GMW Abroad

Tucumán Thank You

2011-08-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

I decided to go digital/green with my thank you letter this year so that you can see more pictures and have it be a more interactive experience for you, and without the paper clutter :)

I returned to the US on July 22, tired from 24 hours of travel and sick from food poisoning on the last day in Argentina. But despite those inconveniences, this year’s trip was memorable as always.

This trip was my fourth time going with Lighthouse (fifth time if you count my solo visit in Christmas 2008). And because I’ve visited before, this year ministering in Tucumán felt natural. Doing ministry in Iglesia Biblica Misionera Tucumán felt like I was doing my normal church activities in Lighthouse San Diego, just with a few minor differences (different language, people, and country…); I welcomed new visitors to the church, I counseled those who were in need, I spent time with the youth girls of the church, and I shared the Gospel with people who didn’t know Christ.

Eugene leads praise during one of our evening evangelistic campaigns.

Me and Roger with some chicas of a neighborhood where we evangelized.

Roger finally got to meet my good friend Pablo.

It made the time even more meaningful knowing that this trip brought much encouragement to Pastor Jorge and Norma Ahualle. I realized during the trip that being a minister of the Gospel in Tucumán is tiring work. Due to the neighborhood’s poverty, serious sins such as drug abuse, crime, violence in families (and that’s just naming a few) is something that Pastor Jorge and Norma have to deal with often. Ministry is also hard because of the constant temptation for Christians to follow and be like the world. I was glad to know that our team being there was having an eternal impact by proclaiming the Gospel. Not only that, we were at the same time encouraging the Ahualles to be effective and rejuvenated even after the missions trip was over. Our ministry to them wasn’t only in the scheduled evangelism activities but also during informal times. Helping out the señoras in the kitchen and discussing God’s Word over mate, Argentina’s signature beverage, as simple as it may seem, was the fulfillment of God’s command for us to be in fellowship.

Fellowshipping over breakfast at the Ahualles' house.

Me trying my hand at being as great of an Argentinean cook as Maga, the grandma of the church.

Street view of the 24 de septiembre neighborhood.

Roger and me with Norma, Jorge, and their son Josue. One of my least favorite times of the trip--saying goodbye :(

Another very encouraging aspect of the trip was seeing how Iglesia Biblica Misionera served the Lighthouse team. The meals were prepared with love (and were delicious!) and they took care to ensure that we were all well-fed.

The famous chimichurri that makes everything it touches delicious.

Argentinean pizza.

Argentinean breakfast pastries (facturas).

Guiso (stew).

Pan de carne (meatloaf)

Me and Roger at Siga la Vaca, an all-you-can-eat meat place.

The church collaborated together in making us gifts, they coordinated a welcome presentation for us on our first night in Tucumán, and they were eager to be part of the evangelism campaign in the barrios. It was an opportunity for the youth kids of the church to take part in the life of the church, as well as for me and Roger to be in our element--acting like big kids with the youth and ministering to that age group-- just like we do at Lighthouse!

Roger & I doing what we love to do--spending time with the youth kids of the church.

This letter is to give you a glimpse of the work that was done in Argentina so that you could know how your support was used to further the Gospel in Tucumán, Argentina. I am so thankful for your prayers and support, and it’s a demonstration of how God uses people like you to fulfill His purposes in having the people of Tucumán hear the Gospel. God always uses my trips to Tucumán as a way to increase in my heart and love for the people there, and this year was no different. Despite the thousands of miles between us, my desire is still to be persistent in my prayers for them throughout the year and to continue loving them.

Team Lighthouse 2011 (and translators) thank you for your support!

Yet another year...

2011-07-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

OK...so we're not very good at this updating our blog thing. Another year has passed by without updates, but here's the rundown on the lives of G, M, & W in the past year.

G: 3 job changes. Got engaged to a very special guy :). Travel-wise, went to North Carolina and went to Smoky Mountains National Park. Went to San Jose nearly once a month. Got back from Argentina 5 days ago!

M: moved to NorCal. Got a government job like a good girl. Got into grad school. Got back from the Czech Republic a couple of weeks ago!

W: moved to Norcal. Got a job in SF at an ad agency. Got engaged to a special guy :) Got married to a special guy. Went to Hawaii. Got a bun in her oven :))))))

I think it's crazy that the very first post on the blog is about how Wury started dating, and now she's a Mrs. and gonna be a Mommy!

GMW Abroad Again!

2010-06-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

This blog has not been updated on in over a year! Time to revive it again, since GMW is now away from each other again. This time not in different countries, but different cities. Moon is in Foster City (near SF) and moved back in May, Grace is still in San Diego and is staying in our (old) apartment at Crossroads, and I'm in Saratoga (near SJ). We aren't living together anymore :(((( But our dreams did come true this past year as we got to live with each other. But God gave us the opportunity to choose to either stay in San Diego and be part of the church family there or be part of the church plant in San Jose. Moon and I have chosen to be part of the church plant and Grace has chosen to stay in San Diego...We knew that this day would come when GMW would no longer be together again.

But something to look forward to is when we will be together in perfect community and harmony - in heaven worshiping our God perfectly!

Oh for that day!

LAST POST FOR NOW--Tucumán 2008--Christmas in Argentina

2009-03-04T19:15:00.000-08:00

This is Jean Bernard. We met in a hostel in southern Chile as I was waiting for my friends to come back from the supermarket. Being the slight gallophile I am, I tried to practice the little French I know with him. Anyway, after parting ways at the hostel, I ran into him again on the trail in Torres del Paine. We said hellos and then goodbyes. Afterward, in a bus terminal in Mendoza, I see him yet again as I was wandering around aimlessly killing time! We sat eating ice cream, him drinking tonic water, talking about politics, immigration, family, and work. I felt like I needed to take a picture before he boarded his bus to Salta just because he felt practically like a travel buddy. This guy wasn't like no jote creeper ginger Chinese boy. Thank goodness...

A 23 hour bus ride, making an old Mendocino friend on the bus who works in agriculture, and several Argentine provinces later, I arrived in Tucumán. I left my heart here last year and I came here to pick up the pieces. ; ) Pablo Lopez, Yanina, Pastor Jorge y Josué came to pick me up. Pablo greeted me with a bag of cookies and a hug.
Pastor Jorge dropped me of at Victor and Norma's home for the night because they were still renovating and fixing up their home for my arrival. Their two daughters were into making bracelets, so I joined in on the fun and made one for myself. And afterward I helped them make empanadas because Norma sells empanadas on the side. I think it is a common way for people to make some extra money.

That night I also went to IBM's midweek Bible study at Doña Maria's house, where I saw a bunch of people from the church (~30). It was the funniest when Virginia arrived, and greeted everyone one-by-one, giving the Argentine kiss as usual. When she got to me after about 15 people, she kissed me and then did a double take upon seeing me. She was rather shocked that I suddenly showed up at Wednesday night Bible study. It was a sweet reunion :)

Norma invited me to go to the women's Bible study for the new believers of the church. She taught at someone's house and the woman's hubby was such a gentleman as he made juice for us and poured it for us. Juice in Tucumán is like the Chilean stuff--sold in powder packets. Mmmm artificial and processed. One thing I missed about USA was definitely the fresh juice sold in the markets. Anyway many people from the church also knew of my arrival in Tucumán, so the 20-something-year-old girls of the church, Mariana and Eva, invited me for Grido Helado. =) Marta accompanied me for safety after the Bible study for the new believers. Afterward, I insisted on taking the Tucumán bus for the cultural experience, and they thought it was hilarious how badly I wanted to take it. We originally were going to get off after one stop, but we still had a lot of time so we took the us all the way to Centro, downtown Tucumán and walked around and window shopped. I saw a lot of Floggers, which apparently is the Argentine version of the Chilean Pokemón.

I arrived the next day at the Ahualle house. I had never been there before, so I was surprised at the cleanliness and coziness of their home in Yerba Buena. I gave them a tapestry I had bought in Punta Arenas from a Ecuadorian Quechua (I struck up a conversation, and he gave me a good deal. Woo hoo!). Norma was so happy to receive the gift and told me God knows the petitions of our hearts; she had been hoping to buy a tapestry herself but couldn't because it's expensive...and in came me with a tapestry for her home! =)

My first day at casa Ahualle.

It was soooo stinkin' hot and humid in Tucumán. I'd wake up from a siesta (afternoon nap) soaked in my own sweat. Gross. So here is Josué and Pastor Jorge sleeping on the cool tiled floor. Lucky. Pastor Jorge kept on joking throughout the week that I stole his bed (Norma and Pastor Jorge let me stay in their room while they slept on mattresses in the living room...that's so sweet) and I joked back saying I'll leave and go to some youth hostel then.

And they entertained me with some songs =) That bookcase is what Pastor Jorge calls his library. They're mostly books LBC gave to him during the missions trips.

Pastor Jorge agrees with my jersey.

Then Pastor Jorge took me, Norma, and Josue to San Pablo, a villa of Tucumán for a children's program at Virginia's house. A villa is a shantytown, and the one in San Pablo is nestled between sugar cane fields and a dirt road with the mountain range closeby. After the children's program, we walked some of the children home and there were houses that didn't even have electricity. LBC evangelizes there too and I went there my 2nd year. Here are some of the kids from San Pablo. I think the girl in the pink is so cute. She looks kind of Asian.

Me and my very good friend Pablo!

Virginia, a very warm woman with a huge heart for evangelism. She opens up her house for 40 kids to hear the Gospel during the children's programs.

Then, the Sunday service was at the new IBM site! There was a run down structure in the front that needs to be destroyed. I wouldn't feel safe in it. Also, church usually starts at 10:30, but being in Argentina, we started at 11. Yay! Anyway, this is Aldana, one of the beloved girly princesses of the church. She's already 3, and speaking in complete sentences. It was weird.

Dario leading worship. Then Pablo (Natalia's husband) preached a message on the importance of influence. It reminded me of what Pastor John preaches telling us about the importance of discipling the younger generation.

Then, after the church service, a group of us stuck around at the church to chat and eat empanadas and sandwiches for lunch!!!! I forget who made it (well, I forget her name...the older lady with clear blue eyes) but they were the best empanadas I'd eaten in Argentina!

Norma wanted to take a pic of me alone with the empanadas...giving a false illusion that I'm an endless pit of empanadas. Nooooo! But man did I miss Argentine empanadas...regular Chilean ones off the street are really bad...

Darío and his 6 children came by church to chat and hang out, and Darío and his Von Trapp singing family sang for us :) I like Eunice, this little girl right here. She's so stinkin' cute and she sings even though she's about 4 years old. Or older? I dunno.

Tucumán that week was HOT. I would wake up in the morning in my own sweat. It also didn't help that during the night I was eaten alive by mosquitoes and other unknown creepy crawlies. When I talked to people, I'd be scratching at my legs until they bled or until the skin was scratched raw. And the bugs worked their way to my thighs and hips too! (My formerly blemish-free legs are now scarred with bite marks. It looks pretty bad like I had some skin disease or something so I'm reluctant now about wearing skirts or shorts. Uhh...could I live in Tucumán like this? Pastor Jorge kept on joking that the mosquitoes like chinita blood. Jaja.) Couple this with Tucumán summer=baaad. But God was gracious and that Sunday, the wind started blowing really strongly sweeping up dust and papers...and then RAIIIIIIN! It poured and showered and it was glorious. This is me and Josué in the back of the car leaving church after it started raining.

We went to Doña Maria's house again. That was probably the 3rd time that week I was there. We sat in the back patio, Pastor Jorge playing guitar and me recording the show on my camera, and Josué's cousins were around too. In the back of Pastor Jorge is Lucas, who asked me a lot of questions about USA.

I also discovered that Pablo Lucero (middle) was taking English classes at a language institute! So I was the English convo leader as I led conversations with Pablo y Pablo so they could practice speaking and listening. : ) It was fun! Who would've thought a chinita could be an Engrish teachuh? What a funny sight to behold.

And this little girl, whose name I do not know, is learning English in school too. She got to speak some, which was cool to know that Tucumán schools are implementing English education at a young age.

Really bad picture of me and Cristian, but Marcelo and Silvia's family invited me over for an asado to celebrate 3 things: 1) Return of Pablo Espeche 2) Fabiana's boyfriend was staying at their home 3) My visit. I helped Marcelo make chimichurri and I cried cutting the onions. I ate too much asado and was full the entire day.

On the 23rd, church was having a Christmas service followed by a potluck. I wanted to contribute something so I made arroz primavera. I didn't know how to do a lot of things, such as cooking rice in a pot and stuff, but Norma helped, and this is our wonderful result.

Chop chop! I miss Argentina supermarket prices, especially on beef. It was $3 a pound. That's hard to find in USA. I spent in total only $11 on the entire arroz primavera. Norma also accompanied me to a verdulería to get the fresh veggies. A verdulería is like a vegetable store that operated from a home in the middle of the 24 de septiembre neighborhood. Norma said she liked that verdulería because they have really good quality veggies. It's a tiny little shop, so being a non-Argentine I stood out quite a lot. The veggie vendor asked me about where I was from, etc. etc. because I'm just so gosh darn interesting!

Looks great, no? I think the red serving bowl really brings out the colors of the veggies (all fresh ingredients!). It was kind of icky though when I suggested we buy paper plates so that everyone could have their own eating plate, bu Norma told me that everyone was bringing finger foods an that it wasn't necessary to buy it. In the end, she brought a few plastic spoons, stuck it in the bowl, and people just took turns eating out from that spoon. Shuddddder...germs...See? Even I have some hygienic standards.

Norma made some sanguichitos (little sandwiches). The bread is this huge sheet (bigger than 8"x11") of white bread with a hard crust. Norma just spread mayo, cheese, and ham and cuts it up into smaller pieces. They're simple yet addictingly tasty, los sanguichitos argentinos.

Since I had been in Tucumán randomly hanging around, I think a lot of people at church who did not know me were wondering why I was there. During church service and Bible studies people kept on mentioning that I was here and welcoming me. I decided to take this opportunity to share about my reason for being in Tucumán and how I love the church, my time in Chile, and a little about Lighthouse.

Then, after sharing and some time singing as a church, people went up to sing and perform. The night before the Ahualles took me to Darío and Claudia's house for a visitation. We had pan dulce (kind of like fruit cake, but spongier) and mate. We sang (something that usually happens when there are a lot of people hanging out together) and Claudia and Darío taught me a chacarero, a typical Argentine song, but this one I sang was with Christian lyrics. Kind of like Argentine country music, I suppose? I hate singing in public, but I wanted to encourage the church and humor them by seeing a chinita singing a chacarero argentino. Since I have no sense of tempo, I needed Darío to signal to me when the next verse started. The church indeed was humored, encouraged however I'm not sure...

