Last stop, Peru

I'm back in the Northern Hemisphere, but before I close this blog out for at least a short while, I wanted to do a photo post of Peru. Yes, it'll be a photo post since I'm currently too lazy to share any more than that. I'm doing what I always do in the summer, enjoying my summer vacation...!!! It really doesn't matter that this vacation could extend beyond the summer since I'm technically unemployed. Details, details, people. Said photo post will also require a faster internet connection speed than I have up here in the north of Wisconsin.

What does it all mean

As I spend my last full week in Santiago and prepare one bag to go to Peru on Saturday and the others to go back to the USA, I've been thinking about how easy it is to begin to questions one's decisions. I think when you're getting ready to close the door on something it's a lot easier to overlook the things that may have sent you packing in the first place...

Winter is coming. It's been beautiful and will reach 70 degrees today, but the cold and rain isn't too far behind...

Let's just say that some things about the institute that I work for are less than desirable and probably aren't going to change for awhile...

A lot of expats that you meet and get attached to are here temporarily, if I were to be the one to stay, they would be the ones leaving eventually.

As sad as I am about leaving, the bottom line is that although I'm ready to go home to see my family and friends and tie up some loose ends. I have some boxes to pack at the school that I left behind. I have some more boxes to pack at my townhouse that I'm turning over to someone else for another year...

I can thank my experience in Chile for giving me the tools to take each day at a time and worry about things as they come up.  My "one year ago" self would never have survived the premise that in a week I'll technically be homeless and unemployed. My "10 months later" self knows that I'm meant to move on from Chicago and go somewhere else, that it's time to leave Chile (at least for a few months), and that if my job opportunity back home doesn't pan out that it's because I'm meant to do something else.

The Plan, Part 1

I've had some things in the works for awhile now and although I still don't know it all, I will share with you what I do know. I've given my notice at my institute and I'm leaving Chile to head back to the USA on June 15th.  A few months ago, after a lot of thought about what I wanted to do next, I decided that I didn't see myself living here long term and that it was time to go back and make a new life in a new place back in the States. It wasn't a decision that I made lightly, and I still have a few lingering doubts about whether it was the right one or if I jumped the gun...
I resigned from my old teaching job back in February, my townhouse is now rented until August of 2012, and as of this moment I don't have another job or a place to live. I do have some job opportunities at home that I'm still waiting on, and I know deep down that if those don't pan out that there are other options here in Chile should I decide to come back at some point.
I really like teaching English and working with business professionals and I've enjoyed my opportunities here to gain more professional teaching experience and to improve my Spanish.
It's definitely an "in-limbo" period, but I think for now I'm doing the right thing. I'm sad about leaving Chile, it's been a good home to me, I've made some really good friends here, and I've loved my English students.
Whatever comes next, I know that I made the right decision in coming here in the first place!

Killing Time

I like most parts of the English teacher gig, mostly because it is so different from my old lifestyle as a teacher, always in one place, same schedule everyday, no time to ever go out and do anything during the day except for the occasional Friday race to order and eat a Jimmy Johns sub and be back at school in 50 minutes.
Here I have the opposite problem, sometimes I have so much time to kill in between things that I wish I could stay in one place. It's not really worth it to take the metro home in the late afternoon because that would just mean having to take it again at the busiest time of day in order to get to my night class. I usually end up with about 2-3 hours to kill depending on if it's a day that I meet with my private student at 6:30. Sometimes I'm gone for 12+ hours and realize that I've only been teaching for about 4 of them, but it really comes down to what time and how far away your classes are. I think most English teachers must be master time killers, knowing exactly what coffee shop is where, how good the wifi is, and exactly how long it will take to walk or ride from Point A to Point B.

Here are some of the ways I have been killing my time:

1. Starbucks
Pretty much the only place with soy milk, so bring on the wifi, lattes, and comfortable chairs. I'm pretty sure I've spent more money at Starbucks here than I ever did back home.

2. Journaling
I've actually filled up 2 whole notebooks since I've been here, not bad.

3. Itouch surfing
See number 1

4. Lesson Planning
Sometimes...

5. Eating lunch at 4:30
Too early to eat lunch before I leave the house and by the time I get to my next stop it´s around 4:30. I eat the lunch/dinner combo and then have a late night oatmeal with apples snack. Nothing wrong with just moving the foods around to different times of day, and grabbing lunch somewhere is a great way to kill at least an hour and have a place to sit for awhile.

6. Walking an extra couple of metro stops when it's nice out
I love walking, but when I'm weighed down with a lot of books it makes it a little less enjoyable. The best part is the people watching, I can't get enough.

