Sewell

Greetings Friends!
Wanna hear something silly? This here tiny blog has been viewed almost 3,000 times! Gee, I feel special! (blush)

Anyways...

A while ago my program director and staff arranged for us to go to the now abandoned Sewell copper mining town. Chile is one of the most copper rich countries in the world and the mines have been making recent history (http://www.foxnews.com/rescued-chilean-miner-returns-surface/) as well as the good old fashion kind.

The town was built high on hill about an hour and a half outside Santiago. The mine is still running but the town itself is a ghost town complete with creaky doors and huge gusts of wind (minus the tumbleweeds though).

Due to the frequent number of earthquakes we've been experiencing here we were not allowed inside the mine this year (although they've done it in years past) but here are some pictures of the town anyway:

The whole town had this amazing faded color palette that had the designer in me daydreaming of the things I would do in those colors.

I've had a lot of time to daydream here. More on that later.

Furthering my point

To re-iterate why traveling is important to mastering a language allow me to provide the following example:

Yesterday I came home from a class presentation with mime make-up residue still on my face after having slept 2 and half hours the night before and my housemate offers this as a greeting:

"¡Chuta, weón! Por qué te ves tan asquerosco?"

Now, I've been speaking classroom Spanish for a long time. In that time I've learned many different ways to greet someone:

¡hola!
¡buenos diás!
¿que tal?
etc

but you'd be hard pressed to find a class that's gonna teach you "chuta, weón! por qué te ves tan asquerosco?" as a way to greet someone.

By the way, the polite translation of this greeting is:

"¡Jeez, dude! Why do you look so disgusting?"

Ah, well! At least they're not babying me because I'm a foreigner :)