A week has flown by very very fast. I meant to write earlier but life in the hostel and in BA in general does not leave a lot of time....however a recap.
After my steak and rain walk on Monday, Tuesday I went for a walk and to do some errands. I walked to the river again, past Casa Rosada, met a friend for coffee and generally explored the city. Wednesday my day was interrupted by being told I had to move rooms...annoying hostel...but after I walked to Recoleta and walked around the cemetery which is incredible. Thousands of tombs that could double as summer houses..some so old and decrepit you could see the bones through the doors. That evening we had a party in the hostel and danced for hours.
Thursday I simply did more walking, the dancing having worn me and my feet out! However I did go to San Telmo, to the market and looked at some really lovely things...old leather bags...buckets of buttons....and chops of meet all chock block in an old warehouse.
That night I went to my first BA club, 69, which had a tranny show! Entertaining to say the least, though more impressive was a break dancing show in between the tranny bits.. some really talented dancers.
Friday it rained and I went to Malba. A lovely musuem, though I was soaking wet as walked most of the way there.
Overall impression of BA is very favorable. I leave tomorrow morning for Salta, but don't want to go. Am going for a final steak tonight and an early flight tomorrow.
x
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
BA
I have now left the valley and am in Buenos Aires. It was a long but uneventful trip from the valley. I fell asleep the moment I got on the midnight bus in Serena and was woken by the conductor as we entered Santiago. I got to the airport 4 hours before my flight and waited 2 hours to check in, the only break in the tedium was an amusing display by one of the airlines. 30 people (led by a particularly annoying loud American with a canoe) filled up the line to check in before anyone was there to check in. After standing for thirty minutes the stewardesses came and a airport official who made everyone back out with all of their bags and belongings, weaving awkwardly through the lines and then checked their passports and made them file back in. Very entertaining.
I arrived in BA about 3 o’clock yesterday. The hostel is fine, huge and pristine, but too many gap years for my taste and the staff all speak English except the two doormen who I therefore like the best. It’s all very gap year partyish and fine for one stay, but not a choice to be repeated.
Yesterday I went for a walk soon after arriving and it began to rain, which was wonderful as it never rained in Pisco. Sheltering under an overhanging I met an Argentinian and when the rain let up walked around the city with him, ending up with steak and wine! A good first day adventure, however it made me realize my Chilean castillano is completely useless. Also the argentinian castillano (or castishano as they seem to pronounce it) is hilarious but confusing as basic words are pronounced so differently as to be unrecognizable. So far I prefer the ungrammatical, fast and much more entertaining Chilean castillano. I have lots of Chilean pride which I have to reign in a bit to stay out of trouble. I have dropped the extra slangy verb tense (stai, vivi, queri..etc) but refuse to stop using all the excellent slang which the argentinians seem to lack.
Today I walked mostly with no firm direction, but have more definite plans for tomorrow.
I arrived in BA about 3 o’clock yesterday. The hostel is fine, huge and pristine, but too many gap years for my taste and the staff all speak English except the two doormen who I therefore like the best. It’s all very gap year partyish and fine for one stay, but not a choice to be repeated.
Yesterday I went for a walk soon after arriving and it began to rain, which was wonderful as it never rained in Pisco. Sheltering under an overhanging I met an Argentinian and when the rain let up walked around the city with him, ending up with steak and wine! A good first day adventure, however it made me realize my Chilean castillano is completely useless. Also the argentinian castillano (or castishano as they seem to pronounce it) is hilarious but confusing as basic words are pronounced so differently as to be unrecognizable. So far I prefer the ungrammatical, fast and much more entertaining Chilean castillano. I have lots of Chilean pride which I have to reign in a bit to stay out of trouble. I have dropped the extra slangy verb tense (stai, vivi, queri..etc) but refuse to stop using all the excellent slang which the argentinians seem to lack.
Today I walked mostly with no firm direction, but have more definite plans for tomorrow.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
lagrimas
I leave pisco in 4 hours and I have come to the internet to write a final post and buy tissues!
