Bracelets! Also, Leaving Campus in a Hurry

Last week started out pretty normal and relaxed.  Life here is starting to feel like life in the States, just in Spanish.    Monday, we tried to meet with girls we had talked to the week before and we got lunch with them, but we didn't get to talk long before they had to leave for class.  Continuing the comparison shots from this school, here's last Monday's church picture.  Here are all of them with the earliest on the right.

Last week, the pollution wasn't as bad as when we first arrived, but still not air I'm really happy breathing.

Tuesday, we had a table set up to have students make bracelets for orphans that we're going to go visit next week.  The plan is to spend a few afternoons at a local orphanage and help however is needed.  The bracelets are going to be gifts for the kids, but also a good way to get people interested in helping.  It took a while to explain this to almost everyone who stopped by, because most of them thought we were selling the bracelets to support the orphanage, but we got a bunch made, so it was a good day.

The girl on the right made about 15 bracelets (out of the 45 we made that day)

That night, a bunch of us went to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant so the vegetarian in our group could eat something other than a salad for once.  It was a little expensive, but really good.  I had eggplant gratin, which was basically ratatouille with lots of melted cheese on top.  We walked there and back, so it was a very healthy night all around, one of the few I feel like I've had.  I walk a lot here, but every meal has so much bread and very few  vegetables, so it's definitely not the healthiest I've ever eaten.

Things got much more exciting on Thursday.  We went to Universidad Alberto Hurtado, which was the most liberal school we visit, taking one of the other girls in the group with us because all of the schools she works at were protesting.  There were tons of students there and almost immediately after we got there, they left to march down the main street.

There weren't lots of people left, but enough for us to stay on campus, so we decided to wait for Isaías and talked and took pictures while we waited, as seen below.

The República Group

The main gates were closed to keep out protesters

We started doing evangelism once he arrived, and had lunch soon after.  We had planned on going over to the building where the English club is held and talking to people there before it started, but just as we were finishing lunch, Nathan, our team leader who was there to meet with Derek, came and told us that the police had set off a lot of pepper spray and we needed to leave.  We cancelled English Club, but weren't able to get a hold of people until we returned to the hostel, so several came anyway.  It was rather lucky that the protests were last week and not any of the others, because one of the staff members who helps with the clubs uses a wheelchair, so it would have been hard to leave quickly if she had come.  The pepper spray was really strong, but everyone had scarves to cover our mouths and noses to limit the exposure.  The protest had finished by the time we left, but we saw a lot of graffiti, broken glass, and the police were still around.  We all got back to the hostel safely, although sneezing a lot.

For campus outreach Friday, we went to UNAB, because it was one of the few universities our team has been working at (out of about 8) that wasn't striking.  Even then, there was a march through the campus.

Friday night, we had a Christmas party for the girls we've met here, because it's getting into winter and there has to be Christmas in winter.  Everyone we told was a little confused about this, but a lot of people came anyway.  There are Crusade staff members from the States, Germany, Mexico, and Chile, so we had traditional foods from each and a presentation of the Christmas traditions.  We also watched the first 20 minutes of "It's a Wonderful Life" in Spanish, which was a little hard to follow.  I didn't feel too bad because the native speakers said they had problems following it, too.  The party was lots of fun, and a few of the women from República came, so we got a chance to spend more time with them, which was great.

Within the next day or two, I'm going to try to get up to date and post stuff about our trip to Valparaiso, which was lots of fun, so get excited!

Hiking Up Cerro San Cristobal

Here in Chile, they have a much different idea of what a hill is and what a mountain is.  Last Saturday, we walked up Cerro San Cristobal, which is considered a hill.  It is about 1000 ft higher than the rest of Santiago, and about 2900 ft above sea level.  This is what it looks like from the ground in a park near our hostel. (Sorry about the sun.  It is apparently the only picture I have that shows how tall the hill is.)

It was really pretty, because the hill is a park, so there's zoo at the bottom and the path up to the top is forested. There's a giant statue of Mary at the top, which can be seen all around the city.

Right below the statue

The climb up was nice, until we looked around and saw the blanket of smog over the city, and the path was really steep.  I kept expecting it to level out after the next turn, but it didn't.  There were lots of breaks for pictures, so it wasn't too tiring.

About halfway to the top

The park near my hostel from the top of Cerro San Cristobal

Going Down

Afterwards, we got lunch and a few of us went to an artisan fair near the hill.  It was more expensive than the other fair we had been to, so all I got was a homemade alfajor, which is a cookie sandwich with manjar (a caramelized milk candy, similar to dulce de leche) in the middle, and dipped in chocolate.  They're great, and this was the best one I've had so far.  That night, one of the girls made avocado smoothies, which taste much, much better than they sound, probably due to the sugar and condensed milk used in the recipe.

