french toast!

this morning i made french toast for the vergara family. they dug it. tried to explain maple syrup, but i think they were a little baffled by the tree part. (it does sound kind of primitive, if you think about it.) so guess what i used for syrup instead.....manjar!! i put some manjar (which comes in a consistency of like peanut butter) and milk in a pan and heated it and stirred it until it became a sauce. put it in a little pitcher and they loved it. (of course also bought some "azucar flor" - powdered sugar - to sprinkle on top.) i think it was a success! we also had yogurt - which is really runny down here; they treat it more like a drink - with banana slices. later today bea was like "from now on every weekend we will have french toast!" haha. little do they know i'll be sending them some maple syrup after i leave for christmas :)
then i went to chillan with kelsey. spent a lot of money....got a lot of neat stuff :)
am really excited to come home. can't believe i only have 2 days left.

President Hopkins

President Hopkins presented diplomas to the 3 of us who graduated this past weekend, since they weren't able to attend the actual ceremony.

Thanksgiving Dance

This year was by far the weirdest Thanksgiving I've ever had. It was pretty cool though! The President of Wright State, David Hopkins, was in South America with the Vice President of International Education, whose name I forget right now. So, for Thanksgiving, they came here to Concepcion, to tour the Thomas Jefferson School and have a nice lunch with us! It was awesome! The school was so excited about it too. All week my sister had been talking about how she needed to find her "corbata" (tie) for her uniform, because everyone had to wear their ties on Thursday. The first graders put on a presentation of pilgrims and stuff for us in the morning, and then at lunch the elementary choir came in and sang (Kelsey said it was in English - I couldn't tell), and then the coolest part was the high schoolers' dance. Several of the high schoolers dressed up in traditional Chilean dress to perform the Chilean national dance for us. Check it out! I also tried to zoom in a few times, in hopes that you could catch a glimpse of their mullets.

pic by the sea

me, carlitos, ignacia, and guaton yesterday

we caught the mullets!

success!
Today at school, Jessica and I ventured into the high school to find some of her students with mullets. The first one we found, he was really good-natured and funny and asked if we wanted him to go get some of his friends. Jackpot!! the boy went and returned with 2 other dudes, all with long hair in the back. We felt like a few apologies/explanations were in order, but when we told them that it used to be common in the United States, and no longer was, they laughed and smiled and proudly brushed their parties in the back. The first was like (in his english) "How do you call it, something like mullet?" and we were like "yes! that's the word!" to which they all laughed. So we took a picture straight on, but as the west virginia waterfalls didn't show up as well, we had them turn to the side for a second photo op. They were so cool about it.
One of the American guys who works at TJS, Jared, was listening to our conversation about the mullet hunt, and jumped in like, "yeah, I got my hair cut down here not too long ago, anddd...they asked me if i wanted to keep it long in the back. I was like, 'no.'" and they we all LOL'ed.

Chillin in Chillan

If it looks like this is a container of aloe vera-flavored yogurt, that's because it is. The convo went down a little something like this:
Jessica: My mom packed us some yogurt, you want?
Me: Sure.
(yogurt is exchanged)(Julie reads label with puzzlement)
Me: What is this?
Jessica: It's aloe yogurt. It's not bad!
Me: ...Can you eat it?
Jessica: Yeah! I mean at first, it's kinda like, 'Am I eating lotion?', but then it gets better. [end convo]
I mean, I've eaten worse. In Mexico we had "napales," which is cactus. I tricked myself into thinking it would taste like green beans, and it did not.
Anyway, the aloe yogurt was strangely fragrant, so it was a little bit like eating lotion. But not all bad.

I also died and went to heaven this weekend, as you can see by the picture at right. Yes, that is me inside of a giant guitar. We visited the museum of the pianist Claudio Arrau, and this was part of the "interactive room." Apparently Arrau is a very famous pianist. While he did not compose any music, he was famous for his amazing performances (of Beethoven, Handel, whatever it be.) He is from Chillan, Chile, which is the city we visited this weekend. Minus the long-winded guide, it was a worthwhile visit.
We also saw the famous "mercado" of Chillan,
where they sell all kinds of "artesania," which means arts, crafts, jewelry, etc. (janelle- i have the best gifts for you!)

