Termas de Chillan

Just when I start to get pissy in Chile, something amazing happens to remind me how lucky I am to be here. This week, it was a Ministry-funded day trip to the Termas de Chillan, a ski resort that has fun off-season activities too. We headed out of el centro at 8:30 for an hour and fifteen minute van ride to a resort, where we were met by an amazing breakfast in the dining room. After breakfast, we headed up the hill behind the resort for a hike in the beautiful landscape. It was invigorating to get out and climb after gorging ourselves on eggs, cheese, ham, cereal, yogurt, fruit, and (since it is Chile) bread, bread, bread!

A view of the resort area from partway up the hill.

Some trees I liked because they reminded me of Tim Burton movies.

The gringos take a hike!
Steph and I near the top...my cheeks are looking a little rosy!

A view of the top.
I enjoyed the colors of the vegetation and volcanic rock.

A ruined bath house of some sort, shrouded in steam from the geysers.

The gringos made it to the top! From left, Sarah, Steph, me, Stacey, Delaney (our pal and fellow volunteer from Los Angeles who by chance joined us for the day!), Andrew.

This picture is for Mom and Dad, because we had a St. Bernard until I was in kindergarten. This was Carla, our hiking companion. She labored up the hill and looked ready for a nap. I love her!


A look back down the mountain to the ski area and across the cordillera.

After our morning in the hills, we were rewarded with a swim in a pool at the resort, filled with volcanic water that was dark, murky, and vaguely sulfuric. I swam for almost an hour, and as a result I am ashamed to say my arms are sore today.

Happy gringos in the pool!

After our dip in the pool, we again gorged ourselves on an amazing meal: pisco sours, appetizers including ceviche, palm hearts wrapped with meat, salmon fishstickes, cheese and seafood empanadas, an elaborate salad bar (complete with my new love, beets), lomo (I think it is like backstrap steak...) in wine sauce, and a dessert bar, where I indulged in creme brulee and some sort of fruity cake. Yummy!

Appetizers at the fire place.

After lunch, we were feeling a little drowsy but our senses quickly snapped to attention because it was time to zip line! I have never been zip lining before, but it was an amazing experience. We were treated to a series of ten lines across a breathtaking river ravine in the shadow of two snow-covered volcanic peaks. I was pretty nervous the first few times, but after that it got really fun, except that until I learned how to hold my hands right, I kept flipping around backwards. The setup: a guy attached your equipment to the steel cable, and then you sort of run or jump off the side of a cliff or a platform and whiz across the line, so quickly you barely have time to enjoy the view or the height. Then, another guy catches you on the other side and helps you detach from the cable. You walk to the next station, and the whole process starts over. This is how we zig-zagged back and forth across the ravine.

Pumping ourselves up for the first leap.

Learning how to not die and getting nervous.

A view from one of the platforms.


That white speck in the green trees is my helmet!

After our zip line adventure, we got to go back in the pool, and then enjoyed onces back in the lodge. I sat outside on the porch with Carla and looked at the stars.

Steph is tired after our long day!

Some days, I am still surprised that I live in Chile. I can't believe how lucky I am to be doing the things I am doing and seeing all these wonders. I feel like more and more every day, Chile becomes a part of me. Everything is changing.

Let's Learn English! (underwater, if necessary)

At the risk of sounding unoriginal, I must write another post about my current frustrations at work. However, part two of this story starts with rain. A whole lot of rain. To put this in perspective, I have lived my entire life until March 10, 2008 in Western Washington, and I have never seen this much rain or water in my life.

My first altercation with rain in Chile came on Saturday. I was in nearby Concepcion with Steph and Sarah. We had stayed the night and were having some sort of volunteer hangout day with some other WT volunteers in a different program. Our director had planned an outing to see this warship that was captured during the war with Peru. I was actually kind of excited about visiting the boat, especially when I discovered we could board it and would be supervised by (in my mind) beautiful Chilean navy men. Unfortunately, the weather interfered.

