Seth in Chile

 Two semesters, four seasons, ten months, 42 weeks, 295 days, 127,631 words. An exchange year is a long time and a lot can happen, and a lot has happened. Much more than I could ever explain through this blog.

I’m not sure what to write right now. Nothing I could say would feel adequate enough to sum up such a long, fast, crazy year. But I suppose I’ll have to try.

This year in Chile has been the best of my life. There were lots of ups and downs, and it was far from easy. I’m happy to say that the ups outnumber the downs. I have made some friends for life. I have family in Chile. I have a life in Chile, a wild, ridiculous, fun life.

But the higher the mountain, the deeper the valley. I will miss my friends terribly, and my Chilean family so much that it already hurts. I need to say goodbye to this life that is completely mine, and that I am completely invested in.

There’s something very tragic about an exchange year, something that is often buried under the great stories and experiences that everyone talks about. I was put in a country for just long enough to learn a language, make friends, and really establish myself. Now I have no choice but to leave it all behind and accept the fact that I will not see many of these people again, and that I will not return to this life in Chile.

I highly recommend doing an exchange year to those who think that they’re up to it. There is not an exchange student “type.” The only real requirements are an open mind and a tolerance for tough goodbyes.

I owe a lot of people thanks. So to my friends and family in the United States and Chile, thank you. Especially to my parents and host parents. Thank you for all of your help and support. To my Rotary clubs and counselors, thank you for all of your work. It is appreciated. And I am thankful to God for this opportunity to grow and learn.

I stumbled upon a few quotes this year that really relate to my exchange year and other areas of my life. Here are a few:

“Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning, think what may be the end.” – Edward Whymper

“If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” – Paulo Coelho

Well, that ends that. There’s nothing more to write for the time being. Now I’ve just got to wait for the next adventure.

It’s been great.

One Month in Chile

232 days ago, I published a post also titled "One Month in Chile." I'm really coming down to the wire here. Every week that goes by is a quarter of my time left here. I'm not going to write a "conclusion post" yet, though. It's my plan to write this and one more post in the month that I have left here.

Here's something else to celebrate: this is the first post in exactly four months that doesn't cover recent natural disasters. It's not that I've gotten bored with writing about them, it's that natural disasters seem to have left Chile alone lately and gone elsewhere (like Nepal). We did, however, have a very small earthquake last night.

Santiago earthquake 5/11/15
#WeWillRebuild

I've been back at school for a little over two months now, and I'm definitely enjoying it more than I did last year. Being able to speak and understand Spanish definitely helps. Two weeks ago, our school celebrated its anniversary with what they call "las alianzas." Every school here does their own alianzas. It's just a few days of school that are filled with games and activities instead of classes. In my school there were two teams of students: Future and Past.These teams competed against each other in the activities. Team members decorated the school and themselves with appropriate future/past accessories. I helped out by playing piano for the Future Band and by dressing up as Fry, a character from the popular future-based TV show Futurama.

Fry

See the similarities?

Another fun activity we did was called "Hombre Musical," or Musical Man, as you probably guessed. This is a lot like musical chairs, except with people instead of chairs. Ten guys, 25 or 30 girls, and some reggaeton music. When the music stopped, the girls needed to jump onto the nearest guy, and cling to him with their feet off the ground for five, ten, or fifteen seconds. If a girl touched the ground, she was out. If a guy stumbled too much, he was out. I ended up being the last man standing.

I count three. There are some very entertaining videos out there. 

I think doing activities like this is a great way to celebrate as a school. It really promotes cooperation between the classes and is a good way to relax a little during a stressful senior year.

In honor of Mother's Day two days ago, I'll take this opportunity to (once again) publicly thank my mother, Judy. Thanks for everything, Mom! We appreciate you. My parents read everything I post and my mom always has some suggestions- thanks for that, too.

And a thank you to my Chilean mothers, Macarena and Marisela. They have both been a great source of help and comfort this year. It wouldn't be possible without them.

In what's becoming pretty common for this blog, I'm going to include one of my friends who wants to be mentioned.

Jakobus, also known as Coby. Or Kobi. I think.

