año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010) - Sara Florecita
I will be teaching English to Chilean children in a public school in the Atacama region through the Inglés Abre Puertas program. I am excited to immerse myself in the Chilean culture, improve at...

19 Days Left
Rock Island, United States
What started off as a lofty, long-term, "someday I would love to visit this country and that country" and "someday I'll live somewhere I can speak Spanish" thoughts have turned into reality. Ever since I left the US for the first time about three and a half years ago (a 2 week long band tour), I have been longing to visit other countries, meet other people, and learn about what life is like somewhere else.
A year ago I spent 3 months studying at Oxford in the UK, and I loved it. I had some wonderful and life-changing chances to visit Venice, Paris, and Prague. I learned a ton about what life is like in England, and I didn't want to go home to the US because Oxford actually started to feel like home. I got used to my life there, but I had to return to the US to finish college.
Life in the States has been okay, but I've always longed for something more exciting, different, challenging, and enlightening. I like the jobs I've had here working with kids, so I'm thrilled that I will be teaching kids in Chile (and WELL-BEHAVED, normal ones who won't throw chairs or shampoo bottles at you, have hissy fits, or get restrained...).
For a while, I'd seriously considered applying to the Peace Corps or other long-term programs, but those were a huge commitment, and I wasn't ready to just leave my boyfriend for two and a half years because things probably wouldn't work out. I don't like the idea of long-distance relationships, but travelling / living abroad has always been important to me.
In my mind, tossed around the ideas of doing the Peace Corps or similar year-long programs in Guatemala or Mexico, and started researching different organizations or programs abroad. One of them, called Cultural Embrace, offered lots of affordable and shorter-term ideas. I requested more information and thought of it as a "maybe I would like to do this later, but now I have a full-time job" sort of idea.
Then one day out of the blue, I got an email from CE saying that they still had positions open for a 4-month program in Chile, and that this was the last call for interested applicants. I admit, it was a really impulsive decision to make, but something about it felt completely right. Within the next 2 days I gathered up my letters of recommendation, wrote a personal statement, and worked on a letter completely in Spanish, and I mailed it in. I didn't think about it a lot or debate whether I should do this or not. For some reason, Chile had always appealed to me, and 4 months was a long enough time to learn about Chile, visit lots of places, and immerse myself in the culture. However, it was also a short enough period of time that I wasn't worried about my relationship falling apart.
...So back to the present. My flight out of O'Hare leaves in 19 days. I've been doing LOTS of reading, studying, and information-seeking. I am part of the way through "Crónica de una muerte anunciada" by Gabriel García Márquez, in attempt to improve my Spanish, which is a tad bit rusty after 7 years of classes, 3 years of waitressing in a Mexican restaurant where I was the only gringa, and 2 1/2 years since I last took a Spanish class or waitressed. Most of it seems like it's coming back (or that I still remembered), and I am picking up all sorts of wonderful, quirky Chilean phrases. I got this book called "Chilenismos" which explains tons of words and phrases I'll probably hear while there.
Overall, I am confident that my Spanish is good enough for me to be decently comfortable while there, but part of me is kicking myself for stopping taking Spanish classes 2 1/2 years ago. I loved it when I was learning it, and it felt like I was good at it and a quick learner. I had one really annoying Spanish teacher in college, and after that I decided not to take more classes. I really wish I would have though. I cringe to think how fluent I COULD be now if I hadn't quit because of one lousy teacher. Then again, I'm still young and have lots of time to pick it back up.
Anyway, everything is in order for me to leave. I just need to figure out the whole cell phone situation because I don't want to pay the expensive rates per minute AT&T will make me pay. I think I'll just communicate via email. I also need to narrow down my list of things to bring with. I usually pack pretty light, but I want to make sure to leave room in my suitcase for anything I might buy in South America.
I have this thing where every city I visit, I buy a painting. It's much more awesome than tacky, touristy souvenirs. If possible, I like to meet and talk to the painter who made it. Then our apartment is filled with beautiful and one-of-a-kind artwork. I am looking forward to selecting paintings that capture some of my experiences in Chile (and probably Peru and Bolivia).
I wonder what my host family will be like. I wonder if they'll have kids, if they'll be accepting of me being a vegetarian, if they'll have a dog or cat, if they'll live in the city or the country, what their house will look like, whether their home will have air conditioning, computers, or TV's. Honestly, I am completely fine with it if they have none of those things. I am thrilled I will not have to deal with all the problems of having a car, driving, traffic, etc. I hope my host family will be nice, and that they'll be understanding of my broken Spanish.
I am looking forward to a more simple lifestyle, not like in the US where people live outside of their means and rely too much on material things for their conceived sense of happiness. I cannot wait to see the Andes, the Pacific, going on long, exhilirating runs in the Atacama, and just soak in the solitude of the desert. Hot springs, geysers, swimming, horseback riding, stargazing, cacti, and the idea of heat and no rain sound amazing. If I go to Bolivia, I am itching to try high-altitude running to see what that's like. Maybe I'll be coordinated enough to try sandboarding, but I think I'll stick with running.
As of now, I'm working my way through taking a course to get certified in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). So far it's not too hard but very time consuming. I really like it though, and it is helping out with all sorts of neat ideas to use with my future class. I really feel like this could be a career thing for me, not just a 4-month teaching job in Chile. Maybe this is part of the answer I've been looking for, and it will open many more doors for me.
At any rate, I need to get back to creating lesson plans for my TEFL homework. I'll be sure to keep writing.
Sarita Esperanza:)
written by  Sara Florecita on July 3, 2010 from Rock Island, United States
from the travel blog: año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010)

En exactamente dos semanas de hoy estaré en Santiago
Rock Island, United States
This morning has been eventful as far as planning my trip for Chile is concerned. It's exciting to think that in exactly two weeks, at this exact moment, my plane will be touching down in Santiago, assuming there aren't any delays.
I also found out my regional placement, which is Tarapacá. The Tarapacá region is located in the northern part of Chile. Although I don't know which specific town or city I'll be teaching in, I was able to do some research of the area. Part of it is along the Pacific Ocean, part in the Atacama Desert, and part is in the Andes. There are several national parks and outdoor activities in Tarapacá. No matter where I'll be assigned to, it'll be a short bus ride to Iquique, a coastal city with beautiful views.
It was a huge surprise when I found out I'm going to Tarapacá (Region I). All along I'd thought I'd be in Region III in either Copiapó, El Salvador, Caldera, or Vallenar. I read a lot about those four cities, and was hoping I'd be in Copiapó (large mining town) or Caldera (small port / fishing town). I didn't even know the program offered teaching jobs in Tarapacá, nonetheless that it even existed.
Upon finding out, I looked up information about it online, and when I saw where it was and pictures of places in the region, I got really excited. There are alpacas there! Although they're rather awkward-looking creatures, I think they're pretty cute. And the cacti!! I LOVE those spikey succulents!
I do hope that I get placed in a larger city instead of a small town (I've always loved being in large cities and someday plan on moving to a major city), but even if it is a small town, I can practice my Spanish and meet lots of people. Not to mention that we end up in certain places for a reason. I'm keeping an open mind to this experience, and I know I'll learn a tremendous amount of new things.
As for the practical details, I still need to try to fit everything from my list of clothes, books, shoes, etc.. into my suitcase to make sure it fits and I don't need to invest in a slightly larger suitcase. The thing is, I don't want to bring too much stuff and would prefer to travel on the lighter side. My green suitcase is large enough I think everything should fit okay, but small enough that it can be considered a carry-on bag according to American Airlines. Plus, it has wheels and an expandable zippered section so if I buy things in Chile I'll be able to have room for them in the suitcase to bring back home to the States.
During 3rd shift last night--technically this morning--I finished Unit 13 of my TEFL course, which I am determined to finish before departing for Chile. So far I've been enjoying the course a lot, but last night I couldn't really "get into" it. Not when the whole lesson focused on phonetics. Ugh. I couldn't even stand that stuff when I was a kid in school. I guess that speaking is one of those things you don't think about, and when you actually do think about it (which syllables are stressed, intonation patterns, etc) it just boggles your brain. At any rate, I am glad Unit 13 is over, and I hope that the following ones will not focus on phonetics. But even if they do, that's okay...because soon I'll be enjoying the warm Chilean sun, Andean peaks, and the brilliant blue Pacific.
written by  Sara Florecita on July 9, 2010 from Rock Island, United States
from the travel blog: año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010)

cuando pienso que no deba estar tan calientito, me digo que en una semana estaré en el desierto.
Rock Island, United States
I should be working on Unit 16 of my TEFL course. Then again, I only have 5 units left, 7 days before I leave, and 6 hours left at work...Which means that in tonight's case, procrastination is okay.
It's been one of those ridiculously humid summer days here in my mostly un-airconditioned apartment, and sleeping was a difficult task. Last night was this week's one day off work, so I went to sleep at a normal hour (1:30am). I woke up at 8am this morning and for the life of me could not fall back asleep. It was already sticky out and I didn't feel like running. Dark clouds were hovering in the east. Eventually I walked down to the coffee shop to go over Unit 15, draw, and kill time. I am definitely bringing my sketchbook with me to Chile.
I ended up going running anyway. It was hot, and I was actually able to enjoy a somewhat longer run (about 6 miles). Running bridges has always been my favorite route. Today I looped around and ran through the new park down by the waterfront on the Illinois side. There was a nice breeze slipping by from the river, and I found that amazing place in my mind where I think about nothing and everything at the same time. It's both relaxing and energizing, and when I do get runner's high, it's what keeps me motivated to continue running.
Anyway, I ran across the Centennial Bridge and started thinking about how much I am going to miss running bridges when I'm in Chile. My mind started wandering, thinking about other things I'll miss when I'm in Chile. Obviously, Kyle (my boyfriend), Elli (my turtle), Bella (our cat), and the fish.
Although I'll still have a job to come back to, I thought about how many of the kids will complete their program and go home before I come back to the States, and I probably won't see many of them again. It's kind of sad thinking that Saturday is my "last" day at work, but then again, I'm excited about meeting my future students in Chile. I wonder if I'll miss the restraints, temper tantrums, yelling, bad attitudes, and noncompliance. In a weird sort of way, I bet I will. I was homesick for my job (especially the working with challenging kids part of it) when I was in England last year. However, I'm 100% glad I went, and I'm sure I'll feel that way about Chile too.
Here is my list of the top 10 things I'll miss about the Quad Cities area during my time in Chile:
1.) Kyle (but maybe he'll be able to come to Chile at some point. Even so, I'm used to seeing him every single day).
2.) Thursday nights at Theo's for open mic.
3.) Running bridges, Hauberg Park, Longview Park, along Blackhawk Park, out to 74 and back.
4.) Walking through Hauberg Park to go to the coffee shop (even though I've managed to cut back on my caffeine intake lately).
5.) Work. I'm pretty much a workaholic, and I love my job. I bet I will love my job in Chile too.
6.) Eating at Blue Cat and walks at night in the district.
7.) Music in general--I'm not bringing any instruments to Chile with me, which probably means no songwriting or singing either. I'll also miss singing and playing bass with the band.
8.) 24th Street in Rock Island, the stretch that goes from Blackhawk Road up to the 5-way. This part of the road winds through lots of beautiful trees. I will miss driving on it, riding in the car as Kyle drives on it, and running there.
9.) Coffee. Although I'm cutting back and learning to live without having espresso every single day (the switch to tea is going well!), I'm sure every now and then I will crave coffee. From what I've read, only the largest cities there have coffee shops. ***please please please let me get placed in Iquique or another large city!!!
10.) Staying up late and sleeping in. I'll be working Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm or something along those lines. Then again, it's probably healthier and more productive to get up and go to sleep earlier. It'll be worth it. I just am wondering if I can tame my inner night owl...at least for 5 months anyway:)
That being said, I do need to start doing Unit 16...
written by  Sara Florecita on July 13, 2010 from Rock Island, United States
from the travel blog: año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010)

almost done packing
Although I don't leave for two more days, tomorrow we're driving back to Peru, IL where my parents live, so today I did most of my packing. Surprisingly it wasn't that hard to fit everything into my carry-on size suitcase. I still have to wash some clothes before I go, but they'll fit:) I was going to bring Pinguino (yes, I have a stuffed animal penguin), but he is too chubby to fit into the suitcase. After debating, I decided it would be better to bring 5 more shirts than a goofy stuffed animal.
As I was packing up my contact case, comb, makeup, etc, the screw holding the arm of my glasses on fell out and the arm of my glasses fell off. I couldn't find the screw anywhere. I just hope Dad will be able to fix them tomorrow.
Now my time for the computer is almost up (I'm at the Rock Island Library since my laptop died a few months ago and a computer isn't really a necessity).
I'll write later!

on my way to the airport (jueves, 22 julio)
Peru, United States
My shuttle will be coming to pick me up in about an hour and fifteen minutes. I am feeling a wide assortment of different things. Excitement to see a new country and live there for four months. Sadness because I'll really miss Kyle while I'm in Chile. Grumpiness because getting stuck in a cramped seat on a plane for the next 14 or so hours doesn't sound like any fun. Caffeine-deprived, but then again, it would be pointless to drink any coffee since I hope to actually sleep on the plane. Refreshed because I went on a 4 mile run this morning, even though the humidity was awful, and running along the long quasi-gravel road by my parents House is not much more exciting than being stuck on a treadmill. All you see is endless rows of corn and nothing else. Oh well, it felt good to run so I can't complain too much.
Yesterday I stopped by work to turn in my keys and say some (temporary?) goodbyes. I have no idea if I'll come back to this area after Chile or not, but that's okay. Things will turn out how they're meant to be.
Last night we stayed up late playing baseball (the card game) with my parents. It was pretty fun even though I kept losing (for the life of me I can't shuffle cards), but it was pretty hilarious. Finally we went to bed around 2am. I lied there for a while feeling overwhelmed--this is really it, and I am actually leaving for four months. I felt a similar emotion to right before I went to Oxford last year. I'd been excited about it for a long time, but right before leaving, a tiny part of me wanted to Chicken out and stay home with Kyle instead of being away for a while, part of me felt worried about flight delays, missing my connecting flight, or some other random problem happening. But I'm sure everything will be wonderful. I don't think I'd be quite human if I didn't have a few doubts or concerns with going to a foreign country for a semester.
Anyway, in exactly one day from now, I will be in Santiago!
written by  Sara Florecita on July 22, 2010 from Peru, United States

the beauty of some things cannot be put into words, but nonetheless I will try to do so anyway (lunes 26 julio).
Santiago, Chile
There is so much going through my mind right now. I absolutely love this city. Its horizons of mountains with their snow covered peaks, the sandy cordilleras afar, and the lingering fog have taken me in, captivated me in a place that feels more like a suspension in time and space. It´s like being here but not really here, more connected to the earth and its beauty, but with my feet touching the frozen, dry ground. At the same time my head is lost somewhere and everywhere in the clouds. This is what I´d imagined it would feel like to be free, in many ways. Free from cell phones, computers, TVs, and having to drive. You can slow down and enjoy the flavors of passing moments while also being caught up in the bustle of pedestrians and busy streets. Free to enjoy the more beautiful, more often missed-out-on aspects of life. I´ve never felt this passionately about a place, but intuitively it feels completely right. A strong part of me considering not going back to Rock Island or the US at all. I am thirsty to keep traveling and continue loving the world. To me, travel represents freedom, which I´ve always valued, but it wasn´t until now that I have realized just how much it means to me. I don´t want to go back and miss out on what else I could be seeing. The past few days have been so happy and worthwhile. Although it´s a city and also full of people who smoke, pollution, and graffiti, I feel this is a more spiritual experience, and extremely spiritually and mentally liberating.
I love it here in Santiago and am having an amazing time. I feel like I've been here longer than just 4 days. I like to do a lot of walking, and it's a great city to walk around. Although it's winter here and the coldest one in 37 years, I like the crisp, fresh mountain air. It downpoured the first night I was here but I met up with some people from the hostel and wandered around in the rain to find a good place to try pisco sours.
The first day was frustrating because I was tired (I arrived at 7:50 and hadn't been able to get much sleep on the plane due to lots of turbulence). I also got held up at the airport. The carabineros were confused about the airport letter because it was in English, which they didn't understand. When I arrived I was dead tired from the flight but I stayed up and wandered around the city after checking into Hostelling Internacional on Cienfuegos, Barrio Brasil. It was a lot colder than I´d expected, but by my midwest standards, it was still pretty mild. I put on two of my zip-up sweatshirts and headed out. I listened to a military band concert across the avenue from the Moneda. Then I went to the Iglesia de San Francisco and el Museo de Arte Colonial de San Francisco. It was freezing there and I would´ve enjoyed it more if I´d had an actual winter coat. The tour guide there was friendly but talked a LOT! After going there, I found a store and bought a winter coat, which was on sale for the equivalent of 12 US dollars! I found some artesanías (art and craft shops) and bought a hat.
Then I walked to the Plaza de Armas and visited El Catedral Metropolitana, and El Mercado Central, which freaked me out because I saw this giant dead fish that had blood oozing out of it. It was lightly raining and a little chilly, and I was tired. I met a few other volunteers from the program, mostly Americans, but I felt awkward and out of place. Some of them seemed exactly like the type of people I was trying to ´leave behind`in the States by coming to Chile, but I figured I was just tired and jet lagged. It was slightly depressing and I felt like I´d left Kyle and my job behind for a gray, cold, smoggy city. I took a hot, steamy shower, took out my contacts, and went back to my room, which smelled sort of weird. I had to use a bedsheet to dry myself off with because the hostel had run out of towels, but it wasn´t a big deal and it worked. I changed into pajamas and decided to go to bed. I was dead tired and not in the greatest of moods.
Then one of my hostelmates came into the room and we started talking. Les, who is Canadian /Irish, and I got along really well and started having some awesome conversations. Eventually he invited me out for a few drinks. It was raining a lot and cold, but I decided some company could be a good thing, especially since we were getting along so well and I had yet to try pisco, the national drink of Chile. We walked to Forestal, which later I would fall in love with, and talked nonstop, not really minding the rain. We ended up crossing the Rio Mapocho and walking to Barrio Bellavista where we ordered pisco sours. I enjoyed it alot. After that we walked back to the hostel, tired after a long day.
The following morning I slept in until 10am, took a hot shower, and got dressed. We went to Cerro San Cristobal after a vegan lunch in a hole in the wall but nice cafe, and visited La Iglesia Merced. Then we walked to Cerro San Cristobal and went hiking up to the summit. On the way there were these really neat aloe vera-like succulent plants that were huge. It was a little bit muddy on the trails but extremely breathtaking. At the summit of Cerro San Cristobal, I drank in the view of city, mountains, and cordillera poking through wispy patches of fog. It was incredible.
There are many things in life you cannot pinpoint the exact moment you begin to love something because the process occurs gradually, but this was different. At the top of Cerro San Cristobal I was taken in by Santiago and realized I wanted to spend way longer than only 5 months in Chile. It was such a powerful experience, falling in love with life at the top of this cerro, so much life below me and nothing but open, foggy sky above me. I felt completely free, happy and energized. This feeling has intensified with each moment of my time in Santiago.
On the way down, we found some more artesanías and wandered through Bellavista with its rainbow colored houses. It began to lightly rain but the sun was poking through the pale clouds and a rainbow reached across the sky, which was great because we were in a neighborhood of colorful houses and murals everywhere when the rainbow appeared.
We crossed back over the Mapocho and walked along the river before going to El Parque de las Esculturas, where I got to contemplate the meaning of art, philosophy, and motives. It isn´t often I find someone who enjoys art and thinks about it the way I do, but I guess when you travel, you find other people like you whose view of the world is more open-minded and interesting.
For dinner I ate a liviana, which is a sandwich, and jugo de chirrimoya. On the way back to the hostel I passed this rectangular fountain of psychedelic water and enjoyed the stars. In Santiago at this time of the year it starts getting dark around 6-6:30pm. We found a bar with this Michael Jackson impersonator who was interesting to watch. I tried Escudo, a type of Chilean beer, but it had a funky kind of aftertaste.
On Sunday I got to sleep in. I went to el Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombiano, where I enjoyed looking at artwork and artifacts from the Incans, Aymara, Mapuche, Mayans, Aztec, and other indigenous peoples. I was able to use Spanish more comfortably today. I went back to the plaza de Armas and listened to a military band concert. Then I visited el Museo Histórico Nacional, which had rooms explaining what life was like for the early settlers of Chile and the different social classes there. I found a park where a Chilean college student was passing out poetry and trying to raise money for the earthquake victims in Concepción. We talked for a little bit and he asked what part of Chile I was from. I guess my Spanish must be improving...at least I hope so. I walked to Cerro Santa Lucía and hiked to the top of it. It was beautiful, and I felt so inspired and in love with this city. I ended up finding a bench in the sunlight and writing poetry in Spanish because it felt more creative than using English, which seemed too `normal´ to capture what I wanted to say. After that I wandered down to Huérfanos where I heard a protest concert of Chileans protesting the immigration policy of Peruvian refugees. I walked down Paseo Ahumeda and decided randomly to get another piercing in my right ear...the place was there and I liked the spontaneous idea of getting something done. I talked to the guy in Spanish and then continued on my way.
Back at the hostel I met up with Les, and his roommates, Sebastián, Dave, and a guy from Spain. We went to a bar in Barrio Brasil and had some wine and a great conversation almost all in Spanish! For a few minutes Sebastián (from Argentina) was going on about how `mystical`my eyes were. I suppose people here are not used to seeing people with blue eyes.
Today I dragged myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30am, took a scalding shower in an otherwise arctic-like hostel. Everyone was dressed up a lot more than I was, but I´m not really that kind of person. A few others wore jeans, but it didn´t really matter since we were just sitting at tables most of the day. For lunch I went with Lisa and Katelyn to a restaurant called Comida Chilena, which we thought was kind of funny.
The program seems really great so far. Today's orientation was sort of repetitive since I took the TEFL course, but then again, it won't hurt hearing things again. The people doing the presentations today were great--super friendly and helpful, and it wasn't boring at all! I am having a wonderful time and although it's only been 4 days, I am falling in love with this city and the people here. There are a lot of artesanias which are interesting to look around and many fresh fruit/veg markets, which makes me happy (I decided to go vegan upon my arrival here). This weekend I have Sat and Sun free before my flight up north on Monday, so on Sat I'm going to take the metro to take a tour of one of the wineries.
After orientation I decided to go running. There aren´t many runners here because of the busy streets and smog. But then again, I´m the kind of person who if I love doing something, am not going to be deterred by a little bit of smog, which I really don´t think is that bad. The parks here are beautiful and completely outweigh the busy streets and smog. Running here is like freedom.There is nothing holding me back from anything. The Santiaguine night air is crisp and refreshing, and I love having endless darkness stretch in front of me, like I have the world in my hands and all of it is mine to explore and do whatever I want with. While running, my mind lapsed into this state where I think of everything and nothing at the same time. It´s meditative, calming, yet energizing. I love the feeling that I can completely rely on myself and my own two legs to carry me along wherever I want to go. I did get a few weird looks from people. An old man told me, `ten cuidad,`and a Chilean college-age student in the Plaza de Armas stood up, started clapping, and yelled, `quieres ser mi amiga?` I kept running but yelled back, `solo si corres conmigo`and laughed to myself.
Anyway, I am heading out to meet up with some people from the hostel for dinner. I'll post some writing on my blog later, but honestly am REALLY enjoying not having to worry about having a car, cell phone, computer, etc. I like living on not a whole lot because I can enjoy the smaller, more often missed-out-on things here. Being here is definitely changing my perspectives on things in a good kind of way.
Nos cachamos!
written by  Sara Florecita on July 26, 2010 from Santiago, Chile

permanent markers and white boards don´t end well (martes, 27 junio)
Santiago, Chile
Today was a little bit hard to pay attention during orientation since a lot of it was a repeat of what I´d learned during the TEFL course. To me, not much is worse than getting stuck sitting in a chair all day listening to people talk. Because of this, during the lesson planning part of the class, a friend I met here and I decided to start being the ´class clowns´just to make orientation bearable. For our presentation we had to pretend that we were teaching the class a speaking-based lesson, in which we taught them the song `Imagine`by the Beatles. One, it was an excuse to sing during orientation, and two, we got to do a ´fun´lesson instead of a boring one like everybody else. We wrote the words ´heaven, hell, die, kill,´ etc on the board (because they are in the song) and then acted them out. I got to be stabbed by Katie and fall on the floor dying. It was actually pretty funny and our class mostly paid attention! Once our lesson was over, we went to erase the board, only to realize that all of our vocab words had been written with a permanent black marker instead of a regular dry erase marker. The guy from the program apologized and admitted it was his fault for putting a permanent marker next to the board, and part of me felt bad because I couldn´t stop laughing. You know how sometimes you are the right combination of bored and tired that you think everything is funny? Well I was definitely at that point this afternoon.
After orientation got out, I met up with Elena, another volunteer, to go running. She is a marathon runner and we went on an hour and a half long run. Part of me felt bad because a few times I struggled to keep up with her (she´s actually finished a few marathons and I´m going to run my first one while in Chile), but she was really nice and encouraging. We ran up to Cerro San Cristobal. Fortunately it seems like my knee fully over that awful ACL injury I had in May. I realized that although I was frustrated with myself at first, it was really good to run with her because usually I go alone, and it is kind of nice having a better runner with you to push you further. It made me kind of miss running with Jess back home a few summers ago. It took most of the time running today for me to start feeling that runner´s high feeling. Unfortunately, I didn´t start feeling ´into it´until we were almost back at the hostel. I suppose this is a good thing...it used to take me 2 miles before I could settle in and feel like that, but we probably went 8 today. This must mean my endurance is improving. I love running in Santiago because all of it is so new and interesting to see. There´s a fun sort of aspect to running in places where you don´t quite know where you´re going because it makes the time pass way faster.
Back at the hostel I took an extremely long shower and then sat down to read some of `The House of Spirits`by Isabel Allende. I love reading but haven´t had much time to just sit and read while here, but that´s okay because I can read anytime, and I´m only here in Santiago for this week plus a few days. I ate some fresh fruit which was left over from lunch. After dinner I met up with Les, Sebastian, and Diego (who works at the hostel) for a little bit outside because it was actually warm enough to sit out on the back patio for a while. Then Sebastian and I went to this sushi restaurant in Barrio Brasil (the same place where we´d all gone the night before for wine and pisco sours de maracuya). I ordered vegan sushi, which was incredible. I´d never tried sushi before, and I loved it. Here they put avocados and corn in it, which was interesting because I´m pretty sure ´normal´sushi does not put those ingredients in it.
By the way, according to our EOD insurance plans, it seems like everything is considered an `extreme sport,`including long distance running. At least most of the things I want to do (skiing, surfing, paragliding, rock climbing, kayaking) usually include a basic insurance when you sign up for it. I´m going to try surfing, paragliding, and rock climbing in Iquique, and hope to try skiing here in Santiago. Life is short and I might as well try new things and live on the edge while I´m here.
Anyway, I´ll write more later. Buenas noches:)
written by  Sara Florecita on July 27, 2010 from Santiago, Chile

