|
GSRind
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Gil
Birthday: 10/16/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: Exploring new places, Guitar, Frisbee, Math/Physics/Engineering
Expertise: Making an ass of myself?
Occupation: Student in Mech Eng
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/19/2006
|
|
| Back from the dead... or missing....Hey,
Sorry that it's been a while since I've updated. I really haven't had too much time to go on a computer and I had way too much stuff to write in the time I had. Unfortunately, that means that now there's too much stuff for me to write no matter how much time I have, so I'll just write some of the highlights (In no specific order whatsoever):
We Tripantu:
I went to a We Tripantu (Mapuche new year) celebrations, which is basically the biggest holiday for them of the year, with Luis (the English teacher in Chol Chol, Mapuche town). It was interesting to be a part of it, even though it was basically was just walking around in a circle in a giant group around decorated tree branches. The chief of the area chants for a long time, then spits alcohol at the branches, then climbs them blindfolded where he "enters the land of spirits" and talks to them for a few minutes. He tells the fortunes for the coming year (unfortunately in Mapudomun, which I still haven't quite gotten the hang of). Then he gets down and everyone dances and eats. The entire ceremony took about 5 hours (about 2-3 of them were the walking around in a circle part). It was a lot of fun though because it was very authentic and it was the first native ceremony I've ever gone to.
Las Cascadas:
I visited Las Cascadas, about 5 hours south of Temuco, where Mariana Elwin (Ex pres' daughter) has a cabin that we were invited to. It was me, Mat, Jesse, Luna, a few stray bulls, and three peacocks. That's right... there were three peacocks living there. I made the important discovery that peacocks like Cheerios (will one day save the world, don't ask how). It was an absolutely beautiful cabin almost completely secluded in nature, right on a giant lake. We played Trivial Pursuit in Spanish from the 80's (I highly recomend) while drinking dulce de leche liquor. Me and Jesse wanted to go canopying, but the guy that does it wasn't where he was supposed to be so we decided to leave. As we were headed back to the cabin, another guy caught up with us and asked us if we wanted to go repelling for about 30 dollars less (about $10 US). So we climbed up a really steep rocky wet slippery path with no safety gear (a recommended activity to do with you children), and then jumped off a cliff about 200 feet clinging onto a rope for dear life. It was actually really amazing, with a great view of a forest, the lake, and the waterfall that was right beside us as we went down. Next time though, I should make sure I'm wearing a diaper (and bring an umbrella... Jesse went after me and wasn't wearing a diaper either :) ).
Canada Day:
We celebrated it about a week late, but it went off pretty nicely. It was a great time to give away all of the extra Canada stuff that I brought down. Yes, that includes the Canada Umbrella-hats which everyone loves! (I think I started a new trend in Temuco.) There were games and stands and students singing the national anthems of the US and Canada. Impressively, the girl that sang the US anthem was taught it the day before and sounded amazing even though she knows about 2 words in English. Those kids rock. They are also obsessed with candy.... and stickers.
Farewell from school:
On the last day of school, all of the classes had big parties to celebrate the coming vacation and, needless to say, me and Mat were welcome to all of them (I can't remember the last time I had eaten so much cake... or sugar... and that includes that time when I was 8 that I got really sick and all I wanted to eat were those little mediciny thingies that were actually just a bunch of little sugar balls in a tube). Wow that was a long sentence... Anyways, the next day we came in for a big end of the semester lunch, and the principal made a speech, and the school gave us a couple Mapuche instruments with Temuco and Escuela Emprender 2006 engraved on them. It was really nice. And Gilda (my English teacher) gave us each a giant frame with pictures of all of our classes and random notes from the children. Also, very sweet... and very big. A couple of kids also came into school that day and gave us little gifts that they made as goodbye presents which was unbelievably sweet and made me very happy. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone that we had been around for the past three months, but I think that it probably went as well as it could have.
