[01 Sep 2008|09:33pm] Well... I'm back in the rainy UK! I arrived safe and sound at around 6pm on Wednesday 20th August... since then I've spent a weekend camping near London and and a week in Scotland, including a 3 day debriefing course on the Isle of Coll with Project Trust. Life's just the same in England and I'm busily looking for a job after deciding to defer my uni placement by another year, to September 2009. Thank you EVERYONE who has helped me for giving me the opportunity to have an AMAZING year. Its been such an experience that I find it impossible to believe that I was actually ever worried about going! Now I'm back, I promise I'll fill you all in on what I've been doing for the last few months as I know my updates became rare...! post comment

10th January - 20th January [13 Jun 2008|11:51am]   Being the “optimists” that we are, we just assumed that there would be cash machines in the bus station considering its quite a major one… wrong! So we jumped into a tax and asked the driver to take us to the nearest cash machine and off we went. Cash found, we headed to a hostel in the guidebook, only to find that it was full. We headed to another to find the same. With us panicking slightly, the taxi driver (who was friendly but slightly too flirty) took us to a hostel called “Las Moiras” which had 2 beds available, although they were in separate rooms which was pretty scary… especially as my room was full of Argentineans and Brazilians who didn’t speak any English. But we were just thankful to have found a hostel – it hadn’t even occurred to us to have to book beforehand.    We headed out to find some food and ended up eating in a pretty expensive burger place which wasn’t all that nice either. By that point the cold / flu that I’d picked up from Jo in Castro (we left them in Castro for them to go elsewhere in Chile) was running at full force and I felt totally rubbish so when we headed back to the hostel after eating and the women in my room asked if I wanted to go out dancing with them, I obviously had to refuse!   We didn’t really do much of interest in Bariloche as the place was just full of rich American and Argentinean tourists and everything that we wanted to do was really expensive. We almost booked a horse trek but changed our minds at the last minute. I suppose Bariloche ended up as being a kind of stop gap and place to sleep between Chile and Buenos Aires (we had to be there by the 15th to meet Catriona’s cousins). On our first day there we booked a bus (TWENTY HOURS) to Buenos Aires which would leave late afternoon on the Sunday (we arrived on a Thursday). It would also be our first experience of an over night bus and to be honest, it wasn’t too bad. I basically slept as much as I would on a normal day, and we were also served with drinks and a 3-course hot meal of meal and mashed potato, with flan and something else than I don’t remember… possibly rice. Although the movies weren’t all that great – the Tenacious D movie twice, followed by “The Last Days of Sophie Scholl”… its German movie but they put the Spanish audio on, so I asked if they could put the English subtitles on but some annoying Argentinians whinged until they put the Spanish ones on… greedy or what! The scenery is amazing on the bus route from Bariloche to Buenos Aires – the landscape is so immensely barren in places… it’s hard to accept how BIG the emptiness looks when you’ve lived in a country as jam-packed as England your entire life. And even when it got too dark to see anything, an immense lightning storm started… its pretty scary and slightly surreal to be in a metal and glass box in the middle of absolute nowhere, and be surrounded by thunder, lightning and all sorts…   We arrived an hour late, to find out that Buenos Aires is also an hour ahead, which meant that “we’ll meet you at 12” was a tiny bit out to meet Catriona’s cousins. We also hadn’t counted on the bus station being SO big (it has boarding slots for 75 buses and has 3 floors!). Although luckily, after only walking the bus station twice, we bumped straight into them. Catriona’s cousins are called Rosie and Tom, and Rosie’s boyfriend Pie was also with them – Pie and Rosie had been living in Buenos Aires for 3 months and Tom was over for a few weeks of holiday with them. We jumped in a taxi and headed to the hostel, “Ayres Porteños” which is an amazing hostel in Argentina, and is totally “one of a kind”. The hostel is “themed” with a tango theme and has big sculptures in random places around the place, and a totally funky paint job. Each room is named after something relating to tango like a famous dancer or a famous dancehall or something like that. The staff are really friendly too… all of which probably adds to why I ended up staying at that particular hostel on three separate occasions.   Since Rosie and Pie have been in Buenos Aires for a good few months now, they’ve made quite a few friends and know “the places” to go at night. We headed to a place called the Konex Centre where there was a drumming group which is basically just a group of professional musicians who get together every Monday and just improvise for a few hours. They have a different soloist every week too with a different instrument… we ended up going three different times and there was a guitarist, a flautist and a vocalist. So we met Rosie and Pie’s friends who included a French girl who speaks English and Spanish and has started to forget her French (kind of scary really) and a Uruguayan who goes to clown school in Buenos Aires. After the music finished, we headed over to a restaurant which was about 30 minutes walk away (we got list) and we ate our first “real” Argentinian steak. Rosie, Pie and Tom shared a parilla which was a HUGE pile of every part of a cow that you can imagine… and I mean EVERY PART. Catriona stuck to a simple steak with pepper, and me to a THING which included a really sweet sauce, beef, breadcrumbs, chips, bacon, cheese, peas and sweetcorn… but it was delicious all the same. The food was amazing, and the amount of meat on the parilla was immense. They ordered a “pile” for 2 people between 3, and still the thing looked like they hadn’t touched it, even when they’d battled with it until they were all having meat sweats!   And as if we hadn’t eaten enough, on the way back to the hostel, we passed by a proper Argentinian ice cream parlour… white chocolate ice cream… its amazing, although they make almost every type of flavour imaginable – Tom had beer-flavoured ice cream!   The next morning we hung around the hostel before heading over to an American friend of Rosie and Pie’s to leave all of the big rucksacks there (5 huge rucksacks plus the 5 of us wouldn’t fit in the rental car we were getting) and then headed over to buy supplies for the road trip before walking across Buenos Aires in a freak torrential summer rain storm (the rain actually does follow us) to pick up the car which turned out to be a silver Chevrolet Corsa. In we crushed and off we went, with Tom skilfully navigating the BA rush hour (I did NOT envy him!). We drove until around 9.30pm before looking for accommodation in a few random “one-horse” towns before finally settling on a “straight from a horror movie” motel at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere… sounds grim, but they ended up giving us 2 3-person rooms for 100 Argentinian pesos which is about £16.70 so well… we weren’t complaining! Although I did let Catriona have the double bed due to the fact that it was nearest the window, and therefore she’d be the first one to die if a mad axe murderer broke in.   We set off at 10am the next morning and drove until we reached the hostel in Iguazu at around 8pm. Unfortunately that was just too late to have the huge BBQ they do on Tuesday evenings, although we did get there in time to witness the terrifying Brazilian dancers! The HI Hostel Inn at Iguazu is HUGE and more like a hotel than a hostel (apart from the fact you sleep in bunk beds in rooms with 5 other people…!). So me and Catriona were in one room, and the others in another. Unfortunately, the only beds available were upper bunks (I have actual nightmares getting onto to upper bunks!) but up I crawled! Thankfully on the second day the people below me and Catriona left and so I moved into the bunk below her for the other night that we stayed there.   So the next morning (Thursday 17th January) we got up early for breakfast and piled into the car once again to head over to the Iguazu National Park which was only about 5 or 10 minutes drive away. We spent the day trekking around the park, seeing the waterfalls, the wildlife and generally being amazed by the sheer power that water has. The waterfalls were so immense and terrifying, and there were so many of them! We were stood relatively near to one for about a minute, and when I walked away, I literally looked like I’d been for a shower! We even took a boat trip INTO one of the main falls… although obviously only into the edge, but still enough to soaked beyond imagination. They even give you big waterproof sacks to put your cameras and rucksacks in and tell you when its “safe” to whip the camera out without it getting destroyed! There’s one walkway where you can see part of a destroyed older walkway and there’s a sign saying it was wrecked during a flood a few years ago… imagine if people had been on it at the time! There’s also a plaque in memorial of all of the workers who drowned or were carried away by the water whilst building all of the walk ways which go across the rivers. Its all pretty scary stuff!   After a LONG day of walking around the park we headed back to the hostel to dry off and relax. Tom had been to the Creamfields music festival in Uruguay the week before and ended up bumping into a few Australian girls and English guys that he’d met there, and we also got talking to a Mexican guy called Leo at dinner who stuck with us for the rest of the night. We later found out that Leo was staying in a different hostel but would skip over to eat the free breakfast, and then skip over again to have cheap dinner too…. SNEAKY!   The next day we had to check out of the hostel as we hadn’t managed to get another night there. We drove into town to check out a few hostels there but ended up staying in some cabañas which were literally next door to the hostel so we could still walk across to eat dinner and socialise there. We used the pool there while waiting for our cabaña to be ready before heading back to the National park again to spend the day doing a nature trail which ended up at a waterfall and pool where we bathed for a little while. During the trek back up, close to the end, it started to rain torrentially, and by the time we got up to the paved paths at the top of the trail, we could hardly see where we were going. And so, we took off our flip flops and plodded on through the (warm) rain like true British whilst all of the South Americans cowered under shelters. On reaching the top we also bumped into Leo who’d been to the falls for the day, but had managed to shelter before the rain hit. And so back to the car we headed, and back to the cabaña too. The boys headed over to the hostel to play football while we relaxed and all had showers. As they came back for showers, the three of us went over to the bar at the hostel to have a few drinks. We ate the buffet at the hostel again (less than £3 for all you can eat!) and stayed there for drinks afterwards with Tom’s friends and Leo.   Saturday was “hometime” and so we packed up and checked out of the cabañas and set off in the car towards Tigre which is a suburb of Buenos Aires, although a city in its own right, but obviously that was still a good day and a half’s drive away. And so we set off driving and reached the same horror-movie motel as before. The price wasn’t quite so good as the time before, although I did do a little bartering to get a pretty good price still. This time as well, we headed to find something to eat and ended up in a parrilla restaurant that had only opened a week or two before. The staff were amazingly friendly and gave us free appetisers and all sorts. We definitely ate well that night and lazed around watching bad cable movies before going to sleep. The next day was again a day of driving and we reached Tigre at around 3pm. post comment

