On Monday we went to the Universidad Catolica vs. Union Espanola futbol (soccer) game. It had rained the day before, so the air was clear and the view on the way was beautiful. The soccer game itself was quite an experience for me, since I had never been to one. This was a pretty big game - there's a tournament going on right now among Chilean soccer teams, and this particular game was one of the semifinals. U. de Chile had already won their previous game, getting them a spot in the finals. Catolica and Espanola were competing on Monday to see who will play then in the finals. Actually, before Sunday night I had no idea what was even going on, but then I watched a tiny bit of the U. de Chile vs. Everton game and then read part of the sports section on Monday before we left. There was a lot in the paper that I didn't understand, but it is a fun challenge to try and read it anyway.
I have to confess, when I walked into the stadium, I felt a little like Harry Potter going to that Quidditch world cup in the 4th book/movie. Coming up the stairs next to the field and hearing the cheering and seeing the soccer players right in front of us was pretty memorable. At the ends of the stadium were the crazy fans for each of the 2 teams. In those sections, everyone was wearing team colors and waving flags and flares and the Catolica side even had a giant bass drum or 3. These sections kept singing and cheering literally the entire game. I wish that I had looked up the cheers for U. de Catolica so I could yell along with everyone, but I caught on to some of the little songs by the end. Javier (one of our program assistants) is a big U. de Catolica fan, so we decided to root for that team too. We didn't sit in the crazy fan section, but instead on the long side of the stadium. I think that gave us a better view of the whole field anyway. I'd never really watched professional soccer before, but it is really fun in person. Unfortunately, I never got to yell "Gooooooooooooooooollllllll" like they do on TV because no points were scored in regular play or overtime. Eventually it went to penalties and the first U. de Catolica shooter flat-out missed his shot. Espanola's goalie had 2 good blocks after that, and that was the game. It was really sad for Javier and everyone else...I was sad we didn't win, and I have no real attachment to this team. I can see how the fans get so involved in the game though.
So I had a lot of fun in the morning, but the rest of the day was not so hot, as I started feeling kind of sick. We ended up going to the mall on Sunday afternoon since it was raining and there was nothing else to do, but I think going out in the cold rain even just to take the bus was not a good idea. About 80% of us have some kind of cold or flu right now, which is unfortunate since today (Tuesday) was our first day of class.
The Microbiology class looks like it will be good. I'm not totally sure, but I think I heard some people saying that Dr. Mora is quite a renowned Chilean scientist, so we are lucky to be taking classes with him. After micro bio, we had our first Spanish class. The Spanish classes are optional but I wanted to go and see what it would be like anyway. I'm not sure how much I will go since I have a feeling I already know a lot of what will be presented. The teacher split us into 2 groups based on a writing sample, but there were only 3 of us at the most advanced level so she just lumped us in with the intermediate group. The 2 groups have class on different days, and the intermediate group is only going to have 3 or 4 classes altogether, so I'm wondering if it is even worth it to go. Then again, it's not like I would have anything pressing to do instead for a couple hours a week. I guess we'll see.
We were supposed to go to the Pre-Columbian Art Museum today after school, but then our program director found out that most people had fevers and coughs. She freaked out and cancelled the outing, and had the program assistants and healthy students go around writing down everyone's temperature and other symptoms. Everyone in this group is really nice, and we are good about looking out for each other I think. The healthy people went down to the hotel restaurant and brought back trays of tea for all us sick people. Cristhian (other program assistant) even ended up calling a doctor friend of his to come to the hotel and take a look at some girls who had extremely high fevers. So really, Mom and Dad and concerned relatives, even though I may be posting about flus and epic bus fights at 4 in the morning, we are actually in really good hands here.
Anyway, lab starts tomorrow and I think my fever is back for the night, so that means it's time for Advil and bed. Hopefully I will have more happy things to report once we all are better.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Zzzz...
