What do sixth graders, four letter English words, and Pablo Neruda have in common?

I have been thinking a lot about this newfangled "blogging" and I am in a bind. I am always torn between writing a ton of detail about my life down here or short and sweet reviews. Its just a bit hard because I don't like writing summaries of my weekends/weeks/days/etc.

With that in mind:

Last weekend I went with my family to Quizco, a small beach town about and hour and a half south of Valpo. We rented a Cabana about two blocks from the beach and spent the weekend eating delicious food and playing cards and dice. The weather was cold and overcast for most of the weekend but the sun did come out for a few hours on Saturday and I got to go to the beach for a few hours.

On Sunday we went to Pablo Neruda's house in Isla Negra for a tour. Pablo Neruda is Chile's most famous poet who traveled the world as a diplomat for the country. He filled his house with ecclectic collections of everything to pipes, rare insects and butterflies, masks, to a large collection of figureheads from the bows of ships. The house is build on a cliff overlooking the giant Pacific waves that crash in front of the house. This house is officially baller-steaz.

On Monday I started my internship at El Colegio de La Republica del Paraguay, a public school down the street from my house. I am assisting a teacher with English classes and I will work about fifteen hours a week there. The first two days were eventful and crazy. The classes completely vary in the behavior of the students. In sixth grade class the only English sentence they knew was "eh, fuck you meng," which they yelled constantly when they weren't drawing pictures of pot leaves, pretending to snort coke of their desks, or punching each other. Seriously, I have no idea how these kids know so much about drugs. One of the kids even walked up to me in class and tried to give me a rolling paper as a gift.

The other sixth grade class however was completely different. They sat at their desks and drew their family tree complete with pretty colors and translations of grandmother, father, brother, etc.

Needless to say the public schools are underfunded and thus, on a whole, the kids lack any sort of discipline which puts them at a serious disadvantage for their future education. My host mom told me that out of the forty or fifty kids who graduate from public school, three or four will go on to a university. Hopefully, at least some of them will learn some English.

Classes...well kind of

My first week of classes came to a close today. On Tuesday I went to a Latin American Literature class that I never really planned on taking. I didn't have anything to do during the day and I figured I would just go and see what classes were like. The class was interesting and after the class the Professor told all the Gringos that we would only have to read one book for every four that the other students would read. Although this definately made the class tempting, as of right now I am not going to take it.

Wednesday I went to a Philosophy of Latin America course that I am definately going to take. The professor is this old man who talks incredibly slowly. The class is small and it seems like there is going to be a lot of participation and discussion. After that I went to History of Chile and the Americas, which was sans professor and thus cancelled.

Afterwards Maria, Sasha, and I went downtown to hang around while I waited for my five o'clock Photography class back at UPLA. A few hours later when I returned I found a teacher's assistant sitting behind the Professor's desk and a sign in sheet again sans Professor. So to wrap up the first day: Professors 1 for 3.

Today the Professors made a better showing and attended both my classes! Again Philosophy and for the first time a bit of history. History will prove to be interesting because I probably understood 5 to 10 percent of what the Professor said. What I did understand was that there is a chance that the Wednesday class will change to Monday. This however, does not fair well with me because as of right now, I have classes Wednesday and Thursday, thus affording me a five day weekend. Stop, its hammertime.

Immediately after classes I booked it across town back to Cerro Las Placeres for a meeting at the public school that I will be working at. I met with the Director of the school and the English teacher and I start on Monday. When I walked into the school all I saw in front of me was a mass of children craving recess. It looks like I will be teaching English in the morning with the teacher and if I need more hours I will help with other activities in the afternoon like sports or tuturing. This makes me a bit nervious because I suck at soccer and I feel like these kids are going wreck me. I fear that I will have to relive my short stint playing soccer as a child. My only real memory of this is of some kid named Jason kicking the ball straight into my stomach, sending me to the ground in tears. That was the first time I ever got the wind knocked out of me and I will never forget it. To me, soccer signifies running confused and desperate behind everyone else for ninety minutes. Now I just have to do that in another language. Sweet.

The other day I walked around town with my camera for a bit. The following are some selected images.

