What's new, Buenos Aires?

So that sad post down there? Don't worry, I just booked 5 nights in Buenos Aires! Best part is that all 5 nights at a decent hostel are costing me $60.

Actually scratch that; the best part is that I'll be there next Thursday! Woooo!

I'm planning on spending a few days before that in Valparaiso before I head over to Argentina, and then I'll be home! Now excuse me while I practice my Evita impression.

Emo blog :(

So, at first I gave it the benefit of the doubt. And maybe it's because of the time of year (the weather is pretty much our late March/April, i.e., crappy), or the fact that I'm living toward the edge of town. But Temuco is a miserable little city. It's cold and damp and rainy. There isn't much to do, especially when you're not in the middle of town. The prettiest part of Temuco is the volcano that you can see in the distance on a clear day taking the bus into town from Labranza. But clear days are rare, and if there's a sunny afternoon it was preceded by a frigid, damp morning and followed by a cold night.

I think a lot of this is fueled by homesickness and loneliness. I don't think it would seem as bad if I wasn't alone here, or if I didn't constantly feel like a stranger in someone else's house. Or if I felt at all invested in the work I was doing here. But I do and I'm not and everything just feels sad here.

I've only been here for two weeks, but it feels like a year. I'm flying home in two weeks for my Dad's wedding and it's impossible to imagine being here that much longer. Time goes a lot slower here, which is driving me crazy. I don't think a minute has gone by when I haven't thought of home.

This has been really emo so I'll write about my favorite thing about Temuco. Houses here don't have central heat so they rely generally on wood-burning stoves to keep warm. So in the evening, the air smells like a campfire. Which reminds me of when we went camping when I was little. So there's that.

HOT FUDGE FILLED CHURROS

Everyone in Chile was pretty excited today since it's their independence day, which means people get to dance and eat empanadas. I was super excited because I discovered CHURROS filled with HOT FUDGE with SPRINKLES. I would have taken a picture, but that would have meant a few seconds of it not being in my mouth.

Seriously guys, that made this whole thing worth it.

Carahue and the countryside

I have the day off today! Woo! So in celebration I'm sitting in my kitchen figuring out how to cook dried chickpeas (hint: it's different than canned chickpeas). I don't have any restaurants close to me but there's a pretty big supermarket right down the block from my house, so I'm cooking more (plus, I'm told it saves money). Hopefully by the time I get back to the U.S. I'll be fully domesticated (or at least know how to cook chickpeas. Baby steps.).

Yesterday, as you could tell from my last post involving what Cori informed me was indeed a goose, we were outside! In nature! And as such, I have pretty pictures for you.

A few people from the foundation and I went to visit one of the artisans we work with out at her home in the country. To get there, we had to take a bus about an hour and a half outside Temuco to a smaller town named Carahue, and then another bus about 45 minutes to a small farming community. We had some time to kill between catching the bus in Carahue and I got to take pictures!

The Río Imperial

The whole area is really hilly, so when we ventured down side streets, we got to see a great view of the surrounding farms. 

View from Carahue

Carahue also has a pretty cute little town square featuring churches and trains!

Me doing a really uninspired pose

Old timey train! Oddly, have not yet seen evidence of new timey trains.

So after some time drinking coffee and walking around, we caught the next bus and walked a good 15-20 minutes to the farm we were visiting.

We had lunch and sat around talking for a while and got to walk around the farm a bit, where I made some new friends:

Actually, none of these animals were particularly friendly. Except for the cat, who was pretty cool. And then the goose hissed at me so I decided to walk away from the animals.

So I climbed a hill.

And overall had a pretty nice time enjoying the scenery. 

It was a nice change of pace and I got to see a lot of the area, which is really tranquil and picturesque. Other than that, I've been spending my time at the foundation trying to keep myself busy or in my room. I've been feeling pretty lonely here, since I haven't really met a lot of people and my Spanish is better than nothing but still not enough. I miss everyone a lot! <3

Added to my list of vicious creatures

This thing hissed at me today, which reminded me why I don't go outside.

Week 1 Recap

So, I've been in Chile about a week so I suppose it's time to actually update this thing! Here's some of what happened in the past week (Hint: a lot).

