Disculpa...

Sorry for the lapse in blogging there lovers and friends. The past few weeks have been pretty intense with school and I’ve been trying to sneak as much fun into my schedule as possible, so I haven’t had much time to peruse the interwebs. What have I been doing? Well, I’ve taught three of my six one-hour lessons so far. Typically the group is two to three adult students and I’ve worked with pre-intermediate to intermediate levels. This coming week, I will teach Monday, Wednesday and Friday (beginners and advanced students). I really like teaching so far which is awesome. It’s so cool to be doing something I’m passionate about.

Other highs and lows of the past few weeks include…exploring some new comunas, watching a friend’s boyfriend perform some awesome live music, playing with puppies AND kittens in the same night (pups pictured above), almost having to tackle an old Chilean man who was attempting to steal my laptop (luckily, he handed it over before it got to that point), writing a 2,500 word paper in one day (bleck), stumbling upon an amazing little health food store, learning more about the smog in Santiago (and thus contemplating moving elsewhere), attending my first intercambio (where you practice Spanish and help Chileans practice their English), making it home from the bars before six am (for once), cooking a big group dinner at a friend’s house and going to an organic farmer’s market today. As you can see, there have been more ups than downs. It’s been a good time overall. Tonight, it is our teacher’s birthday so a few of the students in the class and I are going to swing by her birthday party and say hi and then (hopefully) wrap it up early enough to catch the metro home.

Right now, plans for the future are pretty up in the air but all signs are pointing north. After our class ends in early March, some friends and I are planning a trip to La Serena, Antofagosta, Iquique and Arica to scope out possible places to set up shop as teachers. I’m really excited about the prospect of living in one of these beautiful places. Our plans are to travel for two weeks, including a short detour back to Valpo and Viña to kick us off.

¡No, nos dijo CUATRO mil!"

A Canadian, a Brit, three (North) American girls and a Chilean.

On our first day of classes, they filled our heads with a all kinds of ideas about the various ways that Chileans would try to manipulate, rob and take advantage of us (slashing backpack straps with knives and snatching bags; throwing yogurt on tourists so that they will be distracted long enough for the thief to grab their wallets; lingering outside ATMs, ready to pray on unsuspecting foreigners, and so on and so on). Although I see the obvious necessity in being cautious, I'm not prone to paranoia and I don't intend to spend my entire time in Chile living in fear that everyone I meet in this country is trying to get me. I believe in a balance of being aware without being tense on edge all the tiem. Thus far, all of the Chileans I have interacted with have bent over backwards to help me out in any way possible.  One man literally gave me his shirt (albeit not the one off his back) to help me clean up some orange juice I spilled in the train station.  I have come to find that Santiagans are lovely people.  All of them, that is, except a certain kind of Santiagan...the taxi driver. Now, to clarify, my experience with Chilean taxi drivers has been limited and I haven't completely given up hope that there are some perfectly decent and honest taxi drivers somewhere in this beautiful country...I just haven't met one yet.

Last night, we just barely missed the metro AGAIN and we're forced to take a taxi to our friend's apartment after we attempted and failed to figure out the bus system (which runs much later than the metro). I already learned (from our last experience) to always ask, "¿Cuanto va a costar?" or "How much will it cost?" before you get in the taxi at all. He told me that, for the three of us, he would charge $4000 (about eight dollars USD) for a ride from Bellavista to Provedencia. It seemed a little high by Chilean standards, but it was going to work out to less than $3 USD each so I wasn't that worried about it. When we got inside, we noticed that his meter wasn't even on. He claimed that it was "dead" but who knows if that was true or if he just turned it off so we wouldn't see how much the ride was actually suppose to cost.

When we got to our destination, we took out some money to pay and he looked back at us and said "Cinco mil"...five thousand. "No" I said, "You told us four thousand..." He started to argue with me, claiming that he had even been holding up five fingers at the time. Then, after sternly telling him a second time, "No, nos dijo cuatro mil." He finally threw his hands up, "Ok, cuatro mil.", as if to say "Okay, you caught me."

I guess living here will be a good lesson in standing up for myself when it comes to people (so far, just taxi drivers) trying to take advantage of the fact that I'm so clearly a gringa. I'm sure having my 6'4" tall roommate with me didn't hurt either. "I have a giant Canadian man...and I'm not afraid to use it."

The rest of our night was really fun, we hung out at a friend's for a while and then went back to Bellavista for drinks and dancing. We finally got home around seven this morning, just in time to catch a few Zs before forcing myself out of bed for farmer's market this afternoon, which by the way was AMAZING. Produce here is SO cheap, it is fabulous.

I basically spent most of my day laying around, eating fruit and messing around online. Oh yeah, and napping. I also started reading a book called The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner which is really great so far. Tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to muscle out my entire lesson plan for my first day of teaching on Tuesday (eek!) and get all of my reading done and my visuals for the lesson made up. Time to get some rest. ¡Chau!

"Meu nome é Alicia, e você?"

Today was my first official day of the IDELT program at Bridge. Maybe on the second day, they'll teach us what the acronym IDELT actually stands for...in the meantime, I'll describe it as a certificate that qualifies me to teach English as a second language (if you haven't picked that up yet, that's why I'm in Chile). Above is a picture of me, Ruby and Gordi (my two roommates, who are also in the program). My third roommate's name is Brett and he just finished the program that we are now starting (stop me if you've heard this before).

