Foto-Mania

Fotos of my life in Puerto Natales

Ese debe ser "te quiero muchisimo" y por eso tengo problemas con espanol chileno

Tu Puedes

Yo se que Uds no van a entender este porque es en castellano pero este vídeo es lo que creo sobre la vida y es la razón por casi todo que estoy haciendo ahora. Por eso, estoy en Chile.

I know that most of you reading this are not going to understand this video at all because it's in Spanish, but it's a very good summary of my take on life. It's the reason I'm here, in Chile, right now.

Loosely translated:
Hi! I've been doing YouTube videos for more than three years now. I try to make you guys laugh with my take on life and always try to be honest with you all. I never pretend to be happy in my videos when I'm not. As a matter of fact, if I'm unhappy, I tell you. Continuing with this sense of sincerity, I want to tell you that I'm having some problems in my life right now. I'm fine, just have some things going on right now. Because of this, I want to give you some advice. You right now are sitted in front of your computer, a normal person with your own dreams and ambitions. There's a great possibility that you're working towards your goals right now, but there's also the possibility that you're not. So take this as a little guide or motivation to achieve your dreams. Point 1: believe in yourself. I think that everyone can do anything they want. You just need to believe in yourself, work, and motivation. For example, if you want to be a footbol player, you have to believe that you can be a good futbol player. But that's not all. You also have to work. If you get up at noon and train for two hours every day, you'll probably be a good player. But somewhere else someone else is getting up at eight and training for four hours. And someone else is getting up at six and training for six hours. If you want to be like Cristiano Reinaldo, you have to understand that he got there through effort and work. You can say that oh he got there through talent but perdon for mi, talents are excuses. It makes some things a little bit easier. Obviously, it makes life easier if you're talented at what you love. But if you're not it just means you need to work that little bit harder to get there. Nobody gets anywhere just with talent. Punto 2: always look forward in life. In life, doing what you do there are always going to be people telling you that you can't do it. People scolding you. People telling you it's a bad idea. The people who haven't been capable of achieving their dreams are the ones telling you that you won't be able to achieve yours. You are capable of achieving what you want to achieve; never let anyone tell you that you can't do it just because they couldn't. The only person who can stop you is you. If you want to arrive at another part of the world, you can do it. If you want to be a dancer, you can do it. If you want to be an austronaut and go to the moon, you can do it. It's not easy. It's never easy. It doesn't matter how many times you mess up or it doesn't go quite right. You're going to get up and continue working towards what you want. You are always going to have bad days where you stop and ask yourself what the heck you are doing. But you can never stop. You're always going to get back on your feet and find a way to continue. If you're doing something you love that's all that matters. Don't do something because it will give you money or make your parents happy. With all respect to the parents, your life is your life and you are the only person who can decide what you are going to do with it. There are lots of people that don't want to help you with what you are doing, but when they see that you are putting everything of yourself into what you're doing their going to help you. If you put your heart and soul into what you do, there is no reason that it can't work. When you are ninety years old and in your bed dying, what will you want to say, that you spent your life doing something you don't like or doing something you love? Somethings may earn more money or be more convienent but doing something you love that makes you happy doesn't have a price. So what the heck are you doing sitting in front of your computer? Get up and start working towards your dreams already. The world can be yours if you want, you just have to get out there and be brave enough to take your life in your hands. Live your life the way you want. Everyone only has one opportunity, one life. Are you going to spend it doing something you don't like or something you love? You can do it. (on screen) You can do everything you attempt in this life... everything else is an excuse.

Editing note: It's actually really hard to translate this. At first I thought it was easy and whizzed right through, writing down what he was saying. Then I went back and read it over and realized I can't write in English while I'm listening to Spanish. A good third of the words were actually in Spanish and the grammar was not English grammar nor was the spelling anywhere near correct. So what you see is a rewritten version. I hope that you can understand.

