Upside Down

Welcome....

2009-11-21T10:00:00.007-03:00

Recently Added:

Halong Bay, Vietnam (11/30/2009) (link)
Hanoi and Hoi An, Vietnam (11/30/2009) (link)
Getting in Touch with the World (11/21/2009)
LCP Elections Viña del Mar 2009 (11/21/2009)
Camping Crazyness (11/21/2009)
Running for LCP in US (11/21/2009)
Typical Day of Food (11/21/2009)
Arrival of Greek Trainee (11/21/2009)
Pocket Recruitment to Brazil (11/21/2009)
Spring Time in Chile (11/21/2009)
Fiestas Patrias- Independence Day (11/21/2009)
@ Conference Videos (11/21/2009)
The Porteño Lifestyle (11/21/2009)
Uruguayan Videos (11/21/2009)
Secret World of Mate (11/21/2009)
Into the Land of Argentina (11/21/2009)
Exams and Ski (11/21/2009)
San Pedro Salt (11/21/2009)

Soon to Come:

Adventures of Southeast Asia

Hey. So i'll keep this updated so you can see what's going on in Chile and all that jazz. I'll be here until December so i'll keep uploading posts every so often....chau.

Raley

Getting in touch with the World

2009-11-20T02:34:00.001-03:00

I've recently come across some great videos that present some different perspectives on the world through the documentary. Enjoy:

VIDEO 1: Baraka (link)

VIDEO 2: Into North Korea

VIDEO 3: Home

LCP Elections Viña del Mar 2009

2009-11-17T20:14:00.000-03:00

This was the LCP Elections of AIESEC Viña del Mar 2009 with the elected one being a Brazilian AIESECer from Florianópolis, Brazil. This was quite quite a surpise result in the sense that all of her campaign was done virtually. I had the same experience of running a virtual campaign for AIESEC Chapel Hill in October, but the other candidate that I was running against was doing the same thing (she was in Hong Kong). But also, I was in the LC for a year in Chapel Hill, so many of the LC members got to know me. Only 1 person from the LC here in Viña had ever met her personally. Quite a rarity in the world of AIESEC with a foreigner being elected LCP who isn't even in the country where the LC for which they are running is.

Camping Crazyness

2009-10-19T02:23:00.000-03:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Camping Trip (link)

For my class of Mountain Sports, we spent a weekend at a national park doing a little camping as well as climbing. It was a good time getting up on the rock faces and getting back in touch with nature after having been separated for so long.

Running for LCP in US

2009-10-18T01:49:00.000-03:00

I decided to run for president of AIESEC Chapel Hill due to the fact that I was looking to continue with the challenges of my AIESEC career. I would say it was kind of strange to have never met many of the people that were going to vote which meant virtual communication was the only form possible. After videos, applications, interviews, and debates, Chapel Hill chose me as LCP which I am very excited about for this coming year. I am almost positive that AIESEC is the only organization on campus where someone would even think about running for president from abroad. That is the platform that is AIESEC.

Typical Day of Food

2009-10-17T02:09:00.005-03:00

Typical Menu of a weekday:

Breakfast (9am): Chocopix cereal

Lunch (2:30pm): Rice/Chicken/Cabbage with lemon/Sliced Tomatoes with salt/Avocado with salt

Once (7pm): Bread/Jam/Coffee

Dinner (11pm): Rice/Chicken

Arrival of Greek Trainee

2009-10-15T20:08:00.000-03:00

Our second trainee of the year, Natasha Katsiouli, arrived in October to AIESEC Viña del Mar to work in corporate social responsibility with an NGO in Valparaíso, Chile. It was quite embarassing when she arrived because she was speaking Spanish better than I do and I had been in Chile for 9 months. The LC in Viña gave here a warm welcome at the Local Comittee Conference in Quilpué, Chile. This video was taken just hours after she landed in Chile. It was a surprise because we had told her that we were going to a friend's house, but the truth was we were taking here to the venue of the conference.

Pocket Recruitment to Brazil

2009-10-08T01:54:00.002-04:00

Our Pocket Recruitment focused on administration students that wanted to go to Brazil during the summer months of December to February. Using our program Activating Leadership Brazil (link), we were able to get 52 applicants for the program with a final number selected of 23. At this rate, it will most likely end in December with 14 matches and 11 realizations with the rest realizing in quarter 1. Dealing with 17 EPs has been quite the challenge, but with the strong OGX team that we have, there is no doubt of success. We already have matches with LCs in Florianópolis, Santa Maria, and Uberlandia. Segmentation of programs is the key to success.

Spring Time in Chile

2009-10-01T19:46:00.001-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Camilo's Birthday Party (link)
PHOTO ALBUM 2: Experimenta AIESEC Viña (link)

I returned to Chile to start classes back up and to meet our second trainee that arrived to Viña from Brazil. He was doing a DT in a local NGO working on the professionalization of the NGO, Cotra (link). I ended up taking the classes of Development Psychology, Political and Social Themes of Contemporary Chile, Cultural Anthropology, Latin American Short Stories, and Mountain Sports at the Pontificie Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (link). They worked out pretty well. This was also a time of many strikes from elementary and middle school teachers who were not happy with the salary that they were receiving. This is really bad for the children because they cannot go to school because there are no teachers. Elections of the student federation for 2010 were being held around this time where there were all out campaigns to be elected. They would go into each and every class and do a presentation to the class about why they should be the leaders of the federation. The culture of the classroom is very different than what I am accustomed to in the United States. There is much more of a relaxed atmosphere, the classes are canceled much more often without notice, the classes are more democratic about when we are going to take the tests, and every time someone enters the class late, the whole class erupts in an Ooooooooo starting at a low tone and going up. My Development Psychology professor uses anecdotal stories for each and everything that he teaches. The girl in my class gave that birth in September serves as the reference for things we are learning in class about the behavior of newborns. Sex education hardly does not exist in a country that is guided by the Catholic ideology. If you want to avoid STDs or pregnancy, abstinence is the only way to go. As seen in the United States as well as Chile, this teaching ideology serves not to reduce pregnancy rates but rather only to increase them it seems. The cafeterias within the university are run by contracted external business but do not have a brand name at all. Real coffee does not exist. Everything is powdered coffee with hot water added. Lunch foods at the university are mainly hotdogs.

I ride a Mercedes Benz to school everyday. Not what you normally think of but it's a Mercedes Benz nonetheless (link). It’s the type of buses that are used by the city’s public transportation. The public transportation is privatized to companies that have the best bid for the government. My host dad works for a company that bids to run the parking meters of the city each year. They are always coming up with bids to take on the running of different government operations. Privatization: Crazy.

Fiestas Patrias- Independence Day

2009-09-20T19:40:00.000-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Chilean Independence Day (link)
PHOTO ALBUM 2: Pichilemu Festivities (link)

The time of September 18th is the biggest holiday of the year for Chile. It’s the Chilean independence holidays. Beginning about two weeks before, the whole country is absolutely covered in flags. I was told that it’s the law to put up a flag on top of every building and house. The activities for the 18th are empanadas and chicha (really young wine) (link). September 18th is the day of the year where absolutely all of Chile is tipsy from young to old and from rich to poor. There are places called “fondas” throughout the whole country which are places with tents to go and get food and dance the “cueca” (link). I spent the Fiestas Patrias of Chile in Pichilemu, Chile where tons of people go for the 18th to rent houses and spend the weekend with family/friends (link). I went with about 15 people from AIESEC Santiago as well as trainees from Brasil, Slovakia, United States, and Argentina. It was a fun weekend of the beach, dancing in the fonda, enjoying a little chicha. Pichilemu is known for being a city of surfing and vacationing.

@ Conference Videos

2009-08-15T19:09:00.000-04:00

The Porteño Lifestyle

2009-08-14T18:49:00.000-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: The Secret World of Mate (link)

I stayed in Buenos Aires with an AIESECer friend and got to see the “porteño” way of life. It’s a very bustling city that is very sprawled out. In Santiago, at least I feel like I can get around, but in Buenos Aires, the city is so spread out that your travel times are very high. It was a good couple days in Buenos Aires. One of the nights there was an @ TM meeting which I went to. Interesting to see how TM is run in many different countries. One day, I was walking around a part of the city, and out of the blue appears some @ers from Concepción, Chile that were in Buenos Aires waiting for the conference. This was quite the surprise to run into people I knew randomly and a huge city like Buenos Aires. We met up with the MC in Buenos Aires and went together down to Tandil, Argentina where the conference was to be held. It was a 6 hour drive and we were greeted at our arrival by the @ers there. They gave us places to stay and everything which was really nice. Tandil is a quaint town that is centered around the university. The next couple days were planning and getting ready for the conference of 3 days with a conference team of people from Argentina, Colombia, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, and United States.

The conference was the first time that I had taken on the role of facilitating which meant leading the sessions, and passing on message for the personal and professional development for the delegates. Met lots of people from 10 different countries that are in and out of Latin America and enjoyed it thoroughly. It made the Argentinean news which you can googletranslate if Spanish is in issue for you (link).

After the conference, we headed back to Buenos Aires where I bought my bus ticket to go back to Chile and head back to world of school. I travelled with my friends from Concepción, Chile who were also in the conference. A 24 hour ride across Argentina from seeing the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the Andes, and back into Viña del Mar, Chile.

Uruguayan Videos

2009-08-01T19:03:00.000-04:00

The Secret World of Mate

2009-07-31T15:20:00.000-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: AIESEC Southern Cone Tour (link)
PHOTO ALBUM 2: The Secret World of Mate (link)

I went to see the sights in Uruguay with the AIESEC interns that were doing internships in Montevideo. This included two Americans from Yale, one Puerto Rican girl, one French girl, 4 Brazilians, and one girl from Spain all about 22 years old. All of them spoke Spanish very well. Just walking through the streets, you see tons and tons of people carrying their mate and their hot water thermos which is very cultural thing of Uruguay and Argentina (WIKIPEDIA MATE). It was quite frigid during those days considering it was in the middle of winter. We went to the sights of the grand palace where the legislative chambers and congress chambers can be found. Montevideo is on the ocean so it has some great views. One of the nights, the two Yale guys organized an English lesson in their apartment for all the AIESECers of Montevideo so that was interesting. These two guys were working for Non-Governmental Organizations in Montevideo doing planning and organizational development for their AIESEC internship. I spent a lot of time with the girl from Spain and the Brazilian girl during my 7 days in Montevideo.

For the weekend, we made a trip to Punta del Este which is kind of like Viña del Mar in the sense that it’s on the Ocean and it’s very very popular in the summer. I went with 2 of my Uruguayan friends, 2 Brazilians, and the Puerto Rican for the weekend. We stayed in a hotel for $15 for the night and went to the sights such as a hand monument sticking out of the sand, the casino, and a creepy park with tons of statues of random characters. It was quite the international crew.

