Catching up...

Let's see...where I left off...Two weekends ago my life was full of carretear-ing (Spanglish is my new favorite language in the world). Thursday (we're talking August 7th now) I went out to a Bienvenidos party for the students of La Catolica. I had met up with Helen, a friend from CIEE, and after getting pleasantly stuck with her host parents for a late-night snack of homegrown oranges and pepinos (a Chilean fruit that oddly has the Spanish name for cucumber), we left her house at around 2:30 AM. Wandering the streets of Santiago in search of one of the campuses that was supposedly close-by seemed like a sort of bad idea, but we decided that too late and ended up walking in what we hoped was the right direction. Finally realizing we needed assistance we flagged down a taxista, who assured us he could take us there for a bargain. We hopped it, drove for about two seconds and stopped exactly one block away from where he had picked us up. It was a waste of 500 pesos but a good learning experience haha.

So anyway, Helen and I arrived at the gate to the campus and after standing around awkwardly since it seemed no one was there (maybe the party was already over? we thought), we decided to go for it and introduce ourselves to two Chilean girls standing next to the entrance. I find that in general Chileans are not the most outgoing and extroverted people, especially with foreigners, but if I take the initiative, they are quite friendly and helpful. So while I'm still getting used to the lack of "Buenas tardes" on the street and the poker face public culture, I am learning that if I take the first step, I can meet some pretty amazing people. It's just a matter of putting myself out there. Back to the point: Helen and I made friends with these two Chileans and they assured us that the party was far from over. In fact, the reason there were so few people there was that it was too early. Keep in mind this is already 2:30 AM. Culture shock=learning to live with lack of sleep.

Finally heading in to the party, which was held on the La Catolica campus that used to be a convent, we danced the night away, drinking three piscolas each and stumbling into bed at 5:30 dizzy and exhausted and pleased. Too bad that feeling didn't cure my hangover the next morning. And by morning I mean the next entire day. Instead of doing something cultural and productive I spent Friday recovering...until Friday night.

Maggie and I met up with a few friends (Chileans, CIEE, and other exchangers) at the La Catolica Choripanada (yes, that makes two officially-university-sponsored, very alcoholic parties in one weekend) on another campus. Still feeling the after-effects of the night before I cut back on my consumption (good move) but had just as much fun as the night before. After getting gently kicked off campus when the Choripanada came to an end, a huge group of us hopped onto the metro, belting songs in Spanish and English and Spanglish and Chilean and Mexican and anything else we could think of. We wound up in a two-story apartment with abalcony overlooking the entire city before Maggie and I met up with two Chilean friends we had met earlier. We somehow ended up at McDonald's (I'm still unclear how I always end up at American fast food restaurants in other countries when I avoid them like the plague at home) and then back at our friend's house for a short guitar session. Utterly exhausted I collapsedback at Maggie's house (which would make it the second weekend in a row where I managed to avoid sleeping at my own house--such a huge pain in the ass to get all the way out to where I live, especially at 5 AM and tipsy).

This long intro to this catch-up session is not to say that I have spent the past two weekspartying. I actually managed to squeeze some work in there somewhere, writing my seven-page Spanish paper on the importance of public space in post-dictatorship democracy in Chile (oh URBS you are my life), reading La ciudad y los perros by Vargas Llosa (fantastic read if anyone is interested) and FINALLY finalizing my schedule. Saturday was a working day, for example. (my host sister was thoroughly surprised to find me in my pajamas by 8 PM--"aren't you going out?" "No, not tonight." "What?"). But before I move on...

Sammie and Maggie check out some greda. Empanadas and pastel de choclo (a traditional corn-topped meat stew) in a window in Pomaire.

