Last Post

Saying goodbye to one of my favorite campus dogs - Cecilia.

Last day of school!


Thanksgiving feast!

Well, it's December 9th, which means I leave in 6 days. My flight leaves at 10:15 PM on Tuesday the 15th. I absolutely can't believe I've been here for 5 months.

Alice and my trip to the South was a lot of fun. We saw a lot of really beautiful nature, lived through some crappy weather (not without sore throats, though), and met some interesting people in the hostels we stayed in along the way. It was fun to be independent. We both thought it was strange to not be traveling with parents and to have to plan our days by ourselves.


These days, as I anticipate my trip home, I have a lot of free time. I fill it with laying by the rooftop pool (that just recently got filled, which might be a good thing because I would never have gone out had it been full earlier in the semester), trying to see friends from school, and doing things in Santiago that I haven't had a chance to yet. On Friday I'm going on my last trip out of the city - to Viña del Mar, a beach town about 2 hours away.

It's a really strange thing to know that my life is going to completely change in a matter of 12 hours between next Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. I guess it did the same thing when I came here, but the difference was that I didn't know what I was headed for. Now, I'm stuck between really looking forward to seeing all of my friends in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and feeling sad because I have no idea when I'm going to see all of my friends here again.

It has truly been an amazing semester. I thought about trying to write some sort of summarizing blog entry that would be really moving and all-encompassing, but it turns out I don't think I'm up to the task. I'm anticipating that most of my conversations will be about this semester for the first couple of months that I'm back in the States, so I'm hoping I can do my experience justice through talking about it rather than trying to write about it and make that perfect. I do know that I'll never get sick of talking about all of the incredible people I've met here or all of the things I've done, so always feel free to ask.

To those of you that I'll be reunited with in the next few weeks, I'm really looking forward to seeing you. And to those of you who I may not see for a while, thank you for thinking my life is interesting enough to read about. Cuídate Chile, suerte en Sudáfrica - nos estamos viendo ;) CHAU!

Pictas

Dipping my toes in the Pacific in Valparaíso

Lobo Marino ("Sea wolf") but really a Sea LION - basking in the sun.

Yo y Pia en Valparaíso

Roses in Parque Araucano, a park close to my apartment.

Alice is here!!!!

Alice is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She got here yesterday morning with no glitches in plane schedules and no intimidating situations with airport security. She ate all of her granola bars before going through customs in Santiago just in case.

Yesterday after Pablo and I picked her up at the airport we came back to the apartment, had breakfast, relaxed for a little while, and then set out for a long day of walking around the city. First we went up Cerro San Cristobal. There is a huge pool up there that overlooks the city. We didn't go in but it is really beautiful and I hope to make it there before I leave. We took the funicular down into Bellavista neighborhood and then walked from there to downtown. It was hot and Alice is still acclimating because she came from a colder climate :/ We saw all of the older downtown buildings, including La Moneda (the government palace), and then caught a bus into Providencia to have lunch with Lucy and Nigel. After lunch, we ate some gelato at a new gelato place. Super yummy. That brought us to 6 pm so we headed home for a quick descanso before going over to Pablo and Magda's for snacks and THE BEATLES Guitar Hero(!!!!!!!)

The game is really cool actually. We were all mesmerized by the graphics. AND I got to sing Revolution, A Hard Day's Night, Can't Buy Me Love, Yellow Submarine, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, etc. Alice played some songs for us on the guitar (on Easy, but she was still great). After a long sesh we went home because we were tired after our day of walking in the heat.

Right now we're sitting in the kitchen and we just had my favorite breakfast of shredded apple, yogurt, and granola. We're going to go pack a little bit before heading out for the day. We leave for the South tonight!!!! I won't have my computer while we are down there but I'll post lots of pics and write all about it when we get back!

I´m sunburnt...jealous?

I have taken to being a huge brat lately when telling people from the midwest how it´s going here. I can´t really help it - my grades are good, the weather is beautiful, the is a pool on my roof, and my semester will be over in about 27 hours.

I´m writing this post from a computer room on campus. I have a final exam in 2 hours but I have studied for it about all I can so I´m taking a break now and when people from my class start to arrive, I´ll study with them for a little while. My location means I can´t put up pictures right now but I´ll put some up this afternoon. :)

I went to Valparaíso again last weekend. It was sunny this time and Pia (friend from soccer who I went with) and I even got to stick our toes in the ocean (which is about as cold as lake superior but still pretty nice). That is the only traveling I have done lately, mostly because I´ve been busy wraping up school. I also ran another 7K race on Nov. 8. Best t-shirt yet.

