i went on a trip to the north and i posted pictures on my web gallery...click on the link to the right that says gallery.
i will blog as soon as i can...but im sorta in the midst of travelling and it might be hard...
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
un poquito atrasado....
Okay. I've sat myself down to blog because I've been slacking so badly in that department for the last 2 months. I have relatively legit excuses though....SCHOOL.
First, before I start, note that sometimes a word that usually has an "s" may not have it because my S key is kinda messed up and it only makes the s if i press really hard. So if i miss it, sorry.
Now...alas,....where do I begin. Well, I'm done with the semester. Seems like it went really fast. Maybe it did? I had my last final last thursday and now three whole months of vacation!!!! Woohoo.
I suppose I will start where I left off last time. I had mentioned how Chile had been in some soccer game and won against whoever they were playing, I don't remember...colombia, ecuador, i think, and so they will be going to the world cup in south africa in 2010 for the first time in 12 years i think. Since then I really haven't done much, hence my not blogging. I left Santiago once on a little excursion that was planned by my CSU program. We went to a teensy town on the coast called La Isla Negra...and no, its not a black island. It's just a coastal town. It's where Pablo Neruda, the most famous poet of Chile, had one of his three houses. We toured his house. He reminds me a bit of Grandma Jean...has a lot of things. But his were relatively organized collections. For example, he collected African masks and artesenal trinckets. As well as ships that are inside glass bottles. He had a massive shell collection, including a Narwal horn that was about 9 feet long. Also had a shell from the Philippines that was about 3 feet in diameter, it was pretty sweet. Appeared that he just had a lot of things...he was quite wealthy and also people would just give him things. The house was pretty, the bedroom overlooking the beach with the wallbeing a massive window alone. It was cool. After the house, we wandered around the rocky beach and then went to a restaurant on the beach (the bus driver had some difficulty finding the place, but eventually we made it down there). It was okay-food. Not as good as i thought' it'd be for it's location and snazzy-ness. Funny how the CSU program includes these fancy restaraunt meals for us in our "program costs". If i could decide, I'd prefer to save the money...i'm sure that meal was AT LEAST $50. Appetizer, coctail, wine, entre, dessert, the whole shabang. It was a nice day though.
And other than that I've been in Santiago...studying pretty much. There were a few fiestas I went to...there was a Halloween party and I dressed up as mother nature, by far the best costume in the party. I was going to be gone that weekend, but the plans fell through so I had to find a last minute costume that would be original and cheap. It randomly occured to me in the middle of the night while pulling a late-nighter studying for a Borges exam. The day before halloween i went to Patronato...an outdoor shopping market with tons of vendors that stretches about 7 city blocks to look for things. Pretty much I just wanted green fabric and a bunch of fake flowers and maybe some vines. I found a store that sold me soem perfect green fabric and some yellowish fabric that has a very nice texture for about $3. After that I ran into a fake plant shop which was perfect, and got all my flowers and vines for about $6. And that was it! I robbed a big palm frawn from the short fat palm tree downstairs in the courtyard of my apartment building and made a sweet head-dress type thing with it, fabric, and duck tape. It was the highlight of my costume by far. I now have a forest-theme decorated bedroom...i already have green walls and now i have all the flowers and vines draped around my room. It makes it more homey. Now with my free time with school being over, i am going to make things out of the fabric. I intentionally did not cut the pieces up, or as little as possible (i had to do a little hand sewing for the costume, but the pieces pretty much stayed as big chunks...it was a wrap around dress with lots of safety pins). I don't have a sewing machine here obviously, but i have time, so I'm going to hand sew a skirt from the green and a top from the yellowish fabric. Something to occupy my time.
I also had my birthday party. It was a joint birthday party for me and Felipe. Anyway, we had our birthday party together because his birthday is the day after mine. I wanted to do a theme to make it more interesting...so we made it a black and white party. Obviosuly the idea was that everyone dress up in black and white. It was quite good! The girls were the best about being color coordinated, naturally. We made black russians and white russians to continue with the theme and got black and white balloons with streamer thing and felipe got some black lights. It was in the backyard garden/patio of his house and the weather was really nice and never got cold at night. It was a fun party and everyone pretty much danced all night long and had a good time. It was much better than my 21st birthday, in which I had to take an exam for my online psychology class and didn't really celebrate.
Otherwise I've just been doing school things. Well, not now, but up till last thursday. I had my final in Borges 2 weeks ago, got ALMOST an A. I got a 5.4 and a 5.5 to a 7 is an A. Oh well, doesn't really matter because even had I got a 7 I woudn't have got an A in the class. But I got a B in the class so I'm happy. I studied my butt off for that exam...I even went to a startbucks to study because, even though it's a bit more expensive, for the cuantity of coffee you get it, its cheaper. There is a nice café downt he stree from my apartment but you pay about $4 for a coffee thats 2 inches tall with some cream plopped on top. NOT worth it. For about 3-4 weeks straight, monday through saturday from 9am to 8pm there has been construction going on in the apartment 2 floors down from me so I had to leave. They just finished on monday, FINALLY. It was excrutiatingly annoying, really loud, and banging shaking always going on. I studied quite well though.
Last thursday was my phonetics final, which was hard. I had a 4.3 or somethign going into the class...a 4.0 is passing (its a 60'% but equivalent to a C- in the states). The class just irritated me, and I wasn't the only one...there were plenty of chileans who had the same complaints as me...the teacher honestly only taught us one thing in class after the midterm exam, yet there would be 5 or so concepts on the 5 quizes we had during that unit. The TA's made the quizes and it appeared that they werent necessarily on the same page as us or the teacher. therefore i did pretty badly on most of the quizzes but on the final project I made sure to get a good grade. We had to do a paper in the form of a hypothetical research project that was about 10 pages long in the end (1.5 space, so pretty long). I ended up with the theorectical research part to back the ideas and hypotheses, don't ask my why or how. There were 4 of us, and me and one other guy pretty much made sure thigns were getting done. And then the day before its due at 5pm in the evening when we meet to put all the parts together and make sure everything is good, this kid from my class Marco shows up in the study room. I say hi and he asks me if I saw Martin. And I said, yeah, he's right there. Marco says, oh I'm meeting him for the final project. And I said, oh, ok, well martin's in my group, and marco says, well, then i'm in your group! He laughed and I was mad. I knew this kid was a slacker. I asked him why he was suddenly in my group after we chose our groups 6 weeks before. He told me because the girls he was with dropped the class. Irrelevant, the drop date was 2 or 3 weeks before that, so he would have already known. And because he's a slacker, he intentiionally asked martin to be in our group at the last second so he could get points for the project, which was worth 15% of the final grade. So since he adds himself to our group, I ask him that because he had done absolutely nothing to contribute to the project, if he could add mroe to my portion. I had written 2 pages and the page amount for this section was to be 2-4 pages. I said, PLEASE see if you can write one more page. All he had to do was that, and the abstract, a one paragraph summary of the project, which would take 10 minutes. And since I wanted to put everything together and print the thing to turn it in (i wanted to make sure it was perfect and looked good, those points count...and seeing i was working with 4 boys i was sure that none of them would be that picky, no offense, males). , anyway, i asked him and the others that were still finishing up their parts, to send me what they had before midnight so I could do it and sleep and then just turn it in before my soccer class at 10am. I had been working on very little sleep for the previous few nights. Well, i stayed up till 1am and only 1 of the 3 had sent me their stuff. So i go to sleep and set my alarm for 8. Marco calls me at 7am---still hasnt done his part , and asks to send him something to help him write the abstract. I was so irritated. I hate working with people like this...SLACKER. Needless to say, he finally sends me his thing at 8, i had to put everything together still and ended up missing soccer becasue i didn't finish it all till 10am at my apartment. Oke, that was all said and done...but still the presentation remained. And the deal with that was that one person would present, and it was supposed to be 10-15 minutes. But the person who wass presenting did not find out until the day of the presentations. They started on a thursday, and this kid marco calls me at 9.35 am that day and says "oye, kari, i dont really understand what the project is about" REALLY???!!! 30 Minutes before we have to be ready to present and you're calling me asking me wahts its about?!! Might I add, he had the paper document for a week before this, so he had time to present! I was so mad and just told him sorry i cant help you, you had a week to call me and ask questions.
