Chile:

Last Entry

2007-07-20T21:23:08Z

Hi Everyone, this will be my last entry. Like I’ve told some of you, I will be returning to Bainbridge Island on the 5th of August. Before that happens though, I still have a bit of travel left. Tomorrow at 6:50pm Chile time, my dear father will be arriving. The plan is to go to Talca afterward and have a little good by party with the Exchangers who are left. The non Monday in the morning we’ll be heading out on my last great Chilean adventure. Our fist stop will be Valparaíso, the old port town that I haven’t been to since… musta been October with Rotary. There we we'll spend the day before we hop on a bus and traveling through the night to the National park Pan de Azucar (Sugar Loaf). There we’ll spend a few days there hiking or just hanging out. The non the bus again and to The little town in the mountains, San Pedro de Atacama. As I’m sure you remember, San Pedro was a town I visited on the North trip with Rotery. It’s worth going back too, and I’m looking forward to going to the gysers and Valle de la Luna again. After a day of so there we’ll go even farther north then ever before in Chile, The arid town 10km from Peru, Arica. From there we’ll go even further north (well north east really) to the tip of Chile where is located the high altitude national park, Lauca. We’ll hang around there for a bit before heading south once again to Iquique. After Iquique We’ll start making our way south to Santiago. From Santiago we’re coiné home together without a glance back. In other news, Mauri, my host brother who was in Canada just came home today. He was met by a horde of friends and empanadas and everything. My family went to get him from the airport in Santiago at 6:00am which meant they had to leave here at 3:00am. They said they didn’t have room for me to go what with all the bags Mauri was gunna bring back. That was alright by me. I satyed home and clean out my room, his room now. So yeah, I’m all packed and ready to leave… only a few days left… weird, huh?

Pictures to go with Torres Del Paine

2007-07-16T18:41:02Z

A stop on the way to the Park

First Group shot

With my flag

Salt Lake

In between those Mountians there should be the towers

A close up on the salt

A huaso on our first day hike

The Foest morning with the sunrise

There's me

With the towers in the background

A mountian and a lake

The towers

The famous Torres del Paine

The Sunrise

Second Day

A Glacier

A waterfall

With me, look closely

Me and the Glacier

Me on a rock

Our Hotel

Third Day

It was pertty cold!

Ice!

See it? It was the closest we got to seeing a real glacier that day.

Here's Us with the glacier in the background

It was kinda cool, we all put our cameras on the ground and timed them for to seconds and as we waited they ll sat there and blinked at us.

On the Ferry

Waterfall from the Ferry

Waterfall a bit Closer up

The sign says

Me by the Waterfall

The Waterfall from above

The Road we got stuck on

The Statue with the Shiny Foot

I guess I'm going back to Punta Arenas some day

Roof tops of Punta Arenas

That bodt of water over there is actually the Straits of Magellan

Sign posts

Some day, when I go back to Punta Arenas, I'll bring a BainbridgeIsland sign and stick it up there.

Another group shot

A Grave in the Yard

A lot of these dead people live in beter houses than a lot of live people. Hardly seems fair.

The Sheaperd Monument

The Group Riding the Sheep

Torres Del Paine

2007-07-16T05:48:19Z

Ok I suppose there’s no putting it off any longer. Here’s the Torres Del Paine, Patagonia trip. Just like the Easter Island trip, we all went to Santiago and slept there for a night before getting on the plane the next morning. The movies and stuff on the plane weren’t that good, but the view was pretty spectacular. We stopped along the way down on a landing strip like thing in the middle of nowhere. It looked like someone’s house with a landing strip. There was just a farm house and a tractor. Then we continued south. When we arrived in Punta Arenas we collected our bags and met another Rotary student there from Canada who went with us on the North Trip. Then after a slight delay, we got on the bus and drove for three hours to Puerto Natales. There we got a hotel and were free to walk around for a few hours before bed. It was really windy and cold, but I had my alpaca jacket I got in Puerto Montt, so I was nice and warm though the wind wiped around the dark semi lit streets, making everyone’s cheeks and noses pink. We split into groups, some looking for a pub, others for something to eat, I went with a few kids to a book store. Unfortunately everything was way over priced. It was cool walking through the deserted streets singing and dancing with only the sound of the wing and near by sea to accompany us. Then we went to sleep. Then next morning we got up and it was kinda rainy but we got in the bus again and headed to the most beautiful national park in South America.We stopped on the way at a salt lake. It was cool, there was all this wet salt around the edge of the lake that had the consistency of snow. A few kids even took some experimental throws with salt balls. Behind the lake was supposed to be the famous towers of stone referred to in the name of the park They were, unfortunately, covered in clouds. After taking all the pictures our hearts could desire, we boarded the bus and headed toward the invisible towers. We eventually arrived at the hotel. It was a nice place, a lodge kinda place with punk beds and about 6 of us in a room. We took a little day hike up a little trail. We met some folks on horse back and caught our first glimpse of the towers, then we went back. That night we all sat in the common aria and talked and beat boxed, later we went out and watched the stars. The next morning I woke up before everyone else and figured there might be a cool sun rise, so I got up, grabbed my camera and went outside. I didn’t have a very good view of the horizon so I walked a ways to the top of a hill and sat and waited. After a while the sun came up. It wasn’t all that great of a sun rise, but I had waited all that time and walked all that way, so I took a bunch of pictures of it. By the time I got back most kids were up and eating breakfast. Later we packed our stuff, and headed out. The whether what great, something uncommon, we were told, for Patagonia. The scenery was great and this time I have some cool pictures to prove it. Eventually we arrived at a hostel in the middle of the wilderness. It was next to the lake with a little rocky beach. It had beds and a kitchen and even sold meals for a pretty crazy prices. Fortunately we brought our own makings for dinner. We were all split into groups responsible for their own meals and stuff. My group had spaghetti. Later we went down to the beach and had a bonfire. Then one person form every country would tell a bit about the history of their country. Then we all went back up to the hostel and slept. The next morning I woke up before everyone else to the sound of the wind whipping around the hostel and trees. It was still dark and after a bit I made my self get up and after putting on my coat and alpaca jacket, I headed out into the wind storm. I don’t think I know where I was going, but I brought my camera, just in case. Once I was outside it was clear that a beautiful sunrise was imminent. I quickly made my way to the top of a hill to get a better view like I had done the last morning. The thing about getting to the best place to match a sun rise is that it can’t be done, you just keep climbing and climbing until you figure, “oh well, good enough.” I found my place on a nice rock. The wind was even stronger up there and I found myself losing my balance a few times due to the wind. Another effect of the wind was to whip up the water from the lake. Up on my hill I watched as waves of spray made their way across the lake and crashing against the hostel and sometimes even making it up to me on my hill. Then the sun started to rise. I won’t even explain it, even the most poetic words would insult the beauty of that sun rise. Fortunately I brought my camera and can share it with you that way, though the photos still don’t do it justice. That combined with the wind and occasional spray and craggy mountains behind me and everything made the most beautiful moment I had experienced in Chile. After a few minuets of taking pictures and staring in awe at the sunrise I went down. By the time I was back to the hostel the sunrise was over and everyone was having breakfast. I had breakfast too, crapes and OJ. Then we all got packed up and headed out for another day of hiking. That day was a bit wetter and muddier, but it didn’t rain. After a day of hiking we came upon our last hotel. Well we got there and chose a room and stuff then went down stairs for dinner. Kinda handy having a big hotel in the middle of a national park. The next day I got up early to see if there might be a cool sunrise again. There wasn’t, but it did start to snow. I was just standing there all alone when it just started. I walked back to the hotel in the swirling flakes. By the time I got back it had really gotten going. Most everyone was up and there was a bit of confusion as to the plans. Some people wanted to see the glacier Grey a few km away, so a couple Belgians and I went with a counselor. We started up the now snowy path wrapped up in all our warm clothes. A bit later a group of mostly Germans and Gringos caught up with up. I went with them and we started going faster. After an hour or so people started dropping of and going back and after about two hours only 5 of us remained 4 Gringos and a Canadian. We began to realize that the clouds we pretty thick and they would block our view, also that they weren’t getting any better as we continued up. Eventually we stopped. We were right, there wasn’t a view, but we took a Picture of us infront of where the view should be, maybe later I’ll photoshop one in or something. Then we sat around a bit enjoying our achievement, the kid from Chicago pulled out a soup Thermos and some one else, some candies. After a bit of huddling behind a bush our of the wind, eating our soup and candy, we decided it was time to go back. When we arrived we had breakfast, packed a lunch and the rest of our stuff and got on a boat in the lake. Onboard there was free hot chocolate, I made sure to take advantage of that. There were also some of the best views of the whole trip. Eventually we stopped and got on a bus which took us a short distance to a waterfall we had seen on the boat. After some more pictures we got back on the bus and head to Punta Arenas. On the way, the bus broke down. We sat there for a while, I don’t know how long. We were in the middle of nowhere. They called for help and told us other busses would be there shortly. It was really cold. Some kids got out to throw stones at a sign. An hour or so later a couple vans pulled up and took us the rest of the way to Punta Arenas. Once there we found our hotel and settled in for the night. The next morning we got up slowly a few at a time. I went out to check out Punta Arenas for an hour before we had to meet. It was alright, I almost got lost and bought a few souvenirs. When we met up we got on the bus again and went to a few interesting places in the city. We visited a statue with a shiny foot. They say that if you kiss the foot you’re destined to comeback to Punta Arenas one day. The Chairman told us he had touched it 26 years ago and now, look, here he was. We also visited some sign posts that pointed to cities like Jerusalem, Munich, and New York. We also visited a bunch of statues of a shepherd and some sheep and, lastly, the graveyard. After the graveyard we went back to the airport and went home. The on the ride back to Santiago there was a really cool sunset.

More Photos By Chris, This time frm the South Trip

2007-06-12T21:49:10Z

Group Shot With Flags

I'm right under the top left corner of the Dutch flag, peaking over someone`s sholder.

Talcinos

All exchange students from Talca.

Dutch Kids

This was supposed to be another Dutch kids shot, but Ernesto came in anyway, so did the brown-haird girl, the only one really from Holland is Martin, the tall one.

Me!!

By the twin waterfalls

Belgum!!

This was when we had to do the presentations about our countries. My favorite was Belgium, this was the but when they all pretended to get drunk and stagger around the stage singing the national anthem.

The Mountians, a river, and a Gringo fly fishing

I took this picture, pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Group shot at barraks

Heh, don't show this to the Holland Rotery

The first resturaunt we went to

MMmmmm... my kinda place

A little Cafè

named after the fact that Sherlock Holms was said to have visited Puerto Montt.

A Lovers statue in Puerto Montt

A little boat tour we went on

There's me, Jessy from Georga, and Sebastian from Germany

Me at The Saltos de Petrohue

This time without bugs

Groups Shot

by the Saltos

On the Namivag

Chelsea and I by a Waterfall

The Glacier we visited

Photos From Easter Island

2007-06-07T23:33:16Z

Ok, I know they took a while, but here they are, most of them taken by Chris.

Tower of Lost Luggage

Right in the middle of the airport

Tangata Mano

BirdMan statue

Tangata Mano

The Explorers

The 15 Kings

The ones that were knocked over by a tsunami andput back by a Japanese Company

The Moai dump yard

Group Shot at Airport

With a Tangata Mano statue

Me!!!

The First Beach We Went To

There's the first Moais in the background

Moais

A closer shot of the Moai

Solitary Moai

Closer on the one Moai

Preparing Dinner

Pascuansa Dance

Dance fom Isla de Pascua (Easter Island)

More Moai

Moai With Eyes

This is the only one with with eyes, I think they were placed there recently by some forigner. I guess that's how they looked when it was first built.

Julia, Chris, and I infront of the Moai

with eyes

Close up on the Face

House Foundation

Thay said that all that they did in their houses was sleep. Everything else was done outside.

Group with the Eyes Moai

Me on the Easter Island Coast

Sitting Moai

The only moai with anythin below the belt, not that it has a belt...

Moai Pit

In Production

I guess theywere in the middle of sculpting it when...

More Sunken Moai

Some not normaly seen in magazenes

How many Moai can you see?

More hidden Moai

Volcano Creater

The creater of the volcano were the Moais are carved

Artesin's Market

Lot's of really cool Easter Island Art.

Close up on the Wooden Moai

Moai by the Dock

Easter Islander

The son of the owner of the hotel we staied at. I don't remember his name, but he hung ut with us a bit.

Jessie and I

In out super spiffey wet suits ready to go diveing.

Listening to the Instructions

Goin' Divein'

Sea Turtle

We were just sitting here and it just came up to have a look.

All us who went diving

An artist in the jail

Showing off his handywork

The Queen

Sunken Moai

In the Moai dump pit

Me on the top of the Club House

With my Rotery Jacket.

