Vacación! Part I

I am officially on vacation for an entire month. Has anyone in their whole life ever had a month off? It's a very strange feeling. It started off with a few parties and some relaxation. Then, I hit the slopes. Yesterday, I went skiing with some friends in the Andes at a ski resort called El Colorado. Skiing here is a little different than in the states. There are absolutely no trees on the slopes. Its basically a bald, naken mountain with some wooden barricades to provide some outlines.
Talk a look at the pics...(mostly scenery pics, but very pretty)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2289424&l=230ef&id=907196

If you don't already know the story about the cat, allow me to explain. I am scared of cats, they frighten me. I can't handle them. One sunny day, I opened the door and before I left the house for class, I closed it. I came home late that night, and I hear a noise coming from my room. I think that perhaps, I left the door open and the noise is coming from outside. As I walk closer to my room, I realize, the noise is coming from inside the house. I keep hearing this purring, and I see the glassy eyes of some ugly stray cat that's chillin' under the TV stand in my room! "Vas, vas!" I yell... (that's "go, go!" in spanish). That didn't work. I call a friend, she says, it's a stray cat, it's probably hungry, put out some food. So I go for the first thing I find: some bread. Clearly, my knowledge of cats is lacking, because in the moment of fear, I didn't think... hmmm. what would cats want to eat? I am thinking, "get this disease infested rodent out of my room!" The cat wasn't into the bread that I was putting out for it, so it ran further into the house. At this point, my heart is pounding, and I am FREAKING OUT. There is a cat inside the house! So, I wake Gerty up, explain the fear of cats, and then she saves the day by getting rid of it. That is the story of the stray cat that tried to have a little sleep over party in my room.

Back to my vacation.... The rest of the week, I will be in Santiago... going to the museums I didn't go to already, wineries, etc.... Then, on Saturday, I fly to Easter Island for a week! My final week of vacation will be with Mom and Earle in Buenos Aires!

Will update soon with more vacation adventures, injuries, etc....

Besitos!
Lauren

Pictures from La Serena....

Forgot to include this in the last post...
The blog can't hold too many pictures, so here is a link to all of them if you would like to look.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2261615&l=8e0f3&id=907196
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2261610&l=e5a47&id=907196

Lauren

La Serena y mas

Sorry for the lack of updates….
What’s been happening since the start of school?
I am getting better at teaching little by little. I am learning how to keep my composure when my students come to class completely unprepared. No textbook, no notebook, no pen, and they have figurative tape over their mouth.
I went to La Serena, which is about 6 or so hours north of Santiago with my friend Marisa. We took an overnight bus to the town - think the red eye, but not as nice. Sadly, I didn’t pack enough sleeping pills so I didn’t get enough sleep as planned. However, I survived. The first day we drove to Punto Curros which was this super tiny town surrounded by the desert. I think they realized how neutral their surroundings are because all of the homes were painted in very bright colors. From there, we took a speedboat around Isla Damas and another island. There were 2 dozen dolphins swimming around the boat in groups of 3 to 5. It was incredible. We also saw Humboldt penguins, sea otters, sea lions, pelicans, oh my! (See attached pictures). When we returned to shore we had the first of my many mariscos empanadas. I am having major seafood withdrawal. I know… isn’t the entire west side of the country adjacent to the PACIFIC OCEAN? Why yes, it is. But, Chileans make more money by exporting seafood to the states. They don’t keep much of it around here. You damn Americans. Plus, unless their food is shaped in a hot dog, they aren’t really interested. I don’t think seafood could hold that shape well. Ew, gross…. Seafood isn’t really part of the Chilean diet so unless you are in a coastal town, you wont see much seafood around. Its quite sad for a girl like me.
Back to La Serena….we have dinner, have a drink in Coquimbo the neighboring town to La Serena and head to bed. On Sunday, we headed out to Valle de Elqui. VE as it shall be known, is quite beautiful. In the last 7 years or so, they built a dam to help with the water supplies (as dams are usually used for) and the view from the dam was spectacular. We made a whole bunch of stops on the way to the end, including a stop in Vicuna, the hometown of famous poet, Gabriela Mistral. We had lunch in the town of Villaseca, population 200. They are famous for the restaurant that only uses solar panel ovens. Our journey continued through tons of pisco and wine vineyards to Pisco Elqui, another cute little town. Pisco Elqui is where all pisco is bottled. We did a little tasting, had a nice tour of the distillery and headed to Monte Grande where Gabriela Mistral went to school.
Back to La Serena for my 3rd and final marisco empanada in 2 days. It might be fried, but it’s delicious. We went to the beach, missed the sunset by seconds but we were both still happy to be able to check out the beach. Definitely will go back up there in the spring. Sadly, it was a Sunday night so all the bars were closed. So, we had a nice dinner watched some Chilean futbol and called it a night. Dinner by the way, was reineta, a delicious type of fish, covered in a cream sauce topped with shrimp and muscles…..DELICIOUS!!! What could be better than that?

