Entries for June 2005
Post school – pre final and Peru.
So even though no one has asked I’ll give my schedule any way.
June 30th – My circuits final (wish me luck)
July 1st – Fly to Cuzco Peru
July 2nd -6th – Hopefully hiking a trail to Muchu Pichu (however not the Inca trail)
July 7th –Flying to Lima airport
July 8th – 6 am arrive in Santiago
- take a bus to Vina get my stuff say good bye to my chile mom
- 8:45pm fly out of Santiago to Miami
July 9th – fly to Atlanta then to Denver get in Denver around 2 ish I think
July 10th – 11:30 start up at camp
July 29th -Camp ends – (I’ll be home on weekends and my nights off though)
August 10th – Leave Colorado for Kansas
August 11th – visit the Family in Kansas
August 12th – Arrive in the Cleveland to move in to my new House!!!!
August 21st – 24th go canoeing (hopefully)
There you are all of my plans for what is the remainder of the summer.(your summer) It’s still weird to have July be the middle of winter. So Chile – my last post was on the Atacama so I’m going to start from there. I had another circuits test that Tuesday so I studied like crazy when I got back from the Atacama. that Friday I organized a ski trip to El Colorado Ski resort near Santiago. We got this awesome deal that if we could find ten people and collect all of the money the day before we could go skiing with everything included for $26,000 pesos like $45 US. Yeah this was with transportation the mountain, rentals, lift ticket, and lunch. The lift ticket alone costs that much so basicly this deal is a steal. How ever we had a little be of transportation issues as the drive didn’t know how to put chains on and ended damaging his van when he got the chains wrapped around the axel of the car. We ended up not beaing able to hit the slopes until noon however it was still a good time and I found a girl to board with and it was fun. There was some major powder however I wasn’t super impressed with the slopes in general. I have pics but like always I have pics but Kris probably has better ones so you should check his site too. Skiing was a good time but I it was a pain to set up and we weren’t too thrilled with some of the randoms that we got to go. Then I returned home to study like crazy, for my massive amount of tests and finals I just finished last week. Basically I had finals in my COPA classes and large tests in both of my engineering classes. It was fun I studies a lot. I found Chileans to study with for my engineering classes. I might be being cocky but I really think I got out of my final for my Signals class. That’s exciting. A topic tha I am going to rant about now that has been super prominent in my life recently is the extreme difference in grading here. The school system in the US has killer grade inflation. Here is exactly like IB (except less standardized) It’s really super common to fail classes the major is five years long and is takes everyone a lot longer to get throught because they all fail classes it is unheard of for some one to get throught with out failing a class. Like in grading the only thing that matters here is that you get a 4 and that is enough to pass you out of the class. So the class average is usauay like a 4.3 and everyone is just super happy to have passed, oh also if you have over a 4.5 before the final you don’t have to take the final. Its pretty rare to get out of the final it is considered like you did really well in this class. Here you compete against the test and the teacher not he other students.I think that might be why everyone cheats because it really doesn’t effect you at all if everyone else does well. However if you have a prof that continually makes really hard tests then you just have to keep retaking the class until you pass it. Yeah it sucks. I’m not sure they really are forced to learn the material here because they have very few homeworks so its really hard to have an idea as to whats going to be on the test. They just haveto study off of old tests and all they do is cram for the exams its not like you are continually working to the subject all year. As to the cheating it really pisses my off and I have an awesome comic to prove that thanks to my friend Cesar. But I was asked before my last Signals test “are you really going to take it alone?” Like was I not going to take the test with my friends. “ and you are still passing the class?” Yeah it was quite shocking to this guy. Like the room opens and they all run in and pick up the desks from the front of the room and physically bring them to the back so they can all copy off of each other. Its so wrong and the prof doesn’t even care. I don’t know it still bothers me. However I got 7s on my homework and it’s 20% of the class so I’m golden. So I got through the week and am just trying to get everything I want to do in Vina done before I leave.
Up date - I def dont have to take Signals I ended the class with a 5 which is a B like the 5th highest grade in the class. They have no shame en posting everyones grades here.
I hate my circuits class and my prof. and am going to have to fight the whole way.
This is my last blog update from chile. however there will be one about peru at some point in time.
San Pedro Pics
I post all my pretty desert pics for your viewing pleasure
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the driest place on earth
Hey all,
So My mommy still reads my blog and she really wants me to post again. So here it is. That and I finally have something exciting to post on. And I think that these enteries will be really good to help me remember whati did in chile and how cool it was. I also have a ton of pics for the Atacama that you all can see and enjoy. (All being like my mom) Well any ways yay for my mommy.
First off I the gringa indoor soccer team is in the finals. We won in the semifinals and next Friday after my hardest week of soccer I’m we are going to beat the best Chilean team to claim the championship. This team is the PE major team so they are all supposed to be really good and the gringas seem to always lose this game (historically that is) However we are going to win and it will be very exciting. I haven’t hurt myself playing for a while so all is good and I’m really enjoying soccer here. They are more into it than I thought today they took over a floor of the engineering building where I was studying and set up a large screen and a projector and most of the EE major sat around and yelled and watched a under 20 game against spain. Chile lost badly like normal but they were still enthusiastic. Vamos Chilenos! Any ways
Now to the meat….. so I went to san Pedro de Atacama this weekend it was very exciting. It is about a 24 hour drive to the north of Vina so it’s hot. It’s right on the tropic of Capricorn (which I got to sand on)(that and the Inca trail both were only marked by a little marker and made for a very boring stop). So this is going to be a day by day play it was a very exciting weekend. I went with four girls that I really hadn’t hung out with at all since I’ve been here. Kelsey is one of the ones that I was in Miami with and she is from Cleveland so some of you all might actually meet her. Wednesday we flew into the Calama about an hour from SP (san Pedro) It was about 11:30 when we got there because I had to go to my classes that day not to mention my soccer game. However we were hungary so we put our stuff down and found a hotel to the stay at some one in my group planed ahead and called. We then were followed by creepy people to the only restuant open at 12 on a Wednesday night. We have some not very good half way burnt and horribly cooked food. (we think it might be pay back for us coming in and ordering about five minutes before they closed.) We then headed home to rest up for a early bus.
