Chile Parte I

Well, after a great time in DC, we packed up and left our group of 47 for 12, and we set off to the grandeous Chile!! We left DC after minor delays because of heat, and flew to Dallas, where we had a short layover. We left for Santiago in a full plane and flew overnight to Chile. When we got there, it appeared that everything was running smoothly. Until, we got to immigration and discovered that Partners had forgotten to tell us about the US$140 we needed to pay to get into the country. Without a cell phone or enough cash to pay for 12 of us, we had to track down the Chileans there to greet us, use a phone to call DC, and eventually figured out a way to balance credit and debit limits to pay for everyone (which is going to be reimbursed by Partners of course). So, my entry to Chile took about 2 hours, but no importa, we got in, and I was greeted by the gentile Jorge Valonzuela, a 65 year old Chilean who would be my and Shawnice´s host.

We drove to his home in complete fog and cold weather, where we were greeted by his wife Nery, a shy but talented painter and very good cook. We spent the afternoon eating bread and drinking tea and chatting, and to my delight, the Chilean accent is very similar to the Spanish accent, and I have very little problems communicating (although I have to say that my Español is rusty and I´m slowly resurrecting my vocabulary). Later, we ate dinner with his son and grandchildren, who later took me and Shawnice out to the shopping mall. Santiago has very nice fashion, but everything we looked at was super expensive and all I came away with was a geography book in Spanish to use in my aula.

Today we had more bread and tea for breakfast and left at 8:30am for the YMCA, which will serve as our headquarters here in Santiago. We met up with the rest of our group and Alejandra Molina, who is the coordinator here in Santiago. We had cookies and tea and juice while she explained the logistics of living in Santiago, followed by a presentation by the Partners president Jaime something and a testimonial by a YMCA product, Flavio, who was rescued from the streets of Chile and a life of drugs and robbery and taking in by the YMCA were he is now the head accountant of a US$5.000 budget.

We then walked to the presidential palace La Moneda (the money), and got a tour of the inside. They have a changing of the guard here, and I got a picture with one of them, although I was too afraid to stand very close to him. During the tour, we were always accompanied by a guard who was actually quite friendly and talked a lot. Later, we walked around Santiago and tried not to trip over the stray dogs sleeping on the sidewalks. We visited a ¨small¨ church and observed a major protest going on right now by students and professors (more on this in next post). We then, returned to the Y (pronouned by some ¨Ing-kah¨) and had more juice and cookies and waited for Jorget to come pick us up.

We had some excellent soup for dinner that has warmed me right up. I like the food here, although it is somewhat bland. I am looking forward to another warm night of sleep and more about the educational protests tomorrow.

My Chilean phrase for the day: El ocio es la madre de todo vicios (Laziness is the mother of all vices, in other words an idle hand is the devil´s tool, or something like that)

¡Buenas noches!