Sol en el mar y el campo

Well last Saturday we visited Puerto Savvedra with a friend from work. We were a little worried to start with that the sun was going to leave us, but the clouds receded the further away we got from Temuco. The only thing that bothered me about the whole thing was that we had to be out of the house by 8am... on a Saturday. Some rubbish about 'seizing the day'. All I wanted to do was sleep.
We passed through some really beautiful countryside during the 115km between Lautaro and Savvedra. We stopped in a little town called Carahue and took in the countryside view before heading off again.

Carahue

The 3 bus journey's and two and a half hours after leaving Lautaro we arrived in Puerto Savvedra. It's a little seaside town that's pretty quaint. I keep noticing how the colours here seem so much more intense than back home, where everything was usually covered in some sort of grey. Greens are greener, blues are bluer and everything is brighter. 

We headed towards the sea passing some cute piggies and eventually began running towards the sea ,because we couldn't stand the suspense any more. And then we had our first view of the Pacific Ocean.

Pretty amazing

There wasn't a cloud in the sky but it was really windy so it was quite cold. I found it interesting that foam was formed when the waves hit the shore. It was strange standing there and not seeing France and knowing that the next mass of land was New Zealand. Felt a bit like standing on the edge of the world. We just hung around all day in the sun and after a while walked through a little wood and made a nest in the long grass. It was a really nice day. The only bad part was the sunburn. Thankfully I came off better than Amina who somewhat resembled a ripe tomato for a few days afterwards.

Years of being blown by the wind has left these trees a bit askew

Had a really nice day in the countryside school on Monday. Not only was it lovely and sunny (and my sunburn was gone!) but the kids were being super lovely. The countryside is so pretty no matter where you go here. But there's so much dust when it's dry. I come back every time covered in dirt, really feeling the need to wash my hands.

Ha this is the story we made up on the spot to try and teach prepositions.

This is the bell that gets rung repeatedly with much vigour. It's also at just the right height for me to hit my head every time I walk past it.

I got jumped on 

She kept trying to bite Amina

She enjoyed taking pictures

Project Partners for life! ;)

School/Work?

School/work (something I still get confused about) here in Chile is pretty nice. Everyone is really sweet and even when the kids are being really annoying and not learning, one will be really cute or one will try really hard to learn and that makes it all better.

From nuts to sweets, fruit to stickers and apply-yourself tattoos, the classroom is a great place for black market selling. I love watching the kids shift over to one another, hand over a few hundred pesos and hastily shove their purchase in their pocket. It's also funny when they look at me like they're not sure if it's a good thing I've seen them or not. I'm not sure if they're actually allowed to do this or not. No one seems to mind but then maybe no one else notices.

Oh just a note to all students and all people who were students. I don't know how we ever thought that we could not pay attention in class and get away with it. It is unbelievably obvious when someone is not paying attention to you, even if you have a class of 35. It's also really annoying. So sorry to any teachers I may have annoyed in the past by not paying attention.

We spent two lessons today teaching ceilidh dancing to kids. So much fun. Didn't realise how much I love ceilidh music and dancing. Whenever I hear the music now I smile so much and become really happy. All the kids were laughing at our crazy dancing when me and Amina were demonstrating. (Thanks PT for showing us the spinny hold where you have your arms behind you and SPIN during Strip The Willow). A bit difficult to explain that there is no set foot for you to stamp with if you're waiting your turn or how often you have to clap. Chileans are used to having very set dance moves because the cueca has very set steps. But overall I think they enjoyed it. I certainly did.

Today one of the kids gave me a small fruit that I had never seen before. It was called an albaricoque (apricot) but it didn't look anything like an apricot. When I bit into it it was hard and really sour. All the kids were laughing at my face. Then they told me not to eat the middle... about 2 seconds after I had eaten it. It was horrible. Amina didn't like it either.

Following are some pictures showing that I do actually work.

 I  have to do this pose quite often

If in doubt resort to 'Heads Shoulder Knees and Toes'

So yeh. Life is alright. Like I was saying to my friend Rhona (hey Rhona!) the hardest thing about being here at the moment is not being able to speak Spanish and having to focus so much on learning. I get tired sometimes but other times I feel super enthusiastic again. Ahh wells. 

