Farewell Chile!

It’s time to say goodbye to Chile.  It’s about 11:30pm Sunday night as I write this.  Tomorrow at about 4pm I’ll be boarding a bus with my entire luggage to head to the airport in Santiago.  My plane leaves at 9 pm.  It’s about an 11-hour flight to Toronto, where we have about a 3-hour layover before flying for 2 hours to Minneapolis.  If all goes as planned I’ll land in Minneapolis at 10:30am Tuesday. 

 

We got back from Buenos Aires safely on Thursday.  Most of the others in our group have either gone home already or are still traveling, so it feels kind of weird to be back in Vina alone with no one to hang out with.  It’s been kind of nice to have a couple days to just do whatever without having to worry about classes or anything.

On Thursday, after I got back to Vina, there was a temblor (a tremor), but it was kind of strong and kind of freaked me out.  More continued during the afternoon and evening. There was another pretty strong one at about 5 am.  They don't last more than a minute usually, but they are strong enough to make the pictures on the wall sway back and forth and the whole house creaks and moans.  There were some more on Friday, but I haven't noticed any since then.  This whole time in Chile I only noticed a temblor on one other occasion when I was reading in my bed and it was pretty weak.  These ones were stronger.  At least if an earthquake is coming I won't need to worry about it!

On Friday I walked around town a little and went to the Feria Artesenal to look for some last minute gifts to bring back.  I packed up a good portion of my stuff so I would have an idea of how much room I have.  Surprisingly, it looks like everything is going to fit no problem, probably because I’m leaving some books behind and some clothes that didn’t survive the trip.  Saturday I was really lazy and didn’t do much of anything except do a little more packing and talk to a bunch of people on Skype.  Today I wandered around town some more.  Went to the beach and browsed for gifts at the little vendor huts that are along side of the beach, and got a little sun burnt in the process. 

 

Then I went to the mall.  I felt like I was back in the US doing last minute Christmas shopping.  It was busy as hell; there were Christmas decorations everywhere; there was Christmas music playing in the background; signs announcing Rebajas de Navidad or Christmas sales; kids waiting in line to see Santa (or El Viejito Pascuero as they say here).  Many of the stores in the mall are the same as in the US.  It’s very easy to forget you’re in South America when in the mall.  I went directly to the food court and got a personal pizza from Telepizza.  It took a long time to get and after that I just wanted to get the hell out of there because I knew what the rest of the day would entail—it was busy and I didn’t want to have to deal with lines and crowds of people.  But I also wanted to find a Chile shirt.  This whole time in Chile I have not come across any type of sweatshirt that says Chile—only soccer jerseys and lame t-shirts.  The mall wasn’t the place though; it’s so North Americanized that the only clothing stores they have are just like US clothing stores filled with overpriced brand name clothes that are made in Indonesia or India.  So I decided to go to the super huge supermarket that’s attached to the mall (this place is like sam’s club size!).  There I bought some Alfajores, a packaged South American dessert, to bring home.  I also bought a bottle of wine for the host family.  The checkout lines were really long.  Fortunately I was able to be in the express lane for 10 items or less, so that sped the process up a bit.  If there is one thing I don’t miss about Minnesota right now, besides the weather—that’s too obvious, it’s standing in lines and dealing with the crowds of people that I usually associate with Christmas shopping.  It’s funny how you can’t escape some things, even 7,000 miles away.  After that, I caught a collectivo, a shared (and cheap) cab, for my ride home. 

 

I brought my camera with me today so I could take some last photos of Vina.  I’ve realized how few pictures I have taken of the city that I’ve been living in for the past four months.

 

I’m not gonna lie, I feel like I could stay here another semester, probably because the weather is so beautiful and I feel comfortable living here by now.  That, and I know my next semester at school is going to be a pain in the a$$ with having to write a thesis in Spanish, having to teach two introductory psych. labs a week, and take 4 classes. I’m excited to see every one though and am glad I will be home for Christmas!  I just may complain a lot after the holidays about how I would rather be back in Chile! Just offering that as a fare warning to everyone.  Well, I’m off to get one last sold night’s sleep before home, since I probably won’t sleep very solidly on the overnight flight tomorrow.  See you all soon!      

