Escuela Bellavista. Learning Spanish is easier among friends!

Why study Spanish in Bellavista?

- We are certified professionals

At Escuela Bellavista all of our professors are certified and specialize in teaching Spanish as a foreign language! Lidia, Boris, Yuri, Vanessa, Cathy, Catalina, Jenny, Italo, Sebastián, Cristina, Mauricio, Piedad, Fernando and Jarka have worked together for more than 21 years.

- You are part of our Family

At Escuela Bellavista we want you to feel like you are part of the family. We strive to create a warm and friendly environment in every classroom. We are known for our small group classes of no more than 6 people per group. This allows us to offer personalized attention to each student ensuring their understanding and success in the language.

- Our personalized teaching method

Our classes are adapted to the student's level and his interests. We prepare our own lessons so that we can bring additional personalized materials to our students. Our teaching concept incorporates both written and oral exercises to help the student understand and learn more efficiently.

- Free Activities to practice your Spanish

If you are practicing, you are learning. Our courses include weekly extracurricular activities that are free of charge for all of our students. We offer salsa classes, excursions to different points of interest in Santiago, and after school grammar courses all designed to provide the student with opportunities to connect what they have learned in the classroom to real life situations in Chile.

- Spanish conversation policy

The classes are in Spanish and Spanish only. Students are encouraged to practice their conversational skills by speaking only in Spanish to each other and to their teachers. The extra curricular activities and the mid-day break are oriented to practice Spanish in everyday situations. This policy has been proven to be an excellent method.

Keep reading about this school at Escuela Bellavista.

Queda prohibido - Pablo Neruda (poem in Spanish)

Pablo Neruda's great poem, with music and images related to it. It's really nice! He is one of the greatest poets in Latinamerica!!!



Check out more poems on Youtube.

CUECA CHILENA. Traditional dance video!

Check out more videos of Chile on Youtube.

Getting Used to Clean Air

The plane ride to Calama is a boys' club; the flight attendants strolling up and down the aisles are the only women you'll see. Calama's a mining town and, therefore, if you've got business there, chances are you're a man. It's the base-camp for the world's largest open-pit copper mine, a massive terraced crater called Chuquicamata, first worked under the Guggenheim brothers' Anaconda Copper Co.

The bus from there to San Pedro was a different deal entirely. The company running shuttles to San Pedro, 120 km east of the airport, didn't have enough passengers to make a trip economically feasible. This was lucky for me, because I took a taxi into town, ate lunch and bought a bus ticket for less money than the shuttle would have cost. No skill, pure dumb luck-especially since the cabbie gouged me out of $2 bucks. The bus, though, took two hours, just like the flight, even though it never stopped.

Now, not to dwell on my health, because I've done that recently in these entries, I went to San Pedro to get healthy, to get pure, clean, dry air. And on the bus, the window wide open and my right arm pinning back the whipping sun curtain, I breathed in that air, looking out on the white rock of the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world. At least initially, I felt better, or at least that there was hope for my sinuses.

The Atacama Desert is just like what you've seen of it in movies, like, say The Motorcycle Diaries, where the young Che walks across a dry, bright desert, flat and extensive with the sun blaring down so hard you squint through sunglasses. It's unforgiving land in the broadest sense of the term.

My bus got in shortly after 2 p.m, and it was the same one I took out 6 days later-on the surface, a newer model, but with the back bumper missing and the fan belt spinning wildly and totally exposed. My plane had left at 7 a.m., forcing me to leave for the airport at 5 (I woke up 5 minutes before the Supper Shuttle came, luckily, because the alarm didn't go off). If I felt healthier, the tradeoff was how tired I was.

Read full story at TravelPod

Great way of learning Spanish. Bueno Entonces review from Facebook

by Preproduction

This is absolutely one of the most fun language lessons I have ever seen. It is like a very entertaining TV show, with intelligent conversations and good acting. Complete refreshement after all those boring podcasts that we are used to.

I am looking forward to more of it! Great work:)

Check out more on facebook.com/buenoentonces

Chilean Cuisine

Chilean cuisine stems mainly from the combination of Spanish cuisine with traditional indigenous ingredients, with later influences from other European cuisines, particularly from Germany, Italy, France and the Middle East. The food tradition and recipes in Chile stand out due to the varieties in flavors and colors. The country's long coastline and the Chilean peoples' relationship with the sea adds an immense array of ocean products to the variety of the food in Chile. The country's waters are home to unique species of fish and shellfish such as the Chilean sea bass, loco and picoroco. In addition, many Chilean recipes are enhanced and accompanied by wine, owing to the fact that Chile is one of the world's largest producers of wine. The countries inmense geographical diversity allows for a wide range of crops and fruits to be present in Chilean food.

Major Crops

Throughout Chile and South America you may find fruits and vegetables that have been cultivated for ages. These agricultural products are appreciated and heavily implemented onto several cooking recipes. They have also been exported around the world as important agricultural commodities. Among the most known are the following:

• Olives: Although originating in Europe Azapa olives from Arica are considered a variety originating in the northern region and are widely recognized in Chile.

• Chirimoya: a peruvian fruit native to the subtropical regions of the Andes mountains, it is widely consumed and produced.

• Maize: Recognized in Chile and Peru as choclo, and in English speaking countries as corn. Maize was a staple diet that prospered in three empires Mayas, Aztecs, and in closest proximity to Chile the Incas. It was also cultivated in varying systematic methods by the Atacameño. Through trade and travel, Maize brought and eventually embraced by the Mapuche and using it towards their culinary arts.

• Lúcuma: A subtropical fruit of Andean origin, native to Peru it has grown well for centuries in southern Ecuador and Chile's northern coast. The fruit is very nutritious, having high levels of carotene and vitamin B3. The lúcuma is exported all around the world. It is an important flavor for gelatin desserts such as ice cream.

• Ugni molinae: is an endemic shrub native to southern Chile. The Mapuche Native American name is Uñi, and Spanish names include Murta and Murtilla ("little myrtle"); it is also sometimes known as "Chilean guava". It was used among the Mapuche before the arrival of the Spaniards. It is an ingredient used for marmalades and liquor.

• Potato: Featured heavily in dishes such as cazuela, the potato native to the Americas, was widely grown in Chiloe Archipelago. The potato is a fundamental product in a wide array of dishes.

• Quinoa: grown as a crop primarily for its edible seeds and originated in the peruvian Andean region of South America, where it has been an important food for 6,000 years. Certain varieties of Quinoa are harvested in Concepcion, Chile, known as the Catentoa, and the Regalona is abundant in Temuco, Chile.

Seafood

An elemental characteristic of Chilean cuisine is the variety and quality of fish and seafood, due to the geographic location and extensive coastline. The Humboldt current causes a supply of seafood that gathers along the Pacific coast perpendicular to Chilean waters. These include squid, soleidae (sole), albacore, codfish, hake, corvina (salmon), batoidea and tuna. Seafood such as abalone, prawns, clams, crabs, shrimp, oysters, lobsters, percebes, picorocos, and eels are also fished in large amounts. Congridae or in Chile known as congrio can be deep fried in batter, or seasoned and baked. It may also be made into a stew: this popular dish, called Caldillo de congrio, was praised in an ode by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

To keep reading about this topic, visit Wikipedia.

Great pics from Chile

To search for more images of Chile, go to Flickr.