Punta Arenas

In the US, I live about three hours away from Boston, the nearest city. Here in Chile, my town, Puerto Natales, is about three hours away from Punta Arenas, the nearest city. The difference? There aren't any other towns here. You have to either enter Argentina or fly north to find another city. If you need something that isn't in Puerto Natales, you have to go to Punta Arenas. On the three hour trip between Natales and Punta Arenas, there is nothing but landscape, cows and sheep. The road between the two is called Ruta Fin del Mundo. Because Natales is small (19000 people) and centered on tourism, there aren't really places to shop. Of course there are plenty of grocery stores, school supply stores, and there are some clothing stores (and a lot of tourist traps), but there aren't stores where you can buy home goods and if you're looking for clothes your choices are very limited. So a trip to Punta Arenas is the only way to buy all the long term items you need.

On Wednesday, I had school until 3:30 (note: last week, not this week).  After the bell rang, everyone streamed out the high school door (it's only used for exiting and on Monday's and Tuesday's for entering after lunch. Don't know why). Most people either right away start walking to their houses or wait for their friends to make it through the mad rush out the door. A significant percentage of students (I'd estimate at least a third) whip out their cigarettes and lighters as soon as they've stepped out the gate onto the sidewalk. (Smoking is very common here. To put this in perspective, out of my 10 closer friends, 4 smoke. Every day I walk home with my brother and two of our classmates. Bastian and Carlos don't smoke, but Checho always smokes at least one cigarette during the twenty minute walk.) I was waiting with Carlos, assuming we'd be walking home with Bastian and Checho as usual, but instead Carlos found Tomas and waited for the rush to clear then re-entered the building. I was more than a little confused. Turned out every Wednesday starting this week, there is a meeting of the student resource center group. Basically, they plan things for school spirit, try to make sure everyone is included and welcomed into the school, resolve any conflicts within cursos, tell the school officials what needs to change in order for the students to learn effectively, etc. Anyway, we got home an hour late. (side note: Carlos and I were walking with Tomas and they were talking about trying to get a bunch of the boys together this weekend to watch a movie and I kind of zoned out. All of the sudden, Carlos asked me why I hadn't said hello to her and Tomas told me it was really rude to ignore people. I asked them what they were talking about and they assumed that I didn't understand, very possible but not the case. They started talking really slowly and acting out greeting someone until I finally got the message across that I understood what they were saying but didn't know what they were talking about. Then they explained to me that Antonia from Alemania had passed us on the sidewalk and she'd waved hello and I hadn't responded. I explained I hadn't seen her but the two of them decided it would be good to tease the gringa. So they made me practice saying hola first with them then greeting strangers and pretending I knew them. The poor strangers were probably very confused why an obviously foreign girl in a Chilean school uniform was saying hola and waving to them. Just for the record, when I got home I messaged Antonia and apologized and then ended up talking to her for a good hour.)  When we got home, my host mom told us to change out of our uniforms, which we usually don't for several hours cause we're all lazy, and pack some clothes into a bag. At six we were leaving for Punta Arenas and we'd be back Saturday.

We arrived in Punta Arenas around 10:30 and started off by dropping off a ton of eggs we'd brought with us at the house of my host dad's parents (they'd been staying with us the past two weeks and only arrived home an hour before we got there) and then we went to the house of my host mom's sister. We had un cafecito and I met mi tios y mi prima (I'd already met mi primo because Jorge had come to our house for the weekend before he started college). Then we came to the house of my mom's other sister and stayed there. They have a hotel as part of their house. It's hard to explain but essentially you enter the door from the street into a roofed courtyard area and the hotel is at the back and the house is on the left. Like everything in Chile, it's small but not cramped. Living in the house are mi tia, mi tio, a man who I'm fairly certain is my aunt's nephew but not my cousin, my 22-year-old cousin and my 10-year-old cousin. Plus the six of us. Because it's Chile, the teenagers stayed up until 3 am talking and the adults stayed up until 5 am. In the afternoon when everyone woke up, we had lunch and we set out for the day at 3:30 ish. It was a day of shopping. My parents and Nacho went off to buy things like rugs and comforters and clothes and I went with Coni and Carlos. Most clothes are priced about ten dollars cheaper than the equivalent items in the US but there are some things on sale that are much cheaper than you would ever find in the US. For example, there were skinny jean legging things in one store that were around $5 USD (Coni bought a yellow pair and a blue pair). All I bought in the mall was a sweatshirt/jacket that's soft and nice and above all warm. That's a lie, I also bought a completo (Chilean hot dog with guacamole, tomatoe, mayo, mustard, ketchup). Later, I bought a pair of jeans that were $6 USD. (Chilean sizes for pants are much better than American sizes. They actually fit. I've spent hours trying to find just one pair of jeans that fits in the US. Here I tried on one pair of pants and they fit nearly perfectly. And they didn't cost an arm and a leg.) Overall, a very profitable day though not because of the shopping. I'm generally not a very big fan of shopping and the reason this was different is it was lots of fun to go out for the day with my new siblings. Especially because I now understand when they're talking to me and it doesn't hurt my brain to listen to them and try to communicate.

