Valparaiso

So Valparaiso - also known as Valpo to the locals - is the second largest city in Chile and was once the largest port city in Chile. So Elisabeth and I's adventures continued with a trip to the city to see more of the ocean and check out some of the sites after checking off of list of things to do with the trusty guide books of course.

Just in case you were wondering, here is a hand little map to show where Valpo is in relation to Santiago.

Elisabeth and I with our tour books on the bus.... such tourists.

Getting of the bus in this city was an entirely different process. We got off in to the middle of downtown and in the middle of the outdoor market area. However, it was not the cute, artsy outdoor market area. It was more like stolen goods laid out on trash bags and food. So lots of socks for sale and jeggings. Then lots of street food and fish. Needless to say it smelled bad and we stuck out pretty bad with a slightly scared and lost look on our faces and backpacks on.

Once we escaped the madness we walked about 25 blocks to find this great fresh seafood restaurant that our books had recommend. Cheap and fresh and good for lunch - exactly what we were looking for! We pretty much walked the whole length of the city to find out that it had closed a while ago.....

So plan b was to find the nearest place and that turned out to be seafood as well! So we got a table and got some fresh and delicious food. Since I don't really eat seafood I had a cheese and shrimp empanada, fries and a coke. Elisabeth had a crab empanda and some type of white fried fish and it was all delicious!

My yummy shrimp and cheese empanada

Cheesin with my cheesey empanada!!! I was just a little exhausted and punchy at this point....

That's right, reading the books in the restaurant.

After lunch, we consulted our books and headed out to find. Muelle Prat Wharf. It is the main point of entry for the port and also it's where you can walk in to the water and go out on boats as well. An interesting thing we found out about Valpo.... there are no beaches and it's not really a thing to have homes or property on the waterfront. It was mostly just for the ports and shipping. Kind of weird.

Once we found the wharf we bartered in our broken spanish for the price of a boat ride on the water and hopped aboard. We didn't really know what we were getting in to since Elisabeth and I's Spanish isn't exactly top notch, but it turned out to be so much fun!!

Valpo tour tug boats

Muelle Prat Wharf

On our tour boat with our awesomely horrible life vests.

Views of the city from the boat

We were just bumping along and all of the sudden we were right next to sea lions. A little close in my opinion.... I thought they might fall in to the boat, but our captian did not seem to mind.

Once we got back we took an "ascensor" which is like a little trolley car up into the hills of Valpo. So the city consists of the port and the 4 or 5 main streets that look like a normal city and then it's made up of 42 hills that rise straight up from the water. Think San Francisco style hills with driving up crazy steep streets.

Views of the city from the hills above

Artsy little paintings and colorful steps are through out the whole city

This area is very bohemain with lots of little galleries, coffee shops and bright colored homes. We wandered around for a bit. Found some cool stores and pretty buildings. Unfortunately, our trip was cut a little short (we were planning on staying the night), but I was feeling pretty sick so we headed back. Everyone in our volunteer class got sick with a little cold when we first got here and it finally hit me then. We hopped back on the bus and by the time we pulled in to Santiago I could hardly speak my throat hurt so bad.

All in all it was a great day! We had so much, saw lots of great sites and most importantaly took our first trip and figured out everyone on our own! I was quite proud of our day.

Isla Negra & Pablo Neruda

So I'm a little behind on the blogging, but here's what I've been doing lately.....

Two weekends ago, my friend Elisabeth and I took our first trip in Chile. We went down to Isla Negra and Valparaiso on the coast of Chile. Isla Negra is a tiny little beach town. When we got off the bus there were hardly any people in sight - and it was so great!!! Santiago is so big and crowded so it was nice to get out of that for a bit.


There's not much in Isla Negra, just beaches with huge gorgeous rocks and then little houses and kind of a main area with a few corner store style restaurants. The main atraction is the 2nd house of Chilean's famous poet, Pablo Neruda. He's a pretty big deal around here and his 3 homes are now museums. They are all very different and all built to have the feeling of being on a ship because he loved boats and loved the water. So they are kind of odd layouts with small doors and skinny stairs. One room is completely decorated with statues from the front of ships from all over the world. Unfortunately, I could not take any photos inside, but got to take a lot outside.

This is a shot of his house from the oceanside. It's kind of weird looking, but a lot bigger than this and in a lot more sections.

This is one of my favorite pictures. It's in his "backyard" and I believe it is an old anchor that he bought some where. He was actually a hoarder in life and collected like 50 different things from all over the world.

