Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Of Carrettes, Commies and Chileanese: These Are a Few of My Favorite Things



Carretear (pronounced carr-ay-tay-ar) is the Chilean word for partying—and not just partying but an all-nighter of drinking at some pubs until 2 or so, and then dancing at the discos until the wee hours (still earlier than on the other side of the Andes but whose counting.)  In my few months down here, my best carrete ended with a 3 hour sunrise walk that concluded with an early morning snooze on the beach and breakfast under a palm tree, not too shabby!   Commies are the eternal and mortal enemy of the free, capitalist-happy Western world—the Northern half, at least.  While the Occupy protests are a relatively new phenomenon for the USA, that kind of thing is old news down here—that is until you mess with the police and they round you up with high-powered water-cannons mounted on tanks that roam the capital and mass tear gas you, but hey, you threw the first rock, payback is a bitch.  The current fight for free education has been going on for well over 6 months and many students have not gone to school for an entire year because students have literally taken over their own schools and won’t let anyone in.  The political views of many of my Chilean friends would surely have prompted Richard Nixon to finance a coup ‘d’état.  Wait, that happened?!  Chileanese is what they attempt to pass off as Spanish down here (at best it's vaugly similar and then, only at times.)   My favorite word is bakan, which means cool and was the first Chilenisimo I learned because well, what's cooler than bacon?  Cachai?  Sipo.  Que bueno.  (Get it?  Got it.  Good)

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