My last weeks have been strange. Teachers have been on strike, however we have gone to school to practice for the May 21st celebration. This year pre'kinder to 4th grade prepared dances.. the 4th grade danced the traditional cueca and some really well. All the children wore costumes and the plaza was crowded with spectators. After the dances we marched around and then went home. A slightly sad way to end my experience as I had no chance to say goodbyes, however with my tendancy to cry its probably better. I was told by one of Tota´s friends later that I stood out the most as the only non-serious person in the marching!
Despite the strike I have been incredibly busy organizing final things, making final trips to the river and then having my different despedidas. Last night I went to a bar to listen to friends play in their band, then to the other bar to say goodbye to the owners and then to the disco to say goodbye to more people. All very hectic.
I am off on the night bus to santiago and then an early flight to BA in the morning. From there who knows but will try and update it a bit more than I have been doing.
x
My last weeks have been strange. Teachers have been on strike, however we have gone to school to practice for the May 21st celebration. This year pre'kinder to 4th grade prepared dances.. the 4th grade danced the traditional cueca and some really well. All the children wore costumes and the plaza was crowded with spectators. After the dances we marched around and then went home. A slightly sad way to end my experience as I had no chance to say goodbyes, however with my tendancy to cry its probably better. I was told by one of Tota´s friends later that I stood out the most as the only non-serious person in the marching!
Despite the strike I have been incredibly busy organizing final things, making final trips to the river and then having my different despedidas. Last night I went to a bar to listen to friends play in their band, then to the other bar to say goodbye to the owners and then to the disco to say goodbye to more people. All very hectic.
I am off on the night bus to santiago and then an early flight to BA in the morning. From there who knows but will try and update it a bit more than I have been doing.
x
Saturday, May 9, 2009
comida
The first week when I arrived and had rice and grated carrot for lunch and supper for three days straight I did think am I going to make it. However since then my food has undergone a significant change.
There is still a lot of rice. When I used to have lunch and supper at home every day I probably had rice 10 times a week. The other times would be pasta or quinoa. When I first arrived after a week of no meat I asked Tota if she was a vegetarian and she said yes. Since then I have realized that yes is a Chilean vegetarian which eats meat once a week instead of every day. Once we were sorting out food in Serena and Anne who is a legit vegetarian said she didn’t eat meat so couldn’t have a hamburger and the Chilean solution was a hot dog.
Anyway, I have meat on the weekends, during the week with the rice I have lentils which I have grown fond of, chick peas or some other bean. The first month I had tomatoes every day, I have grown to love them. I also have grown to love marmalade. Tota makes her own apricot marmalade and it is delicious. My breakfast every morning, was her home made pan which she can make out of anything, last time it was pan with quinoa and oats, marmalade and black tea with sugar. Then I finished all the marmalade and now have avena, oatmeal, with palm syrup.
The big Chilean thing is palta (avocados, palta is a solely Chilean word) and manjar (similar to dulce de leche). Every sweet pastry, cake whatever is made with manjar, and I have palta 4 or 5 times a week. They use it like butter spread on bread with a bit of salt it is delicious.
The wife of my teacher always asks me have I eaten this have I eaten that, referring to the typical Chilean dishes, in truth I simply eat very simple things. Chileans don’t use spices, when we asked for extra spices on a mexicana pizza, we were given a little bowl of peppers with the seeds cut out! They flavor things by adding tomatoes and palta to everything.
Finally I eat lots of grapes. They signify good luck and as everyone has a grape vine they are easy to come by. Or if you don’t happen to have a grape vine, you can walk by a orchard/pasture/field of grapes and put your hand through the fence.
x
There is still a lot of rice. When I used to have lunch and supper at home every day I probably had rice 10 times a week. The other times would be pasta or quinoa. When I first arrived after a week of no meat I asked Tota if she was a vegetarian and she said yes. Since then I have realized that yes is a Chilean vegetarian which eats meat once a week instead of every day. Once we were sorting out food in Serena and Anne who is a legit vegetarian said she didn’t eat meat so couldn’t have a hamburger and the Chilean solution was a hot dog.