As I was leaving the country, I was going on a ferry from Uruguay to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I went through the immigration at the port in Uruguay and the Uruguayan immigration officer demanded the slip that everyone receives when they enter the country. Considering that I never talked to an immigration officer when I was entering, of course I didn’t have the slip of paper that said I entered the country. I told her that it was the immigration officers at the border’s fault for not demanding to check documents or anything, but the immigration lady didn’t want to listen to my frivolous lies. She said that would be a $30 fine for having lost the paper which did not please me very much. Not only that, I didn’t even have $30 because I had done everything to avoid leaving Uruguay without Uruguayan currency so I didn’t have to change it in Buenos Aires which would mean that I would lose money. So I was leaving Uruguay with $7 USD cash. I also did not have a credit card because I lost that in January in Chile, so I had been using traveler’s checks for 6 months and I was still using traveler’s checks up until that time. It was about 12:00 in the afternoon, I was at the port with very little cash with the not so cheap ferry leaving in 40 minutes, and the nearest city to possibly change a traveler’s check was a 1.5 hour bus ride away. No good. I spent about 10 minutes arguing with the immigration lady trying to convince her that it’s the government’s fault that I do not have that sheet of paper with no avail. I could not miss that boat because that would mean I would have lost $100 (the cost of the ferry ticket). I had to go from person to person begging to collect the $30 sum to be able to leave the country. I had great luck with that (I have no idea how) and was able to collect the money fairly quickly because people were very kind. Finally, I could pay the sum to the woman and pass through, but that was only half of the problem. The Argentinean immigration man who decides who can enter Argentina and who will be denied was watching this whole event. So when I got to him, he asked to see my bus ticket to leave Argentina. I told him that I would buy it in Buenos Aires. He didn’t like that. He told me that he would not let me enter Argentina for not having an income source that would be sufficient to leave Argentina after being a tourist (which is a government regulation to avoid people entering Argentina and never leaving). I showed my traveller’s checks and my 1 year student visa for Chile which showed my source of money as well as a reason to leave Argentina which was finish my studies in Chile. He didn’t buy it at all with the reasoning that traveller’s checks were not a valid source of money and that if I couldn’t pay a $30 fee to leave the country, how was I going to buy a bus ticket to leave Argentina? He said that he would let me into Argentina with a transit visa which would mean I could enter only to get directly on a bus and return to Chile. This would have meant ruining my trip as well as causing great problems for the AIESEC conference in Tandil, Argentina that I was facilitating. I thought fast and decided to lie to the immigration officer saying that I had left my credit card at a friend’s house in Córdoba, Argentina and that she was meeting me in Buenos Aires with my credit card. So once I got to Buenos Aires, I would have a credit card and a source of money and all would be great. I was arguing with this guy for 10 minutes before he said “Get out of here” by stamping my passport and letting me pass. Through this event, I’ve come across a great way for a government to take money from visitors under the guise of a legitimate reason. When I am president of a country, I’ll get tons of tourists to come to my country, not give them documentation that they entered the country, demand it when they leave the country, and then fine them $30 due to the fact that they “lost” it. It’s brilliant!

Into the land of Argentina

2009-07-12T15:07:00.001-04:00

During the week, the Argentinean that is in charge of Sales and External Relations of AIESEC at the level of Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) came to Viña del Mar in order to give us trainings on selling and making our Local Committee better trained to sell the internship opportunities to companies. I also began work as a Facilitator in planning the sessions for the AIESEC National Leadership Congress that was to be held in Tandil, Argentina in August. In August, I will also be giving the sessions to present knowledge on where do I want to go in life, how do I build a team and create results, and how do I make use of my external environment all to help them in and out of AIESEC.

I then set out for Argentina to meet up with some AIESECers that I had met at conferences and with whom I work with in AIESEC. I got on a bus that took me the 24 hour trip to Córdoba, Argentina, a city in between Mendoza and Buenos Aires a little to the north. The city is rather large and has a little bit of a European flare for me. It has a good number of very old churches that give the city character. The difference in Spanish between Chile and Argentina is very notable and at times there can be some communication difficulties between the Argentineans and me, but it’s all good. We did a tour of the city just to see everything. It seemed like everywhere we walked it was absolutely full of 15 year old kids with nothing to do. Especially in the mall when we were walking around, it was hard to take a step in front of you without stepping on one. I met a German guy at the hostel from Berlin where I was staying for one night who talked about how he had joined the German army for some time to earn the money to be able to go and travel through Argentina for 2 months. He spoke Spanish very well; I almost thought he was Argentinean. The following day I went to one of the team meetings of AIESEC in Córdoba that is responsible for sending Argentineans abroad to fill internship positions in the 107 other countries. I met an American girl from Madison, Wisconsin that was doing an internship through AIESEC with an NGO in Córdoba for 6 weeks. I stayed in the house of one of the AIESECers who lives on the outskirts of Córdoba. In Chile and Argentina, and for the most part all of Latinoamérica, the children live with their parents until they graduate from college and are about to get married. If they go to the university in a city that is different than where their family lives, then they would live in an apartment with other students or something of that nature. Due to this cultural tendency, it’s strange for me to see the relationships between college students and their parents, because for me it looks exactly like high school. And for the most part, mothers in the households do not do work other than that of housewife such as my host mother in Chile. Empanadas are pretty popular in Argentina filled with everything from beef and chicken to corn and cheese. Long promenades in Córdoba are home to those selling newspapers, magazines, umbrellas, trinkets.

Exams and Ski

2009-06-30T14:58:00.000-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Ski Trip (link)

The semester has finished with exams in two of my classes, in Fundamentals of Social Work and Sociology. I was 0.1 points away from not having to take the Sociology final exam, but unfortunately I had to take it and study pretty hard. Although, all is well now, free for the 20 day break or so. My friends wanted to hit up some skiing near Santiago for some vacationing after the semester, so 7 of us went to one of the ski resorts for a couple days to ski. The place was very beautiful and it’s right on the border between Argentina and Chile. It’s actually the only border crossing near Santiago, so all of the shipping trucks have to go right by the ski resort through the Andes to get to the border crossing. It’s actually a big problem because when the border is closed because of too much snow (which happens frequently), the trucks cannot pass and the trucks have to form a mile long line on the side of the road waiting for the pass to open back up. It’s a problem in terms of traffic as well as trading considering the goods do not reach their destination on time. It was nice to see some snow and bet back on skis after such a long time. I picked up pretty well although I was skiing with professionals, literally. One of the guys raced professionally back in the US. Where we were staying, I had reserved a bed in the cheapest part, but they didn’t have any more of that so they upgraded me for free to a bunk bed room with a private bath and a employee of the resort at my service 7:00am -8:00 pm. It was quite a nice upgrade while all my friends were stuck in the other place. I felt like I was more in Brasil during those days because about 80% of the people at the ski place were Brazilian. There were a number of times where I was listening in on Brazilians speaking in Portuguese and the Chileans speaking in Spanish and there were no problems in communicating considering the similarities of the 2 languages. As you were going up on the ski lift, sometimes you were directly overtop the road and the large shipping trucks that carry materials over to Argentina or trucks from Argentina carrying materials to Chile, to the port to be shipped off to Asia or on the coastline of northern South America or Central America. Also, there were tons of Army people with their special gear doing trainings and I don’t even know what. Some were doing the pizza all the way down the mountain, while others were professionally zig zaging and zipping all over the place. It was quite humorous to see the army men all geared up professionally doing the pizza all the way down. The mountains weren’t crowded at all which made for some nice skiing. I did the challenge of some black diamonds which I did alright with. I certainly wasn’t zipping down the mountain, but I was able to avoid falling more than once or twice which was sweet. We returned to Santiago and I said farewell to my gringo friends as they were heading off to Perú to the Amazon to travel a little more. I headed back to Viña del Mar for the week.

Mi Familia Chilena: My Chilean Family

2009-06-28T16:37:00.002-04:00

After the Orientation, we finally got to meet the families that we would live with. I live with a family of 3: the mother, the father, and the 24 year old son. The family is incredibly nice. The mother, Angelina, is a house-wife, making all the meals, taking care of the house, keeping up with the gossip of all the family friends and relatives, doing the wash and all that. The father, Rolando, is a executive of a local company that is in charge of the parking meters of Viña del Mar. I'm really not exactly sure what he does, but yeah. He goes to work in the morning, comes back around 2pm for lunch, and then returns to work at about 4:30, and then comes back home around 11pm. His work is about 40 minutes away in a nearby town called Villa Alemaña (German Villa). The son, Pelao, is a 5th year Industrial Engineer Student at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. There are two other daughters that are both married and live outside of the house. Fernanda, the oldest, lives in Santiago with her husband and two children of 3 and 5. Loreto, the middle daughter, lives in Viña del Mar with her husband, near to her parents, and works in a nursery caring for the children. The house is about a 8 minute bus ride from the center of Viña del Mar and about a 15 minute bus ride to where my classes are in Valparaíso. I eat all my meals in the house which isn't a problem because Angelina makes really good food. Rico! Breakfast is either cereal and milk or bread and jam. Lunch is the big meal of the day which generally always has cut tomatoes with salt and cucumbers with vinegar, cut avocado (really good) and lechuga. Some things that might be eaten during lunch include mashed potatoes, beef, completos (hotdogs with mayonaise and avocado and tomato)

First Semester Wraps Up

2009-06-25T23:38:00.000-04:00

Culture Class: Chilean Families

2009-06-11T02:52:00.001-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Chilean Family (link)

So, looking at some differences in the families of Chile and United States. Families in Chile are a lot closer considering the children do not leave the house until after they have finished college. Most college degrees are 6 years so the majority of the children stay in the house until age 26 easily. Typically, the women are housewives and take care of the house as well as make all the meals. They also serve to keep the nuclear family updated on family news as well as all social happenings. Living at home provides for a much different university experience considering that you aren't surrounded by friends all the time like in the United States. Lunch is served around 2:00 in the afternoon so you return home for lunch. Lunch is the largest meal of the day. Since the Chilean family is closer, the mother is generally wants to make sure that your well dressed it's cold out, that you have an umbrella if it's raining, that you're feeling well, that everything is going well. So the involvement of Chilean parents lives in the lives of their children in the university is much greater than in the United States. Since all the family lives together in the house, it's not abnormal that 2 brothers of 23 and 25 share a room and sleep in bunkbeds. You're expected to tell the family if you aren't coming home one night or if you are getting back later than expected so they don't get worried. On Sunday, the family generally all comes together for a big lunch. The children that no longer live in the house generally come to the house quite often just to talk and see how things are. All meals are eaten the in the dining room where there is no TV. A man comes weekly to completely clean the house and give the mother a break. Water heating is controlled by turning on a heater with a match that heats the water for the house. Dinners at night are at about 9pm and are generally leftovers from lunch. Gas is expensive in Chile so central heating doesn't exist nor any system of heating for that matter. The only heating is a small stove that heats the corner of one room. That means bundling up in the house is a must. Shoes are not expected to be taken off at the door.

Culture Class: Flaite

2009-06-10T01:35:00.000-04:00

It's said that Chile is very classist which I could agree with considering my experiences, but I have not found that it's any more classist than the United States. One cultural aspect of Chile is the use of the word "flaite". I think a good comparison would be that of the word "gay" in English in the way that it's used as a demeaning word towards something else. Also a good comparison would be "redneck" but the word "flaite" carries a much more negative connotation. Flaite is (link). This group that the upper class has labeled has a speech that is noticeably different and they are also identified by "flaite" clothing. The term is used to describe the people as well as parts of the city that are run down as well as anything that is bad. "That's so flaite" or just simply "flaite" is used quite frequently in Chilean speech. The "flaites" cannot be defined with a specific racial minority but rather from a different economic class. There are many youtube videos that make fun of flaites so just for educational purposes, I've included a link to one of these extremely classist videos (link). It does not seem to be viewed as a vulgar term to use or offensive term by most Chileans of the middle and upper class.