7. Reading the magazines from El Mecurio
Some days I try to listen to my own teacherly advice...to keep improving at a language, spend some time reading to help learn new vocabulary.

8. Yoga
I'm lucky enough that my yoga place is within walking or biking distance from my house. Walk to class, hop on the metro for the day, and off I go, or sometimes the reverse plan is also true.

Regardless of what I'm doing, sometimes it's just better to be out and about rather then hanging out in the casita!

Fall Colors

Last night we finally changed the clocks. It's obviously a negative when it comes to the shortening of the day and the fact that it got dark at about 6:00 this evening, but a huge plus for the morning because it's been pretty cold and dark and REALLY hard to get out of bed when it's still black outside until after 8am. 

I can't complain about the weather, with the exception of this past Friday and Saturday, it's been absolutely beautiful. Crisp and chilly in the morning and in the evening, but still sunny and reaching low 70's during the day. 

I love the combination of the fall colors against the palm trees and the tropical plants like the hibiscus that still have flowers on them. It sometimes takes a careful eye, but if you can manage to look past the layer of smog, Santiago really is a beautiful green city.

Who's the teacher here?

On Friday I had my first "intercambio" with the husband of one of my business students. She had mentioned to me that has was looking for some English lessons, and since I was also in search of some language improvement myself, in the end we decided the best way to approach the situation would be with a language exchange. He completed his masters degree in the US several years ago and was looking to brush up, and I was looking for someone to help me in a more academic capacity, and who better to do that than a college professor himself.
I'm looking at several job opportunities in the US that would require me to have a formal language evaluation, and where I need to improve my skills is discussing more academic topics at length. I haven't had formal practice with this for years, and although you can often practice this naturally in social situations, I tend to be more of a listener in large groups of Spanish speakers and haven't yet reached the comfort zone where I jump in to give extended length opinions on social or political topics.
What's also important is that my partner knows "correct" Spanish, so he has already helped me a lot with little suggestions to tune a few things up, knowing that my ultimate goal isn't to learn Chilean Spanish, but to use "proper" Spanish in a more academic context.
He also gave me a lot of homework, I have to give a presentation the next time I see him, something about how we attribute archeological studies to the value of a culture. He doesn't mess around, and while I speak he writes things down in his little notebook to give me feedback.

So much for meeting at a cafe to drink coffee and chat, my teacher is strict!

Pichilemu

Last weekend I took advantage of my Friday and Saturday off for Easter weekend, or Semana Santa, and headed with my friend Abby to Pichilemu, a coastal surf town about 3 hours away from Santiago by bus. We had a few minor snags before we left, including an overbooked hostel and a rainy forecast, but I knew when the bus pulled in and we saw the clouds clearing off and the gigantic waves that we had made the right decision.

I'm not usually a last minute person, but we waited a little too long to try to make reservations, so by the time I actually started actively looking for a place to stay,  many of the places were already booked. I should have seen the red flags when one of the places that I had contacted indicated that they were booked already but the next day was showing availability on the Hostelworld website. To make a long story short, emails were sent, apologies were issued, and luckily we were able to book a really nice place to stay out near Punta de Lobos. The tricky part was trying to get my 10% deposit back from Hostelworld, and although the owner took responsibility for not having updated the site properly, her final word to me via email was, "I guess if you really want the 5,000 pesos you can track me down when you get to Pichilemu." Really??? I won't name any names, but I will say that the place we did end up staying, the Natural Surf Lodge, is a really nice place with great views, complete with sounds of the nearby crashing waves. I was also lucky that after a few emails back and forth I was able to get my credit card refunded without having to go track down crazytown herself at her overbooked hostel.

Cactus at the ocean? Who knew?

I want to see someone surfing this wave

In my opinion, too cold for this

Poor guy, I wonder if he's gotten used to the sand between his toes

Yes, we took a carriage ride

Jam packed and waited forever, but totally worth it

Figuring things out

I know that I haven't written a lot lately and it isn't really for lack of having anything to talk about. I've made some decisions about the way things are going to go in the somewhat near future, but a lot of the changes that I'm seeking are out of my control, and so the waiting game I play. I don't want to share tiny bits and pieces, so when I know more I'll be sharing a lot more about what I hope is happening next. For now, I continue to teach English and enjoy my time in Santiago and try to focus on improving my Spanish. I also have a couple of new conversation partners that I'm excited to get started with very soon!

