Admiring the Andes

This weekend was wonderful.

On Thursday, I went to see El Origen (Inception). It was in English with Spanish subtitles. I didn't realize that only children's movies are dubbed here. Sergio told me that it's because kids can't always read the subtitles so it's easier for them to hear the voices. They don't dub the other films because they want to keep the actors' voices. The movie was so intense. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It was really cool to watch the movie and read the subtitles while listening to the film (lots of multitasking going on). At the end, we just sat there in shock. Definitely worth the 4.500 pesos.

Friday was a normal day. I had my history help session and relaxed to get ready to go skiing!

I woke up on Saturday at 6am to get to the ski shop. Since it was so early, I had to take different buses to get there, and they took a while to come since it was 7 am on a Saturday morning. I finally made it and rented goggles, a helmet, and snow pants - which promptly ripped. Oops. It was tiny. Then I hopped in the mini bus and we left by 8. I went with a group of exchange students from all over the world.

The ride was definitely interesting. I sat in the back with my friend Emily and we got to know the guy sitting in our row - Pierre, from Montreal. He hadn't slept yet - came straight from going out to the ski trip. He was firing questions for most of the ride until we hit the switchbacks. At that point, we all stopped talking so that we could concentrate on keeping our breakfasts down.

I thought the road would never end. We were driving a la Tomás in Switzerland (Brett and Kendall - you know what I mean with this one). We took the turns pretty hard and we were little turning 180 degrees each time. My Chilean mom told me that there were 39 turns in total. It felt like 539 at the time.

But we safely made it to the top of the mountain and had this view:

The skiing was reminiscent of the slopes in Zermatt. Gorgeous view, no trees, just pure snow (and a bit of ice since it was nearing the end of ski season). I skied with my friends Hilary and Sophie. We spent the whole morning on the slopes and as we went in for lunch, Hilary had a rough fall and all of her equipment scattered all over the mountain. She hurt her hip with the fall, so that was the end of her day.

After lunch, Sophie and I joined Pierre and his two friends from Finland - they were awesome - and we hit the slopes for another 3 hours. Sophie and I were the only two skiers of the bunch. We decided to explore the upper right side of the mountain and curved around to the backside. We found our best runs of the day there and the view was amazing. As the day continued, the clouds rolled closer and one of our paths looked like it led straight to heaven. It literally felt like we were flying.

At 4, we returned our gear and drove back down the mountain - 39 switchbacks again. Once I got home, I crashed. I was so sore (and still am). But it's the good kind of "I worked hard" sore.

Sunday, I met Madeline and Abby and we decided to hike up Cerro San Cristobal. This was initially my idea from earlier in the week, but after skiing it was a little rough. I lagged behind at times, but we finally made it.

At the top of San Cristobal is a huge statue of Mary that looks over all of Santiago. It is the most beautiful view of the city - especially if you are there on a smog-less day. Santiago is really interesting in that it has multiple Cerros and parks in the middle of the city that you can hike. They are these hills the pop out among the skyscrapers and houses.

From the top of the mountain, we decided to take the funicular (incline) back down. Abby was a little scared, but it was a quick ride and we kept her occupied.

Today was a pretty normal day with one exception. My life in Santiago revolves around public transportation. So I've pretty much seen everything. From street performers juggling fire or playing with devil sticks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_sticks), to people selling food or movies, to others who play musical instruments or rap - I thought I had seen it all. Nope. A woman and her daughter hoped on my bus the morning and the woman was walking a dog. Ok fair enough. I had seen a cat on the Micro once before. But then I realized that the guy across from me was staring at something. It turns out that the daughter had also brought her pet on the bus.... a duck. It kept biting at her finger and then started the quack. Priceless. I told my Chilean family about it during dinner and they thought I was lying. "Are you sure you weren't swimming in a lake?" Nope...

Feliz Cumpleaños Nati!

Tonight was my Chilean host sister's 20th birthday and we had a huge party. All of her friends came. As did all of the relatives. Time to show off my spanish skills. Haha. It was so great to get to know all the aunts, uncles, and cousins (makes me miss my own family gatherings - love you fam!). We spent the night comparing life in Chile to the US, ranging from high school uniforms to slang terminology. I think I'm going to help my Chilean cousin Italia's boyfriend with his English. Should be super interesting. I also think I might get a Tandem partner to help someone else practice (and also to make an automatic Chilean friend :P).