Perfect example of a normal street in Cerro Alegre

Graffiti in a the ruins of a charred house

One of my favorite murals

View of the city from Cerro Concepcion

Cajon de Maipo

Early Friday morning Maria and I met at the bus terminal to catch a bus over to Santiago. Maria, formally known as Molly, is a friend from Middlebury who is also studying at UPLA in the same program. We had planned to get away for the weekend on a simple camping and backpacking trip to Cajon de Maipo. My friend Sergio recommended to me this area as it is only about an hour and a half outside of Santiago with plenty of places to camp and a beautiful National Park, El Parque El Morado. It all seemed very simple. All we needed to do was get a bus to Santiago, buy a stove, get a bus to San Jose de Maipo, and finally take one more bus to Baños Morales. We planned on getting to the park in the early afternoon, hiking for about two hours to a glacial lagoon and setting up camp.

Needless to say, we are naive gringos in a land where flexible plans are a necessity.

When we arrived in Santiago we rode the subway and then a bus to a mall on the other side of town where Sergio recommended that we buy a stove. In addition to buying the stove and a thermos I was tempted by a glorious foodcourt full of all my favorites: Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, and yes, the glorious McDonald's. Immediately I got in line with my giant purple backpack and ordered a Cuarto de Libre con Queso (Quarter Pounder with Cheese Whatup!). After feasting, we returned to the Metro and when we got to our intended stop we where informed that the buses for Cajon de Maipo were now at a different station on the other side of town. Finally we arrived at the station that we were told was correct.

We walked around, confused and all geared out in our backpacking clothes for a while until we finally asked a guard where the buses left for Cajon de Maipo. He told us they were in front of the building but when we went to find it there were about thirty buses honking their horns in a two lane highway. So, Maria asked another guard where we could find our bus and after consulting his amigos on his radio he replied that we needed to go to the back of the building . So we returned to the other guard where he insisted very sternly that he had been working at the station for many years and that he was sure that all the buses for Cajon de Maipo where out front. Assuredly (kind of), Maria and I entered into the maze of buses and consulted some chicos which bus we needed to take. They were very helpful and pointed out one bus that said "Buin-Maipo." Ah, Maipo, this must be our bus. After missing one or two of these buses due to our confusion we finally hopped on the bus and I asked the driver, "This goes to Cajon de Maipo, right?" He nodded his head and asked for 700 pesos which we were glad to give for our reassurance that all we had to do was relax as our destination approached.

About an hour later I looked out the window and saw signs for Buin. I consulted the small map that Maria was smart enough to tear out of her Lonely Planet guide and saw that Buin was not at all in the direction of Cajon de Maipo. Ah no matter, I thought, the bus must go there next. The driver did after all say that we were on the right bus.

Slowly all the people on the bus began to trickle off and eventually it was only Maria, me, and another hombre. I asked the man, "Are we close to San Jose de Maipo? We are trying to get to Baños Morales, can we take a collectivo from here?" He assured me that we only needed to walk a few blocks more and we would be there. Great, I thought. However, as I looked out the window and only saw fields of green I couldn't help but wonder what this man meant by "walk a few blocks."

Finally we pulled into a gravel parking lot. I tried to talk to the driver but I'm still not sure if he spoke Spanish. I can understand some Chileans but others don't move their mouths when they speak. Even when you ask them to repeat something slower, nothing changes except your level of frustration. Finally we figured out that we took a bus in the completely wrong direction. The drivers at the rural terminal got a good laugh at us and I couldn't help but wonder why this driver didn't tell me that we were on the wrong bus when I asked him about our destination two hours ago.

In retrospect, Maria and I did get to see a part of Chile that we weren't planning on seeing: more rural nothingness. Not to mention now we know the public transit buses from Buin to San Jose, about a two hour journey, so if anyone ever needs some advice in this sector, I am your source.

Finally, as we were riding our bus to San Jose we were informed that there is only one bus to Baños Morales and it leaves in the morning. In San Jose we ended up finding a hostel with a gracious little old Chilean lady host. Just as we arrived to the hostel the skies opened up with pooring rain, thunder, and lightning. We smiled as we saw huge bolts striking the mountains where we had planned to sleep that night.

Later we decided to explore the town for a restaurant. San Jose is extremely small and situated along the Maipo river which carved a giant canyon through the Andes. As Maria tried to pump out a quick email to our program directors about our trip a large flash of lightning was followed by complete darkness. A few teenage girls screamed in the street and all the computor screens in the internet cafe went black. After about three seconds of silence we both burst out in laughter. Abandoning the internet cafe we walked down the pitch black streets, lit sporatically by lightning and a few car headlights. Finally we arrived to the center square and found a restaurant with some candles inside. We went in, having no idea what the name of the restautant was nor what it looked like, sat down, order two beers, and laughed over the ridiculous day. The dinner however was delicious complete with a perfect atmosphere of candles, lightning, and steak.