Views from the backyard. Don't you wish you lived here?
And it was quite windy that day....

Another favorite picture. A boat on land that he sat in and had drinks, because he was actually scared of the water.

Another favorite. I have no idea what this bell tower type thing is, but I thought it was quite interesting and pretty.

Another random sculpture he collected. I love it.

The beach at Isla Negra. After the tour we walked down to the water for a while.

I can't even explain how good to felt to feel salt water splashing on my face! It was freezing and I think it will stay freezing in to the summer, but still so nice to be near water.

Elisabeth and I. The story behind the pineapple is that we came down to Isla with 3 other girls from VE who were just hanging on the beach all day. One of them had brought this pineapple with her to three different places hoping people would eat it and they still had not so she was like the crazy lady with a pineapple at all times. Hence the need to take photos with it, obviously.

Isla Negra is gorgeous..... so far one of my favorite places because it's small and just naturally beautiful. We only stayed for a few hours, but we will definitely be returning soon for the day.
I'll share more on the trip to Valpo tomorrow..... in the mean time here is a little poem by Pablo Neruda called love... and translated in to English.

Amor
Pablo Neruda
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands; how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks, the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting stars, falling objects.

My Chilean Apartment

This week has been very busy. We all started working this week and it's been exhausting, overwhelming, exciting... pretty much every emotion possible! I'll write more about it tomorrow, but first wanted to share about where I'm living in Chile.

So I am in an older apartment building about 2 blocks for the center of downtown Santiago. The building was just renovated so everything is nice and new, which is great for us!

I'm living with 6 other girls ( all VE volunteers) and some of them are sharing rooms, but I was lucky enough to get my own room. It's so nice to come back to my own space at the end of the day.

Our living room

Dining room

Drying rack for our clothes - we only have a washer right now. They swear a dryer will be coming soon, but until then everything is a bit stiff and wrinkled.

the Kitchen - this is HUGE for a Chilean kitchen. Most are like the size of a nice walk in closet.

My sweet little bedroom. Yep, that is a twin bed.

the view from my window

Overall, we really lucked out. The funny thing is that our landlord is this young guy who owns the hostal we first stayed in and this is his first venture in to apartments. So we get something new in our house everyday because everyday we're all like "Mario, don't you think we could use a cutting board or bowls or maybe some knives...." It's been interesting.

The most interesting thing is that Chileans apparently don't really worry about fires. There are no smoke detectors and when I asked about them he said "No, you don't need them. Just don't smoke."

So I have now bought 2 smoke detectors, a fire extinguisher and  will be buying a rope ladder. We are on the 5th floor and there's only one set of stairs down the middle. Most of my roomies think I'm crazy, but I just really don't want to die of a fire in Chile.

Language Barrier

This is going to sound a bit silly, but it is SO DIFFICULT TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY WHERE PEOPLE SPEAK A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE......

- When you go to the grocery store not only do you have to ask questions in another language, but all of the food is in another language. Granted food is easy, but still if you're trying to know what flavor rice you're getting and there's not a picture it can be hard. Then you have to pay in a different currency and get things weighed in kilos.

- When in a restaurant and you finally decide what to get and how to pronouce it... the waiter says "we don't have i"t... followed by like 15 other very fast and mumbled words in spanish and all I can do is panic and say "Si" and immediately point to something else, which turns out to be quite tasty mystery meat, that unfortunately cost WAY too much.

- When you go to a clothing store you have to ask for things in another language. Today's challenges were saying "do you have yoga mats" and "do you have hooks for the back of a door" and "do you have a smoke alarm for my house".  Also, today I had to return something and that took 4 seperate people to tell me I could only return things on the 3rd floor in a tiny unmarked room.

- When you go to the language school to sign up for Spanish classes, SHOCKINGLY, the people there helping to sign you up and take your money SPEAK IN SPANISH. They can do broken english, but they just mostly speak in spanish. How does that make sense?? If I knew spanish why would I be taking the classes?

Due to these difficulties, one of the things that we have learned in orientation is to celebrate the smallest accomplishments. So today when I DID get to return my item and when I DID purchase the smoke alarm I was grinning from ear to ear!! AND this all happened by myself, all across the city today. Meaning I had no one helping translate and no one helping me read the maps, buses, etc. YAYyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy for me!

