I'm home!

Well, I'm back home in Gringolandia, land of the gringos. It’s good to be back, but strange to think that my time in Chile is over. I learned so many things that were fun to learn and worthwhile, but now are completely useless; such as how to use the transportation system, the money, all the chilenismos (Chilean words), and where everything is in Viña and Valparaíso. My host parents kept telling me that my time there would seem like a dream when I came back, and they’re probably right. But it was a good dream while it lasted!
Here’s a list of my favorite things about Chile, in no particular order, to end this blog. Thanks for reading!

• My family. They are amazing people. They really love each other, which was obvious, so it was a great environment to live in. And they cared about whether I had a good time or not, and went out of their way on a regular basis to make me feel at home.
  
• Chilean food! Manjar, chirimoya, helado de lucuma, panqueques, carbonada, palta, la salsa de fideos y la marmelada que mi familia hace, conitos, alfajores, frutilla, pebre, pan chileno, and of course empanadas de queso/jaiba queso, etc....and learning all those words
• Making videos and interviewing lots of different people for projects in TV Journalism and my final project for Spanish class, where we interviewed a graffiti artist
• The trips I took, especially to Chiloé and Machu Picchu
• Speaking in Spanish most of the time, including with German and French exchange students
• Using different money, buses, recognizing different brands: being in a foreign country, essentially
• Living by the ocean and going to the beach in November, December
• The hills and elevators and personality of Valparaíso
• Meeting new people, especially my friend Daniela and her family (her little sisters are really cute!)
• Bad subtitles and dubbing on TV

with my mamá chilena, Ximena

Chiloé and Pucón

I got back yesterday from the last trip of my trip. I went to the south of Chile, just to the gateway to Patagonia, to the islands of Chiloé, and then up again to Pucón, which is the adventure capital of Chile. Chiloé was at the top of my list of places to visit in Chile for lots of reasons. First, from what I had heard, it was incredibly beautiful, with the Pacific on one side and a long bay between it and the mainland of Chile, with one large island and around 40 smaller ones, all rolling green hills. It didn’t disappoint. With a friendly and informative guide originally from New York state who now lives in Chiloé with his Peruvian wife and kids, we took a hike along the coast with gorgeous views of the ocean, lots of happy cows and sheep, and beaches where only a few people come each year, with dark pebbly sand and purple shells. During the same tour we went out in a boat to experience another of the joys of Chiloé: penguins!! We saw dozens of penguins (plus other interesting birds and some sea otters) in their natural habitat, hopping around on the rocks on several tiny islands and swimming in the glassy-clear, cold water. I decided that if I’m ever a bird I’ll come down and live on Chiloé because it seems like a big party.

Four other aspects attracted me to Chiloé, all of them to do with the unique culture. One is curanto, a typical dish of the islanders (Chilotes), which is cooked on hot rocks in a hole in the earth, covered with a species of giant leaf that we later noticed growing all over the island. Curanto has everything: lots of mussels and clams (which I admit I’m not fond of, so that part was wasted on me), chicken, ham, sausage, and finally potato pancakes that get cooked in the upper layers of leaves. To see this being made (and then eat it), we took a boat trip out to a small island called Mechuque, where there is only electricity between 8 and 10 at night, in part so that the islanders can watch the most important telenovelas. The boat trip there was beautiful because we could see the green hills of the smaller islands and also, in the distance, we could just barely make out the snowy mountains of the Andes, which looked like they came right out of the water.

The churches of Chiloé are Patrimonio de la Humanidad (World Heritage sites, like in Valparaíso). There are about 20 of them I think, of which I saw 5 or 6, all wooden and most of them with tall round spires and bright paint jobs. This blue one is right by the ocean. Inside a church in Dalcahue, we found this crazy painting of Jesus with four of the mythological creatures of Chiloé; the mythology of the islands is totally unique and quite expansive. In the upper left corner is Trauco, a short, ugly gnome who seduces virgins. Pincoya is at bottom left; she is the beautiful goddess of the fertility of the waters. At bottom right is El Caleuche, the ghost ship that haunts the waters of Chiloé, and at top right is Camahueto, a beautiful bull/unicorn. There are lots of stories about brujos (witches) and many superstitions. The whole feel of the mythology is pretty dark and spooky, helped out by the fact that Chiloé is so isolated from the mainland.

Another thing about Chiloé is its houses, called palafitos, which are built on stilts over the beaches. Most of the time you can see the structure below them, but when the tide comes in the boats can float up close to the back doors—which I didn’t get to see, but I love the idea. From the street side, the houses look like any other. We saw these in the town of Castro, where we also some men building by hand three of the wooden boats like the ones we saw all over the islands painted bright colors. That is the other thing that attracts me to Chiloé: it’s stuck in time, and the people do many jobs the way they have been done for generations. And to top off this part of the trip, we saw two giant waterfalls on the way back from Mechuque.

Then, after an 11-hour bus ride that should only have taken 8, we got to Pucón. Pucón is a very touristy town, but one of the most beautiful little cities I’ve ever been to. On one side you can see the snowy, perfectly shaped Volcán Villarica (It is always active and smoking, but has not erupted since 1984; there is a green-yellow-red warning system in town in case of another eruption). On the other side is a blue lake with a volcanic sand beach, surrounded by green hills. The style of the buildings is like alpine/Camp Snoopy/Paul Bunyan, everything made out of wood—and there’s lots of good food.