 

 

 

Day 5 (Tuesday December 16, 2008)

Today we walked by the Ecological Center, a large section of the city that’s preserved and undeveloped.  Then we went to the immigration museum where we learned about BA’s immigration history (the two largest immigration groups here are the Spanish and Italians in that order). Actually the Argentinean accent kind of sounds like Italian, I think.  There is also some German, Celtic and other European groups, but a smaller number.  Most immigrants came during late 1800’s/early 1900’s—the last big wave of immigration was in 1914.  There was a hotel where immigrant families could stay for 5 days for free, and it included meals.  During that time they looked for work.  The stay was extended in cases of illness or if they were unable to find work.  Pretty generous immigration policy, huh! 

 

Then we went to the Holocaust museum.  The other big and more recent wave of immigration in Argentina was during and after World War II.  I’ve heard that many Nazis escaped to Argentina after the war, but the museum kind of downplayed that aspect and instead had a lot more information about the victims who came to Argentina after being persecuted and watching members of their families being killed and/or tortured.  It seemed like many came from Poland. 

 

Anyways, we got dinner at a barbecue place that was pretty good and relatively inexpensive and now we’re just chilling at the hostel.      

 

      

Day 4 (Monday December 15, 2008)

Yesterday we did a tour of the city on a bus.  It took kind of a long time but the tour guide had some good info.  The only annoying thing was that she did the tour in English and Spanish so she would say one thing in one language and then say the exact same thing in the other language trying to hurry because she was commenting on stuff as we drove by in the bus and having to explain in Spanish and English made it so that she was still explaining stuff after we drove by it and then would have to cut it short to give an explanation of the next sight.  I understood the Spanish just fine so the two languages thing was really annoying to listen to. 

 

During the evening for dinner we went to the Hard Rock Café.  It felt like I was back in the U.S.  We took a bus to the Hard Rock.  BA has a real problem with having coins in circulation, especially the dollar ones, which makes taking the bus kind of a pain in the ass because the buses only take coins.  When David and I took the bus to La Boca the other day we ended up having to buy unnecessary soft drinks so we could get change to use on the bus.  Luckily at the Hard Rock the employee at the gift store had two of her own personal dollar coins that she gave us in exchange for a 2 peso bill so we were also able to take the bus back to the hostel. 

 

On the bus we learned the importance of keeping the ticket that the machine gives you.  The bus was full and apparently someone didn’t pay, or the bus driver thought someone didn’t pay, because he stopped the bus and said, or rather, yelled, “we’re staying here, what do you prefer that you pay or that I call the police?”  Someone must have paid or got off because we started moving again.  

Day 2 (Sunday, December 14)

Slept in again today!  On Sundays there’s a big market not too far from our hostel that takes up a good number of blocks of this one street, so of course the girls were planning on shopping there in the afternoon.  David and I thought that it would be cool to check out a soccer game instead.

 

 The night before we had asked the person working at the front desk if there were any excursions to the soccer game in the neighborhood of town called La Boca.  I’ve heard that La Boca is the rough part of town and that it is better to go in groups to the games.  The dude at the desk told us to check back with him in the morning if we still wanted to go.  He told us that there are always tickets to the games and that, with this tour, we get to go and get some drinks before the game and then eat afterwards.  He also explained to us that this tour company buys their Boca game tickets from a gang and that it’s much safer because then apparently other gangs won’t mess with you.  “You are untouchable” is what he kept telling us.  This conversation was in Spanish, but David and I understood the same thing, which makes me confident that we did indeed understand him correctly.  When we went down in the morning to check to see if there were tickets left, however, we found that there were no spots left on that tour.  But they did have 2 tickets left for the game without the tour.  These tickets weren’t much less than the entire tour was so we decided not to do it.  We went back up to our room and within 10 minutes changed our minds and went back down to the main desk to buy them.  Apparently within that 10-minute time frame the 2 tickets had been sold.

 

The guy gave us some numbers of other places that sell tickets to Boca games, but they didn’t have any either (it was a championship game so they sold out quickly).  We were kind of frustrated at this point and we knew we didn’t want to spend the rest of the day walking around shopping.  So we decided that we would just take a bus to La Boca and see if we could buy some scalped tickets outside the stadium.  I was half expecting this strategy to fail, but figured it would be better than shopping. 

