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Published: March 16th 2010
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So, nothing really exciting has happened since my return to Santiago after the earthquake. Except, you know, another earthquake...
No joke, there was another earthquake in Libertador O'Higgins, Chile (90 miles SW of Santiago) last Thursday that was measured at 6.9...I only say that because it was like a 6.5 in Santiago and I was actually in the city this time, on the third floor of one of the campus buildings in the middle of class, when the room started shaking and we ended up evacuating the building and having class cancelled for the afternoon. Which was awesome for me because I got to experience an earthquake without any of the mass chaos and destruction that usually accompanies them, class was cancelled, and everything in my apartment was okay. So pretty much like a snowday but better because there was no snow...anyway the thing that was annoying was that a few of us from the program were planning on going camping to Cajon de Maipo (I've already been there once earlier in the semester, where I went hiking, in case yall don't remember) but we kept feeling aftershocks and were advised not to leave santiago, so we decided against it.
However, I shouldn't make these earthquakes seem as trivial as I am, because the one that happened february 27th was huge and horrible and hundreds of people are dead and the one in Haiti was just one more terrible thing that happened to that country...so anyway, the point is that if you have the ability to help somehow in regards to either of the earthquakes, please do. But enough of the heavy stuff. (Except I'll quickly note that on Sunday night there was also an almost country-wide power outage...Anna and I were doing homework in the apartment and getting ready for school and such when all of a sudden the power went out. We just got a flashlight and went downstairs to wait for it to come back on and it almost reminded me of the fire drills we had to do in high school. But the reason the power went out was because the electricity system in Chile is connected in a long line with several generators stationed throughout the country and the earthquake damaged a lot of them, so one of them finally gave out and the others couldn't pick up the slack, which = no power for
a bit. But, again, it came back on fairly quickly, so no big deal. I've had quite a few interesting experiences in this country so far this semester...)
Anyway, the only really noteworthy thing I did this weekend was go to the general cementary of Santiago, which was really intense. First of all, it's enormous (not sure about the exact number of people who are laid to rest there, but it's like a compound), and about 90% of the people there aren't buried in the ground, which was interesting to see. Instead of burying people in the ground, there are these house-like buildings with multiple levels of people buried on top of each other. There are a fair number of people buried in the ground, but the way it works is the graves in the ground are the cheapest things to buy to bury one's relatives/loved ones, and then a space in the buildings, and then the people with money go all out and construct these mausoleum-type like mini-chapels that are absolutely amazing. I've included pictures which will demonstrate better than my descriptions...but it took like three hours just to walk around and look at some of the graves/buildinds/mausoleums
and find the graves we wanted to find--we didn't even see the whole cementary. A bunch of famous people are buried there, including presidents/generals/other governmentally-involved people, artists/musicians, and other iconic Chilean people...I got to see Salvador Allende's tomb, which was ballin', and the tomb of Andres Bello, the guy whose university I attend, which was funny.
But, to make up for my relative inactivity these past few weeks, I'm going to Buenos Aires this weekend, and I'm really, really excited. We're leaving Thursday night and getting back Monday night, and we might go somewhere in Uruguay for the day, and I'm ready to finally get there and see the city after dealing with the flight change business for like two weeks...and tomorrow we're going to show our recently-returned Chilean friends what celebrating St. Patrick's day is all about, so pretty much I have a great week lined up. So I hope everyone's spring breaks/exams/first week back/whatever went/are going well, and next week I'll have pictures from Buenos Aires! Chao, and until next week!
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