Today marked the official last day of orientation!!! We made it y'all!
Orientation has been going on for about a week, and it has been super helpful and informative but EXHAUSTING. In fact, my program has a WhatsApp message going on and it consisted mostly of pictures of people sleeping everywhere around the center. Sitting and listening for 9 hours a day is exhausting, especially when it's also in a language you're still learning.
I have officially kind of figured out how to get around Santiago, which is exciting! We have a pretty good bus and metro system (although they call the bus system here "micro" which can get confusing), although the buses notoriously run on their own schedule. Which is, to say, that 5 buses will appear at once and then you won't see a bus for 30 minutes, making you late for everything. I've learned already that I need to leave an hour for what should be a 20 minute bus ride, especially during morning rush hour when it seems most of the bus drivers are off somewhere sleeping off their weekend of partying and neglecting the commuters of Santiago.
Here is a photo of my lovely group outside the US embassy in Chile, where we were warned that if we go to jail they can't help us, but if we die they have to tell our families. So that was an interesting trip.
This weekend, our program went to the beautiful coastal cities of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. They're neighboring cities, but they have very distinct personalities. Here you can see a picture of Valpo that was taken from the famous poet Pablo Neruda's house! The tour was very interesting, and his house is eclectic and has fantastic views. If you ever go to Valpo, I would absolutely recommend stopping by. As you can kind of see in the photo, Valpo is characterized by poorly placed and very colorful houses. Valpo was built without any sort of city planning, so all of the houses are sort of built on top of each other and the streets are downright frightening to walk on because they're semi-vertical. There's actually very cool/scary footage of people riding bikes down the streets. Empty your bladder before you watch.
In Valpo, we had lunch at a cute restaurant with a fantastic view. It also had many cats who were probably actually humans. Here you can see one cat who was patiently awaiting his milk and fish lunch. He felt perfectly entitled to his seat and was unamused by our laughter.
Next, we went to Viña del Mar, which is much more modern and touristy-feeling than Valpo. Picture big waterfront hotels, cute restaurants overlooking the sea, and trash everywhere on the beaches. That's pretty much exactly what you can find in Viña del Mar. There were many cute beach bum dogs. Please go to that page if you want to see their stories!
Chile borders the Pacific Ocean, which is always cold. Also, it is winter in Chile, so everything is cold. I didn't plan on going into the ocean, but I got distracted by a dog and I ended up accidentally going in the ocean in my clogs, jeans, and thick wool socks. It was cold. Then we had a 2 hour bus ride back. If I get sick, we will know why. It was worth it though--check out this artsy iphone photo of my friend Nick!
On Sunday, we went to a part of Santiago called "El Centro" which is the center of Santiago. It's the oldest area (I think?) in Santiago, and it houses a lot of the government buildings, as well as a very important and beautiful Catholic church. We did a little tour of this area with a professor from the program, and I promptly forgot everything. Then, we went to the local market (El Mercado Central) which was mostly dead fish laying on ice and staring into my soul. I left pretty quickly.
As soon as I walked out, I was greeted by this sight:
That's it. I can go home. I've seen all I need to see.
After I escaped the fish purgatory and encountered the llove of my llife, a few friends and I hopped on the metro and went back to the area of town (Providencia) where the program's building is. We found a little vegetarian Mediterranean restaurant, and had delicious food. Featured prominently in this photo is my mango juice, which was delicious. I will be going back for many glasses of mango juice.
That's basically all I have to report! Classes in the Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC or La Católica), which is the local university we can take courses at, begin this week, and classes through my program begin next week. I will report back soon!
Besos,
Nina