Pastor Jorge made a joke afterwards about our chacarero singing trio, saying that our website name was "Chinita punto com punto turco medio punto Dario"=chinita.com.turco(medio punto)Dario because I am a chinita, Pastor Jorge is a "Turk" (although Pastor Jorge this is a racist term because he has Syrian and Lebanese heritage...but he don't care) and medio punto because Dario is short. Pastor Jorge also joked after the song that he and Norma had been praying to adopt another little girl ("little girl" in Argentine Spanish="chinita"), but God sent them an already grown one--ME! HAHAH.

Christmas Eve dinner the next day. More sandwiches! Norma made the main dish, which was matambre...juicy delicious oven-cooked beef. With roasted bell peppers and onions. DROOL JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.

I took family portraits for them. Hehe. Josué's such a funny kid. He liked to make a lot of jokes at the dinner table. I needed a lot of explanation of the jokes because I didn't understand.

Then at midnight, the entire neighborhood set off fireworks. Josué set some off and I was a bit afraid that someone would blow off their fingers. Afterwards, we went over to Doña Maria's (again) where there were ~25 people sitting on her front yard in a circle just chatting and drinking soda (gaseosa in Argentina, bebida in Chile). Pablo Lucero and I talked about his school and what it's like, bad teachers, teenage pregnancy, what he learns, and what his academic passions are. The party ended at 2 or 3 a.m. Argentines stay up LATE. On the streets people set our their dining tables and chairs and ate al fresco on the sidewalk, drinking wine and playing loud cumbia music. What a Christmas experience to behold!

The next day, we went to a river with the youth group and the families from the church. I've never been to a river on Christmas day, and I sure wasn't used to not celebrating Christmas on Christmas Day. But hey, when in Argentina, right? So this river didnt look the cleanest, but the dudes went in anyway. Haha look at Pastor Jorge's face! The river was an interesting place to be with a conservative church; lots of drinking, young people in swimwear, loud cumbia music (I think it's cumbia; I hear it a lot in the neighborhoods just blasting). It was a very popular place (popular in the sense of common) so I was a bit conscious of my Taiwanesey self. But strangely enough, I barely got any attention in Tucumán like I did in Chile. Even in the supermarkets no one stared, whispered "Look! Chinese!" to each other, looked at me like a sideshow, or went up to me to ask me where I was from. It was kind of nice to be left alone.

We played movie charades in Spanish. It was hard since I only know movie titles in English! So when I had an inkling, I would yell it out in English or do a rough translation of the title.

Monica...what a woman. She and her family all moved to Buenos Aires to study at Word of Life Bible Institute so they could be more equipped leaders in the church. I don't know how they're doing there or if they've found a job, but I'm praying for them and their children!

On the drive back from the river, Pablo Lucero rode with us and we saw a 12 year old riding a motorcycle. So illegal. And dangerous! Anyway, after an exhausting and hot day at the river, Pastor Jorge and Norma kept on talking about a surprise for me when we got home. I was really confused but they wouldn't tell me anything. I guessed that we were going up on the mountain by their house, but they refused to tell me. After going home and resting up a bit, Norma said, "They're outside!" I said, "Who?" and she told me to go outside and look. And lo! A van of about 15 people from IBM pulled up front to pick us up and take us up the Cerro San Javier! It was such a lovely surprise, and I can't believe that planned it all for me, since they kept on talking about how I needed to go up the cerro and see it. At the top of the hill was the Cristo Redentor statue, one of 8 in the world, the most famous one being in Brazil.

Tucuman looks like it's on fire at night.

Fun fun cerro fun! The view is beautiful, but getting up is a drag...so many winds and turns got me really sick. Up on the cerro, we saw a group of gringo tourists, so I whispered to Norma, "I see gringos!" she joked that I should've waved my hands up and say, "Hellllo gringos!" It was cute because Norma actually attempted to speak English, as she had been all week. Her English is pretty bad haha. So is Pastor Jorge's. I think that's what makes it so much fun though ; )

These are the Ahualle dogs. All three of them. They're fun. They have a huge yard to roam around in during the day, as there is no fence on the Ahualle property. I took this pic on my last day in Tucumán before treating the Ahualles to lunch to thank them for being my familia argentina for a week. Sigh. I'm so wuved.

After lunch, we went to visit Raquel and her family. She kept on inviting me to come over that week but we didn't have time until my last day. She lives suuuuper far away in the boonies. Later, Ana Maria joined us. She's a very pretty mom. Actually, she and Raquel are both very pretty mothers. It was strange that I got to sit at the table and talk with the adults while the children played outside. I'm always used to being the child to play outside...but it was a rude awakening that I was a grown up. Okay, maybe not a rude awakening, but a realization I'm not a kid anymore. But these house visits always involves pan dulce and mate. I looooove.

And here are some videos of the new church building:

Josué is very talented. Aww. My lil hermanito argentino.

The Von Trapp singing troupe! Have a listen. It's cute how the sis is playing with Eunice's pigtails.

The Christmas service at a rented building. Singing Ante el trono celestial (Before the Throne of God Above), which they learned from LBC just 6 months ago.

I really like this song Pastor Jorge sang; it's about someone whose heart is for the people of Argentina and wanting to see them know the Lord. He sings that he wants to go to the pampas and the cordillera (of the Andes). Perhaps this song can apply to Chile too then! : )

Josué singing the chacarero I sang at the Christmas concert! I want to sing this again some day. Someone learn to play it!

Josué's drumming is so cute in this video : )

Well, readers. This is my final post on GMW Abroad. It may have taken me 2 months to finish this post, but I wanted to finalize it and close this chapter of Grace Mao Wu's travel adventures in South America. It was an eye-opening 6 months of being a patiperra (one who's always out and about) and I'm thankful to God He let me fulfill my goal of visiting the church in Tucumán at the end of my trip. I hope this won't be the end of my South American adventures! And next time I travel, there definitely will be updates on this website. : ) ¡Chau!

Muahahaha

2009-02-07T15:15:00.000-08:00

Don't think that I'm through with this blog yet. I still have a Kansai picture post to do. I originally wasn't planning on doing it but seeing Grace's strong will for posting her Patagonia pictures, I've decided to go out with a bang.

So! After my bacteriology midterm's over, I'll start doing a Kansai picture post during study breaks (since I have an immunology midterm the week after! x_X!)

Patagonia-- all done! Ready for Viewing!

2009-01-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

Last huge trip in Chile! This is to go to Torres del Paine, but it's stinkin' far away from Santiago. I had to fly to the major airport in Punta Arenas first. Richard and I got there first and met up with Riley, Andrea, Christy, and Grace because they were traveling to Argentina first. Here is the welcome sign to Punta Arenas.

Here's Richard relaxing by the bay. A very boring, cold, windy, and steely kind of bay. I thought that having a body of water would be pretty, but no. It was still pretty cold and steely. Chilean-American author Isabel Allende called Punta Arenas wind-blown, harsh,and proud. Much more elegant than my own words.

It's a super windy city!

And I saw a tulip-shaped trash bin!

This is my face after seeing the ugliness of Punta Arenas. C'mon, a graffitti-tagged seal statue?? I do not like.

We went to the cemetry in Punta Arenas. This tomb was surprisingly empty and plain.

In comparison to the elaborate tombs. A lot of them of Croatian immigrants in the early 20th century. A lot of crazy Croatian last names.

And these are more modest tombs.

There was a tombstone that planted REAL peonies!! My favorite flower!

A tomb in honor of the Indians of Southern Chile. They all were killed by the Spanish conquistadores.

More cemetery.

Cool neatly trimmed hedges. So neatly trimmed I had to give it a big (but spiky) hug.

Richard and I found a Chinese buffet...all the way in Southern Chile. What the heezy?? So being the Sinophiles we are, of course we went in and had a fatty meal. I talked to the workers in there, and it turned out they worked in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. It was cool cuz the name "Tierra del Fuego" directly translates to "Fire Island" in Chinese!! I wanted to talk to that worker more, but he had to work. :( But I tried saying hello to all the Chinese-looking people in the restaurant. I dunno, they all seemed cold and didn't seem that happy to see my Chinesey face. Boooo.

Downtown Punta Arenas, where it's much richer with mansions from the 1800's. It's very prettily constructed, unlike the area where there was that graffiti-tagged seal. But in general, Punta Arenas was a pretty boring city. Richard and I went back to our hostel to sleep off the boredom. We woke up seeing the sun shining brightly outside. I guessed it was around 4:30 or 5, but being in Southern Chile, the sun sets super late...it was 8 p.m.!! We were so sad that we had nothing to do for the entire night.

Richard and I went to Puerto Natales, the city closest to the Torres del Paine National Park to met up with the rest of the group. We went to Erratic Rock hostel, a Oregon native-owned hostel for a lot of gringos. It was weird, cuz when Richard and I entered, we heard a slew of English all around us!! We were completely thrown off because we weren't used to that. Richard and I went to Abu Gosch, the hipermercado nearby and bought pernil and rice to cook in the hostel for dinner. I bought an Austral cerveza, but was a tad disappointed. Later that night, the rest of the other group met up with us there. That night, we took everything out and packed and organized everything that we will need for our survival for the "W" trail in Torres del Paine National Park. We had toiletries, food, sleeping bags, hiking poles, and everything backpacking related. The room was a mess!

Gracey Wang saw the collection of my cool clothes, and told me to toss it all together to take a foto of the amazing outfit. You like? ; )

That morning, after running around the town (literally) for last minute buying stuff, we hopped on the bus to go to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine!!! The road was scenic and rugged, and we stopped by a little tourist stand to stock up on water and to rest the bus. Then on the road we saw guanacos!! They are a llama/camel-like animal, brown, fuzzy, and oh-so-cute. (Side note: My mom always asked me when I was in Chile if the country was a backwards boony Third World kind of place. The word that encompasses this in Taiwanese is "hwa-na-coh," which is the exact same pronunciation for this animal! My mom thought it hilarious when I told her .)

Can you imagine how I felt when I saw the entrance of the park? The sparkling lake, the prancing guanacos, the tall Torres (Towers) peeking in the distance...I was quite excited for this 4-day backpacking excursion. Usually, the entrance fee to the park is 15000 Chilean pesos, around $28. But I had a Chilean ID card, which means I am a Chilean resident, I got in for only 4000 Chilean pesos...around SIX dollars. I FELT SO COOL! I WAS CONSIDERED A CHILEAN RESIDENT! There were gringos behind us who thought they only had to pay 4000 pesos, but too bad they had to get in for the gringo price.

This. Was. My. Pack. Everything hanging off of it. So. Heavy. I had my rest shoes, my sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and my life supply in the backpack. Incredible, huh? I usually have no endurance for this kind of strenuous work, but I think cuz survival was the motivation, so that's how I managed to endure the whole trek without dying and complaints. Thanks, God!

Our Patagonia 2008 team!! This is when we were still clean and bright-eyed about the whole trekking trip. The after pic is quite different. Our hair is matted, our clothes caked with sweat and dirt, and fatigued to the max!

We had to ride the catamaran to the main campsite, so that we would skip the boring part of the hike. The water was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was called glacial milk. It was a pastel turquoise and looked cool and refreshing. The color comes from the minerals in the glaciers that come down into the lake. I don't know what else to say about it but amazing. Pictures are not enough to describe the beauty because it has to be seen with your own eyes.

Glacial milky water with craggy snow-sprinkled mountain peaks in the background. Seeing only this was almost worth the entire trip. Almost.

Me and Andrea (emo ninja, we joked) on the catamaran.

After the catamaran landed, we set up camp at a paid campsite. Paid means bathroom services and a building with a kitchen--later which we discovered was a luxury. We envied this French tour group who drank wine, ate cheese, had lanterns, and a high-class tent in comparison to us poor college students with our 6-person tent, squeezed like sardines in a can.

We got a late start on the day, so we had only a few hours to do the first part of the trail. We were fortunate that the sun set at 10:45 ish, but we couldn't go far enough to see Glaciar Grey up close and personal. But this was a little of what I saw during the trail. Trees, sun, and body of water! I realized on the first day though that I am one slowwwwww hiker. I was trailing way behind, trying to catch up to the front fast people and I lost a lot of motivation to go on further after seeing 5 people way head of me. We switched roles and I led the team so that no one would fall behind and that I could keep up my endurance.

This was the last part of day 1 trail. We couldn't go any further or else the return trail we would be hiking in the dark. That would be no good. Here is me and my cool hiking pole. It's like a third leg, seriously. Without it I probably would've fallen multiple times (maybe to my demise?)

Mmm. A little peek of Glaciar Grey.

Our way back to our campsite. The sun is setting.

The next morning, we had some problems because we didn't wake up early enough (we left at 11am instead of 9am). Good thing I am a not-too-anal person person and really go with the flow rather than freak out over changes in plans. We hiked, took a too long break, only to discover this idyllic lake a few minutes after our too-long break. So, we took another too-long break, but it was totally worth it.

TOTALLY WORTH ITTTTTT! The water was so cold. Christy, Richard, and I had a contest to see who could keep our feet in the crisp cold water the longest. I won, although 'twas painful.

This day was a pretty difficult one, as we had to pack up all our stuff and carry it with us, as opposed to a day hike with only water and snacks. This was also the day I dressed the worst--parachute pants, Chilean soccer jersey (although I got a few compliments!), and a long-sleeve t-shirt as my hat. So ugly. Compared to Gracey Wang who looked all pro and athletic, I was quite tacky.

Heading to the next campsite.

This crazy bridge led to the campsite. It was like what you see in adventure movies--wobbly, shaky, and looked like you were gonna fall in and be washed away by the rushing river.

Here's our new home in our new campsite! It was a free campsite, so the amenities such as bathroom, showers, and kitchen were not there. In fact, the toilet was gross and backed up so I didn't even bother going. We went on a day hike to Valle Frances. Christy thought she got stung by a bee, so she took a Benadryl and knocked out. We went on the day hike without her.

Gracey Wang likes my outfit.

Super excited me about the hike!

The view from the valley. Andrea couldn't stop saying it reminded her of Land Before Time.

Yay group (minus sleeping beauty Christy).

Us at top of the mirador (lookout point).

The many glaciers and the melting waters flowing down into waterfalls were breathtaking. That huge river we crossed on that bridge--all that water came from these glaciers. Water from God, I thought.

Grace doesn't love me! :( Is it the pants? I can change!

The next day, we woke up late...again. But this is the trail. This might have been the hardest day, as it took us 10 hours to get to our next campsite.

And the world is too small. We ran into fellow EAP-ers coming in the opposite direction. They were the 3rd EAP group we ran into in the past 2 days.

