Back to Santiago!

Well - Spring Break is officially over and I'm really glad that I took the time to go home to the states. I got a lot done around the house, took care of some administrative tasks at the university, did my taxes, and of course got to see a lot of different people. I feel like I accomplished a lot and it was really great.

I had some adventures on my way back to Santiago. I had three flights to catch: Minneapolis to Chicago (50 min layover) to Miami (1 hr 5 minute layover) to Santiago. If all the flights would have been on time, I wouldn't have had any problems, however that never happens. My flight from Chicago was delayed 45 minutes. When we landed in Miami, I had 30 minutes to get to the plane to Chile. Then we sat on the runway for 15 minutes, because another plane had mechanical issues and was blocking the alley we had to go down. Once we finally got off the plane - I RAN faster than I have ever ran before to get to my gate. A couple from Germany and another from Chile were running with me. It was so scary, because they had shut the door and the plane was going to pull away. When the airport guy saw us, he quickly opened the door and ran down the hall to catch the plane. Finally, we were able to board the plane. I recieved 4 phone calls while I had been running. It was crazy. Sorry Erin and Jenn - I wasn't able to talk really. I was so stressed out by the time that I got to my seat. I did manage to send a couple texts when I sat down, but the attendant made me shut off my phone.

Anyway. The flight was fine for the most part. In the middle of the night, a woman in the row over from me was really sick. I don't know what she had - she wasn't throwing up or anything. She was just moaning a lot and then fell asleep after a while. The flight attendants even had to interrupt the entire plane (trying to sleep) and ask if there was a doctor on board. It was crazy, and kept me awake for a while. The flight wasn't all bad. I sat next to a really nice 27 year old grad student from Chile who goes to Harvard/MIT for some engineering degree. We ended up chatting on the whole flight, because I couldn't sleep and he had work to do on his computer. He was really interesting, and told me stories about how he has a presentation for the U.S. Secretary of Energy next week, because he is working on a huge research project for the states on how to build more energy efficient systems or something. He was visiting Chile for a wedding and had been delayed an entire day by canceled flights. He also gave me a bunch of places that I have to visit in Santiago and lots of advice about traveling back and forth between the two countries. Like how to make sure I can bring some wine/pisco home to the states. His dad was picking him up at the airport, so he insisted on giving me a ride to the metro station. It was going to save me like 30 bucks, so I was incredibly thankful. His dad was so nice and drove me all the way to the Borquez's apartment. I saved a lot of time and energy. Chileans are sooooo nice.

Anyway. I slept yesterday from 8 am to 6 pm, then from about 2 am to 8 am this morning. Then I came home from school today and slept from 3 pm to about 7 pm. I hate jet lag. I'm still tired.

Tomorrow I have class for six hours instead of three, because my teacher is getting married on Thursday night and wants to have no class on Friday. She insists on making up the extra time. I'm thinking it is going to be a LONG and tiring day. So I'm going to go to sleep. Talk to you all soon hopefully. Emily

Hi, its me again

Hola! Yo estoy en el aeropuerto. Tengo que esperar por mi vuelo. El aeropuerto tiene wi-fi y estoy muy feliz.

That means:
Hello! I am in the airport. I have to wait for my flight. The airport has wi-fi and I am very happy.

Can you tell I'm bored?

Carlos, Cecilia, and Francisca took me to the airport just now. I'm glad they did, because I was originally planning on taking a taxi until yesterday. They saved me like 30-40 bucks, even though I was willing to pay for it. They are such a sweet family. They all came inside the departure area with me, and stood in line with me to check in. I ended up not needing their help translating at all (yay for me), but I was glad they came. We chatted while waiting. Gotta love Chileans - the people with all the power like to take their time with everything. So the people at the DMV, grocery store clerks, bank clerks, and of course, airport check-in attendants take their sweet time no matter how long the lines are. The line wasn't too long, but it was incredibly slow. Anyway, so that leaves me here and now with about an hour before we take off. I am quite sure that I am in the right place. Yes, I'm looking at my tickets and I'm at the right gate. However, I think that it's for an hour later than I originally thought. This is probably due to the day light savings time catastrophe I have encountered. This is a whole different story.

So remember how I told you that daylight savings time would put Chile in the same time zone as US Eastern? Right - that's what I thought. However the government of Chile had different plans. They up and decided to postpone the daylight savings time until March 29th. Their reasons make sense. There is an "energy crisis" in Chile and the government decided that changing the DST would save energy and money. I see their logic. The only thing is - no one told me about this, so my computer changed time and I thought "Oh it's my computer, it must be right!" Right??? Nope. Wrong. So I was an hour late to class on Monday. So if my e-ticket from Travelocity says 8:55 and my boarding pass from LAN Chile/American Airlines says 21:55 - It must be because of this stupid DST thing. It's a little frustrating. No wonder no one else is sitting in my gate getting ready to take off - I'm now two hours away from boarding, not one. Who knows... I just hope that I can make my connection flight in Miami to Minneapolis. If we arrive one hour later, I'm going to be annoyed.

