everyone. Hope you're all enjoying your summers wherever you all are...I love having such a scattered, adventuring group of friends/family :) cuidense todos, chau!

Conciertos

Concierto Número Uno:

One Dancehall Festival 2008, el 7 de junio, con Tego Calderón, Sean Paul, Mala Rodriguez, DJ Raff, but not in that order. Olivia, Victoria, Betsy (fellow obie, yeah!), me, and Dani (Daniela, Olivia's host sister) bussed out in the morning and met up with her dad, sister, and stepmom in santiago, went to the concert and then stayed at their nice apartment in Providenca (una comuna de Santiago). The concert was great. Mala Rodriguez is from Spain and weird, but I liked her. Tego Calderón (reggaeton artist from Puerto Rico) was probably my favorite...guilty pleasure all the way. And Sean Paul was Sean Paul...I'm not a fanatic but it was pretty cool to hear the classics live. He came complete with four girls in like, spankies and tops that danced (kind of) which was awkward and this one awesome guy whose job it was to appear randomly and stomp his foot while twirling a shirt helicopter style over his head and hyping up the crowd. I want his job.

The next day we went to Cerro San Cristobal which is a famous hill/sporting area/park in Santiago. Rich santiaguinos go there to exercise and hang out. They also have these cool gondola type things called teleféricos (I think) that take you from cerro to cerro. Then we had an asado (barbeque) and bussed back to Viña.



Concierto Número Dos:

Three days later...I was back in Santiago to see Joss Stone with Pablo, Claire, and Jo. We chipped in for gas and all went in Pablo´s car which was nice. The concert was absolutely amazing. She was great, the band was great, her back up singers were great. Espectacular, fantástico, etc. and she´s only 20 years old!!! Everyone go buy her album...right now. Afterwards we hung out with some of Pablo´s friends in his house in Las Condes (the business/upperclass comuna of Santiago). His parents were traveling somewhere so we had the house to ourself (minus the nana, who´s probably almost always there) and got our own beds which was sweeeeet.



Then it was back to Viña to take a history test on: The History of Chilean Art (the entire history of chilean art), which never happened because after the profe arrived (late because he couldn´t find a parking space) he realized the copies of the text that the chileans got and the copies that the gringos got were both missing pages, but missing different pages...so the test was postponed to last week during a class period in which he didn´t even come AND it turned out to be easy. That basically sums up the education bit of my life right now which (thank goodness) is ending after July 7th because I told all my profes that I´m leaving to travel.