Wednesday, August 12, 2009
So, last of my entries. I've been home for a month, but I definitely need to close up this little blog that I've been using. So this is very much a final chapter. Final travels, final parties, and of course, finals (bad pun, sorry). So yeah.
This was on our brief trip to Buenos Aires (20+ hour bus ride each way!). I know I'll have to go back someday. My favorite part was the Recoleta Cemetery - the mausoleums were incredible.
Oh man, back in Santiago. Although I don't really miss being on a bus all day, I do really miss the bus musicians. So much.
I had another photo project which was nice. I really enjoyed doing them, and it was good for me to have a little time for self-expression. Basically it was our interpretation of Chile, so it was also a great time for me to reflect on the previous 5 months.
So I turned 21 in Chile, meaning it really didn't have any significance whatsoever. So, being me, I decided I wanted an unconventional birthday and all I wanted was to ride this thing. It. Was. Sweet.
Charlotte and I finally went to a soccer game. It was a world-cup qualifier game versus Bolivia and Chile destroyed, de-stroyed Bolivia 4-0. Viva Chile!
Charlotte and I finally tried 'mote' which is the most delicious summer drink. Basically you rehydrate apricots for days in a sugar water mixture and then you throw in some cooked barley. Kind of like a Chilean boba-tea.
My host-parents threw an awesome birthday party for me, my host mom, and two of their other relatives in the new casa. Lots of family and I love and miss them so much!
Me and my host mom with the birthday cake!
Then we had finals over the last two months I was there which was crazy. This was the day I had my final performance in bellydancing class.
So then I had my final day at my volunteer-gig at a local school for kids with disabilities. This is Daniel, and he was one of the kids in my 'taller de juegos', basically a fun afternoon workshop for the youngest kids. I miss the kids so so so so so much. I'm so happy I volunteered there, I wish I had more time with the kids.
Fabian, another one of the kids in my taller. I miss them so much!
Final days in Santiago with the beautiful snowy mountains.
As a last hoorah Loretta and I took a train ride to Talca for a relaxing day filled with lots of food and completos.
Then, on one of my last days in Chile, I finally went to a Chilean vineyard with Nick and his polola Macarena.
Then I had to say goodbye. Here is my final picture with my amazing host-padres!
I miss Chile a ton lately. I miss the spanish and the garabatos (Chilean words) and the people and everything I guess. Overall, I'm so happy and so grateful that I got to experience SO much. I can't wait to go back!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for reading!
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This was on our brief trip to Buenos Aires (20+ hour bus ride each way!). I know I'll have to go back someday. My favorite part was the Recoleta Cemetery - the mausoleums were incredible.
Oh man, back in Santiago. Although I don't really miss being on a bus all day, I do really miss the bus musicians. So much.
I had another photo project which was nice. I really enjoyed doing them, and it was good for me to have a little time for self-expression. Basically it was our interpretation of Chile, so it was also a great time for me to reflect on the previous 5 months.
So I turned 21 in Chile, meaning it really didn't have any significance whatsoever. So, being me, I decided I wanted an unconventional birthday and all I wanted was to ride this thing. It. Was. Sweet.
Charlotte and I finally went to a soccer game. It was a world-cup qualifier game versus Bolivia and Chile destroyed, de-stroyed Bolivia 4-0. Viva Chile!
Charlotte and I finally tried 'mote' which is the most delicious summer drink. Basically you rehydrate apricots for days in a sugar water mixture and then you throw in some cooked barley. Kind of like a Chilean boba-tea.
My host-parents threw an awesome birthday party for me, my host mom, and two of their other relatives in the new casa. Lots of family and I love and miss them so much!
Me and my host mom with the birthday cake!
Then we had finals over the last two months I was there which was crazy. This was the day I had my final performance in bellydancing class.