Our stopping place for a late (4pm) lunch. Beautiful viewpoint, and Gracey Wang snapped a cool photo of me having a little alone time looking out at the vast glacial lake.

And a terrible river crossing. I had heard about it, thinking it would be a piece of cake since I had $100 Asolo hiking boots. The water was rushing and so cold it felt sharp. I fell in on my first step and I was so scared I would damage my camera, fall in and be swept away by the river, or die. I sat down on a rock with the river rushing next to me, trying to catch my breath and be calmer, but my jacket was getting wet so I had to muster up my courage to continue crossing. I prayed the entire way that God would protect me. He did, which is why I am here, alive to tell my harrowing story!

Our 2nd-to last leg of the trip. We found our campsite off in the distance in this Sound of Music-esque green hilly land. We had to cross yet another river, and Andrea had the bright idea of instead of crossing by carrying her shoes, to toss it over to the other side. We all were questioning her brilliant ideas, but she proceeded anyway, only to result in the shoes flying up then straight down into the river rapids. She had to chase them downstream, resulting in even wetter shoes than originally planned.

Me and Grace, with our matching jackets and backpacks. We are so stylish even when in the wilderness :)

We set up camp at 11 p.m. Hooray for 10-hour hiking days!

Our day to hike up towards the crowning jewel of Torres del Paine--The Torres! They are 3 granite towers that sit atop a peak that requires about a 60% uphill 3 hour hike (one way) to see the beauty and majesty of these grand looming towers. Here, I didn't bother leading because it was such a difficult hike. I let my other teammates go ahead of me (some were ahead by 20 minutes, probably a mile ahead of me. I'm so slow). I was so glad for Christy though we likes to take her time as well so she stayed by my side the entire time as I took my time. In this photo, it was pretty much scrambling on whatever rock we could find. It was stressful too because by this part I couldn't take my time anymore; there were a bunch of tour groups trailing me, so if I stopped or slowed down I'd slow about 15 other people down. It was good in that it would keep me moving without taking too many breaks. An Argentine old man saw me wearing my Boca jersey on the way up and made fun of me saying I can't wear that. Turns out he was a River fan.

This was what I saw when I arrived. That woman in the blue started crying when she arrived because she was so proud of herself for her feat. I didn't know there was a lake there but behold!!!! Lake!!! Towers!! Clouds!! Ice!!

Grace and I were very very happy to have arrived.

Photo by Gracey Wang. It makes me look more athletic than I really am. Must be the baseball cap.

I went down to the lake to touch it and the water was thick! Almost like jello, I claimed but no one really thought so. Oh well, I thought it was the strangest water texture I had ever touched. A narcissistic but very friendly Frenchman took my picture for me.

I tried to take as many Torres pics as possible because Sara said she regretted not taking more Torres pictures.

It started drizzling and being all windy and cold at the top, so after a picnic lunch of pita bread, tuna, and pasta sauce, we hiked back down. I had no rain jacket, but I did have a trash bag Andrea saved for me! It worked great and was free. But since then, I have invested in a rain jacket. I bought it last week actually, Timberland brand for only $10! And it's red,
perfectly matching with my backpack. : )

Copihue, a bellflower, national flower of Chile.

Waterfall. A small one though, but precious nonetheless. My camera didn't capture the beautiful color, so this photo is a bit disappointing for me.

Beautiful landscapes on the hike back. Easy hike, since it was all downhill.

The downhill. I couldn't believe I hiked all the way up this stinking hill. Or rather, mountain. On the way up, I kept my endurance by not looking up at how much more mountain there was to hike. I just looked at my feet and every step I took. It also helped to think about Jesus and him taking up his cross on Calvary. Though an incomparable comparison, it helped me understand how excruciating it must have been for Jesus. But downhill was sweet and slopy. And I got to talk with Andrea about her family and past travel experiences. I like Andrea : )

The looming mountain view I got from my tent back at our campsite. What a sight to wake up to, huh?

Our humble trusty 6-person tent. Every night, either one of us was too cramped, too cold, or too hot. Sucks. I slept like a log most of the time. We spent our last day in the park relaxing as we had finished the "W" hike. We showered (I took all of Gracey's hot water. Sorry), rested our feet, and pooped. Yes. Y que?!

Our bus leaving Torres del Paine National Park. My last view of the proud granite Torres. Such nature, such beauty that I never would have imagined to see with my own eyes and be all intimate with.

Sky meets land on the Chilean pampas.

Gracey and I enjoyed the view outside the bus on my iPod, playing Hijos del Sol, a musical group that I supported by buying one of their CDs on the Santiago bus. We enjoyed their renditions of traditional Chilean music. Oh, and the bus smelled disgusting on the way back because of all the unshowered dirty hikers. It was revolting.

Richard got a golden farmer's tan from our 4day excursion. Lookin' good.

To congratulate ourselves for our survival of the "W" hike, we went back to town 3 hours way in Puerto Natales to return our rented gear and to have a real meal other than trail mix, dried fruit, oatmeal, pasta, and other camping food that will forever scar me. I can't look at spaghetti and tomato sauce the same way again. But anyway, we got these fatty sandwiches at Milogodon (I think that's the name), a family-owned sandwich shop where they have their children working and really good service. I got a leche platano, a mix of milk and bananas. Yum!

We stayed at Backpacker's Paradise in Punta Arenas, where we experienced very interesting memories of a certain ginger chinese boy (not capitalized for a reason), the Special Room, and a left-behind thermos. Shudder. It's an interesting story, if you ever want to hear it you can ask me.

It was the nicest to meet fellow trekkers, such as Brandon, a grad student bird watcher from Minnesota. Richard and I also went to the zona franca, a duty-free shopping zone to pass the time until we had to leave back to Santiago. It was quite boring, but I remember being in a store where there was this Chilean older man with piercing blue eyes and dark hair and a weathered face, whispering loudly and sharply at his family "Look at the Chinese girl!" every time we passed by each other in the market. I was a little dumbfounded at the blatant lack of discreetness in pointing me out. Couldn't you at least do it AFTER we passed by each other, sir? I guess not. I got so annoyed because we ran into him multiple times so finally I stared him straight in his sharp blue eyes and said "Hola." I don't think he was expecting that.

So that ends my journey to the southern tip of Chile. It's really awoken desires to rough it out in nature even more in the future.

Despedida Gringa--ICLAM's goodbye party for us gringos

2009-01-01T01:44:00.000-08:00

Andrew, Grace, Christine, Emily, Leah and I came in as the gringos of the church this semester. It started out as a small group of the UC kids, and then I met Emily on the bus (funny story, but great results) and Grace met Leah through a mutual friend. We all became involved in the church and the butt of many jokes since we suck at Spanish at times :[ Nevertheless, they embraced all of us as their own, and our departure was something worth commemorating, put together by GX, our youth group which stands for Generación Xtrema. And thee are pics form the church retreat. I'm too lazy to update with everything now...so photo posts all the way!!

Chiloé part 2

2008-12-31T01:22:00.000-08:00

Hello, I'm back in the US, and I have a bunch more pictures to upload, such as:
-Gringo goodbye party at church
-Church retreat
-Backpacking in Patagonia
-Christmas in Tucumán

But before I get too ahead of myself, I need to finish uploading Chiloé pictures!The Kennison family, a missionary family in Curaco de Velez (a bordering city of Achao) invited me over for lunch at their home. Their neighbor had a sheep! SO typical Chilote.

Their dining room. Evidence of 5 kids living there. :)

Two of the kids use strollers. Grace and the baby whose name I don't remember...

A cool looking trash can in Curaco.

The church where Daniel pastors. It only has 15 people right now. Thinking about these tiny churches and how much support they need makes me think of more missions opportunities outside of Tucumán and how many other churches there are in need. The pastor is a JMac fan, so he gave me a book in Spanish called, "Distintos por diseño"...also known as "Different By Design" in its English title. Yay Spanish Christian literature!!! It'll always be a book special to my heart. I can't wait to start reading it, tackling theology and Spanish at the same time. Woot!

Me, the kids, and the wife of the pastor went to pasear (walk around) the town, and the church sits at a bay with a view of the water...pretty much common in all of Chiloé. The 8 year old daughter took my picture, since I figured it'd be good to have my face once in a while in these pictures.

The 2nd to youngest one prefers to speak in Spanish.

After I got back from the lunch, I decided to spend some time alone and take pictures. In the corner of this picture was a house/shack made of random materials. I was shocked to see poverty like that in a small town, but it still exists...

The next day, Miguel from Dalcahue called me to hang out. We met at a Bible study class at the church of Pastor Marcelo. He saw me, a gringa and he wanted to talk with me to see how I was adjusting to Chilean life. Finally we got in contact so I hopped on the bus and then the ferry to visit him two towns over. This is the back of the church. A little museum.

Chilote Catholic church stuff.

More pictures of me to prove I was really there.

Miguel and I walked all around Dalcahue as he showed me the sights and invited me to eat milcao, a typical Chilote snack made from potato flour filled with pork and pork fat. Fatty and yummy! Miguel also took me to the pastor's house in Dalcahue, who works with my church in Santiago. There, I found yet another sheep. I wanted to pet it, but here it looks so timid and scared and kept on running away from me.

So Miguel helped me catch it! He is a sheep and potato farmer, so I trusted him to catch that darn sheep!

He caught it!

After the sheep incident, we walked around the bay. I got thirsty so I bought both of us some juice to drink. Miguel showed me an animata of one of his friends, which is a very Latin American tradition where families of the deceased construct a small memorial for the dead in the place where they died. His friend was inebriated and had fallen off the cliff and into the ocean. From there, Miguel told me about his life before becoming a Christian and now how his life had changed, saying that change is necessary as a Christian. It made me so happy to hear him talk about his Christian life--a Chilote sheep farmer and I had something so profound in common. :')

Saying goodbye to Miguel after our paseo (small trip) in Dalcahue. He said bye to me on the bus, we hugged and he said to me, "I hope this isn't the last time I get to see you." I wanted to cry then; even though I had known him for 2 days, we became such good friends and it felt kind of like saying goodbye to the church in Argentina when I left them. Our friendship didn't end after this trip. Miguel still called me a few times a week to check up on me and ask me how I am. On my last day in Chile, I had $3 left on my phone plan, so I used it up to the last peso talking to him and telling him how it was a blessing to be his friend and saying goodbye.

I went back to Pastor Marcelo's house and played with the baby Marco. So cute, this fat little 2 year old. He doesn't talk a lot, but he expresses his fellings in bratty ways: "No puedo!" and "No quiero!"="I can't!" and "I don't want to!" Those 2 phrases work in any situation.

On my last day, Pastor Marcelo and family went to Ancud, and I went with them as I needed to go there as well! They look me to the feria (farmer's market).

This box is an almud. It's a unit of measurement for potatoes because potatoes are a staple in Chiloé.

I invited the family to lunch as a thanks for their hospitality and care for me. Also an excuse for me to eat curanto, which is a typical Chilote dish. It's basically like a barbeque of seafood. It comes in a huge bag filled with potato dough, shellfish of many kinds, chicken, ham, pork, sausage, and potato. And they served the broth of the seafood on the side. It was delicious and an indulgence to the seafood lover in me. And it cost less than $8...another attraction of Chiloé--great, cheap, delicious food.

And I told them about a penguin colony, so Pastor Marcelo drove for 30 minutes on an unpaved road to this obscure place, to find penguin tours!! This is me and Josue.

Biologists from the Universidad de Chile (woot woot represent) who got to do research with the penguins.

Hehe, fat little Marquito with mommy Julia. She's one of the prettiest Chilean women I've met.

Peruvian pelican. The tour guide joked that, since there are a lot of Peruvian immigrans in Chile, that it's not just people are coming over to Chile from Peru now.

The wonderful family that hosted me for 4 days. And they didn't even know me before; I was just some attendee of their friend's church. They told me that they love having people at their home and that they've hosted missionaries from Germany before.

My attractive penguin tour jumpsuit.

Me with the family. I felt like an Asian nanny when I walked around in public with them, as I bet people were wondering what this random Asian girl was doing with a Chilote family and playing with the kids. I even ran into a Korean Catholic tour group on this penguin tour! Being the honorary Korean I am, I busted out my, "ahnyonghasaeyo" to one of them and they asked Julia about me when I was in the bathroom. Hehehe =) Proud of me, guys??

The beautiful, bumpy, unpaved ride back to town where they dropped me off at the bus terminal. This trip being a month ago, I almost forget what it was like to stay with them as I just stayed with Pastor Jorge and his family and the 2 experiences were completely different. But I can recall that I was thankful for their kindness to a complete stranger as well as their encouraging talks with me about Christian life in Chiloé. I really hope I can see them sometime again. I want to own a house in Chiloé when I'm older. =)

I left Chiloé island happy, learning a lot about God, and feeling ultra thankful...things I did not expect to experience in this spontaneous trip traveling alone. Out of all my travels in the country of Chile, this was the most memorable because of all the kind people I met, experiencing being a Christian in Chiloé, and the beauty of such a cute small isolated island. In this picture in Puerto Montt, where my plane left, I was greeted once again by these 2 snowy volcanic peaks, the same ones I saw at the beginning of this unexpected trip.

関東 vs. 関西

2008-12-28T21:17:00.000-08:00

I forgot that I never posted about my Kansai adventure.

If you want to see pictures, see 'em on facebook because there are just way too many pictures to weed through. Haha. And if you don't have facebook and you really really really really want to see the pictures, let me know.

Kanto (関東) is the eastern region on the main island (Honshu). That's where I lived, since Tokyo's in the east (Tokyo, 東京, literally means "Eastern Capital"). I've heard that the Kansai (関西) region is pretty different and there was even some kind of a rivalry between the two, kind of like the whole Nor Cal, So Cal thing. Of course, after living in Tokyo for a couple of months, I was ready to see just how different the Kansai region (especially Osaka) was.

Kyoto wasn't that bad. I heard a few people say, "Okini" instead of "Arigatou" and people saying "hen" instead of "nai." I giggled at it because it's so... stereotypically Kansai.

As a sidenote as to what we did, Yun and I stayed at this wonderful hostel near Kinkakuji (The Golden Temple) where yes, a building is coated in gold. It's absolutely beautiful, especially with the momiji (the autumn leaves). There's also Ginkakuji (The Silver Temple) but we decided not to go. We went around Gion, where you may be able to see some maiko (geisha in training) but they're kind of rare to come by, I think. But the coolest thing was that I got to see the Minami-za while on the bus! (The Minami-za is the Kansai equivalent of the Kabuki-za in Tokyo. They're both Kabuki theaters) There was also a statue of Okuni (the supposed founder of Kabuki) and it turned out that we were by the Kamo River (where Kabuki was first performed)!

