March April

So it has now been a month since I have written a blog post, the last one being about my brother, but I think I will be able to write about almost everything that’s happen. The last two months I fell back into routine as school went back into session. Although many days have gone past I do think I will be able to fit the majority of the important things that have happened to me. Un fortunately I will have to continue the pictureless blog as my computer has died and I have no way to upload large groups of photos.

After my brother finished his championship run I began my final stretch of my exchange in school, the first week of March. I started off very excited for a change from the summer, and a place to isolate my language skills and get better at speaking Spanish. The first couple weeks were so great. I finally understood my classes, and I had some sort of affirmation that I had improved in my Spanish during the summer, and the content was all of a sudden more interesting. I had this inspiration to get good grades even though they didn’t matter and I felt that must connected to my friends. I felt on top of the world and like everything was just going to go out with one big bang. Don’t get too excited, every exchange has its bumps in the road and nothing is perfect.

Before I touch up on anything negative I am going to spend a few sentences saying that the last week of February and the first week of march welcomed new exchangers to Coyhaique! This semester we welcomed Liam from Scottland, Stephen from Ohio, and Nattha from Thailand. Unfortunately Nattha did not speak any Spanish when she arrived but we have been working with her every day and she has already made some great friends in school. To welcome them Chilean style, their first weekend in Chile we had them all to my house and treated them to empanadas which are typical Chilean food. Not only were they very good, we had a great first night together and began planning the next few times we were going to get together. I am just very honored and proud to have such a great group of kids and support system here in Coyhaique. They don’t lie to you, exchange students are the best friends you will have on exchange.

One of the imperfections that is a bit more superficial is that my app to watch March Madness was not functioning well. For those who do not know what that means, it’s the basketball tournament for Division 1 Universities. As dumb as it sounds that I am even mentioning this, missing sports has been one of the only things that has brought upon homesickness and as it was something that I have shared with my friends and family since I was a little kid it was kind of sad for me not to have that. Moving on to another thing that was a little more important to me and I would put down as a large disappointment was not being invited to a Rotary event the last weekend of March. I have grown very close with my group of exchange students over the last 8 months. Unfortunately I am PHYSICALLY very far away from me. It was a trip to that was centered in educating the students about the natives from central Chile, the Mapuches, and visiting a national park. Even though I offered to coordinate my travelling and pay for everything they did not accept y offer. I was very bummed out and even felt unsupported by Rotary for a few days but I after a couple days of thinking I decided to stop dwelling on it as it was just a waste of worrying during my exchange. They had a great time and the pictures were amazing but I found a way to keep myself busy. That Sunday we had all the exchange students together again in the german girls, Robyn, house and her and Max (other german kid) cooked us schnitzel. It was so good. Max is quite the cook. Those are the types of experiences that you don’t forget during an exchange.

At the end of march I was pulled into my counselors office and informed that in two weeks I would be changing families. When something that drastic happens in such a short period of time sometimes its hard to adjust yourself. Fortunately I would be moving in with my counselor, in a house that I already was familiar with and people I was already familiar with so I knew it would be a change and an opportunity to get to know another family. Packing up all of my things for the first time was very strange. I had really found home with my first family the Auad Holmbergs. I had my bed, my room, my routine, my brother, my mom, my dad, and even an extended family. Even though I would be moving down the road it was hard to think that I would be leaving all that. However, upon getting to the new house in my new room with new brothers and parents and routine, I realized neither is better or worse, just different and that I was just fine in the new home. After 3 weeks here I am great and don’t regret anything. In fact one of my new brothers Benjamin is going to be going on exchange in New England next year, we are still waiting on the city and state, fingers crossed!!!

Now we are into April and I start to have some of my rough times. These first couple weeks of April have been my loneliest days in Chile. Its difficult to describe but basically it comes down to this. These last 10 weeks are very precious to me as they are my last in Chile. However, for my friends this time is 100 percent studying to improve their grades for college. Which I understand completely as it was me one year ago. The other thing that has been tough for me is I am not terribly close to everyone in my class, and in Chilean school you have 90 percent of your classes with your one class, same kids every class. I am familiar with everyone and have fun with the kids when we go out but I just haven’t made too many lifetime friends in this group (outside of the other exchange student, he is my best friend). However I would say I have 10 real friends outside of my class. 10 kids I really care about and plan on continuing to talk to for a long time to come. But with some living far away, being in a different class, or going to different schools, our schedules are just on polar opposites and its so hard to see them. It is hard for me to take in that I will not be seeing some of my best friends for the majority of the rest of my time in Chile.