So then I had my final day at my volunteer-gig at a local school for kids with disabilities. This is Daniel, and he was one of the kids in my 'taller de juegos', basically a fun afternoon workshop for the youngest kids. I miss the kids so so so so so much. I'm so happy I volunteered there, I wish I had more time with the kids.
Fabian, another one of the kids in my taller. I miss them so much!
Final days in Santiago with the beautiful snowy mountains.
As a last hoorah Loretta and I took a train ride to Talca for a relaxing day filled with lots of food and completos.
Then, on one of my last days in Chile, I finally went to a Chilean vineyard with Nick and his polola Macarena.
Then I had to say goodbye. Here is my final picture with my amazing host-padres!
I miss Chile a ton lately. I miss the spanish and the garabatos (Chilean words) and the people and everything I guess. Overall, I'm so happy and so grateful that I got to experience SO much. I can't wait to go back!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for reading!
0 comments
Monday, May 18, 2009
Wow so its been a while since I posted, so I have a lot of updates. Basically my world revolves around school in Santiago and our many travel adventures. So here we go.
This picture is from my photo project that I did for my History of Chilean Photography class on "Lo redondo y lo cuadrado de Valparaiso" - The round and the square of Valparaiso. The photo is taken in Valparaiso, the historic fishing city a couple hours outside of Santiago.
CIEE took us to Pucon where we saw beautiful waterfalls, crystal-clear thermal baths, lakes, mountains, rivers, and volcanic caves!!! Here I am with Chloe and Charlotte in front of one of the waterfalls.
We also went rafting which was probably my favorite thing I've done all semester- SOOO exhilirating - loved every moment! (I'm in the back on the right!)
Then a bunch of us went off for Easter weekend to Coquimbo and La Serena which was beautiful. Coquimbo is a fishing town and La Serena is a popular beach town right next to it.
We had delicious, delicious seafood in Coquimbo at the fish market! This is paila marina - a fish soup with all sorts of yummy/weird seafood in it. I have no idea what was in it but it was good!
The area around Coquimbo is one of the best places in the world to see the stars, so we went to an Observatory to check out the sky. Unfortunately there was a full moon so we didn't get to see many stars, but we got unbelievable views of the moon and we learned a TON!
We went on a great boat tour around the Coquimbo bay which back in the day was a real pirate territory. On that big rock were a ton of sea lions basking in the sun!
The weekend after that (I wasn't in Santiago for a single weekend all month!) Beth, Nick, and I went to Mendoza in Argentina. I LOVED it. Probably one of my favorite places I have ever been. We took a beautiful bike tour to all these different vineyards all around Maipu. Beautiful views all around. We visited two "bodegas"/vineyards, an olive oil factory, and a family run chocolate and liquor factory!
Nick, Beth, and I at one of the wine tastings!
We went to our hostel's delicious, delicious asado where we ate really good Argentinian beef! Yum! (Beth's photo).
On our last day we checked out the zoo in Mendoza which was amazing - all sorts of animals ridiculously up close- but also extremely sad since many of the animals are barely given any room to walk.
So Charlotte and I next decided to head off to Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia. With only three short days (because of school obligations) we took a bus tour the first day to try and see as much as we could, and we camped and hiked the next. Definitely want to go back and do the whole circuit!
Unbelievable. The Cuernos and the Torres del Paine.
We saw the bottom of the huge waterfalls, but it was unbelievably windy and I'm way past the "Do not pass" sign (which was all our tour guides idea). Check out my back leg trying to brace myself so I didn't go flying over the edge!
Our campsite that night!
Since we came in fall, the trees were turning beautiful shades of orange and yellow.
We woke up at 4 in the morning to hike all the way up to the Mirador (in the pitch dark, with dinky cell phone flashlights). The view at the top was stunning, and although it was too foggy to really check out the Torres, we had no idea that there was this beautiful glacial pool at the top!
Here's a good overall view of Santiago, in all its smoggy city glory.
