Perú

So before going to Peru and hiking the four-day Inca Trail I honestly couldn’t tell you much about the Incas or Machu Picchu. Now hopefully I remember enough to give yall a brief history lesson! (Please keep reading! I promise its all really interesting stuff!)


Machu in Kechua means old and Picchu means mountain or summit. Machu Picchu literally means Old Mountain. Pretty cool, huh? But most of the names of the cities that are now ruins were changed when the Spanish came, so the original names are lost forever.

Near the city of Machu Picchu they found 173 mummies/dead people and of these bodies around 150 or so were women’s, which means that Machu Picchu was probably built for women.

The Incas only made human sacrifices when they were going through incredibly difficult times. Then they would sacrifice the prettiest little boy and the prettiest little girl in the town by feeding them plants (aka drugging them) and then burying them alive or putting them in the river. This sounds awful to us but for them it was an honor to be chosen for sacrifice. Occasionally they would also sacrifice teenage girls in the same way.

Machu Picchu was divided into two parts by a geologic fault line (I know all about these because I took Environmental Geology). The two parts were the agricultural and the actual city where they lived.

The American Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu on accident.

No one knows for sure how long it took the Incas to build Machu Picchu because some of the buildings were found unfinished. Also the whole community worked to build it and they weren’t on a time schedule so that’s why everything was built to last.


Now my experience in Perú was absolutely AMAZING! I hiked the four-day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and stayed a day in Cusco. The trail was difficult because its all stone steps or mostly and the altitude is so incredibly high that I got a few headaches from it. The hiking was tough but the archeological sites we saw along the way and the moment when Machu Picchu came into site made it worth it. Seeing Machu Picchu in person is breathtaking. Just thinking about the Incas and the hard work they put into their city and the fact that 80% of it is still the original buildings.
Cusco is a very touristy town, yet I didn’t feel like it gave off a cheesy vibe. It was still very authentic in some places. I went to the San Pedro market where they literally had EVERYTHING. Alpaca sweaters, fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, flowers, cheese, other knick-knacks and more. I could have stayed there all day. I seriously just fell in love with Peru and think if I ever had the opportunity to study abroad again I would go there.
Besitos,
Gaby

Vino (Wine)

Degustación- tasting
Corcho- cork

Chile’s wine valley Casa Blanca is (in my opinion) a hidden treasure. Most things that in the states would be super touristy and expensive with signs screaming in your face to go there are much more subtle and even difficult to find here. Tourism in Chile isn’t exactly a priority, especially if you don’t speak Spanish. I like that about this country it makes me feel like an insider when I do find these hidden treasures that most tourists have never heard of and would get lost going to. Which made my experience at the Casas del Bosque vineyard that much more enjoyable.

Saturday morning I met some friends at the bus terminal in Valparaíso to take the 45 minute bus to Casa Blanca (which is about half way between Viña/Valpo and Santiago).The Casablanca Valley has some of the vineyards that have recently grown in popularity here. Once there we hopped in a colectivo (taxi) to take us to the actual vineyard. It was so beautiful and the weather was perfect! We asked for the next tour when we arrived and even did the tour in Spanish (because we are such proactive and eager students!) However, having zero prior knowledge of wine and how it’s made proved to be a bit of a struggle with the vocabulary.
Then came the actual wine tasting! On the table with our wine glasses were other glasses filled with things like vanilla, pepper, bell peppers and mint to compare the smells of the wine with those basic things. There was one vino tinto (red wine) that definitely smelled like pepper but other than that I couldn’t really pick out the smells in the wines….maybe I just need more practice ☺

Other than the awesome wine tour this weekend things have been fairly calm here. The big news is that the Chilean University (La Catolica, the one I was supposed to be attending here) has reached some kind of agreement and started classes Monday. After being in paro (strike) for 4 months it’s about time they settled things! I also found out that on ESPN VIVO I can watch the World Series! Only downside is that the commentary is all in Spanish, kinda takes away from the All American-ness of baseball. BUT STILL I’m able to watch the games!

I LEAVE FOR MACHU PICCHU (the trip I’ve been looking forward to since before I even got here) ON THURSDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can’t contain my excitement. It’s gunna be TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!!

