Two Posts in One Day, Hey Girl Hey.

Some random odds and ends from various walks, day trips, hikes, etc. of late:

 Store I found in Osorno. They sell... lady things. Under my name! I'll take it.

Coffee. Real coffee. Clearly it loves me just as much as I love it. This particular cup came with a generous helping of whiskey. Hey! It was Friday, after all. But Cafe Rhenania, if you're ever in the Osorno way. Highly recommend. Very cute. Delicious pastries. Real coffee. Let me repeat. REAL MOTHERTRUCKING COFFEE.

Also from Friday, we had shortened class with the 8th grade (which I stuck around for, although they were just taking an exam. WOW is that boring to supervise.) because the school was celebrating the Police with an acto, or assembly! These kids pictured below were some of the ones who danced the Cueca, the national Chilean dance. There was also a really cute part that unfortunately I couldn't get up close enough to document, where the first graders reenacted little scenes, pretending to be criminals and carabineros (police). They had obviously memorized little scripts for their plays. Adorable!

 Small memorial tucked beside the highway on the walk home from my school. I've taken to walking home, because the time alone, listening to music, and just thinking and taking in the country is really great. Plus it saves me 500 Pesos (admittedly, not that much money, but I like saving money even when it's not a lot) and it's only 5K, all downhill. Every time I do it though, I get between 2 and 6 offers of a ride from driversby, often teachers at my school returning to Lago Ranco. My coteacher even asked me the other day, "Do you... not have enough money to get home?" When I told her no, I just preferred to walk, she seemed relieved if a little surprised.

Another picture from one of my walks. It was a cloudy day but you can kind of see the sunset reflecting off the sign.

Another view from my walks home. This view is directly across the street from the bus stop outside of Ignao school. It's almost comical how pretty it is.

My first English workshop! I basically have decided to run them similarly to my classes, although a little more relaxed, with a little less structure. We have the same amount of time as a regular class (theoretically, although not a single one of my classes has actually gone 45 minutes because the kids loooove to walk as slowly as physically possible and dawdle in every imaginable way on the way from their classroom to the one assigned to me). So mostly I just play a game with them. Last week we worked on numbers, and I had everyone count off starting from one and going to twenty. Anyone who got 10 or 20 had to sit down, and the last person standing won. It was kind of fun because the kids at first they were winning by getting to sit down, they didn't have to pay attention or keep counting but then... the last kid standing got a sticker! They paid A LOT more attention after that. After the warm-up game we played something that went over REALLY well, where I prepared slides with different numbers of things (butterflies, shoes, chairs, people, hamburgers, whatever) and gave each students a couple cards with the numbers one-twenty written out, in English. There were two teams and when I flashed the slide the first team whose member raised the correct number card got one point. If they could answer the question, "How many _______ are there?" with "There are # _______________" they got another point. They got pretty into it and we all had a pretty good time, so I consider it a success.

 Sunrise at the bus stop across from my street. Now that the clocks have turned back an hour, I probably won't even get this!! Sadness.

These are some of the views from Zach and my sunset walk up to Piedra Mesa from the other weekend. I didn't post them before for obvious reasons but they are really gorgeous and I wanted to share them eventually!

 Obvious scary movie trap- not falling for it. Nice try Piedra Mesa, I'm not that much of a dummy.

 Just so lovely. I'm going to make an effort to climb up there more often.

The next day, just rambling around in the countryside! Horses:

This is where the true adventure began. After hopping a fence onto what was clearly private property, we decided to push our luck even further and climb this (and several other) barbed wire fence to get up onto the hill we really wanted to be on. It was... an interesting afternoon!

 The view afterwards, when we'd returned to legal ground!

 On the boardwalk.

 Store I stumbled upon on Friday, in Río Bueno. I am kind of in love with Chile's love affair with The Cure. They were on the news for like 2 straight weeks before they played their concert in Santiago.

From this past weekend, getting some lunch at Las Vigas, the cute although not very efficient restaurant in my town. Sandy had accompanied my friends (Jennifer, Sarah, Zach) and I on our walk out along the lake, although we assumed we had lost her once we went to eat. But about 20 minutes into our meal she showed up, obviously pleased with herself for finding us once again and ready to curl up and wait for handouts! She really is one of my favorite street dogs in Lago Ranco.