To end on a high note basketball and chorus have started back up again with lots of promise to be great the next couple months. Chorus has doubled in numbers and basketball has a new young coach who is a great guy. Also one of my best exchange student friends will be making her way down to Coyhaique on Wednesday so that will be very fun. I am very fortunate to be ok here in Chile as there have been 2 catastrophes in the last 3 weeks. Keep  the victims of the Valparaiso fire and the Iquique earthquake in your hearts as they have lots of recovery to do. My exchange is going by very fast and I am scared for it to end. My return date is set at June 27^th. I will try to send another post up before the start of May. Keep it real readers. 

Watching From Afar

I apologize for barely blogging this summer, I have had very limited internet access. My plan is in the next week to finish up my blog talking about my summer so for all of you dedicated family members, friends, or strangers, can find out what I´ve been up to. This post will revolve around something a little different…Starting with a fairly unexciting Otter Valley blowout back at the beginning of December I said to myself that my brother´s basketball team was going to be about just how I expected. I thought they would be okay this year considering the new flow of Juniors and leadership, and the majority seeing their first varsity game this year. I couldn’t have told you what their record was going to be but it would have rounded out over 500, maybe 5 or 6 losses and a playoff win followed by a loss in the quarters. That is what I had thought, then they started winning…It didnt all happen at once. In fact they really didn’t show their greatness until later on the road but they just kept winning, and the one who surprised me the most throughout the whole show was my brother. He was playing the best basketball I had ever seen him play. He was also arguably the most consistent player on the team. He was going for 10 and 5 boards every game no questions asked and was playing with a ton of heart. I never played that well when I was a junior.Fast forward to the MSJ 3OT game. If you know my brother and the team then you are familiar with this game. If not I will sum it up. In the second game of the year my brothers team beat MSJ by 50. However, MSJ was missing 3 important players. Going into round two you can only expect my brothers team to be caught off guard when they turned out to be pretty good. So caught off guard in fact they found themselves in a 34-8 hole. That’s generally too much to recover from. I probably would have folded. But they didn’t. They just chipped at the lead little by little. At the end of the half they had cut it to about 18 and then the second continued their chipping. Led by Joe Shehadi (37), Tye Gadson (35), and Taylor Muench (20) they ended up forcing overtime. But before I jump the gun there are a couple important things to throw out in the air. This second half was when Joey really first showed that he was a star. We all knew it since he was 7 years old and knew it was going to come this year. But after seeing every game this year, this second half marked the turning point—where Joey when from scoring 15 a game to 25 a game and one of the best players in the state. He had a play where he hit two 3s in 6 seconds that literally gave me chills and goosebumps. Tye had his best game of his life to date. He knocked down important shots, never showed any type of fear or ounce of quitting and is a lot of the reason they are still undefeated… but we will get to that. Last but not least my little brother played hard the whole game and down 2 with 10 seconds left, when everyone thought it was over, didn’t quit on what EVERYONE thought was a buzzer beating shot. Ball misses and hits iron with .5 on the clock Taylor crashed and right place right time was there to put it back to tie the game. I was a proud brother in that moment.1^st overtime, once again, the reason they are still undefeated. Down 2 Tye takes it in his hands and his a stellar stepback shot