After I get back from Machu Picchu things will get pretty crazy with final papers and exams right around the corner and my travel plans taking up almost every weekend until I go home in December. It’s crazy to think that I’ve been here for about 3 months. Sometimes I think where did the time go? I still haven’t learned anything or seen or done anything?! And other times I think WOW, I’ve learned and grown and seen so much in such a short time. It’s a very strange mix of emotions, especially when you add in the occasional homesickness or feelings of wishing I were staying a year. (Don’t worry I’m not staying a whole year, y’all will see me back in the states in December). So a strange mix of emotions and about a month and half left here is where I stand right now. I hope that made some sense to those of you haven’t studied abroad before, it’s difficult to explain.

Besitos,
Gaby

Futbol (Soccer is the world's favorite sport)

It’s a well-known fact that soccer is the most popular sport pretty much everywhere except the U.S. So being in a Latin American country I have been able to experience first hand the passion these people have for the sport and their team. When I asked my host family why soccer was so popular they simply said it was part of the culture and that it was cheap so anyone can play. Which is so true you don’t need a ton of equipment to play soccer, just a ball and some friends. It’s also one of the reasons many pro futbolistas come from humble beginnings (like in the movie Goal, even though the protagonist is from Mexico its similar in all of Latin America).

In the past week or so I’ve had the opportunity to watch two futbol games at sports bars with some friends in my program. And let me tell you the people watching (or creeping if you will) just at these bars is awesome! And I hope to be able to go to a game live because that would just be madness! The bars are packed wall to wall with fans wearing red or Chile’s team scarves. At one of the bars some of the fans painted their faces like the Chilean flag (yes its ALMOST identical to the Texas flag) and wore crazy hats/wigs.
Everyone started cheering when the players walked on the field and sang along at the top of their lungs when they played the national anthem. In the Chile v. Peru game Chile scored early on and the whole bar went nuts! Everyone jumped out of their chairs and screamed GGGGOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLL!!! Then they chanted CHI-CHI-CHI LE-LE-LE VIVA CHILE! The excitement was definitely contagious! Chile continued to play really well and won 4-2! It was an awesome game with lots of scoring for a soccer match and the atmosphere really added to the experience.

One observation I have about Latin American futbol teams is that when they get hit they tend to be super dramatic and roll around on the ground a lot waiting for the other team to get penalized or whatever. Its kinda annoying but also really funny to think about making a montage after every game of the players just rolling around on the ground!


Now for a few miscellaneous updates!
1. Second time camping was a total success! The weather was awesome and we hiked to the top of the mountain. From the top on one side you could see the beach and Valparaíso and on the other you could see the Andes and Argentina. Super cool!
2. The strikes are still going on. The police went in and extracted the students that had taken over the school and were living there. But my professors think the kids will just take it over again.
3. My program took us on an historical tour of Santiago and we went to the cemetery where all the presidents are buried and to Villa Grimaldi. Villa Grimaldi was where they tortured people during the Pinochet era. It was comparable to a concentration camp during WWII. As depressing as it was I’m glad we went because I understand a lot more about Chile’s recent history now.
4. Things I miss: my car, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a tall glass of milk, chick-fil-a, and surprisingly the hot Texas weather (side note: its technically spring but we’ve had a cold front and I’m just dying to get to the beach!).

Besitos,
Gaby

Teletón (my internship)

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on my blog or only in skype conversations but through my program I am interning/volunteering at a nonprofit in Valparaíso. It’s called Teletón and it is a nonprofit for children with disabilities (con discapacidades). Basically, I go there once a week for a few hours and work in the recrear (to entertain) area where I get to play with the kids and their siblings while they wait for therapy and other appointments. If you know me at all you know that I absolutely love kids and this is the perfect place for me to be working! Some of the kids ask me about the U.S. and others just laugh at my accent or my inability to understand them. Also it’s interesting to talk to their parents about Chile and Teletón.

In addition to going to Teletón once a week, I also have an internship class where I read articles and such about disabilities and discrimination and integration of people with disabilities and write essays. And all these readings are in Spanish! Sometimes its very difficult to understand medical journals in Spanish because let’s be real, I wouldn’t completely understand them in English either. But it’s definitely a challenge that I welcome with open arms! I don’t read about one specific type of disability, I’m learning about physical, mental and psychological disabilities and how they affect people in Chile. Which is fascinating to learn about because it is very different from the United States in this area.

Unfortunately I’m not allowed to take pictures inside Teletón but if you speak Spanish (or have a lot of time to google translate everything) you can find them on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/teletonchile) and Twitter @Teleton!

