Greetings from Chile, the End of the World! Many refer to the country as world's end because of its far southern reaching Patagonia Region.
Anyway, even if the world isn't going to end tomorrow, I hope everyone is enjoying time with friends and family as the holidays approach. The Franske Family arrives in Santiago on Sunday, I'm very excited!
This past weekend I traveled by bus to Los Molles Chile to get my PADI Open Water SCUBA Diver certification. I chose Los Molles mostly because their Santiago-based dive shop is very close to the ChACE apartment, but it turned out to be a real gem on the coast. It's a simple town fed by tourism: beach goers, kelp fishermen, and divers.
I took a very early bus Friday morning to get to Los Molles in time for the first dive at 10:30. I booked a cabin up on the hill that overlooks the ocean. It was a great call. I cooked dinner both nights, had a great view and easy access down to the beach, and had great conversations with the owners who have one son that works in the dive shop and another in Torres del Paine in Patagonia.
This is Watson, the very friendly yellow lab that lives on property at the cabins. We went on a hike together Friday afternoon in search of Puquén, a park my host mother told me not to miss. When I went with Watson all we found was a locked gate. It was a bummer, I would have loved to explore with him.
After checking in at the cabins, my English-speaking dive instructor Christian drove me around Los Molles and we wound up at the dive shop. PADI is known around the world for their certification courses. Considering my travel plans for January, becoming certified was a no-brainer. I'm going to have the incredible opportunity to dive in some of the most beautiful waters of the world and I wouldn't miss it.
Here I am with Christian coming out of the water in full gear. I learned so much this weekend about buoyancy, pressure, and safe diving practices. Thanks so much to Christian and the crew at Los Molles for everything!
After each dive I walked the beautiful beach. There are probably 15 boats lined up waiting to take tourists fishing or diving as long as the conditions are favorable. After launching and beaching our dive boat I can say it's quite the process to get it past the surf and back in.
If you look at the map I linked above, you can see that the beach is a semi-circle facing South. This is a view from the Eastern most end of the beach. We actually dove from the other side, which meant we launched our boat technically heading East--in a country where the entire coast faces West. Cool. The waves here could get pretty intense at high tide. There were a handful of surfers and body boarders trying to make something of them but generally to no avail.
The diving was fantastic, but the real gem of Los Molles in my opinion is Puquén. After being disappointed Friday afternoon, the Cabin owners gave me a back way in. I eventually found it and wandered through a very hilly prairie trying to find the coast. The sun was already pretty low and I wanted to see it set over the water. I eventually found a path that led to a collection of cliffs. It led to an incline that climbed a cliff and the sun shot out from behind a rock.
This is what I saw. I think it has a great shot of being the best sunset I've ever seen. When I arrived there were strange sounds coming from the rock in this picture. I figured they were birds, but after a few minutes I saw the animals moving around. There must have been 150 sea lions watching the sunset with me, and the top ridge was lined with penguins. Incredible. Even more amazing to me, I was the only person witnessing this beautiful gift from God. There wasn't another soul in sight.
This sunset brought back lots of great memories. There are 5 distinct sunsets, in no particular order, that come to mind. The first is really just a location. My dad grew up in Waverly Minnesotaon the southern shore of the lake. I have so many great memories there: learning to water ski, picnics with family and friends, learning to wake board...and I love sitting on the dock watching the sun fall behind the trees. Second was driving across the Howard Franklin Bridge in Florida last year. There was one particular time that I was driving West across the bridge. When I started across the sun was completely up, and by the time I was across it was completely down, dropped below the St. Petersburg Skyline.
Third was my on first cruise through the Caribbean. We took a catamaran as a shore excursion and watched the sun drop on the water as we sailed East. Fourth was this past summer at a retreat on Lake Michigan. We had mass facing the lake and the sunset was coordinated with the consecration and Eucharist itself. It was incredible. Fifth was this moment at Puquén. I will never forget it. The combination of crashing waves, roaring sea lions, and beautiful horizon were perfectly orchestrated.
I went back to Puquén on Saturday and again on Sunday. I wanted to explore more along the coast. It was worth it. Check out the location of this house. Whoever built it knew what they were doing. I couldn't capture it with a picture but the view on the other side of this gorge is ridiculous. Waves slamming against rocks jutting up out of the sea. There were times that those rocks on the left were completely covered.
The only guy I ran into on Saturday was carrying bundles of kelp up from the water. Apparently they sell them to make dermatology products.
I probably saw 6 or 7 piles like this one along the coastline.
