Well hello! Look who got lucky and has internet/computer access at the first hostel! Downside--the keyboard is really hard to use!
Quick recap of the days events, since otehrs are waiting for the computer! Last night we started by getting even more stares than usual by going to Parque Arauco for dinenr and a movie with our giant backpacks, but it was definitely worth it! We saw VAlentiens day and ate at a really nice, cute restaurant called Pasta Basta. We then took a transfer service vanm to the airport from the mall that ended up being around 12 US dollars each! The airport serevd as entertaining, as Gina had a random fork in her backpack when we went through security and the guy litterally said ¨No Importa¨ and we watched some guy almost get arrested. I was exhausted when we got on the plane and fell asleep before takeoff and got around 3 hours pf not very good sleep. We landed at 6AM and immediately realized it was COLD! We got our luggage and chamnged out of flipflops and caught anotehr transfer service into the vcenter of the city, not really sure where we were going. We asked directions to our hostel from the square and it turned out to be pretty far, but figured we´d go for it. After getting somewhat lost and being followed by a gang of dopgs, we eventually got a super chea`p taxi to our hostel where we ate breakfast (toast and butter) and slept on teh couch until our room was ready. We got a super cute 5 person room with a private bathroom, and imemdiately slept for 2 hours until 12:30PM.
At that point, we layered up and headed into town to explore! We went to a really incredibel cemetary, a very impressive church, ate lunch at a restaurant called Chocolaterra and got fudge as dessert which was delicious and was also very much decorated for Valentine´s Day, and then wandered the town. Most things were closed since it is a Sunday, but we wandered the square and made a few purchases from some street vendors (hand knitted mittens (NECESSARY), head/ear warmth bands, etc). We also went to a few outdoor shops which we may return to again tomorrow or wednesday. We bought our bus tickets to Puerto Natales for 8 US dollars for 9AM wednesday and wandered teh town some more. We went down to the beach on teh straight of magellan and felt the freezing water/saw Tierra del Fuego across the way, saw lots of Antarctica souveneirs which reminds you how far down we are, and then went to teh grocery store and bought some stuff to make tacos for dinner which ended up being about 2 US dolars each!
Now we are just chilling at the hostel about to make dinner. I definitely overpacked, but it´s not too bad. The clouds are crazy and gorgeous and fluffy and white and dark. It is gorgeopus and I can´t wait to see more! There are 9 otehr people staying at our hostel from teh EAP group and the hostel is really hoemy and cute with a very nice owner!
Tomorrow we are exploringa few mroe markets and heading to the Reserva Nacional Magellanes about 8km outside of town to do some hiking and get some veiws of where we are!
I´ll try to update again soon! I love you all! I´m taking tons of pictures!
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Chao ILP y Santiago, Hola Patagonia
I cannot believe how fast these past 3 weeks have flown by! I've been here almost a month and it feels both like I've been here a long time and like I just got here yesterday at the same time. If I were looking at this program in terms of modules withing the 6 months, the first part ended yesterday with the end of the Intensive Language Program. From now on my classes are just regular university classes for the semester with Chilean students and not just ILPers! I'm really excited!
My final quiz and final presentation yesterday went well! I don't particularly feel like I learned very many new things in the ILP program, but I definitely became a lot more comfortable with a lot of grammatical concepts that I had always only semi-understood as well as with the basic act of speaking spanish out loud in front of people. It was a really great experience, my professor was great, my class was great, and (fingers crossed) GPA booster much?
Over the past couple days I have been running lots of small errands to get ready for our trip! I picked up my Chilean ID card on Thursday which is really cool! We went to the grocery store for our trip and bought a lot of trail food, but certainly need to go to the store in Puerto Natales also! I have lots of granola bars, some protein bars, lots of nuts, some canned peaches, and cereals. We have some peanut butter to share and are going to buy break and jelly in Patagonia, as well as I plan to buy some canned chicken or something of the sort. We also plan to purchase the refugio dinners so that we don't have to carry a stove and dinner foods, but will bring extra snack just in case!
Last night was my first experience with Chilean night-life. We went out clubbing and ended up dancing at a very crowded club until about 4AM. And it was still full. I don't understand how Chileans do it! It was definitely fun, but will definitely not be turning into a frequent activity of mine I don't think.
Next update! I MAY have a place to live! I should know by tomorrow if I get cell phone reception/can check my email in Punta Arenas. Gina and I will hopefully be living in a very nice, large house with 2 Chileans and a French person. The two guys that we met are totally okay with us moving in and just have to check with the French roommate who is on vacation until Sunday. Fingers crossed! It's a very nice house, in a nice location, with parks to run in, a very large yard, and the guys are really nice and chill. One of them lived in Long Beach for 5 months! I'll keep you posted!