For Nati's party, we kept the Chile decorations up from the asado this past Sunday. We toasted to the safety of the miners in the north and spent the lunch listening to the radio and then watching Piñera's speech on the TV. It's amazing that all 33 are still alive after 17 days in an underground shelter with only 5 days of food. What a miracle! Except they say it's supposed to take around 3 or 4 months to get them out... Can you imagine being stuck in a tiny pocket underground for 4 months? Wow...

I also went hiking this weekend. We took a bus as close to the Cordillera as we could, hopped off, and walked about 2 miles to the "trail head". It took us a little while to reach the start of our hike. With the help of 2 sets of directions, a map, a guide dog dubbed "Rudy", and a staircase that could have led us straight into the sky, we finally made it to our hiking spot.

The hike was basically a straight climb up a dusty mountain littered with cacti....

Without hiking boots, it was a bit tricky. We didn't realize what we were getting ourselves into. But we made it to the first summit in an hour. (My friend Mary wants to climb the rest next weekend).

The view was beautiful with the exception of the smog blanketing the city... but that's Santiago for you.

The route down a bit tougher, especially without hiking poles (the Chileans use them to literally run down the mountain), but we made it!

This weekend I'm going skiing! I am so excited! It's going to be amazing. There are 4 places to ski about an hour outside of Santiago. I'm going to one called "Colorado".

I'm going to leave you with something I now have memorized. After seeing this on the train everyday for the last.. uhh.. 7 weeks? (whoa...).. here's my favorite Transantiago commercial:

El Esmog

After two and a half weeks of school - we've passed the month mark - I'm officially in school mode. Chilean's love their reading, that's for sure. I have about 300 pages of econ reading to do, packets and packets of history, and the occasional short story. But I'm still making time to explore.

This weekend we went to Pomaire, a tiny little town about an hour outside of Santiago that specializes in ceramics. They make these pigs - some are piggy banks! - and the little one's have 3 legs. If you buy a 3-legged pig and give it as a gift, it's supposed to be good luck. Pretty cool.

Pomaire is also the home of the 1/2 kilo empanada. So in the spirit of trying everything Chilean, I split an empanada and a pastel de choclo and we still had too much food.

Today has been a pretty relaxing and productive day. I decided that in order to avoid gaining 90 pounds from all of the bread I consume, I'm going to start running. Outside.

I woke up to meet Madeline at 9:30 - Sergio exclaimed "Milagro!" (miracle!) when he saw me. My family jokes around that I hate waking up. But I can do it when I set my mind to it. It's just tough when it's cold and my bed is warm and snuggly (that's for you, Madeline). I ran to Madeline's, we walked around for a while to see each others' houses and then I dropped her off and ran back. Not too shabby. Except that now I can't stop coughing between my mini cold and the esmog. This is the first time that I've fully understood the smog's impact on exercising...

My Chilean ID card was supposed to be ready today, so Sergio and I went to pick it up. Every time I laughed in the car, I coughed and Sergio joked with me saying "Don't die, or everyone will think I killed you..." Hahah. Once winter is over, the smog won't have such a huge effect.

We're heading back on Friday to officially pick up my ID card. Chileans take their time with everything and deadlines don't really exist. It's more of a suggestion.

Trip One = BOOKED

Madeline, Abby, and I booked our first trip today!!! We are officially going to Peru - Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Lake Titicaca (the floating islands in Puno), and Lima from October 7 to the 11th.

More to come later. Off to Pomaire tomorrow - Kristin, it's the ceramics town with the little 3-legged, good luck chanchitos!

Happy "Día de los Niños"

So today was kids's day - a la father's day and mother's day. A celebration of the younger generation in Chile. Basically like a mini Christmas in August. I think this should become a tradition in the U.S. too. Anyone with me?

Yesterday I went to visit Isla Negra (Pablo Neruda's second house) with some friends. It had the most amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. The inside was designed to resemble a boat and was full of everything that Pablo accumulated in his lifetime. Talk about the ultimate pack-rat. The stuff he had was really cool, but there was a lot of it...It covered all of the walls and ranged from mosaic fireplaces and ships in bottles to immense collections of seashells and figureheads from ships.

After we visited the house, we spent some time at the beach and then picked up empanadas for the road. Once we sat on the benches with our empanadas to wait for our bus back to Santiago, 7 stray dogs showed up because they wanted our food. I felt like the dog whisperer - except I couldn't really control them... They all swarmed my bench and then followed me down the block to the trash can.

After we ditched the dogs and hopped on the bus, we watched the sun set over the Pacific - so beautiful.

