Megan Quick's blog

yeah so I´m still boring

OK so sorry about the long time with out an update. I haven’t been spending a lot of time in with the computers. Before last Monday I was studying like crazy for two EE tests. I’m still not doing any better in circuits and but at least I will probably be able to pull a passing grade out in Signals and Systems. Any ways that’s over rated I need to keep in mind that I am not here to do homework and that I need to the enjoy Chile not freak out so much about school here. It’s not the end of the world if these classes don’t transfer. Anyways no more talking about school. I’ve been at home for such a long time I need to get out of here. The big news is that I am going to Buenos Aires on Tuesday. I’m really excited about this trip. I’m missing all of my classes once, but I’ll get over it. So what have I been doing in Vina? Warning this might get a little boring. But so is life. My Spanish has gotten noticeably better, good side effect of staying at home for so long. I went salsa dancing a couple times. I feel like Kate and I keep calling it swing but anyways it’s a good time.
I had two Intramural indoor (or out door on a basketball court) soccer games. It’s 5 v 5 and I’m on the international team we have one sub at most and the Chileans are all into it. However we have a very experienced team as most of the girls have played soccer for most of there lives and one played for her D1 college team for two years. Need less to say we dominate a lot. Our last game was in the Casa Central which is the main building on campus and it is always full of people. So basically there were a lot of people watching us. It was pretty intense they were all pretty much cheering against us. But it’s ok because we won 5-1 I didn’t score in this game but I was playing Defense the whole time and had like 4 assists. It was lots of fun and I didn’t hurt my self. Best of all I got to be late to Spanish class.
My other main extra curricular activity is volunteering at a Chilean Elementary school. I really enjoy this I am working with two classes of fifth graders. It’s good fun definitely my favorite age the girls are really sweet.(It’s a all girls school so just my specialty) I’m there to help with the English, like putting someone who can actually speak English in the class will help the girls learn not to sound so accented in English. This will help a lot because the teacher I am working with can hardly speak English and is very heavily accented sometimes I can hardly understand her and she never understands me when I speak in English. I’m glad she only has to teach basic English to the kids. She told me that she only took three semesters on college English and never has spent time in an English speaking country. Her degree is defiantly in teaching elementary school. The school is a little different that I expected. They first day I was there the class of 30 girls only had 13 people there because it was raining and the other kids were too lazy to go to school. Half of the girls don’t do any homework and have major problems paying attention in class. I saw a test she was giving to the eight graders and I seemed really basic to me however this is a pubic school and all of the good schools here a private.
Besides that I’ve done lot of hanging out with my Chilean friends which goes well for working on Spanish. I spent an afternoon in their apartment and learned a Chilean dorm room version of soccer with a tennis ball. It was fun. I’m still working on getting my chilemom to teach me to cook some of my favorite foods, but it will happen before I get back.
Today was a really exciting day I actually did something entertaining. First I went Kayaking with Kris and other people from his oceanography class. This was pretty exciting and right up my ally. We got to go up right next to a big rock with a whole lot of lobos del mar. It was pretty cool and one was even swimming in the water with us. We paddled under the pier and got to see lots of huge starfish. Kyle then was playing chicken with the rocks and lost. It was kinda entertaining as there were people on the shore taking pictures and laughing at him as he was getting back into his boat. Luckly he was the only one to fall out as he was the only who had brought a full change of clothes.
Then we went to tour some acensors which are like external elevators up the hill. Valpo is very well known for them. So we took one up and then were walking around the hills looking for another one and some cops decided to escort us for a while as they decided it was a dangerous place for gringos. It was one of the not so nice places, and there was a lady burning trash- smelly. Then we decided to the take the one Micro that tours all of Valpo up in the hills and spent 45 mins riding this micro through the hills is had a pretty view but I didn’t feel like taking a bunch of pics from the inside. We then headed down a pretty hill to watch the sunset and we met this guy at a mirador that was selling drawings of the city. It was cool because he was just featured in a National geographic article on Valpo. So of course we bought pics from him and he started talking to him and he started telling mildly entertaining stories. End of the story I miss my dinner date with the girls and I was going to get to eat Mexican food. Very sad. So tomorrow I’m going on a copa tour of isla negra (Pablo Nerudas house) and part of Santiago. And then on Sunday I’m touring around with Kris and Mads so I think its going to turn out to be an exciting weekend. Good fun.
PS read the extended entry if you want to hear the stories from the guy that made me miss dinner.

So this guy was pretty interesting and he was just continuing to talk and I thought that the other two kids were really into his talk and wanted to stay but we were all just putting on a really good show of faking interest. Anyway it makes for a good story. So the first story is about the cows. So the Questions is “Do to believe that there are blck cows living under the streets of Valpo?� Of course we answer no. So then the story begins. So Valpo is the central hub for boats to take animals for the central valley to the regions of Chile that need food. So before there we trains the port was mostly used for cows and that were always cows leaving in and out of the port. It was said that there were a few people that felt bad for the poor cows that they would tie up and put them on the boats. So these people would release the cows and allow them to swim free and live. So these cows had three different fates, the first was they would swim up the cities of the beaches where the people would be waiting with there BBQ on the beach all ready for the meat to walk right up. The second group of cows died on the rocks. En fin. The third group of cows was the smart group of cows and they would swim up the drainage and sewage tunnels in the city. These cows would swim and living up in under the city and occasionally some one would here them and open the sewer up and pull the cow out. So ha there were cows living under the city. Keep in mind this was being told to us in the dark and cold while I wanted to go to dinner with my friends. Also in Spanish with lots of gesturing and interrupting from the wife and arguing about the telling of the story and what not. It was very pure South America. The second story was even less entertaining than the first, so not worth my typing out. Anyways it still made for and entertaining story and I have a picture to go along with it.