Yo foolz - onto Rio de Janeiro in a few weeks

I don't mean 'yo' as in "I", I mean it as in 'hey'. Been spending a lot of time on my spanish lately, but I'm writing in English for now because I am lazy, I spent 4 hours speaking continous spanish today so I am taking a bit of a break. I went to language class this morning and had class with the lovely and talented Catalina at Escuela Bellavista (http://www.escuelabellevista.cl/), then went to the Brazilian consulate to finalize my visa. I'll be going there in a few weekends with Andre from Chicago and a few of his pals. At the consulate, they were very friendly, helpful, and efficient, as if they actually WANT you to go to Brazil and to enjoy the experience. What a fantastic concept! The only downer is that it costs about $160 US for the visa, in reciprocity for our xenophobic US government charging Brazilians this amount when they want to come to our country. I wonder why we do this? Perhaps to weed out people that they perceive as undesirable? Were they nice to me only because I was paying their extortionate fee? I think we need to be careful because if the rest of the world perceives us as unwelcoming, no one will want to come anymore. As a nation built on immigration, we would stagnate and eventually decline. Some say we are doing this now. In any case, this was the only part of the process that was the least bit unpleasant.

I am at the San Joaquin campus of PUC today, where I met my tandem language partner Maria Jose, who is a graduate student here. We had a nice lunch and a tour around campus, and now I am in the library, where I am supposed to be studying. SJ is the undergraduate campus here, and I feel old walking around here. I don't think I look old for my age, but compared to 18 year old hipster Chileans, I might as well have a walking stick and an AARP card. Seriously I could be the dad of this girl sitting in the cube next to me, or at least her uncle.

Also, 1980's fashion amongst Chileans has been taken to the extreme. I saw an otherwise attractive woman in a fashionable part of Santiago wearing 'MC Hammer' style pants yesterday, which are tight at the ankle and get baggier in the legs as you go up. If you remember these pants, you know that they look ridiculous on anyone. I think she thought that she was stylish, and judging from the rest of her outfit, she probably paid a lot for those pants. She did not understand however when I told her she can't touch this (no toca a ti). Everyone under the age of 25 looks like an extra from a Pat Benatar, Flock of Seagulls, or Whitesnake video. I lived through the 80's once already, though I was very young, and I feel like I am reliving it here, except it is in Spanish.