Adventures in Chile

(*note: Luckily, since writing this entry, I have purchased a USB Key (and made friends with the two people that work in the little computer store near my house) and obtained a chair for my desk. I just didn’t feel like going back and rewriting, so you can mentally edit.

Well, despite the long break, I am alive and well in Viña del Mar, Chile, or Vineyard of the Sea. (How perfect, from one Vineyard to the next.) I am, however, quite without regular internet access, so I am trying to encounter a USB key so I can write at home, and then transport pictures, blog entries, and e-mails to the computers at school. If anyone knows how to say USB key in Spanish, it would be much appreciated, because that is one thing I will not be able to describe to a salesperson. Put that as number one on the list of things I wish I had brought with me to Chile.

Anyway, things are going very well here despite the lack of internet. My family is very nice and our apartment is becoming homey for me. I have my own room with a bed and a desk (but no chair, which I don’t fully understand). I live with a mother and three daughters, not too different from my family at home, which I suppose is somewhat comforting. On the first day, their aunt and uncle came with their cousin from Los Andes (a town, not the mountains, though it is located in the mountains), and we all went driving along the beach where I live. The dunes are like mountains, really, not like our Martha’s Vineyard two-foot tall ones, and the all the beaches are public, so you can go to the beach literally along the whole country. It’s one of the most beautiful things that I’ve seen here so far.

My Chilean family and me, on the beach

My orientation class has been going well so far. I get to the University via a bus called a micro, short for microbus. They are all old busses, usually Mercedes, that shake like an earthquake and cost all of about fifty cents. You can take them just about anywhere in Valparaíso or the surrounding area, but there is no central way of finding out which bus to take, let alone a website describing the routes, it is just general knowledge. I think I’ve finally learned the essentials of taking the micro to the necessary places – school and the mall (which, I have to say, isn’t a shabby place to shop at all).

Our orientation class has been several lectures, about half of them interesting, and “activities in the field”. The trip to Pablo Neruda’s house was one such activity, which we repeated for his Valparaíso house, as was a tour of the Valpo port on a boat. You can see from the picture I took the hills on which the city is built.



There are ascensors that travel up the hills. We took one to Pablo Neruda’s Valpo house. On top of the hills you can see a marvelous view, but you also get a first-hand glimpse at much of the poverty in Valpo - many of the poorest people I’ve ever seen live there. The word “house” is a charitable description of the less-than-shacks that many people on the hills live in. Many people near Neruda’s house gather to sell things to tourists for very cheap prices and try to make a living.


the view from the ascensor

Another activity in the field involved a trip to a tiny pueblito in the hills called Rabuco where a family invited all thirty-three of us into their home and fed us empanadas and some of the best bread you have ever tasted. There is one discoteca and one school in the next town over, and that’s pretty much what happens in Rabuco. And while I would never want to live there, the people are some of the nicest, most welcoming and inviting I’ve ever encountered.


The house our big group of gringos is about to squeeze into. And yes, that sign does say “There are cheeses”, though I really have no idea what it is supposed to indicate besides perhaps that the family sells cheese.


And the whole trip would have been much cooler if our hungry group, on the way to the empanadas and good bread, hadn’t been in the bus that broke down on the side of the Chilean highway…


…although, with I view like this, I suppose there could have been worse places to be stuck next to speeding cars.


Caitlin, Guster, and the Andes, all united in the Chilean countryside.

Besides the endless school orientation activities, I’ve been trying to live up my time in Chile by going out with friends when I can. Of course, all this is made more difficult by the fact that I’m a big dork and don’t like dancing until all hours of the night, and would much prefer spending one night at a pub talking and the next at home watching a movie and calling it a thrill of a weekend. Luckily, half of the students in my program seem to feel the same way (I knew there was a reason I was becoming such good friends with some of them), and all of the students are exhausted from our never-ending orientation activities combined with the drain of constantly trying to think in Spanish. Which means that after about two drinks, we’re all ready to go home and pass out. So much for fitting into the Chilean culture, which dictates that young people stay out dancing until 5 in the morning. At least that means we go out earlier and thus get happy hour prices.

