After a month in Santiago I decided it was time for an update. It's really annoying when you don't know what you're friends are up to. Not mentioning any names.
So you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet (you have to put it in a bin), it’s really easy to get drunk (just over £1 for a litre of beer and in the clubs they fill your glass ¾ full with the spirit for a ‘mixer’) and I get to watch every Liverpool football match (I never could when living 3 hours from Liverpool). That’s pretty much all that needs to be said but anyway...
I spent the first week in Chile at a hostel called La Casa Roja – the red house, apart from there was no little shit of a dog, it was called Dada and was big and quiet. This week was really hectic because I was suddenly living in the same room as all the December class of volunteers and so we got to know each other pretty quick, I think that was the idea. However there was something going on every day and night as the organisation tried to get us used to the country and city before we started working. We spent the night in this crazy hostel where the staff were constantly drunk/hungover or high and no-one seemed to sleep. On the first Sunday morning I went into the garden early to read and a soaking wet French guy stumbled over. He had apparently woken up in the pool a moment ago. I suggested he get some sleep and so he fell asleep on my lap.
I’m living on the 12 floor at 499 Lira in the South of the centre of Santiago with two girls, both from Boston but Mari is originally from Buenos Aires. There’s a pool and a gym on the roof and amazing views over the city to the beautiful snow-covered Andes . It’s a 20 minute walk through a park to the VEGlobal office in the centre and it takes me 30 mins (walking/bus) to get to Pleyades where I work. However I have recently purchased a bike (called Edith) from an old bike-nut called Mario with a rundown garage a couple of blocks away. With very limited Spanish I was proud of being able to tell him that I wanted thinner tyres and the saddle raised, lots of hand gestures are essential,
and so from now on I can cycle to work and save $ on the bus. It’s also good because the buses are very crowded at rush hour and it’s the most likely place that you’re going to get mugged.
I’m having an amazing time volunteering at Pleyades where 11 kids live because they’ve been taken out of their family homes due to neglect and/or abuse. Some have contact with members of their family but I get the impression most do not. (Carlos’ mum came on his 4th birthday last week and announced she was having another child - she already has 3 living at Pleyades...) This makes it sound like a depressing and miserable place to spend time but it is exactly the opposite. I have to constantly remind myself what these children have lived through because, for the most part, they are polite and interested and funny and enjoying life. Sure there are exceptions; I think Lucas has ADHD as he can’t concentrate on one thing for more than a minute. He also likes to spit, on everything, including me. When Juan and I play football it more often than not ends up with him kicking the ball as hard as he can at me. On the other hand he has taught himself guitar and plays to Queen and Michael Jackson on his very battered mp3 player with me singing along. For some reason every single child, not just where I work but at the other institutions too, completely adore Michael Jackson and they’re not afraid of showing it. The best line they try to sing along to is “Annie are you okay, are you okay, are you okay Annie...” It’s honestly just noise they’re making but they’re happy.
So the deal is that I work at Pleyades either in the morning or afternoon each weekday and then have to also do some work in the office. In VEGlobal there are different committees; sports, fundraising, resource management etc and I'm on Vamos a Leer! (Let’s read!) This is basically a programme that's been set up to encourage reading in the institutions and so my work involves maintaining the VE library, keeping track of the children’s reading levels and the amount that each child reads. The incentive for them is tokens as rewards and these can be used at the carnival we hold in Feburary in exchange for turns on the events.
As well as obviously having weekends to do other things I get two weeks holiday over the whole 6 months that I can take whenever I want. At the moment the plan is to go south to the Lake District and then further into Patagonia including Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in early March. However it’s very easy to get away on weekends or just for day trips. So far I’ve been camping at Laguna de Aculeo for a weekend (played football against some Jehovah Witnesses’) and we also went for a day hike in Parque Nacional Rio Clarrillo which is a small gorge in the Andes foothills an hour and a half east. The coast is a similar distance away to the west and
hopefully I will be going surfing sometime soon. Other plans are to go to wineries, go to the rodeo festival in Rancagua, run the half marathon in April, and go hiking in the Andes properly.
Christmas in the 32 deg heat was, in Mr Evans’ fine words, ‘a headfuck’. All the volunteers came to our apartment and we had a bbq on the roof - I made some empanadas (with Mari’s help) which are pretty much like Cornish pastys but smaller and with more interesting fillings. My favourite kind is fried with ham and melted cheese inside. Then I drank 2 litres of red wine and the rest is history.
