Home for 2 months

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well, studying is a pain and since i am not traveling that much, i am not updating my blogs. well after leaving buenos aires ( the best city) i came with my program to study for 2 months in santiago chile. i have been here for a month and so far, this is what i have observed.

chile itself is a skinny diverse country with probably the most stable economy in south america. after talking with people, they say that it is the best country in south america to do buisness becuase, the people are reliable, things work and function, corruption is the lowest, laws work and are enforced. the country, its tradiciones and government are very conservative and the church still has lots of influence.

so i leave in the providencia, which is near the hill with the statue of the virgin mary. its a great safe barrio. and my host family is awesome. they are the sweetest people i ever meet. santiago is great but personally, i hate it. its hard to go from buenos aires and brazil to chile. first off, santiago is like any american city.. think denver. it has mountains, things work well, people work and are very serious, and if you go to the mall, almost everything you can buy,is available or from the states. walking to school, i pass 3 mc donalds, 2 dunking donuts, a starbucks, subway, burger king, apple store... chile wants to be american. basically, i feel like i lost the latino culture, that i experienced in brazil and argentina, and i love so much. chile is a bad place to learn spanish. i get so discouraged to talk. there are many slang words used here, they speak very fast and the pronunciation is very lazy. for example ¨mas o menos¨is pronounced ¨mao men¨. and the dance clubs are not as fun as well.

but other than that, on the weekends, i travel to the coast or somewhere and it is a lot of fun. i went wine tasting with my class. which was basically a 30 minute tour and then 1 hour of being trapped in the gift shop. but it was pretty. went river rafting down class 4 rapids in the beautiful mauipo and spent the rest of the day with my class having an asado and playing soccer.

in santiago, to me, there is not many highlights. for backpackers i would recommend 4 days max. they have this drink called mote de huesillo ( i think i spelled it wrong) but its apple- peach juice with a peach inside and wheat. very good and refreshing. went to a couple bars, went to a couple discos. but the truth is right now my spanish class is sooo hard and so i need to study alot.

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Photos

the flight
view from flying over the andes and the tallest mountain in south america

mote de huesillo
really good refreshing drink

view from the top of the mountain
santiago

in front of the mondeda
this is the building that got blown up during allende term. when pinochet took power

cajon de maipo
the day we went river rafting

more cajon
it was such a nice day