Mr. Bradford goes to London

Jan 4, 2007 I’m reading the last line of my last post and realizing that I must have been tired, because the last thing I was last night was cold. Anway…. The trip around Antofugasta was quite interesting. Jake and I got up at about 8:00 in the morning and I started working on studying more Spanish. I am tired of not being able to remember a word after I hear it, I also need to work on my verb tenses. I don’t have a good book hear that has them in it and I feel very stupid not being able to comfortably conjugate the words I should use. I’m also having issues with typing. I’ll start to type the word, and the Spanish one will come to mine, causing my fingers to start typing that. Boy I’m messed up! Anyway, I studied a while then our host mother fixed us a breakfast of rolls, cheese some kind of luncheon meat, probably ham based, juices and café. I don’t use the term coffee, because what they use down here isn’t really coffee. It’s Nescafe and consists of a powder that almost, but not qui...

Jan 3, 2007 Well, we’ve completed our journey to Antafugasta and we are all ok. The 18 hour bus ride brought new meaning to the term “nada.” I have never seen an area so devoid of any form of life, plant or animal. Almost the entire route up we hardly saw an wild plant or animal. There were some places where a slight scrub brush might be peaking Its green leaves through the surface of the rock strewn landscape, but those were few and far between. In parts of the desert there was emptiness as far as the eye could see. Even the parts that I didn’t see, I am pretty sure they were full of emptiness too. The bus was amazing Big seats that reclined and foot parts that folded down, resulted in an area as comfortable as possibly could be designed for epic drives. It was as close to being in first class than I will ever be. On arrival Charlyn greeted us and one of the host mothers showed up. We all piled into the host family’s van and headed out, with Charlyn giving us a tour as we went. After ...

We made it around the city in record time. I dragged everyone around to the main key spots that I had visited through the week in downtown Santiago. The fact that we didn't get lost was a huge factor in the speed of our movement. I believe a fine time was had by all, but the general consensus is that we all want to take off and to start teaching, or we all want to scrap the whole Jan term thing and just take off for Patagonia and the surrounding area. I don't know if Peggy, my adviser, realizes the fact that if we went to Patagonia we would be in MULTIPLE cultures. MULTIPLE!!!!! Think about that. Our DMIS scores would go through the roof by the time that we got back from Patagonia. Going to Antofagasta will only immerse us in a single culture and put us in contact with a select group of people. If we go to Patagonia, and maybe trek through the highlands and mountains, we would be running into MULTIPLE cultures and MULTIPLE groups of people. Every single village we met ...

The first day in Santiago as a group, where will we go, what will we do? The suspense is killing me! The picture I took was one at the garden we visited a few days ago, I thought it was cool.

Well, I got to the Airport way early, but it was worth it. It was great to have the opportunity to meet with the other Whitworth students: Gina, Kati and Jake. I think they were all timed when they got here and we ended up sleeping for a good part of the day until evening. While they relaxed I went off with the Brazilians for a few hours in search of an open market. Santiago was strangely silent this afternoon, slowly trying to recover from the celebration of the night before. When we finally woke up we all gathered in the courtyard and the Brazilians finished their BBQ and shared with the rest of the people on the patio. Tomorrow we will be able to explore Santiago together and leave in the late evening. I've really been impressed by the Brazilians. One of them said that it was a pretty special group that happened to find each other at the hostel and that not Brazilians are as open. However he also said they are the type of people to accept someone warmly first and only with...

That cat did eat the bone, I watched him today, and he crunched an ate the whole thing.....that's got to hurt 12 hours later.

Well, it's the New Year. In the past few years I have always had some very quiet New Years Celebrations. Usually I fall asleep before midnight and don't even notice that the new year has come until I wake up in the morning. This was not one of those years. It's currently 6:50am, I'm at the Santiago airport waiting for my fellow students to arrive at the airport starting at 9:00am. I shared a cab ride in with two nurses from Tasmania, Australia who have been traveling for seven months around the world together, only spending a total of two hours apart. They are leaving for Peru this morning. They have spent so much time together, or maybe they have always done this, that they finish each others sentences and talk in a type of shorthand where entire concepts are conveyed between them with a OOOH, YA! And, they rarely are quiet, I'm going to miss them. As I run my hand through my hair I have confetti fall out of it onto the floor. I think I might be finding that ...