I shall leave you with this slighty blurry picture of me scooting under the board so that I didn't block words for the kids. See you!

The Product Of Sore Muscles And A Comfy Bed

Ok so this is a blog of three parts. To be honest, I'm not that sure what I'm writing so we'll see how this turns out.

Part One

Well things here are pretty settled. Although actually 2 months seems to be the marker where people are used to us and are now on the hunt for boyfriends for us. They seem oblivious to our protests that we're really not here to get married but to teach English. Every Wednesday at lunch Danay asks us if we've found anyone yet that we like and also talks about her brothers a lot. I think she wants us to marry so that we'll stay here and never leave. Which is just quite sweet really. Nice that we've made such a good impression on her.
We helped Ruth wrap a present yesterday and in so doing I managed to break some complicated ribbon thing. Amina made me be an adult and apologise. Uh I swear that girl is good for me. How horrible ;)

The cockerels here are crazy; they start crowing at two in the morning or ten at night. I think they may be disturbed.

We found this picture when we were in a supermarket killing time and thought it was  really funny.

Part Two

Amina is my project partner (PP) and is quite lovely. She's very hench (a word she taught me that apparently means strong (like henchman)) from doing capoeira for two years. She's outgoing and listens to a lot Santana music. We get along very well. People say that it's good to have time apart but we don't seem to find it a problem when we're constantly together for a week or more. I think this is because we don't feel the need to talk all the time and we don't have clashing personalities.
I personally quite enjoy it when we sit in the kitchen, late at night, chatting while Amina has her post-capoeira food. We have quite hilarious conversations, such as last night's, which comprised of us deciding the best way to put of Chilean suitors. Faces were pulled, jokes were made, it's nice to have a funny PP.
She randomly pulls faces and has an eye twitch that won't quit. She's trying to maintain her French as well as learning Spanish. When she told Ruth this she got the anticipated response of Ruth telling her how she does too much work and should relax more. Some days Ruth tells her she's not allowed to study. Oh Ruth how you help me.
I have to say I'm now quite used to Amina randomly doing headstands in the middle of the room and walking with her hip wiggle.
She's so active that I think I'm going to be much healthier after spending a year with her. Lets hope it lasts to uni life as well.

Me and Amina at a capoeira party

Part Three

Guys my 18th birthday is coming up (woo I'll finally be an adult!) and I've had some emails from people asking what to do about that. As I'm planning my summer travelling at the moment I would really appreciate any money you would feel like giving to help fund these travels. I'm having a great time just planning the summer (January-February for me) and I think it's going to be great. Going to Valparaiso for New Year and will be in San Pedro de Atacama for your birthday mum. Volunteering in an animal shelter in Bolivia for two weeks as well before we try and make the long journey back down Chile. Not quite sure what we're doing in between all these events quite yet but it should be good :) So yeh any money would be a great help! Contact my mother for info on how to give money.


So yeh that's this blog. We're going to Pucon on the 1st of November because we have a long weekend. There's so much to do there! Who thinks I should climb the Villarrica volcano? 

This was the headline that resulted from the interview last week. Even though we're on the front page there's actually nothing about us in the rest of the article. So annoying!

Please feel free to comment on any of my blogs as I love to hear from anyone. Also please ask questions or if you want to know about anything in particular mention it and I will respond. 

Lots of Love to you all!

Two Months - Family Life And Sport

Well it's happened. I've hit the two month mark. It's been crazy, scary, confusing and great!
I feel like after living here for two months now, I know a bit about how things happen around here.
Our days begin by getting breakfast by ourselves (bit much to get Ruth to pour our porridge for us) and then we head out to school. Really miss hills and bends in roads because it's all so flat and straight in Lautaro. We walk 15 blocks to school which on average takes about half an hour, although there are the times where Amina is late and we have to speed walk. That and we're getting lazier. It's really bad. We just think that no one will mind if we're late. It's a bad habit that we need to stop ourselves from falling into.
We have a day of four classes, each an hour and a half long. We go over pronunciation, ask the kids questions then make sure that they all actually do their work.
After work we walk home again and chill/lesson plan/learn Spanish. The following are some random things I've noted down since being here and have been waiting to post. Some date back to when it was still rather chilly here.

