Catch-up blog

What an action packed last two weeks I’ve had! I have so much to tell you about that I’m going to write two blogs, the first one for last week and the second about my recent trip to Easter Island!

So let’s go back a week in time and get started. My classes are going well and I’m keeping up although it is a lot more work than I anticipated. Some highlights about classes include:

• For my Social & Political Themes of Chile class, I’ve been learning a lot about the politics of the Allende and Pinochet years which is just fascinating. We watched a really interesting film from the perspective of Pinochet’s party and learned that this movie is banned in the U.S. I also wrote a research paper on the Hippie movement in Chile, and my professor told me that my ideas about the effects of the movement were ‘groundbreaking’ and I should publish something. I thought that was pretty cool!
• My Art History TA made a joke about the United States and how our country doesn’t have a real name like Chile does. The entire class laughed and stared at me and the other gringo while we tried to understand what the joke had been. Jokes have proven to be some of the most difficult Spanish to understand as they are usually said really quickly and under one’s breath.
• My dance class continues to make me laugh on a daily basis. One day we had a presentation of the different outfits that are worn while dancing in various parts of Chile. Another day, we played the most ridiculous game that I call ‘strip marriage’ and included students crawling around and meowing. Ask for more details if this intrigues you ;)

For the last few weeks, I’ve been part of a conversation group of Chileans and Americans where we meet and speak English half of the time and Spanish for the other half. It started out with eight people, but everyone has been inviting all their friends and now we have a really great group going! It’s fun to hang out with Chileans in a setting where they’re trying to help us learn and vice versa. Tonight we’re having an asado, which literally means ‘grill’ and is a big barbeque with lots of meat and friends.

I also celebrated Día de la Madre with my host family and Chaz and Jacob. We gave my host mom chocolate and homemade cards and had a really nice night.

My host mom, Jeannie, appreciating her Mother's Day card and chocolate

Last, but not least, our IFSA group went on a day trip to 3 places around our area. First, we went to Curacaví to visit a chocolate factory!!! They make all natural chocolates with extremely unique flavors such as oregano, basil, lemon, cardamom, hot pepper and cheese! We tasted all of those and every single one was delicious! My favorite was definitely the cheese one, delicious!

Fancy Kamasutra chocolate

Our second stop was in Pomaire at a huge market where they specialize in pottery and ceramic pigs, but have nearly every trinket you could every need. Amazingly I left with just one pair of earrings, a scarf and a mini pig.

Here is some of the pottery and three pigs in the background

The last stop was La Isla Negra, which is another one of Pablo Neruda’s homes. We’d previously toured his home in Valparaíso and both are similar in that they are an eclectic mix of styles, colors, architecture and decorations. Each room looks nothing like the last, but is its own masterpiece. This house has a spectacular view of the ocean and is also the site where Pablo and his last wife are buried.

Pablo and me!

That’s all for the catch-up blog! Thanks for reading.

My 'real' life in Viña has begun

HI! I know, this blog is way overdue. Time is just flying by; I cannot believe I’ve been in Chile for nearly 2 months! This all still feels unreal. Life these days has been a mix of homework and fun breaks. I think I’m going to organize this entry in sections as I have a few random topics to share with you.

HOMEWORK & SPANISH

I must admit, there is a lot more work than I was anticipating! I’m writing essays every week, as well as quite a bit of reading (which is all in Spanish of course!). Last Thursday, I had an 1.5 hour presentation for my Spanish class, definitely something I wouldn’t have been able to do before coming here, and it went pretty well! On that subject, I still feel like my Spanish is improving slowly but surely. My friends and I are making an effort to speak more Spanish when we’re together, and I’ve been able to comprehend more and more.

MI FAMILIA

Things with my wonderful Chilean family continue to get better and better! I’m feeling more comfortable talking with them and just being a real member of the family. My mama is incredibly sweet and spoils me by tidying up my room, doing my laundry, preparing amazing meals every single day and helping me with anything I need. My papa is very caring and intelligent and makes a point to teach me about Chile through stimulating dinner conversations. My brothers are hilarious and extremely nice, we have a good time practicing their English skills and joking around. I feel so lucky to be a part of such an amazing, tight-knit, loving family!

BEST STUDY BREAK EVER

Speaking of homework and my family…one night I asked if my friends Chaz and Jacob could come over to study. My mama readily agreed and offered to make a ‘little’ snack. This snack consisted of delicious fruit skewers, grilled cheese sandwiches, scrambled eggs with cheese and ham, salami and cheese appetizers, pound cake, juice, coffee & tea…and then the best part, beer! We had a very tasty and productive night.