So we went to the stadium and walked around for a little bit until we were approached by a man asking if we were looking for something.  We nonchalantly said yes not saying exactly what it was we were looking for.  Then he said “tickets.”  Unfortunately he only had one, so we kept walking.  We encountered another man outside a store who seemed to be standing around for no good reason.  He also approached us asking if we were “looking for something.”  He brought us inside his store grabbing a shirt that was on display in the front and bringing it with him to the counter as if we were inquiring about it.  I thought he may have totally misunderstood us, but apparently it was just a cover-up so in case the police happened to be looking in or something they would think we were inquiring about a shirt instead of illegal tickets.  He showed them to us but we had no idea how to tell if they were actually real or not.  So we said we would come back shortly and went outside to try and get a glance of real tickets before buying them.  From what we could tell they looked the same and they were only 80 pesos anyways, which is about 22 dollars (compared to the 200 pesos the hostel was charging for their tickets) so we decided to go with them.

 

They ended up working, even though I was a little bit nervous with all the police at the entrance to the stadium.  Even though we were in an upper deck and had to stand and maneuver a lot to see the game, it was totally worth it!  Especially since we were able to rub it in to Hannah and Susan, since they thought we were crazy for going (Susan said they weren’t taking our stuff back with them if we didn’t make it out of La Boca).

 

In retrospect, the La Boca neighborhood didn’t even seem that bad.  There’s a section called El Camenito that is actually rather touristy. 

 

Tomorrow we’re going on a city tour.  I’m happy that it doesn’t start until 2pm so yep, again, get to sleep in. 

 

      

 

 

Day 1 of Buenos Aires ( Saturday, December 13)

We all woke up at about noon today—sleeping in was awesome!  We went out exploring the town a little bit taking the metro (subway) across town to the holocaust museum realizing that it was closed when we got there.  So we got lunch and went to another part of town to see the Evita Peron museum.  After that, we went to a big park and rented a four person peddle cart and drove around this path that went around the park.  After dinner, we hung out at the hostel playing my FAVORITE game, 500.  Note the sarcasm.  

The End of Chile (Friday, December 12)

My last day of classes was Thursday.  That night we also had our group good-bye dinner with our program director and our Chilean professors.  It was then that it hit me that the trip to Chile is coming to an end.  Many in our group our traveling afterwards—some are going to Machu Pichu, others to the south of Chile and others to other parts of South America.  But some are heading home, which means I won’t get to see them until next semester some time.  It was kind of a bittersweet final get together. 

 

I am actually writing from our hostel in Buenos Aires, Argentina (BA).  I’ve got a small group of friends I’m traveling with: Hannah, Susan and David.  We just got here around 9 tonight (it’s like 1:30am local time right now).  I brought my laptop with, which I was kind of nervous about, but I think it should be safe here at the hostel.  We had another slight problem in the airport.  We were running a little bit behind schedule and ended up missing the plane!  The girls lamed David because he showed up to the bus terminal late, which made us take a later bus than we were planning on, which made us get to the airport later.  Although I think we would have been late anyways because there was a really long line at the airport’s international gate anyways.  By the time we got to the terminal to board the plane the lady told us that it was full and we would have to wait until the next flight.  Fortunately the next flight was an hour and a half later and we didn’t have to pay anything.  David and I just grabbed some food at the airport while the girls shopped.  I was actually kind of glad I could eat before boarding the plane. 

 

We landed in BA and took a taxi to our hostel.  We went out and got some dinner at this pizza/pasta place at like 11:00.  It was pretty good.  BA is well known for having excellent food, especially beef, pizza/pasta and ethnic foods.  Not sure what the plan is tomorrow but we are thinking of doing a tour of the city.  I just don’t want to have to get up early!  It’s really hot here and it’s humid also.  I’m not complaining though—it beats the blizzard in Minnesota!  There’s a lot of street noise right outside our room window, but I’m gonna try and get some sleep.  

 

What a Trip!

