Katie's Blog

Amazing Peru

2011-12-13T18:43:00.000-08:00

I just got back from an absolutely extraordinary trip to Peru. When I planned my trip to Argentina, I added in an extra week for traveling. I was originally planning to visit southern Argentina, but ended up deciding to use the time to see an entirely new country. I chose Peru, and it turned out to be a truly wonderful experience... perhaps my best trip yet.

In order to save money, I didn't fly directly into Peru. Instead, I flew from Buenos Aires through Santiago to Arica, Chile, which was a lot cheaper than flying into either Cusco or Lima. Then I took a "taxi colectivo" (shared taxi) for a two-hour ride across the border to Tacna, Peru. From the moment I left the Arica airport until after leaving Tacna, I didn't see a single other tourist. I was traveling a well-worn path, but only in the sense that it was well-worn by locals. I definitely escaped the "gringo trail" for a while here!

After spending the night in Tacna, I got up early and took a six-hour bus ride into Arequipa, Peru. Arequipa is famous for being the second-largest city in Peru, and also for its beautiful colonial architecture, which is made out of white volcanic stone.

This is the cathedral in Arequipa and an example of the beautiful white buildings that form the whole downtown area.

I also visited a colonial monastery in Arequipa, which I think was the first monastery for women in the Spanish colonies.

Another really interesting thing in Arequipa is the museum dedicated to the Inca mummy "Juanita." Juanita was a child sacrificed to the god of a volcano near Arequipa. She was covered by snow for about 500 years, and then was uncovered when a nearby volcano started erupting in the 1990s. An American researcher found her in the late 90s and she is now in a museum in Arequipa. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the museum, but it was a really well-done exhibition.

Since I wasn't allowed to take any pictures, here is a photo of Juanita from the internet.

Arequipa is also a jumping-off point for a number of outdoor activities. One of the most popular is a multi-day hike in the Colca Canyon, a canyon about a six-hour drive from Arequipa that is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. The Colca Canyon isn't the deepest canyon in the world -- that honor goes to the canyon right next door, which is something like 5 m deeper than Colca. Ha. So, after a bout of altitude sickness that postponed the beginning of my trek for a day, I began a two-day battle against this crazy canyon. Looking back, I can say it was really fun... at the time, though, I'm not so sure!

This is a view of the canyon from the top.

And here I am getting started on the hike. You can see the river at the bottom. The first day, we hiked all the way down to the river (1,200 meters down), crossed the river on a bridge, and then walked about 1/3 of the way up the other side to a path that took os horizontally downriver, down to the river again, and then to an oasis where we spent the night. Yup, it was as hard as it looks!

The views in the canyon were spectacular. This was taken after crossing the river and hiking partway back up the canyon on the first day.

The second day was supposed to be a 7 km hike straight up the side of the canyon (a 1,200 meter climb in a 7 km hike is pretty steep!). Four out of the twelve of us decided to take the easy route up...

by mule! The mules really had a mind of their own, and although they listened well to a complex set of whistles and spoken commands by their master, they didn't care one bit what we riders wanted them to do. Here, for example, I wanted my mule to pose for a picture but he was intent on starting up the mountain!

After visiting the canyon, I headed back to Arequipa and then immediately hopped on a bus to Cusco, Peru. Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire about 500 years ago, but was colonized by the Spanish and now has a colonial feel.

This is the Plaza de Armas (central plaza built during colonial times for military exercises) in Cusco. You can see the cathedral on the left.

After spending the day relaxing in Cusco, I got a good night's rest and then headed off for a tour of the Sacred Valley, which highlighted a number of Inca towns, many of which are now archeological sites. The Sacred Valley is the valley of the Urubamba river, and it is called "Sacred" because a lot of Inca cities, including many temples, have been found in the river valley. The tour was interesting to me because it showed how much the Inca empire pervaded (and continues to pervade) the area. For example, the Incas built agricultural terraces on the mountains in order to make the area more hospitable to agriculture, and those terraces (many of which are still in use, with their original irrigation systems still functioning) are a constant feature in the landscape of the Sacred Valley.

This is the agricultural sector at Pisac. It is really amazing how the Incas built terraces and cultivated even the steepest mountains. And then they built their homes at the top of the mountains rather than in the valley, in order to preserve valuable fertile valley soil for agriculture and avoid natural disasters like floods and landslides.

Me at the archeological site at another Inca city, Ollantaytambo. This is the agricultural sector of the Inca town, and the terraces were used to grow crops. Ollantaytambo is cool because although the agricultural sector is now an archeological site (no longer being used), the rest of the town is an actual town. You can see the original Inca foundations and walls of the buildings, and the streets are original Inca streets. Amazing that after so long, the Inca construction is still usable and useful.

The water pipes and channels continue to work to this day! This is a functioning fountain in the Water Temple in Ollantaytambo.

The Spanish invasion interrupted the construction of the Inca city at Ollantaytambo, and these stones were left mid-way through being carried up the mountain. They would have been used in the continued construction of the city at Pisac, which is now an archeological site. You can't really tell from the picture how steep the hill was, but it is truly amazing that the Incas were able to transport these huge stones down from a quarry on a neighboring mountain, across a river, and then up this mountain.

After touring Ollantaytambo, I hopped on a train and headed to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu mountain and the starting point for my Machu Picchu adventure. There is a bus to the entrance to Machu Picchu at the top of the mountain, and I got up early the next morning prepared to get the bus and hike to the top of the mountain in time for the sunrise. I was greeted with pouring rain and decided to sleep in a bit longer. I was rewarded for my laziness because when I did finally get on the bus around 8 am, it was just starting to clear up.

I decided to hike to a viewpoint called Intipunku (which means "Sun Gate" in Quechua) first thing, and then take a look around Machu Picchu city itself later. It was a beautiful hike with lots of nice foliage, and barely anyone around... so most of these pictures are taken using the timer function on my camera! :)

The path, like all Inca trails, was absolutely amazing. It was paved with stones, and when the path was steep, there were stone steps like these. Compared to the dusty, slippery trail in the Colca Canyon, it was like night and day!

After an easy 90-minute hike, I reached the sun gate...

... and saw a hauntingly beautiful view of Machu Picchu.

Here I am at the top!

And then I hiked back down to get a closer look, and eventually to take a tour of the city itself.

I really enjoyed the tour because it gave me a chance to see up-close the truly impressive architecture and engineering of the Incas. The whole city was put together in such an elegant way.

For example, the stone walls were built with holes in the bottom. This was so that water could run out the hole and avoid causing the wall to deteriorate over time.

And the way that the stones fit together was truly hard to believe. Here, the Incas used a huge natural stone as part of their construction, and then painstakingly carved additional stones to place on top. In these perfect stone walls, the Incas did not use mortar. Instead, the rocks fit together so well that the walls have remained standing for hundreds of years with just one rock on top of another.

Plus, the way it all came together was just really pretty.

I went into my trip knowing that Machu Picchu wasn't the most important Inca city, and in fact is probably so famous today only because its remote location meant that the Spanish did not discover it when they conquered the Inca empire. I was excited that I was going to see Machu Picchu, of course, but I didn't want to build it up too much. I didn't need to worry... I don't think it is possible to build it up too much. Machu Picchu is truly a testament to the beauty and ingenuity of which humans are capable, and I feel so lucky to have been able to visit.

Machu Picchu was the last big stop on my trip, and a wonderful way to end. The next day, I took the bus from Cusco to Puno, a city on Lake Titicaca (the highest-altitude navigable body of water in the world) and near the border with Bolivia. I didn't have time to really explore Puno or to see its biggest attraction, the floating Uros islands of Lake Titicaca (made out of reeds). That, plus the Bolivian side of the lake, will have to remain for another trip. I spent the night in Puno and then took the bus the next day through the Peruvian altiplano back to Tacna, and then the taxi colectivo across the border so that I was full circle back in Arica, Chile. Yesterday I hopped the plane back to Buenos Aires, and today I was back to work, finishing up my last week at work before coming back to the US on Friday.

What a wonderful way to end my most recent stay in South America!

Thanksgiving

2011-11-30T18:24:00.000-08:00

I had a nice Thanksgiving in Buenos Aires! It's the third Thanksgiving I've spent in the southern hemisphere, but it never ceases to be very strange to celebrate a fall harvest holiday in the spring. And yet on the other hand it is really nice to celebrate Thanksgiving in a foreign country... as I often say, it's one of the few "truly American" traditions, and it's nice to share that with people from other cultures.

In the afternoon on Thanksgiving, I had a nice dinner at the American club. The whole experience was a bit odd... it was full of middle-aged Argentine men with no clear connection to the US. I got the feeling they worked for American companies and the employers had bought tickets and given them out to the employees. It was nice to have some turkey, though, and I got to share the experience with my American friend Caroline.

This is me with Caroline and one of the Argentines we befriended. He's young but I promise almost everyone else was old! :)

After the American Club dinner, I came home and cooked up a few Thanksgiving dishes of my own. My American roommate Liz invited some friends over to our house for a modified (vegetarian) Thanksgiving meal.

Here I am with my Argentine roommate Magdalena (left) and my roommate Liz's friend Dani (middle). We had a nice group of about 10 people, most of whom ended up being European!

