Well, I’ve officially left Santiago… After four months of learning about the city, going to the various communities, and learning how to feel safe and comfortable in a new city, it was time to leave. I think I had an interesting relationship with the city, which I noticed specifically when people asked me what there is to do. Santiago is often forgotten when people think about South American cities like Buenos Aires and Lima. Santiago isn’t the prettiest, it doesn’t have the best museums or restaurants, and it doesn’t have anything super famous about it. What I’ve realized, though, is that it was the perfect place for me to study abroad – just enough fun and interesting things to do, just easy enough to get to other places in Chile, just different enough from the US that I felt like I was someplace new, but just safe enough that I didn’t always feel uncomfortable. Looking through my lists of cool thing’s I’ve down, I can say that I really took advantage of (almost) everything that Santiago had to offer – its parks, its museums, its night life, its people. I posted a little ode to Santiago, and Chile in general, on my Facebook as I was leaving:
“I suppose the sign of a good experience is having absolutely no desire for it to end. Thanks, Chile, for 4 months of adventure and pure joy. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t all just a dream. Nos vemos pronto.”
Well, I can’t say I had absolutely no desire to leave… Some things I won’t miss: the food (besides empanadas and sopapillas), the whistles and hollers on the street, and the smog I had to breathe in every day. Besides that, though, I’ll miss so many things about the city. Being able to look at the Andes mountains whenever I wanted, being able to get almost anywhere I wanted to in the city with just an easy metro or bus ride, being able to really feel like I belonged there and knew my way around. To be honest, I don’t think I really appreciated Santiago enough until I came here to Lima. Don’t get me wrong, I think Lima is great. It’s the first city in South America that I visited 3 years ago and will always have a special place in my heart. Nevertheless, it’s dirtier, it’s scarier, it’s less organized and it’s harder to navigate. Driving from the airport, I definitely had a “Dorothy, we’re not in Santiago anymore” moment – especially because I could understand everything that my cab driver said after 4 months of still not being able to understand Chileans. Back to the Facebook status, though, I know I had a good experience because of how hard it was to leave. I knew that it would be hard to leave all the friends I met along the way, but I didn’t realize how much I was going to miss my life in Santiago. Here’s to remembering all of the great memories I made and returning to the city someday!
Throughout my semester, I’ve been collecting odds and ends on a frame hanging in my room. It held postcards from Santiago, Pucon, Chiloe, Valparaiso, Mendoza, and San Pedro de Atacama, in addition to my badge from my clinical observations and the sticker I got at Concha y Toro. I bought the green hat early on in the semester when I realized how much my nose was getting burnt, and the checkered flag is the symbol of San Pedro. On the right side, there’s a sock with a hole in the foot, since my friend always made fun of me for my socks… And a Lady Liberty hat that the guys from Mendoza randomly gave us. Finally, I have my assignment that I failed! Well, thankfully I didn’t end up failing it because my teacher let me re-do it, but I still kept it on my wall as a reminder that sometimes we make mistakes, but we just have to keep working harder :) It was definitely hard to take all of these things down, but I’m excited to create a Chile Wall in my room – and with the other flags and posters I’ve picked up and the pictures I’ll print, I’ll definitely have enough stuff from my trip to fill an entire wall.
“I suppose the sign of a good experience is having absolutely no desire for it to end. Thanks, Chile, for 4 months of adventure and pure joy. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t all just a dream. Nos vemos pronto.”