[02 Jun 2008|03:21pm]  I feel bad that I quite literally NEVER update my journal anymore but I PROMISE there are more travel and current updates coming up... the problem is that without the internet at home, and without my 4 free afternoons a week (I now have zero after my class count went up from 4 to 9 this year), I never have time to sit down and get writing. The free time I do have involves me flopping down somewhere and falling asleep! But all is well in Chile, although its getting EXTREMELY cold here... oh how I miss central heating and cars with hot air blowers! I can't believe its June, although I'm totally SICK of people telling me that I'm going home soon... I have almost 3 months left still - that's a quarter of year! Although I'm also sure that the 3 months will absolutely FLY by, just like the past 9 have! I'll admit it - I'll be really sad to leave - I've enjoyed my year so much, and gained so much from the experiences that I've had. Not to mention I can now speak Spanish like a true Chilean ghetto kid! Although I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...! We moved house at the start of May and now live in the centre of the city - about 15 minutes walk from the main National square, Plaza de Armas.  Its a really nice little flat, and we can even have seperate beds (before we had bunk beds) which gives the room an all-round nicer atmopshere.  We're about 1 block from a big main road (Vicuña MacKenna) 1 block from one metro line, and 3 blocks from another which gives us amazing transport links and the journey to school now takes us less than 30 mins (a 10 minute walk followed by a 10-15 minute bus) which is MUCH more relaxing than 3 packed, horrific buses! School is fine, although having so many classes is quite stressful. Add to that that the school did a total revamp of the timetable last week after working on a different since March... although its turned out quite nicely, giving me a nice relaxing Friday of 4 lessons and a 2pm finish.  The children are insane still, although that will never change!  Catriona now has to do lunch duty, which consists of her standing at the gate between the playgrounds and the main school during the lunchtime of the smaller kids (3rd basico / 8 or 9 year olds and below) and attempting to keep it closed, and stop them escaping into the school... NOT a task I envy, although its quite amusing to spectate while I'm up in one of my classes!  Even as I sit here now writing this, I can hear one of the younger classes (probably 1st Basico) shouting "FOME FOME FOME" in their classroom (it means BORING BORING BORING)... such lovely children we have here! In other news... we had torrential RAIN for 3 days last week... we also had a day off school the week before because of "flooding"... unfortunately we didn't find this out until AFTER we'd gotten up at 7am to get to school. But really, the amount of rain would have been laughed at in the UK! But now I have things to do, and worksheets to mark and allsorts... so until I manage to find some time to do my other entries... mis saludos a todos! Y espero que esten bien! 2 comments|post comment

[16 Apr 2008|03:11pm] I found out on Monday that we're moving flat on April 30th so any post that's sent from now won't get to me.  So I'd like to ask anyone planning on sending me anything in the mail not to until I get my new address... I know half of it, but not all! Thanks everyone! post comment

