más acostumbrada a la once

Hello! Hace un rato.

Well the biggest and best news is that Andrea is coming tomorrow! Or technically today since it's half an hour to midnight. I'm guessing she's somewhere over the ocean right about now. Over Mexico or Costa Rica maybe. She gets here in like seven hours. Unfortunately I can't go meet her nor can i go to her apartment right away because I'll be doing something else.

Ok the something else I'll be doing is "helping" in a "group project" for my journalism class. It's a tv journalism class and we are supposed to be making a video clip that can be about pretty much anything I guess. I mean basically I think we can like make a music video if we want, haha, (seeing as that's like what nearly everyone in the past has done) and we just need to include a journalistic perspective in what we shoot. So that should be cool. I put the words helping and group project in quotes because for the rest of the people in my class this is like, as Marcela put it when I explained to her the situation, "solo uno más." Yep, just one more for them. My film making experience has been limited to my summer class at Strausberg and the occasional attempts to help Brass with random things when she really just ends up doing it all. So there's that aspect of them having to show me, and then there's the other aspect that my Spanish is still.... you know. But igual, I think it will be a good experience and hopefully fun. They understand that I'm just taking this class because I can, because I want to, and it doesn't even count for anything.

(P.S. I want to share my happiness that I almost wrote about a bunch of Spanish words in those sentences. Hey, even though my Spanish still sucks doesn't mean I'm not at least thinking in the language a little bit.)

I don't have many much more updates. I've been taking it pretty easy the last few weeks. I haven't really gone out on the weekends lately, just chilled with my family which I have loved. Some of the random things we've done are taken trips to the supermarket or to the ferria, where we buy all our fruits and vegetables. I run a lot of errands with Marcela, but it's cool because we have really gotten to talk a lot more and get to know each other a lot better. The first month or so I would be traveling on weekends, or be spending a lot of time with my friends. And then I think on top of that I just wasn't understanding as easily so I think it was hard for her to explain things to me. Today while I helped her with lunch I asked her about her job. I know she doesn't like it very much but she really was talking about how lately it's just been getting so hard with the people she works with and everything. Anyways, I know having a job for her is really stressful with three kids that she wants to be home with. So she came back today after going back to work after lunch, and told me that she quit. At first I was like, whoa... but she was like no Brett! This is good, this is what I've wanted for so long and now I can! She told her kids and man they were so happy they were about to cry haha. So I'm happy for them. And plus this means, as she said, that she and I can spend more time together too. Talking, watching movies, etc. So that's good! She also told me how the house is always going to be clean from here on out.... uh oh. Gosh I'm such a slob. I really do try, too.

Anyways I've rambled and rambled on updating things.


I'm reading a book right now (for niños) called "El Niño que Quería Dormir." Marcela lent it to me to read, and seeing that it is for children it is easy. It's about a little brasilian boy who loses his mamá and is homeless. It's pretty sad, but it's a beautiful story.

Oh another thing I've been doing lately is volunteering at an elementary school. I'm working with a program called English Opens Doors. I'm supposed to be a non-Spanish speaker doing activities and exercises with the kids. However, these kids are in their first year of learning english and today we learned the verb "to be." Soooo... I pretty much have to speak Spanish to them. I feel kind of useless but still it's kind of cool because the teacher is having me just bring my own stuff to teach. At first I didn't like this. I mean helloo I'm the volunteer you're the teacher. But now I kind of do like it. This is my first experience teaching a class room really, besides maybe a Sunday school story somewhere in my past. And on top of that, I'm teaching in Spanglish people. Mostly Spanish actually haha. So THAT is cool. Really cool. It's a classroom of all little boys... ten years old about. Anyways, I really like it.

I miss my homes. Peace.

no internet!

So since Saturday night when I came back from Santiago after being there for two days, I have no internet. I am still in the process of diagnosing this problem. I don´t know if it´s the internet in the house that is failing or if it´s my computer that is simply refusing to cooperate, but that is my current situation. I am in the PIIE office on the computers here that will close in about an hour or so. I got to enter from a super secret entrance only for us extranjeros it appears.

So a little bit of an update... this paro is STILL continuing. Not only that, the students have now completely taken over the seven (i think) buildings they have placed all over Valparaíso and Viña. Casa Central is a big deal though because it is from there that all the adminstration operates. I took some cool pictures and I´ll put them up once my computer gets internet.

