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
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