Travelling: 3rd January - 10th January [25 Mar 2008|03:13am]   Even on the day that we left Santiago we hadn’t decided where we were going to go first. We had a brief plan for our 2 months of travelling but choices for our first destination included Pucón, Temuco, Chillan and Chiloé. We accompanied Jo and Lauren to the bus station at about 3pm and bought tickets for Pucón for 11pm that night. After returning home, having a quick last minute repack, booking a hotel for Rio de Janeiro… we were ready to leave and set off from home at about 9.30pm. The bus journey was pretty uneventful and we slept for most of it. We arrived in Pucón at about 9am and spent half an hour or so wandering the streets before deciding on a hostel. We picked the “M@yra” hostel which was a little bit dingy and unfriendly but seemed full, and that’s always a good sign. We had a private twin room which was pretty depressing although was still a room, with beds. After a nap, we took a wander and headed down to the lake and its beach before sunbathing for a while. We did manage to get completely lost first, however, and basically did a walking tour of the residential area of Pucón (whilst being chased by HUGE black flying bug creatures).   Our second (and last) day in Pucón, we decided to book an organised tour which consisted of a tour of the area which included another lake/beach with a view of the Llaíma volcano with erupted on January 2nd as well as the rapids, blue lagoon and a trip to the thermal springs. There were about 16 of us on the tour – 13 Brazilians, us and a Chilean guy… outnumbered much!!   The next day (January 6th) we caught a bus at 10am which took us across to Puerto Montt on the west coast of Chile. We only stayed there an hour or so before catching a connecting bus across to Ancud on the island of Chiloé. The bus goes on a ferry to cross the water between the mainland and the island. On arriving in Ancud we were approached by a guy who owned a hostel and had a minibus ready to take us there. Normally we would have said no immediately, but for some reason we agreed, which turned out to be an amazing choice. The hostel was really homely and run by a crazy old lady and her mid-sixties son. We had a 3-bed private room which cost something like £4 a night although we only booked one night, and when we went back to book another, the place was full. On our first night, a Sunday, we took a wander round the town, but didn’t find anything particularly interesting and so headed back to the hostel with a few drinks. The weather was cold and dingy, and reminded me a lot of England, or a Scottish island!   On the Monday we booked a trip to see the penguins through the hostel owner which cost us about £10 although it was absolutely tipping it down when we got up. My kag in a bag got its first outing though! The owner took us to the bus station in his minivan where we were transferred to a taxi which then took us all the way out to the penguin colonies which took about 30 – 45 minutes. From there, we were taken into a wooden hut and given ridiculous looking waterproof gear to put on. Then we got into a little motorboat with two guys – one to drive the boat, the other as a kind of guide (although it was his first season and he was only just learning English – bless him). The boat took us around the colony to see the 2 different types of penguins as well as various types of birds and a big rock which is shaped like a bear. Fascinating stuff! And all the while it was tipping it down with rain! So then we headed back to dry land, back into the taxi and back to the town. We wandered a little more before finding a really nice café who let us use their laptop and wifi. The hot chocolate and cake REALLY hit the spot on such a dreary, wet day! We wandered a little and found a little artesanal market although it was mostly traditional knitted items and things.   When we headed back to the hostel we found out that they didn’t have space for us for that night (we needed space for Lauren and Jo too, who were due to arrive) but the owner took us over to his friend’s hostel, which turned out to be one in the guidebook that we’d considered looking for when we first arrived. It was a really odd place as it was right next to the old bus terminal which now only serves local buses so it had a major feeling of being deserted, and also felt like it could quite easily be the scene of a horror movie. The woman who owned was also slightly insane and spent ages ranting to Catriona and I about a “certain nationality” who are so inconsiderate and dirty and take showers at ridiculous hours like 1am… she turned out to be being horrifically racist about Israeli people but me and Catriona were too scared to say anything and so just smiled and hoped she didn’t stab us in the middle of the night.   We walked down to the supermarket (TREK) to buy supplies for when Lauren and Jo arrived and managed to meet them as we walked back up. And after that we basically didn’t leave the hostel all night, but stayed in our room and ate a random selection of bread, cheese and biscuits and kept ourselves terrified discussing how much like a horror movie the hostel seemed. It was so deserted which made it so creepy.     The next day, Lauren and Jo went off to see the penguins at midday while me and Catriona headed to “our café” with our journals, ready to do a spot of writing. After staying there for a few hours, we met the other two who decided they were hungry… so Catriona and I headed to an internet place to kill a bit more time. All in all, Ancud turned out to be quite a boring place; with nothing much to do and rubbish weather; although we did manage to achieve one of our main travelling aims, and that was to see the penguins!   Late afternoon we headed to the capital of Chiloé, Castro which is a larger town further to the south. We went via local bus which took about an hour or hour and a half and landed us in the municipal bus terminal in a bit of a dodgy area! We did a quick wander, and with the aid of the guidebook found a really nice hostel where we got a huge room for the 4 of us with really homely duvets and bed covers! The woman was really nice and let us have the room at a cheaper rate (6000 pesos a night instead of 7000) which also got us an amazing breakfast with muffins and cheese and bread and fruit… high quality stuff!   On our full day in Castro we visited the big church which was painted lilac and yellow to celebrate a visit from the Pope and is made from wood so that it can survive earthquakes. It chucked it down all morning so we quickly headed for lunch at a really nice restaurant overlooking the sea. It rained on and off all afternoon so we headed down to the big artsesanal market which had loads of knitwear so we all bought almost-matching silly hats, complete with llama patterns. We definitely looked cool! After an hour or so there we headed back towards the hostel since it was chucking it down again. Catriona and I took a detour via the bus station to try and book bus tickets to Bariloche although we found out that we needed our passports since it was an international journey and so settled for buying random snack food for tea. A little later, after retrieving our passports, we braved the rain again to buy our tickets, although were then interrogated on our visas and what we were on Chile… we thought for one moment that they were going to confiscate our passports! Nightmare! The only bus we could get left Castro at 6.35am which was horrific since we had to get up at 5.45am, and THEN go out into the rain!   And so we headed out of Castro in the pouring rain on a bus to Puerto Montt, where we’d have to change to a bus to Bariloche in Argentina. The journey involved a little bit of drama with us getting stuck in an absolutely huge traffic jam because of a random fire in the middle of the road. There were no firemen in attendance, only a few Carabineros (scary policemen) who were literally poking at the fire and pushing it off the road… idiots! Because of the delay we would miss our connecting bus, but because there were quite a few people making the connection, the bus waited at an outer station and we did a quick changeover which involved running across a huge main road and building site with all of our bags to reach the other bus! And so our real journey out of Chile began… via Osorno (we also came via Osorno when we headed from Pucón to Ancud, as well as Villarica and a random selection of other towns). After crossing the border out of Chile (gutted – we had to ditch the cheese we’d bought for the journey in a bin at the border point), the bus began to climb up into the Andes on a narrow winding road that went up through the forest. It was amazing to see so much snow and such big, frosty forests after being in such a hot (bar Ancud and Castro) country for so long. The Argentinean border crossing was pretty much the same, although a group of Mexicans on our bus had their bags taken and searched – shame. One of the sons went to the toilet something ridiculous like NINE times during the journey.   At about 6pm we reached Bariloche bus station, and the Argentinean part of our travelling began! post comment

Travelling: 28th December - 2nd January [25 Mar 2008|03:11am] Our original plan was to leave Santiago on Boxing Day (which isn’t celebrated in Chile) or the day after but since we later decided that we wanted to go to Valparaíso for New Year (THE place to be in South America at New Year), we decided to spend a weekend camping in Cajon del Maipo near Santiago. We set off from home at around 3 or 4pm, on what should have been an hour and a half journey, but turned out to be a 5 hour TREK including all but one of the metro lines in Santiago as well as 3 or 4 buses… absolute NIGHTMARE. Especially at rush hour with mega heavy rucksacks and 2 tents…But after sampling Santiago’s finest public transportation, we finally made it to the “Cascada de las Animas” (Waterfall of the Spirits) campsite where we found 2 other volunteers, Alice and Heather, totally by coincidence. After pitching the tents we had a relatively early night. The next day we set off on a mini hike through the cajón (canyon) up to the waterfall where we spent a few hours relaxing around the pool and daring each other to enter the freezing water.   After returning to the campsite we attempted a barbecue and ended up with some rather tasty burgers, chorizo and rice… complete with way too much onion! A few hours later another 2 volunteers, Katie and Lucy also arrived so the Saturday night was quite a party! The view of the stars from the canyon is immense since its way out of Santiago city… I’ve never seen so many stars since camping at Tiverton F345s in 2006!   The Sunday was basically a case of packing up and setting off for home (which took just over an hour, rather than the mission it took to get there!). We took a “colectivo” which is like a shared taxi; although with 4 of us it’s like a cheap private one. The colectivo took us from the Cajon, straight to a metro station just outside of Puente Alto. The driver was really nice and insisted on taking us to a station that wasn’t in the centre incase someone mugged us with our big rucksacks (even though we’d been tramping all around the place on Friday… even the caretaker from school saw us!). So a colectivo, a metro and a bus saw us home nicely, and without any major trauma!   After an hour or so at home we realised that we needed to buy tickets for the bus to Valparaíso for the next day so Catriona and I set off into the centre to the bus terminal on the Alameda to buy them for 9.40am the next morning. Since we hadn’t been able to book a hostel and the city was going to be PACKED, we decided to just book a bus back as early as possible on New Year’s Day and attempt to party all night, which didn’t turn out to be too difficult! An early night was had by all except Jo who went out for drinks with another volunteer and forced me to get out of bed to open the door for her… I was not impressed!   So we caught the bus on New Year’s Eve and spent our day wandering around Valparaíso and doing a lot of eating (what else is there to do when you have hours to spare?!). We also met up with Katie, Lucy, Alice, Heather, Simon, Karla and Hayley (and also Clare and Emily briefly) who are all other Project Trust volunteers working in Chile. We ate our last meal of 2007 at a gloomy bar-type place where Catriona, Jo, Lauren and I sampled a Chilean “delicacy” – the chorillana which is basically a disgustingly huge pile of chips, cheese, fried egg, pork, hot dog sausages, chorizo, beef and who knows what else… probably dog! I probably ate about a sixth of mine and was quite literally the closest I’ve been to vomiting since arriving in Chile!   After that we headed to the main square where there was a huge party going on with live music and thousands of people throwing “snow” (confetti)… Catriona and I STILL have some of it in our room 3 months later! As midnight approached we headed down towards the dock, as did tens of thousands of people and so we were all crushed into one big street to watch the fireworks. It was a really nice atmosphere… as New Year struck, our little group started singing Auld Lang Syne, and all of the Chileans (and gringos) around us started singing too and jumping up and down… it was amazing! At around 3, our “fantastic four” headed up to the hostel we stayed in September where our friend Pedro was working for a party he’d invited us to. We stayed there for the rest of night and left at about 7am, although I also discovered then that my camera had been stolen which was extremely annoying.   The journey home was slightly vile as we were just so tired. We attempted to catch a taxi to the bus station but ended up walking it and arriving just in time for our 8am bus… which was then late… 2 hours of sleep later and we had to navigate Transantiago, although we couldn’t face the bus home after 2 metros and so took a taxi. The other 3 went straight to bed, although after an hour of sleep I had to head to the police station to report my camera, although Pamela (thankfully!) accompanied me and did all of the talking. After heading home to check the insurance policy, we ate lunch and then had to go back to the station again. Chilean police are actually quite terrifying and look like soldiers – out of all of the South American police we’ve seen (Chilean, Argentinean, Uruguayan, Brazilian), the Chilean ones are definitely the scariest! After another hour or so of sleep, I headed over to a friend’s house where they wanted to party some more, although I fell asleep at about 10pm!   I had to get up at 9am the next day to head to the police station (again!) to pick up my theft report to send to the insurance company and then headed to the mall to hunt out a new camera. Chile’s selection of cameras isn’t particularly great although I ended up with a nice (but expensive) Canon. We then ended up staying awake until 3am trying to pack with the intention of leaving early the next day… although we didn’t end up catching a bus until 11pm at night! post comment