Then, after a weekend of actually staying in Santiago, CIEE brought us to San Pedro de Atacama, the driest desert in the world (dry being the amount of water in the air - you get dehydrated after 5 minutes of not drinking water - crazy).
Our first morning there we went on a nice bike ride into the cavernous terrain of the desert.
Later that day we explored Valle de la Luna. Atacama was much more rocky and mountainous than we had expected, but really different and beautiful.
We went to watch the sun set on top of a giant dune. Here's the view of the sun setting over one of the twin volcanos of Atacama.
We also visited Los Salares - the salt flats in National Park Los Flamencos (The Flamingos). Crazy bizarre salt formations strewn as far as the eye can see.
The park's namesake - salt-flat residing Flamingos!!!
Then we headed on in to the town of Temuco and hung out with this adorable baby llama until its mother chased us away...
So when we got back to Santiago, rain finally had come! Santiago has been nothing but blue skies since we got here - it sounds nice, but in actuality its boring and hot. I'm so excited for weather again! Thought I'd get a picture of the mountains before the smog heads in during the winter (end of June through August).
That's all for now, but I miss you guys! I'm off to Buenos Aires this weekend and I'll be sure to update when I get back! Love you!
-ali :)
1 comments
This picture is from my photo project that I did for my History of Chilean Photography class on "Lo redondo y lo cuadrado de Valparaiso" - The round and the square of Valparaiso. The photo is taken in Valparaiso, the historic fishing city a couple hours outside of Santiago.
CIEE took us to Pucon where we saw beautiful waterfalls, crystal-clear thermal baths, lakes, mountains, rivers, and volcanic caves!!! Here I am with Chloe and Charlotte in front of one of the waterfalls.
We also went rafting which was probably my favorite thing I've done all semester- SOOO exhilirating - loved every moment! (I'm in the back on the right!)
Then a bunch of us went off for Easter weekend to Coquimbo and La Serena which was beautiful. Coquimbo is a fishing town and La Serena is a popular beach town right next to it.
We had delicious, delicious seafood in Coquimbo at the fish market! This is paila marina - a fish soup with all sorts of yummy/weird seafood in it. I have no idea what was in it but it was good!
The area around Coquimbo is one of the best places in the world to see the stars, so we went to an Observatory to check out the sky. Unfortunately there was a full moon so we didn't get to see many stars, but we got unbelievable views of the moon and we learned a TON!
We went on a great boat tour around the Coquimbo bay which back in the day was a real pirate territory. On that big rock were a ton of sea lions basking in the sun!
The weekend after that (I wasn't in Santiago for a single weekend all month!) Beth, Nick, and I went to Mendoza in Argentina. I LOVED it. Probably one of my favorite places I have ever been. We took a beautiful bike tour to all these different vineyards all around Maipu. Beautiful views all around. We visited two "bodegas"/vineyards, an olive oil factory, and a family run chocolate and liquor factory!
Nick, Beth, and I at one of the wine tastings!
We went to our hostel's delicious, delicious asado where we ate really good Argentinian beef! Yum! (Beth's photo).
On our last day we checked out the zoo in Mendoza which was amazing - all sorts of animals ridiculously up close- but also extremely sad since many of the animals are barely given any room to walk.
So Charlotte and I next decided to head off to Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia. With only three short days (because of school obligations) we took a bus tour the first day to try and see as much as we could, and we camped and hiked the next. Definitely want to go back and do the whole circuit!
Unbelievable. The Cuernos and the Torres del Paine.
We saw the bottom of the huge waterfalls, but it was unbelievably windy and I'm way past the "Do not pass" sign (which was all our tour guides idea). Check out my back leg trying to brace myself so I didn't go flying over the edge!
Our campsite that night!
Since we came in fall, the trees were turning beautiful shades of orange and yellow.
