Where I'll Be

Imagine my surprise when I woke up yesterday morning to an email with my placement information!  I wasn't expecting to know the details until I got to Santiago.  Lucky for me, my assignment sounds fantastic:

Town- Angol, Chile
in the northernmost part of the Araucania region, 2.5 hrs from the regional capital, Temuco, and 3 hrs south of Concepcion.  That means 10 and a 1/2 hours of scenic views on my bus ride from Santiago. The town is only about 49,000 people but it looks very pretty (stradling the Vergara River).  Can't wait to see it!  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angol)

Plaza de Armas in Angol (from somos9.cl)

School- http://www.colegiosanfrancisco.cl/
judging by their fancy website, twitter, and YouTube channel, this Catholic school has really got it together.  Apparently it's about 1,440 kids pre-K-12, and I'll be co-teaching with the high school English teacher.  We've already exchanged emails and I think I'll enjoy working with her a lot!  It looks like everyone wears uniforms here, including white smock-coats for the teachers, so all my worrying about professional attire may have been in vain...

(from their facebook page)

Host family- Yeny & Wladimir and their two kids
woohoo! host siblings!  I'm very excited to meet them all; we've already been in contact (and become facebook friends) and they seem extremely sweet.  Their house is in a neighborhood on the edge of town, about half an hour's walk from school (which is in the center of town).  But my host-brother and -sister go to the same school so we'll all be making the trip together. I picked out a gift for them today--hope they like Jenga!

So yeah, I'm pretty excited... Finally packed yesterday, and I've got today and tomorrow to make sure everything is in order before we head up to Chicago for my red eye flight Saturday night.  In the meantime trying to see as much of my family as possible! 

T minus 8 days!

After a quick trip to the Chilean consulate in Chicago, I finally have my visa in hand (and my passport back--whew!).  This week I also learned my placement region; I will be heading to Araucania! Araucania (there should be an accent on the i, but my keyboard doesn't cooperate like that) is in southern Chile, so I will have to take a 13-hr bus ride from Santiago to get there.  It has the largest concentration of Mapuche people, the indigenous people of southern Chile & Argentina, of any region in Chile, and it is also the poorest region.  Much of Araucania is agricultural but the capital city, Temuco, is the 4th largest city in Chile.  [Disclaimer: these are the facts I keep citing but I got them all from wikipedia -- better research to come!].  

I may have already mentioned that I initially requested to be placed in a mid-sized city in the central region.  Needless to say, this placement will potentially be very opposite.  I won't know my exact placement (town, host family, school) until my first week in Santiago, but I do already know of 3 other EODP volunteers in my region, and we can't all be in Temuco!  So I'm keeping my mind open to the possibility of a rural setting.  Maybe even a Mapuche school, that would be fascinating!  The anthropologist in me knows that I'll love it wherever I am.  

While I was in Chicago I was able to meet 3 other volunteers.  It'll be so nice already knowing some people when we all get to Santiago!  I'm getting very excited.  Next week will be spent frantically rounding up everything I want to pack (and inevitably having to leave some of it behind) and making sure I see all my family and friends before I go!  

P.S. in an effort to spice up this blog visually, I'm using a photo  from Araucania I found online--to be replaced once I have some photos of my own!