Ok. So it has really all began.
Yesterday I spent the day with my Australian buddies, hanging around Santiago. Well first I played translator and bought me and then bus tickets and they were very appreciative. I was the nerd of the group and the only one that cared about seeing historical buildings, or any sights at all. I dragged two of them with me on our educational tour, but one got bored after my first lecture. Adam toughed it out with me as we saw the Palacio de la Moneda (the place where Salvadore Allende died and Pinochet bombed on Sept 11th 1973), a minature and extremely lame version of Palacio de la Alambra (a palace built in Granada that the three of us happened to have all seen in Spain), the Plaza de las Armas (sort of a city center), el Mercado Central (a market where we bought cheap, delicious cherries), and toured Bellavista (the cool neighborhood that our hostel was in with great graffitti everywhere). Adam and I shared my first emapanada - the chilean equivalent of a falafel, as my dad might say. By the time we had finished all that it was about 5:00 and I had tired Adam out. Our other Australian friend and I went to lunch, and then I headed up the finiculare to Cerro San Cristobal, a big hill right behind our hostel. At the top is a big statue of the Virgin Mary and lots of great jesus stuff to accompany it (yáll know how i love jesus...). Then we had a not-so-tearful goodbye and promised to talk on facebook.
After a long viaje to Osorno (where i slept on a luxurious semi-cama and kept waking up with a child on my lap), I arrived this morning at like 10:30. Samantha, my lovely organizer, picked me up a the bus station and dropped me off in my new home. I was smelly, sore, and extremely overwhelmed. After a nice cold shower (apparently the heat will be back tomorrow) and some breakfast I was a little more calm. Basically my homestay is going to be fabulous, but Ill write a little more later when I´m less exhausted and overwhelmed, and know more about them. My new family consists of:
Adrianna: the mother who will surely make me fat by force feeding me all the time. She insisted that her house was simple, but it was full of friendship and love. She is beyond adorable.
Eli: her 28 year old daughter who is beautiful, friendly, funny, and I hope will be my new best friend.
Sofia: Eli´s daughter who is almost 5 years old. She is also beautiful and charming and keeps calling me niña (girl) becuase Sarice is too awkward to say. I think Cereza is going to have to make a come back. Eli already started calling me that.
Victor: Better known as gordito, or little fat one, is a university student who has been living with the family for 4 years. He seems quiet and strange, but i´m sure he´ll grown on me.
El padre: i dont remember his name but hes less talkative than his wife, and extremely difficult to understand. he gave me a politics of osorno talk at lunch and i think we will be great friends.
Javier is Sofia´s father who also lives in the house, but i havent met him yet. Sergio and Camilla are portuguese and french respectively and they have been living here for 6 months i beleive. they are on vacation and i haven{t met them yet. They speak to each other in english, which sofia insists is chinese, and it sounds like their spanish is weak.
Tomorrow at 9am I start three days of training for my job (training that the whole office is doing together). Its going to be insanely overwhelming, but hopefully ill be able to follow whats going on.
Showing posts with label australian boys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label australian boys. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
La Llegada!
I have arrived safetly in Santiago, Chile! Woo hoo!
So my parents bought me a beautiful new journal to write in while I'm traveling, but I had to promise it wouldn't interfere with the quality of the blog. Just so you know, I have it with me here right now so I don't forget any good details.
Anyway all of my travels went smoothly and reletively uneventfully. The thirteen hour plane ride to Buenos Aires was only half full of people and I had a whole row to myself to sleep. My four hour layover in BA was long, but I had some friends. I met my first two (we can only assume there will be many more to come ) australian travelers who were doing the normal wander around South America deal, and were on their way to Lima. Then, I ran into Deena: my lietenant governer from my high school days in key club who i just recently reconnected with at Cornell. Weird. She was visiting her brother in Santiago who has been teaching English for three months. I also spent about an hour trying to find a sandwhich without ham on it and realized I might need to reconsider my diet regulations while I am traveling. Chileans and Argentinians LOVE meat. yuck.
Well after all the traveling I was delighted to arrive to a sunny Santiago at 6pm. Turns out it would be sunny for a few more hours still. I'm definitely not in NY anymore.... The hostel I reserved has no sign on the door, but its painted purple, so I knew immidiately it was perfect. There is a roof with loung chairs, a room with free internet access, a room with a TV filled with colorful chairs, free breakfast, and a Charles Bukowski poster hanging up on the red wall behind me. Its fabulous. It was pretty quiet when I got there, but was not deterred. I needed to find some friends so I didn't wander around the city alone at night. My frist attempt was a Swiss dude named Benjamin. All the languages I could talk to him in *(french, english, spanish) were pretty weak, and he was generally pretty awkward. I decided to move on. On the roof I found an Australian dude lounging on a chair, drinking a beer, and listening to his ipod. Perfect. Turns out Ryan and I hit it off. He just graduated from Uni (as they say down under) and is taking a three month trip around the world. He has already done most of south america and a bit of europe, and chile is his last stop before coming to the US. Almost immidiately I got an invitation to a concert, and to go rock climbing the next day. As you can tell, we have similar interests. As soon as I secured my protection for the night, I went to take a shower and prepare to leave. I met Ryan's traveling partner adam, and another Auzzie they picked up, Trunc. The four of us were immidiately a gang. I offered my translating skills for their company. They were happy to comply.