Many nights, we’ve gone out with plans to start at a pub and then move on to the discotecas. As of yet, the latter hasn’t occurred, but we’ve still had our fair share of adventures. I will not bore anyone who has actually made it this far through my interminable entry with too many details, but one particularly and short story is that one night my friends and I found ourselves approached by a very drunk, very weird British man. Being that we stick out to just about anyone as rubios and gringos (blondes - which every one of us, including the brownest brunettes, get called – and foreigners), this Englishman could quickly identify us as non-Chileans and decided that we would be more sympathetic to an English speaker and would give him money for his long cab ride. Trying to ignore him and head back to Sara’s house, we found ourselves followed by the slightly belligerent bloke. Sara’s host sister’s thirty-two-year-old boyfriend had to walk each of us home, her family was so worried about us getting home safely! It probably doesn’t sound that amusing, but for those of us that had to deal with it, it’s become a pretty amusing Chilean adventure.

Ashley has also finally arrived and we’ve been keeping good company, even if that only means trips to knitting stores or watching TV over onces (which is a small snack in place of dinner, if I haven’t yet explained that) in my house. Many a knitting party and traveling adventure should ensue in short time!

And that pretty much brings me up to the current date. I’m leaving tonight for La Serena, a town 7 hours north on the coast, so hopefully it will be a little warmer. Wednesday I start classes and should get into a somewhat normal schedule, enabling more frequent posts. I’m planning on writing a little bit each night after I finish my homework and then posting it at least once a week at an internet café. Hopefully meaning no more marathon entries! Kudos to those who made it to the end of this one! I miss everyone a lot (and peanut butter, I really miss peanut butter :-p), but am truly having a great time here. Thanks for all the e-mails, keep them coming!


Jeff and I with a mule on the street in Valparaíso. Because where else would you expect to see a mule than in a major urban environment? I feel like this should be a post card home. “Missing you in Chile!”

Another busy day...

The view from the restaurant last night... a little glare from the window, but in real life, it was beautiful

Today was a bit warmer than my first two days in Santiago. I've learned that in Chile, it's all about layers. Not all buildings are heated, so you must be sure to wear enough clothing to keep yourself warm. And you must be sure to be able to remove clothing if it gets too warm wherever you are. Luckily, today I felt comfortable walking around the city in just a sweater, but I brought my jacket so I could have it for when I was eating in cold buildings...it's still cold when you're not moving around.

We went to Pablo Neruda's house in Santiago this morning. I would never want to live there, but it was still very interesting, and we finally had a guide that I could understand! He was very interested in the ocean and sailing, and there were many parts of his home taken from boats. Also, he had symbols of all different parts of Chile decorating his house. And the view was amazing!


The view from Neruda's balcony


Kendra, Sarah, Jenn, Jeff (of Chambers fame ;)), and Byron in front of Neruda's house


The dog that followed us to Neruda's house. One thing that has been difficult to get used to has been the dogs wandering the streets. Chilenos tend to believe that it is wrong to remove the cajones of animals... in other words, there's no fixing the dogs here.

After the tour of Neruda's house we went to the Mercado, the street market, for lunch. I had a seafood soup that was a bit strong and took some bravery to eat, but wasn't bad. We went to the National Museum of Fine Arts for a little, where I just crashed on a bench for most of the time and watched some weird modern art video with sound effects that I must admit were a little unsettling.


About half of the group sitting in el mercado

After the museum, we returned to the hotel and learned about our families. I am going to be living in Viña del Mar, which is the resort-ish town, with a woman and her three daughters. She is a school bus driver, and her daughters are all students, two at universities and one in secondary school. Their ages are 22, 20, and 14. I'm moving in with them tomorrow, so I hope it goes well!

We were free to go where we wanted for dinner, so a big group of us went out for sandwitches at a local cafe. Afterward, we picked up some ice cream at the Big John, a convenient store on the way from our hotel to the main restaurant area.

I need to be awake early tomorrow to go to Valparaíso and meet my family, so it's bedtime for me. Hopefully I'll be near some of my friends from the program, because we've been having a lot of fun so far!

Chile, Days 1 and 2...

My first chilean lesson: it is more difficult to sleep on planes than I once thought. But besides that, and the very sudden awakening at 6:30 am, the flight wasn't too bad. Waking up early was hard, but it payed off when I looked out the window (I was on the east side of the plane) and saw the sun rising over the Andes mountains. The first day was busy - it felt five days long. The program staff met us at the airport and took us to the hotel, which was somewhat comforting. There we had lunch and began our orientation before leaving for the Cerro de San Cristóbal. Cerro means hill or mountain, and the Cerro de San Cristobal has a lift you can use to access the middle and top of the hill. Everywhere you look, you see city, because Santiago is absolutely enormous.