So this brings me to what's next? Well today I am going to somehow make my backpack be packed and not massive and get my stuff in order in my room so that it is neat and orderly while I'm gone. I am soooo excited I can't believe that I am actually leaving to go to Patagonia in a little over 12 hours! I know it's going to be incredible and something I will never forget, as well as certainly an adventure seeing as I've never done anything nearly this ambitious with out my parents! My friends I'm traveling with and I are meeting for dinner at 730 at the mall, then going to see Valentine's Day the movie, and then heading over to the airport for our 2:30AM flight! I am sooo excited but have lots of preparation left to do in the next 7 hours, as well as a skype date with lots of family (Mom, Dad, Grandma, Aunt, Brother, and Judith all in the same place at once!).
Last matter of this blog post. I am not bringing my computer to Patagonia with me so this blog will be seeing far fewer updates in the next 2 weeks. I'm going to tr and locate some way to update it at least once while I'm down there, maybe after the first week, but nothing is certain! I'm going to keep a hand-written journal and probably type some of that up for you all when I return after February 28th, so look for something around then!
I love all and wish you could all be down here with me about to embark on this big adventure with me! I'll take lots of pictures and make lots of memories, and think of the people I love while hiking and adventuring in such a spectacular place!
Chao hasta Marzo! Mucho Amor!
My final quiz and final presentation yesterday went well! I don't particularly feel like I learned very many new things in the ILP program, but I definitely became a lot more comfortable with a lot of grammatical concepts that I had always only semi-understood as well as with the basic act of speaking spanish out loud in front of people. It was a really great experience, my professor was great, my class was great, and (fingers crossed) GPA booster much?
Over the past couple days I have been running lots of small errands to get ready for our trip! I picked up my Chilean ID card on Thursday which is really cool! We went to the grocery store for our trip and bought a lot of trail food, but certainly need to go to the store in Puerto Natales also! I have lots of granola bars, some protein bars, lots of nuts, some canned peaches, and cereals. We have some peanut butter to share and are going to buy break and jelly in Patagonia, as well as I plan to buy some canned chicken or something of the sort. We also plan to purchase the refugio dinners so that we don't have to carry a stove and dinner foods, but will bring extra snack just in case!
Last night was my first experience with Chilean night-life. We went out clubbing and ended up dancing at a very crowded club until about 4AM. And it was still full. I don't understand how Chileans do it! It was definitely fun, but will definitely not be turning into a frequent activity of mine I don't think.
Next update! I MAY have a place to live! I should know by tomorrow if I get cell phone reception/can check my email in Punta Arenas. Gina and I will hopefully be living in a very nice, large house with 2 Chileans and a French person. The two guys that we met are totally okay with us moving in and just have to check with the French roommate who is on vacation until Sunday. Fingers crossed! It's a very nice house, in a nice location, with parks to run in, a very large yard, and the guys are really nice and chill. One of them lived in Long Beach for 5 months! I'll keep you posted!
So this brings me to what's next? Well today I am going to somehow make my backpack be packed and not massive and get my stuff in order in my room so that it is neat and orderly while I'm gone. I am soooo excited I can't believe that I am actually leaving to go to Patagonia in a little over 12 hours! I know it's going to be incredible and something I will never forget, as well as certainly an adventure seeing as I've never done anything nearly this ambitious with out my parents! My friends I'm traveling with and I are meeting for dinner at 730 at the mall, then going to see Valentine's Day the movie, and then heading over to the airport for our 2:30AM flight! I am sooo excited but have lots of preparation left to do in the next 7 hours, as well as a skype date with lots of family (Mom, Dad, Grandma, Aunt, Brother, and Judith all in the same place at once!).
Last matter of this blog post. I am not bringing my computer to Patagonia with me so this blog will be seeing far fewer updates in the next 2 weeks. I'm going to tr and locate some way to update it at least once while I'm down there, maybe after the first week, but nothing is certain! I'm going to keep a hand-written journal and probably type some of that up for you all when I return after February 28th, so look for something around then!
I love all and wish you could all be down here with me about to embark on this big adventure with me! I'll take lots of pictures and make lots of memories, and think of the people I love while hiking and adventuring in such a spectacular place!
Chao hasta Marzo! Mucho Amor!
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Groovin'
So I didn't update this yesterday, so I figure I probably should today before a downward spiral of me not blogging begins.
Over the past few days or even week, I have begun to really fall into a groove. I wake up, either run or not depending on the day/plan, get ready, walk to school (yeyuh saving BIP card money!), have class, do some sort of activity after class be it with the cultural monitor or with friends, come home, do homework, maybe run, eat dinner, sleep, and repeat. It's nice to fall into this groove, it makes it feel less like I'm on a vacation and more like I'm actually doing something productive down here, but still allows for a lot of fun and games in the afternoon and evening! I do well with busy, structured schedules so I'm loving finding things to fill up my afternoon after class!