Buenos Aires:
Me and Mat decided after school ended to bus over to Buenos Aires, where we spent a little less than a week. It's a huge huge city and after exploring for about 6 or 7 hours almost every day, we explored probably about 1/10 of the city (literally). We found a bunch of really cool antique stores where we bought various little knick knacks (I got a couple newspapers from 1899, one of which has pics of BA). We also saw a bunch of cool museums, including one that had interesting, but disturbing, paintings related to children of the disappeared and children of the guerrillas. While we were in BA, we also met up with my friend from high school Nick Burka, who's going on exchange there for a semester, so it was cool to see him. I also played soccer with some people from my hostel, where I was the only Gringo... my team lost.... 12-0.
Towards the end of our trip, we decided to go to Mar Del Plata for a day or two to go to the beach (about 5 hrs south of BA).. We got there thursday afternoon and needed to be back in Stgo on Sunday morning so mat could pack before he left on Monday. First thing we did when we got there was go to the bus station and get our ticket back... but the pass from Mendoza to Stgo was closed due to snow, so we looked for a ticket through the next most popular route, Bariloche. All the tickets were sold out. So after about an hour of wandering, we found a pass that goes to Temuco.... the guy didn't have any buses from Mar del Plata, but he did from Neuquen (middle of Argentina). So after about another hour of wandering, we got four tickets from four companies in four different types of buses taking 40 hours (I now officially hate the number four) in two days to get back to Santiago by sunday morning. All fully complete with a layaway wherelse but in Temuco! On the upside, I got to see Pirates of the Carribean II and I had my one makeout for the summer in a hostal in Mar del Plata (lip rings are fun to play with :) ).
Now I'm in Vicuña slowly making my way up to Cuzco, only to fly back to Santiago and say bye bye to South America. It's a really beautiful desert town, and I've been trying to go to an observatory to see the south american stars which is close to here, but unfortunately it's been too cloudy the past couple days... if it's not clear tomorrow, I'm gonna have to miss it :(. Anyways, that's my quick catch up, lemme know if there's anything else you wanna know or, as always, any thoughts you have.
Also, call me because I'm lonely and travelling by myself. 568-928-1967
-Gil | | |
| Picpers!Hey,
Sorry for the fake entry, but I posted up pics from my first month here... Enjoy!
photos.yahoo.com/Pomegraniteisgood
-Gil
| | |
| Markets, ballets, and fuzzy chinchillas!Hello all!
Welcome back. So lets get started shall we?
On Thursday, the student government had a meeting with the prinicipal and the directors of the school to see what to do to show their support for the strike that's going on. They basically have two options: A 'paro' is basically where classes stop for the day but everyone still comes to school and we do activities in support of the strike. A 'Toma' is a takeover of the school by the students where they lock themselves inside by themselves, thereby disrubting all school progress. They decided that a paro would be better because otherwise they would have to come up with the money to feed the students, ways to keep them warm at night, and not to mention that it's a school for K-8. There are a lot of high schools that are doing tomas right now, but most of these kids haven't even gone through puberty yet.
On Friday, the pres of the student government announced their decision that there would be a paro on monday, and the students got really pissed because they wanted a toma, even though they hadn't discussed what it would entail. So basically, we had an early paro on friday because all of the students refused to learn anything. I had only one class where the kids actually semi-listened. At one point, they surrounded the president of the SG and were yelling at him, and he was crying trying to defend himself and explain that he came to that decision with the administration. It was a pretty intense day.
That night, our good friends in the project Jesse and Luna came up to visit us here. On friday night, we were supposed to go to Jeanette's (School director) birthday party, but it was cancelled. Fortunately, that same day, the random english speaking girls on exchange decided to contact us and see if we wanted to go to a bar, so me, Mat, Luna, and Jesse went over there instead and we had a few drinks. The bar was called Angels and Demons, and it had some pretty good drinks, including one that was mango juice and champagne. For less than 4 bucks. It was dam good. I also happened to hear that night that some of the older kids took over the school and were occupying it. One of the teachers went there with the police to get them out.
