Advertisement
Published: January 24th 2008
Edit Blog Post
An afternoon at the pool
The apartment building where our Chilean grandmother lives has a pool, and since the doorman knows us, we are always welcome there! It´s a great place to do homework, listen to music, swim, etc. Oops, a couple weeks passed! I guess I was having too much fun to notice.
*We have now been in classes for a full two weeks! The literature slash history (ish) class starts at 9:00 am every morning and lasts until 10:30, at which point we have a 30-minute break and then the grammer class, from 11:00 to 12:30. The afternoons are free for exploring the city, visiting museums, doing homework (booo), etc. I´m enjoying the classes for the most part. The only crappy thing about them is the fact that Megan and I have to get up at 7:15 or so in order to be on time. Our commute is roughly 45 minutes to an hour by Metro, so we have to leave the house by about 8:00 every morning. What fun! The nice thing is that the weather is still very pleasant at that point, and the cool breezes help wake us up as we walk to the Metro station. Also, our professors are both completely ridiculous, which makes things entertaining. For example, Professor Hozven, who teaches literature, told us a story the first day about an author who wrote about penises so long they wrapped about the
CEPAL
Touring the Latin American version of the UN was interesting, but we didn´t learn much about the goings-on and therefore I wasn´t super impressed. Alas. men´s waists like belts. (The TA, Roberto Onell, blushed hardcore. It was funny.) Mabel, the professor of grammar, is really tiny and bubbly. She always makes us sing this song called "Color Esperanza" (The Color Hope) in class, and it feels like middle school. But that´s okay. The translation of the chorus of the song goes something like this: "To know that you can do it / to have the will to do it / to take all your fears and to throw them outside / to paint your face the color hope / to color the future with your heart." Inspirational, am I right?
*Megan, Leslee, and I went to the National History Museum here in Santiago one day after class last week. It is basically one continuous exhibit that tracks the entire history of Chile, beginning with the indigenous peoples and ending in the dictatorship era. It has tons of artifacts and information, and it was easy to spend several hours there. My favorite part was Allende's glasses. They were broken and dirty, in their own display case, and the woman who recovered them right after his death had written her account of how she found them and
Concha y Toro
The majority of the Furman group outside of the vineyard before our tour. how she kept them over the years until it was safe to donate them to the museum.
*Last Thursday, we had our first outing with our tutor groups! Our tutors aren´t really tutors at all, but more like girls roughly our age who take us out in Santiago and show us different parts of the city. The first outing was "Santiago night life," so our group (me, Megan, Patrick, and Kerry) went with our tutora, Ana María, and several of her Chilean friends to a bar/lounge type place called Sofa for drinks. It was very relaxing, and I loved the bar. There was art everywhere, and we sat outside in the patio area on old, mismatched living room furniture. Good conversation in a language I´m finally starting to understand, 2-for-1 pisco sours, and a cool breeze. Very nice. We stayed there until about midnight and then headed to a dance club called El Tunel, which was also
really fun. The music there was awesome--basically, dance mixes of a bunch of old American songs (for example, "Play That Funky Music White Boy," "Hit ´Em Up Style," some Eminem, etc). Chilean men in clubs are like sharks. They linger several feet away
Casillero del Diablo
The owner of the vineyard was having problems with local children stealing wine from his cellar, so he made up a rumor that the devil had been sighted down there to keep them away. When people then decided to come hunt for the devil, he made up another story that to find him in the cellar would mean bad luck. Megan and I are obviously terrified of all this. and watch you dance for a little while, then move in for the kill. Luckily, I was able to ignore slash avoid the ones that wanted to dance with me. We left around 2:30, which is actually early for Chileans, but we had to get up early the next day for our visit to CEPAL (similar to the UN, but for Latin America).
*CEPAL was vaguely interesting, but we only really got to see the building. They didn´t tell us much about what actually goes on there, which would have been the cool part. But oh well. Later in the day, a big group of us visited the Concha y Toro vineyard, and that made up for the early and somewhat uninteresting morning. We took a tour of the grounds, got to see the vineyard and the cellars (including the Casillero del Diablo--Devil´s Cellar), and tasted several types of wine. So fun!
*Last Saturday, Megan, Lauren, and I took a trip to Cajón del Maipo, a nearby area with lots of opportunities for hiking, rafting, horseback riding, and other outdoor activites. We initially wanted to go to Baño Morales and take a 6-hour hike, but because of transportation issues, we
El diablo
There he is! Scary! You were going to steal some wine from this cellar, but now you´re totally too scared to, right? ended up in San Alfonso at Cascada de los Animas instead. We took an hour hike, which turned out to have a "tour guide" (who didn´t really do anything) and about 87 other people. It was a bizarre experience. The scenery was really beautiful, but I´ve never walked through nature with such a mob of people before. Some of them were dressed completely inappropriately, too! Examples of poor choices to bring on a hike: high-heeled sandals, cutesy flats, toddlers, infants. Examples of stupid things to do on a hike: change an infant´s diaper in the middle of the trail. Right. When the hike was over, we had quite a bit of time before our taxi would come back to get us, so we decided to walk down the highway from San Alfonso to San José (another pueblo in the Cajón del Maipo area). It turned out to be quite fun! The walk took about 2.5 hours, but on the way we had some great views of the river and the mountains, and we found some cool things like a random playground (with swings!) and a
litter of puppies! I´d say the walk was worth it. Plus, when we got to
Cascada de los Animas
Here´s the waterfall that all the fuss is about. There´s a legend about animals and spirits, but I didn´t catch it all. I was distracted by the person changing a baby´s diaper on the trail. San José, we bought ice creams and sat in the grass and ate them--best thing ever.
*Tuesday, Dr. Cass asked Megan and me to babysit his daughter, Addy. I think she´s like 16 months or so, and basically the cutest little kid ever. Really--I probably would have done it for free. We spent a lot of time on the balcony of their apartment with her, because she loved to just stand there and point at things and say what they were. She also kept repeating "dog?" although we never saw one (surprise--they´re usally everywhere in Santiago). She also kept trying to say our names, but instead of "Emily," it usually just came out more like "Mommy." Oh well.
*Yesterday, we had our second tutor group outing, this one to the Alonso de Córdova district. Basically, this is the really rich section of town, with stores like Armani and Vuitton (where a belt costs roughly $500 US dollars). Ridiculous. Some of the places we walked were pretty close to my apartment, such as this really cute little bookstore that I totally want to go back to in my spare time, and also Mundo de Vino (the Chilean equivalent of Total Wine)!
Eh?
We are skeptical of the whole "hiking en masse" idea. Plus, we had to pay $7 to do it. Weak sauce! We also visited a
really cool art gallery called Animal, where I saw a few paintings that I wish I could buy to put in my future house...
*And now, I find myself with another amazing weekend ahead! Tonight we´re having drinks with the Furman group around 7:30 at a bar in Bellavista, and then going to a birthday party for our brother´s girlfriend, Atala. We´ll be up late, but hopefully not
too late, because tomorrow we leave early in the morning for Viña del Mar and Valparaíso! It will be nice to get out of Santiago for a couple days, especially since we´ll be at the beach. Stay tuned for a full report!
I was finally able to post some pictures on here, if you didn´t notice--I also went back and posted a few on my first two entries, so go check those out too if you haven´t already!
I´m having fun and staying busy, but I still miss everyone! I hope all is well for all of you back home. Much love!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0449s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb