Last Day

Well, this is it. Today I leave Chile to return home after almost one year away. Of course I am feeling a poutpourri of emotions, but above all I feel happy and blessed. I am so glad to have seen what I've seen, to have met so many wonderful people, to have had so many great experiences, to have learned so much. I wouldn't change a single moment, I don't have one single regret, which is a fantastic feeling. I will forever cherish the memories I am taking with me; of time spent with family (including my new family in La Unión), my time spent teaching so many great (although challenging at times) kids, the time spent at the orphange and getting to know the beautiful, rich culture of Perú, and of course the time spent traveling. I feel so lucky to have been able to see so much, experience so much, learn so much. This past year has far exceeded my expectations in so many ways. It has been wonderful, but, I have accomplished all that I have wanted to from the beginning-- learned Spanish, gotten to know some of my family better, lived and worked as a Chilena, traveled, volunteered, experienced new cultures-- so it is time for me to return home.

And it is time to begin a new chapter in my life, which I am very excited about. I will be moving to Los Angles, California, where I hope to begin focusing on developing a career in the non-profit sector working for a cause I strongly believe in. I am looking forward to the nice weather, the new friends, a new job (hopefully soon), all the new learning experiences to come. But one thing is for sure, I will return to Chile. I don't know when, or for how long, but those details don't matter right now. I just know that there is no way that I won't come back. I have too many loved ones here, and I am leaving a bit of myself here in Chile, for now I feel more Chilena than I ever have and I know I will always feel at home here. I have truly come to love this country, for all her beautiful landscapes, for the proud, generous, and loving people that inhabit her, for the richness in culture and nature, even for her faults. Chile, I will truly miss you. But this is not goodbye for long. Hasta luego, mi Chile querida, o sea, hasta pronto.

All good things...

Today is my last day in La Unión and a week from today I will be touching ground in the US for the first time in nearly a year. As one would expect, I'm feeling a lot of different things; happiness, sadness and everything in between. But what I want to do right now is share a little bit about my trip to Uruguay and Buenos Aires. This past week has been very busy, I was working at the Winter English Camp with a group of High Schoolers. That was a really lovely way to bring my teaching experience here to a close. I met a great group of kids and had a lot of fun leading different activities. One day we went bowling which was funny as most of the kids had never bowled in their lives. We were all pretty terrible at it (myself included of course). It was a busy and tiring week, but very nice, now today I have to pack everything up, spend my last moments with the most wonderful host family in the world, and then sadly say goodbye. But before I get caught up in feeling sad about that, let me back track a little bit and think about the cool places I've seen.

Uruguay

Uruguay is a tiny little country with a population of only 3 million. Half of the country's inhabitants live in the capital city Montevideo. I spent two nights here. It's pretty small as far a cities go, and rather chill and quiet. This is not the place you would go if you are looking for a lively night life. Also, it's very expensive. Poverty seems to be almost non-existent in Uruguay, it's a fairly well off country, especially compared to the rest of South America.

Montevideo

1. We went to one of the biggest and best markets I've ever been to. I know I've made that claim before, but I think I really mean it this time. I never saw where this market started and ended and we walked around it for at least an hour of two. It just kept going and going in every direction. And they sold literally everything.

2. The people here are seriously obsessed with maté. I mean OBSESSED. Even though it is not that practical, everyone takes their maté with them everywhere they go. Driving, walking on the river path, shopping in the market, walking the dog, wherever; everyone you see has their thermos of hot water tucked under their arm with their maté in hand which they drink out of a gourd or something similar and sip with a metal straw.

3. Montevideo is a very nice, clean, and safe city. And they people are very calm and actually kind of quiet, although not all that friendly. This city feels much more like Europe than it does South America.

My friend Harry tossing a rock in the water.

The center of Montevideo.

Somewhere in the center of the city.

Along the river is a great walking path, kind of like the lake path in Chicago. We tried to count how many people were walking with their maté in hand while we walked along this path, it was definitely the majority.

Montevideo at night.