We didn't get called the first day of presentations and had the entire weekend to prepare more...I was scared to death i'd get picked cause it wouldbe hard in spanish etc...so i made sure to be ready. I had notecards, practiced, etc. Go figure, when we continue tuesday she calls him. Not only did he only speak for 6 minutes, but he couldnt answer the teachers questions. I had to give him my notecards cause he wasnt ready and otherwise woulda just read from the powerpoint. We scored a 3.7 on the presentation which is a 50-somthing%. We got a 6.2 on the written document, the best grade in the class. Came out to a 5.7 on the project in the end. Now i'm just waiting my grade on the final...we'll see. 7 pages of torture...needless to say it was nothing like the practice exam that they gave us. No joke. oh well, thats life.
Otherwise...here I am. I suppose I should comment on the weather, which has been fabulous. It's been the the mid to lower 80's lately, and I'm loving it. Went swimming the other day to the public pools that are on the big hill in the city., They were pretty.
I posted pictures, check those out.
And now, until I late post I suppose!!!! ChaU!
First, before I start, note that sometimes a word that usually has an "s" may not have it because my S key is kinda messed up and it only makes the s if i press really hard. So if i miss it, sorry.
Now...alas,....where do I begin. Well, I'm done with the semester. Seems like it went really fast. Maybe it did? I had my last final last thursday and now three whole months of vacation!!!! Woohoo.
I suppose I will start where I left off last time. I had mentioned how Chile had been in some soccer game and won against whoever they were playing, I don't remember...colombia, ecuador, i think, and so they will be going to the world cup in south africa in 2010 for the first time in 12 years i think. Since then I really haven't done much, hence my not blogging. I left Santiago once on a little excursion that was planned by my CSU program. We went to a teensy town on the coast called La Isla Negra...and no, its not a black island. It's just a coastal town. It's where Pablo Neruda, the most famous poet of Chile, had one of his three houses. We toured his house. He reminds me a bit of Grandma Jean...has a lot of things. But his were relatively organized collections. For example, he collected African masks and artesenal trinckets. As well as ships that are inside glass bottles. He had a massive shell collection, including a Narwal horn that was about 9 feet long. Also had a shell from the Philippines that was about 3 feet in diameter, it was pretty sweet. Appeared that he just had a lot of things...he was quite wealthy and also people would just give him things. The house was pretty, the bedroom overlooking the beach with the wallbeing a massive window alone. It was cool. After the house, we wandered around the rocky beach and then went to a restaurant on the beach (the bus driver had some difficulty finding the place, but eventually we made it down there). It was okay-food. Not as good as i thought' it'd be for it's location and snazzy-ness. Funny how the CSU program includes these fancy restaraunt meals for us in our "program costs". If i could decide, I'd prefer to save the money...i'm sure that meal was AT LEAST $50. Appetizer, coctail, wine, entre, dessert, the whole shabang. It was a nice day though.
And other than that I've been in Santiago...studying pretty much. There were a few fiestas I went to...there was a Halloween party and I dressed up as mother nature, by far the best costume in the party. I was going to be gone that weekend, but the plans fell through so I had to find a last minute costume that would be original and cheap. It randomly occured to me in the middle of the night while pulling a late-nighter studying for a Borges exam. The day before halloween i went to Patronato...an outdoor shopping market with tons of vendors that stretches about 7 city blocks to look for things. Pretty much I just wanted green fabric and a bunch of fake flowers and maybe some vines. I found a store that sold me soem perfect green fabric and some yellowish fabric that has a very nice texture for about $3. After that I ran into a fake plant shop which was perfect, and got all my flowers and vines for about $6. And that was it! I robbed a big palm frawn from the short fat palm tree downstairs in the courtyard of my apartment building and made a sweet head-dress type thing with it, fabric, and duck tape. It was the highlight of my costume by far. I now have a forest-theme decorated bedroom...i already have green walls and now i have all the flowers and vines draped around my room. It makes it more homey. Now with my free time with school being over, i am going to make things out of the fabric. I intentionally did not cut the pieces up, or as little as possible (i had to do a little hand sewing for the costume, but the pieces pretty much stayed as big chunks...it was a wrap around dress with lots of safety pins). I don't have a sewing machine here obviously, but i have time, so I'm going to hand sew a skirt from the green and a top from the yellowish fabric. Something to occupy my time.
I also had my birthday party. It was a joint birthday party for me and Felipe. Anyway, we had our birthday party together because his birthday is the day after mine. I wanted to do a theme to make it more interesting...so we made it a black and white party. Obviosuly the idea was that everyone dress up in black and white. It was quite good! The girls were the best about being color coordinated, naturally. We made black russians and white russians to continue with the theme and got black and white balloons with streamer thing and felipe got some black lights. It was in the backyard garden/patio of his house and the weather was really nice and never got cold at night. It was a fun party and everyone pretty much danced all night long and had a good time. It was much better than my 21st birthday, in which I had to take an exam for my online psychology class and didn't really celebrate.
Otherwise I've just been doing school things. Well, not now, but up till last thursday. I had my final in Borges 2 weeks ago, got ALMOST an A. I got a 5.4 and a 5.5 to a 7 is an A. Oh well, doesn't really matter because even had I got a 7 I woudn't have got an A in the class. But I got a B in the class so I'm happy. I studied my butt off for that exam...I even went to a startbucks to study because, even though it's a bit more expensive, for the cuantity of coffee you get it, its cheaper. There is a nice café downt he stree from my apartment but you pay about $4 for a coffee thats 2 inches tall with some cream plopped on top. NOT worth it. For about 3-4 weeks straight, monday through saturday from 9am to 8pm there has been construction going on in the apartment 2 floors down from me so I had to leave. They just finished on monday, FINALLY. It was excrutiatingly annoying, really loud, and banging shaking always going on. I studied quite well though.
