photos.... finally
Here´s the view from my apartment room at night (6 floors up) of Carlos Antunez Av.
Here´s the view from the lounge (take these outside photos with a grain of salt- my apartment doesn´t look so flash inside- think clean student flat with a mean view)
From left: Grandad, Valentina, Sussanah and Uncle someone. At Sussanahs mum´s birthday
Chilean Nana (too bad I don´t have a better picture)
Nadia and a Cousin
From left: Omar, Consuelo and Waldo
And touch rugby in Santiago
Anyway, I better be going. Send me feedback on the size etc of the photos- I dont want to make them too big to load up. If you´s want bigger shout out.
I´m going to try shed my ¨dont take to many photos or i´ll look like a gringo¨ mentality because, well... I look like one already.
Chao
Fun times... Chilean Nana, watching the rugby, a full on fiesta...
Hola amigos,
OK, what has happened lately...
well I can´t think of what order things happened, so i´ll write up aobut a few different experiences:
Yetserday (sunday) I stayed with the ramos family afterwards for lunch, then we went to Sussanahs parents place for her mothers birthday. Abuelita (grandma) made me think of Nana almost instantly; similar size, similar personalitys etc (i´ll put up some photos soon) The extended family came around as well- heaps of fun
On Saturday I played futbol with the guys from the church, and believe it or not didn´t play to badly(I actually scored twice- I can really only kick the ball straight, nothing more) It was raining and a bit chilly (funny aye) and afterwards back at the apartment watched te last 20 minutes of the rugby (yay we won!)
Friday night I went to beckas youth group (with the anglican church in provedincia) which was cool. I think that alot of them are from expat families a few generations back. I wa even put in an only english speaking group (a first, becka told me)
afterwards I went with becka to have sushi with some of her friends. Amazingly by pure chance on my part i chose somwthing that tasted pretty good. Then we went to sebastiens birthday party (a fairly subdued affair because they were going away the next day, leaving early) Jessenia was there also and she said she was going to her friends party so I thought i´d tag along (I supposed it was going to be a short stop... hahahahahaha, i learned better.
We caught a micro(the local buses) which was an experiance in itself- the drivers always drive at crazy speeds and seem to think they´re driving rally cars or something. So we made it eventually. Ao we finally got to this club, the party was on a messineen (spelling?) floor packed with heaps of people with music blaring, smoke everywhere (they don´t have the same rules as NZ). So to make a long story short we stayed till 6am (I thought we were making more of a short ´hi and bye´stop) I didn´t know the way home, I had abit of a cold. So I just made the most of the situation, talked to some cool people, got some dancing tips from a master and soaked up the experiance (and the smoke all my clothes reaked when I got home- which reminds me I better wash them today)
well thats some of the stuff thats been happening with me lately, I´m planning on putting some photos up tommorow or something.
Look after yourselves,
Chao
something random
I thought i´d do something more interesting than a blow by blow account, so instead i´ll put down some random comments on life:
On the first day I arrived i accidently bought carbonated water- i´d nearly rather drink the stuff from the tap here than drink that- ivé learned my lesson
did I write that some of the all blacks were on the plane to argentina? i should of got autographs and photos but i didn´t- Jerry Collins is the man ... i´m planning on seeing the game this weekend on cable in my apartment!
Its been crazy seeing how much coverage the world cup has here. Yesterday when i was buying my ´ropa de cama´ or bed clothes we saw people gathering round shop windows watching argentina vs the netherlands. about three free channels have some coverage as well, with at least two playing the games live. And when they show the highlights they show every shot at goal-and more. I can only imagine what it would be like if they were playing in it.
anyway, the plan for me the next few days is to get my C.V ready, settle in to my apartment and have a brilliant time.
p.s if you are a prospective employer please don´t take this as an example of my grasp of the written word- i´m typing furiously
Visa queues and rugby...
These have been the longest days in my life-i´m speaking in a possitive way- it feels as if i´ve been here for at least a few... After my last post Omar gave me a tour of the central city- including the central square, plaza de armas and he took me to a castle on a hill over looking the city (I forgot the name) and we saw heaps of other stuff.
In the evening Omar´s fiance Consuelo came for tea, and I went to bed way too late.
On Saturday morning I met up with Becka (An american friend of some Aussie missionaries that i´ve had email contact with) and she showed me a vacant room in her friend Jessenia´s apartment on 11 de septembrie avenue. It´s in a good central location, very close to the metro and the ¨flatmates¨ are nice (and it´s good value too, with cable to watch the rugby...now you know why I like it) so i´ll be moving in fairly soon. The other flatmate is this Chileno guy (Jessenia is a chilena) . It´s on the sixth floor, so naturally i thought that was pretty cool (there´s about 20ish all up, and I feel like 6 is high enough)
Jessenia had her last touch game of the season in teh afternoon so I went with her to
The Prince of Wales Country Club to watch. It was good fun watching and chilling out, talking to some expats, watching jessys team win, getting possible job contacts and being invited to join the team next season (in september). It was almost a NZ fix. It also was good to pratice my spanish as well, because jessy doesn´t know much. We communicated with a bit of both- so it´ll be real good living there for practice (with a dictionary and friends helping for backup)
On sunday I went to Comunidad de la Gracia (omar´s church) for both Sunday school and the service afterwards. Everyone who came was super friendly and it felt like a big family. For sunday school I sat with the adult class, and we were looking at the esto creemos, confesion bautista de fe de 1689. In paticular the part dealing with the trinidad (trinity in english). The service itself was great as well, I recognized all the tunes and most of them seemed to be translations of the songs i know (except for a song sung to the english national anthem). Im planning on playing futbol this saturday with some of the church.
