Chile, All Ways Surprising

I woke up one Saturday morning recently and followed the wonderful smell of panqueques into the kitchen where Bill was almost done making breakfast. He told me he had been awakened by a strange dream with horses neighing all around him. I walked to the living room, opened the curtains and went out on the balcony to see what kind of day was in store for us. Much to my surprise, the park right below us was filled with horses. Big, beautiful horses with shiny, well-groomed coats. I woke the girls, and they came running to the balcony to see the amazing sight. They quickly ate, dressed, and then ran down to the park to see what was going on.

It turned out there was a horse-jumping competition going on in our park, Parque Inés de Suárez, all weekend long. What a fun day we had, sitting in the beautiful sunshine of a clear, fall day, watching these gorgeous animals jumping so high and graceful.

Like waking up and finding there are beautiful horses flying through the air right outside your window, Chile is full of surprises.

This should come as no surprise, actually. After all, the year-old advertising campaign aimed at promoting tourism, exports, and investments in Chile and in giving the country a new image is called: Chile, All Ways Surprising. Giant banners proclaiming this slogan greet travelers at the airport. Chileans are, apparently, very proud of their ability to surprise the unsuspecting tourist, business person, and investor. I'm not so sure I would want to be surprised in all those situations, all the time (as the word play in the slogan seems to be hinting at). For example, as a tourist, I like to know that I can count on bus and train schedules. As an investor, I would want to know that this democracy is a stable one, with no surprises lurking around the corner.

Still, the slogan is right on the mark. Chile is very surprising, and this has been a year full of surprises for me and my family, practically each day holds a new one. Certainly, there are times when surprises are very nice: horses in your park, a going-away party thrown by colleagues at the school where I was working, having one of my hard-working students win a scholarship to visit the United States. Also, the madness of Chile's geography, the beautiful landscapes, and the delicious wines, fruits and vegetables never cease to amaze and surprise me.

There are also the quirky surprises that are a lot of fun. I recall a day in Santiago when, riding the micro (Chilean for bus), a clown got on (think big, red nose, a painted-on smile and very large shoes) and proceeded to entertain the passengers. They especially loved it when he stuck a toilet plunger onto the roof of the micro and hung on to the handle for dear life as the bus careened around the city streets.

Some of the most peculiar surprises are those that result from miscommunication in the foreign language. For instance, once I was in the teacher's lounge at the school and there was a man there trying to sell insurance to the teachers. After we had established that I was in the country temporarily and didn't need insurance, he asked me -"Cuándo dan los SIMCE?" At the time, I didn't know that the SIMCE was the name of the national test given to Chilean students, and, by pure coincidence, my students in the class I had just come from had been talking about the Simpsons, the tv cartoon they love so much. Well, I couldn't imagine why he would be asking me about the Simpsons, but since it appeared he was, I told him it was on every night at 7:30, something I had only minutes before learned from my students. In my defense, the verb dar means both to give (as in to give a test) and to show (as in to show a television program). Later I chuckled when I realized my error; at least I hadn't inadvertently bought myself some comprehensive, though unnecessary, health insurance.

Misunderstandings like this can result in a happy surprise, the "surprised chuckle", or a very unpleasant surprise. I recall the reservation I had made for a group of us to stay in a house owned by a colleague's mother when we were traveling in the south, in Pucón. When I heard the woman on the phone quote me the equivalent of $450 US dollars per night, I thought that was a bit pricey, but I had heard that Pucón was one of the more expensive areas of Chile, and I had also heard that this was a very nice house, so I told her we'd take it. I can still remember the faces of John and Joe, particularly, after we arrived and we were being shown around the house. They had this look of intense disgust, like they wanted to strangle someone. It's not that the house was bad, it was actually rather charming, just not $450-a-night worth of charm. The woman could sense that something was wrong, so I explained to her that we thought $450 a night was too much. She stared at me in disbelief for a moment before she could spit out that the price she had quoted me was $45 a night, not $450. I'm not sure if this misunderstanding was the result of language or of the exchange rate calculation (math is not my strong point). Also, it's difficult to categorize this type of surprise: happy on the one hand (we didn't have to pay as much as we thought), but definitely on the other hand, very unpleasant (especially for this humiliated Spanish teacher). Those types of misunderstandings used to happen a lot more when I first got here, now I understand Chilean Spanish much better and, of course, know a lot more about their culture. I've also gotten much better at calculating the dollar equivalent of prices in Chilean pesos (basically, just multiply by two and then take off the last three zeroes).

That brings me to one last variety of surprises: the rather frequent, irritating type that, with a little bit of planning and organization, could be avoided and thereby give the traveler in Chile a much better impression of the country. Now, I realize that back home we are a little crazy for structure and information. For example, toward the end of each school year my school prints up a new calendar for the next three years. Rarely, if ever, have I needed to know what days off I'll have that far in advance, but I sure do appreciate and rely on the current year's calendar. Well, here in Chile I have yet to see any school calendar. In fact, at my school we would be told about the date of an obligatory Saturday meeting just the week before. Surprise! Forget about planning anything for the weekend. And it's not just at the schools, it's on the national level. There was a national holiday, set for June 4th. I'm not sure exactly when they changed their minds, but my colleagues and I heard that we would not actually be having that day off just recently, a couple of weeks before the supposed holiday. Apparently, someone decided to create a new holiday to celebrate and honor the Virgin of Carmen, on July 16th, and discontinue the celebration of Corpus Christi. The only problem being that it was not communicated to Chilean workers in a timely fashion.

The way the new transportation system, Transantiago, has turned out for the majority of Santiago commuters is another example of a very irritating surprise, but that is a topic for another blog post. For now let it suffice to say, if you are one of those people who don't appreciate surprises, you'd better not come to Chile. Don't say you weren't warned, it's posted all over the airport.