Chile Gano

I dont know how to write with accents, but what I mean to say is that Chile beat Argentina last night in one of the world cup qualifying matches. I dont know too much about South American football but I know that this is pretty big. Along with Brasil, Argentina is a traditional powerhouse in football and they tend to dominate Chile in other sports as well. Also, this might be the first time Chile has beaten Argentina in a world cup qualifying match. Cole and I watched the game with 4 other guys from our house last night and they were all just going nuts. One of the them barely sat down the entire time. This might be a good time to tell you that I live in a "new" house. Well, its the same house but there are a bunch of new people living there. After Paul (gringo from Missouri) went back home it was just me, Cole, Rodrigo, Vicho and Andres living in the house. So the movement decided to switch things up and sent Vicho and Andres to another house and we got 5 new guys. Two of them, Anthony and Jonathon, are British and have been in Chile and living with the movement for at least a decade now and the other three, Nicolas, Christian and Juan Pablo, are Chilean and are also oblates of the movement. So things were a bit crazy for the first few days but they have settled down since all 8 of us are rarely in the house at the same time.

Coming up next: the last 8 days of my trip to Patagonia and my struggles to understand what the hell people are saying down here. ¡Chao!

More Patagonia

Day 3

I don’t remember much about this day and I didn’t write down very much about it. What I do know is that it was a Sunday so we all went to Puerto Guadal, the nearest town, for mass. We piled 14 (Cole, Paul, Rodrigo, Me, Jose Antonio, the two tutors, 6 high school kids and Esteban, a college aged guy who lives on the ranch) of us into a pickup truck, 6 in the extended cab and 8 in the back. We were lucky enough to meet one of the women from the farm coming back from having dropped off some of the girls in town so we unloaded a few people into her truck. (its not unusual at all that we met her on the way there since there is only one dirt road that goes from the farm to the town) The mass was in a nice little church in town and with the 14 men and about 8 women from the farm, we made up about half of the congregation. The service was pretty informal and afterwards they busted out a boombox and some people danced Queca, the national dance of Chile, since it was the week of the independence day.

I also went for a run on this day. It would be the only run I would go on in Patagonia unfortunately because for the rest of the trip I was either too tired, couldn’t find the time or was too lazy. But it was a great run. I went out to the dirt road which was great for running on and came back on the road/trail that goes through the farm.

Day 4

Today we took a day trip to Cochrane, the “city” closest to the farm. Joselo came with us. He is the son of the Jose Manuel, the founder of the Manquehue Movement and was staying at the farm for a few weeks. He wasn’t on our part of the farm (it’s a big farm). He was staying the big family house that’s down the hill from where we were, on the shore of Lago General Carrera. It took us about 2 hours to drive the 60 km to get to Cochrane since it was all over winding dirt roads. The ride was a little rough but spectacular. We drove along the Baker River (Longest river in Chile, I think) and saw the location of one of the proposed dams on the river. This is probably a good time to tell you about the issue of dams in Patagonia

Patagonia Sin Represas

A company called Hidroaysen is proposing to build 5 dams in Chilean Patagonia (in the Aysen region to be specific). They want to build two dams on the Baker River and 3 on the nearby Pascua River. These rivers are ideal for hydroelectric dams because of their low variability in flow. However, huge reservoirs would be made by these dams which would flood some very nice regions of Patagonia. Also, since the electrical energy produced wouldn’t be going to the Aysen region, but to the electrical grid in the center of the country, a huge, high voltage electrical transmission line would have to be constructed across more than 2000 km of Chile. So as a result, this project has drawn a lot of heat and the main opposition to it is a group called Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia without dams).

Although the Manquehue movement hasn’t taken an official stance on the issue of the dams, there is a lot of concern for the Aysen region and many people are against this project. A few weeks after we got here Rodrigo wanted Cole and I to look into this project and into the environmental effects of dams in general so that we could explain to him in a more technical sense what all this will mean. We put together a little powerpoint presentation and gave it to the house, and later to Jose Manuel (founder of the movement) and recently to another house of oblates. I will probably write more about this issue later and my own feelings about it, but right now I just wanted to give you a little background on the situation.

One of the proposed dam sites

When we finally got to Cochrane we stopped at three restaurants before choosing one to have lunch at. We finally picked a nice little spot and ate Bistec al Pobre (poor man’s steak). This dish used to be for the poor at one time but now its become very popular and as a result its become more expensive. It consists of a bed of greasy French fries with a steak on top and a fried egg on top of the steak. I ate mine with some aji sauce (aji is a hot chili pepper and the sauce is a little like ketchup but boiling lava hot). The key was to get a few French fries, a nice cut of meat, a little egg and some aji all on the fork at the same time. I was moving a little slow after this meal. We were the only people in the restaurant and Rodrigo and Joselo talked to the owner for a while about the dams. I didn’t understand much of what they were talking about but Rodrigo explained it to us afterwards. Basically the owner figured that Cochrane would be totally changed and/or ruined by the project and he would have to sell before everything he owned became worthless. He also told us to not tell anyone because he didn’t want to be marked as anti-dam in the town. After lunch we stopped by the Hidroaysen office and heard what they had to say about the project. They had a really nice place, either in a new building or at least remodeled, with posters, maps, and handouts. They make it all sound like a pretty sweet deal for the region. We also stopped by the Patagonia Sin Represas office and noticed a stark difference. There was one guy working in the office and the building looked like all the other buildings in the town. (Patagonia has only been inhabited by non-indigenous people for about 100 years so there isn’t a lot of development and the towns aren’t much too look at) It looks like a David vs Goliath type fight.

Before heading back home we drove through a ranch that sat in the middle of a beautiful river valley. We stopped at a little puesto to get out and walk around a bit. There was a suspension bridge over the river and a beautiful waterfall nearby that we checked out.

