8:19 PM
Hi! Reasons I have not written an update in a while:
1) I have been spending a lot of my free time talking with my host family (good reason)
2) I was traveling without internet (good reason)
3) Facebook (bad reason)
4) Google+ (bad reason)
5) Couldn’t think of anything to write about (well, that’s an okay reason)
6) Lesson planning (good reason)
7) Babysitting (good reason, although I would rather have been writing a blog than taking care of that monster child, and for no pay too)
I could probably come up with a couple more, but I guess I’ll stop thinking of excuses and just write something.
This past weekend I went to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, which are both located around an hour and a half outside of Santiago. Valparaiso was very pretty, with houses everywhere on the hills surrounding the city. To get anywhere, you have to take trolleys or walk up stairs or almost-vertical roads (okay, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much). Definitely got some exercise that weekend! Most of us chose to spend the night in Valparaiso, my first hostel experience in Chile. The 20 of us pretty much filled the hostel, and we were horrible guests. We broke a bed within the first five minutes of being there (although that wasn’t our fault, three girls sitting on one bed should not cause the whole thing to collapse – which the owner seemed to think as well, as he clearly didn’t believe me when I explained how it had happened), and our group was generally extremely loud and belligerent the whole time. I was staying in a room with a few of the only non-program people in the hostel, two guys from England and another from Chile. One of the highlights of the trip was Winnie attempting to communicate with the British guys in a British accent – afterwards, they admitted that they didn’t even know she was speaking English :P
While in Valparaiso, I visited Pablo Neruda’s second house in Chile, which I enjoyed more than his house in Santiago. There were audio tours, which Winnie, Rebecca (another girl in the program), and I chose to do in Spanish. That shouldn’t have been a problem whatsoever, except for the fact that they tried to make the audio parts more interesting by adding background noise, music, etc. (I always hated that in AP Spanish in high school) and the people around us were not always quiet enough to allow easy listening in any language. The tour was fun though, and definitely worth the time and sweat it took to get there on foot.
The only other event worth mentioning from the weekend comes from our adventures to Viña del Mar. One of the guys who lives with my host family during the week to work is from Viña and had told me a lot about it. I was expecting a cute little seaside village. It turns out Viña is more of a sprawling tourist resort town. Nice, but definitely not what I was expecting. We heard there were some interesting castles to tour though, so Winnie, Rebecca, and I decided to head for one that we saw on top of a nearby hill. We hiked all the way up (another chore) and found the castle. There weren’t any signs or anything, but the front gate was open, so we headed in. We wandered around the grounds for a little while, taking pictures of the view and the castle, but felt a little uncomfortable about the fact that we hadn’t seen anyone and could possibly be trespassing, until we heard a little voice yell “Hola!” from the top of the tower. We looked up, and there was a little girl in pink, being held up by her dad waving at us. The perfect little princess, calling out from her tower ☺ We yelled up asking if the castle was open to the public and how to get inside, and the man responded by making a hand gesture of a spiral, which we assumed meant we could come on up. We headed around to the side and went in, only to get accosted by a couple of women, asking us who we were and what we were doing. Turns out, we had wandered into a pretty exclusive military hotel, and were definitely not allowed in. The women (employees of the hotel) seemed fairly amused by the encounter, and one of them told us that “You have done a bad thing!!” but with a smile on her face. We got led back out, and I didn’t risk asking to use the bathroom (which I was about to do before we were found), but they were nice enough to comply with my request to please not send us to jail.
Later, I found out that President Piñera’s house is also on that particular hill, presumably close to where we were. I guess it’s good we didn’t wander into his house by mistake? Although that would have made for an even better story.
The week since then has been generally uneventful. I keep gaining more and more students, although the point will quickly be reached where taking on more beginners won’t make much sense. I think my teaching skills are improving, and at the very least, my knowledge of the workings of the English language is improving. This Saturday I reach my half-way mark, and I will be leaving for home a month from tomorrow. I can’t say I’m not excited to travel back to the land of summer and sleeping in, but unfortunately I also don’t think I’ll be able to meet all my Spanish-speaking goals by the time I leave. As I am not sure what my plans are for next summer, I have started to begin contemplating how comfortable I am with leaving here with my Spanish still imperfect. If being bilingual is really an important goal for me (which it has been, up to this point), I will have to make a concerted effort to return to a Spanish-speaking country again in the future, preferably for a longer period of time. I’ve heard that six months is a good number. At this point, I am honestly unsure if I want to make that commitment though – my Spanish is good enough to understand everything I hear (unless there is lots of slang involved or multiple people talking at once) and also say anything that I would want to say, and that’s definitely an achievement in itself. All that I have left to do is increase my ease in speaking and decrease pauses while I search for words or weird tenses – but that will take a while to fix. I’m guessing the issue will take care of itself as I go through the process of determining my thesis topic and later, career, but I figure I should try to figure out my priorities now to have a better idea later on.
For the second year in a row, I spent the fourth of July out of the country. Last year, it was full of enthusiastic singing of patriotic songs while touring Spain in a bus. This year, I didn’t even see an American person all day. My colleagues apologized to me for making me work on such a special day, and joked that they were breaking the law by making me come in, but I didn’t mind – I just missed the food and fireworks. My favorite moment of the day came on the subway on the way to work. I was reading the free daily newspaper, La Hora, which had an article about American citizens in Chile and their traditions for the fourth of July. A line of the article reads: “El restaurante The California Cantina fue el escogido por la embajada de ese país para realizar la Flag Raisin, una ceremonia donde se iza la bandera de ese país…” (bolds added) Reading about our flag “raisin” ceremony made me laugh.
This Friday our activities for the day consist of painting a special education school. I’m super excited, because painting is something I have ALWAYS wanted to do. I will update you on how I end up liking it! Then I am going to synagogue with my host family, a first for me as well. My host dad told me today that he would really like me to convert to Judaism. I told him that he can try to convert me all he wants… but that I am extremely doubtful that he will succeed. But at any rate, I am looking forward to seeing what synagogue is like.
Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their summers. I know it’s a little too hot in some places, but appreciate the warmth, and send some to me if you can!
Brianna
a look up one of Valparaiso's slanted streets
our "castle"
as promised, a picture of a school "en toma" - President Piñera made some concessions to the movement yesterday, but it doesn't look like it will be enough to stop the protests
a view of the office where I work :)
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