"Wow Wow Wow!"

(- in the words of Marco...)

I changed the background of my blog! I got bored of the brown and I thought I'd change it up a bit.

Busy week here on the Chilean home front as usual.

Monday was quite the day. We talked about human rights in the morning for the last day of our "Contemporary Chile" class. Human rights are still a huuuuge deal here today (See article from last week: Human Rights Advocates Pressure Piñera On Pardon Issue). The guy who taught the class was pretty interesting and then became even more interesting when we learned that he had been tortured during Pinochet's dictatorship.

Side note 1: Chilean politics are VERY controversial. With the right, center, and left (and each containing their own sectors within), there are so many opinions here, especially when it comes to the very complicated history involving the golpe de estado. (If you feel like reading some more, look up Chile's political history. Tricky stuff.)

Side note 2: Our class is taught from a left-center point of view. My host dad, Marco, is very far to the right [i.e. his views about Pinochet - the dictator - are a lot more positive]. He wants to sit me down and tell me the other side of the story, but we are going to need time, lots of time...

Ok, back to the present.

That afternoon, we took a field trip to Villa Grimaldi - one of the places where Chileans were interrogated and tortured during Pinochet's regime, the same spot were our professor had been tortured. Pretty powerful. He walked us through everything, step by step, in the same location. (They've now turned the site into a park since it was destroyed after Pinochet to cover the act. A few buildings still remain).

I can't imagine having to relieve that sort of pain.

After a day's worth of standing on my feet and walking around - I know I know, it's nothing in comparison to what he went through - I accidently took a 3-hour nap when I got home. My Chilean mom woke me up at 10 to make sure I was ok and give me dinner. She looked pretty concerned. They kept knocking on my door and calling my name for a while, but I slept through it all. Oops.

On Tuesday we had a Spanish placement test, toured around one of the universities, and I watched the U.Chile v. Chivas soccer game. Simple day.

I spent yesterday (Wednesday) figuring out my classes. It's quite the matrix with 3 universities to pick from through our program, so many classes, and an impossible econ department (sweet..).

Last night, we had a dance lesson in our living room. My host family knows two dance professors and they came to teach us the merengue, salsa, and tango. Sergio and I danced together and my host mom danced with my host dad. Sergio warned me before we started that he didn't dance.. it was definitely a struggle. I kept teaching him what to do. Surprisingly, I was the only one in the family who knew salsa! (Sergio gave up by this point, so I danced with the instructor. He told me that I should find a friend to dance with next time. Haha.)

Today, we visited the last of our 3 universities - La Católica. It's probably the one where I will take the most class. [Mom - it's the one that has the "U.S. campus feel" on the San Joaquin campus. That's where most of my classes will be.]

Lastly, I've been found out...

Sergio has noticed that I snooze my alarm like there's no tomorrow. Today was a little rough. I had to get up at 7:30 and it was freezing outside of my bed since my estufa had been off through the night. I mean, who can blame me? But he definitely got a kick out of the fact that 4 different alarms went off this morning.. oops. Paper thin walls can be troublesome.

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Todavía estoy buscando para mi nave espacial...