Me getting the Easter Island Rotery Banner

Another Volcano

Closer to the town

Me by the Crater

Artist at work

Another Moai

More in the South

2007-05-26T18:19:37Z

We arrived in Puerto Montt and everyone was tired and cold. We waited around in the termanal and finally the bus came to take us to Puerto Varis. It took a few hours, but we got there. If you were paying attention, you'll remember that I went to that excact city a month or two before. This time, however, we stayed in a hotel a km or so outside of town. Later we all decided to go into town. A bunch of the other exchangers wanted to go to the casino, but I wanted to explore again. We were suposed to return again to he hotel and go to Chiloè for the rest of the day, but no one showed up on time, so it was rescheduled for the next day. The next day we drove to and took a ferry Chiloè. I felt sorry for the rest of the exchangers who didn't get a chance to see the whole Island for a week, like I did. We just poped in to see one church on the way to Ancud and saw the musium, the last Spanish fort, and walked around a bit before hopping back on the bus and going to Castro where we had lunch. I wondered around Castro by my self to to check out the market and to find somewhere vegetarian to lunch. I actually found a place with some good vegetarian potatoe soup and I was able to explore the city more than I did the last time I was there. Then we got back on the bus and went back to the hotel. The next da we went to the National Park Peyuhue (Pronounced pay-YOU-way), the most visited national park in Chile. We stayed at a resort called Aguas Calientes because it was a hot springs resort. We got to stay in little cabbins that were triangular and cute with wood stoves in. We stayed a couple days there going on hikes and swiming in the hot swiming pools or playing vollyball. One night we did a night hike with a native guy who told us about how his people (Mapuche) thought of nature. Another night we did a relaxing candle light sesson in one of the pools. I feel like it was for old people, and indeed there were quite a few old people about. We didn't relax as much as we probably should have, though. There was a lot of splashing and putting out candles going on. By the end, all the old people had left. This would be the last time we would really be together so we got them to turn on the lights and we waded around the pool and said goodbye to people who lived in other cities who we may never see again after this trip. The next day we went to Pucòn. We got a hotel between Villarica and Pucón within a short walk to the lake shore. Back in Chitén Ernesto promased us a beer when we won that second soccer game against the Chilean army. Now when we went to a resturaute for dinner, we called him on his promace, so everyone who wanted got a beer with dinner. Afterwords we got to walk around. It was pretty late, and the only things open were pubs. That was fine for most people who would have gone to one anyway. I went with a group of kids to a nice looking pub. They all drank while the Morman girl (the only other one there who didn't drink) and I, sat and talked. After a bit Ernesto came along. Now I don't know if I've told you yet, but Rotary has a bunch of rules and suggestions most of which are up for interpratation and bending, but then there are the four rock hard comandments, ot the four D's as they're sometimes called: Thou shalt not Date. Thau shalt not Drive. Thou shalt not indulge in Drugs. And finally, Thou shalt not Drink of alcahol, espicialy not with other exchangers. Technicly breaking any one of the rules is justafacation for being sent home. Back in the beggining of the North Trip a group of kids was cought drinking and a Canadian was sent home. Now I could feel the wrath comming on, but that didn't happen, instead an exchanger bought him a drink and he sat down and talked with the rest of us. Later we got back on the bus and went back to the hotel. Apperently it was one of the German's birthday so there was a big secret party in his cabbin. There was a chocolate cake into which the birthday boy's head was smashed according to Chilean custom. There was misic and dancing and a bit of pisco. Then Ernesto showed up. He hung around and drank some pisco with us for a while. Then right when he left the Germans pulled out some more beer and some kids went off to get drunk, others went down to skinny dip in the lake. I helped clean the room where we had the party and later went back to my cabbin where most of the Germans had gotten out a keg of beer in one of the other rooms. At about 3 am Ernesto woke up again and made everyone go to bed. The next morning we were going river rafting. Ernesto was waiting for us in the meeting aria with a bag of empty bottles. I guess he did find out about the drinking after all, but he just asked who bought the unautherized beer and then didn't punish any one. He's so lienent. We drove up to the rafting place and got all geared up and got into three rafts. The river came directly off of the snow and ice of the mountians and was freezing cold, but that didn't stop us from taking a dip or attacking other rafts and boarding them. I was actually stranded on another raft for a while between calm streches. The river was mostly calm, but there were three exciting parts, in one of which our assistant guide got bounced out. She was a Duch woman training to be a guide. She didn't speak Spanish as well as we did, but, like all Duch people, her English was great. After rafting we went to the hot springs that I went to with Rubin's family. I love that place. I spent the whole day soaking in the nice warm hot tubs. This time remembered about theose mud baths. A couple kids and I went mud bathing, it was soooo cool. All warm and squishey and blerpy. After a while in the mud I got out and tried to shower the mud off (whch took for ever!). Then we got bck into the bus and headed back to te hotel. The next mrning we headed back to Talca. On the way we stopped an hour or so at various important cities like Valdivia, Temuco, and Chillan. In Temuco a Belgian exchanger bougt me a mouth harp. That kept me occupied in the bus. In Chillan we had lunch. At the resturaunt there was a particularly bad vegetarian option. I was commenting on the serious lack of vegetarian resturantes in Chile. One girl laughes and said "No vegetarian resturaunt would last a week in Chile" After lunch I walked around by my self, and I saw a vegetarian resturant! That made me so happy. Later we arrived in Talca and all went home and got ready to start school.

hammagua @ 2007-05-14T12:14:00

2007-05-14T16:16:48Z

Chitén was alright. I think there's a road that connects it to Puerto Montt where we took the boat from, but I'm not sure. It's the Capital of the 11th reagon, but there are no buildings highter than one story. As I walked around the next day, it was strangly quiet, the beach was almost still, lapping quietly on the rocky beach. I felt like I was the only one alive in the world. After a while we finished exploring the town and grouped up again at the barracks. We got on the bus again and went to a glacier. We stopped a few times to check out a lake and a river and some other stuff, but utamitly we arrived at the trailhead. From there it was about a 3 hour hike up to the glacier. When we got to the top, Ernesto, out chairman, got out a bottle of rum and plastic cups and everyone had rum with ice from the glacier. I didn't, rum is nasty. Then we went down again. This another example where pictures explain better than words, unfortunatly my camera broke on the summer vacation trip with my family and it was still in the shop when I left. Maybe one day I'll get Chris' pictures. We got back and had dinner. I think I can freely say it may have been the worst food I've had in Chile. They were nice about not putting meat on my plate, but the alternative wasn't that great, cucumbers. To go with the Cucumbers we had rice and soup. After dinner there was a soccer game. The exchange students vs the Chilean Army. It was kind of a feel good game with anyone who wanted to playing, we lost 2-4 but it was fun to watch. The next day we got on the bus and went to a little town called Futalefú or something like that. It took about 4 hours on bus to get there and it seems like it's in the middle of nowhere, but a more beautiful nowhere I coulden't imagen. It's about 7km from the Argintinian border and even smaller than Chitén. There are beautiful mountians surrounding it and rivers and forrests and everything. It's sometimes called the San Pedro de Atacama of the south, which means that the only was it makes any money is through tourism. Every other store sold tours in rivers and mountians and and forests and everything. Unfortunatle we only had 3 hours with which to enjoy the town, too short to do anything intresting but long enough to get board out of you skull. After the 3 hours were up, we all got back in the bus and left, most of us with negitive feelings about the town, but I want to return some day and raft rivers and climb mountians and hike through forests and everything... someday. After dinner there was another soccer game, this time only the best soccer players from the exchange student side played. Some from Germany the New Zealander the Austrailean, a couple Dutch, and a couple Gringos. That time it was a lot more intence with other exchangers on the side lined chearing. We won that time, 5-2 I've never been that excited about a sport before. That night we heard about some guy from Montana who was going to play music in a local pub, so that night we all we all went down to hear him. It was intresting seeing the faces of all the locals as we walked in. There were about 10 of them and twenty of us. The guy was pretty good, and there were a couple of his gringo friends who we talked to for a bit. We got back late and went to sleep. The next day we had to go home. We knew about the boat this time and tried to get ready as quickly as we could. We arrived at the dock pretty darn early, I thought, but we still had to stow our bags and stuff and by the time we got into the cabbin, it was almost as full as last time. Some managed to snag seats and good floor spots, but most of us were left without anywhere to sleep again. I decided to go up on the open deck again, untill I got sleepy enough to stand the cramped stinkyness of the lower deck. There were some exchangers already up there so we all got close to keep warm. After a while one of them mentioned, "I've got a hammock" How weird, one of the Brizillians had randomly givin him a hammock. There was a roof kinda thing, a sieres of metal pipes that held up a canvis tarp kinda thing. Other people on the upper deck had alreadygotten out sleeping bags and other had pitched a tent, so we felt that it wouldn't be too out of place to string up a hammock to some of those pipes. Afterall, what could be more natural than sleeping in a hammock on a boat. A couple of us had strong belt that we used to tie the hammock up, then we hung off the bottom to test for strength, when we were satisfied, we took turns getting in to test it. Finally when everyone had tested it, it came to the disition of who got to sleep in it first. After a few rounds of "No, you" "No, you," I took the initiative needed and climbed in. The night was still young, but it was still pretty cold. After a while the owner of the hammock kicked me out and replaced me. I went back to huddleing with the others on the hard cold metal. After stuttered sleep, I looked up and saw that no one was occupieing the hammock, in fact no one was occupieing my metal floor eather, part of the reason why I woke up, I was all cold and they had all gone down. I got up and brought with me all the coats and blankets they had left. The floresent lights kept shining all night so that I had to spare a bit of cloth to cover my eyes too. It was still really cold and I kept feeling spots of coldness I had left uncovered. After a long bright cold night we arrived in Puerto Montt.

The Last of Summer Vacation and the Start of The South Trip.

2007-05-08T23:40:35Z

Ok, so I know you've all been waiting at hte edge of your seats wondring what happened with my wallet. Well here's the conclution:

After getting down the mountian, wgot bac into the van and headed back to the hotel. That night Marìa gt a call on her phone from some random guy in Frutillar who said he had found my wallet. He got that number from the little booklet I always keep in my wallet with all my phone numbers. I guess María Graciela Hidalgotas the only one that didn’t sound like a gringo. He said he felt sorry for the poor young gringo who had obiously been spending a lot of time in Chile (from my Chilean ID card), he also said he wanted to send it to me. I wasn’t sure of my dad’s office address, so I gave him my dad’s phone number. That was a big relief. The next day we went on the longest zip line in South America. It was alright, it was split into 6 parts, one part being so long that we had to pair up to have enough weight. The next day we went on a guided hike through Villarrica National Park. That was cool we saw some cool lakes and things pictures of which are already on the blog. Then it was time to go. We all packed everything into the car and headed back to Santiago. We stopped off in Talca to drop me off at the bus station where I got on a bus to Peyuhue, where my family was waiting for me. We spent the next week at the beach or just hanging around the house. Finally, after about three weeks of vacation, we went home. A few days later my wallet arrived and so did my new credit card from home. So that was cool. Then I started school at my new school like I told you earlier. But right before that I went on another trip to the south, this time with Rotary.

It was cool because this was the first time we really got to meet the newbees, the new exchange students from the southern hemisphere, a guy from Austrailia two from New Zealand (one in Talca) and two from Brazil. This trip was cool too because it was the one time when all the Santiago, Rancagua, and Curico kids had to come down to Talca to meet. They arrived after a two hour delay due to traffic in Talca at about 9pm. We met the bus and all went to a resturaunt to have dinner. It was, as usuall, a big hunk of meat. I had salad. Then we got back on the bus and headed south through the night. When we stopped we were in Puerto Montt. We had breakfest in a little cafe and went to check out the market, one of the best I have seen in Chile. I didn’t get anything that time and afterword, we headed to the Saltos de Petrohue. I had been there befote with my family, but it was cool seeing them again. The river had lowered a bit and some of the waterfalls were different. We also went up to All Saints Lake. This time, however, there was not a single bug. After a while there we went back to Puerto Montt and waited to the boat Namivag that would take us South to a little icolated town in northern Patagonia called Chitèn. The Rotary guys told us that we had special seats, so that when the boat finally came, we just laughed at the poor people who had to run to grab a seat in which to spend the night. We were feeling pretty smug about our special seats and just sauntered aboard. When we got to the upper deck, however, where the special seats were, the guy at the door looked at our tickets and pointed to a little word in the lower right hand corner. “General seating” he said. But that didn’t matter that much, all the fools before us had piled themselvs down on the lower deck incide the cabbin. We had practally the whole upper deck out in the open to ourselvs (besides the special seating aria inside) We started choseing seats to sleep on or getting together to play cards. There were some nice strong floresent lights so that we could play the whole night if we wented to. After a few hours of talking and playing I thought I’d see if I could get some sleep.At about 2am, I put on my coat and got on a nice hard metal bench. Now the thing about metal benches out in the open on a metal ship at night in the middle of northern Patagonia is that it gets very cold. After about a half hour of just lieing there in the cold frezing my legs off, I gave up. It wasn’t gunna get a lot warmer as the night drew on. After a thoughtful look at the situation, I realizad that the people who has cosen the crouded stinkey nasty hot lower deck might be right for that exact reason, it was hot. I took a deep breath and headed down after a bit. There were already a few exchangers down there and absolutely no space. It wasn’t just all the seats that were occupied, all of the nice out of the way floor space was also filled with sleeping people. I found a little space in a corador between seats where I could squeeze myself and not get steped on too many times by people walking around. I was hugging the wall with my head dangerously close to some guy’s foot. I just hoped he didn’t twitch in his sleep and knock some teeth out. At about 6am (I think I slept, but I’m not sure) I got up again. Some thing had happened and the boat had stopped. I took a little walk around and returned down stairs. This time I found part of a seat, enough to sit up on, I took it. A bunch of the other exchangers occupied a large section of the corrador with blankets of coats and glared at anyone who looked like they wanted to pass. After about 2 hours the boat started again and at about 10am later we came to a port. It wasn’t ours, but a whole bunch of other people got off, freeing up all shorts of seats, but by that time, it didn’t matter, we were alread all woken up. We spent the last 3 hours sitting around playing cards. It was kinda weird because there were still people sleeping, but we hardly notaced them anymore so every once in a while I’d rest my hand on what looked like just a pile of clothes and it turned out to be someone. I woke pu more than one person like that, oops. Finally we got there. At about noon we arrived at Chitèn. We all unpacked our bags and walked off the boat. I notaced there seemed to be a lot more army people around than normal. The reason was quickly explained when we headed over to a covered army truck and started sticking our bags in. Then we hopped in army busses and went up to a little bast near one of the parks. I guess threr’s an outpost there just to make sure no other country just comes along and clames Northern Patagonia. We got to go up to the barreks and sleep… I was already getting a bad feeling about the food to come. The army down there probable didn’t have much else to do, because they spent a loto f time driving us around. We went and saw a cool beach that day, as well as touring the city of Chitèn, (that didn’t take very long), After all we finaly got to return to our barrica and really sleep and shower for the first time in 3 days.