LA FERIA

Every Wednesday and Saturday there is a huge fresh fruit, vegetable and produce market in Viña and we decided to go. It is a colorful, bustling scene with some of the most succulent fruits and veggies I’ve ever seen! The celery is huge, the tomatoes are gorgeous, the pears are fresh and everything is so cheap! For example, a kilo of kiwis (about 8-10) costs the equivalent of $0.60 and a kilo of avocados costs about $1. I didn’t really need to buy fruit as my family always has an abundant supply, but I decided to buy a mango. The nice vendor helped me choose a ripe one, and then threw in an extra for free! I continue to be pleasantly surprised by how kind and patient Chileans are when helping ‘gringos’ like me buy things or navigate the city.

Tomatoes & Avocados are staples of our diet

Absolutely huge celery

Some enormous grapes, yum!

REÑACA

About 15 minutes up the coast from Viña is a smaller town called Reñaca. We took the bus over and climbed up some awesome sand dunes that look over the coast and the beautiful beach. We watched the sunset and had a lovely time!

RUNNING

My friend Jacob is a serious runner and has inspired me to take up running for my exercise here. Although I’ve been a casual runner for awhile, this has been my first experience as a more regular runner, and it’s great! I’ve been going almost every other day, usually to my favorite path beside the beach. My favorite time to go is after classes, around 4 or 5pm when the sun is setting and the beach is absolutely breathtaking. Every run is eventful here, for instance I've had a group of little girls run with me, a vendor follow me for about 1/2 hour on his bike, lots of 'piropos' (whistles, cat calls) and random people shouting things like 'faster!' or 'one, two, three!' or just clapping and cheering. Anyways, I already feel like I’m improving and hope to keep this up for the next few months to return home a runner!

Also, Jacob competed in two races, one this weekend and one the last weekend. Chaz, Annie and I are part of ‘team gringo’ and are his loyal supporters who come to the races decked out in tie-dye. It’s fun to see new parts of the city and be part of a community event. I especially liked the warm-up which was led by a small dance group to great music! A huge crowd of runners followed along to the dance moves to stretch and get excited for the race.

Tie-dye team gringo!

Jacob with the 80-year old man who just completed his 14th marathon!!!

TAC & GATITOS

My internship at TAC has been going very well! Each week I’m dreading the hassle of getting to the TAC center, but once I’m there I couldn’t be happier to spend time working with such lively students. We play games, teach about the value of plants, work in the garden, perform plays and other enjoyable activities. Also, two tiny little kittens wandered into the TAC center and are currently living there!!! They are the cutest things imaginable and pretty much make my life complete.

This was our acting group for 2 weeks in TAC

These girls are looking at the TAC symbol, which appears on lots of murals in the area

Me with the kittens!!!

Thanks for following and I’ll do my very best to keep updating :)

Routine week + random weekend

I’ve just spent a lovely week in Vina and have some fun and random updates for you. But first, good news! After a chaotic MONTH of registration, I finally have my schedule figured out. Here is a list of my classes with small descriptions.

• Universal Art History – This class is a real Chilean class and is also the largest class I have ever been in with over 50 students. I can barely understand the professor, but that doesn’t seem to matter too much as the TA’s do the majority of the teaching. The class is very rowdy, nothing like you’d find at Whitman. We’ve already had a bunch of readings and an essay test, I’m still waiting (with my fingers crossed) to see my grade!
• Social & Political Themes in Chile – This class is through IFSA and is the smallest class I’ve ever been in with a total of 5 people. The professor is a sweet, older man who speaks beautiful, clear Spanish and has already brought us Chilean sweets and candy three times! The class is really interesting and relevant, and we get to choose the topics for our papers, so I’m looking forward to it.
• Advanced Spanish – A very lively class also through IFSA. Our professor Jorge is wonderful and teaches us very useful ‘chilenísmos’ and grammar.
• Community Action Workshop (TAC) Internship – This involves two parts. First of which is volunteering to teach kids about the environment and coexistence. They are full of life and so excited each week. The second part is meeting my advisor Isabel each week to read articles related to TAC and discuss them, in addition to writing a few research papers. It’s great to talk one-on-one with Isabel as she is very nice and a good opportunity to speak about complicated issues in Spanish.
• Traditional Dances of Chile- This is just about as good as it gets. Best class ever. Our teacher can sway his hips better than anyone I know, and the way he says ‘¡Eso es!’ is priceless. We wear long skirts and bring our scarves to do the traditional dances.

It was nice to have a regular week and routine, then on the weekend have time for some fun. On Friday evening, I played a great game of Pictionary with my host family. Then the ‘three musketeers,’ as I like to call my friends Chaz, Jacob and I, went out to our favorite place, Café Baul. After awhile there, we decided to branch out and went to a place called Aries, where we ran into our Academic Director and my TAC advisor Isabel! That was a pretty hilarious coincidence.

