Elections in Chile Complete. Coming Up Next, the United States

Another week in the books, with tons of stuff to talk about. None of that too mind boggling, but still worth noting. Not sure if I will remember each item in chronological order or what day it took place, but I'll do my best.

Last week marked the final week of my Gringo 101 class with the rest of the program. Nothing incredibly exciting about the class other than the fact that it is over. Now I don't have to head out to downtown Santiago 30 minutes before rush hour just so I can get to class on time and have to stay until 9 p.m. at night. I still do have a final paper that is 5 pages and do sometime in the middle of November, but it's a free topic and not a problem.

The family whom tragedy struck a couple months back with the horrible auto accident that resulted in the death of the father are moving today to Pucón down south. It's such an unfortunate situation and I hate to see them go. To make sure I can stay in touch with them, I went out to buy a web-cam, microphone, and setup a Skype account for one of the sons. I explained how the program, essentially a free telephone for him as long as he has internet access. I also gave him my email address. Hopefully he will have time to bring his laptop over a to cyber-cafe every once in a while because it doesn't look like he'll have in-house internet, but he will at his parent's house that is supposedly close by. Regardless, I just want to be able to keep in touch with the family after all that has happened since my arrival.

Speaking of Southern Chile, I have been working with a couple of my buddies on organizing a rough itinerary for traveling to extreme southern portion of Chile, Patagonia, for the two week I have in between in the end of school and when I fly out to Buenos Aires in mid December. I probably won't have another chance in my life to visit this part of the world, so I figure I should take advantage of the fact that I am currently just a plane ride away. Flights aren't incredibly expensive and I have heard the sites and activities are simply amazing: glaciers that won't exist in less than 10 years, stunning landscapes, even a potential access of Antarctica (not the main part, but an island that is considered part of the continent). I can't wait.

Working at Bar Basic has been a good time. I enjoy practicing my Spanish with co-workers and customers, while essentially doing the same thing that I would normally doing if I wasn't working: watching football, eating, and drinking. Last Thursday was one of the owners' birthdays, so he hired a live band to play Chilean covers and invited a bunch of his buddies. I wasn't supposed to work that night, but I volunteered considering it was his birthday and they could use the help. Fun times either way.

Last Friday I went to a symphony performance at the University of Chile theater downtown. The show was a George Gershwin tribute, playing Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris as well as many others. Symphonies are an amazing network of musicans working together on one piece, with solos and necessary harmonies while under the control of one man, the conductor. I am not a classical music critic, and Gershwin's music is difficult to perform, sometimes it felt that some of the musicians were having trouble with some of the songs. I enjoyed it very much nonetheless.

Saturday was an interesting day for a silly reason. I headed over to the local grocery store to try and buy some medicine for a wart that I have on my pinkie toe as a result of the rubbing against the inside of my shoe. I left for the in-store pharmacy without knowing the Spanish work for wart, assuming I could just show them my toe as well former medication (in English). Solo attempt, fail. Aid from three Chilean women also in line who also did not understand what is was but thought they knew, fail. European woman randomly walks up to offer help, whips out her cellphone and types the word in English into her phone and with her simply Nokia she manages to looks up the term using her Spanish-English dictionary. She found a website that has a bunch of programs that can be stored to the on-board memory of her simple cellphone, any cellphone. What a technological world this is becoming? I thought about the incident all during my walk back, while thinking about the future. Imagine when everyone has internet-connected cellphones with key pads. Language barriers will be essentially non-existent; voice translators? The possibilities are endless. There is a part of me that is anti-technology when it comes to interacting, so I feel a bit uneasy about the extensive connectedness to 'the network.' I'd rather be without my computer, PDA, cell phone, a connection and be spending time in person with people than being attached to a network in which information is sent constantly, instantaneously, endlessly. Too bad it is becoming more and more popular by the day with the newer generations and there is almost not feasible to give it up.

On Sunday, Chile had their municipal elections and the entire country was rumbling with political enthusiasm, so much so that no one was allowed to sell alcohol. This made work for me on particularly boring that day since all we could sell was food and sodas, water, juice. Sunday is usually a busy day with all the gringos coming in to watch American football, but it was obviously quite slow. While many municipalities, including Valparaiso, de mi amor, changed from 'left' municipalities to 'right' ones with the election of 'right' mayors, overall the country of Chile say more people voting for the 'left.' This was unusually surprising considering that Sebastián Piñera was the current favorite for President with the election over a year away. Thing are now much more unclear, with the 'right' parties securing only 35% of the population based on municipal elections, with the 'left' parties won over 46%. There was also a small portion of the populace that voted for Communist and other extreme 'leftist' candidates, who when the time comes for presidential elections, they are obviously more likely to put their support behind a 'leftist' candidate than one from the 'right.'The only problem with this scenario is that the Concertación, or the group of 'leftist' political parties, currently does not have a presidential candidate in place. For a while Ricardo Lagos, former President, was the favorite to represent the left, but that has since changed since he insists that he does not want to have to go through the inner-party political process of electing a candidate. If he ran for president, he would want to be able to be the outright candidate since he has so much experience rather than take part in the process. We'll see how things shape up in the next few months. It is not far from the date in which parties are required to have their candidate selected.

Speaking of elections, the United States presidential elections are coming up in less than a week. I already was able to cast in my vote since a member of the U.S. embassy was in Bar Basic all last week handing out forms that will be sent in via the embassy to whichever county one represents. Earlier this week, I came across an interesting article in this week's Economist about U.S. elections and Latin America. I didn't know John McCain was born in Panama? But I guess it doesn't surprise me because he was probably born in a military base down there. Here is a snippet from the article...

"Preliminary data from the latest Latinobarómetro poll, taken in 18 countries over the past month and published exclusively by The Economist, show that 29% of respondents think an Obama victory would be better for their country, against only 8% favouring Mr McCain. Perhaps surprisingly, 30% say that it makes no difference who wins, while 31% claim ignorance. Enthusiasm for Mr Obama is particularly high in the Dominican Republic (52%), Costa Rica, Uruguay and Brazil (41%). In Brazil, six candidates in this month’s municipal elections changed their names to include “Barack Obama” in them.

The poll suggests that support for Mr Obama is greater among better-educated Latin Americans. Marta Lagos, Latinobarómetro’s director, says the relatively widespread indifference shows the extent to which the United States has lost influence in the region in recent years."

I would tend to agree.