The first day we went white-water rafting, which was new for me and lots of fun. The hardest part of the whole thing was getting the wetsuit on; after that, even though I fell out of the raft a few times (sometimes because the guides in other boats would sneak up on us and pull us out during the calm parts), or because of that, it was great. The next day, we got up at 4:30 AM to attempt something I had plenty of doubts about at the time: climbing Volcán Villarica. I made it to the top, but it was absolutely grueling—almost impossible to believe that our guide did it every single day. It took about 6 hours of straight climbing to reach the smoking, sulfurous crater. When we started, we were already above the clouds, and when we got to the top more than 1 kilometer up, it was like the top of the world. All along the way I was more than a little nervous, because we had to step in the snow-footprints of the person in front of us, because slipping outside of them could mean sliding all the way down the volcano on the steep sheet of ice.

But it was worth it, because coming down was incredibly fun. We got to slide down on our butts the whole way, sort of in a bobsled chute carved out by other people’s butts. We got going REALLY fast, and it was as if we were shooting into the mountains and clouds in the distance, because it was so steep we couldn’t see the bottom of the volcano from the top. It was ridiculous…and I took a nap at the hostel when we finally got back down.

Now…I’m back in Viña and I only have until Sunday afternoon in Chile! I finished my last test yesterday and now it’s time to pack and say goodbye. What makes me really happy (in a bittersweet way, because why does this only happen when I have to leave??) is that my Chilean friend Daniela invited me to her house for almuerzo (lunch) on Saturday, so I get to meet her family.

Teletón (a little late)

This is from Nov. 29:

Today is the Teletón, a massive fundraising effort by what must be the largest charitable organization in Chile (also called Teletón), which helps disabled children. It’s a 27-hour TV special where people call in to donate money, but it’s also street fairs and an enormous publicity campaign. For the past month there have been posters practically everywhere advertising the Teletón and the companies that endorse it. Plus commercials. It’s like every single company in Chile has jumped on the Teletón bandwagon. The tagline is “Teletón 2008, 28 y 29 de noviembre…gracias a ti, podemos seguir” (thanks to you, we can continue) which is now burned into my memory because I’ve heard it or read it at least 200 times. The other funny thing about it is that there’s this guy who was been hosting it for 30 years, a famous TV personality: Don Francisco. He’s in every single one of the commercials, holding up anything from diapers to dog food and saying “Teletón 2008, 28 y 29 de noviembre…gracias a ti, podemos seguir”. I think it’s interesting that all of Chile really comes together for this. It’s almost like a national holiday; not something I can ever see happening in the U.S. It could only happen in a small country where the people put up with a lot of annoying advertising (October was the municipal elections, with a month of cheesy posters with smiling candidates covering basically every surface), and also have a strong sense of solidarity.

La Serena

This weekend all the gringos went up to La Serena, a town with lots of beaches and churches with interesting architecture. It was a trip already paid for with our program fees, so even more fun! I swam in the very cold ocean, made a huge nacho feast with friends because we miss Mexican food, went to a pretty Japanese garden, and briefly experienced the strangest internet café ever—“Infernet”, which was Hell-themed and had a grim reaper in the doorway and homemade devils and flames on the ceilings.

We drove through the Valle de Elqui, which is known for its pisco vineyards. Part of it was dammed up to create a beautiful lake with blue-green water. In this area we went to a restaurant that cooks everything with solar ovens. The birthplace of Nobel Prize-winning poet Gabriela Mistral is in a nearby town, so we went to a museum honoring her. We also took a trip to an observatory called Mamalluca (great name), and I got to see the craters on the moon and four moons of Jupiter with a telescope! Plus the guys who explained the astronomical stuff to us played us a concert at the end (for some reason?) with Andean flutes, etc.

On the way back to Viña del Mar, we stopped at Parque Nacional Fray Jorge, which is the desert but right by the ocean. There is a perpetual fog on top of the mountains closest to the shore, and this creates a microclimate similar to the climate of the south of Chile, which I guess would be like a temperate rainforest; except it doesn’t actually rain soooo I don’t know what you would call it. It was beautiful and really interesting because all the plants get their water from the cloud, so they’ve adapted to that. Plus it was bizarre because the rest of the park was sunny and dry!

Now I’m back and this week I have two news reports to film and edit for Television Journalism. One is with two Chilean students, about the financial and general problems that public hospitals are having in Chile, so we’re going to a hospital to interview a doctor (hopefully) and patients. The other is my final project that I’m doing by myself, about what the international students think about Chileans. I finished all the interviewing and now have to edit it. Unbelievably, I only have two more weeks of classes after this one, so it’s time to wrap up school!

Sand Dunes in Con Con

I have been here for over 3 months, and just last week I finally went to Con Con and Reñaca, which are the beach towns north of Viña del Mar. There are some amazing sand dunes that we climbed, with views of all of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar and even the rural country north of the cities. It was a cloudy day but the view was still incredible. Running down the sand dunes was also fun! Climbing back up was a lot harder.

Right below the dunes were some large rocks on the shoreline, so we climbed around them, too (we were in a climbing mood). There was black volcanic rock and a lighter-colored rock, and you could see where the volcanic rock had oozed into the cracks in the other rock and hardened. I had never seen anything like it before! The waves were crashing in all around us. We also saw a rock with about 40 sea lions on it. The last thing we did in Con Con was get an empanada because the best empanadas are supposed to be there—and yes, my crab and cheese one was muy rica.

