Semana+4


 * Sábado, 23 de octubre**

Raul, Sylvia and I left for Santiago about 9.20. It took an hour to get there. Raúl parked the car while Sylvia and I went to the Plaza de la Consititución where capsule used in the rescue of the miners was on display. It soooooo tiny! I couldn´t imagine how those men had fitted in there.

Then we walked around to the Palacio de la Moneda where the presidential offices are. It was formerly the mint. Moneda means "coin". Its facade was badly damaged in the military coup of 1973 when President Salvador Allende was overthrown. I am reading a book by his niece, Isabel Allende, at present. It´s about Pedro de Valdivia, the founder of Santiago in 1541. I had a photo taken with some guards on horseback outside La Moneda. They were very friendly and invited me to stand right up by them.

We kept walking until we came out onto La Alameda, also known as La Avenida Bernard O´Higgins where there was an enormous Chilean flag waving. Unfortunately,the wind did not cooperate and lift the flag so that I could get a good photo of it.

We walked along the Alameda to the Iglesia de San Francisco which dates from 1586 and is Santiago´s oldest surviving colonial building. It has come unscathed through many earthquakes over the years. We walked down the pedestrian zone Paseo Ahumada to La Plaza de Armas which is the heart of Santiago. It was very animated and there were processions of firemen from all over Chile who had some kind of ceremony at the eastern end of the square as well as stalls selling paintings, helium balloons and people with a political message to draw to the attention of the public. There is a statue of Valdivia on horseback in the square as well as a fountain commemorating the liberator Simón Bolivar.

We went back to the car and drove to the Santa Lucia craft market where I did some more shopping. Then we drove to the Alto Las Condes mall which is absolutely enormous. You would need a week to explore it thoroughly! We had lunch there and a wander around. There is such a huge selection of shops and products that a little old Kiwi could be forgiven for going slightly crazy! Then it was time to head for home.


 * Domingo, 24 de octubre.**

As we set off for the supermarket to do the monthly shop, I looked at my watch and thought to myself, "This time next week I should be just landing in Auckland". It didn´t seem very real but it made me feel like I had to frantically absorb all the sights, smells and sounds I had grown accustomed to so I could take them with me. The supermarket we went to is called Jumbo. It´s huge. There are 50 checkouts. Mind you, the supermarket in Alto Las Condes had 60 odd checkouts! We spent a long time there and I had time to investigate all sorts of products and marvel over the huge variety available. Most of the prices are about the same as they are in NZ and the month´s shopping for a family of four was about what it would be there too.



Sylvia made a delicious dessert called Leche Asada for dinner. It´s a sort of baked custard with a caramel sauce.

I have collected quite a few recipes to introduce my family and friends to when I get home. I have several packets of Merquén which is used for spicing food up with flavours of chili and various herbs and garlic. It´s particularly good on barbecued meat. I really need to buy another suitcase to fill with food and drink to take home! I also bought a bottle of pisco so I can make mango and pisco sours at home. Needless to say I also have some bottles of wine!

In the late afternoon I went for a walk around the neighbourhood to take some photos - trying to get some good shots of the mountains but they never come out the way I can see them as I don´t have a good enough zoom..



We keep running into language problems when I use a Spanish word that is not used here. I am compiling a list of these words as I came across them. My grammar is changing too after resisting for 3 weeks, I´m using "ustedes" instead of "vosotros". It´s much easier that way but I´ll have to change back next week otherwise my NZ students won´t understand me. However, if we are going to be involved with an exchange with Chile, it will make sense to teach them the Chilean way rather than the Peninsular Spanish way. I also have a good supply of Chilean students back in NZ to help me keep it up.


 * Monday, 25 de octubre**

Today I was picked up on the main road at 8.30 to go to a school in another town about 15 minutes away. The school is called Santa Teresa de los Andes and is located in Graneros which is closer to the coastal range. Rancagua is in a glacial valley between those mountains and the Andes so there are mountains all around The coastal range no longer has snow on it, though The school is quite modern. The present buildings date from 1999. It caters for 2,400 students from pre-school to Year 13. The first class I visited was Kinder.

Then there was a break and I was taken to the Headmistress´s office for breakfast - juice, yogurt, coffee and a bead roll filled with what looked like ham. unfortunately, I was talking so much that I didn´t have time to do any more than drink the juice before the bell rang and I had to go to another class. It was a 2 Medio (Year 11) English class. Their level of English was lower than that at Saint John´s and they struggled to understand anything I was saying. In the next class, 1 Media (Year 10) there was one boy who understood quite a lot of what I said and asked my quite a few questions. He is very keen to come to NZ. he was particularly interested in the sports we have at Massey High.

I was really impressed with the layout of the school which started with 300 students but now has a large population. The buildings are 2 storeyed and are built around a central patio. The school has its own fleet of buses to transport the students. It is not a private school but is subsidised by the state.





I have spent most of the afternoon updating the Wiki. It´s been quite an effort and I still have to upload the photos for the last week to include them. That may have to wait until I get home.