San Pedro Salt

2009-05-26T18:57:00.000-04:00

The Desert of Chile

2009-05-25T00:43:00.002-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: San Pedro Trip- link

This past weekend we took a trip up north to San Pedro de Atacama which is a desert in the north of Chile. I went with some of my gringo (american) friends from UNC. The 24 hour bus ride took us to the small but fairly touristy city of San Pedro. While there we got the chance to do some sandboarding on the dunes near the city which was quite entertaining. We did a little bike riding through the mountains and zipped down the hills at lightspeed. On one of the days, we got up at 4am to go to the geysers in the high altitudes of the mountains around there. I don't think I've ever been so cold in my life. Maybe camping once or twice I was as cold, but not much. I had to jog in place the whole time to actually be able to feel my feet. But it was pretty cool. It was basically like 60 Old Faithfuls in the canyon area with bubbling geysers everywhere. There were some hotsprings nearby where you could take a little dip in water that was actually pretty warm. We were too cold to undress to swim, but our legs were revived by taking a dip. When we went for the bike ride, the guy who was leading us told us about all the celebrities that had visited San Pedro and how a number of them were pretty rude. I wish I remembered specifically which ones he mentioned. He talked about his crazy teenage years. He said that 10 years ago, he gave tours in which there was all you can consume pisco sour (chilean alcohol) and marijuana after the bike ride obviously with a higher cost. He said he didn't do that anymore. So that was basically our trip to San Pedro.

AIESEC Leadership Development Conference in Buenos Aires

2009-05-17T01:18:00.001-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: LDS Buenos Aires (link)

This past weekend I was in Buenos Aires for an AIESEC conference (link) which was quite entertaining. We found cheap flight tickets form Santiago to Buenos Aires. I was with people from 12 countries including Portugal, Russia, Czech Republic, Poland, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, and Germany. It was a weekend of learning about how to be a better leader, meeting lots of cool people, doing some AIESEC dances, and just having a good time. We were in an ex-monastery on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The parties included one that was Cowboys which made for some interesting costumes. The second night was people with costumes such as cross dressing to get some laughs and have a good time. It's always fun to meet new people from so many different countries that all have the motivation and desire to create a positive impact on society.

University Life

2009-05-10T16:38:00.000-04:00

The university where I study, the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, has about 7 buildings or so distributed among the two cities of Viña del Mar and Valparaíso. There is no campus that exists, so it's pretty much like an urban campus. I'm taking a couple classes including: General Sociology, Fundamentals of Social Work, Social Violence, Spanish, and Choral Practice 1. Generally there are very few gringos (North Americans) in my classes. In Choral Practice, I am the only one which makes me stand out pretty well. In the universities of Chile, all students enter a major (or "carrera") where they take the same classes with the same group of people for all 5 years. So this makes for a tight-knit group where everyone knows everyone pretty well. This also means that classes can be rescheduled like its nothing because everyone in the class has the same schedule so there wouldn't be a problem. For the gringos (like myself), this can be problematic if we have a class scheduled during the time that the class was rescheduled. This has happened about 6 times so far. Or you'll show up to class and there will be no one there because either class was canceled and you didn't find out about it or it was moved to another room and you didn't find out about it. The communication between the professors and the students is pretty limited. The professor doesn't send out emails or notices of changes because if you just tell one member of the group everyone else in the class is going to find out because they all have the same classes, but not the gringos. One day, I showed up for class and the chileans of the class had done presentations which us gringos had no idea that we were supposed to do that. The professor was calling on people to present what they read about, and we were just lowering ourselves in our seats to try to hide behind the heads of the people in front of us so she wouldn't call on us. Knowing our homework assignments is quite unorganized because you aren't given a syllabus on the first day of class with all the homework assignments of the year. If you miss what the assignment is during class, you're kind of screwed. That's why it's really good to have Chilean friends in the class that can let you know what up. The classes that I'm taking only meet once a week so it leaves for a lot of free time. The homework load is a lot less than UNC Chapel Hill which is quite nice. It's kind of hard to understand everything that the professor says, but it's getting better.

Trip to La Serena

2009-04-18T16:54:00.001-04:00

All the people from my Study Abroad Program took a 4 day trip to La Serena which is about a 6 hour bus ride north of Viña del Mar. We left on Thursday morning, but I of course had the unfortunate event of my alarm not working and waking up too late to catch the bus. I had to go to the bus station in the center of town to search for another way to get to La Serena. Luck had it that not 5 minutes after I arrived, a bus left for La Serena with me on it. Those sitting around me on the bus were all playing their music on their cellphone without any headphones. I arrived in La Serena after a comfortable 7 or so hours and took on the challenge of finding the hotel where the group was staying. Every person that I asked had completely different derections for me basically pointing to opposite sides of the city which made choosing the right directions quite difficult. I ran into a concert going on in the middle of the city with a line stretched 4 blocks of people waiting to get in. After finally finding where the bus stop was, I took a micro to where the hotel was. Once I finally arrived, I was greeted with the smell of asado (BBQ) and wine.

The next day, we took a bus into the city to see the sights and what was going on. We came to the city center which is a square with a large fountain in the center. Many school children stood around in the park talking with friends while other couples took up the benched showing quite public their PDA's (Public Displays of Affection). We checked out a Japanese Garden which seemed strange in the middle of a smaller Chilean town. And of course the day was not complete without an empanada of seafood. In the afternoon, we took a 2 hour trip north of La Serana to a smaller town called Vicuña where we went to a well known observatory situated on the side of a mountain far from light pollution of the city. We had the opportunity to look through high powered telescopes at developing stars, far away galaxies, exploding stars, and planets. The coolest part was to get to see Saturn where you could actually see the rings. It's wasn't just a spot of light, you could make out the form of planet and everything. After looking at the stars, the group of men that seemed to be pretty knwoledgeable about star watching and allowed us to use the telescopes, then stangely brought us downstairs for a musical show of their band. Afterwards, they tried to sell us their CD which seemed quite strange to me that the scientests just happened to make up a band too and were selling their CD.

On Saturday, we took a bus the 1.5 hours from La Serena back to Vicuña to go to a restaurant that has no electricity. They make all their food using ovens that are only heated by the sun. In the afternoon we went to a factory where they make pisco which is the rum of Chile and Perú. In the night, we celebrated the birthday of one of the girls in our study abroad program.

We headed home on Sunday.

Night Life of Viña del Mar

2009-03-25T16:44:00.000-04:00

The parties of Viña del Mar are quite numerous and quite long into the night. Pretty much every weekend, I end up going with Pelao, the 24 year old who I live with, to some house party. The drink of choice of Chile is Piscola which is a mix of Pisco Rum and Coca-Cola. It's pretty much what everyone drinks. If it's beer, then it's Escudo. The parties are centered less on drinking games and more on conversing and just talking with other people enjoying the company. After a couple hours, you might go to a club to go dancing or something. One could be walking home very easily at 7:30am just because that's when the party ends. And a night is not complete without going to MacDonald's or eating a completo (the hotdog with avocado, tomatoes, and mayo). MacDonalds is basically the only place you can find food at 6:30 in the morning, and that's where all the Chileans go. If I don't go out with Pelao, I'll go out with the many people I'm friends with in AIESEC. They're always doing something which makes things exciting. The only problem is there's never a chance to sleep.

Freshman Week

2009-03-10T16:41:00.000-03:00

The Week of Mechones is basically like the week to celebrate the first years that are just now beginning their university experience. All classes after 2pm were canceled and at night their would be parties for the freshman. One tradition, is that all the freshman have to be doused with paint and have their clothes ripped and go barefoot to the street to collect money. And they have to collect a certain amount before coming back. It's not really as bad it sounds and they seem to make it a fun experience. So if you saw a person who looked like a colorful mess, you knew they were freshman. On Thursday of the week was the big day. Beginning at 11am, ten thousand university students from the universities of Viña del Mar and Valparaíso all gathered for one huge party on a beach 30 minutes north of Viña del Mar near Concón. Tons of people were there drinking away and playing music and enjoying time with friends. People were walking around selling shots of rum and selling sandwiches and everything. I went with my friends from Chorus and had a good time. We got to know each other pretty well. I don't think I saw another gringo there the whole day, but then again I'm sure there were a few. (All the gringos from my Study Abroad Program had taken the week off to go to Torres del Paine in the south of Chile) At about 2pm a train was coming with the tracks that basically went through the beach and all the 10,000 people. So all the inebriated people ran after the train and brought it to a halt and actually boarded the train and were jumping on the canisters of coal. That wasn't very good. It didn't pass until about 6 hours later when the Carabineros (Chilean Police) came and forcefully removed the people so that the train could pass. When darkness fell, the party continued and a large number of people headed back to Viña del Mar. But due to the mass of people that were trying to get back, there was a huge traffic jam so it was basically faster to walk than try to wait for a bus because the buses weren't hardly moving. So there was a mass of people walking in the street back to the town. There were large transport trucks in the traffic jam, so tons of people jumped on the trucks to get a lift back to town without having to walk. On one truck, there were probably 40 people. And the truck drivers couldn't really do anything to stop the people from boarding the back of their truck. I finally made it back to Viña in the night.

Mi Familia Chilena: My Chilean Family

2009-03-05T16:37:00.000-03:00

Return back to Valparaíso

2009-03-01T22:11:00.000-03:00

On Monday, we pulled into the port of Puerto Montt at around 7:30am and all of us headed our separate ways. The first thing that I absolutely had to do was do my laundry. I hadn't done laundry in more than 16 days which was absolutely too long. I was fine before Torres del Paine, but then I was 9 days in Torres without doing laundry, and then when I got back to civilization I hopped right on a boat without time to do laundry and went another 4 days without laundry. So my jacket smelled strongly of smoke from the campfires at night and overally, 16 days with intense physical activity most days is a little too long. Surprisingly, it was quite a challenge to find a laundromat. The first one that someone directed me to didn't exist anymore, the second was closed, and then after 2 hours of asking people and be directed to random places where there wasn't a laundromat, I finally found a place to do my laundry (thank god). I can't tell you how happy I was to have clean clothes. In the night, I got on a bus to make the overnight (11 hour) trip from Puerto Montt to Viña del Mar.

Later in the week, from Wednesday to Sunday, my Study Abroad Program, IFSA-Butler, had their orientation in Olmué, Chile which is very near to where I was from my week long AIESEC Conference in January. When I arrived on Wednesday to the orientation, the majority of the group had just flown into Chile from the US that day. It was a fun 4 days, relaxing in this small town of Olmué. We had our program sessions preparing us for studying in the university in Valparaíso and how to avoid getting stolen from. In the Study Abroad Group, there are about 30 people. 13 of those 30 are from UNC Chapel Hill, but I had only met 4 of them before we had gotten there. There were only 4 guys and 26 girls and all 4 of the guys were from UNC-Chapel Hill. I'm not really sure what that means or what the cause of that is. The food was absolutely delicious at the hotel, and they always had more than enough.

Ferry Trip

2009-02-22T20:42:00.004-03:00

PHOTO ALBUM: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64040&id=515011896&l=7bece8f199

On Thursday, I said farewell to the guys from Santiago and took a boat to return to Puerto Natales. Once there, I was really hungry after 8 days of eating on slim rations so I went to restaurant and ordered a huge churrasco (kind of like a hamburger, but a different form of meat, I couldn't tell you what). I went all out, which was a mistake. That night, I boarded a ferry that would take me to Puerto Montt after a 3 day trip by boat. I was going to take a bus all the way back to Viña del Mar (a 3 day trip by bus), but a discounted ticket opened up to take the ferry, so I decided to just go for it. This ferry has like 6 levels (3 of which are for passengers and 3 of which are for cargo, trucks, cars, etc) and is officially the longest ferry in the world (3 days).