The trip to Punta Arenas (PA) was filled with a lot of unexpected curve balls.  First of all, before even going to PA we had a dilemma with purchasing the plane tickets.  There were 4 of us in all traveling: my friends Susan, Hannah and Emily and myself (I know, lucky guy traveling with 3 girls! Bound to happen when there’s 22 girls and only 6 guys in our group)  Susan is our designated travel agent and she was the first to buy her ticket.  I tried to buy the same roundtrip ticket she had through airline “A” a couple weeks later but discovered the return flight was full.  So I bought a one-way ticket going to PA on the same flight through airline “A” and a return ticket through a different airline, let’s call it airline “B.”  Hannah and Emily bought roundtrip tickets through a completely different airline.

 

Anyways, long story short, airline A went out of business so airline B took responsibility for airline A’s flights.  So, Susan and I ended up having our flight to PA changed from 8:00 in the morning to 10:30—ate away at part of the day but not a big deal.  The bigger problem was the return flight.  Since I had already bought my return ticket through airline B, nothing was changed with my flight.  But the return flight Susan had (the original roundtrip ticket through airline “A”) did get changed and she ended up (supposedly) on the same flight as me going home.  When we got to the check-in counter however, we realized that this wasn’t the case because her flight somehow didn’t get confirmed.  The lady told us that there was no room and she would have to wait until the next day to fly out.  This was a bit of a problem since Hannah and I had our flights all set to leave that afternoon (Emily left PA a day earlier).  We talked to the lady at the counter in Spanish to see if there was any other option but she said the only option was to go on the next day’s flight, which was at 9pm, which means that it would be too late to get a bus back to Vina from Santiago when the flight arrived at around midnight.  I even asked about changing my ticket to the following day so there would at least be 2 of us together but there were only high class seats left so it would have been uber expensive. 

 

We ended up having to board our flights leaving Susan at the PA airport by herself in tears.  Hannah and I felt terrible!  We were planning on spending Monday in Santiago since we didn’t have class due to a national holiday, but when Hannah and I met up in the Santiago airport we just decided to get a taxi to the bus station and take a bus back to Vina after all that had happened.  Susan went back to the hostel that we were at in PA (fortunately it was a pretty sweet hostel, keep reading to hear why) and spent another night there.  Now we are all safely back in Vina, thank God. 

 

I don’t want to make it sound like the trip sucked, because I actually really liked it.  It’s just the whole airline issue part was pretty lame.  The first 2 nights (Tuesday and Wednesday) we spent in Puerto Natales, a city about 3 hours from Punta Arenas.  Susan and I were travel companions the whole way there since we had the same flight.  We had to take off and land 3 times because of two stopovers on the way to PA, the southern most city in the world apparently.  Then we had to take a 3-hour bus to Puerto Natales where our hostel was (Hospedaje Maria)—Maria even came to meet us at the bus drop-off point.  Emily and Hannah were already at the hostel.  We were pretty wiped out from traveling so we all just went and got some dinner and went back to the hostel. 

 

I was surprised how late it was when the sun finally went down—around 10:30 or so.  PA is like 53 degrees south, so it’s farther south than Minnesota is north (MN is about 45 degrees).  The first full day in Puerto Natales we went to Torres del Paine national park. We had an option to do a full day hike to the top of the Torres (towers) or do a drive around tour from below.  I pushed to do the day hike to the top, even though I think some of the girls may have rather done the drive around tour (not to name any names COUGH COUGH, Susan and Hannah). I give them credit for going on it with me though.  Emily was at the other end of the spectrum—I had to work hard to keep up with her.  The hike to the top was almost 4 hours and then another 4 hours back to the bottom.  I thought the view was totally worth it, except we didn’t get to stay up there very long because we had to make sure we made it down in time to catch the bus back to town, since we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. 

 

At the top the climb got rougher and rockier.   Hannah decided she had enough about half way up the rocky part and found a rocky seat where she waited until we came back down.  Susan and I kept going while Emily was ahead of us almost out of our site.  We found out that Susan’s the accident prone one in the group; she endured a few minor injuries during the expedition.  We took the bus back to Puerto Natales and went to a Pizza place where we met some Australians.  We each ate an entire pizza, and they were fairly generous portions! 