Yesterday we went to museums with our cultural monitors and then to dinner in Barrio Brasil, a really old and very neat Barrio that I hadn't yet been to before yesterday. It's not really a place I would return to at night, but it was very cool during the day! The museum we went to was call Museo Palacio Cousiños. It was actually a 19th century mansion that had belonged to the Cousiños family, a charcoal mining family that at the time had more money than the Chilean government itself. I can't say it was the most interesting museum ever, especially since they said there was a fire on the second floor several years ago and thus most of the stuff in the mansion was not original, but it was really fun to learn a little bit more about Chilean history! I really want to go back to some of the museums that the other groups went to, especially the Pre-Columbian Art Museum and the Museo de Memoria, which is all about the desaparecidos during the Pinochet era.
Speaking of the Pinochet era, yesterday during class my Professor who is probably around 60 told us the story of what she remembered happening on September 11, 1973 which was the day of the golpe in which La Moneda was bombed, Allende was killed, and Pinochet rose to power. She was not in Santiago, she was living in Viña del Mar and she also shortly thereafter left Chile for France and Algeria for many years, but it was one of the most interesting stories I've ever heard. It's such a HUGE part of Chilean history, so to hear about the planes flying through Santiago, the curfews, the lack of television stations immediately after, and the total and utter control that Pinochet so quickly acquired from someone who actually experienced it was something I will never forget.
The rest of my days have just been filled with prepping for our final presentation project, studying for our final test on friday, beginning to think about what I will be packing for Patagonia on Saturday, and hanging out with friends. It's been a great past several days, filled with me eating far too much food (but seriously, portion control starting tomorrow) and lots of great times with friends. The housing situation remains a question, but I have asked about extending until I find a place and my host mom said of course that was okay, so that takes off some of the stress of finding a place to live. Gina and I are going to look at a house in Providencia tomorrow, so fingers crossed for that! Tomorrow we're supermarketing for some preliminary Patagonia necessities and then I think having a baking/study party at a friends homestay! Should be great!
Over the past few days or even week, I have begun to really fall into a groove. I wake up, either run or not depending on the day/plan, get ready, walk to school (yeyuh saving BIP card money!), have class, do some sort of activity after class be it with the cultural monitor or with friends, come home, do homework, maybe run, eat dinner, sleep, and repeat. It's nice to fall into this groove, it makes it feel less like I'm on a vacation and more like I'm actually doing something productive down here, but still allows for a lot of fun and games in the afternoon and evening! I do well with busy, structured schedules so I'm loving finding things to fill up my afternoon after class!
Yesterday we went to museums with our cultural monitors and then to dinner in Barrio Brasil, a really old and very neat Barrio that I hadn't yet been to before yesterday. It's not really a place I would return to at night, but it was very cool during the day! The museum we went to was call Museo Palacio Cousiños. It was actually a 19th century mansion that had belonged to the Cousiños family, a charcoal mining family that at the time had more money than the Chilean government itself. I can't say it was the most interesting museum ever, especially since they said there was a fire on the second floor several years ago and thus most of the stuff in the mansion was not original, but it was really fun to learn a little bit more about Chilean history! I really want to go back to some of the museums that the other groups went to, especially the Pre-Columbian Art Museum and the Museo de Memoria, which is all about the desaparecidos during the Pinochet era.
Speaking of the Pinochet era, yesterday during class my Professor who is probably around 60 told us the story of what she remembered happening on September 11, 1973 which was the day of the golpe in which La Moneda was bombed, Allende was killed, and Pinochet rose to power. She was not in Santiago, she was living in Viña del Mar and she also shortly thereafter left Chile for France and Algeria for many years, but it was one of the most interesting stories I've ever heard. It's such a HUGE part of Chilean history, so to hear about the planes flying through Santiago, the curfews, the lack of television stations immediately after, and the total and utter control that Pinochet so quickly acquired from someone who actually experienced it was something I will never forget.
The rest of my days have just been filled with prepping for our final presentation project, studying for our final test on friday, beginning to think about what I will be packing for Patagonia on Saturday, and hanging out with friends. It's been a great past several days, filled with me eating far too much food (but seriously, portion control starting tomorrow) and lots of great times with friends. The housing situation remains a question, but I have asked about extending until I find a place and my host mom said of course that was okay, so that takes off some of the stress of finding a place to live. Gina and I are going to look at a house in Providencia tomorrow, so fingers crossed for that! Tomorrow we're supermarketing for some preliminary Patagonia necessities and then I think having a baking/study party at a friends homestay! Should be great!
Monday, 8 February 2010
Superbowling, California style. . .in Chile!