Had to snap a photo of the Marley hat, as I'd just mentioned it in my last post. the marley hat is actually pretty common in Chile. my sister has one, i dunno.




Not really sure what the Escuela Mexico is, but it was pretty, and the Mexican in me is really aching for its home.

We also got to go out in the evening, the first time for me without professors. We were staying in Chillan with Nataly and her family (an actual student teacher at the school), so she took us out with her friends. We met up with some girls at a bar called "La Louvre" and then went to a dance club. Slightly awkward at first, but I ended up having a lot of fun. We also talked about music a lot. Jessica and I couldn't stop singing Backstreet Boys songs (especially "Everybody,"- remember the video with the Halloween costumes? yes you do.) and the Chilean girls thought it was hilarious and joined in. Here we are, 2 Americans and 5 Chileans, walking down the streets at night singing and dancing the Backstreet Boys, happy as could be. We've also been asked a decent amount if in the U.S., they listen to international music. And I'm always embarrassed to be like, "um, no..not really." Like, no one hardly knows what reggaeton even is, unless you've been to Mexico or have Mexican friends. But in Chile, they listen to American music as well as everything else, so it makes sense to them that the road would go both ways. Not really.

More random pics. check out the name of the middle one!!! (suizo means "swiss")

The bug is quite common in Chile.

At the "feria," which is basically where everyone brings their garage sale crap, and it's one giant garage sale. Only, like the people are serious. These are professional garage salers. It was kinda cool, except that everything was crappy.

am i in springfield?

k so i came really close to catching a mullet today. there were like 4 or 5 high school boys that all came out the front door of the school at the same time, ALL with mullets. i had my camera and everything. but i couldn't get a shot!!! i am kind of reminded of high school, when bored on friday nights, we'd drive down to springfield to go to meijer and see how many mullets we could find. fairborn kids, do you do this? or maybe you have a similar yet geographically appropriate thing to hunt? perhaps you go to yellow springs and count guys with bob marley hats? well that's neither here nor there.

have i mentioned the excessive amount of caramel spread they consume in chile? it's called "manjar," and it is on our table at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. i'm not really sure if i'm supposed to put it on my toast, or my lasagna, or what, but the kids freakin love it. my sister, ignacia, honestly handed me a spoon of it the first day i arrived. like, as soon as we got in the house. "te gusta manjar? conoces manjar? aqui, pruebalo." big fat spoon. i had to be like "mmm, good!" in mexico, similarly, they have what they call "cajeta," which is a caramel spread that my mexican family would offer to us, with cookies, after every meal. i dont know what the deal is. i mean it's tasty, but.. like does each country have its own version of caramel spread about which they are crazy? i want to know.

also, while i'm on food, allow me to say that the instant nescafe is not that bad here. my mexican family always had instant coffee, but i'd never try it. so when i returned to the u.s., i decided i'd give it a shot, and bought some instant coffee at meijer. it tasted mainly like gasoline, with an aftertaste of dirt. hence my strong aversion to instant coffee of any variety. i was unwilling to give it a try down here either until one of the girls, jenny, told me that it's not that bad. it actually tastes a little bit like coffee! i douse it with sugar or aspartame and i'm good to go.

and speaking of the aspartame- it comes in the funniest little package! do any of you remember smints? the tiny white mints that came in a flat package? (ben [heckman] if you're reading this, i know you do! i know exactly who you're thinking of right now too!! "would you like a smint?") like, their fake sugar comes in a package, smaller than a cigarette box, and you squeeze the side, and out poops a tiny little white tablet of aspartame! i am so amused by it every time.

