Amanda Goes to Chile

I'm currently sitting in a hostel in Santiago, not far from the first hostel I stayed at here and where I once took Spanish classes. In less than two hours I will head to the airport to get on a plane that will take me back to the United States. The mountains in Santiago look different from how I remember them. They are covered in snow now. It's pretty, but seems to signal that I've been here for a long time. In some ways it feels like I've been here ages (and believe me, some days and weeks dragged on forever), but at the same time, part of me can't believe it's already over.

My last days in Tocopilla were filled with goodbye parties and presents. I think half of my suitcases may be gifts and souvenirs, most of which I did not buy. As much as my students didn't want to listen to me and told me that English was boring, they certainly seem to have disliked the fact that I was leaving. "Miss, now we will only have boring English classes!" "Don't leave us miss!!! Pleeeaassee!" "Miss take me with you!" I spent the last week of classes showing them pictures of my house, my family, my friends, etc. They seemed to really enjoy it. I really do hope they learned something. If nothing else, I know that they know how to say "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" Hopefully they know what it means.

Things I Learned in Chile

• I assume I have learned some Spanish, or at least that it has improved. I think it must have. I can't say it always feels like it has, though. I know that language acquisition is a slow process and it's hard to notice improvements, so it's hard for me to really say how much I've learned. I do know that I have successfully translated for non-Spanish speakers a few times now and that Chileans often say, "oh yes, you can speak Spanish" to me. At the same time I still sometimes stumble over my words and have a hard time expressing exactly what I want to say, and sometimes I still don't understand what people say to me. I like to make myself feel better about the latter by reminding myself that I'm in Chile, and Chileans speak way faster than other Spanish speakers.

• I really enjoy the richness of the English language. For a long time I felt that my inability to express myself exactly as I wanted in Spanish was simply a result of my limited vocabulary. As time went on, however, I realized there was more to it than just that. While my vocabulary is certainly limited, for many things there simply aren't as many ways to express yourself as there are in English. Or, at least, if there are, they are quite uncommon. For instance, there are only a couple phrases you can use to express that something bad or unfortunate has occurred. I feel like there are many more in English. Similarly, there seem to be a lot of ways in English to just very slightly change the significance of what you are saying, with words like would, could, should, can, etc. There are many others but they are hard to think of randomly. While it is possible to say phrases such as these in Spanish, there aren't as many, and often aren't used with as much frequency. This may have to do with the directness of the Spanish language. They says things that I consider quite impolite, because it would be in English, but which is not impolite for them. Maybe we are just really into politeness in English.

• I am fully capable of traveling alone, even in a foreign country. I just might not be very good at it. Although I was often with other people when I traveled places, there were quite a few times where I traveled to completely unknown places by myself. I always made it through my trips successfully, but, given my terrible directional skills, I often end up getting lost at least once. I also seem to have a terribly hard time figuring out public transportation systems. Still though, since I am a patient person, even with myself most of the time, I'm able to get past the hours I spend lost in unknown cities and enjoy myself just fine.

Things I Will Miss About Chile

• The people. I will certainly miss many of the people I have met here including my family and my students (at least the ones I actually know and recognize...). I will undoubtedly miss Antonellas hugs when I come home from school. Luckily the internet exists, making staying in touch pretty easy.

• Completos. Even with the overwhelming amount of mayo that the Chileans put on them, I'm quite fond of these amazing hot dogs. Tomatoes, avocados, sauerkraut, mayonnaise, ketchup all in a nice, warm, toasted bun... what's not to like? This is probably one of the few Chilean foods I'll make when I get home.

• The ocean and mountains. After a while I took them for granted. Sometimes, I even disliked the small mountains by my house for not being as pretty as snow-capped mountains with tree lines and greenery... dirt and rock gets pretty boring after a while. Still, I'm sure that I will miss being able to look out the window and see mountains and ocean whenever I like.

• Relatively easy and comfortable bus travel. Buses aren't very popular in the United States, but they are incredibly popular in Chile. As a result the buses here are more comfortable, and there are more of them. Long bus rides don't seem bad when your in a seat that reclines really far back. Honestly, I would much rather do another 20 hour Chilean bus ride than sit in a plane for 10 hours today. The plane ride is guaranteed to be uncomfortable. Luckily, it's redeeming factor is that it's taking me home.

