En el paraiso - pero trabajando

Welcome back dear reader!

Whether you suffer from wanderlust or as a friend are interested in my life, here are some new information about my life in Santiago.

Hasta ahora solo llevo un mes aca, pero creo que ya me acostumbre mas o menos. Ya tengo mi carnet chileno (aunque salgo horrible en la foto!), estoy en recibiendo mi cuenta chilena y mi primer sueldo (por fin!) =) 
Asi que para vivir aqui tengo todo.

In my old apartment house I lived on 17th floor, so I had a lot of opportunities to try running some stairs. After 2 weeks of training I managed 15 floors upwards in incredible 46 seconds!!! That was almost twice as fast as I managed to go downwards.

 

Pero tambien me cambie la habitacion. Ahora vivo en un depto muy, pero muuyyyy chiquitito! Vivo en un apartamento de 15 qm en una casa de un caballero. Aunque es tan chico, me cuesta mas o menos 420€ mensual! Increible altos los arriendos aqui. The good thing is, now I live like 20 minutes walking from my work, which is incredible close for such a big city! Close by there is an interesting new building.

And my view from the window is amazing as well: the Andes right next to me. Mountains (they are called “hills” here ^^) from 1800m to 3200m altitude and just 8 to 20km away. I know how I will be spending some of my next weekends :)

biggest shopping mall in South America

Now it’s also time to talk about some bad things here. When living closer to the city center I always saw a lot of poor and homeless people begging or sleeping elsewhere (close to entrances of buildings or just somewhere leaning at a wall). The difference between poor and wealthy people is incredible high here in Chile. Also midday a father (with his young son next to him) offered me drugs directly on the street. This time up to now I didn’t get robbed here (fingers crossed!), but already saw 2 guys stealing from a car right outside of the house. And a colleague of mine had been poisoned and robbed in a bar/club.

Nevertheless it also happened that a homeless guy and I met in a street of beautiful nice houses and we were both joking about which one would be his and which one my house :)

Coming back to the bright side of life: It’s funny that I only have been here for a month and almost got discovered for a chilean movie production. I got casted successfully and kind of got the roll, but just a couple of days before shooting the scene it was all canceled. That’s a pity. Well, I’ll become a movie star another life then =)

School really is a hard work here for me. Because of my schedule (either very tight or with too much free time). And of course because I have to teach biology here, which I never studied. And I only teach the younger pupils from 5^th to 7^th grade, which can be especially exhausting. Enough moaning, my colleagues are really nice and always trying to help, there is a lot more socializing (also fiestas y asados) going on here than in I am used to in Germany. And in this “german highschool” a lot looks more german than in Germany, even the trash bins. And they celebrate the “Tag der deutschen Einheit” here!

my class during a test

correcting the tests all over my small flat

garbage bins in school

I sometimes heard church bells ringing, looking for the church itself I just found this bell tower. Strange if you are used to german church constructions.

   

Am still looking for some protestant church here to go to service, and sure I will also soon checkout this beautiful looking monastery about 1km away from my new home.

Dear friends, sorry for sometimes missing you birthdays, not calling, not stepping by for events like birthdays, weddings or newborn babies. Les llevo todos en mi corazoncito y pienso mucho en ustedes. No se preocupen, yo no olvido a ustedes!!!

Sientense abrazados todos mis amigos y lectores! Hasta prontito!

“Don” Miguel :-D