Pictures From Summer Vacation Part Two

2007-04-06T17:20:58Z

Fisherman on Lake Llanquehue
That's Mount Osorno there behind him.

Wind Surfer
There actually wasn't that much wind, he was haveing a hard time.

Going to the Saltos
There's Mount Osorno again.

Saltos River
From a bridge

Saltos Lava Flow

A Salto
One of many waterfalls

Saltos de Petrohue
Classic picture

The Saltos River
We were lucky to have such a clear day and be able to see the mountian.

Me and the Mountian

Some pretty sweet waterfalls

A little waterfall
on the little trail we went on

Downstream
Form the saltos

Along the back path
A pretty little creak

A Colihueache
I don't know how to spell it, but it is one huge evil bug

All Saint's Lake
Up stream from The Saltos

Llamas at the Resturante

Emus at the Resturante

José and Me on the mini zip line

From Mount Osorno
Lake Llanquehue

Mount Ororno

The Frutillar Beach and Concert Hall

This is like the Symbol of Frutillar

Puerto Montt from above

Lake Villarica & Mount Villarica
If you look really close you can see smoke coming out of the top of the volcano. It's always smoking.

José on the Lake

Pucón Beach
Just a little croweded

The other side of Pucón
And Mount Villarica

Me at the Deep Pool and underground river

China Falls

China Falls again

Getting ready for the Climb

All geard up and ready

Some nice landscape from Mount Villarica

Up up up we go

A bit Higher
above the clouds and other mountians

Trenches
Soo close... See the smoke?

The Last strech

On top of the Volcano
There really was quite a lot of smoke.

The Rim
We got to walk almost all around the crater.

A Nice View from the Top

Smoke leaking out from the very rocks themselvs

Everyone had to get a picture of the inside of the crater

There's Me!!
Holding my breath while Rubin takes the picture

Crazy Rock formations
Also leaking smoke

There it is, the inside of the crater.
Too much smoke to see the any lava

More walking around the Rim

Another Mountian far awar

The desent.

Rubin on the Zip Line

Summer Vacation Part 2: Region X

2007-04-06T03:58:30Z

Welcome to Part Two of the Summer Vacation Series. For this entry I decided to add a new and previously unseen before… The whole story SPELL CHECKED!!!

I guess most of my entries have been about my vacations, huh? So for a change, I'll start this entry out with a bit of normal recent life.

So I just got back from a Rotary trip to the south and began to prepare to start school. My mom had signed me up for a new school because Colegio De La Salle wasn't doing anything for me. I guess it was in part because I started in the middle of the year and spoke really bad Spanish. At first I tried to pay attention to the lectures, but they were way over my head and we wouldn't get tested on them anyway. The parents of the gringos going there, including mine decided it was time for a change and I was signed up for Colegio de Ingles de Talca. Chris is also going and so Sarah. Sarah is the new New Zealand exchange student who just arrived this January. Because New Zealand is south of the equator, they're school systems match up and they don't have to split a school year by coming in August. Julia is going to a university because she's old enough and, she says, she's already learned everything grade school can teach her. Alison's dad came just after we got back from the trip, so I guess she'll be starting in about a month. Just yesterday, Chris and I went up the new school, about a half hour walk from my house in a beautiful large campus, sharp contrast to the concrete block that served as our old school. Chris` mom came too and we all talked to a sub director and later took a tour around the school. School was going at the time and as we passed one of the class rooms, a couple kid saw me out the window and showed to me. I didn't know them, they were probably at my birthday party. It was decided that we would start on Monday and we went home. I started classes, and just like the other school people asked me billions of questions but unlike the other school, I was able to answer them with my now pretty fluent Spanish. I’m taking a whole store of classes, among them Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Debate, and Physics. Also I actually able to participate in the classes as well as the other students. That’s making school a whole lot more interesting. So that's a chunk of my life there.... Ok, I'll get back to the exciting Adventures in Region X. Region X is called that because it's the tenth region. It's also called The Lakes District, because there are a whole lot of lakes.

After landing back on mainland Chile, we made a bee line to Puerto Varres. Puerto Varres is on the biggest lake in Chile, Lake Llanquehue (yag-KEY-way). The other way is the Volcano Osorno. We found some nice cabbins and went to check out the city. Puerto Varres is also known for a big casino there. Josè and Pablo went there and lost every penny of their 5,000 pesos. I wondered around a bit and found artisans's markets and stores. After a while we went back to the cabins had dinner and slept. The next day we decided to check out the Volcano Osorno. So we all got into the car and went up. It was a long windy road, but when we got to the top, there was a breathtaking view of the lake and the city and everything. In the winter, there is a ski resort, and we could have gone higher in the ski lift, but it cost about $10 a person. We looked around, took photos and went back down the mountain. For lunch we passed by a restaurant. It had really good food and there were a lot of weird animals hanging around. There were a pack of llamas along with some emus and even a leopard in a cage. Alter looking at all the animals we went in for lunch. We were the only ones there, so we got a table with a wonderful view of Mount Osorno. We ordered 3 lunches for the five of us, it turned out to be more then enough. We ate kugen. Kugen is a typical German pie that became a typical Region X desert because of the quantity of Germans there. What happened was a while back, Chile wanted to expand to the south, but no one wanted to live there because of the bad weather and isolation from the rest of Chile. So the Government at the time imported a bunch of Germans promising them free land and a number of other things if they would come down and build on the land. So they did, and now everywhere you look there’s German architecture and German food and stuff. Another day we went to see the Saltos de Petrohue (Petrohue Falls). They were really spectacular. My pictures will give you a better idea, but what they were was a river over a black lava flow. One of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen. The only downside is that the colihuaches were out again, and this time they brought their friends. We also went to All Saints Lake which is up stream of the Saltos. It was also really beautiful, but we only spent a few moments there before we were driven away by the colihuaches. The next town we went to was Frutillar. Frutallar is on the same lake as Puerto Varras, but the other side, so now we had views of the volcano over the lake. There was also even more German stuff here than in Puerto Varras. We checked into a hotel cabin deal, kinda like apartments I guess. We had our own kitchen and dining room and everything.

Frutillar is really beautiful, it’s a lot smaller and calmer, but there’s still plenty of artisans markets to explore. One of the things it’s famous for is the music hall it has. It’s also really beautiful and built in stilts over the lake. One day we decided to go swimming in the lake. I wore my pants with my swim shorts to the beach, and when we got there I took my pants off and wrapped them in my towel. In one of my pockets was my wallet. Josè and I rented a paddle boat and zipped around near the shore. It was a leaky boat and kept submerging itself, but that was just part of the fun. Then we went swimming a bit and came back to the shore. When we got back my parents were leaving. I gathered my things and headed back to the hotel. On the way I stopped by a little snack shack where I bought an ice cream bar. When I got back to the hotel, I changed back into my pants, but something was wrong. My wallet was missing. I was sure I had put it back in my pants pocket alter buying that ice cream. In it was my Chillan ID, my debit card, my insurance information, my student ID, my little book of telephone numbers, and about $20 worth of cash. I searched my whole room and then started re-tracing my steps back to the snack shack. I wasn’t very far, so once I got there I tried to ask the vender if he had seen my wallet. I was halfway through my question when I forgot the word for wallet. I struggled with an explanation of what it was, but there was a long line and we soon ignored me. I looked around the shack anyway, just in case and then returned to the hotel. Once there I asked Josè if he would accompany me back to ask the guy again. He said he would, so back we went. This time the guy paid attention, he said he hadden’t seen it the other people working there said they hadden’t either. We both had another look around the whole outside of the shack. With out find anything, we headed back to the hotel. A few minuets later my parents got back from what ever they were doing. I told them what happened, and my dad took me to see the police. We asked them to tell us if anyone turned it in and left my dad’s cell phone number. Then we went back to the hotel to find a way to call home to cancel my debit card. Luckily there was a guy there with a computer that could call US telephones cheaply. I called my mom and she agreed to cancel my card. Then my dad and I went back to the snack shack looking over fences and in the gutter hoping maybe someone had found it, taken the money, and chucked it. We even asked the vender guy again, but with no luck. Finally we gave up. We had done all we could, the only thing left was hope that some one would turn it over to the police. I slept that night worrying about the complicated hoops I’d have to jump through to get myself a new Chillan ID. The next day I was due to meet Rubin and his family who were also on vacation. They had invited me to with them to the South the same dates as I was going with my family. We agreed to meet in Villarrica. This worked out well for my family also because they wanted to go to a national park right over the border in Argentina. Without any ID, it might have been difficult for me. We arranged to meet in Peyuhue. The next day we found Rubin and his family without any trouble and I unpacked my stuff in the hotel room. Rubin is a German Exchange student who didn’t go on either the North Trip or Easter Island, but way back I stayed at his house during the Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso trip. He first struck me as the stereotypical German, tall, blond, outdoorsy, and dosen’t smile unless he really means it, but he also happens to be one of the few exchange students who don’t drink. His host mom is Maria Gracela. She’s a really nice lady who smiles all the time and does her best to make us as happy as she can. When she was little, she went to the US for a half year exchange, and now has a daughter in California.

When Josè, her son, gets old enough, she plan son sending him to the US too. She likes using her limited English on me which can be fun sometimes, but annoying when she translates easy Spanish words into English for me. I think she was really hoping to host a Gringo, but she’d never admit it. Josè is about ten years old, I think, and is enchanted by Rubin, he want’s to be just like him. He also want’s to go to Germany for his exchange, much to the shigrin of his mother. The city were staying at, Villarrica, is on the lake Villarrica on the other side of which is the very active Volcano Villarrica. The city was founded back in the 1500s and was one of the first Chilean ctities. It was destroyed a few times by the Mapuche natives who lived in the aria during the Spanish Mapuche War, in which the Mapuche resisted the Spanish for 300 years making it the longest European Native American war. On the other side of the lake near the volcano lies the city of Pucòn. Pucòn is pretty much the outdoorsy turist center of Chile. It has everything, from skiing on the Volcano to skiing on the lake to horse-back riding. An interesting thing I’ve noticed here is that you can tell how touristy a place is by how much English there is around. In Pucòn everything was in English. So I got there, my family left and we went to the check out the beach. It wasn’t all that great for swimming, Maria said there’s a better one in Pucòn. Instead of swimming we went on a tour of the lake. Afterword, we went to check out Pucòn. The beach was a lot better, but it was also right next to a huge hotel and absolutely full of people. Then we took a short little tour of the city and had dinner. The vegetarian food there was pretty good. After dinner we went to the market which was also pretty good. I couldn’t buy anything, however, what with the lack of wallet and everything. Alter a while, we returned to Villarrica, about half an hour away. The next morning we found a touristy flyer at the hotel breakfast table. It looked interesting one of the things it offered was a guided climb to the smoking crater of Mount Villarrica. There were pictures of a bunch of people looking down into a bubbling lava pit. “I want to do that” I said, sort of sarcastically without much hope of doing it. Maria looked over “Hmm, it looks kinda scary, but ok.” Alter breakfast we went to Pucòn and signed up for the climb and also a few other things the same agency offered, a zip line that clamed to be the longest in South America, a tour of the region, a day in a hot springs resort, and a guided hike in one of the near by national parks. After that we spent the rest of the day on the Pucòn beach.

