Know why the aisles in theaters are called "Vomitoriums?" Here's a hint: it's a Roman/wine thing.

First, I have one more small issue to clear up: when Chileans say "como estai?" it is not actually a bastardized version of the vosotros conjugation (which is used exclusively in Spain). It is actually a bastardized version of the vos conjugation, which means it actually isn't a conjugation form that is new to me (just one I've never, ever used, because they don't use it in Bolivia or Peru. Spanish has a lot of regional differences). It's just a seriously strange version that is only used in very informal situation, like with siblings or close friends. Or so according to a Chilean friend of mine.

Chile is fun. I've been going out a lot, which is actually kind of hard work, since the bars close so late I don't get my hangover until 5 or 6pm the next day - about when it's starting to get dark. I've been mistaken for a local several times (until I open my mouth), which might have something to do with my new jeans: it's pretty much impossible to find jeans here with anything shorter than a 36" inseam (WHY? Chileans aren't tall...), so maybe 2 out of 3 people (myself included) have either rolled up jeans or baggy-at-the-bottom jeans. I just need to pick up a fanny pack, and I'm practically Chileno.

I've gotten settled into my apartment, and found some Spanish classes that I think will be pretty good. I have private classes, which used to terrify me, but my Spanish is far enough along now that I don't tense up to the point where I forget how to say "where's the bathroom?" until I pee my pants. Also, there's a scary old elevator in the building with no safety mechanism if you were to get stuck in the door, and the thing closes like a bear trap. Which is pretty cool. The other day a guy tried to hold the door for me and almost got his arm taken off for his trouble. One of the three elevators has a guy running it; his job is to sit on a stool and move the lever between "run" and "stop" all day. Que fome. The building is right near the military port, so there's lots of sailors wandering around, and I noticed I don't giggle at them the way I did at the Bolivian sailors (remember that Bolivia has no coast, although they do have a "navy" base on a river bordering Argentina that is maybe 45 feet across and looked about 6 feet deep), although Chile does have a national holiday celebrating a naval battle they lost, which is pretty funny too (and ironically called "Navy Day." The Battle of Iquique was against Peru, in the War of the Pacific, and features other ironies, like the captain of the Chilean ship ordering a boarding, but the order was only heard by two Chilean sailors, who were quickly riddled with bullets as they stormed the Peruvian ship. There's a large memorial in Valparaiso commemorating the martyrs). The classes are in Valpo, so it's actually a 45 minute commute each way (at least if there's traffic), which kind of sucks, but whatever. Actually, the commute would be shorter if the micro companies hadn't decided to half the number of buses running a couple of days ago. See, Valparaiso especially is pretty hilly, so the taxis charge a lot. Most people don't have cars (this being someplace that isn't the United States, plus there's a lot of students - a demographic known world-wide for its chronic shortage of liquid capital), so everyone pretty much HAS to take the micros. I guess the micro companies know this, and through some sort of collusion - tacit or otherwise - have decided to cut their costs and increase the crappiness of the transit system by halving the number of buses. Either way, it takes a long time to get a micro now, and they're always really full. This is a good example of private enterprise going awry, because even though there are at least three micro companies, it didn't seem hard for them to reach this new business decision (and I think assuming the collusion was tacit would be pretty generous to the companies). Supposedly there are "talks" underway between the companies and the city, whatever that means. I don't know what kind of regulatory body is here, or how much teeth it might have, but I do know that public transit authorities would never pull this kind of shit (why would they? Last I checked, there were no stock-options for Whatcom Transit Authority employees). In the meantime, I'm walking even more than I used to, since it takes about as much time for me to walk the 15 blocks to the central plaza as it does for me to wait for a micro to pick me up and wind its way through traffic. Plus it's giving me Buns of Steel.