Oofta, I´m going to have to cut this short. Time for lunch (microwaved chicken breast with tomato sauce - it´s pretty funny how all of these college students bring bagged lunch from home, prepared by their nanas most likely) and studying. I bought a snicker bar (they´re like $1.50 here) for desert. YUM.

P.S. Joe Mauer is the bomb. More later!

Time flies when you're having fun!

Dorky title, I apologize. IT IS TOTALLY SPRING TIME HERE AND I'M SORRY TO BRAG BUT HOLY COW SANTIAGO IS PRETTY! The streets are lined with green leafy trees, the big parks and coming to life with pick-up games of soccer and a billion rose bushes (I noticed them in Parque Araucano - see one of my first posts for a picture and description - for the first time today and literally stopped in my tracks because they are so full and beautiful), the sun is warm and the shade is cool. And the maintenance guys are going to fill our rooftop pool any day now.

I've been really busy the past two weeks with studying (what?!?!) and some fun stuff too. I went rock climbing again but this time in a gym; went camping in the Maipo River Valley just southeast of Santiago; played soccer with a new league team (I'm still playing with the other one but this one was short players last Friday so I got to fill in!); ran another race with Pablo - this time a 7Km; and celebrated Halloween USA-style by carving pumpkins and roasting the seeds... and dressing up of course. (Pictures below)



Like I said, school got crazy all of a sudden. I had two tests last week, a project turn-in this Tuesday, and a quiz today. They've all gone surprisingly well though! The project was kind of interesting, because it was a group project and we started the semester out with 5 people in our group and three people dropped in the two weeks leading up to the due-date, so Gabriel and I had to do it all by ourselves! And there are debates next week related to the same project, but since we would be 2 versus 5 our profe excused us from the debate and is just going to grade us on the written portion, so it worked out kind of sweet! That also means that I don't have any work left to do for that class unless I have to take the final, and I only have to take the final if I don't have a 5.5 (on a 1-7 scale) at the end of the semester. Wahoo!

Speaking of the 1-7 scale, my soccer profe was talking about my soccer class TA the other day and about how great this guy is, and instead of saying "Nico is a 10" like we would in the States, he said, "Nico is a 7, he is definitely a 7." I thought it was funny. Some cultural differences you just don't see coming, you know?

And speaking of soccer, I was talk to my bro-in-law the other day after going to watch him and another friend play some pick-up fútbol, and we got to talking about why I never see men and women playing together here. He told me it's because the mentality is that girls are dangerous to play with because they kick you all the time... I said yeah the bad ones! He agreed, but said that it would be hard to find a group of men who would pay to rent a field and play with a bunch of women. LAME. So naturally that lit a flame under my butt. While I was at Parque Araucano today I saw several different pickup games going on just in the grass, as in no one has to pay to play there, and next week I'm going to go back with my cleats. Mark my words.

I am crazy making plans for traveling after the semester is over. Initially they were more ambitious, but now I think I just want to hop around in the South of Chile where all the rivers, lakes, and volcanoes are. Everyone says it's gorgeous down there, and it will be easier to do with my small budget. Also I feel like since I am studying abroad in Chile after all, I should get to know all of it at least a little bit, especially since it is so different in the North, Middle, and South. Oh! And Alice is coming to visit me!! So she will be my travel companion. SO PUMPED. She'll be here until December the 6th, and I depart the 15th. Between when she leaves and I leave the plan is to get really tan so that I can brag a lot when I get home, only to have it fade in about a week in that nasty Midwest winter climate (that I love so much but really only for about a month).

Ironically, even though I'm dreading coming back to the cold, I have developed a case of Christmas fever lately and Magda and I are going to watch The Holiday tonight. I think it's because classes are coming to a close (2 more weeks!!) and usually that means Christmas is almost here. Regardless, I'm wishing I had the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack on my computer more and more every day. I would love to listen to it while sunning next to the pool. HA! Chau!

Here's a fun one - a crappy climbing wall set up on campus with The Andes as a back drop.

Nike pics!!

Pablo sandwich

My running partner/big brother, pre-race!

