Obama ate my shoe

When I last wrote we were about to leave Santa Cruz and head to the larger city of Talca (maybe 500,000 people? the 2nd largest city in Chile anyway, after Santiago with its 5 or 6 million). So the Santa Cruz Rotarians piled us with all of our luggage in a rented van and we made it down to Talca in a couple of hours. Melinda and I were hosted by the most wonderful family- a retired couple with a gorgeous pad that included a private cabin for us. It was so adorable that Melinda and I were instantly transformed into 10-year-old girls and we actually held hands and jumped up and down squealing. Our hosts were like doting grandparents who spoiled us rotten and we didn't want to leave them or the city of Talca this morning. Highlights of our time in Talca included an afternoon basking in mud and medicinal herbs at a spa and a most decadent picnic on a lake which was so inspiring we all swore we'd recreate it one day this summer on the Parkway). Oh, and the baby German shepherd named Obama had himself a grand old time with one of my brand new $100 Danskos. (And the following day scored a bra from Melinda!) Our time in Talca was well worth the sacrifice to Obama.

Sorry no time to upload photos now; headed off to a 9pm Rotary meeting and god knows what else afterwards. It's Friday night after all with a nearly full moon and the team is invested (more and more each day as our departure date quickly approaches) in savoring every minute!

Hobbit House to Santa Cruz

Hola once again! It's Tuesday now and we're leaving our very quaint hostel (photo on far left is its grapevine-roofed courtyard; photo on right is the city plaza) in the small city of Santa Cruz. Here we've won and lost money at the Casino Colchagua, owned by a local Rotarian, as well as lolled in the spa of the casino hotel, eaten some more awesome seafood, and visited both a public high school and what we were told is the biggest and best cultural/historical/anthropological museum in South America (photo at left). It was extensive to be sure, and the sun had set by the time our Rotarian guide got us all the way to the end, where we strolled through a roofed but open-air (and dark) shed of sorts which housed a few centuries' worth of agricultural equipment. It was all we could do not to trip over the various appendages sticking out at at threatening angles everywhere. The next day at the high school we spoke to two classes of juniors and seniors. We introduced ourselves and spoke about some exchange opportunities available to the kids through Rotary. Our Rotarian guide for the day, a retired teacher, then seized the opportunity to harangue the kids about studying hard and learning English so that Chile is not left behind in the global economy. They listened patiently and mostly respectfully and then asked us a few questions.



On Wednesday of last week, in San Fernando, we visited an organic fruit processing plant- the only one in Chile and possibly the largest in South America, if I remember correctly. Organic food is not yet profitable domestically as there is little to no demand, but they do export it. And do well at it, if the manager's plantation is any indication. After our tour of the plant and a taste of probably the best apple I've ever had in my life, the manager took us to his ranch down the street. There he grows organic apples and various vegetables and has built the most amazing hobbit house you could imagine! All wooden, with woodburning stoves, situated on various levels, some of which were literally in the tree. Below is a photo of some beehives on the property, but my camera batteries died shortly after we arrived, so I have nothing more to post from there until my team gets together at the end of the trip to share photos. I am so sorry because it's truly your loss that you cannot see more of this crazy place.

I'll just close by saying I wish I could share so much more with you because what I'm able to describe in these infrequent and too-short posts is such a tiny portion of all that we are seeing and doing! But the bottom line is that I'm having a tremendous time, learning a ton, and making lifelong friends...exactly what Rotary said this trip would be all about. Thank you, Rotary!

Pacific waves and waterfalls

It just keeps getting better. We are now in the hands of the Rotary club in Curicó, a (small? compared to Santiago, yes, but not compared to Asheville!) city south of the big metropolis. Here we cannot see the Santiago smog and the whole rhythm of life seems much slower. We arrived Sunday afternoon and on Monday they took us to the seaside town of Iloco. I never imagined I´d be so lucky as to spend three different days at the Pacific shore during my month in Chile! We spent the entire day at this hotel right on the beach, eating, drinking, walking on the sand, and just basically loving life. We went there ostensibly for lunch but stayed until sunset. The highlight may have been watching some of my teammates tasting a sea creature that our waiter had just harvested from the rocks in front of us. We had already finished a meal of several courses including crab, shrimp and cheese empanadas, two kinds of ceviche, fried conger eel (ubiquitous here), and abalone, with of course the customary pisco sour and then wine, and were relaxing with an amaretto when we saw the waiter run out to the shore. Melinda and Michael were just returning from a walk on the beach and joined him in harvesting a shelled creature shich none of us recognized. Upon returning to the restaurant, the waiter showed us how to remove them from their shells, drip a little lime juice on them, and suck them up. Wow.

