Yet another month has passed!
Oh boy, do I have a lot to catch you all up on.
The last time I wrote was October 7, so here's a very abridged version of what's been happening in the past month and a half.
Because Chile is a catholic country, we get an obscene number of Mondays off due to various saints being born or dying, and so the weekend of October 7-9 I went with Steph's host family to Leyda, a rural town about an hour and a half west of Santiago. The crew consisted of me, Steph, Manina and Juan Rene (Steph's host parents), and Emilia and Renato and Damián (Steph's host parents' grandkids). The air in Leyda is so much cleaner and it's a beautiful grasslandy area. It was a much-needed break from the city atmosphere. Here are some pictures from that little trip!
The next week was a pretty hard one overall. It was almost exactly halfway through the trip, and I had just gotten some bad news from home, so being in Chile was feeling both like it was going to quickly and not fast enough. Friday, October 14 all of the spanish classes from my program went to the Cementerio General in Santiago (a cemetery--you probably could've figured that out), and we spent the afternoon looking around and learning about the historical figures who were buried there, the history of the cemetery, and the role of the cemetery in some of the darker history of Chile. During the dictatorship (1973-1990), mass graves were made in the back of the cemetery and unknown numbers of now unknown people were buried after being executed for "crimes against the government"--or, more accurately, for being anti-Pinochet/not pro-Pinochet. Even now, many of the bodies buried in those graves are unidentified. There's also a monument in the cemetery for those who were killed during the dictatorship in which those who are known are named and those who are not known are remembered. Overall, going to the cemetery was a cool but extremely sobering experience.
That Saturday (the next day), one of my closest friends from the program went to the ER, found out she had a detached retina, and had to go home all within about 12 hours. It was a huge shock to my system, and to everyone else in the program as well. It was heartbreaking to see our friend go so soon, and it was also a reminder of the fact that we would be doing the same thing in fewer than two months.
As if that week/weekend couldn't get WORSE, that Sunday I basically had a full-on meltdown because I was tired, sick, tired of being sick, missing Anna already, and I had spent that Friday walking around a cemetery and thinking about death. Not exactly a recipe for happiness. I finally went back to the doctor that Monday, and it turned out that I had been walking around with bronchitis for over a month in one of the top five most polluted cities in the world. With that clarity, I took about a week and a half and finally got the rest I had been needing for a long time.
The first time I really left my bed was October 28, when I got on a bus and headed to La Serena in the north for a solo trip. One of my big goals for myself for this trip was to gain more independence, and since I had conquered the Santiago public transportation challenge, I decided to take on a farther solo experience. La Serena is on the coast, and is part of Valle de Elqui, which is a region known for its stargazing and hiking.
La Serena
Day 1: I took a bus from Santiago and got into La Serena at about 7pm. I walked over to my hostel and made myself at home a little bit by accidentally cooking myself 6 servings of lentils. If you are my friend on Snapchat, you probably got a lot of panicked snaps. I chatted with some girls from Valparaiso, and then immediately passed out.
Day 2: This day was fantastic! I did a tour through a company called Ecotourism, which is the most popular in the area. We went to an area called the Reserva Nacional Pingüino de Humboldt which had several islands including the Islas Damas. It's a nature reserve where we were lucky enough to see sea lions, penguins, sea otters, bottlenose dolphins, and various other animals who were awesome but whose names I have forgotten (I'm sorry! You're special too!). It was just beautiful!!
Day 3: This morning I went for a morning walk on the beach. The La Serena beach itself is pretty gross, to be honest (dirty), but to get to walk by myself on the beach with very few people around felt like the most special thing in the world. After that, I met up with Angela, who is the academic coordinator for IES here in Santiago and who is an absolute lovebug. She and her family have a condo in La Serena, so I went and had lunch with her, her husband, and her wonderful daughter Josefa. And their cat! That evening I went on a star-gazing tour at an observatory called Mamalluca observatory. It was a new moon, so the stars were absolutely beautiful.
Day 4: Back to Santiago I went!
Then, back to reality, and back to school for the first time in about two weeks. It was nice to come back to Santiago and feel like I was coming home in a sense, but I'd also realized at this point that my body really does not like the air pollution here--I feel much, much healthier in basically every way when I am not breathing this air.
That Friday (November 4th), we got to meet Amante EledÃn Parraguez, the man who wrote Tres Años Para Nacer and whose life the movie Machuca is based off of. That was very cool.
The next week was life as normal. I adore adore ADORE working in the day care with the kiddos, so that has been a highlight of every week here. I learn so much from them, and every moment is interesting a new. I already know that they will be the part of this program that I miss the most.
With the next week came the US presidential election. Most of you have probably seen something I've written on Facebook by now, but to sum it all up in case you haven't, I am disgusted. I am deeply, deeply concerned. I am frightened, and I am sad. Being abroad especially the first few days after the election was really hard, because I wanted to scream and rally and sit with all my friends back home, but all I could do was move on with life as normal. During that time, Facebook became a really great way for me to feel connected to those who I was thinking about the most, and to see the outpouring of furious energy and movement towards change gave me a lot of hope. I'll be coming back to the US ready to stand up and fight. Watch out Donald Trump, here I come. Now more proficient in Spanish and angry than ever.
This week has been a bit of a roller coaster. I've been insanely busy, which hasn't given me a lot of time to think about going home soon. At this point I think that's good--I've got enough left to do homework-wise that I can't afford to be distracted, and wallowing in preemptive nostalgia for a week and a half isn't particularly fun. I'll finish up with classes this coming Monday, and my last day at the nursery is Wednesday. The 28th of November Steph and I will head to Easter Island, and the 2nd of December I'll be on my way back, taking a red eye to Raleigh (Mipso song, look it up) (in this case, literal).
I'll be back on here sometime next week, doing a little reflection to tie things up. If you've been following along, you've probably realized that I've adored this experience for so, so many reasons. This time in two weeks, I'll be headed to the airport. And the world spins madly on.
Todos los abrazos del mundo,
Nina