Here is the food we cooked. As you can tell, it's not quite traditional. :) I made the mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy, all of which miraculously ended up tasting pretty normal. It was an interesting experience trying to figure out what spices were absolutely necessary for the stuffing, and then trying to find them in a country where people don't use spices ever!! The pumpkin-pie looking thing is a savory Argentine "tarta de dos colores" that my roommate Liz decided to make because it has a layer of pumpkin, just like pumpkin pie...

... which she also made! The cookie in this picture is a pumpkin cookie from a mix that Mom sent. The cookies were a HUGE hit, both with the Thanksgiving guests and at the office the next day when I took in the leftovers! (And Liz made some baked apples for good measure, which are also pictured here.)

Although Thanksgiving isn't a holiday here, this weekend was also a long weekend by chance, because Monday was a holiday here. Apparently Argentina has something like 28 national holidays each year, when practically everything closes. So a group of friends and I decided to take advantage of the day off and head to a small gaucho (cowboy) town about 2 hours north of Buenos Aires called San Antonio de Areco. It turned out to be a much sleepier village than we anticipated, and given that it was also a holiday so almost all the stores and restaurants were closed, we were in for a veeeery relaxed day. :)

Here we are by the river: my church friends Tazzy, Alice, and me. In the afternoon, lots of locals were going swimming, despite the brown water and the signs warning of pollution. It did look fun though, especially given how hot it was!

We also tried to visit a gaucho museum. It ended up that it has been mostly closed for renovations since it flooded in a storm in 2009 (hmm.. that was two years ago) but we did get to see a couple of rooms with gaucho memorabilia, and at least we could say we tried!

This was the part of the gaucho museum that was closed for renovation. It was an old "estancia" house where a wealthy landowner/ranch owner would live and manage the ranch.

I suppose I should have taken a picture of the Plaza where we got some cold and therefore much-appreciated ice cream, but that was really pretty much the only other thing to see in San Antonio de Areco. So we got lots of high-quality time to hang out and relax before we boarded the evening bus back to Buenos Aires. And now on Friday it's off to Peru!!

Rio and Fun around Buenos Aires

2011-11-20T17:23:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it took me this long to post pictures from my trip to Rio de Janeiro a few weeks ago! To be honest, I thought I'd already put them up.... Anyway, it was great to get to see my Michigan Law classmate and friend Hermine in Rio! She was there for work, and I went up for a weekend and got a great taste for Brazil.

This is me with Hermine at the Copacabana beach. It was really beautiful, although also really built-up as you can see!

One of the most famous sights in Rio is the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue on top of one of the HUGE hills in Rio. I wish I had a better picture of the hill, but it took us 20 minutes by train ("funicular railway," to be exact) to get up the side of the hill!

There was a cafe at the top of the hill, just under the Cristo Redentor statute. The juice in Rio is amazing :)

There were a bunch of really cool and unique things in Rio. One was these sand sculptures along the beach. This one was a really intricate sand castle.

Since coming back from Rio, things have been a lot tamer, but still a lot of fun. It's been nice to relax around Buenos Aires and see some of the things I haven't done up to now. A couple of weeks ago, a few church friends and I went to the "Feria de Mataderos," which is an open-air market in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. We had been told that there was a gaucho (Argentine cowboy) show, so I was expecting it to be really out in the country. Instead, it was in a park right in the middle of a very urban setting, and they didn't even do the gaucho show the day we visited. Ah well, it was fun anyway!

Me with church friends in front of a mural at the park where the Feria de Mataderos is held on the weekends.

Me with another church friend at the Feria de Mataderos (you can see the food tents in the background).

And then today, I got to do something really exciting... go see an Argentine polo match! Apparently horse polo is a really big deal here, and it's something I heard about shortly after I arrived in August. I was looking for something fun to do this weekend and realized that the polo championship started yesterday! So I went to one of today's games with my roommate Liz and two interns at the nonprofit where I work.

Here I am with my coworker Jacqueline (from England), my roommate Liz (from the US), and my coworker Christina (also from the US). We had a great time!!

Here I am with Christina and Jacqueline in front of the polo field, after the game ended.

A live action shot during the game.... The skill required to hit a ball while riding a horse is incredible.

And then after the game, a bunch of guys with guitars (and one with a drum) started walking through the crowd playing their instruments and singing Argentine folk music. The crowd loved it... especially me!! This was their finale where they finally gathered into a group for one last song. It was really a feel-good moment!

Jesuit Missions and Amazing Iguazu Falls

2011-10-24T19:03:00.001-07:00

This weekend, I took a wonderful trip to the Missions province in northern Argentina. This is the province where a number of Jesuit missions dating from the 1600s can be found, as well as the amazing Iguazu falls, which is on the border between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. The bus trip was over 17 hours long, but it was more than worth it. I took LOTS of photos!

Last Thursday night, my roommate Christelle, her boyfriend Cedric, her two French classmates Anne and Violet, and I hopped on a (really luxurious) bus and headed north. After about 13 hours on the bus, we arrived in San Ignacio, Argentina, which is the site of the San Ignacio Mini mission.

This is a panoramic view of the Jesuit mission called San Ignacio Mini. It was formed in 1632 and at one time held a population of 3,000 people, mostly of the Guarani tribe. The Jesuit missions were part of the colonial period but weren't exactly part of the colonial effort... the priests did try to change the lifestyle and convert the Guarani to Catholicism, but they also tried to protect them from the most harmful aspects of colonization. The Jesuits seem to get mixed reviews for their interactions with the Guarani, which I guess is better than most colonists can say for themselves....

The front of the mission at San Ignacio.

Part of the church at the mission

Me with the ruins in the background

There was a huge cactus on the outskirts of the mission. My roommate Christelle's boyfriend (named Cedric) is standing at the bottom left of the photo, for size comparison.

One weird thing at the mission was that, although the ruins are very well-preserved, the city has been built up around the ruins. So you see incongruious sights like this one, with the ruins in the foreground and a hotel in the background. It's an odd justaposition.

After visiting the mission, we got back on the bus and finished the ride to Iguazu falls, which was about 4 more hours farther north. I don't know how to describe the falls except to say that they were truly impressive. The falls are on the border between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, and both Argentina and Brazil have national parks on the site. We visited both parks, doing the Brazilian side on Saturday and the Argentine side on Sunday.

On the Brazilian side, you are looking across the river at the falls, so it gives you panoramic views of the falls. They seem to go on and on... they are actually about 4 km long. The Argentine side takes you right up to the falls (on the same side of the river as the falls, so sometimes you are walking right over them) and although it has some panoramic views, the really cool thing about the Argentine side is that you get to see each of the falls individually. The way it feels is like you are walking through the forest to a beautiful waterfall, and then you walk another minute and see another gorgeous waterfall, and on and on for hours. It was really an indescribable experience, so I'll try to let the pictures speak for themselves.

This is a map of the park. Brazil is on the left, and the squiggly brown line is the path on the Brazilian side. Argentina is on the right, and we did three hikes on the Argentine side. First, we did the blue hike toward the bottom right of the map. Then, we did the yellow hike right above the blue one. Then, we did the red hike toward the top of the map.

The Brazilian side:

The Argentine side:

The last hike we did on the Argentine side was called "Garganta del Diablo," or "The Throat of the Giant." This view was absolutely crazy. We walked on a metal bridge out into the middle of the river, where there was an island. From one side of the island, water was coming at you from three sides. It looked like all the water in the world was rushing toward one giant hole, which was right in front of where we were standing. Pictures don't do it justice, so I tried to capture the feeling on video. I actually tried to record four video clips, but somehow I only ended up with the third and fourth clips. Anyway, try to imagine a 270-degree panorama of water rushing toward you. (Oh, and to top it off, there is a rainbow in the falls.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU6vrzRL-u4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT_6EjALjyo

I really don't think the pictures and video do it justice.... It was really a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's kind of a let-down to be back to normal life now, but I don't have time to get too sad because I am off traveling again next weekend, to visit a law school friend who is working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!

Colonia

2011-10-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't been taking very many pictures lately (sorry!), so it's been a while since my last post. First, and most important, I finally took Karla's husband Dave up on his restaurant recommendation. He visited Buenos Aires a few years ago and found this gem of a restaurant, which I had been meaning to check out. Dave knows what he's talking about... the place was amazing! :)

Also, last weekend, I went to Colonia, Uruguay, a town on the other side of the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires. It turns out that back in the 16th century, the Portuguese were trying to move in on Spanish territory in Latin America. So, they came down from Brazil and set up a small colony ("Colonia" in Spanish) opposite Buenos Aires. The Spanish then attacked the Portuguese colony on and off for two hundred years, until they eventually won. Then, the colonies became independent from Spain, and Uruguay and Argentina became separate countries. The town of Colonia is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been preserved and restored.

Colonia is a fast one-hour ferry ride from Buenos Aires. The ferries are really upscale. This is a picture of the ferry terminal in Buenos Aires. You get what I mean that it's a pretty fancy mode of transportation!

This is the UNESCO World Heritage Site plaque in Colonia.

This is me in Colonia, with the Rio de la Plata in the background. The land that you see on the horizon is just an island, but apparently on a clear day, you can see all the way to Buenos Aires.

This is one of the streets in Colonia. All the buildings were from the Colonial era (the oldest ones were from the Portuguese colony, the more "recent" ones were built when the city was a Spanish colony).

This is one of the older, Portuguese colonial houses.

The stone ruins here used to be Colonia's first church. It was destroyed when the Spanish bombed the town. Instead of rebuilding the church, they used the ruins as the foundation for a lighthouse.