Anyway, I have meat on the weekends, during the week with the rice I have lentils which I have grown fond of, chick peas or some other bean. The first month I had tomatoes every day, I have grown to love them. I also have grown to love marmalade. Tota makes her own apricot marmalade and it is delicious. My breakfast every morning, was her home made pan which she can make out of anything, last time it was pan with quinoa and oats, marmalade and black tea with sugar. Then I finished all the marmalade and now have avena, oatmeal, with palm syrup.
The big Chilean thing is palta (avocados, palta is a solely Chilean word) and manjar (similar to dulce de leche). Every sweet pastry, cake whatever is made with manjar, and I have palta 4 or 5 times a week. They use it like butter spread on bread with a bit of salt it is delicious.
The wife of my teacher always asks me have I eaten this have I eaten that, referring to the typical Chilean dishes, in truth I simply eat very simple things. Chileans don’t use spices, when we asked for extra spices on a mexicana pizza, we were given a little bowl of peppers with the seeds cut out! They flavor things by adding tomatoes and palta to everything.
Finally I eat lots of grapes. They signify good luck and as everyone has a grape vine they are easy to come by. Or if you don’t happen to have a grape vine, you can walk by a orchard/pasture/field of grapes and put your hand through the fence.
x
First of May
I celebrated the first of May by walking to Horcon, some 4 km or so basically up hill in the boiling sun. The road is unpaved, narrow and fool of holes and has been under construction since we got here though I see no improvements. About 20 minutes into our walk we turned a corner and saw a colony of white bubble houses. We went in to see what they and were told they were a hotel/cabanas. They are called the Elqui Domes and they basically attract rich tourists who want to gaze at the starts. Each dome is open at the top with a telescope! When I got home I asked Tota about them and she said a friend had stayed there to test them out, and besides being extremely overpriced, they are also freezing in winter, boiling in summer, have no plumbing and you can hear everything in between bubbles…looks can certainly be deceiving.
After the domes we walked for what seemed like hours, the little town of Horcon was completely quiet with the single little village shop shut. In search of water we walked on, got diverted off the road down to basically a dirt track that went by the river. The track was about 30 degrees cooler than the road and we found a shop to buy figs and water and pears and cake and had a picnic by the river. Feeling much refreshed we walked on and around another corner came across the Pueblo Artesenal de Horcon. There were about 20 or so little shops arranged in a circle. The shops sold a mixture of crap, some stunning jewelry made from flowers painted over with resin so they looked like glass, wood carvings, lots of glass things, chocolate and manjar, and some leather books I was sorely tempted by.
After looking round all the shops and chatting to the resin jewelry woman we started the walk back and luckily got a ride from a Santiago couple. The amount of tourists in Pisco for the long weekend was ridiculous, and apparently much less than Semana Santa or the summer. Before getting a ride we passed a group of men having a picnic along side the river with them was a dwarf (I don’t think little person would even be understood in chile) who called to us various things, typical Chilean man using his 20 words of English to talk to gringas, he was obviously drunk and quite funny. Later we found out his name is Juan I think, Juanito and he gets roaring drunk and high at the one bar in Horcon, and when he is too out of control, the barman calls his wife who is a regular height and she comes and picks him up…in a wheelbarrow!
Saturday I went to the plaza with my family to watch the tourists and out to the local club Topsy with Anne where we saw all our liceo students.
xx
After the domes we walked for what seemed like hours, the little town of Horcon was completely quiet with the single little village shop shut. In search of water we walked on, got diverted off the road down to basically a dirt track that went by the river. The track was about 30 degrees cooler than the road and we found a shop to buy figs and water and pears and cake and had a picnic by the river. Feeling much refreshed we walked on and around another corner came across the Pueblo Artesenal de Horcon. There were about 20 or so little shops arranged in a circle. The shops sold a mixture of crap, some stunning jewelry made from flowers painted over with resin so they looked like glass, wood carvings, lots of glass things, chocolate and manjar, and some leather books I was sorely tempted by.