On Friday, I awoke feeling quite sick. I'm pretty sure that the going all out at dinner the night before was not the best decision. I'm pretty sure that's what made me sick because my body had gotten used to eating a little bit and then it was an abrupt change. Either that, or it was food poisoning. Something. So the first day on the boat was a little rough. I read a lot and met some other Americans my age that I spent time with. There was actually a couple that had both graduated from Duke. Others from up north in Massachusetts. We passed through the endless sight of the archipelago of southern Chile (tons and tons and more tons of small uninhabited islands). I met a woman on the boat that had worked for many years with the United States Peace Corps, particularly in Africa. She was brought in after the genocide in Rwanda to help rebuild the country with social projects after the turmoil of the genoicde. Quite a challenge. She talked about how there was a group of European students that were on a tour to see the gorrillas of Rwanda (I have no idea why there was a tour into Rwanda only 8 months after the genocide, but that's a different matter) and a group of Rwandan guerillas took over their bus and stole all of their possessions at gunpoint. Quite the tour. She was a really interesting person.

On Saturday, we disembarked in the morning to visit a small isolated town that can only be reached by boat called Puerto Edén (Port Eden) just to see it. I felt pretty ridiculously touristy, because they put you in bright flourescent life jackets when you disembark, so basically it's 50 gringos that are walking around this little town and no one else is out. Only 2 people from Puerto Eden were out trying to sell trinkets to the gringos. The rest of the town was completely dead. If I lived there, I would stay in my house as well the 1 time a week that the gringos swarm upon the town. But they built tons of signs and boardwalks and lookouts to turn it into the tourist location that it is. The ferry is basically the only way for the people of Puerto Eden to get to mainland and buy essential things even though it's a day trip by boat to Puerto Montt (the nearest town). So a few members of the town boarded the boat to go with us. As we were leaving and the boat was sailing away, the people of the town began coming out of their houses and functioning as normal. So in short, there are two modes for the town: normal mode and gringo mode. This day I was still working on recovering completely from my stomach sickness.

On Sunday, we sailed out of the archipelago into the wide open area that is not protected by the islands. Therefore, the boat was ridiculously rocky. Swaying back and forth and back and forth. It was actually quite difficult to walk without falling over. This day was more reading and trying not to get sea sickness. haha. In the night, they had a dancing/bingo night (interesting combo) in the area with the bar. And of course, I was selected to be the King of the Ship with an honorary dance with the Queen of the Ship. Basically the selection was only based on one lady who served the food who decided to crown me. The "Queen" was a young married Spaniard traveling with her newlywed through Southern Chile. This made for an interesting dance as the husband seemed to be making sure that I didn't do anything funny. Anyways, it was a good night.

Torres del Paine National Park

2009-02-20T15:56:00.004-03:00

PHOTO ALBUM: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64028&id=515011896&l=43b51a41f1

PHOTO ALBUM 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64034&id=515011896&l=e20fbe262e

On Wednesday, I set off for Torres del Paine. As I was packing my bag, I was actually kind of scared at how heavy it was. I had food for myself for 8 days, a tent, a sleeping bag, a stove, fuel, a pot, a shirt, a pair of pants, a rain jacket, gaiters, water bottle, a camelback, a sleeping pad, hiking boots, my heavy jacket, my eating utensils, my map and compass, my pack cover; all of that. I, personally, had never gone on an 8 day backpacking trip before carrying all my own supplies. I had done tons of trips of 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, even 6 days, but all those experiences were in groups with shared equipment that was distributed among all the group. Not this time. I was on my own. Sure, there would be other people to hike with so I wasn’t alone in that respect, but I was alone in terms of carrying all my own stuff. About 10 minutes before I was about to get on the bus for the 2 hour ride to Torres, I realized that I had forgotten to get sunglasses. And of course the bus was leaving at 2 pm, right in the middle of the afternoon siesta where everything is closed. I had heard about people that had gotten sun blinded by the reflection of the sun off the snow and they had to be lead off of the mountain by people who could actually see. That kind of worried me so I scrambled to find a place open that could sell me sunglasses. I was running with what I think was a 60-65 pound pack in crocks to find a pair of sunglasses, typical gringo stereotype. If I missed that bus I would have lost a lot of money and had to wait until the next day to go which I didn’t really want to do. I finally found this small drugstore and hurried to find a pair of sunglasses. I found a pair that seemed alright, but as the woman that worked there was helping me, she dropped one the pairs and lens popped right out. Great, so they were cheap as cheap can get, but they still seemed to have the solar protection so I went ahead and bought them and ran to catch the bus. During the bus ride I met these group of 5 guys from Santiago who were planning to do the same route as I, the Grand Circuit, so I decided to tag along with them since they seemed pretty cool. As we approached the national park, flocks of animals called Guanacos lined the sides of the roads. It is an animal that closely resembles a llama. We arrived, and the grand lakes and majestic mountain types stood awaiting us. I set off with the 5 guys from Santiago as the wind pounded upon us. Not 6 minutes into the trek, the wind had ripped my pack cover off and carried it so fast that I couldn’t even catch it. Within a few minutes I couldn’t even see it anymore and I wouldn’t have been able to get it. I was thinking, Great, this is a grand start to my trek. 3 of the guys, Cholo, Negro, and Marco were about 25 and were friends from high school and had decided to come trek Torres during their summer break. The other 2, Ody (his nickname because he resembled Ody from Garfield) and Diego were about 22 and were also friends from high school. We hiked the 2 hours to the first campsite. But unfortunately, my bad luck followed me. As I was setting up my tent at the campsite, the wind was pounding upon us. All of a sudden the picked up my tent as I was setting it up and snapped the poles right in half. Great…..Not only did I not have a pack cover in a place where it rains more than the Amazon, but I also didn’t have a functional tent. After some thinking about what to do, I finally remembered that there was a tool that came with my tent that can help in situations such as these. Basically what it is a small piece of pole that slides over the broken part to make it stiff and make it work. Of course, I had pull the string through all the pieces and tie it and then slide the supporter piece over the break. Luckily, it worked for the most part so I actually had a dry place to sleep at night.

Here's a map of Torres del Paine National Park: http://www.torresdelpaine.com/ingles/secciones/02/a/popup/3.htm

On Thursday (Hostería Los Torres to Campamento Laguna), I set off with the guys from Santiago through the forests of the trail, through open fields, all with beautiful terrain. I saw for the first time in my life (at least I think) a woodpecker as it pecked away at the trees. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? And then the rain began, pouring down upon us as we made our way to the next refugio. At the refugio, they have places to set up your tents and get water if necessary. There were about 20 people at this specific refugio and a couple people that lived in the refugio for months working there.

On Friday (Campamento Laguna to Campamento Dickson), we slept in until about 10am as it was raining outside and I didn’t really feel like packing up in the rain. That was one difference that was quite nice compared to trekking in the US. In the US, you have to set off relatively early, say before 10 or 10:30 because if not, you’re going to be hiking into the hours of dark, but since it’s southern Chile, there’s sunlight until the hours of 9 or 9:30 meaning that you can begin hiking at 1 or 2 with no problem. So basically I was in no rush to get out of bed every morning. Although being in a tent alone for 12-13 hours (although 8 or 9 hours sleeping) makes you appreciate the company of others. We set off in early afternoon and began to reach sight of the snow capped mountains and glaciers in the distance. As we continued along, there were a number of people passing us in the other direction that had had to turn back because the pass, 2 days ahead for us) had been closed because of a mudslide. This was a problem. The thing was, on the other side of that pass is the grand sight of trekking along the massive glacier, but those that had to turn back wouldn’t get to see any of that unless they travelled the 8 days in the other direction to reach the other side the long way. We were taking a big risk continuing. If we reached the pass (4 days in on the trail), and it was closed, then we would have had to turn back like the others and hike the 4 days back on the same trail that we camin in on, and we wouldn’t get to see the glacier at all. If I had to do that, I wouldn’t have gotten to see the glaciers at all because that would add 4 days to my trip in Torres del Paine, and those were 4 days I didn’t have. But we had confidence that it was going to open up within the 2 days that it would take us to get there but that didn’t get rid of my worries. The next camp took it out of us in terms of the difficulty. It was about 12 miles away with a lot of elevation change and it seemed like we would never reach it. This is where we got introduced to the torrential mud that would of swallowed babies easily (*actually that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but when stepped in, it easily went higher than the tops of your boots). All I can say is thank god for gaiters. They cover the tops of your boots to stop mud and water from entering inside your boots. It was really almost as if we were hiking through streams rather than trails. After a long and tedious day, we finally arrived at the next camp, Campamento Dixon, where a group of 20 or so tents were scattered in the field. Dinner was extra delicious that day. After dinner, we sat around talking into the night, and of course had to partake in drinking some rum to keep warm.

On Saturday (Campamento Dickson), we decided to take a day off to enjoy the areas around the camp more. So basically I slept in until 11 or 12 as the rain pounded upon our tents. We hadn’t had a bath for a couple days so Marcos, Nacho (a guy from Viña del Mar that I met during the hike who was traveling alone), and I decided to take a dip in the lake that was right next to the camp. It was pretty cold with the wind and all and then we were about to get in even freezinger (that wasn’t a word, but now it is) water. In the distance, you could see the glacier as it extended into the water. Needless to say, our baths didn’t last more than 20 seconds, but it took half an hour curled up in my jacket to get warm again. I didn’t have a way to measure the temperature, but I couldn’t imagine how it could be more than 40 degrees. We did some exploring around the area to see what there was to see.

On Sunday (Campamento Dickson to Campamento Los Perros), we set off again as we packed up in the rain, unfortunately. Through the forests and the mud we trekked. When we were about halfway, we got the great news that the pass was open and that we would be able to reach the glacier on the other side!!! I was quite happy to hear that and to know that I wouldn’t have to turn back and trek the exact same stretch that I had done for the past 4 days. We finally reached a smaller lake up in the mountains with huge rocks on its borders. It looked more like a crater filled with some water. And on the other side of the lake, we came to our first glacier up close. It was quite large with the tops of it reaching up into the clouds (or maybe I should say fog). The small lake was filled with miniature icebergs that had broken off of the glacier. Nearby we came to Campamento Perros, which was dreadfully cold. We arrived drenched and we were warmly greeted with a wigwam like structure with a fire and a place to dry clothes. There were probably about 25 people huddled in this small structure to keep warm, talking, drinking mate, cooking dinner, playing games. It was a really nice atmosphere. It was probably 93% Chileans and 7% foreigners. There was one other American, NO Israelis (not that I don’t like Israelis, I was just completely shocked that there were none considering the abundance of Israelis during the rest of my trip), 2 guys from France, and 1 European couple. As the night got darker, the guitar music started, the singing commenced, and the alcohol was passed around. Negro studied music and he had brought his instrument with him (I really wish I remember what it was called, but it was similar to a banjo/ guitar/harp) It was fun. Haha.