Before I left for Chile, all I heard about Chillan was that it rains a lot here, so imagine my shock when I had passed almost two months here and only seen rain twice. However, Friday night it started raining. Hard. The kind of rain that makes you wonder how flimsy clouds that float in our atmosphere can hold that much water. It didn't really stop all day. We could not board the boat because of the inclement weather, and had to forlornly look at it (and my navy boyfriends) from the shore as the rain and wind pounded us. By the time we were on a bus back to the city, I was soaked and my hair was doing that irritating curly thing that always happens when it is exposed to moisture and that without fail makes me look idiotic. There is no worse feeling than wet feet, mangled hair, and cold puddle water creeping up your jeans. We managed to make the best of it, though, stopping at the mall, consuming hamburgers and ice cream and passing the afternoon bowling and shopping for some essentials that are more difficult to come by in Chillan. I really liked the other volunteers we met, btw; they seemed really down-to-earth and interesting. But by the end of the afternoon, I had had enough of being out and about, wet and dirty...and I was in one of my cranky moods, just wanting to go home and relax.

So Steph and I left and were walking to a bus near our hostel when I was assaulted by rainwater for a second time that day. A damned SUV drove past us a little too close to the overflowing gutter and I was splashed from head to waist with gutter water. Boo! I thought that only happened in the movies! So, on top of being cranky, I was wet and cold for our transit time of 1.25 hours back to Chillan. I have never been so happy to see my family around the table with tea and a fire blazing in the stove.

Even though I was not thrilled to have passed most of Saturday in a soggy state, it wasn't really that big of a deal. However, it continued to rain. All weekend. Consistently dumping thick, heavy raindrops on my little town. It quieted once or twice on Sunday, but for only half an hour or so. I didn't leave the house on Sunday, but spent the day curled up with Anna Karenina and my guidebooks, planning my next escape. It was actually quite pleasant to nap to the sound of heavy rain pelting our roof and drink tea while staring out the window into the greyness. A couple of times, I even felt like I was back at home.

Then, I got up this morning and headed to work. I walked one block uneventfully, until I came to the corner and realized there was no way to cross it. The streets had transformed into small rivers, with several feet of water filling the clogged gutters. I ended up walking halfway around the block in the other direction until I found a good crossing. This routine continued for several more blocks, until it became clear that there were no more crossings and I was stranded on the corner of Maipon and 18 de Septiembre. To solve that crisis, I began climbing through the back of pickup trucks parallel parked on the streets to get through the worst of the deep water. However, after nearly 30 minutes in the streets and a few late-game, poorly timed leaps for the curbs, I was soaked. I arrived at school just in time for the announcement that classes had been cancelled. Wonderful. I was not nearly so artful on my walk home, and slogged calf-deep simply to get home as soon as possible.

I was surprised to find classes cancelled on account of the rain, and I was a little disappointed because I had worked really hard on some lesson plans I was excited to try out...but let's be honest, I was not thrilled by the idea of teaching classes all day in chilly, wet conditions. I guess some days like this, students and some teachers just don't show up, so if classes weren't formally cancelled, as happened at my site, they were cancelled de facto, as they were at Steph's school. Anyway, we were told to wait "ten minutes" for a call from the Ministry to see if classes would be cancelled tomorrow as well. Having extensive experience with a Chilean ten minutes, I told Ruby I would call her for information and headed home. Upon arrival, I saw I had missed nine calls and a text message from my coteacher, who was irritated that I had left because she wanted to plan classes together. I rejoiced that I had missed out on our planning time, as it usually involves her demanding my input on her lesson plans. Generally, after an hour together, her plans are complete and I am no closer to completing mine than having a rough idea of topics or themes. I have explained several times that it is her responsibility to plan her lessons and then our "planning time" is really more of a time for her to communicate her plan to me so I know what to build my lessons from. However, every week I end up watching her plan and puzzle through the intricacies, which wouldn't necessarily be so awful if she treated me respectfully, which she doesn't, so it is painful.

However, when God decided to answer drought-ridden Region Eight's prayers with some heavy precipitation, He also decided to deliver me from my current suffering. I found out last Friday that at the end of August, my coteacher is being sent to China for a year to teach Spanish. I am not totally clear on why or how, but it did come as a bit of a relief to know that I have only three more months to navigate our tenuous relationship. On the other hand, I worry for my program, as it is not clear who will replace her, if my students will remain with their classes or be folded into other classes, and how we will make this transition. Finally, I feel this incident highlights another issue I have been confronting while trying to teach here. Sometimes I feel like there is not a lot of urgency or consideration given to education in general, and my program in particular. It is highly disruptive to the learning of my students to send their teacher to another country and possibly break up my schedule and classes. Again, I feel like I have a lot of creativity, energy, and knowledge to share with my students, but the wildly irratic implementation of my schedule and classes and the general attitude of the administration toward the program makes it almost impossible for my students to really learn English. Sometimes I feel underappreciated; the school has a huge opportunity to use me for the advancement of English education, and they are missing it! Sometimes I wonder, does anyone actually care that I am here to help?