So yeah, I’m really living it rough down here. The next day we went on the tour of the reigon. It was basically driving around in a van looking at lava flows from Moun Villarrica’s last eruption and waterfalls that fall from subterranean rivers. On the tour with us were two gringo girls from California. I got to act as translator for them, relating information about everything we saw. One of the more interesting things was a waterfall called China Falls. It’s named that because there was a cow named China that fell down the waterfall. After the tour, we went to a hot springs resort and spent the rest of the day soaking in hot tub like swimming pools. The next day we went on the zip line. It was at the same place as the hot springs It was alright, but the scenery wasn’t all that spectacular. I had a good time. The next day we got up early, about 5:00am to go climb the volcano. We got to the meeting place and tried on all the gear. Most of the stuff we were told to just stick in the backpack including this weird peace of canvas with a bunch of weird straps. After everyone was ready we all piled into a van and headed up the mountain. In the winter, there’s a ski resort on Mount Villarrica, we got there and they got the ski lifts running with a charge of $10 a person. Rubin and I wanted to hike up, but Maria insisted we take the lift. When everyone had arrived at the top, they handed out ice axes and showed us how to use them and then we were off. There actually wasn’t any real climbing involved, it was just an uphill hike in the snow. After a while Maria and Josè got tired and let Rubin and I go ahead. On the way up I noticed some trenches in the snow that seemed to go straight down the mountain. I thought they might be where unfortunate climbers had slid down, but I kept that to myself. The views were just amazing, and, about 4 hours later we were at the smoking crater. Once there, there was no doubt at all how active that volcano was. Aside from the billowing smoke that would choke anyone who came to close, I could also hear lava boiling and splashing deep within. Rubin and I took pictures and waited for Maria and Josè, but they never showed up. After a while, we were instructed to strap the piece of canvas to our butts and follow our group back down. I wasn’t looking forward to hiking all the way back another four hours down hill. To my suprise we didn’t do any of that at all, instead we headed over to the head of one of those trenches and a guide showed us how to sit on out canvas things and use out ice axes as breaks while we slid on out butts down the mountain. That, I think, was the best part of the whole vacation. It reminded me of a water slide except that no water park I had ever been to had such great views.

Photos from Summer Vacation Part 1

2007-03-08T22:32:13Z

	Ferry Here's the ferry from the main land to the north of Chiloé, near Ancud. Kinda made me miss Washington State Ferries.
	Chiloé landscape Kinda reminded me of home... sort of. It was nice being on an island again.
	Birthing the Cow Yep, there it is. Nice picture, don't you think?
	Beach near Ancud This is where we embarked on the penguin tour.
	The Resturaunt by the Penguin Tour
	Penguins on a Rock
	More penguins on a Rock.
	Here we are after the tour minus Katia
	A Beautiful beach we drove across and a fisherman
	Clamming There was a diver attached to the end of that air tube who just walked into the water and collected clams. Poblo bought a bag of clams from them right there.
	Ancud Just a little part of Ancud.
	Beached Boats In one of the many towns we went to.
	Aucar The island with the church, this is the bridge leading to it.
	The Aucar Church
	The Aucar Cemetary
	The Colo Church
	The Quicavi Church This was the Whitch Town. Even the church is missing it's cross.
	San Jose de Tenaun
	A Ferrt Between Islands This one was even smaller then the first one. You had to back on.
	A Nice view from one of the islands we visited.
	A pretty sweet church.
	Achao From a hill
	The Achao Church Oldest standing church of Chiloé
	Another Church I don't remember the name.
	The End of the Road. We had already gone that far before I realized I should probably take a picture of it.
	Nuestra Sra. Del Rosario de Chonchi
	Some Cool Wall Art
	San Pedro Nolasco De Ichuac
	Don't remember this one's name eather
	Another Church We stoped here for a while. My mom talked to some locals. There were some people working on fixing it.
	The Streets of Castro
	San Francisco De Castro The Coolist and biggest Church of them all.

Summer Vacation part 1: Chillin' Away in Chilly Chiloé, Chile

2007-02-22T21:58:19Z

Ugg, I just finished some Rotary essays and questions. I had to write an essay about Chilean Independence, Pablo Neruda, and the regions of Chile, and answer about a billion questions about the North and Easter Island. Ok, so most of them were assigned back in September, but no one really took them seriously, there was no length it had to be or grade. I figured we would we just forget about it. Most of the other kids did too, then we got a email a few weeks ago saying "Those who have not finished the homework will not participate in the trip to the south." So I just finished them which is good because the trip is the 22nd, Today. So the next cool thing that happened after the new year was Techos Para Chile (Roofs for Chile). This is a Chilean charity that builds houses for poor people. All us gringos participated in what was supposed to be a full weekend of construction of a house for a family in the poorest part of Talca. We managed to get it done in one day. We started at about 7am at the site. By about 8 we were all pounding the ground with metal rods and digging the foundation holes. That alone took half of the day. After finishing the holes we stood back to admire our work, I've never been more proud of 15 pieces of wood sticking up out of the ground. After lunch we started on the floor, walls, and roof. Fortunately for us, the walls and floor were already made, we just put them up and nailed them in. I kinda felt useless after that, there were a few Techos employees and Julia's dad there too, and they did just about everything. Us gringos, for the most part, handed them things or carried things for them. Finally, at about 7 it was done. It was a tiny one room house, most people's bedrooms were bigger, with two openable windows and a door, and a tin roof. Not much, but better then what they had been living in apperently. I got home smelling something horrible and with big ole' blisters, but feeling like I really did something worthwhile.

The next day my family and I went on a vacation. We got up early in the morning and packed the car with all our stuff and headed about 600km south to the city of Ancun, Chiloé. Chiloé is a really special place, it's a group of Islands south of the Lakes District. It was first settled by a religious group who made sure every town had a huge church. The churches of Chiloé are famous nation wide and 16 of them are World Heritage sites. It was also the last The culture of Chiloé was separated from that of main-land Chile for such a long time it developed it's own culture different from the European culture that the rest of Chile had. There are still hints of that around in the myths and legends. There's witches, warlocks, ships that can sail against the wind and go under water, deformed monster men, naked women, and forest gnomes, Chiloé has it all. The islands are normally cloudy and famous for their rain, kinda like home. The Big Island of Chiloé is the second biggest island in South America, after Tierra del Fuego, south of the Straight of Magellan. That's where we started, the north in a town called Ancud. We found cabins and went to sleep. The next day we drove around Ancud. After a while we passed a cow giving birth behind a fence by the side of the road with a whole bunch of farmers and people helping. This looked interesting so we stopped and got out and walked over to them. I was just about to get out my camera when one of the farmers looked at us and said, "What are you doing just standing there? Come help!" So we all crossed the fence and helped. The front hoofs of the calf were just peaking out and there was a rope attached to it on which a few farmers were pulling. José, Pablo, and I added our strength and pulled with all our might. After a while the rope broke and was replaced with a stronger one, the cow's head also had to be tied to one of the fence posts to keep her from being dragged. After a few minuets the head appeared and then the whole front half. It started crying out and I was sure we were going to rip it's legs off, but they were stronger then they looked. Finally when it seemed like it would never get born, with a satisfying SHLOOSHHH!! The calf came free and was pulled a few feet from the mother. The farmers thank us and we left while trying to wipe off the cow dung our feet in the grass as we went. We got back into the car and headed down to the beach. The road led us right down onto a hard wide beach we drove across and stopped by a restaurant. This was a popular penguin hangout zone and there were a few penguin guides. We signed up for one and they gave us some rubber boots to wade out to the boat with. Once on board some other people joined us and some guides with hip boots pushed us out. We saw a bunch of penguins and other birds, and also an otter, not too common a sight. After we got back we went up to the restaurant and had lunch. Cheese empanadas, yum yum! The n we went back to the town to check out the markets and stuff. The next day was overcast and nasty looking. That day we spent mostly on the road going from pueblo to pueblo and looking at the churches. One church was on an island. Well it was only an island during high tide, but there was a cool bridge going over to it. It was all blue and had a cool graveyard on the same little island. While we were there it started to rain. We ran back over the bridge and in to the car. All the other churches we visited, I was usually the only one who daired to get out of the car to take a Picture of the church. That afternoon we went to Castro, the capital of Chiloé where we found another cabin to sleep in. The next day we went on a ferry even smaller then the one we had arrived on to go over to one of the smaller islands of Chiloé. It had stopped raining by today and was actually looking nice. On this ferry one had to back on as there was only one entrance/exit. The little island were kinda cool, we visited a chruch that was made of pure wood, not a metal nail to be found, all wooden pegs. Well it used to be like that, now it had nails to keep it intact. We also went to the Castro crafts market. I love crafts markets in general, but the Castro crafts market was spectacular. We also went to the church of Castro. I’m pretty sure it was the most beautiful church I have ever seen, and I’ve been to Germany and Prague where there are some pretty sweet cathedrals, lemme tell ya. But the thing about the church in Castro was that it wasn’t cold stone and stuff, the inside was the most beautiful wood I have ever seen. It was also really big and had all the alters and staff that you can find in all cool churches. All the other churches were all kinda cool in the historical not very cool at all kinda way. They were mostly falling apart and were way too big for their towns. The next day we went to Quillón, the city at the end of the road. It ‘s kinda weird, I never really made the connection, but the highway that I keep taking between Talca and Santiago and all over this country, is the same road that goes right past Seattle. The Pan-American, or route 5 or I-5, all the same road, and in Quiillón, it ends. I was sure to take a Picture of the End Of The Road, but no one else seemed to think it was that special. Then we took the ferry back to the main land and went to Puerto Varras.

I'm actually going on another Rotary trip here in a couple of hours, untill the 9th, so I won't be ablr to finish 'till I get back. Were going south this time, to many of the same plases I went with my family of the Summer Vacation. Unfourtunatly, my camera broke, so I'll have to copy Chris and Julia's photos when I get back.

Chou
Alex

Merry Christmis And a Happy New Year!!!

2007-02-08T21:50:34Z

Ok, so it's a bit late, but I hope you all had some fun holladays. I sure did. For Christmas I stayed home, unlike most of the other exchange students. During the whole christmas season it was really weird. It was all hot and sunny, and yet there were still the old fashioned northern hemesphere traditions. In the malls there were Santas in big furry coats, fur trees, and fake snow. I fely like I should be buying fireworks for 4th of July, not buying Christmas presents for my family. The poor Santa guys sitting there in their red overcoats in the sweltering heat! Another thing that cought me by surprise was the wors for Chrismas. Everyone knows it's "Navidad" in Spanish, but they never say "Navidad", it's always "Pascua." I always thought Pascua was Easter, hence the name "Isla de Pascua" for "Easter Island." "No" they told me "Easter is 'Easter And The Festaval Of The Reserection'" So that got cleared up. On Christmas eve, my uncle, Mori and grandmother came over. I didn't know they would, and I felt kinda guilty for not getting them presents. In the US I always like to go to bed early so that the mornig would come sooner. Not so in Chile. I was felling pretty sleepy by about 10:00 but my parrents just called me a wus. Then Mori, brother and sister got in the car and invitede me to go "Look for Santa." I got in and we left. It seemed like Mori knew where he was goin but no one would tell me anything "We're looking for Santa" they would insist. Finally we came to a communtiy of houses. "Santa" was actually a cousen we wanted to invite over. She was asleep so we left. They also desided to pass by the rich community to show me their houses. Not all that intresting. We returned to the house and had a nice dinner untill about 12:30 and then my parrents conneted to Mauri, my brother in Canada, by MSN with a web cam and microphone. And then the crazyness began. Everyone began opening presens at once and thanking eachother with kisses on the cheak and starting on another present. Every second or two someone would shove their present infromt of the web cam to show Mauri and tell him who gave it. After the paper storm had cleard, I ended up with a couple new t-shirts a new pair of swiming shorts, a Chile hat, a prayer drum, and pair of sandles. Then we were allowed to go to sleep. I think it was about 2am. The next morning I woke up about noon and was the only one awake for about an hour. For the rest of the day we didn't do much, we went to the country club that my family's a part of and swam in the pool because it was so hot. Not exactly a normal Chrismas for me, but it's good.

For New Years I thought we were going to Viña del Mar, the port town nearist to Santiago to see the best fireworks of South America. Unfortunatly a few thousnad other people had the same idea and Viña del Mar was full. Instead we went to Pelluguy on the 30th and spent a night there before going to Colvun, the house of an uncle on an artifical lake on the 31st. When we got there it was already 9:00pm and dark. There were three of my dad's brothers there with their familys. One of them was actually married to a lady from the US. We had a dinner and waited for the year to end. When it did, we all gave eachother hugs and wished eachother a good year and had a spoonfull of lentles for luck. Then we all went to the back porch to dance. At one point, at about 2am José said he and a couple cousens were going to take a dunk in the lake and invited me to co with them. I agreed and we all headed down. Being in the middle of the summer, it was a warm night, so I changed into my swim shorts and followed them down. It took a while standing on the end of the dock to work up the courage to jump into the black water, but I would like it to be know that I was actually the first one to jump. The water wasn't all that cold and soon every one elce jumped in too. I thought it was going to be a sort of in, out, and done kind of swim, but we kept jumping back in doing flips and dives for about 20 minuets. Then we dried off and went back. By the time we got back to the dancing, it had calmed down and by 4am we all went to sleep. The next morning I got up while every one was still sleeping. My Gringa aunt was up too, and she started making strawberry pancakes for everyone. For the rest of the day we hung out on the lake. There was a kayack a row boat a jet ski and a sail boat to our disposal. The only problem was the flys. There were millions of them, big harry buggers called coliwaches that bit. After swiming for a while I took the kayack for a while. I went all the way to the other side of the lake, which took a while. After a while my parrents got worried about and sent my brother and cousen to retreve me on the jet ski. I don't know if you've ever been toed in a plastic kayack by a jet ski, but I can tell you it was pretty vacan. The front of the kayack was lifted out of the water and on both sides of me the fins of wake spraid me. A bit different from the sluggish progress I was making with just my pattle. When I got back we had lunch and then we went back to the lake. This time I went out on the row boat. I didn't end up going to the other side of the lake this time. I played some boat tag with a cousen before going back to just hanging out. At about 7:00 we went back to Talca.