Colonia is a total mix of Spanish and Portuguese influences. Here, you can see Spanish and Portuguese cobblestones. The Portuguese cobblestones are the less regular ones at the bottom of this picture; the Spanish ones are the regular ones at the top of the picture.

I had lunch in a cute little restaurant. The food wasn't very good at all, but I took this picture before I had eaten, when I was still very excited about the cute restaurant. :)

This is me outside the town gate. The Portuguese built a wall around the city for protection against the Spanish. At the top of the gate is the Portuguese colonial emblem.

In other news, I saw a great Argentine movie about Juan Peron (a former president) and his wife, the famous Evita. Although Peron died in 1974, he is still really popular here, and there continues to be a political movement called "Peronismo" whose members still consider themselves to be followers of Peron. The movie was interesting because it painted a really one-sided (positive) picture of Peron and Eva, and the audience totally loved it. The whole theater erupted in applause at the end of the movie!

This is the poster for the movie, called "Juan y Eva." It was a cool cultural experience!

Next weekend I am headed to Iguazu Falls, and the following weekend I will be visiting a friend in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so I should have some more exciting pictures to post soon!

my birthday!

2011-09-21T04:50:00.001-07:00

The last couple of weeks have been really fun. I feel like I'm getting to know Buenos Aires a lot better and have been having a lot of fun in general! Some of the fun things I've done (and interesting things I've noticed)...

I had my first taste of Argentine "parrilla" a couple of weeks ago. Parrilla is Argentine barbeque, which here basically means meat cooked on a grill. But it is amazing! We went to a great restaurant more or less in my neighborhood, which seems to be really popular with locals and has a great vibe. Here I am with my roommate Christelle (far left) and three of her French classmates that are in her study abroad program here.

I also went to another "closed door dinner," and this time I made sure it was one with shared tables! Here I am with the three Argentinian women that shared my table. The one on the far left is a chef herself, and was looking for ideas for her own closed door restaurant. I wasn't sure if maybe she should have warned our host that she might be stealing some of his customers in the future? :)

And last weekend (the weekend before my own birthday), it was the birthday of a friend of my roommate Liz. We all went to a park and had a picnic to celebrate. It was so fun!! In the picture, the girl on the far left, sitting down, is Christelle (my French roommate); to the left of me is Mariana (the girl whose birthday it was, who is from Greece); and my roommate Liz is to the right of me.

This past weekend, I had the excitement of my first visitors from the US! A friend from college (Eddie, the one next to me in this picture) and three of his friends had long-standing plans to visit Brazil and Argentina this fall, and they were able to spend a few days with me in Buenos Aires. It was soo fun to have them! Here we are in San Telmo, a fun old neighborhood in Buenos Aires, with some delicious Argentine ice cream.

Here I am with Eddie again, showing off that excellent ice cream. Actually, the clinic where I am working just won a lawsuit against this ice cream store, "Freddo." Freddo had refused to hire women to work in its ice cream stores, and the clinic sued them so that they would stop discriminating. They seem to be complying with the court judgment requiring them to hire women, because the people that sold us our ice cream were female. :)

My Birthday!!

My birthday this year was really great! To celebrate, I went out to dinner with my roommates and another one of our friends. We had had such a great experience at the parrilla restaurant (the first picture in this post) that I chose that same restaurant for my birthday dinner. Here we are enjoying some more great parrilla. To my right is Anne (Christelle's classmate and one of our friends), and then Christelle, Freddy (one of my Argentinian roommates), and Liz (my American roommate). Thanks for a great bday, guys!!

Lisa and David sent a really cool bday gift, a bouquet of cookies! Yumm... I thought it was so cute. :) And they had it delivered to the office, so I shared the cookies with my coworkers, who thought they were the greatest thing ever.

And now for a few more cultural tidbits I thought were interesting:

Argentinians love pizza. In fact, they say that Argentinians love the "Three P's": Pizza, Pasta, and Parrilla. The other thing that they really seem to love is onions. It seemed crazy to me, but the second-from-left pizza in this picture is completely covered with onions (on top of the cheese).

And speaking of pasta, they have tons of pasta stores around town. Basically, there are piles of raw fresh pasta behind the glass counter, and you tell them how much you want of each one. It's sold by weight, and you take it home and cook it. And it's amazingly delicious!

Yesterday, my friend Samanta took me to the law school of the University of Buenos Aires, where she teaches a constitutional law class. I got to sit in on a class, and then go to a faculty meeting with the constitutional law faculty. The outside of the building is really beautiful. I had actually seen this building before without realizing what it was -- it's right next to the mechanical flower sculpture from before! :)

And lastly... one of the subway lines still uses the original subway cars from the 1930s, with wooden benches and everything. They're quite something, although they're smaller than the modern cars which means they get ridiculously crowded during rush hour. Thankfully the cars weren't very crowded when I took this photo!

Settling in

2011-09-07T17:07:00.001-07:00

Over the last week and a half, I've enjoyed the chance to settle in and get to know Buenos Aires a bit better! Here are a few pictures of my adventures...

Last Saturday was a beautiful day, and I decided to go to a Latin American art museum. Unfortunately, I found out when I got there that it was closed for renovations (you'd think they would put that on the website...) but the outside of the building was really nice...

...as was the inside of the building. The exhibition areas were closed, but I was able to get into the building to see the architecture.

And then on Saturday night, I went to something called a "closed door dinner." It's something that exists around the world, but is pretty big in Argentina. A chef basically opens his/her home to around 10 guests, who then pay a fixed price for the meal that the chef serves up. It's touted as an interesting way to meet people because usually the guests sit at one or two big tables and talk to one another. Unfortunately, I found out when I got there that I had chosen one ("La Cocina Discreta") that did not have shared tables. Instead, the chef, knowing that I would be there on my own, set me up a little table in the kitchen so that I could hang out with him and his two assistants.

Here I am with the two assistants. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but it turned out to be really fun anyway!

And I thought I would include a few pictures from around town...

This is a picture of the intersection near where I work. One of the streets is actually a full block wide, and it seems like what they did when they built it is demolish a full block's worth of buildings and fill it in with a big avenue. The funny thing is that it's a divided boulevard, and then there are two smaller streets (with their own, different names) on both sides of the big avenue. It's hard to explain, but it ends up looking like four streets all next to each other! You can also see the famous Buenos Aires obelisk in the background here.

Another sight near my work is this statue of Don Quijote de la Mancha. I think it's cool!

Another typical sight in Buenos Aires are these small "fruit and vegetable" stores. Although food is generally really expensive here, fruits and vegetables are actually really cheap. As an example, I bought three potatoes, a small squash, a carrot, an onion, a cucumber, a head of lettuce, and two tomatoes, all for a total of about $2. It was shocking!

Another thing that I've noticed here is that there is really no zoning whatsoever. This car repair shop is literally right next door to my house!

Blockbuster might have gone out of business in the US, but it seems to be going strong in Argentina!

This is my elevator at work, and in fact almost all the elevators here are like this. It has broken at least four times since I got here, so really I think newfangled elevators are a positive development! Also, there is a sign posted next to the elevator on the ground floor, which in translation says, "Given that we provide a stairway, the building is not responsible for damages that might result from use of the elevator." Hmm...

New House, New Neighborhood

2011-08-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

My first week in Buenos Aires was kind of a whirlwind of trying to find my way around, figure out my job, and settle into my host family house (while trying to decide whether I was going to stay there past the two weeks I had reserved)... only to learn a few days ago that they had already rented my room to someone else starting in mid-September, so I was going to have to find a new place one way or another! After seeing a few places and getting a better idea of the city, I ended up deciding on a place yesterday and moving today. I am renting a room in a house owned by a young Argentinian couple in their late 20s. There are also two other foreigners living here, one of whom is a French girl who isstudying here, and the other an American girl that I haven't met yet because she's in Bolivia at the moment. I really like the architecture of the house, and although it isn't in amazing condition, I love the neighborhood -- and the Argentinian couple and the French girl are really nice. And I'm expecting to love the American when I meet her, too! The whole situation seems great and so much better than my old place, so I think the move turned out to be a great idea.

The door on the left is the entrance to my new place!

This is my new bedroom. It's pretty basic, but it is comfortable! I'm planning to decorate a little bit so that it's more cheerful.

This is the view from the top of the stairs, looking down on the living room. You can see a skylight (at the top of the picture). I also really like the architecture of the stairway... it sort of has a maritime theme. :)

This is the front room on the ground floor and one of two seating areas. I'm not sure that anyone really ever uses this room, but I guess we'll see....

And this is the other living room on the ground floor.

This is the dining room. We also have a little seating area in the kitchen, so I'm not sure anyone really uses the dining room either....

And here is the kitchen. Speaking of the kitchen table, it's behind me in this picture so you can't see it. Sorry! :)

My new house is just a few blocks away from the one of the trendiest areas in Buenos Aires, called "Palermo Soho." The neighborhood in general is called Palermo... and they call this particular part "Soho" because it reminds them of the SoHo neighborhood in New York. A few years ago, all the fashion designers in Buenos Aires started opening boutiques in this neighborhood, and now it is full of really interesting boutique stores!

