Now to eat Turkey in Turkey

So I finally made Chili in Chile. I didn't have any Chili powder but found out how to make a substitute online using other spices. It didn't taste quite right but was still very good. My host family liked both it and the bad jokes accompanying it.

Yesterday, I had off for the feast of St. Paul and St. Peter. I went to the movie theatre to see Transformers 2 in subtitled. Today I missed 3 of my 4 classes. 2 because of a mass for the St. Paul and Peter feast and 1 because they skipped claiming I was busy with the debate team.

brrrr

So, it is now officially winter and I am cold. I'm currently sitting in my classroom, with my sweater, winter hat and scarf. Outside its not as cold as it gets in DC, but because all the buildings (my house, the school, cafes) lack any kind of heating there is no break from the cold. The other day I taped the second door to my room shut, in an attempt to stop the draft in my room and to make it a little bit warmer. I keep being at the kitchen table wondering how cold it is outside and then realizing oh wait its just as cold as it is right here. At the supermarket, I keep looking enviously at the space heaters on sale, but my host mom laughs at me and said only really old ladies buy those. Apparently just as August is the hottest month in DC it is the coldest one here, so when you are complaining of humidity and sweat, I'll be complaining of coldness and frostbite.

School Stuff

Today was the public speaking competition. My student, Catalina, unfortunatley didn't finish in the top three and won't be advancing to the next round. I thought that Catalina was the second best student there. The judges, however, disagreed giving it to a boy who gave a very enthusiastic but error prone speech, and another kid who spoke perhaps a tad more clearly and loudly but had a simple speech. Catalina speech was well done, but she stood a little further from the microphone so it was a tad harder to hear her. Oh well.

They students also got back their grades for their first trimester this week. My host brother Alex got some mediocre marks (I think the equivalent of some low B's) so his mom is making him drop out of the student government for the rest of the year to focus more on his grades ... creating some household tension. In Chile, grades and test are the sole determinants to what college you go to, making extra curriuculars much less important.

I also realized this week that one of the biggest differences between schools in Chile and schools in the United States is that in the states, classes tend to be arranged by student skill level so that all the good students are in the same class. Here, all students go to all their classes (actually the students stay in the same class room all day and the teacher rotate, as a volunteer I am the sole exception to theis) with the same students meaning that there is a greater mixing of skill levels. I wonder if this related to the notion of solidarity that frequently mentioned as strong value here or to ease of scheduling.

Federalism

So over the weekend I was talking with my boss a little bit more about the school strikes which resulted when the local districts used the money the had received from the federal government for teacher bonuses on other things. I realized I didn't know why this type of event didn't happen in the United States ... states receive tons on federal government money and as far as I know it almost always goes to what it is directed to ... is this because of contract law? better financial controls, better incentives? the federal government would sue if the states didn't use the money as directed? It sounded like this sort of problem was common in Chile and I imagine it would be common in other developing countries, but I can't imagine a solution being to complicated. Potential here for a thesis project?

Pictures from Mejillones and Tal Tal have been posted

here: http://picasaweb.google.com/paulspicturesfromabroad/MejillonesyTalTal#

Tal Tal

So my trip to Tal Tal was very nice and relaxing. I successfully gave my presentation and met the Tal Tal volunteers who are friendly and fun. Tal Tal is a small beach town that fills up in the summer with people from the Atacama region and all over. It has a nice main street and apparently nice beaches though we didn't go to check them out. Like Antofagasta it is built right against (and on) the surrounding hills. It was used to be bigger with a railroad line during the Atacama's saltpeter and nitrate day, but has condensed itself into a pretty little tourist town with some fishing. Because it was late fall, the town was rather empty.

