Fería, Colectivos, Fotos

Joel, you're already a celebrity here in Arica, I found your poster!

Students in Santiago, they get hazed one of the first days in class, however, one of the Ministry of Education workers told me, they must choose to do this(I don't know if I believe that).

They get mustard, ketchup, marker, eggs thrown all over them, and they must ask people for money on the street for a big party at the end of the first week.

Colectivos:

Colectivos are a cool way to get around Arica.  They each have their own route/line(línea).  Here are some pictures of a few I saw today.  They are like taxi's, but you get in with people 

you don't know.  It's only one dollar for the ride.  I however, don't take them very often, unless I am late, because I like to walk.  Crazy thing is, most of the people in Arica don't know which lines go where, or only know one linea, the one that they usually take.  So colectivos often pull over and people ask if the destination is on their route.

Fería:

The Fería is like a big flea market, it only occurs on sundays, and takes up one whole street for about 5-6 blocks.  They sell everything here. Here are a few pictures I took today, it's usually pretty crowded, you can also buy food and of course ice cream(i'll save the ice cream topic for another post...)

Also some shots of some of the people of Arica. 

Converse shoes, well most of them.  Chilean's love converse shoes and a lot of my students wear them in school as well. I never got into converse shoes, I think it's a 'punk music' thing here.

Around 470 pesos is one USD.  This is not in gallons, but Liters, a liter is around .27 gallons.

So, lets just times 741 by 4 for one gallon and then divide by 470 to get the price of gas in USD in gallons, it comes out to around $6.30 per gallon. And I thought 4 dollars was rough, I am glad I don't drive here...

Middle of a 'round about', I though these only occurred in Europe. I was wrong.

You can see the Fería on the right.

This is one of many 'parks' or 'plazas' in Arica.  I do pass two on the way to school everyday and there is always someone watering the grass, if they did not it would turn into dirt...

And here is a picture of almuerzo today. My host-grandpa is at the end of the table, next to Alejandro's wife, Alejandro(I'm terrible with names), my host-dad, and Rodrigo, Alejandro's son. 

With Terrarie joining us today for lunch.

Alejandro is the man, he is a good cook and I helped him cook the lunch for today, it was delicious and a good time, obviously with some wine, bread, and a few beers, and of course some fútbol on the TV.