• An emphasis on people. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Chileans, and Latinos in general, I believe, put a heavier emphasis on relationships and conversations. While this sometimes bothered me when it caused huge time inefficiencies and lateness, I can see it's benefits. I hope I can take a little bit of this belief system back with me and incorporate it into my everyday life.

Things I Won't Miss About Chile

• Salt. I believe I've complained about salt from the very beginning. I think the fact that I can still notice the food is extremely salty is good, because it means I haven't become accustomed to it. I can't wait to exchange salt for pepper.

• Lack of products, both food and otherwise. I often couldn't find what I consider common, every day products. This was largely because I was located in a small town, but sometimes I couldn't even find them in larger cities. I miss being able to get whatever you need at the grocery store.

• Random store hours. Although I got somewhat used to the opening and closing times of the stores and shops in Tocopilla (9 am - 1 pm; 5:30 or 6 pm- 10ish), they were never guaranteed. People pretty much just opened and closed stores whenever they felt like it, which could be really annoying if you needed to get something. In Chile, you need to make sure you don't wait until the last minute to buy things, or you just might not be able to.

• High prices. The region of Antofagasta is known to have some of the highest prices in all of Chile because the miners are quite well off. Unfortunately most people aren't miners, making it rather unfair to them that the prices are so high. In my experience, though, it's not just the Antofagasta region that has high prices. All of Chile seemed fairly expensive to me. Not all things are expensive though. Sometimes I would expect things to be expensive and they would actually be really cheap. Things I thought would be cheap would often be expensive. Overall though, I would consider Chile quite expensive, especially considering that average incomes are lower here than they are in the US.

• Earthquakes and tremors. I only really experienced one decently sized earthquake and it wasn't bad. It was more of an experience than anything. Still, I don't particularly like living in a place with Earthquakes. I don't like that they are impossible to predict. I think I prefer living with tornadoes. At least they have sirens.

• The lack of indoor heating. I'm always cold. I like heating and cooling systems. I really like heating systems. Tocopilla doesn't get that cold, but when it does, you need to bundle up not just to go outside, but to stay inside too. When I went to San Pedro, there was no heat in the hostel, even though it got below freezing at night. I was so bundled up when I went to bed I felt like I was camping. I will never take a thermostat for granted again.

Things I am Looking Forward to in the US

• The people. My family, my friends, anybody know, I'm excited to see. I've missed most of them, and I've spent the last few months with a fairly limited number of friends I could see with any level of regularity. I'm excited to get to spend lots of time with people I know and love again.

• Malls, movie theaters, bowling alleys, restaurants (with a variety of food!), things to do. I miss these simple activities. I don't necessarily even take advantage of them that frequently, but it's nice to have the option.

• Vegetables, non-fried food, flavor, ingredients, etc. (have I mentioned I love food?). I can't even describe how much I am looking forward to having a good salad. Or Mexican food. Or hamburgers....

• Water. Especially in restaurants. I really enjoy that when you go to a restaurant in the United States you get a glass of water with your meal. It's nice to have water. It's nice to drink water, at any time of the day, with any type of food. Water is good. It's even better when you are allowed to drink water from your tap.

• Being able to express myself exactly how I want. People are going to expect me to speak to them in English, and I really know how to speak English. I can say exactly what I want in English, and people almost always understand me (admittedly, sometimes I mumble and they don't). It's weird speaking English now. Yesterday somebody was talking to me, in English, about the fact that he didn't know Spanish, and for a couple minutes I kept trying to speak to him in Spanish. I had to remind myself to say the words in English. I'm sure this problem will go away very quickly.

This is my final week in Tocopilla, and I'm realizing I've done an awful job of chronically my time here. My excuse is that I haven't wanted to bore you all with the boring details of my life in Tocopilla. I manage to keep myself relatively busy these days, but much of my busyness includes things related to teaching English and applying for jobs. Neither of these things are especially exciting to write about. Anyway, when I look back on the last couple of months, I realize I have done a few interesting things, so here they are for you to review.

