After a 15 hour bus ride that included a ferry ride, a relaxed 'good' night's rest, and a few small meals I finally arrived in Castro, Chiloe. Thursday we wrapped up our orientation, I bought a cell phone, and we had a small cocktail party (in which I could not participate, as I am still on antibiotics and all that jazz), and I was dropped of at one of Santiago's bus terminals. Though I was about 15 hours from arriving at my new town, no one could yet tell me who would be there to pick me up. A teacher, a host family member, the regional director...I was assured it would be someone. And if not, I was told to happily sit on a bench, a la Forrest Gump, until somebody claimed me. I boarded the bus with Luisa, a returning volunteer from Cali. She told me all about her host family (a military family that spent a year in the US and actually speaks English, which is quite rare for the program), her school (fair amount of resources with kids that are pretty awesome), her volunteers friends, and all sorts of other good stuff. The fact that she was home free, and then decided while in Cali to return to the incredibly rainy Lakes region was a bit comforting. I finally arrived around 1pm and was met by the vice-director of the school as well as by members of my host family. All in all, there are four people living here. The parents (Marco and Roxana) and two daughters (teenaged Ignacia and 5 year old extremely cute and adorable--and well behaved!--Matilda). Two older children of theirs are studying/working up in Santiago.
The family is amazing. Right off the bat the parents invited me to go buy meat with them on a farm a little ways off, where the guy slaughters his animals on Fridays. So I stood in a shack with bloodied carcasses hanging on hooks and the head of something like a cow, maybe, laying on the floor with half the guts exposed. I figured if I didn't barf, it'd be all good, and if I did I'd have an awesome story to tell about my first day in Castro. After watching the guy run half a carcass through his saw, I wandered outside to eavesdrop on the conversation between Roxana and the grandmother of that house. Couldn't catch a word, but the views were beautiful. Afterwards Roxana told me that should couldn't understand much either. Apparently the people down here speak extremely fast and blurred, with lots of local slang. Great, gives me much hope of learning the language. In the evening, as I was getting ready to crash, the parents invited me to join them at a friend's house. I took the opportunity to immerse myself a bit more into the community, and went along.
We ended up in the city (my new house is situated just on the outsirts of the city) and by around 11pm all dozen guests had arrived. By midnight several various types of meat were on the grill and by 2am everyone was dancing and singing Chilean folk songs as well as some B.o.B. (''Airplanes''). After a 15 hours bus ride and a week of sleeping in a hostel, I wasn't too excited about sitting on a porch watching random men thrust their hips in my general direction to reggaeton music. Normally I'm all about that, and I'd join in on the fun. But this time I passed and got a ride home with Marco. On the ride back something cracked the entire windshield, which Roxana informed this morning was probably hoodlums chucking rocks. Seriously? Naively I figured an island one mile off the coast, in the south of Chile, South America's most economically and socially stable country, would be a fairly crime-free zone. Never assume. Still, super excited to start work Monday. I was told my classes should be pretty small, and the director of the school is super nice. We'll see if that all pans out. I'll have a week of shadowing before I get to do lesson planning and pretend that I am qualified to be in this position.
I've been uploading pics, blogging, and e-mailing all day on my fam's pc so I'm off to play with the little one. She's simply amazing. Polite, but fun and outgoing. And my Spanish is much better than when I was in Spain, thus my relations with the family are closer. Roxana already promised to go up to Santiago in late July after my program ends to meet my mom, which is pretty awesome of her. (Note: I finished this up Saturday afternoon, and was gonna add more before I posted. But I´m just gonna leave that for the next post.)
Pablo
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