Chile: a month

Hello,
AHHH! I haven´t written an e-mail in a month! I am still alive...I didn´t fall in a hole or off a mountain and die! There is a lot to say, but unfortunately I don´t remember all that I should tell you because I haven´t written in so long (no good, no good at all!). School has been crazy--I have at least two essays to write every week and a novel to read as well. I am going to try to summerize things so the e-mail doesn´t get overly long.

Mendoza, Argentina: October 6-11 I traveled to Mendoza, Argentina! Claire and I left on Friday night at 10 from Valparaiso because I was told that I would have a volleyball and a soccer game on Friday. Turns out I was lied to (the volleyball game was Thursday, the guys played on Friday, and the other soccer team had a game on Friday and we didn´t have a game, but the "coach" told the girls on the other team that they didn´t have a game so they all left and then didn´t have a game anyway) and could have left on Thursday night instead. Claire and I went to a competition at la Univerisdad de Santa María, a very expensive private school with a really good engineering program (it is kind of like Michigan Tech in that there are very few female students because it is a more technical school with the "hard" subjects of science and math...I have been noticing lately how the expectation of women in Chile isn´t the same as for men), because her host brother created a machine that was competing--the goal was to move 50 tennis balls from one point to another using the machine powered hydraulically. His machine moved all 50 balls every time (the only machine in the competition not to lose any balls in transit) but the machine was not the fastest, in the semi-final their machine was competing against a machine from my university and lost by 7 seconds because both machines moved all 50 balls! The bus ride took 11 hours! We got to sleep for most of it, but the border closes for a few hours during the night and the buses line up to go through, so when they opened back up, we waited for about 2 hours. In total we were waiting at customs for about 4 hours. It was really cold in the mountains and I wasn´t really prepared for it because I was planning on really warm days in Mendoza so I only had a sweatshirt but I was on the bus for most of it, so it wasn´t too bad. The cordilleras were really pretty but we missed most of them because of the darkness. We arrived in Mendoza at 9:30 a.m., walked to our hostel, showered and then met Tyffany, Christian, Bethany and Hugo to go find some lunch. We ate a resturaunt with decent food. I had an Argentinian steak (it was good but I didn´t think it was anything to special probably because I hardly ever eat steak so I don´t have anything to compare it to!) After lunch Tyffanie and Christian went back to the hostel to take a siesta, I didn´t want to take a siesta because I didn´t travel 11 hours, to another country to sleep! I expressed this and the others concurred with me, so we wandered around Mendoza. It is a really pretty city. There are five main plazas and all of the streets are lined with huge, old trees. Someone told me that they need the trees because during the summer it gets super hot (36 C or about 100 F) and so the trees shade everything keeping it cooler. We wanted to go to the zoo, but couldn´t find a taxi without people in it, so we didn´t make it to the zoo. That night we went to a Tango show with dinner included, at least we thought it was a Tango show based on the advertising we saw. There was about 30 minutes of show and then open floor for everyone else to dance...we got bored because we were the youngest people there by about 40 years, so we left after about 3 hours, part of the problem was that people in South America aren´t punctual like in the US--when you say something starts at 10:30 they don´t start to show up until 11:30 but we got there at 10:30 on the nose and so were there without anyone else for an hour. Argentina is even more late than Chile...they eat dinner at like 11pm and then go out to the bars/clubs at 1:30 am and that is early! I was super tired, but I kept going. We went out and had a drink at a bar after dinner. Christian had plans to go out dancing after that, but I couldn´t because I was so tired and we had plans to go to the Termas Cacheuta early the next morning. Turns out I wasn´t the only tired one, so everyone went back to the hostel. The next morning we (Claire, Bethany, Hugo and I) woke up early and went to the bus station for a 1 hour ride up into the mountains to the Termas Cachueta, what we thought were hot springs based on what we saw and read on some tour agency websites. Turns out Termas Cachueta is a water park! The pools are heated by and filled with water from natural hot springs, but in concrete pools rather than a hole in the group more like a pond or lake. I was kinda bummed that they weren´t what I thought they were, but we had a really good time. It was really relaxing with the sun, the mountains, the water, good friends, and warm weather. We were there all day (for 8 hours) because the buses run in the morning and night there is nothing in the afternoon! We lathered on the sunscreen and pretty much avoided sunburns. That night Claire and I went out with our friend Ala who was also in Mendoza. We had a really good time talking, laughing and in general just sharing time together. After dinner we went back to our hostel and chatted with some Argentinian guys who were staying in the hostel as well, it was a good time. The next day (Monday: there was no school because it was el día de San Domingo, not really sure what his significance is, but we got a day off for him!) we went on a tour of some Bodegas in and around Mendoza on bicycle. My favorite part was definately getting to ride bike, I really miss having a bike to ride. I also enjoyed the rest of the tour too! We got really nervous about the tour because the bus that was supposed to pick us up was an hour late, we thought that they had taken our money and then forgotten us! But they finally got there and the journey began...I felt kind of out of it that day, I think I needed some space and to get that I kind of went of into my own little world, which the rest of the group didn´t seem to mind because Bethany and Hugo, Tyffany and Christian are dating, so they don´t really notice anything in their surroundings anyway and Claire is very social, so she was talking to everyone else in the tour group (it made my anti-social attitude much easier!) That night everyone left me to return to Viña. I don´t have class on Tuesdays until 3:40 so I decided to see the Cordilleras during the day because I had been told that I needed to see them and since no one else could stay, I stayed by myself. I woke up early the next morning and made the trip back by myself. I sat next to a very nice old lady who was visiting one of her best girlfriends in Mendoza. We talked quite a bit and when we weren´t talking, she was sleeping and I was sitting next to her reading or taking pictures of the absolutely amazing mountains that were surrounding me! I didn´t make it back in time for class (I tried to go to the last part, but they had gone off to explore Valparaiso and I didn´t know that,so I missed a class, not a big deal).

Flight change: I changed my flight. I am now leaving Santiago, Chile the December 22 and will be in the USA December 23. I changed because finals can potentially last until December 11 and with a flight on Dec. 14 I didn´t think I was going to have time to travel Chile and see more of the beautiful country I am currently in.

