Conociéndo a los muchachos de la Casa Payaso

¡Hola! ¿Cómo están ustedes? No he llevado mucho tiempo acá, pero creo que ya voy aprendiéndo mucho. I´m typing this all up on my keyboard set to Spanish, so some things are changed up a bit. Oh well, I´ll do my best anyway (ha--as I started to type that, I began typing "I{ll...."). It´s getting a bit late here, and I do need to get up early in order to try to arrange some of my student visa things, but I wanted to give just a bit of a taste on my experience in Chile so far.

First off, I will say that the country--specifically la cordillera de los Andes, as they say--is marvelous. Flying in, I was like a little kid, pressing my face against the airplane window, gawking at the beauty of these majestic mountains. The snowy peaks stretch as far as the eye can see, and the Rockies that I have seen pale in comparison to these. In addition, spectacular views of the cordillera abound. This picture certainly doesn´t do justice to the view, but here is a snapshot of what I see all the time.


This picture, in fact, was taken in front of Casa de Payaso, where the son (Gonzalo) of my Chilean dad Don Rodrigo works heading up a clown/juggling/circus troupe. Rodrigo showed me around the place last night. It is an old, old house with high ceilings and colorful walls. One room is filled with clown garb, another houses all sorts of miscellaneous equipment, including a bunch of juggling clubs, unicycles, contraptions like bouncy stilts--the list goes on. Today I was invited to go with the troupe to a private event as part of the tech team. Good one, right? Anyway, I went along, and had a grand old time doing so. First, I hung out with the guys at Casa de Payaso. We chatted it up, I juggled with one of the guys, and we played a little foosball (they called it taki taki or something--there´s a lot of vocab I´m trying to keep up with!).

The show (pronounced "cho" :D) that they were putting on tonight was a percussion performance--like NU´s Boomshaka. These guys are crazy. One guy did some fantastic sound effects and beatboxing, while the other guys onstage used ladders, buckets, barrels, a wire mesh, and some sticks to put on a tremendous performance. I will give you a bit of the backstage video so that you can see for yourself. Technically, I was helping to hand things to the performers and then take them back when they were done. Basically, I did nothing, but I got to wear a dark suit that was way to small for me, and hang out backstage. That´s all for now folks! Enjoy the talent.

¡Chau!