Friday, my family and I slept until one o'clock and then had lunch, played video games, and otherwise relaxed on the couch until something like four pm. Completely normal. Not wasteful or bad in anyway. Just a typical Chilean relaxed day. So because we're in Chile, we left the house at four and went to the house of one of my dad's brothers. (He has four siblings.) We'd run into that brother at the mall the day before with his wife, but now we got to spend an hour or two with the baby. Seven months old and absolutely adorable. Two other brothers showed up and then left with the brother who lived there. My parents also left to go find some of the ingredients necessary for dinner. Coni, Carlos, Nacho, and I played with the baby, watched television, ate (this is a critical part of every visit. It's unusual that a Chilean doesn't offer you food or cafécito or técito) and talked with our tia. When my parents returned, we talked some more, ate onces, and set out for the Zona Franca. It's a mall slash game area slash attraction thing. My host dad bought us sushi (muy rico y muchas  gracias a mi papa) and we went into this small movie theater thing. It's 7D and the seats move and it sprays stuff at you. We watched several different short clips designed to make you feel like you were in them (anyone who's been to Disney, it's a mini, adventure-based version of Soarin'). Several of them were like rollercoaster rides in make believe worlds, one was a motorcycle race but in air and on snow, and the last one was a dessert race like the pod races in Star Wars. Then Carlos, Cony and I went skating on the small rink in the center of the Zona Franca. My skates didn't fit properly so I had more trouble balancing than I should have had since I know I can skate perfectly fine and I can do fancier steps and turns. The problem was they were way to wide for my feet and the smaller size wasn't long enough to squish my toes in. Oh well. It was still amazing. After that, the three teenagers were dropped off in the center of town to take pictures in the plaza park thing. Pictures taken, we went to the mini casino- like-thing. I spent two luca and got one luca back (I gave Coni one luca cause she didnt have any money. She won something like three luca and paid me back then lost the other two luca. Nearly everything I played I lost. Note to self: I should never go to a real casino with real money).  Carlos spent one luca and won seven luca. There were two types of machines. Regular old slot machines and these soccer machines that are like pinball machines but aren't. I should probably mention at this point that Chilean money is very different from American money. When I say I spent two luca, I mean I spent two thousand pesos. That's four US dollars. 
 We took a taxi to our tia's house (Carlos didn't wanna walk up the admittedly long and steep hill that makes up the entire return walk and he paid the 500 pesos/one dollar) and when we got there, essentially, my mom's whole family was there. We had a bunch of meat and seafood combined in a dish that I don't remember the name of. The way it's served is an enormous bowl of red meat, chicken, hot dogs, chorizo, a different type of red meat that tastes really smoky, oysters and mussels. The only thing accompanying this bowl is wine or Coca. The mussels were delicious and I must be getting used to Chilean food because the meat was yummy as well. 
Saturday we were supposed to return early to Puerto Natales, but at 2 pm, Coni, Nacho and I were still in bed. My host parents bought so much stuff that there wasn't enough room for three teenagers in the backseat, so they sent us home at seven pm on one of the couch busses that regularly makes the trip from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales. When we arrived at the house, we ordered take out and waited for our parents to arrive so we could all eat dinner together.

Road trip! Carlos, Coni, Me, Nacho

Half way there 

View out my bedroom window

Coni, Nacho, baby, tia

Coni and Carlos in theater

all of us in the 7D theater

We're not so great at normal pictures... 

Skating

Host Mama (and Coni falling over)

Main square in downtown Punta Arenas

I am photogenic as usual (not)

Me, Coni, Papa, nephew of my aunt

Tio, Tio, Jorge, Carlos, Lily

Tio, Jorge, Carlos, Lily

dinner

walking back to the house

looking down at Punta Arenas

Takeout Dinner when we got back

Bienvenidos al Liceo

A couple weeks ago, I recieved a little piece of paper inviting me to attend a welcome ceremony at school the following Saturday: "Con motivo de dar la bienvenida a los alumnos nuevos que se incorporan a nuestro liceo; es que le invitamos cordialmente para el dia sabado 22 de Marzo a las 19:00 hrs a una ceremonia que se realizara en nuestro templo Don Bosco para dicho efecto, solicitamos puntualidad en la hora, lo saluda a usted atentamente."