Classes: classes are going well, but they are difficult and I don´t think I have ever written more essays in my life in such a short period of time. There is only about a month of classes left before finals weeks. Nico, my brother is done with class next week to start preparing for his exams (they are super intensive). I think my GPA will go down a bit as I don´t think I am going to pull all A´s, but it is the experience that really matters!
La semana de la carrera: At PUCV each carrera or facultad (department) has a week where all of the classes in that carrera are cancelled and there are special events that are held instead, like speakers, trips, movies, poetry readings (in my carrera), etc. It was pretty cool. I think they like to have breaks here because there are a lot of them!

La Sebastiana: On Wednesday, September 27 I went to La Sebastiana, the third of Pablo Neruda´s houses. This house in Valparaiso and it overlooks the port. The house is tall and skinny. There are five levels. When climbing the steps to the top, the steps keep going until they dead-end in the wall (I laughed when I made it to the top and there was no where else for me to go). This house was less full of artifacts than his other houses. Of all his houses I liked La Sebastiana as a house the best, La Chascona (in Santiago) because of the spread of the house and the gardens and Isla Negra because it was on the ocean. Each of his houses has a very different personality (perhaps based on the wife he lived there with).

English minor: While I was sitting in my Spanish Lit class I had a premonition. I realized that I would really like to teach Literature, I don´t know why it hit me when it did, but I have been thinking a lot about it and I think that I will be switching my minor, which is math right now, to English. I really like math, but don´t think I have the passion for it that I need in order to teach it. I have actually been doing a lot of work with English lessons lately: last semester at NMU I had a class where we had to teach an English class in the high school, I really liked it and here I am doing volunteer work at a school with an English class and I have working with English lessons there as well. I really like it. I want to teach Spanish, first and foremost, but if I can´t get a job in Spanish, I would be really happy teaching English, more happy than teaching math. I looked at what I would have to do for an English minor and it is only 5 credits more than what I still have left to do for my math minor, so why not, if it is going to make me more happy?

Volunteer: Like I mentioned above, I am volunteering once a week in an English class in a school in Viña. The school I got placed in is an all boys school. It is semi-private, meaning the students have to pay to attend, but the school also receives funding from the government. I am working with a group of 7 boys in their sophomore year (Segundo medio). It is a bit awkward because I am the only young woman in the school and definately the only gringa, so I get stared at everytime I walk into the school. I am working with in the school to help them practice their English with a native speaker. They are quite good at speaking and we have had some really good conversations.

Dia internacional: Last week I started planning for el Día Internacional en La Catolica. I am the lider of the table for the USA. So far it has been a lot of fun. We have to prepare some traditional foods, we are going to make PB&J, smores, taco chip dip, apple crisp and lemonade. We also have to show off some things on the table that are traditionally USA or things that are are known for (not sure what these things are going to be because I am not working on this part). We also have to have a dance, so we´re thinking the Electic slide, a line dance, or swing. I am really excited for this day--really looking forward to it. It is going to be a lot of fun! While working on this project I have met many new people that I didn´t know before from other parts of the world. Last night I went out with a group of Chileans, Mexicans, Norweigeans, a Brazilian, and a German. I had an amazing time. I spoke spanish all night (even though we try to speak spanish when I am with a group of other Americans, the spanish never lasts long) and just really enjoyed myself. It sucks that it took so long to meet all of these people, but I am finally starting to branch out to other groups of people rather than just those with whom I am comfortable. I think this is really important, even though it is going to be difficult!

Okay, that is all for now. I know I have said this before (and it didn´t happen), but I am going to try not to let the e-mailing fall to the side. I am going to make an effort to e-mail more frequently. I would love to hear from you too!

Love,
Kathy

El 18 de septiembre y mi familia

Hello,
Again, I am about a week behind in writing!
El 18 de Septiembre: the day that is celebrated and looked forward to the most of the year. There is about a week of celebration before and after the 18th. Here is my story of the week:

Thursday, September 14, 2006 was the first day of the great fiesta that they call Fiestas Patrias here in Chile. After classes on Thursday I went home and worked on some homework. That night I went to a Ramada, pretty much just a big party outside where they dance cueca and drink chicha. The Ramada was sponsored and planned by Educación Fisica (the students in Physical Education) at La Católica. It was a good time, except that we got there about 2 hours too early. For the first hour and half there was no one there except for us and the people who were working the Ramada! It was pretty boring at first, but we had a good time talking. After awhile people started to show up and we started to have a much better time, but we had plans to go out to Scratch, a discotèque in Viña, that night with a friend. When Lee and I told her that we wanted to stay at the Ramada she got frustrated with, which made it very difficult to stay. To avoid the repercussions of staying and making her mad, Lee and I left and went to Scratch. This has to this point been the thing that I have regretted doing the most of my time in Chile because for the first time, there were Chileans talking to me and I was having a really good time and there are only Ramadas once a year, during Fiestas Patrias and Scratch is there all the time. Oh well, I guess, you live and you learn. From this experience I learned that I have to stick up for myself more and do what I truly want to do rather than going along with one person wants to do to make them happy because if I don´t listen to my heart and do what I really want I am not going to be happy!

On Friday and Sunday nights I went to other Ramadas, one was in Valparaiso and the other in Viña. They were much bigger as it was something that the public could attend and not just for the University. They reminded me a lot of a state fair, but on a smaller scale, with carnival games and rides and booths that sell food. There were also places that you could pay to enter to dance, cueca and other types of dance.

For the 18th, the big day, I went to a party/Ramada at the house of a Chilean and another student from my program. This was a huge event with about 50 people, dancing, singing, drinking, eating, and in general just having a great time until the wee hours of the morning. I had a very good time, but was very ready for my bed when I got home at about 6am (eek!)

During the days I spent time with my family. On Saturday I went to Limache (a town between Santiago and Viña) and then to the mountains with Lelo and Fernanda. Fernanda´s brother lives in Limache, so we went to there house first because we were riding with them up to their son´s cabana in the mountains. Her brother has three houses on his property. He and his wife live in one and they rent the other two (he designed and built all of the houses himself!). The cabana was also designed by him and it was absolutely beautiful! We were up in the mountains all day. The day was beautiful and warm. We had an asado (barbeque) of steak, pork and blood sausage (I opted not to eat the blood sausage as I had consumed it while I was in Peru). After eating all of the food there, I was so full that I could not eat for the rest of the day!

