the mullet: alive and well

I don't by any means want this blog to become a bitch-fest. Hardly. I, and I hope you do too, see it much more as a place of thought and recounting memorable experiences. As my audience isn't here, it therefore becomes my responsibility to bring Chile to them.

To start off, the mullet has become the favored hairstyle. Like the "Rachel" from 'Friends' or, the Farrah Fawcett 'do, it's quite recognizable, and nearly anywhere you look. The young men of this city have practically sold their souls to the mullet and wear it proudly. The most catchy would be what we like to call 'the drullet'. It consists of a mullet-style haircut, done on someone who previously had dreadlocks, and continues to maintain a few in the back for either nostalgia's sake, or disgusting every last person that gets in line behind them. It's really quite remarkable when you think about it. I feel like the teenagers here are trying to recreate the 1980s like it was their job. Girls walk around in leggings and banana-clips, while the guys roll up the sleeves of their sports coats and grow mullets. It kinda gives me a stomach ache, to be honest.

Another fascinating element to the hairstyles popularized by the the Chilean people is the rat-tail. Either male or female, it matters not; guys like to keep them in the back, preferably braided, and girls just seem to get hair trims and miss a section. The girls here, all taking advantage of fabulous genes shared by many latins, grow their hair long. And I mean long-seeing a gal with her hair down to her bum is nothing out of the ordinary. Girls like those 'hair wraps' that were so popular in the early nineties. They attatch funny things to the bottom of them like crystals, beads or really big seeds that they've turned into beads. They're really quite innovative.

...we weeeel we weeeeel rrrrrrrock ju

This week is going a bit slower than the last- where I had too many papers to count and a mid-term. I actually studied. Show of hands: who can believe it!? I was totally freaked for this linguistics exam, as the last one- well, we'll just say it didn't turn out so hot. So I spent the thirty six hours prior poring over selected texts, trying to memorize all I could. Luckily, it seems that the exam was a copy of the study guide, so I was well-prepared. I walked out and felt for the first time that week, that maybe I'm doing ok with Spanish here. Maybe I can hack it after all. I marched myself into the bathroom to rinse my face and was followed by a girl from the same class. She apparently didn't catch on to the foreign vibe, like everybody else does, and started blabbing to me about how she didn't even study and that this exam means practically nothing...only 15% of the final grade...yadayadayada. I, having just completed a total brain-dump could barely find the words to say- "Oh really? I didn't even realize...what's that about a project due next week?". She stopped talking and having realized that I wasn't of the Chilean persuasion, gave me a sympathetic little smile. "well, good luck." What she really wanted to say was-"oh, I can't believe how silly it was of me to expect you to be Chilean. I mean, since you're not, I'll obviously go on avoiding you like the plague."

It's an interesting topic because although the kids at the U. Chile seem to be deep into the 'let's grow our hair long, wear lots of clothing with Che Guevara on it, talk about equal rights and make out in the grass' movement, they really don't like to talk to the foreign exchange students. I've made two friends. One is German and hilarious but obviously doesn't count; and the other is a bona fide Chilean. However, I have a feeling that she may only really be interested in me because I speak English and she is an English major. I'm her English-speaking monkey.

oh, I'm sorry, my concentration has been broken because there's a nine-year-old singing the same line to Queen's We Will Rock You over and over again. I want to bury myself alive.

Whatever I was saying before doesn't matter. The only thing that matters right now is getting my goddamn iTunes going as fast as possible to cover up that terribly frustrating noise. Oh god, make it go faster! I would willingly listen to my own father sing the entire two-hour long songbook of Oklahoma! than listen to that line again. Oh it's bad, friends. Pray for me.