Also, when I was walking back from the grocery store and the ATM feeling a little broke and down guess what happened.....

I looked up and saw that the street sign in front of me said "TOMAS ANDREWS"
It made me smile and laugh to think of Thomas and then of my family. I think it was a little sign from God saying cheer up charlie!!

My First Earthquake

So last night around 4:03am an earthquake hit Central Chile, which is right where we live. I had just rolled over and was just falling back asleep when everything started shaking and there was a low rumble. One of my roomies screamed and that kind of jolted me in to "Ok, this is not a dream, this is an earthquake and other people are feeling it". I'm not really sure how long it lasted, but I believe it was about 10 - 15 seconds, but it felt like forever!

We all got up slowly and opened our doors to see if others felt it. I live with 6 other girls and 2 of the girls slept through it! I just can't believe that because it was shaking our beds like crazy. We all hugged and said "oh my god" about 200 times! Nothing had really fallen down and there were not sirens outside so we assumed everything was ok. However, we looked up on the news and saw it was a 5.6 on the Richter scale. I don't know much about that scale, but that seems pretty high to me!

I actually felt sea sick from all of the swaying of the building and thought I was going to throw up for a minute..... visions of the Canada airport and being woken up to throw up were flooding my mind.
But, luckily we all calmed down and went back to bed after a little while.

The scary thing..... apparently these aren't that rare!!!! Chile is right on a fault line and gets a good amount of earthquakes. (Someone really should have done some research before moving to this country).

Also, apparently the coastal towns ( one hour away) know what to do in case of a tsunami and have signs pointing to higher ground. Well were were thinking about going to one of the beaches this weekend, but now I just don't know anymore! Again, someone should have done some research on this country!!!

I was going to post some pics, but that will have to come later in the day. We are very lucky that nothing bad happened and everything was ok. I just hope this is the only one we every experience!

Ciao!

The Mullet....

Here in Santiago there are many types of people. However, there is one hairstyle that seems to be popular among most men and that is the mullet. We have had mullet sightings all over the city of various lengths and styles....

Here is my favorite to date:

I had a great first weekend in Santiago! We had some good food, drinks and did a little sight seeing. More pictures to come on that later tonight after we (hopefully) move in to our apartment!

Lessons learned....

Having been in the city for a full week now ( 7 whole days!), I have learned a few things in my days in Santiago....

1. Chileans do not say adios, they say ciao.

2. Chileans kiss everyone on the cheek when they say hello and goodbye. So if you enter a room of 18 Chileans then you go around the room and literally give everyone a kiss on the cheek. It can be a long process....

3.Chileans also makeout in public EVERYWHERE. Everywhere we have been there are people making out on the subway, in the park, on the streets, at national monuments. It's a crazy PDA city.

4. They put mayonaise on EVERYTHING. And not just like a little, a lot. It's gross. They also randomly put eggs on lots of things. Not in them, but for example. I have seen quite a few sandwiches, pizzas, pastas, etc. that have a random eggs served sunny side up just placed on top. And since I don't like mayo or eggs I am having to be very clear when ordering food.

5. Chileans speak very, VERY FAST. Like they are known throughout South America as mumblers and the fastest speakers in the country.

No major hilarious miscommunications just yet. However, we did have an interesting little journey to the hardware store to understand how to buy things in Chile.  We were getting adapters and we had to talk to the guy behind the counter to make sure we had the right thing and see them to confirm that is what we wanted, then he gave us a ticket and we went to a line to pay for it. Then we got another ticket and went to another line to get the actual adapter. It was seriously so silly to do all of that, but apparently that is pretty much how a lot of stores work.

Overall though.... everyone has been super friendly. It's very, very obvious that I am a "gringa", but whenever we ask for directions or anything everyone is super helpful.

I'm off to our volunteer dinner for the weekend! Ciao!

Beinvendios a Chile!

So I have now been in Chile for about 5 days and it's been a very overwhelming and busy 5 days!
Right now I am staying in Hostal Providencia with the other members of my volunteer class (the September class). I'm in a bunk bed with 5 other roommates! It's been a bit hectic!

Sidenote: I have now learned that it is acceptable to travel around the world/Europe either in college or straight out of college, but if you get a job and make some money for a while (ie: have a nice home) it will be hard to bum around in hostals again one day and you will literally use the phrase "I'm too old for this" A LOT.  But I'm learning! I'm ok now with showering in a nasty shower with shoes that is shared by 25 - 30 other people! And living in a hostal that does not have heat when it is 30 degrees outside!

