Heading South

Well now I'm getting ready for another big trasition:
Tomorrow at 9 am, we are leaving for an "academic excursion" to the south (primarily Temuco).

Tomorrow afternoon we're meeting our homestay families, and we will be with them for a week: this is a Mapuche family (Mapuche= the largest indigenous group in Chile, lots of political and social struggle). I don't really know what to expect, but I'm excited for the different experience.
During this week we will also be having two academic seminars a day, including ones of the political struggle, environmental issues, Mapuche music and dance, the Mapuche language (Mapundugun)

After that week, we'll have three days to do an ethnographic study of a village (I'll be focusing on "culture" -- music, theatre, dance).

THEN we're going to go around to some other neat places and learn about some interesting things and we'll return back November 3rd.

Seeing as the first week I'll be living with a family probably with no electricity or water, and the second week I'll be traveling from hotel to hotel, I will probably not have time to get online, which is why I'm laying it all out for you.

I'll make sure to do a big "this is what my past two weeks were like" post on return.




AAAND I can do one of those now!
My past week has been a lot of the same: training, training, training. The interesting thing about training this week is that I tore my hip flexor. That's been a struggle, figuring out how to continue training and progressing while still taking care of my body. And also, figuring out how to stay productive emotionally also, not getting frustrated. And I'm doing pretty well with it. I know it will heal soon enough, and I know I can keep training in certain ways until it does.

Also, since this week was the last week all of us from the program are together (we're splitting in have tomorrow - half to the north, half to the south), we've been doing a lot of activities with the group. Last night we had an "art share" where everyone in the program came, and people shared poems, stories, dances, everything. Our academic director played some Bob Dylan and Violeta Parra, one friend read a poem she wrote to our grammar professor, I did a quick acro act with my host brother, et cetera. LOTS of fun!
And today, we got together and did a boat tour around the bay of Valparaiso. It was so much fun - we saw a bunch of pelicans and sea lions, got to see the hills of Valparaiso from afar, and were able to be on the water! That was such a great experience in and of itself - being on a small boat on the water reminded me of all the water-skiing trips with the family - just that subtle physical motion was so comforting!

So all in all, it's been great! And it will continue to be!

Hasta luego, amigos. Chao!