Santiago/ Valpo Market

I just realized that I only have 14 days left of school ... including my finals. This seems absolutely absurd ... the fact that I have gotten through an entire semester and that I will be done with this experience so soon. Part of what surprises me so much is the fact that I can't believe finals are coming so soon and that I still feel like I haven't accomplished much in most of my classes. In reality I came to Chile to work on spanish and my classes have definitely helped me with the language so that's what I need to take from this.

Saturday we had a program trip to Santiago which focused on human rights and the politics during the era of Pinochet. The trip was really interesting and it took us to the municipal cemetery, through the city and to one of the hundreds of sites of torture through Chile during the 70's - which was converted in 2004 to a park for peace.

Learning about the politics during the era of Pinochet from Chileans and hearing all of the different points of view has been extremely interesting. As it would be in any society there are those that see Pinochet as someone who saved Chile from economic depression and is to thank for the prosperity they have today. Whereas there are many people who see Pinochet as a dictator who is to blame for the thousands of "desaparecidos", those who disapeared, during his regime. At the cemetery general we saw the graves of Salvador Allende who was taken down by Pinochet, as well as the family grave of Pinochet. Our guide mentioned that at times there are fresh flowers on the graves of the Pinochets and other times there are eggs thrown at them. The three following pictures are from the cemetery general in Santiago.






La Villa Grimaldi, currently a park for peace which was converted from a torturing ground for those in opposition of Pinochet. There were probably a dozen different little areas each with their own symbolism or purpose. For example, there was a small rose garden as shown in this picture and each rose bush signified each woman that was lost during the time of Pinochet.




This cube represented that the lives of those trapped inside the camp were off balance. Inside was a small collection of articles found in the camp.


It was definitely a different kind of day. The tour wasn't your typical walk around buying cheap touristy stuff or taking pictures in front of important buildings. It was a very sobering day and it got me to research more of what I had heard and try to better understand the magnitude of it all.


Sunday was a rest and make up for all the time I've been spending lately not doing homework day : ) But I spent a few hours walking around a flea market in Valpo with a friend. It was full of little stands selling things off of big sheets. There was a lot of used clothings and shoes, misc. hardware, toys, pirated movies and cd´s, old books and basically anything else you could imagine ... for example:

Who doesn't go to the sunday market to pick up a toilet? Seems logical enough.

This really surprised me ... bunnies!! birds!! hamsters!!! mice!?!

file this under miscellaneous!

Spa and Rafting Pictures

Drying process after slathering on the mud!

Thermal pools

Eliza and I

Chi Chi Chi - Le Le Le

Viva Chile!

Me in a Chilean flag t-shirt & face paint!

2-0 Chile

Well the good news is that Chile won against Peru!! Also, there were no disruptions at the game and I even learned a cheer! The little section that Peru had was guarded on both sides with Caribaneros - Chilean police and barricades.

Carabineros!

We got out of the game around 9:30pm and decided to grab dinner. After a taxi driver tried to take us for a ride we found a cool district and had a great dinner on an outdoor terrace. Of course we hadn't really thought through the fact that the last bus between Santiago and Viña was going to be leaving by 11:00pm and by the time we were done with dinner ... well we thought no big deal we'll go to a cafe sit and chat or maybe even out dancing for a few hours. We all thought, "But of course we can find something to do for the next few hours until the first morning bus leaves ..."

Unfortunately that wasn't the case. We did sit in a cute cafe which had walls covered in 50's memorabilia and played Elvis. We had called a cab and asked him to take us somewhere which ended up being closed and after driving around with him for at least 40 minutes he finally told us he knew of a place that would be open all night. Great. It turned out to be a cafe ... of a gas station. Not really a big deal, I think we all would have preferred less fluorescent lighting at that point but we just sat and chatted and when it came time to get to the bus station we hopped in a quick cab and made it home in time for sunrise.


