September 11 + más divagaciones

So yesterday was pretty anticlimatic. September 11 in Chile is remembered for day Pinochet and his buddies overthrew Allende's government. Here's Wikipedia's take on it. (If you did go to Wikipedia and saw the picture of the La Moneda being bombed, no worries, it's still there. I walked by it once when I first got here. I didn't know what it was at the time, but there was a bunch of guys in uniform, and I just couldn't resist taking a picture.) Anyway, feelings are still hurt, and every year there are protests and riots. All classes after 4:30 were cancelled to ensure students got home safely before riots broke out, and I got quite a few emails from directors of what I'm sure re important University programs advising students to stay away from the center of Santiago. I live in Nunoa, which is in general one of the safer neighborhoods in Santiago, but I was really expecting to see something happen. All I saw was a TV special talking about the riots in the past, and the history of Septemeber 11. Luis quickly changed the channel to a documentary about cocaine dealers though. Hmm. I didn't want to pry too much into how Luis and Patty felt about it because I'm sure you can imagine that any Chilean who was alive at the time has some strong opinions, one way or the other. There are still some people (usually the rich) who support Pinochet and claim that Santiago was a much better place when he was in power. There are others though (usually the poor) who support Allende. In general, these are the people who had family members "disappear" during Pinochet's reign, and these are the people who protest and riot every September 11. But anyway, I knew Patty was a Pinochet suppoter, so it was interesting to hear her opinions. She said most of the rioters are young kids who weren't even alive at this point in history, and that they didn't have a reason to be causing this much trouble.

Um yeah, so that was my yesterday.

On a different note, my poetry professor is a huge butthead and is really rude. And her body is unevenly proportioned. La odio. I could go on and on, but I won't. She doesn't deserve my blogging time.

I'm going to Pomaire tomorrow for another class trip. It's a little town (pueblito) about an hour away which is known for making "greda," which I'm assuming is a sort of clay. A family there is going to let us visit there home, and see how they make la greda. So that should be fun.

Benja woke me up again this morning because he was yelling about how he didn't want to get dressed. Oh shoot me. I did my whole I'll-just-get-up-and-go-to-the-bathroom-so-they-know-I'm-awake thing, and I heard Luis say something like, "Look! You woke up la Jenni!" Ha! It worked! But I still got woken up at 7:30, so I'm still a little urked.

Oh, I got a postcard from my dad a couple days ago, and he wrote a little section in Spanish to Patty and Luis, and then at the bottom he signed it "Donny." Patty asked if it was my brother who had sent it, and I said, "No, no, that's DAnny. My dad is DOnny." She thought that was funny because they sound so similar. She told me how confusing it was growing up in her house, because she's named Patricia and her brother is Patricio. With the double "Pat" on my mind, I pointed out how my mom is Patty Patterson, and she exclaimed, "NOO! NOO!! No lo creo!!" She was laughing so hard, I thought she was going to bust a gut. Oh, the little things in life that make us happy.

Alrighty, here are random pictures I stole from other people on facebook:























This is at the Museo Bellas Artes. It's free on Sundays so mi amiga Blair y yo went. Good thing it's free because I would not have been happy if I had had to pay for it. Besides the cool statues like this that we found in the basement, it was pretty freakin' boring.

And here's a few more from skiing:



































If you look right above our heads, thats the smog from Santiago.


Besos y abrazos!