When we finally found our hostel in the darkened streets we learned that the son of the owner had gone out looking for us in the dark. It seemed that the family was worried about us and wanted to make sure we returned to the hostel safely. Not bad for a ten dollar a night place.

We woke up ealier and got a ride up to Baños Morales. When we arrived we walked straight to the entrance of the El Parque El Morado and learned from the CONAF agent that camping was not permitted inside the park anymore and that we would have to camp in the small town outside the park.

Finally we were outside of the city and out of the snares of public transportation and misguided advice. The hike was beautiful and was a perfect day trek although it would have been awesome to camp in the park. The hike runs along a glacial moraine forming a canyon between two steep mountain ranges.


Eventually we got to the glacial lagoon and saw all the would-be-perfect camping sites. The clouds began to clear and Cerro El Morado came into view at a staggering 5060 meters.

After about another hour or so we crossed over a ridge and we stood at the base of the San Francisco glacier that fell from the base of El Morado. To our left we could hear a thundering waterfall which looked to be extremely muddy. As we looked closer we realized that the bulk of this fall was not water but was actually rock. At the base of the cliff, a large bulk of rocks was slowly moving down the slope like a mass of lava, slowly bubbling and crawling down into the valley. We stood in awe as the landslide carved its way through the rocky ground and eventually met up with the river of snowmelt in the base of the valley.



The return hike was easy and dinner was burnt lentils at our campsite. The next day we hung around and explored the small turist village of Baños Morales. The town is known to Santiguinos for its natural thermal baths, high in sulfur and other unknown but probably important minerals. We found the muddy holes in the ground and decided to give them a try. The water was a bit chilly and we stood uncomfortably in the water while Chileans swam around us in glee. I am not going to say that we enjoyed the thermal pools, but we didn’t hate it. It was mostly entertaining to watch all the weird people wading in the dirty water.

The rest of the day we hung around the campsite and drank mate as we waited for the afternoon bus back to Santiago. Which, thank Dios, was not as eventful as our ride from the country’s capital.

Necessities

Today I bought toenail clippers from a man with one tooth in a restaurant. That is all.

How I Learned the Word "Ceniza"

When you study Spanish in school you learn the really important words. Baño means toilet. Pantalones are pants. Cerveza is beer. These are important words that one uses on a daily basis, of course with moderation Mother...The word ceniza, however, is not a word that I had the opportunity to learn in school. Cenizas are ashes. I learned this word when I woke up one morning to see a dusting of ashes in my room below the open window. As I sat down for breakfast I looked outside and saw a carpet of black and grey on the patio. And as I looked to the sky, ashes were falling like a flurry of snow. "This is odd," I thought to myself. The previous day when I was downtown I remembered seeing a thick layer of dark clouds above the hills that line the city but I thought it was just an inland storm. It turns out the west coast of this continent and its northern brother are not so different after all. About an hour or so away from Valparaiso there are some nasty forest fires flaring and spitting ashes in the surrounding areas as well as filling the sky with dark smoke. It is a most strange feeling to be sitting in a cafe and smell smoke when no one around you has a cigarette between their fingers. It is equally strange when you have to brush ashes out of your hair after walking down the street. What is the world coming to? Is it the apocalypse? Is this one of those darn plagues? Well I say, bring on the frogs.

My first few days living in Valparaiso have gone nice and smooth and I have been adjusting myself to the Chilean lifestyle. A bit about the dining style of the Chileans is in order. In the morning we have desayuno. The Chilean breakfast includes coffee or tea (té para mi), bread, butter, cheese, ham, and some fruit. For me this meal has been often late and by myself because when I don't have to wake up in the mornings, sleep is my number one priority. Almuerzo, lunch, comes at around two in the afternoon and is the biggest meal of the day, usually a full course meal. Today we had salad, soup, ravioli, tea, and ice cream. The other day we had salad, salmon, and fresh fruit. I usually find myself eating all that I can as the food is delicious and perfect to break up the day with. In the evenings, at around eight, we have once which is a light meal of bread and ham or the like. The other day I had quiche, which was scrumptious, and yesterday a few of the students in the program and I had once at La Cafe del Poeta in the Plaza Anibal Pinto where I enjoyed an Austral Lager and a open faced sandwich with ham, tomato, asparagus, and cheese.