We went out to a nice dinner in town after a lot of deliberation, and told traveling stories and talked about why Americans are stupid. By the end of the meal, it was as if we had been friends for years. We decided to go to the supermarket to buy beer in the cheapest form possible, and then head to the concert. We had heard through the grape vine that there was a show, and Trunc saw a stage being set up at the Plaza del Armas. When we got to the plaza, we quickly realized there was no concert, but we found other entertainment. There was a crowd of people gathered a round a grungy looking chilean telling jokes. As soon as we arrived, we became the butt of every joke. He told a serious of " gringos are idiots" jokes that I desperately tried to translate for my friends. The crowd laughed the hardest when I was unable to translate a word or phrase. Finally he ended the show by dragging my friends into the center of the circle and telling a joke "in english" that still required a bit of translating. He kept asking the crowd for money, but am pretty sure he owed us a piece: we made all the jokes funny.
Well after all that excitement, my friends and I decided to return home to our hostel (a short walk from where we were). Two blocks from our hostel, we stopped at a busy outdoor bar to listen to a guy play the drums. As we stopped, I caught a young, friendly chilean man trying to talk to Adam. I quickly intervened and introduced myself as traductora. He explained that we shouldn't be drinking beer on the street, it was illegal (something that Ryan had promised us it certainly wasn't). Explained that if you had a chair, it became perfectly legal, and invited us to sit down. Well we sat down for about 2 hours as I practiced my new translating skills. The young couple had three children who they had left behind with the woman's mother to go out drinking on a monday night. They were both very generous and friendly and happy to tell us how Chile had the best beer, best wine, best agriculture, and most beautiful women in all the world. By the end of the night we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. Next time I'm in town, I'll certainly call them.
Today, I am going to take a trip to the embassy, a trip to the bus station, and take the finiculare (spelling?) up the cerro, or hill, that sits behind the hostel. Tonight I'll be on a bus down to Osorno where Sam will meet me in the morning and introduce me to my homestay family and my new job.
So my parents bought me a beautiful new journal to write in while I'm traveling, but I had to promise it wouldn't interfere with the quality of the blog. Just so you know, I have it with me here right now so I don't forget any good details.
Anyway all of my travels went smoothly and reletively uneventfully. The thirteen hour plane ride to Buenos Aires was only half full of people and I had a whole row to myself to sleep. My four hour layover in BA was long, but I had some friends. I met my first two (we can only assume there will be many more to come ) australian travelers who were doing the normal wander around South America deal, and were on their way to Lima. Then, I ran into Deena: my lietenant governer from my high school days in key club who i just recently reconnected with at Cornell. Weird. She was visiting her brother in Santiago who has been teaching English for three months. I also spent about an hour trying to find a sandwhich without ham on it and realized I might need to reconsider my diet regulations while I am traveling. Chileans and Argentinians LOVE meat. yuck.
Well after all the traveling I was delighted to arrive to a sunny Santiago at 6pm. Turns out it would be sunny for a few more hours still. I'm definitely not in NY anymore.... The hostel I reserved has no sign on the door, but its painted purple, so I knew immidiately it was perfect. There is a roof with loung chairs, a room with free internet access, a room with a TV filled with colorful chairs, free breakfast, and a Charles Bukowski poster hanging up on the red wall behind me. Its fabulous. It was pretty quiet when I got there, but was not deterred. I needed to find some friends so I didn't wander around the city alone at night. My frist attempt was a Swiss dude named Benjamin. All the languages I could talk to him in *(french, english, spanish) were pretty weak, and he was generally pretty awkward. I decided to move on. On the roof I found an Australian dude lounging on a chair, drinking a beer, and listening to his ipod. Perfect. Turns out Ryan and I hit it off. He just graduated from Uni (as they say down under) and is taking a three month trip around the world. He has already done most of south america and a bit of europe, and chile is his last stop before coming to the US. Almost immidiately I got an invitation to a concert, and to go rock climbing the next day. As you can tell, we have similar interests. As soon as I secured my protection for the night, I went to take a shower and prepare to leave. I met Ryan's traveling partner adam, and another Auzzie they picked up, Trunc. The four of us were immidiately a gang. I offered my translating skills for their company. They were happy to comply.
We went out to a nice dinner in town after a lot of deliberation, and told traveling stories and talked about why Americans are stupid. By the end of the meal, it was as if we had been friends for years. We decided to go to the supermarket to buy beer in the cheapest form possible, and then head to the concert. We had heard through the grape vine that there was a show, and Trunc saw a stage being set up at the Plaza del Armas. When we got to the plaza, we quickly realized there was no concert, but we found other entertainment. There was a crowd of people gathered a round a grungy looking chilean telling jokes. As soon as we arrived, we became the butt of every joke. He told a serious of " gringos are idiots" jokes that I desperately tried to translate for my friends. The crowd laughed the hardest when I was unable to translate a word or phrase. Finally he ended the show by dragging my friends into the center of the circle and telling a joke "in english" that still required a bit of translating. He kept asking the crowd for money, but am pretty sure he owed us a piece: we made all the jokes funny.
Well after all that excitement, my friends and I decided to return home to our hostel (a short walk from where we were). Two blocks from our hostel, we stopped at a busy outdoor bar to listen to a guy play the drums. As we stopped, I caught a young, friendly chilean man trying to talk to Adam. I quickly intervened and introduced myself as traductora. He explained that we shouldn't be drinking beer on the street, it was illegal (something that Ryan had promised us it certainly wasn't). Explained that if you had a chair, it became perfectly legal, and invited us to sit down. Well we sat down for about 2 hours as I practiced my new translating skills. The young couple had three children who they had left behind with the woman's mother to go out drinking on a monday night. They were both very generous and friendly and happy to tell us how Chile had the best beer, best wine, best agriculture, and most beautiful women in all the world. By the end of the night we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. Next time I'm in town, I'll certainly call them.
Today, I am going to take a trip to the embassy, a trip to the bus station, and take the finiculare (spelling?) up the cerro, or hill, that sits behind the hostel. Tonight I'll be on a bus down to Osorno where Sam will meet me in the morning and introduce me to my homestay family and my new job.
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