The drive to SP was pretty uneventful and we pretty much just looked out the window like this is so cool the entire time, awesome scenery was the theme of the weekend. So this is Thursday and we walk around until we find a hostel that had nice rooms and a open courtyard in the middle of the rooms with tons of little critters running around. The real reason to stay at this hostal was the baby goats. These kiddos were 6 days old when we got there talk about adorable. (We bargained the price down too and we all got to stay in the same room.) So the look around the town met some Irish people and found a sand boarding tour. None of us knew what it was or what is would be like but the tour took us to the “ valle of the moon” after wards. (this is where we were planning on going any ways ) So it was exciting. So sand boarding is kinda like snowboarding on a huge dune of sand. However you have to walk yourself up the dune at the end. b/c of this you get a little tired. But it was super fun and a good new experience. (I mean how many people have been sand boarding.) However here my snowboarding experience might not have helped my because I kept tying to turn like when you are boarding but you can’t at all do that with. However after a fee mistakes I think I’ll better now. Then we saw the sun set in the valley of the moon that main tourist attraction but it was kind of boring and didn’t seem to live up to all of the hyper. They sunset was amazing, (all of them – we saw like 6 rises/sets) We then signed up for a 5:40 am tour for the altiplano. And made it an early night.
Day 2 – Friday we went to the got up really really early and caught the sunrise on the salt plains. It is a flimingo reservae and so we were the only ones there with the flamingos and the sunset on the mountians yeah really pretty. So it was super exciting and serene. That birds were cool and the salt plians are unique in that the ground is is salt. It is also where chile produces como 70% of the lithuim in the world. Our guide then took up up tp the altiplano lakes ans stuff up super high in the mountians. It was all realyl pretty but we were really high up like 4500 meters it´s kinda like 14,000 feet. It was interesting. The Andes go up to 20000 ft. The lakes were pretty and we stopped in lots of places on the why up. Like a village and to see all of the indains ruins and the irragation systems the keep the desert alive. The desert was really cool, but even during the day we were cold. We then went to stand on the crossing of the tropic of capicorn and the inca trail which ende up being super not interesting, it´s just a marker in the ground hey you are here. We made horrible pasta in the hotel, chile doesn´t believe in spices. It actually started raining while we were cooking dinner and we ran out side to feel the rain drops in one of the driest places on earth. The water storage contain above the kitchen had broken and the was spraying water all over. So much for being there on the one day that it rains. I actaully studied for my test. Are you proud of me?
Next day saterday – We slept in and then went bike riding all over the desert, we braved rivers and followed a mapa and found this canyon place where we the looked at lots of really cool rocks and climbed and went exploring. Made for a really good lunch spot and it wa noce to not have a guide hauling us around every where. We took lots of fun pics. And then rode to the inca ruins close by. It was interesting but i´m still hyped for Machu Pichu. On our ride back we were stamperded by a herd of goats and sheep and the got to watch the shepards round up two pissed off and unresponsive sheep. I will have pics of this motorcycle surround but goats its interesting. Chile has a helmet law so that all wear them that is super good. Umm the only really bad thing that we all had soaking wet shoes and i didn´t have any other shoes. So we went to this resturant with no roof and a bonfire in the middle and i stood in front of the fire and dried my shoes. It was good.
Sunday – final day I went to the Gysers at 4 Am it was fun. Emily and I were the only ones that wanted to go and we went and it was interesting. You get the right for sunset when the gysers are the most active. It´s just like tons of steam jets every where I will have lots of pics if i ever get them posted. Some of them would randomly start and spot becuase it´s all one huge gyser that has pores all over the surface that just continually shoot out steam and it´s interesting. We then went to a hotsprings there fed by the gysers. The larger gysers are interesting too. We saw lots of animals in their natural environments like vicunas and llamas and little chinchilla things. I think my english has gotten worse. Wonderful. I was within 8 km from bolivia and politcal unrest but the guide wouldn´t take me to bolivia very sad. then we saw an awesome sunset from the plane and it was a good end to a great weekend. yeah. then I returned to the real world and studied for my test and if i didnt bomb it yesterday then maybe i can pass the class but we will see.
in case you wanted to see
Ok so I posted Buenos Aires and Vina pics enjoy.
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Watch out Buenos Aires
So i felt very Evita-ish in Buenos Aires, yay musicals. I miss high school. Ok so we it was a pretty fun weekend but there aren{t very many exciting things to talk about becuase there were not events that we were doing. I was just kinda walking around the city and seeing all of the different places. Buenos Aires has 5 or six distinct barrios that all have there own flare. We saw and took pic of all of the really well know places, like the CASA ROSADA, the argentina white house. We went to a tango show which was really cool. Other than that we ate really good food for super cheap and bought lots of stuff. Buenos Aires feels alot like New York city but like friendlier and less rushed. It has a different feel as do all latin american cities. It is hard to describe. I wish I had more exciting stuff to talk about. But really was did{nt do anything that stood out in Buenos. Anyways it was a good trip and a fun place to visit.