I will tell you one thing they do care about at my school: the fact that I am never present for the 20 minute breaks in the morning and afternoon for tea in the teachers lounge. Would you care to know why I am not present at those times? Usually, I am preparing for my next class, organizing my materials and going over the lesson plan so I know what direction to take my classes in. And yet, the colleagues find it rude that I do not come down for forty minutes a day to bullshit with them. I tried to explain that my cultural viewpoint of work is very different from theirs, and that I am not accustomed to people caring if I have a chat with them or not. Really, what I want to tell the teachers is that I am here for the students, not my colleagues, and that maybe if some of them used recreo to plan, or perhaps even left recreo on time to go to their classes rather than stay chatting for ten minutes after the bell, the integrity of Chile's educational system would increase exponentially. Of course, every time I feel a snotty and superior attitude creep into my outlook, I try to check myself, make sure my feelings are obscured so as not to offend my colleagues, and in general reflect: is my attitude proper and justified or if I am thinking about things too much from my viewpoint as an American? It is very hard to tell. I never want to be pompous or condescending. All I want is to help students learn and work hard, but I feel like so many things prevent me from fulfilling these goals, such as teachers wanting me to be more social. In general, Chile is a very social culture, way more than I am used to. I like to come home from work at the end of the day in America and not talk to anyone for an hour while I unwind. This is never a possibility for me here, as usually I get home and there are at least one or two guests over. Our late onces can last several hours, and my weekends are spent around the table with family and friends, talking or listening to conversations. This is way more socializing than I am used to, and I feel like I am trying really hard to participate, even when I am not in the mood. However, I feel sort of protective over my recreo time...I cannot assimilate totally! I will not give in! But am I wrong? I don't know. I am definitely missing the opportunity to bond with colleagues, but to be honest, that is just not all that important to me.

My final near temper-tantrum of the day happened right before lunch. I was in my jamies, in bed reading, and my phone rang. It was Steph, informing me that our supervisor had called everyone to let them know we were expected at a city-wide monthly English teachers' meeting at 3 p.m. this afternoon, where we would be expected to give a presentation. I thought my heart was going to explode, Chaiten-style, in my chest, I was so pissed. This sort of last-minute requirement is typical here, especially from our Ministry supervisor. In addition, I cannot stand that no one would consider to give us advance warning to prepare a presentation that I would be expected to give. I comforted myself with the thought that if they weren't going to warn us, they couldn't have very high expectations, but I can't help but see things for their potential and thus am disappointed when they turn out differently than I know they could be. I had failed to be informed of the meeting since our phone line was down at school, and was raging that I had been informed by Steph and was thus expected to go. Thanks a lot Steph! Anyway, I hit the meeting, and the damn thing lasted for three hours! It would be one thing if it was useful for our purposes, but it is more tailored for the regular English teachers, and thus I spent the time shivering (since I had again been soaked on the walk to the meeting) and pissing and moaning inwardly. My only reflection at this point is that it is so hard for me to be patient with the administration here. I keep reminding myself I need to learn to be patient at some point in my life and it might as well be now in Chile, but I don't really know how to relax when I am feeling tense and impatient. It´s a mystery.

Oh. And classes were cancelled tomorrow. We have a holiday on Wednesday to commemorate the Battle of Iquique, which was decisive in winning Chile all that lucrative mining land in the north. So, here's to another week of "teaching." If my kids learn anything from me, it will be a miracle.

"Maravillosa!"

I met a very interesting boy this past weekend. He spoke some English and studies economics and we talked about the price index. I like him. He is also very interested in the United States, and spent the evening asking me all sorts of questions about the United States, the ubiquitous "What do you think of Bush?" The question that got me very animated, however, was when he asked me how I like all the Chilean men making comments and whistling at me in the streets.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, initially the attention bothered me a lot. Andrew told me to get over it, that I should never be annoyed by people being curious about me. I have grown accustomed to the stares and comments, but it is impossible for me to curb my initial repulsion when some man comments on my physical appearance.

This is how I explained it to the boy: Regardless of the fact that I am in Chile and that I understand that in Chile, whistles and comments are not meant to be degrading, I am still an American, and such actions in America are not appreciated. I have been raised to believe that my mind should be valued over my body, and any feedback I receive to the contrary initially irritates me.

