Mendoza - Santiago - Antofagasta

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. We have been very busy. We made it to Mendoza on the 3rd of March after a 18 hour bus ride. Mendoza was in the middle of their big wine/harvest festival. We got to see a big parade on Saturday night that included floats from all over Argentina. The floats were tossing various fruits such as bananas, grapes, lemons apples and even a few Melons out into the crowd (kind of dangerous). Some floats also handed out meat and wine but these were pretty rare. We met a few friends from our program in Mendoza as well and we went and did some horseback riding together. The ride was in a desert near Mendoza and even looked a little like our desert in California complete with creosote. Overall Argentina had great Italian food and some of the best steaks I have ever had in my life.

We made it back to Santiago on the 6th of March and met all of our friends from our program. We also got to meet all the new recruits who came in just for the teaching portion of the program. We had orientation until Thursday of that week (March 10th). On Wednesday we found out that we were leaving for Antofagasta the following night so we had a bit of a panicked packing period. The bus ride was another 18 hour bus ride and not nearly as comfortable as the one we had in Argentina. When we arrived in Antofagasta on Friday we met our host family and the regional director for our program.

Antofagasta is the 2nd biggest city in Chile with a population of about 300,000 (Compared to Santiago's approximately 6-7 million.) It is right on the beach and serves as a big mining port for the whole area including Bolivia. Our host family is very nice. They are both teachers. The father teaches music and I think the mother now does some sort of administrative work. They have kids that are about our age that are currently in Santiago attending a University. We met our teachers Monday the 14th of March and today was our first day of observation. I am working in a Technical school where highschool age kids learn various trades involving mining or various other technical jobs. It is going to be a challenge because the classes have between 45-50 students each so it will be interesting.

I hope everyone is doing well.

La Paz, Tarija and Salta

Well we are now in Salta, Argentina. La Paz was fun, with lots of museums to look at. We went to a musical instrument museum, a mineralogical museum, an ethnographic museum, a textile museum, and a couple of other smaller cultural museums. My favorite was the ethnographic museum which had a large display of pottery and some videos on how the pottery was done as well as a large display of Carnival masks. All in all La Paz was very pleasant. We were in La Paz from the 16th - 20th. We flew out Feb. 20th to Tarija. In Tarija we stayed with some friends of our host family. They met us at the Airport. They were really nice and Tarija was pleasent but Lindsay and Candice spent most of their time being sick for whatever reason leaving me to wander about by myself most of the time. We took a tour of a couple of wineries which was fun. We also got to try some wines from the vineyard where our family that we were staying worked. On the 25th of February we took a car to the the Bolivia - Argentina Border and then another from their to Salta. The guy we rode with charged us too much but we made it fine. We had great scenery the whole drive and had to stop a lot because of mudslides from the heavy rain. Salta is really pretty, it has a lot of wildlife, especially birds such as toucans, parrots and birds of prey, in the nearby national parks. However, due to the heavy rains the national parks are inaccessible right now so we are forced to stick to the city. However the city in itself is very beautiful with great churches and colonial architecture. Tomorrow we leave for Mendoza which will be about an 18 hour bus ride. We will spend a couple of days in Mendoza and then head across the border to Santiago on the 5th or the 6th.