Chi Chi Chi - Le Le Le

Viva Chile!

Me in a Chilean flag t-shirt & face paint!

2-0 Chile

Well the good news is that Chile won against Peru!! Also, there were no disruptions at the game and I even learned a cheer! The little section that Peru had was guarded on both sides with Caribaneros - Chilean police and barricades.

Carabineros!

We got out of the game around 9:30pm and decided to grab dinner. After a taxi driver tried to take us for a ride we found a cool district and had a great dinner on an outdoor terrace. Of course we hadn't really thought through the fact that the last bus between Santiago and Viña was going to be leaving by 11:00pm and by the time we were done with dinner ... well we thought no big deal we'll go to a cafe sit and chat or maybe even out dancing for a few hours. We all thought, "But of course we can find something to do for the next few hours until the first morning bus leaves ..."

Unfortunately that wasn't the case. We did sit in a cute cafe which had walls covered in 50's memorabilia and played Elvis. We had called a cab and asked him to take us somewhere which ended up being closed and after driving around with him for at least 40 minutes he finally told us he knew of a place that would be open all night. Great. It turned out to be a cafe ... of a gas station. Not really a big deal, I think we all would have preferred less fluorescent lighting at that point but we just sat and chatted and when it came time to get to the bus station we hopped in a quick cab and made it home in time for sunrise.


After arriving back to the apartment I literally had enough time to scrub the face paint off and get to Valparaíso for my volunteering job. This basically sums up my frustrations with the inefficiency of the whole country ... I arrived at 9:00am, after having not slept the night before, on time and ready to go with games for the 5th grade classes I have been working with.
I go to the director's office to check-in and find the teacher I'm helping. The director isn't there, so I ask someone in the office next door to help me. I explain what's going on and she asks me to take a seat while she finds my teacher. Immediately I know that she has gone back to what she was doing when I walked in and is not looking for my teacher. 20 minutes later ... still sitting, impatiently ... I get up to look around myself and ask her again ... trying to explain exactly who I was with the week before. This goes on for another 20 minutes before the director gets into her office and at this point I'm really frustrated. Of course I feel bad because she clearly has a lot going on and I'm probably not a priority but ... still frustrating. She decides to pop her head out over the ledge to try and see the teacher I've been waiting for (the school is more or less one big box which opens into a playground so from every floor you can see across and down to the other floors) ... she is also asking random school girls as they walk by ... frustration mounting ...
Finally I see the teacher, catch her attention and managed to chat with her long enough to find out that she is leaving because her daughter was sick. Needless to say I was just glad to finally find her and I was pretty ready to just get home and nap.

In my Organizational Sociology class we learned that Paris has the highest level effciency (in terms of working hours) and Santiago has the lowest worldwide average level of efficiency. At this point I'm not surprised in the least.

Ok, same day ... after a long nap and quick packing ... we were off to Mendoza, Argentina!!
We took a direct overnight bus from Viña and after about 2 hours crossing the border made it in at 7:00am. Dropped our stuff off at the hostal and figured out the best thing to spend our day doing. BIKES AND WINE! We set the tour up through our hostal and spent the whole day riding bikes through the Mendoza wine valley. One of the girls I was traveling with, Eliza, has never learned to ride a bike so we had to reserve a tandem bike for her to ride on. We were really lucky that the company even had a tandem so the day started really well! When we arrived to the bike shop though the young argentinian told us that a pair from the last group just took the bike. Well ... we didn't really have a choice so we grabbed two bikes and took our chances going to the closest vineyard to hunt down these bike thieves! Amazingly enough they were at the first vineyard! It took an hour before we found them and they finally came out to swap bikes but at least we were ready to go.