San Pedro de Atacama
One of the biggest tourist destinations in Chile is San Pedro de Atacama. It's only about 5 hours from where I live. Since this past Monday was a Catholic holiday (the Assumption of Mary - I had no idea. I'm also a little confused, because when I looked it up, I learned that it is supposed to be in August), there was no school. I decided to take advantage of the three day weekend to travel to San Pedro, where I met up with two of the volunteers from Antofagsta. I didn't have a chance to do everything that San Pedro has to offer, but I certainly enjoyed everything I did get to see. San Pedro is basically a desert oasis, and it's gorgeous.

One of the most popular attractions in San Pedro are the geysers. The Tatio Geysers are 4200 meters above sea level (the highest I've ever been!) and the third largest geyser field in the world (Yellowstone is the first, of course). Since I'd never seen geysers before, this was pretty cool, even if I did have to wake up at 3:30 am to go see them. It was freezing though, -10 Celsius, or about 14 Fahrenheit. Obviously I've experienced colder temperatures in my life, but not without a winter jacket. I can't even count the number of layers I was wearing in an attempt to stay warm. So many that I couldn't bring myself to take them all off to go swimming in the hot pool at the top of the mountain. I did put my legs in, and realized it really wasn't so much of a hot spring as it was a warm spring on the side of a freezing mountain. I don't regret my decision not to go in.

Later in the day I did go into the Laguna Cejar, which is a lake with a very high salt concentration. In fact, it has an even higher salt concentration than the Dead Sea. This means you can float in it without even trying. For the most part, the water was frigid, and it wasn't that warm outside, so it was really hard to get in. Luckily, beneath the lake there are some geysers, which provided some nice warm patches in the water. It was a weird sensation to have the body half of your body nice and warm, while the top half was numb with cold. The floating sensation was also really cool. Even before I got all the way into the water, my legs felt lighter, and almost like there was a pressure pushing up on them. Once I was totally submerged, it was effortless to float. It's really hard to describe how this feels. It took a while to get used to it, because it was so different from anything I had ever felt before and my automatic response was to tread water. This simply wasn't necessary.

While in San Pedro I also took a cool trip into the middle of the desert where an astronomer lives. He and his wife provided tons of excellent information on the stars in the southern hemisphere. Since the Atacama Desert is known to have the clearest skies in the world (they are in the process of building the largest, most technologically advanced telescope in the world here and there are world renown observatories), they were able to use the night sky as the backdrop for the lesson. I have seriously never seen so many stars in my life. I could clearly see the milky way, in a way that I didn't think was possible without a telescope. I also saw a couple shooting stars (the first I've ever seen!). The couple also had 8 amazing telescopes, which they used to show us everything ranging from Saturn to a newly discovered hemisphere. The entire experience was great, not only because the night sky was so clear and I love stars, but because a lot of the stars are different in the southern hemisphere. I've been to a lot of planetariums over the years to learn about stars in the northern hemisphere, but I've never learned so much about the stars in the southern hemisphere, let alone using the actual sky rather than a planetarium. It was freezing though and the hot chocolate at the end of the night was very much appreciated. I also wish I had been able to attend the English session. I didn't have much trouble understanding their Spanish, but I started having a hard time concentrating when I got really cold. I probably would have been able to handle freezing to death and listening at the same time better had it been in English. Luckily, right around that time they brought out blankets and extra jackets that we could use to warm up.

Trips to Antofagasta
While not especially interesting, trips to Antofagasta are sometimes what I depend on to keep me sane. Things get very boring and monotonous here sometimes. Wake up, go to school, come home, lesson plan, watch ANOTHER episode of Two and a Half Men or some other mindless TV show that really is not that interesting (including lots of 90's reruns), and get frustrated with myself for not being able to express myself the way I want to in Spanish (although after some recent reflection I believe this is not purely a result of me limited Spanish vocabulary - more on that in the next post). Among the obvious benefits of traveling to a bigger city (malls, movie theaters, street performers, restaurants.... typical city things), traveling to Antofagasta typically gives me a chance to speak English with other native English speakers, which is something I'm much more appreciative of these days. Seriously, sit me next to another English speaker and I start talking a ridiculous amount. Just the act of being able to easily express myself gets me excited. I feel like I talk a lot when I meet up with other volunteers, but they have mentioned that they think they say the same thing. I'm sure that as soon as I get home I'll start to take speaking English for granted again, but a part of me hopes I don't. It's a lot harder to be shy when you are simply thrilled to be speaking your native language. Communication can be so, so easy, and I like that.