We also went up the street to the Kiyomizudera (The Pure Water Temple) but didn't go in because we wanted to make it to the Fushimi Inari Shrine (it's the shrine that has the thousands upon thousands of orange tori, or gates) before it got dark. I really regret not going into the Kiyomizudera. Even though it was super crowded, we should've gone in. Because we got to the Fushimi Inari Shrine when it was dark anyway. D:

So yes. Fast forward. We got to Osaka and the lady who owned the hostel that we went to was Korean! It helped with communication a lot because we were having some issues talking about the reservation that I made in Japanese. -_-; She was really nice to me and when Yun and I left, she gave us these little cell phone danglys for free, saying, "It's hard to come across a Korean person like this. We have to look out for each other. Please take these." :)

Ok, so remember how I was talking about the "Okini" and "hen" thing a couple of paragraphs ago? IT WAS CRAZIER IN OSAKA. Yun and I went to the Kaikukan (I forget if that's correct or not...) which is the aquarium there. While we were there, I was trying to take a picture of this little critter that moved around really quickly, as was this girl next to me. It was really difficult to take and after a few minutes, she turned to her boyfriend and exclaimed, "Torahen!" In standard Japanese, you would say, "Toranai!" (meaning, "I can't take [a picture of] it!") so when I heard it, I literally had to choke down my laughter and then walk away 'cause I didn't want to laugh in her face.

Yun and I also went to Kobe (first we went to the Kobe station and then found out that we got off at the wrong station -_-;) to get some Kobe steak. It was incredibly... expensive. But delicious. I ate my steak with chopsticks. Hahhahaa. Mmmm... Kobe steak... I'll definitely be hitting up the next time I'm in the Kansai region. *-*...

As for other things to compare, people in Osaka really are meaner than people in Tokyo. Hahaha. Remember how in my last entry (if you read it), I said that people will always say, "Sumimasen! Gomen nasai! Sumimasen! HONTOU NI SUMIMASENNNNN!"? This usually happens in train stations and on the train and what not. Well. In Osaka, people get on the train, shove you around and don't say a word to you. Or they give you a dirty look. I actually got to take the Hankyu Line (the one that takes you to Takarazuka ^o^~) and Yun, her friend, and I were speaking in English and the people on the train just straight up stared at us. Even if we stared back. o___o じ~~~~~

And, just a note of reference for anyone who might go to Tokyo and then Osaka: in Osaka, everyone stands and walks to the right instead of the left. You know how in Asian countries, people walk to the left and stuff? Same dealio in the rest of Japan. Except Osaka. Even in Kyoto, people walk to the left. I don't know what it is about Osaka but it definitely is different. Hahaha.

Ok, that's all. I suppose that it was a very dry entry because there are no visual aids. :D

Good night.

Last few days

2008-12-27T19:33:00.000-08:00

I got back from Tucuman a few hours ago after a 26 hour bus ride. I did not want to leave. Every time I say goodbye to the church in Tucuman it is a difficult time for me as I am snotty, sniffy, and teary. It doesn't help much either that there's a gangload of people from the church waving goodbye to me up till the vehicle departs, which makes it even more tender and special. I can't wait till heaven when we never have to say goodbye to each other and just get to worship our God together.

I'm leaving Chile tomorrow night and finally ending my patiperro (Spanish nickname for someone who's always on the move) study abroad days. Finally get to see the Wu fam! I'll keep on updating because I'm missing a lot of updates.

Oh, and Moon, I got your package. It arrived in Chile on the 19th. I'm trying to eat as much as I can so there's less for me to carry in my suitcase. My host mom loved the orange Pocky!

Wury is back!

2008-12-27T14:46:00.000-08:00

Hey all ya'll - no more writing in this blog probably because.....

I'M BACK IN CALIFORNIA!

HEJ HEJ KOBENHAVN, DANMARK! Will miss you Denmark, but I just had a date with Garrett yesterday and I'm so glad to be back. Hahaha. Okay not only the sole reason why I'm glad to be back - but a huge part of it :)

Minor Reverse Culture Shock

2008-12-24T01:47:00.000-08:00

I didn't think that it would happen to me. Afterall, I would only be in Japan for three months. How Japanese could I turn in such a short amount of time?

Don't underestimate what being surrounded by a different culture can do to you. When I first saw how Japanese girls dressed, I snickered to myself but a month later, found myself wanting to buy a lot of the things that I saw in the clothing stores (but didn't, because I knew that I couldn't rock the look in the States).

A lot of the habits that I carried back from Japan have more or less died in the past few weeks that I've been at home (since in the States, I'm surrounded by American culture).

But here are a few things that I carried back with me.

1. When I do something that would usually warrent a "Oh, I'm sorry," I would instead hold up my hand and say, "Ah, sumimasen!" coupled with "Gomen nasai!" really frantically.

2. In the situations described in #1, I will duck my head, as if bowing, to show just how sorry I am. Japan really is the culture of shame.

3. I walk to the left of everything. This took me a while to get used to in Japan since I grew up in the States but when I was in Osaka, I couldn't get used to how everyone stood on the right. (Oooh... I was supposed to write a post about how different Osaka and Tokyo are...) This still happens to me. While I'm climbing up the stairs or am on the escalator, I'll find myself on the left side, confusing the Americans around me. D:

4. Before eating, I'll put my hands together and say, "Itadakimasu!" It took me a couple of weeks to break this habit. I don't think that my mom appreciated it too much.

5. Instead of saying, "Oooh," I'll say, "あっ！" (Aa!)-ish things. The intonations are a bit different.

6. I feel like everything I do warrents a sumimasen. When you inconvenience someone, even slightly, you would usually say, "Sumimasen..." but in the States, you just kind of shrug it off with a "Thank you" when they do it for you. I find myself frantically saying to salespeople, "Ah, I'm sorry. Really really sorry." Let me repeat: Japan is the culture of shame.

That's all that I can think of, actually... the thing that was the most obvious was my "sumimasen!" and walking to the left tendencies. The rest were things that I noticed kind of sporadically. They weren't really a big problem.

As for reverse culture shock, it's nothing big, really... I remembered how Americans behaved and in a lot of ways, Japanese culture kind of irritated me a lot, making me long for American culture. So if you don't count my Japanese-y habits as reverse culture shock, I will go as far as to say that I didn't have any. If anything, it's just being pleasantly surprised when someone holds the door open for me (the Japanese do not do this).

:D

Tucuman

2008-12-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone and spammer stalker Moon.
I am in Tucuman. I am having a fantastic time sharing with everyone here, but I don´t have much time to access the internet, but I am here...MOON. Okay, ther eis a Christmas potluck dinner at church in a few minutes so I am going to go now.
I´m coming back on the 29th! To the States! Don´t miss me too much!

earthquake!

2008-12-17T01:30:00.000-08:00

Copenhagen felt at 4.7 earthquake around 6am yesterday morning! Haha I sorta just woke up, and said: "Oh it's an earthquake" and went back to bed. Hahaha. Some Europeans said it was their first time experiencing an earthquake. Haha weird...

But anyways, my plans for the next 5 days left here in Copenhagen is so weird! Saying goodbyes to people that I probably won't see again! :(((( Okay I have to finish my papers and go to the library... it all feels so weird to have this be my last couple days here! AHhh....Copenhagen you will be missed.

ただいま

2008-12-16T20:31:00.000-08:00

I'm back. I've been back for a week and a half now. No more jet lag.

I am planning to make a post about coming back from Japan and reverse culture shock. It's not that severe for me. It'll probably be the most severe for Grace. Hahaha hope she'll be ok.

I am also planning to make a post about the experience as well and perhaps give a review of the program. Since, after all, this blog isn't just for keeping in touch with people and recording things down but also as a resource for students who are considering EAP, especially these specific programs, and are doing desperate searches on Google (like I did). I did meet a friend through this blog after all. :)

Ok, that's all for now. I know need to think about what to write. Hhahaha. Bye!

En Mendoza, Argentina

2008-12-16T12:58:00.000-08:00

I´m sitting in an Intenret cafe in Mendoza Argentina right now. I should go out and explore but I stick out like a sore thumb tourist with a huge backpack so I prefer to just stay in the bus temrinal and kill 3 hours on the internet and not be a target for pickpocketing. Yup. I´m gonna be in Tucuman in 18 hours... I used a pay phone and called Yanina and spoke frantically telling her she needs to come and pick me up. Jajaja. I can´t believe it......... I´m gonna see them.... one of the main reasons why i came to Chile is actually coming true and going to be fulfilled!!!!!!!

eeeeeee!!!!!!!

okay, kisses to you all and merry christmas!!!

I survived Torres del Paine

2008-12-15T19:44:00.000-08:00

I just got back from backpacking through Torres del Paine National Park, living off trail mix and pasta, drinking water from waterfalls and flowing streams, sleeping in a tent with 5 other people, not showering for 4 days, carrying a 50 pound backpack, and hiking 10 hours a day through God's crazy beautiful creation. And tomorrow I'm off to Tucuman for 10 days (alone! I love traveling alone!) ! So um, photos to come in like a month...hahah. See you later!

FIBC Christmas Concert!

2008-12-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

Excited!!! Forever Gloria to You Lord! Amen! Soli Deo Gloria!

Singing a solo in one of the songs! :) I love being in the choir. May all of our praise go to You! Wish everyone could come! It's going to be awesome!

last day of work!!!!!!! :D

2008-12-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

Oh my gosh...finally no more work! I decided to make today my last day of work because 1) I have papers due soon, and 2) Denmark only pays from the 15th to 15th. So if I continued to work past December 15th, I wouldn't get paid until January 30th. And 3) I want to enjoy my last week here in Denmark!!

But yay!!! No more cleaning poo in toilets, no more cleaning (all sorts of) shed hair, no more dirty Chinese fob men in hotel (it's so true though, everyone like sighs when we see Chinese men in the lobby and out of all the people that come to the hotel, I can say that they are the dirtiest), no more cleaning 15 rooms and bathrooms, no more itchiness from detergents and sprays , no more scrubbing calcium off the faucets and showers, no more wearing the maroon apron uniform, no more free breakfasts and lunches, no more free danish goodies, no more free fitness center, no more seeing my English bosses and co-workers that I just started to get to know a little better... Goodbye Park Inn...

What an experience though to have to work as a hotel cleaner... I really have so much more deep appreciation for hotel cleaners. It is hard work! And I had it easier than my co-workers who were cleaning 23 rooms. That's professional status. And I thought I've gotten pretty fast at cleaning a room now - I have no idea how they do it. I keep telling the girls that: "I don't know how you do it." Some of them have been there for four years! I was working twice or three times a week for 5 hours per day and only there for three months. How tiring it really gets. But you do get used to the physical labor part. I even started to go to the hotel's fitness center on Thursdays to do running on the treadmill! So now that I know what goes behind the scenes in the hotel, some things that I myself would now do differently after staying at a hotel:

1) I wouldn't move the furniture around too much. Some of the people just like to really move side tables underneath desks, and move beds, etc. Try to keep things in the same place. It makes it a lot easier to clean.

2) I would throw away the trash in trashbins and leave bottles and recylcables outside the trashbins. Often times I would have to fish out gross beer bottles and cans in the trashbins

3) I would take off the sheets and pillowcases that I slept in and put it in a pile. And I would also bundle up the towels I used and put them in a pile as well. You don't have to do this, but because I know what hotel cleaners go through, I think I would because it makes cleaning go so much faster.

4) I would also tip well! In Europe I guess they don't tip - but sometimes I would see some Euros or DKK and that was really nice to get.

5) I would get checkout of the room before 12pm for sure. Basically, the later you checkout - the later we would have to stay at hotel to clean the rooms. So checking out in the morning is best so that the hotel cleaners can get out of there faster too.

The list could go on. But those are the major things...please be nice to the housekeeping workers in hotels. Say "hi" to them and smile please. Even those slight things made the job easier.

But yeah, I'm glad God gave me the opportunity and experience to do it - He taught me a lot from it. He made me think of what it means more to be a servant/slave as an analogy to being a servant/slave (doulos) for God. He taught me more on being submissive to my bosses - to do what they say and work hard without complaining. God placed my bosses there for a reason and my actions and obedience are a good way to be a witness for Christ. Having integrity as I work - it is so tempting a lot of the times to just skip over dusting, vacuuming, wiping...And I did give in a couple times :( He gave me the opportunity to witness to more people that don't know Christ and build at least one relationship with a co-worker...

All in all, I have to conclude that hotel-cleaning was a good job. God really used this job to teach me and refine me - to be more of who He wants me to become. But I'm so glad it's over! Haha. Thank You God.

Oh and here are pictures from Rome with Hyan!!!

Chiloé part 1

2008-12-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

This took way too long to post (I am veryyy behind on my posting, but its because I had finals and now I'm preparing to go to PATAGONIA!!!!!) but for the sake of my own memories I will do so. I still need to put up my church's goodbye party for us gringos. And then I will be silent for about a month, as I will be scrambling to go on my church retreat today, travel the south of Chile, camping in Torres del Paine National Park, stay with the Ahualli family in the north of Argentina, and finally North America =)This is where Chiloé is. Very far, certainly not a stone's throw away.

I felt so self conscious in the beginning traveling by myself. A lot of people were looking at the airport like, "Who is this small Asian girl with this huge backpack all alone?" I was super nervous about it at first, but my friend Liz (UCI) did the same journey herself and she loved it. If Lizzard can do it, I can too! While I was waiting at the airport, at my gate there was a huge group of soccer players. I had no idea who they were, but they looked professional as they wore Chilean beer-sponsored soccer jerseys and carried Louis Vuitton suitcases. I didn't want to ask who they were because I didn't want to look stupid if they were indeed super famous (I probably should have; my Asian girl charm lets me get away with a lot of things). I found out later they were from the team Union Española, the 5th best team in Chile. Dang it! The coach sat right in front of me too!

When I landed in Puerto Montt, I was greeted by 2 snowy peaks of volcanoes. The above one is so perfectly pointy and snowy. 'Twas breathtaking.

From Puerto Montt--> Chiloé. Chiloé is a very rural and isolated area. It doesn't have an airport, and the closest city is Puerto Montt, which requires taking a ferry to get there. I got on a bus to continue my voyage in moving vehicles, going on all modes of transportation: plane, bus, and ferry (air, la and water!). The bus itself goes on the ferry so you could get off the bus to stretch your legs, breathe in the air, enjoy the body of water.
Here's a map of the island of Chiloé! The black arrows show the route I took for the 6-day voyage.