On Monday Lelo and I walked down to the ocean and bought kites from a street vendor. Lelo tested all the kites for their flight factor with a strong wind (they had to have some slack in the paper so they didn´t rip in the wind). While he was testing his kites a couple of women walked up to buy kites and he started talking to them about the kites and what makes a good kite, totally selling them on a kite. After the women were convinced that he was the vendor, the real vendor walked up to make the exchange of kite for money and the women were shocked and did not believe her when she told them that Lelo was buying a kite! Needless to say I was laughing the entire time! After we had our kites and our string, we headed to El Estadio Español (a club for people with Spanish ancestory) in Recreo, a part of Viña. There was a competition for flying kites on Monday, but we were too old to participate, apparently you had to be a little kid flying your kite with a parent. Lelo was bummed because he wanted to win, but we flew our kites anyway. Lelo is a kite flying pro! He knows all about the knots to tie to make the kite fly differently, how to get the kite in the air, how to keep it in the air, pretty much everything! He taught me how to fly a kite in about five minutes and then I was flying the kite solo without any help. After our kite flying expedition we went to another asado in at Fernanda´s cousin´s (Amparo) daughter´s (Mari) house in Viña. Fernanda is the youngest of five children by ten years. Her oldest brother is about 20 years older than she is. Amparo is about 25 years older than she is so Mari is about the same age as Fernanda. Again I ate a lot of food, but this time there were more veggies and I ate chicken rather than steak or pork. After eating we sat around the dining room table talking. It reminded me of our family after big dinners: telling stories, laughing, and debating the origins of pisco and dulce de leche. It was very entertaining.

Lelo and I left a bit early to go home to rest before the big night. On our walk home I learned a lot about my extended family. I am living in a family with money. Fernanda´s dad had a lot of land when Fernanda was younger and up until about 10 years ago when he sold it to someone who built a low-income housing development on it. From the sale of the land he made a lot of money. Fernanda´s mom and siblings grew up in a house that is now the town hall of a town in between Viña and Limache. It is really big (I guess the town government kicked the family out of the house when Fernanda´s grandma died, but I am not totally clear on the story). Amparo, Fernanda´s cousin, is married to one of the richest men in Chile. When Amparo´s dad died, he left her a substantial amount of money. With this money Amparo´s husband invested in parts of some food enterprise. He sold out his shares of this enterprise to put the money into a company called Costo, a producer and distribuiter of cookies and crackers, where he has made millions. He and Amparo are separated, but not divorced and Amparo receives about 50% of the profits. Their children are in charge of the business in Argentina and the U.S.A. Lelo´s parents died many years ago. His mom died in 1979 of cancer; his dad, of a heart attack in 1983. He and Fernanda met when Fernanda was doing her student teaching in the school that Lelo was teaching at. They started dating and got married in 1984.

Once again, I have written another long post. I have to go and study now.

Love,
Kathy

Quizes, La Serena, and the start of Fiestas Patrias

Hola todos,

A lot of time has passed since I last wrote, so I have a lot to say...I may have to do it in two e-mails, but I have not decided yet. While it is getting colder in the U.S. here in Chile it is getting warmer by the day it seems. The days are very warm, but after the sun goes down, it still gets very cold here.

The week of September 4

I had three quizes this week, two of them were essays and one was a regular grammar quiz. One of the quizes was assigned on Monday and was not due til the next Monday (this is something that had changed a week before the quiz because originally the profesor had been planning on an in class essay but since she is leaving for Spain and will be gone for 3 weeks she wanted the time for a lecture instead of an essay). We were able to work on the quiz in groups of 2 or 3 people, so I worked with two other girls and we each did one section of the three part quiz. My other essay quiz I did on my own even though I could have worked with another person (in hindsight, I should have worked with another person because it would have been a ton less work!) The topic of this quiz was one of the Pueblos Originarios (the indigineous populations of Chile). I chose to write about the Rapanui, the inhabitants of Easter Island, and the reasons for their disappearance. In my research I discovered that the popular belief that they destroyed themselves through the abuse of their natural resources, i.e. trees, a population too big for the island to support, and a lack of other resources as a result of the large population, led to wars between the different family groups on the island and canabalism. This caused the population to fall from 20,000 people to around 2,000 and then when the explorers discovered the island the remaining population was wiped out by disease and the slave trade. I found many articles to this effect and this is what the professor that came in to speak to us also said. But I also found several articles that disproved this hypothesis for the downfall of the Rapanui. They had much more scientific basis and seemed much more credible. They looked at the island and the environment of the island with is much like the Hawaiian islands and other Polyinesian islands. It seems that when the Rapanui settled the island they brought rats with them, either as stow-aways or as a source of protein. The rats ate the seeds of the palm trees that the Rapanui used to construct their moais (the great stone statues of faces, that are really whole bodies as well, but the bodies are underground), build fires and their houses. The trees eventually went extinct, but this did not explain the extinction of the Rapanui. Archiological evidence is now suggesting that the Rapanui arrived on the island about 400 years after originally thought, they constructed their moais and used the trees. Their population never exceeded 3,000. Which means that the wars for resources and land did not happen and that the downfall and destruction of the population was almost solely the fault of the explorers with the introduction of disease, the rape of the women, and the abduction of thousands as slaves for Peru. When all was said and done, in either history, only 100 Rapanui remained living on the once prosperous island. Yep I wrote about this topic for about five pages. Five pages in Chile is much more difficult that in the U.S. for two reasons: one, I am writing in Spanish which unfortunately is slightly more difficult that writing in English, and two, they don´t double space here, they use one and a half spacing which requires a lot more words to form a five page paper. In Chile I am writing one average 2 essays per week. In the U.S. I would write on average 4 essays per semester! It is quite different. My grammar test consisted of categorizing words into their parts of speach, diagramming sentences, and determining whether a word was an adjective or an adverb. It was pretty easy. I didn´t take it the same day as my classmates because I had a trip to La Serena with my program, so I had to take it the following Monday during class.

