I'm Baaaaaaack!!

Ok, so sorry about the lack updates. I mean, I'm sure you've all been dying to know what I've been up to! Buncha stalkers...

Well, school has been absolutely awful, and even though I claim to have given up, I'm still a perfectionist and try a too hard. All I need to do is pass, all I need to do is pass. Just keep tellin' yourself that, Jen.

In case you guys didn't know, the UM Chile program is partnered up with Wisconsin, so that made last Saturday's football game super duper fun. We started our tailgate at noon sharp and stumbled over to the gringo bar (and by stumbled, I mean we took 3 metros and a micro -- not convenient at all!) to watch the game. There aren't even words for how exciting that afternoon. It was almost like being in Ann Arbor... except not at all in any way, shape, or form. But we definitely made the best out of the weekend.

Michigan vs. Wisconsin! Grrr!


















Aww, jk! We're friends!


















I'm offically more than halfway done with my stay here, and I think time is really going to fly from here on out. I'm going to Mendoza (that's in Argentina for you less-worldly folks :) ) this weekend, my parents will be here the weekend after that, I have a fieldtrip (to a vineyard, I think) the weekend after that, and I have my YMCA English class party the weekend after that. And then it's November! I think a couple friends and I are going to try to fit in white water rafting somewhere in the next month too.

As for random observations....I know I wrote a wee something before about people wearing shirts with stupid English phrases on them. Well, I saw another one this morning and I just wish I had the skills to tell this guy what his shirt really said. Because if you know your shirt said "GHETTO. RUDE. STAR." on it, would you really want to wear it? Who even manufactures stuff like that? I was hoping for something equally as enlightening on the back of the shirt, but alas, there was only a "manly" fairy-like creature.

I just figured out to apply for an absentee ballot from overseas, so I sent that in today. Hopefully it all works out. Now I don't want to be talking politics or anything, but I think this video is hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65I0HNvTDH4. Barack is such a friggin' cutie.

Oooook, well I'm off to read an insane amount of essays.... or watch the new Heroes episode. We'll see what happens.

Besos y abrazos!

life in pictures

too tired for sentences. pictures of my life. here. now.

fiestas patrias at the estado nacional. i bought a kite.


















un asado (bbq) with some of the students in my english class at the ymca.





















bailando! but not the cueca, because that's hard.























went to algarrobo with my family. flew my kite.









































went to el canelo (a beach pueblito) for the day.















dyslexia?























the pacific


















going for a stoll.


















Then we found two huasos (Chilean cowboys).


















sunset from the roof.


















at home. tired.


















ah life.

Paseo a Pomaire

Hola po! So my weekend was pretty bacán (cool, groovy, hip, slammin', neato). Friday night I went to a fiesta at the YMCA where I volunteer. The fiesta was an early celebration of los días patrias, which is pretty much a 5-day celebration (starting this Wednesday) of a couple different things, but most importantly, Chile's independence. Anyway, at the fiesta, they had cueca dancers (la cueca is a national dance) come in and perform for us, which was super neat. I sat with the people I help teach English to, and they attempted to teach me some Chilean dance moves. Que entretenido!

Saturday, my program took un paseo to the pueblito de Pomaire, a little town known for its mastery of greda (type of clay) making. A lady from Pomaire invited us to her house and fed us breakfast and lunch. After breakfast she led us into town and took us to a greda making factory. Here, they dig the greda from the ground, grind it up, make some sort of pottery out of it, and bake it. We all got to make little pots too, but I'm pretty sure the minute we left, they took all our creations and mashed them back up so they could make decent looking pottery instead of ugly little bowls.

Here's me making my bowl.


















I accidentally pushed the first one off the wheel and smushed it, so I got to make another.


















The finished product!


















This is how the professional does it. It takes him less than a minute to make a pot.



This probably took him a half hour. I have no clue how he can make them all so similar. Que loco.
























After that, we walked to the other side of town (yeah, and it probably took all of 5 minutes -- it's a pretty small town) and were met by a lady who helped us make piggy banks! Here's my finished product. It kind of looks a lot like a fat bear, but whatevs, it'll hold my pesos.



















Saturday night, a few friends and I found a wee pub called O'Flannery's. It's everything you could ever imagine an Irish pub to be. Except it was filled with Chileans. Which I found to be hilarious. But maybe that was just the pisco. Anyway, on they were also hosting karaoke, and golly, you know me. I shoved my way up to the stage and told them I wanted to sing:

"What do you want to sing?!" they asked.
"Anything in English!!" I replied.

And 5 minutes later, I'm singing for some R-E-S-P-E-C-T. And after that, the rest of the gringos joined me, resulting in the worst rendition of Piano Man ever sang. Immediately after, they told us to go sit down. It was super fun though, and I'll definitely be going back. The people were super friendly, and didn't pull the usual "Oh you don't speak Spanish? Well, I see you're trying but I'm not even going to try to understand you because it's not perfect Spanish. And I'm too good for you" thing.