After arriving back to the apartment I literally had enough time to scrub the face paint off and get to Valparaíso for my volunteering job. This basically sums up my frustrations with the inefficiency of the whole country ... I arrived at 9:00am, after having not slept the night before, on time and ready to go with games for the 5th grade classes I have been working with.
I go to the director's office to check-in and find the teacher I'm helping. The director isn't there, so I ask someone in the office next door to help me. I explain what's going on and she asks me to take a seat while she finds my teacher. Immediately I know that she has gone back to what she was doing when I walked in and is not looking for my teacher. 20 minutes later ... still sitting, impatiently ... I get up to look around myself and ask her again ... trying to explain exactly who I was with the week before. This goes on for another 20 minutes before the director gets into her office and at this point I'm really frustrated. Of course I feel bad because she clearly has a lot going on and I'm probably not a priority but ... still frustrating. She decides to pop her head out over the ledge to try and see the teacher I've been waiting for (the school is more or less one big box which opens into a playground so from every floor you can see across and down to the other floors) ... she is also asking random school girls as they walk by ... frustration mounting ...
Finally I see the teacher, catch her attention and managed to chat with her long enough to find out that she is leaving because her daughter was sick. Needless to say I was just glad to finally find her and I was pretty ready to just get home and nap.

In my Organizational Sociology class we learned that Paris has the highest level effciency (in terms of working hours) and Santiago has the lowest worldwide average level of efficiency. At this point I'm not surprised in the least.

Ok, same day ... after a long nap and quick packing ... we were off to Mendoza, Argentina!!
We took a direct overnight bus from Viña and after about 2 hours crossing the border made it in at 7:00am. Dropped our stuff off at the hostal and figured out the best thing to spend our day doing. BIKES AND WINE! We set the tour up through our hostal and spent the whole day riding bikes through the Mendoza wine valley. One of the girls I was traveling with, Eliza, has never learned to ride a bike so we had to reserve a tandem bike for her to ride on. We were really lucky that the company even had a tandem so the day started really well! When we arrived to the bike shop though the young argentinian told us that a pair from the last group just took the bike. Well ... we didn't really have a choice so we grabbed two bikes and took our chances going to the closest vineyard to hunt down these bike thieves! Amazingly enough they were at the first vineyard! It took an hour before we found them and they finally came out to swap bikes but at least we were ready to go.


Our plan was to bike to the furthest vineyard on the route and work our way back as time permitted. Once we reached our first stop (probably 9km) we realized that one of the bikes had a flat. Of course calling the company didn't help because they didn't answer ... so we were left to get all the way back. It was probably the wine tasting but we got back at the end of the day, probably a lot sorer then we would have liked (the other bike that we had had the narrowest seat I've ever seen ... yikes) but in good spirits nonetheless. It was really interesting learning about the production of wine. We also visited an olive factory and a chocolate factory! I guess factory maybe isn't the right descriptive ... they were little factories : )

try and notice the flat tire : )

The next day we had planned to go to the spa but were advised to wait and spend the day walking around the city and going to the San Martin Park. We had another great day and it's just so amazing how different Mendoza felt from any other city I've been in while here. It feels very European and for the most part we didn't really see many signs of economic hardship. The streets are lined with beautiful trees and the sidewalks are lined with fashionable boutiquesplazas with artesans and cafes. The park was really amazing and we spent the day exploring, taking a nap under the trees, and climbing the giant hill to see this beautiful monument.

Plaza España

Cute Argentinian girls!

Gates to the entrance of the park

After what was definitely at least 8 miles of walking we took the night off from cooking and headed out with friends from the hostal to have a real Argentinian meal. Argentina is famous for it's meat and wow ... they don't mess around. Everything I had all weekend was delicious. That night we stayed up playing card games and chatting with new friends we had made at our hostal.
By now we had really earned a day at the spa. It was a great day and verrrry relaxing. We had an hour drive into the pre-cordillera, the mountains before the Andes, and found ourselves at a beautiful hillside oasis. We soaked in thermal pools, took a mud bath, had a hydro massage and napped next to the pool for the rest of the afternoon. That evening I decided that I was definitely staying another day as Mendoza became more and more beautiful. We had a big dinner at the hostal and even had our own Argentinian Parrilla (bbq style meat) yummm.

Our last day in Mendoza (or what turned into the last day after deciding ... school? schmool!)
was spent horseback riding and white water rafting! The horseback riding was interesting because it had been so long since I had done a trail ride, let alone along the edges of some pretty narrow cliffs (small cliffs, not really cliffs at all ... more like hills ... don't worry mom)!



