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!