While I feel I have a good set-up here in Chile, I am a little jealous of one of the Tal Tal volunteer's living situations. She lives in a huge 1 story mansion right on the water. Part of the house is a classy restaurants with good food (many restaurants in Chile are just lightly decorated rooms, with food that is slightly better than how my host grandmother cooks). As a result she enjoys chef cooked lunches and dinners. We ate at this restaurant Friday night and I really enjoyed the food (fish empanadas, swordfish, artichoke hearts, french fries with plenty of lemon) and the good wine. (pictures to be posted soon of Tal Tal and the restaurant.)

Her host family have been around since Tal Tal was founded. I was interested to learn that one of the ways her host great grandpa made money was pumping water from the sea to water down Tal Tal's dirt roads so that dust wouldn't get everywhere.

Packages make everyone's day

Thank you all my friends who helped with putting together my birthday package. It made my day/week. It arrived this friday and I was able to open it on Saturday. The timing was perfect also ... I had just returned to house feeling sick after my trip to Tal Tal and said hi host family, I'm feeling sick host family, goodnight host family and they all said but you can't go to sleep you have a package. So instead of feeling sick in bed Saturday night doing nothing, I was able to distract myself with episodes of weeds devouring reese peanut butter cups (I've almost finished the bag).

Anyways thank you everyone!

English Debates

So I've started working with the school's debate team on constructing briefs for the upcoming English Debates. The two topics for the first set of debates are:

Technology is killing our work ethic

and 

Advertisements makes people waste money.

If anyone sees any interesting news stories related to these topics definitely forward them to me.

Updates from Here

So the other day I introduced peanut butter and jelly to my family. What happened was I was explaining how two things go together like peanut butter and jelly and they started protesting that peanut butter and jelly didn't go together at all. At first, I thought they were just pulling my leg, but then I realized by their faces of ick at imagining the combination that they really though this was some crazy gringo idea. So this past week we went to the supermarket and picked up some peanut butter and tried it out, and of course they liked it. My host mom was like damn the gringo isn't crazy, he's right.

This past weekend a couple other volunteers and I took a day trip to the oceanside town of Mejillones located an hour north of here. It was a relaxing day spent walking along the beach , eating seafood and ice cream. Mejillones is supposed to have a lot of sea lions and sea turtles but we didn't see any. The most memorable moment occurred when I thought I saw a sand dollar, went to pick it up and it turned out to be merely bird poop.

The six month volunteers have also just arrived in the region. I met three of them that will be in Antofagasta this past Sunday over a nice government paid introduction dinner. They seemed nice. This weekend I'm traveling to the town of Tal Tal for the English Opens Doors Program with my boss Marcela and another volunteer to welcome the 3 volunteers in that town to the region. I'm going to also give a small presentation of what I've learned in my two months here. I'm excited because not only do I get to miss a day of classes but I also get to explore another town.

I've finally gotten my temporary Chilean carnet, which will be like a green card for me. The best thing about this is that it means I can use my credit more easily (whenever I tried to use it in the past the store keepers would always give me a hassle because one of the security measures that they use is to write down the rut number of the credit card owner but because I was a foreigner I didn't have a rut number. But with my carnet I now do.) People have been making fun of the number of my rut number because it is the same number that a new born would receive.

I got my hair cut the other day. The owner of the house next to mine cuts hair for a living. I had some minor problems, because I really didn't know how to describe the hair cut I wanted except for saying mas similar a mi pelo ahora pero yo quiero tener menos pelo (which I think means --very similar to my hair now but I want to have less hair). Fortunately, the haircutter had a book of hair photos and I found my hair style there.

This upcoming Thursday, I am going to play in my first rugby game with the team. I am pumped. This past practice we spent half the practice locating rocks on our dirt field and pulverizing them with a pick.

Odds and Ends

So I a couple of people have pointed out that I really haven't talked about how I am doing here in Chile. Which reading back on my past posts is definitely true. 

I think the best description of my state of being is that I'm doing better than surviving but not thriving. I've managed to establish a weekly routine. During the mornings and afternoons of weekdays I teach, surf the Internet and plan lessons/grade tests. Occasionally, I am able to spend the afternoon at the beach.