I arrived in Chonchi, to Hostal Esmeralda, which was highly recommended by 4 different tour books. The owner is Canadian and super helpful, especially since he speaks English. He talks a lot--one morning, I simply went to ask him for a map and it ended up being a one-hour discussion about Pinochet. But anyway, this is the view from my room. Precious, huh? I felt like Pablo Neruda with a little desk facing the water, ready to be inspired to write Nobel Prize-winning poetry. Since it was my first night, I hadn't gotten chummy with any of the fellow travelers in the hostel. I was hungry so I went out to look for some food by myself. This was the part of the trip I was not looking forward to--I HATE eating by myself, especially in restaurants where it's even more socially unacceptable. When I see people eat by themselves, I get sad. I asked Lizzard what she did in her case, and she told me she brought a book or wrote in her journal. I was prepared for this with a journal and a book to bust out in case I got lonely. I went to this newly-constructed, aimed-at-tourists establishment where there are a lot of kitchens/restaurants. I picked an unassuming spot in the dining area close to the window so I could enjoy the beautiful body of water and the salmon fishing boats as I dined in solitude.

And of course, being in the south of Chile, one absolutely will run into salmon dishes. There are a bunch of salmon farms here, which provides jobs for the Chilotes (residents of Chiloé). It's pretty cheap, too: ~$5 for this delicious plate of food + a hearty seafood soup. I love Chiloé's abundance of cheap seafood..... But I digress. Salmons. Later that night, as I got chummy with a fellow hostel dweller (Ben--who's from the US, works in Santiago at the Patagonia Times, and who knows Sara from UCSD who is like my walking Lonely Planet since I reference her facebook pics for any trips I take in Chile) as we sipped vinito and as he told me about the negative aspects of the salmon industry.

I went back to the hostel and this was the beautiful view I saw. Chonchi is such a tranquil little town. I would walk around at night by myself (not that I did, but it just felt that safe).

And these were the beautiful water-meets-the-moon views I got from my hostel the 2 nights I was there.

The next day, fellow world trekkers Bethany and Charles, a young married couple from Wyoming, invited me to visit Isla Lemuy with them. Chiloé is one big island/archipelago with a bunch of small islands surrounding it. There are ferries that run from the main island to the smaller ones. So we walked from our hostel for about 2.5 miles to get to the ferry port. These were the beautiful views we saw while walking.

Here's the view from the ferry.We landed in a few minutes.

To be greeted by cows, rolling hills, and sheep! Here is a sample of the cows we saw. They were very fearful of me. Aw. :(

The wooden church we saw, but was sealed off =(

We walked a good chunk of the way, finally reaching the "major city"=more than 200 people living there. At first, I was disappointed there wasn't more to see on the island, since all we did was walk, take pictures of cows, wave hi to people but my hostel owner told me that Isla Lemuy isn't about finding stuff to do, rather, it was to see how these people lived. I saw a farmer sowing his own little piece of farmland with a hoe (absolutely no machines!), and when he saw us, he took a quick break to wave hi to us gringos from afar. Furthermore, every time we walked by people, we made eye contact and smiled to say hello. I realized that these mere acts of salutation was indicative of the kind of people and the kind of life there is here. I realized that I did appreciate it after all :)

A cemetery that we came across.

After Isla Lemuy, and about 4 hours of walking, we caved in and took a bus back to Chonchi (thank goodness!) and I fell asleep on the 20-minute ride. Charles and Bethany wanted to rest up, so I wandered around Chonchi taking pictures.

It was an empty little rocky bay. No one around, and I only heard the rough salmon farmers yelling at each other in the background.

The end of the pier where the salmon farmers were working.

I sat down at the edge of the pier, deathly afraid of falling in. I took a picture w/ my shoe to prove I was there. Haha! Then an annying salmon farmer saw me and started yelling, "Hola chinita!" I ignored him and left.

Boats are a common sight in Chiloé.

I went to a museum in Chonchi with artifacts of Chonchi upper-class life in th late 1800's. Pink and yellow room!!

And here are the very famous, all-wood, UNESCO World Heritage, Chilote churches.

Not a piece of cement. Wood, wood, wood, made of alerce, a certain type of tree.

Nope, no marble either! Its imitation marble, painted on--you guess it--wood.

Look at the super cute nursery-like ceiling of the church!! Isn't it precious!??!

After wandering for myself for a few hours, Charles, Bethany, and me went to go out for dinner at the same place I went the night before. It was so nice to eat with people =) This is charquican, a typical Chilean dish that my host mom is an expert at. And naturally, my host mom's charquican was more delicious! It was so much food that I saved the charquican and the table bread for lunch the next day.

Licor de oro is a typical drink of Chonchi. After dinner, Bethany, Charles, and I bought a bottle of this (dulce de leche flavored!) and had a great conversation over this delicious nectar of fermented milk (that's what it is!). Bethany and Charles left the hostel the next day, and Bethany slipped her email under my door, since I told her if they are ever in San Diego they should contact me.
I left Chonchi and went to Castro, the capital of Chiloé. This picture was taken when I went in a stranger's car who offered to take me to the bus terminal. Kids, don't get in strangers' cars--unless you're in Chiloé! Jajajaja, just kidding, kind of. Chiloé is known to be super safe and even in Chonchi, the hostel owner encouraged us to hitchhike since it's normal and safe. I was very close to doing so, but no cars came to pick us up =( But I tried to use my best judgment and this stranger was helping an elderly couple with physical therapy by a bench where I ate my lunch. He was super nice and gave me his email and cell phone # and told me to call him if I needed anything. Thanks, Andrés!

I took the bus to Achao on Isla Quinchao, where the pastor friend of my pastor in Santiago lived! He invited me to stay at his house.

I met the little ones--Josue (6) and Marco (2).

Typical architecture of Chiloé. Wood shingles EVERYWHERE, which looks like fish scales.

I found snoopy rock.

And more with the Chilote churches. This one was intense on the inside, with intense carvings made of wood but photography was prohibited =(

And this is a typical Chilote home's stove, where it heats up the house the entire day as it burns. Even though I went in spring, Chiloé was very, very very cold. Brrrr.

Okay, off I go to my church's retreat! Hopefully I can update more later!

Wait. What?!

2008-12-04T05:37:00.000-08:00

It's 12/4! Guess where I am!

.
.
.

Not Foster City, California, USA. I'm at Hotel Nikko Narita, a five minute drive from the Naria Airport in Chiba, Japan.

What happened?

Good question.

I said good bye to Jessi this morning. She shoved me out the door (and I giggled at it... hahahaha). Then I went to Kichijoji to buy stuff for my nails and to get a case for my DS (yes, I got one here! Jessi found me a deal!). I went into Yodabashi Camera with my ginormous backpack. -_-;;; They didn't have big lockers at the Kichijoji station which blows me mind since it's such a popular station. :(

Anyway, I arrived in Shinjuku, ready to take the Narita Express. I got there an hour and twenty minutes early so I decided to eat at Doutor Donut (my first time, actually) and then waited down at the platform for a little bit. Then I hopped on the train and was on my way!

I fell asleep on the train but woke up when we arrived at terminal 2. I got off at terminal 1, found the kuroneko (black cat-- it's another name for the Yamato delivery service) stand, got my suitcase, then made my way to check in.

They took my suitcase and one of the United workers put my suitcase on the scale and as he did, he said, "Kono suitcase wa sugoi!" (This suitcase is incredible) Yes, my suitcase was very heavy. In fact, it was too heavy. It weighed in at 35.6 kg. And then he told me, "It's over, so it will cost 600 USD." I paused and asked, "... US dollars?" and he said, "Yes, 600 USD." I looked at the guy at the counter and he said that things over 32 kg are calculated differently so I owed 600 USD. I kept on staring at him, thinking, "My mom's going to KILL me," but he said, "If you have a second piece of luggage to check in, then you can maybe put some things in there." I sat on the floor of the airport and started to shove things into my backpack. When I reweighed my big suitcase, it came in at 31.something kg. Whew. It was only 3000 yen! Much cheaper than 60,000 yen!

I walked happily through security and then went into this bar/cafe, had a half pint of Guinness with a plate of cheese and crackers (I've been kind of beer tasting since my Sapporo visit). Then afterwards, I went over to gate 37. I was going to board in 45 minutes so I thought that I'd pass the time texting my friend Yuri (who applied to study abroad in UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Davis but got "recommended" to go to University of Massachusetts, Amherst). I thought to myself, "I really don't want to leave Japan" and started to get teary cheeked, especially while texting Yuri. (Saying good bye to her at the Shinjuku train station on Sunday was the most difficult good bye in Japan thus far)

Well, then they called us to board and we were on our way!

I had changed my seat last second and got a window seat. I was ready to knock out as soon as the plane took off. I waited a bit and was used to delays and what not since I take the plane back home so often.

But then there was an announcement about this minor oil spill on the left wing of the aircraft. They said that they would give us an update in half an hour. So we sat there, thinking that it wasn't a big deal. They had boarded us early anyway-- what would half an hour do?

Then they proceeded to update us every half hour about how they would update us the next half hour.

...

Eventually, at 8:20 PM, after sitting in the plane for more than 3 hours, they told us that our flight was rescheduled to 4:25 PM the next day. I started to panic, having no way to tell my parents this. I resorted to texting Jessi so that she could sign onto my Skype account and call my parents. Hahhaa thank goodness! (She told me that a certain ckatsura started to talk to her. Hahhahahaha.)

We filed out of the plane, all really tired and frustrated, and they told us that they were going to try to work out hotel accomodations. They eventually found this place and said that United was paying for it. Along with a 1500 yen voucher for food. Woot. (Btw, the premium-whatever, 1K and some other people with those fancy membership titles were allowed to tag along on another flight. ;o; Us po' folks were left stranded.)

So yep, here I am! All I had today was an onigiri, that puny sandwich at Doutor Donut, a Snickers bars and... well, I'm going to check to see if the restaurant downstairs is open. I need to shower first, though. And if it's not open, there's a Lawson downstairs! I forgot that it was a Lawson! :) I love the konbini.

Anyway, I have a double room all to myself! It's actually kind of nice to leave Japan feeling really relaxed.

So yes, I'll be back tomorrow for sure! I feel really bad for the person/people responsible for the oil spill... mistakes happen! I hope that they don't get fired! :(

Will be in the States soon

2008-11-30T09:04:00.001-08:00

At a friend's place right now.

Will be here 'til I leave. Doesn't look like I'll be posting anything until I get home so hang tight!

My plans for Tokyo is just basically hanging out with Jessi (the wonderful gal that I'm staying with) and buying omiyage (but don't know how much I can buy since everything's cho-takai and too... Japanese-y).

Mkay, that's all. I must now sleep. Bye!

Festival de la Cerveza (Oktoberfest) y Quilpue

2008-11-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've had a fatty post, mainly because I was busy with finals. But now I'M DONEEEEEEE. Finishing off with the easiest finals week of my LIFE. No joke. I was playing the entire weekend before I had to write a a paper, with our Gringo goodbye party for church (that's a whole other post) and various other things with hanging out with people as a "last-time-I'll-see-you" kind of thing. Sniff sniff.

But anyway, here are more posts that I've been meaning to post but didn't get around to. I went to Festival de la Cerveza in Malloco, which is about 4o minutes outside of Santiago. It's like an Oktoberfest and there are various vendors of artisan beers from all over Chile.But we found a mini zoo right by the festival! Animals? We've gotta go!

Guess what animal this is. It's like one of those children's books where you have to guess the object from a closeup picture.

It's an ostrich!

Birdbrain, hehe.

Goat! So white and precious and cute. Awww.
And below is the Stephanie Higa pictures collection. I saw so many varieties of chickens and poultry (er, what's the word for living poultry?) that I knew you'd love it!
This one had wild hair.

This had feathers that would look cute on a dress! I think it's a pheasant???

Or is this a pheasant? I dunno...

A little walkway to take us back to the festival.

Some sort of cerveza and choripan (Sausage and bread). The beer was OK, but I couldn't drink it all; it was too much for little 'ol me.

The bus ride back.

And the day after, my apartmentmate Sole invited me to her family's house in Quilpue (2 hours outside Santiago) to meet them for the weekend. Table all set up for a special Saturday lunch.

Yummy tuna, mayo, and heart of palm salad.

Me with Sole's brother, his partner, and their 3-year-old daughter Nicole.
Me and my apartmentmate Sole! She's 39 and quite a pal =) She's like an older sister and when she's bored, she just comes in my room to sit on my bed and chat. It's cool cuz my apartment has 3 generations of ladies--golden years (70--my host mom), middle age (39--Sole), and a lolita (21-meeee!)

Sole's brother Julio took us in his car to go around the beautiful Pacific coast. But what really irks me about Chilean beaches (picture above is Con Con...funny name.) is that they are FILTHY. It's dangerous for kids to play in the sand because there's broken beer bottle glass everywhere. You can't just lie down and dig your feet in the sand cuz you might get all cut up. ARRRRRG!! Why can't people be considerate of the beauty of nature and just throw their trash away in a trash can or hold onto it until they find a trash can?!?! Such low standards they have for preserving nature and beauty. I feel like it's a lack of self-respect for their country and a lack of teaching manners and a lack of educatin and enforcement on the part of society and government. And everyone suffers from ugly beaches!!!!!! >:O

Anyway, here is Sole and her poodle/dog daugher Puky. (pookie, not puke-y, haha)

Little Nicole got dirty sand in her eyes.

We drove more up and down the coast, stopping at beautiful vista points. Here is Bastian, the 6-year-old son of Sole's brother. It felt like I spent the weekend playing with kids, and I left realizing how much I really do like kids =) I thought I didn't, but being in Chile and spending time with children has taught me that I do in fact like them. They make things so much fun, and you can read them so easily unlike adults. It was so easy to get the kids to trust me and like me--candy! =) And they really do say the darndest things.

I love the Pacific Ocean. Pictures don't capture the beauty of the vistas.

Me, the kiddies, and the poodle's head.

Bastian pretending to be able to read a book about his latest fascination--dinosaurs. This is the day after, and when he left to go home, he wanted to know if he'd see me again. When I left, he called Sole later that week and wanted to talk to me on the phone. When I answered, he clammed up and didn't say a word. Awww, I have a little 6-year-old suitor!

They had an asado (barbecue) for me the next day! Sole's family was super sweet, accommodating and welcoming. Sole was right--the city of Quilpue itself doesn't have much interesting, but it's her family that I will remember :)

Email from Norma (Pastor Jorge's wife)

2008-11-27T21:42:00.000-08:00

hola grace ¿como estasssssssss? estamos re contentos de que ya se acerca el dia que vamos estar juntas , soy NORMA yyyyyyyyyyyyyy aprende mucho español porque vas estar en mi casa y yo no se nada de ingles ok greacias a DIOS estamos terminando el año con muchas bendiciones y muchos hermanos nuevos .Este domingo pasaran por las aguas del bautimos 7 hermanos.

te digo que te AMAMOS mucho y te esperamos seguro sera de mucha bedicion recordar juntas el nacimiento de nuestro SALVADOR.

