This past week, we completed our second week of classes. We are starting to get the hang of lesson planning and how to manage our classes. Sometimes unorthodox means are necessary to get the students to pay attention. Our students meet twice a week and for the first class of the week I will usually ask the students what they did the past weekend. One class in particular had been very unruly the last class of the previous week and I did not want them to repeat this behavior. Upon all of the students sitting down in class, I asked ¨What did you do this past weekend?¨ One of the more talkative students blurted out ¨Fornication!!¨ With a straight-face, I inquired ¨With a man or a woman?¨ My all-male class immediately burst into very audible laughter and they were very attentive the rest of the class. I was just following paternal advice handed down to me to ¨speak in a language that they can understand¨. I don´t know if my application of this advice was used as intended, but I´m only worried about results.
A delicious chicken, pasta, and veggie meal that our friends cooked Friday night.
On Saturday, we went to Lollapallooza. If you didn’t get a chance to check the band list out, good bands were in plentiful supply. Some of the bands featured on Saturday were Cypress Hill, Ben Harper, The National, Deftones, CSS, Fatboy Slim, and The Killers. The Chilean bands played early in the day and due to our Saturday morning English class, we weren’t able to get out there early enough.
The entrance to Lollapalooza
Upon arriving at Lollapallooza at about 2, we were quickly greeted by the familiar tunes of Cypress Hill. After hearing their flagship song, “Insane in the Membrane”, Katie and I decided to watch the rest of the concert from the sidelines. Sitting from afar, it was clear that many members of the audience were heeding Cypress Hill’s advice on marijuana as a thin layer of haze was a permanent fixture above the crowd. Cypress Hill was an entertaining warm-up but he was not as high on our list of bands to see as the people in his audience.
Next up was Ben Harper. For those who don’t know Ben Harper, he incorporates, rock, reggae, folk, blues, and soul into his songs. He is an amazing talent and for this show, we wanted to get really good seats. Lucky for us, it seemed that the only thing the Chileans knew about Ben Harper was that his first name sounded eerily similar to the past participle of “be”, “been”. Although Katie and I went over the past participle lesson with much fervor, it was clear the average Chilean didn’t care about this correlation. We walked right up to the stage to the second row where we waited for an hour and a half for Mr. Harper.
In front of Ben's stage
While scanning the crowd and seeing the recurring print of Megadeath, Deftones, and other heavy metal bands on t-shirts, I laid my eyes on print that took me by complete surprise to say the least. A man, who I couldn’t decipher if he was of Chilean or American descent, was wearing a black shirt with the text, “Plano East Panthers” on it. I read it a couple of times left to right and then right to left just to make sure I was reading it correctly, and then I pursued the individual donning my high school shirt. Unfortunately, this has a very anticlimactic ending as I was unable to track the gentleman down. I was now only left to visualize what the conversation may have gone like with this mystery Panther and so I did. Some of my responses to his questions were, “Yea, I had to carry the team on my back for the whole season and the playoffs back in ‘03”, “Yea, I was voted Best Hair”, and “Yea, you did hear right, there weren’t enough weights in the weight room so two coaches had to stand on opposite ends of the dumbbell with all their weight for me to get a decent bench workout”. I then felt Katie pinch me and I was back to the reality. I wiped off the drool that was induced by a very biased account of my glory days and Ben Harper walked onto the stage.
Ben Harper put on a great show through his guitar playing and wide-ranging vocals. A very unique part of his show was his playing of the Weissenborn, a lap slide guitar, while sitting down. He would switch between playing the Weissenborn, electric, and acoustic guitars to produce a very eclectic mix of songs. Regardless of how we thought Ben Harper was dominating the stage, the Chilean crowd just did not seem into it. Through observing the uninspired crowd around us, we noticed many Deftones shirts which meant they were waiting out Ben Harper for the Deftones show a couple of hours after. Katie even noticed a girl standing near us that had a tattoo ¨Deftones¨ in Old English text spanning her entire upper back. I think she felt obligated to be there.