Ater church I went with Omar and Waldo to Consuelo´s place where she lives with her family (father, mother and sister) for comida, or lunch. They live in a house on the eastern side of the city a nice little drive away. For comida we had empandanas (I think thats the name) a comida typica of chile. after that and a mad crazy drive in the hills we went home- to watch lost in espanol- great for practice. Waldo is teaching me some new words every day´- I thought i wa doing well untill today...
If you want a working holiday visa (or something similar) you have to go thought the process of registrering the paperwork. So this moring I went to the policia something-or-rather to start the process off. but when I arrived I had no idea were to go in the building. fourntunatly there was a nice dude there who helped me out... It was hard enough for him to find out. But eventually i found out were i was supposed to line up. then it was pretty simple for the rest of step one.
I thought that was bad, but it was all going to get even worse...
With the paper work I jhad just recieved it was time to get a chilean id. card. I eventually found it. but once again i had no idea were to line up. After going to the help desk the lady behind it said something about photocoping and pointed somewhere- but I got the impresionthey were in the buildings. But suprise suprise I couldn´t find it. So I asked the help desk guy and e made a little bit more sense- it was outside and a la derecha (to the right) so i found that easily. Then i asked the guy again were to line up... unfourtunatly it was the biggest one there (yay!) so after watching the last 70 minutes of some world cup action and some other stuff afterwards i made it though the line. so i eventually got there, finished the paper work and somehow gathered I had to get my fingerprints taken somewhere. after arrivng in the office the old lady there didn´t seem to get what i wanted for a while, but at least she knew a little english. I then went to a place I was supposed to pick up my card- but no one was there... so after talking to some staff I found out I had t go there early next month. I have alot to learn (sorry for that huge boring commentary, I had to get it out my system) so currently i´m in the E-cafe under the apartment I will move into writing this.
P.S I will fix the blogs graphics soon, i´ll pout some photos on when I get a cable for my laptop and i´ll soon have the details for my cellphone available on request
I´m here!
Hola amigos!
Sorry I didn´t give a synopsis of my trip plans, i´ll give them in retrospect instead:
My journey started at home in Rolleston at 6 in the morning. After packing up I left CH CH at 9:45 to Auckland- then from auckland to Buenos Aires at 4:30 pm wiht Aerolineas Argentinas.
The flight was ok i guess-Except that I had only one/two hours sleep in a 12ish hour flight. I was sitting beside an old lady who could only speak spanish-I think she understood that i was going to chile and that i´m from New Zealand but i´m not sure even of that. After my brief nap i woke up to see the southern part of chile out the window, which gave me a huge buzz and woke me up real good. for some reason our flight took a big u shaped path instead of a straight one.
2-3 hours after that we arrived in Buenos Aires, and then I was kinda close to missing the plan- I was told it left at gate B, but i learned later that gate B was a bus to my plane. anyway an airline guy asked for "passenger sinclair" so I followed him to the bus and onto the plane. good thing i was sitting in the right place.
I wish I could show some photos becuase the flight over the Andes was "muy bonito" , but i couldn´t see the city from my seat because of the cloud/smog over the city. I arrived aoçround 4:30 pm
Omar Ramos, from the Reformed Baptist Church over there picked me up frojm the aiport. (I had a few problems in customs but i´ll talk about that some other time) He drove us on the big toll road round the top part of the city- it was such an amazing drive. The view was awesome, the mountains are so close, the city so busy, old buildings and new ones etc (i wish I took more photos, but i didnt want to feel like a crazy gringo) He took me to his place where I met his family: his wife, two daughters and his son- I also met some of an american family who have been in chile for the last 7 or so weeks. And in normal Nathan fashion I can remember for sure all their names. So I stayed there for 2 or 3 hours and followed Omar around to a dairy (i can´t remeber it´s chilean name) and to a school to pick up his son. It was great fun. Omar speaks english pretty well but the rest of the family aren´t as good as him. So I tryed to comunicate as best I could.
I eventually made it to Waldo´s and Omar´s (another Omar) apartment(they are friends of a chilean frined of mine in NZ) at around 8:30 or something. Omar and his wife, Sussanah took me) . Waldo and Omar are brothers from Concepcion. They both wnat to practice their English so we can communicate quiete well. So we went shopping for some food to make some Chilean hot dogs in their car and arrived back around 1o something to cook it up for tea. Driving around in Santiago is brilliant, swerving lanes, buses driving like crazy.
I eventually got to bed at around 11.30 chile time (3 p.m friday NZ time) Iwas "muy cansado" or very tired.
I got up this morning at 9 and i´m now in Santiago central with Omar (he is looking for work) after a trip on the "Metro" (the subway) and we´re in an e-cafe.
Sorry for all the typos and bad sentence structure- the keyboards here are weird.
Adios,
Nathan
P.S don´t expect all my post to be this long...and photos will come soon
Let it snow...
The countdown: 3 sleeps to go
I don't know about the rest of you in CH CH were expecting this morning, but I'm pretty sure you weren't expecting that this morning. My first thoughts went something like this:
oh oh... This better not stop me flying out
Anyway... It's getting late, so I should hit the sack
P.S How about a trip preview/synopsis/itinerary on the next post? That is, if time permits.
Here´s the view from the lounge (take these outside photos with a grain of salt- my apartment doesn´t look so flash inside- think clean student flat with a mean view)
From left: Grandad, Valentina, Sussanah and Uncle someone. At Sussanahs mum´s birthday
Chilean Nana (too bad I don´t have a better picture)
Nadia and a Cousin
And touch rugby in Santiago