Above are two normal everyday scenes one may see on the way to the coast from Curicó.

Today we visited two apple orchards and a national park. The first falls we saw was interestingly named Bridal Veil. (Don´t we have one of those in WNC)? This one´s 150´tall, about 1/3 taller than Looking Glass Falls, I believe. We were amazed at how clear and blue the water was.

The falls to the left is called 7 teacups. Unfortunately we couldn´t find a spot where we could see all seven falls and their pools, but it was impressive enough to see this much. Michael and I slipped through the fence at the lookout point and climbed right down to the edge of the lower pool you see here. Sam, you would´ve wanted to dive in for sure, but it was too cold for me! Plus, at this point we´d spent about four hours in and around the restaurant nearby and sunset was impending.

Tomorrow we have some vocational visits planned, and then a meeting with the mayor of Curicó followed by a presentation at the Rotary club meeting, which starts at 8:30pm!

Doors of Santiago

To the right is the entrance to an artist´s studio in the Pueblo de los Dominicos, a colonial cathedral whose surrounding buildings have been turned into an artisan´s colony.

Below is the entrance to the main chamber of the Supreme Court. The image of Medusa is supposed to keep secrets in and outside influence out.

To the right is one of the entrances to the oldest building of the University of Chile.

To the right- the train station in San Bernardo, a city of 200,000 about half an hour outside of Santiago.

Below, the main entrance to the cathedral on the main plaza in downtown Santiago.

Below right, inside the Congress building in Valparaiso.

Cold toes in San Pancho

Got to stick my toes in the Pacific again today! The second time in a week and only the second time since San Diego in August. What an indescribable feeling. Someday I will have to live on the left coast again (whether it's North or South America, no me importa). The water's a bit colder here than what you SoCal people have. No photos here of my team romping in the waves because I was too busy splashing in them, and then running a bit up and down the stretch of sand available, to get out my camera. But here's a shot of the port city of Valparaiso. Although it's not as active as it used to be (once it was the busiest port in South America) it looks to me like it's still got a lot going on.


We rode the funicular (anyone know what that is?) up to the top of the hill to look down on the coastline.

To the right is a model of the funicular (is that not the funniest word in the English language?) so you can see it's like a little train car that rides the rails up the side of a hill. Above is the view from the window as we ascended. It's so hilly here- really does remind you of San Francisco- that these things are everywhere and not only for tourists; they are actually used by the locals to get around. It cost us about 50 cents to ride up. Some like to call the town of Valparaiso San Pancho because Pancho is the nickname for Francisco and this is like a little San Francisco.



After drinking a pisco sour up on top of the hill looking down on the port, we went down again and had lunch (seafood of course- razor clams a la parmesan and then fried conger eel) at a navy-themed restaurant overlooking the ocean, where a sea lion napped on a rock. Then we had a tour of the Congress and learned all about the legislative process here. Similar to ours but interesting in that there is no joint committee that finalizes a bill after the House and Senate have each passed their version. Here the House introduces a bill, the Senate changes it, and then it gets voted on. Sounds like it would speed things up but our guide said bills often take years to come to a vote. Also there is no way to override a presidential veto; once a bill is vetoed it's dead and cannot be reintroduced for a year.

Tomorrow we present at the Rotary district conference, and then early Sunday morning we board the train headed south to Curico. We'll spend the next two weeks in smaller cities all within about three hours of Santiago. Expect to visit some more wineries and see a copper mine, among other exciting and surprising things. The Rotarians here continue to treat us as if we were visiting dignitaries, and I imagine those in the south will do the same.

Hasta luego, or as they say here- ciao!

Snail milk, army wine, and more

It´s hard to believe that it´s been four days since I´ve posted. In some ways it seems time is flying, but when I stop to think about all I´ve done and seen, I find it incredible that so much could have happened in only nine days! In addition to the major important sights in Santiago (the central market, the presidential palace, a couple of cathedrals, the national history museum and artisan villages), we´ve been out to the country and up to 7200 feet (what is called here the pre-mountains!). I´ve also had four professional visits now, where entire staffs it seems have taken at least an hour and sometimes more than two, to talk to me and my fellow educators on the team about how they do education here. We´ve been to a technical high school, an adult ed center, a four-room schoolhouse serving pre-K through 8th grade, and the University of Chile. Mostly what we´ve found is that we share the same problems! Everyone we´ve met is extremely kind and generous and seems genuinely interested in sharing with us.

