¡Vamos Chile!

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hola

Basically, right now I am dying for some summer vacation. It's still crunch time at school. Finishing up the year. We've got 2 weeks left, and 8 tests left. And we're getting some final projects. Blah

But I am totally pumped up for a Rotary trip to southern Chile in December. Going with other rotary students here in chile, the people from the orientation. Should be sweet. Going to go visit Punta Arenas, Punta Natales, Seno Otway, Cueva (cave) de Milodón, Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, and Glaciares Balmaceda y Serrano. I'm not sure where all these places are, folks, but it's way down there. That's right. With the penguins

if any of you are interested in Chilean politics, here's a big discussion topic right now. Trans-Santiago. Basically, Santiago is a really huge city and there are a lot of people who need public transportation. Lots of people can't afford to buy a car. So there used to be this crappy bus system in Santiago. Run down yellow buses, and the money people payed to get on the bus was kept right there by the driver. So at night, people robbed the buses.

This needed some change, so around the beginning of 2007, Congress approved a multi-million dollar project to get new buses. The majority of the new buses were green and white, and the money was not kept right there by the driver. Great project, except they only made about 2000 buses. To work efficiently and get people where they need to go, they needed about 7000 buses. The whole thing was a fiasco. There are lots and lots of people who now have to get up an hour earlier or so to walk to work, and have to walk home again at night through very dodgy areas of Santiago.

So they approved more multi-millions of dollars to get more buses. The deadline was this month, and they haven't made the buses. Now there's a whole investigation as to what happened with all the money and what they did for all that time, lots of flack. But Congress has now voted for a new budget for Trans-Santiago. They finally came to an agreement, and approved a budget of 1000 Chilean pesos. Two dollars

I'm about to watch Chile kick Paraguay's butt in Fútbol. Ojalá

I'll add some photos to this later

Love you all

Chao

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