Techo para Chile

I don't have a lot of time, but I figured I'd put up some pictures from last weekend. We went down to Las Cabras to build mediaguas (emergency housing).  We're still not allowed to go down to the most affected areas; they are still officially "unsafe for travel" as far as our exchange group is concerned.
(Note: all of these photos are the work of my friend Mari; I forgot my camera at home (oops).)

 Las Cabras is the little red "A" in the bottom left corner.

Some pictures:

The building site, with work already started (and a school bus in the back).

Mediagua construction is not rocket science.  You dig some holes, put wooden posts down (pilotes), make sure they're level, then start building the pre-fab "house" on top.  It does help to have a little previous know-how or some leadership if you've never done it before, though (especially if you have a building site as difficult as ours).  The first day, we had neither (just diagrams, materials, and ganas (motivation)).  What we DID have were the remnants of a 200+ year old house, and the nastiest foundation I have ever seen.  Cement.  Bricks.  More cement.  Boulders.  Needless to say, we spent a lot of time digging the first day (actually, we spent the ENTIRE first day digging.  Lots of rocks.  Lots.)

Sadly, this rock wasn't even one of the big ones.  We were unearthing small planets in this yard, no lie.

Leveling the pilotes.

Remnants of the house.  That covered-over, patio-looking part?  That used to be their indoor kitchen.  If you look closely, you can see that the only room left of the house is separated from outside by cardboard (CARDBOARD.  I think about 6-7 people were living together in the one room they had left, protected by CARDBOARD).

More cardboard.  You can kind of see where one of the old walls used to be in the back there.

Two of the kids, with the remnants of their house in their "front yard" (which all used to be house, not yard).

The second day, a helper/leader showed up, and revealed that (almost) all of the instructions we had been given were wrong.  He was great, though! Very patient.

Our friend Colin, with the grandpa of the house (sweetest old man ever).

Gettin' down on the roof.

The ladies of the crew (from left): Jules, Ryann, me, Cintia, KK.  Some bad-ass, strong women here.  (Quote of the weekend? "We don't need no man!")

Anyways, it was hard work, but good work.  I really hope I get to go down again before I leave.  This weekend some of us are heading to Mendoza, Argentina (visible on the map above in the top right corner).  The limitations of our tourist visas require that we leave the country every 90 days, so we're heading over there for a couple of days.  Hopefully we'll come back with some quality wine and leather goods.  Until then, take it easy! Que les vaya bien. ♥

The world's still shakin'

...though sometimes so subtly it's hard to tell whether it's real or imagined.  It's incredible to me that more than a week after the quake we're still getting replicas (aftershocks), but there it is.

I've been sick for the past few days so I really have little to report, but I figured I'd check in for regularity's sake.  CIEE activities started up again on Thursday so we at least had a bit of an opportunity to get out of the house; we took a Spanish placement test Thursday and had an orientation at PUC (the private, Catholic university) on Friday.  Later, we went out carreteando (fun!), which was nice after spending the better part of the week trapped in the house.

Our program, for the most part, hasn't been messed with too badly by the quake, with one pretty regrettable exception: due to earthquake damage, classes at La Chile (the public university) have been delayed for a couple of weeks and the semester won't end until July 30th.  Since we originally planned on returning to the states July 14th, attending La Chile is no longer a feasible option for many of us; assuming we have the extra two weeks to spare, we'd have to move, arrange new living arrangements, change our flight schedules, etc. ¡Qué pena!  It's really unfortunate; I really wanted to take classes at both universities (especially La Chile!).  La PUC's administration has taken great pains to portray it as the "prestigious," private university, "with a better infrastructure" and "the best students in the country" or whatever, but La Chile is bigger, public, and has a greater variety of students, from ALL social classes and all parts of Chile.  Opinions about which is better seems to vary from person to person, but I really wanted the opportunity to take classes at both.  Bummed.

Anyways, I'm hoping that this little sickness will disappear by tomorrow morning so I can start going to classes again.  It's registration week, and it's really essential that I attend classes so I can sign up before things fill up.  I went to one in the morning yesterday, but I was so tired and sick that I went home and spent the rest of the day in bed afterward.  I've been drinking lots of water/tea/liquids of all sorts and getting plenty of sleep, so hopefully it'll clear up by tomorrow!

Chilenismos* of the Day

(*maybe partially but certainly not entirely)

Flaite: Described to me as the Chilean equivalent of "ghetto."  
No me gustó ese bar... fue super flaite.

 Super flaite.

Fome: Kind of lame (or uninteresting).  ¿Te gusta 'Crepúsculo'? Ay, no, ¡qué fome!

Echar la corta/la grande: #1 and #2, respectively (think bathrooms here).

Piropear: to hit on, to cat-call, to sweet talk, etc.

