Live and Learn

Hey all... It's been a really long time since I've posted anything!! A lot has happened since I last wrote! Well to give you a general idea of what happened it went a long with the theme of living and learning. Jeannie and I really wanted to make a trip to a German influenced town close to the south of Chile named Valdivia. It's suppose to be beautiful with a lake running through the center, a brewery for German beer to visit, and lots of hikes to do since it's in the lake region. We left Wednesday night for an 11 hour bus ride over night. We were getting excited in the bus just talking about how excited we were doing this trip just the two of us, what we were going to do etc. We ended up sitting next to a Grandma and her grandson who had what I'm thinking down syndrome.... it was an interesting ride sleeping next to a child with down syndrome. There was constant little screams all night long.

Anyway we got to Valdivia at about nine or so to pouring rain. I had looked at the weather before we left and knew it wasn't going to be awesome weather so I packed accordingly knowing we were going to be outside doing a lot of stuff. We figured out where our hostel was, checked in, and slept for two and half hours because we didn't sleep well on the bus. I drug myself out of bed and woke up Jeannie. I knew we should try and make the day worth it otherwise we would have slept all day! However we looked outside and it was still pouring rain and to add to that the wind was crazy! We bundled up and headed outside to look for the movie theater since we couldn't think of anything to do in that crazy rain!

We hadn't been outside for more than two minutes and our jeans were drenched and the wind was blowing us backward! I saw a cafe and we headed there instead. We ordered hot chocolate and empanadas, while we tried to dry out our jackets and jeans. A lady next to us stuck up a conversation with us in English asking us if we were visiting Valdivia, making small talk. After a short time it had become clear this lady knew a lot of English because she looked like she could be from Chile. We talked with her for a long time and in the process found out that she's a professor at Yale University for Spanish and Latin American Literature! She was on sabbatical for the year translating books and living in Valdivia! She was an amazing woman to talk to and Jeannie and I got a lot of good advice about life from her that we'll never forget, such as just living life and not worrying about what we're going to do after college!

Jeannie and I left the cafe and went to the mall (yes I know gross we went to a mall in Chile) to watch a Chilean movie called Todo Incluyido or All Inclusive. It was a good movie and I'm glad we watched a Chilean movie not some English movie with subtitles. After the movie, Jeannie and I sat down to talk about what we were going to do next. I could tell Jeannie wasn't having a good time and I wasn't either because of the weather. Originally were were going to spend four days down in the lake district, but after seeing all the rain, we were toying with the idea of going back to Vina the next day since we had already paid for the night at our hostel and we had just gotten there. I had told Jeannie before we left what the weather was going to be like, but she wasn't prepared for rain that we encountered.

We decided to walk to the bus station to buy our tickets to go back the next day. We walked along the river, which was huge for one, it was like walking next to the Mississippi river that's how wide across it was. It's really lush down there because they get so much rain, so there were lots of trees next to the river to enjoy. I was trying to cheer up Jeannie by singing songs and getting her to think of other things rather than how much water was sloshing in our shoes and how wet our jeans were.

When we got to the bus station, the look on Jeannie's face told me everything. She wanted to go back that night. I was a little bummed, but I couldn't complain much either because I was really wet too. So we bought our tickets home and went back to the hostel to get our things. Our bus left in two hours so we decided to have a nice dinner close to the terminal, sushi, and drink the famous beer we were suppose to try the next day. It was really good beer and I'm bummed we didn't get the tour, but at least I got to try it while I was down there.

So in total we were in Valdivia for 12 hours and on the bus for 22 hours. That trip taught me a lot of things. 1. Sometimes you need to sacrifice some things for a friend, 2. Always be prepared for the worst in the South of Chile (very important for my big backpacking adventure in Patagonia coming up) 3. If things don't go as they were planned, don't let it annoy you and just plan something else instead.

We ended up having a really nice weekend in Vina and it was probably a good idea to come home because I was feeling sick before we left and it could have turned into something a lot worse than it was. I did end up getting something along the lines of a sinus infection and didn't go to the doctor here because it's a pain in the butt to go. Needless to say I nursed myself back to health and I'm a lot better, but still sick. The weather has been amazing, the other day was 86 degrees, a heat I'm not use to.

Day after tomorrow is November already which means I'm hitting my last month in Vina and Valpo today! Next weekend we're going to a tiny town called Pucon to go hike a volcano, go to hot springs, and go rafting! It's going to be a blast and I'm really looking forward to it. After that I have two full weeks left in Vina, getting ready for our trip to Patagonia and finishing up school. Before I know it I'll be on a plane to Punta Arenas and then back to the states! Time is moving soooooo fast now! Well I hope you guys are enjoying the snow in Colorado, have a snowball fight or make some turns for me!!

