Its been a while, but you aren't missing too much. I am just focusing on learning the language right now. I had a 2.5 hour chat last night with a Chilean just drilling her with questions about different things in Spanish. I am always really discouraged after basketball practice because I don't understand anything my teammates say during practice or in the locker room. I can watch a movie just fine, talk to my family just fine, listen to dinner conversations, but I am still struggling amongst my peers.
School has been good and basketball is always a lot of fun, the teammates are great guys and they have all accepted me onto the team, I just don't talk to much! Since I have been on the grind of school, family, gym, basketball, I have not had too much interesting to write about. This past weekend was Christian's birthday party. He gave the gringos VIP ACCESS. He rented out a large house and we had a nice dance party...I had a lot of fun...but the bus didn't come to pick me up for about 45 minutes and I didn't get home until 6:30am...crazy Chileans. Other than Christian's (Breezy's) party, my life has been routine. So as promised, I will talk less about my boring life and on some cool things about Chile.
The animals/wildlife/organisms. First off I will say that there are no bugs in Santiago. I can count on one hand how many times I have seen a small fly or something here. One time my mom called me into the kitchen and was pointing at the ceiling saying "what is that????" It looked to me just like a normal fruit fly or something of that nature, but she made me kill it just to make sure it wouldn't kill any of us. (And I highly doubt she was worried about food contamination because remember we leave our ground beef our for multiple days)
I think that the absence of bugs creates a crucial kink in the food chain, because there are no other small animals either. In all seriousness, I have seen three species of macroscopic life in Santiago. Humans, stray dogs, and pigeons. I am not sure why this is, maybe all large cities are the same way, but I bet you could find a squirrel in some park in NYC.
Outside of Santiago, Chile is a little more diverse. I've seen vultures, penguins, dolphins, emu, llamas, and many other kinds of animals. Even so, I have traveled almost the entire length of Chile, and I don't remember anywhere that had a "normal" amount of bugs. In Uruguay is where we encountered most of the bugs (including a giant moth the size of my hand-page down a few for pics).
Chile's national animal is the condor. To me it seems to be an undesirable image for a country doesn't it?? An ugly carnivorous bird that picks dead rodents off the road? I think Chile may agree with me because they recently introduced a second national animal. It is some deer type creature that is a little more conservative than a condor.
I also included a picture I found entitled "Degu huddling together for warmth" The Degu is a rodent found only in Chile...I will keep my eyes peeled for one in Santiago but I don't have my hopes up.
I'm not sure if I mentioned my trips I have on the radar:
April 24-25: Isla Negra
May 19-25: Lima, Cuzco, Machu Picchu Peru
Sometime in June: Mendoza, Argentina
July 1-16: Volunteer work at a wildlife refuge in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador
I'll keep you posted on everything interesting!!
No comments:
Post a Comment