Right now all of the first year university students are getting "initiated" which involves a generous topical application of things like vinegar, raw eggs, flour, mustard...etc. Sometimes there is hair cutting involved as well among the male students. After this rather smelly experience the kids have to then hit the streets to collect money that will then fund a welcome party a few days later. I recognized the girl on the left from Techo Para Chile, so I gave her a donation and asked if I could take a picture to help embellish the blog entry that I knew I would later write. The victims don't seem to mind the ritual too much, probably because they know they will get to be the instigators rather than the victims the following year. I was talking to my host mom last night and she told me that she had washed Camila's ( a first year chilean student who lives in my house as well) clothes 3 times and still couldn't get the stains out...Everyone just kind of laughs about the ridiculousness of it all. Although I was talking to my friend Cachorro about what happened to him and he said he almost got in a fight with the guy who tired to cut his hair. He is a little protective about his hair though...and sure enough a few days later another guy swooped in and cut a ringlet of curls off and Cachorro just had to wait for it to grow out. And, of course now that his hair has had 3 years to recover he loves to watch the process inflicted upon the newbies.
Yesterday I had my first French class, taught in Spanish. Quite a cool experience really. It made me realize how great my Spanish was in comparison to my French, haha. I can say about one phrase at the moment and it goes a little something like this: "Je parle anglais, espagnol, un peu francais y non, je ne parle pas russe." Rough translation, "I speak English, Spanish, a little bit of French, and I don't speak Russian. So yes, there you have it. I am excited to start learning new grammar structures, which sounds nerdy but it's the truth. I'm hoping that my background in Spanish will help me more than it confuses me...There's definitely a shared latin root between the two. I think I want to download some French podcasts and try and work on my pronunciation as I walk along the river before lunch. It would be so cool to be trilingual, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Right now I'm off to go on a stroll with the other girl from my program. Not sure where we are going to go or what we are going to do but it should be entertaining.