I am extremely excited to announce that Scholars for Schools now has a 15 minute video describing the project. Please share this link and the news about our project!
Scholars for Schools from hannah kelley on Vimeo.
Archive Page 3
My Chilean identity card was stolen from me today near my school. It was in the front pocket of my hoodie and inside of my coin purse that had about $8 in it. Somehow the card ended up back at my university, and I picked it up from the secretary of the international students office all within a couple of hours after it happened. Curious. I am lucky that something more important wasn’t stolen.
Most of my classes have started this week. I am really enjoying my Interpretation class, which is basically a class which trains in translation techniques (Spanish – English). I guess that this sort of class, in the US at least, would only be found at a special institute for language translation. I love having the opportunity to take it. We are listening to oral recordings and practicing synthesis (short summary) and simultaneous translation (you translate while you listen or read). My vocabulary in Spanish is increasing, given that a lot of the words are about things that I wouldn’t normally have the chance to talk about (medical situations, for example).
Yesterday I had my Ethnomusic class, which looks like it will be more of an anthropology class than an overview of Chilean indigenous music. We are going to be doing an overview of all of the major ethnic groups of Chile, and focusing on much more than music.
I changed my hair color to a dark brown, and all of a sudden a lot of people are asking me if I am Chilean! An Argentine girl is staying with me this weekend, and she said that when she first heard me on the phone she thought I was from Chile. I guess I am not Mexican anymore, ha ha.
A new development has come up with Scholars for Schools that I heard last night while I was at the meeting for the Rotary Club of Valparaíso Bellavista; one of the main newspapers here, La Tercera, publishes a series of juvenile paperback books for only 500 pesos each (about a dollar), and is going to help us buy them in bulk for the libraries we are supporting, given that one of the administrative employees is a Rotarian. Since books are so expensive in Chile, this is really great news. I look forward to hearing more about this connection through the Bellavista Club.
Speaking of Scholars for Schools, we now have a website in Spanish: http://scholarsforschools.cl.
In November I am going to take the DELE, which is a diploma certifying my level of Spanish. It is good for the rest of my life, more or less, and will be especially useful should I ever decide to work in a Spanish speaking country or for a company where Spanish is the official work language.
This past Sunday I went to the Naval and Maritime Museum on the Aduana side of town near C˚ Artillería with my friend Emily. It was an amazingly warm beautiful day, and since she was leaving the next day, she asked me to take advantage of the weather with her by taking a walk.
We ended up at the museum, which luckily is free to the public the first Sunday of every Month. A few pictures of the day can be found here: http://gallery.hannahkelley.org/Chile/explore_emily
In the “pirate” room
Emily next to the manicured lawn anchor
I have one essay left for my Administrative Environmental Law class and then I am done with the semester. I passed (so far) the majority of my classes with flying colors. I have picked out ten classes that I want to take for the next term. Once the semester starts I will be able to drop and add to make the number more manageable.
Among them:
Ethnomusic: overview of Chilean ethnic dances and their respective regions and meaning
Fundamentals of Literary Lingüistics
Oratoria 1: speech giving in Spanish
Paul has been making significant progress building shelving for the library at Escuela David Ben Gurion; I was there yesterday helping him move around desks and sort through speakers and other cachureo. Our hope is that today an organization will be coming by the school to pick up all of the dysfunctional electronics to be recycled. Over the break I will be working on a video explaining Scholars for Schools. I am also working on getting scholarsforschools.cl up and running, but it is taking longer than expected.
I feel like I have been in Valparaíso for awhile now, more than ever because the majority of my amigos from last semester have already head home. My buddies from my trip to Siete Tazas are gone–Gretchen and Emily. Gretchen left late last month, and Emily left yesterday. Before Emily went we got together at her house with some other friends, and I had the chance to meet the owner of where she was living, Elena Gallegos.
Elena is a textile artist who lived in Australia for over 35 years. She has an enormous loom in the house, and she works with metals and fabrics to express different themes. It was really a pleasure to talk with her and see her art up close. I hope to keep in touch with her and hopefully pick up some new hobbies from the experience.