I've done some cool things with Coby, my friend from Germany. Each time I update my blog he reminds me in a friendly, patient way that I have once again left him out. Here you go, man. Coby's a cool guy.

On that note, I've got lots of things to do in Chile, and not much time to do them! The next time I write on this blog will probably be the day I fly out of Santiago. 

Rodeos and Volcanoes

When I had only been in Chile for a few months, I would title posts things like, "Day Three" or "Three Weeks." Now I feel like I should be doing the opposite of that. If I switched to that system, this post would be called "Forty-Nine Days." That doesn't roll of the tongue as well as "Rodeos and Volcanoes" does, though. And it's a bit too heavy for my taste. I've been catching myself avoiding thinking about my return. I am excited to go back, but it will mean saying goodbye to lots of good friends.

With such little time left in Chile, I've been doing all that I can to make the most of it. I spend almost every day with friends, often Chileans. I've taken day trips to see things that I hadn't seen yet. One of these trips included a day at the National Rodeo with my host grandfather and brother.

The national sport of Chile is the Chilean rodeo. It is massively popular. So popular, in fact, that in 2004, more Chileans attended rodeos than professional soccer matches. Rodeos here are pretty different from a rodeo you might see in North America. In a Chilean rodeo, a pair of "cowboys" (called Huasos here) chase a cow around an arena and use their horses to slam the cow into predetermined points in the wall. Points are given to the pair of huasos depending on what part of the cow is pinned against the wall. The cow usually collapses from exhaustion and needs to be stabbed with a sharp stick, kicked, or have sand thrown in its eyes before it gets up and is chased again.
I really did enjoy taking part in such a unique cultural experience (and missing school), but it was hard for me to not see it as animal abuse.

The national sport

While what I usually see in public places is a sea of brown hair, at the rodeo I saw a sea of tan and gray hats. The huaso garb is clearly defined and extravagantly priced. The essential (obligatory for the riders) huaso outfit consists of: boots with spurs, pin-striped pants or jeans, a checkered button-up shirt (cigarettes in the chest pocket are typical but not required), a tight-fitting jacket, a sash, a poncho, and the most important part, the gorro, or hat. I was shocked by how Chileans treat their gorros. They need to be picked up a certain way as to not bend the brim. They need special holders as to not bend the brim. No one can wear another person's gorro, as they are all custom-made. I was a little less surprised by the care of these little-used clothing items when I learned how much they all cost. Chileans will shell out thousands of dollars for a genuine huaso outfit, even if they only use it once a year (or less). I couldn't help feeling like it was a little absurd, all of these city-slickers (myself included) dressing up in their four-layer costume in 90 degree weather.

Fun fact: The underside of a huaso's poncho actually burns hotter than the surface of the sun.

Speaking of heat, it's time to move on to the second part of this blog. Pictures are much more interesting than words when it comes to volcanoes, so I'll tone it back a bit.

Some of my friends at school joke that I brought bad luck. This is the third volcanic eruption since I arrived here. There have been other natural disasters in my time here, like the 6.6 earthquake on my first day and the flooding in the North.

This particular volcano, Calbuco, erupted twice in a 24 hour period this week. This is the first time that it has erupted in 40 years. The ash cloud seen here and above reached 10 km into the sky. 

While it made for some good photos, this was, after all, a "disaster." Over 4,000 people were evacuated from their homes around the volcano. 

A lot of the ash was carried by the wind east to Argentina. In parts of both Argentina and Chile, people can't leave their houses without using face-masks. They are preparing for a possible third eruption.

I'll end this blog with a shout out to my good friends Rachel and Jimmy, who I had a fun weekend with and who asked me to include them in my next post. Rachel doesn't know what she wants me to say, but she "definitely called a shout out on the seth blog." Jimmy asked me to "just mention how hardcore he is." Jimmy is actually pretty hardcore. He will be returning to the United States (or at least most of the way there) by bus. He will be leaving in mid-May, which will give him about a month of travel time. Jimmy has invited me several times to join him on his trip, on which he will be raising money for charity by talking to local Rotary Clubs, but unfortunately, there's no way I can make it.

Fire, Flood, Foca

I apologize for my long absence. School has started back up, and with it basketball. That means that I have had neither time to write nor things to write about. But I just got back from a few days at the beach, and there have been some interesting events around the country this month, so I'll try to scrape something together.