The North Pictures (Except for the Diveing one)

2007-02-02T04:13:15Z

	Me Diving Yep, that's me, Diveing by Easter Island
	River Vally This was a common sight, parched hills with a lush vally.
	Iquique Just a city on the edge of oblivian
	Humberstone... store I guess All rusty and falling apart
	Humberstone behind a factory Really quiet, no wind, no people, just an old factory
	Just Some Gringos in a Swiming Pool All rusty and falling apart
	A Humberstone House Falling apart
	Humberstone Market All Chilean towns have maekets, including Hamberstone.
	The first Gisers

	Gringos in the Mist




	A Brizilian in the Giser Swiming Pool
	Me in the second Giser Field



	The Tornado Pool This is the pool I saw the tornado in




	Me by a really strong Giser I could feel the vibrations under my feet
	One of the more colorful streams
	Real live Flamingos
	A Llama we met in the Road
	A Town
	Valley of the Moon Lanscame
	Dune Crossing
	Moon Vally Hill
	Moon vally Rock
	Moon Vally Landscape
	Some boys with a flag In Moon Vally
	Dune Crossing Moon Vally
	Moon Vally BackBone
	Moon Vally Moonscape
	Moon Vally scape
	Dune Crossing from Above
	Some Ruins I visited with Hannah
	Salt Flats with Flamingos
	Salt Flats
	The Dutch Only the Three other Boys are from Holland. The rest of us have Dutch last names.
	Shelly Beach I think this was Antofagasta, I was amazed at how complete the shells were
	Desert Hand
	All the Exchange Students
	All the Guys
	All the Girls

Conguillío

2007-01-31T18:12:49Z

National Park Conguillío is said to be the third most beautiful park in Chile, after Torres del Pine and Easter Island. It's a few hours south of Talca in the north of the Lakes District. The things that are most famus about the Lakes District are the lakes and the volcanoes. Every where you look, there are volcanoes and volcanic, however this dosen't take away from the lush forrests and lakes that make the Lakes District such a baeutiful destanation. Our destanation was Conguillío, origionally created to protect the araucaria (monkey puzzle) tree. This is actually a cool looking tree, my parrent's refered to it at the umbrella tree and you can see why. So we packed up our stuff once again and headed out. This time it was my family, Julia's family and Chris. We got there and unloaded our stuff into two cabbins, one for my family and one for Julia's, Chris stayed with Julia. After that was done we went out to get our first look at the nearist lake, . The lake was big and blue and there were snowcaped mountians on the other side and a big volcano on the other side, I thought it was pretty cool. We went on a little walk around the our cabben and took pictures and stuff. For dinner we had a barbaque (ugg) and then went to sleep. The next day we went on the Siera Nevada trail that goes all the way up into the snowfield of one of the mountians. That was pretty awesome, but I'll let my pictures speak for them selvs, this is one of the few times I actually have pictures right now. Once we got into the snow field we had lunch and started down again. The rest of the day, a few of us went on sort of a driving tour of the park. We saw a cool green lake between a dense forrest and field of volcanic rock. We drove on this road that was out in the middle of what seemed to be a mini desert of grey rock. I thought it was pretty cool. We drove along the road stopping at different lakes untill we got to the other side of the park. On the other side, there was a little town with a great view of the volcano. Then we went back to the cabbins. The next day we went on another walk. This time it was through the forrest, not as pretty in my opinion, but we got to see the biggest araucaria tree in the park. It actually wasn't that big. I wasn't very impressed, after all my time among monster trees in Washington, this tree looked kinda skimpy. But we all took pictures and headed on untill we came to another lake. This was yet another super spiffey lake. Then we went back. It was actually on the way back that Pinochet died. That was kinda weird. Then we all went to the beach of the first lake. My dad wanted to go rowing, so we rented a couple of boats. One was my dad, my mom Julia's little brother, and I, the other was my brother, my sister, and my uncle Mori. We went along the bank taking pictures of little waterfalls and the vegetation, it was all really beautiful. Then we came to a really tall water fall. I can't even explan it, once again I'll let my pictures do the talking. Then we headed back. A little later we went to the historical places of the park, there was an old historical house with what looked like old historical farming equipment. Once we had gotten our fill of old historical stuff, my family went to another beach. This one was a cool beach because of the multi colored rocks. We hgung out there untill the sun went down. That evening Jose found a sement cilinder lieing a little ways from our cabbin, so he did what one normally does with sement cillenders: he put his little sister inside of it and rolled her down a hill. She was alright with it, and so were my parrents who engoureged Jose with souts od "No, no! Roll her down that hill, it's steeper!" Wholesome fun for the whole family. Julia's little brother and I tried to fit inside it, but I was too big, my elbows weould keep sticking out and he was too small, he would keep klunking around when it rolled. My sister was the only one who would fit. This little sport came to an end when while rolling, the cilinder tiped over, rolled and righted itself again. José thought that was pretty awesome, but my dad got scared. That night we had another barbaque (ugg) and went to bed. The next morning we got up, said goodbye to the lake, and went home.

Conguillío

2007-01-31T18:10:06Z

	Unbrella Tree
	The First Lake
	The first Lake Again There's a fisherman sitting in a boat there

	The Snow Field José, Julia's Brother, and my sister.
	Picknic spot This is where we had lunch
	Here's another view of Vulcán Llaima
	Vulcán Llaima and the lake
	Crazt Lizard This was really weird! I was just sitting there and I felt something on my hand, when I looked over there was this lizard trying to dig itself under my hand. I don't know what was going on with that lizard.
	Green Lake Ok, so it's not green from this angle, but it is green in the other photos.
	José by the Green Lake. We saw that some one had thrown some coins into the lake and José wanted some. He didn't end up getting any though.
	Green Lake and a Rock
	Green Lake and My Sister
	Green Lake I love how the log changes color as it goes deeper.
	The Road It really looks like a desert, huh?
	Just Another Lake We didn't get close to this one
	An old Historical House
	An old historical... Plow?
	The Multicolered Beach
	Siblings getting the last reys of the Sun
	Dad on a spit of land
	Sister Rolling
	Saying goodbye to Conguillío
	Another Lake we found with tiny islands and strips of land.
	A Tiny Island In one of the lakes we found
	The View From The Town
	The Big Tree
	The lake at the end of the Path This was Chris' favorite lake
	The Shore of the First Lake This was one of many tiny waterfalls like this.
	Dad and I under a waterfall
	José's boat
	The Tall Waterfall
	My sibblings swiming
	Lake Islands From the first view point
	Volcan Llaima The first really good view of the volcano.
	The Lake, The Mountians, and Some Flowers From the first view point

Easter Island (Isla de Pascua (Rapa Nui))!!

2007-01-28T23:12:01Z

Well hi again, I'm here in Pelluhue again on vacations with my family and I thought "Hay, why don't I write another entry for all the folks back home?" So here it is, the adventure of Easter Island. I guess I should start by telling you a few intresting things I learnd while I was there. firstly Easter Island (known as Rapa Nui by the natives) is actually three volcanic islands that grew and joined into one big island giving it a kinda triangle shape. It's about 24 km from tip to tip, 12km at it's widest point and about 3,500 km from main land Chile. That is al long bloody way away, which gived rise to one of the mystires of Easter Island: How did the first islanders get there? There have been a lot of contravercy and disscution in this airea, but I think these days most scientists are leaning towards boats. Actually I'm not really sure what the contravercy is all about. Maybe it's where they came from. Another thing is the big ole well known statues of Easter Island (here after refured to as moui (pronounced moe-eye)). For a long time I thought the mystery about them was how the natives made them. Well, it's not. There is a archological site where the moui were made. There are even some in all stages of construstion. There is absolutly no doubt on how they were made, the question is how they were moved. All the moui on the island were made from one volcano, that means the natives had to move some of these ten ton statues all the way the heak across the island. Legend says that the preasts would inchant the statued to walk a small distance every day, but scientests have all sorts of theroys for it. They could have been rolled along face up on logs, or dragged by a tripod thing. One of the newst theorys is that the statues were actually too fragile to move horazontally, that they were actually stood up vertacally rocked and swivled like a walking action which aggrees with the legend. Cool huh? Anyway, my story starts back in Talca where I was frantically unpacking washing my chothes and repacking again. For the north trip I had a few days to think, "Oh, should I bring that... maby I should leave that behind..." It wasn't like that this time it was all rushed and unorganized. As a result, I forgot my ipod charger, enough chothes, and my camera. I remembered that I forgot my camera just as we were pulling out of the driveway, but it was too late, we were already late for the bus to Santiago. Also, Chris and Julia happen to take more pictures then all the other exchange students put together, so I knew I gouls be able to get plenty from them when we got back. So I got the the termanel and met Chris and Julia. Julia was deathly ill because of some bad fish she ate on the north trip, but she was going anyway. How many times do you get a chance to go to Easter Island? So we all hoped on the bus and were off. When we got to Santiago, we all went to some other exchange student's house to spend the night. I went to a German kid named Anselm's house. The next morning, Anselm and I got a taxi to the airport and met the other exchange students before getting on the plane. The plane, I thought, was really cool. Each seat had it's own little moneter on which you could play games or choose a movie to watch. I watched Mission Impossable III. When we landed, the Rotary club of Rapa Nui was there to meet us. They gave us all flower lays and we got our picture taken by the Rotary insignia. Then we grabbed out stuff and headed to the hotel. The day was bright and beautiful like I imagened it would be, so after puting our stuff in our rooms, we headed to the beach. The beach we went to was perfect. There were palm trees, yellow sand, clear warm waters, and about 5 moui just standing there looking in at the island. All moui look inland except one group of 7 called "The Explorers." At first I wasn't sure if they were real or not. I guess I thought that with them being such world famous relics, they would have a fence around them or some tape or at least a sign saying "Do Not Touch." They didn't have any of that, they just stood there on that beach like they had for hundreds of years, like they didn't even notace that their culture had been killed. Almost imeaditly everyone was playing in the water and swimming about. It was odd to think that that bright, warm, happy, sunny, day was actually the first of December, and that my buddies on the other side of the world were probably shivering and trying to guard against the cold rain. After almost a full day of playing on the beach, we went to a special dinner for Teleton. Teleton is sort of a nation wide fund raising effort for charity. Just about every store (including McDonnalds) has a Teleton deal, something like 10% of the day's profets goes to teleton. The whole day on TV there alre celebrities telling everyone to give money. We went to a teleton dinner. It was intresting, a bunch of people cooked meet and potatoes outside on hot rocks under leaves for about an hour or so before we were allowed in to eat. The dinner was in a huge tent with about 40 tables to fit everyone. The whole time, there were Pascuencian (native Easter Islander) dancers and music. We were there late into the night. The next day was Sunday. We were invited to go to a half Rapa Nui half Cathloic church service, but I thought I would spent the time walking around and get to know the town of Easter Island called Hanga Roa. I never would have thought it the day before, but Sunday was one of the rainist days of my life. As I walked the emtey streets of Hanga Roa, the water on both sides ripped an rolled along the concreat gutters. They were oviously made to handle such a load. Most of the shops were closed on Sunday, but the ones that weren't were listining to the church survice on the raido. Most of the shops were tourist shops selling Rapa Nui art and T-shirts. One place I stopped at sold cheese empanadas. I got one. It was all hot and melty and wonderful. I ate it on the porch of another store with an over hang. That was one of the best moments of the whole trip. Just me and my empanada seemingly alone in the with the rain gushing down everywhere around us. Once I finished it, I got up and started walking around some more. A bit later, after my jacket was soaked through and thrugh, my hat gushing water, almost as constantly at the rain, and my shoes making a "Squish, Skliosh" sound every time I took a step, I found what I didn't even know was I was looking for, an Artisens Market. The markets of Easter Island are some of the most beatuiful I have ever seen in Chile. They have all kinds of things, tradicional bone necklesses, wooden mixing bowls, and of corse, minature moui of all sized made out of wood, volcanic stone and onix. I got an awesome wooden mask for only $20, (the starting price was $50, a-thank you very much). When I left the market I had no idea where I was or how to get back to the hotel, however, fortunatly for me, a van with some Rotary people showed up and brought me and a few other kids to a museam. It was alright, but mueseams aren't really my favorite thing. Afterwords we went back to the hotel. The next day it stoped raining, and then started again, and then stoped again and again for the whole rest of the trip. The next frw days we went on various tours and things. We saw different moui, all of them are somehow different and special. They were all toppled eather by warfair of by preasts wanting to replace them, and were only returned to their platforms during the last centuary. One of the ones we saw had painted eyes. They all used to have painted eyes, however all but that one got their eyes erroded. We also saw some native house foundations, more like outlines of rocks where the houses were. They were like ovles with points and just big enough for one person to lie down in. Apperently the natives did everything outside and the house was just for sleeping. The weather sure was warm enough for it, even when it was raining. Then we went to some caves. It was kinda cool, at first it looked like a plain field, but the guieds pointed out some holes in the ground. When we went down into them, they turned out to be huge chambers with carvings and beds of rock and other cool things too. Then we got to climb out another hole on the other side of the field. We also went to visit The Explorers. They were pretty cool, they also happen to appear in an issue of Yes! magazene. One of the days we actually got to go to the volcanoo where the moui were made. We got another guieded tour which was cool, because the guy pointed subtle things in some of the moui, like one of them had its ear pierced, another actually had an ear-ring. Also just below where they were made, was what seemed to be the dumping ground for all the crap moui, the ones that had defects. These ones were my favorites, they were all half burried and leaning all over the place. One was leaning to the right, and it looked like it had its head cocked to one side as if it weren't sure of something. Another one was knealing. It was the only one that showed legs. All the other Moui were cut off right above the hips. It was sort of placed off to the side. I think what happened was some revolutionary artist of that time decided to make it, but the prests were like "ummm... No." and they stuck it away from everything elce. We climbed the volcano to see the lake in the crater. We also saw the moui factory with faces still sticking out of the mountian. The tallest moui is still imbeded in the volcano. Later we went to see the 15 moui. They're all satnding there in a row on the beach. Aperently there was a lot of earthquakes and tsunamies and all 15 were knocked over ans scatteres all over the place, but then a Japanese company came and replaced them on their platform. Only one of them was srtong enough to wear it's topknot. The topknot is the red hat thing that represents the hair style at that time. One of the other days we got to go SCUBA diving. We just showed up the day before and split into two groups for the next day. I was in the first group with the only other Rotary student (Jessie) who had been diving before, he had some kind of licence, I had been once before for a week in Austrailia. We were hopeing that we could go off alone to see some moui that had fallen into the ocean. We had seen pictures, and it looked pretty vacan (sweet in Chilean). Unfortunatly we didn't get to go. It was intresting comparing this experence to the one I had in Australia. In Australia we had two days in a swiming pool to learn how all the equipment works and what to do incase of emergency. On Easter Island, they showed us how to breathe, how to inflate our vests and we were off on the motor boat. It was pretty sweet even if we didn't get to see the moui. Jessie and I got into the water first and sank to the bottom where we waited for what seemed like forever for the other four kids to do the same. It was actually kinda cool, just hanging out down there, feeling the waves pushing us back and forth and watching the colorful fish swiming so close to us I felt like I could reach out and grab one. Finally the others joined us and we were off. We were only allowed to be at a depth of 10 meters, but we still saw some awesome rocks and caves and fish. At one point the guide broke open what looked like a sea urchen and swarms of flashy fish came to eat it out of his hand. After about 40 minuets it was over. Back on shore Jessie said he saw a sea turtle, but he was the only one. Later, while waiting on a rock pileing for the second group to get back, I saw one. It was small and cute and it submerged again before I could get a picture of it (Chris lent me her camera while she was diveing, which was exciting). Another day we went to visit the Rotary club of Rapa Nui. Searously, Rotary is everywhere. We visited their club house which looked like an old castle tower planted in the ground. The presedent of the club talked to us and gave us all a banner of the club. Then we went to a resturaunte where we met an Easter Islander girl who is going on exchange to The US next year. She's the first one from Easter Island, also the chub of Rapa Nui will be excepting students, only for about 3 months at a time because a whole year is a bit much to spent on Easter Island if you don't live there. One of those days I got myself a pretty vacan foot-tall moui made of green onix for only $30 with a price tag of $100. On the next to last day, A couple of us went to something called the carcil. The Rotary lady told us that it was where Pascuencian art was made. The carcil was unusally far from everything elce, we had to take a few dirt roads to get there. When we arrived, it looked like a bunch of houses with a fence around them. A guard was there to open the gate for us. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff there. Some nice moui replacas and other statues along with bowls and wooden tablets with Rapa Nui text written encribed in them. Aperently Rapa Nui is the only language that has never been decoaded. Most of the stuff was really beautiful and much cheaper then in the markets, but after I had spent so much on the art and the diveing, I couldn't aford anymore. Behind the table of art were the artests talking and laughing and hacking away at blocks of wood with their tools. Among the workers was a native woman with her face and arms covered with tatooes of Rapa Nui text. She introuduced herself as the queen. Chris paid her $40 for a custom made tablet to be ready the next day. It was only later that I learned that "carcil" is Spanish for "jail." The Queen was there for stealing a chicken. The next day we said our good byes to the Rotarty of Rapa Nui and got on the plane. To my delight there was a new set of movies to choose from. When we got back to Santiago, it was too late for any busses goting to Talca. So I went back to the house of Anslem for the night. The next morning Julia, Chris, and I aggreed on a certan but to take. That morning, Anslem's mom took me to a metro termanal. I was just bairly able to pay the fair, with 3 cents to spare. I don't know what I whould have done if I coulden't. After that, it was a nice uneventful bus ride home. Once again, however, I had about a day to repack my bag for the trip to National Park Congellehue.