Anyways, that's all for now.  I hope all of you are taking good care of yourselves up there, and that everything's going well for everyone. ♥!

Aftershocks

We got our power back this evening at about 8, I believe, and we've been watching the news ever since.  It seems to be a bit more video-based here, with less commentary, and it is heart-wrenching.  I've been searching the internet since the power came back to find ways to volunteer and help (because CIEE will only tell us to stay at home), but unfortunately the advice from the Chilean government at the moment is, like CIEE's, to stay at home as much as possible until they are able to fully survey the damage.  I really hope that there will be opportunities for us to go down and help people who need it; we are, as a friend of mine recently said, "a very capable demographic."  We'll see.

If you want to know how to help or send aid, Huffington post has a pretty extensive list of organizations, which they are continually updating (pardon the source, I know it's biased, blah blah blah, but in this case I hardly think it matters): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/27/chile-earthquake-relief-h_n_479426.html  I at least ask that you keep this country (which has been so warm and hospitable to me thus far) in your hearts and, if you pray, in your prayers.  I'm sure you've heard no end of it on the news (probably for at least two days longer than I have), but, you know, it bears repeating.


Anyways, let's lighten up the tone a little bit-- I've been watching the news with my host parents for the last couple of hours and it has me all sorts of riled up.  We'll look at some pictures (most are mine, but I have taken a few from Facebook because I myself take very few pictures.  After such photos I have included the name of the source/the photographer).  You can click any of these photos to make them bigger.  A ver:

Welcome to Santiago, Chile!  It is a wonderful place.

                                                                                                                                ©Heather Goodale

(BTW: What up, ANDES.)

This is where I live (the little red "A".  Again, click the picture to make it bigger): 

 

Credit: Google Maps (http://maps.google.cl/)

The neighborhood is called "La Reina," and it is very nice indeed.  My house is in a little baby gated community (not like the gigantic labyrinths in Scottsdale, but just a little baby community with a gate).  Once you pass the gate, you see this:

Cute, right?  Also, this was the day after the terremoto, so you can see that things are pretty normal.  Except for the wall that is immediately to your right when you walk through the main gate (immediately to your right in the picture above), you would never know anything happened.  It was a little wall that separated our little community from an dialysis center (the yellow building), but it fell down during the earthquake:

And a bit closer:

 

If you keep walking you will get to my house:

Pass through the gate, and you'll get to the front yard, where you can see the wall in the garden that fell:

 

Not too bad.  It's mostly been cleaned up, but again, the damage was very, very mild, as I have said.  A few broken dishes, some spilled marmalade, a garden wall... nothing compared to an entire house or anything like that.  We were very lucky.

Anyways, here is my host dad Carlos and our dog Danka in the front room (again, day after the earthquake, everyone is looking fine): 

What a cutie:

Mira la Danka.  ¡Que rica!

Anyways, pass through the house and you get to the backyard:

 

If you turn around you see this (back o' the house):

Very, very cute.  Very nice.  I am very lucky to be living in such a nice place with a family that I like so much.  I'll get a picture of Kelly up here sooner or later, but at the time that I was taking photos she said she looked "fea" and didn't want her picture taken at the moment (so not the truth, but whatever.  I understand; I hate having my picture taken 99% of the time).

Ok, so that's the round-up of the house, I think.  Now you can see where I live!  A very wonderful place, as I said, with very wonderful people.  Javier should be arriving within the next few days; the earthquake, understandably, has delayed his arrival by a couple of days.  I will leave you by starting a new section of the blog: " The Chilenismos of the Day".  Chileans have many, many modismos (slang), a lot of which are totally unique to the country.  As I've been here about a week, I've picked up quite a few, so I'll just pick my favorites.  I'll also throw in some other, non-Chile-specific gems, because a lot of them are funny (the section should really be "Vocab of the day", but whatever.  Chilenismos sounds better.).  A ver:

 Chilenismos* of the Day:  

*(Not necessarily entirely)

Pololo/a*: Girlfriend/boyfriend.  Here, novio/a is really serious.  Like, about to be engaged. So for the less serious romantic endeavor, pololo/a is the term of choice (verb= pololear)

Poto*: Bum/bottom.  A kinder, more polite version of "culo." As in, el potito de guagua (the baby's little bum)

Guagua*: Baby.  Pronouned "wahwah".  Kelly is always calling her nieto (grandson) her little guaguita. Onomatopoeia at its finest.

Tirar un peo: To fart (a real gem, in my opinion). ¡Ay, que olor! ¡La Danka tiró un peo!

Carrete*: A party.  A carrete can be big or small, but  fiesta is only used for big parties, from what I understand.  I have already used the verb form of this word in my previous entry (carretear, to go out partying)

Anyways, that should be it.   I need to work on shortening these things.  Good night! ¡Buenas noches! And as always, que todo les vaya bien.

