Sweet pages dude! I loved them "mmm, tastes like glacier" and also the very flattering description of my exercise induced asthma... we conquered those mountains!!!! WOOOOO!!! Coolio, well, keep up the good travelblog! And remember... there's never a bad time... ;)
great photos Look at all those penguins! Was it the birthing season that there were the little ones in the "caves"? I feel like I'm watching a National Geographic special.
yea for the glaciers! Maria: beautiful pix. 3 cheers for the growing glacier. Let's hope for more! Your adventure proves that there is a lot to this big wide world and you are to be commended for choosing to take advantage of your location to see another part of it. Good luck on the rest of your travels while in SA. Thanks for the connection and send more photos. Love, Mrs. L
oh, the pain here's a little trivia for you. the golfo de penas (gulf of sorrows) gets its name from a spelling mistake on a map. originally it was called el golfo de peñas (gulf of cliffs) but a british mapmaker didn't put the tilde over the N so it went from meaning 'cliffs' to 'sorrows' (something similar happened with nome alaska, which originally appeared as "name?", on a map, since the mapmaker didn't know the name of the town. this was interpreted as "nome" and hence the names.
also, the fjord indians in southern chile are practically extinct. there are lots of mapuches (who make up 85-90% of chile's indigenous population, or about 5-7% of the national population) and some aymaras in the far north, as well as some atacameños in the atacama, but beyond puerto montt the indians were wiped out or absorbed. consider yourself lucky to have seen alacalufes. cheers!
morros y moras just a quick comment. the fruit in the picture are called "mora/s". a "morro" is a large and elevated piece of land/rock, like the rock of gibralter, or like el morro de arica (in northern chile). a "moro" is a moor, that is, a muslim from north africa in midieval times (i guess a "mora" can also mean a female north african muslim). hope you're enjoying chillan. cheers!
good strategy I love the idea of you playing basketball in Spanish! That is a really good strategy for both meeting people and using Spanish informally.
Let me finish my earlier comment about your Spanish - your Spanish is very very good so I wonder about what your host mom meant. Could it be that you are somewhat more reserved in your manner than her previous student-guests? I am sure you will get more comfortable and relaxed speaking with her over time. You also might have to push yourself a bit beyond your own comfort zone to get more opportunities for language and culture learning...
Jennifer
non-member comment
Sweet pages dude! I loved them "mmm, tastes like glacier" and also the very flattering description of my exercise induced asthma... we conquered those mountains!!!! WOOOOO!!! Coolio, well, keep up the good travelblog! And remember... there's never a bad time... ;)