Norrth III

2007-01-03T17:21:38Z

So, we drove and drove and drove for most of the day. Man, we practally lived in that bus. At one point we split into groups and played games and composed theme songs for our group (I was blue). Other times we would just sit in our seats and marvel at the beautiful scenery going past. I love the desert. Finally, just before the sun went down, we arrived at San Pedro de Atacama. I think Atacama is the name of the desert. Man, I love that town too. It's most famous for being the base camp for going to the gisers and the Valle de la Luna (Vally of the Moon), but the town itself is also really amazing. It's probably one of the most popular turist site for those reasons, rivled only by Santiago itself, but it has maneged to stay small and cool. So we got there and one of the things I notaced it that none of the buildings were more than one floor, and all the streets were dirt. We checked into our hotel and then had some free time. I walked around with some other kids, looking at shops and things. That night I was sure to go to bed early because the next day we had to get up at 3:00am to see the gisers. I wasn't exactly sure why we needed to get up at three, but I got up like everyone elce and got in buses and we headed up the road. The trip was about 3 hours long on a bumpy windy road, but by now we were used to sleeping on a bus and it went by reletivly quickly. When we got there it was just before the sun rise. We got off the bus and they told us to run along and enjoy our selvs. We walked around the alian like terrain, all different colors some orange some green with gisers all around. Some of the gisers were just simple holes in the ground filled with steeming water, others actually had water boiling up out of them and splashing the near by rocks and unweary exchange students. Others actually had water shooting up out of the ground and were totally inveloped in steem. Further away, the runoff water formed little colorful streems, soome of them steeming and some ice cold. I had I fun time there, taking pictures and walking around alone in the mist. After a while the called us for breakfest. We had hot chocolate and hard boiled eggs. Apperently they cooked the eggs in the giser water and heated the chocolate milk the same way. The eggs weren't actually cooked very well, one spilt all over me when I tried to open it. Then the sun rose other the mountians and illumanated the giser vapor and casting a brilliant light on the colorful ground and sparkling streems. I understood then why we had gotten up so early. After a bit more walking around, we all piled back into the busses. And headed to a different set of gisers. This one had a natural swiming pool. A bunch of people changed into baithing suits and went swiming, bit I haden't gotten enough beautiful gisers. This set was different then the others, they were more spaced out and were generally bigger. I went over to the base of one colom of steem only to find what looked like a big puddle that was gently steeming. The upon closer inspection, it turned out to be at least a few meters deep. The water was almost perfictly clear, but I still couldn't see the bottom. As I watched the brease did some thing strange and a tiny tornado formed in the middle of the water. It danced and span a few seconds before disolving into the stedy upword climb of the rest of the steem. I tried to take pictures of the tornado, of the colors and of the depth of this pool, but none of them captured the magical beauty of this profound pool. I moved on to other quiet pools and roaring, boiling, gisers, each more beautiful and magical then the last. I went to the most violent of all the gisers there. There were little stone walls about thigh hight to keep people from getting too close. Apperently a couple of people died in them recently. The guid told me the water was always at 100° C. I was instructed to stand on a certan spot in front of the wall, quite close to the crazy, spewing, boiling, giser, and the thick, billowing clowd. On that spot I could feel the ground shaking benith my feet in time with the more violent eruptions of water. Just a little ways away, the guid pointed out a couple of holes in the ground out of which were flowing tiny streems in colorful beds of chemicals. They looked exactly the same, but the guide told my to test the tempature with my finger. It was ice cold, I was so surprised I jerked my finger out like it had burned me. The other one was hot. It was weird to me how they could be so close together and have such different tempatures. After a bit more looking and feeling and taking pictures, we all got in our busses. We started driving back to the town, I never realized realy how long of a trip it was. We stoped along the was to look at some llamas grazing or take pictures of the amazing scenes of mountians and canyons all parched and cracked. Eventually we got back to the town. We had lunch and then got in our bus and headed out to Valle de la Luna for the sun set. Man, I don't even know how to discribe the beauty of Valle de la Luna. There were riges streching this way and that, as far as the eye could see. Most on them looking like the back bone of some subterrainian animal. Others ended with huge slabs of stone pointing diagonally up to the heavens in a way that reminded me of gient motercycle jumps or Pride Rock from The Lion King. We climbed a hill that was totally covered in deep deep sand, we got to the top and a whole other panaramic view came into sight. then we crossed a sand dune bridge. It was a huge dune rige that streched from one hill to another. We walked on the rige which was so narrow, we had to walk single file the whole way across. When we got to the other side, every one waited for the sun set while taking pictures of them selvs. We decided to do a group shot to pass the time. So two kids were given all forty some cameras of all the exchange students, and the rest of us sat and tried to hold a smile for as long as we could. Then the sun set came. I watched the sun sink behind the mountian in front of us. Not many others notaced, they were too buisey taking pictures of eachother. But really, they didn't miss much. The sun just slowly dissapeared behind a a rock, I've seen better sun sets here in Talca. Then it started to get dark so we went back. On the way back in the bus, we stpoed at a rock formation called the Tres Marias because it was three natural pillers sticking out of the ground. Some people tried to take pictures, but by then it was too dark and they didn't get anything. Then we got back to the town and had dinner at a nifly resteraunt with out a roof so that we could see the stars above. The next day we said good bye to San Pedro and headed out into the desert again. Most of that day we spent driving, but there were a few things that were cool. One was the Salt Flats. As far a you could see, coral like formations of salt intersperced with tiny lakes inhabeted by real like pink flamingos. We hung out there a bit before heading on. We stoped at a town that was giving me some serious Deja vu untill I realized that we had returned to San Pedro for lunch. We had it at the same roofless resturaunt we had dinner at. Then we hit the road again We also stoped by the big Desert Hand. Just a big hand in the desert. Some guy sculpted it and stuck it in the middle of the desert. We took a bunch of pictures with the hand and continued on. We Slept that night in a city called Antofagasta, and I don't remamber a thing about it. I think we got there late and left early in the morning. The next day we went to Baja Inglesia. We spent most of the day walking around the city and some buddies and I met an Easter Island art vender. He was really cool, he talked to us a lot about Easter Island and about the symbolism of the typical art there and that he was selling. At the end, when one girl asked for the price of one of his nicer neckleses, he gave it to he gave it to her for free. That night we spent in a hotel. The next day, we drove most of the day too. We stoped off at some small towns where I got a present for my dad, and we dilivered some books to some schools. That night we spent in the bus and arrived at about 9:00 in the morning at Santiago. From there it was an uneventfull busride home. I got home and quickly unpacked, got my dirty cloths washed and repacked because the next day, I had a plane to cetch in Santiago headed for... Easter Island!!!!

Hope all is well, Chou
Alex

North Part II

2006-12-30T01:31:23Z

The next day we went to the Zofri. The Zofri is just the name of a mall. I wasn't very excited when I learned that we got to spend about 6 hours doing what ever we wanted as long as we stayed at the Zofri. However, when I got there, I was suprised at how intresting it was. Because this is Iquique, there's no rain, and so there was no roof on the main part of the mall, just a canvis top. But onve that wore off, the other five hours weren't that intresiting. We started playing "Secret Santa" the day before, so I occupied myself by finding a present for my buddy. I got her some chocolates. Not a very personal present to be sure, but one I knew she'd like. I also found a sword shop. That was exciting I got myself a cool walking stick that unscrews and has a hidden sword, and a little Japanese looking sabre about four inches long. After that, they gave us more free time. I talked around the center of the city, looking at statues, fountian, and anything else. I ran across a street vender who, among other things, was selling a Washington lepel pin. I thought it was pretty cool to see my state all the way out there in the desert. Then we all returned to the hotel. Our hotel was really close to the beach, so because we had a little time a few of us decided to head down to the beach and bounce a voleyball around. When we got there, there was a lady doing Tie Chi a little way off. One of the Germans left our game and went over behind and started imatating her. At first I thought he was doing it meanly, but then I saw he was really trying in ernest to do what she was doing. A few more people from our game went over and it was I while before she notaced that she had a group of gringos behind her, coppying every move. Eventually I went over too. It was pretty cool with the sun setting and the waves on the beach. The next day we left Iquique. We got up early and drove and drove and drove, I got a hermonaca from my secret santa, and drove and drove and drove untill we got to Hamberstone. Hamberstone is a ghost town way out in the middle of Nowhere. Ya can't see anything from the once green town except desert and the free way we came on. The whole place is just broken down houses and mining equipment. It was cool for taking pictures. They even had an olympic size swiming pool, also dry and rusting. But despite all that, I think there were people living there. There was a little market where I bought a souvinear and there was a band practicing in a big gym like building which was also old and rusting. Everything was old and rusting. Then we got back in the bus and headed to San Pedro de Atacama, whihc will be in a later blog.