Nothing to report

It's April 11th already and I realized that I hadn't yet posted anything this month. Forgive my lack of inspiration lately, but for now I'm back to working, and to be honest, things are still pretty slow so I'm not doing a whole lot of that either. Of 4 possible private students, only one of them materialized so maybe that means that going to a lot of yoga classes and looking for jobs in the USA is what I'm supposed to be doing right now, or sleeping!?! I'm making the most of it since my karmic payback will surely be a stressful job and I'll be able to look back and remember all of the relaxing and yoga I did while I was in Chile.
I'm fortunate that I work mostly at night and the only morning that I have to get up really early is Saturday, (weird, huh?) but it actually coincides really well with our lack of time change. The government pushed it back again another month to save energy so it's really dark in the morning. When I leave at 7:45 on Saturday morning for class it's barely light enough for me to ride my bike. The trade off is that it still feels kind of like summer since it's still pretty light at night. It's so refreshing to open weather.com and still see sun and 75 degree predictions in the 10-day forecast. I'll take it!

Trekking: Cerro Manquehue

Yesterday was my second trek with the group, this time up to Cerro Manquehue, located in a suburban area in Northeast Santiago. Cerro Manquehue is about 1600 meters high and in Mapuche means "place of the condors".  This particular trek was a little bit slower going than the last one I did due to the larger rocks and looser soil. You know that you have to be careful when the descent ends up taking almost as long as the ascent. I think our guide Daniel scared everyone just enough to use extra caution when he told us that not only could we slip and fall in the loose dirt and twist our ankles, but if we did fall we would probably also cut ourselves on one of the large rocks.
A similar incident occurred with my brother several years ago while skiing, so I took Daniel's word for it, and thankfully we all managed to escape unharmed, except for me getting stung by a yellow-jacket. He decided to crawl up my pant leg and probably stung me in response to his own stupidity when he couldn't find his way back out.
I'll try not to whine and sound like a baby about a silly little bee sting, but it happened to get me right before we headed back down the hill, so nothing like a little swelling and pain right next to my knee that's already working extra hard to stabilize me. Thankfully Daniel also lent me one of his trekking poles that had also been used at one point to hike the Himalayas, and in keeping with the Nepalese tradition, he also led us in a pre-climb prayer to the mountain, asking that we all climb it safely and without incident.

There's our final destination

Pep talks, prayers, etc.

Look at my friends climbing up ahead, these things are always steeper than they look

Claudia, one of my partners in crime

What smog?

Here's to a safe descent

My battle wound starting to swell up

Finally some flatter land

Animal Moments

I've already posted disclaimers about my lack of crazy cat lady-ness, but it's no secret that I really miss my little guy. I think he misses me too, as evidenced by his curiosity with my voice when I'm talking to my mom on Skype or when she has me on speakerphone. He starts rubbing his little whiskers against the phone and purring, while staring at the receiver with a very confused look due to his curiosity about where my voice is coming from...
Sometimes when I'm walking home from class at night and spacing out, I'll think about Cameron and often times feel guilty about leaving him for so long, and to comfort me momentarily a random kitty will pop out of nowhere on the street or from a tree up above and give me a reassuring meow.

A random favorite photo of mine that I knew would fit in somewhere

This semester my night class in on the other side of the city, so my new route has me getting off the bus and returning from the opposite side. You'd think I'd be smarter than the dog, but it never fails, this guy scares the crap out of me every time. He's black so I never see him, and he hides on the step until I turn the corner and then sneaks around behind the cars to the gate just as I turn the corner, ferociously bouncing up and down like a pogo stick. Seriously, this little guy can catch some air, and I don't think this video captured any of his record jumps, in fact this time he kind of looked at me like, "Why are you stopping for film footage lady? I'm much more confident in my terrorizing skills when you just keep walking by."

Trekking: Horcon de Piedra

A couple of weeks ago I bumped into my friend B. at the institute and she was kind enough to invite me along on the the next adventure of a local trekking group that she had discovered in Santiago. One of the disadvantages of not having a car here is the fact that you're a bit limited in terms of visiting some of the beautiful areas within about 40 minutes of the city that are pretty inaccessible using public transportation. Fortunately, this group meets at the metro, all of the participants hop into the cars of whoever is willing to drive, and everyone pitches in for gas at the end.
I wasn't sure exactly where we were going, and as you've probably noticed from some of my pictures, there is quite a varied terrain here in Chile, so I was a little relieved when I discovered that we were heading south of the city to climb a cerro at a private natural reserve called Altos de Cantillana and not straight up into the Andes somewhere. This particular area has an impressive view of the Cordillera de la Costa, a coastal range that runs parallel to the Andes.
The last time I attempted a full day trek was last winter and it resulted in quite an adventure. I'd like to say that this latest attempt wasn't as action packed, but I'd be lying if I said that we didn't get lost, have to climb over locked gates, discover a bunch of beehive boxes, or stumble upon a rather threatening looking cow/bull that didn't appear to be tied up.
If you don't believe me, ask the group who returned yesterday to hike a different area of the same reserve and was this time accompanied by a park ranger sort of fellow. Unfortunately, I now have to work on Saturdays again so I'm not sure when my next trek with this group will be. At any rate, here are some photos of the beautiful parts of the adventure, and sadly enough, I was too fearful to stop and capture all of the hazards mentioned above.