Rafting was definitely a blast. It was the three of us girls and a couple from Canada. Our guide was hilarious and made plenty of jokes prior to getting onto the river. It was my first time and even though it wasn't really an intense set of rapids it was a really great experience. Apparently come January with the amount of melt off they can't even keep the whole course open because it becomes so narrow. Who knows, maybe I'll go rafting again! The guide told us that Chile has the best rafting in S. America and maybe I'll be able to do it when I head south!



The trip home went well and I was able to sleep quite a bit on the bus ride. I still kind of feel as if I'm not going to half as much class as I would be back in "real life" but I am hopeful that next semester in Copenhagen will at least prepare me for getting back to GW.

Hopefully I'll have some rafting pictures to post soon! For now this is probably more than enough, but thanks so much for reading it's always appreciated.

Quite the sailor

Ok, I won't pretend to be a real sailor ... especially not standing in this tiny little sail boat.

Now you have a reference point, especially when you think "How could she hit her head?" Well, I had my last sailing class and it we went out with a bang! Figuratively. Living on the coast has it's advantages and disadvantages, one of the few disadvantages being that the sky doesn't seem to clear up until at least 12noon. Every class we had grey, overcast skies with little wind. The little wind part I appreciated, it meant that we would more or less float around on our sail boats, opposed to flying around : )

This class I woke up peaked out the window and was pleasantly surprised to find a blue sky! A little less pleasantly surprised to realize how windy it was! Quick recap of all previous classes ... I'm a big scaredy cat, and frustrations have been running high, especially with our instructor who after 7 classes calls us all by the wrong names (there are only 8 people, 4 of whom are either named Christian or Christan).

Well I paired up with a friend from COPA and we did great! It was amazing how fast the wind was changing directions and really making it dificult but we managed. All the other boats (ok, I already told you there aren't many people in my class) toppled over taking hard turns. It was probably the only day I would have been ok with falling in, but the ocean is cold! Falling in is never ideal. Two other girls from the class told us afterward that they couldn't believe we hadn't fallen in. We definitely had a close call where our boat was literally sideways with high pitch screams of fear coming from me : ) Somehow we balanced long enough to get the boat back down safely and stayed dry the whole class!



I also had the Don Quijote musical last night! Differences I found going to the theater here ...

1. No one dressed up ... ok, I dressed up. Because I brought a nice dress and no better reason to dress up has presented itself! It was 9:00pm on a Saturday night at a really beautiful theater, why not change out of jeans?
2. No orchestra, there was definitely an orchestra pit so perhaps because this is a traveling musical it just doesn't have the resources to have live music.
3. No intermission. Not loss here, I just started getting nervous after 2 hours thinking ... if there is still an intermission coming ...
4. Musical theater becomes karoake for some! Because this is such an important show for spanish speaking countries the songs were already known by most and meant that they joined in to help the cast : ) The friend I went with said, "I couldn't tell if it was just the acoustics but there might have been someone singing behind me" ... something tells me it wasn't the acoustics.


The music was absolutely beautiful and the actors did an amazing job. The municipal theater was remarkably grandiose with balconies that reminded me of Ford's theater. Watching the show in spanish was fun, I definitely didn't understand everything but I got the "gist" of it. Listening to the songs I kept thinking ... would this be as beautiful in english? I'm sure with a great piece of music the songs are just as lovely but ... something about having them sung in a foreign language ... maybe it's like going to the opera.

So I've got a really short week - 2 classes! Yeah, poor me : ) Wednesday is the Peru vs. Chile game and I'm hoping that we win because yesterday Argentina beat Chile 2-0 and the country is feeling a little down. Thursday I'm off to Mendoza!! Can't wait!! Hopefully I'll have some pictures up after the game but if not definitely after Mendoza.

Until then. Hoping the postcards are finding you!

My host dad asked if I had "más libres"

Which basically mean it's confirmed ... I will not be fitting into my clothes by the time I leave Chile.
Perhaps the nice weather and days at the beach will spur an ... eating less Chilean sweets occurance, but I won't get them once I leave Chile so it's going to be a tough call.