Chou,
Alex

hammagua @ 2006-12-24T13:10:00

2006-12-24T16:10:18Z

	The Pilgramige by Chris
	Posidon Statue Sooo Cool, Why can't Seattle have cool statues like that?
	Tower Hill This is the hill in Santiago with the tower on it.
	Los Dominicos Peacock The Peacock in Los Pueblos de los Dominicos.
	Church Los Dominicos The Church that's near the Pueblos.
	Me feeding the Pidgens That was pretty fun
	Building a Christmis Tree This is in the Plaza de Armas, the most central plaza in the city.
	Perdra de Inglesia This is the rock with the hole I was talking about. It's called the Church Rock.
	Gringo Beach My mommy and I. Awwwww
	Gringo Beach With a sign like that, we just had to pose infront of it.
	Mom and a Mountian Just a cool look out point in Vilches
	Mom and a Pond A pond in Vilches with lots of cool flowers
	Spider I thought it looked cool, almost loke we were walking through come south american forrest or something. I heard later they are completely harmles.

The North Trip Part I

2006-12-18T23:44:37Z

Welcome back blog fans! Just a little note, today is the 18th of December, that makes exactle 4 months in Chile. Cool, huh? Where did all that time go? No then, with out further adu, I give you... Chile, the storys of a Boy that Rocked a Nation. The last eppasode of this thrilling adventure left our hero, Alexander "Bold Explorer" van Gelder with his mom about to embarque on an amazing travel that would include dry deserts, ghost towns, steaming gysers, miles of salt flats, and the longest bus ride our hero has ever taken... in his life! Seriously though, it was really long. When my mom and I arrived at the telephone tower (the same tower, in fact, that we went to the top of back in The Adventure of The Trip to Santiago, remember?) there were already a few students and a few rotarens. It was intresting introdusing my mom to people, because it was always like "Hi, this is my mom" and they would go "Oh, hi, hi, good to meet you" and I would have to go , "No, no, as in... my Mom... from the US." and they would go "Oh, you mean she's your real mom, oh Wow, great to meat you! What do you think of Chile? How long are you here? Want to come to the north with us?" And then they go off and talk about poletics. My mom always seems to talk about poletics, no matter who she's with. After a while all the students and rotarians showed up. I said bye to my mom. She didn't end up going on the trip, she had to stay in Santiago a little while longer to talk to some people about poletics. Then the bus came along. It was pretty cool, it was all painted black with flames on the sides and stuff. It was called "El Pajaro de Fuego" or "The Fire Bird" Is that cool or what? I was pretty impressed. So we all hopped on and left Santiago. The time was 9:00 pm when we started off on the travel that would change me forever, of at least so far. We arrived the next day at about 10:00am in Vicuña. That is a long bus ride, and lemme tell ya, that bus was not one of the best places to get a good night's sleep. We had breakfest in Vicuña and then went to a pisco brewery. That was alright, a guide took us through the whole prosses and showed us a bunch of machienes. I don't remember half of it, mostly because I was really sleepy from the night before. We then went back to Vicuña for lunch and then to La Sarena for a hotel. The rest of the day was free, so a few friends and i went off to walk around and maybe find something to eat. We didn't find much. Then we went back. The next morning we went to the three Islands that were near La Serina. That was pretty cool, we got in moterboats, three to fit all of us, and zipped off to the islands. Once there we slowed down and they showed us all the cool animals. There were pelecuns and penguins and sea-lions (called sea-wolfs in Spanish). Then we stopped on one Island called Isla de Damas (Ladies Island) We hung out there for a bit. Some people sun baithed on the beach others went exploring. I went and collected shells with some friends before going off to climb to the summet of Isla de Damas. That took about five minuets. From the top, I could see all around the island. It was pretty small. Then I went off to find some more rocks to climb. I found some, alright along with some pretty sweet caves. I was in one of those caves when it was time to go. They never told us a time that we should meet by the boats, at some random time, they just ran around telling people it was time to go. It was a good thing there was someone around to see me go into those caves, or they would have been hard pressed to figgure out what happend to the missing gringo. As is was, I was among the last to get to the boats. The other two had already left. We zipped back to the dock and had lunch at a nice sea food resturant. They had a big cheese empanada for me, which was quite tasty. Then we went to a mall and had free time. I don't know why they keep taking us to malls for free time, I know I would rather be in the cool like human own shops that line the streets then this huge monster mall thing that you don't need to come all the way to Chile to find. Anyway, I found an Ice creamery, so it wasn't all bad. We also ran across some exchange students that live in La Serina. We got all excited at seeing each other and went off to intoduce then to the other district 4043 (that's my group) studnets. After all that we went back to the hotel. That night the people in my room decided to all get together and smoke a lot. Apperently smoking is permited, just discuraged. I left and went off to play vollyball untill midnight. The next morning, we learned that a group of exchange students had gone out last night to a bar. Exchange students drinking is not allowed by Roatery, but a group of exchange students drinking together is even less allowed. One of the students was sent back to Canada right away, he was one who had also been cought smoking pot a few weeks before. The other students were just given warnings. The we got on a bus and went to a market in La Sarena. That was pretty cool. I bought a few things for my familly. I got a stone owl for my sister, a motercicle made of nuts, bolts, nails and screws, a maté (an Argentinian tea that my mom likes) cup for my mom, but I couldn't find any thing good for my dad. Then we get on the bus again and drove for the rest of the day, and the whole night. Which actually wasn't so bad. One girl brought a bunch of movies that we got to watch. We saw A Night´s Tail,Donnie Darko, and Pirates of the Carribian, all of which I had seen before, The Jacket, which was pretty good, Boondock Saints, which ws awesome, and The Emperor's New Groove, which was awe inspireing. The next morning, we arrived in IquIque. By now we were in the far north, the dryest desert in the world. Kinda weird, geographiclly speaking, when you look at that part of Chile, it looks kinda like the Pasific Northwest. The Ocean right to the west, and a big mountian rainge right to the east. The only thing that makes the difference between a city famous for rain and one that had never recorded percipatation is the winds. In Washington, they blow off the ocean, in Chile they blow off the land. From above, Iquique looks pretty cool. It's the largest fishing port in Chile, so it's sitting right on the water front, but keep paning and tilting up and BAM! There's the desert. The city dosen't even peter out like most citys, it's just all happy and irragated and green and then when you're least expecting it-BAM yellowish grey mountians. I thought it looked kinda cool. So we got there, had breakfest, and then had free time. After that we went and had lunch. Then we had more free time. Most of us decided to go to the beach. The nice thing about deserts, is the beaches are really warm. I went swiming with a bunch of other people, but when we decided to swim out to the swiming limit line, our number dropped to four. Me, Hannah (US, Talca), Chelsy (US, also Talca) and Marc (Holland, Rancagua). This was the first time I had really swam in... a verry long time. But I was doing alright, I was the slowest, but I was enjoying myself. So we eventually got out to the line. It was one of those ropes with floats like in the pool. We hung out there for a bit, and then Chelsy started realizing how deep it really was, and how there were probably sharks and other evil things down there. So we started back. It was then that a sae animal decided to show up. It surfaces about 10 yards away, and Chelsy started freaking out. "Was that a Sea-Wolf!!?!? Was that a Sea-Wolf!?!?" she kept saying. At first I thought she was just pretending to be panicing, there didn't seem all that much to be scared about, but she kept yelling at us despite Hannah's efforts to calm her. Marc still didn't get it and kept singing the "Jaws" theme and pointing out imagenary animals under us. Then it really did pop up again, right infront of us, about 2 meters away. It was a sea-wolf, alright, and it looked at us cuirously before diveing back down again. That didn't do much to improve Chelsy's clam. For a minuet of two she refused to swim forward because it had appeared between us and the shore. Then she just sprinted for it. Once she was safely on the beach, she ran screaming away from the water telling her friends how there had been a sea wolf that almost tried to eat her. She also vowed never to visit the beach again, she hated it, she said. That was too bad, but also kinda funny. I staied on the beach a while longer. Finally we left to go to the hotel and bed. Well, that's all for now, Blog fans, but tune in next time for the second part of this thrilling adventure.

Chou,
Alex

Pinochet

2006-12-13T16:36:57Z

Hi again everybody. As you may have heard, while I was away, Pinochet died. Pinochet was the dictator of Chile for 17 years between 1973 and 1990. He took power through a US supported violent coup of the first democraticly electid socialist government of Chile. The US government tried 3 times to overthrow Allende's government starting in 1970 when he was ellected. It was only two weeks after Pinochet was appoinetd by Allende as army Comander and Chief. On Sept. 11 1973, there was an attack led by Pinochet useing the army, the navy, the air force, and the police force on the presidental pallace. As planed were dropping bombs over head, Allende realized that he could not reisist, and commited sueiside. The weeks that followed were some of the most violent in Chelian history. Pinochet proceded to round up all his political opponents and former members of Allendes regiem and kill or torture them. Over all, about 3,000 were killed or "dissapeared" and about 27,000 were tortured. On the 13th of September of the same year, Pinochet installed a millatery rule, dissolved congress, suspended the constation, and imposed strict rules such as cerfews and outlawing free speach. Pinochet himself declared himself "Supreme Chief of the Nation" and later on december 17 1974, Presedent. Then in 1990, he was voted out of office through a pleabicite. Pinochet is generally credited with stabilizing Chile's economy, building freeway to connect the country, controlling inflation, amd making Chile the most stable country of South America. But at what cost? On October 17, 1998, Pinochet was arrested in the UK by Spain for the murder of spanish citizens while he was Presedent. He spent about a year and a half under house arrest apealing the right of the UK and Spain to prosicute him, then he was sent back to Chile for medical reasons. He died on December 10th 2006 because of heart failure surrounded by his family. The same day some opposers of Pinochet cellebrated outside the Presidential Pallace while some were dissapointed that he never was punnished for his human rites abuses. Pinochet supporetrs (About 20 to 30 percent of the country still supports Pinochet) morned outside the hospital where he died. On the 11th he was given a millatery funeral (not a state funeral usually given to heads of state) the current president did not attend because her father had been tortured and killed by pinochet. He was then cremated (Unusall in Chile, but his family said it was nessasary to keep people from desecrating his grave) and his remains were sent to his family. Well done there. So there's youe history lesson for the day.

Chou,
Alex

Mommy Mommy Mommy!