La Serena

We left on Thursday, September 7, 2006 to travel about six hours north. In La Serena we were in the north, but not the extreme north. La Serena is a very touristy city, a city of resorts and vacations. However, it also has a very important history in Chile. It was the second city in Chile to be founded after Santiago. We arrived very late to our cabanas...yes, we were staying in cabanas on the beach (or across the street from the beach). It was very exciting. I stayed in a cabana with Claire, Bethany and Tyffanie, my group of girls here in Chile. When we first got there we knew that there was supposed to be food for onces, tea that is normally taken at 6 pm, but the amount of food that was there for us was enormous, so we just assumed that it was for our breakfast the next morning as well. We went to bed and then the next morning I woke up and made scrambled eggs, toast and palta (avacado). It was a great breakfast. We then went to the reception to meet with the other people in our large group to start the day. Turns out we had our timing wrong and that all of the food was for onces because we had breakfast in the reception...oops! After all of this we had a very long, but good day. We had a tour of La Serena, went to the University of La Serena to learn about Gabriela Mistral, one of Chile´s most important and well known authors, had lunch in the University´s cafeteria, and then had free time to wander around the city. After this we got back on the bus to go to Vicuna, a city 1.5 hours east of La Serena. In Vicuna we learned how Pisco was made in the Capel factory. Pisco is a very important alcoholic beverage in Chile and Peru. The Chileans and the Peruvians fight over whose invention pisco was originally. To make pisco you need sweet grapes (not the same kind as you use to make wine, they are much sweeter and produce a wine that can not be sold as wine because it exceeds the limit for percent alcohol). After the grapes have fermented for about 3 weeks or when the wine has reached the correct percent alcohol they distill it, bottle it, package it, and ship it to be sold in stores around the country and South America. I don´t think it is shipped around the world because I have never seen pisco in the U.S., but it is possible that there is pisco in the U.S. and I just never knew what it was and never really shopped for alcohol while I was in the U.S. After our tour of the pisco plant we got to taste the pisco. There were several types of pisco that we were able to try: mango pisco, papaya pisco, regular pisco, cola de mono, chica (more about chica later!), and pisco sour. After this we left to go back into Vicuna proper to tour the house and museum of Gabriela Mistral. The house was super tiny, it only had two rooms in it. Then we had some more free time to eat dinner or to just wander around. SInce we had been provided with a sandwich, an orange and some juice for dinner, I opted to keep my money and just eat the sandwich. The night was clear which was a super good thing, but the moon was full too, which was cool, but kind of sucked for the next thing we did. We went up to the Mammauca Observatory to look at the stars and to learn about the constellations in the southern sky. They are different than in the north. The southern cross was pretty neat. We got to view the moon through a telescope, which was really cool, but the light of the moon dimmed out a lot of the really cool stars that we would have seen without the full moon, but oh well. I got to see stars of different colors, red, blue and yellow. The colors signify the age of the star. And then we left the observatory after a jam session with the astronomers to go back to La Serena where we went to bed. The next day, Saturday, we had a free day. I had hoped for a nice day, but it started off pretty gross, cloudy and cold. For the first half of the day we went to Racoba, the market, to look at things and to purchase a few things as well. I bought some earrings, papaya syrup and a scarf. Tyffanie, Bethany, Claire and I bought a Chilean coin from 1933 that a man had cut very precisely and beautifully into four parts and now each of us has a part of the coin like a pendant. After lunch I went to the Cross in Coquimbo. The cross was commisioned or blessed by Pope John Paul II. It reminded me a lot of the St. Louis Arch. We went up in it and could see all of Coquimbo and La Serena...it was breathtaking. We walked down into Coquimbo to learn a little more about the city. We walked into a museum in the middle of the city. It was really random. A few years ago there was some construction happening on one of the plazas in the city. They had to halt construction because of torrential rains. After the rains they discovered skeletons of humans surrounded by the body of a llama. This is how the the indigenous people buried their dead in this part. If it weren´t for the rain they would not have made this discovery. It was pretty cool to see. After this we returned to La Serena, had dinner, and then played On Sunday we woke up, packed and returned to Viña del Mar.

The next week, September 11-September 13 was pretty uneventful in my world...class, homework, and class. However, September 11 is a very important day in Chilean history. On September 11, 1973 the Junta Militar took place. Pinochet and the militia took control of the country after bombing La Moneda (the "White House" of Chile). Salvador Allende committed suicide. And Chile was changed forever. Pinochet was a horrible man. During his rule in Chile many people disappeared and were executed for beliefs contrary to those of the government. The freedom to think freely was eliminated and forced underground in Chile for 16 years until 1989 when Pinochet was voted out of the dictatorship and Chile became a democracy again with a newly elected president. I was told to be very careful when I was going to class on Monday because there are usually riots on the 11th in the universities and in other parts of the city and that I did not want to be a part of any of it. I did not see anything, but apparently there were riots in Valparaiso that I saw on the news.

Also on Monday Claire´s micro (bus) got in an accident. There was a military transport vehicle stalled on the highway around a curve, so when her micro came around the curve her driver didn´t see the vehicle in time to stop or avoid it. There were only 5 people in the micro and none of them were badly injured...stitches in the mouth for the same thing as Claire, but the marines in the other vehicle were pretty beat up. Two of them died. I was in a later micro and I saw the crash, but had no idea that it was Claire´s micro. I saw a guy lying on the road (the only thing I saw was a hand and an arm, but it still had a really powerful impression on me, I almost started to cry, even though I didn´t know what had happened. Claire had been reading on the micro and when her micro crashed, she flew forward and hit the seat in front of her with her chin. She was brought to the emergency room where she received three stiches inside her mouth where her teeth had almost cut all the way through her lower lip. She also had butterfly stitches outside where she was cut from the seat, but not deeply. I spent my afternoon with her as she was in a rough state. I almost got on the same micro as her, but decided to wait for one that went a bit more directly to where I was going. Her accident almost ruined her plans to go south for our extended weekend. But it didn´t she still went south!

The 18th of September is like the 4th of July. It is Fiestas Patrias and it is very important in Chile. There are parties and celebrations starting the 14th. My stories of this will be coming in the next post as this one is already really long!

Love,

Kathy

Futbol

Hola familia y amigos,

Another week has come and gone, super fast. I can not believe that I have been here for a month and a half already. Last week went really quickly. I decided not to take one of my literature classes, which is a very good thing because I am, with just one literature class, falling behind on my reading. I will catch up, somehow. With just five classes and seventeen credits I am going to be much happier and will hopefully not be quite as stressed out.

