I Invite You...

This past week I've been invited by teachers and students to see the areas around Santa María. One student in 7th grade invited me to La Higuera, a small "neighborhood" within the city limits. There I met her father who cultivates grapes and olives. He was welcoming, but exceptionally suspicious of my reasons for being there. "So you want to know about olives. Why?" I explained that I'm the kind of person who likes to know a little about everything. "But why do you want to know about olives?" I told him that I could tell my students in the U.S. about the agriculture in Chile, and my experiences living in an agricultural area. "But what do you want to know specifically about the olives?" Specifically I had no idea. This went on for a while until he finally consented to give me a brief overview. Later he showed me two of his inventions, one to separate olives by size, and the other a huge oven to make grapes. I asked him if I could take a picture of him and the inventions. "Why?" I explained that I was iinterested in the processes he was describing, and if I could explain them to my students a photo would be really helpful. "But what exactly are you going to do with the photos?" Show them to my students in the U.S., I answered. "Are you going to print them here?" I hadn't planned to..."Are you going to sell them to my competition so they can create similar inventions?" I assured him I knew no one in agriculture in Chile. He finally relented, but on the condition that I take pictures of machines used in agriculture in the U.S. so that he can create more machines, or that I bring my husband to Chile to invest in his business so that he can go international. I placated him somehow without making any real commitments.

On Thursday morning it snowed. It doesn't snow in the area normally, so it was a big event. More than half of the students didn't show up for school, so at noon the director sent the rest of them--and the staff--home. I went with 3 cars full of teachers to the hills to take pictures of the snow. We ended up at the Hotel Jahuel, a 5 star establishment set against the mountains. The snow was falling off the trees as we wandered around the buildings, and some of the frisky teachers bombarded each other with snowballs "a cada rato". I promised Edith I would take lots of pictures for her.

Saturday Edith threw a small party for me. Both Edith's daughters Sady and Alejandra were there, as was her boyfriend Luis, Luis' daughter, and Edith's brother and his family (those of the rabbit fame). We sat around all afternoon eating barbecued pork, beef and sausage with salads and bread. Afterwards we took a walk to "el castillo", a house built by Turkish immigrants in the 1800s, now in ruins. It's a beautiful house, and a shame it is so run down.

Tonight I'm invited to tea with an English teacher from a neighboring school. We met last week at a meeting for local English teachers, and she invited me to come and teach a couple of classes at her school last Friday. We played games using vocabulary talking about things they like to do.

It's been a good week, and it's been nice to go out with all sorts of different people who are so excited to show me their part of the world.
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