 

The next day, Thursday, we left our hostel in Puerto Natales and bussed it back to PA.  Before catching the bus to PA however, the girls (minus Hannah who stayed back at the hostel) made me go shopping with them.  Well, they didn’t so much as make me, as much as there really wasn’t anything else to do so I just went with.  I’m not going to complain because they came with to Torres del Paine without fuss, so I’m just going to zip it!  The hostel that we had in PA was more like a house with extra rooms than a hostel.  It was run by this older woman and she lived there (she wasn’t really old, just old to me—like 60’s).  The first night we were there we met these other two travelers: one from San Diego and the other from Boston.  They accompanied us on the tour to see the penguins on Friday.  On Friday in the morning we went on a historical tour and saw a reconstructed military fort and some other stuff.  It was kind of relaxing compared to Torres del Paine, but I thought it was kind of boring.  After the tour we had lunch in PA and then went on a tour to see the penguins with our new hostel friends.  These were the Magallanes penguins (I saw the Humbolt penguins when I went to La Serena in the north).  They were in a natural habitat and there was a path constructed for viewing.  It was super windy too. After the tour we went with our hostel friends to a Chinese/international food buffet.   

 

The next day, Saturday, Emily left in the morning and the 3 of us slept in and went to the centro, or the main plaza with our hostel friends in the afternoon.  We got some lunch and then our friends had to leave for the airport.  We went back to the hostel and relaxed for a while.  Saturday was also Susan’s birthday, so we went out eat at another Chinese place for dinner.  We tried to rent a movie afterwards, but they wouldn’t rent to us because we didn’t have a local address.  It worked out OK though because we had some free entertainment back at the hostel. It ended up that this woman’s family came to visit from Argentina, including two ten-year-old twin grandkids and they were fun to have around.  They entertained us with these little puppets and then they came into our room and got into our cereal and we somehow ended up having a sort of a contest to see who could catch the most cereal in their mouth and in the process made kind of a mess.  They were up until about midnight and then their mom made them go to bed.

 

The following afternoon, Sunday, was when we were all supposed to leave PA.  Once again the twins were our entertainment.  I brought out my camera to take some photos and I let them have it for a little while.  They had fun making goofy videos.  We also had a pillow fight until their mom put a stop to that.  I may or may not have been the culprit there. 

 

Susan, Hannah and I took a taxi to the airport and that’s when that whole drama began. 

 

This week we’re finishing up classes—have some papers to write but it’s so damn nice out I have 0 motivation!  Friday the 12th is officially the last day of classes, but I don’t have class on Fridays so I’m done on Thursday.  I’m leaving for Buenos Aires Argentina Friday and I’m excited!  Come back to Vina the 18^th and then my flight home leaves the 22^nd.   It’s going too fast!  I’ll see everyone very soon!  

Photos

Photos

 

 

  

 

 

 

I’m #$%&ing tired!

As I write this it is almost 11pm and I haven’t slept in like 30 something hours.  I had a final in my Chilean history class today and an essay that was due for my Latin American cinema class and, since I’m kind of a procrastinator, I left writing the essay and studying for the test until last night and ended up not going to bed.  My bad.  I’m glad to almost be done with classes.  Tomorrow I’m leaving with 3 others to Punta Arenas, a city in the way south of Chile.  I’m really excited to go!  Our bus to the airport leaves from Vina at 5am so I have to get up at about 3:30, yay!  Sleep is overrated anyways!

 

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  Our group had our own Thanksgiving down here with our host families on Friday.  MY host dad and host sister came with me.  We each brought something and shared a part of our American culture with our Chilean friends and families.  There was like 90 people, so it was a pretty good sized thanksgiving dinner.

 

This past month of November

the six of us guys here participated in a “no shave November.”  I also got a tattoo, but it’s fake—just henna, and I shaved so I no longer look like a bad-ass.   

 

I’m gonna have to be done because I’m exhausted.  I just wanted to post before leaving.  I come back to Vina on December 8^th.   

I'll post sometime soon after I get back.

Back from Chiloé

Last week our group traveled south to the Island of Chiloé.  In all, it’s about a 20-hour bus ride, but we made stops along the way to break it up a bit.  The first day, Saturday, we left Viña in the morning and drove for like 9 hours to the city of Concepción where we spent the night in a hostel.  Sunday morning we left Concepción and drove to Lota, an old mining town.