Our plan was to bike to the furthest vineyard on the route and work our way back as time permitted. Once we reached our first stop (probably 9km) we realized that one of the bikes had a flat. Of course calling the company didn't help because they didn't answer ... so we were left to get all the way back. It was probably the wine tasting but we got back at the end of the day, probably a lot sorer then we would have liked (the other bike that we had had the narrowest seat I've ever seen ... yikes) but in good spirits nonetheless. It was really interesting learning about the production of wine. We also visited an olive factory and a chocolate factory! I guess factory maybe isn't the right descriptive ... they were little factories : )

try and notice the flat tire : )

The next day we had planned to go to the spa but were advised to wait and spend the day walking around the city and going to the San Martin Park. We had another great day and it's just so amazing how different Mendoza felt from any other city I've been in while here. It feels very European and for the most part we didn't really see many signs of economic hardship. The streets are lined with beautiful trees and the sidewalks are lined with fashionable boutiquesplazas with artesans and cafes. The park was really amazing and we spent the day exploring, taking a nap under the trees, and climbing the giant hill to see this beautiful monument.

Plaza España

Cute Argentinian girls!

Gates to the entrance of the park

After what was definitely at least 8 miles of walking we took the night off from cooking and headed out with friends from the hostal to have a real Argentinian meal. Argentina is famous for it's meat and wow ... they don't mess around. Everything I had all weekend was delicious. That night we stayed up playing card games and chatting with new friends we had made at our hostal.
By now we had really earned a day at the spa. It was a great day and verrrry relaxing. We had an hour drive into the pre-cordillera, the mountains before the Andes, and found ourselves at a beautiful hillside oasis. We soaked in thermal pools, took a mud bath, had a hydro massage and napped next to the pool for the rest of the afternoon. That evening I decided that I was definitely staying another day as Mendoza became more and more beautiful. We had a big dinner at the hostal and even had our own Argentinian Parrilla (bbq style meat) yummm.

Our last day in Mendoza (or what turned into the last day after deciding ... school? schmool!)
was spent horseback riding and white water rafting! The horseback riding was interesting because it had been so long since I had done a trail ride, let alone along the edges of some pretty narrow cliffs (small cliffs, not really cliffs at all ... more like hills ... don't worry mom)!



Rafting was definitely a blast. It was the three of us girls and a couple from Canada. Our guide was hilarious and made plenty of jokes prior to getting onto the river. It was my first time and even though it wasn't really an intense set of rapids it was a really great experience. Apparently come January with the amount of melt off they can't even keep the whole course open because it becomes so narrow. Who knows, maybe I'll go rafting again! The guide told us that Chile has the best rafting in S. America and maybe I'll be able to do it when I head south!



The trip home went well and I was able to sleep quite a bit on the bus ride. I still kind of feel as if I'm not going to half as much class as I would be back in "real life" but I am hopeful that next semester in Copenhagen will at least prepare me for getting back to GW.

Hopefully I'll have some rafting pictures to post soon! For now this is probably more than enough, but thanks so much for reading it's always appreciated.

Quite the sailor

Ok, I won't pretend to be a real sailor ... especially not standing in this tiny little sail boat.

Now you have a reference point, especially when you think "How could she hit her head?" Well, I had my last sailing class and it we went out with a bang! Figuratively. Living on the coast has it's advantages and disadvantages, one of the few disadvantages being that the sky doesn't seem to clear up until at least 12noon. Every class we had grey, overcast skies with little wind. The little wind part I appreciated, it meant that we would more or less float around on our sail boats, opposed to flying around : )

This class I woke up peaked out the window and was pleasantly surprised to find a blue sky! A little less pleasantly surprised to realize how windy it was! Quick recap of all previous classes ... I'm a big scaredy cat, and frustrations have been running high, especially with our instructor who after 7 classes calls us all by the wrong names (there are only 8 people, 4 of whom are either named Christian or Christan).

Well I paired up with a friend from COPA and we did great! It was amazing how fast the wind was changing directions and really making it dificult but we managed. All the other boats (ok, I already told you there aren't many people in my class) toppled over taking hard turns. It was probably the only day I would have been ok with falling in, but the ocean is cold! Falling in is never ideal. Two other girls from the class told us afterward that they couldn't believe we hadn't fallen in. We definitely had a close call where our boat was literally sideways with high pitch screams of fear coming from me : ) Somehow we balanced long enough to get the boat back down safely and stayed dry the whole class!