Here's the sunset from Saturday. Another stunner. It wasn't especially windy, but there was a thermal coming over the ridge so there were birds soaring all around me, within 10 feet I'd say. Such a naturally beautiful place.
On Sunday I had a few hours to kill before my bus came so I just sat on one of the terraced rocks in my favorite spot along the coast and watched the tide rise with giant waves crashing into shore. I played around with the high speed shutter on my camera until I got some sweet shots like this one. So beautiful.
Time for this week's travel hint. On Monday morning I went to pick up my visa for the only country in South America that requires US citizens to have one. That will come in handy for the second half of February!
Considering the world is supposed to end today, my namesake has made me do a lot of thinking. Between trying to collect gopher wood and converting from cubits to metric to imperial units in preparation for a biblical flood, I figure this is a great time to mention how much I love my family and friends. I'm so excited for my family to arrive on Sunday and to share all these incredible experiences with them!
Season's Greetings from Chile! I hear Minnesota has gotten some snow. I can imagine fire places, hot chocolate, sledding, and snow angels as you all prepare for Christmas. Here things are a little different. We approach 90 degrees every day, and this past weekend we went to the coast, a beautiful town called Zapallar, for the annual ChACE retreat.
I suppose our accommodations were ok. We had a giant house with ample bed space for all 15 of us with a roof that had a jacuzzi and a view of the ocean. The beach was a short walk down a path lined by palm trees. Wow.
But our home base for all retreat activities was even more spectacular. Owned by a friend of St. George, this family has a plot of land on one of the most beautiful seafronts I've ever seen.
They have an infinity pool so you can sit and stare out at the ocean with no visual break between the pool and the sea.
The retreat was structured around an Advent theme, asking why God has brought us here and what He wants us to do with our time in Chile. Mostly though we had lots of free time to listen to the waves crash against the shore and reflect.
This porch is where we had mass the first night and a few discussions throughout the weekend. I love having mass and being able to look out at the ocean. I find God most in nature, especially in fire and water. This venue was unbelievable.
Friday afternoon we went for a walk on a path that has been constructed to connect a series of beaches along the Zapallar coast. It's a little tough to tell here, but it's quite an engineering feat. The path is stone, and it's built up with walls and bridges for maybe 5 miles. The coast is particularly rocky so the path is necessary to walk the shore.
I have never been in a place where the waves truly crash against the rocks in such dramatic fashion. The water would sometimes splash upwards of 20 feet straight up. It was mesmerizing, and I spent several hours over the weekend just staring at the waves and letting my mind wander.
Here's most of the crew above a narrow and very turbulent gorge along the path. A great group of people!
Another animal I've never seen in the wild before: penguins! There was an island just off shore that was full of them. I had no idea they lived this far north but there were TONS hanging out on this rock. Pretty cool!
Here I am with the penguin island in the background. Apart from the mornings and evenings which were brisk I didn't change out of this outfit. I was in and out of the ocean, pool, and sun for 3 days. No complaints.
Sunset Day 1 with a glass of wine. Not bad.
When we arrived, Fr. Lou's first comment was "Gosh, don't you guys think you could have chosen a beautiful country?"
Sunset Day 2. I spent maybe 3 hours on Saturday afternoon in this kayak. The cove was delightfully turbulent which made navigating the narrow channels between the rocks a challenge. At the same time heading out to open water and bobbing up and down was very peaceful.
Sunday morning we had mass and headed back to Santiago. I ran errands in town Monday morning and have since been back at school planning for next year.
Lots of exciting things coming up! I have most of my travel plans set for the summer and I'm going to start dropping hints as to where I'm headed. Guesses are welcome! The hint this week will be my plans for the coming weekend. I'll be heading to Los Molles, a little ways north of Zapallar, to complete my PADI SCUBA diving certification. I'll be going alone, and I'm excited to have a relaxing weekend away from everything--a true retreat--with some spectacular diving mixed in. The SCUBA certification will definitely be put to good use in January. Watch for a recap of my first SCUBA experience next week!
Hey everyone! I'm a little overdue on my weekly promise but don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you.
Busy week! Last Saturday the 24th was a great day for relaxation. There was lots of sun and it was quite warm so we invited the neighbors over and had an asado. Here are our chefs!
And, of course, the meat. I'm learning more and more about which meats and seasonings I prefer at asados. This will be useful for when the Franske clan comes down for our asado on Christmas Eve.
Transportation from my host family's house in Chicureo down to Santiago can be a little tricky but I've stayed at the ChACE apartment in Las Condes at least one night every weekend since I've been in Chile. The occasion last Saturday was the ND/USC game. Ryan's host family lent us a projector so we went to the back yard and watched al fresco.