Yesterday…I was a bunch of grapes (un racimo de uvas) for Halloween. My little sister Victoria and my mom Ximena helped me out a lot. Ximena sewed the balloons to a shirt and Victoria helped me paint the leaves for my head and also painted my face—which I thought was a little bit much but I went along with it. I went to a party thrown by the Chilean host brother of a friend…I was one of 3 finalists in a very informal costume contest, so I guess it turned out pretty well!

Mendoza, Argentina

This weekend I tried to pack all of Argentina into two days, which obviously was not enough time—but we did do a lot in 48 hours. I went with 5 friends to Mendoza, which is about 7 hours by bus from Viña, over the Andes. It’s different from Valparaíso in that it’s very flat, in a desert, bigger and more cosmopolitan. I liked it a lot because there were big trees lining every street, beautiful plazas and lots of people out all the time.

The Mendoza region is known for its wine, so one thing we did was take a bus (probably the hardest part of the trip was figuring out how to catch this bus) to Maipu, a town surrounded by vineyards. We went to a bodega/museum and had a short tour of the vineyard and museum, then got to taste a wine they make there—amazingly this was all free; Argentina in general was really cheap!

Another typically Argentinean thing we did was see some tango at a dinner and performance place. It was really intense! Also there was singing and at the end the singer called up one person from each table to sing karaoke with him…so my friend Alysha impressed everyone with her Spanish and singing skills. We learned a song of which afterwards we could only remember the first line: “Por una cabeza!” Other Argentinean experience: had a tasty steak. It was good but I was more impressed by the large amounts of delicious bread we got at restaurants and the hostel. Argentines definitely love their meat, though; there were lots of outdoor restaurants, so walking down the street we could see people devouring steaks all around us. That was a difference from Chile. Also I think Mendoza has the most dangerous sidewalks of any city I know: there are 3-foot deep trenches running along between the sidewalks and the streets in most places (for water, although there was no water in them), plus random deep holes in other places. A friend of one of my friends, who’s studying in Mendoza, said she had seen at least 3 people fall in. South America is different...

And the other thing we did, which I had always wanted to do: paragliding! I got to fly over the precordillera, the foothills of the Andes. I was surprised that I wasn’t afraid at all once I was actually up in the air: only the running off the cliff part was a little scary (I didn’t have to do any work: my guide was sitting behind me and controlled everything). It was beautiful and peaceful.

Returning yesterday, we crossed the border again on top of the Andes surrounded by snow. The road was really twisty in parts! There were lots of pretty, skinny waterfalls coming down through the mountains because of melting snow. So…the little slice of Argentina that I saw was great and I wish I could easily have spent a whole week just in Mendoza.

10 Unrelated, Odd Things

1) On Wednesday nights, I walk to my poetry class in the Art school at the end of a short street in Viña. This week I noticed a life-size pickup truck made entirely of cardboard parallel parked in a row of normal cars on the street. I assume it’s an art project.
2) My host dad and the food he aquires: the family and I are currently working on finishing a wheel of artesan goat cheese that he drove an hour or more into the country to get, and which I estimate weighs at least 10 lbs. He also got a giant bag of at least 100 avocados for really cheap somewhere (I just found out that half an avocado has 22% of your DV of fat, oops!! That’s a lot for a fruit!! That also must be why they’re so delicious).
3) I saw my television journalism professor on UCV channel 18 one night this week, and I didn’t even realize he actually did reporting. My favorite was hearing the report about the vice presidential debate because of the way he pronounced “Sarah Palin” and “Joe Biden.”
4) The spanish translation of the title of the movie “Lost in Translation” is “Perdidos en Tokio”.
5) For our Spanish class, which is all people from our program, we have to make a video using Chilean spanish. Ours is like the Frog Prince, but with a dog instead of a frog, because we’re using the cultural fact that there are lots of dogs in streets. So we found a friendly dog and taped some interactions with him that we’re going to edit into a coherent movie, hopefully. We got some weird looks from Chileans when we were taping each other talking to a stray dog!
6) In my poetry class with Chileans, our readings so far have included Ezra Pound, Italo Calvino, Charles Baudelaire, and T.S. Eliot, all in Spanish. It’s difficult and kind of strange, but probably my favorite class—especially because the professor gets REALLY excited about what he’s saying.
7) When my host parents explain something to me, they like to use whatever may be on the table as props, like tonight they were telling me how when they were little they would buy watermelons at fruit stands in the countryside, and the people selling them would cut a triangle out of it and let you taste it to see if it was good before you bought it. My host mom used a tub of margarine to stand in for the watermelon and then my host dad explained it to me again using a roll of paper towels—they do a good job making sure I understand what they’re talking about :)
8) Often, when I tell a Chilean that my name is Hannah, they’ll look confused for a second and then say, “Ah, Hannah Montana.” This happens more frequently with the 10 to 13-year-olds at my school placement, but not infrequently with people my age and older!
9) In my TV journalism class, there are three exchange students: me, a girls from France and a girl from Germany. One week we had to make a short video with a plot, and the three of us were in a group with four Chileans. Our storyline was that these three foreign students are wandering around looking for the journalism school. We ask three Chilean students in French, German and English, “Where’s the journalism university?” Two of them look confused, but one guy understands the word “University” which is similar in all 4 languages, and he leads there (and gets the gringas). It was ridiculous and fun. The plaza is called Miraflores, which literally means Lookflowers, so we called it “Lost in Miraflowers.”
10) The only thing I can think of for a 10th is that on Saturday I went with American friends to a tapas restaurant for our friend’s birthday, and one thing we got was called Chorrillana: a huge plate of french fries topped with slices of beef and scrambled quail eggs. I don’t know if this is Chilean but it is certainly delicious.