However, the creativity of the men here astonishes me at times! It has become quite enjoyable to walk down the streets and discover new ways for men to regale me! The best is when it happens on a day I feel like a trainwreck. This afternoon, for instance; I was flying down the street on my way back to school for my afternoon debate meeting, my hair was some sort of nest from an afternoon siesta, and I was frowning into the sun when a man passed me on a bicycle and yelled, "Maravillosa!" As always, it crossed my mind that I was annoyed, but I can´t lie, my step had a little spring to it after the encounter. I generally try to avoid throngs of high school boys because their immaturity and unbridled sexual energy is a recipe for disaster, but one particular group was rewarded with the sight of me cracking up when one of it´s members called out, "You look GREAT....for me!" At least, if nothing else, English training in Chile has given young men a way to hit on Americans! My favorite encounter thus far, however, took place a week ago while I was coming home from the bank with my host mom. We were walking toward the house when I met the gaze of an astoundingly attractive older man pushing a cart loaded with who knows what. I was so startled that I smiled at him, and he tipped his hat to me and said "Good morning, my queen," in Spanish. I liked the hat tip. Pure class.

It never fails to cross my mind, though, what are they really appreciating? Am I really beautiful in their eyes, or is it just because I am a gringa? What is the relationship between beauty and North Americaness? Am I a gringa, am I beautiful, or am I a beautiful gringa? Can you separate the two in Chile?

Another Monday of me getting nothing done.

Well, now seems like as good a day as any for me to reveal the realities of teaching in Chile. I am having a very hard time at my site, and each day at least one thing happens that nearly sets off my temper. It has been a really good exercise in self-control. As my friend Andrew said to me the other day, it feels like every moment of this nine month experience is one giant lesson. I now understand what my program directors meant when they told me to have low goals.

Today was Dia de los Alumnos at my school. I asked everyone I came across what we were celebrating, and I am still not sure what the point of it was. All I know is that all my classes were cancelled, the students were running around outside making a lot of noise and jumping around, and all the teachers were either watching the madness or hanging out in the teachers' lounge. I was really disappointed because, after much work on my part, I finally got my coteacher to grant me a regular schedule, and was supposed to work with one of my favorite classes this morning. Also, tomorrow our WT assistant field director is coming to visit my classroom and observe my teaching, and I am highly irritated because one month in to my assignment, I haven´t done much teaching.

As mentioned previously, I almost had a serious fit last week, and it was due to the conflicts I have been having with my coteacher. One reason it has taken me so long to sort it all out is that I didn´t know at first if the trouble I was having was due to cultural differences, or personal differences. I have since decided that the differences are personal, and have become much more direct in my manner and tone. While this has led to me getting more classroom time with my students, I still feel like I have to battle every day to get to the bare minimum of what I am supposed to be doing here, and even then, quite often something like Dia de los Alumnos comes along, and I am again feeling like my time has been wasted.

One thing that has been really difficult for me is adjusting to different approaches to time and scheduling in Chile. As an American, I am very accustomed to things running smoothly, appointments being kept, there being a reliable school calendar with vacations clearly identified. One day at school I was standing around waiting for a meeting to start. I asked someone when it was going to start, and they told me "soon." About an hour later, the meeting actually started, and in that hour I grew more and more impatient. Today, I was working with my teacher on lesson planning, and she thought nothing of getting up in the middle of our meeting and disappearing for fifteen minutes to make copies, even though we were only halfway through our planning. I always feel like my time is being wasted here, and it has been really hard for me to adjust my thinking and turn the wasted time into something productive. I always have a book with me now, and as a result I have read some fine novels in the past month...almost double the books I read last year in the US alone! I also try to use all the extra time I have to chat with coworkers and practice Spanish, or to hang out with Ruby, the Chinese teacher at my school who miraculously speaks English! However, these moments do very little in the long run to ward off my inward eyerolls when someone has not informed me that classes are cancelled, or we have a day off, or me coming all the way back to school after lunch for a debate team meeting that only two students show up to.

