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).

Re: Zancudos, Jejenes, Pulgas, etcétera.

We're done here. Thanks for playing.

Ups and Downs

It's been a strange, challenging week. Last weekend was extremely quiet for me, my host abuelita does not do much to celebrate Easter and the other family members didn't stop by too much (although Eralia's 14-year-old granddaughter Sofia did teach me an awesome variation on Rummy called Carioca that everyone who knows and loves me should be prepared to play by the time I return home!). It was nice to relax, maybe a little boring. On Sunday I took a long walk that yielded some pretty good moments:

 Three cows, all in a row. Piedra Mesa in the background.

 La medialuna, which is...

 The rodeo! Somehow I doubt I will be here for rodeo season (I'm guessing it coincides with tourist season), but still... interesting that it's just right up the street from me!

 Flower. Very pretty one. I was informed of the name but I can't remember it.

 Puppy Parade!!! And a very intensely orange-eyed mother who was not amused at all by my photographic efforts.

 PARE! PARE, I tell you!

 And then I walked along the beach all the way out to where I got into these woods where things got very quiet, and deserted. Slowly the woods thinned and disappeared and I was on a rocky point about a half a mile away from the pier, and the view was... Well, just look for yourself.

On Monday I discovered my slight head cold had gotten more serious, so I spent the day in bed watching Battlestar Galactica. Eralia even brought me breakfast and lunch in bed! So sweet!!

Egg, noodle, and cilantro soup. Pretty delicious.

She made me get up for once (tea and bread, the final meal of the day) though, she said I had rested enough. Sure enough, by Monday night I was feeling much better. On Tuesday I thought I could go to La Union to get my Chilean identity card, but it turns out it's not ready yet, so instead I headed into school to set up my own personal classroom! So exciting! Then I went into Río Bueno to meet up with some other volunteers, all good stuff.

 Pristine organization at the beginning of the day!

 The board!

Slightly rumpled but still relatively intact U, at the end of the day!

Wednesday was my first day in my own classroom. I had prepared my whiteboard, I had prepared my materials, I had prepared my plan, I had arranged my classroom; there was nothing left to do but teach. And so I did! I got through my lesson plan easily in all but one grade (I ran the same lesson with all 4 of the different high school grades because I wanted a nice, easy first lesson and because they are all about in the same place as far as speaking and listening to English goes, which is to say... beginners.), and that last grade only because their activity from the first half of class, with my co-teacher, ran over time. They were being assessed on the performances dialogues they had written, many of which the students had memorized! So well done there, even if I did have to pare my lesson down to an abbreviated 15 minutes on the fly. Now learn to say things without writing down the Chilean phonetic spelling underneath the English one, guys! We'll get there.

So my first day of classes went fairly well. Unfortunately then I had to wait around the school for two hours. We get done classes at 4 PM but we had a teacher's meeting at the school at 6 PM. Not really enough time to go home and return. The meeting was at the school, which has wi-fi, and I brought my computer, so it wasn't too big of a problem. I bought some sweet, sweet Coke Light and settled in for some Facebook browsing. I even did a little lesson plan research, and get some good ideas for upcoming themes we'll be working on.

And then, the meeting. It was entirely in Spanish, which I expected. I got a nice welcome from all the teachers (there was cake!!) which I did not expect but really appreciated, but then we had a PowerPoint presentation, first on the integration of special needs (because of psychological, home life, or educational reasons) students into Ignao School through a program called PIE. (That's my school's name, by the way, Ignao Técnico Liceo). I was extremely grateful for the PowerPoint wall of text in fact, as educational terminology has enough cognates with English educational terminology as to make it fairly easy to follow along. Turns out my reading Spanish skills are not quite as rusty as I had feared! However, I understood fairly little of what was being said as the Chilean accent has not yet become comprehensible to me. Again, we'll get there!

So, after this was another PowerPoint which presents each student that is being sent to Ignao under the auspices of this program, and why they are there. And the teachers all had questions and comments for each of them, oh yes they do. So. Many. Comments. We spent about 5ish minutes on each student, and there were two dozen of them. It went on... for a while.

For two and half hours, to be precise.

So when we finally got to go, although the meeting was at some points interesting, I was more than ready. But when I get home, a problem that had been simmering for a while finally hit a boiling point, so to speak. I am covered in bug bites. They are horrible, insanely itchy, at some points painful. On Tuesday night I got no sleep and by the time I got home from the meeting I could feel them, on my feet, my legs, my back, my stomach, my upper chest and up onto my throat, even a couple of my face... I could not ignore it anymore. So I called Alejandra, my co-teacher, and a lot of back and forth ensued, including her mother coming over to speak to me in Spanish so rapid it sent me over the emotional edge, and then a trip to the hospital. Although I think that's mostly because what other medical institution is going to be open at 11 PM on a Wednesday night in a small Chilean town? Thank God for it, though, because they gave me some steroids and some anti-histamines and I slept the sleep of babies. Stayed home yesterday, staying home today, taking another low-key weekend. Although if the bites keep coming, I'm going to have to figure out some other solution. Not right now though, because I've had enough excitement for one 24 hour period, thank you very much!

If you somehow magically managed to make it to end of this epic post, your reward is some seal pictures I took while I was in Valdivia. They reminded me greatly of this, one of my favorite internet thingies:

Fun fact I learned while Googling this image: Seal in German is Seehund, which translates literally back into English as Sea Dog. You're welcome.

Dear Ricardo Arjona,

Thank you, brave soul. You who so fearlessly watch over my sleep all the nights of my stay here in Hospedaje Tulipanes, glowering mysteriously out from your featureless burnt sienna prison, your hair oh-so-carefully tossed to the side, your colorful vest arranged just so, your awkward squat a masterpiece of discomfort: it is your face that I see last every night as I drift into the hinterlands of sleep and it is to your squared jaw and heavy brow that I wake each morning. Who are you? I often ask myself this question. Wikipedia tells me that you are a Guatemalan super star, a teacher and a basketball player and a singer-songwriter, a maestro of all Afro-American and Latin music, and a man known to many as El Animal Nocturno.

BUT WHO ARE YOU?? What do you dream, what do you hope for? I guess I could listen to your music and find out, but that would kill your mystique, and ruin all of my fun. I prefer instead to create my own story for you, one filled with Guatemalan princesses (is that a thing?) and cowboys (also a thing, maybe?), of close scrapes and daring feats and triumphant victories.

So thank you Ricardo Arjona, you ponderous unicorn of a man. Though you may grow withered and frail in real life, somewhere far far far away from here, to me you will always be the hunched protector of my sleep, the Guatemalan cowboy of my dreams.

Sincerely,

La Miss

P.S. La Miss is Eralia's nickname for me, which you should probably know since you're always hanging around and surely would have heard me called that, but I thought I'd remind you just in case you forgot. I love you. What? Who said that. Gotta go bye!