In other news I’m going camping again with my mountain sports class this weekend and have tentative plans to go to Mendoza, Argentina the weekend after! I also just finished midterms, yay!
Besitos,
Gaby

Vacaciones de Primavera (Spring Break)

As promised I have included my pictures from Buenos Aires! But first I want to make a few shout outs to Rory “the anti-chirpse” Davidson for being our wonderful tour guide, to Andrew Crook for being awkward and introducing me to media lunas, Erin Dunk for being fabulous as always and to Andre Boudreaux even though I only got to see him for like a second! Yall made my trip to BA soo unforgettable! Thank you!

A few differences between Chile and Argentina:
1. The people in Argentina are not as friendly. They have this “I’m better than you” air about them that just didn’t appeal to me. I don’t know if it’s specifically a Buenos Aires attitude or all of Argentina.
2. The food in Argentina is more flavorful than in Chile!
3. The people in Buenos Aires are not stuck in the 80s as far as fashion goes. They are more modern.
4. People in Argentina speak slower and clearer than people in Chile. They were so much easier to understand! And now I don’t feel so dumb for struggling to understand Chileans my first few weeks here!
5. I’m really glad I chose to study in a smaller city. Being in Buenos Aires was comparable to New York City. I would have been incredibly overwhelmed if I lived there. Which just goes to show that Viña del Mar was the PERFECT choice for me!




Puente de la Mujer, the bridge made to look like a man and woman dancing tango...its abstract.


Casa Rosada (Pink House) where the president lives!


Obelisco


Trinity friends in Buenos Aires! So magical!


The tomb of Evita in the Recoleta Cementary. It had the most elaborate graves I've ever seen. Not that I spend that much time in cementaries but this one is definitely worth going to.


After my adventure in Buenos Aires I still had a few days of spring break left. So I hopped on a bus to the south of Chile! This is a picture of Volcan Villarrica, the volcano I was supposed to go skiing on! But then it rained and I couldn't. Sad day.


Ojo de Caburgua. It was so incredibly beautiful!


Then I went home to Viña just in time for my 21st birthday!!! This is a picture of my host parents Nancy and Adrián and my good friend Mary Kate (she's another Trinity friend!)

Comida (FOOD)

Y’all are probably all really curious about I’ve been eating down here in Chile. So just to clarify the food here is NOTHING like Mexican food. If you’ve been envisioning me eating tacos and enchiladas and spicy foods you are mistaken (and weird if you’re imagining what I eat….)

For breakfast every morning I have a small bowl of oatmeal, a piece of toast and usually an orange. Occasionally, I also have some freshly squeezed orange juice too! It’s kind of a plain breakfast but I really like because it’s not that different from what I eat for breakfast at home in Texas.
Lunch is by far the biggest and most formal meal of the day. And believe me when I say that lunch is HUGE! My family had to start giving me smaller portions because I never eat all of my meal. We usually start off with a salad of lettuce, pealed tomatoes (I still haven’t asked why they peal tomatoes, but I still think its weird) and maybe some broccoli. They don’t use salad dressing like we do. They use salt, oil and vinegar or lemon juice as salad dressing. Sometime we have soup too or whole artichokes that we dip in mayonnaise. (side note: I hate mayonnaise and skip this part of the meal).If we don't have soup or artichoke then we will eat empanadas of jamon y queso (ham and cheese). Also they’ll give me just a piece of bread to put pebre (basically salsa) on. Then we have the main course, which varies day to day but almost always has potatoes or rice and chicken many times. Pastel de papa, arroz con pollo, ravioli, portono con riendas (I think that’s what it’s called, it’s a bean and noodle soup). The other dishes have names that I’ve forgotten. But you get the idea. And for dessert we eat fruit! I really like having kiwi but oranges and apples are good too. Sometime Nancy and Adrián will have bananas with honey (platanos con miel) but I’m allergic to bananas so I just stare at them longingly while I eat my kiwi.
Dinner is small and informal and not called dinner. We say tomar té (to have tea) which, I think is just precious and wish more people in the states drank tea! So we’ll have tea with sandwiches of ham and cheese and sometimes after going to the feria (farmers market) we’ll have palta (avocado/guacamole). And if they’ve been to the panaderia we’ll have some kind of pastry for dessert! I especially like this pastry called a berlín, that has a cream filling and powdered sugar on top! Delicious!

Since my meals at home are already prepared/paid for I haven’t eaten out since I got here. I only buy ice cream! And let me tell you, Chileans LOVE their helado (ice cream). Even when I first got here in the dead of winter they were nomming on ice creams cones ALL THE TIME. There’s one ice cream place right on the beach that I have become a regular at! It’s soo yummy and the perfect start or end to a stroll along the beach!