 

 In Lota, we toured the “Chiflon del Diablo” (The devil’s whistle) coal-mine that's no longer in use, but is now open to tourists.  That was kind of neat because we put on helmets with headlights (like real miners) and walked through parts of the mine, which goes underground

about 140 feet and then turns and goes underneath the ocean floor.  While we were in the bus on the way to the mine we watched a video called Subterra (Underground) about life in Lota during the early 1900’s.  In the town of Lota during this period, the mine was all that existed, so that’s where all the men worked.  There were no labor laws back then so it was basically mandatory to put in 14+ hour workdays six days a week doing extremely labor-intensive work unless you were physically unable to do so.  Even those who physically shouldn’t be doing such work did because they needed to eat.  The workers got paid in tokens that could only be used at the company store.  Because miners were paid so poorly, families often had to take male children out of school to work in the mine at young ages just to afford food.  Workers often died young from black-lung disease or from frequent accidents that occurred in the mine (explosions/cave-ins).  From the late 1800’s to when the mine closed in 1997, thousands of workers had died either due to accidents or diseases caused by working in the mine.  In a way, touring the mine was more like touring a massive tomb than it was like touring an industrial work place due to how many people have died inside of it over the years.   

 The owner of the mine in the early 1900’s was a North American (a Gringo, as they say here). He and his family had one mansion in Lota and another one in Santiago.  The movie Subterra is a documentary that depicts life in Lota during this time based on the writings of Baldomero Lillo, the company store tenant who kept a diary that focused on the sufferings of the miners and their families.  In the movie, the workers form a workers’ union and elect Baldomero to lead them.  They write a list of demands for the owner such as reducing the workday to 12 hours and banning child labor in the mine.  These humble demands are met, but the mine continues its operation as a death camp. 

Eventually the Chilean government took over the mine until it was closed in 1997.  Watching the video made me appreciate not being a miner!  When we toured the mine, I was reminded of an episode of the Discovery Channel program Dirty Jobs.  In this episode, Mike Rowe spends a workweek with a miner from West Virginia in a West Virginian coalmine.  These workers put in a grueling, labor-intensive 10-12 hour workday six days a week and often come from a long line of miners.  One big difference between these miners and the miners from Lota in the 1900s is that the West Virginian miners are raking in over $60,000 a year for their labors and, fortunately, they’re not forced to spend that money in a company store!  We left Lota and drove to Villarrica where we spent the second night.             

 

On Monday morning, we left Villarica and drove the rest of the way to Chiloe.  Before crossing the ferry to get to the island of Chiloe, we had lunch in the city of Angelmó.  The southern part of Chile is known for having really good seafood so, naturally, that’s what a lot of people had for lunch in Angelmó.  Fortunately for me, I’m not such a big fan of seafood.  I say “fortunately” because many who had seafood got sick. 

After lunch, our bus crossed on the ferry to Chiloe and we set out to find the house that the girls were to stay at.  The girls and guys had to be separated the two nights we spent in Chiloe because there wasn’t enough room for the whole group to stay at one house.

 

The houses that we stayed at were kind of like a bread-and-breakfast type set up.  They were out in the boonies with rural families.  The guys’ house was pretty big and had a bunch of small rooms for us to stay in.  The family is apparently used to having large groups of people stay with them; they definitely know how to cook for large crowds and are generous with their provisions.  We stayed with them two nights.  The first night we had a big dinner

accompanied with wine and then some of us stayed up for a while conversing.

 The second day (election Tuesday), we drove around the Island of Chiloe in our big bus.  The landscape was gorgeous.  We were supposed to see 3 historical wooden colonial churches, but we only saw 1 because the other 2 were closed for construction, which we discovered when we got to them.  Nonetheless, it was a pretty drive.  

During the evening the whole group came over to the guys’

 house for Curanto prepared by the rural family we stayed with.  Curanto is a type of food that is typical of southern Chile.  It’s a custom that comes from the indigenous peoples of that region.  To make it, basically you make a big camp fire hole in the ground, get a fire going and then form layers of food over the fire—first the meats and chicken, then, on the top layer, sea food and clams.  Between layers they put some type of leaves in there for flavoring.  Then you cover everything with some type of a fire-retardant tarp and let it cook for a few hours.  That was another feast, with wine of course—very good!  

