ah, participation

man. sometimes i hate shortcut keys. why does the backspace have to be the back button in the browser? i mean, it's nice, i use it all the time. but i just erased what i spent 20 minutes writing, and this post won't be the same as the original. so it goes.

okay, so, this week was nice, i felt like i was actually a part of something, or maybe just like i actually live in this city. tuesday i went and saw a chilean band, matahari, record an acoustic cd. their music was good, "soul," or so i was told, though i'm not sure i agree with the classification, i haven't a better one to offer. i would probably see them again if given the chance, and i will hopefully buy the cd i watched them make. that would be a nice souvenir.

umm, yesterday. i saw the best movie i've seen in a while: y las vacas vuelan. literally, "and cows fly," but more accurately "and pigs fly." it was a metafilm, that is, a movie about making a movie, which of course makes it nice and onionlike. it was directed by a (okay, hold on. i just checked using this wonderful resource of an interenet, and have to change what i was about to say) chilean and filmed in santiago. the main character, though, is from denmark (and in the movie he makes a movie, hence the confusion) and therefore i could empathize with him throughout, in his troubles with the language and his overall perspective on the city as an outsider. as the title indicates, it was also a movie about lying - for example, they lied to me and made me think it was by a danish director. the last scene of the movie is the best 5 minutes of cinema i've ever seen. i'd tell you all about it, but i don't want to ruin the surprise. i don't know if you'll be able to find the movie in the u.s., so i'll try to bring it home with that cd if i can find them. after the movie, which i saw with two girls from the program, ie gringas, we went to a meeting of miercoles po, a group of students (the name translates as "wednesday, of course") from one of the universities i'm studying at, where i got to meet a bunch of other foreign students, notably many from france, as well as chileans.

today: no classes. fun fun. went to another language partners meeting, and this time i had a language partner, named pilar, instead of a whole group of chileans to talk to. she, like all the other language partner chileans, studies english in the university, so we talked half in english, half in spanish, and for a while each of us in our nonnative tongue. all this talking in spanish is heloing, i can tell, but i still don't speak as well as i would like. conjugating verbs on the fly is rather cumbersome at times, but i suppose that's why i am here, or at least that's what i keep telling myself. later, i went and saw a play with icha (the friend i made on friday, "icha" is short for "maritza") at the spanish (as in spain) cultural center. it was a part of the IV Festival de Dramaturgia Europea Contemporánea (4th festival of contemporary european drama), a collection of a bunch of new european dramas that are being shown for free. it was called "extinción" written by a spanish playwright. good and modern - the fourth wall was completely shattered, including one part in which a row of lights sitting on the stage was turned on, illuminating the whole audience. i like the show, and understood most of it, except a few bits of rapid dialogue (or monologue) and some of the jokes. overall a good show.

ok, now i'm tired, after writing this whole thing twice. so i'm going to bed, hopefully tomorrow i'll find a good book to read (something i've been meaning to do for oh so long) and maybe take pictures of the city to show you what some things look like.

ok, goodnight. and maybe i won't delete this before i post it . . .