2006-12-07T21:07:36Z

Right, good. As you can see from my last entry, for the last few weeks I have been travling all over the place. It's been really cool, but I'm back now, here to tell you all about it. Firstly, on the 10th or there abouts, my mom came to Chile. She is taking a 3 month sibadical from work to study cool things happining in South America, so she decided to drop by my house for a week. She got here on a friday, so that weekend we went to a city by the sea called Pichilemu with the familys of Alison and Julia (two of my gringa friends who live in Talca) That was cool, we went to the beach a lot and generaly just hung out. I also rode a horse for the first time in my life. Well, I guess it was more like the horse wore me. I had no control over my horse. It was more intrested in following Alison's sister's horse than paying attention my urgent tugging on the rains. That was unfortunate for me because Alison's sister didn't like going at a nice slow pase which ment I was sore for the next few days. Monday, my mom and I walked around Talca a bit, I got a bigger memory card for my camera and we both got icecreams. Did I mention how good the icecream is here? It's pretty good. So that was Monday, then Tuesday, We, Alison, Julia, Chris, my mom, and I, went to Constetution, another city by the sea. That was super cool partly because of this train that we took. Ok, you all know what Chile looks like, yeah? Bacicly there is a freeway that goes down the center of the counrty and a bunch of citys along it. Then there are a bunch of citys on the coast too. Back in the good old days (so I hear) there used to be bunch of little trains that went from the inland cities to the costal cities. They were all taken down because of all the matnance required and replaced with more freeways. All except one, from Talca to Constetution. It was kept because of how beautiful it is. The train itself looks more like a bus than any train I've seen before. We got on at about 8:00 AM, and it started off. The Talca station was the biggest of all the stations. The ones we stoped at on the was looked like they had been thrown together, all plywood and tin roofing. Aperently some of the towns we stoped at on the way, you can only get to by that train. People on the stops would have to flag down the train by steping to the edge on the platform and waving their hand at it. The views really were beautiful too, we followed a river, the river Mauly I think, the same river with the hot springs that I talked about back in August. The whole ride was about 3 hours and we arrived at about 11:00. We spent the next while just walking around, looking at shops and the market. Then we hit the beach. It was a Yuesday, like I said, and in the middle of the day, so there was absolutly no one but us on the beach. It was all sandy and everything, but there were also big ole rocks to climb. Just my kinda beach. There were also a lot of birds hanging out on a big rock named the Church Rock because it has a hole in it. We lay around on the beach for a while. No one went swining because it was kinda cold and really windy. (It's a good thing it was windy too, or elce we would have smelled the paper mill, Yuck!) Then we went to a cool little resturaunt for lunch. After lunch we walked up a hill. The hill had a wonderful view of the mouth of the river and the beach for miles. We hung out there for a few hours and just talked. Then we cought a bus and went home. The bus wasn't as beautiful, but it was only about 2 hours and left a lot more frequently. The next day, in the afternoon, my parrents drove my mom and I to My uncle's house in Vilches. There, my mom and I spent the night. And in the morning we went on a day hike. That was cool, we took the whole day, and walked up a mountin trying to get to a cool look out place on the map. We didn't get there, but it was fun all the same. I also saw a big herry spyder that waved it's two front legs at me. Later someone told me that they're quite harmless. That afternoon my parrents came and got us. It was kinda weird haveing two moms there for a while. I would be talking to my mom... Sarah, and be refering to Katia as "My mom" ... anyway, it was really weird. So yeah, my parrents came and got my mom and I... errr... Sarah and I... See what I mean? Anyway, so than happened and we all went back to the house and slept. So that musta been Thursday, yeah? So Friday morning both of my moms and I got on a train to Santiago. This was a normal train train that went all fast and had not so great views. When we arrived in Santiago, Katia went streight away to some meeting or work related thing, and I didn't see her again untill I got back from the North Trip. My mom and I stayed in a hotel called "The Happy House Hostle" We got a pretty sweet room. It had it's on sana and a big comfy bed. The rest of the rooms were shared bunkbed type things. We didn't end up useing the sana, it cost 12,000 pesos (24$USD). Later we walked around the city a bit. We found a Little Mapuchi (the name for the natives in Chile) art market. It was in this building on the side of a hill. In side it looked like all the walls and cealing had been decorated to look like a cave. That was pretty cool, but after a little further inspection, it looked like it actually was a real cave. Then we climbed the hill. On the way up there was a cool fountin with a stature of Posidon looking all cool on it. Then we went up a bit more and came to a tower thing with steep steps. It was almost a maze, with stairs going all which ways, but finally we made it to the top. Right near the top there was a quote by Derwin. It seems that way bach when, he climbed the very same hill and thought it was pretty sweet, so he said a quote about it, which is now incribed in a stone near the top of the tower thing. It said something like "This hill is pretty sweet. -Charles Darwin" Then we went down. Across the street, there was a cool turisty market thing going on, so we crossed to check it out. There were all sorts of awesome shops over there. I even saw a sword for sale. I would have bought it too, but I didn't wnat to spent the money and I knew that what ever I bought there, I would have to lug around with me for the whole North Trip. All I bought were a few pins for my blazer. Then we went back to the hotel. I was planing on buying a book in spanish to read on the North Trip, but I just couldn't find one simple enough for me, not that I looked verry hard. At the hotel, though, was the book "It" by Steaphen King. It was in English, but it was intresting and really big, so I traded it for my moms Bolivia Lonely Planet book. I was really gald that I had it though, those bus rides were reeeeeely long, up to 12 hours sometimes. Even so, I didn't end up finishing it untill I went to Easter Island. Anyway, the next morning we went to Los Pueblos de Los Dominicos. YAY! I had forgotten how much I love that place. It's way far away from the center of Santiago, so we had to hake the metro as far as it waould go, and then take a bus a ways further. We even missed the stop and had to walk back, but is was defenitly worth it. There was the Peacock and all the cool shops where they make stuff on the spot and the cool little paths and stream, sigh... I really need to go there with a buttload of money and an emty suitcase before I return to the US. Then we went back to the Plaza de Armas. I'm not sure why it's called the Plaza de Armas, every city has a Plaza de Armas and it's basicly the main plpaza of the city. Katia specualted that maybe it was where they kept the arms way back when they had to defend the city aganst the Mapuchi and Peru, but I don't know. In the plaza I fed the pidgens. That was more fun then it sounds, because there are about a billion pidgens all fighting and scrambling for the food the venders there sell in 200 peso baggies. I could even hold out my hand with food in it and in no time I would have about 3 birds all fighting to stay on while pecking at the seed in my hand. It was pretty exciting. Then we went to a pre-Columbian art musiem. That was... meh... I guess musiums aren't really my thing. I tend to see a peace of art "Cool" and then go to the next one. Everyone I'm with, though, sees a peace of art "Cool" and then reads the plack and studies the brushwork and marvles about it for about half an hour before moving on. It seems like that anyway. After that, we went back to the hotel for a while, I packed up my things and went to the Tellepfone tower to meet up with the other exchange students for the comencing of the... The North Trip. Which I'll talk about later. For now,

Chou,
Alex

By the way, tomarrow I'm going on the third trip in a row. This time with my family, Julia's family, and Chris. This will make about a month of pure travel. w00t!!

Trip plans.

2006-11-18T13:00:00Z

Ok, so I won't be able to reply to emails or comments or anything for a while. I'm going with roatery for a 10 day trip to the North of Chile. I'm not really sure what excatly we'll be seeing, but you can expect a full report when I return. After that I'm going to Easter Island for about a week. After that, my family is taking me down to the south is some really cool national park for I don't know how long. Right now, I'm actually in Santiago, and today is the day we're leaving, so...

Chou,
Alex

Pilgrimage and Birthday

2006-11-13T21:16:58Z

So, I haven't had much Internet in my house for quite some time, so I haven't been able to tell you about the amazing times I've been having. Right now I'm writing in an Internet cafe in Talca. It's getting pretty hot, but I have a cool drink, so life is good. Last you heard from me, I was about to go on a pilgrimage to San Tarisa de los Andes. Now it's not normally like me to participate in Christian things like that, but I'll tell you haw it came about. One day, the philosophy teacher walked in on one of our classes and announced that there was going to be a walk in near Santiago in a few days. I was missing my hikes, so even though this was to be a day hike, I put my name down as a participant. I figured it was like a school trip, and maybe a few more people from another class would come too. A bit later someone told me that this was actually a Christian thing. I didn't really want to take my name off the list, so I stayed on. Then my family changed changed their plans to go to Santiago for the weekend. Then I really couldn't back out. Then Another kid told me that last year 17,000 kids had gone on this walk from all over Chile. A bit more than a few kids from my school. So then the date for walk rolled around. That night there was a party, bingo, fundraising thing at the school. My family all went, and we played a few games of bingo and danced a bit. Then at midnight, all the people going on the walk met at the school's small church. (The school has two churches) Roll was called, name tags were passed out and we started singing songs. It kinda reminded me of a cult. Then at about 12:30 we all got into the bus and were off. Five hours later we arrived in Santiago. The dawn was just breaking and it was kinda foggy. Already, though, people were getting us all riled up. There were stages with people preaching and others with singing and dancing. People were shouting "Good job, everyone. Only 27 km left to go!" (That's how long it was) And all along the path there were vendors. People selling food, trinkets, crosses, anything one might need while going to a sacred site. I brought along four sandwiches, but I didn't really need them. I only ended up eating one. In the first Km or so, we walked along the freeway until we came to the crossing. There, we would all stop and wait until there were enough of us, then a bunch of support people would run into the middle of the road with cones and police tape and stop traffic and let a bunch of us cross. There was a walkway that went over the freeway, I'm not sure why we didn't use that. Then we started up into the hills on an old dirt road. We climbed higher and higher into the hills. They didn't look so tall from the ground, but we just kept going up. Each time we went around a bend I thought, "OK, just around this bend is the top, then we'll start to head down." And each time, except one, there was still more up hill. Most of the people who were doing the walk were about my age, but there were also some old nuns and people with disabilities. Most of the time people were singing. "Tres cosas tienen amor!" that was the start of one of the more popular songs. When we finally got to the top, there were these people giving out purple and orange crosses that said "Dios es amor" on them. They were three people standing in the middle of the road making sure everyone had a cross. They didnt give me one, probably because of my James Bond like dodging techniques. I think I was the only one though kinda made me stand out. I don't know, I just didn't want to feel like I was carrying around a cross. Then at the very top, there was a big 'ole cross that everyone went up to and pressed their crosses to it and prayed. I stood well away from that. Then we went over and had lunch. I ate one of my sandwiches, just because I felt like I should, I carried it all that way despite all the much yummier empanadas de queso and ice creams I had had. It wasn't that good. Then it started to get sunny out and took out my awesome sunglasses and hat that I bought in Chile. I looked pretty sweet. Then we started our decent. Everyone seemed so tired after only half the walk, I kept leaving them behind on accident. Some times I would just stop and look around and see no one I knew. "Maybe they're ahead" I thought, so I quickened my pace, but I still didn't recognize anyone. Then I decided they must be behind me, so I would sit and wait, sometimes as much as a half hour, for them to catch up. Still along the sides people were selling stuff, ice cream bars that were half melted because there's only so long you can keep something cold in a cooler in the hot sun. Others were selling banners and flags with all sorts of religious phrases, some with Bob Dylan and a marijuana leaf on them, and others with a big face of Jesus on them. I'm not sure how they knew that's what he looked like, but it was a bit smiling, yet ruggedly powerful face. The kind of face you could tell anything too, the kind of face you could give your life too. Seeing that face everywhere reminded me a little of the book 1984. "Jesus is watching you!" When we finally got to the end I was pretty tired too. We finished at about 3:00 and waited for the rest of the Talca group at out bus. There were a lot of buses there. Our bus was "Central 23" Other buses were from the north and the south, and the numbers went up to 130. That's a lot of buses. It took quite a long time to find ours. Once everyone was together, we thought about going to mass, but decided against it. "Awww, Shucks" I thought. Then we all got in the bus and waited for some girl who got confused and thought we actually were going to mass. A half hour later when she showed up, everyone on the bus gave her hell for about ten minuets as is proper in that kind of situation and then we were off. Another five hours and we were home again. Yay.

Another cool thing that happened recently was my birthday. A while ago, the 6th of October I think, was my brother's birthday. That was a lot of fun, so a week or two in advance my mom said that if I wanted a party like that, I could have one. So the next week I started inviting people. Mostly people from my class. I realized then how few people I knew. If my party was to be any fun at all, there needed to be a lot more people there then I knew. So I started asking the people who I invited to invite their friends too. Not the smartest thing to do in retrospect, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. A good way to meet new people like Rotary always encourages people to do. My birthday is on November 1st as some of you know, which was a Wednesday this year. Here in Chile, the 1st of November is also a National Holiday, no work or school. So I had my party Tuesday night, Halloween. I invited as many people as I knew on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then on Monday the next week I realized what I had done. People who I had never even seen before started coming up to me and saying "So Alex, I hear your birthday's tomorrow, can I come?" And being the polite guy that I am, I couldn't just say "Bien!" (for the significance if "bien" in this context look at the blog comment that talks about it) So I said "Sure, I guess, if you really have to." Another time Alison told me "You do know the whole school is coming to your party, right?" My class mates even cancelled a Halloween party so that the people who were going to go to that party could come to mine instead. Then Tuesday, during lunch, my mom talked to me "Stop inviting people," She Said "Every one's gunna get drunk and break stuff." Then, sooner then I thought was possible, it was time for the party. My brother borrowed some speakers from a friend, the ones he used at his party. And my mom and I made paper bag lanterns. We put them in a path around the house to try to keep people from entering. My dad bought 24 leaders of soda, 7 of beer, and 3 of pisco, the really strong Chilian alcoholic drink that is almost never drunk straight. By 9:00, the time I told people to show up, only some of my brother's friends had showed up, and my brother was still having troubles with the music, it would still only play Bob Dylan. Then at 9:30 one of my classmates arrived with three of her sketchy looking friends from another school. It was kinda awkward sitting there outside with Bob Dylin on and off trying to make small talk with these shady characters. By 10:00, however, the music was fixed and playing the first sweet beats of Reggaeton. Ahhh... reggaeton. More people started showing up too. Some gave me presents, some not. Then more people, and more and more and more and more. Soon some girls started dancing, and the party took off. That's the was all partys here seem to work. First everyone greets everyone and talk for a bit, and then a bunch of girls go "Aww, to heck with this" and start dancing. Then a the guys, go "Woa woa woa, I gotda get me some a that!" and a few at a time start dancing with the girls. More and more as more guys get drunk. After a while the girls get tired and do something else, but the guys only get drunker and by the end of the party it's only about 20 guys dancing with each other. No one counted, but the next day, I asked and most people figured that there were more or less 100 people at my party. I think I knew about 30 of them. But it was fine, no one broke anything. The only bad thing that happened ws the amplifier overheated and stopped playing music at about 1:30. That got everyone really upset. A party without music is hardly a party at all. Fortunately my brother produced his own speakers that could plug directly into the computer. They weren't as loud as the others, but it was sufficient for the drunk guys who were singing their own songs anyway. By about 2:30 things started quieting down. People started leaving and my dad insisted that less up beat music should be put on to encourage more people to leave. By about 3:30 most everyone was gone. Then I opened my presents. I got a lot of chocolate. I guess it's kinda the universal gift that almost everyone likes. Not that I'm complaining, I still haven't gotten through all of it. I also got a shirt, a bag, a cueca dancer doll, and some panpipes. The next morning we cleaned up. There were about a billion cigarette stubs and three more pisco bottles then we started out with. It didn't take that long though, and before too long, you would hardly be able to tell there had been a party the night before, besides the smell of cigarettes that still hung in the air.

Chou
Alex