Last Saturday (26 August 2006) I went to soccer practice for the first time for baby futbol, it is like intramural soccer, but with fewer players and different rules. I practiced on Monday with the women´s team from PUCV. And then again on Wednesday. There is a story with Wednesday`s practice. So it was in a spot that I had no idea how to get to. The girls on the team had told me which micro I had to take to get there, but beyond that I was lost. I asked Lelo and Fernanda the night before if they knew how to get there, but they had never heard of it. Lelo and I looked it up on the internet so I had some idea of what it looked like. On Wednesday, I had class til 11:45 and practice was at 12:15. I didn´t know if the micro I needed even passed through Valparaiso. I asked one of the guys that shouts numbers and tips out at the drivers about which micros are in front and behind him and how far. He told me that neither of the micros I needed passed through Valpo and that I needed to go to Viña to catch one. I managed to finally encounter the one I needed, get on, and tell the driver where I needed to go and that I did not know where I had to get off. He said okay. We drove into a part of Viña called Reñaca Alto (not the best part of town…really poor). I saw a field out of the window, but there was no sign on it and the driver didn´t say anything to me, so I assumed it was further up. Nope. When I asked the driver where it was, he was like, shoot I forgot to tell you where to get off. He stoped another micro for me that was going back down and told the driver where I needed to get off. He dropped me off and told me I had to walk up the road a bit and that the cancha would be on the right hand side. I found the cancha but none of the girls were there and it didn´t look like the picture, so I walked down the hill to where I saw the other fields, where the practice was. I was only a few minutes late, after all of my adventures.

On Friday we had a baby football game which we lost miserably.

I am not sure that I have ever been as sore as I was for the entire week last week. I could barely walk, my entire body hurt. Today I am feeling better and can walk without a problem, thank goodness, but there is practice again tonight, so we will see if I am once again turned into a cripple.

I have to study…I have 3 quizzes this week (two of which are essays).

Love,

Kathy

Beautiful

27-8-06

Hola,

Holy smokes it has been a long time since I last wrote! I have been very busy lately…classes are tough and they are a lot of work and I have been taking time to play as well. Last Saturday was absolutely beautiful! On Friday I went over to my friend, Claire´s house for a relaxed movie night because we had to be up early the next morning to go to Isla Negra, another of Pablo Neruda´s houses. Friday had been kind of an icky day, but Saturday, Saturday was absolutely beautiful. The house was full of maritime things…ships in bottles, shells, the women on the front of the ship and a real ship outside in his backyard. And to top it off, it is on the ocean! He also had a collection of things that he brought back to Chile with him from all over the world, pretty amazing. This house like la Chascona was in many parts, with several different buildings. After our tour of the house, we had time to eat lunch on the beach and wander around. It was very nice. The sand was bigger sand, it was not fine, and the grains of sand were like little pebbles. I took my shoes off and wandered around barefoot…it was like a massage on the feet.

That night we went to a concert of Mozart´s Requiem at el Teatro Municipal de Viña del Mar. It was a very nice concert, very well done! We got dressed up to go, I really enjoyed getting dressed up.

Sunday I did homework all day!

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I had class and a cold.

On Thursday I had three essays due, craziness. One of them was a group essay on a poet and his work for my Literatura Española 4. I worked with two other people, Claire and Martín (a Chilean from our class). I went over to Claire´s house after class on Wednesday to put all of our parts together. We both thought it would only take about 30 minutes and then we would be able to work on our other essay. Turns out that while Martín is super intelligent and well versed, he isn´t the best writer in the world. His sentences were paragraphs; he has a big problem with run on sentences, so Claire and I had to rework his entire part, which ended up taking about 2.5 hours. Finally we finished at about 8:30 pm and then started on our next essays (different essays, but for the same class). I worked on my essay until 4 am! I then went to bed at Claire´s house to wake up in 3 hours for class. We didn´t have the class that the first essay was for, but I still had one essay to write, turn in the essay at the university, and class later. Since I was sleep deprived I got confused and showed up to a class that I didn´t have, it wasn´t my class (my class was the next hour), oh gracious. Thank goodness my friend Emily came walking down the hall before I entered the classroom because I would have gone in and been really confused, more confused than I was in the hall not seeing any of my classmates. Oh well, I went back to the office and finished my other essay and then had some time to read for another class.

Thursday after class, I had a viaje en bote (a boat ride on the ocean to see Valparaiso from a different perspective). It was amazing. Valparaiso is so beautiful; it was easy to see why it is an International Heritage site. On the boat, we heard stories of Valparaiso, were serenaded with traditional Chilean music, saw Valparaiso and all of the lights of the night (stunning),ate emapanadas, and drank wine. It was a very nice evening!

On Friday I had my first prueba (quiz) or what I thought was going to be a quiz for my class, Lengua Materna 2, a grammar class. It turned out to be a Taller, a quiz-type thing but with less pressure than a quiz, for this we worked in pairs. I studied really hard for it and was ready to do well on the quiz. When the professor announced that we had to find partners, I looked around the room for a partner, but no one wanted to be my partner. No one wanted to work with the gringa because she probably wouldn´t know anything. It was really sad, I was ready to work by myself, but there was a group of three in the back of the room and the professor made them spilt up. I got to work with Daniela (pretty sure she was not real happy to be my partner at first, but I showed her!) Since I had studied and done my homework for the week, I was ready for the taller and the questions, while she was not! I knew my stuff and answered the second half of the taller by myself (questions on the Ortografía de la Lengua Española de la RAE) because she didn´t have a clue. I was pretty proud of myself, but kinda upset because no one wanted to be my partner and then the person who was my partner didn´t really pull her weight in the group. Friday night I went over to Claire´s again for a movie night.