Fodor's was right, Chileans party waaay late. We left the bar/club thing at 3:30 and there was still a big line of people waiting to get in. The dance floor was super crowded but no one got hurt or had anything bad happen to them, so that was good. I guess last night was our welcome to the night life of Santiago; we saw some guy get his head kicked through the window of the bus on the way home. He was okay in the end, but he probably shouldn't have been touching the kicker's woman...anyway, in the future we'll most likely be taking cabs home =p We did the bus last night since our program assistants took us all out and they knew where to go, but I don't think it I would be very good at using the bus by myself.
Everyone slept till at least noon today, and we were supposed to go to a soccer game today but it is cancelled due to rain. I don't know what we're doing instead but I am hearing people talk about the shopping mall. At least there is no school tomorrow so we can go to the rescheduled game.
Everyone slept till at least noon today, and we were supposed to go to a soccer game today but it is cancelled due to rain. I don't know what we're doing instead but I am hearing people talk about the shopping mall. At least there is no school tomorrow so we can go to the rescheduled game.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Santiago Tour, UNAB, Isla Negra, and Pomaire
Yesterday we got to know Santiago a bit better, spending the morning learning our way to campus and the afternoon on an organized tour of the city. We started by learning how to use the Metro, which is surprisingly clean and looks pretty safe too. We took the metro to the UNAB (Universidad Andres Bello), which is where we are having our classes this summer. This is a long weekend because it is St. Peter and St. Paul's day on Monday, so we don't actually begin instruction until Tuesday. Still, we got a mini campus tour from our program assistants and ate lunch at our designated cafeteria which is the firestation close by. In the afternoon we got on a bus and toured around Santiago. There are quite a few districts that make up Santiago. I fell asleep during part of the tour (Bus was really warm and we were all very full from lunch), so I'm not 100% on the names of the districts, but I'm reasonably sure they're something close. Anyway, there's Downtown, which is where our hotel is located. This is the place with all the government buildings and large churches. Other areas of the city are Bellavista which is a sort of Bohemian party place, Las Condes which is the more upscale/rich area, Providencia which is very corporate, and San Cristobal Hill which has parks and a giant statue of the Virgin Mary at the top. You can see pretty much the whole city from the top of the hill:
It's hard to see the Andes through the giant cloud of smog that perpetually hangs over the city, but I promise they're there. The tour guide was telling us that Chile is a very polluted country, mainly in Santiago. They're doing what they can to clean up their air and the Mapocho River, but it's still bad. I believe it too, as many of us have headaches and irritated throats from all the smog.
Today we got some fresh air at the beach though, specifically Isla Negra and Pomaire. These regions are in Valparaiso, which is an hour and 45 minutes northeast of Santiago, along the coast. The famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda owned a house in Isla Negra and we got to see it today. Neruda apparently liked the sea and liked collecting things, so his house contains all kinds of collections of shells, glassware, figureheads from boats, and other nautical things. He also collected art from different countries. We weren't allowed to take pictures of anything inside the house, but the collections were very eccentric but beautiful. The architecture was also interesting - he liked the sea so much he tried to make his house kind of like a boat. A lot of the doors and hallways are very narrow and the floors and ceilings look like those on a ship. His bedroom also has huge glass windows on 3 sides so that he could look out at the sea which is right outside his house.
The photo uploader on this blog is being really weird, so to see pictures of all these places, check out my photo album at http://picasaweb.google.com/lizkritzer/ChileTrip2009?feat=directlink. I have too many pictures to make captions for each one, but you can probably tell by the file name more or less what it is a picture of.
After we finished looking at Neruda's house and playing on the rocks by the beach, we got back on the bus to go to Pomaire for lunch and shopping. Chileans eat really big lunches (probably why they also don't eat dinner until 10:00 at night), so we had a large meal at Los Naranjos restaurant. I had an empanada with an inordinate amount of meat and onions inside, and it was very filling (this is mostly for Mom, who is probably wondering if I am getting enough to eat down here.) After lunch we got to shop around for souvenirs. There was mostly pottery, knit scarves/hats/gloves, and jewelry for sale.