Colonia de Sacramento

1. Just a two hour bus ride from Monetvideo, we spent one night in this small touristy town before crossing the Río de la Plata in a boat to get to Buenos Aires. This town is small but very beautiful. It is the oldest city in Uruguay and was first colonized by the Portuguese, which is noted in the architecture and cobble stone streets.

2. Also very calm and clean and relaxing, but I think I liked Colonia better, it's just very beautiful. Lots of buildings of different colors and many cool little cafés and art stores. Also the weather here was great.

The beautiful cobble stone roads of Colonia.

We enjoyed the sunset over the Río de la Plata.

A picture of a door in the old part of the city, I dedicate it to my dad.

Loving my life.

The boat we took to Buenos Aires was huge and kind of like a cruise ship, complete with a restaurant, duty free store, a game room.

Buenos Aires

After crossing the river, we arrived to Argentina's capital, a very cosmopolitan and international city, a place that some call the Paris of South America. Of course I loved it. Buenos Aires was pretty much the opposite of everything in Uruguay. It's a huge, always busy and lively, noisy, and dirty city. This is the place where the nightlife doesn't really get started until 3 AM and goes strong until 9 in the morning. Some of my favorite things about this city:

1. Like I said, it's international. This is the first city I've been to in this continent that I really got such a worldly vibe. You see people from everywhere here, and they are not just tourists, but living here. That aspect is comparative to New York or Chicago.

2. The tango. Of course the sensual dance is what this city is known for, and it is everywhere. You can find people dancing in the streets in the touristy neighborhood La Boca. But the best tango I saw was in this warehouse converted into a tango dance club. We went there on a Tuesday night and still it was packed with Porteños (what people who live in the city are called) dancing just for themselves. It was so beautiful and sexy to watch. It's such a subtle, sensual, graceful, and intimate dance. I would really love to learn how to dance tango someday.

3. The MALBA, the modern art museum which features only Latino artists. It was probably one of my favorite art museums I've ever been to.

4. The cemetery La Recoleta, which I know I talked about in the last post.

5. It was really easy to find vegetarian food here, one day while spending hours walking around by myself, I stumbled upon a fantastic and cheap buffet of only vegetarian food owned by a Chinese family. I felt like I was in Chicago again, it was great. Also the gelato here is incredibly good.

6. The president lives in a pink house, La Casa Rosada. It's the funniest at night when it is lit by these bright pink spotlights. It's looks more like a party house than a place where important political decision are made. The design of the city in general is very chaotic and lively, very much like a party itself.

Plaza de Mayo, the city's main plaza.

In front of Teatro Colon, a very well known theater for it's extravagant decor inside. We wanted to see it, but you had to pay the equivalent of $15 just for a tour.

La Casa Rosada

The very colorful La Boca neighborhood.

Overall it was a fantastic trip and I returned tired and happy. And like I said I've had a great last week hanging out with the high schoolers, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed working with this age group. They are easy to talk to since they are almost adults, but they are also funny because really in a lot of ways they are still kids.

Tomorrow I will be in Santiago and I will spend this last week visiting all my Tíos and Tías saying all my last goodbyes. Oh querida Chile mia, I will miss you so.

Last Trip

Last week I embarked upon my final big adventure in South America (in two weeks I will be back upon North American soil, eek!); with a few friends I traveled to Uruguay and Argentina, spending time in Montevideo, Colonia del Sacramento, and Buenos Aires. I loved all of it, especially Buenos Aires; I very predictably fell in love with that city. Right now it's late and I have to wake up and teach English to a group of High School kids tomorrow (which has already been more fun than I thought) but I'd like to share some pictures, since I took un montón. In my next post I will talk about the cities I visited, but here I will share some of my favorite photos I took at the Cementerio de La Recoleta in Buenos Aires.

If you know me well, you probably know that I love cemeteries. I find them to be peaceful, beautiful places, and I love how unique each one seems to be. Cemeteries always have very specific characteristics about them that are unique to that one place, that town, the people buried there, whatever. The one in Buenos Aires was huge, and quite a tourist attraction. It was filled with some of the biggest mausoleums I've ever seen as well as some really great sculptures. But, it wasn't my favorite. It lacked grass and that peaceful and tranquil vibe of cemeteries that I normally dig. Regardless, I did take several photographs, some that I actually like quite a lot, so here are some my favorites. Stay tuned for a better update about my trip...

