the shakes

saturday afternoon, i had just moved into my apartment about three hours before, my roommates and i were watching tv, and the entire building started to shake. of course, i´ve never felt an earthquake before so i think it´s cool. my roommates started freaking out! the girl who was moving out is from california and she said it was the longest quake she´d ever felt. and we´re on the seventh floor of our building...

monday morning. i´m sleeping, it´s about six thirty, and the whole building starts shaking hard again! i bolted out of bed and into the living room, but my roommates didn´t get up. according to the news, it was a 5.4 on the richter scale... wasn´t as cool this time.

hopefully no more temblors...

moving day

hurray! in a few minutes, i'm packing up my bags and moving to a new apartment. the hostel has been nice, but it will be great to unpack my suitcase. two weeks out of a suitcase is not okay. i'm living with three other chilenos in a nice part of santiago - and they only speak spanish. wish me luck. usually, i try speaking spanish to people, and they end up trying out their english on me. i stopped in a university the other day to ask about a student housing board, and the security guard took me to the english department. :)

my first week of work went pretty well. i was scheduled to be at two institutions on mondays and wednesdays, and unfortunately, ended up lost in the worst neighborhood in santiago between the two on wednesday afternoon. it was hot, i was tired, my toe hurt and i felt really sorry for myself and cried. then i finally found the institution and cried again when i told everybody what happened. so we made a couple of schedule changes and now i'm going to one institution to work with older girls on the computer on one day, and staying at the baby house the rest of the week.

the baby house is good - everyone in the neighborhood knows where it is, which is cool. the organization itself doesn't seem to be struggling, although i know they can always use extra hands and disinfectant for toys (the kids are always sick!). this week i worked with christy, another ve volunteer, and a couple of chilenos came in on different days to help out as well. the kids love everybody. when things get a little out of control, we watch barney and other kiddie videos. i'm learning a lot.

a chilean word of the day for you: bacan (with an accent on the second "a") it means cool...

chilena (well, almost)

pictures - hurray!

every day is busy here, so apologies for the random posting. we had a despedida (going away party) for a volunteer on sunday afternoon, and by the time i got up and ready, went grocery shopping and baked cookies with Dana, we had to go and didn't get back until late...

so my first day of work was yesterday, and it was good, but busy. i didn't get to drive just yet, but you will all know as soon as it happens. i'm sure. i did visit a home where i'll be teaching girls about computers, and for the first day, we just walked around and got to talk to the girls. of course, they were playing volleyball, and i jumped in the game with flip flops on. not so smart... entonces, broken toe.


i'm still on the hunt for an apartment, looked at one last night and am looking at another tomorrow night. the travel times are crazy long, so i'll leave tomorrow by 7:30 and not get home until close to 10. at least they feed me well at the baby house... more on that later.

so here is the december 2007 class: quique, shara, logan, josh, dana and me. good lookin' crowd... :)


hope you're all doing well!

brief

only a few minutes this morning before we take off for a little repair project at one of our institutions... a few interesting things about chile:

- they clean the sidewalks (brush the trash/leaves away) with big palm branches
- the food is generally pretty bland (lots of rice/pasta)
- they add "po" to everything and it has no meaning, e.g., sipo, nopo, yapo
- they do not drink coffee, they drink nescafe (aaaahhhh!!!)

i start work on monday, that's when i'll learn how to drive... ha ha ha. please, cross your fingers for me!

days like this

We met with a director from Harvard today who runs a Latin studies institution here in Santiago, and talked about the Chilean education system, the political structure, gender issues - I guess you could say it was a crash course in Chilean sociology? Then we went to the park and learned Chilean slang for lame and whatever (fome y filo)... Tomorrow we visit an institution and have a party tomorrow night celebrating VE's fourth year.

There are times during the day that I'm a little lost or frustrated with the language, but I could not be more excited about being here. I walked to the grocery store this morning, just feeling thankful - for the opportunity to be here, for the beautiful weather, for whatever it was in my life that motivated me to come here, for the people who are supporting this, both here in Santiago and back home. The last few years have been better preparation than I realized...

Orientation

It's been a good first couple of days. Well, it's only been two days, it's beautiful and I get to speak a lot of English with other volunteers, but it's been a good transition...

Yesterday we had several presentations - a lot in Spanish - but I made it through. It's a good way to make yourself learn as fast as possible. We also had a scavenger hunt around the city (we'd actually walked a lot of it the night before) but it was still interesting. My favorite part was the top of Santa Lucia, which has a great view of the city. Well, actually maybe my favorite part is in the picture. :)

Here

Have only had a couple of "what am I doing??" moments so far :)

I met another volunteer in the airport in Atlanta, and we shared the plane down to Chile with a very large group of elderly folks getting ready to go on a cruise. Good times. I sat next to Raquel, a woman from Chile who now lives in Denver - she is visiting her son in Santiago, and was nice enough to help me stumble through my broken Spanish.

We got in this morning around 10, made it through customs with only one invitation to go dancing later, and now I'm sitting at Hostal Sammy having something to eat before we get in our room. Yes, our room. Six of us new volunteers in one room for the week. Fortunately, the hostel is pretty nice with a nice patio, lots of shade and free wi-fi.

And for all you Michiganders... it's beautiful. Flowers, sun, green leaves everywhere. It's hot! I'll post pictures soon...