• When Sergio tells a joke sometimes Ruth will laugh but sometimes she looks really unimpressed
• Sergio uses his hands and whatever objects are near by to explain things
• Ruth constantly offers us bread and checks to see if we're warm enough
• When we tried to do our laundry for the first time Ruth showed Amina how to use the machine. Amine then tried three times to just pour all our washing in. Ruth stopped her every time and got her to put them in one by one while me and Lili just stood there laughing
• Ruth is like a super mum. I checked our clothes on the line outside and they were still damp so I left them. Half an hour later they were inside over the fire but we hadn't seen Ruth go outside.
• Ruth gets up early to make our lunches but the first day we forgot forks and had to eat pasta and jelly with our fingers!
• The balcony has been opened up now that it's getting warmer but no one really sits out there
• We bought fruit for the first time and didn't know what one of them was (if anyone knows what a 'pepino' is in English please comment)
• Even in summer you can smell wood smoke - it is the predominant smell in Lautaro
• The TV shows are hilarious; there was one just filled with pictures of cute animals doing silly things
• When you travel anywhere on the main roads all the signs have North/South
• Sergio loves music and plays it really loud in his car so we can always tell when he's coming home.

So yeh hope you enjoyed them. I went to Capoeira for the first time on Tuesday. It was so exhausting. Like walking an entire day of Hadrain's wall in three hours. It's left my muscles screaming about the abuse they had to endure. Sadly they might just have to deal with it - I had a great time. All the people were really friendly. Although when I paused for a moment out of time with everyone else I had to do push-up's.

Me and Amina have been experimenting with non-contact wrestling when we're bored. 

We have really good chats here with Ruth during Once. Today we were saying how life should be enjoyed and that you should work to live, not live to work. All in Spanish. Quite impressed with myself. If you want some sort of measurement of how well I'm learning Spanish, Ruth thinks I've learned a lot for only being here two months. I sometimes feel like I should be able to speak more but then when I say an entire sentence without thinking about it I feel pretty good. Sometimes I forget that some people in the world don't speak Spanish. Or I imagine having conversations with people back home in Spanish before remembering that they speak English.

Here's some pictures from the last week. Happy October 18th everyone! Here's to 10 more months!

 People point out how we fight like an old married couple

 Danay, Me and Amina

 Me and Danay

 GIANT CAKE FOR ONLY 4000 PESOS! 

 We were killing time in a supermarket...Amina with toilet paper

 The best supermarket display ever for Halloween

 Me and Danielle when Ingrid took us all out to tea

Amina's natural expression!

Fame and Fortune

Well we've been quite busy this past week which is actually quite a nice change.

We were supposed to be doing something with Danay at the weekend and when she didn't get in touch with us all weekend we began cursing Chileans and their laid back, non-responsive attitude. It turned out that her phone and car were broken so she couldn't go anywhere, so it was alright. Instead we went for a lovely walk up the hill next to Lautaro, that has been calling to us from day one.

I also tried to make gran's brownies at the weekend. Now this was a bit difficult to cook seeing as they're temperamental enough with an oven when you know what temperature it is at... I had to use a fire-burning stove. Thankfully Ruth was there and she knows how get the oven to a certain temperature so it was ok. I just cut the overall cooking time in half. After about 3 minutes the top was burnt to a crisp but we just cut that off with a bread knife. I was just left deeply confused when the brownies turned out so different from how they do at home. They were more... cakey. I don't know, quite why they were different but they were and it was strange. Ok, enough ramblings about brownie.

On Monday we had breakfast with the mayor of Lautaro. In typical Chilean style this consisted of chocolate cake and a TV crew. The alcalde was lovely and friendly but he spent the whole time talking to the volunteers from Finland. But oh well. We managed to escape before anyone could interview us and we went to the hairdresser's instead. Finally got all that hair chopped off! (Although it took a class of 14 year old girls to notice - big surprise). The only thing that happened is I think she cut off more than I wanted and did so in some strange way but at least it's cut. And it only cost me about £3.50 compared to £25 back home! And the people were so lovely. I was so relieved that my hair had turned out alright that I gave the hairdresser a huge, relieved hug as I was saying goodbye. I think that shows how much I've gotten used to Chilean ways - I've never hugged my hairdresser back home.