Last thursday was my phonetics final, which was hard. I had a 4.3 or somethign going into the class...a 4.0 is passing (its a 60'% but equivalent to a C- in the states). The class just irritated me, and I wasn't the only one...there were plenty of chileans who had the same complaints as me...the teacher honestly only taught us one thing in class after the midterm exam, yet there would be 5 or so concepts on the 5 quizes we had during that unit. The TA's made the quizes and it appeared that they werent necessarily on the same page as us or the teacher. therefore i did pretty badly on most of the quizzes but on the final project I made sure to get a good grade. We had to do a paper in the form of a hypothetical research project that was about 10 pages long in the end (1.5 space, so pretty long). I ended up with the theorectical research part to back the ideas and hypotheses, don't ask my why or how. There were 4 of us, and me and one other guy pretty much made sure thigns were getting done. And then the day before its due at 5pm in the evening when we meet to put all the parts together and make sure everything is good, this kid from my class Marco shows up in the study room. I say hi and he asks me if I saw Martin. And I said, yeah, he's right there. Marco says, oh I'm meeting him for the final project. And I said, oh, ok, well martin's in my group, and marco says, well, then i'm in your group! He laughed and I was mad. I knew this kid was a slacker. I asked him why he was suddenly in my group after we chose our groups 6 weeks before. He told me because the girls he was with dropped the class. Irrelevant, the drop date was 2 or 3 weeks before that, so he would have already known. And because he's a slacker, he intentiionally asked martin to be in our group at the last second so he could get points for the project, which was worth 15% of the final grade. So since he adds himself to our group, I ask him that because he had done absolutely nothing to contribute to the project, if he could add mroe to my portion. I had written 2 pages and the page amount for this section was to be 2-4 pages. I said, PLEASE see if you can write one more page. All he had to do was that, and the abstract, a one paragraph summary of the project, which would take 10 minutes. And since I wanted to put everything together and print the thing to turn it in (i wanted to make sure it was perfect and looked good, those points count...and seeing i was working with 4 boys i was sure that none of them would be that picky, no offense, males). , anyway, i asked him and the others that were still finishing up their parts, to send me what they had before midnight so I could do it and sleep and then just turn it in before my soccer class at 10am. I had been working on very little sleep for the previous few nights. Well, i stayed up till 1am and only 1 of the 3 had sent me their stuff. So i go to sleep and set my alarm for 8. Marco calls me at 7am---still hasnt done his part , and asks to send him something to help him write the abstract. I was so irritated. I hate working with people like this...SLACKER. Needless to say, he finally sends me his thing at 8, i had to put everything together still and ended up missing soccer becasue i didn't finish it all till 10am at my apartment. Oke, that was all said and done...but still the presentation remained. And the deal with that was that one person would present, and it was supposed to be 10-15 minutes. But the person who wass presenting did not find out until the day of the presentations. They started on a thursday, and this kid marco calls me at 9.35 am that day and says "oye, kari, i dont really understand what the project is about" REALLY???!!! 30 Minutes before we have to be ready to present and you're calling me asking me wahts its about?!! Might I add, he had the paper document for a week before this, so he had time to present! I was so mad and just told him sorry i cant help you, you had a week to call me and ask questions.
We didn't get called the first day of presentations and had the entire weekend to prepare more...I was scared to death i'd get picked cause it wouldbe hard in spanish etc...so i made sure to be ready. I had notecards, practiced, etc. Go figure, when we continue tuesday she calls him. Not only did he only speak for 6 minutes, but he couldnt answer the teachers questions. I had to give him my notecards cause he wasnt ready and otherwise woulda just read from the powerpoint. We scored a 3.7 on the presentation which is a 50-somthing%. We got a 6.2 on the written document, the best grade in the class. Came out to a 5.7 on the project in the end. Now i'm just waiting my grade on the final...we'll see. 7 pages of torture...needless to say it was nothing like the practice exam that they gave us. No joke. oh well, thats life.
Otherwise...here I am. I suppose I should comment on the weather, which has been fabulous. It's been the the mid to lower 80's lately, and I'm loving it. Went swimming the other day to the public pools that are on the big hill in the city., They were pretty.
I posted pictures, check those out.
And now, until I late post I suppose!!!! ChaU!
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
elecciones en la U
So this isn't really a legit blog post, but it's very interesting. Right now, in addition to the presidential elections that are going on right now, my university is having student government elections. And they go NUTS over it. I don't have a clue about student presidents or anything at SFSU because no one campaigns so for all I know, they don't exist. The state decides what they do with our funding anyway...
But anyway, it's quite interesting. Banners and posters everywhere, signs, rep's (students) going around trying to get their word out, debates, and legit elections that are going on today and tomorrow. AND my friend Flavia, who is from UCLA but from Chilean/Italian parents (she speaks fluent Spanish, lucky girl), just happened to write an excellent summary of everything that's going on. She posted it on facebook as a "note" --like blogging on facebook. I asked her if i could post it here because it was interesting and she did an excellent job. Here it is:
But anyway, it's quite interesting. Banners and posters everywhere, signs, rep's (students) going around trying to get their word out, debates, and legit elections that are going on today and tomorrow. AND my friend Flavia, who is from UCLA but from Chilean/Italian parents (she speaks fluent Spanish, lucky girl), just happened to write an excellent summary of everything that's going on. She posted it on facebook as a "note" --like blogging on facebook. I asked her if i could post it here because it was interesting and she did an excellent job. Here it is:
"And everything is the same... except the country, the language, and the t-shirt colors"
Just because this stuff blows my mind, I thought I would share my thoughts with you all; some chileans, some study abroad students, and some alumni...
At the most prestigious university in Chile, political parties are basically having a run-through and facing off via the students... Lista1a (Ready first), NAU (New University Action), OI (Independent Option), a socialist party, and Voto Nulo (Vote Null) are currently throwing it down at the voting stations all over PUC's four campuses.
The best part is, this is actually an incredibly accurate reflection of the country at large. Lista1a is a major conservative party- without blinking. Their presidential candidate (according to a conversation I eavesdropped) is a law student (law is a major here) who defended Pinochet's coup in class with a natural law argument. NAU is center left, OI independent, etc. etc.
And yet, the issues are all the same.
Lista1a is "proud to believe in the UC" (Universidad Catolica), "proud to believe that students come first", "proud to believe that participation is service", and just basically... "proud to believe". I read through their flyer, and I couldn't find any platforms. Thanks. Next!
Compared with NAU- whose slogans are, "Alguien tiene que hacerlo" and "La universidad es tuya!" or, "Somebody's got to do it", and "The university is yours!" (that sounds particularly familiar). Their posters feature not only their candidates, but inspiring figures like Father Hurtado (a social liberationist priest from Chile), Albert Einstein, as well as Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump and Uma Thurman as The Bride. Okay.
They state, "The university is yours, for a community that makes sense". They tout campus wide activities not just for students, but for campus service workers and academics, like a week of culture, a festival of music, and a college Olympics. They state, "the university is yours, a university for Chile". They tout a center for campus service workers and a special immersion program in Mapuche (indigenous) communities. There's more, but the best one is that they're going green: they want an Office of Sustainability, green grades for different campus buildings, pilot programs for green-friendly technologies, a campaign for Environmental Conscience, and a Sustainable Practice Guide for distribution.