On Monday (Campamento Los Perros to Campamento Paso), we set off in the morning to visit a glacier that was nearby that everyone had recommended. An hour hike without packs into this open rock area, we came a glacier that was right in front of us. There was no lake stopping us from touching it, only a stream of water flowing down to form a river. It appeared to be precariously situated as if the top part was going to collapse at any moment. The overhang stood something like 80 feet over us. Bakán (really cool). We hiked back to the refugio and set off for the pass. The mud on the trail was absolutely torrential making it quite difficult to avoid completely dirty. And then the rain came as we made the difficult hike up the mountain side. Finally, we got to walk through the snow considering that we were at such a high elevation. There were probably about 6 times where I thought we had reached the pass, but as soon as we got a little higher, you could see another false pass on the horizon. We finally reached the pass and the rain was pouring down on us as the wind was blowing determined to knock us over. My gloves were already wet so I was clenching my fists to avoid the cold. But the view was amazing. We were on the ridge of a mountain peering down on a glacier field with the size of 104 square miles (I looked it up). All across the the glacier, you could see the crannies and pools of turquoise blue water. Quite a sight. As we hiked down the other side, we always had the sight of the glacier right in front of us. Diego, one of the guys from Santiago who I was hiking with, twisted his knee badly so we went at a slower pace so that he could keep up. Hiking down the steep mountains is even worse than hiking up because you have the constant pressure on your knees and it's a lot easier to get injured. We arrived at the campsite, and I had one of the best dinners of my life after such a long day of hiking. I was the only gringo there so it was definitely a good way to meet people from Santiago y some from Argentina. I spent most of the night by the fire, enjoying its warmth while conversing with the others.

On Tuesday (Campamento Paso to Campamento Los Guardas), we had a pretty easy day, slowly making our way down the steep slopes through the forests right next to the glacier. The night was spent playing music and singing. Fun fun.

On Wednesday (Campamento Los Guardas to Campamento Pehoé), we began entering the world of tourist central. Most people come to do the "W", so that's were most of the tourists are. The old gizzards from America traveling with their guides, the young french couple that just got married, the Chinese woman visiting Patagonia alone, the two British girls teaching English in Santiago, all of these who you wouldn't find on the back side of park (where I was the first 6 days). I saw maybe 4 gringos (North Americans for those who don't know) on the back side of the park during the first 6 days, and about 70 within my 2 days in the front part of the park. We walked along the glaciar until finally reaching the point where it turns to a lake. As we were watching the edge of the glacier, a huge chunk crashed into the water forming one of the new baby icebergs that littered the lake. Some of the points were so steep that it required a 40 foot ladder to go down it. As we finally reached the Campamento Pehoé at dusk, we found the camp of gringos, gringos, and more gringos. We were quite exhausted by this time in the trek, so that night, it was time to enjoy. At this developed campamento, there was a hotel, a restaurant, and basically everything a tourist would need. The guys from Santiago and I started in the bar and enjoyed a delicious hamburger. Having such small portions for 7 days really makes you appreciate delicious food. We met a girl of probably 28 years from China that was traveling through Chile. She was excited to practice her Spanish which was really interesting because her Spanish kept the tones that are part of Mandarin. Her accent was very choppy Spanish, but it could still be understood. I thought it interesting that she didn't really know English, but she knew Spanish. It doesn't seem like most Chinese would learn Spanish before English which was interesting. Afterwards, we bought boxed wine and I enjoyed my last night with the guys from Santiago. There were probably about 11 of us that started the trip and finished at the same time, so you spent the nights in the refugios with the same people (oh and when I say refugios, it's basically, there are places to put a tent, and a small shelter to cook under). So we toasted to a good trip and enjoyed the night.

Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales, Chile

2009-02-13T15:54:00.004-03:00

PHOTO ALBUM: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64026&id=515011896&l=4a61d650dd

On Monday I had heard that there was a large population of Magellanic Penguins on a beach near Punta Arenas so I decided to check it out. I took an hour and a half bus ride out of Punta Arenas to a beach with a settlement of penguins. They were just chilling on the beach and waddling, doing what penguins do. The wind was blowing with great force making it generally quite hard to walk. As far as the eye could see, was knee high grass until the beach. About 60 or so penguins were huddled in the sand relatively immobile as they seemed to be sleeping. They had their backs to the forceful wind so as to allow it to blow over them without pushing them over. A couple others had huddled into a log where they were protected from the wind. Every so often a number of them would flock into the ocean for their daily fill of fish. Within the knee high grass, a number of penguins had made underground burrows where they seemed to be keeping away from the cold. I must say it was quite a strange sight to see a group of penguins and not 20 yards away, a group of cows.

On Tuesday, I said farewell to my Spanish friend and took a bus to nearby Puerto Natales, the starting off point for treks to Torres del Paine National Park. I found a backpacker's hostel where there were tons of backpackers just as me. The hostel was probably filled all with backpackers, I want to say probably 70% of which were from Israel, some from Santiago, and some Europeans. As I was walking down the street while doing some errands it was completely sunny, and not 10 minutes later a typical thunderstorm was pouring down upon the town with its dark grey clouds. The wind is so forceful that the weather changes in southern Chile within minutes. That night, the Israelis wanted to go for a night on the town to some pubs so I decided to go along. It was at the bar, that I saw where they stereotype about “don’t be a jew” came from. The whole time during while we were at the bar, the group of Israelis were continuously trying to bargain with the waiter. If the menu said a Rum and Coke costs 2 dollars, they would say “we’ll order 5 for 7 dollars”, always trying to get more for less. I feel that there are some situations where bargaining is appropriate, but not in a formal establishment like a restaurant with set prices. I asked them why they tried to bargain so much and the response they gave me was that as Israelis, they majority travel for 8 months while the rest travel for 2 months. For that reason, they have to save all the money they can or by the end of the trip they’ll be completely broke, hence their incessant bargaining. So that’s their reasoning, although I probably wouldn’t do the same.

Argentinian Road Trip

2009-02-11T15:44:00.002-03:00

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On Saturday, I lounged around the plaza reading my book ´In Patagonia´ by Bruce Chatwin. I looked at the newspaper that day and saw that half of the front page stories were stories from the United States. Most notable was about the Obama rescue plan for the economy and secondly the story that Michael Phelps had been caught smoking marijuana. I also found it interesting in the newspaper that there were still news stories about people trying to resolve court cases about holding people responsible for the disappearance of family members during the Pinochet regime over 30 years ago. I met up with the Spaniard and we began the long journey south to ¨the end of the world¨ (or at least that´s what name the very Southern tip of Chile has acquired). I rode along in the truck that he uses to transport his motorcycles for his clients with two seats up front for the both of us. He´s from Spain, lives in Brasil, and works in Chile, so he definitely gets around. Being that his clients are pretty well off he only has to work 4 months out of the year in Punta Arenas, Chile and then the other 8 months he´s soaking up the sun and enjoying the Brazilian women. Didn´t sound like a bad deal. A little ways out of Coyhaique and the comfortable paved road turns to gravel for around a 80 mile stretch. After passing through the Andes to the Argentine side of the border, you are faced with the vast nothingness of the Argentine Pampa as compared to the green landscape of Chile. Nothing but dirt and small shrubs as far as the eye can see with small fences marking the property lines. I was expecting John Wayne to gallop up on his horse any second. The colors in the sky majestic as the sun set over the horizon. Every so often rabbits would scurry out of the way as the truck came barrelling by. I must say at times we were doing a little more of drifting than actually driving on that dirt road which spiced things up. We stopped at some random gas station to spend the night where music could be heard blaring from the nearby town. The gas station was closed at 11:30 but it was suprisingly a popular spot. I´m not really sure what all the people were doing there. We cleared out the back of the truck and laid out our sleeping bags for a good night´s sleep as cars blaring their music would drive by every so often.

On Sunday we continued on to Comodoro Rivadivia to complete our traverse of Argentina and then turned south towards Punta Arenas. Southern Argentina: Patagonia; where every town is a speck in the vast Pampa. I wondered at times how the people that live in these towns survive financially because it seems that farming is out of the question with poor soil quality and there cannot be much of an economy within the small town. We barrelled down the highway sipping maté and listening to Maná (a really good Mexican band) blaring through the loudspeakers as I tried to pick out the Spanish words. Horatio and I both helped each other out, I with his English and he with my Spanish. Farther down the coast you began to see the oil fields with the pump jacks scattered out across the land pumping away. It seemed to be dominated by foreign companies, including those of the United States although I cannot remember exactly the specific companies. At one of the gas stations that we stopped at, instead of a drink machine, I found a hotwater dispenser for those to fill up their thermoses for drinking maté on the road. Almost everyone had thermoses and would put the couple of coins into the machine to fill their thermoses. We made sure to fill up as well before we went on. In the late evening, we crossed the border once again back into Chile to make the final stretch down to Punta Arenas, but not before stopping for lamb at a trucker´s resturaunt. We pulled in Punta Arenas after dark but it was definitely unlike any other city I had been in in Chile. The only word I could think of to describe it was vintage New York for architectural design and the stone buildings and the atmosphere. This night was a comfy hostal bed.

Coyhaique, Chile

2009-02-08T15:37:00.001-03:00

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On Wednesday, I woke up early to catch the twice a week bus out of Futaleufú down to Coyhaique, Chile (the biggest city of the south). I was a bit surprised when a 44 person bus arrived to take us and the only passengers were an Australian woman, myself, and the 2 bus drivers. This began the 14 hour trip south along the Carretera Austral (the Austral Highway). The Carretera Austral can hardly be called a highway and for most of the road it´s still a dirt road. This is the road that connects the southern section of the country with the northern part with the road going from Villa O´Higgins up to Puerto Montt. Up until 1976, the southern section of the country was completely isolated from the the northern part. It was only accessible by boat from Chile, or roads from Argentina. The road was the grand project of General Augusto Pinochet during the reign of his military regime. As we moved along, we picked up a couple people along the way, but the most that was ever on the bus at one time was only 7 passengers for the 44 seats. I met a father and son from the small town of Palena, Chile who were taking the 10 hour trip to Coyhaique to buy a television set since that was the nearest city. There was a French couple who we picked up on the side of the road who had been backpacking a bit in a nearby national forest. There were also two Israeli guys who hadn´t had much luck with hitchiking. With the bus drivers, I was pretty amazed at how many people they knew. We stopped in probably 10 towns along the way and they got out of the bus probably 3 times in each town to greet people they knew and pick up a cake or something that someone had baked for them. Many places along the road, road crews were working to improve the road which seems like a neverending task considering it´s a gravel road and the large downpours cause erosion that then has to be repaired. All along the way there were billboards on the side of the road that said something like ¨Mira el Progreso¨ (Look at the Progress) with a picture of the road to highlight the improvements being made in the region´s infrastructure. The gravel road made for a bumpy ride most of the way, but the scenery was beautiful; tons of very blue rivers and snow capped mountains and green pastures. We finally arrived in Coyhaique around 10pm and I went with 2 Israelis to a Hospedaje (like a hostel) that someone had recommended. The city was quite a lot bigger than little Futaleufú. After getting lost a couple of times, we finally found it right next to they Municipality Cemetery. It turned out to be basically a woman´s small house that has a room or two that was converted into bunk beds, but it was still very much her house. The Israelis didn´t speak much Spanish and the lady not much English so I was able to do a little translating to help out. Also at the hospedaje were two British girls, one from England one from Scotland, that were both teaching English in Santiago, Chile for a year before going to college and they were traveling a bit during Chile´s school summer break. I spent a while laughing at the words the British girls were using that i´m pretty sure were not English words, but they seemed to think differently.