And yesterday I did absolutely nothing. And it felt wonderful.

Oh, and by the way, today it was in the 70s and the sun was shining and I wore flip-flops!! Yaaaay!!

Besitos!

September 11 + más divagaciones

So yesterday was pretty anticlimatic. September 11 in Chile is remembered for day Pinochet and his buddies overthrew Allende's government. Here's Wikipedia's take on it. (If you did go to Wikipedia and saw the picture of the La Moneda being bombed, no worries, it's still there. I walked by it once when I first got here. I didn't know what it was at the time, but there was a bunch of guys in uniform, and I just couldn't resist taking a picture.) Anyway, feelings are still hurt, and every year there are protests and riots. All classes after 4:30 were cancelled to ensure students got home safely before riots broke out, and I got quite a few emails from directors of what I'm sure re important University programs advising students to stay away from the center of Santiago. I live in Nunoa, which is in general one of the safer neighborhoods in Santiago, but I was really expecting to see something happen. All I saw was a TV special talking about the riots in the past, and the history of Septemeber 11. Luis quickly changed the channel to a documentary about cocaine dealers though. Hmm. I didn't want to pry too much into how Luis and Patty felt about it because I'm sure you can imagine that any Chilean who was alive at the time has some strong opinions, one way or the other. There are still some people (usually the rich) who support Pinochet and claim that Santiago was a much better place when he was in power. There are others though (usually the poor) who support Allende. In general, these are the people who had family members "disappear" during Pinochet's reign, and these are the people who protest and riot every September 11. But anyway, I knew Patty was a Pinochet suppoter, so it was interesting to hear her opinions. She said most of the rioters are young kids who weren't even alive at this point in history, and that they didn't have a reason to be causing this much trouble.

Um yeah, so that was my yesterday.

On a different note, my poetry professor is a huge butthead and is really rude. And her body is unevenly proportioned. La odio. I could go on and on, but I won't. She doesn't deserve my blogging time.

I'm going to Pomaire tomorrow for another class trip. It's a little town (pueblito) about an hour away which is known for making "greda," which I'm assuming is a sort of clay. A family there is going to let us visit there home, and see how they make la greda. So that should be fun.

Benja woke me up again this morning because he was yelling about how he didn't want to get dressed. Oh shoot me. I did my whole I'll-just-get-up-and-go-to-the-bathroom-so-they-know-I'm-awake thing, and I heard Luis say something like, "Look! You woke up la Jenni!" Ha! It worked! But I still got woken up at 7:30, so I'm still a little urked.

Oh, I got a postcard from my dad a couple days ago, and he wrote a little section in Spanish to Patty and Luis, and then at the bottom he signed it "Donny." Patty asked if it was my brother who had sent it, and I said, "No, no, that's DAnny. My dad is DOnny." She thought that was funny because they sound so similar. She told me how confusing it was growing up in her house, because she's named Patricia and her brother is Patricio. With the double "Pat" on my mind, I pointed out how my mom is Patty Patterson, and she exclaimed, "NOO! NOO!! No lo creo!!" She was laughing so hard, I thought she was going to bust a gut. Oh, the little things in life that make us happy.

Alrighty, here are random pictures I stole from other people on facebook:























This is at the Museo Bellas Artes. It's free on Sundays so mi amiga Blair y yo went. Good thing it's free because I would not have been happy if I had had to pay for it. Besides the cool statues like this that we found in the basement, it was pretty freakin' boring.

And here's a few more from skiing:



































If you look right above our heads, thats the smog from Santiago.


Besos y abrazos!

I climbed a mountain.

Things I have done in the Andes:
1. Skied
2. Ate at an outdoor restaurant
3. CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN!

Yesterday 5 other gringos and I decided to go hiking in Cajon de Maipo, a region about an hour southeast of Santiago. We left the bus station around 8am, and took a bus to San Jose de Maipo, which cost about $1.50 USD. From there, we tried to hitch hike, but a different bus came, and we just hopped on that for about $1.25. We took that bus to the end of its route and tried to find someplace to hike. At the first place we found, some lady was guarding the gate and wanted us to pay to enter. Psh, like she owns the Andes Mountains. Yeah right. Yeah, it would have cost less than a dollar, but it's the principle of it. Anyway, we started walking in another direction. There were fences everywhere so we neede to find someplace that didn't have fences because trespassing property is kind of bad and illegal. At some point, we ended up at a fork in the road; one way had a sign saying "Precaucion: Salida Camiones" (Precaution: Truck Exit) and the other saying "No Entrar." We decided to take the first, and continued walking for another 5 minutes. At that point, we found a dog. We named him Buddy. Buddy walked with us for a while, but then a car came, and we caught a ride with a couple of guys from Sweden. We asked where they were going, and they said they were just going to drive down the road and see where it took them. I like that mentality.


















So we hop in the back of the truck and start going, and Buddy starts running beside us. We kept driving and Buddy kept following.