On Saturday, Mat, Jesse, Luna, and I explored downtown Temuco going to a bunch of different markets and getting gifts and such for all our lovely friends. We also went to a pet shop in the mall and I saw a bunch of 'exotic' animals (at least for me). There were invisible fish, and porcupines and chinchillas! I got to pick up the chinchilla and pet it. When Jesse pet it she said "Wow. This is so soft. I want gloves made out of this." At which point I banned Jesse from ever getting near a cute fuzzy animal ever again.
On Sunday, we climbed up Cerro Ñielol and collected the national flower on the way up (I have one drying in my room as we speak).
On Monday, I got to school to find out that for the paro, the students decided to just not show up to school, so I left after about 15 minutes and me and Mat went downtown. We found some nice books of about 30 or 40 songs each by famous singers (I got the beatles, Maná, and Juanes), so I'm gonna have fun with learning some new songs for guitar. I saw a few of the kids downtown, but apparently none of the kids from the school were doing anything active for the strike, so it was practically just a random day off of school.
Tuesday night, we were invited to go see a ballet with our host family. It was a dedication to one of Pablo Neruda's poems (famous Chilean writer) about birds. It was really interesting to see how they portrayed the different aspects of birds and how they showed the grace of ballet. It was the first one that I had ever been to, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Unfortunately though, I couldn't follow along with the plot very well, and it frustrated me that I didn't get the story cause I really wanted to know how everything tied together. Oh yea, and they were all naked :).
Today, I was talking with my English teacher (Gilda) and she basically said that she doesn't understand how we can be much of a help for them except for our Academias (where we make up our own curriculums) because we don't have any education backgrounds. I've been thinkin a lot bout that and how I can make myself more useful at the school because I really want to help them and have them gain as much of a positive experience out of this as I am. Later on, I came here to the good ol' internet café and in the process of writing this fell out of my chair and had a bunch of kids laugh at me for about 10 minutes straight.
Oh, one more thing.... the 14 year old 8th grader that got pregnant... the father is 27. Creepy, eh?
-Gil
| | |
| Strike One! And more!!How've ya been? Haven't talked in over a week, and for this I apologize.... But what would one of my entries be if not ridiculously long? Anyways, last monday I had my first session of 'Academia', which I basically teach by myself to 16 kids whatever the hell I want.... mwahhahahaha corruption jackpot  . On Mondays, I have the Academia with 5º and 6º grades, but only four kids showed up :( Apparently they have to get letters approved by their parents. The word of the day is Adivinar - To Guess, which I forgot about 10 times through the duration of an hour while we were in the Academia. We played a game called 'two truths and a lie', where basically you tell two things about you that are true and one that isn't and everyone else has to guess which one is the lie. The kids didn't really understand it and ended up making their lies something to the effect of "I'm 4 meters tall". It made it a little easy to guess which one was the lie... But nevertheless, I gave out stickers to someone each time they guessed right and luckily only one winner prevailed, who ended up winning a beautiful deck of canadian cards (estimated value $1 CAD). I thought the kids weren't really into it, but Gilda (english teacher) told me afterwards that one of the kids was so excited about the stickers and had a really good time, so that made me feel better. Apparently stickers here are really really expensive, so no one ever uses them, so I stocked up before I came. I was a little uncomfortable because I couldn't communicate too well with them, but we managed thanks to my handy english-spanish dictionary!
Skipping ahead to Wednesday, we had a day off because of a teacher workshop day! So of course, what else could we do except go to another school? We heard that there were about 10 students from Georgetown, in the states, that were visiting the school that Sandra (our neighbor and daughter of the person we're staying with)'s kids go to. I got really excited cause we could reminisce about D.C. and the such, but then was crushed to find out that they were actually from Georgetown College in Kentucky and were in the school doing missionary work. After a couple off-color Kentucky Fried Chicken jokes between me and Mat, we decided to go meet them anyways. We got to the school, Bautista, and I personally was amazed by the sheer size of it. It made Emprender seem like a speck that was made back in the stone ages. Everything was really clean, really new, and well furnished. The buildings (there were two attached through a big courtyard) were each probably about as big as a high school. Anyways, we came inside and went around to a few different classes with one of the english teachers who was really nice.