After the Cerro, Jeff, my roommate Lucy, and I went out to find some dinner. Chilenos tend to eat dinner very late, so us US-ers felt pretty stupid trying to find dinner at 6:30. I have a feeling I will love the 9:00 dinners when I haven't been awake since 6:30 in the morning, but last night, all I wanted to do was get some warm meat in my stomach (there are a few vegetareans on the trip, so our provided meals have been mostly vegetables), and go to bed. We finally found a restaurant that would be considered fairly pricey, and had our meal in pleasant solitude as no one else was eating yet. The bill? 22,000 pesos, which is about $11 US per person. I went home and was asleep by 10 pm.

This morning Lucy and I were up at 7 to get ready for breakfast. The hotel breakfast was quite tasty, and afterward we all went to the campus of El Mercurio, one of the major Chilean newspapers. The grounds were huge, and the building we went through was so extensive. Much bigger than the tour I went on of the Vineyard Gazette... all two rooms of it. We had lunch at the hotel, vegetarean again, and then had more orientation sessions and a trip to the Precolumbian Art Museum. While I must admit my interest in Precolumbian South American art is somewhat low, the trip was still fun. We were all really tired though, so it was good to get back to the hotel before our welcome dinner.

The dinner was great. The location was a surprise: a restaurant in the center of the region of Santiago in which our hotel is located, Providencia. It was on the top floor, and slowly spun around for a view of the whole city. I had turkey (meat again!), and they served us pisco sours (pisco is unaged whisky, and a pisco sour kind of tastes like a strong margarita... not something i would order on my own, but it's the national drink of chile) and wine (i had red, because come on, it's chile!). The view was beautiful, but my pictures don't do it justice because of the glare from the window.

Overall, orientation is somewhat exhausting, and I miss my friends and family back home a lot. The highs are really high and the lows are really low, but I am still glad to be here. Santiago is a very interesting city, and has some beautiful buildings, but others are somewhat dilapidated. The architectural variation is extensive, mostly due to earthquakes which have given way to a need for rebuilding during many different time periods. The city is home to 5 million people, and is absolutely enormous. In some part because of this, I'm sure, it is one of the most polluted cities, which makes me glad that I'll be moving to Valparaíso on Sunday. Providencia is a very nice area, however, and all of the government buildings are quite impressive in their architectural style. (Sorry for the boring tourist information!)

The people in my program are very nice, and it's also great to have a familiar face in the other Georgetown participants. I would love to get e-mails from people at home, though, because I am missing everyone more than I ever imagined possible. Just to assure you that I am in fact having a good time, though, here are my pictures...

The CIEE group waiting in the Santiago airport. Don't we blend in.


Lucy and my room... so cute! The maids even straightened up our stuff, putting our books in piles and organizing our shower supplies!


Me on top of Cerro de San Cristóbal. Picture taken by Jeff :)


One of the views from the Cerro. One of the most interesting things here is the great variety in plant life. There are evergreen trees alongside palm trees and cactuses, and some trees are bare while others have all their leaves. There are cactuses (or cacti... which is correct?) in the bottom of this picture.


Believe it or not, those are snow covered mountains through the fog and smog. The view was clearer today, but I wasn't able to get a picture of the mountains without power lines or construction blocking the view.

written on the plane to chile

And she’s off! Despite a rocky start – my flight to Atlanta was cancelled – I am finally on my way. After finding out that bad weather all over the country had cancelled numerous Philly flights, and some begging with the Delta representative, I was able to get the last seat on an earlier flight to Atlanta than my originally scheduled one. There was only one difference…this seat was first class! So I got bumped on the first stretch of my flight. Sure, I was a left a little frazzled from the shock of seeing my flight cancelled, being told that I probably couldn’t get a flight until the next day, and then being (yet again) one of the few, the proud, the randomly selected and carefully searched passengers, but I think the cushy seats made up for it. And since the new flight was an hour earlier than my cancelled one, I had time to grab some dinner at the Atlanta airport at a restaurant which described itself, quite charitably, as having “Chinese Food”. Well, it was something. Now I’m lucky enough to have an empty seat next to me on this huge flight, so I’ll be able to stretch out and get some sleep. Yay for being short! As long as I can endure the father and son hunting travelers sitting behind me (really, I need to get a better understanding for some of the things people do for fun), and as long as the movie is better than the corny self-help guide to flying they’re playing right now (actors sitting in fake flight seats demonstrating how to swallow and gargle water to stretch your jaw while flying), this flight should be great! A “morning after” post will have to follow! Chile, here I come!

¡Chilespectacular!

I'm finally here. It was quite a journey, but I've made it! Things are very busy here, but many pictures and an update of my trip so far will follow later tonight. For now, I'm off to my "cena de bienvenido"... welcome dinner!