Your History Lesson for the Day

So lately we've been learning about the recent history of Chile. This is really good because I had no idea about anything before I came down here. First of all, Chile has had a hard history especially from about 1970-1990 as they went through some serious changes in their government. In 1970 Salvador Allende, leader of the socialist party, won the candidacy for President. Things began to really change as this was during the time of the Cold War and the communist scare all around the world. Allende was the first Socialist leader to be elected in the entire world! Since he was socialist, all the land started to get divided up. 5,809 large estates or around 10 million acres of land were in the hands of the government. In addition, the economy went down the drain because of all the mines of coal and salitre (which I believe is part of salt) were shut down because they were such huge corporations. Because of all the controversy with the mines, the United States and President Nixon, shut off all trading with Chile. Allende was "President" until 1973 when things got really shaky, people were starting to "disappear", and the economy was horrible, so Allende committed suicide when he found out that a coup de tat was about to happen. In 1973 the Golpe Militar, or military government took over, with the leadership of Augusto Pinochet who ruled as dictator until 1990 or so. Pinochet was a really bad dictator and he did a whole lot of nothing except get rid of the socialist government and torture a lot of people. There were concentration camps for the people that were assumed "communist". With these concentration camps and other methods, 45,000 people disappeared during the dictatorship of Pinochet. Pinochet was VOTED, yes voted, to have his leadership taken away in 1990. Many people liked Pinochet because they were wealthier and didn't want their land taken away! But just imagine the number of people tortured and killed because they were assumed communist. Makes me sick to my stomach. (Some of this history might be wrong, but it's what I've gotten out of learning it in Spanish)

So this last Friday our program went to Santiago to see various places that had to do with Allende and Pinochet. It was a really heavy day, but amazing to see all these places and to be put back in the 70's when all this was going on. The first place we stopped at was called "Fundacion de Documentacion y Archivo de la Vacaria de la Solidaridad" or an organization created by the Catholic church where people could go to to get a lawyer or find documents to help their family fight the government about the disappearance of another family member. There are books and books of info about what one should do so that they can receive the best Habeas Corpus.

The second place we visited was called "Fundacion Solidaridad" which is a supportive foundation trying to help out the poorer families of Santiago. During the years of Pinochet this organization worked to help artisans stuck in either concentration camps or in poverty. They had no money to make their skilled crafts so the organization helped these people get pencils, bones to make carvings, or needle and thread and cloth all to make their specialized crafts. Today it's a fair trade organization that has families make their craft and then they receive the profit when it's sold. We looked at the quilts some of the women make and they are just beautiful!! I wanted to buy them all!

The third place we visited was Santiago's cemetery, which is basically its own city! We saw hundreds upon thousands of graves including the grave of Salvador Allende and his family, previous presidents of Chile, and the worst was the graves of all the people who passed away during Pinochet. Many of the graves are unmarked because no one claimed them, but were laid to rest the everyone else. Finally, we saw the grave or rather a memorial pertaining to all of those who disappeared during Pinochet. The left side are citizens that disappeared and the right are all political figures that disappeared. The list is amazing to look at! The most striking note I took of the cemetery was the difference between all the family graves of important political figures and all the ordinary citizens and families of Santiago. Look at the picture and you'll immediately tell the difference.












Our final visiting place was a concentration camp where many people were held and tortured for being "communists". It was really sad to walk around and know that people were tortured here only around 40 years ago! We saw where they slept, so tiny with 2-3 people to one area. Needless to say it was really hard to take it all in.

Our trip was really informative and I learned a lot about all these different places. It was kind of an emotional day, but well worth it all. It's crazy to learn about all this and then look at Chile today because it's a whole different Chile! Chile is one of the most stable governments in South America today! Considering only 30 years ago they were in a dictatorship! Well I hope you learned a little history through this! Thanks for reading! Chao!!

BienBebidos!!

Hey all!! I'm writing after just getting back from yet another adventure, but to Mendoza Argentina this time! To start off I would just like to say that Argentina is amazing and I really want to explore it more! I've heard Buenos Aires is its own culture on it's own...I hate how money limits things... Argentina and Chile are very different from each other despite they obviously both speak Spanish. For one they speak Spanish differently, meaning they speak a lot slower, but use voseo which is the informal "you" in Spanish, which I'm just now sort of learning down here... rather than saying "y tu?" they say "y vos?" Really weird to go from Chilean Spanish to Argentinean Spanish. Needless to say Chilean Spanish is one the hardest types of Spanish to understand because they drop "S", speak really fast, and blend their words together. So going from understanding Spanish in Chile to understanding Spanish in Argentina wasn't too horrible, but still a little difficult! The other difference from Chile to Argentina is that Argentina is a lot more clean! This is to say there isn't much pollution, not as many people smoking (finally got a break from Chilean chain smoking) and there are NO stray dogs!! Chile has a serious problem with stray dogs... it's disgusting!! The other interesting thing is that nearly all Argentineans asked us what we thought of Obama because they're really curious... it really tested our Spanish skills trying to have a political conversation. Overall Argentineans are really excited for Obama!