So on Saturday the 22nd, I put on my school uniform and went to the school with my brothers and mom. The ceremony was held in the church that is part of the school building and included in the ceremony was a short sermon, a blessing, and a lot of Catholic prayers in Spanish. Then they called up the new students by grade. Aim and I were the only new students there who were in tercero medio. We went up, recieved a little paper triangle saying something like "welcome new students 2014". We had to pick up a handful of seeds and scatter them in the pan of dirt, which I believe was supposed to be symbolic, but really just confused me because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. It was probably explained at some prior point but I missed that part between all the prayers and sermon and Bible readings. Then they pinned a little Don Bosco cross pin on our school sweatshirts and we sat back down. (Don Bosco was the founder of the chain of Catholic schools my school is a part of. In every class room, there is a cross and a plaque stating the school's mission and talking about Don Bosco.) They took pictures of everyone together and released us.

One the school website, they posted several pictures of the ceremony and a little blurb about the ceremony: "Con una emotiva y acogedora ceremonia realizada el dia Viernes 21 y Sabado 22 del presente Marzo en el Parroquia Don Bosco de nuestro Liceo, se dio la bienvenida a esta Comunidad Educativo Pastoral, a los alumnos nuevos y sus familias. Las ceremonias fueron presidadas por el Padre Bernardo Garcia, Coordinador del Area Pastoral y el Padre Jorge Lopez, Director de nuestro Liceo. Entre los significativos momentos que se vivieron, el Padre Bernardo Garcia invito a los padres y apoderados a 'sembrar la emilla en tierra fertil' -haciendo alusion a sus hijos- y junto al Padre Director y la Coordinadora Academica Sra Rosalia Soto e integrantes del Area Pastoral, hicieron entrega a cada alumno y alumna de una piocha distintiva con la imagen de Don Bosco. El acto fue amenizado por un grupo de alumnos de la Orquesto Sinfonica Integral a cargo de su director Sr Daniel Rebolledo."
For those of you who don't know Spanish, that essentially translates to: "With a ceremony on Friday the 21st and Saturday the 22 of March in the Don Bosco parish of our school, we welcomed to this Pastoral Educative Community (sounds weird in English) the new students and their families. Presiding over the ceremony were the Father Bernardo Garcia, coordinator of the pastoral area, and the Father Jorge Lopez, director of our school. Father Bernardo Garcia invited the parents and students to 'plant the seed in the fertiel earth' and together with the Father Director and the academic coordinator, Mrs. Rosalia Soto, welcomed each student to the image of Don Bosco. The ceremony was accompanied by music played by a group of students from the orchestra."

Terremoto y Tsunami en Chile

"Santiago,  April 01, 2014.- A powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake has struck off the northwestern coast of Chile, setting off a small tsunami and prompting evacuations along Latin America’s Pacific coastline. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was centered about 100 kilometers northwest of Iquique Tuesday evening. It was followed by several aftershocks, including one measuring 6.2 in magnitude. Chilean authorities said waves measuring about two meters were striking cities along the coast. Officials quickly ordered evacuations, warning that larger waves may come later. There have been no reports of deaths, injuries, or widespread damage, but Chile’s emergency office said the earthquake has caused landslides that are partially blocking some roads and highways. A tsunami alert has been issued for the entire Pacific coast of Central and South America. U.S. officials said they have found no imminent threat of a tsunami along the coasts of Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon or Washington state after the earthquake near Chile, but the danger is still under evaluation. Chile is one of the world’s most earthquake prone countries. In 2010, a 8.8-magnitude quake rocked central Chile, killing over 500 people and destroying 220,000 homes. The region hit by Tuesday’s quake had also experienced several smaller temblors in recent days, including a 6.0-magnitude earthquake on Sunday." 