This is another of the stores. So many of the stores look really posh and I thought this picture captured that feeling. It's funny because lately, Buenos Aires has a reputation for being a real bargain. I haven't found that to be the case in general (food and housing here are at least as expensive as in Michigan), but really high-end things are definitely way cheaper here than in the states. So I guess if you want to shop at designer boutiques, you'll get a lot of bang for your buck in Buenos Aires! :)

One of the things I really like about my new neighborhood is that there are a ton of people out and about. It was kind of a zoo around here today, which might be partly because it was the first day of good weather in a long time. There were tons of people eating at outdoor cafes, shopping, pushing strollers, and walking their dogs. It feels like a really active and fun area!

This is a picture of me at my desk at ACIJ, the nonprofit where I am working. It's sort of a joke that I'm wearing my coat and scarf (I took the picture when I was about to leave), but actually sometimes the office is really cold and I really do wear my coat!

In addition to moving, the other cool thing that I did this weekend was go to a dinner party at my friend Samanta's house. Here is a picture of us from the party! Sam's friends are all really interesting political types, and although it was a struggle to understand their nuanced discussion of third-party Argentine congressional candidates, it was cool to be there for the discussion! Maybe I will read up on the ins and outs of Argentinian politics before Sam's next party, so I'm prepared and better able to understand what they're talking about! :)

Anyway, that's daily life in Buenos Aires! Until next time....

Bienvenidos a Buenos Aires!

2011-08-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back in Buenos Aires, this time for a much longer stay. I arrived yesterday and am settling in pretty well, thanks in large part to a "porteña" classmate from law school. She recommended that I take a "hop on, hop off" bus tour of Buenos Aires to get a better sense of how all the neighborhoods of the city fit together. It turned out to be great advice! I also got to see a number of the sights I visited last time I was here, and it was interesting to get a better sense of where the landmarks are in relation to each other.

This is the Casa Rosada, which is the president's office. The current president is Argentina's first female president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. (There is a presidential election later this year and I'm excited that I will be here for that!)

This is the congress building. Apparently Argentina has a bicameral legislature, with two houses. The representatives are called diputados, and the senators are senadores. My friend Samanta used to work for a diputada, so I'm hoping to learn more about the government from her while I'm here.

This is the Boca Juniors stadium. The Boca Juniors are a famous soccer team here, and apparently the Buenos Aires experience isn't complete without going to see a game. I'm looking forward to doing that before I leave!

This is a sculpture of a flower that I spent a lot of time trying to find last time I was here. This time, it was conveniently right on the bus tour! :) It opens during the day and closes at night, except on holidays when it stays open all night. Today is a national holiday so apparently if I had seen the sculpture after dark, the flower would still have been open. Cool!

This is the Puente de la Mujer, a bridge designed by a famous architect. I think it's supposed to look like the sail on a boat. Last time, I remember thinking this was really hard to find and kind of far from everything, but in reality it is right downtown. So funny.

That's it for today, but tomorrow I start my language lessons and my fellowship at the nonprofit, the ACIJ (Asociacion Civil de Igualdad y Justicia). I'm looking forward to an exciting first week! Also, tomorrow I promise to take pictures of my host family house and neighborhood!...

Visiting Valencia, Spain

2008-07-21T15:18:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I took my last major trip of the summer: to Valencia, Spain. This was more of a spontaneous trip, because when I got here and my Spanish coworker heard I had never been to Spain, she invited me to visit her at her house there. What an amazing opportunity to see a country from an insider's perspective!

My coworker, Carmen, lives outside Valencia, so I flew into Valencia airport, spent the first evening with Carmen and her friends.

They took me to this beautifully restored restaurant in the old part of Valencia for dinner. The restaurant is famous for its wine (hence the decor). This is me with Carmen.

After dinner, they took me to a bar in the new part of Valencia which was built when they hosted America's Cup and is now being refurbished for a car race they are hosting. The bar was right on the water and it was pretty! And I was absolutely amazed at the number of people out dancing on a Thursday night!

Then Carmen and I spent the night at her friend Ana's house in Valencia, and the next day Ana lent me a bike and showed me around Valencia (Carmen had to take her mom to the doctor).

Me at the Valencia market, which was beautifully restored and also had a ton of really good food. We bought cherries there! (yum!)

This is the Valencia art museum, which is in a cluster of great museums called the "Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias," or the City of Arts and Sciences. It is also next to this park, shown here, that runs along the dry riverbed through town. So pretty!

Here I am with my borrowed bike (you can just see the handlebars) and the museums again: this time, the planetarium (in the foreground) and the art museum from another angle (in the background).

This is another park, this time running along a ridge beside the museums. There aren't actually that many parks in Valencia, but the ones they do have are really nice.

That evening, I took the train to Carmen's hometown of Villareal (Vila-real in Valenciano) where I met up with Carmen and her other friends where we spent ANOTHER evening out. I swear, Spanish people never sleep!! I learned that Valenciano, the local language (related to Catalan), is used in everyday interactions unless one of the participants only speaks Spanish (Castellano). Apparently during the Franco dictatorship, Valenciano was prohibited, and now that they have returned to democracy, they take pride in their unique local language.

The next day I was supposed to go to Barcelona but I think I was dehydrated from all the biking and the hot sun (I'm not used to real summer weather here in London) so I felt sick and decided not to make the trip. Instead, Carmen took me around in the air-conditioned car! Her hometown is small but there was a small church, called a hermitage because people used to make pilgramages there, which was really cute.

We also visited a park called el Desierto de las Palmeras (Palm Desert).

There was a functioning monastery in the Desierto de las Palmeras park, and there were also ruins of an old monastery. Here are the ruins:

Then Carmen took me to see a small town on the coast called Peniscola, which has a beautiful old section with all white buildings, and it also has a castle!

On the last day, we visited another beachside town but I didn't take any pictures. :( It was even hotter that day so we only went out for a couple of hours and then we were so wiped out we went back and had some coffee and rested! And then I was back to London late Sunday night!

One very cool thing I saw on the way back, from the plane: FIREWORKS! It is so neat to see fireworks from above! They look so tiny!

Stavanger!

2008-07-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

I got back last night from an amazing weekend in Stavanger, Norway, the town where my grandparents used to live and a place near and dear to their hearts! I have an ever-increasing admiration for my grandparents and their adventures overseas, and the more I travel, the more impressed I am at all that they have been able to do. And all in a day's work! I am lucky to have such great grandparents and such wonderful examples in my life!

Stavanger was really beautiful. There weren't any huge mountain peaks or glaciers (there's no snow in Stavanger in the summer!), but everything in the landscape just seemed to fit together in a really nice way. It felt like an outdoor landscape that you could really... interact with. I'm not sure quite how to explain that it was gorgeous without being grand, but still so beautiful that it really could take your breath away, and make you not want to leave! Actually, looking at the pictures now it does look pretty grand, so maybe I am misremembering it!! :)

I arrived on Friday night, and the first thing I did on Saturday was go on a boat tour of the fjord.

After the boat ride, I went to the fish market....

Where I enjoyed some FRESH shrimp,

... and a fish cake! It tasted like a fluffier and garlickier version of a Chinese fish ball. All the undiluted seafood was making my stomach feel funny though so I had to eat a bagel to even things out. :)

Then I explored the town of Stavanger itself.

Here is the market, which was next to the fish market and one of the marinas, and on the edge of the downtown area.

This is one of the downtown streets. I actually took this picture before the boat ride, so it was early enough that not many people were out! (Stavanger seems to sleep in late!)

I liked this colorful street downtown! Stavanger actually reminded me a lot of southern Chile (Puerto Natales and Chiloe, especially) and from this street you can kind of see the resemblance.

I did see some new additions to the downtown area that wouldn't have been there when Gma and Gpa lived there. For example, this is the new mall. But although it's modern, it fits right into the downtown architecture, is still part of the walking downtown culture, and doesn't even really look like a mall. Very tasteful!

Also here is the tourist office, which is huge and looks pretty new. They were incredibly helpful and all spoke at least four languages (denoted by these little flags on their nametags!). Actually, I only met three people in Stavanger that didn't speak English: the bus driver, a random man on the street, and a lady at church on Sunday. It is definitely a bilingual society these days! (It was much easier for me getting around than it must have been at first for Gma and Gpa, when not as many people spoke English!)

Here is one of the many marinas.

And the cathedral.

Here I am with the lake in the center of town. It had this great fountain in the middle of it, and a little park around the outside.

This is Gamle Stavanger, the historic "old" Stavanger from the 1800s. The houses were all painted white and in really great condition, and some of the streets, like this one, were lined with rose gardens.

After going to Gamle Stavanger, I decided to head over to where Gma and Gpa used to live, on Erika Nissens Vei:

I wasn't sure which apartment building was theirs, so I'll show them all the options and then post the right picture here if I took one of their actual building!

One of the things that Gma said I would pass on the way to their old apartment was this cemetery.

What we didn't predict was that in the cemetery, I would see this HEDGEHOG! He might even be cuter than Huckleberry! :)

You can't really tell from this photo but I had to get really close in order to get the photo to come out, so I was only about a foot away. But don't worry, I was ready to run away in case he should charge!

(Ok, that was a joke. For the uninitiated, hedgehogs don't charge. They don't have to... as Dustin well knows, if you actually touch them, they just spike you!)

The walk to Erika Nissens Vei was sooo far. I literally had sore muscles the next day from all the hills around town, and it took at least a half an hour of VERY brisk walking to get to Gma and Gpa's old street. I have no idea how Gma did it while carrying grocery bags!