Day 5

Manual labor. Man work. First day of real work (in Patagonia and probably in Chile). But this was all in the afternoon so I have to tell you about the usual morning stuff we did first. We prayed Lauds (first prayer of the day) while breakfast cooked on the woodfire stove. Breakfast was usually hot water for tea or coffee, oatmeal, already baked homemade bread that we heated up and then some butter and jam. After breakfast we read over some interesting Papal documents of environmental issues that we had brought with us. We had a brief session of Lectio Divina, in English, and Rodrigo explained all the steps to us so it made a little more sense. Then we ate lunch 3 hours after breakfast. The eating schedules always confuse me. I wasn’t even that hungry but I managed to put away 3 bowls of thick lentil soup. Once again I was moving a little slow afterwards. I laid down to rest and digest for a minute but then we had to leave to go work. We worked with the high school kids in the part of the ranch that was down by the lake. We had to widen a irrigation ditch that was built to divert the water coming down from the waterfalls into the fields. This ditch has been started a few months ago to keep the fields from getting flooded with water so that the cows could graze on them. Jose Antonio told us that cattle grazing is the only thing that could be at all profitable for this land (he said you could probably grow some nice flowers on it but what the hell are you going to do with nice flowers in the middle of nowhere?). However, before they could put a lot of cows on the land they had to convert it from a swamp. So basically we were digging in the ground…in about a foot of water…and I had a hole in one of my rubber boots. But it was nice outside, and we were in a beautiful place, and we were doing some real work so I felt great. I felt like a tough guy. The high school kids weren’t working very hard and this just motivated me to work even harder. I was like a machine with that shovel. But I paid for it the next day. While I was working someone mentioned that when I get back to Santiago and I could tell all my friends that I dug a ditch in Patagonia. So I got to thinking, what I am going to tell people when they ask what I am doing here.

So Charlie, what did you do in Patagonia/Chile?
- Oh, I helped dig an irrigation ditch.
Oh yeah, like for some poor farmers or something?
- Um, no, not really

But that’s not really fair because while the people who own this farm are not poor, its not exactly a money maker. And it felt good to finish a hard day’s work (half day really) and when we got back to the house all the other stuff like prayer and cooking dinner weren’t as boring as they were before because I had actually accomplished something today. Dinner was pretty simple, just salchichas (hot dogs) and arroz (rice) but we had a little pisco sour beforehand and I think we had plenty of wine during dinner. The wine we drank in Patagonia (for every dinner) came in a carton but it was great. Jose Antonio really likes it and he was his usual gregarious self at dinner and told us a bunch of stories.

Back at San Lorenzo

Alright, I realize I only wrote about 2 of 12 days in Patagonia. I am getting to the rest, I swear. But I figured I would keep the half dozen of you who read this up to date with the rest of what is going on, plus I already had this written. So here is what I am doing now that I am back in Santiago at Colegio San Lorenzo.

Upon returning to San Lorenzo after our trip to Patagonia Cole and I received a schedule for work and some projects that we needed to start. We have 7 main things that we are working on now.

Taller medio ambiente (Environmental Workshop)

One of the projects we will be working on is a workshop for the students to help improve the environment of school. I think this is going to mean several things. First, I think we are going to try and improve the recycling system that is in place at the school. They recycle some stuff but I haven’t seen any bins in the classrooms and haven’t actually seen anyone recycle glass, cans, or paper. We are also going to work to improve the actual appearance and landscape of the school. There are some trees and plants but the athletic fields are in rough shape and the patios are mostly dirt and dust. We also will probably include a little environmental education for the kids that want it.

Sports Teams

Cole is helping with the tennis classes twice and week and I am supposed to be helping out with football practice when it starts soon but we will see how that goes. As I have already mentioned I am not good at football and I am guessing that all the kids who I will be working with will be much better than me. I guess I can help them out with running and calisthenics or whatever. I am pretty sure that there is a guy who comes in a couple days a week and does some track and field stuff with the kids so maybe I will try to help out with that instead.

Baseball Classes

Last Wednesday Cole and I started our first baseball lesson for the boys in 7th and 8th grade. We didn’t have much to work with our first day: some cones for bases, a tennis ball, and two homemade bats. A few hours before we were going to start we realized that we didn’t have any bats but Jaime, a funny guy that works with us in Tutoria, explained to us, in Spanish, that we could find something. So we went over to the trash area/ mini junkyard and found a nice big wooden stick that we cut in two to make a couple of bats. The “class” went well and kids already had a pretty good understanding of the rules. The next day we put up a couple of signs with the names of all the positions and some simple rules in Spanish. I think we are going to wait until the kids get a better grasp of the fundamentals before we introduce more rules, like called strikes, force outs or the infield fly rule.

English Classes

I started working with the 7th and 8th grade English classes (boys and girls) last week. This is probably the simplest of our projects because we already know how to speak English and we don’t really have to prepare anything right now because we are just helping out the teacher. Although later on we will probably have more responsibilities. There are a few things that make English classes tough – 1) I still don’t speak Spanish that well and these kids don’t know that much English. 2) I’m pretty good at speaking English but I am terrible at explaining English. I have no idea why things are the way they are in the English language. 3) The kids aren’t very disciplined. They are always talking, getting out of their seats, and they don’t work very hard. During one class we went over the question words and the teacher had me write out questions and answers with who, what, when, etc. After I went over them the students were supposed to write down the five questions and answers in their copybooks and then think of 20 more questions. They had almost an hour to do this. Some of them didn’t even write down the 5 questions and answers. They seemed much more interested in talking with each other or asking me what the meanings were of the dirty words they knew in English.

Tutoria

We have tutoria with the 8th graders, kindergartners and pre-kindergartners, but like I said before, I still don’t really understand this. Tutoria with the 8th graders seems like its just getting them to calm down for the first 10 minutes and then playing football. And with the younger kids its pretty much the same. The other two guys we work with talk for about 15 minutes while the kids bounce off the walls, and then we go have recess.

Database Work

When the dean of the school asked me if I had any skills (aside from numchucks and bow-hunting) and I made the mistake of saying I knew a little bit about computers. So now I am supposed to work on some databases for the school. I haven’t started this yet but I actually don’t think it will be very hard. I think they use Microsoft Access, which I know nothing about, but I think I can figure it out.