miercoles, 28 julio
Santiago, Chile
Today I had issues with waking up this morning, but at 8:15 finally got out of bed. I was glad I showered last night so all I had to do was get dressed and head to the hotel board room for orientation. I stopped at this place called Natural Greens and got some fresh kiwi juice on the way. It was great! During orientation we worked on more lesson plans and I met some more people. I ate lunch at El Naturista on Paseo Huérfanos with another volunteer. El Naturista is a vegetarian / vegan restaurant. It´s a little pricey but good. It was kind of weird because when we arrived they gave me a menu in Spanish but the other volunteer one in English.
I have been having an easier time lately with speaking Spanish. I feel like I´m improving at it already. Part of me never wants to return the US because then I can stay here (or maybe go to another Spanish speaking country) where I can eventually become fluent. I really love it here and ever since going to Cerro San Cristobal, have felt enamored with this place. Before I´d felt captivated by Venice and its charm, enjoyed the magical city of Prague, but Chile is different. It´s like the mountains and the fog cast a spell over you and you`re completely taken in by it and never want to leave. I´ve enjoyed being here so much that I haven´t thought much about back home at all (although I actually want to get placed in one of the worse schools because I do miss working with my former clients at Arrowhead).
After orientation I was planning on going to Pablo Neruda´s house (La Chascona), but I didn´t have time since the last tour starts a little before 5pm. Instead I went on a shorter, 6 mile run to Plaza Italia and around Forestal before going back to the hostel to shower. I headed out to a vegetable / fruit vendor and bought a fresh avocado, kiwi, and some nuts for dinner. After that, Les, Sebastian, and I went to a place in Barrio Brasil for a drink or two. I couldn´t believe it because it was a Chilean bar that didn´t have pisco! I suppose maybe they ran out. Hanging out with those two has been a lot of fun and I´m going to miss their company when I leave Santiago on Monday.
I need to get some sleep...another early morning tomorrow awaits.
written by  Sara Florecita on July 28, 2010 from Santiago, Chile

there is so much in this world to love and to write about (jueves, 29 julio)
Today orientation was long, as usual. I stopped at Natural Greens to get fresh juice before orientation began. Today they told us about our trip arrangements. Everyone in the group was laughing because some of the people have to get up at 6am on Monday to depart from Santiago. I was laughing, but that stopped as soon as I found out that on Monday I have a 6:30am flight to Iquique, which means I have to be waiting at the front desk of the hostel at 5am for the Inglés Abre Puertas people to pick us up. I guess it was bad karma to laugh at other people...
Instead of going somewhere for lunch I decided to wander around Paseo Huérfanos and Ahumeda to look in some shops. I got some bread, peaches, and juice to take with me and enjoyed the sunlight in la Plaza de Armas. There were a bunch of painters there, so I was excited. I have this thing where every city I visit, I buy a painting. For me, there is no cooler memento of my trip than something completely original made by a native of that city. I´ve always found artists to be a friendly and interesting type of people, so I talked to about three or four of the painters in Spanish for a while. One of them asked if I came from Spain and seemed a little surprised when I said I was from the States. At least it made me feel more confident about speaking Spanish. When I first got here, it had been a while since I´d spoken or heard Spanish (disincluding the Spanish channel), so it wasn´t easy at first. I know it hasn´t been much time at all, but I´m getting more comfortable speaking in Spanish. I was surprised by how difficult it is, especially since I´d always been really good at Spanish in my classes. Then again, the Chilean dialect is a lot different than other kinds of Spanish. I figure that if I can learn to understand people and be understood here, it will be extremely beneficial for me. I ended up choosing a really pretty watercolor of La Calle Catedral. There is a black lantern just off-center surrounded by yellows and pinks of the sunset framed by both sides of the street. The painter said it took about an hour to make. I love being able to talk to the locals about art and the city.
Then I had to return to orientation. When it did finally get over, I walked to La Chascona, which is one of Pablo Neruda´s three houses. Before I came to Chile I bought a bilingual edition of one of Neruda´s collections of poetry. To me, his words are beautiful and completely inspiring. I took a tour in Spanish, and the tour guide was very nice. He kept asking if I understood or had questions since he knew Spanish wasn´t my first language. The house itself is beautiful with all sorts of intricate collections and trinkets such as paperweights, glasswork, dishes, pottery, paintings, and so forth. It is designed to resemble a ship because he loved the sea. Neruda built La Chascona as a place to keep his lover, Matilde, hidden away, but they eventually got married. The house is about as eccentric as Neruda was. The objects seem random, but are a good reflection of his character.
I left there in a creative and inspired mood. There is so much in this world to love and to write about. So many things to appreciate, so much beauty surrounding us. And to think of how much time all of us waste complaining or only seeing the negative. There´s some sort of optimism and realism of being in Santiago, some sort of positive and refreshing energy. Something about this place just resonates love and happiness. I can´t put my finger on it, but that´s okay.
When I got back to the hostel I checked my email, only to find out that back home, my grandma is in the hospital after a sequence of bad events. It was strange because Roman, another volunteer, had let me borrow his laptop to check my email, and without meaning to, blurted out that my grandma was in the hospital and I couldn´t believe all the things that had happened. Roman pointed out that there really was nothing I could do about it, being that I´m all the way in Chile, and worrying wouldn´t do any good. A bunch of volunteers were going out that night to a salsoteca to take salsa dancing lessons, and he invited me to go with. I´m not much of a dancer, but I thought it would be fun, especially since one time back home Kyle and I had been talking about salsa dancing and how he didn´t think I´d be able to learn it because sometimes I´m pretty uncoordinated.
After a quick dinner of avocados, kiwi, almonds, and cauliflour soup, we took the Metro to Baquedano and walked a short way to the place in Bellavista. The music there was lively and fun, and the inside of the place had such a rich South American flavor. It was a little hard to understand the instructor because she talked really fast, but I managed to learn a few steps, spins, etc. She kept having us switch partners and I ended up with a guy, Andrés, who was a great dancer, and he was able to teach me some more salsa. We ended up dancing for five hours! It was a lot of fun and I didn´t want to leave so early (the place didn´t close till 3), but there was still one more day of orientation to get through...

hoy es hoy / y ayer se fue / no hay dudas (viernes, 30 julio)
Finally the last day of orientation has ended. It´s not that I didn´t enjoy it or meet a lot of interesting people, but it was a long week and parts of orientation weren´t that exciting. Some of it was though, like the `Never Have I Ever`game. Let´s just say that I was standing up a lot:) During our lunch break we walked to a place near the Moneda. Fortunately for me, the place next door had veggie burgers!!! I was so excited because I didn´t think they´d have veggie burgers in Chile. I ordered it to go and joined some of the other volunteers at the cafe next door. In a way it´s sad because just as I´m getting to know people, it´s almost time for all of us to leave Santiago. I´m glad I have all of tomorrow and Sunday free. Hopefully on Sunday I´m going to try skiing. I think it´ll be a lot of fun.
After orientation I ran from the hostel all the way out to Los Leones and back. I seriously felt like I was flying. It´s funny because runner´s high used to be a rare occurrence for me, but this whole week it´s been happening. It´s one of the most incredible feelings ever. I ran for almost two hours straight and didn´t want to go back to the hostel because I wanted to keep running forever, but I didn´t want to overdo it again. When I got back to the hostel I stayed in the shower for a long time and my back kept cracking, which also felt great.
I got this crazy but awesome idea that I really want to do. I think I´m going to cancel my return flight and get my money refunded, and when I decide to head back to the States, I´ll take a bus from one city to the next, spending a day or two in places that interest me along the way. I packed light, so this is entirely possible. I´d get to experience more countries and see more places that way. I don´t mind long bus rides, in fact, they´re actually kind of fun. I could get a glimpse of other Spanish speaking countries and their cultures on my long way home. That is, if I decide to go home after all...
I meandered downstairs with my notebook with the intentions of writing, but that didn´t happen because I ran into more people, and as usual for me, started talking. I ended up drinking wine with the hostel staff and some of their friends, one of whom was being really cheesy about my blue eyes. I don´t think a day has passed here where someone has not said something about my eyes. It was a lot of fun talking to the hostel staff and their friends, as well as Les, Sebastian, Igor, and Dave. I didn´t go to bed until after 4am, but it wasn´t a big deal because it´s a Friday night and I get to sleep in tomorrow. I just hope I can tame my inner night owl in a few days when I start working 8 to 4 at the school. But for now, I am enjoying every moment here.

¿que quiere decir para siempre? (sabado, 31 julio)
This morning I slept in till noon and awoke with the bright Santiaguine sunlight shining into my room. At first I was annoyed with myself for sleeping in so late while I could have been doing other things and seeing more of the city. Then I reminded myself that I´d been waking up annoyingly early every day all week, and one day wasn´t bad. I went downstairs where I met up with Sebastián and Vanessa.
After standing around outside the hostel and talking for a while, we walked to El Centro where we found a place to have lunch. We ate on the second floor of this seafood place they wanted to go. I ordered a salad and juice, and the two of them ordered fish. I was a little disturbed because the scales and fins were still on the fish, and I tried not to look at it.
After lunch we walked around some more and went to El Museo de las Bellas Artes. There were so many beautiful sculptures there, both classical and modern styles. We wandered around the museum for a few hours before going back to the hostel. On the way we stopped in a store and I bought some mixed nuts for protein.
The two of them went to Vanessa´s home and I went out on another long run. I ran from the hostel past Los Leones and eventually turned around. Later I calculated it to be about 14 Miles! During my run, some Chilean teenagers who were visiting from the south stopped me to ask for directions to la Plaza Italia, and I was actually able to explain it to them!
Then I went to the fruit and vegetable market to find something for a light dinner. After dinner Les and I went to a French restaurant / bar where I ordered mango sours and vegan pizza, which was really good! I have always been a cheese lover, but there is still so much flavor to enjoy in cheeseless pizza! I didn´t stay out too late because tomorrow I´m going skiing!!! Hopefully I´ll learn quickly and not fall down a whole lot! We´ll have to see...

vino y el valle de maipo (domingo, 1 agosto)
Pirque, Chile
This morning was the first time in a long time that I didn´t hit the snooze button a few times before actually getting out of bed. I woke up at 7:30 sharp, put on warm clothes and headed downstairs to wait for the bus to pick me up to take me to El Colorado. They were supposed to come between 8 and 8:30, but by 8:35 they still hadn´t arrived. I was getting a little impatient when the phone at the front desk rang. Unfortunately, there were snowstorms in the mountains and the road going up there was closed. They said if I could go tomorrow they´d give me a discount, but sadly, tomorrow I will be leaving Santiago at 5am to go to Iquique. I felt pretty bummed out that I wouldn´t get to try skiing because it was something I really wanted to try. It´s still on my list of things to learn at some point, just not now like I was hoping.
Instead I decided to go on a tour of a vineyard about an hour and a half from Santiago in the Maipo Valley. I took the Metro to the last stop and then looked for the bus to take me to La Viñeda Concha y Toro. The bus wasn´t where the girl at the hostel had said it would be, so I asked some of the carabineros who were able to explain where the bus stop was. I got on the old, sputtering, exhaust-smelling local bus and was on my way to the vineyard.
Once there I bought my ticket and decided to take the tour in Spanish. Even if I didn´t understand anything, I´m not going to learn any more by hearing people speak English all the time. There were only two other people who went on the tour with me. Both were from Sao Paolo, Brazil and could speak Spanish. The tour itself was very interesting and informative. The tour guide spoke clearly and was mostly understandable. I learned a lot about the wine making process and Chilean wine. We got to try a glass of cabernet blanc and another of cabernet sauvignon. They gave us each a complimentary wine glass with their logo on it. The tour guide showed us the vineyards, the founders´house, and the cellars full of aging wine in barrels. On average there are four categories of wine, based on the quality and type of grapes. This region of Chile is very conducive to growing premium quality grapes because of the climate. The wine has to stay in the barrel between 9 and 14 months, usually 14, and each type has to stay at a specific temperature. The tour guide explained how the type of wood of the barrels affects the taste and aroma of the wine. Before drinking the glasses of wine he explained how to pour the wine, how to let it sit for about half an hour to let the flavors settle, and how to properly hold a wine glass so the heat of your hand won´t change the temperature of the wine. And then you should swirl the wine and smell it. Now I can feel more classy when drinking wine! He also explained which types of food go best with each type of wine. The red wine was really good but I am still more of a white wine person (even though you´re supposed to drink white wine with seafood and I´m vegan...)
After the tour was over, Amanda and Rodrigo and I took a taxi back to the Metro station. We started talking about all sorts of things. They were very cheerful and interesting people to talk to, and I felt it was easier to understand them than most of the Chileans I´d met so far. They were planning on going to Mercado Central for lunch and invited me with. I had bread, salsa, and a great salad, and we ordered a bottle of Casilla del Diablo, which is a white wine that Concha y Toro produces.
After lunch it was pouring rain and I walked back to the hostel where I changed into dry clothes, read, and caught up on some emails. Then I stuffed all of my things back into my suitcase, hung out with some other volunteers for a while, and went running. I´m really going to miss all these awesome long runs through this city at night.
I´m going to miss all the towering buildings, sprawling parks, olive-clad carabineros on almost every street, and being encircled by snow-capped mountains. I´m going to miss the friendly people and the crisp, dry air. I´m going to miss the psychedelic fountain whose mist would cool me off halfway through running, and being in a city where you can actually look up at night and see the stars. But the amazing thing is, at some point I will come back here.
written by  Sara Florecita on August 1, 2010 from Pirque, Chile

thermal baths, desert skies, giants, and ghost towns (domingo, 15 agosto)
La Tirana, Chile
This weekend we took a road trip to Pica and La Tirana, which are in the middle of the Atacama desert. It was hot...ugh. Yesterday I went on a short run along the beach, showered, and then we piled into my host cousin´s car. We drove up into the desert, passed through some small towns (Alto Hospicio, Pozo Almonte, Humberstone) on the way to La Tirana where we got out and visited the main square and church. Then we got back into the car and drove another 40 minutes to Pica where we swam in the thermal baths / hot springs. Part of the baths are in caves so I got to swim in a cave that had super warm water with bubbles coming out of the floor of the springs. In the baths you can take some hard rocks off the bottom and scrape some of the wet edges away from the caves, which turns into a muddy type of mixture that has healing qualities for the skin. I put some of it on my face and it did feel good.
After about an hour and a half in the thermal pools, we dried off and wandered along the quiet streets of Pica where there were food markets set up. We bought some alfojores (cracker like cake things with honey and coconut) and chumbeques (a sweet that has sweet bread and guayava layered together). Before buying them I talked to the vendors and made sure they didn´t have milk or eggs in them, and they didn´t. Chumbeques are a traditional food specific to the Iquique / Tarapaca region. They are sooo good and come in other fruit flavors too.
On the way back to La Tirana, where my host cousin´s girlfriend´s family has a house, we stopped at this dinosaur park, which had giant sculptures of a T Rex and a Stegosaurus. It was kind of funny seeing these dinosaurs there so we got out of the car and took some pictures.
Back at Daniela´s house, we unloaded the car, changed into normal clothes, and set up the picnic table and grill outside. La Tirana is a dusty, quiet town, but it´s in the desert and there are INCREDIBLE views of the stars. I don´t think I´ve ever been outside at night and seen as many stars as I saw last night. The only one I could identify was the southern cross.
We grilled some potatoes for me and steaks and hot dogs for everyone else...and I´d also brought some rice, squash, and salad. We mixed up rum and cokes. Manuel and Santiago set up the projector and the laptop and we sang karaoke for a while (I sang Evanescence and Aerosmith because they were in English and I didn´t know any of the Spanish songs they had) before watching From Paris With Love in English with Spanish subtitles. The night there was cold so we were all bundled up. I put on two sweatshirts, my winter coat, hat, scarf, and two pairs of pajama pants. They did a really crappy job translating the movie into subtitles. My host brother and I were the only ones who caught on (the other four don´t speak enough if any English to know what the spoken lines meant) and were laughing about it because every time someone said a cuss word in the movie, the subtitles said something less offensive.
This morning we got up and went back to the main square of La Tirana. I wandered around some artesan markets and bought some earrings for my sister that are made out of shells and dried flowers. I bought a cup of mote con huesillo, a traditional Chilean food. Mote is kind of like oatmeal / rice and it´s sweet, and huesillo is a kind of fruit similar to a peach or apricot. It is served cold with huesillo juice poured over the top. I really liked it! Weirdly, some of the best food I´ve tried in Chile has not come from restaurants, but street vendors:) There are also warm, round type of bread served with super spicy salsa called aji, which is great, and there are all sorts of places that sell warm, honey roasted nuts...yum. I have yet to try the Chilean version of churros, but I need to make sure I can eat it first and that there isn´t milk, eggs, or butter in it.
After leaving La Tirana, we drove to Cerro Unita where there is the largest representation of a human ever made, the Gigante de la Atacama, which is a large geoglyph on the side of a hill. No one knows who made it or why it was made, but they estimate that it was made in the 900´s AD (here it is DC--despues Cristo) in reaction to a series of 3 total solar eclipses that occurred in Chile within 30 years, which is pretty frequent. Scholars think the ancient Atacameños carved it on the hill to scare away the spirits that were causing weird happenings in the sky.
We then drove to Humberstone, a ghost town that used to be a flourishing mining town where they mined salitre (nitrate). That was pretty cool walking around. I learned a little about the mining process and the role mining used to and still does have in Chilean society. After all of the minerals were extracted from the earth in Humberstone, everyone just moved away. Now the entire town is like a giant, town version of a museum.
After that we returned home and I went on a long two hour run while it was still light out and just starting to get dark. My family doesn´t like it when I run by myself at night, but if I go during the day they don´t mind. I guess that´s one of the minor changes I´ve had to make here, but it isn´t a huge deal.
Now I need to finish preparing things for tomorrow´s classes. I´ll post more later:)
written by  Sara Florecita on August 15, 2010 from La Tirana, Chile

days should never begin at 4am (lunes, 2 agosto)
Iquique, Chile
The only thing that motivated me to get up at 4am today was knowing that if I didn´t, I would miss my flight to Iquique. And if I missed my flight, I´d have to pay for a 30 hour long bus ride at my own expense and miss out on the first two days of orientation. I got out of bed and tried to make as little noise as possible in order to avoid waking up my roommates. I strapped on my backpack and carried my suitcase downstairs, where I handed in the keys to the place that had started to feel like a home this past week. By 5am, the three other volunteers and I were on the bus on the way out of a dark and rainy Santiago. We got on the interstate, and as we drove past Los Leones, I felt a pang of sadness to be leaving behind this wonderful city.
We arrived at the airport, got our tickets, and waited around for what seemed like a long time before boarding the plane. Near our terminal I found a Starbucks, but didn´t want to wait in such a long line. The flight itself was okay. I briefly fell asleep on the way to Antofagasta, and after taking off for the second time I read a newspaper in Spanish.
It was around 11am when we arrived in warm, sunny Iquique. Our regional coordinators, Paula and Mariangeli, picked us up at the airport. Paula doesn´t speak English at all, but I did my best trying to talk to her. They dropped me off at my host family´s house, and said that in an hour I had to be at the Ministry of Education building for orientation and lunch. No one had told us about having orientation until then, especially since we´d already had a long and tiring day.
When I arrived at my house, my host dad and host brother (Santiago, who is 21) were there. They were a bit surprised to see me because the Ministry had told them I´d be arriving at 6pm that night, and here it was almost 12 noon. Their house is on Pasaje Playa Chauca, and it has views of the ocean. It´s completely beautiful, and I love the views already. Both of them seemed very friendly, and all of a sudden I felt nervous speaking Spanish. I felt like I should be much better at it after all the classes I´d taken and effort I´d put into learning it, but I felt limited by my own lack of vocabulary. For some reason I felt like they were expecting me to know more Spanish than I actually knew. They asked if I wanted to take a nap or rest, but I had less than an hour before I had to be at the Ministry. I decided to unpack some of my things, dig out my sunglasses (which I hadn´t really needed much in Santiago), and go back downstairs to talk to my family and get to know them a bit more. Santiago talked about his job as a deejay, his college, his family, and what kind of music he liked. Before I knew it, it was time to go to the Ministry.
On the way there, Santiago pointed out various sites and told me a little bit about Iquique. At the Ministry building he said his family would pick me up arund 6:30pm, and I went inside to meet with the regional coordinators, and Eric and Elisabeth, two other volunteers in Iquique. After a short introduction, we walked to Bavaria, a restaurant where we had lunch. I ate some bread and spicy salsa, a salad, and french fries (that were cooked in vegetable oil). After lunch we had another long and boring session of orientation to sit through. At one point I felt myself nodding off a bit. I don´t think they were too happy about that, but when I explained I´d had to wake up at 4am, they seemed a lot more understanding. I met my host teacher. It turns out she had another volunteer last term, and she was rather critical of her when first describing her. It was strange because by the end of the conversation, she was saying how I should do everything the same way as the other volunteer. It was confusing and kind of made me wonder what this lady is going to say about me after I leave Iquique. At the end of the session they gave us our boxes of school supplies for our classrooms.
My host family (my mom, dad, and two brothers) arrived to pick me up. My host mother, Sonia, works as a chef in a restaurant called La Cioccolata. She´s very sweet and doesn´t speak a whole lot of English. Her Spanish is so fast and hard to understand. Hopefully I´ll be able to become more fluent and develop better comprehension skills while I´m here. My other brother, Artemio, is 18 and will be one of my students. He speaks English very well and studied in Virginia for three months last year. He is interested in everything relating to English speaking countries and their culture.
At home, Sonia prepared dinner for me (sauteed vegetables, bread and avocados, and tea), and more of the family came over. Their cousin, Manuel, also lives in our house so I got to meet him too. He´s 23 and a college student. I met some of their aunts, uncles, and extended family. It was a bit confusing trying to keep everybody straight and remember names, but I´m sure I´ll get used to it all eventually. After the extended family left I got more of my things unpacked and showed pictures of my family and boyfriend to my Chilean family.
Tomorrow I´m going to Colegio Inglés, my host school, to start my week of observation. I´m really looking forward to seeing my school and meeting my students. I really hope I like teaching.
written by  Sara Florecita on August 2, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

first day of school (martes, 3 agosto)
Iquique, Chile
For once I was actually eager to wake up early this morning. I was excited about seeing my new school, meeting my co-workers, and seeing what my students were like. Inglés Abre Puertas had told us that the first day at our schools, we were expected to dress business casual, and later on we could dress more casually. I put on black pants and a button-down shirt, which in the States is more formal than what teachers normally wear to school. Later that day I would find out that at my school, teachers always dress formally, much to my disdain. I´m not a ´dress up´ kind of person at all.
My host dad drove Artemio and me to my school, which is called Colegio Inglés. CI is the oldest school in Iquique, and it used to be a governor´s mansion. No one knows exactly when it was built because it used to be on Peruvian territory before the war. Here, they start teaching kids English at a younger age than what is considered normal in Chile.
Colegio Inglés itself is nice. It´s very different than most American schools. The building is four stories tall and arranged in a rectangular shape around an open courtyard with tarps over it to block out the bright sun. The buildings are a salmon-pink sort of color, and instead of hallways, there are balconies / patios that connect all of the classrooms. The large concrete filled courtyard serves as the gym, where students go for phys ed and recreo (recess). Their lunch tables are also outside. At first I was shocked that gym classes, lunch, and recreo are always outside, but it never rains in Iquique, and right now (mid 60´s F) is winter. Literally, there are many parts of northern Chile that has no recorded history of rainfall EVER. It´s pretty cool how the school is, but the one drawback is having to walk through the courtyard to go to any other part of the school. This means that it is only my first day and I´ve already been nearly trampled by screaming little kids (CI is a preschool through 12th grade Methodist school), hit by soccer balls, and so forth. I kind of wish there weren´t any really little kids here because anything under 7th grade I generally consider to be annoying. I´m just thankful that my students will all be either 7th graders or high school seniors.
The first half of the day I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I had been told I´d be working with one host teacher; when I arrived at the school, I found out in reality I´m going to be working with three. The first class period I shadowed Lilia´s class, which was fine, but I can´t wait to have my own class and teach them myself, because my teaching style is very different than hers.
During second period, Lilia gave me copies of her schedule as well as those of the other two teachers. She told me to go to the library and choose classes from those three schedules that I wanted, and to write down my schedule. When I did that, she started complaining about the classes I´d chosen, and she wasn´t very nice about it. By the end of the day she made me change the schedule three more times. I was getting very frustrated...if you tell me to do something how I want, don´t complain about me doing what you told me to do. Anyway, I figured she was just stressed out or something. I´d heard from numerous people that the program isn´t the most organized, so I kind of just shrugged it off.
Lunch was pretty good. My host mom had dropped off a salad for me at the school. Starting on Thursday I will be eating food that the school prepares for me for free as part of the program. I spoke with the cafeteria staff, who are all very nice. I explained to them that I´m vegan and what I can and can´t eat. The one girl who works in the cafeteria writes my name as Zára instead of Sarah, but that is fine with me because I´ve never really liked my real name anyway. There are way too many Sarahs out there, and I´d rather have a more unique name.
After school I went on a run along the beaches. My host brother Artemio wanted to come with, so we both ended up going. We ran along Playa Brava and Playa Cavancha, and it was really pretty. I enjoyed listening to the tides washing up on the shore, and realized that running through sand is going to make me stronger. Part of the way through Playa Cavancha, Artemio got tired so I kept running. When I turned around and came back I´d been running for an hour and fifteen minutes (pretty normal for me), but he was tired and ended up calling his dad to come pick us up. It was nice running with him, but I´m not used to running with other people. For me it´s more of a solitary, peaceful kind of experience, and I hate just stopping in the middle of a run. But I realized he isn´t used to running longer distances. And his family doesn´t want me to go running alone because they worry. I hope this doesn´t become a problem because running is important to me, and it isn´t realistic to ask someone else to run with me just so I don´t have to go alone, since most people are not accustomed to going the distances I enjoy.
After we arrived back at the house, I enjoyed some vegetable soup with squash, zucchini, and potatoes that my host mom had prepared. She is such a great cook, and I´m very fortunate to have someone who respects the fact that I´m vegan.
After dinner I tried to catch up on some emails and start planning things for my classroom. Next Monday I will have my own classroom, and I´m looking forward to it a lot. Observing other teachers is okay, but I´m my own person, and if I tried to teach a class the way they do, it wouldn´t work at all. It was good seeing what some of my students are like, but it was equally frustrating. One of the teachers has major discipline issues in her class because she´s very softspoken one minute and yells at the students the next, and she doesn´t enforce any rules. Another teacher is really disorganized and wastes a lot of class time getting things ready that should have been ready before class. The other teacher is really mean to the students and nitpicks every single mistake they make, and honestly if I was a kid in her class, I don´t think I´d want to participate or listen to her either. I am excited for when the students become my students and I can wipe the slate clean and start on the right foot with them, mostly by being strict, enforcing rules, and encouraging them to speak English and not tearing them apart when they do speak outloud in class. One of the classes that is greatly complained about by teachers (and which I will ´inherit´next week) is nothing compared to what I´m used to dealing with at my job back in the US. These kids aren´t delinquents--they are just normal kids, and I´m really excited to start teaching them.
written by  Sara Florecita on August 3, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