There are some great people who work at VE, most of them are American which I try not to hold against them but I have already had the rugby vs American football argument. They do say awesome and seriously too much aswell. There are three more Brits, an Aussie, a Spaniard, a Pole, a Canadian, an Argentinean, a dancing Frenchman and a Germ. Sorry, a German. At VE there aren’t many guys (8 out of about 35 people) so we have a thing called ‘Team Man’. It’s a way of getting away from all the girls and doing manly things like playing football, going camping, playing table tennis and drinking beer and also frequent trips to Cafe con Piernas. CCP (like the carpark) is a very strange Chilean institution where office workers go to have a coffee after work. The difference is that con Piernas means ‘with legs’ and so the coffee is served by very scantily clad waitresses. Borat thongs have never looked so good. These places close at 9pm and don’t serve alcohol so it’s all very innocent and I think that just makes it even stranger. Good coffee though. I stupidly suggested a Team Man beard-growing competition in my drunken state at xmas. This was a bad idea for 3 reasons; the other 7 guys are aged between 25 and 30 so I haven’t got a chance, it’s the middle of a very hot summer and after about a week my facial hair turns ginger. Look out for photos of me near the end of January for cheap laughs.
New Year in Valparaiso was pretty amazing. We got an early bus because the road from Santiago to the coast gets jammed up with the hundreds of thousands of people who make the trip for the celebrations. In the day we enjoyed wasting time wandering some of the 42 cerros (hills) which make up the more interesting part of the city. The muti-coloured houses are built in ridiculous places on the sides of near vertical hills and in some areas the only way to get up is a short funicular ride. The graffiti here was as good as back in Santiago. Unfortunately I didn’t take my camera because I didn’t want the chance of it being nicked in the night so I’ll have to get some photos when I go back, hopefully sometime soon. After sweating on the beach in the afternoon and being in the Pacific Ocean for the first time (very cold because of the current coming up from Antarctica) we met up with the antiguas (older volunteers) at a hostel where they were drinking. Soon enough we got kicked out as there were so many of us and so went to set up camp on the streets. By this time the roads were closed and the streets were lined with people getting ready for midnight so it didn’t matter much. A huge yellow moon came up at dusk over the hill that nearby Vina del Mar sits in and by the time the fireworks started at 12 it was the perfect addition to a simply amazing fireworks display - no other way to describe it. Most of us had made it to a panoramic lookout point which was packed with people looking over the bay where the fireworks were. There was alot of singing and chants of Chi-Chi-Chi, Le-Le-Le, Viva Chi-Le! After making friends and dancing to drums on the streets down below and we got a bus back at 4am.
I’m hopefully meeting up with Alekcis this weekend. That might not mean much to some people but I know one person to whom it will. ;)
Hope you all had a good Christmas and a crackin’ New Year.
Big love to everyone x
So you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet (you have to put it in a bin), it’s really easy to get drunk (just over £1 for a litre of beer and in the clubs they fill your glass ¾ full with the spirit for a ‘mixer’) and I get to watch every Liverpool football match (I never could when living 3 hours from Liverpool). That’s pretty much all that needs to be said but anyway...
I spent the first week in Chile at a hostel called La Casa Roja – the red house, apart from there was no little shit of a dog, it was called Dada and was big and quiet. This week was really hectic because I was suddenly living in the same room as all the December class of volunteers and so we got to know each other pretty quick, I think that was the idea. However there was something going on every day and night as the organisation tried to get us used to the country and city before we started working. We spent the night in this crazy hostel where the staff were constantly drunk/hungover or high and no-one seemed to sleep. On the first Sunday morning I went into the garden early to read and a soaking wet French guy stumbled over. He had apparently woken up in the pool a moment ago. I suggested he get some sleep and so he fell asleep on my lap.
I’m living on the 12 floor at 499 Lira in the South of the centre of Santiago with two girls, both from Boston but Mari is originally from Buenos Aires. There’s a pool and a gym on the roof and amazing views over the city to the beautiful snow-covered Andes . It’s a 20 minute walk through a park to the VEGlobal office in the centre and it takes me 30 mins (walking/bus) to get to Pleyades where I work. However I have recently purchased a bike (called Edith) from an old bike-nut called Mario with a rundown garage a couple of blocks away. With very limited Spanish I was proud of being able to tell him that I wanted thinner tyres and the saddle raised, lots of hand gestures are essential,
and so from now on I can cycle to work and save $ on the bus. It’s also good because the buses are very crowded at rush hour and it’s the most likely place that you’re going to get mugged.I’m having an amazing time volunteering at Pleyades where 11 kids live because they’ve been taken out of their family homes due to neglect and/or abuse. Some have contact with members of their family but I get the impression most do not. (Carlos’ mum came on his 4th birthday last week and announced she was having another child - she already has 3 living at Pleyades...) This makes it sound like a depressing and miserable place to spend time but it is exactly the opposite. I have to constantly remind myself what these children have lived through because, for the most part, they are polite and interested and funny and enjoying life. Sure there are exceptions; I think Lucas has ADHD as he can’t concentrate on one thing for more than a minute. He also likes to spit, on everything, including me. When Juan and I play football it more often than not ends up with him kicking the ball as hard as he can at me. On the other hand he has taught himself guitar and plays to Queen and Michael Jackson on his very battered mp3 player with me singing along. For some reason every single child, not just where I work but at the other institutions too, completely adore Michael Jackson and they’re not afraid of showing it. The best line they try to sing along to is “Annie are you okay, are you okay, are you okay Annie...” It’s honestly just noise they’re making but they’re happy.