Today, for kid's day, I received a gift from family when I woke up - chocolate... excellent! The we had our second family asado since Marco's kids were here for the weekend. We had the whole family together...completely crazy. Everyone talks at the same time, but for once, I understood about 75 % of what they were saying!

We also celebrated the newly discovered barbeque pit dubbed "Machu Picchu". My family has only lived in this house for 3 years and a couple weeks ago, the dogs jumped up on this platform that had been hidden by overgrown brush in the backyard. Voila! Perfect for the family asado!

Tomorrow starts week two of school. I will also solidify my travel plans for the semester. Here's to Machu Picchu, Patagonia, B.A., Mendoza, and the many more places I hope to reach while I'm down here!

I'm Blending!

Whoops! Can't believe I let another week go by. Sorry about that!

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So I'm almost a legitimate Chilean citizen.. meh kinda? After getting my student visa to come here, turns out I had a couple more things to accomplish. The first was a trip to the international police so that I could register my visa. Not really sure why? I thought they already knew I was here since I cleared customs...My Chilean dad and I woke up at the crack of dawn (literally.. the sun was not up yet) and we drove to the city. He wanted to beat all of the Peruvians - they try to immigrate here. After going to the wrong building first, we finally ended up in the right place and I got in line...behind 60 Peruvians.. My host dad really wanted to take a picture because he thought it would be hilarious. Oh boy. Next step is to get my ID card. Sergio is going to take me there tomorrow.

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The rest of the weekend went well. My parents left for a mini vacation together, so my friends Sophie and Hilary came over and we cooked dinner at my house on Friday. They almost killed me by turning on the gas in the oven and not lighting it (it's a manual stove...). Luckily, we caught that one pretty quickly. My host sister keeps playfully messing with me that I tried to burn the house down. Negative.

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Saturday night I went to a birthday party for Hilary's host brother. We got to meet a bunch of Chileans and my Spanish was spot on that night. (Woo Woo!) Times like those are so amazing and they are becoming more frequent! Today, I asked my host dad if I had improved in the last three weeks and he excitedly said "¡Sí!". That's always reassuring.

Campus Oriente

This week has been crazy. We started classes on Monday. These two weeks are meant for "window shopping"... So I went to as many classes as a possible could. My brain definitely hurts, but I understood everything!

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After all of that, I'm taking 4 classes. An econ class comparing the economies of Asia, Europe, and Latin America; a history class dealing with Latin America and Chile in the 20th Century; a class about short stories - love this professor; and an advanced spanish language class. I don't have classes of Friday which is going to be amazing! Probably the only time I'll have a schedule like this one.

The view of the Cordillera from San Joaquin - this is where all of my classes will be.

Arriving at this schedule has been difficult. Between super long excursions to the other Catolica campuses (there are 4), to dealing with the Chilean copy system - we've had many adventures.

Madeline and Abby with our trusty map!

Since yesterday marked my 3 week anniversary here, I decided to reflect a bit on some of the things I've seen here. Fun facts:

• People do the weirdest stuff on the Metro/Micro (the bus). This morning I saw someone with nose spray, another woman with eye drops, another plucking her eyebrows, and yesterday I saw a man trim his beard on the train? Odd?! YES! They also sell all kinds of things and perform. I have seen a guy selling bootleg DVD's, a bunch selling candy and chocolate, one playing the guitar, one selling little toys, and to top it off, today two guys got on my micro and started rapping? Epic.


• There are two types of ambulances here. The normal big ones and smaller vans. The tricky thing is that the bigger ones speed through traffic with their lights flashing - a la U.S. But the little ones just sit in traffic, even with their lights flashing. I guess no one cares about the little ambulances? Or they just don't have enough "Umph" to get through the traffic? Who can say...


• Rush hour here is absolutely ridiculous... At the start of the train line, people will be packed on the platform from the doors of the train all the way to the wall... the whole way down the platform. You have to wait to walk down the stairs. And when everyone gets on the trains and buses - it's the ultimate game of jenga/sardines. I have never been so squished in my life. They have people whose jobs are to push the people onto the metro so the doors can shut.


• Lastly, I feel like I will always look like a gringa here. No matter what I do/wear. But I did have an epic moment yesterday (hence the title of this entry). As I was waiting for the train to come at Vincente Valdés, a Chilean woman came up to me and asked how to get somewhere!!! I was so excited that she thought I might know! (I didn't actually know where the place was.. but that's not the point of this story).

Anyway, that's the gist of what I've been up to in the last week.