After looking round all the shops and chatting to the resin jewelry woman we started the walk back and luckily got a ride from a Santiago couple. The amount of tourists in Pisco for the long weekend was ridiculous, and apparently much less than Semana Santa or the summer. Before getting a ride we passed a group of men having a picnic along side the river with them was a dwarf (I don’t think little person would even be understood in chile) who called to us various things, typical Chilean man using his 20 words of English to talk to gringas, he was obviously drunk and quite funny. Later we found out his name is Juan I think, Juanito and he gets roaring drunk and high at the one bar in Horcon, and when he is too out of control, the barman calls his wife who is a regular height and she comes and picks him up…in a wheelbarrow!
Saturday I went to the plaza with my family to watch the tourists and out to the local club Topsy with Anne where we saw all our liceo students.
xx
Saturday, May 2, 2009
life as normal
My first month I had an abundance of time, in an endeavor to use up some of my extra time I offered to take on an extra day at the Liceo, somehow my one offer led to others and I now work at the liceo on Monday and Wednesdays until 4, Thursdays till 5, as well as have a drawing class on Mondays till 6, and help with the government sponsored Public Speaking contest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I now look back fondly on days when I would sit on my bench in the Plaza listen to the ipod and watch Elqui life.
The drawing class is not quite what I expected. There is one girl who is 10 and she is the oldest! I feel that when the people of Monte Grande hear there is another class at the cultura, all the young mothers use it as a free babysitting service so they can have an hour to themselves. I am not unsympathetic, however it means I have two children of pre-kinder age who cannot even hold a pencil yet alone color inside of a shape. Then three children of kinder age who actually are pretty adept and two eight/nine year olds one of whom is intensely irritating and I have had to threaten to kick her out more than once. Tota says I should put my foot down and say they have to be above a certain age, and if I had thought of it before I would certainly have done so, but two classes in it seems a bit mean. Therefore I spend my evenings racking my brain for more coloring projects that A. I can create without any material except paper, and B. don’t bore me to death.
The Liceo is hilarious and very irregular. The liceo teachers take off whenever they can and Chile has more days of the workers, strikes and unofficial local holidays than there are in a year. The other primary schools don’t take these days off. Therefore on numerous occasions I have run for the bus at 1.30 arrived in Paihuano at five past 2 to discover there are no classes and have to wait half an hour for a bus back to Pisco. Or there have been times when I have missed the class as for no apparent reason there has been no bus and I have sat in the plaza for over an hour. The next day there were three within ten minutes.
When I do get to the Liceo it is very amusing. The students are completely unmotivated, but very funny. I, as the youngest gringa, receive hilarious notes in ungrammatical English: “could you be my reason of life?” is my favorite so far. Last week in Primero Medio (freshmen) I received twenty or so notes which I then gave to Kether, the teacher, causing consternation among the students that he would write them up in the book.
The book is the only system of control. After three bad notations in the book, which also contains all the information about the students, grades and lesson plans and attendance, the students’ parents are called in to meet with the teacher. Therefore if you threaten to write in the book they will behave, for about a minute until they forget. However, most of the second graders have two or three pages worth of two line comments and since the parents don’t care, the one system of punishment is completely ineffectual.
One of the second grader’s parents came to the school the other day as there little brat, Nicolas, had told his parents that Carlos had tried to choke him. Despite them having been called in about once a week to discuss Nicolas’s appalling behavior, they believed him, rather than the truth which was Carlos had to half pull him off a huge cupboard which he had climbed on top of in order to jump out of the window. This jump would certainly have resulted in broken bones. Anyway, because of these silly parents, we now cannot touch Nicolas even when he is running around the classroom with a stick trying to brain a fellow student.
Yesterday, the first of May was another day of the workers so no school and no second graders!