ah, pardon the rambling, but speaking of cigarettes, my friend bought a package of cigarettes the other day half the size of the ones they sell in the u.s. they sell packs of just 10 down here! i don't know why they don't do that in the u.s. it'd be better for people trying to quit (ahem, smokers, you need to quit!) one time when i was working at udf, this guy was like, "hi, i'd like to buy one cigarette, please." haha. and then he had to buy a whole pack. the mini pack is smart! oh, and they also glue a disgusting picture of the most yellow, messed up teeth you've ever seen (dont worry ben i'm saving it so you can share with your dental class!), as well as these really morbid messages like "these kill you more and more by the day!!" and i'm like yipes, get that thing away from me! had to ask my friend if i could unglue the little pic tho and keep it, which i did.

looks like i'm running out of things to ramble about. carlitos and his little friend are watching "the incredibles" in spanish here in me & ignacia's room (they don't have a common tv. how weird is that.) it's pretty funny. leaving for the weekend tomorrow, so i better have some more comments by the time i get back!!!! (spanish III's, don't think i haven't noticed how poorly underrespresented you've been in my comments!!)

some videos from Pingueral

a panoramic view of the apartment and the sea

2-year old simona kept saying that she saw a pineapple ("una piña.") she said it so many times and made me giggle so hard that i absolutely had to get video when she did it again. how freakin cute is she!!

LA PLAYA PINGUERAL

No, that does not mean "player." It means BEACH! And that is exactly where we went this weekend.

Kelsey's family told her that she could bring one friend to tag along with their family to their beach house up in Pingueral. Pingueral is a town about an hour (or, one mile) from Concepción. (No, really. the roads are super windy. I'd estimate it was 20 miles as the crow flies and it took ANNNN HOURRRRR.) Beautiful place! We got to their beach apartment right around sunset, and the place was so trendy, I immediately started taking pictures. I posted one last night but here are more.

After taking a walk down to the store with the girls, Javier and Paula (the parents) began cooking the most amazing dinner I think I've ever eaten in my life. Appetizers- shrimp on a bob, empanadas, and of course beverages. Being a bartender, of course, i was excited to see Javier making a real mojito. (Students back home, you are not 21, and therefore should not drink. EVER!!)

For dinner we had the most delicious chicken on earth, corn, other things I don't even remember, but please trust me that it was incredible. And Chilean wine. Chile is very famous for its wine, and it is tasty. (again if you are not 21, it is illegal to drink! and therefore you should not!)

The next day we laid out on the beach for about 3 hours. Me, having never been burnt on the legs, neglected to put sunscreen on myself anywhere below the shoulders. Hence, by that evening, I was red as a lobster and could barely walk without wincing. We also had lunch at a nice little restaurant down the road, and waited on the dock for about an hour while Javier disappeared, reappered, repeat, before we got on a speedboat ("lancha") with their friends. Funnest thing ever!!! We also saw what looked like a log bobbing in the water, only it was going under then coming back up, and the guy told us "es un lobo del mar!" and i'm thinking ok, lobo means wolf, but... and he apparently could also translate in english, and said "it is a sea wolf!" and we're like yeah, that doesn't help. I have no idea what a sea wolf is! But it was creepy looking.

On Sunday, we laid out on the beach again, and I collected lots of shells. I started thinking, I could probably get enough to give one to each of my students! So, I have a lot. (I can't make any promises. But we'll see. Most of them are purple, so they're really pretty.) We again had a delicious meal of steak and some other Chilean things. Then sadly we had to return home.

When I got back to Kelsey's house, my family picked me up (Reinaldo the dad, Ignacia the sister, and her friend Flor) and we went to the store. I immediately purchased some aloe (pronouned "a-lo-eh" en espanol) and then we bought a frozen pizza and beverages. It wasn't until like 10:30 that we had dinner, but all of us sat together at the table, and it was really fun. I really hadn't talked to Reinaldo (the dad) for more than a minute at a time since the first day I arrived. He actually said to me "entonces hablas muy bien el español!" ("so you speak spanish very well!" ie, he didn't know this before.) Then i helped Bea (the mom) understand Stuart Little, which little Carlitos has to read for his English class. It was nice to put my English knowledge to use. We went to bed very late that night. It was a great weekend.

