Suuuuuuper long post catching up on a month or so

17 April 2010, Saturday

Okay, so it's been about a month since I last posted anything, so I figure I should try to say SOMETHING. Apologies to anyone who is reading this blog with dedication. I would like to claim that I've been far too busy to write anything on here, but that would be a lie. The truth is, I'm terribly lazy... mind shatteringly lazy...... so lazy that even the gods, for whom one of our years is like the blink of an eye, watch me from their seats high in the cosmos and say “DAMN, is he EVER going to move?!?” That being said, here is a summary of my past month or so, highlighting the interesting things, avoiding talking about sitting still and angering the gods.

Okay, well, let's start with the week after my last post. On that Friday I went on a tour of the neighboring city of Valparaiso that was offered by my school. The tour started in the afternoon, and ended pretty close to sunset. We traveled into Valpo (everyone just says Valpo) by bus and walked towards the center of town. Our first stop was a port area where we got onto a boat and took a tour of the bay. We got to watch lazy sea lions (lobos del mar, or sea wolves, in Spanish) and look at various cool boats while hearing a history of the area. The guide explained how important of a port Valparaiso used to be, but that it has lost much of its importance thanks to the Panama Canal. Before that, everyone had to travel around the bottom of the country, making Valpo very important for sailors. We also drove by some Chilean warships which we were told not to photograph. This seemed like a kind of silly rule; if you don't want people to take pictures of your battleships, why the hell are they in a major city port? It seems like you'd at least TRY to hide them a little bit. The boat ride was pretty uneventful beyond that, I wasn't terrible excited about looking at sea lions, but then, I'm not usually too pumped about just looking at stuff anyways.

We got off of the boat and spent some time browsing a nearby marketplace (most of the girls were looking at the cheap jewelery). After this little break, we went to the nearest ascensor (elevator), which basically looks like a ski lift that you stand in instead of sit on. We took that up the hill, and from there the guide took us through the various cerros (hills) of Valpo, showing us interesting landmarks such as the churches in the German district and many of the murals which are sporadically dotted around the area. These murals are actually a form of graffiti that is protected and encouraged by the government, because they started being created as a form of resistance to the military dictatorship of Agusto Pinochet. My personal favorite was one that had a depiction of Pinochet and the subtitle PINOSHIT. Now the murals extend beyond political protest, some describe Valpo in a kind of picturesque way, while others are simply artistic. A new wave of stenciled graffiti is sweeping the city as a form of protest against the current (and recently elected) president, Piñera, who owns a large stake in the largest news-media company in Chile. Chilean law dictates that the president has to sell his holdings upon entering office as a way to protect against vested interests. Piñera has been quoted as saying, “solo los muertos y los santos son los que no tienen conflictos de interés,” or, “Only dead men and saints don't have conflicts of interest.” Because of this situation, there have been numerous graffiti speaking out against the situation of free press and media in Chile. Anyways, after the tour of the cerros we took a bus back to campus and went home. The tour was a lot more fun than I expected! The rest of the week pretty much passed uneventfully, with me going to class, coming home, etc. I probably played cards with Julianne and Chris at some point during the week as well. We've started playing ERS, and it's very disconcerting because both of them are actually better than me! This never happens, so it's a little bit weird. Then again, we were playing with sandwiches, 69's, 69 sandwiches, and doubles. Since I usually just play with doubles, maybe I'm just at a handicap...

Okay, the next Friday was the wine tour. A lot less people went on this than on the Valpo tour, I imagine because it was more expensive and just generally less interesting. I mean, if you don't like wine, why go on a wine tour? Then again, I don't really like wine, so, um, yeah. It was also more expensive then the other tour. Anyhow, the tour started off on a pretty poor note for me, since we were supposed to meet up at two and my host dad woke me up at 2 asking if I wanted lunch. I leaped out of bed and hurriedly got ready for the tour. I ran out of the house without eating and jumped on the first bus going down the hill. When I got out of the bus I literally ran from there up towards campus, and, like a pro, manage to fall flat on my ass right when I came into view of the waiting students. Yes, this was BEFORE the wine tour that I was falling over like a drunk. From our group, only Sarina, Lindsay, and Mai were there, but there were also a few French girls and all of the Mexican girls. The first place we went to was quite cool, with sprawling vineyards and a big production area. They primarily cultivate white wine here because the climate is better for those types of grapes. This particular vineyard was also big on producing wine, to the point that other vineyards would ship their product to this facility to be processed. We got to sample some white and some red wine, all of which was quite nice. The guide taught us how to properly drink wine, but it felt like she was putting us on because it seems quite ridiculous. I bought a bottle of incredibly cheap wine there, and then we moved on to the next vineyard. This one was bigger than the last, with a large vineyard and more production space. This winery, unlike the last, was more focused on quality, however, as the guide at the first vineyard had told us that their focus was quantity. We got a pretty broad sampling of wine there, I think five different glasses. For some reason, these samples weren't like a little sip, however, but all of the samples were really like a full glass of wine. By the 5th sample I just took a sip and stopped, since I really didn't want to pass out drunk on the bus or anything (since I hadn't eaten lunch). It actually turned out quite well and I didn't die or make a drunken ass of myself, so that's good!