despite being sick, it´s been a pretty productive day (lunes, 16 agosto)
Iquique, Chile
This morning when Artemio came to wake me up I was dead tired and felt like I´d just closed my eyes. The night before I´d been throwing up again due to bad vegetables (from now on if I eat any vegetables or fruit they have to be cooked, not raw, because most raw vegetables and fruits here contain a bacteria that Chileans are used to, but Americans are not). Although I wasn´t sick today, I couldn´t imagine having to get through an entire day of classes. I wanted to, but I wanted to sleep. My host mother told me to call in sick from school, so I did, and then I went back to bed to actually get some sleep.
A little before 12 noon I finally got out of bed, feeling slightly guilty about missing school, but mostly a lot more refreshed and well-rested. I sat down at the computer, determined to get some tasks crossed off my list. I was able to finish my online Spanish assignment, finish a poster for my classroom that says `Speak English`in giant blue and yellow letters, finish my last unit of the TEFL course (which involved watching a video of two classes and doing a lot of writing), and start the next Spanish assignment. I was also successful in catching up on some emails to people.
By the time my brothers came back from school I was feeling a lot better, and had been able to eat cereal, potatoes, and chumbeques without getting sick. I mostly just lounged around the house the rest of the afternoon, reading and writing, as well as planning out some of my trip to Peru, where I´m going for ten days next month. I actually felt so much better and was craving a long run along the beaches, but I decided not to go because it would look fishy if students or co-workers saw me out running, yet I hadn´t felt well enough to go to school.
I ended up playing the guitar and singing in my room for a while because my younger brother needed the computer for homework, which was nice because I haven´t had much time to play music either. I´m determined to learn at least a few songs in Spanish while I´m here...not sure which ones yet, but there is one called ´Cuando los sapos bailen el flamenco´that has a pretty melody and doesn´t seem too hard. I also want to learn a few traditional songs, like ´Gracias a la vida´ by Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra.
I hung out with my host brother and cousin for a while and then decided to call it a night. By 1am I was still wide awake but knew I should go to bed because of having to wake up at 7:30am the next day. Oh how I miss being a night owl (and yes, I do occasionally miss my nights working third shift)... But it is totally worth it being here.
written by  Sara Florecita on August 16, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

needing some kind of balance at school (miercoles, 18 agosto)
I´m trying to decide which section of my seventh grade classes I dislike more. I really like the first two sections of seventh because they work hard, are polite, and pay attention. The third and fourth sections are brats. And it doesn´t help that my host teacher makes me work with 20 students while she only works with 12, and of course she chose to work with the twelve ´good´students and dumped me with the bad ones. The program isn´t supposed to work this way. The volunteers are supposed to work with the motivated kids that want to learn, not baby-sit the ones who don´t. If she keeps doing this I think I might complain to someone because I shouldn´t be in this bad of a mood right now. Kids should not be pretending they can´t understand me (they´ve been learning English since kindergarten here!), they shouldn´t be eating in class, drawing on the desks, throwing paper airplanes, and I shouldn´t have had to break up a fight between two scrawny seventh grade boys today.
I actually had to kick a kid out of class today. Then I asked who would like to be next, and suddenly things got quiet. I didn´t have any more problems with that class today. I confiscated all of their cell phones and ipods I caught them using, took away all of their notes they were passing, and drawings that had nothing to do with class. One kid started crying, but right now I don´t really care because there needs to be order in the class, and rules need to be enforced. Hopefully tomorrow they´ll behave better. They behave worse than most of the kids at the residential treatment facility where I used to work. In fact, right now I actually really miss those kids.
In a way it´s kind of funny because yesterday my classes were really well-behaved, and most of them participated pretty well. Yesterday was a great day. After school I had choir rehearsal. I love choir rehearsals here. I really feel more at ease and more at home with the choir group and other music directors than I do as an English teacher. Teaching English can be hard at times. Teaching music comes more naturally to me, and is way more fun. The time goes by much faster and I never really find myself looking at the clock. The choir kids are a fun group of kids. The ones who don´t really seem to care much during English class try really hard and care a lot about music. Yesterday I taught them `Battle Hymn of the Republic`in four-part harmony. They sound really good, but it took a bit of work to get them to sing it in a spirited, strong sort of way. After I started joking around and telling them I was going to fall asleep, they got the message and got into it more. By the end of rehearsal they were able to sing it a capella and didn´t need me to give them their starting pitches where the verse (in unison) splits off into the four-part harmony chorus. The altos (or in Spanish, contraltos) need to sing more confidently. This is the only drawback of the choir. The director has been having me sing the alto part with them while directing so they can hear their parts. I think on Thursday I will stop singing with them so they can prepare for the concerts they´ll be singing in next week in Santiago for the music conference. I also like directing the choir because I get to speak in both English and Spanish. Since it isn´t ´English´class, but rather an English choir, I am allowed to use Spanish to explain things related to the music, the meanings of the lyrics, and so forth.
After choir rehearsal the director asked me to stay around to help with the jazz band. He got me set up with a tenor sax I´ll get to use for the rest of the time I´m here. It´s not a good quality instrument, but that´s okay. It´s really great to play sax again. Our jazz band here at CI is small. It consists of the director playing piano, four students who play drums, guitar, bass, and trumpet, another teacher who plays alto sax, and now myself on tenor. All of the students in the band play super well. We went over Moonlight Serenade, In the Mood, and the Pink Panther. I haven´t played the sax in almost two years, but it didn´t feel like it. In the music I was able to find my soul and really get into the music, and it felt amazing. I even got to improvise a little bit. After rehearsal I took the micro home.
And now I´m wondering how is it that one day is fantastic and the next just isn´t much fun. I wish I could have a good balance at school, but then again I guess the crappy days like today just make me appreciate the good ones that much more.

doctores, ferias artesanales, y comida hindú (jueves, 19 agosto)
Today I went to the doctor because my stomach was really hurting last night and I almost threw up again. I told my host mom I wasn´t feeling well and asked if she knew of a doctor I could go to. She said to wait and see what happens, and maybe next week I could go. I told her that it´s been almost two weeks of me feeling sick one day and fine the next, and I wanted to get this figured out now, because I want to enjoy the rest of my time here and not feel sick. Although today I woke up and felt fine, I´m tired of feeling crappy one minute and fine the next, so I called in sick from work and my host parents took me to the doctor´s office where the regional coordinator from Inglés Abre Puertas met us. I gave the receptionist my insurance card through the program and showed her my passport, and was able to answer all her questions in Spanish. Then I had to wait for about an hour, but I had brought a book (House of the Spirits) with to read so it wasn´t a big deal.
When they called me in for my appointment, my host parents insisted on going into the room with me, even though I told them I´d rather see the doctor in private. The whole thing was really uncomfortable. The doctor introduced himself, and I started to tell him what was wrong. Before I could really say anything, my host dad blurted out, ``She doesn´t speak Spanish and you should talk to us instead,`` which made me unbelievably mad, because I could understand everything they were saying, and I have tried so hard to learn Spanish. I hate it when people treat me like I´m stupid or not independent. I told the doctor that I do speak Spanish, but I´m still learning and sometimes I don´t understand every single thing, but overall I can understand. My host parents continued to talk about me in Spanish like I wasn´t even there, telling their version of what they thought was wrong with me. She told the doctor that she doesn´t think I eat enough, and she´s worried because I go running. I haven´t ran at all since Sunday and it´s starting to get on my nerves because I have all this excess energy I need to get rid of.
Anyway, the doctor seemed nice and asked a lot of questions. He didn´t seem to think it´s a big deal that I go running or am vegan. He said it looks like overall I have good health. He took my height and weight and then I had to listen to my host parents go on and on about my weight, when I´ve always been this size, and I didn´t feel it was their business. Again, I felt like them being in there was not respectful of my privacy, especially when they weren´t being very nice. The doctor said there are lots of runners in Iquique, so not to worry about it. He asked about what I´m used to eating, if I eat raw vegetables and fruit in the US, etc. He said it´s fairly normal for Americans who come to northern Chile to develop stomach problems because of the food. He said vegetarians and vegans are more prone to stomach issues, but that I´ll be fine and prescribed some meds. Tomorrow I have to go back for a blood test just to rule out that it´s anything more serious. He thinks it´s just a normal bacterial thing that can be cured with the meds, but he wants to be sure.
Thankfully, the government / program will reimburse me for the appointment, tests, and meds. I have to save all of the paperwork and make copies of it to give to the program in order to get my money back. Hopefully I get it back sooner than later.
I´m starting to wonder if the host family thing is going to work out. I still can´t believe my host dad told the doctor I can´t speak Spanish. I´m not sure whether he just thinks my Spanish is that bad or what, but I am still mad about it. I´m definitely not used to living with parental figures. I´m used to having more freedom than what I have here living with a host family. I know they´re concerned, but I´m not used to having someone worry about me. My host mom worries more than my real mom!!! (I hadn´t thought that was possible, but it is!!), and she has this way of trying to make me feel guilty about things, like if I go running or decide to stay later at school to get things done for class. Today after the doctor´s appointment she started explaining about the reimbursement / medical insurance process, and I stopped to ask her what a word I didn´t know meant. She assumed I didn´t understand ANYTHING of what she said, when in reality it was just that one word. And then she started crying and asked my host dad to explain it to me, which made me feel horrible. Most of the time I like my host family a lot (I have no problems with my host brothers or cousin), but today it was just too much to deal with.
This afternoon, my host brother asked why I was in such a bad mood. He explained that his mother has always worried about them and sometimes isn´t very sensible. In Chile, women are not typically as independent as I am, and most women are dependent on other people (aka men), which is a cultural difference. Here, people´s kids usually don´t live alone until they are 30 years old, and until then they live with their parents, so that´s another cultural thing they aren´t used to. Here, 22 year olds are still generally viewed as ´kids.´ Most people my age have never had a full-time job, had an apartment, owned a car, or know how to drive. It makes me really thankful for the fact that I have done those things on my own. My family seemed shocked when I told them I have a car in the US and can drive. I can´t imagine being my age and still dependent on my parents. My host brother explained to my dad that I am used to fending for myself and how in the US kids ´grow up´ faster and typically move out when they turn 18. My brother also told me that my father probably told the doctor that I don´t speak English so he´d speak more slowly. I´m not quite convinced on that--I think my brother is just trying to play the peace-maker here, but for now I´ll let it go since no one can do anything about what already happened, and I don´t want to be mad about something if I don´t have to be. The rest of my day has been much better, and I´m trying to focus on the good things about here...I´ll only be here for a relatively short period of my life so why waste time and energy being ticked off?
My host brother decided to ´cure´ my bad mood by taking me shopping haha. It was pretty fun. We went to the mall and wandered around downtown Iquique (I found a piercing place, but didn´t get anything pierced, but it was fun walking around there and looking at stuff), and looked through the markets. My host brother had to find a new pair of dress shoes because he has to dress up for exams in school tomorrow. Here (like in England) students are required to wear formal clothing on test days...makes me thankful it wasn´t like that in the US every time we had a test!! I got to go shoe shopping, which was good because I like shoes, but I didn´t buy any because of limited room in my suitcase when I come home:) Sizes here are quirky. Here, my shoe size is a 34, and my pants size is a 36 or 34. I had to try on a lot of things to figure out how sizes convert, but think I get the hang of it. Strangely, shirt sizes are still XS, S, M,and L, even though in Spanish you´d think they´d translate them to XP (extra pequeño), P (pequeño) M (medio) and G(grande), but no. Yet another way American culture has influenced things here...(OH!!! To my horror Iquique has a McDonalds!!! Barffff!!! And the first thing one person told me when I said I was from the US was, ``Oh you have lots of fast food there!`` Pretty sad when foreigners associate the US with fast food:( ).
Then we found an artesan market (I LOVE those kinds of places) where I bought a purple bag (sorta kinda like the green one I got in San Francisco) that was handmade by local artists, and a sweatshirt, made completely of all natural materials and dyed with vegetable dyes (also hand made by a local artist who I talked to for a while). It´s colorful, unique, and no one else in the world has the same one:) I know, I´m a bit of a nerd when it comes to artistic kind of stuff, but to me it´s really interesting, and way better than all the tacky touristy stuff people buy.
After that I met up with a co-worker at the Croatian Plaza, and we walked to the only Indian (Hindú) restaurant in Iquique where I got rice, vegetables, and soy protein. It´s kind of funny that here if you order something spicy, it is only mildly hot. We also found it amusing because we ate up on the 2nd floor of the restaurant and heard some strange howling noises coming from downstairs. It was also entertaining trying to figure out what language the people there were speaking. At first we thought it was Hindi, but it sounded more like Chinese. At any rate, the food there was really good. We decided to go out for a few drinks after that. Fortunately rum has its ways of improving my mood too:) The place we went to had a straw / grass roof and was decorated really neatly. Then I took a colectivo back to the house, and it turns out the colectivo driver is one of my student´s dads. We talked about the school and places in the US the whole time which was nice since most cab drivers here are really unfriendly.
I have to go back to the doctor tomorrow for my blood test but that´s not a big deal because needles don´t bother me at all. At any rate, I need to go to sleep...gotta love 9am doctors´appointments on my day off from work. No sleeping in for me tomorrow:( I´m still not a morning person. I wonder if I´ll ever tame my inner night owl?

starting to get things figured out at school (miercoles, 4 agosto)
Today seemed to go a bit more smoothly at school. I didn´t do a whole lot besides observing the teachers. One of them is really mean to the kids and keeps trying to get me to back her up. It´s really bad being put in that situation. I tried to encourage the students instead of tear them down, but after class she got really mad at me, saying I was supposed to support her and not the students. I don´t know why people like her are teachers in the first place if they don´t even like kids. I just bit my tongue. I don´t want to get on anyone´s bad side. With this lady I guess I´ll just have to be nice to her and do things my way once I get my own class next week.
Besides that, school is going well. My 7th graders are pretty rowdy. I really love my high school seniors, especially the poorly behaved ones...My host teacher has problems handling them (it´s a metallurgy class at the trade school and their vocab focuses on metalworking - mining related words, the class is mostly boys). I´m supposed to be observing this week but my host teacher asked if i felt like `dealing with them,` (aka teaching the class), so i did...and I didnt have any major problems!! After those students left, she was happy because I actually got them to participate. It sounds weird but if you act goofy and act out all the verbs and vocab words, they find it amusing. They also like it when you can laugh at yourself and when I ask them to tell me what the word is in Spanish, so then they feel useful and more likely to particpate. My high school kids can speak English well but have poor attitudes and don`t want to do anything. They are also afraid of making mistakes but I try to be encouraging and focus on what they can do and let some of the small mistakes go as long as I can still understand them. I also have an English class for seniors focusing on accounting, one on business, one for students who are mostly girls who are going to be secretaries, and one for students learning electrical work.
Iquique is great. I haven´t seen a whole lot of it bc my host family lives on the outskirts of the city and it´s a 20 min bus ride to the downtown area. I only teach on Mon, Tue,Wed, and Thurs, which is good because I have time to take weekend trips to different places. This weekend my host brothers and I are hiking / climbing to the top of Cerro Dragon, this big hill / mountain right by Iquique, and going to the downtown area to see different places. Next weekend we are driving out to Pica where there are aguas termales where we can go, and on the way we´re going to see geoglyphs such as El Gigante de Atacama. Pica is about 2 hrs away but my host cousin, Manuel, who lives with us has a car.
It´s nice having a set routine that´s the same Monday through Thursday. I leave for school at 8am, and the school day ends at 4:30. On Tuesday and Thursday I have to stay later for choir rehearsal unti 6:30. I am now Colegio Inglés´s assistant choir director. The songs I´ll teach them are in English, but they have to be religious songs bc my school is a Methodist school. The last week in August my choir, which has 20 students, will be going on a week long choir tour trip to Santiago, Coquimbo, and LaSerena. It´ll be fun bc the choir kids are overall good kids w-out behavior issues. The music director in my school, Cristián Villaruel, is really nice too. I have to speak in Spanish w him bc he only knows a little bit of English. Tue and Thurs are long days but they are fun. I love this school and my role here bc I´m involved w- music, i´m working with middle / high school kids, I am actually using my business administration and accounting backgrounds to teach my classes, and I get to use Spanish every day!
My host mom brought me rice and vegetable soup for lunch. I ate with my host teacher, who always eats alone in her classroom, while we discussed details for my classes I´m going to be teaching. Tomorrow I´m going to eat in the teachers´lounge and meet more of my co-workers. I kind of wish I didn´t have to spend the rest of the week observing because I feel like I´m well-prepared to teach my own classes.
After school I went running along Playa Brava in the sand. It´s definitely pretty running here, and I think I should get used to the sand. I can´t wait for it to warm up a little more so I can start taking surfing lessons.

loving life today (viernes, 20 agosto)
So the blood test at the medical clinic wasn´t that bad and took no more than five minutes. For the life of me I could not fall back asleep when I got back home, so I sat in front of the computer for a while studying Spanish and then read some more of my book. Around noon I gave up on the idea of getting any more sleep so I decided to go on a run. As usual, I didn´t really get into running mode until I was almost done. There are only so many kilometros of beach to run along, and soon I´ll have to start turning around and repeating the route.
After nearly a week of not running I decided I wasn´t up to the marathon I´d wanted to do a week from tomorrow. When I got back to the house I went online and searched for other marathons I could do instead. Fortunately, on December 5th there is Maratón del Pacífico in Viña del Mar, which is only two hours away from Santiago. And conveniently I will be in Santiago during that week for the BULATS test and closing ceremony of the EOD program. Part of the route for this marathon is along the Pacific, and I´m definitely going to sign up for it.
After I got back I accompanied my host parents downtown to drop off my host mom at work. Then my host dad and I walked around downtown, through Plaza Prat and along Avenida Tarapacá. Fortunately we were getting along really well, the sun was shining, and I felt a lot better. I stopped inside one of the seemingly millions of Cruz Verdes (drugstores) in Iquique to buy more contact solution. Cruz Verde is kind of like Starbucks in Chicago...you can find one on almost every street corner of the city. The guy working there was super nice. He told me my Spanish was really good and asked where I was from. Then we walked around some more and I bought some warm, honey-roasted peanuts one of the street vendors was selling.
Once at home I read a little more and took a short nap since a few friends and I were planning on going salsa dancing later that night. However, by 10pm everyone but me and Andrew had backed out. Instead of going to the salsoteca, I took a colectivo to Plaza Prat and then walked to Rombos, a bar on Baquedano where we met for happy hour (which they don´t translate at all, so you hear all these words in Spanish with ´happy hour´thrown in there somewhere. It´s kind of funny actually. And here happy hour always means you can buy two drinks for the price of one). It was a lot of fun and we had some interesting conversations / friendly arguments about different cultures, countries, politics, and ethics. We disagreed about a lot of things but I really love talking to people like him who have their own opinions and good reasons for them, and who aren´t closed-minded about everything.
At the end of the night I took a colectivo back to the house. I´m definitely starting to get used to using public transportation here. It´s so cheap compared to in the US, and taking colectivos gives me some good opportunities to practice speaking Spanish. It´s also nice because I´m getting more confident at speaking Spanish, and the drivers haven´t tried to rip me off as much:)
Anyway, it was nice to get out and see more of the town today. Now since I´m feeling a lot better, I´ve started liking it here much more:)

art, freedom, live music, and floating in the endless sky (domingo, 22 agosto)
Yesterday I slept in until noon and woke up to warm, golden rays of Iquique sun. I took the micro downtown where I bought some really nice but simple lapis lazuli and Chilean silver earrings for my mom and sister. Lapis lazuli is found in Chile and is its national crystal / stone, and the silver was mined in Chile too. I also bought a necklace for another volunteer (her 23rd bday was yesterday and she was inviting us all over for dinner so I wanted to bring a small gift). Then I found a local artist on this street called Paseo Baquedano where there are markets and street vendors, but it´s an artsy area of town and all the buildings are in the colonial style. It´s the kind of street where there are no cars, just pedestrians and bicyclists. At night, there are always street musicians playing Andean music on their flutes and drums, or a group of people singing traditional music. The artist was making jewelry out of different stones and copper (which is big here bc of all the copper mines). He showed me how he made all of the jewelry by twisting the wire into different shapes. I thought it was really cool and the jewelry struck me as something original. They are really cool, and no one else in the world will have the same pair because it´s art!
Then I found a tattoo shop and got my 7th tattoo. I got the word ´libertad´ (´freedom´in Spanish) on the inside of my right wrist. The outline is dark purple and the letters are filled in with a lighter purple, orange, a lime green, and a darker green. It looks pretty sweet, and it´s small enough to cover up with a watch or bracelet if I have to look professional for something. Freedom is what my experience in Chile means to me. Free to travel, to explore the world, free to run forever and get lost in my own thoughts, and it´s on my right wrist, which is the hand I write and draw with. For me, when I write or draw, I am free to express myself however I want, so the tattoo has a few different meanings for me. I got it in Spanish because I´m here in a Spanish speaking country and wanted it to reflect something of Chile too. It was a good experience, and fortunately I was able to describe things and ask all the right questions in Spanish. The tattoo artist was patient about my Spanish. It turns out he was also born on June 3rd like me! I made sure the place was clean and asked lots of questions. My tattoo was surprisingly cheap (15 luca--luca is slang here for 1,000 pesos. One luca is about 2 US dollars, so my tattoo only cost me the equivalent of $30 US dollars!!)
After my tattoo appointment, I went to Caroline´s host family´s house for her birthday party. Her host mom knew Caroline loves Mexican food so she prepared tacos. I was able to eat one with just vegetables, salsa, and guacamole in it. It tasted really good, but it REALLLYYY made me miss our taco and guac nights we had at our apartment!! I do miss the food in the States. I´m debating whether I want my first meal when I return to the States to be taco/guac night with Kyle, or eat out at Exotic Thai. Anyway, then we went to a bar that had live music (a guitarist / singer who was great! One of the songs he played was Interstate Love Song and it made me miss my bass). Anyway, I tried an Iquiqueña, which is a type of chela rubia (chela is slang for beer, rubia means light). Iquiqueñas are made here in Iquique, so I though I should try the local beer. I´m not usually a big fan of beer but this stuff was really crisp and refreshing. And by US standards, pretty cheap, even though apparently it´s one of the better beers here. After leaving that bar we headed to a discoteca. It´s the first time I´ve been to a club, but I thought I should at least try it and see what it was like. My ears were ringing for like an hour after we left. They played a lot of crappy American hip hop /rap songs I don´t like, but they also played some reggaeton, which I hadn´t ever heard of before coming here, but it´s grown on me a lot and I really like the rhythm of it. Strangely, the club serves as a gym by day and a club by night. Off to the sides we could see all of these weights, exercise bikes, ellipticals, etc and everyone was dancing in the middle of the gym / dance floor. There were also all these giant statues of different Roman gods / goddesses everywhere. Kind of a strange combination of things. I´m not a big dancing person (although salsa dancing is fun) and felt awkward there. Also, I felt like in order to ´fit in´there, I should have worn half as much clothing (I showed up in jeans, gym shoes, and a hoodie lol). I didn´t get back to my house until after 5am! It wasn´t really my thing (the staying up late was though), but at least now in all fairness I can say I´m not much of a club person and that I have actually been to one and that´s how I know it´s not my thing.
Today I woke up and the paragliding instructor, Patricio, picked me up to drive me to Alto Hospicio, this town on top of the mountain. He has been a paraglider for 17 years and knows what he´s doing so I wasn´t worried. Paragliding was so much fun! Not in the adrenaline, super crazy fun kind of way, but it was sooo peaceful and relaxing. We just floated around up in the sky, floated through some clouds, and enjoyed the views. I love Iquique so much more seeing it by air...it´s much more beautiful from the sky, with clear views of the Pacific. It was just silence up there, and because of the air currents there was this slow, rocking motion kind of like what it feels like to be on a boat. I felt very relaxed and calm up there, which was different than was expecting (more of an adrenaline rush, excitement, etc). The flight lasted around half an hour to forty minutes. On our descent we flew super close to this really tall apartment building near the beach. I thought it would be so cool to live up there and see paragliders flying right past your windows. We landed on the beach, put all the equipment back into Patricio´s backpack, and his driver came to pick us up to drive me back to my house.
They offer courses so you can get your paragliding licence. I think that would be cool, but it´s kind of expensive, and I´m not quite sure what I´d do with it. I think I definitely want to get my scuba license / certification when I come back to the US. I really enjoyed scuba diving and being here has made me realize I should try harder to be involved with things I care about like Spanish, the saxophone, and scuba diving to name a few. I took some pictures of my paragliding experience.
It was cool because after a light dinner of chips and guacamole, my host brother, cousin, and I drove to this part of the beach where there´s really rough tides and giant rocks everywhere. We listened to some really good music (not sure what it was, but kinda Pink Floyd-ish but with more guitar and a female vocalist) and walked along the ocean. I swear if it was warmer I could fall asleep to the soothing sound of the waves rushing on the shore.
Then we went to this place called Minero´s, which is an Italian style pizza place. We chipped in to get a pizza without cheese ( they didn´t really care if it had cheese or meat, they just wanted pizza lol). It was kinda funny because the Italian style pizza had tomatoes, corn, guacamole, kalamata olives, red pepper, and oregano on it. Here, anything that has oregano is considered `Italian or Mediterranean style.´The sauce on it was great and the crust was absolutely perfect...not quite a thin crust, but crisp and crunchy, and very flavorful. This pizza was way better than the pizza I tried in Santiago (and I liked that one a lot). Who knew vegan pizza would be so good?
I finally am going to sleep around 2am since I have to get up early for classes tomorrow. I´m going to read some poetry and then go to sleep. Buenas noches!

english choir, paseo baquedano, and la cioccolata (jueves, 5 agosto)
After observing classes today I went to the first choir rehearsal here. Volunteers are required to do some sort of fun, extracurricular activity with the students. Typically this takes the form of a debate team, public speaking, art projects, or cooking typical American food. I was able to talk to the choir director here and get an English choir started. It´s an a capella group with four part harmony, and all the songs will be in English. Because Colegio Inglés is a Methodist school, the songs we teach have to be hymns or have some sort of religious meaning.
The hard part is narrowing it down to just a few songs. I am trying to get things ready with the choir because in 2 weeks we´re going to Santiago for a week long music conference. There is still so much music to teach them! I taught them ´Amazing Grace´ today and got them to learn it in four parts. Next week I´m going to teach them either ´Down to the River to Pray´or ´Battle Hymn of the Republic.´ The choir director also wants to teach them ´Swing Low Sweet Chariot.´
My students seem to like singing in English so far. It´s sort of a problem bc there are 17 kids in the choir, all girls except for 2 boys who sing tenor and bass. However, the two boys that do come are good and can each hold their own parts. I just need to either recruit more boys or find a way to make things sound more balanced. I´ve also had to teach pronunciation of the song and sing along with the altos, who have troubles holding their part if I´m not singing with them. By the end of the rehearsal they were able to sing their parts without me, but I need to build their confidence because I can barely hear them. I think part of the problem is only a few students in the choir know how to read music. Hopefully I can work on this with them, but as for now, teaching them music is helping them improve their English and be motivated about it.
After choir, Artemio and I walked down Paseo Baquedano, which is a pedestrians-only street (hence the term paseo). We looked in a few shops, an art gallery of indigenous-inspired art, and the main plaza which is called Plaza Prat. There is a big clock tower, theater, and a bunch of sidewalk cafe type of places there. There is also a market where I bought a necklace, a ring, and some more earrings. I also bought a pair of green and yellow striped handmade pants which are traditional clothing in Chile. Artemio and I walked around the corner from the plaza where my host mom works as a chef at La Cioccolata. We ordered fresh fruit juice and enjoyed that. Back at home, my mom had prepared asparagus soup. I love asparagus! Then I read my book about Chile and made a list of places I want to visit for weekend trips, and I made a few things for my classroom. Today was nice because I got to see more of the city. For the first time in many days I get to sleep in tomorrow!