Left: The Temptations; Right: Metallica and lots of air-drumming :D

Weeeeee arrre the chaaaaampioonsssss!

It's a good thing the 10K wasn't IN the desert.

Hooooey the Nike 10K Santiago was this morning! It. was. AWESOME. I picked up my t-shirt yesterday at Mall Sport (a mall full of sporty stores), and even THAT was cool. Everybody got a chip to put on our shoes so that we could know our exact time (they haven't posted them yet, but I think I ran it in about an hour and one minute). It was a chilly, cloudy morning for the race but it didn't bother me, especially because of the big, elaborate Nike set-up at the start/finish line. It went by pretty quickly too. I ran with my host brother-in-law for about 8 and a half km and then finished about a minute after him. The route was up one side of the river and down the other, so it was really cool to see the leaders running on the other side. Our friend Pablo took pictures, so I'll post them when I get them :D

As for the desert, it was cool but really touristy. I mean, obviously it's touristy for a reason, but my mom compared it to Niagra Falls, and I think that's pretty accurate. Awesome nature, weird atmosphere. I can't figure out why that takes away from a place, but it does. One of the things I don't like about the tourism there is that everything is pretty far away from the town of San Pedro de Atacama, where most visitors stay, so tours are almost necessary. And a bunch of different agencies do the same trips, so everywhere we went there were vans full of other out-of-towners. However, the company I was with was good and we stayed in a really great hostel, complete with a bunch of cats (three of them gingers) and a couple dogs. And an above-ground pool. During the days, we went to the Salt Flats of Atacama (not very flat, but very salty), the Geisers El Tatio (not very tall, but there are a LOT of them), a fertile valley that looks really out of place in the middle of so much sand, and some small towns out in the desert. (Stole the pics from my friend Matt because I forgot to bring my camera.)





At night we sat around and made dinner at the hostel, and watched Chile QUALIFY FOR THE WORLD CUP!!! That's right, if you hadn't heard or were too busy celebrating the US's victory in Honduras (wait, the US has a soccer team?), now you know. Chile is going to South Africa in 2010. I'm going to have to buy myself a jersey now. The whole country seems pretty jazzed about it.

Both university and volunteering continue to go well. The high school kids warm up to me more and more every week. I showed them a bunch of pictures of Madison last week and they were really attentive the whole time I was talking about it. Pretty cute.

Other thoughts that I can't muster up a paragraph for:

I left a birthday party at 3:30AM on Friday night and got made fun of for leaving "early."

A new TV series started two weeks ago called "Los angeles de Estela" or, in English, "Estela's Angels." I watch it with Magdita sometimes. It's kind of like a soap opera but entertaining nonetheless. It makes for good sister bonding.

Speaking of TV, I have been keeping up with The Office and Grey's Anatomy (it is much easier to find pirated movies and TV shows online here). Both seasons are off to a fantastic start and that's a fact.

My friends and I have been making pies pretty regularly. They get better every time. The pumpkin pie we made on Friday was the best yet. We also made banana cream.

It's totally spring here, so if you're looking for an escape from the snowy midwest (yuck, by the way), come to Santiago. If you don't mind a little smog, it's beautiful. And you can still look at snow, but from a distance (of about 5000 meters, on top of the Andes). Peace!

I still have sand in my eyes!

And that is why I haven't blogged about the desert yet! No, that's a mentira (lie), but I have been really busy this week and will get around to it this weekend. For now, know that the desert in Chile is much like other deserts I have been in (okay, I've only been in one other one), in that it is hot, sunny, sandy, and dry.

10K race this weekend! Ahhh!

Crazy Coincidence

I forgot to mention something pretty unbelievable that happened while we were rock climbing yesterday. There was another group climbing at the same spot we were at and we started talking to them after a while. There were four college-age students and they all spoke enough English so that we could communicate in either that or Spanish. After a while the only girl of the group told us she had lived in the US in high school and we asked where and she goes, "Minnesota?" Lucy and Mathias and I unanimously went, "WHAT?!" Hahaha! How hilarious is that! She did her sophomore year at Wyzata because she has some family there. Incredible. It also turns out that she lives about three blocks away from me in Santiago. Sometimes I wonder if the world could get any smaller.

