Over the year, I tallied roughly 348.5 hours on long-distance buses! That’s the equivalent of 14.5 solid days on a bus, or 4% of my year abroad!

Still, I have to concede defeat in my competition with Meredith who, during her year, spent over 400 hours traveling on buses. Truly impressive!

Well, it’s that time of the year again: finals! Which means that, having finished stalking friends on facebook, answered all me emails, and stared at the ceiling for long periods of time in search of procrastion, I’m now faced with the two choices that remain: do my homework, or update my blog. I’ll do my homework later.

Last week was Kate and my last visit to Villa Huidif, the home for girls where we have been tutoring English. By tutoring, I mean that one of us helps whichever older girl who happens to feel like doing homework that day, while the other teaches the little girls how to make oragami fortune tellers for the fifteenth time. We have fun, and I feel like the one-on-one tutoring is much more successful than the attempt at teaching classes that Ryan and I made last semester.

For our last day, we each brought our cameras to take a few pictures. This is what I learned:

Two cameras + 15-ish girls under the age of 8 = complete and utter chaos.

Kate and I were lucky to escape alive. Our cameras were taken out of our hands almost the instant we pulled them out of our bags, and we spent the next hour and a half trying to prevent fights and tears over whose turn it was to take a picture. The concept of lines and turns doesn’t really exist in Chile, so asking the girls to be patient and wait until their friend had finished taking her picture didn’t go over too well. Fortunately, the girls were generally good photographers. Here are a few of the results:

The husky was an important theme for awhile, until he got thrown into a corner in a fight for the camera.

Cutie...also quick to work up the tear when she didn't get the camera

Even when they are out of control, you can't help but love these girls

Bernarda...my favorite

Some people leave their hearts in San Francisco; I left part of my leg with El Flaco in Chile

We have had an exciting week in the pension. First, Jacqui and Manolla got slammed with the flu over the weekend, and spent the majority of those days wandering around the house in a coughing, comatose stupor. On Saturday, Jacqui confined all members of the household to obligatory bedrest — whether we were sick or not. So, even though I was completely healthy, I was ordered to stay in my room while my lunch was brought to me on a tray.

Tuesday night, one of the boys in the pension decided to pull a little joke by leaving a cassette tape in the microwave. Unfortunately, he forgot that we have a psychotic microwave that randomly turns itself on whenever it feels like it and runs for 10-15 minute intervals. In the middle of the night, Jacqui runs into the kitchen to find black smoke billowing out of the microwave…both tape and machine were toast.

Wednesday night, another one of the boys from the pension, not wanting to be outdone by his friend, took a joy ride in another friend’s truck…straight into the river. Jacqui woke me up at about 5 am to tell me the news, and that she was leaving to go see what she could do. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Spanish at 5 in the morning, and the only words I understood where “truck, river, and drunk”…I pulled my thoughts together enough to ask if the kid was alive and, learning that he was, crashed back to sleep. Later that morning, fully awake, I was able to get the full story: Driving drunk, the boy rounded a corner going too fast, hit the curb of the costanera (a long sidewalk/boardwalk that borders on of the rivers in Valdivia) and lost control of the truck, plunging it into the river. I’m not quite sure of the details, but apparently it took members of the coast guard to pull him out of the truck. He was unbelievably lucky not to have been killed (or to have killed anyone else). He escaped with a few cuts and bruises, but it was a sobering lesson for everyone in the household. Check out these pictures:

The taillight of the truck -- the only bit still above water

Another view of the back of the truck

Moral of the story: Please, please, please don’t drink and drive. Not everyone is lucky enough to escape from an accident like this.

Visiting a Mapuche community north of Temuco

This weekend all of the students from Midd programs in Chile met up for a weekend outing organized by the program. We spent Friday in Temuco learning about the Mapuches (Chile’s indigenous people) and their current fight to protect their lands and culture. On Saturday, we drove north to visit a community in the cordillera…lots and lots of hours in a bus. Fortunately, the company was good and we had a fun time.

On Sunday, it was back to the books. We are coming down the home stretch of classes for the semester, so the workload has spiked a bit. Two of my classes ended unexpectedly today, so that was a nice surprise to start off my week! Two more classes left, plus a handful of projects and essays.

The Chileans had a four-day weekend to celebrate the navy’s glories at sea (not sure if said glories are numerous enough to merit such a long holiday, but we’ll roll with it), so Victor, Catherine, and I extended our break to five days and headed south and east to Bariloche, Argentina for some hiking.

Our hike was a portion of the Nahuel Huapi Traverse, a circuit of up to six days that extends between a series of huts in the mountains behind Bariloche. We hoped to be able to do smaller, three-day variation of the trek. On our first day of hiking, we took a gently climbing trail up through beautiful fall colors and spitting rain and into falling snow and craggy peaks. Refugio Frey was set in a spectacular location, and it’s heated common room was an extremely welcome bonus. We were hoping to spend three days hiking but were told that bad weather could make the path impassable so, when we woke up early the next morning to the sound of gust of wind smashing rain against the window, we opted to sleep for another four hours. The middle day passed in a blur of endless card games and eavesdropping on the development of the relationship between a soon-to-be ex-couple sharing the hut with us.

