In Arica and almost done with my ISP!!

          Now that I've been back in Arica for almost a week, I'm getting close to finishing my ISP! It's so much work and I'm spending basically all day every day on it, aside from all the fun distractions that have been going on. At this point I have written 15 pages in Spanish and all I have left is my conclusion and discussion sections, and a powerpoint presentation! It's going really slowly, but it will all be over in a few days! I'm presenting mine on the 3rd, and after that I'll be so relieved.  =)
          There have been some awesome distractions since I've been here, including catching up with a couple friends, visiting the produce market, going on runs, and a family wedding! The wedding was so much fun-- the service was beautiful and the party was basically just all dancing, all night. They have this funny old uncle who kept walking around from table to table, literally just making toasts to every table so people would drink more. And my host dad has these cousins from Bolivia who were visiting, 3 women, who for some reason thought I was so cute and kept bickering over me and making toasts to me from across the room. And basically Chileans are so obsessed with their red wine that it just kept coming. Then the dancing started and it was SO FUN. a) latin music is way better for dancing, and b) Chileans are good dancers, and c) there's none of that "I-don't-dance" business. Like EVERYone danced, even the old little aunts an uncles who left their canes at the table to dance and I really thought they were gonna fall over any second! That was the first time I went out with my parents and it was so fun. We danced forever and stayed till after 4am...good times.
             I taught the relatives how to "party-boy" or "sandwich" someone, and they thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. They started saying "sandwich, sandwich" in their funny little accents, which turned into "churrasco, churrasco" Churrasco is a meat they eat here they they serve in a sandwich a lot. So now it's a huge family joke, whenever anyone says churrasco. 

"Churrasco, Churrasco!"

          

me, my host mom,  Bride and groom, my host dad

The Bolivian cousinsss  =)

bailando!

Chao Imperial, and Back to Arica!

I just got back to Arica last night and other than the 20-page paper I have to write, I am so happy to be back =) I'm staying with the same host family from before for a week until we all meet up for a few days at the hotel to preset our studies and wrap up the semester. They picked me up at the airport last night and gave me dinner and made this feel like coming home--it's really nice to be back in the comfort of Arica after my cold, dirty month in the south. My room was just the way I left it, the sun shined today, and best of all: there's internet in my very own bedroom--it's incredible! Now I just have to get writing--I have no idea how I'm going to write this paper in a week but I know it'll somehow get done!

The last few days in Imperial were really nice, too. My last day at the school the teachers gave a little speech after the class I taught and told me that the students are going to email me to practice their English.  =)

I took a few pics of my house and the town before I left to remember them...

a rural bus stop

The plaza in the center of Imperial

the vegetables they sell in the street

my kitchen!

As I was walking out the door to leave for the airport, my host mom ran out and gave me a pair of her silver Mapuche earrings. They are the traditional mapuche style, and I actually hadn't bought a pair when I was there because I felt like a wanna-be, really touristy buying them. But my Machi mom gave them tome, so I feel really proud and happy to wear them.

The mapuche earrings

Also, this weekend my gringa friends who are doing their ISP's nearby came to Imperial to visit my family's second house, which is in el campo, the rural outskirts of Imperial. We cooked lentils and chicken over the fire, rode horses, and hung out in the ruka (Mapuche house) there pretty much all day.  It was a good timeeee

My family's house and ruka in el campo

Anneliese and Monica in the ruka

English Classes at the Liceo

Liceo Luis González Vásquez

Teaching at the high school here in imperial might be my favorite thing I’ve done this semester in Chile. Everything about it is so great—It starts with the minute I walk in the door and the secretaries give me a besito (little kiss on the cheek) and offer to show me to the classroom. Then come the kids. They all wait outside the classroom until the teacher gets there at the start of class. The other day I got there early and was waiting with them in the hall and they started crowding around me and literally were all giving me besitos, one by one. And they were all like, “Are you gonna be our teacher today? Is the teacher not coming in?!” 

The teaching is really easy and so much fun. Pronunciation is the hardest part of the language for them, so I explained the “silent e” rule—like how to pronounce bit and bite, mat and mate, etc. I tried to explain how “th” sounds different in “throw” and “they”.  They all try to repeat the words I say, and it’s so funny when they just end up making random sounds and sounding like a bunch of farm animals. And it’s really funny when I try to get them to say my name; that's pretty much impossible for them. 