One of Elena’s pieces
Elena’s loom
For more photos of Elena’s weaving collections and artwork click here: http://gallery.hannahkelley.org/Chile/elenagallegos
On another note, a friend here, Meredith, is trying to put together a bilingual event listing for Valparaíso called Atenea. She is teaching English in the area. The future website is http://www.atenea-valparaiso.org.
If you have been in touch with me other than through my blog, you may already know about a project I have developed with three other Rotary Scholars in Valparaíso called Scholars for Schools. In a nutshell, this project is helping to bridge the gap between public and private education in central Chile by renovating free space in local schools to create multi-media libraries.
Education and children at risk are some of the main focuses of Rotary International and certainly also some of the most pressing social needs in Chile. After two months of designing and organizing the structure of the project, we are finally ready to receive donations and we encourage any humanitarian minded person to get involved. Most questions about the project can be found at http://scholarsforschools.org.
The Saturday before last we had an inaugural activity in the first of what we hope to be a succession of elementary schools. Over 40 people came to help us dust, sweep sand and paint the room which is to become the future library of Escuela David Ben Gurión in cerro (hill) Las Cañas.
This school is in a barely accessible location, which means they need our help more than ever. Many of the schools in the cerros are completely forgotten about by people carrying on their daily life in the lower part of the city (referred to as the “plan”), neighboring Viña del Mar or wealthier cerros. The school has nearly 200 students and two school schedules (day and night) to accommodate space constraints. The majority of the children (pre-kinder to 8th grade) are on a government meal program called Puente and based on information gleaned from schools officials, these meals may be all students eat for the entire day.
Take a moment to look at the pictures from our cleaning day on May 31st and share this post with others by using the share tool at the bottom.
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1.) Rotary Scholar Nathan Gill and volunteer Fernanda hard at work scraping dirty windows 2.) Rotaract Valparaíso volunteers get their hands dirty with some paint 3.) Rotary Scholar Susan Owen taking a moment to read with a student who came to visit us 4.) Cataloging old books! 5.) Some of the volunteers coming together for a group photo 6.) Scholars for Schools!
Santiago trip with California Rotary GSE team
Published 05/25/2008 Chile , Rotary , Travels Leave a CommentAt the end of May I went to Santiago with two other Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars to visit a Rotary Group Study Exchange (GSE) team. True to my informative spirit, I will provide some useful information about GSE teams taken from rotary.org:
What is Group Study Exchange (GSE)?
The Group Study Exchange program is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity for business and professional men and women in the initial years of their careers. The program is designed to develop professional and leadership skills among young people to better prepare them to address the needs of their communities and an increasingly global workplace.What constitutes a GSE team?
- 1 Rotarian team leader who is not the current DG, immediate PDG, or the DGE and
- 4 non-Rotarian team members who are:
- Between the ages of 25-40
- Currently employed, with 2 years of experience in their chosen profession
- Not lineal descendants or spouses of Rotarians
Continuing…
We spent a day in Cerro San Cristobal, which is a municipal park organized around a hill. Around the hill there is a zoo, a wine museum, millions of places to picnic and a lot of joggers and bikers. On the top of the hill is a large statue of the Virgen de la Inmaculada, a gift from France (I guess that the French just love making huge statues to give away). Given that this hill is home to the second highest point in the city, we had an amazing view of Santiago and the Andes despite it being a foggy day. We took a cable car half way up the hill and walked the rest of the way.
Left to Right: Maggie, Dora, Maurice, Susan, Marina, Me, Dana, Paul
At night we spent some time eating sushi inside Patio Bellavista in the Bellavista neighborhood right outside of the park.
The next day was Día del Patrimonio (National Heritage Day), which meant all of the museums and national historic sites were open free to the public. We went to the Museo de Bellas Artes and then spent some time nearby in the famous Plaza de Armas, where all other points in Chile are measured from. The last thing we saw was the ‘presidential palace’ Palacio de La Moneda, which is in fact not where the president lives. She lives in another district near the military headquarters.
