Nous sommes arrivees!

Nous sommes arrivees … Wir haben angekommen …We have arrived, it takes being in Chile to bring all other languages to mind! Spanish doesn´t come easily but I think it´s Hemos llegado. And then there´s Chilean Spanish, what our friend Franklin calls Chilean slang, whereby ´s´ s are often omitted, even in the plural, and various verbs that we have learned one way sound quite different, so we are in for lots of brow-scratching. Celine and I spend all our spare time (i.e. when not enjoying the sunshine, sights, general atmosphere, sounds of people talking – even on the metro in rush hour), reciting Michel Tomas´s CD instructions to stress the first syllable in the present tense and hit the ending hard in the future tense. There are so many past tenses I forget what he says about those!

We are staying in Las Condes, the financial district, with massive skyscrapers competing with the great ring of mountains all around us. Our flat is part of a much older community which used to be surrounded by countryside, and which is likely soon to be swallowed up by the developers, once the community´s negotiators have settled on a fair price for everyone. It´s like a decent council block, although the shady, tree-filled courtyard is a bit different. Mercedes, landlady from Heaven, says that the community will probably be completely demolished within a couple of years.

We did a whistle-stop tour with the lovely Franklin round some of the major sites, spending about 3 hours over lunch in Bella Vista (think Broadway Market x Neil´s Yard + wooded mountain with cable cars and big yellow hot sun!), before wandering off to try and pay our respects to la Presidente, Michelle Bachallet, in La Moneda. The public are actually allowed in (like wandering into the White House), but in fact on this particular day, the guard took one look at us and decided that Michelle should be saved. He said something like, If we came back the next day at 10 she´d be out! There are elections due here next year and there is anxiety that the right are working hard to try and topple Michelle, also unfortunately some of the left.

We managed, amidst our hectic schedule, to fit in the film Che. Completely in Spanish, no subtitles. We understood one word in a hundred, but actually, because the acting is brill and the story well-known, we both enjoyed it. However, it´s put me right off becoming a revolutionary. For a start, you definitely have to be under 50, be extremely fit with a penchant for fording rivers, clambering up mountains carrying wounded compadres – always in driving rain – and that´s without even mentioning getting shot at, shooting, and having to keep your beret looking picturesque!