Ben playing his Weissenborn
Video of Ben's performance
Next up, we went and saw The National. The National is fronted by a baritone lead singer, has two brothers who play bass and lead guitar, and a drummer that looked like a John Lennon reincarnate. They produced a more mellow sound so we were fine just watching them from afar. After listening to a pretty impressive set from The National, we went and saw CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy), which translates to ¨got tired of being sexy¨. CSS is a Brazilian band that is comprised mainly of females with a token male bass player. They sing in both Portuguese and English. CSS combines elements of Indie, electric, techno, and rock music to create a very energetic sound. We stayed for about half of their show and then we were off to see The Killers.
The Killers
The Killers
The Killers played a great set and really got the place going. So much so, I don´t think there was hardly anybody that left early. Trying to cram onto the metro to get home with thousands of other Chileans was not a fun or easy task. This feat gets even a little more tricky when your wife is susceptible to becoming claustrophobic. Using an ingenious therapy, I told her to close her eyes and I whispered, ¨We´re frolicking in a vast green meadow¨, ¨We`re on a beach and you can see the rolling waves endlessly rolling into other rolling waves¨, and finally ¨You´re inside my heart so you can see how big and spaciously gracious it is for all those times when you don´t think I have one¨. The last one seemed to jar her awake, but by that time we were already home with a Sopapilla in our belly.
The next day, we wanted to get to the festival a little earlier to listen to some Chilean bands. The first Chilean band we saw was the FotherMuckers, who sang entirely in Spanish. I point this out because believe it or not, many of the Chilean bands sing in English. The lead guitarist of the FotherMuckers was the brother of our friend, Mari, who accompanied us to the show. They were pretty entertaining, but we left half way through to see 311 play.
311 was good, but they didn´t blow us away. They played some of their old stuff, which was pretty good. At this point, I decided some pints of rum and whiskey would act as an enhancement for the music the rest of the day. They didn´t sell any alcohol inside the festival, so I had to make a little trip outside the walls which turned out to be an hour. Well, even though I can escape the security of both The Carnival and The Norwegian cruise lines, I was unable to sneak pass the Carabineros and they detected the pints in my waste band. The Carabinero said, “Senor, que es este?” with a smug look on his face. He then confiscated the rum and poured it out.
Next, we gravitated toward Chico Trujillo, whose style of music can be described as Cumbia. The Cumbia that you hear today is basically West African tribal music combined with New World instruments such as the accordion, bass guitar, flute, and other instruments depending on the country. The Cumbia style was initiated in the northernmost South American country, Columbia, which was a popular port for slaves during the Spanish Colonization. Slowly, Cumbia spread south to all of the other South American countries each developing its´ own unique version of Cumbia. Chile has incorporated some rock and some other folk Latin American styles into their Cumbia. It´s a very upbeat style and is a very popular warm-up to the discoteca for many Chileans. Going back to Chico Trujillo, his show was highly entertaining and created an environment for many people to get up and dance, even the white people. I am white, but I wasn´t one of them.
After Chico Trujillo, we saw a band quite different in style, The Flaming Lips. The song selection was geared toward a 2-hour set as they only played about 7 songs in their hour long set. I´m a Flaming Lips fan, but I couldn´t really get into their show. Up next was Sublime with Rome and they played many of their classics. They played all of the songs that people wanted to hear and the crowd really responded well. We then saw Cold War Kids and Kanye West, both played solid shows but nothing really extraordinary to write about.
Some of Kanye's show
Overall, Lollapalooza was a great experience and we had a lot of fun. It seemed like several of the bands used Lollapalooza to experiment with their new songs, which was somewhat disappointing. This was really the only drawback to a fun weekend.
We´re still both struggling to get a comfortable grasp on the language as far as speaking and comprehension goes. We meet with a native Chilean one to two times a week, watch crime shows in English with Spanish subtitles, and also watch some Spanish TV. When we first started watching Spanish TV, it was very hard to pick up any of the words. Little by little though, the speaking is slowing down for us and we are able to understand more and more. We eventually hope that the Spanish TV shows slow down so much that we are able to see the subliminal Coca-Cola and McDonald´s advertising between frames.
Monday was back to teaching and we are giving out the first quizzes this week. Therefore, a not too intensive week with the first class being review and the second giving the quiz.