Last night can pretty much be summed up as hilarious. A few EAP kids really wanted to watch the Superbowl, so we looked up where it was playing and found a place in Providencia and decided a group of us would go! We probably could have figured how funny it would be if we had looked at the website in detail before, but it was a great surprise! The bar we went to was called "California Cantina" Sports Bar. As it turns out, it is owned and run by 3 best friends from California. As it also turns out, probably every single US native in Santiago was at this bar for the superbowl! We got there at 7 for an 830 kickoff and got the literal last table possible before they shut the gate and called in the bouncer to turn people away.It was seriously like walking into California in the middle of Santiago. You felt out of place if you spoke spanish. We walked up and the blonde hair blue eyed owner said, rather loudly, "Hey guys! How's it going! You meetin' a group or here for the game?" in the most unaccented English I've heard from anyone but EAP kids since arriving. We all just started laughing! Our waitress was the epitome of a California girl, complete with having attended SDSU. The food was Mexican, something we have all been missing like crazy! We ordered a few pitchers of beer, nachos, and burritos and several people marveled at the availability of hot sauce (non-existant in Chile).
Excitement for burritos!Seriously, everyone in this place spoke English. They boasted themselves as being the only REAL sports bar in Santiago, and it was so weird to translate back to English being the default language when we were addressing people we didn't know in Santiago. A lot of people said it was the perfect place to go when you're homesick, but I kind of disagree. If anything it made me feel a little homesick, but in a oh my goodness Californians and Americans are hilarious kind of way.
Overall, it was a super fun night! It was so great to be able to sit there with friends, eat a burrito, drink a glass of good beer, and watch some all American football! It was like being in ESPN Zone with the cheering and booing and infamous American roudiness, it felt like a tiny slice of home! We also decided that that is where we must return for March Madness and the Fourth of July; and now we know that at least one Mexican restaurant exists in Santiago!
Today I mainly just went to class, watched a really powerful Chilean movie about the time around the Allende-Pinochet era, worked on my cultural project, and wandered Ñunoa for a little with a few friends while successfully buying a replacement earring for my beloved green cartilage piercing earring that disappeared on Saturday :(. I actually like my new little blue one, but we'll see if it upsets my ear! Time to hit the sack early in order to wake up for an early morning run and another full day!
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Pablorazzi
Today was one of those days that I truly realized where I was and how incredibly lucky I am to have this opportunity. After a very rushed morning due to me pressing off on my alarm rather than snooze (woops!) we successfully boarded our got to the bus terminal in Santiago and headed out for El Tabo, a beach town walking distance to Isla Negra.
After arriving in El Tabo, we walked towards Isla Negra and had several "Oh yeah, we're definitely in a foreign country" moments. It's funny because Santiago is really not very different from any big city in the US, but once you get out of the city it's a whole nother world! The beaches and coast here are GORGEOUS. They remind me a lot of Hawaii with the rocks, but also simply of California beaches. We wandered through Isla Negra and down on to a beach where we put our feet in the Pacific, thousands of miles from the ocean we have grown up with but yet the exact same. That astounds me, it's the same ocean! We hung out on the gorgeous beach for a while and then wandered back up to town to get some lunch.
We ended up eating at a restaurant called El Cielo that turned out to be incredible! I ordered Pollo Champiñon (Mushroom Chicken) and ate far more than necessary (quickly becoming a theme/problem). The waiters were so nice in the restaurant and it was an awesome experience.
Then, we made our way over to Pablo Neruda's house which has been turned into a museum for our tour. It was incredible! The house was huge, very very nice, and astoundingly well kept up. It is right on the cliffs of the ocean with incredible views from every room, and it was also incredible to think we were standing in the very rooms where he wrote some of his most inspired poetry (inspiration must have not been hard to come by with the incredible ocean just outside the window). Pablp Neruda and his third wife are also buried just outside the house. The house that is loosely modeled off a boat was overall an awesome and beautiful place to visit with incredible history and views.
After this is where some real adventuring began! One of the friends I was with has a pretty awesome host mom who has a nephew who lives in the tiny village of Isla Negra who we met up with after our tour. We met Rodrigo, his wife Isabel, and their 7 month old son Emilio and walked down to another very nice beach and sat for a bit before heading into town, buying ice cream/water, and returning to their house! We drove up a few dirt roads and eventually stopped at their very rustic but very large and nice house. We ended up hanging out with them for about 3 hours just talking and chilling in their yard! They were only a few years older than us, which made it so interesting to both get their perspectives on living in Chile and Isla Negra as well as just talk about everything from music to school to anything! It was so incredibly Chilean it was almost out of a book as we sat there drinking water while they both smoked cigarettes and drank Escudo Beer (Chilean beer). At one point Rodrigo even busted out his guitars and on of my friends played some songs with him, which was particularly entertaining when Rodrigo tried to sing Rage Against the Machine songs in English.
After parting from our new Chilean friends and profusely thanking them for having us, we headed towards town. However, on the way we came across on of the coolest houses ever and took a little tour inside! It was an entire house converted into a boat-like situation that was painted all sorts of crazy colors and was like a tree-house inside! A picture is all that could do it justice, it was SO COOL!