Honestly, the couple trips I've made to Antofagasta didn't amount to much more than going out with English friends. This past Saturday, we did have a 4th of July on the 2nd of July in Chile bbq. It was as much of a success as you could expect a Fourth of July bbq to be in Chile. We had it on one of Antofagasta's beaches. Originally we planned to make hamburgers and hot dogs, but ground beef is ridiculously expensive in Chile, so we just went with hot dogs. This was fine. They were still delicious. Of course we also had things like sauerkraut and guacamole (we are in Chile after all... And to all my Polish relatives, I was surprised to learn that I do actually like sauerkraut on hot dogs and other sandwiches, just not by itself or with cabbage). There were also some very delicious makeshift s'mores involved. We listened to lots of very American music, until the Chileans guests began growing antsy listening to boring English songs about the United States. There were two things missing - a bonfire (which wasn't really a necessity) and fireworks. The Fourth of July just isn't the same when there aren't fireworks going off over the ocean you're staring at. One of the Chileans did bring an American flag though, so I guess we were all being patriotic. Of course, later, another Chilean suggested that we also have a British flag, since they speak English too. Nothing against the British, but waving their flag on the American Independence Day just doesn't make much sense. We had to have a brief history lesson.

Fireworks or not, I will never forget my Fourth of July on a beach in Chile. It was certainly unique.

A Tuna Comes to Tocopilla
A few weeks ago a Tuna came to Tocopilla. Although I was really confused by what my family was talking about, I eventually realized that a tuna is a singing troupe. They were from a university in Antofagasta and were in town for the day because there was apparently some type of show in the town center. I hadn't know that there was something going on in the plaza, but the group came to eat lunch at my family's restaurant. As we were eating out lunch, the tuna decided to put on a show for us in the restaurant. They asked me to dance and eventually made me part of their show, asking me to marry them every other minute and constantly making jokes based on me. I had this honor pretty much purely because I was the weird American hanging out in Tocopilla, but it still made an ordinary day more interesting. It's the only time I've ever seen anyone sing or dance in the restaurant.

A Father's Day Wine Tasting
There was also a special wine tasting even at the restaurant for Father's Day. My host mom suggested that I go, and, not having anything else to do on a Saturday night (seriously...), I decided it was a good idea. She told me it would start around 10 pm. In my attempt to arrive on Chilean time, I showed up around 10:30 pm. There still wasn't anything going on, so my host mom gave me one of her special pisco sours and some nuts and chips. I continued to drink pisco sours and snack for a couple more hours, at which point the wine tasting finally began. Seriously, I will never get the hang of Chilean time. During the wine tasting I learned that you are supposed to smell coffee before smelling or tasting wine. Apparently it clears your senses. The wine was good, and there was a delicious meal and dessert, so the night was a success. I got home around 3 am, at which point my host sister suggested I go out with her. I went to bed... I just can't come to terms with beginning a night out at 3 am. Where I'm from, bars aren't even open at that time.

Be prepared fora really long blog post.... There should be a lot in the next few days. I actually wrote this one ages ago, but accidentally saved it as a draft instead of publishing it. Oops!

Calama

Not long after my trip to Iquique, I decided to visit some volunteers in Calama so that I could see a movie. We had discussed this a while earlier, during a trip to Antofagasta for a welcome ceremony. The Sunday of the weekend I chose to go was "Dia del Trabajador," or "worker's day," similar to Labor Day. Since the holiday fell on a Sunday, it was celebrated by many people on that Friday. This meant that Friday afternoon classes were canceled and all of the school employees went out for a large dinner. It was a really nice dinner, which included a lot of drinks. They gave me one drink I had never tried before, but which was very good. I don't remember the name, but it somewhat reminded me of a pina colada (except way better). The lunch went fairly late, so I decided not to go to Calama until early Saturday afternoon.

