Chile

For those of you who don´t know, I am spending the fall semester abroad in Santiago, Chile. I arrived in Chile last Wednesday, so it´s been a little over a week, and I will be here until the end of December. As I was lazy, I didn´t bother creating a blog before I left, but I´ve had some requests to make one so I figured I might as well. Here it is.

My South American adventure started out on July 15, but in reality, I was working on it long before then. I sent my visa application to the Chilean consulate in early June, but on July 10, I still did not have a visa. On July 11, I got up at 4 in the morning, went to the airport, and caught a 6:05 flight to Los Angles. I landed there at approximately 7:30 Pacific time, and I spent a nice long chunk of time finding my way to the bus station. I had to change buses in the middle of nowhere, and I was half expecting to be stuck there for the rest of the day, but surprisingly, the buses came on time, and I made to the consulate by 10. The fact that I actually figured out where it was surprises me because I had intelligently forgotten to take the address with me. I found the consulate, and within a half hour of getting there, I had my visa. I had booked my return flight to Denver for 8:30 that night, but I decided that since I had my visa, I might as well go back to the airport to try to catch an earlier flight back. I walked back toward the bus stop I had come from, congratulating myself on my luck, because I was just in time for the 11:00 bus. I got to the bus stop a little before and waited there; I could see Beverly Hills, but I figured that I didn´t have enough time to go explore if I wanted to catch the bus in time. However, when at 11:20, the bus still hadn´t come, I figured I might as well wander for a while and try to catch the next bus. As I was walking along the road, the bus came along, and again, I was astonished at my luck. I waited for the bus, and the bus driver slowed down, looked at me, and sped off without stopping. I was irritated, but didn´t mind so much, because another bus was scheduled to arrive in a few minutes anyway. I walked around the neighborhood a little bit, and then headed back towards the bus stop. This time, as I was standing there, the bus made a turn at the road before the stop, and I was left watching the bus drive off into the distance, cursing furiously. I then decided I would try to catch another bus to get to the airport and set off walking toward the stop. However, when I got there, I discovered that there had been some sort of shootings or something there, so the roads were closed and buses were taking random detours. So, I walked back to the first bus stop and went further up the road to make sure the bus wouldn´t take a detour before it reached me and waited in the scorching sun for a half hour. I finally made it back to the airport and found a flight at 4 that got me back to Denver at 7:30. Although a somewhat painful day, at least I got my passport and visa and could actually start preparing for my trip to Chile.

I spent the entire weekend relaxing, and when Monday came around, I started to pack frantically. I didn´t have half of the things on my list, so I just began to operate on the assumption that I would be able to find everything I needed or wanted in Chile. I didn´t want to take more than 1 suitcase, so I had to be extremely selective about the things I was going to take. I brought an ancient laptop with me, in the hopes that it would at least allow me to check my email and store photos. Tuesday morning, I was still finishing my packing, and I didn´t really close my suitcase until a minute before we left the house. As an afterthought, in part to satisfy my mother, I grabbed my coat on the way out the door.

When I got to the airport, I discovered that my flight had been delayed until 6:30, where it had originally been scheduled for 4:30. That meant I wouldn´t be able to catch my connecting flight in Dallas. The agent got me on a Frontier flight (I was flying American) at 4, and then proceeded to tell me I had 4 minutes to check my bags in the other terminal. I literally ran to the other side of the airport with my brother bringing my suitcase behind me and begged an agent to find me someone to check in my bags before it was too late. I got to the agent, and she spent a good 10 minutes looking at the computer, then told me that there were no seats available on that flight. However, she checked in my bags and gave me a standby boarding pass anyway so that I could go take it up with the gate agent. I ran to security, gave my parents and brother a quick goodbye hug, and proceeded onwards. At security, I discovered that with less than 30 minutes until the flight´s departure time, I had received a boarding pass that earned me the opportunity to go through a secondary screening. That ate up a solid 5 or 10 minutes. I finally made it to the gate, where the gate agent gave me a seat without much problem. I finally started to relax. I boarded the plane and sat down, preparing to be downcast about how I wasn´t going to see my family for 6 months. A couple minutes later, someone else came by and said they had my seat. It turns out that both of us had been given the same seat on our boarding passes. The flight attendant took my boarding pass and told me to sit tight until she told me what to do. At that point, I started internally preparing to throw a fit if they told me I had to get off the plane. With everything I had been through in the past hour, I was not pleased with this new development. Luckily, they found another seat for the other person, and I made it to Dallas. The rest of the trip passed fairly smoothly compared to the first part until I lost a lot of money in my first two hours in Santiago.

Now, on to Santiago. It´s a big city that has a fairly good public transportation system. It´s winter here, so it´s really cold sometimes. There isn´t any indoor heating, so I normally bundle up indoors as well as outdoors. THANK YOU, mother, for making me bring my coat. I would have been frozen without it. There´s a lot of nightlife here - all the young people party until 4 or 5 in the morning on weekends. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning, all of the students in my program stayed in a hotel, and we had orientation. On Friday, we moved in with our host families. My host family consists of a mother and a daughter who is older than me. They are both nice, and they´ve been very good about my vegetarianism. I´m not starving for sure - in fact I´m probably going to pack on some weight during my time here. We live in an apartment that is conveniently situated very close to the metro station. There´s also an absolutely breathtaking view of the Andes from the living room.

All of last week, we have had a class through the program about Contemporary Chile that has involved guest lectures, watching movies and documentaries, listening to music, and field trips. My first weekend in Santiago, my host sister took me to an Andean folk music gig at a club, which was a lot of fun. I really liked the music and hope that I get to hear more of it. I also went to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which has some really good artwork. There was a special exhibition of an artist´s work at the museum as well, and at the same time we were there, the artist was also there, having coffee in the cafe, so we got to meet him. Other places I have been are Pablo Neruda´s house in Santiago, Parque Forestal, and the Cultural Center at Palacio de la Moneda.

The Chilean accent is difficult to understand, and they use a lot of slang here, so I´ve only been able to half-communicate in Spanish. Hopefully, that´ll start getting a little better in the near future though.

There is an abundance of delicious fresh fruit and vegetables here. I have been eating kiwi like mad, and we also bought a fruit called pepina today that I´m going to try. Another thing that merits mentioning is the monster celery. It comes nearly up to my waist!

I´ve tried several of the alcoholic drinks here, including pisco, vaina, and Chilean wine, but I really don´t like alcohol that much. I prefer the amazing fresh fruit/juices and fun flavors of ice cream as an occasional indulgence.

I haven´t done any traveling anywhere yet. I´m waiting for things to settle down and to get acquainted with my environment first. I will hopefully start taking some trips in August though.

I´ll try to update this semi-regularly. All of you that know me pretty well know that I´m not good at that sort of thing, but I´ll make a conscientious effort. My laptop doesn´t seem to like connecting to the Internet, so I´m still in the process of trying to get it to work.

I miss all of you and want you to let me know how things are going. You should leave comments, so I feel like I´m communicating with someone other than myself. It´ll make me happy.