Yesterday I had soccer practice. I am playing baby fútbol, there are five people on the field at a time and the field is about a quarter of a normal field. It is like intramural soccer. I ran to practice, about 8,000 meters. And then had practice for an hour and then ran back home from practice (at a very brisk pace because I had plans at 1 pm and practice got done at 12:05 and I needed a shower). I got my shower and then walked to Claire´s to meet her and Tyffanie to go to Valparaiso to take as many ascensores as we could. Turns out that the ascensores where we started were closed as a result of construction. We walked A LOT because the ascensores were closed! We didn´t find a single ascensor open yesterday. It was disappointing, but oh well. Next time we go on a tour of Valparaiso, we are going to take Lelo because he knows Valparaiso very well because he grew up there. When I got back to Viña I took a nap and then last night went to a birthday party for one of my friends from the program, Wilson. We drove to Valparaiso. At Wilson´s, there were lots of people (about half Chileans and half intercambios). It was really fun. When his mom brought out a cake with candles, we sang Happy Birthday in Spanish and English. After singing, Christian, one of my Chilean friends and Wilson´s brother moved closer to him, grabbed his head and put it in the cake. Wilson was covered in whipped cream! Wilson was then surrounded by a group of Chilean men; all of them cheering and chanting (like a team before a big game). They picked him up and lifted him to the ceiling 21 times (like birthday spankings except more difficult). It was so amazing to watch. After this, Wilson got cleaned up and was handed a bottle of Champaign, which he was encouraged to drink rapidly. There was a barbeque of choripan (a type of sausage), birthday cake (yes the same one that Wilson´s face was in), wine, and lots of dancing. I danced a cueca with one of the Chileans there because Rodrigo, Wilson´s brother handed me the handkerchief and pushed me onto the dance floor. I didn´t think I danced very well, but others told me I did very well and even if I wasn´t as good as the Chileans, I had fun!

Okay, this is sufficiently long…I need to work on writing more frequently, but it is difficult with school, but I will try!

Love,

Kathy

Pancakes, wild rice, and temblores

9 de agosto de 2006

Hola,
On Monday, for la Comida (the 2nd dinner at about 9 pm) I made pancakes
for my family. It was a new experience for them because the pancakes
they are used to are more like crepes. Lelo hung around the kitchen
the entire time I was making them because he wanted to know how it was
done. He would tell me when they were ready to be flipped and then he
would start to talk to me, and distract me from the next pancake so it
would get a bit well done. It is difficult to make pancakes on a gas
stove with a pan that isn´t flat, but I managed to do it! I just had
to be extra vigilent otherwise the edges would burn while the middle
barely got done! They really enjoyed the Maple Syrup. Lelo wants to
start importing it and selling it for big bucks! They told me
yesterday that the syrup wasn´t going to last very long and that I need
to e-mail Mom and have her send a big case of it down for them! Haha.

Tonight I am going to make Wild Rice Hot Dish, another new experience
for them. Lelo is very excited to eat wild rice because it is the food
of the Native Americans and he is very interested in Native Americans.
He says that he is a decendant of the Native Americans (in the U.S.)
and that he looks just like then when he puts on one of his hats. The
other day, he starting dancing around and howling like he has seen
people do in the movies. He was disappointed when I told him that Wild
Rice Hot Dish was probably not an invention of the Native Americans. I
wasn´t able to find water chesnuts here, so I am just going to have to
make it without them.

I had another one of my classes on Monday that I had not had. It is
going to be a lot of reading between this class and my other literature
class.

I get one hiccup everyday. Lelo told me that I should tear off a piece
of newsprint, lick it, and stick it to my forehead and that would cure
my hiccups. It didn´t work, but it sure made Lelo laugh. I guess that
is what his dad taught him to do. Every time he hears me hic, he tells
me to get the newspaper. It is really strange that I only get one
hiccup when I get them, and I get them every day.

Oh, something I keep forgetting to include in my e-mails...the first
day I arrived in Viña, there was a temblore, a baby earthquake. I
didn´t even feel it until Elvirita came running out of her room
yelling, "TEMBLORE, TEMBLORE, TEMBLORE!!!" On Saturday there was
another one. They are very short and they rock the house a bit, but it
is a different experience than I have ever had in the U.S. Chile has a
lot of sesmac activity because it is located next to a tectonic plate
that keeps bumping into it. There are earthquakes every day here, but
often they are so minor that they are not felt.

I am working on getting my pictures posted on the internet for you to
view. Hopefully they will be ready in a couple of days. When they
are, I will send out an e-mail from the Kodak website that invites you
to view my pictures.

Love,
Kathy

Chile: classes

Hola,

My first week of classes is done (it wasn´t a full week, so I still haven´t been to some of the classes). It was a bit hectic, but not too bad as this week was pretty much get the syllabus and learn what the class was going to be about. I think they may be a bit difficult, but I should be okay. On Friday I had a class called Lengua Materna 2, a grammar class for people who want to be teachers in Chile. I really struggled on Friday because we were working with Ortografía (punctuation) quite different than in the United States. I am going to have to work extra hard in this class because it is the second session of the class and the rest of the students in the class took the first part last semester, so I have some catching up to do.

The first day of classes was Wednesday and I had some killer butterflies in my stomach. I was nervous all day long, even after I was done with class. One thing that is really different about school in Chile is that you don´t really buy textbooks. Apparently Chile doesn´t have copyright laws, so you go check the book out of the library, bring it to a photocopy shop and say, “The whole book please” and they make it for you. This is a much cheaper alternative to books, but a bit strange for me.

I met some more Chileans in class, and through some CIEE friends, so I am making friends with Chileans, which is really exciting!

Some observations that I have made:

1. It isn´t as awkward in Chile as it was in Peru. I stand out less here because there is more of a European influence, but I still stick out as a gringo, especially when I talk!

2. The mullet is very trendy right now. About 80% of the males 15-24 is sporting some kind of a mullet.

3. The hair trend for females of the same age bracket is layers, but the short layers are really short and chunky while the long layers are long. Often they wear it in braids, the shorter layers don´t fit and so fall over the rest of the head.

4. When I am with other gringos, it is difficult not to speak English, but I am trying. I found some other people in my group who don´t want to speak English, so I think I am going to start hanging out with them more.

5. I am finally healthy, I think. My cold went away!

6. Lelo taught me how to prepare a traditional dish the other day. It is beans (white ones), pumpkin, garlic, onion, carrot, oregano, olive oil, and spice. It is soupy until you add the spaghetti, then it becomes more like a hot dish. I was really yummy. I think it is called priolo.