Calama is a mining city about 2.5-3 hours away from Tocopilla. Unlike Tocopilla, which is right on the coast, Calama is literally in the middle of the desert. Despite this, I was struck by how green the city was. I'm pretty sure this is only because Tocopilla does a horrible job of keeping up the few trees we have here, and, although I hear that at one point somebody grew grass in some parts of the city, it definitely does not exist now. Calama, a much richer city than Tocopilla, has spent the money to ensure that their plazas continue to have grass and their streets remain tree lined. I found it really nice to see all of the trees, but I think the people in Calama thought I was crazy for commenting on how many trees they had. No matter how much money the city put into their tree life, I was still in the driest desert in the world. It felt more like I was in the desert in Calama, too. The air was even drier than it is in Tocopilla, because it isn't next to the ocean. Plus, without having the water to help regulate its temperature, the city got incredibly cold at night and much warmer during the day. So far in Tocopilla, the temperature doesn't get much lower than 55, but in Calama it was easily getting into the upper 30s/low 40s. Luckily everybody warned me of this before I left, so I took plenty of warm clothes.

While in Calama, I stayed with one of the other volunteers and her host family. The family was really nice and resembled my host family in a lot of ways. They had three kids, the youngest being 4, the middle child being 11, and the oldest 16 (I think). They had a really nice house, too, with plenty of space for me. Unlike Tocopilla, which doesn't use any type of heating device because it doesn't really get that cold, all of the rooms there had a gas heater. The beds also had tons of blankets. It was actually really nice and cozy to lay next to a fire under tons of blankets. I enjoyed it. It is also important to note that Calama is a huge mining town. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for the mines. This means that, like the rest of the Antofagasta region, it is really expensive in Calama.

After I arrived in Calama, we walked around the town and went to the mall. We stopped at a little cafe, and I had a milkshake. It was a milkshake unlike any I had ever had before though. They seemed to have completely melted the ice cream. It was good, but not quite what I had expected. I'm not sure if this is just a normal Chilean milkshake or if it had been a mistake. Later, we went to go see a movie with another volunteer and a woman from New Zealand and her boyfriend. The woman from New Zealand has been in Chile for a number of years now and teaches children from the United States, whose parents are in Calama to work with the mining business.

Despite being a large group of gringos, we decided to watch the one Chilean movie that was playing. In other words, we chose pretty much the only movie that we couldn't watch in English. It was about the large earthquake and tsunami that happened in Chile last year. It was obviously a very solemn movie, but I found it really educative. Although I had known there was an earthquake, I didn't know there was a tsunami too. It made me rather terrified of earthquakes, though. I found the scariest part of the movie to be that the officials didn't think there would be a tsunami following the earthquake. Everybody was told to go back to their homes and not worry, because there was no chance of a tsunami. This, of course, meant that they were all right in the tsunamis path. I have felt quite a few tremors since being in Tocopilla, but I think if I ever experience a full earthquake, I might just run to the mountains no matter what people tell me. I love looking at the ocean everyday, but I really don't want it rushing at me. I think I have officially ruled out anyplace that has earthquakes as a potential living location. Goodbye west coast. I'll visit sometime.

Other than that, not much happened that was really eventful. We went out for dinner at a really nice japanese restaurant/bar. It was nice to eat something that was Chilean. We have Chinese here occasionally, but it's really salty. The food at this restaurant was really nice. There was a group of guys from England and Canada there, who we were able to fairly quickly make out based on their accents and the fact that they went outside to smoke (you can still smoke inside public places in Chile... it drives me crazy). In Tocopilla, this would be a pretty big deal, but since mining copper apparently attracts a lot of international attention and requires expertise from outside the country, my impression was that it is pretty common to run into English speakers there. We also discovered that on Sunday everything was closed for the holiday. I had expected Dia del Trabajador to be like the American Labor Day, where you could still buy groceries. It wasn't. Literally everybody had the day off, so everything was closed. This was pretty disappointing, because I had been hoping to buy some ingredients that you can't find in Tocopilla to bake with. My host family is eager to try "American" foods and desserts, but a lot of the things I would like to make include things like brown sugar, chocolate chips, or sour cream (what is an enchilada without sour cream?). These things are impossible to buy in Tocopilla.

