La Izquierda...

Pictures would make these entries a lot more interesting....I´ll see what I can pull off tomorrow. Just to give an update of what I´ve done this past week. Last friday, Carolina a friend of mine in Santiago, invited me to go to Vina del Mar for the weekend. It´s about an hour and a half outside of Santiago along the coast and quite beautiful when it isn´t cloudy. Things here have been quite cold and I´m really glad I brought my good sleeping bag. So Carolina stayed at her friend´s house Pamela who has a son who was having a birthday party. I prefer spending time with people instead of going around and looking at all the tourist sites. Pamela and her brother are really interesting people who are extremely educated and are part of the strong left (politically speaking) here in Chile. We definitely had some interesting conversations and my Spanish was put to the test. Claudio is in his mid twenties, studying at a university in Valparaiso, and extremely creative. Recently a famous performing group from France (Royale?) came to Chile and they set up a disaster scenario in downtown santiago and had a huge doll (30+ feet tall I think) walk around downtown and was controlled by the actors. Anyway, Claudio, wanting to help with a protest at the University in Valparaiso decided to make a similar doll (is there a better word than doll? can´t think of one at the moment) but one that represented the director of the university. They took the doll around Valparaiso and had him looking for his ¨blue envelope¨ (similar to the pink slip -- basically saying he should be fired). A few students also decided to go to Santiago and pose naked in front of the Government building to show there discontent. Two of the five protesters were at the house for Pamela´s son´s birthday party and I was happy to see the "other cheeks". Anyway, they were in the newspaper and it was interesting to be closely associated with some leftists as this seems to be a very strong trend considering the positions Bolivia, Venezuela, and Argentina have been taking lately. Seems like it is taking hold in most countries down here at least on some level.

Anyway, Carolina has proved to be a great tour guide and will be taking me down to Temuco and up to La Serena a week from Saturday.

I also had an interview this week with an NGO that works with environmental issues in Chile. They seem to naturally want to tap into my connections at the World Bank for potential funding. I might take a look at how they could tap into Bank funds, but it seems like a lot of the WB´s focus has moved away from Chile and is looking more at Africa, so funding is becoming a serious issues for a lot of Chilean NGOs.

Alright, Mamita has lunch waiting for me and the missionaries should be coming over. Signing out...