the beach in PINGUERAL

are you jealous? of course you are! i went to the beach! we laid out! we got sun! we got stuff!! went with family of kelsey. thhree little girls. little ones. susnset was amazing. pictures.

the Thomas Jefferson school

Here is a picture of the woman with whom I am working here at the Thomas Jefferson School, Miss Valeska. Notice their totally "vakan" (Chilean slang for COOL!) uniforms (same colors as Urbana! represent!). The school was designed to be taught in English up until 7th grade, but nobody really teaches in English here. Apparently they found that the students were not learning a solid foundation in either English or Spanish by speaking Spanish at home and having school in English. So, you'll hear the every now and then "oh-kay estudents, plees take out your books" ("books" being pronounced like "boo" but with a "ks" on the end.) My siblings, however, grew up in this school and their English is pretty decent.

some photos from our trip around concepcion

Kelsey, me, and Jessica on a hill in Concepcion. We visited some deer farm and got to overlook the city a little bit. (You can see the Pacific in the background.)

A building on the Universidad de Concepcion campus.

A dinosaur! No wait a whale.

did i mention phil collins?

chileans LOVE PHIL COLLINS!!!!!/genesis.

anyway, i went to the beach this weekened, and it's too late/i'm too tired to do it any justice in this blog. suffice it to say that it was wonderful, and i will elaborate later.

***para los estudiantes: los verbos -ar***

algo interesante que he notado en chile, y de verdad en toda latinoamerica, es que se crea verbos de algunas palabras unicas. tambien hacemos igual en los estados unidos cuando una palabra nueva llega, por ejemplo, "google," que ahora es un verbo en ingles tambien. se hace igual en espanol. usualmente se convierte la palabra en un verbo -ar. entonces, "google," en espanol, ahora es verbo, "googlear." entonces, se dice "estaba googleando algo.." o cualquier que sea.
mi hermanita y yo estabamos mirando la pelicula "drillbit taylor" hace unos dias, y en el parte cuando el chico tiene un "rap-off" con el otro chico, el traducion en los subtituls uso la palabra "rapear" para "to rap." por ejemplo, "but you love to rap!" fue "pero te encanta rapear!" lol!

el chilenito por la ventana

habia un chilenito a su ventana con una bandera chilena cuando paso la marcha.

the protest march

Here is the first portion of video I took of the strike march yesterday in dowtown Concepcion.

***para mis estudiantes espanoles***

Hoy fuimos al centro de la ciudad de Concepción. Vimos la Universidad de Concepción, que es muy linda, compramos helado, y caminamos un rato. Cuando estábamos regresando a nuestros buses, oímos un ruido muy alto. ¡¡Fue una marcha de protesto con cientos de chilenos!! Tenían cosas de hacer ruidos, señales con frases, y estaban gritando. No sé lo que estaban protestando pero mi amiga me dijo que querían salarios mejores. No sé como trabajan esas personas, pero fue muy interesante, y muchos de nosotros americanos tomaron fotos. También hice unos filmes con mi cámara. A ellos les gustó cuando tomamos fotos; les hizo gritar aún más.
De alguna manera, voy a poner algunos fotos aquí, y un video también si es posible.

why the 80s music. 's all i wanna know.

someone tell me why i have heard "forever young" no less than 4 times since being in chile? i even asked one girl, who was listening to it on her iPod --on repeat!!!--, if she had seen the movie "Napoleon Dynamite," and she was like "¿qué?... no."

other strange songs i have heard multiple times: UB40's version of "Fools Rush In" (aka "i cant help falling in love with you), umm, Alanis Morisette's "One Hand in my Pocket," yeah can you say 1995?, the beatles "yesterday," at least that is a good one...maybe it's just that i've heard "forever young" so many times that it seems like there are more.

not that there is anything wrong with this. it's just backwards.

another cosa backwards: apparently, in chile, the mullet is making a comeback. i don't know if it is exactly a comeback per se, or if it is just now reaching south america. but like, not in the redneck, budweiser, nascar kind of way. like young, trendy, hot looking chilean dudes, walking around in trendy clothes, looking hard, sportin' a mullet. i just don't get it. (i'll snap a foto when i can.)