Sunset last Saturday.

Sunday, we ran around the city pretty much nonstop.  We went to an English speaking church in the morning.  The people were really nice, but there wasn't a sermon, just skits about Pentecost.  While talking after the service, I met a man who had gone to the University of Cincinnati and had spent lots of time with friends in Oxford, which was weird, but cool to talk about home for a while.

Horse-bee

After lunch, we went to a meeting for the International Day of Prayer at the courtyard on Cerro Santa Lucia.  It was really cool to have people from all around the city come to pray for the same things, even if I didn't understand all of it.  Once that ended, a bunch of the Chileans we know who had come stayed to play games with us.  I wandered around taking pictures of the scenery, which wasn't great because of the smog, but better than usual.

Then, we went to out to dinner to meet one of the sponsors of Campus Crusade here.  He owns three restaurants in the city, and we were taken to his sushi place, which made me really happy.  He provided tons of sushi for us, as well as gyosa.  Most of the others preferred the rolls, especially the more elaborate ones, leaving all of the sashimi, which I was really happy about.  All in all, it was a great weekend.

Protests and Pasta

So, Thursday we got to Alberto Hurtado and there were students painting signs and had tables for petitions and other stuff going on.  There have been several things going on that other schools have been protesting, but this is the first school I work at that's had anything going on.  Currently the big problems are with proposals by the government to privatize all loans for university students, making the students unable to affordable university, and the building of a hydroelectric plant in Southern Chile that would destroy a lot of wildlife, both with the plant itself and the power lines that would have to run the length of the country.  It would also make Chile the most polluted country in the world (according to some of the students I talk to.  I haven't been able to find anything that confirms this, though.)  There was also a forum the students held on the oppression of the native people here.  According to my friend who attends UAH, they're known as the hippie university because they are really active about things like this, and there was a protest the day before where the police had sprayed the students with fire hoses.  There wasn't anything like that while we were around, and we were able to have really good conversations with some of the girls on campus.

The Forum about Patagonia

Students making signs.
Also, Alberto Hurtado is really pretty

That night at salsa lessons, we got to learn the Cueca, the Chilean national dance.  We only spent a little bit of the class learning this, so I don't really remember the order the steps go in, but it was fun.  The rest of the lesson was fun, and afterwards, all of the girls on the team made dinner for everyone.  We made pasta with chicken, marinara sauce and pesto sauce, green beans, garlic bread and flan for dessert.  The flan was made with too much liquid, so it was really soupy, but it was still good.

Friday, everyone went to Universidad de Las Américas.  I was walking around with one of my roommates, who speaks French, but I thought I could manage a conversation in Spanish on my own, since I've been remembering a lot.  This was untrue.  I thought the girl we were talking to was saying there were many ways and different things people had to do to get to God, so I was trying to tell her that all you needed was faith in Jesus.  After several minutes, she said that she thought good works were how we demonstrate our faith in Jesus, so we turned out to be on the same page the whole time.  I'm not sure why she didn't tell me that wasn't what she thought before that point, but it turned out okay.  After that, we had one of the guys who's pretty good at Spanish come with us.

That night we had a late dinner because we all wanted to get sushi, but there was tons of stuff going on during the evening.  Late for Americans anyway - the restaurant was packed when we got there around 10 because Chileans have their meals a little later than us and a large afternoon snack.  The snack is called "onces" or "elevenses", even though it's eaten around 5 PM.  I got salmon sashimi, which was great, and shrimp nigiri, which was a little lackluster.  They didn't have any tuna, which surprised me, but the salmon was good enough to make up for it.  On the way home, we played games and got stared at by the few people on the street.  It helped us keep warm while we waited an hour for the bus to come.  While on the bus, one of the guys with us thought someone tried to steal his wallet, but luckily, he had it in one of his front pockets.

Up next: Last weekend, including more sushi!

Yay for Rain!

As promised, here are my before and after pictures.  These were taken from a staircase at one of the universities I work at, and were taken a week apart.

Real clouds instead of smog!

Bonus picture of the clear sky at the park!

The schedule for this week was the same as last week, going to UNAB on Monday, UDP Tuesday, UNAB again Wednesday morning for English Club and AIEP in the afternoon, and UAH on Thursdays.  Fridays we spend together as a big group all on one campus.