Okay dearest readers I’ve done enough procrastinating in the form of blogging/skyping/cleaning/eating and should probably write my paper that’s due the day after I get back from BUENOS AIRES!! Did I mention that I’m spending my Chilean spring break in BUENOS AIRES!?!?!?! I’m so excited I can hardly stand it! So obviously my new post will be all glorious pictures from my wonderful spring break!

Besitos,
Gaby

CAMPING (yes this is what you think it is)

A Vocabulary Lesson:
Colchoneta- pad you put under your sleeping bag (which I did not have and my professor told me "vas a morir de frío"luckily my tent mates shared theirs)
Saco de dormir- sleeping bag
Carpa-tent
Cocinilla-little mini camping stove top

For those of you who I haven’t talked to in a million years this will be news to you, I am in a Mountain Sports class (deporte de montaña). Yes, I know I’m not the most outdoorsy or athletic person. But trust me, this is the best decision of my life. Our first excursion a few weeks ago was to go rock climbing and rapelling. I’ve been rock climbing before…you know like on a dinky little rock wall at summer camp. This was a real rock on a mountain. I was kinda scared but at the same time I was thinking to myself I just went rock climbing in Chile!!!! Wahooo!!!!!

Anyway, our second excursion this past weekend was a camping trip to Cerro Roble. So in true Gaby fashion I waited till the day before to buy all my supplies with my group at the Lider (Chilean Walmart). I’m so excited because this is the first time I’ve been camping in twenty years! Friday comes around and I’m so excited (I hope you are now singing Rebecca Black’s Friday in your head). We take the metro and a bus ride to get to the bottom of the Cerro. Once we arrive our professors inform us that there is a 90% chance of rain that night…why are we here if it’s going to rain??? I’m still not really sure about the answer to that question. But I’ve learned that I’m never in control here and to just go with the flow.

We start up the mountain and it’s beautiful and I’m having a great time hiking up the cerro. When it starts to get dark I get to use my linterna frontal (basically the forehead flashlight you wear like a miner). It’s so awesome and I look really cool AND I’m putting those hiking boots to good use! We finally reach the campgrounds, which have cow pies all over (I’m not sure why the cows are in the mountains but whatever). After kicking the cow pies out of the way we pitch our tent! After the tent is set up we cook the most delicious soup and PB&J sandwiches I’ve ever had. Seriously. It was amazing. Then it was time to go to bed before the rain started and we got soaked.
I’m at the point where I’m almost asleep when I hear the rain start. Great, now I’ll never fall asleep because I’m too nervous that the rain will soak through the tent. I try to calm down and sleep but then I hear the ferocious winds blowing. Oh dear, our tent is going to blow away! I keep trying to sleep but now I’m freezing and scared our tent is about to get blown off the mountain. And then it happens, I feel freezing cold water on my arm that’s not good. So I readjust and keep trying to sleep and keep failing.
Finally morning comes and our professor is walking from tent to tent giving important instructions. He comes to ours and says (in Spanish of course) “don’t get out of your tent it’s still dark out and there is snow on the ground.” SNOW?!?! No wonder I was so cold!!! I now don’t feel like such a big baby for being cold and unable to sleep all night. But now what? I’m not hiking in the snow to come back and sleep another night in this tent that is covered in snow/rain. Luckily I didn’t have to because our professors informed us that it was too dangerous to go hiking and that we would just go back. Which of course meant hiking down the slippery snow and mud covered cerro.
It was still snowing when we began hiking back down, which made it difficult and we moved at a very slow pace. Good thing because the mud was super inconvenient. But then we get to where the stream is and its like a rainforest on this portion of the mountain! Green leafy trees everywhere and water! And not that much mud. We keep walking and make it back to the bus that takes us to the metro station. Then I finally get home!!!! And it’s a beautiful sunny day in Viña when I arrive. I then spend the rest of the day/night sleeping (only after I showered and ate a real meal).

And that is the story of my very first camping experience! I feel like after this, the next excursion and my trip to Machu Picchu will be a piece of cake! And good news I didn’t get sick! And even though this whole story probably makes it sound like its was awful (and the weather was awful) I still had a wonderful time! We were all tired but happy because otherwise we would have started panicking about the snow and such. Well anyway, I hope yall enjoyed this adventurous story as much as I enjoyed living it!
Till next time
Besitos
Gaby