Valparaiso, La Playa

Yesterday we went to Valparaiso and toured Pablo Neruda's house, "La Sebastiana." Neruda is probably the most famous Chilean, as a well known poet and winner of the Nobel Prize. (I always hated studying his poetry at Ohio State, cause I never understood it. But apparently he is really good.)

"Fotos" were not permitted to be taken inside, but I was able to sneak this one of his bar. Come on, how cool is it!

We also spent a few hours at the beach. It was only about 72 degrees but the sun was amazing!

At night, our tour guides José and Pablo took us Americans to a local restaurant called Los Buenos Muchachos. They had a band onstage, and lots of meat, and french fries, and the Chilean drink Pisco. Kelsey and Jessica and I all had a pisco sour, which, as the name implies, is rather sour.

After dinner a lot of people got up and danced. (I abstained from dancing, in the interest of everyone there.)

Today we flew down to Concepción and I got picked up by my family. They are really nice! My "sister" Ignacia speaks English pretty well, so she speaks to me in it quite often, as does the 11-year old, Guatón. (i have no idea how you spell his name, but you say it "wah-TONE.) The 6-year-old, Carlitos, is the cutest little thing I have ever seen, although he does not shut up. He knows a little English too, so like when I told the father que "tengo veintitres años" he looked at me and said "..twenty three?" lol! I love it here.

Anyway, Ignacia and I are watching "Zohan" in her room and are about to go to bed. I am a little surprised at how similar Concepción and the culture down here is to Americans'. There are kids on skateboards, with iPods, Ignacia has her own laptop, the 2 boys play soccer and fight, it's really all very similar.

Right now I am going to bed though, and tomorrow I begin teaching at the Thomas Jefferson School! more blogs on random observations (e.g. Chileans´ obsession with American 80s music) to come.

sunrise over the clouds

the Andes Mountains

view of Santiago, Chile

Estamos aqui in Santiago, Chile!

After about 12 hours of flying, we finally arrived Friday morning here in Santiago! Customs was fun, especially the $130 you have to pay when you get off the plane for being from a richer country (they only charge this fee if you are from Canada, the U.S., Australia, or Mexico. Go figure.) I was pretty stoked when the muchacho who stamped my passport was listening to Incubus and I pointed to his music player and said, "¿te gusta Incubus?" "sí, te gusta tambien?" "sí, mucho!" My first Spanish conversation with a real Chilean!

Our tour guide Jose took us to a pretty cool market where they sell little trinkets for gringos like us. I saw some pan flutes (LOL!), "vidrio soplado" (blown glass), and of course the typical shawls and scarves and such. They have lots of things made of alpaca wool, the alpaca of course being a common South American animal. I also saw a buckeye and asked the lady "¿cómo se dice esto en español?" The word for buckeye is "castaño.¨ Apparently they have lots of buckeye trees here too. How nice! We also went up one of the montañas here, where there is a large statue of the Virgin Mary who, as Jose told us, "looks over the city of Santiago." very photogenic.

We also went to a mall tonight, and the food court was so American that it was hard to believe we are actually in a different country. Kelsey and Jessica and I all ate a "completo," which is a hot dog loaded down with all kinds of Hispanic things. (Mine had guacamole, salsa, and mayo of all things.) It was pretty tasty!

Now we are chilling at the hotel and mañana vamos a Valparaíso. Jose nos dijo que podemos nadar en la playa. (¡quiero broncearme!)

I am getting to translate a lot, as 12 of the 16 people in our group speak no Spanish. This is cool, or annoying, depending on the situation (and the person asking of course.) lol! Hope to update again soon. leave me comments if you get a chance! peace