While we were at UNAB, we shared with a couple of girls who prayed with us to receive Christ, which was really cool.  We tried to catch up with them last week, but they were too busy, so we're getting lunch together Monday.  We had also been worried that the protests would affect our schools and we wouldn't be able to work there anymore, but the universities in our area are all private and our Chilean friends told us that they generally don't protest or cancel class, so we shouldn't have to worry about that.

Monday night, there was a worship service for all of the people involved in Vida Estudiantil, which was great!  It was cool to see how big the ministry in Santiago is, rather than the few people I work with each week.  I also bought a Spanish Bible there, because there had been a few times when I wanted to explain something using a verse, but couldn't because the Bible I had was English and my Spanish isn't good enough to tell them about it.  Now I can show them, and it's been good.

We had a very slow day Tuesday.  I had tried to contact girls I met the last time we had gone to UDP, but no one responded.  It was also the coldest day since we've been in Chile, so people were studying inside rather than hanging out in the courtyard, so there weren't many people to talk to.  We also have to have a student let us in all the buildings, and the guy who normally goes with us had meetings all afternoon, so we could only go where he dropped us off.  We prayed for a while, and went home a little early.

That night, the hostel hosted a barbecue for us, which was really good.  They had chorizo sandwiches with a sauce they warned us was really spicy, but it was pretty much just pico de gallo.  They also had really good steak.  It was very carnivore friendly.  Afterwards, we walked down to a gelato place that was really good.  I had a scoop of cappuccino flavored gelato, because I'm trying to get my caffeine wherever I can.

Because I need to sleep more than post stuff, I won't be catching up this weekend, but I'm close.

Cerro Santa Lucia

Last Saturday, we went sightseeing.  We started out the morning with a scavenger hunt, looking for really random things, like hydrogen peroxide and kleenex.  The tissues have been useful, though, because we all seem to be having sinus problems.  I was on a team with Kelly and Tanner and we had fun running around the city.

We had lunch in a plaza with sandwich shops around it.  Our shop had several counters in a tiny area, made worse by the fact that you ordered your meal at one counter and paid for it at another, then brought the stamped receipt back to the first counter to get your food.  My sandwich was really good - it had tomato, avocado, and queso fresco, a soft cheese a little like mozzarella.

After lunch, we went to an artists market at the base of Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill in the middle of Santiago with an old Spanish fort on the top and fountains at the bottom.  There was a lot of interesting stuff there and it was funny to see how much of it had come home with my grandma as souvenirs for me from her trips in the past.  Then we walked up the hill.  The view from the top was really pretty, but really smoggy, too.

The base of Cerro Santa Lucia

A fountain

Entrance of the fort higher on the hill

Going even higher

View of the city 

View of the city with a lovely haze over it due to the smog

After we got back, we planned to go to a nearby sushi place, but it hadn't opened when we got there.  We arrived about 30 minutes after they were supposed to have opened, which is later than even things here tend to be, so we figured they were closed on Saturdays and got Chinese instead.  It was pretty good, but one of the girls with us is vegetarian and her tofu stir fry had chicken in it.  On our way back, we discovered that the sushi place just opens much later than advertised.  Back at the hostel, we watched one of the worst movies ever, I Am Number Four, but mocking it was fun, so we got something out of it.

Sunday, I spent my whole day at or going to church.  A friend invited some of us to the church his father preaches at, so four of us went to that.  It started around 11, but didn't end until after 2.  Everyone there was really nice, and the sermon seemed okay from what I could understand, but it was very charismatic/pentecostal, so some of the people with me were a little uncomfortable during parts of the service.  Then we went back to the hostel for a quick lunch before going to a different church (the one we had going to the week before) with the whole group.  During church, it started to rain, so we ended up walking a little more than half a mile through the steady downpour.  It was a pain then, but the next day turned out to the clearest day we've seen so far since the rain got rid of some of the smog.  In my next post, I'll put pictures with before and afters of the rain, because it's a little gross to realize how bad the smog gets sometimes.

English Clubs and Sightseeing

Continuing my review of last week, we'll start with Thursday.  On the way to Unversidad Alberto Hurtado (UAH), we stopped at a bakery with an espresso machine as I continued my quest for a drinkable cup of coffee.  The one I got wasn't great, but better than the instant coffee at our hostel.  There was an English Club at UAH, so we spent our morning there handing out flyers to advertise in the cafeteria.

English club went really well.  It seemed like there wouldn't be many people there, because only one person was on time, but many people came late.  I helped with the basic lesson, where people were matching pictures of foods with the English word and working on their pronunciation.  Especially fun words were juice and soup, which they pronounced as "hus" and "soap".