It's been a big enough day for me already, but one of the girls in our group turned 21 today so we are going out dancing, etc. tonight in a little while. Chileans usually go out very late on Fridays and Saturdays, like around midnight or later and they stay out till 4 or 5 in the morning (so says Fodor's anyway, we'll see if it's true tonight). We don't have anything big to do tomorrow in the morning though, so we can sleep in after what will probably end up being a late night.
It's hard to see the Andes through the giant cloud of smog that perpetually hangs over the city, but I promise they're there. The tour guide was telling us that Chile is a very polluted country, mainly in Santiago. They're doing what they can to clean up their air and the Mapocho River, but it's still bad. I believe it too, as many of us have headaches and irritated throats from all the smog.
Today we got some fresh air at the beach though, specifically Isla Negra and Pomaire. These regions are in Valparaiso, which is an hour and 45 minutes northeast of Santiago, along the coast. The famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda owned a house in Isla Negra and we got to see it today. Neruda apparently liked the sea and liked collecting things, so his house contains all kinds of collections of shells, glassware, figureheads from boats, and other nautical things. He also collected art from different countries. We weren't allowed to take pictures of anything inside the house, but the collections were very eccentric but beautiful. The architecture was also interesting - he liked the sea so much he tried to make his house kind of like a boat. A lot of the doors and hallways are very narrow and the floors and ceilings look like those on a ship. His bedroom also has huge glass windows on 3 sides so that he could look out at the sea which is right outside his house.
The photo uploader on this blog is being really weird, so to see pictures of all these places, check out my photo album at http://picasaweb.google.com/lizkritzer/ChileTrip2009?feat=directlink. I have too many pictures to make captions for each one, but you can probably tell by the file name more or less what it is a picture of.
After we finished looking at Neruda's house and playing on the rocks by the beach, we got back on the bus to go to Pomaire for lunch and shopping. Chileans eat really big lunches (probably why they also don't eat dinner until 10:00 at night), so we had a large meal at Los Naranjos restaurant. I had an empanada with an inordinate amount of meat and onions inside, and it was very filling (this is mostly for Mom, who is probably wondering if I am getting enough to eat down here.) After lunch we got to shop around for souvenirs. There was mostly pottery, knit scarves/hats/gloves, and jewelry for sale.
It's been a big enough day for me already, but one of the girls in our group turned 21 today so we are going out dancing, etc. tonight in a little while. Chileans usually go out very late on Fridays and Saturdays, like around midnight or later and they stay out till 4 or 5 in the morning (so says Fodor's anyway, we'll see if it's true tonight). We don't have anything big to do tomorrow in the morning though, so we can sleep in after what will probably end up being a late night.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
I'm here!
After a full day of travel, I'm finally here in Santiago. I left for the airport at 5 in the morning on Wednesday...now at 2pm today I'm still awake =( I am torn between staying up to get my internal clock adjusted or taking a mini-siesta so I am coherent at the welcome dinner tonight.
Thankfully, my flights were uneventful yesterday but the overnight one was too bumpy to sleep.
Pretty much everyone who arrived on my flight was the same way but that didn't keep us from going out to explore the city as soon as we got here. Since we were so sleepy, we figured we had better not go too far from the hotel, but we made it to the Casa de Cambio (money exchange shop) and some unknown cafe for lunch.
A bit of amusing news - I have been dubbed "the Spanish speaker" by the rest of the group. Apparently no one else out of the 30 students in this program speaks anything remotely close to passable Spanish. A few can understand fairly well, but so far I am the only one who's been able to converse with the natives. On the plus side I am making lots of friends because everyone needs me to translate things or tell their shuttle driver where we are going. On the minus side though, I don't actually speak Spanish very well at all. I am sure I will get better though, since it looks as though I will be getting plenty of practice. People speak English here more readily than I thought they would, but not enough to rely on it. So far they actually haven't been speaking English to me anyway, unless someone else in my group talks to them first. I blend in pretty well down here in terms of appearance, so I think a lot of people just assume I am Chilean. Maybe it's because it's winter but there are a lot of light-skinned and dark-haired people here. I figured I would stick out like a sore thumb, but I guess not. Or maybe the Asians in my group just stick out more.