After this, the adventures just kept coming as we boarded a highly entertaining bus in Isla Negra in order to get to a neighboring town, El Quisco, where our bus was going to leave from. It was like a South American bus straight out of a movie, complete with lots of colors inside, crazy men, and crazy driving. Definitely an experience!
To conclude one of my best days in Chile yet, after returning to Santiago my host family fed me my first completo (like a hot dog but with more stuff on it like avocado and tomatoes and everything)! SO GOOD!
Today was an absolutely gorgeous, adventurous, perfect day! Now it's time to sleep and I don't have to set an alarm! Perfect ending to a perfect day!
Pictures! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047966&id=1043790015&l=af52a1e6c0
Friday, 5 February 2010
Wine Tasting and Apartment Hunting!
Plan for tonight: SLEEP EARLY! I felt like I wasn't really going out and hanging out and exploring enough last week so I stepped it up this week which has resulted in a lot of really great times and experiences but I am pooped! Sleep is going to have to move up on the priority list this weekend!
Yesterday after class and a run, we went with our cultural monitors to a viña (vineyard) called Concha y Toro just outside of Santiago in a place called Pirque. It was gorgeous and so very very nice to escape the craziness of this city, even if just for 4 hours. There were mountain views, grapevines as far as the eye could see, beautiful houses and wine-cellars, and gorgeous landscaping. I took lots of pictures that I'll link to at the end of this entry. It was such a cool experience! My cultural monitor actually works at this winery, so he led us on a tour where we got to walk around the grounds, eat grapes of the vines (during which I managed to fall and now have a lovely bruise, my klutziness has followed me down here), and then enter the cellars and see the barrels of wine including where they age their highest quality wine. Then we got to actually taste the wine! They gave us two small glasses, on white and one red, and taught us how your supposed to go about tasting it (smelling, swishing, smelling, toasting, etc.). If I remembered the names of the wines I would say them, but I believe one was a Chardonnay and the other a Cabernet. I'm not a huge wine fan, but I could definitely tell it was really good wine! It was very very good! After returning to the city, I went over to Gina's for a little bit with some friends and we just hung out and talked. It was over all a really fun day!
Today has thus far consisted of me dragging myself out of bed to walk to school (Gina, Lauren, and I have been walking in the mornings recently rather than taking the bus), forcing myself to stay awake in class, and then visiting potential apartments with an ice cream stop in the middle.
I visited two apartments today and honestly have no idea what I'm planning to do. Both that I visited today were more like international houses, but neither had too many people. The first apartment was very nice and in Providencia. Four people live in the house including a male student from Texas, a female Chilean student, a male Chilean student, and the owner who is a Chilean man. I only met the man, and he was incredibly nice but I really wish I had been able to meet some of the other people closer to my age. The apartment itself was very very nice with a great living room and the bedroom I'd be in was very large and would be just my own. However, the kicker is location. It's in a nice part of town, but a 30 minute walk from the metro. There is a bus that goes directly between the two, but I'm not quite sure. I'm very torn.
The other apartment was in the perfect location. In Providencia right next to a very central metro station. The guys who currently live there right now were really nice and said usually a total of 7 people, both guys and girls, live there with several often being exchange students. This apartment was also nice and in a GREAT location with a park near to run and near everything. However, there are 4 empty rooms, soon to be 5 and the two people that will be left working there are both working men. They're young and super nice and friendly, but I'd like to have at least another girl living there, which will quite likely happen I just have no way of knowing.
Since apartment hunting has just ended up with me being torn, I have thought again about just staying with Claudia but am still very uncertain. If I moved into either of the above apartments (especially the second) it is already clear I would be speaking WAY more spanish and interacting WAY more with the people than I do here with Claudia. They give me a lot of space, which is sometimes almost too much.
Bottom line, I have no idea what I'm doing living situation wise. If I haven't come to a conclusion by midway through next week, I'm going to ask Claudia to extend for 2 or 3 weeks so I can just go on vacation to Patagonia and figure it out when I get back. The other thing is I believe most host families charge $20 US per day to extend, which ends up being about $600 US per month. Seeing as rent at either of the above places is about $300 US, the cost of staying is kind of a negative.
So that's that as far as the apartment hunting situation! I'll keep looking and hopefully something will click!