But the more recent residents don't have to worry about that, because there is now a supermarket right on Erika Nissens Vei...

...complete with an entire aisle of American cereals!!

That was the end of the excitement for Saturday, because not only does Stavanger get up late, but it also goes to bed early! I tried to go to this restaurant in a neighboring town, Sandnes, for dinner but literally EVERYTHING was closed even though it was 7 pm on a Saturday night and all the restaurants said they were open until 10 pm on Saturdays. I still have no idea what happened!

On Sunday, I visited Gma and Gpa's old church. I never actually got to go inside, though, because the service was moved to Sandnes for a joint service with the congregation there. So I had an adventure trying to find the Metodistkirke of Sandnes at the last minute! :) But I did finally make it! This is a picture of the Methodist church in Stavanger.

I was able to record two videos of hymns at the church, too. The sound quality isn't great but it's still kind of neat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7oMjnCVInw

http://www.youtube.com/v/WsB8fGerBQU

I didn't realize that Gma and Gpa had the option of going to an English speaking church in Stavanger and decided to attend the Norwegian one instead! The people were really nice, and the pastor at the Sandnes church says he might remember my Gma and Gpa from when he was young! (He might have just been humoring me though.... haha.)

They also have a new Oil Museum, which documents the way oil is formed and the role it has played in human development. It also discusses the history of oil drilling in Norway. It was really well put together and informative!

The Oil Museum sign.

And then, sadly, it was time to come back to London. Stavanger was so amazing and I was certainly not ready to leave after only two days! But what an amazing treat to have been able to go, even for a short time! (And it was so expensive, it was probably good I could only stay for a weekend!)

Other cool/funny/interesting things I noticed:

There was wood everywhere. Even the floor at the airport was hardwood!!

A lot of the streets were cobblestone, and instead of painting the crosswalk onto the street, they would just use white stones!

Another funny thing was, in situations where someone was helping me at a business, I would try to let them talk first to see where they thought I was from. The lady saying bye to the passengers after the boat tour said "au revoir," and the bus driver on the way to the airport said "danke" after I paid. So I guess I look French and/or German!!

I have no idea what this cartoon is about, but the lady says "tusen takk," just like my Gma!!

I'm sure I will remember some more amazing and fun things about Norway soon, but that's it for now! It was such a fun, memorable and touching trip. I am sorry it's over but so lucky and blessed to have gotten the chance to go!

Mom's Visit

2008-07-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

I was so excited that my mom decided to attend an Education conference in Amsterdam, and after the conference she came to visit me in London last weekend! We had a great time exploring the city!

One of the days mom was here, we explored the area around the Tower of London and the south bank of the Thames. Here we are with the Tower Bridge!

The next day we visited the government buildings and Trafalgar Square. Here we are at the official "centre" of London

(You can barely see us in the picture though...!)

This is mom at a fountain at Trafalgar Square. It got really windy right before the picture so everyone else ran away from the water, but mom took one for the team and got sprinkled on so we could get this great picture!

Here we are at Big Ben, the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. Apparently the clock face is over 25 feet wide!

And on the last morning mom was here, we went to a service at Westminster Abbey!

Also, work has been going really well and one neat thing we did was go see two hearings at the House of Lords Judicial Committee, the current equivalent of the US Supreme Court (actually, the House of Lords Judicial Committee is about to be renamed to the UK Supreme Court in a few weeks). One of the cases is particularly interesting and it surrounds the fate of the people of the Chagos Islands, who were exiled when the UK gave the islands to the US for a military base.

Here I am with my coworker, Vesna (also a Stanford grad, 2003) inside the Houses of Parliament, the building where the Judicial Committee hears cases.

The Parliament building is really pretty on the inside, too. Here we are (you can barely see us) with a pretty stained glass window.

And here we are outside the building. That's the view of the Houses of Parliament we all know and love! :)

And today, for the 4th of July, we celebrated by eating at a great American BBQ restaurant. It's kind of weird celebrating Independence Day in England - the country we are celebrating our independence FROM! There weren't a lot of festivities, but it was nice to spend part of the day with Americans: my classmate Jordan and the other law students on his fellowship.

Here I am with Jordan. We were all missing the US and sending the good thoughts homeward on Independence Day!

Next stop: Luxembourg (Monday-Wednesday)!

Northern Ireland & A Ball!

2008-06-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have definitely been a whirlwind. After Dustin left, I moved into my new dorm, which has been really nice. The people here are a lot more normal :) and although I haven't made any new best friends, it's fun to keep running into the same people. I am in an amazingly central location and have been trying to soak up London while working and still keeping my sanity!!

Just over a week ago, I went to visit my friend Naomi in Northern Ireland. Naomi is originally from outside Belfast, and we met while we were both in Santiago!

Northern Ireland is absolutely beautiful. Naomi took me to the coast. Here we are on a rope bridge, going from the main island to a tiny little island in the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland.

Here we are again in the rope bridge.... It was actually kinda scary....

Here we are on the little island (on the other side of the rope bridge), enjoying the beautiful day!

One of the most amazing features of the Northern Irish coast: the Giant's Causeway, an unusual rock formation along the coast facing Scotland. Legend has it that the ancient giants built the rock formation as a road to cross the channel between Ireland and Scotland!

Around the same time (just before I went to Ireland, actually), my friend Jung-Min was visiting London and we got to see the Sound of Music on stage! It was my first West End musical and it was really amazing!

And then, in case things were in danger of getting boring, one of Dustin's best friends from Stanford, Lewis, invited me to go to a ball with him! Lewis is finishing up an MBA program at Oxford and he and his MBA friends decided to go to the fancy Trinity College Ball, an annual event put on by one of the Oxford "colleges," and Lewis invited me to go along!

...Recognize the dress from Lisa's wedding? :)

....We were expecting a formal dance, but although the attire was "white tie recommended," it turned out to be more of a fancy, all-night carnival! This is us in a hot air balloon (we only got to go up about ten feet, but it was still really cool) with one of Lewis's classmates, Verona.

They also had bumper cars, laser tag, a live concert of the Sugar Babes (apparently a really famous group here in England, although we weren't that impressed), as well as made-to-order milkshakes, donuts, and other delicacies. It was definitely an event to remember!

I knew that my law school classmate Jordan was going to be arriving on Saturday to intern in London for six weeks, but when I got back from the ball, I was so surprised to get an email from him saying that he was going to be staying in... none other than my very own Goodenough College! He didn't realize that it was the same place I was living, so it was quite a happy reunion when he arrived to find me here! We explored London a little bit on Sunday with his Blackstone Fellowship buddies, but they haven't given me the pictures yet! Dustin will be sad to know we visited his beloved Trafalgar Square and even took a picture with a lion!

Mom is visiting from Thursday to Sunday of this week after her conference in the Netherlands, so the fun continues!...

Dustin goes to London

2008-06-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Dustin came to visit during my second week here, and we had some great adventures together! He was a good travel buddy and it is sad not to have him here anymore!!

The first weekend Dustin was here, we went on a little trip to see Stonehenge. It was my second time there, but I still thought it was very impressive! Actually, Stonehenge has been in the news recently because they have just done some more excavation and it looks like they are coming closer to uncovering the original purpose behind the stones....

Another view of Stonehenge.

Dustin and the cathedral in Salisbury, the town near Stonehenge where we stayed. The Salisbury cathedral has the tallest midevil spire in England and the fourth tallest in Europe. It also houses one of the original copies of the Magna Carta (unfortunately, we got there too late to see that).

We were supposed to also see Bath (an old Roman city -- yes, the Roman empire made it all the way up to England!) and Bristol, but they had record rains of 60 cm on the second day of our outing, so we had to head back to the shelter of London!

Fish & chips was the only authentically British food that Dustin and I thought tasted good. This picture doesn't quite do it justice... the piece of fish was enormous!

Last Tuesday after I finished with work, Dustin and I went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe Theater, a recreation of Shakespeare's original theater. I had been to the theater before (on the high school choir trip) and thought it was kind of hokey then, but this time we didn't hype it up as much and it turned out to be really fun. We got the cheap seats in the standing section right in front of the stage, so we got to be part of all the rowdy cheering of the crowd!!

They have this really pretty walkway along the Thames that we liked. This is us with Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye in the background.

Us with one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, Dustin's favorite place in London!

Trafalgar Square again, this time with the National Gallery in the background.

Dustin being touristy in the Tube station.

Another night on the Thames river walk, this time with the Tower Bridge in the background.

The Tower of London. It really looked like Disney World!

Yesterday (Saturday), we went to Oxford to meet up with one of Dustin's college friends, Lewis. Lewis is finishing up his MBA at Oxford and it was great to catch up with him! He will be there most of the summer so I am looking forward to seeing more of him while I am here!

Climbing a tower in Oxford....

We made it to the top!

Sporting our new Oxford tshirts, outside our hostel this morning.

It was sad to see Dustin go, but life definitely won't be boring for the next few weeks. After Dustin left this morning, I moved into my new student dorm. Although the space is pretty small, it is right near my office and I finally have a room all to myself! The other residents here seem really nice and since moving in a few hours ago I've already met my neighbors, a family from Chile! And then in two weeks, an old friend from high school is going to be staying with me in London for a couple of days, so the adventure continues!

London!