Also, close to the cerro we climbed there is a small airport (I guess that's what one would call it) for gliders. They're this really skinny airplanes with no engine that literally glide around without making any sound. It's a beautiful thing to see in real life. If you haven't seen them before, check some out on youtube (although videos don't really do them justice). Off to school!

10 years later...

You may call me the rip van winkle of blogging. Except I definitely haven't been sleeping the past two weeks...

Spring has hit Santiago, and it has been warm and sunny lately. The smog tries to block out the sun once in a while but thanks to the thin ozone layer around here, it doesn't do a very good job. Good weather during the day means that it doesn't get freezing cold inside of houses/apartments at night, which is a nice change of pace from when I first got here. My friend Lucy has a really charming back patio behind her house and we have eaten our there three times over the past two weeks (pictures!). We also had coffee out there one morning before school, sitting at the big wooden table dappled in sunlight. It would be perfect but they have this crazy dog who is always running around, jumping on laps, and trying to steal food. We love her but sometimes you just want to throw her on the grill with the burgers. Nooooo - she's a lover. Anyway, one night Lucy made caprese salad, our favorite, and last night another friend of ours made these delicious burgers and we had sauteed onions, mushrooms, and peppers to go on them, along with avocado and tomato. AND Heinz-brand ketchup and mustard. Loved it. Last weekend we had another go at pie-making (strawberry this time) and this one was much more successful.

On Friday night a bunch of us went out with Mariana and her friends to a club a bit south of downtown to dance some cueca, because Mariana's friend plays in a cueca band. It was soooooo much fun (more pictures!). What I have realized about dancing the cueca is that more important than knowing the actual steps is having the cueca attitude. It got packed in this club with people of all ages, and the pañuelos were flying. Really, if you haven't done it yet, look up a video of chilean cueca on youtube. We decided it must run in Chilean blood because even after the band stopped playing, people started banging the rhythm on tables and couples were just as happy dancing to that. Awesome.

Soccer has been so good to me lately. I'm becoming much better friends with some of the girls in my class, and the team I play with on weekends qualified for the gold bracket! We thought we were still in qualifying rounds, but we showed up for our game on Saturday and found out we had already made it! And we tied our first game 4-4, thinking we were going to lose. PLUS I think we're getting t-shirt uniforms, aka my favorite thing in the whole world. That will be a great souvenir. I might add another weekly soccer session to my week too - another girl in our class has a team in a different league, and our teams might get together to play pick-up on Wednesday nights. Which would bring the total to 5 days of soccer a week. Beautiful.

Today I went rock climbing for the first time. It is so much fun!! I had gone in gyms maybe twice in my entire life, and not since I was probably 10 or 12. This was on top of a cerro, real live rock climbing. (Pictures, obviously). I only went up once but I can tell my arms are going to be sore tomorrow. Not to mention the hike up is no easy task. A few of my friends have enough gear that we can go ourselves and be self-sufficient. I love climbing anything, and this was no exception. We also have two really good climbing trees outside of the apartment building. I might have to start being more of a monkey in those now that I've gotten a taste of the real thing.


Volunteering at the high school is going well. The boys whistle at me less outside of the classroom now, and the students are getting more comfortable asking me and the other volunteer questions when they're working. I'm going to show one of the classes a powerpoint about places in Madison. They're doing a unit on cities. (Speaking of Madison, what a season to be a Badger football fan, no? I don't even like football but I do like beating the gophers in their new monstrosity of a stadium :D)

Next weekend I'm going up to the Atacama Desert with some friends. It is purported to be the driest desert in the world and some people think it hasn't rained there for decades (for example, me and my Dad), but my geography professor told us just the other day that that is BS. It rains a little bit every winter, and also she said, "and what does 'dry' mean anyway?" Apparently some guy wrote an article about it a long time ago and called it that, and the reputation stuck. It should be a fun trip. Hopefully I'll get another chance to blog before I leave!

Here's a picture of the view from where we were rock climbing today. That's all for now! Missing home, loving Chile.

Independence

FANtastic weekend. After Friday's ear fiasco, I cleaned up the wound, took a shower, put my hair up, and took to the streets to celebrate sweet sweet independence. Well, not exactly to the streets but to a fonda (like a mini state fair) not far from my apartment with some friends. We drank chicha (like wine but doesn't ferment as long so it's sweeter), ate anticucho (like a shishkabob with hunks of steak and chorrizo), and walked around looking at all of the chilean crafts. Aprarently that fonda was the most high-class of them all... as high class as a state-fair-like event can be I guess.