We woke up at 4 in the morning to hike all the way up to the Mirador (in the pitch dark, with dinky cell phone flashlights). The view at the top was stunning, and although it was too foggy to really check out the Torres, we had no idea that there was this beautiful glacial pool at the top!
Here's a good overall view of Santiago, in all its smoggy city glory.
Then, after a weekend of actually staying in Santiago, CIEE brought us to San Pedro de Atacama, the driest desert in the world (dry being the amount of water in the air - you get dehydrated after 5 minutes of not drinking water - crazy).
Our first morning there we went on a nice bike ride into the cavernous terrain of the desert.
Later that day we explored Valle de la Luna. Atacama was much more rocky and mountainous than we had expected, but really different and beautiful.
We went to watch the sun set on top of a giant dune. Here's the view of the sun setting over one of the twin volcanos of Atacama.
We also visited Los Salares - the salt flats in National Park Los Flamencos (The Flamingos). Crazy bizarre salt formations strewn as far as the eye can see.
The park's namesake - salt-flat residing Flamingos!!!
Then we headed on in to the town of Temuco and hung out with this adorable baby llama until its mother chased us away...
So when we got back to Santiago, rain finally had come! Santiago has been nothing but blue skies since we got here - it sounds nice, but in actuality its boring and hot. I'm so excited for weather again! Thought I'd get a picture of the mountains before the smog heads in during the winter (end of June through August).
That's all for now, but I miss you guys! I'm off to Buenos Aires this weekend and I'll be sure to update when I get back! Love you!
-ali :)
1 comments
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Flash Update
Hello all!I knew its been waaay too long since I've updated - I've been travelling a ton, and tomorrow night I'm off to Patagonia (!!!) - Torres del Paine! So, keeping with the whole photo blog idea, I'm gonna give you a super fast update on a few things and then the first couple of my many travels - (those captions last time were less like captions, way more like essays, my b).
So we returned to Vina del Mar for a good 4 day trip - unfortunately it was cloudy the whole time, but we had a chance to explore everything and go to Valpo (Valparaiso) to check out Pablo Neruda's house La Sebastian.
In Valpo of course we had to get nasty, cheap Chilean fast food - Charlotte, on the left, Nick, on the right, poor-life-decision, front and center.
Back in Santiago, I accidentally chopped off all of my hair - getting scarily... scaaarily close to getting one of those oh-so-abundant Chilean mullets. Apparently its a lot harder to translate hair-cut terms into another language...
So this was my Chilean home during all of this...
And here was my room. But why was it so messy? Because I was packing all my stuff up because my host family and I - - - MOVED! (I actually usually, shocking to anyone who knows me, keep my room here clean - pristine even, or else my host mom cleans it, which makes me feel horrible.)
Here's the new house - really cute English townhome style, with a beautiful, beautiful "jardin" (garden) in the back.
Here's my new room. Still messy huh? I actually took this photo to remember how disgusting I felt after getting really really sick for 4 days in bed - I literally threw things everywhere. Had to take antibiotics - overall REALLY sucked.
Right after being sick I went with Chloe (left) and Charlotte (right) to Cajon del Maipo, a beautiful area right outside of Santiago.
We stayed in Lo Valdes - at the tippy top of Cajon del Maipo. It was gorgeous. At night you could see the Milky Way perfectly!
We did a horseback ride our first day in Cajon del Maipo.
We rode to the Laguna Clarillo. A brilliant little pool that really was this shade of blue. Stunning.
Of course I had to jump in. Mind you there are glaciers a few kilometers away - the water was frigid. But oh-so-worth-it!
My beautiful horse Soquete!
Our last day there we went to the Banos Colina which are all these little thermal baths heated by the nearby volcano and filled with some really stinky mud that we put all over ourselves. (In the end I really dont think the mud does anything special, just smell).All in all Cajon del Maipo was AMAZING - the mountains were unlike anything I've ever seen before, very glad we went!
Thats all for now, but I'll update again soon - just thought I'd get a head start!
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