{"id":2813,"date":"2018-09-04T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T14:13:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T18:13:43","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-chile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-chile\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Chile … Featuring Camila @ Letters in Bed"},"content":{"rendered":"


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<\/span> It’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last time’s So Your Character is from Latvia … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span>
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<\/span> Disclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts is as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span>
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\nHello there, I\u2019m Camila but I prefer \u2018Milla\u2019 as the nickname here on the Internet. Am from Santiago, the capital of Chile, so, many of my answers will only represent this city because Chile is sooo long that even the Chilean people don\u2019t know things about other zones. I\u2019m 24 years old and I have a minor in Linguistics and Literature. Now am taking Japanese lessons to improve in that area because my dream is work in that. I have a blog for Japanese literature so you can check it. Nice to meet you all!<\/span>
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<\/span> What do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b><\/span>
\nOur landmarks and food are things that we all know we\u2019re very lucky to have. We also live in a very special zone of the globe that almost always shaking. Because of this, we are very chill with earthquakes. You know that people scream with a 5 o 6 grade Richter? The Chilean is laughing and even still sit in their seats. 7 grade Richter? Lmao somewhere is happening something we say. 8-grade Richter? Ok, now we need to run away. It’s something that we always noted about us. <\/span>
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<\/span> We have a lot of religious festivals, even if our country is laic (doesn\u2019t have an official religion). Catholicism is very strong here. Religious Chilean people love La Virgen del Carmen, the mother of Jesus is very important here, sometimes we have more festivals for her than Jesus.<\/span>
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\nAnd of course, is very important to note that in the late years, Chile had changed a lot culturally. Now we are passing for a decade where public protests are a thing. People are getting the confidence to protest for their rights and there are MASSIVE EVENTS here in Santiago. I know that isn\u2019t very common in other countries or even in other regions of Chile. We have protests almost once in a month. <\/span>
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\nTell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/b>
\nAs I said, Chile is so long that we usually forgot the thing that we have. It is very easy that a northern person has a completely different life than a southern person. The longitude of Chile gave us a lot of landmarks, we have deserts (Atacama Desert), glaciers (P\u00edo XI Glacier, Grey <\/span>Glacier<\/span>, Balmaceda <\/span>Glacier<\/span>, Italia <\/span>Glacier<\/span>), even a long chain of mountains (The Andes). We have at least 4 climates thanks to our long territory, so ask and probably we will have it. <\/span>The South of Chile is so pretty, and my favorite place is from there, is Torres del Paine.<\/span>
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\n <\/span>Tell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/b>
\nOur climates (because we have more than four) give us the chance to cultivate many things, so almost every season we have things that are for that time of the year. We have many fruits and vegetables, fish, and seafood. We\u2019re lucky and even if Santiago isn’t by the coast, we can buy sea products very easy or even go to the Mercado and order dishes from other parts of the country.  <\/span>Famous dishes are Carbonada, Pastel de Choclo, Cazuela, Curanto, Humitas and Empanadas.  My favorite <\/span>is the Humitas, they\u2019re a summer dish. <\/span>
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Humitas, they are like steamed fresh corn cakes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

We also love sweets: chocolate, cream, custard cream and our famous <\/span>manjar (dulce de leche). We put <\/span>manjar in everything, really, all the time I know someone that put manjar in something new. Also, we have our famous \u201csopaipillas\u201d, they\u2019re primordial for winter and you could almost buy one <\/span>at every bus stop in the downtown. <\/span>
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Panqueques con manjar, a typical dessert here.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Sopaipillas<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


Tell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/b><\/span>
\nOh boy, Chilean Spanish is known as the final boss of Spanish for something, you know? Tourists almost everytime are surprised because we talk so fast and so weird, omitting sounds, vowels, consonants, a lot of things. It is probably that you\u2019ll need to ask to slow down to try to understand and we\u2019re sorry for that, but don\u2019t worry\u2026even Chilean people have problems trying to understand other Chilean people. Each zone of Chile has their unique words, sometimes I don\u2019t even understand the north people with their slang, is very fun to try to guess.<\/span>
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<\/span> We also use a lot of bad words, words that if you translate them to English are terrible and omg how dare you to say that to a friend. We curse for every little thing. It is so common that even children or old people do it. People could misunderstand that we\u2019re angry or something but nope, we\u2019re like that. Better to ask if you have a question about that, is hard to grasp.<\/span>
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