The drawing class is not quite what I expected. There is one girl who is 10 and she is the oldest! I feel that when the people of Monte Grande hear there is another class at the cultura, all the young mothers use it as a free babysitting service so they can have an hour to themselves. I am not unsympathetic, however it means I have two children of pre-kinder age who cannot even hold a pencil yet alone color inside of a shape. Then three children of kinder age who actually are pretty adept and two eight/nine year olds one of whom is intensely irritating and I have had to threaten to kick her out more than once. Tota says I should put my foot down and say they have to be above a certain age, and if I had thought of it before I would certainly have done so, but two classes in it seems a bit mean. Therefore I spend my evenings racking my brain for more coloring projects that A. I can create without any material except paper, and B. don’t bore me to death.
The Liceo is hilarious and very irregular. The liceo teachers take off whenever they can and Chile has more days of the workers, strikes and unofficial local holidays than there are in a year. The other primary schools don’t take these days off. Therefore on numerous occasions I have run for the bus at 1.30 arrived in Paihuano at five past 2 to discover there are no classes and have to wait half an hour for a bus back to Pisco. Or there have been times when I have missed the class as for no apparent reason there has been no bus and I have sat in the plaza for over an hour. The next day there were three within ten minutes.
When I do get to the Liceo it is very amusing. The students are completely unmotivated, but very funny. I, as the youngest gringa, receive hilarious notes in ungrammatical English: “could you be my reason of life?” is my favorite so far. Last week in Primero Medio (freshmen) I received twenty or so notes which I then gave to Kether, the teacher, causing consternation among the students that he would write them up in the book.
The book is the only system of control. After three bad notations in the book, which also contains all the information about the students, grades and lesson plans and attendance, the students’ parents are called in to meet with the teacher. Therefore if you threaten to write in the book they will behave, for about a minute until they forget. However, most of the second graders have two or three pages worth of two line comments and since the parents don’t care, the one system of punishment is completely ineffectual.
One of the second grader’s parents came to the school the other day as there little brat, Nicolas, had told his parents that Carlos had tried to choke him. Despite them having been called in about once a week to discuss Nicolas’s appalling behavior, they believed him, rather than the truth which was Carlos had to half pull him off a huge cupboard which he had climbed on top of in order to jump out of the window. This jump would certainly have resulted in broken bones. Anyway, because of these silly parents, we now cannot touch Nicolas even when he is running around the classroom with a stick trying to brain a fellow student.
Yesterday, the first of May was another day of the workers so no school and no second graders!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Semana Santa
Church on Semana Santa began at 11. We got there just after 11, the boys in swim shorts, to start climbing the steps with hundreds of other people in a mixture of skirts and tops, to sweatpants and tank tops to jeans and clubbing outfits. We filed into the church which had benches in rows going outwards in a cross shape from the circular altar. We sat down and the service started soon after, though people kept on coming and going throughout the service.
It started normally with a nun saying a blessing, and then the jazz piano began and all my ideas of Chilean church went out the window.
The jazz piano played all through the service with help in the anthems from two guitarists, a very jazzy choir, and a man in the tightest pair of jeans I have ever seen, gelled hair and a t-shirt who got up behind the pulpit with his guitar to sing his solo.
The more traditional bits of the service were performed by the nuns and the priest, but the choir stole the show, and we left the church 50 minutes later to a Spanish jazz version of the saints go marching. As we left, people were still filing in milling about in front of the church, much more a party atmosphere then a serious one, and a high percentage of teenagers, fleites and normal.
All together a pretty good way to spend Pascua.
It started normally with a nun saying a blessing, and then the jazz piano began and all my ideas of Chilean church went out the window.
The jazz piano played all through the service with help in the anthems from two guitarists, a very jazzy choir, and a man in the tightest pair of jeans I have ever seen, gelled hair and a t-shirt who got up behind the pulpit with his guitar to sing his solo.
The more traditional bits of the service were performed by the nuns and the priest, but the choir stole the show, and we left the church 50 minutes later to a Spanish jazz version of the saints go marching. As we left, people were still filing in milling about in front of the church, much more a party atmosphere then a serious one, and a high percentage of teenagers, fleites and normal.
All together a pretty good way to spend Pascua.
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