2008-06-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

I got to London on May 14 and it has been a whirlwind settling in and exploring! Here are some of the first week's adventures:

One of the first things I visited in London was Big Ben, the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. In the background you can also see the London Eye (the ferris wheel).

This is Trafalgar Square in central London, where lots of festivals and demonstrations take place. It turned out to be Dustin's favorite spot when he arrived!

After less than a week in London, I went on my first business trip with the AIRE Centre! We went to Strasbourg, France, to watch a hearing at the European Court of Human Rights, but we also got to do some sightseeing. Strasbourg is in the Alsace region of France, on the border with Germany. We flew in to Baden-Baden, Germany, and then took a bus over to Strasbourg. It was my first time on the European continent!

Here I am, with the European Parliament Building in the background.

This is the AIRE Centre staff in the European Court of Human Rights, the building where our hearing took place. The whole building looks like a kids' science museum. It is bizarre!

From left to right: Milly, Lorna, and Emily (all interns like me), Carmen (lawyer), Adam (lawyer), Jennifer (administrator), Matthew (intern), and me. There are also a couple of people who didn't go on the trip. It is a fun group!

In case you were wondering what Strasbourg itself looks like! It's France, but it looks like Germany!

We went to the zoo in Strasbourg, and the gardens there were pretty.

Strasbourg and the surrounding area is famous for its storks, and we saw a bunch. Here is one in its nest on top of a building.

The first week was really fun, but I was definitely wiped out by the time it was over!

The USA??, Brazil, and finally back to Chile

2006-05-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

The last few months have been kind of a whirlwind for me with getting back to my project after summer vacation only to turn around and make my first trip home since September in the middle of April, come back to Chile and the same day fly to Brazil for a Fulbright seminar, and then come back to Santiago to try to finish everything up before my parents get here on June 15!! (A big congrats to the first Doctor Ladewski, who is able to come visit because she finished her dissertation! Yay!)

One of the first things I got to do when I got back to the States was go visit New York where I met my future co-workers at the Fed and got to hang out with my cousin Megan... who I hopefully
will get to see a lot next year when we're both living in the big city!

And then a few days later I was off to visit my grandparents in Florida. Of course the highlight of the trip was spending time with them, but we also did some cool things - including the Tiffany glass museum in Winter Park and some gourmet food!

Grandpa waiting patiently for the ladies (we were dawdling as usual, taking in the sights of beautiful Winter Park!).

And then it was time for the highlight of the trip (and the great excuse that made the whole visit possible!)... my cousin Sarah's wedding! Congratulations to the newlyweds whose beauty is complemented here by the blossoming Ladewski orchards!

...plus it gave us an excuse to get all dressed up, too! :)

And then the day after Sarah's wedding, I was off to Santiago and then Sao Paulo, Brazil! It wasn't all fun and games (we had to sit through 35 presentations - half an hour each...) but we did get in a little bit of time to relax. This is the group of Chile Fulbrighters at our hotel near the beach outside of Sao Paulo. Everyone thought we were so cool we even had a few "honorary Chileans."

The Chileans again, this time at the beach. The guys joke around that they are the "Fulbright Chile basketball team" and comparing their height to mine, you can see why!

The girls on the beach...

We also went on a hike in the nearby Atlantic Coastal Rainforest, which (according to our resident Fulbright expert Jason, as well as according to our Brazilian guide) is a biodiversity hotspot, with the highest number of species per square meter of anywhere in the world.

In addition to big trees, the rainforest has some pretty huge rocks!

Here are those big trees - you were probably thinking they were never going to show up! We actually went swimming in this pool which is above a waterfall....

...and this is the waterfall on the other side!

And now it's back to Santiago and finishing up the project and saying my first good-byes, including to my pastor and his wife who just took off for a couple of months in the US. These are the "kids" from my church, who have been like a second family to me here. It's going to be sad to go!

Buenos Aires

2006-03-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

Dustin decided to come down for another visit over his spring break (someone should really tell them that it's not spring in Michigan yet) and we met up in Buenos Aires for a few days before coming back to Santiago together.

One of the greatest things about Buenos Aires is the architecture. We tried to hit all the big "sights," and this is the Casa Rosada which is the site of the president's office. You can't really tell from the pictures, but so many of the buildings were in disrepair, which was really sad.

On another note, they say one of the theories behind the pink color of this building is that it was painted with cow's blood....

This is the Argentine congress building. On our last day in Buenos Aires, there was a huge protest in front, one of quite a few protests that we saw while we were there.

This flower sculpture opens during the day and closes at night, and it was Dustin's favorite thing in the city (go figure). We spent forever trying to find it only to arrive after the gates were closed for the night, but the gatekeeper still let us take this photo.

We went back the next day and, no bribe necessary, were able to walk around the little park. You can see the flower is open during the daytime!

We went to an outdoor crafts market and were there when a street tango show started. The dancers were really good and drew a huge pedestrian crowd!

One of the days we went to the docks at Puerto Madero, a really upscale and pretty new area of Buenos Aires, which kind of reminded me of Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco. This bridge is called Puente de la Mujer - Bridge of the Woman.

On our last day in Buenos Aires, we went to the famous Recoleta Cemetery, where Evita Peron is buried. It was interesting because the cemetery was more like a little village, with houses where the people are buried and paved "roads" instead of grassy plots.

And on our last night, we went to see a tango show at a cafe. I thought the tango was pretty cool, but Dustin's favorite part was the music, which included a bass, an accordion, a piano, and a singer. The audience was very international, but we were the only Americans there.

Once back in Santiago, Dustin and I took advantage of the opportunity to go to some of the "touristy" sights that we missed last time. One of the things that we did was go to Cerro Santa Lucia, a hillside park in downtown Santiago.

Us at a little park in Los Dominicos, relaxing for a little bit. After that, it was time to say good-bye, for a couple of months at least!

Patagonia

2006-02-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

I didn't think I was going to have the opportunity to go to Patagonia again after the trip to Torres del Paine in 2004, but it turns out that this year the Fulbright decided to have the midterm presentations in a town in southern Chile called Coyhaique, which is on the northern end of Patagonia. In addition to the presentations, we got to do some really incredible things!

The first and possibly the coolest thing that we did in Patagonia was to go to a real archeological site that is being excavated by a professor who is also in Chile with the Fulbright. The site contains 10 skeletons that are over 8,000 years old, which represents 40% of such skeletons in North and South America combined. This is a picture I took of one of the skeletons that had just been uncovered.

This is the cave (archeological site) where the skeletons were discovered.

These are the surroundings of the archeological site, which is located near a town called Baño Nuevo. It was freezing, but very beautiful!

The next day, we gave our midterm presentations, (ostensibly) the reason for our trip in the first place. They went really well and we had a good turnout from the local community, and it was fun to share what we were doing. We even showed up in the local newspaper! (and according to the newspaper, we are all doctoral students....news to me!)

The next day we ventured out into the surrounding area again, first to a park called Cerro Castillo, which had some views that were reminiscent of Torres del Paine.

The Fulbrighters at the top of our hike. The people are, from the left, Denise Saint-Jean (director of Fulbright Chile), Anton Daughters (cultural anthropology), Jason Sibold (ecology), Greg Robinson (anthropology of music), me, and in front is Joey Richards (astronomy). It was really an energetic and fun group, with lots of different research interests!

Me at the top of the same hike. The mountains were really incredible, even more so than it looks from the pictures!

After going to Cerro Castillo, on the same day we continued south of Coyhaique to a lake called Lago General Carrera. The lake is an incredible opaque turquoise color which apparently comes from suspended rock dust in the water, because the lake is formed from melting glaciers. The lake is especially famous for caves that were formed from the rock surrounding the water, and we took a boat ride to see the caves and rock formations.

The last thing that we did in Patagonia was go on a boat ride to see a glacier. I don't know how to describe the experience except to say that it was really incredible to be presented with such an immense mass of ice - it is two kilometers wide at the mouth - and to realize that a glacier had been there, where we were, since the last ice age.

This is the group of us on the Zodiac (inflatable boat) that we took from our larger catamaran out to see the glaciar up close. From left: Denise (the director), Joey, me, Greg, Jason, and our guide.

A panoramic view of the glacier....

And then the next day it was back to Santiago, once again for only a few days before it was off to the beach to celebrate my host sister Ana Maria's birthday, and then - finally - back to Santiago for a few weeks!!

Volunteer Work!

2006-02-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

After Dustin left, I hopped on a bus to join a group of students from Santiago's Universidad Catolica who were doing a volunteer project in southern Chile. The project was in a rural area outside of a town called Galvarino, north of Temuco. The project was to run a day camp for the students and to build a jungle gym. We ended up having a really good time and becoming really good friends!

Me (on the right) and another university student Gabi (on the far left) after doing a treasure hunt with the kids.

This is the group of us (there were seven in total) painting the side of the school.

Us goofing around - er, working....

One of the last nights, we made a campfire and they played the guitar. So many people here play the guitar, and they all know so many songs, including a lot more American pop and rock songs than I do!

As a good-bye present to us, the community (which is part of the Chilean indigenous Mapuche tribe) had a party for us where they taught us some traditional dances and songs. This is all of us dancing (the university students and the community members). I'm in the back with the blue sweatshirt, behind the woman with the pink blouse. This was one of the highlights of the trip!

Us with the community members in front of the play structure we built. We ended up building a tire swing, a bar to play on, a play structure with 2 swings and a slide, and two see-saws. The kids were so happy to have a real playground!