The classes are huge, over 40 kids, and there are always kids who aren’t paying attention or talking when I’m talking, but there are a few kids in every class who are so interested and it’s so precious. The other day I was giving a powerpoint presentation about the United States and this one girl kept stretching her long neck and moving when the kid in front of her moved so she could see me the whole time. And there’s this boy who sits up front but doesn’t talk at all in class. And after class one day he came up to me but didn’t really know if he should talk to me in English or Spanish, or what to say, and it was so cute. He kinda just stood there and wouldn’t talk until I started a little conversation with him, and eventually he was like, “do you have facebook? Can I friend you?” And there’s this boy who’s deaf and doesn’t understand anything I say but always has the biggest smile on his face. And this girl the other day was using her phone to take a picture of me during class and got really embarrassed when I saw her, but I told her it was okay. They are so precious!

And the teachers are so sweet too! (Just like everyone here in Imperial). In between classes the teachers meet up in the teachers lounge and always invite me to come have coffee with them. They all sit around tables to talk and laugh for a few minutes before the next class. And one of the English teachers had me over to her house to plan a lesson together. They are so nice I can’t even explain it.

Weekend in Pucón: Horses and Volcanoes

My friend Machi and I went on a fun little adventure this weekend! She also lives outside of Temuco, so we met up in the city on Friday to take a bus to Pucón, a tourist town a couple hours southeast of Temuco. We got there late Friday night, and the hostel that we really wanted to stay at was full, so we just found a random cheap hostel nearby and crashed. But the good hostel told us we could check in Saturday morning and stay Saturday night.

Saturday we shopped around the town a bit and walked by the lake. We got a nice view of the Villarica Volcano, or Volcán Villarica. Then we went horseback riding! This guy Matías who lives way out in the countryside has a horse farm and just organizes day and overnight trips on horseback in the area for tourists. There were 2 guides and 4 other people in our group, and we went on a beautiful and exciting route. First we went down some dirt roads, then into a Mapuche community with little houses, gardens, and fields with farm animals. Then it opened up into this beautiful grassy plain below the mountains. We crossed a river on horseback, which was probably the most fun part! After a snack by the river, we went through these tiny little paths in the woods up to another river, the bigger one in the area with currents. The rest of the ride was along the river and then return back down the dirt road to the horseowner’s house. The whole trip was about 4 hours and very tiring, but SO worth it! It was the most beautiful and interesting horseback riding I’ve ever done.  After horseback riding, Machi and I went on a romantic dinner date and ate way too much fettuccini alfredo and sopaipillas (sopaipillas are like little fried dough in the shape of a donut that they eat as rolls, or with mustard, or with coffee..deliciosas)

Sunday we woke up at 6:30 to start our Trekking up Volcán Villarica, the huge active volcano you can see from near and far in the Araucanía region of Chile. La Araucanía is one of the most volcanically-active parts of the world, with over 60 volcanoes just in this region. 2 Dutch girls from our hostal, Machi and I headed to the national park after we were fitted for boots, jackets, pants and mittens, and stuffing the huge backpacks they gave us. We took a ski lift to cut out an hour of trekking and then starting off to the summit! They gave us a quick lesson on how to use our ice pick and we were off! The first part was mostly loose volcanic gravel. It was really hard to climb. Then we reached the snow. They gave us these spikes for our boots and started putting on layers. The ice was so steep, and even though we were walking so slowly, I literally thought I was going to have a heart attack or something. It was like the stairmaster times six-thousand. Our guides kept pointing to a spot a little bit ahead and telling us we would have a break once we got there. But a spot that looked just a little bit further up took foreverrr to get to. Once we started getting closer to the top of the volcano it got even steeper and windier and I thought for sure I was going to fall over. (that would not be a good thing because it’s so steep and slippery I would literally just slide down the mountainside a few thousand feet.) I’m not scared of heights but when I turned around to take a look at the view I was pretty scared. But anyway, we finallyyyy made it to the top and could actually look down into the middle of the volcano! All we could really see was the smoke coming up, and we couldn’t look for too long because it was practically impossible to breathe with all the toxic smoke. But it was awesome to have climbed all that way and be looking into the crater of an active volcano! I was afraid that my camera was going to freeze, but we took a bunch of pictures real quick to document the achievement  =)  On the way down they gave us these funny black diaper-looking things so we could slide down on our butts and on these little plastic sled-things. It made the way down a little faster and a LOT more enjoyable. I was actually more terrified of the sledding than anything else, because it’s so steep that it’s hard to stop yourself. But once we got going it was so much fun! The whole day was one of those things that is so fun because it’s dangerous enough to scare you but safe enough that you know you’ll be fine. Once we got to the bottom we were so tired our legs were shaking and I felt like I was going to fall over any second. Crazy. They gave us beer when we got back and then I bought lots of ice cream.  =) We were so tired and really sore the next day, but it was SO worth it!