Chaz, Jacob and I at Aries

On Saturday, TAC had a special training day for volunteers. The goal was to learn more about the environment in order to a) take care of the TAC garden and b) pass along the information to the kids. It’s really interesting to see the different level of environmental awareness in Chile in comparison to my past volunteer work in Seattle. That being said, the volunteers are motivated and definitely have the right attitude, and it’s great to see progress being made to bring the community together while promoting environmental causes. Anyways, my work group built structures of wood or rocks around trees and plans in order to help water sink down to the roots of the plants. It was a nice sunny day with some good physical, dirty work!

This is an example of the rock circles we made around plants

That evening, a group of friends decided to try the intriguing ‘Hard Rolls and Pizza’ restaurant (fantastic name, right?) that serves all you can eat pizza and sushi. What a combo! We ended up sitting in an awesome VIP feeling lounge, with white leather couches and a plasma TV showing an amazing collection of the best music videos ever (Britney, Lady Gaga, some reggaeton, etc.). We had a great time eating way too much pizza and sushi, and afterwards hung out at the beach to digest. We ended the night watching ‘Monsters Inc’ in Spanish on TV. A good night!

I think they were attempting to make a play off of 'Hard Rock Cafe'...clearly it failed

Notice the sushi and pizza...mmmmm

Sunday morning I went to the beach to watch an amazing spectacle. It’s called the Bicentenario and is a regatta of sail boats from all the South American countries. These amazing, decorated ships had been sitting in the bay for the past week and then did their traditional parade past all the beaches of Vina and Valpo. Sitting in the white sand and feeling the warm morning sun while watching these amazing sail boats on the sparkling water gave me the reoccurring feeling that this is all just a wonderful dream.

Everyone comes out for the regatta!

Hope you enjoyed the stories and photos. I’m sending my love to you from Chile!

Trip to La Serena

Hi there! First things first, I have been in Chile for a month, which is simply unbelievable. When I think of everything I’ve done, it makes sense, but really time has been flying by!

I recently returned from a nice long-weekend in La Serena, which is a small, beachy city about five hours North of Vina. It is the 2^nd oldest city in Chile, and has the government and court buildings for the 4^th region of Chile. Anyways, this trip was part of the IFSA program, so it was our big group of U.S. friends. While it was fun to catch up with everyone and hang out with new friends, I always feel very conspicuous in such a large group of Americans.

This is a photogenic old church in La Serena

There were a few fabulous highlights of this trip. We stayed in a nice condo type place and cooked delicious group meals. I’ve missed cooking at the See-Saw, so it was just really fun. We made an amazing barbequed meal the first night, and fajitas the second night. Both meals complete with tons of fresh guacamole, yum!

Some of the group waiting for dinner to finish grilling

We spent one day exploring the city center. We saw the Plaza de Armas, an Archeology museum, a nice Japanese garden, and of course, the Recovo market! I just can’t get enough of the markets in Chile, everything is colorful and cheap. This market is known for its papaya fruit and candies, which were a real treat. I also purchased a pair of earrings (under $1) and a colorful pencil pouch.

The Japanese Garden and overly friendly ducks

A taste of the market

Awesome mini cacti being sold at the market

That evening, I took a break from the group and enjoyed a beautiful beach walk. Birds were flying all around as I watched the sunset and looked at the lighthouse in the distance.

The following day, we ate at a very cool restaurant that uses only solar power. They cook everything with mirrors and solar ovens, and let me tell you, the food was delicious! We had fresh baked rolls with picante sauce, salad, chicken with vegetables and rice, and papaya for dessert.

These are the solar ovens, some had rolls baking and others had pots of food cooking

Then we went to a pisco factory for a tour and tasting. Pisco is a very popular liquor here, it is made from grapes in lots of varieties.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but these barrels of pisco are enormous

Definitely the best part of the trip was going to an Astronomy observatory. This area is known for clear skies and we sure did see a remarkable sky! There were over 600 million stars visible to the naked eye. We used a huge telescope to look at the Milky Way, various stars and planets. Mars and Saturn have never looked so beautiful! Our guide would point to a little star, barely visible to the naked eye; and then show us the same star through the telescope and it would actually be hundreds of bright stars! Astronomy always blows my mind, this was no exception. We also saw a number of ‘estrellas fugaz,’ which means shooting stars.

All in all a good trip but, I am happy to be back with my host family and try to settle into a routine. I also have about 200 pages of art history reading (in Spanish of course) to read for a test on Thursday, wish me luck!

Special Edition: Mendoza

I just returned from a 5-day vacation to Mendoza, Argentina! This week most of our classes were cancelled due to Semana Santa, which is a religious week for Catholics. Therefore, my friends Chaz, Jacob, Annie and I decided to take advantage of this break and explore the city of plazas, delicious food, wine and Mate!