It's just student elections, but here, these are the sons and daughters of Chilean elite (have I mentioned this is THE most prestigious university in the country?). In a few years, they will be the elite. It's like watching the entire psychological development of a country unfold. It's a barometer for Chile's present and future...
There were easily at least 300, 400 people packed into an auditorium to hear the debates. It was more like a soccer match than a debate, with drums, flags, tshirts, whistling, hooting, cheering, cussing, and direct attacks between candidates as well as audience members.
The most fascinating part is how incredibly present is Chile's past. Whenever Lista1a started cheering or chanting, the entire crowd supporting NAU would make fun of them by making military salutes, and there were several chants calling them out for being Pinochetistas, or Jaime Guzman demagogues (Jaime Guzman was the godfather of the conservative movement in Chile). Lista1a didn't even fight it- they just rolled right along with it. It has also become pretty clear that UDI, Chile's conservative party, gives Lista 1a money to run their campaign.
It's hard to forget that the university is run by the Vatican. NAU said that this isn't a school for priests anymore, it's a university for intellectuals. The presidential candidate for Lista1a didn't understand a question about anti-contraceptives and their on-campus distribution- she went on to say that while there still exists doubt about the validity of the methods, we shouldn't put at risk the lives of innocents. When the presidential candidate for NAU closed the debate, he recounted how at his internship, the person working above him denied legal services to a woman because she was divorced.
The right (Lista 1a) contended that if you don't like the educational formulation that the university provides, then you should go somewhere else. If you don't like the university's censorship, you should go somewhere else. "If you don't like it, then why are you here?" was the recurring meme. The entire concept that students should be at the receiving end of their education, as opposed to a more formulative role, is very entrenched for conservatives everywhere.
NAU kept discussing access to the university by students in municipal schools, referring to those who get left behind by the system. They showed a profound interest in reforming how people enter the university. The PSU (SAT equivalent) is held nationwide and is pretty much the defining factor in university acceptance. Naturally, the students in private schools score high, and the municipal schools score low. Sounds like a familiar issue.
The country's more controversial issues entered the debate- NAU wants to create an immersion program so that students from the university can immerse themselves in Mapuche communities. "The press calls the Mapuches terrorists, but the United Nations is scandalized with the way we treat our indigenous citizens", stated one NAU candidate.
Also of debate was how to help students with financial aid, those in the third quintile, etc. The university is expensive, the scholarships are few- it's a difficult issue for them to grapple with, and I think there was the most confusion about how to deal with this than with any other topic.
What really moved me, and is something that I feel lacking at my own university, is the expressed relationship NAU has with service workers at the university. They stated that they are trying to build a true university community, one which is composed of three parts: academics, students and workers. They talked about worker capacitation, about investigating the living conditions of workers, about dealing with subcontracting and the fact that because many workers are subcontracted, they don't have the right to unionize. They went off several times describing the condition of university workers, how poorly they are paid, and how more attention needs to be paid to them. Regrettably, this relationship is extremely weak at my home university. We show up for the big events, but we are not involving them as much as we could.
One candidate for NAU said, "people tell us, if you want to make a change, go to U. Chile. We go to PUC, and we want to make some change here and now" U. Chile is the country's official state university, and is known for being more rabble-rousing than the elite at PUC. They're definitely on an upward battle as far as fighting a hierarchical structure goes.
NAU's candidates were pretty frank- yes, their vision is utopic, idealist- but they're willing to lay out the programs to at least try and take the university there.
It's the same stuff everywhere. It's the same crowds, the same problems, the same discussions. At the root of the debate, the discussion is the same. Do students have power? Should they have power? Should they exercise that power if they have it? Lista 1a kept insisting that we're students, that we're here to learn after all, that we're preparing to become leaders for tomorrow. NAU insisted that we're adults, that the time is now, that we need to be leaders today, not tomorrow.
In another note is the complete text of a flier that some people were handing out. It's in Chilean spanish, try and read it if you dare...
At the most prestigious university in Chile, political parties are basically having a run-through and facing off via the students... Lista1a (Ready first), NAU (New University Action), OI (Independent Option), a socialist party, and Voto Nulo (Vote Null) are currently throwing it down at the voting stations all over PUC's four campuses.
The best part is, this is actually an incredibly accurate reflection of the country at large. Lista1a is a major conservative party- without blinking. Their presidential candidate (according to a conversation I eavesdropped) is a law student (law is a major here) who defended Pinochet's coup in class with a natural law argument. NAU is center left, OI independent, etc. etc.
And yet, the issues are all the same.
Lista1a is "proud to believe in the UC" (Universidad Catolica), "proud to believe that students come first", "proud to believe that participation is service", and just basically... "proud to believe". I read through their flyer, and I couldn't find any platforms. Thanks. Next!
Compared with NAU- whose slogans are, "Alguien tiene que hacerlo" and "La universidad es tuya!" or, "Somebody's got to do it", and "The university is yours!" (that sounds particularly familiar). Their posters feature not only their candidates, but inspiring figures like Father Hurtado (a social liberationist priest from Chile), Albert Einstein, as well as Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump and Uma Thurman as The Bride. Okay.
They state, "The university is yours, for a community that makes sense". They tout campus wide activities not just for students, but for campus service workers and academics, like a week of culture, a festival of music, and a college Olympics. They state, "the university is yours, a university for Chile". They tout a center for campus service workers and a special immersion program in Mapuche (indigenous) communities. There's more, but the best one is that they're going green: they want an Office of Sustainability, green grades for different campus buildings, pilot programs for green-friendly technologies, a campaign for Environmental Conscience, and a Sustainable Practice Guide for distribution.
It's just student elections, but here, these are the sons and daughters of Chilean elite (have I mentioned this is THE most prestigious university in the country?). In a few years, they will be the elite. It's like watching the entire psychological development of a country unfold. It's a barometer for Chile's present and future...
There were easily at least 300, 400 people packed into an auditorium to hear the debates. It was more like a soccer match than a debate, with drums, flags, tshirts, whistling, hooting, cheering, cussing, and direct attacks between candidates as well as audience members.
The most fascinating part is how incredibly present is Chile's past. Whenever Lista1a started cheering or chanting, the entire crowd supporting NAU would make fun of them by making military salutes, and there were several chants calling them out for being Pinochetistas, or Jaime Guzman demagogues (Jaime Guzman was the godfather of the conservative movement in Chile). Lista1a didn't even fight it- they just rolled right along with it. It has also become pretty clear that UDI, Chile's conservative party, gives Lista 1a money to run their campaign.
It's hard to forget that the university is run by the Vatican. NAU said that this isn't a school for priests anymore, it's a university for intellectuals. The presidential candidate for Lista1a didn't understand a question about anti-contraceptives and their on-campus distribution- she went on to say that while there still exists doubt about the validity of the methods, we shouldn't put at risk the lives of innocents. When the presidential candidate for NAU closed the debate, he recounted how at his internship, the person working above him denied legal services to a woman because she was divorced.
