Blogs from Arica & Parinacota, Chile, South America - page 6

Today was my last morning to wake up in Arica. The alarm on my cell phone went off at 4:30 am and at 5 I was getting on a bus to the airport. My host mom and sister, Camila, left me with the rest of the students in my program at the gate to Campus Saucache and now I am back in the Santiago airport waiting for the second leg of my flight to Temuco. Sitting in this airport is all too familiar after my 14 hour layover in August, but this time I have more friends with me. The skies are also clearer today and I have a fantastic view of the snow-capped Andes that surround Santiago. Flying in to Santiago is incredible, especially in the early morning sun, because the tips of the mountains ... read more

This is the beginning of spring in Chile, or two weeks in, actually. But you can definitely feel that the air is a touch warmer, people go to the beach on the weekends, and I have seen non-gringos wearing flip-flops. Unfortunately the lovely weather came at a time when my classes are kicking into high gear with tests, essays, and various other tarea. This is because, with one month of Chile under my belt, I am halfway through with my classes! That is, I am halfway through with my 3 hour sessions of meandering Spanish in the mornings and 2 hours of lectures over health or research methods in the afternoons. Everything- lectures, readings, homework- is in Spanish, which has forced me to spend a lot of time with my dictionary. Of course it is all ... read more

The 18th of September is Chile's independence celebration, and I am lucky enough to be here for the 200th anniversary. The Bicentenario demands a 4 day weekend, with Friday and Monday off, lots of food, friends, family, cueca, and vino! The Chileans are super patriotic and wear their traditional clothes to dance the cueca all day long. It is a highly choreographed dance of flirtation, but you still see college students dancing with their grandmothers and parents and children cueca-ing all over. In the center of town, at Plaza Colon and nearby, there have been concerts, dances, games, street entertainers, and a market all weekend long. My participation in Bicentenario events involved seeing my host sister, Javiera, and her entire colegio perform traditional Chilean dances on Wednesday. On Thursday I learned the cueca in my Spanish ... read more

This semester I will be studying public health and spanish in Chile. My program, SIT's Chile: Public Health, Traditional Medicine, and Community Empowerment , is based in Arica, a city less than an hour south of the Peruvian border and near the Bolivian border. It is located at the end of the Azapa valley, in the middle of the Atacama desert. On the west side of Arica are a series of beaches, on the east there is farmland for olives and tomatoes. Arica has 5 universities, including Universidad de Tarapaca, where I will take some of my classes. Arica is also a port city, with a lot of international trade. I landed in Santiago on monday morning at 8 am. Santiago is surrounded by the Andes and during the descent I was able to watch the ... read more

Thanks again for the comments, I laughed out loud reading some of them! Now to try to finish summing up our time in and around Arica... The next morning we woke up in the hotel for breakfast at 8am. I drank tea which I typically hate but I was freezing! We were so lucky to be able to have a hot shower there though. That morning we headed to the Salt Lake. As we began to ascend from Putre up higher into the mountains the views began to change and the mountains around us were incredible. There are 7 active volcanoes that can be seen from the area and they are just hugeeee. The tops of 6 of them are the border of Bolivia and one of them is completely in Bolivia. Some of them were ... read more