Jacob drove me to JFK super early Tuesday morning and after some minor kerfluffles before boarding (apparently TACA actually cares how heavy your carry-on is, so Jacob took home a few things I planned on bringing), I got on the plane and got ready for my FOUR layovers. Yes, four. Because I decided to go with the cheapest flight possible, regardless of how miserable I would be 24 hours into this ordeal. I ended up in:

San Jose, Costa Rica!

Which, guys, is seriously gorgeous.

OMG pretty!

Also gorgeous is Quito, Ecuador, my next stop:

Quito!

Not that you can tell from my crappy photo I took on the plane while we were taxiing. Quito is a bunch of brightly colored houses in a valley between green mountains and looked amazing when we were landing. I would have been cool with just ending up here, but I stayed on the plane until the next stop in Guayaquil, Ecuador:

Guayaquil!

I was not impressed with the view from the Guayaquil airport. The next stop was Lima, Peru, and by the time we got there it was dark and I was NOT in the mood for pictures or being awake, so no pictures. Same for Santiago de Chile, since I got there at 3:30am and had to wait until 6am for the buses to the central bus terminal to start up. So I paid the $140 reciprocity fee for Americans to get into Chile (I know, right?), exchanged some money and finished up The Hunger Games (totally awesome). Then at 6am, I found the right bus and headed over to the bus terminal where I bought another bus ticket and spent another hour waiting for the bus to take me eight hours south to Temuco. Now I'm sure Santiago's a lovely city, but I only saw the airport, bus terminal, and a lot of graffiti, so I didn't get the best impression.

I slept pretty much the entire eight hours, interrupted only by me suddenly waking up in a strange city with no idea what time it was or where I was, and promptly falling back asleep. So I was pretty out of it by the time we actually got to Temuco and had to start having full conversations in Spanish with the members of the organization who picked me up and brought me to the house I'd be living at. 

Guys, Spanish is tough. Especially after a full 36 hours of traveling.

But I picked out my room (on the second floor of a cute little house), took a walk with the girl who met me at the bus station to the supermarket (conveniently just a few blocks away right next to a bus stop) and made what I think might have been polite conversation before falling asleep.

I'm definitely a big fan of where I'm living, mostly because my landlady is an adorable, sweet woman who speaks slowly for my benefit and explains everything to me in really simple terms. On Friday, she took me to the center of Temuco (we live toward the outskirts of the city) and showed me the market, the cathedral and the mall (which is pretty legit, since it has a bowling alley and churros). She only speaks Spanish so I don't always make complete sense to her, but I think she wants to look after me since I'm all alone on a new continent.

View from my window

I've also started work at the foundation, which has been a little exhausting since they also only speak Spanish and I'm finding it hard to keep up sometimes. The foundation is a bit out of town, so I have to take the Micro (the bus system) down the road a ways to the middle of nowhere. One of the guys met up with me at the bus stop the first day (Thursday) and generally showed me how to get to the foundation, so on Friday I was like, "Oh cool, I can do this all by myself!" Here's the thing: there's like a bajillion buses that pass my stop on the way to the foundation and I need to flag down the correct one as they come flying down the street. So, I flagged down the one I thought looked like the one I took the day before and asked "La Fundación?" and the driver said "Sí." And I thought "Cool." And then after driving me a ways, he dropped me off at a gymnasium. And I was like "Umm, la Fundación?" and he was like "Oh, no me entiendes" and I was like "NO, TÚ NO ME ENTIENDES" and I took a bus back to where I started and figured out which bus to take. So, that's how I learned which bus to take.

That's the main stuff that happened, but this is already pretty long, so I'll end it there. My main point is that I miss everyone a ton already and I'll update soon! 

I apologize for the name of this blog.

Just for the record, I'm pretty sure that "chileando" does not actually mean "chillin" in Spanish. But I learned that from Julian along with "Que lo que" and "You from Westchester? Dassit!" so I'm pretty sure that means I'm fluent.

So, hey! A blog! Don't worry, some legit posts are coming up after I watch silly videos online and take a nap.