Sorpresa!

Today my fifth and sixth graders threw me a surprise party for our last workshop together. It was out of control adorable from the way they tried to distract me (while others were setting up) by taking me on a "tour" of the gym, to how they made me walk an unreasonable distance with my eyes closed, to the way they decorated complete with their interpretations of my face drawn on the white board. It was quite impressive actually, because they organized it and set it up all on their own. Such initiative. Really, it was great. I'll let the pictures (most of them taken by students) do the talking. It wasn't exactly the way I normally celebrate the fourth of July, but I did manage to give each kid a chocolate chip cookie I baked from a pre-made mix Sarah brought me, so that was a pretty American thing to do, I feel like.

The whole gang.

Pretty.

A picture of me.

They even had a table cloth for a part of the table. They managed to set all this up in less than 15 minutes, pretty impressive.

Before I forget

I wanted to share with you an article written by Ella Smyth, another Traveler Not Tourist volunteer from England, who I lived with and worked with in Arequipa at the orphanage (which she talks about in the start of the article). It's a well written piece about the complications and harsh reality of family planning and poverty in Perú. Sadly, this is an issue that, of course, is not only a concern in Perú but in the entire world as unplanned pregnancies are an unavoidable fact of life.

Today is a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and so clear that you can see the peaks of the Andes mountains, so far away. I took advantage of this gorgeous day and took a long, satisfying walk that found me following a muddy road that took me way out into the country. For I long time I kept going, I barely saw another human, but I did see lots of animals. And to my right I could see a volcano (I think of Orsorno), the white cone shape standing out nicely against the blue sky, and straight ahead I could see the the ash cloud that continues to pour out of the Volcano Puyehue nearly a month now after if began erupting. It was a great walk.

Yesterday, with a friend, I went to Entre Lagos, a town that lies on the western side of Lake Puyehue, and yes, on the other side of that lake is the volcano. We hoping to be able to see the volcano, but it's not possible due to all the ash. But you could definitely see the giant ash cloud. We stood on a dock out on the lake and watched as the cloud changed shape, and actually the ash is moving quite quickly. You could also clearly see where the wind is blowing the ash. It looked as if someone with a VERY big hand, smeared a light grey, purplish color of paint across the sky. It goes for a very long way. Entre Lagos was a lovely little town, and the lake one of the calmest I've seen. I picked up a few volcanic rocks (pumice stones) to take with me as a memory. They are super light, almost as light as popcorn.

Happy 4th of July to everyone! Tomorrow I will be celebrating with my 5th and 6th graders as we have our last workshop together. I will probably bring in some potato chips and oreos or whatever I else I can find.

Long Weekend Trip

This past Monday was a holiday (for what I'm really not sure) so my family and I took advantage of the long weekend and went to stay in Lican Ray, in the house owned by my host-dad's brother. We had a wonderful, relaxing time. Lican Ray is a really small town on a lake (like so many other places I've been to in this area of Chile), the kind of town that's poppin' during the summer but nearly deserted at this time of year. One of the highlights was all the volcano ash. Not a single bit of ash has fallen here in La Unión, but there was a thin layer covering Lican Ray and many of the surrounding towns. It was most noticeable on the beach and on plants and trees. Turns out I may be allergic to volcano ash, it made me sneeze a lot and my chest felt heavier.

On our way back on Monday we drove to Huilo-Huilo, a national park. Yet another beautiful spot with a waterfall. There are so many beautiful lakes and parks here, I think I am getting to used to it. I will miss it when I'm gone. Speaking of when I'm gone, I only have one more week left at the school, I can't believe how fast the past 4 and a half months have flown by! A month from today I will be on a flight back to the United States. My goodness how the past 10 months have flown by!! I have a lot of mixed feelings about leaving, but mostly I am feeling ready to come back and dive right into my new life in Los Angeles. I'm looking forward to yet another fresh start. And maybe this time I will stay in one place a little longer...

Some pictures:

Huilo-Huilo

Volcano ash on the beach.

Part of the cloudiness is caused by the falling ash.