Since La Serena, I have not done too much traveling. I’ve mostly stayed in Santiago, meeting people and making this city feel like a home. I joined a running group that is organized by Adidas, occasionally, I go to synagogue, and I hang out with my gringo and Chilean friends after classes and on the weekends.
I actually starting writing this blog and took a very long time to post… so now I am approaching the end of the semester. Finals are at the end of next week and then I have lots of free time! I plan on traveling for a bit with my friend, doing some skiing in los Andes, which is supposed to be spectacular and then meeting up with Dad and Margot in Lima, Peru, then Mom and Earle in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I watched the qualifiers for the World Cup. Chile beat Venezuela last week. Viva Chile! I feel like that’s part of the cultural assimilation… watching soccer.
Abrazos and besitos! (hugs and kisses)
Lauren

... and Gerty makes 5

So sorry for the big gap between posts. I know you were all waiting quite impatiently.

Mi madre chilano, Gerty.

I think I have hit my capacity... I have 4 parents, plus a Chilean mom, Gerty. Gerty is 61, born and raised in Chile by 2 German parents. She speaks fluent German, Spanish, and English... good for our relationship, bad for my spanish. She is very cool and when she does decide to cook, it's a pretty good meal. When she doesn't cook, she makes sure to always have ingredients for palta and queso sandwiches on pan integral (that's avocado and cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread)....what could be bad about that? She lived in NJ for about 10 years and with Dad's brief stint in Hackensack, we have a lot to bond over.

Pictures of my room are below. This is my bedroom, closet, and my private patio area. (Mom, Margot, I make my bed everyday! Yes, I'm serious. No, I don't know why I won't do that when I am at home, that is just the way it is.)





This is the front of the house.



DuocUC

I am officially a teacher. Here is how it works: Universidad de Chile is one of the top 3 schools in the country. DuocUC is the middle tier trade-like school that they run. This is where I teach. They have several locations in Santiago and each specializes in a few trades. No two schools are alike. I teach in Providencia where there is an electrical and mechanical engineering school, and a school of health. 80% of my classes are made up of men. I have 4 all male classes (2 with a female or two) and then one all girls class. I like to think I am their hot exotic teacher from the states, but who knows. I could also be their dumb teacher from the states who doesn't understand a lick of what they are saying when they are talking in front of me about things that should be behind my back.

How it's going so far....

I have 2 basic classes and 3 intermediate classes. The basic class is challenging in that no one understands ANYTHING that I am saying. But, last week I did an activity for pronouncing all the letters in the alphabet (yes, it is different enough that it requires going over) and saying our numbers that was a big hit. The Basic class text book isn't so bad and I can get some ideas for activities and we already have the quiz schedule. This makes planning for the basic class easier than the intermediate. How much they are absorbing with my teaching style.... that's another story we will learn more about after the first quiz.