Well, since I have time, I can catch everyone up on what I have been up to. My weekend was great. I went to school last Friday like normal and got an invite to go to Pichilemu (peachy - lay - moo) for the weekend. My amigas from class had a friend coming in from the states, but her flight was canceled from Dallas because of bad weather. So in case she could get on a flight, some of my friends decided to stay in Santiago - freeing up space in the cabanas for me! So I went spur of the moment to this little coastal town that is world renowned for surfing. There are only about 12,000 people in the actual town, but during the high summer season the town has usually over 50,000 people in it. That's a lot of surfers. We were there the weekend after the town emptied out, so it was nice and peaceful.

Sarah, Erin, and I stayed in a cabin that is owned by a young couple from California who opened up a language school three years ago. Chris and Valerie are both are avid surfers, good business people, and decided to move here after they spent 6(!) months in South America on their honeymoon. They live this really cool green lifestyle taking care of the cabins, teaching English, and surfing. They have two chickens for eggs and even compost their own food! You would think that they would have dread locks and smell bad, but they are very attractive people. They just had a baby who might be the cutest baby in all of Chile. I don't think that I could do everything that they do - however, I would like to walk in their shoes for a couple months before going back to my life. They were just fascinating people. I highly recommend the Buenos Vistas Cabanas in Pichilemu for anyone who travels there. I really want to go back.

We arrived in Pichilemu (we call it 'peachy' for short) on Friday evening, unpacked our stuff and quickly found one of the most delicious meals I have had in all of Chile at this restaurant called Casa Luna. It was a huge salmon filet over spicy mashed potatoes with fresh vegetables sauteed in a thai sauce. I'm not kidding - the best dinner I have had here I'm pretty sure. After dinner we went to the only bar in Pichilemu which was a hole in the wall and wasn't as cool as I wanted it to be. It was small and had a lot of spray paint on the walls. I ordered a drink called a Kahlua Colada (because I like Kahlua) but it was horrible and expensive. We left the bar pretty quickly because it was really smoky and we were all really tired. We got back to the cabin and OMG - I have to tell you - the stars were amazing! I haven't seen that beautiful of a night sky in a super long time. I could have slept outside just to watch the stars if it wasn't so cold at night. I also saw three shooting starts. How awesome, right?

Saturday was a good day. We got up and went to surfing lessons!! We got to wear dry suits and everything. I was ready to try anything. We carried our huge surfboards down to the beach and practiced on land for an hour before going into the water. I was so pumped to stand up on my board and not fall down... however I was not prepared for how nauseous I would be during the whole thing. And how difficult it was to paddle in the water. It is a different kind of paddling movement from swimming and the waves were pretty big at times. I gave it my all, but HATED surfing! Once I was out on the water - I realized how hard it was to stand up on the surfboard. They are a lot more unstable than I was ready for. It was really hard to paddle in the water and the waves push you sideways, not towards the beach. When you are out, far from the beach, where the waves haven't started to crash yet, it is like a bad carnival ride. I was soooo incredibly queasy. Then of course, my mind wanders, so I started imagining sharks and jellyfish underneath me. After about 45 minutes, I told the instructor I couldn't do it anymore - so he helped me paddle in. I figure I tried my hardest to like it. My only regret is that I didn't get one picture of me in a dry suit... so their is no record of my attempt.

After surfing, we ran into Chris on the beach who offered to give us a ride back to the cabins after we went grocery shopping. He was so nice! So we picked up a bunch of food to make guacamole, spaghetti, garlic bread, and breakfast for Sunday. I was so excited to cook! It was the first time that I had prepared any food since being in Chile. The girls didn't like cooking so it was even better for me. We spent the afternoon recovering from surfing, reading, and eating guacamole. We decided to take a collectivo (which is a cab that only goes to certain places) to this place called Los Lobos, to watch the sunset. It is this very small peninsula that juts out into the ocean and is basically a big cliff. The waves are HUGE here and so it's a big surfing spot. It was beautiful.

These are the Los Lobos - The Wolves.

After the sunset, I got to make dinner and it was so delicious. Erin promised that she was going to call James to let him know what a great cook I am - and how lucky he is. Ha.