The right (Lista 1a) contended that if you don't like the educational formulation that the university provides, then you should go somewhere else. If you don't like the university's censorship, you should go somewhere else. "If you don't like it, then why are you here?" was the recurring meme. The entire concept that students should be at the receiving end of their education, as opposed to a more formulative role, is very entrenched for conservatives everywhere.
NAU kept discussing access to the university by students in municipal schools, referring to those who get left behind by the system. They showed a profound interest in reforming how people enter the university. The PSU (SAT equivalent) is held nationwide and is pretty much the defining factor in university acceptance. Naturally, the students in private schools score high, and the municipal schools score low. Sounds like a familiar issue.
The country's more controversial issues entered the debate- NAU wants to create an immersion program so that students from the university can immerse themselves in Mapuche communities. "The press calls the Mapuches terrorists, but the United Nations is scandalized with the way we treat our indigenous citizens", stated one NAU candidate.
Also of debate was how to help students with financial aid, those in the third quintile, etc. The university is expensive, the scholarships are few- it's a difficult issue for them to grapple with, and I think there was the most confusion about how to deal with this than with any other topic.
What really moved me, and is something that I feel lacking at my own university, is the expressed relationship NAU has with service workers at the university. They stated that they are trying to build a true university community, one which is composed of three parts: academics, students and workers. They talked about worker capacitation, about investigating the living conditions of workers, about dealing with subcontracting and the fact that because many workers are subcontracted, they don't have the right to unionize. They went off several times describing the condition of university workers, how poorly they are paid, and how more attention needs to be paid to them. Regrettably, this relationship is extremely weak at my home university. We show up for the big events, but we are not involving them as much as we could.
One candidate for NAU said, "people tell us, if you want to make a change, go to U. Chile. We go to PUC, and we want to make some change here and now" U. Chile is the country's official state university, and is known for being more rabble-rousing than the elite at PUC. They're definitely on an upward battle as far as fighting a hierarchical structure goes.
NAU's candidates were pretty frank- yes, their vision is utopic, idealist- but they're willing to lay out the programs to at least try and take the university there.
It's the same stuff everywhere. It's the same crowds, the same problems, the same discussions. At the root of the debate, the discussion is the same. Do students have power? Should they have power? Should they exercise that power if they have it? Lista 1a kept insisting that we're students, that we're here to learn after all, that we're preparing to become leaders for tomorrow. NAU insisted that we're adults, that the time is now, that we need to be leaders today, not tomorrow.
In another note is the complete text of a flier that some people were handing out. It's in Chilean spanish, try and read it if you dare...
Thursday, October 15, 2009
el último mes
Well it's been a month or so....and I figured it's my duty that I would write something. I've done a few fun things since then, so I will cover that. Over than that, it's just been school and studying. Although the weather is changing so that's definitely a good thing!!
So since then...well since covering a month's passing would take a lot of time to type, I'm just going to paste a summarized version from an email i sent to my mom after the weekend of the 18th of September, Chile's independence day. Here it is (pardon me for grammar erros and not capitalizing lots of things..I got lazy):
Finally I left the city and the countryside was so pretty. Friday was Chile's independence day and began the year that celebrates their having 200 years of independence. Thursday night i went to la Moneda plaza, where Michelle Bachelet works (like our white house) where there was a huge free concert with 40 or so bands or artists. tonsss of people. They had fireworks, which i was informed, doesn't happen just any ole independence day--they only had them because it was celebrating 200 years. Saturday a Chilean friend of mine Felipe (he lives in the same house as Maritza, from my program) invited me to celebrate the day with his family, which was cool. got to see how a chilean family celebrates. they made me dance the Cueca, which is a really goofy dance. but its chile's national dance and they dance it like crazy this time of the year. you should google a video. the outfits are really cute though. i wanted to buy one of the dresses because they are pretty cheap here as opposed to a typical German attire dress. We had an asado, a bbq basically with salads and then a typical Chilean cake with lots of manjar in it (dulce de leche).
Saturday Felipe and I and 3 of his roommates (a guy from mexico and a guy and girl from belgium) went to rancagua, a smaller city south of here. has about 200,000 people with little pueblos around it. we went to the fondas, which are these big fair like things...lots of food and rides, vendors, games, etc. ate typical food (anticuchos, pork on a stick cooked over the grill, chicha, sweet apple wine, and empanadas filled with cheese. Pop, you would love the empanadas de queso---they're made of a soft pastry crust with yummy cheese inside and lightly deep fried, soooo good). Then around 5pm we were sitting trying to figure out what to do and we decided to go to Pichilemu, a small beach town south west of santiago. it was kinda on a whim...Maritza and elvira were there with 2 other girls and so since they were there we decided to go meet them since the place they were staying at had an extra room open. We had planned on returning to Santiago that night so we really did go on a whim and no one had a change of clothes or toothbrush or anything!! But anyway, where we stayed was in these little cabins with multiple beds, bathroom, and kitchen with a random assortment of cooking things, that normally rent out for abotu $35 a night, sleeping 5 people. This weekend was a little more but still cheap and RIGHT ON THE BEACH. it was gorgeous. But because we went with nothing, we left around noon on Sunday cause everyone wanted to shower etc. it was really nice anyway. pichilemu was really pretty. Reminded me SO much of California beaches around the Monterey area. rocks and darkish sand, the same trees, plants, smell, house-style. it was crazy how similar they are!!
So that's the summary of the 18th of September weekend. It was pretty awesome...here's a fun fact, by the way. In my Spanish grammar class the tuesday after the weekend we were discussing interesting things regarding the customs and such of the weekend, and I mentioned how I thought it was interesting that pretty much every house I saw had a Chilean flag outside it. And tonnnnss of cars have them too. Well the teacher goe on to say that its actually a law that every house or apartment building display a flag the day of the 18th and there is aparently a fine or somtehign it you dont. She said that she's doenst know of anyone whose been fined and doesnt know if they really do fine people, but the law exists...interesting!!
Since then there's been some fun festivities regarding soccer games. South America has been holding lots of games to determine which countries will go to the world cup in south africa next summer. Chile played Colombia this last saturday and whoever won would go to the cup. Well, Chile won and it was pretty crazy. Everytime they made a goal and at the end of the game you just had to stick your head out the window and the entire city errupts with honking horns, yelling and anything that makes noise. I was thinking how the US doenst really have anything like that, a sport thats played internationally and literally everyyyyone knows when there are games and such. I mean, the olympics but that doenst count because there are always different events going on. But it was pretty awesome. I went and met Cristina and Maritza in Plaza Italia, about 5 blocks from my house which is pretty muchwhere the entire city collaborates to celebrate something. They go there after they win a game, they go there during festivals, they all went wild there apparently when Pinochet died a few years ago. There were tons of people, mostly young people and it was just crazy. There are pictures.
This last weekend was pretty awesome as well. On Friday I got to go to a wedding. The wedding mass was at 9pm, pretty late if you ask me and then the reception was at this awesome restaurant it little out of the city in the country. It was really beautiful--we ate dinner at 2am, go figure. There was a dance floor, open bar, and excellent music. Pretty fun. Gave me an excuse to wear my dress and dress up a little since chileans never really dress up.
