Update from Santiago

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile ... internet problems at my school are still a problem.

I'm currently in Santiago with my school's debate team for the English Debate competition. Tomorrow, 18 teams we be whittled down to only 10. The team is definitely nervous and excited. I think they are ready though.

The September 18th celebration at my school was very enjoyable. The students all performed dances from different places and times of Chile. It was very much ceremony that celebrated all the parts of Chile so while their was a lot of cueca (the national dance of Chile) there was also a lot of other dance included many indigenous dances. The most popular dance were dances of the people from Easter island with 3 or 4 different grades doing it. After the ceremony, the teachers got to enjoy a catered bbq with excellent meat, wine, and chi-cha.

Here are the photos from the ceremony <>

School Silliness

So the computer network at the school has been messed up due to computer viruses and it's having a number of weird effects. The first is that its currently impossible to print anything at the school, except by going to the Principal and asking her to do it for you. Since the principal is often busy or not at the school this means its very difficult to print things. For example, the other day I decided it was easier just to go to an internet cafe and printout my students debate speeches.

Because of the virus, there are now new restrictions of computer use at the school. Some of these make sense and others don't. For example, the computer I would use to print things (if the network could print things) now has a password that I have to ask a secretary to enter in order to use the computer. However, other new restrictions don't make sense. For example, no one is allowed to use the school computers after six and on the weekends. This is because according to the school computer people the computers anti virus protection does not work after 6 or on the weekends. Also, I'm no longer permitted to be in the computer office after 6 or on weekends (usually I go there to surf the internet on my laptop, because the signal is the strongest), because then people will think I'm using the school computers against regulations (even though I don't have the password). Its all very very silly.

In other school news, tomorrow my school is having its September 18th celebration. Its going to be an all day affair with lots of dances and a long lunch. All the different grades are putting on a class dance for which they have been practicing for weeks. All the students are very excited about it. I'll definitely have to take pictures.

Weekend

This weekend was mostly spent writing debate speeches. I managed to get a rough draft completed for all of the speeches! Other notable things that happened this weekend was that I cooked lamb and made Russian bread and played rugby. I've been cooking a lot lately, in part because I've been craving flavors of things that my host family doesn't cook and the only way to get those flavors is to make them myself. Its interesting, that my family (and I'm assuming by extension most Chileans) are very particular with what can be sweet and what can't. Thus the lamb I cooked which was sweet and spicy was only a really big hit with me. But that's ok with me.

My rugby game went well, I played with second stringers and I did really will in our game. So well that I got to lead the team cheer after the game (like getting the game ball in the US). Of course I mispronounced the team's name (saying Vekingos instead of Vikingos) but thats besides the point.

Compulsory Voting Research

So far through my preliminary research on the debate topic I've discovered that Chile has a voting system that seems to combine the worst aspects of a voluntary and compulsory voting systems. The system is as follows: registering to vote is optional ... however once you are registered to vote you are required to vote and you can't unregister yourself. As a result a decent percentage population of Chile is not registered to vote (especially the young)and have no plans on registering because they don't want to have to vote in every election. The voting system raises the cost of registering to vote without increasing any benefits or registering. As a result, people not registered to vote here probably pay less attention to politics here then unregistered people in the United States do.

National Debates

We finally have our debate topic for the National Debates. It is “This house believes that voting should be compulsory”. If anyone sees anything interesting on this topic definitely send it my way.







PS. I'm happy because I think this will be an interesting topic to study and research.

Expensive Electronics

I'm somewhat curious as to why electronics cost so much in Chile. Most things in Chile are priced relatively the same to the United States perhaps a little less with fruits and vegetables being definitely cheaper. The exception to this is electronics which often cost twice as much as they do in the United States (for example to buy a Nintendo wii here would cost close to 400 dollars. People say that this is because they ship all the electronics from Japan and China and that they are long ways away from those countries. Even so electronics are lot more expensive then it seems like it should be. For example, I could buy a wii in United States for 250 and ship it down here for 50 dollars ... so where is the other 100 dollars going? Part of it is that in Chile the taxes are included in the price so the 400 includes an 11% tax and in the United States its added afterwards but even with that factored in things seem like they should be cheaper. When the family of another volunteer visited them in Antofagasta, their host family arranged for the volunteer's family to buy a laptop in the United States and bring it down with them, because it was so much cheaper to repay the volunteer's family for the computer then it was to purchase it in Chile.