Sunday I dragged myself out of bed (much better rested after actively avoiding any more university-provided pisco) and met up with Maggie, Sammie Lammie and Matias, a Chileanfriend. We hopped a bus out to Pomaire, an artisan village an hour and a half from Santiago. We spent a few hours roaming around, checking out the clayware (la greda) and eating traditional foods like a one-kilo empanada. It was a nice break from Santiago and an even nicer break from the pollution. I really never realize how much I'm affected by the contamination in Santiago until I realize I can breathe better once I get beyond city limits.spent the week (Monday to Thursday is my week since I deliberately avoided Friday classes) figuring out my life. And I think I'm actually one step closer to that--surprisingly. But I did have a few ugh moments, especially with transportation, the bane of my Chilean existence--and also a potential research/job interest. Transantiago (the name is where the cleverness of the system ends) was created a year ago to supposedly improve upon the bus/metro situation in Santiago.The government took out the bus routes that used to crisscross the city and replaced them with routes that are much shorter, much less convenient and much less user-friendly in general. Now, for those who live in the suburbs of Santiago (the poorer sectors--Latin American cities have a reverse socioeconomic geographic breakdown so the ghettos are in the periphery of the city rather than in the center as in American cities), just getting to work on time requires getting up at 4 AM and not getting home until 11 PM. The idea was to encourage people to use public transportation by making it more local or something, but instead it's actually encouraged even more car usage, contributing even further to traffic congestion and to the terrible air pollution that drowns Santiago in a constant smog. Now that I have direct personal experience with a public service system that is so utterly idiotic (spending an hour each way to and from campus and having to make a million connections), I'm really interested in the administration and planning behind things like this. Who the hell thought that Transantiago was a good idea? Because I would personally like to kill them. Or at least force them to take their own damn public transportation everywhere (since I'm sure they drive, as do all upper-class Chileans) just to show them how hellish it is.

Anyway, so my schedule is looking something like this:

1. Mario Vargas Llosa: a lit class about the Peruvian author. It's seven full-length novels (roughly 400 pages each) all in Spanish (I know that should be obvious by now since I'm directly enrolled in the schools here and all, but I still can't help commenting about it again just because I still have moments of "What?! Everything is in Spanish?!"). It's actually a ton of work by Chilean standards, and as much as I was planning on taking it really easy this semester since I really believe that I didn't come to Chile for the classes, I really think this class is worth it. The professor is one of the most charming and hilarious teachers I think I've ever had and I love love love Vargas Llosa (think Peruvian Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with a more modern-day Faulker).

2. Urban Geography. Very similar to most of my URBS-y classes at Penn but from a LatinAmerican perspective. And it's based more on salidos a terrenos (literally "terrain trips") and group projects so I should get a chance to explore Santiago from a more academic perspective while at the same time getting to know some Chileans as well. Maggie (who is also in the class) and I made friends with a Mexican architecture student named Andres on the first day when no one else showed up to the class and we were told about 30 minutes later that the prof had sent out an email about not coming though since we were all exchange students none of us had been notified. Since then we've hung out with him a ton--more about that later.

3. History of America Latina in the 20th Century. The professor came very very highly recommended and he definitely didn't disappoint on the first day. He is known for being somewhat of a Marxist, which is definitely something to note on a very conservative, very Catholic campus like La Catolica and in a very neoliberal country like Chile. I'll keep you updated on what he says since it should definitely make for an interesting perspective...

4. Seminar on Waste Management and Public Health in Santiago: Since the other three classes are all at La Catolica, I knew I wanted at least one class at La Chile. But since La Chile started a week after La Catolica and the university itself is generally a lot more disorganized and still recovering from a month-long student strike last semester, I was a little nervous about finding a class that I not only really liked but that also managed to meet at consistent times each week (not to mention actually existed--so many classes are listed that are never really held!) Luckily I tagged along with Maggie to this seminar last week and I'm really intrigued. It's oddly specific, but I like that. Like Urban Geo, it's going to include a ton of salidos a terreno, but unlike Urban Geo, we spent the entire first day talking about experiencing a city through smell. And trash. Strange but I'm up for it.

I would really love to fit in a salsa class somewhere in there and maybe some volunteer work (perhaps with an orphanage to get a different perspective for future Ties to the World work?), but I'm just now finalizing everything and I'm really concerned about too much stability interfering with my traveling plans. And, I know this will surprise a lot of you, but I'm making a very concerted effort to avoid over-booking myself. And to allow room for spontaneity. What? Who is this?!? I guess this is my one opportunity to really just chill and experience the city and take time for myself and try a different kind of college life. I just hope I can commit to it...

Thursday was the beginning of a great weekend. In between classes I went to the Mercado Central, a fish market in the heart of Santiago, with a Canadian friend I met at a party (I'm learning that follow-up is key to creating friendships). I think markets are the most fascinating urban spaces in the world. I could spend hours just wandering through the aisles, marveling at the strange seafoods, breathing in the fishy smell. Such an interesting cross-section of people, such a cosmopolitan canopy.