7. I am scared of gaining weight because of the large amounts of bread that are consumed here!

8. Nico (my host brother) is happier now, which is a good thing. After his big exam that he was studying for the entire first week I was here, his girlfriend broke up with him, and he was very sad and slept all day for about a week, then went out at night and stayed out til 4-5am. I am finally starting to get to know him.

9. I wish for warmth and warmer weather, or somewhere to go besides my bed to be warm.

10. Lunchtime is later here than in the States, 1-2.

11. I still don´t have a student ID so I have to pay full price to ride the micro.

12. Apparently exchange students don´t show up on the list of students that are taking a course. This caused me to freak out in my first class because it made me start to think that I wasn´t supposed to be there. I talked to the professor and it was fine, but after talking with Lelo, who told me I should be on the list, I started to freak again and so I sent an e-mail and learned that we don´t show up on lists for about a month.

Love,

Kathy

La lluvia

Buenas tardes,
It is really chilly here and it is raining. It is like a late October/early November rain, very cold. Yesterday I got soaked walking home from the CIEE office, not fun. We have had quite a bit of free time this week to select classes and to talk to people about the classes we plan to take. I am planning on taking quite a few literature classes, because they are the ones I think will transfer the best and will suite me the best as well. It was really hard to pick classes though because there were so many of them and none of them had course descriptions that were easily accessible, so it was difficult to know what the class was about, but I think I made some good decisions.

About the rain...Viña y Valparaiso are located on the beach and the cities are built on part of the beach until the hills, so when it rains, the streets flood. It was great fun walking, there was one street that was unwalkable (earlier in the day there was a man with waders and a shopping cart ferrying people across the street for a fee). I really hope it stops raining tomorrow because I am sick of being wet and cold, I guess it is part of the territory. Today I have had my coat on all day. I have been drinking a lot of tea. This kind of cold in the US is different because when it is this cold, people turn their heat on, but in Chile the buildings are not heated...we have a little stove that is used to heat the main parts of the house, but that is it. It is just going to take some getting used to.

I have started to have dreams in Spanish, which I guess is a good thing...although I don´t know if I am dreaming in Spanish or if I am just waking up and then thinking in Spanish...either way, it is good because it means I am getting better at Spanish. My head hurts when I go to bed at night and I am exhausted when I finally get into bed at night because thinking, talking, and living Spanish is a lot of mental work. I think I am to the point though that I am thinking in Spanish for the most part and not translating so much anymore, unless there is a word I don´t know or that I am not really sure how to say correctly. I still have a long way to go before I am "fluent" though, I can be understood when I speak, but I have to build up my confidence in speaking in front of and to strangers.

At our introductory breakfast on Monday, one of the speakers said that we came to probably the most difficult country possible for learning Spanish because the Chileans speak very poorly, they drop letters off of their words and add parts to other words and they speak extremely fast. For example: sí (yes) becomes sípoh. They add "poh" to almost every one consonant word, I am getting used to it, but it still kinda throws me. And ¿cómo estás? (how are you) becomes ¿cómo estai? There are whole books (dictionaries) of Chileanismos. I don´t think I am ever going to get to know all of them!

Also at breakfast we had the opportunity to listen to traditional Chilean music performed by individuals from La Catolica and watch dancers perform traditional dances. The dancers would do the dance and then go looking for gringos to dance with them. For one dance, el pavo, they asked for volunteers before the dance even started. I volunteered and so got to dance. I didn´t know what I was volunteering for, but being adventurous, it didn´t really matter. For El Pavo (the turkey), there is one more guy than girl. The girls form a circle on the inside and the guys on the outside. The girls skip one way and the guys the other. When el pavo claps, you switch directions and skip the other way. This goes on until El Pavo gobbles. When el pavo gobbles, the guys have to find a girl and grab her (it reminded me a lot of musical chairs and duck, duck, gray duck...for all you non-Minnesotians, duck, duck, goose). The guy without a girl becomes the new El Pavo and the dance continues. It was very fun and involved a lot of laughing.

I had my first class today, Globalización, it went well, and I think I am going to learn a lot about Chile in the class. I found it kinda difficult to take notes and listen at the same time in Spanish, but I think after a couple of classes, I will be in a groove!

Okay, that is enough for now.

Love,
Kathy

El cine y los micros

Hola,
Today is absolutely beautiful, the sun is shining brilliantly for the
first time since I arrived in Viña. I did decently on my pruebas, I
still do not know what I received on my oral part, but on the written
part I earned a 5, which is a B in the United States. It will be used
to help me pick classes to take. I think I did very well on the oral
part. As a CIEE group, we did not have anything going on this weekend, so we had a chance to get to know Viña on our own.

After my oral exam on Friday, Fernanda picked me up with her friend
Lola and her daughter, and we went to another friends house to drop
something off, and then we headed to Fernanda´s parents´ (Ita y Tata) house for tea. Her parents are in their 80s. Her mom´s health is
failing, but was still a very sweet woman. When we got home, I went
with Lelo and Alvira to the supermarket to buy some things for "happy
hour," cheese, wine, olives, salami, a mixture of pickeled things: ham,
turkey, pickles, cauliflower, carrots, olives, and something like
bologna. Lelo taught me how to tell if a wine was going to be a good
one...first you swirl and see if the wine has legs (whether it drips
down the glass), then you look at the color, then you smell it, and
finally you drink. The wine was spicy, but very good. I met many of
Nico´s friends, Felipe, Sebastian, and Neno. After "happy hour" at my
house, I went out with a group of CIEE people and some of the siblings
of my friends. We went to a place called Casa Journal, it is a place
to sit and talk and just chill with friends. Afterwards we went to El
Huevo, a club where we danced the night away. It was really fun, I
really like dancing.