Tomorrow, I'm going to Isla Negra for a project for my Spanish class with a group of 5 friends. I'm really excited! Isla Negra is where Pablo Neruda's house/museum is and is RIGHT on the coast. We are going to tour the house, go to lunch, explore the beach and the town, and observe a lot for our project. If you don't know, Pablo Neruda is a very famous Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize and was Poet Laureate also. I have read some of his works in Spanish Literature classes back at UCLA. He and his wife are also buried at this museum. Our bus leaves super early tomorrow, but I'm sure it'll be great!
pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047781&id=1043790015&l=6fccd0fe36
Yesterday after class and a run, we went with our cultural monitors to a viña (vineyard) called Concha y Toro just outside of Santiago in a place called Pirque. It was gorgeous and so very very nice to escape the craziness of this city, even if just for 4 hours. There were mountain views, grapevines as far as the eye could see, beautiful houses and wine-cellars, and gorgeous landscaping. I took lots of pictures that I'll link to at the end of this entry. It was such a cool experience! My cultural monitor actually works at this winery, so he led us on a tour where we got to walk around the grounds, eat grapes of the vines (during which I managed to fall and now have a lovely bruise, my klutziness has followed me down here), and then enter the cellars and see the barrels of wine including where they age their highest quality wine. Then we got to actually taste the wine! They gave us two small glasses, on white and one red, and taught us how your supposed to go about tasting it (smelling, swishing, smelling, toasting, etc.). If I remembered the names of the wines I would say them, but I believe one was a Chardonnay and the other a Cabernet. I'm not a huge wine fan, but I could definitely tell it was really good wine! It was very very good! After returning to the city, I went over to Gina's for a little bit with some friends and we just hung out and talked. It was over all a really fun day!
Today has thus far consisted of me dragging myself out of bed to walk to school (Gina, Lauren, and I have been walking in the mornings recently rather than taking the bus), forcing myself to stay awake in class, and then visiting potential apartments with an ice cream stop in the middle.
I visited two apartments today and honestly have no idea what I'm planning to do. Both that I visited today were more like international houses, but neither had too many people. The first apartment was very nice and in Providencia. Four people live in the house including a male student from Texas, a female Chilean student, a male Chilean student, and the owner who is a Chilean man. I only met the man, and he was incredibly nice but I really wish I had been able to meet some of the other people closer to my age. The apartment itself was very very nice with a great living room and the bedroom I'd be in was very large and would be just my own. However, the kicker is location. It's in a nice part of town, but a 30 minute walk from the metro. There is a bus that goes directly between the two, but I'm not quite sure. I'm very torn.
The other apartment was in the perfect location. In Providencia right next to a very central metro station. The guys who currently live there right now were really nice and said usually a total of 7 people, both guys and girls, live there with several often being exchange students. This apartment was also nice and in a GREAT location with a park near to run and near everything. However, there are 4 empty rooms, soon to be 5 and the two people that will be left working there are both working men. They're young and super nice and friendly, but I'd like to have at least another girl living there, which will quite likely happen I just have no way of knowing.
Since apartment hunting has just ended up with me being torn, I have thought again about just staying with Claudia but am still very uncertain. If I moved into either of the above apartments (especially the second) it is already clear I would be speaking WAY more spanish and interacting WAY more with the people than I do here with Claudia. They give me a lot of space, which is sometimes almost too much.
Bottom line, I have no idea what I'm doing living situation wise. If I haven't come to a conclusion by midway through next week, I'm going to ask Claudia to extend for 2 or 3 weeks so I can just go on vacation to Patagonia and figure it out when I get back. The other thing is I believe most host families charge $20 US per day to extend, which ends up being about $600 US per month. Seeing as rent at either of the above places is about $300 US, the cost of staying is kind of a negative.
So that's that as far as the apartment hunting situation! I'll keep looking and hopefully something will click!
Tomorrow, I'm going to Isla Negra for a project for my Spanish class with a group of 5 friends. I'm really excited! Isla Negra is where Pablo Neruda's house/museum is and is RIGHT on the coast. We are going to tour the house, go to lunch, explore the beach and the town, and observe a lot for our project. If you don't know, Pablo Neruda is a very famous Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize and was Poet Laureate also. I have read some of his works in Spanish Literature classes back at UCLA. He and his wife are also buried at this museum. Our bus leaves super early tomorrow, but I'm sure it'll be great!
pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047781&id=1043790015&l=6fccd0fe36
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
A very homely day
Today was really really good! It was a day full of comfortable things, and things that made it seem more like I'm actually living here, rather than just visiting.
After class, I planned to meet my group for our cultural project this weekend at 315 at the bus terminal to buy our bus tickets to La Isla Negra for Saturday. Since I live kind of far from this, Gina and I decided it wasn;t worth going home between class and the ticket purchasing, so we took a bus to Providencia, went to Starbucks and drank some REAL coffee (other than coffee shops, it's all instant here), did our homework, and then took the metro to meet our group to buy our bus tickets. As it turns out, buying bus tickets is pretty darn easy! We just stood in a line, told them where we wanted to go, picked our seats, and paid! It was also really cheap, about $12 US round trip to Isla Negra, where Pablo Neruda's house is on the coast. So that's where I'll be all day Saturday!
Then I came home and did some apartment searching and found a lot of good options and sent some emails of interest. I think I'm going to look at one tomorrow night with a friend, and will definitely go see a few next week and maybe one on Friday. A lot of the ones I'm looking at are International Houses with some Chileans students and some students from all over the world, and several are in Providencia which is where I want to live! We'll see! I also think I'll ask Claudia soon about extending for about a week and how much that will cost.