Last night we met up with some work colleagues and went to watch some traditional dances of Latin America. Mexico and Chile were really good. They had bands and dancers and the costumes were great! It was so amazing. We were invited to sit with the alcalde but we forgot our invitations and ended up sitting in the stands with everyone else. But we preferred it that way because we were with friends. Afterwards we were hanging around with the others and Amina was serenaded by one of the Mexican band members and he tried to kiss her because apparently it was some Mexican game. We really didn't know what was going on!

One of my favourite things is when two people say something in Spanish and then say to each other "she doesn't understand" and I go "I do understand!" and everyone laughs. It was nice today during a break, when one of the teachers came up to us to get us to talk to them - we didn't have to go to them! Yey! It only took two months but we have friends. Which is good because they were attacking each other with cake today which was funny to watch.

Sadly fame seems reluctant to let go of me so soon. I was interviewed today for the newspaper. It's Races (human races) Day on Monday (woo day off!) so I had to give some sort of meaningful comment at the end of the interview. I think I said something like "everyone may have different skin but we're all the same" or something. I think she changed it. I'm really not sure. It's hard to remember things that are said in Spanish.

So that's fame covered. Limited as it is to Lautaro (though I have avoided seeing myself on TV so far). As for fortune... we like to treat ourselves, on our volunteer salary, to bread and yoghurt by the river. Mmm. Que lindo.

Chao! Besos! xxx

Getting Those Blasted ID Cards

     Not so long ago, in a far away land, two girls wandered through the bustling streets of Temuco, Chile. The buildings rose around them, with a few of the taller buildings standing out against the skyline. The cathedral beckoned them, as it always did, towards the city centre. Its sleek grey exterior that ended in a pointed roof would always be the most useful landmark for them as they tried to navigate the maze of a city. The clouds were a dusky grey, not threatening rain, but making their presence known. The cool temperature and grey sky pleased the girls as it reminded them of home. The air was a mix of car fumes, popcorn and nuts but the early hour made the air seem fresher.

    As it was the first time the girls had been in Temuco in the morning they noticed how things were different. The street vendors and markets were setting up their wares and the people were bleary-eyed heading to work. The street dogs were bathing themselves or lying curled up, trying to ignore the pounding of thousands of feet, so that they could have a nice kip. Shops were opening and the queues of people waiting to begin their shopping day shifted impatiently. At a crossing, an elderly couple made it safe for lots of people to cross, as they shuffled slowly across the road, holding up all the traffic. Outside one shop the girls saw a street artist who was spray painting canvases to sell. After only a few minutes he would hold up the finished painting to the amazed crowd.

    The girls neared the city centre (their fast English pace going unnoticed amongst the busy commuters) and saw the central plaza that was to be their first reference point in their journey. There the statue of a Mapuche woman calling the men to war stood tall in front of a cool, blue fountain. Here people had to guard against palm-reading swindlers who would take people for every peso they had – as one of the girls had unfortunately found out.

    The girls turned a corner off an adjoining block to head towards the registration office that was their goal. They kept firmly in their minds, the directions it had taken them so long to acquire before. The block system itself, though simple in theory, was difficult for the English girls to wrap their heads around. Coming from a country of twisty, bendy roads where the future was always around the next bend in the road; the linear block pattern was very difficult for them to find their way around. They made their way past the banks and expensive shops that lined the streets close to the city centre. Past the people talking on their phones and the people carrying their babies that were swaddled so much you couldn't see a single part of the child itself.

    As they neared the office they began to pray that it would be open so that their journey into the city hadn't been futile like the last one. The bus journey though relatively cheap, was not the most entertaining way to spend forty minutes. Jumping onto the small buses (they only seated 29 people leaving the rest to stand uncomfortably close together) was strange because passengers paid at the end of the trip not the beginning. This led to many occasions where the girls had to run back to the bus after getting off without paying.

    Those final steps held the hopes of finally getting the whole business sorted out so that they could finally pay their kind Chilean mum for her hospitality. The need to have a Chilean ID card to live and receive money was annoying and was taking a long time to sort out. Having tried so many times before to pick up the cards and the office being shut, it was beginning to get rather tiresome just to talk about them.

    And...

    It was open!

What Happens When You Bring Out Your Camera In A Hyperactive Class