That night, after a few hours of attempting to finish up my homework before the weekend (attempting and realistically failing), I packed my backpack and met up with Maggie, Helen and Felipe. We took an eight-hour night bus up to La Serena, a beach city in Northern Chile, arriving at 5 AM and passing out for a few extra hours in our hostel. We cooked our breakfast of eggs, palta (avocado), toast and Nescafe and lingered in the hostel kitchen before Felipe went off to meet up with some family members that lived in the area and us three girls headed off to wander around. We had no formal plans so we ended up making our way through Mercado La Recova, famous for dried papaya (which, I must admit, is delicious, even though I think papaya tastes like feet, and I HATE feet).

The orange packages on the left are all local papaya products. That do not taste like feet.
Maggie is the smiley face on the right.

Then down to the beach, which is a long stretch of shell-specked sand in the shadows of the Andes. There were horses galloping down the coast and the sun was shining and we were full of empanada and palta and dried papaya and secret stories shared only between new friends.

Walking down the beach we happened upon this little oasis of sorts--the tips of the palm trees just barely visible from the water's edge, the town below just slipping into view.

While there we happened upon Laetitia, a French woman who was also staying in our hostel. For the past four months she has been traveling straight down from Canada to Chile, exploring the entire Western Hemisphere along the way. So impressive. What I wouldn't give to have her life. And maybe one day I will...

For dinner we met up with Andres (from Urban Geo--he also happened to be traveling up to La Serena this weekend) and Ernesto, Andres' friend from Guadalajara, and several people also passing through the area. We were quite an international crowd--US, Mexico, Australia, France, Switzerland, Germany--and it was so interesting hearing all of our different accents as we spoke in Spanish, the only language common to all of us. We went one town over into Coquimbo, had dinner and pisco (surprise) and then went to a club to dance ourselves silly (another surprise there....I seem to be finding a pattern haha).

The next day it was pouring rain (which I had expected since I checked the weather report right before coming--expected but preferred to ignore, hoping the weather report was just completely wrong. Which is hard to do with an 80% chance of precipitation). But while that sidetracked our original plans to check out a famous observatory and take a tour of a national penguin park, it didn't ruin our fun. We made another breakfast for ourselves and then bought supplies to make lunch at the beachside apartment of Sarah, a girl living in Santiago who happens to be really close with Grant, the boy I stayed with while in Honduras. Again with the connections being key. So anyway, the three of us girls went over to cook with Sarah and her roommate Claudia and we spent the rainy day chatting until the sun was setting and the rain had turned to drizzle and the sky was stained orange. We wandered the beach until settling down for a bottle of wine at a restaurant on the sand. The five of us then met up with Andres and friends at another bar for dinner and wine-induced charades. So the whole day was spent sitting, eating and talking. All in all, a pretty good deal, I would say.

Sunday, despite the rain, we chartered a tour to Valle de Elqui, a nearby wine-making region famous for pisco and for being the birthplace of Gabriela Mistral, the Nobel-Prize-winning Chilean poet. We made stops to buy homemade papaya jam, homemade manjar (YES!), homemade pisco (how could I say no?), homemade raisins (so much better). We had a four-course meal, took a tour of an artisanal pisco vineyard, visited Gabriela Mistral's grave. But the best part about the whole day was realizing how incredible Maggie and Helen are and how lucky I am to have found them here to share this experience with me. I love that moment of realizing when you just connect. We giggled and argued about Israel and the Middle East and recounted the entire plot of Cloverfield and shared a few teary moments in the back of the van all the way back to La Serena.

The three of us girls in front of a water reservoir in Valle de Elqui.

Helen and I pose in front of the pisco vineyards that dot the mountainsides in Valle de Elqui.

Back at the hostel, in the few hours remaining before our eight-hour return bus trip, we sat down to a makeshift dinner and a long discussion about politics over tea and cookies. With Laetitia (French), me and Maggie (US) and Helen (Germany) it made for some really fascinating arguments about the US electoral system, about faith-based politics, about Mexican-US relations, about World War II. There's really something about hostels and traveling and meeting new people that just breeds the most intellectual conversations I've ever had. I always leave wanting to learn more and know more and experience more. It's like the college experience that I had romanticized and dreamt about but never really quite experienced while at Penn itself. I'm realizing more and more how much of my education has been outside of the classroom (and not just in a college-essay-please-accept-me-because-I-am-well-rounded way).

So despite barely being able to function in class this morning since I was running on no sleep and despite still not having done any of my homework, this weekend was absurdly incredible. My favorite thus far. Easy.

So maybe I could really love Chile after all...