Saturday I chilled out and cleaned my room and went to Plaza Italia and then Sunday I got to leave the city again. There is an area south east of the city thats called Cajón del Maipo ==its countryside and parts of the foothills of the Andes. I hadn't been to the moutains yet so I'm glad I got to go before all the snow melted. There are these thermal spas (hot springs) also that are up in the andes that i'd read about and wanted to find at some point. I went with Felipe but little did we know that the road was closed to a few parts where slow covered it. There is nowhereonline that says if its open or closed to snow or rockslides so you just have to go and look. It was interesting on the way out there because the last little town we passed through had a crossing with the police and if you plan on staying more than a day its recommended that you register with the police so they can come look for you if you dont return because it's so rural beyond that and the road doesn't pass all the way to argentina (it just stops at some point in the moutains). Anyway, getting up the road, 28 km dirt road it suddenly stopped cause there were a bunch of cars parked. Then we saw that there was snow covering the road but we thought we were only about 5 km out from the springs so we decided to walk/hike in. The road was only partially covered so walking in was fine. It was sooooo pretty. We were literally UP there in the Andes right next to a resevoir called the Embalse El Yeso (it's in google earth and google maps). The water was super clear and really clean and the mountains all around and covered in snow. Well after about 5 km we still weren't there so we just continued trekking in. After 10 km we decided it'd be smart to go back before the sun went down. A let down that we never got to them but it was a nice 12.5 miles of walking that day---i figureed there wouldnt be a huge amount of walking involved so i just wore my sambas...regular indoor soccer shoes with no ankle support and gave me gnarly blisters. Next time im taking my hiking boots. My darn camera batties crapped out on me though only about an hour after we got there so there aren;t that many pictures. It was a nice day though.
That;s about it..I posted pictures on Picasa so check those out. Oh and I got a B+ on my last exam in my Borges literature class. yeah!
Hope all's well..see ya'll in a few weeks. !!
So since then...well since covering a month's passing would take a lot of time to type, I'm just going to paste a summarized version from an email i sent to my mom after the weekend of the 18th of September, Chile's independence day. Here it is (pardon me for grammar erros and not capitalizing lots of things..I got lazy):
Finally I left the city and the countryside was so pretty. Friday was Chile's independence day and began the year that celebrates their having 200 years of independence. Thursday night i went to la Moneda plaza, where Michelle Bachelet works (like our white house) where there was a huge free concert with 40 or so bands or artists. tonsss of people. They had fireworks, which i was informed, doesn't happen just any ole independence day--they only had them because it was celebrating 200 years. Saturday a Chilean friend of mine Felipe (he lives in the same house as Maritza, from my program) invited me to celebrate the day with his family, which was cool. got to see how a chilean family celebrates. they made me dance the Cueca, which is a really goofy dance. but its chile's national dance and they dance it like crazy this time of the year. you should google a video. the outfits are really cute though. i wanted to buy one of the dresses because they are pretty cheap here as opposed to a typical German attire dress. We had an asado, a bbq basically with salads and then a typical Chilean cake with lots of manjar in it (dulce de leche).
Saturday Felipe and I and 3 of his roommates (a guy from mexico and a guy and girl from belgium) went to rancagua, a smaller city south of here. has about 200,000 people with little pueblos around it. we went to the fondas, which are these big fair like things...lots of food and rides, vendors, games, etc. ate typical food (anticuchos, pork on a stick cooked over the grill, chicha, sweet apple wine, and empanadas filled with cheese. Pop, you would love the empanadas de queso---they're made of a soft pastry crust with yummy cheese inside and lightly deep fried, soooo good). Then around 5pm we were sitting trying to figure out what to do and we decided to go to Pichilemu, a small beach town south west of santiago. it was kinda on a whim...Maritza and elvira were there with 2 other girls and so since they were there we decided to go meet them since the place they were staying at had an extra room open. We had planned on returning to Santiago that night so we really did go on a whim and no one had a change of clothes or toothbrush or anything!! But anyway, where we stayed was in these little cabins with multiple beds, bathroom, and kitchen with a random assortment of cooking things, that normally rent out for abotu $35 a night, sleeping 5 people. This weekend was a little more but still cheap and RIGHT ON THE BEACH. it was gorgeous. But because we went with nothing, we left around noon on Sunday cause everyone wanted to shower etc. it was really nice anyway. pichilemu was really pretty. Reminded me SO much of California beaches around the Monterey area. rocks and darkish sand, the same trees, plants, smell, house-style. it was crazy how similar they are!!
So that's the summary of the 18th of September weekend. It was pretty awesome...here's a fun fact, by the way. In my Spanish grammar class the tuesday after the weekend we were discussing interesting things regarding the customs and such of the weekend, and I mentioned how I thought it was interesting that pretty much every house I saw had a Chilean flag outside it. And tonnnnss of cars have them too. Well the teacher goe on to say that its actually a law that every house or apartment building display a flag the day of the 18th and there is aparently a fine or somtehign it you dont. She said that she's doenst know of anyone whose been fined and doesnt know if they really do fine people, but the law exists...interesting!!
Since then there's been some fun festivities regarding soccer games. South America has been holding lots of games to determine which countries will go to the world cup in south africa next summer. Chile played Colombia this last saturday and whoever won would go to the cup. Well, Chile won and it was pretty crazy. Everytime they made a goal and at the end of the game you just had to stick your head out the window and the entire city errupts with honking horns, yelling and anything that makes noise. I was thinking how the US doenst really have anything like that, a sport thats played internationally and literally everyyyyone knows when there are games and such. I mean, the olympics but that doenst count because there are always different events going on. But it was pretty awesome. I went and met Cristina and Maritza in Plaza Italia, about 5 blocks from my house which is pretty muchwhere the entire city collaborates to celebrate something. They go there after they win a game, they go there during festivals, they all went wild there apparently when Pinochet died a few years ago. There were tons of people, mostly young people and it was just crazy. There are pictures.
This last weekend was pretty awesome as well. On Friday I got to go to a wedding. The wedding mass was at 9pm, pretty late if you ask me and then the reception was at this awesome restaurant it little out of the city in the country. It was really beautiful--we ate dinner at 2am, go figure. There was a dance floor, open bar, and excellent music. Pretty fun. Gave me an excuse to wear my dress and dress up a little since chileans never really dress up.
Saturday I chilled out and cleaned my room and went to Plaza Italia and then Sunday I got to leave the city again. There is an area south east of the city thats called Cajón del Maipo ==its countryside and parts of the foothills of the Andes. I hadn't been to the moutains yet so I'm glad I got to go before all the snow melted. There are these thermal spas (hot springs) also that are up in the andes that i'd read about and wanted to find at some point. I went with Felipe but little did we know that the road was closed to a few parts where slow covered it. There is nowhereonline that says if its open or closed to snow or rockslides so you just have to go and look. It was interesting on the way out there because the last little town we passed through had a crossing with the police and if you plan on staying more than a day its recommended that you register with the police so they can come look for you if you dont return because it's so rural beyond that and the road doesn't pass all the way to argentina (it just stops at some point in the moutains). Anyway, getting up the road, 28 km dirt road it suddenly stopped cause there were a bunch of cars parked. Then we saw that there was snow covering the road but we thought we were only about 5 km out from the springs so we decided to walk/hike in. The road was only partially covered so walking in was fine. It was sooooo pretty. We were literally UP there in the Andes right next to a resevoir called the Embalse El Yeso (it's in google earth and google maps). The water was super clear and really clean and the mountains all around and covered in snow. Well after about 5 km we still weren't there so we just continued trekking in. After 10 km we decided it'd be smart to go back before the sun went down. A let down that we never got to them but it was a nice 12.5 miles of walking that day---i figureed there wouldnt be a huge amount of walking involved so i just wore my sambas...regular indoor soccer shoes with no ankle support and gave me gnarly blisters. Next time im taking my hiking boots. My darn camera batties crapped out on me though only about an hour after we got there so there aren;t that many pictures. It was a nice day though.