Intermediate is easier because I can have more of a conversation with those students which is really fun. Some of my students love to chat, even if we aren't talking about anything of value, just having them speaking in English is great practice for them and it still feels like a class because I will correct them as we digress.

The difficulty in intermediate is two-fold. 1. While some intermediate students speak very good english, there are still some who cannot put a sentence together. This makes preparing for a class with such a wide range of skills tough. 2. The "text book" for intermediate looks much more like a Princeton Review book for the SATs. How do you take a workbook meant for individual use and integrate it into a class for an entire semester! This is something that will be further explained to me later. For now, I just review the material from last year with those students.

My schedule.

I have Mondays off, and I teach Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4-5:30 and 7-8:30. Wednesdays and Fridays, 4-5:30, 5:30-7, 7-8:30. It's late, but I never have a class before 4 and I never have to be traveling during rush hour. My schedule is pretty sweet.

Those are the logistics of home and work life.... now onto the fun stuff. Not all of you would consider this fun though. Let's call it social life.

Friday night I went to synagogue! It was a little weird at first. In the states, I only go to services for high holidays and that's about it. While I can read hebrew, I have no idea what I am saying. To go to a service where half is in hebrew as it should be and half is in Spanish which is completely foreign, is pretty amusing. I was sitting cracking up at myself. I had no idea what was happening. I did however, understand what page we were supposed to be on, so I was able to follow along a little.

Then I met a nice couple my age at the end of the service and they introduced me to another couple who happened to be the daughter and son-in-law of the rabbi. They all spoke english so I told them about myself, what I was doing, etc.... They immediately invited me to the rabbi's home for shabbat dinner. I was so excited!! I have never felt more jewish in my life! Sadly, since I never do Shabbas dinner, the songs you sing at the dinner table were even more foreign. Never heard of them even once. So, I just hummed along a little. The rabbi asked if I went to synagogue at home, and I blushed and said no, but I planned to go to Saturday morning services while I am in Santiago. My schedule doesn't allow me to attend on Fridays, but I had this past Friday off for Easter. He understood the predicament and was happy to hear I plan to attend somewhat regularly.

Saturday and Sunday I spent the day in Valparaiso. There are two volunteers working there, so they know their way around. What a gorgeous city! It's on the water and built up on the hills, and it has beautiful architecture and everything is painted brightly. I forgot my camera, but since it's so close and easy to get to, I plan on going with some frequency.

Other than that, last weekend all the volunteers met for an asado (thats a BBQ) in one of the parks. Yesterday was Easter so I came home from Valparaiso and one of Gerty's daughters was her with her kids celebrating.

That's it for now. Will update more frequently.

Buenas Noches!
Lauren

One more week living in limbo

This past week was more training, more culture, more orientation stuff. We went on a historical tour with a fomer member of MIR, which translates to Revolutionary Leftist Movement. Basically, they are communists. Our guide, Andre, was in training with the MIR prior to the military coup in 1973 so he was an incredible guide. We went to the Cementerio General which as you guessed, is a cemetery. However, it was a really incredible cemetery. It is MASSIVE and there are tons and tons of mausoleums. They also have recorded all the names of those that disappeared or died during the military regime from 1973 to 1990. I know it sounds odd, but it's sort of a cool place to walk around.

We then went to Villa Grimaldi which was the detention and torture complex that was used by the new government's police, DINA. It's amazing what they have done there. It is now called La Parque por la Paz, Park of Peace. They have a small scale version of what the complex once looked like in the DINA's hay day. From there, you can walk around the complex and see what has been put in each area's place to represent what had happened there. The city takes a lot of pride in this park, they even have a canopied area for cultural events! It sounds odd, but they believe in bringing life to this complex and the more people that come and learn, the more education there is so that something like this never happens again. I put the website below for anyone who is bored at work and curious: http://www.villagrimaldi.cl/eng/index_eng.htm

For those curious about the social scene: well, I've met my first Chilean crush. His name is Franco and he's a Carabinero (he's a cop). He's super cute, but doesn't speak slowly enough for me. He has 2 brothers who both have interests in two of my friends so we all have a good time together. Franco and I are going to try communicating via email because I need time to translate what he says.