I was very much reminded of our time in the Duncan Hall "penthouse" at Notre Dame when we would have game watches in our room with our projector. It was a great way to close out the Irish regular season.
But, of course, I'm sure you all know we won. Which means Notre Dame will be playing in the BCS National Championship on January 7th! I'll be on a mission trip from the 4th to the 11th so whether or not I'll get to see the game is a matter of internet connection but I'm crossing my fingers.
Alabama won the SEC championship against Georgia on Saturday the 1st which means it will be ND/Alabama for the big game. This game is going to make MONEY. Face value is $1600 a ticket. I entered the student lottery for a friend. Limit of 2 tickets, $350 a piece. As the Minnesotans say, "oofda". Or however else you want to spell it.
Something I've been planning for over a month, and have mentioned previously, is that Cirque du Soleil is currently in Santiago. Every Cirque show I've seen has been fantastic and I couldn't miss the opportunity to attend in Chile! A group of 13 of us went and it was fantastic. If you ever have the opportunity so see a show I highly recommend it. We were in the nosebleeds (partial vision) but everyone still had a great time.
Trying something new here...imbedding videos. These were 3 of the favorite acts. Enjoy!
As promised, my haircut! It's so nice to feel lighter as the temperatures rise here. Approaching 90 on a daily basis now (except for last week when it was cloudy and cool for a couple days).
It's still odd for me to think that the students have pretty much finished their academic year. In December. Weird. Anyway, the school has been riddled with end-of-the-year parties and I'm invited to most. I have to monitor my cake intake. Side note: cake in Chile is not good. Nobody's specific cake, just the style of the cake in general. It's spongy and kind of tasteless. I'm hoping to make Fr. Mark Thesing's chocolate sheet cake soon to show them what's up.
Also going on all of November was Mes de Maria, or month of Mary. They take it very seriously here. In the states our month devoted to Mary is May and I still don't know why they chose November here, but it was lovely. They had a special prayer to Mary with student songs and presentations every morning. What a great lead-in to Advent!
Thanks to my wonderful mom back in Minnesota I've had the ingredients for proper Puppy Chow in my room for a while now. My host mother, Lorena, had her birthday on Friday the 30th so I decided it was time to make a batch. I think Amelia would have been content to eat all the melted chocolate/peanut butter mixture by itself.
Still having trouble finding grocery size paper bags in South America. So this time it was another gift bag. The favorite (and most "raro," or strange) part for my host siblings was shaking the bag. Best batch of puppy chow I've made thanks to the rice chex and semisweet Tollhouse chocolate chips. Thanks mom!
We once again celebrated the Chilean tradition of birthdays at breakfast. My puppy chow was accompanied by a delicious fruit torte and Lore was muy regalada (given many gifts) by all. I took the liberty to make an "elf youself" of the family. It was a hit. By the way, that link will only work until the 1st of January but if anyone would like to download it for a dollar feel free.
And here's the birthday girl! Thanks again to my host family for everything they've done to make me feel welcome in Chile. They're fantastic!
Friday night we had family and friends over for sushi and good conversation. I was beat and went to bed at midnight.
Speaking of being beat, things have picked up quickly at school. The head of the English department, Alicia, is in Brazil with the 10th graders for a week and a half so I'm in charge of her classes and most importantly giving and grading the English finals for her classes. This may seem like a big undertaking for someone that hasn't taught the classes all year but I'm thrilled to have purposeful work! I've felt kind of like a useless lump at school for a while and it's nice to have some responsibility.
So. Now that I've seen how some of the grading works, I have some issues with it. This may get a bit mathy but try to stay with me. Everything in Chile is on a scale of 7, with a 7 being 100% and a 1 being 0%. 4 and above is called an "azul" (blue) and below 4 is "rojo" (red). Easy enough, right? Just take the percentage and multiply by 7? Not quite. Having 1 as the lowest would make things a little trickier, but to make matters worse, a 4 is not 50%. It's a fixed 60%. This means that the grades from 1 to 4 follow a linear scale from 0% to 60% and 4 to 7 follow a different linear scale from 60% to 100%. If I've lost you don't worry, it just means that there is more grade inflation above 60%. Think of it this way: one point between 0 and 60 is worth less than a point between 60 and 100, so if you're a good student it is easier for you to be great than it is for a failing student to pass. Sneaky grade inflation.
I'll leave you with some irony. They asked me to put together the English Department portion of the yearbook. I've been here for 2 months and have the artistic flare of a cinder block. I finished the captions and pictures on Friday. More on this to come. Happy December!