Saturday during the day I visited the general cemetery. I had heard that it's beautiful, and it's in my Lonely Planet book as a place to visit. When I first walked in, I was in an older section that must have been where the wealthy families are buried. The graves were big and made of old stone. One thing Molly had told me about the cemetery was that it struck her how many of the graves had fresh flowers, and she was totally right. A lot of them not only have fresh bouquets of flowers, but the whole grave would be planted like a mini-garden. Then there were big buildings that were like the apartment-building version of graves (photo), but even those were covered in flowers and had really sweet engravings. I was almost reduced to tears several times.



The less-wealthy section was really cool^. Most of the plots had pinwheels, soccer team flags, flowers, and even tents over them. I thought it looked like more fun to be buried there than with the rich people, but both sections had their charms. I'm really glad I went. That night I went out with Mariana!!! I met her and another friend at Mariana's house and from there we went to the fonda at the National Soccer Stadium. The crowd was definitely different from the night before, but we got terremotos and chorripan so I was more than happy. THEN we went to Providencia to find somewhere to dance and found a Cuban night club that was playing salsa and merengue. It was a smallish joint and for part of the night they had a live band! Siempre lo paso demasiado bien con la Flaca.

Sunday the weather was gorgeous so I walked to the park to do some homework. It was really busy with families with little kids, and kite-flying is something that everybody seems to do. It was fun to be surrounded by cute chilean kids and their parents for a while. The weather was absolutely gorgeous all weekend. Funny, because today is the first day of spring and it has been cold and rainy all day.

To welcome spring, there was a ceremony in the center of the city today where they threw flower petals and ticker tape out the windows of building around this small plaza. I went with one of my friends from soccer class. It was great and made me think that there should be something similar in every city to welcome spring. I guess in MN in March it's usually too effing cold to get everybody outside for something like that, but it made me feel really happy.

I'm throwing in a picture of the pizza I got when we went out for dinner with our program coordinator the other night, mostly for my mama the unofficial (Italian) food critic. And one of a wicked cool sunset that I saw out my kitchen window the other night. Life is good!

SUCCESS!!!!!!!

RAN UP SAN CRISTOBAL TODAY!!!!!!!! Now I can go home happy. There was a minor set-back when an overhanging tree took a bite out of my ear and I started bleeding, but I controlled the wound with my shirt and continued on up. It is so beautiful out today so when I got to the top I sunbathed for about half an hour (it's still winter, in case you were wondering). AND I ran into Jenners from Camp Hand in Hand up there! How nuts is that? Just bumping into friends in a city of 7 million.

I ended up staying in Santiago for the holiday weekend. The news reported that 1 million people left. I believe it, the city feels really empty. Wednesday I took a nice long walk to see Pablo Neruda's Santiago house. It was the only one of his three houses in Chile I hadn't seen yet. I would be extraordinarily happy living in any of them. This one is in Bellavista, the hip night-life neighborhood, at the base of Cerro San Cristobal. It used to have a river running right outside its window, but now the river goes under the property. He had really cool, interesting taste.

There are some North Americans visiting Santiago from Buenos Aires this weekend. We took them to La Piojera last night. It was more packed than I've ever seen it. We sat with a group of super nice Chilenas and two Chilenos. There were fútbol chants being chanted and everyone sang the national anthem at one point. One guy I was talking to wanted me to sing the USA's anthem but I declined. Hahahaha. Life is good!

Fechas Importantes

¡Hola! I got back to the apartment a little while ago from an independence day celebration at Mariano Latorre, the high school I volunteer at. This coming Friday is Chile's 4th of July: "El Dieciocho," or "The Eighteenth." It's the 199th anniversary of Chile's declaration of independence from Spain. Class ends at 1 pm on Thursday and by all accounts, that's when the celebratory drinking commences. La Universidad de Chile - one of the other main universities in Santiago - doesn't have class all week. The week leading up to Fiestas Patrias (the name of the whole shabang) has been described to me as "the biggest party of the year." The one thing I don't really understand though is that a lot of people leave Santiago for it. Originally I was thinking it would be sweet to be in Santiago to see all of the celebration, but now it sounds like a lot of my friends are leaving town. Surely there will be a lot going on here, but I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

