1st October 2010

CLOTHING / FASHION / SHOPPING

It is my host brother’s birthday on Monday so I went to the mall after classes. It is really huge! It starts on one side of the street and has a walkway that goes across to the other mall on the other side. Well I went a bit snap happy and took photos of clothes, fashion accessories and other shopping items. I tried to get photos with prices as much as I could – some are good others not. If you want to know the price of items in NZD then divide the price in pesos by 350 e.g. 10000 Pesos / 350 = $35NZD. The photo ‘Punto Urbano’ which shows a lot of coloured squares and prices is the cost of a haircut. I am not brave enough to get a hair cut in Chile – so my hair is getting longer, however it is only 3 months worth. I tried to get both men and women’s clothing, so you’ll see kids wear and night wear too. Over here they have a Zara shop especially for women and a separate especially for men. The attendant at the Zara mens store would not allow me to take photos of the models in the window. I’m told shoes over here a cheap but haven’t needed to buy any yet. I love the way they display jeans in the shop. Inside the store they sometimes have one pant leg hanging down and the other bunched up on one side – I’m sorry but I couldn’t get a photo of this either.

LANGUAGE ‘GIFT CARD’
I bought a ‘gift card’ for my host brother as I don’t know what kind of music he likes only that he likes music. This was real difficult because the previous day I had been chatting to Ana and she didn’t know what a voucher was. So I went into the music store armed with my dictionary and explained to the attendant that I wanted a voucher to buy music or a CD or DVD etc. He said ‘huh’ so I explained that I pay him money and get a piece of paper that I give to my host brother…. The attendant looked at me and said ‘Oh you mean a ‘gift card’’ It is so frustrating when you expect a word to be in Spanish and they use the English language to describe it! I got to say though that at least I can explain myself now – it may not be accurate but people generally get the idea.

Clothing Fashion Shopping - flash slideshow maker

30th September 2010

CAREER DAY

The last year of High School had a university careers day today. I really enjoyed it. Once we were out of the classroom the students would only speak Spanish to me which was really great for me but a little embarrassing because they now know what my true level is… but I have to practice sometime. The career day was held in the old passenger boat terminal so you will see the photos I took around the outside show sea lions, boats etc. The sea lions were really impressive because they had to jump so high up to get on the platform and they were such big creatures. I was surprised that they were there because I thought that it would be too hot for them. People keep telling me that the water is ice cold so they must be right. Inside the passenger boat terminal they had lots of displays of universities in Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. One of the universities was for PE and medicine etc – they had the skeletons outside their display. Others varied and were universities for hospitality - they had made cakes. One university was for airplane pilots / aviation in general.

University Career Day - flash slideshow maker

27th September 2010

CINEMA

Went to the Cinema on Sunday night, purely because I wanted to know what it was like. There were films mostly in English with subtitles. I watched the movie ‘Son como niños’ with Adam Sandler and Penelope Cruz. It was a real good laugh. The first lot of photos I took were out of focus so I have mixed my photos with the other cinema in the mall.

Cinemark - flash slideshow maker

SALSA

I have been to four Salsa lessons now. I haven’t been for a few days though because my foot was sore from all the walking I did on the tour around Valparaiso. The style of teaching over here reminds me of the film Karate kid. I take lessons in Salsa Cubano and it is for two hours and we learn two movements per class. The theory I think is behind this is the teacher wants us to be able to ‘feel’ the music, let it come naturally rather than counting the music either in our heads or out loud. I have to say that most people over here seem to be able to really dance so this method of teaching is working well. It was really frustrating at first though because when I attend Salsa lessons in Whangarei we learn lots of moves in one lesson and all styles of the dance. Over here you have separate classes for different dances from other regions e.g. classes for Salsa Cubano, Salsa Los Angeles, Merengue, Bachacha etc. In NZ we class these as ‘Salsa’ an all encompassing umbrella of the dance form. I thought I had written about this previously but can’t find it so will rewrite. It took me awhile to get to Salsa classes. The reason for this is that the first day I went I had the day and the time wrong, the second time I went the teacher was sick. The third time I went I actually got it right so I was stoked  The other thing that I find hard is the sense of time here. It is not unusual for the teacher to be late 10 – 30 minutes for the lesson. The teacher has been sick and went into hospital on Thursday so not sure when classes will be resuming.