Overall Calama was really nice. Not far from Calama is a city called San Pedro, which I hope to visit soon. If I do, I'm sure I'll stop by and say hi to the family that took me in for the weekend. They were really nice, and I really appreciated their hospitality.

Mother's Day and El 21 de Mayo
Mother's Day is a big deal in Chile. In fact, in terms of store sales, it is second only to Christmas. There are school assemblies and meals prepared just for the mothers and their children. Everybody goes out to eat. It's clearly very important to honor your mother. I think this is really nice. I found a few things interesting about mother's day. First, there are technically two mother's day's in Chile. In Chile Mother's Day is always on May 10. However, since this often falls on a weekday, they have a "commercial Mother's Day" the Sunday before. Basically, everybody went out to eat and celebrated on the Sunday, but the school celebrations seemed to take place on the 10th, a Tuesday (except that, given unusual circumstances, these were actually pushed off even further). Secondly, Father's Day, although celebrated, is not nearly as important as Mother's Day. Much less attention is given to the fathers. I think the emphasis on celebrating mothers over fathers might be because gender roles are still a bit more traditionally defined in Chile than in the US, but I'm really not sure.

Dia de Alumno
Dia de Alumno (Day of the Student) is a bit like an entire Spirit Week crammed into one day. The week of Dia de Alumno there was a fire at the restaurant across the street from the school (the same restaurant I ate at just days earlier for Dia del Trabajado). As a result, there was no school for two days, and Dia de Alumno celebrations were pushed to a different day. The celebrations included things that you would expect - recognition of exceptional scholars and athletes, relay races and other class competitions, costumes, and dance competitions. I was amazed at the dancing skills of the kids. They weren't just dancing for fun during the competitions; they actually knew the steps to real dances, including everything from the Charleston to the Tango. I was impressed. The elementary kids were absolutely adorable, and the high school kids made me feel somewhat ashamed of my own dancing skills. My host sister, especially, impressed me with here dancing. I have a video of her dancing, which I will upload to facebook sometime. Trust me when I say she's really good.

Other than that, what I found most interesting about Dia de Alumno was the length of the day. In the US school days are always the same length, unless parents and students were previously notified of a half day. This is not how things work in Chile (I really shouldn't have been surprised at this point). Normally all students are let out of school for their two hour lunch break (eaten in their homes) at 1:00 pm. So, as 1:00 drew close and I got increasingly hungry, I anticipated leaving. I kept thinking, they are running out of time, why don't they speed things along (I'm not going to lie, I often wonder why they don't speed things along in Chile... I'm clearly very Americanized - I expect very efficient behavior at all times). As 1:00 came and went, it became apparent that nobody was going anywhere. Around 2:00 I walked by the gate and saw that students weren't being allowed to leave, even if they wanted to, unless their parents were their to pick them up. It made sense that parents had to pick their kids up, but none of the parents knew when the children were expected to finish. If you were a working parent and couldn't make it to the school to pick up your child for lunch, what would you do? As it turns out, the school day didn't finish until after 3:00. By this point I was starving, and wishing I had bought some snacks. Snacking was something I was trying not to do though, because I figured as soon as I started eating, the day would end and it would be time to go home for lunch. I also wondered how parents were supposed to know that students were done at 3:00. Most parents drop off and pick up their kids. I guess that cell phones make it easy for kids to let their parents know that the school day is finally over and they need to be picked up to go home, but what did they do before cell phones? It's nice that schools have the flexibility to do whatever they want with the students, but I feel like a little extra structure is good. I think parents should know before hand when their students will begin wandering home from school for lunch. Overall, though, I found Dia de Alumno to be an interesting experience, and clearly the kids all loved it.

