Visiting Home

I've now been home for a week now, and it feels good.

Seeing family and friends and catching up has been a really rejuvenating experience.  It's been such a nice feeling sleeping in my own bed, getting home cooked meals, and being around everything that is familiar to me once again.  My time so far has involved watching TV with my dad, visiting the mall with friends, a few Magic marathons, a birthday breakfast with my brother and sister in law, catching up with the Rotary Youth Exchange folks that sent me to Germany in high school, and going out to eat with friends.

It's a strange albeit nice feeling being back.  I love the cheap prices and seemingly endless variety that I can get when shopping at the food store or at Target, and the same goes for buying clothing here.  A 10 oz bottle of sunblock for 5 bucks?  Dress socks for a dollar a pair?  Binders for a few dollars each?  I'll take it.  All of it.  As long as it all fits in my luggage when I come back.

My time has also been taken up by new technology: a new laptop with an integrated webcam and mic (which is now perfect for catching up with family and friends via Skype) and a Kindle Fire.  Since I won't be able to access the free TVs and movies in Santiago I've been taking full advantage of the streaming content and have been watching The Wonder Years from the first episode.

Over the years I've built up a huge number of books, textbooks, and general resources for teaching.  I've also put off cleaning through them and my personal possessions each time I've been home, but now I'm slowly sorting through things.  It's amazing how much you can accumulate without realizing it, and going through it brings back a flood of memories of all different types of events over the years: middle school and high school awards, yearbooks, pictures and photo albums from trips, journals, books from my childhood, and the list goes on and on.

And of course I've been enjoying the food.  Here are some pictures of what I've had to eat since I've been home:

A pizza steak

Parmasean crusted chicken with some pasta and tomato salad

apple crumb pie a la mode

some food that I've missed

a made to order salad (I wish there were more of these!)

What's a visit to the mall without going to Cinnabon at least once?

A homemade meal of pork chops, mashed potatoes, spaetzle, and corn.  And yes, I'm aware that that's a lot of starch and carbs for one meal!

Chik Fil-A!

A meatball sandwich from Wawa.

Order out Chinese to help with the hunger after a Magic marathon

I wish they had Belgian waffles in Chile.

I'm very fortunate to be able to visit friends in Los Angeles, and I'll be boarding the plane to go there in less than 2 days!  Have a Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Goodbye May

So I am curled up in bed as I type this and am amazed at how fast time has been going by.

Due to not having internet over the weekend at my place I didn't get to update about the will versus going to question.  I hope no one died in the suspense of the moment.  So here are the rules (according to the English book at my school):

You say "going to" when you are talking about something that you planned before you began speaking.  For example, This summer I am going to eat a lot of Kit Kats for Dan since he has none in Chile.

You say "will" when you are talking about something that you decided right at the moment you started speaking.  For example, Gosh, that last example got me thinking about Dan.  I think I will send him some Kit Kats now.

You can use either "will" or "going to" to tell about predictions of the future.  For example:

Dan is going to get some Kit Kats in the mail.  OR Dan will get some Kit Kats in the mail.

So enough of the grammar.  This past week went by quickly, as did the weekend.  I got together with Mel and Chris, two people from the program, and we did a Friday night Pizza Hut dinner.  It was good to catch up with them over what has been happening and to just laugh about all of our adventures here.  I also learned a new phrase that they (and I now too) use to describe the craziness and almost unbelievable situations we have found ourselves in: motorboat crazy.  Here was some of the Pizza Hut goodness:

My weekend also included building a nightstand sucessfully on my own, shopping for a sweater and some new shirts (there was a huge sale in Patronato), and here is what the store looked like inside:

All over the store it was exactly like this, with piles of clothing all over the place.  The prices were pretty good though, especially for good brands.  I have never really been a sweater type of guy, but I really like the one that I got.  I will have to snap a picture of me in it soon. 

Here is some more food from the weekend.  A small pot/pan of eggs with ham and some hot chocolate:

It turns out that Sunday the 30th of May was the Patriotic Day of Culturalism in Santiago.  There were parades and free entrances to musuems.  Unfortunately the lines were long no matter where I went and I was occupied with other plans so I couldn't enjoy it to the fullest, but here are a few pictures:

May was a month of transition for me.  I moved from one apartment to another, and I am also making the transition to eating more healthy and spending my money more wisely (ie less eating out and more cooking at home). 

And to end this entry here is a picture of the mountains on a clear day from outside the front door of my apartment:

Random Stuff

So my weekend was awesome.  New place, new roommates, birthday party, and all that jazz.

Sunday Ro and I spontaneously decided to go to Jumbo (which is like a Walmart but better).  I tried to convince her to go to the one near my place, but she suggested going to the one about 12 metro stops away from my place.  It's a good thing that she did, as it turns out the one near my place is closed for construction until further notice.

