It’s now been 3 weeks since I arrived in Santiago and I feel like I’m finally starting to really know my way around the city and life in this country. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the whistling from men on the street or people insisting on speaking to me in English once they hear my horrible accent in Spanish, but I’m excited that I’ve already been able to have some great adventures here and I’m looking forward to many more.
Here are some of the things I’ve been up to:
Here are some of the things I’ve been up to:
- Hanging out in a lot of parks. My area of Santiago is full of really nice parks that are usually pretty populated in the afternoons. I’ve spent some great afternoons just hanging out in the park with some friends or going on runs.
- Watching futbol with my host father. Chile played Germany in their last match before the world cup, and though they lost, it was really cool to get to watch the game with my host father. I’m looking forward to being in South America for the World Cup! Santiago isn’t quite like Rio but it’s still pretty exciting..
- Experiencing Miercoles Po – a carrete (dance party) specifically for foreign students in Santiago. In Chilean Spanish, people use the word “po” a lot – not quite like an “um” or a “dude” but along those lines, as in “si po” or “no po.” The idea of Miercoles Po was to teach international students how to use “po” properly, but it’s really just a huge dance party in one of Santiago’s many night clubs every Wednesday. Definitely a fun experience!
- Going to free cultural events in the city. Santiago had its first “Festival Jass por la Paz” or Jazz Festival for Peace and they hosted free concerts throughout the city. After riding sardine style on the metro through rush hour, we finally made it to a basement concert hall in San Miguel where we heard some cool jazz acts. It was a really cool experience to listen to jazz songs that I recognized while sitting in a basement concert hall in Santiago, Chile. I also visited another local university – Universidad de Alberto Hurtado – which was having a free film screening of an independent documentary film. I can’t say I understood all of it (watching interviews where you can’t see peoples faces is pretty hard) but it was an interesting take on unemployment and poverty in Santiago.
- Exploring some museums. There are so many museums here in Santiago and I’ve only started to make a dent. I visited the Museum Nacional de Bellas Artes – the fine art museum in Santiago. Its main exhibit was closed but it still had some pretty cool sculptures and drawings. I’ve visited some of the pretty churches in Santiago, including the Catedral de Santiago and the Iglesia de San Francisco, both of which are beautiful. Today we made a short trip to the museum of “carabineros” – the local police here who are very respected by the community. It was an interesting exhibit about the history of the carabineros and the outfits they’ve worn.
- Meeting my partner for Tandem – a program at the university that pairs a student wanting to learn Spanish with a student from the university who wants to learn their language. My partner, Stefano, is a 22-year-old astronomy major from Santiago. We met up on campus and chatted for a couple of hours with his friends about life in Chile and the United States and places and I should visit while I’m here. It was really cool to speak with local students in Spanish for a couple hours, even if I did have to ask them to repeat themselves a couple of times.
- Watching the “Cambio de Mando” – the changing of the Chilean president. Michelle Bachelet has taken over the presidency again and we ended my history class early so that we could watch it on tv. It was a cool ceremony involving President Pinera removing his presidential sash so that Bachelet could put on hers. It’ll be interesting to see what Bachelet has planned for her first 100 days!