a little under the weather (domingo, 8 agosto)
Yesterday and today I´ve been kind of sick. The water in Iquique is really bad compared to Santiago, and apparently I can´t eat fresh fruit or vegetables here without cooking them first. It really unfortunate because I don´t feel sick, but yesterday and this morning I was throwing up and so forth. At least that has stopped now but I had to go to the pharmacy to get meds. It was really embarrassing because here you can´t just go to the store and get what you need...everything is kept behind the counter and I had to explain to the lady there what was wrong. My host family was really worried because I never take actual meds (they don´t either), but the herbal tea and natural remedies didn´t really seem to be working that well (the herbs did make my stomach stop hurting but I was still puking) and finally I told them that I wanted actual meds.
My family is really worried even though I told them it wasn´t a big deal, and with the meds I should be better soon. I´m not used to having people be concerned about me. My family here is really nice but sometimes I wish they would not worry so much. Like tonight I went running by myself and they were all concerned even though it isn´t a bad part of town, but it was dark. I don´t want them to worry but I also want to do things (such as running in the evening) that are normal for me and that I am used to doing on an every day basis. When we are walking around downtown, my brothers won`t let me walk on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street because if a car veers off the road, they don´t want it to hit me. It is sort of nice in some ways, but at the same time, I´m not used to it at all.
I know they mean well, and that doesn´t bother me, but the whole situation with me being sick made me feel really uncomfortable. I guess I´d forgotten what it feels like to live as part of a family since it´s been a while since I moved out of my parents´place. I´ve only been here a week and don´t want my family thinking I´m helpless or sickly, especially since this is the first time in ages I´ve been sick.
The other thing that made the conversation with my host mom difficult is that she doesn´t speak English, and I have a REALLY hard time understanding her because she talks so fast! She started crying in the middle of the conversation today because she thought I was sad when I really just didn´t feel good. She was asking if I was happy here with their family and I kept telling her I really like her family here in Iquique. Then she felt bad because she thought her cooking had made me sick, but she´s a great cook! I just am not used to the water yet and was trying to explain, but she couldn´t understand anything I was saying and then I felt really crappy because I´ve studied Spanish and am trying so hard to learn more, and she didn´t seem to understand me at all. I was starting to feel really stupid and frustrated with myself. Then Santiago, one of the brothers, came and told me that my host mother is deaf in one ear and can´t hear very well, that it isn´t me and not to feel bad. He said that everyone else usually understands a lot of what I´m saying, and learning a language is hard. After that I felt a lot better about things and he helped translate to my host mom what was going on.
I really like Iquique (except for all the pollution here) but just felt annoyed with myself because I hate being sick, waited on, and just sitting around doing nothing when there is so much out there to DO!!!! I guess I need to work on being more patient:)
For a little bit this afternoon, Artemio, my host mom, and I went to El Centro (downtown) because I needed to buy some more formal clothes for teaching. It turns out the khaki dress pants I brought with don´t fit at all anymore, so I needed a second pair of dress pants. Either I haven´t had to dress business casual in a while, or the combination of veganism and more running is making me slim down a little more. I´m not sure, because I´m still eating pretty well. I found a pair of brown dress pants and a black suit jacket. I should have brought one of the ones from back home, but the program said I could wear polo shirts and jeans to class, and then I ended up in a techical/ prep school where teachers HAVE to dress formally every day. Mondays are ´formal´dress, aka black pants, black shoes, collared shirt, and suit jacket. The rest of the week we can wear black,brown, or khaki pants and a regular shirt. At least now I have school attire. It was kind of fun shopping w my host family bc my host mom wanted me to try on everything and have her make sure it looked okay. My host mom also loves shoe shopping!!! It was fun trying shoes on, but I didn´t buy any due to limited space in my suitcase for when I eventually go back home. After shopping I went running. I ran from the house to school and back, and it took a shade over an hour.
A part of me wonders if I´ll eat cheese again when I return to the US. I will kind of miss the raviolis and kyle sandwiches (especially the ones with pepper jack), but then again, they don´t have those things in Chile, so I can´t really miss them. Pizza without cheese is pretty good actually. I like the whole veganism thing so far. Except for this weekend, I´ve felt a lot healthier and including this weekend, still have more energy. There have been times I wanted cheese, mainly bc it would be easier to find food I can eat. Plus, I LIKE cheese... But I really like the idea of not eating or using animal products. And except for yesterday and today, I haven´t had to deal with problems of stomachaches from eating too much cheese. Grr. stupid water...I thought that only happened in Mexico...
On Friday morning I had to go to this conference for English teachers at la Universidad Arturo Prat from 9am until 1. It was pretty boring although it was nice meeting some of the other English teachers. I kind of wish I´d been able to sleep in for once, but no such luck. After the conference I wanted to take a nap but decided that since the sun was shining and the skies were bright blue, I might as well enjoy the sun and go running along the beaches.
Then Artemio, Santiago, and I went hiking / climbing up this giant hill-slash-sand dune called Cerro Dragón, which is only a few blocks up the hill from our house. It was really pretty seeing the city lights from up there. We climbed to the top and enjoyed the views of Iquique. Going at night was a good idea.
Yesterday morning I wasn´t feeling well again but just lounged around the house most of the day. By the evening I felt a lot better and joined Santiago and Manuel for drinks at this bar called Ron y Tequila on Paseo Baquedano. Two of their friends, Daniela and Jorge, were there. Both of them seemed really nice. We´d planned on going to the casino, but the lines were really long and none of us felt like waiting. Later that night my host dad asked what I´d ordered to drink. When I told him I ordered mango sours, he started laughing and predicted that I will stay in Iquique for a long time because it´s a drink typical of Iquique. I wonder if that´ll be true, or how long I will really be in Iquique for.

runner´s high, earthquakes, powerful dreams, and jazz band concerts (miercoles, 25 agosto)
Monday after school got out I went running along the beaches again. I hadn´t run on Sunday so I had been dying to get out for a nice, long run. I was barely down the street when I found my pace and settled into that peace of mind I love when I run. As I reached Playa Brava, the sun had turned a salmon color and was iridescently glowing in the periwinkle sky, which looked more like a watercolor than actual sky. The air was comfortable but just starting to get a little chilly. I felt like I was flying. I turned onto the boardwalk near Playa Cavancha and really began to enjoy the soothing sound of crashing waves on the sand. I had only planned on a short run but once I got to Colegio Inglés at the end of the beach I decided I wanted to keep running as long and as far as my legs could carry me. I felt like I could run forever, and decided to sign up for la Maratón del Pacífico in Viña del Mar in December, and that I was going to do it for sure. I haven´t felt this good about running in a while, even though I normally do enjoy it. I ended up running back and forth along the same route a few times in order to get in the distance I wanted. I kept running past another guy who I think was doing the same thing. Part of me wanted to stop him and talk, possibly find a new running buddy, but I didn´t want to stop in the middle of the run. I hate stopping because sometimes you can´t find your rhythm again after that. As I ran back it was starting to get dark and with the ocean to my right and sky above me, I remember thinking that I´d never seen so many different shades of blue in my life.
I returned to my house in a fantastic mood, both relaxed and energized. Completely in love with life. Even though school hadn´t been fun today for several reasons (mainly my host teacher), I felt like life is great and I am thoroughly enjoying my experience here. There is so much to be not just happy, but thrilled about. I don´t know what I´d do if I wasn´t a runner. It is completely meditative for me and allows me to stay positive and energized about everything. Even when I´m dead tired and go running, it puts things in perspective for me.
Compared to the awesomeness of my run, there really wasn´t anything worthwhile about Monday to write...same old story today as any other school day. Although my seventh graders were doing their oral presentations today about their favorite famous person. One kid is a piano player and chose Beethoven. During his oral presentation he accidentally said, ¨Beethoven was a computer from the seventeenth century.¨ I started laughing but then realized he´d meant to say ´composer,´but it was still pretty funny.
Yesterday I struggled to stay awake during all of my classes, which consisted of the students finishing their presentations. After school I helped out with the choir for a while. Today was sectionals so I worked just with the girls in the choir. It turns out there is one alto who cannot for the life of her sing in tune. She can´t match pitches and will sing a note a fifth below all the other altos and she can´t tell whether she´s too low or too high. Her voice is very nasally and she moves her shoulders every time she breathes. When I first heard the dissonant pitches I thought there was some sort of fire alarm going off somewhere in the school. The other director and I tried to work with her but I´m not sure if she´s slow or just not musically inclined, but it didn´t get better at all. We aren´t allowed to kick kids out of choir (it´s a Christian school and anyone who wants to participate can). I am not sure what to do with her because she sounds awful, and without her, the rest of the choir is very talented. Her being there is causing an otherwise talented choir to sound horrible. I try not to cringe, but it seems like she always ends up a tritone off from the pitch she´s supposed to be singing. The girl is also really nice which makes it hard, and she is enthusiastic about choir. The other kids have tried to help her but that isn´t working, and they are becoming frustrated. One of them blurted out, ´is she coming with on the trip too?´Unfortunately, she is. Besides that, choir was fun.
Last night I was sitting at the computer checking my email when the house started to shake. It was shaking quasi-strongly for about a minute straight. I asked my host brothers what to do, and they just laughed and said to stay in the house, that minor quakes like this happen all the time. They said it wasn´t really an earthquake, but a tremor (temblor in Spanish), although by my standards it was definitely an earthquake!!! Things were falling off the desk and rolling across the room. After about a minute the shaking stopped. My host dad´s response: ``Don´t worry, it was just the earth breathing´´ which I thought was kind of a neat and beautiful way to look at it.
And then the power went out in our entire neighborhood (the south side of Iquique). We felt our way downstairs where the dad went outside to turn on the car´s headlights in order to shine some sort of light into the house. We found some candles and proceeded to sit around the kitchen table. My host dad said that either there would be a small shake (aftershock) or that there would be a worse earthquake. (Sometimes small ones are followed by worse quakes, but usually this is not the case). I guess I looked pretty freaked out because my older brother was laughing at me. He was saying he can´t even count how many earthquakes he´s experienced. My host cousin was sleeping when it happened, rolled over, and went back to sleep. After a minor 3 second, small aftershock, my host dad decided it was safe for him to drive to my host mom´s work to pick her up (it happened right before she was supposed to get off shift). My host brother asked him to get some pop on the way, and asked if I could lend him a few cents. When I went upstairs to get the change, my eyes had adjusted to the dark, but when I came out of my room, my older host brother Santiago was hiding on me and jumped out at me in the dark. After I got done screaming I thought it was kind of funny.
After almost an hour the lights came back on. No worries, I´m fine. We don´t know where exactly the quake started, but now I can say I´ve experienced my first actual earthquake here. I hope none of them are serious, but they say it happens a few times a month, and some are so small no one notices them.
Last night I dreamt where I watched myself die. It was a really powerful dream I haven´t been able to shake off all day. I was somewhere landlocked in Chile, but this enormous blue tidal wave came up and enveloped me. I remember thinking in my dream that I was dying and knew for certain life was over, but I knew it was going to be a peaceful death. Part of me knew it was a dream because I remember thinking that a giant tidal wave couldn´t happen so far from the ocean. As I spun around in this spiral of water, I realized I was breathing through my lungs, and not drowning, but I knew I was dying. I remember feeling frantic that I wouldn´t get to say good-bye to the people I cared about. I heard spirits in the water telling me that this was the end of life on earth, and that the world was ending, and after life all things are the same. I remember spinning around in the water feeling reassured that wherever I went next I wouldn´t be alone, and the spirits were telling me that some people have it so much worse. It was really weird and I´ve been thinking of it all day. I´ve always believed dreams are important and that they usually have some sort of important message.
A few nights ago I had a prophetic dream about something that actually happened later that day (well, things did not happen in the same way as in the dream, but the outcome was the same). Immediately after the dream I felt reassured and not worried, and of course, things were fine. I think part of the reasons I´ve been having these dreams is because I bought a lapis lazuli ring the other day. It is a traditional and ancient stone of Chile, used by shamans for its healing qualities, but it has energies relating to intuitive senses and dreams, and here it is believed to be very powerful. I didn´t know that when I bought it, but I read about it and think there´s a truth to that. It has also changed colors since I´ve been wearing it. It was blue at first with little specks of white, but now it´s more of a bluish-purple color. I really wish I´d brought one of my books about crystals with from back home, but I still have the Internet. The other thing is I´ve been remembering the majority of my dreams lately. I definitely think there is a lot of truth to what the ancient shamans believed, and what many of the indigenous people here still believe, that everything, living or nonliving, carries a certain energy along with it.
And then I woke up to Artemio telling me it was time to wake up for school. I don´t know what´s with him lately...I told him to get me up at 7:30am, but today he started yelling for me to wake up at 7am. Yesterday it was 7:15. I sincerely hope tomorrow he doesn´t get me up earlier. I don´t like where this pattern is going. I just know I never like mornings.
Today school has been interesting. I arrived with the intentions of teaching classes. The school system here is a lot more disorganized than in the US, but sometimes like today it turns out more fun that way. The choir director found me and said I wasn´t going to teach today bc the jazz band needed me to play tenor with them because this morning before school a bunch of the jazz band students decided to give concerts in the auditorium all day in order to raise money for the choir/ jazz band trip (most of the kids in the jazz band also sing in the choir). The director got permission from my host teacher (the crabby one) to miss classes all day. In fact, the students have also been missing classes all day. I guess this happens at least once or twice a week of impromptu events. IT has been fun, playing Pantera Rosa (the pink panther), Moonlight Serenade, and Summertime all day. Jazz band is way more fun than teaching classes, even though I enjoy my English classes and students.
At any rate, my planning period is almost over so I´ll write more later:)

finally...my own classroom! (martes, 10 agosto)
Yesterday I got my own classroom. They were still in the process of delivering all of my desks and chairs, so I wasn´t able to have classes in it until today. Yesterday I had to teach classes in my host teachers´classrooms, but they pretty much sat back and let me teach the class. They went well, and my host teacher said I did a good job with them. I noticed that the students seemed more willing to participate when I taught than when she teaches them. Most of them seem pretty excited to have a new teacher. They asked various questions about me (a little off-topic, but since they were speaking in English, I didn´t mind) such as where I´m from, what my hobbies are, what my family is like, do I like Iquique, etc. One kid asked me my age, and when I said 22, he said, ¨Oh really? I´m twenty.¨ I quickly set him in his place and called him out on lying (all of the kids in that class are 17). I will have to work to establish student-teacher boundaries. Some of my senior students have this idea that since my last name is difficult to pronounce, they can just call me ¨Miss Pretty Eyes.¨ I also had to put an end to that.
I´m excited about having my own classroom and decorating it. It´s on the 3rd floor in the older part of the building right next to the choir/ band room. It still smells of fresh paint, but there are worse smells in the world. The walls are off-white and the floor is a burnt-reddish color. I thought it was kind of strange that they painted the floor. There are also yellow curtains hanging on the windows. I opened them (I love sunlight) but for some reason the students keep closing the curtains. I might just take them down because I love the Iquique sun so much. I´m just glad I wasn`t the one who had to drag all those desks upstairs!! My room still looks pretty plain. Last night I made a blue poster with red and yellow letters that says ´Welcome to English Class!´ Tonight I´m going to make more posters to hang up in my class so the learning environment looks a bit more stimulating to the senses. The down side of my classroom is that the room directly below my room is a kindergarten classroom, so it is really noisy in my room, even when my own class is being quiet.
My 7th graders are very squirrely...having them first thing in the morning on Tuesdays definitely wakes you up! Today I played Simon Says with them because they were learning verbs (such as stand up, sit down, pick it up, get up, fall down, etc). One of my kids actually told my host teacher that my class is more fun than hers, and she got mad and said I´m not allowed to play games or do anything fun with the kids, because class is not supposed to be fun! I couldn´t believe it. I want them to learn, and it´s obvious that they´ll learn more if they can have fun learning.
Today the cafeteria staff made me vegan soy protein with vegetables. It was great to have a hot lunch for once! The cafeteria ladies are so nice, and I´m really fortunate they respect the fact that I´m vegan and go out of their way to prepare lunches for me.
Actually, my entire day was great. After school I started working on a banner to hang up in my classroom that says ¨Speak English¨in blue, white, and yellow with olde english style writing. It´s going to take longer to make than anticipated, but it will definitely look great once it´s done. At about 10pm my host cousin came home and we decided to go running. He has pretty good endurance because he´s a football (soccer) player. I kept feeling like I was making him run further than he wanted, but he kept up easily and said he didn´t mind. We ran along the beach and then the boardwalk. It was dark and almost no one was out. It was a very tranquil run and I returned to the house in a great mood. I´m glad my cousin likes to run, and it´s nice having a running buddy.
Okay...back to the poster now and then sleep. Chao!

paisajes de la panamericana (viernes, 27 agosto)
Coquimbo, Chile
The 28 hour long bus ride was actually pretty fun and the time seemed to pass quickly. Last night we departed from Colegio Inglés at 6:30. The masses of hugging parents and excited choir and jazz band kids reminded me of when I was a high school kid about to embark on the band tours. Since no one was there to see me off I boarded the bus and got settled.
I read for a little bit and then started working on my Spanish homework for my online class through EOD. My Spanish course is going well. This week I had to read a newspaper in Spanish, choose any article, and write a one page summary. I chose an article about the Mapuche people in Chile and the current hunger strike. They feel they are discriminated against by the government and not treated fairly because the government arrested 31 people for nonviolent protesting. My students saw me working on it and offered to help. When I was done writing, I let them proofread what I´d written. They were really good about correcting the mistakes I made and explaining the correct way to say things. It´s funny in some ways because I´m the English teacher and am helping them improve their English. Most are eager to learn English but lacked confidence to speak to me at first, but once they realized I won´t laugh at them for trying, they have been speaking English a lot more. They don´t realize that they´re teaching me a lot too. As a teacher, I´ve found that it helps a lot if the students know you can laugh at y our own mistakes and that I know I don´t know everything.
After I finished my Spanish homework I read more of ¨The House of Spirits,¨ which I am definitely enjoying. Then I talked to some of my students and got to know them better, and I talked to a choir student´s mom who had come with to chaperone. I moved to the back of the bus where Cristián, Juan, and some of the freshmen / sophomore students were playing the guitar and singing. They wanted to hear me sing something, but it was really hard to sing on the bus because it was pretty bumpy. It was fun anyway. After that I talked to some more students but then people started falling asleep. I was the last one up and read until about 2am before trying to sleep on the bus. I slept pretty well but woke up feeling a little sore because of sleeping in weird angles.
Earlier today we woke up and stopped in Vallenar at a truck stop to freshen up, change clothes, and buy snacks for the bus. The bathrooms at the truck stop had freezing cold water, but I was able to deal with it long enough to wash my face and wash my hair in the sink. Vallenar seemed like a pleasant enough town, nestled in-between green hills and a clear sky. Originally EOD had thought I´d be in either Caldera, Copiapó, or Vallenar. Although I only got a glimpse of the town as the bus drove past, I really feel like I could have been happy there as well. However I like Iquique and I´m here for a reason, and am definitely enjoying it.
The landscapes were gorgeous as we drove along. Near the Vallenar area, the landscape started getting more green as the Panamericana wove in and out of hills. Closer to Coquimbo, I was able to enjoy sparkling views of the Pacific. We drove through La Serena where I somehow managed to take some scenic pictures through the windows of the bus.
We arrived in Coquimbo, which is very hilly and reminded me in some ways of San Francisco, with its steep streets and views of the Pacific. The houses there are all bright colors, and there is a cheerful ambience to the town. The very center of Coquimbo is the peak of the hill, where a large cross is built.
As we drove towards the Methodist school where we were going to perform, the bus hit a car as it tried to make a right turn. That was kind of a hassle because the bus drivers had to get out and exchange information with the owner of the parked car it hit. Fortunately there was no damage to the bus and only a small scrape on the car. Our bus was huge and I can only imagine how difficult it must be trying to drive it.
We arrived at the Methodist school where we unloaded the instruments and set up for the concert. The school only had about 50 students of all ages. During the jazz band part of the program, the principal was dancing around which was entertaining to watch. The kids seemed to enjoy the music. The choir didn´t sing its best today, but we have lots of time to rehearse before the interscolar presentations later this week. Plus, everyone was tired and hadn´t slept especially well on the bus.
We ate lunch in the cafeteria (for me this consisted of rice and an orange). After that we took some pictures on the stairs of the college, loaded everything back onto the bus, and continued driving towards where we would stay at the campamento in El Tabo, which is an hour and a half south-east of the city.
We were all tired when we finally arrived in El Tabo around midnight. It reminded me a lot of church camp when I was in middle school. The campamento was in the middle of the woods, and there were different cabins with different rooms with bunk beds. I ended up in a room with three sophomore girls, all of whom are very nice. The bathrooms and showers were in a different building, and apparently it only has hot water in the mornings. I´d been craving a hot shower upon arriving since I´d spent two days on the bus, but I was thankful enough to collapse into bed, pull the warm covers over my head, and fall fast asleep.
written by  Sara Florecita on August 27, 2010 from Coquimbo, Chile

hiking, viña del mar, el mall, y música (domingo, 29 agosto)
El Tabo, Chile
Yesterday I got up at 8am, took a hot shower, and met up with everybody at the comedor (dining hall) for tea and bread. Cristián filled us in on the day´s schedule and then we had free time. I took some of the students hiking in the woods. We hiked down to the river and walked through the forest. It was really beautiful and the sun was shining brightly. Because of the hills, there were also breathtaking views of the Pacific. Although I was somewhat disappointed we wouldn´t get to spend the day in Santiago, I wasn´t upset for long. It was impossible to be annoyed during such a beautiful day with great weather and beautiful forests to enjoy. We ended up singing and playing the guitar outside before having a choir rehearsal. We ate lunch around 5pm, and I was really excited because we had found soy protein for my lunch! I had a soy protein, tomato, garlic, and oregano sandwhich on whole wheat bread, and a salad, and it was fantastic! Then we boarded the bus to go to Viña del Mar. On the bus ride, one of my students who has Mapuche heritage was telling me about the Mapudungun culture, people, and language. It was really interesting. After about an hour and a half, we arrived in Viña, where we took pictures in front of the clock / garden there, then got back on the bus and went to the mall (the students wanted to go). I´m not much of a mall person but it was better than sitting around the campamento the rest of the night. I found some maní confitado and looked without success for a coffee shop that has soy milk.
This morning we had to get up early to drive into Santiago to play / sing at the Methodist Church. Overall it went pretty well, but the church service was really long and boring and I felt like falling asleep during it. The people there seemed nice though, and it was a beautiful, warm day with the sun shining. We stopped at Lider, which is like the Chilean version of WalMart (they actually own it) on the way back. I was kind of disappointed that we didn´t get to spend more time in Santiago actually seeing things. Hopefully tomorrow we will get to see more of the city I love.
written by  Sara Florecita on August 29, 2010 from El Tabo, Chile

es en tí la ilusión de cada día (martes, 31 agosto)
El Tabo, Chile
Yesterday was alright. I read on the bus on the way into Santiago, where we played at the same church / school as on Sunday. I rehearsed with my students outside in the vine-covered walkway between the church and the school, and they´re getting a lot better. They are actually singing ´Battle Hymn of the Republic´with more emotion and spirit, and it´s almost at the tempo it´s supposed to be. They sang really well during the concert. After we were done singing and playing we drove back to El Tabo where we ate a late dinner before having another rehearsal. I played the guitar for a while in the salón after rehearsal. For some reason I was really in the mood to sing and play in the middle of an otherwise quiet and calm night. I am starting to get irritated that we waste so much time on the bus and that everything seems pretty disorganized. No one seems to know what´s going on, and much of the time it seems like the students know more than I do as far as what they´re doing each day. I´m also starting to get fed up with the fact that it´s not looking like we´ll get to spend much time actually sightseeing in Santiago. But at least the group of choir / orchestra kids is a fun bunch of students.
Today I got to sleep in until 10am, and for once, the sun was already up and shining brightly before I got out of bed. We had tea and then took the micro to the centro of El Tabo to walk around for a little bit. It was kind of funny having to fit the entire group of students on the micro, but not a big deal. Honestly, the centro was within walking distance of the campamento, but then again I guess I walk a lot more than most people. The centro is picturesque, right on the ocean, and windy. There were hardly any people walking around, and most places were closed, including the feria artesanal. I was disappointed, but it was nice to walk around for a bit. Unfortunately there were lots of mangy and gross looking wild dogs on the streets. I´ve never been a dog person, but it was sad how people have all these dogs and then never take care of them. We stopped in La Casa Cultural to watch a group of middle-aged and elderly people dancing the cueca and then continued walking. Combine a ghost town with a windy, cold beach town, add a little bit of forest, and that´s pretty much El Tabo.
The whole time I was wishing I could go running out here, but a few of the girls´moms who are chaperones won´t give me ´permission´to leave the campamento to go running by myself or with two other students who also like to run. I really wish people would stop infringing upon my freedom. It´s only the fifth day of the trip, but I am getting super annoyed with the way I can´t live my life exactly as I want, and that I haven´t been running in six days now.
Later in the afternoon we went to Isla Negra, one of Pablo Neruda´s three houses. It was very beautiful. He was a very eccentric man, and like La Chascona, this house reflects this. It is right on the Pacific with beautiful views. His boat is outside the house, and he´s buried behind it too. There are lots of random collections of everything from New Zealand art to beetles, shells, Venetian glass, pipes, miniature guitars, and so forth. I bought two books of his poetry in Spanish and so far am understanding most of what I read. My students have been very supportive of me trying to learn Spanish. They have taught me new words and chilenismos. One of my students is also a vegan, so we´ve been buying soy protein, fresh fruit, and vegetables each day since everyone else eats the same thi ng, which is some sort of meat. The other directors and some of the students are always joking around and trying to get me to eat meat or eggs.
After we got back to the campamento we were doing breathing / energy exercises with the music students. It´s difficult to explain but I´ll try. The point was to get everyone breathing and singing together to help with the sound of the choir. The other director learned it when he studied in Argentina. It´s sort of like music therapy with movement, meditation, and breathing exercises in a circle. While doing this, his instructions were in Spanish and we listened. Because the nature of the activity was very relaxing and meditative, I completely forgot he was speaking in Spanish. I could understand everything without needing to translate in my head or think too much about it. With the music we could express everything and language was no longer an issue. It was special beause although I feel like my Spanish has been improving, I´d never felt this comfortable with it. This group of music students and the directors have become sort of like a music family here and it´s amazing. The kids are great--so much different than the kids I´m used to working with back in the States. They want to learn, are respectful, and put forth a lot of effort. Leaving here will be so difficult because I love my job. I´m really fortunate the other directors wanted my help with the music program and asked me to come on the trip. Both of them have been really supportive of me.
Although I do wish we could be staying in the city of Santiago and doing more sightseeing, I am enjoying my time here.
written by  Sara Florecita on August 31, 2010 from El Tabo, Chile