to tie it that just had me jaw dropped. OT number two had a freshman on MSJ hit two NBA threes to put it into number 3 where Tye hit FTs and they snuck out on a 99-95 win. This game might have put them on the map at school but still undefeated almost halfway through their season still had them under wraps… until the Rutland game.I had said that there had to be something wrong with the town or the student body to not support this team. I mean they were getting very mediocre crowds and putting on shows for almost no one. Then I received a text from my mom of the student section during the Rutland game at home, and I finally they proved me wrong… and then some.The next 8 games included 2 Rutland, 2 MAU, 2 Brattleboro, 1 Mill River, 1 MSJ. This was the stretch, and they demolished it. They went 8-0 and only two of the games were even close at the end. The crowds came to the home games and before you knew it this whole town was on this teams back. Everything I ever wanted to be a part of or watch was happening. But I wasn’t there.This was the time where I began to feel a little selfish for not just being 100 percent happy for my brother and my dad and my former teammates but actually a little sad for me because, I couldn’t be there, or because I was jealous. But I have convinced myself that its okay and that its human nature to feel this way. In fact after years of being a fairly average brother I may have stepped into a better brotherhood in my own head by being more proud of mine than anyone. All I know is that last couple weeks of watching the games the day after or on blurry livestream and feeling very mixed emotions was far from over. Lets enter playoffs as the 1 seed and the first undefeated season since 1973.Round 1: it was a blowout. I shouldn’t have been too worried about not seeing it live because of my lack of it internet but the games just aren’t the same to me watching them when I already know what happens. I want to watch them with some sort of reality to it. So I ran to internet café to house and all about--sweaty like usual from stress and activity and finally got to see the 3^rd quarter before I lost connection again. But I was content in the fact that they would play MAU on Friday. I couldn’t explain how excited I was to watch this game, I felt like it was my own. I knew the buzz that was going around, the rivalry and undefeated season at stake. I had everything planned to have internet sufficient enough to watch the game, and then my plan crumbled. Nothing was working. By the time I had something working it was the 4^th and everything was in hand. During the internet crisis I was very upset. I had my first spurt of homesickness since Christmas and I was not in a good place. All I wanted was to be in that gym. I would have given everything I had just to be in that gym.But everything that’s happened on this exchange has me learning, every step of the way. As I watch my brother and my dad put together something that they will talk about for the rest of their lives, something I couldn’t be a part of and as I watch my brother come on the verge of history and something magical that I have to watch (hopefully live) from afar I will find some moral or something good that comes from it for me. But until I find that moral, whoever read this until the bottom you have one job and one job only:Critics hate us, they talk about us, but one thing they are right about, is we are in a way underdogs from here on out. We are the new team in D1 and we didn’t play a D1 schedule. So everything team that’s left has experience against the best of the best. If you live in the area, at Tuesday night at 6PM in the UVM gymnasium this team will take their talent and undefeated season against Mount Mansfield in the semifinal game. Go to the game and cheer on these kids. I cant do it but if you live in the area you are really lucky because you CAN. This is not only a once in a lifetime opportunity for them but it is also a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to see it happen. Get in your car and go… Ill be watching. 