The kids in 7º and 8º actually knew a lot of english... it was weird not to have to translate everything right after I said it. In one of the classrooms, the kids asked us for our E-mails and MSNs, and a few of them have added me and started talking to me. It's pretty exciting :) I'm friends with 4º graders again! In another one of the classes, it happened to be religion class. And so of course the teacher asks us how often we go to church.... I, being Jewish, and Mat, not particularly practicing, hesitate for about a minute trying to figure out what to say. Finally we just say no and the teacher looks disappointed and quickly changes the subject. In one of the older classes, one girl asked several questions about Mat's girlfriend (because obviously the first question they ask is if we have girlfriends). It was funny to see his awkward responses. Hehehe I'm a horrible person, but you all know that already. We also met the Kentuckians, but they weren't too excited to see us and it was more just a "hi, we're from canada!", then them saying (In a thick Kentucky accent) "hi.... Ok we're gonna go eat now." But so it goes. Overall, it was a pretty interesting experience, and although it has a much prettier setting, I find Emprender a lot more interesting and comfortable (or maybe that's just the jew in me talking).
Now skipping ahead to friday, I had my second Academia with the 7º and 8º graders, also 16 people, although only 10 showed up. I figured I'd do the same game, but as I was about to introduce it, I decided 'what the hell, I'll put pictionary up there too.' Pictionary won unanimously... So the next thing that went through my head: "crap crap crap..... time to make up a game, some rules, some orginization, and some words to draw..." Fortunately, it all ended up working out pretty well, and the kids really got into it. They were in teams of 3-4 people and needed to guess what the word is in english, so each group got one dictionary. It was a good way to have them practice their vocabulary (and see how they draw the other teachers at school... hehehehe). In fact, it worked so well that I did the same thing with my 5º and 6º graders yesterday. So that was exciting. Interesting though, the only one that no one was able to get was "World Cup 2006"...
The next day, Saturday, Jeanette (one of the school directors) invited us to lunch because her parents were coming over for her nephew's 2nd birthday. Mat made a really good 4 layer nacho dip and Jeanette's mom made a really good meat dish with mushroom sauce. One thing about lunches like that though... it took about 5 hours from the time that we got there for lunch to officially be over. It was alot of fun, but I didn't realize how long it would be. Right afterwards, we went next door to her brother's house for her nephew's birthday party. He was adorable and immediately destroyed is birthday cake by testing out the texture with his hands (multiple, multiple times). It was fun to watch though. Afterwards he got some cake on his face and started crying. To cheer him up, they played his favorite kind of music - Hip hop. This kid is gonna grow up to be such a kickass badass :)
On sunday, Vlad (the cool P.E. teacher that spent some time in Ireland, so he was able to speak some broken english) invited us to watch a football (soccer) game for a team that he was coaching, that was in the championship game. After we got there, we had a really hard time finding which gate was ours, so we decided to just follow where everyone else was going. Turns out we went to the one gate that had people padding everyone down, and I learned, to my discontent, that swiss army knives are apparently prohibited in Chile. The policeman confiscated my knife, which has lots of sentimental value for those of you who know it, but he was able to notice that I was a foreigner (dam... he saw right through my disguise!), and promised to give it back after the game. I was really worried about it, and I didn't get to enjoy the game as much because of it. It was a pretty good game though, and Temuco (Vlad's team) won 3-0! WOOO!!!! There was a section for the dedicated fans, and they didn't stop screaming for the entire game... talk about dedication. After the game, I went straight back to the gate and luckily the guy gave me my knife back, so I was really glad bout that. It's sad but it made it a good night. "It's a good night in Chile when you leave with everything you came in with" -Me. Hehehe.