Recreo Entretenido (Organized, Entertaining Recess)

Although its just for 15 minutes twice a week, (Tuesdays with 1º ciclo, younger kids, and Fridays with 2º ciclo, middle schoolers) this could be our toughest task. The whole point of recreo is that it is not organized and the kids can do whatever they want, so getting them to listen to us and follow directions for 15 minutes might be hit and miss. Anyway, what we are supposed to do is think of some games or activities to organize for the kids to play during the allotted time. We haven’t started this yet, but I was thinking something like the game stoplight, or maybe some human knots, fun relay races or even duck duck grey duck if it doesn’t get too out of control. If anyone out there has any good recess or phy ed games for kids that are simple, safe and don’t involve much equipment, please let me know.

So that’s pretty much what we are doing right now, in addition to prayer, lectio, and just hanging out and talking to the kids during recreo. Its not set in stone and other projects might come up as well. This may seem like a lot but we don’t have all of these things everyday so we still get some down time at the school which is nice.

Patagonia...finally

Between September 12th and 24th Cole, Paul, Rodrigo and I went to Patagonia to stay in one of the retreat houses that the Manquehue Movement has on a farm/ranch in Patagonia. A group of 6 high school boys and 2 girls, as well as 2 older tutors went along as well. The following is a slightly better version of whatever I managed to scribble down in my journal while I was there. (no electricity so obviously no computer)

This is where I was (I hope this link works) The farm is huge, but the houses we stayed in are right near that 265 road sign near the smaller lake.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=aysen,+chile&sll=-45.566107,-72.071686&sspn=0.02698,0.054932&ie=UTF8&ll=-46.765265,-72.567444&spn=0.105593,0.219727&t=h&z=12

Day 1

We flew from Santiago to Puerto Montt and then on to Balmaceda. The airport at Balmaceda was easily the most isolated airport I have ever seen. The airport, and town, sit in the middle of the pampa (large open fields in Patagonia) and they are surrounded by hills and the Andes. This airport is seriously in the middle of nowhere. And I am pretty sure the only reason the town is there is because someone had the bright idea of building an airport in the middle of nowhere.

The weather was actually pretty nice when we got there. A little chilly but for someone from Minnesota is was fine. I was a little worried before going to Patagonia because I didn’t bring many warm clothes to Chile. I have a few long sleeve t-shirts and a fleece pullover as well as a rain coat (which I happened to leave at a friend’s house the day before we left for Patagonia. We were all watching the big football match there). I borrowed a big wool sweater from Vicho (guy we live with) and it reminded me of that scene in Wedding Crashers (“You know I’m not happy about this”). Anyway, it was nice out so Paul, Cole and I decided to walk around this very isolated yet vast and spectacular area of Chile. We had some time to kill anyway because we landed around noon and the bus that would take us to the farm wouldn’t be here until 3. So we had a lot of time because 3 o’clock Chilean time means more like 3:30 and 3 o’clock Patagonian time is like 4. So we decided to walk to Argentina. (I later found out it wasn’t really Argentina but until I get to Argentina for real I am going to count this) A little ways down the road from the airport was a border station and a gate crossing the road. There were signs saying Chilean border control or whatever so we figured we could explain to whoever was working that we wanted to cross the border and that we would be back in 5 minutes. However when we got there we couldn’t find anyone so we crossed the border, took some pictures and then left.

Me in "Argentina". Taken from the Argentina side, looking onto the Chilean border post and the rest of Chile.

¡Welcome to Chile!

When the bus finally got there we crammed all 14 of us and our bags into it. It wasn’t a very big bus and there were already people on it so every seat as filled as well as most of the aisle with all our bags. Despite being packed in like sardines, listening to the bus driver play the same music over and over, and feeling a little sick after driving 6 hours over bumpy gravel roads, the bus ride was pretty amazing. I figured I would fall asleep for most of the time but the amazing views of the mountains and valleys kept me awake the whole time. Plus I got used to the Spanish music and he even threw in some CCR and A-Ha (Take on Me obviously). We finally arrived at the farm around 11 or 12 at night and were greeted by the college-aged women who were on a semester long retreat there and Jose Antonio, the oblate who lives at the farm and would be living with us for the next 12 days. There was a full moon that night and a huge halo surrounded the moon. There are three houses on the farm; we went with Jose Antonio to our house (San Bonifacio) while the high school boys and tutors went to San Bede and the women stayed in a house on a little hill overlooking most of the farm. We had dinner with Jose Antonio by candlelight and then went right to bed.

One of several pictures I took during the bus ride.

Day 2

The farm in Patagonia is owned by the family of the wife of the founder of the Manquehue movement. It is located in the Aysen region of Patagonia, on the shore of Lago General Carrera, a huge lake that straddles the Chile/Argentina border. It’s a huge farm with a ton of cows and three gauchos (cowboys) who take care of them. We met one of the gauchos today while walking around the farm. JA (Jose Antonio) had driven us (Cole, Paul, Rodrigo and me) down the road and dropped us off a couple miles from the house so that we could take a walking tour of part of the farm. So we walked across fields with cattle grazing and hopped over the simple wood and wire fences. If you are picturing this ranch as a bunch of cows packed together onto a large, flat plain then you are way off. This isn’t your ordinary ranch, well it is for Patagonia, but from what I have seen back home its very different from American ranches. Its very simple and the land is still pretty untamed. The cows graze on huge expanses of land with grass, brush, trees and every kind of thorny bush imaginable. Plus the land is very hilly and there is a huge lake nearby with the Andes mountains in the background. I don’t know how they did it but the Andes managed to almost surround this place, they seemed to be on three sides with the forth being foothills. So basically it was like the most spectacular place I had ever been, let alone the most beautiful farm I had ever seen. So anyway, we’re walking across the fields and we end up at the puesto (little house) of one of the gauchos (Orlando). This guy had a great accent (which means I couldn’t understand a word he said) and he invited us into his place for a few minutes. He lives in this small simple house alone most of the year while he works on the ranch.

Orlando's puesto on the ranch

This is the view from right outside the house I stayed in.