We´ve also met a couple of mayors and had drinks in the oldest and most presitigious social club in the country. This club also boasts the longest bar in South America, so naturally we had to get a picture with Michael, who currently works as a bartender in Boone, standing behind the bar. (I´m not posting that one because this one gives you a much better view of the whole place). Apparently women have only been allowed into this club in the last few years and their presence at the actual bar is still frowned upon.

Today we met a snail farmer. She´s the president-elect of the Rotary club in San Bernardo, a city of about 250,000 people which lies about 15 minutes by train outside of Santiago. She has her own snail farm on her property, and in addition the club is piloting a project whereby unemployed folks with disabilities are trained to run a small snail farm in town. They ´milk´the snails by tickling their feet and harvesting the secretion that results. Apparently it´s loaded with collagen and elastin as well as natural antibiotics and other stuff that´s great for our skin. Labs buy it for $100 per liter, then put it into lotions and such. Also of course you can eat their meat, although that´s not popular here. Their poop is great fertilizer too. What a groovy operation this was, and employing disabled folks seems to be a great success. You just never know what you´re going to learn when you step out into the world, eh? (Remind me later and I can tell you all about snail sex, too).


And then what could top a snail farm but a vineyard run by the military?! This is a country that appreciates its wine, all right. We´re told the vineyard was donated to the military in the early 70s to save it from Allende´s agrarian reform project, because god forbid some land should go to the peasants! So the army now runs it and supplies its officers clubs and such with the wine it makes. Neither the equipment nor the process has been modernized much, so we got a good look at how wine used to be made. Then we had a taste and were quite impressed. They only make two kinds- a cabernet sauvignon and a muscatel (? not sure if I´m remembering that one´s name correctly, but it´s a very sweet white which I don´t like). The cab was great though, and we drank it with olives, cheese, and nuts right there in the dim and damp stone-walled and -floored fermenting room. Afterwards the San Bernardo Rotary Club presented each of us with a bottle of our choice boxed in a nifty little wooden crate with the image of an 18th century soldier on it.

All told it was another fabulous day for us, in the hands of yet more wonderful rotarios chilenos. It seems each day is better than the day before, and tomorrow should be no exception as we are going to Valparaiso on the coast, which many have compared to San Francisco. This is what I´ve been looking forward to most about the whole trip!! I promise to take lots of photos.

Finally some blog time!

So I failed my first Spanish test- the flight attendant asked me if I wanted beef or chicken for dinner and I said, "Water please." Now for those of you that speak Spanish and can´t imagine how I mistook "Carne o pollo" for "Algo de tomar", let me just say that the Chilean dialect is really freaking extreme. They pretty much leave out all the consonants, it seems, and half the words I learned in Mexico are not used here. Actually I´m getting used to it now (it´s been five long days since that flight attendant tried to trick me) and even hearing it in my own speech now and then, but still there are people whom I cannot understand one word from.

As I´d suspected would happen, Rotary is keeping us extremely busy and I´m not finding much time to post. Also I haven´t really figured out how to do this yet and it seems to take forever to upload photos, so I really need a good chunk of time to make a post. Maybe I´ll get better at it as we go along.


Here´s the view from
Pablo Neruda´s home in Isla Negra, about an hour from Santiago. What a wild place! Couldn´t take any photos inside the house unfortunately so you´ll just have to imagine the crazy collections: navigational instruments, seashells, butterflies and beetles, glass liquor bottles, masks, those women with big boobs that are posted on the fronts of ships to calm the seas...you name it. And the house was constructed as much as possible to feel like a boat, so low rounded ceilings, really narrow doors, everything wooden, etc. Sam would be in heaven. I really hope he can see it someday. And the view from the bed in the only bedroom in the house is such that I´d never get up if I lived there!

Sorry I don´t have the patience to try and upload more photos right now (I actually had about four more on here a minute ago and somehow deleted them!) but I will tell you that I´m having a fantastic time with many new and hopefully lifelong friends and I could definitely live here. Tomorrow I´m going to visit an ESOL class for adults taught (I think) by volunteers. Can´t wait to see how they do it (and how much they might want to pay me to stay and run the program for them.....?!) Just kidding, Sam- I´ll come home, really I will.