( eli barrionuevo mu ayudo a escribir el e_mail )

NORMA

Hi Grace! How are you? We are very happy that it's already nearing the day that we're going to be together. It's Norma. And, learn lots of Spanish because you're gonna be in my house and I don't know any English, OK? (I'M STAYING IN THE AHUALLI HOUSE IN TUCUMAN!!!) Thanks to God we are finishing this year with many blessings and many new brothers. This Sunday we will be passing the water of baptism of 7 brethren.

I tell you that we love you lots and we are waiting for you. Surely it will be a huge blessing remembering the birth of our Savior together (I'M SPENDING CHRISTMAS WITH THEM!!!!!!!)
Eli Barrionuevo helped me write this email.
Norma

AHHHHH OMGGGG I'M SO EXCITEDDDD!! TUCUMAN IN LESS THAN A MONTH!!! DECEMBER 17ISH!!! WITH THE AHUALLIS! IN TUCUMAN! WITH IBM!! Now I just need to pack my suitcase, go souvenir shopping, and hike through Torres del Paine first...

Chilean Central Coast: San Antonio y Cartagena

2008-11-27T15:06:00.000-08:00

This is way delayed...from over a month ago...on Halloween. But I'm waiting for Liz Seward (UC Irvine) to have our weekly Mmm-mmm-Monday date, only this week it's on Thursday. Our Mmm-mmm-Monday is a food date where we try a new restaurant every week. Anyway, Halloween is Evangelical Day in Chile, which just became a holiday a year ago so we had school off. I wanted to get to know Chile more so Richard, Andrew, and I took a trip to the Central Coast, which is just 2 hours away. We went on and off buses trying to hit up all the small towns that dot the Central Coast.

I was hoping for a beautiful sunny day day, but it turned out to be grey and cold. I only brought a thin jacket, and I was really cold. I also didn't want to buy a new jacket for $20. Solution? Found a used clothing store and picked up this stylish sweater for $1.20 that probably hasn't been washed in 5 years. Looks good, no? Above is the woman who sold it to me. I quickly donated it when I got back home, haha.

First stop: San Antonio! An industrial port town that isn't too easy on the eyes.

But it has big pelicans walking around.

But you can see, not too pretty.

A huuuuuge walrus we saw right next to the pier! It was so fat and big it looked almost mechanical. A cat tried getting close to it, and it got annoyed so it ROARED at the cat, scaring it away. Such a funny sight!

My guide book told me about a 'caleta,' whatever that is.

Working our way down to the caleta.

With my ugly sweater.

So it's like a cliff?

Andriuuu was brave enough to climb the rocks and pose as a merman.

A seafood empanada. Mmm. Since I was along the coast the entire time, seafood is quite abundant (and cheap!). I want to go back there again before I leave Chile to eat some good seafood.

My lunch. Pastel de jaivas...it was watery and not very good at Manzana restaurant in Cartagena. Bleh. I only enjoyed it because Andrew gave me all his seafood to mix it in.

We then went to a laguna in Cartagena. Here is Andrew posing with an ugly face...that's what I get for being his official Chile photographer.

The welcome sign on the laguna. I took a picture of it because there's funnily written Japanese on it.

And we ended the day visitng El Monte! There was an Evangelical Day concert thing going on. I mainly went back to El Monte to visit Pedro and Teresa though. I felt so bad ebcause I called them like 3 times flip flopping about whether I'd be there or not. It was so nice to see them again and buy more alfajores from them :0)

I am homeless

2008-11-25T05:13:00.001-08:00

I am homeless in Japan. I am living in and out of hostels and hotels and stuff. Thus, I do not have regular access to the internet. A massive picture post will come when I can get some good wifi and am not in a rush.

I am going to Hokkaido tomorrow and thus, need to sleep soon. Oyasumi nasai!

snowing again!! Hyan is coming!

2008-11-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

It snowing right now!!! Wow, I biked in the snow :) Hahaha. I'm a true Dane now - I bike through wind, rain, and now snow!! Haha. I took a video of myself on my cell phone. Haha.

So Hyan, my oldest sister is coming tomorrow and I'm so excited to have her here!! I hope she can experience the snow while it lasts :) I'm thankful for her that she'll spend that much money to come here and spend Thanksgiving with me and also travel! Haha I'm sure going to Europe is just a plus and another excuse to come. Haha just kidding, but it really is a plus. Have a free place to stayin in Copenhagen if you come from now until December 22nd. Then you would have to leave with me at 5:30am on December 22nd because that's when I gotta go for my flight! WOW...It's November 24th and I have less than a month to go here. I sorta wanna stay longer! Haha. It'll be bittersweet leaving - I think the best part was meeting the people here in Copenhagen. Not necessarily the Danes. I only play volleyball with them really. Haha. But those ones are cool and I'll miss them too - but the church is what I'll miss here. It's been such a faithful spiritual home and really a family to me. Oh Copenhagen...I must make a bucket-list of things to do in Copenhagen. I've made it much more like a home than a place to go visit different museums and castles and churches. But I think I'm gonna start making a list to go visit the ones that I really should. Haha well when Hyan comes - we'll do some of that.

Haha did I tell you guys that I'm going to Rome, Italy?!?! Haha. Hyan wanted to go...and when we bought tickets to go to Poland they got cancelled because Sterling Airlines went bankrupct! So when I was pressing Hyan to make a decision of what to do she didn't really get back to me soon and then she spontaneously decided to go to Rome! So I'm going with her haha. So we'll be there from Wednesday afternoon till Saturday morning!

Right now I gotta go do my Danish homework! But next time I blog it'll be after I come back from Italy! Ciao!

Oh and here are pictures from my London trip with my old suitemate lovely Loan Luu!

snow!!!!!!

2008-11-21T05:39:00.001-08:00

It snowed today!!!!!

Me at work. I was prepared to bring my camera just in case it started to snow while at work! And it did!!!!!!! Okay I think I got too excited that you can't see much. So here's another one!! SO PRETTY!!

Chiloé to Santiago

2008-11-18T09:12:00.000-08:00

I arrived safely in Santiago a few hours ago. Back to smog, traffic, humans, heat, and homework. I have a lot to say about the trip, but basically I knew that God was with me the entire time working everything sovereignly. I ended up staying at the house of a pastor and his family and meeting a missionary from the USA and his family as well. It was incredibly eye-opening to see not only life in Chiloé, but also life in ministry and life as a Christian in Chiloé. Who would've thunk it that a spontaneous lone-ranger trip to an isolated Chilean island would be a lesson in ministry??

I also came back to some bad news. My apartment mate Sole called me yesterday to tell me my host mom got a heart attack while I was gone. I'm going to visit her in the hospital in an hour, but from the sound of her voice, she sounded fine, which Sole assured me of when she called me last night. When I called her, she was still being so motherly telling me there was food for me in the fridge so I wouldn't go hungry. Please pray for her health and her trust in God during this time.

It is 4:19 AM

2008-11-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

Why am I still up? That's a good question. Last Thursday, I stayed up until 5 in the morning, trying to finish one of my essays. I halfway succeeded. I ended up finishing the essay on Friday evening, even though it was due on Monday. :) Meaning that I had a free weekend. :) But yes, that messed up my sleep cycle. Not that that's an excuse for my staying up this late. But it does tell you why I'm not tired at all.

I'm updating with probably one of the most ridiculous things that's happened to me in a long time. One of my friends, Bernadette, is an art major from UCLA. She needs to relate her study abroad experience with her major somehow. We both took Japanese theater together and have this strange kind of Kabuki obsession and thus, she asked if I could help her out. I told her that sure, I'd love to since, after all, I did a Kabuki mie in public and she did a pose from Aoi no Ue in public (with her right sleeve off and everything) so hey, why not?

I later asked her about it, asking when it was. She replied, "Next year, probably?" I was really confused. I thought that we were just going to dress up and she was going to take some pictures. But no, this was not the case.

It turns out that upon my saying ok, she rented out a space to showcase whatever she's doing. She's not entirely sure yet but it's going to involve me, some white face paint (I hope that she can get the real thing :D), and... Kabuki. Yes, this has turned into something that I did not expect but I'm ok about it.

So yes, I'm extending this invitation to whoever wants to come out to this event. 'Cause apparently, I'm going to be dressed like an onnagata. Or something. I don't know, she needs to figure out what she's going to do first. That's all she knows about it right now. Hahaha.

And this talk about doing a mie in public-- here is proof. (Bernadette dared me to do it. It was not my idea. And note the girl in the corner, giving me a strange look.)

Me.

Ichikawa Danjurou

Yeah, I tried.

Sick of my posts yet? :D?

2008-11-13T04:04:00.000-08:00

I sent an email to my dad, telling him that I need more monies since I'm going to go to Hokkaido and Kansai. I did all the calculations and gave him the amount I needed. He sent this email back:

Hi Moonjoo,

How are you doing in Japan?
Haha, I knew that you are gonna need more bullets to have fun.
So, you need about ----------?
Mom'll call you tomorrow morning around 700am (your time at 1200am).
Thank you for being frugal but try to utilize your opportunity in Japan.
Money is maybe tribial when you consider once or twice in your life.
Understood?

Pretty soon we can talk on our couch.

Love,

Dad

******

At first, I thought, "... talk on our couch?" then realized that that's where most of our conversations take place. As we're both vegging there in front of the TV. Hahahahaha. Awww, it makes me miss home! The couch in our family room at home has this really fuzzy, warm blanket that Cookie and I love. Awww Cookieeee I miss Cookieeeeee.

Anyway, I also LOL'd when I read, "Haha, I knew that you are gonna need more bullets to have fun." Hhahahaa daddy, where are you learning all this from? Haha.

Ok, I need to shower. Yakiniku was good but I kind of had to fend for myself so I didn't get to eat as much. Professor Hwang paid for half the meal, which was super generous of him!

After my shower, it's paper time. Peace out!

YES

2008-11-12T22:10:00.001-08:00

I'm done with all my written exams! All I have left is that paper that's due on Monday! :D :D :D My Japanese exam went much better than I thought.

Anyway, I got a new webcam! I'm installing the program right now so I can't plug the webcam in yet but I will be able to soon. :D

I have a yakiniku dinner at 5:30. That means that I have to go all the way back to school again. >_>;; I was just going to go straight back to school after getting the webcam but figured that since I have time to kill anyway, I could just drop by home for an hour then head back to school.

While I was on the train, I saw the cutestttt thing ever. There were little elementary school children, in little herds, all wearing these yellow hats. I didn't want to whip out my camera (one of the chaperones was standing right next to me on the train) and just snap a picture. So I used my phone to take it. The thing is, with phones in Japan, even if your phone is on silent mode, the phone will make a noise when a picture is taken. This is to prevent perverts from taking pictures up girls' skirts-- if they take a picture while going up on an escalator or during rush hour on the train, the gal will know. My phone made a beeping sound as it took but I figured that it wouldn't be that creepy anyway. :D Here's the picture that I got:

All the boys crowded on one side (which is what I got a picture of) and all the girls crowded on the other. Hahaha. So cute!

I am officially addicted to mitarashi dango. You've probably seen it in anime (even if you have minimal anime exposure). I want to learn how to make it but it seems like the recipes online aren't very good. I need to buy a Japanese cook book while I'm here or something. D: But here is the new love of my life:

This brand tastes better than the one that I buy at the grocery store, which, by the way, is 7 yen cheaper.

And since this is turning into a mini picture post, I asked my friend to leave a book out in front of my door for me and this is what I found. I asked her to put it in a bag or something and write, "To Moon Choi, rm. 319" so that the staff wouldn't think it's anything dangerous...:

What the heezies? A close up:

Thanks, Bernadette. (She's my twin, as we say... we say the same things at the same time. It gets really creepy sometimes. I'm not kidding. Hahaha.)

And just 'cause I can (and because Kabuki's awesome):

I want to strike this mie. It's awesome on so many levels. And the fact that the pose is derived from Aoi no Ue (a very famous Noh play), when Rokujo comes back in her demonic form makes it that much better.

Ok, that's all. :D I think that I'm going to have a tourist-y weekend so I'll be sure to post pictures!

Oh, btw! I'm going to be speaking at ICU's Worship Night tomorrow. The students kind of take turns and share a very brief message with the theme centered around worship. I snatched this opportunity when asked just because I wanted to share the gospel. I didn't hear a single gospel presentation the entire time that I've been in Japan (except at TMEFC <3)

Just thought that I'd post a video since I haven't talked to Grace in a long, long, long time. (Thank goodness for LJ!)

Update from Chiloé

2008-11-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

Just updating so you all know I arrived safely. I knew Chiloée is far, but not THIS far. I flew on the plane for 1:20 hours (with a guy sitting next to me who kept on looking over at me. It´s cuz I´m Azn, huh?) I arrived in Puerto Montt and took a bus for three hours. Three hours doesn´t sound that bad, but when you´ve been up all day in a moving vehicle...three hours is a lot, yo.
(Subway, airport bus, airplane, airport bus, ferry, bus again...)

But MAN...Chiloé is like a Latin American Scotland-Ireland!!! No kidding! Sheep, rolling hills, greenery, cows, body of water. WOWWWWWWWW. Okay, I´m gonna go to sleep. Planning on hiking tomorrow. Or visit an island. We´ll see.

Webcam

2008-11-12T06:28:00.000-08:00

I bought a webcam in July so that I could Skype with friends and family. Then one day, while talking to Cesar and Grace Mao, I was told that there was this strange noise in the background. I thought that perhaps it was all the fans whirring in my room so I turned them off. Still, the sound persisted.

Today, I tried to see just how bad it sounded. So I opened Sound Recorder and just recorded what sounded to me like silence. I played it back and it sounded TERRIBLE. Sorry for putting you guys through that! Then I tried to talk directly into the mic and I couldn't even hear myself!

So I'm going to have to go to Akihabara to buy another webcam tomorrow. :( I had to go there for an errand anyway, so I suppose that it's alright. It's just sad that my webcam's doing this to me. D: I took good care of it too!

Anyhoo, I'm not going to Kyoto this weekend after all. I wanted to spend at least a week in the Kansai region but if I were to go this weekend, I wouldn't be able to do that. So my friend Yun and I decided to just go next week after she finished all of her finals. :D We're going to be there from the 19th until the 24! I decided to take the shinkansen (bullet train) back, which does cost a lot of money but with a gakuwari (student discount), it lowers the cost by A LOT. We'll have roughly 3 days in Kyoto and 2 days in Osaka. :)

My Japanese final is tomorrow! I barely studied for it. :( I looked over the review packet that they gave us but it's not doing me any good. Also, my friend left her textbook at school so I gave her mine to study. I've learned 95% of this already so it's ok-- for her, it's the first time that she's ever learned it so I figured that she needed the textbook more than I did. That's ok, I hope that I'll be ok! After tomorrow's final, I just have that dissertation to write, which I'm planning to finish after I get back from Akihabara so it'll be a nice, fun weekend for me! :D I should tourist it by myself in Tokyo! That is, if I am able to finish my paper by tomorrow. -_- I hope I can-- I want the professor to look over it before I turn it in.