I went to the supermarket today for the first time - not the Lider Express (yes, the name is Spanglish, which is all the rage here), which is on the end of the mall nearest my building, but to the Lider Supermercado proper, which is through the mall (actually the nicest mall I think I have been in), across the skybridge, and into the other part of the mall across the street. This Lider is a whole different ballgame. While the Express is the size of a smallish supermarket in the States, and a fairly adequate place to pick up what you need, Lider proper is a supermarket on steroids. It's probably the size of a Wal-Mart, and has - ready? - 90 aisles (and I think as many checkout stands). There's two rows of them, so it's not so long as you might think, and the aisles are maybe 3/4 the size of aisles back home, but it's still pretty fucking big. There are no baskets here, only carts: Lider is designed for serious grocery shopping. Maybe not "Alaska bush family on monthly Costco run" serious, but pretty serious nonetheless. There are special moving sidewalk-type escalators that move people and their burgeoning carts up to the parking garage, and they even sell entire shopping carts full of a multitude of products that is basically an instant kitchen, filled with items from pudding to dog food to paper towels (a modest $89,000 investment, or US$180. Does that include the cart?)

I love the supermarket, and wandered up and down most of the aisles, just to look, while I rocked out to the sweet 80's music coming through the intercom system (that song from the sex scene in "Top Gun" was on ("Take My Breath Away"), plus "Don't You (Forget About Me), from the Breakfast Club. Good stuff). Mostly there wasn't anything particularly interesting or exotic (although there is an entire aisle devoted to canned seafood products - i.e. an entire aisle devoted to products that have always kind of given me the willies), but I don't shop with a list, so what am I supposed to do? (I'm the dream of supermarket managers - the impulse shopper) I bought some produce, and if I haven't mentioned it, none of the supermarkets here have scales at the checkout - you have to pick your produce out and bag it up, and then have it weighed and stickered with prices. This is annoying for two reasons: one, it creates one more line to wait in; two, it means you have to bag all your produce, which I normally don't do at home (I get enough bags at checkout). There have been times when I was going to buy two of something but decided to buy one so I didn't have to bag it, although I couldn't resist today when they had Asian pears priced at $1.25 a kilo (two pears, $.75 cents. Friggin sweet). Avocados are a good deal too, at a little under $2 a kilo (2.2 pound, to us Yankees - a word they use here, which is a big insult in Chile, but kind of endearing in Argentina. Regionalism again). But you have to buy a whole kilo, so I have a lot of avocado to go through, which is fine since it's awesome on everything from sandwiches to cereal to ice cream (speaking of which, they have Dryer's/Eddy's ice cream here - $10 a half-gallon. I'm guessing not manufactured locally).

Chile is a big food exporter, so there's lots of stuff pretty cheap, like seafood (and I'm guessing the Asian pears). I picked up some salmon, which was farmed by a company called Aqua Star - and I loathe buying farmed salmon, but I didn't really have a choice. To go with my fish, I wanted to buy some wine, which was harder than it sounds. Buying wine is always sort of a pain, just because of the overwhelming options and similarities (I had a boss who had a program on his palm pilot that could write wine descriptions that sounded straight off the bottle. It was called "Bullshit Wine Description." I usually let price influence my decision greatly). This normal complication was compounded by the wine section itself being the size of a small grocery store, plus the fact that I had never even heard of many of the grapes in question. True to form, I eventually settled on some mid-shelf reds that were buy two get one free (who can't use free wine?).

One other item I had been hoping to pick up was quinoa, which I figured should be at least fairly common, since Chile is also an Andean country. But I was wrong. Quinoa at Lider is tucked away in a small corner of an aisle with exotic-type foods (Aisle 87, the guy told me after consulting his extensive product location chart), and comes in little, 250 gram packs (about one serving) and costs a small ransom. It grows out of the sand in one of the poorest countries on the planet, but then again maybe Bolivia isn't interested in selling quinoa to Chile (you know, the whole Bolivia-hates-Chile-with-the-fire-of-a-thousand-suns thing). At any rate, I bought rice instead, which was about 1/10 the cost (they have two grades of rice here, Grade 1 and Grade 2. What the Hell is grade 2 rice? I bought grade 1).

When I got home, my dyed-flesh, high-in-PCB salmon was worth it; my dinner tonight left me satiated in a way I don't think I've been since I've been down here (excluding the possibility of the steak I had in Argentina). Of course much of that had to do with the wine, I think.