On Thursday, I went with the Israelis to figure out bus transportation and see what there is in the city. I learned that there are a ridiculous amount of Israelis traveling everywhere in the world. At least in South America, they are probably known as the nation with the most tourists that come to South America. Israelis all have to spend a mandatory 3 years in the military beginning around 18. One of the Israelis I was with worked as a Tanker Gunman and the other as Special Forces. The Lebanon War had been going on during 2006 so they had both fought in combat during the war. Remembering back to the Israeli River Guide at Futaleufú, he had some pretty horrific stories about his experiences during the Lebanon War. Both of the Israelis in Coyhaique had finished their service a year ago and they had worked for a year, then travel for a year, and then return to Israel to begin university. That seems to be what most Israelis do which means that there is a huge number of Israelis traveling around with their friends, everywhere. This has been confirmed by my experiences of running into tons of Isrealis all along the way (they´re not too hard to spot), on buses, in the supermarket, while backpacking..... There is tons of American television programming and music in Israel which helps them to learn English. Also, none of the American television programming is dubbed, only subtitled so that means that they are constantly hearing the American accent and English being spoken. The result is that most Israelis speak English pretty well. Chile on the other hand does dub a lot of their English programming, but most movies still only use subtitles. Considering the fact that Hebrew outside of Israel is pretty uncommon, they pretty much have to learn English or another language to get along when outside of Israel. While making dinner back at the hostel, the woman whose house it is kept saying I was cooking the meat wrong and that I was using too many bowls so she basically took the spatula from me and cooked the meat herself. I wasn´t going to argue with her, but I didn´t realize that there was really a wrong way to cook meat. She also didn´t like when people washed the dishes and used too much water or didn´t clean it well enough so she didn´t allow us to clean our dishes. I wasn´t going to complain.

On Friday February 6th, I went to the office that sells Ferry tickets to buy a ticket to go down to the south of Argentina but unfortunately I only found that they were sold out until Monday. I found that out and decided to think about it and as I was leaving the office, a man called me over in English and asked where I was going. I told him Puerto Natales and he said he was going to Punta Arenas which is even more south than Puerto Natales and pretty close too. He was a 40 year old Spaniard working for his own tourism company in Argentina renting out motorbikes to those that wanted them. His office is in Punta Arenas but he had driven up the motorbikes to Coyhaique to hand them off to two clients there and he was heading back to Punta Arenas on Saturday. He seemed like a crazy guy and I was thrilled to get a cheap ride considering it would cost about 80$ USD for a bus ticket. We planned on meeting up on Saturday to start the 2 day trek through Argentina to Punta Arenas. Later, while I was at an internet café, these 2, probably 75 year old, proper Irishmen came and sat down at the computers next to me. They were severely technologically challenged and they had the task of opening up gmail and sending an email back to family. They didn´t speak a word of Spanish, and everything on the screen was written in Spanish. Not to mention that the letters written on the keyboard were rubbed off so they couldn´t see what keys they were pressing. They spent probably 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get to www.gmail.com because they didn´t recognize the url area in the screen. Next they spent 8 minutes entering their email addresses asking me every couple of seconds ¨where´s the letter r¨ or ¨where´s the letter ´m´¨ intermingled with sailor´s language of ¨fuck¨and ¨shit¨. The situation was very comical for me. I finally just said let me do the typing and h would tell me what he wanted typed. They kept saying that they really did know how to use the computer well, but I have my doubts. I really don´t know how they got along so well in Southern Chile (or maybe they didn´t) because English is not very common, but kudos to them.

Futaleufú, Chile

2009-02-05T23:44:00.001-03:00

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On Monday, I headed out of Esquel at 8am taking the 2 hour bus to the Chile-Argentina border heading for Futaleufú, Chile. The terrain was an expanse of mountains and nothingness. We all crossed the border without a hassle and picked up another bus on the other side of the border to take us the 10km into town. There are only 2 reasons people come to Futaleufú which is either the river or the small town feel. Futaleufú is definitely a small town. It certainly felt like it was on the frontier and I´m guessing it had population of around 1500. There are about 7 rafting companies with a good number of foreigners (including Americans) working at them. I went to 2 rafting companies and both of them couldn´t even go that day because of lack of people. From what I gathered, it was a bad year in general with the ailing economies around the world. I found one company that was going out that day with a group of Israelis so I decided to join. The company, Futaleufú Explore, was started by an American from Colorado who came down here 6 years ago to experience something new. The river guides working for his company included on other American, and Israeli, a Frenchman, a Peruvian, and one Chilean from the north. The Chilean from Chiloé was a really nice guy and fun to talk to. He would actually speak in Spanish, while everyone else wanted to speak in English. The group rafting that day was 6 Israelis, an American couple, and myself. It seems that there are tons of Israelis traveling because after their mandatory military service, they are given a lump sum of money which many use to go travel (as I understand it). The Israeli guys had really big personalities and were fun to be around. The American couple were I believe in their early 30s and they had driven down from California in their jeep all the way through Central America and were passing through South America. They had spent 6 months in Bariloche with the guy studying for the GMAT and applying to Business School while the woman was teaching English at a school there. I learned that a volcano had erupted about 7 months ago a little north in the town of El Chaiten which the white ash everywhere on the ground as we were driving to the put in spot for the rafts. I heard from others that El Chaiten that was a bustling town is now almost a ghost town because it was so devastated by the volcano ash. The color of the water in the river was a blue that I had never seen a river; quite majestic. The color was in part due to the volcanic ashes that had come to the area. We rafted down the river and it was amazing. I had rafted the Gauley River in West Virginia which has a number of 5+ rapids. This river was highly comparable and ridiculously fun to raft. All the Israelis were in one raft while I was with the two Americans in the other raft. We certainly weighed a lot less than the Israelis´ raft which made it a little more interesting. The scenery was absolutely beautiful with rain coming down and the fog through the mountaintops. That night I camped out in a small little hay area behind the rafting company´s building. The town came alive at night. The municipality building was blaring the radio for all to listen as they passed by. Also at the municipality building was a foosball table and a small playground for all the kids. The kids would all whizz by on their bicycles going wherever they were going. The teenagers would gather in the town square with their friends. Later on in the evening, people who I believe worked for the town came up and set up a projector which projected onto a permanent white washed billboard. At the beginning it was videos of people crashing in their rafts set to music. Then it was a presentation of pictures of the greatness of Futaleufú set to music. I´m pretty sure I was the only foreigner that was watching so I had trouble figuring out the purpose of the movies because it seemed like something you would show a tourist to try to entice them to come to Futaleufú. There were about 15 other people watching, basically all young people. It was quite chilly but many were just walking around in short sleeve t-shirts. After a while, the main presentation began which was the TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Movie). This was the newer cartoon version all dubbed in Spanish. A good chance to practice some Spanish. After the movie ended around 1am, everyone dispersed back to their homes, and I to my tent.

On Tuesday, I awoke to the sound of roosters and a blaring radio in the distance. I found out that the bus left on Wednesday morning so it was a pretty leisurely day. At the bank, while I waited in line and I was able to watch the Simpsons dubbed in Spanish. I have found that the Simpsons is really popular in Chile and Argentina. It´s wierd not hearing the voices that I am so accustomed to. While in an internet café later in the day, I saw some people watching Mythbusters dubbed in Spanish which was also interesting. Considering that it was such a small town, I spent most of the day reading and relaxing. For lunch, I had a sandwich very characteristic of Chile. It has beef, tomatos, tons of avocado, tons of mayonaise, and cheese. A little too much mayonaise for my liking. And there was soap operas in Spanish for viewing entertainment. I also had papas fritas (french fries) which I learned is very common in Chile and Argentina. In Argentina, it´s basically the only vegetable they eat with their meat and french fries can hardly be called a vegetable. I had always thought of french fries as a very American food, but it seems that its more common in Chile and Argentina than it is in the US. There isn´t really much of a nightlife in Futaleufú so your better off waking up early rather than staying up late.

Esquel, Argentina

2009-02-03T23:25:00.002-03:00

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On Saturday, Harrison headed back to El Bolsón to eventually meet up with friends to go to Northern Chile and Perú, while I made my way to the South of Argentina. I took a 4 hour bus from Bariloche to Esquel which is a relatively small frontier feel town. It´s basically the last good size town before the vast expanse of very little. I was on a quest to go to Futaleufú which is a very small town on the Argentina-Chile border, next to the Futaleufú River. This river is well known for its high class rafting of 4+ and 5+ level rapids. I arrived in Esquel and it seemed to be a very slow-paced lifestyle city. Walking down the streets around 6pm it seemed as if no one was out. I made my way to the south of town to a hostel that someone had recommended. There I met a 20s year old guy from Holland who had just come back from Chile where he had been camping a long time. We chatted for a while. Only when it became nighttime did people begin to populate the streets and the park. We went out in the evening looking for the party but we found that none of the clubs opened until 3am. There was of course some of the bars open, but we ended up calling it a night.

Sunday was a day of relaxing. I had learned that the next bus to go to Futaleufú was not until Monday so I was just waiting until then. I spent a lot of the day in the nearby park reading ´In Patagonia´ by Bruce Chatwin which describes the experiences of Bruce Chatwin´s trip to Patagonia during the 1970s. He tells about the stories that people told him and connects it with stories from the past including the time that Butch Cassidy spent with his crew down in Argentina and the Unicorn of Southern Patagonia. During the day, the city seemed like a Ghost Town. It seemed like there was no one in the streets, only a couple of people in the park. Not until 6 or so did the people come back out into the streets. The park seemed to be a very popular place to go. A man brought a fleet of small red bikes that he rented for children to ride around the park. The park was only the size of 1 block, but the kids seemed to be having a blast riding the small bikes around the park. Later in the evening I went to an internet café to take part in a Skype interview for the AIESEC Vice President position. Spanish is a little difficult to understand in person, pretty difficult to understand over the phone, and very difficult to understand using Skype through a bad internet connection. Needless to say, it made for an interesting interview. We´ll see what happens. As I headed back downtown, there was a band playing rock songs in the street which it appeared the city had arranged. About 6 blocks in the other direction there was another band playing reggae which made an interesting combo. I came back to the hostel around 11 to find the group of travelers that were waiting for their bus that headed south at 2am from Esquel. Pretty much everyone heading south head to go on this bus, but it only leaves every two days. After spending some time in the bar, I headed to bed hoping that my room partner would wake me at 7am to make the 8am bus considering I didn´t have a watch.

Backpacking in Bariloche

2009-01-31T22:38:00.000-03:00

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On Wednesday, we put together all our backpacking supplies and headed out on the trail. The trail started at a ski resort that was not very active in skiing that that moment due to it being summer at the time. The trail took us through some beautiful areas and up through a steep valley. There were a number of Argentine families and backpackers making their way down the in the other direction. We came up to a beautiful like surrounded by high bare peaks on 3 sides. Beside the lake sat a refugio with beds and a kitchen that people could use if they didn´t have a tent. You could even buy a homemade pizza from the refugio if you really wanted to. There were probably 30 others camping around the refugio, indcluding ourselves. There were a number of Americans, but their knowledge of Spanish was pretty basic. The water was quite chilly but it was nice to take a dip. Up on the side of the bare sided hill there was a large patch of snow. I couldn´t understand how it still hadn´t melted considering the high temperatures during the day and it´s exposure to the sun. While making dinner, we met two guys about my age from Buenos Aires who were doing a little trekking as we were. They were studying in Buenos Aires. They talked very fast and it was especially hard to understand them in particular, but it was a good chance to practice some Spanish. They said they were going to the same places as us for the 3 day trek, but we didn´t see them after that night. The stars that night were amazing, I´m pretty sure more than I had ever seen before.