We were then all excited for the election.  Since we were with a rural family out in the boonies, we didn’t get CNN or anything.  But, we did get some Chilean news station on one of the three channels that came in and it provided coverage of the election in Spanish.  I went to bed because I didn’t want to stay up all night watching it. 

 

On Wednesday morning, after breakfast and a walk through the woods, we left our rural family’s house and drove to Castro, one of the main cities on the island of Chiloe, where we had lunch. Then, with our bus, we boarded a ferry back to the main land, stopped for a while at the artisanal fair and started driving to Puerto Montt, where we spent the night in a cabin.  

We left Puerto Montt in the morning after breakfast and started driving towards the city of Valdivia.  On the way, we stopped at an old military fort.  Once we got close to Valdivia, we stopped at the Kunstmann brewery, where we had lunch.  After lunch we went on a tour of the brewery.  Kuntsmann is a well-known Chilean beer.  German immigrants started the brewery at the beginning of the century (go figure!).  In the south of Chile, there is a strong German presence because many Germans immigrated to the southern part of Chile in the late 1800’s (kind of like Minnesota!).  Therefore, it’s not uncommon to see German food on the menu in restaurants in this region.  We spent the night in Valdivia and left on Friday morning for Curico, where we spent the next night. 

 

Saturday morning we went to this huge museum in Curico and wandered around the main plaza before boarding the bus to head back to Viña.  We got back to Viña at about 6 in the evening.  For other photos from the trip click here.

 

This past week has been kind of crazy for my host family.  My host dad’s father has been sick with cancer and this past week he got gravely ill.  Thus, my host family has been spending a lot of time at the hospital and helping out my host dad’s mom.  Don't like to end on a sad note, but on Friday, his dad past away and I went with to the funeral today (Saturday).  

Mendoza, Argentina

OK, it’s been a while since I’ve written about what I have been doing (about 3 weeks or so).  Things have been picking up here and I’ve been a lot busier than the first couple months.  That and I probably don’t manage my time very well, so I keep putting off writing on the blog.  Anyways, part of the reason I am a little busier now is that I finally started my service learning.  Service learning counts as one of my classes—I get the same number of credits as I would for a normal class (4).  We choose from a list of service learning sites and document our hours and, at the end of the semester, write a paper about the experience.  For my service learning, I am volunteering at a private k-12 English school (St. Peter’s School).  I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous to say that I am volunteering at a private school—not really what one thinks of when talking about service.  We were able to choose from various different places to work at, one of them being a poorer school attended by kids from poorer families.  However, that school only had 3 openings and it involved working with early elementary age kids.  I wanted to work with older kids, so I was paired with St. Peter’s, where they had like 7 openings.  Anyways, I help out with the English classes (grade 7, 8 and 10).             

            When I first started a couple of weeks ago, it was really chaotic and they basically just put us in any class that they felt like (one day I ended up in a 7^th grade tech. class that was in Spanish and I just basically sat there because I didn’t know exactly how I was supposed to be helping—awkward!).  Then I went to one of the English classes and the teacher basically let me take over.  I started out just introducing myself and then I took up the rest of the class asking the kids questions and answering theirs.  That was in a 7^th grade class and now that teacher is having me come with her to her 8^th and 10^th grade classes also.  Now I prepare exercises and activities for the classes and I like it a lot more than I did at the beginning. 

 

            I’ve definitely noticed how different schools are here compared to schools in the US.  For example, I can literally just walk in St. Peter’s School with out stopping at a desk or getting a visitor’s pass or anything.  Also, the school is much smaller with about 30 students per grade.  Also, the school, since it is private, is family owned and operated more like a business.  Other private schools in Chile are considered corporations.  Another thing I’ve noticed is that the teachers are often late to class and, in general, very disorganized.  Often times the class will be completely nuts and the teacher won’t do anything.  Sometimes the teachers will just leave the classroom for a period of about 10 minutes or so.  I was really surprised that day that I “helped out” in the tech class when I saw that a student had brought a paintball gun to class and was showing it off to his friends after class had ended!  The English teachers I’ve been working with don’t put up with any bull crap, however.   