Honestly... I'm still alive! [24 Mar 2008|06:38pm] I realise its been a ridiculous amount of time since I posted an entry, and that I haven't even posted proper entries about my travelling yet, but with 10 classes instead of last year's 6, I quite literally have zero free periods any more and so don't have the luxury of lots of spare time to do computery things. But entries are on their way... I promise! ALTHOUGH... with the impending arrival of my parents (they arrive on Thursday!!), I'm not sure when I'll manage them... especially with the horrific headache I have tonight! I'm still safe and well and enjoying myself though. And I PROMISE - photos and updates soon! post comment

STILL ALIVE! [08 Feb 2008|08:45am] WELL, after a hectic time of planes, buses and probably another bus and boat tonight, we're currently in Montevideo for a quick stop after spending 7 days in Rio de Janeiro, 2 days in Sao Paulo, a day in Montevideo and 2 days in Punta del Diablo... and now we're absolutely SHATTERED after arriving at the hostel in Montevideo at 3.30am and having to check out at 11am. We spent a day in Montevideo before heading to Brazil and basically spent the entire day wandering around the city.  We visited the mausoleum of José Artigas in Plaza Independencia of Montevideo and planned to go to an art gallery although we didn't make it.  We also went down to the Mercado del Puerto where we'd been told the food was AMAZING but since it was a Monday the majority of the restaurants were closed... booo! We hung around the hostel until about 2am before heading to the airport to catch a flight at 6am.  We flew to Sao Paulo via Porto Alegre and arrived to find torrential rain... which basically continued ALL day Tuesday.  We had an absolute nightmare washing clothes which ended up with all of my clothes smelling even WORSE after being wet for 4 days.  Sao Paulo was quite a scary place, with LOADS of homeless people. I could say I got mugged (which is technically true - I suppose I should explain before everyone has heart attacks!=.  We were walking back to the hostel at about 6pm and a street kid comes up to me and starts wittering in Portuguese about something... I worked out that he was asking for a drink of the coke I was carrying and I kept saying no and trying to walk off. Eventually I got past him, and he ripped the bottle out of my hands and ran off... MY POOR COKE! It was almost full too. How rude.  But we did figure that technically, since one of us had been robbed, we didn't have to be robbed again in Brazil, which did hold true, thankfully! We basically walked around looking at buildings all day, and also went up to the roof terrace of the 41 story Edificio Italia which gave us a breath-taking view of the whole of the city.  Its so immensely huge that its actually indescribable.  Even Catriona, who's been all over the world, said that its probably the biggest place that she's ever been to. On Thursday 31st we caught a bus from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro and made it to the hotel at about 7pm... it seemed SO far out of the centre that I was a little bit worried but it was such a nice hotel, and it all turned out OK as we used the buses to get in, which only cost R$2.10 which is about 60p and once Catriona's friends arrived too, taxis between the 4 of us weren't so expensive. The first night we relaxed and sat up watching movies until about 4am. We spent the next day doing a walking tour from the guidebook and exploring the Centro area.  Somehow we stumbled onto a huuuge carnival party and stayed there with a big samba parade and huge stage.  We got talking to some Americans and followed a samba parade around with them.  They were going to meet their friends in a place called Lapa so we went with them and ended up meeting some really nice Brazilians and an English guy called Kris who's living in Rio and was so so nice. There was a samba band playing in one of the arches so we danced there for a while before heading to a samba club. The next day we met Catriona's friends (2 were staying at our hotel, 3 were staying in an apartment in Ipanema) and ended up going back to the same samba club as the night before although everyone was shattered from flights and things so we went home quite early (by carnival standards!).  The next day we went to a "hippy market" in Ipanema and spent the night at a club called "Casa de Matrix" which was basically like a huge house party with some amazing music (Spice Girls, Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins...!). On Sunday we visited Pao de Acucar (Sugar Loaf) and on Monday we visited Cristo Redentor... the statue is so so big! Its such an awesome atmosphere being up there... he's such a huge religious icon looking out over the city. Its an amazing feeling to be right underneath him, looking up.  Its also such an surreal feeling to realise you're actuayl IN Rio de Janeiro, standing a few metres away from such a prominent icon. I'm afraid that's just a quick summary of what we got up to in Brazil for now... I promise I'll write a proper account of my time travelling after we're back in Santiago and I don't have to pay for every second that I'm online! We left Rio at 9am yesterday, took a bus to Sao Paulo, a plane from there to Port Alegre, another plane to Montevideo and now we're about to book a bus and boat to Buenos Aires for this evening. So much travelling! But at least we're going to stay in Buenos Aires for a good 6 or 7 days before spending a few days in Cordoba and Mendoza on the way back to Santiago... its odd that since we left Santiago I've been missing it and wanting to go back, but now we're closer to going home, I don't want to go back! Hope everyone's OK! xx post comment

[25 Jan 2008|05:08pm] Sorry for the major lack of updates - majorly restricted internet access since we're travelling around so much! Since my last update (Castro I think?), we spent a few days in Bariloche in Argentina (AMAZING scenery) followed by a 20 hour bus ride to Buenos Aires to meet Catriona's cousins and then a week-long road trip to Iguazu in the northeast to see the falls (seriously seriously amazing).  Another night in Buenos Aires and then an hour long catamaran trip to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. We just stayed one night here before moving on to Cabo Polonio which is a fabulously remote little beach settlement which has no mains electricity or running water and to which you have to take a monster truck across the sand dunes! From there we came to Punta del Diablo (yesterday) and tomorrow we're moving on to the Uruguayan capital Montevideo until the 29th when we fly to Sao Paulo! Busy busy busy! post comment

[09 Jan 2008|09:04pm] SO... we've been travelling for almost a week now and been to 3 different places.  I'll just do a quickie right now as I'm on a PC in a hostel and people keep growling at us as we've been monopolising the PC for ages now! We got to Pucón at about 9am and after a short wander decided to stay in a hostel called "Hospedaje M@yra" which turned out to be a tiny bit grim and run by a really grumpy Chilean woman who didn't speak any English at all.  We spent the first day wandering around and lying on the beach around Lake Villarica and just generally getting to know the town and relaxing.  On Saturday we decided to do something and took the option of a tour around the Pucón area which ended in 2 hours in one of the many thermal springs which surround Pucón.  The pools were of 41C and 39C and were almost too hot for the two of us! On Sunday morning we travelled over to Ancud on Isla Grande of the Chiloé archipelago via the bus station at Puerto Montt.  We stayed in a hostel called San José (its owner was at the bus station when we arrived and the hostel was in the guide book).  It was nice and only cost $5000 (Pucón cost $8000 a night).  We went to see the penguins on Monday morning which was organised by the owner of the hostel.  We were taken to the beach near the colonies in a taxi and then taken out in a boat in the pouring rain onto the sea to 3 seperate little islands. After returning to the town we took refuge in a cafe until the rain stopped before venturing out into Ancud again and wandering around (although there's not much to see). Jo and Lauren came over from Temuco to see us so we stayed in a different hostel which felt a bit like a scene from a horror movie as it was mostly deserted.  On Tuesday they took the penguin tour while Catriona and I wandered and spent MORE quality time in the same cafe as Monday.  On Tuesday afternoon we took a mini bus to the capital of Chiloé which is called Castro.  We found a really really nice and friendly hostel (the room we're in is bigger than both of our rooms in Santiago put together!).  Today its rained on and off all day and is really cold (the hostel has a big open fire going in the sitting room!) although Catriona and I booked tickets to go to Bariloche in Argentina tomorrow, although the bus leaves at 6.35am - URGH. I'll be doing better "in depth" travelly things when I'm back in Santiago but for now... just quick updates on where I am and what I'm up to! post comment

