Julia Galasso -- Romania (Home Club: Cobleskill)

A post from Julia in her own blog:

http://usatoromania.blogspot.com/

Michela Rossetti -- Italy (Home Club: Southern Rensselaer)

A late November post from Michael: on her own blog:

http://usatoitaliarye.blogspot.it/

Emily Williams -- Slovakia (Home Club: Salem)

Two posts from Emily (12/3 and 12/21) on her blog:


https://fivedegreesofseparation.wordpress.com/

William Kelley -- Chile (Home Club: Glens Falls)

December 12, 2016

November 2016

Everything is going super well here in Chile.  Caught up in everything that has been going on, I’ve forgotten to report on those same activities!  I am living on a farm outside my city of San Carlos in the very north of the Southern Region of Chile, and smack in between the ocean and the Andes.  I live here with my host father and the two family dogs.  Just about every weekend we either travel to Santiago to visit my host brother, who lives with his grandmother in her apartment there while he is studying in University, or he comes here.  This provides me with a really stark contrast between rural and urban, while San Carlos gives me something in between.  At first, it was a bit difficult to navigate the constant changes in pace but now that I have settled in, I am very grateful to have such a varying lifestyle here.  It certainly keeps me on my toes.

I arrived towards the end of winter here in Chile, and things on the farm have been building throughout the spring towards right now.   Blueberries are falling off their bushes in astounding quantities, with raspberries on the way shortly.  The summer also brings more to work maintaining other crops like porotos and remolacha, both of who's names have given me fits in trying to translate.  Porotos, or beans, can refer to a seemingly infinite number of types of beens, although there also exists an even less exhaustible number of words to refer to beans.  Luckily my host dad, a bean farmer, doesn't like beans, so it doesn't come up terribly often.  The confusion with remolacha is more straight forward.  While remolacha directly translates to “beet”, or the well known purple beetroot, Chileans use “remolacha" to refer to sugar beets, which are used to make sugar or to feed animals.  They call normal beets “betarraga”.  All of this had my head twisting and turning, but never the less I love learning about all things related to the farm, and my host dad and everyone else here has always been excited to share share their knowledge with me.  One of my proudest moments came after talking to one of the farmers about the merits of pesticides on apple trees, when he asked me what varieties of apples we grew on my farm in the U.S.! (I live in the city of Albany).

My class here had two field trips this month, the first to Siete Tazas National Park and the second to Valparaiso.  Siete Tazas was spectacular! The Rio Claro, which runs down from the Andes carved the seven cup-like pools on its way down to the ocean.  Each has its own waterfall and most are surrounded by huge rock walls.  The river really earns its name, with cristal clear water running the whole way.  My classmates wasted no time in deeming it safe to drink, declaring Andean water the purest in the world.  I cautiously declined to drink it, citing the family nearby us with a young child peeing in the water.  The trip to Valparaiso was also super fun.  To make the most out of the day trip despide a 5 hour drive, we departed from the school at 2:00am.  Some kids tried to sleep, but the collective excitement of the class ensured that no one got more than a wink.  We arrived for our tour of the National Congressional Building somewhat drowsy, but equally excited.  We got a tour of both houses of the legislature, and I got to sit in the seat the president sits in when she addresses the nation on special occasions from the Salón de Honor.  Things are much more relaxed there then they are in Washington.  We didn't even go through metal detectors.  

All in all Im loving my experience here, and I can’t wait to do even more in the coming months! A big thank you to everyone that has made this possible for me.