I'm gonna go ahead and skip one more time to today. In one of my classes, we watched the movie 'Billy Elliot', which I thought would be interesting to see how the kids would react to it. The reason being that the movie, for those that haven't seen it, is about a boy that wants to do ballet. Also, one of his close friends is gay and cross dresses. All of which are very taboo topics in Chile, as well as another that I'll talk about in a sec. Unfortunately, the kids were in 6º grade and didn't see the meaningful impact of the movie as much as a boy in a tutu, so it didn't get me very far with the mindset of Chile on these topics. Another topic that is very taboo in Chile is the idea of abortions (obviously). The reason I say this is because there is an 8º grader that found out a couple weeks ago that she's pregnant. I think I forgot to mention that in my last posts. To add more to it, she's in the special education program with school Sandra. Now because there's no abortion, she's 13 years old and she is going to have a baby in about 7 months. Also, at this point she wants to keep it. I was thinking bout this a lot and it bothered me because there really isn't any good solution for this problem in my mind. I don't want any lives to get ruined over it, hers or the baby's, especially since there are so many lives dangling in that school anyways. If you have any wise words bout this topic, feel free to leave comments or email me. I'm interested to hear what other people have to say bout it.
Finally, after school today, there was a meeting for the teachers to discuss a student strike that's been going on throughout Chile. I didn't go to it because I was exhausted and didn't have the energy to try and translate everything they were saying, but Mat filled me in a little on what he understood. Basically this is a very meaningful strike because it's one of the first times in the past 15 years since Pinochet that there has been an organized strike and democracy being used to peacefully challenge the government. The students are very organized and have reasonable demands. Basically, there are a lot of students that can't afford to pay the fee to take the exam necessary to go to university in Chile. Without being able to go to university, they won't be able to get jobs they can support themselves with very easily, and they won't be able to move out of poverty. Catch 22. Also, there are a lot of students that can't afford to pay for public transportation to get to school, and want the buses to be free for students. There may be other things, but those are the two that I heard. The majority of teachers are behind the students on this strike, which makes it even more difficult for the government to argue. The government apparently hasn't made any comments related to the demands or the strike yet. A lot of people think that the new president's government isn't a very solid one, and so I personally think that one thing that's keeping the government from responding positively to this strike is that it might make them seem vulnerable. A lot of other unions or companies could use this strike as a test to see how easily the government will give in to demands, and then take advantage of it. If you have any useful or enlightening comments bout this one, lemme know also.
Ooo! Also apparently, someone saw me in a McGill Parent's magazine, and I wanna know more bout my knew fame. So if anyone knows anything bout that, lemme know!
Til next time!
-Gil
P.S. I'm listening to a Spanish, techno version of gangster's paradise right now. It's hilarious.
P.P.S. Here's a joke, originally told to me by my cousin Muriel in NY:
KFC was losing a lot of business and they needed to come up with a new marketing technique. Everyone was at a loss at what to do, and then it hit them. What's the most read book in the world? The Bible. If they could get some advertisement in there, then people are sure to start buying again! So they call up the Vattican, and start their negotiations. They offer them $1,000,000 to change the verse in the bible and the prayer "give us today our daily bread" to "give us today our daily chicken". The Church is absolutely offended by this and says a big NO! KFC, desperate, says 'ok, ok how about $50,000,000 dollars to change the verse from "give us today our daily bread" to "give us today our daily chicken". The Church starts to think about this, but quickly decides that they won't be bought out and decline again. KFC, sensing the hesitation befor their answer ups their offer to $100,000,000. Finally, the Church accepts the offer. They hold a big meeting, and the Pope says "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we just recieved a $100,000,000 donation from KFC to change the verse 'give us today our daily bread' to 'give us today our daily chicken'. The bad news is that we lost the WonderBread account."
(I apologize if anyone is offended by this joke, it's just for laughs :) Also, it's appropriate for my entry )
| | |
| Double entries!Hey guys!
For those of you who prefer Livejournal to xanga, I've posted everything there too.... Now more people should comment... ehem ehem... especially certain people that complained that i didn't use livejournal to begin with.... ehem ehem.
gsrind.livejournal.com
-Gil
P.S. I'll post up another update soon, but I gotta go run to X3 now!
| | |
|