Happy Easter! I hope you had a fun and meaningful holiday. I spent my weekend with my host family in Concon. It was a nice time. While there, between eating seafood and walking on the beach, I found time to admire some of the giant sand dunes. 

Like this one. That is a 17 story building.

Wanting to get a closer look, I decided to climb one. An hour later I was at the top, completely covered in sweat and sand. My shoes were so full of sand that it was hurting my feet. I couldn't believe how big these dunes were.

So tired at this point.

Turns out, Chile is home to the second biggest sand dunes in the world (Peru, our neighbor to the north, has got us beat with "The Everest of the Desert"). The biggest of the big are found in the Atacama desert, in Northern Chile. The Atacama holds another record, being the driest place on earth. In fact, there are some parts of it that received no rain between the years 1570 and 1971. That's over 400 years without rain!

You might remember, if you read my last post, that there was a pretty impressive volcanic eruption in Villarica, a popular tourist destination in the South of Chile. The volcano goes by the name of Villarica as well, but the natives call it Rucapillan, which means "House of the Spirit." The volcano's last major eruption was in 1971, but since March 3rd of this year, the volcano has been pretty consistently active. The initial eruption (shown below) triggered the evacuation of thousands of people. Since then, people have decided that the volcano poses no real threat and the general attitude of the towns surrounding it is one of excitement. I was just watching the news and I saw a woman being interviewed by a reporter. In the background was the volcano, spewing smoke and lava, and this woman was just talking about how exciting it was for their town because of the tourists that it will bring in.

Attracting tourists since 1971

On an equally exciting but much more tragic note, there has been massive flooding in the North of Chile. When I say massive, I mean massive. Ridiculous amounts of rain fell in the Atacama Region in late March. Being a desert, that part of the country was not at all ready for it. 25 people have died, and four times that many are missing. I've seen videos of trucks and houses being washed down the street like they're nothing. I've seen pictures of bodies washed out of cemeteries and into yards. It's a really awful situation. One of the worst parts of it is that so few people know about it outside of Chile. There is a Wikipedia page, but it has next to no information. I'll post some pictures so you can get an idea.

The Aftermath

This flooding has made me think about a couple of things that I hadn't before. One of them is that it makes me realize how awful the Johnstown Flood (I'm from Johnstown) must have been. About 25 people have died in the North, and after looking at some of the videos, I can't imaging how a flood could get much worse. But the Johnstown Flood killed over 2,000 people. That blows my mind more than ever now.

Shout out to my hometown

It's also made me think about how news spreads in a country. This is a big disaster, and the whole country is very aware of it. That is something that we don't see very much in the United States, being such a large country (Chile is 7% the size of the US). For example, because the United States is so big, if you're from New York you might not even hear about a disaster that kills 20 or 30 people on the West Coast. Like that landslide last year. What landslide? Exactly.

There is the opposite problem going on in most of the rest of the country. In February a fire destroyed almost 80 square miles of ancient forest in Patagonia. Last month, there was a wildfire near Vina Del Mar that took 200 firefighters several days to put out. Last year, there was a huge fire that destroyed over 3,000 homes in Valparaiso. The list goes on and on. Farmers in the South are suffering because their crops can't grow. There are several bridges here in Santiago that go over nothing, as the rivers dried up years ago.

In case you've ever wanted to know what 3,000 houses on fire in a world heritage site look like

Back to the positive side of things, the Chilean Pacific has a thriving seal population that has yet to be affected by drought, fire, or flood. Here are some pictures.

Originally spotted from halfway up the dune. I could actually hear them before I could see them.

"Foca" means seal, for those English-speakers who have made it this far.

Six Months: Vacations, Volcanoes, and Other Fun Things

I think of my exchange year in three distinct parts: Part One lasted from August to December. I went to school during those months. I got to know my family and the language and got comfortable with both of them. Part Two was summer, December to March. I traveled a lot with my host family, I became comfortable navigating Santiago by myself. It was hot. This week, I start Part Three, the part that ends with my return to the United States. I returned to school today, March 4th, and to the structure and work that comes with it. And on Saturday, March 7th, I will be switching host families.