Campamento

Part of the deal with being an AFSer is you go to Orientations to help you adjust and cope and enjoy and make the most out of the experience. The first orientation was in New England, a couple weeks before departure. The second was in Miami as we were departing. The third was in Santiago as we were arriving. For the people living in Temuco, Puerto Montt, Chiloe, Coyhaique, Puerto Natales, Punta Arenas and Valdivia, the fourth orientation was in Puerto Montt. Of all of them, this one was the most interesting. There were thirty people from countries all around the world, all of us living in Chile and going through the same experiences. There were students from the USA, Australia, Japan, Thailand, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and I don't know remember what more. The only bad part is I'm no longer such a big fan of the US. It makes you feel pretty bad to be in a room full of thirty teenagers who all speak their native language, nearly fluent English, and half of who speak nearly fluent Spanish and be one of four who only speak English and a little bit of Spanish. For example, Sunday was the birthday of the host mom of Lucas from Finland so he made a video of us all saying happy birthday in our own languages. He started it off by asking, in English, "How do you say happy birthday in your language?" My very boring response: happy birthday.
So this is how the trip to Puerto Montt worked:
I didn't go to school Wednesday, instead sleeping for an extra hour and a half before jolting awake with the realization that I had yet to prepare in any way for the trip and needed to leave in two hours. (I'm slowly becoming Chilean.) After having desayuno (pan y cafecito) by myself in the kitchen (my siblings were at school and my mom had to take my sister to the doctors because she had fainted the day before), I haphazardly put five day's worth of clothes in my backpack. At eleven, I was at the bus station with the other exchange students, saying goodbye to my host mom and boarding the bus. After the three hour bus ride to Punta Arenas, the four of us- Antonia from Germany, Dion from Denmark, Aim from Thailand and me (sounds cooler in Spanish- Antonia de Alemania, Dion de Dinamarca y Taiwiporn de Tailandi... Aim's real name is Taiwiporn) dropped our stuff off at the house where we were going to spend the night and then went to the Zona Franca for lunch and then to the mall to watch Rio 2 (Dion refused to watch it on the principle that it's a little kid's movie, even though it was his idea to watch a movie in the first place). It was, of course, in Spanish without English subtitles, but I still managed to understand everything in the movie. High five for me. Then we went to the centro to have dinner and explore a little. We went to the casino (no, not to gamble) and went to the top floor which is pretty much made of glass. It's awesome because you can see all of Punta Arenas from above.
On Thursday, we had a flight in the morning to Puerto Montt. In the Punta Arenas airport (PUQ for the locals), we met with the five girls living in Punta Arenas from Finland, Germany, USA, Italy, and Thailand. We were the first ones to arrive in Puerto Montt followed shortly by the two in Coyhaique from the US and Thailand. In the afternoon, the rest of the students arrived in various groups. After dinner, we played various name learning games (none of which worked all that well). If you're bad with names like me, this is one of the worst situations for learning names. There are thirty people whose names you need to learn and nearly every name is difficult to pronounce and remember because it's from a different language. Ademas, a good half of the thirty have nicknames to make their names easier so you have to learn the nickname and the real name. In Thailand, people have full names and then nicknames that are seemingly unrelated a their real names. For example, Phatcharawan is also known as Paggad; Thanvarat is also known as Mo; Lucka is also known as Lucy; Kensuke is also known as Ken; and then there are the names like Tadeas, Linnea, and Lenia.
On Friday, we spent the entire day doing activities about our experiences here and getting to know each other. On Saturday, we went to Puerto Varras, a smaller cute city near Puerto Montt for several hours and then were planning on going to downtown Puerto Montt but that was canceled because it was too cold and rainy. It should probably be mentioned that the Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales kids reacted to this with a what are you kidding me kind of attitude. The "too cold and rainy" weather was nearly the same as the weather I walk home in (a twenty minute walk across town) everyday although it was a little more rainy and a lot less windy. On Sunday, we had a few activities, but it was mostly just hanging out.
Overall, I would say the most valuable part of the weekend was the people. It was also the part that made leaving hard. Because we are from countries all around the world, I haven't a clue if let alone when I'll see any of  them again. Normally, four days of knowing someone would not be enough to make me want to cry when thinking about never seeing him or her again. But this was different. There's something about the shared experience of being exchange students that just makes the relationships click. It's also that I met some of the best people I've ever met. And, apologies to everyone I love in the US, but more than ever I'm not satisfied by returning to the US and starting a normal career and life in the US. I want to go to Prague to visit Lucy, Brazil to visit Guilherme, Italy to visit Serena, Germany to visit Antonia, Finland to visit Maija and Lucas. I want to live in Thailand and Japan. (Which brings up another thing about Asia... more on that in a minute.) All my exchange student friends proved to me is that there is so much out there in the world that I will never be able to see it all, but I have to try.
So on the Asia thing... I have no idea why, but for the entire weekend, I found that the people I clicked with the most, the people who had personalities closest to mine, were all from Asia. At this particular orientation, that meant Japan and Thailand. For a good half of the meals and free time, I was the only non-Asian in the group. To explain this remark, at the orientations we typically separate into different groups, not on purpose, just what happens. There are two main groups which I can pretty much summarize as the East and the West. In no way is anyone pushed into one particular group because of their origins or not allowed to spend time with everyone, but Easterners tend to spend most of their time with Easterners and the Westerners with Westerners. My theory is that this is because the two distinct groups of cultures share a lot of similitaries within the groups. Add to that the language barrier (in this case, all the Asian kids arrived in February and spoke minimal Spanish while everyone else was able to use the language more fluently) and most of the time the groups spent their time apart. I, for whatever reason, found it more enjoyable to spend my time with my friends from Asia. There were other people (my closest Western friends) who also spent a good amount of time with the kids from Thailand and Japan. So, I spent a large portion of the weekend conversing in broken Spanish and simple English with my friends while they conversed with each other in their native languages. So I can now recognize Thai and Japanese by sound and I can introduce myself in both languages. Also, I learned how to read a conversation by expressions and tones of voice even better than I had before.