Martes, 26 de octubre

Today I had a class trip with Diego´s class to Valpaíso. It was a long day - over 2 1/2 hours by bus there and back. On the way we went through a 3km tunnel. It seemed never-ending and I felt a little claustrophobic.

First we went to Congress which is where the laws are made. The actual seat of the Government is in Santiago but to decentralise the administration they set Congress up there.

Quite by chance, the miners were at a ceremony to honour them at Congress so we got to see them receiving their awards. We aslo saw the Minister for Mining and I had a photo taken with the Member of Parliament for Rancagua who came to meet us. After that we went to a restaurant for lunch and then had to walk up to the Naval Museum as the lift wasn´t working as a result of the earthquake back in Feb.





Valparaíso is an incredible place and has a really unique character. It is dirty and disorganised and yet exudes an irresistable charm. It sprawls over high hillsides so steep they have ascensores to go up them but, unfortunately, some was so damaged in the earthquake that they are still not in use again. The view from the lookout by the Naval Museum was amazing. Next we went to Pablo Neruda´s house, La Sebastiana. That was very interesting although I wouldn´t fancy living there and having to go up and down the little narrow staircases inside the house which has 5 storeys. However, visitng the house and reading the lines from his poems which were displayed around the place has motivated me to read more of his work as it has acquired a significance it didn´t have for me before. Two of his other houses are also maintained as museums - one near Valparaíso called Isla Negra and the other in Santiago - maybe I´ll get a chance to see that on Saturday.

On the way home we stopped for while at the beach at Viña del Mar to give the kids a romp. They were very excited about going to the beach which surprised me until I remembered that they live inland and wouldn´t get many opportunities to go to the coast. After a noisy trip in the bus with 40 over-excited 12 year olds we got back to school at 9.30pm. All in all, it was a very well-organised day and I really enjoyed it. It was a real thrill to actually see the miners after witnessing their historic rescue and having seen the capsule that brought them back to the surface.


 * Miércoles, 27 de octubre**

This week has just flown by. I was going to stay at home today after such a long and busy day yesterday and also to prepare a NZ style meal for lunch as it the only time this week when we would all be together before I leave and when I would have time to prepare a meal as Raúl is back on night shift for 10 days from yesterday. However, I had to be at school for an interview with a local newspaper journalist so I got up at the normal time - 6.20. I got a micro home from school after the interview, getting the veg at the local Wednesday street market on the way. After I had cleaned up from lunch I got a micro into town and had a wander around taking photos of the old buildings. I was particulary interested in finding some old adobe houses damaged in the earthquake that I had seen as I went down the street in the car. I managed to find them as well as another one.

I was glad to have done this walk-about as it means I now I have clearer idea of how the city centre is. It is not a pretty city but the old houses painted in various colours have a certain charm and efforts should be made by the community to preserve them. At present they are being spoilt by graffiti which covers so many buildings around Rancagua and definitely is a source of visual pollution which detracts from the pretty little houses and lovely gardens in the street around the city. On the way in the micro, as it turned to the west, I noticed that there was the most glorious sunset so I expected another lovely day on Thursday. Then I went home and made biscotti for the staff desayuno tomorrow as a way of saying thank you to them. It took me until after midnight to get the job finished as I made enough to leave for the family.


 * Jueves, 28 de octubre**

Today is freezing! I´ve packed my winter woollies but I think I might have to get them out again. I didn´t realise it was so cold until I got to school because I decided to stay in bed a little longer this morning and get a micro to school in time for the first break which is called desayuno (breakfast). The staff have a roster to bring something for the desayuno everyday. Just by chance there was no-one signed up for Thursday. I had originally planned to make the biscotti for Friday, which is my last day, but Sylvia said Thursday would be better as there is something else planned for Friday.

I set out from home with the biscotti in a container and three platters, one for each table in the staffroom and got the first micro that came past after checking that it would stop near where I needed to be (by the big MacDonalds sign). However, It took a different route to the usual one I get and I got a bit worried so I quickly got out while I could still see the sign. I thought I would have a big walk ahead of me but, in fact, I was quite close to the road I needed to go down to get to the school and I arrived there in time for the break.

After the first interval I attended a physics class with 3 Medio (Year 12) and the teacher Jaime. Physics was something I could never get my head around at school but if Jaime had been my teacher I´m sure I would have coped quite well as he explained everything so clearly and in such a way that even I could understand the lesson prefectly - once we got past the formulae stage. It was all about the relationship between pressure and speed, based on Bernoulli´s Principles - for those in the know which is not something I claim to be! There were 32 students in the class and the were generally atttentive and asked a lot of questions and provided examples of the application of these principles from personal experience.

I spent the rest of the morning on the computer. Paola came in from the Colegio de las Raíces with a gigantic card for me made by the Pre-Kinder children. They all made smaller card that were attached to the big one telling me that they loved me and with pictures of the mountains from the story I did with them last week. I had hoped to get back to see them again but have run out of time. However, I intend to send them some resources from New Zealand and try to keep supporting them in any way I can..