The picture is of a fountain in Viña by the ocean.

Machu Picchu

So, Machu Picchu: It was incredibly beautiful and hard to get to. First the getting there part: We took an overnight bus from San Pedro to Arica, the northernmost city in Chile. Our arrival time was supposed to be 7am, but there was an accident so we were sitting on the bus from about 6:30-9:00am. We were on the side of a mountain in the desert, and all we could see to our left was clouds. When we finally got to pass the accident, we saw that it was a truck carrying fish that had crashed, and there were fish all over the road and right up to the edge of the cliff. Very bizarre.

We crossed the border in a taxi and got to meet a Peruvian couple who were both doctors coming back from a conference in Argentina. The really stressful part began when we arrived at the bus station in Tacna, the first city in Peru. All our sources had informed us previously that it was only going to take 10 hours to get from Tacna to Cusco: in fact, it takes 16 with a stop. The bus left at 12:30 (luckily there’s a time difference of an hour between Chile and Peru, because we arrived in Tacna at 12:30 Chile Time), and was to arrive in Cusco at 6:00am. Our train, which we had already paid for and is the only way to get to Machu Picchu, left at 6:30. So, if the bus were late at all, we weren’t going to Machu Picchu! It was terrible and also meant spending a second night in a row on the bus, but in the end it all worked out, because we got there on time and everyone we met was really helpful.

Then we were finally in Machu Picchu! We stayed one night in a hostel in the town of Aguascalientes, which is not much but is where you have to stay when you’re there. The next morning we took the bus up the mountain; it’s a narrow dirt road that has switchbacks all the way up, and if there’s a bus coming down when you’re going up, somebody has to pull over to the side—a little scary! It was raining in the morning, but we wanted to get in there and climb Waynupicchu, which is the mountain behind the citadel, which doesn’t look so tall in the pictures, but it is! It was an hour of climbing on stone steps (exhausting!) and we were in a cloud the whole time. When I first caught a glimpse of Machu Picchu through the clouds, it was breathtaking.

When we were coming down it started to clear up and we could get an idea of how high up we were: very high! Besides the fact that the Incas made almost no engineering mistakes in the architecture of Machu Picchu, its being perched on top of a huge mountain is also incredible. We were allowed to walk all over the city; there are some suggested routes, but you can explore by yourself, too. A tour guide, Ernesto, was nice enough to invite us to join his group, some Americans from a financial company in Mississippi (really), so we followed them around for a while. We also met two women from Belgium who had been helping to build a school in Peru. The weather turned out to be perfect, too. Near the end of our day we went up to the other side of the city and sat for a while where we could see the postcard view, and hung out with some llamas. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I’m really thankful I got to go. It was worth all the challenges to get there and back!

When we got back to Arica, we had a morning to see the city before our flight back to Santiago (good decision not to take another 35 hour bus ride). Arica is getting famous for its surfing; we stayed in a hotel called Arica Surf House and got meet some of the surfers, two women from England and New Zealand. There’s a huge rock formation by the beach called the morro, which was impressive. And, it was 19 September, which in Chile means Fiestas Patrias! We missed the 18, which is independence day, but Chileans party all weekend. All over the country they set up ramadas, which are stands with games and typical food. Emily and I had asado de pollo (grilled chicken, very tasty) in a ramada called “Ramada Las Chicas Superpoderosas” (Powerpuff Girls Ramada). I don’t know why they all have cheesy names, but it was pretty funny. On our flight back, we had the most Chilean airline meal ever: empanadas de pino, bread, a salad with just tomatoes and onions, and a dulce de leche cake. Also we made two stops—we had three takeoffs and three landings within four hours.

Since then I’ve been studying and enjoying the fact that the weather is getting warmer. Next Saturday we have a tour of Santiago that highlights the political history of Chile. On Wednesday I had my first day as a volunteer at a girls’ school in Valparaíso helping to teach English. It was not easy because the girls behave so badly that the teacher can hardly do a lesson at all. But I got to talk with some of them who really wanted to learn, and I think working with them will be fun and worth it.

San Pedro de Atacama

I’ve had quite the week traveling in the north of Chile and in Perú. I feel like, after doing this, I can pretty much travel anywhere and survive. The total time traveling by bus was at least 84 hours, plus taxi time to cross the border twice, 8 hours total in a train, and a flight back with a total time of about 4.5 hours (we had two stops, so it was a 35 min flight, a 45 min flight, and a 1 hour 45 min flight—very strange). Out of 7 nights, Emily and I spent 4 in buses. The only time we weren’t traveling in a desert was when we finally got to Machu Picchu. And yet…it was completely worth it!

We arrived at San Pedro de Atacama on Friday night and found our hostel, Hostal Florida, which turned out to be not up to our standards but we toughed it out for two days and two nights. In San Pedro there were 7 of us gringos, plus various other gringos from Valpo and other places—it’s a very touristy place, even though it’s so isolated. The Atacama Desert is supposedly the driest place in the world: it never rains ever. There are no living things at all for miles around, only in the small oasises—San Pedro is one. I started to really like being in the desert because it seems like a different culture. The weather was absolutely beautiful, warm sun and cool breeze.