I've been really bad about blogging the past few weeks. Seeing as I have tons of free time, it's not really excusable, but here are my excuses:

1. For a while very little happened that I deemed interesting enough for a blog.
2. For a while I became quite busy, and, amazingly, didn't have much time to blog
3. I began to feel overwhelmed by everything I needed to blog, and decided it was easier to just put it off...

Right now, though, I'm babysitting my four year old host sister, who is refusing to go to sleep, and I can't think of many other things to do but update my travel blog.

For the most part, life in Tocopilla is very routine. I get up at 7:00 every weekday morning, go to school, come home, often do yoga, eat lunch, and work on lesson plans for the next day. I end up having a lot of free time, since I only have two 90 minute classes (or four 45 minute classes) most days. Wednesdays are my only exception to this. I have four classes Wednesday plus an after school English activity, which means I don't get home until around 6 pm. Regardless, this clearly leaves a lot of room for free time. Now that I'm becoming fairly accustomed to having nothing to do, I find that it is not very hard to fill up time. I read (sometimes on the beach), watch tv or movies (I'm pretty sure I've never before watched so much tv in my life... at least some of it is in Spanish), apply for jobs, work on Spanish homework for my online course, try to do some of my own Spanish practice by learning new vocabulary, play with Antonella, go for a walk, cook or bake for my family, take a walk with a friend, etc. Although having so much free time gets boring, I'm trying really hard to focus on enjoying it. I find it's surprisingly easy to waste time when you have so much of it. I definitely managed my time better when I was in grad school and working... but then it was necessary. Now I could sleep most of the day away every day if I wanted to, but I don't.

Over the past few weeks I have gone on some short, weekend trips. We had Good Friday off for Easter, so I spent the long weekend in Iquique with my family. Iquique is a beach resort town a couple hours north of where I live. It is also a duty free zone, which means that there are a lot of places to go shopping, especially for expensive items like electronics, perfumes, cars, jewelery, etc. My host family has a small apartment on the beach there, so it was really nice. I had a gorgeous view of the ocean from my bedroom window. I think I seriously spent hours just looking out of that window while I was waiting for everybody to get up for breakfast one morning. It was just so gorgeous, and there was great opportunities for people watching. I particularly enjoyed watching a little boy learn how to ride his bike (yes, as I've mentioned, I have A LOT of free time).

While in Iquique I did a lot of the touristy things like go to the beach and go shopping. I couldn't go to the museums because they were all closed for the holiday. My favorite time was definitely on the beach. The water wasn't nearly as cold as it is in Tocopilla. I guess there is a cold pacific current that runs along the cost of most of Chile, but it just barely misses Iquique, so the water is warmer there, even though we weren't really much further north. We also went to go see a movie. We met up with my host dad's grandchildren from his first marriage, so there were a lot of kids there. This meant we ended up seeing Hop, the movie about the Easter Bunny. I enjoyed the movie primarily because I literally understood every word of the dubbed Spanish. Granted... the conversation was not very complicated and you probably could have understood the movie without listening to a word of what was said, but I was pretty excited that I had understood it all so well. Since there was also a blockbuster down the street from the apartment, we rented some movies too. Video rental stores definitely do not exist in Tocopilla, so this was very exciting. However, I found that, despite my wonderful understanding of Hop, I still struggled with The Green Mile, which I had not actually seen before. I certainly understood the gist of the movie, but I get the feeling there were some things that I missed. I'll have to watch it again in English when I get back home.

Other than that, the only interesting thing I can say about Iquique is that I found the way they celebrated Easter to be quite different. Unsurprisingly, the Easter Bunny is not big here. We watched Hop, but on Easter morning, there was no mention of the Easter Bunny. There were a few chocolates for Antonella, but that is all. I can't say much about the Church aspect of it, as my host family does not go to Church. I may have already noted that everybody in Chile found the fact that I gave something up for Lent to be incredibly bizarre, and couldn't understand why I would do something like that to myself (seriously.. not eating ice cream for forty days might be a crime here). In fact, my host sister actually went to talk to her religion teacher about it, and informed me that, according to her teacher, I could begin eating ice cream again on Palm Sunday. I told her that since I traditionally wait until Easter, I could handle the extra week. This did not stop her or the rest of the family from trying to get me to eat ice cream all week however. They told me many things, like "but it's just a popsicle, not real ice cream," "it's so hot you must eat ice cream," and "just eat it, we won't judge you." They also consider not eating meat to refer only to beef. I attribute this to the fact that the words for beef and meat are the same here. What I found most strange was when stores and restaurants were open and closed. It didn't seem like anything was open on Good Friday, but on Easter day, quite a few things were open. In fact, we even went to go pay the water and electricity bill at the utilities office on Easter morning. This seemed very strange to me, especially since most things in the US are open on Good Friday.