Ok, that's all for now! I really should start studying forreal 'cause I have to wake up at 8. Peace!

Traveling alone in Chiloé, Chile

2008-11-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

I'm leaving on a jet plane tomorrow morning to go to Chiloé, an island/archipelago in southern Chile 2 hours away (by plane. 16 hours by bus). How exciting! I decided to go last minute (ahem, Sunday night) because I was looking at my calendar and saw that I needed to go or else I'd have no other time to. So I quickly consulted with my Chilean mom and she told me that the plane ticket price was good and I should go ahead and buy them. Within 10 minutes I bought the plane tickets for Wednesday, without seeing if anyone could travel with me. I asked around on facebook and called, but no one could go. Thus...I'll be traveling alone for 6 days! And skipping classes too =) but no worries, my standing is fine in my classes so missing a few days of school will be all right.

So rushed though; barely finished a paper and now I need to pack, get ~6 hours of sleep, and go to the airport tomorrow! I can't believe I made such a last minute spontaneous decision, but hey, this is study abroad, right? :) Pray for my safety, please!

The Home Stretch!

2008-11-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

I have less than a month left in Japan. In three weeks and three days, I'll be on a plane bound for SFO!

School's ending this week for me. I have one exam for Japanese left, as well as a short 5 page dissertation for my Japanese theater class. Which, by the way, I can just send via email to my professor. ;D

My friends and I are planning to hit up the Kansai region this weekend. I'm super excited! Kantou is all modern and what not-- the Kansai region is more Japanese-y. I'm also going to go to Hokkaido on the 26th-28th with a friend from UCLA and a friend I met in my Japanese theater class who, by the way, is a regular 4 year student at ICU. The Hokkaido trip kind of ballooned from the three of us just wanting to hang out. When Jessi (the girl from UCLA) and I joked around, saying that we should go to Hokkaido to hang out, Yuri (the regular 4 year student) immediately said, "Ok!" We thought that she was kidding but she wasn't. o_o;; So I'm going to Hokkaido, folks! And it really helps to have a native Japanese speaker with us!

I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing in between all of that, though. I'll probably have to extend my lease with the Weekly Mansion. In comparison to how much it costs to stay in hostels and what not, it's actually kind of cheap to stay here. I'ts roughly 30 bucks a night at the Mansion.

I'm excited! Nearly three weeks of travel! I finally won't be tied down to having to commute 2.5 hours every day. :) I'll be sure to take lots and lots of pictures! Please pray for traveling mercies! I'll be taking the overnight bus, the train, flying... all sorts of modes of transportation. :)

Can't wait to finally venture out of Tokyo! And can't wait to go home!

Hello, president-elect Obama!

2008-11-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

The election coverage in Japan hasn't been as crazy as I imagined it to be. Every morning, I wake up and turn on the TV and watch the news while I get ready in the morning. I can somewhat understand what they're saying and with the aid of being able to see the news, it's easy to piece together what the big news is that day. I was expecting to see a lot of stuff about McCain and Obama, especially last night and this morning, but didn't see much.

But I do remember seeing the town of Obama (Yes, there is a town called Obama in Japan, it seems) celebrating over Obama's win.

Haha I'm only posting because Grace & Wury posted about the election coverage in their respective countries. I didn't see too much hype in Japan. But then again, I'm never home to watch TV anyway, so...

Congrats to our new president, Barack Obama

2008-11-04T22:33:00.000-08:00

Woke up at 6am here in Copenhagen to see how the race was going - and Obama won!

From WORLD Magazine:
"From Nov. 4 to Nov. 11": Regardless of who wins the election, it’s great to be an American | Marvin Olasky
"That's why the winner on Nov. 4 should take to heart the Midshipmen's Prayer of the Naval Academy: "Keep me true to my best self, guarding me against dishonesty in purpose and in deed. . . Protect those in whose love I live. Give me the will to do my best and to accept my share of responsibilities with a strong heart and a cheerful mind. Make me considerate of those entrusted to my leadership and faithful to the duties my country has entrusted in me."

Since both major candidates state that they are Christians, all of us should pray for more midshipmen's grace in the life of the president-elect: "If I am inclined to doubt, steady my faith; if I am tempted, make me strong to resist; if I should miss the mark, give me the courage to try again. Guide me with the light of truth and keep before me the life of Him by whose example and help I trust to obtain the answer to my prayer, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

US Presidential Elections in Chile

2008-11-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

Hola gringos,
I did not realize USA's worldwide power until I started living in Chile. Every night on the news up to today--ELECTION DAY-- Obama and McCain's faces were on TV anticipating the presidential election. Today Chilean news networks are keeping vigil over election results, updating every few minutes which states voted for whom. A news anchor on one of Chilean's TV channels (who speaks with a thick Spanish accent that annoys my Chilean mom. Just a sidenote.) even traveled to Chicago to report from there, conducting interviews with voters. And now my Chilean mom and my apartment mate are keeping vigil on the election results. I just heard the anchors talking about New Hampshire.

Contrast this with when Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, won the presidency last year. A woman won the presidency. It was simply a sidenote on Yahoo's news page. It was business as usual. Hm. Chew on that.

From the Chileans I have talked to here, a lot of them are rooting for Obama. My pastor here, Antonio, said he preferred Obama because McCain seemed like any old stiff WASPy president, while Obama was a breath of fresh air for USA's global image. Today my Cuban volleyball prof asked me who I voted for (Obama), and I asked him who he wanted to win. He said Obama because his presidency would improve relations with Cuba. I couldn't believe that who the president of my country will be would matter to someone who doesn't even live in Cuba or the USA.

May the best candidate win.

Pomaire

2008-11-03T18:33:00.001-08:00

I've been pretty behind with posting, so here goes:

A few weeks ago, Chile and Argentina played each other in a game that would determine Chile's entrance into the...something Cup. Never in the history of Chilean soccer have they won against world-class Argentine soccer...until a few weeks ago, with the final score of 1-0! I was a little bit torn about who to root for, and I had originally planned to attend the game, but the cheapest tickets were sold out. I had originally planned to cheer for Argentina, but it was probably better I didn't go and preserved my life amongst Chilean hooligans. In the end, I became impartial because: 1) I love Arg, and if they win I'd be happy. 2) I love Chile too and they deserve at least a win on their home turf. Argentina can take a loss as they win enough as it is.

So anyway, once the game was up, out of my apartment in Plaza Italia (which is smack dab in the center of Santiago), I began to hear horns honking and people marching and shouting outside my window. Turns out Plaza Italia was where the celebration was going to take place! It was literally a 4 hour outdoor party; people threw confetti, lit fireworks, chanted, waved around the Chilean flag, drank, and straight up partied. The street was blocked off with carabineros (police) guarding it. I watched from afar and wanted to check it out. I went downstairs and observed the party, but I decided it probably wasn't the best idea for an Asian girl to wander amongst drunk soccer fans and people who urinated in corners alone. So within 5 minutes, I went back up to my apartment and observed from afar. Fans gathering. Truly crazy!

And that weekend, EAP went on an excursion to Pomaire, a dusty little town 40 minutes outside of Santiago. It is known for their artisan ceramic pottery and typical Chilean food, such as pastel de choclo and empanadas.
Marisol, our tour guide. This is where the potters heap the clay and run it thru an ancient/old school clay refining machine to make the clay, well, fine.

An unfinished piece of pottery. They put black tape on the tops so the clay doesn't dry out and so they can keep on adding clay to it.

Where the potter works. No advanced technology, it's very basic equipment making very large and fine pottery.

Chunks of clay!
The wood thing molds the profile of the pottery. So, you see from this structure that the pot/jug will have some curvy action going on.

While this pot/jug will have a straight profile.

This is one of the many potters in this town. It's not a rich town or anything; in fact, it's a very humble little town. This man told us he had not sold any of his pottery in EIGHT months...it made me wonder how the potters survive and make a living with so little income. The pottery isn't sold for a high price either; it's actually very inexpensive (~$5 for a soup pot, to give you an idea). Furthermore, being in a recession makes people even tighter with their money. *Sigh* how badly I want to support the little guys (small/mom-and-pop businesses). Too bad I can't take a huge clay pot/jug home with me...

Mr. Potter adding layers of clay to the unfinished pottery.

We took a mini hike up to the hills where the potters get their clay. This be me.

This be Andrea (UC Davis).

Also found beautiful wildflowers up in the hills. We picked some an made mini bouquets : )

Some of the beautiful scenery up from the hills.

And...of course we had to eat lunch! Our tour guide, Marisol, served us lunch at her house (hosting ~15 students!). This is homemade pastel de choclo, which you may have seen in previous posts such as Natali's Visit - Food

And what's a Chilean meal without empandas?! We had 3 varieties: mushroom (yummers), spinach (needed Tapatio hot sauce), and pino (typical--meat, egg, onion, and olive).

Miiiine!

The soda was flat, unfortunately. But the pebre was nice and spicy!

Pasteles de choclo ready to get baked in the oven!

Cynthia and I bought homemade strawberry marmelade! It is so delicious...on whole wheat bread...mmm...

I also found this hilarious Chilean food pyramid on the Internet. On the bottom is the "liquid group" which includes their soups such as cazuela, which is really not that exciting. "Grupo chocloso" is the corn food group, evidenced with pastel de choclo. "Grupo tragoso" is the drinks group, which is stuff like mote con huesillos (yummmmm...perfect on a hot summer day) and various other alcoholic drinks. "Grupo grasoso"=fatty food group. SO TRUE. Completos (hot dogs), sopaipillas (fried dough), mayonnaise. Yeah...
Aaaand, at the top is--GRUPO EMPANADOSO! :9

Back in Pomaire, we went to see another taller (workshop) of pottery making!

This guy made a hookah and an ashtray (I think) in a matter of minutes!

I tried my own hand at making a piece of pottery...and made a round piece of clay with a hole in it. And got clay on my clothes in the process.

We then wandered around town and looked around at all the little stores that sold their pottery. Here we have ladles made from clay. If I had my own apartment in Santiago, I'd definitely decorate it with stuff from Pomaire.

Dried and dyed flowers to put into your Pomaire clay pots for decoration! I ended up not buying an pottery, but I still wanted to support their economy, so I went home having bought an embroidered purse, homemade marmalade, and some almonds.

Christine Berlier (one of my close friends here from UC Davis, and we go to church together) and me on the bus ride home to end a clayful day!

Also, I would like to add how much I love my church here...
Yesterday for Sunday service we had a missionary conference where we reported and presented with skits and videos on the persecuted church in Asia. Although it was a low-budget production, it made me think of how I need to be praying for Christians who are being persecuted and killed for their faith. I always hear in SD how comfortable it is to be a Christian there. Christian comfort does not only apply in SD, but in Chile as well. What was emphasized was the freedom we have in Chile to be Christian and worship as we please--which I'm so thankful to have as well, even away from home!
And, to top off Sunday, an elder of the church who always greets me on Sunday mornings asked me, Andrew, and the other Grace, "When are you gonna come over for lunch?" I replied, "When you invite us, of course!" He immediately went to look for a calendar and asked us what dates worked for us and what Chilean dish we wanted him to make. I didn't even know Sixto's name (I had to ask someone after he invited us over) and I don't think he knows ours, but that invitation was so kind. The extent to which he knows us is seeing our faces on Sunday mornings and knowing that we're gringos, but he still shows us hospitality. I love ICLAM. ♥

:D

2008-11-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

Yeahhhh sonnn!

Lol, oh momma.

2008-10-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

My parents check this blog because this is the only place that they can see my pictures.

I skyped with my family yesterday and my mom told me that they had seen the pictures that I had posted.

I asked what they thought of them. You'd expect my mom to say that she's happy to see that I'm doing well and having fun and what not. ... Right?

Nope.

She says, "Ya know, in your pictures with your friends... I noticed that you look kind of chubby. When you come home, I'm going to run you to death. :D"

Oh momma. [Insert nervous laughter]

Speaking of nervous laughter, my grandma knows that I'm in Japan. She asked my parents for my phone number but they feigned ignorance. >_>; She's insisting that I go to Korea after my time in Japan so I can get the moles on my face removed via laser. And I knowww where that'll lead. "Since we're cleaning up your face anyway, why don't we get a little work done on your nose?"

D: D: D:

My parents haven't disclosed when I'm going to go back to the States either. Hhahahaha. I'm not kidding when I say that my grandma's the kind of person who would literally force me to get a nose job. :( People really think that I'm kidding or exaggerating but I'm not. My dad (her son) seriously said, "Yeah, she's the kind of person to do it... we won't send you to Korea after Japan."

@_@

Anyway, I have to finish my reading for my theater class. A 40 page long play. Not too bad. It's actually really interesting? And I have yet to finish reading the Robertson book on Takarazuka. It's been a very interesting study!

Peeeeace!

Boxing, Villa Grimaldi, y Acción de Gracias

2008-10-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

This post is way overdue; about 3 weeks ago I should've put it up, but oh well.

Andrew and me boxing! Our friend Arturo from church is a boxer, so one Friday night we went to a park and started punching each other after a brief 5 minute lesson about boxing basics. We heard people in the pitch black park saying, "What are they doing???" Thinking that we were fighting for real. Well, Andrew and I were, at least. Jaja.

Andrew totally did not punch me in the face. I seriously couldn't stop giggling throughout the entire fight. It was too funny.

And here's me battling with Arturo, the expert. He had the height advantage over me, which stunk.

But I managed to get a swipe at his arm! Jaja!

Nicolas and Arturo, the professional boxers. Apparently Nico's dad was a boxer?

Graciela with Arturo. She's a feisty one! And a quick learner, at that!

After a wild round of boxing, Emily and I met up with Roberto to get Chinese food! This place is called Los Chinos Ricos, it used to be called Los Chinos Pobres. It's apparently the oldest Chinese restaurant in all of Santiago (in Barrio Brasil). We ordered Peking duck and sweet and sour pork. I was a bit disappointed by the Peking duck b/c it didn't have the crispy skin and it was marinated in a soy-sauce based marinade, which is all wrong! And I didn't see a single Chinese face on whom to use my Mandarin Chinese. :'(

Emily sure is creative with a pair of chopsticks!

Roberto with chopsticks. Chileans do know how to use them!