Afterward, we had a salsa class, where our friend Pato led.  We learned the basic step and two turns.  It was a lot of fun, but I wish we had been able to learn more.

That night, several of us went to our first nice restaurant of the trip.  It's a resto bar because it's a restaurant and a bar.  It had a Lord of the Rings theme that was a little weird, with giant paintings of elves and dwarves on the walls.  The food was really good.  We had fried empanadas with various fillings and sandwiches.

Friday, we all went to Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH), but there weren't as many students there as there usually are because of a combination of protests by the students and strikes by the university staff, both of which could go on for several weeks or a month.  The protests are about the government talking about taking away student loans, so the students would have to get loans from the bank with much higher interest rates, while the strikes are going on because the staff feel they don't get paid enough.  The staff strike was called to be nationwide, so we were worried that we wouldn't be able to keep working with the university students, but it seems to be okay so far.  The schools I work at are all private schools, which don't protest as much as the state schools.  Even with the lower number of students on campus, we were still able to talk to several girls and share the gospel with them.  Almost everyone I've talked to says they're Catholic, so they know all the answers I'm listening for when I ask about the gospel, so I don't really know what to do after that, but it's been going really well nonetheless.

At USACH, we also helped with a booth for Vida Estudiantil at a conference on campus for youth ministers from around the continent.  Apparently, in Chile, youth groups are for students from about 12 to marriage.  We mostly promoted the English Clubs and talked to the Chileans we know about the protests and what was going on.  I saw Sergio, one of the students we work with at Universidad Andrés Bello.

The current plan for the blog is to get caught up by this weekend, so there will be a couple of posts coming in the next few days that might be a little long, but I'll try to keep them from being overly dull.

Working at the Universities

On Monday, we learned which of the universities in the area we would be working at after talking about the typical Chilean student's attitudes towards life.  We're working in groups of three at some of the bigger universities in the city, evangelizing and helping with the English Clubs run by Vida Estudiantil.  My group is Anne Marie and Derek, and we're working at four schools in Barrio República.  Our schools are Universidad Alberto Hurtado (UAH), Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB), and AIEP.  Monday, we walked through all of them (by some of them, because we started running late.  Everything here starts about ten or so minutes after it's supposed to).  Isaías, who met us at the hostel the first night, is a student at UAH, so he met us there and showed us around the campuses.  We also met Glenda and Sergio at UNAB, who showed us through that campus and where UDP and AIEP are.

Pictures from a patio at UNAB.  I think there are mountains in the background, but I can't really distinguish them from the smog. 

The universities we're working on are very spread out and don't have a main campus area.  I think it's because the universities were founded after the city was built, so the universities purchased buildings close together, but not with the typical campus we have in the States.  Each of the buildings is devoted to a certain discipline, and most of them have a cafeteria, called a casino, and courtyards, so the students don't really mix within majors.
Then we went to Dunkin' Donuts, where they didn't have any hot coffee, but the iced coffee was better than anything I've had here so far.  After that, we went back to our hostel and took a walk around the neighborhood after getting dinner.  That night, the power was turned off, so we sat in the dining room and told stories for a while before going to bed.

Tuesday, after spending time talking about the Holy Spirit with the whole team, we went to UDP around 11 and met with Ronaldo, a student there.  We needed him to let us in because there are guards to prevent non-students from getting on campus.  When we told the guard who we were waiting for, she was really excited because she also knew Ronaldo and was a Christian, so we were friends now, too.  We spent the rest of the morning talking to students.  Kelly met up with us in the afternoon to disciple Anne Marie and I.  While she and I were together, we shared with three girls studying nursing.  One of them seemed really open to the gospel, but she didn't share a decision with us, so I've been praying for her.  After finishing at the schools, we went back to the Sede for dinner and sharing about our days.

Wednesday, we had our first English Club at UNAB, so we went there in the morning and met with Veronica and Juan Carlos, who teach the lessons.  We passed out fliers promoting the club for a while, and then had lunch.  We had a really good dessert called brazo de la reina, with manjar (caramelized milk) filling, chocolate and coconut on top, and raspberry sauce.  At the English Club, Anne Marie and I worked with the advanced students, just talking to them to help improve their speaking and pronunciation.  We talked about a lot of different things, including politics and TV shows.  After that, we went to AIEP to hold their English Club.  It was the first meeting, so everyone worked on the basic lesson.  Afterwards, we went to Japimax (pronounced "happy max") to hang out with students we had met.  One of them came, and Glenda and Ronaldo showed up, too.  After talking for a while, it was back to the hostel.

This post seems long enough for now, and I need to sleep soon.  I'll try to post again about the rest of my week tomorrow.