Other Stuff

Two things

1. Here is my address, in case anyone out there still uses snail mail or wants to send me a sweet postcard, or a 3lb jar of peanut butter...just kidding, but seriously though

Charlie Sawyer
c/o Rodrigo Vidal
Parque Antonio Rabat 6150
Vitacura Santiago, Chile

2. Here is some more stuff that I wrote. Enjoy.

Food

Since my last post introduced you to some Chilean foods this would probably be a good time to describe in more detail my experiences with eating here. The food I eat at the house is pretty simple and not too different from American food, with some exceptions. Breakfast is usually just oatmeal and bread. Bread is served with every meal in Chile or at least almost every meal I have eaten here at home or at work. People usually buy bread every day or at least several times a week at a Panaderia (I think that’s how you spell it). The bread we eat at the house comes in small pieces for one person and in three main varieties. There are the round English muffin-looking pieces. They don’t taste anything like English muffins, much denser and less flavourful. Then there are two types of baguette-like bread, which are much better. In addition to bread and oatmeal we have some hot beverages (coffee, tea, or hot chocolate), butter, jelly, and milk. On the weekends we occasionally have eggs but during the week breakfast is quick and simple. I don’t drink coffee but the only kind I have seen here is instant coffee, although I am sure there is a Starbucks around somewhere.

Lunch is pretty simple as well. We eat at the school in a separate room with the oblates and committed members of the movement. (The same people we do Lectio with – dean of the school, Andres the oblate we live with, the people from Tutoria, some of the guys from the business office, etc.) We always have bread and a simple salad and then some type of entrée, usually pasta with sauce, a stew or rice with some sort of meat. We eat a dessert at the end as well, jello or fruit usually. The interesting thing about lunch is that it starts at around 2:15. I don’t know if I will ever get used to this. We eat breakfast at the house between 6:30 and 7 am so when lunch finally rolls around I am starving. I started bringing an apple and a granola bar to eat around 10:30 but I still can’t get used to this eating schedule.

The five of us (Cole, Andres, Rodrigo, Vicho and me) eat dinner back at the house after we have all returned from work. Rodrigo works at San Benito and Vicho works at San Anselmo in addition to taking classes and Catholic University of Santiago. We usually don’t sit down for dinner until 8 or 8:30, which seemed pretty late to me at first. I don’t like eating a big meal right before bed but I guess that’s the custom here. Dinner is usually bread, salad and a main entrée. The entrees are simple and pretty good but for the most part they aren’t that different than food back home. A lot of rice, potatoes and pasta, or else some sort of casserole or hot dish type thing. Our maid prepares the entrée for us during the day so when we get home we just have to heat it up in the oven. My favorite dishes for dinner so far are

· lasagna, obviously and its almost as good as the Reef at SJU
· a meat pie-type dish with mashed potatoes on top and meat on the bottom
· crepes, but they are dinner crepes, hard to describe, I usually eat a whole mess of them (crepes are those really thin pancakes)
· we had lamb one night, it was duro (hard) and definitely para hombres (for men)

We have a dessert afterwards as well, most of them are really good, but some are a little different.

· Flan, can mean a lot of different desserts here, but the best we had so far had two layers with manjar (dulce de leche kind of, its delicious, that’s all you need to know) in the middle I think. I can’t really describe it but it was great and I wanted to polish off the rest of the pan but sadly I could not.
· Sopaipillas – it’s like a pancake but made out of donut stuff, and apparently some squash too. So it’s like a thick, sweet, delicious, small pancake. We pour hot cane sugar syrup over the top and then I eat like 8 of them and wake up the next morning with a shot put in my stomach.
· Flan and sopaipillas are the best desserts I can think of right now. We also have fruit (apples, kiwis, oranges – always fresh and delicious), an interesting type of pink mousse, and some other stuff I can’t remember.

So that’s what my daily food is like. Its usually pretty simple, yet delicious and satisfying. We have been out to eat a few times and so here are some other types of Chilean food I have tried so far.

· Empanadas – a fried bread pocket stuffed with meat, onions, olives, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, etc, then baked and served. Delicious. I have only had homemade ones, but I am going to give the street vendors a try soon.
· Pebre – delicious salsa, tomatoes, onions and I don’t know what else but its amazing, some of the best salsa I have ever had. They don’t call it salsa because I think the word salsa in Chile refers to any type of sauce, including the ketchup/mayo mixture that people dip their potato chips in.
· Churasco and Chacadero – not sure if I spelled these right or if I even know the difference between the two. Basically they are sandwiches. Sliced beef, tomatoes, lettuce, guacamole (they don’t call it guacamole, I can’t remember what they call it), ketchup, peppers, mayo, basically whatever you want. It’s impossible to eat without of bunch of crap falling out.
· Quesillo – it’s almost cheese but not quite because I guess they stop the process before it is finished. So it’s a lot softer and more moist, but still with a cheese like consistency.
· Ok there isn’t much else right now, partly because I can’t remember and partly because I haven’t been able to sample many foods…yet. You can be sure that I will be solving this problem in the very near future.

We also had a huge asado (bbq) in Patagonia when we were there for the Chilean Independence Day (18th of September) but I will go into all that stuff when I finally get around to writing about Patagonia.

I have managed to ramble on for quite some time about food, although I am sure you all expected nothing less from me. I will continue to post about my culinary experiences in the future.

Weather

In a nutshell, the weather here is pretty nice. It was a little cool when we first got here but for someone like me who thrives in cool climates and breaks into a sweat easily, it was great. The only problem was getting up in the morning and taking a shower. We don’t have central heating and the mornings were kind of cold so hopping out of the hot shower into a cold bathroom was a little annoying. Other than that almost everything about the weather has been great. Very little rain. Since it just changed to spring down here it has started to heat up and a few days when the sun has been out its gotten a little hot. I usually walk around school without my fleece pullover and sometimes I am in short sleeves and people always ask me if I am alright or if I am cold or if I need a jacket. I try to explain to them that I am from the northern part of the USA and if I was back home I would probably be wearing plaid shorts in this type of weather. Shorts are pretty uncommon in Chile, at least right now, people might wear them during the summer but I doubt it. I was walking around Santiago one of the first weekends I was here and I didn’t see anybody wearing any.

Dogs

I’d like to talk to you about a serious issue, packs of wild dogs that control most American cities.