I also had the Don Quijote musical last night! Differences I found going to the theater here ...

1. No one dressed up ... ok, I dressed up. Because I brought a nice dress and no better reason to dress up has presented itself! It was 9:00pm on a Saturday night at a really beautiful theater, why not change out of jeans?
2. No orchestra, there was definitely an orchestra pit so perhaps because this is a traveling musical it just doesn't have the resources to have live music.
3. No intermission. Not loss here, I just started getting nervous after 2 hours thinking ... if there is still an intermission coming ...
4. Musical theater becomes karoake for some! Because this is such an important show for spanish speaking countries the songs were already known by most and meant that they joined in to help the cast : ) The friend I went with said, "I couldn't tell if it was just the acoustics but there might have been someone singing behind me" ... something tells me it wasn't the acoustics.


The music was absolutely beautiful and the actors did an amazing job. The municipal theater was remarkably grandiose with balconies that reminded me of Ford's theater. Watching the show in spanish was fun, I definitely didn't understand everything but I got the "gist" of it. Listening to the songs I kept thinking ... would this be as beautiful in english? I'm sure with a great piece of music the songs are just as lovely but ... something about having them sung in a foreign language ... maybe it's like going to the opera.

So I've got a really short week - 2 classes! Yeah, poor me : ) Wednesday is the Peru vs. Chile game and I'm hoping that we win because yesterday Argentina beat Chile 2-0 and the country is feeling a little down. Thursday I'm off to Mendoza!! Can't wait!! Hopefully I'll have some pictures up after the game but if not definitely after Mendoza.

Until then. Hoping the postcards are finding you!

My host dad asked if I had "más libres"

Which basically mean it's confirmed ... I will not be fitting into my clothes by the time I leave Chile.
Perhaps the nice weather and days at the beach will spur an ... eating less Chilean sweets occurance, but I won't get them once I leave Chile so it's going to be a tough call.






Soo delicious. sweet pastry filled with kind of a carmel substance which is called "manjar" ...
basically Patty buys a whole roll of this weekly, and then serves it to me with breakfast ... ahhh!






Ok, let's see ... news, news & news.

I'm going to a Chile vs. Peru fútbol (soccer) match next week, which is exciting/makes me a little nervous ... but it should be a lot of fun and a really interesting experience.

This weekend I'm taking Patty to see a musical!! I'm soo excited!! It's at the local Theater and when I went to buy tickets not a single seat was occupied so I got a great pair of seats : ) We are seeing Don Quijote, and the adaptation should be interesting considering the story is over 1,000 pages. Also, with Patty in school now we don't really go out together so I thought this would be a fun thing we could do together .... and it guarantees she can help me understand the plot when I get lost : )

It is finally starting to feel as if it is spring here, and actually almost like summer! Yesterday I spent the day at the beach with my friend Eliza and just layed out basking in the sunshine. It was about 75 degrees and just a perfect day, which of course included no homework ... the same homework I'm putting off to write this of course!

Speaking of ... I thought maybe I'd expand on how my classes are going/have been.

Spanish class is definitely my favorite, as frustrating as it can sometimes be ... there are only 5 people in my class so it's the most I am ever able to talk in a class and our professor is really great. It of course gives me the most amount of homework, usually an essay over the stories we are assigned and group projects exploring the city. Because we have so few people in our class it means that we do twice as much as the other classes that have at least 10 people, but I guess we have an advantage this way.

