What is Chile?

First of all, how do you pronounce the name of my country? For me, is just Chile not chilli, which sounds like chilli peppers for me, so even if the shape of the country resembles the shape of a chilli that doesn’t sound fine for me.

 

Chile is located in the southern part of America. If you look at a map you can find a country in which you can go from the beach to the mountains in just a few hours. Also, you can find snow and desert, beaches and forests, windy and rainy weather and sunny and hot as well. However, you can find this kind of landscapes in other countries in South America. So, what make us distinguishable among all the countries?

We speak Spanish (not Portuguese as some of you have been asking me), but our own version. So, even if you know how to speak Spanish, you may not understand what a Chilean person is saying. Chileans delight in creating new words, changing their pronunciation or shortening them. I will give some examples, but the meaning of all this is something that you will have to discover by yourselves when you visit the country: “como estai?”, “Me duele la guata”, “lo pase chancho”, “es una guagua!”, “se paso”, “ya po”, “cachai?”, “ah no que lata!” and so on.

September is a good month to visit the country and understand our culture.  Every Chilean wants to eat out or have a barbecue at home. Also, you will see some drinking enthusiasts and after a few drinks anyone will want to teach you our traditional dance “cueca”. If you are not keen on dancing like me, you might enjoy playing some of our traditional games like “carrera en tres pies” In this game you have to run with a partner having your leg tied up with one of your partner’s legs.

When it comes to games, we are crazy about soccer, so every time our national team plays a game, the entire country get paralyzed watching the match.

An important part of our day is dinner, which we call “once”. Usually the families gather around the table and talk about their day. Also on weekends we sit around a table and talk after having finished our meal, sometimes over a cup of coffee or tea.

If you ever go to Chile, you have to be ready for an earthquake or at least a little trembling of the floor, but don’t worry we are so used to it that the buildings can resist strong movements. We are such experts because we can estimate the magnitude of a trembling very accurately. I have experienced a big earthquake once, it was 8.8 of magnitude and the epicentre was really close to my city.  So you can imagine how terrified I was!  Even if we had been trained to face an earthquake I wouldn’t have known what to do in that moment. Seriously, nothing can prepare you for this. I was sleeping when I suddenly woke up and heard a strange sound. After that the floor started to move in circles and I wasn’t able to do anything. But don’t worry if I survived you will survive as well, just pay attention to the sign and after the movement go to a high land if you are close to the sea.

This leads us to another feature of Chilean people – generosity. Every time when a catastrophe happens (and in Chile it is frequent) we are ready and willing to help to the ones in need. So this is what I can tell you about my country, if you want to visit it you will be very welcome and you can ask me about some tips as well.

Berta, Advanced

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We are teachers and students at the Cairns College of English and Business (CCEB). How lucky are we to work and study in the Australian Wet Tropics with the world's oldest rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef at our doorstep! We would like to share our happy posts with the world! Welcome to the CCEB space eveyone.

4 thoughts on “What is Chile?

  1. Hi Berta, what a fabulous and informative post about Chile! At least I know how to pronounce your country’s name! I have always wondered why people say “Chilli”!?! Well done! Krystyna 🙂

    1. I’m wondering the same! Why people say “Chili”. I’m almost giving up because when I say Chile usually people don’t understand me.

  2. “Me duele la guata” hahahahaha that sounds so funny. I absolutely love “cachai?”.
    I hope you teach me some of your Chilean words before I go to my country :), that would be awesome!

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