Chilean Independence Day

Chilean Indenpendence day is coming up --- the actual date is September 18. It apparently is a big event, I was talking to somebody who said it was their favorite holiday of the year. Chilean flags have started popping up all over the place. At the school, students have been spending tons of time practicing dances for the school celebration. I'm probably going to be in Antofagasta to witness it .. last year the volunteers got the whole week off but this year September 18th is on a Friday so we are only getting a day and a half off.

Pancakes and spelling bees

The other day I made banana pancakes. The came out pretty well, but I really had to work at frying them because our house's frying pan was an old lumpy piece of metal that the pancake batter kept sticking to. My family argued with me that pancakes were in fact breakfast food and considered dessert food occasionally putting ice cream on top of them.

My host sister Connie has finally started to warm up to me. She shows it by calling me ugly and silly (in English) and by tackling me. She is absolutely fearless when wrestling with me … the other day she headbutted me! I was so surprised I fell down laughing.

I was talking to a Chilean the other day about the work schedule for people who work in the mines (I still know how to enter the work schedule into IDC). Most of the workers have 4 days of work followed by 3 days of down time. However many of the workers want to have a schedule of 7 days of work followed by 7 days of rest, which would allow the workers to live practically anywhere they wanted to in Chile. For this reason the local politicians are strongly against any changes to the work schedule because they want the money from the mine to go into Antofagasta and not into other parts of the country.

Watching the Chilean news can be amusing. Today there was 10 minute segment on the dramatic rescue of a dog from a flooding river. I keep joking that the sports segment of the news should just be called soccer because thats the only sport that is ever mentioned.

Today was the school English spelling bee for which I was judge. I was fun and cute watching the kids spell. The cutest moments were when a student resigned as soon as heard the word and when a kid spelled library lightberry.

Assorted events

Last Friday was the regional competition for English Debates . My school colegio Santa Emilia once again performed well receiving first place. (I meant to take pictures but I forgot my camera). This means that we will be going to Santiago at the end of September for the national Eenglish debate competition. Once again I disagreed with the judges decisions … the other team from the Antofagasta region that is advancing to the national competition, I didn't think was the second best school in the region, in fact I didn't have them in my top three schools, because they had mediocre pronunciation and spoke rather flatly, but what can you do but laugh (the judges ended giving them same amount of points as colegio Santa Emilia which is absurd). One of my fears for Santiago is the judging, which I haven't always agreed with.

The other day I was talking to another volunteer who was telling me about the gyms in Chile. Apparently, Chilean guys tend to bring the girlfriends who watch them work out. Then the guys will lift way to much weight trying to impress the girls while displaying horrible technique. Apparently the guys will also often take off their shirt and flex in front of the mirrors. I say guys because in Chile girls almost never go the gym.

Speaking of the other volunteers, several of the volunteers from Antofagasta got badly hurt a week and a half ago when they were visiting San Pedro de Atacama. While traveling to the Tatio Geysers their car went off the road and they flipped. Because they were way out in the middle of nowhere it was 2 hours before an ambulance could reach them and for some of them over 30 hours before they received surgery. Their injuries were pretty serious, a cracked skull, broken vertebrae and a broken ankle but luckily luckily no one died and no one is going to be permanently disabled. Impressively, they are all going to try staying in Antofagasta until the school year ends.

I had a bad experience with a collectivo the other night. I took one back to my house after going out Friday night and when we got to my house the driver asked for 10 mil (about 20 bucks). Usually, I negotiate before I enter the collectivo but this night for reasons I didn't. I was pissed because the cost should have been 4 or six dollars. I argued with the drive for awhile showing that I a) understood Spanish and b) understood collectivo prices, however the most I could get him down to was 7 mil. There was no way I was paying that but the smallest bill I had was a 5 mil so I tossed it at him and left the collectivo slamming the door on my way out. While I was walking the rest of the way to my house the collectivo driver pulled up to yell at me some. I think he told me to be respectful and that people don't do this in Chile but I'm not really sure what he said because I only kind of understand Spanish. I said sorry and walked away.

I was talking to a half-chilean half Japanese man the other day. He told me he had been to Washington DC, considered it the most beautiful city he has seen and started telling me about the cherry blossoms. I do like DC a lot. I wasn't sure what to make of the fact that he got sick off of the seafood and had to spend a day in the hospital.

I've started helping the students practice for the up-coming spelling bee. They are pretty good but sometimes they will say the most random letter combinations in trying to spell a word. For example the word was weather and the student tried beginning it with a 'g' I just started laughing. The have the most problems with the 'v' versus 'b' , 'd' versus 't' and 'sh' versus 'ch'.