This is getting a bit long, it's getting late, and I'm getting pretty tired. I promise to write again soon and catch up with everything. Hasta luego...

I have been in Tocopilla for nearly a month now. I am in a pretty comfortable routine, although it seems to leave me with a lot of extra time on my hands. So far lesson planning has not really been taking me much time. I'm kind of surprised by this, because when I had to do lesson plans for the ESL place I worked at over the summers during college, I could spend hours on them. The lessons I've done have gone really well though. I see each class for less than 45 minutes each week, which means that, realistically, the impact I can have on improving their English is minimal at best. Most of my lessons involve singing or moving, which keeps the kids really interested. While the lessons aren't entirely in English, I use very, very little Spanish. The kids are still able to follow pretty well. Granted, I'm constantly using huge gestures and demonstrating with examples before asking the class to do the activity. I like to think that some of them are catching on to certain phrases. At the very least, I hope that it is boosting their confidence level with English. I also hope that maybe i am making the classes interesting enough that they are learning to like English a bit more.

As I mentioned before, Tocopilla is pretty small, which means my potential activities are limited. They typically include going for a walk, going to the beach, going to the town center, watching TV, or reading. I also try to spend some time with the family and practice my Spanish. I started the ministry's online Spanish course last week and I started applying for jobs in the US. I'm not really sure how successful I will be with getting interviews while in another country, but I set up a Skype number, which means I can at least put contact information other than an email address on my resume and maybe do some phone interviews.

The past few weekends have basically consisted of birthdays and trips to the night club. A few weeks ago was my host mom's birthday, and we celebrated by throwing her a surprise birthday party/barbecue. I think I've mentioned before that barbecues are different here. Rather than hamburgers and hot dogs, they consist of copious amounts of meat - beef, chicken, sausage, etc. It's a lot of food, but it is delicious.

Last weekend, I went to my host family's disco for the first time with Sara, Jorge, and a couple of their friends. It was a lot of fun. I think they have a really nice nightclub. There weren't many people there though. I guess it is always packed during the summer, but now that all of the students have left Tocopilla to return to university, it is their slow season.

I spend last night at the nightclub too. Emely, the oldest of my host sisters turned 18 this weekend. To celebrate, she had a party in the VIP section of the nightclub. It was celebrity themed, and we all had to dress up like a popular celebrity. She was lady gaga and had an amazing costume. Other costumes ranged from Kiss to Amy Winehouse to Elizabeth Taylor. Because my clothing options were limited, I chose to go as Miley Cyrus, which basically meant I just had to wear shorts, a vest, and cowboy boots and attempt to curl my hair. I got to help bar tend for the party which was really neat, since I've never done that before. I have to say, when your parents own a nightclub and a restaurant, you can have a pretty cool birthday party. There was an open bar and appetizers that could have been served at a wedding. It was a fairly impressive 18th birthday party.

This Wednesday I have some type of ceremony to go to Antofagasta with all of the other volunteers in the region. I'm not really sure what to expect, but I get the feeling they might be presenting us. There seem to be a lot of presenting ceremonies in Tocopilla. My 4 year old host sister was recently presented as a new preschool student and I had to attend a ceremony for the school where they introduced all of the new students, grades K-12. I'm also starting to think about where I might want to travel over Easter. We don't have much time off, but I can do a long weekend someplace close.

I recently uploaded some more pictures to facebook. For those of you who don't have facebook, I did try to upload pictures to flilckr, but was informed that I had way too many pictures for a flickr account....