Anyway we will be here until next Saturday and then we are moving in to our apartments. I will be living in an apartment with 6 other girls (yikes!), but all volunteers that I know and like. And I will have my own room - yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! I can't tell you how excited I was to draw THAT straw.

So we have been in orientation everyday. Learning about VE Global and what they do, what our role is a volunteers and learning about Chilean history. Think about it.... did we ever really learn about the history of South America in school? Nope, not at all. So it's been very, very interesting.

It's also been very overwhelming at times. Some of the sessions are in english, some are in spanish and some in a mix of both. So on top of learning all of this new information, learning in a different language that I'm trying to translate while they are speaking has been hard. Basically, limiting all night time activites because I'm so tired at the end of the day from a complete overload of information.

BUT, with all of that said, it has been really exciting. It's hard being in a different country and living this odd life, but it's exciting and everyone is really NICE. All of the people in my group are super friendly. They range in age from about 19 - 25 (yep I'm in the "old girls groups" - there are 4 girls who are 25). Three from the UK (and I imitate their accents daily), 3 from Germany, 1 from Austraila and the rest from the good ole US of A.... now known only as "The States"

Today, was our "day off" so I got out in the city and then went to visit my institution ( the place I'll be working). I'll share some about that tomorrow....

In the meantime... a few photos taken so far. (FYI, this will probably be more of a wordy story blog than a photo blog.... lo siento mis amigos).

The entrance to Santa Lucia, a really pretty building with parks and fountains that takes you to a view of the city. (We did a scavenger hunt across the city with teams from our class and this was one of our stops)  

The fountain at Santa Lucia

A view of Saintiago and the Andes behind it from the top of Santa Luica.

Brianna, Allison and I at the top of Santa Lucia.

So in Santiago, there are dogs all over the whole city. Stray dogs who just sleep and walk around and wander. They are not mean or aggressive and people feed them. There is a random dog statue in the park of Santa Lucia and I thought it looked like Allison's pup, Khaki. So I took a picture.

People slacklining the the parque de italia.... I felt right at home. A little piece of Boulder in Chile with me :)
Who would have thought this would be an international activity?

Internationl Travel.... so fun and easy.

So I'm here in Chile. No photos to share just yet, I'll blog later today on what I've been doing, but first I would like to share a litttle bit about my experience in getting down here.

So Friday morning, I flew from Wilmington to Charlotte and Charlotte to Toronto. These first two flights were just fine, minus the extreme amounts of crying and sudden burst of tears that I could not control. I was that girl on the plane who randomly just kept crying.

However, the real fun started when I arrived in Toronto. I had to go through customs and then go to my connecting flight. That actually proved to be easy, Canadian airports were pretty nice and friendly.

So my flight was supposed to leave at 11:15 for an overnight flight to Chile. At about 9:00 it was delayed to 1am because of maintence. So I was disappointed, but still ok. We got on the plane, I found a whole row of seats to myself. We were pulling away, lights out, handing out head phones..... so I went ahead and took my ambien. BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA.

Two hours later..... we were apparently deboarded for maintence reasons. I woke up to total confusion and I'm pretty sure I was the last one on  the plane. I stumbled my way off, not really able to walk or keep my eyes open. I made it out of the jetway and in to the gate waiting area. I immediately passed out in a chair and woke at some point later. I then went to ask the person working the counter what was going on, but on the way there I started feeling sick so I turned to go to the bathroom and ended up throwing up twice..... on the way to the bathroom, NOT in the bathroom. Just in the middle of the airport. When I did make it to the bathroom I was done throwing up. Luckly I was so out of it that I didn't even notice if anyone else was looking at me throwing up all over the airport. Nor did I tell anyone working I had just puked everywhere.

So once again in my ambien induced drunkness I walked right out of the bathroom and passed out again in my chair. Note, I did not carry my things with me to the counter or to the bathroom and who knows how I got them off the plane.

Around 6am I kind of came to a bit more and was finally able to speak clearly, walk and ask the stewardess what the hell was going on. My flight was rebooked to take off at 8:30 so I boarded, took a dramamine and slept.

Needless to say, it was a bit tramatic. And on top of all of it my computer would not connect to the internet so I couldn't tell my family or anyone in Chile that I would be late. Not the best travel experince......

BUT I MADE IT HERE!! More to come later today about Santiago!

Adios!