A Spanish evaluation and a city wide frustration

I don't even know where to start.  So much has been going on since my last post.

Thankfully, I now have some cards to make public transportation a bit cheaper.  Up till now I have spent most of my money on transportation and food, transportation being the biggest one.  I live in a little sector called Chorrillos which is kinda far away from everything.  I purchased a metro card which cut the bill someone around a third as much.  I also was given a student card for the buses to get about half off.  That has been helping a lot.

School has been a lot harder as of late.  We are getting a lot more homework than the beginning of the year.  Tomorrow I am going to give my second presentation in the last couple weeks, but as soon as I get done I will have to prepare another for another class.  So as far as homework goes I'm staying busy there!

The education strikes:
I haven't heard much more about the education situation since the last time I posted.  They are still fighting for what they want of course, but they haven't had a big organized rally since he beginning of the month.

Basketball:
Basketball is going well.  We have played three official games now - with the last one pulling in a win.  I'm having a great time being on the team.  The guys are great, we work hard, and we're not half bad.  This particular week coming up is going to be a bit crazy - we have a game tomorrow (Monday), practice on Wednesday, and games on both Thursday and Friday.  That is a bit odd because up till now we have only had either games or practice on Monday and Wednesday.  It'll be fun to play so many games in one week.  I sprained my ankle during the last game, so wish me luck!

The Spanish:
How has the Spanish been going?  Well.  It's getting better... I think.  It's hard to tell right now, I don't honestly feel like it's getting all that much better.  Okay, I shouldn't say that - I can definitely understand much much better than when I arrived.  I don't have any problems understands my host family anymore, and the only problems in communication we ever have are with words that I simply don't know.  But in general, I don't feel like I can speak much better than when I got here... but apparently my family thinks I talk faster.  Classes are easier to understand as well - which is great because my grade has room for improvement!

As far as the ease of understanding goes... I still have to concentrate a lot to catch any Spanish that is spoken around me.  I do have an exciting accomplishment, however.  I was taking public transportation the other day and was pleasantly surprised by a very nice woman in the colectivo as well as a very nice driver.  I chatted with both of them till we departed, and didn't once have to use the word "what?".  I am very proud to be able to say that because the Spanish here, as I have said before, is the worst Spanish in the world.  It's badly spoken, spoken incredibly fast, and they don't pronounce the whole word in many situations.  To be able to understand a full conversation with strangers is something I was very pleased about.

At the same time, however, like I said I don't feel like I'm improving at extraordinary rates.  It is still incredibly frustrating speaking with someone my own age... it's as if I don't speak the language.  When they say Chilean Spanish is fast... man oh man, it is fast.

So last night Chile experienced a black out.  You might be a little confused that I said "Chile" and not Viña del Mar... but no, I mean Chile had a blackout.  I believe it was 70% of the country (almost 10 million people) that lost power.  Everything went out at the same time, country wide.  I live on the 15th floor of an apartment building that is already on a hill that takes 10 minutes to climb... we could see everything.  We could also see in the distance, Con Con, a neighboring city that appeared to be on fire.  It was over a hill so we couldn't actually see, but there were very obvious flames shooting into the air. That actually turned out to be the reason for the blackout.  There was a certain power plant in that city that was experiencing failures, failures that caused huge streams of fire to shoot out of their exhaust pipes.

The whole ordeal was actually quite frightening.  As I found out later I was pretty much the only person who was worried... but the reason I was worried wasn't for myself obviously, I was in my apartment.  I was worried for my fellow students who could have been on the streets when this happened, or stuck in an elevator somewhere, or even in Con Con where we thought there was a raging fire.  After I made sure my friends who were near me were fine, my family and I just sat on my mom's bed with our laptops for light... looking out at the incredibly dark city.  It was a ghost town - something my family said they had never seen before.

All in all things are still going well.  I'm definitely experiencing some downs as well as highs now.... the downs being mainly caused by transportation speeds, food prices, the level of homework, and issues fitting a gringo (that's me) into Chile as a citizen.  But as I said, I'm in Chile.  I will be back in Minnesota long before I know it so I need to make the best of it.  As long as I leave with a much higher Spanish fluency level I will be happy.  But on that note, I'm missing college at St. John's, missing the buffet everyday, but most of all missing family and friends.... so write me!

Hope you are all doin' well.
Daniel

Education stress, and basketball success

I don't know how many of you have heard about the education strikes that are happening in Chile right now, but it's pretty big news here in Viña.  Basically, a great amount of people in Chile are striking because they want free education on all levels - elementary, middle, high, and college.  They are saying that the people have a right to education and the government should pay for it.  Right now, all schooling besides college is required, but there is no help paying for it.  If your family has money, you will most likely go to a private school to receive a widely known better education.  If you don't have money, you will attend a public school which is probably vastly lacking of the tools necessary to ensure a solid education.  As I said, there is no help paying for even elementary, middle, and high school.  Although they don't even come close to the prices that college does, it can obviously be a problem for some families.  

I agree that something should be done to help people who need help on an educational level less than college, for sure.  I am slightly bothered though by the thought that college should be free to all.  That would cause countless problems that I don't wish to go into now.  I believe there should be help for those who wish to gain a higher education, but there should by no means be free education for all without second thought.  

All opinions aside, there's a lot of "ruckus" going on because of this.  It's actually quite violent at times.  A little more than a week ago, on Wednesday and Thursday there was a very big strike in the streets of Santiago and Viña del Mar (where I am living).  Once the sun set, the trouble makers and die-hards came out... and the students attending colleges or schools that weren't closed went and stayed indoors.  There were people with guns, bats, and all sorts of weapons in the streets. The police had quite a time dealing with it.  They used fire trucks and sprayed the masses with water.  They rounded up the most routy of the strikers with plastic shields and their little bat things, I'm not sure what their proper name is.  But the most stunning of events that occurred was the release of tear gas.  I couldn't believe that it was so serious that they not only hosed people down, but actually threw tear gas grenades.  As one of the girls on my trip said: note to the not to wise:  Tear gas ligers.

On a lesser note, I'd like to talk about basketball.  As some of you may know, I have a really crappy left knee.  I have had two surgeries in just over a year, and until recently I thought I was done with rigorous physical activity for the rest of my life.  While planning last year at college for my stay in Chile, I planned with the other guy on the trip, Gabe, to play basketball.  Those plans changed as my knee situation grew worse.  When I got here, I had accepted that I wouldn't be able to play basketball that I had previously planned.  I decided to watch a practice anyway.  Knowing that it would be hard to watch my favorite sport being played without me, I brought my clothes and gear along so I could shoot on the sidelines.  Basically, I tried playing anyway.  I had stretched my knee out for the past half hour, and it was feeling good, so I gave it a shot.

I couldn't believe it, but I was running and playing with the fast paced Chileans as if I didn't have a knee problem.  I was so good to be playing again!  

Two days later, I decided to come back again for the next game.  To my surprise, the coach announced in the huddle that I would be starting.  Later, to my surprise, he put my in key defensive positions, and taught me a play in the huddle during a timeout which goal was to get me the ball in the post.  This was too good to be true.  Not only am I able to play again, but I am a key player on the University basketball team.  I am proud to tell you all about this and pray that I will continue to experience good health!