i will always be a coffee addict at heart (jueves, 2 septiembre)
Today was a super busy day. We sang and played at a Methodist school for special (mentally retarded) students on the southern side of Santiago at 10am. There wasn´t much space on the stage and the jazz band was really crammed in there. I played tenor and alto sax today, and improvised on the new song they´d learned yesterday. (Yesterday was uneventful---we performed for a jardín infantil-kindergarten and preschool kids-went to Líder to get food, and returned to El Tabo for a rehearsal). I´m really enjoying playing the tenor sax again. The jazz band is really laid back and we play most of the music without sheet music, so I have to improvise a lot more, which is good practice. Compared to the jazz bands I´m used to playing with, it´s a lot more casual. No one sits or stands in any specific order, just wherever there is room on the stage. There´s not much sheet music, and I have to transpose the music we do have. It´s okay to play to play withoutt music because then the music has more soul, more emotion. Today I really got lost in the music and it felt great.
Playing for the special kids was interesting. A few of them were dancing around, clapping, and rocking during it. Others just kind of sat there with emotionless expressions on their faces. It brought back memories of when I worked at the Arc, which I don´t miss at all, but am glad I worked there because it changed my outlook on life. I could never work in a special school like that, but I really respect those who do. After we sang / played, we waited around for what seemed like an excessively long time before the bus came to pick us up to go to the Interscolar.
The Interscolar was at Universad Andrés Bello in a huge room which is really the gymnasium. Our performance went well. Out of twenty schools who had come from all areas of Chile, our school was ranked within the top three! Tomorrow we have to go back to compete against more schools to see where we´ll be ranked. I was kind of surprised we were in the top three because our choir is small and not evenly balanced (3 tenors, many sopranos and altos). We had some nice harmony parts in a really bluesy arrangement of ´Amazing Grace´ (which I am getting tired of from having to hear and practice it so many times). The kids are getting really good at pronouncing the words in English.
After the conference a local TV station interviewed the director and a few students, so our school choir also got to be on local TV. The kids were very excited about this. We also sang a celebratory encore on the streets, complete with a few upturned hats to collect pesos.
Then we went to the mall (the kids wanted to go so we went). Everyone else ate at a chicken/ burger place, but we found a Subway (!!) where I ordered a vegan sub. Subways in Chile don´t have spinach, but they do have acodos, corn, and ají, a spicy type of pepper. Then I found a Starbucks! Although I quit drinking coffee before I came to Chile in order to avoid caffeine withdrawals (coffee is rare in Chile, and strangely I don´t miss it a whole lot). Plus, it´s better for my health and for my wallet. I couldn´t resist the Starbucks, so I ordered a vanilla-hazelnut soy lattee. It was cold and rainy that day, so Starbucks was wonderful! My students have never heard of Starbucks, but when I went there, a lot of them were also ordering lattes or cappuccinos. Some of them took pictures of them in the Starbucks. It was kind of cool because Iquique doesn´t have a Starbucks (or any coffee shops for that matter), and my students and fellow directors asked me lots of questions about Starbucks and the coffee house scene in the US. I was able to share some aspects about that part of US culture with them. For them, coffee shops with live music is a completely new idea. Now many of my students want to visit the US to experience what an ´open mic night´is like. Strangely, I felt homesick for Theo´s and Cool Beanz back in Rock Island.
The other thing that was sort of funny but memorable is the experience my students had with the rain today. To understand this, remember that Iquique is in the desert and it never rains there. Many of my students had never seen or felt rain in their lives. Santiago is different, like Illinois climate but without snow. In Santiago it probably rains once or twice a week. As soon as it started raining my students got excited. When we got off the bus, the kids--all of whom are in high school--started dancing in the rain, jumping in puddles, and taking pictures. They asked why I wasn´t excited about the rain so I explained about the weather in the US.
On the way back to the campamento we listened to Bob Marley and the Beatles on the bus, and I wrote for a while. It has been an awesome day!!!
written by  Sara Florecita on September 2, 2010 from Santiago, Chile

yoga and sound healing up in the mountains (sabado, 18 septiembre)
Cusco, Peru
This morning I went to a yoga session outside up in the mountains, and then they did a traditional sound therapy session with Andean instruments. It was really nice. Yoga is a LOT harder than it looks. I enjoyed it but also struggled to do some of the poses. During parts of it my muscles were screaming because the workout was intense, which I wasn´t expecting. Somehow I´d always thought yoga would be relaxing and easy, but it´s not! They didn´t have enough yoga mats for everyone so I just tried to do my best using the ground. I´m not sure if it´s the thing for me or not, but I did enjoy the experience. I felt good afterwards because of all the stretching, and parts of it were very calming with the breeze going through the trees and flute music playing in the background. I think yoga might be something I want to stick with, because it seems really beneficial. Then we had a picnic of guacamole sandwiches, fruit, and cinnamon tea outside near Temple of the Moon.
After we ate we walked down to Cusco to the San Blas neighborhood where my hostel is. I showered, changed, and walked to Loreto, this long street with Incan walls on either side. I also visited Iglesia Santo Domingo where the courtyard of the monastery has the ruins of Qorikancha where the Quechua people used to worship the stars, Venus, the Milky Way, and the sun and moon. They didn´t believe in constellations, but they saw animals in the sky. The darker parts of the Milky Way were animals, and each animal had its own energy. Then the Spaniards came and colonized Peru and pretty much destroyed all of their beliefs. They built a monastery over their temple, and destroyed parts of the temple. It´s such a shame that many of their spiritual beliefs have been lost or altered because of the colonization.
Then I walked around some more, found a vegan / vegetarian restaurant called El Encuentro where I ordered broccoli, pepper, and tofu stir fry. I bought a few stones / crystals from a street vendor, and then got a massage. Here in Cusco, an hour massage only costs the equivalent of 13 US dollars.
I´m staying tonight in Cusco (same earthy hostel) and I´ll be here all day tomorrow. I think I´ll go see some more ruins and a salt flat. I´m going to take the overnight bus back tomorrow night and arrive in Iquique on Monday. I´ll be very sad to leave Cusco. I really like it and feel like it´s this amazing vortex of spiritual energy. It´s very refreshing and calming, and in many ways feels more like a home than anywhere I´ve actually lived.
written by  Sara Florecita on September 18, 2010 from Cusco, Peru

four worlds and enjoying the present moment (martes, 14 septiembre)
Cusco, Peru
It has definitely been an interesting experience in Cusco so far. The day I arrived in Cusco I wasn´t feeling great. My stomach was bothering me, and the person I had been travelling with turned out not to be the person I thought he was, so that was a bit frustrating and uncomfortable. I´ve often wondered why people have to act like someone they´re not, and I wish people could just be themselves. However, I´ve also realized that isn´t my problem and I´m not going to solve anything worrying about someone else´s motives.
I checked into a hostel (Hospedaje Miradorcito) in the San Blas neighborhood and walked down to the SAS office to pay for the rest of my Sacred Valley / Machu Picchu trip. On the way I met a painter who was selling some of her paintings. I talked to her for a while and had a hard time making up my mind. I finally decided on a watercolor of one of the steep, winding streets of the San Blas neighborhood. After checking in with SAS, I got some mate de coca and wandered through some of the markets where I bought a colorful bag made out of alpaca wool.
After stopping at the pharmacy for some meds, I took a mystical tour of the ruins (Qenq´o, Templo de la Luna, Templo del Mono, Puka Pukara, and a few others I don´t remember the names) on horseback. The horse I rode was a Peruvian Paso, and our guide was a Quechua guy and he explained all about the ruins and spiritual views of the Quechua (Incan) people. It was nice to ride a horse again. The Incans believed in spirituality through nature, and I thought it was very fascinating and peaceful. They believed in animal spirits and each thing in the world, whether it be animal, plant, rock, earth, sky, thunder, etc, had its own spirit. They believed in the four worlds, each represented by an animal (puma, condor, snake, and llama), and each had its own energy and represented different things. They thought the mountains were gods, and believed in appreciating the present moment rather than worrying about the future or dwelling on the past.
After the tour of the ruins I was hot, tired, and dehydrated. I took a nap for about an hour and then got up to have a massage. Massages in Cusco are really cheap compared to the US, and I thought it would make me feel better. I got a massage for an hour and fifteen minutes, and it was a full-body Novo Inka massage, which is a massage with more pressure and it ends with a hot stone massage. After the massage I felt amazing and so much more relaxed. I ate dinner at a curry place on Tandapata near the hostel, but still was having a few stomach issues.
Overall I really like Cusco so far. I like all of the artisan markets, the local food, the cobbled streets, and street vendors. Hopefully I get over this stomach thing soon. Even so, I love Cusco. I´ve never been anywhere like it.
written by  Sara Florecita on September 14, 2010 from Cusco, Peru

el valle sagrado, machu picchu, y viento (jueves, 16 septiembre)
Aguas Calientes, Peru
Yesterday I woke up early to go on my tour of the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. I was feeling a lot better at that point and was determined to not miss out on something I´d been planning and looking forward to for such a long time.
The Sacred Valley was beautiful. I went with a small tour group because according to Peruvian law, everyone who visits Machu Picchu has to go on a guided tour. We stopped in the towns of Pisac, where there are ruins, terraces, and a GIANT art and crafts market. I bought two CDs of traditional Andean music and talked to the shopkeeper for a while as I decided which CDs I wanted. I was able to negotiate the price and end up paying about US $6 for two CDs. Then I met a painter named Muña who had studied at Bellas Artes in Cusco. I had already bought a painting of Cusco yesterday, but one of his oil paintings caught my eye. It was of Machu Picchu in shades of oranges and black, and there was a condor flying in the sky. After negotiating the price I decided to buy a second painting. Art is original, and I felt if I didn´t buy the painting I´d regret it. It is probably the favorite thing I´ve bought in Perú so far.
Our tour group ate lunch in the town of Urubamba. It was interesting talking to everyone. There was a couple from Australia, a guy from Japan, another couple from Italy, and a chef from Lima who was living in France. We had a buffet lunch and we ate outside overlooking the Urubamba River. Some Andean flute players serenaded us. I really enjoyed the vegetable soup and chips and salsa. I tried chicha, which is a type of drink made of corn. I´ve heard it referred to as corn beer, but it tasted more like juice. And it was purple and sweet and nothing like beer. Chicha is about 1-3% alcoholic.
Then we continued to Ollantaytambo where we saw more ruins (Temple of the Sun), and took the train to Aguas Calientes. On the train I sat next to a guy named Ryan from Portland and we talked for most of the train ride. The train went past Verónica, the tallest mountain in the area. It was a beautiful ride on the train, and there were windows in the roof of the train. At this time, I felt like the mountains really were gods, just like what the Quechua people believe.
We arrived in Aguas Calientes where I checked into el Hostal Viajeros, which was really nice. I got my own room on the third floor with its own private bathroom. Aguas Calientes is a really beautiful, picturesque town, and I enjoyed it . There were markets and lots of little shops and restaurants all set into the hills there. I bought a pair of onyx earrings, one with the sun and the other with the moon. I found a quartz crystal ball that was calling to me, and I bought it from a girl working there who couldn´t have been more than nine years old. I also found a necklace made out of some kind of stone...I´m not sure what kind it is, but I liked the energy it had. Back at the hostel, I met a few of the other tourists who´d be joining me the following day (a German couple and two women from Australia), had some pumpkin soup, and went to the market to buy some snacks to avoid paying overpriced prices at Machu Picchu the following day. After writing in my journal, I went to bed early because I had to wake up at 5am the following day.
Waking up at 5:10am wasn´t so bad, especially since I was looking forward to Machu Picchu. On the bus ride up, I talked to my guide, Alberto, who told me about more places in the Cusco area that he recommended visiting. There was this sort of mist in the mountains as we drove up the winding, heavily-forested road. Machu Picchu was incredible. I got to see it as the sun was coming up behind the mountain. I took a tour of the ruins and then went hiking around the area for about 7 hours. I walked to Inktipuntu (Sun´s gate) and the Incan Bridge. I also saw their different temples. One of them they used for meditation where the groups of people would chant. The walls of the temple had little square grooves in the walls, and each person faced one of them and chanted into it. With everyone chanting you could feel the whole temple vibrating. It was neat. I got sunburned, but not too badly.
When I returned to Aguas Calientes I found a Mexican restaurant where I ordered some guacamole, hot salsa, and vegan nachos. The restaurant wasn´t that busy so the two waiters talked to me and sat at my table while I ate. We spoke in Spanish, and they talked about the Cusco area, Peru, and their culture. They were really nice, and it was good to speak in Spanish. The Peruvians are a LOT easier to understand than the Chileans, and I really feel my Spanish is improving. On the train / bus back to Cusco I met two guys from Ireland, two guys from England, and a Swiss couple, and we got to talking. We agreed to meet up for a few pints back in Cusco.
When I got back to Cusco I got my backpack out of the storage unit of the hostel and told my co-worker I wasn´t comfortable traveling with him and was going to find a different hostel. He was really rude and still wouldn´t own up to anything or apologize. He said a lot of really hurtful things and started screaming at me, saying it was my fault and I hurt his feelings. I told him I was going to travel around Cusco by myself, and I left. I still have no idea where he is or what he´s doing, but I don´t care. I don´t need to be around people like that. It makes me upset that people often aren´t who they seem to be.
My trip has been SO MUCH better after that. I found a really nice earthy / hippie kind of hostel down the street in San Blas called Casa de la Gringa I and checked in. The people working there were really nice. It´s decorated nicely and they gave me my own little room. Here, the rooms don´t have numbers, but they have names. Mine is called ´Wind´ and it is painted in shades of aqua. You have to climb up a little ladder and across a catwalk kind of thing to get to my room. My hostel is decorated with paintings of the sun, moon, different rocks, crystals, and plants, and it has a mystical feel. I really like it, and have enjoyed the rest of Cusco so far.
I met up with the people from the train at Paddy´s Irish Pub near the Plaza de Armas. The place had stopped serving food, so I ate at a Thai place in the San Blas neighborhood near my hostel where I enjoyed spicy curry. The waitress was really nice and I talked to her in Spanish for a while. After that I met up with the two Irish guys, the two Brits, and a couple from Switzerland at the Irish pub, but by that point I didn´t feel like drinking, so I just hung out there for a while and we talked about Machu Picchu and travelling.
Then I walked back up the narrow, cobbled streets to my hostel for a good night´s sleep. My hostel had a sign up announcing the next San Pedro journey. I didn´t know much about San Pedro so I asked the guy working at the hostel. It turns out tomorrow will be the next San Pedro spiritual journey, so I decided I want to try it. I have no idea what it´ll be like, but it´s supposed to be healing and a spiritual experience. And right now after the past few days, it seems like it´s an experience that´s meant to be. Sometimes I can be impulsive about things, jumping into experiences head first, but the energy here seems right for it, calm and peaceful, so I figured why not. As for the present moment, sleep is beckoning me from my quiet little room called Wind...
written by  Sara Florecita on September 16, 2010 from Aguas Calientes, Peru

el regalo del cacto san pedro y templo de la luna donde nací de nuevo (viernes, 17 septiembre)
Cusco, Peru
This morning I woke up at 8:30 to go on a spiritual journey up in the mountains where you drink the juice of the magical San Pedro cactus. It´s really hard to describe but I´ll try anyway. I didn´t know much about it at all, but I read a little bit and found out it´s a plant used for spiritual reflection and healing. It isn´t exactly legal anywhere besides Peru, but it is an Incan / Quechua tradition that people have been using for centuries. The juice from the cactus is mind-altering and somewhat hallucinogenic, and it´s supposed to bring insight, healing, comfort, and spiritual perspectives of life and the world.
The people who run the hostel drove me and another traveller, Lee, up to the mountains near Templo de la Luna (Incan ruin) where they have a house. There were two other people (Brett and Andy) who were also drinking the cactus, and two others (Renee and Dave) who were there too. Outside there is a courtyard with mats and umbrellas and we sat outside and drank the San Pedro cactus juice. At first it was nauseating, and after about 40 minutes you´re supposed to throw up (the plant is poisonous so it´s a good thing to throw up after it´s been in your system for 40 minutes or so).
There were 4 of us drinking it and a few people from the hostel there to make sure everything was okay. At first after I threw up a little bit, I felt this intense paranoia, but it only lasted for about 10 minutes. I kept shaking the whole time, but the Incans believe the shaking is just the release of energy that needs to come out. After that I was still shaking, but felt really, really mellow. We laid around on mats in the sun, which was nice because there was a slight breeze and it was warm and nice out.
I felt really in tune with the universe and the world around me. The effects were really spiritual and you could feel a connection with everything around you. You could feel the energy of different rocks, plants, crystals, etc. At one point we lit a small fire and just watched the flames and smoke dancing around in the air, enjoying the aesthetics and healing smoke. Time just seemed to slow down, in fact, time stopped existing. I could just enjoy and soak in the present moment. I felt like I spend too much time worrying about and thinking about the negative things in life, instead of enjoying the simple but beautiful things all around us. I laid on my back and watched the leaves of the tree above me dancing in the wind. I looked at these orange flowers and could really appreciate the miracle of a single flower. I listened to the sound of the wind accompanying the meditative music playing from the house.
The San Pedro cactus is a borderline hallucinogenic plant, and for part of the time I thought that my hand had turned into a desert. I could see the sand and the veins in my hand had turned into different roads. Then the desert turned into organic material that was the same thing as the earth, the ground, the trees, etc. It was this feeling of complete connectivity and unity. It was weird, but interesting and very relaxing. Then I thought this giant cactus was hugging me and talking to me, but it felt very calming.
I had some interesting conversations with the other people on the San Pedro journey. Usually when you meet new people, the first things you ask are where you´re from and where you´re going. Here, none of that seemed to matter, just the present moment in which we had come together. I felt like oftentimes people rush through life without taking time to enjoy the smaller but equally important things. Here we were, strangers from different walks of life, united together in the experience of San Pedro. One of the people in particular seemed very different than myself, but from the cactus I learned to appreciate everyone, regardless of their different views, and to embrace them for who they are, to accept everyone. Before San Pedro, the idea of accepting others seemed like a nice idea, but something I couldn´t realistically do. We talked about different places, astrology, time, and balance.
At one point I looked in the mirror and saw my eyes. My pupils were enormous and there was almost no blue part left. I´d gotten more sunburn, but it didn´t matter because as I looked in the mirror I realized I felt happy, and it really didn´t matter what I looked like. I liked the person who was staring back at me in the mirror, and I realized I was accepting myself exactly as I am. This was probably the first time I´ve felt a hundred percent comfortable with the person I am / the person I´ve become. As crazy as it may sound, the cactus showed me that the only real thing in this world is love. Everything else may or may not be an illusion, a matter of perspective.
Simon (the hostel owner´s son) and I walked to Templo de la Luna, which is an Incan temple. It was a little windy and just starting to get dark, but we climbed up the rocks and stood in the wind. Then I went down into the cave, and Simon explained about the puma and snake carved into the entrance to the cave. I said that there was another cave like this I´d been to before. He asked, ´maybe you were here before.´After descending into the cave, I realized I HAD been here before, the day I came up here on horseback. But now it seemed so completely different. I could see the rays of the moonlight shining into the cave and illuminating the table the Incans had used as an altar. It felt like a completely different place, yet familiar at the same time. As I emerged from the cave into the light, I I felt like I was being reborn again. Something echoed in my ears that a co-worker had told me years ago: ¨This moment is the first day of the rest of your life.¨ I was seeing the world in a different, more beautiful way, and I felt completely happy.
At about 6pm the hostel´s driver took me back to the hostel where I showered, changed, and walked around the corner to another curry restaurant called Korma Sutra where I met the two guys from England for dinner. I tried to explain what the effects of the cactus were like, but I don´t think I was able to clearly put it into words. It was nice talking to them though, but talking to them made me feel really homesick for Oxford.
After dinner at the curry place, I went back up to the mountain (the people up there had invited me to come spend the night up there, watch the stars, and sit around the fire), so I took a cab back up there and brought the pizzas the rest of the travellers up there had ordered. It was beautiful at night, and we were all still high from the cactus. We continued talking, and I had some garlic bread and water. They have different rooms travellers can stay in, and I slept in a room on the second floor. It was a little chilly but I´d brought extra clothes. I slept pretty well that night.
I realize this whole thing probably sounds really weird, and most people reading this probably can´t relate, but I wanted to try to explain my experiences...at the very least so I could look back and remember them.
written by  Sara Florecita on September 17, 2010 from Cusco, Peru

más ruinas incas y las calles de cusco (domingo, 19 septiembre)
I was a bit sad to wake up this morning, realizing that today would be my last day (for a while at least) in Cusco. I showered, packed my things into my backpack, and turned in the keys to Wind, which had been my home for the past three days. Walking out of the hostel I felt overwhelmed by sadness, but then I realized it was silly to feel sad. I wouldn´t be leaving Cusco until later tonight. I was still here, and I should enjoy it as much as I could!
I walked down to the SAS travel agency which had booked my trip to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. I was hoping to go mountain biking out to Moray and possibly Maras, but there weren´t any mountain biking trips available that day. I decided to go on a tour with a small group to the ruins of Chinchero and Moray, and to see the salt flats of Maras.
In Chinchero we had great views of the ruins and the terraces where the Incans used to grow potatoes. The town of Chinchero was interesting too. We got to see how the native Quechua people spin wool, make the dyes for it, and dye the alpaca wool. They showed us the difference between alpaca and llama wool, and they explained about different types of plants and how they are used. The lady there passed out mate de muña to try. Muña is a plant used to treat stomachaches, altitude sickness, and to provide more energy.
We then got back on the bus to go to Moray. Moray was really neat, and I´m glad I saw it. No one is sure exactly when or why Moray was built, but they think it was to experiment with agriculture. Moray is a multi-level circular terrace. The farther you go towards the center, the deeper the terraces are. They say there is this lots of energy at the center, so we climbed down to the middle of the terrace. Instead of normal steps, there were slabs of stone stuck diagonally into the terraces, which made climbing down a challenge. In the middle, I laid down in the grass, and definitely felt the energy there. It was a calm type of energy, but refreshing and revitalizing. It was really neat. Then we had to climb back up the terraces to get back on the bus.
I had no idea what Maras was or what it looked like, so I was in for a total shock when we arrived. Looking down the hill there are all these salt pools in bright shades of white. I have never seen anything like it and it´s incredibly difficult to describe. The salt flats are built into the hillside, and they are bright and beautiful.
Once back in Cusco I walked around the markets for a while, visited an internet cafe to check my email, and headed back up to the San Blas area. As I was walking along I saw the girl who´d done my massage on Tuesday, and she offered me a deal to get a manicure for about US $3, so I went with her back to the spa/ massage place. Even though I´m not a big manicure person, every so often it can be nice. Her friend, Ana, did my nails and painted them dark, metallic purple. We spoke in Spanish about different places in Perú and our families the whole time, and it was nice. The part of the building where she did my nails was outside in this courtyard with plants. Downstairs these guys were playing the guitar and flute, which was nice to listen to.
After that I wandered around San Blas and talked to some street vendors selling different types of stones. This one guy had this really pretty pink stone that I´d never seen before. I liked the energy it had. He said it was a pink opal, and it was pink because of the pressure in the volcanic mountains where it was found. Then he asked what my birthday was and I told him June 3. He said since I´m a Gemini, this is one of ´my´stones and that the energy it has should resonate well with me. I asked what kinds of properties the stone had and he explained about it being good for recognizing and balancing your emotions as well as perceiving the emotions of others around you. It was expensive but I couldn´t resist. I ended up talking the price down to about half of what he wanted.
It was just starting to get dark when I wandered into The Muse, a restaurant just around the corner from my hostel. The sign in front said it offers vegetarian food, so I decided to try it. I ordered a mulled wine, Yuquitas (yuca is a type of potato but it´s a little bit sweet) with honey, guacamole, and ají, and vegetarian curry. The yuquitas were delicious, and while the curry wasn´t as good as the curry I´d had at NKo on Thursday night, it still was a great meal. There was another single female traveller eating at The Muse, so we talked for a while before I had to walk down to The Marquesse, the hotel next to the SAS office where they store people´s luggage.
Víctor, guy working at the hotel got my backpack for me and helped me hail a cab. He said some of the taxis in Cusco are not legitimate and can be dangerous or try to rip you off. He stopped three of them before finding a cab that was safe. While waiting for the cab we talked briefly. The Marquesse seemed like a nice hotel, and it made me think of how someday if I ever have a lot more money than I do now, it would be nice to stay there. As I got in the cab, I thought about how much I´d enjoyed Perú.
I bought my ticket for the twelve hour bus ride back to Arequipa. I thought about how fantastic my trip had been, and how most of it was for reasons I hadn´t even thought about before...the spiritual gift of the San Pedro cactus, trying yoga, having been tested by uncomfortable situations but learning from them, meeting new people, self-discovery, healing, and learning about things I never knew even existed.