On Thursday, we began the difficult trek to Refugio Jakob. It started with a very steep climb up a rock face which was probably better to do in the beginning rather than all at the end. At the top we came to another mountain lake and had another large rock face to scale. The climbing part wasn´t that difficult, it was more the descent that was the hard part. We had to descend in elevation everything we had just climbed in to a large valley. You basically had to sled down with your feet while avoiding falling over. Otherwise, it would have been treacherous for the knees. Needless to say, coming down was a very slow process. Although, the views were aweseome. You had snow peaked mountains to the right and a large valley to the left. It was pretty nice to be back on flat trails after the long descent. The only thing was on the other side of the valley we had to do exactly what we had just done. We scaled a large rock face and then descended back into the valley to where the refugio was sitting on a lake. It was a difficult trek being on the rock faces but we saw some cool things. There were a lot less people camping near this Refugio, only about 12. We met a Canadian who was camping near us who had hiked all of the Appalachian Trail and was down in South America for some vacations. The wind roared across the lake to the refugio. The sunset went down through mountain peaks and provided a great sight. It didn´t get dark until about 9:30 which meant that we had light for a long time. We chatted the night away.

We awokened Friday to a rain but luckily that´s the only time it rained during the day. We hiked the 10 miles down the valley, walking along the river. There was a dog that followed us for a long time. He would run ahead and bark until he could see us and then he would run ahead again. It was almost as if he was scaring away the dangerous animals so we wouldn´t get hurt when we passed. The river was ridiculously blue and seemed something out of a fairytale. We finally came to the road only to learn that the nearest bus was another 2 miles up the road so we had to keep on trekking. We ran into two guys from Holland which made the trek a little more interesting. We finally came to Colonia Suiza (Swiss Colony) which has become a touist attraction to come see how the Swiss Immigrants lived during the time of the colony. For a bit of info, Argentina saw the success that US had had with boosting their economy by bringing in imigrants so Argentina did the same by bringing in tons of Europeans to populate their sparsely populated country during the 19th century. The majority of the immigrants that did come were poorer Italians while the Argentines had desired the rich Western Europeans. There were also many Spaniards, Welsh, Swiss, Jews, and many others that came to find a new home in Argentina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_in_Argentina). While waiting for the bus to head back to town, a college aged girl from Buenos Aires (what a surprise) offered us some of her maté and we talked a bit. Back in town, it felt really nice to be able to rest the legs. We went back to the same hostel to find it almost exactly as we had left it with many of the same people. The American girl (who was pretty good at Spanish) had been subletting her apartment out in Boston while she was living in Argentina. She had just received a message from one girl from Israel that was telling her that she was going back to Israel 5 months early eaving the American girl without someone to pay for the rent. That sucked. That night we decided to splurge and go to a restaurant to get some high quality Argentine beef. Argentina is known for their wine and their beef, both of which I can attest to are of very high quality.

Bariloche, Argentina with Harrsion

2009-01-28T00:57:00.003-03:00

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On Sunday, we spent the afternoon riding bikes around the beautiful areas of Llao Llao which is a 30 minute bus ride from Bariloche. The hostel which rented the bikes was full of Hippies and books of buddhism. It was certainly a workout for the legs with all the hills to climb but the views were wonderful. The snow topped mountains stood right next to the lakes. The area out there was full of places that had camping spots and also hostels. Also, the more fancy Hotel Llao Llao which is a very fancy hotel set on a small hill in the middle of a valley with mountains all around. The hotel has great views and caters to the rich (aka not us). At the viewpoints of of the road you found vendors selling sandwiches and locally made raspberry wine to quench your thirst in the hot day. After the 25 kilomters, we went back into town. At the hostel that we moved into, we met an American girl who was living in Bariloche for 6 months teaching English at an orphanage. I was thinking to myself that I sure wouldn´t mind living here for 6 months. We met a lot of people from Buenos Aires at the hostel and around. There was a really nice couple who taught me how to make a Argentine dish with ham, cheese, tomato and a kind of tortilla outside. Quite delicious. It seems that the Argentines travel a lot during the summer months so the hostels are not only full of foreigners, but also a lot of Argentines. Watching TV, it seems like almost all of the movies and also the television programs are American made with either Spanish subtitles or they´re dubbed. Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey happened to be on TV that night.

On Monday, we awoke for our Hostel breakfast of pastries and took a boat out from Llao Llao to visit the Parque Nacional de la Arrayanes (National Park of the Arrayanes) and Victoria Island. We met an older couple (in their 80s) and their daughter (in her 50s) from Buenos Aires while traveling on the boat. They were very nice and were interesting to talk to. Since Harrison was going to be studying in Buenos Aires, they had a lot to share about the city. The whole boat ride they spoke loudly over the loudspeaker to try to get everyone to buy their DVD of the national park because it was supposed to be the best there is and a must buy. I have my doubts. The national park is well known for the forest of Arrayanes trees which is the only forest of this type of tree in the world. It closely resembles the Crape Myrtle. It soaks large amounts of water so it´s hard for anything else around it to grow, leaving a forest of cinnamon colored trees. It´s pretty cool although it has become a bit touristy. Afterwards, we took a trip to nearby Victoria Island which had a lot more trails to explore and a beach to the lake. Hidden among the trees were many National Park Service buildings. I was thinking that it would be an interesting way of life to live on the island a a park ranger. At the end of the trip, Harrison was even able to get the digits of the daughter to be invited for dinner in Buenos Aires. There was an younger girl from Buenos Aires back at the hostel that provided a good source of learning some Spanish. She was really nice. That night I had to go to the internet cafe to finish an application for the AIESEC position of Vice President of Exchange for the local committee in Viña del Mar and I was there until the wee hours of the morning. The internet shop was full of teenagers playing internet computer games with each other such as Counterstrike. It´s sometimes said that the youth all around the world have more in common with each other than they do with the older people of their own culture.

On Tuesday, we spent the day to relax in Bariloche. I set out on my quest to find a sleeping bag that good for backpacking. The one that I had had was a little too large and I had the idea of finding one at a cheaper price in South America rather than buying another one in the US. I didn´t think it would be a difficult task to find a sleeping bag in such an outdoorsy city such as Bariloche, but I seemed to have been mistaken. I asked many people and got sent to places all over town that didn´t even sell sleeping bags. The ones that did selling sleeping bags that I found were of pretty poor quality. It didn´t help that I forgot about the siesta from 1pm to 5pm where everything closes down. I finally ended up finding one of quality about 3 blocks from the hostel after searching all day. We were talking with a Canadian at the hostel and he recommended that we check out some backpacking near Bariloche because it has some awesome views. We decided to take him up on his suggestion.

Valparaíso, Chile to El Bolsón, Argentina

2009-01-26T00:47:00.001-03:00

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On Thursday, I spent the better part of the day trying to get my visa situated. I was planning to leave for Argentina in the evening and I needed to register my visa before leaving the country or else I wouldn´t have been able to return. I first went to the municipal building in Valparaíso thinking that was where I needed to go. After waiting in line for 45 minutes, they told me that because I was going to live in Viña del Mar that I would have to register my visa in Viña del Mar. I was in a bit of a hurry because the offices involved in visas are only open until 1pm everyday and I really needed to get it that day. I made the trek back to Viña del Mar to search for the International Police Building in Viña del Mar which took a bit of searching. I waited in line for a bit and then the International Police took all my information. I waited some more and then after that I had to go to the -Civil Registry Building in Viña del Mar to put in a request for an identification card. After a 20 minute walk and asking a number of people, I found the building. I then had to wait 40 minutes in line to finally put in my request to get an identification card and receive the slip of paper that I needed to leave the country. I set off from the bus station in the evening leaving at 6:30 pm for the 14 hour trip to Osorno, Chile in the south. I then got on another bus at 10am headed for Bariloche, Argentina which was a 6 hour trip. The drive through the lakes region was absolutely beautiful with tons of lakes with the Andes mountains backdrop. On the bus I met a friendly Chilean man going to visit his daughter in Bariloche and two Argentine teenagers heading back home after visiting relatives. The Argentine guys shared some of their music which was pretty techno. I had some trouble at the border because as I was leaving Chile, the immigration officer for some reason did not stamp my passport. When I arrived at the Argentine immigration building, about 3 miles away from the Chilean immigration, the Argentine immigration officer spent a lot of time debating about my situation and talking to his superiors before finally letting me through on the basis that I was probably telling the truth. After arriving at Bariloche around 4pm, I hopped on another 2 hour bus to the south to El Bolson to meet up with my friend from UNC, Harrison. On the way out of Bariloche, we came across a large forestfire, burning forest on the outside of town. The police and firetrucks had already arrived and a number of onlookers were nearby. After asking people in Bariloche a couple days later about it and them not having heard anything about the fire, I assume that the fire did not cause detrimental damage. We crossed a lot of barren land and nothingness until we came to the small town of El Bolsón (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Bols%C3%B3n,_R%C3%ADo_Negro). I was looking for Harrison´s friend´s home for they lived in El Bolsón. I took a taxi through a valley with mountains on all sides, and hiked a mile into the forest to find their house. As I was hiking down into the valley, I came across many tired backpackers making their way back to the road. I came to the house only just as dusk was setting. The houses was set in valley with wonderful views all around. It was located among the refugios which are the last stop for backpackers before heading out on the trail. The family was from California, but the husband and wife had moved to Argentina 20 years ago and raised their children there. I found the son´s English accent interesting because he had learned English from both of his parents, but having not lived in a English speaking country, his accent was a little different. They were in the process of building a lodge for guests and they had a hottub with an old fashioned heater fed with fire and logs. Some friends from around town had come over for the evening before they were going to head into town for the nightlife.

Saturday morning, Harrison and I left the house to go back in town. We spent the afternoon in town strolling through the Saturday market. El Bolsón is basically a town of a lot of hippies. Their appearances reminded me a lot of the youth of 1960s America. I opened my wallet up at the bank only to discover that my debit card was nowhere to be found. Good thing I brought traveler´s checks. In the afternoon, we both took a bus back to Bariloche to spend some time in the beautiful city. Its proximity to a large very blue lake makes it a picturesque setting. Bariloche has a tourism industry that has developed a lot but it still retains homey feel. Without seeing or hearing Spanish, you could easily mistake yourself for being in a Swiss Alps town due mainly to the architecture. I´m not sure why, but a number of the hotels and hospedajes were German themed or European themed. We walked around town trying to find a hostel to stay in without much luck. We probably went to about 10 hostels, all of which were already full for the night. We finally gave in and stayed at a hotel for $20/night/person compared to the $10 price for hostels. When we saw the room, I was surprised to find that the bathroom had a bidet in which I thought was only found in Europe. I would of thought that it was just that it was a European themed hotel, but a day later in the hostel, I found that their bathroom had a bidet in it as well. I don´t know.

Week After 'Cocosur 2009'

2009-01-24T02:28:00.002-03:00

PHOTO ALBUM: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56755&id=515011896&l=58e481c3e7

After the week of the conference, many people from the conference went to Valparaiso to vacation for a bit considering many were in Chile from other countries. ¨Paraiso¨ is spanish for paradise and i´d say that description is pretty accurate for Valparaiso. It´s a coastal city directly west of Santiago and where I´ll be studying until December. Connected to Valparaiso is another city called Viña del Mar. They are very close to each other and similarly sized cities. I´ll be living with a family in Viña del Mar while I study at La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (The Catholic University of Valparaíso). I stayed in a hostel with the local committee from Buenos Aires which was a lot of fun. Of course we had to go to the beach on Tuesday and enjoy the summer weather. Tons of Argentines (and Chileans for that matter) flock to Valparaiso/ Viña del Mar during the summer because of its nice beaches, so it was pretty crowded. I spent the evening with the group from Uruguay going to the supermarket and getting lost trying to find our way back to the house they were staying at. I found that MacDonalds is a popular late night snack for those in Viña del Mar. I ended up eating MacDonalds both of the first two nights after the conference only because that´s where everyone I knew was going and quite possibly it was the only thing open in the wee hours of the morning.