Ok, it’s not that bad here, but I do see a lot of stray dogs wandering around the city, even in my neighbourhood. I experienced the same thing in China, except here in Chile there are a lot of big dogs wandering around as well, like German Shepards. I was a little concerned about this at first but I noticed that all these dogs do is mope around and sleep. They look very tired and usually hungry and I have yet to see them chasing after anything or anyone other than another dog. I am not sure how many of them are strays or how many of them actually have owners but have just wandered away for the day. Some of them obviously have no owner because they look like crap and someone has actually managed to put a cardboard box underneath them on the sidewalk. Others have probably just wandered away from home, especially in my neighbourhood, since we have a dog at the house that is not always around. His name is Fido and he has a habit of running away whenever we open the gate. There is a pretty nice restaurant two doors down from us and Fido is usually fed some leftovers. We sometimes joke that he eats better than we do. We he is back inside the gate he never comes in the house, always outside in the small yard we have around the house. I say small yard compared to a yard back home, but it’s probably pretty nice for Santiago. We have a patio on the side and in back, the rest is grass and a lot of plants, and it’s pretty nice. Anyway, Fido knows not to come into the house which makes me believe that people here treat their pets differently here than back home. I feel like dogs are treated more like dogs and less like humans as is usually the custom in America. I have yet to see any dogs wearing clothing here.

Metro

During our first few weeks here Cole and I were driving to work with Andres but in an effect to get home and little earlier and have some free time we have started taking the metro on the way home. We got a card (BIP, named after the beep sound it makes when you swipe it) for the transportation system (Transantiago, sometimes known as Transantiasco because of all the problems they have had). We can ride the metro or busses with it. It’s about a 1 kilometer (that’s right, I’m using the metric system) walk to the metro station from San Lorenzo. I’ll admit I was a little nervous walking thru Recoleta the first time (Recoleta is the community that San Lorenzo is in. It’s pretty poor with some sketchy houses, but it’s not a slum or a shanty town) However now I feel totally fine walking down the busy street that takes us to the metro. Its got the usual sites and sounds; liquor stores (no gun stores), bakeries, butcher shops, grocery stores, sidewalk vendors, broken sidewalks, dirt boulevards, trash in the street. There is a big street market on this same street every Tuesday. It was actually one of the first things I saw in Chile, after getting off the plane, going to the house and coming to San Lorenzo. I am going to try to check it out more. It’s like a flea market plus there are fruit and vegetable stands. I would love to take some pictures on the walk but right now I would rather not make it any more obvious that I am not only not from the area but also not even from the country. . Sometimes I feel like I can blend in since a lot of people here look very European. However my blond hair and blue eyes usually give me away, if my Spanish doesn’t.)

But anyway, back to the Metro…Cole and I have been taking it home nearly everyday after work now and it’s pretty nice. The stations downtown and near our house are a lot nicer than the ones in Recoleta near San Lorenzo, but overall it’s a pretty clean, safe and reliable system. We have to change lines once and the trains get pretty packed near downtown. And although it takes about an hour for the whole trip home we still get back a lot sooner.

Football

From here on out the word football on this blog will refer to the sport in America known as soccer. I can’t stay in the habit of calling it soccer here because I will look like an idiot. If I do refer to American football I will make sure to call it American football.
­
If Chile wasn’t such a predominantly Catholic country I am pretty sure that people here would worship football. I am sure that some people do take their affection for the Chilean team or their favorite local club to the level of worship. Basically football is pretty popular here and it’s obvious to me almost anywhere I go. Almost all the boys at San Lorenzo play football, where in the middle of the patios at recess, on the tennis/basketball courts (this is called baby football) or an actual game on the football fields nearby. A lot of the kids ask me what my favorite football team is back home. I try to explain to them that I don’t have a favorite football team back home because football is not a very popular professional sport in America. I haven’t watched a lot of TV here. (We watched the news a few days ago after the stock market fiasco and Cole and I also watched a little bit of Flashdance (dubbed in Spanish) with Rodrigo and Andres before we went out last Saturday. I had never seen Flashdance but if I had to pick a movie to watch with two oblates of a religious movement, Flashdance would probably not be one of them.) But the first two times I did watch TV was when Chile was playing in the latest World Cup qualifying games. The first game we watched was against Brazil (they lost) and we saw it at home. The second game was against Columbia (pretty sure) and we went over to Carla´s (girl from work) house after work and watched the game in her small living room with about a dozen other people. We (Chile) won 4-0 so we are still in the mix for the World Cup, I think. (I don’t really know how the qualifying works or when it ends)

I played a little football already as well. Cole and I played some baby football on the basketball court with some other students a few weeks ago. It was five on five and there were 4 teams that rotated in whenever a goal was scored. I am pretty terrible at football and the only way I can contribute at all is if I can run around a lot and rely on my fitness and defensive skills. However, since we were playing on a basketball this was not an option and although I like to think I held my own, I was embarrassed pretty badly a few times. These kids, who were about 16 years old, could do some ridiculous things with their feet. Our team’s strategy was to have Cole play goalie (because he’s tall and filled most of the net, and he also has experience playing goalie) I played defense with one other kid and then the two all-stars on our team just hung around the opposing net most of the time. We would kick it in their general direction and they would somehow control and keep it away from three other players and then put it into the net. Unreal.

Lastly, there are three big football teams here – Colo Colo, U de Chile (University of Chile) and Catolica (Catholic University). Colo Colo is like the Yankees of Chilean Football. They are huge and they almost always win. And unlike the Yankees almost everyone seems to love them. U de Chile and Catolica, even though they bear the names of universities, are actually professional teams. This was really confusing for me at first. It turns out they just practice at the schools and are not actually made up of university students. I think at one point they were more affiliated with the schools but now they just bear the name.

I promise next time I will post all the stuff I wrote in my journal while in Patagonia

Peace

Finally

Alright, this is going to be a long post but I have a lot of stuff to cover. I will try to keep it organized and provide a short title to each separate topic so that you can pick and choose what you want to read. I know that if someone told me to read their blog and then they posted a novel, I wouldn’t be too interested. So pick and choose what you want to read, but please, unless you are incredibly bored with lots of time on your hands, don’t try to read this all at once.