I have turned into someone who lives for the weekends, more than I ever lived for the weekends in the United States. I have never been so unhappy and so unproducitve in a job before in my life, and the thing that irritates me the most is that I feel like I could be doing so much more, that I have so much to give and share with the students, and I am rarely given the opportunity. And the thing is, when we are actually working together, it is amazing what gets accomplished! Last week my youngest students did skits, in English, about bad classroom behavior, and it went really well. I gave the same assignment to my fourth-year students, a class of unmotivated, sarcastic, and rude girls (with a few brilliant exceptions), and they couldn´t handle it. They did nothing in their groups, even when I walked around and tried to work with them, they would just stare at me with blank eyes. I have no idea how to motivate them to learn English. Pucha!

Our program directors tried to warn us about this in a speech they gave us about having low goals. Low goals is the antithesis of how I like to live my life, so at the time I just brushed it off, like, yeah, well, we´ll just see about that! However, I now realize it is about being realistic about what you can accomplish within the system you are working in. While I would love to be a grand revolutionary, reform the way students work and are taught in my classes, and have brilliant and fluent students at the end of my time here, that is not a possibility. I am just beginning to learn the intricacies of how things work here anyway, and it is not my place to come here and say, "The American way is better, you need to learn how to keep to appointments and schedules, you need to hold the students accountable!" Because while from my perspective that is what needs to happen, who am I to say that to anyone? I am a guest here and came to learn, so I just need to find a way to do what I can with what I have. Like I said, every day is a battle.

The thing about all this teaching business, though, is that in the big scheme of my life here in Chile, it is really quite small. I dislike my job and going to work every day, but I love my life here. Mama Emma put it in perspective for me last Tuesday at onces; she reminded me that I am here for three reasons, number one to learn about Chile and the culture, number two to learn Spanish, and number three, to teach English. She told me that if one part of three is not going so well, to focus on the other parts and realize that I am doing good things even if things aren´t going well in my classroom. I really needed that reminder.

The other day, I realized that I can´t have it all. I am used to being able to fix my problems and have control over situations, and that is not possible for me here. I have an amazing family and social life here, and really, it just feels greedy to expect that my professional life be amazing too. While it may sound defeatist to say that, and I would bet most Americans reading this blog would protest at the nature of this attitude, or say that´s not the Tiffany they know...trust me when I say it is the attitude I must adopt to avoid completely losing my cool every day at work. Low goals. It sounds like a contradiction, but right now, I am clinging to the idea.

Volcanos are cool!

Chillan is not very close to Volcan Chaiten, we are too far away to even see anything exciting and we have not been affected by the ash; however, it has been pretty cool to watch the coverage on the news!

Below is a link to a news article about the eruption; I must give a shout-out to my program director for emailing us the link!

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-chile-volcano.html?ex=1210737600&en=d377357ba368f0bc&ei=5070&emc=eta1

In related news, there was almost another eruption in Chile yesterday--an eruption of my temper. More on that later.

The highlight of my day:

La Serena

My first four-day weekend in Chile commenced early on Thursday morning...I met up with the crew at Escuela Mexico at 6 am and we began the 12-hour ride! Oh, and to give you an image, there were 11 of us in the van. Three gringas (Steph, Sarah, me), five Chilean teachers ranging in age but all at least 13 years older than us, and two spouses. Our one saving grace was Julio, the 26-year-old nephew of one of the teachers. It was nice to have another young person around. I thought we would never get to La Serena, and we made about a million pit stops. Please note, Chilean rest stops are amazing! The bathrooms are fully stocked and clean, and they mostly all have little cabanas for picnicing. Very cute!

Here is a picture of a cactus outside a rest stop on the way to La Serena. Like the novelty of palmtrees, cacti never fail to entertain me. You can kind of get a sense of the scenery of most of our drive from this picture...dry hills littered with cacti. Some of them were blooming and had clumps of little red flowers!


After we finally arrived in La Serena, we got settled and went out in search of food, which proved challenging due to the size of our group and the fact that it was Labor Day, and on holidays in Chile everything prettymuch shuts down. I had started to have a scratcy throat at about noon, so by the time we decided to eat dinner all I wanted was soup, so I hit up a Chinese restaurant. The next day, we were up early to drive up the Elqui Valley, which La Serena sits in the mouth of. The Elqui Valley is known for its vineyards, and the drive up was beautiful. It kind of reminded me of the Yakima Valley in Eastern Washington, with the dry dusty hills and the rich cropland. Some of the leaves were changing on the grape vines, so some fields would be green and others bright red. The contrast was lovely. No pictures, unfortunately, as we were on the move! Farther up the valley, a dam created a huge reservoir and the contrast between the deep blue water (littered with wind-surfers) and the brown, cactus-filled hills was also breathtaking.