Monday Night - Spanish classes

Tuesday Night - Rugby practice

Wednesday Night - Free Night (though I'm going to try to start showing English movies for the students every other Wednesday night

Thursday Night - Rugby Practice

Saturday - Salsa classes

Rugby practice is with some students at school who have a coach and everything. I don't play at their games on Saturday because I'm too old to participate, but I go to practices because it was a really really good work that leaves me exhausted. 

I've also been becoming closer with the other volunteers in Antofagasta who are fun to hang out with. Last week, I also hung out with the brother of one of the rugby players who speaks a little bit of English (because I am in Chile hanging out of course meant that I didn't get back to my house until 5:30).

My Spanish has been improving slowly. I can say a decent amount of things in Spanish (my top 5 list of things I say is si, no, por supesto, lo que sea, y no te preocupe .... the Chilean equivalent of baby has not made the list and I actually don't know how to say it) but my ability to understand what other people say is still fairly limited (it doesn't help that Chileans are considered by other Spanish speakers to have a tendency to mumble). Often though I am able to make out 90% of the words that they say, but am unable to put the words together.

Its a little weird that I was definitely feeling restless in DC, but now that I'm here I'm counting the months until I return to DC.

I'm expecting the next couple of months to be better .... more volunteers are coming to the area, the English debates are going to start soon which will be interesting, and I've got a two week winter break in July.

I've also been trying to figure out what I will being doing for the next couple of years. I'm debating between pursuing a Masters or a PhD in either economics of international development, international development or public policy with a focus on international development. However, I have been having a hard time gaining good information that would help me choose what type of program is best for me. If anyone has any advice for me I would appreciate it.

Last year, I applied to Master programs at SAIS, American University, and at the University of Maryland. I got into American and Maryland and waitlisted at SAIS. I decided to defer from UMD for a year. So what I really trying to figure out is there program that is significantly better for me than UMD's (note: I would qualify as an in-state resident making UMD relatively cheap for me).

teacher strike

So teachers throughout Chile have been on strike throughout the country. In Antofagasta, strikes have gone on for the last three weeks. Today, I finally received an email from English Opens doors explaining the situation. 

" the strike is the result of a bonus that teachers throughout the country were promised last year during a renegotiation of their contracts.  The government claims that it sent the bonus money out to the municipalities to be distributed to the teachers, but apparently the municipalities spent the money on other things without passing it along to the intended recipients."

Unfortunately, I still have school and classes because I work at semi-private school which has a different contract and I believe receive better pay, but other volunteers have had the days off. The interesting thing is that I haven't seen any stories about it on the television news ... not that I watch all that much news, but in the past couple of days I have seen news stories about a 3 and a half foot mom and a story about a family getting gastric by pass surgeries. 

Rumor is that the strike will end Wednesday or Thursday this week.

Cumpleaños

So I turned 26 this past weekend and celebrated my birthday on Saturday. The original plan was that I was going to return to my house after salsa lessons for some cake with some of my host family and a couple of friends and then head to a disco for the evening. I was a little bummed because not many people were going to be able to make it ... asados going on, sickness and I even thought about trying to move the event to a better day. 

However, when I returned after salsa I was surprised by my host family and all the other antofagastan volunteers at my house. Just like my 24th birthday this caught me completely off guard. We then proceeded to eat cake (chocolate and manjar) sushi (prepared by my host brother Alex) potatoes on toothpicks that you could dip into a peruvian sauce (at first I thought they were cut up pineapple) beer, rum, homemade bread, and chips. I also opened my presents in which I received a t shirt, a book of Karl Marx in Spanish (an inside joke), some chocolate, and some nice rum. At 12:30 we left for the discotheque where we danced until 5.

The funniest incident of the evening was when it came time to cut the cake. Apparently its the tradition for the birthday boy to take a bite of the cake before it is cut (and someone will push his head into the cake) but I misunderstood what was being explained to me and instead put my forehead into the cake.