On to my least favorite class ... Economic Development ... it's full of first year Chilean students, and having a class with mostly Chileans is good because I'm really being pushed to their level and the professor can't slow down for exchange students but ... wow, I don't know if it is because they don't leave home to go away to school but these first year students might as well be freshman in high school. My most recent project was with three Chileans and one girl from Georgetown, a presentation on the production of Chocolate in the world and it's relevance to our class. Basically we got together the week of to figure out the presentation, decided that it would be sent out via e-mail ... I never saw it before the day of the presentation ... luckily the professor didn't show up that day (not surprising) and we didn't present but ... once I saw what they had made, I seriously would have been embarassed to stand in front of a class with it (i.e. a presentation on slave labor in Africa with pink and purple font and backgrounds ...yikes) Needless to say, it was fixed before we presented this week and they were good about talking and explaining our points ... so no harm, no foul. It has been a big frustrating with our professor in that class as well ... he's come to class 40+ minutes late twice, hasn't shown up at all twice which I think means he's been on time once. Something to get used to I guess, basically it just means that the students aren't ever on time either.

Ecology of Chile - good, learning quite a lot ... I have my first exam tomorrow, so maybe I should be writing this faster and studying : )

Art and Society in Chile Prehispanico - This class only meets once a week and it's completely lecture based. It was neat when we went north because a lot of what we had learned we saw for ourselves - the oldest mummies in the world, geoglyphs etc. The only problem is that all semester all we have is one exam ... not a bad thing but kind of scary to go into an exam knowing that it is basically 80% of your grade (attendance counts for the other %)

Sociology - really good, maybe a little too easy ... almost entirely foreign exchange students. I'm working on a project now with two german students which has been fun. The professor is very relaxed and for a 4 credit class we are supposed to meet twice but only one time so far this semester has he asked us to come twice. Also, he said we could present in english if we wanted ... I'm not sure how that would help us with bettering our spanish (our group is presenting in spanish) but I suppose it's a nice gesture.


Plans for more travel are going well. I'll be in Mendoza, Argentina in two weeks where I'll be stocking up on cheap delicious food and maybe even a day at the spa! I also just bought my plane ticket between Punta Arenas (far south of Chile - end of the world!) and Santiago for December, when I'll be exploring the lake district and Patagonia!! Very excited about this but I cannot believe how little time I have between now and then. We have about 7 weeks of school left ... and I'll be back in the states in about 10 weeks!! Yikes!









Torres del Paine!













Ok, well doing homework is now really the only option I have.

Thanks for reading. Missing you all.

jokes on me

You need to have read the ridiculously long blog about my trip for this to be funny ... basically this is the clay pool I jumped into to save my glove. I did save it, and I was glad I had them at the geysers (-9 celcius)

: )

more from the trip ...

Ok, just pictures this time!!
Entering Bolivia, Laguna Colorado and llamas, the Armada in Arica - Chilean Carnival, Peru, Vicuñas, more flamingoes and Laguna Verde

SKYPE!

yayy, finally!
if you have skype or want to download it to talk to me for free my user name is: irene.lehne

: )

Fiestas Patrias!

<--- Lake Chungara

10 days - 3 Countries.
I'm tired!

I've got so much to share! Lucky for you the pictures are here in case skipping through my dialogue is preferred : )

Last thursday we flew into Arica, the northernmost city in Chile, getting in late we enjoyed the fun welcome from our hostal and spent the next day exploring. We were referred to a guide for a city tour and managed to get it for half price ($12 for 4 hours) and saw all the great sites in Arica.

The first few pictures are from Arica - younch chilean girls at a celebration of the chilean independence day in their traditional outifts - geoglyphs on the hills which are preserved due to the lack of rain - the next two pictures were taken on our trip to the chilean altiplano (high flat). On the altiplano tour we went from sea level to about 15,000 feet in about 5 hours (view from one of the ledges is third). Made for a bit of a headache and an amazing view of lake changara which is the highest in the world (after titikaka which is the highest navegable lake)

We spent a day in Peru before heading a bit further south. It was a Chilean holiday and for this reason it seemed that every Chilean was heading to Peru! It took us about two hours to get through the border and had a nice time walking around the city of Tacna bought a few super cheap things and had a great big Peruvian lunch of fresh seafood, yummm.

The rest of the pictures unfortunately are not in as good of an order as I would like but ... here goes.