the sun is shining and it´s a beautiful day (jueves, 9 septiembre)
Today was another early dismissal due to the Bicentennial celebrations going on this week, so I walked around downtown Iquique for a while and enjoyed the golden sun. I had a few errands to do--buying toothpaste and travel-sized shampoo--but while walking past the piercing studio in the markets, I impulsively decided to get my bellybutton pierced because I saw a lime green ring that I liked. Plus, I missed having my piercing, which had accidentally been torn out a long time ago while I´d been changing clothes. It didn´t really hurt, and on the bright side, piercings are a lot cheaper here. On the way back to my House I saw one of my former Quatro Medio students on the bus so I talked to him for a while. When I got home I went on a nice long run along the beaches before showering and packing the rest of my things into my backpack. I hung out with Santiago and Manuel for a while near Guayquique before heading downtown to meet another teacher at the school to head to Perú. We ate at El Tercer Ojito, which is a new-agey vegetarian-friendly restaurant near the school. I had vegetable curry which was delicious. Now headed off to Perú! I can´t wait!
written by  Sara Florecita on September 9, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

la ciudad blanca (sabado, 11 septiembre)
Arequipa, Peru
Yesterday morning I crossed the border into Tacna, Perú. I had to take a colectivo from Arica to Tacna, and the guy at the border gave me a slightly difficult time before stamping my passport and allowing me to enter Perú. At first it didn´t seem much different than Chile. Tacna was just a dusty border town that looked a lot like Iquique minus the beaches. When we arrived we were hungry so we took a cab to the downtown area of Tacna to this really good Italian restaurant. I ordered a vegan pizza which was awesome!
After lunch we headed back to the bus station, where I met a couple from Argentina and this guy from Scotland. I felt pretty useful because I was able to help translate for the Scotsman. The bus ride took longer than expected, but it wasn´t awful because at least I was able to read on the bus.
Finally we arrived in Arequipa around 8pm. I took a cab to the Plaza de Armas, and after walking just a little bit found a pretty nice hostel called Le Foyer. The rooms are arranged over a second-story courtyard type of place with plants. For dinner I ate at this place overlooking the Plaza de Armas, but after that felt pretty tired so I went to bed.
Today I woke up, showered, got dressed, and went to a cafe where I drank maté de coca. Then I walked to el Museo Santuario which focuses on Incan rituals regarding human sacrifice and death. Juanita, the Incan ice princess, was on display there. It was interesting learning about how the Incans believed it was an honor to be the ´chosen one´to be sacrificed to communicate with the gods. I learned about their rituals and traditions, and enjoyed the visit.
Then we walked around the markets. I saw a sign advertising for ´jugo de rana´and blurted out, `I wonder what that is,´thinking that it couldn´t possibly be what it translated to...frog juice. Unfortunately, the co-worker I´d been traveling with decided to order some. I was so upset when I saw the lady behind the counter pull a live frog out of a container, whack it to death on the counter, and drop it into the blender. At that point I had to walk away because I felt completely angry and sickened by the treatment of that poor frog. My co-worker didn´t seem to think it was a big deal, but all I could remember was that frog´s beady little eyes and how I wished I could have rescued him before such a brutal death. It made me miss Louie and all the other amphibians I´ve had as pets. It also made me miss Kyle because I know he´d never order frog juice in front of me.
After the markets I ate lunch at a place called Fez near the Plaza de Armas where I ordered falafel and a coca sour. It was amazing, but it made me remember the awesome falafel I bought from a street vendor in Prague (which to this day is still the best falafel I´ve ever had). We got on the bus to Chivay. The bus ride itself wasn´t bad, and the altitude didn´t really bother me. I read for a while but mostly watched the scenery of the Colca Valley. When we got off the bus I was annoyed because people were knocking into me and not even apologizing. Sometimes I get claustrophobic in small spaces with lots of people and noise. As soon as we stepped off the bus we were bothered by pesky vendors trying to make us buy different things and tell us about their hostel. The place we ended up finding was called Hospedaje Rumi Wasi and they had a pet alpaca living in the courtyard. I walked around the streets for a while and bought some potato kebabs from a street vendor, which were really good, especially since they came with ají salsa. We played pool at this place, which was fun because I hadn´t played pool in a while. It definitely made me miss all the times Mike and I used to play pool, but hopefully there will be more of those times at some point. We ended up eating dinner at this Irish pub where I ordered vegan pizza.
The plan is to head to Cabanaconde tomorrow to see the condors. I´m anxious to get to Cusco though. I can´t wait for my Sacred Valley / Machu Picchu trip! Chivay is nice, but a bit too small for my taste. I appreciate the beauty of this place, but I´m definitely a big city person at heart.
written by  Sara Florecita on September 11, 2010 from Arequipa, Peru

aguas termales, caminando en el cañón, y pachamama (domingo, 12 septiembre)
Chivay, Peru
This morning I woke up early with the plans of going for a run. However, I´d barely gotten down the street before my nose started bleeding, so I had to head back to the hostel. I wasn´t happy about that, especially since the altitude wasn´t affecting anything else. I was breathing fine, nothing hurt, and now I couldn´t run because of a stupid bloody nose.
I walked to the hot springs at Calera, which was about a half hour walk from Chivay. The landscape along the road was really pretty. The hot springs themselves were great, maybe a little bit too hot especially since the sun was extremely bright in the skies above. I had thought it would be a natural hot spring, but there were three man-made hot springs there. It was nice and relaxing, but there wasn´t enough space to swim around like I´d wanted. I back floated around the pool for a while before drying off, taking a taxi back to Chivay, where I showered and packed my stuff into my backpack.
Lunch was okay. I went to a traditional Peruvian restaurant which served rather bland food. I asked for salsa de ají and the lady came back with a plate of ketchup. She never did bring the tea I ordered, and she added up the bill wrong, but at least she undercharged me.
I took a taxi to Yanque, a small town on the way to Cabanaconde. There was a museum there dedicated to canyon life. Although it was small, it was pretty interesting. However, there is absolutely nothing else to do in Yanque, so I took a walk along the canyon, which had really pretty views. I wanted to walk around more, but the person I was travelling with was having altitude-related problems so we turned around and went back to Yanque. Since the bus wasn´t coming for a while, we took a combi (bus) back to Chivay. The combi was more like a van, but with twenty something people stuffed into it. At first I thought this was amusing, but the ride was bumpy and dusty, and some of the people in the van smelled awful.
Then we took the bus to Cabanaconde. It was about a three-hour bus ride, and at first there weren´t enough seats so I had to stand up in the aisle. I didn´t really mind that much since half the time I have to stand on the micros in Iquique to get to or from school. I was able to read for a while. When I finally did get a seat, I talked to a Peruvian guy and a girl in the Peace Corps in Spanish. It made me think of how I´ve always wanted to join the Peace Corps and how someday I probably will.
It was night when I arrived in Cabanaconde, and it seemed like a really quiet town. Again, I felt a little confined in such a small town. Although it was beautiful, there wasn´t a whole lot to do there. The hostel seemed okay, and I found a restaurant called Pachamama (mother earth), which was advertising a vegetarian menu. I ordered a plate of chips and guacamole, which was awesome. The chips were more like pita chips than taco chips, which was kind of strange but not bad. We talked to a French guy, Mateo, at another pub in Cabanaconde. Apparently there are lots of French travellers in Perú. Mateo said that lots of people are leaving France either permanently or for extended travel, and that South America appeals to them because it´s so much cheaper.
However, tomorrow I have to wake up insanely early to catch the bus at 6am to go to Cruz del Condor for some birdwatching. Early mornings are never any fun, but I hope it´ll be worth it.
written by  Sara Florecita on September 12, 2010 from Chivay, Peru

travelling...restlessness, and the first touch of homesickness (viernes, 24 septiembre)
I never thought I´d feel homesick but I do. Perú and the experiences there have changed me. Honestly, if I hadn´t tried the San Pedro cactus, I probably would have thought seriously about getting a refund for my return flight to Chicago and started job-hunting down here. Since going to Cusco and having the combination of experiences I had, I have mellowed out a lot, become more accepting. It sounds cheesy but I really was re-born when I emerged from that cave in Templo de la Luna. It´s like a butterfly coming out of its chrysalis...it´s still the same exact creature, but it looks different. And it´s now capable of flying.
However, sometimes we spend our whole lives trying to get far away from where we first started, only to end up in the same exact place after all. While not physically in the same place, the mind starts to draw parallels and see connections, and you realize that some things remain constant no matter what. I realized no matter where I am, I will always have the overwhelming desire to travel, and I will always feel slightly saddened by the idea that even if you spend your whole life travelling, it´s impossible to see the entire world. I´m restless by nature and don´t like staying in one place too long, but maybe it´s relative. Since I came back from Perú I have tried to slow down and truly enjoy the present moment, because perhaps that´s all we´ll ever have. Maybe they were right, that the present moment is all that exists and the past is just an illusion, a far-behind memory that only exists thanks to the lingering memories we hold onto.
Part of me wishes I could relax and enjoy Iquique (where I am right now) without always seeming to wonder ´what next?´or making up plans for the future. I already have a long list of places I want to go and things I want to do. I don´t know why I can´t just be happy to be here right now because the present moment is a miracle, without my mind filling itself up with thoughts of future adventures.
Travelling is contagious. Once you go to just one place, it opens up doors. You learn about other places you never knew existed. You want to try new things and experience the most you can. You meet people who change your life in various ways--some are subtle and others are so important that you can barely conceive of your life had you not met those people, even if the time you spent with them was brief.
I also feel homesick after my experiences in Perú because while I was there, I felt like the only real thing in life is love, and I´m 5,000 some miles away from the guy I love and who loves me. Sure, I am surrounded by things I love, such as the beauty of the ocean, the splendid rays of sunlight, being able to run, write, sing, etc. But the one person I know I´m meant to be with is back in Illinois and at the end of the day I often feel lonely because no one here understands me and gets me the way Kyle does. Today is his birthday so I especially missed him, but it was good hearing his voice again on the phone.
Today has been a lot of ups and downs, but at least it ended on a good note and I´m feeling pretty happy now. The government still hasn´t sorted out our visa situations. They have my passport and I´m supposed to get it back, as well as receive my visa, on Monday. As long as I get it back before I go to Bolivia in a week and a half, and as long as they don´t lose it, I´m okay with it...but knowing the Chilean government, you never know. The only unpleasant thing was having to wait around the regional government building for a few hours.
After that I ate lunch at my regional coordinator´s house and met her husband and mother-in-law from Argentina. We talked for a while and then I had to go to the post office to send Kyle´s birthday present home. That was an interesting experience. I had to get everything inspected by the customs people and the whole thing took almost an hour. One of the guys working there was super nice, but the other one treated me so rudely I almost felt like crying. It was worse because the whole conversation was in Spanish which was slightly frustrating. Although my Spanish is improving, there are still moments when I feel like I don´t understand anything at all, which is really upsetting since I´ve tried so hard to learn. Anyway, they said that anything that is made from a tree cannot be sent through the mail, so I wasn´t able to send any of the artwork (which was made of wood) in the mail. Part of me felt like asking why they allowed me to leave all the things made of paper in the box, and why I could send it all in a cardboard box since those are made from a tree too, but I didn´t think being a smart ass would get me anywhere, and I really didn´t want them to confiscate anything.
I wandered around part of the centro I hadn´t been to before and found a few interesting little markets and shops. When I got back home, the electricity was out, so that wasn´t much fun, especially since I was planning on doing my Spanish homework online.
At 7:30 I was supposed to meet some co-workers at a Chinese restaurant. The school was going to treat everyone to dinner, but when I got there I was informed that they had either changed the time to 9:30 or accidentally told me the wrong time. I ended up not eating at the Chinese restaurant because I had plans to meet a friend and I wanted to call Kyle since today was his birthday. After meeting up with Víctor to go over ideas for the tattoo I´m getting tomorrow (I´m going to get a half-sleeve on my left arm, but in three different sessions), I found a cheap call center I could call from. It was good hearing his voice again and getting to talk for a bit, and by the time I got home I was in a pretty good mood.
written by  Sara Florecita on September 24, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

cruz del cóndor y mucho tiempo en el bus (lunes, 13 septiembre)
Cabanaconde, Peru
This morning I woke up insanely early just as the rays of sun were beginning to filter through the windows. The bus was supposed to leave at 6:30 for Cruz del Cóndor, but when I went to turn in the keys at the hostel´s front desk, the lady working there informed me that the bus wasn´t coming until 9:30 am. I ended up eating breakfast of mate de coca, bread, and jam in the hostel, which actually had a pretty interestingly decorated dining room. I looked through the book exchange shelf and found a travel guide to Bolivia, where I´m planning on going in October.
While waiting for the bus I talked to some other travellers, so at least the time passed quickly. The bus ride was really bumpy. At one point the bus went down the wrong road and had to do a two-point turn to get headed back in the right direction. At first it was really weird because the road was right on a cliff and there were no guardrails, and the road itself was pretty narrow, but then I started laughing because only in Perú would this happen without people freaking out that the bus was going to go over the cliff.
Cruz del Cóndor is really pretty. There are mountains all around and the sun was bright and beautiful. It is a lookout point to watch the condors as they soar over the valleys and peaks. There were vendors there selling all sorts of things. I talked to some of the artists and bought a necklace, bracelet, some earrings made of silver and serpentina (aka ¨the Machu Picchu stone¨because it´s really commonly found in the mountains of Perú). Then I saw a lone condor gliding in circles over the lookout point. It was just circling gracefully around and around above us. I tried to take a picture but it didn´t turn out well. It sort of reminded me of how my family and I used to go down to Starved Rock to watch the bald eagles.
For a while I sat on the ledge overlooking the mountains, thinking and enjoying the scenery and sun. Then the bus came and I got back on to head back to Chivay. In Chivay we found a buffet lunch restaurant. The food was really good and there were surprisingly a lot of vegan options in the buffet. Peruvian food is so much better than Chilean food. It has a lot more flavor and tends to be more spicy.
Then I took the bus back to Arequipa, where I got to spend a little bit of time in town before the bus departed for Cusco. I got a vanilla-hazelnut soy latte at a place called Cusco Coffee Company and walked around looking in different shops. I ate in the falafel place before taking a cab back to the bus station for a very long and uncomfortable overnight bus to Cusco...
written by  Sara Florecita on September 13, 2010 from Cabanaconde, Peru

back in Iquique (sabado, 4 septiembre)
Yesterday we had our final presentation for the Interscolar in Santiago. The choir sang well but didn´t win, but we did get an honorable mention award for being the choir with the most emotion in the music and stage presence. Before the presentation there were tons of people crowded into the auditorium and there was barely room to move. I´ve always felt borderline claustrophobic in small spaces crammed with lots of people, and I started to have a bit of an anxiety attack. Travelling with the choir and orchestra had been fun, but I was craving ´me time´by that point. During the trip I had constantly been surrounded by other people, and I was really needing some peace and quiet, as well as personal space. Fortunately I was able to relax a little bit once we sat down in the auditorium and the different choirs started singing.
After the presentation was over, we got back on the bus to head straight back to Iquique. The bus ride wasn´t bad, but it seemed really long since I´d already finished both of the books I´d brought with. I slept a lot on the bus and read a little bit of Neruda´s poetry.
This afternoon we finally got back to Iquique, and by then I was badly in need of running since I hadn´t had the chance to run at all the past week, and I had all this excess energy I needed to get rid of. As soon as Patricia dropped me off at my House, I changed clothes and took off on a long run. Runner´s high settled in almost immediately and I enjoyed the run. After running I had to type up my Spanish homework and email it to my tutor. I met up with a co-worker to plan out parts of the trip to Perú, where we´re going next week during vacations. Then I ate vegan sushi and wandered around the beach for a while before going home for the night. It´s definitely good to be back in Iquique. The choir trip was fun and I´ll never forget the experiences I had this past week.
written by  Sara Florecita on September 4, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

the weekend went by way too quickly (domingo, 26 septiembre)
It has definitely been a pretty good weekend. Yesterday I slept in until about 11 when my host brother woke me up by telling me that there were people downstairs I should meet. I took an icy shower since it seems like my host family has no intentions of fixing the hot water heater anytime in the near future. Then I went downstairs to meet my host family´s aunt, uncle, and two cousins. We ate lunch (well, breakfast in my case) and it was pretty funny because everyone was making fun of each other, including me. I felt like part of the family.
Then I took a colectivo to Víctor, my tattoo artist´s house. It´s weird how sometimes the colectivo drivers are nice, but other times they don´t even talk. The guy yesterday was very friendly and asked a lot of questions about why I was here and what the States are like. It was a mostly sunny day and warm compared to the cloudy days we´ve been having here. When I got to Víctor´s place we walked to the downtown area of town to make copies of the design, and I met a few of his friends, who seemed pretty nice.
Today I got a turtle on the inside of my left arm right above my elbow. By next Saturday I will have a half-sleeve, but I´m getting it done in a few different sessions. It hurt a bit worse than the other tattoos I´ve gotten, but I was really happy with how it turned out. The colors are really bright and I definitely like it. I´m currently working on drawings for the rest of the design, which will include a lotus (to represent spring), a hazel leaf (summer) and a holly leaf (winter), the sun, the moon, and a butterfly, as well a wind design to connect everything and a water/wave design to connect the turtle and lotus.
After getting the tattoo we went back to the store where Ernesto works to hang out for a bit, and then I went home. On the way home, the colectivo broke down, and the driver had to give me my 550 pesos back so I could take another colectivo the rest of the way back home. The colectivo system here is super efficient, and part of me wonders why nowhere in the US has adopted such a system.
When I got home, my host family was eating cake, so I joined them at the table, even though I didn´t eat the cake (it had eggs and milk products in it). After that we were all singing karaoke in the living room until super late. After their aunt, uncle, and their children went to bed, I had a few beers with my host brother and cousin. I didn´t go to bed until pretty late, but then again, I had no reason to wake up early today.
Today I also got to sleep in, which was nice. At about 11 I got up and checked my email, worked on my Spanish assignment, and tried to motivate myself to go running. I love running, but sometimes I get really bored running in Iquique. The beach is pretty much the only good place to go running here, and it isn´t quite big enough for the longer distances I prefer, so I usually have to turn around a few times or run in giant circles, which gets kind of boring. Today was also kind of gray and dull outside, which didn´t motivate me that much. Finally I stopped being lazy and started running. I enjoyed the run I took, and was out for almost two hours. I really need to be more motivated with running, especially since the marathon is in a little over two months from now. I´ve never had much of a problem being motivated to run every day, but even though the beach is nice, I´m tired of only running along the beaches. That is one thing I really miss about Santiago as well as Rock Island. Both places had good places to enjoy a nice long run.
After running I took (another) cold shower and headed downstairs to eat. More of the family was over, and they were cooking food on the grill. I enjoyed grilled zucchini, squash, carrots, red peppers, and onions. However, even after lunch I still felt chilly thanks to the cold shower. My host mom said that a guy will be coming to the house tomorrow to fix it. Hopefully that´ll be the case. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. I drew a lot, which was nice because I haven´t had much time to just sit and draw lately.
I´m not tired, but I should be going to bed soon. Unfortunately tomorrow is Monday and I have to get up early for work.

back to the daily routine after a life-changing trip (martes, 21 septiembre)
I have to admit, it was kind of nice walking back through the front doors of Colegio Inglés today. I´d had a great past week and a half, but returning to school was nice. It was a sunny day outside and I was feeling refreshed and ready for the short week of classes, since Monday was still holiday and Fridays I don´t work.
Yesterday morning I´d arrived in Arequipa, from which I took a 5 hour bus ride to Tacna. In Tacna I found a vegetarian restaurant where I had really good vegetable soup and a main course of soy protein, beans, carrots, and potatoes, all for about $1 US dollar! Back at the bus station I found a colectivo to take me back to Arica. Getting through customs was really easy. However, once in Arica, all the bus tickets were sold out, so I took a colectivo back to Iquique, but it was really cheap so I´m not complaining. It was about 9pm when I got back to Iquique.
Today I was supposed to be teaching my own classes and I was excited about this. I´d come up with some interesting lesson plans and created some materials to use in my class. However, upon arriving at school, one of the other teachers informed me that today I´d be observing all day instead of teaching, mainly because the principal forgot to send home notes to the students´parents informing them that their children were going to have a new English teacher from now on. They said that on Thursday I will be teaching my own classes. Part of me is really frustrated with the disorganization in this program, and how little time I´ve actually spent teaching my own classes in comparison to going to meetings and shadowing other teachers. For me, observing other people´s classes is completely boring and pointless. I´ve already spent lots of time observing other teachers here, and I understand what I´m supposed to be doing. I wish that things in the program were a bit different, and that I was actually teaching every time I came to school.
Besides that, lunch was good and I talked in Spanish to a few of the other teachers about vacations and where we went, what we did, and places we want to go. Then after lunch was back to the boringness of observing other teachers. The whole time while in their classes I kept thinking about different ideas of how I would teach the class or activities I could do with the students.
After school I worked with the choir. We are learning a new song, but it is in French (Cristián picked it out). One of the guys who works in the school can speak French, so he came to explain the pronunciation. I helped the altos learn the correct pitches. Some of them are not very good about holding their part, but they are definitely improving. Singing the alto part can be hard sometimes, but I think the song will sound good once we practice it more.
Anyway...now I need to study some Spanish and then go to bed. More later...

tsunami drills and tacos (jueves, 23 septiembre)
Yesterday school was pretty uneventful except for the tsunami drill we had. Seeing that my school is right across the street from the ocean, it would be a miracle if anyone from the school actually survived. When the sirens started going off, the kids all got underneath their desks, counted to twenty (apparently there is a lot of shaking when the tsunami first comes), and then bolted out the door. Because my classroom is upstairs, there was the whole bottleneck effect as everyone tried to rush down the stairs. Then everyone lined up in the courtyard while the teacher in charge of the drill picked up his megaphone and started telling us that we´d taken too long and if the tsunami had come, it would have been too late. He also said that if there was a real tsunami that we were supposed to leave the school grounds. He pointed to a large sand dune / hill behind the school and said that if there was a real tsunami to run that direction toward higher ground and for everyone to meet up at some building close to it. To me, the whole drill didn´t make much sense, especially since what we did during the drill was nothing like what we were supposed to do if there was actually a tsunami.
Today I finally got to teach the kids in my own classroom. The fifth graders have a test on Monday, so I reviewed vocab words (parts of the body) with them. It was pretty fun. The sixth graders were working on verbs in the past simple tense, so we did guided conversations. We finished early with that so we gathered in a circle on the floor to take turns reading.
After school I went to Santa Isabel, a supermarket, where I bought ingredients to make tacos and guacamole. Finding the ingredients in the store was interesting. Where they put things doesn´t make much sense, and they didn´t have any taco chips. I figured we could just put the guacamole in the tacos though. When I was checking out, the guy was talking to me. ´So you´re having Mexican night? Who´s bringing the tequila?´and so forth. I felt like a bit of an idiot getting on the bus to go home because I was awkwardly trying to carry my grocery bags as well as a somewhat big cardboard box one of the librarians had given me earlier today. I needed the box in order to send Kyle´s birthday present home to him (his birthday is tomorrow...I was busy all week and hadn´t meant to procrastinate, but I figured better late than never). When I was getting up to get off the bus, the bus jerked to a stop and I went flying into another passenger with all my stuff.
At home I made tacos and guacamole and Eric, another volunteer, came over to eat. Caroline was sick so she didn´t come, and Elisabeth backed out on the plans last minute. The soy protein here is different than in the States, so it was a bit of an experiment preparing it, but I think it turned out mostly well. I got Eric to try the soy protein and I think he liked it. Then we went on a walk, and then Eric went home. It was kind of nice hanging out with another volunteer. At times I feel kind of lonely here, even though I have met a lot of people and generally like Iquique. At the same time, I don´t have any close friends down here, and a lot of times when I get home from school, there´s really nothing to do besides running, studying Spanish, writing, or reading. My host brothers are studying, and my host mom works until midnight every day except Sundays. Sometimes I feel like things get a little boring, especially since I live so far away from the downtown area where there are actually more things to do.
But on the bright side, today was good, and I have the next three days off. Yay for weekends! I´m happy I can actually stay up late tonight since I don´t have class tomorrow...

día de unidad nacional (lunes, 6 septiembre)
Today when I got to school I was informed that I wouldn´t be teaching any of my classes until I met with the regional coordinators and my host teacher, Lilia, who I´d been having problems with. The first part of the day I spent in the library. When Mariangeli and Paulina arrived, we met in Lilia´s classroom to discuss the situation and sort out what was going to happen. The meeting started off badly. Lilia had printed out a list of all the things I did wrong and all of the reasons I was a bad volunteer. Among these reasons were that my hair was short and ´unfeminine,´that my pants weren´t hemmed correctly, that I had a few piercings, and that I was short so the kids felt like they didn´t have to listen to me. And the other reasons were downright lies. She said I don´t ever show up to English department meetings, that I am late to class, that I blow off class, and that I have no control of my class (which I do...and I have no idea how she can say that, as she´s never been in my class while I´m teaching). She told Mariangeli and Paulina that I´m not capable of teaching Medio (high school) students, and every time I tried to talk, she cut me off and kept interrupting me. I got very frustrated because I wasn´t even given a chance to explain my opinions or perspectives, or even defend myself.
Fortunately, Mariangeli sympathized with my whole situation, and agreed to have me work with different host teachers. She said it wasn´t worth it arguing with Lilia because Lilia was being stubborn and inflexible anyway. At one point they asked if I wanted to change schools. A huge part of me did (I liked the idea of going to a school where I could wear jeans everyday and not have to take out my piercings or have people judge me based on my appearance), but in the end I decided to stay here because I really liked working with the choir and jazz band, and I felt I´d miss it too much if I left. It´s funny how the choir and jazz band are the only things I really like about my school. I really liked my high school seniors, but I hated working with Lilia. I´m not too sure how I feel about teaching fifth and sixth grade. I´ve never really liked little kids, and sometimes my seventh graders drove me nuts. I hope that once I work with a different teacher, things will get better, and I´m hoping that I´ll like my new students and that they´ll behave.
School got out early today because it´s National Unity Day, the start of Fiestas Patrias. By the time I got home, I had time to go on a short run and take a hurried shower before taking a colectivo to Eduardo Llanos (a public school in Iquique) for our monthly English teachers´meeting. While there I realized that I wish I´d been placed in a public school instead of a subconvencionado (semi-private) school. The meeting was pretty interesting, and I met some other English teachers from the area.
After that I saw Inception (here it´s called Origen) in English with Spanish subtitles. It was really good, and made me think a lot about dreams, reality, and so forth. I hardly ever watch movies, but this one was good, and it was a nice change of pace. However, it really made me miss the times Kyle and I would go to the movies at the theater in Davenport.

gotta love early dismissals from school (miercoles, 8 septiembre)
So it turns out that all week long school ends at 3 instead of 4:30, and all extracurriculars (including choir and jazz band) are cancelled this week due to Fiestas Patrias, which isn´t until September 18!! Yesterday I walked down to the bus station to get my ticket to Arica on Thursday night, when I will start my trip to Perú. I bought some fresh juice and went to the mall of Zofri to buy a backpack for my Perú trip. The one I have is on its last legs, and not much fits in it. Plus, I have the feeling that I´ll need a bigger bag to fit all my things into in order to go back to the States in December. I´ve bought some things in Chile and have worried about it fitting into my suitcase and school-sized backpack. After finding a good deal on my backpack I went back home before going on a long, two and a half hour long run. The rest of the night I just lounged around the House doing nothing in particular. Somehow, I´ve been lacking motivation and plan on making things for my class or being productive and studying Spanish, but then I get distracted by something else. I went to bed early, feeling tired but good after my run.
Today I had a meeting with other English teachers at 8:30. Wednesdays are supposed to be my ´late´day. My first class isn´t until 10:15 on Wednesdays, so I wasn´t too thrilled about getting up early. When I arrived at school, the meeting was kind of pointless and just a repetition of things people had already told me. After school I walked down to La Cioccolata to visit my host mom. I ordered maracuyá Alegre (maracuya juice with orange juice) and sat inside where I drew for a while. Then I walked back to school for their Cultural Night, where students were putting on a performance of traditional Chilean music and dancing. It was pretty interesting but dragged on after a while. I went home and started packing for my trip to Perú.
I need to get going now and continue working on my Spanish homework...

iquique at night and its dark blue waves of the ocean (miercoles, 29 septiembre)
Today was a series of ups and downs. During the school day, the sun was shining brightly and it was a beautiful day. My students were bratty, and I pretty much had to baby-sit another teacher´s class as well as my own while the other teacher did oral quizzes with the students one at a time. Even the normally well-behaved kids were feeding into the problems and not wanting to work. I actually had to raise my voice in order to get them to quiet down and stop the disruptive behavior. It was really frustrating trying to teach twice as many students as normal, and I was relieved when it was time for my lunch break.
After lunch, the fifth graders had to take a test. I was sent to the library with one girl who had broken her arm and couldn´t write. She was supposed to tell me what to write or how to answer the questions, but every time she said an answer, she would ask me if it was right, or she would ask me to translate it into Spanish. I kept having to repeat that this is a test, and I can´t help her or translate for her.
Once school was out I went on a walk, but by then the sky was turning gray and cloudy. Go figure...it´s a beautiful day while I´m cooped up in school, but as soon as I get out it turns drab and gray. The whole day while in school I kept thinking about all the things I wish I could be doing...taking a walk, going on a run, taking a surf lesson, sitting at a street cafe or the boardwalk sipping on fresh fruit juice while people watching... But no. It wouldn´t have been a big deal if my kids had been well-behaved, or if there were the normal amount of students in the class.
Sometimes I feel like the school switches back and forth between not caring that I´m there at all, and taking advantage of me being there. Like today, I had to sub for another teacher´s class instead of teaching my own. It wasn´t a huge deal, but still, it´s in my contract that I don´t have to sub unless I want to. The whole day I didn´t teach any of my own classes. Yesterday I took a sick day from school (had to go back to the doctor) but when I came back, no one had even noticed I wasn´t there.
On the plus side, when I do teach my own class, I really like the students I have. The kids in my class are very eager to learn English and seem to like practicing their English with me. Sometimes we get a little bit off-topic, but I don´t really mind as long as they are speaking in English.
After school I went home with the intentions of going on a run, but by the time the bus pulled up to my corner, I felt dead tired and had no energy for running, so I curled up with a book and read, and after that I took a siesta for about an hour and a half. When I woke up I felt refreshed and a lot more energized. I met up with Eric to get a few drinks at a place called Papá Gallo, and then walked to the ocean to watch the waves come rolling in. There is definitely a calming, relaxing effect to going to the beach at night. I like how the water and sky are the same shade of dark blue, and you can´t see where the ocean ends and the sky begins, but you see the white foam of these powerful waves crashing on the shore. At night you see less, so you can pay more attention to the song the ocean is singing to you, and you notice the salty sea air more. During the day you can see clearly and have spectacular views of the ocean, but often rush through life not noticing anything relating to the other senses.
Sometimes I feel like I can´t decide whether I like Iquique or not. My host family is really caring and generous, my students are mostly great, and the coast is beautiful. But Iquique is also really dirty and polluted, and the stray dogs are really bothersome. Yesterday night at 3am the dogs in our street were keeping me awake with their shrill, high pitched, yappy barking, going on and on and making it difficult to sleep. I wish I lived closer to the Centro, and that I didn´t have to take a bus or colectivo to get anywhere more interesting. But I love the moonlight filtering in through my balcony window at night, and I love the energy of the ocean after dark.
Sometimes I feel like I rush through life, and I need to slow down and enjoy the small things, live more in the present moment, and be thankful for all the beauty that surrounds us.
Right then, as I sat in the sand by Playa Brava I decided that yes, I do like Iquique. At least for this moment. But yes, Iquique is beautiful and special in its own way, and there were reasons I was sent here. To learn, to change, to grow. And I feel like many of the reasons I don´t know yet, but that´s okay. My journey is far from over.