Why am I here?

That’s a very good question. During my senior year I didn’t know what I want to do after I graduated. I looked into and applied to several things; graduate school in engineering, Teach for America, going back to China and teaching English, and of course the Saint John’s Benedictine Volunteer Corps (BVC from here on out). I got into a couple of graduate schools but I wasn’t sure that engineering was what I wanted to do and I didn’t want to spend two more years in school if my heart wasn’t totally in it. Going back to China was appealing but when I found out that I had gotten into the BVC and that Cole and I would be the first members to volunteer in Chile I figured it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
I didn’t know much about Chile before coming here and I knew even less about the community I would be living and working with, the Manquehue Apostolic Movement. The BVC usually spends people to live and work in Benedictine monasteries (becoming a monk or even being Catholic is not a requirement). However, as I will explain a little further on, the Manquehue Movement is not a monastery but a lay Benedictine community. Last year a couple of monks from Saint John’s came down to Santiago for a Benedictine education conference put on by the movement and both parties decided it would be a good idea to add Chile to the destinations for BVC volunteers.

The Manquehue Movement

The Manquehue Movement was started in 1977 by a man named Jose Manuel Eguiguren Guzman. During his mid-twenties Jose Manuel (whom I have met and he is an amazing person) began studying the bible with a monk and he eventually was put in charge of a confirmation group. Jose Manuel taught this group to read the bible in the same way this monk had taught him. The whole point was to discover how God spoke to them through the bible. An intense friendship formed within the group and they all wanted to get out and change the world so they formed this movement and named it Manquehue, which is a large hill in Santiago and means “place of the condor” in the native Indian language. Today Manquehue runs three schools, a women’s shelter, and a library all in Santiago as well as a retreat center in Patagonia. There are more than 900 people in the movement from various walks of life and in various forms of commitment. At the center of the movement are the oblates that have made a stable commitment to the movement. The Manquehue movement prays the Divine Office (the usual pray schedule in Benedictine monasteries) and follows the rule of Saint Benedict (they don’t exactly follow it because no one does that anymore). Also, within education, they are very involved in Tutoria and Lectio Divina, which I will explain.

Lection Divina

Lectio Divina is a kind of bible study that Manquehue does. I have been doing it for a while now but I still haven’t really gotten the hang of it, so I will probably go into more detail with it later. Basically we get together everyday at San Lorenzo, the school I work at, and we do Lectio for about 45 minutes. We refers to me, Cole, and about a dozen other people from the movement who work at San Lorenzo. A bible passage is read aloud, in Spanish obviously, and then each person reads it over a few times themselves and reads the notes and similar passages. This process is called scrutinizing the reading. The whole point of Lectio, at least I think, is to figure out what the bible is saying to you and how it applies to your life at this time. We then pair up and people give echos to each other, where they basically explain how they see the passage and what it means to them. Although I have an English bible, Lectio has been tough because I have to translate my echos and I am finding it hard right now to apply the readings to my life. But I am realizing that the bible is a pretty cool book, even if we are reading St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which is not too exciting.

Tutoria

I am not exactly sure what tutoria is all about right now either. I work in the office with all the other people who do tutoria, but right now its not my main job. A lot of ex-alumnos (alumni) of San Lorenzo work in tutoria. Basically they go into each class for about an hour each week and teach the kids about the bible and religion. I have “helped” with the tutoria sessions for kindergartners and jr high students, but I still don’t really understand it. Kindergarten sessions seem to consist of the kids running wild and jr high sessions are mostly playing football with the kids.

The Schools of the Manquehue Movement

The movement runs three schools here in Santiago – Colegio San Lorenzo, Colegio San Benito and Colegio San Anselmo. All of them are K-12.

Colegio San Anselmo

Cole and I visited San Anselmo for three days during our second week here, as part of our process of getting to know the movement, their work and their schools. San Anselmo is out in the suburbs of Santiago and is a very nice looking school. I think it must have the most space of all the three schools and has some beautiful hills in the background. It’s the newest of the three schools and was built in 1995. It’s a private school and while I don’t know how much tuition is I think most of the students who go there are pretty well off. While at San Anselmo Cole and I sat in on some English classes, one of which was with an intense guy from Canada whose form of discipline was making the boys leave class, run out to the football (soccer) fields and back (all the classes have boys and girls separate until high school) It seems like there is little discipline and respect for rules in the classes but this guys tactics seemed a little too harsh. Cole and I also helped out with the school’s track team. We ran a couple laps around the fields with the little kids, did some hurdle drills with the older students and even ran a couple of 400´s with one of the sprinters (I threw down a 75 second 400 and while I wasn’t that exhausted afterwards, I realized that I was no longer in the shape I was during track in college). The female coach of the track team happened to be the Chilean pole vault record holder and just missed qualifying for the Olympics this year. However, I didn’t know this until after I had left the school. One day after work at San Anselmo Rodrigo took us home the long way through some beautiful hills outside Santiago and through some nice suburban areas that looked almost American except for the lack of large lawns and the fences completely surrounding the houses.

San Benito

San Benito is the oldest of the three schools, built in 1982. It is located in Vitacura, another nice neighbourhood, right next to Providencia. (the neighbourhood I live in) Cole and I didn’t have much to do at San Benito so we pretty much just hung out in Tutoria with Louis. We did go to one religion class and an English class where we accompanied the students to the library where they were doing research for a paper. We also “helped out” with the schools track team. I was the first one to show up for practice and I had a little communication problem with one of the coaches. I kept trying to tell him that I was there to help with practice but he thought that I was asking him to help me train. So he kept telling me to do a few warm up laps and then he was going to make me run some 200´s. I kept asking him where the other students were that I was going to be running with and he just kept telling me to go run. Finally one of the other coaches helped me out and explained to him that I did not need a coach. I helped out by running a few four hundreds with one of the middle distance runners.

