Hmmmmmm what to say about Copiapo itself........ Its in the desert. Its hot in the day and cold at night. Its really dusty. It's also quite dirty. There's nothing to do, although the city is growing rapidly. So we have been making our own fun. We go to the grocery store. Its called Jumbo. There's also a smaller version which locals oxymoronically refer to as "Jumbito (Mini-Jumbo)." They have their own store brand, including our favorite, the appropriately named "Jumbo Shrimp" which are in fact normally sized haha. When we go it feels like we are there with the entire rest of the town- seriously every time I go there its like shopping on the day before Thanksgiving. I have been, however, really finding the contents of people's shopping carts interesting. Jumbo has really big carts and people typically fill them with a ton of sodas ( like 5 or more 2 liter bottles of Coke) and a ton of potato chips and sugary treats and lots of children's toys. Very few vegetables or fruits or anything healthy.
I have found some new favorite brands lately though:
Cif (a cleaning product--sounds like a well-known disease)
Blem (another line of cleaning products--where Flegm meets Blemish)
Mono Balls ( breakfast cereal. Mono means monkey. What do you want for breakfast kids? Mono Balls!)
Maam NippleGel ("Maam" is pronounced "Mom". For the expecting mother preparing to lactate.)
And a few favorite businesses such as a jardin infantil which is like a preschool or kindergarden but when translated directly into English becomes Infantile Garden. And deportes juveniles- Juvenile Sports (youth sports). Hilarious.
Also I have learned several valuable life lessons including that I shouldn't live in the middle of the desert and that roosters do not only crow in the morning. They actually crow whenever they darn well want. Also they make delicious eggs and are entertaining to watch. We live right next door to a plot of land with 20 chickens 4 roosters, 6 geese, 2 German Shepherds and a rabbit.
Anyway, our classes are going ok, and our students are nice, we've made some friends at the church in Copiapó that we have connected with (through our friends in Santiago), and we've done some good exploring of the surrounding area.
Walking down the street outside of our apartment:
The view from our porch- that green spot is where the chickens live. At sunset, the hills all turn bright orange and pink.
The beautiful beach of Bahia Inglesa, just 1 hr from Copiapó.
Ryan petting an alpaca at a random zoo on the side of the freeway in the middle of nowhere approximately 30 minutes from Copiapó. Boy he needs some serious dental work (the alpaca, not Ryan):
Us in a town called Freirina in the Huasco Valley, about 3 hours to the southwest of Copiapó:
And finally, Ryan and I at a huge dam in the Huasco Valley with our wonderful new friends Manuel, Ana, Carla (you can see her shadow) and Rodolfo (not pictured).