The night life here is very different than that of the United States, at least for me at Middlebury, where all the parties start at eleven and are promptly shut down by two in the morning by a stern public safety officer. Here, it is ludicrous to be home before two in the morning, in fact, this is when many clubs open their doors. However, being the new guy in town I haven't really tasted my share of the night life yet and need to get in good with some locals in order to really check things out. The past few nights have been spent mostly walking around the plan, the downtown area, exploring, and usually coming home early. In fact, one night when I returned at around two I was surprised to see that I had arrived for bed earlier than my host parents. To say the least, I was ashamed.

Yesterday, all the students in the Middlebury program that are studing at the University de Playa Ancha, or UPLA for short, went to the University for a meeting with the office for foreign students. There, we were told very important information in indiscernably fast Spanish that I understood maybe ten percent of. However, I did catch one interesting fact: classes do not start until March 17. Interesting. It was at that moment that I began making plans for the weekend...

There are some pros and cons to this unexpected vacation. For one, I get to do some traveling for now and am hoping to check out a National Park for some camping and hiking east of Santiago this weekend. Also, with few priorities during the coming week, hopefully I will be able to get out to the beaches if the sky actually turns blue again. On the other hand, it will be a lot harder to meet Chileans in these next few weeks if I don't have class. But another juicy piece of information that I managed to salvage from the speeding lips of the university employees was that the six students in the Middlebury program are the only foreign students studying at UPLA this semester. This is definately good news, as one other student studying at La Catolica, the private university in Valpo told me yesterday that there are five hundred foreign students in her university. This will make integration a must within classes, once they start of course.

Now that I am so involved in the world of Blogs I have been purusing the Blogosphere and have tried to make mine a little more advanced. I added a few new features and pictures. I hope you like it. I can even put the music that is stuck in my head on here! Wow, technology is rad huh?

"Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John

Whistling is an international tongue, making this song a perfect choice.

Una Vista Bonita

This is the view from my window. Not bad to wake up in the morning too...

Some Corrections

I entered in the wrong links for Eric and Jeremy's blogs in an older post. Here are the corrected links:

Eric Harvey's Blog

Jeremy Martin's Blog

Sorry if any inconvenience ensued.

Mi Casa Nueva

I have finally arrived at my final destination for the next few months. Today I moved in to my new house with my Chilean family. I have a beautiful big room which makes up the second floor of the house. On one end of the room there is a view of the street and on the other I have a great view of the Pacific, as the house is situated on a tall hill, Cerro Los Placeres, like all of Valparaiso.

I arrived in Valpo on Thursday with the rest of the students that will be studying in Chile. The ride from Santiago is short, only about an hour and a half and cuts through vineyards and more arid hills. All the students stayed in a hostel in Cerro Bellavista and our orientation meetings took place down the street at a restaurent called El Gato Tuerto, which is visible in this picture above the colored buildings (Note: I haven't busted out the camera here yet and this is just an image I found online). Everything from here on in is in Spanish and it is very funny to be seeing friends and to only be able to speak in Spanish with them. It is also interesting to meet new people enrolled in the Middlebury program and never have the opportunity to speak with each other in our native language.

The orientation days were filled with meetings about everything from how our internships work, to Chilean slang, safety, and overviews of Chilean society. The past two days have been a flood of information in Spanish and it is quite easy to become exhausted with all the thinking. However, I think that the first few weeks down here, integrating Spanish into my life slowly, has really helped me. I am much more confident in my Spanish than when I was back at home. I have finally learned to allow myself to concentrate less on each word that everyone says and more on the general point of the converstation. I am really excited to be taking things slow, thinking in Spanish, and experimenting with new ways of saying things. It is easy to say this now because it is my first few days here and I am sure that within a week or so I will detract this statement and denounce Spanish as the tongue of Satan. Yesterday afternoon after a city tour and all the classes the last thing I wanted to do was hear more Spanish. Fortunately I got over it and spent the night with the others in the hostal stumbling over our words and laughing at each other's mistakes.

As I said, yesterday all the students went on a two hour walking tour of some of the better known parts of the city, Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion. These areas are located on steep hills that come out of the downtown of the city and have sweeping views of the ocean. All the houses and buildings on the hills are painted in different bright colors and seem to grow out of one another. This is a common theme to this city, as it is the only city in Chile without a city planning department. Many of the small streets that steeply wind up the hills have sharp corners that reveil terraces with small hidden restaurants, hotels, and overlooks of the city. I feel that it is impossible to really learn these parts of the city and it is definately impossible that a map could chart all these secret passages and walkways. The city has a very organic feel to it setting it apart as the most unique city that I have ever seen.

Finally I have some free time and tonight I may go out and see what a Saturday night is like in Valparaiso. For now I will adjust slowly and take things easy.