Our destination was Vicuna, a cute little touristy town of adobe houses, also known as the birthplace of the renouned Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral, the first Chilean to receive the Nobel Prize. We wandered around the artisan booths in the plaza and found amazing jewelry, dried fruit, and other cool stuff.

This is the main church on the Plaza. I love how all the buildings are painted in such bold colors in Chile!


A carving in a gnarled tree in the Plaza de Armas.


Perhaps the highlight of the day was that we decided to go the the Gabriela Mistral museum, which was pretty cool but not very meaningful to me as I have yet to read any of her work. Standing outside the ticket booth we ran into our friend Todd, another ministry volunteer that lives in between Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, four hours south of La Serena! He was on his own, touring the Elqui Valley, so we ended up spending a good part of the day with him.

Todd and me at lunch...please note he is wearting his let´s learn english shirt!


Todd, Steph, me and Sarah at lunch.


After lunch we wandered around town some more, and then went to a nearby pisco distillery. If I haven't mentioned this yet, pisco is a grape brandy that is wildly popular here. The ubiquitous pisco sour is a delicious concoction of pisco, lemon juice, and egg white. People also drink piscolas, which is pisco and cola. Anyway, we toured the plant, and it was in Spanish, but even with little understanding of what was being said, the tour was a little lame...or as we say in Chile, que fome! (how boring!) Basically, they just want you to spend money. Boo.

A view up the valley from the pisco distillery.


Piles of grapes that we watched being shoveled out of dump trucks onto the conveyor belt to be destemmed.


A toast with the complimentary swallow of pisco we were given!


The only major letdown of Vicuna was that the tours to the observatory were full. At first, I was devastated because I had my heart set on looking into the sky through telescopes, but as the weekend wore on, I realized I would have to come back to La Serena anyway, so I think I will have another opportunity for star gazing.

The next day, the adults of our group wanted to go to Coquimbo, a nearby city, but we were feeling in need of some alone time and wanted a chance to poke around La Serena, and our day turned out to be super! It all started at Cafe Continental, with some crepes filled with papaya (Northern Chile is known for its papaya!) and REAL COFFEE!!!! The Continental is far too classy for nescafe!

Me with my REAL COFFEE!!!


La Serena is the most beautiful city I have visited in Chile. It is right on the beach, and the architecture is very colonial, so the city has a very European vibe. It was really fun to just wander the streets and soak in the beauty of the architecture, which we did after meeting up with Todd after breakfast.

A view down the street looking toward the Plaza de Armas.


Another view of the pretty city as we walked to the market.


La Serena had a really cute market with really friendly artisans, and we spent a good part of the afternoon poking around. I bought some dulces to take home to my family, and some papaya marmelade to give to my mama for Dia de la Mama on Sunday! She loves marmelade!

Then, we walked about two miles out to the beach, and on the way there was another funny coincidence. We ran into a gringa and stopped to chat, and she ended up being with another WorldTeach program--the one that works with adults. She lives in Valparaiso, and it just cracked me up that we are in a huge country like Chile and had run into two people we were somehow connected to!

Sarah and Steph on the beach.


We spent a couple hours watching surfers, wading, and watching the sea birds dive into the water. Pretty relaxing...just what I needed to unwind from the stress of navigating the education system of a foreign country!

Oh, and because stray dogs are as much a part of my Chilean experience as chileanismos and besitos, I must share the following annecdote with you!

About a mile and a half from the beach, this stray dog ran over with a huge grin on his face, did a somersault on the grass, and promptly followed us all the way to the beach. When we realized he wasn´t going to leave us alone, we named him Max. Max plopped down in the sand next to me, and for the next two hours, any time another dog or person would come near, he would growl or stand up and bark at them. I felt really bad that I didn´t have any food to give him! At the end of our lounging, Max followed us until we got in a taxi. I have to admit, I was pretty devastated to say goodbye to him, and I really wanted to snuggle with him on the beach, although I know better. What a good dog! He was so cool!

Max, you will be missed.