My favorite thing in San Pedro was going horseback riding; I did it in Olmué for the first time, but here I got a bigger horse, we went faster, we went down big sand dunes (scary!) and the surroundings were incredible. I really felt like I was in a Western. Especially because I got to wear a hat. Our guide took us past the Cordillera de la Sal, hills made up mostly of salt, and we stopped at the oasis of Quitor, where there were pre-Hispanic ruins from the time of the Atacameña indigenous people. As it’s a desert, the buildings were preserved amazingly well.

Our two organized tours were to Valle de la Luna and the Tatio Geysers. Valle de la Luna is called Valley of the Moon because it has an unearthly surface that looks as if it’s covered with craters, and strange rock formations, at least one of which was over a million years old. The thing to do here is climb up a ridge and wait for the sunset, when the desert turns different colors because of the minerals in the dirt. Plus there was an almost-full moon, so it was just extremely strange and beautiful. There was also the hugest, smoothest sand dune I had ever seen.

The next morning we woke up at 3:30am to go on a tour of the geysers. I had heard it was going to be cold, but I was so not prepared for how freezing it was up on top of the mountain. I think it was at least -20°F, and I only had two sweatshirts on. That combined with the thin air, and I was walking pretty slowly. The picture is of Emily and me warming our frozen hands in the steam from the geysers. After having been to Yellowstone, I was surprised that we were allowed to walk around freely in the geyser area—not the safest thing in the world—but in Chile things are different I guess. As the sun was coming up, they gave us hot chocolate, and it started warming up quickly after that. So much so that just 15 minutes later we were all in our bathing suits swimming in a hot spring—it was still cold, don’t get me wrong, but it had to be done. Being a tourist in another country can be very weird, because you’ll be doing something ridiculous like swimming in a hot spring at 7am on top of a mountain in the middle of the desert, and there will be people speaking several different languages all around you doing the same thing.

Anyway, after that we got back in the bus and on the way down saw some wildlife including desert rabbits, flamingos (apparently this is their habitat??), 1000-year-old cacti, and llamas!! Bizarrely, after getting out to take pictures of the llamas, our next stop was an extremely tiny village with a population of about 50, where we had the opportunity to buy llama kebabs as we sat and watched them grazing on the hills. I couldn’t do it, but some of my friends did: “I’m never going to be able to look at a llama again without salivating.”

The second half of my voyage—Machu Picchu—I’ll save until next time.

Chocolate and celery?

Yesterday we had a program tour which involved eating chocolate! We went to a small chocolate factory in Curacaví, which is a little town in the foothills, and we met the founder of the chocolate workshop, Félix Brunatto. He explained to us about how he uses unconventional—and very fresh—ingredients to make the chocolates, which are then shipped throughout the world in beautiful boxes, also handmade. We had chocolates with celery, cloves, oregano, lemon, grapes, cheese, hot pepper, and more. All of them were delicious! I actually think I liked the oregano one the best. They use ingrediants that the Aztecs, Mayans, and Tolmecs used, and also traditional Chilean recepies, and they grow all the herbs they use right there (there they are in front of me on the porch). Also they have a store in Manhattan so I'm totally going...

Then we went to Isla Negra, another one of Pablo Neruda’s houses. It’s not actaully an island, but it has a beautiful view of the ocean. He designed it himself and filled it with all his collected things, like figureheads from the front of the prows of ships, insects under glass, photographs of poets, ships in bottles, paintings, shells, books, and a giant wooden horse. There was also a steam engine out front. He really liked things—just things in general. I think it’s ridiculous that he three houses absolutely full of random stuff, but I love him for it, too.

I’m going to read his poem “Alturas de Machu Picchu” this week, because next week I’m going to Machu Picchu!! I’m really exicted and a little nervous; I’m going with just one friend and we’re taking the bus all the way up there. First we’re going to San Pedro de Atacama (leaving on the bus Thursday evening, arriving Friday evening…ugh), which is a desert in the north of Chile and one of the best places on Earth to see the stars. Also there are gysers and salt flats and the Valle de la Luna. It’s turned out to be a lot of work planning trips like this by ourselves, but it’s also fun and going to be worth it!

Tomorrow I have my Television Journalism class, which is going to be a huge challenge, I’ve found, because the idea is to learn not only how to use the cameras and write news stories but also how to—eek—announce the news, which I often can’t even understand. But hopefully it will be a good kind of challenge. The other thing I got myself into is English Opens Doors, so once a week I’ll be assisting in an English class with students at a school in Valparaíso. I don’t know what age yet or how it’s going to work exactly, but I think it will be difficult but fun.

More Exploration

Last weekend we had a beautiful day for our tour of Valparaíso, which was postponed 3 weeks ago because of weather. There are only 19 students on our program, but we got a full-size tour bus—I was surprised because we were going up in the cerros, where the roads are world-famous for being very steep and narrow. But, all Chilean bus drivers are dauntless, and we made it around some crazy curves and past some rushed micro conductors.