The headline says "Mendoza occupied by 90% tourists on Semana Santa"

We left last Thursday and took an overnight bus from Viña to Mendoza. This was a very interesting journey as the trip was scheduled for 9 hours, but ended up taking almost 14 hours!! The main delay was at the border crossing, as we sat in the bus for nearly 4 hours in a line of tour buses and cars to reach the border. Now imagine all of us in this huge tent at 3am, freezing cold, needing to go to the bathroom and too tired to understand Spanish. In this condition, we made an error and only went through half of the border crossing - we left Chile, but neglected to go through the line to enter Argentina. About an hour later, they realized our error and we had to take a serious walk of shame back down to border control as the entire grumpy bus glared at us for increasing the delay. Definitely learned that lesson!

Our first two days were a relaxing break from our scheduled lives. The city was very quiet as everyone was celebrating Easter, so we took a self-guided tour of the plazas of Mendoza. There are so many that even after a day full of plazas, we weren’t even halfway done!

Nice fountain at Plaza de Independencia

One of the many beautiful willows we saw on our plaza tour

We also went to a Serpentarium and an Aquarium and saw some neat reptiles and sea creatures!

I wish I could remember the name of this special Argentinian fish

That night, we decided to check out the local fair! While standing in line for our first ride, we watched two repairmen climb atop the ride and using small screwdrivers and wire benders, they seemed to be fixing the ride! After about five minutes of tweaking the wires and nails, they decided to allow people onto the ride and continue on! By the way, this was a huge, upside-down ride and I have a feeling that it would not meet the U.S. safety standards! When in doubt, we always follow the natives so we boarded the ride and luckily survived the ride! The other highlights of the fair were the $0.75 chocolate covered fruit skewers and when I accidentally made a ‘gringo’ spectacle by breaking the gate to a ride. Haha.

The next day was my favorite! We woke up super early and met up with our friend Jocelyn, then caught a bus to Aconcagua. The 4-hour bus ride was worth it as we had an absolutely gorgeous day hiking in the Andes! The sun was out, the sky was blue, there was a cool mountain breeze and we had a lot of fun exploring the trails and lakes.

Halfway through the day, we hiked down the highway a few kilometers to see ‘Puente del Inca,’ which is a very interesting sight! The way the minerals and rock formed with a small walkway across allowed this area to be used as a throughway for the Incas way back in the day. Then, in the early 1900’s, a hotel was built above the bridge. But a landslide caused the hotel to slide into the valley and induce a series of chemical reactions causing the colorful rock formation with an old building we see today! The pictures may explain this better.

Puente del Inca

Modeling my new Alpaca sweater

I don’t know how I have written this much without mentioning the amazing food we ate in Mendoza! One night, we went to the famous ‘Tejitas Buffet’ which was simply incredible! It costs the equivalent of $11 USD to eat the most gourmet buffet imaginable. Everything is made their on the spot, so you can customize your meat, sushi, stir fry, pasta, crepes…anything and everything! Amazing fruit and salad bar, millions of desserts and oh so much flan! Anyways, the specialty of Argentina is meat and it really was delicious everywhere we had it (which was pretty much everywhere we ate). They also make a special red meat called ‘lomo’ and put it on a sandwich with ham, cheese, a fried egg, tomatoes and lettuce.

SO excited to eat a Lomo sandwich

On day four we decided to do the classic Mendoza bikes & wine tour. We took a bus to the town of Maipu (where all the wineries are) and rented bikes and were given a map for our self-guided tour, plus a glass of wine to get us started! Our first stop was at the classiest winery called ‘Trepiche’ where we had a tour and tasting session. We learned how to do the official tasting routing, which was a first for me! We had a delicious lunch with plenty of meat, bread and wine along the way. Another stop was at a chocolate, marmalade and liquor shop where we were given samples of all the above. It was a very fun day and reminded me a little bit of Walla Walla.

Biking through the vineyard to Trepiche

Our rich chocolate shots with a basket of chocolate to follow

Mendoza has a gigantic park that we still hadn’t been too, so on our last day we took a morning stroll in San Martin Park. My favorite things were the colorful flowers full of butterflies and the ‘Continental Fountain’.

Our last, but definitely not least, stop in Mendoza was PARAGLIDING! We went with a guide and two pilots in their SUV with a broken front window up an extremely bumpy, windy road. At the top of the hill, we could see Mendoza and mountains all around. We put on our gear, and my pilot Cristian and I ran off the hill and flew! It was a calm day and really a comfortable, relaxing experience. I loved every second of the 15 minute ride!

This is what we looked like!

Photo I took while paragliding

All in all, we had a great time in Mendoza and tomorrow I am off to La Serena (in Northern Chile) for the second part of vacations!