Sunday morning we slept in, went shopping, had lunch, and went back to Santiago which brings me to this week. Monday was pretty boring and yesterday I found out that I got an A- on my last final. So I am halfway through my Spanish class, but more than halfway through my trip. It's an interesting time to be on spring break. I only have 5 more weeks left of class, but still have 2 out of 4 sections of my class left. I know I will miss this place when I'm done. Chile is pretty awesome and I'm glad that I have had the opportunity to be here. I've started a mental list of things that I would tell anyone who plans to live here for a while. University of Iowa put a link to my blog up on their website, so I feel as though I need to give out advice to anyone who is traveling here.

Ok, I'm going to go get a drink and kill some more time in the aeropuerto. Chao for now! Love you all and miss you! Wish me luck on the flights! Emily

Halfway!

Hi everyone! How are you doing? I'm doing well, just trying to kill time. I fly to the states in exactly 4 hours. I think we are going to the airport in an hour or so... Then I'll have some time to kill there. I just hope that I can manuver through the airport with my espanol skills. I feel pretty good about speaking in Spanish and everything - but there are always things that you encounter, but aren't prepared for. And it's so much harder to explain yourself if you don't know how to in another language. I'm pretty positive I will be fine ---


Cecilia just knocked on my door. She wants to take me to the airport now. Ha. Wow... I'm going to have a long time to bum around the airport.

So I will write about last weekend, this week, and my tests/school later. Miss you love you all! Em

busy week!

Hi everyone! I'm sorry that I haven't written in a while, but I have been pretty busy with a lot of things. Since I last wrote, I did my normal school things, but I also took a trip to the really cool city of Pucon. It is pronounced: poo-CONE. The town is a ten hour bus ride south of Santiago in the middle of volcano country. There are lakes, a river, hot springs, and of course, volcanoes. The region is full of activities for the outdoorsy and adventurous type. I stayed with 4 other girls in a hostel and we did a canopy tour, went white water rafting, enjoyed hot springs, the beach, and a horseback riding tour. It wasn't overly expensive by US prices, but for Chile - it was "muy caro" (as my host family would say) - it was expensive.

Because we didn't have school on that Friday, my friends and I decided to take advantage of the 3-day weekend, and leave Thursday night. The bus pulled away from the station in Santiago at 11:25 pm. I swallowed a Dramamine to fight any nausea, and to make myself a little more drowsy for the 10-hour ride. We paid a little extra to have a Semi-Cama bus. This meant that the seats leaned back a bit more than they do in - like- a normal airplane seat. Cama means bed. The seats were still pretty uncomfortable, so even with the meds, I only got maybe 3-4 hours of sleep. We made a lot of stops along the way in tiny Chilean towns. Halfway through the trip, I woke up and looked outside. I could see different parking spots that were numbered, Anden 6, Anden 7, Anden 8, Anden 9, etc. One of the girls wondered out loud, "Where are we?" and I said, "We are in Anden!" All my friends started laughing, because "anden" means platform in espanol. I didn't hear the rest of it for a while. :)

We pulled into Pucon on Friday morning at 8 am. We were pretty sleepy, but ready to get to the hostel. Ecole was a great hostel. Run by Americans, it has a hippie vibe, is very clean, has a vegetarian restaurant, and lots of connections for things to do in town. For $13 a night, I was really pleased with the place. Our room had two sets of bunk beds, one regular bed, two tables, and a couple of ceiling lights. I guess we didn't need any more. The bathrooms were clean for the most part, and every time I took a shower, it was warm. In each bathroom are little signs with a couple rules/guidelines for the bathroom. You aren't allowed to flush your tp down the toilet. This is really common all over Chile, because many places don't have great plumbing systems. It also said stuff like keep the place clean and dry the shower off after use. My favorite rule said something to the effect of "Take quick showers to conserve water (or shower with a friend!)".

Friday afternoon we did the canopy tour. Canopy is a series of zip lines strung from trees at least 10-20 meters off the ground and you get to the next one by climbing up a series of ladders. It wasn't as safe as courses in the US, but this sport is still pretty new in Chile. I think they have only had it for 10-15 years. Because of summer camp, I know all the bad things that can happen to you. Here, they didn't take as many safety precautions as I would have liked, but I survived.