Our first day back in "civilization" after the project... actually, the town that we're in here is still only 3,000 people, but compared to the rural school, it felt like a metropolis. We're relaxing in the town square, called the Plaza de Armas.

Back in Santiago, laden down with our stuff and sad to be done with the project, although excited at the prospect of sleeping on a real bed after spending all night on a bus and the previous two weeks with only ice-cold showers and sleeping on a hard-wood floor!

Everyone was so sad to be done that the next day we all got together and had lunch together... our first "Voluntarios Trabajando Reunion"!

Christmas and New Year's, and Dustin's Visit!

2006-01-26T12:11:00.000-08:00

After sending Gabe and Rebecca off to explore the south of Chile on their own, I came back to Santiago to spend Christmas with my host family. The traditions are a little bit different here and I'll show you some pictures of the differences:

All of the festivities happen on Christmas Eve. They first go to church around 8 pm, then come back and have a fancy dinner afterwards. This is the family before dinner.

Maria Paz and me goofing off after dinner :)

Around midnight, the family goes out to the street to "look for Santa." Strangely enough, this is the only time since I've been here when I have seen the neighbors actually talk to each other! After walking up and down the street a couple of times, the kids go home to discover that Santa has come and left their presents under the tree (usually one of the parents makes some excuse not to go look for Santa with the rest of the family). The younger kids in the family still believe in Santa and it was funny to hear the rest of the family try not to ruin it for them!

A few days after Christmas, Dustin came down. We spent a few days in Santiago and then went to the family's apartment at the beach in Papudo. This is us with the family before dinner on New Year's Eve in Papudo.

Dustin with his new friend, my host brother Vicente.

For the last couple of days that Dustin was here, we headed off on our own to visit other towns on the coast. First we went to the tiny beach town of Cachagua, one of the places in Chile where you can see penguins. Unfortunately after we got there we realized that "seeing" penguins meant squinting through binoculars from the beach, although people had told us it was possible to go out to the island by boat, but it was a cute town and we had a good time being adventurous...

After visiting the penguins, we went down the coast to one of Chile's major ports, a town called Valparaiso. This is Dustin and me taking a boat tour of the Valparaiso harbor.

After Dustin left, it was back to Santiago and back to reality, but only for one day, because the next morning I was on a bus to rural southern Chile to participate in a volunteer project in a school with a bunch of Chilean university students!

Gabe and Rebecca go to Chile

2006-01-26T11:49:00.000-08:00

Well it's been forever since I've posted any pictures, and it isn't because I don't have any pictures to post! Life has been pretty crazy for the past couple of months and I have a lot to catch you all up on. In the middle of December, Gabe and Rebecca came down from San Francisco to visit, and we had a great trip to the mountains outside of a town called Talca, about three hours south of Santiago. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures on the trip and Gabe and Rebecca's camera got stolen, but here are some pictures of us in Santiago!...

One of the cool things that we did in Santiago was go to Pablo Neruda's house, called "La Chascona" for the curly hair of his second wife.

This is me, Rebecca, and Gabe looking out over the gardens at Pablo Neruda's house.

Gabe and Rebecca in front of one of the "rooms" of Pablo Neruda's house. It was built on the side of a hill with a bunch of separate buildings, one for entertaining guests, one for living in, one as a library, etc. The buildings and the scenery were really cool. Pablo Neruda certainly had character!

Two pictures of the three of us sitting outside Pablo Neruda's house. The neighborhood is really cute and also has some of the best restaurants in Santiago!

Gabe and me at Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill in Santiago, and the mountains in the distance.

Thanksgiving, Aaron's Visit, Sudamericano!

2005-12-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

I was soo lucky to have a friend from Stanford, Aaron Kabaker, come visit over Thanksgiving. We took a trip to southern Chile including the island of Chiloe (famous for its local culture and folklore - and its rain, which we fully experienced) and the German-influenced town of Puerto Varas. After the trip, we came back to Santiago for Thanksgiving and a few fun-filled days before Aaron had to head back to Stanford and schoolwork....

Here, Aaron and I are on the ferry to Castro, Chiloe, the first stop on our trip. Chiloe is really cute and the boats are all really colorful - they reminded me of toys! There is no bridge to Chiloe, so you have to go over on a ferry, which was really fun!!

The two of us starting our "hike" in the national park in Chiloe - which was less of a hike and more of a short fast walk through a nature trail in between when the one bus to the park dropped us off and when it was going to pass by to take us back to civilization. One thing that I've learned here is that sometimes public transportation schedules really make no sense!!

Me on the steps leading to our hostel in Castro. The city is set on a hill overlooking the ocean, and I definitely got a workout getting to and from the hostel every day!!

The cathedral in Castro. It was a really beautiful church, all wooden on the inside, and almost seeming out of place in such a small and unpretentious town.

We went on a little boating excursion to see penguins on our last day in Chiloe - unfortunately none of my pictures of the actual penguins turned out, but here we are looking silly in our life jackets!!

Us on the bus back to Santiago. We got more than our fair share of trying to sleep on the bus through the night!!

We got to go to two Thanksgiving dinners! This is us at the first one, a really formal "luncheon" at the house of the assistant to the US ambassador to Chile. The second one, that I sadly don't have a picture of, was at my church, and was really fun and incredibly tasty! The people at church told me that they loved having Aaron there!!

The Sudamericano (South American) swimming championships
last week was really fun, too. Here are pictures of me with some of my teammates at the meet. It was great to get to spend so much time with the other people on the team, including at a party after the team awards ceremony on the last night! (Regrettably without pictures to show for it...boo....)

Me with my teammates, none of whom seemed ready for this picture to be taken!!

Me with teammates Natalia (one of the other 22 year-olds) and Cristian (the "baby" on the team at age 18 - he was actually too young to even participate in the meet but he came every day to cheer us on!!).

I thought these "Gobierno de Chile - Chile Deportes" (Government of Chile - Chile Sports) signs that were all over the pool were pretty cool. It was really something else to be representing Chile against the rest of South America!!

Beach, Mountains, and Habitat for Humanity

2005-11-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

Chile is one of a few places in the world where you can go to the beach and the mountains in one weekend. I got to have this exciting experience two weeks ago, when I went with my family to the beach city of Viña del Mar and then took off for Cajon del Maipo, an area of the Andes outside Santiago.

My host family and I went to Viña del Mar two weeks ago and spent a few days with my host dad´s parents, who have an apartment there. It was a great chance to relax and spend time with the family. The water was freezing though, which we found out right after taking this photo, when a huge wave got all of us wet!

The day after coming back from Viña, I took off for the mountains, to a river valley called Cajon del Maipo. The Andes are only about three hours from Santiago by public transportation, and it is incredible to have such spectacular nature so close to the city. I didn´t have to work on Halloween or on All Saints´Day, but all of my friends here did, so I decided to make the trip by myself. The first day in the mountains I took a mini-hike along a river.

Since I only had two days in the mountains, I planned to go horseback riding on the second day to be able to get to know the area better in a short time. Unfortunately, I got food poisoning on the first night (I was so careful, too), so the horseback riding plans got postponed. Stay tuned for a future trip where I take up my rain check on that one....

Yesterday, I participated in a Habitat for Humanity work day with a bunch of people from church. My group worked on cutting and nailing 2 x 4´s together which will later become walls. It is really amazing what a group of people, even without much experience, can do! This is a picture of the volunteers at the church before we left.

This is a picture of all of us at the work site, including the Chilean construction managers and some of the people who live in the houses we were expanding. The people were incredibly poor (one family had 8 people living in one room) but the neighborhood had a lot of spirit and involvement, and the people were so glad to have our help in their work to improve their own lives!

I also made two new Chilean friends: volunteers Francisca (next to me in the photo) and her boyfriend Javier!

Story

2005-10-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

An 8th grade student at my school, Colegio Cardinal Jose Maria Caro, won a Chilean national story competition for a story that she wrote. It is an incredibly powerful semi-autobiographical story about a homeless dog in Santiago. For those of you who read Spanish, I've copied it below.

One of my sixth grade students asked me today how it was that I had never been in jail. What lives these students lead.

Biografía de la Calle por Jasna Guzman González

Muchos de nosotros nacemos en bajas condiciones por no tener quién nos cuide. Nacemos de madres que a los pocos meses de vida nos dejan solos y desprotegidos. Yo me pregunto si la vida de todos será como la nuestra. A medida que transcurren los días que luego son años de soledad y de abandono nos encontramos a veces que no hay para comer en semanas, y la realidad es así, ¡cómo puedo consolar a mí estómago! entonces tenemos que comer de la basura y la comida está en descomposición, restos de fruta podrida, olores desagradables, y cuando crees que ya no hay más la gente se compadece de nosotros y nos da comida, pero no es lo mismo, pues tenemos que comer en la calle y desde allí miramos la vida en familia de otros, y no estoy hablando de querer estar ahí, sino de pertenecer a la mía, a mi familia, a la que sueño cada día.

Hay días en que camino por calles olvidadas, calles con muchos niños y parece que de pronto la ciudad fuera el mapa de mis ojos, la conozco como conozco a mi corazón. El gran problema son las noches tan largas, camino sobre un manto lleno de estrellas o debajo de un cielo gris y lluvioso. Soy un viajero que a cada paso se pregunta por la injusticia, en donde aloja la esperanza, quién maneja la vida, mi vida... la vida de todos, ¿Por qué soy tan distinto? Mi corazón llora de soledad y de amargura, me siento solo en todo este mar de gente.