Our first stop was La Sebastiana, one of Pablo Neruda’s houses. It has an absolutely beautiful view of the hills and the bay. Four stories tall, with about one room on each floor, the house is full of stuff Neruda collected throughout his life; for example, a porcelain cow, with removable lid, in which he used to mix drinks. There are lots of big windows and some portholes in the stairways, because the house was designed with a nautical theme in mind; Neruda said he loved to go on voyages, but mostly imaginary ones. Standing by his writing desk on the top floor and watching the kites and birds over the houses with the ocean beyond, it was lovely.

Next we took a walking tour of Cerro Concepción, the part of the city that’s been named “Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad,” a World Heritage Site. Unlike the other cerro I’d visited, Cerro Concepción had bigger, color-coordinated houses, lots of murals, and classy restaurants and hotels—all on the sides of the steep hill. (Today I went back with friends and splurged on lunch at the place with best view…the Chilean word for how nice that was is riiiico.) It’s a charming and unique place with a lot of history—like the Anglican church that doesn’t have a steeple because it couldn’t stand out on top of a hill in a country where everyone had to be Catholic (no longer a law). And I finally got to take an ascensor (funicular railway) just like Ché does in The Motorcylce Diaries!

Now that I’ve been here for more than a month (!!), I can appreciate the differences between Viña del Mar and Valparaíso. They have pretty distinct characters. Viña is a resort town, with the beaches and some upscale hotels and restaurants near them, and with residencial sectors in the cerros and to the east, where my journalism school is. Upper-class people (class is well-defined here) generally live in Viña rather than Valpo, and it’s safer to walk around at night, which I assume is why the program placed us here. Viña is a beautiful city and I like living here, being able to walk to the beach and, I admit, to the mall, is comforting; but while it’s definitely Chilean in many ways, Viña is much more like any other city than Valpo is.

Valparaíso is totally different from and has a different feel than any other place I’ve been before. I think it’s because it’s a port city, and a very isolated one. On Cerro Concepción I really felt like I was on the edge of the world. There’s a sense of going back in history to when Valparaíso was the first port after Cape Horn, and the sailors could pick out their houses because their families painted them so brightly. The other thing about Valpo is how chaotic it is, at least in the cerros (there’s also a grid, the ‘plan’ section, which is much easier to navegate but still chaotic because of the traffic and markets). Unlike almost every other city in South America, it was never officially founded or planned out; it just expanded randomly. So a map of the cerros is a bunch of squiggly lines—and as I enjoy mentioning, the roads are super steep. Like our tour guide said, Valparaíso is a city in 3-D.

I think my Spanish is getting better gradually, and I can recognize and appreciate lots of Chilean words and the cadence of their speech, which is different from the way people talked in Spain. Watching Chilean telenovelas is fun and a good way to get used to Chilenismos. My 11-year-old Chilean sister filled up several sheets of paper explaining to me the backstories of 2 different telenovelas, but it didn’t all sink in…

Santiago

This weekend I went to Santiago with six other girls from the program. Santiago is the biggest city in Chile, located an hour and half east of Valparaíso (more or less on the other side of the country). It’s surrounded on one side by snowy mountains, on other sides by the cordillera, foothills. On the day it wasn’t pouring rain, we climbed (funicular railway-style) Cerro San Cristobal, which is a hill from which you can see the whole city—and get an idea of how huge it is!

We also visited the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the main art museum in Santiago. There was an interesting mixture of modern and classic, sacred and not-sacred art. Also a whole gallery filled with children’s drawings and photographs that were apparently going to be displayed in Japan. The next day we stopped by La Moneda, the government building where Salvador Allende died during the 1973 military coup. We couldn’t actually go inside, but we could enter the courtyard; there were some strange modern sculptures, which I wasn’t expecting.

Possibly the most interesting part was that I got to stay in my first hostel, and now I think I’m spoiled forever because it was really comfortable, spacious, and architecturally beautiful. Called La Casa Roja, the hostel used to be a private mansion; it had a big kitchen and we bought bread, cheese, avocados (staple Chilean food!), manjar (caramel, also a staple Chilean food), etc. and ate in the dining room. It was relaxing and we met a guy from Canada who is teaching English in the south of Chile. There were people there from Australia, Germany, England, and other places, too. Also the first night, we went to Calle (street) Pio Nono, which was packed with people at 2:00am on a Thursday, and got empanadas, of course. We found a place called Empanatodos, and I wish I could transplant it to Viña del Mar; or, even better, to Bryn Mawr.


I’m going to have another quiet week because the two journalism classes and the one art class I am now hoping to take still don’t start until next Monday. The picture is of the History building, which I think is pretty but hard work to climb when I have class at 8:15am—an hour that is quite early for most Chilenos and thus for me too while I am here.

Climbing an Urban Mountain

On the right you can see a section of my commute to class every day along the Pacific coast. It doesn’t get any better than that… Also visible in the bottom left corner are some micros, which as I mentioned before, are the exciting transportation system I use.

My family is pretty amazing, and getting to know them makes me think about what I’ve taken for granted living in the US. My Chilean mom was telling me about how difficult it was for her, at my age, to buy something as simple as a sweater or a pair of shoes. Everybody in Chile had to buy necessities on credit during the Pinochet years, and no one could get a good job unless they were in the military or had military connections, no matter how much education they had. That’s why my Chilean parents moved to Canada in 1986 (2 years before the dictatorship ended), and only moved back 2 years ago. Victoria, their daughter, was born in Canada. Ximena, my Chilean mom, was also explaining to me that only people of my generation or a little older in Chile are now able to plan for their retirement. So maybe in the future the culture will become more like the U.S. in that children will not be automatically obliged to take care of their elderly parents in their homes, as they are now. This seems to be a big controversy here; e.g., this morning I was watching the Chilean equivalent of Judge Judy, and the two women with the disagreement were sisters arguing over who will take care of their mother. And in a satirical newspaper my family showed me, there was an ad for the website www.yanoquierovivirconmisviejos.cl, or www.idontwanttolivewithmyparentsanymore.cl. Which actually probably addresses the opposite concern: young people who get married and can’t afford to move out. Both are big issues here, and seem like funny problems…but, I guess, only until it happens to you.

