#12

** Colegio Juanita de los Andes **

Monday
DUBI: We´re in class at school today. Everyone up early and out. It was GREAT to see all the girls - ALL of us were excited to see each other and share all our experiences so far. We sat in the teacher´s room of the English Department talking a million miles a minute! It was great! We spent a couple periods together and then they were taken off to class with their ´sisters´. Three of them are in one classroom and we will probably split them up with other people starting tomorrow so they are all independent and can really focus on their acquisition of Spanish. (this is not a photo of the school, this is a specially designed home in the mountains - I don´t have photos of the school yet .. soon)

I´ve been pretty cool off and on - have resorted to wearing my goose-down jacket. But I´m not alone. The school here is beautiful - amazing. All sorts of little separate areas, like houses but not ... with a central plaza. And it´s at the foot of the mountains. Just beautiful. Up a bit so we´re not in the smog constantly. We´re having a great experience.

Last weekend notes:

DUBI:
This (Saturday) a.m. Micky (father) and I went to the market - they call it a fair, because it´s like a farmer´s market that moves from one locale to another. All fresh fruit and veggies. It was great. I took some good photos there (although the smog interferes with everything light wise) Luckily they´re digital photos and I can enhance them later.

The people here are very friendly .. and I get lots of comments and stuff ... just cuz I´m different looking mostly. My spanish is getting more fluent every day. about half the time I don´t have to think when I´m talking. The Chileans drop the ends of words off when they speak alot. The Ecuadorians say EVERY letter, much more clear and enunciated ... but here I can make mistakes and make them kinda disappear by mumbling at the end a bit (like they do).

Yesterday late Patty, Micky and I went to the Central Park- Parque O`Higgins. There´s lots of little shops and restauraunts near the entrance ... one restaurant had shut down for some reason and there were about 8 people beside it with a big sign ``hunger strike´´because of being out of work. There were some small museums there ... well, they call them museums. One with insects, another fish, etc. I got some good photos there too .. especially gigantic insects to show my daughter ´(she´s a bit squeemish). In the park part there was a nice pond with little bridges and beautiful different types of trees. Most of them have no leaves right now, but there´s one, the alamo, that has beautiful bark.

One of the main things here is that everything EVERYTHING is covered with a fine grey dust. You can wash the car one day and within 2 days it´s dirty again. It´s from the smog. It sneaks into the house and everywhere. Every time I come home I wash my hands and you wouldn´t believe how much soot comes off!

There are stray dogs everywhere too. They, like everything else, are covered with the soot. Everything looks dingy all the time. Plus, knowing that I´m breathing it in ... The water is very good and I can drink it. The subway is very new AND very clean. One of the places in the city that is so. Spotless practically. And no trash. On the sides of the streets it´s almost like the 60s all over -- litter EVERYWHERE. These are things that bit by bit they are trying to change. Construction - everywhere you run into construction. New houses, apartment buildings, roads and more roads. A good thing for the future, but also annoying for now.