However, Buddy could not keep up. Sad story. We got dropped off by a little waterfall, and we were getting ready to climb up when in the distance we see Buddy running towards us. This crazy dog just ran 3 miles. So, we started climbing up the waterfall and once we get to the top of that, we rested and ate lunch. At that point, we wanted to go further but two of the girls decided to stop and go back down. The remaining four kept going, but then another girl stopped. And then there were three. Catherine, Tom, and I kept hiking for another 2 hours or so, trying to get to the top. We stopped at some points along the way, especially when the view was beautiful. At one point, Catherine and I took the time to tan while Tom explored a little more. So now I've skiied, eaten, hiked, and TANNED in the Andes Mountains. Yay! Here's some pictures from one of our resting spots.




















































Yup, that's right - Buddy was hiking with us. This crazy dog went the whole way with us! (By the way, I love the self-timer feature.)

Here's a video. Right before the camera goes a little crazy is where we kept hiking. And don't mind me looking like a loon. K thanks.


We finally made it to the top! There wasn't much there, except for a lot of poop from some unknown animal. Hmm. And we saw a condor! Crazy, huh? Upon getting to the top, I definitely pulled a Hiro Nakamura when he transports himself to New York City. Ya know, the whole throws-arms-in-air-and-shouts-YAHOO! kind of thing. Anyway, here's some pictures from the top. I may just make another "panoramic" picture later. Because no me cae bien la tarea. (I did. It's down at the bottom.)






































































Around 3:30-4ish, we started to hike down, since we didn't want to be hiking after the sun set. Going down was quite a task, let me tell you. Catherine spent the whole time sliding down on her butt. I was just hoping I didn't slide too far (AKA over a cliff). There weren't any trails, so it was really just a bunch of guesswork in trying to get down. There were a far amount of prickly bushes too, which is never any fun.

We finally made it down, Buddy included. Catherine really wanted to bring him home with her to her apartment, but she called her land lady, who quickly explained that that is not allowed. Buddy was such a nice dog too. We started walking down the road and it the third or fourth car stopped and let us hitch a ride. He was a really nice guy with a really nice car. We really just wanted a ride to the bus stop, but he offered to bring us all the way back to Santiago. We happily agreed. Buddy, however, was not as happy, and didn't follow us this time. After figuring out where he dropped us off, we found a metro and got home. My whole body hurt. Everything hurt and everything was dirty. My left pinky finger hurt alot, and I didn't know why. I looked down and saw a big gash between my pinky and my ring finger, so that pretty much explained it. Yeah, ouch. It's my battle wound.

So we figured we had spent around $3 USD that day, so we're planning on going back a few more times. We want to camp there for a weekend too, since that would be a pretty cheap vacation. It's close enough to Santiago, but absolutely nothing like the city, so it's pretty sweet.

Besos!

casi nueve semanas. que loco. si po.

Not much has been going on here. School has really been keeping me busy. I handed in my first paper last week, and I just had my first test on Tuesday. Ugh. That was pretty awful. There was this multiple choice section, but it was impossible to tell the differences between the choices. It was a little like this: Which of the following statements are correct?
A. The apple is red.
B. Red is the color of the apple.
C. There is an apple here, and it has a reddish tint.
D. The apple is rotten.
E. Supermarkets sell apples.
Choose from:
1. A,B,E
2. A,C,E
3. A,D,E
4. B,C,D
5. B,C,D,E
Seriously. It was like that. So, needless to say, I did quite a bit of guessing. But the teacher is really understanding about the whole language barrier deal, so it'll be interesting to see what kind of grade I get.

When I got home that night, I pretty much just collapsed on the couch. Then Montse came over to me and kissed the very tip of my nose. My heart almost melted. It almost makes up for her screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night twice a week. Not that I don't love that.

On a completely different note, there is the subject of the crowdedness in the Santiago public transportation vehicles. Never have I ever felt like a sardine until coming to Chile. For those of you who don't know, I was trapped on an Italian elevator during Rome's hottest summer with 6 other people, and I can truthfully say I had more space in that tiny elevator than I do in my daily commutes. No one ever talks on the metros or micros (but if they do, they whisper) so everyone stands there with their arms at their sides, trying to avoid eye contact with everyone else. Awkward much? Yes. Anyways, so that kind of stinks, but I don't mind too much. The thing that bugs me though is when people try to move past me in a crowded micro. They can obviously see that there is no space to move to yet they still growl "Permiso!" and push and shove until they get by me, which puts me awkwardly close to the smelly old Chilean man happily sitting in seat. Gah. Today, the micro was so packed that I couldn't even get in far enough to swipe my bus pass (the "tarjeta BIP!"). Where did that put me? Squeezed between a glass door and a very tall man, that's where. Really, I turned my head to look the other way, and when I tried to turn back, my ear got caught inside his jacket, which lead to uncomfortable giggles and hasty "lo siento"s.

So, other than that little rant, there's not much going on right now. But I wanted to write a wee something just to let you know I'm still doing okay.


Mucho amor a todos