Earthquake Pt. 2, Hiking, Culture

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Well it has been over two weeks since the earthquake, but the aftershocks are still hitting pretty regularly. They haven’t done any damage that I can see so far, and they aren’t nearly as scary, just kind of annoying. We have had four so far today, the biggest registering at 7.2, which was not fun at all as I was on the 17th story of our academic building. The buildings here are all built to withstand them, and there was no damage, it is scary but it’s just a part of life here.
Earthquakes might be part of their culture, but I’m almost as tired of talking about them as experiencing them. So moving on to some less depressing/natural disaster topics, I started some of my classes this past week. Through the IFSA program I can take classes at any one of three universities: La Catolica, Universidad de Chile, or Diego Portales. The way you register for classes is pretty different, but I like it a lot more than the registration process for Miami, you don’t actually register until about two weeks into the semester, and during that time you just go around visiting classes you are interested in to see if you will like them or not. My schedule so far involves two classes at La Catolica, which is the Chilean equivalent of Harvard, and one class at Diego Portales which starts Monday. Plus we have the mandatory Spanish class for our program, which I can’t wait to start, because I can use all the help I can get. As I go on I am finding I am able to understand more and more, but I am still working on my ability to respond properly. In addition to classes I have started reading Spanish books and watching movies in Spanish to hopefully help that process along a bit.
A lot has happened since I last sat down to write, but the most exciting thing for me was last Saturday when two of the other exchange students and I took a hiking trip up in the mountains. The Andes are indescribably gorgeous, and as often as I tried the pictures simply don’t do it justice. We caught a bus and took it up to the nearest national park; the only instructions were to be back in the little town by 6pm otherwise we would be stuck there until the next day. The trail wasn’t too terribly difficult, but it was a full day hike to get to the glaciers/volcano at the end, which meant we would have needed two days to complete it, and seeing as none of us had the equipment to spend the night up in a mountain range we were content to look at it from afar and snap some pictures. We ended up hiking up to a river and would have gotten in for a swim had it not been fresh glacier melt, meaning it was freezing cold. I dipped my feet in and they were numb within thirty seconds. Also on our way back down the mountain we had an experience with some wild horses on the trail, we were taking a water break in the shade of a boulder and they snuck up on us. Five horses walking along the trail behind us and we had no idea, that was a pretty cool thing to see.
Also I guess I should put one cultural section into each one of these, so here goes for this week. This is something that I find absolutely hilarious because if it happened in the US people would probably gather round and start clapping, but the social acceptance of PDA (Public Displays of Affection for the not fresh out of high school readers) here is staggeringly high. There are couples making out anywhere and everywhere. I had no choice but to watch one couple as I followed them into the subway station, pay to get in, go down the steps, get into the subway, and get off three stops later all without removing their faces from each other. I can’t say I wasn’t impressed.

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