Aside from culture and boys, I decided to take my first day trip outside of Santiago with some other volunteers. For those in nyc, get ready to be jealous. I went to a town just south of Valparaiso called Algarrobo. It's a cute little beach town and we had a fabulous time. Every single person got a little burnt, but that's the Chilean sun for you!

Today, I went to the Pablo Neruda museum. Neruda was a famous Chilean poet and he had three wives. He and his third wife shared a beautiful piece of property and that is where 1 of the 3 Neruda museums is. They had incredible artwork, including a Diego Rivera painting and other pieces that he brought back from Asia, Italia, and a few other places. It's definitely a cool place to check out. Unfortunately, I went with 4 volunteers who all speak much better spanish than I do. So we had a tour in Spanish - I tried to follow and my friends would translate the important stuff.

Finally, I hit Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes because it's right next to the hostel and it's free on Sundays. Love that free art!!! I didn't have too much time, but I went with one other volunteer to see an exhibit on Norwegian architecture and a photography exhibit which was awesome. Lots of great photographs including one of Rockefeller Plaza. I got a little home sick for a second when I saw Saks 5th Ave in the background! Aside from the loads of booby shots, there were some beautiful pictures. I'm so glad my friend who came with me could speak spanish. Sometimes the title of a picture really provokes thought and the lack of understanding would have changed my interpretation. Yet, another key reason why I have to learn spanish quickly!

And then I went to the Parque Forestal which is right behind the museum. It's where all the hippies go on Sunday, it's like a circus! It's really crazy... they sell lots of crappy stuff, there are big drum circles, people juggling, people practicing on a tight rope, people playing Capoeira (yes, it's playing, not doing). All sorts of nutty cool stuff.

What's on the agenda for this week? There are other volunteers who are coming to teach at the same university system. We all meet this week in Santiago for our university training (as opposed to our WorldTeach training) and then everyone goes to their sights across Chile on Friday. I'm looking forward to meeting other volunteers and getting a better feel for the university directly from the staff.

And in 5 days, I get to move in with Gerty, my host mom!! As most of you know, I've been living out of a suitcase since January 28, so I'm really really ready to actually unpack and call Santiago my home. I will update you all next week from Lo Barnachea, the suburb of Santiago where I will be living!

Chao!

Lauren

First Half of Orientation

Buenos Tardes!!!

I just hit the mid-point for orientation. We have learned more about the culture, we are learning teaching methods, taking Spanish classes, learning about multiple intelligences and how to teach to all of them, learning about tenses and grammar and how to teach them, etc.... Does anyone really want to hear about the orientation in any greater detail?

The rest of the stuff....

We had a scavenger hunt as a morning activity last week which was cool, except my "hunt" was to an area that I have already explored. Other volunteers went to cool spots, so I will certainly follow their paths. I saw the Parque O'Higgins which is Santiago's Central Park. Very pretty, had the paddle boats too. Even have a little rinky dink amusement park called "Fantasilandia". I'm not really into them, but the name is so funny, it might be worth it just to go.

The weather here is hot, sunny, and just gorgeous. Last Saturday afternoon I walked around a bit and then came back to the hostel to lay out. We have a nice roof so a bunch of us just hung out there for the rest of the afternoon.

Two of the volunteers in the group had birthdays last weekend, so we all went out to celebrate. We started at a nicer bar called Catedral (pictured to the right) and had bottles of wine and pisco sours. A bunch of us then went out to a discoteque in Vitacura (a barrio of Santiago) and drank and danced until about 4 am. Needless to say, Sunday was rather uneventful. (Note.... comunas are the equivalent of suburbs and barrios are the equivalent of neighborhoods in the city).