San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo is by far the school most in need of help out of the three. It is located in Recoleta, which is a rougher neighbourhood outside of downtown Santiago. It is a very poor area while I haven’t seen any crime or felt unsafe at any time in the area; I have been told that Recoleta can be a little rough at night. All three schools are private but while San Benito and San Anselmo rely on tuition money, San Lorenzo is financed by the movement and by government assistance. The school itself is pretty nice but the facilities are not nearly as nice as the other schools. There is an athletic field, a tennis/basketball court, church, library, cafeteria, etc. From above the school probably looks somewhat like a big “E”, with elementary school, jr high, and high school classrooms divided into three different areas, more or less. Its actually primero ciclo (1st- 4th grade), segundo ciclo (5th – 8th grade) and medio (high school). In between the three rows of classrooms are patios that the kids have their recess on. The students have a short (15 minute) recess every 2 hours or so. Its nice because all the students stay in the same room for the entire day so it lets them get outside and burn off some energy (which they have a lot of) every so often. Because Santiago is in such a nice climate, their aren’t any hallways and the classrooms just open up to the outside. Football (soccer) seems to be a pretty popular activity during recreo (recess), but more about football later. I hope my lame attempt at describing what the school looks like helps.
Although the students are very poor and have a lot of social and economic problems to deal with, especially at home, they are happy and loving and full of energy. Even though I knew I was going to be working at San Lorenzo and despite the fact that the other two schools are much nicer, I knew right away after touring all three schools that San Lorenzo was my favorite. It was the only school where the little kids (especially the kindergartners) would run up to me, hug me, and call me Tio (uncle).


Casa de Gringos (my house)

I live in a sort of guesthouse of the Manquehue Movement. Living in the house right now are
· Rodrigo – the guest master for Manquehue and our contact person here, is the head of the house
· Andres – an oblate of the movement who works at San Lorenzo
· Vicente (Vicho) – a college student who is an alumni of one of the Manquehue schools and I believe is now in the process of becoming an oblate
· Cole
· Me
There were also some other gringos living at the house when Cole and I arrived but since I am posting this so late, they have all left by now, but they were –
· James – an “old boy” of Ampleforth.* I didn’t get to know James too well because he left a couple of days after I returned to Cambridge where he is studying natural science. *Ampleforth is an abbey and high school in England and they have had a relationship with Manquehue for many years now. There are several committed members of the movement who have come from Ampleforth and students from the school come to Chile to volunteer during their “off year” between high school and “uni” (college). Old boy is the British way of saying alumni.
· Rupert – another old boy of Ampleforth, he left a week or so after I got here to start college at Durham in England. He worked at San Anselmo and Cole and I hung out with him during our three days there. He was quite the character and loved to talk.
· Louis – also an old boy of Ampleforth, he is French but went to school in England. He worked at San Benito and left a little while after Rupert
· Paul – the only other American in the house, Paul worked at San Lorenzo with us and was great in showing us around the school when we first got here. He is from St. Louis and went to Priory High School, which is run by a Benedictine monastery and also has a relationship with Manquehue. He left just a few days ago to go back home and return to college in Tennessee.

We live in Providencia, a very nice part of Santiago right outside the downtown area. We live right at the intersection of two streets called Pedro de Valdivia Norte and Los Conquistadores. Pedro de Valdivia was the Spanish guy who founded Santiago and Los Conquistadores is pretty self explanatory. So I think its pretty ironic that Cole and I and the other gringos live at the intersection of these two streets. (at least I think that’s irony, I never really understood the literary definition when we talked about it in jr high English class, and that Alanis Morisette song didn’t seem to help things) The neighbourhood itself looks somewhat European except for the fact that all the houses in the area either have fences or walls completely surrounding them. In fact, every house I have seen in Santiago is this way. The house is located between the Mapucho River and San Cristobal Hill. The river itself isn’t much to look at, just some muddy water flowing through an artificial concrete canal (there is a big project underway to clean up the river) but there are nice green parkways on either side. San Cristobal Hill is pretty big, although nothing compared to the Andes in the background, and from the top you can see pretty much all of Santiago. I ran to the top of the hill a couple of weeks after getting here and although the 25 minutes or so of going straight uphill were tough (especially since I haven’t been running that much here) the view from the top while the sun was setting over the city was amazing. You can walk, bike, drive or take a cable car to the top of the hill so there were a lot of other people up there enjoying the view. I hope to go back up soon and get some pictures to post here, although they probably won’t do the view any justice.
The house itself is quite nice. Its got the usual; living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, and the somewhat unusual; a room to pray in, no central heating, one TV which we rarely watch, although after over a month here these things no longer seem unusual at all. Cole and I share one of the bedrooms. It’s not very big but since we pretty much only sleep in there its just fine. Our bedroom opens up onto a little patio in the backyard. We cook our own breakfast in the morning (more about the food later) and the meals on the weekend but we have a maid who makes our dinners so we just put the dish that she made for the night into the oven when we get home. She also cleans, does the laundry (jackpot!) and makes the beds! I guess it’s fairly common for Chilean homes to have maids. (I’ll say a little more about this later)

Retreat Weekend

The first weekend we were here Cole and I were invited to a retreat for all the ex-alumnos of the schools of Manquehue. (San Lorenzo, San Benito and San Anselmo) Chileans refer to students as alumnos and to former students (what Americans would call alumni) as ex-alumnos, which was confusing for me at first. So anyway Rodrigo took Cole and I, and the other Gringos (who were all still here at the time) to a retreat place/resort thing on the Pacific Ocean for a retreat with at least 100 college students and other members of the movement. We got there at night and so I didn’t realize until morning when I was walking around that we were actually right next to the ocean.

Lake Superior is neat, but the ocean is way bigger. Enjoy this picture because it is the only one you will see on this blog for a while. It took forever to upload.