still looking pretty horizontal at this point

this is why we needed to bring 2 liters of water

am I back in Arizona?

pretty cool shadows from the clouds

check out the range behind those clouds

now we're up pretty high

I'm guessing this is a really old cactus

Changes and going with the flow

Do you ever stop and think about how life seems to be going perfectly in one direction and then suddenly out of nowhere something pops up to take you somewhere completely new?
It happens on a small scale, like when I leave the institute thinking that I'm going to go and do one thing, and then suddenly I bump into a friend and end up at happy hour, and it also happens with the big things, a conversation in passing that sparks an idea that takes you off to a completely new place, either physically or mentally...
A fleeting thought about the beauty and grandeur of the Great Wall of China and a week a later appears a grant opportunity for foreign language teachers. Coincidence, or destiny? The trip to China somehow leads to me living in South America, and here I am looking at the next "next step"...

That's exactly what they are, steps to something bigger and better if we allow them to be. If we knew what was ahead, would we ever take the small steps? If someone told me that this move to Chile would result in me going back to the USA to leave my old teaching job and look for another job would I just opt to skip the Chile part and make only one change instead of two? Sometimes we prefer the easiest course of action, but isn't that where we'd miss the learning?

I want to emphasize that I would classify my time here in Chile as exactly that, a learning experience. Yes, I've traveled and shared lots of photos with you here on this blog, but I can assure you that when I look back on this experience I'll remember more about all the things that I learned, both big and small. Yes, I came to Santiago to gain English teaching experience and to put my Spanish into a more practical context, and in the meantime I learned about a new culture and embarrassed myself a few times in the process. I didn't write much about my daily frustrations on this blog because I try to focus on the bigger things and frankly with everything that's going on in the world I don't think my minor setbacks would always be very well-received.

It is appropriate to share, however, that my experience here isn't about how many people cut me in line or stared at me or grinned when I opened my mouth and actual Spanish came out. I've tried to take a better look at myself and how I react in these moments and also keep in mind that there are plenty of crappy people in my own country. When you move to a different country you realize very quickly that the easiest course of action is not to try to change or be bothered by how everyone else does things. The best way to assimilate is to get with the program and quickly set your own expectations aside. At the end of the day it boils down to how we adjust, grow, and internalize these little changes that we've made and put them into practice when the next opportunity for change appears in our lives. For me, patience and acceptance are two big things that I hope to be able to take with me when I go.

Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay

From Buenos Aires, one of the easiest and most popular excursions is to cross the Rio de la Plata by ferry over to Uruguay to access Montevideo or another adorable little touristy town, Colonia de Sacramento. When one imagines crossing a river, you probably don't imagine a river that is up to about 200 km wide. If you want to get technical, it's an estuary formed by the Uruguay Parana rivers that creates the border between Argentina and Uruguay and connects all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Because of sediments entering from the other rivers, the water is a nice murky brown color.
There is the option for the super fast 1 hour ferry to Colonia or the more affordable 3 hour trip which has you there in time to walk around, grab some lunch, snap photos of the historical area of the city, and with the 1 hour time change be back in Buenos Aires by 10pm.

Leaving Buenos Aires behind

Big river, right?

Brown water noted

Approaching Colonia

This is what the ferry looks like

Don't worry, this guy is going to catch a boat that big and tie us up

Here's to visiting another country in one day

Colonia de Sacramento was founded originally by Portugal in 1680 and over the years had also been under Spanish and Brazilian control. It's now a part of Uruguay and it's best known for its historic district, a World Heritage Site, that was built by the Portuguese.

It also had a tropical island feel

I loved all of the different colored hibiscus everywhere

You know it's a small world when you run into two of your good friends from Santiago in Uruguay. We forgot to snap a picture as proof of our coincidental meeting, but they were really there, I swear.

Back to Buenos Aires!