We took an overnight bus and made it to San Pedro de Atacama - the picture towards the end of the dirt road is it ... it's definitely a pueblo, a pueblo full of tourists - it's an interesting place to try and explain. There are about four streets in the center all of which are packed with tour agencies and overpriced cafes, bars and restaurants. There are so many amazing geographical sites near San Pedro that the entire population is supported by tourism. I learned that only for a year have they had electricity after midnight, and the atm is nearly as new.

We spent the first day relaxing and planning out the time we had strategically as to make sure that we didn't lose out on anything we wanted to see. Our first tour was the astronomy tour - insert amazing moon picture here - which was really even more amazing because one of the girls I traveled with is an AstroPhsyics major! San Padro boasts some of the worlds clearest skies and has more than 300 cloudless nights a year! Of course just seeing stars in the southern hemisphere is amazing because they are different then what we usually see, very very cool.

Thursday we spent the day in Bolivia!! So many new stamps in my passport!!
Bolivia was a totally different experience and probably my favorite of the trip. We spent the day in a 4x4 with a Brasilian and a Chilean along with our tour guide. As we made our way out of Chile we drove along a new international highway linking Chile and Argentina ... as our guide pointed this out we took a sharp left into the desert driving on ... the desert : ) The Bolivian border had no electricity, water or bathrooms and the welcome to Bolivia sign was laying sideways against the building. Very cool : ) We saw geyers (these were clay and stank of sulfur, more like bubbling pulls of clay than the geysers you would imagine), swam in natural thermal pools, and saw three amazing lagoons. Laguna Blanco (white), Laguna Verde (green) and Laguna Colorado - Bright Red!! We saw thousands of flamingoes at Laguna Colorado along with a bunch of llamas. All day there was no other people that we saw and this is definitely why the trip was the much more amazing. The whole area was a national park but we just felt like we were exploring these sites as the first and only tourists.

The next day we took the advice of our tour agent, Regis - very french, and went sandboarding instead of waking up at 3:30am for the geysers after a day of intense altitude. Sandboarding was awesome! We road bikes to the Valle de la Muerte with sandboards on our backs ... intense, right? After having mentally calculated the total cost of such a fantastic ten days we decided without a tour guide would be just fine ... so we made it ... out of breath ... (altitude at SP was still 7,000 ft) and then climbed up the dunes to try our hand at such a cool desert sport. Of course on my first try I did a cartwheel (for those of you who know me well enough you will know I can't actually cartwheel but apparently attached to a board flying down a sand dune it's possible : ) )
The next two times I did pretty good, I wasn't flying down but I managed to not fall!
The same evening we did the Salar de Atacama tour. (Picture before the sandboards) The largest salt flat in Chile, and a national park for flamingoes ... this tour was pretty relaxed. We stopped in a small pueblo and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. After digging the sand out of our ears we were pretty tired and were happy to get to bed early with a 3:30 wake up for the geysers the next morning!

The geysers at El Tatio were pretty amazing. They are the yellowstone of Chile and interestingly enough our guide told us that the government is planning a geothermal energy project for the geysers and that we would be some of the last people to ever see them. My favorite part of the trip was watching the guides put chocolate milk and eggs in the small geyser pools for warming purposes : ) We passed through a small pueblo and sampled llama meat! eek!

Getting back before 12:30 was bizarre after an 8 hour trip! We decided to walk around and do a bit of shopping ... postcards for all! Our plan was to head for Valle de la Luna on bikes around 3:30, hike around a bit and watch the sunset from the national park. This is one of the most famous tours to do and we definitely didn't want to miss it but when we got to the bike rental place the agent told us it was too windy and he wouldn't let us go out! We ran over to our friend at the tour agency we had used and he told us all the tours had left at 3:00pm! Not ready to give up we asked him what we could do and he told us to take a taxi and then join up with his tour that was already there. I have no idea why we thought we could have made it there on bikes ... winds were gusting at probably 50mph and wow sand can puncture the skin!! We were really, really lucky to get out of the taxi at the right place ... we found a tour group and were so desperate to get out of the horrible wind that we didn't care if it was the right agency. Right as we were leaving the one site the right bus came up and we hopped on! Again, so lucky. We headed with the tour to the main site and as we came up to it we saw a poor soul who had ridden their bike all the way up ... it turned out to be a friend from the same program!! Needless to say, we were happy to have had the turn of events. It was worth it in the end and the landscape was amazing (picture after sandboarding and last picture).