[03 Jan 2008|04:57pm] Happy New Year everyone! Or Feliz Año Nuevo if you prefer...! This will just have to be a quick summary as I don't have much time (we're leaving for Pucón tonight on a bus at 11pm!). Last weekend the 4 of us went camping in a place just outside of Santiago called "el Cajon de Maipo" (the Canyon of Maipo (its a river)).  What should be a 2 hour journey at the very most took us about 6 hours and we managed to ride every single line on the Santiago metro bar the red one.  But 3 micros and many metros later, we finally made it and found two other volunteers, Alice and Heather, at the same campsite as us.  The campsite is called "Cascada de las Animas" (Waterfall of the Spirits) and is really well set up.  On Saturday we took a walk through forest and up the canyon to a beautiful little waterfall.  Here, we swam in the (freezing) pool and lazed around for a few hours bfore walking back to the tents to have a barbecue.  On Saturday night another two volunteers, Katie and Lucy, joined us too. For New Year we decided to go to Valparaíso as its basically said to be THE PLACE to be at New Year if you're in South America.  In the end we ended up being a group of 11 volunteers.  We couldn't find a place to stay as the city was RAMMED so instead we took a bus at 9am on Monday morning and returned on a bus at 8am on Tuesday morning after partying all night.  The firework display was amazing, as was the feeling of dancing in the main square with a huge free concert going on.  We ended up COVERED in snow spray, bits of confetti, beer and all sorts of other things but it was definitely worth it.  One thing that soured the occasion a little was that my camera was stolen too.  Although I've lost all of my New Year and camping photos, it could have been worse, and at least it wasn't any kind of violent robbery! So tonight we're heading down to Pucón on an 11-hour night bus which leaves at 11pm from downtown Santiago.  We've already changed our minds 20 times about where we're going first so the next 2 months could definitely be interesting! I apologise if entries are sparse over the next 2 months although most hostels now provide free internet access so I'm sure I'll be able to put a quick entry up every now and then. 1 comment|post comment

The Festive Season [26 Dec 2007|05:15pm] Christmas in Chile was quite odd... they tend to celebrate during the night, but apparently Pamela's family are an extreme when you say "eating late". At first we thought we were going to her mother's house, then her sister's house... and finally her brother's house. We also thought we were being picked up at 7.30 but that turned out to be 11pm! Chilean timing eh! We got to the house and rembered that Pamela's sister-in-law is actually Daniela the Kinder teacher from our school and that we'd already met her daughter.  There ended up being us 4, Pamela, Aileen, Cata, Pamela's parents, Pamela's Auntie and Uncle, Cristian, Pilar and Issy, Daniela, Patricio and their 2 kids so it was definitely a full house!  At midnight we went out into the street to search for Viejo Pascuero (I think that's what he's called... I can't remember!!) then returned to the house so the kids could start tearing into their presents! We sat with Aileen who I think is still a little bewildered by having such a huge family and so many presents and things like that. At around 2am we sat down to dinner which was barbecued steak and choripan (kind of like sausage) with salad, potato, rice, pasta and also... a roast turkey! Thankfully the duck that had been threatened didn't appear!  It was definitely weird to be sitting outside on a patio at 2am on Christmas morning eating BBQ and turkey...! At 3am Carla's auntie came to pick me up with Carla, Leisly and Carla's Grandma in the car (they'd all come along for a little jaunt) and took me back to Carla's house which was amazingly nice of them considering it was 3am and it was actually a lot further than I thought it was!  Carla had a full house too with random cousins and all sorts in the house.  After a while the young 'uns went and sat in José's room and we sat and talked until about 8am, when we FINALLY went to bed.  There was me, Carla, José, Eliel, Octavio and Daniel (cousins), Aileen (Octavio's girlfriend) and Vanessa and Jorge (not sure how those two fit into the picture but they were there anyway!). We slept until about 10 when everyone in the house bar me, Leisly and Carla's mum and grandmother went to the graveyard for the funeral of a friend who died on Saturday night from leukaemia.  I came home then to find a house of sleepy people.  Bere came to the house early afternoon and opened her presents while we opened our presents to each other.  I got a skirt from Catriona, a braclet from Lauren and a diary from Jo.  For lunch on Christmas day we ate... PIZZA and then played Pictionary with the kids. I went back to Carla's house at about 8 and watched Lord of the Rings (cheesy movies - at least some things about Christmas are the same!).  I travelled around by bus by the way: all public transport runs on Christmas day... how odd!  We then walked to Carla's auntie's house to see Griselle and Sofia and Carla's mum and auntie both gave me Christmas presents which was lovely of them.  We THEN walked back to the house and just talked before going to bed. And Boxing Day just doesn't exist here at all! Everyone's back at work and all sorts! So... that was my Christmas in Chile! And none of my packages from England arrived which means I won't get them until MARCH.... how sad! And just as a warning - I probably won't get the chance to update this anytime soon as we're off travelling tomorrow... so don't worry, I'm still alive... and hopefully I'll be able to update before March. Have an awesome New Year everyone! post comment