Con todo esto sobre mis hombros no entiendo por que la gente se escapa de mí cuando yo quiero jugar, quizás por que ando sucio o mi apariencia es peligrosa, muchos como yo tenemos aspectos extraños, de vagabundos, y las personas prefieren ignorarnos, y nos hacen sentir invisibles.

Después de crecer solo en la calle uno aprende muchas cosas para sobrevivir: como defendernos de aquellos que piensan que estorbamos, a refugiarnos en rincones de casas abandonadas, debajo de algún puente y así tener donde dormir en las noches.

Muchos como yo duran poco en la calle, y he tenido que ver como mueren solos sin nadie que los llore o les de una sepultura, ya que no aprendieron a sobrevivir y en un segundo dejan de existir.

Los más fuertes lo logran, y por esta triste razón los que tienen un logar para vivir y estar bien tienen que aprovecharlo, hacer feliz a la familia que los acoge, ya que la calle no es agradable, es fria y ajena.

Los días de lluvia para nosotros son un problema mayúsculo, por que tenemos que buscar por todas partes un lugar para refugiarnos, y es ahí donde más extrañamos el vientre tibio y protegido de nuestras madres porque cuando hace frío no tenemos con que abrigarnos.

Algunas veces hay gente que se compadece de nosotros y nos lleva a lugares cómodos donde dormir, en donde se encuentran niños que nos entregan cariño y donde no pasamos frio, lugares que por una noche se transforman en nuestro hogar.

Como me hibiese gustado tener una familia que me protegiera, que me cuidara y me entregara cariño siempre.

Algunas veces cruzando la calle sentimos una bocina, y luego despertamos en un lugar diferente al que vivía y muy bello, ya que la vida de un Perro Callejero no es buena.

Y ahora desde arriba veo mi cuerpo tirado en calle en donde siempre caminaba, es un día lluvioso y nadie me recuerda, para las personas que me ven tirado y destrozado a un costado del camino soy solo un perro menos, me da un poco de tristeza ver todo este panorama, una vida a la cual me aferré con valentía y entusiasmo, siempre conciente de ser lo que me toco ser.

Ahora estoy en un lugar maravilloso y hay muchos como yo, pero es muy distinto, pues aquí se ven contentos y hay personas preocupadas por cada uno de nosotros, es como si fuera el verdadero lado de la vida humana, aunque hayamos tenido que pasar por todo la anterior, ya no hay calles y tampoco edificios sino amplios paisajes y muchos árboles y, definitivamente aquí puedo ser feliz.

Everyday Life in Santiago

2005-10-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of my daily life in Santiago...

Me with my host sister Maria Jose.

My host dad Claudio on his birthday.

Some of you have been asking about Chilean or Santiaguino culture: one of the most characteristic things is the bus system, which is made up of these really old buses that are sent from "developed countries." There is no timetable for the buses, you just have to wait for the one that you need, and the drivers are paid based on the number of passengers that they take, so they race each other to pick up passengers! The bus system is in the process of changing, though, and they just bought all these new double-long buses so that they can reduce the number of buses and help the traffic problem. A lot of people here are sad that this part of the culture is going to end.

One of the cultural things that struck me when I got here last year was that they sell copies of laws at kiosks in the street (along with pirated CD's... haha).

The swim team here is really fun and inviting! Now if I could only remember everyone's names...

These are some of the other young people on the swim team. The girl second from the left is also 22 years old (and the one next to me is only 17!!).

Some of the guys on the team. Everyone thought the medals were so cool -- I was actually really surprised how much everyone cared about the awards ceremony and winning medals. They insisted that I take this picture of them with their awards. :)

The whole team after the awards ceremony.

Some of my other team members. The one on the far right, named German (pronounced Hair-mahn), is my coach and is also on the team.

Today, the day after my swim meet, my host family got a kick out of looking at my medals and trying on my gear. This is Maria Paz as a swimmer!

Me and Maria Jose all decked out, including medals from the meet yesterday!

My fifth grade class at Colegio Cardinal Jose Maria Caro. They are really cute and funny (and kind of crazy sometimes) and it is a huge class of about 40 kids -- the norm for public and subsidized private schools here in Santiago.

Dani's Birthday

2005-10-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

My host cousin Daniela (Dani) turned 8 over the weekend, and we had a party for her on Saturday. I only have a few pictures, but I thought they were cute enough to show to post!

Dani blowing out her candles....

and here is proof positive that my family didn't make up the cake-in-the-face tradition just for me on my birthday!

Vicente looking like the playa that he is. :)

The birthday girl and her uncle Pachi (his real name is Walter) being silly. Pachi is my host mom's youngest brother and the kids get a kick out of goofing around with him.

My host aunt Franci (also one of my host mom's siblings) pretending to be Chewbacca. I am not kidding, that was really what she was trying to do. As you can tell, the family is crazy and, as Maria Paz would say, "muy, pero muy divertido."

(the real thing, for comparison...)

Signing off for now... hope all is well for you!

The Beach at Papudo

2005-10-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

The long weekend of Oct 8-10 my host family and I went to their apartment in Papudo, a small town on the coast north of Viña del Mar. The area is incredibly beautiful and I think we are going to be spending more time there as summer approaches. Yay for being in the Southern Hemisphere!

The first day that we were in Papudo, Samantha (the Stanford student who is living with me) and I went exploring. This stone staircase that we found is one of the ways to get down to the beach.

This is the seaside part of the town of Papudo and the harbor. The coast is incredibly beautiful and reminded me of northern California. The rest of the town of Papudo is set inland a few blocks from the beach, and is a lot poorer than the coastal part. Chile is definitely a land of extremes, in wealth as well as in geography.

The ocean and harbor again.

I cooked an American-style breakfast for the family: pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. It was the first time they had eaten an American breakfast, and the kids were scared to try the bacon. :) But they all really liked the pancakes, which might be due for a repeat performance sometime soon!

After breakfast, we all went to a neighboring town to buy seafood. In this picture, Samantha and I are standing in front of a booth selling fish. Most of the seafood (clams, snails, crabs) were still alive. Yum....

My host sister Anita (Ana María) holding one of the live clams.

This is all of us, minus my host dad Claudio who is taking the picture, near the fish market. It was cloudy and freeezing, but so fun!

We went on a hike up a huge hill near Papudo. It really was as steep as it looks in the picture...

...but the view from the top was amazing. And you can tell that the flowers are starting to come out here! Yay, spring!!

My Birthday Party!

2005-09-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

These are pictures of my birthday party, which was combined with an Independence Day gathering to be quite a big family event!

My host sister Ana Maria with her cousin Fefi.

Me with my host cousin Dani, who is so cute!

Me with my host dad Claudio and his brother Raul.

There was an airplane fly-by by the Air Force for the Independence Day festivities.

Me with my host parents, Claudio and Pamela.

They had a cake for me and everything! This is my host dad Claudio bringing out the cake and his mom, Mena; the kids are my cousin Dani and my other cousin Panchi.

The cake was really yummy,

although...

part of it ended up on my face! (either a Chilean tradition or a family tradition, I'm not sure which!)

Me with the perpetrators, my host dad Claudio and his brother Raul.

My host sister Maria Paz with one of the pet tortoises. There are four pet tortoises in the extended family!

Me with the pet rabbit. If you thought I had a lot of pets as a kid, this family is like a zoo. They have two dogs, a cat, a rabbit, a canary, and a tortoise!

Santiago and Independence Day Pictures!

2005-09-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of me and my host family in our Chilean Independence Day celebrations. As you'll see, they're quite a fun and entertaining bunch!!

This is me with my extended host family at an Independence Day fair. Pictured: (back row) me, my host mom's sister, my host mom, my host mom's other sister, Maria Jose, Ana Maria; (front row) Dani (my host cousin), Maria Paz, and Vicente.

This is me with my host sisters Maria Jose (left) and Ana Maria (center) at an Independence Day fair at a city park in Santiago.

This is my host sister Maria Paz at a park near the house. The kids love to play outside... it's the perfect family for someone like me!

Mom and dad send me some great flowers for my birthday. It's kind of crazy that you can send flowers to Chile through a flower shop in Ann Arbor! Thank you!! The astromarias are some of my favorites!

Me with my host sister Ana Maria and her cousin Dennis at an Independence Day barbeque at a relative's house in the country outside of Santiago. The kids in Dennis's family all speak Spanish, English, and German, because of a very colorful family history that includes Scottish and German immigrants to Chile in the early 1800's...which was a very long time ago!

My host brother Vicente playing basketball. No one in the family really knows how to play--I actually found myself giving advice on how they could improve their game...that doesn't happen very often! :)

My host siblings Vicente and Maria Paz goofing off in the pool. The house that we visited for Independence Day was really cool, they had a mini soccer field and basketball court along with this little pool, and a bunch of empty space for running around and...

flying kites!... which is what my host sister Maria Jose (with the green capri pants) is doing here with her cousin!

Stay tuned for pictures of my birthday celebration!

Katie's Blog

2005-09-06T23:34:00.000-07:00

I'm using this blog space to post my pictures from Chile this year, since I don't have webspace at Stanford anymore. Stay tuned for photo updates on my time here in Santiago.