The third day, we had better luck with the weather and, emerging from the hut, we got our first clear view of the panorama surrounding us:

View of Refugio Frey

As we started to climb, the views just kept getting better and better:

Climbing out of the valley above Frey

Catherine and Victor showing a bit of the infamous Bariloche rage

Looking over part of Lake Nahuel Huapi and Cerro Catedral ski center

We hiked up out of the valley and then traversed below a long ridge line before crossing over and dipping down into the Cerro Catedral ski center above Bariloche. We hiked down through the ski resort (a place I’d definitely like to visit in the winter, if I get the chance) and caught a bus at the base back to town. The weather was pretty chilly — the equivalent of hiking in November back at home — but the views and the company made for an amazing trip.

For more pictures from the trip, click here.

Check out this link for a look at a side of Chilean life that you’ve never seen before (or perhaps never wanted to see).

http://www.joeskitchen.com/chile/fleas/index.htm

Because I know Catherine is sitting at her internship, bored, and with little to do, I’m making a new post. I present to you:  my study hall, hibernation chamber, and hideout from crazy Chilean sisters… Welcome to my room:

1. The bed…here you can find my two most-used pieces of technology — my camera and my computer. The bed is also covered with many, many blankets and quilts for keeping warm on cold winter nights without central heating. See if you can spot the two chocolate chip cookies that I was saving for Kate (they didn’t last long enough to reach her).

The bed...lots of toasty blankets!

2. The other half of the room, which is actually quite a bit larger than my room at home. My two wardrobes — one for clothes and the other for camping gear. On my desk is the first part of the sweater that I’m starting to knit (and the chocolate chip cookies!). Alongside my mirror, you will find the rosary — extremely important in a household where the owner proclaims herself Jewish.

Opposite corner of the room

3. View #1: Jacqui is expanding her business by adding on two apartments to the pension (the big house that you can see on the right). I’ve gotten pretty good at sleeping through the hammering and drilling that starts up in the morning.

View out bedside window -- Jacqui is building new apartments onto the pension.

4. View #2. Not much to say about this one.

View from deskside window -- inspirational views of the back wall of Bigger, a Chilean take on Wal-Mart

Friday night, I tell Jacqui that I think I may be coming down with a cold (GASP!). I refuse the 10 different magical pills she tries to force down my throat, offering instead to drink an extra cup of tea for dinner. The next morning, I wake up to find that breakfast has been left for me on my desk…my sniffles apparently have me bed-ridden.

The comfort food? Tea, toast, cheese and (of course) a serving of cake:

Chilean comfort food

Though I was a bit embarrassed by so much concern, it was nevertheless very sweet. Especially since, because I wasn’t on my death bed, I was able to appreciate the fact that I was getting to eat cake for breakfast!

Last weekend, I traveled with Catherine and Victor to Puyehue, a national park about 4.5 hours from Valdivia. We arrived in Osorno and, as we looked for the bus to take us to the park, we were kindly bullied onto a bus whose destination didn’t seem to match our own. When we tried to protest that we thought we were going to a different place, he told us to just get on the bus and not worry about anything. So we did. We’d be very easy to kidnap if anyone were interested. Fortunately, it worked out fine and we ended up at the trailhead without a problem.

I did this same hike last semester in the early spring, and I hadn’t been looking forward to repeating it. The hike to the refugio at the base of the volcano we hoped to climb is quite steep and, in the spring, I had been in pretty (read: extremely) bad shape. The hike  ended up being four of the slowest, most painful hours of hiking in my life. On top of that, we weren’t able to climb the volcano because of bad weather. Needless to say, I wasn’t too eager to repeat the humiliation of the hike if I wasn’t also going to get see the mountain at the end. I reviewed a variety of weather reports that promised good weather before I signed on.

And boy am I glad I did. Though I was still in pain on the climb up, I could tell that I was fitter this fall than in the spring. Don’t get me wrong…I still have a long ways to go before I would say that I was anywhere near  being in good shape, but at least I didn’t have to stop every five yards to catch my breath this time. We had beautiful, crisp weather on the hike up, and all the trees were starting to change color and drop their leaves.

We found ourselves sharing the refugio with about 10 Israelis. The cabin was divided into two parts: the American corner huddled around their gooey pasta (don’t know how we managed to botch pasta, but we did. The noodles were gloopy and, when we strained the water out, it looked more like snot than pasta water. Fortunately, our hike up had worked up an appetite that wasn’t very picky), and little Israel dominating the table in the center of the room, cooking up an incredible gourmet feast. About every twenty minutes, one of them would rotate by to chat with us for a bit before returning to the group. The last guy who passed by was able to think of television shows that took place in each of our home states and gave us tips on how to spot Israeli tourists.

The next morning, we woke up to more beautiful weather and made the hike up to the summit, which had gave an incredible panorama of the Chilean and Argentine Andes. The whole area was filled with volcanoes! I think I caught Catherine actually drooling over all the climbing possibilities. It was a gorgeous hike and had us marking potential runs for a skiing expedition this winter.

For pictures from the hike, click here to see my photo album.