eMachines are wothless pieces of....

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Hey all,
It's been along time again. My laptop is giving me more hell than I could ever have wished on my worst enemy. Ok, so maybe that's a bit dramatic but it has been giving me trouble. My current issue is that it won't connect to the internet so I am using an internet café. I actually don't mind it so much. It keeps me from spending all night searching the web for useless information. It would be nice for looking into graduate school though.

Travel

Well, where to begin. I am heading on an amazing vacation in a day and a half. I will be travelling to Valparaíso, Buenos Aires, and Puerto Natales all within 2 1/2 weeks. Valparaíso is an International Heritage site. It's supposed to be beautiful and is the hometown of Noble Peace Prize winner, Pablo Neruda. It's known for its cerros or hills and the colorful houses and buildings that hang from them. I'll be there for 3 days then it's off to Santiago to catch my next flight.

Buenos Aires is the next stop. It's the capital of Argentina and known for its steak (and food in general) and euro-latin culture. It's also just a short ferry away from Uruguay. I figure why not make this a 3 country tour? So, I'm probably going to visit Uruguay for a day and spend the nigh in some hostel in a small coastal town on the Atlantic, South American coast. Not too shabby. From there I will head to the southern tip of the southern cone.

Though it's a few hours from the most southern point of South America, Puerto Natales will still be like visiting the pan handle of Alaska in winter. It's the closest city to Torres del Paine, one of Chile's, and South America's, most famous geographical assets. I hope to make it there for a day. I'm not sure how long I'll have and I think there is only day light for about 6 hours a day there during the winter, but we'll see. If I do you'll all get to see some amazing pictures. I'll be in Puerto Natales working, however. I signed up to be one of the instructors at the annual English Winter Camp there. It's a week-long English immersion program for Chilean high school students.

Around Caldera

I've been keeping busy around home. Classes are coming to and end and I'm saying goodbye to my high school students. I'm really going to miss them. I am excited to be moving on the the middle school students though. They seem to be a little more motivated and willing to try new things (fingers crossed). There have been a lot of activities around the school including a really fancy, catered dinner for the profes (teachers) last Friday that went until the wee hours of the morning. I left at 2:00am and the crowd was still strong.

The weekend before I spent my first full night out with the Chileans. I think my head actually hit the pillow at 6:00am. It wasn't until 3:00am that we decided to leave the house party we were at and go to a club to dance. 3:00am. I had a blast though. I was hanging out with some of the funniest people I've met here.

I've been heading back and forth between here and Copiapó much more than I would like the last 2 weeks but it's necessary. There was work meetings to take care of but more importantly the local Public Speaking tournament for middle school students took place the last 2 weeks. First, was the local tournament in which a studnet from my school participated. I didn't get to work with her and she ended up being too nervous to do it but the other students were great! I think some of them stole their speeches from the internet though. The following week was the regional tournament. Seeing all these students talking in English at such a young age was pretty inspiring. Made me wish we forced our students to learn another language and that we offered them earlier.

We celebrated the 4th of July in style with cheeseburgers, mac & cheese, apple pie, and budweiser at Jason and Anna's. Afterwards we watched my pirated copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It was a blast. The next day we had the 4th all over again at my house and a I made sloppy joes. No fuegos artificiales unfortunately, they are quite illegal.

That's all for now. No pics this time but I will download some soon!
Love and miss you all!
Besos y Abrazos!

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Comments

[Uncle Dale]

Making up for it
Zach, Sounds like your travel iternary will more than make up for the poor performance of your notebook computer. I am green with envy! Let me know what you think of the bottom of S. America in the middle of winter! We are in Red Wing visiting with family and friends. Nanc and I went up to the Twin Cities to see my cousin Connie (Hauschildt) Nielsen, her husband Ron, and some old friends from high school (40 years ago! shit!!!). Today we want to spend a bit of time with Kevin and Diane. Poor Diane really is suffering from her cancer. It is truly terrible. It makes us all realize how impermanent life is. So get out there and enjoy it while you can. Love, Dale

[tom]

Hey!
Nice to hear from you again, Zach! Take LOTS of pictures and have a great trip!! ¡Buen Viaje!

[Rachel]

worlds away
Zach - it's so refreshing to take a time-out from work and read about your adventures. I love being reminded about the excitement going on outside of my small corner of the world. Cheers! Rachel McMillen

[John]

Good to hear about your adventures
Glad to hear you are meeting so many people and visiting so many places. Your updates are great! Things are going reasonably well here. Hope to catch up again soon.

[Levi]

Fuegos Artificiales
No fireworks? Oh well! I'm sure we blew up enough things back here to make up for you! Where'd you get Budweiser oversees? (In my experience, the only places that have it are on military bases.) Have a great time on your trip. I just watched "Where in the hell is Matt?" (matt dancing) and it made me think of you. p.s. - If you have any computer questions, maybe we can instant message (while you're at an I-cafe) sometime and see if we can get you back up and running. Email me if it's really pissin you off.