 Another very cute street dog of Lago Ranco, who I call Street Sancho after my friend's dachshund.  A street dachshund! Who would have guessed! Lago Ranco actually seems to have a lot of pure-breed street dogs, I've also seen German Shepherds and various Spaniels.

So those are some things. I'm sure there are more to come, I have quite a lot of plans coming up for the next few weekends!

Watched: La Belle et La Bête

Just one of my all-time favorite classic films. I could write about this movie forever and ever, especially since I first saw it in a film studies summer course I took at Rutgers, and we learned all sorts of interesting behind-the-scenes trivia. For instance, there's a scene in the movie where Belle's family is doing laundry and there are maybe 40 or so white sheets all hanging on the lines. It creates a really visually interesting background for her homecoming (after she has been living at Beast's digs in the forest for a while and cries until she can go home because she thinks Dad is dying... man up Belle! Or don't. It's your life, I guess.). But during the course we learned about how Jean Cocteau, the director of this movie, made it very soon after the end of World War II and it actually took them months to rustle up that many untorn, unstained white sheets for the scene because so many had been ruined by or donated to the war effort.

Or! Like how the star, Josette Day, was deathly afraid of horses. So for the scene where she is supposed to be riding Beast's magic horse (that's what she said?), Le Magnifique, to his castle, they show her briefly whispering the magical incantation or whathaveyou in Magnifique's ears, and then an eeeextremely long shot, from overhead, of her progress through the woods, wherein you can never see her face. Because it's not her! They used a double for every other horse scene she's supposed to be in and found an interesting runaround, plot-wise, for the end, so that she didn't have to ride the horse again in order to return home.

Okay I really set out not intending to write all that down but I can't help it. That this movie was made at all is just as impressive as the final product, which is a beautiful, romantic, extremely FRENCH in the Amélie/Jules et Jim kind of way and not in the no more headscarves/we're culturally better than you kind of way, funny, at times kind of ribald take on the classic tale. I usually try not to post this many pictures with my movie posts but when it comes to La Belle et La Bête it cannot be helped, and even posting this many is showing a lot of restraint on my part. If I could I would probably screencap about every 15 seconds of this film for the whole world's enjoyment, because that's how pretty of a film it is. But I'll leave it here, I suppose, and just to reiterate: I love this film. I love its costumes. I love the brother, Ludovic, who ruins everyone's lives repeatedly and still somehow manages to be one of the most likable characters. I love the sisters who are hilariously the worst. I love the Beast, who is so weird and over the top dramatic and does all these pseudo-animal mannerisms and whose makeup is NOT GREAT but because it's not great it is kind of great? Does that make sense? It is great in the way that only special effects makeup for movies made in the 1940's can be. I love all the other special effects, especially some of the stuff Cocteau does in the castle, which I think is still legitimately cool-looking, even today. I love the sets. I love the simplicity of the story.

So, yeah. I like this one.

And the world will still be imperfect...

“Forever and ever, we say when we are young, or in our prayers. Twice, we say it do we not? For ever and ever... so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For time does not die. Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in time.” 

I like that. It's a quote from one of my favorite series of books, The Dark is Rising Series, by Susan Cooper. She has a way with ideas and a style to match. She puts things very elegantly, I think.

My grandmother, Helen McClernan, passed away on Friday night.

No hay más palabras. I'm wishing for a lot of things right now, and I can't have any of them. So I'll just have to settle for some long, long walks, hopefully all of them with street dogs as friendly as this one to accompany me, until the wishes subside.

 Autumn is creeping up on Lago Ranco.

Cutie. He's got some hound in him for sure. A pack of dogs attacked him on the road when we'd walked pretty far out, but when I turned and ran in the other direction he followed me and thankfully, they did not. They hurt his leg a bit but he was okay after some snuggles and some more walking.

 When I sat down on the beach for a while, he kept me company.

 Playing with the iPod camera's filter settings.

 Cloudy but quiet day.

My grandmother and I were perhaps not as close as we should have or could have been, but I had a hell of a lot of respect for her, and I was always glad when I got the chance to see her and talk to her, even if only for a couple minutes. I'll miss her raspy laugh and her blunt frankness. I'll miss her support. She was just a good grandmom, and that's all there is left to say.