(jueves, 30 septiembre)
School was great today with the exception of the B section of sixth grade. While they are all really nice, friendly kids, they don´t like to shut their mouths or stay in their seats for more than half a minute. It´s hard to get mad at them because they are all so nice and eager about learning English.
My classroom is finally starting to look like an actual classroom. Most of the students brought the signs I asked them to make. A few of them look super cool, thanks to the really artistic kids in my class. One of my sixth graders made me this picture of Cristiano Ronaldo to hang up in the class. He was all excited when he gave it to me because he´d heard me say that I like watching football matches. I didn´t have the heart to tell him I can´t stand Ronaldo, so now I have this picture of him hanging up in my class. A few of my students started making barfing noises when the kid brought me the picture...I kind of wanted to give those kids extra credit, but part of being a volunteer in the program is that I´m not actually allowed to give out grades. I also hung up pictures of my family and Kyle in my classroom, so it feels a lot nicer in there now. I´m planning on making more signs/ decorations for my class this weekend.
Thursdays are my long lunch break days. I don´t have any classes between 1:30 and 3:45, so yesterday I walked along the boardwalk, found a nice bench in the sun, and sat down to draw for a while. Then I walked to the Centro for some maní confitado (candied peanuts) which are sold along Tarapacá by street vendors. They tell you not to eat the street food due to questionable health codes, but the street food here is some of the best stuff I´ve tried. Maní confitado is quickly becoming my new obsession...at least they are WAY cheaper than Starbucks, Cool Beanz, or Theo´s.
After school was the English department meeting, which not only is boring as hell, but it cuts into my choir rehearsal time. The choir rehearses from 4:30 until 6:30, and I´m required to attend English meetings from 4:30 until 5:30. Generally they are a waste of time. Last week Jorge, another teacher, had brought his computer and was making a powerpoint for his class. During the meeting he and I kept goofing around on the computer. Today, we were told that the sixth graders have to put on a fashion show at the next Cultural Night, which will be at the end of October, so we wrote the script for that. I still need to choose the kids to do this. I was also told that I should choose the kids with the worst grades and give them extra credit for it. We shall see how this turns out. Maybe it´ll be fun. I´m more excited about the fifth graders´presentation I get to plan for Cultural Night. I am going to have them dress up in baseball uniforms and teach them to sing ´Take me out to the ball game.´ The object of the fifth grade presentation is to share some aspect of American culture with the teachers and parents who will be attending.
After the meeting got out, I went to choir rehearsal. On the down side, only one of the boys in the choir showed up, but on the plus side, the altos are improving a lot! I´m really excited that they can hold their parts without me having to sing the alto part with them.
Then I wandered around town before going to El Tercer Ojito. I feel like I´m definitely getting more familiar with knowing my directions and way around Iquique, which was really confusing at first. The whole restaurant is in the garden/courtyard area with exotic plants growing there. It is a super nice, classy restaurant and has a good mix of different ethnic dishes (everything from curry to pad thai to tacos, to gnocchi, lasagna, pastas, to sushi, to south american dishes and seafood). I had vegetarian curry, which was awesome. They also give you a basket of bread with butter (which i didn't eat) and olive pesto stuff. I ordered a drink called Coco Tropic, which has rum, banana flavored vodka, orange, mango, and banana, and it is blended up like a margarita. The waiters were also super nice so I left a good tip. After eating there and writing for a bit I went home for the night.
I´m currently working on some drawings. For me, drawing, writing, and music have always come in waves of creativity, and you never know when you´re going to feel inspired to do something expressive and creative. Since coming to Chile, I haven´t been in much of a creative-writing mood (fiction or poetry), I have been writing a lot of emails and keeping my blog updated. I´ve only written two poems since coming to Chile, but that´s okay. I feel strongly that if I´m not deeply moved to write (or draw or play music, for that matter) then I shouldn´t. If I´m not really involved and really feeling it then whatever I create isn´t going to feel right. I´ve felt like singing on and off here, but need to learn som new music in Spanish. Fortunately, I´ve been feeling a lot more like drawing lately, which is a good way to unwind after a busy day. So now I am going to draw more and then go to sleep. Yay for sleeping in tomorrow!

sometimes the days just blur together (domingo, 3 octubre)
I have definitely made up my mind that I love Iquique. Until now I´ve been on the fence about whether or not I like it. This weekend I met a bunch of people and ended up going out Friday and Saturday night.
Friday during the day was really productive. I finished writing a paper for my online Spanish course, went on a run along the beaches and to the plaza, finished another drawing, and learned to sing and play two new songs (one of them in Spanish!)
Friday night I was feeling in a pretty social mood and wanted to go out, but at first everyone I talked to felt like staying in. I was beginning to feel like a bit of a social loser when I got a message from Caroline saying that she and Elisabeth were going to Siddhartha Lounge, a bar in the Mall de las Américas. I took a colectivo there, and on the way there talked to the driver and other passenger, who were about my age. Hanging out at the bar with Caroline and Elisabeth was fun. We had a chance to catch up, even though we had to pretty much yell at each other across the table in order to hear what we were saying. Then Elisabeth started dancing, even though no one else there was. She can dance really well. Part of me wishes I was Latin-American because I haven´t met a latinoamericano who can´t dance well. There were three Chileans and a British guy at the table next to ours and one of them got up to dance with Elisabeth. A little while later she convinced me to dance too, so I did. We had a few more drinks and talked to them, but then Elisabeth and Caroline decided to go home. I went to Cabala, another place near my school with the four guys for a while, where they introduced me to more of their friends.
When I left Cabala it was light outside. It seemed like the night had flown by so quickly. I took a colectivo back to my house but wasn´t able to sleep, so I stayed up for a while killing time on the computer. I tried to sleep but just tossed and turned. At 10am I went to Víctor´s house for my tattoo appointment. We walked around outside enjoying the sun and met Ernesto by Playa Cavancha.
My tattoo turned out really nice. I´m in the process of getting a half-sleeve on my left arm, but am getting it done in sections since doing it in one sitting would be too painful and long. Today I got a lotus flower right above my elbow. It´s mostly in shades of purples with a little bit of pink, and the water is light blue. The lotus is a traditional symbol of hope and purity, of making it through hard times and then blossoming above the murkiness. It also represents spring, peace, and tranquility. It took about three hours to have it done, and fortunately it didn´t hurt too badly. Only parts of it were kind of painful. I was relieved that it didn´t feel worse because for some reason the turtle I got last week hurt a lot more.
When I left Víctor´s, it was sunny and gorgeous outside, so I went on a walk down to the Centro. I feel like I´m getting to know my way around Iquique much better. When I got back home I showered, practiced the two new songs I´m learning (´Story´by Brandi Carlile and ´Cuando los sapos bailen flamenco´by Ella Baila Sola). I hadn´t planned on going out again, but Ernesto invited me to hang out with him and Víctor and their group of friends, so I headed back to the centro. I met five of their friends and they all seemed really cool. In many ways it feels like I´ve known them a lot longer than just one day. We all got along really well and they were asking me a lot of questions (the usual, why am I here, what do I do, where am I from, what is Chicago like? ...etc). A few of them can speak a little bit of English, so they were talking in English as well. I had a really good time and for the second day in a row, the sun was coming up from behind the sand dunes when I finally got back to my house.
I slept in until 4 in the afternoon, but felt refreshed when I got up. I woke up just in time for almuerzo (lunch). One thing that´s kind of weird is that my host family eats lunch between 3 and 4pm. We always eat lunch together on Sundays because my host mom doesn´t have to work, and the rest of us aren´t at school. She made rice and corn, a plate of broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes, and avocados, and homemade french fries (the rest of them also had chicken). A few weeks ago my host mom decided to become a vegetarian of sorts because she wanted to lose weight (I explained to her that I was thin before I became vegetarian, but she still wanted to try it for a while). She won´t eat any chicken, beef, pork, etc during the week, but on Sundays she´ll eat meat. However, I´ve still noticed her eating cakes and other desserts, so I´m not quite sure if she really thinks she can lose weight by just not eating meat but not eating healthily. Of course, when she asked the family if she looked different, all three of my host brothers and host dad nodded their heads and told her she looks much thinner (I didn´t notice a significant difference, and I´m pretty sure they didn´t want to hurt her feelings). After almuerzo I worked on making another poster for my class. This one says my name in giant letters. I finally decided to make a sign with my name to put in the front of my classroom because I´m getting tired of the students repeatedly asking me what my name is. I´ll tell them and write it on the board, and the next day, someone else asks me, ´Miss, what is your name?´So problem fixed...now I can just point to the sign. On a side note, most of them can pronounce my last name. When I first got to Colegio Inglés, they struggled with the ´th´sound. I´ve been making them practice that, and now they can say my name correctly:)
Well, I´m headed off now to meet Eric and hopefully figure out some ideas for the presentation I´m supposed to give at the English teachers´ meeting tomorrow night.
written by  Sara Florecita on October 3, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

english meetings and an interesting gym experience (lunes, 4 octubre)
Classes went by super well today. My students were overall really good, and time flew by. I got hit by a soccer ball (again) as I was walking through the gym area on my way to the teachers lounge for lunch. Apparently there must be a shortage of soccer balls here because I´ve seen the kids using all sorts of things to play. I´ve started compiling a list of everything I have seen these kids using as a soccer ball:
-wiffle balls, T-shirt wrapped in saran wrap, oranges (always fun when one of the oranges gets kicked too hard...), crumpled up paper wrapped in tin foil, squashed up pop cans, plastic bottles, bottle caps, and I´m sure the list will eventually get longer.
After school I felt like running but didn´t have the time because I had to prepare a power-point presentation for the monthly English teachers´meeting tonight. I chose the topic of classroom management, and finished the presentation just a few minutes before I had to leave the house. I shouldn´t have worried, because it turns out no one is EVER on time for these things. Today there were people visiting from the Santiago office and the US embassy. I hadn´t realized I´d be giving my presentation in front of them, but overall it seemed like it went well.
After the meeting I went to the gym that a few people had told me about on the corner of Rancagua con Tadeo Hanke. Let´s just say it was an interesting experience. I walked in and gave the guy my 500 pesos (which is about 1 US dollar) and went to the bathroom to change. The first elliptical I tried to use didn´t work. One of the guys working there came running over to explain that it didn´t work. He asked if I wanted to do cardio or weights. When I told him cardio, he asked if he could show me how to use all the weights. I don´t usually lift but I figured it would be good to lift a little bit, do a different kind of workout than normal. The guy working there, Marcelio, was really nice and explained all of the weights. It was a little bit weird because there was only one other female in the gym besides me, and the guys there kept giving me looks. One of them came up to me and said in really bad English, ¨you...look...cool.¨ I had to try not to laugh. After doing a few circuits of weights (which seemed easier to lift than last time I tried to...which was in college...), I got on the only elliptical there that actually works. I actually liked lifting, which is weird because I always hated it when our track and cross-country coach made us lift at the beginning of practice. I think I might try to come to the gym to lift a few times a week. It´ll help my muscles out and be beneficial to my running. On a different note, I also need to stop procrastinating and find a place where I can sign up for yoga classes.
There were no treadmills, and only one of the four ellipticals actually worked. And the elliptical only had one setting, which wasn´t enough resistance for me. There weren´t locker rooms, just a kind of dirty bathroom in which the floor was partly flooded. The ceiling/roof of the gym was nothing more than a thin tin sheet, and there was part of a tree growing inside of the gym. The walls were falling apart cement blocks with 80´s style posters hanging up everywhere of muscle men and women in aerobics suits and big hair. There was actually space between the top of the walls and the edges of the ceiling where you could see outside. I suppose it made sense because there´s never rain or severe weather in Iquique, but it was still kind of weird. The equipment was rather primitive, but it worked okay. I wish the elliptical had worked better, and that there was a treadmill because I really felt like running last night. I did an hour on the elliptical before the gym closed at 11.
After I changed back into my normal clothes, Marcelio was asking me all these questions- the normal where I´m from, where I work, if I like Iquique, and if I go running a lot and so forth. He said he knew another English teacher from the States and I figured out he was talking about Caroline. He seemed surprised that I knew her.
When I got home I showered and then practiced the guitar for a bit. My host dad was in one of his crabby moods again, and at 12:30 yelled at me for still being awake. I tried to explain that I don´t normally go to sleep until closer to 1 or 2am, and that I don´t need a whole lot of sleep, but them my host dad went shuffling off to their room, so I stopped playing the guitar. Most of the time I think it´s hard to figure him out. One minute he´s really nice and joking about things, and the next minute he´s all grumpy. I like my host family a lot. My brothers are cool, but sometimes I think I´m just not used to living with a family anymore.
Tomorrow is going to be a long day. I work from 9:15 until 4:30 and after that I have choir until 6:30. But I should head to bed now....even though I´m not really tired...
written by  Sara Florecita on October 4, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

almost legal in Chile (jueves, 7 octubre)
On Tuesday I was supposed to get my passport back, but it turns out I had to wait until yesterday, which really worried me because I´m planning on travelling to Bolivia this weekend. I got stuck waiting around the Migración building for an hour and a half, and the people working there weren´t exactly the most cheerful of people. I finally got my passport back from the government, so that was a huge relief.
When I got back to school, all of my 5th and 6th grade classes were combined with the classes of another teacher who had called in sick. Basically I felt like I was baby-sitting the class instead of teaching them since there were at least 40 kids in each section. It was pretty funny because two of the boys in 6th grade were pretending to fight, and one boy actually grabbed the other kid´s arm and hit himself with it and then said, ´Did you see what he just did?´ It was hard to not laugh at this. A lot of times I feel like a bad teacher in some ways because the kids do or say things that are actually pretty funny, and we´re not supposed to laugh at them.
After school I went running and then tried to plan a little bit of my trip to Bolivia.
This morning I had to meet up with the regional coordinator and other volunteers to go to the International Police to get my visa papers. I got my photo taken for my Chilean visa and carnet, and then we went to the Registro Civil where they took more mug shots and fingerprints. By the time all of that was over, there was no point in going back to school because I only had one of my classes left that day, and by the time I got back to school it would be half over. I walked around the Centro with Liz and Eric for a while and then hung out at Eric´s apartment. After that I walked along the beach and took some pictures. I met up with Ernesto and we went to get my bus ticket to La Paz. When I got home I hardly had any time to take a shower, get everything packed into my backpack, and go back to the bus station.
Now off to La Paz for the weekend....!
written by  Sara Florecita on October 7, 2010 from Iquique, Chile

coca leaves and reggae bars (viernes, 8 octubre)
La Paz, Bolivia
I took the overnight bus to La Paz on Thursday, and arrived Friday around noon. I walked from the bus terminal to the centro, where I found a hostel called Hostal Cactus (it only cost me $3 per night!!). It was pretty cool and had cacti and other succulents everywhere! I found a vegetarian restaurant called 100% Natural where I enjoyed a veggie burger.
Then I went to the Coca Museum, which was very enlightening in both a cultural and political sense. Coca leaves have been traditionally used by the native people and are sacred. They are called the Mama Coca and are used in rituals, as well as turned into natural teas. The people also chew coca leaves. The leaves help relieve stomachaches, headaches, altitude sickness, help wake you up, and sharpen the senses. Coca crops are important to the people here, both for economic and traditional purposes. Coca leaves are also the plant that cocaine comes from. Chewing coca leaves, drinking coca tea, or eating coca candy will not get you high, because they have to be processed and mixed with other stuff before it has those effects. However, drinking coca tea (which is legal) will cause you to fail a drug test. The juice can be squeezed out of them and processed into cocaine or crack. Because of this, the government has taken away rights from cocaleros (coca crop farmers), even though MANY of them are growing the leaves for traditional, legal purposes. The US and FELCN (anti-drug act) have adversely affected the Bolivian people by restricting what they can/can´t grow, and this has in many ways hurt the Bolivian economy, which has already been doing poorly. For this reason, there are a lot of Bolivian people who are really Anti-American, because they were doing nothing illegal in the first place. I also learned in the museum how Sigmund Freud was one of the first cocaine users, and he studied it for medical/ psychological purposes. I found it kind of weird that so much of modern psychology is based on his research, and that what he contributed to the psychology field is accepted, even though he was an addict!! The exhibits also showed the affects that drugs such as cocaine and crack have on the body, It was really interesting, and cost 10 bolivianos, which is about 1 US dollar. Upstairs they had a Coca Cafe, where you can order anything from coca tea to coca cheesecake...I just stuck with the tea.
After that I wandered around the markets a lot and found some souvenirs for people back home. I met a few artists who were selling jewelry on the streets. One of them, Julio, has a friend who had just gotten out of San Pedro Prison (I read a book about this called ´Marching Powder´ and the social worker part of me wanted to learn more about it). Julio arranged for us to meet up with his friend the following morning for a tour of the prison. After that, Julio and Manuel showed me around the city. We walked up to Mirador Laikakota, where there are beautiful views of the city.
It was still early when we went to this underground reggae bar called TTKOS, where we drank capairinhas and enjoyed the interesting ambience. There were signs up that said ´no smoking,´but everyone in there was smoking anyway. There were dimly colored lights and signs up that said ´love,´as well as this full-size statue in army gear hanging up in the corner. Almost blending into one wall was a bunch of large twisted metal strands that read ´Viva Bolivia.´ The whole feel of the place was really laid-back. There were normal tables and chairs, but there was also a section of the bar that had mats on the floor and shorter tables right on the floor, sort of like the kind Japanese people use. I felt kind of bad because I got tired earlier than normal and went back to Hostal Cactus for a good night´s sleep.
written by  Sara Florecita on October 8, 2010 from La Paz, Bolivia

an unforgettable experience in san pedro prison (sabado, 9 octubre)
La Paz, Bolivia
This morning I met up with Julio and he introduced me to his friend, Carmelo, who had done 8 months in San Pedro for drugs. We walked to San Pedro Prison. It´s one of the weirdest, atypical prisons in the world, and I wasn´t going to pass it up. I had to wait for a little bit in the plaza outside of the prison while Carmelo arranged the details with the prison guards, but it was a nice, sunny day so I didn´t mind. Carmelo came back and said we needed to wait for about an hour, so we went to a place called Nueva Era where I ordered carrot and potato soup and maracuya juice.
An hour later, we walked back to the prison. Getting in wasn´t too difficult. Carmelo introduced me to a friend, who brought me through the prison gates, where one of the police wrote a number on my arm, searched my bag, and asked me a few questions. Inside, I met my ´tour guide,´a guy named Juan Carlos who was arrested for being an accomplice in a drug deal. He could speak English and Spanish, so the tour alternated between different languages. He showed me all parts of hte prison and explained the prison society, introduced me to other prisoners, etc. Inside, there are only male prisoners, but many of their wives and children live in their cells with them. The cells are more like dorm rooms (complete with stereos, cell phones, microwaves, furniture, etc) than cells. The family unit in Bolivia is more ´traditional´than in the US. If the dad gets arrested, he is still expected to be a father to his children and take care of them. The whole family will live in a cell (the wife and kids can leave the prison whenever they want) because there is so much poverty in Bolivia and it´s hard for a woman to find work and provide for her kids. I talked to a few of the wives and watched the kids play soccer in the plaza of the prison.
There are also restaurants inside, where I ordered a vegan fruit smoothie for less than $1. The cops also never enter the prison. The prisoners have to do everything themselves...cook, clean (well not always, parts of it are kinda dirty), work (in restaurants, making crafts, maintenance, and security). At first I saw a bunch of guys wearing black uniforms that said ´SEGURIDAD´(security) and carrying batons, so I was relieved...then Juan Carlos told me that the security inside are also prisoners, but ones who don´t have a record of violence (they have drug offenses), and who have good reports of prison behavior. There are also cocaine labs inside the prison. It is made cheaply in the prison and it costs less to buy a gram of coke than it does to buy a bottled water. Almost all of the prisoners use coke, and many also use pasta basé (crack) which is a big problem in the prison. However, the guards don´t care as long as everybody is peaceful and not violently causing problems. Because the prison is so different than others, and the guards do not go inside, the prisoners almost always behave, because if they don´t they´ll get sent to a worse prison or they´ll lose the ´freedom´they have inside, compared to other prisons. Juan Carlos introduced me to some of his fellow-prisoners who are his friends (Pablo, Jose, and I forget the third guy´s name). I met a lot of prisoners and they were kind of stand-offish at first, but when they realized I can speak Spanish, suddenly became really friendly and nice (Bolivians don´t generally like Americans, because our government persuaded their government to crack down on drug laws, which severely hurt their economy and contributed to more poverty and broken families. It also was corrupt bc the money the US gave to Bolivia to help with the drug enforcement program was embezzled by some of the higher-ups in the Bolivian government, so the foreign aid never actually was used to help the people. And the police are severely underpaid so they will arrest as many people as possible in order to earn more money to support their own families...it just goes in circles).
I heard MANY different perspectives from the prisoners about their lives, offenses, life inside and outside the prison, the justice system (which operates along lines of bribery), their attitudes, views on cocaine/crack/drugs, etc, gangs (some of them are in prison gangs in LaPaz, some are ex-gang members who want to change), and Christianity. There are 5 churches in the prison (ecclesiastical, catholic, orthodox, protestant, and jehovah´s witness). Some believe, some don´t, and some have found God. One guy told me that prison wasn´t completely bad because it was there he learned about God and learned that he still can have hope to change his life. It was really interesting, and it was difficult leaving, mostly for the same reasons it was hard leaving my job in the US. I felt like most of the prisoners weren´t that different than the kids I used to work with, except these are adults and speak a different language. Many seemed very kind, intelligent, and creative. Juan Carlos did not introduce me to the ´crazy´ ones. Part of me wants to get a joint masters in social work and criminal justice and work as a prison social worker. In some ways it was a shame I was there for such a short time instead of getting the chance to actually help these people like the kids I used to work with.
I also felt like I want to spend more time (quasi-permanently) in La Paz and figure out a way to volunteer /work inside this place with the kids who have to live there. Prison is no environment for kids to grow up (especially since the prisoners do drugs inside--I watched people doing coke and was talking to a guy while he was smoking crack), they face much discrimination when they leave the prison walls, and grow up too quickly, not having the innocence and happy childhood they should have. They only learn how to ´survive´ as opposed to live, and miss out on many opportunities normal kids have. Even if I didn´t get paid I really want to figure out a way to do some sort of thing to work with these kids and teach them about choices and that they DO have a future. Many of the current prisoners have parents who were also prisoners and that kind of life is all they know and it{s hard to get out of a life of crime. The circle just keeps coming around, and I want to look into organizations in order to help break that circle somehow. All the prisoners are adults, but in many ways reminded me of the kids I worked with back home. Just now are they (well not all of them) learning the consequences of their actions, responsibility, and the power of their mind to make choices that affect their lives. Working with adults in the prison population would also be really good...even though they´re older, it isn´t ever too late for someone to change their life. Often the adult prison population is ignored and lacks the appropriate counseling/social work programs/ skills programs etc in order to support them with their struggles and efforts, and I also would like to do something about this... for these reasons it´ll be incredibly difficult wanting to come back to the US. There is a lot more need for social workers down here and finding a job would not be hard. No one here wants to work in prisons or youth detention centers because they are just regarded as ´screwups´by the rest of society, especially in Bolivia which is the poorest and possibly most corrupt South American country.
After I went to the prison I went to the markets and tried api, which is a traditional hot juice drink made out of corn. I ordered a kind called mexclado (mixed) because it uses purple and yellow corn. It is really sweet. Then I walked down Calle Jaén, which is one of the historic cobblestone streets. I went to bed early, planning on going to the ruins of Tiwanaku the following day.
written by  Sara Florecita on October 9, 2010 from La Paz, Bolivia

