Los Informes: N° 1 - Septiembre

[Opening note: I'm going to change how I've been managing my blog - I'll be posting ~1-2 times a month with good, meaty content and a few pictures, instead of a bunch of pictures and little written content. This is done on the excellent suggestion of my parents.]


- Monthly Report, September


Daily life: Daily life with my host family is absolutely great - they are kind and we rarely have communication problems. I live with my host mom all the time, and I see my host dad on weekends. My host sister just left a few days ago for Kingston, and my host sister's mom visits the house regularly, usually daily. It's a really eye-opening experience living in this house, and I have to face cultural problems I never even considered before. But my host family has helped me with all of those problems, and I'm getting along great with them.

The view from my window

School: School is brilliant - the pupils are incredibly warm and welcoming to newcomers. Unlike in Canada, an exchange student here is friends with the entire school within the first hour - instant friends, just add school. Some of the classes are incredibly boring because I am unable to understand them, like Math, and some are funny because they are very easy, like English, and some are very useful, like Spanish class.


The school day here is an hour longer than what I'm used to - it starts at 7:15 instead of 9:05!


Problems: I have had only one major problem, which is now resolved - setting up a bank account with the aid of my counselor. After receiving no help from my counselor, my host parents told me that the bank account needs to be set up IN CANADA, and then I use a debit card HERE. I had to actually go into several banks with my host family to determine why I couldn't create a bank here - I am underage and a foreigner. Fortunately I found an ATM in which my debit card works, by simple trial and error.


So now everything is fine!


Rotary Club: The Rotary Club of Tacna actually owns several large buildings - the principal one in Tacna, which they use for meetings. The meetings are awesome - because there is food. Delicious, delicious food. Our Rotary Club then talks, and everything unravels like a normal Rotary meeting. I am supposed to go only once a month, but I have gone more than that, before knowing the limit.

 Small, three wheeled "Mr. Bean cars" (he didn't drive a 3-wheeler, but he was always knocking one over) - these are taxis; they're really light, really cheap, and (as proven by Mr. Bean) really easy to knock over.

 The Locumba valley, close to the city of Moquegua. The coastal-mountainous regions in the south-west are desert (as you can see from the sand dunes) - in fact, the largest sand dunes in the world can be found in south-western Peru. However, the few rivers which run through the area are used for irrigating fields.  

Alta de la Alianza (Height of the Alliance) is a memorial commemorating the united efforts of Peru and Bolivia in a war against Chile - both Peru and Bolivia, although united, lost in the war, yet the memorial was erected nonetheless.