Ok on with the actual description of our trip! We, (Jeannie, Rande, Kaeli, and I) 4 Colorado girls once again, took a bus at 7:30 in the morning to Mendoza, which is about 2 and a half hours from the border of Argentina. We spent about 2-3 hours at the border waiting to get through customs! It was a long weekend so a lot of people were going to Mendoza to hang out in really warm weather, enjoy wine, and eat a lot of good food! We got to Mendoza around 8 pm after a spectacular drive through the Andes mountains!! Mendoza is a lot bigger city than we expected! After our last excursion to the Atacama desert in a tiny town, we had the image of a pueblito in our head rather than an actual city! ( The bummer was we had to take taxis everywhere, this includes a story). Even though we got in at 8 we didn't have dinner until nearly 12! We had a hard time navigating at first because we just expected that we could walk every where, which was not the case. Turns out that this is the Argentinean way of eating.... really late at night, which reminded me of eating in Italy! Anyway we had an amazing dinner at a restaurant called Don Mario's. Argentina is famous for their meat, leather, WINE, Italian food, and of course ice cream! We spent a lot of time this weekend eating really good food and drinking really good wine! Where the Atacama was famous for it's environment and picturesque view, Mendoza is known for it's food!

Saturday we rented bikes and did a wine tour! There are 11 plus wineries around Mendoza, which we obviously couldn't possibly go to all of them, but we hit 2 wineries or bodegas and Chile produces Cabernet , an oil factory, and a chocolate factory! It felt great to get on a bike though my rear end was a little angry for being out of shape for such riding. The farthest winery was 12 km away or 7.5 miles on townies (We rode 14 miles in total!). It was pretty hot out so it was quite the trek out there. The coolest winery was actually a French winery, where I learned a lot about different types of Malbecs (Argentina produces Malbecs and Chile produces Cabernet Savignon wines). It's good I'm learning all about these wines since I get asked a lot in the French restaurant I work at in Crested Butte... good for my future career as a waitress. After tasting 4 different kinds of wines we went on to the oil factory, which was really interesting seeing how extra virgin olive oil is made from olive trees! We got to taste a bunch of bread with sun-dried tomatoes, egg plant, or just plain bread (our lunch). We then hit one more winery, which wasn't the greatest, but still fun. Then finally we hit up the chocolate factory where we really hit the jackpot! We got to try a bunch of liquors of different types of chocolates (I tried the Irish cream... amazing), we tried actual chocolate.... delicious, then different marmalades... there are no words, and finally we got a completos or hot dogs with all the makings... all for the grand total of 10 pesos or $2.50!! Glad we didn't spend money on lunch! We started the day at 10:30 and ended at 6:30 just in time to see the sun set and the start of the Argentina vs Peru game, which happened to be at the same time as the Chile vs Colombia game (we won and are going to the World Cup in South Africa now!!!). Needless to say it was an amazing day, but it didn't stop there!! No we still had dinner and the bars to hit! We went to an Italian restaurant for dinner and it was a fiesta in all of our mouths to put is in words to describe just exactly what we tasted!! It was so good! We went bar hopping and it was just ridiculous! Almost too many people and toward the end of the night I was pretty sick of being pushed around and had glass in the bottom of my chacos which made dancing a little uncomfortable! However it was pretty awesome 80's and 90's music, both of which I love! Saturaday was a day I'll never forget and I don't know if I'll ever top how much fun we had riding bikes! (See videos at the end of the blog)

Now on to Sunday.... We knew we wanted to go shopping, but it was Sunday so all the stores were closed so we ended up going to the mall. The one lesson I learned with taxis', either all or just Argentinean taxis, they take advantage that you don't know where to go! We told him we wanted to go shopping so he took us to the mall.... I felt like I was in the US. It gave me a hint of what kind of culture shock I might face when I get back. I was pretty angry with our driver because 1. we wanted to keep together because we had to split up into two cabs... we lost the other cab.... 2. we wasn't focusing on the road rather telling us over and over how beautiful we were.... 3. the mall turned out to be in basically a whole other town!!! We ended up paying a bunch for the worst taxi ride of our lives plus we lost our other half of the group! SOOO NOT COOL! The three of us paid the guy and he knew we were upset for him miss leading us and loosing our friends because the other taxi driver was driving too slow... However it turned out fine in the end because we found our friends who were dropped off in another part of the mall, so we were reunited once again! We had a good lunch, but I really didn't want to spend my day in an Argentinean mall that made me feel like I was back in the USA! Fortunately we ran into an US man with his Argentinean wife who told us to go to the Plaza Libertad to go shopping and hang out... this man was a hoot and talked our ears off. They wanted us to come to their house for dinner, but we had to tell him we were leaving that night for Chile. So we went to the suggested Plaza and as we're walking up I see two VERY familiar faces... Drew Holbrook, who has been working at the ski resort in Chile called Portillo, and Quinn Langsfeld!! Both boys whom I've known my whole life and here we are running into each other in Mendoza Argentina... man this world really is small! We chatted for awhile and made plans for Quinn to come see me in Valparaiso within the next month or so! How fun!! We had an amazing, but sort time in Argentina. The group we were with just worked smoothly together and we laughed and laughed all weekend!!