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1., 2.) Inside of the Museo de Bellas Artes 3.) Plaza de Armas 4.) Flower and sand art celebrating National Heritage Day 5.) The Santiago Stock Exchange 6.) Me in front of the presidential palace La Moneda
For more pictures click here.
–The official wake-Hannah-up-on-days-she-gets-to-sleep-in-street.
Perhaps it is in retaliation to the student protests, maybe they felt left out of the limelight, but whatever the motive a slew of military people went blasting down the street this morning, starting at 8:30 (today is Sunday…). Nothing was left out: horns, loud drum lines, people stomping around, peanuts, stray dogs barking at the parade.
I thought after the first 15 minute round I would be able to get some rest again. Not so. These wonderful marchers had about 4 more rounds in them, at least. I think we are at N˚4 right now. I can only guess that they are celebrating the national holiday this upcoming Wednesday. I forget at the moment which one it is. I’m still rather groggy!
waker-uppers
(in the background, imagine round 5 sounding away)
20th Anniversary of the Rotary Club of Valparaíso Bellavista
Published 05/10/2008 Chile , Rotary 1 CommentToday I had the pleasure of attending a reunion celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Rotary Club of Valparaíso, Bellavista, which is Paul Goldberg‘s host club.
The event took place on a small parcela (ranch house), in the outskirts of Quilpué. On the menú was a feast of seafood stew called curanto. I filmed the whole process! It consisted of 5 or 6 delicacies tied inside of plastic nets, layered in an enormous pot with onions, garlic, lettuce leaves, white wine and potatoes. The potatoes go on top, and once they are soft, the stew is done.
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1.) Smoked pork ribs, chorizo, chicken, clams and mussels put into plastic nets 2.) Stuffing the nets 3.) Layered pot with knotted nets and garlic, onion, white wine, lettuce leaves and potatoes 4.) Rotarian John enjoying curanto 5.) Closeup of the final product
The parcela turned out to be the beekeeping workshop of Sergio, one of the Rotary members.
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1, 2, 3.) Bee boxes behind the ranch house 4.) Old honeycombs after being centrifuged 5.) Me talking to Marruja, one of my favorite Damas Rotarias! 6.) Happy 20th anniversary, Bellavista
¡See even more pictures!
Student Protests on Calle Condell, Valparaíso
Published 05/08/2008 Chile Leave a CommentTags: Condell, paro, valparaíso
Thursday, May 8th
Students from various universities marched down Calle Condell, I suppose to Parque Italia or Parque O’Higgins*, dressed in black. There were also elementary school children and high school aged youth marching in the protest. They woke me out of bed, I went to the balcony of our apartment to watch hundreds of students chanting cheers and banging drums while they waved flags like “Business on Strike!”, “Nursing on Strike!” and …”Physical Therapy!”, “Psychology!”, until nearly all of the majors of whichever given university were represented. My roommate Gustav also awoke because of the noise and came to see the commotion. I soon realized that the black outfits represented the “death of education”. There was for awhile in the central building for PUCV a huge coffin with a Spanish equivalent of R.I.P. underneath the words Educación.
It wasn’t the first time that I have seen protesters block Condell, an important street and thoroughfare used to reach the even bigger and longer Calle Pedro Montt, Avenida Colon, and others.
Click on the below image to see more pictures of this and other events related to the recent student protests in Valparaíso.
Students wear black to mourn the “death of education”
*These parks are located along Calle Pedro Montt, a main avenue in Valparaíso, and are used for concerts, assemblies and social activities in addition to housing several well known street markets.
Why you should use del.icio.us, blogs, and other web tools!
Published 05/08/2008 Uncategorized Leave a CommentI couldn’t help posting about this wonderful site I came across that explains all of my favorite web things in “plain english”.
Click here to find out what a blog is, and why you should get one!
Click here to find out why you should be using del.icio.us bookmarking.
Click here to find out what the big deal about facebook is.
Don’t forget to link to me and make me your friend once you sign up :)