The celebration at the school was a lot of fun. It was cool to see all of the students come to school on a Saturday to celebrate, and most of them were there all day long helping with their own class' stand. Our stand, Miss Gladys' class, sold empanadas, chips, and candy. I loooooove deep fried cheese empanaditas (Chilean spanish is all about adding "ita" onto the ends of nouns for small things). Other classes sold fresh-squeezed juice, chorripan (chorrizo and pan, aka a Chilean bratwurst), sopapillas, etc. And the cooking students made all kinds of deserts that were sooo yummy. I took a picture of their booth, it was right next to ours. I bought the spiral one. I didn't catch the name, but it tasted fantástico. Those boys are going to make really good husbands. I also took a lot of pictures of the elementary schoolers doing the national dance, the Cueca. It's really pretty when it's done right. The man is supposed to be in pursuit of the woman, which makes it extra cute when there are 10-year olds doing it. Here's a pic of me with the teacher I work with and another volunteer. Miss Gladys is wearing a typical Cueca outfit:


The celebration started on campus last week. There was a fonda, which is kind of like a block party but they're held all over Santiago and anyone can attend, at school on Thursday. It was a lot of fun - they sold typical Chilean asado (BBQ) food and drinks. And when it got dark there was a good band and dancing. I ran into some girls from my soccer class and it was a lot of fun to hang out with them off the field.

The other significant day that passed this week was September 11th, which was a sad day in Chile long before it meant anything in the USA. It was the day Pinochet's government violently took power of the country, and there are still protests and demonstrations to mark the event. We were warned as extranjeros to stay away from big plazas and government buildings. Apparently two people died in incidents related to the date. There are still a lot of people in Chile who think Pinochet was a godsend, and they fly the Chilean flag on the 11th.

On a more light-hearted note (well, maybe not), Chile had another disappointing outing in fútbol this week in their world-cup qualifying match against Brazil. It was a weird one - Brazil was not playing with their first line and therefore were not as dominant as usual, which left Chile with un montón of chances to score, but they couldn't seem to capitalize. Laaaaame. They lost 4-2. But I did get to eat my FIRST chorripan out of the deal because Mathias' host brother had some friends over for an asado. You win some you lose some.

Lily's Cumpleaños!

¡Cumpleaños feliz,
Te deseamos a ti,
Cumpleaños Lily,
Que los cumplas feliz!

The birthday song is different here!

It was Lily's birthday today and she had a party in the evening with a bunch of friends and relatives. She got home around 6:30 and we started preparing food and drinks. At most Chilean parties I've been to, they just have a bunch of finger food. My (and my mom B. Jo's) favorite! Tonight we had a veggie platter, nuts, cheese and crackers, meat balls/hot dog bites, empanaditas, little hard-boiled eggs, and this dish that I don't remember the name of that is a bed of thinly sliced zucchini with lemon juice and capers on top that is meant to be eaten on crackers. And everything had it's own home-made dipping sauce prepared by Joanna (our nana). She's a rockstar. She came to help with the party and stayed all night - with a nasty little cold.

I was a little nervous about helping with the party because I didn't want to get in anyone's way, but really Lily just needed help setting up and then we (the young adults) were guests just like everybody else. All of her friends who I have met are super nice, and her niece and nephew feel like my cousins. We even had a kid table like the Jeanetta cousins always do at family get-togethers. Lily was in a great mood and I think she had a really good time. Did I luck out or what?

Valpo - check!

It is a rainy Monday morning in Santiago, perfect bloggin' weather. Really perfect homework weather but who wants to do that? Just an update - that cool fishy meal Molly and I ate at Mercado Central last weekend gave us both a nasty little stomach flu that had us out of commission for a good 24 hours. Good thing I don't have class on Mondays because I couldn't get out of bed, much less ride the metro for 40 minutes. Bleeeeegh. But hey - everybody has to get sick once while abroad, right?? Lily and Magdita took good care of me.

After I got over that, the week was fun. We went out to eat for Molly's last couple of nights at restaurants she wanted to go to before she left. Santiago has some really great food to offer. I also found a cafe last week that sells bagels and muffins, two things that I had been missing.