That;s about it..I posted pictures on Picasa so check those out. Oh and I got a B+ on my last exam in my Borges literature class. yeah!
Hope all's well..see ya'll in a few weeks. !!
Friday, September 11, 2009
por fin, po'!
I'm sitting here at my desk eating an apple with peanut butter and manjar (chilean style dulce de leche, which i'm pretty sure is all over latin america), and decided that blogging might not be a bad idea, since it's been so long. I don't really have any fascinating news because it's just been school and I haven't left the city. I've been trying to mentally remember all the little things that make chilean culture different from what i'm used to so I can write them here, but that will be more of a process that just being able to remember everything at once. But here's is what I can remember as of now.
1. the mullet: it's really popular here. It's fashionable and lots of young guys have mullets. Dreadlocks are also quite popular, and it's not rare to see a guy from the front who appears to ahve normal hair, until you see the back and realize he has a dreadlock mullet---normal hair on top with anywhere from 1-10 dreadlocks protruding out of the back of his head. Girls often have just one dread too.
2. I realized why there are so few available apartments with young chileans. Chileans tend to live with their parents until their upper 20's if not into the 30s or until they get married. The culture, as are most latin cultures, and very family oriented and so kids my age live with their parents, especially if they are students. If i meet someone my age who lives alone, its either because of problems with the family or they are super independent and/or have lived in a foreign country. No wonder most of the foreign students i know here life with.....other foreign students.
3. the greeting in chile in the side-cheek kiss. When you meet someone new or are just meeting with your friends, the side0cheek kiss is always involved. guys dont do it with other guys, they just shake hands. But girls and girls, and guys and girls, always.
4. Fannypacks are popular here. I bought one a while back because thye are cheap but i didn't have the courage to wear it (of course, knowing me, i bought one that is bright purple) until recently. But really they are popular simply because its more safe to carry a fannypack than a small purse. My friends swedish roommate had her little purse cut right off her shoulder a few weeks back in a very public area. They sliced the strap and ran--her wallet and her camera and her chilean id card were all inside. So i've begun to use the fannypack, quite useful.
5. in universities, instead of requiring students to buy entire textbooks, the teachers just photocopy article and portions of textbooks and leave them at the central photocopy station for every department and then i got and just fill out a little sheet saying what copies i need from what class and pay for that. it's WAYYYYYY cheaper than buying books and makes my backpack wayyyyyy lighter. I think for the science and math classes they probably have books, but at least in the literature, language, poly science, history, and such departments, few people have textbooks. I haven;t spent more than 10 or 15 dollars on copies. Also when we print at school we don't pay per page, we just bring our own paper. That's pretty cool because the teachers often put things up on the their online pages that we have to print and they could be pretty lengthy...so buying a pack of printing paper for 5 bucks is cheaper than paying 8 cents a page like at sfsu. that just means that i have a stack about 3 inches tall of all my total articles and such for this semester thus far.
6. there are a few types of style here but the one that stands out to me the most (and kind of surprised me), is very hippy-ish. Like i said, dread locks are very common here, but there are lots of people that just dress super hippy-ish. interesting.
If I think of more, I will continue the list. As far as my life as of late....
I attempted to go to my first english-help session today at a public school (last week most people started but I couldnt go becasue they were doing some event thing at the school). the director emailed me and asked if i still wanted to come even if i'd only be there 45 minutes but I said i would go anyway. The reason being is that today, September 11th, marks the anniversery of the military coup of General Pinochet that overthrough the government of Salvador Allende and marked the begining of the dictatorship that lasted until 1990. The cut school short and especially recommend to international students to try to stay off teh streets starting in the afternoon and especially at night. There are always protests and manifestations and occasionally they get violent because there are still people out there that support what Pinochet did. The more I head about the time of dictatorship, the most intersting it becomes. I'm thinking of taking a chilean modern history class next sememster just because its interesting. A lot of what I hear is extremely shocking. I was hanging out with some friends the other day, chileans and somehow we got onto the topic. One of the guys is 25 so I asked him if he remembered anything but he didn't but they were telling me some of the things that happened and what their parents remembered or thought of it.
They then went on to say that the Estadio Nacional (national futbol stadium), which is the official stadium of the olympics that were held in the 60's and now of the club soccer team of La Universidad de Chile (the team i saw), was not supported by Pinochet. The other main rival team is called Colo-Colo and they have their own stadium in the southern part of the city. well, pinochet supported colo0colo and put money into the team and the stadium. During his dictatorship, the estadio nacional was used for other purposes: torture and killing people. This really shocked me---I was shocked. It's just so surprsiing because it's all so recent and it happened. I was talking to my new roommate, Matthias (who is German!!! yeah!!!) and he said he had talked to a profesor who was actually tortured there. He said it was too much to take in...t0 hear that from someone who experienced it. Appartnely, alongside physical torture, they also used to mentally torture people, saying things about family members they were killing or other such things. Sorry if this is really intense...it's history though and it happened. What I learn from living in a post-communist country. Apparently they also used to capture people who protested and such, would take them in a plane and drop them from thousands of feet over the pacific ocean. This is heavy stuff.
I think that was the main thing I wanted to blog because it is the most interesting. As of late, I've just been in school. I took my first exam, and did really bad, as I thought I would. Despite hours and hours of studying and trying to understand borges, i still got a pretty lousy grade. The teacher knows my name though, which I think is good...and Ive been trying to talk more in class to at least get participation poiints. I've pretty much become a monitor of his voice as well and I color code my notes. Black ink is concrete and waht he writes on the board and red ink is what I write down from him talking. The unit we are in right now is a bit easier though. I hope I can pull off a B on the next exam, to make up for the D I got (yea, a D. ouch).
Oh, and I mentioned I got a new roommate. So now we are four, back to normal. Me, Sarah and Jean-Charles, bother from france, and Matthias from germany. I tried to talk to matthias in german the othr day because I told him i wanted to practice but it WAS SO HARD!! Every time I stumble to think of a word, spanish just blurts out of my mouth. Or even if i know the word in german i still speak spanish. It's hard. that sucks. oh well. At least I can say "that's life" in a total of four languages!! c'est la vie, asi es la vida, so ist das leben.