So we did some grocery shopping and got a few random things at Jumbo. Namely, a white board for the new place and a little pencil case so I feel like a regular teacher at the school.  It was attached to a huge shopping mall, so we did some more shopping and I got a new internet cable.  We did a lot of talking about our experiences and realized we are both facing the same challenges at our schools with management of the students and how we would like to see things done differently, so it was good to bond over that.

We finished off a successful shopping trip with some Starbucks, and I realized this was my first time having it since I left home.  Maybe it was just me, but the hot chocolate tasted better than back home in the States.

I've noticed a few cool cultural things here:

1. When you buy gifts at stores you can get them gift wrapped for free.  The way they wrap things is really interesting.  Rather than wrapping it like we would by putting the gift wrap around the item, they fold the paper over itself and then tape the bottom of it.  They then fold over the top if it so that it is like a bag.  They put the gift inside the wrapping paper and then tape the top of it.  I wish I had my camera to show a picture of it, but I'll bring it next time.

2. Some grocery stores (like Jumbo and Lider) have escalators that are like rolling walkways to go from one floor to another.  While this may not seem like a big deal, here is what is: If you need to take your shopping cart from one floor to another, you can.  They have magnets in the wheels of the carts and in on the escalator floors so that there are no runaway carts to run over anyone.  No matter how much stuff you have in your cart or how hard you try and push it, that cart isn't going anywhere until it is off the escalator.  Pretty nifty in my opinion.

The walk to school was about 35 minutes, and it left me feeling energized.  Between walking to and from school I feel like I have so much energy and am so glad that I found a practical way of getting exercise into my daily routine.  Gyms here cost at least 30 bucks a month, and while they might be a good way to enjoy classes and make some friends I doubt I would actually follow through in the long run with going.

Oh yeah, and I have a mattress and a completely built bed frame.  Now I just need to get some small decorations for the room and a new set of curtains, but that will come with time.

Ziplining, Exploring, Shopping, and a Free Fork

So I promise that there will be pictures to go along with this once I am back in Santiago and can upload them onto my laptop.  Today was just too awesome to not blog about it before I forget it all.

At breakfast I met a nice woman named Charlotte that is from New York.  She was doing a tour, and since I didn´t hear back from the tour company I contacted the day before I decided to hang around until her tour guide came.  It turns out that she was doing a tour with the same company I was planning on doing one with, so I quickly grabbed my things and went along. 

It was a pretty long ride picking people up and then driving out to the camp in Portilleros, but it was worth it. There was a German couple on the bus, so we had a good time talking. The camp was in a really nice area, right next to a lake and surrounded by mountains.  We had some time to kill, so I got some hot chocolate while we were waiting.

I did ziplining with 2 girls from Buenos Aires and 2 older women from Holland, and the guides were really funny and awesome about encouraging us and giving us good travel advice.  Some of the ziplines were so fast and long that the wind rushed past your face, making you start to tear.  The feeling of flying through the air and seeing the mountains all around you and the water below you is indescribable.  I got a CD with pictures from the whole tour as well as a slideshow set to music.

After the tour was over, we grabbed some lunch and hung out until the bus was ready to take us back.  Since I had such an awesome time I booked a full day tour with them tomorrow to do rock climbing.  I got to do indoor rock climbing when I was in high school as part of a field trip for gym, but this will be my first time doing it outside.  I´m really excited about it.

After I got back, I explored some of the main plazas.  Plaza Independencia is the main one, with 4 other plazas surrounding it.  I didn't make it to all of them this time, but here are a few shots:

Along the way I noticed a few interesting things about the traffic here:
1. Some streets do not have markers dividing the middle of the street.
2. These same streets do not indicate if they are one way or two way streets.
3. If there is not a traffic light, there is not a stop sign at 4 way intersections here.  Everyone just goes when they think it is safe.  Notice the words ¨when they think¨.
4. Pedestrians are not given the right of way.  So you really have to watch out and be careful.

After that, it was off to the mall to scope out some deals for clothing and books.  I found a store called Falabella, which seems like a pretty popular department store here.  I got 2 nice dress shirts, 2 short sleeved shirts, and a nice new tie for 40 bucks.  I also found a book of fables in Spanish and a Spanish English dictionary for 15 bucks altogether, so I was pretty happy about that.

To top off the day, I went to Las Tinajas, which is a Tenedor Libre restaurant (free fork, or buffet).  Yeah, I know what you are all thinking.  But this is NOT your typical buffet.  Here is a list of the areas I remember seeing: pasta bar, salad bar, sushi bar, custom made crepes, typical Argentinian dishes, bar full of Argentian wines, dessert bar, and a huge grill of about 12 different types of meats that they will carve to your liking.  I took pictures of each of my plates and will put them on here once I am back in Santiago.

Tomorrow I have a full day of rock climbing followed by some more sightseeing, so I am going to get ready to turn in.  Good night everyone!