Yesterday I finally got to climb up into the cerros (the hills) of Valparaíso, with their jumble of colorful houses. Elizabeth and I were amazed again and again as we reached the top of one very steep incline only to discover that around the corner, the hill continued. The streets are ridiculously steep; I felt like I was walking almost straight up. It was not easy! I admire people who live there, they must have really strong legs. And excellent brakes on their cars. Many of the houses have stairways leading up to them that are extremely narrow and vertical. All of it is very photogenic. It took us about an hour of climbing to reach the top of one cerro (there are many), and I at least was exhausted, but the view was worth it. We could see Viña del Mar to the north, and Reñaca and Con Con, which are suburbs north of Viña, and the whole city of Valparaíso, and the Pacific Ocean of course. In the opposite direction we could see the snow on the tops of the real mountians in the distance. There was a rainbow around the sun and it was all beautiful. Then we walked all the way down, which was hard on the knees!

One thing I’ve been meaning to share is this video that our program directors showed us during orientation when we talked a little bit about Culture Shock. It shows the differences between Italy and the rest of Europe, but they told us it also applies to Chile versus the United States. Besides being very funny, it’s also pretty accurate. I would amend two things: you don’t acutally have to wait long for the buses here, usually not more than a minute, because there are so many of them. And while Italians have a thousand different ways to order coffee, no one here drinks real coffee because it’s too expensive for some reason. The only thing readily available is Nescafé—instant coffee. So that is one aspect of US daily life that I miss. For Chile, I would replace the variety of coffee with a variety of bottled water: for example, when we were climbing the cerro, we stopped to get some water in a tiny store almost hidden between the houses, and I figured they would have one kind of bottled water maybe. Acutally, when I asked, the woman wanted to know if I wanted mineral water, gasificado or sin gas (carbonated or not). I don’t know, water is water to me.

In Which I Wear Little Red Booties

The only stressful thing in the past few days has been the “toma de ramos,” where we sign up for classes we’re interested in. There was an academic fair with student representatives from all the different faculties, and we went around asking questions about specific courses and signing up. I actually didn’t have any problems that day—but the next day Claudio, our academic advisor, sent out an email with the start dates of all the classes that are primarily for international students—and all but one of the classes I had chosen were on the list! Which was an unhappy coincidence that I wasn’t expecting. So I’m still not sure exactly which combo of classes to take now, because I want to be with Chilean students; that’s one of the reasons I chose this program. Frustrating, but it will work out.

One of the classes I know I’m taking is with Chileans at the school of journalism: Periodismo Televisivo. I get to learn how to use the cameras and the little studio they have there, I think. Exciting! I’m also taking a mandatory Spanish grammar class with the Americans from my program, probably a poetry class and probably a course on Valparaíso history—that’s one of the classes primarily for extranjeros, but I really want to take it. I also might take a course on international politics with all Chilean students, but it looks really difficult…we get to visit first and see if the class is for us, so I can decide later.

Other than that, we’ve just been walking around Viña, sitting on the rocks by the beach, and visiting different sites. Yesterday my friend Elizabeth and I went to Palacio Riojas (photo), which is a 1907 mansion located a few blocks from my house. It was kind of an absurd experience. We paid $300 pesos (about 75 cents) to get in, and the one person working there had us sit down and put red booties over our shoes so we wouldn’t hurt the floor. So we shuffled around in our booties for about 10 minutes, and then we had seen everything there was to see and took off our booties and left. The guy seemed really happy to have someone come visit!

After that we went to the Parque Quinta Vergara because we wanted to go the art museum there (photo) but it was closed. THEN, someone tried to steal my camera: he asked if we wanted him to take a picture of us—during orientation we were told that they’ll do that and make off with your camera (before taking the picutre, I suppose). I said “No, gracias.” I was pretty excited to have thrwarted a thief.

When that happened, Elizabeth and I were taking each other’s photo in front of this tree in the Park. It has a poem on it, told from the point of view of a tree. I heard before coming that this is a country of poets, and I think it’s true. Poetry has appeared unexpectly a couple of times already, like here and elsewhere in the park, and in La Campana, the national park where we went during orientation, there was a sign with a poem along one of the mountain trails. I like it; I’m looking forward to taking poetry here.

¡Empanadas!

I'm just loving it here--maybe because I'm still on vacation and my classes haven't started yet...but I'm mostly looking forward to that, too. I've had the chance to take the micro (bus) without help, which is empowering and makes me realize that I have a special place in my heart for sketchy public transportation; it's really fun when you have it figured out. It's one of the best ways to feel like a local.