Our class is pretty big by Bridge standards, ten students. Everyone seems pretty cool, I think we'll help each other out a lot as the course progresses. It feels weird to be back in school again. I have mixed feelings about it for sure. I definitely have a challenging four weeks ahead of me but I think I'm ready...ish. Hopefully I will gain a lot from this course and feel totally confident in my teaching by the end. Vamos a ver.

As part of today's class, we did a beginning Portuguese lesson. The idea was to put ourselves in the role of a beginning foreign language learner again so we could develop empathy for our future students. After stumbling over "Meu nome é Alicia, e você?" about a hundred times, I think I got the point. I would like to learn Portuguese for real one day, maybe go back to Brazil and live for a while. The thought was kind of lingering with me for the rest of class and afterwards I promptly bought myself a caipirinha to temporarily satiate my Brazil craving. Hopefully I'll go back at some point when I'm in Chile. Tickets from here are only about $300 USD round trip and I DO have a ten year visa...

Anyways, back to Chile and back to homework for now. I have about forty more pages to read before tomorrow and it's already 11:30 PM. I guess my procrastination skills didn´t get rusty during those nine months that I wasn't in school. Whew!

A Day to Recover- 6 de Febrero

Today is a day of rest and recuperation after two days of sightseeing, sun soaking and cerveza sipping in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Things didn't go quite as planned and my roommate and I ended up leaving Santiago considerably later than we'd hoped for. We didn't make it to Valparaíso until about five pm on Saturday but luckily it gets dark pretty late here. We got a little lost because we didn't have the best map (yes, it was the map's fault...not ours). The wind was crazy strong and it was blowing up all kinds of dirt and rubble into our eyes as we wandered around trying to find our barrings. Finally, windswept and covered in dirt, we found Hostel Licanantay, where we had already reserved two beds. We cleaned ourselves up and headed out for dinner and some bar hopping. Our hostel was surrounded by restaurants, bars and discotecas which was very convenient.

After the bars closed at five am, we headed back to the hostel and hung out with a bunch of new friends that we met there. The next morning, we took a little mini-tour of Valparaíso with some of them since they were more familiar with the area. It is a cool town with lots of neat street art but it is also pretty dirty. After that, we rode in one of the ascensadores (small outdoor elevators that go up and down the hills) which completed our to-do list for Valparaíso, so we hopped on a bus to Viña.

When we got there, we walked along the beach and checked out a little bit of the downtown area but we didn't have much time to explore beyond that. Our plan was to go to the station, buy the latest return ticket possible and then go back out into Viña until it was time to leave. It didn't work out because when we got to the bus station, all the later trips to Santiago were booked and our only option was to buy a last minute ticket for a bus that was leaving right away. We were a little bummed but super relieved because for a while it was looking like we wouldn't be able to find a way home at all. Luckily the guy working one of the ticket booths was super helpful. Six other companies had already told us that there were no more tickets to Santiago for the day before we talked to him. When we came up to his booth (probably looking a little panicked), he locked up the ticket booth where he was working and took us out to the terminal where we paid the driver for a last minute ticket right there on the bus (and no, we didn't get ripped off. It was actually cheaper than our ticket there). Thank God everything worked out but I wish we had had more time in Viña. It is so beautiful. I'm already thinking about moving there after my program in Santiago wraps up in March. Obviously, I'd like to spend more than two hours there before making my final decision though. We're already thinking about going back next weekend :)

Los Terremotos y El Daño que los Puedan Causar- 3 de Febrero

This morning I woke up with my first Chilean hangover. The culprit, as you may have guessed, is pictured above. We call it El Terremoto, and much like natural terremotos (earth quakes), it is quite capable of shaking things up a bit. Luckily, we managed to survive the damage with only an (albeit, overpriced) taxi bill and a rough next morning. Los Terremotos are made with a sweet white wine (and yes, that is a liter and a half of it you see in the photo) mixed with pineapple ice cream and sometimes rum or cognac. Deliciously dangerous. If you're brave (or stupid) enough, you can follow your terremoto with una réplica (an aftershock), which is just the same thing but "only" half a liter. You can bet that after two liters of alcohol, the earth will be a-quakin'.

Despite my better judgement to sleep off the hangover, I actually pulled myself out of bed at about 7:30 this morning to go get a sim card for my Chilean cell phone. As luck would have it, the department store that I needed didn't open until eleven so I guess I should have just taken advantage of that extra hour of sleep. Pues, asi es la vida.

After my last Spanish class, I went and got sushi at a restaurant by my school que se llama "SushiGREEN". It was muy delicioso and I have been craving sushi for about a week so it really hit the spot. Afterwards, the three of us went on another school field trip with Marisol to Concha y Toro, a vineyard about an hour out of Santiago. There weren't enough people to signed up to justify renting a car so we took 2 metros and a bus instead. This was my first experience riding the bus. On the way there it was fine, but on the way back it was a little rougher since we didn't have seats and had to balance ourselves standing up in the very narrow aisle. It felt a little like we were tourists on display at a zoo, with a guy playing guitar and singing in the background who announced us as we got on the bus, " ¡LOS EXTRAJEROS!"

We paid $8 for a tour of the winery which included two glasses of wine glass. We also got to keep a souvenir Concha y Toro glass which I was excited about because I don't have any at my house here and it feels weird drinking wine from a coffee cup. Overall, I was really glad that I went. I got some great pictures and my SLR survived her first venture into Chile and returned home unscathed.

Now I'm planning my weekend trip to Valparaíso/Viña del Mar. The hostel is booked and now it's time to pack. We take off at ten tomorrow morning! iChau bellos!