More Excursions Outside Conce

I am shamefully behind in my posts, but I am going to try to sum up the past few excursions I have had since Chillán. I have begun to like Chile even more since I have had more opportunities to get outside the city and into the small towns. Living in Conce is great because there is a lot to do and it has all the conveniences of a major city, but the true soul of Chile seems to be in the rural areas.

The weekend of April 5th and 6th, I went to Cabrero and Talcahuano. A Rotary group exchange from Texas was in town, and the Conce Rotary clubs had planned a trip to a rodeo in Cabrero, which is about an hour outside of Conce. The Texans are four young professionals from the Dalls-Forth Worth area, and their leader is an older Rotarian named Guillermo, who originally hails from Colombia. He is such a cute, sweet little man.

Paola rear-ended someone in the Plaza de Perú before we left, so she and Eduardo had to stay behind and deal with the damages. They are both fine, but the car is in the shop for a while. The club president couldn´t find a babysitter, so she could not go, either. Rosana, who has a doctorate in English, and I were the only reps from the Rayen club. She practiced her English with me on the way. She spent a year as an exchange student in the U.S. when she was 15...in North Dakota. Fun. On the way, just outside Conce, she pointed out the school that the club helps with. When Eduardo had mentioned it to me, I had not thought it would be like this: it was in an old, poorly-built, small building, and Rosana said that many of the kids walk two or more kilometers to get to school. It made me feel very motivated to work with the school.

The rodeo was...interesting, I guess. A Chilean rodeo consists of two men on horseback who corner a young cow (not a calf, but not a full-grown cow, either) and get points based on which part of the cow´s body their horses hit. It wasn´t that fun to watch. I concentrated on the colorful ponchos of the riders instead.

Shortly, we ate lunch. There was a restaurant at the rodeo site, and we ate a nice, meaty alumerzo. After lunch, I petted the horses with the women from the group exchange, and Rosana and I left a little later.

That night, in spite of the car issues, Paola, Eduardo, Diane, Diane's friend Mauricio, and I, as well as a Rotary scholar from Valparaíso named Susan, went to a restaurant called La Tijuana. We ate some good Mexican food, and then we danced to regaaeton and disco in the dance club area. Although we were all exhausted from our trips that day (Susan and Diane had gone to a famous mine about 2 hours away with a group of Diane's friends), we had a good time dancing.

The next day, the six of us went to Talcahuano (about 30 minutes away) to see the Huascar, which was a Peruvian ship that the Chileans overtook in the War of the Pacific in 18-something. I figured out why most towns and cities have a street named Prat--he was a captain who died in combat on the ship. While the history lesson was nice, the sea lions were the highlight of the day for me. On the beach outside a line of restaurants were sea lions bathing in the sun. Chileans (and maybe all Spanish-speakers, not sure) call them ''lobos del mar'' or ''lobos marinos'', which both mean ''sea wolves.'' I thought that was pretty cool. We had our pictures taken near the sea lions (or wolves), but we couldn´t get too close wihthout one of them roaring at us. As we ate lunch, we saw a huge sea lion chasing a man across a parking lot, roaring at him. I do not know what this guy did to piss those sea lions off so badly! The most interesting part of the chase occurred when the man ran across the parking lot away from the sea lion and the animal stopped halfway and hid behind a truck. When the man passed the truck as he was walking back, the sea lion jumped out and roared at him! Slippery thing, that sea lion.

That night, Pablo (Diane´s friend, Mr. Rotaract of the Conce area) had an asado (barbecue) at his house. It was a little chilly, but we had fun anyway. I had my first experience with a pinochetista, though. (A pinochetista is someone who supported/admires Augusto Pinochet, who was essentially a military dictator from 1973-1990. The opinion about him is still pretty mixed, even though he tortured and killed a lot of people, exiled perceived political enemies, and made many young men disappear. His supporters think of him as the savior of the Chilean economy, but they either don´t realize or turn a blind eye to the fact that his ''economic miracle'' fell on the backs of the poor). The pinochetista was, in fact, Pablo. It realy surprised me, because he seemed pretty open-minded before. Still, his family is obviously wealthy and probably benefitted from the regime. I felt disturbed when I found out, and I wondered if I should associate with people who supported human rights abuses. After talking with Scott, I felt better. He said to just treat them like young people in the U.S. who support George Bush. Sorry for those of you who like Bush....

The next trip took place the next day (Monday) when Diane and I went to Penco to visit a rural school. We had no idea how rural it would be--it was a few miles into the woods. The president of the Penco Rotary Club is the principal of the school and invited us to see the children's program celebrating Gabriela Mistral and rural education. A few kids from the school recited some of Mistral's poems, complete with hand gestures, and kids from other schools performed traditional dances of different countries and cultures. I could not stop smiling! During the principal's speech, he talked about how proud he was of the school and of all the services they were able to provide for the kids. These are things we take for granted in the U.S.: transportation to and from school, breakfast and lunch, a nice building, a library, etc. There is a big difference in Chile between rural schools, public city schools, and private city schools. The private schoolchildren receive a higher-quality education, and all of the children, no matter where they went to school, have to take a national test (sort of like the ACT) to get into college. This is the only measurement, and inevitably the children from middle-class or upper-class backgrounds get into college and the poor kids get left behind. It made me sad to look at the kids and wonder how many of them would end up as servants in someone's house or in some other low-paying job. Hopefully with the education reforms that are being implemented to help these kinds of schools the gap will begin to close.

The visit to the school really affected me and made me even more eager to start working on a project or projects with the rural school the Rayen club sponsors. Diane and I will be meeting with the club president next week to discuss some options and arrange a visit to the school. Eduardo suggested tht we teach English, and I would really like to do that. I just worry about what will happen when we leave in December. Some more permanent projects that Diane suggested would be augmenting their library and/or providing sports and recreation equipment. Whatever we do, I can´t wait to get started.