Puerto Montt

This is not an inaccurate depiction of my weekend in Puerto Montt. There was a lot of beer and other alcohol, and a lot of food. The city is fairly grey and although it may be livelier during tourist season, the combination of winter and grey weather left it feeling pretty subdued. Not necessarily complaining, as the company was good and the booze abundant, but by Sunday I was crashing hard. So, Puerto Montt! The sights and sounds (you'll have to imagine) and smells (again... imagination).

An honest to God live-music bar! Filled with posters! So utterly urban and... normal?

 A real live Chilean metal band! They weren't exactly great but they weren't half bad. So, you know, I'll take it.

 My friends sort of enjoying the music? Perhaps not to the extent that I was...

Casa Perla, our home stay! Perla herself is lovely as is her very kitschy, very cute home.

Mom, I thought you'd enjoy this. There was a bush out front, just left of the door, filled with these flowers. Very pretty.

 Flan, the extremely friendly hostel cat. I think she sensed my allergy to her, she cuddled up to me suspiciously quick...

 A splash of color. The street art is basically keeping this city from being a giant grey blob.

 As is this monstrosity.

Obviously I took about 5 million pictures of all the street dogs. Don't worry, I'll just share the highlights. This little fluffy little monster immediately rolled over and begged for snuggles when Zach leaned down to take his picture.

Sleeping puppies!

And finally, this guy, who was beautiful and very interested in why we were lingering, perusing the touristy goods at this one shop. His eyes were so light blue they looked white.

SHERLOCK!!!!!!! Because supposedly at some point in one of the stories Holmes visited the city of Puerto Montt, although I don't remember that. In any case, there I was!

 Memories of a Flea in the 20th Century. That experience looks a lot more interesting than the one I'm having. Seen at a book store in the Puerto Montt mall, one of the few attractions around. There's also a movie theater that I thought VERY seriously about visiting, but managed to resist. MIGHT have been rude if I ditched my travel companions/friends I had just met a couple hours ago for a little theatrical nirvana.

 More grey.

 Puerto Montt: Navigating the future. On the floor of an interesting outdoor market we passed through.

We stumbled across a free art museum so we spent some time wandering around inside. This was a pretty cool exhibit: copper and metal dioramas that, if I understood correctly what the guy working was saying, represented Mapuche creation mythology.

 This was outside the Mapuche art room. I think it speaks for itself.

This was an amazingly bizarre and interesting exhibit that I am also just going to let speak for itself. This picture is taken of the front of the exhibit, it's set up in a long room and I took the pictures as I walked deeper into it. Just.... soak it in. Really take your time. I know I did.

Moving on, a horse hanging out by the side of the highway.

After a really nice seafood dinner (and plenty of drinks, first at a completely empty bar we wandered into around 5 PM and completely occupied for an hour before vacating and later with the seafood) we headed back to Casa Perla, in theory, to get changed. What happened next was a much tamer result than Friday night.

This is what a day of wandering around, several glasses of wine/beers (depending on preference), and a rainy, windy evening will result in. Little premature abuelitos, hunkering down for the evening.

But then on Sunday we got an early start, and checked out the Angelmo fish market!

 A truckload of cows, coming in from the port. I guess from Chiloe? I don't really know.

 If you didn't have a cheese guy before, this guy should probably be it. This stuff smelled amazing.

 Chickens and ducks, all caged up.

 Even though everything looks like it's been sealed up and pre-packaged, most of the vendors had the little machine that does it and were doing it at their stands. This stuff is pretty fresh.

Eel, hanging by its gills.

 The providers.

Finally, although I didn't intend to buy anything, we strolled through a long series of stalls selling all kinds of kitschy, touristy Puerto Montt stuff. Some of it was hard to resist (I'm looking at you, giant glorious piles of artesenal chocolate) but most of it was easily passed over. But when I saw these earrings I knew I had to have them. I saw a pair like them when I was in Valdivia and thought about buying them then but chickened out, and I've been looking for them ever since. I had serious non-buyer's remorse! They're carved and painted wood, and they're the Copihue, the national flower of Chile. For $2000 pesos ($4ish USD) they were basically a steal.

Aaand my glorious new sneakers. They were made in Chile. On the back are little representations of what I believe to be llamas. They're extremely comfortable. It was basically a no-brainer.

Remorse level: 0%.

That's all the news that's fit to print from Puerto Montt! All in all, a good weekend. Got some good stuff planned for my students this week, and hopefully I'll start with some after-school clubs (or forming up a debate team, still waiting to hear about that).