All in all the whole trip was absolutely more than I could have hoped for. We met so many interesting people during our tours and in our hostals. It really opened my eyes up to traveling. I have even more pictures and will have them up probably tomorrow so for now ... thanks for letting me ramble again.

Catching up

Thinking back on it now the week seems to have been about as eventful as others but I have plenty to ramble about ... per the usual ...

Last week I decided to join a sailing class! I had my first lesson friday and it was scary, fun and wet. There are only 7 students in total facilitating plenty of hands on learning. We went out in pairs in these tiny little sail boats. They had the mast and the steering part (bear with me, the class is in spanish) with just enough space for two people to sit and work on each part at one time. Of course I had the getting slammed in the head with the mast experience ... which was better then falling if I had fallen into the ocean! Win some ... lose some : ) Classes are fridays for two hours for the next 8 weeks! Hopefully I'll get some pictures ... once I make it onto a real sailboat!

The same evening I went with a few friends to a salsa club in Valparaíso. Being gringos we got there early, avoided paying to get in and caught the tail end of happy hour. There were two Chileans in the group who were language exchange partners of people in our program which was nice and always good to be talking to new people and practicing spanish. As the majority of our group left for another venue I decided to stay behind with a friend, Sarah, and the two Chileans. A great decision because I actually go to dance salsa with one of the Chileans! Luckily of the two I danced with the one who knew how to salsa and it was really fun! I've gone to a few of the free dance classes so I had the basic steps down but in most classes the guy to girl ratio forces me to be the guy ... harder to learn that way!

******I'm issuing a warning for the following paragraph ... if you have a weak stomach don't proceed ... skip ahead! ******

As I was heading home with two girlfriends from Valparaíso wednesday night we noticed a group of Chileans eating completos (Chilean hot dog which included tomatoes, avacodo and mayo) and staggering a bit ... didn't think much of it and found our way onto the bus to get us home to Viña. The same group got on our bus. I was seated by myself behind the two girls and one of the staggering Chileans sat down next to me. Fine. Until about 3 minutes later when he starts vomiting, yes I was terrified. And it wasn't only because it was the first time I had decided to wear out my cute satin diesel flats ... it was of course my first concern but this guy was seriously, seriously throwing up in the seat next to me. I nearly jumped into the seat in front of me and really wasn't even able to say anything, I just sat there in utter disbelief. Luckily he did finally get up and I guess left the bus, at which point I jumped across and got as far forward on the bus as possible. This was definitely the worst experience I've had here and luckily one of the very few. I'm sorry to have shared ... eeeehhh.

Completo ... part of a balanced Chilean meal.

Safe rambling ...

Classes have been the same. I'm frustrated that we haven't found out about the dates for our final exams in any classes, especially with wanting to figure out traveling and specific dates for heading back to the states. Tentative plan is to spend at least two weeks traveling Patagonia and then head to Arizona ... hoping to get to Oregon ... and the fly from LAX to Paris, the cheapest way to get to Europe, spend a week with a friend who lives there, Valentine, and then make my way to Denmark for the semester. We'll see ...

I've got more stories but I'm going to hold off. Sorry for not updating as frequently! I'll have more Monday!

P.S.

In case the reason why I haven't been bombarded with post cards is because you all lost my address ...

Irene Lehne

Avenida Brasil 2950 (PIIE)

COPA

Valparaíso

Chile

AND ... If you really want to get a hold of me ... you can find a cheap phone card and call my cell phone!

+ 569 766 249 14

I really miss hearing from everyone the most ... and peanut butter : )