Well, I can’t say I had absolutely no desire to leave… Some things I won’t miss: the food (besides empanadas and sopapillas), the whistles and hollers on the street, and the smog I had to breathe in every day. Besides that, though, I’ll miss so many things about the city. Being able to look at the Andes mountains whenever I wanted, being able to get almost anywhere I wanted to in the city with just an easy metro or bus ride, being able to really feel like I belonged there and knew my way around. To be honest, I don’t think I really appreciated Santiago enough until I came here to Lima. Don’t get me wrong, I think Lima is great. It’s the first city in South America that I visited 3 years ago and will always have a special place in my heart. Nevertheless, it’s dirtier, it’s scarier, it’s less organized and it’s harder to navigate. Driving from the airport, I definitely had a “Dorothy, we’re not in Santiago anymore” moment – especially because I could understand everything that my cab driver said after 4 months of still not being able to understand Chileans. Back to the Facebook status, though, I know I had a good experience because of how hard it was to leave. I knew that it would be hard to leave all the friends I met along the way, but I didn’t realize how much I was going to miss my life in Santiago. Here’s to remembering all of the great memories I made and returning to the city someday!
Throughout my semester, I’ve been collecting odds and ends on a frame hanging in my room. It held postcards from Santiago, Pucon, Chiloe, Valparaiso, Mendoza, and San Pedro de Atacama, in addition to my badge from my clinical observations and the sticker I got at Concha y Toro. I bought the green hat early on in the semester when I realized how much my nose was getting burnt, and the checkered flag is the symbol of San Pedro. On the right side, there’s a sock with a hole in the foot, since my friend always made fun of me for my socks… And a Lady Liberty hat that the guys from Mendoza randomly gave us. Finally, I have my assignment that I failed! Well, thankfully I didn’t end up failing it because my teacher let me re-do it, but I still kept it on my wall as a reminder that sometimes we make mistakes, but we just have to keep working harder :) It was definitely hard to take all of these things down, but I’m excited to create a Chile Wall in my room – and with the other flags and posters I’ve picked up and the pictures I’ll print, I’ll definitely have enough stuff from my trip to fill an entire wall.
I final wrap-up of fun things at the end of my stay:
– Hiked up Cerro San Cristobal to watch the sunset. I’ve been wanting to do it all semester, so I finally convinced some friends to do it with me one day after it rained (when the smog is much better). It was so so beautiful to come down from the top while watching the sunset over the eastern mountain range!
– Hiked up Cerro San Cristobal to watch the sunset. I’ve been wanting to do it all semester, so I finally convinced some friends to do it with me one day after it rained (when the smog is much better). It was so so beautiful to come down from the top while watching the sunset over the eastern mountain range!
-Visited my final winery in Chile. This time, some friends and I went to Concha y Toro, the biggest winery in Chile on the outskirts of Santiago. It was a really nice day and we enjoyed walking around the vineyard.
– Veronique and I visited Santiago’s very own Love Locks Bridge. Perhaps not quite as impressive as the one in Paris, but it was still fun to finally figure out where the bridge is.
– Veronique and I visited Santiago’s very own Love Locks Bridge. Perhaps not quite as impressive as the one in Paris, but it was still fun to finally figure out where the bridge is.
After the visit to the locks bridge, we made our way to Buffalo Waffles, a little shop in Lastarria that I’ve passed multiple times but I’ve never stopped at. They have 5 different savory waffles (essentially sandwiches) and one sweet kind. Surprisingly, I went for the savory vegetarian waffle instead of the sweet one, which is very unlike me… It was really delicious though – I’ll have to go back on my next trip to Stgo!
– Made a final trip to my friend Naty’s house for some sopapillas with her mom. It was really hard to say goodbye to her and Anita, because they’ve been so welcoming and loving this whole semester. I’ll definitely be paying them a visit when I come back, though, if just to eat more of the delicious sopapillas!
– Final trip to the airport for my flight to Lima, and my bag was exactly 23.0 kg – not bad. Chao, Santiago – nos vemos pronto!
– Made a final trip to my friend Naty’s house for some sopapillas with her mom. It was really hard to say goodbye to her and Anita, because they’ve been so welcoming and loving this whole semester. I’ll definitely be paying them a visit when I come back, though, if just to eat more of the delicious sopapillas!
– Final trip to the airport for my flight to Lima, and my bag was exactly 23.0 kg – not bad. Chao, Santiago – nos vemos pronto!