 

I go to St. Peter’s on Wednesdays and Fridays in the mornings.  Since I have class Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, that means no more sleeping in.  I’m somehow supposed to get 80 hours in before the end of the semester, but I don’t see that happening, since I’m limited to Wednesday and Friday mornings and will have to miss some days for traveling.  

A couple weeks ago our group went to a partido de futbol (soccer game) at the national stadium in Santiago.  It was Chile Vs. Argentina, their historic rival.  Argentina always wins—they’ve won every game in the past thirty-something years.  But, this time Chile won!  It was a pretty exciting game to see.  On the bus ride back to Vina people were honking their horns and waving their Chilean flags out car windows, it was wild. 

 

We got back to Vina at about one something in the morning after the game, a Wednesday night.  A group of us skipped our senior seminar class on Thursday and went to Mendoza, Argentina, about an 8-hour bus ride from Vina del Mar.  We drug our sleep-deprived bodies to the bus terminal at about 7 in the morning.  I slept a little on the bus.  The bus ride through the Andes was gorgeous.  Click here to see photos  We got to Mendoza in the

afternoon and found our hostel.  Mendoza, and Argentina in general, is known for having excellent food that’s reasonably priced.  The first night we were there I confirmed that popular belief.  A large group of us went to an all-you-can-eat buffet that was a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!! Hands down, best buffet ever!  For those of you who have eaten at the Mystic Lake buffet, this one was better, and I love the Mystic Lake buffet.  The buffet was like 20 Argentinean pesos, which equals about 7 US dollars.  Since the buffet was so cheap, we decided to buy a few bottles of cheap wine.  We all ate WAY more that we should have and left feeling like we had bowling balls in our stomachs. It was awesome!  

We all went out that night and got back to the hostel late (like 4 am late).  We were all signed up with the hostel to go on a bike ride wine tour the following morning.  However, I decided in the morning that I didn’t want to go so I stayed at the hostel and slept most of the day.  I don’t regret that decision one bit.  On Saturday, a group of us went on a white water rafting and canopying excursion through our hostel.  Some others went paragliding, which I almost did but decided not to because I don’t really like heights, and it was expensive.  The white water rafting and canopying was super fun.  

 

On Saturday evening, we went to this really good Mexican restaurant.  Sunday, we walked around the city a little, well, actually a lot, checking out the main plaza.  Our bus back to Vina left Mendoza at about 10 pm.  I actually slept a little, but had to get up at 2:30am once we reached the border to go through customs.  That took about an hour and a half.  It took a while to fall back asleep, but I for sure slept because the next thing I remember was waking up from a deep sleep as we pulled into the bus terminal in Vina.  That was at about 6am.  I caught a cheep cab back to my host family’s house but I didn’t bother sleeping anymore because I had classes at 9:30 and I knew if I went to sleep, I wouldn’t be getting up for class.  I took a huge nap after classes to make up for lost sleep.   

 

When we got back from Mendoza we had a nice little present waiting for us: a midterm exam for our senior seminar class!  It was a take-home midterm: basically write two, three page essays.  Our profe emailed it to us on Thursday, but, since we left for Mendoza on Thursday and didn’t get back until Monday morning, we obviously didn’t have time to work on it at all.  I had to pull a straight-up all nighter to get it done, and I don’t feel like it was very good. 

 

Homework is starting to be kind of a drag.  It’s definitely the biggest challenge while studying abroad—it’s very difficult to focus.  Also, I’m getting kind of bored of having all humanities classes because all you do is write.  I kind of miss my psych. classes.  

 

            This coming week, our entire group is traveling south to Chiloe.  We are gone from Saturday to Saturday.  This is the one big excursion that is part of the program so we all go together.  I’m excited because it sounds like we’ll be doing a lot of cool stuff (like going inside a mine that goes underneath the ocean floor, and touring a brewery).  Also, we don’t have classes and no homework! 

 

We only have about 7 weeks left in Chile.  I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at Christmas time.  I’ll post the week I get back from Chiloe.  Hope those of you in Minnesota are enjoying the snow! Ha ha!