You can see the platform that everyone is standing on and the instructors are in red shirts. They just climb like monkeys all over the course - sometimes clipped in and other times not! The platforms and the trees sway a little, but it is part of the thrill. The trees aren't going to fall over, but it is still a little scary. Well, five minutes after we finished the course, the sky opened up and poured rain. We became soaking wet while waiting for the van to pick us up. I haven't seen any form of precipitation since being in Santiago - and I LOVED the rain. It was so nice to be cold for once! Santiago is still the hottest place ever. I am made for cold weather... Anyway, we rode back to town with our instructors who invited us to their house that evening for drinks. They all are from Santiago and do this job in the summertime. Since the season was ending, they were celebrating being done with the summer. The girls and I went back to the hostel and ate at the restaurant in the hostel. I had this delicious vegetarian lasagna... it was so good. Pucon was an awesome city, because they knew how to cook with flavor! On Sunday morning, I had these whole wheat, oat, and nut pancakes with fresh fruit, fresh blackberry jam, and plain yogurt. Then we had pizza that night - with garlic!!!! I was in eating heaven. (Santiago restaurants don't have any flavor -or at least, I haven't found any yet). So Friday night, we went over to hang out with the canopy instructors. It was really fun and I got to speak Spanish with native Chileans.

Saturday morning we woke up and went river rafting! I had never been before and I loved it! We had a great time with our guide. We were all suited up in helmets, wetsuits, life jackets, and water shoes. We didn't have a camera - but I wished we did, because we looked hilarious. The river was a level 4 which means that there are some pretty hefty falls and lots of big rocks. Our guide would always yell "Fuerte! Fuerte!" which means strong - so paddle strong! One part of the river is a level 6 - so we had to get out and walk through the brush to get around it. The end of the path is at a cliff overlooking the rushing water. Down below, our boat is waiting for us - and when we walked up, one of the guides says "OK, who is first?" I thought they were kidding. They told us it was about a 4 meter jump. It was pretty intense. It took me about 20 seconds of standing on the edge, before I had the nerve to leap. The jump was fine but the water took a long time to get to. I remember thinking how "I'm still falling, but I should be in the water right now!" And then BAM! You are deep in this freezing cold water! When you surface, you have to quickly swim to the boat, where your guide grabs you by the life jacket, and throws you into the boat. It was hilarious!

We kept paddling for a while before we got to this part of the river that is a pretty dangerous part. There is a one big rock that if you hit it - you could flip the raft over! So- we tried to paddle around it, but got stuck on a different rock! Then we got unstuck from that rock, only to be stuck between two rocks and water rushing over the sides of the raft! It wasn't really dangerous... just tricky. Our guide wasn't angry with us, but just annoyed because he had to do some extra work. So he helped us to climb to the side of the river (thank goodness the water was a little low) and we had to get out and climb once again, but this time there wasn't a path. The rafts are self draining, so we finally got everything figured out and went down the river. It never was dangerous - just took a little more time than planned. We like to think we got our money's worth out of the excursion.

After the rafting trip, two of the girls napped, while Kate, Christine, and I went to the beach. The lake was gorgeous and the sand was little black volcanic rocks. Isn't it gorgeous? The pictures don't really do it justice, but it still is beautiful.

That evening, the girls went to the hot springs, but I didn't feel well - so I decided to save the twenty bucks and stay in the hostel. I ended up borrowing this really good murder mystery book called The Survivor's Club. I haven't finished it yet, because Christine wanted it back on Sunday, but I only have 50 pages left and it's really good so far.

So our last day was Sunday, and Christine and I went horseback riding. It was run by some English/Spanish speaking Germans who were really super nice. I got to ride Esperanza and she was a fun horse to ride. She loved to run (which scared the hell out of me each time because I was just hanging on for dear life) and was generally really good. She was a big eater too. We would be trotting along the path and she would lean over and take a big bite out of a bush every chance she could get. It was really funny. I would worry that something was wrong with her, if I didn't know that all the horses are really well taken care of. Here is me and Christine on the horses in front of Villarica - the closest volcano.

Isn't it so pretty!!! I wish the horses would have posed better, but this was the best we could get them to do... I'm pretty sure that the pic was snapped while Esperanza was walking to that bush - to eat it. So it's Wednesday now... and my legs still hurt, especially my inner thighs. OW!

I put up all the pictures from my trip on Facebook again. The link for you to check them out is: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2234202&l=8cf80&id=14811972

We got back from Pucon at 8:30 in the morning on Monday. I was glad to be back, but I was exhausted. I didn't do much except sleep then and yesterday. Again, I have another test this Friday so I need to study, but I'm procrastinating. I got a big care package from James today which I was so excited about. It had CD's, magazines, books, food, and candy inside. All my classmates were totally jealous. So I have been playing with everything in there all afternoon.

I fly home a week from tonight... I hope I can see some of you while I'm there! I plan on doing some resume work and applying for jobs - but also having a fabulous break from thinking in espanol all day.

This upcoming Sunday is Daylight Savings Time, and Chile "Falls Back" and the states "Spring Forward" - So that means we will be in the same time zone as Eastern! Isn't that a weird phenomenon? I didn't know that other countries did DST too.

Anyway, I have to go. I miss you and love you all!