This is where my night got awesome! Gina, Lauren, and I went out to Parque Arauco again (the really nice mall) to see a movie and eat ice cream (yep, always). It was so much fun! We ended up seeing Alvin y las Ardillas 2, AKA The Squeakwel! It was totalmente en español and I love that I could understand it all! It's a great feeling. I can also really tell that I'm becoming much more comfortable at speaking Spanish also, although I definitely have a LONG way to go. Also, the movie cost around $6 US. Incredible!
So today was a really fun, comfortable day and tomorrow should also be great! We're going to a vineyard with our cultural monitors after class! Wine tasting! Stories to come!
After class, I planned to meet my group for our cultural project this weekend at 315 at the bus terminal to buy our bus tickets to La Isla Negra for Saturday. Since I live kind of far from this, Gina and I decided it wasn;t worth going home between class and the ticket purchasing, so we took a bus to Providencia, went to Starbucks and drank some REAL coffee (other than coffee shops, it's all instant here), did our homework, and then took the metro to meet our group to buy our bus tickets. As it turns out, buying bus tickets is pretty darn easy! We just stood in a line, told them where we wanted to go, picked our seats, and paid! It was also really cheap, about $12 US round trip to Isla Negra, where Pablo Neruda's house is on the coast. So that's where I'll be all day Saturday!
Then I came home and did some apartment searching and found a lot of good options and sent some emails of interest. I think I'm going to look at one tomorrow night with a friend, and will definitely go see a few next week and maybe one on Friday. A lot of the ones I'm looking at are International Houses with some Chileans students and some students from all over the world, and several are in Providencia which is where I want to live! We'll see! I also think I'll ask Claudia soon about extending for about a week and how much that will cost.
This is where my night got awesome! Gina, Lauren, and I went out to Parque Arauco again (the really nice mall) to see a movie and eat ice cream (yep, always). It was so much fun! We ended up seeing Alvin y las Ardillas 2, AKA The Squeakwel! It was totalmente en español and I love that I could understand it all! It's a great feeling. I can also really tell that I'm becoming much more comfortable at speaking Spanish also, although I definitely have a LONG way to go. Also, the movie cost around $6 US. Incredible!
So today was a really fun, comfortable day and tomorrow should also be great! We're going to a vineyard with our cultural monitors after class! Wine tasting! Stories to come!
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Terremotos are bad, regardless of whether there's wine involved.
For some reason this city just exhausts me everyday, it must be the heat or the millions of people or something! Or the fact that I haven't woken up this early for this many days in a row for a lonnnng time.
Anyhow, after class today we had another outing with our cultural monitors to La Moneda (the Presidential Palace). We took a tour of the building where the presidential administrative offices are, kind of like Chile's equivalent to the White House, only the president doesn't actually live in La Moneda she just lives in a house in a nice part of Santiago. The tour was really interesting and historical, we saw a lot of artwork of important historical figures such as Don Pedro de Valdivia and lots of past presidents. There was also a lot of history involved, for instance, when we went to the part of the palace with a piece of the original wall that was bombed and destroyed in 1973 when Pinochet overthrew and killed President Salvador Allende. It was really interesting!
After the tour, we went with our cultural monitors to get ice cream (not a surprise at all at this point) and the to this Chilean Bar to order some traditional Chilean drinks called Terremotos (see title of entry). Now terremoto literally means earthquake, but in this case is a cup of white wine with some sort of ice cream/sorbet in it. I've decided I'm not a fan. I took a few sips trying to convince myself it was a Chilean fave and I had to like it, and the gave up and ate the ice cream off the top. I don't think I'll be spending my money on terremotos while I'm here!
Anyhow, after class today we had another outing with our cultural monitors to La Moneda (the Presidential Palace). We took a tour of the building where the presidential administrative offices are, kind of like Chile's equivalent to the White House, only the president doesn't actually live in La Moneda she just lives in a house in a nice part of Santiago. The tour was really interesting and historical, we saw a lot of artwork of important historical figures such as Don Pedro de Valdivia and lots of past presidents. There was also a lot of history involved, for instance, when we went to the part of the palace with a piece of the original wall that was bombed and destroyed in 1973 when Pinochet overthrew and killed President Salvador Allende. It was really interesting!
After the tour, we went with our cultural monitors to get ice cream (not a surprise at all at this point) and the to this Chilean Bar to order some traditional Chilean drinks called Terremotos (see title of entry). Now terremoto literally means earthquake, but in this case is a cup of white wine with some sort of ice cream/sorbet in it. I've decided I'm not a fan. I took a few sips trying to convince myself it was a Chilean fave and I had to like it, and the gave up and ate the ice cream off the top. I don't think I'll be spending my money on terremotos while I'm here!