[18 Dec 2007|09:41am] I can’t believe how UN-Christmassy I feel this year! But then again… it’s quite difficult to get into the festive spirit when it’s about 30C outside and the sun is shining! I haven’t even started my Chilean Christmas shopping yet! It may end up being a Christmas Eve job… and would you believe it – the SUMMER holidays from school start tomorrow, and Summer begins officially on Friday (incidentally, also the day we begin our Summer vacation!).   Last week was “La Semana de Cultura” (Culture Week) at the school so we had a different theme each day – Monday was Art, Tuesday was Drama, Thursday was Dancing and Friday was Music (with Wednesday being a day off for Matriculation for next year). On Monday all of grades from 7th upwards made sculptures of characters from one of the books they’d been reading for the “Plan Lector” which began on our first day here. We mainly stayed with Primero Medio who made a… THING which resembled a cross between Spongebob Squarepants and a boy in the class (NOT a compliment!). I’ll definitely have to upload a photo of that as my description gives it NOTHING. Some of the others were really good, with Tercero Medio’s Animal Farm probably my favourite.   On Tuesday we watched the Segundo Basico Elmer (the Elephant) Play followed by a puppet show by Septimo Basico and also the Primero Basico nativity play (which was REALLY cute). Following that, we helped Primero Medio to paint the windows of their classroom with Christmas things… and I have to say, the present, holly and Christmas tree that Catriona and I painted were DEFINITELY the best! All of the rooms looked really good, although I could never imagine my school in England setting us free with as much paint as we wanted. I was being “sensible” and I still ended up with green and blue paint on my jeans and white and black all over my arms (thanks to Carla and Catriona!).   On Wednesday we stayed at home as there were no lessons or pupils so there wasn’t any reason for us to be at school. I received a lovely surprise in the morning in the form of a parcel from my mum containing some Christmas decorations, an advent candle and a flashing Christmas badge to add to the banner, Celebrations advent calendar and cracker kit that I received the week before. Since Chile doesn’t seem to do advent AND their chocolate is rubbish, the advent calendar was DEFINITELY welcome. Now I just need to hope the kids don’t realize what it is or what it contains…!   Thursday was a day of dancing in the main yard which was followed by the movie “Pursuit of Happiness” in the dining room although only about 5 students actually wanted to watch it so they left all of the others go back to their classrooms. There was no sound for the majority, so reading the Spanish subtitles was definitely a good test of my language skills! The movie ran over the Kinder and Pre-Kinder lunchtime and OF COURSE, the movie was MUCH more interesting than food… even if they didn’t understand any of it! It always makes me smile when I hear my Kinders yelling “HOLA TIIAAAAAAA” across the yard and waving manically! At least they got bored of the “lets group hug Emily in the middle of the lesson while she tries to teach us” game… you’re pretty helpless when 30 5 year olds pounce on you at the same time and refuse to let go!   On Friday there were music performances in the main yard, with a group of students from Colegio Silva (another Fundación Belén school in Santiago) performing as well. Catriona and I were also given the “honour” of supervising Quinto Basico all morning while they ran wild and painted their windows… they’re such little monsters!   We managed to leave at around 1.30pm on Friday afternoon and went over to the hospital at Salvador to visit Lauren. She’d been ill for a while and ended up at a few different doctors and staying at Litz’ house in Maipu before being taken to the hospital. She was diagnosed as having pneumonia and rubella by one doctor, but the hospital later changed this to a chest infection and a serious allergic reaction to penicillin (which was in the antibiotics she was given by the first doctor). Thankfully she got out of hospital on Saturday and is definitely on the mend and should be able to go travelling next week as scheduled!   Kinder had their graduation yesterday at school. They really are adorable. I’m quite worried that the majority of them will be leaving and was quite sad yesterday to hear that one of my favourites is definitely going! Catriona and I have discussed changing our timetables a little so that she can keep her Pre-Kinder in Kinder and I can keep my current Kinders as Primero Basico but we’ll have to wait and see if that can work. For the graduation they all receive certificates and sit on the stage. They also sang 3 songs in English (5 Little Ducks, Where Has My Little Dog Gone and Goodbye) although the coordinator decided at the last minute that they couldn’t do the actions which I was a little disappointed about. Leandro and Maycol definitely stole the show though, by making sure they were singing RIGHT into the microphone… the entire audience found it hilarious!   Octavo Basico also graduated today (all but 2) although that wasn’t quite as cute. They had the same kind of ceremony as Kinder (and Cuarto Medio) although there was less singing and dancing, and being 14 rather than 4 made them a lot less cute!   Nothing else to report really… apart from the fact that we felt our first major tremor yesterday! We thought we’d felt one or two in October or November but yesterday was the first that we were actually conscious of it being a tremor. I was lying in bed at about 6am and suddenly realized that the entire room was shaking, and Catriona could hear the clothes racks on the balcony shaking too… quite bizarre! Not that either of us was bothered enough to get out of bed! Apparently there was also one on Saturday afternoon which Leisly, Carla and Pamela asked us about but we didn’t even notice it!   All good fun…! 1 comment|post comment

[04 Dec 2007|09:16pm] Apologies for the long silence, although they’re only going to get longer when I go travelling! I usually get time to do entries when I’m hanging around in the English room on afternoons but recently I’ve been busy drawing things for Kinder, invigilating exams, scanning photos for Cuarto Medio Graduation or just generally being busy or lazy.   Life is still going well in Chile, and I still love it here. I might moan about things, and certain people / things may drive me insane occasionally but I definitely wouldn’t swap my year here for a year at university. I can have my gap year now, and still have the “first year at university” next year… the people stuck at Uni now can’t do the opposite!   All those worried about me being arrested by Carabineros for being illegal will be glad to know that Catriona and I eventually managed to pick up our identity cards last Tuesday. The school kept saying that Roberto would take us but that wasn’t getting us anyway so on the advice of Ali, we just told them we weren’t going to school and were doing that instead so off we went. As well as the cedulas, we also somehow managed to stumble across Plaza de Armas (the kind of “National Square” of Chile) and also Mercado Central which is where all of the fish is sold as well as cheap food and fruit and veg. We also treated ourselves to a manjar frappuccino at Starbacks which cost almost as much as an entire steak and chips meal at the steakhouse on Irrarrazaval!   The school year is drawing to a close and so we’ve been sorting out tests and all sorts. Catriona spent most of the day yesterday reading tape scripts for different grades’ tests. Last Friday was the Cuarto Medio graduation ceremony at school. Since we only have 12 students in Cuarto, the whole thing was really nice and personal. The teachers had been to the houses of all of the students while they were away on a retreat last week and hunted down baby photos of them all which I later scanned, and I also scouted out all of their fotolog pages to get as many embarrassing photos as possible and Cristian put them all together in a big PowerPoint show which was projected onto a big screen. All of them graduated (thankfully) even though Eduardo actually failed more than two subjects and Paulina and Marcelo were both awarded scholarships so that they can both continue studying next year which is nice. I’ll miss them – they were my favourite grade, mainly because they’re all about my age and so have the same sense of humour. We’ll be losing a lot of other kids at the end of the year too – a lot of Octavo Basico will leave before they move into the Medio classes, a lot of Kinder will leave before they move into the Basico classes and a lot of the Segundo Medio will leave before they start studying Administration in Tercero (because the school is so small there’s only Administration to choose from whereas other schools do things like Telecommunications and Gastronomy). Apparently a lot of kids leave from Quinto Basico too… but there does just seem to be a lot of general movement!   Ali from Project Trust visited us on Friday 23rd November. She came with Alison (our in-country rep) to see the school, see our teaching, see how we’re doing… although because they came on a Friday (Eloisa said they couldn’t come another day) they actually ended up missing the only two lessons I teach on a Friday. We had a chance to talk to them together (me and Catriona) and separately then got to leave early and took Ali back to the house so she could see how we’re living. It was good to have a little grumble about some things… although she did tell me that she thinks I’m picking up a Scottish lilt when I speak – NIGHTMARE. Way too much time spent with that nutter Catriona. We’re like each other’s shadow… I’m surprised she hasn’t gone insane with the amount of the time she’s had to spend with me so far! The day after that, Ali got all of the volunteers together at a Belen Educa building in the city centre so we could all meet, talk about how we’re doing, what we want to achieve, what we have achieved and any problems we’ve had or are having just we could see how everyone else is doing. It was really nice to see Karla and Hayley who are at a project on the island of Chiloé and so haven’t been up to Santiago since we arrived at the end of August. After filling us full of pizza, ice cream and chocolate brownies, Ali and Clare (deputy rep) then took us all for a drink in Barrio Brasil which is where a lot of bars and cafes are. We also ended up seeing her again the following Monday because she visited Oviedo (Jo and Lauren’s school) and so was in the house when me and Catriona got home. It was really good to see her, although quite strange considering the last time was on a windy pier on Coll on July 8th when she told us she’d “see us on the other side” in 4 months time… how quickly time passes! I can’t actually believe that on the 29th of this month, we’ll have been in Chile for 4 months!   Today (Tuesday), Catriona and I spend the day at the Fundación Belén Olympics which is a big athletics competition for all of the Belén Educa schools in Chile (there’s 7 in Santiago). Manuel Vicuña is by far the smallest with only 300 pupils and so has never won anything before. We didn’t exactly come 1st over all (6th actually), but we did win quite a few gold, silver and bronze medals which was nice for the kids. The weather was really nice and I managed not to burn (the same can’t be said for Miss “I don’t burn” Hepburn) although the kids did think it would be hilarious to involve us in their water fight and pour numerous bottles of water over both of us… it was actually quite pleasant! One thing that did make me laugh was when our school almost started a fight with the school next to us (Fresno in Puente Alto) and one of their boys was saying to his teacher “its not our fault, the girls from that school are just too crazy”… and they really are – they’re vicious! We might be a small school… but we’re hardcore!!   We’ve also been thinking about where we’re going to travel as we have to give an itinerary to the Directora before we leave. At the moment, the outline of our “grand trip” looks like we’ll be going to the south of Chile, possibly via Chiloé, and visiting Pucón and Puntas Arenas amongst other places. After that we may go back to Santiago for a day or two before heading over to Buenos Aires, via a few other places such as Mendoza. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up with some of Catriona’s family who will be visiting Argentina before heading over to Uruguay to visit a few cities there. After this will probably be Brazil and Rio de Janeiro, just in time for the big carnival at the beginning of February. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up a few of Catriona’s friends there too. After Brazil comes Paraguay, and then we’ll be heading home through Argentina and back to Santiago in time for the beginning of school at the start of March. Obviously our plans aren’t definite yet and we’ll visiting other cities and places in between but at least we’re starting to form some ideas! If anyone has any recommendations, feel free to leave me a comment or send me an email! You also may notice that Peru and Bolivia are completely missing from our travel plans. We’ll have a little more travel time in July during the Winter vacation and the time after that and so have decided to visit Peru and Bolivia then, since they’re both further north than Chile. The south of Chile is apparently NOT a pleasant place to be mid-winter!   I do feel like my Spanish is improving all of the time and every day I’m learning new phrases and new words although I do still find it hard to understand everything when there’s a big group of people talking together. We’ve been told that its amazing how much your Spanish improves when you go travelling but I can imagine feeling completely lost again once confronted with the weird and wonderful accents and dialogues of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay… and then the Portuguese of Brazil! Though I do find it amazing to be sitting having a conversation with a group of Chileans and to suddenly realise that I’m actually speaking and understanding a foreign language, comfortably, and am able to respond and make conversation too… its such an odd feeling! post comment