The retreat itself isn’t that interesting to describe. It was a lot of bible study (Lectio), prayer, church and talks in Spanish that I didn’t understand. There was one talk that I unfortunately was struggling to stay awake in and afterwards we broke off into our groups to do some activities about what we had just heard. Since everything was in Spanish I had no idea what was going on and when we separated from our groups to answer some questions individually I struggled to understand the questions and then just sat there until everyone came back. Rupert, who was in my group, asked me if I at least understood the questions and I told him I didn’t understand anything – questions, the talk, the group activities. He just shook his head and laughed.
I know it may sound like I am just bitching, but the retreat was actually fun and interesting, despite all the Spanish and church stuff. I got to meet and talk to a lot of Chilean people my age who were all very nice and interesting and seemed to all have this deep desire to get something more out of life. I was able to go for a nice run along the ocean. I mostly stayed near the beach but at one point I cut thru a lawn and onto the dirt roads of the streets which would have been great to run on except that there were about half a dozen stray dogs wandering around. I also realized I didn’t know where I was going so I decided to avoid that altogether and return to the beach.
We also had a little party/celebration on the last night of the retreat. About 10 hours after lunch (I’ll get to the crazy eating times later, at least they are crazy to me) we went into the main building where most of the talks were and there were Chilean flags everywhere and tables set up with wine, salsa and bread. We eventually ate some empanadas (fried bread pocket stuffed with meat, onions, eggs, etc. Kind of like Hot Pocket only much much better) and watched some skits that were put on by the various groups of ex-alumnos. Some queca dancing followed and the whole thing didn’t get over until around 1 am, at which point they busted out the prayer books and we recited Compline (the last prayer of the day). At first I was confused at this but then I realized that this whole retreat was about getting closer to the word of God and that we had spent most of our waking hours in the church and I realized that this was not out of the ordinary at all.

Second Weekend in Santiago

Our second Friday here in Santiago happened to coincide with Paul’s birthday and although Cole and I weren’t around for the festivities that happened at San Lorenzo, because we were touring San Benito that day, we were able to surprise him by taking him out to dinner that night. We all tricked him into thinking we were going to volunteer that night. We got him good! So all of us (Rodrigo, Andres, etc) went to a pizza place called Los Insaciables. (the insatiables), an all you can eat pizza restaurant. The servers come around every so often with a new pizza and although it was thin crust and tiny, and with some interesting toppings (fish, vegetables, etc.) and you pretty much had to eat whatever they were serving at the time (not really a problem for me) it was pizza baby! And all you can eat, and we even got a couple of beers to wash it down with. Plus they played some great 80´s music and I started to feel a little homesick.
The next day, Saturday, Rodrigo took Cole and me on a little tour of downtown Santiago. We took the metro (our first experience on it, everything went fine) to Santa Lucia hill, an old fort right near downtown with some good views of the city. We also checked out Plaza de Armas, the main square right in downtown. The old part of the city obviously has a lot of Spanish-influenced architecture and so it looks a lot more “Latin American” than the part of the city that we live in.
On Sunday we had a little bbq at the house because Rupert would be leaving us soon. We had some other people in the movement come over and we roasted some large cuts of meat on the grill. We also had some pebre (salsa), churripan (hot dogs kind of) and some chicha (kind of like a hard apple cider).

Some things I miss

· American music – I don’t listen to much music right now. Pretty much all I have is what we sing and play during prayer and mass, and whatever may be playing on the radio or one of the computers in Tutoria – which is usually Raggaeton (not sure if I spelled that right) which is like Latin American dance/techno/club music
· Peanut Butter
· Milk – they have milk here but it’s different.
· Running – I am still running and trying to get back into the habit of running everyday, but I miss everyone on the cross country and track team and the regularity of practice everyday at 4.
· College
· Family
· Friends

Some things that are sweet

· Having my laundry done for me
· Sopaipillas – it’s like a pancake but made out of a donut, and you can put cane sugar syrup on top, amazing. But if you eat too many you wake up feeling like a bomb went off in your stomach
· Pebre – delicious salsa, I ate it out of a jar with a fork once
· Manjar – I guess it’s like dulce de leche, but since I have never tried that I don’t know. Anyway, its delicious
· Not having to do homework anymore
· The kids at San Lorenzo – I swear these kids have an unlimited supply of energy and are almost always happy
· Not having a lot of stuff and living a simple life
· Not watching TV – this is kinda sweet. I am glad I am no longer a slave to cable TV and all the crappy movies they play that I have already seen a dozen times but still want to waste my time watching. I do miss some of the good TV shows like Family Guy, South Park, The Daily Show, and being able to see the news in English. But its been nice to have a break from TV for a while

Some things that are different

· Eating meals 6-7 hours apart
· PDA – I see a lot of couples getting close on the grass next to the river
· Houses with walls and fences around them
· Mountain bikes – my neighborhood is a little upscale and on the weekends I see a lot of people in outdoor performance clothing riding around on big fancy mountain bikes. I haven’t really figured this out yet. It seems a little strange coming from the US where people usually ride road bikes or fixed gear bikes in the city. The pathways along the river parkways are dirt but they are pretty flat and packed down, and there is the big hill near my house, San Cristobal, but the only time I see bikers on the hill is when they are flying down the paved road that runs from the top to the bottom. So far I haven’t seen any terrain that would necessitate a dual suspension bike, unless they were going to take it off some sweet jumps and get like three feet of air.
· Pace of life – I don’t know if the stereotypes of South American life are true, but from what I have heard, at least from Chileans, it seems like Chile doesn’t exactly fit the mold of the rest of South America. However, I have noticed that the pace of life is much slower here and schedules are not strictly followed like back home. Our first couple of weeks here if Cole and I had to be anywhere, we would arrive a few minutes early. We did this because 1) it seemed like the polite thing to do and we didn’t want to be late 2) we are accustomed to being on time or even a bit early to things and 3) we didn’t really have anything better to do. However, we soon found out that being early wasn’t necessary. We then started showing up on time to things and still this was not all that necessary. It was only until we started showing up a few minutes late did we realize that things rarely start on time. And they rarely finish on time as well. Right now it seems like Chilean people like nothing more than to sit around and chat with each other, which is great but sometimes I just want to get things done. I should mention that this isn’t really a problem for me. It’s nice having a more relaxed schedule. I am by no means whining. I am merely pointing out what I have observed. I will probably discuss this more when I get a better feel for how things work here.


Coming up next...Food, the weather, and maybe even some stories from my trip to Patagonia and my new projects at San Lorenzo. (all these things have already happened, I am just way behind)