After a THREE hour dinner, we were still up for a night of carretear ("partying" in Chilean Spanish) so we went to La Casa en el Aire in Bellavista, a live music joint where they serve snacks and drinks. I had been there once before and I enjoyed the music and the chocolate milk (but not the cigarette smoke). This is Emily's tequila sunrise. Mmmm.

The caipiriña azul, which is a Brazilian drink made with said alcohol, a bunch of limes, probably blue food coloring, and sugar. Apparently it's a hard drink to make because you need the perfect amount of sugar or else the caipiriña will be too strong and make the drink nasty.

Emily and Roberto enjoyed it!

So that was a night of fatty carretear...I got home at 4 and had to wake up at 8 the next day. But it was nice to spend 6 hours just chatting about life. The next day, EAP organized a trip for us to go to Villa Grimaldi, a torture center/concentration camp during the dictatorship for people who were suspected to be against the Pinochet regime. Our tour guide was a torture victim himself but was so courageous to speak so openly about the specifics of the torture sessions he endured so that people will remember and know how humans can treat other humans as if they were inhuman. It also opened my eyes to the importance of human rights.

This is a model of how the torture center looked back in the 70's before it was destroyed by the military dictatorship as a way to eliminate any traces of torture that happened, because it was fiercely denied that torture went on during the dictatorship. Now it's been reconstructed in a memorial park.

"Old parking area. Sector where one was tortured with vehicles."

This plaque explains why the park is here. At the bottom it says, "Never again in Chile will torture be repeated."

This held the remains of a boat...of something...I forgot.

This is a wall full of names of the political prisoners who had been in Vila Grimaldi. It was a huge wall.

It was a 7 hour tour, and it ended with a visit to the General Cemetery in Santiago, where many people "disappeared" (read: kidnapped and killed and dumped their body in the ocean) and killed are buried. This guy Orlando Letelier escaped to Washington D.C. but was assassinated by the direction of Pinochet--even in the US! The bottom of his grave says, "I was born a Chilean, I am a Chilean, and I will die a Chilean."

A small hill with an image of Jesus on the cross. Lots of people left notes for God.

It was interesting that the cemetery was divided by class. The front of the cemetery is filled with huge mausoleums of the rich with statues and marble and all that, but as you walk more and more toward the back, the poor bury their dead here. It seemed more like a plant nursery than a cemetery, as it was adorned with potted plants, plastic windmills, toys, and the like.

Barely looks like a cemetery, no?

Nameless graves.

The grave of Victor Jara, a famous Chilean singer in the 60's-70's who sang of social justice and criticized the US foreign policies in Vietnam. When the military coup happened in 9/11/1973, ushering in the Pinochet dictatorship, he was kidnapped, tortured, and killed. His grave is now in the back of the cemetery with "the people" instead of the elites. His wife wanted him to be buried in this sector of the cemetery because she believed Victor Jara would've wanted it this way--to be with "the people."

The wall with all the names of people who died or were tortured during the dictatorship. It was another huge wall.

The wall's description: "Memorial of the disappeared detainees and of the politically executed people. Victims of the period of the military dictatorship."

What's sad though is that there are still people missing, who disappeared more than 20 years ago and whose whereabouts are still unknown...

On a brighter note, the next day at church we had a thanksgiving service to give thanks to Pastor Antonio, so it was 2 hours of people presenting a poem, a Bible verse, a skit, or music to show thanks. I took pictures of the gringos performing :)Andrew and Christine singing "Mighty to Save" in Spanish.

GX (Generación Extrema), the youth group I'm part of at church, performing the "Everything" skit by Lifehouse. It was very well done and powerful.

Graciela and Francisca singing "Desde mi interior" (From the Inside Out...by Hillsong).

And an amazingly cute toddler named Emilia sat in front of me, and I had to take a sneaky picture of her as she fell asleep in mommy's arms. Awww.

Oh my!

2008-10-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

Oh my!!!! I'm leaving Denmark in 2 months!!!! And for about 2 weeks out of 8 weeks, I'm going to travel! Haha wow...

Schedule:
- October 28th to November 1st: London with my suitemate from freshman and sophomore year in college, Loan Luu!
- November 12th: Mediasociology paper due. Booo....Gonna write about Joel Osteen. Haha gross huh?
- November 22nd: UC Thanksgiving Dinner in Lund, Sweden with UC students from Sweden! Sweden is just a bridge away! :)
- November 25th to December 1st: Hyan is visiting Copenhagen!
- November 27th to November 30th: Poland!
- December 14th: FIBC's Christmas Concert - "Forever Gloria! We Worship the Christ of Christmas"
- December 15th - 21st: Maybe Romania? My good friend Sylva is gonna go back home and she really wants me to come back with her! :) Maybe....
- December 22nd: FLIGHT HOME! :D

I can't wait to give everyone a FAT hug!

It's going by really fast!!! I'm gonna miss this place. For SURE, I'm gonna come back to Copenhagen some day...

Universidad de Chile pt. II

2008-10-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

The Chilean grading scale is from 1 to 7. There was a joke that I heard once that said, "Only God gets 7s." haha.

Anyway. My first quiz grade...

3.5

That's a D+.
Are. You. Kidding. Me.
Same class that I cried to the prof in office hours. (Note to anyone who is thinking of studying en Universidad de Chile: Do not take Historia Social de Latinoamerica if you suck at Spanish or you'll end up like me.)
I don't know what to think; I need serious help in Spanish.
I came here thinking, "I want to challenge myself in Spanish and read and write in Spanish. I know it'll be hard, but I love a challenge!"
Not anymore. If there's an opportunity to get reading material in English, I am all over it as long as it gets the job done. Spanish is way too hard.

More pictures-- Odaiba & Okutama

2008-10-19T08:52:00.001-07:00

Long story short, I ended up sleeping from 4 PM until 12 AM today. @_@;; I've been really tired the past two weeks.

Since I'm up, I figure that I might as well post pictures again! It's been a busy weekend. Went to Odaiba, a man made island made by the Tokugawa government. Then today, a couple of us from TMEFC went to Okutama to meet up with the rest of the English department that had a retreat this weekend! We couldn't join them for the whole weekend (it was too much monies) but we were able to be with them today! (Okutama, as beautiful and rural as it seems, is still part of Tokyo. :D)

On the Yurikamome Line. In other words, the monorail to Odaiba! That's the Rainbow Bridge. :D The monorail goes on that!

We passed by the replica of the Statue of Liberty. It's really tiny.

This was actually before we saw the Statue of Liberty. Sorry, the pictures are a tad bit out of order. This is the famed Fuji TV building. We were supposed to stop by and see it but we were really hungry. D: This was taken on the bridge.

On our way to the Miraikan (I will explain what this is later), we happened upon this sculpture outside. There were no signs that said do not touch or do not climb so we figured that we'd climb it! It was really sturdy, so no worries!

The 未来官(Miraikan)! Mirai means "future," as in the distant future. (As opposed to shorai, which means the short future, e.g. the next few years or so. If you ever take Japanese, keep this in mind! It confused me for a while.) The Miraikan is short for "National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation." Hhahaha. It's a very hands-on museum so a lot of parents bring their kids there. There are exhibits on life sciences, space, robotics (there was this cool robot named Asimo! I'll post videos later.), and a whole bunch of other stuff. There was a dome theater too! :D

This really cool globe thing was hanging in the Miraikan. The clouds move! And the earth "rotates!" It was so cool. :D

This was obviously in the life sciences department. Yeah, DNA replication! This is tRNA doin' it's thing.

We left the Miraikan and started to make our way towards food. There was a field of flowers and the girls couldn't resist it. I decided to take my obligatory flower face picture.

This is where we ate. It's a shopping center called Venus Fort. We ate and wandered around a bit, but not for too long. This is how the inside looks like. There are no windows in this shopping center so that the lighting can be controlled. It's very faux European but it's really pretty. :)

Then we went to the Toyota City Showcase. Basically a lot of cars by Toyota. And games like this for free. :D You only get to do one lap, though. And if you can't finish a lap, then you only have three minutes or so? I finished a lap. :D

There was this precious oldman in a suit and sneakers. It looks like he's doing well. Hahah.

We went on the giant ferris wheel. This is us at the top! You can see the Yokohama ferris wheel in the distance (the little white orb on the horizon to the right).

This is us, making our way down. It was a quick ride-- 16 minutes!

This was early this morning at the Ogikubo station. We were very excited about waiting half an hour for the train. (This is a horrible picture. I tried taking it but my face got cut off and we're totally off center. But because it's so epic fail, I think it's hilarious.)

Ah, we arrived in Okutama safely! We thought that this was the bridge that we had to cross. We were very, very wrong. Needless to say, we got very lost getting to the retreat site.

But somehow, we still made it. :D

This is after the service. We were making our way back to the station. That's Amy that you see there. And the Trail of Death. The trail that you need to go up in order to get to the road that leads you to the retreat site is seriously one of the steepest inclines that I've ever walked on. It would make for good skiing/snowboarding. It's a really short trail but it was so, so painful.

Well, that's the end of that. It's now 2 AM and I haven't washed up or showered yet. :D So I need to get crackin' on that and then it's bed time again! :D Bye bye!

Hikinuki

2008-10-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

I finally found a hikinuki, after weeding through some kabuki videos on youtube.

Go to 3:20 if you don't want to watch the entire dance. Hahaha I knew that there had to be a hikinuki somewhere!

Very long picture post.

2008-10-16T04:12:00.000-07:00

This is a compilation of photos from the past month or so. Hahaha. I forget to update this thing with new pictures but my parents want to see and they don't have facebook! Some of these pictures, I posted on facebook, but I uploaded these straight from my computer without looking at what I have on faceook. So keep an eye out!

Pretty lights at the Roppongi Station! That station is just a lot of fun. :D

A shop at the shopping mall at Roppongi. Was that Roppongi Hills? Or is Roppongi Hills where the Mori Tower is? I forget. "/ But yeah, this shop sold chopsticks. Mostly chopsticks. Beautiful, fun chopsticks. :D And this is their display window! I tried to get some close ups of the dolls that were on display but it was kinda hard.

Switching gears, this is the thunder gate at Asakusa.

Me, wafting smoke over my head in hopes of getting smarter. :D

I got a half fortune. It told me to never get married or to get a new job. To thank the fortune, I tied it to the bar and abandoned it. :D Bye bye.

Switching gears again, this was at the Tsukiji fish market! Look at the size of that tuna!

And so I had this for breakfast. From left to right, that's fatty tuna, tuna with avocado, and horse meat. Yes, horse meat.

After that Tsukiji excursion, we hit up Ginza. There were a bunch of these Hello Kitty bouquets! But they were expensive. And I can't take it back to the States.

And we found that the Imperial Palace was close to Ginza. So we walked over there and got a peak at it. The palace is that little bit of building peaking out from behind the bridge.

The Imperial Garden was beeeeautiful. I would've stayed longer but we were sleepy, tired, and hungry, thus making us cranky. D:

More garden!

And more.

We went to Roppongi again. This is near Tokyo Midtown. There was an odd sculpture. So Becky and I decided to take a picture with it. I think of weird poses, don't ask me?

The Mori Tower in Roppongi. All 54 stories of it!

Here's the Tokyo Tower! I wanted to buy Grace a keychain from there but it looks like the Eiffel Tower, so no fun.

Ferris wheel at Odaiba. It changes colors! It was beautiful. :) (We're planning an Odaiba excursion for this Saturday.)

Ah, what typically comes to mind when you think of Tokyo. :) It seems all romantic and stuff but man, don't base your judgments of Japan off of these pictures. I'm just not taking pictures of the mundane. But will soon.

The Rainbow Bridge!

So yes, I went to the Kabuki-za. This is to prove that I was there. And Bernadette's head is to the left. Haha, hello.

The Kabuki-za! I love this place!

A group picture of us. I'm standing next to two of my professors. It was very strange. Hahaha.

I've been seeing this pollack roe (명란젓? Is that how you spell it, 엄마? In Japanese, it's tarako.) crackers and it weirded me out a lot. But I bought it and tried it. And liked it.

Another strange cracker. Ddukbokee! I didn't dig it too much. I got it at Shin-Okubo (aka Korea Town) in some Korean market. Bleh.

And look at what I got in the mail from a certain someone in Santiago, Chile! :D This was taken on the bus. Hahahaha.

Look at my ecstatic joy.

And the goodies! Orly? Yarly. (Thank you, Grace!)

We had to go to the Ghibli Museum. Like, it's mandatory for my core class. The Ghibli Studio is where Miyazaki Hayao does his magic and it's located in Mitaka-shi, where my school is!

We arrived! This is me venturing into the magical forest through the mythical gates. (This isn't the end of the strange poses.)

I can't jump too high, I soon found out...

The museum is three stories tall. It's an absolutely delightful little place. If you're a Miyazaki fan and you're in Japan, you must come here! This is the spiral staircase that leads up to the garden on the roof! There's also a statue of a giant (from one of Miyazaki's films that I'm unfamiliar with.).

Hello, giant. I wasn't sure if he were friendly or not so I figured that I'm better safe than sorry. Hahaha. (I'm totally posing for this picture.)

Well, that's the end of it! I'll probably only upload a couple of the Ghibli pictures on facebook since it's not all too exciting or Tokyo-esque.

That's all for now. This picture post took such a long time. And I lost three games of chess against the computer while waiting for the pictures to upload. Hahaha. Good night!

Kabuki-za

2008-10-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

I went to go watch kabuki today with my theater class. I must say that it was one of the most amazing things that I've ever seen and may very well be my favorite thing in Japan. I don't think that anything can top it. There were two hikinuki throughout the three performances. What is a hikinuki? Arg, can't find a clip for it but it's when literally, the stage assistant pulls the garments of the actor to reveal a whole other outfit underneath. It's so trippy but so spectacular that everytime a hikinuki happens, the audience breaks out into applause.

How can I describe what I saw? Man, all I can say is kabuki is so dramatic! And spectacular! And fantastic! I'm not using spectacular and fantastic synonymously with "wonderful," but with what they literally mean.

You wouldn't think that the overstylized kind of acting could move someone to tears but at the end of one play, I was hurting with the female character!

The last play was the lion dance and it was absolutely fantastic and beautiful. Here's a clip of it:

It's not the same dance as the one that I saw but quite similar in many aspects. I suppose that it's very stereotypical Japanese. Hahhaa.

Anyway, just wanted to tell you all how fabulous kabuki is, as outrageous of an art form as it seems. I now have a composition to write for Japan. We just got the prompt today and it's due tomorrow. Yay!

BTW! I forgot to mention-- the dancer is a man. Only males do professional kabuki. I'm doing my research paper on onnagata, men who play women in kabuki. Isn't that trippy?