On Saturday morning our program coordinator took us to Valparaíso for a day trip! Mathias, Lucy, and I took advantage of the free ride there and free lunch on Saturday and spent the night. Valpo gets mixed reviews from Santiaguinos - some say it's beautiful and you HAVE to go there and some use adjectives more like "dirty" and "dangerous". After spending two days there, I think it is incredibly charming and unlike any city I've ever seen. It is a port town almost due west of Santiago, made up of 45 cerros (giant hills) complete with 15 ascensores (lifts) to get people up them. But that description doesn't even begin to give a good idea of what this place is like. It is FULL of winding streets, in fact I think the only remotely straight ones are ones within a few blocks of the port. There are narrow streets and staircases everywhere you go, and really cool street murals everywhere you look. It is the queen of cities that are best seen on foot. PICTURES:






We stayed in a hostel not far from the port called Hostal Millennium. We shared a room with a German woman and an Italian woman. We ate breakfast with the German and a couple from the Netherlands that was staying in another room. Hostels are so cool for that reason, plus it was a steal. On Saturday night, Chile had a world cup qualifying match against Venezuela so we got to go to a bar full of Chileans and watch it. So much fun! Unfortunately, Chile tied when they should have won, but it was a good game and a sweet atmosphere nonetheless. We (Chile) play Brasil this week... yikes! Whatever, they can be beat. Anyway, I found a boyfriend on Chile's national team: Matías Fernández. He's super excited about living in Minnesota.

Valparaíso has a city right next door called Viña del Mar. We drove through the downtown area on the bus on Saturday. It's much more modern and apparently cleaner. It's main attraction is its extensive beach. We're already talking about spending a few days there right when finals are over. Since the bus ride there comes out to about $6, day trips aren't really a problem!

(Molly's) Grand Finale

Have I mentioned that I have a high school friend living here? My friend Molly who went to St. Paul Central and now goes to the U of Chicago had an internship in Santiago this summer and is living about 20 minutes away from me on the metro/walking. Anyway, she leaves a week from tomorrow (Saturday) so she has been squeezing in all of her last touristy outings this week and I love it because a lot of them are things I haven't done either. On thursday, we went to a restaurant in the Bellavista neighborhood called El Caramaño. We both had AMAZING meals - mine was white fish stuffed with tomatoes, chorrizo, and cheese and she got seafood-stuffed chicken, and we shared a bottle and a half of wine. It was a lovely time. The restaurant is in the best-known nightlife part of Santiago but it's a little bit off the beaten path. It was small, quiet, and the walls were coooovered in things people had written in marker. I had to get up early on Friday so I went home after dinner.

Firday morning I had my second day at the high school in La Pintana. It was a lot different because they had a regular day of classes. I sat in on two classes but with a different teacher than the one I'll be working with. The first one was doing an activity out of a workbook so after I introduced myself I was just sitting behind the teacher's desk not really knowing what to do. After a little while I noticed that the kids sitting at the table right in front of me were copying each other's work. I thought well crap, it's my first day, I don't want to start off reprimanding them OR telling on them right away. Sooo I asked them if I could help, they let me, and after that things went swimmingly. The second class I was in was apparently missing a lot of students, so the teacher had the kids who were there circle up and ask me and another volunteer questions. The most interesting thing they asked us was to sing a Michael Jackson song for them. (His death has really hit Chile hard.)

The weather has been beautiful since about Tuesday. Today a few of us went to el Mercado Central for lunch. It is a fairly well known tourist destinations in the city, but also incredibly practical and used by Santiaguinos. Half of the market is made up of fresh seafood stands and the other half is restaurants. We ate a mildly over-priced meal in the restaurant half of the mercado after being approached and chatted up by about five different owners. They were all very friendly, but the result was that we were going to feel guilty no matter where we ate. The funiest thing we saw there was this: a table had ordered crab and when it came, a waiter stood at the table cracking the shell off the entired time they were eating. We thought maybe an asterisk on the menu would be appropriate indicating that not only were you going to get crab, but also an extra lunch guest. Haha! The top picture is of one of the booths at the seafood market and the other one is an old couple eating at a table near ours.

The Mercado is right across the street from La Piojera (the bar with the earthquake drinks), so we went over there after lunch for an afternoon terremoto - Molly hadn't had one yet. And NOW I have my first real-league soccer game! My friend Mari is coming to pick my up in about ten minutes, so I should go and get ready. Allez les blanc!