¡Terremoto!

As many of you know, there was a major earthquake in Chile at about 4 A.M. (~12 A.M. AZ time) Saturday morning. Everyone in my house and everyone I know is ok, and there was relatively little damage to our neighborhood. Everyone is asking me if it was scary, or if I'm ok or whatever, but in reality, things were relatively minor where I was; until I talked to my mother yesterday afternoon (when the landlines came back), I didn't even think that any of you guys in the states would've heard about it. The truth is that much of where I am is running relatively normally; yeah, we don't have power, and the metro, supermarkets, airport, and some streets are shut down, but other than that, things are pretty normal. Gracias a Dios, everyone we know is ok. Yesterday morning I wrote a little bit about what happened, so I'll post that here. As you'll see, I really didn't think that the quake was a big deal (we didn't have radio, telephone, TV, news, anything, so we didn't hear any of the statistics or death tolls that we're now hearing), not until yesterday afternoon and today, anyways.

From yesterday morning (~11 A.M. Santiago time):
“This morning we had un terremoto (earthquake). At about 4 A.M. Santiago time (~12 AM Arizona time), I woke up and felt like I was experiencing extreme... I don’t know, vertigo? The feeling you feel when you get off a boat or a a plane but you still feel like you’re on it. I was only semi-conscious at the time (I was sleeping when it started), so I didn’t really realize what was going on, but Carlos and Kelly came running into my room and pulled me under the doorway. Afterward it was just the sound of car alarms going off, dogs barking, and, later, the sound of the neighbors coming out of their houses, checking up on and talking with each other. We didn’t have power, so the only news we could get was from the neighbors who had a battery-powered radio. The quake was about an 8 on the Richter Scale, so they say, but we haven’t had radio or electricity since so I really don’t have any details.

It was really strange. I had never experienced a strong earthquake before, only the aftershocks that sometimes reach us from LA or wherever, so when I woke up, I didn’t really think to react or move. I just kind of laid in bed, thinking that everything was wiggling and that it had to be an earthquake (what else would it be?) and “oh, how strange”, but I really wasn’t awake yet and I didn’t think to move. The sensation was really different than what I had expected; I kind of expected it to be more abrupt, like when you put things in a box and shake it, but it wasn’t. It felt like being on a boat; it like the entire house had been put on a boat on choppy water.  It lasted longer than I expected, too; maybe it was just in my head, but I felt like we were under that doorway for a long time, like it would maybe never stop. And it was interesting: I wasn’t scared, mentally; I didn’t really feel any fear in my head. My body knew it was scared before my head did: my heart knew to beat faster and my lungs to breathe deeper before my head knew to feel fear. Very interesting. I’m sure tiredness had a great deal to do with it.

Anyways, everyone in the house and all the family members are fine (I haven’t talked to any of the kids in the group, but I’m sure they’re ok). As soon as the land lines started working in the middle of the night, everyone started calling up and checking in (I slept through all of that, but Kelly told me the phone woke her up every ten minutes). I still haven’t had the opportunity to call or text home (it’s pretty early there anyways, and I’m sure they haven’t heard about it yet) because my phone service is dead and I haven’t wanted to call using the house phone ($). I’ll contact them once it’s not so early in AZ (it’s still about 8 or so there) and I have electricity to charge my US cell phone (shouldn’t be too long, they’re pretty used to earthquakes here, though not this big usually. Apparently they haven’t had one this big since 1984).

Around here things don’t seem to be so bad: a fallen wall in the garden, some downed trees here and there (our fridge also tipped over a bit, but it’s fine now). I don’t know about the rest of the city, though. Apparently there are about 60 or 70 dead throughout Chile, but again, that’s all just hearsay since we don’t have radio or internet. Kelly was saying it was very lucky that we were all in the house, that I wasn’t out carreteando (partying), and I have to agree. I wouldn’t have known what to do if I was out by myself (let alone out by myself and drunk without telephone or public transportation). Could you imagine being on the metro during that quake? It would’ve been terrifying (though luckily the metro doesn’t run at that hour, so no one had to go through that, thank God).”

So you can see, the intensity/the gravity of the situation didn't hit me until I talked to my mother yesterday afternoon. And it still hasn't hit me, really, because I still haven't seen any photos or video footage. It's a very different thing to know that several hundred people have died and to see it with your own eyes. I still don't think it's hit me yet.

So, again, everything is good, everyone is fine, no se preocupen (don't worry:-) ). I'll try to talk to everyone whenever I can on the internet, but my house still doesn't have power so my internet access is fairly limited (I'm at my host grandmother's right now writing this; some neighborhoods weren't hit as hard and still have power).

Thank you for your thoughts and concern, que todo les vaya bien.

♥