Every student in my District was supposed to switch families between Christmas and the New Year, and most of them did. Due to some confusion on Rotary's end, I did not, and here I am, more than two months later, sitting tight with my first host family. I had just started to let myself hope that no one would say anything and I wouldn't need to switch, so I am a little disappointed. I have been with this family for six and a half months, and I feel like part of the family. That being said, the second family is very nice and I'm sure we will get along well. By some crazy bit of good fortune, my second host family is only a few houses down the road from where I live now. I don't think you can understand how remote the chances of that are unless you are involved with Rotary. Most of my friends moved to completely different parts of this huge city.

The night before last, at about 3:00 am, a volcano in Villarica erupted. This is the volcano's first big eruption in 30 years. I was nowhere near it when it happened, but I was there in October. The town that I stayed in, Pucon, was evacuated in the middle of the night. I just figured that I should cover this since a few people have already asked me about it.

A real picture of the volcano erupting last night

My last post was about all the weird things I've eaten in Chile. I should have waited just a couple of weeks, because I could have added sea urchin to the list. It was not good. Chileans say it gets better each time you try it,and to that I say it's not worth it.

On a different note, the month of February was a month of vacation (photos below). Well, three weeks of vacation would be more accurate. We spent a week at Lake Rapel, which is a couple hours south of here, and then two weeks at a beach a couple hours north of here (here being Santiago). I jet-skied for the first time in Lake Rapel, where I also did lots of kayaking and attempted wind-surfing. I didn't do anything much more exciting than sleep while we were at the beach. These three weeks were like Spanish boot-camp. For the first week, thirty of us were staying in one house. That is not an exaggeration. The house was massive, though, so that helped. The second two weeks were more relaxed, but I was still craving some English by the time we got back to Santiago.

Photos from Vacation 2/2015

The house in Rapel

Jet skiing

Windsurfing 

I did better on land

The kind of place that charges you 60 cents to enter, gives you five squares of single-ply, and asks you to return what you don't use.

Heart, Tongue, Horse, Giant Barnacles and Living Rocks

Six months ago I would have had no idea why I would ever title a post like this. Well, now I know. And so will you.

So, what do a heart, tongue, horse, giant barnacles, and living rock have in common?

Answer: They've all been in my stomach at some point.

I've been waiting to make another food post for quite some time, and when I bought some dried horse meat today I knew that the moment had come.

I am a big person and food is a big part of my life, so you've seen some of my favorite foods from Chile. We've already covered the giant barnacle- called picoroco in Spanish-here. It's one of my favorite foods in Chile because of its distinct crabby flavor. And it looks awesome.

Picorocos from a local seafood restaurant. These ones have already been taken out of their shells

Have I eaten a whole, fresh heart? No, I have not (yet). But I have had a dip made out of blended chicken heart a few times. It has a bland, salty taste and goes nicely with crackers.

I am from southwestern Pennsylvania, which is crawling with Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch. So the tongue might not be very interesting to some of you. I had tongue for the first time this week and it was definitely interesting for me. I was most surprised by the fact that it was the size of a shoe. The next most surprising thing was the size of its taste buds, which I could clearly feel against my own.

Cow tongue sliced like a loaf of bread. Best served cold, apparently

The living rock, or piure, looks just like you would probably imagine it: Like a rock. In reality, it is a weird little animal that is native to the coasts of Chile and Peru. It's filled with a bunch of little slimy pieces of flesh, not unlike raw oysters, but red. To get to the meat, you need to cut it open, which is probably something better done outside. The rock sprays juice when it's punctured and it smells really, really bad (in my opinion- I encourage everyone to try it). I have a strong stomach and sense of adventure but I questioned my ability to eat this thing when our host began scooping the meat out with his fingers and plopping it into a serving dish. That being said, I had a few pieces and it was... interesting. The best way I can describe it might be to say that it smells like it tastes and it tastes like it's not supposed to be eaten.

"Now you take this home, throw it in a pot, add some broth, a potato. Baby, you've got a stew going." - Arrested Development

You should look up "piure" or "living rock" on youtube. A video is better than than pictures, but it won't do the smell justice.