Yesterday was a fairly normal day to start out with. I got up at seven thirty, put on my darned tights and skirt, stepped outside into the cold and dark, stepped back inside, got in the car with my siblings five minutes before school started, got out of the car as the inspector started shutting the gate, sprinted towards the school, slipped in just in time, arrived late to buenos dias, and then headed to class. Everything continued as normal with the small exception that I had a cold and wanted nothing more than to sleep. My head hurt, I could barely breathe, my throat was sore and it hurt to swallow, I just wasn't feeling so great. I stuck through with class though and then came home for lunch, went back to school after lunch, and walked home after school ended at six with the intention of saving my English video and sleeping. Since it was a Tuesday, it was a zumba night and all the other girls were going, but I had already told them I couldn't. I just didn't feel up to it. At eight o'clock, Carlos called my dad and told him to hand the phone to me. The conversation went like this:                                             

-¿Alo?- (me)

-Cris, ven- (Carlos)

-¿Que cosa?

-Necesitamos tu ayuda con el trabajo.

-Pero... ¿por que?

-Ven para ayudarnos.

-¿Donde estas?

-la casa de Lucho

-Ok... 

-Pasa el celu a mi papa.

-Ok... 

(I hand the phone to my host father. He and Carlos talk. I go back to whatever I was doing. Several minutes later.)

-Cristina, ¡apurate!- (my host father)

-¿Que?- (me)

-¡La taxi esta aca!

-¡¿Que?!

-Vas a la casa de Lucho para trabajar con los chicos. La taxi sabe donde vas.

-Pero...

So when I had just wanted to sleep, I ended up in a taxi on my way to help fifteen teenagers record themselves speaking English. Turns out the taxi didn't know where I was going. We were on the right street, but he couldn't find the right house. He ended up pulling over, getting out, and asking the guy walking down the street for directions. But I got to the house eventually. When I arrived, the guys were in the bedroom playing Leage of Legends and the girls were in the living room, chilling on the couches. For the next two hours, nothing changed. At about ten-ish, Natalia started working on writing out what she was going to say (she had already written it out in class, but forgotten her notebook). A couple minutes later, Carlos came into the room to tell us there was going to be tremor (in Chile, anything under a 6 on the Richter scale is a tremor) in Puerto Natales. We turned on the news and there it was. There had been an 8.2 terremoto (earthquake) on the coast near Iquique. There was a possible tsunami warning for all of Chile. A while later, our dad called, saying that Carlos and I needed to come home immediately. Which meant that Carlos went to charge his cell phone with more minutes before we walked around waiting for a colectivo to pass us. We got home at about eleven and it had become a tsunami alert for the entire coast. Evacuations in the north were in process. Mind you, we're in the far, far, far south of Chile. But this serious of an earthquake can send tsunami waves all over the place and my town is centered at about two feet above sea level. We're luckier than Punta Arenas, though, which has the same problem, as we only have to drive for about ten minutes to reach a point where there's enough elevation that we're safe. 

My mom told me to put some stuff in my backpack in case of evacuation. I dumped my notebooks out of my backpack and stuffed in my warmest and softest pajamas, spandex pants and shirt for warmth, fingerless gloves, two scarves (plus the one I wore- warmth around my neck because I'm sick, not because I'm obsessed with scarves), toothbrush, the swan pin my friends gave me for good luck, passport, and fruit snacks. Oh and the adipose stress toy my friends in the US recently sent me. (Katie- thanks for the adipose and fruit snacks. My sister and I were arguing over whose turn it was to play with the adipose during evacuation. It actually works really well for stress.) 

We waited around for a while (I received some rather frantic Facebook messages from people who thought I'd been in the 8.2 terremoto) and then we all piled in the car. The alarm for evacuation hadn't been sounded, and most people were still in their houses. Outside of the little complex I live in, everything was very calm. Inside the little complex, there were soldiers pouring into the administration buildings. Lots of army men live in normal housing in Puerto Natales and were coming from those houses here for orders. My dad drove us out of the little complex (which is practically on the shore) and out of town to the bigger, farther away army complex that's not for families. We had trouble getting in because there were so many army vehicles going out. My dad left us in a cafeteria with a few other families and went off to help in town. We were there for a few hours, huddled around the heater because the room was cold. I tried very hard not to cough, but there were several times when I was coughing so much I couldn't breath. My host mother was more worried about me than a tsunami. At two in the morning, my host dad called us, the alert was over. Everyone in the army was going back to their normal business and he was coming to get us and take us home. 

There isn't any school today, I'm fairly certain, or at least no one in my family went to school. (There was a very long argument in the Facebook group for my curso at two am about whether there was school or not.) I've been relegated to my bed for the day though at some point my host mom is taking me to see a friend of hers who is a doctor. My head hurts, my nose is stuffed, I've got icky stuff in my throat, and I still have a pretty bad cough, but besides that I'm perfectly fine. Puerto Natales survived the country-wide crisis without a scratch.