On the way back we had an extensive search at the borders! Just another story.... I had purchased an orange and apple in Chile, but apparently we aren't allowed to bring them back over the border even if they're fruit from Chile! I guess there are fruit flies that are in Argentina that aren't in Chile and if they get in they can ruin plants, which I think is a crock.... At first I was going to just try and sneak my apple and orange over the border in my shirt because it was my breakfast the next day... then I saw the dogs sniffing everything and I knew I would get caught that way. If they catch you bringing fruit or vegetables over the border without claiming them then you can receive up to a $22,000 ticket!!! Holy Cow that's a lot!! So I took the fruit out of my shirt, claimed them before some dog tackled me, and they ended up throwing my fruit away in the end even though they were from Chile!! I was pretty upset, but thinking back I was incredibly stupid to even think I could get away with that... you would think I was sneaking over drugs rather than an 80 cent orange and apple! Oh well it's a story to tell the kids....

So that's it!! We're back safely in our homes with nothing stolen or any tickets received for sneaking over fruit! Life is great and I actually just purchased my plan ticket to Punta Arenas in Patagonia for my birthday and the first two weeks in December!! Just another adventure to add to the books. I have a lot of planning to do for that trip, but I'm so excited to go backpacking by the infamous Torres del Paine!! My heath is good only with weird bites on my body probably from hostel beds, but my cough is basically gone!! I hope you guys are all in good health! Sorry this was such a long blog, but there was so much to tell!! Love you all! Besitos y Abrazos!! Chao!!

Amelie

A weekend at the beach!

I had a wonderful weekend here in Chile and it only consisted of the beach! The weather is starting to get beautiful out and that means we can lay out on the beach! So Friday Jeannie and my friend Nicole and I ventured to a small beach town known as Quintay. It's super small, but one of the most beautiful beach areas I've seen in Chile yet! We had a wonderful fish lunch which we enjoyed with our spectacular view of the ocean! Afterwards we huffed it up the huge hill, trekked around the town, through a horse pasture feeling the crisp CLEAN air on our skin and letting our lungs have their fill, and down a very steep hill to the beach known as Playa Grande or big beach! The beach was beautiful and really piola or chill as they say here in Chile because the was a total of about 10 people at the most on the beach! We laid out on the soft sand with our swimsuits on, but I didn't last super long because the crisp air was quite crisp with hardly any clothes on.... The sun felt amazing though and it was great to finally relax and read my book on the beach! We played in the sand right along with a little boy and his daddy trying to fly a kite. We found seashells I've never seen before, and rocks colors I didn't think existed! It was a great day and I'm glad we got our butts out the door to experience it!

Saturday was an excursion with my program to the northern beaches of Chile (about an hour away as well). First we stopped in Con Con to a beach I've already been to, but people road horses and I took pictures because I'm severely allergic to horses. The day wasn't super warm but here and there the sun came out to say hello! The second beach, which wasn't really a beach, was Horcon. We had lunch that consisted of shrimp empanadas (amazing) and a pastry that I don't know what it was but it was tasty! Horcon is one of the last places where the fishermen use horses to get their boat loaded with fish up on to the shore. I didn't actually see this happen unfortunately because it would have been cool! The third and final beach was Zapillar. This town is known for their summer luxurious houses, which I found out why when we stepped off the bus.... the view and beach are gorgeous! I found where I want my beach house to be when I marry into riches... not going to happen I know. However I did find many houses my mother would be quited pleased with retiring into when she finally quits working! ( she "retired" five years ago). My friends Isabelle, Amelie (Am-a-lee), and I walked a cute path filled with cool trees and beautiful wild flowers! The colors were breath-taking! It was a wonderful, fun filled day all in all I just wish we had had more sun along with it!

Sunday consisted of sleeping in after a hectic week of school (papers in Spanish take a long time to write) and a week of not sleeping very well. However I woke up and walked to meet Celine where we went to the beach because it was a gorgeous day! It's an amazing feeling being able to just walk down the road to the beach! Something I'm definitely going to miss when I return to Colorado!

I had a beautiful, relaxing weekend and I hope you all did too! On Friday morning Jeannie and I are leaving for our next adventure to Mendoza Argentina to ride bikes and taste wine! Can't wait! Until then folks.... besitos y abrazos! Chao!