"We´re Not Going to the Beach"

So back to Viña. I went to "the beach" last weekend, but in fact, never left Chancho´s house at all. Everyone ended up hanging out at the beach house all weekend so we never ended up going to the playa. Lucho, one of Cassie´s neighbors, end up driving me, her, and her other neighbor Aníbel to Viña, and we sang random songs all the way there. What´s embarrassing is that they know more American songs than both me and Cass combined. Aníbel would be playing a song on his guitar in the car, and then would tell us to start singing, and we would both sheepishly say, ¨Lo siento, solamente sé el coro" ("Sorry, I only know the chorus"). One of the songs we sang was "Billie Jean,¨ and when I sang the part that goes, "And the kid is not my son!" Aníbel asked me, "What exactly is Michael Jackson singing?" and when I translated for him, he said, "Oh, it sounds so much like "Quieres una manzana!" ("You want an apple?"). And when I sang it back again, I have to admit, it kind of does. Check it out. Also, in one of the Grease songs, ¨You´re the One that I Want,¨there´s a part in the chorus, that allegedly, according to Aníbel, sounds like they´re saying ¨Suck my dick" in Spanish, so when a DJ plays that song in the club, that part of the song has to be censored. That story completely made my day.

The first day at Viña (Saturday) consisted of...surprise surprise, fabulously slacking and hanging out in the house. We barbecued in the afternoon, and then a few hours later, some of their Chilean friends came over. Before the Chilean friends came over, Aníbel and Lucho asked if we wanted to play Pictionary, and we agreed. We would give them English words to draw, and they would give us Spanish words to draw. Naively, I thought it would just be a cute little Pictionary game, but immediately, they were like, "If you lose a round, you have to take a shot of Pisco out of the cap." Later, I learned that Pictionary is a pretty popular drinking game in Chile. What an intelligent drinking game, right? All of the popular drinking games in the States live up to the dumb American stereotype in comparison. Beer pong and flip cup apparently doesn´t cut it in Chile. The only problem with this game was that overall, me and Cass´s comprehension of Spanish was better than their English comprehension, so they would reject some words that we gave to them, and we would have to give them an easier word. So, literally almost every round, me and Cass had to take shots. After a handful of rounds, I had to stop, due to the very grave and serious condition of "Lightweight-itis.¨

So their friends came over and we stayed up pretty late - well, I should say THEY stayed up really late. I went to bed at a mere 3:30 in the morning, which apparently is considered "muy temprano" (very early) in Chile. Seriously, I´m not even kidding you, they stayed up until about 6:30 in the morning. Apparently, Chilenos take a nap from like 10-12, and then go out and party for the entire night. When I told all of them that parties in the States usually end around 2 or 3 in the morning, they looked at me like I was crazy. "Qué raro" (How strange) one of them said to me. At one random point during the night, Fona (Chancho´s girlfriend) called out to us: "Gringa Crew! Wake up!" The name immediately stuck, and now we are officially known as "Gringa Crew." I love it. The next morning, or should I say afternoon, most of them got up around 2 PM. A couple of hours after we got up, me, Cass, and Aníbel were sitting together and talking, and Aníbel turns to Cass, and says in English, with perfect delivery: "We´re not going to the beach." It was truly an epic moment. It was like hearing that Santa Clause didn´t exist (well, metaphorically for me - many scientific studies show that Jews are born hardwired with the knowledge that Santa Clause is a figment of the imagination...allegedly): Someone else had to tell you to make it official, but you always knew in the back of your mind that that was really the case.

Nonetheless, it was an amazing weekend, and I had a lot of fun. In fact, one of my favorite things about the weekend was teaching Cassie´s neighbors some English phrases, and them doing the same for us in Spanish. For example, "Ni teni ni un brillo" (literally translated as "You don´t have any shine") basically means you are really boring and don´t have a personality. "Filo" means "Never mind." Which they definitely used a lot on me. The conversation usually went like this: Jenn: ¿Espera - que pasó?" ("Wait, what happened?"). Aníbel and/or Lucho:¨Filo." "Bacán" means ¨Cool.¨And the most important one - "Huevón," means something like "Fucker." They call each other that all the time. It´s so endearing. We taught them stuff like, "Fo sho!" They LOVED that one. They also liked saying the phrase, "What the fuck?!?" and said it pretty much all weekend. We also taught them the words "Ice," "Crib," and, "Bachelor pad."

What can I say, it was cultural exchange at its finest.