On Tuesday, I checked out Valparaíso which is really nice city. The buildings are painted a wide array of colors while the limits of the city stretch up onto the surrounding mountains. A Chilean who had spent a while living in Germany approached me and started speaking to me in German. After he saw my confused look, he started talking in Spanish. I told him that I was in fact American not German and we talked for a bit. He had moved to Germany and married a German woman while he still owned a house here in Valparaiso, and he and his wife were on vacation. He was a really nice guy. After I told him that I was going uptown, he insisted that he give me a ride. After making my way back to the hostel, I went with the crew from Buenos Aires to the supermarket. We bought some salad makings, some hamburgers, and of course the salt (Lots of salt is a requirement of any Chilean meal; put on everything from meat to salad to sandwiches). I was quite surprised at the level of security in the supermarket. To enter, you must pass through a turnstyle with a security guard collecting all bags that could possible be used to steal food. And then another 8 or so guards were dispersed through the store keeping watch on all clients. All employees were dressed very professionally with all of the same uniforms. In the produce section, there was a person to weigh your produce and tag it with a barcode. There was a number of employees working in the meat section, another couple in the deli section, another in the flower section, one in the section of bread, and or course the cashiers and baggers. The bread in Chile is so much more delicious and cheap than at home which is really nice. For the night we all went to the club. We had dinner around 11, then went to a friend´s house, and then finally we went to the club around 2. It was pretty packed being that it was the summer but the music was quality. We danced the night away and didn´t leave until it closed down around 5am. We walked the long way back to the hostel, but it was a good night.

On Wednesday, after 4 or 5 hours of sleep, I joined the group from Buenos Aires as they went to Isla Negra (Black Island), which is actually not an island at all. It is a city on the coast, south of Valparaíso. It was about an hour and half bus ride down until we came to the city. It´s generally a small coastal town. It´s known for being the home of Pablo Neruda for some time. He was a famous Chilean author who is world renowned. We visited his house which was full of things from ships, particularly the part of the ship that sticks out on front with many times the carvings of goddess women or something like that. He had those hanging up all around his house. Afterwards, we went over to the beach nearby to enjoy the afternoon. There were huge rock formations near the beach which made for nice climbing. The water crashing onto the rocks made for some spots where slipping into the water could be quite a bad situation. After traveling backing to Viña del Mar, I had to spend a night of rest instead of heading to the disco club.

Jan 12-17: AIESEC Conference 'Cocosur 2009'

2009-01-18T02:24:00.002-03:00

PHOTO ALBUM: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=55677&id=515011896&l=6c0d7b6b2d

AIESEC is the world´s largest student organization in 107 countries and in short, it´s an organization that develops globally minded leaders through conferences, working in a local committee, and participating in internships abroad. Basically, the local committees work with local companies to create internships for people in other countries while the committees in other countries are doing the same thing for students of all other countries (including Americans). Each local committee then sends members to other countries to participate in an internship and live with the local comittee. It´s a great way to meet people from all over the world. I´ve gotten to meet people from Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, Poland, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, tons of people from the US and many more. The day after I arrived in Chile, the AIESEC conference began near Valparaiso at a small Chilean resort (but less a resort and more like just a Chilean vacation place for the weekend). This was the annual conference for the Southern Cone which brought together all the AIESEC members of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. It was basically a week of getting to know other people, learning about how to better perform in our local committees, and also learn how to be better leaders. The conference is run by members of AIESEC so basically it´s just a lot of fun. I found out quickly the differences between the Spanish that I learned and the Spanish of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. First of all, in Chile many of the ´s´ are cut off at the end of the words so at times it can be difficult to understand. Not to mention the rapid speed at which many speak. And of course different vocabulary for many things that I had learned. I had a lot of catching up to do. During the day we would have sessions and then by night party. I have found that I´m quite the fan of Chilean and Argentine music because it´s all about dancing and it certainly gets you in a good mood. I was introduced to the Argentine drink Maté which is made by putting yerba (an herb) into a container called maté with hot water. It´s a very social drink and is normally passed around to everyone. During the conference, there was always someone drinking maté. Interestingly enough, due to its similar appearance to marijuana, it has not been unknown for gringos to attempt to smoke it when passed maté. It has a lot of caffeine and being the caffeine fiend I am, I´m sure I´ll be drinking a lot of it in the future. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(beverage)

AIESEC Winter Conference 2008

2009-01-05T22:47:00.003-03:00

PHOTO ALBUM: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=55665&id=515011896&l=a1340d6aad

From December 27th to January 2rd, I attended an AIESEC National Conference in St. Louis, Mississippi. I had a blast. We drove up from North Carolina with 3 of us (2 people from Appalachian State and myself). There were about 150 people there from all across the US with lots of partying and then sessions during the day. I had never seen the St. Louis Arch, so that was pretty cool. We were in a Sheraton Hotel (I think) for the 5 day conference. I met people from South Korea, China, Poland, Costa Rica, and Russia. The President of AIESEC International, Juan Cajiao from Costa Rica, came and served as Conference Chair which was pretty exciting. There was also a lot AIESEC dances which are an integral part of every conference.

An example of an AIESEC dance:

AIESEC Youtube Videos:

I'm Famous

2008-12-20T20:50:00.000-03:00

Well, not really, but someone who I met a while back from UNC who I don't really know well at all used my in his standup comedy act! About 2:58 into his act he mentions the fact that my name is Raley White and I'm also "Really" White and how that's just wrong. Hahaha. Great.

http://www.rooftopcomedy.com/college/standup/steal/156615_246306

Hoi An, Vietnam

2008-07-19T11:13:00.000-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Hanoi, Vietnam (link)
PHOTO ALBUM 2: Hoi An, Vietnam (link)

We drove back the next day to Hanoi and the four of us decided it would be best to start traveling south so we booked a bus trip that night down to Hoi An. Since we booked so late, all the seats on the sleeper bus (the bus with beds and a toilet, $23) had been taken so we had to book seats on the sitter bus (the bus without beds nor a toilet, $15). The sleeper bus was 13 hours direct to Hoi An , but our sitter bus was 14 hours to Hue, Vietnam, a 3 hour layover, and then another 4 hour bus ride to Hoi An. So when we got to the bus station that night it was pouring down rain, so we got a little wet. When we finally got on the 40 seat coach, we found that there were no more seats and that the bus company had overbooked the bus. They expected us to sit on the floor even though we had paid for a seat. Needless to say, we were not very happy with this arrangement. I mean, just by principal, you shouldn’t make people pay for something that you promised to provide and then not provide it. I had heard of overbooking flights, but never buses. After 30 minutes of confusion by the bus company personnel and a very pissed bus driver at having to sit there and work more than he was supposed to, they finally got a van to carry the 4 people that we only going half the way. I got a seat between Carlee and an older Vietnamese gentlemen on the back row. With the honking of the bus’s horn and a crying baby, it was quite hard to fall asleep the first 2 hours. There were no lights on in the town and only every so often would we see some people sitting on the side of the road selling drinks. The only other people we saw were two girls riding a bicycle down the dark street. It seemed quite eerie. I was finally able to fall asleep, although I was awoken every often when the bus stopped for a toilet break. Every time we stopped, the bus would fill with gnats which stuck to our sweat considering there wasn't airconditioning. A couple times there weren’t even restrooms in the bathroom stops, there were just walls that served as the toilet. When daylight finally broke we had been going for 12 hours or so. The numbers on the bus were dwindling as many of the Vietnamese got off on the side of the road before we reached Hue.

When we finally got to Hue at 10: 30 am, we had to wait till 1:30 to catch another bus to get to Hoi An. We decided to walk around the city. We went into the city's center which was surrounded by a moat and had large castle like walls all around the city. It seemed to be very touristy. Once we got near the citadel in the center of town, we realized we had to get back so we tried to get a motorbike taxi, but unfortunately motorbike taxis were not allowed in the city's center and there was not much other option for getting back. Tensions were a little high when it was getting closer and closer to the time that our bus was leaving and we still couldn't find a motorbike taxi. Some guys on bicycles saw that we wanted motorbike taxis so they rushed out to get their bikes and were waiting as we got out. We finally got back for our bus and the company had overbooked it again so one girl had to be squeezed up front. There seems to be a common theme of overbooking buses in Vietnam. The four hour bus ride along the coast was not bad at all. We finally got to Hoi an after a 20 hour trip or so (in total), so it was nice to be done with the buses for a while. We went around asking if the small hotels had room, but everything was full for the night. After searching for 45 minutes, we finally found a place that had one room open which we gladly took. We walked around town and saw the many shops and markets. Hoi An is known for getting clothing tailor made and for its beaches. Next to the river there were small makeshift cafés with plastic tables that served as sugar cane juice. The vibrant orange sunset fell over the river with smaller ferries carrying many Vietnamese with their motorbikes and bicycles down the river to their homes. We ate at this small makeshift eating place on the street with some small plastic tables and step stools as chairs communicating with the lady selling the food mainly with fingers and pointing due to the language barrier. Hoi An's older buildings creates a nice atmosphere.

The next day we rented some bicycles and rode the 3 miles down to the beach. It was quite thrilling riding among tons of motorbikes and them zooming around you. We even got a UNC shoutout from a Caucasian girl riding the opposite direction because she saw one of our UNC t-shirts. That was quite a surprise in the middle of Vietnam. The beach there was beautiful and the water quite refreshing. You did have to watch out for jellyfish, but that was quite alright. There were large mountain islands in the distance and it was really nice in the South Chin Sea. During the night, many westerners had congregated in a part of the town with modernized nightlife with a line of bars and signs on the outside publicizing their “happy hours”. We went around town on one of the Brit’s rented motorbike. It was kind of eerie driving through the streets that late at night because everything was quiet and completely empty.

Halong Bay, Vietnam

2008-07-17T11:03:00.001-04:00

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Halong Bay (link)

In the morning, we headed by bus to Halong Bay in the Northern part of Vietnam. On the way, we passed tons of rice paddies and smaller towns. We reached Halong City which is the city that has built up from tourism because of it’s closeness to Halong Bay. There were hundreds of boats in the bay there, and we got on a larger boat with 15 of us and 5 crew members. In our group there were 7 Americans, 3 Irish, 4 British, and 1 Australian. Hearing about their travels made our 3 weeks sound like nothing. Most were taking a year off before going to University so they were going all around the world. Halong Bay is connected with the South China Sea and has thousands of small rocky islands making a majestic scene. We spent the day boating around the islands, kayaking, and splunkering in one the islands’ caverns. We also spent a good deal swimming and jumping off of the 20 foot boat into the water. The many jellyfish made swimming a little more adventurous as we did our best not to get stung. Acouple failed in this quest and got stung after jumping on some. Every time we stopped, many women on smaller boats carrying everything you might find in a convenience store were trying to sell it to us over the side of the boat. We docked for the night out in the middle of the bay where many other boats were as well and slept on the boat for the night. We stayed on the top deck having fun into the wee hours of the night. While taking to one of the crew members, he was telling me that the rest of the crew teased him for not being married at 28 as the normal age for getting married is 22. Getting married young is very common. He was also telling me how the crew members only get to go see their families for 3 days out of the month because they are constantly working on the boat. They make more money on the boat than they do in their towns and they live too far away to travel back home very often. That definitely put things in perspective.