Week 2 in Chile

Hola,

This blog entry is going to attempt the impossible of summarizing all of the exciting things that have happened in the past week and a half without writing an entire novel.

Tres hermanos y madre

Last Friday was Filipe, my youngest homestay brother's 16th birthday.  We had a special sushi lunch then friends and family came over for homemade 'love' cake.

Saturday Filipe had a soccer match and our family had another homestay host family over for a dinner of a seafood stew.  The student from the other family is in the |LSU choral group and he and I put on a little performance, me on harmonica, to everyones amusement.

During the 'work' week the four science students attended an Oceanography conference at the University of Concepcion.  There we spent half of the day watching science presentations, mostly in Spanish, mingling with other researchers and professors.  It's always a nice experience talking to people with the same interests and passions.  There was even a room with a full day of biogeochemical research topics being presented.  For what sounds to be a such obscure topic, I was very pleased to find an international  group dedicated to similar studies as myself.

The walk from the university to the bus station back to our homebase at the high school allowed us to enjoy the public art filled campus and streets in Concepcion.  

This weekend I went to a barbeque for Filipe's class and caught an amazing sunset at the desembocadura *river mouth, where the Bio Bio River enters the Pacific Ocean.  There were seaside cliffs, rock outcroppings, rocks to scramble on and big waves some lucky surfers were riding.  It was a wonderful bookend to another great week in Chile.