January Vacation/Traveling pt. 1

This blog post will focus on the first half of my month long vacation in the capital, Santiago. For those of you who do not know, on the 3^rd of January I headed up North to visit a former exchange student who studied at BBA last year, Juan Ignacio. However, this would not JUST be hanging in his house for 28 days. Geographically Chile is very long, and I am at the VERY end of Chile in Coyhaique. So to put it in perspective just to get the center the country to Santiago is about the equivalent of a Vermont-Florida drive/plane ride. Because of this all my tickets are incredibly expensive every time I have to travel. During this month, I needed to take advantage of the fact that I am here and get to see as many people in the area as possible.

So I got there and the first thing I had to deal with was the fact I left all my money at home and my cellphone fell out of my pocket in the transfer; 0 communication, 100 dollars for 31 days, not going to be enough. I was helped by a large family of 4 kids and 2 adults in the airport to get everything set. They all spoke fluent English, the kids all spoke Spanish as a second language and the adults, Spanish. I was amazed at how well the adults spoke. I mean they had been in America/South Africa for 20 years but I still did not find a single accent or flaw in their English.

Seeing Juan Ignacio was very cool for me—fun fact, I was Juan Ignacio’s tutor with the English language at BBA, will touch on that more later on—because it was the first exchange student I had seen outside of BBA. It has also inspired me to get on my high horse and try to get out more to see exchange students (money is always an issue). The first thing that I noticed when I arrived was the fact that it was SO hot out. It was about 45-50 in Coyhaique when I left and it was a nice 95 upon landing. I was obviously far overdressed and sweating so much. I ran to the bathroom, stripped down and we headed to his house. Santiago is not New York. It does not have a skyline and instead of being on the ocean it is surrounded by mountains. The air and the pollution just gets trapped in the city from the mountains and it leaves the city with a very thick smog and and not very good visibility at distance. The first thing we did was go to the pool, and boy did I need that. It was a nice chance to just sit down and talk to Ignacio for the first time face to face and a very long time. He told me about his life, I told him about mine. We shared similar exchange stories and just enjoyed the end of the day’s sun. The rest of the agenda was to visit his cousins in Viña del Mar and Valparaiso (two adjacent cities about 2 hours north of Santiago, right on the ocean), meet up with some exchange students in Santiago and then spend the last week in Concepción with one of my best exchange friends in his family.

I found out the first night that we  would be headed straight to Viña and Valpo in two days. Which got me really excited to get to the beach! Especially after reading the weather reports about the US, sorry guys! The next day we after lunch the plan was to hike a short little mountain to a church on a hill, which overlooks the city. When we left the house there was visibly more smog in the air and that was when his mom said that there must be a fire somewhere. Another couple things about Santiago that I never experience, forrest fires and earthquakes. Both of which happened quite often. We didn’t think too much of the fire and headed to the mountain anyway. Well unfortunately the smoke just filled the city. The hike was a short hour but it was hot and sweaty and smokey. When I got to the top I actually had pain in my lungs from the smoke that had entered, it was not comfortable. I know the smoke isn’t the same but after feeling that in my lungs it reassured me that I never want to smoke. We got to the top and were very disappointed in the view. I am going to be honest with you, you couldn’t see anything. It was incredible how much smoke was in the city. You couldn’t see more than 3 buildings ahead of you in the city and from afar on a mountain you could not see absolutely anything. However, the hike was not in vain because the church on the hill and the statue of the Virgin Mary is a spectacle. The Virgin Mary is huge and beautiful and the Church is a nature(ish) church where the services are done outside. Which was just too cool for me. That night we packed out bags and got ready to go to the beach.

The trip to the bus was quite an adventure. We got there right on time but unfortunately, we couldn’t not find the bus. Two different people sent us the wrong way, and then when we got to the station the bus had left, but we could see it. We ran after it and caught up as it was heading onto the main roads the conductor was nice enough to allow us on anyway. A short bus ride accompanied by a Robert Patinson movie I had never heard of—easily his best work—and we were there. I also bring my guitar which has its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that I have to have it with me all time and we were a good 30 minute walk from the beach. We put our bags at his grandparents work and then we were there. It was a nice 75 degrees which was perfect and we went beach walking. I loved the city already. The beach was beautiful, the buildings were beautiful, there wasn’t a lot of contamination, and the woman were BEAUTIFUL. Honestly, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life; mostly because about half the people on the beach were from Argentina. I ended up taking a little nap on the beach before we took a bus to the sand dunes. Now these things were cool. You could actually rent dune sleds and slide around on the them. They were steep, natural, difficult to climb, and straight up fun. We climbed up there with out stuff and just relaxed and played some guitar. After a couple hours of napping and enjoying the sun Ignacio’s cousin, and 5 classmates who were also in Viña joined us. Honestly, one of the best parts about exchange is just meeting people. I want to have connections anywhere and everywhere, whatever nationality or language you speak, I want to know you. So it just helps this objective when I get to meet people in every city. We spent the next two hours duning, sledding, talking and eventually counting down the sunset with some French people. We were picked up by Ignacio’s aunt and with his cousin we headed back to the house where I met the girl cousin, and father of the family. They were all very nice and it was a good night of talking and getting to know them. I forgot to mention that on the beach I found a group of people selling empanadas out of their car that were literally so unbelievably good. I can’t describe the goodness. I bought 6 over the next three days. 12 dollars well spent.