[19 Nov 2007|03:20pm] [ mood | hot ] It’s so so hot today… and here’s me in “real shoes” and jeans. Pfff. We had a meeting with the principal on Friday to see how things are and she said we couldn’t wear flip flops or shorts to school. And also implied that we should cut our hair short (there’s no way I’m doing that I’m afraid) and that we shouldn’t wear bright clothes to school but well… I don’t have anything else! They’ve been OK for 3 months now so I’m sure if they’d been seriously offended by my clothing; something would have been said by now. But today… it’s about 31C and the school (and the country) just doesn’t DO air conditioning!   This weekend was absolutely awesome. When we went to the party on Halloween, the cousin of the family invited us to her birthday party at a “parcela”. When I looked the word up in the dictionary it meant “a piece of ground” so I was quite curious as to how it would be (the first word I looked up was “paluza” which actually means “crazy drugs blowout”… so I’m quite glad I was mistaken!). During last week we had about 60 different sets of instructions given to us by Carla and Leisly so we decided to go with the earliest to be safe and took the metro and bus to their house at lunchtime on Saturday. It was the first time we’d walked to their house on our own so of course, we got lost… again. After eventually getting there we found that the only person in the house was Carla’s mum who fussed around us, fed us cake and made some AMAZING empanadas from scratch. Carla’s brother and his friends came home and then we were ushered into the car of one of the aunties with a primero basico from our school and given a lift so that we didn’t have to go on the “horrible hot bus” (fine with us!).   The parcela was in the countryside near to the next big city to the south which is called Rancagua. It turned out to a big house (big by Chilean standards, still tiny by English standards) set on a big fieldy piece of land with a tennis court, a huge trampoline, a swimming pool, horses, 3 huge slobbery dogs and a room with a full size snooker table in it. The main party was on the Saturday night but a lot of people arrived late afternoon and stayed until the evening on Sunday. There was a live band and probably about 100 people there (the family really is huge, with cousins and aunties EVERYWHERE).   With it being such a hot day, my shoulders were a little red (not burnt) and I must have had about FIFTY people come up to me and tell me within an hour or too. It was sweet but so so annoying! I ended up carrying a bottle of sun cream in my pocket at all times to show people!    Our little “crew” (us, Carla, Leisly, Carla’s brother and his friends) chilled out in the snooker room until the food was ready, and spent a lot of Sunday in there too. We danced, ate, drank and played on the trampoline for most of the night, and I also somehow ended up with cake all over my face, even though I didn’t actually HAVE any cake to begin with (CATRIONA!!!). We’d been told to bring sleeping bags but ended up sleeping in the living room on a row of mattresses with about 10 other people which was… cosy!   Sunday seemed like the longest day EVER, although it was really nice. We sunbathed, swam, trampolined, played pool and just basically chilled out all day. The original plan was for us to get the bus back with three of Carla’s brother’s friends but as is their family’s custom, they kicked up a fuss and FORCED US to go home in the car of one of their friends who ended up taking us all the way to our door so all was well in the end! (Edit – It’s a good job we DID go in the car as after talking to Jone last night, him and Novito didn’t manage to get a bus at all on Sunday and ended up having to walk back up to the house at about 1am – OUCH).   And no… I’m not sun burnt!   The Friday before last we had a big birthday party for Bere and Aileen in a big room in the apartment block of one of Pamela’s friends who looks after them sometimes. All of Pamela’s teacher friends brought their kids and we filled them full of junk food and played musical chairs and pin the tail on the donkey which was all good fun. They also had a piñata, which I’ve never seen for real before! I’ve also decided that I want a birthday party like that!   We did, however, have a really sad time in the middle of the week. Pamela was told a few weeks that Aileen and Bere would have to go to a children’s home at some point and that that point was fast approaching. I’m not sure how much warning she had but she told us on Wednesday night that they’d be going at 10am from school the next day. We didn’t have Bere that night but Aileen had only just been told and was just sitting on the bed with tears running down her face while Pamela showered Cata. That really did break my heart, so we spent the rest of the evening playing with her and making her last night with us as fun as possible. I asked Cristian about children’s homes in Chile on Friday (in relation to something else) and he told me that they’re more like jails than anything else which obviously has us pretty worried. Today the house is being inspected to determine if we’re allowed to have them at weekends but looking at the state of the flat, I doubt they’ll say yes. But who knows how the Chilean authorities work here… they’re probably insane like the rest of this country.   Ali from Project Trust arrived in Chile on Thursday and took us all for a nice meal at Vacas Gordas (the same restaurant as the first night we were here) on Friday. It was weird to see her, knowing that the last thing she said to us was on Coll pier over 4 months ago and it was that she would “see us on the other side” and that felt like SO long away. She’s visiting us at school on Friday and probably coming back to the house with us. We did ask her to change days since I don’t really have any lessons on a Friday but the Directora said that wasn’t possible for some reason… so Friday it is! I do hope it goes well, especially since the lesson I’m going to have be observed on will be Kinder (Cuarto Medio have left now, and Octavo Basico are too early in the morning).   Other than that, I can’t really think of anything else exciting that’s happened recently! It did drizzle slightly a week or two ago – that was exciting! It was literally a tiny sprinkling of drizzle (someone could have spat at me and I’d’ve been wetter) and there were people hiding under the canopies of buildings and all sorts – imagine what they’d be like in England!   So November is rolling on, and soon we’ll be into December (CHRISTMAS!!). It’s so weird to see all of the Christmas decorations in the shops because here it’s getting hotter and hotter as we get closer to the summer.   35C tomorrow…!   post comment

[09 Nov 2007|12:52pm] So I posted about our nightmare day when I was still at school… after we left, it got even worse (and funnier!).  We left just after 5.30pm and were walking out of the cul-de-sac the school is in and saw Dani coming out of the shop opposite so we started walking along with him, walking out of La Legua onto the main road (the Santa Rosa). I crossed the road in front of a Carabinero van which then pulled over to the side of the road along with ANOTHER van and called Dani over… so me and Catriona just kept walking but they shouted for us too. Then we were asked for our ID cards, which we don’t have. Then “other ID” but we’ve been told not to take our passports or purses to school so we had nothing… and typically, it was a hot day and the first time Dani hadn’t brought his bag… or his ID card. He explained that he worked at the school and that we were English volunteers but the first Carabinero wasn’t particularly impressed so he walked off and told us to wait.   Then another one walked up and asked Dani what was going on and who we were, then where we were from and he told them England and Scotland and the guy goes “Escoseeeesa” then asked us how we found working in La Legua. I said I liked it and he said something about why would we like working in such a dangerous area… so Catriona said that it was “difficult but rewarding”.  I figured it was best to play dumb as if we spoke no Spanish... but Catriona panicked and was like "no tiene..." (it means he / she doesn't have , or you don't have if you say tienes like a Chilean)... argh.   We kept on waiting, then Luisa and a few other teachers walked past and the first Carabinero shouted to them to ask if we were really from the school and when she said yes he said we could go. As we were walking off Dani said to us that if we hadn’t been with him, he probably would have been arrested for not having his ID card (its illegal not to carry it).   Me and Catriona were quite literally laughing hysterically all the way up the Santa Rosa – could our day have actually been any worse?!   I told Cristian today and he laughed at me, saying that they probably thought we were gringos trying to buy cocaine… niiiice! post comment