Soo delicious. sweet pastry filled with kind of a carmel substance which is called "manjar" ...
basically Patty buys a whole roll of this weekly, and then serves it to me with breakfast ... ahhh!






Ok, let's see ... news, news & news.

I'm going to a Chile vs. Peru fútbol (soccer) match next week, which is exciting/makes me a little nervous ... but it should be a lot of fun and a really interesting experience.

This weekend I'm taking Patty to see a musical!! I'm soo excited!! It's at the local Theater and when I went to buy tickets not a single seat was occupied so I got a great pair of seats : ) We are seeing Don Quijote, and the adaptation should be interesting considering the story is over 1,000 pages. Also, with Patty in school now we don't really go out together so I thought this would be a fun thing we could do together .... and it guarantees she can help me understand the plot when I get lost : )

It is finally starting to feel as if it is spring here, and actually almost like summer! Yesterday I spent the day at the beach with my friend Eliza and just layed out basking in the sunshine. It was about 75 degrees and just a perfect day, which of course included no homework ... the same homework I'm putting off to write this of course!

Speaking of ... I thought maybe I'd expand on how my classes are going/have been.

Spanish class is definitely my favorite, as frustrating as it can sometimes be ... there are only 5 people in my class so it's the most I am ever able to talk in a class and our professor is really great. It of course gives me the most amount of homework, usually an essay over the stories we are assigned and group projects exploring the city. Because we have so few people in our class it means that we do twice as much as the other classes that have at least 10 people, but I guess we have an advantage this way.

On to my least favorite class ... Economic Development ... it's full of first year Chilean students, and having a class with mostly Chileans is good because I'm really being pushed to their level and the professor can't slow down for exchange students but ... wow, I don't know if it is because they don't leave home to go away to school but these first year students might as well be freshman in high school. My most recent project was with three Chileans and one girl from Georgetown, a presentation on the production of Chocolate in the world and it's relevance to our class. Basically we got together the week of to figure out the presentation, decided that it would be sent out via e-mail ... I never saw it before the day of the presentation ... luckily the professor didn't show up that day (not surprising) and we didn't present but ... once I saw what they had made, I seriously would have been embarassed to stand in front of a class with it (i.e. a presentation on slave labor in Africa with pink and purple font and backgrounds ...yikes) Needless to say, it was fixed before we presented this week and they were good about talking and explaining our points ... so no harm, no foul. It has been a big frustrating with our professor in that class as well ... he's come to class 40+ minutes late twice, hasn't shown up at all twice which I think means he's been on time once. Something to get used to I guess, basically it just means that the students aren't ever on time either.

Ecology of Chile - good, learning quite a lot ... I have my first exam tomorrow, so maybe I should be writing this faster and studying : )

Art and Society in Chile Prehispanico - This class only meets once a week and it's completely lecture based. It was neat when we went north because a lot of what we had learned we saw for ourselves - the oldest mummies in the world, geoglyphs etc. The only problem is that all semester all we have is one exam ... not a bad thing but kind of scary to go into an exam knowing that it is basically 80% of your grade (attendance counts for the other %)

Sociology - really good, maybe a little too easy ... almost entirely foreign exchange students. I'm working on a project now with two german students which has been fun. The professor is very relaxed and for a 4 credit class we are supposed to meet twice but only one time so far this semester has he asked us to come twice. Also, he said we could present in english if we wanted ... I'm not sure how that would help us with bettering our spanish (our group is presenting in spanish) but I suppose it's a nice gesture.


Plans for more travel are going well. I'll be in Mendoza, Argentina in two weeks where I'll be stocking up on cheap delicious food and maybe even a day at the spa! I also just bought my plane ticket between Punta Arenas (far south of Chile - end of the world!) and Santiago for December, when I'll be exploring the lake district and Patagonia!! Very excited about this but I cannot believe how little time I have between now and then. We have about 7 weeks of school left ... and I'll be back in the states in about 10 weeks!! Yikes!









Torres del Paine!













Ok, well doing homework is now really the only option I have.

Thanks for reading. Missing you all.