The following Tuesday I got my first chance to go to a teaching experience at a local school that is sponsored by the Chilean Government. They are trying to recruit native English speakers who are studying in Chile to come to the schools and help the teachers with English lessons. The idea here being that English is a very important language for business and international success. I got there a little bit late, because once again I had bus-related issues. Once we got there (at about 8:05), we ended up waiting for something like 20 minutes to talk to the director of the school. After her, and her sub-director chatting us up for a while about the school, how the girls here “son malas” and so on, we got the chance to go talk to the English teachers. They were relatively nice, although it was entirely too difficult to explain to them what our schedules were. We (Sabdy and I are the only ones teaching English so far) ended up getting our schedules set and leaving at about 10:30, so it took two hours for us to tell them what our availability was. This is, of course, keeping in mind that we had already given them our schedules a week ago. It was impressively unproductive, so I'm hoping that the actual teaching will go better.

From there, my time here has actually been quite uneventful up until a few days ago. On Thursday I got invited to go both to Cafe Journal and to Camille's birthday party (French student). Julianne and I were headed to Cafe Journal when we got the call to come to the birthday party (I had known about it previously and was just waiting for a call/forgot about it somewhat). We had only just started walking down the hill a very short distance when Anna called, so we ended up calling our friends at Journal (Sarina and Lindsay) and telling them we'd meet them at the party. I don't know if it's pathetic that we chose to go to the party at Anna's rather than go first to Cafe Journal and then to the party because we wouldn't have to walk as far, I don't think so... After a longer than expected trek uphill towards Anna's apartment and a serendipitous meeting with some other friends from the university who helped us actually find Anna's place, we arrived at the party. When we got there Camille was in the kitchen making food for everyone to have (which looked amazing). I wished her a happy birthday and sat down on the couch. After hanging out for a while and pouring myself a piscola, the party moved to a picnic/grill area in the apartment complex. Everyone ate, drank, and was merry. We pretty much spent the whole night just hanging out, drinking, talking, etc. One Chilean at the party was making choripan, which is basically just like a hot dog, but with chorizo and better bread than crappy hot dog bread. It was delicious! At one point Camille and Anna broke out some marshmallows, so I got to showcase my amazing marshmallow roasting abilities. After a few hours the festivities started dying down, so everyone wanted to move the party to Cafe Journal. I was ready to sleep, however, as alcohol makes me instantly tired, so I opted to go home. All in all, it was a very fun night though!

Friday flew by very uneventfully, partially because I'd been so busy that I really wanted to sit around doing nothing. Saturday, however, was another birthday party, this time for Adrienne, a really nice Bolivian girl in my Cultures in Contact class. Mai, Julianne, and I all met up and took a bus to the mall area where Adrienne was having the party. We actually didn't get lost, which is always nice, and showed up to the party without much incident. When we got there, there was literally only one girl already there and the rest of the group was guys. This seemed odd to me until a bunch of women showed up at once, reminding me of the style of parties in the U.S., where all of the women get together somewhere to get ready then all come as a huge group. At any rate, it was a really cool party. The theme was colors, so you were supposed to wear bright colors (I don't really own any and Mai was given way to short of notice to know). There were brightly colored balloons all over the room and blue colored alcohol. We stayed at the party for a while, talking amongst ourselves and occasionally with the Chileans and Bolivians there. It was a little bit less welcoming than your average gathering here because not so many of these people were international students like the rest of us, but a group of friends from Bolivia combined with the Chileans they had met here. This made it a little bit harder for us to walk up to people and start conversing with them. I got a few more comments on my weird accent today, which Julianne continues affirming is a Mexican accent, whereas I'm thinking that it's an amalgamation of various different accents that I've heard, but with a strong Mexican twist. We ended up walking home instead of taking a bus or colectivo, which totally seemed like a good idea up until the moment when Julianne and I arrived at the bottom of the hill that goes up to our houses. For some reason I always underestimate how arduous the walk up that hill is. At any rate, Saturday was another night well spent.

On Tuesday, I had to get up super early for my first actual teaching experience at a local high school. I got there at precisely 8:00, when I had agreed to be there last week. I went to the faculty room where I was told and waited around for about 20 minutes, talking to the professors who were in there. After this chunk of time, I opted to just start wandering around looking for the appropriate classroom, because I decided that the teacher had probably just forgotten that I was going to be there; perfectly understandable. Some woman with some relation to the school (I have no idea what, secretary of some sort maybe, clerk?) noticed my confusion and led me to where an English class was going on. The teacher there seemed surprised to see me, and explained how I was supposed to be helping the other English teacher. I pointed out that she wasn't there, and the teacher told me that she was sick and would be coming in soon, but I could wait in the teacher's lounge if I wanted to. I decided to go ahead and sit in on the class instead, since there would be no point in waiting alone. I got a chance to help a few girls out with their presentations they were working on, and they all seemed really nice. Many of them were at varying levels of English proficiency, which could obviously make things very difficult for the teacher. The woman who was teaching today didn't seem terribly enthusiastic, but perhaps she was just having a bad day. After this class ended, she led me back to the teacher's lounge (picking up Sabdy on the way, who is the one who is supposed to be in her class) and told me to wait there for Ana Carina, the other English teacher. I ended up waiting around for an hour and then just leaving because I had to go to class. Oh well, I guess I wasn't going to get a chance to help this time. Hopefully this day was an exception to the rule, but I'm a little bit concerned that it won't be. Half of the faculty and staff in the colegio didn't seem too confident about these girls' ability to learn or about how much they actually wanted to learn. I hope they aren't getting sold short, but, like I said, this was just one day.

Well, that pretty much catches me up to current day, super abridged version. That cuts out most of the sitting around and doing nothing that I've been up to, which I promise hasn't been all of the time. Hopefully when I transfer this from Word to the internet it's not going to be a massive death post like my first one, but I think it actually will be a massive death post, so sorry about that! If you've managed to read through to here, good job to you. If anyone's got any bright ideas or suggestions about what I should do with my remaining time here, please leave a comment and tell me, because I'm always looking for more things to do!