[07 Nov 2007|03:20pm]   Well this morning was the biggest nightmare ever… we left the house for school at 7.15am as normal… and finally arrived at around 9.30am… an hour and a half late!   Usually we get three buses to school. As we were walking to the stop for the first, it drove past the end of the road which isn’t all that unusual. But then it took about 20 minutes for the next bus to arrive (instead of about 10) and in true Chilean style, although we were first at the stop we somehow ended up at the back of the crowd and I was shoved OFF the bus by an old lady. So another 30 minutes later and another bus finally arrives and the two of us manage to squeeze on.   We get off the first bus at the Carlos Valdovinos metro station which is kind of a bus terminal too. Usually there’s an H04 or two waiting there but this morning there were none, so up pulls the H01 (the other bus which we can get but don’t very often) so we hopped on. It takes a few unexpected turns and we start complaining about it going the long way… until we then realize we don’t have a clue where we are and that’s gone completely insane. So after a while we get a bit worried and get off… and realize we’re on a road called Antonio Matta which is a LONG way from where the school is.   We walked a little bit and realize we ARE on the Santa Rosa (the road we need to get to) but at a different part (the Santa Rosa is probably 10+ miles long) so we decided to start walking and see if we can see a bus going the way we want to go… so we walk… and we walk… and we walk. We try to phone school to tell them where we are, but failed. I’d already texted Maca early on but she hadn’t replied so eventually I phoned Alison and asked her to phone the school for us,   So after walking for a (long) while we realize we recognize where we are and so eventually get on a bus that takes us to school.   And all through our little “adventure”, the two of us are laughing hysterically at how ridiculously lost we managed to get ourselves. Fair enough if it had been within the first week or so but no… we’ve been here over 2 months, and we still manage to get horribly lost!   Such a mare. post comment

[05 Nov 2007|03:47pm] I’d completely forgotten that tonight is Guy Fawkes… I’m actually quite sad to be missing it!   Yesterday we had a nice little taste of British (and American) culture in the form of music… the first time we went into Providencia on a Saturday, Lauren and I saw a poster for the Killers, Starsailor and Travis but we kept forgetting to get tickets… until Catriona and I took a trip to Mall Plaza Vespucio last Thursday on a mission to find some. Considering that was only 3 days before the concert, we’d have had zero chance in England – a concert like that would have been sold out within an hour! As part of Catriona’s birthday present, her parents agreed to pay to upgrade our tickets from the Platea (the tiers) to Cancha (standing) but then through a combination of an amazingly generous guy, being British and my pigeon Spanish, we managed to get our 4 tickets for $93,000 instead of $226,000 making the tickets around ₤23 each – BARGAIN!   The concert was actually a big festival called the “Fenix Festival” and consisted of about 8 Chilean bands outdoors in true festival style in the grounds of the Santiago Arena in Parque O’Higgins, followed by a concert of Starsailor, Travis and the Killers in the actual arena. We arrived at 12.30pm and queued for about an hour before “being let in”. We didn’t really stand and watch the Chilean bands but listened to them from the safety of the shady trees or the refreshment area. The weather (as usual) was hot and sunny although I did manage to avoid getting burnt (apart from a little strip on my back and right shoulder) and was sensible with sun cream (you’ll all be glad to know that part!!). At around 5pm we piled into arena (in true Chilean “queue style” – they seem to lightly grasp the concept, but are missing a few essential points) and gradually edged our way forward until me and Lauren had places at the front bar of the cancha section. The way the arena is laid out is that the front section is the “Cancha VIP” section, then there’s a barrier, then the “Cancha General” section (where we were). We had an amazing view, and a comical security guard who kept asking the photographers to get out of our way so we could see!   Starsailor were first and played quite a lot of new stuff which I wasn’t so familiar in (its not as fun when you can’t shout along to the music!!) but they did play things like ‘In The Crossfire’ and ‘Four To The Floor’ which are some of my favourites. Next were Travis (Trav-eee, Trav-eee!) who were actually a lot better than I expected! I’m not a huge fan of Travis (way too depressing for a gig!) but their bant was really good (in comparison to Starsailor’s repeated “mooochhaassss grassseeee-aaassss”). They had a guest pianist called Claus who was playing for them, and the singer made EVERYONE in the arena point and shout his name repeatedly when he played this piano solo… how CRINGE! They sang things like ´Turn´, ´Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’, ‘Driftwood’ and my favourite: ‘Flowers In The Window’. Flowers was SO good – all of the band members came to the front of the stage with just an acoustic guitar and 2 tambourines and all sang it together with the bassist and guitarist playing the guitar around the singer’s neck at one point… good stuff.   But then… THE KILLERS! I was surprised at how many songs they played… they started and ended with the Sam’s Town introduction thing which I’m not a HUGE fan of (I don’t like that album so much) but they also played ‘Smile Like You Mean It’ (twice), ‘Somebody Told Me’, ‘Bones’, ‘Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine’, ‘Mr. Brightside’ and “the one which goes I got soul but I’m not a solider but I can’t remember the name of”. The crowd went INSANE for Mr. Brightside… and the singer is an amazing performer too – he’s got so much ENERGY and just bounces around all over the place. He must have been HOT though in a full suit with waistcoat and everything. They were really really good though, and it was cool that it was all 3 bands’ first time in Chile… and we were there!   One thing I have to say though, is that Chilean crowds just don’t do it the same as UK ones do! There was no where near as much jumping as at a UK gig… and that’s the best part! An annoying thing too, is the way they all sing their hearts out, but they don’t really know what the words are and so actually sound terrible… There were 2 people shouting in mine and Lauren’s ears throughout the entire concert – grrr!   Just a normal week this week I’m afraid. The school year is starting to draw to an end and final marks have to be in within 2 weeks, followed by the main tests then in December there’s a week of culture and a week of graduations and celebrations before the summer holidays begin at the end of December in time for Christmas. 1 comment|post comment

[02 Nov 2007|09:59am] Also -  the background on my journal is a photo of the view from our bedroom window. If you want to see my other photos (I do still have a lot to upload), you can see them at http://s200.photobucket.com/albums/aa297/em-in-chile/ If you find the colours of my journal hard to read, get some glasses (just kidding!).  If you leave a comment, I'll have a look at changing them... post comment

[02 Nov 2007|09:54am] There IS another entry or two coming... I'm just here, there and everywhere at the moment! As a very quick update... I'm still here, still alive, still OK! School is VERY quiet today as we're the only school in today and we were off yesterday, so most of the kids haven't bothered coming in today (I wish I'd followed that example!!). Yesterday we managed to buy tickets to this thing called the Fenix Festival which is on Sunday... so we're going to see THE KILLERS, STARSAILOR AND TRAVIS... and even better - by being English and slightly confused and bad at Spanish, we managed to get the tickets for $94000 instead of $226000 AND get upgraded to standing in the "cancha"... I'm so excited!! On the bad side, because we had to come to school today, we haven't been able to go travelling this weekend but I'd already decided it was going to be a choice between travelling and seeing the Killers... and the Killers were winning! Its cooled down a little bit since the 30C madness of last week but its still as warm as a British Summer! I do have another big entry almost finished... its just finding the time to finish it and then upload it - I get distracted way too easily! post comment

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