The weather is finally getting a litttttle better. It was around 70 today...after 2 weeks of on and off raining and really cold days for what it should be in september. I might be going to the beach next weekend with some friends. I hope i can...i need to get out of the city. i think i am the only person from my entire group who hasnt left for a weekend or day trip to either go snowboarding or valparaíso ( a city west of here on the ocean) or anything else. I just didn't wanna spend money to go places when it's winter and we are going to have 3 months of no school. But i'm dying from some clean air, stars, space, trees, absolute quiet. It would be a nice thing. Also, school ends at 1pm on thursday and there are no classes friday because friday is the 18th of september, chilean independence day. It's supposed to a pretty wild and fun time. I'm excited for the food...maybe i will find a chilean food that has some real flavor in it. I hope so!!
Anywho, I think I will go get started on dinner.. Hope this was sufficient!! Some picutres to come soon!!! Espero que todos estén bien!!!
1. the mullet: it's really popular here. It's fashionable and lots of young guys have mullets. Dreadlocks are also quite popular, and it's not rare to see a guy from the front who appears to ahve normal hair, until you see the back and realize he has a dreadlock mullet---normal hair on top with anywhere from 1-10 dreadlocks protruding out of the back of his head. Girls often have just one dread too.
2. I realized why there are so few available apartments with young chileans. Chileans tend to live with their parents until their upper 20's if not into the 30s or until they get married. The culture, as are most latin cultures, and very family oriented and so kids my age live with their parents, especially if they are students. If i meet someone my age who lives alone, its either because of problems with the family or they are super independent and/or have lived in a foreign country. No wonder most of the foreign students i know here life with.....other foreign students.
3. the greeting in chile in the side-cheek kiss. When you meet someone new or are just meeting with your friends, the side0cheek kiss is always involved. guys dont do it with other guys, they just shake hands. But girls and girls, and guys and girls, always.
4. Fannypacks are popular here. I bought one a while back because thye are cheap but i didn't have the courage to wear it (of course, knowing me, i bought one that is bright purple) until recently. But really they are popular simply because its more safe to carry a fannypack than a small purse. My friends swedish roommate had her little purse cut right off her shoulder a few weeks back in a very public area. They sliced the strap and ran--her wallet and her camera and her chilean id card were all inside. So i've begun to use the fannypack, quite useful.
5. in universities, instead of requiring students to buy entire textbooks, the teachers just photocopy article and portions of textbooks and leave them at the central photocopy station for every department and then i got and just fill out a little sheet saying what copies i need from what class and pay for that. it's WAYYYYYY cheaper than buying books and makes my backpack wayyyyyy lighter. I think for the science and math classes they probably have books, but at least in the literature, language, poly science, history, and such departments, few people have textbooks. I haven;t spent more than 10 or 15 dollars on copies. Also when we print at school we don't pay per page, we just bring our own paper. That's pretty cool because the teachers often put things up on the their online pages that we have to print and they could be pretty lengthy...so buying a pack of printing paper for 5 bucks is cheaper than paying 8 cents a page like at sfsu. that just means that i have a stack about 3 inches tall of all my total articles and such for this semester thus far.
6. there are a few types of style here but the one that stands out to me the most (and kind of surprised me), is very hippy-ish. Like i said, dread locks are very common here, but there are lots of people that just dress super hippy-ish. interesting.
If I think of more, I will continue the list. As far as my life as of late....
I attempted to go to my first english-help session today at a public school (last week most people started but I couldnt go becasue they were doing some event thing at the school). the director emailed me and asked if i still wanted to come even if i'd only be there 45 minutes but I said i would go anyway. The reason being is that today, September 11th, marks the anniversery of the military coup of General Pinochet that overthrough the government of Salvador Allende and marked the begining of the dictatorship that lasted until 1990. The cut school short and especially recommend to international students to try to stay off teh streets starting in the afternoon and especially at night. There are always protests and manifestations and occasionally they get violent because there are still people out there that support what Pinochet did. The more I head about the time of dictatorship, the most intersting it becomes. I'm thinking of taking a chilean modern history class next sememster just because its interesting. A lot of what I hear is extremely shocking. I was hanging out with some friends the other day, chileans and somehow we got onto the topic. One of the guys is 25 so I asked him if he remembered anything but he didn't but they were telling me some of the things that happened and what their parents remembered or thought of it.
They then went on to say that the Estadio Nacional (national futbol stadium), which is the official stadium of the olympics that were held in the 60's and now of the club soccer team of La Universidad de Chile (the team i saw), was not supported by Pinochet. The other main rival team is called Colo-Colo and they have their own stadium in the southern part of the city. well, pinochet supported colo0colo and put money into the team and the stadium. During his dictatorship, the estadio nacional was used for other purposes: torture and killing people. This really shocked me---I was shocked. It's just so surprsiing because it's all so recent and it happened. I was talking to my new roommate, Matthias (who is German!!! yeah!!!) and he said he had talked to a profesor who was actually tortured there. He said it was too much to take in...t0 hear that from someone who experienced it. Appartnely, alongside physical torture, they also used to mentally torture people, saying things about family members they were killing or other such things. Sorry if this is really intense...it's history though and it happened. What I learn from living in a post-communist country. Apparently they also used to capture people who protested and such, would take them in a plane and drop them from thousands of feet over the pacific ocean. This is heavy stuff.
I think that was the main thing I wanted to blog because it is the most interesting. As of late, I've just been in school. I took my first exam, and did really bad, as I thought I would. Despite hours and hours of studying and trying to understand borges, i still got a pretty lousy grade. The teacher knows my name though, which I think is good...and Ive been trying to talk more in class to at least get participation poiints. I've pretty much become a monitor of his voice as well and I color code my notes. Black ink is concrete and waht he writes on the board and red ink is what I write down from him talking. The unit we are in right now is a bit easier though. I hope I can pull off a B on the next exam, to make up for the D I got (yea, a D. ouch).
Oh, and I mentioned I got a new roommate. So now we are four, back to normal. Me, Sarah and Jean-Charles, bother from france, and Matthias from germany. I tried to talk to matthias in german the othr day because I told him i wanted to practice but it WAS SO HARD!! Every time I stumble to think of a word, spanish just blurts out of my mouth. Or even if i know the word in german i still speak spanish. It's hard. that sucks. oh well. At least I can say "that's life" in a total of four languages!! c'est la vie, asi es la vida, so ist das leben.
The weather is finally getting a litttttle better. It was around 70 today...after 2 weeks of on and off raining and really cold days for what it should be in september. I might be going to the beach next weekend with some friends. I hope i can...i need to get out of the city. i think i am the only person from my entire group who hasnt left for a weekend or day trip to either go snowboarding or valparaíso ( a city west of here on the ocean) or anything else. I just didn't wanna spend money to go places when it's winter and we are going to have 3 months of no school. But i'm dying from some clean air, stars, space, trees, absolute quiet. It would be a nice thing. Also, school ends at 1pm on thursday and there are no classes friday because friday is the 18th of september, chilean independence day. It's supposed to a pretty wild and fun time. I'm excited for the food...maybe i will find a chilean food that has some real flavor in it. I hope so!!
Anywho, I think I will go get started on dinner.. Hope this was sufficient!! Some picutres to come soon!!! Espero que todos estén bien!!!
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