I had a wonderful surprise when I woke up this morning. It had snowed during the night and there was snow on the foothills near the house. My first class was with Sylvia, a Year 7 class. the children had all made cards for me and each of them kissed me good-bye. At the desayuno we had sopaipillas to eat. This is a winter speciality but the Prinicpal provided them for my last day. Then I was farewelled by the Principal who gave me a school year book, a school banner and a school keyring. I gave the speech I had prepared. It was very emotional saying good-bye to everyone. I enjoyed being a part of the staff of Saint John's and will miss my good friends there.Before I left to get the micro back home to finish packing, I popped in to say good-bye to the 3 Basico class I had met with Joanna. and Sylvia's 4 Basico English class who were having a Music class when I went to see them. Their teacher said they would like to play me the piece they were working on. I thought they did very well and I videoed theri performance. This was a difficult good-bye as I had spent quite a bit of time with these children. They are kissed me good-bye and quite a few of us were teary. They kept saying, "No te vayas. No te vayas", as they hugged me. The Kiwi visit had made quite an impression on them and this was backed up by feed-back from the parents of these children at the monthlyhparent-teacher interviews Sylvia had with them. They soaked up everything I told them about NZ like little sponges.
 * Viernes, 29 de octubre**

When I got back home we had an early lunch so that Raul could take me and my luggage to pick up Sylvia from school at 2.30 to drive us to the bus station where we were to meet up with Vivi and Ana Luisa to go to Santiago. The others were going there for an AFS Chile Conference with volunteers from all over Chile. Because of the snowfall during the night there was fresh snow on the Andes making them look even more spectacular as we drove along parallel to them on the way to Santiago. Even the coastal range had snow on it. Apparently this is most unusual for this time of the year so I chose to think of it as my farewell present.

When we arrived in Santiago we took a taxi to the hotel where the conference was being held. It took a good hour to get there through the rush-hour traffic and, to make matters worse, the taxi driver ended up on the opposite side of the road to hotel and had to do a huge detour to get onto the right side as it was a multi-laned highway, I was whisked up to the conference room where a young NZ teacher was in the process of talking about her 3 month stay in Chile and then it was my turn. By this stage I had hardly any voice partly from all the emotin of the morning's farewells and partly from an allergy to something in Santiago - apparently there is a tree that causes a lot of allergies at this time of the year. I certainly hadn't expected to be called upon to address the conference but managed to do so in Spanish in such a way as to inspire people to congratulate me afterwards. Fortunately I had the speech I had prepared for the farewell at school still fresh in my mind and just built on that. When Sylvia and the others arrived in the conference room she was called upon to give her side of the experience and I introduced her as my "host Mum' despite the fact that she is quite a lot younger than me and then she referred to me as her "hija" which caused some merriment. I think people were quite impressed by the closeness that had developed between us during my stay. It certainly seemed longer than a month to me because I had been so involved in the life of the family and the school community.

I was invited to stay for cocktails and dinner so I went up to the room where Ana Luisa, Vivi and Sylvia were staying to put on some fresh clothes as all my luggage was there. The dinner was lovely and I had the pleasure of seeing the three from Rancagua get an award for being the most active chapter. After dinner it was time for me to say good-bye to them and Mauricio, the AFS taxi-driver I had had when I first arrived, came to take me to Ana Maria's son's appartment where I was to stay the night. Ana Maria was there to meet me and it was lovely to see her again. I met her son Daniel who had spent a year as an AFS student in Gore some years ago. Now he and his partner, Alejandra, are planning a return visit to NZ in April next year so I am looking forward to being able to show them around while they are in Auckland. Their live-wire son, Vicente, who is five was still up when I arrived. he is already learning English at his pre-school (Children start school at 6 in Chile). He's a real cutie and as bright as a button too.

In the morning Ana Maria came to pick me up to do some tiki-touring after breakfast. I was keen to go up the Cerro San Cristobal to get a view of the Andes with their fresh coat of snow. It was relatively clear because it had rained on Thursday night. The view was spectacular but the smog was already starting to build up again. By the end of the day the snow had started melting too. After that we drove around down-town Santiago which was interesting. You get such a different perspective of a city when you get shown around by a local. We went home for lunch in the fresh air on the patio under the awning that they had been setting up on the day I arrived in Chile. I enjoyed meeting up with Ana Maria's elderly parents again. They are such a distinguished-looking couple. After lunch I opted to have a siesta to prepare for the night flight back to NZ rather than do any more sight-seeing. Ana Maria took me out to the airport and, once my luggage had been checked through, we went up stairs for coffee and cake. Then it was time for moe good-byes. The flight was due to leave at 11.10 but there were a few hitches - problems with a door - and we were late leaving. However, this did not affect our arrival time as we arrived in Auckland earlier than expected.
 * Sábado, 30 de octubre**

The plane arrived at 3.45. There were only a few disembarking in Auckland so we were processed quite quickly and my LIA experience to Chile was over.
 * Lunes, 1 de noviembre**