Monday, 1 February 2010
A half marathon and a sister
Well it's Monday and our class is now from 9-1 for the remaining two weeks, which made for a far too early alarm awakening but a much more tolerable temperature during class. I suppose the two main things that happened today, as you may have gathered from the title of this entry, are that I officially registered to run the Santiago Half Marathon on April 11th with several people from my program and my host sister who I had yet to meet returned home from her vacation.
I will first elaborate on the running aspect. I had kind of toyed with the idea of wanting to look into seeing if there was a half marathon somewhere down here while I'm here, but I had also kind of accepted defeat and figured I was going to majorly slack off on the running I have been doing so well at keeping up on this year. Suddenly yesterday, all the pieces kind of fell into place while I was out with some friends who run and suddenly we were all registered and a fairly large group from EAP is running the Santiago Half Marathon! I'm really excited about this, because I love the way I feel when I'm running regularly both mentally and physically but I am awful at staying motivated if I don't have a goal so this works out great! More so than ever before, my goal is just to finish it. Obviously, there are many things that are going to take priority over this, but if I can just run 3 times a week I know I can make it happen. Before arriving in Chile, I was worried about running as far as the air quality and safety, but I've run several times (obviously not in the dark) and been both perfectly safe and able to breathe which, you know, is always a good thing! Another advantage? Registration was 12000 pesos, which is only about 22 dollars since the exchange rate ROCKED today (528 pesos to the dollar). Overall, I'm super excited! Half marathon in South America woohoo!
So on to my new host sister! I was kind of nervous to meet her, just because I had become so comfortable being at home and was worried about rocking the boat. However, she's awesome! Well, to be honest I've only known her about an hour so far, but still. She is 19 years old and just got back from camping as a scout leader about 5 hours to the south. She's really talkative and I can communicate with her pretty well, which gives me more opportunities to speak Spanish while at home which is DEFINITELY a good thing since when I'm with my friends we seem to almost always speak English or Spanglish.
Which moves me on to the third point I didn't know I was going to make but have been naturally led to. I am once again torn between staying with Claudia and moving out, but definitely seem to be leaning towards moving out into one of the Residenciales or Pensiones. My reasoning is that I don't feel like I've been speaking enough spanish, and want to live with chilean students that are my own age so that there is more Spanish in my daily life. This is not to say I don't think I've improved at all since arriving, I just think that by having more of an opportunity to speak it things could move a lot quicker.
Other highlights of today included chatting with Malia in New Zealand, a great feeling run, another (unsuccessful in terms of purchases) visit to El Patronato, and homework.
So with that, it is nearly my bed-time so that I can wake up bright (dark?) and early again. I love and miss you all! Chao!
I will first elaborate on the running aspect. I had kind of toyed with the idea of wanting to look into seeing if there was a half marathon somewhere down here while I'm here, but I had also kind of accepted defeat and figured I was going to majorly slack off on the running I have been doing so well at keeping up on this year. Suddenly yesterday, all the pieces kind of fell into place while I was out with some friends who run and suddenly we were all registered and a fairly large group from EAP is running the Santiago Half Marathon! I'm really excited about this, because I love the way I feel when I'm running regularly both mentally and physically but I am awful at staying motivated if I don't have a goal so this works out great! More so than ever before, my goal is just to finish it. Obviously, there are many things that are going to take priority over this, but if I can just run 3 times a week I know I can make it happen. Before arriving in Chile, I was worried about running as far as the air quality and safety, but I've run several times (obviously not in the dark) and been both perfectly safe and able to breathe which, you know, is always a good thing! Another advantage? Registration was 12000 pesos, which is only about 22 dollars since the exchange rate ROCKED today (528 pesos to the dollar). Overall, I'm super excited! Half marathon in South America woohoo!
So on to my new host sister! I was kind of nervous to meet her, just because I had become so comfortable being at home and was worried about rocking the boat. However, she's awesome! Well, to be honest I've only known her about an hour so far, but still. She is 19 years old and just got back from camping as a scout leader about 5 hours to the south. She's really talkative and I can communicate with her pretty well, which gives me more opportunities to speak Spanish while at home which is DEFINITELY a good thing since when I'm with my friends we seem to almost always speak English or Spanglish.
Which moves me on to the third point I didn't know I was going to make but have been naturally led to. I am once again torn between staying with Claudia and moving out, but definitely seem to be leaning towards moving out into one of the Residenciales or Pensiones. My reasoning is that I don't feel like I've been speaking enough spanish, and want to live with chilean students that are my own age so that there is more Spanish in my daily life. This is not to say I don't think I've improved at all since arriving, I just think that by having more of an opportunity to speak it things could move a lot quicker.
Other highlights of today included chatting with Malia in New Zealand, a great feeling run, another (unsuccessful in terms of purchases) visit to El Patronato, and homework.
So with that, it is nearly my bed-time so that I can wake up bright (dark?) and early again. I love and miss you all! Chao!
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