Okay, horse. This might be the most controversial food item that I've eaten (A close runner up would be the sheep that we killed and ate on a field trip). To be fair, I didn't eat much of it because it is gross. I love beef jerky. I have been looking for beef jerky ever since I got here. Today I was walking around the Costanera Center (one of the biggest malls in the world and attached to the the tallest building in Latin America) when something that looked almost like jerky caught my eye. It's even called "charqui." I took a look at the ingredients: Dry horse meat, salt.

Sold.

It was disappointing. My first warning was the smell, which was something like gerbil food. Others would probably say that my first warning should have been that it was horse meat.

Cellphone quality photo

There's more where that came from. Lots of food items that I have eaten did not make the cut- raw beef on toast, eel, jelly and cheese sandwiches (they think that PBJ is strange), all sorts of raw seafood, and enough avocado to drown in. But don't let this post make you think that I don't enjoy the food here. Most of it is great, especially with my host family. I'm living with some great cooks.

The kitchen and dining room often look like cupcake sweatshops. My host sister has been known to have some friends over and pump out a couple hundred cookies

One of the most important lessons that I've learned on this exchange is the value of leaving your comfort zone. I think that one of the best ways to learn about yourself, which I would say is beneficial, is to try new things. You never know how you will respond to something and what you will learn until you try it. Doing new things and leaving your comfort zone is a great way to get to know yourself and become a more well-rounded person. So go for it.

A Very Merry Christmas Update

My time in Chile is rapidly approaching its halfway point. I have been here for 127 days, and in those days, which have gone by at an alarming pace, we've gone through Labor Day, Chilean Independence Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and finally, Christmas.

Christmas in Chile is certainly different than Christmas in the States, but there are also some definite similarities. For starters, stores put out their Christmas goods in October. Just like in the U.S, shops are eager to move on to the next holiday. In fact, I've already seen some Easter decorations. On the other hand, Christmas does feel a little less commercialized here- even if the difference is very small.

Like in America, many people-most, in Chile- go to a Christmas Eve service, which typically starts at about 8:00. Unlike in America, it would be almost unheard of to have dinner before 8:00. This means that we need to sit through a mass and find our way to a relative's house before we can have dinner. And before we can eat, of course, we need to deal with Santa.

Santa exists! Or, I should say, the idea of him exists here in a way similar to that in the United States. Santa, called "Viejo Pascuero," passes from house to house just like in the States- drawn, of course, by a team of flying reindeer. But while Santa wiggles his way down chimneys in the Northern Hemisphere, here he is content to climb in through windows, or, if he is in a big hurry, just chuck the gifts onto the roof and hope that the owners have a good ladder.

And while kids in the U.S. are tucked in bed and sleeping so that they can be sure that Santa will come, kids here do quite the opposite: They leave their houses in hoards in the middle of the night and actively hunt down Santa, who I assume is trying not to succumb to heat stroke (remember, it's summer in Chile).

My host brother helping the kids look for Santa

While we were outside, we were lucky enough to run into a typical Chilean treat: Chinchineros, or Chilean one-man bands. They always have a bass drum and cymbal, but are known to wield accordions and/or harmonicas. The two that we found marching around in the middle of the night just had the drums and cymbals. This video is from Youtube. I couldn't get the video that I took to work here.

These are the ones we saw

After their fruitless hunt (full of screams of excitement at every airplane), the kids return to their houses, where they find that Santa has taken advantage of their absence and already climbed in and back out the window, leaving lots of gifts behind.

After the kids spend the next hour or so opening gifts, people generally remember that it's 1:00 in the morning and that they're starving, and they sit down to Christmas dinner. Our dinner consisted of turkey with mango sauce and a great deal of seafood. It was all very good.

After everyone has had their fill, they make their way home, often arriving in the early hours of the morning- in our case, at 5:30.

Christmas day is much less eventful. In my family, they do a "secret friend" exchange, where each person gets one other person a gift. I like this way of doing it, as it really cuts back on the typical and unnecessary excess of Christmas. This is often followed by a family lunch and then relaxing outside, either by the pool or at the beach.

I was assigned to get Javiera, my host sister, a gift.

Wishing you all a happy holiday season and a good, healthy New Year.