So we went to Santiago Friday on an excursion that was really really interesting and a bit overwhelming sometimes. We learned more about the dictadorship of Pinochet and about the thousands and thousands of desparecidos (missing persons) during his rule. The most intense part of the day had to have been the Villa Grimaldi, where we learned about the torture these people who were arrested when Pinochet came into power went through, and met a man who was in prison for three years... Really, it was all overwhelming. And I´m sure I´m doing a sucky job of portraying it to anyone who reads but I feel like anything I say to describe what I learned is lacking.

I did spend my Saturday with Mary Elizabeth from Alabama, and that was really fun. We wandered Santiago a bit, ate at the Mercado Central, which is an experience in itself, and shopped for El Día de Mamá.

Buenooo.... I have a lot of work to do tonight. Chau.

Bomba Lacrimogena

So the paro continues, for lets see... what is about the third week, I guess. Oh and today the students took over several of the buildings, which means we can't even enter them. Now that just blows my mind, haha. Also we have a long weekend this weekend... Thursday is a federal holiday and Friday most departments cancel classes, also. Ok out of the four sentences I have written so far I have almost used a Spanish word in place of another word about four times. I guess that's a good sign.

[Above (sorry for the misplaced caption)]One of the many signs announcing the paro that students have posted through the Casa Central. "Te Desafío," it says. "I defy you."

Anyways, as I was walking to class today at about 2, traffic was stopped as students were protesting in the street. I was already late to class so I hurried past. I got out at about 3:30 and hung around outside. At this point there was still action but not as much. I went inside to check my email, then headed back out and inhaled a bunch of tear gas. The funny thing was that it smelled more like the remains of tear gas... And I
definitely wasn't smelling it five minutes before. Maybe it was
sprayed far away and finally made it's way over to the Casa Central, but shoot. My eyes watered and my nose ran and I still have a headache.

More signs all through the Casa Central showing different departments protesting together, etc. >>>

Anyways... this guy in my journalism class told me today that he thinks I'm pretty much fluent. HA! ok... IF that's what he thinks, haha.... I'm good with that. He says he always understands what I say and that he thinks I usually understand what he says. Which is true, for some reason I can understand this guy almost perfectly. No exaggeration. I still don't understand why home is so different. Home is almost hardcore Spanish. I almost always understand the majority of what Marcela tells me, but like her kids are sometimes harder to understand. maybe it's because they speak with more Chileanismos. So I hung out with this guy today after one of my classes and we walked around Cerro Concepción. I just can't get over the beauty of that neighborhood. I wish everyone could see it. The murals, the different colored buildings. The whole neighborhood is like a community art project. Actually, it's safe to say all of Valpo is a community art project. I want so badly to live in an apartment in that cerro and to always be able to walk around, discovering new murals, hidden cafés, daily drinking in the view of the ocean, and wandering through colorful alleyways. I could live there forever if it wasn't so dang far away.

He told me how if a muralist wants to paint in a general area, he'll check with the neighbors. Knocking on door to door asking if the proposed mural would be to their liking. After getting the neighbors' approval... the muralist paints all day for several days, just painting and tomando cerveza. He alsowalked me past steps that he had painted as a kid with his uncle. I don't know. It just seems so cool to be able to say, oh I contributed to the uniqueness of this place.

Well, I am super excited because I'm going to the Isla de Chiloé this weekend. I hear it's just a completely different part of Chile, about a 15-hour bus ride South of Valpo/Viña, and then we'll have to take a ferry over to the island. I'll take several pictures of course. One thing I've heard is that this place is like stepping back in time. And the people, so I've heard, invite you into their homes for lunch, to stay, to tomar once, after just knowing you for a few minutes. "Sin exageración," I've been told.

Oh, I guess I can also share that we went to Pablo Neruda's third house in Chile and his favorite, Isla Negra, on Saturday. It's on the water, absolutely beautiful. Oh and he had some insane collections of insects, sea shells, pipes (of all things, haha.... and he had TONS), sculptures from all over the world, oh and hm... I can't even remember the word, but they are the figures that are in front of ships, usually female figures. Anyways, Pablo had a ton of those. I don't have a ton of pictures... but there are some on my facebook...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2232147&l=d20c9&id=27415785

I miss everyone so much. Now I'm off to reading and falling asleep to the rain. Besos.