en la paz no hay paz (domingo, 10 octubre)
La Paz, Bolivia
Unfortunately, it was raining when I woke up, so I found a cafe where I got a soy latte and wrote in my notebook for a while. When the rain stopped, I found out information about Tiwanaku, but it turns out the bus for it left at 8am, and by this time it was past then. Plus, it was a kind of dismal, gray day to actually enjoy the ruins.
I went to La Paz´s famous Mercado de Brujas (witches market) where people sell traditional herbs and healing remedies. I talked to a guy working there who explained about the culture and what people traditionally believe. They believe the sun represents the male god and the earth represents the female god. They believe in something similar to karma, and they are very nature-based and respect all of the earth. They also believe that when people die, their bodies return to the earth but their spirit is carried to the sky. First the person´s spirit is put inside of a llama´s nose and all of the earthly things the person needs for the spirit world are packed on the llama´s back. Eventually the spirit is released out of the llama´s nose and carried into the sky by a condor. They don´t really believe this anymore, but it is a legend with symbolic meaning, and so today in society these beliefs are still respected.
After that I met another artist in the market named Fernando. We got to talking and he also told me about the Bolivian/ Quechua culture. It was really interesting, but then it started raining again so we went inside this coffee shop place to get some tea and talk where it wasn´t raining. It turns out he plays the quena (traditional wood flute) in this group, and they were playing at this place called Blue Note that night, so I decided to go with and listen. The conversation was so interesting and I learned more about the culture and a few Quechua words. Before we went back to Blue Note I went to this Arabic restaurant to eat falafel for dinner. The music was really good and I enjoyed listening to it. Their group consists of the quena, a guitar, drums, and a charango (a really small type of guitar like instrument). Listening to the music was really a lot of fun.
After the live music, Fernando, Will, and I went to a club where we went salsa dancing, which I enjoyed even though I feel like I have two left feet sometimes. I definitely want to keep learning the salsa though.
All in all, it has been an awesome day, even though I didn´t get to see the ruins of Tiwanaku. Funny how sometimes plans fall through but then something better happens.
written by  Sara Florecita on October 9, 2010 from La Paz, Bolivia

mi escuela nueva, colegio república croacia (jueves, 14 octubre)
It turns out when I got back from La Paz early Wednesday morning, the Ministry of Education decided to move me to a different school. This one is a municipal (public, lower-class) school, and there is only one english teacher. The school I was at had 20 English teachers, so they decided there was more of a need for me at this school. It is called Colegio Republica Croacia, and I will be teaching 5th through 8th graders. I only have to be there for an hour and a half on Mondays, and half of the Fridays I´m off.
A good majority of the kids in my new school are immigrants from Perú and Bolivia, which are really poor countries. The kids there have a lot of problems. Some of their parents are split up, some have a parent in prison, and some of them live in a place for kids who have both parents in jail or whose parents have abused them. Many of them have parents or older siblings who use drugs, are in gangs, or have experienced a lot of domestic violence. Part of me is reminded of my job in the US where I used to work, and I´m super excited to have the chance to be a part of these kids´lives.
I really like it here so far. The other teachers in my school are super nice and they are glad I´m there. They don´t care what I look like...in fact, they told me NOT to dress up, because these kids are from poor families and the school wants teachers to wear normal clothes (aka t-shirts and jeans) because if the teachers dress up too nicely it makes the kids feel bad and ashamed. They said I can leave all my earrings in, and they don´t care about the tattoos, because they want the kids to know that appearance doesn´t make a person successful or moral, and these kids need to learn that people can be themselves and still respect that.
My new host teacher is sooo nice. Her name is Patricia, and her husband is from India, and they have two daughters. She said if I want to take a few days off work now and then to travel, she doesn´t mind, and that I should enjoy my time here. Patricia also respects the fact that I´m vegan because she is used to cooking vegetarian meals for her husband. She even said she would prepare my lunches and bring them to school with her! I could not have asked for a nicer host teacher.
I will miss the choir program a lot, but there is a choir here too. The choir director is named Omar and he´s glad I´m here because Republica Croacia´s funds are low, and he has to teach band, choir, AND all the PE classes.
At first I thought it was kind of weird to be switching schools again, especially since I only have slightly more than a month left. However, after I came to República Croacia today for the first time, I was once again reminded of the fact that everything happens for a reason. The kids I met today seemed super excited to have me here, and although they do seem rowdy, overall they seem like a good group of kids. I can´t wait to get to know them and work with them more. It´s going to be a fun month.

leaves in the wind (martes, 12 octubre)
Yesterday I had been planning on biking on the ´World´s Most Dangerous Road´from La Paz to Oroico, but due to the rain from the day before, and the fact that I did not feel like waking up early, I changed my plans again. Prior to coming to Bolivia I´d read about a place called Alexander Café, and part of me was craving Starbucks-style coffee. I walked through the markets and across the bridge and headed towards the business district of La Paz, where Alexander Café was located. It was a nice place that actually has vegetarian/vegan food, as well as soy lattes. I enjoyed a hot, vanilla-hazelnut-cinnamon soy latte and ordered a ´quinoa wrap,´which had all sorts of wonderful Bolivian vegetables and spices in it.
While there, I read some of my guide book and pretty much decided that there are SO many things I want to see in La Paz (well, in Bolivia in general), and that sadly, I won´t be able to squeeze it all into one long-ish weekend. So...I´m coming back at the end of October, when I have another long weekend. At first I wasn´t sure how I should feel about this because usually when I travel, I like to go to different places than the ones I´ve already been, but due to things such as rain, I didn´t get to visit Tiwanaku OR go mountain biking to Oroico, so that made the decision easy.
Plus, it would be cool to spend more time here listening to live music and meeting people. I´ve met so many interesting people here in La Paz, and that´s one of the things I love about travelling. However, it can be a double-edged sword because although I´m constantly meeting new people, I´m also saying a lot of good-byes. I end up having lots of extremely interesting conversations and connecting with people on different levels, but then those conversations become just memories, and friendships are difficult to maintain because of factors such as long-distance. Some of the people I´ve met while travelling have given me different ideas to think about or made me see things from a different light. Sometimes it´s hard to imagine where I´d be or how different I´d be had I not had one short but meaningful conversation with someone.
For example, in Prague I spent two night sharing a room in a hostel with this girl who was biking across Europe, and she and I had very different perspectives on things such as work and postgraduate education. It was not until our paths crossed that I even started THINKING about wanting a masters´degree. Back home where I waitressed in a Mexican restaurant, one of my former co-workers taught me that it´s never too late to change, to open my mind, or to have new experiences, and that I should take time to enjoy the small things, like a beautiful night sky in the midst of an otherwise hectic shift. In Santiago I randomly met this guy in my hostel, and the lesson learned from him was to seize the day, live adventurously, and try new things. In Cusco I met an Australian who taught me that everyone has a place in this world, regardless of how different their lives are from mine, and to love and accept those people as they are. And here, in La Paz, I met an artist/musician from whom I realized that my roots are important---that I can travel the world, live abroad, and immerse myself in different cultures, but never to forget where I came from, because that is also a strong part of my identity.
Sometimes it´s sad to have all these great conversations and then realistically, never see these people or hear from them again. I guess everything happens for a reason and people are like leaves in the wind...you can´t control where it goes or when something will come blowing back again, but you can still enjoy it while it lasts and remember the beauty of it. And if our paths are meant to cross again, they will. That is how I feel about travelling and meeting new people. Plus, having the chance to meet different people is way better than the alternative which is not going anywhere and not diving into new experiences (which for me, is also not an option).
So I´m pretty excited that I´ll be returning to La Paz soon. There are so many neat places in Bolivia I´d like to visit...Potosí, Salar de Uyuni, Santa Cruz, Lake Titicaca, just to name a few.
After lunch I walked around the northern part of the city because I hadn´t really seen much of it yet. The sun was shining and it was a gorgeous day outside. I stopped for fresh juice and then visited the Museo de Etnografía y Folklore. It was really interesting. There were displays of different textiles made by different groups of indigenous people. The exhibit showed how the patterns, colors, and styles changed depending on their location, available materials/dyes, and specific use (practical vs. ritualistic). There were also exhibits showing different masks, which were used in the precolonial times as well as afterwards. The mask room was dark with just a few floor lights to illuminate these giant masks, which were also displayed on mannequins wearing the clothing that would have been worn with the mask. Some of them were representations of different animals or gods, and some of them were actually pretty creepy. After the Spaniards came, all sorts of theatrical festivals originated in Bolivia to commemorate different saints or biblical stories, so many of the costumes and masks were of the Devil. At one point, I got really freaked out because the lights stopped working and the room became entirely pitch black (there were no windows in the room, probably so light wouldn´t affect the masks and costumes). I had no idea where I was in the room, and no one else was in there. I really didn´t want to accidentally walk into anything and break it. Also, it was kind of eerie being in there where I knew there were all these creepy looking masks. After trying to wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark (which they didn´t), I finally got out my camera. Although you´re not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, my camera was the only thing I had that could produce a light in order for me to see where I was going to get out of the room. I was definitely relieved when I got out of there. The rest of the museum had different featherwork used by the Bolivian people, and a whole room of ceramics/pottery. Again, the styles of the featherwork and pottery varied depending on the group of people who made them, their purpose, their geographic region, and social status. I learned a lot in the museum and with the exception of the lights blacking out, I enjoyed it.
Then I walked back to the neighborhood near my hostel where I got an hour-long massage for a really good price. It was super relaxing and I felt much more calm afterwards. I still cannot believe how inexpensive massages are here. I paid about US $7 for my massage.
Then I met up with some other travellers (from parts of the States and Australia) for some empanadas. I actually found some empanadas that were vegan and that I could eat. They were spinach samosas, and they were hot out of the oven and tasted wonderful. For the first time in a while this trip I had a longer conversation in English as my fellow travellers and I exchanged stories and experiences. I enjoyed some vegan / tofu sushi before meeting up with Julio, who I randomly passed on the street. I decided to head back to the hostel rather early (11pm) since today I had to get on the bus to head back to Iquique.
Today I slept until 9:30 even though I´d been planning on getting up a little earlier in order to visit one last museum before catching a taxi back to the bus station. I hadn´t counted on my stomach feeling mildly queasy, but fortunately I´d brought some over the counter meds with me, and soon was feeling much better. I packed up my things, found a painting to give to my host family, found a soccer jersey for Kyle, and got headed on my way. On the bus I read for a while, wrote, and did a lot of staring out the window, enjoying the landscapes of the altiplano. I tried to get some sleep but it was impossible.
At the border when we crossed back into Chile at Tambo Quemado, I got really worried because when I gave them my passport, they asked for a copy of the paper I´d filled out when I left Chile. Although I thought I´d saved it, couldn´t find it anywhere. The security guy called me into his office, asked me a few questions (where I´m from, how long was I in Bolivia, etc). I showed him all of my Chilean visa paperwork and he pretended like he wasn´t going to let me back into Chile, but he did. I had to declare some of the souvenirs I´d bought (a few necklaces made out of seeds), and was asked about that too. He and the other security guy were kind of laughing about it and joking around that they needed my phone number to verify something. I´m glad that I didn´t have any serious problems because of that stupid little piece of paper, but oh well. Then after I left the office, another guy searched my bag, and again, I got asked a lot of questions about where I live, where I work, why am I in Chile, etc. Sometimes I think I should dye my hair and get brown-tinted contacts so I won´t have to answer the same questions over and over again, but then again, in some ways it´s kind of nice that people here are interested and friendly to foreigners. The guy told me that I should go to Bolivia again so I can cross through the border again.
When I got back on the bus, the Bolivian lady sitting next to me was freaking out because she couldn´t find her carnet (identity card). Bolivians and Chileans can cross into each other´s countries without a passport as long as they have their carnet with their RUT numbers. The Chilean police were not going to let her into the country without it, so our whole bus had to wait while she searched through all her things. Fortunately she found it.
The rest of the bus ride was long, boring, cold, and uncomfortable, but it was definitely worth it because I really enjoyed Bolivia. I can´t wait to go back! But now...off to another week at school. I´m thinking of going to San Pedro de Atacama either this weekend or the next...
More adventures to come:)

early dismissal, no water, heading to calama a day early (jueves, 21 octubre)
Calama, Chile
Today classes got out early because the students had a football (soccer) game. When I got to school I found out that tomorrow´s classes are cancelled as well, so when classes ended at 11am I walked down to the bus station to buy a ticket to Calama, which is an hour or so outside of San Pedro, where I planned on spending the weekend. I was actually pretty excited to be getting there a day earlier than planned.
I managed to find my bus ticket without any problems. The departure time wasn´t until 3:45 so I figured I´d have enough time to go home, take a hot shower, pack some stuff into my backpack, and grab a bite to eat before leaving. However, when I got home, the water wasn´t working at all. It made me pretty mad because this was the second time since being here that my House didn´t have any water. Sometimes it´s pretty inconvenient and things such as lights and water don´t work like they´re supposed to. My host brother said that our whole neighborhood didn´t have any water and he had no idea when it was going to be fixed. At this point I would have gladly welcomed even a cold shower, just so I could rinse off and not feel slimey, but oh well. I packed my bag and got on the number 4 bus downtown where I had pizza before boarding the bus to Calama. I worked on my Spanish homework and tried to read a little bit on the bus. Six hours later I arrived in Calama.
In Calama I met Mary, another English teacher/volunteer whom I´d met on the program´s website. We got fries and beer at a Mexican pub that was Mexican in decor but not much else. It was a kind of dark, smokey place blasting heavy metal and serving food such as fries, pizzas, and hamburgers...I guess the owners hadn´t ever been to Mexico... Anyway, the fries were good and Mary and I got to hang out for a while which was nice. Around 1am I found a hostel (with 24/7 hot water!) and decided to call it a night.
Tomorrow off to San Pedro de Atacama!!!
written by  Sara Florecita on October 21, 2010 from Calama, Chile

la noche más bella que todos (viernes, 22 octubre)
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
One thing I´ve learned about being here is that the buses rarely show up at the time they´re supposed to. Last night I´d bought an 8am ticket to San Pedro de Atacama. I arrived at the bus station around 7:30 just to make sure I didn´t miss the bus (when I went to Bolivia a few weeks ago I missed the bus because it left half an hour earlier than it was scheduled to). However, it wasn´t until almost 8:30 that the bus pulled into the parking lot. While waiting I talked with a couple from the Netherlands. The bus ride went by pretty quickly since we talked about travel experiences.
When I got to San Pedro, I was slightly surprised by how small it is. Prior to coming, I´d read that it´s a small town in the desert, but I thought it would be slightly bigger. Right away I realized I liked the calm, quiet atmosphere and the hot sun. Usually it´s much busier, but I´m here during the off-season, which means fewer tourists and a more ´real´experience. I walked down Caracoles, the main street, where I talked to a few different tour operators to get information about Valle de la Luna, El Tatio, and the lagunas. While looking for a hostel I found a place advertising horseback riding tours in the desert. I´d been wanting to ride again and really missed it, so I jumped at the chance. I stopped by there and talked to Daniel, the guy working there. As it turns out he used to live in Iquique. He told me to come back at around 12:30 to arrange the details for my horseback riding trip.
I found a hostel called La Ruca on Toconao, and it seemed a pretty reasonable price. The lady working there let me store my backpack until my room was ready later that evening. I walked to the main plaza and visited the church, which was made of adobe and the ceiling was made from a bunch of sticks. By then I was pretty hungry so I went to a restaurant called Adobe which offered pumpkin/squash/pecan soup.
At 12:30 I returned to the place and found out that today they were going to offer a five-hour long trip on horseback to Pukara de Quitor, Catarpe, Paseo del Toro, Valle de la Muerte, and Valle de la Luna. At first I wasn´t sure. I´d never ridden more than a few hours before, but five? I decided I was up for it and agreed to go. Since I had a few more hours to spend before riding, I looked in some of the shops, bought a few postcards, some (more) earrings, and found a pair of purple, orange, yellow, and red striped pants that I liked. The pants were originally supposed to cost 18 luca but I talked the guy down to 10 luca because I knew a little bit about how to salsa dance and agreed to dance the salsa in the store!! It was actually pretty fun, and the guy working there could dance really well.
We met up to go to the stable around 4pm. My horse was a paint named Trueno, which means ´lightning´in Spanish. At first he was very calm and easy to ride. In our group, it was just me, the guide, and a French couple who spoke just enough Spanish for us all to communicate. We rode along the dirt roads past Pukara de Quitor, ruins of a pre-Incan culture. Then we went to Catarpe and rode along the San Pedro River. Trueno kept trying to stop and eat whenever we´d pass by patches of grass, so I had to pay attention. Although I was alert and aware of details, riding through here was in many ways a very meditative, relaxing experienc, and I felt very connected to nature. I love spending time outside, but I really hadn´t enjoyed the outdoors this much in a long time. It was completely gorgeous riding through here. We ascended a mountain and went to Valle de la Muerte which had sort of rocky surfaces. Halfway up, we dismounted and drank some water, had some coca, and rested for a bit. The views of the mountains were so beautiful, and the sun was just starting to set. The pictures I took could not do this place justice. From here we had views of Licancabur, which is actually on the Bolivian side of the border, and other mountains in colors of sand, tangerine, and violet, thanks to the setting sun. Our break was for about fifteen minutes and then we got back on our horses and continued up the steep terrain. At the top it was a bit windy so I was glad I´d brought a sweatshirt and my jacket. When our tour guide told us we´d be descending the mountain in the sand, I started laughing, but then I realized he was serious. However, I was already up there, and it was too late to turn back. Plus, the adventurous side of me wasn´t scared. I followed the group down the mountain, down this enormous and kind of steep sand dune. It was a lot of fun, but Trueno kept wanting to go faster, so I had to keep a tight hold on the reins to make sure we didn´t go tumbling down the hill. At the bottom of the mountain Trueno decided to take off at a dead gallop. I wasn´t prepared for this and both of my feet came out of the stirrups. I hung on with my legs for dear life, but Trueno would not listen when I tried to get him to slow down. It was both exhilirating and scary at the same time, and for a flicker of a moment I saw parts of my life flashing before my eyes, certain that I was going to fall off. But I didn´t, and eventually Trueno did slow down to a more manageable pace. Then we rode to Valle de la Luna, which was spectacular because the full moon was just starting to rise. I enjoyed the quiet and solitude of the desert as we rode along. I´d never seen anything like this before. We rode through some flat desert back to the stable.
When we returned to San Pedro I felt pretty sore, but in a good kind of way. I was also starving by this point so I found a restaurant on Caracoles called El Restaurante Esquina. Inside there was a bonfire and the atmosphere was very relaxed. I ordered a vegan pizza and an amaretto sour. The pizza was fresh out of the oven and tasted delicious. On the way back to the hostel I saw a few of the people who were working at the horse/sandboard/bike agency, and they invited me for a few drinks at a place on Tocopillo (another street). However, I was tired and was planning to go on a tour the following day, so by midnight I went back to the hostel for a good night´s sleep.
written by  Sara Florecita on October 22, 2010 from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

salar de atacama, lagunas altiplánicas, pueblitos, y música tradicional (sabado, 23 julio)
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
This morning I woke up at 7:15, ate some leftover vegan pizza, and got ready for my tour with Aventura Altiplano. They picked me up at my hostel a shade before 8am, and we stopped to buy some bottled water and snacks before heading out. There were about 12 of us on the tour. We got on the highway and drove south of San Pedro. Our first stop was an oasis of tamarugal trees, which had been planted here in the desert as part of an ecological project. I met a couple from Santiago who were very nice. We then got back in the van and drove to Salar de Atacama, the third-largest salt flat in the world (after Salar de Uyuni and Salt Lake). The ground was covered in clusters of white and gray salt, which formed after the water in the salt lakes had evaporated thousands of years ago. It was interesting learning how sometimes the salt forms in different shapes, and how the forces of the earth affected that. We went to Laguna Chaxa, where there are three kinds of flamingoes that live there. When they fly, they look black if you are watching from the ground because the insides of their wings have either black or dark blue feathers. The guide also explained that their colors (varying from pink to orange) are because of the shrimp and other organisms they eat. We walked around Salar de Atacama for a while before getting back in the van.
Next we stopped briefly in Socaire, where we saw a church and some potato terraces. Here they grow a type of potato that is purple inside. This is the only place where it grows, but unfortunately I didn´t get a chance to try it. In Socaire, the church was made of adobe and had a roof of twigs/sticks because the adobe walls cannot support a heavier roof. Also, this church was unique because its bell tower was a separate building from the church. The reason for this was that back in the days when the church was built, the traditional belief was that the church represented the virgin Mary, and that a bell tower was a phallic symbol and therefore, the two should not be part of the same building.
We then went to two lakes in the altiplano, Laguna Miscanti and Meñiques. The water there was so blue and beautiful. We walked along a path by Laguna Miscanti. I enjoyed the scenery even though it was a bit chilly because of the altitude. After that we went back to Socaire for a traditional lunch of vegetable soup (which hit the spot!), rice, quinoa, and tomatoes. After lunch we went to the town of Toconao, which is the only town in the surrounding area with a clean water source. I saw the inside of the church which had a staircase and doors made out of cactus wood. There was also a beautiful cactus garden outside of the church.
When I got back to San Pedro I ate an early dinner at an organic, natural place called Tierra, where I enjoyed champiniones al pil-pil, a vegetable empanada, and fresh juice. I arranged my tour for the following day to the El Tatio geysers, and went back to the hostel. When I got back, there was a group of people there from all parts of the world (Chile, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Germany...) who invited me out for a few drinks and live music. First we went to a place called Café Export, where we ordered the ´specialty´drink of San Pedro, which was called San Pedro en Llamas (pisco, orange juice, and grenadine). After there we went to Adobe, where we ordered wine and listened to a traditional Andean band. A few people were dancing, which was entertaining, especially since one of them was wearing a green mask. I met a guy from Antofagasta, and he was really interesting to talk to. The rest of the group wanted to go out for more drinks, but since I had to get up early to go to El Tatio, I went back to the hostel to get a good night´s sleep.
written by  Sara Florecita on October 23, 2010 from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

thinking things through (lunes, 25 octubre)
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Today I woke up around 9am in order to shower and get my things packed into my backpack before checking out of La Ruca. The lady working there was really friendly today and let me store my backpack in the staff room so I wouldn't have to lug it around all day.
Outside I was greeted by the typical, glaringly warm sun as I walked down Toconao towards Caracoles, where I ran into Laura who was in my tour group to El Tatio yesterday. Like myself, she was also travelling alone, so we walked to a place called Café Esquina where we ordered delicious fresh fruit juice. The café was an interesting place with tabletops made of slabs of tree trunks and other nature-y decor. We talked about travelling, living abroad (she is Chilean but lives in Australia), and what foods are typical in different countries. After finishing our juice she had to meet a friend at the bus station, and I was hungry so I went back to Tierra for another amazing vegetable empanada.
After an early lunch I started looking for a place where I could either rent a bike or try sandboarding or sand-skiing. Having hot had a chance to go running all week, I had all this excess energy I needed to release. Unfortunately, all of the sandboarding/skiing tours didn't start until 4pm and wouldn't return to San Pedro until 9pm, and my bus wsa going to depart at 6pm. The guys at the agency were really nice and said I could rent a bike. They gave me a map and suggested some places I could ride. The first bike they got out for me they had to put the seat all the way down and it was still too big...when I tried to get on the bike, I tripped and fell on the ground. We were all laughing and the guy went to find a smaller bike for me.
I rode down the lonely San Pedro streets, through the plaza, and the dusty outskirts of town. I hadn't ridden a bike in ages, so it felt really great to ride again. I was heading down the dirt-and-rock road towards Pukara de Quitor when I saw Marcelo, who I'd met the previous night.
The ride to Pukara de Quitor was only three kilometers, but I instantly regretted not applying sunscreen. The sun was intense, and I was thankful for my hat, sunglasses, and water I'd brought with. The landscape was beautiful--mostly red rocks, sand, red hills, mountains, and volcanoes framing the horizon, and occasional splashes of green from a few hardy trees and sparse grasses.
At Pukara de Quitor I had to carry my bike up a bunch of stairs. I climbed up the rocky surfaces of the hill by the ruins, enjoying the views over the San Pedro Valley. I learned that the ruins were from an Atacameño culture that pre-dated the Incan empire, possibly as early as 1500 BCE. The ruins had rooms used for pretty much everything--bedrooms, food storage, pens for animals, a place to prepare food, community (ayllu) gatherings, etc. The Atacameños were hunter-gatherer types of people. Here the women planted all the crops because working the land (pachamama) was a female aspect of the different gender roles. The earth/land was regarded as a representation of the female divine energy. Also in this culture, men and women were regarded as equally important but each with different gender roles. Before community (ayllu) meetings, the husband and wife w ould discuss their opinions on an issue and decide together, but at the meetings, the men were the ones who were the household spokesperson.
I biked back to San Pedro and ran into Daniel, who I'd met at the horseback riding place. He invited me to a party in the desert that night, but unfortunately I would be returning to Calama before then. I returned my bike and met up with Mario, Marcelo, and Cristian for a while. Cristian, Mario, and I took a walk out to the countryside/ desert. It turns out Cristian will be in Santiago the same week as my marathon, so we exchanged contact information. Then Cristian had to return to town, so Mario and I kept walking and talking about different things. He told me about his life in Uruguay and what it's like there. He showed me the place where he and Cristian work, and where I will probably end up working since there is a huge need for people who can speak English. The pay by US standards isn't much--maybe the equivalent of 600 US dollars per month. However, I was quick to realize I'm not in the States anymore, and living on 600 a month is do-able. The cost of living here is different, and I can definitely support myself on that kind of salary. Here In San Pedro I can rent a flat/pensión for around 80 luca (160 dollars) per month. I won't need a car or any of the expenses that go along with driving--insurance, maintenance, repairs, etc. I won't even need to pay to use a micro or colectivo (there aren't any in San pedro) I'll just need the one- time investment of a bike, which won't be that expensive if I get a used bike. The town is so small that having a bike will be perfect. I can also go biking out in the desert, or go for long walks and enjoy the solitude. I will be able to pay back my student loans and still have plenty of money left for food and travel, and normal living expenses. I can save some money, or spend it on things I'd enjoy--horseback riding, trying sandboarding, etc.
More importantly, I can work in a different field, gain new experiences, and learn more things. I'd actually be using my business degree and would continue to practice Spanish every day. Yes, I will miss working with the at-risk kids back home, but I can look for places to volunteer. I can use my free time to practice the quena or guitar, learn more music, draw, write, and go running. I like the idea that I won't need much. I like the idea of a different kind of independence, of freedom to live the kind of life I want. I'm not scared to step out on a branch and stand close to the edge. I can make it out here on my own.
written by  Sara Florecita on November 30, 2010 from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

at Santa Lucía

at Cerro Dragon

at the top of Cerro San Cristobal

EOD group at lunch

Lipanessa, Sebastian, and me

Plaza de Armas