That night for dinner, we ate sea bass and drank white wine on a balcony overlooking part of the city. We were on an American eating schedule that night (6 p.m.), so the place was deserted! After dinner, we packed up our stuff and that night I went out for a beer with Sarah and Julio. My Spanish is getting decent, and we were able to talk about things like the challenges of education in Chile and America, stereotypes of Chileans, engineering, all sorts of things! It was pretty fun, and Julio lives nearby to us in Concepcion, so one weekend soon we are going to go visit. He also wants to take us camping in the spring--after making sure we are hard core enough to live without bathrooms and running water, which I am (in small doses).

All in all, I really enjoyed my weekend, but it also proved to be a giant test of my patience in some ways. One thing about Chile that has been really difficult for me is having to adjust to not being in control or planning everything in advance. I like to know plans or what is going to happen, and many Chileans I have encountered have a way of not telling you pertinent information like where we are going or what time we are going to eat until five minutes before they want to leave. This frustrates my very American sensibility of wanting to know what the entire weekend is going to look like before it is even close. On our vacation, Ruth, Steph's coteacher, would tell us the night before that the next day we were going to Coquimbo, for example. Traveling with the adults at times was a very vexing problem. The lack of planning also backfired when we couldn´t get to the observatory. Also, it was very hard to travel with a large group and not be in charge of my own destiny. However, there are several things I got the opportunity to do that I would not have done on my own, like visiting the Elqui Valley, so everything has its tradeoff.

Another irritation was this man that traveled with us. He was trying to be funny, I think, so prettymuch the only thing he would say to us was, "Nice to meet you!" in English! This was cute like two times, but after that it got really annoying. I think he was just trying to be nice and say something in English to connect to our culture, but seriously, this went on all weekend and the day we got up at 5 a.m. to leave and I heard him say it to Steph out in the hallway, I nearly exploded. But, on the car ride home he got sick and threw up, so I will call that karma!

Julio asked me this weekend which place is better, America or Chile. This is an obviously loaded question, and one that has been posited by other Chileans as well. While it is clearly impossible to answer, I really enjoy thinking about it, because the thing is, neither place is better or worse. You can compare them, but to make judgements is far too simplistic, because in many ways they are so different that it feels unfair to have a preference. Honestly, if all my friends and family were here with me, I would be able to adjust to live here for the rest of my life. Steph and I were talking about how normal it feels here sometimes, even things that seem strange like not flushing your toilet paper or having to light the hot water heater before you shower. It has not been so difficult to adjust to many of the daily routines. There are many things about Chilean culture that I really like and wish I could bring home with me. For example, I love how physically affectionate this culture is. It is completely normal to see two girl friends holding hands. I love getting kisses and hugs from strangers when I meet them. Zuni asked me if I was cold the other day, and in response I nuzzled her with my ice cold nose...I love that! I love holding hands with my host brother, having students kiss my cheek, having mama Emma snuggle into my arm when she tells me a joke on the street. I love touching my friends and family, and I wish Americans were more comfortable with the simple act of touch. I am trying to just soak it up here, because I will miss it a lot when I leave. On the other hand, I love love LOVE the institutional efficiency of America. At a meeting last week, our Ministry rep told us our stipends would be ready at the bank on Wednesday, and after waiting in line for an hour at the bank, I was informed they were not there yet. The bank is difficult here, because it is only open from 9-2, and it is normal to spend two hours waiting in line there. Thus, there are beautiful aspects to both places.

My last thought of the day is that I have slowly but surely formed some friendships with my family here. Zuni and I sit around with tea and talk about simple things like fruit, or the weather. Felipe and I have become pals. Last Wednesday we stayed up until midnight looking at pictures from when he was a kid. Last weekend we went dancing with our cousin Nacho and danced a lot and I was right--reggaeton is way more fun when you have partners to dance with! And now, with Julio, we have another pal willing to show us around Chile and entertain us! It feels really good, and, as someone who lived with her brother for two years and was used to a house full of boys, I am really grateful to know some boys in this town. I was starting to miss their companionship. At the end of the day, however, I really do just want to talk to my friends and family back home. All of this is not the same without the people I love to share it with. My phone calls with Daddy and Mommy never last long enough. My emails from my brother crack me up, but they are always bittersweet because we are not hanging out face to face, quoting Seinfeld, or laughing together. Every moment I enjoy, I am constantly thinking about how to describe it to people back home, how to make my experience real to them, which it never fully will be because they are not here. It is really painful to be doing something like this and know that the people you love will never fully know what it is like for you in this moment. My life here is beautiful, and I want to share it with my favoite people. I want them to feel what I feel, see what I see, and above all, be here with me.