So the deal is that I work at Pleyades either in the morning or afternoon each weekday and then have to also do some work in the office. In VEGlobal there are different committees; sports, fundraising, resource management etc and I'm on Vamos a Leer! (Let’s read!) This is basically a programme that's been set up to encourage reading in the institutions and so my work involves maintaining the VE library, keeping track of the children’s reading levels and the amount that each child reads. The incentive for them is tokens as rewards and these can be used at the carnival we hold in Feburary in exchange for turns on the events.
As well as obviously having weekends to do other things I get two weeks holiday over the whole 6 months that I can take whenever I want. At the moment the plan is to go south to the Lake District and then further into Patagonia including Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in early March. However it’s very easy to get away on weekends or just for day trips. So far I’ve been camping at Laguna de Aculeo for a weekend (played football against some Jehovah Witnesses’) and we also went for a day hike in Parque Nacional Rio Clarrillo which is a small gorge in the Andes foothills an hour and a half east. The coast is a similar distance away to the west and
hopefully I will be going surfing sometime soon. Other plans are to go to wineries, go to the rodeo festival in Rancagua, run the half marathon in April, and go hiking in the Andes properly.Christmas in the 32 deg heat was, in Mr Evans’ fine words, ‘a headfuck’. All the volunteers came to our apartment and we had a bbq on the roof - I made some empanadas (with Mari’s help) which are pretty much like Cornish pastys but smaller and with more interesting fillings. My favourite kind is fried with ham and melted cheese inside. Then I drank 2 litres of red wine and the rest is history.
There are some great people who work at VE, most of them are American which I try not to hold against them but I have already had the rugby vs American football argument. They do say awesome and seriously too much aswell. There are three more Brits, an Aussie, a Spaniard, a Pole, a Canadian, an Argentinean, a dancing Frenchman and a Germ. Sorry, a German. At VE there aren’t many guys (8 out of about 35 people) so we have a thing called ‘Team Man’. It’s a way of getting away from all the girls and doing manly things like playing football, going camping, playing table tennis and drinking beer and also frequent trips to Cafe con Piernas. CCP (like the carpark) is a very strange Chilean institution where office workers go to have a coffee after work. The difference is that con Piernas means ‘with legs’ and so the coffee is served by very scantily clad waitresses. Borat thongs have never looked so good. These places close at 9pm and don’t serve alcohol so it’s all very innocent and I think that just makes it even stranger. Good coffee though. I stupidly suggested a Team Man beard-growing competition in my drunken state at xmas. This was a bad idea for 3 reasons; the other 7 guys are aged between 25 and 30 so I haven’t got a chance, it’s the middle of a very hot summer and after about a week my facial hair turns ginger. Look out for photos of me near the end of January for cheap laughs.
New Year in Valparaiso was pretty amazing. We got an early bus because the road from Santiago to the coast gets jammed up with the hundreds of thousands of people who make the trip for the celebrations. In the day we enjoyed wasting time wandering some of the 42 cerros (hills) which make up the more interesting part of the city. The muti-coloured houses are built in ridiculous places on the sides of near vertical hills and in some areas the only way to get up is a short funicular ride. The graffiti here was as good as back in Santiago. Unfortunately I didn’t take my camera because I didn’t want the chance of it being nicked in the night so I’ll have to get some photos when I go back, hopefully sometime soon. After sweating on the beach in the afternoon and being in the Pacific Ocean for the first time (very cold because of the current coming up from Antarctica) we met up with the antiguas (older volunteers) at a hostel where they were drinking. Soon enough we got kicked out as there were so many of us and so went to set up camp on the streets. By this time the roads were closed and the streets were lined with people getting ready for midnight so it didn’t matter much. A huge yellow moon came up at dusk over the hill that nearby Vina del Mar sits in and by the time the fireworks started at 12 it was the perfect addition to a simply amazing fireworks display - no other way to describe it. Most of us had made it to a panoramic lookout point which was packed with people looking over the bay where the fireworks were. There was alot of singing and chants of Chi-Chi-Chi, Le-Le-Le, Viva Chi-Le! After making friends and dancing to drums on the streets down below and we got a bus back at 4am.
I’m hopefully meeting up with Alekcis this weekend. That might not mean much to some people but I know one person to whom it will. ;)
Hope you all had a good Christmas and a crackin’ New Year.
Big love to everyone x
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