The next day it wasn’t great weather and we went to the movies. I went to Wolf of Wall street and Ignacio and Jose Tomás (his cousin) went to a Chilean movie. The reason we didn’t go to the same one was for two reasons. 1. The Chilean one was purely a satire on Chileans, so I wouldn’t have gotten any of the jokes. 2. Wolf of Wall Street was an 18+ movie which neither of them were so we parted ways for a few hours. I will just say I liked Wolf of Wall street but am still confused on my opinion, which would be better explained in a different blog post. After the movie I was surprised by the rest of Ignacio’s classmates with Ignacio and his cousin. They ended up coming to see the movie as well, this only meant that all of us got to hang out even more! We took a walk on the beach except at this point the sun was setting and it was quite a site. There were actually some people swimming even though the temperature had dropped to a brisk 55-60. As the sun was setting I had a moment of realization. I walked away from the group and stripped down to my boxers—unfortunately I was wearing a very unflattering pair at this moment—and without thinking I ran into the ocean and went swimming. Everyone thought I was crazy but honestly it wasn’t even that cold, I am from Vermont for pete’s sake! It was a very memorable moment as I watched at the sun fall behind the mountains from the Chilean sea. You can see Valpo from Viña and it’s really cool. It’s a city built on little hills. So the buildings are built on a slant and when it’s dark out you can see the mountains light up and it’s really something.

The next day we made an attempt to go to Valpo and take some tours and climb the little hills as well as see a house that housed the most famous Chilean writer ever, Pablo Nerudo. We got there and immediately Ignacio was not feeling well. He decided to sit out a boat tour that his cousin and I went on. This tour took us around the ships that surround the city and the history behind them. I enjoyed the tour even though I did not understand much. I am fairly advanced with Spanish but when it comes to history it’s hard to concentrate so I decided to take it easy and just enjoy the ocean and the ships. When we got back from the tour Ignacio just did not feel well so we went back to Viña for the day. I was a little disappointed but he did not feel well and it would have been torture for him to continue so I understood. That night was one of Taylor’s basketball games and with the new system I watched the live stream and saw as Taylor avenged the state championship game and came out on top with a victory by about 30. Ignacio’s cousin actually watched the whole game with me which was awesome because I could share that experience with someone.

The next day Ignacio was still feeling sick and it was hard for me to just sit in the house. I was not going to ask Ignacio to rally for me and go out because he just couldn’t. But I was in a city I may never return to and I wanted to enjoy it while it lasted (we were leaving the next day). So I decided to just go to the beach alone. I was not very familiar with the area or the public transportation system so I made sure I paid attention to the route on the way there. Ignacio’s aunt dropped me off and then I was off on my adventure. An adventure that contained about 7 drops of sunscreen; I was screwed. I just accepted it and had a very YOLO mentality. It took some good searching but I found a part of the beach that was primarily Argentinean and that meant maté tea. Every single person was drinking maté and I knew I was in the right place. I ended up sleeping almost a total of 4 hours on the beach. I knew I was burned I just didn’t know how bad or where. I was told by Ignacio’s aunt that I was supposed to take a bus back to the house, it was about 3 miles. But like I mentioned before I knew I would screw up the bus and paid close attention to the route to the beach. So I left an hour before the meeting point and headed back on foot. This was way better than a bus. I actually love walking. I will walk just about up to 10 miles if I have the time. It’s a great way to think and just enjoy your surroundings. I ended up getting to the meeting spot at 6:55 (5 minutes early). I ran into the grocery store and bought some food for the family—mostly because I had eaten the rest of it in the house—and met up at the spot again at 7:03. I got in the car and immediately apologized for being late because to me I was late. I was always raised that if you are on time you are late. Well she was thanking me for my punctuality; this is the difference between Chile and the US. The rest of the night was spent with a movie and then sleep. Ignacio woke me up at 12 and told me we were gonna go home early because he still wasn’t 100 percent (we were planning on going home at 9pm). We got on the first bus that was available at 2 and just like that we were gone. Thank you so much to Ignacio’s extended family for hosting us. It was very amazing to know you guys and I had a lot of fun during the week!

I am writing this on the way to my friend’s house in Concepción. This blog post covered January 3-9. I plan on posting something about the time in between then and departing for Concepción in the near future. I apologize for the delays.

END OF PART 1.