On Saturday after I woke up, we went to buy me a cell phone, it was
really cheap in comparison to those in the US. It cost 16.990 pesos,
which is about 35 dollars. With the phone I got 10.000 pesos worth of
minutes (not sure how many minutes I can actually talk with them, but
quite a bit), and 50 text messages, so I pretty much got the phone for
free. Then we, Fernanda, Alvira, and I, went over to Ita y Tata´s for
lunch. It was a salad with tuna fish on top and fricase, fried
potatoes, peas, hot dogs, and a bit of cream. It was really good.
After lunch I came home to hang out, but Emily called me and invited me out to Pirates of the Caribean 2 with her, so I headed off to the
theater. I got there right as the movie was starting, and didn´t see
Emily so I headed into the theater and sat down, thinking I would catch
her after the movie. I left the theater and still didn´t see her, so I
waited and then called her, but she didn´t answer, so I waited some
more and then called her again, this time she answered. She said she
was still in the theater, I said I was in the mall, but would come back
up to the lobby of the theater, so I did, and then I waited some more.
Still no Emily. She called me back and told me her phone was about to
die, but where was I, so I described my surroundings and then waited.
Finally she and her siblings come walking up the steps. Turns out
there are two movie theaters in Viña like right across the street from
each other, and we were each in different theaters. Neither of us knew
there were two of them! Afterwards we went out for tea and then back to Emily´s house to hang out for a bit, then I came home on a micro
accompanied by Emily´s brother, Axel because he was on his way to a
friends house. We waited for a micro for a long time, and then finally
the right one drove past. When it was time for me to get off, I rang
the little bell, but the driver didn´t stop, or even seem like he was
going to stop because he was getting faster. I got really nervous and
so I rang the bell several more times, but to no avail, it was broken.
So I whistled with my fingers, and he stopped, but then the doors
didn´t open, so I yelled, more loudly than I wanted, ¡Abre la puerta,
por favor! I felt very embarrassed after I got off the micro, but oh
well. When I got home, Lelo and all of Nico´s friends got a real kick
out of my experiences for the day.

I am learning, and will continue to learn about being in Chile.

Love,
Kathy

Mi familia

21 July 2006
Hola todos,
I have been living with my family since Wednesday. My father´s name is Luis, but everyone calls him Lelo. He is a professor of education at La Universidad Catolica. My mom´s name is Maria Fernanda. She was a religion teacher, but I don´t think she is teaching anymore, but I don´t really know...everyone is on vacation right now. I also have a brother and a sister, Nico and Alvira. It is kind of crazy, because they are the same ages as Ben and Tim, my biological brothers. Nico is a law student at la Catolica...he has had a really big test to study for all week, so I haven´t had a chance to get to know him or really talk to him at all. I have been talking a lot with Lelo and Fernanda, and I think my Spanish is really improving, while my English is getting worse! We live in an apartment, which is small, but just the right size. I feel kinda bad because Nico had to give up his room for me, so he is in a room the size of a walk-in closet, but I think he has another place that he lives sometimes, or can go to get away (his cousins apartment in Valparaiso). The apartment is on one of the main streets in Viña.

Yesterday we (the CIEE group) went out to el campo, the country, to learn about the way of life out there. We got there and ate a lunch of empanadas and fruit, which was an amazing lunch. After lunch we learned how to dance the cuaca, the Chilean national dance. It was quite difficult, I really struggled with it, mainly because I thought it was like the grapevine, but it wasn´t, so I was doing it really incorrectly, but I think that I got it figured out. After the dancing, we went to a flower plantation, and learned about growing flowers and creating seeds. After this we learned how to make empanadas, and then looked at animals.

Then we went to a viña, where they grow grapes, both for export (plain eating) and for use in wine. It was really cool, I wish we could have seen it when there were leaves on the plants, since it is winter, there was no green on the plants, but a few grapes that were decomposing on the plants.

When we got back to the camp, there was a little soccer game between the gringos while the Peruvians watched and laughed at us.

After we got back to Viña, Emily and I went back to my apartment and had some té and then went for a walk around Viña.

Today we took tests for placement...not sure how well I did, I should have reviewed before I took it, but I had no idea what would be on it, I thought that it would be more of a writing exam, but a lot of it was which word should be used in this space...I got really confused, so I will see how I did a bit later.
It is really quite cold here, but I am living with it and in reality it isn´t COLD, but chilly like in October. I have to get going because it is almost time for my oral exam.

Love, Kathy

Beautiful city

18 julio 2006
Hola todos!


I am in Chile! Once again, there were some issues with the flying, but we were only delayed in Atlanta for 3 hours, and CIEE was still waiting at the airport for all of us, and it gave us the opportunity to get to know each other a bit before we left the country.

Santiago is absolutely beautiful, it is a big city, but it doesn´t really feel like a big city. The Andes are in the skyline, pretty much where ever you turn. The air feels clean when you breath it and it is very refreshing. It is pretty chilly at night and in the mornings, but for the past two days it has been up into the 70s during the day. Yesterday we went out to dinner at a restaurant, very fancy. It was on the 16th floor of the building and it was all windows, so we could see the skyline and all of the lights of the city. The city seems to stretch on forever, there really wasn´t an end to the lights. The cool thing about the restaurant was that it rotated, yes that´s right, we were spinning while we ate dinner, so we got to see the city from all different views. Yesterday during the day we went to the high point of the city and looked out over Santiago, it was quite breathtaking. To get up the mountain we rode the Funicular, s train/tram type thing. It was fun. There was also a chapel and statues on the mountain, a huge statue of the Virgin stood at the top, very cool!

Today we find out who our host families are, I am so excited! We went to La Chascona, one of Pablo Neruda´s three homes this morning as well, it was very neat, there were three different parts, all separated and you had to walk outside to get to each part. In the main dining room there is a hutch, one part of the hutch holds dishes and the other is a trap door that Neruda used to surprise his guests. He would come out of it in crazy costumes and serve his guests dinner. I really enjoyed seeing his house. As part of the program we will have the chance to see his other two houses as well, something to look forward to.

There are 41 students in my group, and we are all getting along quite nicely, there are some that I get along with better than others. I met a girl today from South Carolina, named Emily, with whom I think I am going to be good friends. Emily and I wandered around today after lunch, and encountered a group of musicians in the mall after we found peanut butter for her (something that is hard and expensive to come by in Chile). They were absolutely amazing. There were three male singers accompanied by a small orchestra (one of each of the strings) two of the men were singing traditional male parts, but the other was singing soprano! He was absolutely amazing, he sounded like a woman, I have never heard another amature male singer sound like him, I was in awe!

We leave Santiago tomorrow and go to live with our host families. I am keeping a blog, that way anyone not on my e-mail list can keep tabs on my journey and time in Peru. If you are interested (the postings will be the same as the e-mails) it is www.kathystrek.blogspot.com.

Much love, Kathy