My Chilean family makes me feel good about myself because they tell me I speak Spanish well, although I don't feel like I am most of the time. At the same time, I definitely am thinking in Spanish more and understanding better. I found out the my family speaks Spanish because they lived in Canada for many years before moving back to Chile 2 years ago, and Victoria, my 11-year old Chilean sister, was born in Canada. So, they all speak English (but they always speak Spanish to me). Which is a plus because they know how to help me with words I don't know. Also, their Spanish is more standard than most Chileans' because they lived outside the (¿mala?) influence of Chilean Spanish for so long.

Here's a picture of my room; I have a huge bed and a TV and a big window, so I'm being spoiled (regaloneada). But, I'm not used to how cold it gets at night because there's no central heating... only my nose gets really cold, though.









And here is a not-very-good picture of Valparaíso from Viña (I live in Viña and take classes in Valpo) (and I'll take a better picture sometime soon). Soooo yeah it's pretty awesome, it's a 10 min walk to the beach from where I live. And Valparaíso is one of the most interesting, least-American (U.S.) cities ever; we walked through at least half a mile of fruit/vegetable/fish market today in the middle of the city, dogs and cats wandering around, colorful buildings on the hills, a big white church, and we got cheese empanadas (me encantan). I heard that there's a store around the corner from my house that sells like 30 different kinds of empanadas!!

de Viña

A lot has happened since I arrived in Chile on Weds! Here are some highlights. In Olmué, a small town in the mountains where we’ve had our orientation for the past 3 days, we got to ride horses around the town. I was amazed because there are 19 students, and we each had our own Chilean horse to ride. (This program is really well-run, as this excursion demonstrated; they teach everything we need to know about living in Chile—like how to ride the “micro” bus, register for classes, recognize Chilean slang—and organize fun/active things like horseback riding for our spare time. We also had salsa/merengue lessons for an hour a half each night.) I hadn’t ever been let loose on a horse before, and it was pretty exciting even though we didn’t go very fast. We had to keeping pulling over (“¡a la derecha!”) for cars to go by on the dirt roads.

Today we hiked in the national park La Campana, which is like an island of preserved land between the two large cities Santiago (by the snow-capped Andes, where we flew in) and Valparaíso (the city I’m next to right now, now that I’m in my host family’s house in Viña del Mar). It’s interesting because on one side of a mountain, there’s one type of ecosystem that is cooler, with lots of green plants; on the other side, and on the opposing mountain face, the ecosystem is different, with cacti like the ones in roadrunner cartoons and fewer trees. It’s because the sun hits the earth at this point at a certain angle. Also in La Campana, we went into a copper mine that had been dug out by hand many years ago—kind of scary because, even though it was only a few hundred feet long, it was totally dark so we had to keep our hands above our heads to make sure not to hit the ceiling. …It’s obvious to me here that there aren’t the same preoccupations with safety that we enjoy in the U.S. This copper mine excursion is just one example; now that I’m in the city, I’m sure I’ll witness/participate in many more (My host father, René, demonstrated how everyone jaywalks in Viña del Mar, because there aren’t enough crosswalks, as he said. And how people drive somewhat…hmm…recklessly).

My host family is great, I like them a lot and I hope I made a good first impression. They’re very friendly and eager to make me feel at home, but also to let me know that I am free to come and go as I please. They pepper their speech with English words for my benefit, tomorrow I’m planning to ask how they learned so much English, but I think the answer is that it’s all around here, on signs and on TV, so I imagine anyone could pick up a lot of English if they wanted to learn.

The food is good too! I haven’t had anything that I hated yet, although some things I can’t say I liked, because I’m just not used to them. And so much meat! But I love cheese empanadas (hot cheese in a not-flakey pastry shell), and today we had empanadas with I think beef and onions, and, interestingly, one black olive, some slices of hardboiled egg, and 3 golden raisins inside. I think the rule with empanadas is that there are no rules. They’re really popular here.

I can understand with almost no problems the Spanish that our program directors and (thankfully!) my host family speak. But I’ll be interested (and I’m nervous) to see how I understand the university students and others, because many Chileans reputedly use a lot of slang and abbreviations, some of which I’ve learned here already (for example, for “where are you going?” it should be “¿Para dónde vas?”, but they’ll say “¿Pa’ ‘onde vai?”). We’ll see! On Monday, I think we’re going to the university to be shown around by a real, live student. Tomorrow, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m looking forward to it. I almost forgot to say, it’s incredibly beautiful here, right by the ocean where you can see across the water Valparaíso laid out in lights on the hills. My host family drove me around to show me the place and I was sitting with my mouth open, it’s just really amazing.

Leaving tomorrow!

I'm flying out tomorrow, about 3 hours to Miami and then 8 hr 15 min to Santiago! Chile's in the same time zone but on a different ocean, which seems strange but isn't really (why should everything line up?). In Miami I'll meet most of the other students from all over the country who will be on the program with me in Valparaíso, along with some who'll be in Santiago.

My host family sounds great, I found out about them on Saturday. My host mom is Doña Ximena, my host dad is Don René, and Doña Ximena's father lives with them--his name is Raúl. Also I'll have an 11-year old sister named Victoria, so it will be just like home except with my own room... And there's a cat!

It's a new experience keeping a personal blog for me, so I hope it stays fun to read. For me it's also a good way to document my trip as it goes along--so if anything seems long/boring, just figure it's becuase I'm talking to myself. :)

Definitely next time I'll have lots to say!

Welcome!

Hi everyone! Check this space for news and pictures of my semester in Chile! Here's a photo of the Jersey shore to kick things off.