This past week, we did some lesson planning training and then we had the opportunity to go to the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano to teach 1/2 of an english class in pairs. Sean, one of the other WorldTeach volunteers, and I taught a beginner class. We did some cool activities. Some were effective, some were not, but all good experiences! It was great to get some class time mid-orientation and we really liked the students for the two days we worked with them. It gave us a sense for how long an activity we plan actually takes in real time with non-english speakers. And we were able to get our first time teaching nerves out of our systems in a controlled environment before we went up in front of our own classes. All in all, it was great.

I'm just getting over a cold, so no crazy stories for last night... but no worries! I'm sure I'll have one by tomorrow morning!

Chao!

Lauren

I'm in Chile!!!

Hello everyone and welcome to the blog! So sorry for writing my first post so late, I've been really busy and when I'm not busy, I'm exhausted and not funny enough to write a blog.

So let's start from the beginning....

I met my fellow volunteers on Wednesday evening in Miami. We had a pre-departure meeting, hung out a bit, did some silly ice-breakers and went to sleep early.

Our journey started at 4:45 am on Thursday as we headed to the airport. For the next 24 hours we got to know each other through three flights, 2 layovers, and a few drinks. All of the people seems really great. There are 20 volunteers, about 6 from California and the rest are scattered. The age range is 20-28 and I'm the only New Yorker!

Our arrival in Chile....

We got to Santiago at 2:30 am on Friday and got through customs very quickly but in typical Chilano fashion, the transportation was a little delayed. We got to the hostel and in our rooms by 5 am!

The weekend...

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we had informal orientation sessions in the hostel. We were getting to know each other, learning about the Chilano customs and the culture. Basic information like the Chilano version of 911... that kind of stuff.

Little tidbits about Chile...

One of the most fascinating things I heard on our journey was the rumor that the mullet was in full effect in Chile. I thought that with the outlaw of the mullet in the 80s in the states that countries to follow the trend would have been over it by the 90s. I was wrong. Mullets are plentiful here and as we explored the city over the weekend we saw them everywhere on people of all ages. Even people in advertisements have mullets! Please, do not worry, I will not come back with one. I am just shocked that an entire society thinks it's fashionable. Ok.... I think that we have covered mullets and I hope never to discuss it this much again.

They love mayonnaise! They put globs of it on everything! I think it's more like a 5th food group for them. Sadly for me, I think mayo is repulsive and want to vomit just talking about it. Walking around with friends who want to try the street meat can be painful for me. But, I'm trying to control myself. Another little fact about mayo: if you do not want it, you say "sin mayo" with a soft "a". If you pronounce with a hard "a" you are literally saying, "without I pee". Good thing to remember if you come here, but don't worry, I'll remind you.

Wines!

We tried several on our first night and found one that was a bit more expensive (it was $5 instead of $4) and it was incredible. Terrapura... "pure earth" it's a cab. if you can find it, try it. It's my first of what I hope will be many recommendations.

What I've seen so far.

We are staying in a hostel in the central part of the city which is a great location. We are near the capital (la moneda), la plaza de armas, some cool markets, and el Museo all of which I went to see this past weekend (except for el museo which is free on Sundays so I'm going this weekend). I walked over to the Cerro (hill) Santa Lucia. This is where Santiago was established. It has some amazing views of the Andes and you can see the whole city from there (picture with Cara and James).

I've also been to the Cerro San Cristobal which is where there is a giant statue of the virgin Mary and has even better views of the Andes (picture up top). I walked around Providencia which is a beautiful neighborhood within Santiago and took a ride on the metro and buses.

So far this week....

We have now officially started orientation. We went to el universidad where we have our orientation for the next 4 weeks. This happens to be the location where I will be working from so that works out great for me! Today, we watched a film called "Machuca" which is a really incredible film about Chile in '73 prior to the coup and then spoke withe the Harvard University Director of Latin American Studies who further explained the last 30 years of history.

That's it for now.... hope everyone is well.

Chao!

Lauren

P.S. Leb - Thanks for the blog title.