One interesting linguistic thing I've noticed so far is the difference between Chilean Spanish and Mexican Spanish. In general I am able to understand Chilean speakers better, and I think they use more of the terms I actually learned in school instead of strange border slang. However, lunch threw me off a bit because almost none of the meats are called the same thing in Mexican and Chilean Spanish. For example, "chicken" has always been "pollo" to me, but here they call it "ave." Roast beef is usually "carne asada," but today I saw "barros" and "churrasco." It was kind of embarassing because everyone was asking me what the menu items were at lunch and I had never seen most of the words before. Even so, it is fun to be able to practice my Spanish. I am much more comfortable speaking it here than I ever was in Mexico.
That's about it for first impressions of the city. It has been overcast all day, and cold. I find the cold refreshing at the moment but I'll probably be missing the sun within a few days. The hotel we are living at is really nice and the bellboy said that the travelstudy group comes here every year, so I guess they are used to the silly Americans taking over the top floor every summer. Hopefully tomorrow I can get some pictures taken, I just didn't want to be standing around being obviously touristy today since I am so tired and not as alert as I would like to be. The stores and restaurants like tourists a lot, but I don't get that same impression from the people walking around so I don't want to advertise it until I can be more on my guard.
Anyway, I have wireless internet in my hotel room, so I am hoping I'll be able to update pretty frequently with pictures and such.
Thankfully, my flights were uneventful yesterday but the overnight one was too bumpy to sleep.
Pretty much everyone who arrived on my flight was the same way but that didn't keep us from going out to explore the city as soon as we got here. Since we were so sleepy, we figured we had better not go too far from the hotel, but we made it to the Casa de Cambio (money exchange shop) and some unknown cafe for lunch.
A bit of amusing news - I have been dubbed "the Spanish speaker" by the rest of the group. Apparently no one else out of the 30 students in this program speaks anything remotely close to passable Spanish. A few can understand fairly well, but so far I am the only one who's been able to converse with the natives. On the plus side I am making lots of friends because everyone needs me to translate things or tell their shuttle driver where we are going. On the minus side though, I don't actually speak Spanish very well at all. I am sure I will get better though, since it looks as though I will be getting plenty of practice. People speak English here more readily than I thought they would, but not enough to rely on it. So far they actually haven't been speaking English to me anyway, unless someone else in my group talks to them first. I blend in pretty well down here in terms of appearance, so I think a lot of people just assume I am Chilean. Maybe it's because it's winter but there are a lot of light-skinned and dark-haired people here. I figured I would stick out like a sore thumb, but I guess not. Or maybe the Asians in my group just stick out more.
One interesting linguistic thing I've noticed so far is the difference between Chilean Spanish and Mexican Spanish. In general I am able to understand Chilean speakers better, and I think they use more of the terms I actually learned in school instead of strange border slang. However, lunch threw me off a bit because almost none of the meats are called the same thing in Mexican and Chilean Spanish. For example, "chicken" has always been "pollo" to me, but here they call it "ave." Roast beef is usually "carne asada," but today I saw "barros" and "churrasco." It was kind of embarassing because everyone was asking me what the menu items were at lunch and I had never seen most of the words before. Even so, it is fun to be able to practice my Spanish. I am much more comfortable speaking it here than I ever was in Mexico.
That's about it for first impressions of the city. It has been overcast all day, and cold. I find the cold refreshing at the moment but I'll probably be missing the sun within a few days. The hotel we are living at is really nice and the bellboy said that the travelstudy group comes here every year, so I guess they are used to the silly Americans taking over the top floor every summer. Hopefully tomorrow I can get some pictures taken, I just didn't want to be standing around being obviously touristy today since I am so tired and not as alert as I would like to be. The stores and restaurants like tourists a lot, but I don't get that same impression from the people walking around so I don't want to advertise it until I can be more on my guard.
Anyway, I have wireless internet in my hotel room, so I am hoping I'll be able to update pretty frequently with pictures and such.
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