English (figuratively) Opens Doors

English Opens Doors is a government-sponsored education program in Chile that I am volunteering for. My understanding is that it consists of sending English-speaking volunteers, both part- and full-time, to municipal schools in several different cities throughout the country. I got assigned to a school called Centro Comercial Coeducation Mariano La Torre. It is in a community called La Pintana, much further south in Santiago than I had been before going for the first time today. La Pintana is a mostly residential area that is clearly not as affluent as other parts of the city, but the people that I have seen there are really similar to the people everywhere else and I think it's actually kind of charming. It doesn't have the same huge-city feel as the center of Santiago and is much quieter. Plus, the bus drops me off three blocks away from the school so I don't have to walk alone much and there are people out and about around the school anyway.

Mariano La Torre is a little bit different from other high schools - in their last two years, the students choose a "carrera," which is like a major. It's a technical school and they can choose between accounting, international cuisine, childcare, and auto mechanics. The teacher I am working with teaches English across all of the carreras. My first impression of her is fantastic. She is young, friendly, and really great with her students. One of my friends from WI had her first day at a different school ealier this week and was basically thrown into a classroom and expected to manage the class for an hour. Luckily, my teacher told me she knows that she is the teacher and she makes lesson plans, but if there is ever something I want to add to a class she said I should feel free.

The students didn't have regular class today, so my co-teacher gave me a tour of the school and introduced me to a lot of her students. They are mostly 15 to 18-year-old boys, but some girls too. Most of them were really curious about me and were very welcoming, especially the boys, and especially once they figured out I could speak Spanish fairly well. I'll probably be going just on Friday mornings. I was originally planning on going twice a week, but the commute is a pain.

In other, international news, our neighbors to the East made a pretty big decision recently: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8221599.stm
So if you do happen to come to Argentina before December (for whatever reason...) please stop by and visit me!

I may have found a legit soccer league to play in. One of the girls in my class invited me to be on her team. Exciting, huh? Plus it's futbolito, on smaller fields, which is my fave. It sounds like we just have games on Saturdays. Baaaallllin'!

Besides all that, we are suffering through Santiago winter this week with temps in the low twenties... CELCIUS!! Hahaha, also known as 60-75 degrees farenheit. It's a beautiful thing. I think I'll go to a sports bar tonight to sip some soda and watch some Chilean soccer. Love life.

Viajeeees

Jeremy (a friend who is in Australia) inspired me to turn my ever-growing mental list of places I want to visit into a blog entry. Here goes:

Valparaíso is a city almost due West of Santiago on the coast. It only takes about an hour and a half to get there by bus and will be an easy weekend trip that I'll hopefully make relatively soon. It has a lot of old buildings and is really cosmopolitan, though a lot smaller than Santiago. Viña del Mar is another city just south of it (similar to a Minneapolis-St. Paul situation) that I'd also like to make it to. That could even be a day-trip. I've heard it has nice beaches.

Pucón is about 10 hours south of here. It is on a lake and not far from several big volcanoes. The south is a lot different than the north, which is all I've seen so far. It sounds like there is good hiking in the area.

Buenos Aires, this tiny little town in Argentina. (Ha) I wasn't sure if I wanted to make the haul over there, thinking that it was just going to be another huge city and maybe not worth the cost, but the more I think about it and the more I see pictures, the more I want to go. Flights aren't so bad if I buy far in advance, and since I don't have class on Mondays I should be able to make a nice long weekend out of it. Plus I have to make it over to the home-country of my new favorite writer one way or another, right?

Mendoza, Argentina To tell you the truth, I don't know much about Mendoza besides it's a decent-sized city, it is in the wine-producing region of Argentina, and it's only 8 hours away by bus. Heyo!

Pichilemu a beach about 7 hours south and is known (unofficially) as the surfing capital of Chile. Magdita says she has tíos there and that we can go stay with them once we get closer to summer!!

Peru I'm thinking about making this my big trip at the end of the semester, depending on what my budget is by then. I'd really like to make it to Lima and maybe Cuzco. We'll see!

Ahhh it's amazing how a list can have such a calming effect. I don't know if I'll get to do them all, not to mention there are several others that my friends and I talk about from time to time, but I'm anxious to cross off as many as I can!

Meow (Mariana's birthday "a lo felino!")

Birthday cat dancing

The birthday girl getting thrown up in the air!

Everyone kept saying to us, "That's your teacher!" Hahaha.

Me, Mariana, and Annie celebrating terremoto-style!